Meanwhile at Laughton there was confusion and alarm. Helen had found
herself more than usually unwell in the morning; towards noon, the maid
who attended her informed Madame Dalibard that she was afraid the poor
young lady had much fever, and inquired if the doctor should be sent
for. Madame Dalibard seemed surprised at the intelligence, and directed
her chair to be wheeled into her niece’s room, in order herself to judge
of Helen’s state. The maid, sure that the doctor would be summoned,
hastened to the stables, and seeing Beck, instructed him to saddle one
of the horses and to await further orders. Beck kept her a few moments
talking while he saddled his horse, and then followed her into the
house, observing that it would save time if he were close at hand.
“That is quite true,” said the maid, “and you may as well wait in the
corridor. Madame may wish to speak to you herself, and give you her own
message or note to the doctor.”
Beck, full of gloomy suspicions, gladly obeyed, and while the maid
entered the sick-chamber, stood anxiously without. Presently Varney
passed him, and knocked at Helen’s door; the maid half-opened it.
“How is Miss Mainwaring?” said he, eagerly.
“I fear she is worse, sir; but Madame Dalibard does not think there is
any danger.”
“No danger! I am glad; but pray ask Madame Dalibard to let me see her
for a few moments in her own room. If she come out, I will wheel her
chair to it. Whether there is danger or not, we had better send for
other advice than this country doctor, who has perhaps mistaken the
case; tell her I am very uneasy, and beg her to join me immediately.”
“I think you are quite right, sir,” said the maid, closing the door.
Varney then, turning round for the first time, noticed Beck, and said
roughly,--
“What do you do here? Wait below till you are sent for.”
Beck pulled his forelock, and retreated back, not in the direction of
the principal staircase, but towards that used by the servants, and
which his researches into the topography of the mansion had now made
known to him. To gain these back stairs he had to pass Lucretia’s room;
the door stood ajar; Varney’s face was turned from him. Beck breathed
hard, looked round, then crept within, and in a moment was behind the
folds of the tapestry.
Soon the chair in which sat Madame Dalibard was drawn by Varney himself
into the room.
Shutting the door with care, and turning the key, Gabriel said, with
low, suppressed passion,--
“Well; your mind seems wandering,--speak!”
“It is strange,” said Lucretia, in hollow tones, “can Nature turn
accomplice, and befriend us here?”
“Nature! did you not last night administer the--”
“No,” interrupted Lucretia. “No; she came into the room, she kissed
me here,--on the brow that even then was meditating murder. The kiss
burned; it burns still,--it eats into the brain like remorse. But I did
not yield; I read again her false father’s protestation of love; I read
again the letter announcing the discovery of my son, and remorse lay
still. I went forth as before, I stole into her chamber, I had the fatal
crystal in my hand--”
“Well, well!”
“And suddenly there came the fearful howl of a dog, and the dog’s fierce
eyes glared on me. I paused, I trembled; Helen started, woke, called
aloud. I turned and fled. The poison was not given.”
Varney ground his teeth. “But this illness! Ha! the effect, perhaps, of
the drops administered two nights ago.”
“No; this illness has no symptoms like those the poison should
bequeath,--it is but natural fever, a shock on the nerves; she told me
she had been wakened by the dog’s howl, and seen a dark form, like a
thing from the grave, creeping along the floor. But she is really ill;
send for the physician; there is nothing in her illness to betray the
hand of man. Be it as it may,--that kiss still burns; I will stir in
this no more. Do what you will yourself!”
“Fool, fool!” exclaimed Varney, almost rudely grasping her arm.
“Remember how much we have yet to prepare for, how much to do,--and the
time so short! Percival’s return,--perhaps this Greville’s arrival. Give
me the drugs; I will mix them for her in the potion the physician sends.
And when Percival returns,--his Helen dead or dying,--I will attend on
him! Silent still? Recall your son! Soon you will clasp him in your arms
as a beggar, or as the lord of Laughton!”
Lucretia shuddered, but did not rise; she drew forth a ring of keys from
her bosom, and pointed towards a secretary. Varney snatched the keys,
unlocked the secretary, seized the fatal casket, and sat down quietly
before it.
When the dire selections were made, and secreted about his person,
Varney rose, approached the fire, and blew the wood embers to a blaze.
“And now,” he said, with his icy irony of smile, “we may dismiss
these useful instruments,--perhaps forever. Though Walter Ardworth, in
restoring your son, leaves us dependent on that son’s filial affection,
and I may have, therefore, little to hope for from the succession, to
secure which I have risked and am again to risk my life, I yet trust to
that influence which you never fail to obtain over others. I take it for
granted that when these halls are Vincent Braddell’s, we shall have
no need of gold, nor of these pale alchemies. Perish, then, the mute
witnesses of our acts, the elements we have bowed to our will! No poison
shall be found in our hoards! Fire, consume your consuming children!”
As he spoke, he threw upon the hearth the contents of the casket,
and set his heel upon the logs. A bluish flame shot up, breaking into
countless sparks, and then died.
Lucretia watched him without speaking.
In coming back towards the table, Varney felt something hard beneath
his tread; he stooped, and picked up the ring which has before been
described as amongst the ghastly treasures of the casket, and which had
rolled on the floor almost to Lucretia’s feet, as he had emptied the
contents on the hearth.
“This, at least, need tell no tales,” said he; “a pity to destroy so
rare a piece of workmanship,--one, too, which we never can replace!”
“Ay,” said Lucretia, abstractedly; “and if detection comes, it may
secure a refuge from the gibbet. Give me the ring.”
“A refuge more terrible than the detection,” said Varney,--“beware of
such a thought,” as Lucretia, taking it from his hand, placed the ring
on her finger.
“And now I leave you for a while to recollect yourself,--to compose your
countenance and your thoughts. I will send for the physician.”
Lucretia, with her eyes fixed on the floor, did not heed him, and he
withdrew.
So motionless was her attitude, so still her very breathing, that the
unseen witness behind the tapestry, who, while struck with horror at
what he had overheard (the general purport of which it was impossible
that he could misunderstand), was parched with impatience to escape to
rescue his beloved master from his impending fate, and warn him of the
fate hovering nearer still over Helen, ventured to creep along the wall
to the threshold, to peer forth from the arras, and seeing her eyes
still downcast, to emerge, and place his hand on the door. At that very
moment Lucretia looked up, and saw him gliding from the tapestry; their
eyes met: his were fascinated as the bird’s by the snake’s. At the
sight, all her craft, her intellect, returned. With a glance, she
comprehended the terrible danger that awaited her. Before he was aware
of her movement, she was at his side; her hand on his own, her voice in
his ear.
“Stir not a step, utter not a sound, or you are--”
Beck did not suffer her to proceed. With the violence rather of fear
than of courage, he struck her to the ground; but she clung to him
still, and though rendered for the moment speechless by the suddenness
of the blow, her eyes took an expression of unspeakable cruelty and
fierceness. He struggled with all his might to shake her off; as he did
so, she placed feebly her other hand upon the wrist of the lifted arm
that had smitten her, and he felt a sharp pain, as if the nails had
fastened into the flesh. This but exasperated him to new efforts. He
extricated himself from her grasp, which relaxed as her lips writhed
into a smile of scorn and triumph, and, spurning her while she lay
before the threshold, he opened the door, sprang forward, and escaped.
No thought had he of tarrying in that House of Pelops, those human
shambles, of denouncing Murder in its lair; to fly to reach his master,
warn, and shield him,--that was the sole thought which crossed his
confused, bewildered brain.
It might be from four to five minutes that Lucretia, half-stunned,
half-senseless, lay upon those floors,--for besides the violence of her
fall, the shock of the struggle upon nerves weakened by the agony
of apprehension, occasioned by the imminent and unforeseen chance of
detection, paralyzed her wondrous vigour of mind and frame,--when Varney
entered.
“They tell me she sleeps,” he said, in hoarse, muttered accents, before
he saw the prostrate form at his very feet. But Varney’s step, Varney’s
voice, had awakened Lucretia’s reason to consciousness and the sense
of peril. Rising, though with effort, she related hurriedly what had
passed.
“Fly, fly!” she gasped, as she concluded. “Fly, to detain, to secrete,
this man somewhere for the next few hours. Silence him but till then;
I have done the rest!” and her finger pointed to the fatal ring. Varney
waited for no further words; he hurried out, and made at once to the
stables: his shrewdness conjectured that Beck would carry his tale
elsewhere. The groom was already gone (his fellows said) without a word,
but towards the lodge that led to the Southampton road. Varney ordered
the swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he
sprang on his back,--
“I, too, must go towards Southampton. The poor young lady! I must
prepare your master,--he is on his road back to us;” and the last word
was scarce out of his lips as the sparks flew from the flints under the
horse’s hoofs, and he spurred from the yard.
As he rode at full speed through the park, the villain’s mind sped more
rapidly than the animal he bestrode,--sped from fear to hope, hope
to assurance. Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,--incoherent,
improbable as the tale would be,--who would believe it? How easy to
meet tale by tale! The man must own that he was secreted behind the
tapestry,--wherefore but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had
coined this wretched fable. And the spy, too, could not live through the
day; he bore Death with him as he rode, he fed its force by his speed,
and the effects of the venom itself would be those of frenzy. Tush! his
tale, at best, would seem but the ravings of delirium. Still, it was
well to track him where he went,--delay him, if possible; and Varney’s
spurs plunged deep and deeper into the bleeding flanks: on desperately
scoured the horse. He passed the lodge; he was on the road; a chaise and
pair dashed by him; he heard not a voice exclaim “Varney!” he saw not
the wondering face of John Ardworth; bending over the tossing mane, he
was deaf, he was blind, to all without and around. A milestone glides
by, another, and a third. Ha! his eyes can see now. The object of his
chase is before him,--he views distinctly, on the brow of yon hill, the
horse and the rider, spurring fast, like himself. They descend the
hill, horse and horseman, and are snatched from his sight. Up the steep
strains the pursuer. He is at the summit. He sees the fugitive before
him, almost within hearing. Beck has slackened his steed; he seems
swaying to and fro in the saddle. Ho, ho! the barbed ring begins to work
in his veins. Varney looks round,--not another soul is in sight; a deep
wood skirts the road. Place and time seem to favour; Beck has reined in
his horse,--he bends low over the saddle, as if about to fall. Varney
utters a half-suppressed cry of triumph, shakes his reins, and spurs
on, when suddenly--by the curve of the road, hid before--another chaise
comes in sight, close where Beck had wearily halted.
The chaise stops; Varney pulls in, and draws aside to the hedgerow. Some
one within the vehicle is speaking to the fugitive! May it not be
St. John himself? To his rage and his terror, he sees Beck painfully
dismount from his horse, sees him totter to the door of the chaise, sees
a servant leap from the box and help him up the step, sees him enter. It
must be Percival on his return,--Percival, to whom he tells that story
of horror! Varney’s brute-like courage forsook him; his heart was
appalled. In one of those panics so common with that boldness which
is but animal, his sole thought became that of escape. He turned his
horse’s head to the fence, forced his way desperately through the
barrier, made into the wood, and sat there, cowering and listening, till
in another minute he heard the wheels rattle on, and the horses gallop
hard down the hill towards the park.
The autumn wind swept through the trees, it shook the branches of the
lofty ash that overhung the Accursed One. What observer of Nature knows
not that peculiar sound which the ash gives forth in the blast? Not
the solemn groan of the oak, not the hollow murmur of the beech, but
a shrill wail, a shriek as of a human voice in sharp anguish. Varney
shuddered, as if he had heard the death-cry of his intended victim.
Through briers and thickets, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boughs,
he plunged deeper and deeper into the wood, gained at length the main
path cut through it, found himself in a lane, and rode on, careless
whither, till he had reached a small town, about ten miles from
Laughton, where he resolved to wait till his nerves had recovered their
tone, and he could more calmly calculate the chances of safety.