MR. LARKIN'S TWO MOVES.
THE hatch of the Steward's House stood open, and Mr. Larkin entered.
There was a girl's voice crying in the room next the hall, and he
opened the door.
The little girl was sobbing with her apron to her eyes, and hearing
the noise she lowered it and looked at the door, when the lank form of
the bald attorney and his sinister face peering in met her eyes, and
arrested her lamentation with a new emotion.
"It's only I--Mr. Larkin," said he. He liked announcing himself
wherever he went. "I want to know how Mrs. Mervyn is now."
"Gone dead, sir--about a quarter of an hour ago;" and the child's
lamentation recommenced.
"Ha! very sad. The doctor here?"
"He's gone, sir."
"And you're _certain_ she's dead?"
"Yes, sure, sir," and she sobbed on.
"Stop that," he said, sternly, "just a moment--thanks. I want to see
Mr. Dingwell, the old gentleman who has been staying here--where is
he?"
"In the drawing-room, sir, please," said the child, a good deal
frightened. And to the drawing-room he mounted.
Light was streaming from a door a little open, and a fragrance also of
a peculiar tobacco, which he recognised as that of Mr. Dingwell's
chibouque. There was a sound of feet upon the floor of the room above,
which Mr. Larkin's ear received as those of persons employed in
arranging the dead body.
I would be perhaps wronging Mr. Dingwell, as I still call him, to say
that he smoked like a man perfectly indifferent. On the contrary, his
countenance looked lowering and furious--so much so that Mr. Larkin
removed his hat, a courtesy which he had intended studiously to omit.
"Oh! Mr. Dingwell," said he, "I need not introduce myself."
"No, I prefer your withdrawing yourself and shutting the door," said
Dingwell.
"Yes, in a moment, sir. I merely wish to mention that Lord Verney--I
mean your brother, sir--has fully apprized me of the conversation
with which you thought it prudent to favour him."
"You'd rather have been the medium yourself, I fancy. Something to be
made of such a situation? Hey! but you _shan't_."
"I don't know what you mean, sir, by something to be made. If I chose
to mention your name and abode in the city, sir, you'd not enjoy the
power of insulting others long."
"Pooh, sir! I've got _your_ letter and my brother's _secret_. I know
my strength. I'm steering the fire-ship that will blow you all up, if
I please; and you talk of flinging a squib at me, you blockhead! I
tell you, sir, you'll make nothing of me; and now you may as well
withdraw. There are two things in this house you don't like, though
you'll have enough of them one day; there's death up stairs, sir, and
some thing very like the devil here."
Mr. Larkin thought he saw signs of an approaching access of the
Dingwell mania, so he made his most dignified bow, and at the door
remarked, "I take my leave, sir, and when next we meet I trust I may
find you in a very different state of mind, and one more favourable to
business."
He had meditated a less covert sneer and menace, but modified his
speech prudently as he uttered it; but there was still quite enough
that was sinister in his face, as he closed the door, to strike Mr.
Dingwell's suspicion.
"Only I've got that fellow in my pocket, I'd say he was bent on
mischief; but he's in my pocket; and suppose he did, no great matter,
after all--only dying. I'm not gathering up my strength; no--I shall
never be the same man again--and life so insipid--and that poor old
doll up stairs. So many things going on under the stars, all ending
_so_!"
Yes--so many things. There was Cleve, chief mourner to-day, chatting
now wonderfully gaily, with a troubled heart, and a kind of growing
terror, to that foolish victim who no more suspected him than he did
the resurrection of his uncle Arthur, smoking his chibouque only a
mile away.
There, too, far away, is a pale, beautiful young mother, sitting on
the bed-side of her sleeping boy, weeping silently, as she looks on
his happy face, and--_thinks_.
Mr. Dingwell arrayed in travelling costume, suddenly appeared before
Lord Verney again.
"I'm not going to plague you--only this. I've an idea I shall lose my
life if I don't go to London to-night, and I must catch the mail
train. Tell your people to put the horses to your brougham, and drop
me at Llwynan."
Lord Verney chose to let his brother judge for himself in this matter,
being only too glad to get rid of him.
Shrieking through tunnels, thundering through lonely valleys, gliding
over wide, misty plains, spread abroad like lakes, the mail train bore
Arthur Verney, and also--each unconscious of the other's vicinity--Mr.
Jos. Larkin toward London.
Mr. Larkin had planned a checkmate in two moves. He had been brooding
over it in his mufflers, sometimes with his eyes shut, sometimes with
his eyes open--all night, in the corner of his carriage. When he
stepped out in the morning, with his despatch-box in his hand, whom
should he meet in the cold gray light upon the platform, full front,
but Mr. Dingwell. He was awfully startled.
Dingwell had seen him, too; Larkin had felt, as it were, his quick
glance touch him, and he was sure that Dingwell had observed his
momentary but significant change of countenance. He, therefore, walked
up to him, touched him on the arm, and said, with a smile--
"I thought, sir, I recognized you. I trust you have an attendant? Can
I do anything for you? Cold, this morning. Hadn't you better draw your
muffler up a little about your face?" There was a significance about
this last suggestion which Mr. Dingwell could not mistake, and he
complied. "Running down again to Malory in a few days, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Dingwell.
"So shall I, and if quite convenient to you, I should wish, sir, to
talk that little matter over much more carefully, and--can I call a
cab for you? I should look in upon you to-day only I must be at
Brighton, not to return till to-morrow, and very busy then, too."
They parted. Dingwell did not like it.
"He's at mischief. I've thought of _every_ thing, and I can't see
_any_ thing that would answer _his_ game. I don't like his face."
Dingwell felt very oddly. It was all like a dream; an unaccountable
horror overcame him. He sent out for a medicine that day, which the
apothecary refused to give to Mrs. Rumble. But he wrote an explanatory
note alleging that he was liable to fits, and so got back just a
little, at which he pooh'd and psha'd, and wrote to some other
apothecaries, and got together what he wanted, and told Mrs. Rumble he
was better.
He had his dinner as usual in his snuggery in Rosemary Court, and sent
two letters to the post by Mrs. Rumble. That to Lord Verney contained
Larkin's _one_ unguarded letter inviting him to visit England, and
with all the caution compatible with being intelligible, but still not
enough--suggesting the audacious game which had been so successfully
played. A brief and pointed commentary in Mr. Dingwell's handwriting,
accompanied this.
The other enclosed to Wynne Williams, to whose countenance he had
taken a fancy; the certificate of his marriage to Rebecca Mervyn, and
a reference to the Rev. Thomas Bartlett; and charged him to make use
of it to quiet any unfavourable rumours about that poor lady, who was
the only human being he believed who had ever cared much about him.
When Wynne Williams opened this letter he lifted up his hands in
wonder.
"A miracle, by heaven!" he exclaimed. "The most providential and
marvellous interposition--the _only_ thing we wanted!"
"Perhaps I was wrong to break with that villain, Larkin," brooded Mr.
Dingwell. "We must make it up when we meet. I don't like it. When he
saw me this morning his face looked like the hangman's."
It was now evening, and having made a very advantageous bargain with
the Hebrew gentleman who had that heavy judgment against the late Hon.
Arthur Verney, an outlaw, &c.--Mr. Larkin played his first move, and
amid the screams of Mrs. Rumble, old Dingwell was arrested on a
warrant against the Hon. Arthur Verney, and went away, protesting it
was a false arrest, to the Fleet.
Things now looked very awful, and he wrote to Mr. Larkin at his hotel,
begging of him to come and satisfy "some fools" that he was Mr.
Dingwell. But Jos. Larkin was not at his inn. He had not been there
that day, and Dingwell began to think that Jos. Larkin had, perhaps,
told the truth for once, and was actually at Brighton. Well, one night
in the Fleet was not very much; Larkin would appear next morning, and
Larkin could, of course, manage the question of identity, and settle
everything easily, and they would shake hands, and make it up. Mr.
Dingwell wondered why they had not brought him to a sponging-house,
but direct to the prison. But as things were done under the advice of
Mr. Jos. Larkin, in whom I have every confidence, I suppose there was
a reason.
Mr. Dingwell was of a nature which danger excites rather than cows.
The sense of adventure was uppermost. The situation by an odd reaction
stimulated his spirits, and he grew frolicsome. He felt a recklessness
that recalled his youth. He went down to the flagged yard, and made
an acquaintance or two, one in slippers and dressing-gown, another in
an evening coat buttoned across his breast, and without much show of
shirt. "Very amusing and gentlemanlike men," he thought, "though out
at elbows a little;" and not caring for solitude, he invited them to
his room, to supper; and they sat up late; and the gentleman in the
black evening coat--an actor in difficulties--turned out to be a
clever mimic, an inimitable singer of comic songs, and an admirable
_raconteur_--"a very much cleverer man than the Prime Minister, egad!"
said Mr. Dingwell.
One does see very clever fellows in odd situations. The race is not
always to the swift. The moral qualities have something to do with it,
and industry everything; and thus very dull fellows are often in very
high places. The curse implies a blessing to the man who accepts its
condition. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." Labour is
the curse and the _qualification_, also; and so the dullard who toils
shall beat the genius who idles.
Dingwell enjoyed it vastly, and _lent_ the pleasant fellow a pound,
and got to his bed at three o'clock in the morning, glad to have
cheated so much of the night. But tired as he was by his journey of
the night before, he could not sleep till near six o'clock, when he
fell into a doze, and from it he was wakened oddly.
It was by Mr. Jos. Larkin's "second move." Mr. Larkin has great
malice, but greater prudence. No one likes better to give the man who
has disappointed him a knock, the condition being that he disturbs no
interest of his own by so doing. Where there is a proper
consideration, no man is more forgiving. Where interest and revenge
point the same way, he hits very hard indeed.
Mr. Larkin had surveyed the position carefully. The judgment of the
criminal court was still on record, _nullum tempus occurrit_, &c. It
was a case in which a pardon was very unlikely. There was but one way
of placing the head of the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney firmly in
the vacant coronet, and of establishing him, Jos. Larkin Esq., of the
Lodge, in the valuable management of the estates and affairs of that
wealthy peerage. It was by dropping the extinguisher upon the flame of
that solitary lamp, the Hon. Arthur Verney. Of course Jos. Larkin's
hand must not appear. He himself communicated with no official person.
That was managed easily and adroitly.
He wrote, too, from Brighton to Lord Verney at Malory, the day after
his interview with that ex-nobleman, expressing the most serious
uneasiness, in consequence of having learned from a London legal
acquaintance at Brighton, that a report prevailed in certain quarters
of the city, that the person styling himself Mr. Dingwell had proved
to be the Hon. Arthur Verney, and that the Verney peerage was, in
consequence, once more on the shelf. "I treated this report slightly,
in very serious alarm notwithstanding for your brother's safety,"
wrote Mr. Larkin, "and your lordship will pardon my expressing my
regret that you should have mentioned, until the Hon. Arthur Verney
had secured an asylum outside England, the fact of his being still
living, which has filled the town unfortunately with conjecture and
speculation of a most startling nature. I was shocked to see him this
morning on the public platform of the railway, where, very possibly,
he was recognised. It is incredible how many years are needed to
obliterate recollection by the hand of time. I quietly entreated him
to conceal his face a little, a precaution which, I am happy to add,
he adopted. I am quite clear that he should leave London as
expeditiously and secretly as possible, for some sequestered spot in
France, where he can, without danger, await your lordship's decision
as to plans for his ultimate safety. May I entreat your lordship's
instantaneous attention to this most urgent and alarming subject. I
shall be in town to-morrow evening, where my usual address will reach
me, and I shall, without a moment's delay, apply myself to carry out
whatever your lordship's instructions may direct."
"Yes, he has an idea of my judgment--about it," said Lord Verney when
he had read this letter, "and a feeling about the family--very
loyal--yes, he's a very loyal person; I shall turn it over, I
will--I'll write to him."
Mr. Dingwell, however, had been wakened by two officers with a warrant
by which they were ordered to take his body and consign it to a
gaoler. Mr. Dingwell read it, and his instinct told him that Jos.
Larkin was at the bottom of his misfortune, and his heart sank.
"Very well, gentlemen," said he, briskly, "very good; it is not for
me; my name is Dingwell, and my solicitor is Mr. Jos. Larkin, and all
will be right. I must get my clothes on, if you please."
And he sat up in the bed, and bit his lip, and raised his eyebrows,
and shrugged his shoulders drearily.
"Poor linnet--ay, ay--she was not very wise, but the only one--I've
been a great fool--let us try."
There came over his face a look of inexpressible fatigue and
something like resignation--and he looked all at once ten years older.
"I'll be with you, I'll be with you, gentlemen," he said very gently.
There was a flask with some noyeau in it, relics of last night's
merry-making, to which these gentlemen took the liberty of helping
themselves.
When they looked again at their prisoner he was lying nearly on his
face, in a profound sleep, his chin on his chest.
"Choice stuff--smell o' nuts in it," said constable Ruddle, licking
his lips. "Git up, sir; ye can take a nap when you git there."
There was a little phial in the old man's fingers; the smell of
kernels was stronger about the pillow. "The old man of the mountains"
was in a deep sleep, the deepest of all sleeps--death.