CHAPTER XX.
A map is a very useful thing: I wonder what people did without it before it was invented. Yet there were great travellers in those days, too, both by land and water. Adam began the first, and Noah the second, and they managed very well without either chart or compass, so that it is evident those instruments are nothing but luxuries, and ought to be done away with. Nevertheless, I feel that I should be much better off, and so would the reader too, if I could give here, on this page, a map of the county of ----, just to show him the relative position of the place called Buxton's Inn and the little village of Coldington-cum-Snowblast, which lay nearly north-west of Buxton's Inn, and at the distance, by the road, of about six miles. The innkeepers charge seven miles' posting, because it was the seventeenth part of a furlong beyond the six miles. However, a dreary little village it was, situated on one of the two roads to London, which was indeed somewhat shorter than the other, but so hilly, so tiresome, so bleak, and so stiff, as the post-boys termed it, that man and beast alike preferred the other road, and generally went to and from Tarningham by Buxton's Inn. Nevertheless, it was absolutely necessary that a pair or two of posters should be kept at Coldington, as that was the only direct road to several considerable towns; and though it was only an eight-mile stage, yet the cattle, when they had got over the hills, had no inclination to go further. The post-horses had engendered a public-house, which was designated by courtesy an inn, but it was a very solitary one, with very few visitors but those who took a glass of beer or spirits at the bar, and a chance mercantile traveller, who came to supply the two shops that ornamented the village, and slept there for the night.
At a very early hour of the morning, however, on the day of which we have just been speaking, a post-chaise drew up to the door with horses from Buxton's Inn, and a fresh relay was immediately ordered to carry the travellers on towards Bristol. A tall, powerful, showily-dressed man got out with a lady closely veiled, whose costume spoke of Parisian manufacture; and while the portmanteaux and other articles of baggage were being taken into the doorway till they could be placed upon the new chaise, the gentleman paid the post-boy, and then asked if he was going back directly.
"In about an hour, Sir," replied the man, touching his hat, with the look of one well satisfied with his fee.
But at this reply the traveller looked blank, and said, "Well, it does not matter. I must get some lad to run over across the moor with this note to Mr. Wittingham. Just see for some one, my good fellow. He shall have half-a-crown for his pains."
But the post-boy was not such a goose as to let the half-crown slip by him, and, with the most respectful air in the world, he assured the gentleman that he was quite ready to go that minute, and that he had only proposed to stay an hour because he did not know--how should he?--that the other wanted to send back.
The note and the half-crown were immediately given, the post-boy got into his saddle again, resisted the soft entreaties of the ostler to take a glass of something, and trotted away. No sooner was he gone, however, in the full persuasion that ere a quarter of an hour was over his two travellers would be on their way to Bristol, than the gentleman he left behind seemed to have suddenly changed his mind. The horses were countermanded, a room upstairs looked at, some breakfast ordered, and there he and his fair companion seemed disposed to pass the day. After a short but hearty breakfast, which was crowned by a glass of brandy, upon the strength of such an early drive, the gentleman himself sallied forth, saying to the lady, "I must see that fellow Stephen, and find out if he has peached. If he has, we had better get over the water for a while, at all events; though they can prove nothing, I am sure."
"You will take your rash, wild ways, love," answered the lady, in a languid tone; "and then you are sure to get into a scrape." But the gentleman did not wait for the end of the admonition, leaving the room and shutting the door behind him.
We will stay with the lady, however, and a very pretty woman she was, though, indeed, there had been a time when she was prettier. She was certainly not less than three or four-and-thirty, with good, small features, and a complexion which had once been exceedingly fine. It had become somewhat coarse now, however, and looked as if the process of deterioration had been assisted by a good deal of wine, or some other stimulant perhaps still more potent. Her eyes were fine dark eyes, but they had grown somewhat watery, and there was an occasional vacancy in them, a wandering uncertainty that bespoke either some intense preoccupation with other subjects than those immediately in question, or some failure of the intellect, either from temporary or permanent causes. Her figure was tall and fine, and her dress very handsome in materials and make; but yet there was a something about it too smart. There was too much lace and ribbon, too many bright and gaudy colours, too much flutter and contrast, to be perfectly ladylike. There was also a negligence in the way of putting it on--almost a slovenliness, if one may go that length, which made things nearly new look old and dirty.
Her air and manner, too, were careless and languid; and as she set herself down on one chair, then moved to another, and rested her feet upon a third, it seemed as if something was continually weighing upon her mind, which yet wanted vigour and solidity enough to make an effort to cast it off.
It was not that she seemed to mope at being left alone by her male companion, or that she felt or cared for his absence very much, although she evidently deemed his plans and purposes imprudent and perilous. Far from it: she was as gay, or perhaps gayer, when he was gone than before; sang a little bit of an Italian song, took a small note-book out of her bag and wrote in it some lines, which seemed, by their regular length, to be verses; and then, getting up again, she opened a portmanteau, brought out a book, and began to read. She had not continued long, however, when she seemed to become tired of that also, and putting back the book again, gave herself up to thought, during the course of which her face was chequered with slight smiles and slight frowns, neither of which had the most pleasant expression in the world. There was a littleness in it all, indeed, a sort of careless indolence, which perhaps bespoke a disposition hackneyed and spoiled by the pleasures, if not the pains of life. And there she sat, casting away from her everything but thought, as if there were nothing in the world valuable or important, except the little accidents, that might disturb or promote her own individual comfort. The maid who carried away the breakfast things informed the landlady that "the woman upstairs was a taking on it easy, a sitting with her feet on one of the best chears." And although the good dame did not think fit to object to this proceeding, she mentally commented on it thus: "Them quality-folks is always giving themselves airs; but if she spiles my new kivers, I'll take it out in the bill, anyhow."
After this state of things had continued for somewhat more than an hour and a half, the gentleman came back, apparently in great haste, dripping like a Newfoundland dog, and, calling to the ostler before he ran upstairs, directed him to put-to the horses as soon as possible. Then, running up, he entered the room where he had left the lady, exclaiming, "Quick, Charlotte, we must be off like the devil!"
"Why, what's the matter, Moreton?" she said, without moving an inch. "You are all dripping wet; you have met with some adventure."
"And something else, too," answered the gentleman. "I have met with that devil of a fellow again, and he recognised me and tried to stop me, but I pulled him into the river, and left him there, getting to the other bank Heaven knows how. All I am sure of is, that I kept his head under water for two or three minutes; for he fell undermost. But I have not time to talk more now, for we must go as if Satan drove us, and I will tell you more as we go along."
"I hope he's drowned," said the lady, with the sweetest possible smile; "it is an easy death, they say. I think I shall drown myself one day or other."
"Pooh!" said the gentleman. "But come along, come along! I have something to tell you of Charles; so make haste."
"Of Charles!" exclaimed the lady, starting up as if suddenly roused from a sort of stupor, while a look of intense and fiery malignity came into her face. "What of him? Have you seen him? Did he see you?"
"I don't know," answered her companion. "But come along;" and taking up one of the portmanteaus as the chaise drove up to the door, he hurried down, and sent up for the other. The lady followed with a quick step, drawing her veil over her face; for she now seemed to be all life and eagerness; and while the gentleman was paying the bill, she got into the chaise and beat the bottom of the vehicle with her small foot, as if impatient for his coming.
Before he could reach the door, after having paid the bill, however, a man on horseback galloped quickly up, and, springing to the ground, caught the gentleman by the arm, exclaiming, "Why, hang it, Moreton, you have played me a scurvy trick, to go off and leave me before it was daylight."
"I could not help it, my dear Wittingham," replied the other: "I was obliged to be off; there is a d--d cousin of mine down here whom I would not have see me for the world. You must not stop me now, by Jove; for they have found out where I am, and I expect him to pay his respects very soon."
"Devil take it! that's unfortunate," cried Wittingham, "I wanted you to go and call out that meddling scoundrel, Hayward, whom I told you of. He bolted into my room last night, and he told me he had horsewhipped me once, and would horsewhip me again whenever he met me, if I could not get some gentleman of honour to arrange a meeting with him."
"Upon my life, I can't stay," cried the other, "though I should like to see you shoot him, too, if he is alive, which I have some doubts of--but stay," he continued, after a moment's thought, "I will find a man for you, and I will send him down without loss of time--Major Woolstapler; he has been lately in foreign service, but that's all the same, and he's a capital hand at these things; and, if you follow his advice, you will shoot your man to a certainty--he shall be down before three days are over; I am off for Bristol, and so up the Cath road to London. We shall get there to-night; and he will be down to-morrow or the next day early. He'll hear of you at Buxton's, I suppose. Good-by, good-by." And he jumped into the chaise.
A moment after, as soon as the door was shut, he seemed to recollect something, and putting his head out of the window he beckoned up young Wittingham, saying, in a low voice, "You'll need the bull-dogs, so I'll send you down mine. Tell Woolstapler to contrive that you have number one. It will do his business, if tolerably well handled--and I say, Wittingham, don't mention to any one that you have seen me either here or at Oxford. My cousin fancies I am in India still." Then turning to the postillion, he said, "Go on and brush along fast. Sixpence a mile for good going."
Never was such an intimation given to a postillion without the horses suffering for it. I actually once made a Bavarian go seven miles and a half an hour between Ulm and Augsburg by the same process. I record it as amongst the memorable events of my life, proudly satisfied that no man upon earth ever did the same, either before or since. On the present occasion, the postillion, without fear, struck his spurs into the horse's side, laid the whip over the back of the other with that peculiar kind of gentle application which intimated that if the brown-coated gentleman did not get on as hard as his four legs would carry him, the instrument of propulsion would fall more heavily the next time; and away they went, at a pace which was a canter up hill, a trot down, and a gallop over the flat. Captain Moreton leaned back in the chaise and murmured, "We've cut them, by Jove!"
"But what is to be the end of all this?" asked the lady, who seemed to be now thoroughly roused: "if that man is to go on for ever having his own way I do not see any thing that is to be gained. We cannot keep this up much longer, Moreton; and so you thought two days ago. I shall be compelled to come forward and claim the arrears of the annuity by actual want of money. You told me, when we were at the inn there, that you had but ten pounds left, and now you seem to take a different view of the subject. You men are certainly the most vacillating creatures in the world."
"Nay," answered Moreton, bowing his head with an air of persiflage, "ladies, it must be owned, are superior to us in that, as in everything else. Two or three months ago you seemed enchanted with your plan, and declared, though it had not answered yet, it would answer in the end. I only thought it would not answer for want of means, otherwise I was as well disposed towards it as you could be. Now, on the contrary, you are eager to abandon it, while I wish to pursue it, for this simple reason: that I have got the means of carrying it on for some time at least, and see the greatest probability of success. You must recollect, my dear Charlotte, that this is not a matter where a few hundreds or a few thousand pounds are at stake, but many thousands a-year."
As usually happens--for nobody ever hears or attends to more, at the utmost, than the twentieth part of what is said to them, the lady's mind fixed upon one particular sentence, without listening to anything more, and she repeated, as if contemplating and doubting, "You have got the means! You have the means!"
"Ay, indeed, I have," answered Captain Moreton, with a smile; "I have got the means; for, while you were thinking I was doing nothing, I was shrewdly laying out my own plans, by which I have contrived to screw full five hundred pounds out of that terrible miser, Wharton. Was not that somewhat like a coup? With that we can live for some five or six months in Paris--economically, you know, my love--we must not have champagne and oysters every day; but we can do well enough; and before the time is out, the very event we wished to bring about will have happened; otherwise my name is not Moreton. I can see very well how matters are going. He is caught: for the first time in his life really and truly captivated; and, if we but take care to play our game well, he will be married and completely in our power within a few weeks. I know he will never be able to stand that; and there will but be one choice before him, either to buy you off at the highest possible price, or--"
"Buy me!" cried the lady; "if he had the diamond mines of Golconda, he could not buy me! If he could coin every drop of blood in his heart into a gold piece, I would see him mind them all to the very last, and then refuse them all with scorn and contempt. No, no, I will bring him to public shame and trial; I will make him a spectacle, have him condemned as a malefactor, break his proud spirit and his hard heart, and then leave him to his misery, as he has left me. For this I have toiled and longed; for this I have saved and scraped, like the veriest miser that ever worshipped Mammon in his lowest shape; for this I saved every sixpence, and lived in self-inflicted poverty and neglect, till I met you, Moreton, in order to hoard enough to keep me, till this revenge could be accomplished; and often, very often since, I have been tempted to curse you for having, by the extravagance you taught and practised, squandered away the very means of obtaining all that I have longed and pined for."
"You speak in a very meek and Christian spirit," cried Captain Moreton, with a laugh; "but, nevertheless, I will not quarrel with it, Charlotte; for your revenge would serve my purposes too. If we could but get him to commit himself beyond recall, I am his next heir, you know, my dear; and, therefore, the sooner he goes to heaven or Botany Bay, the better for me--don't you think that we could contrive to get up a very well authenticated report of your death in some of the newspapers, with confirmations of all kinds, so as to leave no doubts in his mind?"
"Moreton, upon my life I believe you are a fool," cried the lady, bitterly; "would he not plead that as his excuse?--no, no, if I could so manage it, and, Heaven or the devil send me wit, I care not which, to do it, I would contrive to make him fancy my death certain by small indications, such as none but himself could apply, and which, to the minds of others would seem but frivolous pretexts if brought forward in his own justification. If you can help me to such a plan, I will thank you; if not, we must trust to fortune."
"Good faith! I see no means to accomplish that," cried Moreton.
"Now then, let us talk no more about it," answered the lady; and sinking back into the chaise, she relapsed into that state of seeming apathy, from which nothing but passion had the power to rouse her.
"By the way," said Captain Moreton, after about a quarter of an hour's consideration, while the chaise rolled rapidly along, "all those things that you had in Paris, clocks and chimney ornaments, and such like things, what has become of them?"
"Oh, they are of little value, Moreton," said the lady; "a thousand franks would buy them all; the worth would not last you ten minutes at roulette."
"No," answered Captain Moreton, taking no notice whatever of the bitterness with which she spoke; "but I was thinking that they might be more serviceable at hazard."
"What do you mean?" she asked, abruptly, fixing her eyes upon him.
"I want to know where they are," answered Captain Moreton, in a cool tone.
"Why you know very well," she answered, sharply, "when I left Paris two years ago with you, I told the girl, Jeanette, to take care of them till I came back. I dare say she has pawned or sold them long ago."
"That is the very thing," cried Moreton, rubbing his hands. "We will away to Paris with all speed; you will keep quite close; I will find out Mamselle Jeanette, and give her intimation that she may sell the things to pay her own arrears of wages; for that her poor dear lady will never come back to claim them."
"I see the plan," replied the lady, "but I fear it will not answer, Moreton; I had been living, as you know, in seclusion for a year before, and the very means that I took to make him think me dead, will now frustrate your scheme for that purpose."
"I don't know that, Charlotte," answered her companion. "He has been making inquiries in Paris, I know; you were traced thither distinctly, and whether all clue was there lost of your proceedings, neither I nor you can tell. But I'll tell you a story. When I was living at my father's place, he had a particularly fine breed of pheasants, which regularly every year disappeared about the 8th or 9th of October, without the possibility of proving that any one had been into the copses. One day, however, when I was out early in the morning, I saw a fine old cock, with his green and gold neck, walking along straight through a field towards the ground of a neighbouring farmer. Every two or three seconds down went the pheasant's head, and on he walked again. I watched him for a few minutes over a hedge, then made my way through, put up the bird, and examined the spot where he had been. There I found a regular pheasant's footpath, and nicely strewed along it a line of barleycorns, leading straight on to the farmer's ground, in the first hedge of which I found another portly bird fast by the neck in a springe. Now, my dear Charlotte, we'll strew some barleycorns, and perhaps we may catch your bird in the springe; I mean, we'll throw out such pieces of information as will lead to the certainty that you were in the Rue St. Jaques two years ago; we will get Jeanette to sell things to pay her own wages, with the best reason to believe you are dead; and if what I have heard is true, all that you have so long aimed at will be accomplished before two months are over."
"I see, I see," answered the lady, and the chaise stopped to change horses.