CHAPTER L.
The Ruin at Night.—The Fire.—Gray’s Behaviour.—A Challenge.—Old Westminster Again.
Ada made no remark upon these proceedings of Jacob Gray. She had made up her mind to a particular course of action. She had wound up her feelings and her courage to a certain pitch and she resolved not to say another word to Jacob Gray, until she had an opportunity of acting, as she had now considered it her sacred duty to act.
Gray himself seemed suspicious and annoyed at her pertinacious silence, and he addressed her in a fawning, trembling voice, as if he would fain restore her to her usual confidence in addressing him. The calm of Ada’s manner alarmed him. He would ten times rather she had spoken to him in terms of reproach and abhorrence; but now that she said nothing, he trembled for what might be the nature of her thoughts regarding him.
“Ada,” he said, as he crept along by her side, or rather one pace before her towards the inner side. “Ada, all that I have often pictured to you of riches and honour shall soon be yours. You will enjoy all that your young and ardent imagination can hope for; but there are some few things yet to be done ere I can place you in such a position as would make you the envy of all.”
These few things, in Jacob Gray’s mind, consisted in efficient preparations for his own departure from England; the secreting of his confession, and the extortion of a yet further sum of money from the fears of Learmont.
“You do not hear me, Ada,” as she made no reply.
The young girl shuddered, and shrank from him as far as he would permit.
“You shrink from me now,” said Gray, “and yet I am the only person who can and will place you in a position to enjoy every pleasure—to gratify every taste. Ada, you will be much beholden now to Jacob Gray.”
Still Ada would not speak, and they were rapidly nearing some stairs, at which plied wherries between Battersea and Westminster. Gray now looked cautiously around him, and being quite satisfied that no one was within heating, he stooped his mouth close to Ada’s ear, and said, in a voice of suppressed yet violent passion,—
“Girl, I am a desperate man. Do not tempt me beyond what I can resist to do a deed which I fain would not do. Hear me, Ada—I swear to have your life if you play me false. Be obedient to what I shall command, and all will be well; but have a care—have a care, for I am desperate, and you know what I can do.”
Jacob Gray then walked on in silence until he reached the stalls, at which there was no one but a boy, who immediately cried to him, “Boat, your honour—going across, sir?”
“Yes,” said Gray.
The boy ran into the water to steady the beat while Gray handed in Ada, who submitted passively. Then he stepped on board himself, and the boy, clambering in after him, pushed the boat out into the stream.
“Where to, your honour?” said the boy, as he settled the sculls in the rollocks, and gave, a sweep that turned the boat’s head from the shore.
“To the stairs at Westminster-bridge,” said Gray.
The boy nodded, and the boat, under his good management, was soon gliding up the stream in the wished-for direction.
The sun was now rapidly sinking, and tall dark shadows lay upon the surface of the Thames, making the waters look as if they were composed of different kinds of fluids of varying colours and densities. Then the last edge of the sun’s disc, which had been reposing on the horizon for a moment, suddenly disappeared, and a cold wind on the instant swept across the face of the river, curling it up into small wrinkles, and giving a gentle, undulating motion to the boat.
Not a word was spoken, and the small wherry might have been occupied by the dead, for all the signs of life or animation given by Gray or Ada.
That Gray’s thoughts partook of the apprehensive might have been guessed by the nervous manner in which he clutched the side of the boat, and the distracted movement of the fingers of his other hand with which he held the collar of his cloak across the lower part of his face.
Ada was pale as a marble statue; but there was an intellectuality and determination about her small, compressed lips and commanding brow that would have won admiration from all, and enraptured a poet or a painter. She sat calm and still. There was no nervousness, no trembling, no alarm; and it was the absence of all those natural and feminine feelings which cast a cold chill to the heart of Jacob Gray, and filled him with a terror of he knew not what.
He could not for more than one instant of time keep his eyes off Ada’s face. There was a something depicted there that while he dreaded, he seemed, by some supernatural power, compelled to look upon. Like one fascinated by the basilisk eye of a serpent, he could not withdraw his gaze; although pale, firm, and slightly tinged with a death-like hue by the strange colours that lingered in the sky from the sunset, that young and lovely face brought to his recollection one which the mere thought of was an agony, and the name of whom was engraven upon his heart in undying letters of eternal flame.
The fresh breeze caught as it passed the long glossy ringlets of Ada’s hair, and blew them in wanton playfulness across her face, but still she moved not. The night darkened, and the shadows of the buildings and shipping crossed her eyes, but she stirred not. Her whole soul, with all its varied perceptions and powers seemed to be engrossed by some one great idea that would admit of no sort of companionship, and for the time reigned alone within the chambers of her brain.
Suddenly now the boy let his oars rest in the water, and the boat no longer urged forward, moved but sluggishly. His eyes seemed to be fixed on something. Now he lifted one hand and shaded them, while he looked earnestly in the direction from whence he had been coming.
Gray for a moment did not seem conscious that the boat was making no progress, but in fact slowly turning broadside to the stream, and Ada, if she did notice it, preserved her silence and calmness, for she neither moved nor spoke.
“Master,” cried the boy, suddenly, and Gray started as if he had been suddenly aroused by a trumpet at his ear.
“What—a—what?” he cried. “Who spoke?”
“I spoke, sir,” said the boy. “There’s a famous fire out Battersea way.”
“A fire?” said Gray.
“Yes,” said the boy, and he pointed with his finger in the direction from whence they came. “It’s a large fire; now it does burn, to be sure. Look, sir, there!”
Gray turned half round upon his seat in the boat, and he saw that the heavens were illuminated with a dull, red glare in the direction to which the boy had pointed, and in that one particular spot there was a concentrated body of light from whence shot up in the sky myriads of bright sparks, and now and then a long tongue of flame which lit up the house, the shipping, and the river, with a bright and transitory glow.
“It is—the house,” muttered Gray to himself; “my work prospers. Sir Frederick Hartleton, I have but one more wish, and that is, that your flesh was broiling in yon house along with your myrmidon whom you left to his fate.”
“It’s a large fire,” remarked the boy. “A famous fire.”
“Yes,” said Gray, “a famous fire; can you tell where it is?”
“I think,” said the boy, “it lies somewhere over the marshes.”
“Indeed.”
“Yes; and I should say it was Forest’s old haunted house, only nobody lives there but the ghosts.”
“Forest’s house,” repeated Gray, in an assumed careless tone. “Indeed I should not wonder if you were right.”
“I hope it is,” said the boy. “It was an old miserable-looking place. You’ve heard about it, sir?”
“A little—a little,” replied Gray.
“There was a murder there once,” said the boy.
“Yes,—yes, I—know,” said Gray.
“Forest, you see, sir, lived in the house. He built it, you see, sir, and he wasn’t content with what he had, so he murdered a poor fellow, who they say had a thousand pounds belonging to somebody who employed him to collect rents, you see, sir.”
“Yes,” said Gray, licking his lips.
“Well, sir, Forest shot him.”
“Shot him? Oh, yes. He—he shot him.”
“He was hung, though,” added the boy, “and well he deserved it, too. My grandfather saw him hung on the common, not a hundred feet from his own door.—After that no one would live in the house, and, in course, old Forest’s ghost, and, the man’s ghost that he killed, took to being there. Well, it does flare now famously.”
The fire seemed now at its height, for the flames rose to a tremendous height into the sky, and the roaring and crackling of the timbers could be distinctly heard, even at that distance from the spot of the conflagration.
Now and then a loud sound, resembling the discharge of artillery at a distance, would come booming through the air, indicative of the fall of some heavy part of the ancient building, and then the flame would be smothered for a moment, and dense volumes of smoke terrifically red from the glare beneath, would roll over the sky, to be succeeded again by myriads of sparks, which would, in their turns, give place to the long tongues of flame which shot up from the fallen mass, as it became more thoroughly ignited.
Jacob Gray gazed intently on the scene for a few minutes, then turning to the boy, he cried,—
“We are in haste.”
The lad resumed his oars, and struck them lazily into the glowing stream, that looked like liquid fire from the bright reflection of the sky, and once more the boat was making way towards Westminster.
Several times Gray glanced in the face of Ada, to note what effect the burning of the old house had upon her imagination, but not a muscle moved—all was as still and calm as before, and save that the reflection from the reddened sky now cast a glow of more than earthly beauty over her otherwise pale face, to look at her, she might have been supposed some thing of Heaven, summoned by the small casualties and petty commotions of this world, which she had but visited for a brief space, for some specific purpose.
The boat glided on, and so intent was the boy upon the fire, that he had several narrow escapes of running foul of barges and other wherries, some of the latter of which were pulling down the stream on purpose to look at the fire, which was causing a great deal of comment and commotion among the gossips of ancient Westminster.
Many were the oaths levelled on the head of the boy, by parties who were obliged to ship their oars suddenly to avoid a collision with his boat, and it was not until this happened thrice, that he began to be a little more careful, and look warily about him.
The stairs to which Gray directed the boy were through the bridge, and the boat now reached the ancient structure, which looked beautiful and brilliant from the reflection of the fire upon its many rough stones and jagged points of architecture.
A wherry, in which sat one person besides the rower, now came rapidly from under the same arch of the bridge, through which the boat containing Ada and Gray was about to proceed.
“Hilloa!” cried the man, who was sitting in the boat. “Hilloa there!”
“Well, what now?” said the boy.
“None of your impertinence, youngster,” cried the man, showing a constable’s staff, which Ada knew no more the meaning of than if he had unfurled the banner of Mahomet.
“Well, sir,” said the boy, “I only want to land my passengers.”
“You may land your passengers, and be d—d,” replied the man in authority.
“Thank you kindly sir,” replied the boy, promptly.
The rower in the other boat laughed at this, and the constable cried,—
“Come, come, none of this. How far have you pulled up the river, boy?”
“From Battersea.”
“Oh, hem! From Battersea?”
“I told you so.”
“Come, come, young fellow—no insolence. Where’s the fire?”
“I can’t say exactly.”
“Where do you think it is? You say you have pulled up from Battersea, and the fire is at Battersea, we know.”
“I think it’s at old Forest’s haunted house,” said the boy.
“D—d if I didn’t think so,” cried the officer, who was no other than our old friend Stephy; “I must go and see, though, notwithstanding. Pull away, my man.”
The wherries shot past each other, and in a few moments more, Ada and Gray stood on the top of the flight of stone steps conducting from the river to Bridge-street.