BLINDED
Tom Ryfe, walking down Berners Street in the worst of humours, saw the
whole game he had been playing slipping out of his hands. If there
were to be no duel, all the trouble he had taken went for nothing;
and even should there be an unseemly _fracas_, and should a meeting
afterwards take place between Lord Bearwarden and Dick Stanmore, what
good would it do him, if her ladyship's name were kept out of the
quarrel? How he cursed this cockney painter's resolution and good
sense! How he longed for some fierce encounter, some desperate
measure, something, no matter what, that should bring affairs to a
crisis! It seemed so silly, so childlike, to be baffled now. Yes, he
had set his heart on Lady Bearwarden. The great master-passion of
his life had gone on gathering and growing till it became, as such
master-passions will, when there is neither honour nor religion to
check them, a fury, over which he had lost all control. And he felt
that, having gone so far, there was no crime, no outrage, he would
shrink from committing, to obtain what he desired now.
When a man is thus ripe for evil he seldom wants opportunity. It must
be admitted the devil never throws a chance away. Open your hand, and
ere you can close it again, he slips a tool in, expressly adapted for
the purpose you design--a tool that, before you have done with it, you
may be sure, will cut your own fingers to the bone.
"Beg pardon, sir, can I speak to you for a minute?" said a
gaudily-dressed, vulgar-looking personage, crossing the street to
accost Tom Ryfe as he emerged from the painter's house. "It's about
a lady. About her ladyship, askin' your pardon. Lady Bearwarden, you
know."
That name was a talisman to arrest Tom's attention. He looked his man
over from head to foot, and thought he had never seen a more ruffianly
bearing, a wilder, sadder face.
"Come up this by-street," said he. "Speak out--I'll keep your counsel,
and I'll pay you well. That's what you mean, I suppose. That's
business. What about Lady Bearwarden?"
The man cursed her deeply, bitterly, ere he replied--"I know _you_,
sir, an' so I ought to, though you don't know _me_. Mr. Ryfe, I seen
you in Belgrave Square, along of _her_. You was a-courtin' of her
then. You owes her more than one good turn now, or I'm mistaken!"
"Who the devil are you?" asked Tom, startled, and with reason; yet
conscious, in his dark, dreary despair, of a vague glimmer, bearing
the same relation to hope that a will-o'-the-wisp does to the light on
our hearth at home.
The man looked about him. That narrow street was deserted but for
themselves.
He stared in Tom's face with a certain desperate frankness. "I'll tell
ye who I am," said he; "if you an' me is to go in for this job, as
true pals, let's have no secrets between us, an' bear no malice. They
call me 'Gentleman Jim,' Mr. Ryfe, that's what they call me. I'm the
man as hocussed you that there arternoon, down Westminster way. I was
set on to that job, I was. Set on by _her_. I squeezed hard, I know.
All in the way o' business. But I might have squeezed _harder_, Mr.
Ryfe. You should think o' that!"
"You infernal scoundrel!" exclaimed Tom, yet in a tone neither so
astonished nor so indignant as his informant expected. "If you had,
you'd have been hanged for murder. Well, it's not _you_ I ought to
blame. What have you got to say? You can help me--I see it in your
face. Out with it. You speak to a man as desperate as yourself."
"I knowed it!" exclaimed the other. "When you come out o' that there
house, I seen it in the way as you slammed to that there door. Says I,
there's the man as I wants, an' the man as wants me! I follered you
this mornin' from your hotel, an' a precious job I had keepin' up with
your hansom, though the driver, as works by times with a pal o' mine,
he kep' on easy when he could. I watched of the house, ah! an hour an'
more, an' I never turned my head away but to get a drop o' beer from a
lad as I sent round to the Grapes for a quart. Bless ye! I hadn't but
just emptied the pot, when I see a lady--the very moral of her as we
knows on--pops round the corner into Oxford Street. I was in two minds
whether to foller, but thinks I, it's Mr. Ryfe as I'm a-lookin' for,
an' if it _was_ she, we couldn't trap her now, not in a crowded place
like that. Besides, I see a servant-gal takin' home the beer drop her
a curtsey as she went by. No, it couldn't be my lady; but if so be as
you an' me is of the same mind, Mr. Ryfe, my lady shall be safe in a
cage afore this time to-morrow, and never a man to keep the key but
yourself, Mr. Ryfe, if you'll only be guided by a true friend."
"Who set you on to this?" asked Tom, coolly enough, considering that
his blood was boiling with all the worst and fiercest passions of his
nature. "What do you expect to gain from injury inflicted on" (he
could not get the name out)--"on the lady you mention?"
Jim laughed--a harsh, grating laugh. "You're a deep 'un, Mr. Ryfe!" he
answered. "I won't deceive you. I put this here in your way because
there's two things as I must have to work the job as I ain't got.
One's money, and t'other's gumption. I ain't rich enough, and I ain't
hartful enough. I owe my lady a turn, too, never you mind what for,
and strike me dead but I'll pay it up! I ain't a-going to say as I
wouldn't ha' worked this here off, clear, single-handed, if I'd had
the chance. I'm not telling you a lie, Mr. Ryfe; you and me can do it
together, an' I'll only charge you fair and reasonable. Ah! not half
what you'd take an' offer this minute if I was to stand out for a
price."
Tom Ryfe turned round, put both hands on the other's shoulders, and
laughed too.
"We understand each other," said he. "Never mind the price. If the
work's done to please me, I'm not likely to grudge the money. You've
some plan in your head by which you think we can both gain what we
most desire. I know you're a resolute fellow. Hang it! my throat's
still sore where you got that cursed grip of yours inside my collar.
You can believe I'm not easily thwarted, or I should hardly be here
now. Explain yourself. Let me know your plan. If it is anything like
practicable, you and I ought to be able to carry it out."
Then Jim, not without circumlocution and many hideous oaths, detailed
in his hearer's willing ears the scheme he had in view. He proposed,
with Mr. Ryfe's assistance, to accomplish no less flagrant an outrage
than the forcible abduction of Lady Bearwarden from her home.
He suggested that his listener, of whose skill in penmanship he
entertained a high opinion, should write such a letter as might lure
her ladyship into a lonely, ill-lighted locality, not far from her own
door; and Tom, appreciating the anxiety she must now feel about her
husband's movements, saw no difficulty in the accomplishment of such
a stratagem. This desperate couple were then to be ready with a
four-wheeled cab, a shawl, and a cleverly-constructed gag, in which
screaming was impossible. Tom should enact the part of driver, while
Jim, being the stronger man of the two, should seize and pinion her
ladyship in his grasp. Mute and muffled, she was to be forced into
the cab, which could then be driven off to that very lodging in the
purlieus of Westminster which Tom knew, by his own experiences, was
far removed from assistance or inquiry. Once in Mr. Ryfe's hands,
Jim observed, the captive would only be too glad to make terms, and
arrangements for taking her out of London down the river, or in any
other direction, could be entered into at leisure. Mr. Ryfe surely
would not require more than twelve hours to come to an understanding
with a lady irrevocably in his power. And all the while, deep in this
bold villain's breast lurked a dark, fierce, terrible reflection
that one more crime, only one more--almost, indeed, an act of wild
retributive justice on his confederate--and that proud, tameless woman
would be crouching in the dust, praying for mercy at the feet of the
desperate man she had reviled and despised.
Gentleman Jim, maddened by a course of dram-drinking, blinded by
an infatuation that itself constituted insanity, was hardly to be
considered an accountable being. It may be that under the mass of
guilt and impurity with which his whole being was loaded, there
glimmered some faint spark of manlier and worthier feeling; it may
be, that he entertained some vague notion of appearing before the
high-born lady in the light of a preserver, with the blood of the
smoother and more polished scoundrel on his hands, and of setting her
free, while he declared his hopeless, his unalterable devotion, sealed
by the sacrifice of two lives, for, as he often expressed it in
imaginary conversations with his idol, "he asked no better than to
swing for her sake!"
Who knows? Fanaticism has its martyrs, like religion. It is not only
the savage heathen who run under Juggernaut every day. Diseased
brains, corrupt hearts, and impossible desires go far to constitute
aberration of intellect. Unreasoning love, and unlimited liquor, will
make a man fool enough for anything.
Tom Ryfe listened, well pleased. For him there was neither the excuse
of drink nor despair, yet he, too, entertained some notion of home and
happiness hereafter, when she found nobody in the world to turn to but
himself, and had forgiven him her wrongs because of the tenacity with
which he clung to her in spite of all.
Of his friend, and the position he must leave him in, he made no
account.
Something very disagreeable came across him, indeed, when he thought
of Lord Bearwarden's resolute character--his practical notions
concerning the redress of injury or insult; but all such apprehensions
were for the future. The present must be a time of action. If only
to-night's _coup de main_ should come off successfully, he might cross
the Atlantic with his prey, and remain in safe seclusion till the
outrage had been so far forgotten by the public that those at home
whom it most affected would be unwilling to rekindle the embers of a
scandal half-smothered and dying out. Tom Ryfe was not without ready
money. He calculated he could live for at least a year in some foreign
clime, far beyond the western wave, luxuriously enough. A year!
With _her_! Why it seemed an eternity; and even in that moment his
companion was wondering, half-stupidly, how Mr. Ryfe would look with
his throat cut, or his head laid open, weltering in blood; and when
and where it would be advisable to put this finishing stroke of murder
and perfidy to the crimes he meditated to-night.
Ere these confederates parted, however, two letters had to be written
in a stationer's shop. They were directed by the same pen, though
apparently in different handwritings, to Lord and Lady Bearwarden at
their respective addresses.
The first was as follows--
DEAR LORD BEARWARDEN,
"They won't fight! All sorts of difficulties have
been made, and even if we can obtain a meeting at last, it
must be after considerable delay. In the meantime I have
business of my own which forces me to leave town for
four-and-twenty hours at least. If possible, I will look
you up before I start. If not, send a line to the office.
I shall find it on my return: these matters complicate
themselves as they go on, but I still venture to hope you
may leave the conduct of the present affair with perfect
safety in my hands, and I remain, with much sympathy,"
Your lordship's obedient servant,
THOMAS RYFE.
The second, though a very short production, took longer time, both in
composition and penmanship. It was written purposely on a scrap of
paper from which the stationer's name and the water-mark had been
carefully torn off. It consisted but of these lines--
"A cruel mystery has deprived you of your husband.
You have courage. Walk out to-night at eight, fifty yards
from your own door. Turn to the right--I will meet you
and explain all."
"My reputation is at stake. I trust you as one woman
trusts another. Seek to learn no more."
"That will bring her," thought Tom, "for she fears nothing!" and he
sealed the letter with a dab of black wax flattened by the impression
of the woman's thimble, who kept the shop.
There was a Court Guide on the counter. Tom Ryfe knew Lady
Bearwarden's address as well as his own, yet from a methodical and
lawyer-like habit of accuracy, seeing that it lay open at the letter
B, he glanced his eye, and ran his finger down the page to stop at the
very bottom, and thus verify, as it were, his own recollection of his
lordship's number, ere he paid for the paper and walked away to post
his letters in company with Jim, who waited outside.
The stationer, fitting shelves in his back shop, was a man of
observation and some eccentricity.
"Poll," said he to his wife, "it's an uncertain business, is the
book-trade. A Court Guide hasn't been asked for over that counter, no,
not for six months, and here's two parties come in and look at it in
a morning. There's nothing goes off, to depend on, but hymns. Both
of 'em wanted the same address, I do believe, for I took notice each
stopped in the same column at the very foot. Nothing escapes me, lass!
However, that isn't no business of yours nor mine."
The wife, a woman of few words and abrupt demeanour, made a pounce at
the Court Guide to put it back in its place, but her "master," as she
somewhat inconsequently called him, interposed.
"Let it be, lass!" said he. "There's luck in odd numbers, they say.
Who knows but we mayn't have a third party come in on the same errand?
Let it be, and go make the toast. It's getting on for tea-time, and
the fire in the back parlour's nearly out."
When these letters were posted, the confederates, feeling themselves
fairly embarked on their joint scheme, separated to advance each his
own share of the contemplated enormity. Tom Ryfe jumped into a cab,
and was off on a multiplicity of errands, while Jim, pondering deeply
with his head down, and his hands thrust into his coat-pockets, slunk
towards Holborn, revolving in his mind the least he could offer some
dissipated cabman, whose licence was in danger at any rate, for the
hire of horse and vehicle during the ensuing night.
Feeling his sleeve plucked feebly from behind, he broke off these
meditations, to turn round with a savage oath.
What a dreary face was that which met his arm! Pale and gaunt, with
the hollow eyes that denote bodily suffering, and the deep cruel lines
that speak of mental care. What a thin wasted hand was laid on his
burly arm, in its velveteen sleeve; and what a weak faint voice in
trembling accents, urged its sad, wistful prayer.
"Speak to me, Jim--won't you speak to me, dear? I've looked for you
day and night, and followed you mile after mile till I'm ready to lie
down and die here on the cold stones."
"Bother!" replied Jim, shaking himself free. "I'm busy, I tell ye.
What call had you, I should like to know, to be tracking, and hunting
of me about, as if I was a--well--a fancy dog we'll say, as had
strayed out of a parlour? Go home, I tell ye, or it'll be the worse
for ye!"
"You don't love me no more, Jim!" said the woman. There was a calm
sadness in her voice speaking of that resignation which is but the
apathy of despair.
"Well--I don't. There!" replied Jim, acceding to this proposition with
great promptitude.
"But you can't keep me off of loving _you_, Jim," she replied, with a
wild stare; "nobody can't keep me off of that. Won't ye think better
of it, old man? Give us one chance more, that's a good chap. It's for
dear life I'm askin'!"
She had wound both hands round his arm, and was hanging to it with all
her weight. How light a burden it seemed, to which those limp rags
clung so shabbily, compared with the substantial frame he remembered
in former days, when Dorothea was honest, hard-working, and happy.
"It ain't o' no use tryin' on of these here games," said he,
unclasping the poor weak hands with brutal force. "Come! I can't stop
all day. Shut up, I tell ye! you'll wish you had by and by."
"O! Jim," she pleaded. "Is it come to this? Never say it, dear. If you
and me is to part in anger now we'll not meet again. Leastways, not
on this earth. And if it's true, as I was taught at Sunday-school,
heaven's too good a place for us!"
"Go to h----ll!" exclaimed the ruffian furiously; and he flung her from
him with a force that would have brought her to the ground had she not
caught at the street railings for support.
She moaned and sat down on a doorstep a few paces off, without looking
up.
For a moment Jim's heart smote him, and he thought to turn back, but
in his maddened brain there rose a vision of the pale, haughty face,
the queenly bearing, the commanding gestures that bade him kneel to
worship, and with another oath--remorseless, pitiless, untouched, and
unrepentant--he passed on to his iniquity.
Dorothea sat with head bent down, and hands clasped about her knees,
unconscious, as it seemed, of all the world outside. The heart knoweth
its own bitterness, and who shall say what expiation she may not
have made for sin in that dull trance of pain which took no note of
circumstance, kept no count of time?
Ere long, a policeman, good-humoured but imperative, touched her on
the shoulder, and bade her "move on."
The face that looked up to him puzzled this functionary extremely. The
woman was sober enough, he could see, and yet there seemed something
queer about her, uncommon queer: he was blessed if he knew what to
make of her, and he had been a goodish time in the force, too!
She thanked him very quietly. She had been taking a rest, she said,
thinking no harm, for she was tired, and now she would go home. Yes,
she was dead-tired, she had better go home!
Wrapping her faded shawl about her, she glided on, instinctively
avoiding the jostling of foot-passengers and the trampling of
horses, proceeding at an even, leisurely pace, with something of the
sleep-walker's wandering step and gestures. The roll of wheels came
dull and muffled on her ear: those were phantoms surely, those
meaningless faces that met her in the street, not living men and
women, and yet she had a distinct perception of an apple-woman's
stall, of some sham jewelry she saw in a shop-window. She was near
turning back then, but it didn't seem worth while, and it was less
trouble to plod stupidly on, always westward, always towards the
setting sun!
Without knowing how she got there, presently she felt tufts of grass
beneath her feet dank with dew, growing greener and coarser under
large towering elms. O! she knew an elm-tree well enough! She was
country bred, she was, and could milk a cow long ago.
It wasn't Kensington Gardens, was it? She didn't remember whether
she'd ever been here before or not. She'd heard of the place, of
course, indeed Jim had promised to take her there some Sunday. Then
she shivered from head to foot, and wrapped her shawl tight round her
as she walked on.
What was that shining far-off between the trees, cool, and quiet, and
bright, like heaven? Could it be the water? That was what had brought
her, to be sure. She remembered all about it now and hurried forward
with quick, irregular steps, causing her breath to come thick, and her
heart to beat with sudden choking throbs.
She pulled at her collar, and undid its fastenings. She took her
bonnet off and swung it in her hand. The soiled tawdry ribbon had been
given her by Jim, long ago. Was it long ago? She couldn't tell, and
what did it matter? She wouldn't have looked twice at it a while back.
She might kiss and cuddle it now, if she'd a mind.
What a long way off that water seemed! Not there yet, and she had been
walking--walking like the wayfarer she remembered to have read of in
the _Pilgrim's Progress_. All in a moment, with a flash, as it were,
of its own light, there it lay glistening at her feet. Another step
and she would have been in head-foremost! There was time enough. How
cool and quiet it looked! She sat down on the brink and wondered why
she was born!
Would Jim feel it very much? Ah! they'd none of them care for him like
she used. He'd find that out at last. How could he? How _could_ he?
She'd given him fair warning!
She'd do it now. This moment, while she'd a mind to it. Afraid! Why
should she be afraid? Better than the gin-palace! Better than the
workhouse! Better than the cold cruel streets! She couldn't be worse
off anywhere than here! Once! Twice!
Her head swam. She was rising to her feet, when a light touch rested
on her shoulder, and the sweetest voice that had ever sounded in poor
Dorothea's ears, whispered softly, "You are ill, my good woman. Don't
sit here on the damp grass. Come home with me."
What did it mean? Was it over? Could this be one of the angels, and
had she got to heaven after all? No; there were the trees, the grass,
the distant roar of the city, and the peaceful water--fair, smooth,
serene, like the face of a friend.
She burst into a fit of hysterical weeping, cowering under that kindly
touch as if it had been a mountain to crush her, rocking herself to
and fro, sobbing out wildly, "I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!"