WE ARRIVE SAFE IN LONDON AND GO TO MEDWORTH SQUARE—BACK AT “THE
FRENCH HORN”—NEWS AT LAST OF THE _AMARANTH_—I INTERVIEW MR.
CRAGE AND FIND HIM ILL
VERY little remains to tell; but that little is of importance. Of our
journey home together (my sister, Lucy, Bailey Thompson, Parsons, and I,
the others sailing on board the yacht) I need say nothing, for it was
entirely pleasant and uneventful. Our luggage wasn’t even robbed on the
Italian lines; we felt the cold somewhat as we neared home, and that was
all.
At Charing Cross Thompson was evidently well-known to the officials; he
proclaimed us all his friends and above suspicion, so our portmanteaus
were barely looked at; everybody touched their hats to him, and we felt
quite royal in our immunities.
There we parted. Teddy jumped into a cab for Euston, to catch the night
express for his dear Southport; my sister, Lucy, and I went off in a
four-wheeler to Medworth Square; while the still unsuspicious Thompson
remained on the platform, bowing and smiling. Once safely landed at
Charing Cross, our duty to him was plainly at an end. No doubt he would
immediately go off to Brixton, find his sister, Mrs. Wingham, and learn
the truth; but what that might mean to us I really neither knew nor
cared. We had so far so brilliantly succeeded that readers must not
blame me if I continued obstinately optimistic, and believed, whatever
trouble might still be in store for us, we should certainly somehow
emerge from it scathless and joyous.
“I hope,” my sister said, as we drove away, “he won’t think it rude of
me not asking him to come and call. After all, he’s not quite of our
world, and he would need such a deal of explaining, for Frank always
insists on knowing exactly who everybody is.”
“He won’t think of coming of his own accord, I suppose?” whispered Lucy.
“And, oh! I do so wish he wasn’t a friend of Mr. Crage’s.”
“Lor’ bless you!” I philosophically remarked, “it’s even money we none
of us ever see or hear of him again.”
But we did, that day week exactly, when he turned up at “The French
Horn,” purple with ineffective rage, accompanied by his dazed French
_confrère_, Monsieur Cochefort.
In Medworth Square all was as usual. The Thursday evening German band
was playing the usual selection from that tiresome old “Mikado,” and my
sweet niece Mollie was soon tearing down the stairs to welcome us.
“She watch for you every night, ma’am,” her Welsh nurse said; “and last
night she go down-stairs her best, and blow up Mr. Blyth like anything
for doing a door-bell ring exactly like yours, ma’am.”
My brother-in-law was very glad to get his wife back, and, having been
warned by letter, welcomed my dear Lucy with sufficient warmth. How
could he help it? Everywhere she went she won all hearts. Brentin and
Parsons both admired her desperately, and Bob Hines, my sister told me,
paid her more attention on the yacht coming from Monte Carlo than he had
ever been known to pay any one before.
Even Forsyth, who is one of the most _difficile_ men I know (unless the
young lady makes a dead set at him, when he thinks her lovely), even he
said to me, “That’s a real pretty girl, Vincent, and you’re a very lucky
man to get her;” while Miss Rybot once quite surprised me by the warmth
of her congratulation. “She’s so fresh and unaffected, Mr. Blacker,” she
said. “She’s like a breeze that meets you at the end of a country lane
when you come suddenly upon the sea.” Which I thought both poetical and
perfectly true—rather a rare combination nowadays.
The next morning Lucy and I were off to Liverpool Street for Nesshaven
and “The French Horn.” As we drove up, and I saw the familiar place once
more, blinking in the soft February sunshine, just as we had left it, I
could scarcely believe all I had gone through in the way of peril and
adventure. Somehow, if one leaves a place for a time, and has
experiences of moment in the interval, one expects those experiences to
have had their effect elsewhere, too, even on inanimate objects.
I felt older, wiser, more developed, more of a man, and I was astonished
to find the place quite unaltered and Mr. Thatcher looking just the same
as he came running out in his dirty old blazer. His mother was at the
window, gazing through the panes with the naïve curiosity of a child at
new arrivals. She kissed Lucy, and said to me: “Well, here you are back
safe, you bad young man. You’ve given us a rare fright, I can tell
you”—and that was all.
That same evening, when the ladies were safely abed, I had a long talk
with Mr. Thatcher in the bar parlor. After dear Lucy’s escapade, we
decided we might as well be married at once, without waiting for Easter;
and that, with the help of a license, the following Thursday, February
6th, would be none too soon. For myself, apart from other
considerations, I thought it clearly wisest to get married and clear out
of the country, on a lengthy wedding-tour, as quick as we could; so
that, in case of search being made for me, as the head and guiding
spirit of the raid, I might, for some few months at any rate, be _non
inventus_.
Next, I delicately approached the subject of the repurchase of Wharton
Park. I told Mr. Thatcher we had been extraordinarily lucky at Monte
Carlo, and that, by a combination of rare circumstances, I was the
richer by £30,000 than when I started. He was shrewd enough to listen in
silence and ask no sort of question as to what particular system I had
pursued to enable me to return with so large a sum. In fact, I scarcely
gave him time to ask questions, I was so rapid, hurrying forward only to
the main point, whether Crage’s offer were still open and we should
still be able to get the old wretch out.
He told me that since Crage’s last visit and offer to marry Lucy he had
seen nothing of him, and, so far as he knew, the place was still to be
had. We could, if I liked, go up to the house in a day or two and make
inquiries cautiously, or write Crage a letter making him a formal
proposal.
To which I replied that, knowing something of human nature, I judged it
best, when we made our offer, to be prepared with the actual sum in
notes and gold to make it good; for, with a man like Crage, combined of
malice and craft, he would most likely try to bluff and raise us unless
he saw the very gold and notes before him, beyond which, not having any
more to offer, we were not prepared to go.
“Very true,” said Thatcher. “There’s nothing like the ready to tempt a
man, as I know very well. Why, when I was in business—”
“Then all we can do,” I continued, cutting him short, “is to wait in
patience till the boodle—”
“The what?” said Thatcher, taking the pipe out of his mouth.
“It’s an American term—the money we have won, arrives. It’s coming in
the yacht, and should be here in a day or two now. Then we’ll go up with
it to the house, in a bag, and spread it out on the table—”
“And I shall be back in Wharton Park again!” cried Thatcher. “Gracious
powers! Who would have thought it possible? And, of course, it will be
settled on Lucy. Me for life, and then Lucy. How delighted my poor old
mother will be!”
“Yes,” I said, “and that your name may be perpetuated, I will add it to
my own. Father-in-law, here’s health and prosperity to those two fine
old English families, the Thatcher-Blackers!”
So there was nothing we could do but wait in patience for the arrival of
the _Amaranth_. It was tedious, anxious work, for though I never doubted
all would be well, yet Bailey Thompson’s portentous silence somewhat
alarmed me; and as the days passed, and neither he nor the yacht gave
any sign of their existence, my nerves began to get unstrung, and I grew
worn and irritable.
Fortunately, as often happens in the early days of February, the weather
was beautifully fine; so fine that the more flatulent class of
newspapers were full of letters from country correspondents, who were
finding hedge-sparrows’ eggs and raspberries in their gardens, and the
usual Lincolnshire parson broke into jubilant twitterings over his dish
of green pease. Otherwise, I don’t think I really could have borne it.
At last, late on the Tuesday evening, came a telegram from Brentin at
Southampton—“_Safe, will arrive to-morrow_”—and I began to breathe a
little easier. But not a word of any sort from Bailey Thompson, neither
a reproach nor a threat; till I felt like that Damocles of Syracuse who,
though seated on a throne, was yet immediately under a faintly suspended
sword. For here was I, on a throne, indeed—the throne of dear Lucy’s
pure and constant affection—and yet!—at any moment!—
Dramatically enough, the sword fell on my very wedding morning—on its
flat side, happily—giving me a shock, but no cut of any sort, as I am
now briefly going to tell.
The next morning came another telegram from Brentin in London, to say he
would arrive at six and beg he might be met. All was well, he wired,
adding “_Any news Thompson?_”
I wired back to the “Victoria” there was none: “_bring boodle with
you_;” and then I went off and found Thatcher.
For always I had had the fancy to pay old Crage out of the place and be
married on the same day, and here was now my chance. We were to be
married in Nesshaven Church, in the grounds of Wharton Park, at twelve;
what was to prevent us, I said to Thatcher, from walking on up to the
house first with £30,000, completing the purchase, and hasting to the
wedding afterwards? Thence back to “The French Horn” for a light lunch,
afterwards catch the half-past-two train for Liverpool Street, and so to
Folkestone in the evening.
There was nothing to prevent it, said Thatcher, who for the last two
days had gone about in a triumphant, bulging white waistcoat; only it
would require rather delicate handling, all to be done successfully.
Crage should be prepared, for instance, he thought; for, notwithstanding
the sight of the money, the sight of dear Lucy in her happy wedding
radiance might turn him sour, and he might after all refuse to complete.
What was to prevent one of us, he said—meaning, of course, me—going up
to the house and sounding the old man first? Then we should know exactly
how we stood, and what chance there was of our money being accepted.
Now, for the last week nothing had been seen of the old man, and rumors
had reached us, chiefly through the gardener, he was very ill. He hadn’t
been to church for more than a month, and at church he had always been a
very regular attendant; not so much because he had any real religion in
him as that he might aggravate the parson by catching him up loudly in
the responses, and barking his way harshly through the hymns a good
half-line behind the rest of the congregation. Indeed, the chief
attraction, I fear, at Nesshaven Church was old Crage and his nauseous
eccentricities, and people who had heard how he had once lighted up his
pipe during the sermon and sat there sucking at it in the Wharton pew,
came from miles round in the hope he would enliven the discourse by
doing it again.
Nor had he been seen about the grounds, nor stumping down to the inn, as
he mostly did once a week to insult the inmates; in short, the end that
comes to us all—good, bad, and indifferent—was clearly coming now to
him, and if business were ever to be done, it must be done speedily and
at once.
So, before Brentin came, early on the Wednesday afternoon, I trudged
alone up to the house. There wasn’t a sign of life in it, and when I
rang at the hall door I heard the heavy bell clanging away down the
empty passages and cold servants’ quarters as in the depths of an
Egyptian tomb. I rang and rang, until at last I heard shuffling
footsteps approach. From the other side of the door came stertorous
breathing and wheezing, and the undoing of a chain; then a burglar’s
bell was taken off and fell with a jangle on the stone floor inside, and
at last the door was pulled ajar.
Poor old Crage! He looked out at me with his wicked, frightened old
face, pinched, haggard, unshaven, dirty; terror-struck, as though he
feared, I were Death himself who had been knocking at the door. He was
in his shirt and trousers and a frowzy old dressing-gown, and his bare,
bony feet were thrust in worn leather slippers. As he breathed his
throat rattled dismally, and his long hand, with the thick, muddy veins,
shook so he couldn’t fold the dressing-gown round his gaunt, corded,
bare throat.
“Hullo, young cockney!” he croaked; “what’s to do?”
“How are you, Mr. Crage?” I asked, shocked at the old man’s fallen,
forlorn look.
“Very bad!” he whispered, his rheumy eyes blinking with watery
self-pity.
“Is there anybody looking after you?”
“No—no—thieves! all thieves!—don’t want ’em.”
Then he made as if he would shut the door.
“I came up to see you on business,” I said; “about selling the house.”
“No business to-day,” he croaked. “Too ill. Come to-morrow—any time.
Come to-morrow.” And with that he shut the door in my face.
I heard him shuffling away across the hall, kicking the fallen bell with
a tinkle along the floor, and then, as I turned to go, I heard him fall
and groan. I ran in hastily, and with great difficulty managed to get
him on his feet again. He stood there for some few minutes, clutching me
and rattling his throat; then, hanging on my arm, dragging me along with
him, he paddled off down a short dark passage towards a half-open door,
pushed it wide, and pulled me after him into the great empty
drawing-room.
The blinds were down, and the fading February sun gleamed in on the bare
worn carpet. In front of the fine fireplace, with a little dying
wood-fire in it, stood an arm-chair, with a small table beside it. A
candle and snuffers were on it, and a plate of stale bread-and-butter.
On the high mantel-piece was a medicine bottle, full and corked.
He sank back into his chair, and lay there, breathing heavily, with his
eyes closed.
“But is there nobody looking after you?” I asked, and he made some
twitching movement with his fingers.
Just at that moment in flounced the gardener’s wife, drying her hands on
her apron. She was a big, handsome, shameless-looking creature, with a
naming eye and a hard, high color on her stiff cheeks.
“Now you’ve been moving yourself about again!” she cried, bending over
him.
Crage opened his eyes and looked up at her maliciously.
“He came up on business,” he whispered.
“You’re a pretty man to do business, ain’t you?” she sneered.
“No, not to-day,” he mocked. “Too ill. All right to-morrow. Tell the
genelman to come to-morrow, early. Quite well to-morrow.”
I turned to go, and Crage, raising himself in his chair, rasped out:
“Bring the money with you, young cockney, or no business. Mind that!”
The woman followed me to the door.
“Has he got a doctor?” I asked.
“Doctor Hall came once,” she said, “but he won’t do anything he tells
him. He won’t take his medicine and he won’t go to bed. He says he’ll
die if he goes to bed. He sleeps all night in that arm-chair in the
drawing-room. If he don’t die soon, I shall; I know that very well. If
you’ve got any business to do with him, you’d better come early in the
morning. He can’t last much longer.”
And with that she closed the door on me, and I heard her putting up the
chain again and the burglar’s bell as I went away down the weedy gravel
path.