"Miss Brock has gone, sir."
"Gone!" Mr. Gibbs was puzzled by the woman"s tone. "Gone where? For a walk?"
"No, sir, she"s gone away. She"s left this letter, sir, for you."
The landlady thrust an envelope into his hand. It was addressed simply, "Thomas Gibbs, Esq." With the envelope in his hand, and an odd something clutching at his heart, he went into the empty sitting-room.
He took the letter out of its enclosure, and this is what he read:
"My own, own Tom,--You never were mine, and it is the last time I shall ever call you so. I am going back, I have only too good reason to fear, to the life from which you took me, because--_I am not your Nelly_."
The words were doubly underlined, they were unmistakable, yet he had to read them over and over again before he was able to grasp their meaning. What did they mean? Had his darling suddenly gone mad? The written sheet swam before his eyes. It was with an effort he read on.
"How you ever came to mistake me for her I cannot understand. The more I have thought of it, the stranger it has seemed. I suppose there must be a resemblance between us--between your Nelly and me. Though I expect the resemblance is more to the face in Mr. Bodenham"s picture than it is to mine. I never did think the woman in Mr. Bodenham"s picture was like me--though I was his model. I never could have been the original of your photograph of Nelly--it is not in the least like me. I think that you came to England with your heart and mind and eyes so full of Nelly, and so eager for a sight of her, that, in your great hunger of love, you grasped at the first chance resemblance you encountered. That is the only explanation I can think of, Tom, of how you can have mistaken me for her.
"My part is easier to explain. It is quite true, as I told you, that I was starving when you came to me. I was so weak and faint, and sick at heart, that your sudden appearance and strange behaviour--in a perfect stranger, for you were a perfect stranger, Tom--drove from me the few senses I had left. When I recovered I found myself in the arms of a man who seemed to know me, and who spoke to me words of love--words which I had never heard from the lips of a man before. I sent you to buy me food. While you were gone I told myself--wickedly! I know, Tom it was wickedly!--what a chance had come at last, which would save me from the river, at least for a time, and I should be a fool to let it slip. I perceived that you were mistaking me for some one else. I resolved to allow you to continue under your misapprehension. I did not doubt that you would soon discover your mistake. What would happen then I did not pause to think. But events marched quicker than I, in that first moment of mad impulse, had bargained for. You never did discover your mistake.
How that was, even now I do not understand. But you began to talk of marriage. That was a prospect I dared not face.
"For one thing--forgive me for writing it, but I must write it, now that I am writing to you for the first and for the last time--I began to love you. Not for the man I supposed you to be, but for the man I knew you were. I loved you--and I love you! I shall never cease to love you, with a love of which I did not think I was capable. As I told you, Tom, last night--when I kissed you!--I love you better than my own life. Better, far better, for my life is worthless, and you--you are not worthless, Tom! And I would not--even had I dared!--allow you to marry me; not for myself, but for another; not for the present, but for the past; not for the thing I was, but for the thing which you supposed I had been, once. I would have married you for your own sake; you would not have married me for mine. And so, since I dared not undeceive you--I feared to see the look which would come in your face and your eyes--I am going to steal back, like a thief, to the life from which you took me. I have had a greater happiness than ever I expected. I have enjoyed those stolen kisses which they say are sweetest. Your happiness is still to come. You will find Nelly. Such love as yours will not go unrewarded. I have been but an incident, a chapter in your life, which now is closed. G.o.d bless you, Tom! I am yours, although you are not mine--not yours, Nelly Brock--but yours, Helen Reeves."
Mr. Gibbs read this letter once, then twice, and then again. Then he rang the bell. The landlady appeared with a suspicious prompt.i.tude which suggested the possibility of her having been a spectator of his proceedings through the keyhole.
"When did Miss Brock go out?"
"Quite early, sir. I"m sure, sir, I was quite taken aback when she said that she was going--on her wedding-day and all."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"Not a word, sir. She said: "Mrs. Horner, I am going away. Give this letter to Mr. Gibbs when he comes." That was every word she says, sir; then she goes right out of the front door."
"Did she take any luggage?"
"Just the merest mite of a bag, sir--not another thing."
Mr. Gibbs asked no other questions. He left the room and went out into the street. The driver of the brougham was instructed to drive, not to church, but--to his evident and unconcealed surprise--to that slum in Chelsea. She had written that she was returning to the old life. The old life was connected with that top attic. He thought it might be worth his while to inquire if anything had been seen or heard of her.
Nothing had. He left his card, with instructions to write him should any tidings come that way. Then, since it was unadvisable to drive about all day under the aegis of a Jehu, whose b.u.t.ton-hole was adorned with a monstrous wedding favour, he dismissed the carriage and sent it home.
He turned into the King"s Road. He was walking in the direction of Sloane Square, when a voice addressed him from behind.
"Tom!"
It was a woman"s voice. He turned. A woman was standing close behind him, looking and smiling at him--a stout and a dowdy woman. Cheaply and flashily dressed in faded finery--not the sort of woman whose recognition one would be over-anxious to compel. Mr. Gibbs looked at her. There was something in her face and in her voice which struck faintly some forgotten chord in his memory.
"Tom! don"t you know me? I am Nelly."
He looked at her intently for some instants. Then it all flashed over him. This was Nelly, the real Nelly, the Nelly of his younger days, the Nelly he had come to find. This dandy sloven, whose shrill voice proclaimed her little vulgar soul--so different from that other Nelly, whose soft, musical tones had not been among the least of her charms.
The recognition came on him with the force of a sudden shock. He reeled, so that he had to clutch at a railing to help him stand.
"Tom! what"s the matter? Aren"t you well? Or is it the joy of seeing me has sent you silly?"
She laughed, the dissonant laughter of the female c.o.c.kney of a certain cla.s.s. Mr. Gibbs recovered his balance and his civility.
"Thank you, I am very well. And you?"
"Oh, I"m all right. There"s never much the matter with me. I can"t afford the time to be ill." She laughed again. "Well, this is a start my meeting you. Come and have a bit o" dinner along with us."
"Who is us? Your father and your mother?"
"Why, father, he"s been dead these five years, and mother, she"s been dead these three. I don"t want you to have a bit of dinner along with them--not hardly." Again she laughed. "It"s my old man I mean. Why, you don"t mean to say you don"t know I"m married! Why, I"m the mother of five."
He had fallen in at her side. They were walking on together--he like a man in a dream.
"We"re doing pretty well considering, we manage to live, you know." She laughed again. She seemed filled with laughter, which was more than Mr.
Gibbs was then. "We"re fishmongers, that"s what we are. William he"s got a very tidy trade, as good as any in the road. There, here"s our shop!" She paused in front of a fishmonger"s shop. "And there"s our name"--she pointed up at it. "Nelly Brock I used to be, and now I"m Mrs. William Morgan."
She laughed again. She led the way through the shop to a little room beyond. A man was seated on the table, reading a newspaper, a man without a coat on, and with a blue ap.r.o.n tied about his waist.
"William, who do you think I"ve brought to see you? You"ll never guess in a month of Sundays. This is Tom Gibbs, of whom you"ve heard me speak dozens of times."
Mr. Morgan wiped his hand upon his ap.r.o.n.
Then he held it out to Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs was conscious, as he grasped it, that it reeked of fish.
"How are you, Gibbs? Glad to see you!" Mr. Morgan turned to his wife.
"Where"s that George? There"s a pair of soles got to be sent up to Sydney Street, and there"s not a soul about the place to take "em."
"That George is a dratted nuisance, that"s what he is. He never is anywhere to be found when you want him. You remember, William, me telling you about Tom Gibbs? My old sweetheart, you know, he was. He went away to make his fortune, and I was to wait for him till he came back, and I daresay I should have waited if you hadn"t just happened to come along."
"I wish I hadn"t just happened, then. I wish she"d waited for you, Gibbs. It"d have been better for me, and worse for you, old man."
"That"s what they all say, you know, after a time."
Mrs. Morgan laughed. But Mr. Morgan did not seem to be in a particularly jovial frame of mind.
"It"s all very well for you to talk, you know, but I don"t like the way things are managed in this house, and so I tell you. There"s your new lodger come while you"ve been out, and her room"s like a regular pig-sty, and I had to show her upstairs myself, with the shop chock-full of customers." Mr. Morgan drew his hand across his nose. "See you directly, Gibbs; some one must attend to business."
Mr. Morgan withdrew to the shop. Mr. Gibbs and his old love were left alone.
"Never you mind, William. He"s all right; but he"s a bit huffy--men will get huffy when things don"t go just as they want "em. I"ll just run upstairs and send the lodger down here, while I tidy up her room.
The children slept in it last night. I never expected her till this afternoon; she"s took me unawares. You wait here; I shan"t be half a minute. Then we"ll have a bit of dinner."
Mr. Gibbs, left alone, sat in a sort of waking dream. Could this be Nelly--the Nelly of whom he had dreamed, for whom he had striven, whom he had come to find--this mother of five? Why, she must have begun to play him false almost as soon as his back was turned. She must have already been almost standing at the altar steps with William Morgan while writing the last of her letters to him. And had his imagination, or his memory, tricked him? Had youth, or distance, lent enchantment to the view? Had she gone back, or had he advanced? Could she have been the vulgar drab which she now appeared to be, in the days of long ago?
As he sat there, endeavouring to resolve these riddles which had been so suddenly presented for solution, the door opened and some one entered.
"I beg your pardon," said the voice of the intruder, on perceiving that the room was already provided with an occupant.
Mr. Gibbs glanced up. The voice fell like the voice of a magician on his ear. He rose to his feet, all trembling. In the doorway was standing the other Nelly--the false, and yet the true one. The Nelly of his imagination. The Nelly to whom he was to have been married that day. He went to her with a sudden cry.
"Nelly!"