Part 8 (2/2)
The day fixed for the wedding now drew near; and when the bridegroom did not appear, the vulgar, who do not believe scandals though they like to hear them, declared that the murder theory was true beyond question. The rest said that he was either bankrupt or bigamist--and having consoled themselves with the reflection, they let the matter go. It is likely that I should have done the same had I not enjoyed a solution of the mystery, which came to me unsought and accidentally. On a day near to that fixed for the wedding I was at Victoria Station about eight o'clock in the evening when I ran full upon the missing n.o.bleman; and for some while stood speechless with astonishment at the sight of him. His beard was longer than ever, recalling the traditions of Killingworthe or of Johann Mayo; his Dundreary whiskers were s.h.a.ggy and unkempt; he was very pale in the face, and wore a little yachting cap and a blue serge suit which begarbed him ridiculously. He had no luggage with him, not even a valise; and his first remark was given in the voice of a man afraid, and in a measure broken.
”Ah, Sutton, that's you, is it?” he cried. ”I'm glad to see you, by Jove; have you such a thing as half-a-crown in your pocket?”
I offered him half-a-sovereign, still saying nothing; but he continued rapidly,--
”You've heard all about it, of course--what are they saying here now? Do they think I'm a dead man, eh?--but I won't face them yet. Upon my life, I dare not see a soul. Come with me to an hotel; there's a good fellow--but let's have a cognac first; I'm s.h.i.+vering like a child with a fever.”
I gave him some brandy at a bar, and after that we took a four-wheeled cab--he insisting on the privacy--and drove to a private hotel in Cecil-street, Strand. They did not know him there, and I engaged a room for him and ordered dinner, taking these things upon myself, since he was as helpless as a babe. After the meal he seemed somewhat better, and I telegraphed to Ramsgate for his man, though it was impossible that the fellow could be with him until the following morning. In the meantime I found myself doing valet's work for him--but I had his story; and although it was not until some months later that another supplied some of the missing links in it, he telling me the barest outline, I will set it down here plainly as a narrative, and without any of those ”says I's”
and ”says he's,” which were the particular abomination of Defoe, as they have been of many since his day.
The complete explanation of this mystery was one, I think, to astonish most people. It was so utterly unlooked for, that I was led at the first hearing to believe the narrator insane. He told me that at three o'clock on the afternoon of July 5th, he had left his hotel on the East Cliff at Ramsgate--the day being glorious, and a full sun playing upon the Channel and many s.h.i.+ps--and had determined to walk over to St. Peters, where his _fiancee_ expected him to a tennis party. With this intention, he struck along the cliff towards Broadstairs, but had gone only a few paces, when a seaman stopped him, and touching his hat respectfully, said that he had a message for him.
”Well, my man, what is it?” Maclaren asked--I had the dialogue from the seaman himself--being in a hurry as those who walk the ways of love usually are.
”My respects to your honor,” replied the fellow, ”but the ketch _Bowery_, moored off the pier-head, 'ud be glad to see your honor if convenient, and if not, maybe to-morrow?”
”What the devil does the man mean?” cried his lords.h.i.+p, but the seaman plucking up courage continued,--
”An old friend of your honor's for sure he is, my guv'ner, Abraham Burrow, what you had the acquaintance of in New York city.”
”Well, and why can't he come ash.o.r.e? I remember the man perfectly--I have every cause to”--a true remark, since Abraham Burrow then owed the speaker some two thousand pounds; and had shown no unprincipled desire to pay it.
”The fact is, my lords.h.i.+p,” replied the seaman, whose vocabulary was American and strange, ”the fact is he's tidy sick, on his beam ends, I guess with brounchitis; and he won't be detaining you not as long as a bosun's whistle if you go aboard, and be easin' of him.”
Now, although this comparatively juvenile lover was in a mighty hurry to get to St. Peter's, there was yet a powerful financial motive to send him to the s.h.i.+p. He had done business with this Abraham Burrow in America; the man had--we won't say swindled--but been smart enough there to relieve him of a couple of thousand pounds. To hope for the recovery of such a sum seemed as childish as a sigh for the moon. Maclaren had not seen Burrow for twelve months, and did not know a moment before this meeting whether he was alive or dead. Yet here he was in a yacht off Ramsgate harbor, desiring to see his creditor, and to see him immediately. The latter reflected that such a visit would not occupy half an hour of his time, that it might lead to the recovery of some part of his money, that he could make his excuses to the pretty girl awaiting him--in short, he went with the seaman; and in a quarter of an hour he stepped on board an exceeding well-kept yacht, which lay beyond the buoy over against the East Pier; and all his trouble began.
The craft, as I have said, was ketch rigged, and must have been of seventy tons or more. There was a good square saloon aft, and a couple of tiny cabins, the one amids.h.i.+ps, the other at the p.o.o.p. When Lord Maclaren went aboard, three seamen and a boy were the occupants of the deck; but a King Charles spaniel barked at the top of the companion; and a steward came presently and asked the visitor to go below. He descended to the saloon at this; but the sick man, they told him, lay in the fore cabin; and thither he followed his very obsequious guide.
I had the account of this episode and of much that follows from two sources, one a man I met in New York last summer, the other, the victim of the singularly American conspiracy. Lord Maclaren's account was simple--”As there's a heaven above me, Sutton,” said he, ”I'd no sooner put my foot in the hole when the door was slammed behind me, and bolted like a prison gate.” The American said, ”I guess the old boy had hardly walked right in, before they'd hitched up the latch, and he was shouting glory. Then the skipper let the foresail go--for the ketch was only lyin'-to, and in ten minutes he was standing out down the Channel. But you never heard such a noise as there was below in all your days. Talk about a sheet and pillow-case party in an insane asylum, that's no word for it.”
The fact that the ”ill.u.s.trious n.o.bleman,” as the penny society papers called him, was trapped admitted of no question. He realized it himself in a few moments, and sat down to wonder, ”who and why the devil, etc.,”
in five languages. I need scarcely say that the thing was an utter and inexplicable mystery to him. He thought at first that robbery was the motive, for he had the model of the bracelet upon him; and as he sat alone in the cabin, he really feared personal violence. He told me that he waited to see the door open, and a villain enter, armed with Colt or knuckleduster, after the traditional Adelphian mood; but a couple of hours pa.s.sed and no one came, and after that the only interruption to his meditation was the steward's knock upon the cabin door, and his polite desire to know ”Will my lord take tea?” ”My lord” told him to carry his tea to a lat.i.tude where high temperatures prevail; and after that, continued to kick l.u.s.tily at the door, and to make original observations upon the owner of the yacht, and upon her crew, until the light failed. Yet no one heeded him; and when it was dark the roll of the yacht to the seas made him sure that they stood well out, and were beating with a stiff breeze.
Unto this point, temper had dominated him; but now a quiet yet very deep alarm took its place. He began to ask himself more seriously if his position were not one of great danger, if he had not to face some mysterious but very daring enemy--even if he were like to come out of the adventure with his life. Yet his mind could not bring to his recollection any deed that had merited vindictive anger on the part of another; nor was he a blamable man as the world goes. He paid his debts--every three years; he was amongst the governors of five fas.h.i.+onable charities, and the only scandalous case which concerned him was arranged between the lawyers on the eve of its coming into court.
The matrons told you that he was ”a dear delightful rogue”; the men said that he was ”a cunning old dog”; and between them agreed that he had read the commandments at least. Possibly, however, those hours of solitude in the cabin compelled him to think rather of his vices than of his virtues--and it may be that the fear was so much the more real as his shortcomings were secret. Be that as it may, he a.s.sured me that he had never suffered so much as he did during that strange imprisonment, and that he cried almost with delight when the door of the cabin opened, and he saw the table of the saloon set for dinner, and light falling upon it from a handsome lamp below the skylight. During one delicious moment he thought himself the victim of a well-meaning practical joker--the next his limbs were limp as cloth, and he sank upon a cus.h.i.+oned seat with a groan which must have been heard by the men above.
This scene has been so faithfully described to me that I can see it as clearly as though I myself stood amongst the players. On the one hand, a pretty little American girl, with hands clasped and malicious laughter about her rosy mouth; on the other, a shrinking, craven, abject shadow of a man, cowering upon the cus.h.i.+ons of a sofa, in blank astonishment, and hiding his view of her with bony fingers. At a glance you would have said that the girl was not twenty--but she was twenty-three, the picture of youth, with the color of the sea-health upon her cheeks, the spray of the sea-foam glistening in her rich brown hair. She had upon her head a little hat of straw poised daintily; her dress was of white serge with a scarf of yacht-club colors at the throat; but her feet were the tiniest in the world, and the brown shoes which hid them not unfit for an artist's model. And as she stood laughing at the man who had become her guest upon the yacht, her att.i.tude would have made the fortune of half the painters in Hampstead. The two faced each other thus silently for a few minutes, but she was the first to speak, her voice overflowing with rippling laughter.
”Well,” she said, ”I call this real good of you, my lord, to come on my yacht--when you were just off to the other girl--and your wedding's fixed for the eighteenth of July. My word, you're the kindest-hearted man in Europe.”
He looked up at her, some shame marked in his eyes, and he said,--
”Evelyn, I--I--never thought it was you!”
<script>