Harold Bindloss - The League of the Leopard

He had just arrived at this decision when Chatterton came upon him.

"You do not look at all fit, Hilton," said the elder man. "The cut on your forehead would, of course, account for that; but it has struck me lately that something is troubling you. I refrain on principle from prying into other folks' affairs; but, considering the time I have known you, if you have any difficulty, I think you might confide it to me."

Dane understood what lay behind this, and he felt that it was the last thing under the circumstances he would think of doing.

"You have made my stay here so pleasant that if I remain much longer I shall never be fit for work again," he said. "I have accordingly decided to run up to London, and, if the railroad builders have not my work cut out, look round for another foreign commission."

Thomas Chatterton started a little, and tried to hide a frown.

"I thought you had changed your mind after the letter you showed me, and decided to stay in this country. It strikes me as downright folly to risk accidents and fevers abroad with such a patent in your hands. Your pump would beat the best pulsometer ever put into a mine. If you don't approve of the offers you have received, and my suggestions, why can't you sell it to the public through a limited company?"

Dane laughed a little.

"As I said before, sir, by the time I paid promoters and directors, there would be very little left for me. If the pump, which cost years of thought and experimenting, is to enrich anybody it shall be its inventor; and another good foreign commission should supply me with the necessary money."

"Listen to me," said Chatterton. "It is time I spoke plainly. I have been called a hard man, but I hope I am equally just, and I had to fight desperately for a foothold at the beginning. Well, I kept a mental ledger, and no man ever robbed or assisted me but I made against his name a debit or credit entry. Some of those debts were heavy, but in due time I paid them back in full."

For a moment Chatterton certainly looked a hard man as he shut his hand slowly, and with a very grim expression in his heavy-jawed visage, stared steadily at Dane. Then the grimness vanished as he added:

"There is still a sum standing to the credit of Henry Dane, and I feel ashamed often that I have let it stand so long. There is still one way in which you could help me wipe it off, if none of those mentioned already suits you. My niece will not leave me dowerless – and – for if it had not been so I should not have spoken – you expressed your admiration pretty openly some years ago."

Dane had no enviable task before him, but, remembering his compact, he was determined to accomplish it, even if it should be necessary to use a little brutality.

"I am afraid I see two somewhat important objections, sir," he answered quietly. "In the first place, it is not apparent that the lady approves of me."

"Pshaw!" said Chatterton. "When I was your age I never allowed such trifles to daunt me. You surely did not expect her to say she had been patiently waiting for you?"

"I think I mentioned two objections, sir, and the second is of almost equal importance," Dane responded gravely. "I am at present a poor man, you see."

Thomas Chatterton faced round on him again with his jaw protruded, and a deeper hue in his generally sufficiently florid countenance.

"You need not be, unless you are fond of poverty. You mean – "

"That a boy and girl attachment seldom lasts long – on either side."

Chatterton moved a few paces forward, with the dry cough which those who knew his temper recognized as a danger signal, then wheeled round upon his heel and strode toward the house; and Dane noticed that he kicked an unoffending dog he usually fondled.

As luck would have it, the next person Dane met was Lilian, and she looked very winsome as she stood bareheaded under the morning sunshine in her thin white dress. Dane's lips set tight as he watched her, then suddenly his face softened again.

"I am glad to see you recovering, Hilton," she greeted him. "That hat hides my bandages nicely. Do you feel able to walk slowly over to Culmeny with me to-day?"

It was a tantalizing question: Dane felt not only able but very willing to walk across the breadth of Scotland in Lilian Chatterton's company. He feared however, that his moral strength would prove unequal to the strain the excursion might impose, for it was growing very difficult to observe the conditions of the indefinite compact.

"I am very sorry, but I have letters to write," he said.

Lilian Chatterton was a trifle quick-tempered, and though Dane knew it, and considered it not a fault but a characteristic, he wondered at the ways of women as she answered:

"I could not, of course, expect you to delay your correspondence, which is no doubt important. Have you run out of those new powder cartridges?"

Dane felt that, under the circumstances, this was particularly hard on him, but he smiled dryly.

"The correspondence relates to my departure for London. I want you to listen, Lilian. I have just had an interview with your uncle, which makes my absence appear desirable. Perhaps you can guess its purport, and the gist of what he said."

The clear rose-color deepened a little in the girl's cheeks, but she answered steadily.

"I will admit the possibility. The most important question is what you said to him."

Now Dane had not only subdued mutinous alien laborers, and held them to their task, but he had even been complimented by a South American Spaniard upon the incisive vocabulary which helped him to accomplish it. Nevertheless, at that moment he felt almost abject, and found speech of any kind very difficult.

"Are you ashamed of your answer?" asked the girl.

"I am," Dane admitted. "There was, however, only one way in which I could satisfy Mr. Chatterton without running the risk of allowing him to apply considerable misdirected energy to the task of convincing a second person. Therefore, though I did not like it, I took that way. He was not pleased with me."

"You told him – " Lilian began, coloring still more.

"I did," said Dane grimly. "Horribly unflattering, wasn't it; but it was the best I could do for you."

The girl first experienced a wholly illogical desire to humiliate the speaker; but, recognizing the unreasonableness of this, she reflected a moment, and then laughed mirthlessly.

"It should certainly prove effective. Still, a woman would have found a neater way out of the difficulty!"

Lilian left him, and when the man passed out of earshot into the shrubbery, he used a few pointed and forbidden adjectives in connection with what he termed his luck.

He was leaning moodily upon a gate, looking down on a sunlit stubble-field the following afternoon, when the next link was forged in the chain of circumstances which, beginning with Chatterton's fishing, would drag him through strange adventures. There was late honeysuckle on the hedges, and festoons of warm-tinted straw. Running water sang soothingly beneath the pine branches overhanging a neighboring hollow; while all the wide vista of river, moor, and fell was mellowed by the golden autumn haze. Dane, however, was far from happy. He was in no way jealous of Carsluith Maxwell, which was perhaps surprising; but, in addition to his other troubles, it did not please him that the latter should have accompanied Miss Chatterton home on foot from Culmeny. They had also been an inordinate time over the journey.

Presently, a little brown-faced child came pattering barefooted down the lane, and stopping, glanced at him shyly, as though half afraid. She was a pretty, elfish little thing, though her well-mended garments betokened industrious poverty. She apparently gathered courage when the man smiled at her.

"Whom are you staring so hard at, my little maid?" said he.