What Will He Do with It? — Volume 10

Losely continued to gaze on the pale walls gleaming through the wintry boughs, as the moon rose high and higher. And now out broke the light from Darrell's lofty casement, and Losely smiled fiercely, and muttered —hark! the very words—"And then! come what may!"

Hoofs are now heard on the hard road, and Jasper is joined by his accomplice.

"Well!" said Jasper.

"Mount!" returned Cutts; "I have much to say as we ride."

"This will not do," resumed Cutts, as they sped fast down the lane; "why, you never told me all the drawbacks. There are no less than four men in the house—two servants besides the master and his secretary; and one of those servants, the butler or valet, has firearms, and knows how to use them."

"Pshaw!" said Jasper scoffingly; "is that all? Am I not a match for four?"

"No, it is not all; you told me the master of the house was a retired elderly man, and you mentioned his name. But you never told me that your Mr. Darrell was the famous lawyer and Parliament man—a man about whom the newspapers have been writing the last six months."

"What does that signify?"

"Signify! Just this, that there will be ten times more row about the affair you propose than there would be if it concerned only a stupid old country squire, and therefore ten times as much danger. Besides, on principle I don't like to have anything to do with lawyers— a cantankerous, spiteful set of fellows. And this Guy Darrell! Why, General Jas., I have seen the man. He cross-examined me once when I was a witness on a case of fraud, and turned me inside out with as much ease as if I had been an old pincushion stuffed with bran. I think I see his eye now, and I would as lief have a loaded pistol at my head as that eye again fixed on mine."

"Pooh! You have brought a mask; and, besides, YOU need not see him; I can face him alone."

"No, no; there might be murder! I never mix myself with things of that kind, on principle; your plan will not do. There might be a much safer chance of more swag in a very different sort of scheme. I hear that the pictures in that ghostly long room I crept through are worth a mint of money. Now, pictures of great value are well known, and there are collectors abroad who would pay almost any price for some pictures, and never ask where they came from; hide them for some years perhaps, and not bring them forth till any tales that would hurt us had died away. This would be safe, I say. If the pictures are small, no one in the old house need be disturbed. I can learn from some of the trade what pictures Darrell really has that would fetch a high price, and then look out for customers abroad. This will take a little time, but be worth waiting for."

"I will not wait," said Jasper, fiercely; "and you are a coward. I have resolved that to-morrow night I will be in that man's room, and that man shall be on his knees before me."

Cutts turned sharply round on his saddle, and by the aid of the moonlight surveyed Losely's countenance. "Oh, I see," he said, "there is more than robbery in your mind. You have some feeling of hate—of vengeance; the man has injured you?"

"He has treated me as if I were a dog," said Jasper; "and a dog can bite."

Cutts mused a few moments. "I have heard you talk at times about some rich relation or connection on whom you had claims; Darrell is the man, I suppose?"

"He is; and hark ye, Cutts, if you try to balk me here, I will wring your neck off. And since I have told you so much, I will tell you this much more—that I don't think there is the danger you count on; for I don't mean to take Darrell's blood, and I believe he would not take mine."

"But there may be a struggle-and then?"

"Ay, if so, and then—man to man," replied Jasper, mutteringly.

Nothing more was said, but both spurred on their horses to a quicker pace. The sparks flashed from the hoofs. Now through the moonlight, now under shade of the boughs, scoured on the riders—Losely's broad chest and marked countenance, once beautiful, now fearful, formidably defined even under the shadows—his comrade's unsubstantial figure and goblin features flitting vague even under the moonlight.

The town they had left came in sight, and by this time Cutts had resolved on the course his prudence suggested to him. The discovery that, in the proposed enterprise, Losely had a personal feeling of revenge to satisfy had sufficed to decide the accomplice peremptorily to have nothing to do with the affair. It was his rule to abstain from all transactions in which fierce passions were engaged. And the quarrels between relations or connections were especially those which his experience of human nature told him brought risk upon all intermeddlers. But he saw that Jasper was desperate; that the rage of the bravo might be easily turned on himself; and therefore, since it was no use to argue, it would be discreet to dissimulate. Accordingly, when they reached their inn, and were seated over their brandy-and-water, Cutts resumed the conversation, appeared gradually to yield to Jasper's reasonings, concerted with him the whole plan for the next night's operations, and took care meanwhile to pass the brandy. The day had scarcely broken before Cutts was off, with his bag of implements and tracts. He would have fain carried off also both the horses; but the ostler, surly at being knocked up at so early an hour, might not have surrendered the one ridden by Jasper, without Jasper's own order to do so. Cutts, however, bade the ostler be sure and tell the gentleman, before going away, that he, Cutts, strongly advised him "to have nothing to do with the bullocks."

Cutts, on ariving in London, went straight to Mrs. Crane's old lodging opposite to Jasper's. But she had now removed to Podden Place, and left no address. On reaching his own home, Cutts, however, found a note from her, stating that she should be at her old lodging that evening, if he would call at half-past nine o'clock; for, indeed, she had been expecting Jasper's promised visit—had learned that he had left his lodgings, and was naturally anxious to learn from Cutts what had become of him. When Cutts called at the appointed hour and told his story, Arabella Crane immediately recognised all the danger which her informant had so prudently shunned. Nor was she comforted by Cutts's assurance that Jasper, on finding himself deserted, would have no option but to abandon, or at least postpone, an enterprise that, undertaken singly, would be too rash even for his reckless temerity. As it had become the object of her life to save Losely from justice, so she now shrunk from denouncing to justice his meditated crime; and the idea of recurring to Colonel Morley happily flashed upon her.

Having thus explained to the reader these antecedents in the narrative, we return to Jasper. He did not rise till late at noon; and as he was generally somewhat stupefied on rising by the drink he had taken the night before, and by the congested brain which the heaviness of such sleep produced, he could not at first believe that Cutts had altogether abandoned the enterprise—rather thought that, with his habitual wariness, that Ulysses of the Profession had gone forth to collect further information in the neighbourhood of the proposed scene of action. He was not fully undeceived in this belief till somewhat late in the day, when, strolling into the stable-yard, the ostler, concluding from the gentleman's goodly thews and size that he was a north-country grazier, delivered Cutts's allegorical caution against the bullocks.

Thus abandoned, Jasper's desperate project only acquired a still more concentrated purpose and a ruder simplicity of action. His original idea, on first conceiving the plan of robbery, had been to enter into Darrell's presence disguised and masked. Even, however, before Cutts deserted him; the mere hope of plunder had become subordinate to the desire of a personal triumph; and now that Cutts had left him to himself, and carried away the means of disguise, Jasper felt rather pleased than otherwise at the thought that his design should have none of the characteristics of a vulgar burglary. No mask now; his front should be as open as his demand. Cutts's report of the facility of penetrating into Darrell's very room also lessened the uses of an accomplice. And in the remodification of his first hasty plan of common place midnight stealthy robbery, he would no longer even require an assistant to dispose of the plunder he might gain.

Darrell should now yield to his exactions, as a garrison surprised accepts the terms of its conqueror. There would be no flight, no hiding, no fear of notes stopped at banks. He would march out, hand on haunch, with those immunities of booty that belong to the honours of war. Pleasing his self-conceit with so gallant a view of his meditated exploit, Jasper sauntered at dark into the town, bought a few long narrow nails and a small hammer, and returning to his room, by the aid of the fire, the tongs, and the hammer, he fashioned these nails, with an ease and quickness which showed an expert practitioner, into instruments that would readily move the wards of any common country-made lock. He did not care for weapons. He trusted at need to his own powerful hands. It was no longer, too, the affair of a robber unknown, unguessed, who might have to fight his way out of an alarmed household. It was but the visit which he, Jasper Losely, Esquire, thought fit to pay, however unceremoniously and unseasonably, to the house of a father-in-law! At the worst, should he fail in finding Darrell, or securing an unwitnessed interview—should he, instead, alarm the household, it would be a proof of the integrity of his intentions that he had no weapons save those which Nature bestows on the wild man as the mightiest of her wild beasts. At night he mounted his horse, but went out of his way, keeping the high-road for an hour or two, in order to allow ample time for the farmers to have quitted the rent-feast, and the old Manor-house to be hushed in sleep. At last, when he judged the coast clear and the hour ripe, he wound back into the lane towards Fawley; and when the spire of its hamlet-church came in sight through the frosty starlit air, he dismounted—led the horse into one of the thick beech-woods that make the prevailing characteristic of the wild country round that sequestered dwelling-place—fastened the animal to a tree, and stalked towards the park-pales on foot. Lightly, as a wolf enters a sheepfold, he swung himself over the moss-grown fence; he gained the buttresses of the great raw pile; high and clear above, from Darrell's chamber, streamed the light; all the rest of the old house was closed and dark, buried no doubt in slumber.

He is now in the hollows of the skeleton pile; he mounts the ladder; the lock of the door before him yields to his rude implements but artful hand. He is in the long gallery; the moonlight comes broad and clear through the large casements. What wealth of art is on the walls! but how profitless to the robber's greed. There, through the very halls which the master had built in the day of his ambition, saying to himself, "These are for far posterity," the step of Violence, it may be of Murder, takes its stealthy way to the room of the childless man! Through the uncompleted pile, towards the uncompleted life, strides the terrible step.

The last door yields noiselessly. The small wooden corridor, narrow as the drawbridge which in ancient fortresses was swung between the commandant's room in the topmost story and some opposing wall, is before him. And Darrell's own door is half open; lights on the table—logs burning bright on the hearth. Cautiously Losely looked through the aperture. Darrell was not there; the place was solitary; but the opposite door was open also. Losely's fine ear caught the sound of a slight movement of a footstep in the room just below, to which that opposite door admitted. In an instant the robber glided within the chamber—closed and locked the door by which he had entered, retaining the key about his person. The next stride brought him to the hearth. Beside it hung the bell-rope common in old-fashioned houses. Losely looked round; on the table, by the writing implements, lay a pen-knife. In another moment the rope was cut, high out of Darrell's reach, and flung aside. The hearth, being adapted but for logwood fires, furnished not those implements in which, at a moment of need, the owner may find an available weapon—only a slight pair of brass wood-pincers, and a shovel equally frail. Such as they were, however, Jasper quietly removed and hid them behind a heavy old bureau. Steps were now heard mounting the stair that led into the chamber; Losely shrunk back into the recess beside the mantelpiece. Darrell entered, with a book in his hand, for which he had indeed quitted his chamber—a volume containing the last Act of Parliament relating to Public Trusts, which had been sent to him by his solicitor; for he is creating a deed of trust, to insure to the nation the Darrell antiquities, in the name of his father, the antiquarian.

Darrell advanced to the writing-table, which stood in the centre of the room; laid down the book, and sighed—the short, quick, impatient sigh which had become one of his peculiar habits. The robber stole from the recess, and, gliding round to the door by which Darrell had entered, while the back of the master was still towards him, set fast the lock, and appropriated the key as he had done at the door which had admitted himself. Though the noise in that operation was but slight, it roused Darrell from his abstracted thoughts. He turned quickly, and at the same moment Losely advanced towards him.

At once Darrell comprehended his danger. His rapid glance took in all the precautions by which the intruder proclaimed his lawless purpose—the closed door, the bell rope cut off. There, between those four secret walls, must pass the interview between himself and the desperado. He was unarmed, but he was not daunted. It was but man to man. Losely had for him his vast physical strength, his penury, despair, and vindictive purpose. Darrell had in his favour the intellect which gives presence of mind; the energy of nerve, which is no more to be seen in the sinew and bone than the fluid which fells can be seen in the jars and the wires; and that superb kind of pride, which, if terror be felt, makes its action impossible, because a disgrace, and bravery a matter of course, simply because it is honour.

As the bravo approached, by a calm and slight movement Darrell drew to the other side of the table, placing that obstacle between himself and Losely, and, extending his arm, said: "Hold, sir; I forbid you to advance another step. You are here, no matter how, to re-urge your claims on me. Be seated; I will listen to you."

Darrell's composure took Losely so by surprise that mechanically he obeyed the command thus tranquilly laid upon him, and sunk into a chair— facing Darrell with a sinister under-look from his sullen brow. "Ah!" he said, "you will listen to me now; but my terms have risen."

Darrell, who had also seated himself, made no answer; but his face was resolute and his eye watchful. The ruffian resumed, in a gruffer tone: "My terms have risen, Mr. Darrell."

"Have they, sir? and why?"

"Why! Because no one can come to your aid here; because here you cannot escape; because here you are in my power!"

"Rather, sir, I listen to you because here you are under my roof-tree; and it is you who are in my power!"

"Yours! Look round; the doors are locked on you. Perhaps you think your shouts, your cries might bring aid to you. Attempt it—raise your voice —and I strangle you with these hands."

"If I do not raise my voice, it is, first, because I should be ashamed of myself if I required aid against one man; and, secondly, because I would not expose to my dependents a would-be assassin in him whom my lost child called husband. Hush, sir, hush, or your own voice will alarm those who sleep below. And now, what is it you ask? Be plain, sir, and be brief."

"Well, if you like to take matters coolly, I have no objection. These are my terms. You have received large sums this day; those sums are in your house, probably in that bureau; and your life is at my will."

"You ask the monies paid for rent to-day. True, they are in the house; but they are not in my apartments. They were received by another; they are kept by another. In vain, through the windings and passages of this old house, would you seek to find the room in which he stores them. In doing so you will pass by the door of a servant who sleeps so lightly that the chances are that he will hear you; he is armed with a blunderbuss, and with pistols. You say to me, 'Your money or your life.' I say to you, in reply, 'Neither: attempt to seize the money, and your own life is lost."

"Miser! I don't believe that sums so large are not in your own keeping. And even if they are not, you shall show me where they are; you shall lead me through those windings and passages of which you so tenderly warn me, my hand on your throat. And if servants wake, or danger threaten me, it is you who shall save me, or die! Ha! you do not fear me—eh, Mr. Darrell!" And Losely rose.

"I do not fear you," replied Darrell, still seated. "I cannot conceive that you are here with no other design than a profitless murder. You are here, you say, to make terms; it will be time enough to see whose life is endangered when all your propositions have been stated. As yet you have only suggested a robbery, to which you ask me to assist you. Impossible! Grant even that you were able to murder me, you would be just as far off from your booty. And yet you say your terms have risen! To me they seem fallen to nothing! Have you anything else to say?"

The calmness of Darrell, so supremely displayed in this irony, began to tell upon the ruffian—the magnetism of the great man's eye and voice, and steadfast courage, gradually gaining power over the wild, inferior animal. Trying to recover his constitutional audacity, Jasper said, with a tone of the old rollicking voice: "Well, Mr. Darrell, it is all one to me how I wring from you, in your own house, what you refused me when I was a suppliant on the road. Fair means are pleasanter than foul. I am a gentleman—the grandson of Sir Julian Losely, of Losely Hall; I am your son-in-law; and I am starving. This must not be; write me a cheque."

Darrell dipped his pen in the ink, and drew the paper towards him.

"Oho! you don't fear me, eh? This is not done from fear, mind—all out of pure love and compassion, my kind father-in-law. You will write me a cheque for five thousand pounds—come, I am moderate—your life is worth a precious deal more than that. Hand me the cheque—I will trust to your honour to give me no trouble in cashing it, and bid you good-night-my father-in-law."

As Losely ceased with a mocking laugh, Darrell sprang up quickly, threw open the small casement which was within his reach, and flung from it the paper on which he had been writing, and which he wrapt round the heavy armorial seal that lay on the table.

Losely bounded towards him. "What means that? What have you done?"

"Saved your life and mine, Jasper Losely," said Darrell, solemnly, and catching the arm that was raised against him. "We are now upon equal terms."

"I understand," growled the tiger, as the slaver gathered to his lips— "you think by that paper to summon some one to your aid."

"Not so—that paper is useless while I live. Look forth—the moonlight is on the roofs below—can you see where that paper has fallen? On the ledge of a parapet that your foot could not reach. It faces the window of a room in which one of my household sleeps; it will meet his eye in the morning when the shutters are unbarred; and on that paper are writ these words: 'If I am this night murdered, the murderer is Jasper Losely,' and the paper is signed by my name. Back, sir—would you doom yourself to the gibbet?"

Darrell released the dread arm he had arrested, and Losely stared at him, amazed, bewildered.

Darrell resumed: "And now I tell you plainly that I can accede to no terms put to me thus. I can sign my hand to no order that you may dictate, because that would be to sign myself a coward—and my name is Darrell!"

"Down on your knees, proud man—sign you shall, and on your knees!

I care not now for gold—I care not now a rush for my life. I came here to humble the man who from first to last has so scornfully humbled me.

—And I will, I will! On your knees—on your knees!"

The robber flung himself forward; but Darrell, whose eye had never quitted the foe, was prepared for and eluded the rush. Losely, missing his object, lost his balance, struck against the edge of the table which partially interposed between himself and his prey, and was only saved from falling by the close neighbourhood of the wall, on which he came with a shock that for the moment well-nigh stunned him. Meanwhile Darrell had gained the hearth, and snatched from it a large log half- burning. Jasper, recovering himself, dashed the long matted hair from his eyes, and, seeing undismayed the formidable weapon with which he was menaced, cowered for a second and deadlier spring.

"Stay, stay, stay, parricide and madman!" cried Darrell, his eye flashing brighter than the brand. "It is not my life I plead for—it is yours. Remember, if I fall by your hand, no hope and no refuge are left to you! In the name of my dead child, and under the eye of avenging Heaven, I strike down the fury that blinds you, and I scare back your soul from the abyss!"

So ineffably grand were the man's look and gesture—so full of sonorous terror the swell of his matchless all-conquering voice, that Losely, in his midmost rage, stood awed and spellbound. His breast heaved, his eye fell, his frame collapsed, even his very tongue seemed to cleave to the parched roof of his mouth. Whether the effect so suddenly produced might have continued, or whether the startled miscreant might not have lashed himself into renewed wrath and inexpiable crime, passes out of conjecture. At that instant simultaneously were heard hurried footsteps in the corridor without, violent blows on the door, and voices exclaiming, "Open, open!—Darrell, Darrell!"—while the bell at the portals of the old house rang fast and shrill.

"Ho—is it so?" growled Losely, recovering himself at those unwelcome sounds. "But do not think that I will be caught thus, like a rat in a trap. No—I will—"

"Hist!" interrupted Darrell, dropping the brand, and advancing quickly on the ruffian—" Hist!—let no one know that my daughter's husband came here with a felon's purpose. Sit down—down I say; it is for my house's honour that you should be safe." And suddenly placing both hands on Losely's broad shoulder, he forced him into a seat. During these few hurried words, the strokes at the door and the shouts without had been continued, and the door shook on its yielding hinges.

"The key—the key!" whispered Darrell.

But the bravo was stupefied by the suddenness with which his rage had been cowed, his design baffled, his position changed from the man dictating laws and threatening life, to the man protected by his intended victim. And he was so slow in even comprehending the meaning of Darrell's order, that Darrell had scarcely snatched the keys less from his hand than from the pouch to which he at last mechanically pointed, when the door was burst open, and Lionel Haughton, Alban Morley, and the Colonel's servant were in the room. Not one of them, at the first glance, perceived the inmates of the chamber, who were at the right of their entrance, by the angle of the wall and in shadow. But out came Darrell's calm voice:

"Alban! Lionel!—welcome always; but what brings you hither at such an hour, with such clamour? Armed too!"

The three men stood petrified. There sate, peaceably enough, a large dark form, its hands on its knees, its head bent down, so that the features were not, distinguishable; and over the chair in which this bending figure was thus confusedly gathered up leant Guy Darrell, with quiet ease—no trace of fear nor of past danger in his face, which, though very pale, was serene, with a slight smile on the firm lips.

"Well," muttered Alban Morley, slowly lowering his pistol—"well, I am surprised!—yes, for the first time in twenty years, I and surprised!"

"Surprised perhaps to find me at this hour still up, and with a person upon business—the door locked. However, mutual explanations later. Of course you stay here to night. My business with this—this visitor, is now over. Lionel, open that door—here is the key.—Sir"—(he touched Losely by the shoulder, and whispered in his ear, "Rise and speak not,") —(aloud) "Sir, I need not detain you longer. Allow me to show you the way out of this rambling old house."

Jasper rose like one half asleep, and, still bending his form and hiding his face, followed Darrell down the private stair, through the study, the library, into the hall, the Colonel's servant lighting the way; and Lionel and Morley, still too amazed for words, bringing up the rear. The servant drew the heavy bolts from the front door; and now the household had caught alarm. Mills first appeared with the blunderbuss, then the footman, then Fairthorn.

"Stand back, there!" cried Darrell, and he opened the door himself to Losely. "Sir," said he then, as they stood in the moonlight, "mark that I told you truly—you were in my power; and if the events of this night can lead you to acknowledge a watchful Providence, and recall with a shudder the crime from which you have been saved, why, then, I too, out of gratitude to Heaven, may think of means by which to free others from the peril of your despair."

Losely made no answer, but slunk off with a fast, furtive stride, hastening out of the moonlit sward into the gloom of the leafless trees.