The Return of Learmont.—The Interview.—Doubts and Fears.
In his way Jacob Gray passed Learmont’s house, and he had scarcely got
half a dozen yards from the door, when he was compelled to step aside,
to allow a cavalcade to pass him, consisting of some half-dozen footmen
bearing links, followed by a chair containing their master.
One of the curtains of the sedan was but partially drawn, and Gray, at
a glance, saw that Learmont himself was the occupier of it. His
resolution was formed in a moment. He would risk whatever construction
the squire chose to put upon such a visit, at so singular an hour, and
procure some money from him at once for present pressing exigencies.
He could easily frame some lie to account for his visit at such an
hour; and whether Learmont believed it or not, it must pass current,
for who could contradict it?
He watched the haughty arbiter of his fortunes get out of the chair,
and ascend the steps of the mansion. Then, before the door could be
closed, he stepped forward; and being just behind Learmont, he said,—
“I have waited for you.”
Learmont turned suddenly, and looked perfectly astonished to see Gray.
For a moment neither spoke. Then the squire said, in a low tone,—
“To-morrow morning, early.”
“No,” said Gray. “My business is urgent and important, I must see you
to-night.”
“Must?”
“Yes—must!”
Learmont bit his lip, and passed into the house, which Gray taking as a
passive permission to follow him, did so, until Learmont paused in a
room devoted to the purpose of a library, and which was but dimly
lighted. Then turning to Gray, he said,—
“Well?” in a brief stern voice.
Gray had hastily concocted in his mind what he should say to Learmont,
and after carefully closing the door, he replied in nearly his usual
low and cautious tone, although his voice shook a little,—
“It is not all well. Squire Learmont, me thinks I should have a better
reception for coming some distance, and waiting long to tell you news
of more importance to you than to me.”
Jacob Gray was unconscious that he touched a chord in Learmont’s heart,
which had vibrated painfully ever since his interview with Britton; but
he saw, by the nervous clutching of a back of a chair with his fingers,
that Learmont was alarmed, and that was what he wished.
“What—what—mean you?” said Learmont.
“I mean this,” replied Gray, “that Sir Francis Hartleton—”
“Hartleton again!” cried Learmont, clenching his fist. “By all that’s
damnable—that man is born to be my bane—my curse—I will have his blood.”
Gray saw that he had struck the right chord, and he added,—“I fear he
is plotting and planning some mischief.”
“You only fear?”
“Nay, I am almost certain.”
“State all you know.”
“I will. And it is because I know so much that I come to you at so
unseasonable an hour.”
“Heed not that,” said Learmont. “All hours—all times by night and by
day—are alike to me, for they all teem with alarms. The shadow of some
dreadful coming evil seems to press upon my soul. Bad tidings crowd
upon me. Say on, Jacob Gray, I am prepared too well.”
“What I have to tell you,” said Gray, “consists more of a certain
knowledge that there is something to discover than that something
itself.”
“Say on—say on.”
“Before I speak, will you, for the first time, let me have a cup of
wine, for I am very—very faint.”
“Help yourself,” said Learmont, pointing to a buffet at the further end
of the room, on which were refreshments.
Gray eagerly poured himself a glass of rich wine; and as he felt the
generous fluid warm him, his blood seemed to flow easier through his
veins, and he appeared to have lifted half of his cares from his heart.
“Now—now,” said Learmont, impatiently. “Tell me all.”
“I will. Early this evening, I went into a small hostel, in Pimlico,
near to the public office of this Hartleton—”
“Yes—yes.”
“And there was one,” continued Gray, lying with a volubility that would
have taken any one in,—“there one belonging to the magistrate’s office,
who had already taken more drink than his brains would stand.”
“You—you—plied him well.”
“I did when my suspicions were awakened. He was talking loudly, and
amongst other things, he said ‘His master had an eye upon a certain
squire, not a hundred miles from Westminster, who bid fair for Tyburn.’”
“The knave!—What—what more?”
“On that I thought, of course, on you,” said Gray, with a sneering
malice in his tone.
“Well—well—what followed?”
“Why, knowing no other squire in Westminster but yourself, with whom I
could couple the allusion to Tyburn, I called for more drink and
brought him to converse with me.”
“And—and—what?”
“He dwelt but in obscure hints,” continued Gray, “and at last dropped
off into a drunken sleep, which smothered all his faculties.”
“And you heard no more?”
“No more.”
“’Tis not much.”
“Enough for apprehension,” suggested Gray.
“Ay; but not enough for action.”
“True—but you can think of it.”
“There is the curse! I can think of—thought is my hell!”
“Such thoughts lured unpleasant images; but ’tis better to have such
slender information of coming danger than to dream on of safety, but to
be roughly awakened by it when it comes to your doors.”
“No—no. Apprehension is a fiend of far more awful aspect than danger.
It only suggests the terrible, and leaves to the shrinking, trembling
fancy to fill up the ghastly picture. Show me danger, and I have nerve
to face it. Only tell me it is coming, and in some unknown shape, and
I—I—do quail before it. Yes I—even I do quail before it.”
He sank into a chair as he spoke, and turned deathly white.
“Arm yourself with fortitude,” said Gray. “You may yet triumph.”
“There is but one course open,” said Learmont, in a low earnest tone.
“Among us we must find a means to lay the troublesome spirit of this
Hartleton, Jacob Gray, where is all the deep cunning that would enable
you to circumvent hell itself? I say, where is it now, if you cannot
summon it to your aid, to rid us all of this man, who will otherwise
destroy us.”
“You may yet triumph,” muttered Gray, with a meaning look. “Hear me
Squire Learmont: I am sick and weary of the life I lead, an’ would fain
now lend an ear to some proposal from you, which would enable me to
feel more peace here.”
He struck his breast as he spoke, and fixed his keen eye upon Learmont,
who in his turn, from beneath his knitted brows, peered anxiously into
the face of Gray.
“You understand me,” continued Gray; “I am willing, if I could do so
with safety, to leave you at peace—to secure you from the worst evils
that can befall you—to deliver you from your greatest feelings of
apprehension.”
“Say on, Jacob Gray,” said Learmont, in a low indifferent tone.
“Nay, I would now hear from you,” remarked Gray, “what proposal you
would make to me for surrendering to you your worst foe.”
“The child?”
“Ay; but a child no longer,” hastily interrupted Gray. “Years have now
rolled on, and the child that was, has in the due progress of time
passed that age and become a dangerous enemy to you. An enemy only
controlled by me. I am as one holding in my grasp the thunderbolt
which, were I for a moment to let loose, would rush with fearful
certainty at your devoted head. I—but I want your proposal, squire—I am
willing to accede to some terms, but they must be to me, both safe and
profitable.”
Learmont was silent for some moments, then he said,—
“Tell me your demand, Jacob Gray, and at large particularise your
proposal.”
“Nay, squire, I repeat I have no proposal—none whatever—but I have
bethought me that danger threatens around us, and that some day when
the horizon of our fortunes may appear unclouded, a storm may come
which will sweep us to destruction.”
Learmont groaned, and then fixing his eyes upon Gray, he said with a
fearful and intense earnestness,—
“Jacob Gray, you are a man of crimes—you have shed blood more
causelessly than I—and I would ask you if ever in your solitude, when
none have been near you, you have seen or heard—”
Gray licked his parched lips, as he said with trembling apprehension,—
“What—what mean you, squire? I—I have seen nothing—heard nothing, ’Twas
Andrew Britton struck the blow—he—he did it.”
“Peace, peace!” cried Learmont; “nor with a hollow sophistry try to
cleanse your soul of the deep spots that eat, like a wild splash of
burning lava, to its inmost part.”
Gray shrank and cowered before the frightened looks of Learmont, and
after a pause he said,—
“What have you seen—what heard?”
“Twice now I have seen a face which, to look upon has nearly turned my
heart to stone.”
“A—a—face?”
“Yes—’tis an angel or a devil. Listen to me.”
“I—I will—I will.”
“Once on the steps of this, my mansion, at an hour when my heart was
lighter than its wont, and I was far from dreaming of such a sight, a
face appeared before me. It seemed that of a young girl, but so
like—oh, so like him—who sleeps in that dread spot which ever rises
like a spectre before my affrighted eyes.”
“The smithy?” said Gray.
“And once again,” continued Learmont, not heeding Gray’s interruption,
“once again I saw it. Then another was with me, and I know it was not
of this world because he saw it not.”
“The same face?”
“The same.”
“And of a young girl, say you—pale and noble, with a look of
gentleness, yet pride—a—brow of snow—long raven hair?”
“The—the same—you have seen it, Jacob Gray—you have seen it—you are
cursed as well as I.”
“In a dream,” muttered Gray.
“Only a dream? I saw it on a bright morning when all was light and life
around.”
“Was that recently?” said Gray.
“This very morning.”
Gray would have given much at that moment to be able to ask with
unconcern where Learmont had seen Ada, for that it was she he did not
entertain a shadow of a doubt, but it was several minutes before he
could command his voice sufficiently to say,—
“Where saw you this appearance?”
“Where all my fears are concentrated—where my worst foe resides—I saw
it at the window of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house from the park.”
Gray drew a long breath as he thought, “So my worst fears are
confirmed. She is with the magistrate.” He then said, with a more
assumed and confident air than he had hitherto assumed:—
“These fancies would leave you were you more at ease—I grieve that you
should as yet have missed the enjoyments which your wealth should have
brought within your grasp.”
“Enjoyment!” said Learmont, with a deep groan—“you mock me, Jacob
Gray—what enjoyments have you and Andrew Britton left me? Have you not
between you surrounded me with danger and suspicion? I have been
tempted, for the great favours I owe you both, to take some day a step
that should rid me of you for ever.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes—but we will talk more another time—the hour waxes late—shall we
meet in the morning?”
“The—the night would suit me better,” said Gray, who by no means
relished in his present dangerous circumstances a morning visit.
Learmont, with a forced air of unconcern, cried,—
“Pho—pho—let it be the morning—say at half-past ten.”
“I will take money of you now,” said Gray, evading the point, “in
earnest of the sum which shall separate us for ever.”
“There is my purse,” cried Learmont, giving it to him. “’Tis moderately
full—take it, and let me see you to-morrow by the hour I have named.”
“Squire Learmont,” said Gray, “for three thousand pounds I will rid you
of the young object of your fears—of myself—and, perchance, of Andrew
Britton.”
“Three thousand pounds?” said Learmont.
“Yes—a small sum you must own—a very small sum.”
“You will bring me here—”
“No—no—I will do this—on shipboard, I will hand you an address written
on the back of my confession.”
“I will consider,” said Learmont, “and in the meantime bethink you of
some means of ridding me of Hartleton. While that man lives I stand as
it were upon a mine, and—and—you will be here in the morning by
half-past ten.”
It would have been a curious study for any deep theorist on human
nature to have remarked these two men, Learmont and Gray, at this
moment, watching each other’s countenances, and yet endeavouring to
avoid seeming so to do, and mutually suspicious that every word covered
some hidden and covert meaning.
“What change has taken place, that Jacob Gray is so anxious to
compromise with me for a sum of money at once?” was Learmont’s mental
interrogatory.
“Why does he want me here by half-past ten so particularly?” thought
Gray; “I will not come.”
Thus they parted, mutually hating and mutually suspicious of each other.