The Dust of Conflict. Bindloss Harold
on,” said Palliser, who turned to his guests. “I am sorry we have kept you waiting, gentlemen.”
They started, and, as it happened, Tony and Appleby sat at the back of the dog-cart which followed the larger vehicle, while the rattle of gravel beneath the wheels rendered their conversation inaudible to those who sat in front.
“You heard what Evans said?” asked Tony anxiously.
“Of course!” said Appleby. “I am almost afraid Davidson has made a bolt. If he hadn’t he would have come for the twenty pounds.”
“I hope so,” and Tony drew in a deep breath. “It would be a merciful relief to feel I had seen the last of him. Why in the name of all that’s wonderful are you afraid he has gone?”
“Because I wanted a statement and your letter from him,” said Appleby. “You see, you will have to tell Miss Wayne that story sooner or later.”
“Tell her!” said Tony blankly. “I’ll be shot if I do!”
“Then she’ll find out, and it will be considerably the worse for you.”
Now, Tony Palliser was a good-natured man, and had as yet never done anything actually dishonorable, but whenever it was possible he avoided a difficulty, which, because difficulties must now and then be grappled with, not infrequently involved him in a worse one. He lived for the present only, and was thereby sowing a crop of trouble which he would surely have to reap in the future.
“I don’t think it’s likely, and there is no reason why I should make unpleasantness – it wouldn’t be kind,” he said.
“You don’t know Violet yet. She is almost unmercifully particular, and now and then makes one feel very small and mean. It would hurt her horribly to know I’d been mixed up in the affair at all – and, the fact is, I don’t feel equal to telling her anything of that kind. Besides, I did kiss the girl, you see – and I don’t think Violet would understand what prompted me.”
“Still,” said Appleby dryly, “that story will have to be told.”
Just then one of the other men touched his shoulder and asked a question, while there are topics which when once left off are difficult to commence again; but Appleby fancied that Tony had made one incorrect statement. He felt, strange as it seemed, that he knew Violet Wayne better than her prospective husband did.
They drove on, and nothing of moment happened during the shooting, or at the lunch they were invited to at one of Palliser’s neighbor’s houses, though Tony, who seemed to have recovered his spirits, shot unusually well. He also bantered the beaters and keepers, and, though he was as generous as such men usually are, the largesses he distributed somewhat astonished the recipients. It was a bright day of early winter, with clear sunlight that took the edge off the faint frost; and most men with healthy tastes would have found the hours spent in the brown woods, where the beech leaves still hung in festoons about the lower boughs, invigorating, even if they had not just had a weight lifted off their minds. Tony made the most of them, and it was, perhaps, as well he did, for it was long before he passed another day as free from care again.
Still, the troubles he could not see were trooping about him, and it was doubtless as part of the scheme that was to test him, and bring about his retribution when he was found wanting, that a nut on the bush of the dog-cart’s wheel slackened during the homeward journey. As a result, four men and several guns were flung without serious injury into the road; and when the horse had been taken to a neighboring farm, Tony and three of his friends found themselves under the necessity of walking home. He took them the shortest way by lane and stile, and they came to the footbridge across the river as dusk was closing down. Both he and Appleby long remembered that evening.
The sun had sunk behind a bank of smoky cloud, and a cold wind wailed dolefully through the larches in the wood, under which the black water came sliding down. There was no mist in the meadows now, and straggling hedgerow and coppice rose shadowy and dim against the failing light. The river, however, still shone faintly as it swirled round the pool beneath the bridge, and the men stopped a moment and leaned upon the single rail. It was seldom any one but a keeper took that path to the hall.
Appleby noticed how the dead leaves came sailing down, and little clusters of them swung round and round in the eddies. It was a trifle, but it fixed his attention, and often afterwards he could see them drift and swing at the mercy of the current. Then it seemed to him that their aimless wandering had been curiously portentous. He, however, looked up when Tony struck a match to light a cigarette with, and saw his face by the pale flame of it. Tony shook off his troubles readily, and there was a twinkle in his eyes, while his laugh rang lightly at a jest one of the others made. Then a man standing further along the bridge stretched out his hand.
“There’s a stone among the boulders at the tail of the pool that seems different from the rest. One could almost fancy it was somebody’s head,” he said.
“Good Lord!” said one of the others. “One could do more than fancy it. Can’t you see his shoulder just above the water?”
Tony dropped his cigarette, and stared at Appleby with a curious horror in his face, but the latter gripped his arm.
“Keep your head!” he said sternly.
Nobody else heard him, for the rest were hastening across the bridge, and in a moment or two one of them sprang down among the boulders at the edge of the pool. He called out sharply as the others followed him, and standing very still when they came up with him, they saw a white face that moved as the stream swirled about it looking up at them. A wet shoulder also bumped softly against a stone.
“I think it’s your keeper, Palliser,” said one of them a trifle hoarsely. “It would have been more pleasant if somebody else had found him, but we can’t leave him in the water.”
Tony seemed to shiver, and glanced at Appleby. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was very strained, “it’s Davidson.”
It was Appleby who, as one of the rest remembered, stooped down and grasped the dead man’s arm. “Give me a lift,” he said.
The men had evidently little liking for the task, but they accomplished it, and stood still again when the rigid object lay with the water draining from it at their feet.
“He must have fallen over the bridge and struck his head. There are stones yonder, and you can see the bruise,” said one. “Still, it might not have happened that way, and it seems to me we had better push on to the hall, and send somebody for the police.”
They went on in haste, and twenty minutes later Tony stood, a little white in face, in Appleby’s room.
“I don’t ask you whether it was the truth you told me last night,” he said.
“No,” said Appleby, who was flinging articles of clothing into his bag. “I could not have taken that from you, but I told you what happened precisely. Perhaps I should have seen him across the bridge, but I never thought of it. Still, there will be an inquest, and when they find out a little more it will be difficult to convince an average jury that one of us didn’t kill him.”
“It could be managed,” said Tony, a trifle hoarsely.
“Yes,” said Appleby, “I think it could, though I couldn’t be certain; but, if there was a defendant, not before everything came out. That would spoil my two best friends’ lives. You see, he did not sign the statement, and folks are very quick to believe the kind of story that would certainly get about.”
“That would ruin me,” said Tony. “Godfrey Palliser would turn me out for bringing it on him. It’s a trifle horrible. You have got to help me!”
“Yes,” said Appleby, closing the bag with a snap. “I fancy it would. Still, there will be no defendant, because I’m going out of the country. If you sent to the bank you might lend me fifty pounds, and tell somebody to get the dog-cart out. There’s a train I can get through to Liverpool starts in an hour. If I am ever able, I’ll send you back the money.”
Palliser stared at him. “But they may bring it in homicide against you! I can’t let you do this for me.”
Appleby