What had been his history? As dark and shadowy as the rest of him. Where had he lived, how lost his leg, how met with his corrupt adviser? These were questions to which there were no answers. All that was known for certain was that he’d fled his home twelve years before and never dared return on account of some hanging offense. This, Andrews knew of, and preferred that the world and Mr. Field should think Jack dead rather than damned. A heavy secret—and the granity old fellow’s shoulders were bending under it.
But to hide an evil is not to destroy it. The old man had made his discovery and had been hurried into his grave.
Andrews must have stood a great while upon a hillock above the fallen figure for, when Mr. Lennard’s coach came towards Prickler’s Hill, he was still there, looking to the sky, as if the spread shape below had fallen a great way to this cold, white ruin.
But of Mr. Billing there was no sign, and it seemed for a while as though the earth itself had swallowed him up. No one saw him—neither anyone in the house, nor Mr. Lennard coming from Barnet, nor Miss Mansfield coming afoot from Whetstone, where Mr. Billing, whom she’d insisted on accompanying, had begged her to remain, as if to spare her from the tragic news he was confident was awaiting—that her father had been murdered on Finchley Common. There was no doubt that this vile and hateful man still loved Miss Mansfield; for the sake of which spark of humanity in him, maybe his sentence in the courts of Heaven will be to burn in Hell for one day less than if he’d never loved at all.
20
MOURNFUL Smith, Smith of disasters, Smith who’d led the blind so fatefully—storm-tossed, heartbroken Smith. He stared through the windows of the house to the widowy yew trees behind which lay his idol, Lord Tom.
His snow-stained, tear-stained face came but rarely out of its faraway look to survey the busy drawing room and only the most serious commotion could hold him for long. The coming of Mr. Lennard, together with as many of the old man’s family as could get into his coach, interested him but little; and even Mr. Mansfield’s proud introduction of him to the old-fashioned lawyer with his old-fashioned face—“My guardian angel, sir! A little singed and tattered about the wings—but then he’s flown through the caves of hell! Meet Smith.”—even this grand introduction provoked but a melancholy smile.
“Pleased to meet you,” he muttered, “I’m sure,” and turned back to the viewing of his private grief.
Lord Tom—Lord Tom! You blew blue daylight through ’em just like you said! Oh, Lord Tom—you went like the grandest toby of them all!
Cowardice, boastfulness and double-dealing had bled out of Lord Tom into the snow and what remained in Smith’s heart was “the grandest toby of them all.”
Then Miss Mansfield came and Smith turned and smiled compassionately across the room at her. She’d learned of Mr. Billing’s monstrousness and the pain and bitterness in her heart was written in her eyes. Quickly, she crossed to the window, put her arm about Smith’s shoulder and pressed her cold face to his, so that her dark hair curtained them off in a private night.
“Sorry you lost a friend, miss,” he said. Then he turned away even from her, to the dark yew trees and the strangely moving whiteness beyond.
“Smith,” murmured Mr. Mansfield, who had not left his side. “What did he—look like?”
Smith sniffed and swallowed hard. “ ’E was a big man, Mister Mansfield, and always wore green. Green ’at, green cloak, green breeches—and ’e’d bright green eyes as well. ’E bristled a bit about the chops, but ’ad such a smile on ’im when he talked of the Common, that ’e fair shone. ’E was a real gallant ’igh toby, Mister Mansfield. One of the best!”
“He—went well, Smith.”
“None better, Mister Mansfield.”
“He’s in Heaven, Smith.”
“If there’s Commons up there, that’s where ’e is, Mister Mansfield. Right up ’igh on the snaffling lay!”
Then Mr. Lennard came over, followed by the inquisitive eyes of Mr. Field’s family—the beneficiaries of nothing in particular. He began to talk in low tones to Mr. Mansfield and Smith’s mournful attention drifted away; till a piece of sardonic humor struck him—a wry, Smith-like humor.
Mr. Mansfield was mentioning his name and handing over the document to Mr. Lennard. With an awful smile Smith watched the stained and tattered paper change hands. In a moment, it was done.
“Bleeding mail-boy, that’s what I been!” he brooded. “Documents took and delivered. No charge. And you may ’ave confidence. I’ll rent me an office in the shadow of Saint Paul’s. Come wind, come snow, come Newgate Jail and the deaths of friends—Smith gets through with the documents! From Curtis Court to Prickler’s Hill in less than three months! Well done, Smith!”
But Mr. Lennard had come now to “the trifle.” Mild interest tickled Smith—in spite of his aching heart. It was proposed to go at once to the burying place. Smith sighed. He’d no wish to visit that spot so soon, but the beneficiaries were eager.
“Come, Smith,” murmured Mr. Mansfield, hearing sounds of movement to the door. “Let’s see it out.”
So Smith, still heavy of heart, but none the less inquisitive enough not to be left behind, followed the respectfully hopeful beneficiaries to the sheeted churchyard. Strange occasion: strange procession; to go to a churchyard in hope.
Through the well-remembered little gate they wound, past the rents in the snow to show where the dead man in brown and the mortality of Lord Tom had been decently dragged away.
“He’s gone,” whispered Smith, and Mr. Mansfield took off his hat.
Black and peaceful was the angel, undisturbed at its mysterious devotions though the world had rocked and tumbled about it.
“Is this the place?”
Andrews nodded. This was the place.
The sexton was fetched from the church and, under a host of desperate eyes, he began to dig.
Strangely like the old man himself were the crowding beneficiaries, thought Smith, as he watched them moving their lips in silent prayer. Like echoes of him: there was his nose, there his chin and there, in his frail, gaunt sister, were his very eyes. Indeed, it was as though Mr. Field was come back to see his wishes at last fulfilled.
Smith turned to watch the toiling sexton who’d pierced the snow and was a foot into the frozen earth. He paused to wipe his brow. Hard on the beneficiaries—to wait while he drew breath. He grunted and continued.
“Ah! What ’ave we ’ere?”
A straining forward: an excitement.
“No. Nothing. A slab of stone. Sorry, good people.”
A general perishing of excitement. A gloom, almost. Old Miss Field had begun to weep. Smith bowed his small, storm-tossed head. Was everyone to be disappointed?
“Ah! What ’ave we ’ere?”
The sexton was looking up, frowning. What had been buried and not by him? A trifle. A wooden box . . . a traveling box . . .
“It was his!” whispered Miss Field. “I know it! He always used to take it with him to—”
“But ’e’s left it behind now, ma’am!” grunted the sexton and struck off the strap with his spade.
It may be that it’s unseemly for beneficiaries to beam and twinkle in a churchyard—even to caper gently in the snow and crowd and shake a lawyer’s hand. But in God’s name, what else were they to do? Crocodiles might have wept, but the beneficiaries were needy human souls.
Mr. Field’s wooden box was filled, stuffed and glutted with a prosperous lifetime’s guineas! Guineas that lay upon guineas in sunny shoals, gleaming and winking in the cold light. The old man must have carried them there in bags which had long since split and sunk under the spreading weight of coinage for, here and there, tufts of canvas poked up, like threads of cloud in a golden sky.
A hundred thousand! thought Smith dreamily. Must be a hundred thousand golden flatties down there! God save the King! For Smith, whenever he saw a sight too grand for any of his words, always said, “God save the King!”
And sometime later that m
orning, when the company—in radiant spirits—were back in the house, he had occasion to say once more, “God save the King!”
It is night in the Red Lion Tavern between Turnmill Street and Saffron Hill. In the cellar, Miss Fanny and Miss Bridget—reduced to four or five smoking tallows—are sewing mournfully. Miss Fanny has heard of the death of her admirer and is red-eyed and sniffy. Miss Bridget does not speak but sighs and shrugs her shoulders from time to time. Their shadows hugely comment on them upon the wall.
Miss Bridget looks up as if she will speak—but thinks better of it and returns to her work. Miss Fanny loudly sniffs again.
Suddenly, there are certain sounds from above. Miss Bridget frowns and shakes her head. (Her great shadow does likewise, as if in agreement.) But Miss Fanny puts down her work with an air of presentiment.
“It’s him!”
“Never!”
“It’s him, Brid! It’s him!”
The door opens. There’s a clatter and scuffle. Once more, Smith has missed his footing and fallen down the stairs!
“It’s him! It’s Smut!” cries Miss Fanny, dropping her work entirely and bustling to her feet.
“And about time, too!” says Miss Bridget, looking as stern as she might. “Oh, you felonious child! We thought you was shamefully dead!”
Now Smith picks himself up, rubs his elbows, the side of his head and a shin. He squints disparagingly round the cellar, then grandly at his sisters.
“Dead?” he says. “What business would I ’ave being dead with ten thousand guineas to me name? Answer me that!”
And he stares at them with such an air of offended dignity and unnatural honesty, that they’re half inclined to believe him. The half so inclined is Miss Fanny. The half which is not, is Miss Bridget—who’s worked hard all of her young life and never dreamed of being related to more than twenty pound in cash.
Resolutely, she’s ever set her handsome but toil-sterned face against her softer sister’s imaginings, saying over and over again that such gaudy thoughts are as tinsel thread—fit enough to decorate a bodice, but never to hold up a hem. Tears start to her eyes as she sees her sister dote and smile foolishly upon the small Smith whose heart she thought she knew as being closer to her own.
Of a sudden, Miss Bridget feels tired and lonely in the seedy world of the Red Lion’s cellar. Why must it always be me, she thinks, who’s got to spoil the dreaming? Do they suppose I like this shameful place? But someone must face it out—for we can’t live off dreams alone!
“What would you say,” says Smith, adding insult to injury by disengaging himself from Miss Fanny and coming to outface the stern Miss Bridget herself, “to a carriage an’ pair, and a ’ouse in Golden Square?”
Miss Bridget looks at her silly sister and the thin child whose sharp face is fairly shining with pleasure. She sighs. Why not? she thinks. What harm in a few hours of cheerful dreaming? Soon enough the gray, gray dawn. So Miss Bridget nods and smiles and reaches out to ruffle Smith’s head.
“I’d say, child, I’d like it very much. When do we move?”
“Tomorrow,” says Smith. “And what would you say to a footman, a maid and a coachie?”
“I’d say, very elegant, child. When do we engage them?” Is it possible Miss Bridget is beginning to enjoy the dreaming—or are her eyes shining only because she’s warmed by Smith’s generosity even in his dreams?
“Tomorrow,” says Smith.
“Oh, Smut!” cries Miss Fanny. “You are good! Might we have a tall coachman, in green livery?”
Smith nods in an offhand fashion. “And what would you say to offering me old friend Mister Magistrate Mansfield of Vine Street a tot of what might warm him against the cold night air?”
Miss Bridget smiles. “I’d say it would be an honor and we’d be very pleased to oblige. When do we invite him?”
“Now!” says Smith and shouts: “Come in, Mister Mansfield! I prepared ’em! Mind the steps. There’s thirteen!”
Upon which Miss Fanny shrieks and Miss Bridget goes white as her stockings, for the door has opened and the great blind magistrate himself stands incredibly at the head of the stairs.
“Good evening, ladies. I’ve heard much about you—”
Very pitiable to behold is now Miss Bridget, for she’s gone quite distracted and begins to fly about the cellar in a terrible frenzy of tidying and making seemly. Her thoughts are in a whirl and she knows not if she’s on her head or her heels. She keeps crying out very breathlessly: “Oh, Smut! You should have said—you should have warned—Oh, Smut!”
Till Smith puts an end to her cellar-proud misery by saying: “Don’t fret, Miss Bridget. He’s as blind as a mole. If it wasn’t for the whiff, he might as well be in Saint James’s Palace! Ain’t that so, Mister Mansfield?”
And the great man smiles and nods and Miss Bridget is no longer in any doubt of which way up she is: she knows she is on her head!
And that was how Smith came home: Smith of the courts and alleys: Smith of the corners and byways and many a passing pocket: Smith the ten thousand guinea man! For he’d spoke not a halfpenny less than the truth.
On the morning at Prickler’s Hill—to the beneficiaries’ approval and his own speechless (save for “God save the King!”) delight, Attorney Lennard had awarded him one tenth of the churchyard treasure as a mark of gratitude and esteem: ten thousand guineas!
“A good, round sum,” had said Mr. Mansfield, with satisfaction. “And what are you going to do with it, Smith?” But Smith had answered never a word, for he’d fainted away on “King!”
Small wonder, then, that Miss Bridget was distracted and, even after an hour with the magistrate sitting beside her talking gently and wisely of all their futures, still believed she’d fallen a victim to her sister’s foolish dreaming and was no more awake than a bed-post!
But at last, when morning brought no gloomy fact to dispel the night’s fancy, she permitted herself to believe that the future was a rosy and splendid affair . . . and even to tolerate, with a gracious smile, her sister’s favorite remark that, “I always said, Brid, that there was some good in our dockiment, didn’t I?”
Though there was no more snow, the weather continued very cold until the beginning of March, when an unlooked-for warmth set in, and the sun came out in spring-like glory. Everywhere, the snow—which had grown as flat, tired and grubby as an old sheet—went into little green holes. Then, swiftly, these holes spread into islands which put out fingers, like children in a round dance, eager to touch their neighbors. So the green islands joined up and the whiteness shrank away till it vanished entirely, and nothing more was left of the snow but a crusty puddle or two in the vicinity of Godliman Street and Curtis Court, where Mr. Lennard, the attorney, has his office and sometimes works late . . . for he’s short of a partner. Even though, one night, Mr. Billing came quietly and furtively back!
Much shocked, amazed and a trifle uneasy, Mr. Lennard let him in after warning him that he must and would have him arrested for his monstrous villainy.
“Don’t be too harsh on me, sir!” Mr. Billing had muttered, with an apologetic smile. “It’s this world we live in that’s to blame! But believe me, sir, I’ve come to make amends!”
Mr. Lennard stared at him—and Mr. Billing promptly declared his intention of turning King’s Evidence! He knew where was the second murderer in brown and, for the usual consideration, was prepared to give him up. The “usual consideration” was the sparing of his wretched life. Which, indeed, came to pass; for, though Mr. Billing’s heart was black as pitch, his plump lawyer’s hands were still as clean as snow.
There was nothing the justice of the law could do with him but sentence him to three years in Newgate Jail. Of which he served a month—and then fell an odd victim . . .
The old man who dwelt in the fireplace took a strong fancy to him and offered him Smith’s old snoozing place. Which Mr. Billing, being temporarily without friends, was very glad of, and slept there comfortably till, in one of the old
man’s dreadful twitchy nightmares, his head was stove in by the old man’s chained wrists.
Naturally a great fuss was made, and it was strongly urged that the old man be sent to Bedlam as being a danger to himself and other prisoners. But he never went, for (and not for the first time) his son—to whom the State was much obliged—pleaded powerfully and successfully for his father to remain in the Stone Hall. His son was Mr. Jones, the hangman . . . so the State could scarce refuse him . . .
For a while Smith and Mr. Mansfield wondered uneasily if this strange and violent incident would affect Miss Mansfield—considering her one-time regard for the lying attorney. But Miss Mansfield was well out of that wood and, indeed, out of the wood that had shadowed most of her life.
Smith, staying as he did in Vine Street, had become so much Mr. Mansfield’s companion and friend that the tempestuous young lady found herself—as often as not—quite unnecessary. She was able to go out and about in the Town, where, by an extraordinary coincidence, she found a likable young gentleman from Sussex who had been waiting for her all his life (though neither of them suspected it at first).
So Smith, despite his independence of pocket and spirit, has stayed on in Vine Street as firmly and cheerfully and contentedly as only a truly free spirit could have done. Nothing holds him but affection, and nothing feeds this affection so much as the deep understanding of his own fair situation in his blind friend’s dark world.
Sometimes, of a late afternoon, the pair of them go out together, and stroll as far as Golden Square, where Smith tells Mr. Mansfield how fine and prosperous a certain Establishment is looking these days. Then they go inside it, and Miss Bridget and Miss Fanny are pleased and charmed to serve them with chocolate. (Gin? The very idea! We are dealing now with ladies!) Then they go out again, and Smith looks up at the shop sign with a grin.
Miss Bridget and Miss Fanny. Court Dressmakers.
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