WE ARRIVE SAFE IN LONDON AND GO TO MEDWORTH SQUARE—BACK AT “THE FRENCH HORN”—NEWS AT LAST OF THE AMARANTH—I INTERVIEW MR. CRAGE AND FIND HIM ILL

Very little remains to tell; but that little is of importance. Of our journey home together (my sister, Lucy, Bailey Thompson, Parsons, and I, the others sailing on board the yacht) I need say nothing, for it was entirely pleasant and uneventful. Our luggage wasn’t even robbed on the Italian lines; we felt the cold somewhat as we neared home, and that was all.

At Charing Cross Thompson was evidently well-known to the officials; he proclaimed us all his friends and above suspicion, so our portmanteaus were barely looked at; everybody touched their hats to him, and we felt quite royal in our immunities.

There we parted. Teddy jumped into a cab for Euston, to catch the night express for his dear Southport; my sister, Lucy, and I went off in a four-wheeler to Medworth Square; while the still unsuspicious Thompson remained on the platform, bowing and smiling. Once safely landed at Charing Cross, our duty to him was plainly at an end. No doubt he would immediately go off to Brixton, find his sister, Mrs. Wingham, and learn the truth; but what that might mean to us I really neither knew nor cared. We had so far so brilliantly succeeded that readers must not blame me if I continued obstinately optimistic, and believed, whatever trouble might still be in store for us, we should certainly somehow emerge from it scathless and joyous.

“I hope,” my sister said, as we drove away, “he won’t think it rude of me not asking him to come and call. After all, he’s not quite of our world, and he would need such a deal of explaining, for Frank always insists on knowing exactly who everybody is.”

“He won’t think of coming of his own accord, I suppose?” whispered Lucy. “And, oh! I do so wish he wasn’t a friend of Mr. Crage’s.”

“Lor’ bless you!” I philosophically remarked, “it’s even money we none of us ever see or hear of him again.”

But we did, that day week exactly, when he turned up at “The French Horn,” purple with ineffective rage, accompanied by his dazed French confrÈre, Monsieur Cochefort.

In Medworth Square all was as usual. The Thursday evening German band was playing the usual selection from that tiresome old “Mikado,” and my sweet niece Mollie was soon tearing down the stairs to welcome us.

“She watch for you every night, ma’am,” her Welsh nurse said; “and last night she go down-stairs her best, and blow up Mr. Blyth like anything for doing a door-bell ring exactly like yours, ma’am.”

My brother-in-law was very glad to get his wife back, and, having been warned by letter, welcomed my dear Lucy with sufficient warmth. How could he help it? Everywhere she went she won all hearts. Brentin and Parsons both admired her desperately, and Bob Hines, my sister told me, paid her more attention on the yacht coming from Monte Carlo than he had ever been known to pay any one before.

Even Forsyth, who is one of the most difficile men I know (unless the young lady makes a dead set at him, when he thinks her lovely), even he said to me, “That’s a real pretty girl, Vincent, and you’re a very lucky man to get her;” while Miss Rybot once quite surprised me by the warmth of her congratulation. “She’s so fresh and unaffected, Mr. Blacker,” she said. “She’s like a breeze that meets you at the end of a country lane when you come suddenly upon the sea.” Which I thought both poetical and perfectly true—rather a rare combination nowadays.

The next morning Lucy and I were off to Liverpool Street for Nesshaven and “The French Horn.” As we drove up, and I saw the familiar place once more, blinking in the soft February sunshine, just as we had left it, I could scarcely believe all I had gone through in the way of peril and adventure. Somehow, if one leaves a place for a time, and has experiences of moment in the interval, one expects those experiences to have had their effect elsewhere, too, even on inanimate objects.

I felt older, wiser, more developed, more of a man, and I was astonished to find the place quite unaltered and Mr. Thatcher looking just the same as he came running out in his dirty old blazer. His mother was at the window, gazing through the panes with the naÏve curiosity of a child at new arrivals. She kissed Lucy, and said to me: “Well, here you are back safe, you bad young man. You’ve given us a rare fright, I can tell you”—and that was all.

That same evening, when the ladies were safely abed, I had a long talk with Mr. Thatcher in the bar parlor. After dear Lucy’s escapade, we decided we might as well be married at once, without waiting for Easter; and that, with the help of a license, the following Thursday, February 6th, would be none too soon. For myself, apart from other considerations, I thought it clearly wisest to get married and clear out of the country, on a lengthy wedding-tour, as quick as we could; so that, in case of search being made for me, as the head and guiding spirit of the raid, I might, for some few months at any rate, be non inventus.

Next, I delicately approached the subject of the repurchase of Wharton Park. I told Mr. Thatcher we had been extraordinarily lucky at Monte Carlo, and that, by a combination of rare circumstances, I was the richer by £30,000 than when I started. He was shrewd enough to listen in silence and ask no sort of question as to what particular system I had pursued to enable me to return with so large a sum. In fact, I scarcely gave him time to ask questions, I was so rapid, hurrying forward only to the main point, whether Crage’s offer were still open and we should still be able to get the old wretch out.

He told me that since Crage’s last visit and offer to marry Lucy he had seen nothing of him, and, so far as he knew, the place was still to be had. We could, if I liked, go up to the house in a day or two and make inquiries cautiously, or write Crage a letter making him a formal proposal.

To which I replied that, knowing something of human nature, I judged it best, when we made our offer, to be prepared with the actual sum in notes and gold to make it good; for, with a man like Crage, combined of malice and craft, he would most likely try to bluff and raise us unless he saw the very gold and notes before him, beyond which, not having any more to offer, we were not prepared to go.

“Very true,” said Thatcher. “There’s nothing like the ready to tempt a man, as I know very well. Why, when I was in business—”

“Then all we can do,” I continued, cutting him short, “is to wait in patience till the boodle—”

“The what?” said Thatcher, taking the pipe out of his mouth.

“It’s an American term—the money we have won, arrives. It’s coming in the yacht, and should be here in a day or two now. Then we’ll go up with it to the house, in a bag, and spread it out on the table—”

“And I shall be back in Wharton Park again!” cried Thatcher. “Gracious powers! Who would have thought it possible? And, of course, it will be settled on Lucy. Me for life, and then Lucy. How delighted my poor old mother will be!”

“Yes,” I said, “and that your name may be perpetuated, I will add it to my own. Father-in-law, here’s health and prosperity to those two fine old English families, the Thatcher-Blackers!”

So there was nothing we could do but wait in patience for the arrival of the Amaranth. It was tedious, anxious work, for though I never doubted all would be well, yet Bailey Thompson’s portentous silence somewhat alarmed me; and as the days passed, and neither he nor the yacht gave any sign of their existence, my nerves began to get unstrung, and I grew worn and irritable.

Fortunately, as often happens in the early days of February, the weather was beautifully fine; so fine that the more flatulent class of newspapers were full of letters from country correspondents, who were finding hedge-sparrows’ eggs and raspberries in their gardens, and the usual Lincolnshire parson broke into jubilant twitterings over his dish of green pease. Otherwise, I don’t think I really could have borne it.

At last, late on the Tuesday evening, came a telegram from Brentin at Southampton—“Safe, will arrive to-morrow”—and I began to breathe a little easier. But not a word of any sort from Bailey Thompson, neither a reproach nor a threat; till I felt like that Damocles of Syracuse who, though seated on a throne, was yet immediately under a faintly suspended sword. For here was I, on a throne, indeed—the throne of dear Lucy’s pure and constant affection—and yet!—at any moment!—

Dramatically enough, the sword fell on my very wedding morning—on its flat side, happily—giving me a shock, but no cut of any sort, as I am now briefly going to tell.

The next morning came another telegram from Brentin in London, to say he would arrive at six and beg he might be met. All was well, he wired, adding “Any news Thompson?”

I wired back to the “Victoria” there was none: “bring boodle with you;” and then I went off and found Thatcher.

For always I had had the fancy to pay old Crage out of the place and be married on the same day, and here was now my chance. We were to be married in Nesshaven Church, in the grounds of Wharton Park, at twelve; what was to prevent us, I said to Thatcher, from walking on up to the house first with £30,000, completing the purchase, and hasting to the wedding afterwards? Thence back to “The French Horn” for a light lunch, afterwards catch the half-past-two train for Liverpool Street, and so to Folkestone in the evening.

There was nothing to prevent it, said Thatcher, who for the last two days had gone about in a triumphant, bulging white waistcoat; only it would require rather delicate handling, all to be done successfully. Crage should be prepared, for instance, he thought; for, notwithstanding the sight of the money, the sight of dear Lucy in her happy wedding radiance might turn him sour, and he might after all refuse to complete. What was to prevent one of us, he said—meaning, of course, me—going up to the house and sounding the old man first? Then we should know exactly how we stood, and what chance there was of our money being accepted.

Now, for the last week nothing had been seen of the old man, and rumors had reached us, chiefly through the gardener, he was very ill. He hadn’t been to church for more than a month, and at church he had always been a very regular attendant; not so much because he had any real religion in him as that he might aggravate the parson by catching him up loudly in the responses, and barking his way harshly through the hymns a good half-line behind the rest of the congregation. Indeed, the chief attraction, I fear, at Nesshaven Church was old Crage and his nauseous eccentricities, and people who had heard how he had once lighted up his pipe during the sermon and sat there sucking at it in the Wharton pew, came from miles round in the hope he would enliven the discourse by doing it again.

Nor had he been seen about the grounds, nor stumping down to the inn, as he mostly did once a week to insult the inmates; in short, the end that comes to us all—good, bad, and indifferent—was clearly coming now to him, and if business were ever to be done, it must be done speedily and at once.

So, before Brentin came, early on the Wednesday afternoon, I trudged alone up to the house. There wasn’t a sign of life in it, and when I rang at the hall door I heard the heavy bell clanging away down the empty passages and cold servants’ quarters as in the depths of an Egyptian tomb. I rang and rang, until at last I heard shuffling footsteps approach. From the other side of the door came stertorous breathing and wheezing, and the undoing of a chain; then a burglar’s bell was taken off and fell with a jangle on the stone floor inside, and at last the door was pulled ajar.

Poor old Crage! He looked out at me with his wicked, frightened old face, pinched, haggard, unshaven, dirty; terror-struck, as though he feared, I were Death himself who had been knocking at the door. He was in his shirt and trousers and a frowzy old dressing-gown, and his bare, bony feet were thrust in worn leather slippers. As he breathed his throat rattled dismally, and his long hand, with the thick, muddy veins, shook so he couldn’t fold the dressing-gown round his gaunt, corded, bare throat.

“Hullo, young cockney!” he croaked; “what’s to do?”

“How are you, Mr. Crage?” I asked, shocked at the old man’s fallen, forlorn look.

“Very bad!” he whispered, his rheumy eyes blinking with watery self-pity.

“Is there anybody looking after you?”

“No—no—thieves! all thieves!—don’t want ’em.”

Then he made as if he would shut the door.

“I came up to see you on business,” I said; “about selling the house.”

“No business to-day,” he croaked. “Too ill. Come to-morrow—any time. Come to-morrow.” And with that he shut the door in my face.

I heard him shuffling away across the hall, kicking the fallen bell with a tinkle along the floor, and then, as I turned to go, I heard him fall and groan. I ran in hastily, and with great difficulty managed to get him on his feet again. He stood there for some few minutes, clutching me and rattling his throat; then, hanging on my arm, dragging me along with him, he paddled off down a short dark passage towards a half-open door, pushed it wide, and pulled me after him into the great empty drawing-room.

The blinds were down, and the fading February sun gleamed in on the bare worn carpet. In front of the fine fireplace, with a little dying wood-fire in it, stood an arm-chair, with a small table beside it. A candle and snuffers were on it, and a plate of stale bread-and-butter. On the high mantel-piece was a medicine bottle, full and corked.

He sank back into his chair, and lay there, breathing heavily, with his eyes closed.

“But is there nobody looking after you?” I asked, and he made some twitching movement with his fingers.

Just at that moment in flounced the gardener’s wife, drying her hands on her apron. She was a big, handsome, shameless-looking creature, with a naming eye and a hard, high color on her stiff cheeks.

“Now you’ve been moving yourself about again!” she cried, bending over him.

Crage opened his eyes and looked up at her maliciously.

“He came up on business,” he whispered.

“You’re a pretty man to do business, ain’t you?” she sneered.

“No, not to-day,” he mocked. “Too ill. All right to-morrow. Tell the genelman to come to-morrow, early. Quite well to-morrow.”

I turned to go, and Crage, raising himself in his chair, rasped out:

“Bring the money with you, young cockney, or no business. Mind that!”

The woman followed me to the door.

“Has he got a doctor?” I asked.

“Doctor Hall came once,” she said, “but he won’t do anything he tells him. He won’t take his medicine and he won’t go to bed. He says he’ll die if he goes to bed. He sleeps all night in that arm-chair in the drawing-room. If he don’t die soon, I shall; I know that very well. If you’ve got any business to do with him, you’d better come early in the morning. He can’t last much longer.”

And with that she closed the door on me, and I heard her putting up the chain again and the burglar’s bell as I went away down the weedy gravel path.