Читать книгу Mr. Rowl - Pemberton Max - Страница 8

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“Your ignorance was merely accidental, which, being neither your crime nor your folly, could afford them no reason to applaud themselves; and the knowledge which they had . . . they might as effectually have shown by warning as betraying you.”—Rasselas, chap. ix.

All this while Sir Francis Mulholland was returning towards his mansion and his betrothed in no sunny frame of mind. And he undoubtedly had a grievance, for Juliana, on this, the last afternoon of her stay, had absurdly insisted on going yet again to Northover to take a final and solitary farewell of her dear Laetitia. After yesterday’s scene, and the ominous words with which it had concluded, the lover thought it better to affect complaisance. He obtained the privilege of at least escorting his lady to Mr. Bentley’s door, though he was not allowed to enter, nor to wait, nor to call for her, being given to understand that the exact moment of her return was uncertain, and that Mr. Bentley and Laetitia would perhaps walk back with her. He could occupy himself, he was told, by going on to Stoneleigh to see the horse for sale there, as he had several times said he was anxious to do.

Not too enthusiastically, Sir Francis had agreed to this, and was even now returning from a long interview with the quadruped in question. His shortest way home from Stoneleigh lay by the turnpike road, and by the turnpike alone he would have proceeded thither, had he not fallen in at the crossroads with Mr. Ramage riding, or at least sitting on his old flea-bitten cob taking his usual afternoon’s airing. And Mr. Ramage had implored him to accompany him a little on his homeward path, which, though it lay at an angle to the coach road, would not take Sir Francis very much out of his way if the latter continued by the short cut over Fawley Bridge. It appeared that Mr. Ramage had something about which he wished to consult him.

So Sir Francis consented, and all the way down the lane Mr. Ramage confided to him his suspicions that Morris the tallow chandler’s prisoner had a habit of leaving his lodgings at six o’clock in the morning (which was strictly against regulations), and his own conjectures as to why he so left them . . . It could not be to find mushrooms in March. “Tell Bannister about it, then,” counselled Sir Francis, rather bored. “That is what he is here for, to keep an eye on the prisoners.” Mr. Ramage retorted that he greatly feared one, at least, of Mr. Bannister’s eyes was a blind eye; but that he himself was certainly going to do his duty and warn him about the suspected activities of Zachary Miller, whom this very afternoon the speaker had seen with his own unobscured vision, sitting in his pedlar’s cart talking to two of the French prisoners near Four Oaks Farm. Why?

But Sir Francis Mulholland, beginning to regret his yesterday’s interview with this zealous gentleman, concealed a yawn and, having come to a convenient point, bade the suspect-hunter farewell, and resumed his solitary course and his ruminations about Juliana.

In his own fashion he loved her, and he prized her even more than he loved. And the more valuable an object the more acute is one’s apprehension of loss. He was inconsistent, no doubt, in his violent and at times all-embracing jealousy, for he had far too good an opinion of Sir Francis Mulholland to imagine that his destined wife could prefer another to him—least of all this foreign Other whom he had made his latest subject of torment. Lord Fulgrave’s daughter was not in the least likely to fall in love with a penniless if good-looking French prisoner. But it enraged him that she should even allow the Frenchman to talk to her, while to have the audacity to confess that she found pleasure in his conversation, and to refuse to abandon the acquaintanceship . . . ! Acquaintanceship, indeed! It was more than that! What of those damned theatricals last month, with that cursed foreigner in a petticoat and shawl, sheltered by Juliana, the wood-cutter’s daughter, in her cottage, and then turning out to be a man after all . . . some ridiculous romantic farrago it was, everybody with a name ending in o or a; its only merit that at least the petticoated young man was not the titular hero, and did not make love to Juliana, a proceeding which was very stiffly gone through by that nincompoop Elwell, of whom not even Sir Francis could be jealous. . . . And that ball at Wanfield Assembly Rooms in January, shortly after their betrothal, at which, for the first and only time, des Sablières had appeared in his dashing hussar’s uniform, confound him, and had danced twice with Juliana, confound him still more—because it was useless to deny that the silver-grey and scarlet set off his looks and figure to great advantage, and one knew what women were about regimentals, and Sir Francis had overheard plenty of appreciative comments that night from some of the ladies . . . if not from Juliana.

Damn it all, was there no way of getting rid of that hussar fellow while Juliana was away? His attempt to put a spoke in his wheel yesterday evening had been worse than a failure. If only he could use a little quiet influence to get him transferred to one of the other parole towns! But that, preëminently the wisest course, was also preëminently the most difficult, because des Sablières never misconducted himself, and Bannister, the agent, had a strong regard for him and would never lend himself to intrigue against a well-behaved member of his not always amenable flock.

But, though as yet he knew it not, Sir Francis was under the guidance that afternoon of some tutelary spirit. By sending Mr. Ramage across his path this dæmon (good or bad) had withdrawn him from the highroad, and forced him to take the route by Fawley Bridge and the short cut up the meadow to Fawley Copse. Not content with guiding his steps, it had also timed them to the best advantage. Yet even when Sir Francis saw a partially disjointed fishing rod lying by the parapet of the bridge he was not aware of this; he merely wondered who could have left it there.

When he was half-way up the sloping path, however, he saw a man coming out of the copse. As there was a right of way through it the sight did not surprise him. But in another moment his pulses gave a leap. Surely that was des Sablières himself who was coming so unconcernedly towards him! It was, it was—Bannister’s model prisoner, out of bounds at last! What luck . . . what unbelievable good luck!

Des Sablières’ head was bent, for he was twisting a handkerchief round the knuckles of one hand, and so he did not at first see who was approaching him. But when he raised his head and did see, it was obvious, to Sir Francis’s gratification, that he was by no means pleased.

“Good afternoon, Monsieur des Sablières,” said the Englishman, grimly polite. “So your fishing licence has been extended to cover Fawley Copse! I hope you had good sport there?”

The offender met his gaze quite boldly. He did not look at all ashamed of himself, but rather hot and untidy, and his neckcloth was disarranged.

“I know that I am, strictly speaking, out of bounds,” he replied coldly. “But I assure you that I had an excellent reason for it.” And, stepping off the path, he passed his enemy.

But he was not going to get away so easily! Sir Francis turned round after him. “Then I should like to hear that reason, Sir.”

The Frenchman slackened his pace, but did not stop entirely. “It does not concern you, Sir Francis Mulholland,” he observed over his shoulder.

“Ah, but I think you will find that it does! You forget, perhaps, that I am a justice of the peace, Monsieur des Sablières!”

This time des Sablières did stop, and faced round. “No, I know it quite well,” he retorted. “But that fact does not justify you in questioning me. If I have to give an explanation I shall give it to the proper person. I wish you good afternoon.” And, turning on his heel, he resumed his progress down the slope.

Sir Francis watched him go. “Yes, you will be asked for that explanation, my fine fellow,” he said under his breath, exhilarated by his good fortune. “And, by George I think you will find it devilish hard to give!”

Turning on that very quickly, as one struck by a brilliant idea, he ran up the rest of the slope, plunged into the copse, and searched it from end to end. But there was no one there, least of all Mr. Zachary Miller, whom he was hoping that some further grace of the gods would enable him to find. Nevertheless, some half hour later Sir Francis was back in Wanfield and entering the private residence of Mr. James Bannister, the agent responsible to the Transport Office for the prisoners of war on parole in that place.

* * * * *

Raoul meanwhile had gone straight home with his fishing rod to his little room off the High Street, under the roof of Miss Eliza Hitchings, that acidulous-looking female, of whose cold eye he mendaciously declared himself to be in perpetual terror. This apartment was not a palace, and he was without the means to render it more attractive (for which he consoled himself by the reflection that he would not have dared to do so if he could). He had at present nothing but the weekly sum allowed by the British Government to officer prisoners of war, because, on its recent augmentation from ten and six-pence to fourteen shillings, he had promptly forbidden his family to send him any more remittances, as he was now living in affluence—which was far from being true. But though, when in straits, he would sooner cut down the expenses of his commissariat than endanger the irreproachableness of his outward appearance, and would tell Miss Hitchings that such and such a purchase need not be made that week, only hoping that the good lady would not guess the reason, Miss Hitchings of the unsmiling countenance had much better ground, on her side, for being sure that “Mr. Rowl” had not the faintest suspicion of how many loaves of bread and pats of butter he was never charged for at all.

It was not often that “Mr. Rowl,” being popular, returned home before he was obliged to do so by his parole regulations, which, in the present month of March, demanded that he should be indoors by seven, as the Comte de Saint-Suzanne had reminded him yesterday. From May till June he was looking forward to being free till nine; the three winter months, however, had seen him driven to his fireside by five o’clock. So Miss Hitchings was a little surprised when she heard him come in now, the clock marking only a quarter past five; and by the fact that he did not run upstairs as he usually did.

Raoul was in fact rather worried as he mounted that narrow staircase and came into his ugly little room. What devil of ill luck had sent Sir Francis up the path just at that moment? As far as Raoul himself was concerned, it would have been less damning if Mulholland had come on him a few minutes earlier by the bridge, conversing though he were with Miss Forrest; the Englishman might have disliked that, but he could not urge it against him as a crime. On his way home the prisoner had in fact debated whether he should not do well to go and inform Mr. Bannister that he had for a short space gone out of bounds, and why. Bannister would believe and absolve him, he felt sure. For the matter of that, Sir Francis must have absolved him, too, if he had told him the reason. Perhaps he had been foolish to give him no inkling of it, since indeed Mulholland, far from blaming him, ought in the circumstances to be deeply grateful. Raoul did not, however, feel sure that he would, exactly, for he had an intuition that Miss Forrest had somehow manipulated circumstances—in other words, her betrothed—in order to return alone by Fawley Bridge. At the moment, with no time to spend on weighing pros and cons, it had seemed natural to cover Miss Forrest’s traces. Sir Francis would probably hear soon enough what had happened in Fawley Copse.

He might even have come on the tramp or poacher or whatever he was, though to be sure the latter had vanished very quickly indeed after he had picked himself up. . . . Proceedings, it was true, had opened with a somewhat scrambling corps à corps encounter after Raoul had torn him away from Miss Forrest, but the end had been more in style, though he himself had broken his knuckles over it. . . . Miss Forrest had been shaking so much when it was over that he had been obliged to support her to a tree stump, on which she had sunk down, while he knelt beside her and fanned her—it was the only treatment he could think of—with his hat. And really she had looked almost more beautiful when she was as white as a lily. But she was never near swooning, he thought, except, perhaps, just for the first second or two after he had disposed of her assailant—that first second or two in which she had clung to him . . . moments which, neither at the time nor in retrospect, were at all disagreeable ones. . . .

In the end he had escorted her to the boundary of the Mulholland domain. And just before they parted she had said, in a voice full of emotion, “Will you . . . would you care to . . . keep my little Rasselas for your own . . . in memory of my undying gratitude?”

So Miss Forrest’s book was now his, a memento of an episode which would have been wholly pleasurable to contemplate if it had not been for the encounter with Mulholland—on top of yesterday’s, too! But Raoul now put Sir Francis resolutely from his mind, and, ensconcing himself in his one fairly comfortable chair, took out the book in question from his pocket. By the absence of any sounds from the room above, where lodged another prisoner, a naval lieutenant named Lamotte, he surmised that the latter was not home yet. He had invited him to partake that evening of a hare recently presented to him, which, as its arrival almost coincided (of course, unknown to the British donor) with the second anniversary of the birth of the little King of Rome, would be treated as a commemorative feast on the eve of the event, combining in one both dinner and supper. It was a pity that Miss Hitchings had insisted on cooking the animal to-night, on the ground that it would keep no longer, for the birthday was not till to-morrow.

As every well-conducted reader should, Raoul began at the first page; and the stately and beautifully rounded exordium impressed him as much as Miss Forrest herself could have desired. “Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.” And soon he was reading of the delights of that blissful place of captivity, the Happy Valley, with its remarkable floral and zoological riches, and the even more remarkable juxtaposition of the latter, since “on one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of the chase frisking on the lawns; the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade.” A momentary reflection that the Happy Valley must have been rather like the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and the student, struck with the justice of these last epithets, repeated them several times to himself. Then he went on to read of the human inhabitants, who “wandered in gardens of fragrance and slept in the fortresses of security,” and by six o’clock had reached the passage in the fourth chapter where Rasselas, carried away by a day-dream of that outer world which he has never seen, actually pursues the imaginary robber of an imaginary damsel whom he pictures as appealing to him for help, until he is brought up short by the foot of the impassable mountain hemming in the Happy Valley.

“Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own impetuosity. Then, raising his eyes to the mountain, ‘This,’ said he, ‘is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life which yet I have never attempted to surmount!’ ”

The incident, in more ways than one, had sufficiently close a resemblance with what had happened to Miss Forrest and himself in Fawley Copse that afternoon to make “Mr. Rowl” lay down the book and smile. But the smile had a spice of melancholy. In his situation, just as much as in that of Dr. Johnson’s hero, was “a fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue”—his parole. And it was more insurmountable than Rasselas’s mountain. No doubt he was fortunate that his military rank entitled him to the indulgence, but, nevertheless, comparative ease and pleasant society had to be paid for—in the same coin in which Rasselas paid. Wanfield was rather like the Happy Valley!

Upon this reflection the door opened, and Miss Hitching’s voice observed in a somewhat minatory manner: “Mr. Bannister to see you, Sir!”

The reader jumped up, as there entered the retired chemist who was his very good friend and custodian.

“I was thinking about you, Sir!” exclaimed Raoul. “If I had not been sure that you would have left your office, I think I should have paid you a visit this afternoon.”

“Well, you see that I am paying you one,” returned Mr. James Bannister rather heavily, as he took a chair. “And I wish I had not to; but I did it rather than send for you. I expect you know what I have come about. You are the last man I thought I should have trouble with on such a score.”

Raoul stood looking down on him with a slightly heightened colour. “You wish to know why I was out of bounds this afternoon? On my honour, Mr. Bannister, I could not avoid it. I had to go—as you will acknowledge when you hear of the circumstances. But first, who told you of my crime?”

“You can guess, I should think. Sir Francis Mulholland.”

Raoul made a face. “He has not lost much time. Well, I suppose he was able to tell himself that he was doing his duty. But as it was on account of a person in whom he is deeply interested that I had to transgress, his zeal is a little misplaced.”

“What do you mean—what person? Sir Francis said nothing——” began the Agent.

“No, no, I told him nothing. The sheep reserves the tale of its misdemeanours for its own shepherd,” announced Raoul cheerfully, bestowing a smile on the gentleman in question, and sitting down on the arm of a chair. “Voyons donc. . . .” And he proceeded with his tale—a strictly truthful narrative in all but its suppression of Miss Forrest’s previous whereabouts.

By the end of this recital Raoul’s shepherd looked decidedly relieved. “No, my dear fellow, you certainly could not have done anything else. But why the deuce didn’t you tell Sir Francis about Miss Forrest?”

“Because he had no right to demand an explanation of me,” replied the champion. “I said that to the right person I would give one, if necessary.”

“But you see, you hothead, if you had done it there and then he would not have lodged information against you for breaking your parole!”

“Breaking my parole!” exclaimed the young soldier, indignantly. “How dare he suggest. . . . But I suppose I was breaking it—in a sense!” he finished in some dismay.

Mr. Bannister laughed. “Technically, perhaps, but certainly not in the spirit, if that is all you went out of bounds for.”

“I hope you do not think it was for any other reason, Mr. Bannister?” rejoined Raoul rather gravely.

“No, no, I take your word for it without reservation,” said the Agent. “But Sir Francis, who does not know you as well as I do——”

“Yes?” enquired Raoul, with an odd light in his eyes.

“Sir Francis suspects—now pray don’t run away with the idea that I suspect it—he imagines that you had gone into Fawley Copse to meet some escape agent or other.”

Raoul gave a short, angry laugh. “He has an imagination, that one! Certainly I had a meeting with a man in the copse . . . and I think he will remember the fact, but not pleasantly. I myself also.” He showed his grazed knuckles.

Mr. Bannister got up. “Well, I am only too glad that you can give me such a satisfactory explanation. And as Sir Francis must by now have received from the lady concerned her account of your chivalrous conduct, I hope we may think of the incident as closed. But till he formally withdraws his charge—which, as he is a magistrate, I am bound to take rather seriously—you would make things easier for me if you would engage not to leave your rooms till I tell you that you are free to do so.”

“But with pleasure,” agreed Raoul, “I will constitute myself the prisoner of Miss Hitchings.”

“I will see Sir Francis and get the matter cleared up with him—to-morrow morning if possible. You have taken a weight off my mind, des Sablières. I have so much to try me, one way and another, between your countrymen and my own. But I have always felt that you were one of those whom I could fully trust,” concluded Mr. Bannister.

“Thank you,” said his charge. “I shall try always to deserve that opinion.” They shook hands, and the Agent departed, leaving the young Frenchman to reflect with indignation upon Sir Francis’s action. He saw his game quite well: he had seized on this opportunity to do him an injury because—as yesterday’s collision had made abundantly plain—he resented his presence in Wanfield society. However, when he knew the truth he would find this weapon broken in his hand. Moreover, as Raoul’s own conscience was clear, and the Agent did not—could not—regard the matter seriously, there was nothing that need cloud his and Lieutenant Lamotte’s enjoyment of the commemorative hare, upon which they very cheerfully supped, nor of their game of cards afterwards, in which Raoul lost with equal cheerfulness (since to-morrow was pay-day) the whole of his remaining weekly income, namely, one shilling sterling. And his mimicry of an imaginary scene in which he, Raoul, went on his knees to Sir Francis Mulholland to beseech him to sing “Rule, Britannia,” and Sir Francis condescendingly sang it—out of tune—while the Francophobe Mr. Ramage played the accompaniment at sight, reduced Lieutenant Lamotte to such helpless laughter, and Miss Hitching’s old spinet to such a condition of discord, that Miss Hitchings herself appeared, to deprecate the holding up of that patriotic air to ridicule lest the neighbours should hear; and had to be calmed by Raoul’s assuring her, with his hand on his heart, that no disrespect was intended to the majestic lady who rose from out the azure main, only to those who murdered so fine a song. But he did not tell Lieutenant Lamotte why he had selected Sir Francis Mulholland as the murderer.