Loe raamatut: «One Of Them», lehekülg 36

“Put your hand in mine, then, and I ‘ll take you on any conditions you like.”

“One word more before we close our bargain. It might so happen – it is far from unlikely – that the circumstances of which I dare not trust myself to utter a syllable may come to your ears when I am your wife, when it will be impossible for you to treat them as calumnies, and just as idle to say that you never heard of them before. How will you act if such a moment comes?”

“Answer me one plain question first. Is there any man living who has power over you – except as regards these letters, I mean?”

“None.”

“There is, then, no charge of this, that, or t’ other?”

“I will answer no more. I have told you fairly that if you take me for your wife you most be prepared to stand in the breach between me and the world, and meet whatever assails me as one prepared. Are you ready for this?”

“I’m not afraid of the danger – ”

“So, then, your fears are only for the cause?”

It was with the very faintest touch of scorn these words were spoken; but he marked it, and reddened over face and forehead.

“When that cause will have become my own, you ‘ll see that I ‘ll hesitate little about defending it.”

“That’s all that I ask for, all that I wish. This is strange courtship,” said she, trying to laugh; “but let us carry it through consistently. I conclude you are not rich; neither am I, – at least, for the present; a very few weeks, however, will put me in possession of a large property. It is in land in America. The legal formalities which are necessary will be completed almost immediately, and my co-heir is now coming over from the States to meet me, and establish his claim also. These are all confidences, remember, for I now speak to you freely; and, in the same spirit that I make them, I ask you to trust me, – to trust me fully and wholly, with a faith that says, ‘I will wait to the end – to the very end! ‘”

“Let this be my pledge,” said he, taking her hand and kissing it. “Faith!” said he, after a second or two, “I can scarcely believe in my good luck. It seems to be every moment so like a dream to think that you consent to take me; just, too, when I was beginning to feel that fortune had clean forgotten me. You are not listening to me, not minding a word I say. What is it, then, you are thinking of?”

“I was plotting,” said she, gravely.

“Plotting, – more plotting! Why can’t we go along now on the high-road, without looking for by-paths?”

“Not yet, – not yet awhile. Attend to me, now. It is not likely that we can meet again very soon. My coming out here to-day was at great risk, for I am believed to be ill and in bed with a feverish cold. I cannot venture to repeat this peril, but you shall hear from me. My maid is to be trusted, and will bring you tidings of me. With to-morrow’s post I hope to learn where Paten is, and when he will be here. You shall learn both immediately, and be prepared to act on the information. Above all things, bear in mind that though I hate this man, all my abhorrence of him is nothing – actually nothing – to my desire to regain my letters. For them I would forego everything. Had I but these in my possession, I could wait for vengeance, and wait patiently.”

“So that from himself personally you fear nothing?”

“Nothing. He cannot say more of me than is open to all the world to say – ” She stopped, and grew red, for she felt that her impetuosity had carried her further than she was aware. “Remember once more, then, if you could buy them, steal them, get them in any way, – I care not how, that my object is fulfilled, – the day you place them in this hand it is your own!”

He burst out into some rhapsody of his delight, but checked himself as suddenly, when he saw that her face had assumed its former look of preoccupation.

“Plotting again?” asked he, half peevishly.

“I have need to plot,” said she, mournfully, as she leaned her head upon her hand; and now there came over her countenance a look of deepest sorrow. “I grow very weary of all this at times,” said she, in a faint and broken voice; “so weary that I half suspect it were better to throw the cards down, and say, ‘There! I ‘ve lost! What’s the stake?’ I believe I could do this. I am convinced I could, if I were certain that there was one man or one woman on the earth who would give me one word of pity, or bestow one syllable of compassion for my fall.”

“But surely your daughter Clara – ”

“Clara is not my daughter; she is nothing to me, – never was, never can be. We are separated, besides, never to meet again, and I charge you not to speak of her.”

“May I never! if I can see my way at all. It ‘s out of one mystery into another. Will you just tell me – ”

“Ask me nothing. You have heard from me this day what I have never told another. But I have confidence in your good faith, and can say, ‘If you rue your bargain, there is yet time to say so,’ and you may leave this as free as when you entered it.”

“You never mistook a man more. It’s not going back I was thinking of; but surely I might ask – ”

“Once for all, I will not be questioned. There never lived that man or woman who could thread their way safely through difficulties, if they waited to have every obstacle canvassed and every possible mystery explained. You must leave me to my own guidance here; and one of its first conditions is, not to shake my confidence in myself.”

“Won’t you even tell me when we ‘re to be one?”

“What an ardent lover it is!” said she, laughing. “There, fetch me my shawl, and let me see that you know how to put it properly on my shoulders. No liberties, sir! and least of all when they crush a Parisian bonnet. The evening is falling already, and I must set off homewards.”

“Won’t you give me a seat in the carriage with you? Surely, you ‘d not see me ride back in such a downpour as that.”

“I should think I would. I ‘d leave you to go it on foot rather than commit such an indiscretion. Drive back to Rome with Mr. O’Shea alone! What would the world say? What would Sir William Heathcote say, who expects to make me Lady Heathcote some early day next month?”

“By the way, I heard that story. An old fellow, called Nick Holmes, told me – ”

“What old Nick told you could scarcely be true. There, will you order the carriage to the door, and give these good people some money? Ain’t you charmed that I give you one of a husband’s privileges so early? Don’t dare to answer me; an Irishman never has the discretion to reply to a liberty as he ought. Is that poor beast yours?” asked she, as they gained the door, and saw a horse standing, all shivering and wretched, under a frail shed.

“He was this morning, but I had the good luck to sell him before I took this ride.”

“I must really compliment you,” said she, laughing heartily. “A gentleman who makes love so economically ought to be a model of order when a husband.” And with this she stepped in, and drove away.

CHAPTER II. A DINNER OF TWO

The O’Shea returned to Rome at a “slapping pace.” He did his eight miles of heavy ground within forty minutes. But neither the speed nor the storm could turn his thoughts from the scene he had just passed through. It was with truth he said that he could not give credit to the fact of such good fortune as to believe she would accept him; and yet the more he reflected on the subject, the more was he puzzled and disconcerted. When he had last seen her, she refused him, – refused him absolutely and flatly; she even hinted at a reason that seemed unanswerable, and suggested that, though they might aid each other as friends, there could be no copartnership of interests. “What has led her to this change of mind, Heaven knows. It is no lucky turn of fortune on my side can have induced it; my prospects were never bleaker. And then,” thought he, “of what nature is this same secret, or rather these secrets, of hers, for they seem to grow in clusters? What can she have done? or what has Penthony Morris done? Is he alive? Is he at Norfolk Island? Was he a forger, or worse? How much does Paten know about her? What power has he over her besides the possession of these letters? Is Paten Penthony Morris?” It was thus that his mind went to and fro, like a surging sea, restless and not advancing. Never was there a man more tortured by his conjectures. He knew that she might marry Sir William Heathcote if she liked; why, then, prefer himself to a man of station and fortune? Was it that he was more likely to enact the vengeance she thirsted for than the old Baronet? Ay, that was a reasonable calculation. She was right there, and he ‘d bring Master Paten “to book,” as sure as his name was O’Shea. That was the sort of thing he understood as well as any man in Europe. He had been out scores of times, and knew how to pick a quarrel, and to aggravate it, and make it perfectly beyond all possibility of arrangement, as well as any fire-eater of a French line regiment. That was, perhaps, the reason of the widow’s choice of him. If she married Heathcote, it would be a case for lawyers: a great trial at Westminster, and a great scandal in the papers. “But with me it will be all quiet and peaceable. I ‘ll get back her letters, or I ‘ll know why.”

He next bethought him of her fortune. He wished she had told him more about it, – how it came to her, – was it by settlement, – was it from the Morrises? He wished, too, it had not been in America; he was not quite sure that property there meant anything at all; and, lastly, he brought to mind that though he had proposed for dozens of women, this was the only occasion he was not asked what he could secure by settlement, and how much he would give as pin-money. No, on that score she was delicacy itself, and he was one to appreciate all the refinement of her reserve. Indeed, if it came to the old business of searches, and showing titles, and all the other exposures of the O’Shea family, he felt that he would rather die a bachelor than encounter them. “She knew how to catch me! ‘A row to fight through, and no questions asked about money, O’Shea,’ says she. ‘Can you resist temptation like that?’”

As he alighted at the hotel, he saw Agincourt standing at a window, and evidently laughing at the dripping, mud-stained appearance he presented.

“I hope and trust that was n’t the nag I bought this morning,” said he to O’Shea, as he entered the room.

“The very same; and I never saw him in finer heart. If you only witnessed the way he carried me through those ploughed fields out there! He’s strong in the loins as a cart-horse.”

“I must say that you appear to have ridden him as a friend’s horse. He seemed dead beat, as he was led away.”

“He’s fresh as a four-year old.”

“Well, never mind, go and dress for dinner, for you’re half an hour behind time already.”

O’Shea was not sorry to have the excuse, and hurried off to make his toilet.

Freytag was aware that his guest was a “Milor’,” and the dinner was very good, and the wine reasonably so; and the two, as they placed a little spider-table between them before the fire, seemed fully conscious of all the enjoyment of the situation.

Agincourt said, “Is not this jolly?” And so it was. And what is there jollier than to be about sixteen or seventeen years of age, with good health, good station, and ample means? To be launched into manhood, too, as a soldier, without one detracting sense of man’s troubles and cares, – to feel that your elders condescend to be your equals, and will even accept your invitation to dinner! – ay, and more, practise towards you all those little flatteries and attentions which, however vapid ten years later, are positive ecstasies now!

But of all its glorious privileges there is not one can compare with the boundless self-confidence of youth, that implicit faith not alone in its energy and activity, its fearless contempt for danger, and its indifference to hardships, but, more strange still, in its superior sharpness and knowledge of life! Oh dear! are we not shrewd fellows when we matriculate at Christ Church, or see ourselves gazetted Cornet in the Horse Guards Purple? Who ever equalled us in all the wiles and schemes of mankind? Must he not rise early who means to dupe us? Have we not a registered catalogue of all the knaveries that have ever been practised on the unsuspecting? Truly have we; and if suspicion were a safeguard, nothing can harm us.

Now, Agincourt was a fine, true-hearted, generous young fellow, – manly and straightforward, – but he had imbibed his share of this tendency. He fancied himself subtle, and imagined that a nice negotiation could not be intrusted to better hands. Besides this, he was eager to impress Heathcote with a high opinion of his skill, and show that even a regular man of the world like O’Shea was not near a match for him.

“I ‘m not going to drink that light claret such an evening as this,” said O’Shea, pushing away his just-tasted glass. “Let us have something a shade warmer.”

“Ring the bell, and order what you like.”

“Here, this will do, – ‘Clos Vougeot,’” said O’Shea, pointing out to the waiter the name on the wine carte.”

“And if that be a failure, I ‘ll fall back on brandy-and-water, the refuge of a man after bad wine, just as disappointed young ladies take to a convent. If you can drink that little tipple, Agincourt, you ‘re right to do it. You ‘ll come to Burgundy at forty, and to rough port ten years later; but you ‘ve a wide margin left before that. How old are you?”

“I shall be seventeen my next birthday,” said the other, flushing, and not wishing to add that there were eleven months and eight days to run before that event should come off.

“That’s a mighty pretty time of life. It gives you a clear four years for irresponsible follies before you come of age. Then you may fairly count upon three or four more for legitimate wastefulness, and with a little, very little, discretion, you never need know a Jew till you’re six-and-twenty.”

“I beg your pardon, my good fellow,” said the other, coloring, half angrily; “I’ve had plenty to do with those gents already. Ask Nathan whether he has n’t whole sheafs of my bills. My guardian only allows me twelve hundred a year, – a downright shame they call it in the regiment, and so I wrote him word. In fact, I told him what our Major said, that with such means as mine I ought to try and manage an exchange into the Cape Rifles.”

“Or a black regiment in the West Indies,” chimed in O’Shea, gravely.

“No, confound it, he did n’t say that!”

“The Irish Constabulary, too, is a cheap corps. You might stand that.”

“I don’t mean to try either,” said the youth, angrily.

“And what does Nathan charge you? – say for a ‘thing’ at three months?”

“That all depends upon the state of the money-market,” said Agincourt, with a look of profoundest meaning. “It is entirely a question of the foreign exchanges, and I study them like a stockbroker. Nathan said one day, ‘It’s a thousand pities he’s a Peer; there’s a fellow with a head to beat the whole Stock Exchange.’”

“Does he make you pay twenty per cent, or five-and twenty for short dates?”

“You don’t understand it at all. It’s no question of that kind. It’s always a calculation of what gold is worth at Amsterdam, or some other place, and it’s a difference of, maybe, one-eighth that determines the whole value of a bill.”

“I see,” said O’Shea, puffing his cigar very slowly. “I have no doubt that you bought your knowledge on these subjects dearly enough.”

“I should think I did! Until I came to understand the thing, I was always ‘outside the ropes,’ always borrowing with the ‘exchanges against me,’ – you know what I mean?”

“I believe I do,” said O’Shea, sighing heavily. “They have been against me all my life.”

“That’s just because you never took trouble to study the thing. You rushed madly into the market whenever you wanted money, and paid whatever they asked.”

“I did indeed! and, what’s more, was very grateful if I got it.”

“And I know what came of that, – how that ended.”

“How?”

“Why, you dipped your estate, gave mortgages, and the rest of it.”

O’Shea nodded a full assent.

“Oh, I know the whole story; I ‘ve seen so much of this sort of thing. Well, old fellow,” added he, after a pause, “if I ‘d been acquainted with you ten or fifteen years ago, I could have saved you from all this ruin.”

O’Shea repressed every tendency to a smile, and nodded again.

“I ‘d have said to you, ‘Don’t be in a hurry, watch the market, and I ‘ll tell you when to “go in.’’”

“Maybe it’s not too late yet, so give me a word of friendly advice,” said O’Shea, with a modest humility. “There are few men want it more.”

There was now a pause of several minutes; O’Shea waiting to see how his bait had taken, and Agincourt revolving in his mind whether this was not the precise moment for opening his negotiation. At last he said, —

“I wrote that letter I promised you. I said you were an out-and-outer as to ability, and that they could n’t do better than make you a Governor somewhere, though you ‘d not be disgusted with something smaller. I ‘ve been looking over the vacancies; there’s not much open. Could you be a Mahogany Commissioner at Honduras?”

“Well, so far as having had my legs under that wood for many years with pleasure to myself and satisfaction to my friends, perhaps I might.”

“Do you know what I ‘d do if I were you?”

“I have not an idea.”

“I ‘d marry, – by Jove, I would! – I ‘d marry!”

“I ‘ve thought of it half a dozen times,” said he, stretching out his hand for the decanter, and rather desirous of escaping notice; “but, you see, to marry a woman with money, – and of course it’s that you mean, – there’s always the inquiry what you have yourself, where it is, and what are the charges on it. Now, as you shrewdly guessed awhile ago, I dipped my estate, – dipped it so deep that I begin to suspect it won’t come up again.”

“But look out for a woman that has her fortune at her own disposal.”

“And no friends to advise her.”

O’Shea’s face, as he said this, was so absurdly droll that Agincourt laughed aloud. “Well, as you observe, no friends to advise her. I suppose you don’t care much for connection, – I mean rank?”

“As for the matter of family, I have enough for as many wives as Bluebeard, if the law would let me have them.”

“Then I fancy I know the thing to suit you. She’s a stunning pretty woman, besides.”

“Where is she?”

“At Rome here.”

“And who is she?”

“Mrs. Penthony Morris, the handsome widow, that’s on a visit to the Heathcotes. She must have plenty of tin, I can answer for that, for old Nathan told me she was in all the heavy transfers of South American shares, and was a buyer for very large amounts.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“I can give my word on it. I remember his saying one morning, ‘The widow takes her losses easily; she minds twelve thousand pounds no more than I would a five-pound note.”

“They have a story here that she’s going to marry old Heathcote.”

“Not true, – I mean, that she won’t have him.”

“And why? It was clear enough she was playing that game for some time back.”

“I wanted Charley to try his chance,” said Agincourt, evading the question; “but he is spooney on his cousin May, I fancy, and has no mind to do a prudent thing.”

“But how am I to go in?” said O’Shea, timidly. “If she’s as rich as you say, would she listen to a poor out-at-elbows Irish gentleman, with only his good blood to back him?”

“You ‘re the man to do it, – the very man.”

O’Shea shook his head.

“I say you ‘d succeed. I ‘d back you against the field.”

“Will you make me a bet on it?”

“With all my heart! What shall it be?”

“Lay me a hundred to one, in tens, and I give you my solemn word of honor I ‘ll do my very best to lose my wager and win the widow.”

“Done! I ‘ll bet you a thousand pounds to ten; book it, with the date, and I ‘ll sign it.”

While Agincourt was yet speaking, O’Shea had produced a small note-book, and was recording the bet. Scarcely had he clasped the little volume again, when the waiter entered, and handed him a note.

O’Shea read it rapidly, and, finishing off his glass, refilled and drank it. “I must leave you for half an hour,” said he, hastily. “There’s a friend of mine in a bit of a scrape with one of these French officers; but I ‘ll be back presently.”

“I say, make your man fight. Don’t stand any bullying with those fellows.”

O’Shea did not wait for his counsels, but hurried off.

“This way, sir,” whispered a man to him, as he passed out into the court of the hotel; “the carriage is round the corner.”

He followed the man, and in a few minutes found himself in a narrow by-street, where a single carriage was standing. The glass was quietly let down as he drew near, and a voice he had no difficulty in recognizing, said, “I have just received a most urgent letter, and I must leave Rome tomorrow at daybreak, for Germany. I have learned, besides, that Paten is at Baden. He was on his way here, but stopped to try his luck at the tables. He has twice broken the bank, and swears he will not leave till he has succeeded a third time. We all well know how such pledges finish. But you must set off there at once. Leave to-morrow night, if you can, and by the time you arrive, or the day after, you ‘ll find a letter for you at the post, with my address, and all your future directions. Do nothing with Paten till you hear; mind that, – nothing. I have not time for another word, for I am in terror lest my absence from the house should be discovered. If anything imminent occur, you shall hear by telegraph.”

“Let me drive back with you; I have much to say, much to ask you,” said he, earnestly.

“On no account. There, good-bye; don’t forget me.”

While he yet held her hand, the word was given to drive on, and his farewell was lost in the rattling of the wheels over the pavement.

“Well, have you patched it up, or is it a fight?” asked Agincourt when he entered the room once more.

“You’ll keep my secret, I know,” said O’Shea, in a whisper. “Don’t even breathe a word to Heathcote, but I ‘ll have to leave this to-morrow, get over the nearest frontier, and settle this affair.”

“You ‘d like some cash, would n’t you? – at all events, I am your debtor for that horse. Do you want more?”

“There, that’s enough, – two hundred will do,” said O’Shea, taking the notes from his fingers; “even if I have to make a bolt of it, that will be ample.”

“This looks badly for your wager, O’Shea. It may lose you the widow, I suspect.”

“Who knows?” said O’Shea, laughing. “Circular sailing is sometimes the short cut on land as well as sea. If you have any good news for me from Downing Street, I ‘ll shy you a line to say where to send; and so, good-bye.”

And Agincourt shook his hand cordially, but not without a touch of envy as he thought of the mission he was engaged in.