The Mysteries of London, Vol. II [Unabridged & Illustrated] (Valancourt Classics)

by George W. M. Reynolds

  * * *

  It was eleven o’clock at night.

  Mr. Graham had just left his patient in a profound sleep, and had retired to the bed-room allotted to him, Lydia Hutchinson having already come to keep the promised vigil by the couch of the wounded nobleman.

  The curtains were drawn around the bed: wax-lights burnt upon the mantel.

  A deep silence reigned throughout the mansion.

  Lydia Hutchinson threw herself back in the armchair, and gave way to her reflections.

  “Thus far has my vengeance progressed: but it is not yet near its termination. It must fall alike upon the woman who first taught me the ways of duplicity and vice, and on him who used the blackest treachery to rob me of my innocence. Oh! who would have ever thought that I—once so humane in disposition—once possessed of so kind a heart that I sacrificed myself to save a friend,—who would have thought that I could have become such a fiend in dealing forth retribution? But my heart is not yet completely hardened: it is only towards those at whose hands I have suffered, that my sympathies flow no longer. And even in respect to the hateful Adeline, how often—oh! how often am I forced to recall to mind all my wrongs—to ponder, to brood upon them—in order to nerve myself to execute my schemes of vengeance! When she spoke this evening of her unborn child, she touched my heart:—I could have wept—I could have wept,—but I dared not! I was compelled to take refuge in that freezing manner which I have so well studied to assume when I contemplate her sufferings. My God! thou knowest how great are my wrongs! A father’s grey hairs brought down with sorrow to the grave impel me to revenge:—the voice of a brother’s blood appeals to me also for revenge! Revenge—revenge—upon Adeline and on the perfidious nobleman sleeping here!”

  She had reached this point in her musings, when Lord Dunstable moved, and coughed gently.

  He was awake.

  “Graham,” he murmured, in a faint tone: “for God’s sake give me some drink—my throat is parched!”

  “Mr. Graham is not present,” answered Lydia; “chance has brought me hither to attend upon you.”

  Thus speaking, she drew aside the curtains.

  Lord Dunstable cast one glance up to that countenance which looked malignantly on him.

  “Lydia!” he said: “is that you? or is my imagination playing me false?”

  “It is Lydia Hutchinson, whom you betrayed—whose brother fell by your hand—and who is now here to taunt you with all the infamy of your conduct towards her,” was the calm and measured reply.

  “Am I alone with you?—is there none else present?” asked Dunstable, in a tone of alarm.

  Lydia drew the curtains completely aside; and the nobleman cast a hasty look round the room.

  “You see that we are alone together,” she said, “and you are in my power!”

  “What would you do to me, Lydia?” he exclaimed: “you cannot be so wicked as to contemplate——”

  “I am wicked enough to contemplate any thing horrible in respect to you!” interrupted the avenging woman. “But fear not for your life. No:—although your hands be imbrued with the blood of my brother, I would not become a murderess because you are a murderer.”

  “Did a man apply that name to me,” said Dunstable, darting a savage glance towards Lydia’s countenance, “he should repent his insolence sooner or later.”

  “And are you not a murderer as well as a ravisher?” cried Lydia, in a taunting tone. “By means the most vile—the most cowardly—the most detestable—the most degrading to a man, you possessed yourself of my virtue. Afterwards, when my brother stood forth as the avenger of his sister’s lost honour, you dared to point the murderous weapon at him whom you had already so grossly wronged in wronging me. Ravisher, you are a cowardly villain!—duellist, you are a cold-blooded murderer!”

  “Lydia—Lydia, what are you?” cried Lord Dunstable; “a fiend—thus to treat a wounded man who is so completely at your mercy!”

  “And how did you treat me when I was at your mercy at the house of your equally abandoned friend Cholmondeley?” continued Lydia. “Was not the wine which I drank, drugged for an especial purpose? Or, even if it were not—and supposing that I was intemperate,—granting, I say, that the stupefaction into which I fell was the result of my own imprudence in drinking deeply of a liquor till then unknown to me,—did you act honourably in availing yourself of my powerlessness to rob me of the only jewel I possessed? I was poor, my lord—but I was still virtuous:—you plundered me of that chastity which gave me confidence in myself and was the element of my good name! No prowling—skulking—masked thief ever performed a more infernal part than did you on that foul night!”

  “And now that years have passed, you regret the loss of a bauble—call it a jewel, indeed!—which I certainly seized an opportunity to steal, but which you would have given me of your own accord a few days later, had I chosen to wait?” said Dunstable, speaking contemptuously, and yet with great difficulty.

  “It is false—it is false—it is false!” replied Lydia, in a hoarse voice that indicated the rage which these words excited in her bosom. “I never should have yielded to you: never—never! But when once I was lost, I became like all women in the same state—reckless, indifferent! Villain that you are, you make light of your crimes. Oh! I am well aware that seduction—rape, even, under such circumstances as those in which you ravished me—are not deemed enormities in the fashionable world: they are achievements at which profligates like yourself laugh over their wine, and which render them favourites with the ladies! You call seductions and rapes by the noble name of ‘conquests!’ O glorious conqueror that you were, when you lay down by the side of a mere girl who was insensible, and rifled her of the only jewel that adorned her! how was your victory celebrated? By my tears! What have been its consequences? My ruin and utter degradation! Detestable man, of what have you to boast? Of plunging a poor, defenceless woman into the depths of misery—of hurrying her father to the grave with a broken heart—of murdering her brother! Those are your conquests, monster that you are!”

  Weak as was the young nobleman’s frame,—attenuated as was his mind by suffering and by prostration of the physical energies, it is not to be wondered at if those terrible reproaches produced a strange effect upon him,—uttered as they were, too, in a tone of savage malignity, and by a woman with whom he found himself alone at an hour when all the other inmates of the mansion were probably rocked in slumber.

  That evanescent gleam of a naturally spirited disposition which had enabled him to meet her first taunts with a contemptuous reply, had disappeared; and he now found himself prostrated in mind and body—rapidly yielding to nervous feelings and vague alarms—and almost inclined to believe himself to be the black-hearted criminal which Lydia represented him.

  “And when such profligates as you appear in the fashionable world, after some new conquest,” proceeded Lydia, “how triumphant—how proud are ye, if the iniquity have obtained notoriety! Ye are the objects of all conversation—of all interest! And what is your punishment at the hands of an outraged society? Ladies tap you with their fans, and say slyly, ‘Oh! the naughty man!’ And the naughty man smiles—displays his white teeth—and becomes the hero of the party! But all the while, how many bitter tears are shed elsewhere on his account! what hearts are breaking through his villany! Such has doubtless been your career, Lord Dunstable; and I do not envy you the feelings which must now possess you. For should that wound prove fatal—should mortification ensue—should this, in a word, be your death-bed, how ill-prepared are you to meet that all-seeing and avenging Judge who will punish you the more severely on account of the high station which you have held in the world!”

  “Water, Lydia—water!” murmured Lord Dunstable: “my throat is parched. Water—I implore you!”

  “How could I give you so poor a drink as water when you gave me wine?”

/>   “Oh! spare those taunts! I am dying with thirst.”

  “And I am happy in the thirst which now possesses me—but it is a thirst for vengeance!”

  “Water—water! I am fainting.”

  “Great crimes demand great penance. Do you know in whose mansion you are? This is Ravensworth Hall,” added Lydia; “and Lady Ravensworth is Adeline—Cholmondeley’s late paramour.”

  “I know all that,” said Lord Dunstable, faintly, “but how came you here?”

  “It were too long to tell you now.”

  “Water, Lydia,—Oh! give me water!”

  “Tell me that you are a vile seducer—and you repent.”

  “Oh! give me water—and I will do all you tell me!”

  “Then repeat the words which I have dictated,” said Lydia, imperiously.

  “I am a seducer——”

  “No: a vile seducer!”

  “A vile seducer—and I repent. Now give me water!”

  “Not yet. Confess that you are a ruthless murderer, and that you repent!”

  “No—never!” said Dunstable, writhing with the pangs of an intolerable thirst. “Water—give me water!”

  “You implore in vain, unless you obey me. Confess——”

  “I do—I do!” exclaimed the miserable nobleman. “I confess that I am—I cannot say it!”

  “Then die of thirst!” returned Lydia, ferociously.

  “No: do not leave me thus! Give me water—only one drop! I confess that I murdered your brother in a duel—and I deeply repent that deed! Now give me to drink!”

  “First swear that you will not complain to a living soul of my treatment towards you this night,” said Lydia, holding a glass of lemonade at a short distance from his lips.

  “I swear to obey you,” murmured Dunstable, almost driven to madness by the excruciating anguish of his burning thirst.

  “You swear by that God before whom you may so soon have to appear?” continued Lydia, advancing the glass still nearer to his parched mouth.

  “I swear—I swear! Give me the glass.”

  Then Lydia allowed him to drink as much as he chose of the refreshing beverage.

  At that moment the time-piece struck one, and a low knock was heard at the door.

  “I now leave you,” said Lydia, in a whisper, as she leant over him. “Another will watch by your side during the remainder of the night. To-morrow evening I shall visit you again. Remember your oath not to utter a complaint that may induce the surgeon to prevent me from attending on you. If you perjure yourself in this respect, I shall find other means to punish you:—and then my vengeance would be terrible indeed!”

  Lord Dunstable groaned in anguish, and closed his eyes—as if against some horrific spectre.

  Lydia smiled triumphantly, and hastened to admit the housekeeper.

  “His mind wanders a little,” she whispered to the person who thus came to relieve her in the vigil; “and he appeared to think that I wished to do him a mischief.”

  “That is a common thing in delirium,” answered the housekeeper, also in a low tone, inaudible to the invalid. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” returned Lydia.

  She then withdrew—satisfied at having adopted a precautionary measure in case the nobleman should utter a complaint against her.

  And she retired to her own chamber gloating over the vengeance which she had already taken upon the man who had ruined her, and happy in the hope of being enabled to renew those torments on the ensuing night.

  * * *

  We must conclude this chapter with an incident which has an important bearing upon events that are to follow.

  Adeline arose early on the morning following that dread night of vengeance, and dressed herself before Lydia made her appearance in the boudoir.

  Hastening down stairs, Lady Ravensworth ordered breakfast to be immediately served, and the carriage to be got ready.

  When she returned to the boudoir to assume her travelling attire, Lydia was there.

  “You have risen betimes this morning, madam,” she said; “but if you think to escape the usual punishment, you are mistaken.”

  “I am going to London, Lydia, upon important business for Lord Ravensworth,” answered Adeline; “and as you have frequently declared that you do not level your vengeance against him, I——”

  “Enough, madam: I will do nothing that may directly injure the interests of that nobleman, whom I sincerely pity. When shall you return?” she demanded in an authoritative manner.

  “This evening—or at latest to-morrow afternoon,” was the reply, which Adeline gave meekly—for she had her own reasons not to waste time by irritating her torturess on this occasion.

  “ ’Tis well, Adeline,” said Lydia: “I shall not accompany you. You are always in my power—but Dunstable may soon be far beyond my reach; and I would not miss the opportunity of passing the half of another night by his bedside.”

  Adeline was now ready to depart; and Lydia attended her, for appearance’ sake, to the carriage.

  Ere the door of the vehicle was closed, Lady Ravensworth said to Lydia, “You will prepare my room as usual for me this evening—and see that the fire be laid by eleven o’clock—as it is probable that I may return to-night.”

  Lydia darted upon her mistress a glance which was intended to say—“You shall soon repent the authoritative voice in which you uttered that command;”—but she answered aloud, in an assumed tone of respect, “Yes, my lady.”

  The footman closed the door—and the carriage drove rapidly away for the town-mansion at the West End.

  And as it rolled along, Adeline mused thus:—

  “Now, Lydia, for vengeance upon you! You have driven me to desperation—and one of us must die! Oh! I have overreached you at last! You think that I am bound upon business for my husband:—no, it is for you! And well did I divine that your schemes of vengeance against the poor wounded nobleman would retain you at the Hall: well was I convinced that you would not offer to accompany me! At length, Lydia, you are in my power!”

  Then, as she smiled with demoniac triumph, Adeline took from her bosom and devoured with her eyes the address that she had picked up in the ruins of the gamekeeper’s cottage.

  There was only an old housekeeper maintained at the town-mansion, to take care of the dwelling;—and thus Adeline was under no apprehension of having her motions watched.

  Immediately after her arrival, which was shortly before eleven in the forenoon, she repaired to a chamber, having given instructions that as she had many letters to write, she desired to remain uninterrupted.

  But scarcely had the housekeeper withdrawn, when Adeline enveloped herself in a large cloak, put on a common straw bonnet with a thick black veil, and left the house by a private door of which she possessed the key.

  CHAPTER CCXVII.

  THE PRISONER IN THE SUBTERRANEAN.

  It was on the same morning when Adeline came to London in the manner just described, that Anthony Tidkins emerged from his dwelling, hastened up the dark alley, and entered the ground-floor of the building.

  He was not, however, alone:—Mr. Banks, who had been breakfasting with him, followed close behind.

  “Light the darkey, old fellow,” said the Resurrection Man, when they were both in the back room; “while I raise the trap. We must bring matters to an end somehow or another this morning.”

  “I hope so,” returned Banks. “It isn’t wery probable that the poor old wessel will have pluck enow to hold out much longer. Why—it must be near upon ten days that she’s been here.”

  “I dare say it is,” observed the Resurrection Man, coolly: “but she’ll never stir out till she gives us the information we want. It would be worth a pretty penny to us. The young girl was evidently dying to k
now about her parents, that night she met the old woman; and she can get money from her friends—she said so.”

  “Well,” returned Banks, “let us hope that the old woman has thought better on it by this time and will make a clean buzzim of it. It would be a great pity and a wery useless crime if we was obleeged to knock the sinful old wessel on the head arter all: her corpse would fetch nothing at the surgeon’s.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Tidkins: “it won’t come to that. She was half inclined to tell every thing last night when I visited her as usual. But come along, and let’s see how she is disposed this morning.”

  The Resurrection Man descended the stone staircase, followed by Banks, who carried the light.

  In a few moments they entered the vault where their prisoner was confined.

  And that prisoner was the vile hag of Golden Lane!

  A lamp burned feebly upon the table in the subterranean; and the old woman was already up and dressed when the two men made their appearance.

  She was sitting in a chair, dolefully rocking herself to and fro and uttering low moans as she pondered upon her condition and the terms on which she might obtain her release.

  When the Resurrection Man and Banks entered the subterranean, she turned a hasty glance towards them, and then continued to rock and moan as before.

  The two men seated themselves on the side of the bed.

  “Well,” said the Resurrection Man, “have you made up your mind, old woman? Because me and my friend Banks are pretty tired of this delay; and if the solitary system won’t do—why, we must try what good can be effected by starvation.”

  “Alack! I have always thought myself bad enough,” said the old hag; “but you are a very devil.”

  “Ah! and you shall find this place hell too, if you go on humbugging me much longer,” returned the Resurrection Man, savagely. “You have only got yourself to thank for all this trouble that you’re in. If you had behaved in a straightforward manner, all would have gone on right enough. My friend Banks here can tell you the same. But you tried to get the upper hand of me throughout the business.”