CONCERNING A NEW DANGER WHICH THREATENED CAPTAIN STANLEY LAKE.
The ambitious captain walked out, sniffing, white, and incensed. There
was an air of immovable resolution in the few words which Dorcas had
spoken which rather took him by surprise. The captain was a terrorist. He
acted instinctively on the theory that any good that was to be got from
human beings was to be extracted from their fears. He had so operated on
Mark Wylder; and so sought to coerce his sister Rachel. He had hopes,
too, of ultimately catching the good attorney napping, and leading him
too, bound and docile, into his ergastulum, although he was himself just
now in jeopardy from that quarter. James Dutton, too. Sooner or later he
would get Master Jim into a fix, and hold him also spell-bound in the
same sort of nightmare.
It was not from malice. The worthy attorney had much more of that leaven
than he. Stanley Lake did not care to smash any man, except such as stood
in his way. He had a mercantile genius, and never exercised his craft,
violence and ferocity, on men or objects, when no advantage was
obtainable by so doing. When, however, fortune so placed them that one or
other must go to the wall, Captain Stanley Lake was awfully unscrupulous.
But, having disabled, and struck him down, and won the stakes, he would
have given what remained of him his cold, white hand to shake, or sipped
claret with him at his own table, and told him stories, and entertained
him with sly, sarcastic sallies, and thought how he could make use of him
in an amicable way.
But Stanley Lake's cold, commercial genius, his craft and egotism, were
frustrated occasionally by his temper, which, I am afraid, with all its
external varnish, was of the sort which is styled diabolical. People said
also, what is true of most terrorists, that he was himself quite capable
of being frightened; and also, that he lied with too fertile an audacity:
and, like a man with too many bills afloat, forgot his endorsements
occasionally, and did not recognise his own acceptances when presented
after an interval. Such were some of this dangerous fellow's weak points.
But on the whole it was by no means a safe thing to cross his path; and
few who did so came off altogether scathless.
He pursued his way with a vague feeling of danger and rage, having
encountered an opposition of so much more alarming a character than he
had anticipated, and found his wife not only competent _ferre aspectum_
to endure his maniacal glare and scowl, but serenely to defy his violence
and his wrath. He had abundance of matter for thought and perturbation,
and felt himself, when the images of Larcom, Larkin, and Jim Dutton
crossed the retina of his memory, some thrill of the fear which 'hath
torment'--the fear of a terrible coercion which he liked so well to
practise in the case of others.
In this mood he paced, without minding in what direction he went, under
those great rows of timber which over-arch the pathway leading toward
Redman's Dell--the path that he and Mark Wylder had trod in that misty
moonlight walk on which I had seen them set out together.
Before he had walked five minutes in this direction, he was encountered
by a little girl in a cloak, who stopped and dropped a courtesy. The
captain stopped also, and looked at her with a stare which, I suppose,
had something forbidding in it, for the child was frightened. But the
wild and menacing look was unconscious, and only the reflection of the
dark speculations and passions which were tumbling and breaking in his
soul.
'Well, child,' said he, gently, 'I think I know your face, but I forget
your name.'
'Little Margery, please Sir, from Miss Lake at Redman's Farm,' she
replied with a courtesy.
'Oh! to be sure, yes. And how is Miss Rachel?'
'Very bad with a headache, please, Sir.'
'Is she at home?'
'Yes, Sir, please.'
'Any message?'
'Yes, Sir, please--a note for you, Sir;' and she produced a note, rather,
indeed, a letter.
'She desired me, Sir, please, to give it into your own hand, if I could,
and not to leave it, please, Sir, unless you were at home when I
reached.'
He read the direction, and dropped it unopened into the pocket of his
shooting coat. The peevish glance with which he eyed it betrayed a
presentiment of something unpleasant.
'Any answer required?'
'No, Sir, please--only to leave it.'
'And Miss Lake is quite well?'
'No, Sir, please--a bad headache to-day.'
'Oh! I'm very sorry, indeed. Tell her so. She is at home, is she?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Very well; that's all. Say I am very sorry to hear she is suffering; and
if I can find time, I hope to see her to-day; and remember to say I have
not read her letter, but if I find it requires an answer, it shall have
one.'
He looked round like a man newly awakened, and up among the great boughs
and interlacing foliage of the noble trees, and the child made him two
courtesies, and departed towards Redman's Farm.
Lake sauntered back slowly toward the Hall. On his way, a rustic seat
under the shadow invited him, and he sat down, drawing Rachel's letter
from his pocket.
What a genius they have for teasing! How women do contrive to waste our
time and patience over nonsense! How ingeniously perverse their whimsies
are! I do believe Beelzebub employs them still, as he did in Eden, for
the special plague of us, poor devils. Here's a lecture or an exhortation
from Miss Radie, and a quantity of infinitely absurd advice, all which I
am to read and inwardly digest, and discuss with her whenever she
pleases. I've a great mind to burn it quietly.'
But he applied his match, instead, to his cigar; and having got it well
lighted, he leaned back, and broke the seal, and read this letter, which,
I suspect, notwithstanding his preliminary thoughts, he fancied might
contain matter of more practical import:--
'I write to you, my beloved and only brother, Stanley, in an altered
state of mind, and with clearer views of duty than, I think, I have ever
had before.'
'Just as I conjectured,' muttered Stanley, with a bitter smile, as he
shook the ashes off the top of his cigar--'a woman's homily.'
He read on, and a livid frown gradually contracted his forehead as he did
so.
'I do not know, Stanley, what your feelings may be. Mine have been the
same ever since that night in which I was taken into a confidence so
dreadful. The circumstances are fearful; but far more dreadful to me, the
mystery in which I have lived ever since. I sometimes think I have only
myself to blame. But you know, my poor brother, why I consented, and with
what agony. Ever since, I have lived in terror, and worse, in
degradation. I did not know, until it was too late, how great was my
guilt. Heaven knows, when I consented to that journey, I did not
comprehend its full purpose, though I knew enough to have warned me of my
danger, and undertook it in great fear and anguish of mind. I can never
cease to mourn over my madness. Oh! Stanley, you do not know what it is
to feel, as I do, the shame and treachery of my situation; to try to
answer the smiles of those who, at least, once loved me, and to take
their hands; to kiss Dorcas and good Dolly; and feel that all the time I
am a vile impostor, stained incredibly, from whom, if they knew me, they
would turn in horror and disgust. Now, Stanley, I can bear anything but
this baseness--anything but the life-long practice of perfidy--that, I
will not and cannot endure. _Dorcas must know the truth._ That there is a
secret jealously guarded from her, she does know--no woman could fail to
perceive that; and there are few, Stanley, who would not prefer the
certainty of the worst, to the anguish of such relations of mystery and
reserve with a _husband_. She is clever, she is generous, and has many
noble qualities. She will see what is right, and do it. Me she may hate,
and must despise; but that were to me more endurable than friendship
gained on false pretences. I repeat, therefore, Stanley, that _Dorcas
must know the whole truth_. Do not suppose, my poor brother, that I write
from impulse--I have deeply thought on the subject.'
'_Deeply_,' repeated Stanley, with a sneer.
'And the more I reflect, the more am I convinced--if _you_ will not tell
her, Stanley, that _I_ must. But it will be wiser and better, terrible as
it may be, that the revelation should come from _you_, whom she has made
her husband. The dreadful confidence would be more terrible from any
other. Be courageous then, Stanley; you will be happier when you have
disclosed the truth, and released, at all events, one of your victims.
'Your sorrowful and only sister,
'RACHEL.'
On finishing the letter, Stanley rose quickly to his feet. He had become
gradually so absorbed in reading it, that he laid his cigar unconsciously
beside him, and suffered it to go out. With downcast look, and an angry
contortion, he tore the sheets of note-paper across, and was on the point
of reducing them to a thousand little snow flakes, and giving them to the
wind, when, on second thoughts, he crumpled them together, and thrust
them into his breast pocket.
His excitement was too intense for foul terms, or even blasphemy. With
the edge of his nether lip nipped in his teeth, and his clenched hands in
his pockets, he walked through the forest trees to the park, and in his
solitudes hurried onward as if his life depended on his speed. Gradually
he recovered his self-possession. He sat down under the shade of a knot
of beech trees, overlooking that ill-omened tarn, which we have often
mentioned, upon a lichen-stained rock, his chin resting on his clenched
hand, his elbow on his knee, and the heel of his other foot stamping out
bits of the short, green sod.
'That d--d girl deserves to be shot for her treachery,' was the first
sentence that broke from his white lips.
It certainly was an amazing outrage upon his self-esteem, that the secret
which was the weapon of terror by which he meant to rule his sister
Rachel, should, by her slender hand, be taken so easily from his grasp,
and lifted to crush him.
The captain's plans were not working by any means so smoothly as he had
expected. That sudden stab from Jos. Larkin, whom he always despised, and
now hated--whom he believed to be a fifth-rate, pluckless rogue, without
audacity, without invention; whom he was on the point of tripping up,
that he should have turned short and garotted the gallant captain, was a
provoking turn of fortune.
That when a dire necessity subjugated his will, his contempt, his rage,
and he inwardly decided that the attorney's extortion must be submitted
to, his wife--whom he never made any account of in the transaction, whom
he reckoned carelessly on turning about as he pleased, by a few
compliments and cajoleries--should have started up, cold and inflexible
as marble, in his path, to forbid the payment of the black mail, and
expose him to the unascertained and formidable consequences of Dutton's
story, and the disappointed attorney's vengeance--was another stroke of
luck which took him altogether by surprise.
And to crown all, Miss Radie had grown tired of keeping her own secret,
and must needs bring to light the buried disgraces which all concerned
were equally interested in hiding away for ever.
Stanley Lake's position, if all were known, was at this moment formidable
enough. But he had been fifty times over, during his brief career, in
scrapes of a very menacing kind; once or twice, indeed, of the most
alarming nature. His temper, his craft, his impetus, were always driving
him into projects and situations more or less critical. Sometimes he won,
sometimes he failed; but his audacious energy hitherto had extricated
him. The difficulties of his present situation were, however, appalling,
and almost daunted his semi-diabolical energies.
From Rachel to Dorcas, from Dorcas to the attorney, and from him to
Dutton, and back again, he rambled in the infernal litany he muttered
over the inauspicious tarn, among the enclosing banks and undulations,
and solitary and lonely woods.
'Lake Avernus,' said a hollow voice behind him, and a long grisly hand
was laid on his shoulder.
A cold breath of horror crept from his brain to his heel, as he turned
about and saw the large, blanched features and glassy eyes of Uncle Lorne
bent over him.
'Oh, Lake Avernus, is it?' said Lake, with an angry sneer, and raising
his hat with a mock reverence.
'Ay! it is the window of hell, and the spirits in prison come up to see
the light of it. Did you see him looking up?' said Uncle Lorne, with his
pallid smile.
'Oh! of course--Napoleon Bonaparte leaning on old Dr. Simcock's arm,'
answered Lake.
It was odd, in the sort of ghastly banter in which he played off this old
man, how much hatred was perceptible.
'No--not he. It is Mark Wylder,' said Uncle Lorne; 'his face comes up
like a white fish within a fathom of the top--it makes me laugh. That's
the way they keep holiday. Can you tell by the sky when it is holiday in
hell? _I_ can.'
And he laughed, and rubbed his long fingers together softly.
'Look! ha! ha!--Look! ha! ha! ha!--_Look!_' he resumed pointing with his
cadaverous forefinger towards the middle of the pool.
'I told you this morning it was a holiday,' and he laughed very quietly
to himself.
'Look how his nostrils go like a fish's gills. It is a funny way for a
gentleman, and _he's_ a gentleman. Every fool knows the Wylders are
gentlemen--all gentlemen in misfortune. He has a brother that is walking
about in his coffin. Mark has no coffin; it is all marble steps; and a
wicked seraph received him, and blessed him till his hair stood up. Let
me whisper you.'
'No, not just at this moment, please,' said Lake, drawing away,
disgusted, from the maniacal leer and titter of the gigantic old man.
'Aye, aye--another time--some night there's aurora borealis in the sky.
You know this goes under ground all the way to Vallambrosa?'
'Thank you; I was not aware: that's very convenient. Had you not better
go down and speak to your friend in the water?'
'Young man, I bless you for remembering,' said Uncle Lorne, solemnly.
'What was Mark Wylder's religion, that I may speak to him comfortably?'
'An Anabaptist, I conjecture, from his present situation,' replied Lake.
'No, that's in the lake of fire, where the wicked seraphim and cherubim
baptise, and anabaptise, and hold them under, with a great stone laid
across their breasts. I only know two of their clergy--the African vicar,
quite a gentleman, and speaks through his nose; and the archbishop with
wings; his face is so burnt, he's all eyes and mouth, and on one hand has
only one finger, and he tickles me with it till I almost give up the
ghost. The ghost of Miss Baily is a lie, he said, by my soul; and he
likes you--he loves you. Shall I write it all in a book, and give it you?
I meet Mark Wylder in three places sometimes. Don't move, till I go down;
he's as easily frightened as a fish.'
And Uncle Lorne crept down the bank, tacking, and dodging, and all the
time laughing softly to himself; and sometimes winking with a horrid,
wily grimace at Stanley, who fervently wished him at the bottom of the
tarn.
'I say,' said Stanley, addressing the keeper, whom by a beck he had
brought to his side, 'you don't allow him, surely, to go alone now?'
'No, Sir--since your order, Sir,' said the stern, reserved official.
'Nor to come into any place but this--the park, I mean?'
'No, Sir.'
'And do you mind, try and get him home always before nightfall. It is
easy to frighten him. Find out what frightens him, and do it or say it.
It is dangerous, don't you see? and he might break his d--d neck any time
among those rocks and gullies, or get away altogether from you in the
dark.'
So the keeper, at the water's brink, joined Uncle Lorne, who was talking,
after his fashion, into the dark pool. And Stanley Lake--a general in
difficulties--retraced his steps toward the park gate through which he
had come, ruminating on his situation and resources.