Читать книгу: «The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 1», страница 16

“Are you aware,” said Daly, in a whisper, “that I am bound over in heavy recognizances – ”

“Ah, indeed!” interrupted the other; “that, perhaps, may explain – ”

“Explain what, sir?” said Daly, as he grasped the formidable weapon which, more club than walking-stick, he invariably carried.

“I meant nothing; I would only observe – ”

“Never observe, sir, when there’s nothing to be remarked. I was informing you that I am bound over to keep the peace in this same kingdom of Ireland; circumstances compel me to be in England to-morrow morning, – circumstances of such moment that I have myself hired a vessel to convey me thither, – and although the object of my journey is far from agreeable, I shall deem it one of the happiest coincidences of my life if it can accommodate your friend’s wishes. Nothing prevents my giving him the satisfaction he desires on English ground. I have sincere pleasure in offering him, and every gentleman of his party, a passage over – the tide serves in half an hour. Eh, Sandy?”

“At a quarter to twelve, sir.”

“The wind is fair.”

“It is a hurricane,” replied the other, almost shuddering.

“It blows fresh,” was Daly’s cool remark.

For a moment or two the stranger returned to his party, with whom he talked eagerly, and the voices of the others were also heard, speaking in evident excitement.

“You have the pistols safe, Sandy?” whispered Daly.

“They ‘re a’ safe, and in the wherry; but you ‘ll no want them this time, I trow,” said Sandy, with a shrug of his shoulders; “yon folk would rather bide where they are the night, than tak’ a bit o’ pleasure in the Channel.”

Daly smiled, and turned away to hide it, when the stranger again came forward. “I have consulted with my friends, Mr. Daly, who are also the friends of Serjeant Nickolls; they are of opinion that, under the circumstances of your being bound over, this affair cannot with propriety go further, although it might not, perhaps, be unreasonable to expect that you, feeling the peculiar situation in which you stand, might express some portion of regret at the utterance of this most severe attack.”

“You are really misinformed on the whole of the business,” said Daly. “In the few words I offered to the House, I was but responding to the question of your friend, who asked, I think somewhat needlessly, ‘Where was Bagenal Daly?’ I have no regrets to express for any terms I applied to him, though I may feel sorry that the forms of the House prevented my saying more. I am ready to meet him now; or, as he seems to dislike a breeze, when the weather is calmer. Tell him so; but tell him besides, that if he utters one syllable in my absence that the most malevolent gossip of a club-room can construe into an imputation on me, by G – d I’ll break every bone in his cowardly carcass! Come, Sandy, lead on. Good evening, sir. I wish you a bolder friend, or better weather.” So saying, he moved forward, and was soon hastening towards the North Wall, where the wherry was moored.

“It’s unco like the night we were wrecked in the Gulf,” said Sandy. “I mind the moon had that same blue color, and the clouds were a’ below, and none above her.”

“So it is, Sandy, – there ‘s a heavy sea outside, I ‘m sure. How many men have we?”

“Four, and a bit o’ a lad that’s as gude as anither. Lord save us! there was a flash! I wish it wud come to rain, and beat down the sea; we ‘d have aye wind enough after.”

“Where does she lie?”

“Yonder, sir, where you see the light bobbing. By my certie, but the chiels were no far wrang. A bit fighting ‘s hard bought by a trip to sea on such a night as this.”

CHAPTER XXI. TWO OF A TRADE

When the newspapers announced the division on the adjourned debate, they also proclaimed the flight of the defaulter; and, wide as was the disparity between the two events in point of importance, it would be difficult to say which more engaged the attention of the Dublin public on that morning, the majority for the Minister, or the published perfidy of “Honest Tom Gleeson.”

Such is, however, the all-engrossing interest of a local topic, aided, as in the present case, by almost incredulous amazement, the agent’s flight was talked of and discussed in circles where the great political event was heard as a matter of course. Where had he fled to? What sum had he carried away with him? Who would be the principal losers? were all the questions eagerly discussed, but none of which excited so much diversity of opinion as the single one: What was the cause of his defalcation? His agencies were numerous and profitable, his mode of life neither extravagant nor ostentatious; how could a man with so few habits of expense have contracted debts of any considerable amount, or what circumstances could induce him to relinquish a station of respectability and competence for a life-long of dishonorable exile?

Such has been our progress of late years in the art of revealing to the world at large the hidden springs of every action and event around us that a secret is in reality the only thing now impossible. Forty-five years ago, this wonderful exercise of knowledge was in a great measure unknown; the guessers were then a large and respectable class in society, and men were content with what mathematicians call approximation. In our own more accurate days, what between the newspaper, the club-room, and “‘Change,” such mystery is no longer practicable. One day, or two at furthest, would now proclaim every item in a man’s schedule, and afford that most sympathetic of all bodies, the world, the fruitful theme of expatiating on his folly or his criminality. In the times we refer to, however, it was only the “Con Heffermans” of society that ventured even to speculate on the secret causes of these events.

Although the debate had lasted from eight o’clock in the evening to past eleven on the following morning, before twelve Mr. Heffernan’s carriage was at the door, and the owner, without any trace of fatigue, set off to ascertain so much as might be learned of this strange and unexpected catastrophe. It was no mere passion to know the current gossip of the day, no prying taste for the last piece of scandal in circulation, – Con Heffernan was above such weaknesses; but he had a habit – one which some men practise even yet with success – of whenever the game was safe, taking credit to himself for casualties in which he had no possible connection, and attributing events in which he had no share to his own direct influence. After all, he was in this only imitating the great navigators of the globe, who have established the rule that discovery gives a right only second to actual creation.

This was, however, a really provoking case; no one knew anything of Gleeson’s embarrassments. Several of those for whom he acted as agent were in Dublin, but they were more amazed than all others at his flight; most of them had settled accounts with him very lately, some men owed him small sums. “Darcy perhaps knows something about him,” was a speech Heffernan heard more than once repeated; but Darcy’s house was shut up, and the servant announced “he had left town that morning.” Hickman O’Reilly was the next chance; not that he had any direct intercourse with Gleeson, but his general acquaintanceship with moneyed men and matters made him a likely source of information; while a small sealed note addressed to Dr. Hickman was in possession of a banker with whom Gleeson had transacted business the day before his departure. But O’Reilly had left town with his son. “The doctor, sir, is here still; he does not go before to-morrow,” said the servant, who, knowing that Heffernan was a person of some consequence in the Dublin world, thought proper to give this piece of unasked news.

“Will you give Mr. Con Heffernan’s compliments, and say he would be glad to have the opportunity of a few minutes’ conversation?” The servant returned immediately, and showed him upstairs into a back drawing-room, where, before a table covered with law papers and parchments, sat the venerable doctor. He had not as yet performed the usual offices of a toilet, and, with unshaven chin and uncombed hair, looked the most melancholy contrast of age, neglect, and misery, with the gorgeous furniture of a most splendid apartment.

He lifted his head as the door opened, and stared fixedly at the new-comer, with an expression at once fierce and anxious, so that Heffernan, when speaking of him afterwards, said that, “Dressed as he was, in an old flannel morning-gown, dotted with black tufts, he looked for all the world like a sick tiger making his will.”

“Your humble servant, sir,” said he, coldly, as Heffernan advanced with an air of cordiality; nor were the words and the accents they were uttered in lost upon the man they were addressed to. He saw how the land lay, in a second, and said eagerly, “He has not left town, I trust, sir; I sincerely hope your son has not gone.”

“Yes, sir, he’s off; I’m sure I don’t know what he’d wait for.”

“Too precipitate, – too rash by far, Mr. Hickman,” said Heffernan, seating himself, and wiping his forehead with an air of well-assumed chagrin.

“Maybe so,” repeated the old man two or three times over, while he lowered his spectacles to his nose, and began hunting among his papers, as though he had other occupation in hand of more moment than the present topic.

“Are you aware, sir,” said Heffernan, drawing his chair close up, and speaking in a most confidential whisper, – “are you aware, sir, that your son mistook the signal, – that when Mr. Corry took out his handkerchief and opened it on his knee, that it was in token of Lord Castlereagh’s acquiescence of Mr. O’Reilly’s demand, – that, in short, the peerage was at that moment his own if he wished it?”

The look of dogged incredulity in the old man’s face would have silenced a more sensitive advocate than Heffer-nan; but he went on: “If any one should feel angry at what has occurred, I am the person; I was the guarantee for your son’s vote, and I have now to meet Lord Castle-reagh without one word of possible explanation.”

“Hickman told me,” said the old man, with a voice steady and composed, “that if Mr. Corry did not raise the handkerchief to his mouth, the terms were not agreed upon; that opening it before him only meant the bargain was not quite off: more delay, more talk, Mr. Heffernan; and I think there was enough of that already.”

“A complete mistake, sir, – a total misconception on his part.”

“Just like Beecham being blackballed at the club,” said the doctor, with a sarcastic bitterness all his own.

“With that, of course, we cannot be charged,” said Heffernan. “Why was he put up without our being apprised of it? The blackballing was Bagenal Daly’s doing – ”

“So I heard,” interrupted the other; “they told me that; and here, look here, here’s Daly’s bond for four thousand six hundred. Maybe he won’t be so ready with his bank-notes as he was with his black ball – ay!”

“But, to go back to the affair of the House – ”

“We won’t go back to it, sir, if it’s the same to you. I ‘m glad, with all my heart, the folly is over, – sorra use I could see in it, except the expense, and there’s plenty of that. The old families, as they call them, can’t last forever, no more than old houses and old castles; there’s an end of everything in time, and if Hickman waits, maybe his turn will come as others’ did before him. Where ‘s the Darcys now, I ‘d like to know? – ” Here he paused and stammered, and at last stopped dead short, an expression of as much confusion as age and wrinkles would permit covering his hard, contracted features.

“You say truly,” said Heffernan, finishing what he guessed to be the sentiment, – “you say truly, the Darcys have run their race; when men’s incumbrances have reached the point that his have, family influence soon decays. Now, this business of Gleeson’s – ” Had he fired a shot close to the old man’s ear he could not have startled him more effectually than by the mention of this name.

“What of Gleeson?” said he, drawing in his breath, and holding on the chair with both hands.

“You know that he is gone, – fled away no one knows where?”

“Gleeson! Honest Tom Gleeson ran away!” exclaimed Hickman; “no, no, that’s impossible, – I’d never believe that.”

“Strange enough, sir, that the paragraphs here have not convinced you,” said Heffernan, taking up the newspaper which lay on the table, and where the mark of snuffy fingers denoted the very passage in question.

“Ay! I did n’t notice it before,” muttered the doctor, as he took up the paper, affecting to read, but in reality to conceal his own confusion.

“They say the news nearly killed Darcy; he only heard it when going into the House last night, and was seized with an apoplectic fit, and carried home insensible.” This latter was, it is perhaps needless to say, pure invention of Heffernan, who found it necessary to continue talking as a means of detecting old Hickman’s game. “Total ruin to that family of course results. Gleeson had raised immense sums to pay off the debts, and carried all away with him.”

“Ay!” muttered the doctor, as he seemed greatly occupied in arranging his papers on the table.

“You ‘ll be a loser too, sir, by all accounts,” added Heffernan.

“Not much, – a mere trifle,” said the doctor, without looking up from the papers. “But maybe he’s not gone, after all; I won’t believe it yet.”

“There seems little doubt on that head,” said Heffernan; “he changed three thousand pounds in notes for gold at Ball’s after the bank was closed on Tuesday, and then went over to Finlay’s, where he said he had a lodgment to make. He left his great-coat behind him, and never came back for it. I found that paper – it was the only one – in the breast pocket.”

“What is it? what is it?” repeated the old man, clutching eagerly at it.

“Nothing of any consequence,” said Heffernan, smiling; and he handed him a printed notice, setting forth that the United States barque, the “Congress,” of five hundred tons burden, would sail for New York on Wednesday, the 16th instant, at an hour before high water. “That looked suspicious, didn’t it?” said Heffernan; “and on inquiry I found he had drawn largely out of, not only the banks in town, but from the provincial ones also. Now, that note addressed to yourself, for instance – ”

“What note?” said Hickman, starting round as his face became pale as ashes; “give it to me – give it at once!”

But Heffernan held it firmly between his fingers, and merely shook his head, while, with a gentle smile, he said, “The banker who intrusted this letter to my hands was well aware of what importance it might prove in a court of justice, should this disastrous event demand a legal investigation.”

The old doctor listened with breathless interest to every word of this speech, and merely muttered at the close the words, “The note, the note!”

“I have promised to restore the paper to the banker,” said Heffernan.

“So you shall, – let me read it,” cried Hickman, eagerly; and he clutched from Heffernan’s fingers the document, before the other had seemingly determined whether he would yield to his demand.

“There it is for you, sir,” said the doctor; “make what you can of it;” and he threw the paper across the table.

The note contained merely the words, “Ten thousand pounds.” There was no signature or any date, but the handwriting was Gleeson’s.

“Ten thousand pounds,” repeated Heffernan, slowly; “a large sum!”

“So it is,” chimed in Hickman, with a grin of self-satisfaction, while a consciousness that the mystery, whatever it might be, was beyond the reach of Heffernan’s skill, gave him a look of excessive cunning, which sat strangely on features so old and time-worn.

“Well, Mr. Hickman,” said Heffernan, as he arose to take leave, “I have neither the right nor the inclination to pry into any man’s secrets. This affair of Gleeson’s will be sifted to the bottom one day or other, and that small transaction of the ten thousand pounds as well as the rest. It was not to discuss him or his fortunes I came here. I hoped to have seen Mr. O’Reilly, and explained away a very serious misconception. Lord Castlereagh regrets it, not for the sake of the loss of Mr. O’Reilly’s support, valuable as that unquestionably is, but because a wrong interpretation would seem to infer that the conduct of the Treasury bench was disingenuous. You will, I trust, make this explanation for me, and in the name of his Lordship.”

“Faith, I won’t promise it,” said old Hickman, looking up from a long column of figures which he was for some minutes poring over; “I don’t understand them things at all; if Bob wanted to be a lord, ‘t is more than ever I did, – I don’t see much pleasure there is in being a gentleman. I know, for my part, I ‘d rather sit in the back parlor of my little shop in Loughrea, where I could have a chat over a tumbler of punch with a neighbor, than all the grandeur in life.”

“These simple, unostentatious tastes do you credit before the world, sir,” said Heffernan, with a well put-on look of admiration.

“I don’t know whether they do or not,” said Hickman, “but I know they help to make a good credit with the bank, and that’s better – ay!”

Heffernan affected to relish the joke, and descended the stairs, laughing as he went; but scarcely had he reached his carriage, however, than he muttered a heavy malediction on the sordid old miser whose iniquities were not less glaring because Con had utterly failed to unravel anything of his mystery.

“To Lord Castlereagh’s,” said he to the footman, and then lay back to ponder over his late interview.

The noble Secretary was not up when Con arrived, but had left orders that Mr. Heffernan should be shown up to his room whenever he came. It was now about five o’clock in the afternoon, and Lord Castlereagh, wrapped up in a loose morning-gown, lay on the bed where he had thrown himself, without undressing, on reaching home. A debate of more than fifteen hours, with all its strong and exciting passages, had completely exhausted his strength, while the short and disturbed sleep had wearied rather than refreshed him. The bed and the table beside it were covered with the morning papers and open letters and despatches, for, tired as he was, he could not refrain from learning the news of the day.

“Well, my Lord,” said Heffernan, with his habitual smile, as he stepped noiselessly across the floor, “I believe I may wish you joy at last, – the battle is gained now.”

“Heigho!” was the reply of the Secretary, while he extended two fingers of his hand in salutation. “What hour is it, Heffernan?”

“It is near five; but really there ‘s not a creature to be seen in the streets, and, except old Killgobbin airing his pocket-handkerchief at the fire, not a soul at the Club. Last night’s struggle has nearly killed every one.”

“Who is this Mr. Gleeson that has run off with so much money, – did you know him?”

“Oh, yes, we all knew ‘honest Tom Gleeson.’”

“Ah! that was his sobriquet, was it?” said the Secretary, smiling.

“Yes, my Lord, such was he, – or such, at least, was he believed to be, till yesterday evening. You know it’s the last glass of wine always makes a man tipsy.”

“And who is ruined, Heffernan, – any of our friends?”

“As yet there’s no saying. Drogheda will lose something considerable, I believe; but at the banks the opinion is that Darcy will be the heaviest loser of any.”

“The Knight?”

“Yes, the Knight of Gwynne.”

“I am sincerely sorry to hear it,” said Lord Castlereagh, with an energy of tone he had not displayed before; “if I had met half-a-dozen such men as he is, I should have had some scruples – ” He paused, and at the instant caught sight of a very peculiar smile on Heffernan’s features; then, suddenly changing the topic, he said, “What of Nickolls, – is he shot?”

“No, my Lord, there was no meeting. Bagenal Daly, so goes the story, proposed going over to the Isle of Man in a row-boat.”

“What, last night!” said the Secretary, laughing.

“Yes, when it was blowing the roof off the Custom House; he offered him his choice of weapons, from a blunderbuss to a harpoon, and his own distance, over a handkerchief, or fifty yards with a rifle.”

“And was Nickolls deaf to all such seductions?”

“Quite so, my Lord; even when Daly said to him, ‘I think it a public duty to shoot a fellow like you, for, if you are suffered to live, the Government will make a judge of you one of these days.’”

“What profound solicitude for the purity of the judgment seat!”

“Daly has reason to think of these things; he has been in the dock already, and perhaps suspects he may be again.”

“Poor Darcy!” said Lord Castlereagh to himself, in a half whisper, “I wish I knew you were not a sufferer by this fellow’s flight. By the bye, Heffernan, sit down and write a few lines to Forester; say that Lord Cornwallis is greatly displeased at his protracted absence. I am tired of making excuses for him, and as I dine there to-day, I shall be tormented all the evening.”

“Darcy’s daughter is very good-looking, I hear,” said Heffernan, smiling slyly, “and should have a large fortune if matters go right.”

“Very possibly; but old Lady Wallincourt is the proudest dowager in England, and looks to the blood-royal for alliances. Forester is entirely dependent on her; and that reminds me of a most solemn pledge I made her to look after her ‘dear Dick,’ and prevent any entanglement in this barbarous land, – as if I had nothing else to think of! Write at once, Heffernan, and order him up; say he ‘ll lose his appointment by any further delay, and that I am much annoyed at his absence.”

While Heffernan descended to the library to write, Lord Castlereagh turned once more to sleep until it was time to dress for the Viceroy’s dinner.