Chapter XX: Cross Purposes

The morning was a clear, bright, sunny, and joyous one, the sun without cloud, the chimneys of Antwerp, as usual, without smoke, though the season was winter, and all its spires and countless crow-stepped gables were standing up clearly defined against a pure blue sky, when Bevil Goring, with high spirits, yet not without just emotions of great indignation, walked forth a free man from the place in which he had been detained, and, stepping into a voiture with his luggage, told the driver to take him to the Hôtel du Parc in the Place Verte, and kissed the ring of Alison which was on his finger again. He was free, and it had come about thus:--

The papers and manifestoes found among his property were of so serious and compromising a nature that he was on the point of being transmitted with them to Brussels, but he contrived to employ an _advokat_ (as an attorney or barrister is called there) in the Rue de l'Hôpital, who soon traced to the arrested Belgian workman those unlucky papers, and it chanced, oddly enough, that the mischievous Mr. Gaskins, having got a serious smash up in an accident on the railway to Waterloo, believing himself to be dying, made a full confession of the trick he had played to serve a lucrative master; and the Belgian authorities, duly aware at last of Goring's rank and position in society, confessed their haste and mistake, and, with a 'million pardons,' released him from an arrest that, after it had extended to some days, was nearly making him frantic, and he was welcomed and ushered to his former apartment at the hotel by the waiter Jacquot, though Maître Jean Picot, remembering his arrest, had some unpleasant doubts about receiving him.

Bevil, however, lost no time in repairing to the Hôtel St. Antoine, resolved to see Sir Ranald--Alison too, if possible, if it was not too late; but he was rather unprepared for the state of affairs that awaited him there.

Meeting the concierge or hall-porter at the door, he asked with some anxiety if Sir Ranald Cheyne was still there.

'Oui, monsieur,' replied the porter, saluting in military fashion.

'And Miss Cheyne?'

'Non, monsieur.'

The reply sank deep in Goring's heart, and he was perplexed when the official at the same time mysteriously shook his head and shrugged his shoulders with a deprecatory expression in his face.

'Is Lord Cadbury here?'

'Milord is out also,' was the reply.

'Also--then they are together!' thought Goring. 'Take up my card to Sir Ranald, and ask if he will receive me.'

It was taken up by a waiter, who returned promptly to report, in Continental parlance, that 'Sir Cheyne desired him to walk up.'

Much depended upon the issue of this visit if Alison was still free. He had come frankly, freely, to urge humbly his suit again, backed by the undoubted wealth which had flowed upon him since last they met at Chilcote.

He found Sir Ranald in a handsome apartment, seated in an easy-chair, but looking pale, thin, and worn. He made no offer of his hand, as with both he grasped the arms of the chair, tremulous with rage, while his eyes glared like those of a rattlesnake through the glasses of his _pince-nez_ at his unexpected visitor, who scarcely knew how or where to begin, and looked nervously round him for some evidence of the recent presence of Alison, but saw nothing.

'Permit me to congratulate you, Sir Ranald--' he began.

'On what?' asked the other, savagely.

'On the escape from death by drowning which we were all led to suppose you and Miss Cheyne had suffered.'

'I don't want your congratulations; and, so far as Miss Cheyne is concerned, your appearance in Antwerp sufficiently accounts for her mysterious disappearance.'

Utter bewilderment, in which emotions of dismay, fear, and anger coursed through his mind, tied the tongue of Bevil Goring--dismay and fear he knew not of what, and anger lest this was some fresh trickery of Lord Cadbury.

'Mysterious disappearance!' he faltered.

'Your conduct, Captain Goring, has been shamefully deceitful--most dishonourable!' exclaimed Sir Ranald, in a broken but still enraged tone.

'How?'

'You came to my house at Chilcote a welcome guest, then you stole the affections of my daughter. You have followed her to Antwerp with plans best known to yourself; and where--oh, where--is she now?'

'Sir Ranald!' expostulated Goring, piteously, and feeling his face grow pale.

'Talk not to me!' resumed Sir Ranald, in his tone of fury again; 'every silly girl thinks she is in love, or that she must love the first man who says he loves her.'

These strange utterances made Goring half forget the errand on which he had come, and utterly forget the fortuitous but fortunate wealth which would, he hoped, have made that errand perhaps successful.

'Vile trickster, you shall answer to me for all the mischief you have wrought!' exclaimed Sir Ranald, breaking the silence that had ensued, though, if glances could kill, Goring's earthly career had ended there and then. 'We are in Belgium, and, old as I am, I shall cover you with a pistol at twelve paces, even if I should be propped against a post--by heaven I shall! Do you hear me, sir?'

'You are very wrong, Sir Ranald, to address me thus,' said Goring, gravely and sadly; 'and, though you might level ten pistols at me, God forbid that I should level one at you--the father of her I have come so far to seek, and, if I understand your terrible words, apparently in vain.'

'Don't speak of my daughter, sir, and don't attempt to humbug me!' thundered Sir Ranald, almost beside himself with rage and weakness. 'Bah!' he added, scornfully, 'to follow her here was pleasanter and safer work than fighting the Ashantees. Will you meet me at any time or place--we may select to-morrow?'

'For what purpose?'

'Can you ask? To fight me.'

'Absurd--I shall not.'

'You will not?'

'No.'

'Coward!'

'You are mad, Sir Ranald, to address me, a tried soldier, thus injuriously,' said Goring, more sadly than bitterly. 'I have worn my Victoria Cross,' he added, striking his breast, 'by no solitary act of rashness, but by acknowledged proofs of disciplined courage! and my name has an echo still on the north-east frontier of India.'

'Coward!' hissed the old man's voice again, as he looked round for some missile to throw at the head of his visitor, who, seeing it was useless to protract an interview so painful and terrible, at once withdrew, and the fierce, mocking laughter--and strange laughter it was--of Sir Ranald jarred sorely on his ear as he did so.

His head was in a whirl--what was to be done? The old man's anger and epithets he pardoned; but from his utterances he gathered that Alison was abducted or absent, and that he was supposed to be the author of the mystery that now filled him with terror and anxiety.

When was she missed? Had she been decoyed from the hotel, or abducted in the street, and how long since?

On these points the concierge, on having a couple of five franc pieces deftly slipped into his palm, soon enlightened him.

She had gone one night with Lord Cadbury to the Théâtre des Variétés, and milord had come home without her in great terror and dismay, all search had proved unavailing, even the ponds in the Park of the Avenue Rubens had been dragged in vain till the ice came.

'How long is it since she disappeared?'

'A week ago, monsieur.'

A mortal terror smote the heart of Goring as he listened; but rage greatly took its place when the concierge, with apparent sympathy, referred to the dismay and anxiety of Milord Cadbury.

This Goring deemed but trickery to cover some act of deceit he had perpetrated, end terribly did the as yet baffled lover resolve to punish it; but he was rather surprised at first by the manner in which he was suddenly accosted by Cadbury, who now by chance entered the vestibule of the hotel in which several waiters were loitering, and, with all an Englishman's genuine horror of a 'scene,' made an effort to keep his temper.

As if following suit with Sir Ranald, the peer, who now connected Alison's disappearance with Goring's liberty, though the dates did not tally, said to him haughtily, and in in a low tone,

'So, Captain Goring, it seems to have pleased you to follow my intended wife.'

'_Your_ intended wife!'

'Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, to this place--to Antwerp, and that you have forced yourself upon her as soon as you had the opportunity of finding her alone. By heavens, you must have watched her steps closely.'

'Shuffler and juggler!' exclaimed Goring, in his rage becoming as furious in his speech as Sir Ranald.

'May I ask your reason for daring to apply these epithets to me?' asked Cadbury, reddening with passion to the tips of his coarse, hairy ears.

'I shall give them to you on the ramparts of the citadel, in the Champ de Manœuvres, or anywhere else you choose.'

'Are you engaged in a melodrama, without a musical accompaniment?' asked Cadbury, with a sneer.

'You will find it terribly real, I promise you.'

'Braggadocio!--behind the age. Bah! people don't fight duels now.'

'Cads and Cadburys, perhaps.'

'Permit me to pass,' said the peer, assuming what he thought an air of dignity that only made his vulgar little figure look more absurd.

'Not until I am fully answered,' replied Goring, resolutely barring his way.

'Of your past intentions, Captain Goring, we----'

'Who are _we_?'

'Sir Ranald and myself.'

'Well?'

'Of your past intentions we have an idea; but what are your present?'

'To discover her, and carry her off,' replied Goring, passionately.

'You know but too well where she is; but I don't understand why you come brawling in my hotel. Concierge, get a gendarme, and have this fellow expelled.'

'Will you meet me?' asked Goring, in a low and concentrated voice.

'Most certainly not. No man of honour is obliged to go out with a man who has been in the hands of the gendarmerie and inside a prison.'

This recalled the story of the 'papers,' and roused Goring's blood to boiling heat.

He suddenly, to the mingled amusement and dismay of the concierge and group of wondering waiters, made a brisk manual application to the nose of my Lord Cadbury, which he took between the first and second fingers of his right hand, and therewith administered such a wrench as made the 'hereditary legislator' dance with rage and pain.

'Now,' thought Goring, as he flung a card at Cadbury's feet, and strode into the broad and sunlit Place Verte, 'he must come out, or the devil is in it!'

Little did either know how completely they were all at _cross purposes_!