“We old fellows, we find it out, sometimes suddenly, we are not quite what we were. On Saturday — it seems so ridiculous I should be so easily knocked up now — I could have walked to the very top of the mountain and over it, with more ease than I have accomplished this little walk. You are not a bit tired. I’m quite ashamed; but now I’m at your command again. Suppose we go on.”
So on they went.
A few hundred yards below the point at which they had crossed this old road-if anything so narrow and inartificial deserved to be called so-the hill, shelving a little, forms a level platform, in diameter about a hundred yards. With no floral purposes, and by no means in search of the picturesque, quite another party, consisting of five gentlemen, were assembled, and a little encampment of traps — three of these-and horses, and one vehicle, nondescript, with C springs, which had conveyed the doctor from Dingham. There were servants with these horses and vehicles, which were screened from the little green area on which the gentlemen were assembled by a projecting bank, overgrown with birch and whitethorn.
No more convenient or secluded spot for a duel could have been selected, and should a combatant happen to be wounded, there was the very gentle descent of the road from this point, on the level turf, beside which a carriage might run as softly as over the pile of half a dozen Turkey carpets.
Outside this little knot of persons, not a human being anywhere, except perhaps one, suspected an assemblage of gentlemen for any purpose, much less this, upon the green platform I have described, and which, lying in a gentle hollow, was fenced from distant View. This place, for its facilities of access and departure, was selected by shrewd old Doctor Jollock, who, when affairs of this kind were more frequent, had acquired a serviceable experience.
My reader and I have lighted upon them at a critical moment. That trying interval spent by the seconds in discussing and determining arrangements was passed. Each had accomplished the process of loading the “saw-handles,” which the principals were about to level one at the other. The empty cases were on the ground-Sir John Mardykes’ an heirloom, made of rosewood, inlaid with brass, an extremely pretty article; and, indeed, we see no reason, observing the amount of decoration expended upon coffins by fashionable undertakers, why these other cases of death should not also borrow something from our sense of the beautiful and the elegant.
Another case, just as grizzly, lay also upon the sward a little apart. It was that which contained honest Doctor Jollock’s surgical instruments. The doctor himself stood by — his jolly port-wine complexion bleached to yellow by the suspense — for the decisive moment had come. The stout little baronet, in’a green “cutaway” coat, with gilt buttons, a hat exquisitely brushed, and Wellington boots, that shone intensely in the sun, was standing in the spot where his “friend” had just placed him, with a pistol already in his hand, looking very pale and glowering.
About twelve steps away stood Charles Shirley, receiving a word or two, spoken low, from his seconda tall, slight, elderly gentleman, with a rather red sharp nose, and a resolute and important air, and his coat buttoned across his chest. His nose was near Charles’s ear as he whispered, and he held a pistol in each hand, with the butt uppermost. And now he retires backward about a dozen steps, and takes his handkerchief from his pocket. The baronet’s second, a short, plump man, with a short high nose, and a double chin, an eyeglass and a white hat, stood at the other side.
Doctor Jollock, a little in the second’s rear, stands motionless, with his lips tightly screwed together, and frowning hard, as if he expected a box on the ear — staring breathless and still on the combatants.
“Gentlemen, are you both ready?” cries the second, with the handkerchief in his fingers.
Each adjusts himself and says “yes,” or “all right.”
“Now mind, gentlemen, when I drop it.”
There ensued one dreadful second of suspense, and — blowing his nose violently in the fatal handkerchief — to the surprise of each, the tall thin second steps hurriedly between them, and with the incoherence of a madman, as he stuffs the handkerchief into his pocket, cries across to his brother “second,” in a loud voice —
“Now stick your cane in the ground, and mind, the best shooting in six shots wins the hundred, and you begin, Sir John.
And then, waving his hand forward a little, he called, “Please steady for a moment; only twelve shots, and you can pass; but there’s a wager here. Will you kindly wait for a very few minutes?”
Now this last speech was addressed to a tall “scraggy” man, with a very long neck, and a black frock-coat on, that somehow looked at once new and seedy — dyed, perhaps, and smoothed by some process into an unnatural gloss. This man drew a paper from his pocket as he rounded the little screen of bushes, and was closely followed by two equally oddly got-up gentlemen.
The “friend” with the red nose, who had seen such apparitions before, had no difficulty in recognising a “detective,” and “policemen in plain clothes”; and, with excellent presence of mind, he had lied cheerfully, as we have heard.
The tall stranger with the long neck beckoned to him, saying, “I beg your pardon, sir,” as he fumbled with his paper, and still advanced.
“Well?” said the second, making up his mind and stepping forward to meet him.
The stranger may have had his suspicions, but he was upon quite other game.
“Did you happen to see Mr. Burton, that’s stopping down here at the George, sir, going this way?” he asked.
“No.”
The detective had a word to say to him aside; and when it was said, the “friend” beckoned to his brother “second,” who heard likewise, and called, “Sir John, do come here for a moment”; and to the policeman he added, “Sir John Mardykes is a magistrate of our county.”
Sir John arrived, and also heard the murmured words of the detective; and Charles Shirley drew near, and heard likewise.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Charles, very pale; “he is gone up the hill with Miss Mildmay.”
“This thing’s at an end, of course,” said the “friend” with the nose, drawing his associate apart by the arm.
“Of course,” whispered the fat friend in the white hat energetically, “resting upon such a basis!”
They both agreed, as they brought their principals quietly together. Those “principals,” at the instance of their friends shook hands, but, I am bound to say, rather coldly, and instantly the united party moved up the hill, following the line of the road, for Charles, who had seen them set out in the boat, rightly conjectured whereabout they must be.
CHAPTER XXII.
GIDDY.
OLD Mr. Burton, with his companion, had got on, languid and smiling, but very agreeably, notwithstanding his occasional pauses for rest; and I shall now describe the point at which he said with a smile, and a sigh, and a little shrug —
“Ha, ha-at last — here we are!”
He looked pallid, tired, and in a dark reverie, from which, suddenly awakening, he said —
‘You can see the flowers, there.”
With his stick he pointed; and she answered, delighted —
“Oh, dear! how beautiful — how wonderful! but how shall we get them?”
The old road, half-hidden, with its close nap of grass, and skirted with the spreading mantle of heath and ferns that cover the steeps that ascend at their right, is traced at the downward side by a halfobliterated fence of peat and here and there of stones, which had in this spot been displaced. With a steep convexity, the hill bends downward here. The near horizon, as you look from the road, terminates in a sudden curve not ten steps down the descent.
‘I am jo unaccountably and absurdly knocked up, to-day,” said he, “that I can do nothing. Do you see just there, not nine feet down the slope, that little ridge? I rested my feet upon that, and plucked the flower, and came up again; but to-day I am quite good-for-nothing, as you see — utterly done up — hardly able to walk; but if you are not afraid to do what an old
fellow did only two days ago, you can hold the end of my stick, and with your feet resting on that little ledge and so pluck the flowers, as many as you like. It is perfectly easy, or I should not allow you to try.”
Laura Mildmay could walk those mountains, to which from her childhood she had been accustomed, like a chamois; but this was an unpleasant venture. Over the brow of the steep you could see, five hundred feet below, the distant town of Golden Friars like a tiny toy village beneath them, and a strip of the blue lake.
“Are you quite sure, Mr. Burton, that the little ridge there, as you call it, is perfectly firm?”
“As the mountain itself, my dear child. I stood upon it for five minutes on Saturday, of course leaning on the bank at the same time; and I weigh fourteen stone, and you hardly seven.”
“Oh, then, there can be no danger,” she said. “It would be so cowardly to return without the flowers; and if you kindly hold your stick to me, it will make me feel quite comfortable.”
In a moment it was arranged, and, kneeling on the slope, and holding fast to the end of the stick, she allowed herself to slide down till her feet rested on the prominence on which she relied for support.
It turned out to be merely a mass of peat, detached from its position at the edge of the road; and it instantly slipped under the pressure of her feet, and slid down the smooth turf, fast er and faster, till it disappeared ovei the deepening edge.
“Hullo! what’s that! Good heaven!” cried Mr. Burton from above, as in her momentary panic she suddenly endeavoured to recover the summit by the aid of his stick, which escaped from his hold, and she found herself lying, without support, upon the smooth declivity, which was clothed with a short grass baked by the sun as brown and shiny as the hair on the back of a trunk.
“Don’t be frightened — be steady, it will be all right,” cried Mr. Burton. But the young lady was already slipping slowly down the glassy surface.
Her tremendous situation was now too plain, and a piercing scream burst from her lips and soared away through the wide vacuity.
She had turned on her side, her shoulder touching the smooth turf, trying vainly to bury her fingers in the hard surface. Thus, inch by inch, slowly she glided by the end of a huge mass of rock which hung close by her, flanking her descent, and then, within a foot, she caught a glimpse of that towards which, a little lower down, she was drifting. She was, as it were, slipping down the steep roof of a dome, and near enough to its side-edge to measure the fall to which she was hastening. There suddenly opened the sunny landscape beneath, the immense distance and the smooth stone precipice, that, with a slight convexity, curved darkly down five hundred feet to the verge of the lake, like a wall. She shut her eyes and screamed again.
A man passing by, summoned by that cry, ran to the spot, and, with a word or two of horror in his queer dialect, ran to his dwelling to fetch a rope.
At every yard the bank was steeper. Little hope there was. She felt herself still slipping. Her hand lighted on a solitary tuft of fern, and she caught it. She opened her eyes.
A crow came sailing slowly over, only a few feet above the level of the turf, and dived towards her as it passed, curiously, and so swooped over the airy ledge.
She heard the singing of some ladies in a boat, far below, upon the lake, rising sweet and faint, but distinct.
Every leaf and blade of vegetation on the slanting brink close under her eye, grew horribly sharp and exaggerated.
With white lips and eyes dimming with terror, she held by the frail stay her hand but encountered. It broke, and with it in her fingers she again slipped downward, a little more, and a little more, and now a good deal, and she felt that her feet had actually cleared the edge.
And now a frenzy seized Mr. Burton, who, in distraction, threw himself on his knees, crying aloud; and as he stood up and stamped about in his agony, a great stone, dislodged by him, bounded down so close that the earth shook under her, as it flew over the edge of the cliff.
Again her fingers encountered a resisting object, a little angle of rock peeped scarce an inch above the turf.
Once more Mr. Burton’s stampings and running hither and thither brought down a piece of rock which again bounded close by her.
She shut her eyes, and wildly she sex earned the awful name of her Creator; her fingers scarcely felt the hold on which her next moment’s life depended.
But, heaven and earth! what is this?
Voices are heard above — many; one that she knew. It was Charles Shirley’s, approaching lower and lower, nearer and nearer, cheering, exhorting her; and now a strong arm is round her — firmly, convulsively.
A rope with a running knot, sustained by many hands from above, secures him.
At first, little by little, but now with better progress, they are making upward way — and still — and still — and the same powerful arm clasps her like a girdle of iron.
And now — thank Heaven! at last — at top, safe-on level ground; and Laura Mildmay knows no more for many minutes. She has fainted.
What has become of Mr. Burton, alias Blinks, alias Amyot, alias and truly Captain Torquil — alive, and still possessed with his sordid and murderous purpose? While every hand was employed in the rescue of Laura Mildmay, this man, accused of many forgeries and frauds, and crowning his guilt with this ferocious perfidy, has escaped.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCLUSION.
THE whole town is alarmed. You may be sure the vicar’s house is in a pretty flutter at the news. Miss Laura, always something of an idol, is now, and for days after, worshipped with a frantic adoration.
Dr. Lincote and Mr. Tarlcot are at the “George and Dragon,” with Mr. Turnbull; and these three wise men of Golden Friars are putting their heads together over this ghastly breakdown of their pattern philanthropist.
“I never was so deceived in man!” said the doctor. “‘Pon my soul, it’s a nice knock to our dispensary! And Sir John says he found him with his teeth in one tumbler, and his eye in another, and a hole in its place you could put a turnip in, and his face like a nutcracker, and blazing like a furnace, and the old villain himself as drunk as a fiddler! He must be a heartless scoundrel, or he could not have played such a trick on the poor.”
“I never had occasion to advise anyone about him. It was only through the vicar and you, that I knew anything of him,” said Mr. Tarlcot. “He did not take me in, I promise you. I hope he has not hit you very hard, Mr. Turnbull — a stiff bill, I’m afraid?”
Mr. Turnbull scratched his head, and looked pompous, and perhaps a little sheepish.
“Might a’ bin worse, sir. There’s a big boxful o’ things upstairs; but I mun lose five pounds or more. Who’d a’ took him for such a ramscallion?”
“Did he get drunk here?” asked the doctor. “I think you should have put us a bit on our guard.”
“I never sid him nappy,” said Mr. Turnbull. “But he got through a deal o’ brandy, considering what an old man he was. I could a’ wished it less, sir,” said the innkeeper, and considering that it was not paid for, I can well believe him.
“But didn’t he correspond with half the swells in England?” inquired the attorney.
“Well, I was thinking o’ that. I’m not sa sure. He sent letters to the highest in the land, no doubt; no end o’ them. But I can’t mind that he got many letters in answer. I don’t think he did. Why, I could write to the Archbishop o’ Canterbury every week — what for no? — and to the Dook o’ Wellington, or the Lord Mayor o’ Lunnon, though I never sid one o’ the lot, and that, I do consayt, was that old boy’s case.”
“Not a bad notion,” said the attorney, with an attorney’s amused appreciation.
In the meantime, a full score of tall fellows from the town and about it, with hasty fury threw down sledge, or spade, or cricket-bat, and set off to scour the fells in search of the old miscreant.
Evening came. The elder townsmen were gathered on the margin of the water, and many glasses were directed to the opposite side
of the lake, the bleak mountain sides, the jagged ravines, and angular summits. But a fog spread gradually down the sides of the mountains, and by-and-by shrouded the scene of the pursuit in white folds of vapour from their view.
It was late that night in the thick fog, which, creeping across the lake, had by this time enveloped the town, when, in broken detachments, by twos and threes, the police, with the other pursuers, dropped in, unsuccessful, and quite “done up.”
It was prodigious that the old villain should have foiled the police and a body of the most experienced mountaineers in Golden Friars!
The mysterious veil of fog was still hanging over the landscape next morning, when people peeped out of their bedroom windows in Golden Friars, in vain search for the outline of the fells. Hidden behind that curtain was the scene of Mr. Burton’s bivouac. One comfort was, that the most which impeded search, also very nearly precluded escape.
The fells aie so precipitous at the further side that, the fog taken into account, it was next to impossible he could, walled in by those awful stone frontages, have found a passage among them to the level beneath.
The pursuers this morning divided their force into two parties; one beginning their march across the fells from the upper end of the lake, the other from the end nearest Golden Friars; and so soon as the mist began to clear, they commenced their movement from opposite ends of the range, in a long chain of scouts, each maintaining its respective communications by shouting and signalling from point to point.
They had taken their rations with them, and returned again to Golden Friars at nightfall, after a fatiguing and fruitless search.
If they had known the truth it would have saved them many renewed searches and many scourings of those steep and dangerous mountains.
Another week revealed it, and the swollen body of the old villain, drowned in the lake on the night of his attempt on the life of Miss Mildmay, in the endeavour, under cover of the mountain fog, to accomplish his escape, came to the surface, and was floated by the breeze to the shore, not far from Golden Friars.
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 749
