"_My_ only chance--_your_ only chance. Do you take me for a greenhorn?
This is a poor subterfuge; could you not have vamped up something better? Get back to your own room, or I shall make no more of shooting you than I would of snuffing that candle."
"Be advised, sir," continued Luke. "There are three of them--give me a pistol, and fear nothing."
"Give _you_ a pistol! Ha, ha!--to be its mark myself. You are an amusing rascal, I will say."
"Sir, I tell you not a moment is to be lost. Is life nothing? Lady Rookwood may be murdered."
"I tell _you_, once for all, it won"t do. Go back to your room, or take the consequences."
"By the powers! but it shall do, anyhow," exclaimed t.i.tus, flinging himself upon the attorney, and holding both his arms; "you"ve bullied me long enough. I"m sure the lad"s in the right."
Luke s.n.a.t.c.hed the pistols from the hands of Coates.
"Very well, Mr. Tyrconnel; very well, sir," cried the attorney, boiling with wrath, and spluttering out his words. "Extremely well, sir. You are not perhaps aware, sir, what you have done; but you will repent this, sir--repent, I say--repent was my word, Mr. Tyrconnel."
"Poh!--poh!" replied t.i.tus. "I shall never repent a good-natured action."
"Follow me," cried Luke; "settle your disputes hereafter. Quick, or we shall be too late."
Coates bustled after him, and t.i.tus, putting the neck of the forbidden whisky bottle to his lips, and gulping down a hasty mouthful, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a rusty poker, and followed the party with more alacrity than might have been expected from so portly a personage.
_CHAPTER VI_
_THE APPARITION_
_Gibbet._ Well, gentlemen, "tis a fine night for our enterprise.
_Hounslow._ Dark as h.e.l.l.
_Bagshot._ And blows like the devil.
_Boniface._ You"ll have no creature to deal with but the ladies.
_Gibbet._ And I can a.s.sure you, friend, there"s a great deal of address, and good manners, in robbing a lady. I am the most of a gentleman, that way, that ever travelled the road.
_Beaux Stratagem._
Accompanied by her son, Lady Rookwood, on quitting the chamber of the dead, returned to her own room. She then renewed all her arguments; had recourse to pa.s.sionate supplications--to violent threats, but without effect. Ranulph maintained profound silence. Pa.s.sion, as it ever doth, defeated its own ends; and Lady Rookwood, seeing the ill effect her anger would probably produce, gradually softened the asperity of her manner, and suffered him to depart.
Left to herself, and to the communings of her own troubled spirit, her fort.i.tude, in a measure, forsook her, under the pressure of the difficulties by which she was environed. There was no plan she could devise--no scheme adopt, unattended with peril. She must act alone--with prompt.i.tude and secrecy. To win her son over was her chief desire, and that, at all hazards, she was resolved to do. But how? She knew of only one point on which he was vulnerable--his love for Eleanor Mowbray. By raising doubts in his mind, and placing fresh difficulties in his path, she might compel him to acquiesce in her machinations, as a necessary means of accomplishing his own object. This she hoped to effect. Still there was a depth of resolution in the placid stream of Ranulph"s character which she had often noticed with apprehension. Aware of his firmness, she dreaded lest his sense of justice should be stronger than his pa.s.sion.
As she wove these webs of darkness, fear, hitherto unknown, took possession of her soul. She listened to the howling of the wind--to the vibration of the rafters--to the thunder"s roar, and to the hissing rain--till she, who never trembled at the thought of danger, became filled with vague uneasiness. Lights were ordered; and when her old attendant returned. Lady Rookwood fixed a look so wistful upon her, that Agnes ventured to address her.
"Bless you, my lady," said the ancient handmaiden, trembling, "you look very pale, and no wonder. I feel sick at heart, too. Oh! I shall be glad when they return from the church, and happier still when the morning dawns. I can"t sleep a wink--can"t close my eyes, but I think of him."
"Of _him_?"
"Of Sir Piers, my lady; for though he"s dead, I don"t think he"s gone."
"How?"
"Why, my lady, the corruptible part of him"s gone, sure enough. But the incorruptible, as Dr. Small calls it--the sperrit, my lady. It might be my fancy, your ladyship; but as I"m standing here, when I went back into the room just now for the lights, as I hope to live, I thought I saw Sir Piers in the room."
"You are crazed, Agnes."
"No, my lady, I"m not crazed; it was mere fancy, no doubt. Oh, it"s a blessed thing to live with an easy conscience--a thrice blessed thing to _die_ with an easy one, and that"s what I never shall, I"m afeard. Poor Sir Piers! I"d mumble a prayer for him, if I durst."
"Leave me," said Lady Rookwood, impatiently.
And Agnes quitted the room.
"What if the dead can return?" thought Lady Rookwood. "All men doubt it, yet all men believe it. _I_ would not believe it, were there not a creeping horror that overmasters me, when I think of the state beyond the grave--that intermediate state, for such it must be, when the body lieth mouldering in the ground, and the soul survives, to wander, unconfined, until the hour of doom. And doth the soul survive when disenthralled? Is it dependent on the body? Does it perish with the body? These are doubts I cannot resolve. But if I deemed there was no future state, this hand should at once liberate me from my own weaknesses--my fears--my life. There is but one path to acquire that knowledge, which, once taken, can never be retraced. I am content to live--while living, to be feared--it may be, hated; when dead, to be contemned--yet still remembered. Ha! what sound was that? A stifled scream! Agnes!--without there! She is full of fears. I am not free from them myself, but I will shake them off. This will divert their channel,"
continued she, drawing from her bosom the marriage certificate. "This will arouse the torpid current of my blood--"_Piers Rookwood to Susan Bradley_." And by whom was it solemnized? The name is Checkley--Richard Checkley. Ha! I bethink me--a Papist priest--a recusant--who was for some time an inmate of the hall. I have heard of this man--he was afterwards imprisoned, but escaped--he is either dead or in a foreign land. No witnesses--"tis well! Methinks Sir Piers Rookwood did well to preserve this. It shall light his funeral pyre. Would he could now behold me, as I consume it!"
She held the paper in the direction of the candle; but, ere it could touch the flame, it dropped from her hand. As if her horrible wish had been granted, before her stood the figure of her husband! Lady Rookwood started not. No sign of trepidation or alarm, save the sudden stiffening of her form, was betrayed. Her bosom ceased to palpitate--her respiration stopped--her eyes were fixed upon the apparition.
The figure appeared to regard her sternly. It was at some little distance, within the shade cast by the lofty bedstead. Still she could distinctly discern it. There was no ocular deception; it was attired in the costume Sir Piers was wont to wear--a hunting dress. All that her son had told her rushed to her recollection. The phantom advanced. Its countenance was pale, and wore a gloomy frown.
"What would you destroy?" demanded the apparition, in a hollow tone.
"The evidence of----"
"What?"
"Your marriage."
"With yourself, accursed woman?"
"With Susan Bradley."
"What"s that I hear?" shouted the figure, in an altered tone. "Married to her! then Luke _is_ legitimate, and heir to this estate!" Whereupon the apparition rushed to the table, and laid a very substantial grasp upon the doc.u.ment. "A marriage certificate!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the spectre; "here"s a piece of luck! It ain"t often in our lottery life we draw a prize like this. One way or the other, it must turn up a few cool thousands."
"Restore that paper, villain," exclaimed Lady Rookwood, recovering all the audacity natural to her character the instant she discovered the earthly nature of the intruder--"restore it, or, by Heaven, you shall rue your temerity."
"Softly, softly," replied the pseudo-phantom, with one hand pushing back the lady, while the other conveyed the precious doc.u.ment to the custody of his nether man--"softly," said he, giving the buckskin pocket a slap--"two words to that, my lady. I know its value as well as yourself, and must make my market. The highest offer has me, your ladyship; he"s but a poor auctioneer that knocks down his ware when only one bidder is present. Luke Bradley, or, as I find he now is, Sir Luke Rookwood, may come down more handsomely."
"Who are you, ruffian, and to what end is this masquerade a.s.sumed? If for the purpose of terrifying me into compliance with the schemes of that madman, Luke Bradley, whom I presume to be your confederate, your labor is misspent--your stolen disguise has no more weight with me than his forged claims."
"Forged claims! Egad, he must be a clever hand to have forged that certificate. Your ladyship, however, is in error. Sir Luke Rookwood is no a.s.sociate of mine; I am his late father"s friend. But I have no time to bandy talk. What money have you in the house? Be alive."
"You _are_ a robber, then?"
"Not I. I"m a tax-gatherer--a collector of Rich-Rates--ha, ha! What plate have you got? Nay, don"t be alarmed--take it quietly--these things can"t be helped--better make up your mind to do it without more ado--much the best plan--no screaming, it may injure your lungs, and can alarm n.o.body. Your maids have done as much before--it"s beneath your dignity to make so much noise. So, you will not heed me? As you will."