‘sir wilfrid monson, sir,’ exclaimed my man.
it was half-past ten o’clock at night, and i was in my lodgings in bury street, st. james, slippers on feet, a pipe of tobacco in my hand, seltzer and brandy at my elbow, and on my knees the ‘sun’ newspaper, the chief evening sheet of the times.
‘sir wilfrid monson, sir.’
my cousin! thought i, starting, and looking round at my man with a fancy in me for a moment that he had got the wrong name. ‘show him in.’
sir wilfrid entered in a sort of swift headlong way, full of nervousness and passion, as was to be seen easily enough; and then he came to a dead stop with a wild look round the room, as if to make sure that i was alone, and a frowning stare at my servant, who was lingering a moment on the threshold as though suddenly surprised out of his habits of prompt sleek attendance by a fit of astonishment.
he stood about six feet high; he had a slight stoop, and was something awkward in arms and legs; yet you were sensible of the indefinable quality of breeding in him the moment your eye took in his form and face, uncommon as both were. he was forty-four years of age at this time, and looked fifty. his hair was long and plentiful, but of an iron grey streaked with soft white. he had a protruding under-lip, and a nose which might have been broken for the irregularity of its outline, with unusually high-cut nostrils. his eyes were large, short-sighted, and grey, luminous and earnest, but with a tremulous lid that seemed to put a quivering into their expression that was a hint in its way of cunning and mental weakness. he had a broad, intellectual forehead, brilliantly white teeth, high cheek bones, a large heavy chin, rounding into a most delicately moulded throat. he was a man, indeed, at[2] whom, as a stranger, one might catch one’s self staring as at something sufficiently puzzling to be well worth resolving. ill-looking he was not, and yet one seemed to seek in vain for qualities of body or mind to neutralise to the sight what was assuredly a combination of much that was uncomely, and indeed, in one or two directions, absolutely grotesque. but then i had the secret.
the long and short of it was, my cousin, sir wilfrid monson, was not entirely straight-headed. everything was made clear to the mind, after a glance at his strange, weak, yet striking profile, with the hint that there had been madness in his mother’s family. he was the eighth baronet, and on his father’s side (and that was my side, i am thankful to say) all had been sound as a bell; but my uncle had fallen in love with the daughter of a scotch peer whose family were tainted with insanity—no matter her real name: the lady elizabeth will suffice. he was frankly warned by the old earl, who was not too mad to be candid, but the lovesick creature grinned in his lordship’s face with a wild shake of the head at the disclosure, as though he saw no more in it than a disposition to end the engagement. then the honest old madman carried him to a great window that overlooked a spacious sweep of lawn, and pointed with a bitter smile and a despairful heave of the shoulders to three women walking, two of whom were soberly clad in big bonnets and veils down their back, whilst the third, who was between them, and whose arms were locked in the others’, glided forwards as though her feet travelled on clockwork rollers, whilst she kept her head fixedly bent, her chin upon her breast, and her gaze rooted upon the ground; and as the amorous baronet watched—the earl meanwhile preserving his miserable smile as he held his gouty forefinger levelled—he saw the down-looking woman make an effort to break away from her companions, but without ever lifting her head.
‘that’s lady alice,’ said the earl, ‘speechless and brainless! guid preserve us! and the lady elizabeth is her seester.’
‘ay, that may be,’ answers the other; ‘but take two roses growing side by side: because some venomous worm is eating into the heart of one and withering up its beauty, is the other that is radiant and flawless to be left uncherished?’
‘guid forbid!’ answered the earl, and then turned away with a weak hech! hech! that should have proved more terrifying to one’s matrimonial yearnings than even the desolate picture of the three figures stalking the emerald-green sward.
these were dim memories, yet they flashed into my head with the swiftness of thought, along with the workings of the eager conjecture and lively wonder raised in me by wilfrid’s visit, and by his peculiar aspect, too, during the few moments’ interval of pause that followed his entrance. my servant shut the door; wilfrid looked to see that it was closed, then approached me with a sort of lifting of his face as of a man half choked with a hurry[3] and passion of sentences which he wants to be quit of all at once in a breath, staggering as he moved, his right arm outstretched with a rapid vibration of the hand at the wrist; and, without delivering himself of a syllable, he fell into a chair near the table, dashing his hat to the floor as he did so, buried his face in his arms, and so lay sobbing in respirations of hysteric fierceness.
this extraordinary behaviour amazed and terrified me. i will not deny that i at first suspected the madness that lurked as a poison in his blood had suddenly obtained a strong hold, and that he had come to see me whilst seized with a heavy fit. i put down my pipe and adopted a steadier posture, so to speak, in my chair, secretly hoping that the surprise his manner or appearance had excited in my valet would render the fellow curious enough to hang about outside to listen to what might pass at the start. i kept my eyes fixed upon my cousin, but without offering to speak, for, whatever might be the cause of the agitation that was convulsing his powerful form with deep sobbing breathings, the emotion was too overwhelming to be broken in upon by speech. presently he looked up; his eyes were tearless, but his face was both dusky and haggard with the anguish that worked in him.
‘in the name of heaven, wilfrid,’ i cried, witnessing intelligence enough in his gaze to instantly relieve me from the dread that had possessed me, ‘what is wrong with you? what has happened?’
he drew a long tremulous breath and essayed to speak, but was unintelligible in the broken syllable or two he managed to utter. i poured what sailors term a ‘two-finger nip’ of brandy into a tumbler, and added a little seltzer water to the dram. he seized the glass with a hand that shook like a drunkard’s, and emptied it. but the draught steadied him, and a moment after he said in a low voice, while he clasped his hands upon the table with such a grip of each other that the veins stood out like whipcord: ‘my wife has left me.’
i stared at him stupidly. the disclosure was so unexpected, so wildly remote from any conclusion my fears had arrived at, that i could only look at him like a fool.
‘left you!’ i faltered, ‘what d’ye mean, wilfrid? refused to live you?’
‘no!’ he exclaimed with a face darkening yet to the effort it cost him to subdue his voice, ‘she has eloped—left me—left her baby for—for—’ he stopped, bringing his fist to the table with a crash that was like to have demolished everything upon it.
‘it is an abominable business,’ said i soothingly; ‘but it is not to be bettered by letting feeling overmaster you. come, take your time; give yourself a chance. you are here, of course, to tell me the story. let me have it quietly. it is but to let yourself be torn to pieces to suffer your passion to jockey your reason.’
‘she has left me!’ he shrieked, rising bolt upright from his chair, and lifting his arms with his hands clenched to the ceiling.[4] ‘devil and beast! faithless mother! faithless wife! may god——’
i raised my hand, looking him full in the face. ‘pray sit, wilfrid. lady monson has left you, you say. with or for whom?’
‘hope-kennedy,’ he answered, ‘colonel hope-kennedy,’ bringing out the words as though they were rooted in his throat. ‘my good friend hope-kennedy, charles; the man i have entertained, have hunted with, assisted at a time when help was precious to him. ay, colonel hope-kennedy. that is the man she has left me for, the fellow that she has abandoned her baby for. it is a dream—it is a dream! i loved her so. i could have kissed her breast, where her heart lay, as a bible for truth, sincerity, and all beautiful thought.’
he passed his hand over his forehead and seated himself again, or rather dropped into his chair, resting his chin upon the palm of his hand with the nails of his fingers at his teeth, whilst he watched me with a gaze that was rendered indescribably pathetic by the soft near-sighted look of his grey eyes under the shadow of his forehead, that had a wrinkled, twisted, even distorted aspect with the pain his soul was in. there was but one way of giving him relief, and that was by plying him with questions to enable him to let loose his thoughts. he extended his hand for the brandy and mixed himself a bumper. there was little in spirits to hurt him at such a time as this. indeed i believe he could have carried a whole bottle in his head without exhibiting himself as in the least degree oversparred. this second dose distinctly rallied him, and now he lay back in his chair with his arms folded upon his breast.
‘when did your wife leave you, wilfrid?’
‘a week to-day.’
‘you know, of course, without doubt, that hope-kennedy is the man she has gone off with?’
he nodded savagely, with a smile like a scowl passing over his face.
‘but how do you know for certain?’ i cried, determined to make him talk.
he pulled a number of letters from his side-pocket, overhauled them, found one, glanced at it, and handed it to me with a posture of the arm that might have made one think it was some venomous snake he held.
‘this was found in my wife’s bedroom,’ said he, ‘read it to yourself. every line of it seems to be written in fire here.’ he struck his breast with his fist.
what i am telling happened a long time ago, as you will notice presently. the letter my cousin handed to me i read once and never saw again, and so, as you may suppose, i am unable to give it as it was written. but the substance of it was this: it was addressed to lady monson. the writer called her, i recollect, ‘my darling,’ ‘my adorable henrietta.’ it was all about the proposed[5] elopement, a complete sketch of the plan of it, and the one document sir wilfrid could have prayed to get hold of, had he any desire to know what had become of his wife, and on what kind of rambles she and her paramour had started. the letter was signed, boldly enough, ‘frank hope-kennedy,’ and was filled with careful instructions to her how and when to leave her house. railroads were few and far between in those days. sir wilfrid monson’s estate was in cumberland, and it was a long journey by coach and chaise to the town that was connected with the metropolis by steam. but the colonel had made every arrangement for her ladyship, and it was apparent from his instructions that she had managed her flight first by driving to an adjacent village, where she dismissed the carriage with orders for it to return for her at such and such an hour; then, when her coachman was out of sight, she entered a postchaise that was in readiness and galloped along to a town through which the stage coach passed. by this coach she would travel some twenty or thirty miles, then post it to the terminus of the line that conveyed her to london. but all this, though it ran into a tedious bit of description, was but a part of the gallant colonel’s programme. her ladyship would arrive in london at such and such an hour, and the colonel would be waiting at the station to receive her. they would then drive to a hotel out of bond street, and next morning proceed to southampton, where the ‘shark’ lay ready for them. it was manifest that colonel hope-kennedy intended to sail away with lady monson in a vessel named the ‘shark.’ he devoted a page of small writing to a description of this craft, which, i might take it—though not much in that way was to be gathered from a landsman’s statement—was a large schooner yacht owned by lord winterton, from whom the colonel had apparently hired it for an indefinite period. he assured his adorable henrietta that he had spared neither money nor pains to render the vessel as luxurious in cuisine, cabin fittings, and the like as was practicable in a sea-going fabric in those days. he added that what his darling required for the voyage must be hastily purchased at southampton. she must be satisfied with a very slender wardrobe; time was pressing; the madman to whom the clergyman who married them had shackled her would be off in wild pursuit, helter-skelter, flying moonwards mayhap in his delirium on the instant of discovering that she was gone. time therefore pressed, and when once the anchor of the ‘shark’ was lifted off the ground he had no intention of letting it fall again until they had measured six thousand miles of salt water.
i delivered a prolonged whistle on reading this. six thousand miles of ocean, methought, sounded intolerably real as a condition of an elopement. my cousin never removed his eyes from my face while i read. i gave him the letter, which he folded and returned to his pocket. he was now looking somewhat collected, though the surging of the passion and grief in him would show in a momentary sparkle of the eye, in a spasmodic grin and twist of the lips,[6] in a quick clenching of his hands as though he would drive his finger-nails into his palms. i hardly knew what to say, for the letter was as full a revelation of the vile story as he could have given me in an hour’s delivery, and the injury and misery of the thing were too recent to admit of soothing words. yet i guessed that it would do him good to talk.
‘have they sailed yet, do you know?’ i inquired.
‘yes,’ he answered, letting out his breath in a sigh as though some thought in him had arrested his respiration for a bit.
‘how do you know?’
‘i arrived an hour ago from southampton,’ he replied, ‘and have got all the information i require.’
‘there cannot be much to add to what the letter contains,’ said i, ‘it is the completest imaginable story of the devilish business.’
he looked at me oddly, and then said, ‘ay, it tells what has happened. but that did not satisfy me. i have gone beyond that, and know the place they are making for.’
‘it will be six thousand miles distant, anyhow,’ said i.
‘quite. the villain reasoned with a pair of compasses in his hand. it is cape town—the other side of the world; when ’tis ice and northern blasts with us, it is the fragrance of the moon-lily and a warm heaven of quiet stars with them.’
he struck the table, smothering some wild curse or other behind his set teeth, next leaped from his chair and fell to pacing the room, now and again muttering to himself with an occasional flourish of his arm. i watched him in silence. presently he returned to the table and mixed another glass of liquor. he sat lost in thought for a little, then, with a slow lifting of his eyes, till his gaze lay steadfast on me, he said: ‘charlie, i am going to follow them to cape town.’
‘in some south african trader?’
‘in my yacht. you know her?’
‘i have never seen her, but i have heard of her as a very fine vessel.’
‘she sails two feet to the “shark’s” one,’ he exclaimed, with a queer gleam of satisfaction glistening in the earnest stare he kept fastened on me. ‘i gave her square yards last year—you will know what a great hoist of topsail, and a big squaresail under it, and a large topgallantsail should do for such a model as the “bride.” the “shark” is fore and aft only.’ he fetched his leg a smack that sounded like the report of a pistol. ‘we’ll have ’em!’ he exclaimed, and his face turned pale as he spoke the words.
‘let me understand you,’ said i; ‘you propose to sail in pursuit of the colonel and your wife?’
he nodded whilst he clasped his hands upon the table and leaned forward.
‘what proof have you that they have started for cape town?’
he instantly answered: ‘the captain of the “shark” is a man[7] named fidler. my captain’s name is finn. his wife and mrs. fidler are neighbours at southampton, and good friends. mrs. fidler told my captain’s wife that her husband was superintending the equipment of lord winterton’s yacht for a voyage round the world, and that the first port of call would be table bay. she knew that the “shark” had been let by winterton to a gentleman, but at the time of her speaking to mrs. finn she did not know his name.’
‘you said just now,’ i exclaimed, ‘that you had assisted this fellow, hope-kennedy, when help was precious to him. i suppose you mean that you lent him money? how can he support the expense of a yacht, for, if i remember rightly, the “shark’s” burthen is over two hundred tons?’
‘i lent him money before i was married; within the last three years he has come into a fortune of between eighty and a hundred thousand pounds.’
i paused a moment and then said, ‘have you thoroughly considered this project of chasing the fugitives?’
his eyes brightened to a sudden rage, but he checked the utterance of what rose to his lips and said with a violent effort to subdue himself: ‘i start the day after to-morrow.’
‘alone?’
‘no, my sister-in-law will accompany me;’ then, after a breath or two, ‘and you.’
‘i?’
‘oh,’ he cried, ‘it would be ridiculous in me to expect you to say at once that you will come; but before i leave this room i shall have your promise.’ and as he said this he stretched his arms across the table and took my hand in both his and fondled it, meanwhile eyeing me in the most passionate, wistful manner that can be imagined.
‘wilfrid,’ said i softly, touched by his air and a sort of beauty as i seemed to think that came into his strange face with the pleading of it, ‘whatever i can do that may be serviceable to you in this time of bitter trial, i will do. but let me reason with you a little.’
‘ay, reason,’ he responded, relinquishing my hand and folding his arms, and leaning back in his chair.
‘i have been a sailor in my time, as you know,’ said i, ‘and have some acquaintance with the sea, even though my experience goes no further than a brief spell of east african and west indian stations; and, therefore, forgive me for inquiring your expectations. what do you suppose? the “shark” will have had three days’ start of you.’
‘five days,’ he interrupted.
‘five days, then. do you expect to overhaul her at sea, or is it your intention to crowd on to the cape, await her arrival there, or, if you find that she has already sailed, to follow her to the next port, providing you can learn it?’
[8]
‘you have named the programme,’ he answered. ‘i shall chase her. if i miss her i shall wait for her at table bay.’
‘she may get there before you,’ i said, ‘and be under way for another destination whilst you are still miles to the nor’ard.’
‘no,’ he cried hotly, ‘we shall be there first; but we shall not need to go so far. her course must be our course, and we shall overhaul her; don’t doubt that.’
‘but put it,’ said i, ‘first of all, that you don’t overhaul her. you may pass her close on a dark night with never a guess at her presence. she may be within twenty miles of you on a clear, bright day, and not a creature on board suspect that a shift of helm by so much as half a point would bring what all hands are dying to overhaul within eyeshot in half an hour.’
he listened with a face clouded and frowning with impatience; but i was resolved to weaken if i could what seemed to me an insane resolution.
‘count upon missing her at sea, for i tell you the chances of your picking her up are all against you. well, now, you arrive at table bay and find that the “shark” sailed a day or two before for some port of which nobody knows anything. what will you do then? how will you steer your “bride”? for all you can tell, this man hope-kennedy may make for the pacific islands by way of cape horn, or he may head north-east for the mozambique and the indian waters, or south-east for the australias. it is but to let fly an arrow in the dark to embark on such a quest.’
he lay back looking at me a little without speaking, and then said, in a more collected manner than his face might promise, ‘i may miss this man upon the high seas; i may find his yacht has arrived and gone again when i reach table bay; and i may not know, as you say, in what direction to seek her if there be no one in cape town able to tell me what port she has started for; but’—he drew a deep breath—‘the pursuit gives me a chance. you will admit that?’
‘yes, a chance, as you say.’
‘a chance,’ he continued, ‘that need not keep me waiting long for it to happen. d’ye think i could rest with the knowledge that that scoundrel and the woman he has rendered faithless to me are close yonder?’ he exclaimed, pointing as though there had come a vision of the atlantic before his mind’s eye, and he saw the yacht afloat upon it. ‘who’s to tell me that before the month is out our friend the colonel will not be drifting somewhere fathoms deep with a shot through his heart?’
‘if you catch him you will shoot him?’
‘oh yes.’
‘and lady monson?’
he looked down upon his hands without answering.
‘i am a single man,’ said i, ‘and am, therefore, no doubt disqualified from passing an opinion. but i vow to heaven, wilfrid, if my wife chose to leave me for another man, i would not lift a[9] finger either to regain her or to avenge myself. a divorce would fully appease me. who would not feel gay to be rid of a woman whose every heart-throb is a dishonour? what more unendurable than an association rendered an incomparable insult, and the basest lie under heaven, by one’s wife’s secret abhorrence and her desire for another?’
on a sudden he sprang to his feet as though stabbed. ‘cease, for christ’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘the more truthful your words are, the more they madden me. if i could tear her from me,’ clutching at his breast in a wild, tragical way—‘if i could cleanse my heart of her as you would purify a vessel of what has lain foul and poisonous in it; if disgust would but fall cool on my resentment and leave me loathing her merely; if—if—if! but it is if that makes the difference betwixt hell and heaven in this bad world of unexpected things.’ he sat afresh, passing the back of his hand over his brow, and sighing heavily. ‘there is no if for me,’ said he. ‘i love her passionately yet, and so hate her besides that——’ he checked himself with a shake of the head. ‘no, no, perhaps not when it came to it,’ he muttered as though thinking aloud. ‘we are wasting time,’ he cried, pulling out his watch. ‘charlie, you will accompany me?’
‘but you say you start the day after to-morrow?’
‘yes.’
‘from southampton?’
‘yes.’
‘and, should you find the “shark” gone when you arrive at the cape——’
‘well?’
‘ay,’ said i, ‘that’s just it. we should be like adam and eve, with all the world before us where to choose.’
‘charlie, will you come? i counted upon you from the moment of forming my resolution. you have been a sailor. you are the one man of them all that i should turn to in such a time as this. say you will come. laura jennings, my wife’s—my—my sister-in-law i mean—will accompany us. did i tell you this? yes; i recollect. she is a stout-hearted little woman, as brave as she is beautiful, and so shocked, so shocked!’ he clasped his hands upon his brow, lifting his eyes. ‘she would pass through a furnace to rescue her sister from this infamy. come!’
‘you give me no time.’
‘time! you have all to-morrow. you may easily be on board by four o’clock in the afternoon on the following day. time! a sailor knows nothing of time. i must have you by my side, charlie. we shall meet them, and i shall need a friend. the support and help of your company, too——’
‘will your yacht be ready for sea by the day after to-morrow?’
‘she is ready now.’
‘your people will have worked expeditiously,’ said i, fencing a little, for he was leaning towards me and devouring me[10] with his eyes, and i found it impossible to say yes or no right off.
‘will you come?’
‘how many form your party?’
‘there is myself, there is laura, then you, then a maid for my sister-in-law, and my man, and yours if you choose to bring him.’
‘in short, there will be three of us,’ said i; ‘no doctor?’
‘we cannot be too few. what would be the good of a doctor? will you come?’
‘do you sleep in town to-night?’
‘yes,’ he replied, naming a hotel near charing cross.
‘well, then, wilfrid,’ said i, ‘you must give me to-night to think the thing over. what are your plans for to-morrow?’
‘i leave for southampton at ten. laura arrives there at six in the evening.’
‘then,’ said i, ‘you shall have my answer by nine o’clock to-morrow morning. will that do?’
‘it must do, i suppose,’ said he wearily, moving as if to rise, and casting a dull, absent sort of look at his watch.
a quarter of an hour later i was alone.
