Part 3 (2/2)
”What if his horse had stumbled? What if he is lying there at the roadside beneath the tree?” He tore himself away from the contemplation of the map. ”The thing's magical!” he cried. ”It has bewitched you, Steve, and by the Lord it has come near to bewitching me!”
”I thought the horseman was yourself. Why don't you go?” said I, pointing to the map.
Lieutenant Clutterbuck rose impatiently from his chair.
”There must be an end of this. Once for all I will not go. There is no reason I should. There is reason why I should not. You do not know in what you are meddling. You are taken like a schoolboy by an old wife's tale of a lonely girl trapped in a net. You are too old for such follies.”
”I was too old a fortnight ago,” I returned, ”but, by the Lord, these last days I have grown young again--so young that----”
I stopped suddenly. Not until this instant had the notion occurred to me, but it came now, it thrilled through me with a veritable shock. I leaned back in my chair and stared at Clutterbuck. He understood, for he in his turn stared at me.
”The rider!” said he breathlessly, tapping the map with his forefinger, ”the man whose face you did not see!”
I nodded at him.
”What if the face were mine?” said I.
”You could never believe it.”
”I believe that I have even enough youth for that,” I cried, and I bent over the map, trying again to fas.h.i.+on from its plain black and white my picture of the great high-road, climbing and winding through a country-side rich with all the colours of the summer. But it was only a map of lines and curves, nor could I any longer discover the horseman who spurred along it--though I had now a particular reason to wish for a view of his face,--or the wood into which he disappeared.
”Well, has your cavalier galloped into the open yet?” asked Clutterbuck.
He spoke with sarcasm, but the sarcasm was forced. It was but a cloak to cover and excuse the question.
I shook my head.
”No, and he will not,” said Clutterbuck.
”Is that so sure?” I asked. ”What if the face were mine?”
”You are serious!” he cried. ”You would go a stranger and offer your unsought aid? It would be an impertinence.”
”Suppose life and death are in the balance, would they weigh impertinence?”
”It might be _your_ life and _your_ death!”
And as he spoke, it seemed to me that all my last seven years rose up in their shrouds and laughed at him.
”And what then?” I cried. ”Would the world s.h.i.+ver if I died? Would even a tavern-keeper draw down his blinds? Perhaps some drunkard in his cups would wish I lived, that he might take my measure in a drinking-bout. There's my epitaph for you! Good Lord, Clutterbuck, but I would dearly love to die a clean death! There's that boy Parmiter tramping down his road. He does a far better thing than I have ever done. You know! Why talk of it? You know the life I have lived, and since that boy flung his example in my eyes, upon my word I sicken to think of it. Twelve years ago, Clutterbuck, I came to London, a cadet with a cadet's poor portion, but what a wealth of dreams! A fortune first, if I slaved till I was forty, and then I would set free my soul and live! The fortune came, and I slaved but six years for it. The treaty of Aix and a rise of stocks, and there was my fortune. You know how I have lived since.”
Clutterbuck looked at me curiously. I had never said so much to him or to any man in this strain. Nor should I have said so much now, but I was fairly shaken out of my discretion. For a little Clutterbuck sat silent and motionless. Then he said gently:
”Shall I tell you why I will not go? Yes, I will tell you,” and he told me the history of that Sunday, two years ago, when Cullen Mayle sat in the stocks, or at least as much of it as had come within his knowledge. The events of that day were the beginning of all the trouble, indeed, but Lieutenant Clutterbuck never knew more of it than what concerned himself, and as I sat over against him on that July morning and listened to his story while the world awoke, I had no suspicion of what the pa.s.sage of that Sunday hid, or of the extraordinary consequences which it brought about.
CHAPTER IV
<script>