“VITRIOLISERAI.”
The next morning he was gone, he was not there in the cave, and as for
the man, Healy, he was not there, and where to seek I knew not at all:
only the thing like a telescope was there in the cave, the thing like a
trap, the dead creature’s remains, the stone which he has hollowed into
a vase, and under some rubbish and leaves in a corner the thing like an
ink-bottle that he has called a “stele”: but all the bread, etc., that
I had brought him he had either eaten or taken away.
Eaten, may be; but, if not eaten, whither, I asked myself—with this
food—was he off to? Ah, many questions I asked myself; and then,
hurrying across the bridge, went to the cottage of Mrs. Bream, with
whom Healy was lodging, to ask if the man did not sleep there the
previous night; but she said no, he had merely come in, together with
a stripling who wore sandals, to take away his bag, saying, however,
that he would be back to her in some days; and he had taken the 10.20
up-train with this stripling, who had wished to know of her, poor
sinner, if she did not know even so much as the names of the mountains
in the moon.
Upon this, seeing me near to fainting, she made me sip a little of a
white wine made, she said, out of cowslips. I was not, however, wholly
without hope, since Healy, who is clearly a captive, and probably but
repeated his master’s words, had promised to return; nor did I believe
that the man could mean to deceive, since he seems an honest-minded
person. To this, then, I clung; though that the boy should fly off thus
wildly to London without breathing anything of it to me who am his
sweetheart seemed hard—_to London_, I assumed! for that 10.20 train
stops only at Gloucester and Swindon before London, and I thought that
he may have wished to behold the capital. Indeed, this is probable:
for the conviction has clearly been growing upon him that his “Man,”
hereabouts, at all events, is hardly all that he has thought him; and I
guess that the feebleness of such a magnate as Monsieur the Minister of
the Interior in that encounter in the garden may have sent him flying
off to the capital to find out once and for all how things actually
are. What, then, I asked myself, would be his opinion of it all? Would
what he there saw fascinate or in any other way keep him from returning
to me? Would not Healy find the means to communicate with Dr. Lepsius,
or in some way to kidnap and immure the young man? Ah, many, many
questions I asked myself....
The 26th. It was vindictive of Monsieur de Courcy to give information
to the police as to his grievance against the young man, which, after
all, was hardly very grave; but his no doubt is one of those hard brows
that hardly ever forgive. At any rate, this morning an “inspector”
demanded to interview me with regard to the whereabouts of the young
man, my relation with whom, owing to my haste to crow my marriage, is
already known throughout the household, just as the fact that Miss
Eve is in negotiation with a lady for a new maid is well known to
everyone.... My God! what is to become of me now, my good God? Have
I not conducted myself like a light-headed young girl who has not yet
learned to govern her nerves or her tongue, who skips into enthusiasm
at the first music, and boasts beforehand of shadows as though they
were substances? At any rate, I had to confess to this constable my
complete ignorance of my bridegroom’s movements, whereupon he, getting
up to go, said to me, “Well, we shall make it hot for him if he dares
show his nose about here again.”
The 27th. But is he such a blackguard, or is his scorn of me so great,
that he cannot even write me a line to say that I am never again to see
him? Still not even a line, and Miss Eve this morning would not let me
do her hands, but ordered me to bed, I looked so bad. I went, but had
to get up to go to St. Arvens to receive the marriage-licence, after
which I took the train, as directed, to Wynton, to give notice of it to
the registrar there; and now any day after to-morrow, this gentleman
told me, I may be married: a statement that made me in coming down the
stairs break bitterly out into tears.... In passing through Wynton I
procured myself at the chemist’s a vial of vitriol....
The 28th. Again to-day I was several hours in bed with my headache,
Miss Ruth coming at noon to read aloud to me a fairy-tale named _The
Pilgrim’s Progress_, and after luncheon comes Miss Eve also to sit five
minutes at my bedside. It was in going away, when she had reached the
door, that she stopped and said, “And as to your marriage?” whereupon
I too rashly indulged my shame with the falsehood that I had that very
morning received a communication from my future-one, assuring me that
he would immediately be here to be mine.... The house is now empty of
guests, the two Gordons having departed this morning....
The 29th. Well, dear Lord, he is here, and I thank you. I now write at
six in the morning, after having spent a nearly sleepless night with
him and Healy, and still with no desire to close my eyes. By to-morrow
evening we shall have been secretly and safely married, and within a
week I shall have taken farewell of this my life here....
I was in the housekeeper’s room alone, for Mrs. Bowden had gone up,
it being long past midnight, and I was lying on the sofa, the vial of
vitriol beside me on the table, for I had been foolishly fingering
it, when there came a tapping at that back door which opens upon the
passage. I get up, I go to it, I open it.... And it was _he_! Oh, my
wild one with wings, with the light of life flying wildly in his eyes,
it was he! and while one might reckon three I stood breathless, then
with a cry was on his breast.
His nature is not yet coaxed over into tolerating the luxury of
kissing, and even in the ecstasy of our meeting his chastity shrank
from the touch of my lips; but, my faith, that will soon be “al-right”!
and he patted my shoulder fondly, even while hurriedly saying, “I need
light for an hour or two.”
I was too much flurried to attend to what he said! I cooed to him, “And
is it actually true that you have come back to me?”
“Yes, yes, let me get in,” he mutters hurriedly, and now, seizing Healy
by the sleeve, hurries in into the housekeeper’s room. He had climbed
outside, and spied me alone in there through the window, Healy told me
afterwards.
But his air was much changed! all bustle now, business, and aloofness
from one! When I now said to him, “But where, then, have you been?”
he mutters to Healy, “Just answer her questions, and see that she
speaks in whispers,” and instantly sits to the table, places on it
that ink-bottle “stele” of his that he had left in the cave, takes a
magnifying-glass out of his shirt, and begins to gaze through it at the
marks that are cut in the stone.
“But tell me——” I began to say to him, when “_Sh-h-h!_” breathes Healy
into my ear, “_I_’ll tell you,” and draws me away to a corner, where
he whispers me, “Mum, can you offer a body such a thing as a bite of
something? He”—indicating Hannibal Lepsius with his thumb—“can do
without food and sleep, but that’s a bit more than _I_ can bring off,
anyway.”
I made him sit, stole out, and in five minutes was back with bread,
meat, cheese, and a bottle of beer. Hannibal Lepsius at this time could
no more be said to be sitting, but was half over the table, one knee
on the chair, poring with greed over that “stele,” as if he would eat
it with his gaze. I was about to say something to him, when my ear was
afresh reached by the _sh-h-h_ of Healy, like a whispering of leafage
fretted by a zephyr; so I placed the victuals on Healy’s knees, sat
before him, and commenced to question him; but it was many minutes
before his stuffed mouth could bring out a syllable.
“Why were you so famished?” I asked him, “since you had money to pay
railway-fare?”
With his lips at my ear, he answered: “It was a question of time,
mum—no time to eat, no time to sleep; but that’s good meat, that is,
and that’s good beer, too.”
“Was he, then, in such a hurry to return to his marriage?” I asked.
The man looked at me under his eyes—strangely, I thought—and replied,
“I know nothing of that, mum; but we went to see London, and we saw it
in a tear, I tell you, and we left it in a tear, for by the end of the
third day London had got a bit too hot for us.”
“Why, how was that?” I asked him.
“Truth is,” he whispered, “some of us have been putting into our
pockets more than what belongs to us!”
“What!” I said.
“_Sh-h-h_,” he went.
Mrs. Bowden’s clock just then struck one, and glancing round at it, I
beheld Hannibal Lepsius bent yet further over the table, poring upon
that stone, and heard him whimper over it as if in pain.
“What is he doing?” I whispered to Healy.
“Lord knows, mum,” he whispered back.
“So the London police were after him?”
“That’s so.”
“What a thing!” I said in awe.
“Thrice in three days!” he whispered; “aye, and that second time it
was a close go with us, too, seeing that he wouldn’t let go hold of
me—a thousand people after us through London streets, if there was one,
and he dragging me, thinking that I am against him, too, and want to
betray him. That’s hard, too, that’s hard. Here am I, mum, Dr. Lepsius’
servant—I’d give this hand for the doctor—yet keeping the lad dark from
the doctor, going against the doctor, mind, knowing that I am doing
wrong, but no more able to help it than a man addicted to liquor, I
am that given up to the lad; yet he keeps me as his prisoner, I who’d
race after him to hell; thinks I want to run away and betray him to
everybody, can’t believe in a motive that’s not selfish, it’s hard.”
“You haven’t, then, written to tell his father that you have found
him?” I asked.
“God forgive me, no,” he answered with a bent head; “though I have had
chances to do it, too, mum, and the doctor must be in as much of a
wonder what’s come to me as what’s come to Master Hanni. God forgive
me! for never I’ll forgive myself on this side Jordan. And all to
pleasure the lad—but he can’t see it, keeps me as a prisoner, it’s
hard.”
“But what did he do in London? what did he think of the ladies there?
was he really chased by the London people?” I asked, for I could not
whisper my questions fast enough to satisfy my inquisitiveness.
Healy answered yes, that the sandals and bauge shirt of Shunter Island
had been chased with hue and cry all up Tottenham Court Road at midday,
and twice by night in other places; and that not the London police
only were after him, for that he had no sooner stepped from the train
down here than a constable laid hands on him; but he had filliped the
constable in the face, and run away, making to the cave to get the
“stele,” which he seemed to be extremely eager to get, and then had run
up here, dragging Healy with him.
“And he actually filliped the constable?” I said to Healy: “he is no
longer, then, at all in awe of his ‘Man’?”
Healy grinned a grimace to himself, and throwing up his hands a little,
whispered to me, “All idiots! that was the verdict on the second
night—about eight o’clock, mum, drizzling, hazy night, he and I sitting
in one of those recesses of Waterloo Bridge, and over the river a
sight, mum, greatly like a fairyland going on in a haze, with that host
of lights.... So he sits awhile there, weary from the two days’ tear,
looking at the traffic rolling over the bridge; then getting up on the
seat, he leans over the parapet; and presently, as he was there looking
down upon the river, I hear him say to himself ‘idiots,’ and then I
hear him say ‘all, all,’ with a sort of wail, shaking his head a bit,
and then I see him bury his face in his hands, and a sound came out of
him that at first was more like crying, but afterwards was more like
laughing; and from that minute he was eager to get back down here to
his cave.”
I looked round at Hannibal Lepsius, and now saw his body all across the
table, with one knee also on it, for, in the keenness of his strain
as to that “stele,” he had been pushing it inch by inch from him and
following it; and now his brow was all brown and engorged, his eyes
were glaring at the object like a maniac’s, and now also a sort of
groan broke out of his breast.
When I turned back to Healy to continue our conversation, I found that
during those few moments that I had been looking away his brow had
dropped in sleep; and I was just disengaging from his fingers the glass
that he had been drinking from lest he should drop it, when I became
aware of a tapping at the little door at the back. I stole out to it,
I opened it, and now, heavens! my soul faints within me when I behold
standing there the big Inspector Gibbon, together with that graceful
young constable of Thring with the moustache, whose name is Shooter.
“We have found him at last,” remarks Inspector Gibbon, for they had
seen the light, climbed a little by the spout outside, and seen the
young man poring over the stele.
“But what has he done?” I asked them, with a trembling about my right
knee, hearing, as I asked it, Mrs. Bowden’s clock strike twice.
“There are no less than five counts against him,” answered Inspector
Gibbon, “three from London, two down here; let’s have the beauty
out”—and he steps within the doorway.
At once now with a wild heart I darted back into Mrs. Bowden’s room, to
whisper to the young man, “I am afraid that two officers are come to
arrest you!”
He groaned, without glancing up from his poring over that stone. I
waited several seconds, hearing the clock tick, and my own heart as
loudly pounding. Healy also, who had started awake, now sat staring
with an open mouth.
“What shall I say to the two officers?” I asked the young man.
Again he groaned grievously, but did not glance up at me, and again I
stood in suspense some seconds; till now he in an absent way, still
without glancing up, mumbled at me, “Bring them here.”
I ran out, and found the officers already at the door: in another
moment they were standing within the housekeeper’s room. Hanni Lepsius
was now on his feet awaiting them, and the instant they appeared he
stepped up to them, saying, “Now, I wish you to take me; take me—only
be swift.”
“You are a beauty——” Inspector Gibbon began to say, taking the young
man by one arm, while Shooter took him by the other; but Hannibal
Lepsius cut short his words, saying to him, “Yes, I know: you all
delight in the waste of time, the waste of words. But come, take me,
and I shall know now with certainty whether you are of the smallest
worth.” The boy now pointed out of the back door at the old oak tree
that stands there in the courtyard about twelve yards from the door.
“You see that oak tree,” he said to them: “only get me past that,
and not only will I go with you the rest of the way to prison, but
four hundred pounds which I stole in London shall be for your private
use”—and how earnestly he spoke to them! turning from one to the other,
instilling his meaning into their ears as into the ears of people hard
of hearing, while they calmly smiled upon him with a contempt for him
equal to his concern for them. “You are poor,” he told them, “ah, poor
even to meanness, even to shame; and here in this pocket is the money.
Rouse yourselves now, then! _Ask_ yourselves, ‘How can he escape us?’
Not by strength!—each of you is as strong as I. By craft, then? Surely,
only by craft!”—turning from one to the other, pleading earnestly at
the ear of each in turn. “But there are at most only six possible
ways,” he said, “in which, by craft, even a lord of Mars or Venus, I
think, could escape you. Think in lightning _now_ of those ways! Rouse,
rouse yourselves! Oh, rouse, rouse, now, all those dark powers that
profoundly drowse in your soul! Look round the room: for the means by
which I choose to escape lie here before your face; nor are you idiots
born, your brain has the same bulk, your reason is equal to mine,
only it deeply sleeps—oh, dull, dull, dull—and wakefulness is bliss,
wakefulness is life——”
“Oh, come, no more of it,” now said Inspector Gibbon, interrupting him
with a good-natured disdain, drawing the young man away; and Hannibal
Lepsius uttered no other word.
They took him to the back door, Healy and I following mutely behind,
and down the two steps they went, and across the yard toward the oak
tree and the swing-gate that is close by the south garden-wall. The
moon was about at her full in a sky without one cloud in it, so that
I could see that the boy’s right foot, as he walked, was drawing part
of the coil of rope from the stables which generally lies just there by
the back door; and I whispered to Healy, “He has got his leg entangled
in the rope!”
They were by this time not three feet from the old oak tree, Inspector
Gibbon at the young man’s right arm, Shooter at the left, keeping a
strong grip, I could see, and a cautious guard, since they had been so
warned; nor had I, for my part, the least expectation of seeing him
escape them ere they reached the tree, or indeed at any time; but all
at once, just as they reached the tree, without even the least effort I
now beheld him easily free; and the next instant one saw a sight!—the
two constables all entangled, and Hannibal Lepsius running furiously
round and round the tree, ever with every revolution at a shorter
distance from it, the rope in his hand, roping with many whorles the
two men to the tree. I never was so curiously affected, I think, by any
sight—with a feeling of religion and hallelujah, I may say, the two
men’s bulk of flesh looking so abject and helpless in the hands of that
wit, like hippopotami with their insignificant skulls: though how he
had contrived to escape out of their grasp without a struggle I still
had no idea. To tie their hands, their arms being already bound, was to
him not the work of a minute, and suddenly he was rushing back to the
house, dashed inward past Healy and me without a word, and by the time
we two had returned to Mrs. Bowden’s room, he was already whining and
whimpering anew over his stone, as if nothing had happened.
“But in what way——?” I began to say to him, when Healy’s “_sh-h-h_”
again checked my tongue; so in the corner Healy and I discussed in
agitated whispers what had taken place. When I asked Healy if he knew
in what manner the young man had escaped the police, he answered by
asking me, “What’s in that little bottle on the table?”
At this I felt myself fly red to the roots of my hair! for he meant
the vial of vitriol which, procured at Wynton on the 27th, I have been
foolishly fingering ever since.
“How should I know what is in the vial?” I said to Healy.
“Well, whatever it is,” he said, “it is something that makes cloth
rotten in a tick, for when you went out to tell the officers to come
in, he dipped a match into the vial, drew with the match a circle
on each of his shirt sleeves, and now, you see, the two pieces of
shirt have disappeared”—and in truth the young man’s arm nearest me
was showing through a hole in his shirt, so I understood that by the
working of the vitriol the two pieces of shirt had come away in the
policemen’s hands. I had begun to say, “Well, it was not so wonderful,
after all, now that one knows how——” when one of the bound men began to
shout out for succour; upon which Hanni Lepsius groaned within himself
over his stone, and, without glancing up, told Healy to go and give
them to know that if they made but one other outcry before the daybreak
he would gag and agonise them; so Healy hastened out to say this, and
thenceforth the two men remained mum.
After this Healy and I talked in our corner till the clocks tolled
three, by which time both our heads were ready to nod, our words dried
up, and still on in the soundless night worked Hanni Lepsius over that
stone. I did not hear four strike, for I was in a little sleep; but
immediately after half-past four I heard, or dreamed that I heard, a
laugh somewhere, and I started awake, aware that his study of the stone
was over, and that he was standing at my side.
At once, as I opened my eyes, he handed me the vial of vitriol, bowing
a little, and smiling.
“What is this?” I asked him.
“It is oil of vitriol,” replies the boy.
I ought, if I had had my wits, to have asked him why he handed it to
me! but, being only half-awake and confused, I foolishly took the thing
and put it down without finding a word to say; and I saw his gaze
linger strangely upon me. Then he said, “I am very hungry.”
I ran and fetched him bread, cheese, and water, for he will eat no
meat; and it was while eating that he asked me whether I had with me
those two hundred pounds which I had told him that I had hoarded. I
replied that I had with me ninety pounds only; he then demanded of me
if I had this in metal or in notes, and on my replying “in notes,”
he said that he desired to see at once what a banknote is like, and
would I run and bring him the money that he might see. Proud to do him
a pleasure, though it was a journey through the house at that hour,
I light my candle, I set off, and soon return with my roll of notes.
He sat with them, fingering, holding them up to the gas, while I,
with my hand on his shoulder, remarked that all that was to begin our
little _ménage_, informed him that everything had been arranged for our
marriage, and asked him when that little affair was to be. His answer
was that it should be that very day at two o’clock, and I felt my heart
start once and cease to beat, my right knee trembling like a string.
While I stood thus agitated behind him, he, examining the banknotes,
requests me to give him an envelope; so I go to Mrs. Bowden’s desk, I
get an envelope, and, as I give this to him, he hands me back my roll
of notes, takes the envelope, puts into it a piece of tissue-paper, on
which he had written some words with a stump of blue pencil, fastens
the envelope, and with the pencil writes on it the words, “To Eve
Vickery.”
I started! and I started anew when he said to me, “Hand this to that
lady when she awakes.”
“But what do you mean?” I said, shrinking from him; “do you, then, wish
to outrage me? and do you suppose that I would do such a thing, really?”
“You will,” he said; and to Healy, “Come.”
“But stay!” I cried; “at what hour of the day do I see you?...”
He was already at the door of the room, but came back a little, saying,
“At noon; and the marriage at two”—whereupon he anew picks up the
vial of vitriol from the table, hands it to me, and goes through the
doorway—the good God only knows why he did this.
I darted after, caught him at the back door, and, casting my arms about
him, wet his cheek with my kisses and tears. He made no remark, save to
say, “Do not release those police until twenty minutes past five”; and
he went.
The moon had set, and the new day hardly yet dawning, but I could see
him go past the oak tree without a glance at the two prisoners, and go
away like ghosts, he and his Healy, through the swing-gate close by the
south garden-wall.
I had then to sit up till twenty past five, as he had said, to release
the police, when I brought them in, gave them some breakfast, and
impressed it upon them that it was useless for them to seek him, since
he was “gone away,” I said; and even if he was not, they could never
get him, I said: a statement which they seemed to believe, for they
were very dejected and shivering.
It is now near seven, and here I still sit, even now not sleepy, for
this is the day of my life. What is in my heart? Is it peace? Is it
dancing? I think I have a fear....
It will soon be time to be at Miss Eve’s bedside. Of course, I shall
not give her the envelope, though he said with assurance that I will;
but I have not as yet opened it to see what is in it, for I fear his
consciousness of things.... There is something solid in it, like the
half of a halfpenny, and a chain....
The 29th, at nine in the night. He has robbed me of my savings, he has
abandoned me, he is gone for ever!... No, my God, I cannot write, my
head cannot hold itself up.
The 30th. I will vitriolise him. God knows, that will not be easy,
he has many eyes, it will be almost impossible: but those great men
who make discoveries which amaze the creation—in what manner do they
accomplish this? I think it is not because their wits are so vastly
more than those of ordinary folk, but because their lives are wholly
devoted to one thing only, as my life henceforth will be wholly devoted
to this alone. God help me in this; it will be only after years of
effort that I can even hope to do it, but one day, if God be my Helper,
it will be done “al-right.”
When at two yesterday he could not be anywhere found, I opened with
steam the envelope addressed to Miss Eve, and found that he had written
on the piece of tissue-paper in it the words, “Beldam Eve, farewell
for two years, from your slave for ever, Hannibal Lepsius. Please tell
Jeanne Auvache where I have laid her money.” The meaning of this last
phrase I could not for fully an hour make any sense of, since my brain
was reeling round and round; then it occurred to me to look anew at
the roll of notes that he had handed me back, and when I now flew to
them, I found that only the two outer ones were now notes, all within
being mere stuffing of tissue-paper. For a long time I lay on the floor
by the trunk, feeling myself ruined, for the loss of even a franc has
always appeared irreparable to me, and here were two thousand francs
departed by fraud, for ever, out of my life. But after a time I thought
of the words in the note to Miss Eve, “Please tell Jeanne Auvache where
I have laid her money,” and without stopping to ask myself how Miss
Eve could know this, I picked myself up to run straight to her with
the note, no more caring whether she noticed that I had opened it, for
I cared for nothing. First, however, I tried to detach the half-coin
from the note—it was the half of a sovereign which had been split in
two, and through a hole in it passed one of those little chains such
as medallions are hung from round infants’ necks; but he had artfully
gummed the half-coin to the tissue-paper just by the words “please tell
Jeanne Auvache,” and, as I could not get away the coin without tearing
the paper, I ran with the whole to Miss Eve in the eagerness of my hope
to get back my money—forgetting at the moment that this was even what
that fiend had foretold that I would do. Miss Eve was in her boudoir
alone, reading in her rocking-chair, and suddenly, without rapping, I
was there before her, holding out the note and chain. She lifts her
eyes, and instantly a faint flush flew to suffuse her face. “What is
it?” says she, taking the thing, and in one moment her eyes had run
over the words, she had thrown the note aside with a little motion of
the wrist in a little hurry, like one brushing off a fly, and was anew
perusing her book.
“Miss Vickery,” I said, “can you tell me where my money is laid?”
Anew she lifts her eyes, looks at me silently, and from that look I
knew at once that that phrase in the note had only been put into it so
as to ensure that Miss Eve should receive the note; for he knew that I
would open the envelope, and that Miss Eve knew nothing as to where my
money is, for how could she? My money is in his pocket, that is where
my money is, my two thousand francs.
The 31st. I was not allowed to get out of bed to-day, and ah, these
English, they are frigid, they are hard on the surface, but beneath
they are tenderer and better than all the world. I expected that Miss
Ruth would lavish the compassion of her ever-wounded bosom upon my
grief, but I have been even deeper touched by the goodness of Miss
Eve. When, in one of the paroxysms, I cried, “Miss Vickery, I will
vitriolise, I will vitriolise him, if it is in fifteen years to come!”
she, with a look that flashed anger at me, began to say, “You shameful
woman!” but then rushed to the bed and warmly embraced me in her arms,
murmuring many times in words of wooing, “Poor bruised heart, poor
wounded woman,” with water swimming in her eyes, while I wept on her. A
French lady would not have kissed me on the lips.... In the afternoon
when I knew that she was below, I stole from bed, and, creeping to her
boudoir, peeped in to see if the tissue-paper note with the half of a
sovereign was yet on the card-table, whither she had brushed it from
her; but it had vanished.
The 2nd. I must go away, and in haste, since this holy house is no
place for me to linger one hour in, with my heart all a nest of
hissing asps. I recognise it to be an incongruity, as a devil in
disguise in high heaven might be. Miss Eve would have me revoke the
notice to leave that I have given her: but I will go. In truth, thy
youth is over, Jeanne, thy last hope of happiness has perished, thy
very last rose is ashes. Is it not certainly a dog’s world? and I will
get back into it black and bitter, a hag at heart, bidding good-bye
to the time of bloom, to all beauties of youth, abandoning my being
recklessly to rancour and wrinkles, decay and tragedy and destruction.
I do not care, I will vitriolise him, if he live as high from me as the
sky, and within a week, I swear it, will have left this place and these
people....