Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - Pelham — Complete

Accordingly I left my obscurity, and walked slowly onwards. I had not got above three paces before the figure rose, and stood erect and motionless before me. His hat had fallen off, and the moon shone full upon his countenance; it was not the wild expression of intense anguish which dwelt on those hueless and sunken features; nor their quick change to ferocity and defiance, as his eyes fell upon me, which made me start back and feel my heart stand still! Notwithstanding the fearful ravages graven in that countenance, then so brilliant with the graces of boyhood, I recognized, at one glance, those still noble and chiselled features. It was Reginald Glanville who stood before me! I recovered myself instantly; I threw myself towards him, and called him by his name. He turned hastily; but I would not suffer him to escape; I put my hand upon his arm, and drew him towards me. “Glanville!” I exclaimed, “it is I! it is your old—old friend, Henry Pelham. Good God! have I met you at last, and in such a scene?”

Glanville shook me from him in an instant, covered his face with his hands, and sunk down with one wild cry, which went fearfully through that still place, upon the spot from which he had but just risen. I knelt beside him; I took his hand; I spoke to him in every endearing term that I could think of; and roused and excited as my feelings were, by so strange and sudden a meeting, I felt my tears involuntarily falling over the hand which I held in my own. Glanville turned; he looked at me for one moment, as if fully to recognize me: and then throwing himself in my arms, wept like a child.

It was but for a few minutes that this weakness lasted; he rose suddenly—the whole expression of his countenance was changed—the tears still rolled in large drops down his cheeks, but the proud, stern character which the features had assumed, seemed to deny the feelings which that feminine weakness had betrayed.

“Pelham,” he said, “you have seen me thus; I had hoped that no living eye would—this is the last time in which I shall indulge this folly. God bless you—we shall meet again—and this night shall then seem to you like a dream.”

I would have answered, but he turned swiftly, passed in one moment through the copse, and in the next had utterly disappeared.

I could not sleep the whole of that night, and the next morning, I set off early, with the resolution of discovering where Glanville had taken up his abode; it was evident from his having been so frequently seen, that it must be in the immediate neighbourhood.

I went first to Farmer Sinclair’s; they had often remarked him, but could give me no other information. I then proceeded towards the coast; there was a small public house belonging to Sir Lionel close by the sea shore; never had I seen a more bleak and dreary prospect than that which stretched for miles around this miserable cabaret. How an innkeeper could live there is a mystery to me at this day—I should have imagined it a spot upon which anything but a sea-gull or a Scotchman would have starved.

“Just the sort of place, however,” thought I, “to hear something of Glanville.” I went into the house; I inquired, and heard that a strange gentleman had been lodging for the last two or three weeks at a cottage about a mile further up the coast. Thither I bent my steps; and after having met two crows, and one officer on the preventive service, I arrived safely at my new destination.

It was a house very little better, in outward appearance, than the wretched hut I had just left, for I observe in all situations, and in all houses, that “the public” is not too well served. The situation was equally lonely and desolate; the house, which belonged to an individual, half fisherman and half smuggler, stood in a sort of bay, between two tall, rugged, black cliffs. Before the door hung various nets, to dry beneath the genial warmth of a winter’s sun; and a broken boat, with its keel uppermost, furnished an admirable habitation for a hen and her family, who appeared to receive en pension, an old clerico-bachelor-looking raven. I cast a suspicious glance at the last-mentioned personage, which hopped towards me with a very hostile appearance, and entered the threshold with a more rapid step, in consequence of sundry apprehensions of a premeditated assault.

“I understand,” said I, to an old, dried, brown female, who looked like a resuscitated red-herring, “that a gentleman is lodging here.”

“No, Sir,” was the answer: “he left us this morning.”

The reply came upon me like a shower bath; I was both chilled and stunned by so unexpected a shock. The old woman, on my renewing my inquiries, took me up stairs, to a small, wretched room, to which the damps literally clung. In one corner was a flock-bed, still unmade, and opposite to it, a three-legged stool, a chair, and an antique carved oak table, a donation perhaps from some squire in the neighbourhood; on this last were scattered fragments of writing paper, a cracked cup half full of ink, a pen, and a broken ramrod. As I mechanically took up the latter, the woman said, in a charming patois, which I shall translate, since I cannot do justice to the original: “The gentleman, Sir, said he came here for a few weeks to shoot; he brought a gun, a large dog, and a small portmanteau. He used to spend all the mornings in the fens, though he must have been but a poor shot, for he seldom brought home anything; and we fear, Sir, that he was rather out of his mind, for he used to go out alone at night, and stay sometimes till morning. However, he was quite quiet, and behaved to us like a gentleman; so it was no business of ours, only my husband does think—”

“Pray,” interrupted I, “why did he leave you so suddenly?”

“Lord, Sir, I don’t know! but he told us for several days past that he should not stay over the week, and so we were not surprised when he left us this morning at seven o’clock. Poor gentleman, my heart bled for him when I saw him look so pale and ill.”

And here I did see the good woman’s eyes fill with tears: but she wiped them away, and took advantage of the additional persuasion they gave to her natural whine to say, “If, Sir, you know of any young gentleman who likes fen-shooting, and wants a nice, pretty, quiet apartment—”

“I will certainly recommend this,” said I.

“You see it at present,” rejoined the landlady, “quite in a litter like: but it is really a sweet place in summer.”

“Charming,” said I, with a cold shiver, hurrying down the stairs, with a pain in my ear, and the rheumatism in my shoulder.

“And this,” thought I, “was Glanville’s residence for nearly a month! I wonder he did not exhale into a vapour, or moisten into a green damp.”

I went home by the churchyard. I paused on the spot where I had last seen him. A small gravestone rose over the mound of earth on which he had thrown himself; it was perfectly simple. The date of the year and month (which showed that many weeks had not elapsed since the death of the deceased) and the initials G. D. were all that was engraved upon the stone. Beside this tomb was one of a more pompous description, to the memory of a Mrs. Douglas, which had with the simple tumulus nothing in common, unless the initial letter of the surname corresponding with the latter initial on the neighbouring gravestone, might authorize any connection between them, not supported by that similitude of style usually found in the cenotaphs of the same family: the one, indeed, might have covered the grave of a humble villager—the other, the resting-place of the lady of the manor.

I found, therefore, no clue for the labyrinth of surmise: and I went home, more vexed and disappointed with my day’s expedition than I liked to acknowledge to myself.