Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/321

. 12, 1863.] now it lashed them with vindictive blasts till they ached and tingled all over as from the most cutting and malicious stripes. The streets so searchingly swept by the wind looked blanched like bones on a sea-strand. Right glad was I to beat a retreat from an enemy so merciless, and take refuge for a while in my warm corner in the coffee-shop.

The Baron was not long after me. As he took possession of his accustomed seat, I was struck by something unusual in his appearance. He was pale and agitated; he glanced continually over his shoulder as though he expected to see some one following him, and his thin white hand trembled so that he at once removed it from the table. His eyes wandered about with a vacant restlessness that was almost alarming, while he was every now and then seized with a distressing fit of coughing which shook his whole frame.

“This is a bad morning,” I said.

He turned to me with a startled air.

“It is,” he replied coldly, after a pause.

“Your cold is very bad—are you not imprudent to venture out?”

He gazed at me steadfastly for a moment or two.

“Why do you ask this? Who are you, that presume to question me?”

I was not unprepared for a rebuff of this nature. In a few words I ventured to inform him that my question arose from no merely idle motive, but out of real sympathy for him. I reminded him of the many times we had met, and suggested to him that the fact prevented my regarding him entirely as a stranger. I spoke in a tone as conciliatory and polite as was possible to me, and by way of giving an example of confidence, I spoke openly of myself; mentioned my name, address, and calling, and finally expressed regret if in addressing him I had given offence.

The unreserve of this appeared to soothe him.

“You have trust in me, at any rate,” he said.

I gave him my card. He placed it in his notebook—shuffling it in with his hand—then clasped the book and returned it to his pocket.

“Your curiosity in regard to me has been roused?”

“Something more than curiosity.”

“Interest, perhaps?”

“Yes, interest.”

“Well, it is not so surprising. You are young and—”

He stopped as though from irresolution. Leaning his head upon his hand and gazing at me searchingly, he after a pause resumed:

“Something has happened to me tonight”—speaking slowly and in a depressed tone—“so strange, so marvellous, that I might stand excused if I made the first man I met my confidant; were it only to preserve a record of what has taken place in another mind than my own, I am almost bound to speak. Time so effaces impressions—so constrains us to forget and to disbelieve, it would be a satisfaction to relate this matter to another, even an utter stranger, while it is still new, fresh, and restless in my thoughts. And you have taught yourself to be interested in me?”

A sudden fit of coughing shook him cruelly. Exhausted and panting he rose from his seat. I stretched out my arm to assist him. Probably he misunderstood my intention. Smiling, he pressed my hand gently.

“No,” he said, “not here; not now.”

He moved slowly towards the door, turning back, however, before he had reached it.

“Do not follow me,” he said, and quitted the room.

For three days the Baron’s seat in the coffee-room was unoccupied, and I could gain no tidings of him. On the evening of the fourth day, however, I found at my lodgings a letter, the handwriting of which I readily recognised. The contents were brief. I was requested to call that night at a house in the neighbourhood of Queen Square. The letter was signed “Lane Daly.” I hurried at once to the place appointed, found the house without difficulty—it was small, but not mean-looking—and learnt that Mr. Daly occupied rooms on the second-floor. The staircase was tortuous and ill-lighted, but the apartment into which I was introduced was well-furnished, and generally comfortable in appearance. The Baron, or Mr. Daly, as his real name seemed to be, was reclining on a small sofa in front of the fire. He rose as I entered, shook me cordially by the hand, and motioned me to an armchair by the side of his couch. He looked pallid and weak. He was taking coffee; after pouring me out a cup, he resumed his reclining position.

“You were possibly surprised at my writing to you,” he said in a low tone, “but the fact of your presence here shows that I did not draw too largely upon your kindness. I have been ill—I have been compelled to succumb to sickness as I have seldom done before. I have not left my room since I last saw you. You will forgive my asking you to come to me here, but for some days now I must remain a prisoner, and I then leave England. You have expressed an interest in me. I have to thank you much. I have seen you frequently at the coffee-room to which we both resort. I have Observed you more perhaps than you are aware of. I can—I do believe that this interest arises from a certain sympathy and not from mere curiosity. You are young. You do not know how valuable to those journeying on to age is the sympathy of the young. I did not perhaps myself know it thoroughly until within these few hours. I did not think I needed the sympathy of anyone. Heaven knows I have not courted it, and but a short time back I would as soon have died as have had a stranger here, sitting where you sit, hearing what I am about to ask you to hear. But an event has occurred which almost forces me to speak. It seems to me that silence would prey upon my reason.

“I had resolved after our last meeting at the coffee-room, and urged by your kindness there, to make known to you a strange chapter in a strange history. I have been thinking how to isolate this incident from surrounding circumstances, so as to make it intelligible to you without my entering upon a lengthy revelation. I find it necessary, however, that I should narrate to you certain details of my past career which I had not contemplated at first, and which may lead me to be more prolix than I desire. Forgive me,