by M. P. Shiel
XXVI
FRANKL AND O'HARA
Mrs. Sturgess, of the paper-shop, a clean, washed-out old lady, held upboth averting hands at her back door, as Hogarth threw back his kefie,finger on lips; but soon, her alarm warming into welcome, she took himto a room above, to listen to his story of escape.
"And to think", said she, "there is the very box your sister, poorthing, left with me to keep the day she went away, which never once haveI seen her dear good face from that day to this. Anyway, _there's_ thebox--" pointing to a trunk covered with grey goat's-hair, the trunk towhich the old Hogarth had referred in telling Richard the secret of hisbirth, saying to deaf ears that it contained Richard's "papers"--a boxdouble-bottomed, on its top the letters "P. O.", with a cross-of-Christunder them.
"But, sir", said Mrs. Sturgess, "you must be in great danger here. Ihope"--with a titter--"I shan't be implicated--"
"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Sturgess, it will be all right, and, foryourself, don't trouble about the paper-shop any more, but buy a littlevilla near Florence, where it is warm for the cough--don't think mecrazy if I tell you that I am a very rich man. Now give me a steak".
Mrs. Sturgess served him well that day with a pang of expectancy ather heart! Always, she remembered, Richard Hogarth had beenstrange--uplifted and apart--a man incalculable, winged, unknown, thoughwalking the common ways. He _might_ be a "very rich man"...
His meal over, Hogarth threw himself upon a bed, to dream anothertrouble of bubbles and burden of purples; woke at four; and, with aprocured cold-chisel, hammer, and a calico bag, went to the fowl-housewhere he had left the meteorite, shut himself in.
Sitting in the dust there, he set to chisel out the gems from the porousore, and as the chisel won the luscious plums, held them up, gluttinghis gaze, scratched his name on a fragment of window-pane, and wasenchanted that the adamant rim ripped the glass like rag: the whim,meanwhile, working in him to purchase Colmoor, to turn the moor into aparadise, the prison into a palace; where his old cell stood in GalleryNo. III to be the bedroom of Rebekah.
To see _her_ that very night was a necessity! and when it was dark heset out.
But that plot failed: on presenting himself at the front of the mansion,he was sent round to the back, where he received payment, and wasdismissed; and when he again started for the front, intending to forcehis way in, he decided upon something else, and walked back to Thring.
He reached the Sturgess cottage soon after six, ate, with a candlereturned to the lean-to to resume his work, and was still intent upon itat seven, when Mrs. Sturgess ran out to tell him that "the gentleman hadcome". He said: "Show him up to my room".
The first thing which O'Hara noticed in that room was the goat-hairtrunk, with the initials and cross, the initials his own.
After some minutes he furtively turned the key, dived into a mass ofthings, paused to remember the whereabouts of a spring, found it, and,lifting the upper bottom, peered beneath; saw a bundle of papers;and, without removing the band, ferreted among them, and wassatisfied---Hogarth's "birth-papers".
He presently went to a back window, and saw ruddy streaks between theboarding of the shanty, while sounds of the hammer reached him.
He would go and meet Hogarth: no harm in that; but it was stealthilythat he hurried down the stair and carried himself across the yard,grinning a grimace of self-conscious caution, to peep through a cranny.
Hogarth's back was toward him, the iron leg lying near a box in whichwas a sitting hen, on its top a candlestick, the calico bag, and a lotof the gems: at which the priest's palm covered his awed mouth, and witha fleet thievishness, like a cat on hot bricks, he trotted back to thecottage.
Ten minutes later Hogarth entered, nodding: "Ah, O'Hara..."; and hecalled down: "Mrs. Sturgess! pen, ink, and paper!"
When these came, he sat and wrote:
"I have escaped from prison, and come into great power. I summon you tomeet me at the elm in the beech-wood to-night at nine. I beseech you, Ientreat you. I burn to ashes. Rebekah! My flames of fire! I am dying.
"R. H."
He enclosed, and handed it, without any address, to O'Hara.
"O'Hara", said he, "I want you to take that for me. Come--I will showyou the place. You ask in the hall to see 'the young lady': her namedoes not concern you; but you can't mistake her: she is so-pretty.Give the note to no one else, of course: it mentions my escape, for onething. I know you will do it well".
He conducted O'Hara, till the two towers of Westring were visible;pointed them out; then went back, and in an hour had finished his workon the diamonds.
O'Hara, meantime, going on his way alone, muttered: "You go fast,Hogarth: prelates of the Church your errand boys? But there is a littlefellow called Alf Harris...if he had seen what I have seen to-night, youwould be a corpse now".
In twenty minutes he was at Westring, which he knew well, fortwenty-five years before he had lived in the Vale: but he supposed thatLord Westring de Broom was still the inmate.
He asked to see "the young lady", persisted, and after a time Rebekahcame with eyebrows of inquiry.
The moment O'Hara saw her well, his visage acquired a ghastly ribbedfixity. Even before this, _she_, by one flashed glance, had known him.
But she took the envelope with easy coolness. And, instead of thenreturning upon her steps, went still beyond, and whispered to two men inthe hall: "Do not let that man pass out!"
As she again returned inward past O'Hara, she remarked: "You might waithere a little".
She travelled then, not hurrying, down the breadth of a great apartmentto a side room where her father sat, capped and writing; and she said:"Papa, the man who assaulted me in the train is now in the hall. As hissentence was three years, he must have escaped--" She was gone at once,the unaddressed envelope, still unopened, shivering a little in herhand.
Frankl leapt up, rather pale, thinking that if the man had come _here_,he must mean mischief; but remembering that the man was a gentleman, apriest, he took heart, and went out.
O'Hara, meantime, stood at bay, guessing his exit blocked, whilethe terrors of death gat hold upon him, the flesh of his yellow jawshivering. But he was a man of stern mind--stern as the rocky aspect ofhis face, and the moment he saw Frankl coming (he had seen him in theCourt), he started to meet him--stooped to the Jew's ear, who shrankdelicately from contact.
"There isn't any good in running me down, sir", he whispered insycophant haste. "I pledge you my word I came here without knowingto whom. O do, now! I have already suffered for my crime; and if youattempt to capture me, I do assure you, I strangle you where you stand!Do, now! I only brought a letter--"
Frankl, half inclined to tyrannize over misery, and half afraid, swepthis hand down the beard.
"Letter?" said he: "from whom?"
"From a friend".
"Which friend?"
"A man named Hogarth".
O'Hara said it in an awful whisper, though not aware of any relationbetween Hogarth and Frankl.
Whereupon an agitation waved down Frankl's beard. The news that "a mannamed Hogarth" had written to his daughter would hardly have suggested_Richard_--safe elsewhere; but, one night at Yarmouth, he had seenRichard Hogarth inexplicably kiss his daughter's hand.
"Hogarth?" said he: "what Christian name?"
"Richard".
The agonized thought in Frankl's brain was this: "Well, what's thegood of prisons, then?"--he, too earnest a financier to read newspapergossip, having heard not a word of the three escapes from Colmoor.
He said: "Well, sir, generally speaking, I'm the last to encourage thissort of thing; but, as yours is a special case, I tell you plain outthat, personally, I don't mean a bit of harm to you. Just step into aroom here, and let us talk the matter quietly over".
He led O'Hara to his study; and there they two remained locked half anhour, conferring head to head.