in wrath on the young man, "From what rank in life are you sprung?" she
demanded. "You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the
astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only be a
green-grocer's man. Pray, gather up your vegetables, and let me see no
more of you."
"Madam," babbled Somerset, "you promised me a month's warning."
"That was under a misapprehension," returned the old lady. "I now give
you warning to leave at once."
"Madam," said the young man, "I wish I could; and indeed, as far as I am
concerned, it might be done. But then, my lodger!"
"Your lodger?" echoed Mrs. Luxmore.
"My lodger: why should I deny it?" returned Somerset. "He is only by the
week."
The old lady sat down upon a chair. "You have a lodger?--you?" she
cried. "And pray, how did you get him?"
"By advertisement," replied the young man. "O madam, I have not lived
unobservantly. I adopted"--his eyes involuntarily shifted to the
cartoons--"I adopted every method."
Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset's experience,
she produced a double eyeglass; and as soon as the full merit of the
works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her
trilling and soprano laughter.
"Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!" she cried. "I do hope you had
them in the window. M'Pherson," she continued, crying to her maid, who
had been all this time grimly waiting in the hall, "I lunch with Mr.
Somerset. Take the cellar key and bring some wine."
In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented
Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M'Pherson bring
up from the cellar--"as a present, my dear," she said, with another
burst of tearful merriment, "for your charming pictures, which you must
be sure to leave me when you go"; and finally, protesting that she dared
not spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of London,
departed (as she vaguely phrased it) for the continent of Europe.
She was no sooner gone than Somerset encountered in the corridor the
Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to singularly
strong emotion. It was made to appear, from her account, that Mr. Jones
had already suffered acutely in his health from Mrs. Luxmore's visit,
and that nothing short of a full explanation could allay the invalid's
uneasiness. Somerset, somewhat staring, told what he thought fit of the
affair.
"Is that all?" cried the woman. "As God sees you, is that all?"
"My good woman," said the young man, "I have no idea what you can be
driving at. Suppose the lady were my friend's wife, suppose she were my
fairy godmother, suppose she were the Queen of Portugal; and how should
that affect yourself or Mr. Jones?"
"Blessed Mary!" cried the nurse, "it's he that will be glad to hear it!"
And immediately she fled upstairs.
Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and, with a very
thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of the remainder
of the bottle. It was port; and port is a wine, sole among its equals
and superiors, that can in some degree support the competition of
tobacco. Sipping, smoking, and theorising, Somerset moved on from
suspicion to suspicion, from resolve to resolve, still growing braver
and rosier as the bottle ebbed. He was a sceptic, none prouder of the
name; he had no horror at command, whether for crimes or vices, but
beheld and embraced the world, with an immoral approbation, the frequent
consequence of youth and health. At the same time, he felt convinced
that he dwelt under the same roof with secret malefactors; and the
unregenerate instinct of the chase impelled him to severity. The bottle
had run low; the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the same
moment, night and the pangs of hunger recalled him from his dreams.
He went forth, and dined in the Criterion: a dinner in consonance, not
so much with his purse, as with the admirable wine he had discussed.
What with one thing and another, it was long past midnight when he
returned home. A cab was at the door; and entering the hall, Somerset
found himself face to face with one of the most regular of the few who
visited Mr. Jones: a man of powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a
chin-beard in the American fashion. This person was carrying on one
shoulder a black portmanteau, seemingly of considerable weight. That he
should find a visitor removing baggage in the dead of night, recalled
some odd stories to the young man's memory; he had heard of lodgers who
thus gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the very
furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now, in a
mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of a
drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard and
knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor. With a face
struck suddenly as white as paper, the man with the chin-beard called
lamentably on the name of his Maker, and fell in a mere heap on the mat
at the foot of the stairs. At the same time, though only for a single
instant, the heads of the sick lodger and the Irish nurse popped out
like rabbits over the banisters of the first floor; and on both the same
scare and pallor were apparent.
The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone, and he
continued speechless, while the man gathered himself together, and, with
the help of the hand-rail and audibly thanking God, scrambled once more
upon his feet.
"What in Heaven's name ails you?" gasped the young man as soon as he
could find words and utterance.
"Have you a drop of brandy?" returned the other. "I am sick."
Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the man with
the chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to confound himself
in apologies for what he called his miserable nervousness, the result,
he said, of a long course of dumb ague; and having taken leave with a
hand that still sweated and trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen
and departed.
Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep. What, he asked himself, had
been the contents of the black portmanteau? Stolen goods? the carcass of
one murdered? or--and at the thought he sat upright in bed--an infernal
machine? He took a solemn vow that he would set these doubts at rest;
and, with the next morning, installed himself beside the dining-room
window, vigilant with eye and ear, to await and profit by the earliest
opportunity.
The hours went heavily by. Within the house there was no circumstance of
novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more frequently made little
journeys round the corner of the square, and before afternoon was
somewhat loose of speech and gait. A little after six, however, there
came round the corner of the gardens a very handsome and elegantly
dressed young woman, who paused a little way off, and for some time, and
with frequent sighs, contemplated the front of the Superfluous Mansion.
It was not the first time that she had thus stood afar and looked upon
it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the young man had
already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage, and
had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye. He hailed her
coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a little nearer to the
window to enjoy the sight. What was his surprise, however, when, as if
with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted the steps, and tapped
discreetly at the door! He made haste to get before the Irish nurse, who
was not improbably asleep, and had the satisfaction to receive this
gracious visitor in person.
She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, asked the
young man if he were the person of the house (and at the words, he
thought he could perceive her to be smiling), "because," she added, "if
you are, I should like to see some of the other rooms."
Somerset told her he was under an engagement to receive no other
lodgers; but she assured him that would be no matter, as these were
friends of Mr. Jones's. "And," she continued, moving suddenly to the
dining-room door, "let us begin here." Somerset was too late to prevent
her entering, and perhaps lacked the courage to essay. "Ah!" she cried,
"how changed it is!"
"Madam," cried the young man, "since your entrance, it is I who have the
right to say so."
She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious droop of
the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the mingled
litter, now with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the wonders of the
two apartments. She gazed upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes, and a
heightened colour, and, in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed a high
opinion of their merits. She praised the effective disposition of the
rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to
defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration. "How simple and
manly!" she cried: "none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so
detestable in a man!" Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to
reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no
further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, and ascended the
staircase alone.
For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with Mr. Jones;
and at the end of that time, the night being now come completely, they
left the house in company. This was the first time since the arrival of
his lodger that Somerset had found himself alone with the Irish widow;
and without the loss of any more time than was required by decency, he
stepped to the foot of the stairs and hailed her by her name. She came
instantly, wreathed in weak smiles and with a nodding head; and when the
young man politely offered to introduce her to the treasures of his art,
she swore that nothing could afford her greater pleasure, for, though
she had never crossed the threshold, she had frequently observed his
beautiful pictures through the door. On entering the dining-room, the
sight of a bottle and two glasses prepared her to be a gentle critic;
and as soon as the pictures had been viewed and praised, she was easily
persuaded to join the painter in a single glass. "Here," she said, "are
my respects; and a pleasure it is, in this horrible house, to see a
gentleman like yourself, so affable and free, and a very nice painter, I
am sure." One glass so agreeably prefaced, was sure to lead to the
acceptance of a second; at the third, Somerset was free to cease from
the affectation of keeping her company; and as for the fourth, she
asked it of her own accord. "For indeed," said she, "what with all these
clocks and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life would be
impossible entirely. And you seen yourself that even M'Guire was glad to
beg for it. And even himself, when he is downhearted with all these
cruel disappointments, though as temperate a man as any child, will be
sometimes crying for a glass of it. And I'll thank you for a thimbleful
to settle what I got." Soon after, she began with tears to narrate the
deathbed dispositions and lament the trifling assets of her husband.
Then she declared she heard "the master" calling her, rose to her feet,
made but one lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with her head
upon the lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.
Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the door of the
drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several lamps. It was a great
apartment; looking on the square with three tall windows, and joined by
a pair of ample folding-doors to the next room; elegant in proportion,
papered in sea-green, furnished in velvet of a delicate blue, and
adorned with a majestic mantelpiece of variously tinted marbles. Such
was the room that Somerset remembered; that which he now beheld was
changed in almost every feature: the furniture covered with a figured
chintz; the walls hung with a rhubarb-coloured paper, and diversified by
the curtained recesses for no less than seven windows. It seemed to
himself that he must have entered, without observing the transition,
into the adjoining house. Presently from these more specious changes,
his eye condescended to the many curious objects with which the floor
was littered. Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks and
clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking, some
reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, jars, and
bottles; a carpenter's bench and a laboratory-table.
The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had likewise
undergone a change. It was transformed to the exact appearance of a
common lodging-house bedroom; a bed with green curtains occupied one
corner; and the window was blocked by the regulation table and mirror.
The door of a small closet here attracted the young man's attention; and
striking a vesta, he opened it and entered. On a table, several wigs and
beards were lying spread; about the walls hung an incongruous display of
suits and overcoats; and conspicuous among the last the young man
observed a large overall of the most costly sealskin. In a flash his
mind reverted to the advertisement in the _Standard_ newspaper. The
great height of his lodger, the disproportionate breadth of his
shoulders, and the strange particulars of his instalment, all pointed to
the same conclusion.
The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat upon his
arm, Somerset hastily returned to the lighted drawing-room. There, with
a mixture of fear and admiration, he pored upon its goodly proportions
and the regularity and softness of the pile. The sight of a large
pier-glass put another fancy in his head. He donned the fur coat; and
standing before the mirror in an attitude suggestive of a Russian
prince, he thrust his hands into the ample pockets. There his fingers
encountered a folded journal. He drew it out, and recognised the type
and paper of the _Standard;_ and at the same instant his eyes alighted
on the offer of two hundred pounds. Plainly then, his lodger, now no
longer mysterious, had laid aside his coat on the very day of the
appearance of the advertisement.
He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the
incriminating paper in his hand, when the door opened and the tall
lodger, with a firm but somewhat pallid face, stepped into the room and
closed the door again behind him. For some time the two looked upon each
other in perfect silence; then Mr. Jones moved forward to the table,
took a seat, and, still without once changing the direction of his eyes,
addressed the young man.
"You are right," he said. "It is for me the blood money is offered. And
now what will you do?"
It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able to reply.
Taken as he was at unawares, masquerading in the man's own coat, and
surrounded by a whole arsenal of diabolical explosives, the keeper of
the lodging-house was silenced.
"Yes," resumed the other, "I am he. I am that man, whom with impotent
hate and fear they still hunt from den to den, from disguise to
disguise. Yet, my landlord, you have it in your power, if you be poor,
to lay the basis of your fortune; if you be unknown, to capture honour
at one snatch. You have hocussed an innocent widow; and I find you here
in my apartment, for whose use I pay you in stamped money, searching my
wardrobe, and your hand--shame, sir!--your hand in my very pocket. You
can now complete the cycle of your ignominious acts, by what will be at
once the simplest, the safest, and the most remunerative." The speaker
paused as if to emphasise his words; and then, with a great change of
tone and manner, thus resumed: "And yet, sir, when I look upon your
face, I feel certain that I cannot be deceived: certain that in spite of
all, I have the honour and pleasure of speaking to a gentleman. Take off
my coat, sir--which but cumbers you. Divest yourself of this confusion:
that which is but thought upon, thank God, need be no burthen to the
conscience; we have all harboured guilty thoughts; and if it flashed
into your mind to sell my flesh and blood, my anguish in the dock, and
the sweat of my death agony--it was a thought, dear sir, you were as
incapable of acting on, as I of any further question of your honour." At
these words the speaker, with a very open, smiling countenance, like a
forgiving father, offered Somerset his hand.
It was not in the young man's nature to refuse forgiveness or dissect
generosity. He instantly, and almost without thought, accepted the
proffered grasp.
"And now," resumed the lodger, "now that I hold in mine your loyal hand,
I lay by my apprehensions, I dismiss suspicion, I go further--by an
effort of will, I banish the memory of what is past. How you came here,
I care not: enough that you are here--as my guest. Sit ye down; and let
us, with your good permission, improve acquaintance over a glass of
excellent whisky."
So speaking, he produced glasses and a bottle; and the pair pledged each
other in silence.
"Confess," observed the smiling host, "you were surprised at the
appearance of the room."
"I was indeed," said Somerset; "nor can I imagine the purpose of these
changes."
"These," replied the conspirator, "are the devices by which I continue
to exist. Conceive me now, accused before one of your unjust tribunals;
conceive the various witnesses appearing, and the singular variety of
their reports! One will have visited me in this drawing-room as it
originally stood; a second finds it as it is to-night; and to-morrow or
next day, all may have been changed. If you love romance (as artists
do), few lives are more romantic than that of the obscure individual now
addressing you. Obscure yet famous. Mine is an anonymous, infernal
glory. By infamous means, I work towards my bright purpose. I found the
liberty and peace of a poor country desperately abused; the future
smiles upon that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the existence of a
hunted brute, work towards appalling ends, and practise hell's
dexterities."
Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before him,
and listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment. He
looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks
of education; and wondered the more profoundly.
"Sir," he said--"for I know not whether I should still address you as
Mr. Jones--"
"Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, Henderland, by all
or any of these you may address me," said the plotter; "for all I have
at some time borne. Yet that which I most prize, that which is most
feared, hated, and obeyed, is not a name to be found in your
directories; it is not a name current in post-offices or banks; and
indeed, like the celebrated clan M'Gregor, I may justly describe myself
as being nameless by day. But," he continued, rising to his feet, "by
night, and among my desperate followers, I am the redoubted Zero."
Somerset was unacquainted with the name; but he politely expressed
surprise and gratification. "I am to understand," he continued, "that,
under this alias, you follow the profession of a dynamiter?"[3]
The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the glasses.
"I do," he said. "In this dark period of time, a star--the star of
dynamite--has risen for the oppressed; and among those who practise its
use, so thick beset with dangers and attended by such incredible
difficulties and disappointments, few have been more assiduous, and not
many--" He paused, and a shade of embarrassment appeared upon his
face--"not many have been more successful than myself."
"I can imagine," observed Somerset, "that, from the sweeping
consequences looked for, the career is not devoid of interest. You have,
besides, some of the entertainment of the game of hide-and-seek. But it
would still seem to me--I speak as a layman--that nothing could be
simpler or safer than to deposit an infernal machine and retire to an
adjacent county to await the painful consequences."
"You speak, indeed," returned the plotter, with some evidence of warmth,
"you speak, indeed, most ignorantly. Do you make nothing, then, of such
a peril as we share this moment? Do you think it nothing to occupy a
house like this one, mined, menaced, and, in a word, literally tottering
to its fall?"
"Good God!" ejaculated Somerset.
"And when you speak of ease," pursued Zero, "in this age of scientific
studies, you fill me with surprise. Are you not aware that chemicals are
proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork as capricious as the very
devil? Do you see upon my brow these furrows of anxiety? do you observe
the silver threads that mingle with my hair? Clockwork, clockwork has
stamped them on my brow--chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks!
No, Mr. Somerset," he resumed, after a moment's pause, his voice still
quivering with sensibility, "you must not suppose the dynamiter's life
to be all gold. On the contrary: you cannot picture to yourself the
bloodshot vigils and the staggering disappointments of a life like mine.
I have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down late; my bag is
ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried with white face to
deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England, the
massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and lo! a snap
like that of a child's pistol, an offensive smell, and the entire loss
of so much time and plant! If," he concluded musingly, "we had been
merely able to recover the lost bags, I believe, with but a touch or
two, I could have remedied the peccant engine. But what with the loss of
plant and the almost insuperable scientific difficulties of the task,
our friends in France are almost ready to desert the chosen medium. They
propose, instead, to break up the drainage system of cities and sweep
off whole populations with the devastating typhoid pestilence: a
tempting and a scientific project: a process, indiscriminate indeed, but
of idyllical simplicity. I recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have
something of the poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune.
And, for my small part, I shall remain devoted to that more emphatic,
more striking, and (if you please) more popular method of the explosive
bomb. Yes," he cried, with unshaken hope, "I will still continue and, I
feel it in my bosom, I shall yet succeed."
"Two things I remark," said Somerset. "The first somewhat staggers me.
Have you, then--in all this course of life, which you have sketched so
vividly--have you not once succeeded?"
"Pardon me," said Zero. "I have had one success. You behold in me the
author of the outrage of Red Lion Court."
"But if I remember right," objected Somerset, "the thing was a _fiasco_.
A scavenger's barrow and some copies of the _Weekly Budget_--these were
the only victims."
"You will pardon me again," returned Zero, with positive asperity: "a
child was injured."
"And that fitly brings me to my second point," said Somerset. "For I
observed you to employ the word 'indiscriminate.' Now, surely, a
scavenger's barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the very
acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate and, pardon me, of ineffectual
reprisal."
"Did I employ the word?" asked Zero. "Well, I will not defend it. But
for efficiency, you touch on graver matters; and before entering upon so
vast a subject, permit me once more to fill our glasses. Disputation is
dry work," he added, with a charming gaiety of manner.
Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a stalwart grog;
and Zero, leaning back with an air of some complacency, proceeded more
largely to develop his opinions.
"The indiscriminate?" he began. "War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate.
War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless
scavenger. No more," he concluded, beaming, "no more do I. Whatever may
strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the
guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion
steamer, is welcome to my simple plans. You are not," he inquired, with
a shade of sympathetic interest, "you are not, I trust, a believer?"
"Sir, I believe in nothing," said the young man.