An Old Meerschaum Part 3

The home stamp made it clear that the letter had reached England ten days back.

'My man brought it down this afternoon, the lazy scamp!' said Leland.

'He has never been near those blessed chambers since I left till now. A pile of letters came together, but I took no notice.'

'Listen to me,' said Barndale. 'You have done harm enough in this matter already, Jimmy, and you must do no more. You must keep clear of her. I will send her down to my sister for a time. Sophy is a good girl, and will be glad to have a companion whilst I am away. I will go up to town to-morrow and see Miss Perzio. You stay here. I shall either wire to you or come back in the evening.'

The weather had been hot and clear for weeks together, and the traditions of English summer were preparing to enforce themselves by the common thunderstorm. The wind moaned in swift and sudden gusts, and the distant thunder rumbled threateningly. The listener outside misheard this speech thus:

'You will be glad of a companion whilst I am away. I will go up to town to-morrow and see Miss Perzio.'

He ground his teeth, and clenched his hands, and held himself in resolute silence, fighting against the instinct which prompted him to cry aloud and dash in upon the two, and either slay them both, or sell his own life, then and there. But reflecting on the certainty of defeat, unarmed as he was, and dreading to declare himself too soon, and so put his enemy upon his guard, he fought the instinct down. Yet so strong was it upon him that he knew that sooner or later it would master him. He waded to the sh.o.r.e and crept along the field in the thick darkness, groping his way with both hands. Turning, he could see the dull gleam of the river, and the house-boat bulking black against it. He stood watching, whilst within and without the storm swept swiftly up. Dead silence. Then a creeping whisper in the gra.s.s at his feet and in the trees about him, but no wind. Then the slow dropping of heavy rain--drop, drop, drop--like blood. Then a fierce and sudden howl from the wind, like some hoa.r.s.e demon's signal, and the storm began. But what a puny storm was that which raged outside could one have seen the tempest in this murderous soul! Not all the tones of great material nature's diapason could find this tortured spirit voice enough. Yet to find the very heavens in tune with his mood brought the Greek to a still madder ecstasy of pa.s.sion.

At such times the mind, fearful for herself, catches at phrases and fancies, as drowning men catch at straws. So now, with terrible irrelevance, his mind caught at the simple couplet:--

Nenni, nenni, vattienne, non me sta chiu' a seccar Sta rosa che pretienne non la sto manco a gardar!

There was nothing for the mind to hold to except that it was the last song the runaway Thecla had sung to him. He did not remember this, and had only a half consciousness of the words themselves. But in this mad whirl of the spiritual elements the mind was glad to cling to anything, and turned the refrain over, and over, and over,

Nenni, nenni, vattienne, non me sta chiu' a seccar Sta rosa che pretienne non la sto manco a gardar!

Rain, and wind, and thunder, and Lightning, had their time without and within. Peace came to the summer heavens, and the pale stars took the brief night with beauty. But to the firmament of his soul no star of peace returned. There dwelt night and chaos. If his pa.s.sion were blind, the blindness was wilful. For he saw clearly the end of what he meant to do, and chose it. Whatever his love might have been worth, he had been robbed of it, and for him life ended there. He was but an automaton of vengeance now.

So having set resolve before him, and having done with it, he went his way. His plan was long since laid, and was simple enough. Demetri Agryopoulo was not the man to perplex himself with details until the time came for them to be useful. When that time came he could rely upon himself for invention. And so his plan was simply to take James Leland alone, and then and there to put an end to him. He had taken a room in a river-side public-house near Kingston, and thither he walked. He made some grim excuse for the lateness of the hour and his bedraggled garments to the drowsy ostler who had sat up for him, and calmed the drowsy ostler's grumbles by a gift of half-a-crown. Then he drank a gla.s.s of neat brandy, and went to bed and slept like an innocent child.

Next morning he was up early, ate a cheerful breakfast, delighted his host with foreign affabilities, paid his bill, and went away by train to London. Leaving his luggage in a cloak-room at the station, he took a stroll about town, dropping into public-houses here and there, and drinking terrible brandy. At home he drank _mastica_ as Englishmen drink beer, and brandy was insipid as water to his palate, and had just now almost as little effect upon his head. Demetri Agryopoulo had discovered the one secret of the true dissembler, that he who controls his features controls his mind. A man who can put a smile on his face while torments rack him, can thereby calm the torments. The resolute will which arrests the facial expression of grief or rage, allays the grief or rage. He went about with an aspect of calm insouciance, and therefore with a feeling of calm and ease within. Yet he was like one who walks with a madman, knowing that if his own courage should for one instant seem to waver, the maniac will be upon him. In his journey to town he had been alone, and between one station and another he had opened his portmanteau and taken therefrom a small breech-loading revolver and a stiletto. He laid his hand upon these now and again, and smiled to himself.

The afternoon grew into evening. He took train to Wimbledon, and thence struck across country in the direction of the houseboat. He skirted the village with its straggling lights, and made his way across the fields to the river side. Nearing the boat cautiously, he ensconced himself in the bushes on the bank, and watched and listened. There were two voices audible. Barndale and Leland were engaged in serious and indeed in angry talk. There was a woman in the question apparently, and it would seem that the friends were quarrelling concerning her. But the Greek soon heard enough to convince him that this woman was not Thecla Perzio. The voices grew louder, and some open breach of the peace seemed imminent.

The friends were rehearsing their own especial scene in Barndale's comedy.

It becomes necessary to this history at this point to set forth the fact that one Hodges, resident in the village, had within an hour of this time received intelligence of the straying of a cow. This man was a yokel of no interest to us, apart from this one episode in his career.

He had supplied the inmates of the house-boat with new milk and fresh b.u.t.ter from the time of their first coming. And it was he who had set afloat a report, not unknown at the historic 'Swan,' to the effect that for all so sweet as them two young gents did go about wi' one another, they was a naggin' like blazes every night,' He came by now, driving his recovered cow before him, and pa.s.sed within a foot of the Greek, who lay as still as death in the brushwood. The quarrel, when at its height, ceased suddenly, and the voices fell so low that neither Hodges nor the Greek could hear anything more than a murmur. The amateurs were criticising the dialogue and its rendering over pipes and beer.

'Well,' said Hodges, addressing vacancy, 'if theer ain't murder afore long, it _is_ a pity.'

Then the bovine Hodges went his way. Events supplied him with an excitement which lasted him for life; and the younger Hodges who has succeeded to his father's cows and remembrances, will not willingly let die the story of his progenitor's a.s.sociation with this tragic tale.

The Greek lay hidden in the bushes, and listened to the soft retreating steps in the field and the murmur of voices in the boat. By-and-by the door opened, and the friends appeared.

'I shall not come back by the late train now, Jimmy,' Barndale said, as he placed a small portmanteau in the dingy. 'You had better come down with me to the "Swan" and scull up again.'

'No,' said Leland, unconscious of the impending fate, 'I'll walk down for the boat tomorrow. If I get down there to-night I shall stay, and I want to write some letters. Goodbye, old fellow. Send us a line in the morning.'

'All right,' said Barndale. 'Good-bye.'

The sculls dipped, and he shot into the darkness. For a few minutes we follow Barndale. He pulled down stream rapidly, for the train by which he intended to reach town was already nearly due. There was n.o.body at the landing place. He fastened the boat, and seizing his small portmanteau, dashed at full speed into the road, ran all the way to the station, and threw himself into the train panting, and just in time. At the bottom of the station steps he had spilt a countryman, to whom he threw out a hurried apology. The countryman was Mr. Hodges.

The Greek listened until the measured beat of Barndale's sculls had lost itself in silence. Then he crept forward from the bushes, stepped lightly to the margin of the stream, laid both hands on a st.u.r.dy branch which drooped above the house-boat, and swung himself light as a feather to the after deck The door of the rear room, which served the inmates as a kitchen, was unsecured and open. He pa.s.sed through, pistol in hand, and trod the matted floor stealthily, drawn and guided by the tiny beam of light which issued from the interstice between it and the doorway.

With the motion of the boat the door beat idly and noiselessly to and fro, so that the beam was cut off at regular intervals, and at regular intervals again shone forth, keeping time with the Greek's noiseless footsteps, and his beating heart and his bated breath, and altogether taking to itself that importance and force which trifles always have in moments of intense pa.s.sion or suffering. Even yet he would not let the madman within him loose. Even yet he would hold him back until he saw the object of his hate and rage, and then----

The door swung to and fro gently, and the Greek approached it with his hand, when suddenly the unconscious Leland from within banged it to noisily and fixed the hasp. Then with one resolute action Demetri threw it back and stepped into the doorway, pistol in hand. Leland rose and turned. He saw the Greek, and read murder in his face, and dashed himself upon him. But the murderous hand was quick and true. One shot rang out, and Leland, with outcast arms, fell backwards. The Greek, with a hand on the table, looked down upon him. Not a struggle or a groan stirred the p.r.o.ne figure. Demetri threw the revolver through the open window, and heard the splash with which it fell into the water. He drew the stiletto from his bosom, and threw that after it. Then closing the door lightly, and stepping still on tiptoe as though he feared to wake that p.r.o.ne figure from its awful sleep, he swung himself on sh.o.r.e again.

'Our rustic friend,' he said to himself as he stood and looked upon the boat, bulking black against the dull gleam of the river, like some uncouth animal standing at the bank and peering landward with fiery eyes, our rustic friend may not forget his prophecy.'

Therewith he went his way again, and the darkness shrouded him.

CHAPTER IV.

What should bring fas.h.i.+on, and wealth, and beauty in one charming person up to London from the country at the latter end of August? The town house long since dismantled for the grand tour now finished--the charms of the season abandoned for peaceful Suffolk--why should Lilian care to return thus at the f.a.g end of London's feast of folly? Has the bronzed and bearded Barndale anything to do with it? Lady Dives Luxor gives a ball; and Lady Dives, being Lilian's especial patroness and guardian angel and divinity, insists on Lilian being present thereat. This ball is designed as the crowning festivity of a brilliant year; and to Lilian, blest with youth and beauty and high spirits, and such a splendid lover, shall it not be a night to remember until the grey curtain fall on the close of the last season, and nothing is any more remembered? But a cloud of sadness settles on Lilian's charming face when she misses the bronzed and bearded. Lady Dives knows all about the engagement, and is enthusiastic over it; and, when Lilian has a second's time to s.n.a.t.c.h an enquiry concerning the absent one, she answers, 'He has never been near me once. I wrote him a special note, and told him you were coming. He will be here.' So Lady Dives strives to chase the cloud. Barndale does not come, having never, in point of fact, received that special note which Lady Dives had despatched to him. So the ball is a weariness, and Lilian goes back with mamma to the hotel with quite drooping spirits. She makes excuses for the absent Barndale, but fancies all manner of things in her feminine fas.h.i.+on, preferring to believe in fevers and boat accidents and other horrors rather than think that a valet has been lazy or a postman inaccurate.

Papa Leland, who is here to take care of his womankind, has ideas of his own on some matters.

'Hang your swell hotels,' says Papa Leland; 'I always stop at the Westminster, It's near the House, and quite convenient enough for anywhere.'

It was thus that Lilian found herself under the same roof with Thecla Perzio, who lived there with a sore and frightened heart, waiting for that shallow lover who had caught her in love's toils, and broken up her life for her, and who now left her poor appeal unanswered.

Poor indiscreet little Thecla had a suite of rooms on the first floor, and lived alone within them with her Greek maid, and agonised. She was for ever peering furtively through the door when any manly step sounded in the corridor, but she never saw the form she waited for. But it chanced, the morning after the ball, that she opened her door and looked out upon the corridor at the sound of Papa Leland's footstep. Papa Leland went by briskly; but Lilian caught sight of her and knew her in a moment, and stayed to speak. The two girls had been too closely engaged with their respective love-makings to form any very close acquaintance with each other; but during a week's imprisonment on board s.h.i.+p the friends.h.i.+ps of women, and especially of young and gentle-hearted women, advance very rapidly. They had parted with a great deal of mutual liking, and met again now with mutual pleasure. In a minute Lilian was seated in the poor little Greek's big and dreary parlour. She was a proud creature was little Thecla, and would not chatter with her maid.

She had given n.o.body her confidence; and now, having once confessed that she was unhappy, she broke out, with her pretty head on Lilian's lap, and had a grand, refres.h.i.+ng, honest cry. That over, she set forth her story. She told how Demetri was madly, foolishly jealous; how he had tried to murder the gentleman of whom he was jealous; and how at last, finding herself alone in the world, and being afraid of Demetri, she had sought an asylum in England. She did not say of whom Demetri was jealous, and Lilian had not the remotest notion of the truth. It very soon came out, however; and then Lihan was sore afraid for Thecla Perzio's happiness. She had no great belief in her brother. She loved him very much; but she was dimly afraid that James was an impracticable and unmarriable man, a person who could set all the wiles and all the tenderness of the s.e.x at calm defiance--a born bachelor. And, besides that, being, in spite of her many charms and virtues, an Englishwoman, she had a natural and ridiculous objection to the marriage of any person whom she valued to any other person of foreign blood, excepting in the case of British royalty, in whose foreign matches she felt unfeigned delight--wherefore, Heaven, perchance, knoweth. But then Lilian was not a woman of a logical turn of mind; she was inconsistent and amiable, as good girls always are; and being strongly opposed to marriages of this kind in general, determined to lay herself out, heart and soul, for the prosperity of this particular arrangement. So she kissed Thecla vivaciously, and went to mamma, and persuaded that estimable lady to a visit to Thames Ditton in search of James. Mamma, having regard to the missing Barndale, and being in some matronly alarm for him, consented, and the two set out together.

Barndale in the meantime had gone to his own chambers, and had there smoked many deliberative and lonely pipes. When he came near to the enterprise he had so readily undertaken in his friend's behalf, he began to feel signally nervous and uncomfortable about it. Of course he did not for one moment think of resigning it; but he was puzzled, and in his be-puzzlement retired within himself to concoct a plan of action. Having definitely failed in this attempt, he resolved to go off at once without preparation, and ask at the hotel for Miss Perzio, and then a round, unvarnished tale deliver. This resolution formed, he started at once and hurried, lest it should break by the way. Lilian and he were within twenty yards of each other, neither of them knowing it, when his cab rushed up to the door of the hotel.

Lilian knew the house-boat and its ways. One of the Amphibia of Ditton conveyed the two ladies in a capacious boat to the aquatic residence of the two friends. Lilian stepped lightly to the fore deck, and a.s.sisted mamma from the boat.

'They are both away,' said Lilian, smiling and blus.h.i.+ng. 'And the careless creatures have left the doors open. We will wait for them and give them a surprise.'

The two women, full of fluttering complacency, entered the living room. Lilian went first, and fell upon her knees with a sudden shriek, beholding the p.r.o.ne figure on the floor; the mother darted to her side, saw and partly understood, whipped out a vinaigrette, seized a caraffe of water, and applied those innocent restoratives at once. Neither mother nor daughter had time to think of anything worse than a fainting fit, until Lilian, who had taken her brother's head upon her lap, found blood upon her hands. Then she turned white to the very lips, and tore open the blue serge coat and waistcoat. The white flannel s.h.i.+rt beneath was caked with blood. The two women moaned, but not a finger faltered.

They opened the s.h.i.+rt tenderly, and there, on the right breast, saw a dull blue stain with a crimson thread in the middle of it. A gunshot wound looks to unaccustomed eyes altogether too innocent a thing to account for death or even for serious danger. But the cold pallor of the face and body, the limp and helpless limbs betokened something terrible.

'Take his poor head, mamma,' cried Lilian; and she darted from the cabin to the deck, The boatman was lounging quietly in the boat some thirty yards down stream. She called to him aloud--

'Go for a doctor. My brother is dying here. Be quick, be quick, be quick!' she almost screamed as the man stared at her. Understanding at last, the fellow s.n.a.t.c.hed up his sculls and dashed through the water.

Lilian flew back to her brother; and while the two women, not knowing what to do further, sat supporting the helpless head together; a man leapt aboard.

'You called for a doctor, madam,' he said quietly, 'I am a surgeon.

Permit me to a.s.sist you.'

The women made way for him. He was a youngish man, with a sunburnt complexion and grey hair, a gentleman beyond denial, and beyond doubt self-possessed and accustomed to obedience. They trusted him at once. He raised the rec.u.mbent figure to a couch, and then looked at the wound. He turned over the lappel of the coat and glanced at it. He had a habit of speaking to himself.

'Pistol shot,' he muttered. 'Close quarters. Coat quite burned. Decimal three-fifty or thereabouts I fancy from the look of it. Ah, here it is!

Have you a penknife or a pair of scissors, madam? That small knife will do. Thank you.'

A dexterous touch, and from the little gaping lips carved by the penknife's point in the muscle of the back rolled out a flattened piece of lead with jagged edges like a battered s.h.i.+lling, but a trifle thicker.

'Yes,' said the surgeon, laying it on the table; 'decimal three-fifty.

What's this? Wound on the head. Your handkerchief, please. Cold water.

Thank you.'