Chapter 9. At Last

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_ CHAPTER IX. AT LAST

"Does not the stone rebuke me
For being more stone than it?"

--Winter's Tale.

"Yet did he loath to see the image fair,
White and unchanged of face, unmoved of limb!"

--Earthly Paradise.

Leander's hand was very tremulous all the next day, as several indignant clients discovered, and he closed as early as he could, feeling it impossible to attend to business under the circumstances.

About seven o'clock he went up to his sitting-room. A difficult and ungrateful task was before him. To facilitate her removal, he must persuade the goddess to take up a position in the saloon for the night; and, much as he had suffered from her, there was something traitorous in delivering her over to these coarse burglars.

He waited until the statue showed signs of returning animation, and then said, "Good evening, mum," more obsequiously than usual.

She never deigned to notice or return his salutations. "Hairdresser," she said abruptly, "I am weary of this sordid place."

He was pleased, for it furthered his views. "It isn't so sordid in the saloon, where you stood the other evening, you know," he replied. "Will you step down there?"

"Bah!" she said, "it is _all_ sordid. Leander, a restlessness has come upon me. I come back night after night out of the vagueness in which I have lain so long, and for what? To stand here in this mean chamber and proffer my favour, only to find it repulsed, disdained. I am tired of it--tired!"

"You can't be more tired of it than I am!" he said.

"I ask myself," she went on, "why, having, through your means, ascended once more to the earth, which I left so fair, I seek not those things which once delighted me. This city of yours--all that I have seen of it--revolts me; but it is vast, vaster than those built by the mortals of old. Surely somewhere there must be brightness in it and beauty, and the colour and harmony by which men knew once to delight the gods themselves. It cannot be that the gods of old are all forgotten; surely, somewhere there yet lingers a little band of faithful ones, who have not turned from Aphrodite."

"I can't say, I'm sure," said Leander; "I could inquire for you."

"I myself will seek for them," she said proudly. "I will go forth this very night."

Leander choked. "To-night!" he cried. "You _can't_ go to-night."

"You forget yourself," she returned haughtily.

"If I let you go," he said hesitatingly, "will you promise faithfully to be back in half an hour?"

"Do you not yet understand that you have to do with a goddess--with Aphrodite herself?" she said. "Who are you, to presume to fetter me by your restrictions? Truly, the indulgence I have shown has turned your weak brain."

He put his back against the door. He was afraid of the goddess, but he was still more afraid of the burglars' vengeance if they arrived to find the prize missing.

"I'm sorry to disoblige a lady," he said; "but you don't go out of this house to-night."

In another minute he was lying in the fender amongst the fireirons--alone! How it was done he was too stunned to remember; but the goddess was gone. If she did not return by midnight, what would become of him? If he had only been civil to her, she might have stayed; but now she had abandoned him to certain destruction!

A kind of fatalistic stupor seized him. He would not run away--he would have to come home some time--nor would he call in the police, for he had a very vivid recollection of Mr. Braddle's threat in such a contingency.

He went, instead, into the dark saloon, and sat down in a chair to wait. He wondered how he could explain the statue's absence. If he told the burglars it had gone for a stroll, they would tear him limb from limb. "I was so confoundedly artful about Potter," he thought bitterly, "that they'll never believe now I haven't warned him!"

At every sound outside he shook like a leaf; the quarters, as they sounded from the church clock, sank like cold weights upon his heart. "If only Venus would come back first!" he moaned; but the statue never returned.

At last he heard steps--muffled ones--on the paved alley outside. He had forgotten to leave the window unfastened, after all, and he was too paralysed to do it now.

The steps were in the little yard, or rather a sort of back area, underneath the window. "It may be only a constable," he tried to say to himself; but there is no mistaking the constabulary tread, which is not fairy-like, or even gentle, like that he heard.

A low whistle destroyed his last hope. In a quite unpremeditated manner he put out the gas and rolled under a leather divan which stood at the end of the room. He wished now, with all his heart, that he had run away while he had the chance; but it was too late.

"I hope they'll do it with a revolver, and not a knife," he thought. "Oh, my poor Matilda! you little know what I'm going through just now, and what'll be going through _me_ in another minute!"

A hoarse voice under the window called out, "Tweddle!"

He lay still. "None o' that, yer skulker; I know yer there!" said the voice again. "Do yer want to give me the job o' coming after yer?"

After all, Leander reflected, there was the window and a thick half-shutter between them. It might be best not to provoke Mr. Braddle at the outset. He came half out of his hiding-place. "Is that you, Mr. Braddle?" he quavered.

"Ah!" said the voice, affirmatively. "Is this what you call being ready for us? Why, the bloomin' winder ain't even undone!"

"That's what I'm here for," said poor Leander. "Is the--the other gentleman out there too?"

"You mind your business! You'll find something the Count give me to bring yer; I've put it on the winder-sill out 'ere. And you obey horders next time, will yer?"

The footsteps were heard retreating. Mr. Braddle was apparently going back to fetch his captain. Leander let down the shutter, and opened the window. He could not see, but he could feel a thick, rough bundle lying on the window-sill.

He drew this in, slammed down the window, and ran up the shutter in a second, before the two could have had time to discover him.

"Now," he thought, "I _will_ run for it;" and he groped his way out of the dark saloon to the front shop, where he paused, and, taking a match from his pocket, struck a light. His parcel proved to be rough sackcloth, on the outside of which a paper was pinned.

Why did the Count write, when he was coming in directly? Curiosity made him linger even then to ascertain this. The paper contained a hasty scrawl in blue chalk. "_Not to-night_," he read; "_arrangements still uncomplete. Expect us to-morrow night without fail, and see that everything is prepared. Cloth sent with this for packing goods. P---- laid up with professional accident, and safe for a week or two. You must have known this--why not say so last night? No trifling, if you value life!_"

It was a reprieve--at the last moment! He had a whole day before him for flight, and he fully intended to flee this time; those hours of suspense in the saloon were too terrible to be gone through twice.

But as he was turning out his cashbox, and about to go upstairs and collect a few necessaries, he heard a well-known tread outside. He ran to the door, which he unfastened with trembling hands, and the statue, with the hood drawn closely round her strange painted face, passed in without seeming to heed his presence.

She had come back to him. Why should he run away now, when, if he waited one more night, he might be rescued from one of his terrors by means of the other?

"Lady Venus!" he cried hysterically. "Oh, Lady Venus, mum, I thought you was gone for ever!"

"And you have grieved?" she said almost tenderly. "You welcome my return with joy! Know then, Leander, that I myself feel pleasure in returning, even to such a roof as this; for little gladness have I had from my wanderings. Upon no altar did I see my name shine, nor the perfumed flame flicker; the Lydian measures were silent, and the praise of Cytherea. And everywhere I went I found the same senseless troubled haste, and pale mean faces of men, and squalor, and tumult. Grace and joyousness have fled--even from your revelry! But I have seen your new gods, and understand: for, all grimy and mis-shapen and uncouth are they as they stand in your open places and at the corners of your streets. Zeus, what a place must Olympus now be! And can any men worship such monsters, and be gladsome?"

Leander did not perceive the very natural mistake into which the goddess had fallen; but the fact was, that she had come upon some of our justly renowned public statues.

"I'm sorry you haven't enjoyed yourself, mum," was all he could find to say.

"Should I linger in such scenes were it not for you?" she cried reproachfully. "How much longer will you repulse me?"

"That depends on you, mum," he ventured to observe.

"Ah! you are cold!" she said reproachfully; "yet surely I am worthy of the adoration of the proudest mortal. Judge me not by this marble exterior, cunningly wrought though it be. Charms are mine, more dazzling than any your imagination can picture; and could you surrender your being to my hands, I should be able to show myself as I really am--supreme in loveliness and majesty!"

Unfortunately, the hairdresser's imagination was not his strongest point. He could not dissociate the goddess from the marble shape she had assumed, and that shape he was not sufficiently educated to admire; he merely coughed now in a deferential manner.

"I perceive that I cannot move you," she said. "Men have grown strangely stubborn and impervious. I leave you, then, to your obstinacy; only take heed lest you provoke me at last to wrath, for my patience is well-nigh at an end!"

And she was gone, and the bedizened statue stood there, staring hardly at him with the eyes his own hand had given her.

"This has been the most trying evening I've had yet," he thought. "Thank my stars, if all goes well, I shall get rid of her by this time to-morrow!"

The next day passed uneventfully enough, though the unfortunate Leander's apprehensions increased with every hour. As before, he closed early, got his apprentice safely off the premises, and sat down to wait in his saloon. He knew that the statue (which he had concealed during the day behind a convenient curtain) would probably recover consciousness for some part of the evening, as it had rarely failed to do, and prudence urged him to keep an eye over the proceedings of his tormentress.

To his horror, Aphrodite's first words, after awaking, expressed her intention of repeating the search for homage and beauty, which had been so unsuccessful the night before!

"Seek not to detain me, Leander," she said; "for, goddess as I am, I am drooping under this persistent obduracy. Somewhere beyond this murky labyrinth, it may be that I shall find a shrine where I am yet honoured. I will go forth, and never rest till I have found it, and my troubled spirits are revived by the incense for which I have languished so long. I am weary of abasing myself to such a contemptuous mortal, nor will I longer endure such indignity. Stand back, and open the gates for me! Why do you not obey?"

He knew now that to attempt force would be useless; and yet if she left him this time, he must either abandon all that life held for him, and fly to distant parts from the burglars' vengeance--or remain to meet a too probable doom!

He fell on his knees before her. "Oh, Lady Venus," he entreated, "don't leave me! I beg and implore you not to! If you do, you will kill me! I give you my honest word you will!"

The statue's face seemed irradiated by a sudden joy. She paused, and glanced down with an approving smile upon the kneeling figure at her feet.

"Why did you not kneel to me before?" she said.

"Because I never thought of it," said the hairdresser, honestly; "but I'll stay on my knees for hours, if only you won't go!"

"But what has made you thus eager, thus humble?" she said, half in wonder and half in suspicion. "Can it be, that the spark I have sought to kindle in your breast is growing to a flame at last? Leander, can this thing be?"

He saw that she was gratified, that she desired to be assured that this was indeed so.

"I shouldn't be surprised if something like that was going on inside of me," he said encouragingly.

"Answer me more frankly," she said. "Do you wish me to remain with you because you have learnt to love my presence?"

It was a very embarrassing position for him. All depended upon his convincing the goddess of his dawning love, and yet, for the life of him, he could not force out the requisite tenderness; his imagination was unequal to the task.

Another and a more creditable feeling helped to tie his tongue--a sense of shame at employing such a subterfuge in order to betray the goddess into the lawless hands of these housebreakers. However, she must be induced to stay by some means.

"Well," he said sheepishly, "you don't give me a chance to love you, if you go wandering out every evening, do you?"

She gave a low cry of triumph. "It has come!" she exclaimed. "What are clouds of incense, flowers, and homage, to this? Be of good heart; I will stay, Leander. Fear not, but speak the passion which consumes you!"

He became alarmed. He was anxious not to commit himself, and yet employ the time until the burglars might be expected.

"The fact is," he confessed, "it hasn't gone so far as that yet--it's beginning; all it wants is _time_, you know--time, and being let alone."

"All Time will be before us, when once your lips have pronounced the words of surrender, and our spirits are transported together to the enchanted isle."

"You talk about me going over to this isle--this Cyprus," he said; "but it's a long journey, and I can't afford it. How _you_ come and go, I don't know; but I've not been brought up to it myself. I can't flash across like a telegram!"

"Trust all to me," she said. "Is not your love strong enough for that?"

"Not quite yet," he answered; "it's coming on. Only, you see, it's a serious step to take, and I naturally wish to feel my way. I declare, the more I gaze upon the--the elegant form and figger which I see before me, the stronger and the more irresistible comes over me a burning desire to think the whole thing carefully over. And if you only allowed me a little longer to gaze (I've no time to myself except in the evenings), I don't think it would be long before this affair reached a 'appy termination--I don't indeed!"

"Gaze, then," she said, smiling--"gaze to your soul's content."

"I mean no offence," he represented, having felt his way to a stroke of supreme cunning, "but when I feel there's a goddess inside of this statue, I don't know how it is exactly, but it puts me off. I can't fix my thoughts; the--the passion don't ferment as it ought. If, supposing now, you was to withdraw yourself and leave me the statue? I could gaze on it, and think of thee, and Cyprus, and all the rest of it, more comfortable, so to speak, than what I can when you're animating of it, and making me that nervous, words can't describe it!"

He hardly dared to hope that so lame and transparent a device would succeed with her; but, as he had previously found, there was a certain spice of credulity and simplicity in her nature, which made it possible to impose upon her occasionally.

"It may be so," she said. "I overawe thee, perchance?"

"Very much so," said he, promptly. "You don't intend it, I know; but it's a fact."

"I will leave you to meditate upon the charms so faintly shadowed in this image, remembering that whatever of loveliness you find herein will be multiplied ten thousand-fold in the actual Aphrodite! Remain, then; ponder and gaze--and love!"

He waited for a little while after the statue was silent, and then took up the sacking left for him by Braddle; twice he attempted to throw it over the marble, and twice he recoiled. "It's no use," he said, "I can't do it; they must do it themselves!"

He carefully unfastened the window at the back of his saloon, and, placing the statue in the centre of the floor, turned out the gas, and with a beating heart stole upstairs to his bedroom, where (with his door bolted) he waited anxiously for the arrival of his dreaded deliverers.

He scarcely knew how long he had been there, for a kind of waking dream had come upon him, in which he was providing the statue with light refreshment in the shape of fancy pebbles and liquid cement, when the long, low whistle, faintly heard from the back of the house, brought him back to his full senses.

The burglars had come! He unbolted the door and stole out to the top of the crazy staircase, intending to rush back and bolt himself in if he heard steps ascending; and for some minutes he strained his ears, without being able to catch a sound.

At last he heard the muffled creak of the window, as it was thrown up. They were coming in! Would they, or would they not, be inhuman enough to force him to assist them in the removal?

They were still in the saloon; he heard them trampling about, moving the furniture with unnecessary violence, and addressing one another in tones that were not caressing. Now they were carrying the statue to the window; he heard their labouring breath and groans of exertion under the burden.

Another pause. He stole lower down the staircase, until he was outside his sitting-room, and could hear better. There! that was the thud as they leapt out on the flagged yard. A second and heavier thud--the goddess! How would they get her over the wall? Had they brought steps, ropes, or what? No matter; they knew their own business, and were not likely to have forgotten anything. But how long they were about it! Suppose a constable were to come by and see the cart!

There were sounds at last; they were scaling the wall--floundering, apparently; and no wonder, with such a weight to hoist after them! More thuds; and then the steps of men staggering slowly, painfully away. The steps echoed louder from under the archway, and then died away in silence.

Could they be really gone? He dared not hope so, and remained shivering in his sitting-room for some minutes; until, gaining courage, he determined to go down and shut the window, to avoid any suspicion. Although now that the burglars were safely off with their prize, even their capture could not implicate him. He rather hoped they _would_ be caught!

He took a lighted candle, and descended. As he entered the saloon, a gust from the open window blew out the light. He stood there in the dark and an icy draught; and, beginning to grope about in the dark for the matches, he brushed against something which was soft and had a cloth-like texture. "It's Braddle!" he thought, and his blood ran cold; "or else the Count!" And he called them both respectfully. There was no reply; no sound of breathing, even.

Ha! here was a box of matches at last! He struck a light in feverish haste, and lit the nearest gas-bracket. For an instant he could see nothing, in the sudden glare; but the next moment he fell back against the wall with a cry of horror and despair.

For there, in the centre of the disordered room, stood--not the Count, not Braddle--but the statue, the mantle thrown back from her arms, and those arms, and the folds of the marble drapery, spotted here and there with stains of dark crimson! _

Read next: Chapter 10. Damocles Dines Out

Read previous: Chapter 8. Between The Devil And The Deep Sea

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