Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (170 page)

Julia, on her part, was not yet alive to her position. She saw she had lost the canoe, and she looked forward with something less than avidity to her next interview with Mr Bloomfield; but she had no idea that she was imprisoned, for she knew of the plank bridge.

She made the circuit of the house, and found the door open and the bridge withdrawn. It was plain, then, that Jimson must have come; plain, too, that he must be on board. He must be a very shy man to have suffered this invasion of his residence, and made no sign; and her courage rose higher at the thought. He must come now, she must force him from his privacy, for the plank was too heavy for her single strength; so she tapped upon the open door. Then she tapped again.

‘Mr Jimson,’ she cried, ‘Mr Jimson! here, come! — you must come, you know, sooner or later, for I can’t get off without you. O, don’t be so exceedingly silly! O, please, come!’

Still there was no reply.

‘If he is here he must be mad,’ she thought, with a little fear. And the next moment she remembered he had probably gone aboard like herself in a boat. In that case she might as well see the houseboat, and she pushed open the door and stepped in. Under the table, where he lay smothered with dust, Gideon’s heart stood still.

There were the remains of Jimson’s lunch. ‘He likes rather nice things to eat,’ she thought. ‘O, I am sure he is quite a delightful man. I wonder if he is as good-looking as Mr Forsyth. Mrs Jimson — I don’t believe it sounds as nice as Mrs Forsyth; but then “Gideon” is so really odious! And here is some of his music too; this is delightful. Orange Pekoe — O, that’s what he meant by some kind of tea.’ And she trilled with laughter. ‘Adagio molto espressivo, sempre legato,’ she read next. (For the literary part of a composer’s business Gideon was well equipped.) ‘How very strange to have all these directions, and only three or four notes! O, here’s another with some more. Andante patetico.’ And she began to glance over the music. ‘O dear me,’ she thought, ‘he must be terribly modern! It all seems discords to me. Let’s try the air. It is very strange, it seems familiar.’ She began to sing it, and suddenly broke off with laughter. ‘Why, it’s “Tommy make room for your Uncle!”‘ she cried aloud, so that the soul of Gideon was filled with bitterness. ‘Andante patetico, indeed! The man must be a mere impostor.’

And just at this moment there came a confused, scuffling sound from underneath the table; a strange note, like that of a barn-door fowl, ushered in a most explosive sneeze; the head of the sufferer was at the same time brought smartly in contact with the boards above; and the sneeze was followed by a hollow groan.

Julia fled to the door, and there, with the salutary instinct of the brave, turned and faced the danger. There was no pursuit. The sounds continued; below the table a crouching figure was indistinctly to be seen jostled by the throes of a sneezing-fit; and that was all.

‘Surely,’ thought Julia, ‘this is most unusual behaviour. He cannot be a man of the world!’

Meanwhile the dust of years had been disturbed by the young barrister’s convulsions; and the sneezing-fit was succeeded by a passionate access of coughing.

Julia began to feel a certain interest. ‘I am afraid you are really quite ill,’ she said, drawing a little nearer. ‘Please don’t let me put you out, and do not stay under that table, Mr Jimson. Indeed it cannot be good for you.’

Mr Jimson only answered by a distressing cough; and the next moment the girl was on her knees, and their faces had almost knocked together under the table.

‘O, my gracious goodness!’ exclaimed Miss Hazeltine, and sprang to her feet. ‘Mr Forsyth gone mad!’

‘I am not mad,’ said the gentleman ruefully, extricating himself from his position. ‘Dearest. Miss Hazeltine, I vow to you upon my knees I am not mad!’

‘You are not!’ she cried, panting.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘that to a superficial eye my conduct may appear unconventional.’

‘If you are not mad, it was no conduct at all,’ cried the girl, with a flash of colour, ‘and showed you did not care one penny for my feelings!’

‘This is the very devil and all. I know — I admit that,’ cried Gideon, with a great effort of manly candour.

‘It was abominable conduct!’ said Julia, with energy.

‘I know it must have shaken your esteem,’ said the barrister. ‘But, dearest Miss Hazeltine, I beg of you to hear me out; my behaviour, strange as it may seem, is not unsusceptible of explanation; and I positively cannot and will not consent to continue to try to exist without — without the esteem of one whom I admire — the moment is ill chosen, I am well aware of that; but I repeat the expression — one whom I admire.’

A touch of amusement appeared on Miss Hazeltine’s face. ‘Very well,’ said she, ‘come out of this dreadfully cold place, and let us sit down on deck.’ The barrister dolefully followed her. ‘Now,’ said she, making herself comfortable against the end of the house, ‘go on. I will hear you out.’ And then, seeing him stand before her with so much obvious disrelish to the task, she was suddenly overcome with laughter. Julia’s laugh was a thing to ravish lovers; she rolled her mirthful descant with the freedom and the melody of a blackbird’s song upon the river, and repeated by the echoes of the farther bank. It seemed a thing in its own place and a sound native to the open air. There was only one creature who heard it without joy, and that was her unfortunate admirer.

‘Miss Hazeltine,’ he said, in a voice that tottered with annoyance, ‘I speak as your sincere well-wisher, but this can only be called levity.’

Julia made great eyes at him.

‘I can’t withdraw the word,’ he said: ‘already the freedom with which I heard you hobnobbing with a boatman gave me exquisite pain. Then there was a want of reserve about Jimson — ’

‘But Jimson appears to be yourself,’ objected Julia.

‘I am far from denying that,’ cried the barrister, ‘but you did not know it at the time. What could Jimson be to you? Who was Jimson? Miss Hazeltine, it cut me to the heart.’

‘Really this seems to me to be very silly,’ returned Julia, with severe decision. ‘You have behaved in the most extraordinary manner; you pretend you are able to explain your conduct, and instead of doing so you begin to attack me.’

‘I am well aware of that,’ replied Gideon. ‘I — I will make a clean breast of it. When you know all the circumstances you will be able to excuse me.

And sitting down beside her on the deck, he poured forth his miserable history.

‘O, Mr Forsyth,’ she cried, when he had done, ‘I am — so — sorry! wish I hadn’t laughed at you — only you know you really were so exceedingly funny. But I wish I hadn’t, and I wouldn’t either if I had only known.’ And she gave him her hand.

Gideon kept it in his own. ‘You do not think the worse of me for this?’ he asked tenderly.

‘Because you have been so silly and got into such dreadful trouble? you poor boy, no!’ cried Julia; and, in the warmth of the moment, reached him her other hand; ‘you may count on me,’ she added.

‘Really?’ said Gideon.

‘Really and really!’ replied the girl.

‘I do then, and I will,’ cried the young man. ‘I admit the moment is not well chosen; but I have no friends — to speak of.’

‘No more have I,’ said Julia. ‘But don’t you think it’s perhaps time you gave me back my hands?’

‘La ci darem la mano,’ said the barrister, ‘the merest moment more! I have so few friends,’ he added.

‘I thought it was considered such a bad account of a young man to have no friends,’ observed Julia.

‘O, but I have crowds of FRIENDS!’ cried Gideon. ‘That’s not what I mean. I feel the moment is ill chosen; but O, Julia, if you could only see yourself!’

‘Mr Forsyth — ’

‘Don’t call me by that beastly name!’ cried the youth. ‘Call me Gideon!’

‘O, never that,’ from Julia. ‘Besides, we have known each other such a short time.’

‘Not at all!’ protested Gideon. ‘We met at Bournemouth ever so long ago. I never forgot you since. Say you never forgot me. Say you never forgot me, and call me Gideon!’

‘Isn’t this rather — a want of reserve about Jimson?’ enquired the girl.

‘O, I know I am an ass,’ cried the barrister, ‘and I don’t care a halfpenny! I know I’m an ass, and you may laugh at me to your heart’s delight.’ And as Julia’s lips opened with a smile, he once more dropped into music. ‘There’s the Land of Cherry Isle!’ he sang, courting her with his eyes.

‘It’s like an opera,’ said Julia, rather faintly.

‘What should it be?’ said Gideon. ‘Am I not Jimson? It would be strange if I did not serenade my love. O yes, I mean the word, my Julia; and I mean to win you. I am in dreadful trouble, and I have not a penny of my own, and I have cut the silliest figure; and yet I mean to win you, Julia. Look at me, if you can, and tell me no!’

She looked at him; and whatever her eyes may have told him, it is to be supposed he took a pleasure in the message, for he read it a long while.

‘And Uncle Ned will give us some money to go on upon in the meanwhile,’ he said at last.

‘Well, I call that cool!’ said a cheerful voice at his elbow.

Gideon and Julia sprang apart with wonderful alacrity; the latter annoyed to observe that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant human instinct of the matchmaker softened his heart.

‘Well, I call that cool,’ he repeated; ‘you seem to count very securely upon Uncle Ned. But look here, Gid, I thought I had told you to keep away?’

‘To keep away from Maidenhead,’ replied Gid. ‘But how should I expect to find you here?’

‘There is something in that,’ Mr Bloomfield admitted. ‘You see I thought it better that even you should be ignorant of my address; those rascals, the Finsburys, would have wormed it out of you. And just to put them off the scent I hoisted these abominable colours. But that is not all, Gid; you promised me to work, and here I find you playing the fool at Padwick.’

‘Please, Mr Bloomfield, you must not be hard on Mr Forsyth,’ said Julia. ‘Poor boy, he is in dreadful straits.’

‘What’s this, Gid?’ enquired the uncle. ‘Have you been fighting? or is it a bill?’

These, in the opinion of the Squirradical, were the two misfortunes incident to gentlemen; and indeed both were culled from his own career. He had once put his name (as a matter of form) on a friend’s paper; it had cost him a cool thousand; and the friend had gone about with the fear of death upon him ever since, and never turned a corner without scouting in front of him for Mr Bloomfield and the oaken staff. As for fighting, the Squirradical was always on the brink of it; and once, when (in the character of president of a Radical club) he had cleared out the hall of his opponents, things had gone even further. Mr Holtum, the Conservative candidate, who lay so long on the bed of sickness, was prepared to swear to Mr Bloomfield. ‘I will swear to it in any court — it was the hand of that brute that struck me down,’ he was reported to have said; and when he was thought to be sinking, it was known that he had made an ante-mortem statement in that sense. It was a cheerful day for the Squirradical when Holtum was restored to his brewery.

‘It’s much worse than that,’ said Gideon; ‘a combination of circumstances really providentially unjust — a — in fact, a syndicate of murderers seem to have perceived my latent ability to rid them of the traces of their crime. It’s a legal study after all, you see!’ And with these words, Gideon, for the second time that day, began to describe the adventures of the Broadwood Grand.

‘I must write to The Times,’ cried Mr Bloomfield.

‘Do you want to get me disbarred?’ asked Gideon.

‘Disbarred! Come, it can’t be as bad as that,’ said his uncle. ‘It’s a good, honest, Liberal Government that’s in, and they would certainly move at my request. Thank God, the days of Tory jobbery are at an end.’

‘It wouldn’t do, Uncle Ned,’ said Gideon.

‘But you’re not mad enough,’ cried Mr Bloomfield, ‘to persist in trying to dispose of it yourself?’

‘There is no other path open to me,’ said Gideon.

‘It’s not common sense, and I will not hear of it,’ cried Mr Bloomfield. ‘I command you, positively, Gid, to desist from this criminal interference.’

‘Very well, then, I hand it over to you,’ said Gideon, ‘and you can do what you like with the dead body.’

‘God forbid!’ ejaculated the president of the Radical Club, ‘I’ll have nothing to do with it.’

‘Then you must allow me to do the best I can,’ returned his nephew. ‘Believe me, I have a distinct talent for this sort of difficulty.’

‘We might forward it to that pest-house, the Conservative Club,’ observed Mr Bloomfield. ‘It might damage them in the eyes of their constituents; and it could be profitably worked up in the local journal.’

‘If you see any political capital in the thing,’ said Gideon, ‘you may have it for me.’

‘No, no, Gid — no, no, I thought you might. I will have no hand in the thing. On reflection, it’s highly undesirable that either I or Miss Hazeltine should linger here. We might be observed,’ said the president, looking up and down the river; ‘and in my public position the consequences would be painful for the party. And, at any rate, it’s dinner-time.’

‘What?’ cried Gideon, plunging for his watch. ‘And so it is! Great heaven, the piano should have been here hours ago!’

Mr Bloomfield was clambering back into his boat; but at these words he paused.

‘I saw it arrive myself at the station; I hired a carrier man; he had a round to make, but he was to be here by four at the latest,’ cried the barrister. ‘No doubt the piano is open, and the body found.’

‘You must fly at once,’ cried Mr Bloomfield, ‘it’s the only manly step.’

‘But suppose it’s all right?’ wailed Gideon. ‘Suppose the piano comes, and I am not here to receive it? I shall have hanged myself by my cowardice. No, Uncle Ned, enquiries must be made in Padwick; I dare not go, of course; but you may — you could hang about the police office, don’t you see?’