Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  The landlord raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you were anxious, sir,’ he retorted, ‘to get news?’

  ‘So I am, very anxious!’ Mr. Thomasson replied, with a touch of the stiffness that marked his manner to those below him. ‘Still, I think I had better wait here. Or, no, no!’ he cried, afraid to stand out, ‘I will come with you. But, you see, if she is not here, I am anxious to go in search of her as quickly as possible, where — wherever she is.’

  ‘To be sure, that is natural,’ the landlord answered, holding the door open that the clergyman might pass out, ‘seeing that you are her father, sir. I think you said you were her father?’ he continued, as Mr. Thomasson, with a scared look round the hall, emerged from the room.

  ‘Ye — yes,’ the tutor faltered; and wished himself in the street. ‘At least — I am her step-father.’

  ‘Oh, her step-father!’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Thomasson answered, faintly. How he cursed the folly that had put him in this false position! How much more strongly he would have cursed it, had he known what it was cast that dark shadow, as of a lurking man, on the upper part of the stairs!

  ‘Just so,’ the landlord answered, as he paused at the foot of the staircase. ‘And, if you please — what might your name be, sir?’

  A cold sweat rose on the tutor’s brow; he looked helplessly towards the door. If he gave his name and the matter were followed up, he would be traced, and it was impossible to say what might not come of it. At last, ‘Mr. Thomas,’ he said, with a sneaking guilty look.

  ‘Mr. Thomas, your reverence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the young lady’s name would be Thomas, then?’

  ‘N-no,’ Mr. Thomasson faltered. ‘No. Her name — you see,’ he continued, with a sickly smile, ‘she is my step-daughter.’

  ‘To be sure, your reverence. So I understood. And her name?’

  The tutor glowered at his persecutor. ‘I protest, you are monstrous inquisitive,’ he said, with a sudden sorry air of offence. ‘But, if you must know, her name is Masterson; and she has left her friends to join — to join a — an Irish adventurer.’

  It was unfortunately said; the more as the tutor in order to keep his eye on the door, by which he expected Mr. Pomeroy to re-enter, had turned his back on the staircase. The lie was scarcely off his lips when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and, twisting him round with a jerk, brought him face to face with an old friend. The tutor’s eyes met those of Mr. Dunborough, he uttered one low shriek, and turned as white as paper. He knew that Nemesis had overtaken him.

  But not how heavy a Nemesis! For he could not know that the landlord of the Angel owned a restive colt, and no farther back than the last fair had bought a new whip; nor that that very whip lay at this moment where the landlord had dropped it, on a chest so near to Mr. Dunborough’s hand that the tutor never knew how he became possessed of it. Only he saw it imminent, and would have fallen in sheer terror, his coward’s knees giving way under him, if Mr. Dunborough had not driven him back against the wall with a violence that jarred the teeth in his head.

  ‘You liar!’ the infuriated listener cried; ‘you lying toad!’ and shook him afresh with each sentence. ‘She has run away from her friends, has she? With an Irish adventurer, eh? And you are her father? And your name is Thomas? Thomas, eh! Well, if you do not this instant tell me where she is, I’ll Thomas you! Now, come! One! Two! Three!’

  In the last words seemed a faint promise of mercy; alas! it was fallacious. Mr. Thomasson, the lash impending over him, had time to utter one cry; no more. Then the landlord’s supple cutting-whip, wielded by a vigorous hand, wound round the tenderest part of his legs — for at the critical instant Mr. Dunborough dragged him from the wall — and with a gasping shriek of pain, pain such as he had not felt since boyhood, Mr. Thomasson leapt into the air. As soon as his breath returned, he strove frantically to throw himself down; but struggle as he might, pour forth screams, prayers, execrations, as he might, all was vain. The hour of requital had come. The cruel lash fell again and again, raising great wheals on his pampered body: now he clutched Mr. Dunborough’s arm only to be shaken off; now he grovelled on the floor; now he was plucked up again, now an ill-directed cut marked his cheek. Twice the landlord, in pity and fear for the man’s life, tried to catch Mr. Dunborough’s arm and stay the punishment; once William did the same — for ten seconds of this had filled the hall with staring servants. But Mr. Dunborough’s arm and the whirling whip kept all at a distance; nor was it until a tender-hearted housemaid ran in at risk of her beauty, and clutched his wrist and hung on it, that he tossed the whip away, and allowed Mr. Thomasson to drop, a limp moaning rag on the floor.

  ‘For shame!’ the girl cried hysterically. ‘You blackguard! You cruel blackguard!’

  ‘’Tis he’s the blackguard, my dear!’ the honourable Mr. Dunborough answered, panting, but in the best of tempers. ‘Bring me a tankard of something; and put that rubbish outside, landlord. He has got no more than he deserved, my dear.’

  Mr. Thomasson uttered a moan, and one of the waiters stooping over him asked him if he could stand. He answered only by a faint groan, and the man raising his eyebrows, looked gravely at the landlord; who, recovered from the astonishment into which the fury and suddenness of the assault had thrown him, turned his indignation on Mr. Dunborough.

  ‘I am surprised at you, sir,’ he cried, rubbing his hands with vexation. ‘I did not think a gentleman in Sir George’s company would act like this! And in a respectable house! For shame, sir! For shame! Do, some of you,’ he continued to the servants, ‘take this gentleman to his room and put him to bed. And softly with him, do you hear?’

  ‘I think he has swooned,’ the man answered, who had stooped over him.

  The landlord wrung his hands. ‘Fie, sir — for shame!’ he said. ‘Stay, Charles; I’ll fetch some brandy.’

  He bustled away to do so, and to acquaint Sir George; who through all, and though from his open door he had gathered what was happening, had resolutely held aloof. The landlord, as he went out, unconsciously evaded Mr. Pomeroy who entered at the same moment from the street. Ignorant of what was forward — for his companion’s cries had not reached the stables — Pomeroy advanced at his ease and was surprised to find the hall, which he had left empty, occupied by a chattering crowd of half-dressed servants; some bending over the prostrate man with lights, some muttering their pity or suggesting remedies; while others again glanced askance at the victor, who, out of bravado rather than for any better reason, maintained his place at the foot of the stairs, and now and then called to them ‘to rub him — they would not rub that off!’

  Mr. Pomeroy did not at first see the fallen man, so thick was the press round him. Then some one moved, and he did; and the thing that had happened bursting on him, his face, gloomy before, grew black as a thunder-cloud. He flung the nearest to either side, that he might see the better; and, as they recoiled, ‘Who has done this?’ he cried in a voice low but harsh with rage. ‘Whose work is this?’ And standing over the tutor he turned himself, looking from one to another.

  But the servants knew his reputation, and shrank panic-stricken from his eye; and for a moment no one answered. Then Mr. Dunborough, who, whatever his faults, was not a coward, took the word. ‘Whose work is it?’ he answered with assumed carelessness. ‘It is my work. Have you any fault to find with it?’

  ‘Twenty, puppy!’ the elder man retorted, foaming with rage. And then, ‘Have I said enough, or do you want me to say more?’ he cried.

  ‘Quite enough,’ Mr. Dunborough answered calmly. He had wreaked the worst of his rage on the unlucky tutor. ‘When you are sober I’ll talk to you.’

  Mr. Pomeroy with a frightful oath cursed his impudence. ‘I believe I have to pay you for more than this!’ he panted. ‘Is it you who decoyed a girl from my house to-night?’

  Mr. Dunborough laughed aloud. ‘No, but it was I sent her there,’ he said. He had the advantage of knowledge. ‘And if I had brought he
r away again, it would have been nothing to you.’

  The answer staggered Bully Pomeroy in the midst of his rage.

  ‘Who are you?’ he cried.

  ‘Ask your friend there!’ Dunborough retorted with disdain. ‘I’ve written my name on him! It should be pretty plain to read’; and he turned on his heel to go upstairs.

  Pomeroy took two steps forward, laid his hand on the other’s shoulder, and, big man as he was, turned him round. ‘Will you give me satisfaction?’ he cried.

  Dunborough’s eyes met his. ‘So that is your tone, is it?’ he said slowly; and he reached for the tankard of ale that had been brought to him, and that now stood on a chest at the foot of the stairs.

  But Mr. Pomeroy’s hand was on the pot first; in a second its contents were in Dunborough’s face and dripping from his cravat. ‘Now will you fight?’ Bully Pomeroy cried; and as if he knew his man, and that he had done enough, he turned his back on the stairs and strode first into the Yarmouth.

  Two or three women screamed as they saw the liquor thrown, and a waiter ran for the landlord. A second drawer, more courageous, cried, ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen — for God’s sake, gentlemen!’ and threw himself between the younger man and the door of the room. But Dunborough, his face flushed with anger, took him by the shoulder, and sent him spinning; then with an oath he followed the other into the Yarmouth, and slammed the door in the faces of the crowd. They heard the key turned.

  ‘My God!’ the waiter who had interfered cried, his face white, ‘there will be murder done!’ And he sped away for the kitchen poker that he might break in the door. He had known such a case before. Another ran to seek the gentleman upstairs. The others drew round the door and stooped to listen; a moment, and the sound they feared reached their ears — the grinding of steel, the trampling of leaping feet, now a yell and now a taunting laugh. The sounds were too much for one of the men who heard them: he beat on the door with his fists. ‘Gentlemen!’ he cried, his voice quavering, ‘for the Lord’s sake don’t, gentlemen! Don’t!’ On which one of the women who had shrieked fell on the floor in wild hysterics.

  ON THE THRESHOLD, ... STOOD MR. DUNBOROUGH.

  That brought to a pitch the horror without the room, where lights shone on frightened faces and huddled forms. In the height of it the landlord and Sir George appeared. The woman’s screams were so violent that it was rather from the attitude of the group about the door than from anything they could hear that the two took in the position. The instant they did so Sir George signed to the servants to stand aside, and drew back to hurl himself against the door. A cry that the poker was come, and that with this they could burst the lock with ease, stayed him just in time — and fortunately; for as they went to adjust the point of the tool between the lock and the jamb the nearest man cried ‘Hush!’ and raised his hand, the door creaked, and in a moment opened inwards. On the threshold, supporting himself by the door, stood Mr. Dunborough, his face damp and pale, his eyes furtive and full of a strange horror. He looked at Sir George.

  ‘He’s got it!’ he muttered in a hoarse whisper. ‘You had better — get a surgeon. You’ll bear me out,’ he continued, looking round eagerly, ‘he began it. He flung it in my face. By God — it may go near to hanging me!’

  Sir George and the landlord pushed by him and went in. The room was lighted by one candle, burning smokily on the high mantelshelf; the other lay overturned and extinguished in the folds of a tablecloth which had been dragged to the floor. On a wooden chair beside the bare table sat Mr. Pomeroy, huddled chin to breast, his left hand pressed to his side, his right still resting on the hilt of his small-sword. His face was the colour of chalk, and a little froth stood on his lips; but his eyes, turned slightly upwards, still followed his rival with a grim fixed stare. Sir George marked the crimson stain on his lips, and raising his hand for silence — for the servants were beginning to crowd in with exclamations of horror — knelt down beside the chair, ready to support him in case of need. “They are fetching a surgeon,” he said. “He will be here in a minute.”

  Mr. Pomeroy’s eyes left the door, through which Dunborough had disappeared, and for a few seconds they dwelt unwinking on Sir George: but for a while he said nothing. At length, “Too late,” he whispered. “It was my boots — I slipped, or I’d have gone through him. I’m done. Pay Tamplin — five pounds I owe him.”

  Soane saw that it was only a matter of minutes, and he signed to the landlord, who was beginning to lament, to be silent.

  “If you can tell me where the girl is — in two words,” he said gently, “will you try to do so?”

  The dying man’s eyes roved over the ring of faces. “I don’t know,” he whispered, so faintly that Soane had to bring his ear very near his lips. “The parson — was to have got her to Tamplin’s — for me. He put her in the wrong carriage. He’s paid. And — I’m paid.”

  With the last word the small-sword fell clinking to the floor. The dying man drew himself up, and seemed to press his hand more and more tightly to his side. For a brief second a look of horror — as if the consciousness of his position dawned on his brain — awoke in his eyes. Then he beat it down. “Tamplin’s staunch,” he muttered. “I must stand by Tamplin. I owe — pay him five pounds for—”

  A gush of blood stopped his utterance. He gasped and with a groan but no articulate word fell forward in Soane’s arms. Bully Pomeroy had lost his last stake!

  Not this time the spare thousands the old squire, good saving man, had left on bond and mortgage; not this time the copious thousands he had raised himself for spendthrift uses: nor the old oaks his great-grand-sire had planted to celebrate His Majesty’s glorious Restoration: nor the Lelys and Knellers that great-grand-sire’s son, shrewd old connoisseur, commissioned: not this time the few hundreds hardly squeezed of late from charge and jointure, or wrung from the unwilling hands of friends — but life; life, and who shall say what besides life!

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  IN THE CARRIAGE

  Mr. Thomasson was mistaken in supposing that it was the jerk, caused by the horses’ start, which drew from Julia the scream he heard as the carriage bounded forward and whirled into the night. The girl, indeed, was in no mood to be lightly scared; she had gone through too much. But as, believing herself alone, she sank back on the seat — at the moment that the horses plunged forward — her hand, extended to save herself, touched another hand: and the sudden contact in the dark, conveying to her the certainty that she had a companion, with all the possibilities the fact conjured up, more than excused an involuntary cry.

  The answer, as she recoiled, expecting the worst, was a sound between a sigh and a grunt; followed by silence. The coachman had got the horses in hand again, and was driving slowly; perhaps he expected to be stopped. She sat as far into her corner as she could, listening and staring, enraged rather than frightened. The lamps shed no light into the interior of the carriage, she had to trust entirely to her ears; and, gradually, while she sat shuddering, awaiting she knew not what, there stole on her senses, mingling with the roll of the wheels, a sound the least expected in the world — a snore!

  Irritated, puzzled, she stretched out a hand and touched a sleeve, a man’s sleeve; and at that, remembering how she had sat and wasted fears on Mr. Thomasson before she knew who he was, she gave herself entirely to anger. ‘Who is it?’ she cried sharply. ‘What are you doing here?’

  The snoring ceased, the man turned himself in his corner. ‘Are we there?’ he murmured drowsily; and, before she could answer, was asleep again.

  The absurdity of the position pricked her. Was she always to be travelling in dark carriages beside men who mocked her? In her impatience she shook the man violently. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ she cried again.

  The unseen roused himself. ‘Eh?’ he exclaimed. ‘Who — who spoke? I — oh, dear, dear, I must have been dreaming. I thought I heard—’

  ‘Mr. Fishwick!’ she cried; her voice breaking between tears and laughter. ‘Mr. Fishwic
k!’ And she stretched out her hands, and found his, and shook and held them in her joy.

  The lawyer heard and felt; but, newly roused from sleep, unable to see her, unable to understand how she came to be by his side in the post-chaise, he shrank from her. He was dumbfounded. His mind ran on ghosts and voices; and he was not to be satisfied until he had stopped the carriage, and with trembling fingers brought a lamp, that he might see her with his eyes. That done, the little attorney fairly wept for joy.

  ‘That I should be the one to find you!’ he cried. ‘That I should be the one to bring you back! Even now I can hardly believe that you are here! Where have you been, child? Lord bless us, we have seen strange things!’

  ‘It was Mr. Dunborough!’ she cried with indignation.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘He is behind with Sir George Soane. Sir George and I followed you. We met him, and Sir George compelled him to accompany us.’

  ‘Compelled him?’ she said.

  ‘Ay, with a pistol to his head,’ the lawyer answered; and chuckled and leapt in his seat — for he had re-entered the carriage — at the remembrance. ‘Oh, Lord, I declare I have lived a year in the last two days. And to think that I should be the one to bring you back!’ he repeated. ‘To bring you back! But there, what happened to you? I know that they set you down in the road. We learned that at Bristol this afternoon from the villains who carried you off.’

  She told him how they had found. Mr. Pomeroy’s house, and taken shelter there, and —

  ‘You have been there until now?’ he said in amazement. ‘At a gentleman’s house? But did you not think, child, that we should be anxious? Were there no horses? No servants? Didn’t you think of sending word to Marlborough?’

  ‘He was a villain,’ she answered, shuddering. Brave as she was, Mr. Pomeroy had succeeded in frightening her. ‘He would not let me go. And if Mr. Thomasson had not stolen the key of the room and released me, and brought me to the gate to-night, and put me in with you—’