CHAPTER LXI.Albert Seyton’s Destitution.—A Lone and Wearied Spirit.—The Application to Learmont, and the Meeting with Sir Francis Hartleton.We havebeen compelled for a long time to leave the gallant and noble-hearted Albert Seyton to follow out his fortunes unchronicled in order to depict the various changing scenes in the life of Ada, who, now that she is conducted to a haven of rest for a while, we can leave in calm contentment, although not yet, fair persecuted girl, are thy trials done! The sunshine of peace and joy that now surrounds you is but a prelude to a storm. We will not, however, anticipate but allow the events of our tale to flow on in their natural course like a mighty river, which, as it nears the ocean which is the goal of its destiny, sweeps onwards with it every little tributary stream and murmuring rivulet that has borrowed a brief existence from it.After the death of his father, the scanty means of support which the elder Seyton had arising from the tardy justice of the government ceased at once, and no answer was returned by the corrupt minister to Albert’s application, not for a continuance of his father’s pension, but for honourable employment.One by one he was compelled to part with the several remnants of convertable property which his father had left behind him. His whole time was occupied in searching for Ada, until hope sickened into despair and a deep gloom began to spread itself like a vapour before the sun over his heart, which in happier circumstances would have throbbed with every free, noble, and generous emotion.Twice he had called upon Sir Francis Hartleton, but had not been so fortunate as to meet with him, and the second disappointment, although it was purely accidental, Albert took seriously to heart, and in the gloomy confusion of his imagination, arising from the grief that oppressed him, cemented it into an intentional slight, and never called again. The consequence of this was, that at the time of Ada’s introduction to the house of the kind and humane magistrate, she was entirely ignorant of Albert’s place of abode and condition in life.Several times since his father’s death the young man had shifted his residence, for he could not bear that his rapidly decreasing means should become a subject of remark, even although a pitying one, and now he tenanted a small room in a narrow court, near the Savoy steps in the Strand.Absolute destitution was now rapidly approaching, and he felt that the time was quickly coming when he would have had to bid adieu for ever to the most distant hope of ever again beholding Ada; and to save himself from starvation, enlisted as a private soldier in the army in which his father had held a commission.On that very morning that Ada was sitting in the little room commanding so delightful a view of the park, and conversing with Lady Hartleton, poor Albert sat in his cheerless apartment with his head resting upon his hands in a deep reverie composed of gloomy and heart depressing thoughts and anticipations.“Alas! Alas!” he cried. “My beautiful Ada, thou art lost to me for ever. Oh, why did I leave you for one moment to the mercy of that man? I am rightly punished. Having by the merest accident—by one of those happy chances of fortune that rarely occur twice, met you, Ada, when you were wandering in this great city, I madly allowed you to go from me. Oh, what blindness was that—why did not some good spirit shriek ‘beware’ in my ears? Ada—Ada, I have lost you forever!”He remained for some moments silent, and suddenly rising he cried,—“’Tis in vain to struggle with my fate. My lot in life is cast, and I must stand the hazard of the die. Ada, farewell forever, I must take a step now which will sever us for ever—a step which, while it takes from me my freedom of action, places me in a situation that will separate me from you, Ada. There is a regiment ordered, I am told, to the West Indies. It wants recruits—with it will I go, and bid adieu to England, hope, and Ada.”With a saddened heart, and yet a fixed and determined aspect, he now proceeded to collect and pack into a small compass such few papers and small cherished articles as were in themselves valueless, but dear to him as the words of his father. There was one book, too, in the inside of the cover of which Ada, when quite young, had written the name of “Harry”—and underneath “Albert.” This one word of her whom he loved so well he placed next his heart, with a determination that death should alone part him and it. He then destroyed a number of letters which would have encumbered him, and which possessed no very peculiar features of interest.For a moment he paused over one of those notes, as he was about to tear it across, and as he read it it suggested one last hope to his mind.The reader will recollect that previous to his long and dangerous illness, Albert Seyton had applied to Learmont, whom he knew but as the reported richest commoner in the kingdom, for the situation of secretary to him, and had received not a distinct, but certainly an encouraging reply.Before, however, Albert could follow up the application his illness had placed so long an interval between the first proceeding and that which would have been the second, that not doubting Learmont was long since suited, he had taken no further steps in the matter. It was Learmont’s note dated far back which now caught his eye, and made him in the present desperate state of his fortunes adopt the sudden notion of calling with it in his hand and explaining the cause of the long delay, which might interest the rich and powerful squire to give him a recommendation to some one else, if he could not himself employ him.“A drowning man,” exclaimed Albert, “they say, will catch at a straw, and upon the same principle I will cling to this one slender hope.” He read the letter carefully, which ran thus:—If Mr. Seyton will call upon Mr. Learmont at his house any morning before eleven he will oblige him, and they will converse on Mr. Seyton’s application.This was very brief, but still amply sufficient to found a call upon, and Albert placing it in his pocket, and trimming up as well as he could his faded apparel, donned his hat, and with a quick active step proceeded towards Learmont’s house.What an estimable thing to youth is hope, and from what a small tiny plant will it grow in the human breast to wondrous size and beauty.The freshness of the morning, the sunshine and the feeling that there was yet another chance for him, slight as it was, chased many of the phantoms of gloom and despair from his mind.He was not long in arriving at Learmont’s house and entering the hall, for it was the fashion then of many of the wealthy to keep their outer-doors open, and trust to the throng of servant’s they kept in their halls, to defend them from any improper intrusion. He inquired for Learmont. He was replied to by a question concerning his business, when luckily recollecting his letter, he produced it, saying,—“I have a note from the squire, requesting my attendance upon him.”“Oh,” said a servant, “if that is the case, young sir, I will take your name in. Pray follow me.”Albert followed the man, and was conducted into a small, but magnificent apartment, with an exquisitely painted roof, and hung with crimson damask.He had not waited long when the servant re-appeared to say,—“that his master had no sort of recollection of the affair, and wished to see his own letter which the stranger said he had.”“Here is the letter,” said Albert; “but his worship will see by the date, that the time therein mentioned scarcely authorises my present visit. Be so good as to add that long illness and the death of one near and dear to me, accounts for the delay.”The man took the note and was away for some time, when he entered and requested Albert Seyton to follow him, for that his master would see him.He was then conducted through a magnificent suite of rooms, until the servant paused at a door which was a little way open. At this he knocked gently, and a deep-toned hollow voice from within said,—“Come in.”The servant motioned Albert Seyton to enter the apartment, and in the next moment he was in the presence of Learmont, who fixed his keen searching eyes upon the young man’s face for several moments before he spoke. Then he said in a low tone,—“Young man, your application now can scarcely be considered as encouraged by me. The note you have bears date a long time back.”“It does, sir,” replied Albert; “but I have been on a bed of sickness myself, and am now bereft of the parent who then—”Albert’s feelings would not permit him to say more, and he paused.“Are you an orphan?” said Learmont.“I am.”“And poor and friendless—and, and very nearly driven to despair? Have you found out what a hollow cheat the care of Providence is? Are you one of Fortune’s foot-balls, kicked here and there as the jade thinks proper? Have you met with ingratitude where you should have had succour? Contempt where you trusted upon honour—derision where you went for sympathy—are you, young man, one of those who have seen enough of misery to retaliate upon the world? Speak, young man, are you such as I have described?”There was a kind of subdued, snarling tone of vehemence in the utterance of these words by Learmont, that surprised Albert Seyton as much as the words themselves were unexpected. After a moment’s pause he replied,—“Sir, I scarce know how to answer you. I am, it is true, poor, friendless, and an orphan; I have met with ingratitude when I should have met friendship; cold indifference instead of ardent sympathy; but, sir, I thank Heaven that poor, nearly destitute as I am, my heart is light as thistle-down in its innocence of wrong, and from my inmost soul do I look up to and acknowledge that Providence that watches over all. You have jested with me, sir.”“In truth have I,” said Learmont; “it is my custom with a stranger, heed it not. When I want a moral, religious, and light-hearted secretary, you may be assured that I will send for you, young man.”A pang of disappointment shot across the heart of Albert Seyton as Learmont spoke, and he replied sadly,—“Farewell, sir, you will send for me in vain. This day, if unaccepted by you, I enter the ranks as a soldier.”“Indeed, are you so hardly pressed?”“Heaven knows I am indeed. For myself, sir, I care not, but in my fate is involved that of another.”“What other?” said Learmont.“Alas, sir, the tale is long, and its telling useless.”“Young man,” said Learmont earnestly, “there is a matter in which I could give you good employment, but it is one requiring secresy, prudence, and deep caution.”“If it be honourable, sir,” said Seyton, “I will freely undertake it were it beset with dangers.”“’Tis a reach above honourable,” said Learmont. “The object is absolutely pious.”This was said in so strange a tone that Albert was puzzled to make up his mind if it were sincere or honourable, and he remained silent, expecting Learmont to go on with what he was saying.“It is a trifling service,” said Learmont, “and yet by trifles I ever estimate good service. I fear me, much, young man, that in this great city there is great wickedness.”“No doubt,” said Albert, “and I should not object to any service that had for its end a righteous object.”“Sagely and wisely spoken, young sir,” said Learmont; “I give away large sums to those who are in want, and some days since there came to me a man who told a piteous tale, in which there were, however, some glaring discrepancies. I relieved his wants, real or pretended, and sent a servant to follow him home for two objects; first, to ascertain if he had given his true place of abode to me, and, secondly, to enable me to make inquiry into his real condition, in order that I might expose him as an impostor, or grant him further relief. You understand me?”“I do, sir.”“Good. The man I sent was foiled. He did not succeed in tracing him to his home. With much doublings and windings he eluded all pursuit. This man then I wish you to track to his abode;—Have you tact for such an enterprise?”“Methinks ’tis very easy,” said Albert.“And you will do it?”“I will, sir; I hate impostures, I hate that which puts the garb of virtue or religion for base purposes.”“Ah, you have a right feeling of these things, young man,” said Learmont.“Execute this matter to my satisfaction, and I will entertain you as my secretary.”“When, sir, may I have an opportunity to prove my zeal?”“I think to-morrow. A week seldom passes but he comes here craving for alms. You shall see him and follow him. Track him like a blood-hound; it will be esteemed good service by me. ’Tis a mere trifle, but succeed in it, and I will make much of you.”“I shall do my utmost, sir. There may be difficulties that I wont not of; but I will strive to overcome this, and do you satisfactory service.”“Here’s money for you,” said Learmont, handing him a purse. “Amuse yourself to-day: I shall not require your services until to-morrow, but attend me then at an early hour—say nine.”“I will be punctual, sir.”“And secret?”“If you wish it.”“I do wish it. Hark ye, young sir, it is a rule in this house, that, if the slightest occurrence be made a subject of discourse out of it; if the lightest stray word be repeated elsewhere, he who so reports never enters its portals again.”“I will obey you, sir; I have no taste for babbling, and, indeed, in all this city I have not one that I can call an acquaintance.”“’Tis better so—’tis better so,” said Learmont; “you will do me good service. Farewell, young sir, until to-morrow.”“Then I may consider myself as so far honoured by you, sir, as to call myself your secretary?” said Albert Seyton, scarcely believing his good fortune.“You may—you may,” said Learmont. “We will talk more at large to-morrow.”He touched a bell as he spoke, and, when a servant appeared, he said,—“This gentleman has access to me. Good morning, young sir.”Albert bowed himself out, and scarcely recovered from his bewilderment till he found himself out of the house.Then, as he began to consider all that had passed in his interview with Learmont, Albert began more and more to dislike his service, and to suspect that his employer was not by any means the high-minded and charitable gentleman he would fain assume to be. The manner of Learmont was so much at variance with his words that Albert irresistibly came to the conclusion that there was something more than had been explained to him connected with the service he was asked to perform of watching to his home an unfortunate beggar.“Still,” he thought, “I may be mistaken, and blaming this man for faults of nature. He may be benevolent and just, as he reports himself to be, but still afflicted with as roguish and villanous a face as ever fell to the lot of mortal man. It will not do always to trust to appearances, and I should be foolish indeed to forsake an honourable employment for perhaps a mere chimera of the imagination. I can leave him when I please; and at least, while I remain, dear Ada, I will please myself with a belief that I am near thee.”When Learmont was once more alone, and the echo of the retiring footsteps of Albert Seyton had died away, he muttered indistinctly to himself for some moments. Then, as he grew more confident in the success of some stratagem which he had connived, he spoke with a tone of exultation.“Yes,” he said, “fortune has favoured me with the best chance yet of discovering the hiding place of Jacob Gray. This youth must be unknown to him, and surely will succeed in dogging him to his haunt. That once discovered, and an hour shall not elapse without witnessing his dissolution, I can set this young man too upon Britton. The grand difficulty in circumventing these fellows has always consisted in the want of unsuspected persons to mingle with them. This youngster looks bold and capable; he will surely be successful in taking him, and, should his curiosity grow clamorous, he is easily disposed of. What matters it to me a few more lives!—I am already steeped in gore—steeped—steeped; but then I have my reward—wealth—honours—and—and enjoyment, of course. Ha! What noise was that?”Some slight creaking of an article of furniture sent the blood with a frightful rush to his heart, and he remained for several moments trembling excessively, and clutching the edge of the oaken table for support. Then, with a deep sigh, he again spoke,—“’Twas nothing—nothing. I have grown strangely nervous of late. I was not wont to be so tremblingly alive to every slight alarm. Is it age creeping upon me, or the shadow of some impending evil upon my heart? Learmont—Learmont, be thyself. Shake off these vapours of the brain. I—I have been ten times worse since I saw that face upon my door step. God of heaven! How like it was to one who sleeps the sleep of death. I—I cannot stay here. This room seems peopled with shapes. Hence—hence—I am going—I am going—going.”He slowly crept to the door, and kept softly muttering unintelligible words with his cold, livid lips, till he had passed out, and closed the door after him.Laughter at this moment reached his ears from the servants’ hall, and he smote his forehead with his clenched hand, as he exclaimed,—“Why can I not laugh? Why has no smile ever lighted my face for years? Am I a thing accursed? Others have spilt blood as well as I, and they have not been thus haunted. I will go out. There seems in the house to be ever close to me some hideous, unfashioned form, whose hot breath comes on my cheek, and whose perpetual presence is a hell. Yes—I—I will go out—out!”
Albert Seyton’s Destitution.—A Lone and Wearied Spirit.—The Application to Learmont, and the Meeting with Sir Francis Hartleton.
We havebeen compelled for a long time to leave the gallant and noble-hearted Albert Seyton to follow out his fortunes unchronicled in order to depict the various changing scenes in the life of Ada, who, now that she is conducted to a haven of rest for a while, we can leave in calm contentment, although not yet, fair persecuted girl, are thy trials done! The sunshine of peace and joy that now surrounds you is but a prelude to a storm. We will not, however, anticipate but allow the events of our tale to flow on in their natural course like a mighty river, which, as it nears the ocean which is the goal of its destiny, sweeps onwards with it every little tributary stream and murmuring rivulet that has borrowed a brief existence from it.
After the death of his father, the scanty means of support which the elder Seyton had arising from the tardy justice of the government ceased at once, and no answer was returned by the corrupt minister to Albert’s application, not for a continuance of his father’s pension, but for honourable employment.
One by one he was compelled to part with the several remnants of convertable property which his father had left behind him. His whole time was occupied in searching for Ada, until hope sickened into despair and a deep gloom began to spread itself like a vapour before the sun over his heart, which in happier circumstances would have throbbed with every free, noble, and generous emotion.
Twice he had called upon Sir Francis Hartleton, but had not been so fortunate as to meet with him, and the second disappointment, although it was purely accidental, Albert took seriously to heart, and in the gloomy confusion of his imagination, arising from the grief that oppressed him, cemented it into an intentional slight, and never called again. The consequence of this was, that at the time of Ada’s introduction to the house of the kind and humane magistrate, she was entirely ignorant of Albert’s place of abode and condition in life.
Several times since his father’s death the young man had shifted his residence, for he could not bear that his rapidly decreasing means should become a subject of remark, even although a pitying one, and now he tenanted a small room in a narrow court, near the Savoy steps in the Strand.
Absolute destitution was now rapidly approaching, and he felt that the time was quickly coming when he would have had to bid adieu for ever to the most distant hope of ever again beholding Ada; and to save himself from starvation, enlisted as a private soldier in the army in which his father had held a commission.
On that very morning that Ada was sitting in the little room commanding so delightful a view of the park, and conversing with Lady Hartleton, poor Albert sat in his cheerless apartment with his head resting upon his hands in a deep reverie composed of gloomy and heart depressing thoughts and anticipations.
“Alas! Alas!” he cried. “My beautiful Ada, thou art lost to me for ever. Oh, why did I leave you for one moment to the mercy of that man? I am rightly punished. Having by the merest accident—by one of those happy chances of fortune that rarely occur twice, met you, Ada, when you were wandering in this great city, I madly allowed you to go from me. Oh, what blindness was that—why did not some good spirit shriek ‘beware’ in my ears? Ada—Ada, I have lost you forever!”
He remained for some moments silent, and suddenly rising he cried,—
“’Tis in vain to struggle with my fate. My lot in life is cast, and I must stand the hazard of the die. Ada, farewell forever, I must take a step now which will sever us for ever—a step which, while it takes from me my freedom of action, places me in a situation that will separate me from you, Ada. There is a regiment ordered, I am told, to the West Indies. It wants recruits—with it will I go, and bid adieu to England, hope, and Ada.”
With a saddened heart, and yet a fixed and determined aspect, he now proceeded to collect and pack into a small compass such few papers and small cherished articles as were in themselves valueless, but dear to him as the words of his father. There was one book, too, in the inside of the cover of which Ada, when quite young, had written the name of “Harry”—and underneath “Albert.” This one word of her whom he loved so well he placed next his heart, with a determination that death should alone part him and it. He then destroyed a number of letters which would have encumbered him, and which possessed no very peculiar features of interest.
For a moment he paused over one of those notes, as he was about to tear it across, and as he read it it suggested one last hope to his mind.
The reader will recollect that previous to his long and dangerous illness, Albert Seyton had applied to Learmont, whom he knew but as the reported richest commoner in the kingdom, for the situation of secretary to him, and had received not a distinct, but certainly an encouraging reply.
Before, however, Albert could follow up the application his illness had placed so long an interval between the first proceeding and that which would have been the second, that not doubting Learmont was long since suited, he had taken no further steps in the matter. It was Learmont’s note dated far back which now caught his eye, and made him in the present desperate state of his fortunes adopt the sudden notion of calling with it in his hand and explaining the cause of the long delay, which might interest the rich and powerful squire to give him a recommendation to some one else, if he could not himself employ him.
“A drowning man,” exclaimed Albert, “they say, will catch at a straw, and upon the same principle I will cling to this one slender hope.” He read the letter carefully, which ran thus:—
If Mr. Seyton will call upon Mr. Learmont at his house any morning before eleven he will oblige him, and they will converse on Mr. Seyton’s application.
This was very brief, but still amply sufficient to found a call upon, and Albert placing it in his pocket, and trimming up as well as he could his faded apparel, donned his hat, and with a quick active step proceeded towards Learmont’s house.
What an estimable thing to youth is hope, and from what a small tiny plant will it grow in the human breast to wondrous size and beauty.
The freshness of the morning, the sunshine and the feeling that there was yet another chance for him, slight as it was, chased many of the phantoms of gloom and despair from his mind.
He was not long in arriving at Learmont’s house and entering the hall, for it was the fashion then of many of the wealthy to keep their outer-doors open, and trust to the throng of servant’s they kept in their halls, to defend them from any improper intrusion. He inquired for Learmont. He was replied to by a question concerning his business, when luckily recollecting his letter, he produced it, saying,—
“I have a note from the squire, requesting my attendance upon him.”
“Oh,” said a servant, “if that is the case, young sir, I will take your name in. Pray follow me.”
Albert followed the man, and was conducted into a small, but magnificent apartment, with an exquisitely painted roof, and hung with crimson damask.
He had not waited long when the servant re-appeared to say,—“that his master had no sort of recollection of the affair, and wished to see his own letter which the stranger said he had.”
“Here is the letter,” said Albert; “but his worship will see by the date, that the time therein mentioned scarcely authorises my present visit. Be so good as to add that long illness and the death of one near and dear to me, accounts for the delay.”
The man took the note and was away for some time, when he entered and requested Albert Seyton to follow him, for that his master would see him.
He was then conducted through a magnificent suite of rooms, until the servant paused at a door which was a little way open. At this he knocked gently, and a deep-toned hollow voice from within said,—
“Come in.”
The servant motioned Albert Seyton to enter the apartment, and in the next moment he was in the presence of Learmont, who fixed his keen searching eyes upon the young man’s face for several moments before he spoke. Then he said in a low tone,—
“Young man, your application now can scarcely be considered as encouraged by me. The note you have bears date a long time back.”
“It does, sir,” replied Albert; “but I have been on a bed of sickness myself, and am now bereft of the parent who then—”
Albert’s feelings would not permit him to say more, and he paused.
“Are you an orphan?” said Learmont.
“I am.”
“And poor and friendless—and, and very nearly driven to despair? Have you found out what a hollow cheat the care of Providence is? Are you one of Fortune’s foot-balls, kicked here and there as the jade thinks proper? Have you met with ingratitude where you should have had succour? Contempt where you trusted upon honour—derision where you went for sympathy—are you, young man, one of those who have seen enough of misery to retaliate upon the world? Speak, young man, are you such as I have described?”
There was a kind of subdued, snarling tone of vehemence in the utterance of these words by Learmont, that surprised Albert Seyton as much as the words themselves were unexpected. After a moment’s pause he replied,—
“Sir, I scarce know how to answer you. I am, it is true, poor, friendless, and an orphan; I have met with ingratitude when I should have met friendship; cold indifference instead of ardent sympathy; but, sir, I thank Heaven that poor, nearly destitute as I am, my heart is light as thistle-down in its innocence of wrong, and from my inmost soul do I look up to and acknowledge that Providence that watches over all. You have jested with me, sir.”
“In truth have I,” said Learmont; “it is my custom with a stranger, heed it not. When I want a moral, religious, and light-hearted secretary, you may be assured that I will send for you, young man.”
A pang of disappointment shot across the heart of Albert Seyton as Learmont spoke, and he replied sadly,—
“Farewell, sir, you will send for me in vain. This day, if unaccepted by you, I enter the ranks as a soldier.”
“Indeed, are you so hardly pressed?”
“Heaven knows I am indeed. For myself, sir, I care not, but in my fate is involved that of another.”
“What other?” said Learmont.
“Alas, sir, the tale is long, and its telling useless.”
“Young man,” said Learmont earnestly, “there is a matter in which I could give you good employment, but it is one requiring secresy, prudence, and deep caution.”
“If it be honourable, sir,” said Seyton, “I will freely undertake it were it beset with dangers.”
“’Tis a reach above honourable,” said Learmont. “The object is absolutely pious.”
This was said in so strange a tone that Albert was puzzled to make up his mind if it were sincere or honourable, and he remained silent, expecting Learmont to go on with what he was saying.
“It is a trifling service,” said Learmont, “and yet by trifles I ever estimate good service. I fear me, much, young man, that in this great city there is great wickedness.”
“No doubt,” said Albert, “and I should not object to any service that had for its end a righteous object.”
“Sagely and wisely spoken, young sir,” said Learmont; “I give away large sums to those who are in want, and some days since there came to me a man who told a piteous tale, in which there were, however, some glaring discrepancies. I relieved his wants, real or pretended, and sent a servant to follow him home for two objects; first, to ascertain if he had given his true place of abode to me, and, secondly, to enable me to make inquiry into his real condition, in order that I might expose him as an impostor, or grant him further relief. You understand me?”
“I do, sir.”
“Good. The man I sent was foiled. He did not succeed in tracing him to his home. With much doublings and windings he eluded all pursuit. This man then I wish you to track to his abode;—Have you tact for such an enterprise?”
“Methinks ’tis very easy,” said Albert.
“And you will do it?”
“I will, sir; I hate impostures, I hate that which puts the garb of virtue or religion for base purposes.”
“Ah, you have a right feeling of these things, young man,” said Learmont.
“Execute this matter to my satisfaction, and I will entertain you as my secretary.”
“When, sir, may I have an opportunity to prove my zeal?”
“I think to-morrow. A week seldom passes but he comes here craving for alms. You shall see him and follow him. Track him like a blood-hound; it will be esteemed good service by me. ’Tis a mere trifle, but succeed in it, and I will make much of you.”
“I shall do my utmost, sir. There may be difficulties that I wont not of; but I will strive to overcome this, and do you satisfactory service.”
“Here’s money for you,” said Learmont, handing him a purse. “Amuse yourself to-day: I shall not require your services until to-morrow, but attend me then at an early hour—say nine.”
“I will be punctual, sir.”
“And secret?”
“If you wish it.”
“I do wish it. Hark ye, young sir, it is a rule in this house, that, if the slightest occurrence be made a subject of discourse out of it; if the lightest stray word be repeated elsewhere, he who so reports never enters its portals again.”
“I will obey you, sir; I have no taste for babbling, and, indeed, in all this city I have not one that I can call an acquaintance.”
“’Tis better so—’tis better so,” said Learmont; “you will do me good service. Farewell, young sir, until to-morrow.”
“Then I may consider myself as so far honoured by you, sir, as to call myself your secretary?” said Albert Seyton, scarcely believing his good fortune.
“You may—you may,” said Learmont. “We will talk more at large to-morrow.”
He touched a bell as he spoke, and, when a servant appeared, he said,—“This gentleman has access to me. Good morning, young sir.”
Albert bowed himself out, and scarcely recovered from his bewilderment till he found himself out of the house.
Then, as he began to consider all that had passed in his interview with Learmont, Albert began more and more to dislike his service, and to suspect that his employer was not by any means the high-minded and charitable gentleman he would fain assume to be. The manner of Learmont was so much at variance with his words that Albert irresistibly came to the conclusion that there was something more than had been explained to him connected with the service he was asked to perform of watching to his home an unfortunate beggar.
“Still,” he thought, “I may be mistaken, and blaming this man for faults of nature. He may be benevolent and just, as he reports himself to be, but still afflicted with as roguish and villanous a face as ever fell to the lot of mortal man. It will not do always to trust to appearances, and I should be foolish indeed to forsake an honourable employment for perhaps a mere chimera of the imagination. I can leave him when I please; and at least, while I remain, dear Ada, I will please myself with a belief that I am near thee.”
When Learmont was once more alone, and the echo of the retiring footsteps of Albert Seyton had died away, he muttered indistinctly to himself for some moments. Then, as he grew more confident in the success of some stratagem which he had connived, he spoke with a tone of exultation.
“Yes,” he said, “fortune has favoured me with the best chance yet of discovering the hiding place of Jacob Gray. This youth must be unknown to him, and surely will succeed in dogging him to his haunt. That once discovered, and an hour shall not elapse without witnessing his dissolution, I can set this young man too upon Britton. The grand difficulty in circumventing these fellows has always consisted in the want of unsuspected persons to mingle with them. This youngster looks bold and capable; he will surely be successful in taking him, and, should his curiosity grow clamorous, he is easily disposed of. What matters it to me a few more lives!—I am already steeped in gore—steeped—steeped; but then I have my reward—wealth—honours—and—and enjoyment, of course. Ha! What noise was that?”
Some slight creaking of an article of furniture sent the blood with a frightful rush to his heart, and he remained for several moments trembling excessively, and clutching the edge of the oaken table for support. Then, with a deep sigh, he again spoke,—
“’Twas nothing—nothing. I have grown strangely nervous of late. I was not wont to be so tremblingly alive to every slight alarm. Is it age creeping upon me, or the shadow of some impending evil upon my heart? Learmont—Learmont, be thyself. Shake off these vapours of the brain. I—I have been ten times worse since I saw that face upon my door step. God of heaven! How like it was to one who sleeps the sleep of death. I—I cannot stay here. This room seems peopled with shapes. Hence—hence—I am going—I am going—going.”
He slowly crept to the door, and kept softly muttering unintelligible words with his cold, livid lips, till he had passed out, and closed the door after him.
Laughter at this moment reached his ears from the servants’ hall, and he smote his forehead with his clenched hand, as he exclaimed,—
“Why can I not laugh? Why has no smile ever lighted my face for years? Am I a thing accursed? Others have spilt blood as well as I, and they have not been thus haunted. I will go out. There seems in the house to be ever close to me some hideous, unfashioned form, whose hot breath comes on my cheek, and whose perpetual presence is a hell. Yes—I—I will go out—out!”
CHAPTER LXII.Jacob Grey in the Hampstead Fields.—The Placard.—The Reward.The birdswere singing merrily, and skimming over Jacob Gary’s head long before he awoke from the effects of the drugged wine that had been administered to him by the considerate friends he had met with. The morning sun was shining upon his pale, haggard face, lighting even it up with some appearance of less ghastliness, and yet there he lay motionless, as if dead. It is a favourite theory of dreams with some philosophers, that such visions of the fancy never occur but at the moment or two before awakening, or at the moment of losing consciousness by going to sleep, or in other words that we dream only when not fully slumbering.It would appear that this was the case with Jacob Gray; for, as the birds sung above him, and the sun gleamed upon him, while a crow would occasionally flap his face as it flew over him, his perception appeared half to return, and his face became bedewed with a heavy perspiration, as some fearful images of his past life came across his mental vision.His thoughts were evidently wandering back to the fearful night of the fire at the Old Smithy, and his busy fancy was enacting over again that dreadful drama of blood.He tossed his arms wildly to and fro, and groaned and uttered the half-stifled screams which came from a disturbed stupor, in the agony of his mind.“Save—save her,” he said. “The child of the dead! I cannot do the deed. Help, oh, help me, my heart is burning—charring in my breast.”He then, in his intense mental suffering, bit his under lip till the blood trickled on to his breast, and with the actual pain he awoke, crying—“Spare me—spare me! Oh, do not scorch my eye-balls so—my brain is on fire! Oh, God, have mercy—mercy—mercy.”He opened his eyes, and the full glare of the sunlight fell upon them, blinding him for the moment. Then he opened them again, and glanced around him in speechless wonder as to where he was.His first impression was that he was dead, and in some other world. Then he clasped his hands over his face and then tried to think. But a confusion and want of images in his brain quite rendered such an effort vain, and at length he became only alive to so horrible a sensation of thirst that he shrieked aloud,—“Water—water—water!”He rose to his knees, and glaring around him with his parched tongue hanging from his mouth, he saw a shining sheet of limpid water at some distance before him. Then, still gasping the word “water” he attempted to rise, but so confused was his head from the effects of the opiate that had been so unstintingly administered to him, that, after tottering a step or two, he sank to the earth again. His awful thirst was however, unbearable, and with a dizzy brow and aching eyes, he crawled on his hands and knees towards the pond.He was long in reaching it, for he deviated from the strait track largely; but when he did, oh, what an exquisite pleasure it was to lie by the brink and dash his head in, drinking up huge quantities and causing the cold stream to bubble in his mouth and ears.Not till his breath was exhausted did Jacob Gray raise his head from the pond, and then, when he did so, recollection returned to him up to the point when he had sat down to supper with his two suspicious friends in the court. With a cry that had something unearthly in it, he hurriedly thrust his hands into all his pockets, then with a wild shriek, he grovelled on the ground, dashing his head upon it, and clutching the grass with his hands as he cried,—“Gone—gone—all gone—that I have toiled for—beggared, ruined, gone.”Then he lay on his back, panting, as he looked into the clear, quiet pool before him, refecting, as it did, the face of Heaven in its glassy surface, the thought came over him of plunging in, and at once ending a life of never-ending misery.“Is it easy to drown?” he asked himself; “or are there unknown hours of maddening torture, after we think, by the cessation of all movement, life is gone?”He crawled towards the bank of the stream, and leaning over it, he gazed long and earnestly into its clear blue depths, it seemed miles down in the immensity of space, for now the ripples he had created had all subsided, and there was scarcely the slightest trembling of the reflected visage of the sky in the glassy stream.Then with a shudder he withdrew, slowly.“I dare not—I dare not,” he moaned. “It is for those of more unstained souls than mine to take the awful leap from here to eternity, and hope to be forgiven—not for me—not for me—I dare not. Yet where is now my philosophy? There is no eternity—no, no—we are all here but to play our parts in a great drama. What have I to fear? Nothing—nothing. I—I—believe in nothing.”Oh how the abject terror depicted in his countenance belied his words. He was striving to cheat himself by the lying effusions of his own tongue, while his heart was a haven of despair.Suddenly his attention was arrested by a man singing, as he ascended to the high ground, upon which Jacob Gray was lying. The strain was a merry one, and jarred strangely upon the half-maddened ears of Gray, who had just sufficient prudence left him to feel the necessity, in his present position, of not giving any clue to suspicion, for he felt that, in his weak and abject condition, a child might have arrested him.He accordingly rested his head upon his arm, in as unconcerned an attitude as he could assume, and awaited the coming of the man who was now within a few paces of him. He was coarsely and roughly attired, and evidently belonged to a very low grade of society. He did not notice Jacob Gray till he apparently came full upon him, then he cried,—“Hilloa, friend, you rise betimes. I call it over work getting up so early.”“Yes,” said Gray, “I—I am up soon. I like the cool air of the morning.”The man looked very earnestly at him, and Gray’s heart sunk within him at the thought that he was about to be recognised and taken. He made one effort to save himself by quietly adding,—“It’s nothing to me to be in the fields early or late. I am well armed.”The man stepped back a pace at this intimation, and Gray saw that whether or not the man had any criminal designs against his liberty, he had succeeded in awakening his fears.“No offence, sir,” he said—“no offence, I hope—I’m a poor fellow, come upon business from Westminister.”“Oh! From Westminister,” said Gray. Then he paused, and fixed an eager searching glance upon the man, who added,—“Have you heard of the murder last night, sir, of Mr. Vaughan?”“No,” said Gray, “I have not been in London for some time, although I have very nearly wandered out of my track.”A clock at this moment chimed some quarters, and the man said,—“The clock of the old church at Hampstead sounds clearly across the fields.”“At Hampstead,” muttered Gray, gazing earnestly around him, for he was as ignorant as possible of the locality in which he rightly surmised he had been left by those who had eased him of all his wealth.“Yes, there’s the church peeping among the tree, sir,” added the man.“I know it well,” said Gray, “my family all lie buried in its humble graveyard.”“Oh, indeed, sir,” said the man, and then he went with a slow step towards a tree, and taking a little tin can and a brush from his pocket, he began lathering it with paste.Gray watched his proceedings with intense curiosity, for he could not surmise what he could possibly be about to do. All wonder and conjecture were, however, speedily set at rest, for the man took a large printed bill from his hat, and the first word that struck Jacob Gray was the awful and ominous one of “Murder” in large letters on the top.The man pasted the bill on to the trunk of the tree carefully and evenly, and then he paused for a moment, and in a low, mumbling voice, read it.Jacob Gray was in such a position that he could not see the smaller print of the bill with sufficient distinctness to read it. The one word at the top—murder, only came out strongly and clearly to his eyes. That the placard concerned him, he never for a moment doubted, and now his agony became intense, at the thought that the man was most probably then engaged in mentally concerning his Gray’s, personal appearance, with a description of him in the bill.His anxiety while the man was reading became so intense, that he could neither speak nor move, and it was not until the man turned to him, and said,—“A horrid murder, sir, it seems,” that he found breath to answer him, in a confused manner.“Yes—yes,” he said, “a very horrid murder. Have you caught the murderer?”“No, sir—but there’s a hundred pounds reward offered for him, and bills are being stuck all over London, and within ten miles, with a description of him.”“Indeed,” said Gray, a violent trembling coming over him. “I am glad I am so well armed, that I hold several men’s lives in my power; so, you see, should I meet him, I am safe from him.”The man again went back a few paces upon hearing this declaration, and said with an appearance of fright,—“Certainly, sir—oh—of course, good morning, sir.”“Good morning,” said Gray.In a moment the man turned, and walk downed the hill at a pace which Jacob Gray could see he was momentarily increasing, as he placed a greater distance between them.“He suspects me! He suspects me!” gasped Gray. “He has only gone to get assistance to capture me. Whither can I now fly? I can purchase no more safety, for I am penniless. Die I dare not—must I be taken—oh, horror—horror! The scaffold dances before my eyes, and I seem even now to hear the shouts of the multitude as I am dragged out to die.”He shook for several moments fearfully, then with blanched lips and tottering limbs, he rose and approached the tree on which was posted the placard. For a minute or more, the letter seemed to dance before his bewildered gaze, and he could read nothing but the one word “Murder,” which appeared as it were to stand out from the paper with a supernatural distinctness.Gradually, however, this nervous delusion vanished, and the letters arranged themselves like living things in their proper places. Jacob Gray then read the bill, which offered a reward of one hundred pounds to any one who would apprehend and lodge in any gaol the perpetrator of the murder. The placard then went on to give but an imperfect description of Gray’s person, and concluded by the name of one of the magistrates of the metropolis.There were two things that surprised Gray in this placard. One was, that his name was not mentioned, and the other was, that no reference was made to any other real or supposed crime than the murder of the man Vaughan, in the court leading from the Strand.Through Ada, who had so fearlessly denounced him, he had made sure that his name would become public, and that his other crime of recent date, namely, the murder of the officer Elias, in the house at Battersea, would have become known, and form as direct and distinct a charge against him as that of Vaughan, which was the least criminal act of the two. Moreover, Sir Francis Hartleton’s name did not appear to the document, which was as great a surprise to Gray as anything, for he conjectured that to him, Ada would make her first appeal for protection.Altogether the bill tormented and puzzled Jacob Gray, and he continued gazing at it, until again the letters danced before his fevered brain, and calm reflection became lost in a whirl of contending fears.
Jacob Grey in the Hampstead Fields.—The Placard.—The Reward.
The birdswere singing merrily, and skimming over Jacob Gary’s head long before he awoke from the effects of the drugged wine that had been administered to him by the considerate friends he had met with. The morning sun was shining upon his pale, haggard face, lighting even it up with some appearance of less ghastliness, and yet there he lay motionless, as if dead. It is a favourite theory of dreams with some philosophers, that such visions of the fancy never occur but at the moment or two before awakening, or at the moment of losing consciousness by going to sleep, or in other words that we dream only when not fully slumbering.
It would appear that this was the case with Jacob Gray; for, as the birds sung above him, and the sun gleamed upon him, while a crow would occasionally flap his face as it flew over him, his perception appeared half to return, and his face became bedewed with a heavy perspiration, as some fearful images of his past life came across his mental vision.
His thoughts were evidently wandering back to the fearful night of the fire at the Old Smithy, and his busy fancy was enacting over again that dreadful drama of blood.
He tossed his arms wildly to and fro, and groaned and uttered the half-stifled screams which came from a disturbed stupor, in the agony of his mind.
“Save—save her,” he said. “The child of the dead! I cannot do the deed. Help, oh, help me, my heart is burning—charring in my breast.”
He then, in his intense mental suffering, bit his under lip till the blood trickled on to his breast, and with the actual pain he awoke, crying—
“Spare me—spare me! Oh, do not scorch my eye-balls so—my brain is on fire! Oh, God, have mercy—mercy—mercy.”
He opened his eyes, and the full glare of the sunlight fell upon them, blinding him for the moment. Then he opened them again, and glanced around him in speechless wonder as to where he was.
His first impression was that he was dead, and in some other world. Then he clasped his hands over his face and then tried to think. But a confusion and want of images in his brain quite rendered such an effort vain, and at length he became only alive to so horrible a sensation of thirst that he shrieked aloud,—
“Water—water—water!”
He rose to his knees, and glaring around him with his parched tongue hanging from his mouth, he saw a shining sheet of limpid water at some distance before him. Then, still gasping the word “water” he attempted to rise, but so confused was his head from the effects of the opiate that had been so unstintingly administered to him, that, after tottering a step or two, he sank to the earth again. His awful thirst was however, unbearable, and with a dizzy brow and aching eyes, he crawled on his hands and knees towards the pond.
He was long in reaching it, for he deviated from the strait track largely; but when he did, oh, what an exquisite pleasure it was to lie by the brink and dash his head in, drinking up huge quantities and causing the cold stream to bubble in his mouth and ears.
Not till his breath was exhausted did Jacob Gray raise his head from the pond, and then, when he did so, recollection returned to him up to the point when he had sat down to supper with his two suspicious friends in the court. With a cry that had something unearthly in it, he hurriedly thrust his hands into all his pockets, then with a wild shriek, he grovelled on the ground, dashing his head upon it, and clutching the grass with his hands as he cried,—
“Gone—gone—all gone—that I have toiled for—beggared, ruined, gone.”
Then he lay on his back, panting, as he looked into the clear, quiet pool before him, refecting, as it did, the face of Heaven in its glassy surface, the thought came over him of plunging in, and at once ending a life of never-ending misery.
“Is it easy to drown?” he asked himself; “or are there unknown hours of maddening torture, after we think, by the cessation of all movement, life is gone?”
He crawled towards the bank of the stream, and leaning over it, he gazed long and earnestly into its clear blue depths, it seemed miles down in the immensity of space, for now the ripples he had created had all subsided, and there was scarcely the slightest trembling of the reflected visage of the sky in the glassy stream.
Then with a shudder he withdrew, slowly.
“I dare not—I dare not,” he moaned. “It is for those of more unstained souls than mine to take the awful leap from here to eternity, and hope to be forgiven—not for me—not for me—I dare not. Yet where is now my philosophy? There is no eternity—no, no—we are all here but to play our parts in a great drama. What have I to fear? Nothing—nothing. I—I—believe in nothing.”
Oh how the abject terror depicted in his countenance belied his words. He was striving to cheat himself by the lying effusions of his own tongue, while his heart was a haven of despair.
Suddenly his attention was arrested by a man singing, as he ascended to the high ground, upon which Jacob Gray was lying. The strain was a merry one, and jarred strangely upon the half-maddened ears of Gray, who had just sufficient prudence left him to feel the necessity, in his present position, of not giving any clue to suspicion, for he felt that, in his weak and abject condition, a child might have arrested him.
He accordingly rested his head upon his arm, in as unconcerned an attitude as he could assume, and awaited the coming of the man who was now within a few paces of him. He was coarsely and roughly attired, and evidently belonged to a very low grade of society. He did not notice Jacob Gray till he apparently came full upon him, then he cried,—
“Hilloa, friend, you rise betimes. I call it over work getting up so early.”
“Yes,” said Gray, “I—I am up soon. I like the cool air of the morning.”
The man looked very earnestly at him, and Gray’s heart sunk within him at the thought that he was about to be recognised and taken. He made one effort to save himself by quietly adding,—
“It’s nothing to me to be in the fields early or late. I am well armed.”
The man stepped back a pace at this intimation, and Gray saw that whether or not the man had any criminal designs against his liberty, he had succeeded in awakening his fears.
“No offence, sir,” he said—“no offence, I hope—I’m a poor fellow, come upon business from Westminister.”
“Oh! From Westminister,” said Gray. Then he paused, and fixed an eager searching glance upon the man, who added,—
“Have you heard of the murder last night, sir, of Mr. Vaughan?”
“No,” said Gray, “I have not been in London for some time, although I have very nearly wandered out of my track.”
A clock at this moment chimed some quarters, and the man said,—
“The clock of the old church at Hampstead sounds clearly across the fields.”
“At Hampstead,” muttered Gray, gazing earnestly around him, for he was as ignorant as possible of the locality in which he rightly surmised he had been left by those who had eased him of all his wealth.
“Yes, there’s the church peeping among the tree, sir,” added the man.
“I know it well,” said Gray, “my family all lie buried in its humble graveyard.”
“Oh, indeed, sir,” said the man, and then he went with a slow step towards a tree, and taking a little tin can and a brush from his pocket, he began lathering it with paste.
Gray watched his proceedings with intense curiosity, for he could not surmise what he could possibly be about to do. All wonder and conjecture were, however, speedily set at rest, for the man took a large printed bill from his hat, and the first word that struck Jacob Gray was the awful and ominous one of “Murder” in large letters on the top.
The man pasted the bill on to the trunk of the tree carefully and evenly, and then he paused for a moment, and in a low, mumbling voice, read it.
Jacob Gray was in such a position that he could not see the smaller print of the bill with sufficient distinctness to read it. The one word at the top—murder, only came out strongly and clearly to his eyes. That the placard concerned him, he never for a moment doubted, and now his agony became intense, at the thought that the man was most probably then engaged in mentally concerning his Gray’s, personal appearance, with a description of him in the bill.
His anxiety while the man was reading became so intense, that he could neither speak nor move, and it was not until the man turned to him, and said,—
“A horrid murder, sir, it seems,” that he found breath to answer him, in a confused manner.
“Yes—yes,” he said, “a very horrid murder. Have you caught the murderer?”
“No, sir—but there’s a hundred pounds reward offered for him, and bills are being stuck all over London, and within ten miles, with a description of him.”
“Indeed,” said Gray, a violent trembling coming over him. “I am glad I am so well armed, that I hold several men’s lives in my power; so, you see, should I meet him, I am safe from him.”
The man again went back a few paces upon hearing this declaration, and said with an appearance of fright,—
“Certainly, sir—oh—of course, good morning, sir.”
“Good morning,” said Gray.
In a moment the man turned, and walk downed the hill at a pace which Jacob Gray could see he was momentarily increasing, as he placed a greater distance between them.
“He suspects me! He suspects me!” gasped Gray. “He has only gone to get assistance to capture me. Whither can I now fly? I can purchase no more safety, for I am penniless. Die I dare not—must I be taken—oh, horror—horror! The scaffold dances before my eyes, and I seem even now to hear the shouts of the multitude as I am dragged out to die.”
He shook for several moments fearfully, then with blanched lips and tottering limbs, he rose and approached the tree on which was posted the placard. For a minute or more, the letter seemed to dance before his bewildered gaze, and he could read nothing but the one word “Murder,” which appeared as it were to stand out from the paper with a supernatural distinctness.
Gradually, however, this nervous delusion vanished, and the letters arranged themselves like living things in their proper places. Jacob Gray then read the bill, which offered a reward of one hundred pounds to any one who would apprehend and lodge in any gaol the perpetrator of the murder. The placard then went on to give but an imperfect description of Gray’s person, and concluded by the name of one of the magistrates of the metropolis.
There were two things that surprised Gray in this placard. One was, that his name was not mentioned, and the other was, that no reference was made to any other real or supposed crime than the murder of the man Vaughan, in the court leading from the Strand.
Through Ada, who had so fearlessly denounced him, he had made sure that his name would become public, and that his other crime of recent date, namely, the murder of the officer Elias, in the house at Battersea, would have become known, and form as direct and distinct a charge against him as that of Vaughan, which was the least criminal act of the two. Moreover, Sir Francis Hartleton’s name did not appear to the document, which was as great a surprise to Gray as anything, for he conjectured that to him, Ada would make her first appeal for protection.
Altogether the bill tormented and puzzled Jacob Gray, and he continued gazing at it, until again the letters danced before his fevered brain, and calm reflection became lost in a whirl of contending fears.
CHAPTER LXIII.Gray’s Proceedings.—A Narrow Escape.—The Night Visit to Learmont.The necessityfor some immediate movement, in order to insure his personal safety, now came strongly across the oppressed and wavering mind of Gray, and hastily tearing down the bill from the tree, he clasped his throbbing temples with his hands, and strove to reduce his thoughts to order and consistency. That the bill-sticker had gone to get assistance to apprehend him, was the frightful notion that never for one instant left his mind, and without any definite notion of where he was going, he went round the declivity of the hill, until he arrived completely on the other side. The only means of concealment that there presented itself was a thick hedge, but then he thought how very insecure a place of refuge would that be, in the event of an active search being made for him.The country before him was level for a considerable distance, with only here and there a small clump of trees. After some minutes more of painful thought an idea suggested itself to him, which was very much in accordance with his usual complicated habits of thought. That was, to leave some portions of his apparel on the bank of the pond, to induce a belief that he had drowned himself in its waters, and then to scramble into one of the trees, and hide till nightfall among the branches.This was the only feasible plan of escape that suggested itself to him, for with his utter ignorance of the localities of the fields, an attempt to cross them to the village would most probably be seen, and but a short race in his exhausted and sickly state would ensure his capture. “At night,” he thought, “I will venture to Learmont’s—it is my only chance. I will then offer for a thousand pounds to deliver up Ada to him, and he still supposing, probably, that nothing material has happened, may consent, when I will find a means of leaving England for ever, and mature at my leisure plans of revenge against them all. But now most of all, Ada, will I mark you well. You, who have reduced me to my present state, my bitterest malediction light upon you. I would, I could have made you great and wealthy, but now I will devise some finely woven scheme to revenge myself on those I hate, without missing you.”He then laid several articles of his clothing by the bank of the pond to which he had walked, while the reflections we have worded were passing through his brain. Then hastily repairing to one of the clumps of trees we have mentioned, he with much difficulty and pain, for he was sadly bruised, contrived to ascend it, and although the pangs of hunger began, even now to harass him, he resolved that the shadows of evening should shroud all things before he ventured from his retreat.From his elevated position he now commanded a good view of the surrounding country, and far down the hill he had first ascended, he saw the forms of three persons rapidly approaching.At that distance he could not see their forms distinctly, but as they neared the brow of the hill, he felt no doubt that one of them was the man who had stuck the placard to the tree. Now he saw them pause and point forwards, then with an accelerated pace they all three advanced towards the tree near which the bill sticker had left them. They now paused, and appeared to be consulting upon their next step, when one apparently saw the articles of clothing which Gray had left by the bank of the pond, and they all came to the spot using gestures to each other of astonishment.They remained for several minutes in close consultation now, and then as if in accordance with an arrangement they had just made, one of them remained by the pond while the others commenced carefully peering into the hedges and bushes.After satisfying themselves that he they sought was not immediately at hand, they both ran up Traitor’s-hill, and from its summit took a long searching glance at all the surrounding fields. One of these men, Gray could see now to his intense fright, had a gun in his hand, and that fright was increased to absolute abject terror when he saw him level it at one of the trees in the vicinity, and fire among the branches, awakening many echoes and starting from their covert many birds who flew twittering and screaming from among the branches.Then to his agony he saw the gun again loaded, and the man pointed it at another tree and fired. The sharp report went through Jacob Gray’s excited brain like electricity, and it was only by twining his feet round an arm of the tree in which he was, and clutching another with his hands, that he saved himself from falling in his agitation to the ground.The two men now conversed for some minutes in an undertone. Then one raising his voice, said in a tone that came clearly to Jacob Gray’s anxiously straining ears,—“Oh, don’t give it up yet—it’s worth a try.”“So it is, but it’s a bore to fire away so much powder for nothing,” said the other.“Oh, nonsense, blaze away,” said the first, “I call it good sport.”“Well, here goes then,” remarked the man with the gun, as he deliberately rammed down another charge.Jacob Gray now trembled so excessively that had the men been near at hand the shaking of the branches of the tree must have at once betrayed him; but fortunately for him they were too much occupied with the trees they were firing into to heed any other at a distance, however short.As they came sauntering on, Jacob Gray with a deep groan that he could not repress, saw that a very few minutes more would bring the tree in which he was, under the aim of the man with the gun.Bang went the piece again, and another flight of screaming birds flew from the tree fired at, and along with a number of crows took refuge in the one occupied by Gray. The men were now within a few paces of the tree, and he could hear in his elevated position with painful distinctness every word they said.By a great effort, he in a great measure stilled the trembling which would have betrayed him, and lay along a thick branch nearly breathless from terror.“You may depend he’s off,” said the man with the gun. “He wouldn’t wait for you.”“Unless he’s drowned himself,” remarked the other, who was the bill-sticker.“No fear of that,” remarked the other with a laugh, “these kind of fellows never cheat the hangman that way. He has had time to run across the field to Highgate or Hampstead, or even to skulk into town you may depend.”“Well, I’d take my oath it was him as was mentioned in the bill,” said the man who had brought all this danger upon Gray. “I was thankful I got off scot-free from him, I can tell you. He would soon have blown my brains out if I had said half a word.”“Oh, bother you,” cried the other, “you were too fainthearted, you mean to lay hold of him.”“It’s all very well for you to talk with a gun in your hand, but what odds was I with a paste-pot against a right down regular murderer, I should like to know?”“Upon my faith,” said he with the gun, “I should have enjoyed seeing you sneak off—I really should.”As he spoke, he commenced reloading his gun with deliberation. Oh, what a horrible process that was to Jacob Gray. Each moment gave him a pang of fear that nearly stopped the beating of his heart. How he watched the action of the ramrod as the powder was pressed down. Then the rattle of a number of small shot as they went down the barrel, came upon his ears with dreadful distinctness. Again there was a piece of paper pressed into the muzzle of the piece, and as the ramrod forced it home with a dull sound upon the charge, Jacob Gray perspired in every pore, and with difficulty kept himself from shrieking, mercy! Mercy!“That’s an old tree,” remarked the man, as he primed the gun, and stepping back a pace or two levelled it among the branches. “I recollect it when I was a boy.”“Fire away,” said the other, who seemed quite to enjoy the sport.“Now—now,” thought Jacob, “now to fall a bleeding wounded man to the ground—now for pain, horror, capture, death.”He closed his eyes, and clung to the branch on which he lay with pure desperation. All thought of a consistent character became lost in abject terror. It seemed to him an age ere the man fired into the tree. Then suddenly a loud report reached his ears. Small branches of the tree fell about him, and he uttered a deep groan, as he felt a shock upon his face, and along one arm, which assured him he had been hit by some of the shots. The pain of a gun-shot wound is not immediate; the first effect is rather as if sensation had been suddenly stunned, but when the shock subsides, and the blood again resumes its wonted channels, the agony of the wound commences. Such was the case with Jacob Gray, and although but very few of the shots had struck him in the face, the neck, and on one arm, he could have screamed with pain in the course of a few moments, and it required all the counteracting influence of the master feeling of his mind—fear—to prevent him from discovering himself. Clinging still to the branch desperately he endured the pain in silence for he durst not even moan. His first groan had been drowned in the report of the gun, but now that the echoes had died away, and all was still, the least sound of pain from his lips might be his utter destruction.The men were silent for some moments after the discharge of the gun—then he who had fired it remarked in a disaffected tone,—“He ain’t there. It’s no use. He must have given us the slip.”“No, he could not stand that, I’m sure I couldn’t,” said the bill-sticker, “I never saw so many birds fly out of a tree in my life.”“That’s because we have hunted them from all the others, and they took refuge in this one blockhead,” cried the man with the gun, whose temper did not seem at all improved by the non-success of his expedition.“Well, you needn’t get in a passion,” suggested the other.“Who’s in a passion? How do you know I’m in a passion? I don’t believe you saw the man at all, and there’s an end of it.”“Upon my conscience—”“Bother your conscience—you’ve got none.”“Why, now you saw his things lying by the side of the pond yourself. What—suppose now he’s drowned himself really. How you’d look then. Why don’t you have the pond dragged—you know nobody will drag it for me.”“Why don’t you get in and feel about for him?” suggested the man with the gun.“What?”“Get into the pond and see if he’s there, I say.”“And put my foot on him perhaps. I’d sooner go to Jericho. I should never recover it. Suppose I was to go in, and put my foot on his very face. Oh, oh!”“You are a coward, that’s what you are, and you may hunt the fellow yourself for all I care.”“Don’t go away,” cried the bill-sticker. “Why—why—”“I shan’t stay here to be fooled any longer,” said the other.“Will you lend me the gun, then?”“Lend you my gun?”“Yes.”“I’ll see you particularly well—never mind.”So saying, he of the gun marched off in very great dudgeon, leaving the bill-sticker gazing after him.“Well,” he muttered, “there’s an air and a grace, I never knew he was so hasty before. I—I think I’ll have a hunt for the fellow myself, and—yet he might master me, and I think I won’t. It’s all very well to take a prisoner, but when the prisoner takes you, it ain’t near so pleasant.”Having come to this sage conclusion, the bill-sticker rapidly walked away, glancing every now and then around him in terror, lest Gray should make a sudden dart at him from behind some tree or hedge.“Here! Here,” moaned Jacob Gray, as he smeared the blood from his face with his hand, “here I must remain in hunger and pain till night, and then my only hope now is to crawl to Learmont’s!”
Gray’s Proceedings.—A Narrow Escape.—The Night Visit to Learmont.
The necessityfor some immediate movement, in order to insure his personal safety, now came strongly across the oppressed and wavering mind of Gray, and hastily tearing down the bill from the tree, he clasped his throbbing temples with his hands, and strove to reduce his thoughts to order and consistency. That the bill-sticker had gone to get assistance to apprehend him, was the frightful notion that never for one instant left his mind, and without any definite notion of where he was going, he went round the declivity of the hill, until he arrived completely on the other side. The only means of concealment that there presented itself was a thick hedge, but then he thought how very insecure a place of refuge would that be, in the event of an active search being made for him.
The country before him was level for a considerable distance, with only here and there a small clump of trees. After some minutes more of painful thought an idea suggested itself to him, which was very much in accordance with his usual complicated habits of thought. That was, to leave some portions of his apparel on the bank of the pond, to induce a belief that he had drowned himself in its waters, and then to scramble into one of the trees, and hide till nightfall among the branches.
This was the only feasible plan of escape that suggested itself to him, for with his utter ignorance of the localities of the fields, an attempt to cross them to the village would most probably be seen, and but a short race in his exhausted and sickly state would ensure his capture. “At night,” he thought, “I will venture to Learmont’s—it is my only chance. I will then offer for a thousand pounds to deliver up Ada to him, and he still supposing, probably, that nothing material has happened, may consent, when I will find a means of leaving England for ever, and mature at my leisure plans of revenge against them all. But now most of all, Ada, will I mark you well. You, who have reduced me to my present state, my bitterest malediction light upon you. I would, I could have made you great and wealthy, but now I will devise some finely woven scheme to revenge myself on those I hate, without missing you.”
He then laid several articles of his clothing by the bank of the pond to which he had walked, while the reflections we have worded were passing through his brain. Then hastily repairing to one of the clumps of trees we have mentioned, he with much difficulty and pain, for he was sadly bruised, contrived to ascend it, and although the pangs of hunger began, even now to harass him, he resolved that the shadows of evening should shroud all things before he ventured from his retreat.
From his elevated position he now commanded a good view of the surrounding country, and far down the hill he had first ascended, he saw the forms of three persons rapidly approaching.
At that distance he could not see their forms distinctly, but as they neared the brow of the hill, he felt no doubt that one of them was the man who had stuck the placard to the tree. Now he saw them pause and point forwards, then with an accelerated pace they all three advanced towards the tree near which the bill sticker had left them. They now paused, and appeared to be consulting upon their next step, when one apparently saw the articles of clothing which Gray had left by the bank of the pond, and they all came to the spot using gestures to each other of astonishment.
They remained for several minutes in close consultation now, and then as if in accordance with an arrangement they had just made, one of them remained by the pond while the others commenced carefully peering into the hedges and bushes.
After satisfying themselves that he they sought was not immediately at hand, they both ran up Traitor’s-hill, and from its summit took a long searching glance at all the surrounding fields. One of these men, Gray could see now to his intense fright, had a gun in his hand, and that fright was increased to absolute abject terror when he saw him level it at one of the trees in the vicinity, and fire among the branches, awakening many echoes and starting from their covert many birds who flew twittering and screaming from among the branches.
Then to his agony he saw the gun again loaded, and the man pointed it at another tree and fired. The sharp report went through Jacob Gray’s excited brain like electricity, and it was only by twining his feet round an arm of the tree in which he was, and clutching another with his hands, that he saved himself from falling in his agitation to the ground.
The two men now conversed for some minutes in an undertone. Then one raising his voice, said in a tone that came clearly to Jacob Gray’s anxiously straining ears,—
“Oh, don’t give it up yet—it’s worth a try.”
“So it is, but it’s a bore to fire away so much powder for nothing,” said the other.
“Oh, nonsense, blaze away,” said the first, “I call it good sport.”
“Well, here goes then,” remarked the man with the gun, as he deliberately rammed down another charge.
Jacob Gray now trembled so excessively that had the men been near at hand the shaking of the branches of the tree must have at once betrayed him; but fortunately for him they were too much occupied with the trees they were firing into to heed any other at a distance, however short.
As they came sauntering on, Jacob Gray with a deep groan that he could not repress, saw that a very few minutes more would bring the tree in which he was, under the aim of the man with the gun.
Bang went the piece again, and another flight of screaming birds flew from the tree fired at, and along with a number of crows took refuge in the one occupied by Gray. The men were now within a few paces of the tree, and he could hear in his elevated position with painful distinctness every word they said.
By a great effort, he in a great measure stilled the trembling which would have betrayed him, and lay along a thick branch nearly breathless from terror.
“You may depend he’s off,” said the man with the gun. “He wouldn’t wait for you.”
“Unless he’s drowned himself,” remarked the other, who was the bill-sticker.
“No fear of that,” remarked the other with a laugh, “these kind of fellows never cheat the hangman that way. He has had time to run across the field to Highgate or Hampstead, or even to skulk into town you may depend.”
“Well, I’d take my oath it was him as was mentioned in the bill,” said the man who had brought all this danger upon Gray. “I was thankful I got off scot-free from him, I can tell you. He would soon have blown my brains out if I had said half a word.”
“Oh, bother you,” cried the other, “you were too fainthearted, you mean to lay hold of him.”
“It’s all very well for you to talk with a gun in your hand, but what odds was I with a paste-pot against a right down regular murderer, I should like to know?”
“Upon my faith,” said he with the gun, “I should have enjoyed seeing you sneak off—I really should.”
As he spoke, he commenced reloading his gun with deliberation. Oh, what a horrible process that was to Jacob Gray. Each moment gave him a pang of fear that nearly stopped the beating of his heart. How he watched the action of the ramrod as the powder was pressed down. Then the rattle of a number of small shot as they went down the barrel, came upon his ears with dreadful distinctness. Again there was a piece of paper pressed into the muzzle of the piece, and as the ramrod forced it home with a dull sound upon the charge, Jacob Gray perspired in every pore, and with difficulty kept himself from shrieking, mercy! Mercy!
“That’s an old tree,” remarked the man, as he primed the gun, and stepping back a pace or two levelled it among the branches. “I recollect it when I was a boy.”
“Fire away,” said the other, who seemed quite to enjoy the sport.
“Now—now,” thought Jacob, “now to fall a bleeding wounded man to the ground—now for pain, horror, capture, death.”
He closed his eyes, and clung to the branch on which he lay with pure desperation. All thought of a consistent character became lost in abject terror. It seemed to him an age ere the man fired into the tree. Then suddenly a loud report reached his ears. Small branches of the tree fell about him, and he uttered a deep groan, as he felt a shock upon his face, and along one arm, which assured him he had been hit by some of the shots. The pain of a gun-shot wound is not immediate; the first effect is rather as if sensation had been suddenly stunned, but when the shock subsides, and the blood again resumes its wonted channels, the agony of the wound commences. Such was the case with Jacob Gray, and although but very few of the shots had struck him in the face, the neck, and on one arm, he could have screamed with pain in the course of a few moments, and it required all the counteracting influence of the master feeling of his mind—fear—to prevent him from discovering himself. Clinging still to the branch desperately he endured the pain in silence for he durst not even moan. His first groan had been drowned in the report of the gun, but now that the echoes had died away, and all was still, the least sound of pain from his lips might be his utter destruction.
The men were silent for some moments after the discharge of the gun—then he who had fired it remarked in a disaffected tone,—
“He ain’t there. It’s no use. He must have given us the slip.”
“No, he could not stand that, I’m sure I couldn’t,” said the bill-sticker, “I never saw so many birds fly out of a tree in my life.”
“That’s because we have hunted them from all the others, and they took refuge in this one blockhead,” cried the man with the gun, whose temper did not seem at all improved by the non-success of his expedition.
“Well, you needn’t get in a passion,” suggested the other.
“Who’s in a passion? How do you know I’m in a passion? I don’t believe you saw the man at all, and there’s an end of it.”
“Upon my conscience—”
“Bother your conscience—you’ve got none.”
“Why, now you saw his things lying by the side of the pond yourself. What—suppose now he’s drowned himself really. How you’d look then. Why don’t you have the pond dragged—you know nobody will drag it for me.”
“Why don’t you get in and feel about for him?” suggested the man with the gun.
“What?”
“Get into the pond and see if he’s there, I say.”
“And put my foot on him perhaps. I’d sooner go to Jericho. I should never recover it. Suppose I was to go in, and put my foot on his very face. Oh, oh!”
“You are a coward, that’s what you are, and you may hunt the fellow yourself for all I care.”
“Don’t go away,” cried the bill-sticker. “Why—why—”
“I shan’t stay here to be fooled any longer,” said the other.
“Will you lend me the gun, then?”
“Lend you my gun?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you particularly well—never mind.”
So saying, he of the gun marched off in very great dudgeon, leaving the bill-sticker gazing after him.
“Well,” he muttered, “there’s an air and a grace, I never knew he was so hasty before. I—I think I’ll have a hunt for the fellow myself, and—yet he might master me, and I think I won’t. It’s all very well to take a prisoner, but when the prisoner takes you, it ain’t near so pleasant.”
Having come to this sage conclusion, the bill-sticker rapidly walked away, glancing every now and then around him in terror, lest Gray should make a sudden dart at him from behind some tree or hedge.
“Here! Here,” moaned Jacob Gray, as he smeared the blood from his face with his hand, “here I must remain in hunger and pain till night, and then my only hope now is to crawl to Learmont’s!”
CHAPTER LXIV.The Chequers.—Britton’s Corner.—An Alarm.—The Mysterious Stranger.—A Quarrel.—A Fight and a Little Anatomy.Whileall these important circumstances are taking place, intoxication was doing its fell work upon even the iron frame of Andrew Britton, and each day saw him more coarse, bloated, and wayward in his various fancies. He was but as an infant in the interval between his fits of drunkenness, and it was never until he had taken enough ardent spirits to kill any ordinary person that he felt his energies increase and his blood course through his veins with its accustomed activity. The fearful excitement of drink was deluding him with its present support, at the same time it was sapping the very springs of his life, and weakening the foundations of his strength.He had already expended a small fortune at the Chequers, and yet his gold, to the surprise of the landlord and the frequenters of the house, appeared to be inexhaustible. Endless were the conjectures of who and what he was; and one person had actually called upon Sir Francis Hartleton to mention his strong suspicions that all was not right as regarded Britton; but we know that the magistrate had ample and judicious reasons for not alarming Learmont by a useless interference with Andrew Britton; and although he received the communication with politeness, he replied that he saw no reason at present to take any steps as regarded the drunken smith, who held his nightly orgies at the Chequers; so that the party left his office rather discouraged than otherwise, and Britton pursued his career unchecked.On the very night which had witnessed the denunciation of Jacob Gray by Ada at Whitehall, and the various harrowing incidents, directly and, indirectly arising therefrom, Britton had been holding high revel in the parlour of the Chequers.He had that morning visited Learmont, and was now freely lavishing around him the gold pieces, which appeared to have no limit, but to be produced by him as freely as if he had discovered the much coveted secret of the transmutation of metals.There was one man who lately Britton had taken much to, and that was on account principally of his wonderful capacity for drink, in which he vied with the smith himself. This man was a butcher, residing in the immediate vicinity, and in every respect he was indeed a fit companion for Britton. Brutal, coarse, strong, and big, he combined in himself all that Britton admired; and as he had no money, and Britton had plenty, which he was, moreover, willing to spend freely, they became quite great cronies and friends.On this occasion Britton and the butcher, whose name was Bond, occupied two seats near the fire-place, and were indulging in a bowl of hot arrack punch, which steamed before them, and from which they dipped large quantities with pewter measures.The rest of the room presented its usual mostly appearance. There were persons of all kinds and conditions below, the respectable, and a steam of hot breaths, vapour of mixed liquors, and all sorts of villanous compounds, to which was added copious volumes of tobacco smoke, which ascended to the roof.All was boisterous, rough mirth and roaring jollity, the only distinguishing feature of which was that Britton took care his voice should be heard above all the surrounding din, and if any one presumed to laugh as loud as he, or raise his voice to as stentorian a pitch, he either commissioned the butcher, or went himself, to nob the said person on the head with the pewter measure. Britton was in one of his treating humours, and he had just ordered jugs of strong ale all round when the landlord came in and said,—“Gentlemen all, there’s some rare news—most rare news!”“What is it?” cried a dozen voices in chorus.“Hilloa!” roared Britton. “Peace, I say, peace! Am I king or not? Damme, if I was a cockchafer instead of a king, you couldn’t behave worse; curse you all!”“Ha, ha, ha! A cockchafer,” laughed a man whose back was towards Britton, but who was just within his reach, and he accordingly received from Britton such a stunning blow with the pewter measure that he had not a laugh in him for an hour.“Now, silence all,” cried Britton, and when comparative stillness was procured, he turned with drunken gravity to the landlord, and said.—“Now, idiot, you come into my presence, and say,—‘There’s news!’”“Yes, your majesty.”“If you interrupt me, I’ll brain you. No, not brain you. You can’t be brained, having none; but I’ll do something else that I’ll think of. Now, what’s the news?”“May it please your majesty,” said the landlord, “there’s news of a fire and a murder.”The smith half rose from his chair and his face assumed a tinge of deep red as he shouted,—“Who dare say so much? Think you I am crippled and cannot use my fore hammer still—the—the fire was accidental.”A murmur of astonishment passed among those present, and the landlord added,—“I—I—was only told of it, your majesty, and thought you’d like to hear, that’s all. No offence, your majesty, only they say that there’s been a murder, and the old place where it was done burnt down to destroy the dead body.”“Liar!” cried Britton, making a rush at the landlord. “Who—who dare say half as much? Show me the man, and I’ll take his life! Show his face, and then I shall find his throat!”Everybody rose, and the landlord made good his retreat to the door, where he stood looking at Britton aghast, for he had never seen him in so genuine a rage before.“What do you mean,” growled the butcher, “by coming here and vexing him? Slaughter me if you deserve such a customer. Hands off there, leave him alone, will you?”“It’s a lie,” cried Britton; “there is nobody there to burn, none—none. That woman, that hag, Maud, has trumped up the tale. She is mad, but full of malice—quite full of malice at me, for what I don’t know. Who talks of the body? Who beards and flouts me, I should like to know? Beware, I am Britton, the smith—Beware, I say!”The veins upon his forehead were swollen almost to bursting, and rage imparted to his voice a vehemence which soon destroyed it, for his last words were hoarse and broken, and still muttering only—“Beware!” he suffered the butcher to lead him back to his seat and fill for him a measure of the hot punch, which Britton drank as if it had been so much water. Then he drew a long breath and exclaimed,—“The—villain—to—to—come to me with such a tale. His life—curses on him! His life should be worth more to him than to risk it.”“Be calm!” said the butcher, in a voice that almost shook the rafters of the house. “Be calm; give care the go by, and drown all sorts of disagreeables in drink. There is nothing like it, you may depend, whether you’re a butcher or a king. Take another glass, by boy, and swear away. That’s one o’ the comforts of life too, gentlemen. Now I’m a butcher, and as humane a individual as is in all Westminster; and if anybody says I isn’t, I’ll put my slaughtering knife in his inside.”Britton was quiet for a few moments, partly from exhaustion and partly because he was nearly choked with another measure of punch which he threw into his throat rather heedlessly, and the landlord, when the butcher had done speaking, took the opportunity of throwing in a word of personal justification, for he was quite alarmed at the riot he had created, as he supposed, with such very slender materials.“Your majesty,” he said, “will humbly excuse me, but there is a fire at Battersea, and they do say there’s been a murder.”“At—at—where?” cried Britton.“At Battersea. From the back window of the room up stairs, adjoining your gracious majesty’s, you may see the sky as red as—as—anything.”“Oh—at Battersea—to-night?”“Yes—even now. It was one of Sir Francis Hartleton’s men who said there had been a murder.”“Indeed!—Oh, indeed,” said Britton, breathing more freely. “I—I—What’s it to me? What have I to do with it? Here’s a toast, gentlemen, all. A toast, I say.”People are always ready to drink toasts at another’s expense, and it is really very extraordinary what very out-of-the-way and singular sentiments many well-meaning and harmless people will solemnly pledge themselves when they come before them in the shape of toasts; and every glass and tankard was filled to do honour to the proposition of Britton, when the landlord, whose back was against the door, was nearly pushed down by the sudden entrance of a man, who, after one glance round the room, cried,—“Now’s your time.”At the words, there arose two men from among the guests, and nodded to him who had just arrived. What the three were about to do seemed involved in mystery, and likely to form an endless theme for conjecture, for before they could make any movement indicative of their intentions, another man appeared at the door, and nearly breathless from the haste he had made, he cried in a loud voice,—“No!”The two men who had risen looked at each other in amazement, and then at the stranger, who cried, “No!” in a tone of such authority. For the space of about a minute no one spoke, and a general feeling of alarm seemed to be produced by this strange proceedings, a clue to which no one could possibly imagine.Then he who had last made his appearance said, in a lower tone,—“You know me?”“Yes, sir,” replied both the men in a breath.“Enough—follow!”He then turned on his heels and walked away. The two men as well as he who had just come in so mysteriously made a bustle to leave the room, but by this time all the indignation of King Britton was thoroughly aroused, and he roared out,—“This is pretty; I’ll let you know who is king here. You follow him if you dare, ye hounds. What’s the meaning of all this?”He rose from his seat and sprung to the door as he spoke, but he had no sooner got there that he found himself face to face with the man who had cried “No” so lustily, and who hearing some objections made to his orders, had come back. There was an unflinching boldness about the man, that for a moment staggered Britton, and they stood face to face for a few moments in silence.“Well, bully,” cried the man, “what now?”The only reply of the smith was a straightforward blow, which was, however, so skillfully parried by the stranger, that it was not only quite innoxious to him, but gave Britton a severe wrench of the elbow.“What now?” again cried the man.“Let me get at him,” roared the butcher.“No,” screamed Britton. “D—e, let him have fair play. It’s my quarrel, and I’ll smash anybody that interferes.”All now rose, and a more strange collection of excited faces could scarcely have been seen, than was presented just then at the Chequers in expectation of a serious battle between the smith and his antagonist, who, although not near so stout a man, was fully as tall, and a great deal younger looking than he.“What do you want here?” said Britton.“I shall not tell you,” replied the man.“You can fight?”“A little.”“Where I came from,” added Britton, “we wrestle a little.”“So do we where I came from,” replied the other, calmly.“Do you,” cried Britton, and then confident in his own strength and skill, even half intoxicated as he was, he sprung upon the man, and seizing him fairly by the shoulder and waist, he made a tremendous effort to throw him, but he produced no more impression upon the stranger than as if he had laid hold of the corner of a house.After a few moments’ exertion, he ceased, panting, from his endeavours, and at that moment the stranger put out his arms, and threw Britton so heavily upon his back that the room shook again.“Foul play! Foul play!” cried the butcher, half rising.“You lie, sir,” cried the stranger, in a tone that made the butcher fall back into his seat again with surprise.“Follow,” cried the stranger then, addressing the men who had waited patiently until the result of the combat. He then strode from the house, being immediately followed by those who appeared to know him, and under so implicit an obedience to his commands. Britton was picked up by the butcher, and laid with a thwack as if he had been some huge joint of meat, upon one of the oaken tables.“I hope there’s no bones broke,” said the landlord.“Bones broke, be bothered,” replied the butcher; “I think I ought to know something about bones and meat too.”“So you ought. Master Bond,” cried a man; “so you ought. Only I should say you knew most about bones.”“Should you, spooney—and why?”“Because you never send me a joint that isn’t at least the best part bones.”There was a general laugh against the butcher at this sally, who, glaring ferociously at the speaker, exclaimed,—“When you come to my shop again, look after your own carcass that’s all, and now for what I callsjudgmatical atomy.”“What?” cried several voices.“Judgmatical atomy,” roared the butcher. “It means knowing whether bones is broke or not.”“Oh, very good, Master Bond,” said the landlord. “Pray attend to his majesty, bless him. I hope he ain’t hurt—a d—d fool.”This last sentence was uttered very low by the landlord, and Bond, the butcher, at once commenced a ludicrous examination of the various limbs of Britton.“He ain’t hurt in the fore-leg,” he remarked. “He ain’t damaged nowhere from neck to loins. He’d cut up as nice as possible, and nobody be no wiser. Pour a glass of brandy into his mouth, and hold his nose.”This operation was duly performed, and as recovery or strangulation were the only alternatives nature had, in the case of Andrew Britton, she embraced the former and he opened his eyes.
The Chequers.—Britton’s Corner.—An Alarm.—The Mysterious Stranger.—A Quarrel.—A Fight and a Little Anatomy.
Whileall these important circumstances are taking place, intoxication was doing its fell work upon even the iron frame of Andrew Britton, and each day saw him more coarse, bloated, and wayward in his various fancies. He was but as an infant in the interval between his fits of drunkenness, and it was never until he had taken enough ardent spirits to kill any ordinary person that he felt his energies increase and his blood course through his veins with its accustomed activity. The fearful excitement of drink was deluding him with its present support, at the same time it was sapping the very springs of his life, and weakening the foundations of his strength.
He had already expended a small fortune at the Chequers, and yet his gold, to the surprise of the landlord and the frequenters of the house, appeared to be inexhaustible. Endless were the conjectures of who and what he was; and one person had actually called upon Sir Francis Hartleton to mention his strong suspicions that all was not right as regarded Britton; but we know that the magistrate had ample and judicious reasons for not alarming Learmont by a useless interference with Andrew Britton; and although he received the communication with politeness, he replied that he saw no reason at present to take any steps as regarded the drunken smith, who held his nightly orgies at the Chequers; so that the party left his office rather discouraged than otherwise, and Britton pursued his career unchecked.
On the very night which had witnessed the denunciation of Jacob Gray by Ada at Whitehall, and the various harrowing incidents, directly and, indirectly arising therefrom, Britton had been holding high revel in the parlour of the Chequers.
He had that morning visited Learmont, and was now freely lavishing around him the gold pieces, which appeared to have no limit, but to be produced by him as freely as if he had discovered the much coveted secret of the transmutation of metals.
There was one man who lately Britton had taken much to, and that was on account principally of his wonderful capacity for drink, in which he vied with the smith himself. This man was a butcher, residing in the immediate vicinity, and in every respect he was indeed a fit companion for Britton. Brutal, coarse, strong, and big, he combined in himself all that Britton admired; and as he had no money, and Britton had plenty, which he was, moreover, willing to spend freely, they became quite great cronies and friends.
On this occasion Britton and the butcher, whose name was Bond, occupied two seats near the fire-place, and were indulging in a bowl of hot arrack punch, which steamed before them, and from which they dipped large quantities with pewter measures.
The rest of the room presented its usual mostly appearance. There were persons of all kinds and conditions below, the respectable, and a steam of hot breaths, vapour of mixed liquors, and all sorts of villanous compounds, to which was added copious volumes of tobacco smoke, which ascended to the roof.
All was boisterous, rough mirth and roaring jollity, the only distinguishing feature of which was that Britton took care his voice should be heard above all the surrounding din, and if any one presumed to laugh as loud as he, or raise his voice to as stentorian a pitch, he either commissioned the butcher, or went himself, to nob the said person on the head with the pewter measure. Britton was in one of his treating humours, and he had just ordered jugs of strong ale all round when the landlord came in and said,—
“Gentlemen all, there’s some rare news—most rare news!”
“What is it?” cried a dozen voices in chorus.
“Hilloa!” roared Britton. “Peace, I say, peace! Am I king or not? Damme, if I was a cockchafer instead of a king, you couldn’t behave worse; curse you all!”
“Ha, ha, ha! A cockchafer,” laughed a man whose back was towards Britton, but who was just within his reach, and he accordingly received from Britton such a stunning blow with the pewter measure that he had not a laugh in him for an hour.
“Now, silence all,” cried Britton, and when comparative stillness was procured, he turned with drunken gravity to the landlord, and said.—
“Now, idiot, you come into my presence, and say,—‘There’s news!’”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“If you interrupt me, I’ll brain you. No, not brain you. You can’t be brained, having none; but I’ll do something else that I’ll think of. Now, what’s the news?”
“May it please your majesty,” said the landlord, “there’s news of a fire and a murder.”
The smith half rose from his chair and his face assumed a tinge of deep red as he shouted,—
“Who dare say so much? Think you I am crippled and cannot use my fore hammer still—the—the fire was accidental.”
A murmur of astonishment passed among those present, and the landlord added,—
“I—I—was only told of it, your majesty, and thought you’d like to hear, that’s all. No offence, your majesty, only they say that there’s been a murder, and the old place where it was done burnt down to destroy the dead body.”
“Liar!” cried Britton, making a rush at the landlord. “Who—who dare say half as much? Show me the man, and I’ll take his life! Show his face, and then I shall find his throat!”
Everybody rose, and the landlord made good his retreat to the door, where he stood looking at Britton aghast, for he had never seen him in so genuine a rage before.
“What do you mean,” growled the butcher, “by coming here and vexing him? Slaughter me if you deserve such a customer. Hands off there, leave him alone, will you?”
“It’s a lie,” cried Britton; “there is nobody there to burn, none—none. That woman, that hag, Maud, has trumped up the tale. She is mad, but full of malice—quite full of malice at me, for what I don’t know. Who talks of the body? Who beards and flouts me, I should like to know? Beware, I am Britton, the smith—Beware, I say!”
The veins upon his forehead were swollen almost to bursting, and rage imparted to his voice a vehemence which soon destroyed it, for his last words were hoarse and broken, and still muttering only—“Beware!” he suffered the butcher to lead him back to his seat and fill for him a measure of the hot punch, which Britton drank as if it had been so much water. Then he drew a long breath and exclaimed,—
“The—villain—to—to—come to me with such a tale. His life—curses on him! His life should be worth more to him than to risk it.”
“Be calm!” said the butcher, in a voice that almost shook the rafters of the house. “Be calm; give care the go by, and drown all sorts of disagreeables in drink. There is nothing like it, you may depend, whether you’re a butcher or a king. Take another glass, by boy, and swear away. That’s one o’ the comforts of life too, gentlemen. Now I’m a butcher, and as humane a individual as is in all Westminster; and if anybody says I isn’t, I’ll put my slaughtering knife in his inside.”
Britton was quiet for a few moments, partly from exhaustion and partly because he was nearly choked with another measure of punch which he threw into his throat rather heedlessly, and the landlord, when the butcher had done speaking, took the opportunity of throwing in a word of personal justification, for he was quite alarmed at the riot he had created, as he supposed, with such very slender materials.
“Your majesty,” he said, “will humbly excuse me, but there is a fire at Battersea, and they do say there’s been a murder.”
“At—at—where?” cried Britton.
“At Battersea. From the back window of the room up stairs, adjoining your gracious majesty’s, you may see the sky as red as—as—anything.”
“Oh—at Battersea—to-night?”
“Yes—even now. It was one of Sir Francis Hartleton’s men who said there had been a murder.”
“Indeed!—Oh, indeed,” said Britton, breathing more freely. “I—I—What’s it to me? What have I to do with it? Here’s a toast, gentlemen, all. A toast, I say.”
People are always ready to drink toasts at another’s expense, and it is really very extraordinary what very out-of-the-way and singular sentiments many well-meaning and harmless people will solemnly pledge themselves when they come before them in the shape of toasts; and every glass and tankard was filled to do honour to the proposition of Britton, when the landlord, whose back was against the door, was nearly pushed down by the sudden entrance of a man, who, after one glance round the room, cried,—
“Now’s your time.”
At the words, there arose two men from among the guests, and nodded to him who had just arrived. What the three were about to do seemed involved in mystery, and likely to form an endless theme for conjecture, for before they could make any movement indicative of their intentions, another man appeared at the door, and nearly breathless from the haste he had made, he cried in a loud voice,—
“No!”
The two men who had risen looked at each other in amazement, and then at the stranger, who cried, “No!” in a tone of such authority. For the space of about a minute no one spoke, and a general feeling of alarm seemed to be produced by this strange proceedings, a clue to which no one could possibly imagine.
Then he who had last made his appearance said, in a lower tone,—
“You know me?”
“Yes, sir,” replied both the men in a breath.
“Enough—follow!”
He then turned on his heels and walked away. The two men as well as he who had just come in so mysteriously made a bustle to leave the room, but by this time all the indignation of King Britton was thoroughly aroused, and he roared out,—
“This is pretty; I’ll let you know who is king here. You follow him if you dare, ye hounds. What’s the meaning of all this?”
He rose from his seat and sprung to the door as he spoke, but he had no sooner got there that he found himself face to face with the man who had cried “No” so lustily, and who hearing some objections made to his orders, had come back. There was an unflinching boldness about the man, that for a moment staggered Britton, and they stood face to face for a few moments in silence.
“Well, bully,” cried the man, “what now?”
The only reply of the smith was a straightforward blow, which was, however, so skillfully parried by the stranger, that it was not only quite innoxious to him, but gave Britton a severe wrench of the elbow.
“What now?” again cried the man.
“Let me get at him,” roared the butcher.
“No,” screamed Britton. “D—e, let him have fair play. It’s my quarrel, and I’ll smash anybody that interferes.”
All now rose, and a more strange collection of excited faces could scarcely have been seen, than was presented just then at the Chequers in expectation of a serious battle between the smith and his antagonist, who, although not near so stout a man, was fully as tall, and a great deal younger looking than he.
“What do you want here?” said Britton.
“I shall not tell you,” replied the man.
“You can fight?”
“A little.”
“Where I came from,” added Britton, “we wrestle a little.”
“So do we where I came from,” replied the other, calmly.
“Do you,” cried Britton, and then confident in his own strength and skill, even half intoxicated as he was, he sprung upon the man, and seizing him fairly by the shoulder and waist, he made a tremendous effort to throw him, but he produced no more impression upon the stranger than as if he had laid hold of the corner of a house.
After a few moments’ exertion, he ceased, panting, from his endeavours, and at that moment the stranger put out his arms, and threw Britton so heavily upon his back that the room shook again.
“Foul play! Foul play!” cried the butcher, half rising.
“You lie, sir,” cried the stranger, in a tone that made the butcher fall back into his seat again with surprise.
“Follow,” cried the stranger then, addressing the men who had waited patiently until the result of the combat. He then strode from the house, being immediately followed by those who appeared to know him, and under so implicit an obedience to his commands. Britton was picked up by the butcher, and laid with a thwack as if he had been some huge joint of meat, upon one of the oaken tables.
“I hope there’s no bones broke,” said the landlord.
“Bones broke, be bothered,” replied the butcher; “I think I ought to know something about bones and meat too.”
“So you ought. Master Bond,” cried a man; “so you ought. Only I should say you knew most about bones.”
“Should you, spooney—and why?”
“Because you never send me a joint that isn’t at least the best part bones.”
There was a general laugh against the butcher at this sally, who, glaring ferociously at the speaker, exclaimed,—
“When you come to my shop again, look after your own carcass that’s all, and now for what I callsjudgmatical atomy.”
“What?” cried several voices.
“Judgmatical atomy,” roared the butcher. “It means knowing whether bones is broke or not.”
“Oh, very good, Master Bond,” said the landlord. “Pray attend to his majesty, bless him. I hope he ain’t hurt—a d—d fool.”
This last sentence was uttered very low by the landlord, and Bond, the butcher, at once commenced a ludicrous examination of the various limbs of Britton.
“He ain’t hurt in the fore-leg,” he remarked. “He ain’t damaged nowhere from neck to loins. He’d cut up as nice as possible, and nobody be no wiser. Pour a glass of brandy into his mouth, and hold his nose.”
This operation was duly performed, and as recovery or strangulation were the only alternatives nature had, in the case of Andrew Britton, she embraced the former and he opened his eyes.