Kitabı oku: «One Of Them», sayfa 40

“This is very poor jesting, I must say,” muttered he, angrily.

“You’ll find it, perhaps, a very serious earnest if we’re caught.”

“Come, come, Loo, forgive him; he certainly meant all for the best. I ‘m sure you did, Trover,” said old Holmes, with the blandest of voices.

“Why, what on earth do you mean?” cried he. “You are just as deep in the plot as I am. But for you, how should I have known about Hawke’s having any property in America, or that he had any heir to it?”

“I am not naturally suspicious, Trover,” said she, with mock gravity, “but I declare I begin to believe you are a bad man, – a very bad man!”

“I hope and trust not, Loo,” said old Holmes, fervently; “I really hope not.”

“It is no common baseness that seeks for its victim the widow and the fatherless. Please to put that rug under my feet, Trover. There are barristers would give their eye-tooth for such an opening for invective. I have one fat friend in my eye would take the brief for mere pleasure of blackguarding you. You know whom I mean, papa.”

“You may push a joke too far, Mrs. Morris, – or Mrs. Hawke, rather,” said Trover, rudely, “for I don’t know by which name you will be pleased to be known in future.”

“I am thinking very seriously of taking a new one, Trover, and the gentleman who is to share it with me will probably answer all your inquiries on that and every other subject. I trust, too, that he will meet us to-morrow.”

“Well, if I were Trover, I’d not pester him with questions,” said Holmes, laughingly.

“Don’t you think they might take to their oars again, now?” asked Trover, in a very beseeching tone.

“Poor Mr. Trover!” said she, with a little laugh. “It is really very hard on him! I have a notion that this night’s pleasuring on the Lake of Constance will be one of the least grateful of his recollections.” Then turning to the boatmen, she bade them “give way” with a will, and pull their best for Rorschach.

From this time out nothing was said aloud, but Holmes and his daughter spoke eagerly together in whispers, while Trover sat apart, his head turned towards where the shadow of large mountains indicated the shore of the lake.

“A’n’t you happy now, Mr. Trover?” said she, at length, as the boat glided into a little cove, where a number of fishing-craft lay at anchor. “A’n’t you happy?”

Either smarting under what he felt the sarcasm of her question, or too deeply immersed in his own thoughts, he made no reply whatever, but as the boat grated on the shingly beach he sprang out and gained the land. In another minute the boatmen had drawn the skiff high and dry, on the sand, and assisted the others to disembark.

“How forgetful you are of all gallant attentions!” said she, as Trover stood looking on, and never offering any assistance whatever. “Have you got any silver in your purse, papa?”

“I can’t see what these pieces are,” said Holmes, trying to peer through the darkness.

“Pay these people, Trover,” said she, “and be liberal with them. Remember from what fate they have saved you.” And as she spoke she handed him her purse. “We’ll saunter slowly up to the village, and you can follow us.”

Trover called the men around him, and proceeded to settle their fare, while Holmes and his daughter proceeded at an easy pace inland.

“How much was there in your purse, Loo?” asked Holmes.

“Something under twenty Napoleons, papa; but it will be quite enough.”

“Enough for what, dear?”

“Enough to tempt poor Mr. Trover. We shall never see more of him.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I am certain of it. He was thinking of nothing else than how to make his escape all the time we were crossing the lake, and I, too, had no more pressing anxiety than how to get rid of him. Had I offered him a certain sum, we should have had him for a pensioner as long as he lived, but by making him steal the money I force him to be his own security that he ‘ll never come back again. It was for this that I persisted in acting on his fears in the boat; the more wretched we made him the cheaper he became, and when he heaved that last heavy sigh, I took ten Napoleons off his price.”

Holmes had to stop walking, and hold his hands to his sides with laughter. The device seemed to him about the best practical joke he had ever heard of. Then ceasing suddenly, he said, —

“But what if he were to go back to the others, Loo, and turn approver against us?”

“We are safe enough on that score. He has nothing to tell them that they do not know already. They have got to the bottom of all the mystery, and they don’t want him.”

“Still it seems to me, Loo, that it might have been safer to keep him along with us, – under our eye, as it were.”

“Not at all, papa. It is as in a shipwreck, where the plank that will save two will sink with three. The stratagem that will rescue us would be probably marred by him, and, besides, he’ll provide for his own safety better than we should.”

Thus talking, they entered the little village, where, although not yet daybreak, a small café was open, – one of those humble refreshment-houses frequented by peasants on their way to their daily toil.

“Let us breakfast here,” said she, “while they are getting ready some light carriage to carry us on to St. Grail. I have an old friend there, the prior of the monastery, who used to be very desirous to convert me long ago. I intend to give him a week or ten days’ trial now, papa; and he may also, if he feel so disposed, experiment upon you.”

It was in this easy chit-chat they sat down to their coffee in the little inn at Rorschach. They were soon, however, on the road again, sealed in a little country carriage drawn by a stout mountain pony.

“Strange enough all this adventure seems,” said she, as they ascended the steep mountain on foot, to relieve the weary beast. “Sometimes it appears all like a dream to me, and now, when I look over the lake there, and see the distant spires of Bregenz yonder, I begin to believe that there is reality in it, and that we are acting in a true drama.”

Holmes paid but little attention to her words, wrapped up as he was in some details he was reading in a newspaper he had carried away from the Café.

“What have you found to interest you so much there, papa?” asked she, at last.

Still he made no reply, but read on.

“It can scarcely be that you are grown a politician again,” continued she, laughingly, “and pretend to care for Austria or for Italy.”

“This is all about Paten,” said he, eagerly. “There’s the whole account of it.”

“Account of what?” cried she, trying to snatch the paper from him.

“Of his death.”

“His death! Is he dead? Is Paten dead?” She had to clutch his arm as she spoke to support herself, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she kept her feet. “How was it? Tell me how he came by his death. Was it O’Shea?”

“No, he was killed. The man who did it has given himself up, alleging that it was in an altercation between them; a pistol, aimed at his own breast, discharged its contents in Paten’s.”

She tore the paper from his hand, and, tottering over to a bank on the roadside, bent down to read it. Holmes continued to talk over the event and all the details, but she did not hear what he said. She had but senses for the lines she was perusing.

“I thought at first it was O’Shea in some disguise. But it cannot be; for see, they remark here that this man has been observed loitering about Baden ever since Paten arrived. Oh, here’s the mystery,” cried she. “His name is Collier.”

“That was an old debt between them,” said Holmes.

“I hope there will be no discovery as to Paten’s real name. It would so certainly revive the old scandal.”

“We can scarcely expect such good luck as that, Loo. There is but one thing to do, dear; we must put the sea between us and our calumniators.”

“How did O’Shea come by the letters if he had no hand in it?”

“Perhaps he had; perhaps it was a concerted thing; perhaps he bought up the letters from Collier afterwards. Is it of the least consequence to us how he got them?”

“Yes, Collier might have read them,” said she, in a hollow voice; and as Holmes, startled by the tones, turned round, he saw that she had a sickening faintness over her, and that she trembled violently.

“Where’s your old courage, Loo?” said he, cheeringly. “Paten is gone, Collier has a good chance of being sent after him, and here we are, almost the only actors left of the whole drama.”

“That’s true, papa, very true; and as we shall have to play in the afterpiece, the sooner we get the tragedy out of our heads the better.”

They remounted the carriage, and went on their way. There, where the beech-trees bend across the road, it is there they have just disappeared! The brisk tramp of the pony can be heard even yet; it grows fainter and fainter, and only the light train of dust now marks their passage. They are gone; and we are to see them no more!

CHAPTER VIII. CONSULTATION

Every host has had some experience of the fact that there are guests of whom he takes leave at the drawing-room door, and others who require that he should accompany them to the very frontier of his kingdom, and only part with as they step into their carriage. The characters of a story represent each of these classes. Some make their exit quietly, unobtrusively; they slip away with a little gesture of the hand, or a mere look to say adieu. Others arise with a pretentious dignity from their places, and, in the ruffle of their voluminous plumage, seem to say, “When we spread out our wings for flight, the small birds may flutter away to their nests.” It is needless that we should tell our readers that we have reached that critical moment. The dull roll of carriages to the door, and the clank of the let-down steps tell that the hour of departure has arrived, and that the entertainer will very soon be left all alone, without “One of Them.”

As in the real world, no greater solecism can be committed than to beg the uprising guest to reseat himself, nor is there any measure more certain of disastrous failure; so in fiction, when there is a move in the company, the sooner they all go the better.

While I am painfully impressed with this fact, – while I know and feel that my last words must be very like the leave-takings of that tiresome button-holder who, great-coated and muffled himself, will yet like to detain you in the cold current of a doorway, – I am yet sensible of the deference due to those who have indulgently accompanied me through my story, and would desire to leave no questions unanswered with regard to those who have figured before him.

Mr. Trover, having overheard the dialogue which had such an intimate bearing on his own fortunes, lost no time, as we have seen, in quitting the hotel at Bregenz; and although Winthrop expected to see him at dinner, he was not surprised to hear that he had left a message to say he had gone over to the cottage to dine with Mrs. Hawke. It was with an evident sense of relief that the honest American learned this fact. There was something too repulsive to his nature in the thought of sitting down at the same table in apparent good fellowship with the man whom he knew to be a villain, and whose villany a very few hours would expose to the world; but what was to be done? Quackinboss had insisted on the point; he had made him give a solemn pledge to make no change in his manner towards Trover till such tine as the Laytons had returned with full and incontestable proofs of his guilt.

“We’ll spoil everything, sir,” said Quackinboss, “if we harpoon him in deep water. We must go cautiously to work, and drive him up, gradually, towards the shallows, where, if one miss, another can strike him.”

Winthrop was well pleased to hear that the “chase” was at least deferred, and that he was to dine tète-à-tête with his true-hearted countryman.

Hour after hour went over, and in their eager discussion of the complicated intrigue they had unravelled, they lost all recollection of Trover or his absence. It was the character of the woman which absorbed their entire thoughts; and while Winthrop quoted her letters, so full of beautiful sentiments, so elevated, and so refined, Quackinboss related many little traits of her captivating manner and winning address.

“It’s all the same in natur’, sir,” said he, summing up. “Where will you see prettier berries than on the deadly nightshade? and do you think that they was made to look so temptin’ for nothing? Or wasn’t it jest for a lesson to us to say, ‘Be on your guard, stranger; what’s good to look at may be mortal bad to feed on.’ There’s many a warnin’ in things that don’t talk with our tongues, but have a language of their own.”

“Very true all that, sir,” resumed the other; “but it was always a puzzle to me why people with such good faculties would make so bad a use of them.”

“Ain’t it all clear enough they was meant for examples, – jest that and no more? You see that clever fellow yonder; he can do fifty things you and I could n’t; he has got brains for this, that, and t’other. Well, if he’s a rogue, he won’t be satisfied with workin’ them brains God has given him, because he has no right sense of thankfulness in his heart, but he ‘ll be counterfitin’ all sorts of brains that he has n’t got at all: these are the devil’s gifts, and they do the devil’s work.”

“I know one thing,” said Winthrop, doggedly, “it is that sort of folk make the best way in life.”

“Clear wrong – all straight on end – unsound doctrine that, sir. We never think of countin’ the failures, the chaps that are in jail, or at the galleys, or maybe hanged. We only take the two or three successful rogues that figure in high places, and we say, ‘So much for knavery’. Now let me jest ask you, How did they come there? Was n’t it by pretend in’ to be good men? Wasn’t it by mock charity, mock patriotism, mock sentiment in fifty ways, supported now and then by a bit of real action, just as a forger always slips a real gold piece amongst his counterfeits? And what is all this but sayin’ the way to be prosperous is to be good – ”

“Or to seem good!” broke in Winthrop.

“Well, sir, the less we question seemin’ the better! I ‘d rather be taken in every day of the week than I ‘d go on doubtin’ every hour of the day, and I believe one must come very nigh to either at last.”

As they thus chatted, a light post-carriage rolled into the inn yard, and Dr. Layton and Alfred hastily got out and made for the apartment of their friends.

“Just as I said, – just as I foretold, – the certificate forged, without giving themselves the trouble to falsify the register,” broke in Layton. “We have seen the book at Meisner, and it records the death of a certain serving-woman, Esther Baumhardt, who was buried there seven years ago. All proves that these people, in planning this knavery, calculated on never meeting an opponent.”

“Where is this Mr. Trover?” said Alfred. “I thought we should find him here in all the abandonment of friendly ease.”

“He dined at the cottage with his other friends,” said Winthrop, “for the which I owe him all my gratitude, for I own to you I had sore misgivings about sitting down with him.”

“I could n’t have done it,” broke in the old doctor. “My first mouthful would have choked me. As it is, while I wait to denounce his guilt, I have an uneasy sense of complicity, as though I knew of a crime and had not proclaimed it to the world.”

“Well, sir,” said Quackinboss, and with a sententious slowness, “I ain’t minded like either of you. My platform is this: Rogues is varmin; they are to the rest of mankind what wolves and hyenas is to the domestic animals. Now, it would not be good policy or good sport to pison these critturs. What they desarve is to be hunted down! It is a rare stimulus to a fellow’s blood to chase a villain. Since I have been on this trail I feel a matter of ten years younger.”

“And I am impatient to follow up the chase,” said the doctor, who in his eagerness walked up and down the room with a fretful anxiety.

“Remember,” said Alfred, “that however satisfied we ourselves may be on every point of these people’s culpability, we have no authority to arrest them, or bring them to justice. We can set the law in motion, but not usurp its action.”

“And are they to be let go free?” asked Quackinboss. “Is it when we have run ‘em to earth we ‘re to call off the dogs and go home?”

“He’s right, though, Colonel,” said Winthrop. “Down in our country, mayhap, we ‘d find half a dozen gentlemen who’d make Mr. Trover’s trial a very speedy affair; but here we must follow other fashions.”

“Our detective friend says that he’ll not leave them till you have received authority from home to demand their extradition,” said the doctor. “I take it for granted forgery is an offence in every land in Europe, and, at all events, no State can have any interest in wishing to screen them.”

While they thus talked, Alfred Layton rang the bell, and inquired if Mr. Trover had returned.

The waiter said, “No.”

“Why do you ask?” said the doctor. “It just occurred to me that he might have seen us as we drove up. He knows the Colonel and myself well.”

“And you suspect that he is off, Alfred?”

“It is not so very unlikely.”

“Let us down to the cottage, then, and learn this at once,” said Quackinboss; “I ‘d be sore riled if he was to slip his cable while we thought him hard aground.”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “We need not necessarily go and ask for him; Winthrop can just drop in to say a ‘good-evening,’ while we wait outside.”

“I wish you had chosen a craftier messenger,” said Winthrop, laughing. And now, taking their hats, they set out for the Gebhardts-Berg.

Alfred contrived to slip his arm within that of Quackinboss, and while the others went on in front, he sauntered slowly after with the Colonel. He had been anxiously waiting for a moment when they could talk together, and for some days back it had not been possible. If the others were entirely absorbed in the pursuit of those who had planned this scheme of fraud, Alfred had but one thought, – and that was Clara. It was not as the great heiress he regarded her, not as the owner of a vast property, all at her own disposal; he thought of the sad story that awaited her, – the terrible revelation of her father’s death, and the scarcely less harrowing history of her who had supplied the place of mother to her. “She will have to learn all this,” thought he, “and at the moment that she hears herself called rich and independent, she will have to hear of the open shame and punishment of one who, whatever the relations between them, had called her her child, and assumed to treat her as her own.”

To make known all these to Quackinboss, and to induce him, if he could, to regard them in the same light that they appeared to himself, was young Layton’s object. Withoat any preface he told all his fears and anxieties. He pictured the condition of a young girl entering life alone, heralded by a scandal that would soon spread over all Europe. Would not any poverty with obscurity be better than fortune on such conditions? Of what avail could wealth be, when every employment of it would bring up an odious history? and lastly, how reconcile Clara herself to the enjoyment of her good fortune, if it came associated with the bitter memory of others in suffering and in durance? If he knew anything of Clara’s heart, he thought that the sorrow would far outweigh the joy the tidings of her changed condition would bring her; at least, he hoped that he had so read her nature aright, and it was thus that he had construed it.

If Quackinboss had none of that refined appreciation of sentiment which in a certain measure is the conventionality of a class, he had what is infinitely and immeasurably superior, a true-hearted sympathy with everything human. He was sorely sorry for “that widow-woman.” He had forgotten none of the charms she threw around their evenings at Marlia long ago, and he was slow to think that these fascinations should always be exercised as snares and deceptions, and, last of all, as he said, “We have never heard her story yet, – we know nothing of how she has been tried.”

“What is it, then, that you propose to do?” asked the Colonel, at the end of a somewhat rambling and confused exposition by young Layton.

“Simply this: abandon all pursuit of these people; spare them and spare ourselves the pain and misery of a public shame. Their plot has failed; they will never attempt to renew it in any shape; and, above all, let not Clara begin the bright path before her by having to pass through a shadow of suffering and sorrow.”

“Ay, there is much in what you say; and now that we have run the game to earth, I have my misgivings that we were not yielding ourselves more to the ardor of the pursuit than stimulated by any love of justice.”

While they were thus talking, the others had passed the little wicket and entered the garden of the cottage. Struck by the quietness and the unlighted windows, they knocked hastily at the door. A question and answer revealed all, and the doctor called out aloud, “They are off! They are away!”

Young Layton pressed Quackinboss’s hand, and whispered, “Thank Heaven for it!”

If Winthrop laughed heartily at an escape that struck him as so cleverly effected, the doctor, far more eager in pursuit than the others, passed into the house to interrogate the people, – learn when and how and in what direction they had fled, and trace, if so it might be, the cause of this sudden departure.

“See,” cried he, as the others entered the drawing-room, – “see what a sudden retreat it has been! They were at their coffee; here is her shawl, too, just as she may have thrown it off; and here a heap of papers and letters, half burned, on the hearth.”

“One thing is clear enough,” said Alfred; “they discovered that they had lost the battle, and they have abandoned the field.”

“What do I see here?” cried the doctor, as he picked up a half-burned sheet of paper from the mass. “This is my own writing – my application to the Patent Office, when I was prosecuting my discovery of corrugated steel! When and how could it have come here?”

“Who can ‘My dear father’ be?” asked Quackinboss, examining a letter which he had lifted from the floor. “Oh, here’s his name: ‘Captain Nicholas Holmes’ – ”

“Nick Holmes!” exclaimed the doctor; “the fellow who stole my invention, and threw me into a madhouse! What of him? Who writes to him as ‘dear father’?”

“Our widow, no less,” said the Colonel. “It is a few lines to say she is just setting out for Florence, and will be with him within the week.”

“And this scoundrel was her father!” muttered the old doctor. “Only think of all the scores that we should have had to settle if we had had the luck to be here an hour ago! I thrashed him once in the public streets, it’s true, but we are far from being quits yet. Come, let’s lose no time, but after them at once.”

Alfred made no reply, but turned a look on Quackinboss, as thongh to bespeak his interference.

“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, slowly, “so long as the pursuit involved a something to find out, no man was hotter arter it than I was; but now that we know all, that we have baffled our adversaries and beaten ‘em, I ain’t a-goin’ to distress myself for a mere vengeance.”

“Which means that these people are to go at large, free to practise their knaveries on others, and carry into other families the misery we have seen them inflict here. Is that your meaning?” asked the doctor, angrily.

“I can’t tell what they are a-goin’ to do hereafter, nor, maybe, can you either, sir. It may be, that with changed hearts they ‘ll try another way of livin’; it may be that they ‘ll see roguery ain’t the best thing; it may be – who’s to say how? – that all they have gone through of trouble and care and anxiety has made them long since sick of such a wearisome existence, and that, though not very strong in virtue, they are right glad to be out of the pains of vice, whatever and wherever they may be. At all events, Shaver Quackinboss has done with ‘em, and if it was only a-goin’ the length of the garden to take them this minute, I ‘d jest say, ‘No, tell ‘em to slope off, and leave me alone.’”

“Let me tell you, sir, these are not your home maxims, and, for my part, I like Lynch law better than lax justice,” said the doctor, angrily.

“Lynch law has its good and its bad side,” said Quackinboss, “and, mayhap, if you come to consider the thing coolly, you ‘ll see that if I was rejecting rigid legality here, it was but to take the benefit of Judge Lynch, only this time for mercy, and not for punishment.”

“Ah, there is something in that!” cried the doctor. “You have made a stronger case for yourself than I looked for; still, I owed that fellow a vengeance!”

“It’s the only debt a man is dishonored in the payin’, sir. You know far more of life than I do, but did you ever meet the man yet that was sorry for having forgiven an injury? I’m not sayin’ that he mightn’t have felt disappointed or discouraged by the result, – his enemy, as he’d call him, mightn’t have turned out what he ought; but that ain’t the question: did you ever see one man who could say, after the lapse of years, ‘I wish I had borne more malice, – I’m sorry I was n’t more cruel’?”

“Let them go, and let us forget them,” said the old man, as he turned and left the room.

Young Layton grasped the Colonel’s hand, and shook it warmly, as he said, “This victory is all your own.”