The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Читать онлайн книгу.
briefly introduced himself to Gus and the Smasher, made some remarks about the town of Liverpool to the cheerful friend of the late distinguished American.
The cheerful friend took his cigar out of his mouth, smiled, and said, “Yes; it’s a thriving town, a small London, really—the metropolis in miniature.”
“You know Liverpool very well?” asked the Smasher’s companion.
“No, not very well; in point of fact, I know very little of England at all. My visit has been a brief one.”
He is evidently an American from this remark, though there is very little of brother Jonathan in his manner.
“Your visit has been a brief one? Indeed. And it has had a very melancholy termination, I regret to perceive,” said the persevering stranger, on whose every word the Smasher and Mr. Darley hung respectfully.
“A very melancholy termination,” replied the gentleman, with the sweetest smile. “My poor friend had hoped to return to the bosom of his family, and delight them many an evening round the cheerful hearth by the recital of his adventures in, and impressions of, the mother country. You cannot imagine,” he continued, speaking very slowly, and as he spoke, allowing his eyes to wander from the stranger to the Smasher, and from the Smasher to Gus, with a glance which, if anything, had the slightest shade of anxiety in it; “you cannot imagine the interest we on the other side of the Atlantic take in everything that occurs in the mother country. We may be great over there—we may be rich over there—we may be universally beloved and respected over there,—but I doubt—I really, after all, doubt,” he said sentimentally, “whether we are truly happy. We sigh for the wings of a dove, or to speak practically, for our travelling expenses, that we may come over here and be at rest.”
“And yet I conclude it was the especial wish of your late friend to be buried over there?” asked the stranger.
“It was—his dying wish.”
“And the melancholy duty of complying with that wish devolved on you?” said the stranger, with a degree of puerile curiosity and frivolous interest in an affair entirely irrelevant to the matter in hand which bewildered Gus, and at which the Smasher palpably turned up his nose; muttering to himself at the same time that the forrin swell would have time to get to America while they was a-palaverin’ and a-jawin’ this ’ere humbug.
“Yes, it devolved on me,” replied the cheerful gentleman, offering his cigar-case to the three friends, who declined the proffered weeds. “We were connections; his mother’s half-sister married my second cousin—not very nearly connected certainly, but extremely attached to each other. It will be a melancholy satisfaction to his poor widow to see his ashes entombed upon his native shore, and the thought of that repays me threefold for anything I may suffer.”
He looked altogether far too airy and charming a creature to suffer very much; but the stranger bowed gravely, and Gus, looking towards the prow of the vessel, perceived the earnest eyes of Mr. Peters attentively fixed on the little group.
As to the Smasher, he was so utterly disgusted with the stranger’s manner of doing business, that he abandoned himself to his own thoughts and hummed a tune—the tune appertaining to what is generally called a comic song, being the last passages in the life of a humble and unfortunate member of the working classes as related by himself.
While talking to the cheerful gentleman on this very melancholy subject, the stranger from Liverpool happened to get quite close to the coffin, and, with an admirable freedom from prejudice which astonished the other passengers standing near, rested his hand carelessly on the stout oaken lid, just at that corner where the canvas left it exposed. It was a most speaking proof of the almost overstrained feeling of devotion possessed by the cheerful gentleman towards his late friend that this trifling action seemed to disturb him; his eyes wandered uneasily towards the stranger’s black-gloved hand, and at last, when, in absence of mind, the stranger actually drew the heavy covering completely over this corner of the coffin, his uneasiness reached a climax, and drawing the dingy drapery hurriedly back, he rearranged it in its old fashion.
“Don’t you wish the coffin to be entirely covered?” asked the stranger quietly.
“Yes—no; that is,” said the cheerful gentleman, with some embarrassment in his tone, “that is—I—you see there is something of profanity in a stranger’s hand approaching the remains of those we love.”
“Suppose, then,” said his interlocutor, “we take a turn about the deck? This neighbourhood must be very painful to you.”
“On the contrary,” replied the cheerful gentleman, “you will think me, I dare say, a very singular person, but I prefer remaining by him to the last. The coffin will be put in the hold as soon as we get on board the Washington; then my duty will have been accomplished and my mind will be at rest. You go to New York with us?” he asked.
“I shall have that pleasure,” replied the stranger.
“And your friend—your sporting friend?” asked the gentleman, with a rather supercilious glance at the many-coloured raiment and mottled-soap complexion of the Smasher, who was still singing sotto voce the above-mentioned melody, with his arms folded on the rail of the bench on which he was seated, and his chin resting moodily on his coat-sleeves.
“No,” replied the stranger; “my friends, I regret to say, leave me as soon as we get on board.”
In a few minutes more they reached the side of the brave ship, which, from the Liverpool quay, had looked a white-winged speck not a bit too big for Queen Mab; but which was, oh, such a Leviathan of a vessel when you stood just under her, and had to go up her side by means of a ladder—which ladder seemed to be subject to shivering fits, and struck terror into the nervous lady and the bald-headed parrot.
All the passengers, except the cheerful gentleman with the coffin and the stranger—with Gus and the Smasher and Mr. Peters loitering in the background—seemed bent on getting up each before the other, and considerably increased the confusion by evincing this wish in a candid but not conciliating manner, showing a degree of ill-feeling which was much increased by the passengers that had not got on board looking daggers at the passengers that had got on board, and seemed settled quite comfortably high and dry upon the stately deck. At last, however, every one but the aforesaid group had ascended the ladder. Some stout sailors were preparing great ropes wherewith to haul up the coffin, and the cheerful gentleman was busily directing them, when the captain of the steamer said to the stranger from Liverpool, as he loitered at the bottom of the ladder, with Mr. Peters at his elbow,—“Now then, sir, if you’re for the Washington, quick’s the word. We’re off as soon as ever they’ve got that job over,” pointing to the coffin. The stranger from Liverpool, instead of complying with this very natural request, whispered a few words into the ear of the captain, who looked very grave on hearing them, and then, advancing to the cheerful gentleman, who was very anxious and very uneasy about the manner in which the coffin was to be hauled up the side of the vessel, he laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder, and said,—“I want the lid of that coffin taken off before those men haul it up.”
Such a change came over the face of the cheerful gentleman as only comes over the face of a man who knows that he is playing a desperate game, and knows as surely that he has lost it. “My good sir,” he said, “you’re mad. Not for the Queen of England would I see that coffin-lid unscrewed.”
“I don’t think it will give us so much trouble as that,” said the other quietly. “I very much doubt its being screwed down at all. You were greatly alarmed just now, lest the person within should be smothered. You were terribly frightened when I drew the heavy canvas over those incisions in the oak,” he added, pointing to the lid, in the corner of which two or three cracks were apparent to the close observer.
“Good Heavens! the man is mad!” cried the gentleman, whose manner had entirely lost its airiness. “The man is evidently a maniac! This is too dreadful! Is the sanctity of death to be profaned in this manner? Are we to cross the Atlantic in the company of a madman?”
“You are not to cross the Atlantic at