Kitabı oku: «A House to Let», sayfa 6

“There!” says the child, knitting his little downy eyebrows into a frown. “Drat the dirt! I’ve cleaned up. Where’s my beer?”

Benjamin’s mother chuckled till Trottle thought she would have choked herself.

“Lord ha’ mercy on us!” says she, “just hear the imp. You would never think he was only five years old, would you, sir? Please to tell good Mr. Forley you saw him going on as nicely as ever, playing at being me scouring the parlour floor, and calling for my beer afterwards. That’s his regular game, morning, noon, and night – he’s never tired of it. Only look how snug we’ve been and dressed him. That’s my shawl a keepin his precious little body warm, and Benjamin’s nightcap a keepin his precious little head warm, and Benjamin’s stockings, drawed over his trowsers, a keepin his precious little legs warm. He’s snug and happy if ever a imp was yet. ‘Where’s my beer!’ – say it again, little dear, say it again!”

If Trottle had seen the boy, with a light and a fire in the room, clothed like other children, and playing naturally with a top, or a box of soldiers, or a bouncing big India-rubber ball, he might have been as cheerful under the circumstances as Benjamin’s mother herself. But seeing the child reduced (as he could not help suspecting) for want of proper toys and proper child’s company, to take up with the mocking of an old woman at her scouring-work, for something to stand in the place of a game, Trottle, though not a family man, nevertheless felt the sight before him to be, in its way, one of the saddest and the most pitiable that he had ever witnessed.

“Why, my man,” says he, “you’re the boldest little chap in all England. You don’t seem a bit afraid of being up here all by yourself in the dark.”

“The big winder,” says the child, pointing up to it, “sees in the dark; and I see with the big winder.” He stops a bit, and gets up on his legs, and looks hard at Benjamin’s mother. “I’m a good ’un,” says he, “ain’t I? I save candle.”

Trottle wondered what else the forlorn little creature had been brought up to do without, besides candle-light; and risked putting a question as to whether he ever got a run in the open air to cheer him up a bit. O, yes, he had a run now and then, out of doors (to say nothing of his runs about the house), the lively little cricket – a run according to good Mr. Forley’s instructions, which were followed out carefully, as good Mr. Forley’s friend would be glad to hear, to the very letter.

As Trottle could only have made one reply to this, namely, that good Mr. Forley’s instructions were, in his opinion, the instructions of an infernal scamp; and as he felt that such an answer would naturally prove the death-blow to all further discoveries on his part, he gulped down his feelings before they got too many for him, and held his tongue, and looked round towards the window again to see what the forlorn little boy was going to amuse himself with next.

The child had gathered up his blacking-brush and bit of rag, and had put them into the old tin saucepan; and was now working his way, as well as his clothes would let him, with his make-believe pail hugged up in his arms, towards a door of communication which led from the back to the front garret.

“I say,” says he, looking round sharply over his shoulder, “what are you two stopping here for? I’m going to bed now – and so I tell you!”

With that, he opened the door, and walked into the front room. Seeing Trottle take a step or two to follow him, Benjamin’s mother opened her wicked old eyes in a state of great astonishment.

“Mercy on us!” says she, “haven’t you seen enough of him yet?”

“No,” says Trottle. “I should like to see him go to bed.”

Benjamin’s mother burst into such a fit of chuckling that the loose extinguisher in the candlestick clattered again with the shaking of her hand. To think of good Mr. Forley’s friend taking ten times more trouble about the imp than good Mr. Forley himself! Such a joke as that, Benjamin’s mother had not often met with in the course of her life, and she begged to be excused if she took the liberty of having a laugh at it.

Leaving her to laugh as much as she pleased, and coming to a pretty positive conclusion, after what he had just heard, that Mr. Forley’s interest in the child was not of the fondest possible kind, Trottle walked into the front room, and Benjamin’s mother, enjoying herself immensely, followed with the candle.

There were two pieces of furniture in the front garret. One, an old stool of the sort that is used to stand a cask of beer on; and the other a great big ricketty straddling old truckle bedstead. In the middle of this bedstead, surrounded by a dim brown waste of sacking, was a kind of little island of poor bedding – an old bolster, with nearly all the feathers out of it, doubled in three for a pillow; a mere shred of patchwork counter-pane, and a blanket; and under that, and peeping out a little on either side beyond the loose clothes, two faded chair cushions of horsehair, laid along together for a sort of makeshift mattress. When Trottle got into the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled up on the bedstead with the help of the beer-stool, and was kneeling on the outer rim of sacking with the shred of counterpane in his hands, just making ready to tuck it in for himself under the chair cushions.

“I’ll tuck you up, my man,” says Trottle. “Jump into bed, and let me try.”

“I mean to tuck myself up,” says the poor forlorn child, “and I don’t mean to jump. I mean to crawl, I do – and so I tell you!”

With that, he set to work, tucking in the clothes tight all down the sides of the cushions, but leaving them open at the foot. Then, getting up on his knees, and looking hard at Trottle as much as to say, “What do you mean by offering to help such a handy little chap as me?” he began to untie the big shawl for himself, and did it, too, in less than half a minute. Then, doubling the shawl up loose over the foot of the bed, he says, “I say, look here,” and ducks under the clothes, head first, worming his way up and up softly, under the blanket and counterpane, till Trottle saw the top of the large nightcap slowly peep out on the bolster. This over-sized head-gear of the child’s had so shoved itself down in the course of his journey to the pillow, under the clothes, that when he got his face fairly out on the bolster, he was all nightcap down to his mouth. He soon freed himself, however, from this slight encumbrance by turning the ends of the cap up gravely to their old place over his eyebrows – looked at Trottle – said, “Snug, ain’t it? Good-bye!” – popped his face under the clothes again – and left nothing to be seen of him but the empty peak of the big nightcap standing up sturdily on end in the middle of the bolster.

“What a young limb it is, ain’t it?” says Benjamin’s mother, giving Trottle a cheerful dig with her elbow. “Come on! you won’t see no more of him to-night!”

“And so I tell you!” sings out a shrill, little voice under the bedclothes, chiming in with a playful finish to the old woman’s last words.

If Trottle had not been, by this time, positively resolved to follow the wicked secret which accident had mixed him up with, through all its turnings and windings, right on to the end, he would have probably snatched the boy up then and there, and carried him off from his garret prison, bed-clothes and all. As it was, he put a strong check on himself, kept his eye on future possibilities, and allowed Benjamin’s mother to lead him down-stairs again.

“Mind them top bannisters,” says she, as Trottle laid his hand on them. “They are as rotten as medlars every one of ’em.”

“When people come to see the premises,” says Trottle, trying to feel his way a little farther into the mystery of the House, “you don’t bring many of them up here, do you?”

“Bless your heart alive!” says she, “nobody ever comes now. The outside of the house is quite enough to warn them off. Mores the pity, as I say. It used to keep me in spirits, staggering ’em all, one after another, with the frightful high rent – specially the women, drat ’em. ‘What’s the rent of this house?’ – ‘Hundred and twenty pound a-year!’ – ‘Hundred and twenty? why, there ain’t a house in the street as lets for more than eighty!’ – Likely enough, ma’am; other landlords may lower their rents if they please; but this here landlord sticks to his rights, and means to have as much for his house as his father had before him!’ – ‘But the neighbourhood’s gone off since then!’ – ‘Hundred and twenty pound, ma’am.’ – ‘The landlord must be mad!’ – ‘Hundred and twenty pound, ma’am.’ – ‘Open the door you impertinent woman!’ Lord! what a happiness it was to see ’em bounce out, with that awful rent a-ringing in their ears all down the street!”

She stopped on the second-floor landing to treat herself to another chuckle, while Trottle privately posted up in his memory what he had just heard. “Two points made out,” he thought to himself: “the house is kept empty on purpose, and the way it’s done is to ask a rent that nobody will pay.”

“Ah, deary me!” says Benjamin’s mother, changing the subject on a sudden, and twisting back with a horrid, greedy quickness to those awkward money-matters which she had broached down in the parlour. “What we’ve done, one way and another for Mr. Forley, it isn’t in words to tell! That nice little bit of business of ours ought to be a bigger bit of business, considering the trouble we take, Benjamin and me, to make the imp upstairs as happy as the day is long. If good Mr. Forley would only please to think a little more of what a deal he owes to Benjamin and me – ”

“That’s just it,” says Trottle, catching her up short in desperation, and seeing his way, by the help of those last words of hers, to slipping cleverly through her fingers. “What should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was nothing like so far from thinking about that little matter as you fancy? You would be disappointed, now, if I told you that I had come to-day without the money?” – (her lank old jaw fell, and her villainous old eyes glared, in a perfect state of panic, at that!) – “But what should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was only waiting for my report, to send me here next Monday, at dusk, with a bigger bit of business for us two to do together than ever you think for? What should you say to that?”

The old wretch came so near to Trottle, before she answered, and jammed him up confidentially so close into the corner of the landing, that his throat, in a manner, rose at her.

“Can you count it off, do you think, on more than that?” says she, holding up her four skinny fingers and her long crooked thumb, all of a tremble, right before his face.

“What do you say to two hands, instead of one?” says he, pushing past her, and getting down-stairs as fast as he could.

What she said Trottle thinks it best not to report, seeing that the old hypocrite, getting next door to light-headed at the golden prospect before her, took such liberties with unearthly names and persons which ought never to have approached her lips, and rained down such an awful shower of blessings on Trottle’s head, that his hair almost stood on end to hear her. He went on down-stairs as fast as his feet would carry him, till he was brought up all standing, as the sailors say, on the last flight, by agravating Benjamin, lying right across the stair, and fallen off, as might have been expected, into a heavy drunken sleep.

The sight of him instantly reminded Trottle of the curious half likeness which he had already detected between the face of Benjamin and the face of another man, whom he had seen at a past time in very different circumstances. He determined, before leaving the House, to have one more look at the wretched muddled creature; and accordingly shook him up smartly, and propped him against the staircase wall, before his mother could interfere.

“Leave him to me; I’ll freshen him up,” says Trottle to the old woman, looking hard in Benjamin’s face, while he spoke.

The fright and surprise of being suddenly woke up, seemed, for about a quarter of a minute, to sober the creature. When he first opened his eyes, there was a new look in them for a moment, which struck home to Trottle’s memory as quick and as clear as a flash of light. The old maudlin sleepy expression came back again in another instant, and blurred out all further signs and tokens of the past. But Trottle had seen enough in the moment before it came; and he troubled Benjamin’s face with no more inquiries.

“Next Monday, at dusk,” says he, cutting short some more of the old woman’s palaver about Benjamin’s indisgestion. “I’ve got no more time to spare, ma’am, to-night: please to let me out.”

With a few last blessings, a few last dutiful messages to good Mr. Forley, and a few last friendly hints not to forget next Monday at dusk, Trottle contrived to struggle through the sickening business of leave-taking; to get the door opened; and to find himself, to his own indescribable relief, once more on the outer side of the House To Let.

LET AT LAST

“There, ma’am!” said Trottle, folding up the manuscript from which he had been reading, and setting it down with a smart tap of triumph on the table. “May I venture to ask what you think of that plain statement, as a guess on my part (and not on Mr. Jarber’s) at the riddle of the empty House?”

For a minute or two I was unable to say a word. When I recovered a little, my first question referred to the poor forlorn little boy.

“To-day is Monday the twentieth,” I said. “Surely you have not let a whole week go by without trying to find out something more?”

“Except at bed-time, and meals, ma’am,” answered Trottle, “I have not let an hour go by. Please to understand that I have only come to an end of what I have written, and not to an end of what I have done. I wrote down those first particulars, ma’am, because they are of great importance, and also because I was determined to come forward with my written documents, seeing that Mr. Jarber chose to come forward, in the first instance, with his. I am now ready to go on with the second part of my story as shortly and plainly as possible, by word of mouth. The first thing I must clear up, if you please, is the matter of Mr. Forley’s family affairs. I have heard you speak of them, ma’am, at various times; and I have understood that Mr. Forley had two children only by his deceased wife, both daughters. The eldest daughter married, to her father’s entire satisfaction, one Mr. Bayne, a rich man, holding a high government situation in Canada. She is now living there with her husband, and her only child, a little girl of eight or nine years old. Right so far, I think, ma’am?”

“Quite right,” I said.

“The second daughter,” Trottle went on, “and Mr. Forley’s favourite, set her father’s wishes and the opinions of the world at flat defiance, by running away with a man of low origin – a mate of a merchant-vessel, named Kirkland. Mr. Forley not only never forgave that marriage, but vowed that he would visit the scandal of it heavily in the future on husband and wife. Both escaped his vengeance, whatever he meant it to be. The husband was drowned on his first voyage after his marriage, and the wife died in child-bed. Right again, I believe, ma’am?”

“Again quite right.”

“Having got the family matter all right, we will now go back, ma’am, to me and my doings. Last Monday, I asked you for leave of absence for two days; I employed the time in clearing up the matter of Benjamin’s face. Last Saturday I was out of the way when you wanted me. I played truant, ma’am, on that occasion, in company with a friend of mine, who is managing clerk in a lawyer’s office; and we both spent the morning at Doctors’ Commons, over the last will and testament of Mr. Forley’s father. Leaving the will-business for a moment, please to follow me first, if you have no objection, into the ugly subject of Benjamin’s face. About six or seven years ago (thanks to your kindness) I had a week’s holiday with some friends of mine who live in the town of Pendlebury. One of those friends (the only one now left in the place) kept a chemist’s shop, and in that shop I was made acquainted with one of the two doctors in the town, named Barsham. This Barsham was a first-rate surgeon, and might have got to the top of his profession, if he had not been a first-rate blackguard. As it was, he both drank and gambled; nobody would have anything to do with him in Pendlebury; and, at the time when I was made known to him in the chemist’s shop, the other doctor, Mr. Dix, who was not to be compared with him for surgical skill, but who was a respectable man, had got all the practice; and Barsham and his old mother were living together in such a condition of utter poverty, that it was a marvel to everybody how they kept out of the parish workhouse.”

“Benjamin and Benjamin’s mother!”

“Exactly, ma’am. Last Thursday morning (thanks to your kindness, again) I went to Pendlebury to my friend the chemist, to ask a few questions about Barsham and his mother. I was told that they had both left the town about five years since. When I inquired into the circumstances, some strange particulars came out in the course of the chemist’s answer. You know I have no doubt, ma’am, that poor Mrs. Kirkland was confined while her husband was at sea, in lodgings at a village called Flatfield, and that she died and was buried there. But what you may not know is, that Flatfield is only three miles from Pendlebury; that the doctor who attended on Mrs. Kirkland was Barsham; that the nurse who took care of her was Barsham’s mother; and that the person who called them both in, was Mr. Forley. Whether his daughter wrote to him, or whether he heard of it in some other way, I don’t know; but he was with her (though he had sworn never to see her again when she married) a month or more before her confinement, and was backwards and forwards a good deal between Flatfield and Pendlebury. How he managed matters with the Barshams cannot at present be discovered; but it is a fact that he contrived to keep the drunken doctor sober, to everybody’s amazement. It is a fact that Barsham went to the poor woman with all his wits about him. It is a fact that he and his mother came back from Flatfield after Mrs. Kirkland’s death, packed up what few things they had, and left the town mysteriously by night. And, lastly, it is also a fact that the other doctor, Mr. Dix, was not called in to help, till a week after the birth and burial of the child, when the mother was sinking from exhaustion – exhaustion (to give the vagabond, Barsham, his due) not produced, in Mr. Dix’s opinion, by improper medical treatment, but by the bodily weakness of the poor woman herself – ”

“Burial of the child?” I interrupted, trembling all over. “Trottle! you spoke that word ‘burial’ in a very strange way – you are fixing your eyes on me now with a very strange look – ”

Trottle leaned over close to me, and pointed through the window to the empty house.

“The child’s death is registered, at Pendlebury,” he said, “on Barsham’s certificate, under the head of Male Infant, Still-Born. The child’s coffin lies in the mother’s grave, in Flatfield churchyard. The child himself – as surely as I live and breathe, is living and breathing now – a castaway and a prisoner in that villainous house!”

I sank back in my chair.

“It’s guess-work, so far, but it is borne in on my mind, for all that, as truth. Rouse yourself, ma’am, and think a little. The last I hear of Barsham, he is attending Mr. Forley’s disobedient daughter. The next I see of Barsham, he is in Mr. Forley’s house, trusted with a secret. He and his mother leave Pendlebury suddenly and suspiciously five years back; and he and his mother have got a child of five years old, hidden away in the house. Wait! please to wait – I have not done yet. The will left by Mr. Forley’s father, strengthens the suspicion. The friend I took with me to Doctors’ Commons, made himself master of the contents of that will; and when he had done so, I put these two questions to him. ‘Can Mr. Forley leave his money at his own discretion to anybody he pleases?’ ‘No,’ my friend says, ‘his father has left him with only a life interest in it.’ ‘Suppose one of Mr. Forley’s married daughters has a girl, and the other a boy, how would the money go?’ ‘It would all go,’ my friend says, ‘to the boy, and it would be charged with the payment of a certain annual income to his female cousin. After her death, it would go back to the male descendant, and to his heirs.’ Consider that, ma’am! The child of the daughter whom Mr. Forley hates, whose husband has been snatched away from his vengeance by death, takes his whole property in defiance of him; and the child of the daughter whom he loves, is left a pensioner on her low-born boy-cousin for life! There was good – too good reason – why that child of Mrs. Kirkland’s should be registered stillborn. And if, as I believe, the register is founded on a false certificate, there is better, still better reason, why the existence of the child should be hidden, and all trace of his parentage blotted out, in the garret of that empty house.”

He stopped, and pointed for the second time to the dim, dust-covered garret-windows opposite. As he did so, I was startled – a very slight matter sufficed to frighten me now – by a knock at the door of the room in which we were sitting.

My maid came in, with a letter in her hand. I took it from her. The mourning card, which was all the envelope enclosed, dropped from my hands.

George Forley was no more. He had departed this life three days since, on the evening of Friday.

“Did our last chance of discovering the truth,” I asked, “rest with him? Has it died with his death?”

“Courage, ma’am! I think not. Our chance rests on our power to make Barsham and his mother confess; and Mr. Forley’s death, by leaving them helpless, seems to put that power into our hands. With your permission, I will not wait till dusk to-day, as I at first intended, but will make sure of those two people at once. With a policeman in plain clothes to watch the house, in case they try to leave it; with this card to vouch for the fact of Mr. Forley’s death; and with a bold acknowledgment on my part of having got possession of their secret, and of being ready to use it against them in case of need, I think there is little doubt of bringing Barsham and his mother to terms. In case I find it impossible to get back here before dusk, please to sit near the window, ma’am, and watch the house, a little before they light the street-lamps. If you see the front-door open and close again, will you be good enough to put on your bonnet, and come across to me immediately? Mr. Forley’s death may, or may not, prevent his messenger from coming as arranged. But, if the person does come, it is of importance that you, as a relative of Mr. Forley’s should be present to see him, and to have that proper influence over him which I cannot pretend to exercise.”

The only words I could say to Trottle as he opened the door and left me, were words charging him to take care that no harm happened to the poor forlorn little boy.

Left alone, I drew my chair to the window; and looked out with a beating heart at the guilty house. I waited and waited through what appeared to me to be an endless time, until I heard the wheels of a cab stop at the end of the street. I looked in that direction, and saw Trottle get out of the cab alone, walk up to the house, and knock at the door. He was let in by Barsham’s mother. A minute or two later, a decently-dressed man sauntered past the house, looked up at it for a moment, and sauntered on to the corner of the street close by. Here he leant against the post, and lighted a cigar, and stopped there smoking in an idle way, but keeping his face always turned in the direction of the house-door.

I waited and waited still. I waited and waited, with my eyes riveted to the door of the house. At last I thought I saw it open in the dusk, and then felt sure I heard it shut again softly. Though I tried hard to compose myself, I trembled so that I was obliged to call for Peggy to help me on with my bonnet and cloak, and was forced to take her arm to lean on, in crossing the street.

Trottle opened the door to us, before we could knock. Peggy went back, and I went in. He had a lighted candle in his hand.

“It has happened, ma’am, as I thought it would,” he whispered, leading me into the bare, comfortless, empty parlour. “Barsham and his mother have consulted their own interests, and have come to terms. My guess-work is guess-work no longer. It is now what I felt it was – Truth!”

Something strange to me – something which women who are mothers must often know – trembled suddenly in my heart, and brought the warm tears of my youthful days thronging back into my eyes. I took my faithful old servant by the hand, and asked him to let me see Mrs. Kirkland’s child, for his mother’s sake.

“If you desire it, ma’am,” said Trottle, with a gentleness of manner that I had never noticed in him before. “But pray don’t think me wanting in duty and right feeling, if I beg you to try and wait a little. You are agitated already, and a first meeting with the child will not help to make you so calm, as you would wish to be, if Mr. Forley’s messenger comes. The little boy is safe up-stairs. Pray think first of trying to compose yourself for a meeting with a stranger; and believe me you shall not leave the house afterwards without the child.”

I felt that Trottle was right, and sat down as patiently as I could in a chair he had thoughtfully placed ready for me. I was so horrified at the discovery of my own relation’s wickedness that when Trottle proposed to make me acquainted with the confession wrung from Barsham and his mother, I begged him to spare me all details, and only to tell me what was necessary about George Forley.

“All that can be said for Mr. Forley, ma’am, is, that he was just scrupulous enough to hide the child’s existence and blot out its parentage here, instead of consenting, at the first, to its death, or afterwards, when the boy grew up, to turning him adrift, absolutely helpless in the world. The fraud has been managed, ma’am, with the cunning of Satan himself. Mr. Forley had the hold over the Barshams, that they had helped him in his villany, and that they were dependent on him for the bread they eat. He brought them up to London to keep them securely under his own eye. He put them into this empty house (taking it out of the agent’s hands previously, on pretence that he meant to manage the letting of it himself); and by keeping the house empty, made it the surest of all hiding places for the child. Here, Mr. Forley could come, whenever he pleased, to see that the poor lonely child was not absolutely starved; sure that his visits would only appear like looking after his own property. Here the child was to have been trained to believe himself Barsham’s child, till he should be old enough to be provided for in some situation, as low and as poor as Mr. Forley’s uneasy conscience would let him pick out. He may have thought of atonement on his death-bed; but not before – I am only too certain of it – not before!”

A low, double knock startled us.

“The messenger!” said Trottle, under his breath. He went out instantly to answer the knock; and returned, leading in a respectable-looking elderly man, dressed like Trottle, all in black, with a white cravat, but otherwise not at all resembling him.

“I am afraid I have made some mistake,” said the stranger.

Trottle, considerately taking the office of explanation into his own hands, assured the gentleman that there was no mistake; mentioned to him who I was; and asked him if he had not come on business connected with the late Mr. Forley. Looking greatly astonished, the gentleman answered, “Yes.” There was an awkward moment of silence, after that. The stranger seemed to be not only startled and amazed, but rather distrustful and fearful of committing himself as well. Noticing this, I thought it best to request Trottle to put an end to further embarrassment, by stating all particulars truthfully, as he had stated them to me; and I begged the gentleman to listen patiently for the late Mr. Forley’s sake. He bowed to me very respectfully, and said he was prepared to listen with the greatest interest.

It was evident to me – and, I could see, to Trottle also – that we were not dealing, to say the least, with a dishonest man.

“Before I offer any opinion on what I have heard,” he said, earnestly and anxiously, after Trottle had done, “I must be allowed, in justice to myself, to explain my own apparent connection with this very strange and very shocking business. I was the confidential legal adviser of the late Mr. Forley, and I am left his executor. Rather more than a fortnight back, when Mr. Forley was confined to his room by illness, he sent for me, and charged me to call and pay a certain sum of money here, to a man and woman whom I should find taking charge of the house. He said he had reasons for wishing the affair to be kept a secret. He begged me so to arrange my engagements that I could call at this place either on Monday last, or to-day, at dusk; and he mentioned that he would write to warn the people of my coming, without mentioning my name (Dalcott is my name), as he did not wish to expose me to any future importunities on the part of the man and woman. I need hardly tell you that this commission struck me as being a strange one; but, in my position with Mr. Forley, I had no resource but to accept it without asking questions, or to break off my long and friendly connection with my client. I chose the first alternative. Business prevented me from doing my errand on Monday last – and if I am here to-day, notwithstanding Mr. Forley’s unexpected death, it is emphatically because I understood nothing of the matter, on knocking at this door; and therefore felt myself bound, as executor, to clear it up. That, on my word of honour, is the whole truth, so far as I am personally concerned.”