Wylder's Hand

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by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu


  CHAPTER LXVIII.

  THE COMPANION DISCLOSES HIMSELF.

  But this sort of musing and wonderment leads to nothing; and Mr. Jos.Larkin being an active-minded man, and practical withal, in a littlewhile shook it off, and from his breast-pocket took a tiny treasure of apocket-book, in which were some bank-notes, precious memoranda in pencil,and half-a-dozen notes and letters, bearing upon cases and negotiationson which, at this juncture, he was working.

  Into these he got, and now and then brought out a letter bearing on somepoint of speculation, and read it through, and then closed his eyes forthree minutes at a time, and thought. But he had not his tin boxes there;and, with a man of his stamp, speculation, which goes upon guess as todates and quantities, which are all ascertainable by reference to blackand white, soon loses its interest. And the evidence in his pocket beingpretty soon exhausted, he glanced again at his companion over the way.

  He had not moved all this while. He had a high stand-up collar to thecape he wore, which covered his cheeks and nose and outside was looselyswathed a large, cream-coloured, cashmere handkerchief. The battered felthat covered his forehead and eyebrows, and left, in fact, but a narrowstreak of separation between.

  Through this, however, for the first time, Jos. Larkin now saw theglitter of a pair of eyes gazing at him, he fancied. At all events therewas the glitter, and the gentleman was awake.

  Jos. returned the gentleman's gaze. It was his lofty aristocratic stare;and he expected to see the glittering lights that peeped through the darkchink between brim and collar shut up under its rebuke. But nothing ofthe kind took place, and the ocular exercises of the attorney weretotally ineffectual.

  If the fellow knew that his fixed stare was observed through his narrowembrasure--and Larkin thought he could hardly be insensible to thereproof of his return fire--he must be a particularly impertinent person.It would be ridiculous, however, to continue a contest of this kind; sothe attorney lowered the window and looked out. Then he pulled it up, andtook to his newspaper again, and read the police cases, and a verycurious letter from a poor-house doctor, describing a boy who was quiteblind in daylight, but could see very fairly by gas or candle light, andthen he lighted upon a very odd story, and said to be undergoing specialsifting at the hands of Sir Samuel Squailes, of a policeman on a certainbeat, in Fleet Street, not far from Temple Bar, who every night saw, ator about the same hour, a certain suspicious-looking figure walk alongthe flag-way and enter a passage. Night after night he pursued thisfigure, but always lost it in the same passage. On the last occasion,however, he succeeded in keeping him in view, and came up with him in acourt, when he was rewarded with a sight of such a face as caused him tofall to the ground in a fit. This was the Clampcourt ghost, and I believehe was left in that debatable state, and never after either exploded orconfirmed.

  So having ended all these studies, the attorney lifted up his eyes again,as he lowered his newspaper, and beheld the same glittering gaze fixedupon him through the same horizontal cranny.

  He fancied the eyes were laughing. He could not be sure, of course, butat all events the persistent stare was extremely, and perhapsdeterminedly, impertinent. Forgetting the constitutional canon throughwhich breathes the genuine spirit of British liberty, he felt for amoment that he was such a king as that cat had no business to look at;and he might, perhaps, have politely intimated something of the kind, hadnot the enveloped offender made a slight and lazy turn which, burying hischin still deeper in his breast, altogether concealed his eyes, and soclosed the offensive scrutiny.

  In making this change in his position, slight as it was, the gentleman inthe superfluous clothing reminded Mr. Jos. Larkin very sharply for aninstant of--_some_body. There was the rub; who could it be?

  The figure was once more a mere mountain of rug. What was the peculiarityin that slight movement--something in the knee? something in the elbow?something in the general character?

  Why had he not spoken to him? The opportunity, for the present, was past.But he was now sure that his fellow-traveller was an acquaintance, whohad probably recognised him. Larkin--except when making a mysterious tripat election times, or in an emergency, in a critical case--was a frank,and as he believed could be a fascinating _compagnon de voyage_, such andso great was his urbanity on a journey. He rather liked talking withpeople; he sometimes heard things not wholly valueless, and once or twicehad gathered hints in this way, which saved him trouble, or money, whichis much the same thing. Therefore upon principle he was not averse fromthat direst of bores, railway conversation.

  And now they slackened speed, with a long, piercing whistle, and came toa standstill at 'East Had_don_' (with a jerk upon the last syllable),'East Had_don_, East Had_don_,' as the herald of the station declared,and Lawyer Larkin sat straight up, very alert, with a budding smile,ready to blow out into a charming radiance the moment hisfellow-traveller rose perpendicular, as was to be expected, and peepedfrom his window.

  But he seemed to know intuitively that Larkin intended telling him,_apropos_ of the station, that story of the Haddon property, and SirJames Wotton's will, which as told by the good attorney and jumbled bythe clatter, was perhaps a little dreary. At all events he did not stir,and carefully abstained from wakening, and in a few seconds more theywere again in motion.

  They were now approaching Shillingsworth, where the attorney was to getout, and put up for the night, having a deed with him to be executed inthat town, and so sweetening his journey with this small incident ofprofit.

  Now, therefore, looking at his watch, and consulting his time table, hegot his slim valise from under on top of the seat before him, togetherwith his hat-case, despatch-box, stick, and umbrella, and brushed offwith his handkerchief some of the gritty railway dust that lay drifted inexterior folds and hollows of his coat, rebuttoned that garment withprecision, arranged his shirt-collar, stuffed his muffler into hiscoat-pocket, and made generally that rude sacrifice to the graces withwhich natty men precede their exit from the dust and ashes of this sortof sepulture.

  At this moment he had just eight minutes more to go, and the glitter ofthe pair of eyes, staring between the muffler and the rim of the hat, methis view once more.

  Mr. Larkin's cigar-case was open in his hand in a moment, and with such asmile as a genteel perfumer offers his wares with, he presented it towardthe gentleman who was built up in the stack of garments.

  He merely shook his head with the slightest imaginable nod and a wave ofa pudgy hand in a soiled dog-skin glove, which emerged for a second fromunder a cape, in token that he gratefully declined the favour.

  Mr. Larkin smiled and shrugged regretfully, and replaced the case in hiscoat pocket. Hardly five minutes remained now. Larkin glanced round for atopic.

  'My journey is over for the present, Sir, and perhaps you would findthese little things entertaining.'

  And he tendered with the same smile 'Punch,' the 'Penny Gleaner,' and'Gray's Magazine,' a religious serial. They were, however, similarlydeclined in pantomime.

  'He's not particularly polite, whoever he is,' thought Mr. Larkin, with asniff. However, he tried the effect of a direct observation. So gettingone seat nearer, he said:--

  'Wonderful place Shillingsworth, Sir; one does not really, until one hasvisited it two or three times over, at all comprehend its wealth andimportance; and how justly high it deserves to hold its head amongst theprovincial emporia of our productive industry.'

  The shapeless traveller in the corner touched his ear with his pudgydogskin fingers, and shook his hand and head a little, in token eitherthat he was deaf, or the noise such as to prevent his hearing, and in thenext moment the glittering eyes closed, and the pantomimist appeared tobe asleep.

  And now, again, the train subsided to a stand-still, and Shillingsworthresounded through the night air, and Larkin scrambled forward to thewindow, by which sat the enveloped gentleman, and called the porter, and,with many unheeded apologies, pulled out his various properties, close bythe knees of the tranquil traveller
. So, Mr. Larkin was on the platform,and his belongings stowed away against the wall of the station-house.

  He made an enquiry of the guard, with whom he was acquainted, about hiscompanion; but the guard knew nothing of the 'party,' neither did theporter, to whom the guard put a similar question.

  So, as Larkin walked down the platform, the whistle sounded and the trainglided forward, and as it passed him, the gentleman in the cloak andqueer hat was looking out. A lamp shone full on him. Mr. Larkin's heartstood still for a moment, and then bounded up as if it would choke him.

  'It's him, by ----!' and Mr. Larkin, forgetting syntax, and propriety,and religion, all together, and making a frantic race to keep up with thetrain, shouted--

  'Stop it, stop it--hollo!--stop--stop--ho, stop!'

  But he pleaded with the winds; and before he had reached the end of theplatform, the carriage windows were flying by him with the speed ofwheel-spokes, and the end of the coupe, with its red lantern, sailed awaythrough the cutting.

  'Forgot summat, Sir,' said the porter, touching his hat.

  'Yes--signal--stop him, can you?'

  The porter only scratched his head, under his cap, and smiled sheepishlyafter the train. Jos. Larkin knew, the next moment, he had talkednonsense.

  'I--I--yes--I have--have you an engine here:--express--I'll payanything.'

  But, no, there was 'no engine--not nearer than the junction, and shemight not be spared.'

  'How far is the junction?'

  'Nineteen and a-half.'

  'Nineteen miles! They'll never bring me there, by horse, under two hours,they are so cursed tedious. Why have not you a spare engine at a placelike this? Shillingsworth! Nice management! Are you certain? Where's thestation-master?'

  All this time he kept staring after the faint pulsations on the air thatindicated the flight of the engine.

  But it would not do. The train--the image upon earth of the irrevocable,the irretrievable--was gone, neither to be overtaken nor recalled. Thetelegraph was not then, as now, whispering secrets all over England, atthe rate of two hundred miles a second, and five shillings per twentywords. Larkin would have given large money for an engine, to get up withthe train that was now some five miles on its route, at treble,quadruple, the common cost of such a magical appliance; but all was vain.He could only look and mutter after it wildly. Vain to conjecture forwhat station that traveller in the battered hat was bound! Idlespeculation! Mere distraction!

  Only that Mr. Larkin was altogether the man he was, I think he would havecursed freely.

 

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