At the sight of that name, and of the pollution which covered it, he paused, silent and thoughtful; and, at the same moment, heard the parlor door below, locked. He stooped hastily, took up the box by the cord round it, and left the room. His hand touched a substance, as he grasped the cord, which did not feel like wood. Examining the box by the clearer light falling on the landing from a window in the roof, he discovered a letter nailed to the cover. There was something written on it; but the paper was dusty, the ink was faded by time, and the characters were hard to decipher. By dint of perseverance, however, he made out from them this inscription: "Justification of my conduct towards my niece: to be read after my death. Joanna Grice."
As he pa.s.sed the parlor door, he heard her voice, reading. He stopped and listened. The words that reached his ears seemed familiar to them; and yet he knew not, at first, what book they came from. He listened a little longer; his recollections of his boyhood and of home helped him; and he knew that the book from which Joanna Grice was reading aloud to herself was the Bible.
His face darkened, and he went out quickly into the garden; but stopped before he reached the paling, and, turning back to the front window of the parlor, looked in. He saw her sitting with her back to him, with elbows on the table, and hands working feverishly in her tangled grey hair. Her voice was still audible; but the words it p.r.o.nounced could no longer be distinguished. He waited at the window for a few moments; then left it suddenly, saying to himself: "I wonder the book don"t strike her dead!" Those were his only words of farewell. With that thought in his heart, he turned his back on the cottage, and on Joanna Grice.
He went on through the rain, taking the box with him, and looking about for some sheltered place in which he could open it. After walking nearly a mile, he saw an old cattle-shed, a little way off the road--a rotten, deserted place; but it afforded some little shelter, even yet: so he entered it.
There was one dry corner left; dry enough, at least, to suit his purpose. In that he knelt down, and cut the cord round the box--hesitated before he opened it--and began by tearing away the letter outside, from the nail that fastened it to the cover.
It was a long letter, written in a close, crabbed hand. He ran his eye over it impatiently, till his attention was accidentally caught and arrested by two or three lines, more clearly penned than the rest, near the middle of a page. For many years he had been unused to reading any written characters; but he spelt out resolutely the words in the few lines which first struck his eye, and found that they ran thus:--
"I have now only to add, before proceeding to the miserable confession of our family dishonor, that I never afterwards saw, and only once heard of, the man who tempted my niece to commit the deadly sin, which was her ruin in this world, and will be her ruin in the next."
Beyond those words, he made no effort to read further. Thrusting the letter hastily into his pocket, he turned once more to the box.
It was sealed up with strips of tape, but not locked. He forced the lid open, and saw inside a few simple articles of woman"s wearing apparel; a little work-box; a lace collar, with the needle and thread still sticking in it; several letters, here tied up in a packet, there scattered carelessly; a gaily-bound alb.u.m; a quant.i.ty of dried ferns and flower leaves that had apparently fallen from between the pages: a piece of canvas with a slipper-pattern worked on it; and a black dress waistcoat with some unfinished embroidery on the collar. It was plain to him, at a first glance, that these things had been thrown into the box anyhow, and had been left just as they were thrown. For a moment or two, he kept his eyes fixed on the sad significance of the confusion displayed before him; then turned away his head, whispering to himself, mournfully and many times, that name of "Mary," which he had already p.r.o.nounced while in the presence of Joanna Grice. After a little, he mechanically picked out the letters that lay scattered about the box; mechanically eyed the broken seals and the addresses on each; mechanically put them back again unopened, until he came to one which felt as if it had something inside it. This circ.u.mstance stimulated him into unfolding the enclosure, and examining what the letter might contain.
Nothing but a piece of paper neatly folded. He undid the folds, and found part of a lock of hair inside, which he wrapped up again the moment he saw it, as if anxious to conceal it from view as soon as possible. The letter he examined more deliberately. It was in a woman"s handwriting; was directed to "Miss Mary Grice, Dibbledean:" and was only dated "Bond Street, London. Wednesday." The post-mark, however, showed that it had been written many years ago. It was not very long; so he set himself to the task of making it all out from beginning to end.
This was what he read:--
"MY DEAREST MARY,
"I have just sent you your pretty hair bracelet by the coach, nicely sealed and packed up by the jeweler. I have directed it to you by your own name, as I direct this, remembering what you told me about your father making it a point of honor never to open your letters and parcels; and forbidding that ugly aunt Joanna of yours, ever to do so either. I hope you will receive this and the little packet about the same time.
"I will answer for your thinking the pattern of your bracelet much improved since the new hair has been worked in with the old. How slyly you will run away to your own room, and _blush unseen,_ like the flower in the poem, when you look at it! You may be rather surprised, perhaps, to see some little gold fastenings introduced as additions; but this, the jeweler told me, was a matter of necessity. Your poor dear sister"s hair being the only material of the bracelet, when you sent it up to me to be altered, was very different from the hair of that faultless true-love of yours which you also sent to be worked in with it. It was, in fact, hardly half long enough to plait up properly with poor Susan"s, from end to end; so the jeweler had to join it with little gold clasps, as you will see. It is very prettily run in along with the old hair though. No country jeweler could have done it half as nicely, so you did well to send it to London after all. I consider myself rather a judge of these things; and I say positively that it is now the prettiest hair bracelet I ever saw.
"Do you see him as often as ever? He ought to be true and faithful to you, when you show how dearly you love him, by mixing his hair with poor Susan"s, whom you were always so fondly attached to. I say he _ought;_ but _you_ are sure to say he will--and I am quite ready, love, to believe that you are the wiser of the two.
"I would write more, but have no time. It is just the regular London season now, and we are worked out of our lives. I envy you dressmakers in the country; and almost wish I was back again at Dibbledean, to be tyrannized over from morning to night by Miss Joanna. I know she is your aunt, my dear; but I can"t help saying that I hate her very name!
"Ever your affectionate friend,
"JANE HOLDSWORTH.
"P. S.--The jeweler sent back the hair he did not want; and I, as in duty bound, return it enclosed to you, its lawful owner."
Those scars on Mat"s face, which indicated the stir of strong feelings within him more palpably than either his expression or his manner, began to burn redly again while he spelt his way through this letter. He crumpled it up hastily round the enclosure, instead of folding it as it had been folded before; and was about to cast it back sharply into the box, when the sight of the wearing apparel and half-finished work lying inside seemed to stay his hand, and teach it on a sudden to move tenderly. He smoothed out the paper with care, and placed it very gently among the rest of the letters--then looked at the box thoughtfully for a moment or two; took from his pocket the letter that he had first examined, and dropped it in among the others--then suddenly and sharply closed the lid of the box again.
"I can"t touch any more of her things," he said to himself; "I can"t so much as look at "em, somehow, without its making me--" he stopped to tie up the box; straining at the cords, as if the mere physical exertion of pulling hard at something were a relief to him at that moment. "I"ll open it again and look it over in a day or two, when I"m away from the old place here," he resumed, jerking sharply at the last knot--"when I"m away from the old place, and have got to be my own man again."
He left the shed; regained the road; and stopped, looking up and down, and all round him, indecisively. Where should he go next? To the grave, where he had been told that Mary lay buried? No: not until he had first read all the letters and carefully examined all the objects in the box.
Back to London, and to his promised meeting next morning with Zack? Yes: nothing better was left to be done--back to London.
Before nightfall he was journeying again to the great city, and to his meeting with Zack; journeying (though he little thought it) to the place where the clue lay hid--the clue to the Mystery of Mary Grice.
CHAPTER IV. FATE WORKS, WITH ZACK FOR AN INSTRUMENT.
A quarter of an hour"s rapid walking from his father"s door, took Zack well out of the neighborhood of Baregrove Square, and launched him in vagabond independence loose on the world. He had a silk handkerchief and sevenpence halfpenny in his pockets--his available a.s.sets consisted of a handsome gold watch and chain--his only article of baggage was a blackthorn stick--and his anchor of hope was the p.a.w.nbroker.
His first action, now that he had become his own master, was to go direct to the nearest stationer"s shop that he could find, and there to write the penitent letter to his mother over which his heart had failed him in the library at Baregrove Square. It was about as awkward, scrambling, and incoherent an epistolary production as ever was composed. But Zack felt easier when he had completed it--easier still when he had actually dropped it into the post-office along with his other letter to Mr. Valentine Blyth.
The next duty that claimed him was the first great duty of civilized humanity--the filling of an empty purse. Most young gentlemen in his station of life would have found the process of p.a.w.ning a watch in the streets of London, and in broad daylight, rather an embarra.s.sing one.
But Zack was born impervious to a sense of respectability. He marched into the first p.a.w.nbroker"s he came to with as solemn an air of business, and marched out again with as serene an expression of satisfaction, as if he had just been drawing a handsome salary, or just been delivering a heavy deposit into the hands of his banker.
Once provided with pecuniary resources, Zack felt himself at liberty to indulge forthwith in a holiday of his own granting. He opened the festival by a good long ride in a cab, with a bottle of pale ale and a packet of cigars inside, to keep the miserable state of the weather from affecting his spirits. He closed the festival with a visit to the theater, a supper in mixed company, total self-oblivion, a bed at a tavern, and a blinding headache the next morning. Thus much, in brief, for the narrative of his holiday. The proceedings, on his part, which followed that festival, claim attention next; and are of sufficient importance, in the results to which they led, to be mentioned in detail.
The new morning was the beginning of an important day in Zack"s life.
Much depended on the interviews he was about to seek with his new friend, Mat, in Kirk Street, and with Mr. Blyth, at the turnpike in the Laburnum Road. As he paid his bill at the tavern, his conscience was not altogether easy, when he recalled a certain pa.s.sage in his letter to his mother, which had a.s.sured her that he was on the high road to reformation already. "I"ll make a clean breast of it to Blyth, and do exactly what he tells me, when I meet him at the turnpike." Fortifying himself with this good resolution, Zack arrived at Kirk Street, and knocked at the private door of the tobacconist"s shop.
Mat, having seen him from the window, called to him to come up, as soon as the door was opened. The moment they shook hands, young Thorpe noticed that his new friend looked altered. His face seemed to have grown downcast and weary--heavy and vacant, since they had last met.
"What"s happened to you?" asked Zack. "You have been somewhere in the country, haven"t you? What news do you bring back, my dear fellow? Good, I hope?"
"Bad as can be," returned Mat, gruffly. "Don"t you say another word to me about it. If you do, we part company again. Talk of something else.
Anything you like; and the sooner the better."
Forbidden to discourse any more concerning his friend"s affairs, Zack veered about directly, and began to discourse concerning his own.
Candor was one of his few virtues: and he now confided to Mat the entire history of his tribulations, without a single reserved point at any part of the narrative, from beginning to end.
Without putting a question, or giving an answer, without displaying the smallest astonishment or the slightest sympathy, Mat stood gravely listening until Zack had quite done. He then went to the corner of the room where the round table was; pulled the upturned lid back upon the pedestal; drew from the breast pocket of his coat a roll of beaver-skin; slowly undid it; displayed upon the table a goodly collection of bank notes; and pointing to them, said to young Thorpe,--"Take what you want."
It was not easy to surprise Zack; but this proceeding so completely astonished him, that he stared at the bank notes in speechless amazement. Mat took his pipe from a nail in the wall, filled the bowl with tobacco, and pointing with the stem towards the table, gruffly repeated,--"Take what you want."
This time, Zack found words in which to express himself, and used them pretty freely to praise his new friend"s unexampled generosity, and to decline taking a single farthing. Mat deliberately lit his pipe, in the first place, and then bluntly answered in these terms:--
"Take my advice, young "un, and keep all that talking for somebody else: it"s gibberish to _me._ Don"t bother; and help yourself to what you want. Money"s what you want--though you won"t own it. That"s money. When it"s gone, I can go back to California and get more. While it lasts, make it spin. What is there to stare at? I told you I"d be brothers with you, because of what you done for me the other night. Well: I"m being brothers with you now. Get your watch out of p.a.w.n, and shake a loose leg at the world. _Will_ you take what you want? And when you have, just tie up the rest, and chuck "em over here." With those words the man of the black skull-cap sat down on his bearskins, and sulkily surrounded himself with clouds of tobacco smoke.
Finding it impossible to make Mat understand those delicacies and refinements of civilized life which induce one gentleman (always excepting a clergyman at Easter time) to decline accepting money from another gentleman as a gift--perceiving that he was resolved to receive all remonstrances as so many declarations of personal enmity and distrust--and well knowing, moreover, that a little money to go on with would be really a very acceptable accommodation under existing circ.u.mstances, Zack consented to take two ten-pound notes as a loan. At this reservation Mat chuckled contemptuously; but young Thorpe enforced it, by tearing a leaf out of his pocket-book, and writing an acknowledgment for the sum he had borrowed. Mat roughly and resolutely refused to receive the doc.u.ment; but Zack tied it up along with the bank-notes, and threw the beaver-skin roll back to its owner, as requested.
"Do you want a bed to sleep in?" asked Mat next. "Say yes or no at once!
I won"t have no more gibberish. I"m not a gentleman, and I can"t shake up along with them as are. It"s no use trying it on with me, young "un.
I"m not much better than a cross between a savage and a Christian. I"m a battered, lonesome, scalped old vagabond--that"s what I am! But I"m brothers with you for all that. What"s mine is yours; and if you tell me it isn"t again, me and you are likely to quarrel. Do you want a bed to sleep in? Yes? or No?"
Yes; Zack certainly wanted a bed; but--
"There"s one for you," remarked Mat, pointing through the folding-doors into the back room. _"I_ don"t want it. I haven"t slep" in a bed these twenty years and more, and I can"t do it now. I take dog"s snoozes in this corner; and I shall take more dog"s snoozes out of doors in the day-time, when the sun begins to s.h.i.+ne. I haven"t been used to much sleep, and I don"t want much. Go in and try if the bed"s long enough for you."
Zack tried to expostulate again, but Mat interrupted him more gruffly than ever.