CHAPTER XCIII.
Gray at Home.—Albert’s Joy and Exultation.—The Meeting in the Old Door Way.
“Make way there!” roared Sir Francis Hartleton’s man, as the boy who rowed him shot the wherry’s nose between the other two. “Make way there—curse you all, I am on the king’s business.”
“Make way for his majesty,” cried the man who had carried Albert Seyton. “He says he’s on the king’s business, but that’s only his modesty. He’s the king himself, I shouldn’t wonder, disguised as a fool.”
The spy had scrambled from the boat on to the wooden steps, but he was so annoyed at this last remark, that snatching his staff from his pocket, he turned round, saying,—
“If I lose my proper game, I’ll make sure for you for obstructing an officer. You shall have a lodging in the watch-house, my exceedingly witty fellow.”
The waterman was, however, a great deal too quick for him; for, as he tried to step from the stairs into the boat, by one sweep of his oars he shot the wherry out some three or four yards from the landing, and the spy stepped up to his knees in the river, and was nearly precipitated head foremost into the stream.
“Don’t pison the water,” said the waterman; and then he pulled steadily away.
“I’ll have you another time, my man,” said the spy, quite livid with rage, as he turned, and again ascended the steps.
In the meantime Jacob Gray had gathered his cloak closely around him, and smiling to himself at his own cleverness in, as he thought, thoroughly outwitting Learmont, and even when there was no danger, approaching his home in so very baffling a manner, was creeping along close to the houses as usual towards his obscure lodgings.
Albert Seyton, when he reached the top of the stairs, looked anxiously to the right, and there he saw Gray, not half a dozen yards from him. To follow so closely would have been very dangerous, undisguised now as the young man was, and he hung back, still keeping Jacob Gray in his eye, until the latter had proceeded nearly to a turning which led into the next street but one in which he lived. The moment, then, that he was upon the corner Albert walked hastily forward, and by pursuing the same system at the corner of the next street, he fairly succeeded in dogging Gray to the little mean shop above which he lodged.
Albert’s heart beat high as he saw him enter the humble abode. His agitation became extreme, and the thought that he was so near Ada caused such a tumult of delightful feelings in his breast, that he forgot all passed suffering—all present cautions, and actually bounded forward half a dozen paces towards the shop, before his promise to Learmont came across his mind, and arrested his eager footsteps.
“Oh, oh,” he said, “Ada, my beautiful and true. Even now, although so near to you, I must not rush to your rescue. My word of honour binds me, but I can gaze with rapture upon the house in which you are. I can please myself by fancying I breathe the same air with you. Oh, how cruel is this that I cannot, for my promise to the rich squire, at once rush into the house that contains my heart’s treasure, and claim it as my own, I must control my impatience. Ada, your imprisonment shall now be but of short duration. Soon now shall I clasp you to my heart.”
Albert now crossed over to the other side of the way, and diving into a doorway where he was completely hidden, but from whence he could command a good view of the house in which he so erroneously supposed Ada to be, he gave himself up to the delirious feeling that he had at length arrived at the end of all his troubles, and Ada would soon be his, while the patronage of the rich Squire Learmont would ensure him ease, and perhaps in time fortune.
There was no sign of inhabitants visible in the whole front of the house; but in a few more moments, as Albert rose his eye restlessly from window to window, he saw a dirty narrow curtain moved in one of the top rooms, and fancy made him think the hand was Ada’s, which he saw but partially.
“My Ada—my own. Ada—my beautiful,” he cried; “oh! If I could but be sure now that you were well, and,—”
He was interrupted at this moment by some one popping into the dark doorway so suddenly as to run against him with great violence.
Albert immediately laid hold of the intruder, and cried—“Hilloa, friend! Softly here.”
“What do you do here?” cried a man’s voice in no very pleasant accents.
“I may as well retaliate the question.”
“Oh! Be d—d,” cried the man, who was no other than the spy, “I know you now by your voice. You are the fellow who took a boat before me.”
“Then I presume,” said Albert, “you are the fellow who took a boat after me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I say.”
“Come, come, no nonsense, young fellow—what do you mean by following that man you have made such a run after?”
“I never explain my affairs to strangers,” said Albert, coldly.
“I’m an officer.”
“I don’t care if you are a dozen officers,” said Albert, “you have nothing to do with my private affairs.”
“But I can take you up on suspicion.”
“Can you?”
“Yes, I can, and for your impudence, I will too.”
“Then,” said Albert, “I’ll knock you down first;” and suiting the action to the word, he grappled with the officer before he was aware, and although much the lighter and weaker of the two, threw him upon his back in the passage with so much violence, that he lay stunned.
“I am sorry for this,” thought Albert; “but I can allow no vexatious interference with me now. Farewell, dear Ada, for a time—your lover will be with you soon—I will now away to Learmont’s and claim his proffered assistance.”
Casting then, ever and anon, lingering looks behind at the house, which he believed contained the object of his fond affections, Albert left the street; and when he had turned the corner, and could no longer see even the habitation of Jacob Gray, he started off at a pace which astonished every one he passed, towards the house of Learmont.
Jacob Gray, when he reached his room, sat down on the side of the miserable little bed, and began to think of his future plans and hopes, with a feeling of certainty, as regarded their stability, such as he had rarely before experienced. It seemed as if Providence having now hurried him on to the very brink of destruction, was determined that his fall should be the more dreadful and full of suffering by his having no sort of anticipation of it. He was as one smiling and making long calculations on the brink of the grave.
“Learmont,” he said, “has seized the bait—I shall be wealthy and free, besides satisfying my revenge. They taunt me with being subtle—I trust that they will find me so. They might long ago have temporised with me, and ensured their own safety by never awakening in my breast the dark feelings towards them that now possess it; but they sought my life, and I swore revenge. Britton and Learmont shall fall in one common destruction, while Ada shall have more trouble to prove her legitimacy than will last her life, should she linger to the age of an ancient patriarch. Yes, I shall be revenged on her, as well as upon Britton and Learmont.”
He sat then for some moments in deep thought, and a feeling of anxiety began to creep over him.
“I am getting nervous now,” he muttered; “of late I am fearfully subject to such gloomy thoughts. I shall be glad when this gloomy, lonely life is over. It suits not with my disposition. I—I did not feel it so much when she was with me, but now that I am quite alone, a shuddering awe creeps around my heart, and I start at the merest trifle. Gracious Heaven—how my heart beats now! ’Tis time I should have ease and comfort in some other land, where all things are new and strange, and there is nothing to remind me of the past—aye, then, I shall know peace.”
He rose, and paced his room uneasily; but even in his mental agitation he trod cautiously, as if the very boards would proclaim, to the world—there trod Jacob Gray, the murderer! Then he produced his confession, and a strange desire seized him to read it carefully through, and make some verbal corrections in it, in order that it should be still more clear and explanatory than it had been. Again, and again, he read over the document, and was satisfied that its notations were distinct and clear.
“Yes—yes—if anything should happen to me,” he muttered, “this will destroy Learmont and Britton, and likewise doom Ada to poverty, while the estates of Learmont will revert to the crown, or some very distant branch of the family that will be eager to acquire them. So even I should not fall quite unavenged. In my death I should be terrible. Death?—Death? I am not going to die—why did such a thought enter my brain? ’Tis strange—very strange.—I never thought of death before this night. I—I am quite well—quite. ’Tis a mere feverish fancy; a vision crossing the over-excited brain. I have had hundreds of such—such forebodings. I suppose that is what I must call the strange feeling that now oppresses me.”
He was now silent for some time, and then, hastily rising, he held the confession in his hand and glanced around his room, as he said,—
“I will never again carry so important a document as this about with me. ’Tis far better—far safer in some hiding-place here; and then suppose it should not be found till some time after my death. That word again—death—death—pshaw, what have I to do with death, for many years to come?”
He, nevertheless, trembled, as he strove to reason himself out of his nervous fears, and he was some time before he could decide upon where to put his confession, so that it must eventually be found, but still where a search would be required to bring it to light. He finally ripped some of the lining from his cloak, and inserted the confession between that and the cloth.
“There it will be quite safe from any casual observation,” he said, “while sooner or later it must come to light, and my vengeance would be greater by a little delay, because Learmont would be lulled into fancied security if no immediate danger assailed after my death.”
He sunk upon his chair muttering.
“Death again—death again—death again—how that notion haunts me! An absurd fancy; in my case a most absurd fancy, for never was I so safe—so free—so likely to obtain all that I wish as I am now—my star is in the ascendant.”
He hung the cloak on a large hook behind the door of his room, and then said,—
“How many persons would search this room, and toss this cloak about, without discovering that it contained anything so important as that now hidden in it.”
He then proceeded to a cupboard, and taking from it a case bottle, he drank a quantity of raw spirits, to which he had latterly habituated himself whenever he felt any disagreeable mental qualms which he could not reason himself out of.
“Drink—drink,” he muttered, as he returned the case bottle to its place. “That is the wretch’s last solace. It will for a time banish care, but it is a deceitful fiend that comes at first with semblance of great friendship, but sooner or later it will turn upon him who has been lured by it, and become a deadly foe. I—think I will sleep now—all is safe, and I am very weary; my confession will be found after my death—ah, that word again—death—death—nothing else can I think of—come, welcome sleep.”
He threw himself upon his bed, and exhausted as he was by the few preceding day’s actions, he soon dropped into slumber—not an unbroken or easy one, though, for the imagination, now freed from the control of reason, conjured up fearful images into the brain of the man of crime.