The Man of the Crowd.
In a few days Dr Lefevre found a quiet afternoon, and went and told his
mother the story of the Spanish marquis which he had got from Dr Rippon.
She hailed the story with delight. Courtney was a fascinating figure to
her before: it needed but that to clothe him with a complete romantic
heroism; for, of course, she did not doubt that he was the son of the
Spanish grandee. She wished to put it to him at once whether he was not,
but she was dissuaded by her son from mentioning the matter yet to
either Julius or her daughter.
"If he wishes," said Lefevre, "to keep it secret for some reason, it
would be an impertinence to speak about it. We shall, however, have a
perfect right to ask him about himself if his attentions to Nora go on."
Soon afterwards (it was really a fortnight; but in a busy life day melts
into day with amazing rapidity), Lefevre was surprised at dinner, and
somewhat irritated, by a letter from his mother. She wrote that they had
seen nothing of Julius Courtney for three or four days,--which was
singular, since for the past three or four weeks he had been a daily
visitor; latterly he had begun to look fagged and ill, and it was
possible he was confined to his room,--though, after all, that was
scarcely likely, for he had not answered a note of inquiry which she had
sent. She begged her son to call at his chambers, the more so as Nora
was pining in Julius's absence to a degree which made her mother very
anxious.
With professional suspicion Lefevre told himself that if Julius, with
his magnificent health, was fallen ill, it must be for some outrageous
reason. But even if he was ill, he need not be unmannerly: he might have
let his friends who had been in the habit of seeing him daily know what
had come to him. Was it possible, the doctor thought, that he was
repenting of having given Nora and her mother so much cause to take his
assiduous attentions seriously? He resolved to see Julius at once, if he
were at his chambers.
He left his wine unfinished (to the delight of his grave and silent man
in black), hastily took his hat from its peg in the hall, and passed out
into the street, while his man held the door open. In two minutes he had
passed the northern gateway of the Albany, which, as most people know,
is just at the southern end of Savile Row. Courtney's door was speedily
opened in response to his peremptory summons.
"Is your master at home, Jenkins?" asked Lefevre of the well-dressed
serving-man, who looked distinguished enough to be master himself.
"No, doctor," answered Jenkins; "he is not."
"Gone out," said Lefevre, "to the club or to dinner, I suppose?"
"No, doctor," repeated Jenkins; "he is not. He went away four days ago."
"Went away!" exclaimed Lefevre.
"He do sometimes go away by himself, sir. He is so fond of the country,
and he likes to be by himself. It is the only thing that do him good."
"Becomes solitary, does he?" said Lefevre. "Yes; intelligent, impulsive
persons like him, that live at high pressure, often have black moods."
That was not quite what he meant, but it was enough for Jenkins.
"Yes, sir," said Jenkins; "he do sometimes have 'em black. He don't seem
to take no pride in himself, as he do usual--don't seem to care somehow
if he look a gentleman or a common man."
"But your master, Jenkins," said Lefevre, "can never look a common man."
"No, sir," said Jenkins; "he cannot, whatever he do."
"He is gone into the country, then?" asked Lefevre.
"Yes, sir; I packed his small port-mantew for him four days ago."
"And where is he gone? He told you, I suppose?"
"No, sir; he do not usual tell me when he is like that."
It did not seem possible to learn anything from Jenkins, in spite of the
apparent intimacy of his conversation, so Lefevre left him, and returned
to his own house. He had sat but a little while in his laboratory (where
he had been occupying his small intervals of leisure lately in
electrical studies and experiments) when, as chance would have it, the
last post brought him a note from Dr Rippon. Its purport was curious.
"_I think_," the letter ran, "_you were sufficiently interested in the
story I told you some week or two ago about one Hernando Courtney, not
to be bored by a note on the same subject. Last night I accompanied my
daughter and son-in-law to the Lyceum Theatre. On coming out we had to
walk down Wellington Street into the Strand to find our carriage, and in
the surging crowd about there I am almost sure I saw the Hernando
Courtney whom I believed to be dead_. Aut Courtney aut Diabolus. _I have
never heard satisfactory evidence of his death, and I should very much
like to know if he is really still alive and in London. It has occurred
to me that, considering the intimacy of yourself and your family with
the gentleman who was made known to me at your mother's house by the
name of Courtney, you may have heard by now the rights of the case. If
you have any news, I shall be glad to share it with you."_
Considering this in association with the absence of Julius, Lefevre
found his wits becoming involved in a puzzle. He could not settle to
work, so he put on overcoat and hat, and sallied out again. He had no
fixed purpose: he only felt the necessity of motion to resolve himself
back into his normal calm. The air was keen from the east. May, which
had opened with such wanton warmth and seductiveness, turned a cold
shoulder on the world as she took herself off. It was long since he had
indulged in an evening walk in the lamp-lit streets, so he stepped out
eastward against the shrewd wind. Insensibly his attention forsook the
busy and anxious present, and slipped back to the days of golden and
romantic youth, when the crowded nocturnal streets were full of the
mystery of life. He recalled the sensations of those days--the sharp
doubts of self, the frequent strong desires to drink deep of all that
life had to offer, and the painful recoils from temptation, which he
felt would ruin, if yielded to, his hope of himself, and his ambition of
filling a worthy place among men.
Thus musing, he walked on, taking, without noting it, the most
frequented turnings, and soon he found himself in the Strand. It was
that middle time of evening, after the theatres and restaurants have
sucked in their crowds, when the frequenters of the streets have some
reserve in their vivacity, before reckless roisterers have begun to
taste the lees of pleasure, and to shout and jostle on the pavements. He
was walking on the side of the way next the river, when, near the
Adelphi, he became aware of a man before him, wearing a slouch-hat and a
greatcoat--a man who appeared to choose the densest part of the throng,
to prefer to be rubbed against and hustled rather than not. There was
something about the man which held Lefevre's attention and roused his
curiosity--something in the swing of his gait and the set of his
shoulders. The man, too, seemed urged on by a singular haste, which
permitted him to be the slowest and easiest of passengers in the thick
of the crowd, but carried him swiftly over the less frequented parts of
the pavement. The doctor began to wonder if he was a pickpocket, and to
look about for the watchful eye of a policeman. He kept close behind him
past the door of the Strand Theatre, when the throng became slacker, and
the man turned quickly about and returned the way he had come. Then
Lefevre had a glimpse of his face,--the merest passing glimpse, but it
made him pause and ask himself where he had seen it before. A dark,
foreign-looking man, with a haggard appeal in his eye: he tried to find
the place of such a figure in his memory, but for the time he tried in
vain.
Before the doctor recovered himself the man was well past, and
disappearing in the throng. He hurried after, determined to overtake
him, and to make a full and satisfying perusal of his face and figure.
He found that difficult, however, because of the man's singular style of
progression. To maintain an even pace for himself, moreover, Lefevre had
to walk very much in the roadway, the dangers of which, from passing
cabs and omnibuses, forbade his fixing his attention on the man alone.
Yet he was more and more piqued to look him in the face; for the longer
he followed him the more he was struck with the oddity of his conduct.
He had already noted how he hurried over the empty spaces of pavement
and lingered sinuously in the thronged parts; he now remarked further
that those who came into immediate contact with him (and they were
mostly young people who were to be met with at that season of the night)
glanced sharply at him, as if they had experienced some suspicious
sensation, and seemed inclined to remonstrate, till they looked in his
face.
Lefevre could not arrive at a clear front view till, by Charing Cross
Station, the man turned on the kerb to look after a handsome youth who
crossed before him, and passed over the road. Then the doctor saw the
face in the light of a street-lamp, and the sight sent the blood in a
gush from his heart. It was a dark hairless face, terribly blanched and
emaciated, as if by years of darkness and prison, with the impress of
age and death, but yet with a wistful light in the eyes, and a firm
sensuousness about the mouth that betrayed a considerable interest in
life. He turned his eyes away an instant, to bring memory and
association to bear. When he looked again the man was moving away. At
once recognition rushed upon him like a wave of light. The terribly
worn, ghastly features resolved themselves into a kind of death-mask of
Julius! The wave recoiled and smote him again. Who could the man be,
therefore, who was so like Julius, and yet was not Julius?--who could he
be but Julius's father,--that Hernando Courtney whom Dr Rippon believed
he had seen the evening before?
Here was a coil to unravel! Julius's father--the Spanish marquis that
was--supposed to be dead, but yet wandering in singular fashion about
the London streets, clearly not desiring, much less courting,
opportunities of being recognised; Julius not caring to speak of his
father, apparently ignoring his continued existence, and yet apparently
knowing enough of his movements to avoid him when he came to London by
suddenly removing "into the country" without leaving his address. What
was the meaning of so much mystery? Crime? debt? political intrigue? or,
what?
The mysterious Hernando went on his way, by the southern sweep of
Trafalgar Square and Cockspur Street, to the Haymarket, and Lefevre
followed with attention and curiosity bent on him, but yet with so
little thought of playing spy that, if Hernando had gone any other way
or had returned along the Strand, he would probably have let him go. And
as they went on, the doctor could not but note, as before, how the
object of his curiosity lingered wherever there was a press of people,
whether on the pavement or on a refuge at a crossing, and hurried on
wherever the pavement was sparsely peopled or whenever the persons
encountered were at all advanced in years. Indeed, the farther he
followed the more was his attention compelled to remark that Hernando
sharply avoided contact with the weakly, the old, and the decrepit, and
wonder why the young people of either sex whom he brushed against should
turn as if the touch of him waked suspicion and a something hostile.
Thus they traversed the Haymarket, the Criterion pavement, and, flitting
across to the Quadrant, the more popular side of Regent Street, among
pushing groups, weary stragglers, and steady pedestrians. Lefevre had a
mind to turn aside and go home when he was opposite Vigo Street, but he
was drawn on by the hope of observing something that might give him a
clue to the Courtney mystery. When Oxford Circus was reached, however,
Hernando jumped into a cab and drove rapidly off, and Lefevre returned
to his own fireside.
He sat for some time over a cigar and a grog, walking in imagination
round and round the mystery, which steadfastly refused to dissolve or to
be set aside. His own honour, and perhaps the peace of his mother and
sister, were involved in it. He was resolved to ask Julius for an
explanation as soon as he could come to speech with him; but yet, in
spite of that assurance which he gave himself, he returned to the
mystery again and again, and beset and bewildered himself with
questions: Why was Julius estranged from his father? What was the secret
of the old man's life which had left such an awful impress on his face?
And why was he nightly haunting the busiest pavements of London, in the
crowd, but not of it, urged on as by some desire or agony?
He went to bed, but not to sleep. In the quiet and the darkness his
imagination ranged without constraint over the whole field of his
questionings. He went back upon Dr Rippon's story of the Spanish
marquis, and fixed on the mention of his occult studies. He saw him, in
fancy, without wife or son, cut off from the position and activities in
his native country which his proper rank would have given him, sequester
himself from society altogether, and give himself up to the study of
those Arabian sages and alchemists in whom he had delighted when he was
a young man. He saw him shun the daylight, and sleep its hours away, and
then by night abandon himself like another Cagliostro to strange
experiments with alembic and crucible, breathing acrid and poisonous
vapours, seeking to extort from Nature her yet undiscovered
secrets,--the Philosophers Stone, and the Elixir of Life. He saw him
turn for a little from his strange and deadly experiments, and venture
forth to show his blanched and worn face among the throngs of men; but
even there he still pursued his anxious quest of life in the midst of
death. He saw him wander up and down, in and out, among the evening
crowd, delighting in contact with such of his fellow-creatures as had
health and youth, and seeking, seeking--he knew not what. From this
phantasmagoria he dozed off into the dark plains of sleep; but even
there the terribly blanched and emaciated face was with him, bending
wistful worn eyes upon him and melting him to pity. And still again the
vision of the streets would arise about the face, and the sleeper would
be aware of the man to whom the face belonged walking quickly and
sinuously, seeking and enjoying contact with the throng, and strangely
causing many to resent his touch as if they had been pricked or stung,
and yet urged onward in some further quest,--an anxious quest it
sometimes resolved itself into for Julius, who ever evaded him.
Thus his brain laboured through the dead hours of the night, viewing and
reviewing these scenes and figures, to extract a meaning from them; but
he was no nearer the heart of the mystery when the morning broke and he
was waked by the shrill chatter of the sparrows. The day, however,
brought an event which shed a lurid light upon the Courtney difficulty,
and revealed a vital connection between facts which Lefevre had not
guessed were related.