Sir Jekyl bethinks him of Pelter and Crowe.
The Baronet held his candle high in air, as I have said, as he gazed
round him inquisitively. The thin housekeeper, with her pale lips
closed, and her odd eyes dropped slantingly toward the floor, at the
corner of the room, held hers demurely in her right finger and thumb,
her arms being crossed.
The room was large, and the light insufficient. Still you could not help
seeing at a glance that it must be, in daylight, a tolerably cheerful
one. It was roomy and airy, with a great bow-window looking to the front
of the building, of which it occupied the extreme left, reaching about
ten feet from the level of the more ancient frontage of the house. The
walls were covered with stamped leather, chiefly green and gold, and the
whole air of the room, even in its unarranged state, though somewhat
quaint and faded, was wonderfully gay and cozy.
"This is the green chamber, sir," she repeated, with her brows raised
and her eyes still lowered askance, and some queer wrinkles on her
forehead as she nodded a sharp bitter emphasis.
"To be sure it is, damme!--why not?" he said, testily, and then burst
into a short laugh.
"You're not a going, I suppose, Sir Jekyl, to put anyone into it?" said
she.
"I don't see, for the life of me, why I should not--eh? a devilish
comfortable room."
"Hem! I can't but suppose you are a joking me, Sir Jekyl," persisted the
gray silk phantom.
"Egad! you forget how old we're growing; why the plague should I quiz
you! I want the room for old General Lennox, that's all--though I'm not
bound to tell you for whom I want it--am I?"
"There's a plenty o' rooms without this one, Sir Jekyl," persevered the
lady, sternly.
"Plenty, of course; but none so good," said he, carelessly.
"No one ever had luck that slept in it," answered the oracle, lifting
her odd eyes and fixing them on Sir Jekyl.
"I don't put them here for luck. We want to make them comfortable,"
answered Sir Jekyl, poking at the furniture as he spoke.
"You know what was your father's wish about it, sir?" she insisted.
"My father's wish--egad, he did not leave many of his wishes
unsatisfied--eh?" he answered, with another chuckle.
"And your poor lady's wish," she said, a good deal more sharply.
"I don't know why the devil I'm talking to you, old Gwynn," said the
Baronet, turning a little fiercely about.
"_Dying_ wishes," emphasised she.
"It is time, Heaven knows, all that stuff should stop. You slept in it
yourself, in my father's time. I remember you, here, Donica, and I don't
think I ever heard that you saw a ghost--did I?" he said, with a
sarcastic chuckle.
She darted a ghastly look to the far end of the chamber, and then, with
a strange, half-frozen fury, she said--
"I wish you good-night, Sir Jekyl," and glided like a shadow out of the
room.
"Saucy as ever, by Jupiter," he ejaculated, following her with his
glance, and trying to smile; and as the door shut, he looked again down
the long apartment as she had just done, raising the candle again.
The light was not improved of course by the disappearance of Mrs.
Gwynn's candle, and the end of the room was dim and unsatisfactory. The
great four-poster, with dark curtains, and a plume at each corner, threw
a vague shadow on the back wall and up to the ceiling, as he moved his
candle, which at the distance gave him an uncomfortable sensation, and
he stood for a few seconds sternly there, and then turned on his heel
and quitted the room, saying aloud, as he did so--
"What a d--d fool that old woman is--always _was_!"
If there was a ghost there, the Baronet plainly did not wish it to make
its exit from the green chamber by the door, for he locked it on the
outside, and put the key in his pocket. Then, crossing the dressing-room
I have mentioned, he entered the passage which crosses the gallery in
which he and Mrs. Gwynn, a few minutes before, had planned their
dispositions. The dressing-room door is placed close to the window
which opens at the end of the corridor in the front of the house.
Standing with his back to this, he looked down the long passage, and
smiled.
For a man so little given to the melodramatic, it was a very well
expressed smile of mystery--the smile of a man who knows something which
others don't suspect, and would be surprised to learn.
It was the Baronet's fancy, as it had been his father's and his
grandfather's before him, to occupy very remote quarters in this old
house. Solitary birds, their roost was alone.
Candle in hand, Sir Jekyl descended the stairs, marched down the long
gaunt passage, which strikes rearward so inflexibly, and at last reaches
the foot of a back staircase, after a march of a hundred and forty feet,
which I have measured.
At top of this was a door at his left, which he opened, and found
himself in his own bed-room.
You would have said on looking about you that it was the bed-room of an
old campaigner or of a natty gamekeeper--a fellow who rather liked
roughing it, and had formed tastes in the matter like the great Duke of
Wellington. The furniture was slight and plain, and looked like
varnished deal; a French bed, narrow, with chintz curtains, and a plain
white coverlet, like what one might expect in a barrack dormitory or an
hospital; a little strip of carpet lying by the bed, and a small square
of Turkey carpet under the table by the fire, hardly broke the shining
uniformity of the dark oak floor; a pair of sporting prints decorated
the sides of the chimneypiece, and an oil-portrait of a grey hunter
hung in the middle. There were fishing-rods and gun-cases, I dare say
the keys were lost of many, they looked so old and dingy.
The Baronet's luggage, relieved of its black japanned casings, lay on
the floor, with his hat-case and travelling-desk. A pleasant fire burnt
in the grate, and a curious abundance of wax-lights, without which Sir
Jekyl, such was his peculiarity, could not exist, enlivened the chamber.
As he made his toilet at his homely little dressing-table, he bethought
him suddenly, and rang the bell in his shirt-sleeves.
"My letters."
"Yes, sir."
And up came a salver well laden with letters, pamphlets, and newspapers,
of all shapes and sizes.
"And tell Miss Beatrix I shan't have any tea, and get some brandy from
Mrs. Gwynn, and cold water and a tumbler, and let them leave me
alone--d'ye see?--and give me that."
It was a dressing-gown which Tomlinson's care had already liberated from
its valise, and expanded before the fire.
The Baronet's tastes, as we might see, were simple. He could dine on a
bit of roast mutton, and a few glasses of sherry. But his mutton was
eight years old, and came all the way from Dartbroke, and his sherry
cost more than other men's Madeira, and he now lighted one of those
priceless cigars, which so many fellows envied, and inhaled the
disembodied aroma of a tobacco which, perhaps, Jove smokes in his easy
chair on Olympus, but which I have never smelt on earth, except when Sir
Jekyl dispensed the inestimable treasures of his cigar-case.
Now, the Baronet stood over his table, with a weed between his lips,
tall in his flowered silk dressing-gown, his open hands shoving apart
the pile of letters, as a conjurer at an exhibition spreads his pack of
cards.
"Ha! poor little thing!" he murmured, with a sly simper, in a petting
tone, as he plucked an envelope, addressed in a lady's hand, between two
fingers, caressingly, from the miscellaneous assortment.
He looked at it, but reserved it as a _bon-bouche_ in his waistcoat
pocket, and pursued his examination.
There were several from invited guests, who were either coming or not,
with the customary expressions, and were tossed together in a little
isolated litter for conference with Mrs. Gwynn in the morning.
"Not a line from Pelter and Crowe! the d--d fellows don't waste their
ink upon me, except when they furnish their costs. It's a farce paying
fellows to look after one's business--no one ever does it but yourself.
If those fellows were worth their bread and butter, they'd have known
all about this thing, whatever it is, and I'd have had it all _here_,
d---- it, to-night."
Sir Jekyl, it must be confessed, was not quite consistent about this
affair of the mysterious young gentleman; for, as we have seen, he
himself had a dozen times protested against the possibility of there
being anything in it, and now he was seriously censuring his respectable
London attorneys for not furnishing him with the solid contents of this
"windbag."
But it was only his talk that was contradictory. Almost from the moment
of his first seeing that young gentleman, on the open way under the sign
of the "Plough," there lowered a fantastic and cyclopean picture, drawn
in smoke or vapour, volcanic and thunderous, all over his horizon, like
those prophetic and retrospective pageants with which Doree loves to
paint his mystic skies. It was wonderful, and presaged unknown evil; and
only cowed him the more that it baffled analysis and seemed to mock at
reason.
"Pretty fellows to keep a look-out! It's well I can do it for
myself--who knows where we're driving to, or what's coming? Signs
enough--whatever they mean--he that runs may read, egad! Not that
there's anything in it _necessarily_. But it's not about drawing and
ruins and that stuff--those fellows have come down here. Bosh! looking
after my property. I'd take my oath they are advised by some lawyer; and
if Pelter and Crowe were sharp, they'd know by whom, and all about it,
by Jove!"
Sir Jekyl jerked the stump of his cigar over his shoulder into the grate
as he muttered this, looking surlily down on the unprofitable papers
that strewed the table.
He stood thinking, with his back to the fire, and looking rather cross
and perplexed, and so he sat down and wrote a short letter. It was to
Pelter and Crowe, but he began, as he did not care which got it, in his
usual way--
"MY DEAR SIR,--I have reason to suspect that those ill-disposed
people, who have often threatened annoyance, are at last seriously
intent on mischief. You will be good enough, therefore, immediately
to set on foot inquiries, here and at the other side of the water,
respecting the movements of the D---- family, who, I fancy, are at
the bottom of an absurd, though possibly troublesome,
demonstration. I don't fear them, of course. But I think you will
find that some members of that family are at present in this
country, and disposed to be troublesome. You will see, therefore,
the urgency of the affair, and will better know than I where and
how to prosecute the necessary inquiries. I do not, of course,
apprehend the least _danger_ from their machinations; but you have
always thought _annoyance_ possible; and if any be in store for me,
I should rather not have to charge it upon our supineness. You
will, therefore, exert your vigilance and activity on my behalf,
and be so good as to let me know, at the earliest possible
day--which, I think, need not be later than Wednesday next--the
result of your inquiries through the old channels. I am a little
disappointed, in fact, at not having heard from you before now on
the subject.
"Yours, my dear sir, very sincerely,
"JEKYL M. MARLOWE."
Sir Jekyl never swore on paper, and, as a rule, commanded his temper
very creditably in that vehicle. But all people who had dealings with
him knew very well that the rich Baronet was not to be trifled with. So,
understanding that it was strong enough, he sealed it up for the
post-office in the morning, and dropped it into the post-bag, and with
it the unpleasant subject for the present.
And now, a little brandy and water, and the envelope in the well-known
female hand; and he laughed a little over it, and looked at himself in
the glass with a vaunting complacency, and shook his head playfully at
the envelope. It just crossed his sunshine like the shadow of a flying
vapour--"that cross-grained old Gwynn would not venture to meddle?" But
the envelope was honestly closed, and showed no signs of having been
fiddled with.
He made a luxury of this little letter, and read it in his easy chair,
with his left leg over the arm, with the fragrant accompaniment of a
weed.
"Jealous, by Jove!" he ejaculated, in high glee; "little fool, what's
put that in your head?"
"Poor, little, fluttering, foolish thing!" sang the Baronet, and then
laughed, not cynically, but indulgently rather.
"How audacious the little fools are upon paper! Egad, it's a wonder
there is not twice as much mischief in the world as actually happens. We
must positively burn this little extravagance."
But before doing so he read it over again; then smiling still, he
gallantly touched it to his lips, and re-perused it, as he drew another
cigar from the treasury of incense which he carried about him. He
lighted the note, but did not apply it to his cigar, I am bound to
say--partly from a fine feeling, and partly, I am afraid, because he
thought that paper spoiled the flavour of his tobacco. So, with a
sentimental smile, a gentle shrug, and a sigh of the Laurence Sterne
pattern, he converted that dangerous little scrawl into ashes--and he
thought, as he inhaled his weed--
"It is well for you, poor little fanatics, that we men take better care
of you than you do of yourselves, sometimes!"
No doubt; and Sir Jekyl supposed he was thinking only of his imprudent
little correspondent, although there was another person in whom he was
nearly interested, who might have been unpleasantly compromised also, if
that document had fallen into other hands.