A SECOND APPARITION.
When Alfred Layard got back to the house he was far from easy in his
mind about his lodger. In appearance Crawford was the least
imaginative man in the world. His face, figure, and manner indicated
extreme practicalness. No man could have less of the visionary or the
seer about him. One would think he treated all things in life as a
civil engineer treats things encountered in his profession. And yet
here was this man giving way to absurd and sentimental timidity about
nothing at all.
Of course, Layard himself would have been greatly shocked if he
thought any harm had come to that solitary pedestrian on the tow-path;
but not one man in a thousand would have allowed the circumstance of
the man's non-appearance and the jesting words he himself had used to
occupy his mind five minutes, to say nothing of suffering anxiety
because of the circumstance, and sallying out to make inquiries and
clear it up.
He did not bargain for such eccentricity as this when he agreed to
live for a few days a month under the same roof with William Crawford.
He would say nothing to Hetty of his fears, or rather uneasiness; but
it would be necessary for him to suggest precautions.
When Crawford had bidden the brother and sister good-night finally,
and the two were again alone in the front sitting-room, and Alfred had
told Hetty, with no alarming comment, what had occurred since they
left the house, she cried, "Now, sceptic, what have you to say? Could
anything be more humane or kind-hearted than the interest he took in
that unknown man, a man he could absolutely have never seen once in
all his life? You were in the act of implying that he saved the widow
because she was rich, and married her because she was rich, when, lo!
Sir Oracle, down comes Mr. Crawford to see what had happened to that
man, the unknown man! Tell me, was _he_ rich? Is _he_ going to marry
_him?_"
"I confess things look very black for my theory," said the brother,
from the couch, where he lay smoking placidly.
"I do believe," she cried with animation, "that you are rather sorry
he turned out so nobly. I do believe you would rather he showed no
interest in that man on the tow-path."
"Candidly, Hetty, I would."
"It is all jealousy on your part, and you ought to be ashamed of
yourself. Are you?"
"No--o--o," he said slowly, "I can't say I am much ashamed of myself
on that account."
"Then," she said, "it is worse not to repent than to sin, and your
condition is something dreadful. Now, my impression is that Mr.
Crawford never thought of money at all when he married his wife. I
believe he married her for pure love, and the fact of her being an
invalid was a reason for his loving her all the more. To me he is a
Bayard," cried this enthusiastic young person with flushing cheek, and
eyes in which the gold glinted more than ever.
"He's too stout, my dear," said the brother placidly from his couch.
"What!" cried she indignantly. "Too stout to marry for love! You are
outrageous!"
"No; not to marry for love, but to be a Bayard. You know as well as I
do our lodger would not cut a good figure on horseback," said the
brother with calm decision.
"You are intolerable, Alfred, and I will not speak to you again on the
subject. Nothing could be in worse taste than what you have been
saying," said the girl, gathering herself daintily together and
looking away from him.
"Besides, you do an injustice to our lodger."
"I wish, Alfred, if you find it necessary to refer to Mr. Crawford,
that you would do so in some other way than by calling him our lodger.
It is not respectful."
"Not respectful to whom?"
"To me," with a very stately inclination of the gallant little head.
"I see. Well, I will call him Mr. Bayard," said the brother with
provoking amiability.
"I am sure, Alfred, I do not know how you can be so silly."
"Evil communications, my dear."
"The gentleman's name is Crawford, and why should you not call him
Crawford?"
"Just to avoid the monotony."
"And, I think, Alfred, to annoy me."
"Perhaps."
"Well, I must say that is very good-natured of you."
"But I aim at an identical result."
"I don't understand you."
"To avoid monotony, too. You are always so good-humoured and
soft-tempered it is a treat to see you ruffled and on your dignity.
But there, Hetty dear, let us drop this light-comedy sparring----"
"I'm sure I don't think it's light comedy at all, but downright
disagreeableness; and I didn't begin it, and I don't want to keep it
up, and I am sure you have a very clumsy and unkind notion of humour,
if talking in that way is your idea of it."
"Remember, Hetty," he said, holding up his hand in warning, "you are
much too big a girl to cry. You are a great deal too old to cry."
"A woman is never too old to cry--if she likes."
"She is, and you are, too old to cry for anything a brother may say to
you. According to the usage of the best society, you are too old to
cry because of anything I may say to you. It will be your duty to
repress your tears for your lover. According to good manners you ought
not to shed a tear now until you have your first quarrel with your
lover; and then, mind you, I am to hear nothing about it, or it would
be my duty to call the scoundrel out, when there is no knowing but he
might injure or even kill me, and then you couldn't marry him, for he
would be your brother's murderer; and if I killed him you couldn't
marry him, because I should be his murderer; and I don't see of what
use we could be to any one, except to write a tragedy about, and that
is about as bad a use as you can put respectable people to."
The girl's face had been gradually clearing while Layard spoke, and by
the time he had finished, all trace of annoyance had vanished from it,
and she was bright and smiling once more.
"You are a queer old Alfred, and I am a fool to allow myself to grow
angry with you or your nonsense. I of course said too much. I did not
mean quite that I thought him a Bayard."
"He's much better-looking than the only portrait of the Chevalier
I ever saw. I must say the knight, by his portrait, is a most
repulsive and unchivalrous brute, more fit for the Chamber of Horrors
than the Hall of Kings. I assure you, Hetty, Mr. Crawford is a much
better-looking man."
How was he to warn his sister without alarming her? To say he thought
the man was not quite right in his mind would terrify Hetty, and it
would not do to leave her without any caution. At last he could think
of nothing but a most simple and most matter-of-course caution--that
of locking the door of the room in which she and the child slept.
"For," thought Layard, "if there is anything wrong with his head,
although it may now be in the direction of excessive humanity, later
it may change to be dangerously homicidal."
As they were saying "good-night," he remarked, as carelessly as he
could:
"Remember, Hetty, although we are in our own house, it still it is not
all our own."
"Of course I know that, Alfred."
"And if Fred cries, you must quiet him as quickly as possible."
"So that Mr. Crawford may not be disturbed?"
"Yes; and you may as well lock your door?"
"I will."
And thus they parted, and he felt at rest; for even if a paroxysm
seized Crawford in the night, he could do no serious hurt without
making noise enough to wake the others.
At the time that Layard was providing against a possible maniac in
William Crawford, there was not a saner man within the four corners of
London.
That night passed in perfect peace under the roof of Alfred Layard. So
far as Layard knew, Crawford had slept the sleep of mental and bodily
health, and little Freddie had not awakened once, as his aunt
certified when she came down to breakfast.
Mrs. Grainger, the charwoman whose services were to be enlisted all
the time Mr. Crawford was in the house, brought up his breakfast, and
carried down news that the gentleman was arranging his papers and the
rooms generally, as was only natural and to be expected upon a
gentleman taking up his residence in a new lodging. Mr. Crawford she
found very civil, but not inclined at all for conversation. He told
Mrs. Grainger he should ring for her when he wanted her, and she took
the liberty of explaining to the gentleman that he could not ring for
her, because there was no bell. Upon this the gentleman said he should
put his head over the balustrade and call to her, if she would be good
enough to favour him with her name; which she accordingly did, giving
her Christian name and married name, and adding with a view to defying
fraud or personation, her maiden name (Wantage) also. The only piece
of information he had volunteered to Mrs. Grainger, _née_ Wantage, was
that he had no intention of stirring out that day.
Layard did not renew the conversation of the night before. He was
extraordinarily fond of his beautiful, sprightly, gentle-hearted
sister, and he knew that his badinage had reduced her almost to tears.
He was grave and tender, and devoted himself through most of breakfast
to his lusty, restless, yellow-haired boy of three, little Freddie.
Alfred Layard's duties lay at the works, not the office, of the great
Welford Gas Company. Hence, although his functions were those of a
clerk, he had not the hours of a clerk. Years ago the Layards had been
in a position very different from that occupied by them now. Then
their father had been a prosperous merchant in Newcastle, but a series
of disasters had come upon him: a partner failed in another business,
a bank broke, and the father's health gave way utterly, and he died
leaving absolutely nothing behind him. Alfred was at Cambridge at the
time of the crash. He left the University at once, and for some time
failed to get anything to do. At length an old friend of his father's
found him a situation worth a hundred and twenty pounds a year in the
great Welford Gasworks. In a couple of years his salary was increased
ten pounds a year, upon which joyful encouragement he married Lucy
Aldridge, the penniless girl he had, before the downfall of his
father's house, resolved to make his wife.
For a little while he and his wife and sister lived very happily and
contentedly on his modest hundred and thirty pounds a year. Then came
little Freddie, and although it was an additional mouth to feed, any
one of the three would have been without meat and butter from year's
end to year's end rather than without baby Freddie. And when Freddie
was a year old and could just syllable his mother's name, the ears of
the poor young well-beloved mother were closed for ever in this life
to the voice of her only sweetheart, Alfred, and her only child.
The brother and sister put her to rest with other dead in a great
cemetery, and never once mentioned her name after that, although often
when their loss was fresh upon them they would sit hand in hand by the
widowed hearth, weeping silently for the ease of their full and weary
hearts.
The day following that on which the brother and sister took possession
of Crawford's House, Layard felt less anxious about their lodger's
condition of mind than he had the evening before. In the darkness
of night and the strangeness of a new house and the loneliness of
this deserted neighbourhood it had seemed as though Crawford was
insane--might, in fact at any moment develop into a dangerous maniac.
In the sweet sunlight of a bright May morning the fears of the night
before looked preposterous, and at very worst the lodger appeared to
be no more than a fidgety, nervous, excitable man, with whom it would
be a bore to live all one's life.
When his usual time came, Layard kissed his little son and his sister,
and went off to his business at the great gasworks with no fear or
misgiving in his heart.
Mr. Crawford gave no indication of being a troublesome lodger. He had
a simple breakfast, consisting of eggs and bacon and coffee, and in
the middle of the day a simple dinner, consisting of a chop and
potatoes, with bread-and-cheese and a bottle of stout. At tea he
hadn't tea, but coffee again, and a lettuce and bread-and-butter. For
a man with his income he was easily pleased, thought Hetty. He had
found fault with nothing. In fact, he had said no word beyond the
briefest ones that would convey his wishes, and when Mrs. Grainger
asked if the food had been to his liking he had said simply, "It was
all right, thank you." To that good lady he had imparted the
impression that he was too much occupied with matters of the mind to
give much heed to matters of the body, and he had answered all her
questions in a preoccupied and absent-minded manner.
After tea Mr. Crawford showed no sign of going out. He drew an
easy-chair to the window, and sat down at the right-hand side of the
embrasure, so as to command a view of the head of the island across
which he had seen the man pass the evening before.
He heard Layard's knock and his voice below-stairs, but still he did
not stir. From the place where he sat, any man coming along the
tow-path at a walking pace would be in view a minute or a minute and a
half before passing out of sight behind Boland's Ait. Crawford did not
remove his eyes from that tow-path for any thirty consecutive seconds.
"I knew him at once," he whispered; "I knew him the minute I saw
him. I knew his build, his figure, his walk, the way he swings his
hands--ay, his face, far off as he was--ay, his face, his accursed
vengeful face."
He leaned forward. He judged, by the dying of the light and the
shrouded rose-tint on the chimneys and upper walls of the houses in
view, that it was growing near the hour at which the solitary man had
appeared on the tow-path last evening.
"I wonder, if he saw me, would he recognise me? He thinks I am not in
this country. He is not on the look-out for me. I am much changed
since I saw him last." He passed his hand over his close-shaven face.
"I had a beard and moustache then, and taking them off makes a great
difference in a man's appearance--puts him almost beyond recognition.
Then I have grown stouter--much stouter. I daresay my voice would
betray me; and then there is that St. Vitus's dance in my eyelids.
That is an awful drawback. I am horribly handicapped; it isn't a fair
race. And the worst of that jumping of my eyelids is that it always
comes on me when I am most excited and least want it, and, moreover,
when I am mostly unconscious of it until the excitement is over.
Confound it! I _am_ heavily handicapped."
He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, and dropped his chin into
his palm, keeping his eyes all the while fixed on that section of the
tow-path visible beyond the head of the island.
"I," he went on in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible to
himself, "was on the look-out for him when I recognised him. I knew he
lived in Camberwell, and that Camberwell was in the neighbourhood; and
when I knew that this tow-path goes to that place, I had a
presentiment he would come along that tow-path into my view. It might
be called a superstition, I know, but I had the feeling, and it came
true. He did come along that tow-path--he the man of all others on
this earth I dread. But where did he delay? Where did he linger? Where
did he hide himself? Layard said there was no place but in the canal,
and I can see that the fence is too high for any man to scale without
the aid of a ladder."
He rose and stood at the window, to command a better view of the
scene.
"It seems unnatural, monstrous, that I should fear this Philip Ray
more than Mellor. If I ought to be afraid of any one, it is Mellor;
and yet I stand in no dread of him, because, no doubt----"
He paused with his mouth open. He was staring at the tow-path.
A tall slender man had come into view beyond the head of Boland's Ait.
He was walking rapidly north, and swinging his arms as he moved.
"It is he!" whispered Crawford in a tone of fear.
He stood motionless by the window for a while--five, ten, fifteen
minutes. The man did not reappear.
Crawford wiped his forehead, which had grown suddenly damp.
"At any cost I must find out the explanation of this unaccountable
disappearance."
He went from the house and into the blind lane at the front of the
house.