Kitabı oku: «An Isle of Surrey: A Novel», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XX.
A HOSTAGE AT CRAWFORD'S HOUSE

The failure of Philip Ray's expedition to Richmond had dispirited him in the pursuit of the man whom he called John Ainsworth, but whom Richmond knew as William Crawford. He was an impulsive man in action, but when action was denied to him, he could make little or no progress. He was a man of devices rather than plans. In the heat of action he could invent, but he needed the stimulus of present necessity or expediency before he could design. He could carry out a plan, not invent one. He was a good captain, but no general.

Hence, when he found himself baffled at Richmond, he did not know in what direction to turn for a clue to Ainsworth. He chafed under his impotency; but he could not remove it. The conclusion to which he came was that Ainsworth did not live at Richmond, and he hated that town because of the disappointment he had experienced in it. His determination to take vengeance on Ainsworth was still unshaken; but he felt that, having missed his man once, the likelihood of encountering him again was diminished. Say, according to the law of chances, they should be fated to meet twice in ten years: one of those meetings had been missed, owing to the ill-luck of his not being in Richmond the day Lambton saw Ainsworth there. This, of course, was not logical, but then no one who knew Ray ever expected him to be influenced by pure reason. It was not according to the law of chances, for he had had no chance of seeing Ainsworth in Richmond, since he himself had not been in the town that day.

On the evening of his return from Richmond he had been asked by Bramwell to go and apologise to Layard for the postponement or abandonment of his brother-in-law's visit. Layard had opened the door for him, and, seeing a young man he did not know, and having heard from Hetty that Bramwell had promised to call, he concluded that this was the promised visitor; held out his hand, and had drawn Philip inside the door before the latter could explain. As soon as Ray had told Layard he was not the expected man, and that he was only a relative of the desired guest, "Well," said Layard with one of his unexpected bright smiles on his homely face, "since you have ventured into the bandit's cave, I must hold you as hostage until he comes to release, or reclaim, or redeem you. Sit down."

"But he will not come. He cannot come, he expects me back. He is unable to come because he cannot leave the boy alone," said Ray, somewhat disarmed and drawn towards this ugly man with the kind voice and surprising smile.

"Well, now, you cannot plead the same excuse. You are here, in the first place, and, in the second place, the boy's not alone now. Do sit down, pray. I do not make a new acquaintance once in a year, and I haven't a single companionable neighbour. You won't miss half-an-hour out of your life, and I should take it as a favour if you gave me one."

What could Ray do but sit down?

"Do you smoke?" asked Layard.

"Yes.

"For," said Layard, as they lit their pipes, "my sister says she is certain Mr. Bramwell doesn't smoke; and her reason for thinking so is because he seems not to be a fool."

"Then," said Ray, putting down his pipe, "perhaps Miss Layard objects to smoking."

"Not she," said Layard; "it is only her disagreeable way of rebuking me. Please go on with your pipe."

"Old maids," thought Ray, "invariably do object to smoking. I'm sorry I sat down, and now I can't in decency get up for a while. An elderly female edition of this man would be a dreadful sight."

His own handsome face, with its straight brows and straight nose, was reflected behind Layard's back in the little mirror of the chiffonier.

"You do not live in this neighbourhood?" asked Layard, when Ray had resumed his pipe.

"No. I live in Camberwell."

Layard straightened himself in his chair, and looked hard at the other for a few seconds.

"That receding forehead," thought Ray, "indicates a weak intellect. I hope I am not face to face alone with a madman. What on earth is the ape looking at! I wish this gorgon sister, however hideous she may be, would come in."

The door opened, and, in response to his thought, the gorgon entered.

"My sister, Mr. Ray. Hetty, Mr. Ray has called to say that Mr. Bramwell cannot come this evening; he must not leave his little boy alone, and I have impounded Mr. Ray."

Ray bowed, and took in his hand the slender hand that was held out to him with a smile, took in his eyes the smile and the beauty of the girl, and said to himself, "Are they real?"

He was disposed to think some trick was being played upon him, for, from what Frank said, he had been prepared for age and ugliness; and what Layard had said about the smoking had prepared him for sourness and sarcastic eyes, and here-!

Hetty sat down quite close to Philip, and he felt very strangely at this, because still he had the feeling that there must be some trick in the affair; since he was prepared for blue spectacles, and a blue nose, and a front, perhaps, and prominent teeth. And here, instead, were the brightest and bluest and most cheerful eyes he had ever seen, instead of spectacles; and a lovely delicate, shapely nose, with the least suggestion of an aquiline curve in it, and of the colour of the petal of a white rose that lies over the petal of a red rose, and hair that was like amber against the sun, and teeth as even as a child's and as white as a fresh cut apple. Was it all real?

"Won't you go on smoking, Mr. Ray?" said the apparition at his side.

"I will," said Ray, not knowing what he said, but putting the pipe mechanically into his mouth. He didn't even say "Thank you." He had still some notion of unreality in his mind. Was it a dream, if it wasn't a trick? Anyway, it would be best to be on his guard, so he only said "I will," without even "Thank you." He was waiting to see what would happen next.

The next thing that happened was nothing to astonish an ordinary mortal, but it filled Philip Ray with such a feeling of at once disappointment and joy that he was afterwards certain he must have spoken incoherently for a few minutes.

Said Layard to Hetty, "I was just on the point of saying to Mr. Ray when you came in that if, by any misfortune, another quarter of an hour went by without my getting food, all would be up with me."

With a laugh Hetty rose and left the room.

Ray thought, "That strange look I saw in his eyes must have been the bale fire of cannibalism. He must have been thinking of eating me!"

Then in a few minutes the strangest thing in this dream happened before Philip's eyes. The girl of whose reality he had such doubt carried in the supper-things like the simplest maiden that ever ministered to man. Philip rose and stood with his back against the mantelpiece, looking on, while Layard helped his sister to spread the feast and kept up a running commentary on the various articles as they were placed on the table.

When all was ready they sat down, Philip still feeling dull and heavy, like one in a dream. Could it be that this incomparable being was no more in that household than the sister of the host? Could it be that she busied herself with plates and knives and forks, and beef and salad and cress, just like other girls he had seen? Incredible! And yet if he had not been dreaming, so it was.

"Pepper, mustard, vinegar, oil! I see only four cruets, Hetty," said Alfred Layard reproachfully. "What is the meaning of only four cruets? Where is the fifth?"

"There are only four bottles. What do you want, Alfred?"

"I do not want anything, but Mr. Ray does. Mr. Ray, do you take your arsenic with your beef or in the salad?"

Philip looked from one to the other with a stupid smile. He felt more than ever that the whole thing was unreal, notwithstanding the fact that he was eating and drinking.

"When you know Alfred better, you won't mind anything he says," said the girl, addressing the guest.

"Speak for yourself," said Layard solemnly and in a warning voice. "Listen to me! Just as you came into the room, Hetty-"

"O, I know! You told us that before. You were on the point of fainting from hunger."

"No! That was only my way of putting it. What I really meant was that I did not feel myself able to face the discovery I had made without the aid of food instantly applied, and in ample quantities."

"But what about the arsenic?" she asked, with a look of perplexed amusement.

"I'm coming to the arsenic."

"I thought you intended it for Mr. Ray. What has he done?"

"Hetty, you are flippant. What has he done? Why, do you know that he lives at Camberwell?" cried Layard, putting down his knife and fork, and glaring at his sister with a horrified expression.

"Is that a capital offence at Welford?" asked Ray, trying to rouse himself.

"In the present connection it is ten thousand times a worse crime than slaying the sacred Ibis. You live at Camberwell. You walk along the tow-path. You get by a floating-stage from the tow-path to Boland's Ait. Confess! You may as well confess. I see it all now. Were you on Boland's Ait within the past week?"

"Certainly; I confess I was. Is that a still greater offence than living at Camberwell?"

"It makes parts of the stupendous crime."

"And what is the stupendous crime?"

"Our sometime lodger, Mr. Crawford, saw you come along the track, saw you disappear behind the head of the island, and saw you did not reappear at the other end. Being thus unable to make head or tail of you, he thought you were drowned, and insisted on my going out at a most untimely hour in order that we might make certain of your fate. As we just got under Welford Bridge you stepped out from under it, looking not a penny the worse; I say you deserve death for these abnormal aquatic habits of yours, by which you disturb a quiet household, and take a peaceful citizen like me away from his warm fireside into the bleak winds of December close on midnight."

"I'm very sorry, I'm sure," said Ray, with a smile, "and I am very much indebted to Mr. Crawford for the interest he took in me. He must be a very kind-hearted man."

"He's a hero!" cried Hetty enthusiastically. "A Bayard!"

"But, as I told you before, rather fat for the part," said her brother. "Mr. Ray, he is our lodger and our landlord, and hence he must be above all reproach. Our association with him would put him all right if he was a Thug. But my sister is really too much carried away by her admiration for this Bayard because he married a rich woman-"

"Who is a hopeless invalid," broke in Hetty.

"Who owns a good deal of property in this neighbourhood-"

"And is ever so much older than he. I call him a most heroic man."

"And large savings out of her income."

"Mr. Ray, don't mind Alfred. He is only joking. In his secret heart he admires Mr. Crawford as much as I do; but he will not give in. This man saved Mrs. Crawford from being burned in her house. She is ever so much older than he, and he married her out of a wish to make her happy after saving her life at the risk of his own." The girl became quite excited as she spoke. Her lips quivered, her cheeks flushed, the golden light blazed in her blue eyes.

Her brother looked at her with admiration.

Philip Ray looked at her, and for the first time in his life realised ecstasy. He had never tasted the wine of love before, and now he was drinking the most potent and intoxicating of all kinds-love at first sight.

"I consider," he said, at last fully awake, "Mr. Crawford a very lucky man." He meant in having so beautiful an advocate.

"So do I," said Layard, meaning in a worldly sense.

"And does he live with you always?" asked Ray, who had some confused memory of the phrase, "sometime lodger."

"No," said Hetty. "He is to come to us for only a couple or three days a month. He has his offices for the property upstairs."

"O, I see," said Ray, much relieved. He did not want this object of her admiration to be near her. He was now interested no more in Mr. Crawford. To keep the conversation going, he said, "And where does Mr. Crawford live the rest of the time?"

"At Richmond."

He started. The name of the town was a harsh, discordant note; but he said nothing, and shortly after took his leave, promising to call again.

From that night he visited almost every evening at Crawford's House. When he was not there he pitied himself with a pathetic, desperate pity. When he was there he wondered how all the rest of the world could be content to dwell so far apart from her.

CHAPTER XXI.
CRAWFORD SELLS A PATENT

A few days after William Crawford's return from Welford, and the scene in which he gave his wife a specimen of his quality as the player of a part in private theatricals, he went up to London with one of the hundred pounds in his pocket. He told her he could not dream of taking the money from her except to pay the men working on the models and machines for his great patent, and in the interest of their joint worldly welfare.

He set off, as usual, in the afternoon, taking with him half the money. He was a gambler, but no plunger. He played for the excitement of the game, rather than for the sake of gaining. He had no idea that he should win a fortune. His luck was usually bad, but this did not keep him back; nor did he play on in the hope or expectation that it would turn so as to recoup him. Every gambler is entitled to curse his luck, and Crawford cursed his with no bated breath. But he would rather have bad luck than no play. He was not a mean man with money when he had it, but he was a desperate man when he wanted it.

Cards and pretty faces were his weaknesses. With regard to cards, he recognised the laws of honour; with regard to pretty faces, he regarded no law but the law of his wishes. He had never been in love in his life. He admired pretty women, and made love to every pretty woman he met, if occasion served. But he was completely wanting in any feeling of self-sacrifice or devotion. He was, as he told his wife, good at private theatricals. He could play the heroic, or romantic, or sentimental lover, according as circumstances demanded, to the utmost perfection; but his heart was never once touched. He looked on women as inferior creatures, the natural prey of man. With them he had no mercy or compunction. He made love automatically to the owner of every pretty face he came across, provided there was no great risk from male friend or relative; for, though he could assume the air and words of a hero in the presence of a woman, he fought shy of men in their anger, and was of that prudent disposition that prefers flight to fight.

On going to town this afternoon, he left half the money he had got from his wife behind him. One hundred pounds was quite enough for one night; one hundred pounds was quite as good as two. Playing for certain stakes, one hundred pounds would last him the whole night, even if luck were dead against him. Two hundred pounds would enable him to play for stakes of double the amount: that was all. He would rather play two nights for small stakes than one night for stakes of double the value.

William Crawford was a cautious, not to say cowardly, man. This talk of the artificers engaged in making a machine for him was not wholly illusory. From time to time he ordered inexpensive portions of machinery at a mechanical engineer's in the Blackfriars Road. He never took the parts of the machine away; but left them in the workshops, saying he would not remove them until it was all ready to be put together. He had no fear that he might one day be driven to make good his words about this wonderful machine in course of construction; but if he were, there lay the wheels and racks and drums in the workshop. Of course the manner in which they were to be put together remained his secret. It was not likely he would divulge that until he had secured his patent, and, for aught you could know or should know from him to the contrary, he might have other portions of the machine in course of manufacture for him in other workshops.

When he arrived in town this early day in June he went first to the Blackfriars Road and gave an order for two cog-wheels of peculiar make. He handed in a paper with the specification, paid a bill of a couple of pounds, and then betook himself to the Counter Club.

Here he dined, and from the dinner-table went to the card-room, which he did not leave until seven o'clock the next morning. He breakfasted at the club, and after breakfast fell asleep in a chair in the deserted smoking-room, and did not wake for a couple of hours. Then he went out, and, turning into Bond Street, did a little shopping, and got back to Richmond at about noon.

He found his wife in the drawing-room with some fancy work in her hand. After an affectionate greeting, he sat down beside her and took her hand as usual. Contrary to his custom, he had brought no book, or flowers, or basket of fruit.

"And how did you get on in town, William?" she asked, giving no time for him to notice, if he had not already noticed, the omission of his customary little present.

"Very well indeed, Nellie. Better than I could have hoped. Better than I deserved."

"Not better than you deserved, surely, dear," she said fondly. "That could not be."

"Well, better than I could have hoped. I am afraid, Nellie, I got on so splendidly that success has turned my head."

She looked at him in surprise and pressed his hand. "I know you better than to think success could turn your head."

"Nevertheless, my success has had such an effect on me that I have not brought you any flowers, or fruit, or a book. Does not that look like being spoiled by success? Should I not be spoiled by prosperity when I forgot you?"

"It does not follow," she said tenderly, as though she were excusing herself, not him, "that because you did not bring me something that you forgot me."

He put his hand in his pocket, took something out of it, and before she knew what he was doing she found a gold bracelet, having a circle of pearls round a large diamond, clasped upon her arm.

She gave a little cry of wonder and pleasure. "Why, what is this? Where did you get it? Whom is it for?"

"It is for my own wife Nellie. I bought it for her in Bond Street to-day, to show her that I did not forget her when away. And I did not buy it out of the money she lent me yesterday-for, look!" He threw into her lap a lot of gold and notes. "There's the hundred pounds I took with me to town-and look!" He held out towards her more gold and notes. "Here is another hundred I have got over and above what she lent me, and the price of the bracelet."

"Wonder upon wonder!" she cried with a laugh and a simple childlike joy in her husband's success. "Tell me all about the affair. Have you met fairies?"

"No, dear. Only a good angel, and you are she," he said, and kissed the hand below the gleaming bracelet.

"But I did not give you this. You got this yourself."

"No, you did not give me this money directly, but you gave me the means of getting it."

"But tell me all, dear. I am dying to hear."

"You must know, then, that in designing some machinery for preparing my fibre I hit upon an immense improvement in the scutching machine now in use. I patented my improvement, and sold my patent last evening for two hundred and fifty pounds."

She was overwhelmed with gratitude and joy. This was the first-fruit of his genius, the earnest of his great triumph.

For half-an-hour they sat and chatted, he telling her his schemes for the future, and she listening, full of delight and pride and love. Then he said he had some writing to do, and went to his room.

The fact was that he could hardly keep his eyes open. It had been a very hot night at the Counter Club, and he had come away the winner of close upon three hundred pounds. He locked the door, drew down the blind, threw himself on a couch, and was fast asleep in a few minutes.

Mrs. Crawford always breakfasted in her own room, and had her other meals brought to her in the drawing-room. She had gradually sunk back almost to the helpless condition in which she had lived so long before the fire. She suffered no pain, but she was nearly as helpless as a year ago. If necessity required it, she could creep about the room by resting her hands on the furniture, but as a rule she went from one place to the other by means of her invalid's chair. She never ventured down-stairs now. She lived upon the first-floor. Here were her bedroom, the drawing-room, her husband's study-which he called his own room-and the dressing-room where he slept, so as to be within call if she needed assistance in the night.

The doctors told Crawford that his wife was, if anything, rather worse than she had been before the fire, and that any other such shock would in all likelihood kill her.

"Is there no chance of it producing an effect like the former one?" Crawford had asked.

Well, there was no saying for certain. This, however, was sure, that if she sustained another shock and by chance she once more regained the use of her limbs, the relief would be only temporary, and the reaction would leave her in a very critical condition indeed-the chances were ten to one she would die.

A shock, then, was to be avoided at any cost.

With Mrs. Crawford's life all William Crawford's interest in the property would pass away. This property brought in more than Ned Bayliss, or Jim Ford, or Matt Jordan, or any of the other loafers on Welford Bridge imagined. The income was nearer to two than one thousand a year, and Mrs. Crawford's savings exceeded three thousand pounds. These savings would become Crawford's absolute property upon his wife's death. She had practically put them at his disposal already. They were his own, she told him, and he took her word for it. But that was a good reason why he should be moderately careful of them. As long as she lived he had not only these savings at his disposal, but the lion's share of the income as well. If he did not blunder, nothing could take the savings away from him; if she died he would lose all participation in the fine income.

A shock was to be avoided at any cost.

One morning after breakfast, in the middle of June, Crawford came into the drawing-room, and said to his wife:

"I have slept so badly! I do not know when I had so little sleep, and the little I got so disturbed."

She looked at him anxiously. "You are not unwell? You don't feel anything the matter, do you?"

"O, no! I am quite well. But I have had such horrid nightmares. What you said to me a fortnight ago about the want of gates on that ice-house all came back to me in sleep last night, and I had the most awful visions of that young Layard drowning in it while I was looking on, unable to stretch out my hand to save him." He made a gesture as though to sweep away the spectacle still haunting him.

"I am so sorry, William, I said anything about the place. I am, indeed. I spoke foolishly, no doubt. You are not so superstitious as to fancy anything dreadful has happened?" she asked, losing colour and leaning back in her chair.

"Dear me! No. And I don't think you spoke foolishly at all. I now see that what you said was quite right. I own it's very selfish of me, but I do not feel disposed to go through another such night as last. That brought home to me the danger you saw at once, and instinctively."

She could not help smiling and feeling gratified at these candid and gracious words from so clever a man-from a man who got two hundred and fifty pounds the other day for the pure brain-work of a couple of hours.

"And what do you think of doing?"

"Well, I feel that the surest way to lay the ghost that haunted me last night, and provide against all danger, would be for me to go down to Welford and get these gateways boarded up."

"Indeed, indeed! I'm sure that would be the best thing to do. When did you fancy you would go?"

"I could go to-day. I am not doing anything particular. Do you want me for anything?"

He asked the question in a soft submissive voice.

"I!" she cried, flushing with pleasure at his deference to her. "Not I, William! I am all right, and feel as well as usual. You could do nothing that would please me more."

"Very well, then; I'll go at once. I shall not want more than an hour or so there. I need not wait to see the thing done. All I shall have to do is to get hold of a carpenter, and put the job into his hands."

And so he set out for Welford.

The fact is he had dreamed last night of Hetty Layard's bright face and wonderful golden hair, and he was getting tired of Richmond and-the house.

It would be very pleasant to go down to Welford, knock at the door, and find Hetty alone. Her brother would be at the gasworks. Philip Ray was in some public office or other, and could not come to make that tow-path horrible with his presence at that hour of the day. He should be able to reach Crawford's House at about eleven, and get away at about one or two. Thus he would run no risks, and he should see again the prettiest girl he had now in his memory.