Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 15
“I don’t wonder this Northfleet man comes here to study birds,” she exclaimed at last. “The place is simply alive with them, Colin. What’s that, there? I’ve never seen one like it before.”
“Heron,” Colin explained, with a wave of his pipe-stem. “They sometimes nest on the cliffs when no trees are handy. Not many of them about, though, I’d imagine.”
They topped a little rise and came suddenly upon the shieling, a tiny little building with whitewashed walls and a thatched roof. Beside the door of it a man was sitting at a camp-table, engrossed m some papers outspread before him.
“My man, after all,” Colin said in an undertone to Jean. Then, as they advanced, he hailed.
“Hullo, Northfleet! Remember me, by any chance? Trent. U.C.L. in your day.”
Colin’s rather incoherent greeting seemed to be sufficient. Northfleet got up from his chair, and Jean saw a clean-shaven, hard-bitten man, an inch or two taller than Colin. The two were much of an age, but this stranger had something about him which made Colin seem rather boyish by comparison. Jean could not quite define what it was. “Gravity” wasn’t the word, neither was “sternness.”
“He looks the sort of person who could see a thing through if he took it up,” was her almost unconscious summing-up in her mind. “But he’s not like Colin. You can’t tell what he’s thinking, from his face.”
Perhaps that was what Mrs. Dinnet meant by “reserved, rather.”
Something in Northfleet’s attitude when he caught sight of them had suggested, though only for an instant, that they had interrupted him at an inopportune moment. But nothing of this showed in his expression as he came forward with a gesture of greeting.
“Mr. Northfleet, Jean. This is my wife,” Colin added, with that mixture of pride and diffidence which marks some newly-married husbands.
“My husband and I have been wondering about you, since we heard your name,” Jean explained candidly. “I was quite sure, somehow, that you’d turn out to be the right person and not a total stranger.”
Northfleet did not seem anxious to follow up this opening.
“You’re staying at Wester Voe, I suppose. A nice place. My own quarters”—he nodded towards the shieling—“are hardly so palatial. If you go inside and face south, you’re in the bedroom. Face to the west, where the fireplace is, and you’re in the kitchen. Turn to the south, and you’re in the dining-room, because the table’s there under the window. There are no stairs or passages to confuse one. The architect evidently made no provision for entertaining visitors.”
If there was an intention behind the last words, Northfleet took care not to underline it by his facial expression.
“It serves my purpose,” he added carelessly.
“You’re interested in birds, aren’t you, Mr. Northfleet?” Jean asked. “You must find plenty here, on the island.”
Yes, I’m interested in birds,” Northfleet confirmed.
But he did not seem the voluble type of enthusiast, for he made no attempt to develop Jean’s topic.
Colin did not take the hint.
“Ornithology’s a new line for you, Northfleet, surely. You used to be rather down on the birds-beasts-and-fishes business in the old days.”
“I don’t know much about it, even now,” Northfleet admitted with apparent frankness.
Then a fresh thought seemed to strike him, and he turned to Jean.
“Are you making a long stay on Ruffa, Mrs. Trent?”
“Three weeks or so,” Jean explained. “Isn’t it a lovely place? We’re just exploring it for the first time this morning.”
Northfleet seemed to consider for a moment, as though making some mental calculation before answering.
“I’ve made a very crude map of Ruffa,” he volunteered. “The Dinnets helped me with the place-names for it. If it’s of any interest to you, I’ll make a second copy and leave it for you at Wester Voe.”
“I should like it very much indeed,” Jean said gratefully. “It makes things more interesting when one knows the real names of places, doesn’t it?”
“Must have taken a bit of work to draw it up,” Colin commented.
Northfleet made a careless gesture.
“One must fill in one’s time somehow on a place like this,” he said, in what seemed deprecation of his work. “It’s not even a plane-table survey, you know; I only used a prismatic compass for the bearings, and worked the thing out roughly.”
“I’d have thought the birds would have kept your hands full,” Colin suggested.
“The birds? Oh, that’s a regular routine. I go about, with a note-book, over the island at more or less fixed times and jot down what seems interesting. There’s a meadow-pipit up yonder which changes its ground once or twice a week for some reason that I haven’t discovered. And I’m interested in a couple of owls.”
“Isn’t it rather lonely for you?” Jean demanded, with the idea of paving the way to an invitation.
“Lonely? It was at first. One gets used to it.”
“Of course, there are the people up at Heather Lodge,” Jean suggested.
“Yes, of course,” Northfleet agreed, with a touch of dryness in his tone.
Jean’s eyes caught some birds on a cliff near at hand.
“Look at these, Colin, the way they’re sitting, two by two, as if they were getting ready to go into the Ark. There’s one just flown away. See how graceful it is: it seems to fly without troubling to move its wings. What sort of gull is it, Mr. Northfleet?”
Northfleet glanced in the direction to which she pointed.
“Oh, a herring-gull,” he said, carelessly. “You’ll see them all along the coast.”
Jean dismissed the subject, since it did not seem to lead further. She was becoming faintly piqued by Northfleet’s manner. “Reserved, rather”