CHAPTER XIX
THE SECOND MAN
The evening had come; it was seven o'clock. Towards where London lay, something-a murky, grimy-looking ball, had sunk away half an hour ago, its disappearance being followed after a very short interval by darkness and an increase of the fog, so that those who were out in the night could not see thirty paces ahead of them. Nor of artificial light was there any hereabouts in these gloomy, miserable marshes, except a glimmer that shone from one window of the "Red Rover." Yet, nevertheless, another light was dawning that, later, served to brighten somewhat the dense mist and to make it possible by degrees to see objects fifty yards away, but no further. The light of a moon approaching her second quarter and consequently rising at this time.
Nearer to London than where the inn was-nearer by some three or four hundred paces-and upon the bank close by, where there was a rough causeway running out into the river and down to the point which the lowest tide touched, two men paced slowly-Algernon Bufton and Lewis Granger. Each was now wrapped in a long cloak, that which the latter wore being almost the counterpart of the one that Anne had laid her hand upon that morning in his house-nay, in the mist and grime through which the sickly light of the moon shone fully, it was the counterpart, Bufton's being very similar to it. Each, too, held in his hand, though he had not yet assumed it, a vizard mask.
"You hear that sound?" Granger said to his companion, as now upon his accustomed ear, if not upon the other's, there came a deep grunting noise, a noise as regular as the ticking of a clock. "You hear it and know what it is?"
"I hear nothing yet. Ah! yes; now I catch it. What is the noise?"
"The thumping of oars in rowlocks. It is the quarter-boat of the schooner coming ashore for its victims. And, alas! I fear now that it will get none."
"I fear so, too," said Bufton, glancing under the flap of his hat at the other, who was peering forward along the river-bank as though he might be imagining that still there was a hope of Ariadne and Anne coming. "I fear so, too," Bufton repeated, though as he spoke he knew that nothing could now well prevent there being one victim.
"No time must be wasted," Granger said. "The schooner sails to-night as soon as the boat returns to her. Empty or full, that boat must go back within half an hour."
"What shall we do?" Bufton asked, feeling that he was trembling with excitement.
"Best go on a hundred yards or so up the road they should come. Then, after a quarter of an hour, bid the boat put off. Tell them that we are unable to provide what was expected."
"Yes. Yes. Quick. Let us do that," his companion said, while as he spoke they heard the keel of the boat grate against the causeway. They heard also a whistle given.
"A quarter of an hour," cried Granger, casting his voice towards the spot where the sound had come, "a quarter of an hour. Wait so long," and, doubtless because of the filthy reek and mist around, that voice sounded different in Bufton's ears from usual.
"Ay, ay," was called back hoarsely, in a subdued tone, from the boat. "Shall we come ashore? Shall we be needed?"
"What shall I say?" asked Granger, appearing to hesitate. "What need of-"
"Nay," his companion replied, feverishly it seemed, and in great agitation. "Tell them to do so. To-do so. They may be needed. The women may come."
"So be it." Then Granger called back, "Ay, get ashore, and be ready. You know your work."
"We know it."
"The fool!" thought Bufton. "He has signed his own death-warrant-or as good as a death-warrant."
"Come," said Granger now. "Let us go on a few hundred yards. Then, if nothing appears when ten minutes are past, 'tis very certain we have lost them."
"Ay, of course. Come."
So they walked forward those few hundred yards-they were, indeed, but three hundred-when Granger stopped near a dry dyke, along the bank of which some stunted, miserable bushes grew that, in summer, had sparse leaves upon them, but were now dank and dripping, and said-
"'Tis useless waiting. All is still as death; if wheels were coming we should hear them, as well as the jangle of harness or crack of whip. 'Tis useless. Best go back and send the boat away."
Bufton was trembling even more than before with excitement by this time, and could scarcely stammer, "Yet-yet-'tis best that one-should wait. One go back-to-the boat-and-one wait. They may-they-the women-may come yet."
"'Tis so. Well, go you back! If Anne should see you! – if-go back, I say-I-will-follow-I will follow;" and he, ordinarily so cool and collected, stammered somewhat himself.
"So be it. You will follow? Soon! Will you not?"
"Ere you have gone a hundred yards, half the distance. Go. Go. Walk slowly-to-to-give-them-the women time even now to come. Yet-stay-those guineas-for-the master."
"He has not earned them," Bufton said, appearing to hesitate about parting with his money. "He has not earned them. He-"
"No matter! Give them to me. When I come up to you we will send them off by the man in charge of the boat. The master will earn them-later. When he returns to England."
With still an affectation of disliking to part with the money, Bufton, nevertheless, drew a silken purse forth and handed it to the other, chuckling inwardly to himself at how Granger, who was now to be the "second man," would carry upon his own person the price of his enslavement-of his doom.
Then he prepared to set forth towards the causeway, where the boat was.
"Walk slowly, there is no hurry," Granger whispered; "the quarter of an hour is not yet passed. And pause once or twice-look-back; may wish you to return-to assist, if-if-at the last moment I should hear them coming."
"I will," Bufton said, "I will"; and added to himself, "I will walk slowly, and look back more than once-to make sure of you."
Whereon he set out.
As he did so, and before he had gone thirty paces Granger went off swiftly at left angles to the path the man was following-off into the mist and fog, so that none on that path, not even Bufton could see him. Yet, still, there was a figure standing where he had stood-a figure enshrouded in a long cloak, with, hanging over its brows, a flapping broad-brimmed hat-a figure that, as Granger vanished, stepped out from behind the bush by the dyke's side and stood there for some moments.
And that figure saw the man ahead turn back and look at it, while, when Bufton had done so a second time, it called out in a gruff, fog-choked voice, "Hist! I am coming now. 'Tis useless."
"Ay, come on," replied Bufton. "Come on now. 'Tis useless."
While, as he spoke, he went on himself.
Yet, because of the state of the atmosphere, he did not know that ahead of him a "first man" (who had been listening with straining ears for his oncoming footsteps-who had, by a detour, come panting to the spot sixty yards ahead of where he was) was now walking along towards the causeway. A figure, masked as those behind him were, which, hearing a deep, husky voice close by say, "You are the 'first.' Is the 'second' coming?" answered from beneath the folds of the cloak he held across his mouth, doubtless to keep out the fog-
"Ay, he is coming."
"And-he is to be taken at all hazards?"
"At all hazards."
In truth the other was coming, though still turning and turning again, to see that his supposed victim was following him. And he did see that that supposed victim was following in his footsteps. Then he turned for the last time, gloating in his triumph, rejoicing that now-in a few moments-Granger would be gone from out his path for ever; turned to find himself confronted by three shadowy forms close to him, which, ere he could utter a cry, had sprung at him; one, the biggest and most burly, almost choking the life out of him with the brawny hands that were clenched upon his windpipe. Yet now he struggled to be free, as the rat in the trap, the panther caged, will struggle for freedom when snared and doomed; struggled so, that, at last, one of those figures struck him on the head with a bludgeon, and knocked him senseless.
"Away," that burly figure cried now. "Away with him to the boat. The time is past. Hark to the anchor cable grating through the hawse-hole; they are making ready. Away with him."
Whereupon they bore the miserable man off to the causeway, carrying him face downwards, and with still upon his face the vizard over which blood streamed now from the wound upon his crown, when, throwing him into the boat, they made off for the Nederland.
Then Granger stepped out from the dark obscurity to which he had retreated after speaking to the sailor who had greeted him as the "first man" and had asked if the second was coming, and went back to meet that other shrouded figure which had taken his place.
"He is gone," he said; "we are avenged and you are free. You heard?" Then, suddenly, he cried, as he saw Anne reel towards him, "What is it? You do not regret, surely?"
"Nay," the girl replied, falling almost fainting into his arms. "Nay. There is no regret, and he deserves his fate-whatsoever it may be. Yet-yet-actress as I have been-the strain was too much. Granger, help me now to get back to your house to change my clothes, and, next, to get on board the Mignonne."
"First come to the 'Red Rover' and have something to revive you. Come."
"Hark," she said, pausing in the step she had taken towards the inn, "hark. What is that out there in the river? That shouting?"
"It is the men's cries as they haul on to the halyards, so as to be ready when the wind comes. Yet the schooner has enough tide beneath her to carry her swiftly down to the open. Listen, Anne, their voices are becoming fainter.
"I hear. They are moving."
"They are moving. In ten minutes they will be gone."
As they sat together later, and he ministered to her wants, recognising well that, without her bravery to assist him, he could never have turned the tables so thoroughly upon Bufton's villainous scheme as he had done, he remembered the fifty guineas which the latter had handed over to him at the last moment. Whereupon he passed them over to the girl.
"They are yours, Anne. You are his lawful wife-soon, doubtless, you will be his executrix. He has still money about him, which I make no doubt the skipper of the Nederland will appropriate. He will land a beggar. Heaven help him!"
"You say that?" Anne exclaimed, "Heaven help him! Help him who ruined you. You can say that?"
"No," he cried savagely. "No. I do not say it. I retract. Damn him! he forged Lord Glastonbury's name, but passed the bill to me, since he owed me one-half the sum, and I paid it into Child's bank. Then, when Glastonbury caused me to be arrested on board the ship I served in, and I stated where I had obtained the bill, that craven hound now going to his fate swore he knew nought about it-that my story was a fabrication. But that his lordship and I loved the same woman, and she sacrificed herself to save my neck-unknown to me-as well as paid the money to the bankers, I should have swung at Tyburn."
"Wherefore," said Anne, "you forgave him for the time-with an end in view."
"With an end in view. An end, my determination to reach which never slackened. And it is reached. Anne, it is borne in on me that he will never come back. If he does, then-"
"He never will return," said Anne. "It is also borne in on me. Now let us go," and she moved towards the door, throwing over her the great cloak which she had removed after the drawer had quitted the room, and replacing the hat.
"You have forgotten the guineas," said Granger, noticing that she had let them lie unheeded where he had originally placed them.
"The guineas!" the girl cried. "The guineas! His money! I will never take them-never touch them. Except," she cried, seizing on the packet, "to fling them into the river. Never! Never!"
"Be not foolish. They are yours. Can you devise no means to which you can put them?"
"Ay," she said a moment later, and after thinking deeply while she stood gazing down at the table. "Ay, I can. Kitty's grave is a lonely, desolate one. Now it shall be brightened and made cheerful with the money of the man who drove her to death. Come," and as she spoke she took the packet and dropped it into her pocket. "Come, I must get back."
So Lewis Granger took the girl back to Brunswick Stairs and sent her off by a shore boat to the Mignonne, he learning on shore, and she when she, stepped on board the frigate, that Sir Geoffrey had set out an hour ago to board the Nederland, so as to take from out of her some of the men who were now so much required.
"For," said Ariadne, whom she found in the state cabin, "Sir Edward Hawke sails in a fortnight for Torbay, thence to set out and attack the French. And, Anne, the Mignonne goes as one of the frigates. Oh, Anne!"
"It must be so. Be brave, darling. Sir Geoffrey is a sailor, as your father and my father were. It is duty. But-Ariadne-be cheered also with one small thing. Sir Geoffrey will be back to-night in an hour."
"In an hour?"
"Ay, in an hour. The Nederland has sailed."
"Sailed! With all those wretched trepanned creatures on board!"
"With them all. And with one other besides, trepanned as he would have trepanned you and me had he had his will, and as he would have done to Lewis Granger, too."
Whereon she told her foster-sister everything.
CHAPTER XX
ARIADNE'S COMPASSION
That Sir Geoffrey Barry should be in a considerable state of exasperation when he returned with his boarding-party from their frustrated intention to capture the Nederland, and take from her as many able-bodied men as he required, was no more than natural. For now he scarcely knew where to turn to procure the extra men whom the Admiralty continued to strenuously instruct him to obtain, and he began to fear that the great fleet preparing to go to sea and attack Conflans would not owe much more to his endeavours. Yet, exasperated as he might be, astonishment obtained the mastery over that feeling when Ariadne-who had refused to go to bed till he came back-informed him of what had happened in the Marshes that night.
"Great heavens!" he cried, in his first surprise, "this is too awful. What a vengeance! What a vengeance! And Anne in it, too. Yet," he continued, "she could scarcely have taken a more effective way of ridding herself of the man. The schooner will be captured beyond all doubt by Thurot, or Boisrose, or some of those French sailors, half corsairs and half naval officers. And then-well! then-at best it will be months, nay, perhaps years, of detention in a French fortress."
"And at worst?" asked Ariadne.
"At worst! Why-this," and he pointed downwards to the deck. "That, with perhaps a broadside into them."
"I pity the others," said Ariadne; "him I cannot pity. Oh! he was willing to undertake such a fiendish scheme to smuggle Anne and me into that loathsome ship, and would have succeeded had not Mr. Granger, who hoodwinked him into believing that he would help him, found means to catch him in a trap instead."
Whereon, in answer to Geoffrey's desire to be told all, his wife related everything that Anne had divulged on her return.
Extreme as Geoffrey's anger was-and in that anger he felt almost inclined to go ashore and punish Granger in some way for having dared use his wife's name as a means whereby to lure Bufton to his doom-surprise once more took possession of him when he heard Ariadne say-
"Poor Mr. Granger! What a sad fate has been his. Oh! Geoffrey, why did not you tell me before that, Lady Glastonbury was-was-"
"Tell you, child! Why, how could I tell you anything I did not know? 'Lady Glastonbury!' What was she to him that you speak thus?"
"Sophy Jervis was my dearest friend once at Gosport, and-as you know-she married Lord Glastonbury."
"Well! Ariadne."
"And Sophy Jervis was loved by, and herself loved madly, Lewis Granger."
"My God! And sacrificed herself to save him. Is that it?"
"It is, as I know now. Though not until to-night, when Anne told me all and enabled me to put one thing with another. And to-morrow," she continued, "I will show you her letters to me. Short of saying what the name of the man whom she loved was, she has told me all."
In the morning she did as she had said she would, and put in her husband's hands a small packet of letters which he read later, not without a man's compassion for the wrecked love of the unhappy pair, and with, too, much, doubt upon his part as to whether these letters from one woman to another should not have been sacred from any man's eyes. Yet, also, ere he had concluded the perusal, he understood that it was well that Ariadne had shown them to him.
For in these letters the whole story was narrated, as Granger had briefly told it to Anne overnight in the "Red Rover"; the story of the girl's mad love for the handsome young lieutenant and of his for her; of the delirious bliss of the earliest days of that love; days full of softest wishes and tenderest fears and hopes of happy years to come. Of happy years with him who, so cold to and disdainful of all others, was to her a slave-a slave, but a loving one! Then, while Geoffrey read on-knowing that, as he did so, the tears were in his eyes-the tale was told of how the blow had fallen; of how the man she loved was ruined and disgraced; and that he had committed a crime which would drive him forth from the society of all honest men, and out of the service he belonged to-nay! worse, might bring him to the gallows. Yet she saved him, saved him at last, at the cost of her own happiness in this world; by the perdition of her own soul. The man he had robbed, or attempted to rob, was, by Fortune's favour, one who had wooed her long and unsuccessfully; now he would spare him upon one condition. The condition that she resigned the man she loved, and wedded the man who loved her.
"And then," the last letter went on, "oh! my God, then, Ariadne, when I had been Lord Glastonbury's wife for six months, we learnt that the man I had loved was innocent, and that he was the tool of a designing villain. We learnt it through a letter written to my husband by a woman who had been the friend of that villain and was cognizant of the robbery he was meditating; by a woman who, discarded and cast off, had found means to communicate with Glastonbury, she imagining that the theft had succeeded. And, darling," the unhappy writer concluded, "my husband, though dissolute, is an honourable man; if he could find my unhappy lover he would tell him all, he would send him that woman's letter. It might yet go far to restore him to his proper place in the world. Meanwhile, he intends to write to the Lords of the Admiralty."
Geoffrey called Ariadne to him when he had finished the perusal of the letters, and told her that he had done so; then he said quietly-
"It was a pity Lady Glastonbury never mentioned her lover's name to you. By chance (since I have spoken of him so much of late) we should have been able to help him. Now, it is too late."
"Geoffrey!" she exclaimed, after a moment's meditation, "let me see him. Perhaps-perhaps-if I let him hear those letters read it might do much to reclaim him, low as he has fallen, and horrible as is the calling he follows."
"Yet the calling which I profit by," her husband made answer. "Therefore is he little worse, if any, than we who employ him. But," he continued, "what use in seeing him, Ariadne? What can you do?"
"If I told him all that Sophy has written; if I should plead with him to lead a better life-now that he has exacted so horrible a vengeance on the man who destroyed him-might I not prevail?"
"Prevail! What is there for him to do?"
"God knows! Yet something better than that which he does now. Surely! surely!"
For a moment Geoffrey stood reflecting. He was profoundly impressed by all that he had learnt, as it was most natural he should be. Had not he himself sat upon the very court-martial which condemned Lewis Granger to ignominy; had not all upon that awful tribunal regarded him as a common knave; had not all refused to listen to his protestations of innocence? Yet now-now! – he was innocent. Everything proved it. Not only the letters of his lost love, but surely, also, the terrible retribution he had exacted from him who had so ruined him. If-if by a pure, good woman's pleading he could be induced to lead a better and more honourable calling, should he stand in the way of helping him to do so, even though that woman was his own wife?
Later that day, as Geoffrey inspected some men who had been brought off from the shore-they having been taken by a press-gang overnight after a hard fight-a boat came away from the stairs with, seated in it, Lewis Granger. He had come in answer to a summons from Geoffrey, in which the latter simply said that he wished to speak to him in connection with something in his past life in which they had both played a part. But he had added at the foot another line: "I wish to make you acquainted with Lady Barry."
And now the unhappy man was close at hand, his mind filled with wonder at the strange summons.
"To make me acquainted with his wife," he had whispered to himself a dozen times-nay! a hundred times, since receiving the message. "I! the exposed forger-the man driven out of the Navy for an ignoble crime-the crimp of to-day. And this in connection with something in my past, of which her husband knows as well as I! What does it mean?"
Yet, soon, he was himself to know. At once! The boat had reached the side of the ship, the man-ropes were in his hands; above stood Sir Geoffrey Barry, watching him coming on board, with, upon his face, a pleasant glance.
"My God!" Lewis Granger thought to himself, "he looks as once he might have looked at a comrade across the mess-cabin table; as he has never looked yet at me before. And-and-I am to be made acquainted with his wife!"
Geoffrey held out his hand to Granger when he reached the deck, noting as he did that the man had come as a gentleman to visit a lady. He was clad now in a quiet but good black costume; he was also clean-shaven and neat, which he had not been before. His wig was new and freshly powdered, and his lace was faultless. A different person this from the one who sat day by day in Jamaica Court, consigning drunkards and kidnapped men to their fate.
"Granger, I sent for you to tell you some news that has come to me. Through my wife, who has heard it from a lady-from-"
"Sophy!" the other whispered, divining all-or, perhaps it was not a whisper, his lips alone forming the word, though uttering no sound. While as they did so, he turned white as death.
"Yes. She has heard-her husband has heard-strange news. Nay, Granger, be steady," he said, breaking off as he saw the other put out his hand and touch a gun-carriage as though he feared to fall.
"What has-she-heard?" the latter asked a moment later, his voice almost inaudible.
"That-that-we who sat in judgment on you-that-that-all were wrong. I think it can be proved."
"It is too late," Granger said. "Too late. I have fallen too low. Do you know that since it all happened I-God help me! – have been drinking myself to death? That, now I have avenged myself on the man who ruined me, I shall do so even more furiously? To end all."
"No! No! Think! Think still on what may be. If-if their Lordships are but satisfied that you were misjudged-I do not know-but-perhaps-it might be possible in these times of war to reinstate you. I do not know, I repeat. But it may be."
"Could that restore to me the woman I loved-the woman whom, Heaven help me, I love madly still? Can anything do that?"
"No," Geoffrey answered, his tone low yet full of sympathy. "No. Nothing can do that. But it might make her happy, might ease some of her pain. If she could know that you were righted in the world's eyes, if she knew that the shame which has covered you was swept away for ever-could not that make her happy?"
"It would perhaps make our lot easier to bear," Granger answered. Then in a clearer voice, he said, "I knew that Lady Barry and Sophy-had been friends from girlhood. That was one, though but one reason why I helped Anne to ensnare that scheming scoundrel."
"For that at least I thank you-for punishing him for his vile and wicked insolence. Now, tell me, did he in truth design to put her-great heavens! to think of it-on board the Nederland?"
"He swallowed the bait I held out to him; jumped at it. He was so eager to see the plan carried out that, thus, he fell into my power. Yes, even at the last, and meditating further a double treachery, he fell into my power. You have heard that?"
"Yes. I have heard all. But-how can I pity him? Now come and see my wife," and Geoffrey made a step towards the cabin aft.
"Not yet. Not yet. Give me one moment to recover myself. To meet her-Sophy's friend-will be an ordeal to me. Let me collect myself."
Geoffrey busied himself about the deck, giving orders for the bestowal of raffle and other things until he thought Granger might feel sufficiently calm to meet Ariadne, then, turning to where the latter still stood with his eyes fixed on the river, he said again-
"Come. She desires so much to see you."
"Go on. Lead me to her."
Whereon, conducting Granger past the sentry and through the outer cabin, or office, he tapped gently on the door of the saloon, and opening it, said-
"Ariadne, Mr. Granger is here," while, motioning the other to enter, he closed the door, not going in himself.
"'Tis best that they should be alone," he thought, his mind delicate and manly as ever. "Far better. It is indeed an ordeal for him."
And Granger, entering that saloon-while thinking how long it was since he had been admitted as a visitor to such a place-how long since he had stood face to face and on terms of equality with a gentle, refined woman! – knew that before him, and gazing pityingly at him, was Ariadne Barry, the dearest friend of the woman whom he had loved and lost.