Henry Beauchamp was, beyond all doubt, by nature an impatient man;
but, for the first five-and twenty years of his life, his impatience
had found so little in his state or situation whereon to work, that it
had gone lame for want of exercise. Nature--notwithstanding Locke--had
given him a store of noble feelings, and education had added thereto a
store of good principles; and, with all this to guard him against evil
desires, he had found little in the world to wish for that his fortune
or influence had not enabled him to obtain with ease: thus he was only
now beginning to find matters whereon to exercise the virtue of
patience.
On the third day after his visit to the jeweler's, he began to find
that his stock was nearly exhausted, and likewise to contemplate
paying another visit to the shop where he had first obtained this
clew, as he hoped it would prove, for discovering the residence of
William Delaware. Indeed, he would have pursued that course at once,
had he not feared that his anxiety on the subject might excite
suspicion, and cause some annoyance to the object of his search. This
reflection, though it did not keep him from going near the jeweler's
house more than once in the course of the day, did prevent him from
venturing into it.
His equanimity, however, was gone; and, whether it arose from his late
attack of fever, or from the air of Paris in the first days of
November, or from disappointment and vexation, I can not tell; but
certain it is, he viewed every thing on the darkest side, and began to
revolve the prospect of losing Blanche Delaware forever, just at the
moment that he had found new hopes of having her heart in his favor.
The consolatory process of dining did nothing for him; and, as seven
o'clock chimed on the third day, the whole array of dinner was
removed, the courier stationed as before in the ante-room, with strict
orders given to admit no one but the person described; and, as soon as
he was admitted, to retire, and leave his master, and the stranger
alone. Eight o'clock came, Beauchamp ordered coffee, and took a book;
but, though he gazed with an involuntary smile upon the grotesque
drawings stitched into the _Roi de Boheme_, no word could he read of
the letter-press. He tried the eloquent nonsense of Chateaubriand, but
it was as unpalatable as the satirical nonsense of Nodier; and,
casting away the books, he gave the matter up in despair, abandoning
himself to the contemplation of the pictures in the wood fire.
At length the door of the ante-room was heard to open, and the voice
of some one speaking to the courier reached Beauchamp's ear; but the
door shut again, the intruder descended the stairs, and all was silent
once more. The moment after, however, the same sounds were repeated;
the door of the saloon also was thrown wide by the servant, who
uttered, at the same time, the pleasant words of, "Here is the
gentleman you expected, sir!"
Beauchamp started up as the visitor entered; but what was his surprise
to see--not the features of Captain Delaware, but those of Walter
Harrison, or Sailor Wat, as he had been called at Emberton, and who
was certainly too nearly connected with one part at least of his long
and hitherto unsuccessful search to be beheld without emotion.
Beauchamp and the young sailor gazed at each other for a moment
without speaking; and even the courier--doubtful, from the
astonishment evident in his master's countenance, whether he had
admitted the right person--stood at the door for a moment, and stared
at them both in turn.
He soon received a sign, however, to depart; and, closing the door, he
left Beauchamp and the sailor alone.
"This is a strange visit, certainly!" said Beauchamp, flinging himself
into a chair, and gazing in some perplexity upon the countenance of
Wat Harrison, which was pale, worn, and haggard, in a frightful
degree. "This is a strange visit enough, certainly!"
"You have sought me, Mr. Burrel," said the young sailor, in a tone of
calm determination; "and now you seem surprised to see me! What is the
meaning of this?"
"I have certainly sought you, sir," said Beauchamp, not yet having
caught the right end of the clew; "but, most assuredly, I little
thought you would present yourself uncompelled--are you aware that
this visit is dangerous to you?"
"Not a whit!" said Wat Harrison, boldly; "and I do not care a d--n if
it were; but I say, not a whit! You are not a man, sir, to ask me here
in order to betray me. I knew that well enough before I came."
Beauchamp now, for the first time, perceived the mistake. The young
sailor, well dressed, and offering the external appearance of a
gentleman, had gained that appellation from the jeweler, the mind of
whose hearer, already filled with idea of Captain Delaware, had at
once become impressed with the notion that the person described was no
other than that officer. The height and the fair complexion had aided
the rest of the circumstances; and Beauchamp now found that he had
invited the visit of one of the murderers of the unhappy miser of
Ryebury, in such a manner as to preclude him from taking advantage of
his coming, to cause his apprehension. He hesitated, indeed, for he
felt that perhaps the duty of bringing the culprit to justice should
be paramount; but the word honor, so often falsely construed, was so
even with Beauchamp, and he could not bring himself to do that which
his conscience told him he ought to do. Although the contest between
reason and prejudice was severe, yet he was not long in forming his
determination; and rising again, after a moment's thought, he said,
"Young man, your coming here has originated in a mistake. From the
description given by the person who sent you, I thought he spoke of
Captain Delaware, when he really alluded to yourself; but as the
mistake was mine, not yours, I will not take advantage of it to give
you up to justice. Nevertheless, remember that I am not ignorant of
your crime; and that, although I suffer you to depart from this house,
and will give you time to seek your place of concealment, yet I hold
myself bound to give notice to the Parisian police--who have orders
from the government to aid in arresting you and your accomplices--that
you are within the walls of Paris, and that, therefore, if you escape,
it is their fault."
"It will not be so easy to arrest me, Mr. Burrel," answered the young
man, in the same calm tone in which he had spoken before. "It will not
be so easy to arrest me, unless I like it myself. So you sent for me
by mistake? Well, I had hoped that there was one man on earth that
knew how to work me properly--but no matter--no matter! And you took
me for Captain Delaware, did you? God bless him, wherever he is, for a
noble gentleman and a gallant officer! So, they tell me they have
accused him of the murder, and made him fly his country, and that
he is to be dismissed his majesty's service;" and as he spoke, the
calm tone was lost, and he was evidently working himself up to a pitch
of excessive fury--"And if he is taken he is to be tried," he
continued--"and there is already a coroner's verdict against him--and
that he will be hanged to a certainty--and that his good name is
already blasted forever--and that poor Miss Blanche will weep her
heart out for him--and poor old Sir Sidney will die of grief for his
son's fate--and all for a crime that he did not commit--and, d--n your
eyes, do you think I am going to stand all that! No, never, by--!
Weren't they kind to me when never a soul was kind to me in all the
world? and didn't they stand by me when every soul abandoned me? And
am I going to see them all go to ruin and to misery, because I myself
and that black villain have brought damnation upon my own head? No,
no, never you think that! Why, it was bad enough before--and every
time I thought upon their going and murdering the poor old man, while
I kept watch in the passage, I was ready to go and give myself up, and
beg them to hang me out of the way, that I might think no more of
it--but now--now that I find all that it has done besides, d--me if I
would not hang forty such fellows as that, rather than that the
captain should come to ill by it!"
From this confused speech, which Beauchamp listened to with eager
attention, though certainly not without some surprise, he learned all
that the judicious reader has already discovered, of what was passing
in the mind of poor Walter Harrison. He saw, in short, that remorse
had done its work; and that the fact of the crime in which he had
taken part, having brought down such misfortunes on the family who had
been his benefactors, had carried remorse to its natural climax of
despair. It was evident, too, that his remorse was of that purer kind
which is kindred to repentance, and that, at all events, he
contemplated atonement; and Beauchamp felt confident that, by proper
management, full and satisfactory evidence might now be procured of
the facts necessary to exculpate William Delaware completely. He saw,
however, at the same time, that the spirit with which he had to
deal--wild, wayward, and violent--would require most skillful
treatment to bring it to the point he had in view.
"You are heated!" he said, "Walter Harisson; but if I understand you
right, there is still a hope, through your means, of saving William
Delaware from all the evils that you have brought upon him."
"Hear me, sir--hear me!" replied the young sailor. "Only tell me what
is necessary to save him--and if you bid me hang a slip-knot to the
yard-arm, then put my neck in it, and cast myself off, I'll do it."
"I take you at your word," said Beauchamp. "There is but one way to
clear him--but one way to restore him to that clear and honorable
character which he always maintained in life, notwithstanding
poverty."
"Ay, there it is! there it is!" cried the young man "clear and
honorable, and yet poor--as poor for his rank as I was for mine--ay,
and I might have a clear and honorable name, too--but never
mind--never mind--it is all coming to an end soon!" And casting
himself down in a chair, he pressed his hands over his eyes.
"You lose your self-command, Walter," said Beauchamp. "Be calm, and
let us speak over this business rationally."
"Calm! calm!" cried the young sailor; starting up. "How the devil
would you have me calm, when you are speaking of things that are
burning in my heart like coals of fire? How can I be calm?"
"You came here," said Beauchamp, somewhat sternly, "with a fixed
determination, I suppose, of some kind--either intending to do right
or to do wrong--to make the only reparation that you can for the
crimes you have committed, by delivering your benefactor from the
consequences of your errors--or boldly to deny what you have
committed. If you intend to do right, the first noble and generous
determination that you have formed for long, should teach you to
execute your purpose with the calmness and fortitude of a man."
"You say true, sir--you say true!" replied the youth, in a tone of
deep melancholy. "You always say true; and if I had attended to what
you told me when you brought me home from the fire that night, I
should not have felt as I do now--but there is no use of talking of
that--I did come here with the intention of doing right; and I will do
right, if you will tell me how. What I want to do, is to clear the
captain of every thing, and make it so plain that he never had any
hand in the bad business, that even those old devils at Emberton shall
have nothing to say. You were going to tell me the way when I stopped
you. Now, I will stick at nothing, either on my own account, or that
of others--for as to that accursed ruffian who entrapped me into the
business, I have had many a black thought, when he sneers at me
because I am sorry, to finish him myself."
"Your only way, then, to make the reparation you propose," replied
Beauchamp, "is to give such information as may lead to the
apprehension and conviction of the men who actually committed the
murder--for, from what you have said, I am led to believe that you had
no absolute share in the deed itself."
"No, no! None, none!" cried the young man, rapidly. "I did not know
they were going to do it--they had promised me, with the most solemn
oaths, not to hurt a hair of his head, and I knew nothing of it till
it was all over."
"Well, then," answered Beauchamp, "if that be the case, you will not
only be enabled to make, as I said before, the only reparation in your
power for the ill you have done, but you will entirely clear Captain
Delaware, and yet run no danger yourself; for in his Majesty's
proclamation on the subject, I find that a free pardon is promised
to any one of the parties--with the exception of the actual
murderers--who will bring his accomplices to justice. So that your
life is safe."
"I care nothing about my life!" cried the young man, relapsing into
impetuosity. "What the devil, do you think I am going to turn a
pitiful king's evidence, and make a bargain for my own neck, while I
am hanging my fellows? No, no! I will tell all that I know--I will go
along with them, and be tried with them, and hanged with them too, for
that matter--I care not--if I am alive on the execution day. But I
will make no bargains about my life--none--none--my days are numbered,
Mr. Burrel!" He added, more calmly, "My days are numbered; and the
last may come when it will--I will shake hands with it when it does.
There is only one bargain I will make, and that I know you will grant
me; for you were one of the few that were kind--it is about my poor
mother I am talking. She has had sorrows enough, sir, and she shall
only have one more for me; so, when I am dead, I hope you will promise
to take care of her, and let her have enough--if the job do not kill
her, which likely it may, too; and that is the worst of it all; but,
however, I have made up my mind, do you see, and so you must promise
me, that she shall have the old cottage and forty pounds a year to
live on; and if nobody else gives it, you must."
"Most willingly will I do it, upon my honor," replied Beauchamp.
"That is enough, sir! Quite enough!" continued the young sailor. "You
and I, Mr. Burrel, are quits in some things--you saved my life once;
and I can tell you, that if it had not been for me on that horrible
night, you would either have been left with your throat cut at the
door of the house, or have gone overboard, and to the bottom, as we
sailed along."
"I imagined that such was the case," answered Beauchamp; "and all
these things tell so much in your favor, that I can not understand how
you could suffer yourself to be led into such a crime as that which
you have committed."
"I tell you, sir, I had nothing to do with it," cried the young man.
"If I had been present, they should not have hurt a hair of his
head--they knew that well enough, and therefore they left me below to
keep watch. As to the robbery, that I did consent to; and that was bad
enough, too--but then, that Harding had the tongue of the devil
himself, to persuade one. He got round me when I was ill--he taught me
to believe that all riches ought to be in common, and that no man
should be wealthy, while another man was poor; and then he told me,
that to take the money which the old miser made no use of, and left
rotting in his chests, could be no harm; and then he harped upon my
mother's poverty and misery, and made things ten times worse than they
were; so at length I consented, on condition that he would promise not
to hurt the old man. Well, even then, when he came down all bloody,
and I saw too well that they had killed him, I do think that I should
have either shot him for deceiving me, or should have gone and given
him up, as he deserved, but I saw that he felt what he had done
himself, and there was something so awful about him just at that
moment, that I do not well know why or how, but he got the mastery of
me, and I did what he liked, till it came to killing you, which the
woman wanted us to do, as you lay stunned at the door. Then my spirit
got up again, and I was master of them all till we came over here. But
now he has forgotten all that he seemed to feel then--that Harding, I
mean--and he talks about it quietly, and sneers and laughs, and looks
coolly at me, while he is speaking of things that would make one's
blood run cold--and he persuades himself that it is all right."
The strong excitement under which the young sailor labored afforded
Beauchamp every means of drawing from him the whole details of the
murder, and the events that followed; and he found that the crime, at
least as far as he robbery went, had been concerted long before it was
perpetrated. The moment for executing their plan had always been
postponed by Harding himself, who had assured his accomplices, that a
large sum of money, which he knew was to be paid into the miser's
hands, and not yet been received; and Beauchamp easily divined that
the murderer had alluded to the sum he himself had drawn for, through
the instrumentality of the unhappy money-lender. So completely
organized had been the whole design, that a French cutter, engaged by
young Harrison, had actually lain upon the coast for several days, in
order to carry the three culprits to Havre, whence they were instantly
to embark for America. The master of the vessel, however, tired of
waiting, had at length left the coast on the very night that the
murder was committed; and the only means of escape that the four
accomplices found when they reached the beach, was the boat which the
young sailor had provided, with money furnished by Harding, for the
purpose of conveying them from the shore to the ship, without the
necessity of making signals, which might have betrayed them. The woman
had, indeed, nearly brought the coast-guard upon them, by accidentally
falling into the sea as they embarked, and screaming for help; but,
nevertheless, they got her into the boat, and pushed off before any
one came up. On their arrival in France, the young man added, they had
taken, under Harding's directions, those measures of precaution which
had baffled Beauchamp and the officers in their pursuit, and had at
length arrived in Paris, where he, who might be considered as their
leader, had boasted that he could lie concealed if all the police of
France and England were set upon his track. Here he proposed to sell a
variety of different articles of jewelry and plate, which he and his
companion had contrived to bring with them, and then to take ship for
the land of Columbus, as they originally had proposed. Harding, the
young sailor said, had soon lost all appearance of that remorse which
he had felt at first; but he described him at the same time as living
in a state of reckless debauchery and excitement, from which Beauchamp
argued that the never-dying worm was still tremendously alive within
his 'bosom. He drank deep, Walter Harrison added, without getting
drunk. The woman whom he had brought with him, and had before seduced,
he treated with contempt and cruelty. He gamed, also, continually, in
the lower and more brutal resorts of Parisian blacklegs and madmen;
and, gratifying every passion to excess, it was evident that he was
striving to drown the voice of remorse in a tide of gross and eager
licentiousness.
"It is a fearful picture," said Beauchamp. "But now tell me how and
when we can bring this atrocious villain to punishment. You, my poor
young man, he has misled and betrayed; and I do not even know that his
crime toward you is not of a deeper die than that which he committed
on the person of the wretched old man at Ryebury. He could but kill
the body of the one--"
"Ay, and of the other," interrupted the young sailor, "he has
condemned the immortal soul!"
"I hope not! I hope not!" said Beauchamp. "Life is still before you,
if you choose to live; and I know of no circumstances in which life is
so inestimably valuable to man, as when he has been greatly criminal;
for every year that he remains here may, if he will, be filled with
the golden moments of repentance. But once more, how can we apprehend
this villain?"
"Ay, he is a villain!" answered the young sailor; "if ever there lived
one, he is the man;" and he was proceeding again to stray from the
subject, when Beauchamp recalled him to it, and mentioned the
necessity there would be of applying to the French police; but at the
very idea the other started wild away.
"No, no, no!" he cried, "that will not do. He's a brave man, though he
be a ruffian; and he shall never say that I took odds against him,
because I was afraid of him one to one."
"Then how do you propose to act?" demanded Beauchamp, in some
astonishment. "This man must be taken, and brought to punishment, if
you would keep your word with me, and clear the character of William
Delaware."
The young man mused sullenly for several minutes, merely muttering,
"He shall--he shall be taken. Hark you, Mr. Burrel," he said at
length, looking up boldly and steadfastly, "you are a brave man. I
have seen you do brave things. Now, there is this Harding and another;
and here are you and I--that is two to two, and fair play. If you
choose to go with me to-morrow night, I will take you to where those
two are alone; and if we do not take them, and tie them hand and foot,
it is our fault; but d--me if I take odds against them."
The proposal was certainly as strange a one as ever was made, and as
unpleasant a one as could have been addressed to Henry Beauchamp. I
have said before that he was naturally fearless; and, consequently,
did not see one-half of the dangers in any thing proposed that most
other people would have done; but, at the same time, he had not the
slightest inclination to run himself into scrapes of any kind without
necessity; and he could not help perceiving that the business was at
once a perilous one, and one which might be much better performed
without his interference. In the next place, he did not think the
occupation particularly dignified or becoming; and thirdly, he did not
at all like the eclat it would produce, and felt most exquisitely
annoyed at the very idea of the romantic interest of the story, as it
would figure in all the newspapers, and be told in all the coteries.
It was quite enough, he thought, to have been made to drown himself
for the amusement of the public; and certainly something too much, to
be obliged to apprehend two murderers, _vi et armis_, without any
cause or necessity whatever.
"Well, sir, will you do it?" demanded the young sailor, seeing that he
paused upon his proposal.
"Why, I think not," answered Beauchamp.
"D--me, then!" cried the other; but Beauchamp interrupted him, in that
commanding tone which no one knew better how to assume.
"Hush, sir! hush!" he said. "You forget yourself, and who you are
speaking to. Call not down in words those curses which I trust that
your present and your future actions may avert, however much the past
may have merited them. In regard to your proposal--in the first place,
I am not a thief-taker; and consequently the task does not become me.
In the next place, by the plan you suggest, the great object I have in
view is likely to be defeated--I mean the bringing these men to
justice, in order to clear Captain Delaware. Suppose, for instance,
that by any accident we should be overpowered by them, we lose his
only hope; and even if we overpower them, having no legal authority to
do so, any one who happens to be near may give them such aid and
assistance as will enable them to escape, and foil us entirely."
"I will tell you what sir," said the young man, sullenly; "I'll go
some length, but I will not go all. To prevent them getting away any
how, you may put the police round the house, if you like--but only you
and I shall go in upon them; for I will not take odds against them any
how; and if you are afraid to go, why--"
"I am not afraid to do any thing, sir!" replied Beauchamp. "And though
it is not at all necessary, and though perhaps it may be foolish of me
to do it--yet, rather than loose any evidence in favor of Captain
Delaware, I will do what you propose; that is to say, I will go in
with you alone, in order to master these two men, if we can: but it
shall be on condition that the agents of the police be stationed round
the house, in such a manner as to prevent their escape, whether we
succeed or fail."
"That is what I say," replied the young sailor. "Let us have a bout
with them, two to two fairly; and then, if they kill us, why, there
will be still men around the house to take them."
"I had forgot," answered Beauchamp, "that, as you say, we may be both
killed in this business; and if you should be killed, pray, what
evidence is there to convict either of these men! If you really intend
to do what you have promised, it will behove you to make a full and
complete declaration of the whole facts, and sign them before two or
three persons, previous to entering upon this undertaking."
Walter Harrison paused and thought, and Beauchamp urged him strongly
to take the precaution he proposed; but he did not succeed. "No," said
the young sailor, at length; "No! I will put it all down in my own
handwriting, which can be well enough proved by the ship's books, and
I will sign it with my name, and I'll give it to you to-morrow night;
but I'll not go it all over again before any one else, till I tell it
all for the last time--there, don't say any more; for I won't do it--I
don't like this police business either; but I suppose it must be
done--so, now I will go. You will find me, to-morrow night, at ten
o'clock, opposite that jeweler's shop. I will not fail you, upon my
honor;" and so saying, he walked toward the door. Ere he had reached
it, however, he turned, and coming nearer, he said, "Mr. Burrel, I
trust to your honor, that when you have got me there with the police,
you will not let them go into the house with us--mind, two to two is
fair play. He shall never say that I brought odds against him!"
"I have given you my word," said Beauchamp, "and I will certainly keep
it."
"Well, then, good night, sir!" replied the young man, and opening the
door, he passed out into the ante-room; but ere he had taken two steps
beyond the threshold, he again returned to bid Beauchamp bring his
pistols with him. "He always has his in his pockets," he said, "so it
would be unfair that you should be without."
"I will take care to come prepared," replied Beauchamp, and his
visitor once more left the room. He paused a moment in the ante-room,
and hesitated as if he had something more to say, but the instant
after he quitted the apartments, and was heard descending the stairs
with a rapid step.