--Mysterious Conduct of Fenton
When Sir Thomas Gourlay, after the delay of better than an hour in town,
entered the coffee-room of the “Mitre,” he was immediately attended by
the landlord himself.
“Who is this new guest you have got, landlord,” inquired the
baronet--“They tell me he is a very mysterious gentleman, and that no
one can discover his name. Do! you know anything about him?”
“De'il a syllable, Sir Tammas,” replied the landlord, who was a
northern--“How ir you, Counsellor Crackenfudge,” he added, speaking
to a person who passed upstairs--“There he goes,” proceeded Jack the
landlord--“a nice boy. But do you know, Sir Tammas, why he changed his
name to Crackenfudge?”
Sir Thomas's face at this moment, had grown frightful. While the
landlord was speaking, the baronet, attracted by the noise of a carriage
passing, turned to observe it, just at the moment when his daughter was
bowing so significantly to the stranger in the window over them, as
we have before stated. Here was a new light thrown upon the mystery or
mysteries by which he felt himself surrounded on all hands. The strange
guest in the Mitre inn, was then, beyond question, the very individual
alluded to in the anonymous letter. The baronet's face had, in the
scowl of wrath, got black, as mine host was speaking. This expression,
however, gradually diminished in the darkness of that wrathful shadow
which lay over it. After a severe internal struggle with his tremendous
passions, he at length seemed to cool down. His face became totally
changed; and in a few minutes of silence and struggle, it passed from
the blackness of almost ungovernable rage to a pallid hue, that might
not most aptly be compared to the summit of a volcano covered with snow,
when about to project its most awful and formidable eruptions.
The landlord, while putting the question to the baronet, turned his
sharp, piercing eyes upon him, and, at a single glance, perceived that
something had unusually moved him.
“Sir Tammas,” said he, “there is no use in denyin' it, now--the blood's
disturbed in you.”
“Give your guest my compliments--Sir Thomas Gourlay's compliments--and I
should feel obliged by a short interview.”
On going up, Jack found the stranger and Fenton as we have already
described them--“Sir,” said he, addressing the former--“there's a
gentleman below who wishes to know who you ir.”
“Who I am!” returned the other, quite unmoved; “and, pray who may he
be?”
“Sir Tammas Gourlay; an' all tell you what, if you don't wish to see
him, why don't see him. A 'll take him the message, an' if there's
anything about you that you don't wish to be known or heard, make
him keep his distance. He's this minute in a de'il of a passion about
something, an' was comin' up as if he'd ait you without salt, but a'
would n't allow it; so, if you don't wish to see him, am the boy won't
be afeard to say so. He's not coming as a friend, a' can tell you.”
“Sir Thomas Gourlay's in the house, then,” said the stranger, with a
good deal of surprise. He then paused for some time, and, during this
pause, he very naturally concluded that the baronet had witnessed his
daughter's bow, so cautiously and significantly made to himself as she
passed. Whilst he turned over these matters in his mind, the landlord
addressed Fenton as follows:
“You can go to another room, Fenton. A'm glad to see you in a decent
suit of clothes, any way--a' hope you'll take yourself up, and avoid
drink and low company; for de'il a haet good ever the same two brought
anybody; but, before you go, a'll give you a gless o' grog to drink the
Glorious Memory. Come, now, tramp, like a good fellow.”
“I have a particular wish,” said the stranger, “that Mr. Fenton should
remain; and say to Sir Thomas Gourlay that I am ready to see him.”
“A' say, then,” said Jack, in a friendly whisper, “be on your edge with
him, for, if he finds you saft, the very de'il won't stand him.”
“The gentleman, Sir Tammas,” said Jack, on going down stairs, “will be
glad to see you. He's overhead.”
Fenton, himself, on hearing that Sir Thomas was about to come up,
prepared to depart; but the other besought him so earnestly to stay,
that he consented, although with evident reluctance. He brought his
chair over to a corner of the room, as if he wished to be as much out of
the way as possible, or, it may be, as far from Sir Thomas's eye, as
the size of the apartment would permit. Be this as it may, Sir Thomas
entered, and brought his ungainly person nearly to the centre of
the room before he spoke. At length he did so, but took care not to
accompany his words with that courtesy of manner, or those rules of
good-breeding, which ever prevail among gentlemen, whether as friends or
foes. After standing for a moment, he glanced from the one to the other,
his face still hideously pale; and ultimately, fixing his eye upon the
stranger, he viewed him from head to foot, and again from foot to head,
with a look of such contemptuous curiosity, as certainly was strongly
calculated to excite the stranger's indignation. Finding the baronet
spoke not, the other did.
“To what am I to attribute the honor of this visit, sir?”
Sir Thomas even then did not speak, but still kept looking at him with
the expression we have described. At length he did speak:
“You have been residing for some time in our neighborhood, sir.” The
stranger simply bowed.
“May I ask how long?”
“I have the honor, I believe, of addressing Sir Thomas Gourlay?”
“Yes, you have that honor.”
“And may I beg to know his object in paying me this unceremonious
visit, in which he does not condescend either to announce himself, or to
observe the usual rules of good-breeding?”
“From my rank and known position in this part of the country, and in my
capacity also as a magistrate, sir,” replied the baronet, “I'm entitled
to make such inquiries as I may deem necessary from those who appear
here under suspicious circumstances.”
“Perhaps you may think so, but I am of opinion, sir, that you would
consult the honor of the rank and position you allude to much more
effectually, by letting such inquiries fall within the proper province
of the executive officers of law, whenever you think there is a
necessity for it.”
“Excuse me, but, in that manner, I shall follow my own judgment, not
yours.”
“And under what circumstances of suspicion do you deem me to stand at
present?”
“Very strong circumstances. You have been now living here nearly a week,
in a privacy which no gentleman would ever think of observing. You have
hemmed yourself in by a mystery, sir; you have studiously concealed your
name--your connections--and defaced every mark by which you could be
known or traced. This, sir, is not the conduct of a gentleman; and
argues either actual or premeditated guilt.”
“You seem heated, sir, and you also reason in resentment, whatever may
have occasioned it. And so a gentleman is not to make an excursion to a
country town in a quiet way--perhaps to recruit his health, perhaps to
relax his mind, perhaps to gratify a whim--but he must be pounced upon
by some outrageous dispenser of magisterial justice, who thinks,
that, because he wishes to live quietly and unknown, he must be some
cutthroat, or raw-head-and-bloody-bones coming to eat half the country?”
“I dare say, sir, that is all very fine, and very humorous; but when
these mysterious vagabonds--”
The eye of the stranger blazed; lightning itself, in fact, was not
quicker than the fire which gleamed from it, as the baronet uttered the
last words. He walked over deliberately, but with a step replete with
energy and determination:
“How, sir,” said he, “do you dare to apply such an expression to me?”
The baronet's eye quailed. He paused a moment, during which he could
perceive that the stranger had a spirit not to be tampered with.
“No, sir,” he replied, “not exactly to you, but when persons such as
you come in this skulking way, probably for the purpose of insinuating
themselves into families of rank--”
“Have I, sir, attempted to insinuate myself into yours,” asked the
stranger, interrupting him.
“When such persons come under circumstances of strong suspicion,”
said the other, without replying to him, “it is the business of every
gentleman in the country to keep a vigilant eye upon them.”
“I shall hold myself accountable to no such gentleman,” replied the
stranger; “but will consider every man, no matter what his rank or
character may be, as unwarrantably impertinent, who arrogantly attempts
to intrude himself in affairs that don't--” he was about to add, “that
don't concern him,” when he paused, and added, “into any man's affairs.
Every man has a right to travel incognito, and to live incognito, if he
chooses; and, on that account, sir, so long as I wish to maintain mine,
I shall allow no man to assume the right of penetrating it. If this has
been the object of your visit, you will much oblige me by relinquishing
the one, and putting an end to the other, as soon as may be.”
“As a magistrate, sir, I demand to know your name,” said the baronet,
who thought that, in the stranger's momentary hesitation, he had
observed symptoms of yielding.
“As an independent man, sir, and a gentleman, I shall not answer such a
question.”
“You brave me, sir--you defy me.” continued the other, his face still
pale, but baleful in its expression.
“Yes, sir,” replied the other, “I brave you--I defy you.”
“Very well, sir,” returned the baronet--“remember these words.”
“I am not in the habit of forgetting anything that a man of spirit
ought to remember,” said the other--“I have the honor of wishing you a
good-morning.”
The baronet withdrew in a passion that had risen to red heat, and was
proceeding to mount his horse at the door, when Counsellor Crackenfudge,
who had followed him downstairs, thus addressed him:
“I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas; I happened to be sitting in the
back-room while you were speaking to that strange fellow above; I pledge
you my honor I did not listen; but I could not help overhearing, you
know--well, Sir Thomas, I can tell you something about him.”
“How!” said the baronet, whose eye I gleamed with delight--“Can you, in
truth, tell me anything about him, Mr. Crackenfudge? You will oblige me
very much if you do.”
“I will tell you all I know about him, Sir Thomas,” replied the worthy
counsellor; “and that is, that I know he has paid many secret visits to
Mr. Birney the attorney.”
“To Birney!” exclaimed the other; and, as he spoke, he seemed actually
to stagger back a step or two, whilst the paleness of his complexion
increased to a hue that was ghastly--“to Birney!--to my blackest
and bitterest enemy--to the man who, I suspect, has important
family documents of mine in his possession. Thanks, even for this,
Crackenfudge--you are looking to become of the peace. Hearken now; aid
me in ferreting out this lurking scoundrel, and I shall not forget your
wishes.” He then rode homewards.
The stranger, during this stormy dialogue with Sir Thomas Gourlay,
turned his eye, from time to time, toward Fenton, who appeared to have
lost consciousness itself so long as the baronet was in the room. On the
departure, however, of that gentleman, he went over to him, and said:
“Why, Fenton, what's the matter?” Fenton looked at him with a face of
great distress, from which the perspiration was pouring, but seemed
utterly unable to speak.