SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.

      XIII.

       HARIPOL—AUXILIARY TROOPS

       Table of Contents

      Half-way down the avenue, Archie drew up sharply.

      “I forgot about Mackenzie. We can’t have him here—he’ll play the fool somehow. Benjie, out you go. You’re one of the few that can manage him. Here’s his lead—you tie him up somewhere and watch for us, and we’ll pick you up outside the gates when we start home…Don’t get into trouble on your own account. I advise you to cut round to the bothies, and try to find out what is happenin’.”

      On the massive doorstep of Haripol stood Lady Claybody, parasol in one hand and the now useless dog-whip in the other.

      She made a motion as if to retreat, but thought better of it. Her face was flushed, and her air had abated something of its serenity. The sight of Janet—for she looked at Archie without recognition—seemed to awake her to the duties of hospitality, and she advanced with outstretched hand. Then a yelp from the side of Palliser-Yeates wrung from her an answering cry. In a trice Wee Roguie was in her arms.

      “Yes,” Janet explained sweetly, “it’s Roguie quite safe and well. There’s a boy who sells fish at Strathlarrig—Benjie they call him—he found him in the woods and brought him to me. I hope you haven’t been worried.”

      But Lady Claybody was not listening. She had set the dog on his feet and was wagging her forefinger at him, a procedure which seemed to rouse all the latent epilepsy of his nature. “Oh, you naughty, naughty Roguie! Cruel, cruel doggie! He loved freedom better than his happy home. Master and mistress have been so anxious about Wee Roguie.”

      It was an invocation which lasted for two and a half minutes, till the invoker realised the presence of the men. She graciously shook hands with Sir Archie.

      “I drove Miss Janet over,” said the young man, explaining the obvious. “And I took the liberty of bringin’ a friend who is stayin’ with me—Mr Palliser-Yeates. I thought Lord Claybody might like to meet him, for I expect he knows all about him.”

      The lady beamed on both. “This is a very great pleasure, Mr Palliser-Yeates, and I’m sure Claybody will be delighted. He ought to be in for tea very soon.” As it chanced, Lady Claybody had an excellent memory and a receptive ear for talk, and she was aware that in her husband’s conversation the name of Palliser-Yeates occurred often, and always in dignified connections. She led the way through the hall to a vast new drawing-room which commanded a wide stretch of lawns and flower-beds as far as the woods which muffled the mouth of the Reascuill glen. When the party were seated and butler and footman had brought the materials for tea, Lady Claybody— Roguie on a cushion by her side—became confidential.

      “We’ve had such a wearing day, my dear.” She turned to Janet. “First, the ruffian who calls himself John Macnab is probably trying to poach our forest. The rain yesterday kept him off, but we have good reason to believe that he will come to-day. Poor Johnson has been on the hill since breakfast. Then, there was the anxiety about Roguie. I’ve had our people searching the woods and shrubberies, for the little darling might have been caught in a trap… Macnicol says there are no traps, but you never can tell. And then, on the top of it all, we’ve been besieged since quite early in the morning by insolent journalists. No. They hadn’t the good manners to come to the house—I should have sent them packing—but they have been over the grounds and buttonholing our servants. They want to hear about John Macnab, but we can’t tell them anything, for as yet we know nothing ourselves. I gave orders that they should be turned out of the place—no violence, of course, for it doesn’t do to offend the Press—but quite firmly, for they were trespassing. Would you believe it, my dear? they wouldn’t go. So our people had simply to drive them out, and it has taken nearly all day, and they may be coming back any moment…Something should really be done, Mr Palliser-Yeates, to restrain the license of the modern Press, with its horrid, vulgar sensationalism and its invasion of all the sanctities of private life.”

      Palliser-Yeates cordially agreed. The lady had not looked to Archie for assent, and her manner towards him was a trifle cold. Perhaps it was the memory of her visit a fortnight before when he was sickening for smallpox; perhaps it was her husband’s emphatic condemnation of his Muirtown speech.

      At this point Lord Claybody entered, magnificent in a kilt of fawn-coloured tweed and a ferocious sporran made of the mask of a dog-otter. The garments, which were aggressively new, did not become his short, square figure.

      “I don’t think you have met my husband, Miss Raden,” said his wife. Then to Lord Claybody: “You know Sir Archibald Roylance. And this is Mr Palliser-Yeates, who has been so kind as to come over to see us.”

      Palliser-Yeates was greeted with enthusiasm. “Delighted to meet you, sir. I heard you were in the North. Funny that we’ve had so much to do with each other indirectly and have never met…You’ve been having a long walk? Well, I know what you need. Cold tea for you. We’ll leave the ladies to their gossip and have a whisky-and-soda in the library. I’ve just had a letter from Dickinson on which I’d like your views. Busy folk like you and me can never make a clean cut of their holiday. There’s always something clawing us back to the mill.”

      The two men were led off to the library, and Janet was left to entertain her hostess. That lady was in an expansive mood, which may have been due to the restoration of Roguie, but also owed something to the visit of Palliser-Yeates. “My heart is buried here,” she told the girl. “Every day I love Haripol more—its beauty and poetry and its—its wonderful traditions. My dream is to make it a centre for all the nicest people to come and rest. Everybody comes to the Highlands now, and we have so much to offer them here…Claybody, I may as well admit, is apt to be restless when we are alone. He is not enough of a sportsman to be happy shooting and fishing all day and every day. He has a wonderful mind, my dear, and he wants a chance of exercising it. He needs to be stimulated. Look how his eye brightened when he saw Mr Palliser-Yeates…And then, there are the girls…I’m sure you see what I mean.”

      Janet saw, and set herself to cherish the innocent ambition of her hostess. In view of what might befall at any moment, it was most needful to have the Claybodys in a good humour. Then Lady Claybody, one of whose virtues was a love of fresh air, proposed that they should walk in the gardens. Janet would have preferred to remain in the house, had she been able to think of any kind of excuse, for the out-of-doors at the moment was filled with the most explosive material—Benjie, Mackenzie, an assortment of fugitive journalists, and Leithen and Lamancha somewhere in the hinterland. But she assented with a good grace, and, accompanied by Roguie, who after a morning of liberty had cast the part of lap-dog contemptuously behind him, they sauntered into the trim parterres.

      The head-gardener at Haripol was a man of the old school. He loved fantastically shaped beds and geometrical patterns, and geraniums and lobelias and calceolarias were still dear to his antiquated soul. On the lawns he had been given his head, but Lady Claybody, who had accepted new fashions in horticulture as in other things, had constructed a pleasaunce of her own, which with crazy-paving and sundials and broad borders was a very fair imitation of an old English garden. She had a lily-pond and a rosery and many pergolas, and what promised in twenty years to be a fine yew-walk. The primitive walled garden, planted in the Scots fashion a long way from the house, was now relegated to fruit and vegetables.

      Lady Claybody was an inaccurate enthusiast.