BY THE SCOTCH EXPRESS.
Among other passengers, on a certain fine spring morning, by the 10
a.m. Scotch express, was one who had been so far able to propitiate
the guard as to secure a whole compartment to himself. He was enjoying
himself in a quiet way--smoking, and skimming his papers, and taking a
bird's-eye view now and again at the landscape that was flying past
him at the rate of forty miles an hour. Few people who cared to
speculate as to his profession would have hesitated to set him down as
a military man, even had not the words, "Captain Ducie," painted in
white letters on a black portmanteau which protruded half-way from
under his seat, rendered any such speculation needless. He must have
been three or four-and-forty years old, judging from the lines about
his mouth and eyes, but in some other respects he looked considerably
younger. He wore neither beard nor whiskers, but his short hair, and
his thick, drooping moustache were both jet black, and betrayed as
yet, thanks either to Nature or Art, none of those straggling streaks
of silver which tell so plainly of the advance of years. He had a
clear olive complexion, a large aquiline nose, and deep-set eyes,
piercing, and full of fire, under a grand sweep of eyebrow. In person
he was tall and thin; broad-chested, but lean in the flank, with hands
and feet that looked, almost effeminate, so small were they in
comparison with his size. A black frock-coat, tightly buttoned, set
off to advantage a figure of which he might still be reasonably proud.
The remainder of his costume was in quiet keeping with the first
fashion of the period.
Captain Ducie smoked and read and stared out of the window much as
eleven out of twelve of us would do under similar circumstances, while
milepost after milepost flashed out for an instant and was gone. After
a time he took a letter out of his breast pocket, opened it, and read
it. It was brief, and ran as under:--
"Stapleton, Scotland,
"March 31st.
"My Dear Ned,--Since you wish it, come down here for a few weeks;
whether to recruit your health or your finances matters not. Mountain
air and plain living are good for both, However, I warn you beforehand
that you will find us very dull. Lady B.'s health is hardly what it
ought to be, and we are seeing no company just now. If you like to
take us as we are, I say again--come.
"As for the last paragraph of your letter, I scarcely know in what
terms to answer it. You have already bled me so often the same way,
that I have grown heartily sick of the process. This must be the last
time of asking, my boy; I wish you clearly to understand that. This
place has cost me a great deal of money of late, and I cannot spring
you more than a hundred. For that amount I enclose you a cheque.
_Finis coronat opus_. Bear those words in mind, and believe me when I
say that you have had your last cheque.
"From your affectionate cousin,
"Barnstake."
"Consummate little prig!" murmured Captain Ducie to himself as he
refolded the letter, and put it away. "I can fancy the smirk on his
face as he penned that precious effusion, and how, when he had
finished it, he would trot off to his clothes-prop of a wife and ask
her whether she did not think it at once amusing and severe. That
letter shall cost your lordship fifty guineas. I don't allow people to
write to me in that style with impunity."
He lighted another cigar frowningly. "I wonder if I was ever so really
hard up as I am now," he continued to himself. "I don't think I ever
was quite. I have been in Queer Street many a time, but I've always
found a friend round the corner, or have pulled myself through by the
skin of the teeth somehow. But this time I see no lift in the cloud.
My insolvency has become chronic; it is attacking the very citadel
of life. I have not a single uncle or aunt to fall back upon. The
poor creatures are all dead and buried, and their money all spent.
Well!--Outlaw is an ugly word, but it is one that I shall have to
learn how to spell before long. I shall have to leave my country for
my country's good." He puffed away fiercely for a little while, and
then he resumed. "It would not be a bad thing for a fellow like me to
become a chief among the Red Skins--if they would have me. With them
my lack of pence would be no bar to success. I can swim, and shoot,
and ride: although I cannot paint a picture, I daresay that I could
paint myself; and I know several fellows whose scalps I should have
much pleasure in taking. As for the so-called amenities of civilized
life, what are they worth to one who, like me, has no longer the means
of enjoying them? After all, it is a question whether freedom and the
prairie would not be preferable to Pall-Mall and a limited income of,
say--twelve hundred a year--the sort of income that is just enough to
make one the slave of society, but is not sufficient to pay for
gilding its fetters. A station, by Jove! and with it the possibility
of getting a drop of cognac."
As soon as the train came to a stand, Captain Ducie vacated his seat
and went in search of the refreshment-room. On coming back five
minutes later, he was considerably disgusted to find that he was no
longer to have his compartment to himself. The seat opposite to that
on which he had been sitting was already occupied by a gentleman who
was wrapped up to the nose in rugs and furs.
"Any objection to smoking?" asked the captain presently as the train
began to move. He was pricking the end of a fresh cigar as he asked
the question. The words might be civil, but the tone was offensive; it
seemed to convey--"I don't care whether you object or not: I intend to
enjoy my weed all the same."
The stranger, however, seemed in nowise offended. He smirked and
quavered two yellow gloved fingers out of his furs. "Oh, no, certainly
not," he said. "I too am a smoker and shall join you presently." He
spoke with the slightest possible foreign accent, just sufficient to
tell an educated ear that he was not an Englishman. If Captain Ducie's
features were aquiline, those of the stranger might be termed
vulturine--long, lean, narrow, with a thin high-ridged nose, and a
chin that was pointed with a tuft of thick black hair. Except for this
tuft he was clean shaven. His black hair, cropped close at back and
sides, was trained into an elaborate curl on the top of the forehead
and there fixed with _cosmètique_. Both hair and chin-tuft were of
that uncompromising blue-black which tells unmistakably of the
dye-pot. His skin was yellow and parchment-like, and stretched tightly
over his forehead and high cheek bones, but puckering into a perfect
network of lines about a mouth whose predominant expression was one of
mingled cynicism and suspicion. There was suspicion, too, in his small
black eyes, as well as a sort of lurking fierceness which not even his
most urbane and elaborate smile could altogether eliminate. In person
he was very thin and somewhat under the middle height, and had all the
air of a confirmed valetudinarian. He was dressed as no English
gentleman would care to be seen dressed in public. A long brown velvet
coat trimmed with fur; lavender-coloured trowsers tightly strapped
over patent leather boots; two or three vests of different colours
under one made of the skin of some animal and fastened with gold
buttons; a profusion of jewellery; an embroidered shirt-front and deep
turn-down collar: such were the chief items of his attire. A hat with
a very curly brim hung from the carriage roof, while for present
head-gear be wore a sealskin travelling cap with huge lappets that
came below his ears. In this cap, and wrapped to the chin in his
bear-skin rug, he looked like some newly-discovered species of
animal--a sort of cross between a vulture and a monkey, were such a
thing possible, combining the deep-seated fierceness of the one with
the fantastic cunning, and the impossibility of doing the most serious
things without a grimace, of the other.
No sooner had Captain Ducie lighted his cigar than with an impatient
movement he put down the window close to which he was sitting. It had
been carefully put up by the stranger while Ducie was in the
refreshment room; but the latter was a man who always studied his own
comfort before that of any one else, except when self whispered to him
that such a course was opposed to his own interests, which was more
than he could see in the present case.
The stranger gave a little sniggering laugh as the window fell
noisily; then he shivered and drew his furs more closely around him.
"It is strange how fond you English people are of what you call fresh
air," he said. "In Italy fresh air may be a luxury, but it cannot be
had in your hang-dog climate without one takes a catarrh at the same
time."
Captain Ducie surveyed him coolly from head to foot for a moment or
two. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him. "I must really ask
you to pardon my rudeness," he said, lifting his Glengarry. "If the
open window is the least annoyance to you, by all means let it be
shut. To me it is a matter of perfect indifference." As he spoke he
pulled the window up, and then he turned on the stranger with a look
that seemed to imply: "Although I seemed so truculent a few minutes
ago, you see what a good-natured fellow I am at heart." In most of
Captain Ducie's actions there was some ulterior motive at work,
however trivial many of his actions might appear to an outsider, and
in the present case it was not likely that he acted out of mere
complaisance to a man whom he had never seen nor heard of ten minutes
previously.
"You are too good--really far too good," said the stranger. "Suppose
we compromise the matter?" With that his lean hands, encased in
lemon-coloured gloves, let down the window a couple of inches, and
fixed it there with the strap.
"Now really, you know, do just as you like about it," said the
captain, with that slow amused smile which became his face so well.
"As I said before, I am altogether indifferent in the matter."
"As it is now, it will suit both of us, I think. And now to join you
in your smoke."
From the net over his head he reached down a small mahogany case. This
he opened, and from it extracted a large meerschaum pipe elaborately
mounted with gold filigree work. Having charged the pipe from an
embroidered pouch filled with choice Turkish tobacco, he struck an
allumette and began to smoke.
"Decidedly an acquaintance worth cultivating," murmured the captain
under his breath.
"But what country does the beggar belong to?" A question more easily
asked than answered: at all events, it was one which the captain found
himself unable to solve to his own satisfaction. For a few minutes
they smoked in silence.
"Do you travel far, to-day?" asked the stranger at length. "Are you
going across the Border?"
"The end of my journey is Stapleton, Lord Barnstake's place, and not a
great way from Edinbro'. Shall I have the pleasure of your Company as
far as I go by rail?"
"Ah, no, sir, not so far as that. Only to ----. There I must leave
you, and take the train for Windermere. I live on the banks of your
beautiful lake. Permettez-moi, monsieur," and with a movement that was
a combination of a shrug, a grimace, and a bow, the stranger drew a
card-case from one of his pockets, and extracting a card therefrom,
handed it to Ducie.
The captain took it with a bow, and sticking his glass in his eye,
read:
M. Paul Platzoff.
_Bon Repos_,
_Windermere_.
The captain in return handed over his pasteboard credential, and this
solemn rite being accomplished conversation was resumed on more easy
and agreeable terms.
"I dare say you are puzzling your brains as to my nationality," said
Platzoff with a smile. "I am not an Englishman; that you can tell from
my accent. I am not a Frenchman, although I write 'monsieur' before my
name. Still less am I either a German or an Italian. Neither am I a
genuine Russian, although I look to Russia as my native country. In
brief, my father was a Russian, my mother was a Frenchwoman, and I was
born on board a merchantman during a gale of wind in the Baltic."
"Then I should call you a true cosmopolitan--a genuine citizen of the
world," remarked Ducie, who was amused with his new friend's
frankness.
"In ideas I strive to be such, but it is difficult at all times to
overcome the prejudices of education and early training," answered
Platzoff. "You, sir, are, I presume, in the army?"
"Formerly I was in the army, but I sold out nearly a dozen years ago,"
answered Ducie, drily. "Does this fellow expect me to imitate his
candour?" thought the captain. "Would he like to know all about my
grandfather and grandmother, and that I have a cousin who is an earl?
If so, I am afraid he will be disappointed.
"Did you see much service while you were in the army?" asked Platzoff.
"I saw a good deal of hard fighting in the East, although not on any
large scale." Ducie was beginning to get restive. He was not the sort
of man to quietly allow himself to be catechized by a stranger.
"I too know something of the East," said Platzoff. "Three of the
happiest years of my life were spent in India. While out there I
became acquainted with several gentlemen of your profession. With
Colonel Leslie I was particularly intimate. I had been stopping with
the poor fellow only a few days before that gallant affair at
Ruckapore, in which he came by his death."
"I remember the affair you speak of," said Ducie. "I was in one of the
other presidencies at the time it happened."
"There was another officer in poor Leslie's regiment with whom I was
also on very intimate terms. He died of cholera a little later on, and
I attended him in his last moments. I allude to a Captain Charles
Pollexfen. Did you ever meet with him in your travels?"
Captain Ducie's swarthy cheek deepened its hue. He paused to blow a
speck of cigar ash off his sleeve before he spoke. "I did not know
your Captain Charles Pollexfen," he said, in slow deliberate accents.
"Till the present moment I never heard of his existence."
Captain Ducie pulled his Glengarry over his brows, folded his arms,
and shut his eyes. He had evidently made up his mind for a quiet
snooze. Platzoff regarded him with a silent snigger. "Something I have
said has pricked the gallant captain under his armour," he muttered to
himself. "Is it possible that he and Pollexfen were acquainted with
each other in India? But what matters it to me if they were?"
When M. Platzoff had smoked his meerschaum to the last whiff, he put
it carefully away, and disposed himself to follow Ducie's example in
the matter of sleep. He rearranged his wraps, folded his arms, shut
his eyes, and pressed his head resolutely against the cushion; but at
the end of five minutes he opened his eyes, and seemed just as wakeful
as before. "These beef-fed Englishmen seem as if they can sleep
whenever and wherever they choose. Enviable faculty! daresay the
heifers on which they gorge possess it in almost as great perfection."
Hidden away among his furs was a small morocco-covered despatch-box.
This he now proceeded to unlock, and to draw from it a folded paper
which, on being opened, displayed a closely-written array of figures,
as though it were the working out of some formidable problem in
arithmetic. Platzoff smiled, and his smile was very different from his
cynical snigger, as his eyes ran over the long array of figures. "I
must try and get this finished as soon as I am back at Bon Repos," he
muttered to himself. "I am frightened when I think what would happen
if I were to die before its completion. My great secret would die with
me, and perhaps hundreds of years would pass away before it would be
brought to light. What a discovery it would be! To those concerned it
would seem as though they had found the key-note of some lost
religion--as though they had penetrated into some temple dedicated to
the gods of Eld."
His soliloquy was suddenly interrupted by three piercing shrieks from
the engine, followed by a terrible jolting and swaying of the
carriage, which made it almost impossible for those inside to keep
their seats. Captain Ducie was alive to the danger in a moment. One
glance out of the window was enough. "We are off the line! Hold fast!"
he shouted to Platzoff, drawing up his legs, and setting his teeth,
and looking very fierce and determined. M. Platzoff tried to follow
his English friend's example. His yellow complexion faded to a sickly
green. With eyes in which there was no room now for anything save
anguish and terror unspeakable, he yet snarled at the mouth and showed
his teeth like a wolf brought hopelessly to bay.
The swaying and jolting grew worse. There was a grinding and
crunching under the wheels of the carriage as though a thousand huge
coffee-mills were at work. Suddenly the train parted in the middle,
and while the forepart, with the engine, went ploughing through the
ballast till brought up in safety a few hundred yards further on, the
carriage in which were Ducie and Platzoff, together with the hinder
part of the train, went toppling over a high embankment, and crashing
down the side, and rolling over and over, came to a dead stand at the
bottom, one huge mass of wreck and disaster.
Captain Edmund Ducie was one of the first to emerge from the wreck. He
crept out of the broken window of the crushed-up carriage, and shook
himself as a dog might have done. "Once more a narrow squeak for
life," he said, half aloud. "If I had been worth ten thousand a year,
I should infallibly have been smashed. Not being worth ten brass
farthings, here I am. What has become of my little Russian, I wonder?"