Laid up in Lavender Part 20

The fair, tear-stained face of my tyrant looked into mine for a moment, and then came quite naturally to its resting-place.

"Now," she said, when I was leaving, "you may have your hat, sir."

"I believe," I replied, "that you sat upon this chair on purpose."

And Bab blushed. I believe she did.

GERALD

GERALD

I have friends who tell me that they seldom walk the streets of London without wondering what is pa.s.sing behind the house-fronts; without picturing a comedy here, a love-scene there, and behind the dingy cane blinds a something ill-defined, a something odd and _bizarre_. They experience--if you believe them--a sense of loneliness out in the street, an impatience of the sameness of all these many houses, their dull bricks and discreet windows, and a longing that some one would step out and ask them to enter and see the play.

Well, I have never felt any of these things; but as I was pa.s.sing through Fitzhardinge Square about half-past ten o'clock one evening in last July, after dining, if I remember rightly, in Baker Street, something happened to me which I fancy may be of interest to such people.

I was pa.s.sing through the square from north to south, and to avoid a small crowd, which some reception had drawn together, I left the pavement and struck across the road to the path round the oval garden; which, by the way, contains a few of the finest trees in London. This part was in deep shadow, so that when I presently emerged from it and recrossed the road to the pavement near the top of Fitzhardinge Street, I had an advantage over persons on the pavement. They were under the lamps, while I, coming from the shadow under the trees, was invisible.

The door of the house immediately in front of me as I crossed was open, and standing at it was an elderly man-servant out of livery, who looked up and down the pavement by turns. It was his air of furtive anxiety that drew my attention to him. He was not like a man looking for a cab, or waiting for his sweetheart; and I had my eye upon him as I stepped upon the pavement beside him. My surprise was great when he uttered an exclamation of dismay at sight of me, and made as if he would retreat; while his face, in the full glare of the light, grew so pale and terror-stricken that he might before have been completely at his ease. I was astonished and instinctively stood, returning his gaze; for perhaps twenty seconds we remained so, he speechless, and his hands fallen by his side. Then, before I could move on, he cried, "Oh! Mr. George! Oh! Mr. George!" in a tone that rang in the stillness more like a wail than an ordinary cry.

My name, my surname I mean, is George. For a moment I took the address to myself, forgetting that the man was a stranger; and my heart began to beat more quickly with fear of what might have happened. "What is it?" I exclaimed. "What is it?" and I pulled from the lower part of my face the silk m.u.f.fler I was wearing. The evening was close, but I had been suffering from a sore throat.

He came nearer and peered more closely at me and I dismissed my fear; for I could see the discovery of his mistake dawning upon him. His pallid face, on which the pallor was the more noticeable, seeing that his plump features were those of a man with whom the world went well, regained some of its lost colour, and a sigh of relief pa.s.sed his lips. But this feeling was only momentary. The joy of escape from whatever blow he had thought imminent gave place to his previous state of expectancy of something.

"You took me for another person," I said, preparing to pa.s.s on. At that moment I could have sworn--I would have given one hundred to one twice over--that he was going to say yes. To my immense astonishment, he did not. With a visible effort he said "No!"

"Eh! What?" I exclaimed. I had taken a step or two.

"No, sir."

"Then what is it?" I said. "What do you want, my good fellow?"

Watching his shuffling indeterminate manner I wondered if he were sane. His next answer rea.s.sured me. There was an almost desperate deliberation in his manner. "My master wishes to see you, sir," was what he said, "if you will kindly walk in for five minutes."

I should have replied, "Who is your master?" if I had been wise; or cried, "Nonsense!" and gone my way. But often the mind when it is spurred by an emergency over-runs the more obvious course to adopt a worse. It was possible that one of my intimates had taken the house, and said in his butler's presence that he wished to see me. Thinking of that I answered, "Are you sure? Have you not made a mistake, my man?"

With a sullenness that was new in him, he said, No, he had not. Would I please to walk in? He stepped forward as he spoke, and induced me by a kind of urgency to enter the house, taking from me with the ease of a trained servant my hat, coat, and m.u.f.fler. Finding himself in the course of his duties he gained composure; while I, being thus treated, lost my sense of the strangeness of the proceeding, and only awoke to a full consciousness of my position when he had shut the door behind us and was putting up the chain.

Then I confess I looked round, alarmed at my easiness. But I found the hall s.p.a.cious, lofty, and dark-panelled, the ordinary hall of an old London house. The big fireplace was filled with plants in flower.

There were rugs on the floor and a number of chairs with painted crests on the backs, and in a corner was an old sedan chair, its poles upright against the wall.

No other servants were visible. But apart from this all was in order, all was quiet, and the notion of violence was manifestly absurd.

At the same time the affair seemed of the strangest. Why should the butler in charge of a well-arranged and handsome house--the house of an ordinary wealthy gentleman--why should he hang about the open doorway as if anxious to feel the presence of his kind? Why should he show the excitement, even the terror, which I had witnessed? Why should he introduce a stranger?

I had reached this point when he led the way upstairs. The staircase was wide, the steps were low and broad. On either side at the head of the flight stood a Venus of white Parian marble. They were not common reproductions, and I paused. I could see beyond them a Hercules and a Meleager, and delicately tinted draperies and ottomans that under the light of a silver hanging-lamp--a gem from Malta--changed a mere lobby to a fairies' nook. The sight filled me with a certain suspicion; which was dispelled, however, when my hand rested for an instant upon the pedestal that supported one of the statues. The cold touch of the marble was enough. The pillars were not of composite; as they certainly would have been in a gaming-house, or worse.

Three steps carried me across the lobby to a curtained doorway by which the servant was waiting. I saw that the "shakes" were upon him again. His impatience was so ill-concealed that I was not surprised, though I was taken aback, when he dropped the mask. As I pa.s.sed him--it being now too late for me to retreat undiscovered, if the room were occupied--he laid a trembling hand on my arm and thrust his face close to mine. "Ask how he is!" he whispered, trembling. "Say anything, no matter what, sir! Only, for the love of Heaven, stay five minutes!"

He gave me a gentle push as he spoke--pleasant all this!--and announced in a loud quavering voice, "Mr. George!"--which was true enough. I found myself walking round a screen at the same time that something in the room, a long dimly-lighted room, fell with a brisk rattling sound. This was followed by the scuffling noise of a person, still hidden from me by the screen, rising to his feet.

Next moment I was face to face with two men. One, a handsome elderly gentleman, who wore grey moustaches and would have seemed in place at a service club, was still seated. He regarded me with a perfectly unmoved face, as if my entrance at that hour were the commonest incident of his life. The other had risen and stood looking at me askance. He was five-and-twenty years younger than his companion and he was as good-looking in a different way. But his face was white and, unless I was mistaken, was distorted by the same terror--ay, and a darker terror than that which I had surprised in the servant's features; it was the face of one in a desperate strait. He looked as a man looks who has put all he has in the world upon an outsider--and done it twice. In that quiet drawing-room by the side of his placid companion, with nothing in their surroundings to account for his emotion, his panic-stricken face shocked me inexpressibly.

They were in evening dress; and between them was a chess-table, its men in disorder. Almost touching this was another small table bearing a tray of Apollinaris water and spirits. On this the young man was resting one hand as if but for its support he would have fallen.

To add one more fact; I had never seen either of them in my life.

Or wait; could that be true? If so, I must be dreaming. For the elder man broke the silence by addressing me in a quiet ordinary tone that matched his face. "Sit down, George," he said, "don't stand there. I did not expect you this evening." He held out his hand, without rising from his chair, and I advanced and shook it in silence. "I thought you were in Liverpool. How are you?" he continued.

"Very well, I thank you," I muttered mechanically.

"Not very well, I should say," he retorted. "You are as hoa.r.s.e as a raven. You have a bad cold. It is nothing worse, my boy, is it?" with anxiety.

"No, a throat cough; nothing else," I murmured, resigning myself to this astonis.h.i.+ng reception--this evident concern for my welfare on the part of a man whom I had never seen in my life.

"That is well!" he answered cheerily. Not only did my presence cause him no surprise. It gave him, without doubt, pleasure!

It was otherwise with his companion. He had made no advances to me, spoken no word, scarcely altered his position. His eyes he had never taken from me. Yet there was a change in him. He had discovered his mistake, as the butler had discovered his. The terror was gone from his face, and a malevolence not much more pleasant to witness had taken its place. Why this did not break out in an active form was part of the mystery given to me to solve. I could only surmise from glances which he cast from time to time towards the door, and from the occasional creaking of a board in that direction, that his self-restraint had to do with my friend the butler. The inconsequences of dreamland ran through it all. Why the elder man remained in error; why the younger with that pa.s.sion on his face was tongue-tied; why the great house was so still; why the servant should have mixed me up with the business at all--these were questions as unanswerable, one as the other.

And the fog in my mind grew denser when the old gentleman turned from me as if my presence were a usual thing, and rapped the table before him. "Now, Gerald!" he cried in sharp tones, "have you put those pieces back? Good heavens! I am glad that I have not nerves like yours! Don't remember the squares, boy? Here, give them to me!" With a hasty gesture of his hand, something like a mesmeric pa.s.s over the board, he sat down the half-dozen pieces with a rapid tap! tap! tap!

which made it abundantly clear that he, at any rate, had no doubt of their various positions.

"You will not mind sitting by until we have finished the game?" he continued, speaking to me, in a voice more genial than that which he had used to Gerald. "I suppose you are anxious to talk to me about your letter, George?" he went on when I did not answer. "The fact is that I have not read the enclosure. Barnes, as usual, read the outer letter, in which you said the matter was private and of grave importance; and I intended to go to Laura to-morrow, as you suggested, and get her to read the other to me. Now you have returned so soon, I am glad that I did not trouble her."

"Just so, sir," I said, listening with all my ears; and wondering.

"Well, I hope there is nothing very bad the matter, my boy?" he replied. "However--Gerald! it is your move! Ten minutes more of such play as your brother's, and I shall be at your service."

Gerald made a hurried move, the piece rattling upon the board as if he had been playing the castanets. His father made him take it back. I sat watching the two in wonder and silence. What did it all mean? Why should Barnes--now behind the screen listening--have read the outer letter? Why must Laura be employed to read the inner? Why could not this cultivated and refined gentleman before me read his--Ah! That much was disclosed. A mere turn of the hand did it. He had made another of those pa.s.ses over the board, and I learned from it what an ordinary examination would not have detected. He, the old soldier with the placid face and light blue eyes, was blind! Quite blind!

I began to see more clearly now. And from this moment I took up, in my own mind, a different position. Possibly the servant who had impelled me into the middle of the scene had had good reasons for doing so, as I began to discern. But with a clue to the labyrinth in my hand I could no longer move pa.s.sively. I must act for myself. For a while I sat still and made no sign. But my suspicions were presently confirmed. The elder man more than once scolded his opponent for playing slowly; in one of the intervals caused by his opponent's indecision he took from an inside pocket of his waistcoat a small packet.

"You had better take your letter, George," he said. "If there are originals in it, they will be more safe with you than with me. You can tell me all about it, now you are here. Gerald will leave us presently."

He held the papers towards me. To take them was to take an active part in the imposture, and I hesitated, my hand half outstretched. But my eyes fell at the critical instant upon Master Gerald's face, and my scruples took themselves off. He was eyeing the packet with an intense greed, with a trembling longing--a very itching of the fingers, to fall upon the prey--that put an end to my doubts. I took the papers.

With a quiet, but I think a significant, look in his direction, I placed them in the breast-pocket of my coat. I had no safer receptacle about me, or into that they would have gone.

"Very well, sir," I said. "There is no particular hurry. I think the matter will keep, as things now are, until to-morrow."

"So much the better. You ought not to be out with such a cold, my boy," he continued. "You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water and a lemon? The servants are all at the theatre--Gerald begged a holiday for them--but Barnes will get you the things in a minute."

"Thank you; I won't trouble him. I will take some with cold water," I replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted--time to think; five minutes to myself, while they played.