A Laodicean Part 61

But instead of going townward, he turned his back upon the distant sprinkle of lights, and did not check his walk till he reached the lodge of Stancy Castle.

Here he pulled the wooden acorn beside the arch, and when the porter appeared his light revealed the pedestrian's countenance to be scathed, as by lightning.

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Power,' said the porter with sudden deference as he opened the wicket. 'But we wasn't expecting anybody to-night, as there is n.o.body at home, and the servants on board wages; and that's why I was so long a-coming.'

'No matter, no matter,' said Abner Power. 'I have returned on sudden business, and have not come to stay longer than to-night. Your mistress is not with me. I meant to sleep in Markton, but have changed my mind.'

Mr. Power had brought no luggage with him beyond a small hand-bag, and as soon as a room could be got ready he retired to bed.

The next morning he pa.s.sed in idly walking about the grounds and observing the progress which had been made in the works--now temporarily suspended. But that inspection was less his object in remaining there than meditation, was abundantly evident. When the bell began to toll from the neighbouring church to announce the burial of Sir William De Stancy, he pa.s.sed through the castle, and went on foot in the direction indicated by the sound. Reaching the margin of the churchyard he looked over the wall, his presence being masked by bushes and a group of idlers from Markton who stood in front. Soon a funeral procession of simple--almost meagre and threadbare--character arrived, but Power did not join the people who followed the deceased into the church. De Stancy was the chief mourner and only relation present, the other followers of the broken-down old man being an ancient lawyer, a couple of faithful servants, and a bowed villager who had been page to the late Sir William's father--the single living person left in the parish who remembered the De Stancys as people of wealth and influence, and who firmly believed that family would come into its rights ere long, and oust the uncirc.u.mcized Philistines who had taken possession of the old lands.

The funeral was over, and the rusty carriages had gone, together with many of the spectators; but Power lingered in the churchyard as if he were looking for some one. At length he entered the church, pa.s.sing by the cavernous pitfall with descending steps which stood open outside the wall of the De Stancy aisle. Arrived within he scanned the few idlers of antiquarian tastes who had remained after the service to inspect the monuments; and beside a rec.u.mbent effigy--the effigy in alabaster whose features Paula had wiped with her handkerchief when there with Somerset--he beheld the man it had been his business to find. Abner Power went up and touched this person, who was Dare, on the shoulder.

'Mr. Power--so it is!' said the youth. 'I have not seen you since we met in Carlsruhe.'

'You shall see all the more of me now to make up for it. Shall we walk round the church?'

'With all my heart,' said Dare.

They walked round; and Abner Power began in a sardonic recitative: 'I am a traveller, and it takes a good deal to astonish me. So I neither swooned nor screamed when I learnt a few hours ago what I had suspected for a week, that you are of the house and lineage of Jacob.' He flung a nod towards the canopied tombs as he spoke.--'In other words, that you are of the same breed as the De Stancys.'

Dare cursorily glanced round. n.o.body was near enough to hear their words, the nearest persons being two workmen just outside, who were bringing their tools up from the vault preparatively to closing it.

Having observed this Dare replied, 'I, too, am a traveller; and neither do I swoon nor scream at what you say. But I a.s.sure you that if you busy yourself about me, you may truly be said to busy yourself about nothing.'

'Well, that's a matter of opinion. Now, there's no scarlet left in my face to blush for men's follies; but as an alliance is afoot between my niece and the present Sir William, this must be looked into.'

Dare reflectively said 'O,' as he observed through the window one of the workmen bring up a candle from the vault and extinguish it with his fingers.

'The marriage is desirable, and your relations.h.i.+p in itself is of no consequence,' continued the elder, 'but just look at this. You have forced on the marriage by unscrupulous means, your object being only too clearly to live out of the proceeds of that marriage.'

'Mr. Power, you mock me, because I labour under the misfortune of having an illegitimate father to provide for. I really deserve commiseration.'

'You might deserve it if that were all. But it looks bad for my niece's happiness as Lady De Stancy, that she and her husband are to be perpetually haunted by a young chevalier d'industrie, who can forge a telegram on occasion, and libel an innocent man by an ingenious device in photography. It looks so bad, in short, that, advantageous as a t.i.tle and old family name would be to her and her children, I won't let my brother's daughter run the risk of having them at the expense of being in the grip of a man like you. There are other suitors in the world, and other t.i.tles: and she is a beautiful woman, who can well afford to be fastidious. I shall let her know at once of these things, and break off the business--unless you do ONE THING.'

A workman brought up another candle from the vault, and prepared to let down the slab. 'Well, Mr. Power, and what is that one thing?'

'Go to Peru as my agent in a business I have just undertaken there.'

'And settle there?'

'Of course. I am soon going over myself, and will bring you anything you require.'

'How long will you give me to consider?' said Dare.

Power looked at his watch. 'One, two, three, four hours,' he said. 'I leave Markton by the seven o'clock train this evening.'

'And if I meet your proposal with a negative?'

'I shall go at once to my niece and tell her the whole circ.u.mstances--tell her that, by marrying Sir William, she allies herself with an unhappy gentleman in the power of a criminal son who makes his life a burden to him by perpetual demands upon his purse; who will increase those demands with his accession to wealth, threaten to degrade her by exposing her husband's antecedents if she opposes his extortions, and who will make her miserable by letting her know that her old lover was shamefully victimized by a youth she is bound to screen out of respect to her husband's feelings. Now a man does not care to let his own flesh and blood incur the danger of such anguish as that, and I shall do what I say to prevent it. Knowing what a lukewarm sentiment hers is for Sir William at best, I shall not have much difficulty.'

'Well, I don't feel inclined to go to Peru.'

'Neither do I want to break off the match, though I am ready to do it.

But you care about your personal freedom, and you might be made to wear the broad arrow for your tricks on Somerset.'

'Mr. Power, I see you are a hard man.'

'I am a hard man. You will find me one. Well, will you go to Peru? Or I don't mind Australia or California as alternatives. As long as you choose to remain in either of those wealth-producing places, so long will Cunningham Haze go uninformed.'

'Mr. Power, I am overcome. Will you allow me to sit down? Suppose we go into the vestry. It is more comfortable.'

They entered the vestry, and seated themselves in two chairs, one at each end of the table.

'In the meantime,' continued Dare, 'to lend a little romance to stern realities, I'll tell you a singular dream I had just before you returned to England.' Power looked contemptuous, but Dare went on: 'I dreamt that once upon a time there were two brothers, born of a Nonconformist family, one of whom became a railway-contractor, and the other a mechanical engineer.'

'A mechanical engineer--good,' said Power, beginning to attend.

'When the first went abroad in his profession, and became engaged on continental railways, the second, a younger man, looking round for a start, also betook himself to the continent. But though ingenious and scientific, he had not the business capacity of the elder, whose rebukes led to a sharp quarrel between them; and they parted in bitter estrangement--never to meet again as it turned out, owing to the dogged obstinacy and self-will of the younger man. He, after this, seemed to lose his moral ballast altogether, and after some eccentric doings he was reduced to a state of poverty, and took lodgings in a court in a back street of a town we will call Geneva, considerably in doubt as to what steps he should take to keep body and soul together.'

Abner Power was shooting a narrow ray of eyesight at Dare from the corner of his nearly closed lids. 'Your dream is so interesting,' he said, with a hard smile, 'that I could listen to it all day.'

'Excellent!' said Dare, and went on: 'Now it so happened that the house opposite to the one taken by the mechanician was peculiar. It was a tall narrow building, wholly unornamented, the walls covered with a layer of white plaster cracked and soiled by time. I seem to see that house now!

Six stone steps led up to the door, with a rusty iron railing on each side, and under these steps were others which went down to a cellar--in my dream of course.'

'Of course--in your dream,' said Power, nodding comprehensively.

'Sitting lonely and apathetic without a light, at his own chamber-window at night time, our mechanician frequently observed dark figures descending these steps and ultimately discovered that the house was the meeting-place of a fraternity of political philosophers, whose object was the extermination of tyrants and despots, and the overthrow of established religions. The discovery was startling enough, but our hero was not easily startled. He kept their secret and lived on as before. At last the mechanician and his affairs became known to the society, as the affairs of the society had become known to the mechanician, and, instead of shooting him as one who knew too much for their safety, they were struck with his faculty for silence, and thought they might be able to make use of him.'

'To be sure,' said Abner Power.

'Next, like friend Bunyan, I saw in my dream that denunciation was the breath of life to this society. At an earlier date in its history, objectionable persons in power had been from time to time murdered, and curiously enough numbered; that is, upon the body of each was set a mark or seal, announcing that he was one of a series. But at this time the question before the society related to the subst.i.tution for the dagger, which was vetoed as obsolete, of some explosive machine that would be both more effectual and less difficult to manage; and in short, a large reward was offered to our needy Englishman if he would put their ideas of such a machine into shape.'

Abner Power nodded again, his complexion being peculiar--which might partly have been accounted for by the reflection of window-light from the green-baize table-cloth.

'He agreed, though no politician whatever himself, to exercise his wits on their account, and brought his machine to such a pitch of perfection, that it was the identical one used in the memorable attempt--' (Dare whispered the remainder of the sentence in tones so low that not a mouse in the corner could have heard.) 'Well, the inventor of that explosive has naturally been wanted ever since by all the heads of police in Europe. But the most curious--or perhaps the most natural part of my story is, that our hero, after the catastrophe, grew disgusted with himself and his comrades, acquired, in a fit of revulsion, quite a conservative taste in politics, which was strengthened greatly by the news he indirectly received of the great wealth and respectability of his brother, who had had no communion with him for years, and supposed him dead. He abjured his employers and resolved to abandon them; but before coming to England he decided to destroy all trace of his combustible inventions by dropping them into the neighbouring lake at night from a boat. You feel the room close, Mr. Power?'

'No, I suffer from attacks of perspiration whenever I sit in a consecrated edifice--that's all. Pray go on.'

'In carrying out this project, an explosion occurred, just as he was throwing the stock overboard--it blew up into his face, wounding him severely, and nearly depriving him of sight. The boat was upset, but he swam ash.o.r.e in the darkness, and remained hidden till he recovered, though the scars produced by the burns had been set on him for ever.

This accident, which was such a misfortune to him as a man, was an advantage to him as a conspirators' engineer retiring from practice, and afforded him a disguise both from his own brotherhood and from the police, which he has considered impenetrable, but which is getting seen through by one or two keen eyes as time goes on. Instead of coming to England just then, he went to Peru, connected himself with the guano trade, I believe, and after his brother's death revisited England, his old life obliterated as far as practicable by his new principles. He is known only as a great traveller to his surviving relatives, though he seldom says where he has travelled. Unluckily for himself, he is WANTED by certain European governments as badly as ever.'

Dare raised his eyes as he concluded his narration. As has been remarked, he was sitting at one end of the vestry-table, Power at the other, the green cloth stretching between them. On the edge of the table adjoining Mr. Power a s.h.i.+ning nozzle of metal was quietly resting, like a dog's nose. It was directed point-blank at the young man.

Dare started. 'Ah--a revolver?' he said.

Mr. Power nodded placidly, his hand still grasping the pistol behind the edge of the table. 'As a traveller I always carry one of 'em,' he returned; 'and for the last five minutes I have been closely considering whether your numerous brains are worth blowing out or no. The vault yonder has suggested itself as convenient and snug for one of the same family; but the mental problem that stays my hand is, how am I to despatch and bury you there without the workmen seeing?'

''Tis a strange problem, certainly,' replied Dare, 'and one on which I fear I could not give disinterested advice. Moreover, while you, as a traveller, always carry a weapon of defence, as a traveller so do I. And for the last three-quarters of an hour I have been thinking concerning you, an intensified form of what you have been thinking of me, but without any concern as to your interment. See here for a proof of it.'