TELLS OF MY INTRODUCTION TO THE TALL MAN
We were admitted to the pavilion by Clara, and I was surprised by the
completeness and security of the defences. A barricade of great
strength, and yet easy to displace, supported the door against Any
violence from without; and the shutters of the dining-room, into which
I was led directly, and which was feebly illuminated by a lamp, were
even more elaborately fortified. The panels were strengthened by bars
and cross-bars; and these, in their turn, were kept in position by a
system of braces and struts, some abutting on the floor, some on the
roof, and others, in fine, against the opposite wall of the apartment.
It was at once a solid and well-designed piece of carpentry; and I did
not seek to conceal my admiration.
“I am the engineer,” said Northmour. “You remember the planks in the
garden? Behold them?”
“I did not know you had so many talents,” said I.
“Are you armed?” he continued, pointing to an array of guns and
pistols, all in admirable order, which stood in line against the wall
or were displayed upon the sideboard.
“Thank you,” I returned; “I have gone armed since our last encounter.
But, to tell you the truth, I have had nothing to eat since early
yesterday evening.”
Northmour produced some cold meat, to which I eagerly set myself, and a
bottle of good Burgundy, by which, wet as I was, I did not scruple to
profit. I have always been an extreme temperance man on principle; but
it is useless to push principle to excess, and on this occasion I
believe that I finished three-quarters of the bottle. As I ate, I still
continued to admire the preparations for defence.
“We could stand a siege,” I said at length.
“Ye-es,” drawled Northmour; “a very little one, per-haps. It is not so
much the strength of the pavilion I misdoubt; it is the doubled anger
that kills me. If we get to shooting, wild as the country is some one
is sure to hear it, and then—why then it’s the same thing, only
different, as they say: caged by law, or killed by _carbonari_. There’s
the choice. It is a devilish bad thing to have the law against you in
this world, and so I tell the old gentleman upstairs. He is quite of my
way of thinking.”
“Speaking of that,” said I, “what kind of person is he?”
“Oh, he!” cried the other; “he’s a rancid fellow, as far as he goes. I
should like to have his neck wrung to-morrow by all the devils in
Italy. I am not in this affair for him. You take me? I made a bargain
for Missy’s hand, and I mean to have it too.”
“That by the way,” said I. “I understand. But how will Mr. Huddlestone
take my intrusion?”
“Leave that to Clara,” returned Northmour.
I could have struck him in the face for this coarse familiarity; but I
respected the truce, as, I am bound to say, did Northmour, and so long
as the danger continued not a cloud arose in our relation. I bear him
this testimony with the most unfeigned satisfaction; nor am I without
pride when I look back upon my own behaviour. For surely no two men
were ever left in a position so invidious and irritating.
As soon as I had done eating, we proceeded to inspect the lower floor.
Window by window we tried the different supports, now and then making
an inconsiderable change; and the strokes of the hammer sounded with
startling loudness through the house. I proposed, I remember, to make
loop-holes; but he told me they were already made in the windows of the
upper story. It was an anxious business this inspection, and left me
down-hearted. There were two doors and five windows to protect, and,
counting Clara, only four of us to defend them against an unknown
number of foes. I communicated my doubts to Northmour, who assured me,
with unmoved composure, that he entirely shared them.
“Before morning,” said he, “we shall all be butchered and buried in
Graden Floe. For me, that is written.”
I could not help shuddering at the mention of the quicksand, but
reminded Northmour that our enemies had spared me in the wood.
“Do not flatter yourself,” said he. “Then you were not in the same boat
with the old gentleman; now you are. It’s the floe for all of us, mark
my words.”
I trembled for Clara; and just then her dear voice was heard calling us
to come upstairs. Northmour showed me the way, and, when he had reached
the landing, knocked at the door of what used to be called _My Uncle’s
Bedroom_, as the founder of the pavilion had designed it especially for
himself.
“Come in, Northmour; come in, dear Mr. Cassilis,” said a voice from
within.
Pushing open the door, Northmour admitted me before him into the
apartment. As I came in I could see the daughter slipping out by the
side door into the study, which had been prepared as her bedroom. In
the bed, which was drawn back against the wall, instead of standing, as
I had last seen it, boldly across the window, sat Bernard Huddlestone,
the defaulting banker. Little as I had seen of him by the shifting
light of the lantern on the links, I had no difficulty in recognising
him for the same. He had a long and sallow countenance, surrounded by a
long red beard and side whiskers. His broken nose and high cheekbones
gave him somewhat the air of a Kalmuck, and his light eyes shone with
the excitement of a high fever. He wore a skull-cap of black silk; a
huge Bible lay open before him on the bed, with a pair of gold
spectacles in the place, and a pile of other books lay on the stand by
his side. The green curtains lent a cadaverous shade to his cheek; and,
as he sat propped on pillows, his great stature was painfully hunched,
and his head protruded till it overhung his knees. I believe if he had
not died otherwise, he must have fallen a victim to consumption in the
course of but a very few weeks.
He held out to me a hand, long, thin, and disagreeably hairy.
“Come in, come in, Mr. Cassilis,” said he. “Another
protector—ahem!—another protector. Always welcome as a friend of my
daughter’s, Mr. Cassilis. How they have rallied about me, my daughter’s
friends! May God in heaven bless and reward them for it!”
I gave him my hand, of course, because I could not help it; but the
sympathy I had been prepared to feel for Clara’s father was immediately
soured by his appearance, and the wheedling, unreal tones in which he
spoke.
“Cassilis is a good man,” said Northmour; “worth ten.”
“So I hear,” cried Mr. Huddlestone eagerly “so my girl tells me. Ah,
Mr. Cassilis, my sin has found me out, you see! I am very low, very
low; but I hope equally penitent. We must all come to the throne of
grace at last, Mr. Cassilis. For my part, I come late indeed; but with
unfeigned humility, I trust.”
“Fiddle-de-dee!” said Northmour roughly.
“No, no, dear Northmour!” cried the banker. “You must not say that; you
must not try to shake me. You forget, my dear, good boy, you forget I
may be called this very night before my Maker.”
His excitement was pitiful to behold; and I felt myself grow indignant
with Northmour, whose infidel opinions I well knew, and heartily
derided, as he continued to taunt the poor sinner out of his humour of
repentance.
“Pooh, my dear Huddlestone!” said he. “You do yourself injustice. You
are a man of the world inside and out, and were up to all kinds of
mischief before I was born. Your conscience is tanned like South
American leather—only you forgot to tan your liver, and that, if you
will believe me, is the seat of the annoyance.”
“Rogue, rogue! bad boy!” said Mr. Huddlestone, shaking his finger. “I
am no precisian, if you come to that; I always hated a precisian; but I
never lost hold of something better through it all. I have been a bad
boy, Mr. Cassilis; I do not seek to deny that; but it was after my
wife’s death, and you know, with a widower, it’s a different thing:
sinful—I won’t say no; but there is a gradation, we shall hope. And
talking of that—Hark!” he broke out suddenly, his hand raised, his
fingers spread, his face racked with interest and terror. “Only the
rain, bless God!” he added, after a pause, and with indescribable
relief.
For some seconds he lay back among the pillows like a man near to
fainting; then he gathered himself together, and, in somewhat tremulous
tones, began once more to thank me for the share I was prepared to take
in his defence.
“One question, sir,” said I, when he had paused. “Is it true that you
have money with you?”
He seemed annoyed by the question, but admitted with reluctance that he
had a little.
“Well,” I continued, “it is their money they are after, is it not? Why
not give it up to them?”
“Ah!” replied he, shaking his head, “I have tried that already, Mr.
Cassilis; and alas that it should be so! but it is blood they want.”
“Huddlestone, that’s a little less than fair,” said Northmour. “You
should mention that what you offered them was upwards of two hundred
thousand short. The deficit is worth a reference; it is for what they
call a cool sum, Frank. Then, you see, the fellows reason in their
clear Italian way; and it seems to them, as indeed it seems to me, that
they may just as well have both while they’re about it—money and blood
together, by George, and no more trouble for the extra pleasure.”
“Is it in the pavilion?” I asked.
“It is; and I wish it were in the bottom of the sea instead,” said
Northmour; and then suddenly—“What are you making faces at me for?” he
cried to Mr. Huddlestone, on whom I had unconsciously turned my back.
“Do you think Cassilis would sell you?”
Mr. Huddlestone protested that nothing had been further from his mind.
“It is a good thing,” retorted Northmour in his ugliest manner. “You
might end by wearying us. What were you going to say?” he added,
turning to me.
“I was going to propose an occupation for the afternoon,” said I. “Let
us carry that money out, piece by piece, and lay it down before the
pavilion door. If the _carbonari_ come, why, it’s theirs at any rate.”
“No, no,” cried Mr. Huddlestone; “it does not, it cannot belong to
them! It should be distributed _pro rata_ among all my creditors.”
“Come now, Huddlestone,” said Northmour, “none of that.”
“Well, but my daughter,” moaned the wretched man.
“Your daughter will do well enough. Here are two suitors, Cassilis and
I, neither of us beggars, between whom she has to choose. And as for
yourself, to make an end of arguments, you have no right to a farthing,
and, unless I’m much mistaken, you are going to die.”
It was certainly very cruelly said; but Mr. Huddlestone was a man who
attracted little sympathy; and, although I saw him wince and shudder, I
mentally endorsed the rebuke; nay, I added a contribution of my own.
“Northmour and I,” I said, “are willing enough to help you to save your
life, but not to escape with stolen property.”
He struggled for a while with himself, as though he were on the point
of giving way to anger, but prudence had the best of the controversy.
“My dear boys,” he said, “do with me or my money what you will. I leave
all in your hands. Let me compose myself.”
And so we left him, gladly enough I am sure. The last that I saw, he
had once more taken up his great Bible, and with tremulous hands was
adjusting his spectacles to read.