Harold Bindloss - The League of the Leopard

They went back to the house together; and in the meantime, Thomas Chatterton, who was not a skilful angler, whipped several pools unsuccessfully, hooking nothing but weeds, and once, by accident, a water hen. Thus it happened that he had not returned when darkness fell, and Mrs. Chatterton despatched Dane in search of him. The moon was rising when the latter came down a path through the fir wood and stopped beside a deep, black pool. A streak of silver light crept up to the roots of an alder beside a ruined wall, and he paused to watch the wrinkled current flash athwart it. The odors of the firs and the stillness of the night were soothing: the sacrifice he had lately made had been a heavy one. Dane had not abandoned his hopes, but knew that he might have to wait long for their consummation, if they were ever realized.

Presently there was a sound of footsteps, and Dane guessed that the approaching shape was Chatterton by the red glow of his cigar. The iron-master stopped beside the alder, and it seemed that something which caused a ripple near its roots caught his eyes. Dane suspected that some poacher had set a night line.

Now, the wall marked the boundary between Chatterton's riparian rights and those of Culmeny; and it was out of idle curiosity that Dane watched his host instead of hailing him as, first looking about him, he descended the bank and hauled in the line. An exclamation of disgust followed as a writhing eel was flung out upon the grass; but there were nobler fish attached, and presently Chatterton stood up holding a splendid trout. Dane remembered that his father had sworn by Chatterton's commercial integrity, but he was not wholly astonished when the man slipped the fish, and a second one which followed it, into his creel. Then, surmising that the angler would not have desired a witness, he turned back softly and met him in the wood, flattering himself that he had arranged the meeting neatly.

"Had you any luck, sir?" he asked.

"The water was low, but here is something to convince the mockers," Chatterton answered, holding up a handsome trout; and Dane expressed admiration but no astonishment, which might not have been complimentary.

They walked home together, and Lilian met them in the hall. She surveyed the trout suspiciously, then laughed as she said:

"You look hot and muddy, and almost guilty. Are you quite sure you have not been poaching?"

Miss Chatterton was a shrewd young lady, and for a moment the iron-master, who had quelled several strikes unaided, looked positively uneasy.

"Young women were taught that flippancy did not become them when I was young," he rebuked.

Late that night the two men sat talking together.

"You have told me little about your affairs, Hilton," Chatterton said; "but I presume you will stay at home and put your pump on the market instead of accepting the foreign commission. There should be a good demand for it among the deep mine owners."

"I'm afraid not, sir," was the answer. "The patent lawsuit proved expensive, and to start an article of that kind successfully requires a good deal of money. I shall therefore go abroad to earn a little more as soon as the firm sends me."

"And risk your life for a thousand pounds," said Chatterton severely. "Don't you know that there are men with money who would be willing to finance you?"

"All I have met demanded three-fourths of the possible profits in return; and this is my invention."

"It is a valuable one," declared Chatterton with unusual diffidence. "But can't you think of anybody who would lend you the money out of good-will at a very moderate interest?"

Dane looked at the speaker steadily before he answered.

"I think I could; and I'm grateful; but unfortunately I can't bring myself to borrow money from such people. It would be abusing their kindness; and I might lose it for them."

Chatterton frowned.

"You are like your father – and as confoundedly hard to do a favor to," he said.

He retired shortly after this; and Dane went out into the moonlight, and leaned over the rails of a footbridge, watching the river slide past. He found a faint solace in the sounds and scents which filled the shadows, and knew that though he had taken the one course possible, if he was to retain his own self-respect and Lilian's esteem, there would be no sleep for him that night.

While waiting for his foreign commission, Dane found the summer days slip by almost too rapidly, though there were occasions when, after a long afternoon spent in Lilian's company, he fancied he could understand the feelings of Tantallus. The girl appeared completely reassured, and treated him with sisterly cordiality, while Chatterton, who knew nothing of their compact, nodded sapiently as he observed their growing friendship. Dane sometimes wondered if he were not heaping up future sorrow for himself; but, with infrequent exceptions, he found the present very good, and, being a sanguine man who could wait, he made the most of it.

Lilian was troubled by no misgivings. Once, when her aunt asked a diplomatic question, she smiled frankly as she said: "Yes. I am in one way very fond of Hilton; you will remember that I always was. We understand each other thoroughly; and he is so assured and solid that one feels a restful sense of security in his company. You will remember the Highland chieftain's candlesticks – the men with the claymores and torches, Aunty. Well, I fancy that worthy gentleman must have felt the same thing when he dined in state with them about him. He had but to lift his finger and they would disappear, you know."

Mrs. Chatterton looked slightly grave as she answered: "Don't forget that they were also men with passions, and very terrible men, sometimes – for instance, at Killiecrankie. It would not surprise me if you discovered that there is a good deal of very vigorous human nature in Hilton Dane."

Thomas Chatterton still went fishing, generally with indifferent success, but once Lilian caught Dane examining his creel, which was surprisingly well filled.

"I am puzzled, Hilton," she said. "I made a wager with Uncle that he would not catch a dozen good trout in a month, and now I fancy that he will win it."

"Well?"

"Men are deceivers ever – especially when it is a question of catching fish. I have noticed that when your host goes fishing by daylight he rarely catches anything but eels, which, as everybody knows, do not rise to a fly, while when he rises early or returns in the dusk he brings a really fine trout or two. I cannot, however, believe that this one died only two hours ago. Can you suggest an explanation?"

"Charity," said Dane gravely, "suspecteth nothing. Don't you know that trout rise most freely just before the dusk?"

Lilian shook her head.

"You are not sufficiently clever to set your wits against a woman's," she declared.

Dane laughed, a trifle grimly; and the girl, momentarily startled by something in his merriment, decided that she must have been mistaken; but she abandoned the subject with some abruptness.

That very evening, perhaps sent forth by fate, because much depended upon his fishing, Thomas Chatterton took up his rod and landing net, and, as he did not return by nightfall, his wife once more despatched Dane in search of him.

"I think you know where to find him; and I wish I did, for he has only to take two more trout to win," Lilian added significantly.

Dane proceeded by the shortest way to the big elbow pool, but it was almost dark when he reached it. There had been heavy rain, and all the firs which loomed through thin white mist were dripping. The water came down beneath them thick with the peat of the moorlands in incipient flood. Dane could hear its hoarse growl about the boulders studding the tail rapid, and surmised that there ought to be several trout on the poacher's line. Having, nevertheless, no desire to surprise his host red-handed, he did not immediately proceed toward it, but sat upon the driest stone he could find, listening for his coming. There was no sound but the clamor of the river and the heavy splashing of moisture from the boughs above, some of which trickled down his neck, until he heard a rattle of falling stones, and a shadowy figure, which he guessed was Chatterton's, crawled down toward the alder roots.