The Lord of the Sea Part 24

But that plot failed: on presenting himself at the front of the mansion, he was sent round to the back, where he received payment, and was dismissed; and when he again started for the front, intending to force his way in, he decided upon something else, and walked back to Thring.

He reached the Sturgess cottage soon after six, ate, with a candle returned to the lean-to to resume his work, and was still intent upon it at seven, when Mrs. Sturgess ran out to tell him that "the gentleman had come". He said: "Show him up to my room".

The first thing which O'Hara noticed in that room was the goat-hair trunk, with the initials and cross, the initials his own.

After some minutes he furtively turned the key, dived into a ma.s.s of things, paused to remember the whereabouts of a spring, found it, and, lifting the upper bottom, peered beneath; saw a bundle of papers; and, without removing the band, ferreted among them, and was satisfied---Hogarth's "birth-papers".

He presently went to a back window, and saw ruddy streaks between the boarding of the shanty, while sounds of the hammer reached him.

He would go and meet Hogarth: no harm in that; but it was stealthily that he hurried down the stair and carried himself across the yard, grinning a grimace of self-conscious caution, to peep through a cranny.

Hogarth's back was toward him, the iron leg lying near a box in which was a sitting hen, on its top a candlestick, the calico bag, and a lot of the gems: at which the priest's palm covered his awed mouth, and with a fleet thievishness, like a cat on hot bricks, he trotted back to the cottage.

Ten minutes later Hogarth entered, nodding: "Ah, O'Hara..."; and he called down: "Mrs. Sturgess! pen, ink, and paper!"

When these came, he sat and wrote:

"I have escaped from prison, and come into great power. I summon you to meet me at the elm in the beech-wood to-night at nine. I beseech you, I entreat you. I burn to ashes. Rebekah! My flames of fire! I am dying.

"R. H."

He enclosed, and handed it, without any address, to O'Hara.

"O'Hara", said he, "I want you to take that for me. Come--I will show you the place. You ask in the hall to see 'the young lady': her name does not concern you; but you can't mistake her: she is so-pretty.

Give the note to no one else, of course: it mentions my escape, for one thing. I know you will do it well".

He conducted O'Hara, till the two towers of Westring were visible; pointed them out; then went back, and in an hour had finished his work on the diamonds.

O'Hara, meantime, going on his way alone, muttered: "You go fast, Hogarth: prelates of the Church your errand boys? But there is a little fellow called Alf Harris...if he had seen what I have seen to-night, you would be a corpse now".

In twenty minutes he was at Westring, which he knew well, for twenty-five years before he had lived in the Vale: but he supposed that Lord Westring de Broom was still the inmate.

He asked to see "the young lady", persisted, and after a time Rebekah came with eyebrows of inquiry.

The moment O'Hara saw her well, his visage acquired a ghastly ribbed fixity. Even before this, _she_, by one flashed glance, had known him.

But she took the envelope with easy coolness. And, instead of then returning upon her steps, went still beyond, and whispered to two men in the hall: "Do not let that man pa.s.s out!"

As she again returned inward past O'Hara, she remarked: "You might wait here a little".

She travelled then, not hurrying, down the breadth of a great apartment to a side room where her father sat, capped and writing; and she said: "Papa, the man who a.s.saulted me in the train is now in the hall. As his sentence was three years, he must have escaped--" She was gone at once, the unaddressed envelope, still unopened, shivering a little in her hand.

Frankl leapt up, rather pale, thinking that if the man had come _here_, he must mean mischief; but remembering that the man was a gentleman, a priest, he took heart, and went out.

O'Hara, meantime, stood at bay, guessing his exit blocked, while the terrors of death gat hold upon him, the flesh of his yellow jaw shivering. But he was a man of stern mind--stern as the rocky aspect of his face, and the moment he saw Frankl coming (he had seen him in the Court), he started to meet him--stooped to the Jew's ear, who shrank delicately from contact.

"There isn't any good in running me down, sir", he whispered in sycophant haste. "I pledge you my word I came here without knowing to whom. O do, now! I have already suffered for my crime; and if you attempt to capture me, I do a.s.sure you, I strangle you where you stand!

Do, now! I only brought a letter--"

Frankl, half inclined to tyrannize over misery, and half afraid, swept his hand down the beard.

"Letter?" said he: "from whom?"

"From a friend".

"Which friend?"

"A man named Hogarth".

O'Hara said it in an awful whisper, though not aware of any relation between Hogarth and Frankl.

Whereupon an agitation waved down Frankl's beard. The news that "a man named Hogarth" had written to his daughter would hardly have suggested _Richard_--safe elsewhere; but, one night at Yarmouth, he had seen Richard Hogarth inexplicably kiss his daughter's hand.

"Hogarth?" said he: "what Christian name?"

"Richard".

The agonized thought in Frankl's brain was this: "Well, what's the good of prisons, then?"--he, too earnest a financier to read newspaper gossip, having heard not a word of the three escapes from Colmoor.

He said: "Well, sir, generally speaking, I'm the last to encourage this sort of thing; but, as yours is a special case, I tell you plain out that, personally, I don't mean a bit of harm to you. Just step into a room here, and let us talk the matter quietly over".

He led O'Hara to his study; and there they two remained locked half an hour, conferring head to head.

XXVII

THE BAG OF LIGHT

Rebekah, having excused herself from three ladies, her guests, alone in her room opened her letter.

Glanced first at the "R. H.", and was not surprised. He had "escaped", had "come into great power": that seemed natural; but he "summoned" her to meet him, and she saw no connection between his "great power" and his right to summon her.

She held the paper to a fire, and, as it began to burn, in a panic of flurry extinguished the edge, and hustled it into her bosom; then perambulated; then fell to a chair-edge with staring gaze; then, rocking her head which she had dropped upon a little table, moaned: "He is mad...."

"My flames of fire! Rebekah! I am dying...."

He suffered; and a p.u.s.s.y's wail mewed from her; but with a gasp of anger which said "Ho!" she sprang straight, and went ranging, with a stamping gait, through the chamber, filling it with pa.s.sion. "I _won't go_!" she went with fixed lips, as something within her whispered: "You must".

To escape herself, she went again to see what had happened with regard to the convict, whose face would carry to the grave the scars of her nails.

There were no signs of any disturbance; and she asked a footman: "Where is the man who was here?"

"With your father in the study".

That seemed a strange proceeding: she felt a touch of alarm for her father, and, pa.s.sing again by the study, peeped; could see nothing for the key, but heard voices.