The Hillman Part 9

The prince, escaping gracefully from a companion who remained adamant to all his advances, had maneuvered his way to their side. The last few steps were taken together. In a few moments they were in the car and ready to start. Stephen, with a stiff little bow, had already departed.

Louise leaned out from her place with outstretched hands.

"And now good-by, dear Mr. Strangewey! Your brother would not let me make my little speech to him, so you must accept the whole of my thanks.

And," she went on, the corners of her mouth twitching a little, although her face remained perfectly grave, "if the time should come when the need of reinvestments, or of some new machinery for your farm, brings you to London, will you promise that you will come and see me?"

"I will promise that with much pleasure," John answered.

She leaned back and the prince took her place, holding out his hand.

"Mr. Strangewey, although your luck has been better than mine, and you have robbed me of a visit to which I had looked forward for months, I bear you no ill-will. I trust that you will do me the honor of shooting with me before long. My head keeper arranges for the local guns, and I shall see that he sends you a list of the days on which we shall shoot.

May I beg that you will select the most convenient to yourself? If you have no car here, it will give me additional pleasure to welcome you at Raynham as my guest."

John, struggling against an instinctive dislike of which, for many reasons, he was a little ashamed, murmured a few incoherent words. The prince leaned back and the car glided away, followed, a few minutes later, by Louise's own landaulet, with Aline in solitary state inside.

John watched the little procession until it finally disappeared from sight; then he turned on his heel and went into the house. Stephen, who had just filled a pipe, was smoking furiously in the hall.

"Have they gone?" he demanded.

John nodded.

"They are racing into Kendal to catch the Scotchman for London."

"The sooner she gets there, the better," Stephen growled.

John raised his head. The light of battle flashed for a moment in his eyes.

"She came here unbidden," he said, "and we did no more than our bounden duty in entertaining her. For the rest, what is there that you can say against her? Women there must be in the world. Why do you judge those who come your way so harshly?"

Stephen withdrew the pipe from his mouth and dealt the black oak table in front of him a blow with his great fist. Even John himself was struck with the sudden likeness of his brother's face to the granite rocks which were piled around their home.

"I'll answer your question, John," he said. "I'll tell you the truth as I see it and as I know it. Women there must be to breed men's sons, to care for their households; even, I grant you, to be their companions and to lighten the dark days when sorrow comes. But she isn't that sort. She is as far removed from them as our mountain road is from the scented thoroughfares of Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, where she might take her daily exercise. I'll tell you about her, John. She is one of those who have sown the hatred of women in my heart. Do you know what I call them, John? I call them witch-women. There's something of the devil in their blood. They call themselves artists. They have the gift of turning the heads and spoiling the lives of sober, well-living men, till they make them dance to their bidding along the ways of shame, and turn their useful lives into the dotage of a love-sick boy. They aren't child-bearing women, that sort! They don't want to take their proper place in your household by your side, breed sons and daughters for you, sink their own lives in the greater duties of motherhood. There's generally a drop of devilish foreign blood in their veins, as she has.

Our grandmother had it. You know the result. The empty frame in the lumber-room will tell you."

John, half angry, half staggered by his brother's vehemence, was for the moment a little confused.

"There may be women like that, Stephen," he confessed. "I am not denying the truth of much that you say. But what right have you to cla.s.s her among them? What do you know of her?"

"It's written in her face," Stephen answered fiercely. "Women like her breathe it from their lips when they speak, just as it s.h.i.+nes out of their eyes when they look at you. An actress, and a friend of the Prince of Seyre! A woman who thought it worth her while, during her few hours'

stay here--" John had suddenly straightened himself. Stephen clenched his teeth. "Curse it, that's enough!" he said. "She's gone, anyway.

Come, let's have our lunch!"

VI

Once more that long, winding stretch of mountain road lay empty under the moonlight. Three months had pa.s.sed, and none of the mystery of the earlier season in the year remained. The hills had lost their canopy of soft, gray mist. Nature had amplified and emphasized herself. The whole outline of the country was marvelously distinct. The more distant mountains, as a rule blurred and uncertain in shape, seemed now to pierce with their jagged summits the edge of the star-filled sky.

Up the long slope, where three months before he had ridden to find himself confronted with the adventure of his life, John Strangewey jogged homeward in his high dog-cart. The mare, scenting her stable, broke into a quick trot as they topped the long rise. Suddenly she felt a hand tighten upon her reins. She looked inquiringly around, and then stood patiently awaiting her master's bidding.

It seemed to John as if he had pa.s.sed from the partial abstraction of the last few hours into absolute and entire forgetfulness of the present. He could see the motor-car drawn up by the side of the road, could hear the fretful voice of the maid, and the soft, pleasant words of greeting from the woman who had seemed from the first as if she were very far removed indeed from any of the small annoyances of their accident.

"I have broken down. Can you help?"

He set his teeth. The poignancy of the recollection was a torture to him. Word by word he lived again through that brief interview. He saw her descend from the car, felt the touch of her hand on his arm, saw the flash of her brown eyes as she drew close to him with that pleasant little air of familiarity, shared by no other woman he had ever known.

Then the little scene faded away, and he remembered the tedious present.

He had spent two dull days at the house of a neighboring landowner, playing cricket in the daytime, dancing at night with women in whom he was unable to feel the slightest interest, always with that far-away feeling in his heart, struggling hour by hour with that curious restlessness which seemed to have taken a permanent place in his disposition. He was on his way home to Peak Hall. He knew exactly the welcome which was awaiting him. He knew exactly the news he would receive. He raised his whip and cracked it viciously in the air.

Stephen was waiting for him, as he had expected, in the dining room. The elder Strangewey was seated in his accustomed chair, smoking his pipe and reading the paper. The table was laid for a meal, which Jennings was preparing to serve.

"Back again, John?" his brother remarked, looking at him fixedly over his newspaper.

John picked up one or two letters, glanced them over, and flung them down upon the table. He had examined every envelope for the last few months with the same expectancy, and thrown each one down with the same throb of disappointment.

"As you see."

"Had a good time?"

"Not very. We were too strong for them. They came without a bowler at all."

"Did you get a good knock?"

"A hundred and seven," John replied. "It was just a slog, though.

Nothing to eat, thank you, Jennings. You can clear the table so far as I am concerned. I had supper with the Greys. Have they finished the barley-fields, Stephen?"

"All in at eight o'clock."

There was a brief silence. Then Stephen knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to his feet.

"John," he asked, "why did you pull up on the road there?"

There was no immediate answer. The slightest of frowns formed itself upon the younger man's face.

"How did you know that I pulled up?"

"I was sitting with the window open, listening for you. I came outside to see what had happened, and I saw your lights standing still."

"I had a fancy to stop for a moment," John said; "nothing more."

"You aren't letting your thoughts dwell upon that woman?"

"I have thought about her sometimes," John answered, almost defiantly.

"What's the harm? I'm still here, am I not?"

Stephen crossed the room. From the drawer of the old mahogany sideboard he produced an ill.u.s.trated paper. He turned back the frontispiece fiercely and held it up.

"Do you see that, John?"