“Do not grieve, my sweet Damaris,” he said presently. “Your sympathy has consoled and cheered me. It makes me realise that perhaps all may not yet be lost.”
“Nothing is lost,” she answered him, “since we have it in our power to — to ransom you.”
“Not that!” he cried, in a voice of thunder. “I forbid it. Do you hear me, child?” He disengaged himself from her arms, and threw back his great head that he might regard her fully. Then in a milder, tender voice, he pursued: “Ah, it is sweet in you to offer it; it is noble in you, and I am proud and happy in this earnest of your love, my dear. But it may not — it shall not be.”
“I am but a husk,” she said slowly, her voice a little wistful, her eyes resolute. “All that was Damaris Hollinstone perished at Tyburn a week ago — all save this little of me that I have kept for you. What, then, can it signify? Let my lord have this husk. It is all that he seeks of me — more than he seeks, since my fortune is his real desire. And how better could that fortune be applied than to ransoming the man whom today I honour most in all the world. Ah, father dear, you’ll not deny me. Did you know how gladly I will—”
“No!” he roared again, and his great hand crashed heavily upon the table. “It shall not be. I would not permit it were it to save me from being quartered alive. What manner of knave should I be, Damaris? What respect for me could linger with you or with any honest soul did I become a party to so infamous a bargain?” He waved a hand of peremptory dismissal. “Let come what will. I am am old man, and in any event I should not have many more years of life before me. The Government will get but little, when all is said, and for such a little the ransom you propose were altogether absurd and disproportionate.”
“Can it be that you think only of yourself?” she asked him.
He stared. “My dear, I hope I think of you as well.”
“There are those who have a prior claim to mine upon your thoughts.”
She saw the sudden spasm of pain that crossed his face; noted the little pause before he spoke again. But when he did speak his tone and manner were unshaken.
“And am I so base that I will purchase their welfare at the price of your prostitution?” he asked her.
But she did not flinch. “I have told you that I am but a husk,” she said. “Do you not believe me?”
“O my God!” he groaned, and for a moment he was limp and helpless. But in the next he had mastered himself. “Not another word of this, my child,” he said, and his voice was now one of utter finality. “As you love me do not attempt to pursue this subject further. I will not listen. Ah, don’t think me harsh, don’t think me slow to perceive your nobility, your greatness, my sweet Damaris.” He rose, took her in his arms, and kissed her very tenderly. “For that I thank you from my soul. You have brought such comfort and gladness to my grey hairs this day as I have never known. To the end I shall thank God for the treasure of your affection.”
“Ah, but, father dear!” Her face was upturned to his, and he saw the tears brimming her eyes.
“No more,” he said gently. “No more of this. You cannot constrain me, for even if you consented of your own accord to the sacrifice, even did you in your foolish nobility seek that hound Pauncefort and announce your readiness to pay the price, yet should I withhold my consent to the union, and exercise my rights under your father’s will. I must, as I believe in God and in honour.”
She perceived then how irrefragable was his resolve, perceived with her true-sightedness that did she urge him further he might perhaps make an end by impaling himself upon the sword that threatened him. So she went her way, praying heaven to afford her the means of saving him yet, despite himself. Indeed, so engrossed was she in the thought that she realised but indifferently its meaning to herself, had little leisure in which to dwell upon the horror of the price that she must pay.
One day, a week later, she thought that her chance had come, when Evelyn brought her word that my Lord Pauncefort was again closeted with Sir John in the library.
Again as on the occasion of my lord’s previous visit, Sir John’s first impulse had been to deny himself. But he reflected that it were best to receive his lordship and learn — as he supposed he would — the precise present degree of the danger threatened. Yet his reception of Pauncefort was again as uncompromising as before.
“You are not welcome, my lord,” he said, rising to receive his visitor, and keeping him standing throughout the interview, “and if your visit has the same object as your last you had been better advised to have spared yourself the trouble.”
“I deplore, Sir John,” returned the viscount, with his almost miraculous equanimity, “to find you still in the same obdurate humour. But I think I shall have the felicity of mending it.” He advanced slowly, gracefully into the room, whilst Sir John took his habitual stand with his shoulders to the carved overmantel. “Had I not conceived,” he continued, “means of removing your unworthy suspicions, of proving to you how disinterested is my action, how dictated purely by my profound affection for your ward I should not again have intruded where — as you do not omit to tell me — I am unwelcome.”
He had waited from hour to hour in London, confident that there would come to him a letter from Damaris. Unable, however, longer to endure the suspense; knowing, too, that he could not much longer delay action in the matter of advising Sir John’s arrest, lest it should occur independently to Lord Carteret to order it (from which will be gathered the falsehood in which his lordship had been dealing), he had returned to the attack, armed now with a fresh weapon.
“I am listening, my lord,” was the baronet’s cold answer. “But I warn you that the matter will need a deal of proof, and I conceive that your invention is more like to be strained than my credulity. But proceed, my lord.”
“You have said, sir, that to the end you would withhold your sanction to my marriage with your niece?” His lordship’s statement was interrogative rather than affirmative.
“I have said so,” answered Sir John.
“And I hope,” said his lordship, “that you adhere to that resolve.”
“You are justified of that hope, at least,” was the dry answer.
The door opened gently and, unobserved by either of the men, Damaris appeared under the lintel.
“I rejoice in that,” answered his lordship, his face lightening suddenly, “since thus I can prove to yourself and to Damaris my penitence of my past attitude and the sincerity of my feelings. I am willing, Sir John, willing and eager to marry your niece, as you once invited me, without your sanction. And so, the devil take her fortune!”
“And the devil take your offer!” was the imperturbable reply.
“No, no, Sir John!” It was Damaris who spoke. She advanced quietly into the room.
“Damaris!” cried Sir John, and his brows grew dark. His lordship, a fine figure in bronze-green satin, bowed until the curls of his periwig almost met across his face.
“Since his lordship offers this proof of his sincerity—” she began, and Lord Pauncefort’s eyes were aglow with triumph. But this triumph was not yet complete.
“His sincerity!” the baronet interrupted. “Are you deceived by these smooth words?”
“Sir John, you go too far,” my lord reproved him, very haughty now. “Consider, pray, that I do no more than take you at your word, as I should have taken you when it was uttered but that I was a fool. Thus, at least, I had saved Damaris and myself much fruitless pain. I am here, sir, to repair a fault for which I have never ceased to feel the most profound contrition, and if there is deception in my words I challenge you, sir, to unmask it.”
He flicked a handkerchief as he finished, applied it to his lips, and with head thrown back, gallant defiance in every line of him, he waited for Sir John’s answer. It came hard and swift.
“Why, what a foolish rogue is this! It passes belief! That he should think, Damaris, to cozen us with transparent falsehoods that would not deceive a child! And you would listen to him. Be it
so; but at least let me help you to understand him. He will take you without my sanction, he says; by which he means that he will take you without your fortune, and that in withholding my sanction I am to dispose of your inheritance as your father’s will directs. But am I? Shall I be allowed to do so? If they arrest me and make an outlaw of me, what power have I to execute any such deed? And that, Damaris, is what my lord is counting on. Oh, he is subtle but not subtle enough to match his villainy.”
Lord Pauncefort’s face was black with anger. “Your injustice, sir, is the only thing that passes belief.” He swung to Damaris. “I am employing every effort of which I am capable to restrain the Secretary of State from issuing a warrant against your uncle as I have told him; and all that he can find for me on his side is insult. I think I had much better wash my hands of the affair, and leave him to his fate.”
“No, no!” she cried. “Wait, my lord. Do you undertake that Sir John shall have complete immunity from any proceedings?”
“From any proceedings resulting from his having harboured Captain Gaynor,” said his lordship. “That is what I have promised. I do not wish this to be a bargain between us, Damaris. In no sense do I make it a bargain. But loving you as I do,” he continued, affecting not to observe how she winced under those words, “loving you as I do, how can I refrain from pointing out that, were I Sir John’s relative by marriage, my Lord Carteret, out of his affection for me, would be more easily induced to refrain from proceedings against him? This I can promise.”
“Ay, and prove as false to your promise as you have proven false to all else,” stormed Sir John. “Oh, do not heed him, Damaris.”
“Nay, you must heed me, mistress,” said his lordship. “You were right to — to have despised me once for an altogether unworthy hesitation. That hesitation I am now amending, and I implore you not to make me suffer more for it than I have done. I am ready and eager, as I have said, to waive Sir John’s sanction, and thus consent that your fortune be bestowed elsewhere. What greater proof can I afford of the sincerity of my intentions?”
“He waives my sanction,” said Sir John, “knowing full well that once I am laid by the heels he can dispense with it at law to appropriate your inheritance. Do you not see, Damaris, that, far from helping me, as you suppose, by such a sacrifice, you will but imperil me, you will make my doom doubly assured?”
This was checkmate indeed; and his lordship saw it — saw it reflected on her face. Her shrewd wit had straightly followed Sir John’s shrewd indication.
“Then you must give your sanction, Sir John,” she cried. “You must!”
“Never!” he answered, and his lips closed firmly, his face became a stone.
Lord Pauncefort perceived the doom of his hope as far as the present line of attack was concerned. But from her attitude he perceived where and how a flanking movement might be made that should carry him to easy victory. At once he flung off his hypocritical mask of resignation, and showed now a countenance that was evil and menacing.
He bowed. “There is no more to be said at present,” he murmured. “You are too old a man to call to account for your words. It but remains for me to withdraw from further insult.”
As on the former occasion Sir John pulled the bell-rope. “I am glad, sir, that you perceive it,” was his scornful answer.
Deliberately his lordship turned his shoulders upon him, and with bowed head he stood respectfully before Damaris.
“I will beg you to judge more mercifully than does your uncle. Believe me,” and his voice vibrated with an apparent sincerity that almost deceived her, “I have not deserved so much opprobrium, and I am honest in my love of you.”
He swept her a profound bow, and was gone.
She ran to Sir John, and put her arms about his neck. “Why did you refuse?” she wailed. “You have doomed yourself.”
“Not more than I was doomed before,” he answered gloomily. He stroked the dark head, and looked wistfully into her brown eyes, that were now so troubled for his sake. “Indeed, my only chance is to stand firm,” he said, to comfort her. “If I give way I am destroyed. But as long as I refuse him, I may hold him off; he may hope and, hoping, may not denounce me — for it is upon his denunciation that my arrest depends. The rest is all a fable of his own. He has convinced me of that today.”
“Oh no, no; never that!” she cried.
“I know my Lord Carteret. We have been almost friends. And I know that he is not the man to stand like a lackey at that fellow’s beck. Pish! It is as I say. He pretends to stand between me and arrest. He does — by not denouncing me. He denounced all the others. He denounced Harry Gaynor.”
She cried out at that. It was a shrewd thrust, well calculated to pierce her armour of self-sacrifice, as Sir John intended.
“Ay, it is true enough, as God hears me,” he insisted. “And that is the man you would have married! You see how impossible ’twould be? You had not quite understood this until now, eh? But do not fret, dear child. By opposing him we may still weather this.” She was deceived. “You believe that?”
“I do,” he answered, lying bravely And so, somewhat comforted by his assurance, she departed.
But when alone he went again to sit at that table, as he had sat before after the last interview with Lord Pauncefort. And if on that occasion he had accounted himself in grave danger, today he accounted himself irrevocably doomed. The end would not be long in coming, and he wondered again what would betide his helpless child, and still more helpless wife, when the blow fell. From his heart he sent up a silent prayer to God to guard them.
Still sitting there, quite idly, a lackey found him half an hour later when he entered with a letter for Sir John, which a messenger had just brought from London.
Chapter 19. THE CAPTAIN GOES INTO ACTION
Sir John broke the seal, and spread a sheet of yellowish paper on which a crabbed and spidery hand had written:
HONOURED SIR, — I have a communication to make that I think you will consider of importance, concerning your friend Captain Harry Gaynor, and as I am in some haste to deliver it, which you will consider quite natural when you shall have received it, I hope that you will find it possible to do me the honour of visiting me here at once. The bearer of these present has my order to reconduct you hither should you desire to give my request the immediate compliance which I solicit. Should this not be possible or convenient, he is to bring me word on what day and at what hour I may look for the honour of your visit. My house is situate in the Gray’s Inn Road, three doors from ‘The Weeping Woman,’ as you go from Holborn. I am, honoured sir, your obedient, respectful servant, EMANUEL BLIZZARD.
Sir John read the letter twice with knitted brows. A communication concerning Harry Gaynor! And the writer did not so much as say “the late Harry Gaynor.” It flashed through his mind at the first reading that here might lurk some trap for him. But that omission of “the late” — with its inevitable suggestion that the writer was in ignorance of the Captain’s death — was in itself almost sufficient to dispel any such fear. Assuredly, anyone preparing a snare for him would not have fallen into such an omission as that. A doubt still lingered. But he crushed it aside. What need was there to lay traps for him? If his conviction was desired, the grounds already afforded were ample.
He rose abruptly, his decision taken. He could form no conception of the nature of this promised communication, seek as he might; but it could not be his to be slow to inform himself. He looked at the respectfully waiting servant.
“What like is the messenger who brought this?” he inquired.
“Just a plain youth, Sir John,” the man replied. “He came on horseback.”
“Tell him I will accompany him. Bid them saddle Jessie for me, and send Bird to help me on with my boots.”
He said nothing to Damaris, and to his wife no more than that he was summoned to London upon a matter of some urgency and that he would return that night.
A couple of hours later he was standing in a dark room on the
ground floor of the doctor’s dingy house in the Gray’s Inn Road. Into this room came the slim little professor, moving swiftly and jerkily, as was his habit, and clucking as he came.
“Tut, tut! This is kind in you, Sir John. I should be distressed to think I had caused you inconvenience, eh? I trust I have not.” He washed his great bony hands in the air, his gimlet eyes gleaming through his spectacles.
“I should not consider any inconvenience of account to receive a communication touching one who was almost as a son to me, Mr Blizzard.”
“Doctor — Doctor Blizzard,” the professor amended. “Your obedient servant. But, will you not sit, eh?”
Sir John took the arm-chair to which the doctor waved him, and set his hat and whip on the table at his side. The professor leaned against the table, clucking for a moment. He thrust his spectacles up on to his forehead until they almost joined the rim of his grizzled bob-wig, and he peered at his visitor with short-sighted eyes that had lost all apparent powers of penetration.
“The communication I have for you, sir, is very extraordinary — ve-ry extraordinary, eh; in fact, startling.”
“Yes, yes,” said the baronet. “I will beg you not to prolong my suspense.”
“Tut! I should not dream of it. But it may be necessary to prepare you somewhat, eh?”
“To prepare me?”
“Godso! yes. Have I not said that my communication is of a startling character, eh? It amounts, sir, to this: that the gallows at Tyburn proved to your friend the gate of life in a sense other than that intended by the prophet, psalmist or theologian, or whoever it was, who made the phrase — mors janua vitae, ye know.”
Sir John stared at him blankly. Had he to do with a madman? “Will ye tell me Dr Blizzard, in plain terms, what ye mean?”
“In plain terms? Ah! In plain terms, then ... But wait! I am a doctor, as I have told you, sir. I am a professor of anatomy, and therefore a student of anatomy. By great good fortune, sir, your friend’s friends neglected to provide a funeral for him, and I bought the alleged corpse from the snatchers for a couple o’ guineas, and — well, then, to put it in plain terms, as ye desire, I found that he wasn’t dead at all.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 269