The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 5

“Five minutes!” said Somerset, glancing with horror at the timepiece. “If you do not instantly buckle to your bag, I leave you.”

“A few necessaries,” returned Zero, “only a few necessaries, dear Somerset, and you behold me ready.”

He passed into the bedroom, and after an interval which seemed to draw out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he returned, bearing in his hand an open Gladstone bag. His movements were still horribly deliberate, and his eyes lingered gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he moved to and fro about the drawing-room, gathering a few small trifles. Last of all, he lifted one of the squares of dynamite.

“Put that down!” cried Somerset. “If what you say be true, you have no call to load yourself with that ungodly contraband.”

“Merely a curiosity, dear boy,” he said persuasively, and slipped the brick into his bag; “merely a memento of the past – ah, happy past, bright past! You will not take a touch of spirits? no? I find you very abstemious. Well,” he added, “if you have really no curiosity to await the event – ”

“I!” cried Somerset. “My blood boils to get away.”

“Well, then,” said Zero, “I am ready; I would I could say, willing; but thus to leave the scene of my sublime endeavours – ”

Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and dragged him downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the deserted mansion; and still towing his laggardly companion, the young man sped across the square in the Oxford Street direction. They had not yet passed the corner of the garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a shattering fracas. Somerset turned in time to see the mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and instantly collapse into its cellars. At the same moment, he was thrown violently to the ground. His first glance was towards Zero. The plotter had but reeled against the garden rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon his heart, his whole face radiant with relief and gratitude; and the young man heard him murmur to himself: “Nunc dimittis, nunc dimittis!“

The consternation of the populace was indescribable: the whole of Golden Square was alive with men, women, and children, running wildly to and fro, and, like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and out of the house doors, and under favour of this confusion, Somerset dragged away the lingering plotter.

“It was grand,” he continued to murmur: “it was indescribably grand. Ah, green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and, oh, my calumniated dynamite, how triumphantly hast thou prevailed!”

Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle of the footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.

“Good God!” he cried, “how mortifying! seven minutes too early! The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me. Alas, can there be no success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-letter day be chequered by a shadow?”

“Incomparable ass!” said Somerset, “what have you done? Blown up the house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole earthly property of the only person who is fool enough to befriend you!”

“You do not understand these matters,” replied Zero, with an air of great dignity. “This will shake England to the heart. Gladstone, the truculent old man, will quail before the pointing finger of revenge. And now that my dynamite is proved effective – ”

“Heavens, you remind me!” ejaculated Somerset. “That brick in your bag must be instantly disposed of. But how? If we could throw it in the river – ”

“A torpedo,” cried Zero, brightening, “a torpedo in the Thames! Superb, dear fellow! I recognise in you the marks of an accomplished anarch.”

“True!” returned Somerset. “It cannot so be done; and there is no help but you must carry it away with you. Come on, then, and let me at once consign you to a train.”

“Nay, nay, dear boy,” protested Zero. “There is now no call for me to leave. My character is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this is the best thing I have done yet; and I see from here the ovations that await the author of the Golden Square Atrocity.”

“My young friend,” returned the other, “I give you your choice. I will either see you safe on board a train or safe in gaol.”

“Somerset, this is unlike you!” said the chemist. “You surprise me, Somerset.”

“I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office,” returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage. “For on one point my mind is settled: either I see you packed off to America, brick and all, or else you dine in prison.”

“You have perhaps neglected one point,” returned the unoffended Zero: “for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means you can employ to force me. The will, my dear fellow – ”

“Now, see here,” interrupted Somerset. “You are ignorant of anything but science, which I can never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have studied life; and allow me to inform you that I have but to raise my hand and voice – here in this street – and the mob – ”

“Good God in Heaven, Somerset,” cried Zero, turning deadly white and stopping in his walk, “great God in Heaven, what words are these? Oh, not in jest, not even in jest, should they be used! The brutal mob, the savage passions… Somerset, for God’s sake, a public-house!”

Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity. “This is very interesting,” said he. “You recoil from such a death?”

“Who would not?” asked the plotter.

“And to be blown up by dynamite,” inquired the young man, “doubtless strikes you as a form of euthanasia?”

“Pardon me,” returned Zero: “I own, and, since I have braved it daily in my professional career, I own it even with pride: it is a death unusually distasteful to the mind of man.”

“One more question,” said Somerset; “you object to Lynch Law? why?”

“It is assassination,” said the plotter calmly; but with eyebrows a little lifted, as in wonder at the question.

“Shake hands with me,” cried Somerset. “Thank God, I have now no ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive how I burn to see you on the gallows, I can quite contentedly assist at your departure.”

“I do not very clearly take your meaning,” said Zero, “but I am sure you mean kindly. As to my departure, there is another point to be considered. I have neglected to supply myself with funds; my little all has perished in what history will love to relate under the name of the Golden Square Atrocity; and without what is coarsely if vigorously called stamps, you must be well aware it is impossible for me to pass the ocean.”

“For me,” said Somerset, “you have now ceased to be a man. You have no more claim upon me than a door-scraper; but the touching confusion of your mind disarms me from extremities. Until to-day, I always thought stupidity was funny; I now know otherwise; and when I look upon your idiot face, laughter rises within me like a deadly sickness, and the tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as blood. What should this portend? I begin to doubt; I am losing faith in scepticism. Is it possible,” he cried, in a kind of horror of himself – “is it conceivable that I believe in right and wrong? Already I have found myself, with incredulous surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour. And must this change proceed? Have you robbed me of my youth? Must I fall, at my time of life, into the Common Banker? But why should I address that head of wood? Let this suffice. I dare not let you stay among women and children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by any means I may avoid it; you have no money; well then, take mine, and go; and if ever I behold your face after to-day, that day will be your last.”

“Under the circumstances,” replied Zero, “I scarce see my way to refuse your offer. Your expressions may pain, they cannot surprise me; I am aware our point of view requires a little training, a little moral hygiene, if I may so express it; and one of the points that has always charmed me in your character is this delightful frankness. As for the small advance, it shall be remitted you from Philadelphia.”

“It shall not,” said Somerset.

“Dear fellow, you do not understand,” returned the plotter. “I shall now be received with fresh confidence by my superiors; and my experiments will be no longer hampered by pitiful conditions of the purse.”

“What I am now about, sir, is a crime,” replied Somerset; “and were you to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should scorn to be reimbursed of money I had so scandalously misapplied. Take it, and keep it. By George, sir, three days of you have transformed me to an ancient Roman.”

With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the pair were driven rapidly to the railway terminus. There, an oath having been extracted, the money changed hands.

“And now,” said Somerset, “I have bought back my honour with every penny I possess. And I thank God, though there is nothing before me but starvation, I am free from all entanglement with Mr. Zero Pumpernickel Jones.”

“To starve?” cried Zero. “Dear fellow, I cannot endure the thought.”

“Take your ticket!” returned Somerset.

“I think you display temper,” said Zero.

“Take your ticket,” reiterated the young man.

“Well,” said the plotter, as he returned, ticket in hand, “your attitude is so strange and painful, that I scarce know if I should ask you to shake hands.”

“As a man, no,” replied Somerset; “but I have no objection to shake hands with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran poison or hell-fire.”

“This is a very cold parting,” sighed the dynamiter; and still followed by Somerset, he began to descend the platform. This was now bustling with passengers; the train for Liverpool was just about to start, another had but recently arrived; and the double tide made movement difficult. As the pair reached the neighbourhood of the bookstall, however, they came into an open space; and here the attention of the plotter was attracted by a Standard broadside bearing the words: “Second Edition: Explosion in Golden Square.” His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for the necessary coin, he sprang forward – his bag knocked sharply on the corner of the stall – and instantly, with a formidable report, the dynamite exploded. When the smoke cleared away the stall was seen much shattered, and the stall-keeper running forth in terror from the ruins; but of the Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no adequate remains were to be found.

In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin. Yet as he continued to walk the pavements, he wondered to find in his heart a sort of peaceful exultation, a great content, a sense, as it were, of divine presence and the kindliness of fate; and he was able to tell himself that even if the worst befell, he could now starve with a certain comfort since Zero was expunged.

Late in the afternoon he found himself at the door of Mr. Godall’s shop; and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce considering what he did, he opened the glass door and entered.

“Ha!” said Mr. Godall, “Mr. Somerset! Well, have you met with an adventure? Have you the promised story? Sit down, if you please; suffer me to choose you a cigar of my own special brand; and reward me with a narrative in your best style.”

“I must not take a cigar,” said Somerset.