“MY DEAR ZACK—The enclosed are the tickets for my picture show, which I told you about yesterday evening. I send them now, instead of waiting to give them to you to-night, at Lavvie’s suggestion. She thinks only three days’ notice, from now to Saturday, rather short, and considers it advisable to save even a few hours, so as to enable you to give your friends the most time possible to make their arrangements for coming to my studio. Post all the invitation tickets, therefore, that you send about among your connection, at once, as I am posting mine; and you will save a day by that means, which is a good deal. Patty is obliged to pass your house this morning on an errand, so I send my letter by her. How conveniently things sometimes turn out, don’t they?
“Introduce anybody you like; but I should prefer intellectual people; my figure-subject of ‘Columbus in sight of the New World’ being treated mystically, and, therefore, adapted to tax the popular mind to the utmost. Please warn your friends beforehand that it is a work of high art, and that nobody can hope to understand it in a hurry.
“V. BLYTH.”
The perusal of this letter reminded Zack of certain recent aspirations in the direction of the fine arts, which had escaped his slippery memory altogether, while he was thinking of his future prospects. “I’ll stick to my first idea,” he thought, “and be an artist, if Blyth will let me, after what’s happened. If he won’t, I’ve got Mat to fall back upon; and I’ll run as wild in America as ever he did.”
Reflecting thus, Zack descended cautiously to the back parlor, which was called a “library.” The open door showed him that no one was in the room. He went in, and in great haste scrawled the following answer to Mr. Blyth’s letter:—
“MY DEAR BLYTH—Thank you for the tickets. I have got into a dreadful scrape, having been found out coming home tipsy at four in the morning, which I did by stealing the family door-key. My prospects after this are so extremely unpleasant that I am going to make a bolt of it. I write these lines in a tearing hurry, for fear my father should come home before I have done—he having gone to Yollop’s to set the parson at me again worse than ever.
“I can’t come to you to-night, because your house would be the first place they would send to after me. But I mean to be an artist, if you won’t desert me. Don’t, my dear fellow! I know I’m a scamp; but I’ll try and be a reformed character, if you will only stick by me. When you take your walk tomorrow, I shall be at the turnpike in the Laburnum Road, waiting for you, at three o’clock. If you won’t come there, or won’t speak to me when you do come, I shall leave England and take to something desperate.
“I have got a new friend—the best and most interesting fellow in the world. He has been half his life in the wilds of America; so, if you don’t give me the go-by, I shall bring him to see your picture of Columbus.
“I feel so miserable, and have got such a headache, that I can’t write any more. Ever yours,
After directing this letter, and placing it in his pocket to be put into the post by his own hand, Zack looked towards the door and hesitated—advanced a step or two to go out—and ended by returning to the writing-table, and taking a fresh sheet of paper out of the portfolio before him.
“I can’t leave the old lady (though she won’t forgive me) without writing a line to keep up her spirits and say goodbye,” he thought, as he dipped the pen in the ink, and began in his usual dashing, scrawling way. But he could not get beyond “My dear Mother.” The writing of those three words seemed to have suddenly paralyzed him. The strong hand that had struck out so sturdily all through the fight, trembled now at merely touching a sheet of paper. Still, he tried desperately to write something, even if it were only the one word, “Goodbye.”—tried till the tears came into his eyes, and made all further effort hopeless.
He crumpled up the paper and rose hastily, brushing away the tears with his hand, and feeling a strange dread and distrust of himself as he did so. It was rarely, very rarely, that his eyes were moistened as they were moistened now. Few human beings have lived to be twenty years of age without shedding more tears than had ever been shed by Zack.
“I can’t write to her while I’m at home, and I know she’s in the next room to me. I will send her a letter when I’m out of the house, saying it’s only for a little time, and that I’m coming back when the angry part of this infernal business is all blown over.” Such was his resolution, as he tore up the crumpled paper, and went out quickly into the passage.
He took his hat from the table. His hat? No: he remembered that it was the hat which had been taken from the man at the tavern. At the most momentous instant of his life—when his heart was bowing down before the thought of his mother—when he was leaving home in secret, perhaps for ever—the current of his thoughts could be incomprehensibly altered in its course by the influence of such a trifle as this!
It was thus with him; it is thus with all of us. Our faculties are never more completely at the mercy of the smallest interests of our being, than when they appear to be most fully absorbed by the mightiest. And it is well for us that there exists this seeming imperfection in our nature. The first cure of many a grief, after the hour of parting, or in the house of death, has begun, insensibly to ourselves, with the first moment when we were betrayed into thinking of so little a thing even as a daily meal.
The rain which had accompanied the thaw was falling faster and faster; inside the house was dead silence, and outside it damp desolation, as Zack opened the street door, and, without hesitating a moment, dashed out desperately through mud and wet, to cast himself loose on the thronged world of London as a fugitive from his own home.
He paused before he took the turning out of the square; the recollections of weeks, months, years past, all whirling through his memory in a few moments of time. He paused, looking through the damp, foggy atmosphere at the door which he had just left—never, it might be, to approach it again; then moved away, buttoned his coat over his chest with trembling, impatient fingers, and saying to himself, “I’ve done it, and nothing can undo it now,” turned his back resolutely on Baregrove Square.
CHAPTER III. THE SEARCH BEGUN.
The street which Mat had chosen for his place of residence in London, was situated in a densely populous, and by no means respectable neighborhood. In Kirk Street the men of the fustian-jacket and seal-skin cap clustered tumultuous round the lintels of the gin-shop doors. Here ballad-bellowing, and organ grinding, and voices of costermongers, singing of poor men’s luxuries, never ceased all through the hum of day, and penetrated far into the frowzy repose of latest night. Here, on Saturday evenings especially, the butcher smacked with appreciating hand the fat carcasses that hung around him; and flourishing his steel, roared aloud to every woman who passed the shop door with a basket, to come in and buy—buy—buy! Here, with foul frequency, the language of the natives was interspersed with such words as reporters indicate in the newspapers by an expressive black line; and on this “beat,” more than on most others, the night police were chosen from men of mighty strength to protect the sober part of the street community, and of notable cunning to persuade the drunken part to retire harmlessly brawling into the seclusion of their own homes.
Such was the place in which Mat had set up his residence, after twenty years of wandering amid the wilds of the great American Continent.
Never was tenant of any order or degree known to make such conditions with a landlord as were made by this eccentric stranger. Every household convenience with which the people at the lodgings could offer to accommodate him, Mat considered to be a domestic nuisance which it was particularly desirable to get rid of. He stipulated that nobody should be allowed to clean his room but himself; that the servant-of-all-work should never attempt to make his bed, or offer to put sheets on it, or venture to cook him a morsel of dinner when he stopped at home; and that he should be free to stay away unexpectedly for days and nights together, if he chose, without either landlord or landlady presuming to be anxious or to make inquiries about him, as long as they had his rent in their pockets. This rent he willingly covenanted to pay beforehand, week by week, as long as his stay lasted; and he was also ready to fee the servant occasionally, provided she would engage solemnly “not to upset his temper by doing anything for him.”
The proprietor of the house (and tobacco-shop) was at first extremely inclined to be distrustful; but as he was likewise extremely familiar with poverty, he was not proof against the auriferous halo which the production of a handful of bright sovereigns shed gloriously over the oddities of the new lodger. The bargain was struck; and Mat went away directly to fetch his personal baggage.
After an absence of some little time, he returned with a large corn-sack on his back, and a long rifle in his hand. This was his luggage.
First putting the rifle on his bed, in the back room, he cleared away all the little second-hand furniture with which the front room was decorated; packing the three rickety chairs together in one corner, and turning up the cracked round table in another. Then, untying a piece of cord which secured the mouth of the corn-sack, he emptied it over his shoulder into the middle of the room—just (as the landlady afterwards said) as if it was coals coming in instead of luggage. Among the things which fell out on the floor in a heap, were—some bearskins and a splendid buffalo-hide, neatly packed; a pipe, two red flannel shirts, a tobacco-pouch, and an Indian blanket; a leather bag, a gunpowder flask, two squares of yellow soap, a bullet mold, and a nightcap; a tomahawk, a paper of nails, a scrubbing-brush, a hammer, and an old gridiron. Having emptied the sack, Mat took up the buffalo hide, and spread it out on his bed, with a very expressive sneer at the patchwork counterpane and meager curtains. He next threw down the bear skins, with the empty sack under them, in an unoccupied corner; propped up the leather bag between two angles of the wall; took his pipe from the floor; left everything else lying in the middle of the room; and, sitting down on the bearskins with his back against the bag, told the astonished landlord that he was quite settled and comfortable, and would thank him to go down stairs, and send up a pound of the strongest tobacco he had in the shop.
Mat’s subsequent proceedings during the rest of the day—especially such as were connected with his method of laying in a stock of provisions, and cooking his own dinner—exhibited the same extraordinary disregard of all civilized precedent which had marked his first entry into the lodgings. After he had dined, he took a nap on his bear skins; woke up grumbling at the close air and the confined room; smoked a long series of pipes, looking out of window all the time with quietly observant, constantly attentive eyes; and, finally, rising to the climax of all his previous oddities, came down when the tobacco shop was being shut up after the closing of the neighboring theater, and coolly asked which was his nearest way into the country, as he wanted to clear his head, and stretch his legs, by making a walking night of it in the fresh air.
He began the next morning by cleaning both his rooms thoroughly with his own hands; and seemed to enjoy the occupation mightily in his own grim, grave way. His dining, napping, smoking, and observant study of the street view from his window, followed as on the previous day. But at night, instead of setting forth into the country as before, he wandered into the streets; and, in the course of his walk, happened to pass the door of the Snuggery. What happened to him there is already known; but what became of him afterwards remains to be seen.
On leaving Zack, he walked straight on; not slackening his pace, not noticing whither he went, not turning to go back till daybreak. It was past nine o’clock before he presented himself at the tobacco-shop, bringing in with him a goodly share of mud and wet from the thawing ground and rainy sky outside. His long walk did not seem to have relieved the uneasiness of mind which had induced him to separate so suddenly from Zack. He talked almost perpetually to himself in a muttering, incoherent way; his heavy brow was contracted, and the scars of the old wounds on his face looked angry and red. The first thing he did was to make some inquiries of his landlord relating to railway traveling, and to the part of London in which a certain terminus that he had been told of was situated. Finding it not easy to make him understand any directions connected with this latter point, the shopkeeper suggested sending for a cab to take him to the railway. He briefly assented to that arrangement; occupying the time before the vehicle arrived, in walking sullenly backwards and forwards over the pavement in front of the shop door.
When the cab came to take him up, he insisted, with characteristic regardlessness of appearances, on riding upon the roof, because he could get more air to blow over him, and more space for stretching his legs in, there than inside. Arriving in this irregular and vagabond fashion at the terminus, he took his ticket for DIBBLEDEAN, a quiet little market town in one of the midland counties.
When he was set down at the station, he looked about him rather perplexedly at first; but soon appeared to recognize a road, visible at some little distance, which led to the town; and towards which he immediately directed his steps, scorning all offers of accommodation from the local omnibus.
It did not happen to be market day; and the thaw looked even more dreary at Dibbledean than it looked in London. Down the whole perspective of the High Street there appeared only three human figures—a woman in pattens; a child under a large umbrella; and a man with a hamper on his back, walking towards the yard of the principal inn.
Mat had slackened his pace more and more as he approached the town, until he slackened it altogether at last, by coming to a dead stand-still under the walls of the old church, which stood at one extremity of the High Street, in what seemed to be the suburban district of Dibbledean. He waited for some time, looking over the low parapet wall which divided the churchyard from the road—then slowly approached a gate leading to a path among the grave-stones—stopped at it—apparently changed his purpose—and, turning off abruptly, walked up the High Street.
He did not pause again till he arrived opposite a long, low, gabled house, evidently one of the oldest buildings in the place, though brightly painted and whitewashed, to look as new and unpicturesque as possible. The basement story was divided into two shops; which, however, proclaimed themselves as belonging now, and having belonged also in former days, to one and the same family. Over the larger of the two was painted in letters of goodly size:—
Bradford and Son (late Joshua Grice), Linendrapers, Hosiers, &c., &c.
The board on which these words were traced was continued over the smaller shop, where it was additionally superscribed thus:—
Mrs. Bradford (late Joanna Grice), Milliner and Dressmaker.
Regardless of rain, and droppings from eaves that trickled heavily down his hat and coat, Mat stood motionless, reading and re-reading these inscriptions from the opposite side of the way. Though the whole man, from top to toe, was the very impersonation of firmness, he nevertheless hesitated most unnaturally now. At one moment he seemed to be on the point of entering the shop before him—at another, he turned half round towards the churchyard which he had left behind him. At last he decided to go back to the churchyard, and retraced his steps accordingly.
He entered quickly by the gate at which he had delayed before; and pursued the path among the graves a little way. Then striking off over the grass, after a moment’s consideration and looking about him, he wound his course hither and thither among the turf mounds, and stopped suddenly at a plain flat tombstone, raised horizontally above the earth by a foot or so of brickwork. Bending down over it, he read the characters engraven on the slab.
There were four inscriptions, all of the simplest and shortest kind, comprising nothing but a record of the names, ages, and birth and death dates of the dead who lay beneath. The first two inscriptions notified the deaths of children:—“Joshua Grice, son of Joshua and Susan Grice, of this parish, aged four years;” and “Susan Grice, daughter of the above, aged thirteen years.” The next death recorded was the mother’s: and the last was the father’s, at the age of sixty-two. Below this followed a quotation from the New Testament:—Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It was on these lines, and on the record above them of the death of Joshua Grice the elder, that the eyes of the lonely reader rested longest; his lips murmuring several times, as he looked down on the letters:—“He lived to be an old man—he lived to be an old man after all!”
There was sufficient vacant space left towards the bottom of the tombstone for two or three more inscriptions; and it appeared as if Mat expected to have seen more. He looked intently at the vacant space, and measured it roughly with his fingers, comparing it with the space above, which was occupied by letters. “Not there, at any rate!” he said to himself, as he left the churchyard, and walked back to the town.
This time he entered the double shop—the hosiery division of it—without hesitation. No one was there, but the young man who served behind the counter. And right glad the young man looked, having been long left without a soul to speak to on that rainy morning, to see some one—even a stranger with an amazing skull-cap under his hat—enter the shop at last.
What could he serve the gentleman with? The gentleman had not come to buy. He only desired to know whether Joanna Grice, who used to keep the dressmaker’s shop, was still living?
Still living, certainly! the young man replied, with brisk civility. Miss Grice, whose brother once had the business now carried on by Bradford and Son, still resided in the town; and was a very curious old person, who never went out, and let nobody inside her doors. Most of her old friends were dead; and those who were still alive she had broken with. She was full of fierce, wild ways; was suspected of being crazy; and was execrated by the boys of Dibbledean as an “old tiger-cat.” In all probability, her intellects were a little shaken, years ago, by a dreadful scandal in the family, which quite crushed them down, being very respectable, religious people—
At this point the young man was interrupted, in a very uncivil manner, by the stranger, who desired to hear nothing about the scandal, but who had another question to ask. This question seemed rather a difficult one to put; for he began it two or three times, in two or three different forms of words, and failed to get on with it. At last, he ended by asking, generally, whether any other members of old Mr. Grice’s family were still alive.
For a moment or so the shopman was stupid and puzzled, and asked what other members the gentleman meant. Old Mrs. Grice had died some time ago; and there had been two children who died young, and whose names were in the churchyard. “Did the gentleman mean the second daughter, who lived and grew up beautiful, and was, as the story went, the cause of all the scandal? If so, the young person ran away, and died miserably somehow—nobody knew how; and was supposed to have been buried like a pauper somewhere—nobody knew where, unless it was Miss Grice—”
The young man stopped and looked perplexed. A sudden change had passed over the strange gentleman’s face. His swarthy cheeks had turned to a cold clay color, through which his two scars seemed to burn fiercer than ever, like streaks of fire. His heavy hand and arm trembled a little as he leaned against the counter. Was he going to be taken ill? No: he walked at once from the counter to the door—turned round there, and asked where Joanna Grice lived. The young man answered, the second turning to the right, down a street, which ended in a lane of cottages. Miss Grice’s was the last cottage on the left hand; but he could assure the gentleman that it would be quite useless to go there, for she let nobody in. The gentleman thanked him, and went, nevertheless.
“I didn’t think it would have took me so,” Mat said, walking quickly up the street; “and it wouldn’t if I’d heard it anywhere else. But I’m not the man I was, now I’m in the old place again. Over twenty year of hardening, don’t seem to have hardened me yet!”
He followed the directions given him, correctly enough, arrived at the last cottage on his left hand, and tried the garden gate. It was locked; and there was no bell to ring. But the paling was low, and Mat was not scrupulous. He got over it, and advanced to the cottage door. It opened, like other doors in the country, merely by turning the handle of the lock. He went in without any hesitation, and entered the first room into which the passage led him. It was a small parlor; and, at the back window, which looked out on a garden, sat Joanna Grice, a thin, dwarfish old woman, poring over a big book which looked like a Bible. She started from her chair, as she heard the sound of footsteps, and tottered up fiercely, with wild wandering grey eyes and horny threatening hands, to meet the intruder. He let her come close to him; then mentioned a name—pronouncing it twice, very distinctly.
She paused instantly, livid pale, with gaping lips, and arms hanging rigid at her side; as if that name, or the voice in which it had been uttered, had frozen up in a moment all the little life left in her. Then she moved back slowly, groping with her hands like one in the dark—back, till she touched the wall of the room Against this she leaned, trembling violently; not speaking a word; her wild eyes staring panic-stricken on the man who was confronting her.
He sat down unbidden, and asked if she did not remember him. No answer was given; no movement made that might serve instead of an answer. He asked again; a little impatiently this time. She nodded her head and stared at him—still speechless, still trembling.
He told her what he had heard at the shop; and using the shopman’s phrases, asked whether it was true that the daughter of old Mr. Grice, who was the cause of all the scandal in the family, had died long since, away from her home, and in a miserable way?
There was something in his look, as he spoke, which seemed to oblige her to answer against her will. She said Yes; and trembled more violently than ever.
He clasped his hands together; his head drooped a little; dark shadows seemed to move over his bent face; and the scars of the old wounds deepened to a livid violet hue.
His silence and hesitation seemed to inspire Joanna Grice with sudden confidence and courage. She moved a little away from the wall, and a gleam of triumph lightened over her face, as she reiterated her last answer of her own accord. “Yes! the wretch who ruined the good name of the family was dead—dead, and buried far off, in some grave by herself—not there, in the churchyard with her father and mother—no, thank God, not there!”
He looked up at her instantly, when she said those words, There was some warning influence in his eye, as it rested on her, which sent her cowering back again to her former place against the wall. Mentioning the name for the first time, he asked sternly where Mary was buried. The reply—doled out doggedly and slowly, forced from her word by word—was, that Mary was buried among strangers, as she deserved to be—at a place called Bangbury—far away in the next county, where she died, and where money was sent to bury her.
His manner became less roughly imperative; his eyes softened; his voice saddened in tone, when he spoke again. And yet, the next question that he put to Joanna Grice seemed to pierce her to the quick, to try her to the heart, as no questioning had tried her before. The muscles were writhing on her haggard face, her breath burst from her in quick, fierce pantings, as he asked plainly, whether it was only suspicion, or really the truth, that Mary was with child when she left her home?
No answer was given to him. He repeated the question, and insisted on having one. Was it suspicion, or truth? The reply hissed out at him in one whispered word—Truth.
Was the child born alive?
The answer came again in the same harsh whisper—Yes: born alive.
What became of it?
She never saw it—never asked about it—never knew. While she replied thus, her whispering accents changed, and rose sullenly to hoarse, distinct tones. But it was not till the questioner spoke to her once more that the smothered fury flashed out into flaming rage. Then, even as he raised his head and opened his lips, she staggered, with outstretched arms, up to the table at which she had been reading when he came in; and struck her bony hands on the open Bible; and swore by the Word of Truth in that Book, that she would answer him no more.
He rose calmly; and with something of contempt in his look, approached the table and spoke. But his voice was drowned by hers, bursting from her in screams of fury. No! no! no! Not a word more! How dare he come there, with his shameless face and his threatening eyes, and make her speak of what should never have passed her lips again—never till she went up to render her account at the Judgment Seat! Relations! let him not speak to her of relations. The only kindred she ever cared to own, lay heart-broken under the great stone in the churchyard. Relations! if they all came to life again this very minute, what could she have to do with them, whose only relation was Death? Yes; Death, that was father, mother, brother, sister to her now! Death, that was waiting to take her in God’s good time. What! would he stay on in spite of her? stay after she had sworn not to answer him another word?
Yes; he was resolved to stay—and resolved to know more. Had Mary left nothing behind her, on the day when she fled from her home?
Some suddenly-conceived resolution seemed to calm the first fury of Joanna Grice’s passion, while he said those words. She stretched out her hand quickly, and griped him by the arm, and looked up in his face with a wicked exultation in her wild eyes.
He was bent on knowing what that ruined wretch left behind her? Well! he should see for himself!
Between the leaves of Joanna Grice’s Bible there was a key, which seemed to be used as a marker. She took it out, and led the way, with toilsome step, and hands outstretched for support to the wall on one side and the banisters on the other, up the one flight of stairs which communicated with the bed-room story of the cottage.
He followed close behind her: and was standing by her side, when she opened a door, and pointed into a room, telling him to take what he found there, and then go—she cared not whither, so long as he went from her.
She descended the stairs again, as he entered the room. There was a close, faint, airless smell in it. Cobwebs, pendulous and brown with dirt, hung from the ceiling. The grimy window-panes saddened all the light that poured through them faintly. He looked round him, and saw no furniture anywhere; no sign that the room had ever been lived in, ever entered even, for years and years past. He looked again, more carefully: and detected, in one dim corner, something covered with dust and dirt, which looked like a small box.
He pulled it out towards the window. Dust flew from it in clouds. Loathsome, crawling creatures crept from under it and from off it. He stirred it with his foot still nearer to the faint light, and saw that it was a common deal-box, corded. He looked closer, and through cobwebs, and dead insects, and foul stains of all kinds, spelt out a name that was painted on it: MARY GRICE.
At the sight of that name, and of the pollution which covered it, he paused, silent and thoughtful; and, at the same moment, heard the parlor door below, locked. He stooped hastily, took up the box by the cord round it, and left the room. His hand touched a substance, as he grasped the cord, which did not feel like wood. Examining the box by the clearer light falling on the landing from a window in the roof, he discovered a letter nailed to the cover. There was something written on it; but the paper was dusty, the ink was faded by time, and the characters were hard to decipher. By dint of perseverance, however, he made out from them this inscription: “Justification of my conduct towards my niece: to be read after my death. Joanna Grice.”
As he passed the parlor door, he heard her voice, reading. He stopped and listened. The words that reached his ears seemed familiar to them; and yet he knew not, at first, what book they came from. He listened a little longer; his recollections of his boyhood and of home helped him; and he knew that the book from which Joanna Grice was reading aloud to herself was the Bible.
His face darkened, and he went out quickly into the garden; but stopped before he reached the paling, and, turning back to the front window of the parlor, looked in. He saw her sitting with her back to him, with elbows on the table, and hands working feverishly in her tangled grey hair. Her voice was still audible; but the words it pronounced could no longer be distinguished. He waited at the window for a few moments; then left it suddenly, saying to himself: “I wonder the book don’t strike her dead!” Those were his only words of farewell. With that thought in his heart, he turned his back on the cottage, and on Joanna Grice.
He went on through the rain, taking the box with him, and looking about for some sheltered place in which he could open it. After walking nearly a mile, he saw an old cattle-shed, a little way off the road—a rotten, deserted place; but it afforded some little shelter, even yet: so he entered it.
There was one dry corner left; dry enough, at least, to suit his purpose. In that he knelt down, and cut the cord round the box—hesitated before he opened it—and began by tearing away the letter outside, from the nail that fastened it to the cover.
It was a long letter, written in a close, crabbed hand. He ran his eye over it impatiently, till his attention was accidentally caught and arrested by two or three lines, more clearly penned than the rest, near the middle of a page. For many years he had been unused to reading any written characters; but he spelt out resolutely the words in the few lines which first struck his eye, and found that they ran thus:—
“I have now only to add, before proceeding to the miserable confession of our family dishonor, that I never afterwards saw, and only once heard of, the man who tempted my niece to commit the deadly sin, which was her ruin in this world, and will be her ruin in the next.”
Beyond those words, he made no effort to read further. Thrusting the letter hastily into his pocket, he turned once more to the box.
It was sealed up with strips of tape, but not locked. He forced the lid open, and saw inside a few simple articles of woman’s wearing apparel; a little work-box; a lace collar, with the needle and thread still sticking in it; several letters, here tied up in a packet, there scattered carelessly; a gaily-bound album; a quantity of dried ferns and flower leaves that had apparently fallen from between the pages: a piece of canvas with a slipper-pattern worked on it; and a black dress waistcoat with some unfinished embroidery on the collar. It was plain to him, at a first glance, that these things had been thrown into the box anyhow, and had been left just as they were thrown. For a moment or two, he kept his eyes fixed on the sad significance of the confusion displayed before him; then turned away his head, whispering to himself, mournfully and many times, that name of “Mary,” which he had already pronounced while in the presence of Joanna Grice. After a little, he mechanically picked out the letters that lay scattered about the box; mechanically eyed the broken seals and the addresses on each; mechanically put them back again unopened, until he came to one which felt as if it had something inside it. This circumstance stimulated him into unfolding the enclosure, and examining what the letter might contain.
Nothing but a piece of paper neatly folded. He undid the folds, and found part of a lock of hair inside, which he wrapped up again the moment he saw it, as if anxious to conceal it from view as soon as possible. The letter he examined more deliberately. It was in a woman’s handwriting; was directed to “Miss Mary Grice, Dibbledean:” and was only dated “Bond Street, London. Wednesday.” The post-mark, however, showed that it had been written many years ago. It was not very long; so he set himself to the task of making it all out from beginning to end.
This was what he read:—
“MY DEAREST MARY,
“I have just sent you your pretty hair bracelet by the coach, nicely sealed and packed up by the jeweler. I have directed it to you by your own name, as I direct this, remembering what you told me about your father making it a point of honor never to open your letters and parcels; and forbidding that ugly aunt Joanna of yours, ever to do so either. I hope you will receive this and the little packet about the same time.
“I will answer for your thinking the pattern of your bracelet much improved since the new hair has been worked in with the old. How slyly you will run away to your own room, and blush unseen, like the flower in the poem, when you look at it! You may be rather surprised, perhaps, to see some little gold fastenings introduced as additions; but this, the jeweler told me, was a matter of necessity. Your poor dear sister’s hair being the only material of the bracelet, when you sent it up to me to be altered, was very different from the hair of that faultless true-love of yours which you also sent to be worked in with it. It was, in fact, hardly half long enough to plait up properly with poor Susan’s, from end to end; so the jeweler had to join it with little gold clasps, as you will see. It is very prettily run in along with the old hair though. No country jeweler could have done it half as nicely, so you did well to send it to London after all. I consider myself rather a judge of these things; and I say positively that it is now the prettiest hair bracelet I ever saw.
“Do you see him as often as ever? He ought to be true and faithful to you, when you show how dearly you love him, by mixing his hair with poor Susan’s, whom you were always so fondly attached to. I say he ought; but you are sure to say he will—and I am quite ready, love, to believe that you are the wiser of the two.
“I would write more, but have no time. It is just the regular London season now, and we are worked out of our lives. I envy you dressmakers in the country; and almost wish I was back again at Dibbledean, to be tyrannized over from morning to night by Miss Joanna. I know she is your aunt, my dear; but I can’t help saying that I hate her very name!
“JANE HOLDSWORTH.
“P. S.—The jeweler sent back the hair he did not want; and I, as in duty bound, return it enclosed to you, its lawful owner.”
Those scars on Mat’s face, which indicated the stir of strong feelings within him more palpably than either his expression or his manner, began to burn redly again while he spelt his way through this letter. He crumpled it up hastily round the enclosure, instead of folding it as it had been folded before; and was about to cast it back sharply into the box, when the sight of the wearing apparel and half-finished work lying inside seemed to stay his hand, and teach it on a sudden to move tenderly. He smoothed out the paper with care, and placed it very gently among the rest of the letters—then looked at the box thoughtfully for a moment or two; took from his pocket the letter that he had first examined, and dropped it in among the others—then suddenly and sharply closed the lid of the box again.
“I can’t touch any more of her things,” he said to himself; “I can’t so much as look at ‘em, somehow, without its making me—” he stopped to tie up the box; straining at the cords, as if the mere physical exertion of pulling hard at something were a relief to him at that moment. “I’ll open it again and look it over in a day or two, when I’m away from the old place here,” he resumed, jerking sharply at the last knot—“when I’m away from the old place, and have got to be my own man again.”
He left the shed; regained the road; and stopped, looking up and down, and all round him, indecisively. Where should he go next? To the grave, where he had been told that Mary lay buried? No: not until he had first read all the letters and carefully examined all the objects in the box. Back to London, and to his promised meeting next morning with Zack? Yes: nothing better was left to be done—back to London.
Before nightfall he was journeying again to the great city, and to his meeting with Zack; journeying (though he little thought it) to the place where the clue lay hid—the clue to the Mystery of Mary Grice.
CHAPTER IV. FATE WORKS, WITH ZACK FOR AN INSTRUMENT.
A quarter of an hour’s rapid walking from his father’s door, took Zack well out of the neighborhood of Baregrove Square, and launched him in vagabond independence loose on the world. He had a silk handkerchief and sevenpence halfpenny in his pockets—his available assets consisted of a handsome gold watch and chain—his only article of baggage was a blackthorn stick—and his anchor of hope was the Pawnbroker.
His first action, now that he had become his own master, was to go direct to the nearest stationer’s shop that he could find, and there to write the penitent letter to his mother over which his heart had failed him in the library at Baregrove Square. It was about as awkward, scrambling, and incoherent an epistolary production as ever was composed. But Zack felt easier when he had completed it—easier still when he had actually dropped it into the post-office along with his other letter to Mr. Valentine Blyth.
The next duty that claimed him was the first great duty of civilized humanity—the filling of an empty purse. Most young gentlemen in his station of life would have found the process of pawning a watch in the streets of London, and in broad daylight, rather an embarrassing one. But Zack was born impervious to a sense of respectability. He marched into the first pawnbroker’s he came to with as solemn an air of business, and marched out again with as serene an expression of satisfaction, as if he had just been drawing a handsome salary, or just been delivering a heavy deposit into the hands of his banker.
Once provided with pecuniary resources, Zack felt himself at liberty to indulge forthwith in a holiday of his own granting. He opened the festival by a good long ride in a cab, with a bottle of pale ale and a packet of cigars inside, to keep the miserable state of the weather from affecting his spirits. He closed the festival with a visit to the theater, a supper in mixed company, total self-oblivion, a bed at a tavern, and a blinding headache the next morning. Thus much, in brief, for the narrative of his holiday. The proceedings, on his part, which followed that festival, claim attention next; and are of sufficient importance, in the results to which they led, to be mentioned in detail.
The new morning was the beginning of an important day in Zack’s life. Much depended on the interviews he was about to seek with his new friend, Mat, in Kirk Street, and with Mr. Blyth, at the turnpike in the Laburnum Road. As he paid his bill at the tavern, his conscience was not altogether easy, when he recalled a certain passage in his letter to his mother, which had assured her that he was on the high road to reformation already. “I’ll make a clean breast of it to Blyth, and do exactly what he tells me, when I meet him at the turnpike.” Fortifying himself with this good resolution, Zack arrived at Kirk Street, and knocked at the private door of the tobacconist’s shop.
Mat, having seen him from the window, called to him to come up, as soon as the door was opened. The moment they shook hands, young Thorpe noticed that his new friend looked altered. His face seemed to have grown downcast and weary—heavy and vacant, since they had last met.
“What’s happened to you?” asked Zack. “You have been somewhere in the country, haven’t you? What news do you bring back, my dear fellow? Good, I hope?”
“Bad as can be,” returned Mat, gruffly. “Don’t you say another word to me about it. If you do, we part company again. Talk of something else. Anything you like; and the sooner the better.”
Forbidden to discourse any more concerning his friend’s affairs, Zack veered about directly, and began to discourse concerning his own. Candor was one of his few virtues: and he now confided to Mat the entire history of his tribulations, without a single reserved point at any part of the narrative, from beginning to end.
Without putting a question, or giving an answer, without displaying the smallest astonishment or the slightest sympathy, Mat stood gravely listening until Zack had quite done. He then went to the corner of the room where the round table was; pulled the upturned lid back upon the pedestal; drew from the breast pocket of his coat a roll of beaver-skin; slowly undid it; displayed upon the table a goodly collection of bank notes; and pointing to them, said to young Thorpe,—“Take what you want.”
It was not easy to surprise Zack; but this proceeding so completely astonished him, that he stared at the bank notes in speechless amazement. Mat took his pipe from a nail in the wall, filled the bowl with tobacco, and pointing with the stem towards the table, gruffly repeated,—“Take what you want.”
This time, Zack found words in which to express himself, and used them pretty freely to praise his new friend’s unexampled generosity, and to decline taking a single farthing. Mat deliberately lit his pipe, in the first place, and then bluntly answered in these terms:—
“Take my advice, young ‘un, and keep all that talking for somebody else: it’s gibberish to me. Don’t bother; and help yourself to what you want. Money’s what you want—though you won’t own it. That’s money. When it’s gone, I can go back to California and get more. While it lasts, make it spin. What is there to stare at? I told you I’d be brothers with you, because of what you done for me the other night. Well: I’m being brothers with you now. Get your watch out of pawn, and shake a loose leg at the world. Will you take what you want? And when you have, just tie up the rest, and chuck ‘em over here.” With those words the man of the black skull-cap sat down on his bearskins, and sulkily surrounded himself with clouds of tobacco smoke.
Finding it impossible to make Mat understand those delicacies and refinements of civilized life which induce one gentleman (always excepting a clergyman at Easter time) to decline accepting money from another gentleman as a gift—perceiving that he was resolved to receive all remonstrances as so many declarations of personal enmity and distrust—and well knowing, moreover, that a little money to go on with would be really a very acceptable accommodation under existing circumstances, Zack consented to take two ten-pound notes as a loan. At this reservation Mat chuckled contemptuously; but young Thorpe enforced it, by tearing a leaf out of his pocket-book, and writing an acknowledgment for the sum he had borrowed. Mat roughly and resolutely refused to receive the document; but Zack tied it up along with the bank-notes, and threw the beaver-skin roll back to its owner, as requested.
“Do you want a bed to sleep in?” asked Mat next. “Say yes or no at once! I won’t have no more gibberish. I’m not a gentleman, and I can’t shake up along with them as are. It’s no use trying it on with me, young ‘un. I’m not much better than a cross between a savage and a Christian. I’m a battered, lonesome, scalped old vagabond—that’s what I am! But I’m brothers with you for all that. What’s mine is yours; and if you tell me it isn’t again, me and you are likely to quarrel. Do you want a bed to sleep in? Yes? or No?”
Yes; Zack certainly wanted a bed; but—
“There’s one for you,” remarked Mat, pointing through the folding-doors into the back room. “I don’t want it. I haven’t slep’ in a bed these twenty years and more, and I can’t do it now. I take dog’s snoozes in this corner; and I shall take more dog’s snoozes out of doors in the day-time, when the sun begins to shine. I haven’t been used to much sleep, and I don’t want much. Go in and try if the bed’s long enough for you.”
Zack tried to expostulate again, but Mat interrupted him more gruffly than ever.
“I suppose you don’t care to sleep next door to such as me,” he said. “You wouldn’t turn your back on a bit of my blanket, though, if we were out in the lonesome places together. Never mind! You won’t cotton to me all at once, I dare say. I cotton to you in spite of that. Damn the bed! Take or leave it, which you like.”
Zack the reckless, who was always ready at five minutes’ notice to make friends with any living being under the canopy of heaven—Zack the gregarious, who in his days of roaming the country, before he was fettered to an office stool, had “cottoned” to every species of rustic vagabond, from a traveling tinker to a resident poacher—at once declared that he would sleep in the offered bed that very night, by way of showing himself worthy of his host’s assistance and regard, if worthy of nothing else. Greatly relieved by this plain declaration, Mat crossed his legs luxuriously on the floor, shook his great shoulders with a heartier chuckle than usual, and made his young friend free of the premises in these hospitable words:—
“There! now the bother’s over at last, I suppose,” cried Mat. “Pull in the buffalo hide, and bring your legs to an anchor anywhere you like. I’m smoking. Suppose you smoke too.—Hoi! Bring up a clean pipe,” cried this rough diamond, in conclusion, turning up a loose corner of the carpet, and roaring through a crack in the floor into the shop below.
The pipe was brought. Zack sat down on the buffalo hide, and began to ask his queer friend about the life he had been leading in the wilds of North and South America. From short replies at first, Mat was gradually beguiled into really relating some of his adventures. Wild, barbarous fragments of narrative they were; mingling together in one darkly-fantastic record, fierce triumphs and deadly dangers; miseries of cold, and hunger, and thirst; glories of hunters’ feasts in mighty forests; gold-findings among desolate rocks; gallopings for life from the flames of the blazing prairie; combats with wild beasts and with men wilder still; weeks of awful solitude in primeval wastes; days and nights of perilous orgies among drunken savages; visions of meteors in heaven, of hurricanes on earth, and of icebergs blinding bright, when the sunshine was beautiful over the Polar seas.
Young Thorpe listened in a fever of excitement. Here was the desperate, dangerous, roving life of which he had dreamed! He longed already to engage in it: he could have listened to descriptions of it all day long. But Mat was the last man in the world to err, at any time, on the side of diffuseness in relating the results of his own experience. And he now provokingly stopped, on a sudden, in the middle of an adventure among the wild horses on the Pampas; declaring that he was tired of feeling his own tongue wag, and had got so sick of talking of himself, that he was determined not to open his mouth again—except to put a rump-steak and a pipe in it—for the rest of the day.
Finding it impossible to make him alter this resolution, Zack thought of his engagement with Mr. Blyth, and asked what time it was. Mat, having no watch, conveyed this inquiry into the shop by the same process of roaring through the crack in the ceiling which he had already employed to produce a clean pipe. The answer showed Zack that he had barely time enough left to be punctual to his appointment in the Laburnum Road.
“I must be off to my friend at the turnpike,” he said, rising and putting on his hat; “but I shall be back again in an hour or two. I say, have you thought seriously yet about going back to America?” His eyes sparkled eagerly as he put this question.
“There ain’t no need to think about it,” answered Mat. “I mean to go back; but I haven’t settled what day yet. I’ve got something to do first.” His face darkened, and he glanced aside at the box which he had brought from Dibbledean, and which was now covered with one of his bearskins. “Never mind what it is; I’ve got it to do, and that’s enough. Don’t you go asking again whether I’ve brought news from the country, or whether I haven’t. Don’t you ever do that, and we shall sail along together easy enough. I like you, Zack, when you don’t bother me. If you want to go, what are you stopping for? Why don’t you clear out at once?”
Young Thorpe departed, laughing. It was a fine clear day, and the bright sky showed signs of a return of the frost. He was in high spirits as he walked along, thinking of Mat’s wild adventures. What was the happiest painter’s life, after all, compared to such a life as he had just heard described? Zack was hardly in the Laburnum Road before he began to doubt whether he had really made up his mind to be guided entirely by Mr. Blyth’s advice, and to devote all his energies for the future to the cultivation of the fine arts.
Near the turnpike stood a tall gentleman, making a sketch in a note-book of some felled timber lying by the road side. This could be no other than Valentine—and Valentine it really was.
Mr. Blyth looked unusually serious, as he shook hands with young Thorpe. “Don’t begin to justify yourself, Zack,” he said; “I’m not going to blame you now. Let’s walk on a little. I have some news to tell you from Baregrove Square.”
It appeared from the narrative on which Valentine now entered, that, immediately on the receipt of Zack’s letter, he had called on Mr. Thorpe, with the kindly purpose of endeavoring to make peace between father and son. His mission had entirely failed. Mr. Thorpe had grown more and more irritable as the interview proceeded; and had accused his visitor of unwarrantable interference, when Valentine suggested the propriety of holding out some prospect of forgiveness to the runaway son.
This outbreak Mr. Blyth had abstained from noticing, out of consideration for the agitated state of the speaker’s feelings. But when the Reverend Mr. Yollop (who had been talking with Mrs. Thorpe up stairs) came into the room soon afterwards, and joined in the conversation, words had been spoken which had obliged Valentine to leave the house. The reiteration of some arguments on the side of mercy which he had already advanced, had caused Mr. Yollop to hint, with extreme politeness and humility, that Mr. Blyth’s profession was not of a nature to render him capable of estimating properly the nature and consequences of moral guilt; while Mr. Thorpe had referred almost openly to the scandalous reports which had been spread abroad in certain quarters, years ago, on the subject of Madonna’s parentage. These insinuations had roused Valentine instantly. He had denounced them as false in the strongest terms he could employ; and had left the house, resolved never to hold any communication again either with Mr. Yollop or Mr. Thorpe.
About an hour after his return home, a letter marked “Private” had been brought to him from Mrs. Thorpe. The writer referred, with many expressions of sorrow, to what had occurred at the interview of the morning; and earnestly begged Mr. Blyth to take into consideration the state of Mr. Thorpe’s health, which was such, that the family doctor (who had just called) had absolutely forbidden him to excite himself in the smallest degree by receiving any visitors, or by taking any active steps towards the recovery of his absent son. If these rules were not strictly complied with for many days to come, the doctor declared that the attack of palpitation of the heart, from which Mr. Thorpe had suffered on the night of Zack’s return, might occur again, and might be strengthened into a confirmed malady. As it was, if proper care was taken, nothing of an alarming nature need be apprehended.
Having referred to her husband in these terms, Mrs. Thorpe next reverted to herself. She mentioned the receipt of a letter from Zack; but said it had done little towards calming her anxiety and alarm. Feeling certain that Mr. Blyth would be the first friend her son would go to, she now begged him to use his influence to keep Zack from abandoning himself to any desperate courses, or from leaving the country, which she greatly feared he might be tempted to do. She asked this of Mr. Blyth as a favor to herself, and hinted that if he would only enable her, by granting it, to tell her husband, without entering into details, that their son was under safe guidance for the present, half the anxiety from which she was now suffering would be alleviated. Here the letter ended abruptly; a request for a speedy answer being added in the postscript.
“Now, Zack,” said Valentine, after he had related the result of his visit to Baregrove Square, and had faithfully reported the contents of Mrs. Thorpe’s letter, “I shall only add that whatever has happened between your father and me, makes no difference in the respect I have always felt for your mother, and in my earnest desire to do her every service in my power. I tell you fairly—as between friends—that I think you have been very much to blame; but I have sufficient confidence and faith in you, to leave everything to be decided by your own sense of honor, and by the affection which I am sure you feel for your mother.”
This appeal, and the narrative which had preceded it, had their due effect on Zack. His ardor for a wandering life of excitement and peril, began to cool in the quiet temperature of the good influences that were now at work within him. “It shan’t be my fault, Blyth, if I don’t deserve your good opinion,” he said warmly. “I know I’ve behaved badly; and I know, too, that I have had some severe provocations. Only tell me what you advise, and I’ll do it—I will, upon my honor, for my mother’s sake.”
“That’s right! that’s talking like a man!” cried Valentine, clapping him on the shoulder. “In the first place, it would be no use your going back home at once—even if you were willing, which I am afraid you are not. In your father’s present state your return to Baregrove Square would do him a great deal of harm, and do you no good. Employed, however, you must be somehow while you’re away from home; and what you’re fit for—unless it’s Art—I’m sure I don’t know. You have been talking a great deal about wanting to be a painter; and now is the time to test your resolution. If I get you an order to draw in the British Museum, to fill up your mornings; and if I enter you at some private Academy, to fill up your evenings (mine at home is not half strict enough for you)—will you stick to it?”
“With all my heart,” replied Zack, resolutely dismissing his dreams of life in the wilds to the limbo of oblivion. “I ask nothing better, Blyth, than to stick to you and your plan for the future.”
“Bravo!” cried Valentine, in his old gay, hearty manner. “The heaviest load of anxiety that has been on my shoulders for some time past is off now. I will write and comfort your mother this very afternoon—”
“Give her my love,” interposed Zack. —“Giving her your love; in the belief, of course, that you are going to prove yourself worthy to send such a message,” continued Mr. Blyth. “Let us turn, and walk back at once. The sooner I write, the easier and happier I shall be. By the bye, there’s another important question starts up now, which your mother seems to have forgotten in the hurry and agitation of writing her letter. What are you going to do about money matters? Have you thought about a place to live in for the present? Can I help you in any way?”
These questions admitted of but one candid form of answer, which the natural frankness of Zack’s character led him to adopt without hesitation. He immediately related the whole history of his first meeting with Mat, (formally describing him, on this occasion, as Mr. Mathew Marksman), and of the visit to Kirk Street which had followed it that very morning.
Though in no way remarkable for excess of caution, or for the possession of any extraordinary fund of worldly wisdom, Mr. Blyth frowned and shook his head suspiciously, while he listened to the curious narrative now addressed to him. As soon as it was concluded, he expressed the most decided disapprobation of the careless readiness with which Zack had allowed a perfect stranger to become intimate with him—reminding him that he had met his new acquaintance (of whom, by his own confession, he knew next to nothing) in a very disreputable place—and concluded by earnestly recommending him to break off all connection with so dangerous an associate, at the earliest possible opportunity.
Zack, on his side, was not slow in mustering arguments to defend his conduct. He declared that Mr. Marksman had gone into the Snuggery innocently, and had been grossly insulted before he became the originator of the riot there. As to his family affairs and his real name, he might have good and proper reasons for concealing them; which was the more probable, as his account of himself in other respects was straightforward and unreserved enough. He might be a little eccentric, and might have led an adventurous life; but it was surely not fair to condemn him, on that account only, as a bad character. In conclusion, Zack cited the loan he had received, as a proof that the stranger could not be a swindler, at any rate; and referred to the evident familiarity with localities and customs in California, which he had shown in conversation that afternoon, as affording satisfactory proof in support of his own statement that he had gained his money by gold-digging.
Mr. Blyth, however, still held firmly to his original opinion; and, first offering to advance the money from his own purse, suggested that young Thorpe should relieve himself of the obligation which he had imprudently contracted, by paying back what he had borrowed, that very afternoon.
“Get out of his debt,” said Valentine, earnestly—“Get out of his debt, at any rate.”
“You don’t know him as well as I do,” replied Zack. “He wouldn’t think twice about knocking me down, if I showed I distrusted him in that way—and let me tell you, Blyth, he’s one of the few men alive who could really do it.”
“This is no laughing matter, Zack,” said Valentine, shaking his head doubtfully.
“I never was more serious in my life,” rejoined Zack. “I won’t say I should be afraid, but I will say I should be ashamed to pay him his money back on the day when I borrowed it. Why, he even refused to accept my written acknowledgment of the loan! I only succeeded in forcing it on him unawares, by slipping it in among his banknotes; and, if he finds it there, I’ll lay you any wager you like, he tears it up, or throws it into the fire.”
Mr. Blyth began to look a little puzzled. The stranger’s behavior about the money was rather staggering, to say the least of it.
“Let me bring him to your picture-show,” pursued Zack. “Judge of him yourself, before you condemn him. Surely I can’t say fairer than that? May I bring him to see the pictures? Or will you come back at once with me to Kirk Street, where he lives?”
“I must write to your mother, before I do any thing else; and I have work in hand besides for to-day and tomorrow,” said Valentine. “All things considered, you had better bring your friend as you proposed just now. But remember the distinction I always make between my public studio and my private house. I consider the glorious mission of Art to apply to everybody; so I am proud to open my painting room to any honest man who wants to look at my pictures. But the freedom of my other rooms is only for my own friends. I can’t have strangers brought up stairs: remember that.”
“Of course! I shouldn’t think of it, my dear fellow. Only you look at old Rough and Tough, and hear him talk; and I’ll answer for the rest.”
“Ah, Zack! Zack! I wish you were not so dreadfully careless about whom you get acquainted with. I have often warned you that you will bring yourself or your friends into trouble some day, when you least expect it. Where are you going now?”
“Back to Kirk Street. This is my nearest way; and I promised Mat—”
“Remember what you promised me, and what I am going to promise your mother—”
“I’ll remember everything, Blyth. Good bye and thank you. Only wait till we meet on Saturday, and you see my new friend; and you will find it all right.”
“I hope I shan’t find it all wrong,” said Mr. Blyth, forebodingly, as he followed the road to his own house.