Part 30 (1/2)
”But you don't believe it is?”
”We can't help our thoughts, but----” and another laugh ended his sentence.
Benham looked round. They were alone. Cautiously he drew a bag of money and a roll of notes from his pocket. For a moment he opened the bag and showed the gleam inside; wetting his forefinger, he parted the notes for a second.
”Some one believes it,” he said, ”up to five hundred pound.”
”That's the sort of belief I'd like to inspire,” laughed Gaspard, watching the money back into its pocket with a curious eye.
”Come, you're not drinking,” urged the hospitable Benham.
”You don't show me the way,” untruthfully answered the guest, as Benham complacently b.u.t.toned up his coat, little imagining that his neighbour was weighing a question, very momentous to him, in the light of fresh information.
Five hundred pounds! The duty of removing Benham began to look rather imperative again, but from a different point of view. Francois had of late worked for his living, a mode of existence which seemed to him anomalous, and ill suited to his genius. Five hundred pounds meant, to a man of his frugal habits and tact in eliciting hospitality three years'
comfortable idleness. It was no doubt apparent now that Benham had already parted with his secret, and that, if anything happened to him, the secret would still remain to vex the good Medland. Gaspard regretted this; he would have liked to combine public and private advantage in the job. But a man must not ask everything, or he may end by having to take nothing. Here sat a drunken fool with five hundred pounds; opposite to him sat a sober sharp-wit with only five. The situation was full of suggestion. If the five hundred could be got from the fool without violence, well and good; but really, thought Mr. Gaspard, their transference to the sharp-wit must be effected somehow, or that sharp-wit had no t.i.tle to the name.
”Care to play any more?” asked Benham.
”Not I, my friend, I have robbed you enough.”
”And about time for the luck to turn, isn't it? Well, I don't care! What shall we do?”
”What you will,” answered the Frenchman absently.
Benham pulled his beard, then leant forward and put a question with an intoxicated leer. A laugh of feigned reproof burst from Gaspard. Benham seemed to urge him, and at last he said,
”Oh, if you're bent on it, I can be your guide.”
The two men left the house arm-in-arm, went down the street, and crossed Digby Square. It was late, and few people were about, but Gaspard saw one acquaintance. The doorkeeper was strolling along on his way home, and Gaspard bade him good-night in a cheery voice as they pa.s.sed him.
The doorkeeper stood and watched the pair for a minute as they left the Square and turned down a narrow street which led to the poorer part of the town, and thence to the quays. He heard Gaspard's high-pitched voice and shrill laughter, and, in answer, Benham's thick tones and heavy shout of drunken mirth. Once or twice these sounds repeated themselves, then they ceased; the footsteps of the Frenchman and his companion died away in the distance. The doorkeeper went on his way, thinking with relief that Mr. Gaspard, for all his tall talk, was more at home with a bottle than with a knife or a bomb.
Notwithstanding his dissipation, Gaspard was afoot very early in the morning. It was hardly light, and the deep scratch of finger-nails on his face--it is so awkward when drunken fools wake at the wrong minute--attracted no attention from the few people he encountered. He did not give them long to look at him, for he hurried swiftly through the streets, towards the quays where the s.h.i.+ps lay loading their cargoes. He seemed to have urgent business to transact down there, business that would brook no delay, and that was, if one might guess from his uneasy glances over his shoulder, of a private nature. With one hand he held tight hold of something in his trousers pocket, the other rested on his belt, hard by a little revolver. In his business it is necessary to be ready for everything.
Meanwhile Mr. Benham, having no affairs to trouble him, and no more business to transact, stayed where he was.
CHAPTER XIX.
LAST CHANCES.
At an early hour on Sunday all Kirton seemed astir. The streets were alive with thronging people, with banners, with inchoate and still amorphous processions, with vendors of meat, drink, and newspapers.
According to the official arrangements, the proceedings were not to begin till one o'clock, and, in theory, the forenoon hours were left undisturbed; but, what with the people who were taking part in the demonstration, and those who were going to look on, and those who hoped to suck some profit to themselves out of the day's work, the ordinary duties and observances of a Sunday were largely neglected, and Mr.
Puttock, pa.s.sing on his way to chapel at the head of his family, did not lack material for reprobation in the temporary superseding of religious obligations.
The Governor and his family drove to the Cathedral, according to their custom, Eleanor Scaife having pleaded in vain for leave to walk about the streets instead. Lady Eynesford declined to recognise the occasion, and Eleanor had to content herself with stealthy glances to right and left till the church doors engulfed her. The only absentee was Alicia Derosne, and she was not walking about the streets, but sitting under the verandah, with a book unopened on her knees, and her eyes set in empty fixedness on the horizon. The luxuriant growth of a southern summer filled her nostrils with sweet scents, and the wind, blowing off the sea, tempered the heat to a fresh and balmy warmth; the waves sparkled in the sun, and the world was loud in boast of its own beauty; but poor Alicia, like many a maid before, was wondering how long this wretched life was to last, and how any one was ever happy. Faith bruised and trust misplaced blotted out for her the joy of living and the exultation of youth. If these things were true, why did the sun s.h.i.+ne, and how could the world be merry? If these things were true, for her the sun shone no more, and the merriment was stilled for ever. So she thought, and, if she were not right, it needed a philosopher to tell her so; and then she would not have believed him, but caught her woe closer to her heart, and nursed it with fiercer tenderness against his shallow prating. Perhaps he might have told her too, that it is cruel kindness unasked to set people on a pinnacle, and, when they cannot keep foothold on that slippery height, to scorn their fall. Other things such an one might well have said, but more wisely left unsaid; for cool reason is a blister to heartache, and heartache is not best cured by blisters. Never yet did a child stop crying for being told its pain was nought and would soon be gone. Yet this prescription had been Lady Eynesford's--although she was no philosopher, to her knowledge--for Alicia, and it had left the patient protesting that she felt no pain at all, and yet feeling it all the more.
”What do you accuse me of? Why do you speak to me?” she had burst out.
”What is it to me what he has done or not done? What do you mean, Mary?”