The normal state of the Adelphi Hotel at Liverpool is one of such bustle and confusion, that when the entire establishment goes stark staring mad, as is the case twice a year, on the occasions of the Grand National Steeplechase and the Waterloo Meeting, the people are not inclined to regard the eccentricity as anything to be wondered at. Passing a night at the Adelphi, you are liable to come across the man who went out to California five-and-twenty years ago with the full determination never to revisit the motherland where the first half of his life had been so thrown away, but who, his fortune made and the nostalgia strong upon him, arrived last night from New York, to travel for six months like a gentleman in the country where, for a quarter of a century, he had starved and slaved. Or you are equally likely to run into the arms of the elderly friend whom you have always considered as a fixed item of London life, but who, having heard a rumour 'that things are going wrong out there,' is starting by the next day's outward-bound mail to satisfy himself. The halls and passages of the Adelphi are always crammed with sea-going chests and Saratoga boxes, and deckchairs, more or less maimed; and there is generally a dozen of champagne being cracked in some of the rooms to drink the health of the captain who has just brought the good ship safely over, or success to the captain who is just going to take the good ship out; and there are newspaper reporters flying to and fro to get lists of passengers, or details of any occurrences on the voyage, and relations of the newly-arrived, who are very much elated, and relations of the departing, who are very much depressed, and whose excessive emotion in their case contrasts curiously with the steady-going business tone of the members of the establishment.
It was not to be supposed that a man of Mr. Bryan Duval's foresight would have neglected writing beforehand to secure rooms, any more than that he would have omitted sending a hint of his intended arrival to two or three members of the local press with whom he was on terms of friendship. Consequently, when the theatrical party from London walked into the house, they were not merely received with gracious smiles from the three young ladies in the bar, and with portentous grins from Sam the boots (not naturally a good-natured man, but an old acquaintance of Mr. Duval's, and the recipient of many orders for the upper boxes when that gentleman was staying there on a starring tour), but with a warm acclamation from Mr. Lavrock, the popular editor of theLiverpool Lion, and two or three of his comrades. It was not Mr. Lavrock's fault that he was not a London editor; it was the one hope of his life; but being unable to accomplish the feat, and finding himself tied to Liverpool, he revenged himself on the fate which had dictated, as his duty, the pulverisation of the Mayor, the castigation of the Corporation, and the flaying of the Mersey Board, by devoting every minute of his off-time to London things and London people, by running to the metropolis at all times when he could get away, and by acting as general agent for every London literary or theatrical celebrity.
It had not wanted the presence of these gentlemen to remind Bryan Duval that he had intended giving a little banquet that evening in honour of Mr. Foster; but when he saw them, he at once thought that they would not be merely pleasant additions to the party, but that they might be the means of giving it world-wide publicity by inserting a neat little paragraph in the next morning's editions, which he would take over with him, and have copied immediately after arrival in the New York journals. Mr. Lavrock and his friends would be delighted to accept the invitation, and the party separated with the understanding that they were to meet at seven o'clock, the travellers going to their bedrooms to rest themselves after their journey, and the newspaper men to their offices, to prepare that little paragraph concerning which Mr. Duval had dropped a hint into the ear of each of them.
The Adelphi can give a dinner when it has a mind, and it had a mind this day. The turtle was superb; so good that Mr. Foster, who had had two or three rather sharp culinary arguments with Mr. Duval since their acquaintance, was compelled to acknowledge that on one point, at least, he had been wrong, and that he had never, even at the Brevoort House in New York, tasted better soup than that then set before him; and when dinner was over, Mr. Duval made a very prolonged epigrammatic speech, proposing Mr. Foster's health, and Mr. Foster, with that self-possession and flow of language so characteristic of his countrymen, returned thanks. And then Mr. Lavrock stood up and exhausted the dictionary of flattery upon Bryan Duval, who, in responding, remarked that he hoped in a couple of months or so to give another dinner to almost the same party in the same place, on his return from what he intended should be a prosperous run; and then, as they were most of them tired, and had to get up betimes, the party broke up.
When Mr. Foster came down the next morning, he found Bryan Duval, already the centre of an admiring crowd, giving directions for the stowage of his luggage on the huge trucks which were to convey it to the steamer's tender. Mr. Duval had exchanged his costume of the previous day for a yachting suit, and with an oilskin-covered straw hat, low patent-leather shoes, and striped silk socks, looked ready to lead off a hornpipe on any given cue. It had been arranged that they should breakfast in their rooms, and that Mr. Foster, who might be looked upon as accustomed to this kind of thing, should act as convoy to the company, Mr. Duval going in front to attend to the luggage. No sooner, therefore, was the truck duly piled than Bryan rattled off before it in a swift-going hansom, while Mr. Foster, Miss Montressor, and the others followed in a more sober vehicle.
The landing-stage at which the Cunard tender was lying was thronged on this occasion with even a more motley crowd than usual, for the paragraphs in the morning journals had announced to the actors the presence among them of their great colleague, and several of them had come down to see him off. Many of the young brokers and shipping clerks too had rushed away from their offices for a few minutes to catch a glimpse of the popular artistes, and, as if to act as a corrective to the light tone of thought likely to be engendered by these people, a dark-bearded sombre-faced man, in the rustic garb of a Methodist preacher, made his way in and out amongst the crowd, distributing tracts to whoever would take them. There was no chance for his admirers mistaking any one else for Mr. Duval; that gentleman's activity was preternatural; and when the tender left the shore, they raised a little cheer, which he gratefully acknowledged by squeezing his hat over his chest exactly as he had done on many occasions after a successful first night's performance.
There was not much talk among the little party as they made their way to the ship. They praised her noble proportions as she lay at anchor in mid-stream, cast looks at the sky, and prophesied about the weather; but their hearts were too full to say much, and they soon lapsed into silence. When they were once on board they, those who were to make the voyage, went straight to their state-rooms, and of our friends all remained there with the exception of Miss Montressor and Bryan Duval; the latter had still to see the luggage safely stowed away in the hold, the former came straight to Mr. Foster as he was standing very dejectedly on the hurricane-deck.
'I have just found another instance of your kindness, another thing to be grateful to you for.'
'Not in the least,' he replied with a sad smile. 'I had forgotten all about it; but I know there is no preventive of sea-sickness like champagne, and you can depend upon that case being genuine.'
'I wish you would have a bottle of it now,' she said. 'I think it would do you good.'
'I am afraid not,' he replied, with an attempt at gaiety. 'I am very depressed and very dull, I know, and I do not think champagne would help me; the only cure for me will be when I find myself on this or some sister ship bound for home.'
'And Helen!' whispered Miss Montressor.
'And Helen,' he repeated gravely, lifting his hat as though invoking a blessing on the name.
Then the shore-bell rang, and Bryan Duval came up, and in a few words of kindly friendship, without a trace of professional affectation, spoke his thanks and adieux to his newly-made friend.
When Mr. Foster turned to Miss Montressor he tried to put on a light and rallying manner, but his voice broke, and the tears rose in his eyes. He muttered something, she could not distinguish what, for she herself was very much overcome, and vanished down the ladder and across the gangway.
Then the tender steamed away. Bryan Duval and Clara Montressor, leaning over the rail, watched the figure of the man in whom alone they had an interest until it was undistinguishable; still stood gazing until the tender herself became a mere speck in the distance. Then he touched her on the arm.
'You had better go down and see to your things, Clara, my dear,' he said, in a kindly tone. 'We shall meet Foster again, I trust--he is a downright good fellow.'
'He is a gentleman,' sobbed Clara Montressor, 'and one of the best men on the face of the earth.'
By this time the good ship was standing out to sea.
* * * * * *
Mr. Foster returned to his hotel in very low spirits; the mere sight of the sea, the mere sense of being on board a steamer, the bustle and departure, and the glad anticipations which he heard all around him, had produced a fit of home-sickness. It rarely occurred that Mr. Foster, as the strictly business man, revolted against business in any shape, or resented its exactions, but he did so on this occasion, and yielded to a sort of physical and mentalmalaise, which he was ready to impute partly to fatigue, and partly to the fact that he had been amusing himself more than was his custom during the last few days, and this was the reaction. 'I go back to the grind now,' he thought, 'and I will get it over as soon as possible--I can't stand much more of this kind of thing; it doesn't pay. My Helen would be cured of her funny unreasonable notions about the supremacy of my business in my thoughts, her pretty jealousy would vanish like a cloud if she could only see me now, if she could only look into my heart and know how I longed to have done with it all and to get back to her. How I envy the people who are going where she is!'
He was walking slowly, with bent head and a musing manner, rarely seen in the busy streets of the water-side city, as he thought this, and he mechanically put his hand into his breast-pocket searching for his wife's last letter, which he felt sure he had brought down with him; but it was not there. 'I must have left it in my room,' he thought, and quickened his steps. On reaching the hotel, Mr. Foster went to his room and found the letter, which he glanced over and placed in his pocket-book.
Everything, tide included, had favoured the departure of his friends. It was nigh noon when the ship steamed down the Mersey, and the solitary man, who was in a humour to indulge the sense of solitude, had several hours to dispose of before returning to London. He had contemplated staying one night in Liverpool, but he changed his mind; he would go and have a look at the chief places of interest in the city and its environs, and so dispose of the hours until he could go away.
It was a little after one when he left the Adelphi, and set out on a sort of strolling tour, and his mind, an active and intelligent one, soon became diverted and interested in the novel scene. There is a good deal to be seen in Liverpool and at Birkenhead, and Mr. Foster gave his mind to seeing it; so that it was much later than he had calculated upon when he was crossing in the ferry from the latter place, and he perceived, with some vexation, that he had overstayed his time, and could not possibly leave by the night train as he had intended. 'Not that it matters,' he thought, 'except that Helen's letter will be waiting for me instead of my being waiting for it.'
'I beg your pardon,' he said, making room on the bench where he was sitting for a man who had stood, with rather an ostentatious air of expecting to have room made for him, just in front of Mr. Foster, 'I didn't see that you wanted a place;' and the man sat down, after some words of course.
He was a slight man, who carried himself awkwardly, with high shoulders and sunken chest and stooping head; he was of dark complexion, had straight black hair, which fitted his head like a thatch, and a black beard, but he was painfully nearsighted, and wore spectacles of such power that his eyes, seen through them, seemed to be buried in cavities altogether disproportionate to the other feature. He was curiously ill-dressed, not only as regards the fabric of his garments, which was incongruous, but also as regards their fit, which had not the slightest reference to either his height or his breadth. They were formed of two or three kinds of cloth of different degrees of coarseness, but all of the cheapest description, and all rusty black, which associates itself in one's mind with the Scripture-reading, amateur-preaching, charity-letter writing, and tract-distributing class. He wore shoes, which might have been made for any one of the passengers on board the ferry with as much reference to their fit as for him, and his gray cotton gloves were too long in the fingers and too wide in the wrists. In the dog's-eared pocket of his black cloth waistcoat he carried a clumsy silver watch, attached to a frayed piece of black braid; and a shiny leather case, which had evidently been replenished with tracts since he had lavishly distributed his morning supply of that improving order of literature, protruded from the breast-pocket of his shapeless coat.
Mr. Foster glanced at the stranger as one naturally glances at a person to whom one has done a passing civility, and was not far out in his estimate of his social position and professional character; not that he was familiar with the precise type, but the character was too ostentatiously put forward to be mistaken.
A respectable-looking stout woman, with a large basket, which she held tenaciously upon her knees, to her extreme discomfort, no doubt considering it much too precious to be intrusted to the open space of deck at her feet, got into conversation with Mr. Foster's neighbour, with all the facility accorded by custom to social intercourse with gentlemen of his profession, and after a few minutes Mr. Foster found himself taking an interest in the conversation. It referred to the physical and spiritual needs of the water-side population, and the man spoke in a sensible and straightforward way, quite devoid of cant, which pleased Mr. Foster, and was singularly at variance with his appearance--that of the most conventional theatrical type, which one is almost irresistibly tempted to associate with imposture and hypocrisy.
'I wonder,' said the woman, 'you are not afraid to go down into them dens. What extraordinary sights you must see there!'
'I see a great deal of poverty and suffering,' said the man, in a marked Irish accent, 'but much less wickedness than people think for.'
And he then proceeded to tell one or two stories of his experience of that day, which had a very real ring about them, and which he related with no affectation, self-seeking, or technical phraseology. Probably he had observed that the gentleman who had made way for him was taking an interest in the conversation, for he shifted his position, in which he had previously had his shoulder turned towards Mr. Foster, for one which placed him straight between his two neighbours, his shoulders against the rail of the bench, and his bent head on his breast. There was occasionally the slightest possible glance of the strange-looking eyes, from under the magnifying spectacles, in the direction of Mr. Foster's attentive and sympathising face.
'May I ask if you have seen much of this sort of thing?' said Mr. Foster, when the speaker came to a pause, and the kindly woman on his other side was unaffectedly wiping from her eyes tears of compassion evoked by his story of a scene which the narrator had that morning witnessed at a certain 'rookery,' as he called it.
'O yes; my life has passed among such scenes,' said the man.
'Do you get used to them?' asked Mr. Foster.
'In a certain sense, of course I do; as a surgeon gets used to the sight of pain, and a judge to the presence of criminals; but if you mean do I leave off feeling them, do the individual cases become merged in the general, no, certainly not. And, sir,' said the man, now turning decidedly towards Mr. Foster, but propping his arm on his knee, and covering with his hand the end of his nose and the upper lip, already sufficiently hidden by his straight black moustache, which shaded his teeth and mingled with the hair of the beard, 'mine is a life which has its consolations as well as its duties. I see a great deal of misery, vice, sickness, cruelty, and injustice, but I see a great deal of charity too. I am made the channel through which not a little of it flows. Are you familiar with Liverpool?'
'No,' said Mr. Foster; 'I never was here until yesterday, having merely passed through when I came from New York, and I am going back to town to-morrow morning, and should have gone to-night if I hadn't over-stayed my time in sight-seeing, and run myself late for the train.'
'Among the sights you have seen,' said the man with the spectacles, 'had the low quarters of Liverpool and their inhabitants any place?'
'O no,' said Mr. Foster. 'I had not time for anything of that kind--just to get a look at the surface was all I have been able to do; besides, one never sees anything of that sort in reality, I fancy, if one goes loafing into it as a casual stranger; one must go round with the police to get any real insight into the life of such places.'
'Do you think so?' said the man, in a remonstrating tone. 'Did you ever try ta get a look into the lives of the poor and the dangerous classes in the company of their friends, for they have friends, rather than in that of their enemies?'
'No,' said Mr. Foster; 'the idea never occurred to me; indeed, I am sorry to say, I am such a busy man, that I have hardly ever seen anything of that sort, even at home. I am afraid I have been rather remiss,' he continued, with a cordial frankness, which was one of his pleasant peculiarities; 'too easily satisfied with giving a little money now and then, which I can readily spare, and shielding my own feelings from the sight of poverty, which we are all ready to talk about and depute other people to relieve.'
At this point in the conversation the brief crossing came to an end, and the two men stepped off the ferry-boat together. He whom we may call for convenience the stranger scrupulously assisted the woman and her cumbersome basket--an act of politeness which he accomplished with not a little difficulty, as it appeared he also had a parcel to carry. As the ferry touched the landing-stage, he stooped down and picked up from under the bench, where he had placed it unnoticed by either of his temporary companions, a good-sized package, rather neatly done up in tarpaulin.
Mr. Foster was the first to step off the ferry, and he and the stranger stood for a moment outside, while the latter relinquished her basket to the woman, who took a civil leave of both, and then waited, as if supposing that the sentence addressed to him was incomplete.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, as if expecting Mr. Foster to resume it; 'I thought you asked me a question.'
'I did not,' said Mr. Foster; 'but may I now ask you if your day's work is done?'
The first smile which had appeared upon the face of the stranger crossed it now, but it was instantly controlled, and had been almost imperceptibly brief. 'O dear, no,' he replied, giving the parcel which he had tucked under his arm a significant squeeze; 'I am on an errand to one of the poorest places in all Liverpool--a rookery down near the landing-stage--and I am taking some clothes there which have just been given me for the purpose for a woman and two children, who are lying on old sacks under a piece of old sail-cloth, because the mother has no clothes in which she can go and beg for work. That was not a case in which to wait for to-morrow, so I went and begged the clothes from some people I know at Birkenhead, and I am going down there direct.'
They had walked on a few steps, but the stranger stood still now, as if expecting--several places branching off here--the gentleman would take leave of him. In that moment of waiting he had an indescribable look of suspicion: the nostrils expanded and closed, the dark complexion paled slightly, and the fingers of one hand clenched themselves. It was only for a second, though; the next Mr. Foster spoke:
'I suppose the place you're going to is quite a representative den?' he said. 'Would you mind taking me with you--I should like to see it, and I should like to help a little through you, who know these poor people? I suppose it isn't very far? But of course it is not, down by the landing-stage. I should hardly have thought there were dens of that kind down there in the region of the great wharves and warehouses.'
'That's just where they swarm,' said the stranger in a bold tone of assertion, 'as you will see' (he stepped out briskly as he spoke). 'I will show you several as we go down to the one my business lies in.'
The night had fallen rapidly; there was no moon, and though the stars were coming out, there was a considerable drift of cloud, so that the sky was gloomy. As the two men walked side by side along the lighted streets, Mr. Foster found himself occasionally outstripping his companion, with whom he was talking familiarly, not exclusively upon topics which had previously engaged them, but with reference to the aspect of Liverpool. On each occasion of the kind he apologised; on the first the stranger complained of a slight lameness, which prevented his keeping up with the alert step of the strange gentleman.
The slowness and the slouchingness of his gait certainly did not decrease during their long walk; their progress was tediously slow; and Mr. Foster would probably have been surprised at the lateness of the hour, had it occurred to him to think about it.
The city was settling down into the silence produced by the general evacuation of its business quarters before that walk commenced. By the time the two turned on Water-street--along the great line of the warehouses past which the sailor who had been Mr. Foster's fellow-traveller from London on the previous day had taken his way the night before--that part of Liverpool was as silent as the City of London at midnight. It presented somewhat of a similar aspect, from a picturesque point of view, of a great centre of wealth and business in isolation and inaction. With this aspect of London Mr. Foster was well acquainted. One of the sights and sensations he had procured for himself some time before was 'the City'--properly so called--when nobody is in it; and Liverpool was now affording him a similar study; but the locality was entirely new, and very shortly Mr. Foster was quite bewildered, and had lost all notion of where he was. Out there lay the river, on the other side of the town, and the great buildings stretched endlessly under the frowning sky, like a giant wall between him and its life.
They had passed along innumerable immense blocks of building, profoundly still, when they reached one where there was a kind of yard surrounded on three sides with high walls, pierced with many windows. The fore wall forming the front was considerably lower than the other three, and in one corner was a door standing ajar, and kept from closing by a stone; the aperture was very slight, and the probability of any passer-by, previously unacquainted with the locality, perceiving that the door was unfastened was exceedingly small. As the two passed it, Mr. Foster, who was on the inner side, would not have been the least aware of the fact, had not his companion stretched his arm across him and pushed the door wide open.
'This is the rookery,' said the stranger, having checked Mr. Foster's steps by the movement of his arm, and stopped with suddenness which took him by surprise; 'clean and quiet as it looks outside, it swarms like a London court.'
Mr. Foster stepped back on the pathway for a moment, while his companion crossed the threshold, and expressed some astonishment at no light being visible.
'They are all at the back,' replied the man, as he kicked away the stone and held the door for Mr. Foster to pass through. He did so, and it was shut behind him. 'Follow me,' said the stranger; 'the door into the house is in an opposite corner, and the stairs are dark till you get to the first landing--mind the step.'
Mr. Foster followed him in silence, and they passed through the narrow door into the flagged passage, from which a steep and narrow staircase, with an iron railing, led to a square landing at some height above them. Still there was no light, except a feeble glimmer emitted from the window above the landing. When they had mounted the staircase so far, and could see each other's faces by the feeble light, Mr. Foster remarked:
'There cannot be any rooks here tonight--there is no cawing.'
It was not, perhaps, any feeling so decided as distrust which lent a peculiar tone to his voice, but it was certainly discomfort.
'I beg your pardon,' said the man; 'I didn't catch what you said,' and he drew quite close to him on the narrow landing, from which a second flight of steep stairs went up.
Mr. Foster repeated the sentence. 'There cannot be any rooks here to-night--there is no cawing;' and had hardly uttered it when the man pushed him into the angle of the wall on which the little ray of light fell obliquely, and stabbed him to the heart! Stabbed him with a hand so sure, with a thrust so steady, with a blade so keen, with an aim so precise, that he only groaned and sank down dead when the hand which pressed him back, the hilt of the weapon within it, was withdrawn.
Then the murderer, making one cautious step backward, which just withdrew him beyond the reach of the outstretched feet, as the dead man dropped into a heap in the corner, lighted an inch of wax candle which he took from his pocket, and, standing well away from the blood which soaked through the dead man's clothes, welling upwards from the wound, but neither spurting nor dropping, for it was all caught in the folds of the waistcoat and the shirt, stooped over him and closely examined the features, without touching the body. The examination, prolonged until the fixity of death had gripped every feature, and the film of death had covered the wide-open eyes, was perfectly satisfactory.
This ascertained, the murderer, standing at the full length of his arm from the dead man, slowly and carefully withdrew the weapon, and placing it on his victim's lap, proceeded to search the breast-pocket from which he had seen a note-book peeping out. He found the note-book, and, after a hasty glance at its contents, transferred it, taking care that it received no stain of blood, to his own pocket; but his rifling of the dead stopped there, with one trifling exception. There was a handkerchief in the same pocket with the note-book, marked in initials which did not correspond with Mr. Foster's name; this he took possession of.
There was no hurry, there was no tremor, there was not a moment's uncertainty, there was not an undecided movement throughout the whole of these proceedings. This man and his victim might have been alone in the universe for any trace of haste or fear of detection which he displayed. His face was motionless, his lips were still, there was no hurried breathing, no muttered words, as he minutely inspected his own clothes and hands. His precautions had been eminently successful; there was no stain on either.
The landing was narrow, the space was small, and for his next operation the murderer required a little more room. Mr. Foster had fallen completely in the angle of the wall, and when the body slipped down, the feet projected almost to the top of the lower stair. The murderer took hold of these feet and gently pushed them towards the wall, so as to leave himself more space; he had deposited his bundle on the second step of the upper stair, and he left it undisturbed while he divested himself of every article of clothing except his shirt, and folded them up into a neat roll, corresponding in size with that enclosed in the tarpaulin covering.
This done, he took off his black wig, beard, and moustaches, placed them in the centre of the roll, and proceeded to unpack the bundle. It contained a suit of sailors clothes, including a blue shirt, a red wig, and a red beard. These were very carefully constructed, and he assumed them without any difficulty. He then put on the sailor's dress complete, wrapped his white shirt round the clothes he had taken off, and sitting down on the topmost step of the lower stair, with the dead man's feet within a foot of his elbow, sewed up the second bundle in the tarpaulin cover which had enclosed the first, by the aid of a packing-needle and a piece of twine which he took with him ready in his trousers pocket.
This done, he stood up and stood still for two clear minutes, mentally recapitulating the precautions he had just taken, and comparing them with the programme he had arranged. He had omitted nothing, he was quite satisfied; so he put his bundle under his arm, blew out the scrap of candle, and without a glance in the direction in which the dead man lay in a mass rapidly becoming indistinguishable in the darkness, almost groped his way down the stairs, passed out of the door, crossed the yard noiselessly, and noiselessly pushing back the bolt of the outer gate, emerged from it just as a policeman on his beat had reached the second block of building above it, and was safe not to observe him.
The sailor strolled leisurely down to the landing-stage. If any one had met him, it would have been impossible to mistake his character of houseless, companionless, foreign sailor; but no one did meet him, and a few minutes' keen inspection of the lonely scene satisfied him that the opportunity for the last precaution to be taken with success was there. He advanced to the edge of the stage, and leaning against one of the iron posts which supported the boundary chain, he slowly dropped the parcel with its tarpaulin covering into the river. Even to his impassiveness, to his almost incredible indifference of manner, the finality of this act seemed to be a relief. He straightened his figure, drew a deep breath, stretched his arms out to their full length, and brought them down by his sides, and after standing for a few minutes, with a straight look-out seawards, he turned away, and keeping the side of the road which borders the landing-stage, avoiding on this occasion the shade of the great warehouses, he took his way towards the tramps' quarters where he had passed the previous night.
On his road he passed a trough provided for the watering of cattle on their way from shipment. A lamp stood near, so that, though the darkness of the night had increased, there was light on that spot. The sailor took his cap off, pulled up the sleeves of his jersey, and pumped a quantity of water over his head and face. This done, he once more inspected the premises, and finding himself perfectly free from any danger of observation, he took off his shoes and examined his feet by the gaslight. It was as he supposed. There were traces of blood upon them, but it had dried before he had put on his stockings, so that no tell-tale marks had extended to them. He swung himself up on the side of the trough, and carefully washed first one foot, then the other; after which he sat swinging them in the air until they were perfectly dry, when he resumed his shoes and stockings, and again went on his way.
The lodging-house was even more crowded than it had been on the previous night, and the proprietor was more drunk and less accommodating. A couple of dirty sacks on the landing, outside the wretched dormitory, was all that the sailor could procure by way of a bed; and when he asked for a pillow, he was told that he might roll up his clothes, and use them for that purpose--they hadn't got no pillows--advice which was accompanied by a coarse jest at the luxuriousness of his requirements, and which was overheard by one of the men whose efforts at conversation the sailor had met, on the previous night, with sullen moroseness.
'Pillow,' said this man; 'what do you want with a pillow? Where's that 'ere bundle you were so particular about last night? One would think it was stuffed with diamonds, you was so fond of it.'
'I've been robbed of it,' replied the man, with an oath. 'Worse luck.'
'Well, you weren't robbed of it here,' said the proprietor of the establishment.
'No, that you weren't, Tom Summers,' struck in his neighbour; 'we ain't fine gentlemen here as are above being spoken to, but we're on the square, and pals is safe with us.' With which testimony to the virtues of the company, and protest against the surliness of the new-comer, this gentleman turned on his bed of sacking and went to sleep.
And so the night wore on in Liverpool, and the dawn brightened over the fair ship with her happy and hopeful company out at sea, and over the stark figure of the dead man who lay with wide-open eyes upon the landing of the great warehouse, where many hurrying feet would shortly be arrested beside him in horror at the fate of the unknown, unclaimed stranger.
Sitting down this morning to make a beginning towards the fulfilment of my promise to my husband, I ask myself if I am indeed the same person as I was when he left me. It seems to me that a great gulf lies between me and that time, and that the experience which I have gained of human nature and of the possibilities of life has completely changed me. With all the relief which the absence of Alston's friend has given me there is a great pang of pain for Alston himself, and a horrid sense of a barrier of concealment between us. I have allowed so many days to elapse before I force myself into commencing this self-communing, in sheer uncertainty of what my line of duty is, and though I am now tolerably clearly convinced that neither now nor ever must I reveal to Alston what has passed, the conviction invests my task of writing to him with great pain and difficulty. Somehow we seem to be doubly parted; first by distance, then by secret. Will this additional sense of parting yield even to his return? How shall I bear to see him take up his relations with Warren just where he dropped them, and to know, as I do know, how his confidence is betrayed? Not in business matters, I daresay; so far as I understand anything about them, there is no likelihood that Alston's interests and Warren's could ever clash, and so far he is safe. It would do my husband such harm in every way to know what has occurred; his own frankness and loyalty of nature could hardly withstand so great a shock; the world would be changed for him. No, he shall never know it; I will trust to the chapter of accidents, or rather, I should say, to the beneficence of Providence, to preserve us harmless from his false friend.
But my journal, to which he looked forward with such pleasure, and which I determined should be so frank and free and full a record of my life, telling it all out to him in so far as one human heart can break the bar of its solitude in words to another--what has become of that? To keep any freshness and any truth in it at all, I must make this record of what has passed for myself, waiting it indeed, but laying it by as a thing that is done with--as a chronicle of the truth for reference, for precisely that which must not be brought into my letters to Alston is that relief for the feelings and the fears which must be hidden from him. What are these fears? How often I ask myself that question, and I never find an answer! The man has gone; not alone has he pledged his word--he could hardly expect me to set much store by that; but he knows it is for his own interest, for his own safety, for the future preservation of the good relations between him and Alston, which, false as all pretext to friendship is on his part, are, nevertheless, valuable to him, that he should keep his promise to me--that he should remain away; that he should never attempt to see me or to communicate with me while I am alone. A thousand times a day I tell myself this; I strive to feel my freedom; I recall the oppression of his presence: I remember my dislike to him long before I knew the secret unconscious origin it had; and I ask myself why I do not exult, why I am not able to bear with more than composure anything which has led to such an emancipation? But it is not so. The presence of the enemy seems to hem me in, an evil influence is in the air I breathe; no effort frees me from this morbid terror, of which I am half ashamed, while I write this secret record no eyes but my own are ever to see. How cleverly, how skilfully this man has carried out this sudden and complete change of all his plans; how reasonably he seems to have accounted for leaving New York! No one seems surprised, and I am quite certain not the slightest shade of suspicion that his departure is of any consequence to me has presented itself to the mind of any of our common acquaintance, though the close tie between him and Alston is perfectly well known. It is just this power, this influence over others, which makes me so afraid of him even now. What if on Alston's return he took some other means of alienating him from me! The feminine inferiority, the absence of a power of understanding business matters, will serve him no longer: he won't try to revive that theory when Alston returns; he shall find that I have administered every affair which he left in my charge too well to be set down as an incapable for the future; but he may try a more subtle means. I believe the love of a man like Warren is half passion, half hatred, and that the hatred swallows up the passion when it is effectually checked. Whence that notion has come to me, I know not, but it has come, and with it a fear of this man's hatred, greater, if possible, than my horror of his love.
There, I have recorded it, and now I will try to turn my mind from it--I will try to write to Alston a cheery letter, a pious fraud.
When you told me, dearest Alston, that my letters were to take the form of a journal, I remember thinking of the passage in our pet book, theVicar of Wakefield, in which Dr. Primrose describes the vicissitudes of primroses' existence, and summoning them up in migrations from the blue bed to the brown. My journal, if I keep it at all within the actual sense of the term, would record nothing more strange or exciting. I migrate from the nursery to the parlour, from the parlour to the park, from the park to the nursery; but my chief sojourn is in the latter place. I never could have imagined that a baby could give one so much to do, even when one is assisted, as I am, by the most capable of nurses, concerning whom I have a lot to tell you presently; neither could I have believed that a baby could be so interesting. We made up our minds, you remember, that we were not going to plague our neighbours, and make fools of ourselves, by advancing the claims of this remarkable infant to be quite the finest, the most intelligent, and the most precocious that ever existed. Bearing this resolution in mind, I endeavoured to be a very rational mother, but I protest, quite genially, that I do not want any society except baby's, until the kind Fates send me that of baby's papa.
The child has become so strong and healthy that I am no longer in the least uneasy about her; therefore she is a pure unmitigated pleasure to me; and the real truth is that if I am to tell you all about my daily life, I fear you will suffer from the plethora of baby. Of course, I read and work, and visit and receive some people sometimes--not many and not often; and, of course, I get out and do some shopping. I bought the loveliest pelisse, yesterday, that ever was seen out of Paris, and I believe it came from there; and then, again, even shopping has come to mean baby--the pelisse was for her, not for me. I play the piano, sometimes, a little--nurse says baby is beginning to take notice of music. But after all this is not my life, you know; it is only the outside of it, and one shell is very like another.
Of course I miss you frightfully, more and more every day, but I do not feel helpless. I made up my mind, you know, that I never would yield to that helpless feeling, from which I have seen so many women suffer who are guarded as I am by the care and love and generosity of good men, from every trouble from which one human being can shield another, and so I have kept my promise made to myself. When there is anything to make up my mind about, I make up my mind promptly; when there is anything to do, I do it at once, to the best of my ability; if I make mistakes I don't fret over them, but I think I shall manage them better next time, and I don't get discouraged. I daresay I shall see in the end how very good for me this parting between us proved. Don't suppose I am going back upon what you laughed at me for, and called my jealous susceptibility. I have got over all that, but I really am going to say that you will find me ever so much more useful, ever so much more of a companion; because I shall have had this little interval for exercising my judgment as well as my taste, for exerting my discretion as well as gratifying my fancies. Hitherto, your indulgence and affection have limited me to the less useful and less strengthening of these processes; so when you come home, dearest Alston, you will have to tell me all about business, and you will find I shall understand it quite as well, and take quite as much pleasure in it, as in our old discussions on books and music and pictures and acting.
Writing that word 'acting' reminds me of our baby's new nurse--rather an inconsequent style of writing this, you will perhaps say, for a woman who is claiming a newly-developed talent for business; but it is what you asked for. Baby's nurse is the oddest woman, and such a treasure! I will tell you how she came to me, and really it is not out of proportion, for it was certainly the most striking event in my life since you left me. She came in answer to my advertisement--she was the first candidate, her name is Bessie Jenkins, her husband is somewhere in the Western States. They had misfortunes, and were obliged to part for a while, like ourselves. I suppose it was that likeness in unlikeness which attracted me towards the good woman from the first. She spoke with a hearty love and a hearty sorrow of her absent husband and her dead baby, only a day or two dead when she came to me, and I shall never forget her face when she took our little Mary in her arms, and saw how delicate the child was. The very way she said: 'This won't do you don't understand babies, ma'am;' put aside the food which Jessie and I had been messing up unskilfully; and made some mysterious alterations in the way the child's clothes were put on, made me feel that the right person had been sent to me. Dr. Clark just looked at her and said, 'She will do; make sure of her, Mrs. Griswold;' and I asked her if she could come to me at once--if she could stay that very night; she said she would, and went and fetched her things on the spot.
We are quite friends--we were from the beginning--and she takes almost as much care of me as of little Mary; even that she does cleverly, and has avoided making any jealousy or confusion in the house, which was just what I dreaded, you know, when the doctor told me I must have a nurse. Mrs. Jenkins is a good-looking woman, tall, large, active, with a very fair skin, and fine, honest, gray eyes. She says she does not know exactly how old she is, and I believe her--she looks about five-and-twenty; she is very well spoken for a woman of her class, and not at all ignorant. We have long talks in the nursery and in our drives--for I never go out without nurse and baby; it is so horribly dull to drive out alone; and I find I learn a good deal from her about the realities of life as they exist for women who have not been taken the care of that you have taken of me.
After all, dearest Alston, what a very little bit of trouble I have known in my life--just those dark days when poor papa's affairs went badly, and you came and brightened them up with that blessed, steady light which has shone on all my pathway since. Why are people's history so different? Is mine to be always an exception? Some time before you left me, and when I was much less thoughtful than I am now, I have occasionally felt afraid that I was too happy; there seemed such deep peace, of such settled certainty, in our lives. I hardly understand all the talk in books and in speech about the turbulence and the transitoriness and the perpetual change which mark human existence all over the world; while your absence has taken away that deep tranquillity, it has not touched, of course, the real happiness of my life. I would not have you think me discontented, and, perhaps, this little shake is good for me--will be good for us both. This is a lesson which Mrs. Jenkins, in her good, quiet, homely, honest way, impresses on me very often. It does one good to see a person who has had plenty of trouble of a sternly material kind, as well as a great sorrow, bear them with the ready submission and cheerful courage of this poor woman; and many a time when I see her with our baby in her arms and at her breast, where her dead child once lay, I ask myself how I should have faced such a life as hers.
I have said before that we are great friends; she has formed a really strong affection for me--it is like the kind of thing one hears about the Irish people in old times. I fancy she would not shrink from any sacrifice for me. She is extremely curious about you, and never tired of hearing me tell how I came to know you first, and the story of my girlhood; and I talk to her about all these things; so you will have no difficulty in believing that our new nurse is an exceptional person, and that, though she is homely in speech and manner, there is no real inferiority in her. Don't laugh at me when I say that I am quite sure you and she will be great friends. There is, at least, one very strong bond of union between you: Mrs. Jenkins has a ruling passion--it is for the drama. I found that out very soon.
You know we agreed that the nursery was to be made into a very pretty and cheerful room, so that baby's nurse, if we had the good fortune to find a good one, should be thoroughly comfortable, and feel herself at home. Looking about through the house for such things as I could spare to ornament her domain, on the day after Mrs. Jenkins's arrival, I came upon a lot of photographs in a drawer in the study--they were likenesses of all the actors and actresses whom, I verily believe, you have seen in the whole course of your life. I had no notion you had such a collection; and you need not be frightened, I have not deprived you of them, I have only taken such as have duplicates--there are a good many. I put them all into the photograph-book which belonged to me when I was a girl, and made it over for nursery use. Who knows how soon Mrs. Jenkins will find out that her wonderful nurseling takes notice of pictures as well as of music? Two or three days after, I asked her if she liked her rooms, if she was quite comfortable, and so forth. She replied, with great delight, that she had never been so comfortable in her life, and expressed peculiar pleasure at finding some pictures about. I found she had been eagerly investigating the contents of the photograph-book, and she surprised me not a little by running glibly over the names of all the portraits. As I hadn't written them in--for one very good reason among others, that I had no notion of who are represented by several of their numbers--I could not understand how she came to know who all these theatrical ladies and gentlemen were. It came out then; the theatre is a celestial vision to Mrs. Jenkins; to see a play is the greatest enjoyment of which she is capable.
She says that she knows a good play from a bad one as well as any one in the world, and is a first-rate judge of acting; but she would much rather see a bad play than none at all, which I take as a mark of enthusiasm, if true, that does not justify much faith in her critical faculty. I think she knows every play that has been produced in New York in her time. If she hasn't seen she has read them; she knows all about the 'castes,' as she calls it, is a perfect chronicle of the successes and the failures of the actors and actresses who have come here from London and Paris, and has, among her possessions, a huge scrap-book, of which she is inordinately proud, crammed with newspaper critiques, squibs, old playbills, and gaudy woodcuts, which represent her prime favourites as it is devoutly to be hoped they never did appear upon any stage. Mrs. Jenkins is not an American by birth; she was born in Hampshire and reared in London; and though she has been in America since her fifteenth year, she seems to have enjoyed a good deal of her favourite amusement even at that early age. I am, however, positive that she was never employed in any capacity in connection with the stage herself, if only because she speaks of the fact with considerable regret.
One portrait in the photograph-book has so special an attraction for her, that I took it out and put it in a little upright frame, which she keeps on her dressing-table. This slight act of kindness has, it appears, particularly touched her heart; and yesterday, when I mentioned that I should be despatching my letter to you this morning, she begged me to ask you to be sure and go to see the original of this beloved portrait, a certain Miss Clara Montressor, who is at present playing at one of the London theatres. The theatre in question is called the Thespian; you may perhaps know it, but I am so deplorably ignorant of such matters that I really do not know whether I am talking to you of a first-rate or a fifth-rate establishment. I disguised my ignorance, for Mrs. Jenkins's harmless enthusiasm and true believership amuses me so much that I would not snub her for the world; and when she assured me that she has heard tell that Miss Clara Montressor is quite the finest actress in existence, I did not allow her to perceive that I had never heard Miss Clara Montressor's name. If you can at all conveniently get anywhere near to confirming Mrs. Jenkins's belief, pray do so; at all events, let your reply to this contain an assurance that you have beheld the prodigy. I should not like baby's nurse to be prejudiced against baby's papa by supposing that he could be in London without seeing Miss Clara Montressor and appreciating the advantage as it deserves.
This young lady is one craze; but Mrs. Jenkins has another, rather an abstract one, for she has never seen its object, who is no less a person than the famous actor, Bryan Duval. She has followed his career with most amusing zeal, and has told me all about his best characters and his peculiar points, until I feel that he too is an old acquaintance. How heartily you would have laughed if you could have been present, unseen, at baby's bedtime yesterday! I had just heard a piece of information which I knew would be productive of unbounded delight to Mrs. Jenkins, and I took that favourable opportunity, when she is always thoroughly disposed for a chat, to tell her about it. She had been rather low all day--she sometimes is, I observe, when she gets a letter from her husband (he is not like you, Alston, though she loves him)--and I knew I should cheer her up by telling her, what no doubt you know as well as we know it here, that Bryan Duval is coming to New York. You never saw anything so absurd as her delight, which appeared to be thoroughly shared by baby, judging by the kicking and crowing of that young lady in consequence of the additional dangling and tossing which her nurse bestowed upon her in her pleasure. I told her not only that she could go to see him, but that she might accompany me--we can manage to put baby in commission for that little time--and I even hinted at the possibility of her unknown idol presenting himself in the flesh at our house. I suppose you will have made this gentleman's acquaintance in London; do be sure and tell me if so, and whether he is really the very charming man in society which he has the name of being here. Mrs. Sinclair said, in speaking of him to-day, that he was one of the very few great actors whom it did to know off the stage, but that he was thoroughly satisfactory. 'So unlike either authors or painters, you know,' added Mrs. Sinclair, in that bored manner of hers; 'they never do, dear, out of print and off canvas; but Bryan Duval is charming!' Charming doesn't mean very much, for every one says it, and everybody means by it something different from what everybody else means. If you say Bryan Duval is 'charming,' I shall know the value of the verdict, and be quite sure that I shall find him so, for of course we shall know him here, whether you have made his acquaintance in London or not. If you have, dear Alston, give him a letter of introduction to me, for I really think I am slightly bitten by the popular enthusiasm, and though I cannot say, like Mrs. Sinclair, that I am 'dying to know him,' it would be very pleasant, and I should at once call upon his wife, of whom I have heard a great deal.
I have nothing particularly interesting to communicate respecting household affairs; everything is going on very well and very quietly. Of course, my dearest Alston, you will expect that this letter should contain some reference to the commission with which you charged Mr. Warren on the day of your departure, and which he immediately fulfilled. Will you pardon me if I make my reference to it a brief one in proportion to its importance and to the large share which I know it has had in your thoughts? Our parting is too new, the sense of its inevitable duration weighs too heavily upon me. I am obliged to set my face too steadfastly to overcome the nervousness, the anxiety, and the loneliness involved in dwelling upon it to admit of my saying all that I feel, or even any part of it, with regard to the contents of the letter which your friend handed to me. If I said all, if I said any, it would come to the same thing--that letter is like you, Alston; it is an absolute fulfilment, a complete realisation of the estimate which I have formed of you. If by any horrible decree of Fate the occasion should ever arise on which it would be my doom and my duty to act upon the instructions, and to carry out the provisions, contained in that letter, I should do so with a proud and full sense that they are worthy of you, that they are such last words, such last instructions, as, if I could have chosen, I should have asked of you. And now I must pass away from this subject. I am unequal to saying more about it. When I can say what I have felt, with my head on your shoulder and my hand in yours, you will know what the receipt and the reading of that letter was to me. The other commission with which you charged Mr. Warren, I fear, I received in a different spirit--one which made it difficult for me to bow my own will completely to yours, to substitute your judgment unrepiningly for my own. Happily no occasion has yet arisen to oblige me to have recourse to Mr. Warren's advice or assistance. I have needed neither. All external matters, with which alone he could have any concern, have passed along very smoothly, nor can I, at present, foresee any possible contingency in which it would be necessary for me to apply to him; should any such arise, you may rest assured that I shall strictly conform to your instructions. It was rather hard for me, my dear husband, to be told by that one friend of yours, concerning whom we are not entirely of one opinion, that my letters to you were to pass through his hands. Did I not know that you are quite above such a futile and foolish exercise of power, such experimenting in the pliability of the human will, had we not often discussed the contemptible folly of the patient Griselda, and quite made up our minds as to what we thought of Geraint, I might have supposed for a moment that you had imposed this restriction upon me as a sort of test, as well as a significant hint to me that thus far and no farther I might go in our domestic relations. I might have thought you meant to say, 'I like Warren, you don't; you will have to give in to my liking.' This would have been a calculation and an act of a domestic tyrant; therefore an impossibility to you. I accept the restriction in a perfectly frank and candid spirit, and absolute loyalty towards you. Some day you will perhaps tell me--when you find that I am capable of being more of a companion to you than I have hitherto been--what is the precise nature of your present business, and the exact character of the complication which has rendered it necessary that my letters should not go direct from your own house in New York to your own address in London; and I have no doubt that I shall entirely recognise the force of the reason. If, however, you should never tell me, if for any reason conceivable or unconceivable by me it should remain impossible for you to confide this to me, I shall be perfectly satisfied that the motive not to be explained is one which does no discredit to you, and is wholly uninfluenced with any slight to me. And now, dear Alston, I pass from the subject either for ever or until such time as you choose to resume it. I wonder if you will be provoked with my pertinacity if I tell you that I have discovered that Mr. Warren has very few such partial friends as you are. The fact is, he is not much liked by men, and he is, generally speaking, as much disliked by their wives as he is by me. I think no polish of manner, no external surface, brightness, or gallantry of that kind which, when looked into by a keen-eyed woman, is much more insulting than complimentary, has ever enabled him to conceal from women in general the sentiment which all right-minded women must resent, and which would render neglect, even rudeness, from Mr. Warren, the most acceptable line of treatment he could adopt towards a woman. Mrs. Sinclair was talking of him yesterday. I did not introduce the subject, and I kept my own opinion to myself. I should regard it as a kind of side wind of disloyalty to you, my dearest, if I allowed anybody but yourself to know the difference that exists between us on that point, to suspect that your friend was not my friend. Mrs. Sinclair spoke of him pretty roundly, and saying a great many things which were untrue, I daresay, she said one in which I believed. It was that Mr. Warren was, in her opinion, an unsafe friend and an exceedingly dangerous enemy. I pray that we may never have him for an enemy! I wish to God, and with a growing earnestness, that we had never had him for a friend!
At this point in my letter, dearest Alston, I was interrupted by a visit, and now I fear that I shall have to finish this up hurriedly in time for the mail. My unexpected visitor was Thornton Carey. He sat with me a long time. I didn't like to hint to him that his coming was a little imprudent, in one sense, as curtailing my time for writing to you--that, however, I can take up again; in another sense, his visit was exceedingly apropos. You will be delighted to hear how admirably your generous intentions towards him have been realised. Can I ever thank you sufficiently for all you have done for him, indeed for every one dear to me, from my father to the merest acquaintance whom I have ever recommended to your good offices? Thornton looks remarkably well, and so far from complaining of hard work in his new office, he says he hasn't half enough to do but judging from the account he gave me of his duties, I should say most men would consider they had a tolerably fair share of labour and responsibility in his post of librarian at New Orleans. He has taken to his occupation with enthusiasm; in that respect (only) he reminded me very strongly of Tom Pinch, when he set to work so vehemently about making a catalogue of his unknown employer's books in the Temple chambers. He seems to have grown fond of the very outside of his charge; and when we were talking of our childish days together, and I reminded him of the awful quarrel we had because he tore the red-and-gold cover of myArabian Nights, he regarded me with the most comical horror, as though I had suddenly dug up and brought to light the corpse of a victim, and produced it in the sight of its murderer, after the fashion of, 'You don't mean to say, Helen,' he said, 'that even in my most cub-like and uncivilised days I ever tore a book?' I laughed as I little thought I should ever laugh during your absence; but I thought we were both very near tears occasionally during our interview, for, of course, we talked of our friendlessness until we respectively found the best of all friends in you. I wonder if Thornton Carey has any chance of being a great man some day--in his own studious scientific line, I mean? How nice it would be if he did turn into a great man, and it was all your doing--for so it would be! No man could work without tools; you have put his into his hand. Do you know even I had no notion how hopeless he was, how severely he felt the restriction of poverty, and that narrow sphere from which there seemed no chance of escape, until you opened the barrier with the golden key? I suppose I understand most things better now; and though I always felt very much for him, and had a dim notion that he was a case of what I have heard you call 'wasted force,' I have only come to see it clearly since he has been talking to me.
How earnestly I thank you for all your goodness to my old friend! It seems, he says, the most absurd of all possible ideas that he could ever be able to express his feelings otherwise than by, or even by, words. There is small chance that he should ever be able to prove his gratitude or repay his obligation to you--not that he ever wishes it ever to be repaid; I do believe him to be one of those few noble men who can bear obligation nobly; but should the opportunity ever come, he would snatch at it gladly. He said a great deal to me which I feel I cannot repeat, partly because he would not like it, and partly because you could not bear it. I never met any one who can so ill endure to be thanked as you, my dear Alston. I have seen you carry that sometimes to an almost ungracious extent. So when Thornton meets you he will not try to thank you--he will leave that to me; you will accept the substitute, won't you?
We had one more laugh, he and I, before I had to send him away, in order that I might get time just to finish this. It was over our recollections of the time when we took great delight in the fable of the Lion and the Mouse. He and I differed in opinion in those days--he wanted to be the lion, I preferred being the mouse; we agreed just now that Fate had turned us both into mice, and put the kindest of lions in our way. May God keep him from any net, or any need of nibblers!
Of course I am looking out very anxiously for all sorts of details about your daily life. I should like to know that you are exceedingly comfortable, very well looked after, and enjoying yourself when you are not immersed in business; but I don't think I want to hear that you like London very much, that you find the time flies, and that your quarters are sufficiently snug to prevent your remembering home very constantly, and missing me at every turn. This is not small-minded, is it? And even if it were, you would not care, Alston, for it has nothing to do with my mind, but everything to do with my heart. I do not say, for my own part,
'There is na luck about the house,'