A Perilous Secret Part 31

Doze, indeed! Never did a man's eyes move to and fro more restlessly.

Every faculty was strung to the utmost.

At first as all the _dramatis personae_ he was in search of came out one after another from that gossip's tongue, he was amazed and delighted to find that instead of having to search for one of them in one part of England, and another in another, he had got them all ready to his hand.

But soon he began to see that they were too near each other, and some of them interwoven, and all the more dangerous to attack.

He saw one thing at a glance. That it would be quite a mistake to settle a plan of action. That is sometimes a great advantage in dealing with the unguarded. But it creates a stiffness. Here all must be supple and fitted with watchful tact to the situation as it rose. Everything would have to be shot flying.

Then as to the immediate situation, Reader, did ever you see a careful setter run suddenly into the middle of a covey who were not on their feet nor close together, but a little dispersed and reposing in high cover in the middle of the day? No human face is ever so intense or human form more rigid. He knows that one bird is three yards from his nose, another the same distance from either ear, and, in short, that they are all about him, and to frighten one is to frighten all.

His tail quivers, and then turns to steel, like his limbs. His eyes glare; his tongue fears to pant; it slips out at one side of his teeth and they close on it. Then slowly, slowly, he goes down, noiseless as a cat, and crouches on the long covert, whether turnips, rape, or clover.

Even so did this designing cur crouch in the Dun Cow.

The loyal quadruped is waiting for his master, and his anxiety is disinterested. The biped cur was waiting for the first streak of dawn to slip away to some more distant and safe hiding-place and sally-port than the Dun Cow, kept by a woman who was devoted to Hope, to Walter, and to Mary, and had all her wits about her--mother-wit included.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SERPENT.

Monckton slipped away at the dawn, and was off to Derby to prepare first-rate disguises.

At Derby, going through the local papers, he found lodgings offered at a farm-house to invalids, fresh milk and eggs, home-made bread, etc. The place was within a few miles of Clifford Hall. Monckton thought this would suit him much better than being too near. When his disguises were ready, he hired a horse and dog-cart by the month, and paid a deposit, and drove to the place in question. He put some shadow under his eyes to look more like an invalid. He had got used to his own cadaverous tint, so that seemed insufficient.

The farmer's wife looked at him, and hesitated.

"Well, sir," said she, with a blush, "we takes 'em in to cure, not to--"

"Not to bury," said Monckton. "Don't you be alarmed. I have got no time to die; I'm too busy. Why, I have been much worse than this. I am convalescent now."

"Ye don't say so, sir!" said she. "Well, I see your heart is good" (the first time he had ever been told that), "and so I've a mind to risk it."

Then she quickly clapped on ten s.h.i.+llings a week more for color, and he was installed. He washed his face, and then the woman conceived hopes of him, and expressed them in rustic fas.h.i.+on. "Well," said she, "dirt is a disguise. Now I look at you, you have got more mischief to do in the world yet, I do believe."

"A deal more, I hope," said he.

It now occurred to him, all of a sudden, that really he was not in good health, and that he had difficulties before him which required calm nerves, and that nerves are affected by the stomach. So, not to throw a chance away, he had the sense and the resolution to devote a few days to health and unwholesome meditation.

This is a discordant world: even vices will not always pull the same way. Here was a sinister villain distracted between avarice and revenge, and sore puzzled which way to turn. Of course he could expose the real parentage of Mary Bartley, and put both Bartley and Hope to shame, and then the Cliffords would make Bartley disgorge the 20,000. But he, Monckton, would not make a s.h.i.+lling by that, and it would be a weak revenge on Bartley, who could now spare 20,000, and no revenge at all on Hope, for Hope was now well-to-do, and would most likely be glad to get his daughter back. Then, on the other hand, he could easily frighten Bartley into giving him 5000 to keep dark, but in that case he must forego his vengeance on Hope.

This difficulty had tormented Monckton all along; but now Mrs. Dawson had revealed another obstacle. Young Clifford and Mary in love with each other. What Mrs. Easton saw as a friend, with her good mother-wit, this man saw in a moment as an enemy, viz., that this new combination dwarfed the 20,000 altogether. Monckton had no idea that his unknown antagonist Nurse Easton had married the pair, but the very attachment, as the chatter-box of the Dun Cow described it, was a bitter pill to him. "Who could have foreseen this?" said he. "It's devilish." We did not ourselves intend our readers to feel it so, or we would not have spent so much time over it. But as regards that one adjective, Mr. Monckton is a better authority than we are. He had a doc.u.ment with him that, skillfully used, might make mischief for a time between these lovers. But he foresaw there could be no permanent result without the personal a.s.sistance of Mrs.

Braham. That he could have commanded fourteen years ago, but now he felt how difficult it would be. He would have to threaten and torment her almost to madness before she would come down to Derbys.h.i.+re and declare that this Walter Clifford was the Walter Clifford of the certificate, and that she was his discarded wife. But Monckton was none the less resolved she should come if necessary. Leaving him _varius distractum vitiis_, and weighing every scheme, with its pros and cons, and, like a panther crouching and watching before he would make his first spring, we will now bring our other characters up to the same point, and that will not take us long, for during the months we have skipped there were not many events, and Mrs. Dawson has told the readers some of them, and the rest were only detached incidents.

The most important in our opinion were:

1. That Colonel Clifford resumed his determination to marry Julia Clifford to Walter, and pooh-poohed Fitzroy entirely, declaring him to be five feet nothing, and therefore far below the military standard.

2. That Hope rented a cottage of Walter about three hundred yards from the mine, and not upon the land that was leased to Bartley; that there was a long detached building hard by, which Walter divided for him, and turned into an office with a large window close to the ground, and a workshop with a doorway and an aperture for a window, but no window nor door.

3. That Hope got more and more uneasy about the 20,000, and observed to Bartley that they must be robbing _somebody_ of it without the excuse they once had. He, for his part, would work to disgorge his share.

Bartley replied that the money would have gone to a convent if he had not saved it from so vile a fate. This said the astute Bartley because one day Hope, who had his opinions on everything, inveighed against a convent, and said no private prisons ought to exist in a free country. So Bartley's ingenious statement stunned Hope for a minute, but did not satisfy his conscience.

4. Hope went to London for a week, and Mary spent four days with her husband at a hotel near the lake; but not the one held by Mrs. Easton's sister. This change was by advice of Mrs. Easton. On this occasion Mary played the woman. She requested Walter to get her some orange blossoms, and she borrowed a diamond bracelet of Julia, and sat down to dinner with her husband in evening dress, and dazzled him with her lovely arms and bust, and her diamond bracelet and eyes that outshone it. She seemed ever so much larger as well as lovelier, and Walter gazed at her with a sort of loving awe, and she smiled archly at him, and it was the first time she had really enjoyed her own beauty, or even troubled her head much about it. They condensed a honey-moon into these four days, and came home compensated for their patience, and more devoted than ever. But whilst they were away Colonel Clifford fired his attorney at Mr. Bartley, and when Mary came home, Bartley, who had lately connived at the love affair, told Mary this, and forbade her strictly to hold any more intercourse with Walter Clifford.

This was the state of things when "the hare with many friends," and only one enemy, returned to his cottage late in the afternoon. But before night everybody knew he had come home, and next morning they were all at him in due order. No sooner was he seated in his workshop, studying the lines of a new machine he was trying to invent, than he was startled from intense thought into the att.i.tude of Hogarth's enraged musician by cries of "Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope!" and there was a little lot of eager applicants. First a gypsy boy with long black curls and continuous genuflections, and a fiddle, and doleful complaints that he could not play it, and that it was the fiddle's fault.

"Well, it is for once," said Hope. "Why, you little duffer, don't you see the bridge is too low?"

He slackened the string, removed the bridge, fitted on a higher one, tuned it, and handed it over.

"There," said he, "play us one of the tunes of Egypt. 'The Rogue's March,' eh? and mizzle."

The supple Oriental grinned and made obeisances, pretended not to know "The Rogue's March" (to the hen-house), and went off playing "Johnny Comes Marching Home." (Bridewell to wit.)

Then did Miss Clifford's French maid trip forward smirking with a parasol to mend: _Desolee de vous deranger, Monsieur Hope, mais notre demoiselle est au desespoir: oh, ces parasols Anglais_!

"_Connu_," said Hope, "_voyons ca_;" and in a minute repaired the article, and the girl spread it, and went off wriggling and mincing with it, so that there was a p.r.o.nounced horse-laugh at her minauderies.

Then advanced a rough young English nurse out of a farm-house with a child that could just toddle. She had left an enormous doll with Hope for repairs, and the child had given her no peace for the last week. Luckily the doll was repaired, and handed over. The mite, in whose little bosom maternal feelings had been excited, insisted on carrying her child. The consequence was that at about the third step they rolled over one another, and to spectators at a little distance it was hard to say which was the parent and which the offspring. Them the strapping la.s.s in charge seized roughly, and at the risk of dislocating their little limbs, tossed into the air and caught, one on each of her own robust arms, and carried them off stupidly irritated--for want of a grain of humor--at the good-natured laugh this caused, and looking as if she would like to knock their little heads together.

Under cover of this an old man in a broad hat, and seemingly infirm, crept slowly by and looked keenly at Hope, but made no application. Only while taking stock of Hope his eyes flashed wickedly, and much too brightly for so old a man as he appeared. He did not go far; he got behind a tree, and watched the premises. Then a genuine old man and feeble came and brought Hope his clock to mend. Hope wound it up, and it went to perfection. The old man had been a stout fellow when Hope was a boy, but now he was weak, especially in the upper story. Hope saw at once that the young folk had sent him there for a joke, and he did not approve it.

"Gaffer," said he, "this will want repairing every eight days; but don't you come here any more; I'll call on you every week, and repair it for auld lang syne."

Whilst he toddled away, and Hope retired behind his lathe to study his model in peace, Monckton raged at the sight of him and his popularity.

"Ay," said he, "you are a genius. You can model a steam-engine or mend a doll, and you outwitted me, and gave me fourteen years. But you will find me as ingenious as you at one thing, and that's revenge."

And now a higher cla.s.s of visitors began to find their way to the general favorite. The first was a fair young lady of surpa.s.sing beauty. She strolled pensively down the green turf, cast a hasty glance in at the workshop, and not seeing Hope, concluded he was a little tired after his journey, and had not yet arrived. She strolled slowly down then, and seated herself in a large garden chair, stuffed, that Hope had made, and placed there for Colonel Clifford. That worthy frequented the spot because he had done so for years, and because it was a sweet turfy slope; and there was a wonderful beech-tree his father had made him plant when he was five years old. It had a gigantic silvery stem, and those giant branches which die crippled in a beech wood but really belong to the isolated tree, as one Virgil discovered before we were born. Mary Bartley then lowered her parasol, and settled into the Colonel's chair under the shade _patulae f.a.gi_--of the wide-spreading beech-tree.

She sat down and sighed. Monckton eyed her from his lurking-place, and made a shrewd guess who she was, but resolved to know.

Presently Hope caught a glimpse of her, and came forward and leaned out of the window to enjoy the sight of her. He could do that un.o.bserved, for he was a long way behind her at a sharp angle.

He was still a widower and this his only child, and lovely as an angel; and he had seen her grow into ripe loveliness from a sick girl. He had sinned for her and saved her; he had saved her again from a more terrible death. He doted on her, and it was always a special joy to him when he could gloat on her unseen. Then he had no need to make up an artificial face and hide his adoration from her.

But soon a cloud came over his face and his paternal heart. He knew she had a lover; and she looked like a girl who was waiting pensively for him. She had not come there for him whom she knew only as her devoted friend. At this thought the poor father sighed.

Mary's quick senses caught that, and she turned her head, and her sweet face beamed.

"You _are_ there, after all, Mr. Hope."

Hope was delighted. Why, it was him she had come to see, after all. He came down to her directly, radiant, and then put on a stiff manner he often had to wear, out of fidelity to Bartley, who did not deserve it.

"This is early for you to be out, Miss Bartley."