“Here’s me hand, then . . . you old blind Justice, you!”
Over breakfast, which was taken in the back parlor, Mr. Mansfield said: “And will you go back to your cellar, Smith?”
Smith shrugged his thin shoulders. Miss Mansfield looked at him—and then to her father in weary aggravation. Did the blind man live but to spite her? What was he thinking of? So why didn’t he come out with it, then? Must everything be left to her?
“Smith,” she said, affecting a careless, everyday tone not reflected in her face, “Mister Mansfield means, will you stay here? And work for your board and keep, of course! Mister Mansfield is very concerned about you. He thinks you deserve better of the world than you’ve got, and would give it to you. My father is quite a saint, you know—”
“Come, daughter! ’Tis your own idea.”
“Never! Never in ten thousand years! I read it all in your face, sir.”
“My face?”
“ ’Tis like an open book to me.”
Smith, his mouth full, looked from one to the other of the Mansfields, each accusing the other of a kindness. He shrugged his shoulders. They might quarrel about it till the end of time. It would make no difference. He wasn’t going to stay in that uncanny house. No, sir! Nothing on earth would have kept him with the Mansfields—blind father and mad daughter.
“Then it’s settled,” said Miss Mansfield, with another irritated look at her father. “Mister Mansfield will employ you in the stables, Smith . . . and I—” (Here, she looked: God help me!) “—will attend to your improvement. For a beginning, Smith, I shall teach you to read!”
Smith stared. He gaped. He poked his finger in his ear and scraped it about. What was it she’d said? Teach him to read? To read! He beamed . . . and beamed! He couldn’t stop himself. He wondered if his face would ever go back again.
“I think he’s pleased, Papa,” murmured Miss Mansfield in a low voice. “I suppose he’s fond of horses.”
Mr. Mansfield offered to send a servant to the Red Lion to acquaint Miss Fanny and Miss Bridget with their brother’s situation. But Smith said he’d rather go himself. The last thing he wanted was his improvement boasted of in the Red Lion’s cellar! For, though he loved and trusted his sisters, he feared that, under such tortures as the two men in brown might inflict (such as the sight of five shillings—or even four), they’d wag their tongues like a pair of windy flags. “Smut’s in Vine Street! Poor little Smut!”
“I’ll tell ’em tomorrow,” he said, and left it at that.
Now all was settled indeed, and Smith—on Miss Mansfield’s orders—returned to his mad-shaped room. In high good humor he fell upon the bed and took out the precious document—the last remains of Mr. Field of Prickler’s Hill in Hertfordshire. Excitedly, he waved it aloft like a banner.
“Won’t be long now, old fellow! Very soon you and me will be better acquainted! And then—up we’ll go in the world!”
He folded it and wrapped it once more in the pilfered handkerchief. And not a moment too soon! Footsteps. Quickly, he pushed it into the tumbled bed linen. The door opened. Two footmen with real hangmen’s faces. Alarm seized Smith. Why had they come? And why so grim?
“Up with you!” said one.
“And then down with you!” said the other.
“W-what d’you mean?”
They grinned. “Miss’s instructions. She says, afore you commence on scrubbing the yard, that selfsame necessary thing must be done to you! So down to the scullery, young Smith!”
Smith’s eyes glittered in alarm. Most likely he paled, too . . . but that wasn’t so easy to see. He looked about him. But there was no escape. He looked up to the footmen. No mercy, nor even pity, there.
“To the scullery, young Smith.”
Now Smith had never been washed since, most likely, the midwife had obliged, twelve darkening years ago. Consequently, he suspected the task would be long, hard and painful. He was not mistaken.
Two more footmen, aproned over their livery, stood ready and waiting by a steaming iron tub.
“Take off them wretched rags, Smith.”
“Rags? What rags?” (The scullery was gray and stony and full of strong vapors.)
“Your clothes, Smith. Take off your clothes.”
The window was barred and the door was shut. He began to undress. Disdainfully, the footmen watched him; and indignantly, he stared back.
“Ain’t you never seen a person take off his clothes before?”
Disdain gave way to amusement . . . and then to surprise. Several times the footmen reached forward to seize him, for they thought he’d finished, but each time he waved them back.
“ ’Ave the goodness to wait till I’m done, gen’lemen! ’Ave the goodness!”
For Smith wore a great many clothes. Indeed, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, he’d never thrown a single item away. Coats and waistcoats worn to nothing but armlets and thread now came off him, and shirts down to wisps of mournful lace: one by one, removed carefully and with dignity, then dropped, gossamer-like, to the floor.
Then there were breeches consisting in nothing more than the ghosts of button-holes, and breeches that came off in greasy strips—like over-cured slices of ham; and breeches underneath that were no more than a memory of worsted, printed on his lean, sharp bottom.
These memories of perished clothes were everywhere, and plainest of all on his chest, where there was so exact an imprint of ancient linen that Smith himself was deceived—and made to take off his skin!
At last he crouched, naked as a charred twig, quivering and twitching as if the air was full of tickling feathers.
“Ready,” he said, in a low, uneasy voice, and the four footmen set to work.
Two held him in the tub; one scrubbed, and one acted as ladleman. This last task was on account of the water having been dosed with sulphur, and it consisted in spooning off Smith’s livestock as it rushed to the surface in a speckled throng.
From beginning to end, the washing of Smith took close upon three hours, with the scullery so filled with sulphurous steam that the footmen’s misted faces grew red as the copper saucepans that hung like midnight suns on the scullery’s streaming walls.
At last it was done. He was taken out, rinsed, and wrapped in a sheet—the ghost of his former self. For he was now a stark white replica of the previous Smith and, had his sisters seen him they’d have shrieked and sworn it was his spectral image!
His clothes were burned before his oddly saddened eyes . . . which eyes were now seen to be somewhat larger and rounder than might have been supposed. But his hair, in spite of shock and scrubbing, remained as black as the river at night.
“Me clothes,” he said. “Me belongings. I can’t go about like this.”
Then he was told a livery was being cut down for him, and he was to go back to his room and wait. He mounted the stairs, much hampered by the sheet he was wrapped in. But there was great determination in him. Each fresh disaster he endured seemed to strengthen his bond with the document . . . and whatever it might contain. In a way, it seemed to be payment in advance.
He opened the door to his room. He stared. His eyes filled with tears of horror and dismay. The bed was stripped. The bedding was gone. And with it—the document!
7
WHEN THEY BROUGHT him his fine new livery (blue, with brass buttons), they wondered why he was sat, crouched on his bare bed, with his knees drawn up like battlements before his face. And they remarked, when they left him, on the look in his eyes as he watched them come and go: dismay and despair. They laughed on the way downstairs—but not unkindly—and decided his system was still shocked from his washing.
“Give him another half an hour and he’ll be trying on his new clothes and strutting like the king of the weasels!”
But after half an hour there was no change, save that, maybe, Smith’s head was sunk a little lower and his eyes stared with a deeper despair. His livery was untouched and the sheet that covered him had slipped an inch or
two off his shoulders, leaving those thin objects to fend for themselves against the cold air.
“Maybe he’s taken a chill?” suggested the housekeeper, and rummaged in her wits for a remedy.
“But he ain’t flushed or feverish. He looks more froze than inly heated.”
Miss Mansfield came to see him. She scowled angrily at his sick, despairing air.
“Are you ill, Smith? What’s wrong with you? Answer me!”
“Nothing, miss. Nothing.”
She went away, much troubled, and ordered blankets to be taken up—and Smith to be wrapped inside them.
Several times during the afternoon she returned, hoping against hope to find him restored. But each time he seemed more sunk within himself—as if something necessary had perished inside, and all was sinking inwards for lack of support. She questioned the four footmen and consulted with the housekeeper who gave it as her opinion that the child had been poisoned by too much sulphur and offered to prepare a draft. Gladly Miss Mansfield agreed. The draft was mixed and carried upstairs.
“Come, Smith. This will make you well again!”
But it was no use. He’d take neither draft nor anything else to sustain him.
“It’s as if,” said the housekeeper quietly, “that poor mite has made up his mind to die.”
“What an idea!”
“Scowl and frown as you please, miss, but I’ve seen it happen. These little souls of the Town perish like you and I go to sleep.”
And so it began to seem to all the Vine Street household save Mr. Mansfield himself, from whom it was desperately kept—as was the late visit of a physician, brought in against all dignity through the tradesman’s door with much secrecy and quiet.
He studied Smith. Felt his head, his wrist, his chest. Bade Smith look this way, that way, and to a point above his head. Wearily, Smith obliged, and everywhere his eyes turned they seemed to see even more misery—as if there was no end, no bottom to it. The physician shook his head. In all justice he could find nothing wrong; but in all compassion and pity there was something grievously amiss. But it was out of his scope to find it. He spread his hands, pocketed his fee, and left.
More and more Miss Mansfield blamed herself; had not the child been bright and well before his violent washing? But to her father’s repeated inquiries she answered cheerfully: “He’s quite worn out from the footmen’s labor, sir. I fancy he’ll sleep the clock round. Best not disturb him yet.”
During the evening, Mr. Billing called. Mr. Billing was a youngish attorney and was both Mr. Mansfield’s friend and also deeply in love with his daughter. Mr. Mansfield had high hopes of a marriage but he feared his daughter would never leave Vine Street as long as he lived. She always laughed when he brought the matter up and declared that Mr. Billing was so agreeable a suitor that it would be a shame to bury him in a husband! Mr. Mansfield would have dearly liked to have seen his daughter’s face when she spoke so lightly . . . if only to see if her eyes were filled with regretful tears.
But on this evening Miss Mansfield found the attorney tiresome and overstaying his welcome; she longed to creep up to the top of the house and see the strange, sad child. She had a terrible feeling he’d die in the night.
Mr. Billing stayed and stayed, affable and talkative as ever . . . and all the while she longed to cry out: “Begone! Begone! There’s a dying boy upstairs, and I must go to him.”
Instead, she helped him to port and brandy (as her father directed), and never left the room for an instant, being afraid of arousing her father’s suspicions that all was not well with Smith. She chattered as amiably as she was able—and hoped her suitor would read the anxious impatience in her eyes. But, unluckily, Mr. Billing was used to Miss Mansfield’s varied and odd expressions and, though he loved each and all of them, he took no particular note of any.
Below stairs, all but two of the servants had gone to bed: a dozing footman and a certain scullery maid called Meg—a softhearted person with large arms the color of boiled lobsters.
All the evening her muddled, motherly mind had been fixed on the sick child at the top of the house and a certain notion had come to her. Knowing that the boy had been brought up in an ale cellar she supposed he was homesick for all familiar things. She brooded on this till there was no one about to question her, then she crept up to Smith with a pint of ale.
Not that she supposed he’d drink it, but she firmly believed that the sight and smell of it would do his aching heart a power of good.
Smith stared up at her mournfully. Her heart was fairly wrung. She moved about the tiny room to spread the ale’s odors. Smith watched her. She smiled and held out the tankard.
“Come along, little one. It’ll do you a power of good. Drink it up—for not the Red Lion itself has a better ale!”
Smith gazed at her somberly.
“Nothing but kindness is meant. All’s for your own good! They’ll feed an’ clothe you an’ treat you like a yewmanbeen. You’ll want for nought, here!”
Smith looked as though all he ever wanted was to pass, unhindered, away. Meg’s eyes grew great with tears.
“They ’ad to wash you! You was that black! You should have seen the sheets—”
“The sheets? Did you see ’em?”
For the first time Smith showed signs of interest in the world. His nose twitched and his eyes began to kindle.
The ale, thought Meg triumphantly. It’s the smell o’ the ale what’s doing it!
“Why, bless you, yes! And they was that horrible Miss wanted ’em burned!”
“And—did you?”
“Lor’ no! Burn good sheets? I biled ’em!”
At this, Smith stared at her so strangely that she began to fidget.
“W-was there anything—anything else w-with the sheets?”
Obligingly, Meg shut her eyes to recall the scene.
“There was a handkerchief . . . but ’twas so far gone, I burned it—”
“Burned it?”
Here Smith gave such a shriek and a groan that Meg thought his last moment was come.
“I ’ad to, little one! ’Twas in a shameful state. It smelled, dear, like . . . well, I don’t know what it smelled like, for I’ve nought to compare it with! Powerful. Clinging. I only ’ope it’ll wear off the master’s paper—”
“Paper?” whispered Smith, not daring to hope—and yet not able to prevent it. “What—paper?” His eyes glittered so brilliantly, and he began to shiver so violently, that Meg edged away, fearing a contagious, mortal fever.
“Why—one of the master’s documents that had somehow got itself muddled up in that dreadful ’andkerchief. Sometimes he drops ’is papers in the queerest places . . . what with his disability—”
“What was in it?”
“Lor’ child! I don’t know! ’Twas a lawyer’s document of sorts— and no one must read them save the mistress or the master’s clerk. And then only when the master asks!”
“Then how do you know it was a lawyer’s document?” Smith said this with desperate sharpness, for he was coming back to life with a vengeance.
Meg, seeing nothing but the boy’s improvement and wanting to humor him, smiled confidentially. “ ’Twas marked for the attorneys, Billing and Lennard . . . with ’oom we ’ave dealings.” She sighed sentimentally. “Billing and Cooing I call ’em—on account of Mister Billing being sweet on Miss Mansfield. He’s in the parlor now. Such a handsome pair!” Her smile grew soft and misty—then she remembered Smith’s question. “So what else could it have been but one of the master’s documents? Answer me that!”
Dazedly, Smith nodded. What else could it have been but one of the magistrate’s documents? For what would a light-fingered alley-scuttler like Smith be doing with a document marked for a lawyer?
“Did—did you give it to ’im?”
“To our Mister Billing? Lor’ no! That’s for the master to do! Besides, it were for the other one, for Mister Lennard.”
“So you g-gave it to Mister Mansfield?”
“Questions, questions! Was you a cat, you’d be stone dead! No: I never gave it to him. There. Why, it smelled so bad it would ’ave knocked him flat—what with ’is disability an’ all! I put it in his study along with ’is other papers. Only I put it at the bottom so’s the smell might wear off afore he comes to it! That’s what makes a good servant,” she added proudly. “Consideration for ’er master’s feelings. Oho! There’s a good lad! Drunk up your ale! Just ’omesick, weren’t you. Knew it all the time. Trust Meg!”
She repeated this several times with some triumph, then beamed encouragingly at Smith and left the room. On the way downstairs she sniffed and tossed her head in high contempt and muttered: “Chills and fevers and sulphury poisonings? ’Omesick! Ha! And it took a motherly soul like Meg to see it. Brains? Give you a farthing for ’em!”
She prodded the snoozing footman and boasted of Smith’s improvement.
“A touch of ’eart,” she said. “That’s all this big busy Town ’as need of! Take that boy, f’rinstance . . .”
It was now midnight and, to Miss Mansfield’s aggravation and distress, Mr. Billing stayed for another hour. Then at last he went, and, when her father was safely in bed, she flew upstairs with an anguished heart—expecting she knew not what.
She opened the door; she looked inside, and she all but dropped her candle. The room was empty! The boy was gone! Her face grew pale with dread. A terrible fear assailed her. The boy, feeling himself to be dying, had struggled from his bed and crept from the house. The housekeeper’s grim words echoed in her mind. “These little souls of the Town perish easily . . .”
In blackest despair she began to go downstairs. Suddenly, she stopped. She’d heard a noise: very gentle, very subtle, very secretive. A papery rustle. From her father’s study.
She approached the door. She was much frightened and would have aroused the house—but an odd instinct prevented her. She opened the door. She held up the candle—
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