Harold Bindloss - The Dust of Conflict

“Blackmail!” said Appleby dryly. “Go on.”

Tony took out and played with a cigar. “She was pretty, and you know I was always a trifle soft. Now and then I stopped as I passed, and talked to her. I don’t think she disliked it. Well, I don’t remember exactly how it came about, but I made her a trifling wager, and, of course, I lost it; while some fiend put it into my head to send her a little brooch, with a note, instead of the forfeit agreed on – I think it was a box of chocolate. I was away for a week or two, and when I came back she told me she didn’t think she ought to take anything of that kind from me. There was nobody about the lodge – at least so I fancied – and I insisted upon putting the condemned thing on. I think I told you she was pretty.”

“I have seen it for myself,” said Appleby, whose face was a picture of disgust. “Go on!”

“Well,” said Tony, “why the devil are you looking like that at me? I wasn’t engaged to Violet then, and I kissed her – and went away immediately. It is necessary that you should know this, you see.”

Perhaps it was relief, for his comrade was more truthful than weak men usually are, but Appleby lapsed into a great burst of laughter. Tony, however, looked at him lugubriously.

“It really isn’t in the least amusing – to me,” he said. “It’s an especially risky business kissing that kind of young woman, especially when anybody sees you. Still, I’d seen something in the girl’s face that warned me, and on my word of honor the affair ended there; but in a week or two, when I didn’t answer the note she sent, Davidson came and worried me. Talked about his feelings and a motherless girl’s reputation, showed me the note I’d written her, and said a good deal about witnesses. Well – you know I’m careless – I gave him five pounds, a note, and then saw he had one of his men hanging about. ‘Go down to the “Black Bull,” and get this fiver Mr. Palliser has given me changed,’ he said.”

“Clever!” said Appleby. “I begin to understand the thing.”

“Well,” said Tony, “I never went near his place since then, and the girl went away, but soon after I was engaged to Violet, Davidson turned up again. This time it was a more serious tale – the usual one – but you have got to believe what I told you.”

“Yes,” said Appleby, “I think I can. You were often a fool, Tony, but that contented you.”

“I gave him twenty pounds. If I’d had any sense I would have knocked him down instead; but it was an unpleasant story, and I was engaged to Violet. Godfrey Palliser was bent on the match too, though it wasn’t that which influenced me. Then Davidson commenced to come for money regularly, and I can’t get out of the fact that I’ve been subsidizing him without perjury; while it’s evident that if I told the truth now nobody would believe me. I tell you, Bernard, the thing has been worrying the life out of me.”

This was apparent from his strained voice and the dejection in his face, but Appleby smiled reassuringly. “You should have gone to a lawyer long ago, Tony; but you can leave it to me,” he said. “Davidson expects you to give him money to-night?”

“Yes. He makes me come out at midnight and meet him to show he holds the whip over me. Thirty pounds – and I can only raise twenty – at half-past eleven by the fir spinny! Have you the slightest hope of doing anything with him?”

Appleby nodded as he took out his watch. “I shouldn’t wonder if I bring you good news to-morrow. Remember, you are to say nothing to anybody. Give me what money you have and then go to sleep. You look as if you needed it.”

He took the notes Palliser handed him, and when he went away hung about the head of the stairway until Violet Wayne came up with a white-haired lady. He contrived to catch her eye, and though she passed on with her companion within five minutes she came back again.

“Well?” she said expectantly.

Appleby smiled. “If you can let me have ten pounds and ask no questions I think it will be an excellent investment, though it is quite possible that I shall be able to hand you them back to-morrow,” he said. “If I were a richer man I would not ask you.”

The girl made a little gesture of impatience and flitted away, but in a few minutes she once more stood beside him, a trifle breathless, and there was a crisp rustle, as she slipped something into his hand.

“Thank you ever so much! When you can you will tell me,” she said.

Appleby only nodded, and went down the stairway. He took a riding crop from the rack in the hall, and then passed through the drawing-room into the conservatory, the outer door of which was not fastened yet. He opened it noiselessly and slipped out into the night, taking the key with him; but, though he did not know this, a man who afterwards remembered it saw him and noticed that he carried the riding crop.

IT was with confused feelings that Appleby, treading softly as he crossed the gravelled terrace, slipped into the gloom of a shrubbery. There was a trace of frost in the air, and the stars shone brightly, but here and there a thin white mist hung in filmy wisps. He was, however, conscious of an elation which had a curious bracing effect. Violet Wayne had trusted him with her confidence, and it was the first time a woman of her station had cast more than a passing glance on him. Her reposeful serenity, with its faint suggestion of imperiousness, had impressed him more than her beauty, and he was sensible of an unbounded respect and admiration for Tony’s fiancée. Tony had also, in his indolent fashion, and perhaps because the favors he dispensed cost him nothing, been a good friend to him, which was, however, not astonishing, since Appleby had fought most of his battles for him and stood between him and the results of his easy-going carelessness at school. Tony Palliser was one of the men who need the guidance of a stronger hand, and usually obtain it.

Appleby had, however, affairs of his own to think of that night, and as he swung across a misty meadow the half-formed resolution which had been long in his mind took definite shape, and he decided he would not go back to the drudgery his soul detested. His father had risen by valor from the ranks, and the instincts he had stubbornly held in check at last asserted themselves dominantly. He remembered the sordid poverty, the struggle to maintain appearances, and the strain of forced attention to an uncongenial task, and asked himself half contemptuously why he had borne them so long. He had spent his early years in Spain, where he had been taught out of charity by an army chaplain, and had reckless brown-faced muleteers and smugglers and grave artillery officers, the gatekeepers of the Mediterranean, for his friends, while the fortnight spent at Northrop had brought back old associations overwhelmingly.

It was, however, not the leisure and wealth and luxury which appealed to him – and indeed there was little of the latter at Northrop Hall – but the smell of the brown woods and the ringing of the guns. There were also the horses, for Appleby had learned to ride in Spain, the wide spaces he could gallop through with tingling blood, and the hours he had spent pitting every faculty against the wariness of the grayling in the stream. He felt he could never go back to the old colorless life again, and as he looked out into the dusky blueness under the stars and across the dim landscape which rolled away before him, silent, and wide, and shadowy, his courage rose. There was room, he felt, beyond the confines of English cities for men with thews and sinews who were willing to hew their own way to fortune out in the wind and sun.

He stopped for a few moments on a hillside and looked about him, while his heart throbbed faster. There was still a light or two in the hall behind him, but none in the village, and the earth lay asleep wrapped in fleecy draperies of drifting mist, while the low murmur of the river came out of the great stillness. He could see its pale blink where it slid out from the gloom of a wood, and above, across the stubble where the footpath led, a clump of rigid spires that rose black and solid against the faintly luminous night. That, he knew, was the fir spinny where he was to meet the blackmailer, and shaking all thought of his own affairs from him he went on quietly resolute to do battle for his friend. Appleby was an impulsive man, quick to decide; but there was also an obdurate persistency in him, and the decision once made was usually adhered to. Keeper Davidson was not to find an easy victim that night.