An inarticulate cry, like that of a wild animal caught in a snare, was the only reply.

"That is the worst of letting his candle go out," mused Richard, aloud; "some rat has got hold of him already." Then, with a steady foot and smiling face, which showed how all his previous fears had been a.s.sumed, he retraced his steps, and mounted to the upper air. The sky was clearer now; and, casting the torch, for which he had no further need, far into the mine, and shouldering the ladder, he started for Gethin at good speed. It was past two o'clock before he reached his inn at Turlock; but before he retired to rest he sat down to the supper that had been prepared for him, but without the appet.i.te which he had antic.i.p.ated.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE SMOKING-ROOM OF THE GEORGE AND VULTURE.

Robert Balfour did not remain at Turlock, as he had originally intended.

Perhaps the vicinity to Wheal Danes was not so attractive to him as he had promised himself that it would be, although not for a single instant did his purpose of revenge relax. Other considerations, had he needed them, were powerful, now that he had taken the first step, to keep him on that terrible path which he had so long marked out for himself. To disclose the position of his victim now would have been not only to make void his future plans, but to place his own fate at Solomon's mercy. Yet he found his heart less hard than the petrifaction it had undergone, the constant droppings of wrong and hardship for twenty years, should have rendered it. He did not wake until late, and the first sound that broke upon his ear was the tinkling of the bell of the little church, for it was Sunday morning. He compared it for a moment with something that he had been dreaming of: a man in a well chipping footsteps for himself in the brick wall, up which he climbed a few feet, and then fell down again. Then a pitiful, unceasing cry of "Help, help!--help, help!" rang in his ears, instead of the voice that called people to prayers. Even when that ceased, the wind and rain--for the weather was wild and wet--beating against the window-pane, brought with them doleful shrieks.

Sometimes a sudden gust seemed to bear upon it confused voices and the tramp of hurrying feet; and then he would knit his brow and clench his hand, with the apprehension that they had found his enemy, and were bringing him to the door. Not the slightest fear of the consequences to himself in such a case agitated his mind; he had quite resolved what to do, and that no prison walls should ever hem him in again; but the bare idea that Solomon should escape his vengeance drove him to the brink of frenzy. He would have left the place at once, but that he thought the coincidence of his departure with the disappearance of his foe might possibly awaken suspicion; so he staid on through the day, waiting for the news which he knew must arrive sooner or later. At noon he thought the landlady wore an unusually grave air, and he felt impelled to ask her what was the matter. But then, if there was nothing--if she only looked sour, as folks often did, just because it was Sunday--she might think him too curious.

From his window, a little later, he saw a knot of people in the rain talking eagerly together, and one of them pointing with his hand toward Gethin. But they were too far off to be overheard, and he did not dare go down and interrogate them. It was his object to appear utterly indifferent to local affairs, and as a total stranger. He felt half stifled within doors, and yet, if he should go out, he knew that he would be incontrollably impelled to take the cliff path that he had followed the preceding night, to watch that n.o.body came near the place that held his prey, and thereby, like the bird who shows her nest by keeping guard too near, attract attention. The tidings for which he waited came at six o'clock, just as he was sitting down to his dinner.

The parlor-maid who served him had that happy and excited look which the possession of news, whether it be good or bad, but especially the latter, always imparts to persons of her cla.s.s.

"There's strange news come from Gethin, Sir," said she, as she arranged the dishes.

"Indeed," said Balfour, carelessly, though he felt his brain spin round and his heart stop at the same moment. "What is it?"

"Mr. Coe, Sir, a very rich man--he as owns all Dunloppel--has disappeared."

"How's that?"

"Well, Sir, he went to his room last night, they say, at his usual hour, but never slept in his bed, and the front-door was found unlocked in the morning, so that he must have gone away of himself. That would not be so odd, for he is a secret sort of man, as is always coming and going; but he has taken nothing with him; only the clothes he stood in."

"Well, I dare say he has come back again by this time, my good girl.

What's this? Is there no fish?"

"No, Sir; the weather was too bad yesterday for catching them, and all last night there was a dreadful sea: that's what they fear about Mr.

Coe--that he has fell into the sea. His footsteps have been tracked to the cliff edge, and there they stop."

"Poor fellow! Has he any relatives?"

"Oh yes, Sir; a wife and son--a very handsome, nice young gentleman."

"Then his widow will be rich, I suppose?"

"Oh, pray, don't call her a widow yet, Sir; let us hope her husband may be found. It's a dreadful thing to be drowned like that on a Sunday morning; and for one who knows the cliff path so well as he did, too. He was a hard man, and no favorite, but one forgets that now, of course."

"You have also forgotten the Harvey Sauce, my good girl; oblige me by bringing it, will you?" said Mr. Balfour, beginning to whistle something which did not sound like a psalm tune. "You must excuse my hard-heartedness, but I had not the pleasure of knowing this gentleman."

An hour afterward the solitary guest had left the inn, and was on his road to Plymouth. His departure caused little surprise, for the weather was such as to induce no visitor to prolong his stay.

Whether from his long enforced abstinence from society, or from the unwelcome nature of his thoughts, Robert Balfour was always disinclined to be alone. His expeditions with Charley in search of pleasure had been, though he did not find pleasure, more agreeable to him than the being left to his own resources; and now this was more the case than ever. He preferred even such company as that which the smoking-room of an hotel afforded to none at all. The voices of his fellow-creatures could not shape themselves, as every inarticulate sound did to his straining ear, into groans and feeble cries for aid. Not twenty-four hours had elapsed since his prisoner was placed in hold, so that such sounds of weakness and agony must have been in every sense chimerical; and yet he heard them. What, then, if these echoes from the tomb should always be heard? A terrible idea indeed, but one which bred no repentance. It was not likely that remorse should seize him in the very place where his hated foe had clutched and consigned him to _his_ living grave.

The hotel at which he now put up was the same at which he had then lodged; this public room was the same in which he had smoked his last cigar upon his fatal visit to the Miners' Bank. He had had only one companion then, but now it was full of people. By their talk it was evident that they were townsfolk, and all known to one another; in fact, it was a tradesmen's club, which met at the _George and Vulture_ on Sunday nights through the winter months. In spite of his willingness to be won from his thoughts, he could not fix his attention on the small local gossip that was going on about him. Men came in and out without his observing them; and indeed it was not easy to take note of faces through the cloud of smoke that filled the room; he was fast relapsing into his own reflections, wondering what Solomon was doing in the dark, and if he slept much, when an event occurred which roused him as thoroughly as the p.r.i.c.k of a lance or a sudden douche of cold water.

"Let us have no misunderstanding and no obligation--that is my motto."

The speaker was a thin, gray man, whose entrance into the apartment Balfour had not perceived, and who was seated in an elevated chair, which had apparently been reserved for him as president of the a.s.sembly.

The face was unfamiliar, for twenty years had made an old man of the astute and lively detective; but his phrase, and the manner of delivering it, identified him at once as his old friend Mr. Dodge.

"It was in this very room," continued the latter, "that I sat and talked with him as sociable as could be, not a quarter of an hour before I put the darbies on him; and it's a thing that has been upon my mind ever since. I was only doing my duty, of course, but still it seemed hard to take advantage of such a frank young fellow. As for stealing them notes, it's my belief he had no more intention of doing it than I had."

"And yet he got it hot at the 'sizes, Mr. Dodge, didn't he?" inquired one of the company.

"Got it hot, Sir?" replied Mr. Dodge, with dignity; "he got an infamous and most unjustly severe sentence, if you mean that, Sir. Of course what he did was contrary to law, but it's my opinion as the law was strained agin him. There was some as swore hard and fast to get him punished as knew he deserved no such treatment. Why, the girl as he loved, and whose picture I found upon him myself when I searched him, and gave it him back, too--ay, that I did--even she took a false oath, as Weasel himself told me, who was his lawyer, and had built up his case with that same hussy for its corner-stone. Ah!" said Mr. Dodge, with a gesture of abhorrence, "if there ever was a murdered man, it was that poor young fellow, Richard Yorke."

"But I thought he got twenty years' penal servitude," observed the same individual who had interposed before, and whose thankless office it seemed to be to draw the old gentleman out for the benefit of society.

"I say he was murdered, Sir. He was shut up for nigh twenty years, and then shot in the back in trying to get away from Lingmoor. It was the hardest case I ever knew in all my professional experience. Lord, if you had seen him--the handsomest, brightest, gayest young chap! And he was what some folks call well-born, too; he was the son--that is, though, in a left-handed sort of way, it's true--of mad Carew of Crompton, about whose death the papers were so full a month ago or so; and that, in my judgment, was the secret of all his misfortune: it was the Carew blood as did it. To take his own way in the world; to seek n.o.body's advice, nor use it if 'twas given; to be spoiled and petted by all the women and half the men as came nigh him; to own no master nor authority; to act without thought, and to scorn consequences--well, all that was bred in the bone with him."

"Then he had never any one to look after him at home, I reckon, Mr.

Dodge?"

"Well, yes; he had a mother; and though she was a queer one too, she loved him dearly. She was the cleverest woman, Weasel used to say, as ever he had to do with; and a perfect lady too, mind you. She worked to get the poor lad off like a slave; and when all was over, instead of breaking down, as most would, she swallowed her pride, and went down on her bended knees to that old miserly devil, Trevethick, the prosecutor, and to his son-in-law, Coe, likewise: they lived down Cross Key way--where was it?--at Gethin--and begged and prayed him to join in pet.i.tioning in her son's favor. She got down there the very day after his lying daughter was married to Solomon Coe, he as has got Dunloppel, and is a big man now. But he'll never be any thing but a scurvy lot, if he was to be king o' Cornwall. I shall never forget the way he insulted that poor young fellow when he was took up. Damme, I would have given a ten-pound note to have had _him_ charged with something, and I'd ha'

seen that the handcuffs weren't none too big for his wrists neither."

"And this Trevethick refused to help the lady, did he?"

"Why, of course he did. He broke her heart, poor soul. I saw her when she pa.s.sed through Plymouth afterward, and she looked twenty years older than before that trial. Even then she didn't give the matter up, but laid it before the crown. But poor Yorke had offended government--helped some fool or another through one of them public examinations; he had wits enough for any thing, had that young fellow. But there--I can't a-bear to talk about him; and yet somehow I can't help doing on it when I get into this room. He sat just where that gentleman sits yonder. I think I see him now, smoking the best of cigars, one of which he offered to me--for he was free as free; but I was necessitated to restore it, for I couldn't take a gift from one as I was just a-going to nab. 'Thank you kindly,' says I, 'but let us have no misunderstanding and no obligation.' Poor fellow! poor fellow!"

No more was said about the case of Richard Yorke; but it was evidently a standing topic with the chairman of the _George and Vulture_ club. A yearning to behold and embrace that mother who had done and suffered so much for his sake took possession of Richard's soul. His heart had been steeled against her when he found harbored under her roof the objects of his rage and loathing; but he felt now that that must have come to pa.s.s with some intention of benefit to himself. The very truth, indeed, flashed upon him that she entertained some plan of frustrating his revenge against them, with the idea of protecting him from the consequences that were likely to ensue from it; and he forgave her, while he hated his foes the more. He would carry out his design to the uttermost, but very cautiously, and with a prudence that he would certainly not have used had his own safety been alone concerned; and then, when he had avenged himself and her, he would disclose himself to her. The statement he had just heard affected him deeply, but in opposite ways. The justification of himself in no way moved him--he did not need that; it was also far too late for his heart to be touched by the expression of the old detective's good-will, though the time had been when he would have thanked him for its utterance with honest tears; but the revelation of his mother's toil and suffering in his behalf reawakened all his dormant love for her, while it made his purpose firmer than ever to be the Nemesis of her enemies and his own.

As he went to bed that night the clock struck twelve. It was just four-and-twenty hours since he had left his victim in the bowels of Wheal Danes. If a free pardon could have been offered to him for the crime, and the mine been filled with gold for him to its mouth, he would not have stretched out his hand to save him.

CHAPTER XLIV.

STILL HUMAN.

Mr. Balfour atoned for his previous indifference to the wares of the news-boy by sending him next morning to the station for all the local papers. In each, as he expected, there was a paragraph headed _Mysterious Disappearance_, and as lengthened an account as professional ingenuity could devise of the unaccountable departure of Mr. Solomon Coe from his house at Gethin. The missing man was "much respected;" and, "as the prosperous owner of the Dunloppel mine, which had yielded so largely for so many years, he could certainly not have been pressed by pecuniary embarra.s.sments, and therefore the idea of suicide was out of the question." Unlikely as it seemed in the case of one who knew the country so well, the most probable explanation of the affair was that the unfortunate gentleman, in taking a walk by night along the cliff top, must have slipped into the sea. The weather had been very rough of late and the wind blowing from off the land, which would have accounted--if this supposition was correct--for the body not having been washed ash.o.r.e. "In the mean time an active search was going on."

Balfour had resolved not to return to London for at least ten days. Mrs.

Coe and her son would, without doubt, be telegraphed for, and he could not repair to their house in their absence. The idea of being under the same roof alone with his mother was now repugnant to him. He felt that he could not trust himself in such a position. It had been hard and grievous, notwithstanding his resentment against her, to see her in company with others, and her absence of late from table had been a great relief to him. With his present feeling toward her it would be impossible to maintain his incognito; and, if that was lost, his future plans--to which he well knew she would oppose herself--would be rendered futile. He had seen with rage and bitter jealousy that both Harry and her boy, and especially the latter, were dear to her; and it was certain she would interfere to protect them, for their sake as well as for his own. He had other reasons also for not returning immediately to town. It might hereafter be expedient to show that he _had_ really been to Midlandshire, where he had given out he had designed to go; and, moreover, though his purpose was relentless as respected Solomon, he did not perhaps care to be in a house where hourly suggestions would be dropped as to the whereabouts of his victim, or the fate that had happened to him. Harry and her son might even not have gone to Gethin, and in that case their apprehensions and surmises would have been insupportable.

Richard was more human than he would fain believe himself to be. Though he had gone to bed so inexorable of purpose, it had been somewhat shaken through the long hours of a night in which he had slept but little, and waked to think on what his feverish dreams had dwelt upon--the fate of his unhappy foe, perishing slowly beside his useless treasure. More than once, indeed, the impulse had been strong upon him that very morning to send word anonymously where Solomon was to be found to the police at Plymouth. Remorse had not as yet become chronic with him, but it seized him by fits and starts.

There had been a time when he had looked (through his prison bars) on all men with rage and hatred; but now he caught himself, as it were, at attempts at self-justification with respect to the retribution he had exacted even from his enemy. Had he not been rendered miserable, he argued, supremely wretched, for more than half his lifetime, through this man's agency? for it was certain that Solomon had sworn falsely, in the spirit if not in the letter, and caused him to be convicted of a crime which his rival was well aware he had not in intention committed.

His conduct toward him on the occasion of his arrest had also been most brutal and insulting; while, after conviction had been obtained, this wretch's malice, as Mr. Dodge had stated, had known no cessation. In the arms of his young bride he had been deaf to the piteous cry of a mother beseeching for her only son.

But, on the other hand, had not he (Richard) deeply wronged this man in the first instance? Had he not robbed him--for so much at least must Solomon have known--of the love of his promised wife? If happiness from such an ill-a.s.sorted union was not to have been antic.i.p.ated, still, had he not rendered it impossible? If their positions had been reversed, would not he have exacted expiation from such an offender to the uttermost? He would doubtless have scorned to twist the law as Solomon had done, and make it, as it were, the crooked instrument of his revenge. He would not, of course, have evoked its aid at all. But was that to be placed to his credit? He had put himself above the law throughout his life; he had never acknowledged any authority save that of his own selfish will; nay, he owned to himself that his bitterness against his unhappy victim had been caused not so much by the wrong he had suffered at his hands as by the contempt which he (Richard) had entertained for him. Without materials such as his father had possessed to back his pretensions he had imagined himself a sort of irresponsible and sovereign being. (Such infatuation is by no means rare, nor confined to despots and brigands, and when it exists in a poor man it is always fatal to himself.) His education, if it could be called such, had doubtless fostered this delusion; but Mr. Dodge was right; the Carew blood had been as poison in his veins, and had destroyed him.