Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 112

"Once more I say I cannot."

"Am I to understand that is as much as to say you will not?"

"If you like to take it so. It is most painful to me, Mr. Brandon, to have to meet you in this spirit, but you force it on me. The case is this: I am not able to refund the debt to Squire Todhetley, and he has no power to enforce his claim to it."

"I don't know that."

"I do though. It is best to be plain, as we have come to this, Mr.

Brandon; and then perhaps you will bring the interview to an end, and leave me in peace. You have no power over me in this country; none whatever. Before you can obtain that, there are certain forms and ceremonies to be gone through in a legal court; you must make over the----"

"Squire Todhetley's is not a case of debt," interrupted old Brandon. "If it were, he would have no right in honour to come here and seek payment over the heads of the other creditors."

"It is a case of debt, and nothing else. As debt only could you touch me upon it here--and not then until you have proved it and got judgment upon it in England. Say, if you will, that I have committed murder or forged bank-notes--you could not touch me here unless the French government gave me up at the demand of the English government. Get all the police in the town to this room if you will, Mr. Brandon, and they would only laugh at you. They have no power over me. I have committed no offence against this country."

"Look here," said old Brandon, nodding his head. "I know a bit about French law; perhaps as much as you: knew it years ago. What you say is true enough; an Englishman, whether debtor or criminal, in his own land, cannot be touched here, unless certain forms and ceremonies, as you express it, are first gone through. But you have rendered yourself amenable to French law on another point, Clement-Pell; I could consign you to the police this moment, if I chose, and they would have to take you."

Clement-Pell quite laughed at what he thought the useless boast. But he might have known old Brandon better. "What is my crime, sir?"

"You have come here and are staying here under a false name--Brown. That is a crime in the eyes of the French law; and one that the police, if they get to know of it, are obliged to take cognizance of."

"No!" exclaimed Clement-Pell, his face changing a little.

"_Yes_," said Mr. Brandon. "Were I to give you up for it to-day, they would put you on board the first boat leaving for your own country. Once on the opposite sh.o.r.e, you may judge whether Squire Todhetley would let you escape again."

It was all true. Mr. Pell saw that it was so. His fingers nervously trembled; his pale face wore a piteous aspect.

"You need not be afraid of me: I am not likely to do it," said Mr.

Brandon: "I do not think the Squire would. But you see now what lies within his power. Therefore I would recommend you to come to terms with him."

Clement-Pell rubbed his brow with his handkerchief. He was driven into a corner.

"I have told you truth, Mr. Brandon, in saying that I am not able to repay the two hundred pounds. I am not. Will he take half of it?"

"I cannot tell. I have no authority for saying that he will."

"Then I suppose he must come up here. As it has come to this, I had better see him. If he will accept one hundred pounds, and undertake not to molest me further, I will hand it over to him. It will leave me almost without means: but you have got me in a hole. Stay a moment--a thought strikes me. Are there any more of my creditors in the town at your back, Mr. Brandon?"

"Not that I am aware of. I have seen none."

"On your honour?"

Mr. Brandon opened his little eyes, and took a stare at Pell. "My word is the same as my honour, sir. Always has been and always will be."

"I beg your pardon. A man, driven to my position, naturally fears an enemy at every corner. And--if my enemies were to find me out here, they might be too much for me."

"Of course they would be," a.s.sented Mr. Brandon, by way of comfort.

"Will you go for Squire Todhetley? What is done, must be done to-day, for I shall be away by the first train in the morning."

Shrewd old Brandon considered the matter before speaking. "By the time I get back here with the Squire you may have already taken your departure, Mr. Pell."

"No, on my honour. How should I be able to do it? No train leaves the town before six to-night: the water is low in the harbour and no boat could get out. As it has come to this, I will see Squire Todhetley: and the sooner the better."

"I will trust you," said Mr. Brandon.

"Time was when I was deemed more worthy of trust: perhaps was more worthy of it,"--and tears involuntarily rose to his eyes. "Mr. Brandon, believe me--no man has suffered by this as I have suffered. Do you think I did it for pleasure?--or to afford myself wicked gratification! No. I would have forfeited nearly all my remaining life to prevent the smash.

My affairs got into their awful state by degrees; and I had not the power to retrieve them. G.o.d alone knows what the penalty has been to me--and what it will be to my life's end."

"Ay. I can picture it pretty tolerably, Mr. Pell."

"No one can picture it," he returned, with emotion. "Look at my ruined family--the position of my sons and daughters. Not one of them can hold up their heads in the world again without the consciousness that they may be pointed at as the children of Clement-Pell the swindler. What is to be their future?--how are they to get along? You must have heard many a word of abuse applied to me lately, Mr. Brandon: but there are few men on this earth more in need of compa.s.sion than I--if misery and suffering can bring the need. When morning breaks, I wish the day was done; when night comes, I toss and turn and wonder how I shall live through it."

"I am sorry for you," said Mr. Brandon, moved to pity, for he saw how the man needed it. "Were I you, I would go back home and face my debts.

Face the trouble, and in time you may be able to live it down."

Clement-Pell shook his head hopelessly. Had it been debt alone, he might never have come away.

The sequel to all this had yet to come. Perhaps some of you may guess it. Mr. Brandon pounced upon the Squire as he was coming out of church in the Rue du Temple, and took him back in another coach. Arrived at the house, they found the door fast. Mathilde appeared presently, arm-in-arm with her sweetheart--a young man in white boots with ear-rings in his ears. "Was M. Brown of depart," she repeated, in answer to the Squire's impulsive question: but no, certainly he was not. And she gave them the following information.

When she returned after midday, she found M. Brown all impatience, waiting for her to show him the way to the house of Monsieur Bourgeois, that he might claim Madame's letter. When they reached the shop, it had only the fille de boutique in it. Monsieur the patron was out making a promenade, the fille de boutique said he might be home possibly for the shutting up at two o'clock.

Upon that, M. Brown decided to make a little promenade himself until two o'clock; and Mathilde, she made a further promenade on her own account: and had now come up, before two, to get the door open. Such was her explanation. If the gentlemans would be at the pains of sitting down in the salon, without doubt M. Brown would not long r.e.t.a.r.d.

They sat down. The clock struck two. They sat on, and the clock struck three. Not until then did any thought arise that Clement-Pell might not keep faith with them. Mathilde's freely expressed opinion was that M.

Brown, being strange to the town, had lost himself. She ran to the grocer's shop again, and found it shut up: evidently no one was there.

Four o'clock, five o'clock; and no Mr. Brown. They gave him up then; it seemed quite certain that he had given them the slip. Starving with hunger, exploding with anger, the Squire took his wrathful way back to the hotel: Mr. Brandon was calm and sucked his magnesia lozenges.

Clement-Pell was a rogue to the last.

There came to Mr. Brandon the following morning, through the Boulogne post-office, a note; on which he had to pay five sous. It was from Clement-Pell, written in pencil. He said that when he made the agreement with Mr. Brandon never a thought crossed him of not keeping faith: but that while he was waiting about for the return of the grocer who held his wife's letter, he saw an Englishman come off the ramparts--a creditor who knew him well and would be sure to deliver him up, were it in his power, if he caught sight of him. It struck him, Clement-Pell, with a panic: he considered that he had only one course left open to him--and that was to get away from the place at once and in the quietest manner he was able. There was a message to Mr. Todhetley to the effect that he would send him the hundred pounds later if he could. Throughout the whole letter ran a vein of despairing sadness, according with what he had said to Mr. Brandon; and the Squire's heart was touched.

"After all, Brandon, the fellow _is_ to be pitied. It's a frightful position: enough to make a man lose heart for good and all. I'm not sure that I should have taken the hundred pounds from him."

"That's more than probable," returned old Brandon, drily. "It remains a question, though, in my mind, whether he did see the creditor and did 'take a panic:' or whether both are not invented to cover his precipitate departure with the hundred pounds."

How he got away from the town we never knew. The probability was, that he had walked to the first station after Boulogne on the Paris railroad, and there taken the evening train. And whether he had presented himself again at Monsieur Bourgeois's shop, that excellent tradesman, who did not return home until ten on Sunday night, was unable to say. Any way, M. Bourgeois held the letter yet in safety. So the chances are, that Mr.

and Mrs. Pell are still dodging about the earth in search of each other, after the fashion of the Wandering Jew.

And that's a true account of our visit to Boulogne after Clement-Pell.

Mr. Brandon calls it to this hour a wild-goose chase: certainly it turned out a fruitless one. But we had a good pa.s.sage back again, the sea as calm as a mill-pond.

XXVI.