He cried these words aloud, like one beside himself; beating his hands upon his grey head, and rocking backwards and forwards in his chair. His feeble hands trembled no longer—they were strengthened by some convulsive force that gave them a new power.
‘I believe,’ said Robert, in the same solemn, relentless voice, ‘that my friend never left Essex; and I believe that he died on the 7th of September last.’
The wretched old man, still beating his hands amongst his thin grey hair, slid from his chair to the ground, and grovelled at Robert’s feet.
‘Oh! no, no—for God’s sake, no!’ he shrieked hoarsely. ‘No! you don’t know what you say—you don’t know what you ask me to think—you don’t know what your words mean!’
‘I know their weight and value only too well—as well as I see you do, Mr Maldon. God help us!’
‘Oh, what am I doing? what am I doing?’ muttered the old man, feebly; then raising himself from the ground with an effort, he drew himself to his full height, and said, in a manner which was new to him, and which was not without a certain dignity of its own—that dignity which must always be attached to unutterable misery, in whatever form it may appear—he said, gravely:—
‘You have no right to come here and terrify a man who has been drinking; and who is not quite himself. You have no right to do it, Mr Audley. Even the—the officer, sir, who—who—’ He did not stammer, but his lips trembled so violently that his words seemed to be shaken into pieces by their motion. ‘The officer, I repeat, sir, who arrests a—a thief, or a—’ He stopped to wipe his lips, and to still them if he could by doing so, which he could not. ‘A thief—or a murderer—’ His voice died suddenly away upon the last word, and it was only by the motion of those trembling lips that Robert knew what he meant. ‘Gives him warning, sir, fair warning, that he may say nothing which shall commit himself—or—or—other people. The—the—law, sir, has that amount of mercy for a—a—suspected criminal. But you, sir, you—you come to my house, and you come at a time when—when— contrary to my usual habits—which, as people will tell you, are sober—you come, and perceiving that I am not quite myself—you take—the—opportunity to—terrify me—and it is not right, sir—it is——’
Whatever he would have said died away into inarticulate gasps which seemed to choke him, and sinking into a chair, he dropped his face upon the table and wept aloud. Perhaps in all the dismal scenes of domestic misery which had been acted in those spare and dreary houses—in all the petty miseries, the burning shames, the cruel sorrows, the bitter disgraces which own poverty for their common father—there had never been such a scene as this. An old man hiding his face from the light of day, and sobbing aloud in his wretchedness. Robert Audley contemplated the painful picture with a hopeless and pitying face.
‘If I had known this,’ he thought, ‘I might have spared him. It would have been better, perhaps, to have spared him.’
The shabby room, the dirt, the confusion, the figure of the old man, with his grey head upon the soiled table-cloth, amid the muddled débris of a wretched dinner, grew blurred before the sight of Robert Audley as he thought of another man, as old as this one, but, ah, how widely different in every other quality! who might come by-and-by to feel the same, or even a worse anguish, and to shed, perhaps, yet bitterer tears. The moment in which the tears rose to his eyes and dimmed the piteous scene before him, was long enough to take him back to Essex and to show him the image of his uncle, stricken by agony and shame.
‘Why do I go on with this?’ he thought; ‘how pitiless I am, and how relentlessly I am carried on. It is not myself; it is the hand which is beckoning me further and further upon the dark road whose end I dare not dream of.’
He thought this, and a hundred times more than this, while the old man sat with his face still hidden, wrestling with his anguish, but without power to keep it down.
‘Mr Maldon,’ Robert Audley said, after a pause, ‘I do not ask you to forgive me for what I have brought upon you, for the feeling is strong within me that it must have come to you sooner or later—if not through me, through some one else. There are——’ He stopped for a moment, hesitating. The sobbing did not cease; it was sometimes low, sometimes loud, bursting out with fresh violence, or dying away for an instant, but never ceasing. ‘There are some things which, as people say, cannot be hidden. I think there is truth in that common saying which had its origin in that old worldly wisdom which people gathered from experience and not from books. If—if I were content to let my friend rest in his hidden grave, it is but likely that some stranger, who had never heard the name of George Talboys, might fall by the remotest accident upon the secret of his death. To-morrow, perhaps; or ten years hence; or in another generation, when the—the hand that wronged him is as cold as his own. If I could let the matter rest; if—if I could leave England for ever, and purposely fly from the possibility of ever coming across another clue to the secret, I would do it—I would gladly, thankfully do it—but I cannot! A hand which is stronger than my own beckons me on. I wish to take no base advantage of you, less than of all other people; but I must go on; I must go on. If there is any warning you would give to any one, give it. If the secret towards which I am travelling day by day, hour by hour, involves any one in whom you have an interest; let that person fly before I come to the end. Let them leave this country; let them leave all who know them—all whose peace their wickedness has endangered; let them go away—they shall not be pursued. But if they slight your warning—if they try to hold their present position in defiance of what it will be in your power to tell them—let them beware of me, for when the hour comes, I swear that I will not spare them.’
The old man looked up for the first time, and wiped his wrinkled face upon a ragged silk handkerchief.
‘I declare to you that I do not understand you,’ he said. ‘I solemnly declare to you that I cannot understand; and I do not believe that George Talboys is dead.’
‘I would give ten years of my own life if I could see him alive,’ answered Robert, sadly. ‘I am sorry for you, Mr Maldon—I am sorry for all of us.’
‘I do not believe that my son-in-law is dead,’ said the lieutenant; ‘I do not believe that the poor lad is dead.’
He endeavoured in a feeble manner to show to Robert Audley that his wild outburst of anguish had been caused by his grief for the loss of George Talboys; but the pretence was miserably shallow.
Mrs Plowson re-entered the room, leading little Georgey, whose face shone with that brilliant polish which yellow soap and friction can produce upon the human countenance.
‘Dear heart alive!’ exclaimed Mrs Plowson, ‘what has the poor old gentleman been taking on about? We could hear him in the passage, sobbin’ awful.’
Little George crept up to his grandfather and smoothed the wet and wrinkled face with his pudgy hand.
‘Don’t cry, gran’pa,’ he said, ‘don’t cry. You shall have my watch to be cleaned, and the kind jeweller shall lend you the money to pay the taxman while he cleans the watch—I don’t mind, gran’pa. Let’s go to the jeweller—the jeweller in High Street, you know, with golden balls painted upon his door, to show that he comes from Lombar—Lombarshire,’ said the boy, making a dash at the name. ‘Come, gran’pa.’
The little fellow took the jewelled toy from his bosom and made for the door, proud of being possessed of a talisman which he had seen so often made useful.
‘There are wolves at Southampton,’ he said, with rather a triumphant nod to Robert Audley. ‘My gran’pa says when he takes my watch that he does it to keep the wolf from the door. Are there wolves where you live?’
The young barrister did not answer the child’s question, but stopped him as he was dragging his grandfather towards the door.
‘Your grandpapa does not want the watch today, Georgey,’ he said, gravely.
‘Why is he sorry, then?’ asked Georgey, naively; ‘when he wants the watch he is always sorry, and beats his poor forehead so’—the boy stopped to
pantomime with his small fists—‘and says that she—the pretty lady, I think, he means—uses him very hard, and that he can’t keep the wolf from the door; and then I say, “Gran’pa, have the watch;” and then he takes me in his arms and says, “Oh, my blessed angel! how can I rob my blessed angel?” and then he cries, but not like to-day—not loud, you know; only tears running down his poor cheeks; not so that you could hear him in the passage.’
Painful as the child’s prattle was to Robert Audley, it seemed a relief to the old man. He did not hear the boy’s talk, but walked two or three times up and down the little room and smoothed his rumpled hair and suffered his cravat to be arranged by Mrs Plowson, who seemed very anxious to find out the cause of his agitation.
‘Poor dear old gentleman,’ she said, looking at Robert. ‘What has happened to upset him so?’
‘His son-in-law is dead,’ answered Mr Audley, fixing his eyes upon Mrs Plowson’s sympathetic face. ‘He died within a year and a half after the death of Helen Talboys, who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard.’
The face into which he was looking changed very slightly; but the eyes that had been looking at his shifted away as he spoke, and once more Mrs Plowson was obliged to moisten her white lips with her tongue before she answered him.
‘Poor Mr Talboys dead!’ she said; ‘that is bad news indeed, sir.’
Little George looked wistfully up at his guardian’s face as this was said.
‘Who’s dead?’ he said. ‘George Talboys is my name. Who’s dead?’
‘Another person whose name is Talboys, Georgey.’
‘Poor person! Will he go to the pit-hole?’
The boy had that common notion of death which is generally imparted to children by their wise elders, and which always leads the infant mind to the open grave, but rarely carries it any higher.
‘I should like to see him put in the pit-hole,’ Georgey remarked, after a pause. He had attended several infant funerals in the neighbourhood, and was considered valuable as a mourner on account of his interesting appearance. He had come, therefore, to look upon the ceremony of interment as a solemn festivity; in which cake and wine and a carriage drive were the leading features.
‘You have no objection to my taking Georgey away with me, Mr Maldon?’ asked Robert Audley.
The old man’s agitation had very much subsided by this time. He had found another pipe stuck behind the tawdry frame of the looking-glass, and was trying to light it with a bit of twisted newspaper.
‘You do not object, Mr Maldon?’
‘No, sir—no, sir; you are his guardian, and you have a right to take him where you please. He has been a very great comfort to me in my lonely old age; but I have been prepared to lose him. I—I—may not have always done my duty to him, sir, in—in the way of schooling and—and boots. The number of boots which boys of his age wear out, sir, is not easily realised by the mind of a young man like yourself; he has been kept away from school, perhaps, sometimes, and has occasionally worn shabby boots when our funds have got low; but he has not been unkindly treated. No, sir; if you were to question him for a week, I don’t think you’d hear that his poor old grandfather ever said a harsh word to him.’
Upon this, Georgey, perceiving the distress of his old protector, set up a terrible howl, and declared that he would never leave him.
‘Mr Maldon,’ said Robert Audley, with a tone which was half-mournful, half-compassionate, ‘when I looked at my position last night, I did not believe that I could ever come to think it more painful than I thought it then. I can only say—God have mercy upon us all. I feel it my duty to take the child away; but I shall take him straight from your house to the best school in Southampton; and I give you my honour that I will extort nothing from his innocent simplicity which can in any manner——I mean,’ he said, breaking off abruptly, ‘I mean this—I will not seek to come one step nearer the secret through him. I—I am not a detective officer, and I do not think that the most accomplished detective would like to get his information from a child.’
The old man did not answer; he sat with his face shaded by his hand, and with his extinguished pipe between the listless fingers of the other.
‘Take the boy away, Mrs Plowson,’ he said, after a pause; ‘take him away and put his things on. He is going with Mr Audley.’
‘Which I do say that it’s not kind of the gentleman to take his poor grandpa’s pet away,’ Mrs Plowson exclaimed, suddenly, with respectful indignation.
‘Hush, Mrs Plowson,’ the old man answered, piteously; ‘Mr Audley is the best judge. I—I—haven’t many years to live; I shan’t trouble anybody long.’
The tears oozed slowly through the dirty fingers with which he shaded his bloodshot eyes as he said this.
‘God knows, I never injured your friend, sir,’ he said by-and-by, when Mrs Plowson and Georgey had returned, ‘nor ever wished him any ill. He was a good son-in-law to me—better than many a son. I never did him any wilful wrong, sir. I—I spent his money, perhaps, but I am sorry for it,—I am very sorry for it now. But I don’t believe he is dead—no, sir, no, I don’t believe it!’ exclaimed the old man, dropping his hand from his eyes, and looking with new energy at Robert Audley. ‘I—I don’t believe it, sir! How—how should he be dead?’
Robert did not answer this eager questioning. He shook his head mournfully, and walking to the little window looked out across a row of straggling geraniums at the dreary patch of waste ground on which the children were at play.
Mrs Plowson returned with little Georgey muffled in a coat and comforter, and Robert took the boy’s hand.
‘Say good-by to your grandpapa, Georgey.’
The little fellow sprang towards the old man, and clinging about him, kissed the dirty tears from his faded cheeks.
‘Don’t be sorry for me, grandpa,’ he said; ‘I am going to school to learn to be a clever man, and I shall come home to see you and Mrs Plowson, shan’t I?’ he added, turning to Robert.
‘Yes, my dear, by-and-by.’
‘Take him away, sir—take him away,’ cried Mr Maldon; ‘you are breaking my heart.’
The little fellow trotted away contentedly at Robert’s side. He was very well pleased at the idea of going to school, though he had been happy enough with his drunken old grandfather, who had always displayed a maudlin affection for the pretty child, and had done his best to spoil Georgey, by letting him have his own way in everything; in consequence of which indulgence Master Talboys had acquired a taste for late hours, hot suppers of the most indigestible nature, and sips of rum-and-water from his grandfather’s glass.
He communicated his sentiments upon many subjects to Robert Audley, as they walked to the Dolphin Hotel; but the barrister did not encourage him to talk.
It was no very difficult matter to find a good school in such a place as Southampton. Robert Audley was directed to a pretty house between the Bar and the Avenue, and leaving Georgey to the care of a good-natured waiter, who seemed to have nothing to do but to look out of the window, and whisk invisible dust off the brightly polished tables, the barrister walked up the High Street towards Mr Marchmont’s academy for young gentlemen.
He found Mr Marchmont a very sensible man, and he met a file of orderly looking young gentlemen walking townwards under the escort of a couple of ushers as he entered the house.
He told the schoolmaster that little George Talboys had been left in his charge by a dear friend, who had sailed for Australia some months before, and whom he believed to be dead. He confided him to Mr Marchmont’s especial care, and he further requested that no visitors should be admitted to see the boy, unless accredited by a letter from himself. Having arranged the matter in a very few business-like words, he returned to the hotel to fetch Georgey.
He found the little man on intimate terms with the idle waiter, who had been directing Master Georgey’s attention to the different objects of interest in the High Street.
Poor Robert had about as much notion of the requirements of a chil
d as he had of those of a white elephant. He had catered for silkworms, guinea-pigs, dormice, canary birds, and dogs, without number, during his boyhood, but he had never been called upon to provide for a young person of five years old.
He looked back five-and-twenty years, and tried to remember his own diet at the age of five.
‘I’ve a vague recollection of getting a good deal of bread and milk and boiled mutton,’ he thought; ‘and I’ve another vague recollection of not liking them. I wonder if this boy likes bread and milk and boiled mutton.’
He stood pulling his thick moustache and staring thoughtfully at the child for some minutes before he could get any further.
‘I dare say you’re hungry, Georgey,’ he said, at last.
The boy nodded, and the waiter whisked some more invisible dust from the table, as a preparatory step towards laying a cloth.
‘Perhaps you’d like some lunch?’ Mr Audley suggested, still pulling his moustache.
The boy burst out laughing.
‘Lunch!’ he cried. ‘Why, it’s afternoon, and I’ve had my dinner.’
Robert Audley felt himself brought to a standstill. What refreshment could he possibly provide for a boy who called it afternoon at three o’clock?
‘You shall have some bread and milk, Georgey,’ he said, presently. ‘Waiter, bread and milk, and a pint of hock.’
Master Talboys made a wry face.
‘I never have bread and milk,’ he said; ‘I don’t like it. I like what grandpa calls something savoury. I should like a veal cutlet. Grandpa told me he dined here once, and the veal cutlets were lovely, grandpa said. Please, may I have a veal cutlet, with egg and bread-crumb, you know, and some lemon-juice, you know?’ he added to the waiter. ‘Grandpa knows the cook here. The cook’s such a nice gentleman, and once gave me a shilling, when grandpa brought me here. The cook wears better clothes than grandpa—better than yours even,’ said Master Georgey, pointing to Robert’s rough greatcoat with a depreciatory nod.
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