A VISITOR AT BOLAND'S AIT.
On the evening that Crawford arrived for the first time at the house
called after his name, and saw the man he recognised as Philip Ray
hastening along the tow-path, the man of whom he expressed such fear
was almost breathless when, having passed the head of the Ait, he was
hidden from view. As soon as he got near the tail of the island he
suddenly stopped, bent down, and seizing a small chain made fast to an
iron ring below the level of the tow-path and close to the water, drew
heavily upon it, hand over hand. Gradually a long low black floating
mass began to detach itself from the island, and, like some huge snake
or saurian, stretch itself out across the turbid waters, now darkening
in the shadows of eve. This was the floating stage of which Red Jim
had told Crawford.
When the stage touched the bank Philip Ray stepped on it, walked to
the other end, stooped down to the water, and, catching another chain,
drew the stage back. Then he stepped ashore on Boland's Ait.
He paused a moment to gather breath and wipe his forehead, for in his
wild haste he had run half the way from Camberwell. With rapid steps
and arms swinging he strode to the door of what had once been the
foreman's cottage, and knocked hastily. Then he made a great effort,
and forced himself into an appearance of calm.
There was the sound of some one rising inside. The door swung open,
and a man of thirty slightly under the middle height stood facing the
failing light of day.
"Philip," he said. "Philip, I did not expect to see you so soon again.
Come in."
On a table littered with papers a reading-lamp was already burning,
for even at the brightest hour the light in the small oblong room was
not good. By the table stood a Windsor armchair; another stood against
the wall furthest from the door. There was a tier of plain bookshelves
full of books against one of the walls, a few heavy boxes against
another, and absolutely nothing else in the place. The cottage stood
at the head of the island, and the one window of the occupant's study
looked up the canal in the direction of Camberwell.
"At work, as usual," said Ray, pointing to the papers on the table as
he shut the door.
"My work is both my work and my play, my meat and my rest. Sit down,
Philip. Has anything unusual happened? I did not expect to see you
until Sunday," said the solitary man, dropping into his chair, resting
his elbows on the arms of it and leaning forward.
"I am out of breath. I ran most of the way," said Ray, avoiding the
question.
"Ran!" cried the other in faint surprise. "Your walking is like
another man's running. Your running must be terrific. I never saw you
run. What made you run this evening?" He smiled very slightly as he
spoke of Ray's walking and running.
"I am out of breath," said the other, again shirking the question.
"Give me a minute."
It was not to gain breath Philip Ray paused, but to put in shape what
he had to say. He had come from Camberwell at the top of his speed
because he was burning with intelligence which had just reached him.
He had been so excited by the news that he had never paused to think
of the form in which he should communicate it, and now he was in great
perplexity and doubt.
Francis Bramwell threw himself back in his chair in token of giving
the required respite. He was a pale broad-browed man, with large,
grave, unfathomable, hazel eyes His hair and moustache were dark
brown; his cheeks and chin, clean-shaven.
Ray fidgeted a good deal in his chair, and acted very badly the man
who was out of breath.
"You must have run desperately hard," said Bramwell, at length, in a
tone half sympathy, half banter.
"Never harder in all my life," said the other, placing his hand on his
side, as though still suffering from the effects of his unusual speed.
After a while he sat up and said, "I was pretty tired to begin with. I
had been wandering about all the afternoon, and when I found myself
near home I made up my mind not to budge again for the night. I found
a letter waiting for me, and I have come over about that letter." He
ceased to speak, and suppressed the excitement which was shaking him.
"A letter!" said Bramwell, observing for the first time that something
very unusual lay behind the manner of the other. "It must have been a
letter of great importance to bring you out again, and at such a rate,
too." He looked half apprehensively at his visitor.
"It was a letter of importance."
A spasm of pain shot over the face of Bramwell, and his brows fell. "A
letter of importance that concerned me?" he asked in a faint voice.
"Well," after a pause, "partly."
Bramwell's lips grew white, and opened. He scarcely breathed his next
question: "From _her?_"
"O, no!" answered Ray quickly.
"About her?"
"No."
Bramwell fell back in his chair with a sigh of relief. "I thought the
letter was about her. I thought you were preparing me to hear of her
death," said he tremulously, huskily.
"I am sorry to say you were wrong. That would be the best news we
could hear of her," said Ray bitterly.
"Yes, the very best. What does the letter tell you that affects me?"
"It is about _him_," answered Ray, with fierce and angry emphasis on
the pronoun.
"What does the letter say?"
"That he is in England."
"Ah! Where?"
"In Richmond."
"So near!"
"Who saw him?"
"Lambton."
"Beyond all chance of mistake?"
"Beyond all chance of mistake, although he has shaved off his whiskers
and moustache. Lambton saw him on the railway platform, and recognised
him at once. Lambton had no time to make any inquiries, as his train
was just about to move when he recognised the villain standing alone.
But _I_ have plenty of time for inquiries, and shall not miss one.
I'll shoot him as I would a rabid dog."
"The atrocious scoundrel!"
"When I read the letter I only waited to put this in my pocket."
He took out a revolver and laid it on the table.
Then for a while both men sat staring at one another across the table,
on which lay the weapon. At length Bramwell rose and began pacing up
and down the room with quick, feverish steps. Ray had not seen him so
excited for years--not since his own sister Kate, the solitary man's
wife, had run away, taking her baby, with that villain John Ainsworth,
whom Edward Lambton had seen at Richmond. After the first fierce agony
of the wound, the husband had declined to speak of her flight or of
her to his brother-in-law. He plunged headlong into gambling for a
time until all his ample means were dissipated, unless Boland's Ait
are enough to keep body and soul together. Then his grief took another
turn. He was lost to all his former friends for months, and at last
took up his residence, under an assumed name--Francis Bramwell instead
of Frank Mellor--on Boland's Ait, in the South London Canal. To not a
living soul did he disclose his real name or his place of habitation
but to Philip Ray, the brother of his guilty wife, and the sworn
avenger of her shame and his dishonour.
Ray watched Bramwell with flashing, uneasy eyes. By a desperate effort
he was calming his own tumultuous passions.
At last Bramwell wound his arms round his head, as though to shut out
some intolerable sight, to close his ears to some maddening sounds, to
shield his head from deadly, infamous blows.
"Bear with me, Philip!" he cried huskily, at length. "Bear with me, my
dear friend. I am half mad--whole mad for the moment. Bear with me!
God knows, I have cause to be mad."
He was staggering and stumbling about the room, avoiding by instinct
the table on which the lamp burned.
Ray said nothing, but set his teeth and breathed hard between them.
"I did not think," went on Bramwell, unwinding his arms and placing
his hands before his face, as he went on unsteadily to and fro, "that
anything could break me down as this has done. I thought I had
conquered all weakness in the matter. I cannot talk quite steadily
yet. Bear with me awhile, Philip!"
The younger man hissed an imprecation between his set teeth.
Bramwell took down his hands from his face and tore the collar of his
shirt open.
"What you told me," he resumed in a gentler voice, a voice still
shaken by his former passion of wrath, as the sea trembles after the
wind has died away, "brought it all back upon me again. How I
worshipped her! How I did all in my power to make her love me! How I
hoped in time she would forget her young fancy for him! I thought if
she married me I could not fail to win her love, and then when the
child was born I felt secure. But the spell of his evil fascination
was too strong for her feeble will, and--and--and he had only to
appear and beckon to her to make her leave me for ever; and to go with
_him_--with such a man as John Ainsworth! O God!"
Ray drew a long breath, brought his lips firmly together, but uttered
no word. His eyes were blazing, and his hands clutched with powerful
strenuousness the elbows of his chair.
"I am calmer now," resumed Bramwell.
"I am not," breathed Ray, in a whisper of such fierceness and
significance that the other man arrested his steps and regarded the
speaker in a dazed way, like one awakening from sleep in unfamiliar
surroundings.
"I am not calmer now," went on Ray, in the same whisper of awful
menace, "unless it is calmer to be more than ever resolved upon
revenge."
"Philip----"
"Stop! I must have my say. You have had yours. Have I no wrongs or
sorrow? Am I not a partner in this shame thrust upon us?"
"But----"
"Frank, I will speak. You said a while ago, 'Bear with me.' Bear you
now with me."
Bramwell made a gesture that he would hear him out.
"In the first wild burst of your anger you would have strangled this
miscreant if you could have reached his throat with your thumbs--would
you not?"
He was now speaking in his full voice, in tones charged with intense
passion.
"I was mad then."
"No doubt; and I am mad still--now. I have never ceased to be mad, if
fidelity to my oath of vengeance is madness. You know I loved her as
the apple of my eye, and guarded her as the priceless treasure of my
life; for we were alone--she was alone in the world only for me. Him I
knew and loathed. I knew of his gambling, his dishonourableness, his
profligacy. I knew she was weak and flighty, vain and headlong, open
to the wiles of a flatterer, and I shuddered when I found she had even
met him once, and I forbade her ever to meet him again. She promised,
and although my mind was not at rest, it was quieted somewhat. Then
you came. I knew you were the best and loyalest and finest-souled man
of them all. Let me speak. Bear with me a little while."
"My life is over. Let me be in such peace as I may find." Bramwell
walked slowly up and down the room with his head bowed and his eyes
cast on the floor.
"And why is your life over--at thirty? Because of him and his ways of
devilish malice; he cared for her really nothing at all. When he came
the second time, a year after the marriage, he set his soul upon
ruining you and her. He thought of nothing else. Do not stop me. I
will go on. I will have it out for once. You would never listen to me
before. Now you shall--you shall!"
He was speaking in a loud and vehement voice, and swinging his arms
wildly round him as he sat forward on his chair.
"Go on."
"Well, I liked you best of all; you had everything in your favour:
position, money, abilities, even years. You were younger than the
scoundrel, and quite as good-looking. You had not his lying smooth
tongue for women, or his fine sentiment for their silly ears. I
thought all would be well if she married you. She did, and all went
well for a year, until he came back, and then all went wrong, and she
stole away out of your house, taking your child with her."
"I know--I know; but spare me. I have only just said most of this
myself."
"No doubt; but I must say what is in my heart--what has been in my
heart for years. Well, we know he deserted her after a few months. He
left her and her child to starve in America, the cowardly ruffian!
What I have had in my mind to say for years, Frank, is that of all the
men in this world, I love and esteem you most; that I love and esteem
you more than all the other men in this world put together, and that
it drives me mad to think shame and sorrow should have come upon you
through my blood."
"Do not speak of her, Philip. What has been done cannot be undone."
"No; but the shame which has come upon you through my blood can be
washed out in his, and by----, it shall! and here I swear it afresh."
With a sudden movement forward he flung himself on his knees and threw
his open right hand up, calling Heaven to witness his oath.
Bramwell paused in his walk. The two men remained motionless for a
moment. Suddenly Bramwell started. There was a loud knocking at the
door.