CHAPTER VI
On my way towards our lodgings I resolved to look in at a humble tavern, in the coffee-room of which the Captain and myself habitually dined. It was now about the usual hour in which we took that meal, and he might be there waiting for me. I had just gained the steps of this tavern when a stagecoach came rattling along the pavement and drew up at an inn of more pretensions than that which we favored, situated within a few doors of the latter. As the coach stopped, my eye was caught by the Trevanion livery, which was very peculiar. Thinking I must be deceived, I drew near to the wearer of the livery, who had just descended from the roof, and while he paid the coachman, gave his orders to a waiter who emerged from the inn,—“Half-and-half, cold without!” The tone of the voice struck me as familiar, and the man now looking up, I beheld the features of Mr. Peacock. Yes, unquestionably it was he. The whiskers were shaved; there were traces of powder in the hair or the wig; the livery of the Trevanions (ay, the very livery,—crest-button and all) upon that portly figure, which I had last seen in the more august robes of a beadle. But Mr. Peacock it was,—Peacock travestied, but Peacock still. Before I had recovered my amaze, a woman got out of a cabriolet that seemed to have been in waiting for the arrival of the coach, and hurrying up to Mr. Peacock, said, in the loud, impatient tone common to the fairest of the fair sex, when in haste, “How late you are!—I was just going. I must get back to Oxton to-night.”
Oxton,—Miss Trevanion was staying at Oxton! I was now close behind the pair; I listened with my heart in my ear.
“So you shall, my dear,—so you shall; just come in, will you?”
“No, no; I have only ten minutes to catch the coach. Have you any letter for me from Mr. Gower? How can I be sure, if I don’t see it under his own hand, that—”
“Hush!” said Peacock, sinking his voice so low that I could only catch the words, “no names. Letter, pooh! I’ll tell you.” He then drew her apart and whispered to her for some moments. I watched the woman’s face, which was bent towards her companion’s, and it seemed to show quick intelligence. She nodded her head more than once, as if in impatient assent to what was said, and after a shaking of hands, hurried off to the cab; then, as if a thought struck her, she ran back, and said,—
“But in case my lady should not go,—if there’s any change of plan?”
“There’ll be no change, you may be sure. Positively tomorrow,—not too early: you understand?”
“Yes, yes; good-by!” and the woman, who was dressed with a quiet neatness that seemed to stamp her profession as that of an abigail (black cloak with long cape,—of that peculiar silk which seems spun on purpose for ladies’-maids,—bonnet to match, with red and black ribbons), hastened once more away, and in another moment the cab drove off furiously.
What could all this mean? By this time the waiter brought Mr. Peacock the half-and-half. He despatched it hastily, and then strode on towards a neighboring stand of cabriolets. I followed him; and just as, after beckoning one of the vehicles from the stand, he had ensconced himself therein, I sprang up the steps and placed myself by his side. “Now, Mr. Peacock,” said I, “you will tell me at once how you come to wear that livery, or I shall order the cabman to drive to Lady Ellinor Trevanion’s and ask her that question myself.”
“And who the devil! Ah, you’re the young gentleman that came to me behind the scenes,—I remember.”
“Where to, sir?” asked the cabman.
“To—to London Bridge,” said Mr. Peacock. The man mounted the box and drove on.
“Well, Mr. Peacock, I wait your answer. I guess by your face that you are about to tell me a lie; I advise you to speak the truth.”
“I don’t know what business you have to question me,” said Mr. Peacock, sullenly; and raising his glance from his own clenched fists, he suffered it to wander over my form with so vindictive a significance that I interrupted the survey by saying, “‘Will you encounter the house?’ as the Swan interrogatively puts it? Shall I order the cabman to drive to St. James’s Square?”
“Oh, you know my weak point, sir! Any man who can quote Will—sweet Will—has me on the hip,” rejoined Mr. Peacock, smoothing his countenance and spreading his palms on his knees. “But if a man does fall in the world, and after keeping servants of his own, is obliged to be himself a servant,—
“‘I will not shame To tell you what I am.’”
“The Swan says, ‘To tell you what I was,’ Mr. Peacock. But enough of this trifling. Who placed you with Mr. Trevanion?”
Mr. Peacock looked down for a moment, and then fixing his eyes on me, said, “Well, I’ll tell you: you asked me, when we met last, about a young gentleman,—Mr.—Mr. Vivian.”
Pisistratus.—“Proceed.”
Peacock.—“I know you don’t want to harm him. Besides, ‘He hath a prosperous art,’ and one day or other,—mark my words, or rather my friend Will’s,—
“‘He will bestride this narrow world Like a Colossus.’
“Upon my life he will,—like a Colossus;
“‘And we petty men—‘”
Pisistratus (savagely).—“Go on with your story.”
Peacock (snappishly).—“I am going on with it! You put me out. Where was I—oh—ah—yes. I had just been sold up,—not a penny in my pocket; and if you could have seen my coat,—yet that was better than the small clothes! Well, it was in Oxford Street,—no, it was in the Strand, near the Lowther,—
“‘The sun was in the heavens; and the proud day Attended with the pleasures of the world.”’
Pisistratus (lowering the glass).—“To St. James’s Square?”
Peacock.—“No, no; to London Bridge.
“‘How use doth breed a habit in a man!’
“I will go on,—honor bright. So I met Mr. Vivian, and as he had known me in better days, and has a good heart of his own, he says,—
“‘Horatio,—or I do forget myself.”’
Pisistratus puts his hand on the check-string.
Peacock (correcting himself).—I mean—“Why, Johnson, my good fellow.”’
Pisistratus.—“Johnson! Oh, that’s your name,—not Peacock.”
Peacock.—“Johnson and Peacock both [with dignity]. When you know the world as I do, sir, you will find that it is ill travelling this ‘naughty world’ without a change of names in your portmanteau.
“‘Johnson,’ says he, ‘my good fellow,’ and he pulled out his purse. ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘if, “exempt from public haunt,” I could get something to do when this dross is gone. In London there are sermons in stones, certainly, but not “good in everything,”—an observation I should take the liberty of making to the Swan if he were not now, alas! “the baseless fabric of a vision."’”
Pisistratus.—“Take care!”
Peacock (hurriedly).—“Then says Mr. Vivian, ‘If you don’t mind wearing a livery till I can provide for you more suitably, my old friend, there’s a vacancy in the establishment of Mr. Trevanion.’ Sir, I accepted the proposal; and that’s why I wear this livery.”
Pisistratus.—“And pray, what business had you with that young woman, whom I take to be Miss Trevanion’s maid? And why should she come from Oxton to see you?”
I had expected that these questions would confound Mr. Peacock; but if there were really anything in them to cause embarrassment, the ci-devant actor was too practised in his profession to exhibit it. He merely smiled, and smoothing jauntily a very tumbled shirt front, he said, “Oh, sir, fie!
“‘Of this matter
Is little Cupid’s crafty arrow made.’
“If you must know my love affairs, that young woman is, as the vulgar say, my sweetheart.”
“Your sweetheart!” I exclaimed, greatly relieved, and acknowledging at once the probability of the statement. “Yet,” I added suspiciously,—“yet, if so, why should she expect Mr. Gower to write to her?”
“You’re quick of hearing, sir; but though—
“‘All adoration, duty, and observance;
All humbleness and patience and impatience,’
the young woman won’t marry a livery servant,—proud creature!—very proud! and Mr. Gower, you see, knowing how it was, felt for me, and told her, if I may take such liberty with the Swan, that she should—
“‘Never lie by Johnson’s side
With an unquiet soul,’
for that he would get me a place in the Stamps! The silly girl said she would have it in black and white,—as if Mr. Gower would write to her!
“And now, sir,” continued Mr. Peacock, with a simpler gravity, “you are at liberty, of course, to say what you please to my lady; but I hope you’ll not try to take the bread out of my mouth because I wear a livery and am fool enough to be in love with a waiting-woman,—I, sir, who could have married ladies who have played the first parts in life—on the metropolitan stage.”
I had nothing to say to these representations, they seemed plausible; and though at first I had suspected that the man had only resorted to the buffoonery of his quotations in order to gain time for invention or to divert my notice from any flaw in his narrative, yet at the close, as the narrative seemed probable, so I was willing to believe the buffoonery was merely characteristic. I contented myself, therefore, with asking, “Where do you come from now?”
“From Mr. Trevanion, in the country, with letters to Lady Ellinor.”
“Oh! and so the young woman knew you were coming to town?”
“Yes, sir; Mr. Trevanion told me, some days ago, the day I should have to start.”
“And what do you and the young woman propose doing to-morrow if there is no change of plan?”
Here I certainly thought there was a slight, scarce perceptible, alteration in Mr. Peacock’s countenance; but he answered readily, “To-morrow, a little assignation, if we can both get out,—
“‘Woo me, now I am in a holiday humor,
And like enough to consent’
“Swan again, sir.”
“Humph! so then Mr. Gower and Mr. Vivian are the same person?”
Peacock hesitated. “That’s not my secret, sir; ‘I am combined by a sacred vow.’ You are too much the gentleman to peep through the blanket of the dark and to ask me, who wear the whips and stripes—I mean the plush small-clothes and shoulder-knots—the secrets of another gent to whom ‘my services are bound.’”
How a man past thirty foils a man scarcely twenty! What superiority the mere fact of living-on gives to the dullest dog! I bit my lip and was silent.
“And,” pursued Mr. Peacock, “if you knew how the Mr. Vivian you inquired after loves you! When I told him, incidentally, how a young gentleman had come behind the scenes to inquire after him, he made me describe you, and then said, quite mournfully, ‘If ever I am what I hope to become, how happy I shall be to shake that kind hand once more,’—very words, sir, honor bright!
“‘I think there’s ne’er a man in Christendom
Can lesser hide his hate or love than he.’”
And if Mr. Vivian has some reason to keep himself concealed still; if his fortune or ruin depend on your not divulging his secret for a while,—I can’t think you are the man he need fear. ‘Pon my life,—
“‘I wish I was as sure of a good dinner,’
as the Swan touchingly exclaims. I dare swear that was a wish often on the Swan’s lips in the privacy of his domestic life!”
My heart was softened, not by the pathos of the much profaned and desecrated Swan, but by Mr. Peacock’s unadorned repetition of Vivian’s words. I turned my face from the sharp eyes of my companion; the cab now stopped at the foot of London Bridge.
I had no more to ask, yet still there was some uneasy curiosity in my mind, which I could hardly define to myself, was it not jealousy? Vivian so handsome and so daring,—he at least might see the great heiress; Lady Ellinor perhaps thought of no danger there. But—I—I was a lover still, and—nay, such thoughts were folly indeed!
“My man,” said I to the ex-comedian, “I neither wish to harm Mr. Vivian (if I am so to call him), nor you who imitate him in the variety of your names. But I tell you fairly that I do not like your being in Mr. Trevanion’s employment, and I advise you to get out of it as soon as possible. I say nothing more as yet, for I shall take time to consider well what you have told me.”
With that I hastened away, and Mr. Peacock continued his solitary journey over London Bridge.
CHAPTER VII
Amidst all that lacerated my heart or tormented my thoughts that eventful day, I felt at least one joyous emotion when, on entering our little drawing-room, I found my uncle seated there.
The Captain had placed before him on the table a large Bible, borrowed from the landlady. He never travelled, to be sure, without his own Bible; but the print of that was small, and the Captain’s eyes began to fail him at night. So this was a Bible with large type, and a candle was placed on either side of it; and the Captain leaned his elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his forehead,—tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and force his whole soul upon the page.
He sat the image of iron courage; in every line of that rigid form there was resolution: “I will not listen to my heart; I will read the Book, and learn to suffer as becomes a Christian man.”
There was such a pathos in the stern sufferer’s attitude that it spoke those words as plainly as if his lips had said them. Old soldier, thou hast done a soldier’s part in many a bloody field; but if I could make visible to the world thy brave soldier’s soul, I would paint thee as I saw thee then!—Out on this tyro’s hand!
At the movement I made, the Captain looked up, and the strife he had gone through was written upon his face.
“It has done me good,” said he simply, and he closed the book.
I drew my chair near to him and hung my arm over his shoulder.
“No cheering news, then?” asked I in a whisper.
Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on his lips.
CHAPTER VIII
It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland’s thoughts, whatever their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.
Yet as “restless I rolled around my weary bed,” and revolved the renewal of Vivian’s connection with a man of character so equivocal as Peacock; the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his own in the service of Trevanion; the care with which he had concealed from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion’s maid; the words that had passed between them,—plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still suspicious; and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian’s reckless ambition and unprincipled sentiments,—nay, the effect that a few random words upon Fanny’s fortune, and the luck of winning an heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious temper,—when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, in the darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, more experienced in the world than myself, to advise me as to the course I ought to pursue. Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what? The character of the servant, or the designs of the fictitious Gower? Against the first I could say, if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without—not indeed betraying his confidence, for that he had never given me—but without belying the professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever were his real secrets to Trevanion; and, if not, I might indeed ruin his prospects by revealing the aliases he assumed. But wherefore reveal, and wherefore warn? Because of suspicions that I could not myself analyze,—suspicions founded on circumstances most of which had already been seemingly explained away. Still, when morning came, I was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland’s countenance, and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care that I had no option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in his strong understanding and unerring sense of honor, I wandered out, hoping that in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts and solve the problem that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And, this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon Lady Ellinor and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.
Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, borne by post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement, scattering to the right and left all humbler equipages, and hurried, as if on an errand of life and death, up the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland Place. But rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen distinctly the face of Fanny Trevanion in the carriage; and that face wore a strange expression, which seemed to me to speak of anxiety and grief; and by her side—Was not that the woman I had seen with Peacock? I did not see the face of the woman, but I thought I recognized the cloak, the bonnet, and peculiar turn of the head. If I could be mistaken there, I was not mistaken at least as to the servant on the seat behind. Looking back at a butcher’s boy who had just escaped being run over, and was revenging himself by all the imprecations the Dirae of London slang could suggest, the face of Mr. Peacock was exposed in full to my gaze.
My first impulse, on recovering my surprise, was to spring after the carriage; in the haste of that impulse, I cried “Stop!” But the carriage was out of sight in a moment, and my word was lost in air. Full of presentiments of some evil,—I knew not what,—I then altered my course, and stopped not till I found myself, panting and out of breath, in St. James’s Square—at the door of Trevanion’s house—in the hall. The porter had a newspaper in his hand as he admitted me.
“Where is Lady Ellinor? I must see her instantly.”
“No worse news of master, I hope, sir?”
“Worse news of what, of whom? Of Mr. Trevanion?”
“Did you not know he was suddenly taken ill, sir,—that a servant came express to say so last night? Lady Ellinor went off at ten o’clock to join him.”
“At ten o’clock last night?”
“Yes, sir; the servant’s account alarmed her ladyship so much.”
“The new servant, who had been recommended by Mr. Gower?”
“Yes, sir,—Henry,” answered the porter, staring at me. “Please, sir, here is an account of master’s attack in the paper. I suppose Henry took it to the office before he came here,—which was very wrong in him; but I am afraid he’s a very foolish fellow.”
“Never mind that. Miss Trevanion,—I saw her just now,—she did not go with her mother: where was she going, then?”
“Why, sir,—but pray step into the parlor.”
“No, no; speak!”
“Why, sir, before Lady Ellinor set out she was afraid that there might be something in the papers to alarm Miss Fanny, and so she sent Henry down to Lady Castleton’s to beg her ladyship to make as light of it as she could; but it seems that Henry blabbed the worst to Mrs. Mole.”
“Who is Mrs. Mole?”
“Miss Trevanion’s maid, sir,—a new maid; and Mrs. Mole blabbed to my young lady, and so she took fright, and insisted on coming to town. And Lady Castleton, who is ill herself in bed, could not keep her, I suppose,—especially as Henry said, though he ought to have known better, ‘that she would be in time to arrive before my lady set off.’ Poor Miss Trevanion was so disappointed when she found her mamma gone. And then she would order fresh horses and go on, though Mrs. Bates (the housekeeper, you know, sir) was very angry with Mrs. Mole, who encouraged Miss; and—”
“Good heavens! Why did not Mrs. Bates go with her?”
“Why, sir, you know how old Mrs. Bates is, and my young lady is always so kind that she would not hear of it, as she is going to travel night and day; and Mrs. Mole said she had gone all over the world with her last lady, and that—”
“I see it all. Where is Mr. Gower?”
“Mr. Gower, sir!”
“Yes! Can’t you answer?”
“Why, with Mr. Trevanion, I believe, sir.”
“In the North,—what is the address!”
“Lord N—, C—Hall, near W—”
I heard no more.
The conviction of some villanous snare struck me as with the swiftness and force of lightning. Why, if Trevanion were really ill, had the false servant concealed it from me? Why suffered me to waste his time, instead of hastening to Lady Ellinor? How, if Mr. Trevanion’s sudden illness had brought the man to London,—how had he known so long beforehand (as he himself told me, and his appointment with the waiting-woman proved) the day he should arrive? Why now, if there were no design of which Miss Trevanion was the object, why so frustrate the provident foresight of her mother, and take advantage of the natural yearning of affection, the quick impulse of youth, to hurry off a girl whose very station forbade her to take such a journey without suitable protection,—against what must be the wish, and what clearly were the instructions, of Lady Ellinor? Alone, worse than alone! Fanny Trevanion was then in the hands of two servants who were the instruments and confidants of an adventurer like Vivian; and that conference between those servants, those broken references to the morrow coupled with the name Vivian had assumed,—needed the unerring instincts of love more cause for terror?—terror the darker because the exact shape it should assume was obscure and indistinct.
I sprang from the house.
I hastened into the Haymarket, summoned a cabriolet, drove home as fast as I could (for I had no money about me for the journey I meditated), sent the servant of the lodging to engage a chaise-and-four, rushed into the room, where Roland fortunately still was, and exclaimed,—“Uncle, come with me! Take money, plenty of money! Some villany I know, though I can’t explain it, has been practised on the Trevanions. We may defeat it yet. I will tell you all by the way. Come, come!”
“Certainly. But villany,—and to people of such a station—pooh! collect yourself. Who is the villain?”
“Oh, the man I had loved as a friend; the man whom I myself helped to make known to Trevanion,—Vivian, Vivian!”
“Vivian! Ah, the youth I have heard you speak of! But how? Villany to whom,—to Trevanion?”
“You torture me with your questions. Listen: this Vivian (I know him),—he has introduced into the house, as a servant, an agent capable of any trick and fraud; that servant has aided him to win over her maid,—Fanny’s—Miss Trevanion’s. Miss Trevanion is an heiress, Vivian an adventurer. My head swims round; I cannot explain now. Ha! I will write a line to Lord Castleton,—tell him my fears and suspicions; he will follow us, I know, or do what is best.”
I drew ink and paper towards me and wrote hastily. My uncle came round and looked over my shoulder.
Suddenly he exclaimed, seizing my arm: “Gower, Gower! What name is this? You said Vivian.”
“Vivian or Gower,—the same person.”
My uncle hurried out of the room. It was natural that he should leave me to make our joint and brief preparations for departure.
I finished my letter, sealed it, and when, five minutes afterwards, the chaise came to the door, I gave it to the hostler who accompanied the horses, with injunctions to deliver it forthwith to Lord Castleton himself.
My uncle now descended, and stepped from the threshold with a firm stride. “Comfort yourself,” he said, as he entered the chaise, into which I had already thrown myself. “We may be mistaken yet.”
“Mistaken! You do not know this young man. He has every quality that could entangle a girl like Fanny, and not, I fear, one sentiment of honor that would stand in the way of his ambition. I judge him now as by a revelation—too late—Oh Heavens, if it be too late!”
A groan broke from Roland’s lips. I heard in it a proof of his sympathy with my emotion, and grasped his hand, it was as cold as the hand of the dead.