Let me try to take them in something like their proper order.
To begin with, Sydney has behaved very badly. So badly that it seems likely that I shall have to re-cast my whole conception of his character. It was nearly nine o"clock this morning when I,-I cannot say woke up, because I do not believe that I had really been asleep-but when I returned to consciousness. I found myself sitting up in bed, trembling like some frightened child. What had actually happened to me I did not know,-could not guess. I was conscious of an overwhelming sense of nausea, and, generally, I was feeling very far from well. I endeavoured to arrange my thoughts, and to decide upon some plan of action. Finally, I decided to go for advice and help where I had so often gone before,-to Sydney Atherton.
I went to him. I told him the whole gruesome story. He saw, he could not help but see what a deep impress the events of the night had made on me. He heard me to the end with every appearance of sympathy,-and then all at once I discovered that all the time papa had been concealed behind a large screen which was in the room, listening to every word I had been uttering. That I was dumfoundered, goes without saying. It was bad enough in papa, but in Sydney it seemed, and it was, such treachery. He and I have told each other secrets all our lives; it has never entered my imagination, as he very well knows, to play him false, in one jot or t.i.ttle; and I have always understood that, in this sort of matter, men pride themselves on their sense of honour being so much keener than women"s. I told them some plain truths; and I fancy that I left them both feeling heartily ashamed of themselves.
One result the experience had on me,-it wound me up. It had on me the revivifying effect of a cold douche. I realised that mine was a situation in which I should have to help myself.
When I returned home I learned that the man whom I had found in the street was himself again, and was as conscious as he was ever likely to be. Burning with curiosity to learn the nature of the connection which existed between Paul and him, and what was the meaning of his oracular apostrophes, I merely paused to remove my hat before hastening into his apartment.
When he saw me, and heard who I was, the expressions of his grat.i.tude were painful in their intensity. The tears streamed down his cheeks. He looked to me like a man who had very little life left in him. He looked weak, and white, and worn to a shadow. Probably he never had been robust, and it was only too plain that privation had robbed him of what little strength he had ever had. He was nothing else but skin and bone. Physical and mental debility was written large all over him.
He was not bad-looking,-in a milk and watery sort of way. He had pale blue eyes and very fair hair, and, I daresay, at one time, had been a spruce enough clerk. It was difficult to guess his age, one ages so rapidly under the stress of misfortune, but I should have set him down as being about forty. His voice, though faint enough at first, was that of an educated man, and as he went on, and gathered courage, and became more and more in earnest, he spoke with a simple directness which was close akin to eloquence. It was a curious story which he had to tell.
So curious, so astounding indeed, that, by the time it was finished, I was in such a state of mind, that I could perceive no alternative but to forgive Sydney, and, in spite of his recent, and scandalous misbehaviour, again appeal to him for a.s.sistance. It seemed, if the story told by the man whom I had found in the street was true,-and incredible though it sounded, he spoke like a truthful man!-that Paul was threatened by some dreadful, and, to me, wholly incomprehensible danger; that it was a case in which even moments were precious; and I felt that, with the best will in the world, it was a position in which I could not move alone. The shadow of the terror of the night was with me still, and with that fresh in my recollection how could I hope, single-handed, to act effectually against the mysterious being of whom this amazing tale was told? No! I believed that Sydney did care for me, in his own peculiar way; I knew that he was quick, and cool, and fertile in resource, and that he showed to most advantage in a difficult situation; it was possible that he had a conscience, of a sort, and that, this time, I might not appeal to it in vain.
So I sent a servant off to fetch him, helter skelter.
As luck would have it, the servant returned with him within five minutes. It appeared that he had been lunching with Dora Grayling, who lives just at the end of the street, and the footman had met him coming down the steps. I had him shown into my own room.
"I want you to go to the man whom I found in the street, and listen to what he has to say."
"With pleasure."
"Can I trust you?"
"To listen to what he has to say?-I believe so."
"Can I trust you to respect my confidence?"
He was not at all abashed,-I never saw Sydney Atherton when he was abashed. Whatever the offence of which he has been guilty, he always seems completely at his ease. His eyes twinkled.
"You can,-I will not breathe a syllable even to papa."
"In that case, come! But, you understand, I am going to put to the test the affirmations which you have made during all these years, and to prove if you have any of the feeling for me which you pretend."
Directly we were in the stranger"s room, Sydney marched straight up to the bed, stared at the man who was lying in it, crammed his hands into his trouser pockets, and whistled. I was amazed.
"So!" he exclaimed. "It"s you!"
"Do you know this man?" I asked.
"I am hardly prepared to go so far as to say that I know him, but, I chance to have a memory for faces, and it happens that I have met this gentleman on at least one previous occasion. Perhaps he remembers me.-Do you?"
The stranger seemed uneasy,-as if he found Sidney"s tone and manner disconcerting.
"I do. You are the man in the street."
"Precisely. I am that-individual. And you are the man who came through the window. And in a much more comfortable condition you appear to be than when first I saw you." Sydney turned to me. "It is just possible, Miss Lindon, that I may have a few remarks to make to this gentleman which would be better made in private,-if you don"t mind."
"But I do mind,-I mind very much. What do you suppose I sent for you here for?"
Sydney smiled that absurd, provoking smile of his,-as if the occasion were not sufficiently serious.
"To show that you still repose in me a vestige of your confidence."
"Don"t talk nonsense. This man has told me a most extraordinary story, and I have sent for you-as you may believe, not too willingly"-Sydney bowed-"in order that he may repeat it in your presence, and in mine."
"Is that so?-Well!-Permit me to offer you a chair,-this tale may turn out to be a trifle long."
To humour him I accepted the chair he offered, though I should have preferred to stand;-he seated himself on the side of the bed, fixing on the stranger those keen, quizzical, not too merciful, eyes of his.
"Well, sir, we are at your service,-if you will be so good as to favour us with a second edition of that pleasant yarn you have been spinning. But-let us begin at the right end!-what"s your name?"
"My name is Robert Holt."
"That so?-Then, Mr Robert Holt,-let her go!"
Thus encouraged, Mr Holt repeated the tale which he had told me, only in more connected fashion than before. I fancy that Sydney"s glances exercised on him a sort of hypnotic effect, and this kept him to the point,-he scarcely needed a word of prompting from the first syllable to the last.
He told how, tired, wet, hungry, desperate, despairing, he had been refused admittance to the casual ward,-that unfailing resource, as one would have supposed, of those who had abandoned even hope. How he had come upon an open window in an apparently empty house, and, thinking of nothing but shelter from the inclement night, he had clambered through it. How he had found himself in the presence of an extraordinary being, who, in his debilitated and nervous state, had seemed to him to be only half human. How this dreadful creature had given utterance to wild sentiments of hatred towards Paul Lessingham,-my Paul! How he had taken advantage of Holt"s enfeebled state to gain over him the most complete, horrible, and, indeed, almost incredible ascendency. How he actually had sent Holt, practically naked, into the storm-driven streets, to commit burglary at Paul"s house,-and how he,-Holt,-had actually gone without being able to offer even a shadow of opposition. How Paul, suddenly returning home, had come upon Holt engaged in the very act of committing burglary, and how, on his hearing Holt make a cabalistic reference to some mysterious beetle, the manhood had gone out of him, and he had suffered the intruder to make good his escape without an effort to detain him.
The story had seemed sufficiently astonishing the first time, it seemed still more astonishing the second,-but, as I watched Sydney listening, what struck me chiefly was the conviction that he had heard it all before. I charged him with it directly Holt had finished.
"This is not the first time you have been told this tale."
"Pardon me,-but it is. Do you suppose I live in an atmosphere of fairy tales?"
Something in his manner made me feel sure he was deceiving me.
"Sydney!-Don"t tell me a story!-Paul has told you!"
"I am not telling you a story,-at least, on this occasion; and Mr Lessingham has not told me. Suppose we postpone these details to a little later. And perhaps, in the interim, you will permit me to put a question or two to Mr Holt."
I let him have his way,-though I knew he was concealing something from me; that he had a more intimate acquaintance with Mr Holt"s strange tale than he chose to confess. And, for some cause, his reticence annoyed me.
He looked at Mr Holt in silence for a second or two.
Then he said, with the quizzical little air of bland impertinence which is peculiarly his own,
"I presume, Mr Holt, you have been entertaining us with a novelty in fables, and that we are not expected to believe this pleasant little yarn of yours."
"I expect nothing. But I have told you the truth. And you know it."
This seemed to take Sydney aback.
"I protest that, like Miss Lindon, you credit me with a more extensive knowledge than I possess. However, we will let that pa.s.s.-I take it that you paid particular attention to this mysterious habitant of this mysterious dwelling."
I saw that Mr Holt shuddered.