CHAPTER IX.

“VITRIOLISERAI.”

The next morning he was gone, he was not there in the cave, and as for the man, Healy, he was not there, and where to seek I knew not at all: only the thing like a telescope was there in the cave, the thing like a trap, the dead creature’s remains, the stone which he has hollowed into a vase, and under some rubbish and leaves in a corner the thing like an ink-bottle that he has called a “stele”: but all the bread, etc., that I had brought him he had either eaten or taken away.

Eaten, may be; but, if not eaten, whither, I asked myself—with this food—was he off to? Ah, many questions I asked myself; and then, hurrying across the bridge, went to the cottage of Mrs. Bream, with whom Healy was lodging, to ask if the man did not sleep there the previous night; but she said no, he had merely come in, together with a stripling who wore sandals, to take away his bag, saying, however, that he would be back to her in some days; and he had taken the 10.20 up-train with this stripling, who had wished to know of her, poor sinner, if she did not know even so much as the names of the mountains in the moon.

Upon this, seeing me near to fainting, she made me sip a little of a white wine made, she said, out of cowslips. I was not, however, wholly without hope, since Healy, who is clearly a captive, and probably but repeated his master’s words, had promised to return; nor did I believe that the man could mean to deceive, since he seems an honest-minded person. To this, then, I clung; though that the boy should fly off thus wildly to London without breathing anything of it to me who am his sweetheart seemed hard—_to London_, I assumed! for that 10.20 train stops only at Gloucester and Swindon before London, and I thought that he may have wished to behold the capital. Indeed, this is probable: for the conviction has clearly been growing upon him that his “Man,” hereabouts, at all events, is hardly all that he has thought him; and I guess that the feebleness of such a magnate as Monsieur the Minister of the Interior in that encounter in the garden may have sent him flying off to the capital to find out once and for all how things actually are. What, then, I asked myself, would be his opinion of it all? Would what he there saw fascinate or in any other way keep him from returning to me? Would not Healy find the means to communicate with Dr. Lepsius, or in some way to kidnap and immure the young man? Ah, many, many questions I asked myself....

The 26th. It was vindictive of Monsieur de Courcy to give information to the police as to his grievance against the young man, which, after all, was hardly very grave; but his no doubt is one of those hard brows that hardly ever forgive. At any rate, this morning an “inspector” demanded to interview me with regard to the whereabouts of the young man, my relation with whom, owing to my haste to crow my marriage, is already known throughout the household, just as the fact that Miss Eve is in negotiation with a lady for a new maid is well known to everyone.... My God! what is to become of me now, my good God? Have I not conducted myself like a light-headed young girl who has not yet learned to govern her nerves or her tongue, who skips into enthusiasm at the first music, and boasts beforehand of shadows as though they were substances? At any rate, I had to confess to this constable my complete ignorance of my bridegroom’s movements, whereupon he, getting up to go, said to me, “Well, we shall make it hot for him if he dares show his nose about here again.”

The 27th. But is he such a blackguard, or is his scorn of me so great, that he cannot even write me a line to say that I am never again to see him? Still not even a line, and Miss Eve this morning would not let me do her hands, but ordered me to bed, I looked so bad. I went, but had to get up to go to St. Arvens to receive the marriage-licence, after which I took the train, as directed, to Wynton, to give notice of it to the registrar there; and now any day after to-morrow, this gentleman told me, I may be married: a statement that made me in coming down the stairs break bitterly out into tears.... In passing through Wynton I procured myself at the chemist’s a vial of vitriol....

The 28th. Again to-day I was several hours in bed with my headache, Miss Ruth coming at noon to read aloud to me a fairy-tale named _The Pilgrim’s Progress_, and after luncheon comes Miss Eve also to sit five minutes at my bedside. It was in going away, when she had reached the door, that she stopped and said, “And as to your marriage?” whereupon I too rashly indulged my shame with the falsehood that I had that very morning received a communication from my future-one, assuring me that he would immediately be here to be mine.... The house is now empty of guests, the two Gordons having departed this morning....

The 29th. Well, dear Lord, he is here, and I thank you. I now write at six in the morning, after having spent a nearly sleepless night with him and Healy, and still with no desire to close my eyes. By to-morrow evening we shall have been secretly and safely married, and within a week I shall have taken farewell of this my life here....

I was in the housekeeper’s room alone, for Mrs. Bowden had gone up, it being long past midnight, and I was lying on the sofa, the vial of vitriol beside me on the table, for I had been foolishly fingering it, when there came a tapping at that back door which opens upon the passage. I get up, I go to it, I open it.... And it was _he_! Oh, my wild one with wings, with the light of life flying wildly in his eyes, it was he! and while one might reckon three I stood breathless, then with a cry was on his breast.

His nature is not yet coaxed over into tolerating the luxury of kissing, and even in the ecstasy of our meeting his chastity shrank from the touch of my lips; but, my faith, that will soon be “al-right”! and he patted my shoulder fondly, even while hurriedly saying, “I need light for an hour or two.”

I was too much flurried to attend to what he said! I cooed to him, “And is it actually true that you have come back to me?”

“Yes, yes, let me get in,” he mutters hurriedly, and now, seizing Healy by the sleeve, hurries in into the housekeeper’s room. He had climbed outside, and spied me alone in there through the window, Healy told me afterwards.

But his air was much changed! all bustle now, business, and aloofness from one! When I now said to him, “But where, then, have you been?” he mutters to Healy, “Just answer her questions, and see that she speaks in whispers,” and instantly sits to the table, places on it that ink-bottle “stele” of his that he had left in the cave, takes a magnifying-glass out of his shirt, and begins to gaze through it at the marks that are cut in the stone.

“But tell me——” I began to say to him, when “_Sh-h-h!_” breathes Healy into my ear, “_I_’ll tell you,” and draws me away to a corner, where he whispers me, “Mum, can you offer a body such a thing as a bite of something? He”—indicating Hannibal Lepsius with his thumb—“can do without food and sleep, but that’s a bit more than _I_ can bring off, anyway.”

I made him sit, stole out, and in five minutes was back with bread, meat, cheese, and a bottle of beer. Hannibal Lepsius at this time could no more be said to be sitting, but was half over the table, one knee on the chair, poring with greed over that “stele,” as if he would eat it with his gaze. I was about to say something to him, when my ear was afresh reached by the _sh-h-h_ of Healy, like a whispering of leafage fretted by a zephyr; so I placed the victuals on Healy’s knees, sat before him, and commenced to question him; but it was many minutes before his stuffed mouth could bring out a syllable.

“Why were you so famished?” I asked him, “since you had money to pay railway-fare?”

With his lips at my ear, he answered: “It was a question of time, mum—no time to eat, no time to sleep; but that’s good meat, that is, and that’s good beer, too.”

“Was he, then, in such a hurry to return to his marriage?” I asked.

The man looked at me under his eyes—strangely, I thought—and replied, “I know nothing of that, mum; but we went to see London, and we saw it in a tear, I tell you, and we left it in a tear, for by the end of the third day London had got a bit too hot for us.”

“Why, how was that?” I asked him.

“Truth is,” he whispered, “some of us have been putting into our pockets more than what belongs to us!”

“What!” I said.

“_Sh-h-h_,” he went.

Mrs. Bowden’s clock just then struck one, and glancing round at it, I beheld Hannibal Lepsius bent yet further over the table, poring upon that stone, and heard him whimper over it as if in pain.

“What is he doing?” I whispered to Healy.

“Lord knows, mum,” he whispered back.

“So the London police were after him?”

“That’s so.”

“What a thing!” I said in awe.

“Thrice in three days!” he whispered; “aye, and that second time it was a close go with us, too, seeing that he wouldn’t let go hold of me—a thousand people after us through London streets, if there was one, and he dragging me, thinking that I am against him, too, and want to betray him. That’s hard, too, that’s hard. Here am I, mum, Dr. Lepsius’ servant—I’d give this hand for the doctor—yet keeping the lad dark from the doctor, going against the doctor, mind, knowing that I am doing wrong, but no more able to help it than a man addicted to liquor, I am that given up to the lad; yet he keeps me as his prisoner, I who’d race after him to hell; thinks I want to run away and betray him to everybody, can’t believe in a motive that’s not selfish, it’s hard.”

“You haven’t, then, written to tell his father that you have found him?” I asked.

“God forgive me, no,” he answered with a bent head; “though I have had chances to do it, too, mum, and the doctor must be in as much of a wonder what’s come to me as what’s come to Master Hanni. God forgive me! for never I’ll forgive myself on this side Jordan. And all to pleasure the lad—but he can’t see it, keeps me as a prisoner, it’s hard.”

“But what did he do in London? what did he think of the ladies there? was he really chased by the London people?” I asked, for I could not whisper my questions fast enough to satisfy my inquisitiveness.

Healy answered yes, that the sandals and bauge shirt of Shunter Island had been chased with hue and cry all up Tottenham Court Road at midday, and twice by night in other places; and that not the London police only were after him, for that he had no sooner stepped from the train down here than a constable laid hands on him; but he had filliped the constable in the face, and run away, making to the cave to get the “stele,” which he seemed to be extremely eager to get, and then had run up here, dragging Healy with him.

“And he actually filliped the constable?” I said to Healy: “he is no longer, then, at all in awe of his ‘Man’?”

Healy grinned a grimace to himself, and throwing up his hands a little, whispered to me, “All idiots! that was the verdict on the second night—about eight o’clock, mum, drizzling, hazy night, he and I sitting in one of those recesses of Waterloo Bridge, and over the river a sight, mum, greatly like a fairyland going on in a haze, with that host of lights.... So he sits awhile there, weary from the two days’ tear, looking at the traffic rolling over the bridge; then getting up on the seat, he leans over the parapet; and presently, as he was there looking down upon the river, I hear him say to himself ‘idiots,’ and then I hear him say ‘all, all,’ with a sort of wail, shaking his head a bit, and then I see him bury his face in his hands, and a sound came out of him that at first was more like crying, but afterwards was more like laughing; and from that minute he was eager to get back down here to his cave.”

I looked round at Hannibal Lepsius, and now saw his body all across the table, with one knee also on it, for, in the keenness of his strain as to that “stele,” he had been pushing it inch by inch from him and following it; and now his brow was all brown and engorged, his eyes were glaring at the object like a maniac’s, and now also a sort of groan broke out of his breast.

When I turned back to Healy to continue our conversation, I found that during those few moments that I had been looking away his brow had dropped in sleep; and I was just disengaging from his fingers the glass that he had been drinking from lest he should drop it, when I became aware of a tapping at the little door at the back. I stole out to it, I opened it, and now, heavens! my soul faints within me when I behold standing there the big Inspector Gibbon, together with that graceful young constable of Thring with the moustache, whose name is Shooter.

“We have found him at last,” remarks Inspector Gibbon, for they had seen the light, climbed a little by the spout outside, and seen the young man poring over the stele.

“But what has he done?” I asked them, with a trembling about my right knee, hearing, as I asked it, Mrs. Bowden’s clock strike twice.

“There are no less than five counts against him,” answered Inspector Gibbon, “three from London, two down here; let’s have the beauty out”—and he steps within the doorway.

At once now with a wild heart I darted back into Mrs. Bowden’s room, to whisper to the young man, “I am afraid that two officers are come to arrest you!”

He groaned, without glancing up from his poring over that stone. I waited several seconds, hearing the clock tick, and my own heart as loudly pounding. Healy also, who had started awake, now sat staring with an open mouth.

“What shall I say to the two officers?” I asked the young man.

Again he groaned grievously, but did not glance up at me, and again I stood in suspense some seconds; till now he in an absent way, still without glancing up, mumbled at me, “Bring them here.”

I ran out, and found the officers already at the door: in another moment they were standing within the housekeeper’s room. Hanni Lepsius was now on his feet awaiting them, and the instant they appeared he stepped up to them, saying, “Now, I wish you to take me; take me—only be swift.”

“You are a beauty——” Inspector Gibbon began to say, taking the young man by one arm, while Shooter took him by the other; but Hannibal Lepsius cut short his words, saying to him, “Yes, I know: you all delight in the waste of time, the waste of words. But come, take me, and I shall know now with certainty whether you are of the smallest worth.” The boy now pointed out of the back door at the old oak tree that stands there in the courtyard about twelve yards from the door. “You see that oak tree,” he said to them: “only get me past that, and not only will I go with you the rest of the way to prison, but four hundred pounds which I stole in London shall be for your private use”—and how earnestly he spoke to them! turning from one to the other, instilling his meaning into their ears as into the ears of people hard of hearing, while they calmly smiled upon him with a contempt for him equal to his concern for them. “You are poor,” he told them, “ah, poor even to meanness, even to shame; and here in this pocket is the money. Rouse yourselves now, then! _Ask_ yourselves, ‘How can he escape us?’ Not by strength!—each of you is as strong as I. By craft, then? Surely, only by craft!”—turning from one to the other, pleading earnestly at the ear of each in turn. “But there are at most only six possible ways,” he said, “in which, by craft, even a lord of Mars or Venus, I think, could escape you. Think in lightning _now_ of those ways! Rouse, rouse yourselves! Oh, rouse, rouse, now, all those dark powers that profoundly drowse in your soul! Look round the room: for the means by which I choose to escape lie here before your face; nor are you idiots born, your brain has the same bulk, your reason is equal to mine, only it deeply sleeps—oh, dull, dull, dull—and wakefulness is bliss, wakefulness is life——”

“Oh, come, no more of it,” now said Inspector Gibbon, interrupting him with a good-natured disdain, drawing the young man away; and Hannibal Lepsius uttered no other word.

They took him to the back door, Healy and I following mutely behind, and down the two steps they went, and across the yard toward the oak tree and the swing-gate that is close by the south garden-wall. The moon was about at her full in a sky without one cloud in it, so that I could see that the boy’s right foot, as he walked, was drawing part of the coil of rope from the stables which generally lies just there by the back door; and I whispered to Healy, “He has got his leg entangled in the rope!”

They were by this time not three feet from the old oak tree, Inspector Gibbon at the young man’s right arm, Shooter at the left, keeping a strong grip, I could see, and a cautious guard, since they had been so warned; nor had I, for my part, the least expectation of seeing him escape them ere they reached the tree, or indeed at any time; but all at once, just as they reached the tree, without even the least effort I now beheld him easily free; and the next instant one saw a sight!—the two constables all entangled, and Hannibal Lepsius running furiously round and round the tree, ever with every revolution at a shorter distance from it, the rope in his hand, roping with many whorles the two men to the tree. I never was so curiously affected, I think, by any sight—with a feeling of religion and hallelujah, I may say, the two men’s bulk of flesh looking so abject and helpless in the hands of that wit, like hippopotami with their insignificant skulls: though how he had contrived to escape out of their grasp without a struggle I still had no idea. To tie their hands, their arms being already bound, was to him not the work of a minute, and suddenly he was rushing back to the house, dashed inward past Healy and me without a word, and by the time we two had returned to Mrs. Bowden’s room, he was already whining and whimpering anew over his stone, as if nothing had happened.

“But in what way——?” I began to say to him, when Healy’s “_sh-h-h_” again checked my tongue; so in the corner Healy and I discussed in agitated whispers what had taken place. When I asked Healy if he knew in what manner the young man had escaped the police, he answered by asking me, “What’s in that little bottle on the table?”

At this I felt myself fly red to the roots of my hair! for he meant the vial of vitriol which, procured at Wynton on the 27th, I have been foolishly fingering ever since.

“How should I know what is in the vial?” I said to Healy.

“Well, whatever it is,” he said, “it is something that makes cloth rotten in a tick, for when you went out to tell the officers to come in, he dipped a match into the vial, drew with the match a circle on each of his shirt sleeves, and now, you see, the two pieces of shirt have disappeared”—and in truth the young man’s arm nearest me was showing through a hole in his shirt, so I understood that by the working of the vitriol the two pieces of shirt had come away in the policemen’s hands. I had begun to say, “Well, it was not so wonderful, after all, now that one knows how——” when one of the bound men began to shout out for succour; upon which Hanni Lepsius groaned within himself over his stone, and, without glancing up, told Healy to go and give them to know that if they made but one other outcry before the daybreak he would gag and agonise them; so Healy hastened out to say this, and thenceforth the two men remained mum.

After this Healy and I talked in our corner till the clocks tolled three, by which time both our heads were ready to nod, our words dried up, and still on in the soundless night worked Hanni Lepsius over that stone. I did not hear four strike, for I was in a little sleep; but immediately after half-past four I heard, or dreamed that I heard, a laugh somewhere, and I started awake, aware that his study of the stone was over, and that he was standing at my side.

At once, as I opened my eyes, he handed me the vial of vitriol, bowing a little, and smiling.

“What is this?” I asked him.

“It is oil of vitriol,” replies the boy.

I ought, if I had had my wits, to have asked him why he handed it to me! but, being only half-awake and confused, I foolishly took the thing and put it down without finding a word to say; and I saw his gaze linger strangely upon me. Then he said, “I am very hungry.”

I ran and fetched him bread, cheese, and water, for he will eat no meat; and it was while eating that he asked me whether I had with me those two hundred pounds which I had told him that I had hoarded. I replied that I had with me ninety pounds only; he then demanded of me if I had this in metal or in notes, and on my replying “in notes,” he said that he desired to see at once what a banknote is like, and would I run and bring him the money that he might see. Proud to do him a pleasure, though it was a journey through the house at that hour, I light my candle, I set off, and soon return with my roll of notes. He sat with them, fingering, holding them up to the gas, while I, with my hand on his shoulder, remarked that all that was to begin our little _ménage_, informed him that everything had been arranged for our marriage, and asked him when that little affair was to be. His answer was that it should be that very day at two o’clock, and I felt my heart start once and cease to beat, my right knee trembling like a string. While I stood thus agitated behind him, he, examining the banknotes, requests me to give him an envelope; so I go to Mrs. Bowden’s desk, I get an envelope, and, as I give this to him, he hands me back my roll of notes, takes the envelope, puts into it a piece of tissue-paper, on which he had written some words with a stump of blue pencil, fastens the envelope, and with the pencil writes on it the words, “To Eve Vickery.”

I started! and I started anew when he said to me, “Hand this to that lady when she awakes.”

“But what do you mean?” I said, shrinking from him; “do you, then, wish to outrage me? and do you suppose that I would do such a thing, really?”

“You will,” he said; and to Healy, “Come.”

“But stay!” I cried; “at what hour of the day do I see you?...”

He was already at the door of the room, but came back a little, saying, “At noon; and the marriage at two”—whereupon he anew picks up the vial of vitriol from the table, hands it to me, and goes through the doorway—the good God only knows why he did this.

I darted after, caught him at the back door, and, casting my arms about him, wet his cheek with my kisses and tears. He made no remark, save to say, “Do not release those police until twenty minutes past five”; and he went.

The moon had set, and the new day hardly yet dawning, but I could see him go past the oak tree without a glance at the two prisoners, and go away like ghosts, he and his Healy, through the swing-gate close by the south garden-wall.

I had then to sit up till twenty past five, as he had said, to release the police, when I brought them in, gave them some breakfast, and impressed it upon them that it was useless for them to seek him, since he was “gone away,” I said; and even if he was not, they could never get him, I said: a statement which they seemed to believe, for they were very dejected and shivering.

It is now near seven, and here I still sit, even now not sleepy, for this is the day of my life. What is in my heart? Is it peace? Is it dancing? I think I have a fear....

It will soon be time to be at Miss Eve’s bedside. Of course, I shall not give her the envelope, though he said with assurance that I will; but I have not as yet opened it to see what is in it, for I fear his consciousness of things.... There is something solid in it, like the half of a halfpenny, and a chain....

The 29th, at nine in the night. He has robbed me of my savings, he has abandoned me, he is gone for ever!... No, my God, I cannot write, my head cannot hold itself up.

The 30th. I will vitriolise him. God knows, that will not be easy, he has many eyes, it will be almost impossible: but those great men who make discoveries which amaze the creation—in what manner do they accomplish this? I think it is not because their wits are so vastly more than those of ordinary folk, but because their lives are wholly devoted to one thing only, as my life henceforth will be wholly devoted to this alone. God help me in this; it will be only after years of effort that I can even hope to do it, but one day, if God be my Helper, it will be done “al-right.”

When at two yesterday he could not be anywhere found, I opened with steam the envelope addressed to Miss Eve, and found that he had written on the piece of tissue-paper in it the words, “Beldam Eve, farewell for two years, from your slave for ever, Hannibal Lepsius. Please tell Jeanne Auvache where I have laid her money.” The meaning of this last phrase I could not for fully an hour make any sense of, since my brain was reeling round and round; then it occurred to me to look anew at the roll of notes that he had handed me back, and when I now flew to them, I found that only the two outer ones were now notes, all within being mere stuffing of tissue-paper. For a long time I lay on the floor by the trunk, feeling myself ruined, for the loss of even a franc has always appeared irreparable to me, and here were two thousand francs departed by fraud, for ever, out of my life. But after a time I thought of the words in the note to Miss Eve, “Please tell Jeanne Auvache where I have laid her money,” and without stopping to ask myself how Miss Eve could know this, I picked myself up to run straight to her with the note, no more caring whether she noticed that I had opened it, for I cared for nothing. First, however, I tried to detach the half-coin from the note—it was the half of a sovereign which had been split in two, and through a hole in it passed one of those little chains such as medallions are hung from round infants’ necks; but he had artfully gummed the half-coin to the tissue-paper just by the words “please tell Jeanne Auvache,” and, as I could not get away the coin without tearing the paper, I ran with the whole to Miss Eve in the eagerness of my hope to get back my money—forgetting at the moment that this was even what that fiend had foretold that I would do. Miss Eve was in her boudoir alone, reading in her rocking-chair, and suddenly, without rapping, I was there before her, holding out the note and chain. She lifts her eyes, and instantly a faint flush flew to suffuse her face. “What is it?” says she, taking the thing, and in one moment her eyes had run over the words, she had thrown the note aside with a little motion of the wrist in a little hurry, like one brushing off a fly, and was anew perusing her book.

“Miss Vickery,” I said, “can you tell me where my money is laid?”

Anew she lifts her eyes, looks at me silently, and from that look I knew at once that that phrase in the note had only been put into it so as to ensure that Miss Eve should receive the note; for he knew that I would open the envelope, and that Miss Eve knew nothing as to where my money is, for how could she? My money is in his pocket, that is where my money is, my two thousand francs.

The 31st. I was not allowed to get out of bed to-day, and ah, these English, they are frigid, they are hard on the surface, but beneath they are tenderer and better than all the world. I expected that Miss Ruth would lavish the compassion of her ever-wounded bosom upon my grief, but I have been even deeper touched by the goodness of Miss Eve. When, in one of the paroxysms, I cried, “Miss Vickery, I will vitriolise, I will vitriolise him, if it is in fifteen years to come!” she, with a look that flashed anger at me, began to say, “You shameful woman!” but then rushed to the bed and warmly embraced me in her arms, murmuring many times in words of wooing, “Poor bruised heart, poor wounded woman,” with water swimming in her eyes, while I wept on her. A French lady would not have kissed me on the lips.... In the afternoon when I knew that she was below, I stole from bed, and, creeping to her boudoir, peeped in to see if the tissue-paper note with the half of a sovereign was yet on the card-table, whither she had brushed it from her; but it had vanished.

The 2nd. I must go away, and in haste, since this holy house is no place for me to linger one hour in, with my heart all a nest of hissing asps. I recognise it to be an incongruity, as a devil in disguise in high heaven might be. Miss Eve would have me revoke the notice to leave that I have given her: but I will go. In truth, thy youth is over, Jeanne, thy last hope of happiness has perished, thy very last rose is ashes. Is it not certainly a dog’s world? and I will get back into it black and bitter, a hag at heart, bidding good-bye to the time of bloom, to all beauties of youth, abandoning my being recklessly to rancour and wrinkles, decay and tragedy and destruction. I do not care, I will vitriolise him, if he live as high from me as the sky, and within a week, I swear it, will have left this place and these people....