THERE had been barely light enough left for me to read by. Zillah lit the
candles and drew the curtains. The silence which betokens a profound
disappointment reigned in the room.
"Who can he be?" repeated Lucilla, for the hundredth time. "And why
should your looking at him have distressed him? Guess, Madame
Pratolungo!"
The last sentence in the gazetteer's description of Exeter hung a little
on my mind--in consequence of there being one word in it which I did not
quite understand--the word "Assizes." I have, I hope, shown that I
possess a competent knowledge of the English language, by this time. But
my experience fails a little on the side of phrases consecrated to the
use of the law. I inquired into the meaning of "Assizes," and was
informed that it signified movable Courts, for trying prisoners at given
times, in various parts of England. Hearing this, I had another of my
inspirations. I guessed immediately that the interesting stranger was a
criminal escaped from the Assizes.
Worthy old Zillah started to her feet, convinced that I had hit him off
(as the English saying is) to a T. "Mercy preserve us!" cried the nurse,
"I haven't bolted the garden door!"
She hurried out of the room to defend us from robbery and murder, before
it was too late. I looked at Lucilla. She was leaning back in her chair,
with a smile of quiet contempt on her pretty face. "Madame Pratolungo,"
she remarked, "that is the first foolish thing you have said, since you
have been here."
"Wait a little, my dear," I rejoined. "You have declared that nothing is
known of this man. Now you mean by that--nothing which satisfies _you._
He has not dropped down from Heaven, I suppose? The time when he came
here, must be known. Also, whether he came alone, or not. Also, how and
where he has found a lodging in the village. Before I admit that my guess
is completely wrong, I want to hear what general observation in Dimchurch
has discovered on the subject of this gentleman. How long has he been
here?"
Lucilla did not, at first, appear to be much interested in the purely
practical view of the question which I had just placed before her.
"He has been here a week," she answered carelessly.
"Did he come, as I came, over the hills?"
"Yes."
"With a guide, of course?"
Lucilla suddenly sat up in her chair.
"With his brother," she said. "His _twin_ brother, Madame Pratolungo."
_I_ sat up in _my_ chair. The appearance of his twin-brother in the story
was a complication in itself. Two criminals escaped from the Assizes,
instead of one!
"How did they find their way here?" I asked next.
"Nobody knows."
"Where did they go to, when they got here?"
"To the Cross-Hands--the little public-house in the village. The landlord
told Zillah he was perfectly astonished at the resemblance between them.
It was impossible to know which was which--it was wonderful, even for
twins. They arrived early in the day, when the tap-room was empty; and
they had a long talk together in private. At the end of it, they rang for
the landlord, and asked if he had a bed-room to let in the house. You
must have seen for yourself that The Cross-Hands is a mere beer-shop. The
landlord had a room that he could spare--a wretched place, not fit for a
gentleman to sleep in. One of the brothers took the room for all that."
"What became of the other brother?"
"He went away the same day--very unwillingly. The parting between them
was most affecting. The brother who spoke to us to-night insisted on
it--or the other would have refused to leave him. They both shed
tears----"
"They did worse than that," said old Zillah, re-entering the room at the
moment. "I have made all the doors and windows fast, downstairs; he can't
get in now, my dear, if he tries."
"What did they do that was worse than crying?" I inquired.
"Kissed each other!" said Zillah, with a look of profound disgust. "Two
men! Foreigners, of course."
"Our man is no foreigner," I said. "Did they give themselves a name?"
"The landlord asked the one who stayed behind for his name," replied
Lucilla. "He said it was 'Dubourg.'"
This confirmed me in my belief that I had guessed right. "Dubourg" is as
common a name in my country as "Jones" or "Thompson" is in England--just
the sort of feigned name that a man in difficulties would give among
_us._ Was he a criminal countryman of mine? No! There had been nothing
foreign in his accent when he spoke. Pure English--there could be no
doubt of that. And yet he had given a French name. Had he deliberately
insulted my nation? Yes! Not content with being stained by innumerable
crimes, he had added to the list of his atrocities--he had insulted my
nation!
"Well?" I resumed. "We have left this undetected ruffian deserted in the
public-house. Is he there still?"
"Bless your heart!" cried the old nurse, "he is settled in the
neighborhood. He has taken Browndown."
I turned to Lucilla. "Browndown belongs to Somebody," I said hazarding
another guess. "Did Somebody let it without a reference?"
"Browndown belongs to a gentleman at Brighton," answered Lucilla. "And
the gentleman was referred to a well-known name in London--one of the
great City merchants. Here is the most provoking part of the whole
mystery. The merchant said, 'I have known Mr. Dubourg from his childhood.
He has reasons for wishing to live in the strictest retirement. I answer
for his being an honorable man, to whom you can safely let your house.
More than this I am not authorized to tell you.' My father knows the
landlord of Browndown; and that is what the reference said to him, word
for word. Isn't it provoking? The house was let for six months certain,
the next day. It is wretchedly furnished. Mr. Dubourg has had several
things that he wanted sent from Brighton. Besides the furniture, a
packing-case from London arrived at the house to-day. It was so strongly
nailed up that the carpenter had to be sent for to open it. He reports
that the case was full of thin plates of gold and silver; and it was
accompanied by a box of extraordinary tools, the use of which was a
mystery to the carpenter himself. Mr. Dubourg locked up these things in a
room at the back of the house, and put the key in his pocket. He seemed
to be pleased--he whistled a tune, and said, 'Now we shall do!' The
landlady at the Cross-Hands is our authority for this. She does what
little cooking he requires; and her daughter makes his bed, and so on.
They go to him in the morning, and return to the inn in the evening. He
has no servant with him. He is all by himself at night. Isn't it
interesting? A mystery in real life. It baffles everybody."
"You must be very strange people, my dear," I said, "to make a mystery of
such a plain case as this."
"Plain?" repeated Lucilla, in amazement.
"Certainly! The gold and silver plates, and the strange tools, and the
living in retirement, and the sending the servants away at night--all
point to the same conclusion. My guess is the right one. The man is an
escaped criminal; and his form of crime is coining false money. He has
been discovered at Exeter--he has escaped the officers of justice--and he
is now going to begin again here. You can do as you please. If _I_ happen
to want change, I won't get it in this neighborhood."
Lucilla laid herself back in her chair again. I could see that she gave
me up, in the matter of Mr. Dubourg, as a person willfully and
incorrigibly wrong.
"A coiner of false money, recommended as an honorable man by one of the
first merchants in London!" she exclaimed. "We do some very eccentric
things in England, occasionally--but there is a limit to our national
madness, Madame Pratolungo, and you have reached it. Shall we have some
music?"
She spoke a little sharply. Mr. Dubourg was the hero of her romance. She
resented--seriously resented--any attempt on my part to lower him in her
estimation.
I persisted in my unfavorable opinion of him, nevertheless. The question
between us (as I might have told her) was a question of believing, or not
believing, in the merchant of London. To her mind, it was a sufficient
guarantee of his integrity that he was a rich man. To my mind (speaking
as a good Socialist), that very circumstance told dead against him. A
capitalist is a robber of one sort, and a coiner is a robber of another
sort. Whether the capitalist recommends the coiner, or the coiner the
capitalist, is all one to me. In either case (to quote the language of an
excellent English play) the honest people are the soft easy cushions on
which these knaves repose and fatten. It was on the tip of my tongue to
put this large and liberal view of the subject to Lucilla. But (alas!) it
was easy to see that the poor child was infected by the narrow prejudices
of the class amid which she lived. How could I find it in my heart to run
the risk of a disagreement between us on the first day? No--it was not to
be done. I gave the nice pretty blind girl a kiss. And we went to the
piano together. And I put off making a good Socialist of Lucilla till a
more convenient opportunity.
We might as well have left the piano unopened. The music was a failure.
I played my best. From Mozart to Beethoven. From Beethoven to Schubert.
From Schubert to Chopin. She listened with all the will in the world to
be pleased. She thanked me again and again. She tried, at my invitation,
to play herself; choosing the familiar compositions which she knew by
ear. No! The abominable Dubourg, having got the uppermost place in her
mind, kept it. She tried, and tried, and tried--and could do nothing. His
voice was still in her ears--the only music which could possess itself of
her attention that night. I took her place, and began to play again. She
suddenly snatched my hands off the keys. "Is Zillah here?" she whispered.
I told her Zillah had left the room. She laid her charming head on my
shoulder, and sighed hysterically. "I can't help thinking of him," she
burst out. "I am miserable for the first time in my life--no! I am happy
for the first time in my life. Oh, what must you think of me! I don't
know what I am talking about. Why did you encourage him to speak to us? I
might never have heard his voice but for you." She lifted her head again
with a little shiver, and composed herself. One of her hands wandered
here and there over the keys of the piano, playing softly. "His charming
voice!" she whispered dreamily while she played. "Oh, his charming
voice!" She paused again. Her hand dropped from the piano, and took mine.
"Is this love?" she said, half to herself, half to me.
My duty as a respectable woman lay clearly before me--my duty was to tell
her a lie.
"It is nothing, my dear, but too much excitement and too much fatigue," I
said. "To-morrow you shall be my young lady again. To-night you must be
only my child. Come, and let me put you to bed."
She yielded with a weary sigh. Ah, how lovely she looked in her pretty
night-dress, on her knees at the bed-side--the innocent, afflicted
creature--saying her prayers!
I am, let me own, an equally headlong woman at loving and hating. When I
had left her for the night, I could hardly have felt more tenderly
interested in her if she had been really a child of my own. You have met
with people of my sort--unless you are a very forbidding person
indeed--who have talked to you in the most confidential manner of all
their private affairs, on meeting you in a railway carriage, or sitting
next to you at a table-d'hôte. For myself, I believe I shall go on
running up sudden friendships with strangers to my dying day. Infamous
Dubourg! If I could have got into Browndown that night, I should have
liked to have done to him what a Mexican maid of mine (at the Central
American period of my career) did to her drunken husband--who was a kind
of peddler, dealing in whips and sticks. She sewed him strongly up one
night in the sheet, while he lay snoring off his liquor in bed; and then
she took his whole stock-in-trade out of the corner of the room, and
broke it on him, to the last article on sale, until he was beaten to a
jelly from head to foot.
Not having this resource open to me, I sat myself down in my bedroom, to
consider--if the matter of Dubourg went any further--what it was my
business to do next.
I have already mentioned that Lucilla and I had idled away the whole
afternoon, woman-like, in talking of ourselves. You will best understand
what course my reflections took, if I here relate the chief particulars
which Lucilla communicated to me, concerning her own singular position in
her father's house.