CHAPTER XXV.The Escape.—Taunts.—The Confession.—Learmont’s Rage and Discomfiture.But fewmoments remained to Jacob Gray for sad or exultant communion with his own thoughts. A heavy blow from without dashed the door open, and Learmont, with a drawn sword in his hand, closely followed by Britton, carrying a lighted link, entered the room.“Well met; Jacob Gray,” cried Learmont. “Your cunning is now at fault. You are scarcely a match for Squire Learmont, who you thought you had so safely in your toils.”“Ho! Ho!” sneered Britton, holding the torch close to the pale, agitated face of Gray. “So we have unearthed the fox at last. Cunning—clever Master Jacob Gray—amazingly artful Master Gray.”“You have triumphed but for a short time,” added Learmont. “Your own cunning has been your destruction, Jacob Gray, your life is not now worth five minutes’ purchase.”“Taunt on,” said Gray, “I know not what you mean or what you want.”“Well you know,” cried Learmont, angrily, “you had a double hold upon my fears, Jacob Gray, but that double hold depended upon a slender foundation. So long as you could keep your hiding-place secret you were safe, but no longer.”“I—I still do not understand you,” said Gray, who was anxious to give Ada some time to complete the change he did not doubt she was making in her apparel.“Ha! Ha!” laughed Learmont. “It were a thousand pities you should die in ignorance of what had been the result of your extreme cleverness, Jacob Gray. Suppose me, as I shall be now, possessed of the boy, and the confession, which of course, must be somewhere handy, else it is objectless.”“Well—well,” said Gray, trembling, “suppose all that.”“Ho! Ho! Ho!” chuckled the smith. “Upon my soul that’s good, cunning Jacob—clever, artful, deep-designing Jacob. Why, supposing all that we mean to cut your throat.”“We waste time,” cried Learmont. “Where is the boy?”“Ay, the boy, the cherub, the boy!” cried Britton.“He is not here,” said Gray, with as much boldness as he could assume.Learmont gave a smile of contempt as he said,—“Indeed, he is not here, and yet Jacob Gray is here. That is very probable. Now I tell you he is here, and what is more, he cannot escape. The back of the house is guarded by persons who have orders to cut down whoever attempts to leave it that way. Britton and I came in at the front. We have well searched the lower rooms, so you see we have taken our measures almost as cleverly as Jacob Gray took his when he came to Learmont to whisper in his ear that the boy still lived!”“Ho! Ho! Ho!” roared the smith, patting Gray on the back. “How feel you, Master Jacob? Does your blood dance merrily through your veins, or have you still some stroke of cunning un-played off that shall put us yet to shame? By hell, if you have, Jacob Gray, I’ll—I’ll give you my head!”“Agreed,” said Gray.“Give me the light,” cried Learmont.He snatched the link from the hand of Britton, and made two strides towards the inner room.Gray with difficulty suppressed a scream of alarm, but before Learmont could lay hand on the lock, Ada flung the door open, and walked composedly forth.She was attired in a plain, but neat girl’s dress. A small hooded cloak was clasped round her neck; and now that she was attired in the proper costume of her sex, she looked several years older, and the change in her general appearance was so great that even Jacob Gray would scarcely have recognised her.She showed no nervousness, no haste, no sign of trepidation as she stepped from the room, and her voice was soft, and musical, and quite calm as she paused and said,—“Good evening, Mr. Gray. I have put all Harry’s things in order.”Then curtseying to Learmont, who stood almost directly in her way, she passed across the outer room, and disappeared through the broken doorway.For several minutes not a word was spoken by either of the three men there assembled. Oh, what precious minutes they were to Jacob Gray!Learmont then, without a word, entered the inner room. In a few moments he returned with his face distorted by passion, and placing his sword’s point against the throat of Gray, he said,—“Where is the boy?”“Not here—on my soul not here!” cried Gray, trembling with fear that Learmont’s passion might get the better of his prudence, and that by one thrust of his weapon he might shed his life blood.“Where is he?”“Where is he?” echoed Gray, to whom each moment gained for Ada thoroughly to escape, was equal to a drop of blood to his heart.“Answer me!” shrieked Learmont.“I repeat the boy is not here.”“One moment more I give you,” added Learmont, “to declare to me where the boy is, or you die, as sure as—as that I hate you from my soul!”“Pause yet a moment, Squire Learmont,” sneered Gray. “If my life has hitherto been valuable, and my safety precious to you, they are doubly so now.”“No, Jacob Gray,” cried Learmont, “that tale will do no more. We have hunted you down. It is not probable that the cautious Jacob Gray has trusted the boy we seek with the secret of his birth.”“You are right,” said Gray, “I have not.”“And you are candid,” sneered Learmont.“Ho! Ho!” laughed Britton. “Poor Jacob Gray has forgotten even to lie—”“Exactly,” snarled Gray, “because the truth will do as well. That is a piece of philosophy which the muddled brains of savage Britton would never have conceived.”Britton made a furious rush at Gray, but the latter stepped behind Learmont, saying,—“It is still the interest of Squire Learmont to protect Jacob Gray.”“Hold, Britton,” cried Learmont. “Stay your arm yet a moment. We—we will hear him.”“You need not be alarmed, squire,” said Gray. “Our relative positions are still the same.”“How mean you? Your retreat is discovered.”“True, but—”“And the confession which has hitherto ensured your safety, must be here, and easily found, else it were valueless, and would defeat its object.”“Indeed!” said Gray. “Now, hear me. The boy is not here! The confession is in his hands.”Learmont trembled as he slowly dropped the point of his sword, and fixed his eyes upon Jacob Gray’s countenance, as if he would read his very soul.“Go on, go on,” he said.“I repeat, the boy has the confession. He knows not what it is. It is sealed.”“Well. Go—go—on.”“But he has express instructions, which, be assured, he will fulfil to the letter; that if he and I do not meet at an appointed spot, by an appointed hour, he is to hasten to Sir Francis Hartleton, and deliver the packet. You understand my position, Squire Learmont? And even your dull-pated Britton may now see the expediency of being careful of your dear friend, Jacob Gray. Fancy any delay being thrown in my way now, which should prevent me from meeting the boy. How disagreeable it would be to me to see hung, kind Britton, while I had my free pardon in my pocket for being evidence against you. Do you understand?”There was a most remarkable difference in the expression of the smith’s countenance and that of Learmont’s, while Gray was speaking. The former became nearly purple with suppressed rage, while the squire turned of an ashy, ghastly paleness, and seemed scarcely equal to the exertion of standing erect.“Gray—Jacob Gray,” he gasped. “You do not—you cannot mean that—that—”“That what, squire?” said Gray. “Why do you hesitate? I will answer any question; candidly.”“Have you,” continued Learmont, “indeed set all our lives in such a chance as your meeting a boy at an appointed hour in this great city?”“I have,” answered Gray; “or rather I should say you have.”“Yes, Squire Learmont, you thirst for my blood! You would hunt me to death could you do so with safety to yourself! Beware! I say, and give up the chance!“Learmont attempted to sheath his sword, but his hand trembled so excessively, that it was several moments before he could accomplish it. When, however, he had succeeded, he turned to Gray, and said,—“At what hour—are—you to meet the boy?”Gray smiled, as he said,—“Perhaps your next question, sir, may be where I am to meet him?”“I—I merely asked the hour.”“Whatever the appointed hour may be,” said Gray, “be assured I shall not meet him, let the consequences be what they may, until I am assured that you and this angry smith are not dogging my footsteps.”“Let—us—go, Britton,” said Learmont.“Jacob Gray,” said Britton, striding up to him, and grinding his words through his set teeth, “there will come a time for vengeance.”“Exactly,” said Gray, calmly.“An hour will come when I shall have the pleasure, and I would pay dearly for it, of cutting your throat.”“You shall pay dearly for it when you do,” said Gray; “and, in the meantime cunning, clever, extremely artful Master Britton, I bid you good morning.”“Wretch!” cried Britton.“Oh very cunning Britton,” sneered Gray; “amazingly clever, artful, deep Master Britton—Ha! Ha! Ha!”“Now, if I dared!” cried Britton, half drawing a knife from his breast.“But you dare not,” cried Gray.“You are too cunning, far too cunning, clever Britton—Ha! Ha!”“Away! Away!” said Learmont. “Come, Britton, we waste time.”“Ay, and precious time, too,” added Gray, “only Master Britton is so very—so extremely cunning and clever.”“Come, come,” cried Learmont, seizing Britton by the arm.“Nay, do not hurry away,” sneered Gray. “Shall I offer you refreshments? ’Tis some distance to Westminster. Will you go by water, cunning Britton?”Britton’s passion was too great for utterance, and he walked to the door, which he kicked open with a violence that split it from top to bottom.“You will like to hear, Squire Learmont,” said Gray, “that all is right. I will do myself the honour of paying you a visit to-morrow.”Learmont turned at the door, and cast a glance at Gray, that even he quailed under, and then, followed Britton down the staircase.
The Escape.—Taunts.—The Confession.—Learmont’s Rage and Discomfiture.
But fewmoments remained to Jacob Gray for sad or exultant communion with his own thoughts. A heavy blow from without dashed the door open, and Learmont, with a drawn sword in his hand, closely followed by Britton, carrying a lighted link, entered the room.
“Well met; Jacob Gray,” cried Learmont. “Your cunning is now at fault. You are scarcely a match for Squire Learmont, who you thought you had so safely in your toils.”
“Ho! Ho!” sneered Britton, holding the torch close to the pale, agitated face of Gray. “So we have unearthed the fox at last. Cunning—clever Master Jacob Gray—amazingly artful Master Gray.”
“You have triumphed but for a short time,” added Learmont. “Your own cunning has been your destruction, Jacob Gray, your life is not now worth five minutes’ purchase.”
“Taunt on,” said Gray, “I know not what you mean or what you want.”
“Well you know,” cried Learmont, angrily, “you had a double hold upon my fears, Jacob Gray, but that double hold depended upon a slender foundation. So long as you could keep your hiding-place secret you were safe, but no longer.”
“I—I still do not understand you,” said Gray, who was anxious to give Ada some time to complete the change he did not doubt she was making in her apparel.
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Learmont. “It were a thousand pities you should die in ignorance of what had been the result of your extreme cleverness, Jacob Gray. Suppose me, as I shall be now, possessed of the boy, and the confession, which of course, must be somewhere handy, else it is objectless.”
“Well—well,” said Gray, trembling, “suppose all that.”
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” chuckled the smith. “Upon my soul that’s good, cunning Jacob—clever, artful, deep-designing Jacob. Why, supposing all that we mean to cut your throat.”
“We waste time,” cried Learmont. “Where is the boy?”
“Ay, the boy, the cherub, the boy!” cried Britton.
“He is not here,” said Gray, with as much boldness as he could assume.
Learmont gave a smile of contempt as he said,—
“Indeed, he is not here, and yet Jacob Gray is here. That is very probable. Now I tell you he is here, and what is more, he cannot escape. The back of the house is guarded by persons who have orders to cut down whoever attempts to leave it that way. Britton and I came in at the front. We have well searched the lower rooms, so you see we have taken our measures almost as cleverly as Jacob Gray took his when he came to Learmont to whisper in his ear that the boy still lived!”
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” roared the smith, patting Gray on the back. “How feel you, Master Jacob? Does your blood dance merrily through your veins, or have you still some stroke of cunning un-played off that shall put us yet to shame? By hell, if you have, Jacob Gray, I’ll—I’ll give you my head!”
“Agreed,” said Gray.
“Give me the light,” cried Learmont.
He snatched the link from the hand of Britton, and made two strides towards the inner room.
Gray with difficulty suppressed a scream of alarm, but before Learmont could lay hand on the lock, Ada flung the door open, and walked composedly forth.
She was attired in a plain, but neat girl’s dress. A small hooded cloak was clasped round her neck; and now that she was attired in the proper costume of her sex, she looked several years older, and the change in her general appearance was so great that even Jacob Gray would scarcely have recognised her.
She showed no nervousness, no haste, no sign of trepidation as she stepped from the room, and her voice was soft, and musical, and quite calm as she paused and said,—
“Good evening, Mr. Gray. I have put all Harry’s things in order.”
Then curtseying to Learmont, who stood almost directly in her way, she passed across the outer room, and disappeared through the broken doorway.
For several minutes not a word was spoken by either of the three men there assembled. Oh, what precious minutes they were to Jacob Gray!
Learmont then, without a word, entered the inner room. In a few moments he returned with his face distorted by passion, and placing his sword’s point against the throat of Gray, he said,—
“Where is the boy?”
“Not here—on my soul not here!” cried Gray, trembling with fear that Learmont’s passion might get the better of his prudence, and that by one thrust of his weapon he might shed his life blood.
“Where is he?”
“Where is he?” echoed Gray, to whom each moment gained for Ada thoroughly to escape, was equal to a drop of blood to his heart.
“Answer me!” shrieked Learmont.
“I repeat the boy is not here.”
“One moment more I give you,” added Learmont, “to declare to me where the boy is, or you die, as sure as—as that I hate you from my soul!”
“Pause yet a moment, Squire Learmont,” sneered Gray. “If my life has hitherto been valuable, and my safety precious to you, they are doubly so now.”
“No, Jacob Gray,” cried Learmont, “that tale will do no more. We have hunted you down. It is not probable that the cautious Jacob Gray has trusted the boy we seek with the secret of his birth.”
“You are right,” said Gray, “I have not.”
“And you are candid,” sneered Learmont.
“Ho! Ho!” laughed Britton. “Poor Jacob Gray has forgotten even to lie—”
“Exactly,” snarled Gray, “because the truth will do as well. That is a piece of philosophy which the muddled brains of savage Britton would never have conceived.”
Britton made a furious rush at Gray, but the latter stepped behind Learmont, saying,—“It is still the interest of Squire Learmont to protect Jacob Gray.”
“Hold, Britton,” cried Learmont. “Stay your arm yet a moment. We—we will hear him.”
“You need not be alarmed, squire,” said Gray. “Our relative positions are still the same.”
“How mean you? Your retreat is discovered.”
“True, but—”
“And the confession which has hitherto ensured your safety, must be here, and easily found, else it were valueless, and would defeat its object.”
“Indeed!” said Gray. “Now, hear me. The boy is not here! The confession is in his hands.”
Learmont trembled as he slowly dropped the point of his sword, and fixed his eyes upon Jacob Gray’s countenance, as if he would read his very soul.
“Go on, go on,” he said.
“I repeat, the boy has the confession. He knows not what it is. It is sealed.”
“Well. Go—go—on.”
“But he has express instructions, which, be assured, he will fulfil to the letter; that if he and I do not meet at an appointed spot, by an appointed hour, he is to hasten to Sir Francis Hartleton, and deliver the packet. You understand my position, Squire Learmont? And even your dull-pated Britton may now see the expediency of being careful of your dear friend, Jacob Gray. Fancy any delay being thrown in my way now, which should prevent me from meeting the boy. How disagreeable it would be to me to see hung, kind Britton, while I had my free pardon in my pocket for being evidence against you. Do you understand?”
There was a most remarkable difference in the expression of the smith’s countenance and that of Learmont’s, while Gray was speaking. The former became nearly purple with suppressed rage, while the squire turned of an ashy, ghastly paleness, and seemed scarcely equal to the exertion of standing erect.
“Gray—Jacob Gray,” he gasped. “You do not—you cannot mean that—that—”
“That what, squire?” said Gray. “Why do you hesitate? I will answer any question; candidly.”
“Have you,” continued Learmont, “indeed set all our lives in such a chance as your meeting a boy at an appointed hour in this great city?”
“I have,” answered Gray; “or rather I should say you have.”
“Yes, Squire Learmont, you thirst for my blood! You would hunt me to death could you do so with safety to yourself! Beware! I say, and give up the chance!“
Learmont attempted to sheath his sword, but his hand trembled so excessively, that it was several moments before he could accomplish it. When, however, he had succeeded, he turned to Gray, and said,—
“At what hour—are—you to meet the boy?”
Gray smiled, as he said,—
“Perhaps your next question, sir, may be where I am to meet him?”
“I—I merely asked the hour.”
“Whatever the appointed hour may be,” said Gray, “be assured I shall not meet him, let the consequences be what they may, until I am assured that you and this angry smith are not dogging my footsteps.”
“Let—us—go, Britton,” said Learmont.
“Jacob Gray,” said Britton, striding up to him, and grinding his words through his set teeth, “there will come a time for vengeance.”
“Exactly,” said Gray, calmly.
“An hour will come when I shall have the pleasure, and I would pay dearly for it, of cutting your throat.”
“You shall pay dearly for it when you do,” said Gray; “and, in the meantime cunning, clever, extremely artful Master Britton, I bid you good morning.”
“Wretch!” cried Britton.
“Oh very cunning Britton,” sneered Gray; “amazingly clever, artful, deep Master Britton—Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Now, if I dared!” cried Britton, half drawing a knife from his breast.
“But you dare not,” cried Gray.
“You are too cunning, far too cunning, clever Britton—Ha! Ha!”
“Away! Away!” said Learmont. “Come, Britton, we waste time.”
“Ay, and precious time, too,” added Gray, “only Master Britton is so very—so extremely cunning and clever.”
“Come, come,” cried Learmont, seizing Britton by the arm.
“Nay, do not hurry away,” sneered Gray. “Shall I offer you refreshments? ’Tis some distance to Westminster. Will you go by water, cunning Britton?”
Britton’s passion was too great for utterance, and he walked to the door, which he kicked open with a violence that split it from top to bottom.
“You will like to hear, Squire Learmont,” said Gray, “that all is right. I will do myself the honour of paying you a visit to-morrow.”
Learmont turned at the door, and cast a glance at Gray, that even he quailed under, and then, followed Britton down the staircase.
CHAPTER XXVI.The Morning.—The Body of the Murdered Man.—The Old Inn.—Jacob’s Reflections.WhenLearmont and the smith had left the house, and Jacob Gray felt that his great and inevitable danger was over, he sunk into a chair, and a fit of trembling came over him that he was many minutes in recovering from.“They are foiled this once,” he muttered; “but they may not be again—’twas a rare chance, a most rare chance, I—I must leave her now. I am hunted—hunted like a wild animal, from den to den. Oh! How they would have rejoiced in my destruction. This is a sad life to lead—and—and if, before they came, I had taken her life, I should even now be lying a stiffened corpse on these boards—yet, what can I do? She is my torment; she will be my destruction!”He then rose, and paced the room for some time with hasty and unequal steps. Suddenly pausing, he trembled again with the same awful intensity that he had done before, and in a hoarse, husky whisper, said,—“What if she come not back? She suspects me. It is time she were here again. Oh! If she should seek protection elsewhere! More danger!—More danger!—Into what a tangled web of horrors am I placed! Can I fly? What money have I? A large sum, but yet not enough. Oh! If Learmont would give me at once a sum of money which would suffice me in a foreign land, and trust my word to go, and if I could trust him to let me live to go. Ah! There it is!—There it is! We cannot trust each other—not for a moment—no, not for a moment.”Jacob Gray muttered these gloomy meditations in a low, anxious tone, and almost at every word he paused to endeavour to detect some token of the return of Ada. None, however, met his ears, and, after two hours of mental agony of mind had thus passed over the head of Jacob Gray, he crept down the staircase, and stood at the door looking anxiously about him by the dim morning light that was beginning, with its cold grey tints, to struggle through the darkness of the sky.“She does not come,” he muttered—“she does not come. What shall I do—whither seek her? Yet—I—I must endeavour to find her.”He now turned his attention to the broken lock of the door, and after some time, succeeded in closing it after him tolerably securely, then searching in the road till he found a piece of chalk, he wrote on the door,—“Wait—J.G.”“Should she return during my absence,” he thought, “she will recognise my writing and initials to wait my return. She is most probably near at hand, waiting for me to search for her.”Casting again a cautious, scrutinising glance around him, Jacob Gray walked slowly down the ruined street, peering into each doorway as he went, with the hope of seeing Ada.His search was unsuccessful. He could see no trace of Ada; and a thousand feelings of alarm and suspicion began to crowd upon his mind. He paused irresolutely at the end of the street, uncertain which way he should shape his course. At last, with a sudden resolution, he walked in the direction of Westminster Bridge.As he neared Lambeth, he observed that the watermen, who plied at the different stairs by the side of the river, seemed particularly engrossed by some subject of importance, for they were congregated together in knots of two, three, and four, discoursing earnestly and vehemently.He approached one, and touching his arm, said,—“What is the matter, friend?”“Murder’s the matter,” replied the man.“Murder!”“Ay, murder. There has been a murder done in the Bishop’s Walk.”“In the Bishop’s Walk?”“Yes; the body was found cold and stiff—the body of a waterman; but we will have justice.”“What was his name?” said Gray.“Sheldon. He plied at the bridge stairs opposite.”“I thank you, friend,” said Gray, as he walked on muttering to himself,—“Now, I’d lay my life this murder is Britton’s doing. Oh, if I could fix him with it—and yet there might be danger. At the gallows he might denounce me—yes, he would. It must have been by means of this man somehow that my retreat was so quickly discovered—yet how, I cannot divine.”He now observed a small public-house, at the door of which was a throng of persons, and pressing forward, he soon learned that there the body of the murdered man lay.Impelled by a curiosity that he could not resist, Gray entered the house, and calling for some liquor, commenced a conversation with the landlord, which somewhat altered his opinion concerning the murderer.“I saw Sheldon,” said the host, “and intend to swear to it solemnly, pass my house at an unusual hour in company with a stranger. I was looking out to see the state of the night when I saw them pass on towards the Bishop’s Walk.”“What kind of man was he with?” said Gray.“A tall man.”“Thin and dark?”“Nay, as for his complexion I can say nothing, for in the dark, you know, all cats are grey.”“True; but you could swear to the man being tall and thin, Master Landlord?”“In faith I could, and your tall, thin men are just what I dislike—bah! They seldom drink much.”“Most true—I thank you. ’Tis a barbarous murder.”“Would you like, sir, to see the corpse?” said the landlord, in an under tone.“The corpse?” echoed Gray.“Ay; he was a fine fellow. You must know that Sir Francis Hartleton has been here—”“The magistrate?”“Yes. He is here, and there, and everywhere; and no sooner did he hear of the body of a murdered man being found in the Bishop’s Walk, than he had a cast across the Thames from his own house in Abingdon-street.”“Yes—yes,” said Gray, abstractedly.“He had the body brought here,” continued the loquacious landlord, “and he says to me,—‘Landlord, allow no one to see or touch the corpse or it’s clothing until you hear from me.’—‘No, your worship,’ says I, and I’ve kept my word for excepting neighbour Taplin, the corn-factor, Mrs. Dibbs, next door, Antony Freeman, the hosier, John Ferret, the bishop’s steward, Matthew Briggs, who keeps the small wareshop at the corner, Matthew Holland, the saddler, Dame Tippetto, the old midwife, and just a few more friends, no one has crossed the threshold of the room the corpse lies in. That I could take my solemn oath of, sir, I assure you.”“No doubt—no doubt,” said Gray, “I—I will, if it so please you, see the body.”“Come along, then,” said the landlord, placing his finger by the side of his nose, and keeping up a succession of winks all the way up the staircase, till he came to the room door in which the body of the murdered waterman was lying.Jacob Gray entered after the landlord, and closed the door behind him.“Now, sir, you will see him,” said the host. “Just let me move a shutter, and you will have a little more light. There, sir—there he lies. Ah, he was fond of his glass—that he was—a fine fellow.”A stream of light came from the partially unclosed shutter, and Gray saw the corpse of the man whom he had tempted to commit a murder upon Britton himself, lying cold and stark in the bloody embrace of death.The body lay upon a table, and the warmth of the house had caused the wound to bleed slightly again. The face was ghastly and pale, and the wide open staring eyes gave an awful appearance to the fixed rigid countenance.“See there, now,” cried the landlord. “You may note where he has been run through the breast; don’t you see the rent?”“I do,” said Gray.“There are two such wounds.”“Don’t it strike you,” remarked Gray, “that these are sword wounds?”“Of course it does.”“Then who but a gentleman accredited to wear a weapon could have killed the man?”“That’s true. I’ll solemn swear to that,” cried the landlord.“The tall, thin, dark man,” added Gray, “must be some gentleman, residing probably hereabout, or directly across the bridge.”“No doubt; I’ll swear.”“Most properly,” added Gray. “Good day to you, sir. I may perchance look in again.”“Come to the inquest, sir,” said the landlord. “There you shall have it all out, I’ll warrant. There you shall hear me solemnly swear everything.““Perchance, I may,” said Gray, as he descended the staircase. “Will it be to-day?”“To-morrow, at noon; as I understand, sir.”“Thank you. Thank you.”Gray left the house, and when he was some paces from the door, he muttered.—“So, Master Learmont, I have another hold upon your kind generosity. That by some strange chance, which I cannot conjecture, this waterman found out my place of abode, and thus communicated it to you, Squire Learmont. I am convinced. Humph! He has got his wages. I could accuse you of a crime, good, kind, considerate Learmont, that would not in the least compromise my own safety. We shall see—we shall see. I—I must now make my way homewards again. Surely by this time Ada has returned. She must be waiting. Home! Home! And then, to think of another place in which to hide my head from my worst foe, and yet my only source of wealth.”
The Morning.—The Body of the Murdered Man.—The Old Inn.—Jacob’s Reflections.
WhenLearmont and the smith had left the house, and Jacob Gray felt that his great and inevitable danger was over, he sunk into a chair, and a fit of trembling came over him that he was many minutes in recovering from.
“They are foiled this once,” he muttered; “but they may not be again—’twas a rare chance, a most rare chance, I—I must leave her now. I am hunted—hunted like a wild animal, from den to den. Oh! How they would have rejoiced in my destruction. This is a sad life to lead—and—and if, before they came, I had taken her life, I should even now be lying a stiffened corpse on these boards—yet, what can I do? She is my torment; she will be my destruction!”
He then rose, and paced the room for some time with hasty and unequal steps. Suddenly pausing, he trembled again with the same awful intensity that he had done before, and in a hoarse, husky whisper, said,—
“What if she come not back? She suspects me. It is time she were here again. Oh! If she should seek protection elsewhere! More danger!—More danger!—Into what a tangled web of horrors am I placed! Can I fly? What money have I? A large sum, but yet not enough. Oh! If Learmont would give me at once a sum of money which would suffice me in a foreign land, and trust my word to go, and if I could trust him to let me live to go. Ah! There it is!—There it is! We cannot trust each other—not for a moment—no, not for a moment.”
Jacob Gray muttered these gloomy meditations in a low, anxious tone, and almost at every word he paused to endeavour to detect some token of the return of Ada. None, however, met his ears, and, after two hours of mental agony of mind had thus passed over the head of Jacob Gray, he crept down the staircase, and stood at the door looking anxiously about him by the dim morning light that was beginning, with its cold grey tints, to struggle through the darkness of the sky.
“She does not come,” he muttered—“she does not come. What shall I do—whither seek her? Yet—I—I must endeavour to find her.”
He now turned his attention to the broken lock of the door, and after some time, succeeded in closing it after him tolerably securely, then searching in the road till he found a piece of chalk, he wrote on the door,—
“Wait—J.G.”
“Should she return during my absence,” he thought, “she will recognise my writing and initials to wait my return. She is most probably near at hand, waiting for me to search for her.”
Casting again a cautious, scrutinising glance around him, Jacob Gray walked slowly down the ruined street, peering into each doorway as he went, with the hope of seeing Ada.
His search was unsuccessful. He could see no trace of Ada; and a thousand feelings of alarm and suspicion began to crowd upon his mind. He paused irresolutely at the end of the street, uncertain which way he should shape his course. At last, with a sudden resolution, he walked in the direction of Westminster Bridge.
As he neared Lambeth, he observed that the watermen, who plied at the different stairs by the side of the river, seemed particularly engrossed by some subject of importance, for they were congregated together in knots of two, three, and four, discoursing earnestly and vehemently.
He approached one, and touching his arm, said,—
“What is the matter, friend?”
“Murder’s the matter,” replied the man.
“Murder!”
“Ay, murder. There has been a murder done in the Bishop’s Walk.”
“In the Bishop’s Walk?”
“Yes; the body was found cold and stiff—the body of a waterman; but we will have justice.”
“What was his name?” said Gray.
“Sheldon. He plied at the bridge stairs opposite.”
“I thank you, friend,” said Gray, as he walked on muttering to himself,—
“Now, I’d lay my life this murder is Britton’s doing. Oh, if I could fix him with it—and yet there might be danger. At the gallows he might denounce me—yes, he would. It must have been by means of this man somehow that my retreat was so quickly discovered—yet how, I cannot divine.”
He now observed a small public-house, at the door of which was a throng of persons, and pressing forward, he soon learned that there the body of the murdered man lay.
Impelled by a curiosity that he could not resist, Gray entered the house, and calling for some liquor, commenced a conversation with the landlord, which somewhat altered his opinion concerning the murderer.
“I saw Sheldon,” said the host, “and intend to swear to it solemnly, pass my house at an unusual hour in company with a stranger. I was looking out to see the state of the night when I saw them pass on towards the Bishop’s Walk.”
“What kind of man was he with?” said Gray.
“A tall man.”
“Thin and dark?”
“Nay, as for his complexion I can say nothing, for in the dark, you know, all cats are grey.”
“True; but you could swear to the man being tall and thin, Master Landlord?”
“In faith I could, and your tall, thin men are just what I dislike—bah! They seldom drink much.”
“Most true—I thank you. ’Tis a barbarous murder.”
“Would you like, sir, to see the corpse?” said the landlord, in an under tone.
“The corpse?” echoed Gray.
“Ay; he was a fine fellow. You must know that Sir Francis Hartleton has been here—”
“The magistrate?”
“Yes. He is here, and there, and everywhere; and no sooner did he hear of the body of a murdered man being found in the Bishop’s Walk, than he had a cast across the Thames from his own house in Abingdon-street.”
“Yes—yes,” said Gray, abstractedly.
“He had the body brought here,” continued the loquacious landlord, “and he says to me,—‘Landlord, allow no one to see or touch the corpse or it’s clothing until you hear from me.’—‘No, your worship,’ says I, and I’ve kept my word for excepting neighbour Taplin, the corn-factor, Mrs. Dibbs, next door, Antony Freeman, the hosier, John Ferret, the bishop’s steward, Matthew Briggs, who keeps the small wareshop at the corner, Matthew Holland, the saddler, Dame Tippetto, the old midwife, and just a few more friends, no one has crossed the threshold of the room the corpse lies in. That I could take my solemn oath of, sir, I assure you.”
“No doubt—no doubt,” said Gray, “I—I will, if it so please you, see the body.”
“Come along, then,” said the landlord, placing his finger by the side of his nose, and keeping up a succession of winks all the way up the staircase, till he came to the room door in which the body of the murdered waterman was lying.
Jacob Gray entered after the landlord, and closed the door behind him.
“Now, sir, you will see him,” said the host. “Just let me move a shutter, and you will have a little more light. There, sir—there he lies. Ah, he was fond of his glass—that he was—a fine fellow.”
A stream of light came from the partially unclosed shutter, and Gray saw the corpse of the man whom he had tempted to commit a murder upon Britton himself, lying cold and stark in the bloody embrace of death.
The body lay upon a table, and the warmth of the house had caused the wound to bleed slightly again. The face was ghastly and pale, and the wide open staring eyes gave an awful appearance to the fixed rigid countenance.
“See there, now,” cried the landlord. “You may note where he has been run through the breast; don’t you see the rent?”
“I do,” said Gray.
“There are two such wounds.”
“Don’t it strike you,” remarked Gray, “that these are sword wounds?”
“Of course it does.”
“Then who but a gentleman accredited to wear a weapon could have killed the man?”
“That’s true. I’ll solemn swear to that,” cried the landlord.
“The tall, thin, dark man,” added Gray, “must be some gentleman, residing probably hereabout, or directly across the bridge.”
“No doubt; I’ll swear.”
“Most properly,” added Gray. “Good day to you, sir. I may perchance look in again.”
“Come to the inquest, sir,” said the landlord. “There you shall have it all out, I’ll warrant. There you shall hear me solemnly swear everything.“
“Perchance, I may,” said Gray, as he descended the staircase. “Will it be to-day?”
“To-morrow, at noon; as I understand, sir.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
Gray left the house, and when he was some paces from the door, he muttered.—
“So, Master Learmont, I have another hold upon your kind generosity. That by some strange chance, which I cannot conjecture, this waterman found out my place of abode, and thus communicated it to you, Squire Learmont. I am convinced. Humph! He has got his wages. I could accuse you of a crime, good, kind, considerate Learmont, that would not in the least compromise my own safety. We shall see—we shall see. I—I must now make my way homewards again. Surely by this time Ada has returned. She must be waiting. Home! Home! And then, to think of another place in which to hide my head from my worst foe, and yet my only source of wealth.”
CHAPTER XXVII.Ada’s Flight and Despair.—Old Westminster Bridge at Daybreak.—The Smith.—Mad Maud.WhenAda, the beautiful and persecuted child of the dead, passed from the room in the garments befitting her sex, she thought her heart must burst with the suppressed feelings which were conjured up in its inmost recesses. One awful question occurred to her to be traced in letters of liquid fire upon her brain, and that was: “Is it true that Jacob Gray is my father?” His assertion of the fact had come upon her so entirely unawares that, as Gray had himself exultingly supposed, she had not time to think—but the doubt—the merest suspicion that it might true, was madness. Ada did not—she could not, even at the moment that Gray declared himself her father, believe his words; but still the doubt was raised, and although all reason—all probability—all experience gave the lie to the assertion, there was still the awful intrusive thought that it might be so.Upon the impulse of that small possibility, that in that moment of despair and agony of soul Jacob Gray had spoken truly, Ada acted. She could not run the dreadful risk of sacrificing even a brutal and criminal father, and with a speed that in her state of mind was marvellous, she altered herself, in her girl’s clothing, and, as we have seen, for the time, saved Jacob Gray from death.As she descended the narrow, dilapidated staircase, she pressed her hands convulsively upon her heart to still its tumultuous beatings. Her position in life appeared to her to be all at once strangely altered. If—and oh! That horrid if,—if conveying as it did a possibility of the fact—if Jacob Gray was really her father!—What was she now to do?—How think of him?—How address him? Could she ever bestow upon him the smallest fraction of that dear love which flows in so easy and natural a current from a child to its parent? Could she call him father?—No, she felt that she could not. She examined her feelings to endeavour to detect some yearnings of natural love and duty—some of that undefined, mysterious instinct she had read of as enabling the parent to single out the child—the child the parent, from the great mass of humanity; but the search—the self-examination was in vain. Jacob Gray was to her but the cruel, vindictive tyrant, rioting in oppression and brutality when un-resisted, and shrinking from her like a beaten hound when she dared to confront him, and question his acts.“God of Heaven!” she said, when she had reached the street; “there should be some similarity of thought, some community of feeling between a father and his child. Do I and Jacob Gray think alike in anything? Have we one feeling in common?—No,—not one.”As the probabilities of his not being her father crowded upon her mind, now that the intense excitement of the minute was over, Ada became more happy and composed, and she slackened her pace, seeing that she had already placed a considerable distance between herself and the house which had been to her a prison for so long a period.“I will not, cannot believe it,” she said to herself; “that man is no father of mine. ’Twas a trick—a master-stroke in the extremity of his fortunes to bend me to his wishes, for some reasons which I know not, and cannot even hazard the wildest guess of. My father? Jacob Gray, my father? Oh, no, no, no! Rather never let me look upon a father’s face, than feel assured of such a horror as that! It cannot—cannot be. Oh, what would I not give to be assured of the lie! Had I worlds of riches in my grasp, I would unloose my hold and let them fly from me to be assured, past all doubt—past all hesitation, that Jacob Gray was to me neither father nor uncle.”The dank fog that hung upon the Thames was now slowly clearing from before the face of heaven, and by the time Ada had reached Westminster Bridge, she could see through several breaks in the sky, glimpses of the starry host looking down upon the rapidly departing night.The excitement the young girl had gone through had hitherto supported her against the intense coldness of the raw air, but now she trembled in every limb, and as she stood upon the silent bridge, trying to pierce with her dark, lustrous eyes, the heavy fog, and to catch a glimpse of the rushing stream below, she felt the cold to her very heart, and all the miseries of her homeless, friendless situation, rushing at once like a full tide upon her mind, she shrank into one of the little alcoves of the bridge, and sinking upon the rude wooden seat, she burst into tears, and sobbed aloud in the deep anguish of her heart.Suddenly then she started to her feet, as she heard a heavy footstep approaching. Her first impulse was to leave her place of refuge, and walk quickly onwards, but a second thought caused her to shrink back, with the hope that the stranger would pass on, and she should escape his observation.Nearer and nearer she heard the heavy measured tread approaching, and an undefinable sensation of fear crept over her as the sounds echoed from one side of the old bridge to the other.Now and then the person, whoever it was, would pause in his walk, and indistinct mutterings, as if he were communing with himself, reached the ears of Ada.As he came near she could detect the words he used, and her ears were shocked by oaths of the most awful character, coupled with invectives and horrible imprecations against some one. Involuntarily Ada shrank still closer within the alcove, and now the stranger paused nearly opposite to where she was concealed, and she could hear his words distinctly.“Curses on him,” he muttered; “I swear, I, Andrew Britton, swear by all the furies of hell that I will have that man’s blood! He shall bitterly rue his taunts, most bitterly. By Heaven, I would like to tear his heart out. I—I could set his blood flowing like a torrent. I could exult in any agony inflicted upon him. Cunning Britton am I? Taunt on—taunt on; every dog will have his day.”There was now a dead silence for some moments, and Ada strove to recollect where and when she had heard that voice before.“Can this be one of those from whose visits my—my—no, no, not my father—my uncle shrank from in so much terror? It surely is—or else I have heard his voice in some dream. Ha! He comes—he comes!”Britton, for it was he, advanced a pace or two and leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, still muttering deep and awful curses. He was so close to Ada that she could have touched him with her small white hand, had she chosen, but she stilled the very beating of her heart as much as possible, in instinctive terror of that man.“It’s all to do over again now,” he said: “all over again—with the additional difficulty that he is upon his guard. Oh, could I but light on that boy; I—I’d wring his neck—and then—then Jacob Gray, I would invent some method of burning you to death painfully; some method that would take long in doing this—I should see you writhe in your agony. By the fiends there’s comfort in the thought. Oh, that I had him here—here clinging to the parapet of this bridge while I—I, Andrew Britton, was slowly—yes, very slowly, sawing his fingers till he loosed his hold and fell. Then he would strike against yon projection. Ha! Ha! That would be one pang—I should hear him shriek—what music! Then down—down he would go into the water, mingling his blood with it! I should see him rise again, and his heart would break in another shriek. Ha! Ha! Ha!—I am better with the very thought. He—a step—I will to the Chequers, and drown care in a flagon!”A strange wild voice was now heard singing in a kind of rude chaunt. The tones were feeble and broken, but Ada, with a feeling of pleasure, recognised in them those of a woman. Her attention, however, was in a moment again turned to Britton, who all at once exclaimed, “What voice is that? I—I know that voice, although I have not heard it for some time now.”The voice became more distinct as the singer approached, and there was a wild earnestness in the manner in which the following words were spoken, which touched Ada to the heart:—“The winter’s wind is cold,But colder is my heart,I pray for death full oft,Yet may not now depart,I have a work to do,The gentle child to save,Alas! That its poor fatherShould want a shroud and grave.”“Now I know her—now I know her!” cried Britton. “Damnation, it’s—it’s Mad Maud! Shall I fly from her—or—or kill her?”Before he could decide upon a course of action, the poor creature was close to him. She laid her hand upon his arm—“Found—found,” she shrieked. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Found at last. Andrew Britton I have travelled many miles to find thee out.”“Away, cursed hag!” cried Britton,“I have sought you,” continued the poor woman, “oh, how I have sought you and Learmont too. You see I am mad, and so I know more than ordinary people. The day is coming—the day of vengeance, and I have come to London to see it. I have asked often—often for you, Andrew Britton, and now you are found.”“Devil!” cried Britton, “why do you haunt me?”“Haunt you! Yes, that is the word, I do haunt you! I will haunt you to the last.”“Indeed! Perhaps you may meet with some accident.”“No, no; I will tell you who I asked for you. You will not be surprised.”“Who?—Who dared you ask for me?”“There was a man hung last Monday—”“Well, w—what is that to me? If there were fifty men hung? What is it to me, I say?”“Nothing—oh, nothing, Andrew Britton; but I asked if he knew your hiding-place.”“Why ask him?”“Because the good and just cannot know you; you belong not to them; I asked the man who stood beneath the gibbet if he had been tempted to crime by Andrew Britton, the savage smith of Learmont; I asked the hangman if he knew you, and when he said he did not, I described you to him, that he might recognise you, when his cold clammy hands, are about your neck!”“Prating idiot!” said Britton, “if you tempt me to the deed, I’ll cast you over the bridge!”“You dare not, Andrew Britton! You dare not,” cried Maud. “Savage as you are, you dare not do that! Strange, too, as you boast yourself, you could not!”“Indeed!“ answered Britton. “Now, by Heaven—”“Hold—hold! Whatever you do, swear not by Heaven;—that Heaven you will never see! What have you to do with Heaven, that you should record your blustering oaths in its pure annals? Swear not by Heaven, Andrew Britton, or you may provoke a vengeance that may be terrible even to you.”“Tell me,” said Britton, in an evidently assumed tone of mildness, “what brought you to London?”“A holier errand, Britton, than that which has brought you, God knows I came to save, but you came to destroy.”“Save who?”“The child! The child!”“You speak in riddles, Maud. What child?”“I am mad!” replied the woman. “I know I am mad, but I have not forgotten—no, no. I cannot tell how long ago it is, but I saw the child of the dead brought forth by the bleeding man!”“You rave,” cried Britton.“No—no; I had no clue to that young child. To wander in search of it was hopeless till—till I found that you, Andrew Britton, were on the move. So long as the sound of your hammer rose on the night air at Learmont, I stayed there,—I hovered round your dwelling.”“You played the spy upon me?” cried Britton.“I did—I did; and wherefore should I not? I have followed you to this city. You came to seek the child; so have I. But you came quickly, with gold to urge you on your way; I have been many weeks begging from door to door. I asked two things wherever I went; one was a morsel of broken bread, and the other was to place my face towards London; now I am here,—here, Britton, I came to save the child.”“Wretch!” cried Britton; “if your madness may be feigned for all I know. Swear to me that you will at once, return to Learmont.”“Return?”“Ay; you shall not dog my steps. I know not what you mean. You rave, woman—you rave.”“Do I rave? Well, well, perhaps ’tis true. But I saw the child.”“Tell me one thing, Maud. Do you know who that child is?”There was a pause of a moment and Ada’s heart beat with tumultuous emotion, as she thought that now she might hear by this strange accidental meeting the secret of her birth.“Yes,” said Maud; “yes—I know.”“You are sure,” said Britton.“I know, I know,” repeated Maud.“Then, if there is a heaven above us, or a hell beneath us,” cried Britton, “you shall not leave this bridge alive.”“Hush—hush!” cried Mad Maud, “I have dreamt it often, and believe it. You are to die before I do; it is so arranged, Andrew Britton.”Ada looked out with trembling apprehension from her place of concealment, and she saw, by the rapidly increasing light of the coming day, the savage smith casting rapid glances around, as if to assure himself that no one was within sight of the deed of blood he was about to commit. For a moment an awful apathy crept over the heart of Ada, and she felt as if she were condemned to crouch in that little alcove without power of voice or action, and see the murder committed.Mad Maud did not appear to have comprehended the last muttered threat of Britton, for she stood with her arms folded across her breast, murmuring in a low tone to herself, and apparently unheedful even of the presence of her enemy. Ada then saw the smith fumble awhile in his breast, and then he drew forth a knife. She saw it glitter in the faint light.“Yes, yes,” said Maud, in a low tone, “I recollect all, or nearly all. How difficult it is to separate the dreams from the reality. The spirit of the dead man still haunts the place! Yes; that is real! He cries for his child!—His little child!—And there is a garb on his breast! Let me think. How has he lived so long after his murder? Oh, yes—I know now: it is by drinking the blood continually from his own wounds! Ay, that would preserve him!”Britton made a step towards her.“The child!” she cried suddenly.“You shall torment me no longer,” he cried.“Ha!” shrieked Maud, as she saw the knife uplifted, “you dare not—cannot do it!”She shrank back, but Britton followed close upon her, Ada again saw the knife uplifted, and by a violent effort, like a person recovering from a nightmare, she screamed.The sound seemed to Britton so great a surprise, that he staggered, and dropped the knife from his trembling hand.Her own voice appeared to have broken the spell of horror that bound up the faculties of Ada, and now, by an impulse which lent her strength and courage, she rushed from the place of concealment, and, snatching the knife from the ground, she fled quickly along the bridge, crying, “Help!—Help!”She had not proceeded many paces when she was caught in the arms of some one who cried,—“Hilloa!—hilloa! What now, little one?”“Help!—Murder on the bridge!” cried Ada. “Oh!—Haste!—Haste!—Save the woman!”It was the watchman going his rounds, and he hurried onwards, as fast as his chilled limbs would permit him, towards the spot indicated by Ada, who closely followed him.“He has killed her!” exclaimed Ada, as she saw Maud lying apparently lifeless on the stones.“Murder done!” cried the watchman.Ada cast an anxious glance around her, and she thought that at the further extremity of the bridge she caught sight of the flying figure of the man who she believed had done the deed.“There!” she said, pointing in the direction—“Pursue him!—There flies the murderer!”The watchman immediately threw down the lantern, and with a great clattering of his iron-shod shoes, rushed across the bridge.“Alas!—Alas!” cried Ada, clasping her hands. “What can all this mean? Who is this poor mad creature?—And who that fearful man? The mystery in which my birth, name, and fate is involved, grows more and more inexplicable. Was it of me she talked so strangely and so wildly? Oh! If she could but breathe to me one word, to assure me that Jacob Gray was not my father, how richly would the terrors of this fearful night be repaid!”Ada knelt by the body of Maud as she spoke, and placed her hand over her heart, to endeavour to trace some sign of vitality.“She lives—she lives!” suddenly cried Ada, as she felt the regular beating of the organ of life. “Perchance the villain has only struck her. He may not, after casting away his knife, have had the means of harming her very seriously.”A deep groan now came from the lips of the insensible woman.“Speak—oh, speak!” cried Ada.Maud opened her eyes. They glared with the wild fire of insanity on Ada.“Do you know me?” said the girl.“Know you?—Know you? Are you an angel or a devil?”“Alas!” cried Ada. “There is no hope.”Maud passed her hand across her eyes for several moments as if trying to clear the mist that beset her memory and mental faculties. Then she said,—“Where is he?”“The man you were talking with?”“Yes, Britton, the savage smith of Learmont.”“He has fled.”“Yes—yes—fled. He was pursued by the dead man asking for his child.”“What child?” said Ada, in a voice trembling with anxiety.“I saw its little arms cling round its father’s murderer. I heard him shriek—I heard him say the hell of conscience had began its awful work within his guilty breast.”“The child—the child,” cried Ada,—“what was its name? Oh, tell me, if you can, its name?”“Its name,” repeated Maud. “It was the child of the dead. It—it reminded me of my own. Listen! When I was young—for I was young once—and my hair hung in long silken rights from my brow, when my eyes danced in the pure light of heaven, and my heart mounted with joy, singing like the lark that carries its sweet notes even to the gates of heaven. Long—long ago I clasped to my breast such a dear child as that. So you see it reminded me of my own dear infant.”“And you knew not its name?” said Ada.“Its name!—No, I cannot tell you its name! but I will tell you a dream.”“Answer me one question,” said Ada. “The child, I heard you say, you came to London to save. Was its name Gray?”“Gray—Gray. Who is Gray?”“There is hope even,” sighed Ada, “in the want of confirmation of a terrible doubt. If I am the child she raves so strangely of, she knows me not by that most hateful name.”“Will you hear my dream?” said Maud, endeavouring to rise from the cold stones.Ada saw that blood was trickling from her head, but whether she had struck it in falling, or the man who had attempted her destruction had inflicted the wound, was doubtful. Ada, however, assisted her to her feet, and as she did so she heard the tread of the watchman as he returned slowly from his pursuit.“He’s off,” cried the man. “Hilloa!—Ain’t the woman dead?”“Dead!” shrieked Maud, suddenly confronting the watchman, “is Andrew Britton dead?”“Who?”“Andrew Britton, the savage smith; because he is to die before me. Ha! Ha! Yes, Andrew Britton will die before I do.”With wild laughter she flew rather than ran across the bridge in the direction of Lambeth, and her voice echoed in the still morning air, as she shrieked,—“Andrew Britton—Andrew Britton—I am not dead!—Not dead yet!”The watchman stared after her in amazement, and Ada took the opportunity, while he was thus fully engaged, of walking quickly onwards until she had cleared the bridge and the solemn spires of Westminster Abbey came upon her sight.
Ada’s Flight and Despair.—Old Westminster Bridge at Daybreak.—The Smith.—Mad Maud.
WhenAda, the beautiful and persecuted child of the dead, passed from the room in the garments befitting her sex, she thought her heart must burst with the suppressed feelings which were conjured up in its inmost recesses. One awful question occurred to her to be traced in letters of liquid fire upon her brain, and that was: “Is it true that Jacob Gray is my father?” His assertion of the fact had come upon her so entirely unawares that, as Gray had himself exultingly supposed, she had not time to think—but the doubt—the merest suspicion that it might true, was madness. Ada did not—she could not, even at the moment that Gray declared himself her father, believe his words; but still the doubt was raised, and although all reason—all probability—all experience gave the lie to the assertion, there was still the awful intrusive thought that it might be so.
Upon the impulse of that small possibility, that in that moment of despair and agony of soul Jacob Gray had spoken truly, Ada acted. She could not run the dreadful risk of sacrificing even a brutal and criminal father, and with a speed that in her state of mind was marvellous, she altered herself, in her girl’s clothing, and, as we have seen, for the time, saved Jacob Gray from death.
As she descended the narrow, dilapidated staircase, she pressed her hands convulsively upon her heart to still its tumultuous beatings. Her position in life appeared to her to be all at once strangely altered. If—and oh! That horrid if,—if conveying as it did a possibility of the fact—if Jacob Gray was really her father!—What was she now to do?—How think of him?—How address him? Could she ever bestow upon him the smallest fraction of that dear love which flows in so easy and natural a current from a child to its parent? Could she call him father?—No, she felt that she could not. She examined her feelings to endeavour to detect some yearnings of natural love and duty—some of that undefined, mysterious instinct she had read of as enabling the parent to single out the child—the child the parent, from the great mass of humanity; but the search—the self-examination was in vain. Jacob Gray was to her but the cruel, vindictive tyrant, rioting in oppression and brutality when un-resisted, and shrinking from her like a beaten hound when she dared to confront him, and question his acts.
“God of Heaven!” she said, when she had reached the street; “there should be some similarity of thought, some community of feeling between a father and his child. Do I and Jacob Gray think alike in anything? Have we one feeling in common?—No,—not one.”
As the probabilities of his not being her father crowded upon her mind, now that the intense excitement of the minute was over, Ada became more happy and composed, and she slackened her pace, seeing that she had already placed a considerable distance between herself and the house which had been to her a prison for so long a period.
“I will not, cannot believe it,” she said to herself; “that man is no father of mine. ’Twas a trick—a master-stroke in the extremity of his fortunes to bend me to his wishes, for some reasons which I know not, and cannot even hazard the wildest guess of. My father? Jacob Gray, my father? Oh, no, no, no! Rather never let me look upon a father’s face, than feel assured of such a horror as that! It cannot—cannot be. Oh, what would I not give to be assured of the lie! Had I worlds of riches in my grasp, I would unloose my hold and let them fly from me to be assured, past all doubt—past all hesitation, that Jacob Gray was to me neither father nor uncle.”
The dank fog that hung upon the Thames was now slowly clearing from before the face of heaven, and by the time Ada had reached Westminster Bridge, she could see through several breaks in the sky, glimpses of the starry host looking down upon the rapidly departing night.
The excitement the young girl had gone through had hitherto supported her against the intense coldness of the raw air, but now she trembled in every limb, and as she stood upon the silent bridge, trying to pierce with her dark, lustrous eyes, the heavy fog, and to catch a glimpse of the rushing stream below, she felt the cold to her very heart, and all the miseries of her homeless, friendless situation, rushing at once like a full tide upon her mind, she shrank into one of the little alcoves of the bridge, and sinking upon the rude wooden seat, she burst into tears, and sobbed aloud in the deep anguish of her heart.
Suddenly then she started to her feet, as she heard a heavy footstep approaching. Her first impulse was to leave her place of refuge, and walk quickly onwards, but a second thought caused her to shrink back, with the hope that the stranger would pass on, and she should escape his observation.
Nearer and nearer she heard the heavy measured tread approaching, and an undefinable sensation of fear crept over her as the sounds echoed from one side of the old bridge to the other.
Now and then the person, whoever it was, would pause in his walk, and indistinct mutterings, as if he were communing with himself, reached the ears of Ada.
As he came near she could detect the words he used, and her ears were shocked by oaths of the most awful character, coupled with invectives and horrible imprecations against some one. Involuntarily Ada shrank still closer within the alcove, and now the stranger paused nearly opposite to where she was concealed, and she could hear his words distinctly.
“Curses on him,” he muttered; “I swear, I, Andrew Britton, swear by all the furies of hell that I will have that man’s blood! He shall bitterly rue his taunts, most bitterly. By Heaven, I would like to tear his heart out. I—I could set his blood flowing like a torrent. I could exult in any agony inflicted upon him. Cunning Britton am I? Taunt on—taunt on; every dog will have his day.”
There was now a dead silence for some moments, and Ada strove to recollect where and when she had heard that voice before.
“Can this be one of those from whose visits my—my—no, no, not my father—my uncle shrank from in so much terror? It surely is—or else I have heard his voice in some dream. Ha! He comes—he comes!”
Britton, for it was he, advanced a pace or two and leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, still muttering deep and awful curses. He was so close to Ada that she could have touched him with her small white hand, had she chosen, but she stilled the very beating of her heart as much as possible, in instinctive terror of that man.
“It’s all to do over again now,” he said: “all over again—with the additional difficulty that he is upon his guard. Oh, could I but light on that boy; I—I’d wring his neck—and then—then Jacob Gray, I would invent some method of burning you to death painfully; some method that would take long in doing this—I should see you writhe in your agony. By the fiends there’s comfort in the thought. Oh, that I had him here—here clinging to the parapet of this bridge while I—I, Andrew Britton, was slowly—yes, very slowly, sawing his fingers till he loosed his hold and fell. Then he would strike against yon projection. Ha! Ha! That would be one pang—I should hear him shriek—what music! Then down—down he would go into the water, mingling his blood with it! I should see him rise again, and his heart would break in another shriek. Ha! Ha! Ha!—I am better with the very thought. He—a step—I will to the Chequers, and drown care in a flagon!”
A strange wild voice was now heard singing in a kind of rude chaunt. The tones were feeble and broken, but Ada, with a feeling of pleasure, recognised in them those of a woman. Her attention, however, was in a moment again turned to Britton, who all at once exclaimed, “What voice is that? I—I know that voice, although I have not heard it for some time now.”
The voice became more distinct as the singer approached, and there was a wild earnestness in the manner in which the following words were spoken, which touched Ada to the heart:—
“The winter’s wind is cold,
But colder is my heart,
I pray for death full oft,
Yet may not now depart,
I have a work to do,
The gentle child to save,
Alas! That its poor father
Should want a shroud and grave.”
“Now I know her—now I know her!” cried Britton. “Damnation, it’s—it’s Mad Maud! Shall I fly from her—or—or kill her?”
Before he could decide upon a course of action, the poor creature was close to him. She laid her hand upon his arm—
“Found—found,” she shrieked. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Found at last. Andrew Britton I have travelled many miles to find thee out.”
“Away, cursed hag!” cried Britton,
“I have sought you,” continued the poor woman, “oh, how I have sought you and Learmont too. You see I am mad, and so I know more than ordinary people. The day is coming—the day of vengeance, and I have come to London to see it. I have asked often—often for you, Andrew Britton, and now you are found.”
“Devil!” cried Britton, “why do you haunt me?”
“Haunt you! Yes, that is the word, I do haunt you! I will haunt you to the last.”
“Indeed! Perhaps you may meet with some accident.”
“No, no; I will tell you who I asked for you. You will not be surprised.”
“Who?—Who dared you ask for me?”
“There was a man hung last Monday—”
“Well, w—what is that to me? If there were fifty men hung? What is it to me, I say?”
“Nothing—oh, nothing, Andrew Britton; but I asked if he knew your hiding-place.”
“Why ask him?”
“Because the good and just cannot know you; you belong not to them; I asked the man who stood beneath the gibbet if he had been tempted to crime by Andrew Britton, the savage smith of Learmont; I asked the hangman if he knew you, and when he said he did not, I described you to him, that he might recognise you, when his cold clammy hands, are about your neck!”
“Prating idiot!” said Britton, “if you tempt me to the deed, I’ll cast you over the bridge!”
“You dare not, Andrew Britton! You dare not,” cried Maud. “Savage as you are, you dare not do that! Strange, too, as you boast yourself, you could not!”
“Indeed!“ answered Britton. “Now, by Heaven—”
“Hold—hold! Whatever you do, swear not by Heaven;—that Heaven you will never see! What have you to do with Heaven, that you should record your blustering oaths in its pure annals? Swear not by Heaven, Andrew Britton, or you may provoke a vengeance that may be terrible even to you.”
“Tell me,” said Britton, in an evidently assumed tone of mildness, “what brought you to London?”
“A holier errand, Britton, than that which has brought you, God knows I came to save, but you came to destroy.”
“Save who?”
“The child! The child!”
“You speak in riddles, Maud. What child?”
“I am mad!” replied the woman. “I know I am mad, but I have not forgotten—no, no. I cannot tell how long ago it is, but I saw the child of the dead brought forth by the bleeding man!”
“You rave,” cried Britton.
“No—no; I had no clue to that young child. To wander in search of it was hopeless till—till I found that you, Andrew Britton, were on the move. So long as the sound of your hammer rose on the night air at Learmont, I stayed there,—I hovered round your dwelling.”
“You played the spy upon me?” cried Britton.
“I did—I did; and wherefore should I not? I have followed you to this city. You came to seek the child; so have I. But you came quickly, with gold to urge you on your way; I have been many weeks begging from door to door. I asked two things wherever I went; one was a morsel of broken bread, and the other was to place my face towards London; now I am here,—here, Britton, I came to save the child.”
“Wretch!” cried Britton; “if your madness may be feigned for all I know. Swear to me that you will at once, return to Learmont.”
“Return?”
“Ay; you shall not dog my steps. I know not what you mean. You rave, woman—you rave.”
“Do I rave? Well, well, perhaps ’tis true. But I saw the child.”
“Tell me one thing, Maud. Do you know who that child is?”
There was a pause of a moment and Ada’s heart beat with tumultuous emotion, as she thought that now she might hear by this strange accidental meeting the secret of her birth.
“Yes,” said Maud; “yes—I know.”
“You are sure,” said Britton.
“I know, I know,” repeated Maud.
“Then, if there is a heaven above us, or a hell beneath us,” cried Britton, “you shall not leave this bridge alive.”
“Hush—hush!” cried Mad Maud, “I have dreamt it often, and believe it. You are to die before I do; it is so arranged, Andrew Britton.”
Ada looked out with trembling apprehension from her place of concealment, and she saw, by the rapidly increasing light of the coming day, the savage smith casting rapid glances around, as if to assure himself that no one was within sight of the deed of blood he was about to commit. For a moment an awful apathy crept over the heart of Ada, and she felt as if she were condemned to crouch in that little alcove without power of voice or action, and see the murder committed.
Mad Maud did not appear to have comprehended the last muttered threat of Britton, for she stood with her arms folded across her breast, murmuring in a low tone to herself, and apparently unheedful even of the presence of her enemy. Ada then saw the smith fumble awhile in his breast, and then he drew forth a knife. She saw it glitter in the faint light.
“Yes, yes,” said Maud, in a low tone, “I recollect all, or nearly all. How difficult it is to separate the dreams from the reality. The spirit of the dead man still haunts the place! Yes; that is real! He cries for his child!—His little child!—And there is a garb on his breast! Let me think. How has he lived so long after his murder? Oh, yes—I know now: it is by drinking the blood continually from his own wounds! Ay, that would preserve him!”
Britton made a step towards her.
“The child!” she cried suddenly.
“You shall torment me no longer,” he cried.
“Ha!” shrieked Maud, as she saw the knife uplifted, “you dare not—cannot do it!”
She shrank back, but Britton followed close upon her, Ada again saw the knife uplifted, and by a violent effort, like a person recovering from a nightmare, she screamed.
The sound seemed to Britton so great a surprise, that he staggered, and dropped the knife from his trembling hand.
Her own voice appeared to have broken the spell of horror that bound up the faculties of Ada, and now, by an impulse which lent her strength and courage, she rushed from the place of concealment, and, snatching the knife from the ground, she fled quickly along the bridge, crying, “Help!—Help!”
She had not proceeded many paces when she was caught in the arms of some one who cried,—
“Hilloa!—hilloa! What now, little one?”
“Help!—Murder on the bridge!” cried Ada. “Oh!—Haste!—Haste!—Save the woman!”
It was the watchman going his rounds, and he hurried onwards, as fast as his chilled limbs would permit him, towards the spot indicated by Ada, who closely followed him.
“He has killed her!” exclaimed Ada, as she saw Maud lying apparently lifeless on the stones.
“Murder done!” cried the watchman.
Ada cast an anxious glance around her, and she thought that at the further extremity of the bridge she caught sight of the flying figure of the man who she believed had done the deed.
“There!” she said, pointing in the direction—“Pursue him!—There flies the murderer!”
The watchman immediately threw down the lantern, and with a great clattering of his iron-shod shoes, rushed across the bridge.
“Alas!—Alas!” cried Ada, clasping her hands. “What can all this mean? Who is this poor mad creature?—And who that fearful man? The mystery in which my birth, name, and fate is involved, grows more and more inexplicable. Was it of me she talked so strangely and so wildly? Oh! If she could but breathe to me one word, to assure me that Jacob Gray was not my father, how richly would the terrors of this fearful night be repaid!”
Ada knelt by the body of Maud as she spoke, and placed her hand over her heart, to endeavour to trace some sign of vitality.
“She lives—she lives!” suddenly cried Ada, as she felt the regular beating of the organ of life. “Perchance the villain has only struck her. He may not, after casting away his knife, have had the means of harming her very seriously.”
A deep groan now came from the lips of the insensible woman.
“Speak—oh, speak!” cried Ada.
Maud opened her eyes. They glared with the wild fire of insanity on Ada.
“Do you know me?” said the girl.
“Know you?—Know you? Are you an angel or a devil?”
“Alas!” cried Ada. “There is no hope.”
Maud passed her hand across her eyes for several moments as if trying to clear the mist that beset her memory and mental faculties. Then she said,—
“Where is he?”
“The man you were talking with?”
“Yes, Britton, the savage smith of Learmont.”
“He has fled.”
“Yes—yes—fled. He was pursued by the dead man asking for his child.”
“What child?” said Ada, in a voice trembling with anxiety.
“I saw its little arms cling round its father’s murderer. I heard him shriek—I heard him say the hell of conscience had began its awful work within his guilty breast.”
“The child—the child,” cried Ada,—“what was its name? Oh, tell me, if you can, its name?”
“Its name,” repeated Maud. “It was the child of the dead. It—it reminded me of my own. Listen! When I was young—for I was young once—and my hair hung in long silken rights from my brow, when my eyes danced in the pure light of heaven, and my heart mounted with joy, singing like the lark that carries its sweet notes even to the gates of heaven. Long—long ago I clasped to my breast such a dear child as that. So you see it reminded me of my own dear infant.”
“And you knew not its name?” said Ada.
“Its name!—No, I cannot tell you its name! but I will tell you a dream.”
“Answer me one question,” said Ada. “The child, I heard you say, you came to London to save. Was its name Gray?”
“Gray—Gray. Who is Gray?”
“There is hope even,” sighed Ada, “in the want of confirmation of a terrible doubt. If I am the child she raves so strangely of, she knows me not by that most hateful name.”
“Will you hear my dream?” said Maud, endeavouring to rise from the cold stones.
Ada saw that blood was trickling from her head, but whether she had struck it in falling, or the man who had attempted her destruction had inflicted the wound, was doubtful. Ada, however, assisted her to her feet, and as she did so she heard the tread of the watchman as he returned slowly from his pursuit.
“He’s off,” cried the man. “Hilloa!—Ain’t the woman dead?”
“Dead!” shrieked Maud, suddenly confronting the watchman, “is Andrew Britton dead?”
“Who?”
“Andrew Britton, the savage smith; because he is to die before me. Ha! Ha! Yes, Andrew Britton will die before I do.”
With wild laughter she flew rather than ran across the bridge in the direction of Lambeth, and her voice echoed in the still morning air, as she shrieked,—
“Andrew Britton—Andrew Britton—I am not dead!—Not dead yet!”
The watchman stared after her in amazement, and Ada took the opportunity, while he was thus fully engaged, of walking quickly onwards until she had cleared the bridge and the solemn spires of Westminster Abbey came upon her sight.
CHAPTER XXVIII.Ada’s Wanderings.—The Pearl Necklace.—A Kind Heart.—The Park.—A Joyous Meeting.—The Arrangement.Coldand hunger now began to exercise a sensible influence upon the fragile frame of Ada. Her step became languid and slow, and she began to feel that her strength was fast deserting her. Her dislike to return to Jacob Gray was very great, and yet where else in that great city could she find a place whereon to lay her aching limbs? The sense of her own extreme destitution came vividly across her imagination, and had it not been for the curious gaze of the early passengers she met, she could have wept freely in her bitterness of heart. Listlessly she walked onwards, and thought, from its very intensity, became at last a positive pain. Money she had none; and, in fact, so secluded from the world had she been kept by the fears of Jacob Gray, that she would not have known how to procure the means of supporting life, even had she possessed valuable property about her.A cold, glaring winter’s sun shone forth from a clear sky, mocking the earth with an appearance of warmth, which made the sharp wind that whistled round the corners of the streets seem doubly keen and piercing.“Must I return to that dismal house?” thought Ada—“must I again throw myself on the mercy of that man who calls himself my father?”She paused in doubt and irresolution, and no one who passed could fail to mark the air of deep dejection which sat upon the pale anxious face of the young girl.It so chanced that she stopped opposite to the shop-door of a jeweller and dealer in precious stones, in Parliament-street, and as she clung to the little wooden rail that guarded the window, she saw the keen, sparkling eyes of an old man fixed on her from within. His beard and general appearance proclaimed him a Jew, and scarcely had Ada shrank from his gaze, and paused a step or two onwards, when she heard a voice behind her saying,—“My dear, will you sell that necklace?”Ada turned quickly. The old man from the shop stood before her, and repeated his question.“Will you sell that necklace?”“Necklace?” said Ada.“Yes; the little necklace you have round your pretty little neck, my dear.”Ada now recollected that among her female attire she had found the necklace; and hastily clasped it on when dressing, to elude the search of Jacob Gray’s furious visitors.“I am tired and hungry,” said Ada.“Are you indeed. Bless me!” cried the old man. “Walk into my shop. You see I am an old man. Walk in—do walk in.”Ada suffered herself to be led into the little shop, and unclasping the necklace, she said—“Will it fetch me a meal?”“A meal?” said the jeweller, and his eyes sparkled as he took the necklace. “A meal? Why it’s real—no, I mean mock—mock pearls—”“And valueless?” said Ada.“No—no—not quite—not quite, my dear. Here is a new guinea—a bright new guinea!”Ada took the coin, and said, languidly—“Alas! I am so strange here, I know not even how to dispose of this to procure me food.”“Indeed?” said the jeweller. “Do you know nobody? Have you no friends?”“Do you—can you,” said Ada, and a radiant blush suffused her cheeks as she spoke—“can you tell me, if you know where a Sir Seyton lives?”“Does he know you had a necklace?” said the Jew.“No, I scarcely knew it myself.”“Indeed!” cried the jeweller, lifting up his eyes and hands. “My dear, I don’t know the gentleman you mention.”“I thank you,” said Ada, rising.She left the shop, and looking back after she had gone a few paces, she could not derive how it was that the Jew was putting up his shutters with nervous haste. She little knew that her necklace was of Indian pearls, and worth a very large sum indeed.To her joy, after she had proceeded a few paces further, she saw that the second house, down a small turning to her left, was a little dairy—and immediately entering, she requested of the old woman who served, a draft of milk.It was handed to her, and she drank it off with great pleasure and laid on the little counter her guinea.“Would you like the rest, miss?” said the old woman; “you do seem tired, to be sure.”“I am tired,” said Ada, “and would gladly rest myself, if I am not in your way.”“Dear heart, no,” said the old woman. “Come in here, it’s warmer than the shop. What weather we do have to be sure.”Ada accompanied, the woman to the little parlour at the back of the shop, and the good dame placed before her some rolls and more milk, of which the wearied girl partook with more pleasure than she ever made breakfast with before.“You are too young to be out by yourself,” said the dame; “and a great deal too pretty too.”Ada shook her head, as she said,—“Do you know where resides a Mr. Seyton?”“No,” replied the woman. “This London is such an immense place, that it’s like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay to find anybody.”“If I could find him,” sighed Ada, “he would be my friend. Is there a gentleman named Sir Francis Hartleton?”“Indeed there is; and if you want him, he lives close at hand. He is a magistrate, and as good a man as ever breathed.”“Indeed,” said Ada, “’Tis very strange!”“What’s strange, my dear?”“Oh, nothing—nothing. Can you show me to his house?”“Yes; if you come to the door, I can point it out for you, though he very likely to be at his office, and that’s across the park.”Ada accompanied the old woman to her outer door, and she pointed out to the refreshed and much revived girl a handsome house, as the residence of Sir Francis Hartleton.She again tendered her guinea, but the kind-hearted woman replied—“Pho, pho, my dear. You sha’n’t change your guinea for a sup of milk.”The tears gathered to Ada’s eyes at this trifling act of kindness, and she grasped the hand of the good dame, warmly, as she said, in a voice of emotion,—“I am not used to kindness.”“Not used to kindness? Ah, well, poor thing! If your friend, Sir Francis Hartleton, ain’t in the way, come here again.”“If I live,” said Ada, “I will visit you again.”She then, with a sweet smile, walked from the little dairy, and slowly approached the house of Sir Francis Hartleton. She paused as she neared it, and many anxious doubts and fears crossed her mind, concerning the result of an interview with the magistrate; to whom Jacob Gray’s mysterious bundle of papers was addressed, and above all, rose like a spectre, the still clinging horrible supposition that Jacob Gray might possibly be her father. She could not positively swear that he was not. In defiance of all probability he might have spoken the truth.She stood by the portico of the magistrate’s house, and her irresolution increased each moment that she strove to reason with her fears.“Dare I,” she thought, “run this dreadful risk? Heaven knows what that paper may contain which Gray sets such store by. Some awful history of crime and suffering, perchance, which would bring him to a scaffold and proclaim me the child of a murderer. Can I make conditions with the magistrates? Can I say to him, I will direct you to a packet addressed to yourself, containing, I know not what, which you can send a force, if necessary, to possess yourself of, but which you must act upon only so far as may be consistent with my feelings? Alas, no! I feel that such would not be acceded to, and I am tortured by doubts and anxieties—dreadful fears—Jacob Gray, what devil tempted you to raise so dreadful a supposition in my mind that you might be my father? And yet I do not, cannot believe you. No—but I doubt—ay doubt. There lies the agony! The fearful irresolution that cramped my very soul—cripples my exertions to be free, and makes me the unhappy, wretched thing I am. No, I cannot yet betray thee to death, Jacob Gray, although you would have taken my life, even while I slept unsuspectingly beneath your roof, I cannot, dare not yet betray thee.”Scarcely, in the confusion of other feelings, knowing whither she went, she passed the door of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house, nor paused till she found herself in the Bird Cage Walk, in St. James’s Park. It was still very early, but the fine bracing morning had attracted many pedestrians to the park, and the various walks were beginning to assume a gay appearance, the fashionable hour of promenading being then much earlier than it is at present.Many an admiring glance was cast upon the beautiful Ada as she slowly took her uncertain way beneath the tall ancient trees which have now given place to young saplings, the fall beauty of which the present generations will never enjoy. The cool air that blew across the wide expanse imparted a delicate bloom to her cheeks, that many a court beauty would have bartered a portion of her existence to obtain. The hat she wore but partially confined the long dancing black ringlets that fell in nature’s own freedom on her neck and shoulders; and, withal, there was a sweet pensiveness in her manner, and the expressions of her face, which greatly charmed and interested all the gentlemen, and greatly vexed and discomposed all the ladies, who, with one accord, voted it to be affectation.How little they dreamt of the deep sorrow that was in the young girl’s heart.She walked on till she reached the Great Mall, and then, feeling somewhat weary she sat down on one of the wooden seats, and seeing nothing, hearing nothing, she gave herself up to her own thoughts, and tears trickled slowly from her eyes, as all her meditations tended to the one conclusion that she must starve or go back to the lone house and Jacob Gray.She was aroused from her reverie by some one repeatedly, in an affected drawl pronouncing the word,—“Delicious: de—licious; oh, de—licous!” immediately in front of where she sat.Ada looked up, and balancing himself before her, nearly on his toes, was an affectedly dressed person who was staring at her through an opera-glass, and repeating the word delicious, as conveying his extreme admiration of her. When Ada looked up he advanced with a smirk and a bow, and laying his hand on his embroidered waistcoat, said, in the same drawling, affected tone—“My charming little Hebe—what unearthly change—what glorious concatenation of sublime events have procured St. James’s Park the felicity of beholding you? Eh, eh, my delicious charmer?”“Sir,” said Ada, annoyed by the tone of the remarks, the substance of which she scarcely heard or comprehended.“Charming simplicity!” cried the beau; “permit me.”He seated himself with these words by the side of Ada, and attempted, by an affected, apeish manner, to take her hand.Ada shrunk from his touch, and rising with an innocent dignity, that appalled for a moment the fine gentleman, she said—“I do not know you, sir,” and walked onwards, leaving him the questionable credit of having turned her out of the seat.“Charming! charming!” she heard him say, after a few moments, as he pursued her along the Mall.Ada was excessively annoyed at this most disagreeable intrusion, and she quickened her pace in the hope of distancing the gallant; such, however, was not the event, for he was nearly close to her when she arrived at the next seat, which was occupied but by one gentleman, who was reading a book.“One stranger,” thought Ada, “may protect me from the insults of another,” and she paused close to the seat on which was the gentleman reading.“’Pon honour,” cried the beau who had followed her; “you walk most vulgarly fast. Ah! Ah! Really now, a delicious little creature like you ought to glide, not walk—to glide—positively glide. Ah! Ah! That would be delicious.”The gentleman who was reading looked up, his eyes met Ada’s.“Harry!” he cried.“Albert!” she replied, and bursting into tears, she clung convulsively to the arms of Albert Seyton.
Ada’s Wanderings.—The Pearl Necklace.—A Kind Heart.—The Park.—A Joyous Meeting.—The Arrangement.
Coldand hunger now began to exercise a sensible influence upon the fragile frame of Ada. Her step became languid and slow, and she began to feel that her strength was fast deserting her. Her dislike to return to Jacob Gray was very great, and yet where else in that great city could she find a place whereon to lay her aching limbs? The sense of her own extreme destitution came vividly across her imagination, and had it not been for the curious gaze of the early passengers she met, she could have wept freely in her bitterness of heart. Listlessly she walked onwards, and thought, from its very intensity, became at last a positive pain. Money she had none; and, in fact, so secluded from the world had she been kept by the fears of Jacob Gray, that she would not have known how to procure the means of supporting life, even had she possessed valuable property about her.
A cold, glaring winter’s sun shone forth from a clear sky, mocking the earth with an appearance of warmth, which made the sharp wind that whistled round the corners of the streets seem doubly keen and piercing.
“Must I return to that dismal house?” thought Ada—“must I again throw myself on the mercy of that man who calls himself my father?”
She paused in doubt and irresolution, and no one who passed could fail to mark the air of deep dejection which sat upon the pale anxious face of the young girl.
It so chanced that she stopped opposite to the shop-door of a jeweller and dealer in precious stones, in Parliament-street, and as she clung to the little wooden rail that guarded the window, she saw the keen, sparkling eyes of an old man fixed on her from within. His beard and general appearance proclaimed him a Jew, and scarcely had Ada shrank from his gaze, and paused a step or two onwards, when she heard a voice behind her saying,—
“My dear, will you sell that necklace?”
Ada turned quickly. The old man from the shop stood before her, and repeated his question.
“Will you sell that necklace?”
“Necklace?” said Ada.
“Yes; the little necklace you have round your pretty little neck, my dear.”
Ada now recollected that among her female attire she had found the necklace; and hastily clasped it on when dressing, to elude the search of Jacob Gray’s furious visitors.
“I am tired and hungry,” said Ada.
“Are you indeed. Bless me!” cried the old man. “Walk into my shop. You see I am an old man. Walk in—do walk in.”
Ada suffered herself to be led into the little shop, and unclasping the necklace, she said—
“Will it fetch me a meal?”
“A meal?” said the jeweller, and his eyes sparkled as he took the necklace. “A meal? Why it’s real—no, I mean mock—mock pearls—”
“And valueless?” said Ada.
“No—no—not quite—not quite, my dear. Here is a new guinea—a bright new guinea!”
Ada took the coin, and said, languidly—
“Alas! I am so strange here, I know not even how to dispose of this to procure me food.”
“Indeed?” said the jeweller. “Do you know nobody? Have you no friends?”
“Do you—can you,” said Ada, and a radiant blush suffused her cheeks as she spoke—“can you tell me, if you know where a Sir Seyton lives?”
“Does he know you had a necklace?” said the Jew.
“No, I scarcely knew it myself.”
“Indeed!” cried the jeweller, lifting up his eyes and hands. “My dear, I don’t know the gentleman you mention.”
“I thank you,” said Ada, rising.
She left the shop, and looking back after she had gone a few paces, she could not derive how it was that the Jew was putting up his shutters with nervous haste. She little knew that her necklace was of Indian pearls, and worth a very large sum indeed.
To her joy, after she had proceeded a few paces further, she saw that the second house, down a small turning to her left, was a little dairy—and immediately entering, she requested of the old woman who served, a draft of milk.
It was handed to her, and she drank it off with great pleasure and laid on the little counter her guinea.
“Would you like the rest, miss?” said the old woman; “you do seem tired, to be sure.”
“I am tired,” said Ada, “and would gladly rest myself, if I am not in your way.”
“Dear heart, no,” said the old woman. “Come in here, it’s warmer than the shop. What weather we do have to be sure.”
Ada accompanied, the woman to the little parlour at the back of the shop, and the good dame placed before her some rolls and more milk, of which the wearied girl partook with more pleasure than she ever made breakfast with before.
“You are too young to be out by yourself,” said the dame; “and a great deal too pretty too.”
Ada shook her head, as she said,—
“Do you know where resides a Mr. Seyton?”
“No,” replied the woman. “This London is such an immense place, that it’s like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay to find anybody.”
“If I could find him,” sighed Ada, “he would be my friend. Is there a gentleman named Sir Francis Hartleton?”
“Indeed there is; and if you want him, he lives close at hand. He is a magistrate, and as good a man as ever breathed.”
“Indeed,” said Ada, “’Tis very strange!”
“What’s strange, my dear?”
“Oh, nothing—nothing. Can you show me to his house?”
“Yes; if you come to the door, I can point it out for you, though he very likely to be at his office, and that’s across the park.”
Ada accompanied the old woman to her outer door, and she pointed out to the refreshed and much revived girl a handsome house, as the residence of Sir Francis Hartleton.
She again tendered her guinea, but the kind-hearted woman replied—
“Pho, pho, my dear. You sha’n’t change your guinea for a sup of milk.”
The tears gathered to Ada’s eyes at this trifling act of kindness, and she grasped the hand of the good dame, warmly, as she said, in a voice of emotion,—
“I am not used to kindness.”
“Not used to kindness? Ah, well, poor thing! If your friend, Sir Francis Hartleton, ain’t in the way, come here again.”
“If I live,” said Ada, “I will visit you again.”
She then, with a sweet smile, walked from the little dairy, and slowly approached the house of Sir Francis Hartleton. She paused as she neared it, and many anxious doubts and fears crossed her mind, concerning the result of an interview with the magistrate; to whom Jacob Gray’s mysterious bundle of papers was addressed, and above all, rose like a spectre, the still clinging horrible supposition that Jacob Gray might possibly be her father. She could not positively swear that he was not. In defiance of all probability he might have spoken the truth.
She stood by the portico of the magistrate’s house, and her irresolution increased each moment that she strove to reason with her fears.
“Dare I,” she thought, “run this dreadful risk? Heaven knows what that paper may contain which Gray sets such store by. Some awful history of crime and suffering, perchance, which would bring him to a scaffold and proclaim me the child of a murderer. Can I make conditions with the magistrates? Can I say to him, I will direct you to a packet addressed to yourself, containing, I know not what, which you can send a force, if necessary, to possess yourself of, but which you must act upon only so far as may be consistent with my feelings? Alas, no! I feel that such would not be acceded to, and I am tortured by doubts and anxieties—dreadful fears—Jacob Gray, what devil tempted you to raise so dreadful a supposition in my mind that you might be my father? And yet I do not, cannot believe you. No—but I doubt—ay doubt. There lies the agony! The fearful irresolution that cramped my very soul—cripples my exertions to be free, and makes me the unhappy, wretched thing I am. No, I cannot yet betray thee to death, Jacob Gray, although you would have taken my life, even while I slept unsuspectingly beneath your roof, I cannot, dare not yet betray thee.”
Scarcely, in the confusion of other feelings, knowing whither she went, she passed the door of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house, nor paused till she found herself in the Bird Cage Walk, in St. James’s Park. It was still very early, but the fine bracing morning had attracted many pedestrians to the park, and the various walks were beginning to assume a gay appearance, the fashionable hour of promenading being then much earlier than it is at present.
Many an admiring glance was cast upon the beautiful Ada as she slowly took her uncertain way beneath the tall ancient trees which have now given place to young saplings, the fall beauty of which the present generations will never enjoy. The cool air that blew across the wide expanse imparted a delicate bloom to her cheeks, that many a court beauty would have bartered a portion of her existence to obtain. The hat she wore but partially confined the long dancing black ringlets that fell in nature’s own freedom on her neck and shoulders; and, withal, there was a sweet pensiveness in her manner, and the expressions of her face, which greatly charmed and interested all the gentlemen, and greatly vexed and discomposed all the ladies, who, with one accord, voted it to be affectation.
How little they dreamt of the deep sorrow that was in the young girl’s heart.
She walked on till she reached the Great Mall, and then, feeling somewhat weary she sat down on one of the wooden seats, and seeing nothing, hearing nothing, she gave herself up to her own thoughts, and tears trickled slowly from her eyes, as all her meditations tended to the one conclusion that she must starve or go back to the lone house and Jacob Gray.
She was aroused from her reverie by some one repeatedly, in an affected drawl pronouncing the word,—
“Delicious: de—licious; oh, de—licous!” immediately in front of where she sat.
Ada looked up, and balancing himself before her, nearly on his toes, was an affectedly dressed person who was staring at her through an opera-glass, and repeating the word delicious, as conveying his extreme admiration of her. When Ada looked up he advanced with a smirk and a bow, and laying his hand on his embroidered waistcoat, said, in the same drawling, affected tone—
“My charming little Hebe—what unearthly change—what glorious concatenation of sublime events have procured St. James’s Park the felicity of beholding you? Eh, eh, my delicious charmer?”
“Sir,” said Ada, annoyed by the tone of the remarks, the substance of which she scarcely heard or comprehended.
“Charming simplicity!” cried the beau; “permit me.”
He seated himself with these words by the side of Ada, and attempted, by an affected, apeish manner, to take her hand.
Ada shrunk from his touch, and rising with an innocent dignity, that appalled for a moment the fine gentleman, she said—
“I do not know you, sir,” and walked onwards, leaving him the questionable credit of having turned her out of the seat.
“Charming! charming!” she heard him say, after a few moments, as he pursued her along the Mall.
Ada was excessively annoyed at this most disagreeable intrusion, and she quickened her pace in the hope of distancing the gallant; such, however, was not the event, for he was nearly close to her when she arrived at the next seat, which was occupied but by one gentleman, who was reading a book.
“One stranger,” thought Ada, “may protect me from the insults of another,” and she paused close to the seat on which was the gentleman reading.
“’Pon honour,” cried the beau who had followed her; “you walk most vulgarly fast. Ah! Ah! Really now, a delicious little creature like you ought to glide, not walk—to glide—positively glide. Ah! Ah! That would be delicious.”
The gentleman who was reading looked up, his eyes met Ada’s.
“Harry!” he cried.
“Albert!” she replied, and bursting into tears, she clung convulsively to the arms of Albert Seyton.