Britton and Learmont.—Mind and Matter Produce Similar
Results.—Learmont’s Weakness and Fears.—The Chair.
Despite the apathy endured by his habitual state of intoxication,
Andrew Britton began to feel some vague sort of apprehension that there
was danger at hand, and that he was watched by parties who came and sat
down with apparent jollity in the old parlour of the Chequers.
When once this idea got possession of his mind, it began to torment
him, and, however, after thinking to the best of his ability over the
matter, he determined upon consulting with Learmont upon the subject,
and leaving it to his cooler judgment to take what steps he thought fit
in the affair.
According to this resolve he sought the house of Learmont, where he
arrived but a very few minutes after Albert Seyton had left, and
demanded, with his usual effrontery, an interview with the squire.
Learmont had latterly looked upon Andrew with mixed feelings of dread
and exultation—dread that he might drink himself to death some day and
leave behind him ample written evidence to convict him, Learmont, of
heavy crimes—and exultation that all the money the savage smith wrung
from his fears was converted into the means of his destruction by his
habit of habitual intoxication.
When they now met, Learmont forgot for a moment his personal danger in
eager notice of the trembling hand and generally decayed state of the
smith’s once hardy frame. But he forgot at the same time that anxiety
and the constant gnawing of conscience were making even more rapid
ravages upon his own constitution than the utmost stretch of
intemperance could have done.
Britton was pale, and in some degree emaciated; but Learmont was
positively ghastly, and had wasted nearly to a skeleton.
“Well,” said Learmont, in a hollow and constrained voice, “you come, as
usual, for more money, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Britton,—“I don’t mean to go away empty-handed squire, you
may take your oath; but I have something more to say on this visit.”
“Say it; and begone! I—I—am busy.”
“Are you? Perhaps you will be busier still some day. Do you happen to
be thirsty?”
“No!” said Learmont impatiently.
“That’s a pity, because I am; and if it wasn’t for the look of the
thing, drinking by one’s self, I’d have a glass of something.”
“Andrew—Britton,” said Learmont, jerking out his words slowly from
beneath his clenched teeth; “I have warned you more than once before
not to trifle with me. Your errand here is specific; you come for the
means of carrying on a life of mad riot and intoxication—a life which
some of these days may lead you to an excess which will plunge you, and
all connected with you, in one common ruin.”
“Well, is that all?”
“And enough,” cried Learmont, angrily. “Have I ever resisted your
demands?”
“No.”
“Have I ever limited your calls upon my purse?”
“No; but how d—d moderate I’ve been—think of that.”
“But—but Britton—there was a time when you were not deaf to all reason;
hear me now.”
“You cannot complain of me, so long as I freely administer to your real
and fancied wants. Wherefore, then, should I run a fearful and terrible
risk daily from your excesses? You admit—you must admit—that I, to the
very spirit and letter, fulfil my contract with you; and yet I run a
fearful risk—a risk which can do you no manner of good. What, if you
were to die, Andrew Britton? You are a man of wild excesses; I say, if
you were to die? Is the end of all my compliances with your demands to
be my destruction, when you can desire no more? Speak! How do you
warrant me against so hard a condition?”
“I don’t warrant you at all,” said Britton. “Recollect you forced me to
it. What was I? The smith of Learmont. I toiled day and night; and they
called me ‘a savage’ and why? because I was in your toils—I did a piece
of work for you that—”
“Hush! Hush!” gasped Learmont.
“Oh, you are delicate, and don’t like it mentioned. I am not so nice—I
murdered for you squire, and you know it. What was my reward?
Toil—toil—and you know that too. You taunted me with my guilt and
crime. Once, squire, when I threw in your teeth, that the same halter
that was made for me, would fit your worshipful neck, you told me that
I flattered myself, for that the word of a right worshipful squire,
would outweigh the oath of a smith, and cursed me for a fool, but I
believed you, and put up with it, till that sneaking hound, Gray, came
to me.”
“Curses on him!” muttered Learmont.
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Britton. “I like him no more than yourself—I have
much to lay at his door.”
“But to my question, Britton,” said Learmont, impatiently.
“Well, to your question—what care I what becomes of you? I have myself
and myself only to look to, and you may go to the devil or anywhere
else, for all that it matters to me.”
“Andrew Britton, once before I told you to beware. You may carry this
matter so far that I may turn upon you, and find greater safety in a
foreign land than here, and if I once determine upon such a step—”
“You will leave me to the hangman?”
“I will because you goad me to it.”
“And what is there to hinder me from doing the same thing?”
“You cannot! You have not the means nor the inclination. To accomplish
such an object, you must come to me for a sum of money, which would be
equivalent to proclaiming your intention at once, and thus my least
danger would be your destruction—you understand me?”
“I do; and although there are two words to that bargain—pray in the
name of all that’s honourable, what do you want me to do, squire?”
“As a matter of common justice between us, I ask you to destroy any
written evidence you may have prepared according to the accursed and
unjust suggestions of Gray against me; or that in the event of your
death, I may, having faithfully fulfilled my bond with you, be then
released. Stay, I know what you would say. That, you would tell me,
holds out a temptation to me to take your life. I say it does not,
Andrew Britton, in your case. Your avarice is not so insatiable as
Jacob Gray’s; and, moreover, we never meet but as man to man, and you
can take what precautions you please to ensure your own safety.”
“No, squire,” said Britton, “it’s worth all the money, I’m d—d if it
ain’t to see you in such a fright. You think I’m drinking myself to
death, I know you do, and so I am, but it’s an infernally slow process,
and if you come to that, you look half dead yourself.”
“I—I?”
“Yes! Mind you give me none of your nonsense, you know, in case you
should pop off all of a sudden.”
“I—I am very well,” said Learmont, “strong and well; I never was
better.”
He dropped into a chair, as he spoke, and a deadly paleness came over
his face, robbing it even of its usual sallowness, and giving instead a
chalky appearance to the skin, that was fearful to behold.
“There, you see,” said Britton, “you ain’t well now—you don’t drink
enough. Here you have been making a riot about me, and the chance of my
popping off, and you have hardly an ounce of flesh on your cursed long
carcase.”
“I am better now!” cried Learmont, “I am quite well—very well indeed.
You—you have known me long, Andrew Britton—tell me I never looked
better in my life, and I will give you a hundred pounds—yes, a hundred
pounds, good Britton.”
“Can’t be such a cursed hypocrite,” said Britten, who mightily enjoyed
Learmont’s fright, “I never saw you look so bad in all my life!”
“I am sure you are joking.”
“Serious as a horseshoe.”
“Well, well, that don’t matter, I never take people by their looks.
Sometimes the freshest and the finest go first. You know that well,
Andrew Britton.”
“That’s very true,” said Britton, “as one we know—a tall proper man
enough—you recollect—his name was—”
“Peace! Peace! Do you want to drive me mad, Andrew Britton? Where is
your hope, but in me? What—what other resource have you? Fiend! Do you
dare thus to call up the hideous past to blast me? Peace—peace, I say,
Andrew Britton. Leave me—our conference is over.”
“Not quite.”
“It is—it is. Go—there’s money.”
He threw his purse to Britton as he spoke, and then cried,—
“Go, go. Go at once.”
“You forget,” said Britton, as he coolly pocketed the money, “that I
came here to tell you something particular.”
“What is it?”
“There is danger!”
“Danger?” cried or rather shrieked Learmont, springing from his seat.
“Danger? No, no; you don’t mean—”
“I mean what I say. There’s danger; and giving you credit for a cooler
head than mine, though I’m not quite sure of it, I came to tell you.”
Learmont leaned heavily upon the arm of the smith, as he said,—
“Good Britton, we will stand or fall together; we will not forsake each
other, I will help you, Britton. We have known each other long, and
been mutually faithful, I’m sure we have. You have still the sense
to—to take a life—for our own safety, Britton—always for our safety.”
“If I have, it’s more than you have,” said Britton. “Why, you are
turning silly. What’s the matter with the man? Have you seen a ghost?”
“Ah!” cried Learmont, “don’t speak of that; for, by the—the powers of
hell, I think I really have.”
“Oh! You think you have?”
“I do.”
“Where?”
“On my very door steps, Andrew Britton, I saw a face. Young and
beautiful—so like—so very like—hers who—”
“You don’t mean the Lady Monimia?”
“Hush, hush. ’Twas she—I knew her—come to look at me, as she looked—now
two and twenty years ago, in the spring of her rare beauty, when
we—we—quenched her life, Andrew Britton.”
“That’s all your beastly imagination,” said Britton, “I wonder at you.
On your step, do you say?”
“Yes.”
“Stuff—you don’t drink enough to clear your head of the vapours. Some
of these days you’ll fancy you see your—”
“Hush, hush. My conscience tells me the name you were about to
pronounce Hush, hush, I say. Oh! Andrew Britton, you are a man rough in
speech and manners. Your heart seems callous, but have there been no
times—no awful moments when your mental eye has been, as it were,
turned inwards on your soul, and you have shrunk aghast from—from
yourself, and wished to be the poorest, veriest abject mortal that ever
crawled, so you were innocent of man’s blood? Britton—savage, wild as
you are, you must have felt some portion of the pangs that bring but
one awful consolation with them, and that is, that hell can inflict no
more upon us.”
“I’ll be hanged if I know what you are driving at,” cried Britton. “I
should recommend brandy-and-water.”
“No, no; I cannot drink. That vulgar consolation is denied to me. My
blood dries up, and my brain inflames, but I get no peace from such a
source. Besides it shortens life.”
“Have your own way. All I’ve got to say is, that I feel as sure as that
I am standing here, that some one has been watching me at the Chequers.”
“No—no.”
“Yes—yes, I say.”
“Some drunken brawl of your own!”
“No. Do you know, I suspect that fellow Hartleton is poking and prying
about as usual, curse him.”
“Aye, Hartleton!” cried Learmont. “There is my great danger. He
suspects and watches—Britton, he might die suddenly.”
“He might.”
“Well, well.”
“And he will too, if I catch him.”
“Good, Britton. A thousand pounds for news that he is up more.”
“What’s the use of your thousand pounds to me? I can but lead the life
of a gentleman, and that I am. Why, somebody would cut my throat, if I
had a thousand shillings all at once. Good day to you, squire, good
day—take care of yourself. Leave me alone if I once catch Master
Hartleton at bay.”
“Yes, yes; you are courteous, Britton.”
“Oh! By-the-by, what do you call one of those things I see in your
hall, like a watch-box with two long poles to it?”
“A sedan chair.”
“Oh! Then I’m d—d if I don’t have one.”
“You?”
“Yes, me. Why shouldn’t I?—It will be rare fun—upon my life it will.
Good morning to you.”
So saying, Britton swaggered out of the house, and by way of showing
both his knowledge and his independence to Learmont’s servants in the
hall, when he got there, he said pointing the sedan-chair,—
“What’s that?”
“A chair,” said one.
“You think I didn’t know that, did you, spooney?” he replied, as he
gave the unfortunate footman a crack on the head that made him dance
again.