CHAPTER LVII.Ada’s Escape.—The Magistrate.—Ada’s Ignorance of London Localities.—Learmont’s Fright.WhenAda sunk insensible into the arms of a stranger, after denouncing Jacob Gray as a murderer, she was conveyed into a shop by Charing-cross, when her rare and singular beauty, and the peculiar circumstances under which she had fainted, were the themes of every tongue. Such restoratives as upon the moment could be procured were immediately brought into requisition, and after a quarter of an hour she gently opened her eyes with a faint sigh and looked inquiringly about her.Then she clasped her hands, and as she gazed upon the throng of curious, yet compassionate faces that surrounded her, she exclaimed,—“What has happened? Oh, speak to me; where am I?”“You have fainted,” cried four or five voices in a breath.“Fainted—fainted?”“Yes; I brought you in after you had called after the man as a murderer,” said the person who had caught Ada before she was brought into the shop.For the space of about another minute then the young girl looked confused; after that a gush of recollections flashed across her mind, and the feeling that she was really at last free from Jacob Gray, came across her heart with so much happiness and joy, that covering her beautiful face with her small slender hands, she burst into tears and sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.Those who stood by seemed to feel that there was something sacred in the tears of the young thing before them, for they stood silent, and no one attempted to insult her by the usual commonplace remarks of vulgar consolation. There were tears in almost every eye, and when Ada withdrew her hands from her face, and a smile, beautiful as a sunbeam after an April shower, illumined her expressive countenance, it seemed as if some universal joy had been awakened in every breast, and murmured blessings upon her beauty, burst from several of the persons who had crowded, from motives of curiosity, into the shop.Then Ada looked from face to face, and oh, how different were those honest sympathising countenances to the dark ever shifting expression of the lineaments of Jacob Gray, where avarice, cruelty, and fear were ever struggling together for a mastery.“Thank you all—thank you all,” she cried; “I am very happy now.”This was not a very comprehensible speech to those who had not gone through the scene of misery and woe, that the young heart of Ada had known, but still there was a deep truthfulness and sincerity in the tone in which it was uttered that sensibly affected every one.“Shall I take you home?” said the person who had supported her in the street.“Home—home?” cried Ada.“Yes; you are not well enough to go home by yourself; I will see you safely home.”“I have no home,” said Ada.“No home?”“None—I never had a home.”The people looked at each other in amazement, and several of them significantly touched their foreheads in confirmation of their belief that the beautiful young girl was not quite right in her head.“Where are your friends?” said one.“Alas, I know not,” cried Ada, mournfully. “Tell me, is he whom I denounced in the street taken prisoner?”“No, not that I am aware of,” said a man. “There has been one here who says he ran up the Strand like a madman and escaped.”Ada shuddered as she said,—“Let him go now; his own conscience must be punishment enough. Let him go now.”“What has he done?” said several voices at once.“Murder,” said Ada. “My eyes were shocked with the sight of blood. He is a murderer.”“A murderer?”“Yes—I saw him do the deed.”“What’s his name?”“Jacob Gray.”The people glanced at each other, and then several left the shop, considering Jacob Gray as the more interesting person of the two to make inquiries about.“Where will you go, my dear?” said the owner of the shop.“I have but one friend,” said Ada, “to whom there is any hope of sending. He has called himself my friend, and his voice was sincere. I will believe that he sought me with kindly feelings. His name is Hartleton—he is a magistrate.”“Sir Francis Hartleton?”“Yes—the same.”“If he knows you and is your friend,” said one, “you need look no farther, for he is a good man, and universally esteemed.”“I thank you for those words,” cried Ada. “And—and tell me—do any of you know Albert Seyton?”All shook their heads, and one man remarked,—“That he knew an Albert Brown, which was the nearest he could come to it.”“I will take you to Sir Francis Hartleton’s,” said the man of the shop. Before Ada could reply, the door was opened, and a stranger walked in, saying,—“Where is the girl?”“Here, here?” cried many voices.The stranger stepped forward, and upon seeing Ada, he said,—“My lass, you must come with me before a magistrate, and tell us what you know of this man who has led us such a pretty race up the Strand.”“Is he caught?” cried several.“No,” replied the officer, for such he was; “we nearly had him by the court next to Somerset-house, but he killed the man who laid hold of him.”“Another murder!” exclaimed Ada.“Yes; I never saw such a sight as he left the man.”“Take me to Sir Francis Hartleton,” said Ada.“That I will,” said the officer.Ada sprung to her feet, and then, turning to those in the shop, she said,—“Accept my heartfelt thanks? I am poor in all else.”Then, taking the offered arm of the officer, who, though rough and uncouth, meant to be quite kind and considerate in his way, she left the shop, and the strangely-matched pair proceeded down Whitehall towards Sir Francis Hartleton’s house.“That fellow as you was with my dear,” remarked the officer, “is a reg’lar out-and-outer; down as fifteen hammers, and a touch above nothing.”This speech was about as intelligible to Ada as if it had been spoken in Chinese, and she replied mildly,—“I don’t know what you mean.”“Bless your innocence!” said the officer; “I means as he’s the most downiest cove as we’ve come across lately.”“Indeed,” said Ada, who was quite as wise as before.“Yes; he went up the Strand like twenty blessed lamplighters rolled into one.”“Where’s the Strand?” said Ada.The officer stopped short at the question, and looked hard at Ada for some moments to assure himself that he was not, in his own phraseology, being “regularly done;” but there was something so very innocent and guileless in the face of Ada that he very reluctantly came to the conclusion that she really did not know where the Strand was, and from that moment he looked upon her as a natural phenomenon, and spoke to her with a curious kind of considerate voice, such as he would have addressed to a person not quite right in her mind.“Why, the Strand,” he said, “runs from the Cross to the Bar, you see.”“Does it?” said Ada.“This here is Whitehall.”“Whitehall? I have read of Whitehall. Cardinal Wolsey held great state here once.”“Well, I never,” thought the officer, who had never heard of Cardinal Wolsey in his life. “She’s wandering in her mind, poor thing.”“What building is that?” inquired Ada, as they came opposite to the Horse Guards.“That ’ere is the Horse Guards, and leads into the Park.”“St. James’s Park? I have been there,” said Ada. “That too is full of recollection.”“I believe ye,” said the officer. “Don’t you know as Bill Floggs, who was called the ‘Nubbly Cove,’ robbed Lord Chief Justice Bones by Buckingham Gate?”“No,” said Ada, who, if there had been a Newgate Calendar in those days, had never seen one.“Oh! you doesn’t?—Nor Claude Duval, the ladies’ own highwayman, who robbed a gentleman of his gold watch, while he, the gentleman, was complaining of being stopped the very night before by him on Kennington Common?”“Indeed?”“Lor,’ bless you, yes. The ladies used to take a drive out of town on purpose to be robbed by Claude Duval.”“A strange fancy,” said Ada.They now proceeded for some distance in silence, until they came to a large mansion, every window of which was blazing with light, and from the interior of which came the sound of music.Ada paused, and looked upon the illuminated windows as a sensation of pleasure came across her mind, arising from the sweet sounds of melody that came wafted to her ears from within the house of revelry.“Ah!” remarked the officer, looking up at the house, “they do keep it up finely. Almost every night now for a week there has been nothing but feasting, dancing, and music in that house. They say its master don’t like to be left alone, and that he is never satisfied unless the house be full of company, and himself in the very midst of it.”“Indeed!”“Yes, he is an odd-looking fellow; but they say he is so rich he might pave his great hall with guineas.”“And yet shrinks, as it were, from himself, that he dare not be alone!”“Why, ’atween you and I, there’s Tyburn written upon his face.”“What upon his face?”“Tyburn.”“What’s that?”“Why—why—you don’t mean all to go to say as you never heard o’ Tyburn?”“I have lived a lone and solitary life,” said Ada; “and, although so near the haunts of thousands of my fellow-creatures, I have seen but one, except rarely. The names of places in this great city, the habits, the thoughts, and actions of its myriads of inhabitants, are all strange to me. For all I know of the familiar things of life—those every-day events and materials of life that make up the sum of most persons’ existence—I am as ignorant as a child cast upon some desert shore.”There was a mournful pathos in the tone of voice in which Ada uttered these words that gave them their full effect upon the rough man she was with. Nature spoke in every soft melancholy word that fell from her lips; and, although her language was to him as strange and incomprehensible quite, as his to her, he understood sufficient to reply to her.—“Then, whosoever shut you up, and purvented you from going about and amusing yourself, my dear, was a big brute, and only let him come across me, that’s all.”“Whose house is this?” said Ada, listening, at the same time, to a beautiful melody which was being played as a prelude to the commencement of a dance.“Squire Learmont they call him,” replied the man; “but, if he lives a little-longer, it’s said he’ll be a lord, or something of that kind.”Ada placed her hand upon her brow, and repeated the name of Learmont, as if its sound conjured up some long-forgotten images in her brain. Then she shook her head, as memory could shape to her nothing tangible in connexion with the name, which yet, as she again pronounced it, came upon her heart as something far from new.“Learmont—Learmont!” she murmured, as if pleased with the repetition.“Yes, that’s his name,” rejoined the officer. “Nobody knows exactly where he got all his money from; but got it he has, and he knows how to spend it too.”At this moment the doors of the mansion were flung open, and a splendid carriage dashed up to the entrance.“There’s somebody coming,” remarked the officer to Ada. “Let’s have a look at them.”Ada and her companion now crossed the road, and stood close to the step of Learmont’s house, as a lacquey shouted to those in the hall,—“Lord and Lady Brereton, and the Honourable Georgiana Brereton.”A blaze of light shot from the interior of the mansion, and just as the guests were alighting, Learmont himself descended the steps of his house to receive them.He was attired in a splendid suit of moreen velvet, and a diamond of great lustre sparkled in his sword hilt. His fingers were covered with rings, profusely studded with precious stones, and, take his appearance altogether, he looked, indeed, like the man who could pave his hall with gold.A bland and courtly smile was upon his face, and he handed the occupants of the carriage up the steps, with the air of a sovereign prince, graciously condescending to an act of rare and unexampled courtesy.From the moment that he had appeared, Ada had never taken her eyes from off his face; she seemed like one fascinated by the basilisk eyes of a serpent, and, with a wild rush of mingled feelings, which she could neither define nor understand, she watched each varying expression of that cold, pale, haughty countenance that wore upon its surface so hollow and so artificial a smile.Learmont was one step below the Honourable Lady he was handing by the extreme tips of her fingers, into his house, when the officer, in what he thought a whisper, said to Ada,—“That’s him.”The guilty heart of Learmont throbbed even at this trifling remark, for it did reach his ears, and he turned suddenly to see who had uttered it, when his eyes met Ada’s, and for the space of about one moment they looked full at each other.The look on Ada’s part was one of intense and indescribable interest and curiosity, but on Learmont’s, it was that concentrated soul-stricken glare, with which a person might be supposed to regard for about a breathing space, some awful blasting spectre, ere nature gathers strength to scream.A wild unearthly cry burst from his lips, and he stretched out his hands towards her as he ascended the steps backwards, crying, or rather shrieking,—“Off—off—off—”Then as he reached the top he reeled into the hall of his house, and was caught by his servants as he fell insensible from the overwrought agony of his mind.
Ada’s Escape.—The Magistrate.—Ada’s Ignorance of London Localities.—Learmont’s Fright.
WhenAda sunk insensible into the arms of a stranger, after denouncing Jacob Gray as a murderer, she was conveyed into a shop by Charing-cross, when her rare and singular beauty, and the peculiar circumstances under which she had fainted, were the themes of every tongue. Such restoratives as upon the moment could be procured were immediately brought into requisition, and after a quarter of an hour she gently opened her eyes with a faint sigh and looked inquiringly about her.
Then she clasped her hands, and as she gazed upon the throng of curious, yet compassionate faces that surrounded her, she exclaimed,—
“What has happened? Oh, speak to me; where am I?”
“You have fainted,” cried four or five voices in a breath.
“Fainted—fainted?”
“Yes; I brought you in after you had called after the man as a murderer,” said the person who had caught Ada before she was brought into the shop.
For the space of about another minute then the young girl looked confused; after that a gush of recollections flashed across her mind, and the feeling that she was really at last free from Jacob Gray, came across her heart with so much happiness and joy, that covering her beautiful face with her small slender hands, she burst into tears and sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.
Those who stood by seemed to feel that there was something sacred in the tears of the young thing before them, for they stood silent, and no one attempted to insult her by the usual commonplace remarks of vulgar consolation. There were tears in almost every eye, and when Ada withdrew her hands from her face, and a smile, beautiful as a sunbeam after an April shower, illumined her expressive countenance, it seemed as if some universal joy had been awakened in every breast, and murmured blessings upon her beauty, burst from several of the persons who had crowded, from motives of curiosity, into the shop.
Then Ada looked from face to face, and oh, how different were those honest sympathising countenances to the dark ever shifting expression of the lineaments of Jacob Gray, where avarice, cruelty, and fear were ever struggling together for a mastery.
“Thank you all—thank you all,” she cried; “I am very happy now.”
This was not a very comprehensible speech to those who had not gone through the scene of misery and woe, that the young heart of Ada had known, but still there was a deep truthfulness and sincerity in the tone in which it was uttered that sensibly affected every one.
“Shall I take you home?” said the person who had supported her in the street.
“Home—home?” cried Ada.
“Yes; you are not well enough to go home by yourself; I will see you safely home.”
“I have no home,” said Ada.
“No home?”
“None—I never had a home.”
The people looked at each other in amazement, and several of them significantly touched their foreheads in confirmation of their belief that the beautiful young girl was not quite right in her head.
“Where are your friends?” said one.
“Alas, I know not,” cried Ada, mournfully. “Tell me, is he whom I denounced in the street taken prisoner?”
“No, not that I am aware of,” said a man. “There has been one here who says he ran up the Strand like a madman and escaped.”
Ada shuddered as she said,—
“Let him go now; his own conscience must be punishment enough. Let him go now.”
“What has he done?” said several voices at once.
“Murder,” said Ada. “My eyes were shocked with the sight of blood. He is a murderer.”
“A murderer?”
“Yes—I saw him do the deed.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jacob Gray.”
The people glanced at each other, and then several left the shop, considering Jacob Gray as the more interesting person of the two to make inquiries about.
“Where will you go, my dear?” said the owner of the shop.
“I have but one friend,” said Ada, “to whom there is any hope of sending. He has called himself my friend, and his voice was sincere. I will believe that he sought me with kindly feelings. His name is Hartleton—he is a magistrate.”
“Sir Francis Hartleton?”
“Yes—the same.”
“If he knows you and is your friend,” said one, “you need look no farther, for he is a good man, and universally esteemed.”
“I thank you for those words,” cried Ada. “And—and tell me—do any of you know Albert Seyton?”
All shook their heads, and one man remarked,—“That he knew an Albert Brown, which was the nearest he could come to it.”
“I will take you to Sir Francis Hartleton’s,” said the man of the shop. Before Ada could reply, the door was opened, and a stranger walked in, saying,—
“Where is the girl?”
“Here, here?” cried many voices.
The stranger stepped forward, and upon seeing Ada, he said,—
“My lass, you must come with me before a magistrate, and tell us what you know of this man who has led us such a pretty race up the Strand.”
“Is he caught?” cried several.
“No,” replied the officer, for such he was; “we nearly had him by the court next to Somerset-house, but he killed the man who laid hold of him.”
“Another murder!” exclaimed Ada.
“Yes; I never saw such a sight as he left the man.”
“Take me to Sir Francis Hartleton,” said Ada.
“That I will,” said the officer.
Ada sprung to her feet, and then, turning to those in the shop, she said,—
“Accept my heartfelt thanks? I am poor in all else.”
Then, taking the offered arm of the officer, who, though rough and uncouth, meant to be quite kind and considerate in his way, she left the shop, and the strangely-matched pair proceeded down Whitehall towards Sir Francis Hartleton’s house.
“That fellow as you was with my dear,” remarked the officer, “is a reg’lar out-and-outer; down as fifteen hammers, and a touch above nothing.”
This speech was about as intelligible to Ada as if it had been spoken in Chinese, and she replied mildly,—
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Bless your innocence!” said the officer; “I means as he’s the most downiest cove as we’ve come across lately.”
“Indeed,” said Ada, who was quite as wise as before.
“Yes; he went up the Strand like twenty blessed lamplighters rolled into one.”
“Where’s the Strand?” said Ada.
The officer stopped short at the question, and looked hard at Ada for some moments to assure himself that he was not, in his own phraseology, being “regularly done;” but there was something so very innocent and guileless in the face of Ada that he very reluctantly came to the conclusion that she really did not know where the Strand was, and from that moment he looked upon her as a natural phenomenon, and spoke to her with a curious kind of considerate voice, such as he would have addressed to a person not quite right in her mind.
“Why, the Strand,” he said, “runs from the Cross to the Bar, you see.”
“Does it?” said Ada.
“This here is Whitehall.”
“Whitehall? I have read of Whitehall. Cardinal Wolsey held great state here once.”
“Well, I never,” thought the officer, who had never heard of Cardinal Wolsey in his life. “She’s wandering in her mind, poor thing.”
“What building is that?” inquired Ada, as they came opposite to the Horse Guards.
“That ’ere is the Horse Guards, and leads into the Park.”
“St. James’s Park? I have been there,” said Ada. “That too is full of recollection.”
“I believe ye,” said the officer. “Don’t you know as Bill Floggs, who was called the ‘Nubbly Cove,’ robbed Lord Chief Justice Bones by Buckingham Gate?”
“No,” said Ada, who, if there had been a Newgate Calendar in those days, had never seen one.
“Oh! you doesn’t?—Nor Claude Duval, the ladies’ own highwayman, who robbed a gentleman of his gold watch, while he, the gentleman, was complaining of being stopped the very night before by him on Kennington Common?”
“Indeed?”
“Lor,’ bless you, yes. The ladies used to take a drive out of town on purpose to be robbed by Claude Duval.”
“A strange fancy,” said Ada.
They now proceeded for some distance in silence, until they came to a large mansion, every window of which was blazing with light, and from the interior of which came the sound of music.
Ada paused, and looked upon the illuminated windows as a sensation of pleasure came across her mind, arising from the sweet sounds of melody that came wafted to her ears from within the house of revelry.
“Ah!” remarked the officer, looking up at the house, “they do keep it up finely. Almost every night now for a week there has been nothing but feasting, dancing, and music in that house. They say its master don’t like to be left alone, and that he is never satisfied unless the house be full of company, and himself in the very midst of it.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, he is an odd-looking fellow; but they say he is so rich he might pave his great hall with guineas.”
“And yet shrinks, as it were, from himself, that he dare not be alone!”
“Why, ’atween you and I, there’s Tyburn written upon his face.”
“What upon his face?”
“Tyburn.”
“What’s that?”
“Why—why—you don’t mean all to go to say as you never heard o’ Tyburn?”
“I have lived a lone and solitary life,” said Ada; “and, although so near the haunts of thousands of my fellow-creatures, I have seen but one, except rarely. The names of places in this great city, the habits, the thoughts, and actions of its myriads of inhabitants, are all strange to me. For all I know of the familiar things of life—those every-day events and materials of life that make up the sum of most persons’ existence—I am as ignorant as a child cast upon some desert shore.”
There was a mournful pathos in the tone of voice in which Ada uttered these words that gave them their full effect upon the rough man she was with. Nature spoke in every soft melancholy word that fell from her lips; and, although her language was to him as strange and incomprehensible quite, as his to her, he understood sufficient to reply to her.—
“Then, whosoever shut you up, and purvented you from going about and amusing yourself, my dear, was a big brute, and only let him come across me, that’s all.”
“Whose house is this?” said Ada, listening, at the same time, to a beautiful melody which was being played as a prelude to the commencement of a dance.
“Squire Learmont they call him,” replied the man; “but, if he lives a little-longer, it’s said he’ll be a lord, or something of that kind.”
Ada placed her hand upon her brow, and repeated the name of Learmont, as if its sound conjured up some long-forgotten images in her brain. Then she shook her head, as memory could shape to her nothing tangible in connexion with the name, which yet, as she again pronounced it, came upon her heart as something far from new.
“Learmont—Learmont!” she murmured, as if pleased with the repetition.
“Yes, that’s his name,” rejoined the officer. “Nobody knows exactly where he got all his money from; but got it he has, and he knows how to spend it too.”
At this moment the doors of the mansion were flung open, and a splendid carriage dashed up to the entrance.
“There’s somebody coming,” remarked the officer to Ada. “Let’s have a look at them.”
Ada and her companion now crossed the road, and stood close to the step of Learmont’s house, as a lacquey shouted to those in the hall,—
“Lord and Lady Brereton, and the Honourable Georgiana Brereton.”
A blaze of light shot from the interior of the mansion, and just as the guests were alighting, Learmont himself descended the steps of his house to receive them.
He was attired in a splendid suit of moreen velvet, and a diamond of great lustre sparkled in his sword hilt. His fingers were covered with rings, profusely studded with precious stones, and, take his appearance altogether, he looked, indeed, like the man who could pave his hall with gold.
A bland and courtly smile was upon his face, and he handed the occupants of the carriage up the steps, with the air of a sovereign prince, graciously condescending to an act of rare and unexampled courtesy.
From the moment that he had appeared, Ada had never taken her eyes from off his face; she seemed like one fascinated by the basilisk eyes of a serpent, and, with a wild rush of mingled feelings, which she could neither define nor understand, she watched each varying expression of that cold, pale, haughty countenance that wore upon its surface so hollow and so artificial a smile.
Learmont was one step below the Honourable Lady he was handing by the extreme tips of her fingers, into his house, when the officer, in what he thought a whisper, said to Ada,—
“That’s him.”
The guilty heart of Learmont throbbed even at this trifling remark, for it did reach his ears, and he turned suddenly to see who had uttered it, when his eyes met Ada’s, and for the space of about one moment they looked full at each other.
The look on Ada’s part was one of intense and indescribable interest and curiosity, but on Learmont’s, it was that concentrated soul-stricken glare, with which a person might be supposed to regard for about a breathing space, some awful blasting spectre, ere nature gathers strength to scream.
A wild unearthly cry burst from his lips, and he stretched out his hands towards her as he ascended the steps backwards, crying, or rather shrieking,—
“Off—off—off—”
Then as he reached the top he reeled into the hall of his house, and was caught by his servants as he fell insensible from the overwrought agony of his mind.
CHAPTER LVIII.An Anecdote.—Sir Francis Hartleton’s House at Westminster.—The Reception.—Ada’s Conduct and Feelings.Ada wasboth astonished and alarmed at the sudden emotion of the man who, her reason told her, was a stranger to her; but who her imagination seemed notwithstanding to recognise as one who she must have seen before. Her memory concerning him was like one of those sudden strange feelings which occasionally come over us all, as we meet particular people who we are quite sure we have not met before, but who nevertheless wear not the aspect of strangers to us; people whom we could almost imagine we had been intimate with for good or evil, in some other state of existence long antecedent to this.On occasions of this singular nature too, there will always be a dim perception in the mind concerning the person so strangely recognised; which enables us to say, with certainty, whether the circumstances connected with him or her quite unremembered, though they maybe, were of a pleasing or a disagreeable character. To Ada, the full sight of Learmont’s face brought a sensation of shuddering horror, which assured her that wherever or whenever she and he had ever taken part together in the great drama of human existence, he was an enemy to be at once loathed and dreaded.As for the officer he was so astonished and confounded at the whole affair, that after rubbing his eyes twice, he looked a long way down the street, with the full expectation of seeing something coming which might, in some measure, account for Learmont’s sudden and extraordinary flight. That the mere sight of the face of the beautiful girl, who was with him, could cause such an excess of terror, he could not imagine, and when a servant came from the hall, and said to him,—“What was it! What scared him?” he replied—“I’ll be hanged if I know. He was going up the steps, like Claude Duval at a minuet, when he was taken aback by something.”“It’s very odd,” said the servant.“You may say that,” remarked the officer.“Come away—come away,” said Ada faintly, “to Sir Francis Hartleton; come, come.”“Certainly,” said the officer, “but this here is, out of all hand, the rummiest go ever I seed in all my life.”“Come, come,” repeated Ada, “I would not see that man again for worlds.”“No wonder he’s frightened you. My own very hair nearly stood a’ end. I’m afeared he’s done something queer, and wants to be found out, that’s what I am. I supposes as he seed some sort o’ ghostesses as made him take on so.”Ada sighed.“Don’t you mind it,” said the officer. “You may depend as he’s a victim of conscience, he is. I once before seed a face very like that as he made when he staggered up the steps.”“Indeed?”“Yes. As like it as one pea is like another.”“Where saw you it?”“In the condemned cell.”“The condemned cell; where, is that?”“In Newgate. It’s where we stow a fellow afore his execution. There was a man named Rankin, who had committed a murder, and he was regularly tried and condemned. Well, he carried it off with a high hand, swearing and blustering away, as if he didn’t care a bit, and roaring out as he’d die game, which I knew very well he wouldn’t, for the noisy ones never do.”“Well, you see he was put in the cell, and we promised to wake him in the morning, in answer to which piece of politeness he swore away at us like a house o’ fire.”“At half-past six, I and another went to get him up, and when we went in, he never said not a word, and I cried out, ‘hilloa.’ Still he never spoke, and I held up his light, and there he was, a standing straight up against the further end of the cell with his eyes half an inch out of his head, and some such a face as that Learmont puts on.”Ada shuddered and the officer continued.“When we went up to him, what do you think we found?”“I cannot tell.”“He was stone dead and stiffened up against the wall of his cell, and our chaplain said as how he must have seen the devil all of a sudden. But here we are at Sir Francis Hartleton’s.”Ada cast her eyes up to the house, and a pang shot across her heart as the doubt crossed her mind, that Jacob Gray might by some innate possibility have spoken the truth, when he described Sir Francis as her enemy; but still she hesitated not, but silently commending herself to the care of Heaven, she entered the house along with the officer.She was left for some time in a handsomely-furnished parlour, for this was the magistrate’s private, not his official residence. Each moment that passed now appeared to Ada an age of suspense and anxiety. She could hear the beating of her own heart in the silence of that room, and, as she sat with her eyes fixed upon the door, she thought that she had scarcely suffered as much anxiety, even when, in the dreary cell with Jacob Gray, a spirit of resistance to him and all his acts, supported her and prevented her mind from sinking beneath the oppressive circumstances which then surrounded her.Ada’s mind was of that rare and high order which rises superior to circumstances, and the energies of which become more acute and more capable of vigorous action, the more necessity there exists for the use of such qualities.Now, however, when there was no iniquity to denounce, no wickedness to resist, but when her heart was only oppressed with a faint doubt of whether she was to receive from Sir Francis Hartleton kindness or not, she did feel faint, weak, and sad, and all those trembling sensibilities of her nature she had suppressed from native energy of mind, and pride of innocence, when with Gray, now that she was free from him, arose from the recesses of her pure heart and forced her to feel, that, although a noble-minded heroine when surrounded by great peril, yet in real nature she was but a timid shrinking girl, such as her fragile and beautifully delicate appearance would indicate.Then when her anxiety had almost grown into a positive pain, the door opened and a tall, gentlemanly-looking man, with an intelligent countenance, entered the room.Ada rose, but for a moment she could not speak. He who had come in, evidently saw her emotion, for he said in accents of the greatest kindness and tender consideration to her,—“Sit down, and don’t be alarmed—I will listen to you with patience.”It was not the words, but it was the tone of genuine heartfelt kindness in which they were spoken, that went direct to the heart of Ada.Once, twice, she tried to speak, but what all the threats, and all the harshness of Jacob Gray had failed to produce, these few simple words kindly spoken, at once accomplished, and she burst into tears.Sir Francis Hartleton had merely been told that a young girl wished to see him, and he had not the remotest idea of who she was, or upon what errand she came.“I pray you to be calm,” he said, “I have no doubt you have something to tell me that afflicts you very much.”“No, no,” cried Ada.“No!”“It is joy—the joy of meeting a kind heart, that forces these tears from me—I am, sir, but too—too happy now.”“God forbid I should speak otherwise than kindly to you.”“Oh, sir,” said Ada, dashing aside the long clustering ringlets of her hair, that in her deep emotion had veiled her face. “You do not know me, but I have pondered over your name till hopes and fears of who or what you were have made my heart sicken. Though young in years, it seems to me that in the small space of time which has seen my existence, I have lived an age of sorrow, of persecution, of horror. I am a harmless, friendless, and for all I know, a nameless thing. Debarred from all that to the young is beautiful, I have passed the dawning of my life the victim of another’s crimes, although how connected with him and his great sinfulness, I cannot tell. My spirit has been worn by incessant rebuke, until death would have been a relief. A murderer’s hand has been lifted against me while I slept—I have seen blood shed before my eyes, and could not stay the unrighteous hand of the murderer—I have had none to love me but one—no mother ever smiled upon me—no recollection of a father’s caress warms my heart. To you, sir, I came for succour, for protection—a fugitive—a homeless wanderer—a thing of blight and desolation; when I hoped, there has come despair—when I wept I have met with mockery—when I trusted I was betrayed—you called upon me once when I dared not return you one answering cry—you proclaimed yourself my friend—I am she whom you called in Forest’s ancient house. I am Ada, the Betrayed!”Sir Francis Hartleton during this speech had stood before Ada with one of her hands clasped in his, and showing by his earnest attention, and the deep sympathy depicted in his countenance, that he was far from an unmoved listener to her words. When she had concluded, a fervent “thank Heaven!” burst from his lips, and he cried with animation.—“Ada, I have for many months now sought you throughout this great city—not one day has elapsed without some effort upon my part to find you, and offer you friendship, protection, and a home; my poor girl, you have suffered much—I know it—have known it long, and it has been a shadow on my heart, to think that I could not aid you;—your trials—your persecutions are all over now, and once more I from my heart thank Heaven that I see you under my protection, safe from that awful man, who I ever dreaded would in some wild moment, sacrifice you to his fears, or to his revenge. Ada, you are safe and free! I have both power and will to shelter you, and while Sir Francis Hartleton lives, whoever would harm you must do it through his heart.”When first Sir Francis had commenced speaking, Ada had fixed her large pensive eyes upon his face, and appeared to drink in with her soul every word he uttered; but as he went on, and his own voice became a little broken by the depth of his emotion and the sincerity of his sympathy, she, in all the guileless innocence of her heart, pressed his hand within hers, and tears gushed from her eyes; but when he told her that she was now safe for ever from Jacob Gray, and that his home should be hers, her joy and gratitude became too much for her, and she laid her head upon his breast and wept, as she would have done upon her father’s heart.Sir Francis Hartleton was himself scarcely less affected than Ada, for brave, noble, and gifted natures such as his, are easily melted by the softer feelings of human nature.When he spoke, which was not for some minutes, for he could scarcely command his voice sufficiently, he said,—“Ada, you shall rest till to-morrow before you tell me all your history—I have likewise much to tell you, and to-morrow we will have a long conference.”“Yes,” said Ada, “oh, what can I say to you to make you know how my heart thanks you?”“Nothing—say nothing, Ada—Heaven will help me to do what I am now doing—it is but my duty, Ada, to protect you. Remember now you are at home—you are no guest here, mind, but one of ourselves. These, I hope, are the last tears I shall ever see you shed.”“Ah, sir, they are far different from those I have shed in the silence and solitude of my various prisons. Those were wrung from me by despair. These come from a heart too full of gratitude.”Sir Francis Hartleton now rung a small hand bell, which was immediately answered by a servant, to whom he said,—“Tell your mistress to come to me here;” then turning to Ada, he said, with a half-smile upon his face—“Now, my dear Ada, I shall have nothing to do with you till to-morrow. I am but recently married, and my wife will love you for your own sake as well as for mine. She knows what of your history I know, and is well prepared to give you welcome.”At this moment a lady entered the room, and Ada cast her eyes upon her face. That one glance was sufficient to assure her she had found a friend, for it was one of those faces that cannot conceal the goodness of the owner’s heart.“Emilia, this is Ada,” said Sir Francis Hartleton. “I will not say make much of her, and I don’t think you can spoil her.”
An Anecdote.—Sir Francis Hartleton’s House at Westminster.—The Reception.—Ada’s Conduct and Feelings.
Ada wasboth astonished and alarmed at the sudden emotion of the man who, her reason told her, was a stranger to her; but who her imagination seemed notwithstanding to recognise as one who she must have seen before. Her memory concerning him was like one of those sudden strange feelings which occasionally come over us all, as we meet particular people who we are quite sure we have not met before, but who nevertheless wear not the aspect of strangers to us; people whom we could almost imagine we had been intimate with for good or evil, in some other state of existence long antecedent to this.
On occasions of this singular nature too, there will always be a dim perception in the mind concerning the person so strangely recognised; which enables us to say, with certainty, whether the circumstances connected with him or her quite unremembered, though they maybe, were of a pleasing or a disagreeable character. To Ada, the full sight of Learmont’s face brought a sensation of shuddering horror, which assured her that wherever or whenever she and he had ever taken part together in the great drama of human existence, he was an enemy to be at once loathed and dreaded.
As for the officer he was so astonished and confounded at the whole affair, that after rubbing his eyes twice, he looked a long way down the street, with the full expectation of seeing something coming which might, in some measure, account for Learmont’s sudden and extraordinary flight. That the mere sight of the face of the beautiful girl, who was with him, could cause such an excess of terror, he could not imagine, and when a servant came from the hall, and said to him,—
“What was it! What scared him?” he replied—
“I’ll be hanged if I know. He was going up the steps, like Claude Duval at a minuet, when he was taken aback by something.”
“It’s very odd,” said the servant.
“You may say that,” remarked the officer.
“Come away—come away,” said Ada faintly, “to Sir Francis Hartleton; come, come.”
“Certainly,” said the officer, “but this here is, out of all hand, the rummiest go ever I seed in all my life.”
“Come, come,” repeated Ada, “I would not see that man again for worlds.”
“No wonder he’s frightened you. My own very hair nearly stood a’ end. I’m afeared he’s done something queer, and wants to be found out, that’s what I am. I supposes as he seed some sort o’ ghostesses as made him take on so.”
Ada sighed.
“Don’t you mind it,” said the officer. “You may depend as he’s a victim of conscience, he is. I once before seed a face very like that as he made when he staggered up the steps.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. As like it as one pea is like another.”
“Where saw you it?”
“In the condemned cell.”
“The condemned cell; where, is that?”
“In Newgate. It’s where we stow a fellow afore his execution. There was a man named Rankin, who had committed a murder, and he was regularly tried and condemned. Well, he carried it off with a high hand, swearing and blustering away, as if he didn’t care a bit, and roaring out as he’d die game, which I knew very well he wouldn’t, for the noisy ones never do.”
“Well, you see he was put in the cell, and we promised to wake him in the morning, in answer to which piece of politeness he swore away at us like a house o’ fire.”
“At half-past six, I and another went to get him up, and when we went in, he never said not a word, and I cried out, ‘hilloa.’ Still he never spoke, and I held up his light, and there he was, a standing straight up against the further end of the cell with his eyes half an inch out of his head, and some such a face as that Learmont puts on.”
Ada shuddered and the officer continued.
“When we went up to him, what do you think we found?”
“I cannot tell.”
“He was stone dead and stiffened up against the wall of his cell, and our chaplain said as how he must have seen the devil all of a sudden. But here we are at Sir Francis Hartleton’s.”
Ada cast her eyes up to the house, and a pang shot across her heart as the doubt crossed her mind, that Jacob Gray might by some innate possibility have spoken the truth, when he described Sir Francis as her enemy; but still she hesitated not, but silently commending herself to the care of Heaven, she entered the house along with the officer.
She was left for some time in a handsomely-furnished parlour, for this was the magistrate’s private, not his official residence. Each moment that passed now appeared to Ada an age of suspense and anxiety. She could hear the beating of her own heart in the silence of that room, and, as she sat with her eyes fixed upon the door, she thought that she had scarcely suffered as much anxiety, even when, in the dreary cell with Jacob Gray, a spirit of resistance to him and all his acts, supported her and prevented her mind from sinking beneath the oppressive circumstances which then surrounded her.
Ada’s mind was of that rare and high order which rises superior to circumstances, and the energies of which become more acute and more capable of vigorous action, the more necessity there exists for the use of such qualities.
Now, however, when there was no iniquity to denounce, no wickedness to resist, but when her heart was only oppressed with a faint doubt of whether she was to receive from Sir Francis Hartleton kindness or not, she did feel faint, weak, and sad, and all those trembling sensibilities of her nature she had suppressed from native energy of mind, and pride of innocence, when with Gray, now that she was free from him, arose from the recesses of her pure heart and forced her to feel, that, although a noble-minded heroine when surrounded by great peril, yet in real nature she was but a timid shrinking girl, such as her fragile and beautifully delicate appearance would indicate.
Then when her anxiety had almost grown into a positive pain, the door opened and a tall, gentlemanly-looking man, with an intelligent countenance, entered the room.
Ada rose, but for a moment she could not speak. He who had come in, evidently saw her emotion, for he said in accents of the greatest kindness and tender consideration to her,—
“Sit down, and don’t be alarmed—I will listen to you with patience.”
It was not the words, but it was the tone of genuine heartfelt kindness in which they were spoken, that went direct to the heart of Ada.
Once, twice, she tried to speak, but what all the threats, and all the harshness of Jacob Gray had failed to produce, these few simple words kindly spoken, at once accomplished, and she burst into tears.
Sir Francis Hartleton had merely been told that a young girl wished to see him, and he had not the remotest idea of who she was, or upon what errand she came.
“I pray you to be calm,” he said, “I have no doubt you have something to tell me that afflicts you very much.”
“No, no,” cried Ada.
“No!”
“It is joy—the joy of meeting a kind heart, that forces these tears from me—I am, sir, but too—too happy now.”
“God forbid I should speak otherwise than kindly to you.”
“Oh, sir,” said Ada, dashing aside the long clustering ringlets of her hair, that in her deep emotion had veiled her face. “You do not know me, but I have pondered over your name till hopes and fears of who or what you were have made my heart sicken. Though young in years, it seems to me that in the small space of time which has seen my existence, I have lived an age of sorrow, of persecution, of horror. I am a harmless, friendless, and for all I know, a nameless thing. Debarred from all that to the young is beautiful, I have passed the dawning of my life the victim of another’s crimes, although how connected with him and his great sinfulness, I cannot tell. My spirit has been worn by incessant rebuke, until death would have been a relief. A murderer’s hand has been lifted against me while I slept—I have seen blood shed before my eyes, and could not stay the unrighteous hand of the murderer—I have had none to love me but one—no mother ever smiled upon me—no recollection of a father’s caress warms my heart. To you, sir, I came for succour, for protection—a fugitive—a homeless wanderer—a thing of blight and desolation; when I hoped, there has come despair—when I wept I have met with mockery—when I trusted I was betrayed—you called upon me once when I dared not return you one answering cry—you proclaimed yourself my friend—I am she whom you called in Forest’s ancient house. I am Ada, the Betrayed!”
Sir Francis Hartleton during this speech had stood before Ada with one of her hands clasped in his, and showing by his earnest attention, and the deep sympathy depicted in his countenance, that he was far from an unmoved listener to her words. When she had concluded, a fervent “thank Heaven!” burst from his lips, and he cried with animation.—
“Ada, I have for many months now sought you throughout this great city—not one day has elapsed without some effort upon my part to find you, and offer you friendship, protection, and a home; my poor girl, you have suffered much—I know it—have known it long, and it has been a shadow on my heart, to think that I could not aid you;—your trials—your persecutions are all over now, and once more I from my heart thank Heaven that I see you under my protection, safe from that awful man, who I ever dreaded would in some wild moment, sacrifice you to his fears, or to his revenge. Ada, you are safe and free! I have both power and will to shelter you, and while Sir Francis Hartleton lives, whoever would harm you must do it through his heart.”
When first Sir Francis had commenced speaking, Ada had fixed her large pensive eyes upon his face, and appeared to drink in with her soul every word he uttered; but as he went on, and his own voice became a little broken by the depth of his emotion and the sincerity of his sympathy, she, in all the guileless innocence of her heart, pressed his hand within hers, and tears gushed from her eyes; but when he told her that she was now safe for ever from Jacob Gray, and that his home should be hers, her joy and gratitude became too much for her, and she laid her head upon his breast and wept, as she would have done upon her father’s heart.
Sir Francis Hartleton was himself scarcely less affected than Ada, for brave, noble, and gifted natures such as his, are easily melted by the softer feelings of human nature.
When he spoke, which was not for some minutes, for he could scarcely command his voice sufficiently, he said,—
“Ada, you shall rest till to-morrow before you tell me all your history—I have likewise much to tell you, and to-morrow we will have a long conference.”
“Yes,” said Ada, “oh, what can I say to you to make you know how my heart thanks you?”
“Nothing—say nothing, Ada—Heaven will help me to do what I am now doing—it is but my duty, Ada, to protect you. Remember now you are at home—you are no guest here, mind, but one of ourselves. These, I hope, are the last tears I shall ever see you shed.”
“Ah, sir, they are far different from those I have shed in the silence and solitude of my various prisons. Those were wrung from me by despair. These come from a heart too full of gratitude.”
Sir Francis Hartleton now rung a small hand bell, which was immediately answered by a servant, to whom he said,—
“Tell your mistress to come to me here;” then turning to Ada, he said, with a half-smile upon his face—“Now, my dear Ada, I shall have nothing to do with you till to-morrow. I am but recently married, and my wife will love you for your own sake as well as for mine. She knows what of your history I know, and is well prepared to give you welcome.”
At this moment a lady entered the room, and Ada cast her eyes upon her face. That one glance was sufficient to assure her she had found a friend, for it was one of those faces that cannot conceal the goodness of the owner’s heart.
“Emilia, this is Ada,” said Sir Francis Hartleton. “I will not say make much of her, and I don’t think you can spoil her.”
CHAPTER LIX.Jacob Gray and His Kind Friends.—The Plunder.—Thieves’ Morality.—The Drive to Hampstead.WhenJacob Gray fell upon the floor in a state of utter insensibility in consequence of the powerful narcotic drug infused into his drink by his two kind and considerate friends, those two gentlemen looked on with the utmost composure for a few moments, and then Bill remarked in a careless voice,—“I think he’ll do now, Moggs?”“In course,” responded the other, withdrawing the pipe from his mouth, and knocking out the ashes very deliberately upon the hob of the grate.“He’s precious green,” remarked Bill.“Very,” said Mr. Moggs.“Doesn’t you know who he is?”“I hasn’t the slightest idea. Never clapped eyes on the fellow in my life before, but to my mind he’s a new hand as has been and done something strong in the murder line for an ample consideration.”“Very likely—what’s the caper concerning him?”“Honour, Bill—honour.”“In course.”“Vun o’ the rules is, that if a regular out-and-out prig or cracksman comes to vun o’ us, and says, ‘I’m in trouble—the runners are hard on me. Guv us a share.’ Why, then we shares the swag all round equal.”“Spoke like a oracle.”“Very good. Another o’ the rules is, ‘If the prig aforesaid,’ as the lawyers say, ‘gammon us, or tries all for to gammon us, as to the exact waley o’ the swag, we takes it all.’”“Never vos a truer vord spoke,” responded Bill, with a look of intense admiration at his companion.“Well, if so be as this fellow has but what he said, two hundred, we takes one, and leaves him one.”“That’s the way.”“But if so be as he has more we takes it all in course; and I’ll wager my blessed nose off my face that he has a precious sight more.”Bill nodded knowingly.“Well then,” continued Mr. Moggs, “in either case we gets the shay-cart, and takes him somewhere far enough off.”Bill nodded again, and then taking from his pocket a large clasped knife, he knelt down by the side of Gray, and with a neatness and dexterity that were evidently the result of practice, he ripped open every one of his pockets, and in a few brief moments Jacob Gray was despoiled of every guinea of that sum of money he had gone through so much pain, suffering, and crime, to procure.The sum when collected from all his pockets, was in notes and gold so much larger than the thieves had any idea of finding, that when they had it fairly lying before them on the table, they looked at each other for some moments in mute surprise.“Bill,” cried the other, “this is a regular set up, it is. I’m blowed if we maydent and must retire from business with all this.”“Don’t be proud,” said Bill. “You always was ambitious. Take it easy, can’t you. This card will be uncommonly useful. How many a poor fellow has been scragged at the tree for want of a few pounds over the blood money, to give a officer as had a warrant agin him. Tom, what I propose is, for us to take a cool hundred or so only, out o’ all this here, and lay the remainder by for bad times.”“Bill,” remarked the other, after a pause of intense thought, “you should have been Lord Chancellor, that’s what you should! We’ll do it, my boy. Forty pounds is the blood money for hanging a poor fellow, and it’s very well known a chap never will get taken by the officers so long as he can make it guineas to let him go, except we comes across that d—d Sir Francis Hartleton, and he wouldn’t let a chap go for nothink or the whole world, he wouldn’t. What business has a beak to be poking as he does, instead of sitting quiet in his arm-chair, and leaving the business to be settled ’atween such as us and the receivers? It’ an iniquity, and no good can come of it.”“Very true,” said Bill. “You hide the money somewheres, while I go and get the cart, for we must start this chap somewhere afore daylight.”“Bill,” said the other, “you wouldn’t like to cut his throat?”“Not exactly.”“Well, well. I only mention it. I’m afraid he’s a sneak, but let him do his worst. Get the chaise-cart, and bring it round to the corner by Jem Medbourn’s.”Bill nodded, and went to execute his errand, and during his absence, the other carefully concealed the money beneath the floor of the room, excepting about two hundred pounds, which he reserved for himself and companion. Then lighting his pipe, he again sat down very composedly by the fire-side.“Well, well,” he said suddenly, as if he had arrived at some mental conclusion that he could not help, and yet did not like. “Bill may have it his own way, but I would never have let that chap,” nodding at Gray, “have a chance o’ being venomous. He’s cut out for a sneaking lump o’ evidence against others he is, and I shouldn’t a bit wonder if he gets into trouble himself, but he speaks agin us about the money just out o’ a nasty bit o’ revenge.”He then resumed his smoking as if he had been reasoning upon some very common place affair indeed, and in about ten minutes more Bill made his appearance, saying,—“It’s all right—they have guved up the search for to-night, and we shall get on famously.”“Where do you mean to take him?” said he, who had suggested the notion of cutting Gray’s throat.“I should say somewhere a little way out of town, and shoot him out o’ the cart into some blessed verdant spot,” replied Bill. “He’s rather a queer one, himself, so he’ll find as he’s all right, when he wakes up and finds as he’s amusing the butterflies and daisies.”“I’m blessed if you ain’t a out and out good un,” replied the other.“Supposes then,” suggested Bill, “we takes him up to Hampstead. It’s an odd little out o’ the way place enough.”“Very good,” said the other. “You are quite sure there’s nobody about?”“Quite.”“Come along, then.”As he spoke the man stooped, and lifted Jacob Gray from the ground with as much ease as if he had been an infant, and followed his comrade down stairs with his burthen, which seemed in no way to distress him.The court they passed out into was one of those kind which now are exceedingly rare in London, but which the wisdom of our ancestors took good care to make very common and infest the town with. At the period of our tale there was an immense wen, as it might be termed, of various pestiferous courts at the back of the Strand, where thieves and vagabonds of all kinds lived in a sort of community of their own, quite undisturbed by the authorities, who then could boast of very little authority indeed. Another mass of such courts was to be found where Regent-street now stands, and the vicinity; another at the bottom of St. Martin’s-lane, and another close to old Fleet-market, so that the city of London was as well provided with haunts of blackguardism and vice as the mouth of the Thames is with mud banks.Along the narrow court in which was Bill’s mansion, the confederates pursued their way until they came to what any stranger would have supposed a mere doorway, but which was in reality an entrance to another court; into this they dived, and after proceeding for a small distance ascended a flight of wooden steps, at the bottom of which stood a dirty, mean chaise-cart.Into this vehicle, without the least ceremony or consideration for what bruises he might receive, Jacob Gray was flung. There was nothing at the bottom of the cart but some littered straw, upon which he laid more like a dead body than anything living and breathing.The two men then climbed into the frail and crazy vehicle, and Bill taking the reins gave a shrill whistle, which the horse seemed perfectly to understand as a signal to go on, for he started immediately at a smart trot.There were no policemen then promenading the streets, who might have looked with an eye of suspicion upon the proceedings of Bill and his comrade, and the lazy watchmen having just signally exerted themselves by squalling out the hour, with the supplementary information that it was a cold night, betook themselves again to their watchboxes, leaving the community over whose lives and property they were supposed, by a fiction which lasted many years, to watch, to the care of Providence and the mercy of thieves and housebreakers.The chaise-cart rattled and bounded along through divers very intricate lanes and bye-streets, until at length it emerged into the Strand, near Arundel-street. Then dashing across the wide thoroughfare, it entered a congeries of dirty streets on the other side, and finally emerged in a curious and complicated place close to the British Museum. There were bye-roads across the Pancras-fields, and Bill having dismounted and taken down a bar which impeded his progress, drove across a meadow which now forms part of the ground occupied by that compound of pride, bloated arrogance, and humbug, the London University. Another quarter of an hour passed, and they were rattling up the Hampstead-road, which then had tall tress on either side of it.Camden Town was then a small village, with not above forty little whitewashed houses in it, with here and there sprinkled a few edifices of somewhat more pretensions, which had been built by well-to-do citizens, who repaired there on a Sunday to see the phenomena of a cabbage growing, and admire the sweet pea blossom as it thrust its pretty leaves in at the windows.The most famous house of entertainment then in Camden Town, was called the Queen’s Head, and has long been levelled with the dust; it was then even an old-fashioned house, and spoken of as a curiosity. It could boast of but one story, and its projecting sign hung so low that any one riding by quickly, and not aware of it, ran the risk of breaking his own head against the queen’s, with no very agreeable momentum.The entrance was adorned with oaken carved pillars, to the designs on which a great deal had been added from time to time by bread and cheese knives, rapiers’ penknives, and all sorts of cutting instruments, the door posts of an inn being considered as much public property, and open to defacement, as are wooden seats in Kensington gardens.To enter the house, you had to descend two steps, which generally at night caused a strange visitor to fall on his nose in the passage, when the hostess would come out, hearing the clatter, and probably a few oaths, and trim a lamp; so that after the mischief was done, you had the pleasure of seeing the steps quite clearly and beautifully.At this house Bill drew up, and without getting out, called lustily,—“Mother Meadows! Mother Meadows!”“Well, what now?” said a shrill female voice from the interior.“A shilling’s worth of brandy,” said Bill, and the coin he threw rattled down the steps.The liquor was brought to the chaise-cart by a boy, with a head of hair resembling strongly one of the now popular patent chimney sweeping apparatus.Bill took his half to a nicety, and handed the remainder to his companion, who then bumped the little pewter measure upon the boy’s head till his eyes flashed fire.Bill whistled to the horse, and with loud laughter, the two ruffians galloped up the Hampstead-road, which was then as innocent of “Cottages of Gentility” as is the Lake of Windermere.Up the hill they went with but slightly lessened speed, nor stopped till they were quite clear of all the little suburban houses that here and there dotted the road, and within about half a mile of the village of Hampstead itself. They then turned down Haverstock Hill, which was quite free from buildings, and by a route which avoided the village, they came upon the verge of the heath.“I think this will do,” remarked Bill.“I think so too,” said the other. “How precious dark it is, to be sure.”“You may say that. I’m blowed if I can see the horse’s head. Woa! Woa!”They both now alighted, and led the horse towards a thick hedge, skirting a plantation, near the large house lately occupied by Lady Byron. Then Bill let down the tail-board of the cart, and laying hold of Jacob Gray by the heels, he dragged him out, and letting his head come with a hard bump against the ground, which was by no means likely to improve his faculties.They then pushed him along with their feet, till he lay completely under the hedge, and could not come to any harm from a chance vehicle or horseman.“Well,” remarked Bill, “I think we have done that job handsomely.”“Uncommon,” replied his companion; “I’d give something to see his stare when he wakes up to-morrow.”“He will look about him a bit, and then, when he finds his money gone, won’t he put up prayers for us in that blessed little old church, as is now striking two.”Hampstead church was striking two as he spoke, and the echo of the sounds came sweetly and solemnly upon the night air.Bill whistled to the horse, and, at a rapid pace, the thieves took the road homewards again.
Jacob Gray and His Kind Friends.—The Plunder.—Thieves’ Morality.—The Drive to Hampstead.
WhenJacob Gray fell upon the floor in a state of utter insensibility in consequence of the powerful narcotic drug infused into his drink by his two kind and considerate friends, those two gentlemen looked on with the utmost composure for a few moments, and then Bill remarked in a careless voice,—
“I think he’ll do now, Moggs?”
“In course,” responded the other, withdrawing the pipe from his mouth, and knocking out the ashes very deliberately upon the hob of the grate.
“He’s precious green,” remarked Bill.
“Very,” said Mr. Moggs.
“Doesn’t you know who he is?”
“I hasn’t the slightest idea. Never clapped eyes on the fellow in my life before, but to my mind he’s a new hand as has been and done something strong in the murder line for an ample consideration.”
“Very likely—what’s the caper concerning him?”
“Honour, Bill—honour.”
“In course.”
“Vun o’ the rules is, that if a regular out-and-out prig or cracksman comes to vun o’ us, and says, ‘I’m in trouble—the runners are hard on me. Guv us a share.’ Why, then we shares the swag all round equal.”
“Spoke like a oracle.”
“Very good. Another o’ the rules is, ‘If the prig aforesaid,’ as the lawyers say, ‘gammon us, or tries all for to gammon us, as to the exact waley o’ the swag, we takes it all.’”
“Never vos a truer vord spoke,” responded Bill, with a look of intense admiration at his companion.
“Well, if so be as this fellow has but what he said, two hundred, we takes one, and leaves him one.”
“That’s the way.”
“But if so be as he has more we takes it all in course; and I’ll wager my blessed nose off my face that he has a precious sight more.”
Bill nodded knowingly.
“Well then,” continued Mr. Moggs, “in either case we gets the shay-cart, and takes him somewhere far enough off.”
Bill nodded again, and then taking from his pocket a large clasped knife, he knelt down by the side of Gray, and with a neatness and dexterity that were evidently the result of practice, he ripped open every one of his pockets, and in a few brief moments Jacob Gray was despoiled of every guinea of that sum of money he had gone through so much pain, suffering, and crime, to procure.
The sum when collected from all his pockets, was in notes and gold so much larger than the thieves had any idea of finding, that when they had it fairly lying before them on the table, they looked at each other for some moments in mute surprise.
“Bill,” cried the other, “this is a regular set up, it is. I’m blowed if we maydent and must retire from business with all this.”
“Don’t be proud,” said Bill. “You always was ambitious. Take it easy, can’t you. This card will be uncommonly useful. How many a poor fellow has been scragged at the tree for want of a few pounds over the blood money, to give a officer as had a warrant agin him. Tom, what I propose is, for us to take a cool hundred or so only, out o’ all this here, and lay the remainder by for bad times.”
“Bill,” remarked the other, after a pause of intense thought, “you should have been Lord Chancellor, that’s what you should! We’ll do it, my boy. Forty pounds is the blood money for hanging a poor fellow, and it’s very well known a chap never will get taken by the officers so long as he can make it guineas to let him go, except we comes across that d—d Sir Francis Hartleton, and he wouldn’t let a chap go for nothink or the whole world, he wouldn’t. What business has a beak to be poking as he does, instead of sitting quiet in his arm-chair, and leaving the business to be settled ’atween such as us and the receivers? It’ an iniquity, and no good can come of it.”
“Very true,” said Bill. “You hide the money somewheres, while I go and get the cart, for we must start this chap somewhere afore daylight.”
“Bill,” said the other, “you wouldn’t like to cut his throat?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, well. I only mention it. I’m afraid he’s a sneak, but let him do his worst. Get the chaise-cart, and bring it round to the corner by Jem Medbourn’s.”
Bill nodded, and went to execute his errand, and during his absence, the other carefully concealed the money beneath the floor of the room, excepting about two hundred pounds, which he reserved for himself and companion. Then lighting his pipe, he again sat down very composedly by the fire-side.
“Well, well,” he said suddenly, as if he had arrived at some mental conclusion that he could not help, and yet did not like. “Bill may have it his own way, but I would never have let that chap,” nodding at Gray, “have a chance o’ being venomous. He’s cut out for a sneaking lump o’ evidence against others he is, and I shouldn’t a bit wonder if he gets into trouble himself, but he speaks agin us about the money just out o’ a nasty bit o’ revenge.”
He then resumed his smoking as if he had been reasoning upon some very common place affair indeed, and in about ten minutes more Bill made his appearance, saying,—
“It’s all right—they have guved up the search for to-night, and we shall get on famously.”
“Where do you mean to take him?” said he, who had suggested the notion of cutting Gray’s throat.
“I should say somewhere a little way out of town, and shoot him out o’ the cart into some blessed verdant spot,” replied Bill. “He’s rather a queer one, himself, so he’ll find as he’s all right, when he wakes up and finds as he’s amusing the butterflies and daisies.”
“I’m blessed if you ain’t a out and out good un,” replied the other.
“Supposes then,” suggested Bill, “we takes him up to Hampstead. It’s an odd little out o’ the way place enough.”
“Very good,” said the other. “You are quite sure there’s nobody about?”
“Quite.”
“Come along, then.”
As he spoke the man stooped, and lifted Jacob Gray from the ground with as much ease as if he had been an infant, and followed his comrade down stairs with his burthen, which seemed in no way to distress him.
The court they passed out into was one of those kind which now are exceedingly rare in London, but which the wisdom of our ancestors took good care to make very common and infest the town with. At the period of our tale there was an immense wen, as it might be termed, of various pestiferous courts at the back of the Strand, where thieves and vagabonds of all kinds lived in a sort of community of their own, quite undisturbed by the authorities, who then could boast of very little authority indeed. Another mass of such courts was to be found where Regent-street now stands, and the vicinity; another at the bottom of St. Martin’s-lane, and another close to old Fleet-market, so that the city of London was as well provided with haunts of blackguardism and vice as the mouth of the Thames is with mud banks.
Along the narrow court in which was Bill’s mansion, the confederates pursued their way until they came to what any stranger would have supposed a mere doorway, but which was in reality an entrance to another court; into this they dived, and after proceeding for a small distance ascended a flight of wooden steps, at the bottom of which stood a dirty, mean chaise-cart.
Into this vehicle, without the least ceremony or consideration for what bruises he might receive, Jacob Gray was flung. There was nothing at the bottom of the cart but some littered straw, upon which he laid more like a dead body than anything living and breathing.
The two men then climbed into the frail and crazy vehicle, and Bill taking the reins gave a shrill whistle, which the horse seemed perfectly to understand as a signal to go on, for he started immediately at a smart trot.
There were no policemen then promenading the streets, who might have looked with an eye of suspicion upon the proceedings of Bill and his comrade, and the lazy watchmen having just signally exerted themselves by squalling out the hour, with the supplementary information that it was a cold night, betook themselves again to their watchboxes, leaving the community over whose lives and property they were supposed, by a fiction which lasted many years, to watch, to the care of Providence and the mercy of thieves and housebreakers.
The chaise-cart rattled and bounded along through divers very intricate lanes and bye-streets, until at length it emerged into the Strand, near Arundel-street. Then dashing across the wide thoroughfare, it entered a congeries of dirty streets on the other side, and finally emerged in a curious and complicated place close to the British Museum. There were bye-roads across the Pancras-fields, and Bill having dismounted and taken down a bar which impeded his progress, drove across a meadow which now forms part of the ground occupied by that compound of pride, bloated arrogance, and humbug, the London University. Another quarter of an hour passed, and they were rattling up the Hampstead-road, which then had tall tress on either side of it.
Camden Town was then a small village, with not above forty little whitewashed houses in it, with here and there sprinkled a few edifices of somewhat more pretensions, which had been built by well-to-do citizens, who repaired there on a Sunday to see the phenomena of a cabbage growing, and admire the sweet pea blossom as it thrust its pretty leaves in at the windows.
The most famous house of entertainment then in Camden Town, was called the Queen’s Head, and has long been levelled with the dust; it was then even an old-fashioned house, and spoken of as a curiosity. It could boast of but one story, and its projecting sign hung so low that any one riding by quickly, and not aware of it, ran the risk of breaking his own head against the queen’s, with no very agreeable momentum.
The entrance was adorned with oaken carved pillars, to the designs on which a great deal had been added from time to time by bread and cheese knives, rapiers’ penknives, and all sorts of cutting instruments, the door posts of an inn being considered as much public property, and open to defacement, as are wooden seats in Kensington gardens.
To enter the house, you had to descend two steps, which generally at night caused a strange visitor to fall on his nose in the passage, when the hostess would come out, hearing the clatter, and probably a few oaths, and trim a lamp; so that after the mischief was done, you had the pleasure of seeing the steps quite clearly and beautifully.
At this house Bill drew up, and without getting out, called lustily,—“Mother Meadows! Mother Meadows!”
“Well, what now?” said a shrill female voice from the interior.
“A shilling’s worth of brandy,” said Bill, and the coin he threw rattled down the steps.
The liquor was brought to the chaise-cart by a boy, with a head of hair resembling strongly one of the now popular patent chimney sweeping apparatus.
Bill took his half to a nicety, and handed the remainder to his companion, who then bumped the little pewter measure upon the boy’s head till his eyes flashed fire.
Bill whistled to the horse, and with loud laughter, the two ruffians galloped up the Hampstead-road, which was then as innocent of “Cottages of Gentility” as is the Lake of Windermere.
Up the hill they went with but slightly lessened speed, nor stopped till they were quite clear of all the little suburban houses that here and there dotted the road, and within about half a mile of the village of Hampstead itself. They then turned down Haverstock Hill, which was quite free from buildings, and by a route which avoided the village, they came upon the verge of the heath.
“I think this will do,” remarked Bill.
“I think so too,” said the other. “How precious dark it is, to be sure.”
“You may say that. I’m blowed if I can see the horse’s head. Woa! Woa!”
They both now alighted, and led the horse towards a thick hedge, skirting a plantation, near the large house lately occupied by Lady Byron. Then Bill let down the tail-board of the cart, and laying hold of Jacob Gray by the heels, he dragged him out, and letting his head come with a hard bump against the ground, which was by no means likely to improve his faculties.
They then pushed him along with their feet, till he lay completely under the hedge, and could not come to any harm from a chance vehicle or horseman.
“Well,” remarked Bill, “I think we have done that job handsomely.”
“Uncommon,” replied his companion; “I’d give something to see his stare when he wakes up to-morrow.”
“He will look about him a bit, and then, when he finds his money gone, won’t he put up prayers for us in that blessed little old church, as is now striking two.”
Hampstead church was striking two as he spoke, and the echo of the sounds came sweetly and solemnly upon the night air.
Bill whistled to the horse, and, at a rapid pace, the thieves took the road homewards again.
CHAPTER LX.Ada at Sir Francis Hartleton’s.—The Philosophy of a Young Heart.—A Confession.—The Pleasure of Sympathy.Whatpen shall describe the happiness that gleamed now in the heart of Ada as she sat with Sir Francis Hartleton’s young wife on the morning after her introduction to her, in a neat and prettily-arranged room, overlooking the park.The air was fresh and balmy—the birds were flitting past the windows, and filled the atmosphere with music. Crowds of gaily-dressed persons were idly sauntering among the trees; enlivening strains of martial music came wafted to her ears as the guard was changed at the Palace. The perfume of flowers, the kind words of Lady Hartleton, and kinder looks—the harmony of the household—the gay laughter from children who were chasing each other in a neighbouring garden, and last, though greatest of all, the consciousness of freedom from Jacob Gray, so filled the heart of Ada with delight, that she suddenly threw herself into the arms of Lady Hartleton, and with a flood of tears, said,—“Oh, I am too happy! How can I by a life’s long duration ever repay you a little of the joys you have filled my heart with?”“My dear Ada,” replied Lady Hartleton, “you must not talk so. What you are now enjoying, and for which you are so thankful, is no more, and probably much less than what you ought always to have enjoyed. ’Tis the contrast of this and what you have suffered which makes you overlook all the disadvantages and fancy that to mix with the world, and enjoy its routine of existence, must he unalloyed happiness.”“Can any of those be unhappy?” said Ada, pointing to the gay throngs in the park.“Alas! my dear,” said Lady Hartleton, “how very few of them are happy.”“Indeed, madam?”“Aye, indeed, Ada. Our joys and our sorrows are all comparative. You, in your pure innocence, my dear Ada, have yet to learn how many an aching heart is hidden by wreathed smiles.”“’Tis very strange,” said Ada, musingly. “’Tis very strange that we should be unhappy, and the world so beautiful. To live—to have freedom and liberty—to go wherever the wayward fancy leads me, seem to me a great enjoyment. The birds—the sunshine—the flowers—ay, each blade of grass trembling and glistening with its weight of morning dew, is to me a source of delightful contemplation—I am sure all might be happy, the green fields and the sunny sky are so very beautiful.”“There are evils, Ada.”“Yes—sickness, pain, the loss of those we love, are all evils,” said Ada. “But then we have a thousand consolations even from them, in the ever fresh and never dying beauties of nature around us.”“Ada, with your feelings, death, pain, and sickness of ourselves, of those we loves may well appear the greatest evils of existence. Yet strange as it may seem to you, such is the perversity of human nature, that these are the very things that affect it least.”“You surprise me.”“And well I may. The cares, the anxieties, the awful horrors of existence to the many, arise from their artificial desires, and the mad riot of their own bad passions. Avarice affects some—ambition, and the love of power, others; and many who could, without a pang, see rent the natural ties of love and kindred, will lay violent hands upon their own lives, if they fail in some mad effort of their own wild passions.”“Oh,” cried Ada, “I think that I could be so happy without power—without wealth—my own ambition is to be surrounded by kind and loving hearts, and happy faces—tongues that knew no guile, and breasts that harboured no suspicion. Surely then, enough of variety might be found, in watching the wonders of the changing seasons—enough of joy in marking the many charms which He who made us all, has cast around us for our pleasure.”“You, my dear Ada, have the elements of happiness in your heart; but now that we are alone, have you sufficient confidence in me, to tell me at length all your history?”“Confidence?” said Ada. “Oh, yes; and in whom could I have confidence, if not in you?”“Then sit here by me, and tell me all. We will be mutually confidential, Ada, and have no secrets but in common. Now tell me, is your happinesss quite perfect? Have you no secret yearning of the heart yet ungratified, Ada?”“My happiness,” said Ada, “is perfect with hope—a hope that must surely ripen into a dear reality.”“Then you have a hope—a wish that lives upon hope—an expectation yet ungratified, Ada?”“Madam,” said Ada, gazing without the least timidity into the eyes of Lady Hartleton, “when I was quite friendless and oppressed, there was one who loved me—when no other human heart spoke a word of consolation to me, there was one that beat for me, and bade its owner whisper to me words of dearer hope and joy, than ever before had lingered in my ears. Wonder not then, that even now, when I have so much to be thankful and grateful for, my heart yearns for him to share its new born joy.”“And his name?” said Lady Hartleton.“Is Albert Seyton,” said Ada, with a sigh.“Is he handsome, Ada?”“I love him,” replied Ada, emphatically.“Maidens seldom avow their preferences so very boldly,” said Lady Hartleton, with a smile.“They who have felt as I have felt,” said Ada, “the pangs of solitude and the horrors of a persecution, surely never paralleled, would learn to set a high value on the heart that loved them in their misery, and to cherish as something holy, the words of comfort, hope, and kindness, that were breathed to them in their despair. You wonder that I can avow without a blush my heart’s fond love for Albert Seyton. Oh, lady, it has been the only light that shone upon me through years of gloom. Can you wonder, then, that I thought it beautiful—I am as one who had been confined for many, many years, in a dungeon. I read the legend in a book that Albert lent to me. For many years, then, this poor fated being had not seen the light of day—had heard nothing but the harsh grating of his dungeon door—the hideous rattle of his chains, until at last one day there came struggling like a sunbeam upon his soul, a strain of music. ’Twas a common air, and played unskilfully, but to him it was indeed divine.”“The prisoner lived to bid adieu to his dungeon, and he came abroad into the great world. He heard music in its excellence—music that seemed borrowed from Heaven, and he praised; admired; applauded it. But one day, some wandering minstrel, with a careless hand, struck up from a rude viol the strain that in his dungeon had so sweetly greeted him. Oh, how his heart bounded, like a bird, within his breast—how a joy unequalled danced through his brain. He wept, he sobbed aloud in his happiness. What music greeted his rapt senses like that! He hung upon the minstrel’s neck, and his prayer was—‘Oh, stay ever near me, and when I am sad or weary, play to me that strain that I may thank God for my happiness.’”Ada ceased speaking, and Lady Hartleton caught her to her heart, as she said,—“My dear Ada, I did but speak for the pleasure of hearing you reply to me. I am too richly repaid.”“As that lonely prisoner loved the strain of melody that greeted his dreary solitude,” sobbed Ada, “so let me love him who sought me out when I had none else to love me, and told me how to hope.”“Your pure and noble feelings, Ada,” said Lady Hartleton, much affected, “do you infinite honour. I am proud of you, my dear Ada, and hope to have the second place in your heart.”“You have the first,” said Ada. “I cannot make distinctions between those I love. I open my heart freely to you. There is room, dear lady, for you and Albert both, and for Sir Francis too.”There was a beautiful and earnest simplicity in Ada’s manner that perfectly charmed Lady Hartleton, and she encouraged her to open her heart thoroughly to her; and she was perfectly astonished at the rich store of poetry, beauty, and virtue which lay garnered up in the breast of the persecuted and beautiful girl—stores of feeling, thought, and imagination which required but the sunny influence of kindness to bring forth in all their native purity and beauty.Ada now gave Lady Hartleton an animated description of her whole course of life with Jacob Gray, commencing at her earliest recollection of being with him in various mean lodgings, and coming down through all the exciting and dangerous scenes she had passed to her denunciation of him at Charing Cross.Lady Hartleton listened to her narration with the greatest interest, and when Ada had concluded, she said,—“And you have still no clue, Ada, to your birth?”“None—none. The mysterious paper addressed to your husband by Jacob Gray most probably contained some information, but I fear that is lost for ever.”“A more strange aad eventful history I never heard,” remarked Lady Hartleton. “I have very sanguine hopes that the activity and exhaustless energy of Sir Francis will soon clear up some of the mysteries that surround you.”“Heaven grant it may be so,” said Ada.“There is one circumstance that must not be lost sight of, as it may afford some clue or corroborative evidence of your birth—that is, the necklace you sold to the Jew.”“It might, indeed,” said Ada, “I was foolish to part with it.”“Should you know the shop again?”“Certainly I should, and the man likewise. My intercourse with the world has been so very slight that I am not confused with a multitude of images and occurrences. Everything that has happened to me, and every one who has ever spoken to me, stand clear and distinct in my memory.”“Then the necklace may be recovered.”“Indeed!”“Without doubt; Sir Francis will get it back for you.”Lady Hartleton rang the bell, and when a servant appeared, she said,—“Is Sir Francis within?”“Yes, my lady,” was the reply. “He has just returned from the Secretary of State’s office.”“Ask him to come here.”The servant bowed and retired, and in a very few minutes, Sir Francis Hartleton entered the room with a smile.Ada arose and welcomed him with evident pleasure, and he said,—“Well, Ada, are you happy here?”“Too happy, sir,” she said, with emotion. “It requires all my reason to convince me it is real.”Lady Hartleton then related to her husband the story of the necklace, to which he listened with grave attention.At its conclusion, he said,—“I need not trouble Ada to point out the shop. The description is sufficient. The Jew who keeps it is well known to the police, I have no doubt of getting back the necklace if it be still in this country. It may be an important link in the chain of evidence concerning Ada’s birth.”“Have you any thought of who I am?” asked Ada, with eagerness.“I have,” said Sir Francis, “but believe and trust me when I tell you it is for your own peace of mind and happiness that I would rather tell you nothing until I can tell you something which has a firmer basis than conjecture.”“You are right,” said Ada; “I should but be giving my imagination play, and torturing my mind with perhaps futile fears, and too sanguine hopes.”“Hope all and fear nothing,” said Sir Francis. “The mere adventitious circumstances of your birth need not affect your happiness, Ada. If you can make this a comfortable home, we shall be much delighted.”“I cannot speak to you as I ought,” replied Ada, “time may show my deep gratitude, but never can I hope to repay you.”“And appreciation of kindness, Ada,” said the magistrate, “is its dearest reward. I will now leave you for a little time to call upon your very doubtful friend the Jew.”“He who bought my necklace. In sooth I know little of money, but from what I have read, it should be worth a much larger sum. I heard Gray call it real pearl.”“No doubt—no doubt—I will go myself. You will see me again very soon, and it will go hard, but I will make the hoary robber disgorge his ill-gotten prey.”So saying, Sir Francis bade Ada and his wife a temporary adieu, and hurried to the shop of the Jew who had taken such an unworthy advantage of Ada’s want of knowledge of the value of a really costly pearl necklace.
Ada at Sir Francis Hartleton’s.—The Philosophy of a Young Heart.—A Confession.—The Pleasure of Sympathy.
Whatpen shall describe the happiness that gleamed now in the heart of Ada as she sat with Sir Francis Hartleton’s young wife on the morning after her introduction to her, in a neat and prettily-arranged room, overlooking the park.
The air was fresh and balmy—the birds were flitting past the windows, and filled the atmosphere with music. Crowds of gaily-dressed persons were idly sauntering among the trees; enlivening strains of martial music came wafted to her ears as the guard was changed at the Palace. The perfume of flowers, the kind words of Lady Hartleton, and kinder looks—the harmony of the household—the gay laughter from children who were chasing each other in a neighbouring garden, and last, though greatest of all, the consciousness of freedom from Jacob Gray, so filled the heart of Ada with delight, that she suddenly threw herself into the arms of Lady Hartleton, and with a flood of tears, said,—
“Oh, I am too happy! How can I by a life’s long duration ever repay you a little of the joys you have filled my heart with?”
“My dear Ada,” replied Lady Hartleton, “you must not talk so. What you are now enjoying, and for which you are so thankful, is no more, and probably much less than what you ought always to have enjoyed. ’Tis the contrast of this and what you have suffered which makes you overlook all the disadvantages and fancy that to mix with the world, and enjoy its routine of existence, must he unalloyed happiness.”
“Can any of those be unhappy?” said Ada, pointing to the gay throngs in the park.
“Alas! my dear,” said Lady Hartleton, “how very few of them are happy.”
“Indeed, madam?”
“Aye, indeed, Ada. Our joys and our sorrows are all comparative. You, in your pure innocence, my dear Ada, have yet to learn how many an aching heart is hidden by wreathed smiles.”
“’Tis very strange,” said Ada, musingly. “’Tis very strange that we should be unhappy, and the world so beautiful. To live—to have freedom and liberty—to go wherever the wayward fancy leads me, seem to me a great enjoyment. The birds—the sunshine—the flowers—ay, each blade of grass trembling and glistening with its weight of morning dew, is to me a source of delightful contemplation—I am sure all might be happy, the green fields and the sunny sky are so very beautiful.”
“There are evils, Ada.”
“Yes—sickness, pain, the loss of those we love, are all evils,” said Ada. “But then we have a thousand consolations even from them, in the ever fresh and never dying beauties of nature around us.”
“Ada, with your feelings, death, pain, and sickness of ourselves, of those we loves may well appear the greatest evils of existence. Yet strange as it may seem to you, such is the perversity of human nature, that these are the very things that affect it least.”
“You surprise me.”
“And well I may. The cares, the anxieties, the awful horrors of existence to the many, arise from their artificial desires, and the mad riot of their own bad passions. Avarice affects some—ambition, and the love of power, others; and many who could, without a pang, see rent the natural ties of love and kindred, will lay violent hands upon their own lives, if they fail in some mad effort of their own wild passions.”
“Oh,” cried Ada, “I think that I could be so happy without power—without wealth—my own ambition is to be surrounded by kind and loving hearts, and happy faces—tongues that knew no guile, and breasts that harboured no suspicion. Surely then, enough of variety might be found, in watching the wonders of the changing seasons—enough of joy in marking the many charms which He who made us all, has cast around us for our pleasure.”
“You, my dear Ada, have the elements of happiness in your heart; but now that we are alone, have you sufficient confidence in me, to tell me at length all your history?”
“Confidence?” said Ada. “Oh, yes; and in whom could I have confidence, if not in you?”
“Then sit here by me, and tell me all. We will be mutually confidential, Ada, and have no secrets but in common. Now tell me, is your happinesss quite perfect? Have you no secret yearning of the heart yet ungratified, Ada?”
“My happiness,” said Ada, “is perfect with hope—a hope that must surely ripen into a dear reality.”
“Then you have a hope—a wish that lives upon hope—an expectation yet ungratified, Ada?”
“Madam,” said Ada, gazing without the least timidity into the eyes of Lady Hartleton, “when I was quite friendless and oppressed, there was one who loved me—when no other human heart spoke a word of consolation to me, there was one that beat for me, and bade its owner whisper to me words of dearer hope and joy, than ever before had lingered in my ears. Wonder not then, that even now, when I have so much to be thankful and grateful for, my heart yearns for him to share its new born joy.”
“And his name?” said Lady Hartleton.
“Is Albert Seyton,” said Ada, with a sigh.
“Is he handsome, Ada?”
“I love him,” replied Ada, emphatically.
“Maidens seldom avow their preferences so very boldly,” said Lady Hartleton, with a smile.
“They who have felt as I have felt,” said Ada, “the pangs of solitude and the horrors of a persecution, surely never paralleled, would learn to set a high value on the heart that loved them in their misery, and to cherish as something holy, the words of comfort, hope, and kindness, that were breathed to them in their despair. You wonder that I can avow without a blush my heart’s fond love for Albert Seyton. Oh, lady, it has been the only light that shone upon me through years of gloom. Can you wonder, then, that I thought it beautiful—I am as one who had been confined for many, many years, in a dungeon. I read the legend in a book that Albert lent to me. For many years, then, this poor fated being had not seen the light of day—had heard nothing but the harsh grating of his dungeon door—the hideous rattle of his chains, until at last one day there came struggling like a sunbeam upon his soul, a strain of music. ’Twas a common air, and played unskilfully, but to him it was indeed divine.”
“The prisoner lived to bid adieu to his dungeon, and he came abroad into the great world. He heard music in its excellence—music that seemed borrowed from Heaven, and he praised; admired; applauded it. But one day, some wandering minstrel, with a careless hand, struck up from a rude viol the strain that in his dungeon had so sweetly greeted him. Oh, how his heart bounded, like a bird, within his breast—how a joy unequalled danced through his brain. He wept, he sobbed aloud in his happiness. What music greeted his rapt senses like that! He hung upon the minstrel’s neck, and his prayer was—‘Oh, stay ever near me, and when I am sad or weary, play to me that strain that I may thank God for my happiness.’”
Ada ceased speaking, and Lady Hartleton caught her to her heart, as she said,—
“My dear Ada, I did but speak for the pleasure of hearing you reply to me. I am too richly repaid.”
“As that lonely prisoner loved the strain of melody that greeted his dreary solitude,” sobbed Ada, “so let me love him who sought me out when I had none else to love me, and told me how to hope.”
“Your pure and noble feelings, Ada,” said Lady Hartleton, much affected, “do you infinite honour. I am proud of you, my dear Ada, and hope to have the second place in your heart.”
“You have the first,” said Ada. “I cannot make distinctions between those I love. I open my heart freely to you. There is room, dear lady, for you and Albert both, and for Sir Francis too.”
There was a beautiful and earnest simplicity in Ada’s manner that perfectly charmed Lady Hartleton, and she encouraged her to open her heart thoroughly to her; and she was perfectly astonished at the rich store of poetry, beauty, and virtue which lay garnered up in the breast of the persecuted and beautiful girl—stores of feeling, thought, and imagination which required but the sunny influence of kindness to bring forth in all their native purity and beauty.
Ada now gave Lady Hartleton an animated description of her whole course of life with Jacob Gray, commencing at her earliest recollection of being with him in various mean lodgings, and coming down through all the exciting and dangerous scenes she had passed to her denunciation of him at Charing Cross.
Lady Hartleton listened to her narration with the greatest interest, and when Ada had concluded, she said,—
“And you have still no clue, Ada, to your birth?”
“None—none. The mysterious paper addressed to your husband by Jacob Gray most probably contained some information, but I fear that is lost for ever.”
“A more strange aad eventful history I never heard,” remarked Lady Hartleton. “I have very sanguine hopes that the activity and exhaustless energy of Sir Francis will soon clear up some of the mysteries that surround you.”
“Heaven grant it may be so,” said Ada.
“There is one circumstance that must not be lost sight of, as it may afford some clue or corroborative evidence of your birth—that is, the necklace you sold to the Jew.”
“It might, indeed,” said Ada, “I was foolish to part with it.”
“Should you know the shop again?”
“Certainly I should, and the man likewise. My intercourse with the world has been so very slight that I am not confused with a multitude of images and occurrences. Everything that has happened to me, and every one who has ever spoken to me, stand clear and distinct in my memory.”
“Then the necklace may be recovered.”
“Indeed!”
“Without doubt; Sir Francis will get it back for you.”
Lady Hartleton rang the bell, and when a servant appeared, she said,—
“Is Sir Francis within?”
“Yes, my lady,” was the reply. “He has just returned from the Secretary of State’s office.”
“Ask him to come here.”
The servant bowed and retired, and in a very few minutes, Sir Francis Hartleton entered the room with a smile.
Ada arose and welcomed him with evident pleasure, and he said,—
“Well, Ada, are you happy here?”
“Too happy, sir,” she said, with emotion. “It requires all my reason to convince me it is real.”
Lady Hartleton then related to her husband the story of the necklace, to which he listened with grave attention.
At its conclusion, he said,—
“I need not trouble Ada to point out the shop. The description is sufficient. The Jew who keeps it is well known to the police, I have no doubt of getting back the necklace if it be still in this country. It may be an important link in the chain of evidence concerning Ada’s birth.”
“Have you any thought of who I am?” asked Ada, with eagerness.
“I have,” said Sir Francis, “but believe and trust me when I tell you it is for your own peace of mind and happiness that I would rather tell you nothing until I can tell you something which has a firmer basis than conjecture.”
“You are right,” said Ada; “I should but be giving my imagination play, and torturing my mind with perhaps futile fears, and too sanguine hopes.”
“Hope all and fear nothing,” said Sir Francis. “The mere adventitious circumstances of your birth need not affect your happiness, Ada. If you can make this a comfortable home, we shall be much delighted.”
“I cannot speak to you as I ought,” replied Ada, “time may show my deep gratitude, but never can I hope to repay you.”
“And appreciation of kindness, Ada,” said the magistrate, “is its dearest reward. I will now leave you for a little time to call upon your very doubtful friend the Jew.”
“He who bought my necklace. In sooth I know little of money, but from what I have read, it should be worth a much larger sum. I heard Gray call it real pearl.”
“No doubt—no doubt—I will go myself. You will see me again very soon, and it will go hard, but I will make the hoary robber disgorge his ill-gotten prey.”
So saying, Sir Francis bade Ada and his wife a temporary adieu, and hurried to the shop of the Jew who had taken such an unworthy advantage of Ada’s want of knowledge of the value of a really costly pearl necklace.