CHAPTER LXXVI.
The Old Associates.—Gray’s Fears.—The Old Attic at the Chequers.
There was a light in the passage, which shed a strong full glare upon the pallid care worn features of Gray; and Andrew Britton, as he held him at arm’s length turned nearly as pale as he was with the intense surprise of the meeting. He was sobered by the shock, and in a husky whisper he muttered the name of Jacob Gray.
Such awful and abject fear seemed to take possession of Gray that had not Britton held him, he must have fallen at his feet. All his presence of mind and cunning appeared to have deserted him, and it was not until Britton had again pronounced his name that he gasped,—
“Is—is it you, Andrew Britton? I—I am glad to see you look so well.”
“Yes by God,” said Britton, “it is me. What wind from hell blew you here?”
“I—I, you are looking very well,” said Gray, with a sickly smile.
“Curses on my looks, and yours too, I say again what brought you here?”
“To—to see you, of course. I thought as we had been old friends, I would come and—and see you. You rather hurt me, Britton.”
“You canting, whining villain,” said Britton, “I will know what brought you here, or I will smash your head against the door-post.”
“Violent, Britton, still violent to poor Jacob Gray, who comes to do you good. You know, my dear Britton—”
“Just say that again,” cried Britton, “and I’ll—”
He tightened his grasp upon Gray, who had just breath sufficient to gasp out—
“Remember—my—confession! The gallows!”
Britton relaxed his hold, and a slight tremor passed over his frame as he said in a lower tone,—
“Jacob Gray, you must have something damnable to say or propose to me!”
“Not exactly, Britton. But I think there is danger abroad to us both!”
“Danger?”
“Yes, Britton. Of course when I thought any danger threatened, I said to myself, shall I not warn good, kind, peaceable, inoffensive Britton.”
“You infernal liar!” cried Britton.
“So having,” resumed Gray, not heeding any interruption, “so having placed my written confession where, in case I return not soon, it would be easily found and forwarded to Sir Francis Hartleton, I came, you see, here at once.”
“Sir Francis Hartleton!” cried Britton; “if you have anything really to say it is of him, I’ll be sworn. He has been hunting me, but I will have his heart’s hood, I will!”
Gray caught at the suggestion, and immediately replied,—
“Yes—yes, Britton, it was of Sir Francis Hartleton I came to warn you.”
“Indeed, on your soul?”
“On my soul it was. He is hatching some mischief against us all, Britton, and do you think I will let an old friend fall into danger, and not warn him? So as I say, after placing my full and carefully written confession—”
“Now, Jacob Gray,” said Britton, “if you say another word about your d—d confession, I will brain you on the spot.”
“I only wished you to understand our relative positions, my good Britton,” said Gray, who was rapidly overcoming his first fright, and with his usual fertility of invention scheming to overcome Britton by cunning.
“There, there, that will do. Let me hear no more of it,” said Britton. “Come in.”
Gray hesitated a moment, and Britton, bending his brows upon him, said,—
“Why, you are as safe in the Chequers at Westminster, as you were at the Old Smithy at Learmont. Why do you shrink, man? You know, and I make no secret of it, that I would as soon dash out your brains as look at you, if I could do so with safety. Come in, I say.”
“I am quite sure,” muttered Gray, “I may depend upon such an old friend as Britton.”
He followed Britton as he spoke, and the smith, crossing the bar, ascended two flights of stairs to his own sleeping room, into which he ushered Jacob Gray.
“I have company down stairs, and be cursed to them,” he said. “Wait here till I come back to you.”
“You—you won’t be long, Britton?”
“But five minutes.”
Britton left the room, and after proceeding down about three stairs, he came back and, to Gray’s dismay, locked the door of the room.
“So—so,” murmured Gray, playing his fingers nervously upon the back of a chair. “Here I am hunted through Westminster, and forced at length to take refuge with Andrew Britton—he who has avowedly sought my life, and would take it now, but for fear of my confession. Have I ever been in such desperate straits as this before? Yes—yes—I have, and yet escaped. Surely he will not kill me. He dare not. Yet he drinks largely, and may remember then his revenge, and hatred against me, while he forgets his own safety. Oh, if Andrew Britton knew how safe it was to murder Jacob Gray, I should never see another sunrise. I am in most imminent danger—very imminent danger, indeed, and locked in too. What will become of me? What have toiled for, what committed crime upon crime for, what dipped my hands in blood for, if I am to be hunted thus, impoverished, and a price to be set upon my head?”
Jacob Gray leaned his head upon his hands, and groaned aloud, in the bitterness of his despair.
Then after a time he rose and carefully examined the door with a forlorn hope, that he might be able by some means to escape by it, and slinking down the staircase, leave the house; but it was quite fast, and although his strength might have been sufficient to break it open, that was a mode of operation attended with far too much noise to answer his purpose.
“I am a prisoner here,” he said,—“a prisoner to Andrew Britton, and my only chance of safety consists now in acting upon his fears, and arousing his anger more against Hartleton. He is long in coming,—what can be detaining him? Has he gone to Learmont’s, and are they together hatching some plot for my destruction? Am I safe, or—or am I on the very brink of the grave? My heart sinks within me. Surely he has been gone an hour. Shall I alarm the house? No—no. I am then taken for a thief; and, perhaps, dragged before Hartleton, who would not fail to recognise me. There is no weapon here to protect myself,—no means of escape.”
A sudden thought seemed to strike Gray, and he took up the candle which Britton had brought from the bar, and left with him.
“Does Britton,” he muttered, “keep his confession here with—my knife? Oh, if I could find those,—if I could, ’twere worth all the risk I now run. I would sell him to Learmont for a goodly sum.”
With a stealthy step, and a damp clammy perspiration of fear upon his brow, Jacob Gray crept about the room, which was at the top of the house, peering into every hole and corner in search of the much-dreaded confession of Andrew Britton.
His search was in vain—there was no paper to be found of any description and he sat down at length in despair.
“’Tis in vain—’tis in vain,” he groaned. “I am the victim of some contrivance of Britton’s to destroy me, or he would have returned eye this. I am lost—lost—lost.”
Jacob Gray wrung his hands, and wept like a child, as he thought his hour was come.
A long, straggling ray of light came in at the window now, and he started up exclaiming,—
“There is one hope more—the window—the window.”
The casement was one of those with diamond-shaped panes, held together by thin slips of lead, and Jacob Gray saw that immediately under it was a filthy gutter.
“One hope—one hope,” he muttered; and cautiously drawing himself through the window, he closed it again, and stood in the gutter. On one side of him was the high sloping roof of the attic, and on the other was a narrow crumbling parapet.
With a shudder, he looked down into the street. An itinerant breakfast provider had taken up his station immediately below, and several early passengers were hurrying onwards to different employments.
A boy looked up, and said,—
“There he goes!”
Gray could have cut his throat with pleasure, but he could only curse him, and creep on, while the urchin pointing him out to the saloon dealer, who, shading his eyes with his hands, said in a voice that came clearly to Jacob Gray’s ears,—
“It’s some thief, I’ll be bound, but it’s no business of mine—saloop!”