Mr. Cutts held a very peculiar position in that section of the great world to which he belonged. He possessed the advantage of an education superior to that of the generality of his companions, having been originally a clerk to an Old Bailey attorney, and having since that early day accomplished his natural shrewdness by a variety of speculative enterprises both at home and abroad. In these adventures he had not only contrived to make money, but, what is very rare with the foes of law, to save it. Being a bachelor, he was at small expenses, but besides his bachelor's lodging in the dark court, he had an establishment in the heart of the City, near the Thames, which was intrusted to the care of a maiden sister, as covetous and as crafty as himself. At this establishment, ostensibly a pawnbroker's, were received the goods which Cutts knew at his residence in the court were to be sold a bargain, having been obtained for nothing. It was chiefly by this business that the man enriched himself. But his net was one that took in fishes of all kinds. He was a general adviser to the invaders of law. If he shared in the schemes he advised, they were so sure to be successful, that he enjoyed the highest reputation for luck. It was but seldom that he did actively share in those schemeslucky in what he shunned as in what he performed. He had made no untruthful boast to Mrs. Crane of the skill with which he had kept himself out of the fangs of justice. With a certain portion of the police he was indeed rather a favourite; for was anything mysteriously "lost," for which the owner would give a reward equal to its value in legal markets, Cutts was the man who would get it back. Of violence he had a wholesome dislike; not that he did not admire force in othersnot that he was physically a cowardbut that caution was his predominant characteristic. He employed force when requiredset a just value on itwould plan a burglary, and dispose of the spoils; but it was only where the prize was great and the danger small, that he lent his hand to the work that his brain approved. When Losely proposed to him the robbery of a lone country-house, in which Jasper, making light of all perils, brought prominently forward the images of some thousands of pounds in gold and notes, guarded by an elderly gentleman, and to be approached with ease through an uninhabited buildingCutts thought it well worth personal investigation. Nor did he consider himself bound, by his general engagement to Mrs. Crane, to lose the chance of a sum so immeasurably greater than he could expect to obtain from her by revealing the plot and taking measures to frustate it. Cutts was a most faithful and intelligent agent when he was properly paid, and had proved himself so to Mrs. Crane on various occasions. But then, to be paid properly meant a gain greater in serving than he could get in not serving. Hitherto it had been extremely lucrative to obey Mrs. Crane in saving Jasper from crime and danger. In this instance the lucre seemed all the other way. Accordingly, the next morning, having filled a saddle-bag with sundry necessaries, such as files, picklocks, masksto which he added a choice selection of political tracts and newspapershe and Jasper set out on two hired but strong and fleet hackneys to the neighbourhood of Fawley. They put up at a town on the other side of the Manor-house from that by which Jasper had approached it, and at about the same distance. After baiting their steeds, they proceeded to Fawley by the silent guide of a finger-post, gained the vicinity of the park, and Cutts, dismounting, flitted across the turf, and plunged himself into the hollows of the unfinished mansion while Jasper took charge of the horses in a corner of the wooded lane. Cutts, pleased by the survey of the forlorn interior, ventured, in the stillness that reigned around, to mount the ladder, to apply a picklock to the door above, and, opening this with ease, crept into the long gallery, its walls covered with pictures. Through the crevices in another door at the extreme end gleamed a faint light. Cutts applied his eye to the chinks and keyhole, and saw that the light came from a room on the other side the narrow passage which connected the new house with the old. The door of that room was open, candles were on the table, and beside the table Cutts could distinguish the outline of a man' s form seateddoubtless the owner; but the form did not seem "elderly." If inferor to Jasper's in physical power, it still was that of vigorous and unbroken manhood. Cutts did not like the appearance of that form, and he retreated to outer air with some misgivings. However, on rejoining Losely, he said: "As yet things look promising-place still as deathonly one door locked, and that the common country lock, which a schoolboy might pick with his knife."
"Or a crooked nail," said Jasper.
"Ay, no better picklock in good hands. But there are other things besides locks to think of."
Cutts then hurried on to suggest that it was just the hour when some of the workmen employed on the premises might be found in the Fawley public- house; that he should ride on, dismount there, and take his chance of picking up details of useful information as to localities and household. He should represent himself as a commercial traveller on his road to the town they had quitted; he should take out his cheap newspapers and tracts; he should talk politicsall workmen love politics, especially the politics of cheap newspapers and tracts. He would rejoin Losely in an hour or so.
The bravo waitedhis horse grazedthe moon came forth, stealing through the trees, bringing into fantastic light the melancholy old dwelling- housethe yet more melancholy new pile. Jasper was not, as we have seen, without certain superstitious fancies, and they had grown on him more of late as his brain had become chronically heated and his nerves relaxed by pain. He began to feel the awe of the silence and the moonlight; and some vague remembrances of earlier guiltless daysof a father's genial loveof joyous sensations in the priceless possession of youth and vigourof the admiring smiles and cordial hands which his beauty, his daring, and high spirits had attracted towards himof the all that he had been, mixed with the consciousness of what he was, and an uneasy conjecture of the probable depth of the final fallcame dimly over his thoughts, and seemed like the whispers of remorse. But it is rarely that man continues to lay blame on himself; and Jasper hastened to do, as many a better person does without a blush for his follyviz., shift upon the innocent shoulders of fellow-men, or on the hazy outlines of that clouded form which ancient schools and modern plagiarists call sometimes "Circumstance," sometimes "Chance," sometimes "Fate," all the guilt due to his own wilful abuse of irrevocable hours.
With this consolatory creed came, of necessitythe devil's grand luxury, Revenge. Say to yourself, "For what I suffer I condemn another man, or I accuse the Arch-Invisible, be it a Destiny, be it a Maker!" and the logical sequel is to add evil to evil, folly to follyto retort on the man who so wrongs, or on the Arch-Invisible who so afflicts you. Of all our passions, is not Revenge the one into which enters with the most zest a devil? For what is a devil?A being whose sole work on earth is some revenge on God!
Jasper Losely was not by temperament vindictive; he was irascible, as the vain arecombative, aggressive, turbulent, by the impulse of animal spirits; but the premeditation of vengeance was foreign to a levity and egotism which abjured the self-sacrifice that is equally necessary to hatred as to love. But Guy Darrell had forced into his moral system a passion not native to it. Jasper had expected so much from his marriage with the great man's daughtercounted so thoroughly on her power to obtain pardon and confer wealthand his disappointment had been so keen been accompanied with such mortificationthat he regarded the man whom he had most injured as the man who had most injured him. But not till now did his angry feelings assume the shape of a definite vengeance. So long as there was a chance that he could extort from Darrell the money that was the essential necessary to his life, he checked his thoughts whenever they suggested a profitless gratification of rage. But now that Darrell had so scornfully and so inexorably spurned all concessionnow that nothing was to be wrung from him except by forceforce and vengeance came together in his projects. And yet even in the daring outrage he was meditating, murder itself did not stand out as a thought acceptedno; what pleased his wild and turbid imagination was the idea of humiliating by terror the man who had humbled him. To penetrate into the home of this haughty scornerto confront him in his own chamber at the dead of night, man to man, force to force; to say to him, "None now can deliver you from meI come no more as a suppliantI command you to accept my terms"; to gloat over the fears which, the strong man felt assured, would bow the rich man to beg for mercy at his feet;this was the picture which Jasper Losely conjured up; and even the spoil to be won by violence smiled on him less than the grand position which the violence itself would bestow. Are not nine murders out of ten fashioned thus from conception into deed? "Oh that my enemy were but before me face to face none to part us!" says the vindictive dreamer. Well, and what then? There, his imagination haltsthere he drops the sable curtain; he goes not on to say, "Why, then another murder will be added to the long catalogue from Cain." He palters with his deadly wish, and mutters, perhaps, at most, "Why, thencome what may!"
"Or a crooked nail," said Jasper.
"Ay, no better picklock in good hands. But there are other things besides locks to think of."
Cutts then hurried on to suggest that it was just the hour when some of the workmen employed on the premises might be found in the Fawley public- house; that he should ride on, dismount there, and take his chance of picking up details of useful information as to localities and household. He should represent himself as a commercial traveller on his road to the town they had quitted; he should take out his cheap newspapers and tracts; he should talk politicsall workmen love politics, especially the politics of cheap newspapers and tracts. He would rejoin Losely in an hour or so.
The bravo waitedhis horse grazedthe moon came forth, stealing through the trees, bringing into fantastic light the melancholy old dwelling- housethe yet more melancholy new pile. Jasper was not, as we have seen, without certain superstitious fancies, and they had grown on him more of late as his brain had become chronically heated and his nerves relaxed by pain. He began to feel the awe of the silence and the moonlight; and some vague remembrances of earlier guiltless daysof a father's genial loveof joyous sensations in the priceless possession of youth and vigourof the admiring smiles and cordial hands which his beauty, his daring, and high spirits had attracted towards himof the all that he had been, mixed with the consciousness of what he was, and an uneasy conjecture of the probable depth of the final fallcame dimly over his thoughts, and seemed like the whispers of remorse. But it is rarely that man continues to lay blame on himself; and Jasper hastened to do, as many a better person does without a blush for his follyviz., shift upon the innocent shoulders of fellow-men, or on the hazy outlines of that clouded form which ancient schools and modern plagiarists call sometimes "Circumstance," sometimes "Chance," sometimes "Fate," all the guilt due to his own wilful abuse of irrevocable hours.
With this consolatory creed came, of necessitythe devil's grand luxury, Revenge. Say to yourself, "For what I suffer I condemn another man, or I accuse the Arch-Invisible, be it a Destiny, be it a Maker!" and the logical sequel is to add evil to evil, folly to follyto retort on the man who so wrongs, or on the Arch-Invisible who so afflicts you. Of all our passions, is not Revenge the one into which enters with the most zest a devil? For what is a devil?A being whose sole work on earth is some revenge on God!
Jasper Losely was not by temperament vindictive; he was irascible, as the vain arecombative, aggressive, turbulent, by the impulse of animal spirits; but the premeditation of vengeance was foreign to a levity and egotism which abjured the self-sacrifice that is equally necessary to hatred as to love. But Guy Darrell had forced into his moral system a passion not native to it. Jasper had expected so much from his marriage with the great man's daughtercounted so thoroughly on her power to obtain pardon and confer wealthand his disappointment had been so keen been accompanied with such mortificationthat he regarded the man whom he had most injured as the man who had most injured him. But not till now did his angry feelings assume the shape of a definite vengeance. So long as there was a chance that he could extort from Darrell the money that was the essential necessary to his life, he checked his thoughts whenever they suggested a profitless gratification of rage. But now that Darrell had so scornfully and so inexorably spurned all concessionnow that nothing was to be wrung from him except by forceforce and vengeance came together in his projects. And yet even in the daring outrage he was meditating, murder itself did not stand out as a thought acceptedno; what pleased his wild and turbid imagination was the idea of humiliating by terror the man who had humbled him. To penetrate into the home of this haughty scornerto confront him in his own chamber at the dead of night, man to man, force to force; to say to him, "None now can deliver you from meI come no more as a suppliantI command you to accept my terms"; to gloat over the fears which, the strong man felt assured, would bow the rich man to beg for mercy at his feet;this was the picture which Jasper Losely conjured up; and even the spoil to be won by violence smiled on him less than the grand position which the violence itself would bestow. Are not nine murders out of ten fashioned thus from conception into deed? "Oh that my enemy were but before me face to face none to part us!" says the vindictive dreamer. Well, and what then? There, his imagination haltsthere he drops the sable curtain; he goes not on to say, "Why, then another murder will be added to the long catalogue from Cain." He palters with his deadly wish, and mutters, perhaps, at most, "Why, thencome what may!"
Losely continued to gaze on the pale walls gleaming through the wintry boughs, as the moon rose high and higher. And now out broke the light from Darrell's lofty casement, and Losely smiled fiercely, and muttered hark! the very words"And then! come what may!"
Hoofs are now heard on the hard road, and Jasper is joined by his accomplice.
"Well!" said Jasper.
"Mount!" returned Cutts; "I have much to say as we ride."
"This will not do," resumed Cutts, as they sped fast down the lane; "why, you never told me all the drawbacks. There are no less than four men in the housetwo servants besides the master and his secretary; and one of those servants, the butler or valet, has firearms, and knows how to use them."
"Pshaw!" said Jasper scoffingly; "is that all? Am I not a match for four?"
"No, it is not all; you told me the master of the house was a retired elderly man, and you mentioned his name. But you never told me that your Mr. Darrell was the famous lawyer and Parliament mana man about whom the newspapers have been writing the last six months."
"What does that signify?"
"Signify! Just this, that there will be ten times more row about the affair you propose than there would be if it concerned only a stupid old country squire, and therefore ten times as much danger. Besides, on principle I don't like to have anything to do with lawyers a cantankerous, spiteful set of fellows. And this Guy Darrell! Why, General Jas., I have seen the man. He cross-examined me once when I was a witness on a case of fraud, and turned me inside out with as much ease as if I had been an old pincushion stuffed with bran. I think I see his eye now, and I would as lief have a loaded pistol at my head as that eye again fixed on mine."
"Pooh! You have brought a mask; and, besides, YOU need not see him; I can face him alone."
"No, no; there might be murder! I never mix myself with things of that kind, on principle; your plan will not do. There might be a much safer chance of more swag in a very different sort of scheme. I hear that the pictures in that ghostly long room I crept through are worth a mint of money. Now, pictures of great value are well known, and there are collectors abroad who would pay almost any price for some pictures, and never ask where they came from; hide them for some years perhaps, and not bring them forth till any tales that would hurt us had died away. This would be safe, I say. If the pictures are small, no one in the old house need be disturbed. I can learn from some of the trade what pictures Darrell really has that would fetch a high price, and then look out for customers abroad. This will take a little time, but be worth waiting for."
"I will not wait," said Jasper, fiercely; "and you are a coward. I have resolved that to-morrow night I will be in that man's room, and that man shall be on his knees before me."