Book: What Will He Do With It, Book 10.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> What Will He Do With It, Book 10.



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BOOK X.


CHAPTER I.

BRUTE-FORCE.

We left Jasper Losely resting for the night at the small town near
Fawley. The next morning he walked on to the old Manor-house. It was
the same morning in which Lady Montfort had held her painful interview
with Darrell; and just when Losely neared the gate that led into the
small park, he saw her re-enter the hired vehicle in waiting for her. As
the carriage rapidly drove past the miscreant, Lady Montfort looked forth
from the window to snatch a last look at the scenes still so clear to
her, through eyes blinded by despairing tears. Jasper thus caught sight
of her countenance, and recognised her, though she did not even notice
him. Surprised at the sight, he halted by the palings. What could have
brought Lady Montfort there? Could the intimacy his fraud had broken off
so many years ago be renewed? If so, why the extreme sadness on the face
of which he had caught but a hurried, rapid glance? Be that as it might,
it was no longer of the interest to him it had once been; and after
pondering on the circumstance a minute or two, he advanced to the gate.
But while his hand was on the latch, he again paused; how should he
obtain admission to Darrell?--how announce himself? If in his own name,
would not exclusion be certain?--if as a stranger on business, would
Darrell be sure to receive him? As he was thus cogitating, his ear,
which, with all his other organs of sense, was constitutionally fine as a
savage's, caught sound of a faint rustle among the boughs of a thick
copse which covered a part of the little park, terminating at its pales.
The rustle came nearer and nearer; the branches were rudely displaced;
and in a few moments more Guy Darrell himself came out from the copse,
close by the gate, and opening it quickly, stood face to face with his
abhorrent son-in-law. Jasper was startled, but the opportunity was not
to be lost. "Mr. Darrell," he said, "I come here again to see you;
vouchsafe me, this time, a calmer hearing." So changed was Losely, so
absorbed in his own emotions Darrell, that the words did not at once
waken up remembrance. "Another time," said Darrell, hastily moving on
into the road; "I am not at leisure now." "Pardon me, NOW," said Losely,
unconsciously bringing himself back to the tones and bearing of his
earlier and more civilised years. "You do not remember me, sir; no
wonder. But my name is Jasper Losely."

Darrell halted; then, as if spellbound, looked fixedly at the broad-
shouldered burly frame before him, cased in its coarse pea-jacket, and in
that rude form, and that defeatured, bloated face, detected, though with
strong effort, the wrecks of the masculine beauty which had ensnared his
deceitful daughter. Jasper could not have selected a more unpropitious
moment for his cause. Darrell was still too much under the influence of
recent excitement and immense sorrow for that supremacy of prudence over
passion which could alone have made him a willing listener to overtures
from Jasper Losely. And about the man whose connection with himself was
a thought of such bitter shame, there was now so unmistakably the air of
settled degradation, that all Darrell's instincts of gentleman were
revolted--just at the very time, too, when his pride had been most chafed
and assailed by the obtrusion of all that rendered most galling to him
the very name of Jasper Losely. What! Was it that man's asserted child
whom Lionel Haughton desired as a wife?--was the alliance with that man
to be thus renewed and strengthened?--that man have another claim to him
and his in right of parentage to the bride of his nearest kinsman? What!
was it that man's child whom he was asked to recognise as of his own
flesh and blood?--the last representative of his line? That man!--that!
A flash shot from his bright eye, deepening its grey into dark; and,
turning on his heel, Darrell said, through his compressed lips--

"You have heard, sir, I believe, through Colonel Morley, that only on
condition of your permanent settlement in one of our distant colonies, or
America if you prefer it, would I consent to assist you. I am of the
same mind still. I can not parley with you myself. Colonel Morley is
abroad, I believe. I refer you to my solicitor; you have seen him years
ago; you know his address. No more, sir."

"This will not do, Mr. Darrell," said Losely, doggedly; and, planting
himself right before Darrell's way, "I have come here on purpose to have
all differences out with you, face to face--and I will--"

"You will!" said Darrell, pale with haughty anger, and with the impulse
of his passion, his hand clenched. In the bravery of his nature, and the
warmth of a temper constitutionally quick, he thought nothing of the
strength and bulk of the insolent obtruder--nothing of the peril of odds
so unequal in a personal encounter. But the dignity which pervaded all
his habits, and often supplied to him the place of discretion, came,
happily for himself, to his aid now. He strike a man whom he so
despised!--he raise that man to his own level by the honour of a blow
from his hand! Impossible! "You will!" he said. "Well, be it so. Are
you come again to tell me that a child of my daughter lives, and that you
won my daughter's fortune by a deliberate lie?"

"I am not come to speak of that girl, but of myself. I say that I have a
claim on you, Mr. Darrell; I say that turn and twist the truth as you
will, you are still my father-in-law, and that it is intolerable that I
should be wanting bread, or driven into actual robbery, while my wife's
father is a man of countless wealth, and has no heir except--but I will
not now urge that child's cause; I am content to abandon it if so
obnoxious to you. Do you wish me to cut a throat, and to be hanged, and
all the world to hear the last dying speech and confession of Guy
Darrell's son-in-law? Answer me, sir?"

"I answer you briefly and plainly. It is simply because I would not have
that last disgrace on Guy Darrell's name that I offer you a subsistence
in lands where you will be less exposed to those temptations which
induced you to invest the sums that, by your own tale, had been obtained
from me on false pretences, in the sink of a Paris gambling house. A
subsistence that, if it does not pamper vice, at least places you beyond
the necessity of crime, is at your option. Choose it or reject it as you
will."

"Look you, Mr. Darrell," said Jasper, whose temper was fast giving way
beneath the cold and galling scorn with which he was thus cast aside,
"I am in a state so desperate, that, rather than starve, I may take what
you so contemptuously fling to--your daughter's husband; but--"

"Knave!" cried Darrell, interrupting him, "do you again and again urge it
as a claim upon me, that you decoyed from her home, under a false name,
my only child; that she died in a foreign land-broken-hearted, if I have
rightly heard is that a claim upon your duped victim's father?"

"It seems so, since your pride is compelled to own that the world would
deem it one, if the jail chaplain took down the last words of your son-
in-law! But, /basta, basta!/ hear me out, and spare hard names; for the
blood is mounting into my brain, and I may become dangerous. Had any
other man eyed, and scoffed, and railed at me as you have done, he would
be lying dead and dumb as this stone at my foot; but you-are my father-
in-law! Now, I care not to bargain with you what be the precise amount
of my stipend if I obey your wish, and settle miserably in one of those
raw, comfortless corners into which they who burthen this Old World are
thrust out of sight. I would rather live my time out in this country--
live it out in peace and for half what you may agree to give in
transporting me. If you are to do anything for me, you had better do it
so as to make me contented on easy terms to your own pockets, rather than
to leave me dissatisfied, and willing to annoy you, which I could do
somehow or other, even on the far side of the Herring Pond. I might keep
to the letter of a bargain, live in Melbourne or Sydney, and take your
money, and yet molest and trouble you by deputy. That girl, for
instance--your grandchild; well, well, disown her if you please; but if I
find out where she is, which I own I have not done yet, I might contrive
to render her the plague of your life, even though I were in Australia."

"Ay," said Darrell, murmuring--"ay, ay; but"--(suddenly gathering himself
up)--"No! Man, if she were my grandchild, your own child, could you talk
of her thus? make her the object of so base a traffic, and such miserable
threats? Wicked though you be, this were against nature! even in
nature's wickedness--even in the son of a felon, and in the sharper of a
hell. Pooh! I despise your malice. I will listen to you no longer. Out
of my path."

"No!"

"No?"

"No, Guy Darrell, I have not yet done; you shall hear my terms, and
accept them--a moderate sum down; say a few hundreds, and two hundred a-
year to spend in London as I will--but out of your beat, out of your
sight and hearing. Grant this, and I will never cross you again--never
attempt to find, and, if I find by chance, never claim as my child by
your daughter that wandering girl. I will never shame you by naming our
connection. I will not offend the law, nor die by the hangman; yet I
shall not live long, for I suffer much, and I drink hard."

The last words were spoken gloomily, not altogether without a strange
dreary pathos. And amidst all his just scorn and anger, the large human
heart of Guy Darrell was for the moment touched. He was silent--his mind
hesitated; would it not be well--would it not be just as safe to his own
peace, and to that of the poor child, whom, no matter what her parentage,
Darrell could not but desire to free from the claim set up by so bold a
ruffian, to gratify Losely's wish, and let him remain in England, upon an
allowance that would suffice for his subsistence? Unluckily for Jasper,
it was while this doubt passed through Darrell's relenting mind, that the
miscreant, who was shrewd enough to see that he had gained ground, but
too coarse of apprehension to ascribe his advantage to its right cause,
thought to strengthen his case by additional arguments. "You see, sir,"
resumed Jasper, in almost familiar accents, "that there is no dog so
toothless but what he can bite, and no dog so savage but what, if you
give him plenty to eat, he will serve you."

Darrell looked up, and his brow darkened.

Jasper continued: "I have hinted how I might plague you; perhaps, on the
other hand, I might do you a good turn with that handsome lady who drove
from your park-gate as I came up. Ah! you were once to have been married
to her. I read in the newspapers that she has become a widow; you may
marry her yet. There was a story against you once; her mother made use
of it, and broke off an old engagement. I can set that story right."

"You can," said Darrell, with that exceeding calmness which comes from
exceeding wrath; "and perhaps, sir, that story, whatever it might be, you
invented. No dog so toothless as not to bite--eh, sir?"

"Well," returned Jasper, mistaking Darrell's composure, "at that time
certainly it seemed my interest that you should not marry again; but
/basta! basta!/ enough of bygones. If I bit once, I will serve now.
Come, sir, you are a man of the world, let us close the bargain."

All Darrell's soul was now up in arms. What, then! this infamous wretch
was the author of the tale by which the woman he had loved, as woman
never was loved before, had excused her breach of faith, and been lost to
him forever? And he learned this, while yet fresh from her presence--
fresh from the agonising conviction that his heart loved still, but could
not pardon. With a spring so sudden that it took Losely utterly by
surprise, he leaped on the bravo, swung aside that huge bulk which Jasper
had boasted four draymen could not stir against its will, cleared his
way; and turning back before Losely had recovered his amaze, cried out:
"Execrable villain! I revoke every offer to aid a life that has existed
but to darken and desolate those it was permitted to approach. Starve or
rob! perish miserably! And if I pour not on your head my parting curse,
it is only because I know that man has no right to curse; and casting you
back on your own evil self is the sole revenge which my belief in Heaven
permits me."

Thus saying, Darrell strode on-swiftly, but not as one who flies. Jasper
made three long bounds, and was almost at his side, when he was startled
by the explosion of a gun. A pheasant fell dead on the road, and
Darrell's gamekeeper, gun in hand, came through a gap in the hedge
opposite the park-pales, and, seeing his master close before him,
approached to apologise for the suddenness of the shot.

Whatever Losely's intention in hastening after Darrell, he had no option
now but to relinquish it, and drop back. The village itself was not many
hundred yards distant; and, after all, what good in violence, except the
gratified rage of the moment? Violence would not give to Jasper Losely
the income that had just been within his grasp, and had so unexpectedly
eluded it. He remained, therefore, in the lane, standing still, and
seeing Darrell turn quietly into his park through another gate close to
the Manor-house. The gamekeeper, meanwhile, picked up his bird, reloaded
his gun, and eyed Jasper suspiciously askant. The baffled gladiator at
length turned and walked slowly back to the town he had left. It was
late in the afternoon when he once more gained his corner in the coffee-
room of his commercial inn; and, to his annoyance, the room was crowded
--it was market-day. Farmers, their business over, came in and out in
quick succession; those who did not dine at the ordinaries taking their
hasty snack, or stirrup-cup, while their horses were being saddled;
others to look at the newspaper, or exchange a word on the state of
markets and the nation. Jasper, wearied and sullen, had to wait for the
refreshments he ordered, and meanwhile fell into a sort of half-doze, as
was not now unusual in him in the intervals between food and mischief.
From this creeping torpor he was suddenly roused by the sound of
Darrell's name. Three farmers standing close beside him, their backs to
the fire, were tenants to Darrell--two of them on the lands that Darrell
had purchased in the years of his territorial ambition; the third resided
in the hamlet of Fawley, and rented the larger portion of the
comparatively barren acres to which the old patrimonial estate was
circumscribed. These farmers were talking of their Squire's return to
the county--of his sequestered mode of life--of his peculiar habits--of
the great unfinished house which was left to rot. The Fawley tenant then
said that it might not, be left to rot after all, and that the village
workmen had been lately employed, and still were, in getting some of the
rooms into rough order; and then he spoke of the long gallery in which
the Squire had been arranging his fine pictures, and how he had run up a
passage between that gallery and his own room, and how he would spend
hours at day, and night too, in that awful long room as lone as a
churchyard; and that Mr. Mills had said that his master now lived almost
entirely either in that gallery or in the room in the roof of the old
house--quite cut off, as you might say, except from the eyes of those
dead pictures, or the rats, which had grown so excited at having their
quarters in the new building invaded, that if you peeped in at the
windows in moonlit nights you might see them in dozens, sitting on their
haunches, as if holding council, or peering at the curious old things
which lay beside the crates out of which they had been taken. Then the
rustic gossips went on to talk of the rent-day which was at hand--of the
audit feast, which, according to immemorial custom, was given at the old
Manor-house on that same rent-day--supposed that Mr. Fairthorn would
preside--that the Squire himself would not appear--made some incidental
observations on their respective rents and wheat-crops-remarked that they
should have a good moonlight for their ride back from the audit feast--
cautioned each other, laughing, not to drink too much of Mr. Fairthorn's
punch--and finally went their way, leaving on the mind of Jasper Losely
--who, leaning his scheming head on his powerful hand, had appeared in
dull sleep all the while--these two facts: 1st, That on the third day
from that which was then declining, sums amounting to thousands would
find their way into Fawley Manor-house; and, 2ndly, That a communication
existed between the unfinished, uninhabited building, and Darrell's own
solitary chamber. As soon as he had fortified himself by food and drink,
Jasper rose, paid for his refreshments and walked forth. Noiseless and
rapid, skirting the hedgerows by the lane that led to Fawley, and
scarcely distinguishable under their shadow, the human wild-beast strided
on in scent of its quarry. It was night when Jasper once more reached
the moss-grown pales round the demesnes of the old Manor-house. In a few
minutes he was standing under the black shadow of the buttresses to the
unfinished pile. His object was not, then, to assault, but to
reconnoitre. He prowled round the irregular walls, guided in his survey,
now and then, faintly by the stars--more constantly and clearly by the
lights from the contiguous Manor-house--especially the light from that
high chamber in the gable, close by which ran the thin framework of wood
which linked the two buildings of stone, just as any frail scheme links
together the Past which man has not enjoyed, with the Future he will not
complete. Jasper came to a large bay unglazed window, its sill but a few
feet from the ground, from which the boards, nailed across the mullions,
had been removed by the workmen whom Darrell had employed on the
interior, and were replaced but by a loose tarpaulin. Pulling aside this
slight obstacle, Jasper had no difficulty in entering through the wide
mullions into the dreary edifice. Finding himself in profound darkness,
he had recourse to a lucifer-box which he had about him, and the waste of
a dozen matches sufficed him to examine the ground. He was in a space
intended by the architect for the principal staircase; a tall ladder,
used by the recent workmen, was still left standing against the wall, the
top of it resting on a landing-place opposite a doorway, that, from the
richness of its half-finished architrave, obviously led to what had been
designed for the state apartments; between the pediments was a slight
temporary door of rough deal planks. Satisfied with his reconnoitre,
Losely quitted the skeleton pile, and retraced his steps to the inn he
had left. His musings by the way suggested to him the expediency, nay,
the necessity, of an accomplice. Implements might be needed--disguises
would be required--swift horses for flight to be hired--and, should the
robbery succeed, the bulk of the spoil would be no doubt in bank-notes,
which it would need some other hand than his own to dispose of, either at
the bank next morning at the earliest hour, or by transmission abroad.
For help in all this Jasper knew no one to compare to Cutts; nor did he
suspect his old ally of any share in the conspiracy against him, of which
he had been warned by Mrs. Crane. Resolving, therefore, to admit that
long-tried friend into his confidence, and a share of the spoils, he
quickened his pace, arrived at the railway-station in time for a late
train to London, and, disdainful of the dangers by which he was
threatened in return to any of the haunts of his late associates, gained
the dark court wherein he had effected a lodgment on the night of his
return to London, and roused Cutts from his slumbers with tales of an
enterprise so promising, that the small man began to recover his ancient
admiration for the genius to which he had bowed at Paris, but which had
fallen into his contempt in London.

Mr. Cutts held a very peculiar position in that section of the great
world to which he belonged. He possessed the advantage of an education
superior to that of the generality of his companions, having been
originally a clerk to an Old Bailey attorney, and having since that early
day accomplished his natural shrewdness by a variety of speculative
enterprises both at home and abroad. In these adventures he had not only
contrived to make money, but, what is very rare with the foes of law, to
save it. Being a bachelor, he was at small expenses, but besides his
bachelor's lodging in the dark court, he had an establishment in the
heart of the City, near the Thames, which was intrusted to the care of
a maiden sister, as covetous and as crafty as himself. At this
establishment, ostensibly a pawnbroker's, were received the goods which
Cutts knew at his residence in the court were to be sold a bargain,
having been obtained for nothing. It was chiefly by this business that
the man enriched himself. But his net was one that took in fishes of all
kinds. He was a general adviser to the invaders of law. If he shared in
the schemes he advised, they were so sure to be successful, that he
enjoyed the highest reputation for luck. It was but seldom that he did
actively share in those schemes--lucky in what he shunned as in what he
performed. He had made no untruthful boast to Mrs. Crane of the skill
with which he had kept himself out of the fangs of justice. With a
certain portion of the police he was indeed rather a favourite; for was
anything mysteriously "lost," for which the owner would give a reward
equal to its value in legal markets, Cutts was the man who would get it
back. Of violence he had a wholesome dislike; not that he did not admire
force in others--not that he was physically a coward--but that caution
was his predominant characteristic. He employed force when required--set
a just value on it--would plan a burglary, and dispose of the spoils; but
it was only where the prize was great and the danger small, that he lent
his hand to the work that his brain approved. When Losely proposed to
him the robbery of a lone country-house, in which Jasper, making light of
all perils, brought prominently forward the images of some thousands of
pounds in gold and notes, guarded by an elderly gentleman, and to be
approached with ease through an uninhabited building--Cutts thought it
well worth personal investigation. Nor did he consider himself bound,
by his general engagement to Mrs. Crane, to lose the chance of a sum so
immeasurably greater than he could expect to obtain from her by revealing
the plot and taking measures to frustate it. Cutts was a most faithful
and intelligent agent when he was properly paid, and had proved himself
so to Mrs. Crane on various occasions. But then, to be paid properly
meant a gain greater in serving than he could get in not serving.
Hitherto it had been extremely lucrative to obey Mrs. Crane in saving
Jasper from crime and danger. In this instance the lucre seemed all the
other way. Accordingly, the next morning, having filled a saddle-bag
with sundry necessaries, such as files, picklocks, masks--to which he
added a choice selection of political tracts and newspapers--he and
Jasper set out on two hired but strong and fleet hackneys to the
neighbourhood of Fawley. They put up at a town on the other side of the
Manor-house from that by which Jasper had approached it, and at about the
same distance. After baiting their steeds, they proceeded to Fawley by
the silent guide of a finger-post, gained the vicinity of the park, and
Cutts, dismounting, flitted across the turf, and plunged himself into the
hollows of the unfinished mansion while Jasper took charge of the horses
in a corner of the wooded lane. Cutts, pleased by the survey of the
forlorn interior, ventured, in the stillness that reigned around, to
mount the ladder, to apply a picklock to the door above, and, opening
this with ease, crept into the long gallery, its walls covered with
pictures. Through the crevices in another door at the extreme end
gleamed a faint light. Cutts applied his eye to the chinks and keyhole,
and saw that the light came from a room on the other side the narrow
passage which connected the new house with the old. The door of that
room was open, candles were on the table, and beside the table Cutts
could distinguish the outline of a man' s form seated--doubtless the
owner; but the form did not seem "elderly." If inferor to Jasper's in
physical power, it still was that of vigorous and unbroken manhood.
Cutts did not like the appearance of that form, and he retreated to outer
air with some misgivings. However, on rejoining Losely, he said: "As yet
things look promising-place still as death--only one door locked, and
that the common country lock, which a schoolboy might pick with his
knife."

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