The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 9

"So!" said I. "I am ready." And I strode quickly to the door. For Lucy's glee and my masquerading weighed with equal heaviness upon me.

I was full-charged with sorrow for the coming interview. The old days in c.u.mberland lived and beat within my heart; the old dreams of a linked future voiced themselves again with a very bitter irony. 'Twas the last time my eyes were to be gladdened with the sight of my loved friend and playmate. I looked upon this visit as the sacred visit to a death-bed; nay, as something yet more sad than that, for Julian lay a-dying in the very bloom of health and youth, and the grotesque guise in which I went forth to him seemed to mock and flout the solemnity of the occasion.

"Stop, lad!" said Vincott. "You must never walk like that. Your first step would betray you. Watch me!"

With a peac.o.c.k air, which at another time would have appeared to me inimitably ludicrous, the little attorney minced across the room on the tips of his toes. Lucy leaned against the wall holding her sides, and fairly screamed with delight.

"What ails you, la.s.s?" said he very sternly.

"La, Mr. Vincott," she gulped out between bubbles of laughter, "I think you have but few honest women among your clients."

Mr. Vincott rebuked her at some length for her sauciness, and would have prolonged his lecture yet further, but that my impatience mastered me and I haled him from the room. The girl let us out by a small door which gave on to an alley at the back of the house. The night was pitch-dark, and the streets deserted; not even a lamp swung from a porch.

"Stay here for a moment," whispered Vincott. "I will move ahead and reconnoitre."

His feet echoed on the cobbles with a strange lonely sound. In a minute or so a low whistle reached my ears, and I followed him.

"All's clear," he said. "I little thought the time would ever come when I should bless his late Majesty King Charles for forbidding the citizens of Bristol to light their streets."

We stepped quickly forward, threading the quiet roads as noiselessly as we could, until Vincott stopped before a large building. Lights streamed from the windows, piercing the mirk of the night with brownish rays, and a dull m.u.f.fled clamour rang through the gateway.

"The Bridewell," whispered Vincott. "Keep your face well shrouded, and for G.o.d's sake hide your feet!"

He drew a long breath. I did the same, and we crossed the road and pa.s.sed beneath the arch.

CHAPTER IV.

SIR JULIAN HARNWOOD.

Mr. Vincott knocked at the great door within the arch, and we were presently admitted and handed over to the guidance of a gaoler.

The fellow led us across a courtyard and into a long room clouded and heavy with the smoke of tobacco.

"Keep the hood close!" whispered my companion a second time.

I m.u.f.fled my face and bent my head towards the ground. For a noisy clamour of drunken songs and coa.r.s.e merriment, and, mingled with that, a ceaseless rattle of drinking-cans, rose about me on all sides. It seemed that the Bridewell kept open house that night.

We traversed the room, picking out a path among the captives, for even the floor was littered with men in all imaginable att.i.tudes, some playing cards, some asleep, and most of them drunk. My presence served to redouble the uproar, and each moment I feared that my disguise would be detected. I felt that every eye in the room was centred upon my hood. One fellow, indeed, that sat talking to himself upon a bench, got unsteadily to his feet and reeled towards us. But or ever he came near, the gaoler cut him across the shoulders with his stick and sent him back howling and cursing.

"Back to your kennel!" he shouted. "'Tis an uncommon wench that would visit the lousy likes o' you."

At the far end of the room he unlocked a door which opened on to a narrow flight of stairs. On the landing above he halted before a second door of a more solid make, the panels being strengthened by cross-beams, and secured with iron bars and a ma.s.sive lock. The gaoler unfastened it and threw it open.

"You have half an hour, mistress," he said, civilly enough. A startled cry of pain broke from the inside, I heard a sharp clink of fetters, and Julian confronted me through the doorway, his eyes ablaze with pa.s.sion, and every limb strained and quivering.

"What more? What more, madam?" he asked, in a hoa.r.s.e, trembling voice.

"Are you not satisfied?"

He stopped suddenly with a gasping intake of the breath, and let his head roll forward on his breast like a fainting man. Vincott pushed me gently within the room, and I heard the door clang behind me. For a moment I could not speak. The tears rose in my throat and drowned the words. Julian was the first to recover his composure.

"I crave your pardon," he said, and his voice sounded in my ears with a sad familiarity like the echo of our boyhood. "I mistook you for another." And he sat down on a bench and covered his face with his hands.

"Julian!" I said, finding at length my voice, and I held out my hands to him. He uncovered his face and stared at me in sheer incredulity.

Then with a cry of joy he sprang forwards, stumbling pitifully from the hindrance of his fetters.

"Morrice at last!" He lifted his hands and clapped them down into mine, and the quick movement jerked the chain between his handlocks so that it fell cold across my wrists. So we stood silent, memory speeding to and fro between our eyes and telling the same wistful tale within the heart of each of us. But in that brumous cell, lit only by a smoky lamp which served rather to deepen the shadows of the s.p.a.ce which it left obscure than to illumine the circle immediately about it, such thoughts could not beguile one long; and a strange, unaccountable fear began to creep up in my mind like a mist. It seemed to me that the chain pressed ever tighter and tighter about my wrists, and grew cold like a ring of ice. The chill of it slipped into the marrow of my bones. I came almost to believe that I myself was manacled, and with that I felt once again that premonition of evil drawing near, which had numbed my spirit in the grey dawn at London.

Now, however, the warning came to me with a clearer and more particular message. I had a penetrating conviction that this cell prefigured some scene in the years to come wherein I should fill the place of Julian; and, seeing him, I saw a dim image of myself as when a man looks into a clouded mirror. So thoroughly, indeed, did the fancy master me that I too became, as it were, the shadow and reflex of another, a mere counter and symbol representing one as yet unknown to me.

"I thought you would never come," said my friend, and I woke out of my trance.

"I started at once from Leyden," I replied; but Julian cut short my explanation.

"I am sure of it. I never doubted you. We have but half an hour, and I have much to tell."

He turned away and flung himself down on the bench, which was broad and had a rail at the back, such as you may see outside a village alehouse.

"Vincott has told you the history of my arrest?"

"Yes!" said I. The lamp stood upon a stool beside the bench, and I lifted it up and placed it on a rough bracket which was fixed to the wall above. The light fell full upon his face, which had grown extraordinary thin, with the skin very bloodless and tight about his jaws, so that the bones looked to have sharpened. Only around his eyes was there any colour, and that of a heavy purple. I sat down upon the stool, and Julian gave something like a sigh of content.

"I am glad you have come, Morrice," he said. "It has tired me so, waiting for you."

He closed his eyes wearily, and appeared to be falling asleep. I touched him on the shoulder, and he sprang to his feet like one dazed, brus.h.i.+ng against the bracket and making the flame of the lamp spirt up with a sudden flare. Once or twice he walked to and fro in the room, as though ordering his speech.

"Here is the kernel of the matter," said he at last, coming back to the bench. "I was arrested to serve no ends of justice, but the vilest treachery and cowardice that man ever heard of. The tale, in truth, seems well-nigh inconceivable. Even I, who have sounding evidence of its truth," and he kicked one of his feet, so that the links of the fetters rattled on the floor, "even I find it hard to believe that 'tis more than a monstrous fable. The man called himself my friend."

"It was Count Lukstein, then?"

"How did you find out that? Vincott could not have told you."

"He did not tell me, but yet he gave me to know it."

"Yes, it was Count Lukstein. He laid the information to spare himself a duel and to get rid of--well, of an obstacle. I meant to kill him. I should have killed him, and he knew it. The duel was arranged secretly on the afternoon of Sat.u.r.day, the ninth; the spot chosen--a dip in the hill, solitary and unfrequented even at midday, for the descent is steep--and the time six o'clock on the Sunday morning. And yet there I was taken, on the very ground, at six o'clock on a Sunday morning--raining, too!"

"There seems little doubt."

"There is no doubt. 'Twas his life or mine. The dispute was the mere pretext and occasion of the duel."

"So I understood."

I was beginning to understand, besides, that the facts which Mr.

Vincott had intended to impart to me were somewhat more numerous than he thought fit to admit.

"The cause--but I can't speak of that. In any case, 'twas his life or mine, and he knew it, so deemed it prudent to take mine, since he had the power, without risking his own."