They were walking, more slowly now, on a soft mossy path, and nearing a small plantation, chiefly of pines and firs, half-a-mile from the avenues. This path, as it approaches the trees, has beside it several saplings shielded by tall triangular fences, which even in daylight would afford very fair cover for a man’s body. Miles and Pound had passed close to half-a-dozen or more of these triangles.
“Well?” said Miles; for Pound remained silent.
“I am looking to see where you have brought me.”
“I have brought you to the best place of all, this plantation,” Miles answered, leaving the path and picking his way over the uneven ground until there were trees all round them. “Here we should be neither seen nor heard if we stayed till daybreak. Are you going on?”
But Pound was not to be hurried until he had picked out a spot to his liking still deeper in the plantation; far from shaking his sense of security, the trees seemed to afford him unexpected satisfaction. The place was dark and silent as the tomb, though the eastern wall of the park was but three hundred yards distant. Looking towards this wall in winter, a long, unbroken row of gaslights marks the road beyond; but in summer the foliage of the lining trees only reveals a casual glimmer, which adds by contrast to the solitude of this sombre, isolated, apparently uncared-for coppice.
“I reached London just before you,” resumed Pound, narrowly watching the effect of every word. “I waited for your boat at the docks. There were others waiting. I had to take care — they were detectives.”
Miles uttered an ejaculation.
“I watched them go on board; I watched them come back — without you. They were white with disappointment. Ned Ryan, those men would sell their souls to lay hands on you now!”
“Go on!” said Miles between his teeth.
“Well, I got drinking with the crew, and found you’d fallen overboard coming up Channel — so they thought; it happened in the night. But you’ve swum swollen rivers, before my eyes, stronger than I ever see man swim before or since, and I was suspicious. Ships get so near the land coming up Channel. I went away and made sure you were alive, if I could find you. At last, by good luck, I did find you.”
“Where?”
“At the Exhibition. I took to loafing about the places you were sure to go to, sooner or later, as a swell, thinking yourself safe as the Bank. And that’s where I found you — the swell all over, sure enough. You stopped till the end, and that’s how I lost you in the crowd going out; but before that I got so close I heard what you were saying to your swell friends: how you’d bring ‘em again, if they liked; what you’d missed that day, but must see then. So I knew where to wait about for you. But you took your time about coming again. Every day I was waiting and watching — starving. A shilling a day to let me into the ching — and place; a quid in reserve for when the time came; and pence for my meals. Do you think a trifle’ll pay for all that? When you did turn up again yesterday, you may lay your life I never lost sight of you.”
“I should have known you any time; why you went about in that rig — —”
“I had no others. I heard fools whisper that I was a detective, moreover, and that made me feel safe.”
“You followed me down here yesterday, did you? Then why do nothing till to-night?”
The fellow hesitated, and again peered rapidly into every corner of the night.
“Why did you wait?” repeated Miles impatiently.
An evil grin overspread the countenance of Jem Pound. He seemed to be dallying with his answer — rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue — as though loth to part with the source of so much private satisfaction. Miles perceived something of this, and, for the first time that night, felt powerless to measure the extent of his danger. Up to this point he had realised and calculated to a nicety the strength of the hold of this man over him, and he had flattered himself that it was weak in comparison with his own counter-grip; but now he suspected, nay felt, the nearness of another and a stronger hand.
“Answer, man,” he cried, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in his voice, “before I force you! Why did you wait?”
“I went back,” said Pound slowly, slipping his hand beneath his coat, and comfortably grasping the haft of his sheath-knife, “to report progress.”
“To whom?”
“To — your wife!”
“What!”
“Your wife!”
“You are lying, my man,” said Miles, with a forced laugh. “She never came to England.”
“She didn’t, didn’t she? Why, of course you ought to know best, even if you don’t; but if you asked me, I should say maybe she isn’t a hundred miles from you at this very instant!”
“Speak that lie again,” cried Miles, his low voice now fairly quivering with passion and terror, “and I strike you dead where you stand! She is in Australia, and you know it!”
Jem Pound stepped two paces backward, and answered in a loud, harsh tone:
“You fool! she is here!”
Miles stepped forward as if to carry out his threat; but even as he moved he heard a rustle at his side, and felt a light hand laid on his arm. He started, turned, and looked round. There, by his side — poverty-stricken almost to rags, yet dark and comely as the summer’s night — stood the woman whom years ago he had made his wife!
A low voice full of tears whispered his name: “Ned, Ned!” and “Ned, Ned!” again and again.
He made no answer, but stood like a granite pillar, staring at her. She pressed his arm with one hand, and laid the other caressingly on his breast; and as she stood thus, gazing up through a mist into his stern, cold face, this topmost hand rested heavily upon him. To him it seemed like lead; until suddenly — did it press a bruise or a wound, that such a hideous spasm should cross his face? that he should shake off the woman so savagely?
By the merest accident, the touch of one woman had conjured the vision of another; he saw before him two, not one; two as opposite in their impressions on the senses as the flower and the weed; as separate in their associations as the angels of light and darkness.
Yet this poor woman, the wife, could only creep near him again — forgetting her repulse, since he was calm the next moment — and press his hand to her lips, so humbly that now he stood and bore it, and repeat brokenly:
“I have found him! Oh, thank God! Now at last I have found him!”
While husband and wife stood thus, silenced — one by love, the other by sensations of a very different kind — the third person watched them with an expression which slowly changed from blank surprise to mortification and dumb rage. At last he seemed unable to stand it any longer, for he sprang forward and whispered hoarsely in the woman’s ear:
“What are you doing? Are you mad? What are we here for? What have we crossed the sea for? Get to work, you fool, or — —”
“To work to bleed me, between you!” cried Ned Ryan, shaking himself again clear of the woman. “By heaven, you shall find me a stone!”
Elizabeth Ryan turned and faced her ally, and waved him back with a commanding gesture.
“No, Jem Pound,” said she, in a voice as clear and true as a clarion, “it is time to tell the truth: I did not come to England for that! O Ned, Ned! I have used this man as my tool — can’t you see? — to bring me to you. Ned, my husband, I am by your side; have you no word of welcome?”
She clung to him, with supplication in her white face and drooping, nerveless figure; and Pound looked on speechless. So he had been fooled by this smooth-tongued, fair-faced trash; and all his plans and schemes, and hungry longings and golden expectations, were to crumble into dust before treachery such as this! So, after all, he had been but a dupe — a ladder to be used and kicked aside! A burning desire came over him to plunge his knife into this false demon’s heart, and end all.
But Ryan pushed back his wife a third time, gently but very firmly.
“Come, Liz,” said he, coldly enough, yet with the edge off his voice and manner, “don’t give us any of th
is. This was all over between us long ago. If it’s money you want, name a sum; though I have little enough, you shall have what I can spare, for I swear to you I got away with my life and little else. But if it’s sentiment, why, it’s nonsense; and you know that well enough.”
Elizabeth Ryan stood as one stabbed, who must fall the moment the blade is withdrawn from the wound; which office was promptly performed by one who missed few opportunities.
“Why, of course!” exclaimed Pound, with affected sympathy with the wife and indignation against the husband. “To be sure you see how the wind lies, missis?”
“What do you mean?” cried Elizabeth Ryan fiercely.
“Can’t you see?” pursued Pound in the same tone, adding a strong dash of vulgar familiarity; “can’t you see that you’re out of the running, Liz, my lass? You may be Mrs. Ryan, but Mrs. Ryan is a widow; there’s no Ned Ryan now. There’s a Mr. Miles, an Australian gentleman, in his skin, and, mark me, there’ll be a Mrs.—”
He stopped, for Liz Ryan turned on him so fiercely that it looked as though she was gathering herself to spring at his throat.
“You liar!” she shrieked. “Tell him, Ned! Give him the lie yourself! Quickly — speak, or I shall go mad!”
Her husband uttered no sound.
“He can’t, you see,” sneered Pound. “Why, if you’d only come in with me into the garden, you’d have seen the two together sweethearting in the starlight!”
“If I had,” said Mrs. Ryan, trembling violently, “I pity both. But no, I don’t believe it! O Ned! Ned! answer, unless you want to break my heart!”
“Well, well, what does it matter?” put in Pound hastily, speaking to her in a fatherly, protective tone, which hit the mark aimed at. “Liz, my dear, you and I have been good friends all this time; then why not let him go his ways? — after we’ve got our rights, I mean.”
Ned Ryan glanced sharply from his wife to the man who had brought her from Australia; and then he spoke:
“My good woman, why not be frank? What’s the use of acting a part to me? Anyway, it’s a bit too thin this time. Only let me alone, and you two can go on — as you are. Come now, I don’t think I’m hard on you; considering everything I might be a deal harder.”
His wife sprang before him, her black eyes flashing, her whole frame quivering.
“Edward Ryan, you shall answer for these foul, cruel words before Him who knows them to be false. What do you think me, I wonder? That vile thing there — can’t you see how I have used him? — he has been the bridge between me and you, yet you make him the barrier! Oh, you know me better than that, Ned Ryan! You know me for the woman who sacrificed all for you — who stood by you through thick and thin, and good and bad, while you would let her — who would not have forsaken you for twenty murders! — who loved you better than life — God help me!” cried the poor woman, wildly, “for I love you still!”
She rose the next moment, and continued in a low, hard, changed voice:
“But love and hate lie close together; take care, and do not make me hate you, for if you do I shall be pitiless as I have been pitiful, cruel as I have been fond. I, who have been ready all these years to shield you with my life — I shall be the first to betray you to the laws you have cheated, if you turn my love to hate. Ned! Ned! stop and think before it is too late!”
She pressed both hands upon her heart, as if to stay by main force its tumultuous beating. Her limbs tottered beneath her. Her face was like death. Her life’s blood might have mingled with the torrent of her eloquence!
“You are beside yourself,” said her husband, who had listened like a stone; “otherwise you would remember that tall talk never yet answered with me. And yet — yet I am sorry for you — so poor, so ragged, so thin—” His voice suddenly softened, and he felt with his hand in his pocket. “See here! take these twenty pounds. It’s a big lump of all I have; but ‘twill buy you a new dress and some good food, and make you decent for a bit, and if I had more to spare, upon my soul you should have it!”
Elizabeth Ryan snatched the notes from her husband’s hand, crumpled them savagely, and flung them at his feet; with a wild sweep of her arm she tore off her bonnet, as though it nursed the fire within her brain, and coils of dark, disordered hair fell down about her shoulders. For one moment she stood glaring fixedly at her husband, and then fell heavily to the ground.
“She has fainted,” said Miles, not without pity, and bending over her. “Bring her to, then lead her away. Take her back; she must not see me again.”
Pound knelt down, and quietly pocketed the crumpled notes; then he raised the senseless head and fanned the ashy face, looking up meanwhile and saying:
“Meet me here to-morrow night at ten; I will come alone.”
“For the last time, then.”
“I am agreeable; but it will rest with you.”
Miles drew away into the shadows. He waited, and presently he heard a faint, hollow, passionate voice calling his name:
“Ned Ryan! I will come back, Ned Ryan! Come back, never fear, and see you — see you alone! And if you are as hard then — as hard and cruel — Heaven help us both! — Heaven help us both!”
When Ned Ryan, alias Sundown, alias Miles, heard the footsteps fail in the distance and die on the still night air, a rapid change came over his face and bearing. Throughout the night he had lost his self-command seldom; his nerve never. But now the pallor of a corpse made his features ghastly, and a cold sweat burst forth in great beads upon his forehead. His limbs trembled, and he staggered.
By a violent effort he steadied his brain and straightened his body. In a few minutes he had well-nigh regained his normal calm. Then gradually his chest expanded, and his air became that of one who has climbed through desperate peril to the lofty heights and sweet breath of freedom. Nay, as he stood there, gazing hopefully skyward, with the dim light upon his strong handsome face, he might very well have been mistaken for a good man filled with dauntless ambition, borne aloft on the wings of noble yearning.
“After all, I am not lost!” The thoughts escaped in words from the fulness of his soul. “No, I am safe; he dares not betray me; she will not — because she loves me. Not another soul need ever know.”
A new voice broke upon his ear:
“You are wrong; I know!”
His lowered gaze fell upon the motionless figure of Dick Edmonstone, who was standing quietly in front of him.
XIV
QUITS
For the second time that night Miles felt instinctively for his revolver, and for the second time in vain.
The younger man understood the movement.
“A shot would be heard in the road and at the lodge,” said he quietly. “You’ll only hasten matters by shooting me.”
At once Miles perceived his advantage; his adversary believed him to be armed. Withdrawing his hand from the breast of his overcoat slowly, as though relinquishing a weapon in the act of drawing it, he answered:
“I believe you are right. But you are a cool hand!”
“Perhaps.”
“I have only seen one other as cool — under fire.”
“Indeed?”
“A fact. But I’ll tell you where you come out even stronger.”
“Do.”
“In playing the spy. There you shine!”
“Hardly,” said Dick dryly, and this time he added a word or two: “or I should have shown you up some time since.”
The two men faced one another, fair and square, but their attitudes were not aggressive. Miles leant back against a tree with folded arms, and Dick stood with feet planted firmly and hands in his pockets. A combat of coolness was beginning. The combatants were a man in whom this quality was innate, and one who rose to it but rarely. In these circumstances it is strange that the self-possession of Dick was real to the core, whilst that of the imperturbable Miles was for once affected and skin-deep.
“Will you tell me,” said Miles, “what you have heard? You may very possibly have drawn w
rong inferences.”
“I heard all,” Dick answered.
“All is vague; why not be specific?”
“I heard that — well, that that woman was your wife.”
Miles felt new hope within him. Suppose he had heard no more than that! And he had not heard anything more — the thing was self-evident — or he would not have spoken first of this — this circumstance which must be confessed “unpleasant,” but should be explained away in five minutes; this — what more natural? — this consequence of an ancient peccadillo, this bagatelle in comparison with what he might have learned.
“My dear sir, it is nothing but an infernal lie!” he cried with eager confidence; “she never was anything of the kind. It is the old story: an anthill of boyish folly, a mountain of blackguardly extortion. Can’t you see?”
“No, I can’t,” said Dick stolidly.
“Why, my good fellow, they have come over on purpose to bleed me — they said so. It’s as plain as a pikestaff.”
“That may be true, so far as the man is concerned.”
“Don’t you see that the woman is his accomplice? But now a word with you, my friend. These are my private affairs that you have had the impudence — —”
“That was not all I heard,” said Dick coldly.
Danger again — in the moment of apparent security.
“What else did you hear, then?” asked Miles, in a voice that was deep and faint at the same time.
“Who you are,” replied Dick shortly. “Sundown the bushranger.”
The words were pronounced with no particular emphasis; in fact, very much as though both sobriquet and calling were household words, and sufficiently familiar in all men’s mouths. The bushranger heard them without sign or sound. Dick waited patiently for him to speak; but he waited long.
It was a strange interview between these two men, in the dead of this summer’s night, in the heart of this public park. They were rivals in love; one had discovered the other to be not only an impostor, but a notorious felon; and they had met before under circumstances the most peculiar — a fact, however, of which only one of them was now aware. The night was at the zenith of its soft and delicate sweetness. A gentle breeze had arisen, and the tops of the slender firs were making circles against the sky, like the mastheads of a ship becalmed; and the stars were shining like a million pin-pricks in the purple cloak of light. At last Miles spoke, asking with assumed indifference what Dick intended to do.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 222