'He's got it!' he muttered in a hoarse whisper. 'You had better--get a surgeon. You'll bear me out,' he continued, looking round eagerly, 'he began it. He flung it in my face. By God--it may go near to hanging me!'
Sir George and the landlord pushed by him and went in. The room was lighted by one candle, burning smokily on the high mantelshelf; the other lay overturned and extinguished in the folds of a tablecloth which had been dragged to the floor. On a wooden chair beside the bare table sat Mr. Pomeroy, huddled chin to breast, his left hand pressed to his side, his right still resting on the hilt of his small-sword. His face was the colour of chalk, and a little froth stood on his lips; but his eyes, turned slightly upwards, still followed his rival with a grim fixed stare. Sir George marked the crimson stain on his lips, and raising his hand for silence--for the servants were beginning to crowd in with exclamations of horror--knelt down beside the chair, ready to support him in case of need. "They are fetching a surgeon," he said. "He will be here in a minute."
Mr. Pomeroy's eyes left the door, through which Dunborough had disappeared, and for a few seconds they dwelt unwinking on Sir George: but for a while he said nothing. At length, "Too late," he whispered. "It was my boots--I slipped, or I'd have gone through him. I'm done. Pay Tamplin--five pounds I owe him."
Soane saw that it was only a matter of minutes, and he signed to the landlord, who was beginning to lament, to be silent.
"If you can tell me where the girl is--in two words," he said gently, "will you try to do so?"
The dying man's eyes roved over the ring of faces. "I don't know," he whispered, so faintly that Soane had to bring his ear very near his lips. "The parson--was to have got her to Tamplin's--for me. He put her in the wrong carriage. He's paid. And--I'm paid."
With the last word the small-sword fell clinking to the floor. The dying man drew himself up, and seemed to press his hand more and more tightly to his side. For a brief second a look of horror--as if the consciousness of his position dawned on his brain--awoke in his eyes. Then he beat it down. "Tamplin's staunch," he muttered. "I must stand by Tamplin. I owe--pay him five pounds for--"
A gush of blood stopped his utterance. He gasped and with a groan but no articulate word fell forward in Soane's arms. Bully Pomeroy had lost his last stake!
Not this time the spare thousands the old squire, good saving man, had left on bond and mortgage; not this time the copious thousands he had raised himself for spendthrift uses: nor the old oaks his great-grand-sire had planted to celebrate His Majesty's glorious Restoration: nor the Lelys and Knellers that great-grand-sire's son, shrewd old connoisseur, commissioned: not this time the few hundreds hardly squeezed of late from charge and jointure, or wrung from the unwilling hands of friends--but life; life, and who shall say what besides life!
CHAPTER XXXIII
IN THE CARRIAGE
Mr. Thomasson was mistaken in supposing that it was the jerk, caused by the horses' start, which drew from Julia the scream he heard as the carriage bounded forward and whirled into the night. The girl, indeed, was in no mood to be lightly scared; she had gone through too much. But as, believing herself alone, she sank back on the seat--at the moment that the horses plunged forward--her hand, extended to save herself, touched another hand: and the sudden contact in the dark, conveying to her the certainty that she had a companion, with all the possibilities the fact conjured up, more than excused an involuntary cry.
The answer, as she recoiled, expecting the worst, was a sound between a sigh and a grunt; followed by silence. The coachman had got the horses in hand again, and was driving slowly; perhaps he expected to be stopped. She sat as far into her corner as she could, listening and staring, enraged rather than frightened. The lamps shed no light into the interior of the carriage, she had to trust entirely to her ears; and, gradually, while she sat shuddering, awaiting she knew not what, there stole on her senses, mingling with the roll of the wheels, a sound the least expected in the world--a snore!
Irritated, puzzled, she stretched out a hand and touched a sleeve, a man's sleeve; and at that, remembering how she had sat and wasted fears on Mr. Thomasson before she knew who he was, she gave herself entirely to anger. 'Who is it?' she cried sharply. 'What are you doing here?'
The snoring ceased, the man turned himself in his corner. 'Are we there?' he murmured drowsily; and, before she could answer, was asleep again.
The absurdity of the position pricked her. Was she always to be travelling in dark carriages beside men who mocked her? In her impatience she shook the man violently. 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' she cried again.
The unseen roused himself. 'Eh?' he exclaimed. 'Who--who spoke? I--oh, dear, dear, I must have been dreaming. I thought I heard--'
'Mr. Fishwick!' she cried; her voice breaking between tears and laughter. 'Mr. Fishwick!' And she stretched out her hands, and found his, and shook and held them in her joy.
The lawyer heard and felt; but, newly roused from sleep, unable to see her, unable to understand how she came to be by his side in the post-chaise, he shrank from her. He was dumbfounded. His mind ran on ghosts and voices; and he was not to be satisfied until he had stopped the carriage, and with trembling fingers brought a lamp, that he might see her with his eyes. That done, the little attorney fairly wept for joy.
'That I should be the one to find you!' he cried. 'That I should be the one to bring you back! Even now I can hardly believe that you are here! Where have you been, child? Lord bless us, we have seen strange things!'
'It was Mr. Dunborough!' she cried with indignation.
'I know, I know,' he said. 'He is behind with Sir George Soane. Sir George and I followed you. We met him, and Sir George compelled him to accompany us.'
'Compelled him?' she said.
'Ay, with a pistol to his head,' the lawyer answered; and chuckled and leapt in his seat--for he had re-entered the carriage--at the remembrance. 'Oh, Lord, I declare I have lived a year in the last two days. And to think that I should be the one to bring you back!' he repeated. 'To bring you back! But there, what happened to you? I know that they set you down in the road. We learned that at Bristol this afternoon from the villains who carried you off.'
She told him how they had found. Mr. Pomeroy's house, and taken shelter there, and--
'You have been there until now?' he said in amazement. 'At a gentleman's house? But did you not think, child, that we should be anxious? Were there no horses? No servants? Didn't you think of sending word to Marlborough?'
'He was a villain,' she answered, shuddering. Brave as she was, Mr. Pomeroy had succeeded in frightening her. 'He would not let me go. And if Mr. Thomasson had not stolen the key of the room and released me, and brought me to the gate to-night, and put me in with you--'
'But how did he know that I was passing?' Mr. Fishwick cried, thrusting back his wig and rubbing his head in perplexity. He could not yet believe that it was chance and only chance had brought them together.
And she was equally ignorant. 'I don't know,' she said. 'He only told me--that he would have a carriage waiting at the gate.'
'And why did he not come with you?'
'He said--I think he said he was under obligations to Mr. Pomeroy.'
'Pomeroy? Pomeroy?' the lawyer repeated slowly. 'But sure, my dear, if he was a villain, still, having the clergyman with you you should have been safe. This Mr. Pomeroy was not in the same case as Mr. Dunborough. He could not have been deep in love after knowing you a dozen hours.'
'I think,' she said, but mechanically, as if her mind ran on something else, 'that he knew who I was, and wished to make me marry him.'
'Who