Читать книгу Katerfelto, A Story of Exmoor - George J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 8

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In the surgery Katerfelto began to prepare for the reception of his visitors. Standing at a bright little mirror, he was soon immersed in the task. A spot of carmine on the cheek-bones, a line or two of paint round the mouth, about the eyes, and across the forehead added a score of years to his appearance and made him look a man of eighty. A flowing white beard, in which his own grey tresses mingled freely, and a black cloak bordered with crimson, drawn over the velvet gown, completed his equipment. Surveying the whole in his glass, he drew himself up, with something of the confidence a knight must have felt when armed from head to heel. "Come one, come all," he seemed to say, "I am a match for the best of you, and profitable as is the victory, I am not sure but the real pleasure consists in the strife!—"

The plot thickened with nightfall. He was hardly ready before a cautious tap made itself heard at the street door. Waif, watching her patient's slumbers, flew to admit the visitor, and was at her post again ere he had time to pay a single compliment on her good looks.

In his own opinion, this gentleman was a consummate judge of such matters. On the points of a horse, or a woman, he held no man so well qualified to give an opinion, and indeed had spent the greater part of his fortune in researches after speed and beauty. His accomplishments were those of his time and class. A better and bolder card-player than Lord Bellinger never held a trump. He cracked his bottle like an honest fellow without flinching, played tennis, danced a minuet to admiration, bowed and took snuff with inimitable grace, fenced beautifully, swore fearfully, and corrupted his mother tongue into a jargon only intelligible at Ranelagh or the Cocoa Tree.

When the cloak was thrown open in which this paragon was enveloped, Katerfelto did not fail to recognise in that worn, handsome face and attenuated form the most frequent and productive of his customers.

"Your lordship is welcome," said the Charlatan, with gracious dignity. "How liable is our poor glimmering of human science to error; the mistake of a decimal caused me to expect you nearly an hour ago."

"What? You knew it!" replied the other, not without an oath. "Why, Katerfelto, you know everything! Yes, here I am. It's not very difficult to guess why. Have you found out anything more? Who is she? And what is she? How much longer am I to go on toasting her without so much as knowing her name, haunted by those clear, cold eyes, that proud, delicate face, that queenly shape and air? Tell me all about her, now at once! Here! I've brought you the stuff in a bag. Look at it, man. Does it make your eyes shine and your mouth water? It cost me six hours' work to get that little purse together last night at the Cocoa Tree. Never were such cards! Never was such luck!"

"Fortune is a woman," answered the other. "Like all women, coy to be wooed, but grateful to be won."

"She hath played me more slippery tricks than I choose to count," laughed his lordship. "It may be that I solicit her too often, and trust her too fondly. Last night she did me a rare jade's turn! Look ye here, man; I had won a cool four thousand at picquet, and St. Leger wanted to leave off. I was always too strong for him at picquet. Well, sir, four thousand was no use to me, but eight would have taken my lady's diamonds out of pawn, and I offered him one more chance, double or quits."

"I know you did," observed Katerfelto with the utmost effrontery, "and left off quits; I wish I had been at your lordship's elbow."

"I wish you had!" replied the other; "for I believe you are the devil himself, or in close league with him. However, I did not come here to prate about my luck, and I have little time to waste; my lady thinks I am at Ranelagh. She's to meet me there later. Now business is business, my good friend; what have you done for me?"

"Little and yet enough," answered the other. "You will meet somebody at Ranelagh to-night; you are to be wary and cautious. Do not seem to recognise her till you find her unattended. You may then speak three words, no more. It is her express stipulation. They will be answered in due time. She goes to Ranelagh early and remains only an hour."

"Then I had better be off!" exclaimed his lordship, pressing a purse into Katerfelto's hand. "What? are you so ceremonious? Must you needs come to the door yourself? Where's the pretty gipsy lass? I saw her not ten minutes ago. I say, Katerfelto, if ever you sell her back into bondage, let me have the refusal. By Jupiter! if I was to put that girl into velvet and brocade I could take the town by storm."

"Your lordship does her too much honour," answered Katerfelto, bowing profoundly while he opened the door, but there was a malicious twinkle in his eye, and a curl of scorn about the corners of his mouth, to belie the outward show of deference with which he dismissed his visitor.

The latter had been gone but a few minutes ere a sedan-chair was set down at the end of Deadman's Alley, and a lady closely veiled, carrying a riding mask, not over her face, but in her hand, alighted with some trepidation, peering up and down the passage, as if fearful of being observed, while she made for the red lamp in Katerfelto's window. This visitor was also admitted after a little cautious tap, but, unlike her predecessor, looked with scorn rather than admiration on Waif's dark locks and flashing glances. "Tell the Doctor, child," said she, "that I am not to be disturbed while I consult him, and beware of eaves-dropping. I do not choose to share my secrets with a waiting-maid, for all her saucy looks and sallow skin!"

Waif scarcely heard and certainly did not heed, for her heart was in the sick-chamber with John Garnet, whither her agile body lost no time in following it.

"Your ladyship is early," said Katerfelto, with an obeisance courtly, but not subservient. "Ranelagh need wait the less impatiently for its fairest ornament."

"La, Doctor!" was the answer, "who could have told you I was going to Ranelagh? I protest you know everything. My lord thinks I am there now."

"My lord will be there as surely as my lady," answered the other. "But it was not to learn his lordship's movements that your ladyship came here!"

"Fie, Doctor!" she replied; "what woman of fashion cares to know the doings of a husband? I have a crow to pluck with you. Do you remember what you promised me the last time I was here?"

"Triumphs by the hundred," said he; "compliments by the thousand; conquests and flatteries innumerable. Better than these, a run of luck with the cards that should last a week."

"And I wore it out in a night," she complained. "Whist, ombre, picquet, and three-card loo, I have never risen a winner but once since I came here last. You dare not deceive me, Doctor; nay, you would not deceive a woman, I am sure. Can you—couldn't you put me in the way of winning a game or two? I protest I shall have to pawn my diamonds else."

No one knew better than the doctor that this expedient had been resorted to long ago, and her ladyship was at present wearing paste; but he did not say so.

"Are you willing to learn?" he asked, with his quiet sarcastic smile. "An hour's practice every day for ten days would make your ladyship independent of chance and all its fluctuations. Chance, forsooth! there's no such thing. Do you think I trust to chance when I direct your actions and forecaste your future? Fate is the ruling power of the universe; but science and skill, the quick brain and the ready hand—these may control Fate."

On a weak mind so high-sounding a sentence, meaning nothing, took no small effect. She blushed, she simpered, she bit her lips, she hesitated.

"I should like it prodigiously," she said, with a nervous laugh, "if—if it wasn't dishonest, you know; and—and if it couldn't be found out!"

He took a pack of cards from a drawer. "Observe my fingers," he began, but she interrupted him with a faint scream.

"Not now!" she exclaimed; "some other time, Doctor. I'm so frightened! I'm sure I heard somebody at the door. It is cheating, you know. Besides, I must be at Ranelagh in an hour, and I have to dress, all but my head, that was done this morning. I wish I hadn't come. La! I know I could never find courage. Let me out, please. This is between ourselves, of course. Shall I find you to-morrow night at the same time?"

Assuring her that he never left his post, Katerfelto ushered her ladyship with much ceremony to the door, which was opened by Waif, on whom the departing visitor found nothing better to bestow than a look of supreme indifference and scorn.

Not so the next comer. Hardly had the chairmen, who winked at each other as they took up their precious burden, moved a dozen paces, when a heavy step was heard in Deadman's Alley, and a burly figure, that seemed to ignore all considerations of secrecy and disguise, stopped at Katerfelto's door to thump till it shook again.

Undoing the fastening, hastily as she might, Waif found herself confronted by a stout middle-aged person, in a rusty black riding suit, who looked as if he had been taking hasty refreshment, washed down by strong potations, as indeed was the case.

Parson Gale—for it was none other—had ridden post from Exmoor to London on receiving the news of his brother's death in a midnight brawl. Arrived in the metropolis, he lost no time in communicating with the officers of justice; and from the particulars thus furnished, satisfied himself that the affray took place without witnesses, and that the survivor had escaped. The Parson swore a great oath that he would avenge the crime, and if the perpetrator was above ground, hunt him down to death. His difficulty was to find out where John Garnet lay concealed. Every day, and all day long, he pursued his inquiries, without success. Tired and hungry, while sitting at his tavern supper he chanced to hear Katerfelto spoken of as a cunning man, for whom there were no secrets in this world or the next; and having ascertained the locality of Deadman's Alley, finished his bottle, and started without delay on his search.

The apparition of Waif, in answer to his summons, may have surprised him a little; but when a pretty lass was in question, Parson Gale was never at a loss; he recovered his astonishment in time to chuck her under the chin, and bestow on her a most unwelcome caress. The girl's eyes glittered, and her lithe fingers stole to the knife at her girdle. He caught her by the wrist, and kissed her again. She disengaged herself, with one dexterous twirl, and pushed rather than ushered this unwelcome admirer into the presence of Katerfelto; muttering, in her own outlandish tongue, something that sounded less like a blessing than a curse.

When roused to wrath, it was her nature to resent an insult or an injury on the spot; but if immediate retaliation seemed impossible, to wait for an opportunity with untiring patience, not to be diverted from its purpose by any considerations of clemency or forgiveness.

"If I can learn something about you," she thought, "I shall know when and where to strike. Before our reckoning is over, you will wish your lips had been seared with a red-hot iron, rather than laid to mine against my will!" Then, casting one loving look towards the chamber in which John Garnet was sleeping, she took up her post at the door of the surgery, and listened eagerly to the conversation within.

"I'm a plain man, Doctor," began Parson Gale, in his rough, frank tones. "I speak the truth mostly myself, and expect others will speak it to me. Now I am told that you know more, good and bad, than ever another person in this great wicked town. That's what brought me here."

Katerfelto nodded gravely. "Good and bad," said he, "are relative terms. Knowledge cannot of itself be evil, whether it be gleaned from the crowded footway or the solitary moor. Wisdom crieth aloud, could we but hear her, from the dome of St. Paul's, no less than from the purple outline of the Quantock Hills and the brown ridge under Dunkerry Beacon."

The mention of these familiar places startled his listener; and Katerfelto, who had already detected the kindly West-country accent, did not fail to notice his surprise.

"I believe you are a conjuror," said the Parson, "as sure as I am not! Well—if you can tell me where I came from, perhaps you will tell me what I came for."

The charlatan smiled. "You wish to learn something very near your heart," said he, watching the other's countenance.

"Not quite the nearest and dearest of all! yet a matter of great importance. A matter of life and death."

For a bow drawn at a venture, it was a good shot, and the arrow reached its mark.

"That's enough!" exclaimed the Parson. "You're the man to tell me what I want. Name your price. 'Tis blood-money, and I'm not going to stand for a guinea one way or the other!"

"Justice must be done first!" said Katerfelto with exceeding gravity. "Let me hear your own tale in your own words, and rely on my help."

Thus encouraged, the Parson embarked on a narrative of his brother's duel, but little exaggerated, nor indeed very different from the facts set forth above, interspersing his account with dire threats of vengeance and solemn oaths, whereat Waif's blood ran cold, that he would take no rest till he had discovered and hunted down the perpetrator of this murder, as he persisted in calling it, to the death!

Listening at the keyhole, she lost not a syllable of their conversation, and the gipsy-girl vowed in her heart to come between the avenger and his victim, aye, even though she must steep her hands in blood, and swing for it on Tyburn-tree.

Little by little Katerfelto gathered enough from Parson Gale's repetitions, threats, and assertions, to feel sure that his patient in the next room was the individual whom the visitor wished to identify and bring to justice. In his plotting brain such a complication was simply a problem to be solved, a sum to be worked out, a plot to be elaborated for his own advantage. With a gravity not lost on the West-country parson, who, for all his mother wit, felt overawed by the other's assumption of superior intelligence, he promised to furnish the information required, as soon as he should himself have consulted those spiritual intelligences he held at command.

"You shall come again when the moon is full," said he, accepting the broad pieces which his visitor thrust on him clumsily enough. "Ere then I shall discover his hiding-place, though he have taken refuge forty fathoms deep, below the sea. But, mark you—I am not a man of blood, and I make no promise to deliver him into your hand."

Again Waif's fingers stole to her knife, while the Parson's savage laugh grated on her ear.

"Show me where the deer is harboured," said he, passing into the street. "I can do all the rest myself. The Lord have mercy on him, for I will not, when once I set him up to bay!"