Throughout the rest of the journey I observed the strictest caution, and fortune seconded my efforts. It was dark when we got to Shrewsbury. On leaving the coach I was enabled, under cover of the night, to keep a sharp watch on the proceedings of Screw and his Bow Street ally. They did not put up at the hotel, but walked away to a public house. There, my clerical character obliged me to leave them at the door.
I returned to the hotel, to make inquiries about conveyances.
The answers informed me that Crickgelly was a little fishing-village, and that there was no coach direct to it, but that two coaches running to two small Welsh towns situated at nearly equal distances from my destination, on either side of it, would pass through Shrewsbury the next morning. The waiter added, that I could book a place—conditionally—by either of these vehicles; and that, as they were always well-filled, I had better be quick in making my choice between them. Matters had now arrived at such a pass, that nothing was left for me but to trust to chance. If I waited till the morning to see whether Screw and the Bow Street runner traveled in my direction, and to find out, in case they did, which coach they took, I should be running the risk of losing a place for myself, and so delaying my journey for another day. This was not to be thought of. I told the waiter to book me a place in which coach he pleased. The two were called respectively The Humming Bee, and The Red Cross Knight. The waiter chose the latter.
Sleep was not much in my way that night. I rose almost as early as Boots himself—breakfasted—then sat at the coffee-room window looking out anxiously for the two coaches.
Nobody seemed to agree which would pass first. Each of the inn servants of whom I inquired made it a matter of partisanship, and backed his favorite coach with the most consummate assurance. At last, I heard the guard’s horn and the clatter of the horses’ hoofs. Up drove a coach—I looked out cautiously—it was the Humming Bee. Three outside places were vacant; one behind the coachman; two on the dickey. The first was taken immediately by a farmer, the second—-to my unspeakable disgust and terror—was secured by the inevitable Bow Street runner; who, as soon as h e was up, helped the weakly Screw into the third place, by his side. They were going to Crickgelly; not a doubt of it, now.
I grew mad with impatience for the arrival of the Red Cross Knight. Half-an-hour passed—forty minutes—and then I heard another horn and another clatter—and the Red Cross Knight rattled up to the hotel door at full speed. What if there should be no vacant place for me! I ran to the door with a sinking heart. Outside, the coach was declared to be full.
“There is one inside place,” said the waiter, “if you don’t mind paying the—”
Before he could say the rest, I was occupying that one inside place. I remember nothing of the journey from the time we left the hotel door, except that it was fearfully long. At some hour of the day with which I was not acquainted (for my watch had stopped for want of winding up), I was set down in a clean little street of a prim little town (the name of which I never thought of asking), and was told that the coach never went any further.
No post-chaise was to be had. With incredible difficulty I got first a gig, then a man to drive it; and, last, a pony to draw it. We hobbled away crazily from the inn door. I thought of Screw and the Bow Street runner approaching Crickgelly, from their point of the compass, perhaps at the full speed of a good post-chaise—I thought of that, and would have given all the money in my pocket for two hours’ use of a fast road-hack.
Judging by the time we occupied in making the journey, and a little also by my own impatience, I should say that Crickgelly must have been at least twenty miles distant from the town where I took the gig. The sun was setting, when we first heard, through the evening stillness, the sound of the surf on the seashore. The twilight was falling as we entered the little fishing village, and let our unfortunate pony stop, for the last time, at a small inn door.
The first question I asked of the landlord was, whether two gentlemen (friends of mine, of course, whom I expected to meet) had driven into Crickgelly, a little while before me. The reply was in the negative; and the sense of relief it produced seemed to rest me at once, body and mind, after my long and anxious journey. Either I had beaten the spies on the road, or they were not bound to Crickgelly. Any way, I had first possession of the field of action. I paid the man who had driven me, and asked my way to Zion Place. My directions were simple—I had only to go through the village, and I should find Zion Place at the other end of it.
The village had a very strong smell, and a curious habit of building boats in the street between intervals of detached cottages; a helpless, muddy, fishy little place. I walked through it rapidly; turned inland a few hundred yards; ascended some rising ground; and discerned, in the dim twilight, four small lonesome villas standing in pairs, with a shed and a saw-pit on one side, and a few shells of unfinished houses on the other. Some madly speculative builder was evidently trying to turn Crickgelly into a watering-place.
I made out Number Two, and discovered the bell-handle with difficulty, it was growing so dark. A servant-maid—corporeally enormous; but, as I soon found, in a totally undeveloped state, mentally—opened the door.
“Does Miss Giles live here?” I asked.
“Don’t see no visitors,” answered the large maiden. “T’other one tried it and had to go away. You go, too.”
“T’othor one?” I repeated. “Another visitor? And when did he call?”
“Better than an hour ago.”
“Was there nobody with him?”
“No. Don’t see no visitors. He went. You go, too.”
Just as she repeated that exasperating formula of words, a door opened at the end of the passage. My voice had evidently reached the ears of somebody in the back parlor. Who the person was I could not see, but I heard the rustle of a woman’s dress. My situation was growing desperate, my suspicions were aroused—I determined to risk everything—and I called softly in the direction of the open door, “Alicia!”
A voice answered, “Good heavens! Frank?” It was her voice. She had recognized mine. I pushed past the big servant; in two steps I was at the end of the passage; in one more I was in the back parlor.
She was there, standing alone by the side of a table. Seeing my changed costume and altered face, she turned deadly pale, and stretched her hand behind her mechanically, as if to take hold of a chair. I caught her in my arms; but I was afraid to kiss her—she trembled so when I only touched her.
“Frank!” she said, drawing her head back. “What is it? How did you find out? For mercy’s sake what does it mean?”
“It means, love, that I’ve come to take care of you for the rest of your life and mine, if you will only let me. Don’t tremble—there’s nothing to be afraid of! Only compose yourself, and I’ll tell you why I am here in this strange disguise. Come, come, Alicia!—don’t look like that at me. You called me Frank just now, for the first time. Would you have done that, if you had disliked me or forgotten me?”
I saw her color beginning to come back—the old bright glow returning to the dear dusky cheeks. If I had not seen them so near me, I might have exercised some self-control—as it was, I lost my presence of mind entirely, and kissed her.
She drew herself away half-frightened, half-confused—certainly not offended, and, apparently, not very likely to faint—which was more than I could have said of her when I first entered the room. Before she had time to reflect on the peril and awkwardness of our position, I pressed the first necessary questions on her rapidly, one after the other.
“Where is Mrs. Baggs?” I asked first.
Mrs. Baggs was the housekeeper.
Alicia pointed to the closed folding-doors. “In the front parlor; asleep on the sofa.”
“Have you any suspicion who the stranger was who called more than an hour ago?”
“None. The servant told him we s
aw no visitors, and he went away, without leaving his name.”
“Have you heard from your father?”
She began to turn pale again, but controlled herself bravely, and answered in a whisper:
“Mrs. Baggs had a short note from him this morning. It was not dated; and it only said circumstances had happened which obliged him to leave home suddenly, and that we were to wait here till be wrote again, most likely in a few days.”
“Now, Alicia,” I said, as lightly as I could, “I have the highest possible opinion of your courage, good-sense, and self-control; and I shall expect you to keep up your reputation in my eyes, while you are listening to what I have to tell you.”
Saying these words, I took her by the hand and made her sit close by me; then, breaking it to her as gently and gradually as possible, I told her all that had happened at the red-brick house since the evening when she left the dinner-table, and we exchanged our parting look at the dining-room door.
It was almost as great a trial to me to speak as it was to her to hear. She suffered so violently, felt such evident misery of shame and terror, while I was relating the strange events which had occurred in her absence, that I once or twice stopped in alarm, and almost repented my boldness in telling her the truth. However, fair-dealing with her, cruel as it might seem at the time, was the best and safest course for the future. How could I expect her to put all her trust in me if I began by deceiving her—if I fell into prevarications and excuses at the very outset of our renewal of intercourse? I went on desperately to the end, taking a hopeful view of the most hopeless circumstances, and making my narrative as mercifully short as possible.
When I had done, the poor girl, in the extremity of her forlornness and distress, forgot all the little maidenly conventionalities and young-lady-like restraints of everyday life—and, in a burst of natural grief and honest confiding helplessness, hid her face on my bosom, and cried there as if she were a child again, and I was the mother to whom she had been used to look for comfort.
I made no attempt to stop her tears—they were the safest and best vent for the violent agitation under which she was suffering. I said nothing; words, at such a ti me as that, would only have aggravated her distress. All the questions I had to ask; all the proposals I had to make, must, I felt, be put off—no matter at what risk—until some later and calmer hour. There we sat together, with one long unsnuffed candle lighting us smokily; with the discordantly-grotesque sound of the housekeeper’s snoring in the front room, mingling with the sobs of the weeping girl on my bosom. No other noise, great or small, inside the house or out of it, was audible. The summer night looked black and cloudy through the little back window.
I was not much easier in my mind, now that the trial of breaking my bad news to Alicia was over. That stranger who had called at the house an hour before me, weighed on my spirits. It could not have been Doctor Dulcifer. He would have gained admission. Could it be the Bow Street runner, or Screw? I had lost sight of them, it is true; but had they lost sight of me?
Alicia’s grief gradually exhausted itself. She feebly raised her head, and, turning it away from me, hid her face. I saw that she was not fit for talking yet, and begged her to go upstairs to the drawing-room and lie down a little. She looked apprehensively toward the folding-doors that shut us off from the front parlor.
“Leave Mrs. Baggs to me,” I said. “I want to have a few words with her; and, as soon as you are gone, I’ll make noise enough here to wake her.”
Alicia looked at me inquiringly and amazedly. I did not speak again. Time was now of terrible importance to us—I gently led her to the door.
CHAPTER XIV
As soon as I was alone, I took from my pocket one of the handbills which my excitable fellow-traveler had presented to me, so as to have it ready for Mrs. Baggs the moment we stood face to face. Armed with this ominous letter of introduction, I kicked a chair down against the folding-doors, by way of giving a preliminary knock to arouse the housekeeper’s attention. The plan was immediately successful. Mrs. Baggs opened the doors of communication violently. A slight smell of spirits entered the room, and was followed close by the housekeeper herself, with an indignant face and a disordered head-dress.
“What do you mean, sir? How dare you—” she began; then stopped aghast, looking at me in speechless astonishment.
“I have been obliged to make a slight alteration in my personal appearance, ma’am,” I said. “But I am still Frank Softly.”
“Don’t talk to me about personal appearances, sir,” cried Mrs. Baggs recovering. “What do you mean by being here? Leave the house immediately. I shall write to the doctor, Mr. Softly, this very night.”
“He has no address you can direct to,” I rejoined. “If you don’t believe me, read that.” I gave her the handbill without another word of preface.
Mrs. Baggs looked at it—lost in an instant some of the fine color plentifully diffused over her face by sleep and spirits—sat down in the nearest chair with a thump that seemed to threaten the very foundations of Number Two, Zion Place—and stared me hard in the face; the most speechless and helpless elderly female I ever beheld.
“Take plenty of time to compose yourself ma’am,” I said. “If you don’t see the doctor again soon, under the gallows, you will probably not have the pleasure of meeting with him for some considerable time.”
Mrs. Baggs smote both her hands distractedly on her knees, and whispered a devout ejaculation to herself softly.
“Allow me to deal with you, ma’am, as a woman of the world,” I went on. “If you will give me half-an-hour’s hearing, I will explain to you how I come to know what I do; how I got here; and what I have to propose to Miss Alicia and to you.”
“If you have the feelings of a man, sir,” said Mrs. Baggs, shaking her head and raising her eyes to heaven, “you will remember that I have nerves, and will not presume upon them.”
As the old lady uttered the last words, I thought I saw her eyes turn from heaven, and take the earthly direction of the sofa in the front parlor. It struck me also that her lips looked rather dry. Upon these two hints I spoke.
“Might I suggest some little stimulant?” I asked, with respectful earnestness. “I have heard my grandmother (Lady Malkinshaw) say that, ‘a drop in time saves nine.’”
“You will find it under the sofa pillow,” said Mrs. Baggs, with sudden briskness. “‘A drop in time saves nine’—my sentiments, if I may put myself on a par with her ladyship. The liqueur-glass, Mr. Softly, is in the backgammon-board. I hope her ladyship was well the last time you heard from her? Suffers from her nerves, does she? Like me, again. In the backgammon-board. Oh, this news, this awful news!”
I found the bottle of brandy in the place indicated, but no liqueur-glass in the backgammon-board. There was, however, a wine-glass, accidentally left on a chair by the sofa. Mrs. Baggs did not seem to notice the difference when I brought it into the back room and filled it with brandy.
“Take a toothful yourself,” said Mrs. Baggs, lightly tossing off the dram in a moment. “‘A drop in time’—I can’t help repeating it, it’s so nicely expressed. Still, with submission to her ladyship’s better judgment, Mr. Softly, the question seems now to arise, whether, if one drop in time saves nine, two drops in time may not save eighteen.” Here Mrs. Baggs forgot her nerves and winked. I returned the wink and filled the glass a second time. “Oh, this news, this awful news!” said Mrs. Baggs, remembering her nerves again.
Just then I thought I heard footsteps in front of the house, but, listening more attentively, found that it had begun to rain, and that I had been deceived by the pattering of the first heavy drops against the windows. However, the bare suspicion that the same stranger who had called already might be watching the house now, was enough to startle me very seriously, and to suggest the absolute necessity of occupying no more precious time in paying atten
tion to the vagaries of Mrs. Baggs’ nerves. It was also of some importance that I should speak to her while she was sober enough to understand what I meant in a general way.
Feeling convinced that she was in imminent danger of becoming downright drunk if I gave her another glass, I kept my hand on the bottle, and forthwith told my story over again in a very abridged and unceremonious form, and without allowing her one moment of leisure for comment on my narrative, whether it might be of the weeping, winking, drinking, groaning, or ejaculating kind. As I had anticipated, when I came to a conclusion, and consequently allowed her an opportunity of saying a few words, she affected to be extremely shocked and surprised at hearing of the nature of her master’s pursuits, and reproached me in terms of the most vehement and virtuous indignation for incurring the guilt of abetting them, even though I had done so from the very excusable motive of saving my own life. Having a lively sense of the humorous, I was necessarily rather amused by this; but I began to get a little surprised as well, when we diverged to the subject of the doctor’s escape, on finding that Mrs. Baggs viewed the fact of his running away to some hiding-place of his own in the light of a personal insult to his faithful and attached housekeeper.
“It shows a want of confidence in me,” said the old lady, “which I may forgive, but can never forget. The sacrifices I have made for that ungrateful man are not to be told in words. The very morning he sent us away here, what did I do? Packed up the moment he said Go. I had my preserves to pot, and the kitchen chimney to be swept, and the lock of my box hampered into the bargain. Other women in my place would have grumbled—I got up directly, as lively as any girl of eighteen you like to mention. Says he, ‘I want Alicia taken out of young Softly’s way, and you must do it.’—-Says I, ‘This very morning, sir?’—Says he, ‘This very morning.’—Says I, ‘Where to?’—Says he, ‘As far off as ever you can go; coast of Wales—Crickgelly. I won’t trust her nearer; young Softly’s too cunning, and she’s too fond of him.’—‘Any more orders, sir?’ says I.—‘Yes; take some fancy name—Simkins, Johnson, Giles, Jones, James,’ says he, ‘what you like bu t Dulcifer; for that scamp Softly will move heaven and earth to trace her.’—‘What else?’ says I.—‘Nothing, but look sharp,’ says he; ‘and mind one thing, that she sees no visitors, and posts no letters.’ Before those last words had been out of his wicked lips an hour, we were off. A nice job I had to get her away—a nice job to stop her from writing letters to you—a nice job to keep her here. But I did it; I followed my orders like a slave in a plantation with a whip at his bare back. I’ve had rheumatics, weak legs, bad nights, and miss in the sulks—all from obeying the doctor’s orders. And what is my reward? He turns coiner, and runs away without a word to me beforehand, and writes me a trumpery note, without a date to it, without a farthing of money in it, telling me nothing! Look at my confidence in him, and then look at the way he’s treated me in return. What woman’s nerves can stand that? Don’t keep fidgeting with the bottle! Pass it this way, Mr. Softly, or you’ll break it, and drive me distracted.”
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 154
