FASCINATION.
A few days after the private interview between Mr. Van Duren and his
lodger, Mr. Billing, the lawyer, called on Mr. Byrne by appointment,
and took down that gentleman's instructions with respect to the
disposition of his property. Three days later, Mr. Billing called with
the all-important document, and found waiting to receive him in Mr.
Byrne's parlour, the testator himself, Mr. Van Duren, who had most
kindly consented to act as one of the executors, and a certain Mr.
Dexter, an old personal friend of Mr. Byrne, who was to act as
executor number two.
Then, at the testator's request, the will was read aloud by Mr.
Billing. By its provisions Mr. Byrne bequeathed, equally between his
son Gerald and his daughter Miriam, the whole of his property,
amounting in the aggregate to thirty thousand pounds, the same being
partly invested in government three per cents., and partly in the
shares of certain railways and other public companies. When the
reading was over, Mr. Byrne put his signature to the will in a hand
that was remarkably firm and clear for his age. The two executors then
appended their signatures. Mr. Billing took charge of the document,
and the ceremony was at an end. After that, a couple of bottles of old
port were produced, the testator's health was drunk, and there was a
little hand-shaking and the expression of many good wishes, and after
that the three gentlemen went away, and Mr. Byrne was left to solitude
and the company of his own thoughts.
His own thoughts, such as they might be, seemed of an eminently
satisfactory nature. Miriam was out--had been sent out purposely
during the process of will-signing. Thus it fell out that Mr. Byrne
now found himself temporarily deprived of the services of his
daughter. But that did not trouble him in the least. He liked to be
waited upon--as most men do--but he was not above looking after his
own comforts when there was no one else to do it for him. All through
life he had been in the habit of celebrating any pleasant little
event, or successful stroke of business, by taking something "on the
strength of it," as he termed it; and it was hardly likely that he
should pretermit such an excellent observance on the present occasion.
Accordingly, he no sooner found himself alone than he proceeded to
charge and light the inevitable pipe, and to mix for himself the
inevitable tumbler of grog. With his chair tilted back on its hind
legs, his feet on the table, his wig awry, his pipe in his mouth, and
his steaming glass before him, Mr. Byrne was quietly meditating over
the day's proceedings, when, without any preliminary knock, the door
that gave egress on to the landing was softly opened, and the head of
Pringle, Mr. Van Duren's clerk, was thrust into the room. His glassy
eyes fixed themselves on Byrne, but without any apparent sign of
intelligence lighting up their dull depths. For a few seconds the two
men stared at each other without speaking. Byrne was, in fact, too
much taken aback to utter a word. "Beg pardon. I thought the governor
was here," said Pringle at last. "See he isn't. Sorry to intrude."
With that he withdrew his head and shut the door as softly as he had
opened it.
"That drunken fool has seen enough to spoil everything!" cried Byrne,
as he started to his feet. "What an ass I must have been not to lock
the door! My only chance is that he may have had so much to drink as
to have forgotten all about what he saw by to-morrow morning."
Pringle, having shut the door of Mr. Byrne's room, stood still on the
mat, while he indulged in one of his noiseless, malicious laughs. "I
thought the old boy was after some private little game of his own," he
said; "and I thought I shouldn't be long before I spotted him. A
disguise--eh? And no more deaf, I'll swear, than I am! Haven't I
listened at the keyhole, and heard him and the girl talking quite
natural and easy like? And then Van Duren's sweet on the girl, but the
girl looks too wide awake to be sweet on him, without she thinks him
rich, and wants a husband. I can't make out just yet what it all
means, but, anyhow, I don't think it means much good to Van Duren, and
so long as it don't mean any good to him I sha'n't interfere. I'll
watch and say nothing, and if I only find that the pair of them are
weaving a net round Van Duren, won't I give them a helping hand! That
is," he added, as if suddenly correcting himself, "that is, provided
it don't interfere with my own little game."
He went slowly downstairs to the office on the ground-floor. The gas
was lighted, but there was no one in the room. "Van Duren and Billing
have gone out together. If Van thinks I'm going to wait for him, he's
mistaken. I'll just shut up shop, and go to tea. Now, what could Van
and the other one want in the old boy's room upstairs? That's a
puzzler. Is there some little game on that they are all mixed up in?
Or are Van and the other trying to best the old 'un? Or is the old 'un
trying to best Van and the other one?" Shaking his head, as though the
questions he had put to himself were beyond his powers of solution, he
took a ledger under each arm, and carried them slowly downstairs--all
Pringle's movements were slow--into the fireproof room in the
basement of the house, where Van Duren's books and papers were
habitually kept.
This fireproof room was on the same floor as the rooms inhabited by
Bakewell and his wife, who had charge of the whole premises, but was
separated from them by a brick passage of some length. Opposite the
foot of the stairs was a door that opened into this passage, in which
a tiny jet of gas was kept burning through the day. At the end of
the passage was a strong iron door, which opened into the fireproof
room. There was only one key to this door, and that was kept by Van
Duren himself. But it was part of Bakewell's duties to go up to his
master's bedroom every morning, obtain the key in question, open the
door--which was allowed to stand open all day--lock it again at ten
o'clock at night, and take back the key to his master's bedroom. When
Van Duren went out of town, which he did frequently, the key was given
in charge of Pringle. The key of the safe itself never left Van
Duren's possession for more than a few minutes at a time. A small,
square apartment with a brick roof, and fitted up with shelves and
book-racks, with sundry boxes in one corner, and in the other a large
patent safe: such was Mr. Van Duren's fireproof room. Like the passage
that led to it, it was entirely shut out from daylight, and the gas
was kept burning in it all day long.
When Pringle had deposited the ledgers in their proper places, he
turned the gas a little higher, and then stood for a few moments
listening intently. Not a sound broke the silence. "If one was buried
six feet deep in the earth, one couldn't be quieter than one is here,"
said Pringle, with a shudder. "It's just like a vault, particularly
when one knows that there's nothing but dead men's bones all round. No
fear of an interruption," he added. "Bakewell's out, and his wife
ain't over-fond of this part of the house."
His next proceeding was a very singular one. From an inner pocket of
his waistcoat he extracted a key, which key be proceeded to insert
into the lock of the patent safe in the corner. "Not quite the thing
yet," he muttered, as he tried the key. "Wants another touch of the
file here and there. Grainger's three thousand will fall due in about
a month's time. I must have everything ready by then. It's sure not to
be all in bills. There will be a few hundreds in gold. Then there will
be Van's private stock, and other things. Altogether, a pretty little
haul."
He withdrew the key from the lock and put it back into his secret
pocket. "If he had not treated me like a dog, if he had treated me as
one man ought to treat another, I should never have thought of this
thing. He thinks that he has me in his power, and that I dare not
turn; but he will find himself mistaken. I'm not quite a worm, though
he tramples on me as if I were. He will find that I can turn, and
sting too, when the proper time comes."
He went back upstairs, turned down the gas in the office, and taking
his hat and his faded gingham umbrella, he left the house.
Jonas Pringle was from fifty to fifty-five years old. He was bald,
except for a straggling fringe of hair round the back of his head, and
had weak, watery eyes, that gave him the appearance, to strangers, of
being habitually in tears. He always dressed in black, and always wore
an old-fashioned dress coat. But his black clothes were never
otherwise than very shabby and threadbare, and shiny with old age at
the elbows and knees. He wore a thick black silk neckcloth, above
which peered the frayed edge of a dirty collar. Among Pringle's
intimates at the Pig and Whistle (his favourite evening haunt) there
was a story current that he had not had a new hat for twenty years.
This evening he went mooning slowly along the streets, muttering under
his breath, as was his habit, and glancing up with a queer, sudden
stare into the face of every woman that passed him. Years before, he
had lost his daughter, an only child: lost her, that is, in the sense
of her being stolen from him by a villain. It was a fixed article of
Pringle's belief that he should one day find his daughter again, and
he had got into the habit, when walking along the streets, of looking
into the face of each woman that he met, ever hoping that among them
he might some time see again the face of his lost Jessie.
It was quite impossible for Pringle to get as far as his lodgings
without making one or two calls for refreshment by the way. There were
certain houses where his face was well known as that of a regular
frequenter, and where they knew, without his having to be at the
trouble of asking for it, the particular article (twopennyworth of
gin, neat) with which to supply him.
"He's been at it again," remarked Pringle, parenthetically, to the
landlord of one of the dirty little taverns which he favoured with his
patronage. "He was raving about all morning like a bear with a sore
head. Nothing pleased him, nothing one could do was right."
"Ay, ay. I shouldn't stand it if I was you," answered the publican.
"I sha'n't stand it much longer; you may take your oath of that," said
Pringle. "There'll be a day of reckoning before long: mark my words,
if there ain't."
About the very time that Jonas Pringle was giving utterance to this
mysterious threat, the man to whom he referred was sitting alone,
thinking deeply--thinking of Miriam Byrne, of her manifold charms of
fortune and person, and trying to screw up his courage to the point of
asking her to become his wife. He had fully made up his mind that he
would so ask her, but he wished with all his heart that the task were
well over. In all business transactions he was one of the most prompt
and decisive of men, and, it may be added, one of the hardest; but the
thought of having to tell this dark-eyed beauty of twenty that he
loved her and would fain marry her, fluttered his nerves strangely.
That it must be done, and done soon, he had quite made up his mind;
but none the less did the thought of having it to do trouble him. To
old Byrne he had thrown out one or two hints already, and had not been
repulsed. In fact, the old man seemed desirous of seeing his daughter
comfortably settled in life, and would perhaps be more likely to
encourage the addresses of a man like Van Duren, who knew the world
and the value of money, rather than those of some empty-headed
popinjay of Miriam's own age, who would, in all probability, first
spend her fortune and then neglect her. Ah! if he could only win her
for himself--win her and her fortune too--what a happy stroke of luck
that would be! He admired the girl for her beauty, admired her more
than any woman he had ever met before, and even if she had not been
worth a penny, he might in some moment of rashness have flung all
other considerations to the winds, and have asked her to marry him.
But knowing what he knew about her, would he not be an idiot to let
such a golden opportunity slip through his fingers without trying to
grasp it and claim it for his own? "If I can find a chance of doing
so, I'll propose to her to-morrow," he said to himself, emphatically,
as he rose from the table. "I cannot afford to lose another day."
At seven o'clock next evening Mr. Van Duren knocked at the door of his
lodgers' sitting-room. His summons was answered by Miriam in person.
He started with surprise as his eyes fell on her. He had never seen
her dressed as she was to-night. Anyone might have thought that she
knew he was going to call upon her, that she suspected what he had
made up his mind to say. Had she deliberately laid herself out to
fascinate him, to enthral his senses, to make him forget reason and
prudence, and all the cautious rules with which his life had
heretofore been hedged round, she could not, with all her thought,
have done more towards effecting that end than the caprice of a moment
was likely to do for her without thought at all. And it was but the
whim of a moment that had induced her to attire herself after the
fashion in which she presented herself to the eyes of Van Duren
to-night.
She wore a long, trailing robe of amber silk, which fitted her very
loosely, and was fastened round her waist with a gay Persian scarf of
many colours. The sleeves of this dress were cut very short, and
Miriam's bare arms were decorated with bracelets of tiny, tinted
shells and small coins intermixed. A fringe of coins was bound round
her forehead, and fastened at the back with a gilt arrow. Her hair
fell to her waist in two long plaits, with which more coins and shells
were intermixed. As she walked across the room, and as she reclined on
the sofa, the tips of two Turkish slippers, embroidered with gold
thread and silks of various colours, could be seen peeping from under
the edge of her robe. In her ears hung two tiny bells, that looked
like gold, but were only gilt, which tinkled faintly when she moved
her head; round her throat was clasped a double string of large amber
beads.
"Good evening, Miss Byrne," said Van Duren, as soon as he had
recovered his presence of mind. "I have had a small consignment of
fruit from France, and I have ventured to hope that you would do me
the favour of accepting a box of it."
"You are kindness itself," said Miriam. "But don't stand there,
please." Then, when she had shut the door behind him, she added: "How
you have so quickly found out two of my pet weaknesses--flowers and
candied fruits--is more than I can understand." Then she took the box
from his hand. "Many, many thanks. Why, the casket itself is quite a
work of art!"
Van Duren crossed to where Mr. Byrne was sitting in his easy-chair by
the fire. He had neither spoken nor stirred from the moment of hearing
the knock at the door. Van Duren laid his hand on the old man's
shoulder. "How are you this evening, Mr. Byrne?" he said, speaking
close to the other one's ear.
"Oh, hearty, hearty: never better," answered Byrne, in a querulous
voice. "If it wasn't for this nasty cough, and this pain in my side,
and one or two other trifles, I should be as right as a trivet."
"We shall soon have the warm weather here now, and that will help you
along."
"Of course it will. In another month's time I shall be out and about
again, as strong and active as the best of you."
"Poor papa never will allow that he is worse," said Miriam, in a low
voice. "He has certainly been weaker and feebler for the last day or
two, but he will persist in saying that he is quite the opposite."
"The old boy can't last long," thought Van Duren to himself: "another
reason why I ought not to delay."
Next minute, without exactly knowing how it happened, he found himself
sitting opposite Miriam, who had resumed he favourite position--a
half-sitting, half-reclining one--on the sofa, and was eating daintily
a sugared apricot. How round and white her arms looked, contrasted
against the deep amber of her robe, from under which the tiny Turkish
slippers peeped tantalizingly! She was certainly very lovely, but
about her loveliness to-night there was something wild and weird that
at once attracted to itself a certain element of savagery that lay
latent in the character of her admirer, but which the quiet, humdrum
life he had led of late years had all but buried out of sight. An
Englishman of the timid conventional type would either have been
repelled or frightened had he seen the lady of his love decked out
after Miriam's strange fashion, but it only served to draw Van Duren
more closely to her. It seemed to him that, could he but have had his
own way in the matter, he would never have let her dress otherwise
than as he saw her to-night. As he gazed at her, all the pulses of his
being seemed to throb with newer life. His eyes brightened, the lines
of his hard mouth softened, and for once, as Miriam avowed afterwards
to her father, the man looked almost handsome.
Miriam's guitar was resting against the sofa, within reach of her
hand. Said Van Duren--
"You were singing and playing the other evening, Miss Byrne, as I went
upstairs to my own room, but I have never had the pleasure of hearing
you when in your company."
"Then you ought to consider yourself very fortunate," replied Miriam,
"for I am really not worth listening to."
"Will you afford me an opportunity of judging for myself?"
"If you put it as a definite request, of course I cannot refuse you. I
have accepted your bribe beforehand," she added, with a smile,
pointing to the box of fruit.
"I should really like to hear you."
"Then you shall hear me. After that you will be satisfied. You will
never want to hear me again."
"That's as it may be," said Van Duren, as he drew his chair several
inches nearer the sofa.
"What shall I murder for you?" asked Miriam, as she took up the
guitar.
The phrase was an ugly one, and was spoken without thought. Van Duren
started as if some one had smitten him suddenly from behind. He shot a
look full of suspicion and terror at Miriam; but her eyes were bent on
the guitar, one or two strings of which seemed to want screwing up.
"What shall I sing for you?" she said, amending her phraseology this
time.
Van Duren recovered himself with an effort.
"The guitar has always been associated in my mind," he said, "with
love-songs and serenades, with moonlight and romance."
"Then here's a little serenade for you. I, who sing, am supposed to be
a cavalier. If your imagination will carry you so far, you can fancy
yourself to be the lady thus lovingly addressed."
She struck a chord or two on the guitar, and began as follows:--
"What throbs through the song of the nightingale?
What makes the red heart of the rose turn pale?
Love, burning love.
What makes me grow drowsy 'neath midsummer skies?
What makes me a slave to my lady's dark eyes?
Love, burning love."
One verse will be quite enough for the reader. Miriam's voice was a
rich, clear contralto, which she managed with considerable skill. Now
and again as she sang, she shot a glance out of her dangerous black
eyes at the rapt listener sitting opposite to her. Her father, in his
easy-chair by the fire, gave no further sign of existence than by the
troublesome cough which seized him every few minutes, and shook him
like a leaf.
As the last line thrilled from Miriam's lips, Van Duren sank down on
one knee before her, and tried to seize her hand. With a little
involuntary shudder, she drew it away from him. Then he grasped a fold
of her dress, and pressed it passionately to his lips.
"Miriam Miriam! do not repulse me, but listen to me!" he cried. "You,
who can give such passionate expression to the words of a mere
love-song, must have felt and known that I loved you from the first
moment that I saw you. I cannot ask or expect that you should give
me back such a love as I now offer you. But try to like me a
little--consent to be my wife--and I will do all that lies in the
power of mortal man to make you happy!"
"Oh, Mr. Van Duren, you do indeed surprise me!" was all Miriam said.
But she was not surprised in the least.
"I am richer than the world gives me credit for being," pursued Van
Duren. "I have led a quiet, saving life for years; but all that shall
be changed if you will only become mine. I can afford to let my wife
live as a lady ought to live; I can afford to----"
"Oh, Mr. Van Duren, you must not talk in that way."
"I am quite aware," he pleaded, "that there is a very wide difference
between your age and mine, but----"
"That would make no difference in my feelings towards any one for whom
I really cared."
"If you would only try to care a little for me!"
"It all seems so strange, Mr. Van Duren."
"What is it that seems so strange, dearest?"
"Why, that a man like you, who have seen so much of the world, who
must have seen and known so many ladies, both in England and abroad,
should really profess to care about a foolish, frivolous girl like
me."
"You are neither foolish nor frivolous. Besides which, you are
different from any one whom I ever met before. More than all, you are
my fate."
"Your fate, Mr. Van Duren!"
"Yes, the one woman out of all the wide world whom, uncounted ages
ago, it was fated, or fore-ordained, that I should love."
"Now you are going further than I can follow you," said Miriam, with a
smile. "Perhaps, at the same time, it was fore-ordained that I should
reject your suit."
"You do not know how terribly in earnest I am, or you would not laugh
at me."
"Indeed, Mr. Van Duren, I am not laughing at you. But pray resume your
seat."
"Not till you have told me the best or the worst. Not till you have
given me some word of hope, or told me that I must never hope again."
"Mr. Van Duren," said Miriam, with more earnestness than she had yet
used, "your offer has come upon me so suddenly that I know not what to
say. I think you can hardly expect me to give you an answer to so
serious a question without giving me time to consider what that answer
must be. Not now, not to-night--can I answer you either one way or the
other. Two or three days at the least I must claim, to think over all
that you have said to me, and to discover, if it be possible for me to
do so, what my feelings are in a matter that concerns my future
welfare so closely."
"I can but bow to your decision," said Van Duren. "I hope I may accept
it as a good augury that you have not rejected my suit at once and
entirely; that you have deemed it worthy of being taken into
consideration."
"Ah, Mr. Van Duren, I am afraid that you are not such a novice as you
would wish to make out: I am afraid that you understand more of our
sex and their ways than you would care to have known."
Then, as if to change the subject, she took up her guitar and began to
play. A little while later Van Duren took his leave.
"Very well managed, my dear," said Mr. Byrne, approvingly, wheeling
round his chair as soon as the door was closed upon their visitor;
"only neither of you seemed to think much about me in the matter."
"I suppose Mr. Van Duren thinks that if he can obtain my consent,
yours will follow as a matter of course."
"He is welcome to think what he likes, so long as you succeed in
getting out of him the particular information that I want. So far,
all has gone off well. In three days' time you will accept him
provisionally--accept him on trial, that is, for a month or six weeks,
before finally binding yourself to anything. In the course of that
month you ought to be able to worm out of him the all-important
secret, without which all that we have done up to the present time
will be of no avail whatever."
"I understand perfectly what you want, papa, but I cannot tell you how
utterly distasteful to me is the whole wretched business."
"Tut, tut, girl, you mustn't talk in that way! Think of the two
hundred pounds that will be yours--absolutely your own--if we
succeed."
"I do think of it, papa. But even that can hardly reconcile me at
times to go through with what I have promised. You don't know the
feeling of repulsion, of absolute loathing, that came over me to-night
when that man tried to take my hand. Think what it is to be made love
to by a murderer; think of this, and pity me!"
"Of course I pity you, and feel for you," said the old man,
soothingly. "But our needs are great, and the money will be very
useful--you can't but admit that."
"Oh yes, I admit that. But I was never afraid of poverty."
"I am not afraid of it--but I certainly don't like it. But what do you
intend doing with your two hundred pounds, Miriam? Better let me
invest it for you."
"If I succeed in getting the two hundred pounds---which at present is
by no means certain--I shall----"
"Yes: what?"
"I shall furnish a couple of rooms--furnish them very nicely, mind
you--and marry James."
"You will!" gasped the old man.
"I shall, most certainly. It is the thought of that and nothing else
that strengthens me to go through with this dreadful business. No
meaner prize would tempt me."
She stooped and kissed her father lightly on the forehead, and then
went quickly out of the room, as if afraid that what she had said
might provoke a discussion that would have been unpleasant to both of
them.