Elizabeth-next-door was a strengthening influence, able to look facts in the face. She almost elided forewords and inquiries, to come to her strong point, the way she had used the strange story to produce surprise in her husband; a worthy man, but imperturbable by anything short of earthquakes or thunderbolts. "Ye may sa-ay your vairy worst to Sam," said Elizabeth, "and he'll just sa-ay back, 'Think a doan't knaw that,' he'll say, 'afower ever yow were born?' and just gwarn with his sooper. And I give ye my word, Widow Thrale, I no swooner told it him than there he sat! An' if he come down on our ta-able wi' th' fla-at of his ha-and once, that he did thrice and mower, afower he could sa-ay one word. Hedid, and went nigh to break it, but it be o-ak two-inch thick a'mo-ast. Then a said, 'twas enough to wa-aken oop a ma-an all through the night, he did!" He seemed, however, not to have suffered in this way, for his wife added:—"Wa-aken him oop? Not Sam, I lay! Ta-akes a souse o' cold pig to wa-aken up Sam afower t' marnin!" Ruth felt braced by this bringing of the event within human possibilities. Improbable possibilities surprise. Impossible events stun.
She co-operated in domesticities with her useful neighbour, glancing once or twice at the figure on the bed, and reinforced in the belief that all was safe there, for the time. For she saw what seemed slight natural movement, for ease. Presently she went to hear how it fared with her other mother, her normal one. The cross purposes of her relations to the two old sisters were an entanglement of perplexities.
Granny Marrable, asleep when Ruth looked stealthily in at her, was waked by a creak with which the door just contrived to disappoint hopes of a noiseless escape. She called after her:—"Yes, who's that?" Whereupon Ruth returned. It was their first real word alone since the disclosure.
"Oh, mother, have you slept?" She kissed the old worn-out face tenderly; feeling somehow the reserve of strength behind theresponse she met. "Oh, can you—canyou—make it out?... Yes, she is lying still. She has seen that letter." She dropped her voice, and shuddered to name it.
"My dear," said Granny Marrable, answering her question, "I cannot say truly yet that I can make it out. But I thank God for letting me be able to know that this must be Maisie. For I know her for Maisie, when she talks of the bygone time. And that letter—God is good, for that! For it was that told of how she died—that wicked poison-bite! My child, it has never gone quite out of my heart to think your mother died so far away in such pain—never in all these years! And now I know it for an untruth. I thank God for that, at least!"
"Shesays," said Ruth, checkmated in an attempt to use any name she could call her real mother by, without some self-blame for the utterance, "shesays the story is one-half true, but 'twas her best friend died of the bite—not she! But she died in great suffering."
"Ah—the poor thing! Mary Ann Stennis."
"That was the name."
"Will she be able to tell more? Will she tell us who her husband was?"
"Her husband!" Ruth thought this was new trouble—that the Granny's head had given way under the strain. "Her husband was my father, mother," said she. "Think!"
But old Phoebe was quite clear. "I am all right, child," said she reassuringly. "Hersecondhusband. Marrable wasmysecond, you know, else I would still have been Cropredy. Why is she not Daverill?"
Ruth was really the less clear of the two. "Oh yes!" said she wonderingly. "She is Mrs. Prichard, still."
"Please God we shall know all!... What was that?"
"I must go to her.... Come!" For old Maisie had called out. Her daughter went back to her quickly, and Granny Marrable followed, not far behind.
"Come, dear, come.... I called for you to know.... Come, Phoebe, come near, and let me tell you.... He was not so wicked.... Oh no, oh no—it was none of his own doing—I shall be able ... directly...." Thus old Maisie, gasping for breath, and falling back on the pillow from which she had part risen. The hectic flush in her face was greater, and her eyes were wild under her tangle of beautiful silver hair. Both were afraid for her, for each knew what fever might, mean. They might lose her, almost without a renewal of life together.
Still, it might be no more than the agitation of a moment, a passing phase. They tried to pacify her. Howcouldthe letter be none of Daverill's own doing? But she would not be soothed—would say the thing she had set her mind to say, but failed to find the words or breath for. What was it she was trying to say? Was it about the letter?
Elizabeth-next-door came into the room, tentatively. Ostensible reason, inquiry about breakfast; actual reason, curiosity. Sounds of speech under stress had aroused, and a glance at old Maisie intensified it. Widow Thrale would come directly, but for the moment was intent on hearing what Mrs. Prichard was saying. To Elizabeth, Maisie continued Mrs. Prichard.
She would not leave unsaid this thing she was bent on:—"No, dear! No, dear! It does not hurt me to talk, but I want time.... I will tell you ... I must tell you.... I know it.... It was not his own doing.... He was set on to do it by a devil that possessed him.... There are devils loose among the blacks...."
The pulse in the hand Ruth held was easy to find. Yes, thatwasfever! Ruth left her to speak with Elizabeth, and the hand went over to its fellow, in Granny Marrable's.
"Phoebe, dearest, that is so—and in those days there were a many blacks. But they were fewer and fewer after that, and none in our part when we came away, my son and I.... Phoebe!"
"What, dearest?"
"You must say nothing ofhimto Ruth. He was her brother."
"Say nothing of him to Ruth—why not?" She had lost sight of her adventure with the convict, and did not identify him. She may have fancied some other son accompanied her sister home.
"Yes—yes—nothing toher! He is not fit to speak of—not fit to think of.... Do not ask about him. Forget him! I do not know if he be alive or dead."
Then an image of the convict, or madman, flashed across Phoebe's mind. She dared not talk of him now, with that wild light and hectic flush in her sister's face; it would only make bad worse. But a recollection of her first association of him with the maniac in the Gadarene tombs was quick on the heels of this image, and prompted her to say:—"Had no evil spirit power overhim, then, as well as his father?"
The wild expression on old Maisie's face died down, and gave place to one that was peace itself by comparison. "I see it all now," said she. "Yes—you are right! It was after his father's death he became so wicked." It was the devil that possessed his father, driven out to seek a home, and finding it in the son. Thatwas apparently what her words implied, but there was too much of delirium in her speech and seeming to justify their being taken as expressing a serious thought.
Old Phoebe sat beside her, trying now and again with quiet voice and manner to soothe and hush away the terrible memories of the audacious deception to which each owed a lifelong loss of the other. But when fever seizes on the blood, it will not relax its hold for words.
One effect of this was good, in a sense. Itistrue, as the poet said, that one fire burns out another's burning—or at any rate that one pain is deadened by another anguish—and it was a Godsend to Granny Marrable and Ruth Thrale that an acupression of immediate anxiety should come to counteract their bewilderment, and to extinguish for the time the conflagration of a thousand questions—whys, whens, and wherefores innumerable—in their overburdened minds. Visible fever in the delicate frame, to which it seemed the slightest shock might mean death, was a summons to them to put aside every possible thought but that of preserving what Time had spared so long, though Chance had been so cruel an oppressor. It would be the cruellest stroke of all that she should be thus strangely restored to them, only to be snatched away in an hour.
Presently she seemed quieter; the fever came in gusts, and rose and fell. She had once or twice seemed almost incoherent, but it passed away. Meanwhile Granny Marrable's memory of that madman or criminal, who had at least known the woman he claimed as his mother well enough to be mystified by her twin sister, rankled in her mind, and made it harder and harder for her to postpone speech about him. She would not tell the incident—she was clear ofthat—but would it harm Maisie to talk of him? She asked herself the question the next time her sister referred to him, and could not refrain from letting her speech about him finish.
It came of her mind drifting back to that crazy notion of an evil spirit wandering to seek a home; as the hermit-crab, dispossessed of one shell, goes in search of another. After a lull which had looked for a moment like coming sleep, she said with an astonishing calmness:—"But do you not see, Phoebe dear, do you not see how good his father must have been, to do no worse than he did? See what the devil that possessed him could do with Ralph—my youngest, he was; Isaac died—a good boy, quite a good boy, till I lost his father! Oh—see what he came to do!"
"He ... he was sent to prison, was he not?" After saying it, old Phoebe was afraid she might have to tell the whole tale of howshe knew it. But she need not have feared. Old Maisie was in a kind of dreamland, only half-cognisant of what was going on about her.
Her faint voice wandered on. "I was not thinking of that. That was nothing! He stole some money, and it cost him dear.... No!—it was worse than that—a bad thing!... It wasnotthe girl's fault.... Emma was a good girl...."
Granny Marrable was injudicious. But it was an automatic want of judgment, bred of mind-strain. She could not help saying:—"Was that Emma Drax?" For the name, which she had heard from the convict, had hung on her mind, always setting her to work to fashion some horrible story for its owner.
"Yes—Emma Drax.... They found her guilty.... I do not mean that.... What is it I mean?... I mean they laid it all at her door.... Men do!" This seemed half wandering, and Granny Marrable hoped it meant a return of sleep. She was disappointed. For old Maisie became more restless and hot, starting convulsively, catching at her hand, and exclaiming:—"But how came you to know?—how came you to know? You were not there then. Oh, Phoebe dearest, you were not therethen." She kept on saying this, and Granny Marrable despaired of finding words to explain, under such circumstances. The tale of her meeting with the convict was too complex. She thought to herself that she might say that Maisie had spoken the name as a dream-word, waking. But that would have been a fib, and fibs were not her line.
"I went myself to get him," said Ruth, reappearing after a longer absence than old Phoebe had anticipated. She was removing an out-of-door cloak, and an extempore headwrap, when she entered the room. "How is she?" she asked.
Old Phoebe shook her head doubtfully. "Whom did you go for, child? The doctor? I'm glad."
"I thought it better.... Mother darling!—how are you?" She knelt by the bed, held the burning hands, looked into the wild eyes. "Yes—I did quite right," she said.
Dr. Nash came, not many minutes later. Whether the mixture to be taken every two hours, fifty years ago, was the same as would have been given now, does not concern the story. It, or the reassurance of the doctor's visit, had a sedative effect; and old Maisie seemed to sleep, to the great satisfaction of her nurses. What really did credit to his professional skill was that he perceived thata visit from Lady Gwendolen would be beneficial. A message was sent at once to John Costrell, saying that an accompanying letter was to be taken promptly to the Towers, to catch her ladyship before she went out. We have seen that it reached her in time.
"You found that all I told you was true, Granny Marrable," said the doctor, after promising to return in time to catch her ladyship.
"I shall live to believe it true, doctor, please God!"
"Tut tut! You see that itistrue."
"Yes, indeed, and I know that yonder is Maisie, come back to life. I know it by thinking; but 'tis all I can do, not to think her still dead."
"She can talk, I suppose—recollects things? Things when you were kids?"
"God 'a' mercy, yes, doctor! Why—hasn't she told me how she drew my tooth, with a bit of silk and a candle, and knew which drawer-knob it was, and the days she saw her husband first, a-horseback?... Oh, merciful Heavens, how had he the heart?"
"Some chaps have the Devil in 'em, and that's the truth!"
"That's what she says. She just made my flesh creep, a-telling how the devils come out of the black savages, to seize on Christians!"
But the doctor was not prepared to be taken at his word, in this way. Devils are good toys for speech, but they are not to be real. "Lot of rum superstitions in those parts!" said he. "Now look you here, ma'am! When I come back, I shall expect to hear that you and your daughter.... Oh ah!—she's not your daughter! What the deuce is she?"
"Ruth has always been my niece, but we have gone near to forget it, times and again. 'Tis so many a long year!"
"Well—I shall expect to hear that you and your niece have had a substantial breakfast. You understand—substantial!And you must makehertake milk, or gruel. You'll find she won't eat."
"Beef-tea?"
"No—at least, have some ready, in case. But her temperature is too high. Especially at her time of life!" The doctor walked briskly away. He had not had the gig out, for such a short distance.
CHRISTMAS AND THE GREEK KALENDS. O NOBIS PRAETERITOS! THE WRITING-TABLE BACK. AN INFLEXIBLE GOVERNOR. HOW MR. JERRY DID NOT GO TO THE WORKHOUSE. BUT HOW CAME M'RIAR TO BE SO SHORT? THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA. UNCLE MO'S COLDBATH FIELDS FRIEND, AND HIS ALLOWANCE. UNCLE MO ON KEEPING ONE'S WORD. AND KEEPING ITS MEANING. JERRY'S CONSCIENTIOUS TREACHERY, AND HIS INTERVIEW WITH MR. ROWE. HOW M'RIAR HAD PROMISED LOVE, HONOUR, AND OBEDIENCE TO A THING A DEVIL HAD TAKEN A LONG LEASE OF. HOW SHE SENT A NOTE TO IT, BY MICHAEL RAGSTROAR. WHO REALISED THREE-HALFPENCE. HOW MISS HAWKINS, JEALOUSY MAD, TINKERED AUNT M'RIAR'S NOTE. EVE'S CIVILITY TO THE SERPENT. MUCH ABOUT NORFOLK ISLAND. DAVERILL'S SECOND VISIT TO ENGLAND, AND ITS CAUSES
CHRISTMAS AND THE GREEK KALENDS. O NOBIS PRAETERITOS! THE WRITING-TABLE BACK. AN INFLEXIBLE GOVERNOR. HOW MR. JERRY DID NOT GO TO THE WORKHOUSE. BUT HOW CAME M'RIAR TO BE SO SHORT? THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA. UNCLE MO'S COLDBATH FIELDS FRIEND, AND HIS ALLOWANCE. UNCLE MO ON KEEPING ONE'S WORD. AND KEEPING ITS MEANING. JERRY'S CONSCIENTIOUS TREACHERY, AND HIS INTERVIEW WITH MR. ROWE. HOW M'RIAR HAD PROMISED LOVE, HONOUR, AND OBEDIENCE TO A THING A DEVIL HAD TAKEN A LONG LEASE OF. HOW SHE SENT A NOTE TO IT, BY MICHAEL RAGSTROAR. WHO REALISED THREE-HALFPENCE. HOW MISS HAWKINS, JEALOUSY MAD, TINKERED AUNT M'RIAR'S NOTE. EVE'S CIVILITY TO THE SERPENT. MUCH ABOUT NORFOLK ISLAND. DAVERILL'S SECOND VISIT TO ENGLAND, AND ITS CAUSES
Sapps Court was looking forward to Christmas with mixed feelings, considered as a Court. The feelings of each resident were in some cases quite defined or definable; as for instance Dave's and Dolly's. The children had required from their seniors a trustworthy assurance of the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, and had only succeeded in obtaining from Aunt M'riar a vague statement. Mrs. Prichard was a-coming some day, and that was plenty for children to know at their time of life. They might have remained humbly contented with their ignorance, if Uncle Mo had not added:—"So's Christmas!" meaning thereby the metaphorical Christmas used as an equivalent of the Greek Kalends. He overlooked, for rhetorical purposes, the near approach of the actual festival; and Dave and Dolly accepted this as fixing the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, to a nicety. The event was looked forward to as millennial; as a restoration of a golden age before her departure. For no child is so young as not tolaudareatempus actum; indeed, it is a fiction that almost begins with speech, that the restoration of the Past is the first duty of the Future.
Dolly never tired of recasting the arrangement of the tea-festivity that was to celebrate the event, discovering in each new disposition of the insufficient cups and unstable teapot a fresh satisfaction to gloat over, and imputing feelings in sympathy with her own to her offspring Gweng. It was fortunate for Gweng that her mamma understood her so thoroughly, as otherwise her fixedexpression of a maximum of joy at all things in Heaven and Earth gave no clue to any emotions due to events of the moment. Even when her eyes were closed by manipulation of her spinal cord, and opened suddenly on a new and brilliant combination, any candid spectator must have admitted her stoicism—rapturous perhaps, but still stoicism. It was alleged—by her mamma—that she shed tears when Dave selfishly obstructed her line of sight. This was disputed by Dave, whom contact with an unfeeling World was hardening to a cruel literalism.
Dave, when he was not scheming a display of recent Academical acquirements to Mrs. Prichard, dwelt a good deal on the bad faith of the postman, who had not brought him the two letters he certainly had a right to expect, one from each of his Grannies. He had treasured the anticipation of reading their respective expressions of joyful gratitude at their discovery of their relationship, and no letter had come! Small blame to Dave that he laid this at the door of the postman; others have done the self-same thing, on the other side of their teens! The only adverse possibility that crossed his infant mind was that his Grannies were sorry, not glad; because really grown-up people were so queer, you never could be even with them. The laceration of a lost half-century was a thing that could not enter into the calculations of a septennarian. He had not tried Time, and Time had not tried him. He had odd misgivings, now and again, that there might be in this matter something outside his experience. But he did not indulge in useless speculation. The proximity of Christmas made it unnecessary.
Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar accepted the season as one beneficial to trade; production taking the form of a profusion of little muslin dresses for small girls at Christmas Trees and parties with a Conjurer—dresses in which the fullest possibilities of the human flounce became accomplished facts, and the last word was said about bows of coloured ribbons. To look at them was to breathe an involuntary prayer for eiderdown enclosures that would keep the poppet inside warm without disparagement to her glorious finery. Sapps Court under their influence became eloquent of quadrilles; "Les Rats" and the Lancers, jangled by four hands eternally on pianos no powers of sleep could outwit, and no execration do justice to. They murmured tales of crackers with mottoes; also of too much rich cake and trifle and lemonade, and consequences. So much space was needed to preserve them unsoiled and uncrushed until consigned to their purchasers, that Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar felt grateful for the unrestricted run ofMrs. Prichard's apartment, although both also felt anxious to see her at home again.
Mrs. Prichard's writing-table came back, done beautiful. Only the young man he refused to leave it without the money. He was compelled to this course by the idiosyncrasies of his employer. "You see," said he to Uncle Mo, with an appearance of concentrating accuracy by a shrewd insight, "it's like this it is, just like I tell you. Our Governor he's as good a feller—inhisselfmind you!—as you'll come across this side o' Whitechapel. Only he's just got this one pecooliarity—like a bee has in his bonnet, as the sayin' is—he won't give no credit, not so much as to his own wife; or his medical adwiser, if you come to that. 'Cash across invoice'—that's his motter. And as for moving of him, you might just as easy move Mongblong." It is not impossible that this young man's familiarity with Mont Blanc was more apparent than real; perhaps founded on Albert Smith's entertainment of that name, which was popular at that time in London. The young man went on to say that he himself was trustful to a fault, and that if it depended on him, a'most any arrangement could be come to. But you had to take a party as you found him, and there it was!
Uncle Mo said:—"If you'd said you was a-coming with it, mate, I'd have made a p'int of having the cash ready. My salary's doo to-morrow." He was looking rather ruefully at an insufficient sum in the palm of his hand, the scrapings of more than one pocket.
The young man said:—"It's the Governor, Mr. Moses. But if you'll square the 'ire of the trolley, I'll run it back to the shop, and you can say when you're ready for it."
Uncle Mo seemed very reluctant to allow the bird to go back into the bush. He went to the stairfoot, and called to Aunt M'riar, upstairs, making ribbons into rosettes, and giving Dolly the snippings. He never took his eye off the coins in his palm, as though to maintain them as integral factors of the business in hand. "Got any small change, M'riar?" said he.
"How much do you want, Mo?"
"Six.Andthree. Can you do six-and three?"
"Stop till I see, Mo." Aunt M'riar descended from above, and went into her bedroom. But she did not find six-and-three. For she came out saying:—"I can't only do five-and-nine, Mo. Can't you make out with that?"
Uncle Mo still looked at the twelve-and-nine he already had in hand, as though it was a peculiar twelve-and-nine, that mightconsent for once to make nineteen shillings, the sum required, when added to Aunt M'riar's contribution; but he was obliged to yield to the inflexible nature of Arithmetic. "Sixpence short, I make it," said he. Then to the young man whose employer was like Mont Blanc:—"You'll have to fetch it round again to-morrow, any time after two o'clock." This was, however, rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Jerry, who was able to contribute the six-and-three, without, as he said, going to the workhouse. So Mrs. Prichard's old table, with a new leg so nobody could ever have told, and a touch of fresh polish as good as new, was restored to its old place, to join in the general anticipation of its owner's return.
But however M'riar come to be so short of cash Uncle Mo, smoking an afternoon pipe as of old with Mr. Jerry, could not say, not if the Emperor of Roosher was to ask him. Not that shortness of cash was unusual in Sapps Court, but that he had supposed that M'riar was rather better off than usual, owing to recent liquidations by the firm for whom she and Mrs. Burr were at work upstairs. Mr. Jerry urged him on no account to fret his kidneys about mundane trifles of this sort. Everything, without exception, came to the same thing in the end, and weak concessions to monetary anxiety only provided food for Repentance.
Uncle Mo explained that his uneasiness was not due to ways and means, or the want of them, but to a misgiving that Aunt M'riar's money was "got from her."
Now in his frequent confabs with Mr. Jerry, Uncle Mo had let fall many suggestions of the sinister influence at work on Aunt M'riar; and Mr. Jerry, being a shrewd observer, and collating these suggestions with what had come to him otherwise, had formed his own opinions about the nature of this influence. So it was no wonder that in answer to Uncle Mo he nodded his head very frequently, as one who not only assents to a fact, but rather lays claim to having been its first discoverer. "What did I tell you, Mo?" said he.
"Concernuating? Of? What?" said Uncle Mo in three separate sentences, each one accompanied by a tap of his pipe-bowl on the wooden table at The Sun parlour. The third qualified it for refilling. You will see, if you are attentive and observant, that this was Mo's first pipe that afternoon; as, if the ashes had been hot, he would not have emptied them on that table, but rather on the hob, or in the brazen spittoon.
"Him," said Mr. Jerry, too briefly. For he felt bound to add:—"Coldbath Fields. Anyone giving information that will lead toapprehension of, will receive the above reward. Your friend, you know!"
"My friend's the man, Jerry. Supposin'—just for argewment—I fist that friend o' mine Monday morning, I'll make him an allowance'll last him over Sunday. You wouldn't think it of me, Jerry, but I'm a bad-tempered man, underneath the skin. And when I see our old girl M'riar run away with like by an infernal scoundrel.... Well, Jerry, I lose my temper! That I do." And Uncle Mo seemed to need the pipe he was lighting, to calm him.
"He's where her money goes, Mo—that's it, ain't it?"
"That's about it, sir. So p'hraps when I say I don't know how M'riar come to be so short of cash, I ought to say Idoknow. Because Idoknow, as flat as ever so much Gospel." So the Emperor of Russia might not have remained unenlightened.
Mr. Jerry reflected. "You say he hasn't been near the Court again, Mo?"
"Not since that last time I told you about. What M'riar told me of. When he showed his knife to frighten her. I couldn't be off telling Sim Rowe, at the Station, about it, because of the children; and he's keeping an eye. But the beggar's not been anigh the Court since. Nor I don't suppose he'll come."
"But when ever does he see M'riar, to get at her savings?—that's what I'd like to know. Eh, Mo?"
"M'riar ain't tied to the house. She's free to come and go. I don't take kindly to prying and spying on her."
A long chat which followed evolved a clear view of the position. After Mo's interview with Aunt M'riar just before Gwen's visit, he had applied to his friend the Police-Inspector, with the result that the Court had been the subject of a continuous veiled vigilance. He had, however, been so far swayed by the distress of Aunt M'riar at the possibility that she might actually witness the capture of her criminal husband, that he never revealed to Simeon Rowe that she had an interest in defeating his enterprise. The consequence was that every plain-clothes emissary put himself into direct personal communication with her, thereby ensuring the absence of Daverill from Sapps Court. She was of course guilty of a certain amount of duplicity in all this, and it weighed heavily on her conscience. But there was something to be said by way of excuse. He was—or had been—her husband, and she didnotknow the worst of his crimes. Had she done so, she might possibly have been ready to give him up to justice. But as Mo had told her this much, that his last achievement mightlead him to the condemned cell, and its sequel, and she nevertheless shrank from betraying him, probably nothing short of the knowledge of the age and sex of his last victim would have caused her to do so. She had in her mind an image of a good, honest, old-fashioned murder; a strained episode in some burglary; perhaps not premeditated, but brought about by an indiscreet interruption of a fussy householder. There are felonies and felonies.
Mr. Jerry's conversation with Uncle Mo in the Sun parlour gave him an insight into this. "Look'ee here, Mo," said he. "So long as the Court's watched, so long this here gentleman won't come anigh it. He's dodged the London police long enough to be too clever for that. But so long as he keeps touch with M'riar, you've got touch of him."
Uncle Mo seemed to consider this profoundly. "Not if I keep square with M'riar," said he at last.
"How do you make that out, Mo?"
"I've as good as promised the old girl that she shan't have any hand in it. She's out of it."
"Then keep her out of it. But only you give the tip to Sim Rowe that M'riar's in with him, and that he's putting the screw on her, and Sim he'll do the rest. Twig?" Conscious casuistry always closes one eye, and Mr. Jerry closed his.
"That's one idea of keeping square, Jerry, but it ain't mine."
"What's wrong with it, Mo?" Mr. Jerry's confidence in his suggestion had flagged, and his eye had reopened slowly.
"M'riar's not to haveanyhand in it—that's her stipulation. According-ly to my ideas, Jerry, either you take advantage, or you don't.Don't'sthe word, this time. If I bring M'riar inat all, it's all one which of two ways I do it. She's out of it."
Mr. Jerry began, feebly:—"You can't do more than keep your word, Mo...."
"Yes, you can, Jerry. You can keep your meanin'. And you can do more than that. You can keep to what the other party thought you meant, when you know.Iknow, this time. I ain't in a Court o' Justice, Jerry, dodgin' about, and I know when I'm square, by the feel. M'riar's out of it, and she shall stop out." Uncle Mo was not referring only to the evasions of witnesses on oath, which he regarded as natural, but to a general habit of untruth, and subtle perversion of obvious meanings, which he ascribed not only to counsel learned in the Law, but to the Bench itself.
"Don't you want this chap to dance the Newgate hornpipe, Mo?"
"Don't I, neither?" Uncle Mo smoked peacefully, gazing on the fire. The silhouette of a hanged man, kicking, floated before his mind's eye, and soothed him. But he made a reservation. "After him and me have had a quiet half-an-hour together!"
Mr. Jerry was suddenly conscious of a new danger. "I say, Mo," said he. "None of that, ifyouplease!"
"None o' what?"
"This customer's not your sort. He's a bad kind. Bad before he was first lagged, and none the better for the company he's kept since! You're an elderly man now, Mo, and I'll go bail you haven't so much as put on the gloves for ten years past. And suppose you had, ever so! Who's to know he hasn't got a Colt in his pocket, or a bowie-knife?" Those of us who remember the fifties will recall how tightly revolvers clung to the name of their patentee, and the sort of moral turpitude that attached to their use. They were regarded as giving a mean advantage to murderers; who otherwise, if they murdered fair, and were respectably hanged, merely filledrôlesnecessary to History and the Drama.
"Couldn't say about the barking-iron," said Uncle Mo. "He's got a nasty sort of a knife, because he was flourishing of it out once to frighten M'riar. I'll give him that." Meaning—the advantage of the weapon. A trivial concession from a survivor of the best days of the Fancy! "Ye see, Jerry," he continued, "he'll have to come within arm's length, to use it.I'llsee to him! Him and his carving-knives!"
But Mr. Jerry was far from easy about his friend, who seemed to him over-confident. He had passed his life in sporting circles, and though he himself had seen more of jockeys than prizefighters, their respective circumferences intersected; and more than one case had come to his knowledge of a veteran of the Ring unconscious of his decadence, who had boastfully defied a junior, and made the painful discovery of the degree to which youth can outclass age. This was scarcely a case of youth or extreme age, but the twenty years that parted them were all-sufficient.
He began to seek in his inner conscience excuses for a course of action which would—he was quite candid with himself—have a close resemblance to treachery. But would not a little straightforward treachery be not only very expedient, but rather moral? Were high principles asine qua nonto such a humble individual as himself, a "bookmaker" on race-courses, a billiard-marker elsewhere in their breathing-times? Though indeed Mr. Jerry in his chequered life had seen many other phases of employment—chiefly, whenever he had the choice, within the zone of horsiness.For he had a mysterious sympathetic knowledge of the horse. If pressed to give an account of himself, he was often compelled to admit that he was doing nothing particular, but was on the lookout. He might indicate that he was getting sick of this sort of thing, and would take the next chance that turned up; would, as it were, close with Fate. There had never been a moment in his sixty odd years of life—for he was very little Uncle Mo's junior—when he had not been on the eve of a lucrative permanency. It had never come; and never could, in the nature of things. Nevertheless, the evanescencies that came and went and chequered his career were not quite unremunerative, though they were hardly lucrative. If he was ever hard up, he certainly never confessed to it.
He, however, looking back on his own antecedents to determine from them how straitlaced a morality conscience called for, decided, in view of the possibility of a collision between his friend and this ex-convict, that he would be quite justified in treating Aunt M'riar's feelings as negligible, set against the risk incurred by deferring to them as his friend had done. No doubt Mo's confidence had been reposed in him under the seal of an honourable secrecy, but to honour it under the circumstances seemed to him to be "cutting it rather fine." He resolved to sacrifice his integrity on the altar of friendship, and sought out Mr. Simeon Rowe, who will be remembered as the Thames Policeman who was rowing stroke at Hammersmith that day when his chief, Ibbetson, lost his life in the attempt to capture Daverill; and who had more recently been identified by Mo as the son of an old friend. Jerry made a full communication of the case as known to him; giving as his own motive for doing so, the wish to shield Mo from the possible consequences of his own rash over-confidence.
"I collect from what you tell me," said the Police-Inspector, "that my men have been going on the wrong tack. That's about it, Mr. Alibone, isn't it?"
"That's one way of putting it, Mr. Rowe. Anyhow, they were bound to be let in. Why, who was to guess Aunt M'riar?Andthe reason!"
"They'll have to look a little sharper, that's all." It suited the Inspector to lay the blame of failure on his subordinates. This is a prerogative of seniors in office. Successes are officially credited to the foresight of headquarters—failures debited to the incompetence of subordinates. Mr. Rowe's attitude was merely human. He expressed as much acknowledgment of indebtedness to Mr. Jerry as was consistent with official dignity, adding withoutemotion:—"I've been suspecting some game of the kind." However, he unbent so far as to admit that this culprit had given a sight of trouble; and, as Mr. Jerry was an old acquaintance, resumed some incidents of the convict's career, not without admiration. But it was admiration of a purely professional sort, consistent with strong moral loathing of its object. "He's a born devil, if ever there was one," said he. "I must say I like him. Why—look how he slipped through their fingers at Clerkenwell! That was after we caught him at Hammersmith. That was genius, sir, nothing short of genius!"
"Dressed himself in his own warder's clothes, didn't he, and just walked over the course? What's become of your man he knocked on the head with his leg-iron?"
"Oh—him? He's got his pension, you know. But he's not good for any sort of work. He's alive—that's all! Yes—when Mr. Wix pays his next visit at the Old Bailey, there'll be several charges against him. He'll make a good show. I'll give him three months." By which he meant that, with all allowances made for detention and trial, Mr. Wix would end his career at the time stated. He went on to refer to other incidents of which the story has cognisance. He had been inclined to be down on his old chief Ibbetson, who was drowned in his attempt to capture Wix, because he had availed himself of a helping hand held out to him to drag its owner into custody. Well—he would think so still if it had not been for some delicate shades of character Mr. Wix had revealed since. How did he, Simeon Rowe, know what Ibbetson knew against the ex-convict? Some Walthamstow business, as like as not! It was wonderful what a faculty this man had for slipping through your fingers. He had been all but caught by one of our men, in the country, only the other day. He was at the railway-station waiting for the up-train, due in a quarter of an hour, and he saw our man driving up in a gig. At this point Mr. Rowe stopped, looking amused.
"Did he run?" said Mr. Jerry.
"Not he! He made a mistake in his train. Jumped into the Manchester express that was just leaving, and got carried off before our man reached the station. At Manchester he explained his mistake, and used his return ticket without extra charge to come back to London. Our man knew he would do that, and waited for him at Euston. Butheknew one better. Missed his train again at Harrow—just got out for a minute, you know, when it stopped—and walked the rest of the way!"
Ralph Daverill must have had a curious insight into humannature, to know by the amount of his inspection of that police-officer—the one who had ridden after him from Grantley Thorpe—whether he would pursue him to Manchester or try to capture him at Euston. How could he tell that the officer was not clever enough to know exactly how clever his quarry would decide he was?
Aunt M'riar, haunted always by a nightmare—by the terrible dream of a scaffold, and on it the man who had been her husband, with all the attendant horrors familiar to an age when public executions still gratified its human, or inhuman interest—was unable to get relief by confiding her trouble to others. She dared to say no more than what she had already said to Uncle Mo, as she knew he was in communication with his friend the police-officer and she wanted only just as much to be disclosed about the convict as would safeguard Sapps Court from another of his visits, but at the same time would not lead to his capture. If she had thought his suggestions of intimidation serious, no doubt she would have put aside her scruples, and made it her first object that he should be brought to justice. But she regarded them as empty threats, uttered solely to extort money.
She knew she could rely on Mo's kindness of heart to stretch many points to meet her feelings, but she felt very uncertain whether even his kind-heartedness would go the length of her demand for it. He might consider that a wife's feelings for a husband—andsucha husband!—might be carried too far, might even be classified as superstition, that last infirmity of incorrect minds. If she could only make sure that the convict should never show his face again in Sapps Court, she would sacrifice her small remainders of money, earned in runs of luck, to keep him at a distance. An attitude of compromise between complete repudiation of him, and misleading his pursuers, was at least possible. But it involved a slight amount of duplicity in dealing with Mo, and this made Aunt M'riar supremely uncomfortable. She was perfectly miserable about it. But there!—had she not committed herself to an impracticable constancy, with a real altar and a real parson? That was it. She had promised, five-and-twenty years ago, to love, honour, and obey a self-engrossed pleasure-seeker, and time and crime and the canker of a gaol had developed a devil in him, who was by now a fine representative sample—a "record devil" our modern advanced speech might have called him—who had fairly stamped out whatever uncongenial trace of good may have existed originally inthe premises he had secured on an indefinite lease. Itwassuperstition on Aunt M'riar's part, but of a sort that is aided and abetted by a system that has served the purposes of the priesthoods all the world over since the world began, and means to last your time and mine—the more's the pity!
It was the day after her conversation with Mo about the convict—the day, that is, after Gwen's last visit to Sapps Court—that Aunt M'riar said to Dave, just departing to absorb erudition at his School, that if he should see Michael Ragstroar he might tell him she had a note for his, Michael's, aunt at Hammersmith; and if he was a-going there Sunday, he might just every bit as well make himself useful, and carry it and save the postage. Dave said:—"Whoy shouldn't oy carry it?" An aspiration crushed by Aunt M'riar with:—"Because you're seven!" So Dave, whose nature was as docile as his eyes were blue, undertook to deliver the message; and Michael presented himself in consequence, just after Uncle Mo had took a turn out to see for a newspaper, for to know some more of what was going on in the Crimaera. It was just as well Uncle Mo had, because when it's two, you don't have to consider. If this is obscure, Aunt M'riar, who used the phrase, is responsible, not the story. Its opinion is, that she meant that the absence of a third person left her freer to speak. Perhaps if Mo had been present she would merely have handed Micky the letter directed to his aunt, which would have been palpably no concern of Uncle Mo's, inquirin' and askin' questions.
As it was, she accompanied it with verbal instructions:—"Now you know what you've got to do, young Micky. You've just got to give this letter to your great-aunt Treadwell. And when she sees inside of it, she'll find it ain't for her, but a party."
"What sort of a party, that's the p'int? Don't b'leeve my great-aunt knows no parties. Them she knows is inside of her farmily. Nevoos, sim'lar to myself as you might say. Or hequal value." An Academical degree would have qualified Micky to say "or its equivalent." The expression he used had its source in exchange transactions of turnips and carrots and greens, anticipating varied calls for each in different markets.
"She may know the address of the lady she'll find in this envelope. And if she don't, allyougot to do is to bring the letter back."
"Suppose she don't know the address and I do, am I to tell her, or 'old my tongue?"
"Now which do you think? I do declare you boys I never!Nor yet anyone else! Why, if she don't know the address and you do, all you got to do then is take the letter and leave it."
"Without any address wrote? Wery good! 'Ave it your own way, missis. 'And it over."
Aunt M'riar handed it over. But before Micky was half-way up the Court, she called him back. "Maybe you know the party's name? Miss Julia Hawkins—on the waterside, Hammersmith."
"Her! Not know her! Juliarawkins. Why, she's next door!"
"But do you know her—to speak to?"
"Rarther! We're on torkin terms, me and Juliar. Werry often stop I do, to pass the time of day with Jooliar." An intensification in the accent on the name seemed to add to his claim to familiarity with its owner. "Keeps the little tiddley-wink next door. Licensed 'ouse. That's where they took Wix—him as got out of quod—him as come down the Court to look up a widder."
Aunt M'riar considered a moment whether it would not be better to instruct Micky to find out Daverill and deliver her letter to him in person. She decided on adhering to the convict's instructions. If she had understood his past relations with Miss Hawkins she might have decided otherwise. She affected not to hear Micky's allusion to him, merely enjoining the boy to hand her letter in over the bar to its Egeria. "You won't have any call for to trouble your aunt," said she. For she felt that the fewer the cooks, the better the broth. Questioned as to when he would deliver the letter, Micky appeared to turn over in his mind a voluminous register of appointments. But he could stand them all over, to oblige, and would see if he couldn't make it convenient to go over Sunday morning. Nothing was impossible to a good business head.
As the appointments had absolutely no existence except in his imagination—though perhaps costermonging, at its lowest ebb, still claimed his services—he was able to make it very convenient indeed to visit his Aunt Elizabeth. History repeats itself, and the incident of the half-and-half happened again, point for point, until settlement-time came, and then a variation crept in.
"I got a letter for you, missis," said Micky.
"Sure it ain't for somebody else? Let's have a look at it."
"No 'urry! Tork it over first—that's my marxim! Look ye here. Miss Juliar, this is my way of putting of it. Here's three-halfpence, over the beer. Here's the corner of the letter, stickin' out of my porket. Now which'll you have, the letter or the three-halfpence? Make your ch'ice. All square and no deception!"
"Well—the impidence of the child! Who's to know the letter's for me onlest I see the direction? Who gave it you to give me?"
"Miss Wardle down our Court. Same I told you of—where the old widder-woman hangs out. Him the police are after's mother!" Micky was so confident of the success of this communication that he began picking up the three-halfpence to restore them to his pocket, and stood holding the corner of the letter to draw it out as soon as his terms were accepted. The acceptance came unconditionally, with a nod; and Micky departed with his jug.
What were the contents of this letter to Mr. Wix, care of Miss Julia Hawkins, at The Pigeons? That was all the direction on the envelope, originally covered by another, addressed to Micky's great-aunt. It was worded as Daverill had worded it in a hurried parting word to Aunt M'riar, given when Gwen's knock had cut his visit short. This letter, in an uneducated woman's hand, excited Miss Hawkins's curiosity. Of course it might only be from the old woman he supposed to be his mother. If so, there did not seem to be any reasonable objection to her reading it. If otherwise, she felt that there were many reasonable objections to leaving it unread. Anyhow there was a kettle steaming on the fire in the bar, and if she held the letter over the spout to see if it would open easy, she would be still in a position to shut it up again and deliver it with a guiltless conscience. Eve, no doubt, felt that she could handle the apple and go on resisting temptation, so as not to seem rude to the Serpent. The steam was not wanted for long, the envelope flap curling up in a most obliging manner, and leaving all clear for investigation. Miss Hawkins laid the letter down to dry quite dry, before fingering it. Remember to bear this in mind in opening other people's letters this way. The slightest touch on paper moistened by steam may remain as a tell-tale.
This woman was so cautious that she left the paper untouched where she had laid it on the table while she conferred with a recently installed potboy on points of commercial economy. When she returned it was dry beyond suspicion, and she drew the letter out to see if it contained anything she need hesitate to read. She felt that she was keeping in view what is due to the sensitive conscience of an honourable person.
The note she read was short, written so that the lines fell thus:—
"Ralph Daverill—The police areon the look out for you and it is now notsafe to come to the Court—This is writtenby your wife to say you will rungreat risk of being took if you come—For you to know who I am I write my name—Polly Daverill.Sapps Court Dec 9 1854."
The lines were ill-spaced, so that blanks were left as shown. At the end of the second, a crowded line, the wordnotwas blurred on the paper-edge, and looked like a repetition of the previous word.
One does not see without thought, why this letter sent its reader's heart beating furiously. Why should she turn scarlet with anger and all but draw blood from a bitten lip? She knew perfectly well that this gutter Don Juan's depravity could boast as many victims as his enforced prison life had left possible to him. But no particular one had ever become concrete to her, and jealousy of a multitude, no one better off than herself, had never rankled. Jealousy of Heaven-knows-who is a wishy-washy passion. Supply a definite object, and it may become vitriolic. Polly Daverill, whoever she was, was definite, and might be the wife the convict had acknowledged—or rather claimed—when he first made Miss Julia's acquaintance, over twenty years ago.
The lip was perhaps saved from bloodletting by an idea which crossed the mind of the biter. A look of satisfaction grew and grew as she contemplated the letter; not for its meaning—that was soon clear. It was something in the handwriting; something that made her hide half-words with a finger-point, and vary her angle of inspection. Then she said, aloud to herself:—"Yes!" as though she had come to a decision.
She examined an inkstand that the dried ink of ages had encrusted, beyond redemption, in a sunken cavity of restraint in an inktray overstocked with extinct and senile pens. Its residuum of black fluid had been glutinous ever since Miss Julia had known it; ever since she had written, as a student, that Bounty Commanded Esteem all down one page of a copybook. The pens were quill pens past mending, or overwhelmed by too heartfelt nibs; or magnum bonums whose upstrokes were morally as wide as Portland Place, or parvum malums that perforated syllables and spluttered. The penwiper was non-absorbent, and generally contrived to return the drop it refused to partake of on the hands of incautious scribes, who rarely obtained soap and hot water time enough to do any good.
Miss Julia first remedied the ink. A memory of breakfast unremoved still hung about the parlour table—a teapot and aslop basin. The former supplied a diluent, the latter a haven for the indisputably used-up quill whose feather served to incorporate it with the black coagulum. With the resultant fluid you could make a mark about the same blackness as what the letter was, using by preference the newest magnum bonum pen, which was all right in itself, only stuck on an old wooden handle that scribes of recent years had gnawed.
What this woman's jealous violence was prompting her to do was to alter this letter so as to encourage its recipient to put himself in danger of capture. It was an easy task, as the only words she had to insert could be copies from what was already written. The first line required the wordnotat the end, the fourth the wordno. The only other change needed was the erasure of the wordnot, in the second line, which already looked like an accidental repetition ofnow. Was an erasure advisable? she decided against it, cleverly. She merely drew her pen through thenot, leaving the first two letters intentionally visible, and blurring the last. She then re-enveloped the letter, much pleased with the result, and wrote a short note in pencil toaccompanyit; then hunted up an envelope large enough to take both, and directed it to W. at the Post Office, East Croydon. This was the last address the convict had given. Where he was actually living she did not know.
Her own letter to him was:—"The enclosed has come for you. I write this in pencil because I cannot find any ink." It was a little stroke of genius worthy of her correspondent's father. Nothing but clairvoyance could have bred suspicion in him. Micky reappeared that evening in Sapps Court, and found an opportunity to convey to Aunt M'riar that he had obeyed his instructions. He did so with an air of mystery and an undertone of intelligence, saying briefly:—"That party, missis! She's got the letter."
"Did you give it her?" said Aunt M'riar.
"I see to it that she got it," said Micky with reserve. "You'll find it all correct, just as I say." This attitude was more important than the bald, unqualified statement that he had left the letter when he fetched the beer, and Micky enjoyed himself over it proportionately.
Aunt M'riar was easier in her mind, as she felt pretty confident that the letter would reach its destination. She had killed two birds with one stone—so she believed. She had saved Daverill from the police, so far at least as their watchfulness of Sapps Courtwas concerned, and had also saved Uncle Mo from possible collision with him, an event she dreaded even more than a repetition of those hideous interviews with a creature that neither was nor was not her husband; a thing with a spurious identity; a horrible outgrowth from a stem on which her own life had once been grafted. Could woman think a worse thought of man than hers of him, when she thanked God that at least the only fruit of that graft had been nipped in the bud? And yet no such thought had crossed her mind in all these years in which he had been to her no more than a memory. A memory of a dissolute, imperfect creature—yes! but lovable enough for all that. Not indeed without a sort of charm for any passing friend, quite short of any spell akin to love. How could this monstrous personality have grown upon him, yet left him indisputably the same man? The dreadful change in the identity of the maniac—the maniac proper, the victim of brain-disease—is at least complete; so complete often as to force the idea of possession on minds reluctant to receive it. This man remained himself, but it was as though this identity had been saturated with evil—had soaked it up as the sponge soaks water. There was nothing in the old self M'riar remembered to make her glad his child was not born alive. There was everything in his seeming of to-day to make her shudder at the thought that it might have lived.
The cause of the change is not far to seek. He had lived for twenty years in Norfolk Island as a convict; for fourteen years certainly as an inmate of the prisons, even if a period of qualified liberty preceded his discharge and return to Sydney. He was by that time practically damned beyond redemption, and his brilliant career as a bushranger followed as a matter of course.
Those who have read anything of the story of the penal settlements in the early part of last century may—evenmust—remember the tale told by the Catholic priest who went to give absolution to a whole gang of convicts who were to be hanged for mutiny. He carried with him a boon—a message of mercy—for half the number; for they had beenpardoned; that is to say, had permission now to live on as denizens of a hell on earth. As it turned out, the only message of mercy he had to give was the one contained or implied in an official absolution from sin, and it is possible that belief in its validity occasioned the outburst of rejoicing that greeted its announcement. For there was no rejoicing among the recipients of His Majesty's clemency—heart-broken silence alone, and chill despair! For they were to remain on the rack, while their more fortunate fellows could look forwardto a joyous gallows, with possibilities beyond, from which Hell had been officially excluded. It is but right to add that the Reverend Father didnotascribe the exultant satisfaction of his clients—if that is the word—to anything but the anticipation of escape from torture. He was too truthful.
If the nearest dates the story has obtained are trustworthy, Daverill's actual term in Norfolk Island may have been fourteen years; it certainly came to an end in the early forties. But he must have been there at the time of the above incident, as it happenedcirca1836-37. The powers of the sea-girt tropical Paradise to sterilise every Divine impulse must have been at their best in his time, and he seems to have been a favourable subject for thevirusof diabolism, which was got by Good Intentions out of Expediency. The latter must have been carrying on with Cowardice, though, to account for Respectability's choice, for her convicts, of an excruciating life rather than a painless death. Possibly the Cowardice of the whole Christian world, which accounts Death the greatest of possible evils.
The life of a bushranger in New South Wales, which fills in the end of his Australian career, did not tend to the development of any stray germ of a soul that the prison-fires had not scorched out of old Maisie's son. Small wonder it was so! Conceive the glorious freedom of wickedness unrestrained, after the stived-up atmosphere of the gaol, with its maddening Sunday chapel and its hideous possibilities of public torture for any revolt against the unendurable routine. We, nowadays, read with a shudder of the enormities that were common in the prisons of past times—we, who only know of their modern substitutes. For the last traces of torture, such as was common long after themoyen âge, as generally understood, have vanished from the administration of our gaols before a vivified spirit of Christianity, and the enlightenment consequent on the Advance of Science.[A]After fourteen years of such a life, how glorious must have been the opportunities the freedom of the Bush afforded to an instinctive miscreant, still in the prime of life, and artificially debarred for so long from the indulgence of a natural bent for wickedness; not yetennuyéby the monotony of crime in practice, which often leads to a reaction, occasionally accompanied by worldly success. There was, however, about Daverill a redeeming point. He was incorrigibly bad. He never played false to his father the Devil, and the lusts of his father he did do, to the very last, never disgracing himself by the slightest wavering towards repentance.