Читать книгу The Evil That Men Do - M.P. Shiel - Страница 9

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The next evening, near eight, James Drayton's brougham awaited its master at Liverpool Street Station, for Hartwell, after making arrangements for the burial of the "tramp," and the bringing of McCalmont's body to London, had telegraphed his coming to Miss Scatchett, his housekeeper, and she had sent a brougham to meet him.

It was a dark, rainy night, and the scene about the station was a blur of umbrellas, wheels, mist, lights, mud, and hurrying feet.

Standing in it all, apparently awaiting someone, was a tall young man, with a wide hat tilted aside on his head, blonde hair, and the most alert eyes—evidently a Frenchman—with a certain dancing levity in all his air. His clothes were of a fashionable cut, but shabby, he had no overcoat, no umbrella and his jacket collar was turned up. But though cold and poor, he did not seem depressed, being a young man used to the ups and downs of life, certain to be rich to-morrow, if he was poor to-day, and quite certain to be poor again the day after to-morrow. His name was Emile Dulaunay, Count d'Artenset-Villiers, for though penniless for the moment, he was the representative of one of the oldest seigneurial families.

"Mon dieu!" thought the count, "I wish that she would come."

But he was getting wet, his expected friend did not appear and finally, seeing a brougham standing just near him among a number of carriages, and seeing also that its door had by chance fallen open he, in his nimble way, slipped in out of the rain, with a grimace of self-conscious monkeyism, and there in the brougham, he sat, leaning out of the door with a bright outlook both for his expected friend and for the owner of the brougham, ready to slip out at the first sing of the latter's appearing.

He had not been three minutes in the brougham, when quite near him a big man in a furred coat seemed to rise out of the ground, calling out: "Drayton's carriage!" This was Hartwell, just arrived from Aylsham. Hartwell, of course, did not know his own carriage and coachman, and his hesitating indirect approach in the crowd had given the Frenchman no hint that he was the owner of the carriage. At the call of "Drayton's carriage!" the coachman sang out in reply: "Here, sir!" and before the Frenchman could stir, Hartwell was at the carriage door.

The excellent count was about to laugh an excuse and take to flight when, to his extreme mystification, Hartwell said, "How do you do?" put out his hand, and shook the count's. For Hartwell naturally assumed that here must be some household friend or dependant of Drayton's who had come in the carriage to meet him.

Hartwell got hurriedly into the carriage, saying to Dulaunay:

"Tell him to drive us home fast, I am hungry."

And Dulaunay at once said to himself "Here then, evidently, is a dinner arranged beforehand for me by the good God himself."

A born adventurer and hanger-on on Providence, living by instants like a bird, Dulaunay followed always giddily whither chance led, little recking whither that might be, and leaning out of the door he called to the astonished driver, who had not seen him get in: "It is necessary that you hasten yourself!" whereupon the carriage moved, and off they went westward.

There was a silence for a time in the dim brougham, each of its two occupants waiting in vain for the other to speak. Dulaunay would not say a word, and finally Hartwell asked:

"Is everything going well at home?"

"But, sir, I hope it," answered Dulaunay.

Hartwell considered that answer in silence.

"Tell me about things," he said, presently.

"What things, sir?"

"Everything."

"Well—but—'everything' is a sufficiently ample subject, you will admit, sir! It is, in effect, an abstract science that, sir, demands—." The count said this with reproach.

"Ha! yes, that is so. I see that you are as full of your jokes as usual."

"But yes, as usual, sir. It is better to take the life lightly, is it not, sir?"

"You are a philosopher as well as a humorist," said Hartwell, "and a philosopher of my own school. I am in agreement with you."

He did not know what to make of the Frenchman by his side, who was evidently a man of culture and no chef, nor was it within the bounds of Dulaunay's fancy to conceive why this excellent sir was taking him in his carriage to dinner. They were now passing down Holborn. Hartwell longed and was sorely tempted, to ask the name and relation to himself of the man who was so near to him, yet was so strange, dark, and spectral to his consciousness. But, as he was supposed to know, to ask was precisely the thing which he was resolved in no case to do. Dulaunay for his part could only dream that he was the subject of some mistake which might bring him a dinner and other good chances, and refrained from uttering rashness with his lips, so that the two men, wholly unrelated till that hour, but now linked fast together by a chain of circumstances, remained perfect riddles one to the other.

"As to my housekeeper?" said, Hartwell, brusquely, after a long time.

"What, as to her?" asked the excellent count.

"Is she well?"

"I venture to cherish the hope that she is well, sir," said Dulaunay, in a tone of some surprise.

"You have not seen her lately, then?"

"Not perhaps lately, sir."

"Where, then, have you been?"

"I? Why at home."

"I see, at home, but not come in contact with her, so to say?"

"Not into personal contact, perhaps, sir."

"You say 'perhaps' always," said Hartwell, reproachfully.

"Yes, sir," answered Dulaunay.

There was silence between them again, till Hartwell said:

"I am late, by the way. I hope our dinner will not spoil."

"The heaven defend that, sir," answered the count, in a quiet and confident tone of protest.

Hartwell, meantime, was thinking: "Strange that he asks me not a word about the accident;" and presently he said:

"What did you think of my accident?"

"Your accident? Mon Dieu! but the news of your accident sensibly touches me, sir," cried the count.

"I cannot, however, flatter myself that you exhibit the keenest interest in the details."

"I! but even the keenest!" cried the count, "permit me instantly, sir, to ask of you a full history of that vexing circumstance!"

Hartwell, with that humorous shrewd look of his narrow eye, answered:

"I will not burden you on the eve of your dinner. A motor car may be heavy for digestion."

Whereupon Dulaunay at once spun round toward Hartwell in an ardour of narrative, exclaiming:

"A motor car! but I have not yet told you, I think, of that what you call it?—'upset' that arrived to me in the Upper Auvergne? You are going to hear—"

And the glib count plunged into a story of hair-breadth escape, full of cries and gesticulation, which lasted till they were sweeping through the gates of Addison Road to the house.

Arrived at James Drayton's home in Addison's Road, the two occupants of the carriage got out. The coachman, who had seen only one man get in, saw two get out, but almost before he could ask himself anew how that was, his attention was all drawn off from this question by the strange conduct of a mastiff—a large, buff watch-dog, named "Bull"—which had bounded from the outer hall as the carriage entered the drive. Bull had been a great friend of Drayton's, and the moment Hartwell appeared at the carriage door the hound ran to fondle him and be fondled by him. But half-way to the carriage the dog stopped short, uttered a yelp, then a growl, and now was apparently about to spring with a bristling neck and no good meaning upon the new-comer. But again he stopped short, whined and shrunk backwards, with vague eyes of awe, his back bristling with superstitious horror. And suddenly the dog was in flight, whimpering, his tail between his legs, round the house to the back.

The coachman, seeing all this, muttered to himself:

"Well, I never!"

And Hartwell thought:

"Our dog will have to be reasoned with severely!"

Miss Scatchett, the housekeeper, had thought fit, in view of so great an event as the accident, to have her staff assembled in the inner-hall, where Hartwell shook hands all round, receiving their congratulations with an affable dignity while the Frenchman stuck to his elbow with many bows and an opening of the arms.

"Well, Mr Drayton, you have had a miraculous escape, heaven be praised!" said Miss Scatchett, a very meagre old gentlewoman, with a bird-like and active air, who wore old brown silks and black silk mits on her hands. Hartwell already knew her name and decided at his first glance at her that she was a spinster.

"Such is life, Miss Scatchett," he said; "I am safe, you see, I am here, in spite of all. Let all be attributed to that merciful Providence which occupies itself in watching over our mute existences. I received your letter of sympathy, and thank you. I thank you all—I wish this overcoat taken to my room. It is my poor McCalmont's"—and he threw off the overcoat to the arm of a footman, his object being to discover the whereabouts of his own room, and when the footman moved Hartwell followed, and when Hartwell moved Dulaunay followed.

"Ah, I fear you have had a truly terrible shock sir," said Miss Scatchett, who also went up with them for, missing the breezy entrance of her old Drayton and finding instead a self-respecting and genial dignity, she could only put this down to the shock of the accident.

"Yes, a terrible shock enough," answered Hartwell, "it may be months before I am myself again. I believe that you will henceforth miss in me a certain, let me say, boisterousness, Miss Scatchett. I feel myself somewhat changed. The memory in particular seems rather clouded. I struck just here, where you see the bruise."

"Dear, dear me!"

"Well, never mind, I say! Let us take all things cheerily and bravely as they come, Miss Scatchett. Our earth is not a paradise, but the Chance which governs it is not uniformly bitter. Ah, here we are."

The footman with the coat now entered a room on the first floor, into which Hartwell followed him, and seeing Dulaunay about to follow also said rather testily, "You may, perhaps, prefer to go to your own room, sir, before dinner."

"Certainly, sir," answered the count, and turned with enquiring brows towards Miss Scatchett, who was wondering that he had not been presented to her while Hartwell, on his side, assumed that the Count was well known to her.

"This way, sir," said Miss Scatchett to Dulaunay, as Hartwell closed the door upon himself, and she led the way up another soft stair to a bed-room overlooking the lawn. And here Dulaunay, after surveying its spaciousness, the bright fire, the draperies, and comfortable bed, muttered to himself:

"Mon dieu, it is not but the English, after all, who know to be imposing!"

"May I ask, sir," said Miss Scatchett, "if you will be staying any considerable time with Mr Drayton?"

"But, madame, I hope it," said the pleased Frenchman. "Have the goodness to make to know Mr Drayton that I descend to dinner in five minutes."

"Very good sir, and your name?"

"Emile Dulaunay, the Count d'Artenset-Villiers, madam, at your service," answered the Count.