"Now," said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at first affected him, "you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off: if not," she added, with a sobbing sigh, "it does not matter. So, good-bye."
"Teresa," said Harry, "get into your cab, and I will go along with you.
You are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and till I know the whole, not even you can make me leave you."
"You will not?" she asked. "O Harry, it were better!"
"I will not," said Harry stoutly.
She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand suddenly and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and still holding him, walked to the cab-door.
"Where are we to drive?" asked Harry.
"Home, quickly," she answered; "double fare!" And as soon as they had both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily trundled from the station.
Teresa leaned back in a corner. The whole way Harry could perceive her tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no explanation. At the door of the house in Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman lowered the box, which Harry, glad to display his strength, received upon his shoulders.
"Let the man take it," she whispered. "Let the man take it."
"I will do no such thing," said Harry cheerfully; and having paid the fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she had opened with her key. The landlady and maid were gone upon their morning errands; the house was empty and still; and as the rattling of the cab died away down Gloucester Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his burthen, he heard close against his shoulders the same faint and m.u.f.fled ticking as before. The lady, still preceding him, opened the door of her room, and helped him to lower the box tenderly in the corner by the window.
"And now," said Harry, "what is wrong?"
"You will not go away?" she cried, with a sudden break in her voice and beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience. "O Harry, Harry, go away! Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I deserve!"
"The fate?" repeated Harry. "What is this?"
"No fate," she resumed. "I do not know what I am saying. But I wish to be alone. You may come back this evening, Harry; come again when you like; but leave me now, only leave me now!" And then suddenly, "I have an errand," she exclaimed; "you cannot refuse me that!"
"No," replied Harry, "you have no errand. You are in grief or danger.
Lift your veil and tell me what it is."
"Then," she said, with a sudden composure, "you leave but one course open to me." And raising the veil, she showed him a countenance from which every trace of colour had fled, eyes marred with weeping, and a brow on which resolve had conquered fear. "Harry," she began, "I am not what I seem."
"You have told me that before," said Harry, "several times."
"O Harry, Harry," she cried, "how you shame me! But this is the G.o.d"s truth. I am a dangerous and wicked girl. My name is Clara Luxmore. I was never nearer Cuba than Penzance. From first to last I have cheated and played with you. And what I am I dare not even name to you in words.
Indeed, until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never grasped the depth and foulness of my guilt."
The young man looked upon her aghast. Then a generous current poured along his veins. "That is all one," he said. "If you be all you say, you have the greater need of me."
"Is it possible," she exclaimed, "that I have schemed in vain? And will nothing drive you from this house of death?"
"Of death?" he echoed.
"Death!" she cried: "death! In that box that you have dragged about London and carried on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the trigger"s mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite."
"My G.o.d!" cried Harry.
"Ah!" she continued wildly, "will you flee now? At any moment you may hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building. I was sure M"Guire was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own contrivances. I knew then I loved you-Harry, will you go now? Will you not spare me this unwilling crime?"
Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he turned to her.
"Is it," he asked hoa.r.s.ely, "an infernal machine?"
Her lips formed the word "Yes," which her voice refused to utter.
With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.
"For whom?" he asked.
"What matters it," she cried, seizing him by the arm. "If you may still be saved, what matter questions?"
"G.o.d in heaven!" cried Harry. "And the Children"s Hospital! At whatever cost, this d.a.m.ned contrivance must be stopped!"
"It cannot," she gasped. "The power of man cannot avert the blow. But you, Harry-you, my beloved-you may still-"
And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden catch was audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the hour. For one second the two stared at each other with lifted brows and stony eyes.
Then Harry, throwing one arm over his face, with the other clutched the girl to his breast and staggered against the wall.
A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes blinked against the coming horror; and still clinging together like drowning people, they fell to the floor. Then followed a prolonged and strident hissing as from the indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by the throat; the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.
Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at length they drew themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture, the first object that greeted their vision was the box reposing uninjured in its corner, but still leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.
"Oh, poor Zero!" cried the girl, with a strange sobbing laugh. "Alas, poor Zero! This will break his heart!"
_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_ (_Concluded_)
Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary to all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young man found Zero seated on a sofa in an att.i.tude of singular dejection. Close beside him stood an untasted grog, the mark of strong preoccupation. The room besides was in confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor was strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of this disorder lay a lady"s glove.
"I have come," cried Somerset, "to make an end of this. Either you will instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost what it may) I will denounce you to the police."
"Ah!" replied Zero, slowly shaking his head. "You are too late, dear fellow! I am already at the end of all my hopes, and fallen to be a laughing-stock and mockery. My reading," he added, with a gentle despondency of manner, "has not been much among romances; yet I recall from one a phrase that depicts my present state with critical exact.i.tude; and you behold me sitting here "like a burst drum.""
"What has befallen you?" cried Somerset.
"My last batch," returned the plotter wearily, "like all the others, is a hollow mockery and a fraud. In vain do I combine the elements; in vain adjust the springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul that I can face. My subordinates themselves have turned upon me. What language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, what pungency of expression! She came once; I could have pardoned that, for she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane. Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable for . . . well, well! Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead. I am extinct. It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should be haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful description; but here," he added, "is another: "Oth.e.l.lo"s occupation"s gone." Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend to a less glorious life?"
"I cannot describe how you relieve me," returned Somerset, sitting down on one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the middle of the floor. "I had conceived a sort of maudlin toleration for your character; I have a great distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty; and upon both grounds, your news delights me. But I seem to perceive,"
he added, "a certain sound of ticking in this box."
"Yes," replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, "I have set several of them going."
"My G.o.d!" cried Somerset, bounding to his feet.
"Machines?"