CROSS PURPOSES.
The morning was a clear, bright, sunny, and joyous one, the sun
without cloud, the chimneys of Antwerp, as usual, without smoke,
though the season was winter, and all its spires and countless
crow-stepped gables were standing up clearly defined against a pure
blue sky, when Bevil Goring, with high spirits, yet not without just
emotions of great indignation, walked forth a free man from the place
in which he had been detained, and, stepping into a voiture with his
luggage, told the driver to take him to the Hôtel du Parc in the
Place Verte, and kissed the ring of Alison which was on his finger
again. He was free, and it had come about thus:--
The papers and manifestoes found among his property were of so
serious and compromising a nature that he was on the point of being
transmitted with them to Brussels, but he contrived to employ an
_advokat_ (as an attorney or barrister is called there) in the Rue de
l'Hôpital, who soon traced to the arrested Belgian workman those
unlucky papers, and it chanced, oddly enough, that the mischievous
Mr. Gaskins, having got a serious smash up in an accident on the
railway to Waterloo, believing himself to be dying, made a full
confession of the trick he had played to serve a lucrative master;
and the Belgian authorities, duly aware at last of Goring's rank and
position in society, confessed their haste and mistake, and, with a
'million pardons,' released him from an arrest that, after it had
extended to some days, was nearly making him frantic, and he was
welcomed and ushered to his former apartment at the hotel by the
waiter Jacquot, though Maître Jean Picot, remembering his arrest, had
some unpleasant doubts about receiving him.
Bevil, however, lost no time in repairing to the Hôtel St. Antoine,
resolved to see Sir Ranald--Alison too, if possible, if it was not
too late; but he was rather unprepared for the state of affairs that
awaited him there.
Meeting the concierge or hall-porter at the door, he asked with some
anxiety if Sir Ranald Cheyne was still there.
'Oui, monsieur,' replied the porter, saluting in military fashion.
'And Miss Cheyne?'
'Non, monsieur.'
The reply sank deep in Goring's heart, and he was perplexed when the
official at the same time mysteriously shook his head and shrugged
his shoulders with a deprecatory expression in his face.
'Is Lord Cadbury here?'
'Milord is out also,' was the reply.
'Also--then they are together!' thought Goring. 'Take up my card to
Sir Ranald, and ask if he will receive me.'
It was taken up by a waiter, who returned promptly to report, in
Continental parlance, that 'Sir Cheyne desired him to walk up.'
Much depended upon the issue of this visit if Alison was still free.
He had come frankly, freely, to urge humbly his suit again, backed by
the undoubted wealth which had flowed upon him since last they met at
Chilcote.
He found Sir Ranald in a handsome apartment, seated in an easy-chair,
but looking pale, thin, and worn. He made no offer of his hand, as
with both he grasped the arms of the chair, tremulous with rage,
while his eyes glared like those of a rattlesnake through the glasses
of his _pince-nez_ at his unexpected visitor, who scarcely knew how
or where to begin, and looked nervously round him for some evidence
of the recent presence of Alison, but saw nothing.
'Permit me to congratulate you, Sir Ranald--' he began.
'On what?' asked the other, savagely.
'On the escape from death by drowning which we were all led to
suppose you and Miss Cheyne had suffered.'
'I don't want your congratulations; and, so far as Miss Cheyne is
concerned, your appearance in Antwerp sufficiently accounts for her
mysterious disappearance.'
Utter bewilderment, in which emotions of dismay, fear, and anger
coursed through his mind, tied the tongue of Bevil Goring--dismay and
fear he knew not of what, and anger lest this was some fresh trickery
of Lord Cadbury.
'Mysterious disappearance!' he faltered.
'Your conduct, Captain Goring, has been shamefully deceitful--most
dishonourable!' exclaimed Sir Ranald, in a broken but still enraged
tone.
'How?'
'You came to my house at Chilcote a welcome guest, then you stole the
affections of my daughter. You have followed her to Antwerp with
plans best known to yourself; and where--oh, where--is she now?'
'Sir Ranald!' expostulated Goring, piteously, and feeling his face
grow pale.
'Talk not to me!' resumed Sir Ranald, in his tone of fury again;
'every silly girl thinks she is in love, or that she must love the
first man who says he loves her.'
These strange utterances made Goring half forget the errand on which
he had come, and utterly forget the fortuitous but fortunate wealth
which would, he hoped, have made that errand perhaps successful.
'Vile trickster, you shall answer to me for all the mischief you have
wrought!' exclaimed Sir Ranald, breaking the silence that had ensued,
though, if glances could kill, Goring's earthly career had ended
there and then. 'We are in Belgium, and, old as I am, I shall cover
you with a pistol at twelve paces, even if I should be propped
against a post--by heaven I shall! Do you hear me, sir?'
'You are very wrong, Sir Ranald, to address me thus,' said Goring,
gravely and sadly; 'and, though you might level ten pistols at me,
God forbid that I should level one at you--the father of her I have
come so far to seek, and, if I understand your terrible words,
apparently in vain.'
'Don't speak of my daughter, sir, and don't attempt to humbug me!'
thundered Sir Ranald, almost beside himself with rage and weakness.
'Bah!' he added, scornfully, 'to follow her here was pleasanter and
safer work than fighting the Ashantees. Will you meet me at any time
or place--we may select to-morrow?'
'For what purpose?'
'Can you ask? To fight me.'
'Absurd--I shall not.'
'You will not?'
'No.'
'Coward!'
'You are mad, Sir Ranald, to address me, a tried soldier, thus
injuriously,' said Goring, more sadly than bitterly. 'I have worn my
Victoria Cross,' he added, striking his breast, 'by no solitary act
of rashness, but by acknowledged proofs of disciplined courage! and
my name has an echo still on the north-east frontier of India.'
'Coward!' hissed the old man's voice again, as he looked round for
some missile to throw at the head of his visitor, who, seeing it was
useless to protract an interview so painful and terrible, at once
withdrew, and the fierce, mocking laughter--and strange laughter it
was--of Sir Ranald jarred sorely on his ear as he did so.
His head was in a whirl--what was to be done? The old man's anger
and epithets he pardoned; but from his utterances he gathered that
Alison was abducted or absent, and that he was supposed to be the
author of the mystery that now filled him with terror and anxiety.
When was she missed? Had she been decoyed from the hotel, or
abducted in the street, and how long since?
On these points the concierge, on having a couple of five franc
pieces deftly slipped into his palm, soon enlightened him.
She had gone one night with Lord Cadbury to the Théâtre des Variétés,
and milord had come home without her in great terror and dismay, all
search had proved unavailing, even the ponds in the Park of the
Avenue Rubens had been dragged in vain till the ice came.
'How long is it since she disappeared?'
'A week ago, monsieur.'
A mortal terror smote the heart of Goring as he listened; but rage
greatly took its place when the concierge, with apparent sympathy,
referred to the dismay and anxiety of Milord Cadbury.
This Goring deemed but trickery to cover some act of deceit he had
perpetrated, end terribly did the as yet baffled lover resolve to
punish it; but he was rather surprised at first by the manner in
which he was suddenly accosted by Cadbury, who now by chance entered
the vestibule of the hotel in which several waiters were loitering,
and, with all an Englishman's genuine horror of a 'scene,' made an
effort to keep his temper.
As if following suit with Sir Ranald, the peer, who now connected
Alison's disappearance with Goring's liberty, though the dates did
not tally, said to him haughtily, and in in a low tone,
'So, Captain Goring, it seems to have pleased you to follow my
intended wife.'
'_Your_ intended wife!'
'Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, to this place--to Antwerp, and that you
have forced yourself upon her as soon as you had the opportunity of
finding her alone. By heavens, you must have watched her steps
closely.'
'Shuffler and juggler!' exclaimed Goring, in his rage becoming as
furious in his speech as Sir Ranald.
'May I ask your reason for daring to apply these epithets to me?'
asked Cadbury, reddening with passion to the tips of his coarse,
hairy ears.
'I shall give them to you on the ramparts of the citadel, in the
Champ de Manœuvres, or anywhere else you choose.'
'Are you engaged in a melodrama, without a musical accompaniment?'
asked Cadbury, with a sneer.
'You will find it terribly real, I promise you.'
'Braggadocio!--behind the age. Bah! people don't fight duels now.'
'Cads and Cadburys, perhaps.'
'Permit me to pass,' said the peer, assuming what he thought an air
of dignity that only made his vulgar little figure look more absurd.
'Not until I am fully answered,' replied Goring, resolutely barring
his way.
'Of your past intentions, Captain Goring, we----'
'Who are _we_?'
'Sir Ranald and myself.'
'Well?'
'Of your past intentions we have an idea; but what are your present?'
'To discover her, and carry her off,' replied Goring, passionately.
'You know but too well where she is; but I don't understand why you
come brawling in my hotel. Concierge, get a gendarme, and have this
fellow expelled.'
'Will you meet me?' asked Goring, in a low and concentrated voice.
'Most certainly not. No man of honour is obliged to go out with a
man who has been in the hands of the gendarmerie and inside a prison.'
This recalled the story of the 'papers,' and roused Goring's blood to
boiling heat.
He suddenly, to the mingled amusement and dismay of the concierge and
group of wondering waiters, made a brisk manual application to the
nose of my Lord Cadbury, which he took between the first and second
fingers of his right hand, and therewith administered such a wrench
as made the 'hereditary legislator' dance with rage and pain.
'Now,' thought Goring, as he flung a card at Cadbury's feet, and
strode into the broad and sunlit Place Verte, 'he must come out, or
the devil is in it!'
Little did either know how completely they were all at _cross
purposes_!