CHAPTER VI.

PASTILLE-BURNING.

Rarely had Captain Ducie felt in a pleasanter frame of mind than when he went down to breakfast in the course of the forenoon following the evening on which he had shown Mr. Van Loal and his daughter the Great Mogul Diamond. Several circumstances had combined to render him more than ordinarily cheerful. He had fully made up his mind to propose to Mirpah Van Loal that very day, and he felt little fear that his suit would be rejected. Once married, he would cut his old associations for ever, would probably leave England for several years, and in some remote spot would, with his lovely wife, lead a life such as one sometimes reads of in idylls and romances but rarely sees reduced to practice in this work-a-day world. Mr. Van Loal had appraised the Diamond at a very tolerable sum, and through his influence he would doubtless be able to dispose of it quietly, and in a way that would give rise to no suspicion as to the mode by which it had come into his possession. The proceeds of the sale, judiciously invested, would be productive of an annual income on which it would be possible to live in comfort wherever he might choose to pitch his tent. Lastly, all apprehension as to any results which might possibly have accrued to him from the sudden death of M. Platzoff, and the subsequent events at Bon Repos, had utterly died away. He had got by this time to feel as if the Diamond were as much his own as though it had been given to him or handed down to him as a family heirloom. If any uncomfortable thought connected with the death of Platzoff and his appropriation of the Diamond ever crossed his mind, it was dismissed with ignominy, like a poor relation, almost as soon as it made itself known. Captain Ducie was not a man to let his conscience trouble him whenever it wished to question him respecting any transaction the results of which had proved prosperous to himself. In such cases he bade it begone, turning it out by main force, and shutting the door in its face. But whenever it stole in and began to reproach him for his conduct in any little affair that in its results had proved disastrous either socially or pecuniarily, then did Edmund Ducie bow his head in all humility before the veiled monitress, and cry mea culpa, and bewail his naughtiness with many inward groans, and promise to amend his ways in time to come. But it may be doubted whether in the latter case his regret did not arise less from having done that which was wrong, than because the wrong had proved unsuccessful in compassing the ends for which it was done.

Be that as it may, Captain Ducie's conscience did not seem to trouble him much as he came downstairs this pleasant autumn morning, humming an air from the Trovatore, and giving the last finishing touches to his filbert-shaped nails. He rang the bell for breakfast, and turned over, half contemptuously, the selection of newspapers on the side table.

"Has Mr. Van Loal come down to breakfast yet, do you know?" he asked when the waiter re-entered the room.

"I will ascertain, sir, and let you know."

Two minutes later the waiter came back. "Mr. Van Loal, sir, and Miss Van Loal, left this morning by the Southampton boat."

"What!" shouted Ducie, jumping to his feet as though he had been shot.

The waiter repeated his statement.

"Either you are crazy or you have been misinformed," said Ducie, contemptuously, as he quietly resumed his seat. "Go again, and ascertain the truth this time."

Presently the waiter returned. "What I told you before, sir, is quite true. Mr. Van Loal and his daughter left this morning by the early boat."

A horrible sickening dread took possession of Ducie. He staggered to his feet, his face like that of a corpse. Was it--was it possible that by some devil's trick the Diamond had been conjured from him? His hand went instinctively to the spot where he knew it ought to be. No--it was not gone. He could feel it there, just below his heart, in the little sealskin bag that hung from his neck by a steel chain. He had replaced it there after taking it from the fingers of Van Loal the preceding night, and he had not looked at it since.

Greatly relieved, he turned to the waiter with a face that was still strangely white and contorted. "What you have just told me is almost incredible," he said, "in fact, I cannot believe it without further proof. Go and bring to me some one who was an eye-witness of the departure of Mr. and Miss Van Loal."

The waiter went. Ducie was still unnerved, and he poured himself out a cup of coffee with a hand that trembled in spite of all his efforts to keep it still. But his appetite for breakfast was utterly gone.

Then the waiter came back and ushered into the room, first, the young lady who kept the accounts of the establishment; secondly, the boots. The young lady advanced with charming self-possession, made her little curtsy, and broke the ice at once.

"I am informed, sir, that you wish to have some particulars respecting the departure of Mr. and Miss Van Loal," she said. "They dined with you last evening in your own room, if I am not mistaken. Yes. Well, sir, about eleven o'clock, just as I was closing my books for the night, I was surprised by a visit from Mr. Van Loal. 'Oblige me by making out my little account,' said he; 'and include in it to-morrow's breakfast. I am recalled to England by important letters, and must go by the first boat. You will further oblige me by making no mention of my departure till after I am gone. I have several friends to whom I ought to say good-by, but I do not feel equal to the occasion, and wish to slip quietly away without saying a word.' Mr. Van Loal waited while I made out the account. Then he paid me and bade me good-night. When I got up this morning, I found that he and his daughter had gone by the early boat. James, here, took their luggage down to the pier and saw them start."

"Did you with your own eyes see Mr. and Miss Van Loal start by the Southampton boat this morning?"

"I did, sir. I was instructed to look after their luggage this morning. I took it down to the boat and saw the old gentleman and the young lady safe aboard. They went below deck at once, and two minutes later the steamer was off."

"A very clear and conclusive narrative," said Ducie. "You are the man, I believe, who looks after the letters and attends to the post bag?"

"I am, sir."

"Were there any letters by the afternoon post yesterday for Mr. Van Loal?"

"No, sir, not one. I can speak positively to that."

Left alone, Captain Ducie sat down in a perfect maze of perplexity. That Van Loal and his daughter were gone he could no longer doubt. But why had they gone without a hint or word of farewell? They must have known at the time they were dining with him the previous evening that they were about to sail on the following morning, and yet they allowed him to plan and arrange for the day's excursion as though any thought of change were the last thing in their minds. And Mirpah, too--what of her? What of the woman whom it was his intention to have proposed to that very day? Had she merely been playing with him all along in order that she might jilt him at last? He could not understand the thing at all. He was mazed, utterly dumbfounded, like a man walking in a dream. The more he thought of the affair, the less comprehensible it seemed to him. His amour propre was terribly wounded. More intolerable than all else was the sense there was upon him of having been outwitted, of having in some mysterious way been made the victim of a plot with the beginning and ending of which he was utterly unacquainted. He had been hoodwinked--bamboozled--he felt sure of it: but how and for what purpose he was quite at a loss to fathom. His Diamond was perfectly safe; he had never gambled with Van Loal; whatever his looks might have conveyed, he had never spoken a word of love to Mirpah, so that it was impossible she could have taken offence with him on that score. What, then, was the meaning of it all? He rang the bell to inquire whether Mr. Van Loal had left no note, or message of any kind for him. None whatever, was the reply.

"What a preposterous idiot I must have been," murmured Ducie, "to fancy that this woman whom I proposed to make my wife, cared for me the least bit in the world! She is like the rest of her sex--neither better nor worse. From highest to lowest they are false and fickle--every one."

He spent a miserable day, wandering aimlessly about, he neither knew nor cared whither; nursing his wounds, and vainly striving to understand for what reason he had been struck so mercilessly and in the dark. A thousand times that day he cursed the name of Mirpah Van Loal. Once he paused in his pacing of the lonely sands, and not satisfied with the evidence of his fingers that the Diamond was safe in its sealskin pocket, he took it out of its hiding-place and gazed on it, and pressed it to his lips, even as M. Paul Platzoff had done in his time, and as, in all probability, hundreds had done before him.

"Fool! after all my experience of life and the world, to believe in the chimera of woman's love!" he said bitterly to himself. "Man's only real friend in this world is money, or that which can command money. The rest is only a shadow on the wall, gone ere it can be clutched."

He had been wandering about all day without food, and when night set in he felt nervous and dispirited.

He made a pretence of eating his dinner as usual, but he sickened at his food and sought consolation in a double allowance of wine. Later on he strolled out with a cigar, and made his way to a certain billiard-room where he was not unknown. He was too nervous to touch a cue himself, but he found his excitement in betting on other men's play. After having lost five sovereigns he went back to his hotel. This was the night of Cleon's arrival at Jersey.

His mood next day was one of sullen bitterness. It was a mood that, under other circumstances, might have incited him to do something desperate, were it only to find a safety-valve for his pent-up feelings. In such a mood, had he been on active service, and had the need arisen, he would have gloried in offering himself as the leader of some forlorn hope. In such a mood, had he been a burglar, it would have fared ill with any one who stood up in defence of that which he had made up his mind to take as his own. Happily, or unhappily, in such crises of everyday life we have no choice save to eat our own hearts, and drink our own tears, and wear the mask of comedy to the world, while hiding that other mask of tragedy under our robe, which we venture to don only when we are in secret and alone.

Captain Ducie, behind the mask of comedy which he presented to the world, hid a heart that in a few short hours had become surcharged with gall, and that would never again, however long his life might be, be entirely free from bitterness. He felt like one of those savage caged creatures who, when they have nothing else to war against, will sometimes turn and rend themselves. He felt that he should like to do himself some bodily injury: to put his foot under the car of Juggernaut, had he been a Hindoo; or to have swung, with a hook through his loins, above the populace of some Indian fair.

All day long he loafed about in this savage mood, smoking innumerable cigars and twisting the ends of his moustache viciously.

He was only anxious for one thing, and that was for the arrival of the afternoon post. It is possible that he expected some line of explanation from Van Loal. If so, he was disappointed. That day's post brought him no letters.

After dinner he joined a whist party in the coffee-room. Later on the quartette composing the party adjourned to a private-room upstairs. Captain Ducie was ordinarily an abstemious man, especially when cards were on the tapis, but to-night he was reckless and took more wine than was good for him. It was nearly one o'clock when the party broke up, and Captain Ducie never afterwards remembered how he reached his own room.

That he reached his room in safety cannot be doubted, because he found himself safely in bed when he awoke next morning. But before that time arrived a strange scene had been enacted in Captain Ducie's bedroom.

As before stated, it was nearly one o'clock when he reached his room, and five minutes after getting into bed he had fallen into a broken troubled sleep in which he enacted over again the varied incidents of the evening's play. After moaning and tossing about for more than an hour, he woke up, feeling parched from head to foot and with a pain across his forehead like a fiery hoop that seemed to be slowly shrivelling up his brain. He got out of bed and emptied the decanter on his dressing-table at a draught. Then he plunged his head into a large basin of water, and that revived him still more. His head still ached, but not so violently as before. He went back to bed, cursing his folly for having taken so much wine. The night-light was burning as usual--dim and ghostly; barely sufficient to light up the familiar features of the room--for Captain Ducie had a strange superstitious horror of sleeping in the dark. He lay on his back, with his hands clasped above his head and with shut eyes. Sleep did not come back to him at once. His imagination went wandering here and there into odd nooks and corners that it had not visited for years. By-and-by he slid into a state of semi-unconsciousness, in which, without entirely losing all knowledge of time and place--of the fact that he was lying there in bed with a beastly headache--he yet mixed up certain scenes and events from dreamland, interfusing the real and the imaginary in such a way that for the time being the line of demarcation between the two was utterly lost, and where one ended and the other began, he would just then have found it impossible to determine. He was playing cards with one of the huge stone images that guarded the gates of Memphis, and was yet at the same time conscious of being in bed. He could see the grotesque shadows thrown by the night-light on the wall, and he could hear the ticking of his watch in the little pocket a few inches above his head. In his game with the stone image, in whose eyes he seemed to read the garnered patience of many centuries, he was aware that unless he could succeed in trumping his adversary's trick with the five of clubs, the game would be irrevocably lost, and he, Ducie, would be condemned to be buried alive for five hundred years in the heart of the great Pyramid. The twentieth deal would be the last, and if the five of clubs were not forthcoming by that time, the game would be lost and the dread sentence would be carried into effect.

Deal after deal went on, and still the five of clubs did not show itself. Even in the midst of his perturbation he heard and counted the strokes of a clock in the silent house. The clock struck three, and in the act of deliberating which card he should play next, Ducie remarked to himself that it still wanted two hours till daybreak.

From minute to minute his perturbation increased. He did his best to maintain a calm front before his calm adversary. As he peered into those terrible eyes, he knew that he must expect no mercy if he failed in producing the magic card. Forgiveness and revenge were alike unknown to the inexorable being before him, who was the embodiment of Law, serene and passionless, neither to be hurried nor hindered, keeping ever to the simple white line traced out for its footsteps from the beginning of the world, and as utterly regardless of human joy or human sorrow, as of the grumbling of the earthquake or the fiery passion of the volcano.

Slowly but surely the game went on. Ducie's adversary marked off every deal with a hieroglyph on a huge slate by his side. Fifteen--ten--five--the number of deals diminished one by one, and still the magic card was not forthcoming. Ducie went on playing with the quiet courage of despair. Five--four--three--two--one. The last deal had come but the five of clubs was still hidden in the pack. As he thought of the terrible fate before him his soul was utterly dismayed. Suddenly he heard a faint whisper in his ear: "Give me the Great Mogul Diamond and I will save you." "It is yours," he replied in the same tone. In a fainter whisper than before came the words: "Feel up your sleeve for the five of clubs."

Ducie put his hand up his sleeve and drew forth the magic card. As he dashed it on the table, cards and image melted silently away, all but the great calm eyes, which seemed to recede slowly from him while gazing at him with an inexorable gentleness that awed him, and crushed out of him all expressions of joy at his escape.

He had been conscious all this time of being in his own room at the Royal George, and without being thoroughly awake, this consciousness was still upon him when he found himself left alone. Was he really quite alone? he asked himself. Some voice had whispered in his ear only a minute ago, and a voice implied a bodily presence. But whose presence?

He would doubtless know before long, when this unknown being would come forth to claim the great Diamond.

Well, better part from the Diamond than be made a living mummy of, and be buried for five hundred years among dead kings and priests in the great pyramid.

Was it Shakspeare who talked about "dusty death?" It did not matter. He had been saved from a dreadful fate, and a long peaceful sleep for one hundred and five hours, fifteen minutes, and ten seconds--neither more nor less--was needed to compensate him for the mental and bodily torture from which he had just escaped.

Even while this fancy was simmering in his brain, he was aware of a strange, subtle odour which seemed to rise from the floor in faint, cloud-like waves, rising and spreading till every nook and cranny of the room was pervaded by it. It was a mist of perfume--a perfume far from unpleasant to inhale--heavy, yet pungent, odorous of the East, inclining to sleep and to visions of a passionless existence, undisturbed by all outward influences--such visions as must come to the strange beings whose most central thought is that of future absorption in the mystic godhead of the mighty Brahma.

Empires might change and die, the world might split asunder and chaos rule again, it mattered not to him. Only to rest, to lie there for ever, self-absorbed, indifferent to all mundane matters--that was the utmost that he craved.

The mist of perfume thickened, becoming from minute to minute denser and more penetrating. By this time it seemed to have permeated his whole being. It filled his lungs, it mingled with his blood, it saturated his brain; it glowed in him, a slumberous heat, from head to foot. The shadowy past of his life, the real present of his surroundings, grouped themselves in his brain like blurred photographs, which it was impossible for him to regard with anything more than a vague and impersonal interest. Nothing seemed real to him save the noiseless involved working of his own mind, working in and out like a shuttle with a fantastic thread of many colours, and with self for ever as the central figure.

While his mind had been growing thus strangely active, his body had been slowly losing--or rather suspending--its vitality. Slowly and imperceptibly his limbs had grown utterly powerless and inert, till now, if a kingdom had been offered him, he could not have raised hand or foot two inches from the bed. Not that he had any desire to move hand, or foot, or head, or tongue; only to lie still for ever, thinking his own thoughts, weighing the universe in the balance of his own mind and finding it wanting. Grant him but that, ye powers of earth and air, and for the rest, the word "nihil" might be written, and all things come to an end.

Suddenly through the mist of perfume that filled the room he saw, or seemed to see, a black and threatening figure rise from the floor close by his bedside.

"Surely," he thought to himself, "this must be the presence belonging to the voice that whispered in my ear as I was playing cards with the Memphian image. He has come to claim his pledge--he has come for the Mogul Diamond."

To him, just now, the Mogul Diamond was as valueless as a grain of sand. That black and threatening figure by his bedside might take it and welcome.

"Strange," he thought, "that the minds of men should ever grow to such trifles."

The power of despising others thoroughly, but without emotion, is one of the final products of pure intellect: and to that serene height he had now attained.

The black figure bent over him. In one hand it held a dagger.

Ducie felt no alarm. Such a human emotion as fear affected him not, nor quickened the equable pulses of his being.

As the face pertaining to the figure bent nearer to his own, he recognised it as the face of Cleon the mulatto. Even then he was not surprised. The mulatto made as though he would have struck Ducie to the heart, but stopped the dagger when it was within an inch of his breast. He passed his other hand across his forehead, and seemed to stagger.

Was it possible that the powerful odour was affecting him as it had affected his victim? He hurriedly replaced his dagger in its sheath, and putting his hand to Ducie's neck, as if he knew instinctively that such a thing was there, he felt for the chain from which was suspended the sealskin pouch that held the Diamond. He had no difficulty in finding the chain, nor the sachet, nor the Diamond. He extracted the great flashing gem from its hiding-place, even as Ducie had extracted it a few weeks before from the head of the Indian idol. He held it up between his eye and the night-lamp, and muttered a few guttural words to himself.

Then for the second time he passed his hand across his forehead and staggered. As if warned that he had not a moment to spare, he stuffed the Diamond into his mouth, gave a last scowl at the helpless figure before him, and disappeared behind the curtains that fell round the head of the bed.

Ducie was left alone.

All that had just taken place had affected him no more than if he had witnessed it as a scene out of a play. The Great Diamond was gone, and not even a ripple disturbed the waveless serenity of his mind.

But the subtle odour that had filled the room was slowly fading out, and as it grew fainter, so did the strange spell that had held Ducie captive begin to lose its power. His thoughts lost their crystalline clearness, becoming blurred and unwieldy. They no longer arranged themselves in proper sequence. Some of them became so cumbersome that they had to be dropped and left behind, while those that were more nimble strayed so far ahead as to be almost beyond recall. Then the nimble ones had to come back and try to pick up the unwieldy ones, till they all became jumbled together and lost their individuality. Finally, sleep came to the rescue and laid her mantle softly over them, and for a little while all was peace.