Chapter Twenty Five.His Last Friend.Midwinter in the metropolis!If you are blessed with a sufficient income, a snug club, a cheerful abode and a good digestion, there is nothing very terrible in the above. But, if your shillings are scanty in number, and each one disbursed with infinite reluctance, if you have been so long in a far country as to be unknown to, or forgotten by, every living soul, if you are condemned to pig it in a miserable slum, because needs must when the devil drives—then, O friend and reader—Heaven help you!Midwinter in the metropolis!Streets knee-deep in black, slushy, half-melted snow; a pelting, ceaseless rain falling from the opaque, lowering vapour above, which makes one doubt the existence of Heaven’s blue firmament otherwise than in dreams; foot passengers with streaming umbrellas and muffled in vast wraps, jostling each other angrily, as, red-nosed and watery-eyed, they hurry through the rain and mire; then, as the short afternoon fades into night, the yellow light of gas lamps and the glare of shop windows reflects itself slimily on the sloppy pavements, and the breath of the cab and omnibus horses mingles in a steamy cloud with the prevailing dank and fog-laden atmosphere.On just such a day as this Roland Dorrien sits moodily in his dreary, comfortless room, looking out into the darkling vista of rain and fog. A tiny handful of fire flickers in the grate, hardly enough to make itself felt twelve inches off, and though he is wrapped in a warm, thick overcoat he shivers from time to time. He is looking very altered from when we saw him last, three or four months ago, very pale, and haggard, and hollow-eyed, and a frown is seldom altogether away from his brow; but his clothes are not shabby, nor does his countenance wear the neglected and unkempt aspect of a man who had come down so irretrievably in the world as to be careless of appearances. His dark curling hair is as neat, but his face is no longer clean-shaven, for he has allowed a thickly-growing beard to hide it, in addition to the heavy, drooping moustache. From a vestiary point of view he would seem as prosperous as in the days when he was known to, and envied by, Wandsborough and its neighbourhood as the future Squire of Cranston. But as a set-off against this, he seldom indulges in more than one full meal a day, sometimes not that. Prevention is better than cure, he thinks, and if the pangs of hunger assail him, why, a crust of bread will stave it off for the time being. As a consequence, his system is rapidly falling to zero, and now he lives in a kind of lethargy which is half a waking slumber. He goes out and comes in, taking not the slightest notice of what transpires around him, and of society or acquaintances he has none. In the intervals between his brooding fits, his pen affords him a solace, and at times he will sit down and by the hour confide his reflections to sympathising paper, strange, weird fancies and reasonings, so startling andbizarrein their wildness, that, but for the strong, logical sequence running through them, they might be taken for the ravings of delirium.As with food, so with other bodily comforts. Firing costs money, of which he has but the scantiest store, wherefore he sits and shivers. Tobacco he has hardly touched since his ruin, for the same reason, and as for anything alcoholic he has almost forgotten what it was like. There is method in his madness, and against this temptation he has set a resolute face. It may be that he will soon find an unknown and nameless grave, probably he will—indeed, this is a contingency he has quite brought himself to contemplate with equanimity, but never will he sink to the level of a raving, drink-sodden beast. Yet another danger, more imminent still, he somehow overlooks. A little more of this morbid, brooding life in its frightful loneliness, and the man will go mad.But if he himself overlooks the possibility, others do not. He has changed his lodgings no less than three times in as many months, in reality, obliged to do so by the fears of his respective landladies, who didn’t like to “’ave a gentleman in the ’ouse as was that queer—no, not if you was to give them the whole Bank of England. Why, they might be murdered any night in their beds.” So one after another politely hinted that they would rather have his room than his occupation, and to each and all poor Roy afforded a ready pretext.And it is chiefly, in fact wholly, with Roy that his thoughts are concerned, as we once more look in upon him this dark, desolate afternoon. For it has come to this, that any moment, now, he may be called upon to part with this faithful friend, who has been with him in his prosperity, as through no inconsiderable portion of his adversity. Roy is sold.Yes, sold, and his purchaser is the man who it will be remembered had shown great anxiety to possess him on the occasion of meeting with his master in Kensington Gardens.And how comes it that his master has brought himself to part with him? The answer is simple. Necessity has no law. Hardly able to keep himself, how shall he be able to keep Roy. The ruined exile foresees the time when he must yield up the struggle which is not worth maintaining: what then is to become of this attached and more than human companion in adversity? And as, in imagination, he sees him the property of some brute or cad, beaten and starved, and spending his days chained to a miserable kennel, he makes up his mind to accept Mr Marsland’s offer. At any rate, Roy will be well-treated by his new master, possibly so well that he may in time come to forget his old one. Never mind, he must go; but it is with a very heavy heart that Roland scribbles off a few lines to the address the other man had given him. He purposely put the price low, he said, as that was only a secondary consideration, the dog’s future comfort and well-being was the chief thing. If the other was disposed to agree, the sooner he sent for Roy the better.A reply soon came. Mr Marsland was out of town, or would have called himself; as it was he would send for Roy at a stipulated time. He was sorry so little had been asked, as he himself would have been glad to obtain the dog at a far larger figure. In reality, of course, he understood the state of affairs, but being a good-hearted fellow and a gentleman he divined that the other would rather be left alone, and forebore to press the point.And so we find the exile sitting here to-day, momentarily expecting the ring at the bell which shall summon him to deliver up his faithful companion. The afternoon wears on. It will soon be dark, and now he hopes that something may occur to delay the sad hour, at any rate until the next morning. Poor Roy sits unsuspectingly, with his head on his master’s knee, his soft brown eyes watching his master’s moody countenance with a wistful gaze.Rat-tat, tat-tat-tat! goes the door knocker. Roy, who has become used to persons passing in and out, takes no notice beyond a slight cocking of his ears. A moment more, and the slipshod maid of all work appears, ushering in—“A gentleman, sir.”With a sigh Roland looks up at the “gentleman,” who might be a stableman or an under-keeper, but is a decent-looking, civil fellow enough.“From Mr Marsland?”“Yes, sir. Can I take the dog now, sir?”“Yes.”He goes into the other room, and returns with a chain and collar. Roy, becoming alive to the import of the situation, backs under the table and whines piteously.“Come here, Roy—come here, sir,” says his master, in a voice that he vainly strives to render firm. “You dear old fellow, you must go, there’s no help for it. Come.”The dog obeys, and stands crestfallen, with a world of sad reproach in his soft, pleading eyes, as his master fastens the collar round his white, silky ruff, and kisses him in the middle of his smooth, glossy forehead.“Now, good-bye, old dog, and don’t forget your master too soon,” and he gives the chain to the man, who stands waiting.“Thankee, sir—good-evenin’, sir. He’ll go quiet enough directly, bless him.”They had reached the front door, Roy hanging back and tugging vigorously at his chain. Roland stands looking after them down the street, in order to see the last of his faithful friend. Suddenly Roy ceases his struggles and trots along quietly for a few steps. Then he stops short. A couple of sudden jerks and he is free. He has slipped his head through the collar and comes running back to his master, and presses against him, looking up into his face with such a piteous whine.“Good God! There’s nothing like piling on the agony,” mutters Roland between his set teeth, as he readjusts the collar, drawing the strap tighter, the dog licking his face all the while. “Here—take him away—and—stop, there’s half a crown for yourself. And mind you take devilish good care of the dog if you have anything to do with him.”Now, the man was an honest countryman, and, unspoiled by any taint of socialism, he still entertained a hearty respect for his betters, and “a gentleman down on his luck” was in his eyes an object for reverential sympathy. He had taken in the bare, mean vulgarity of the room in which its occupant looked so sadly out of place—and his natural shrewdness told him that the other would not have parted with the dog save under the direst stress of circumstances. So he stammered, and looked nervous, as he tried to refuse the proffered gratuity in a suitable manner.“Thankee kindly, sir. But master, he don’t let none of us take anything from gentlemen, except when they’s down for the shootin’,” answers the man, hitting upon the only excuse he could invent. “But it’s thank ye kindly, sir, all the same, and I’ll take downright good care of the dog. Good-evenin’, sir.”The now sole occupant of the room feels desolate and lonely indeed. There is Roy’s pan of water, and the few crumbs remaining from the dog-biscuits Roy had for his dinner. How silent and intolerable the room feels without him. His last friend!And now a resolve takes root in his mind, a wild and desperate resolve, and it was partly with this idea that he brought himself to accept a price for Roy. Even now he had better dismiss it, and accept the situation, and hasten on towards oblivion. It is not too late.Nebuchadnezzar, we read, was transformed into a beast of the field. There comes a time, or times, in most men’s lives when they undergo a similar metamorphosis. Such a time had come to Roland Dorrien. He was transformed into—an ass.Nature, however, was willing to do her best for him, by upsetting, if possible, his wise resolve above referred to. When he tried to rise the following morning, his head was throbbing with an agonising pain, and his consciousness only permitted him to realise one fact—that to move from his bed that day would be a stark impossibility.
Midwinter in the metropolis!
If you are blessed with a sufficient income, a snug club, a cheerful abode and a good digestion, there is nothing very terrible in the above. But, if your shillings are scanty in number, and each one disbursed with infinite reluctance, if you have been so long in a far country as to be unknown to, or forgotten by, every living soul, if you are condemned to pig it in a miserable slum, because needs must when the devil drives—then, O friend and reader—Heaven help you!
Midwinter in the metropolis!
Streets knee-deep in black, slushy, half-melted snow; a pelting, ceaseless rain falling from the opaque, lowering vapour above, which makes one doubt the existence of Heaven’s blue firmament otherwise than in dreams; foot passengers with streaming umbrellas and muffled in vast wraps, jostling each other angrily, as, red-nosed and watery-eyed, they hurry through the rain and mire; then, as the short afternoon fades into night, the yellow light of gas lamps and the glare of shop windows reflects itself slimily on the sloppy pavements, and the breath of the cab and omnibus horses mingles in a steamy cloud with the prevailing dank and fog-laden atmosphere.
On just such a day as this Roland Dorrien sits moodily in his dreary, comfortless room, looking out into the darkling vista of rain and fog. A tiny handful of fire flickers in the grate, hardly enough to make itself felt twelve inches off, and though he is wrapped in a warm, thick overcoat he shivers from time to time. He is looking very altered from when we saw him last, three or four months ago, very pale, and haggard, and hollow-eyed, and a frown is seldom altogether away from his brow; but his clothes are not shabby, nor does his countenance wear the neglected and unkempt aspect of a man who had come down so irretrievably in the world as to be careless of appearances. His dark curling hair is as neat, but his face is no longer clean-shaven, for he has allowed a thickly-growing beard to hide it, in addition to the heavy, drooping moustache. From a vestiary point of view he would seem as prosperous as in the days when he was known to, and envied by, Wandsborough and its neighbourhood as the future Squire of Cranston. But as a set-off against this, he seldom indulges in more than one full meal a day, sometimes not that. Prevention is better than cure, he thinks, and if the pangs of hunger assail him, why, a crust of bread will stave it off for the time being. As a consequence, his system is rapidly falling to zero, and now he lives in a kind of lethargy which is half a waking slumber. He goes out and comes in, taking not the slightest notice of what transpires around him, and of society or acquaintances he has none. In the intervals between his brooding fits, his pen affords him a solace, and at times he will sit down and by the hour confide his reflections to sympathising paper, strange, weird fancies and reasonings, so startling andbizarrein their wildness, that, but for the strong, logical sequence running through them, they might be taken for the ravings of delirium.
As with food, so with other bodily comforts. Firing costs money, of which he has but the scantiest store, wherefore he sits and shivers. Tobacco he has hardly touched since his ruin, for the same reason, and as for anything alcoholic he has almost forgotten what it was like. There is method in his madness, and against this temptation he has set a resolute face. It may be that he will soon find an unknown and nameless grave, probably he will—indeed, this is a contingency he has quite brought himself to contemplate with equanimity, but never will he sink to the level of a raving, drink-sodden beast. Yet another danger, more imminent still, he somehow overlooks. A little more of this morbid, brooding life in its frightful loneliness, and the man will go mad.
But if he himself overlooks the possibility, others do not. He has changed his lodgings no less than three times in as many months, in reality, obliged to do so by the fears of his respective landladies, who didn’t like to “’ave a gentleman in the ’ouse as was that queer—no, not if you was to give them the whole Bank of England. Why, they might be murdered any night in their beds.” So one after another politely hinted that they would rather have his room than his occupation, and to each and all poor Roy afforded a ready pretext.
And it is chiefly, in fact wholly, with Roy that his thoughts are concerned, as we once more look in upon him this dark, desolate afternoon. For it has come to this, that any moment, now, he may be called upon to part with this faithful friend, who has been with him in his prosperity, as through no inconsiderable portion of his adversity. Roy is sold.
Yes, sold, and his purchaser is the man who it will be remembered had shown great anxiety to possess him on the occasion of meeting with his master in Kensington Gardens.
And how comes it that his master has brought himself to part with him? The answer is simple. Necessity has no law. Hardly able to keep himself, how shall he be able to keep Roy. The ruined exile foresees the time when he must yield up the struggle which is not worth maintaining: what then is to become of this attached and more than human companion in adversity? And as, in imagination, he sees him the property of some brute or cad, beaten and starved, and spending his days chained to a miserable kennel, he makes up his mind to accept Mr Marsland’s offer. At any rate, Roy will be well-treated by his new master, possibly so well that he may in time come to forget his old one. Never mind, he must go; but it is with a very heavy heart that Roland scribbles off a few lines to the address the other man had given him. He purposely put the price low, he said, as that was only a secondary consideration, the dog’s future comfort and well-being was the chief thing. If the other was disposed to agree, the sooner he sent for Roy the better.
A reply soon came. Mr Marsland was out of town, or would have called himself; as it was he would send for Roy at a stipulated time. He was sorry so little had been asked, as he himself would have been glad to obtain the dog at a far larger figure. In reality, of course, he understood the state of affairs, but being a good-hearted fellow and a gentleman he divined that the other would rather be left alone, and forebore to press the point.
And so we find the exile sitting here to-day, momentarily expecting the ring at the bell which shall summon him to deliver up his faithful companion. The afternoon wears on. It will soon be dark, and now he hopes that something may occur to delay the sad hour, at any rate until the next morning. Poor Roy sits unsuspectingly, with his head on his master’s knee, his soft brown eyes watching his master’s moody countenance with a wistful gaze.
Rat-tat, tat-tat-tat! goes the door knocker. Roy, who has become used to persons passing in and out, takes no notice beyond a slight cocking of his ears. A moment more, and the slipshod maid of all work appears, ushering in—
“A gentleman, sir.”
With a sigh Roland looks up at the “gentleman,” who might be a stableman or an under-keeper, but is a decent-looking, civil fellow enough.
“From Mr Marsland?”
“Yes, sir. Can I take the dog now, sir?”
“Yes.”
He goes into the other room, and returns with a chain and collar. Roy, becoming alive to the import of the situation, backs under the table and whines piteously.
“Come here, Roy—come here, sir,” says his master, in a voice that he vainly strives to render firm. “You dear old fellow, you must go, there’s no help for it. Come.”
The dog obeys, and stands crestfallen, with a world of sad reproach in his soft, pleading eyes, as his master fastens the collar round his white, silky ruff, and kisses him in the middle of his smooth, glossy forehead.
“Now, good-bye, old dog, and don’t forget your master too soon,” and he gives the chain to the man, who stands waiting.
“Thankee, sir—good-evenin’, sir. He’ll go quiet enough directly, bless him.”
They had reached the front door, Roy hanging back and tugging vigorously at his chain. Roland stands looking after them down the street, in order to see the last of his faithful friend. Suddenly Roy ceases his struggles and trots along quietly for a few steps. Then he stops short. A couple of sudden jerks and he is free. He has slipped his head through the collar and comes running back to his master, and presses against him, looking up into his face with such a piteous whine.
“Good God! There’s nothing like piling on the agony,” mutters Roland between his set teeth, as he readjusts the collar, drawing the strap tighter, the dog licking his face all the while. “Here—take him away—and—stop, there’s half a crown for yourself. And mind you take devilish good care of the dog if you have anything to do with him.”
Now, the man was an honest countryman, and, unspoiled by any taint of socialism, he still entertained a hearty respect for his betters, and “a gentleman down on his luck” was in his eyes an object for reverential sympathy. He had taken in the bare, mean vulgarity of the room in which its occupant looked so sadly out of place—and his natural shrewdness told him that the other would not have parted with the dog save under the direst stress of circumstances. So he stammered, and looked nervous, as he tried to refuse the proffered gratuity in a suitable manner.
“Thankee kindly, sir. But master, he don’t let none of us take anything from gentlemen, except when they’s down for the shootin’,” answers the man, hitting upon the only excuse he could invent. “But it’s thank ye kindly, sir, all the same, and I’ll take downright good care of the dog. Good-evenin’, sir.”
The now sole occupant of the room feels desolate and lonely indeed. There is Roy’s pan of water, and the few crumbs remaining from the dog-biscuits Roy had for his dinner. How silent and intolerable the room feels without him. His last friend!
And now a resolve takes root in his mind, a wild and desperate resolve, and it was partly with this idea that he brought himself to accept a price for Roy. Even now he had better dismiss it, and accept the situation, and hasten on towards oblivion. It is not too late.
Nebuchadnezzar, we read, was transformed into a beast of the field. There comes a time, or times, in most men’s lives when they undergo a similar metamorphosis. Such a time had come to Roland Dorrien. He was transformed into—an ass.
Nature, however, was willing to do her best for him, by upsetting, if possible, his wise resolve above referred to. When he tried to rise the following morning, his head was throbbing with an agonising pain, and his consciousness only permitted him to realise one fact—that to move from his bed that day would be a stark impossibility.
Chapter Twenty Six.Two Meetings.For three days Roland lay in his shabby lodgings, too ill to stir from his bed; and but for the consciousness that, if he would accomplish his purpose, he must rouse himself, and determine to rally, the probability is that he would never have risen from it at all.The effort must be made. His vitality, sadly impaired by a long course of semi-starvation, must be restored by the contrary treatment. He was not going to die in any such squalid hole as this, among the dirty and repellant semblances of humanity, who, under the circumstances, grudgingly ministered to his wants. Not he. He would get up; try whether the air would set him on his legs again, and if so, would certainly carry out his plan the very next day. His funds, considerably replenished by the price of parting with his last, faithful friend, would enable him to do this, only it must be done at once, and then—afterwards! Well, he had a plan.Rising with an effort from his bed, Roland proceeded to dress himself, with infinite difficulty, for he felt wretchedly weak and dazed. Then at the picture which his distorted and cracked mirror presented him with, he fairly started. His beard, which he had allowed to grow at will since his misfortunes, was now plentifully streaked with grey, and with such alarming suddenness had this come about that he stared at his reflected face in amazement. Then he remembered with sardonic bitterness that this circumstance would yet further aid his plans. Who would recognise him now?It was afternoon when he sallied forth. With a pang he missed his attached companion, and his sense of loneliness seemed enhanced tenfold. The short winter day was already closing in, and a keen north-easter, wafting particles of sleet from the black and riftless sky, chilled him to the bone. Anything, though, rather than remain longer in the frightful depression of his dingy rooms.The dark sky and the winter gloom struck him as an earnest of what life was to be henceforth. The pinched and sour expression on the countenance of the British public struggling in the teeth of the biting north-easter, reflected aptly the attitude of the world towards him who is irrevocably down. Nothing was above a certain value—not even life, for may not life itself be held on terms too hard?His wanderings had brought him to Charing Cross, and walking a little way up the Strand he turned into a well-known tavern to dine. Then it occurred to him that he might as well look out a certain train.But the A.B.C. time-table, requisite for this purpose, was not among the resources of the establishment.“Where can I get one, then?” he asked.“We can send out for one, sir,” said the waiter.“Then do.”Not till an hour had passed was the A.B.C. put into his hands.“Why the devil have you been so long about it?” he asked, rendered irritable by the fatigue and excitement of the day, as he snatched it in eager haste, and his hands trembled as he turned over the leaves.“What the devil are you staring at now?” he cried, looking up and meeting the glance of the waiter, who was watching him curiously. The man muttered a word of apology and hastened away.At length he found the train he wanted, put a mark against it, and turned down the corner of the page. Then he fell into a profound reverie. Suddenly he started up, paid his bill and hurried away.“Tom,” said the waiter who had attended on him, hailing a colleague. “See that cove just gone out?”“Yes.”“Should you know him again?”“Swear to him anywhere,” was the laconic reply.“’E’s a queer ’un. Look. ’E’s left his time-table that he kicked up such a blessed row about gettin’. Wonder where ’e’s a-goin’. Look ’ere, it’s turned down and marked.”At that moment Roland had suddenly come to a standstill in the street, and like the proverbial Caledonian, was swearing “at large.” For it had dawned upon him that he had forgotten his A.B.C. Should he go back for it? No; too far. He would get another.But little he dreamed what gigantic importance to his weal or woe that trivial act of forgetfulness would one day assume.The cold was cutting, and just now a gust of driving sleet swept down upon him, and in contrast he became aware of the glaring portico of a variety theatre just in front. There at any rate he would be warm. Once within, seated, with something to drink in front of him, and smoking a cigar—the first for several long months—he gave himself up to a sheer sense of warmth and physical comfort, which, combined with the effects of the stimulants, produced a state of dreamy placidity. To the performance he paid no attention whatever. Turn after turn was the same, dull, tawdry, idiotic—but each intensely respectable in its vulgar way.Overcome by the stuffiness of the place, he went out for a little while. On his return the house was in a ferment of excitement. The star performer of the evening had just been on—and off; an athletic exhibition apparently, as the attendants were removing a net and tight rope, among other things; and a popular one, for some belated hand-clapping was still going on. But for him it had no more interest than had any of the others, nor did the overheard remarks made by those in the neighbourhood—to the effect that they wouldn’t have missed it for anything—strike him with any overwhelming sense of loss. Then, as the performance drew to an end, he made his way into the street.The sleet showers had ceased, the wind had gone down, and the night, clear and fine, was an agreeable contrast to the confined atmosphere and garish interior of the theatre. Roland, threading the hurrying crowds homeward-bound from the numerous places of entertainment, felt small inclination to follow their example. He preferred the open air. Strolling down Whitehall, unaware of a figure in a long ulster following at some little distance behind, he reached Westminster Bridge. It seemed very still and quiet here. The bridge was destitute of passers-by, and the double crescent of lights twinkled like eyes upon the dark waters. The tide was at ebb, and the black current swirled beneath the piers with many a hiss and hollow gurgle, and the solitary watcher felt chained to the spot by a weird and intangible fascination. Just then, with sepulchral boom, “Great Tom” began tolling the hour of midnight.The pedestrian turned to retrace his steps. As he did so the figure in the ulster stopped suddenly, and faced him. The move had been well timed. Roland gave a great start, and stared in bewildered fashion upon the face confronting him in the full glare of the lamplight, for he was looking into the limpid blue eyes of Lizzie Devine.“Well!” she said, and there was a flash of white teeth as the full lips parted into a very attractive smile, which broadened into a little laugh at the sudden and cold look of disapproval which had frozen up the expression of the other’s face. “That’s right, think the worst of me,” she went on. “Only, if you do, you happen to be wrong—though it’s little enough difference it would make to you, I should suppose, even if you weren’t.”“What on earth are you doing up here, Lizzie?” he said, ignoring the “feeler.”“Left Cranston for good, eh?”“Don’t know. I left soon after you did, so can’t give you all the latest news, I’m afraid.”“There never is any down there, so that’s no loss,” he said with affected carelessness. But not for a moment did it deceive the other, and a great wave of pitiful tenderness welled up within her heart. She had all the admiration of her class for “gameness,” and now, as she noted the ravages which ill-fortune and consequent ill-health had wrought upon the appearance of this man, she needed none to tell her to what depths of poverty he had dropped. Yet he carried it—for her benefit at any rate—with the same careless ease as he had done the enviable circumstances under which they had last met.“Why did you go out just before my ‘turn,’ and come back just after?” she said. “Did you know it was me?”“Your ‘turn’?” he repeated mystified. “Very sorry, but I don’t quite follow.”“You were in the Abracadabra the whole evening, and the only turn you missed was mine.”He began to see. This, then, was Lizzie’s line at present, yet how on earth, under the absurd and Italianised stage-name on the programme, even if it had attracted his attention at all, could he ever have dreamed of looking for Lizzie Devine?“Why, of course, I had no idea it was you,” he said.“Well, you see, you needn’t have looked so black and suspicious at me. I’m a first-rate draw there, I can tell you, and that’s worth something a week. And I’ve got other engagements sticking out that are better still.”“I’m delighted to hear it, Lizzie. And—how well you’re looking!”“That’s more than you are,” she said quickly, the glow of pride and pleasure evoked by the compliment from his lips giving way to a helpless feeling of compunction and concern as she looked at him, the while in a confused whirl her thoughts were chasing each other round and round. She had heard enough of Cranston gossip to know what had happened between General Dorrien and his eldest son, and now the appearance of the latter, accidentally encountered after all this time, had enabled her shrewdly to fill up the gap. What could she do? If only she could help him. She had gone up in the world materially, and was going up still more—not by reason of her performance, which was only average, but by her rare physical attractiveness—and was commanding large salaries. Yet withal, she had kept straight by reason of the memory of the man talking with her here to-night; but ah! what a wreck he was compared with his former self, and the reason thereof nobody was more capable of appreciating. Yet she knew she was as powerless to help him in the slightest degree as yon ragged tramp “singing” outside the public-house over the road just before closing time; and that apart from the certainty that now he only saw her as the daughter of a flagrantly drunken and disreputable village rowdy.“Getting late, isn’t it?” he said, misinterpreting her silence. “We might drop in somewhere and get a ‘split’ or something before closing time.”“We’ll drop in and get something—yes,” she answered decisively, “but nowhere else than in my own place. You’re not too proud, are you—remembering old times on the other side? No, you can’t be.”He laughed wearily. “I don’t know. I’m not much up to conviviality these days. I think I’ll go and turn in. Fact is I’m beastly tired.”“Great Scott, but that’s a fine girl!” said a voice behind, obviously not intended to be heard by its object or her escort. “Wonder if she’ll be as disappointing as to the face.”“They generally are,” said another.There was that in the tone to make Roland Dorrien start. Three young men in evening dress and crush hats overtook and passed them, and simultaneously three heads came round to look at his companion. But one head remained around a moment longer than the others, and it took in not only the face of the girl but that of himself, and in it he beheld once more the face of his brother Hubert. And it needed not the start the latter gave to show that the recognition was not one-sided.
For three days Roland lay in his shabby lodgings, too ill to stir from his bed; and but for the consciousness that, if he would accomplish his purpose, he must rouse himself, and determine to rally, the probability is that he would never have risen from it at all.
The effort must be made. His vitality, sadly impaired by a long course of semi-starvation, must be restored by the contrary treatment. He was not going to die in any such squalid hole as this, among the dirty and repellant semblances of humanity, who, under the circumstances, grudgingly ministered to his wants. Not he. He would get up; try whether the air would set him on his legs again, and if so, would certainly carry out his plan the very next day. His funds, considerably replenished by the price of parting with his last, faithful friend, would enable him to do this, only it must be done at once, and then—afterwards! Well, he had a plan.
Rising with an effort from his bed, Roland proceeded to dress himself, with infinite difficulty, for he felt wretchedly weak and dazed. Then at the picture which his distorted and cracked mirror presented him with, he fairly started. His beard, which he had allowed to grow at will since his misfortunes, was now plentifully streaked with grey, and with such alarming suddenness had this come about that he stared at his reflected face in amazement. Then he remembered with sardonic bitterness that this circumstance would yet further aid his plans. Who would recognise him now?
It was afternoon when he sallied forth. With a pang he missed his attached companion, and his sense of loneliness seemed enhanced tenfold. The short winter day was already closing in, and a keen north-easter, wafting particles of sleet from the black and riftless sky, chilled him to the bone. Anything, though, rather than remain longer in the frightful depression of his dingy rooms.
The dark sky and the winter gloom struck him as an earnest of what life was to be henceforth. The pinched and sour expression on the countenance of the British public struggling in the teeth of the biting north-easter, reflected aptly the attitude of the world towards him who is irrevocably down. Nothing was above a certain value—not even life, for may not life itself be held on terms too hard?
His wanderings had brought him to Charing Cross, and walking a little way up the Strand he turned into a well-known tavern to dine. Then it occurred to him that he might as well look out a certain train.
But the A.B.C. time-table, requisite for this purpose, was not among the resources of the establishment.
“Where can I get one, then?” he asked.
“We can send out for one, sir,” said the waiter.
“Then do.”
Not till an hour had passed was the A.B.C. put into his hands.
“Why the devil have you been so long about it?” he asked, rendered irritable by the fatigue and excitement of the day, as he snatched it in eager haste, and his hands trembled as he turned over the leaves.
“What the devil are you staring at now?” he cried, looking up and meeting the glance of the waiter, who was watching him curiously. The man muttered a word of apology and hastened away.
At length he found the train he wanted, put a mark against it, and turned down the corner of the page. Then he fell into a profound reverie. Suddenly he started up, paid his bill and hurried away.
“Tom,” said the waiter who had attended on him, hailing a colleague. “See that cove just gone out?”
“Yes.”
“Should you know him again?”
“Swear to him anywhere,” was the laconic reply.
“’E’s a queer ’un. Look. ’E’s left his time-table that he kicked up such a blessed row about gettin’. Wonder where ’e’s a-goin’. Look ’ere, it’s turned down and marked.”
At that moment Roland had suddenly come to a standstill in the street, and like the proverbial Caledonian, was swearing “at large.” For it had dawned upon him that he had forgotten his A.B.C. Should he go back for it? No; too far. He would get another.
But little he dreamed what gigantic importance to his weal or woe that trivial act of forgetfulness would one day assume.
The cold was cutting, and just now a gust of driving sleet swept down upon him, and in contrast he became aware of the glaring portico of a variety theatre just in front. There at any rate he would be warm. Once within, seated, with something to drink in front of him, and smoking a cigar—the first for several long months—he gave himself up to a sheer sense of warmth and physical comfort, which, combined with the effects of the stimulants, produced a state of dreamy placidity. To the performance he paid no attention whatever. Turn after turn was the same, dull, tawdry, idiotic—but each intensely respectable in its vulgar way.
Overcome by the stuffiness of the place, he went out for a little while. On his return the house was in a ferment of excitement. The star performer of the evening had just been on—and off; an athletic exhibition apparently, as the attendants were removing a net and tight rope, among other things; and a popular one, for some belated hand-clapping was still going on. But for him it had no more interest than had any of the others, nor did the overheard remarks made by those in the neighbourhood—to the effect that they wouldn’t have missed it for anything—strike him with any overwhelming sense of loss. Then, as the performance drew to an end, he made his way into the street.
The sleet showers had ceased, the wind had gone down, and the night, clear and fine, was an agreeable contrast to the confined atmosphere and garish interior of the theatre. Roland, threading the hurrying crowds homeward-bound from the numerous places of entertainment, felt small inclination to follow their example. He preferred the open air. Strolling down Whitehall, unaware of a figure in a long ulster following at some little distance behind, he reached Westminster Bridge. It seemed very still and quiet here. The bridge was destitute of passers-by, and the double crescent of lights twinkled like eyes upon the dark waters. The tide was at ebb, and the black current swirled beneath the piers with many a hiss and hollow gurgle, and the solitary watcher felt chained to the spot by a weird and intangible fascination. Just then, with sepulchral boom, “Great Tom” began tolling the hour of midnight.
The pedestrian turned to retrace his steps. As he did so the figure in the ulster stopped suddenly, and faced him. The move had been well timed. Roland gave a great start, and stared in bewildered fashion upon the face confronting him in the full glare of the lamplight, for he was looking into the limpid blue eyes of Lizzie Devine.
“Well!” she said, and there was a flash of white teeth as the full lips parted into a very attractive smile, which broadened into a little laugh at the sudden and cold look of disapproval which had frozen up the expression of the other’s face. “That’s right, think the worst of me,” she went on. “Only, if you do, you happen to be wrong—though it’s little enough difference it would make to you, I should suppose, even if you weren’t.”
“What on earth are you doing up here, Lizzie?” he said, ignoring the “feeler.”
“Left Cranston for good, eh?”
“Don’t know. I left soon after you did, so can’t give you all the latest news, I’m afraid.”
“There never is any down there, so that’s no loss,” he said with affected carelessness. But not for a moment did it deceive the other, and a great wave of pitiful tenderness welled up within her heart. She had all the admiration of her class for “gameness,” and now, as she noted the ravages which ill-fortune and consequent ill-health had wrought upon the appearance of this man, she needed none to tell her to what depths of poverty he had dropped. Yet he carried it—for her benefit at any rate—with the same careless ease as he had done the enviable circumstances under which they had last met.
“Why did you go out just before my ‘turn,’ and come back just after?” she said. “Did you know it was me?”
“Your ‘turn’?” he repeated mystified. “Very sorry, but I don’t quite follow.”
“You were in the Abracadabra the whole evening, and the only turn you missed was mine.”
He began to see. This, then, was Lizzie’s line at present, yet how on earth, under the absurd and Italianised stage-name on the programme, even if it had attracted his attention at all, could he ever have dreamed of looking for Lizzie Devine?
“Why, of course, I had no idea it was you,” he said.
“Well, you see, you needn’t have looked so black and suspicious at me. I’m a first-rate draw there, I can tell you, and that’s worth something a week. And I’ve got other engagements sticking out that are better still.”
“I’m delighted to hear it, Lizzie. And—how well you’re looking!”
“That’s more than you are,” she said quickly, the glow of pride and pleasure evoked by the compliment from his lips giving way to a helpless feeling of compunction and concern as she looked at him, the while in a confused whirl her thoughts were chasing each other round and round. She had heard enough of Cranston gossip to know what had happened between General Dorrien and his eldest son, and now the appearance of the latter, accidentally encountered after all this time, had enabled her shrewdly to fill up the gap. What could she do? If only she could help him. She had gone up in the world materially, and was going up still more—not by reason of her performance, which was only average, but by her rare physical attractiveness—and was commanding large salaries. Yet withal, she had kept straight by reason of the memory of the man talking with her here to-night; but ah! what a wreck he was compared with his former self, and the reason thereof nobody was more capable of appreciating. Yet she knew she was as powerless to help him in the slightest degree as yon ragged tramp “singing” outside the public-house over the road just before closing time; and that apart from the certainty that now he only saw her as the daughter of a flagrantly drunken and disreputable village rowdy.
“Getting late, isn’t it?” he said, misinterpreting her silence. “We might drop in somewhere and get a ‘split’ or something before closing time.”
“We’ll drop in and get something—yes,” she answered decisively, “but nowhere else than in my own place. You’re not too proud, are you—remembering old times on the other side? No, you can’t be.”
He laughed wearily. “I don’t know. I’m not much up to conviviality these days. I think I’ll go and turn in. Fact is I’m beastly tired.”
“Great Scott, but that’s a fine girl!” said a voice behind, obviously not intended to be heard by its object or her escort. “Wonder if she’ll be as disappointing as to the face.”
“They generally are,” said another.
There was that in the tone to make Roland Dorrien start. Three young men in evening dress and crush hats overtook and passed them, and simultaneously three heads came round to look at his companion. But one head remained around a moment longer than the others, and it took in not only the face of the girl but that of himself, and in it he beheld once more the face of his brother Hubert. And it needed not the start the latter gave to show that the recognition was not one-sided.
Chapter Twenty Seven.Interim.Christmas had come and gone, and Eustace Ingelow was at home again, but things were not going well with him, and he was in consequence proportionately gloomy. Never, since the day he surprised her in the midst of her grief, had he had the chance of speaking to Nellie Dorrien alone. Whether by accident or design, she had been invited to visit a relative at a distance for Christmas. She had left Cranston a few days before his arrival, and it seemed unlikely that her return would take place before his departure, and he had failed in his undertaking, for no trace could he discover of her missing brother. Venn had written stating that he feared they would see no more of Roland Dorrien until such time as that worthy chose to disclose his whereabouts. And Eustace’s heart had sunk. If Venn, a London man, could not trace his friend, what chance had he himself, who could bring neither time nor experience to bear upon his quest? His failure and misgivings he had made known to Nellie, who had recognised the force of them. Poor Eustace, however, was very unhappy. He had been looking forward to the Christmas vacation with the bright, warm glow of first love fresh at his heart, and with all the sanguine buoyancy of youth. Things would come right somehow. But, now that his hopes were so cruelly disappointed, and that the meetings, all the sweeter if stolen, to which he had been looking forward, were not to be, the poor fellow hardly knew how to conceal his despondency. In Olive he found a ready sympathiser, but hers was a sympathy that was all on one side. Never since the receipt of that last letter from Roland Dorrien had the girl opened her lips on the subject of her griefs to any living soul. It was a strange reticence—yet one that she heroically and rigidly preserved, and now, though she entered lovingly into poor Eustace’s troubles, of her own she breathed not one word. With such elements of despondency in their midst it was not to be wondered at that Christmas festivities this year had seemed to the rector’s family to fall somewhat flat.At Cranston Hall the chronic atmosphere of gloom and constraint in nowise tended to a clearance, and Time, so far from allaying General Dorrien’s resentment towards his eldest son, rather tended to heighten it; as one or two incidents showed. Mr Curtis, the easy-going but good-hearted vicar of Cranston, happening to be aware of the complete ruin in which the exiled one had been involved through the bank failure, took an opportunity of cautiously approaching this vindictive parent on his behalf, but was met with such an angry rebuff as would have constituted a mortal insult to a less good-natured man, but which the easy-tempered vicar had suffered to pass over him unresented. It was only his duty, he argued to his wife, to try and set things smooth if possible; if not, well, he had done his best. The exile’s other advocate was Colonel Neville, who had thought Christmas a capital time for putting in his word, but with like result; and the Colonel falling far short of the parson in the quality of forbearance, something very like a quarrel had taken place between the old friends and companions-in-arms, and a coolness set in between their two houses.Alone in this uncongenial home poor Nellie had a bad time of it. Her father seldom addressed a word to her, or indeed, to anybody—for as his moroseness increased he would shut himself up in his study for hours or wander about by himself, going nowhere nor entertaining anybody, and since he had discovered the meeting between herself and Eustace Ingelow he had treated her as though very little better than her banished brother. Between herself and her mother there had never been any sympathy, and now there seemed to be less than any. One bright spot was on her horizon—Christmas would come, and she would see Eustace again, and to that she looked forward as to a forlorn hope. And Christmas had come, and previously to it she had been sent away, as we have seen, a procedure which, at any other time and under other circumstances, would have met with her unbounded approval. But now?The only one whose spirits were in nowise impaired was Hubert. Why, indeed, should they be, seeing that he was now the assured heir to the broad acres and splendid rent-roll of Cranston? So on the strength of his prospects he found means of launching out into unlimited dissipation. He was now leaving Oxford, and had already mapped out for himself a dazzlingly attractive programme for the enjoyment of “life” when he should take up his abode in London in a week or two to read for his “call.” Meanwhile, even in Wandsborough, Master Hubert found scope for some very lively doings, and was only restrained just within the bounds of prudence by the fear of certain of his high jinks reaching the paternal ears, which possibility kept him in a state of periodical and wholesome terror. And there was always the apprehension that circumstances might combine to restore Roland to his rightful place, which would mean nothing less than ruin to himself.That “no one is all bad” is a favourite cant—but only a cant. In common with not a few others Hubert Dorrien was “all bad”—emphatically so. There was not a single redeeming point in his character, not even the boldness which frequently attends utter want of scruple. The latter quality he possessed in affluent measure, but ever subordinate to the stronger passion of fear. His brother had helped him, very much to his own hindrance, in his dire need, and not only was he dead to all sense of gratitude, but felt only too glad that circumstances afforded him a colourable excuse for neglecting to refund the loan now that he wae in a position to do so.And towards that brother he now felt all the bitter hatred, begotten of fear and a sense of obligation, of which his base and craven nature was capable, and, as fate would have it, the circumstance detailed in a former chapter placed an efficient weapon in his hand. Rumour began to circulate in Wandsborough, and with multifold winks and head-shakings, and “I told you so,” and “What else could you expect?” the many-tongued assassin commented on the continued absence of Lizzie Devine. All Wandsborough became aware, or fancied itself so, that the girl was play acting, or worse, in London, but that whatever she was doing she was not alone, for had not young Squire Hubert—he had got rapid promotion, you see—met her, in company with his brother, at some theatre or other? That was enough. Everybody knew she was never any better than she should be. A fine girl—yes. A splendidly-handsome girl—yes—but—a bad ’un, come of a bad stock. And those young Dorriens. A wild set, and no mistake! Thus the gossips.This rumour was quick to reach Gipsy Steve’s ears, with the result that the ex-poacher got furiously drunk, and went about vowing vengeance in forcible and blood-curdling terms, thereby narrowly escaping summary dismissal at the hands of Colonel Neville. It was not long, either, in becoming known to Turner, and that reverend person, coupling it with the upshot of his earlier observations, could not refrain from making capital—pious capital of course—out of the knowledge. But circumspectly as he had originated the rumour and disseminated it withal, common consent attributed it to Hubert, and men wondered how his brother could have been such a fool as to trust a fellow who couldn’t keep counsel in a delicate affair of this kind, but went blabbing it all over the place. Finally, it became known to the General, as Hubert had all along intended it should. From that moment he felt secure. The heavens might fall, but never again would Roland set foot in his father’s presence.
Christmas had come and gone, and Eustace Ingelow was at home again, but things were not going well with him, and he was in consequence proportionately gloomy. Never, since the day he surprised her in the midst of her grief, had he had the chance of speaking to Nellie Dorrien alone. Whether by accident or design, she had been invited to visit a relative at a distance for Christmas. She had left Cranston a few days before his arrival, and it seemed unlikely that her return would take place before his departure, and he had failed in his undertaking, for no trace could he discover of her missing brother. Venn had written stating that he feared they would see no more of Roland Dorrien until such time as that worthy chose to disclose his whereabouts. And Eustace’s heart had sunk. If Venn, a London man, could not trace his friend, what chance had he himself, who could bring neither time nor experience to bear upon his quest? His failure and misgivings he had made known to Nellie, who had recognised the force of them. Poor Eustace, however, was very unhappy. He had been looking forward to the Christmas vacation with the bright, warm glow of first love fresh at his heart, and with all the sanguine buoyancy of youth. Things would come right somehow. But, now that his hopes were so cruelly disappointed, and that the meetings, all the sweeter if stolen, to which he had been looking forward, were not to be, the poor fellow hardly knew how to conceal his despondency. In Olive he found a ready sympathiser, but hers was a sympathy that was all on one side. Never since the receipt of that last letter from Roland Dorrien had the girl opened her lips on the subject of her griefs to any living soul. It was a strange reticence—yet one that she heroically and rigidly preserved, and now, though she entered lovingly into poor Eustace’s troubles, of her own she breathed not one word. With such elements of despondency in their midst it was not to be wondered at that Christmas festivities this year had seemed to the rector’s family to fall somewhat flat.
At Cranston Hall the chronic atmosphere of gloom and constraint in nowise tended to a clearance, and Time, so far from allaying General Dorrien’s resentment towards his eldest son, rather tended to heighten it; as one or two incidents showed. Mr Curtis, the easy-going but good-hearted vicar of Cranston, happening to be aware of the complete ruin in which the exiled one had been involved through the bank failure, took an opportunity of cautiously approaching this vindictive parent on his behalf, but was met with such an angry rebuff as would have constituted a mortal insult to a less good-natured man, but which the easy-tempered vicar had suffered to pass over him unresented. It was only his duty, he argued to his wife, to try and set things smooth if possible; if not, well, he had done his best. The exile’s other advocate was Colonel Neville, who had thought Christmas a capital time for putting in his word, but with like result; and the Colonel falling far short of the parson in the quality of forbearance, something very like a quarrel had taken place between the old friends and companions-in-arms, and a coolness set in between their two houses.
Alone in this uncongenial home poor Nellie had a bad time of it. Her father seldom addressed a word to her, or indeed, to anybody—for as his moroseness increased he would shut himself up in his study for hours or wander about by himself, going nowhere nor entertaining anybody, and since he had discovered the meeting between herself and Eustace Ingelow he had treated her as though very little better than her banished brother. Between herself and her mother there had never been any sympathy, and now there seemed to be less than any. One bright spot was on her horizon—Christmas would come, and she would see Eustace again, and to that she looked forward as to a forlorn hope. And Christmas had come, and previously to it she had been sent away, as we have seen, a procedure which, at any other time and under other circumstances, would have met with her unbounded approval. But now?
The only one whose spirits were in nowise impaired was Hubert. Why, indeed, should they be, seeing that he was now the assured heir to the broad acres and splendid rent-roll of Cranston? So on the strength of his prospects he found means of launching out into unlimited dissipation. He was now leaving Oxford, and had already mapped out for himself a dazzlingly attractive programme for the enjoyment of “life” when he should take up his abode in London in a week or two to read for his “call.” Meanwhile, even in Wandsborough, Master Hubert found scope for some very lively doings, and was only restrained just within the bounds of prudence by the fear of certain of his high jinks reaching the paternal ears, which possibility kept him in a state of periodical and wholesome terror. And there was always the apprehension that circumstances might combine to restore Roland to his rightful place, which would mean nothing less than ruin to himself.
That “no one is all bad” is a favourite cant—but only a cant. In common with not a few others Hubert Dorrien was “all bad”—emphatically so. There was not a single redeeming point in his character, not even the boldness which frequently attends utter want of scruple. The latter quality he possessed in affluent measure, but ever subordinate to the stronger passion of fear. His brother had helped him, very much to his own hindrance, in his dire need, and not only was he dead to all sense of gratitude, but felt only too glad that circumstances afforded him a colourable excuse for neglecting to refund the loan now that he wae in a position to do so.
And towards that brother he now felt all the bitter hatred, begotten of fear and a sense of obligation, of which his base and craven nature was capable, and, as fate would have it, the circumstance detailed in a former chapter placed an efficient weapon in his hand. Rumour began to circulate in Wandsborough, and with multifold winks and head-shakings, and “I told you so,” and “What else could you expect?” the many-tongued assassin commented on the continued absence of Lizzie Devine. All Wandsborough became aware, or fancied itself so, that the girl was play acting, or worse, in London, but that whatever she was doing she was not alone, for had not young Squire Hubert—he had got rapid promotion, you see—met her, in company with his brother, at some theatre or other? That was enough. Everybody knew she was never any better than she should be. A fine girl—yes. A splendidly-handsome girl—yes—but—a bad ’un, come of a bad stock. And those young Dorriens. A wild set, and no mistake! Thus the gossips.
This rumour was quick to reach Gipsy Steve’s ears, with the result that the ex-poacher got furiously drunk, and went about vowing vengeance in forcible and blood-curdling terms, thereby narrowly escaping summary dismissal at the hands of Colonel Neville. It was not long, either, in becoming known to Turner, and that reverend person, coupling it with the upshot of his earlier observations, could not refrain from making capital—pious capital of course—out of the knowledge. But circumspectly as he had originated the rumour and disseminated it withal, common consent attributed it to Hubert, and men wondered how his brother could have been such a fool as to trust a fellow who couldn’t keep counsel in a delicate affair of this kind, but went blabbing it all over the place. Finally, it became known to the General, as Hubert had all along intended it should. From that moment he felt secure. The heavens might fall, but never again would Roland set foot in his father’s presence.
Chapter Twenty Eight.The Ban.“Yes, sir. Our town’s bigger nor Wandsbro’—more go-ahead like. It didn’t use to be so, you see, but when them works at Wandsbro’ were shut up, why, then it fell back and we went ahead, sir.”So spake the loquacious waiter in the coffee-room of the “Silver Fleece Inn,” at Battisford, as he skipped, napkin in hand, round the only guest, who was dining early, for it was Sunday. A finely-proportioned man of, apparently, about sixty, and wearing a bushy iron-grey beard and dark-tinted spectacles, it would be difficult to guess at his rank in life. He might be a peer of the realm, or he might be a detective, and he was dressed with perfect simplicity, though well.“Indeed?” he replied carelessly. “I just remember being at Wandsborough many years ago, when I was almost a boy. By the way, what’s that remarkably fine place I passed driving over here? It stood back in a park, where there were any amount of deer.”“Was it against the hill, sir? ’Cos that’s Cranston ’All—Gen’ral Dorrien’s. Yes, that is a fine place, sir.”“Dorrien did you say? Dorrien? Now that’s strange. Fact is, I used to know someone of that name, but I’m certain he hadn’t ever been in the army. Has this one any sons?”“Oh, yes, sir. There’s—”“Ah! The one I knew hadn’t. He was a bachelor.”“That must ’ave been the old squire, sir—the Gen’ral’s brother. ’E was a bachelor. But this one—well, sir, I don’t mind tellin’ you, ’e’s a terribly cross-tempered gentleman, and they do say as how none of his fam’ly can live with him.”“Indeed? How’s that?”“Well, sir, I believe it’s this way,” went on the loquacious waiter, delighted at the prospect of whiling away a goodly portion of this dull Sunday afternoon at his favourite pastime. Here, too, was a stranger, one who seemed to listen to him with interest. So he plunged at once into his lecture, with the utter disregard of his class for sequence or order in narration, and the stranger was favoured among other incidents with a highly-coloured version of the fracas which had taken place in the Dorrien family some months earlier.“And then, you see, sir, the General was that savage with the poor young Squire, ’cos he not only wanted to marry the parson’s young lady, but it seemed he hadn’t been playing quite on the square with a gal in Cranston village—Steve Devine’s gal, that was—he as is now keeper at Colonel Neville’s. And now they say he’s took up with her in London. She’s a play-actress up there, they say.”If the slightest possible change came over the listener’s countenance at this announcement, to have discovered it would have taken a very close observer indeed, which the waiter was not.“H’m! A sort of Don Juan this young Dorrien seems to have been,” remarked the stranger more to himself than to the other, and pronouncing the name in the usual British and erroneous way.“Yessir—I daresay, sir—King John—wasn’t ’e the party that ’ad eight wives and cut their ’eads off as fast as he got tired of them?”“Well, what sort of a girl was this?”“A fine gal, sir. A reelly fine, purty gal, and Gipsy Steve, he looked after her orlways and led her a life of it, if any young chap so much as looked at her. And now, sir, ’ere’s a bit of queer human natur’,” went on the gossip, sinking his voice and looking preternaturally wise. “There’s some wot sez they don’t believe the gal’s with Mr Roland at all, but that his brother started the story. Ah! he’s a bad lot, is young Mr Hubert.”“Well, but why the deuce should he tell such an infernal lie as that?”The loquacious one looked at him for a moment pityingly, and his voice grew even more confidential.“Bless your ’art. Don’t you see, sir? The young one wants to stick to all the swag. If the other comes back, well, of course, it’ll make all the difference to this one. And so ’e says ’e sor his brother and Lizzie in London together, and the General’s more furious than ever about it.”“And what do they think in Wandsborough?”“Well, sir, there’s them as believes it and there’s them as doesn’t. For my part I dunno wot to think, though, of course, it’s no concern o’ mine.”“H’m!” The stranger yawned and deliberately stretched himself, and began to show signs of moving, and the loquacious one perceived that his fill of gossip was over for the present.“Beg pardon, sir,” he remarked, “but are you ’Igh Church?”“What? Why?” answered the stranger, starting from a reverie.“Because, sir, if you are, there’s a big ’Igh Church over at Wandsborough, and lots of folks go from here on a Sunday evening. I’ve been myself once or twice, but couldn’t make nothing out of it. But it’s very gorjus.”“Well, it’d be something to do. How long does it take to walk over?”“Nearly an hour, sir, if you walk very quick. But the walk’s jest lovely, and so’s the music.”“All right. I may go over. Now I’m going upstairs,” and escaping from the running fire of enquiries by which he was pursued, the stranger made his way to his bed-room. Once there, and the door locked, a restless sigh escaped him. He threw open the window, and kept consulting his watch from time to time. Then he sat down and fell into deep thought, with knitted brows and fixed gaze. He was thinking over all he had just heard. The thoughtless chatter of busybodies, like this talkative waiter, often reflected public opinion with marvellous accuracy. After a while he rose, and pulling on a warm overcoat and taking a stout walking-stick in his hand, he went out.About half a mile outside Wandsborough there is a certain stile leading from the high road into the footpath to Minchkil Bay. Anyone commanding a view of this stile might have witnessed a curious spectacle on this dark, wintry afternoon. They might have descried an elderly stranger, grey-bearded and spectacled, leaning over the stile, his gaze riveted on the cliff path; and our concealed witnesses would opine that the said stranger had one foot in the grave. Then through the gloom rang out a clash of bells upon the damp, chilly atmosphere; a joyous, musical peal, that seemed to tell of light and warmth and peaceful homes. And the lonely man standing there, with his eyes wandering over the darkening wold, heard it, and his face wore an expression such as might rest upon the countenances of the lost. Yes, he seemed dreadfully ill, hardly able to stand, in fact; for presently he sank down into the rimy grass in a half-faint.For long he sat thus. Then, suddenly starting to his feet, he walked rapidly towards the town, and in a few minutes stood within the church porch. The change from darkness to the brilliantly-lighted interior was bewildering. Mechanically he slipped into the place shown him by the civil verger, heedless of the screwed-round heads and curious glances inseparable from the event. How familiar it all seemed! The stately altar lighted by its six tall tapers; the rows of white-clad choristers, and the celebrant in his rich cope; the solemn chanting and the fragrant fumes of the incense—what memories it seemed to bring back! And around him many a familiar face—yet none knew him.Mechanically again he took the hymn-book which the good-natured verger put into his hands, and—held it upside down. After the singing, a priest in surplice and stole entered the pulpit and began his sermon, evoking in the stranger’s face a momentary gleam of recognition. But his thoughts soon wandered. Our friend Turner, indeed, was a pulpit bore of the first water, but had he been a very Chrysostom he would have met with scant attention from this stranger, who had walked all the way from Battisford to attend the evening service.The function over, the stranger hastened not to depart, but lingered, half-concealed, in the shadow of a pillar, apparently intent on studying the framed list of notices there hung up—in reality, his keen eyes narrowly scanned the dispersing congregation. One group stood chatting in a low voice just inside the west door, and, as his eye fell upon it, again that white, haggard look came into his face.“Brown,” said a low, sweet, woman’s voice, addressing the verger, who was intent on putting out the lights. “Please tell Mr Mason that I shall be happy to take his organ duties to-morrow, and even the next day, if he wishes it. So that’ll be a weight off his mind.”“Very good, Miss Olive. I know he’ll be glad. I’ll be sure to tell him. Good-night, ladies.”Then the unknown, with a nod and a “good-evening” to the friendly verger, passed out into the street, keeping within a dozen yards behind the first speaker. Immediately a dark figure passed him hurriedly, and gaining the side of her whom he was watching, a cordial greeting ensued, and the two dropped a little behind the rest. The cassock and cloak which he wore denoted one of the parish clergy, and as he passed under the light of a lamp, the watcher recognised the features of Turner, the curate.An overpowering desire came over the stranger to learn the burden of their conversation. That a strong bond of mutual sympathy existed between them he had no difficulty in perceiving, and his mind leaped to its own conclusions. Then with noiseless step he overtook the pair and passed them slowly.But what the sad, soft voice was saying, as well as the answer, was inaudible to the listener. A loud, harsh hammering was sounding in his brain, and he felt faint and dizzy. Fearful of betraying himself, he crossed the road, and leaned against the wall for a few moments to recover. When he looked up again the street was empty.He wandered out of the town, and still lost in his reflections, hardly noticed where he was till he reached the stile where he had rested a short while previously. Then, instead of continuing his way along the high road, he turned off across the fields, and began to ascend the bleak heights which lay above the cliffs.And it was a weird and desolate scene, that winter expanse of sea and land upon which the wanderer’s glance was bent. On all sides to seaward the mist-wrack was rolling back like a curtain, and a red half-moon slowly rose in the heavens, pouring a pale, spectral light upon the silent waters and the great mysterious cliffs. A murmur of waves breaking on the beach was upborne to his ears, as he strode rapidly on through the rimy heather plants and the chill, bracing whiff of the salt sea. Minchkil Beacon is left behind, and the rugged brow overhanging Hadden’s Slide, and still he keeps on his way, stopping now and again to gaze upon the solemn grandeur of the moonlit coastline.It is cold, but the pedestrian is in a glow of warmth after his hard, uphill exercise, for he pauses occasionally to rest and wipe his heated brow. What then makes him start and shiver violently, as though chilled to the very marrow!Cleaving the still and frosty air comes a deep-toned, lugubrious howl, long-drawn, and proceeding apparently from the sea itself—a dismal, unearthly baying, not loud, but with a carrying vibration that renders the sound no less felt than heard. The listener standing alone on the cliff feels an icy perspiration break out upon his forehead, and his dilated gaze is riveted upon two rock pinnacles rising out of the sea beneath. The crest of the highest is hidden in a dark cloud.Stay! A strange phenomenon, that! There is not a vestige of cloud nearer than the horizon. Yet down yonder a dark wreath broods over the summit of one of those rock-turrets. And the highest of The Skegs is far below the brow of the cliff.The contour of the coast is perfectly outlined in the clear and searching moonlight. The silver surface of the sea is deserted. But darker than ever, and seeming to take shape beneath the watcher’s gaze, the cloud rests upon that turret-rock, and from its black folds again and again sounds forth upon the silent night the terrible Death Portent.
“Yes, sir. Our town’s bigger nor Wandsbro’—more go-ahead like. It didn’t use to be so, you see, but when them works at Wandsbro’ were shut up, why, then it fell back and we went ahead, sir.”
So spake the loquacious waiter in the coffee-room of the “Silver Fleece Inn,” at Battisford, as he skipped, napkin in hand, round the only guest, who was dining early, for it was Sunday. A finely-proportioned man of, apparently, about sixty, and wearing a bushy iron-grey beard and dark-tinted spectacles, it would be difficult to guess at his rank in life. He might be a peer of the realm, or he might be a detective, and he was dressed with perfect simplicity, though well.
“Indeed?” he replied carelessly. “I just remember being at Wandsborough many years ago, when I was almost a boy. By the way, what’s that remarkably fine place I passed driving over here? It stood back in a park, where there were any amount of deer.”
“Was it against the hill, sir? ’Cos that’s Cranston ’All—Gen’ral Dorrien’s. Yes, that is a fine place, sir.”
“Dorrien did you say? Dorrien? Now that’s strange. Fact is, I used to know someone of that name, but I’m certain he hadn’t ever been in the army. Has this one any sons?”
“Oh, yes, sir. There’s—”
“Ah! The one I knew hadn’t. He was a bachelor.”
“That must ’ave been the old squire, sir—the Gen’ral’s brother. ’E was a bachelor. But this one—well, sir, I don’t mind tellin’ you, ’e’s a terribly cross-tempered gentleman, and they do say as how none of his fam’ly can live with him.”
“Indeed? How’s that?”
“Well, sir, I believe it’s this way,” went on the loquacious waiter, delighted at the prospect of whiling away a goodly portion of this dull Sunday afternoon at his favourite pastime. Here, too, was a stranger, one who seemed to listen to him with interest. So he plunged at once into his lecture, with the utter disregard of his class for sequence or order in narration, and the stranger was favoured among other incidents with a highly-coloured version of the fracas which had taken place in the Dorrien family some months earlier.
“And then, you see, sir, the General was that savage with the poor young Squire, ’cos he not only wanted to marry the parson’s young lady, but it seemed he hadn’t been playing quite on the square with a gal in Cranston village—Steve Devine’s gal, that was—he as is now keeper at Colonel Neville’s. And now they say he’s took up with her in London. She’s a play-actress up there, they say.”
If the slightest possible change came over the listener’s countenance at this announcement, to have discovered it would have taken a very close observer indeed, which the waiter was not.
“H’m! A sort of Don Juan this young Dorrien seems to have been,” remarked the stranger more to himself than to the other, and pronouncing the name in the usual British and erroneous way.
“Yessir—I daresay, sir—King John—wasn’t ’e the party that ’ad eight wives and cut their ’eads off as fast as he got tired of them?”
“Well, what sort of a girl was this?”
“A fine gal, sir. A reelly fine, purty gal, and Gipsy Steve, he looked after her orlways and led her a life of it, if any young chap so much as looked at her. And now, sir, ’ere’s a bit of queer human natur’,” went on the gossip, sinking his voice and looking preternaturally wise. “There’s some wot sez they don’t believe the gal’s with Mr Roland at all, but that his brother started the story. Ah! he’s a bad lot, is young Mr Hubert.”
“Well, but why the deuce should he tell such an infernal lie as that?”
The loquacious one looked at him for a moment pityingly, and his voice grew even more confidential.
“Bless your ’art. Don’t you see, sir? The young one wants to stick to all the swag. If the other comes back, well, of course, it’ll make all the difference to this one. And so ’e says ’e sor his brother and Lizzie in London together, and the General’s more furious than ever about it.”
“And what do they think in Wandsborough?”
“Well, sir, there’s them as believes it and there’s them as doesn’t. For my part I dunno wot to think, though, of course, it’s no concern o’ mine.”
“H’m!” The stranger yawned and deliberately stretched himself, and began to show signs of moving, and the loquacious one perceived that his fill of gossip was over for the present.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he remarked, “but are you ’Igh Church?”
“What? Why?” answered the stranger, starting from a reverie.
“Because, sir, if you are, there’s a big ’Igh Church over at Wandsborough, and lots of folks go from here on a Sunday evening. I’ve been myself once or twice, but couldn’t make nothing out of it. But it’s very gorjus.”
“Well, it’d be something to do. How long does it take to walk over?”
“Nearly an hour, sir, if you walk very quick. But the walk’s jest lovely, and so’s the music.”
“All right. I may go over. Now I’m going upstairs,” and escaping from the running fire of enquiries by which he was pursued, the stranger made his way to his bed-room. Once there, and the door locked, a restless sigh escaped him. He threw open the window, and kept consulting his watch from time to time. Then he sat down and fell into deep thought, with knitted brows and fixed gaze. He was thinking over all he had just heard. The thoughtless chatter of busybodies, like this talkative waiter, often reflected public opinion with marvellous accuracy. After a while he rose, and pulling on a warm overcoat and taking a stout walking-stick in his hand, he went out.
About half a mile outside Wandsborough there is a certain stile leading from the high road into the footpath to Minchkil Bay. Anyone commanding a view of this stile might have witnessed a curious spectacle on this dark, wintry afternoon. They might have descried an elderly stranger, grey-bearded and spectacled, leaning over the stile, his gaze riveted on the cliff path; and our concealed witnesses would opine that the said stranger had one foot in the grave. Then through the gloom rang out a clash of bells upon the damp, chilly atmosphere; a joyous, musical peal, that seemed to tell of light and warmth and peaceful homes. And the lonely man standing there, with his eyes wandering over the darkening wold, heard it, and his face wore an expression such as might rest upon the countenances of the lost. Yes, he seemed dreadfully ill, hardly able to stand, in fact; for presently he sank down into the rimy grass in a half-faint.
For long he sat thus. Then, suddenly starting to his feet, he walked rapidly towards the town, and in a few minutes stood within the church porch. The change from darkness to the brilliantly-lighted interior was bewildering. Mechanically he slipped into the place shown him by the civil verger, heedless of the screwed-round heads and curious glances inseparable from the event. How familiar it all seemed! The stately altar lighted by its six tall tapers; the rows of white-clad choristers, and the celebrant in his rich cope; the solemn chanting and the fragrant fumes of the incense—what memories it seemed to bring back! And around him many a familiar face—yet none knew him.
Mechanically again he took the hymn-book which the good-natured verger put into his hands, and—held it upside down. After the singing, a priest in surplice and stole entered the pulpit and began his sermon, evoking in the stranger’s face a momentary gleam of recognition. But his thoughts soon wandered. Our friend Turner, indeed, was a pulpit bore of the first water, but had he been a very Chrysostom he would have met with scant attention from this stranger, who had walked all the way from Battisford to attend the evening service.
The function over, the stranger hastened not to depart, but lingered, half-concealed, in the shadow of a pillar, apparently intent on studying the framed list of notices there hung up—in reality, his keen eyes narrowly scanned the dispersing congregation. One group stood chatting in a low voice just inside the west door, and, as his eye fell upon it, again that white, haggard look came into his face.
“Brown,” said a low, sweet, woman’s voice, addressing the verger, who was intent on putting out the lights. “Please tell Mr Mason that I shall be happy to take his organ duties to-morrow, and even the next day, if he wishes it. So that’ll be a weight off his mind.”
“Very good, Miss Olive. I know he’ll be glad. I’ll be sure to tell him. Good-night, ladies.”
Then the unknown, with a nod and a “good-evening” to the friendly verger, passed out into the street, keeping within a dozen yards behind the first speaker. Immediately a dark figure passed him hurriedly, and gaining the side of her whom he was watching, a cordial greeting ensued, and the two dropped a little behind the rest. The cassock and cloak which he wore denoted one of the parish clergy, and as he passed under the light of a lamp, the watcher recognised the features of Turner, the curate.
An overpowering desire came over the stranger to learn the burden of their conversation. That a strong bond of mutual sympathy existed between them he had no difficulty in perceiving, and his mind leaped to its own conclusions. Then with noiseless step he overtook the pair and passed them slowly.
But what the sad, soft voice was saying, as well as the answer, was inaudible to the listener. A loud, harsh hammering was sounding in his brain, and he felt faint and dizzy. Fearful of betraying himself, he crossed the road, and leaned against the wall for a few moments to recover. When he looked up again the street was empty.
He wandered out of the town, and still lost in his reflections, hardly noticed where he was till he reached the stile where he had rested a short while previously. Then, instead of continuing his way along the high road, he turned off across the fields, and began to ascend the bleak heights which lay above the cliffs.
And it was a weird and desolate scene, that winter expanse of sea and land upon which the wanderer’s glance was bent. On all sides to seaward the mist-wrack was rolling back like a curtain, and a red half-moon slowly rose in the heavens, pouring a pale, spectral light upon the silent waters and the great mysterious cliffs. A murmur of waves breaking on the beach was upborne to his ears, as he strode rapidly on through the rimy heather plants and the chill, bracing whiff of the salt sea. Minchkil Beacon is left behind, and the rugged brow overhanging Hadden’s Slide, and still he keeps on his way, stopping now and again to gaze upon the solemn grandeur of the moonlit coastline.
It is cold, but the pedestrian is in a glow of warmth after his hard, uphill exercise, for he pauses occasionally to rest and wipe his heated brow. What then makes him start and shiver violently, as though chilled to the very marrow!
Cleaving the still and frosty air comes a deep-toned, lugubrious howl, long-drawn, and proceeding apparently from the sea itself—a dismal, unearthly baying, not loud, but with a carrying vibration that renders the sound no less felt than heard. The listener standing alone on the cliff feels an icy perspiration break out upon his forehead, and his dilated gaze is riveted upon two rock pinnacles rising out of the sea beneath. The crest of the highest is hidden in a dark cloud.
Stay! A strange phenomenon, that! There is not a vestige of cloud nearer than the horizon. Yet down yonder a dark wreath broods over the summit of one of those rock-turrets. And the highest of The Skegs is far below the brow of the cliff.
The contour of the coast is perfectly outlined in the clear and searching moonlight. The silver surface of the sea is deserted. But darker than ever, and seeming to take shape beneath the watcher’s gaze, the cloud rests upon that turret-rock, and from its black folds again and again sounds forth upon the silent night the terrible Death Portent.
Chapter Twenty Nine.The Tragedy of a Winter Night.“Pooh! What a fool I am, and what fancies a course of starvation and mooning will put into a man’s head!” exclaimed the stranger impatiently. “A wreath of mist over the sea, and immediately one conjures up an apparition. But I never saw anything more diabolically real in my life.”Yet he was not quite reassured as he turned to continue his walk. The cloud had completely disappeared from The Skegs, vanished as suddenly as it had gathered there, nor was there a trace of vapour round the turret-like head—and the moonlight seemed to fall clearer upon the face of the cliffs.He felt weary. He threw himself on the springy turf, heedless of damp or wet. A great, black fissure yawned at his feet, a gaping rent in the ground seeming to straggle into unknown depths. A few boulders lay about the little hollow where he rested. The fissure in front of him was known to the neighbourhood as Smugglers’ Ladder. Bats arose from the dark cleft and circled in the night air. The tide was in, and the lapping of the waves in the chasm beneath came up with a tuneful monotony through this gigantic telephone—but all else was silent as the grave. Far above twinkled the solemn stars, and the red, pointed moon looked angrily down. Then the distant chime from Wandsborough steeple rang out the hour of nine.Only nine! Yet it might be midnight, so still and lifeless was this out-of-the-world hush. A soothing lethargy crept over him. Stillness—silence—rest. After the warring turmoil of a great city, this was as another world. But it was winter, and soon a shiver from head to foot reminded him that the more prosaic side of life, i.e. bed, had its attractions. A few minutes more and he would be on his way to Battisford, but a low whistle, unmistakably human, recalled in a trice his wandering reflections. It was repeated, and simultaneously the figure of a man appeared on the skyline.The stranger did not move. He felt no apprehension, whoever the other might be. He was without hope in this world and therefore absolutely without fear, and so he sat with the lower part of his face resting in his hands, perfectly motionless, while the other approached him, saying in a low whisper:“Why didn’t you answer my signal, dear?”Then the stranger arose, with a harsh laugh.“Ha-ha-ha! I’m afraid you’re the victim of a trifling ‘sell’ to-night, Hubert Dorrien.”To say that the new-comer was astonished would be to say next to nothing at all. He was thunderstruck—speechless; and his face was as white as a sheet, as he stood rooted to the earth—gazing at this unexpected apparition as one transfixed.“G-Good God! Who are you, sir, and what do you want with me?” he stammered at last.“Ha-ha-ha! Good boy, Hubert. Good boy! Mother’s darling and papa’s expectant and deserving heir,” went on the stranger in the same harsh, jeering tone. “And now, may I ask, who is the fair frail one with whom this most delightful moonlight tryst was to have come off?” Excess of courage was at no time one of Hubert Dorrien’s besetting faults, and now he simply shivered, and his lips trembled. All of which the stranger noted as the moonlight played upon the white, terrified face.“I don’t know who the devil you are, sir—and I don’t care,” he found courage to bluster at last. “But anyhow, I shall wish you good-evening, for I must go,” and he made a movement.“But you are not going, Hubert Dorrien, not yet at least. Not until you and I have had a little talk together,” said the stranger, laying a firm hand upon his shoulder.“Well, what do you want with me?” said Hubert doggedly, but horribly uneasy in his mind, for to his ordinary “prudent” disposition was now added the incubus of a tolerably guilty conscience. The place was hideously lonely withal, and his strange questioner looked powerful enough to have eaten him.“Good boy, Hubert—ha-ha-ha! Does papa know you’re over here to-night, I wonder? But now—who were you expecting to find here?”“Be damned to you!” broke out the young fellow furiously. “I’m not going to stand your impudent catechising. Go to blazes and find out. Oh—by God!”For the stranger had turned his face full to the light, and, hiding the lower half of it, had removed his glasses.”—Roland!”And the two stood looking into each other’s eyes in the moonlight, and both faces wore any other expression than that of mutual affection. Yet they were brothers.“Now that you have stepped into my shoes, Hubert, I hope they fit you,” said the elder, drily.“Oh yes, thanks. Fit—very well indeed. More comfortable, by the bye, after a little further wear,” was the reply, given with a cold, exasperating grin.“Which wear you won’t get out of them, my friend, in all probability. So look out for speedy squalls.”“Oh, shan’t I?” replied the younger, his former fears dispelled, now that the mysterious stranger’s identity lay disclosed. “Shan’t I? Who will, then?”“Why, their rightful owner, of course. Myself, to wit.”“Good dog, Brag,” jeered the other contemptuously, jerking a stone across the mouth of Smugglers’ Ladder. Better for him had he kept up his prudence a little longer. “And now, Roland, I don’t come blundering in on top of your little arrangements up in Town, and should be very glad if you would kindly not interfere with mine here. In other words, by remaining in this sequestered spot you are spoiling my fun—if you have not already done so, that is.”“Ah—now we are coming to it. Just answer me one question. What the deuce made you follow me over half the town one night last week, and then pretend you didn’t recognise me?”“By Jove! Itwasyou, then! I wasn’t sure, you see, and I couldn’t well buttonhole another fellow on spec. Besides you were with someone,” answered Hubert readily. But the other laughed drily.“Not bad for you, Hubert. Shouldn’t wonder if you got your ‘silk’ after all, one of these days, if you go on as you have begun. And now, isn’t it a singular thing that a certain rumour should have started here at my expense, coincidently with that merry meeting of ours just by Westminster Bridge?”“Very odd,” was the sneering rejoinder. “But the world’s devilish small, you know, and it’s astonishing how these little things will leak out.”He ought to have known better. One glance at his brother’s face, and he would have spoken in a very different tone. But he was talking half-turned away.“Quite so. It is. And now, O brother of mine, may I ask what motive you had in originating such a gratuitously mischievous and infernally backbiting story?”Hubert’s first alarm had given way to exasperation and venomous resentment. Over and above inspiring him with considerable fear, this inconvenient brother of his had quite spoiled his little programme for the evening.“Go to blazes and find out,” he answered again with an impudent sneer. “Or better still—ask Olive Ingelow what she thinks on the subject—Ha-ha-ha!”But his laughter died, for with a furious curse the other had seized him by the throat. They were perilously near the edge of the chasm to indulge in a wrestling bout. And like a whisper from hell there flashed through the exile’s brain a vivid picture of all he had undergone from that sad parting scene in Wandsborough street to this hour, and probably she for whose sake he had given up all and was now an outcast had allowed her mind to be poisoned against him by the lying reports emanating from the slanderous tongue of this ungrateful and heartless young villain, this serpent who was his brother.“Whisperhername again, and I’ll choke the life out of you,” he ejaculated, almost inarticulate with fury. But Hubert, exasperated beyond measure, forgot all his prudence.“Yes, I will,” he shrieked, wrenching himself free.“You asked just now who I was expecting to-night. What if it was the lovely Olive herself?”But again the speaker’s voice failed him. Again his face went livid with deadly fear. He recoiled and would fain have fled before the terrible effect of his words. Behind lay the dark, yawning mouth of the chasm. His wild scream for help was choked in his throat. There was a fall—a scuffle and a slide. A human figure rolled down the sloping rock, with fingers convulsively clutching the merciless, unyielding stone, and face upturned to the cold moon in a paroxysm of deadly terror, then disappeared into the black chasm. A metallic sound as of stones dislodged striking against the sides of the fissure, then a dull splash far below and—silence.He who was left upon the height above stood motionless for some minutes, his chest heaving and a perfect hell of fiendlike ferocity inflaming his countenance. Then he advanced to the edge of the fissure and peered fearlessly down. All was black as ink. Here and there the moonlight from without fell upon an angle of rock far beneath with a ghostly glint, but there was no sign of life—or death; nothing to tell that a human being had just been hurled down that terrific chasm to his last account. No accusing voice in the air—to proclaim aloud over the placid sea, to thunder forth from the hard, frowning cliffs—or even to whisper into the survivor’s ear the ghastly tale of this chill winter’s night—Murder.And they two were brothers.The survivor roused himself and looked keenly around. Were there no traces on the smooth turf that would connect him with the disappearance of the other when he should come to be missed and a search was made; no marks of feet upon the slippery rock? No, there were none. The moon’s cold eye alone had witnessed the deed—of which there remained absolutely no trace. Having assured himself of this, he readjusted his spectacles and walked rapidly away from the spot without once looking back.Battisford was an old-fashioned place and “The Silver Fleece” was a snug and old-fashioned hostelry, where they kept early hours. Especially on Sundays was this the case, but on this particular Sunday our friend the loquacious waiter was deputed to sit up for the new guest—the gentleman who had gone over to church at Wandsborough. The service there would be over at any time after eight—say half-past, so that he should be back at a quarter-past nine or half-past at the latest. But it was slow work sitting up alone in the deserted coffee-room, and so it speedily came to pass that the talkative one followed the example of the five foolish virgins—slumbered and slept.At length the stranger returned, and the first sound that greeted his ears as he let himself in and stood within the dimly lighted passage was a prolonged and unmistakable snore. Now in the said passage there stood a clock—a large timepiece of venerable aspect—and the hands of this clock were close upon a quarter-past ten. Whether it was a kind of instinct that prompted him to do so, or that he noticed that the glass was closed, but not shut—or both—cannot be here recorded, but in a moment he had opened the clock face, put the hands back forty minutes, and, having closed the glass again, proceeded carelessly in the direction of the snore.“Hallo! Been sitting up for me?” he cried. “Early here, I suppose. Well, see if you can scare me up an S. and B., and that’s all I shall want to-night.”Up jumped the drowsy one with a start.“Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but I must ha’ dropped off,” he said, rubbing his eyes and making for the door. “Ah well, sir, I h’aint been long in a doze; it was after nine when last I looked at this blessed clock, and now it ain’t quite half-past yet, leastways it’s just over it.”The other felt relieved. There was no fear of the man discovering the alteration of the hands if he had been asleep ever since nine, and it crossed his mind as just within the bounds of possibility that this circumstance might yet stand him in good stead.“Just over half-past nine? So it is,” he said carelessly, as the waiter re-appeared with the brandy and soda. “I must have come quick, for it seemed to me a precious long way from Wandsborough.”“You have come quick, sir. Did you come by the cliffs?”“The cliffs! Is there a way by the cliffs, then?”“Oh yes, sir, much shorter. But not over-safe at night, speshully to a gentleman as doesn’t know the country well.”“H’m! I should think not. Likely to take a plunge over in the dark—eh? By the way, what’s the name of the verger at Wandsborough church? He seems a nice, civil sort of fellow. I rather liked the look of him, and he quite took me under his wing and looked after me. The bald-headed man.” This would show that he had been at Wandsborough.“Brown, sir, it is. Oh yes, I know him well, he’s been there a matter o’ many years now. He’s a downright good honest chap, is Brown,” and then the loquacious one launched into a dissertation on the many good qualities and rare virtues of the official in question, which we shall spare the reader, even as he upon whom it was inflicted spared himself by promptly retiring to his room.Next morning, while the grey-bearded stranger was leisurely discussing a late breakfast, the talkative waiter bustled in.“Heard the news, sir? but of course you ’aven’t—seeing you’re only just up.”“Quite right, my friend. And now, what’s the excitement?”“Well, sir, they Bays as how young Mr Dorrien, he as we was talking about yesterday, he can’t be found nowhere,” said the man, hastening to discharge this last prime event with which his mind was burdened. “He went over to Cranston church by himself last night, and didn’t come home all night.”“H’m! I don’t see anything very extraordinary in that. He may have had reasons of his own for being out all night, perhaps went somewhere by train, eh, don’t you see?—young men, you know, will be young men—and missed his train back.”“No, sir, depend upon it there’s something wrong,” dissented the other, provoked at the stranger’s imperturbability. He had taken a great liking to him, “a pleasant-spoken, haffable gent as ever was, and yet a gent every hinch of him, as anybody might see” had been his verdict, in camera, with his colleagues below stairs. “Mistress Dorrien they say is that scared, and she’s going to have the country searched for him. He’s come to grief, ’e has. He carrier from Wandsbro’, he as brought the news—he says”—and here the man’s voice fell to what he intended to be a most impressive and mysterious whisper—“he says that one of them down at Minchkil Bay was coming home along the beach by moonlight and saw the Dorriens’ wraith on ‘The Skegs.’ The ghost always appears before the death of a Dorrien.”The stranger looked quickly round as a violent shiver ran through him from head to foot.“Just shut that door, will you? When the front door is open as well, the most infernal draught finds its way in here. It’s enough to give a man his death. Thanks. What were you saying? Something about a ghost?”Only too delighted with the opportunity, our voluble friend proceeded redundantly to regale the stranger’s ears with the dour legend we heard narrated by very different lips nearly at the commencement of this narrative. But the listener proved sadly sceptical.“Pooh!” he said, when the other had done. “That won’t wash at all, you know. It’s surprising how these humbugging old myths survive in the country, and the further away from Town you get, the more you find of them.”“Beg pardon, sir, but shall you be leaving to-day?” asked the waiter, as the stranger rose from the table.“No.”“All right, sir. Glad to ’ear it, sir. Custom’s slack just now, sir.”
“Pooh! What a fool I am, and what fancies a course of starvation and mooning will put into a man’s head!” exclaimed the stranger impatiently. “A wreath of mist over the sea, and immediately one conjures up an apparition. But I never saw anything more diabolically real in my life.”
Yet he was not quite reassured as he turned to continue his walk. The cloud had completely disappeared from The Skegs, vanished as suddenly as it had gathered there, nor was there a trace of vapour round the turret-like head—and the moonlight seemed to fall clearer upon the face of the cliffs.
He felt weary. He threw himself on the springy turf, heedless of damp or wet. A great, black fissure yawned at his feet, a gaping rent in the ground seeming to straggle into unknown depths. A few boulders lay about the little hollow where he rested. The fissure in front of him was known to the neighbourhood as Smugglers’ Ladder. Bats arose from the dark cleft and circled in the night air. The tide was in, and the lapping of the waves in the chasm beneath came up with a tuneful monotony through this gigantic telephone—but all else was silent as the grave. Far above twinkled the solemn stars, and the red, pointed moon looked angrily down. Then the distant chime from Wandsborough steeple rang out the hour of nine.
Only nine! Yet it might be midnight, so still and lifeless was this out-of-the-world hush. A soothing lethargy crept over him. Stillness—silence—rest. After the warring turmoil of a great city, this was as another world. But it was winter, and soon a shiver from head to foot reminded him that the more prosaic side of life, i.e. bed, had its attractions. A few minutes more and he would be on his way to Battisford, but a low whistle, unmistakably human, recalled in a trice his wandering reflections. It was repeated, and simultaneously the figure of a man appeared on the skyline.
The stranger did not move. He felt no apprehension, whoever the other might be. He was without hope in this world and therefore absolutely without fear, and so he sat with the lower part of his face resting in his hands, perfectly motionless, while the other approached him, saying in a low whisper:
“Why didn’t you answer my signal, dear?”
Then the stranger arose, with a harsh laugh.
“Ha-ha-ha! I’m afraid you’re the victim of a trifling ‘sell’ to-night, Hubert Dorrien.”
To say that the new-comer was astonished would be to say next to nothing at all. He was thunderstruck—speechless; and his face was as white as a sheet, as he stood rooted to the earth—gazing at this unexpected apparition as one transfixed.
“G-Good God! Who are you, sir, and what do you want with me?” he stammered at last.
“Ha-ha-ha! Good boy, Hubert. Good boy! Mother’s darling and papa’s expectant and deserving heir,” went on the stranger in the same harsh, jeering tone. “And now, may I ask, who is the fair frail one with whom this most delightful moonlight tryst was to have come off?” Excess of courage was at no time one of Hubert Dorrien’s besetting faults, and now he simply shivered, and his lips trembled. All of which the stranger noted as the moonlight played upon the white, terrified face.
“I don’t know who the devil you are, sir—and I don’t care,” he found courage to bluster at last. “But anyhow, I shall wish you good-evening, for I must go,” and he made a movement.
“But you are not going, Hubert Dorrien, not yet at least. Not until you and I have had a little talk together,” said the stranger, laying a firm hand upon his shoulder.
“Well, what do you want with me?” said Hubert doggedly, but horribly uneasy in his mind, for to his ordinary “prudent” disposition was now added the incubus of a tolerably guilty conscience. The place was hideously lonely withal, and his strange questioner looked powerful enough to have eaten him.
“Good boy, Hubert—ha-ha-ha! Does papa know you’re over here to-night, I wonder? But now—who were you expecting to find here?”
“Be damned to you!” broke out the young fellow furiously. “I’m not going to stand your impudent catechising. Go to blazes and find out. Oh—by God!”
For the stranger had turned his face full to the light, and, hiding the lower half of it, had removed his glasses.
”—Roland!”
And the two stood looking into each other’s eyes in the moonlight, and both faces wore any other expression than that of mutual affection. Yet they were brothers.
“Now that you have stepped into my shoes, Hubert, I hope they fit you,” said the elder, drily.
“Oh yes, thanks. Fit—very well indeed. More comfortable, by the bye, after a little further wear,” was the reply, given with a cold, exasperating grin.
“Which wear you won’t get out of them, my friend, in all probability. So look out for speedy squalls.”
“Oh, shan’t I?” replied the younger, his former fears dispelled, now that the mysterious stranger’s identity lay disclosed. “Shan’t I? Who will, then?”
“Why, their rightful owner, of course. Myself, to wit.”
“Good dog, Brag,” jeered the other contemptuously, jerking a stone across the mouth of Smugglers’ Ladder. Better for him had he kept up his prudence a little longer. “And now, Roland, I don’t come blundering in on top of your little arrangements up in Town, and should be very glad if you would kindly not interfere with mine here. In other words, by remaining in this sequestered spot you are spoiling my fun—if you have not already done so, that is.”
“Ah—now we are coming to it. Just answer me one question. What the deuce made you follow me over half the town one night last week, and then pretend you didn’t recognise me?”
“By Jove! Itwasyou, then! I wasn’t sure, you see, and I couldn’t well buttonhole another fellow on spec. Besides you were with someone,” answered Hubert readily. But the other laughed drily.
“Not bad for you, Hubert. Shouldn’t wonder if you got your ‘silk’ after all, one of these days, if you go on as you have begun. And now, isn’t it a singular thing that a certain rumour should have started here at my expense, coincidently with that merry meeting of ours just by Westminster Bridge?”
“Very odd,” was the sneering rejoinder. “But the world’s devilish small, you know, and it’s astonishing how these little things will leak out.”
He ought to have known better. One glance at his brother’s face, and he would have spoken in a very different tone. But he was talking half-turned away.
“Quite so. It is. And now, O brother of mine, may I ask what motive you had in originating such a gratuitously mischievous and infernally backbiting story?”
Hubert’s first alarm had given way to exasperation and venomous resentment. Over and above inspiring him with considerable fear, this inconvenient brother of his had quite spoiled his little programme for the evening.
“Go to blazes and find out,” he answered again with an impudent sneer. “Or better still—ask Olive Ingelow what she thinks on the subject—Ha-ha-ha!”
But his laughter died, for with a furious curse the other had seized him by the throat. They were perilously near the edge of the chasm to indulge in a wrestling bout. And like a whisper from hell there flashed through the exile’s brain a vivid picture of all he had undergone from that sad parting scene in Wandsborough street to this hour, and probably she for whose sake he had given up all and was now an outcast had allowed her mind to be poisoned against him by the lying reports emanating from the slanderous tongue of this ungrateful and heartless young villain, this serpent who was his brother.
“Whisperhername again, and I’ll choke the life out of you,” he ejaculated, almost inarticulate with fury. But Hubert, exasperated beyond measure, forgot all his prudence.
“Yes, I will,” he shrieked, wrenching himself free.
“You asked just now who I was expecting to-night. What if it was the lovely Olive herself?”
But again the speaker’s voice failed him. Again his face went livid with deadly fear. He recoiled and would fain have fled before the terrible effect of his words. Behind lay the dark, yawning mouth of the chasm. His wild scream for help was choked in his throat. There was a fall—a scuffle and a slide. A human figure rolled down the sloping rock, with fingers convulsively clutching the merciless, unyielding stone, and face upturned to the cold moon in a paroxysm of deadly terror, then disappeared into the black chasm. A metallic sound as of stones dislodged striking against the sides of the fissure, then a dull splash far below and—silence.
He who was left upon the height above stood motionless for some minutes, his chest heaving and a perfect hell of fiendlike ferocity inflaming his countenance. Then he advanced to the edge of the fissure and peered fearlessly down. All was black as ink. Here and there the moonlight from without fell upon an angle of rock far beneath with a ghostly glint, but there was no sign of life—or death; nothing to tell that a human being had just been hurled down that terrific chasm to his last account. No accusing voice in the air—to proclaim aloud over the placid sea, to thunder forth from the hard, frowning cliffs—or even to whisper into the survivor’s ear the ghastly tale of this chill winter’s night—Murder.
And they two were brothers.
The survivor roused himself and looked keenly around. Were there no traces on the smooth turf that would connect him with the disappearance of the other when he should come to be missed and a search was made; no marks of feet upon the slippery rock? No, there were none. The moon’s cold eye alone had witnessed the deed—of which there remained absolutely no trace. Having assured himself of this, he readjusted his spectacles and walked rapidly away from the spot without once looking back.
Battisford was an old-fashioned place and “The Silver Fleece” was a snug and old-fashioned hostelry, where they kept early hours. Especially on Sundays was this the case, but on this particular Sunday our friend the loquacious waiter was deputed to sit up for the new guest—the gentleman who had gone over to church at Wandsborough. The service there would be over at any time after eight—say half-past, so that he should be back at a quarter-past nine or half-past at the latest. But it was slow work sitting up alone in the deserted coffee-room, and so it speedily came to pass that the talkative one followed the example of the five foolish virgins—slumbered and slept.
At length the stranger returned, and the first sound that greeted his ears as he let himself in and stood within the dimly lighted passage was a prolonged and unmistakable snore. Now in the said passage there stood a clock—a large timepiece of venerable aspect—and the hands of this clock were close upon a quarter-past ten. Whether it was a kind of instinct that prompted him to do so, or that he noticed that the glass was closed, but not shut—or both—cannot be here recorded, but in a moment he had opened the clock face, put the hands back forty minutes, and, having closed the glass again, proceeded carelessly in the direction of the snore.
“Hallo! Been sitting up for me?” he cried. “Early here, I suppose. Well, see if you can scare me up an S. and B., and that’s all I shall want to-night.”
Up jumped the drowsy one with a start.
“Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but I must ha’ dropped off,” he said, rubbing his eyes and making for the door. “Ah well, sir, I h’aint been long in a doze; it was after nine when last I looked at this blessed clock, and now it ain’t quite half-past yet, leastways it’s just over it.”
The other felt relieved. There was no fear of the man discovering the alteration of the hands if he had been asleep ever since nine, and it crossed his mind as just within the bounds of possibility that this circumstance might yet stand him in good stead.
“Just over half-past nine? So it is,” he said carelessly, as the waiter re-appeared with the brandy and soda. “I must have come quick, for it seemed to me a precious long way from Wandsborough.”
“You have come quick, sir. Did you come by the cliffs?”
“The cliffs! Is there a way by the cliffs, then?”
“Oh yes, sir, much shorter. But not over-safe at night, speshully to a gentleman as doesn’t know the country well.”
“H’m! I should think not. Likely to take a plunge over in the dark—eh? By the way, what’s the name of the verger at Wandsborough church? He seems a nice, civil sort of fellow. I rather liked the look of him, and he quite took me under his wing and looked after me. The bald-headed man.” This would show that he had been at Wandsborough.
“Brown, sir, it is. Oh yes, I know him well, he’s been there a matter o’ many years now. He’s a downright good honest chap, is Brown,” and then the loquacious one launched into a dissertation on the many good qualities and rare virtues of the official in question, which we shall spare the reader, even as he upon whom it was inflicted spared himself by promptly retiring to his room.
Next morning, while the grey-bearded stranger was leisurely discussing a late breakfast, the talkative waiter bustled in.
“Heard the news, sir? but of course you ’aven’t—seeing you’re only just up.”
“Quite right, my friend. And now, what’s the excitement?”
“Well, sir, they Bays as how young Mr Dorrien, he as we was talking about yesterday, he can’t be found nowhere,” said the man, hastening to discharge this last prime event with which his mind was burdened. “He went over to Cranston church by himself last night, and didn’t come home all night.”
“H’m! I don’t see anything very extraordinary in that. He may have had reasons of his own for being out all night, perhaps went somewhere by train, eh, don’t you see?—young men, you know, will be young men—and missed his train back.”
“No, sir, depend upon it there’s something wrong,” dissented the other, provoked at the stranger’s imperturbability. He had taken a great liking to him, “a pleasant-spoken, haffable gent as ever was, and yet a gent every hinch of him, as anybody might see” had been his verdict, in camera, with his colleagues below stairs. “Mistress Dorrien they say is that scared, and she’s going to have the country searched for him. He’s come to grief, ’e has. He carrier from Wandsbro’, he as brought the news—he says”—and here the man’s voice fell to what he intended to be a most impressive and mysterious whisper—“he says that one of them down at Minchkil Bay was coming home along the beach by moonlight and saw the Dorriens’ wraith on ‘The Skegs.’ The ghost always appears before the death of a Dorrien.”
The stranger looked quickly round as a violent shiver ran through him from head to foot.
“Just shut that door, will you? When the front door is open as well, the most infernal draught finds its way in here. It’s enough to give a man his death. Thanks. What were you saying? Something about a ghost?”
Only too delighted with the opportunity, our voluble friend proceeded redundantly to regale the stranger’s ears with the dour legend we heard narrated by very different lips nearly at the commencement of this narrative. But the listener proved sadly sceptical.
“Pooh!” he said, when the other had done. “That won’t wash at all, you know. It’s surprising how these humbugging old myths survive in the country, and the further away from Town you get, the more you find of them.”
“Beg pardon, sir, but shall you be leaving to-day?” asked the waiter, as the stranger rose from the table.
“No.”
“All right, sir. Glad to ’ear it, sir. Custom’s slack just now, sir.”