THE COMPANION DISCLOSES HIMSELF.
But this sort of musing and wonderment leads to nothing; and Mr. Jos.
Larkin being an active-minded man, and practical withal, in a little
while shook it off, and from his breast-pocket took a tiny treasure of a
pocket-book, in which were some bank-notes, precious memoranda in pencil,
and half-a-dozen notes and letters, bearing upon cases and negotiations
on which, at this juncture, he was working.
Into these he got, and now and then brought out a letter bearing on some
point of speculation, and read it through, and then closed his eyes for
three minutes at a time, and thought. But he had not his tin boxes there;
and, with a man of his stamp, speculation, which goes upon guess as to
dates and quantities, which are all ascertainable by reference to black
and white, soon loses its interest. And the evidence in his pocket being
pretty soon exhausted, he glanced again at his companion over the way.
He had not moved all this while. He had a high stand-up collar to the
cape he wore, which covered his cheeks and nose and outside was loosely
swathed a large, cream-coloured, cashmere handkerchief. The battered felt
hat covered his forehead and eyebrows, and left, in fact, but a narrow
streak of separation between.
Through this, however, for the first time, Jos. Larkin now saw the
glitter of a pair of eyes gazing at him, he fancied. At all events there
was the glitter, and the gentleman was awake.
Jos. returned the gentleman's gaze. It was his lofty aristocratic stare;
and he expected to see the glittering lights that peeped through the dark
chink between brim and collar shut up under its rebuke. But nothing of
the kind took place, and the ocular exercises of the attorney were
totally ineffectual.
If the fellow knew that his fixed stare was observed through his narrow
embrasure--and Larkin thought he could hardly be insensible to the
reproof of his return fire--he must be a particularly impertinent person.
It would be ridiculous, however, to continue a contest of this kind; so
the attorney lowered the window and looked out. Then he pulled it up, and
took to his newspaper again, and read the police cases, and a very
curious letter from a poor-house doctor, describing a boy who was quite
blind in daylight, but could see very fairly by gas or candle light, and
then he lighted upon a very odd story, and said to be undergoing special
sifting at the hands of Sir Samuel Squailes, of a policeman on a certain
beat, in Fleet Street, not far from Temple Bar, who every night saw, at
or about the same hour, a certain suspicious-looking figure walk along
the flag-way and enter a passage. Night after night he pursued this
figure, but always lost it in the same passage. On the last occasion,
however, he succeeded in keeping him in view, and came up with him in a
court, when he was rewarded with a sight of such a face as caused him to
fall to the ground in a fit. This was the Clampcourt ghost, and I believe
he was left in that debatable state, and never after either exploded or
confirmed.
So having ended all these studies, the attorney lifted up his eyes again,
as he lowered his newspaper, and beheld the same glittering gaze fixed
upon him through the same horizontal cranny.
He fancied the eyes were laughing. He could not be sure, of course, but
at all events the persistent stare was extremely, and perhaps
determinedly, impertinent. Forgetting the constitutional canon through
which breathes the genuine spirit of British liberty, he felt for a
moment that he was such a king as that cat had no business to look at;
and he might, perhaps, have politely intimated something of the kind, had
not the enveloped offender made a slight and lazy turn which, burying his
chin still deeper in his breast, altogether concealed his eyes, and so
closed the offensive scrutiny.
In making this change in his position, slight as it was, the gentleman in
the superfluous clothing reminded Mr. Jos. Larkin very sharply for an
instant of--_some_body. There was the rub; who could it be?
The figure was once more a mere mountain of rug. What was the peculiarity
in that slight movement--something in the knee? something in the elbow?
something in the general character?
Why had he not spoken to him? The opportunity, for the present, was past.
But he was now sure that his fellow-traveller was an acquaintance, who
had probably recognised him. Larkin--except when making a mysterious trip
at election times, or in an emergency, in a critical case--was a frank,
and as he believed could be a fascinating _compagnon de voyage_, such and
so great was his urbanity on a journey. He rather liked talking with
people; he sometimes heard things not wholly valueless, and once or twice
had gathered hints in this way, which saved him trouble, or money, which
is much the same thing. Therefore upon principle he was not averse from
that direst of bores, railway conversation.
And now they slackened speed, with a long, piercing whistle, and came to
a standstill at 'East Had_don_' (with a jerk upon the last syllable),
'East Had_don_, East Had_don_,' as the herald of the station declared,
and Lawyer Larkin sat straight up, very alert, with a budding smile,
ready to blow out into a charming radiance the moment his
fellow-traveller rose perpendicular, as was to be expected, and peeped
from his window.
But he seemed to know intuitively that Larkin intended telling him,
_apropos_ of the station, that story of the Haddon property, and Sir
James Wotton's will, which as told by the good attorney and jumbled by
the clatter, was perhaps a little dreary. At all events he did not stir,
and carefully abstained from wakening, and in a few seconds more they
were again in motion.
They were now approaching Shillingsworth, where the attorney was to get
out, and put up for the night, having a deed with him to be executed in
that town, and so sweetening his journey with this small incident of
profit.
Now, therefore, looking at his watch, and consulting his time table, he
got his slim valise from under on top of the seat before him, together
with his hat-case, despatch-box, stick, and umbrella, and brushed off
with his handkerchief some of the gritty railway dust that lay drifted in
exterior folds and hollows of his coat, rebuttoned that garment with
precision, arranged his shirt-collar, stuffed his muffler into his
coat-pocket, and made generally that rude sacrifice to the graces with
which natty men precede their exit from the dust and ashes of this sort
of sepulture.
At this moment he had just eight minutes more to go, and the glitter of
the pair of eyes, staring between the muffler and the rim of the hat, met
his view once more.
Mr. Larkin's cigar-case was open in his hand in a moment, and with such a
smile as a genteel perfumer offers his wares with, he presented it toward
the gentleman who was built up in the stack of garments.
He merely shook his head with the slightest imaginable nod and a wave of
a pudgy hand in a soiled dog-skin glove, which emerged for a second from
under a cape, in token that he gratefully declined the favour.
Mr. Larkin smiled and shrugged regretfully, and replaced the case in his
coat pocket. Hardly five minutes remained now. Larkin glanced round for a
topic.
'My journey is over for the present, Sir, and perhaps you would find
these little things entertaining.'
And he tendered with the same smile 'Punch,' the 'Penny Gleaner,' and
'Gray's Magazine,' a religious serial. They were, however, similarly
declined in pantomime.
'He's not particularly polite, whoever he is,' thought Mr. Larkin, with a
sniff. However, he tried the effect of a direct observation. So getting
one seat nearer, he said:--
'Wonderful place Shillingsworth, Sir; one does not really, until one has
visited it two or three times over, at all comprehend its wealth and
importance; and how justly high it deserves to hold its head amongst the
provincial emporia of our productive industry.'
The shapeless traveller in the corner touched his ear with his pudgy
dogskin fingers, and shook his hand and head a little, in token either
that he was deaf, or the noise such as to prevent his hearing, and in the
next moment the glittering eyes closed, and the pantomimist appeared to
be asleep.
And now, again, the train subsided to a stand-still, and Shillingsworth
resounded through the night air, and Larkin scrambled forward to the
window, by which sat the enveloped gentleman, and called the porter, and,
with many unheeded apologies, pulled out his various properties, close by
the knees of the tranquil traveller. So, Mr. Larkin was on the platform,
and his belongings stowed away against the wall of the station-house.
He made an enquiry of the guard, with whom he was acquainted, about his
companion; but the guard knew nothing of the 'party,' neither did the
porter, to whom the guard put a similar question.
So, as Larkin walked down the platform, the whistle sounded and the train
glided forward, and as it passed him, the gentleman in the cloak and
queer hat was looking out. A lamp shone full on him. Mr. Larkin's heart
stood still for a moment, and then bounded up as if it would choke him.
'It's him, by ----!' and Mr. Larkin, forgetting syntax, and propriety,
and religion, all together, and making a frantic race to keep up with the
train, shouted--
'Stop it, stop it--hollo!--stop--stop--ho, stop!'
But he pleaded with the winds; and before he had reached the end of the
platform, the carriage windows were flying by him with the speed of
wheel-spokes, and the end of the coupé, with its red lantern, sailed away
through the cutting.
'Forgot summat, Sir,' said the porter, touching his hat.
'Yes--signal--stop him, can you?'
The porter only scratched his head, under his cap, and smiled sheepishly
after the train. Jos. Larkin knew, the next moment, he had talked
nonsense.
'I--I--yes--I have--have you an engine here:--express--I'll pay
anything.'
But, no, there was 'no engine--not nearer than the junction, and she
might not be spared.'
'How far is the junction?'
'Nineteen and a-half.'
'Nineteen miles! They'll never bring me there, by horse, under two hours,
they are so cursed tedious. Why have not you a spare engine at a place
like this? Shillingsworth! Nice management! Are you certain? Where's the
station-master?'
All this time he kept staring after the faint pulsations on the air that
indicated the flight of the engine.
But it would not do. The train--the image upon earth of the irrevocable,
the irretrievable--was gone, neither to be overtaken nor recalled. The
telegraph was not then, as now, whispering secrets all over England, at
the rate of two hundred miles a second, and five shillings per twenty
words. Larkin would have given large money for an engine, to get up with
the train that was now some five miles on its route, at treble,
quadruple, the common cost of such a magical appliance; but all was vain.
He could only look and mutter after it wildly. Vain to conjecture for
what station that traveller in the battered hat was bound! Idle
speculation! Mere distraction!
Only that Mr. Larkin was altogether the man he was, I think he would have
cursed freely.