The Lunatic at Large
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J. Storer Clouston >> The Lunatic at Large
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He turned away his head. Lady Alicia was visibly affected.
"I am so sorry!" she murmured.
Still keeping his face turned away, he held out his hand and she pressed
it gently.
"Sorrow cannot give me my freedom," he said.
"If there is anything I can do----" she began.
"Dismount," he said, looking up at her tenderly.
Lady Alicia never quite knew how it happened, but certainly she found
herself standing on the ground, and the next moment Mr Beveridge was in
her place.
"An old soldier," he exclaimed, gaily; "I can't resist the temptation of
having a canter." And with that he started at a gallop towards the gate.
With a blasphemous ejaculation Moggridge sprang from behind his tree, and
set off down the drive in hot pursuit.
Lady Alicia screamed, "Stop! stop! Francis--I mean, Mr Beveridge; stop,
please!"
But the favorite of the crack regiment, despite the lady's saddle, sat his
steed well, and rapidly left cries and footsteps far behind. The lodge was
nearly half a mile away, and as the avenue wound between palisades of old
trees, the shouts became muffled, and when he looked over his shoulder he
saw in the stretch behind him no sign of benefactress or pursuer. By
continued exhortations and the point of his penknife he kept his horse at
full stretch; round the next bend he knew he should see the gates.
"Five to one on the blank things being shut," he muttered.
He swept round the curve, and there ahead of him he saw the gates grimly
closed, and at the lodge door a dismounted groom, standing beside his
horse.
Only remarking "Damn!" he reined up, turned, and trotted quietly back
again. Presently he met Moggridge, red in the face, muddy as to his
trousers, and panting hard.
"Nice little nag this, Moggridge," he remarked, airily.
"Nice sweat you've give me," rejoined his attendant, wrathfully.
"You don't mean to say you ran after me?"
"I does mean to say," Moggridge replied grimly, seizing the reins.
"Want to lead him? Very well--it makes us look quite like the Derby winner
coming in."
"Derby loser you means, thanks to them gates bein' shut."
"Gates shut? Were they? I didn't happen to notice."
"No, o' course not," said Moggridge, sarcastically; "that there sunstroke
you got in India prevented you, I suppose?"
"Have a cigar?"
To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and
continued lightly, "I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I'd have
given you a lead all round the park if I'd known."
"You'd 'ave given me a lead all round the county if them gates 'ad been
open."
"It might have been difficult to stop this fiery animal," Mr Beveridge
admitted. "But now, Moggridge, the run is over. I think I can take Lady
Alicia's horse back to her myself."
Moggridge smiled grimly.
"You won't let go?"
"No fears."
Mr Beveridge put his hand behind his back and silently drove the penknife
a quarter of an inch into his mount's hind quarters. In an instant his
keeper felt himself being lifted nearly off his feet, and in another
actually deposited on his face. Off went the accomplished horseman again
at top speed, but this time back to Lady Alicia. He saw her standing by
the side of the drive, her handkerchief to her eyes, a penitent and
disconsolate little figure. When she heard him coming, she dried her eyes
and looked up, but her face was still tearful.
"Well, I am back from my ride," he remarked in a perfectly usual voice,
dismounting as he spoke.
"The man!" she cried, "where is that dreadful man?"
"What man?" he asked in some surprise.
"The man who chased you."
Mr Beveridge laughed aloud, at which Lady Alicia took fresh refuge in her
handkerchief.
"He follows on foot," he replied.
"Did he catch you? Oh, why didn't you escape altogether?" she sobbed.
Mr Beveridge looked at her with growing interest.
"I had begun to forget my petticoat psychology," he reflected (aloud,
after his unconventional fashion).
"Oh, here he comes," she shuddered. "All blood! Oh, what have you done to
him?"
"On my honour, nothing,--I merely haven't washed his face."
By this time Moggridge was coming close upon them.
"You won't forget a poor soldier?" said Mr Beveridge in a lower voice.
There was no reply.
"A _poor_ soldier," he added, with a sigh, glancing at her from the corner
of his eye. "So poor that even if I had got out, I could only have ridden
till I dropped."
"Would you accept----?" she began, timidly.
"What day?" he interrupted, hurriedly.
"Tuesday," she hesitated.
"Four o'clock, again. Same place as before. When I whistle throw it over
at once."
Before they had time to say more, Moggridge, blood- and gravel-stained,
came up.
"It's all right, miss," he said, coming between them; "I'll see that he
plays no more of 'is tricks. There's nothin' to be afrightened of."
"Stand back!" she cried; "don't come near me!"
Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.
"Stand away!" she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She
turned to Mr Beveridge.
"Now, will you help me up?"
She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the
call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse's head
towards the lodge.
"Well, I'm blowed!" said Moggridge.
"They do blow one," his patient assented.
Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through
Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect,
for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details,
illustrating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril
of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a
runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner's unbounded
gratitude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official account, and
for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable
anxiety and mistrust.
"I can't make the man out," said Sherlaw to Escott. "I had begun to think
there was nothing much the matter with him."
"No more there is," replied Escott. "His memory seems to me to have
suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation
from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment.
The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his
friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels
him mad and locks the door on him."
A day or two afterwards official opinion was a little disturbed. Lady
Alicia, in reply to anxious inquiries, gave a third version of the
adventure, from which nothing in particular could be gathered except that
nothing in particular had happened.
"What do you make of this, Escott?" asked Dr Congleton, laying her note
before his assistant.
"Merely that a woman wrote it."
"Hum! I suppose that _is_ the explanation."
Upon which the doctor looked profound and went to lunch.
CHAPTER VI.
"Two five-pound notes, half-a-sovereign, and seven and sixpence in
silver," said Mr Beveridge to himself. "Ah, and a card."
On the card was written, "From a friend, if you will accept it. A."
He was standing under the wall, in the secluded walk, holding a little
lady's purse in his hand, and listening to two different footsteps. One
little pair of feet were hurrying away on the farther side of the high
wall, another and larger were approaching him at a run.
"Wot's he bin up to now, I wonder," Moggridge panted to himself--for the
second pair of feet belonged to him. "Shamming nose-bleed and sending me
in for an 'andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by 'isself!"
"What a time you've been," said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its
contents into his pocket. "I was so infernally cold I had to take a little
walk. Got the handkerchief?"
In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the
handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.
"Now for a balloon," Mr Beveridge reflected.
Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning
there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through
the winter sunshine.
By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day
it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge
was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of
general admiration and envy. He traced "vines" and "Q's," and performed
wonderful feats on one leg all morning. At lunch he was in the best of
spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.
When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was
Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together
hand in hand.
"I knew you would come to-day," he remarked.
"How _could_ you have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to
come."
"It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come."
"Who have ever come?" she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said
something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.
"Many things," he smiled, "including purses. Which reminds me that I am
eternally your debtor."
She blushed and said, "I hope you didn't mind."
"Not much," he answered, candidly. "In my present circumstances a
five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress."
The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to
change the subject.
"What beautiful ice!" she said.
"The question now is," he continued, paying no heed to this diversion,
"what am I to do next?"
"What do you mean?" she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she
was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.
"The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it
hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I
don't. The gates are always kept closed, and it isn't worth any one's
while to open them for L10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class
ticket up to town. What are we to do?"
"We?" she gasped.
"You and I," he explained.
"But--but I can't _possibly_ do anything."
" 'Can't possibly' is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand."
"Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn't do anything."
"Mustn't is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it's a
temptation in itself."
"It wouldn't be right," she said, with quite a show of firmness.
He looked at her a little curiously. For a moment he almost seemed
puzzled. Then he pressed her hand and asked tenderly, "Why not?"
And in a half-audible aside he added, "That's the correct move, I think."
"What did you say?" she asked.
"I said, 'Why not?' " he answered, with increasing tenderness.
"But you said something else."
"I added a brief prayer for pity."
Lady Alicia sighed and repeated a little less firmly. "It wouldn't be
right of me, Mr Beveridge."
"But what would be wrong?"
This was said with even more fervour.
"My conscience--we are very particular, you know."
"Who are 'we'?"
"Papa is _very_ strict High Church."
An idea seemed to strike Mr Beveridge, for he ruminated in silence.
"I asked Mr Candles--our curate, you know," Lady Alicia continued, with a
heroic effort to make her position clear.
"You told him!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, I didn't say who it was--I mean what it was I thought of doing--I mean
the temptation--that is, the possibility. And he said it was very kind of
me to think of it; but I mustn't do anything, and he advised me to read a
book he gave me, and--and I mustn't think of it, really, Mr Beveridge."
To himself Mr Beveridge repeated under his breath, "Archbishops, bishops,
deacons, curates, fast in Lent, and an anthem after the Creed. I think I
remember enough to pass."
Then he assumed a very serious face, and said aloud, "Your scruples do
your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet
character, which emboldens me to make a confession."
He stopped skating, folded his arms, and continued unblushingly, "I was
educated for the Church, but the prejudices of my parents, the immature
scepticism of youth, and some uncertainty about obtaining my
archbishopric, induced me in an unfortunate moment, which I never ceased
to bitterly regret, to quit my orders."
"You are in orders?" she exclaimed.
"I was in several. I cancelled them, and entered the Navy instead."
"The Navy?" she asked, excusably bewildered by these rapid changes of
occupation.
"For five years I was never ashore."
"But," she hesitated--"but you said you were in the Army."
Mr Beveridge gave her a look full of benignant compassion that made her,
she did not quite know why, feel terribly abashed.
"My regiment was quartered at sea," he condescended to explain. "But in
time my conscience awoke. I announced my intention of resuming my charge.
My uncle was furious. My enemies were many. I was seized, thrown into this
prison-house, and now my only friend fails me."
They were both silent. She ventured once to glance up at his face, and it
seemed to her that his eyes were moist--though perhaps it was that her own
were a little dim.
"Let us skate on," he said abruptly, with a fine air of resignation.
"By the way," he suddenly added, "I was extremely High Church, in fact
almost freezingly high."
For five minutes they skated in silence, then Lady Alicia began softly,
"Supposing you--you went away----"
"What is the use of talking of it?" he exclaimed, melodramatically. "Let
me forget my short-lived hopes!"
"You _have_ a friend," she said, slowly.
"A friend who tantalises me by 'supposings'!"
"But supposing you did, Mr Beveridge, would you go back to your--did you
say you had a parish?"
"I had: a large, populous, and happy parish. It is my one dream to sit
once more on its council and direct my curate."
"Of course that makes a difference. Mr Candles didn't know all this."
They had come by this time to the corner of a little island that lay not
far from the shore; in the channel ahead a board labelled "Danger" marked
a hidden spring; behind them the shining ice was almost bare of skaters,
for all but Dr Escott seemed to be leaving; on the bank they could see
Moggridge prowling about in the gathering dusk, a vigilant reminder of
captivity. Mr Beveridge took the whole scene in with, it is to be feared,
a militant rather than an episcopal eye. Then he suddenly asked, "Are you
alone?"
"Yes."
"You drive back?"
"Ye--es."
He took out his watch and made a brief calculation.
"Go now, call at Clankwood or do anything else you like, and pass down the
drive again at a quarter to five."
This sudden pinning of her irresolution almost took Lady Alicia's breath
away.
"But I never said----" she began.
"My dear friend," he interrupted, "in the hour of action only a fool ever
says. Come on."
And while she still hesitated they were off again.
"But----" she tried to expostulate.
"My dearest friend," he whispered, "and my dear old vicarage!"
He gave her no time to protest. Her skates were off, she was on her way to
her carriage, and he was striking out again for the middle of the lake
before she had time to collect her wits.
He took out his watch and looked at the time. It was nearly a quarter-past
four. Then he came up to Escott, who by this time was the only other soul
on the ice.
"About time we were going in," said Escott.
"Give me half-an-hour more. I'll show you how to do that vine you
admired."
"All right," assented the doctor.
A minute or two later Mr Beveridge, as if struck by a sudden reflection,
exclaimed, "By Jove, there's that poor devil Moggridge freezing to death
on shore. Can't you manage to look after so dangerous a lunatic yourself?
It is his tea-time, too."
"Hallo, so he is," replied Escott; "I'll send him up."
And so there were only left the two men on the ice.
For a little the lesson went on, and presently, leaving the doctor to
practise, Mr Beveridge skated away by himself. He first paused opposite a
seat on the bank over which hung Dr Escott's great fur coat. This
spectacle appeared to afford him peculiar pleasure. Then he looked at his
watch. It was half-past four. He shut the watch with a click, threw a
glance at his pupil, and struck out for the island. If the doctor had been
looking, he might have seen him round it in the gloaming.
Dr Escott, leaning far on his outside edge, met him as he returned.
"What's that under your coat?" he asked.
"A picture I intend to ask your opinion on presently," replied Mr
Beveridge; and he added, with his most charming air, "But now, before we
go in, let me give you a ride on one of these chairs, doctor."
They started off, the pace growing faster and faster, and presently Dr
Escott saw that they were going behind the island.
"Look out for the spring!" he cried.
"It must be bearing now," replied Mr Beveridge, striking out harder than
ever; "they have taken away the board."
"All right," said the doctor, "on you go."
As he spoke he felt a violent push, and the chair, slewing round as it
went, flew on its course unguided. Mr Beveridge's skates rasped on the ice
with a spray of white powder as he stopped himself suddenly. Ahead of him
there was a rending crack, and Dr Escott and his chair disappeared. Mr
Beveridge laughed cheerfully, and taking from under his coat a board with
the legend "Danger" printed in large characters across its face, he placed
it beside the jagged hole.
"Here is the picture, doctor," he said, as a dripping, gasping head came
up for the second time. "I must ask a thousand pardons for this--shall I
say, liberty? But, as you know, I'm off my head. Good night. Let me
recommend a hot drink when you come out. There are only five feet of
water, so you won't drown." And with that he skated rapidly away.
Escott had a glimpse of him vanishing round the corner of the island, and
then the ice broke again, and down he went. Four, five, six times he made
a desperate effort to get out, and every time the thin ice tore under his
hands, and he slipped back again. By the seventh attempt he had broken his
way to the thicker sheet; he got one leg up, slipped, got it up again, and
at last, half numbed and wholly breathless, he was crawling circumspectly
away. When at last he ventured to rise to his feet, he skated with all the
speed he could make to the seat where he had left his coat. A pair of
skates lay there instead, but the coat had vanished. Dr Escott's
philosophical estimate of Mr Beveridge became considerably modified.
"Thank the Lord, he can't get out of the grounds," he said to himself;
"what a dangerous devil he is! But he'll be sorry for this performance, or
I'm mistaken."
When he arrived at the house his first inquiries were for his tutor in the
art of vine-cutting, and he was rather surprised to hear that he had not
yet returned, for he only imagined himself the victim of a peculiarly
ill-timed practical joke.
Men with lanterns were sent out to search the park; and still there was no
sign of Mr Beveridge. Inquiries were made at the lodge, but the gatekeeper
could swear that only a single carriage had passed through. Dr Congleton
refused at first to believe that he could possibly have got out.
"Our arrangements are perfect,--the thing's absurd," he said, peremptorily.
"That there man, sir," replied Moggridge, who had been summoned, "is the
slipperiest customer as ever I seed. 'E's hout, sir, I believe."
"We might at least try the stations," suggested Escott, who had by this
time changed, and indulged in the hot drink recommended.
The doctor began to be a little shaken.
"Well, well," said he, "I'll send a man to each of the three stations
within walking distance; and whether he's out or in, we'll have him by
to-morrow morning. I've always taken care that he had no money in his
pockets."
But what is a doctor's care against a woman's heart? For many to-morrows
Clankwood had to lament the loss of the gifted Francis Beveridge.
CHAPTER VII.
At sixteen minutes to five Mr Beveridge stood by the side of the Clankwood
Avenue, comfortably wrapped in Dr Escort's fur coat, and smoking with the
greatest relish one of Dr Escott's undeniable cigars.
It was almost dark, the air bit keen, the dim park with its population of
black trees was filled with a frosty, eager stillness. All round the
invisible wall hemmed him in, the ten pounds, seventeen shillings, and
sixpence lay useless in his pocket till that was past, and his one hope
depended on a woman. But Mr Beveridge was an amateur in the sex, and he
smiled complacently as he smoked.
He had waited barely three minutes when the quick clatter of a pair of
horses fell on his ears, and presently the lights of a carriage and pair,
driving swiftly away from Clankwood, raked the drive on either side. As
they rattled up to him he gave a shout to the coachman to stop, and
stepped right in front of the horses. With something that sounded unlike a
blessing, the pair were thrown almost on their haunches to check them in
time. Never stopping to explain, he threw open the door and sprang in; the
coachman, hearing no sound of protest, whipped up again, and Mr Beveridge
found himself rolling through the park of Clankwood in the Countess of
Grillyer's carriage with a very timid little figure by his side. Even in
that moment of triumphant excitement the excellence of his manners was
remarkable: the first thing he said was, "Do you mind smoking?"
In her confusion of mind Lady Alicia could only reply "Oh no," and not
till some time afterwards did she remember that the odour of a cigar was
clinging and the Countess's nose unusually sensitive.
After this first remark he leaned back in silence, gradually filling the
carriage with a blue-grey cloud, and looking out of the windows first on
one side and then on the other. They passed quickly through the lines of
trees and the open spaces of frosty park-land, they drew up at the lodge
for a moment, he heard his prison gates swing open, the harness jingled
and the hoofs began to clatter again, a swift vision of lighted windows
and a man looking on them incuriously swept by, and then they were rolling
over a country road between hedgerows and under the free stars.
It was the Lady Alicia who spoke first.
"I never thought you would really come," she said.
"I have been waiting for that remark," he replied, with his most
irresistible smile; "now for some more practical conversation."
As he did not immediately begin this conversation himself, her curiosity
overcame her, and she asked, "How did you manage to get out?"
"As my friend Dr Escott offered no opposition, I walked away."
"Did he really let you?"
"He never even expostulated."
"Then--then it's all right?" she said, with an inexplicable sensation of
disappointment.
"Perfectly--so far."
"But--didn't they object?"
"Not yet," he replied; "objections to my movements are generally made
after they have been performed."
Somehow she felt immensely relieved at this hint of opposition.
"I'm so glad you got away," she whispered, and then repented in a flutter.
"Not more so than I am," he answered, pressing her hand.
"And now," he added, "I should like to know how near Ashditch Junction you
propose to take me."
"Where are you going to, Mr Beveridge?"
The "Mr Beveridge" was thrown in as a corrective to the hand-pressure.
"To London; where else, my Alicia? With L10, 17s. 6d. in my pocket, I
shall be able to eat at least three good dinners, and, by the third of
them, if I haven't fallen on my feet it will be the first time I have
descended so unluckily."
"But," she asked, considerably disconcerted, "I thought you were going
back to your parish."
For a moment he too seemed a trifle put about. Then he replied readily,
"So I am, as soon as I have purchased the necessary outfit, restocked my
ecclesiastical library, and called on my bishop."
She felt greatly relieved at this justification of her share in the
adventure.
"Drop me at the nearest point to the station," he said.
"I am afraid," she began--"I mean I think you had better get out soon. The
first road on the right will take you straight there, and we had better
not pass it."
"Then I must bid you farewell," and he sighed most effectively. "Farewell,
my benefactress, my dear Alicia! Shall I ever see you, shall I ever hear
of you again?"
"I might--I might just write once; if you will answer it: I mean if you
would care to hear from such a----"
She found it difficult to finish, and prudently stopped.
"Thanks," he replied cheerfully; "do,--I shall live in hopes. I'd better
stop the carriage now."
He let down the window, when she said hastily, "But I don't know your
address."
He reflected for an instant. "Care of the Archbishop of York will always
find me," he replied; and as if unwilling to let his emotion be observed,
he immediately put his head out of the window and called on the coachman
to stop.
"Good-bye," he whispered, tenderly, squeezing her fingers with one hand
and opening the door with the other.
"Don't quite forget me," she whispered back.
"Never!" he replied, and was in the act of getting out when he suddenly
turned, and exclaimed, "I must be more out of practice than I thought; I
had almost forgotten the protested salute."
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