A DISILLUSION
It was a clear cold night when Geoffrey Thurston met Captain Franklin,
who held certain sporting rights in the vicinity, at the place agreed
upon. The captain had brought with him several amateur assistants and
stablehands besides two stalwart keepers. Greeting Thurston he said:
"Very good of you to help me! Our local constable is either afraid or
powerless, and I must accordingly allow Black Jim's rascals to sweep my
covers or take the law into my own hands. It is the pheasants he is
after now, and he'll start early so as to get his plunder off from the
junction by the night mail, and because the moon rises soon. We had
better divide, and you might come with Evans and me to the beeches
while the others search the fir spinney."
Geoffrey, assenting, followed the officer across a dew-damped meadow
and up a winding lane hung with gossamer-decked briars, until the party
halted, ankle-deep among withered leaves, in a dry ditch just outside
the wood. There were reasons why each detail of all that happened on
that eventful night should impress itself upon Geoffrey's memory, and,
long afterwards, when wandering far out in the shadow of limitless
forests or the chill of eternal snow, he could recall every incident.
Leaves that made crimson glories by day still clung low down about the
wide-girthed trunks beyond the straggling hedge of ancient thorns, but
the higher branches rose nakedly against faintly luminous sky. Spruce
firs formed clumps of solid blackness, and here and there a delicate
tracery of birch boughs filled gaps against the sky-line between. The
meadows behind him were silent and empty, streaked with belts of
spectral mist, and, because it was not very late, he could see a red
glimmer of light in the windows of Barrow Hall.
But if the grass told no story it was otherwise with the wood, for
Geoffrey could hear the rabbits thumping in their burrows among the
roots of the thorn. Twice a cock-pheasant uttered a drowsy, raucous
crow, and there was a blundering of unseen feathery bodies among the
spruce, while, when this ceased, he heard a water-hen flutter with feet
splashing across a hidden pool. Then heavy stillness followed,
intensified by the clamor of a beck which came foaming down the side of
a fell until, clattering loudly, wood-pigeons, neither asleep nor
wholly awake, drove out against the sky, wheeled and fell clumsily into
the wood again. All this was a plain warning, and keeper Evans nodded
agreement when Captain Franklin said:
"There's somebody here, and, in order not to miss him, we'll divide our
forces once more. If you'll go in by the Hall footpath, Thurston, and
whistle on sight of anything suspicious, I'd be much obliged to you."
A few minutes later Thurston halted on the topmost step of the lofty
stile by which a footpath from the Hall entered the wood. Looking back
across misty grass land and swelling ridges of heather, he could see a
faint brightness behind the eastern rim of the moor; but, when he
stepped down, it was very dark among the serried tree-trunks. The
slender birches had faded utterly, the stately beeches resembled dim
ghosts of trees and only the spruces retained, imperfectly, their shape
and form. Thurston was country bred, and, lifting high his feet to
clear bramble trailer and fallen twig, he walked by feeling instead of
sight. The beck moaned a little more loudly, and there was a heavy
astringent odor of damp earth and decaying leaves. When beast and bird
were still again it seemed as if Nature, worn out by the productive
effort of summer, were sinking under solemn silence into her winter
sleep.
The watcher knew the wood was a large one and unlawful visitants might
well be hidden towards its farther end. He stood still at intervals,
concentrating all his powers to listen, but his ears told him nothing
until at last there was a rustle somewhere ahead. Puzzled by the
sound, which reminded him of something curiously out of place in the
lonely wood, he instantly sank down behind an ash tree.
The sound certainly was not made by withered bracken or bramble leaves,
and had nothing to do with the stealthy fall of a poacher's heavy boot.
It came again more clearly, and Thurston was almost sure that it was
the rustle of a woven fabric, such as a woman's dress. To confirm this
opinion a soft laugh followed. He rose, deciding it could only be some
assignation with a maid from the Hall, and no business of his. He had
turned to retreat when he noticed the eastern side of a silver fir
reflect a faint shimmer. Glancing along the beam of light that
filtered through a fantastic fretwork of delicate birch twigs arching a
drive, he saw a broad, bright disk hanging low above the edge of the
moor. It struck him that perhaps the poachers had used the girl to
coax information out of a young groom or keeper, and that she was now
warning them. So he waited, debating, because he was a rudely
chivalrous person, how he might secure the girl's companion without
involving the girl's disgrace. Again a laugh rose from beyond a
thicket. Then he heard the voice of a man.
Geoffrey was puzzled, for the laugh was musical, unlike a rustic
giggle; and, though the calling of the beck partly drowned it, the
man's voice did not resemble that of a laborer. Thurston moved again,
wondering whether it was not some affair of Leslie's from the Hall, and
whether he ought not to slip away after all. The birch boughs sighed a
little, there was a fluttering down of withered leaves, and he remained
undecided, gripping his stout oak cudgel by the middle. Then the hot
blood pulsed fiercely through every artery, for the voice rose once
more, harsh and clear this time, with almost a threat in the tone, and
there was no possibility of doubting that the speaker was Leslie.
"This cannot continue, Millicent," the voice said. "It has gone on too
long, and I will not be trifled with. You cannot have both of us, and
my patience is exhausted. Leave the fool to his folly."
Geoffrey raised the cudgel and dropped it to his side. Turning
suddenly cold, he remained for a second or two almost without power of
thought or motion. The disillusion was cruel. The woman's light
answer filled him with returning fury and he hurled himself at a
thicket from which, amid a crash of branches, he reeled out into the
sight of the speakers. The moon was well clear of the moor now, and
silver light and inky shadow checkered the mosses of the drive.
With a little scream of terror Millicent sprang apart from her
companion's side and stood for a space staring at the man who had
appeared out of the rent-down undergrowth. The pale light beat upon
Geoffrey's face, showing it was white with anger. Looking from
Geoffrey, the girl glanced towards Leslie, who waited in the partial
shadow of a hazel bush. Even had he desired to escape, which was
possible, the bush would have cut off his retreat.
Geoffrey turned fiercely from one to the other. The woman, who stood
with one hand on a birch branch, was evidently struggling to regain her
courage. Her lips were twitching and her pale blue eyes were very wide
open. The man was shrinking back as far as possible in a manner which
suggested physical fear; he had heard the dalesfolk say a savage devil,
easily aroused, lurked in all the Thurstons, and the one before him
looked distinctly dangerous just then. Leslie was weak in limb as well
as moral fiber, and it was Geoffrey who broke the painful silence.
"What are you doing here at such an hour with this man, Millicent?" he
asked sternly. "No answer! It appears that some explanation is
certainly due to me--and I mean to force it out of one of you."
Millicent, saying nothing, gazed at her companion, as if conjuring him
to speak plainly and to end an intolerable position. Geoffrey read her
meaning, even though Leslie, who glanced longingly over his shoulder
down the drive, refused to do so. Because there was spirit in her, and
she had recovered from the first shock of surprise, Millicent ground
one little heel into the mosses with a gesture of disgust and anger
when the man made answer:
"I resent your attitude and question. We came out to see the moon rise
on the moor, and found the night breeze nipping."
Geoffrey laughed harshly before he repeated: "You found the breeze
nipping! There is scarcely an air astir. And you understand the
relations existing between Miss Austin and me? I want a better reason.
Millicent, you, at least, are not a coward--dare you give it me?"
"I challenge your right to demand an account of my actions," said the
girl. With an evident effort to defy Thurston, she added, after a
pause, "But the explanation must have come sooner or later, and you
shall have it now. I have grown--perhaps the brutal truth is
best--tired of you and your folly. You would sacrifice my future to
your fantastic pride--and this man would give up everything for me."
The first heat of Geoffrey's passion was past, and he was now coldly
savage because of the woman's treachery.
"Including his conscience and honor, but not his personal safety!" he
supplemented contemptuously. "Millicent, one could almost admire you."
Turning to Leslie he asked: "But are you struck dumb that you let the
woman speak? This was my promised wife to whom you have been making
love, though, for delicacy would be superfluous, it is evident that she
has not discouraged you. Until three days ago I could have trusted my
life to her. Now, I presume, she has pledged herself to you?"
"Yes," answered Leslie, recovering his equanimity as his fears grew
less oppressive. He began to excuse himself but Geoffrey cut him short
with a gesture.
"Then, even if I desired to make them, my protests would be useless,"
said Geoffrey. "I am at least grateful for your frankness, Millicent;
it prevented me from wringing the truth from your somewhat abject
lover. Had you told me honestly, when this man first spoke to you,
that you had grown tired of me, I would have released you, and I would
have tried to wish you well. Now I can only say, that at least you
know the worst of each other--and there will be less disappointment
when, stripped of either mutual or self respect, you begin life
together. But I was forgetting that Franklin's keepers are searching
the wood. Some of them might talk. Go at once by the Hall path, as
softly as you can."
The man and the girl were plainly glad to hurry away, and Geoffrey
waited until the sound of their footsteps became scarcely audible
before he heeded a faint rustling which indicated that somebody with a
knowledge of woodcraft was forcing a passage through the undergrowth.
He broke a dry twig at intervals as he walked slowly for a little
distance. Then he dropped on hands and knees to cross a strip of open
sward at an angle to his previous course, and lay still in the black
shadow of a spruce. It was evident that somebody was following his
trail, and the pursuer, passing his hiding-place, followed it straight
on. Geoffrey's was a curious character, and the very original cure for
a disappointment in love, that of baffling a game watcher while his
faithless mistress escaped, brought him relief; it left no time for
reflection.
Presently he dashed across a bare strip of velvet mosses and
rabbit-cropped turf, slipped between the roots of the hedge, and,
running silently beneath it, halted several score yards away face to
face with the astonished keeper. "Weel, I'm clanged; this clean beats
me," gasped that worthy. "Hello, behind there. It's only Mr.
Geoffrey, sir. Didst see Black Jim slip out this way, or hear a scream
a laal while gone by?"
"I saw no one," answered Geoffrey, "but I heard the scream. It was not
unlike a hare squealing in a snare. You and I must have been stalking
each other, Evans, and Black Jim can't be here."
The rest came up as they spoke, and Captain Franklin said, "You seem
badly disappointed at missing your old enemy, Thurston. I never saw
you look so savage. I expect Black Jim has tricked us, after all."
"I've had several troubles lately, and don't find much amusement in
hunting poachers who aren't there," said Geoffrey. "You will excuse me
from going back with you."
He departed across the meadows, at a swinging pace, and the keeper, who
stared after him, commented:
"Something gradely wrang with Mr. Geoffrey to-night. They're an ill
folk to counter yon, and it's maybe as well for Black Jim as Mr.
Geoffrey didn't get hold on him."
Geoffrey saw no more of Millicent, but once he visited her younger
sister, a gentle invalid, who, because of the friendship which had long
existed between them, said: "You must try to believe I mean it in
kindness when I say that I am not wholly sorry, Geoffrey. You and
Millicent would never have gotten on well together, and while I wish
the awakening could have happened in a more creditable way, you will
realize--when somebody else makes you happy--that all has been for the
best."
"That day will be long in coming," declared the man, grimly, and the
sick girl laid a thin white hand on his hard one as she answered him.
"It is not a flattering speech, and you must not lose faith in all of
us," the invalid went on. "Lying still here, helpless, I have often
thought about both of you, and I feel that you have done well in
choosing a new life in a new country. When you go out, Geoffrey, you
will take my fervent wishes for your welfare with you."
Janet Austin was frail and worn by pain. Her pale face flushed a
little as the man suddenly stooped and touched her forehead with his
lips.
"God bless you for your kindly heart," he said. "A ruined man has very
few friends, and many acquaintances are waiting to convince him that
his downfall is the result of his own folly, but"--and he straightened
his wiry frame, while his eyes glinted--"they have not seen the end,
and even if beaten, there is satisfaction in a stubborn, single-handed
struggle."
Janet Austin, perhaps thinking of her own helplessness, sighed as she
answered:
"I do not think you will be beaten, Geoffrey, but if you will take
advice from me, remember that over-confidence in your powers and the
pride that goes with it may cost you many a minor victory. Good-by,
and good luck, Geoffrey. You will remember me."
That afternoon, while Thurston was in the midst of preparations to
leave his native land, the mining engineer called upon him with a
provincial newspaper in his hand. "I suppose this is your answer," he
remarked, laying his finger on a paragraph.
"Mr. G. Thurston, who has, in the face of many difficulties, attempted
to exploit the copper vein in Crosbie Fell, has been compelled to close
the mine," the printed lines ran. "We understand he came upon an
unexpected break in the strata, coupled with a subsidence which
practically precludes the possibility of following the lost lead with
any hope of commercial success. He has, therefore, placed his affairs
in the hands of Messrs. Lonsdale & Routh, solicitors, and, we
understand, intends emigrating. His many friends and former employees
wish him success."
"Yes," Geoffrey answered dryly, "I sent them the information, also a
copy to London financial papers. Considering the interest displayed
just now in British mines, they should insert a paragraph. I've staked
down your backers' game in return for your threats, and you may be
thankful you have come off so easily. Your check is ready. It is the
last you will ever get from me."
The expert smiled almost good-naturedly. "You needn't have taken so
much trouble, Thurston," he said. "The exploitation of your rabbit
burrow would only have been another drop in the bucket to my
correspondents, and it's almost a pity we can't be friends, for, with
some training, your sledge-hammer style would make its mark in the
ring."
"Thanks!" replied Geoffrey. "I'm not fishing for compliments, and it's
probably no use explaining my motives--you wouldn't understand them.
Still, in future, don't set down every man commonly honest as an
uncommon fool. If I ever had much money, which is hardly likely, I
should fight extremely shy of any investments recommended by your
friends!"