messenger"; and with the sweetest of smiles she despatched him to the
east end of London, to an address which he was unable to find. This was
a bitter pill to the knight-errant; but when he returned at night, worn
out with fruitless wandering and dismayed by his _fiasco_, the lady
received him with a friendly gaiety, protesting that all was for the
best, since she had changed her mind and long since repented of her
message.
Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and courage, and
determined to protect Teresa with his life. But a painful shock awaited
him. In the narrow and silent Hanway Street, she turned suddenly about
and addressed him with a manner and a light in her eyes, that were new
to the young man's experience.
"Do I understand that you follow me, Senor?" she cried. "Are these the
manners of the English gentleman?"
Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers to be
forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at length dismissed,
crestfallen and heavy of heart. The check was final; he gave up that
road to service; and began once more to hang about the square or on the
terrace, filled with remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit
object for the scorn and envy of older men. In these idle hours, while
he was courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out
naturally that he should observe the manners and appearance of such as
came about the house. One person alone was the occasional visitor of the
young lady: a man of considerable stature and distinguished only by the
doubtful ornament of a chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.
Something in his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon
him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered courage to
inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more dismayed by her
reply.
"That gentleman," said she, a smile struggling to her face, "that
gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal from you, desires my hand in
marriage, and presses me with the most respectful ardour. Alas, what am
I to say? I, the forlorn Teresa, how shall I refuse or accept such
protestations?"
Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfixed him; and
he had scarce the strength of mind to take his leave with decency. In
the solitude of his own chamber, he gave way to every manifestation of
despair. He passionately adored the Senorita; but it was not only the
thought of her possible union with another that distressed his soul, it
was the indefeasible conviction that her suitor was unworthy. To a duke,
a bishop, a victorious general, or any man adorned with obvious
qualities, he had resigned her with a sort of bitter joy; he saw himself
follow the wedding party from a great way off; he saw himself return to
the poor house, then robbed of its jewel; and while he could have wept
for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly. But this affair
looked otherwise. The man was patently no gentleman; he had a startled,
skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were black, his eyes evasive, his
love perhaps was a pretext; he was perhaps, under this deep disguise, a
Cuban emissary! Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the
next evening, about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at a
spot whence his eye commanded the three issues of the square.
Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door; and the man with
the chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and was seen by Harry to
enter the house with a brown box hoisted on his back. Half an hour
later, he came forth again without the box, and struck eastward at a
rapid walk; and Desborough, with the same skill and caution that he had
displayed in following Teresa, proceeded to dog the steps of her
admirer. The man began to loiter, studying with apparent interest the
wares of the small fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he returned hurriedly
upon his former course; and then, as though he had suddenly conquered a
moment's hesitation, once more set forth with resolute and swift steps
in the direction of Lincoln's Inn. At length, in a deserted by-street,
he turned; and coming up to Harry with a countenance which seemed to
have become older and whiter, inquired with some severity of speech if
he had not had the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.
"You have, sir," said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with a good show of
stoutness; "and I will not deny that I was following you on purpose.
Doubtless," he added, for he supposed that all men's minds must still be
running on Teresa, "you can divine my reason."
At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a palsied
tremor. He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the utterance which his
fear denied him; and then, whipping sharply about, he took to his heels
at the most furious speed of running.
Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue; and by
the time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition was only
rewarded by a glimpse of the man with the chin-beard mounting into a
hansom, which immediately after disappeared into the moving crowds of
Holborn.
Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned to the
house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to knock at the
fair Cuban's door. She bade him enter, and he found her kneeling with
rather a disconsolate air beside a brown wooden trunk.
"Senorita," he broke out, "I doubt whether that man's character is what
he wishes you to believe. His manner, when he found, and indeed when I
admitted, that I was following him, was not the manner of an honest
man."
"Oh!" she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, "Don Quixote,
Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against windmills?" And then,
with a laugh, "Poor soul!" she added, "how you must have terrified him!
For know that the Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may
soon be hunted down. Even yon humble clerk from my solicitor's office
may find himself at any moment the quarry of armed spies."
"A humble clerk!" cried Harry, "why, you told me yourself that he wished
to marry you!"
"I thought you English like what you call a joke," replied the lady
calmly. "As a matter of fact he is my lawyer's clerk, and has been here
to-night charged with disastrous news. I am in sore straits, Senor
Harry. Will you help me?"
At this most welcome word, the young man's heart exulted; and in the
hope, pride, and self-esteem, that kindled with the very thought of
service, he forgot to dwell upon the lady's jest. "Can you ask?" he
cried. "What is there that I can do? Only tell me that."
With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the Fair Cuban
laid her hand upon the box. "This box," she said, "contains my jewels,
papers, and clothes; all, in a word, that still connects me with Cuba
and my dreadful past. They must now be smuggled out of England; or, by
the opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy. To-morrow, on board
the Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the box; the problem still unsolved
is to find some one to carry it as far as Holyhead, to see it placed on
board the steamer, and instantly return to town. Will you be he? Will
you leave to-morrow by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear
still in mind that you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and without so
much as a look behind you, or a single movement to betray your interest,
leave the box where you have put it and come straight on shore? Will
you do this, and so save your friend?"
"I do not clearly understand ..." began Harry.
"No more do I," replied the Cuban. "It is not necessary that we should,
so long as we obey the lawyer's orders."
"Senorita," returned Harry gravely, "I think this, of course, a very
little thing to do for you, when I would willingly do all. But suffer me
to say one word. If London is unsafe for your treasures, it cannot long
be safe for you; and indeed, if I at all fathom the plan of your
solicitor, I fear I may find you already fled on my return. I am not
considered clever, and can only speak out plainly what is in my heart:
that I love you, and that I cannot bear to lose all knowledge of you. I
hope no more than to be your servant; I ask no more than just that I
shall hear of you. Oh, promise me so much!"
"You shall," she said, after a pause. "I promise you, you shall." But
though she spoke with earnestness, the marks of great embarrassment and
a strong conflict of emotions appeared upon her face.
"I wish to tell you," resumed Desborough, "in case of accidents...."
"Accidents!" she cried: "why do you say that?"
"I do not know," said he, "you may be gone before my return, and we may
not meet again for long. And so I wished you to know this: That since
the day you gave me the cigarette, you have never once, not once, been
absent from my mind; and if it will in any way serve you, you may
crumple me up like that piece of paper, and throw me on the fire. I
would love to die for you."
"Go!" she said, "Go now at once! My brain is in a whirl. I scarce know
what we are talking. Go; and good-night; and oh, may you come safe!"
Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young man's mind;
and as he recalled her face struck suddenly white and the broken
utterance of her last words, his heart at once exulted and misgave him.
Love had indeed looked upon him with a tragic mask; and yet what
mattered, since at least it was love--since at least she was commoved at
their division? He got to bed with these parti-coloured thoughts; passed
from one dream to another all night long, the white face of Teresa still
haunting him, wrung with unspoken thoughts; and, in the grey of the
dawn, leaped suddenly out of bed, in a kind of horror. It was already
time for him to rise. He dressed, made his breakfast on cold food that
had been laid for him the night before; and went down to the room of his
idol for the box. The door was open; a strange disorder reigned within;
the furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the room left bare of
impediment, as though for the pacing of a creature with a tortured mind.
There lay the box, however, and upon the lid a paper with these words:
"Harry, I hope to be back before you go. Teresa."
He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the table. She had
called him Harry: that should be enough, he thought, to fill the day
with sunshine; and yet somehow the sight of that disordered room still
poisoned his enjoyment. The door of the bedchamber stood gaping open;
and though he turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not
but observe the bed had not been slept in. He was still pondering what
this should mean, still trying to convince himself that all was well,
when the moving needle of his watch summoned him to set forth without
delay. He was before all things a man of his word; ran round to
Southampton Row to fetch a cab; and, taking the box on the front seat,
drove off towards the terminus.
The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse the eye; and
the young man's attention centred on the dumb companion of his drive. A
card was nailed upon one side, bearing the superscription: "Miss Doolan,
passenger to Dublin. Glass. With care." He thought with a sentimental
shock that the fair idol of his heart was perhaps driven to adopt the
name of Doolan; and, as he still studied the card, he was aware of a
deadly black depression settling steadily upon his spirits. It was in
vain for him to contend against the tide; in vain that he shook himself
or tried to whistle: the sense of some impending blow was not to be
averted. He looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab pursued its
way without a trace of any follower. He gave ear; and over and above the
jolting of the wheels upon the road, he was conscious of a certain
regular and quiet sound that seemed to issue from the box. He put his
ear to the cover; at one moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate
ticking; the next, the sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening
recapture it. He laughed at himself; but still the gloom continued; and
it was with more than the common relief of an arrival, that he leaped
from the cab before the station.
Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some thirty minutes
earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the box into the charge
of a porter, who set it on a truck, he proceeded briskly to pace the
platform. Presently the bookstall opened; and the young man was looking
at the books when he was seized by the arm. He turned and, though she
was closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.
"Where is it?" she asked; and the sound of her voice surprised him.
"It?" he said. "What?"
"The box. Have it put on a cab instantly. I am in fearful haste."
He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not daring to
trouble her with questions; and when the cab had been brought round, and
the box mounted on the front, she passed a little way off upon the
pavement and beckoned him to follow.
"Now," said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at
first affected him, "you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the
steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say
to him that all has been put off: if not," she added, with a sobbing
sigh, "it does not matter. So, good-bye."
"Teresa," said Harry, "get into your cab, and I will go along with you.
You are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and till I know the
whole, not even you can make me leave you."
"You will not?" she asked. "Oh, Harry, it were better!"
"I will not," said Harry stoutly.
She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand suddenly
and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and, still holding
him, walked to the cab-door.
"Where are we to drive?" asked Harry.
"Home, quickly," she answered; "double fare!" And as soon as they had
both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily trundled from the
station.
Teresa leaned back in a corner. The whole way Harry could perceive her
tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no explanation. At the
door of the house in Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman lowered
the box, which Harry, glad to display his strength, received upon his
shoulders.
"Let the man take it," she whispered. "Let the man take it."
"I will do no such thing," said Harry cheerfully; and having paid the
fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she had opened with her
key. The landlady and maid were gone upon their morning errands; the
house was empty and still; and as the rattling of the cab died away down
Gloucester Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his
burthen, he heard close against his shoulders the same faint and muffled
ticking as before. The lady, still preceding him, opened the door of her
room, and helped him to lower the box tenderly in the corner by the
window.
"And now," said Harry, "what is wrong?"
"You will not go away?" she cried, with a sudden break in her voice and
beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience. "Oh, Harry,
Harry, go away! Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I deserve!"
"The fate?" repeated Harry. "What is this?"
"No fate," she resumed. "I do not know what I am saying. But I wish to
be alone. You may come back this evening, Harry; come again when you
like; but leave me now, only leave me now!" And then suddenly, "I have
an errand," she exclaimed; "you cannot refuse me that!"
"No," replied Harry, "you have no errand. You are in grief or danger.
Lift your veil and tell me what it is."
"Then," she said, with a sudden composure, "you leave but one course
open to me." And raising the veil, she showed him a countenance from
which every trace of colour had fled, eyes marred with weeping, and a
brow on which resolve had conquered fear. "Harry," she began, "I am not
what I seem."
"You have told me that before," said Harry, "several times."
"Oh, Harry, Harry," she cried, "how you shame me! But this is the God's
truth. I am a dangerous and wicked girl. My name is Clara Luxmore. I was
never nearer Cuba than Penzance. From first to last I have cheated and
played with you. And what I am I dare not even name to you in words.
Indeed, until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never
grasped the depth and foulness of my guilt."
The young man looked upon her aghast. Then a generous current poured
along his veins. "That is all one," he said. "If you be all you say, you
have the greater need of me."
"Is it possible," she exclaimed, "that I have schemed in vain? And will
nothing drive you from this house of death?"
"Of death?" he echoed.
"Death!" she cried: "death! In that box which you have dragged about
London and carried on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the
trigger's mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite."
"My God!" cried Harry.
"Ah!" she continued wildly, "will you flee now? At any moment you may
hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building. I was sure M'Guire
was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my
fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own
contrivances. I knew then I loved you--Harry, will you go now? Will you
not spare me this unwilling crime?"
Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he
turned to her.
"Is it," he asked hoarsely, "an infernal machine?"
Her lips formed the word "yes"; which her voice refused to utter.
With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that
still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured
sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.
"For whom?" he asked.
"What matters it?" she cried, seizing him by the arm. "If you may still
be saved, what matter questions?"
"God in Heaven!" cried Harry. "And the Children's Hospital! At whatever
cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!"
"It cannot," she gasped. "The power of man cannot avert the blow. But
you, Harry--you, my beloved--you may still----"
And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden catch
was audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the hour. For
one second, the two stared at each other with lifted brows and stony
eyes. Then Harry, throwing one arm over his face, with the other
clutched the girl to his breast and staggered against the wall.
A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes blinked
against the coming horror; and still clinging together like drowning
people, they fell to the floor. Then followed a prolonged and strident
hissing as from the indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by
the throat; the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.
Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at length they drew
themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture, the first object
that greeted their vision was the box reposing uninjured in its corner,
but still leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.
"Oh, poor Zero!" cried the girl with a strange sobbing laugh. "Alas,
poor Zero! This will break his heart!"
THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (_concluded_)
Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary
to all custom, was unlocked; and, bursting in, the young man found Zero
seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular dejection. Close beside him
stood an untasted grog, the mark of strong preoccupation. The room
besides was in confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor
was strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of this
disorder lay a lady's glove.
"I have come," cried Somerset, "to make an end of this. Either you will
instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost what it may) I will
denounce you to the police."
"Ah!" replied Zero, slowly shaking his head. "You are too late, dear
fellow! I am already at the end of all my hopes and fallen to be a
laughing-stock and mockery. My reading," he added, with a gentle
despondency of manner, "has not been much among romances; yet I recall
from one a phrase that depicts my present state with critical
exactitude; and you behold me sitting here 'like a burst drum.'"
"What has befallen you?" cried Somerset.
"My last batch," retorted the plotter wearily, "like all the others, is
a hollow mockery and a fraud. In vain do I combine the elements; in vain
adjust the springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of
disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a
soul that I can face. My subordinates themselves have turned upon me.
What language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, what
pungency of expression! She came once; I could have pardoned that, for
she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this
crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane. Yes, dear fellow, I
have drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable for ...
well, well! Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead. I am
extinct. It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should
be haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful
description; but here," he added, "is another: 'Othello's occupation's
gone.' Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and
how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend to
a less glorious life?"
"I cannot describe how you relieve me," returned Somerset, sitting down
on one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the middle of the
floor. "I had conceived a sort of maudlin toleration for your character;
I have a great distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty;
and upon both grounds, your news delights me. But I seem to perceive,"
he added, "a certain sound of ticking in this box."
"Yes," replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, "I have set
several of them going."
"My God!" cried Somerset, bounding to his feet. "Machines?"
"Machines!" returned the plotter bitterly. "Machines indeed! I blush to
be their author. Alas!" he said, burying his face in his hands, "that I
should live to say it!"
"Madman!" cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm. "What am I to
understand? Have you, indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in
motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?"
"'Hoist with his own petard?'" returned the plotter musingly. "One more
quotation: strange! But indeed my brain is struck with numbness. Yes,
dear boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivances in motion. The one on
which you are sitting, I have timed for half an hour. Yon other----"
"Half an hour!" echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation. "Merciful
heavens, in half an hour?"
"Dear fellow, why so much excitement?" inquired Zero. "My dynamite is
not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give it him
to play with. You see this brick?" he continued, lifting a cake of the
infernal compound from the laboratory-table. "At a touch it should
explode, and that with such unconquerable energy as should bestrew the
square with ruins. Well, now, behold! I dash it on the floor."
Somerset sprang forward, and, with the strength of the very ecstasy of
terror, wrested the brick from his possession. "Heavens!" he cried,
wiping his brow; and then with more care than ever mother handled her
first-born withal, gingerly transported the explosive to the far end of
the apartment; the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side,
dispiritedly watching him.
"It was entirely harmless," he sighed. "They describe it as burning like
tobacco."
"In the name of fortune," cried Somerset, "what have I done to you, or
what have you done to yourself, that you should persist in this insane
behaviour? If not for your own sake, then for mine, let us depart from
this doomed house, where I profess I have not the heart to leave you;
and then, if you will take my advice, and if your determination be
sincere, you will instantly quit this city, where no further occupation
can detain you."
"Such, dear fellow, was my own design," replied the plotter. "I have, as
you observe, no further business here; and once I have packed a little
bag, I shall ask you to share a frugal meal, to go with me as far as to
the station, and see the last of a broken-hearted man. And yet," he
added, looking on the boxes with a lingering regret, "I should have
liked to make quite certain. I cannot but suspect my underlings of some
mismanagement; it may be fond, but yet I cherish that idea: it may be
the weakness of a man of science, but yet," he cried, rising into some
energy, "I will never, I cannot if I try, believe that my poor dynamite
has had fair usage!"
"Five minutes!" said Somerset, glancing with horror at the timepiece.
"If you do not instantly buckle to your bag, I leave you."
"A few necessaries," returned Zero, "only a few necessaries, dear
Somerset, and you behold me ready."