Read Ebook: Flight: An Epic of the Air by Franklyn Irwin R Graves Ralph Other

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BY THE LOCH.

"It is you who have been the thief, then?"

The question was uttered in tones of withering contempt. The criminal, standing before his judge with downcast face and nervously-twitching fingers, found not a word to reply.

"Answer me," said Richard Luttrell, imperatively. "Tell me the truth--or, by Heaven, I'll thrash you within an inch of your life, and make you speak! Did you, or did you not, take this money out of my strong-box?"

"I meant to put it back," faltered the culprit. He was a slender lad of twenty, with the olive skin, the curling jet-black hair, the liquid-brown eyes, which marked his descent from a southern race. The face was one of singular beauty. The curved lips, the broad brow on which the dusky hair grew low, the oval cheek and rounded chin might well have served for the impersonation of some Spanish beggar-boy or Neapolitan fisher-lad. They were of the subtilely sensuous type, expressive of passion rather than of intellect or will. At present, with the usual rich, ripe colour vanished from cheek and lips, with eyes downcast, and trembling hands dropped to his sides, he was a picture of embodied shame and fear which his cousin and guardian, Richard Luttrell, regarded with unmitigated disgust.

Luttrell himself was a man of very different fibre. Tall, strong, fiercely indignant, he towered over the youth as if he could willingly have smitten him to the earth. He was a fine-looking, broad-shouldered man of twenty-eight, with strongly-marked features, browned by exposure to the sun and wind. The lower part of his face was almost hidden by a crisp chestnut beard and moustache, whilst his eyes were of the reddish hazel tint which often denotes heat of temper. The fire which now shot from beneath the severely knitted brows might indeed have dismayed a person of stouter heart than Hugo Luttrell. The youth showed no signs of penitence; he was thoroughly dismayed and alarmed by the position in which he found himself, but that was all.

The scene of their interview was hardly in accordance with its painful character. The three men--for there was another whom we have not attempted to describe--stood on the border of a small loch, the tranquil waters of which came lapping almost to their feet as they spoke together. The grassy shores were fringed with alder and rowan-trees. Above the heads of the speakers waved the branches of a great Scotch fir, the outpost and sentinel, as it were, of an army of its brethren, standing discreetly a few yards away from the banks of the loch. Richard Luttrell's house, though not far distant, was out of sight; and the one little, grey-stone cottage which could be seen had no windows fronting the water. It was a spot, therefore, in which a prolonged conversation could be carried on without much fear of disturbance. Beyond the trees, and on each side of the loch, were ranged the silent hills; their higher crags purple in the sunlight, brown and violet in shadow. The tints of the heather were beginning to glow upon the moors; on the lower-lying slopes a mass of foliage showed its first autumnal colouring; here and there a field of yellow stubble gave a dash of almost dazzling brightness to the landscape, under the cloudless azure of a September sky. Hills, woods, and firmament were alike reflected with mirror-like distinctness in the smooth bosom of the loch, where little, brown ducks swam placidly amongst the weeds, and swallows skimmed and dipped and flew in happy ignorance of the ruin that guilt and misery can work in the lives of men.

Richard Luttrell stood with his back towards the open door of a large wooden shed used as a boat-house, the interior of which looked densely black by contrast with the brilliant sunlight on the green grass and trees outside it. An open box or two, a heap, of fishing tackle, a broken oar, could be seen but dimly from without. It was in one of these boxes that Richard Luttrell had made, early in the day, a startling discovery. He had come across a pocket-book which had been abstracted from his strong-box in a most mysterious way about a week before. On opening it, he found, not only certain bank-notes which he had missed, but some marked coins and a cornelian seal which had disappeared on previous occasions, proving that a system of robbery had been carried on by one and the same person--evidently a member of the Luttrell household. The spoil was concealed with great care in a locked box on a shelf, and but for an accidental stumble by which Luttrell had brought down the whole shelf and broken the box itself, it would probably have remained there undisturbed. No one would ever have dreamt of seeking for Luttrell's pocket-book in a box in the boat-house.

"How did this get here? Who keeps the second key of the boat-house?" demanded Richard in the first moment of his discovery.

And Brian, his younger brother, answered carelessly--

"Hugo has had it for the last week or two."

Then, disturbed by his brother's tone, he came to Richard's side and looked at the fragments of the box by which Richard was still kneeling. With an exclamation of surprise he took up the lid of the box and examined it carefully. The name of its owner had been printed in ink on the smooth, brown surface--Hugo Luttrell. And the stolen property was hidden in that little wooden box.

The exclamations of the two brothers were characteristic. Richard raised himself with the pocket-book in his hand, and said vehemently--

"The young scoundrel! He shall rue it!"

While Brian, looking shocked and grieved, sat down on the stump of a tree and muttered, "Poor lad!" between his teeth, as he contemplated the miserable fragments on the ground.

The sound of a bell came faintly to their ears through the clear morning air. Richard spoke sharply.

"We must leave the matter for the present. Don't say anything about it. Lock up the boat-house, Brian, and keep the key. We'll have Hugo down here after breakfast, and see whether he'll make a clean breast of it."

"He may know nothing at all about it," suggested Brian, rising from his seat.

"It is to be hoped so," said Luttrell, curtly. He walked out of the boat-house with frowning brows and sparkling eyes. "I know one thing--my roof won't shelter him any longer if he is guilty." And then he marched away to the house, leaving Brian to lock the door and follow at his ease.

Brian's meditations were interrupted at this point. His brother had risen from the breakfast-table and was addressing Hugo, with a great show of courtesy, but with the stern light in his eyes which always made those who knew him best be on their guard with Richard Luttrell. "If you are at liberty," he said, "I want you down at the boat-house. I am going there now."

Brian, who was watching his cousin, saw a sudden change in his face. His lips turned white, his eyes moved uneasily in their sockets. It seemed almost as if he glanced backwards and forwards in order to look for a way of escape. But no escape was possible. Richard stood waiting, severe, inflexible, with that ominous gleam in his eyes. Hugo rose and followed like a dog at his master's call. From the moment that Brian marked his sullen, hang-dog expression and drooping head, he gave up his hope of proving Hugo's innocence. He would gladly have absented himself from the interview, but Richard summoned him in a voice that admitted of no delay.

The lad's own face and words betrayed him when he was shown the pocket-book and the broken box. He stammered out excuses, prevaricated, lied; until at last Luttrell lost all patience, and insisted upon a definite reply to his question. And then Hugo muttered his last desperate self-justification--that he had "meant to put it back!"

Richard's stalwart figure, the darkness of his brow, the strong hand in which he was swinging a heavy hunting-crop--caught up, as he left the house, for no decided purpose, but disagreeably significant in Hugo's eyes--became doubly terrible to the lad during the interval of silence that followed his avowal. He glanced supplicatingly at Brian; but Brian had no aid to give him now. And, when Brian's help failed him, Hugo felt that all was lost.

Meanwhile, Brian himself, a little in the back ground, leaned against the trunk of a tree which grew close to the shallow water's edge, bent his eyes upon the ground and tried to see the boy's face as little as possible. His affection for Hugo had given him an influence over the lad which Richard had certainly never possessed. For, generous as Richard might be, he was not fond of his young cousin; and Hugo, being aware of this fact, regarded him with instinctive aversion. In his own fashion he did love Brian--a little bit!

Brian Luttrell was at this time barely three-and-twenty. He had rooms in London, where he was supposed to be reading for the bar, but his tastes were musical and literary, and he had not yet made much progress in his legal studies. He had a handsome, intellectual face of a very refined type, thoughtful dark eyes, a long, brown moustache, and small pointed beard of the same colour. He was slighter, less muscular, than Richard; and the comment often made upon him was that he had the look of a dreamer, perhaps of an artist--not of a very practical man--and that he was extremely unlike his brother. There was, indeed, a touch of unusual and almost morbid sensitiveness in Brian's nature, which, betraying itself, as it did, from time to time, only by a look, a word, a gesture, yet proved his unlikeness to Richard Luttrell more than any dissimilarity of feature could have done.

"You meant to put it back, sir!" thundered Richard, after that moment's pause, which seemed like an eternity to Hugo. "And where did you mean to get the money from? Steal it from some one else? Folly! lies! And for what disgraceful reason did you take it at all? You are in debt, I presume?"

Hugo's white lips signified assent.

"You have been gambling again?"

He bowed his head.

"I thought so. I told you three months ago that I had paid your gambling debts for the last time. I make one exception. I will pay them once again--with the money you have stolen, which you may keep. Much good may it do you!" He flung the pocket-book on the turf at Hugo's feet as he spoke. "Take it. You have paid dearly enough for it, God knows. For the future, sir, manage your own affairs; my house is no longer open to you."

"Don't be hard on him, Richard," said Brian, in a voice too low to reach Hugo's ears. "Forgive him this time; he is only a boy, after all--and a boy with a bad training."

"Will you be so good as to mind your own business, Brian?" said the elder brother, peremptorily. The severity of his tone increased as he addressed himself again to Hugo. "You will leave Netherglen to-day. Your luggage can be sent after you; give your own directions about it. I suppose you will rejoin your regiment? I neither know nor care what you mean to do. If we meet again, we meet as strangers."

"Willingly," said Hugo, lifting his eyes for one instant to his cousin's face, with an expression so full of brooding hatred and defiance that even Richard Luttrell was amazed.

"For Heaven's sake don't say that, Hugo," began the second brother, with a hasty desire to pave the way for reconciliation.

"Why not?" said Hugo.

The look of abject fear was dying out of his face. The worst, he thought, was over. He drew himself up, crossed his arms, and tried to meet Brian's reproachful eyes with confidence, but in this attempt he was not successful. In spite of himself, the eyelids dropped until the long, black lashes almost touched the smooth, olive cheek, across which passed a transient flush of shame. This sign of feeling touched Brian; the lad was surely not hopelessly bad if he could blush for his sins. But Richard went on ruthlessly.

"You need expect no further help from me. I own you as a relation no longer. You have disgraced the name you bear. Don't let me see you again in my house." He was too indignant, too much excited, to speak in anything but short, sharp sentences, each of which seemed more bitter than the last. Richard Luttrell was little concerned for Hugo's welfare, much for the honour of the family. "Go," he said, "at once, and I will not publish your shameful conduct to the world. If you return to my house, if you seek to establish any communication with members of my family, I shall not keep your secret."

"Speak for yourself, Richard," said his brother, warmly, "not for me. I hope that Hugo will do better in time; and I don't mean to give him up. You must make an exception for me when you speak of separating him from the family."

"I make no exception," said Richard.

Brian drew nearer to his brother, and uttered his next words in a lower tone.

"Think what you are doing," he said. "You will drive him to desperation, and, after all, he is only a boy of nineteen. Quite young enough to repent and reform, if we are not too hard upon him now. Do as you think fit for yourself and your own household, but you must not stand in the way of what I can do for him, little though that may be."

"I stand to what I have said," answered Richard, harshly. "I will have no communication between him and you." Th

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