The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 20

“Is he that kind of a man?” I said, staring on these lamps as though I could decipher in them the secret of my cousin’s character.

“You will find him a dangerous kind,” answered the lawyer. “For you, these are the lights on a lee shore! I find I fall in a muse when I consider of him; what a formidable being he once was, and what a personable! and how near he draws to the moment that must break him utterly! We none of us like him here; we hate him, rather; and yet I have a sense – I don’t think at my time of life it can be pity – but a reluctance rather, to break anything so big and figurative, as though he were a big porcelain pot or a big picture of high price. Ay, there is what I was waiting for!” he cried, as the lights of a second chaise swam in sight. “It is he beyond a doubt. The first was the signature and the next the flourish. The two chaises, the second following with the baggage, which is always copious and ponderous, and one of his valets: he cannot go a step without a valet.”

“I hear you repeat the word big,” said I. “But it cannot be that he is anything out of the way in stature.”

“No,” said the attorney. “About your height, as I guessed for the tailors, and I see nothing wrong with the result. But, somehow, he commands an atmosphere; he has a spacious manner; and he has kept up, all through life, such a volume of racket about his personality, with his chaises and his racers and his dicings, and I know not what – that somehow he imposes! It seems, when the farce is done, and he locked in Fleet prison – and nobody left but Buonaparte and Lord Wellington and the Hetman Platoff to make a work about – the world will be in a comparison quite tranquil. But this is beside the mark,” he added, with an effort, turning again from the window. “We are now under fire, Mr. Anne, as you soldiers would say, and it is high time we should prepare to go into action. He must not see you; that would be fatal. All that he knows at present is that you resemble him, and that is much more than enough. If it were possible, it would be well he should not know you were in the house.”

“Quite impossible, depend upon it,” said I. “Some of the servants are directly in his interests, perhaps in his pay: Dawson, for an example.”

“My own idea!” cried Romaine. “And at least,” he added, as the first of the chaises drew up with a dash in front of the portico, “it is now too late. Here he is.”

We stood listening, with a strange anxiety, to the various noises that awoke in the silent house: the sound of doors opening and closing, the sound of feet near at hand and farther off. It was plain the arrival of my cousin was a matter of moment, almost of parade, to the household. And suddenly, out of this confused and distant bustle, a rapid and light tread became distinguishable. We heard it come upstairs, draw near along the corridor, pause at the door, and a stealthy and hasty rapping succeeded.

“Mr. Anne – Mr. Anne, sir! Let me in!” said the voice of Rowley.

We admitted the lad, and locked the door again behind him.

“It’s him, sir,” he panted. “He’ve come.”

“You mean the Viscount?” said I. “So we supposed. But come, Rowley – out with the rest of it! You have more to tell us, or your face belies you!”

“Mr. Anne, I do,” he said. “Mr. Romaine, sir, you’re a friend of his, ain’t you?”

“Yes, George, I am a friend of his,” said Romaine, and, to my great surprise, laid his hand upon my shoulder.

“Well, it’s this way,” said Rowley; “Mr. Powl have been at me! It’s to play the spy! I thought he was at it from the first! From the first I see what he was after – coming round and round, and hinting things! But to-night he outs with it plump! I’m to let him hear all what you’re to do beforehand, he says; and he gave me this for an arnest” – holding up half a guinea; “and I took it, so I did! Strike me sky-blue scarlet!” says he, adducing the words of the mock oath; and he looked askance at me as he did so.

I saw that he had forgotten himself, and that he knew it. The expression of his eye changed almost in the passing of the glance from the significant to the appealing – from the look of an accomplice to that of a culprit; and from that moment he became the model of a well-drilled valet.

“Sky-blue scarlet?” repeated the lawyer. “Is the fool delirious?”

“No,” said I; “he is only reminding me of something.”

“Well – and I believe the fellow will be faithful,” said Romaine. “So you are a friend of Mr. Anne’s too?” he added to Rowley.

“If you please, sir,” said Rowley.

“’Tis something sudden,” observed Romaine, “but it may be genuine enough. I believe him to be honest. He comes of honest people. Well, George Rowley, you might embrace some early opportunity to earn that half-guinea by telling Mr. Powl that your master will not leave here till noon to-morrow, if he go even then. Tell him there are a hundred things to be done here, and a hundred more that can only be done properly at my office in Holborn. Come to think of it – we had better see to that first of all,” he went on, unlocking the door. “Get hold of Powl, and see. And be quick back, and clear me up this mess.”

Mr. Rowley was no sooner gone than the lawyer took a pinch of snuff, and regarded me with somewhat of a more genial expression.

“Sir,” said he, “it is very fortunate for you that your face is so strong a letter of recommendation. Here am I, a tough old practitioner, mixing myself up with your very distressing business; and here is this farmer’s lad, who has the wit to take a bribe and the loyalty to come and tell you of it – all, I take it, on the strength of your appearance. I wish I could imagine how it would impress a jury!” says he.

“And how it would affect the hangman, sir?” I asked.

“Absit omen!” said Mr. Romaine devoutly.

We were just so far in our talk, when I heard a sound that brought my heart into my mouth: the sound of some one slily trying the handle of the door. It had been preceded by no audible footstep. Since the departure of Rowley our wing of the house had been entirely silent. And we had every right to suppose ourselves alone, and to conclude that the new-comer, whoever he might be, was come on a clandestine, if not a hostile, errand.

“Who is there?” asked Romaine.

“It’s only me, sir,” said the soft voice of Dawson. “It’s the Viscount, sir. He is very desirous to speak with you on business.”

“Tell him I shall come shortly, Dawson,” said the lawyer. “I am at present engaged.”

“Thank you, sir!” said Dawson.

And we heard his feet draw off slowly along the corridor.

“Yes,” said Mr. Romaine, speaking low, and maintaining the attitude of one intently listening, “there is another foot. I cannot be deceived!”

“I think there was indeed!” said I. “And what troubles me – I am not sure that the other has gone entirely away. By the time it got the length of the head of the stair the tread was plainly single.”

“Ahem – blockaded?” asked the lawyer.

“A siege en règle!” I exclaimed.

“Let us come farther from the door,” said Romaine, “and reconsider this damnable position. Without doubt, Alain was this moment at the door. He hoped to enter and get a view of you, as if by accident. Baffled in this, has he stayed himself, or has he planted Dawson here by way of sentinel?”

“Himself, beyond a doubt,” said I. “And yet to what end? He cannot think to pass the night there!”

“If it were only possible to pay no heed!” said Mr. Romaine. “But this is the accursed drawback of your position. We can do nothing openly. I must smuggle you out of this room and out of this house like seizable goods; and how am I to set about it with a sentinel planted at your very door?”

“There is no good in being agitated,” said I.

“None at all,” he acquiesced. “And, come to think of it, it is droll enough that I should have been that very moment commenting on your personal appearance, when your cousin came upon this mission. I was saying, if you remember, that your face was as good or better than a letter of recommendation. I wonder if M. Alain would be like the rest of us – I wonder what he would think of it?”

Mr. Romaine was sitting in a chair by the fire with his back to the windows, and I was myself kneeling on the hearthrug and beginning mechanically to pick up the scattered bills, when a honeyed voice joined suddenly in our conversation.

“He thinks well of it, Mr. Romaine. He begs to join himself to that circle of admirers which you indicate to exist already.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE DEVIL AND ALL AT AMERSHAM PLACE

Never did two human creatures get to their feet with more alacrity than the lawyer and myself. We had locked and barred the main gates of the citadel; but unhappily we had left open the bath-room sally-port; and here we found the voice of the hostile trumpets sounding from within, and all our defences taken in reverse. I took but the time to whisper Mr. Romaine in the ear: “Here is another tableau for you!” at which he looked at me a moment with a kind of pathos, as who should say, “Don’t hit a man when he’s down.” Then I transferred my eyes to my enemy.

He had his hat on, a little on one side: it was a very tall hat, raked extremely, and had a narrow curling brim. His hair was all curled out in masses like an Italian mountebank – a most unpardonable fashion. He sported a huge tippeted overcoat of frieze, such as watchmen wear, only the inside was lined with costly furs, and he kept it half open to display the exquisite linen, the many-coloured waistcoat, and the profuse jewellery of watch-chains and brooches underneath. The leg and the ankle were turned to a miracle. It is out of the question that I should deny the resemblance altogether, since it has been remarked by so many different persons whom I cannot reasonably accuse of a conspiracy. As a matter of fact, I saw little of it and confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race-meeting, or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared at himself with admiration by the coal porters. Of his frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught up in a smile that could almost be called a snarl, of a sheer, arid malignity that appalled me and yet put me on my mettle for the encounter. He looked me up and down, then bowed and took off his hat to me.

“My cousin, I presume?” he said.

“I understand I have that honour,” I replied.

“The honour is mine,” said he, and his voice shook as he said it.

“I should make you welcome, I believe,” said I.

“Why?” he inquired. “This poor house has been my home for longer than I care to claim. That you should already take upon yourself the duties of host here is to be at unnecessary pains. Believe me, that part would be more becomingly mine. And, by the way, I must not fail to offer you my little compliment. It is a gratifying surprise to meet you in the dress of a gentleman, and to see” – with a circular look upon the scattered bills – “that your necessities have already been so liberally relieved.”