Chapter Thirty Eight.
Another Bomb for the Rev. Dudley.
Once more we must peep into the library at Lant Hall.
Mr Vallance sat in his accustomed chair, thinking. His gaze would wander from the window to the blazing fire and back again, and the frown of anxiety deepened on his features. Without, the wind howled shrilly through the bare boughs, and a few scattered flakes of snow whirled in the air.
“Why did we ever let him go?” he exclaimed aloud. “Why did we ever let him go?”
Even as when last we saw him, Mr Vallance was terribly anxious on behalf of his son. His former misgivings had been allayed by the subsequent receipt of a letter from Geoffry; which missive, however, had given him to understand that it was the last the writer would have an opportunity of sending for some time—in fact, until he should be on his way home again. Characteristically, too, this letter contained only vague and general information that the writer had fallen in with and joined Winthrop’s outfit; and of his meeting with Yseulte Santorex, not a word. It was of no use worrying about the matter, decided the Rev. Dudley. Any post might now bring intelligence that the boy was on his way home. It was poor comfort, and again he found himself repeating:
“Why did we ever allow him to go?”
Of the other affair which had so sorely troubled him—his cousin’s unexpected and preposterous claim—he had heard no more. His apprehensions first were lulled, then subsided altogether. The whole business was palpably a “try on.”
A sound of subdued voices outside, then a knock.
“A gentleman wishes to see you, sir.”
In his then frame of mind, Mr Vallance could not but feel startled by the interruption.
“Who is he, James?” he asked, quickly.
“He wouldn’t give his name, sir. He said as how you’d be sure to see him, sir.”
“Quite right, quite right,” said a deep voice, whose owner entered behind the astonished flunkey. “Er—How do, Dudley!”
If Mr Vallance had been startled before, the expression of his features now betokened a state of mind little short of scare. His face had turned as white as a sheet, and his jaw fell as he stood helplessly staring at his visitor.
“Why—bless my soul—Ralph,” he stammered. Then advancing with outstretched hand, “Why—Ralph—I’m—I’m glad to see you. I hope you have come to stay with us for a time.”
The visitor’s reception of this friendly—this hospitable overture, was singular. Standing bolt upright, he deliberately put his hand behind his back.
“Glad to see me!” he echoed, with a sneer. “No, you are not. Why tell a—tarra-diddle. Such a tarra-diddle, too—and you a preacher—er—I beg your pardon—a priest, it used to be, if I remember right. You would sooner see the devil himself at this moment than me.”
Under the sting of this reply, the parson recovered a certain amount of dignity.
“Really,” he said, stiffly, “your behaviour is strange, to put it mildly. May I ask, then, the object of your intru— your visit.”
“Certainly, if it affords you any satisfaction.” Then glancing around the room, and finishing up with a look out of the window, he went on. “Say, cousin Dudley, this is a pretty shebang enough. The object of my visit is this: You’ve bossed up this show about long enough. Suppose you abdicate now and let me have a turn?”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?”
“Not much. Have you?”
There was a sternness about the speaker’s laconic reply which caused Mr Vallance to quail involuntarily. He made a step towards the bell-pull. The other laughed.
“No, no. Don’t exert yourself. I’m not going yet—and if you bring in all the pap-fed flunkeys and swipe-guzzling stable-hands on your establishment, the poor devils’ll only get badly hurt without furthering your object. I mean what I say—you’ve got to quit sooner or later. If you’re wise it’ll be sooner.”
“Indeed! And why?” was the answer, given with cutting politeness.
“Well, it’s this way. If you agree to clear at once, I’ll give you five hundred a year—no, I’ll make it six—out of the property for your life. That and the parsonic pickings will keep you in clover. If you mean fighting, I’m your man. But I warn you I’m prepared to plank down ever so many thousands of pounds to get you out—and when I’ve got you out I’ll come down on you for every shilling of arrears, by George, I will!”
“Oh, you will?”
“You may bet your life on it.”
For some moments the two men looked full in each other’s faces without speaking. The sneer of conscious power on that of the one was matched by the expression of defiance, hatred, mingled with fear, on that of the other.
“Well, well,” said Mr Vallance at length. “Take your own course. Only, let me remind you that you are in England now, and that in this country we don’t settle important matters in any such rough and ready fashion.”
“Oh don’t make any mistake; I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinking about. You see, I’ve been knocking around a goodish few years, and now I’ve a fancy for settling down—settling down in my own place, you understand.”
There was a smug smile of triumph on the parson’s face now. His cousin was merely “bouncing” to extort terms. It would come to that in a few minutes. But the look aroused a very demon in the other. His eyes burned like live coals, though when he spoke his voice was under perfect control.
“Again, I say, you needn’t be afraid,” he said. “Everything shall be done in due course of law.”
“But—but, my good fellow, surely you are aware you haven’t a leg to stand on?”
“I reckon I’m the best judge of that. See here, most reverend Dudley. Do you remember our last interview, here, in this very room? Safe in the triumph of your successful fraud—fraud, I say, if you prefer it, forgery—you jeered at me, jeered at the man you had robbed. Remember?”
“‘Fraud!’ ‘Robbed!’” sputtered the parson, trying to lash himself into anger to drown the sinking sense that had come over him. “Do you know, sir, that you are using actionable words?”
“Ah, ah! History repeats itself. That is precisely as you spoke on the former occasion, friend Dudley. I will say it again, call in witnesses if you like. Having defrauded and robbed me of my patrimony by lies and intriguing, and worse—you, a preacher of the Gospel, a teacher of Christian morality—you threatened me with the law. You made your lawyers write to threaten me with an action for libel if I dared so much as venture an opinion on your behaviour. Do you remember my words to you as I left this room?”
Well, indeed, did he remember. And now at the sight of the deadly wrath on this man’s features, all the more terrible because so completely held in hand—of the towering form with its back just half a yard from the door, precluding alike entrance or exit—again Mr Vallance could not restrain a shiver of physical fear.
“I told you my time would surely come, didn’t I? How many years ago was it? Nearer twenty than ten—yes. You slandered my name and stole my possessions—you, a sacred dispenser of sacraments—and I went forth a beggar, followed by your jeers of triumph. If you go where I have been during those years, and take the trouble to enquire, you will learn that few persons have played me a scrofulous trick without bitterly rueing it. You have played me the most scrofulous trick of all, and you are going to rue it.”
“Well, I must trouble you to let me pass, please. I shall ask you to excuse me wasting my time any longer,” said Mr Vallance, making a move as if to leave the room. But the other only smiled.
“Not yet. Not quite yet,” he said. “By the way, Dudley. Heard anything of Geoffry lately?”
The tone was easy—smiling—but it struck a chill to the parson’s heart. He glanced up quickly at his interlocutor’s face, his own white with deadly fear. His lips parted, but he was powerless to articulate. The other stood immovable—smilingly enjoying his apprehension, but the smile was that of a fiend.
“Not heard anything of him?” he said, slowly, while like the hellish hiss of red-hot irons in quivering flesh there passed through his mind the recollection of his cousin’s defiant sneers over the successful intrigue that had robbed him of his patrimony, there in that same room, whose very walls seemed to echo their refrain even now. “Not heard anything of him? Well I’m not surprised, for—he’s dead.”
“Dead?” echoed Mr Vallance blankly, as though in a dream.
“As the proverbial door-nail.”
“Murderer!” gasped the wretched man, spasmodically clutching the air with his fingers, and gazing at his tormentor as through a far-off mist.
“Oh, no. You are under a delusion,” was the cool reply. “It’s odd that it should devolve on me—on me above all people—to give you the latest news of him. He died at an Indian stake.”
Even the pitiless, revengeful heart of the man who stood there smilingly unfolding his horrible news was hardly prepared for the awful metamorphosis that came over the smug, smooth-tongued, purring parson at those words. With a scream that rang through the house from top to bottom, and froze the blood of all who heard it, the miserable man leaped at his tormentor’s throat like a wild cat at bay. But he might as well have leaped at a rock. The powerful arm was raised, and the mere shock of the recoil sent the poor wretch sprawling. He lay—his livid features working in mania—the foam flying from his lips in flakes.
The other glanced at him a moment, then opened the door.
“You, James?” he said, coolly, to the trembling flunkey, who had not been many yards from the door during the interview. “You, James? Your boss is taken bad, I guess. Better see after him. Tell him, when he comes round, I’ll call again by-and-bye, and give him further particulars.”
With the same easy smile upon his lips he passed through the crowd of frightened women-folk who met him on the stairs, and who shrunk back before his glittering eyes and towering form, and gained the front door. Then he smiled in fearful glee.
“The last time I passed out this way,” he said to himself, half-aloud. “The last time I passed out this way, I was saying my time would surely come—and it has. Aha! my exemplary and most reverend cousin I think I’m nearly even with you now—very nearly!”