The Dust of Conflict

He stopped outside the spinny with the riding crop held, where it would not be seen, behind him, and a man who had been listening for his footsteps came out of it. It was unfortunate for him that he had spent most of the evening in the hostelry at the village, or he might have recognized the difference between them and Tony Palliser’s reluctant tread. Appleby had come up with swift, resolute stride, as one who had a purpose, and meant to accomplish it.

“Davidson?” he said, with a little ring in his voice, which was very unlike Tony’s then.

The man stared at him. “It was Mr. Palliser I expected to see,” he said.

“I have come in place of him, and don’t think it likely that he will meet you here again,” Appleby said dryly. “In fact, unless we can come to some arrangement, it is very probable that you will get a month’s notice from Mr. Godfrey Palliser to-morrow.”

Davidson laughed unpleasantly. “Mr. Tony tried that game before, and found it wouldn’t pay. Now, you listen to me, though I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Mr. Tony has to marry money, and Miss Wayne is a particular young lady. They say he’s fond of her, too; but if I thought it my duty to tell her the kind of man he is there’d be no more talk of that match.”

“The trouble is that Miss Wayne would not believe you,” said Appleby.

Now, though Appleby was not aware of this, Davidson had consumed a good deal of liquid refreshment that evening, or he might not have shown his hand so plainly. Nor did he know that Appleby had any connection with the legal profession.

“It would be easy convincing her when she saw his letter. I’ve got witnesses – and a certificate,” he said.

The sullen anger in the last words would probably have caught Appleby’s attention had he been an older man, and shown him that it was not avarice alone which prompted Davidson. As it happened, however, he did not notice it.

“That proves nothing,” he said. “We do not dispute the fact it relates to, but maintain that Mr. Palliser had no connection with it.”

“Do you think you could convince anybody who heard my story?”

“We can try. Isn’t it clear to you that Mr. Palliser can’t go on subsidizing you forever?”

“He’ll go on until there’s enough put by to bring his daughter up a lady.”

Again Appleby failed to discern the sincerity of conviction in Davidson’s tone, which would have been evident to him had he possessed any of the qualities which go to make a successful lawyer.

“I think you are mistaken,” he said. “It is quite clear to us that you will tell your story sooner or later, and because it is Mr. Palliser will tell it before you in his own way. That cuts the ground from under your feet, you see. Then he will indict you and your daughter for conspiracy. It is a somewhat serious thing to blackmail anybody, but you shall have one more chance. I will pay you twenty pounds for Mr. Palliser’s letter, on condition that you sign a statement confessing there is no truth in the slander you have brought against him, and leave his uncle’s service within a month from to-morrow.”

The man stood silent a moment or two, his gun on his arm; and it was unfortunate that Appleby could not see the passion in his face. A sullen hatred of the class he served had smouldered within him since the day a gunshot accident, for which he had obtained no adequate compensation, left him with a limp, and now when he saw the game was up it blazed into unreasoning anger. He may also have been as fond of his daughter as he was of gold, and deceived by her, for the veins were swollen on his forehead when he made a step forward.

“Who are you to thrust yourself into what doesn’t concern you?” he said.

“I am a lawyer,” said Appleby quietly. “Don’t come any nearer!”

Davidson dropped the gun into the palm of his left hand with a rattle. “I might have known it by your tricks,” he said. “Well, I’ll make you fight, and we’ll see who Miss Wayne will believe to-morrow. Now take yourself and your money to – out of this!”

He raised the gun, and Appleby’s calmness deserted him. With a sweep of the riding crop he struck the barrel aside, and, perhaps without Davidson intending it, there was a flash and an explosion. Then the riding crop came down upon a dim white face. The man reeled, recovered, and lurched forward, while next moment he and his adversary were panting and straining in a breathless grapple. Davidson was a strong man, but the blow had dazed him, and the refreshment consumed at the “Black Bull” had endued him with an unreasoning passion, which was not an advantage in a conflict with a man who kept his head. Appleby was also wiry, and tolerably proficient in a certain useful art. Thus when he got his fist home in a place where it would hurt Davidson slackened his grasp, and Appleby struck again as he flung him off. He staggered backwards and went down heavily. Appleby stood still until he rose shakily to his feet again.

“Go home,” he said. “You will be sorry for this tomorrow. It will probably cost you twenty pounds.”

Davidson turned without a word, and Appleby waited a minute or two watching him cross the meadow towards the narrow, one-railed footbridge that spanned the river. He was walking unevenly, but Appleby was too shaken himself to trouble about his condition. Perhaps keeper Davidson was still dazed by the blows dealt him, or his brain was clouded by impotent anger, for he passed on, a dim, shadowy figure, into the gloom of a coppice, and no man saw him alive again. Then Appleby went back to the hall and let himself in through the conservatory. He found Tony waiting him in a state of feverish anxiety, told him briefly what had passed, and, assuring him that Davidson would in all probability listen to reason next day, went to sleep. He also slept soundly, and awakened later than usual when Tony’s man, who had found knocking useless, entered the room with some of his garments on his arm.

“Mr. Palliser was asking if you were up, sir, and they’re getting breakfast now,” he said, and then glanced at the clothes. “I’ve been giving them a brush. There was some mud on the trousers, and I notice a seam split in the coat. I could ask one of the maids to put a stitch in it before it gets worse.”

“No,” said Appleby, a trifle too hastily. “You can put them in my bag. I am leaving by the night train.”

He got into his tweeds, and went down to find the rest of the men who had finished breakfast lounging about the hall, while Tony and his uncle stood on the terrace outside. A dog-cart was also waiting, and another vehicle coming up the avenue. Appleby commenced his breakfast, wondering – because he surmised that Miss Wayne would be anxious to hear what he had accomplished – whether any of the ladies would come down before the shooters started. By and by he saw a light dress flit across the gallery at the head of the stairway, and immediately got up with the ostensible purpose of going back to his room. He, however, stopped in the corridor which led out of the gallery, where, as he had expected, Violet Wayne was waiting him. She usually appeared to as much advantage in the morning as she did under the glitter of the lamps at night, but Appleby fancied that she had not slept very well. There was, so far as he could see, nobody else about.

“You have something to tell me?” she said quietly.

“No,” said Appleby. “I fancied I should have had, but instead I have ten pounds to give you back.”

“Then some plan you had has failed?”

“Not exactly! I am going to try a bolder course.”

The girl looked at him steadily. “I have trusted you, Mr. Appleby. Would it be too much if I asked you to take me into your confidence?”

Appleby shook his head. “I am afraid I can’t very well do that just now,” he said. “In the meanwhile you can be kind to Tony. He has been foolish – and a trifle weak – but he has done nothing that you could not readily forgive him.”

There was a faint sparkle in Violet Wayne’s eyes, and a suspicion of color in her cheek. “How do you know that my code is as lenient as your own – and are you wise in asking me to take so much on trust?”

Appleby smiled gravely. “I think I grasp your meaning, but if you try to follow up any clue I may have given you it can only lead you into a pitfall. Please wait, and I think I can engage that Tony will tell you the whole story. It would come best from himself, but he must substantiate it, and that is what I expect I can enable him to do.”

The color grew a trifle plainer in Violet Wayne’s cheek, and Appleby, who guessed her thoughts, shook his head.

“There is a question you are too proud to ask, but I will venture to answer it,” he said. “I have known Tony a long while, and he has never wavered in his allegiance to you. To doubt that would be an injustice you have too much sense to do yourself. Now you have the simple truth, and if it is a trangression to tell it you, you must remember that I have had no training in conventional niceties.”

The girl looked at him with a curious little glow in her eyes. “Tony has the gift of making good friends,” she said. “One could have faith in you.”

She turned and left him, while Appleby, who went down, found Godfrey Palliser talking to the under-keeper on the terrace. He was a spare, gray-haired gentleman, formal and fastidious, and betrayed his impatience only by a faint incisiveness of speech.

“Davidson has kept us waiting half an hour, it has never happened before, and it shall not occur again,” he said. “You have been round to the lodge, Evans?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man. “They had not seen him since last night. He told them he was going to the fir spinny. Some of the Darsley men had been laying snares for hares.”

“It shall be looked into, but we will make a start now as you have sent the beaters 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 smiled curiously. “I had decided to go, anyway, and I haven’t a friend who would worry about me except yourself, and perhaps Miss Wayne. It would be very different with you. Now, don’t waste a minute, Tony. I have made my mind up.”

Tony Palliser had usually yielded to the domination of his friend, and was not in a condition to think very concisely then, so he did what he was bidden, and ten minutes later grasped Appleby’s hand as the dog-cart came up to the door. He did not remember if he said anything, but Appleby, perhaps for the groom’s benefit, laughed as he drew the rug about him.

“You will remember to send on the cigars you promised me,” he said.

Then the groom flicked the horse, the dog-cart rattled away, and Tony Palliser was left standing, flushed in face, on the steps, with his heart beating painfully.