Part 83 (2/2)

Darrell should now yield to his exactions, as a garrison surprised accepts the terms of its conqueror. There would be no flight, no hiding, no fear of notes stopped at banks. He would march out, hand on haunch, with those immunities of booty that belong to the honours of war.

Pleasing his self-conceit with so gallant a view of his meditated exploit, Jasper sauntered at dark into the town, bought a few long narrow nails and a small hammer, and returning to his room, by the aid of the fire, the tongs, and the hammer, he fas.h.i.+oned these nails, with an ease and quickness which showed an expert pract.i.tioner, into instruments that would readily move the wards of any common country-made lock. He did not care for weapons. He trusted at need to his own powerful hands. It was no longer, too, the affair of a robber unknown, unguessed, who might have to fight his way out of an alarmed household.

It was but the visit which he, Jasper Losely, Esquire, thought fit to pay, however unceremoniously and unseasonably, to the house of a father-in-law! At the worst, should he fail in finding Darrell, or securing an unwitnessed interview--should he, instead, alarm the household, it would be a proof of the integrity of his intentions that he had no weapons save those which Nature bestows on the wild man as the mightiest of her wild beasts. At night he mounted his horse, but went out of his way, keeping the high-road for an hour or two, in order to allow ample time for the farmers to have quitted the rent-feast, and the old Manor-house to be hushed in sleep. At last, when he judged the coast clear and the hour ripe, he wound back into the lane towards Fawley; and when the spire of its hamlet-church came in sight through the frosty starlit air, he dismounted--led the horse into one of the thick beech-woods that make the prevailing characteristic of the wild country round that sequestered dwelling-place--fastened the animal to a tree, and stalked towards the park-pales on foot. Lightly, as a wolf enters a sheepfold, he swung himself over the moss-grown fence; he gained the b.u.t.tresses of the great raw pile; high and clear above, from Darrell's chamber, streamed the light; all the rest of the old house was closed and dark, buried no doubt in slumber.

He is now in the hollows of the skeleton pile; he mounts the ladder; the lock of the door before him yields to his rude implements but artful hand. He is in the long gallery; the moonlight comes broad and clear through the large cas.e.m.e.nts. What wealth of art is on the walls! but how profitless to the robber's greed. There, through the very halls which the master had built in the day of his ambition, saying to himself, ”These are for far posterity,” the step of Violence, it may be of Murder, takes its stealthy way to the room of the childless man! Through the uncompleted pile, towards the uncompleted life, strides the terrible step.

The last door yields noiselessly. The small wooden corridor, narrow as the drawbridge which in ancient fortresses was swung between the commandant's room in the topmost story and some opposing wall, is before him. And Darrell's own door is half open; lights on the table--logs burning bright on the hearth. Cautiously Losely looked through the aperture. Darrell was not there; the place was solitary; but the opposite door was open also. Losely's fine ear caught the sound of a slight movement of a footstep in the room just below, to which that opposite door admitted. In an instant the robber glided within the chamber--closed and locked the door by which he had entered, retaining the key about his person. The next stride brought him to the hearth.

Beside it hung the bell-rope common in old-fas.h.i.+oned houses. Losely looked round; on the table, by the writing implements, lay a pen-knife.

In another moment the rope was cut, high out of Darrell's reach, and flung aside. The hearth, being adapted but for logwood fires, furnished not those implements in which, at a moment of need, the owner may find an available weapon--only a slight pair of bra.s.s wood-pincers, and a shovel equally frail. Such as they were, however, Jasper quietly removed and hid them behind a heavy old bureau. Steps were now heard mounting the stair that led into the chamber; Losely shrunk back into the recess beside the mantelpiece. Darrell entered, with a book in his hand, for which he had indeed quitted his chamber--a volume containing the last Act of Parliament relating to Public Trusts, which had been sent to him by his solicitor; for he is creating a deed of trust, to insure to the nation the Darrell antiquities, in the name of his father, the antiquarian.

Darrell advanced to the writing-table, which stood in the centre of the room; laid down the book, and sighed--the short, quick, impatient sigh which had become one of his peculiar habits. The robber stole from the recess, and, gliding round to the door by which Darrell had entered, while the back of the master was still towards him, set fast the lock, and appropriated the key as he had done at the door which had admitted himself. Though the noise in that operation was but slight, it roused Darrell from his abstracted thoughts. He turned quickly, and at the same moment Losely advanced towards him.

At once Darrell comprehended his danger. His rapid glance took in all the precautions by which the intruder proclaimed his lawless purpose--the closed door, the bell rope cut off. There, between those four secret walls, must pa.s.s the interview between himself and the desperado. He was unarmed, but he was not daunted. It was but man to man. Losely had for him his vast physical strength, his penury, despair, and vindictive purpose. Darrell had in his favour the intellect which gives presence of mind; the energy of nerve, which is no more to be seen in the sinew and bone than the fluid which fells can be seen in the jars and the wires; and that superb kind of pride, which, if terror be felt, makes its action impossible, because a disgrace, and bravery a matter of course, simply because it is honour.

As the bravo approached, by a calm and slight movement Darrell drew to the other side of the table, placing that obstacle between himself and Losely, and, extending his arm, said: ”Hold, sir; I forbid you to advance another step. You are here, no matter how, to re-urge your claims on me. Be seated; I will listen to you.”

Darrell's composure took Losely so by surprise that mechanically he obeyed the command thus tranquilly laid upon him, and sunk into a chair--facing Darrell with a sinister under-look from his sullen brow.

”Ah!” he said, ”you will listen to me now; but my terms have risen.”

Darrell, who had also seated himself, made no answer; but his face was resolute and his eye watchful. The ruffian resumed, in a gruffer tone: ”My terms have risen, Mr. Darrell.”

”Have they, sir? and why?”

”Why! Because no one can come to your aid here; because here you cannot escape; because here you are in my power!”

”Rather, sir, I listen to you because here you are under my roof-tree; and it is you who are in my power!”

”Yours! Look round; the doors are locked on you. Perhaps you think your shouts, your cries might bring aid to you. Attempt it--raise your voice--and I strangle you with these hands.”

”If I do not raise my voice, it is, first, because I should be ashamed of myself if I required aid against one man; and, secondly, because I would not expose to my dependents a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin in him whom my lost child called husband. Hush, sir, hush, or your own voice will alarm those who sleep below. And now, what is it you ask? Be plain, sir, and be brief.”

”Well, if you like to take matters coolly, I have no objection. These are my terms. You have received large sums this day; those sums are in your house, probably in that bureau; and your life is at my will.”

”You ask the monies paid for rent to-day. True, they are in the house; but they are not in my apartments. They were received by another; they are kept by another. In vain, through the windings and pa.s.sages of this old house, would you seek to find the room in which he stores them. In doing so you will pa.s.s by the door of a servant who sleeps so lightly that the chances are that he will hear you; he is armed with a blunderbuss, and with pistols. You say to me, 'Your money or your life.'

I say to you, in reply, 'Neither: attempt to seize the money, and your own life is lost.”

”Miser! I don't believe that sums so large are not in your own keeping.

And even if they are not, you shall show me where they are; you shall lead me through those windings and pa.s.sages of which you so tenderly warn me, my hand on your throat. And if servants wake, or danger threaten me, it is you who shall save me, or die! Ha! you do not fear me--eh, Mr. Darrell!” And Losely rose.

”I do not fear you,” replied Darrell, still seated. ”I cannot conceive that you are here with no other design than a profitless murder. You are here, you say, to make terms; it will be time enough to see whose life is endangered when all your propositions have been stated. As yet you have only suggested a robbery, to which you ask me to a.s.sist you.

Impossible! Grant even that you were able to murder me, you would be just as far off from your booty. And yet you say your terms have risen!

To me they seem fallen to nothing! Have you anything else to say?”

The calmness of Darrell, so supremely displayed in this irony, began to tell upon the ruffian--the magnetism of the great man's eye and voice, and steadfast courage, gradually gaining power over the wild, inferior animal. Trying to recover his const.i.tutional audacity, Jasper said, with a tone of the old rollicking voice: ”Well, Mr. Darrell, it is all one to me how I wring from you, in your own house, what you refused me when I was a suppliant on the road. Fair means are pleasanter than foul. I am a gentleman--the grandson of Sir Julian Losely, of Losely Hall; I am your son-in-law; and I am starving. This must not be; write me a cheque.”

Darrell dipped his pen in the ink, and drew the paper towards him.

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