CHAPTER XXVI.
THE SPY FLIES.
Meanwhile at Laughton there was confusion and alarm. Helen had found
herself more than usually unwell in the morning; towards noon, the maid
who attended her informed Madame Dalibard that she was afraid the poor
young lady had much fever, and inquired if the doctor should be sent for.
Madame Dalibard seemed surprised at the intelligence, and directed her
chair to be wheeled into her niece's room, in order herself to judge of
Helen's state. The maid, sure that the doctor would be summoned,
hastened to the stables, and seeing Beck, instructed him to saddle one of
the horses and to await further orders. Beck kept her a few moments
talking while he saddled his horse, and then followed her into the house,
observing that it would save time if he were close at hand.
"That is quite true," said the maid, "and you may as well wait in the
corridor. Madame may wish to speak to you herself, and give you her own
message or note to the doctor."
Beck, full of gloomy suspicions, gladly obeyed, and while the maid
entered the sick-chamber, stood anxiously without. Presently Varney
passed him, and knocked at Helen's door; the maid half-opened it.
"How is Miss Mainwaring?" said he, eagerly.
"I fear she is worse, sir; but Madame Dalibard does not think there is
any danger."
"No danger! I am glad; but pray ask Madame Dalibard to let me see her
for a few moments in her own room. If she come out, I will wheel her
chair to it. Whether there is danger or not, we had better send for
other advice than this country doctor, who has perhaps mistaken the case;
tell her I am very uneasy, and beg her to join me immediately."
"I think you are quite right, sir," said the maid, closing the door.
Varney then, turning round for the first time, noticed Beck, and said
roughly,--
"What do you do here? Wait below till you are sent for."
Beck pulled his forelock, and retreated back, not in the direction of the
principal staircase, but towards that used by the servants, and which his
researches into the topography of the mansion had now made known to him.
To gain these back stairs he had to pass Lucretia's room; the door stood
ajar; Varney's face was turned from him. Beck breathed hard, looked
round, then crept within, and in a moment was behind the folds of the
tapestry.
Soon the chair in which sat Madame Dalibard was drawn by Varney himself
into the room.
Shutting the door with care, and turning the key, Gabriel said, with low,
suppressed passion,--
"Well; your mind seems wandering,--speak!"
"It is strange," said Lucretia, in hollow tones, "can Nature turn
accomplice, and befriend us here?"
"Nature! did you not last night administer the--"
"No," interrupted Lucretia. "No; she came into the room, she kissed me
here,--on the brow that even then was meditating murder. The kiss
burned; it burns still,--it eats into the brain like remorse. But I did
not yield; I read again her false father's protestation of love; I read
again the letter announcing the discovery of my son, and remorse lay
still. I went forth as before, I stole into her chamber, I had the fatal
crystal in my hand--"
"Well, well!"
"And suddenly there came the fearful howl of a dog, and the dog's fierce
eyes glared on me. I paused, I trembled; Helen started, woke, called
aloud. I turned and fled. The poison was not given."
Varney ground his teeth. "But this illness! Ha! the effect, perhaps, of
the drops administered two nights ago."
"No; this illness has no symptoms like those the poison should bequeath,-
-it is but natural fever, a shock on the nerves; she told me she had been
wakened by the dog's howl, and seen a dark form, like a thing from the
grave, creeping along the floor. But she is really ill; send for the
physician; there is nothing in her illness to betray the hand of man. Be
it as it may,--that kiss still burns; I will stir in this no more. Do
what you will yourself!"
"Fool, fool!" exclaimed Varney, almost rudely grasping her arm.
"Remember how much we have yet to prepare for, how much to do,--and the
time so short! Percival's return,--perhaps this Greville's arrival.
Give me the drugs; I will mix them for her in the potion the physician
sends. And when Percival returns,--his Helen dead or dying,--I will
attend on him! Silent still? Recall your son! Soon you will clasp him
in your arms as a beggar, or as the lord of Laughton!"
Lucretia shuddered, but did not rise; she drew forth a ring of keys from
her bosom, and pointed towards a secretary. Varney snatched the keys,
unlocked the secretary, seized the fatal casket, and sat down quietly
before it.
When the dire selections were made, and secreted about his person, Varney
rose, approached the fire, and blew the wood embers to a blaze.
"And now," he said, with his icy irony of smile, "we may dismiss these
useful instruments,--perhaps forever. Though Walter Ardworth, in
restoring your son, leaves us dependent on that son's filial affection,
and I may have, therefore, little to hope for from the succession, to
secure which I have risked and am again to risk my life, I yet trust to
that influence which you never fail to obtain over others. I take it for
granted that when these halls are Vincent Braddell's, we shall have no
need of gold, nor of these pale alchemies. Perish, then, the mute
witnesses of our acts, the elements we have bowed to our will! No poison
shall be found in our hoards! Fire, consume your consuming children!"
As he spoke, he threw upon the hearth the contents of the casket, and set
his heel upon the logs. A bluish flame shot up, breaking into countless
sparks, and then died.
Lucretia watched him without speaking.
In coming back towards the table, Varney felt something hard beneath his
tread; he stooped, and picked up the ring which has before been described
as amongst the ghastly treasures of the casket, and which had rolled on
the floor almost to Lucretia's feet, as he had emptied the contents on
the hearth.
"This, at least, need tell no tales," said he; "a pity to destroy so rare
a piece of workmanship,--one, too, which we never can replace!"
"Ay," said Lucretia, abstractedly; "and if detection comes, it may secure
a refuge from the gibbet. Give me the ring."
"A refuge more terrible than the detection," said Varney,--"beware of
such a thought," as Lucretia, taking it from his hand, placed the ring on
her finger.
"And now I leave you for a while to recollect yourself,--to compose your
countenance and your thoughts. I will send for the physician."
Lucretia, with her eyes fixed on the floor, did not heed him, and he
withdrew.
So motionless was her attitude, so still her very breathing, that the
unseen witness behind the tapestry, who, while struck with horror at what
he had overheard (the general purport of which it was impossible that he
could misunderstand), was parched with impatience to escape to rescue his
beloved master from his impending fate, and warn him of the fate hovering
nearer still over Helen, ventured to creep along the wall to the
threshold, to peer forth from the arras, and seeing her eyes still
downcast, to emerge, and place his hand on the door. At that very moment
Lucretia looked up, and saw him gliding from the tapestry; their eyes
met: his were fascinated as the bird's by the snake's. At the sight, all
her craft, her intellect, returned. With a glance, she comprehended the
terrible danger that awaited her. Before he was aware of her movement,
she was at his side; her hand on his own, her voice in his ear.
"Stir not a step, utter not a sound, or you are--"
Beck did not suffer her to proceed. With the violence rather of fear
than of courage, he struck her to the ground; but she clung to him still,
and though rendered for the moment speechless by the suddenness of the
blow, her eyes took an expression of unspeakable cruelty and fierceness.
He struggled with all his might to shake her off; as he did so, she
placed feebly her other hand upon the wrist of the lifted arm that had
smitten her, and he felt a sharp pain, as if the nails had fastened into
the flesh. This but exasperated him to new efforts. He extricated
himself from her grasp, which relaxed as her lips writhed into a smile of
scorn and triumph, and, spurning her while she lay before the threshold,
he opened the door, sprang forward, and escaped. No thought had he of
tarrying in that House of Pelops, those human shambles, of denouncing
Murder in its lair; to fly to reach his master, warn, and shield him,--
that was the sole thought which crossed his confused, bewildered brain.
It might be from four to five minutes that Lucretia, half-stunned, half-
senseless, lay upon those floors,--for besides the violence of her fall,
the shock of the struggle upon nerves weakened by the agony of
apprehension, occasioned by the imminent and unforeseen chance of
detection, paralyzed her wondrous vigour of mind and frame,--when Varney
entered.
"They tell me she sleeps," he said, in hoarse, muttered accents, before
he saw the prostrate form at his very feet. But Varney's step, Varney's
voice, had awakened Lucretia's reason to consciousness and the sense of
peril. Rising, though with effort, she related hurriedly what had
passed.
"Fly, fly!" she gasped, as she concluded. "Fly, to detain, to secrete,
this man somewhere for the next few hours. Silence him but till then; I
have done the rest!" and her finger pointed to the fatal ring. Varney
waited for no further words; he hurried out, and made at once to the
stables: his shrewdness conjectured that Beck would carry his tale
elsewhere. The groom was already gone (his fellows said) without a word,
but towards the lodge that led to the Southampton road. Varney ordered
the swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he sprang
on his back,--
"I, too, must go towards Southampton. The poor young lady! I must
prepare your master,--he is on his road back to us;" and the last word
was scarce out of his lips as the sparks flew from the flints under the
horse's hoofs, and he spurred from the yard.
As he rode at full speed through the park, the villain's mind sped more
rapidly than the animal he bestrode,--sped from fear to hope, hope to
assurance. Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,--incoherent,
improbable as the tale would be,--who would believe it? How easy to meet
tale by tale! The man must own that he was secreted behind the
tapestry,--wherefore but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had
coined this wretched fable. And the spy, too, could not live through the
day; he bore Death with him as he rode, he fed its force by his speed,
and the effects of the venom itself would be those of frenzy. Tush! his
tale, at best, would seem but the ravings of delirium. Still, it was
well to track him where he went,--delay him, if possible; and Varney's
spurs plunged deep and deeper into the bleeding flanks: on desperately
scoured the horse. He passed the lodge; he was on the road; a chaise and
pair dashed by him; he heard not a voice exclaim "Varney!" he saw not the
wondering face of John Ardworth; bending over the tossing mane, he was
deaf, he was blind, to all without and around. A milestone glides by,
another, and a third. Ha! his eyes can see now. The object of his chase
is before him,--he views distinctly, on the brow of yon hill, the horse
and the rider, spurring fast, like himself. They descend the hill, horse
and horseman, and are snatched from his sight. Up the steep strains the
pursuer. He is at the summit. He sees the fugitive before him, almost
within hearing. Beck has slackened his steed; he seems swaying to and
fro in the saddle. Ho, ho! the barbed ring begins to work in his veins.
Varney looks round,--not another soul is in sight; a deep wood skirts the
road. Place and time seem to favour; Beck has reined in his horse,--he
bends low over the saddle, as if about to fall. Varney utters a half-
suppressed cry of triumph, shakes his reins, and spurs on, when suddenly-
-by the curve of the road, hid before--another chaise comes in sight,
close where Beck had wearily halted.
The chaise stops; Varney pulls in, and draws aside to the hedgerow. Some
one within the vehicle is speaking to the fugitive! May it not be St.
John himself? To his rage and his terror, he sees Beck painfully
dismount from his horse, sees him totter to the door of the chaise, sees
a servant leap from the box and help him up the step, sees him enter. It
must be Percival on his return,--Percival, to whom he tells that story of
horror! Varney's brute-like courage forsook him; his heart was appalled.
In one of those panics so common with that boldness which is but animal,
his sole thought became that of escape. He turned his horse's head to
the fence, forced his way desperately through the barrier, made into the
wood, and sat there, cowering and listening, till in another minute he
heard the wheels rattle on, and the horses gallop hard down the hill
towards the park.
The autumn wind swept through the trees, it shook the branches of the
lofty ash that overhung the Accursed One. What observer of Nature knows
not that peculiar sound which the ash gives forth in the blast? Not the
solemn groan of the oak, not the hollow murmur of the beech, but a shrill
wail, a shriek as of a human voice in sharp anguish. Varney shuddered,
as if he had heard the death-cry of his intended victim. Through briers
and thickets, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boughs, he plunged
deeper and deeper into the wood, gained at length the main path cut
through it, found himself in a lane, and rode on, careless whither, till
he had reached a small town, about ten miles from Laughton, where he
resolved to wait till his nerves had recovered their tone, and he could
more calmly calculate the chances of safety.
