Lucy was a humble dependent upon the bounty of the house of Tyndale and Tyndale, and she had the care of the town residence belonging to the firm, a roomy old house which communicated with the offices.
People knew very little about her, except that she was the daughter of a superannuated old clerk, who had gone stone blind over the ledgers of Tyndale and Tyndale, and that she lived with her father in this dreary, old, deserted town house. Once or twice in the year the brothers would take it into their heads to give a dinner-party in this disused dwelling; and then the great oak furniture was polished, and clusters of wax-candles were lighted in the twisted silver sconces, and the dim pictures of the Tyndales dead and gone, shipowners and merchants in the days of William and Mary, were uncovered: but at other times Lucy Malden and her blind old father had the great place, with its long dark corridors and its lofty chambers, into which the light rarely penetrated, all to themselves. The house joined the offices, and the offices and the house formed three sides of a square, the dock-side forming the fourth. The counting-house in which Christopher Weldon and I sat was exactly opposite the house.
I watched him upon the morning when he first saw her — watched him without his being aware of it. It was a blazing July day; and when she had arranged her father’s room and her own, and the little sitting-room which they shared together, which formed part of a range of apartments on the second story, she came to her window, and, opening it to its widest extent, sat down to her needlework. She eked out the slender income which the firm allowed her father by the sale of her needlework, which was very beautiful. A screen of flowers in great stone jars shaded the window, and behind these she placed herself.
He saw her in a moment, and his pen fell from his listless hand.
She was not beautiful; I know that she was not beautiful. I think that many would have scarcely called her even a pretty girl; but to me, from the first to the last, she was the fairest, the dearest, and the loveliest of women, and it is so difficult to me to dispossess myself of her image, as that image shone upon me, that I doubt if I can describe her as she really was.
She was very pale. The dreary, joyless life she led in that dark old house, in the heart of a dingy seaport town, had perhaps blanched the roses in her cheeks, and dimmed the sunlight in her thoughtful brown eyes. She had very light hair — hair of the palest flaxen, perfectly straight and smooth, which she wore turned back over a roll, and fastened in one thick mass at the back of her head. Her eyes, in utter contrast to this light hair, were of the darkest brown, — so dark and deep, that the stranger always thought them black. Her features were small and delicate, her lips thin, her figure slender, and below the average height. Her dress, a dimity petticoat, with a gray stuff gown, and a white apron.
Christopher’s pen fell out of his hand, and he looked up at her window, and began to hum the air of a favourite song in the new opera about thieves and ragamuffins, which had got Mr. Gay, the poet, and a beautiful duchess, into such disgrace up in London.
He was such a conceited beau and lady-killer, that he could not rest till she had looked at the office-window by which he sat.
The song attracted her, and she lifted her eyes from her work, and looked down at him.
She started, and blushed — blushed a beautiful, rosy red, that lighted up her pale face like the reflection of a fire; and then, seeing me at my desk, nodded and smiled to me. She and I had been friends for years, and I only waited till I should rise one step higher in the office to tell her how much I loved her.
Prom that day, on some excuse or other, Christopher Weldon was always dangling about the house. He scraped acquaintance with her blind old father. He was a pretty musician, and he would put his flute in his pocket, after office-hours, and stroll over to the house, and sit there in the twilight playing to the father and daughter for the hour together, while I hid myself in the shadow of the counting-house doorway, and stood watching them. O, how I hated him, as I saw across the screen of plants the two fair heads side by side, and the blind old father nodding and smiling, and applauding the music! How I hated that melodious opera of Mr. Gay’s! How I hated Christopher Weldon, as he and Lucy stood on the step of the hall-door, between the tall iron extinguishers under the disused oil-lamp, wishing each other good-night! I thought that I could see the little white hand tremble when it fluttered a gentle farewell to him, as he strode away through the dusky evening.
Should I dog his steps, and when he got to a lonely place upon the narrow quay, dart suddenly upon him, and push him into the water? — push him in where the barges lay thickly clustered together, and where he must sink under their keels down into the black stream? The God of sinners knows I have asked myself this question!
For months I watched them. O, what bitter pain, what silent torture, what a long fever of anguish and despair!
How could I do him some dire injury, which should redress one atom of this mighty sum of wrong that he had done me? — fancied wrong, perhaps; for if he had not won her love, I might never have won it. But I prayed — I believe I was wicked and mad enough even to pray — for some means of doing him as deadly an injury as I thought he had done me.
He looked up at me one day, in his gay, reckless fashion, and said, suddenly pushing the ledger away from him, with a weary sigh:
“Samuel Lowgood, do you know what a tailor’s bill is?”
I cursed him in my heart for his insolence in asking me the question; but I looked down at my greasy white coat-sleeve, and said:
“I have worn this for five years, and I bought it second-hand of a dealer on the quay.”
“Happy devil!” he said, with a laugh; “if you want to see a tailor’s bill, then look at that.”
He tossed me over a long slip of paper, and I looked at the sum-total.
It seemed to me something so prodigious, that I had to look at it ever so many times before I could believe my eyes.
“Thirty-seven pounds thirteen and fourpence-halfpenny. I like the fourpence-halfpenny,” he said; “it looks honest. Samuel Lowgood, my mother’s heart would break if she saw that bill. I must pay it in a fortnight from to-day, or it will come to her ears.”
“How much have you got towards paying it?” I asked. My heart beat faster at the thought of his trouble, and my face flushed crimson; but he sat with his forehead leaning on his clasped hands, and he never looked at me.
“How much have I got towards it?” he said bitterly. “This.” He turned his waistcoat-pockets inside out, one after the other. “Never mind,” he added, in his old reckless tone, “I may be a rich man before the fortnight’s out.”
That evening he was dangling over at the house as usual, and I heard “Cease your funning” on the flute, and saw the two fair heads across the dark foliage of Lucy Malden’s little flower-garden.
I was glad of his trouble — I was glad of his trouble! It was small, indeed, compared to the sorrow and despair which I wished him; but it was trouble, and the bright, fair-haired, blue-eyed boy knew what it was to suffer.
The days passed, and the fortnight was nearly gone, but my fellow-clerk said no more about the tailor’s bill. So one day as we sat as usual at the desk — I working hard at a difficult row of figures, he chewing the end of his pen, and looking rather moodily across the courtyard, I asked him, “Well, have you got rid of your difficulty?”
“What difficulty?” he asked sharply.
“Your tailor’s bill; the thirty-seven thirteen and fourpence-halfpenny He looked at me very much as if he would have liked to have knocked me off my high stool; but he said presently, “0 yes; that’s been settled ever so long!” and he began to whistle one of his favourite songs.
“Ever so long!” His trouble lasted a very short time, I thought.
But in spite of this he was by no means himself. He sat at his desk with his head buried in his hands; he was sharp and short in his answers when anybody spoke to him, and we heard a great deal less of the Beggars’ Opera and “Polly.”
All of
a sudden, too, he grew very industrious, and took to writing a great deal; but he contrived to sit in such a manner that I could never find out what he was writing.
It was some private matter of his own, I felt sure. What could it be?
Love-letters, perhaps; letters to her!
A fiendish curiosity took possession of me, and I determined to fathom his secret.
I left the counting-house on some pretence; and after a short absence returned so softly that he could not hear me; and stealing behind him, lifted myself upon tiptoe, and looked over his shoulder.
He was writing over and over again, across and across, upon half a sheet of letter-paper, the signature of the firm, “Tyndale and Tyndale.”
What could it mean? Was it preoccupation? mere absence of mind? idle trifling with his pen? The fop had a little pocket mirror hanging over his desk. I looked into it, and saw his face.
I knew then what it meant. My hatred of him gave me such a hideous joy in the thought of what I had discovered that I laughed aloud. He turned round, and asked me savagely what I was doing; and as he turned he crumpled the paper in his hand, inking his pretty white fingers with the wet page.
“Spy, sneak, sycophant!” he said; “what are you crawling about here for?”
“I was only trying to startle you, Mister Weldon,” I answered. “What are you writing, that you’re so frightened of my seeing? love-letters?”
“Mind your own business and look to your own work, you pitiful spy,” he roared out, “and leave me to do mine my own way.”
“I would, if I were you. It seems such a nice way,” I answered meekly.
Two days after this, at half-past three o’clock in the afternoon, Christopher Weldon asked one of the senior clerks for a quarter of an hour’s leave of absence. He wanted to see a fellow round in the High-street, he said, and he couldn’t see him after four o’clock.
I felt my sallow face flame up into a scarlet flush as my fellow-clerk made this request. Could it be as I thought?
He had been four months in the office, and it was the end of November. The end of November, and almost dark at halfpast three o’clock.
They granted his request without the slightest hesitation. He left his desk, took his hat up, and walked slowly to the door; at the door he stopped, turned back to his desk, and throwing his hat down, leaned moodily upon his folded arms.
“I don’t know that I care much about seeing the fellow now,” he said.
“Why, Chris.,” cried one of the clerks, “what’s the matter with you, man? Are you in love or in debt, that you’re so unlike yourself?”
“Neither,” he said, with a short laugh.
“What, not in love, Chris.? How about the pretty little fair-haired girl over the way?”
“How about her?” he said savagely. “She’s a cold-hearted little coquette, and she may go to—”
I slapped the ledger on which I was at work violently on to the desk, and looked up at him.
“Christopher Weldon!”
“Your humble servant,” he said mockingly. “There’s a face! Have I been poaching upon your manor, Samuel?”
“If you want to see your friend before four o’clock you’d better be off, Chris.,” said the clerk.
He took his hat up once more, twirled it slowly round for a few minutes, then put it on his head, and, without saying a word to anyone, hurried out of the office and across the courtyard.
Lucy was standing at her window opposite, with her forehead leaning against the dingy framework of the panes, and I watched her start and tremble as she saw him.
“If I’m to take these accounts into the market-place I’d better take them now, hadn’t I, sir?” I asked of the senior clerk.
“You may as well.”
There was a back way through some narrow courts and squares which led from the dock-side to the High-street, in which the house Tyndale and Tyndale banked with was situated. I was hurrying off this way when I stopped, and changed my mind.
“He’ll go the back way,” I thought; “I’ll cut across the market-place by the most public road.”
In five minutes I was in the High-street. Opposite the bank there was a tobacconist’s shop, at which our clerks were accustomed to buy their pennyworths of snuff. I strolled in, and asked the girl to fill my box. I was quite an old man in most of my ways, and snuff-taking was a confirmed habit with me.
As she weighed the snuff, I stood looking through the low window at the great doors of the bank opposite.
One of the doors swung back upon its hinges. An old man, a stranger to me, came out.
Three minutes more.
“I am waiting for a friend,” I said to the girl at the counter.
Two minutes more. The doors opened again. I was right, and I was not surprised. Christopher Weldon came out of the bank, and walked quickly down the street.
It was too dark for me to see his face; but I knew the tall slim figure and the dashing walk.
“I am not surprised, I am only glad,” I said.
During my long service in the house of Tyndale and Tyndale, I had lived so hard as to have been able to save money from my scanty earnings. I had scraped together, from year to year, the sum of forty-eight pounds fifteen shillings.
“I will save a hundred,” I had said, “and then I will ask her to marry me.”
But the only dream of my life was broken, and my little hoard was useless to me now.
Useless to purchase love, perhaps; but it might yet bring me revenge.
I put every farthing I possessed into my pocket the next morning, and the first time I could find an excuse for going out hurried down to the bank.
“One of our clerks presented a cheque here yesterday,” I said.
The man looked up with an expression of surprise.
“Yes, certainly; there was a cheque cashed yesterday. Your handsome, fair-haired junior brought it.”
“Will you let me look at it?”
“Well, upon my word, it’s rather a strange—”
“Request. Perhaps. On the part of Messrs. Tyndale and Tyndale I—”
“O,” he said, “if you are commissioned by the firm to—”
“Never mind,” I said, “whether I am or not. As you think my request a strange one, I’ll put it in another way. Will you be so good as to look at the cheque yourself?”
“Yes, certainly. Here it is,” he added, selecting a paper from a drawer; “a cheque for forty. Payable to bearer.”
“Look at the signature of the firm.”
“Well, it’s right enough, I think. I ought to know the signature pretty well.”
“Look at the ‘y’ in ‘Tyndale.’”
He scrutinised the signature more closely, and lifted his eyebrows with a strange, perplexed expression.
“It’s rather stiff, isn’t it?” I said. “Not quite old Tyndale’s flowing caligraphy. Very near it, you know, and a very creditable imitation; but not quite the real thing.”
“It’s a forgery!” he said.
“It is.”
“How did you come to know of it?”
“Never mind that,” I answered. “Mr. Simmonds, have you any sons?”
“Three.”
“One about the age of Christopher Weldon, perhaps?”
“One pretty nearly his age.”
“Then you’ll help me to save this young man, won’t you?”
“How is it to be done?”
“Cancel the cheque, and replace the money.”
“My good young man, who’s to find the money?”
I drew a little canvas-bag out of my pocket, and turned out a heap of one-pound notes and spade-guineas upon the clerk’s desk.
“Here’s the exact sum,” I said; “forty pounds, ready money, for the slip of paper Christopher Weldon presented here at ten minutes to four yesterday evening.”
“But who finds this money?”
“I do. Christopher Weldon and I have been fellow-clerks for four months and upwards. I have see
n his mother. I know how much she loves her only son. I know a girl who loves him. I don’t mind forty pounds out of my savings to keep this matter a secret. Mr. Simmonds, for the sake of your own sons, let me have that slip of paper, and cancel the cheque.”
The old man caught my hand in his, and shook it heartily. “Young Lowgood,” he said, “there’s not another lad in Willborough capable of such a generous action. If I were not a poor old fellow, with a hard fight of it to get a living, I’d be twenty pounds in this transaction; but I respect and honour you. I dare not give you back the cheque upon my own responsibility; but the senior partner is in his office; I’ll go and talk to him. Perhaps, when he hears the real state of the case, he’ll consent to hush the matter up and do what you want.”
The old man left me and remained away about a quarter of an hour, during which I sat in the quiet counting-house, with my heart beating loud and fast. I daresay the junior clerks wondered what my business could be as I sat waiting for their senior’s return. He came back at last.
“I’ve had a good deal of trouble,” he said, “but I have succeeded.”
I burst out laughing as he gave me the forged cheque in exchange for the forty pounds I counted out to him.
“Laugh away, laugh away,” said the old man; “you’ve need to have a light heart, Samuel Lowgood, for you’re a noble fellow.”
In our back office there was a great chest which had been disused for some years. The clerks let me have it for my own use, and inside it I had a smaller iron-clamped strong-box of my own, which I had bought of a broker on the quay. Into this strong-box I put the forged cheque.
Christopher Weldon’s high spirits entirely deserted him. It was such pleasure to me to watch him slyly as I sat beside him, apparently occupied only by my work, that I was almost tempted to neglect my business.
No more Beggars’ Opera, no more Polly, no more flute-playing in the dusk of the evening over at the gloomy old house.
“That lad Weldon is leaving off his giddy ways and growing industrious,” said the clerks; “he’ll get on in the world, depend upon it.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1059