Part 21 (2/2)
'Why, true,' said I: 'I had not thought of that.'
'I warrant you,' cried Romaine, 'you had supposed it was nothing to be the hero of an interesting notice in the journals! You had supposed, as like as not, it was a form of secrecy! But not so in the least. A part of England is already buzzing with the name of Champdivers; a day or two more and the mail will have carried it everywhere: so wonderful a machine is this of ours for disseminating intelligence! Think of it! When my father was born-but that is another story. To return: we had here the elements of such a combustion as I dread to think of-your cousin and the journal. Let him but glance an eye upon that column of print, and where were we? It is easy to ask; not so easy to answer, my young friend. And let me tell you, this sheet is the Viscount's usual reading. It is my conviction he had it in his pocket.'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said I. 'I have been unjust. I did not appreciate my danger.'
'I think you never do,' said he.
'But yet surely that public scene-' I began.
'It was madness. I quite agree with you,' Mr. Romaine interrupted. 'But it was your uncle's orders, Mr. Anne, and what could I do? Tell him you were the murderer of Goguelat? I think not.'
'No, sure!' said I. 'That would but have been to make the trouble thicker. We were certainly in a very ill posture.'
'You do not yet appreciate how grave it was,' he replied. 'It was necessary for you that your cousin should go, and go at once. You yourself had to leave to-night under cover of darkness, and how could you have done that with the Viscount in the next room? He must go, then; he must leave without delay. And that was the difficulty.'
'Pardon me, Mr. Romaine, but could not my uncle have bidden him go?' I asked.
'Why, I see I must tell you that this is not so simple as it sounds,' he replied. 'You say this is your uncle's house, and so it is. But to all effects and purposes it is your cousin's also. He has rooms here; has had them coming on for thirty years now, and they are filled with a prodigious acc.u.mulation of trash-stays, I dare say, and powder-puffs, and such effeminate idiocy-to which none could dispute his t.i.tle, even suppose any one wanted to. We had a perfect right to bid him go, and he had a perfect right to reply, ”Yes, I will go, but not without my stays and cravats. I must first get together the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine chestsfull of insufferable rubbish, that I have spent the last thirty years collecting-and may very well spend the next thirty hours a-packing of.” And what should we have said to that?'
'By way of repartee?' I asked. 'Two tall footmen and a pair of crabtree cudgels, I suggest.'
'The Lord deliver me from the wisdom of laymen!' cried Romaine. 'Put myself in the wrong at the beginning of a lawsuit? No, indeed! There was but one thing to do, and I did it, and burned my last cartridge in the doing of it. I stunned him. And it gave us three hours, by which we should make haste to profit; for if there is one thing sure, it is that he will be up to time again to-morrow in the morning.'
'Well,' said I, 'I own myself an idiot. Well do they say, an old soldier, an old innocent! For I guessed nothing of all this.'
'And, guessing it, have you the same objections to leave England?' he inquired.
'The same,' said I.
'It is indispensable,' he objected.
'And it cannot be,' I replied. 'Reason has nothing to say in the matter; and I must not let you squander any of yours. It will be enough to tell you this is an affair of the heart.'
'Is it even so?' quoth Romaine, nodding his head. 'And I might have been sure of it. Place them in a hospital, put them in a jail in yellow overalls, do what you will, young Jessamy finds young Jenny. O, have it your own way; I am too old a hand to argue with young gentlemen who choose to fancy themselves in love; I have too much experience, thank you. Only, be sure that you appreciate what you risk: the prison, the dock, the gallows, and the halter-terribly vulgar circ.u.mstances, my young friend; grim, sordid, earnest; no poetry in that!'
'And there I am warned,' I returned gaily. 'No man could be warned more finely or with a greater eloquence. And I am of the same opinion still. Until I have again seen that lady, nothing shall induce me to quit Great Britain. I have besides-'
And here I came to a full stop. It was upon my tongue to have told him the story of the drovers, but at the first word of it my voice died in my throat. There might be a limit to the lawyer's toleration, I reflected. I had not been so long in Britain altogether; for the most part of that time I had been by the heels in limbo in Edinburgh Castle; and already I had confessed to killing one man with a pair of scissors; and now I was to go on and plead guilty to having settled another with a holly stick! A wave of discretion went over me as cold and as deep as the sea.
'In short, sir, this is a matter of feeling,' I concluded, 'and nothing will prevent my going to Edinburgh.'
If I had fired a pistol in his ear he could not have been more startled.
'To Edinburgh?' he repeated. 'Edinburgh? where the very paving-stones know you!'
'Then is the murder out!' said I. 'But, Mr. Romaine, is there not sometimes safety in boldness? Is it not a common-place of strategy to get where the enemy least expects you? And where would he expect me less?'
<script>