The Doings of Raffles Haw by Arthur Conan Doyle (the snowy day read aloud TXT) 📕

Hector Spurling’s profession was written in every line of his face. The clean-shaven lip and chin, the little fringe of side whisker, the straight decisive mouth, and the hard weather-tanned cheeks all spoke of the Royal Navy. Fifty such faces may be seen any night of the year round the mess-table of the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth Dockyard—faces which bear a closer resemblance to each other than brother does commonly to brother. They are all cast in a common mould, the products of a system which teaches early self-reliance, hardihood, and manliness—a fine type upon the whole; less refined and less intellectual, perhaps, than their brothers of the land, but full of truth and energy and heroism. In figure he was straight, tall, and well-knit, with keen grey eyes, and the sharp prompt manner of a man who has been accustomed both to command and to obey.

“You had my note?” he said, as he entered the room. “I have to go again, Laura. Isn’t it a bore? Old Smithers is short-handed, and wants me back at once.” He sat down by the girl, and put his brown hand across her white one. “It won’t be a very large order this time,” he continued. “It’s the flying squadron business—Madeira, Gibraltar, Lisbon, and home. I shouldn’t wonder if we were back in March.”

“It seems only the other day that you landed.” she answered.

“Poor little girl! But it won’t be long. Mind you take good care of her, Robert when I am gone. And when I come again, Laura, it will be the last time mind! Hang the money! There are plenty who manage on less. We need not have a house. Why should we? You can get very nice rooms in Southsea at 2 pounds a week. McDougall, our paymaster, has just married, and he only gives thirty shillings. You would not be afraid, Laura?”

“No, indeed.”

“The dear old governor is so awfully cautious. Wait, wait, wait, that’s always his cry. I tell him that he ought to have been in the Government Heavy Ordnance Department. But I’ll speak to him tonight. I’ll talk him round. See if I don’t. And you must speak to your own governor. Robert here will back you up. And here are the ports and the dates that we are due at each. Mind that you have a letter waiting for me at every one.”

He took a slip of paper from the side pocket of his coat, but, instead of handing it to the young lady, he remained staring at it with the utmost astonishment upon his face.

“Well, I never!” he exclaimed. “Look here, Robert; what do you call this?”

“Hold it to the light. Why, it’s a fifty-pound Bank of England note. Nothing remarkable about it that I can see.”

“On the contrary. It’s the queerest thing that ever happened to me. I can’t make head or tail of it.”

“Come, then, Hector,” cried Miss McIntyre with a challenge in her eyes. “Something very queer happened to me also to-day. I’ll bet a pair of gloves that my adventure was more out of the common than yours, though I have nothing so nice to show at the end of it.”

“Come, I’ll take that, and Robert here shall be the judge.”

“State your cases.” The young artist shut up his sketch-book, and rested his head upon his hands with a face of mock solemnity. “Ladies first! Go along Laura, though I think I know something of your adventure already.”

“It was this morning, Hector,” she said. “Oh, by the way, the story will make you wild. I had forgotten that. However, you mustn’t mind, because, really, the poor fellow was perfectly mad.”

“What on earth was it?” asked the young officer, his eyes travelling from the bank-note to his fiancee.

“Oh, it was harmless enough, and yet you will confess it was very queer. I had gone out for a walk, but as the snow began to fall I took shelter under the shed which the workmen have built at the near end of the great new house. The men have gone, you know, and the owner is supposed to be coming to-morrow, but the shed is still standing. I was sitting there upon a packing-case when a man came down the road and stopped under the same shelter. He was a quiet, pale-faced man, very tall and thin, not much more than thirty, I should think, poorly dressed, but with the look and bearing of a gentleman. He asked me one or two questions about the village and the people, which, of course, I answered, until at last we found ourselves chatting away in the pleasantest and easiest fashion about all sorts of things. The time passed so quickly that I forgot all about the snow until he drew my attention to its having stopped for the moment. Then, just as I was turning to go, what in the world do you suppose that he did? He took a step towards me, looked in a sad pensive way into my face, and said: `I wonder whether you could care for me if I were without a penny.’ Wasn’t it strange? I was so frightened that I whisked out of the shed, and was off down the road before he could add another word. But really, Hector, you need not look so black, for when I look back at it I can quite see from his tone and manner that he meant no harm. He was thinking aloud, without the least intention of being offensive. I am convinced that the poor fellow was mad.”

“Hum! There was some method in his madness, it seems to me,” remarked her brother.

“There would have been some method in my kicking,” said the lieutenant savagely. “I never heard of a more outrageous thing in my life.”

“Now, I said that you would be wild!” She laid her white hand upon the sleeve of his rough frieze jacket. “It was nothing. I shall never see the poor fellow again. He was evidently a stranger to this part of the country. But that was my little adventure. Now let us have yours.”

The young man crackled the bank-note between his fingers and thumb, while he passed his other hand over his hair with the action of a man who strives to collect himself.

“It is some ridiculous mistake,” he said. “I must try and set it right. Yet I don’t know how to set about it either. I was going down to the village from the Vicarage just after dusk when I found a fellow in a trap who had got himself into broken water. One wheel had sunk into the edge of the ditch which had been hidden by the snow, and the whole thing was high and dry, with a list to starboard enough to slide him out of his seat. I lent a hand, of course, and soon had the wheel in the road again. It was quite dark, and I fancy that the fellow thought that I was a bumpkin, for we did not exchange five words. As he drove off he shoved this into my hand. It is the merest chance that I did not chuck it away, for, feeling that it was a crumpled piece of paper, I imagined that it must be a tradesman’s advertisement or something of the kind. However, as luck would have it, I put it in my pocket, and there I found it when I looked for the dates of our cruise. Now you know as much of the matter as I do.”

Brother and sister stared at the black and white crinkled note with astonishment upon their faces.

“Why, your unknown traveller must have been Monte Cristo, or Rothschild at the least!” said Robert. “I am bound to say, Laura, that I think you have lost your bet.”

“Oh, I am quite content to lose it. I never heard of such a piece of luck. What a perfectly delightful man this must be to know.”

“But I can’t take his money,” said Hector Spurling, looking somewhat ruefully at the note. “A little prize-money is all very well in its way, but a Johnny must draw the line somewhere. Besides it must have been a mistake. And yet he meant to give me something big, for he could not mistake a note for a coin. I suppose I must advertise for the fellow.”

“It seems a pity too,” remarked Robert. “I must say that I don’t quite see it in the same light that you do.”

“Indeed I think that you are very Quixotic, Hector,” said Laura McIntyre. “Why should you not accept it in the spirit in which it was meant? You did this stranger a service—perhaps a greater service than you know of—and he meant this as a little memento of the occasion. I do not see that there is any possible reason against your keeping it.”

“Oh, come!” said the young sailor, with an embarrassed laugh, “it is not quite the thing—not the sort of story one would care to tell at mess.”

“In any case you are off to-morrow morning,” observed Robert. “You have no time to make inquiries about the mysterious Croesus. You must really make the best of it.”

“Well, look here, Laura, you put it in your work-basket,” cried Hector Spurling. “You shall be my banker, and if the rightful owner turns up then I can refer him to you. If not, I suppose we must look on it as a kind of salvage-money, though I am bound to say I don’t feel entirely comfortable about it.” He rose to his feet, and threw the note down into the brown basket of coloured wools which stood beside her. “Now, Laura, I must up anchor, for I promised the governor to be back by nine. It won’t be long this time, dear, and it shall be the last. Good-bye, Robert! Good luck!”

“Good-bye, Hector! Bon voyage!”

The young artist remained by the table, while his sister followed her lover to the door. In the dim light of the hall he could see their figures and overhear their words.

“Next time, little girl?”

“Next time be it, Hector.”

“And nothing can part us?”

“Nothing.”

“In the whole world?”

“Nothing.”

Robert discreetly closed the door. A moment later a thud from without, and the quick footsteps crunching on the snow told him that their visitor had departed.

CHAPTER II.

THE TENANT OF THE NEW HALL.

The snow had ceased to fall, but for a week a hard frost had held the country side in its iron grip. The roads rang under the horses’ hoofs, and every wayside ditch and runlet was a street of ice. Over the long undulating landscape the red brick houses peeped out warmly against the spotless background, and the lines of grey smoke streamed straight up into the windless air. The sky was of the lightest palest blue, and the morning sun, shining through the distant fog-wreaths of Birmingham, struck a subdued glow from the broad-spread snow fields which might have gladdened the eyes of an artist.

It did gladden the heart of one who viewed it that morning from the summit of the gently-curving Tamfield Hill Robert McIntyre stood with his elbows upon a gate-rail, his Tam-o’-Shanter hat over his eyes, and a short briar-root pipe in his mouth, looking slowly about him, with the absorbed air of one who breathes his fill of Nature. Beneath him to the north lay the village of Tamfield, red walls, grey roofs, and a scattered bristle of dark trees, with his own little Elmdene nestling back from the broad, white winding Birmingham Road.