Night and Morning, Complete

“Nothing more reasonable—it is understood. Still I confess that I should like to have my men close at hand. I am not given to fear; but this is a dangerous experiment.”

“You knew the danger beforehand and subscribed to it: you must enter alone with me, or not at all. Mark you, the men are sworn to murder him who betrays them. Not for twenty times 20,000 francs would I have them know me as the informer. My life were not worth a day’s purchase. Now, if you feel secure in your disguise, all is safe. You will have seen them at their work—you will recognise their persons—you can depose against them at the trial—I shall have time to quit France.”

“Well, well! as you please.”

“Mind, you must wait in the vault with them till they separate. We have so planted your men that whatever street each of the gang takes in going home, he can be seized quietly and at once. The bravest and craftiest of all, who, though he has but just joined, is already their captain;—him, the man I told you of, who lives in the house, you must take after his return, in his bed. It is the sixth story to the right, remember: here is the key to his door. He is a giant in strength; and will never be taken alive if up and armed.”

“Ah, I comprehend!—Gilbert” (and Favart turned to one of his companions who had not yet spoken) “take three men besides yourself, according to the directions I gave you,—the porter will admit you, that’s arranged. Make no noise. If I don’t return by four o’clock, don’t wait for me, but proceed at once. Look well to your primings. Take him alive, if possible—at the worst, dead. And now—mon ami—lead on!”

The traitor nodded, and walked slowly down the street. Favart, pausing, whispered hastily to the man whom he had called Gilbert,—

“Follow me close—get to the door of the cellar-place eight men within hearing of my whistle—recollect the picklocks, the axes. If you hear the whistle, break in; if not, I’m safe, and the first orders to seize the captain in his room stand good.”

So saying, Favart strode after his guide. The door of a large, but ill-favoured-looking house stood ajar—they entered-passed unmolested through a court-yard—descended some stairs; the guide unlocked the door of a cellar, and took a dark lantern from under his cloak. As he drew up the slide, the dim light gleamed on barrels and wine-casks, which appeared to fill up the space. Rolling aside one of these, the guide lifted a trap-door, and lowered his lantern. “Enter,” said he; and the two men disappeared.

…

The coiners were at their work. A man, seated on a stool before a desk, was entering accounts in a large book. That man was William Gawtrey. While, with the rapid precision of honest mechanics, the machinery of the Dark Trade went on in its several departments. Apart—alone—at the foot of a long table, sat Philip Morton. The truth had exceeded his darkest suspicions. He had consented to take the oath not to divulge what was to be given to his survey; and when, led into that vault, the bandage was taken from his eyes, it was some minutes before he could fully comprehend the desperate and criminal occupations of the wild forms amidst which towered the burly stature of his benefactor. As the truth slowly grew upon him, he shrank from the side of Gawtrey; but, deep compassion for his friend’s degradation swallowing up the horror of the trade, he flung himself on one of the rude seats, and felt that the bond between them was indeed broken, and that the next morning he should be again alone in the world. Still, as the obscene jests, the fearful oaths, that from time to time rang through the vault, came on his ear, he cast his haughty eye in such disdain over the groups, that Gawtrey, observing him, trembled for his safety; and nothing but Philip’s sense of his own impotence, and the brave, not timorous, desire not to perish by such hands, kept silent the fiery denunciations of a nature still proud and honest, that quivered on his lips. All present were armed with pistols and cutlasses except Morton, who suffered the weapons presented to him to lie unheeded on the table.

“Courage, mes amis!” said Gawtrey, closing his book,—“Courage!—a few months more, and we shall have made enough to retire upon, and enjoy ourselves for the rest of the days. Where is Birnie?”

“Did he not tell you?” said one of the artisans, looking up. “He has found out the cleverest hand in France, the very fellow who helped Bouchard in all his five-franc pieces. He has promised to bring him to-night.”

“Ay, I remember,” returned Gawtrey, “he told me this morning,—he is a famous decoy!”

“I think so, indeed!” quoth a coiner; “for he caught you, the best head to our hands that ever les industriels were blessed with—sacre fichtre!”

“Flatterer!” said Gawtrey, coming from the desk to the table, and pouring out wine from one of the bottles into a huge flagon—“To your healths!”

Here the door slided back, and Birnie glided in.

“Where is your booty, mon brave?” said Gawtrey. “We only coin money; you coin men, stamp with your own seal, and send them current to the devil!”

The coiners, who liked Birnie’s ability (for the ci-devant engraver was of admirable skill in their craft), but who hated his joyless manners, laughed at this taunt, which Birnie did not seem to heed, except by a malignant gleam of his dead eye.

“If you mean the celebrated coiner, Jacques Giraumont, he waits without. You know our rules. I cannot admit him without leave.”

“Bon! we give it,—eh, messieurs?” said Gawtrey. “Ay-ay,” cried several voices. “He knows the oath, and will hear the penalty.”

“Yes, he knows the oath,” replied Birnie, and glided back.

In a moment more he returned with a small man in a mechanic’s blouse. The new comer wore the republican beard and moustache—of a sandy grey—his hair was the same colour; and a black patch over one eye increased the ill-favoured appearance of his features.

“Diable! Monsieur Giraumont! but you are more like Vulcan than Adonis!” said Gawtrey.

“I don’t know anything about Vulcan, but I know how to make five-franc pieces,” said Monsieur Giraumont, doggedly.

“Are you poor?”

“As a church mouse! The only thing belonging to a church, since the Bourbons came back, that is poor!”

At this sally, the coiners, who had gathered round the table, uttered the shout with which, in all circumstances, Frenchmen receive a bon mot.

“Humph!” said Gawtrey. “Who responds with his own life for your fidelity?”

“I,” said Birnie.

“Administer the oath to him.”

Suddenly four men advanced, seized the visitor, and bore him from the vault into another one within. After a few moments they returned.

“He has taken the oath and heard the penalty.”

“Death to yourself, your wife, your son, and your grandson, if you betray us!”

“I have neither son nor grandson; as for my wife, Monsieur le Capitaine, you offer a bribe instead of a threat when you talk of her death.”

“Sacre! but you will be an addition to our circle, mon brave!” said Gawtrey, laughing; while again the grim circle shouted applause.

“But I suppose you care for your own life.”

“Otherwise I should have preferred starving to coming here,” answered the laconic neophyte.

“I have done with you. Your health!”

On this the coiners gathered round Monsieur Giraumont, shook him by the hand, and commenced many questions with a view to ascertain his skill.

“Show me your coinage first; I see you use both the die and the furnace. Hem! this piece is not bad—you have struck it from an iron die?—right—it makes the impression sharper than plaster of Paris. But you take the poorest and the most dangerous part of the trade in taking the home market. I can put you in a way to make ten times as much—and with safety. Look at this!”—and Monsieur Giraumont took a forged Spanish dollar from his pocket, so skilfully manufactured that the connoisseurs were lost in admiration—“you may pass thousands of these all over Europe, except France, and who is ever to detect you? But it will require better machinery than you have here.”

Thus conversing, Monsieur Giraumont did not perceive that Mr. Gawtrey had been examining him very curiously and minutely. But Birnie had noted their chief’s attention, and once attempted to join his new ally, when Gawtrey laid his hand on his shoulder, and stopped him.

“Do not speak to your friend till I bid you, or—” he stopped short, and touched his pistols.

Birnie grew a shade more pale, but replied with his usual sneer:

“Suspicious!—well, so much the better!” and seating himself carelessly at the table, lighted his pipe.

“And now, Monsieur Giraumont,” said Gawtrey, as he took the head of the table, “come to my right hand. A half-holiday in your honour. Clear these infernal instruments; and more wine, mes amis!”

The party arranged themselves at the table. Among the desperate there is almost invariably a tendency to mirth. A solitary ruffian, indeed, is moody, but a gang of ruffians are jovial. The coiners talked and laughed loud. Mr. Birnie, from his dogged silence, seemed apart from the rest, though in the centre. For in a noisy circle a silent tongue builds a wall round its owner. But that respectable personage kept his furtive watch upon Giraumont and Gawtrey, who appeared talking together, very amicably. The younger novice of that night, equally silent, seated towards the bottom of the table, was not less watchful than Birnie. An uneasy, undefinable foreboding had come over him since the entrance of Monsieur Giraumont; this had been increased by the manner of Mr. Gawtrey. His faculty of observation, which was very acute, had detected something false in the chief’s blandness to their guest—something dangerous in the glittering eye that Gawtrey ever, as he spoke to Giraumont, bent on that person’s lips as he listened to his reply. For, whenever William Gawtrey suspected a man, he watched not his eyes, but his lips.

Waked from his scornful reverie, a strange spell chained Morton’s attention to the chief and the guest, and he bent forward, with parted mouth and straining ear, to catch their conversation.

“It seems to me a little strange,” said Mr. Gawtrey, raising his voice so as to be heard by the party, “that a coiner so dexterous as Monsieur Giraumont should not be known to any of us except our friend Birnie.”

“Not at all,” replied Giraumont; “I worked only with Bouchard and two others since sent to the galleys. We were but a small fraternity—everything has its commencement.”

“C’est juste: buvez, donc, cher ami!”

The wine circulated. Gawtrey began again:

“You have had a bad accident, seemingly, Monsieur Giraumont. How did you lose your eye?”

“In a scuffle with the gens d’ armes the night Bouchard was taken and I escaped. Such misfortunes are on the cards.”

“C’est juste: buvez, donc, Monsieur Giraumont!”

Again there was a pause, and again Gawtrey’s deep voice was heard.

“You wear a wig, I think, Monsieur Giraumont? To judge by your eyelashes your own hair has been a handsomer colour.”

“We seek disguise, not beauty, my host; and the police have sharp eyes.”

“C’est juste: buvez, donc-vieux Renard! When did we two meet last?”

“Never, that I know of.”

“Ce n’est pas vrai! buvez, donc, MONSIEUR FAVART!”

At the sound of that name the company started in dismay and confusion, and the police officer, forgetting himself for the moment, sprang from his seat, and put his right hand into his blouse.

“Ho, there!—treason!” cried Gawtrey, in a voice of thunder; and he caught the unhappy man by the throat. It was the work of a moment. Morton, where he sat, beheld a struggle—he heard a death-cry. He saw the huge form of the master-coiner rising above all the rest, as cutlasses gleamed and eyes sparkled round. He saw the quivering and powerless frame of the unhappy guest raised aloft in those mighty arms, and presently it was hurled along the table-bottles crashing—the board shaking beneath its weight—and lay before the very eyes of Morton, a distorted and lifeless mass. At the same instant Gawtrey sprang upon the table, his black frown singling out from the group the ashen, cadaverous face of the shrinking traitor. Birnie had darted from the table—he was half-way towards the sliding door—his face, turned over his shoulder, met the eyes of the chief.

“Devil!” shouted Gawtrey, in his terrible voice, which the echoes of the vault gave back from side to side. “Did I not give thee up my soul that thou mightest not compass my death? Hark ye! thus die my slavery and all our secrets!” The explosion of his pistol half swallowed up the last word, and with a single groan the traitor fell on the floor, pierced through the brain—then there was a dead and grim hush as the smoke rolled slowly along the roof of the dreary vault.

Morton sank back on his seat, and covered his face with his hands. The last seal on the fate of THE MAN OF CRIME was set; the last wave in the terrible and mysterious tide of his destiny had dashed on his soul to the shore whence there is no return. Vain, now and henceforth, the humour, the sentiment, the kindly impulse, the social instincts which had invested that stalwart shape with dangerous fascination, which had implied the hope of ultimate repentance, of redemption even in this world. The HOUR and the CIRCUMSTANCE had seized their prey; and the self-defence, which a lawless career rendered a necessity, left the eternal die of blood upon his doom!

“Friends, I have saved you,” said Gawtrey, slowly gazing on the corpse of his second victim, while he turned the pistol to his belt. “I have not quailed before this man’s eye” (and he spurned the clay of the officer as he spoke with a revengeful scorn) “without treasuring up its aspect in my heart of hearts. I knew him when he entered—knew him through his disguise—yet, faith, it was a clever one! Turn up his face and gaze on him now; he will never terrify us again, unless there be truth in ghosts!”

Murmuring and tremulous the coiners scrambled on the table and examined the dead man. From this task Gawtrey interrupted them, for his quick eye detected, with the pistols under the policeman’s blouse, a whistle of metal of curious construction, and he conjectured at once that danger was at hand.

“I have saved you, I say, but only for the hour. This deed cannot sleep. See, he had help within call! The police knew where to look for their comrade—we are dispersed. Each for himself. Quick, divide the spoils! Sauve qui peat!”

Then Morton heard where he sat, his hands still clasped before his face, a confused hubbub of voices, the jingle of money, the scrambling of feet, the creaking of doors. All was silent!

A strong grasp drew his hands from his eyes.

“Your first scene of life against life,” said Gawtrey’s voice, which seemed fearfully changed to the ear that heard it. “Bah! what would you think of a battle? Come to our eyrie: the carcasses are gone.”

Morton looked fearfully round the vault. He and Gawtrey were alone. His eyes sought the places where the dead had lain—they were removed—no vestige of the deeds, not even a drop of blood.

“Come, take up your cutlass, come!” repeated the voice of the chief, as with his dim lantern—now the sole light of the vault—he stood in the shadow of the doorway.

Morton rose, took up the weapon mechanically, and followed that terrible guide, mute and unconscious, as a Soul follows a Dream through the House of Sleep!

CHAPTER X

“Sleep no more!”—Macbeth

After winding through gloomy and labyrinthine passages, which conducted to a different range of cellars from those entered by the unfortunate Favart, Gawtrey emerged at the foot of a flight of stairs, which, dark, narrow, and in many places broken, had been probably appropriated to servants of the house in its days of palmier glory. By these steps the pair regained their attic. Gawtrey placed the lantern on the table and seated himself in silence. Morton, who had recovered his self-possession and formed his resolution, gazed on him for some moments, equally taciturn. At length he spoke:

“Gawtrey!”

“I bade you not call me by that name,” said the coiner; for we need scarcely say that in his new trade he had assumed a new appellation.

“It is the least guilty one by which I have known you,” returned Morton, firmly. “It is for the last time I call you by it! I demanded to see by what means one to whom I had entrusted my fate supported himself. I have seen,” continued the young man, still firmly, but with a livid cheek and lip, “and the tie between us is rent for ever. Interrupt me not! it is not for me to blame you. I have eaten of your bread and drunk of your cup. Confiding in you too blindly, and believing that you were at least free from those dark and terrible crimes for which there is no expiation—at least in this life—my conscience seared by distress, my very soul made dormant by despair, I surrendered myself to one leading a career equivocal, suspicious, dishonourable perhaps, but still not, as I believed, of atrocity and bloodshed. I wake at the brink of the abyss—my mother’s hand beckons to me from the grave; I think I hear her voice while I address you—I recede while it is yet time—we part, and for ever!”

Gawtrey, whose stormy passion was still deep upon his soul, had listened hitherto in sullen and dogged silence, with a gloomy frown on his knitted brow; he now rose with an oath—

“Part! that I may let loose on the world a new traitor! Part! when you have seen me fresh from an act that, once whispered, gives me to the guillotine! Part—never! at least alive!”

“I have said it,” said Morton, folding his arms calmly; “I say it to your face, though I might part from you in secret. Frown not on me, man of blood! I am fearless as yourself! In another minute I am gone.”

“Ah! is it so?” said Gawtrey; and glancing round the room, which contained two doors, the one concealed by the draperies of a bed, communicating with the stairs by which they had entered, the other with the landing of the principal and common flight: he turned to the former, within his reach, which he locked, and put the key into his pocket, and then, throwing across the latter a heavy swing bar, which fell into its socket with a harsh noise,—before the threshold he placed his vast bulk, and burst into his loud, fierce laugh: “Ho! ho! Slave and fool, once mine, you were mine body and soul for ever!”

“Tempter, I defy you! stand back!” And, firm and dauntless, Morton laid his hand on the giant’s vest.

Gawtrey seemed more astonished than enraged. He looked hard at his daring associate, on whose lip the down was yet scarcely dark.

“Boy,” said he, “off! do not rouse the devil in me again! I could crush you with a hug.”

“My soul supports my body, and I am armed,” said Morton, laying hand on his cutlass. “But you dare not harm me, nor I you; bloodstained as you are, you gave me shelter and bread; but accuse me not that I will save my soul while it is yet time!—Shall my mother have blessed me in vain upon her death-bed?”

Gawtrey drew back, and Morton, by a sudden impulse, grasped his hand.

“Oh! hear me—hear me!” he cried, with great emotion. “Abandon this horrible career; you have been decoyed and betrayed to it by one who can deceive or terrify you no more! Abandon it, and I will never desert you. For her sake—for your Fanny’s sake—pause, like me, before the gulf swallow us. Let us fly!—far to the New World—to any land where our thews and sinews, our stout hands and hearts, can find an honest mart. Men, desperate as we are, have yet risen by honest means. Take her, your orphan, with us. We will work for her, both of us. Gawtrey! hear me. It is not my voice that speaks to you—it is your good angel’s!”

Gawtrey fell back against the wall, and his chest heaved.

“Morton,” he said, with choked and tremulous accent, “go now; leave me to my fate! I have sinned against you—shamefully sinned. It seemed to me so sweet to have a friend; in your youth and character of mind there was so much about which the tough strings of my heart wound themselves, that I could not bear to lose you—to suffer you to know me for what I was. I blinded—I deceived you as to my past deeds; that was base in me: but I swore to my own heart to keep you unexposed to every danger, and free from every vice that darkened my own path. I kept that oath till this night, when, seeing that you began to recoil from me, and dreading that you should desert me, I thought to bind you to me for ever by implicating you in this fellowship of crime. I am punished, and justly. Go, I repeat—leave me to the fate that strides nearer and nearer to me day by day. You are a boy still—I am no longer young. Habit is a second nature. Still—still I could repent—I could begin life again. But repose!—to look back—to remember—to be haunted night and day with deeds that shall meet me bodily and face to face on the last day—”

“Add not to the spectres! Come—fly this night—this hour!”

Gawtrey paused, irresolute and wavering, when at that moment he heard steps on the stairs below. He started—as starts the boar caught in his lair—and listened, pale and breathless.

“Hush!—they are on us!—they come!” as he whispered, the key from without turned in the wards—the door shook. “Soft! the bar preserves us both—this way.” And the coiner crept to the door of the private stairs. He unlocked and opened it cautiously. A man sprang through the aperture:

“Yield!—you are my prisoner!”

“Never!” cried Gawtrey, hurling back the intruder, and clapping to the door, though other and stout men were pressing against it with all their power.

“Ho! ho! Who shall open the tiger’s cage?”

At both doors now were heard the sound of voices. “Open in the king’s name, or expect no mercy!”

“Hist!” said Gawtrey. “One way yet—the window—the rope.”

Morton opened the casement—Gawtrey uncoiled the rope. The dawn was breaking; it was light in the streets, but all seemed quiet without. The doors reeled and shook beneath the pressure of the pursuers. Gawtrey flung the rope across the street to the opposite parapet; after two or three efforts, the grappling-hook caught firm hold—the perilous path was made.

“On!—quick!—loiter not!” whispered Gawtrey; “you are active—it seems more dangerous than it is—cling with both hands—shut your eyes. When on the other side—you see the window of Birnie’s room,—enter it—descend the stairs—let yourself out, and you are safe.”

“Go first,” said Morton, in the same tone: “I will not leave you now: you will be longer getting across than I shall. I will keep guard till you are over.”

“Hark! hark!—are you mad? You keep guard! what is your strength to mine? Twenty men shall not move that door, while my weight is against it. Quick, or you destroy us both! Besides, you will hold the rope for me, it may not be strong enough for my bulk in itself. Stay!—stay one moment. If you escape, and I fall—Fanny—my father, he will take care of her,—you remember—thanks! Forgive me all! Go; that’s right!”

With a firm impulse, Morton threw himself on the dreadful bridge; it swung and crackled at his weight. Shifting his grasp rapidly—holding his breath—with set teeth-with closed eyes—he moved on—he gained the parapet—he stood safe on the opposite side. And now, straining his eyes across, he saw through the open casement into the chamber he had just quitted. Gawtrey was still standing against the door to the principal staircase, for that of the two was the weaker and the more assailed. Presently the explosion of a fire-arm was heard; they had shot through the panel. Gawtrey seemed wounded, for he staggered forward, and uttered a fierce cry; a moment more, and he gained the window—he seized the rope—he hung over the tremendous depth! Morton knelt by the parapet, holding the grappling-hook in its place, with convulsive grasp, and fixing his eyes, bloodshot with fear and suspense, on the huge bulk that clung for life to that slender cord!

“Le voiles! Le voiles!” cried a voice from the opposite side. Morton raised his gaze from Gawtrey; the casement was darkened by the forms of his pursuers—they had burst into the room—an officer sprang upon the parapet, and Gawtrey, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, and as he moved on, glared upon the foe. The policeman deliberately raised his pistol—Gawtrey arrested himself—from a wound in his side the blood trickled slowly and darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below; even the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him—his hair bristling—his cheek white—his lips drawn convulsively from his teeth, and his eyes glaring from beneath the frown of agony and menace in which yet spoke the indomitable power and fierceness of the man. His look, so fixed—so intense—so stern, awed the policeman; his hand trembled as he fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below the spot where Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling sound-half-laugh, half-yell of scorn and glee, broke from Gawtrey’s lips. He swung himself on—near—near—nearer—a yard from the parapet.