The Wild Geese. Stanley John Weyman

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ this is robbery."

      "Sure it's not that you must be saying!"

      The Colonel put the skipper on one side. "By your leave," he cried, "one word! You don't know, sir, who I am, but——"

      "I know you must pay your dues!" Uncle Ulick answered, parrot-like. "Oh yes, you must pay your dues!" He was clearly ashamed of his rôle, however; for as he spoke he shook off the Colonel's hold with a pettish gesture, struck his horse with his stick, and cantered away over the hill. In a twinkling he was lost to sight.

      "Vaurien!" cried Captain Augustin, shaking his fist after him. But he might as well have sworn at the moon.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      MORRISTOWN

      It was not until the Colonel had passed over the shoulder above the stone-walled house that he escaped from the jabber of the crowd and the jeers of the younger members of this savage tribe, who, noting something abnormal in the fashion of the stranger's clothes, followed him a space. On descending the farther slope, however, he found himself alone in the silence of the waste. Choosing without hesitation one of two tracks, ill-trodden, but such as in that district and at that period passed for roads, he took his way along it at a good pace.

      A wide brown basin, bog for the most part, but rising here and there into low mounds of sward or clumps of thorn-trees, stretched away to the foot of the hills. He gazed upon it with eyes which had been strained for years across the vast unbroken plains of Central Europe, the sandy steppes of Poland, the frozen marshes of Lithuania; and beside the majesty of their boundless distances this view shrank to littleness. But it spoke to more than his eyes; it spoke to the heart, to feelings and memories which time had not blunted, nor could blunt. The tower on the shoulder behind him had been raised by his wild forefathers in the days when the Spaniard lay at Smerwick; and, mean and crumbling, still gave rise to emotions which the stern battlements of Stralsund or of Rostock had failed to evoke. Soil and sky, the lark which sang overhead, the dark peat-water which rose under foot, the scent of the moist air, the cry of the curlew, all spoke of home—the home which he had left in the gaiety of youth, to return to it a grave man, older than his years, and with grey hairs flecking the black. No wonder that he stood more than once, and, absorbed in thought, gazed on this or that, on crag and moss, on the things which time and experience had so strangely diminished.

      The track, after zig-zagging across a segment of the basin that has been described, entered a narrow valley, drained by a tolerable stream. After ascending this for a couple of miles, it disclosed a view of a wider vale, enclosed by gentle hills of no great height. In the lap of this nestled a lake, on the upper end of which some beauty was conferred by a few masses of rock partly clothed by birch-trees, through which a stream fell sharply from the upland. Not far from these rocks a long, low house stood on the shore.

      The stranger paused to take in the prospect; nor was it until after the lapse of some minutes, spent in the deepest reverie, that he pursued his way along the left-hand bank of the lake. By-and-by he was able to discern, amid the masses of rock at the head of the lake, a grey tower, the twin of that Tower of Skull which he had left behind him; and a hundred paces farther he came upon a near view of the house.

      "Two-and-twenty years!" he murmured. "There is not even a dog to bid me welcome!"

      The house was of two stories, with a thatched roof. Its back was to the slopes that rose by marshy terraces to the hills. Its face was turned to the lake, and between it and the water lay a walled forecourt, the angle on each side of the entrance protected by a tower of an older date than the house. The entrance was somewhat pretentious, and might—for each of the pillars supported a heraldic beast—have seemed to an English eye out of character with the thatched roof. But, as if to correct this, one of the beasts was headless, and one of the gates had fallen from its hinges. In like manner the dignity of a tolerably spacious garden, laid out beside the house, was marred by the proximity of the fold-yard, which had also trespassed, in the shape of sundry offices and hovels, on the forecourt.

      On the lower side of the road opposite the gates half a dozen stone steps, that like the heraldic pillars might have graced a more stately mansion, led down to the water. They formed a resting-place for as many beggars, engaged in drawing at empty pipes; while twice as many old women sat against the wall of the forecourt and, with their drugget cloaks about them, kept up a continual whine. Among these, turning herself now to one, now to another, moved the girl whom the Colonel had seen at the landing-place. She held her riding-skirt uplifted in one hand, her whip in the other, and she was bare-headed. At her elbow, whistling idly, and tapping his boots with a switch, lounged the big man of the morning.

      As the Colonel approached, taking these things in with his eyes, and making, Heaven knows what comparisons in his mind, the man and the maid turned and looked at him. The two exchanged some sentences, and the man came forward to meet him.

      "Sir," he said, not without a touch of rough courtesy, "if it is for hospitality you have come, you will be welcome at Morristown. But if it is to start a cry about this morning's business, you've travelled on your ten toes to no purpose, and so I warn you."

      The Colonel looked at him. "Cousin Ulick," he said, "I take your welcome as it is meant, and I thank you for it."

      The big man's mouth opened wide. "By the Holy Cross!" he said, "if I'm not thinking it is John Sullivan!"

      "It is," the Colonel answered, smiling. And he held out his hand.

      Uncle Ulick grasped it impulsively. "And it's I'm the one that's glad to see you," he said. "By Heaven, I am! Though I didn't expect you, no more than I expected myself! And, faith," he continued, grinning as if he began to see something humorous as well as surprising in the arrival, "I'm not sure that you will be as welcome to all, John Sullivan, as you are to me."

      "You were always easy, Ulick," the other answered with a smile, "when you were big and I was little."

      "Ay? Well, in size we're much as we were. But—Flavia!"

      The girl, scenting something strange, was already at his elbow. "What is it?" she asked, her breath coming a little quickly. "Who is it?" fixing her eyes on the new-comer's face.

      Uncle Ulick chuckled. "It's your guardian, my jewel," he said. "No less! And what he'll say to what's going on I'll not be foretelling!"

      "My guardian?" she repeated, the blood rising abruptly to her cheek.

      "Just that," Ulick Sullivan answered humorously. "Just that, my darling. It's John Sullivan come back from Sweden. And, as I've told him, I'm not sure that all at Morristown will be as glad to see him as I am." At which Uncle Ulick went off into a peal of Titanic laughter.

      But that which amused him did not appear to amuse his niece, She stood staring at Colonel Sullivan as if she were far more surprised than pleased. At length, and with a childish dignity, she held out her hand.

      "If you are Colonel John Sullivan," she said, in a thin voice, "you are welcome at Morristown."

      He might have laughed at the distance of her tone. But he merely bowed, and with the utmost gravity. "I thank you," he answered. And then, addressing Ulick Sullivan, "I need not say that I had your communication," he continued, "with the news of Sir Michael's death and of the dispositions made by his will. I could not come at once, but when I could I did, СКАЧАТЬ