The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

“No cheering news, then?” asked I in a whisper.

Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on his lips.

CHAPTER VIII

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland’s thoughts, whatever their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.

Yet as “restless I rolled around my weary bed,” and revolved the renewal of Vivian’s connection with a man of character so equivocal as Peacock; the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his own in the service of Trevanion; the care with which he had concealed from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion’s maid; the words that had passed between them,—plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still suspicious; and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian’s reckless ambition and unprincipled sentiments,—nay, the effect that a few random words upon Fanny’s fortune, and the luck of winning an heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious temper,—when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, in the darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, more experienced in the world than myself, to advise me as to the course I ought to pursue. Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what? The character of the servant, or the designs of the fictitious Gower? Against the first I could say, if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without—not indeed betraying his confidence, for that he had never given me—but without belying the professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever were his real secrets to Trevanion; and, if not, I might indeed ruin his prospects by revealing the aliases he assumed. But wherefore reveal, and wherefore warn? Because of suspicions that I could not myself analyze,—suspicions founded on circumstances most of which had already been seemingly explained away. Still, when morning came, I was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland’s countenance, and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care that I had no option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in his strong understanding and unerring sense of honor, I wandered out, hoping that in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts and solve the problem that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And, this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon Lady Ellinor and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.

Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, borne by post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement, scattering to the right and left all humbler equipages, and hurried, as if on an errand of life and death, up the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland Place. But rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen distinctly the face of Fanny Trevanion in the carriage; and that face wore a strange expression, which seemed to me to speak of anxiety and grief; and by her side—Was not that the woman I had seen with Peacock? I did not see the face of the woman, but I thought I recognized the cloak, the bonnet, and peculiar turn of the head. If I could be mistaken there, I was not mistaken at least as to the servant on the seat behind. Looking back at a butcher’s boy who had just escaped being run over, and was revenging himself by all the imprecations the Dirae of London slang could suggest, the face of Mr. Peacock was exposed in full to my gaze.

My first impulse, on recovering my surprise, was to spring after the carriage; in the haste of that impulse, I cried “Stop!” But the carriage was out of sight in a moment, and my word was lost in air. Full of presentiments of some evil,—I knew not what,—I then altered my course, and stopped not till I found myself, panting and out of breath, in St. James’s Square—at the door of Trevanion’s house—in the hall. The porter had a newspaper in his hand as he admitted me.

“Where is Lady Ellinor? I must see her instantly.”

“No worse news of master, I hope, sir?”

“Worse news of what, of whom? Of Mr. Trevanion?”

“Did you not know he was suddenly taken ill, sir,—that a servant came express to say so last night? Lady Ellinor went off at ten o’clock to join him.”

“At ten o’clock last night?”

“Yes, sir; the servant’s account alarmed her ladyship so much.”

“The new servant, who had been recommended by Mr. Gower?”

“Yes, sir,—Henry,” answered the porter, staring at me. “Please, sir, here is an account of master’s attack in the paper. I suppose Henry took it to the office before he came here,—which was very wrong in him; but I am afraid he’s a very foolish fellow.”

“Never mind that. Miss Trevanion,—I saw her just now,—she did not go with her mother: where was she going, then?”

“Why, sir,—but pray step into the parlor.”

“No, no; speak!”

“Why, sir, before Lady Ellinor set out she was afraid that there might be something in the papers to alarm Miss Fanny, and so she sent Henry down to Lady Castleton’s to beg her ladyship to make as light of it as she could; but it seems that Henry blabbed the worst to Mrs. Mole.”

“Who is Mrs. Mole?”

“Miss Trevanion’s maid, sir,—a new maid; and Mrs. Mole blabbed to my young lady, and so she took fright, and insisted on coming to town. And Lady Castleton, who is ill herself in bed, could not keep her, I suppose,—especially as Henry said, though he ought to have known better, ‘that she would be in time to arrive before my lady set off.’ Poor Miss Trevanion was so disappointed when she found her mamma gone. And then she would order fresh horses and go on, though Mrs. Bates (the housekeeper, you know, sir) was very angry with Mrs. Mole, who encouraged Miss; and—”

“Good heavens! Why did not Mrs. Bates go with her?”

“Why, sir, you know how old Mrs. Bates is, and my young lady is always so kind that she would not hear of it, as she is going to travel night and day; and Mrs. Mole said she had gone all over the world with her last lady, and that—”

“I see it all. Where is Mr. Gower?”

“Mr. Gower, sir!”

“Yes! Can’t you answer?”

“Why, with Mr. Trevanion, I believe, sir.”

“In the North,—what is the address!”

“Lord N—, C—Hall, near W—”

I heard no more.

The conviction of some villanous snare struck me as with the swiftness and force of lightning. Why, if Trevanion were really ill, had the false servant concealed it from me? Why suffered me to waste his time, instead of hastening to Lady Ellinor? How, if Mr. Trevanion’s sudden illness had brought the man to London,—how had he known so long beforehand (as he himself told me, and his appointment with the waiting-woman proved) the day he should arrive? Why now, if there were no design of which Miss Trevanion was the object, why so frustrate the provident foresight of her mother, and take advantage of the natural yearning of affection, the quick impulse of youth, to hurry off a girl whose very station forbade her to take such a journey without suitable protection,—against what must be the wish, and what clearly were the instructions, of Lady Ellinor? Alone, worse than alone! Fanny Trevanion was then in the hands of two servants who were the instruments and confidants of an adventurer like Vivian; and that conference between those servants, those broken references to the morrow coupled with the name Vivian had assumed,—needed the unerring instincts of love more cause for terror?—terror the darker because the exact shape it should assume was obscure and indistinct.

I sprang from the house.

I hastened into the Haymarket, summoned a cabriolet, drove home as fast as I could (for I had no money about me for the journey I meditated), sent the servant of the lodging to engage a chaise-and-four, rushed into the room, where Roland fortunately still was, and exclaimed,—“Uncle, come with me! Take money, plenty of money! Some villany I know, though I can’t explain it, has been practised on the Trevanions. We may defeat it yet. I will tell you all by the way. Come, come!”

“Certainly. But villany,—and to people of such a station—pooh! collect yourself. Who is the villain?”

“Oh, the man I had loved as a friend; the man whom I myself helped to make known to Trevanion,—Vivian, Vivian!”

“Vivian! Ah, the youth I have heard you speak of! But how? Villany to whom,—to Trevanion?”

“You torture me with your questions. Listen: this Vivian (I know him),—he has introduced into the house, as a servant, an agent capable of any trick and fraud; that servant has aided him to win over her maid,—Fanny’s—Miss Trevanion’s. Miss Trevanion is an heiress, Vivian an adventurer. My head swims round; I cannot explain now. Ha! I will write a line to Lord Castleton,—tell him my fears and suspicions; he will follow us, I know, or do what is best.”

I drew ink and paper towards me and wrote hastily. My uncle came round and looked over my shoulder.

Suddenly he exclaimed, seizing my arm: “Gower, Gower! What name is this? You said Vivian.”

“Vivian or Gower,—the same person.”

My uncle hurried out of the room. It was natural that he should leave me to make our joint and brief preparations for departure.

I finished my letter, sealed it, and when, five minutes afterwards, the chaise came to the door, I gave it to the hostler who accompanied the horses, with injunctions to deliver it forthwith to Lord Castleton himself.

My uncle now descended, and stepped from the threshold with a firm stride. “Comfort yourself,” he said, as he entered the chaise, into which I had already thrown myself. “We may be mistaken yet.”

“Mistaken! You do not know this young man. He has every quality that could entangle a girl like Fanny, and not, I fear, one sentiment of honor that would stand in the way of his ambition. I judge him now as by a revelation—too late—Oh Heavens, if it be too late!”

A groan broke from Roland’s lips. I heard in it a proof of his sympathy with my emotion, and grasped his hand, it was as cold as the hand of the dead.

PART XV

CHAPTER I

There would have been nothing in what had chanced to justify the suspicions that tortured me, but for my impressions as to the character of Vivian.

Reader, hast thou not, in the easy, careless sociability of youth, formed acquaintance with some one in whose more engaging or brilliant qualities thou hast,—not lost that dislike to defects or vices which is natural to an age when, even while we err, we adore what is good, and glow with enthusiasts for the ennobling sentiment and the virtuous deed,—no, happily, not lost dislike to what is bad, nor thy quick sense of it,—but conceived a keen interest in the struggle between the bad that revolted, and the good that attracted thee, in thy companion? Then, perhaps, thou hast lost sight of him for a time; suddenly thou hearest that he has done something out of the way of ordinary good or commonplace evil; and in either—the good or the evil—thy mind runs rapidly back over its old reminiscences, and of either thou sayest, “How natural! only, So-and-so could have done this thing!”

Thus I felt respecting Vivian. The most remarkable qualities in his character were his keen power of calculation and his unhesitating audacity,—qualities that lead to fame or to infamy, according to the cultivation of the moral sense and the direction of the passions. Had I recognized those qualities in some agency apparently of good,—and it seemed yet doubtful if Vivian were the agent,—I should have cried, “It is he; and the better angel has triumphed!” With the same (alas! with a yet more impulsive) quickness, when the agency was of evil, and the agent equally dubious, I felt that the qualities revealed the man, and that the demon had prevailed.

Mile after mile, stage after stage, were passed on the dreary, interminable, high north road. I narrated to my companion, more intelligibly than I had yet done, my causes for apprehension. The Captain at first listened eagerly, then checked me on the sudden. “There may be nothing in all this,” he cried. “Sir, we must be men here,—have our heads cool, our reason clear; stop!” And leaning back in the chaise, Roland refused further conversation, and as the night advanced, seemed to sleep. I took pity on his fatigue, and devoured my heart in silence. At each stage we heard of the party of which we were in pursuit. At the first stage or two we were less than an hour behind; gradually, as we advanced, we lost ground, despite the most lavish liberality to the post-boys. I supposed, at length, that the mere circumstance of changing, at each relay, the chaise as well as the horses, was the cause of our comparative slowness; and on saying this to Roland as we were changing horses, somewhere about midnight, he at once called up the master of the inn and gave him his own price for permission to retain the chaise till the journey’s end. This was so unlike Roland’s ordinary thrift, whether dealing with my money or his own,—so unjustified by the fortune of either,—that I could not help muttering something in apology.

“Can you guess why I was a miser?” said Roland, calmly.

“A miser? Anything but that! Only prudent,—military men often are so.”

“I was a miser,” repeated the Captain, with emphasis. “I began the habit first when my son was but a child. I thought him high-spirited, and with a taste for extravagance. ‘Well,’ said I to myself, ‘I will save for him; boys will be boys.’ Then, afterwards, when he was no more a child (at least he began to have the vices of a man), I said to myself, ‘Patience! he may reform still; if not, I will save money, that I may have power over his self-interest, since I have none over his heart. I will bribe him into honor!’ And then—and then—God saw that I was very proud, and I was punished. Tell them to drive faster,—faster; why, this is a snail’s pace!”

All that night, all the next day, till towards the evening, we pursued our journey, without pause or other food than a crust of bread and a glass of wine. But we now picked up the ground we had lost, and gained upon the carriage. The night had closed in when we arrived at the stage at which the route to Lord N—‘s branched from the direct north road. And here, making our usual inquiry, my worst suspicions were confirmed. The carriage we pursued had changed horses an hour before, but had not taken the way to Lord N—‘s, continuing the direct road into Scotland. The people of the inn had not seen the lady in the carriage, for it was already dark; but the man-servant (whose livery they described) had ordered the horses.

The last hope that, in spite of appearances, no treachery had been designed, here vanished. The Captain at first seemed more dismayed than myself, but he recovered more quickly. “We will continue the journey on horseback,” he said; and hurried to the stables. All objections vanished at the sight of his gold. In five minutes we were in the saddle, with a postilion, also mounted, to accompany us. We did the next stage in little more than two thirds of the time which we should have occupied in our former mode of travel,—indeed I found it hard to keep pace with Roland. We remounted; we were only twenty-five minutes behind the carriage,—we felt confident that we should overtake it before it could reach the next town. The moon was up: we could see far before us; we rode at full speed. Milestone after milestone glided by; the carriage was not visible. We arrived at the post-town or rather village; it contained but one posting-house. We were long in knocking up the hostlers: no carriage had arrived just before us; no carriage had passed the place since noon.

What mystery was this?

“Back, back, boy!” said Roland, with a soldier’s quick wit, and spurring his jaded horse from the yard. “They will have taken a cross-road or by-lane. We shall track them by the hoofs of the horses or the print of the wheels.”

Our postilion grumbled, and pointed to the panting sides of our horses. For answer, Roland opened his hand—full of gold. Away we went back through the dull, sleeping village, back into the broad moonlit thoroughfare. We came to a cross-road to the right, but the track we pursued still led us straight on. We had measured back nearly half the way to the post-town at which we had last changed, when lo! there emerged from a by-lane two postilions and their horses!

At that sight our companion, shouting loud, pushed on before us and hailed his fellows. A few words gave us the information we sought. A wheel had come off the carriage just by the turn of the road, and the young lady and her servants had taken refuge in a small inn not many yards down the lane. The man-servant had dismissed the post-boys after they had baited their horses, saying they were to come again in the morning and bring a blacksmith to repair the wheel.

“How came the wheel off?” asked Roland, sternly.

“Why, sir, the linch-pin was all rotted away, I suppose, and came out.”

“Did the servant get off the dickey after you set out, and before the accident happened?”

“Why, yes. He said the wheels were catching fire, that they had not the patent axles, and he had forgot to have them oiled.”

“And he looked at the wheels, and shortly afterwards the linch-pin came out? Eh?”

“Anan, sir!” said the post-boy, staring; “why, and indeed so it was!”

“Come on, Pisistratus, we are in time; but pray God, pray God that—” The Captain dashed his spurs into the horse’s sides, and the rest of his words were lost to me.

A few yards back from the causeway, a broad patch of green before it, stood the inn,—a sullen, old-fashioned building of cold gray stone, looking livid in the moonlight, with black firs at one side throwing over half of it a dismal shadow. So solitary,—not a house, not a hut near it! If they who kept the inn were such that villany might reckon on their connivance, and innocence despair of their aid, there was no neighborhood to alarm, no refuge at hand. The spot was well chosen.

The doors of the inn were closed; there was a light in the room below: but the outside shutters were drawn over the windows on the first floor. My uncle paused a moment, and said to the postilion,—

“Do you know the back way to the premises?”

“No, sir; I doesn’t often come by this way, and they be new folks that have taken the house,—and I hear it don’t prosper over much.”

“Knock at the door; we will stand a little aside while you do so. If any one ask what you want, merely say you would speak to the servant,—that you have found a purse. Here, hold up mine.”

Roland and I had dismounted, and my uncle drew me close to the wall by the door, observing that my impatience ill submitted to what seemed to me idle preliminaries.

“Hist!” whispered he. “If there be anything to conceal within, they will not answer the door till some one has reconnoitred; were they to see us, they would refuse to open. But seeing only the post-boy, whom they will suppose at first to be one of those who brought the carriage, they will have no suspicion. Be ready to rush in the moment the door is unbarred.”

My uncle’s veteran experience did not deceive him. There was a long silence before any reply was made to the post-boy’s summons; the light passed to and fro rapidly across the window, as if persons were moving within. Roland made sign to the post-boy to knock again. He did so twice, thrice; and at last, from an attic window in the roof, a head obtruded and a voice cried, “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m the post-boy at the Red Lion; I want to see the servant with the brown carriage: I have found this purse!”

“Oh! that’s all; wait a bit.”

The head disappeared. We crept along under the projecting eaves of the house; we heard the bar lifted from the door, the door itself cautiously opened: one spring, and I stood within, and set my back to the door to admit Roland.

“Ho, help! thieves! help!” cried a loud voice, and I felt a hand grip at my throat. I struck at random in the dark, and with effect, for my blow was followed by a groan and a curse.

Roland, meanwhile, had detected a ray through the chinks of a door in the hall, and, guided by it, found his way into the room at the window of which we had seen the light pass and go, while without. As he threw the door open, I bounded after him and saw, in a kind of parlor, two females,—the one a stranger, no doubt the hostess; the other the treacherous abigail. Their faces evinced their terror.

“Woman,” I said, seizing the last, “where is Miss Trevanion?” Instead of replying, the woman set up a loud shriek. Another light now gleamed from the staircase which immediately faced the door, and I heard a voice, that I recognized as Peacock’s, cry out, “Who’s there?—What’s the matter?”

I made a rush at the stairs. A burly form (that of the landlord, who had recovered from my blow) obstructed my way for a moment, to measure its length on the floor at the next. I was at the top of the stairs; Peacock recognized me, recoiled, and extinguished the light. Oaths, cries, and shrieks now resounded through the dark. Amidst them all I suddenly heard a voice exclaim, “Here, here! help!” It was the voice of Fanny. I made my way to the right, whence the voice came, and received a violent blow. Fortunately it fell on the arm which I extended, as men do who feel their way through the dark. It was not the right arm, and I seized and closed on my assailant. Roland now came up, a candle in his hand; and at that sight my antagonist, who was no other than Peacock, slipped from me and made a rush at the stairs. But the Captain caught him with his grasp of iron. Fearing nothing for Roland in a contest with any single foe, and all my thoughts bent on the rescue of her whose voice again broke on my ear, I had already (before the light of the candle which Roland held went out in the struggle between himself and Peacock) caught sight of a door at the end of the passage, and thrown myself against it: it was locked, but it shook and groaned to my pressure.

“Hold back, whoever you are,” cried a voice from the room within, far different from that wail of distress which had guided my steps. “Hold back at the peril of your life!”

The voice, the threat, redoubled my strength: the door flew from its fastenings. I stood in the room. I saw Fanny at my feet, clasping my hands; then raising herself, she hung on my shoulder and murmured “Saved!” Opposite to me, his face deformed by passion, his eyes literally blazing with savage fire, his nostrils distended, his lips apart, stood the man I have called Francis Vivian.

“Fanny—Miss Trevanion—what outrage, what villany is this? You have not met this man at your free choice,—oh, speak!” Vivian sprang forward.

“Question no one but me. Unhand that lady,—she is my betrothed; shall be my wife.”

“No, no, no,—don’t believe him,” cried Fanny; “I have been betrayed by my own servants,—brought here, I know not how! I heard my father was ill; I was on my way to him that man met me here and dared to—”

“Miss Trevanion—yes, I dared to say I loved you!”

“Protect me from him! You will protect me from him?”

“No, madam!” said a voice behind me, in a deep tone; “it is I who claim the right to protect you from that man; it is I who now draw around you the arm of one sacred, even to him; it is I who, from this spot, launch upon his head—a father’s curse. Violator of the hearth, baffled ravisher, go thy way to the doom which thou hast chosen for thyself! God will be merciful to me yet, and give me a grave before thy course find its close in the hulks or at the gallows!”