CHAPTERCLIV.THE UNEXPECTED MEETING—LAURA AND MRS. GROVER.We are again in London—it is night—the day’s work is over with many of the inhabitants of this mighty human hive. But there are thousands, however, whose work commences after dark. Journalists, reporters, printers, and those who minister to the pleasure of the public as entertainers, have each and all to ply their vocation after what are the recognised working hours of the great body of the people.The doors of the theatres had opened for the second price; from the cafés, saloons, and taverns, of the Haymarket and its purlieus red lights began to gleam—hoarse voices to swear—and this fearful quarter, where, but a few years back, vice and debauchery reigned undisturbed, now began to fill with the votaries of vice and the victims of vanity—men who covered their natures of beasts with the garb of gentlemen—women, who, with sad gaiety and lurid smiles, walked, walked, and walked, in order that they might not starve.In a dark street near Leicester-square two women met beneath a gas-light. Both started. One of them tried to pass. The other seized her.“No, I must speak to you, Laura Stanbridge,” said the elder of the two.The woman whom she addressed affected surprise.“Why, is it really you, Mrs. Grover?” said she.“Yes, it is me,” she answered, gloomily. “It is years since we met, but I knew you in a moment.”“Indeed! In that you had the advantage of me, for at first, I confess, I was at a loss to understand who you were.”“That is likely enough. Time has altered both of us, but me more especially.”“I don’t see that it has. But do you want anything of me?”“Yes, I do, or I should not have troubled to make myself known to you. I desire to have a little conversation with you.”Laura Stanbridge hesitated.“Humph! Something to say, eh?”“Yes.”“Perhaps I may learn something from her,” she muttered to herself, “better keep in with her.”Then aloud she said—“You are the last person in the world I should have expected to meet. Still, of course, I am glad to see you.”“Oh yes, I dare say you are.”“Let us enter this café,” said Laura.They entered the establishment in question, which was provided with some marble tables and luxurious ottomans.It was divided into two compartments.They passed into the further one, where they could converse with privacy.First, however, it was requisite to order some refreshment.“Garcon!” cried Laura.No.86.Illustration: LAURA STANBRIDGE AND PURVIS’S MOTHERLAURA STANBRIDGE AND PURVIS’S MOTHER IN THE RESTAURANT.A waiter, with shaved cheeks, and a small black moustache of the true Frenchman style, answered the call.“Une verre de parfait amour,” said Miss Stanbridge.He bowed, vanished, and returned with a tiny glass filled with a liquor red as a girl’s lips, luscious, and perfumed as the nectar of the gods.“Now, my dear Mrs. Grover,” said Laura, as she sipped the beverage and reclined in a voluptuous attitude, “I am all attention. Pray tell me what you have to discourse about. The wickedness and vanity of the world—or what?”“There is no occasion for you to make a jest of a subject which to me is, alas! a most serious one,” returned her companion. “I have come to ask what you have done with my child.”“Your child?” cried Laura, raising her eyebrows. “The person to whom you allude is no longer a child.”“Well, then, my son, if that term pleases you better.”“We will not dispute about terms—I presume you allude to a young man who was at one my time protégé.”“The boy whom you adopted from the streets and taught to be a thief was my son. I always loved him,” said the unhappy woman. “I always loved him without knowing why. But he was the babe I nursed at this breast, and carried in these arms, and kissed with these lips—the babe I abandoned when I was mad and foolish, and whom they tore from me, and made me fly for my very life. I never knew this until lately, and I have been searching for you for months past. I asked Bill Rawton to put me on the right track, and I have asked everybody I could think of.”“Oh, indeed.”“Yes, I have.”“This is very curious and romantic; and you really mean to say that you have not seen or heard of your young friend for all these long and weary years?”“No never—never once have I set eyes upon him. But what could I do? You threatened me with the police if I tried to baulk you and I was altogether at your mercy. I did not know that he was my darling son, and if I had,” she said fiercely, “the rope itself should not have held me back, but I did not know that then. I only knew that I loved him, but I did not know why.”Laura Stanbridge sipped herparfait amour.“This is really very dramatic, Mrs. Grover—very dramatic indeed,” said she with perfect composure, “And I suppose there will be no harm in grattfying your curiosity, especially as it may serve you as a lesson not to play at pitch and toss with babies in the future.”“I do not care a pin for your taunts. Jest at me as you will—it will not harm me; only tell me where he is.”“I should be clever indeed to tell you that, seeing that I do not know myself.”“Have you quarrelled then, and do you never see him then?”“I never see him and never wish to do so; he was my friend—he is now my bitterest enemy. I suppose you have heard of Dandy Sutherland, as he is termed.”Mrs. Grover turned pale. “Eh,” she murmured, “Then my boy has fallen into his hands? All is lost, all is lost.”“Dandy Sutherland is the Bully Grand of the Forty Thieves, and the standing toast of every boozing ken between Westminster and Whitechapel. While other men have been content to shine in one branch of the profession, the Dandy has made himself master of them all, and is equally notorious as a drummer, as a mobsman, a shofuller, a smasher, and a cracksman. In this last capacity he is only surpassed by the celebrated and famous Charles Peace, who surpasses all others as a daring and accomplished burglar.”The Dandy, therefore, is not to be named in the same day with Charles Peace, but he has other accomplishments—practises other forms of villainy which Peace never attempted.“Gracious heaven! Can this be possible?”“It is not only possible, but true.”“Admit that it is so, but this does not help me to find my son. Where is my boy?”“His genius for calculation would have made his fortune at cards before the hells were abolished,” observed Miss Stanbridge, not taking any heed of her companion’s queries. “And could he obtain anentréeinto the ‘Ottoman’ or ‘Cocoa-nut Tree,’ where hundreds of pounds are frequently staked upon a game, his skill at billiards would speedily enrich him.”“And is he not rich now?” inquired the other, stifling her rage that she might obtain the information she desired.“He was not rich when I last saw him; on the contrary, he was poor, but this is some time ago. I have not seen anything of him for a long time past. He is unsettled and extravagant. Besides, he is an unprincipled corrupter of our own sex, and so spends more thought upon vice than upon crime. Vice is a safe game because it is played at by all the aristocracy, but it is the reverse of lucrative.”“And this man, this Dandy Sutherland, as you call him, am I to understand that he is an associate of my son’s, or is he my boy himself?”“Well, to tell you the truth, forlorn and afflicted parent,” said Laura Stanbridge, “Dandy Sutherland, with his fifty aliases and his thousand crimes, is no other than the youth whom I had the honour of initiating into his profession.”The mother did not speak. She stared at Laura stupidly as if she had not understood her, but she turned pale, and breathed very hard.“I repeat,” said Laura, “that your son is now called, by the thieving fraternity, Dandy Sutherland, and that he has been compelled to fly from the officers of justice in consequence of a burglary and murderous outrage he has been engaged in, and, I think, seeing that he is wanted by the police, that it is very doubtful about your finding him—for some time to come at all events. If he is caught they’ll give it him pretty hot, I fancy,” remarked Laura, carelessly, as she sipped herparfait amour.“And you will be glad to see him in trouble. If you say that again I will throttle you,” cried Mrs. Grover, with a sudden burst of passion.“Now don’t be noisy, my dear old friend,” returned her companion, with a smile. “It is, of course, very dramatic, but we don’t want to bring down the house just now—we don’t, indeed.”The unhappy mother fell into a chair, and the tears streamed in hot torrents from her eyes. Suddenly she sprung to her feet.She snatched a handkerchief from her bosom, and showed Laura Stanbridge a golden ring and a slip of paper, on which the ink was brown and faded, as if it had been written years before.“I will save him yet!—I will save him yet!” cried the woman. “Do you know what I will do?”“Can’t possibly imagine.”“I will go to him, and will show him this ring and paper, and I will tell him that he is not base born, but born in lawful wedlock, and heir to a squire’s land. That will tempt him to turn from his evil ways, and he will go to his grandfather, and, of course, he will not know what my son has been, and what he will never be again, but will make up some clever story, and it will be all right.”“Oh, it must be a wonderfully clever story to put your son straight with Squire Kensett—wonderfully clever, indeed. Why, don’t you know that the worthy magistrate in question has already had Dandy Sutherland before him upon the charge of attempting to defraud the Saltwich Bank?”“Before Squire Kensett,” cried Mrs. Grover, perfectly aghast at this piece of information.“Most certainly.”“Alf is the squire’s grandson.”“Is he?”“Most certainly, he is the son of Mr. Robert Everhard Kensett—read that,” said Mrs. Grover, handing her companion the paper.“Ah I see a marriage certificate, and your husband—this Mr. Robert Everhard Kensett—is dead.”“Yes, he is. The ship he sailed in foundered at sea and all hands on board were lost.”“How very unfortunate—very sad indeed! But this instrument appears to be genuine.”“When I show it my son he will do as I wish; will he not?”“No one could refuse to exchange constant anxiety and danger for perpetual substance and respectability.”“You think he will come with me then?” asked Mrs. Grover, for the sake of hearing such words again.“I am sure of it, if you find him.”“If I find him!”“Yes, at present that little difficultly stands in the way.”“Oh, how happy I am, and the thought only came into my poor weak head lately. My boy will be a squire, and perhaps they will make him a magistrate. Only fancy his being a magistrate.”“I confess I cannot fancy it. At present he is hunted like a wild beast, and has been compelled to leave the country—so I have been told. He had better keep out of the way, and no doubt he will, for he is cunning as a fox.”Mrs. Grover looked at the speaker anxiously.“What are you doing with my certificate?” said she.“I am folding it up to put in my pocket. It is a very important paper, and perhaps you might lose it.”“Oh, no, I am not likely to do that,” said the other, earnestly. “I have kept that paper and the ring my husband gave me ever since I was a young and wicked girl. Don’t put it in your pocket. I shall want it, you know, to show it to my son.”“But I don’t mean to let you show it to your son.” And she sipped herparfait amour.“Not let me! Why not?”“Because I don’t wish your son to become a squire and a magistrate. He would be too proud to remember his old friends.”“Oh, Laura!” cried the miserable mother, “you cannot find it in your heart to hold him back from a life of honesty and drive him to sin and death. Ah, woman, you have made him everything that’s bad. Have you not done enough?”“No!” shrieked Laura, rising to her feet—“no, I have not done enough, for, do you know, woman, how this precious son of yours turned round upon me?”“No, I never heard.”“Hark ye, woman! I knelt to that man—I, Laura Stanbridge—and he spurned me as if I had been a leper. I became a woman for once, and I was trodden on. Do you think I am likely to serve him—the recreant, heartless scoundrel? No, no, madam. You know little of me if you imagine I can forget the bitter wrong done me. I fostered a serpent, and now I both hate and despise this precious sample of manhood. Go your ways. Do as you will—you cannot count on any assistance from me. Find him if you can—but I tell you once and for all that I have done with him.”Mrs. Grover listened to this sudden burst of fury at first with a shudder, afterwards with an icy calmness.She had taken a resolution. Without replying she moved towards the door.“Stop!” cried Laura Stanbridge. “Understand me distinctly. I have nothing to say against you personally. I do not dislike you, but as for him——”“No more. Say no more. You have done your worst.”“Do not be sure of that. Possibly worse is to follow.”Mrs. Grover moaned and sank back in her chair. There was no life in her eyes but one tear which struggled freely down her cheeks—no life in her frame but a slight quivering in her hands.Laura Standbridge looked at her with a smile. Then she drew the marriage certificate from her pocket and read it over carefully, and she took the last sip of herparfait amour.After awhile her companion recovered herself. She arose, and, holding up one hand in a deprecating manner, she passed out of the café.“Unhappy woman!” exclaimed Miss Stanbridge, after she had gone, “She little thinks that she is not likely to see her son this side of the grave. Strange that the body has never been found—drifted out, I suppose, and never will be recovered. All things considered we must deem ourselves fortunate.”
We are again in London—it is night—the day’s work is over with many of the inhabitants of this mighty human hive. But there are thousands, however, whose work commences after dark. Journalists, reporters, printers, and those who minister to the pleasure of the public as entertainers, have each and all to ply their vocation after what are the recognised working hours of the great body of the people.
The doors of the theatres had opened for the second price; from the cafés, saloons, and taverns, of the Haymarket and its purlieus red lights began to gleam—hoarse voices to swear—and this fearful quarter, where, but a few years back, vice and debauchery reigned undisturbed, now began to fill with the votaries of vice and the victims of vanity—men who covered their natures of beasts with the garb of gentlemen—women, who, with sad gaiety and lurid smiles, walked, walked, and walked, in order that they might not starve.
In a dark street near Leicester-square two women met beneath a gas-light. Both started. One of them tried to pass. The other seized her.
“No, I must speak to you, Laura Stanbridge,” said the elder of the two.
The woman whom she addressed affected surprise.
“Why, is it really you, Mrs. Grover?” said she.
“Yes, it is me,” she answered, gloomily. “It is years since we met, but I knew you in a moment.”
“Indeed! In that you had the advantage of me, for at first, I confess, I was at a loss to understand who you were.”
“That is likely enough. Time has altered both of us, but me more especially.”
“I don’t see that it has. But do you want anything of me?”
“Yes, I do, or I should not have troubled to make myself known to you. I desire to have a little conversation with you.”
Laura Stanbridge hesitated.
“Humph! Something to say, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps I may learn something from her,” she muttered to herself, “better keep in with her.”
Then aloud she said—
“You are the last person in the world I should have expected to meet. Still, of course, I am glad to see you.”
“Oh yes, I dare say you are.”
“Let us enter this café,” said Laura.
They entered the establishment in question, which was provided with some marble tables and luxurious ottomans.
It was divided into two compartments.
They passed into the further one, where they could converse with privacy.
First, however, it was requisite to order some refreshment.
“Garcon!” cried Laura.
No.86.
Illustration: LAURA STANBRIDGE AND PURVIS’S MOTHERLAURA STANBRIDGE AND PURVIS’S MOTHER IN THE RESTAURANT.
LAURA STANBRIDGE AND PURVIS’S MOTHER IN THE RESTAURANT.
A waiter, with shaved cheeks, and a small black moustache of the true Frenchman style, answered the call.
“Une verre de parfait amour,” said Miss Stanbridge.
He bowed, vanished, and returned with a tiny glass filled with a liquor red as a girl’s lips, luscious, and perfumed as the nectar of the gods.
“Now, my dear Mrs. Grover,” said Laura, as she sipped the beverage and reclined in a voluptuous attitude, “I am all attention. Pray tell me what you have to discourse about. The wickedness and vanity of the world—or what?”
“There is no occasion for you to make a jest of a subject which to me is, alas! a most serious one,” returned her companion. “I have come to ask what you have done with my child.”
“Your child?” cried Laura, raising her eyebrows. “The person to whom you allude is no longer a child.”
“Well, then, my son, if that term pleases you better.”
“We will not dispute about terms—I presume you allude to a young man who was at one my time protégé.”
“The boy whom you adopted from the streets and taught to be a thief was my son. I always loved him,” said the unhappy woman. “I always loved him without knowing why. But he was the babe I nursed at this breast, and carried in these arms, and kissed with these lips—the babe I abandoned when I was mad and foolish, and whom they tore from me, and made me fly for my very life. I never knew this until lately, and I have been searching for you for months past. I asked Bill Rawton to put me on the right track, and I have asked everybody I could think of.”
“Oh, indeed.”
“Yes, I have.”
“This is very curious and romantic; and you really mean to say that you have not seen or heard of your young friend for all these long and weary years?”
“No never—never once have I set eyes upon him. But what could I do? You threatened me with the police if I tried to baulk you and I was altogether at your mercy. I did not know that he was my darling son, and if I had,” she said fiercely, “the rope itself should not have held me back, but I did not know that then. I only knew that I loved him, but I did not know why.”
Laura Stanbridge sipped herparfait amour.
“This is really very dramatic, Mrs. Grover—very dramatic indeed,” said she with perfect composure, “And I suppose there will be no harm in grattfying your curiosity, especially as it may serve you as a lesson not to play at pitch and toss with babies in the future.”
“I do not care a pin for your taunts. Jest at me as you will—it will not harm me; only tell me where he is.”
“I should be clever indeed to tell you that, seeing that I do not know myself.”
“Have you quarrelled then, and do you never see him then?”
“I never see him and never wish to do so; he was my friend—he is now my bitterest enemy. I suppose you have heard of Dandy Sutherland, as he is termed.”
Mrs. Grover turned pale. “Eh,” she murmured, “Then my boy has fallen into his hands? All is lost, all is lost.”
“Dandy Sutherland is the Bully Grand of the Forty Thieves, and the standing toast of every boozing ken between Westminster and Whitechapel. While other men have been content to shine in one branch of the profession, the Dandy has made himself master of them all, and is equally notorious as a drummer, as a mobsman, a shofuller, a smasher, and a cracksman. In this last capacity he is only surpassed by the celebrated and famous Charles Peace, who surpasses all others as a daring and accomplished burglar.”
The Dandy, therefore, is not to be named in the same day with Charles Peace, but he has other accomplishments—practises other forms of villainy which Peace never attempted.
“Gracious heaven! Can this be possible?”
“It is not only possible, but true.”
“Admit that it is so, but this does not help me to find my son. Where is my boy?”
“His genius for calculation would have made his fortune at cards before the hells were abolished,” observed Miss Stanbridge, not taking any heed of her companion’s queries. “And could he obtain anentréeinto the ‘Ottoman’ or ‘Cocoa-nut Tree,’ where hundreds of pounds are frequently staked upon a game, his skill at billiards would speedily enrich him.”
“And is he not rich now?” inquired the other, stifling her rage that she might obtain the information she desired.
“He was not rich when I last saw him; on the contrary, he was poor, but this is some time ago. I have not seen anything of him for a long time past. He is unsettled and extravagant. Besides, he is an unprincipled corrupter of our own sex, and so spends more thought upon vice than upon crime. Vice is a safe game because it is played at by all the aristocracy, but it is the reverse of lucrative.”
“And this man, this Dandy Sutherland, as you call him, am I to understand that he is an associate of my son’s, or is he my boy himself?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, forlorn and afflicted parent,” said Laura Stanbridge, “Dandy Sutherland, with his fifty aliases and his thousand crimes, is no other than the youth whom I had the honour of initiating into his profession.”
The mother did not speak. She stared at Laura stupidly as if she had not understood her, but she turned pale, and breathed very hard.
“I repeat,” said Laura, “that your son is now called, by the thieving fraternity, Dandy Sutherland, and that he has been compelled to fly from the officers of justice in consequence of a burglary and murderous outrage he has been engaged in, and, I think, seeing that he is wanted by the police, that it is very doubtful about your finding him—for some time to come at all events. If he is caught they’ll give it him pretty hot, I fancy,” remarked Laura, carelessly, as she sipped herparfait amour.
“And you will be glad to see him in trouble. If you say that again I will throttle you,” cried Mrs. Grover, with a sudden burst of passion.
“Now don’t be noisy, my dear old friend,” returned her companion, with a smile. “It is, of course, very dramatic, but we don’t want to bring down the house just now—we don’t, indeed.”
The unhappy mother fell into a chair, and the tears streamed in hot torrents from her eyes. Suddenly she sprung to her feet.
She snatched a handkerchief from her bosom, and showed Laura Stanbridge a golden ring and a slip of paper, on which the ink was brown and faded, as if it had been written years before.
“I will save him yet!—I will save him yet!” cried the woman. “Do you know what I will do?”
“Can’t possibly imagine.”
“I will go to him, and will show him this ring and paper, and I will tell him that he is not base born, but born in lawful wedlock, and heir to a squire’s land. That will tempt him to turn from his evil ways, and he will go to his grandfather, and, of course, he will not know what my son has been, and what he will never be again, but will make up some clever story, and it will be all right.”
“Oh, it must be a wonderfully clever story to put your son straight with Squire Kensett—wonderfully clever, indeed. Why, don’t you know that the worthy magistrate in question has already had Dandy Sutherland before him upon the charge of attempting to defraud the Saltwich Bank?”
“Before Squire Kensett,” cried Mrs. Grover, perfectly aghast at this piece of information.
“Most certainly.”
“Alf is the squire’s grandson.”
“Is he?”
“Most certainly, he is the son of Mr. Robert Everhard Kensett—read that,” said Mrs. Grover, handing her companion the paper.
“Ah I see a marriage certificate, and your husband—this Mr. Robert Everhard Kensett—is dead.”
“Yes, he is. The ship he sailed in foundered at sea and all hands on board were lost.”
“How very unfortunate—very sad indeed! But this instrument appears to be genuine.”
“When I show it my son he will do as I wish; will he not?”
“No one could refuse to exchange constant anxiety and danger for perpetual substance and respectability.”
“You think he will come with me then?” asked Mrs. Grover, for the sake of hearing such words again.
“I am sure of it, if you find him.”
“If I find him!”
“Yes, at present that little difficultly stands in the way.”
“Oh, how happy I am, and the thought only came into my poor weak head lately. My boy will be a squire, and perhaps they will make him a magistrate. Only fancy his being a magistrate.”
“I confess I cannot fancy it. At present he is hunted like a wild beast, and has been compelled to leave the country—so I have been told. He had better keep out of the way, and no doubt he will, for he is cunning as a fox.”
Mrs. Grover looked at the speaker anxiously.
“What are you doing with my certificate?” said she.
“I am folding it up to put in my pocket. It is a very important paper, and perhaps you might lose it.”
“Oh, no, I am not likely to do that,” said the other, earnestly. “I have kept that paper and the ring my husband gave me ever since I was a young and wicked girl. Don’t put it in your pocket. I shall want it, you know, to show it to my son.”
“But I don’t mean to let you show it to your son.” And she sipped herparfait amour.
“Not let me! Why not?”
“Because I don’t wish your son to become a squire and a magistrate. He would be too proud to remember his old friends.”
“Oh, Laura!” cried the miserable mother, “you cannot find it in your heart to hold him back from a life of honesty and drive him to sin and death. Ah, woman, you have made him everything that’s bad. Have you not done enough?”
“No!” shrieked Laura, rising to her feet—“no, I have not done enough, for, do you know, woman, how this precious son of yours turned round upon me?”
“No, I never heard.”
“Hark ye, woman! I knelt to that man—I, Laura Stanbridge—and he spurned me as if I had been a leper. I became a woman for once, and I was trodden on. Do you think I am likely to serve him—the recreant, heartless scoundrel? No, no, madam. You know little of me if you imagine I can forget the bitter wrong done me. I fostered a serpent, and now I both hate and despise this precious sample of manhood. Go your ways. Do as you will—you cannot count on any assistance from me. Find him if you can—but I tell you once and for all that I have done with him.”
Mrs. Grover listened to this sudden burst of fury at first with a shudder, afterwards with an icy calmness.
She had taken a resolution. Without replying she moved towards the door.
“Stop!” cried Laura Stanbridge. “Understand me distinctly. I have nothing to say against you personally. I do not dislike you, but as for him——”
“No more. Say no more. You have done your worst.”
“Do not be sure of that. Possibly worse is to follow.”
Mrs. Grover moaned and sank back in her chair. There was no life in her eyes but one tear which struggled freely down her cheeks—no life in her frame but a slight quivering in her hands.
Laura Standbridge looked at her with a smile. Then she drew the marriage certificate from her pocket and read it over carefully, and she took the last sip of herparfait amour.
After awhile her companion recovered herself. She arose, and, holding up one hand in a deprecating manner, she passed out of the café.
“Unhappy woman!” exclaimed Miss Stanbridge, after she had gone, “She little thinks that she is not likely to see her son this side of the grave. Strange that the body has never been found—drifted out, I suppose, and never will be recovered. All things considered we must deem ourselves fortunate.”