The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)

by Edmund Yates

The arrival down-stairs and the stir in the house had apparently not disturbed the secluded tenant of the drawing-room floor. He had indeed thrown aside the window-blind and looked out for a moment, as the heavily-laden carriage rumbled up to the door, but it was only because the habitual emptiness of the street had hardly been interrupted before that day. He saw a woman in deep widow's weeds step out of the carriage, attended by a slight, active-looking young man, and enter the house; then he let the blind fall, and returned to his occupation, and thought no more of the incident.

Mrs. Watts had some reason to be proud of her drawing-room floor. It consisted of two very well-proportioned apartments, and a smaller room, intended for the dignified purposes of a boudoir, but which, under the lodging-house régime, served as dressing and bath room. The sitting-room and bedroom were handsomely furnished, and presented an aspect of very decided comfort, though it was a London house in October; a cheerful wood fire, just enough to brighten the room without overheating it, burned in the bright steel grate; a handsome easy-chair stood near it, the castors buried in the thick white sheep-skin rug; while a writing-table, laden with papers and the paraphernalia of a business man, was wheeled into a convenient position with regard to both fire and light.

Let us have a look at Mr. Dunn, Mrs. Watts's model lodger, as he paces the sitting-room from end to end, absorbed in meditations, which, to judge by the abstraction of his countenance, have nothing whatever to do with the actual scene. Mrs. Watts's brothers must have indeed confused her notions of the stature of human beings out of Yorkshire, to which county she belonged, if she considered Mr. Dunn a little man. Other people would have pronounced him decidedly tall; his figure was slim but wiry built, about twenty-eight years of age, with long, thin, close-shaved face, small deeply-set eyes, and thin bloodless lips. He walked up and down with a slow measured pace, his arms folded tightly on his chest, and the fingers of each hand gripping the coat-sleeves with a curious fixity of grasp, corresponding with his set teeth and intent frowning eyes. Occasionally in his walk he stopped at his writing-table, uncrossed his arms, took up a sheet of paper from the number which lay scattered on the blotting-book, read it, laid it down again, refolded his arms, and commenced his uneasy, ill-regulated perambulation.

If the reader, Asmodeus-like, had been permitted to glance over his shoulder while he read these pages, he would have perceived how far Mrs. Watts's estimate of the good-nature and affability of her gentleman-like and most desirable lodger was to be relied upon. When he had taken up the third, he glanced over it viciously, as though uncertain whether he had made the terms of it bitter and imperative enough.

With the matter of these documents we have, however, no immediate concern. He read and re-read them; and then, having lighted the gas in his rooms, he sat down at the writing-table, collected the sheets, which, as they were written on very thin paper, he was enabled to fold into a small compass, and made a kind of précis of their contents in cipher in a memorandum-book, which he locked away in one of the drawers of the writing-table before he proceeded to place the address on the envelope into which he had carefully packed the written sheets. The envelope was of the buff colour and medium texture which we are accustomed to associate with letters of business from America; but contrary to usual custom, no part of the address was printed, nor was there any printing upon the impressed wafer.

His task completed, Mr. Dunn drew his chair closer to the fire and took up a book, but he seemed unable to occupy his attention with its contents, and after turning over a few pages in a desultory way, he flung it down and went into his bedroom, from which he emerged in a quarter of an hour, dressed for walking. Once more he crossed the sitting-room, approached the fire, and leaning against the mantelpiece, hat in hand, muttered, 'I cannot account for it, I cannot account for the delay of those letters; it is either foul play or an accident. If it is foul play, he is the most ungrateful scoundrel unhanged; if it is an accident--ah, "if!" where am I?'

With these words, uttered half aloud, and which seemed to have in them some mysterious and weighty meaning, Mr. Dunn took up the letter which he had just addressed, and went slowly down-stairs, carrying it in his hand.

The business of putting out of sight the luggage appertaining to the new arrivals was not yet quite completed, and Mr. Dunn's eyes lighted upon a very shiny black-leather valise, which was resting on one end against the clock-case until such time as it should be convenient to have it carried up to the new gentleman's room at the top of the house; for his appellation, Mr. Clarke, had not yet come pat to the tongues of Mrs. Watts and her domestics.

There was nothing remarkable about the valise, except its newness and its shininess, and painted in white upon the lid were the initials 'T.C.;' and as Mr. Dunn looked at it he thought idly, 'That hasn't seen much travel, anyhow.'

He laid his letter on the table in the hall, from which it would be duly conveyed to the post at five o'clock; and also observing carelessly that the door of the dining-room was ajar and that the gas was alight within, an appearance from which he arrived at the conclusion that the lady and gentleman whom he had seen getting out of the carriage had made it all right with Mrs. Watts, and were actually then in occupation, he opened the hall-door for himself, felt mechanically in his pocket to make sure that he had his latch-key, in case of a late return, and went out into the soft chill October evening.