"She"ll never come back any more!" moaned Mattie; "she has met with danger--I am sure of it! She has come to harm, and I am powerless to help her. I should not feel like this, if something had not happened!"
"Two," struck the clock of St. Georges, Southwark; in the stillness of the streets it echoed towards her, and sounded like a death-bell. Mattie covered her face with her hands, and prayed silently for help, for one away from home. Then she sprung up again, piled some more coals on the fire, stirred it, and sat down before it.
"I"ll not believe any of these horrible things yet a while. It will all be explained--she"ll be back presently, to laugh at me for this foolishness!"
CHAPTER X.
MATTIE IN SEARCH.
How does the time contrive to steal away from us when we are sitting up, feverish with fear for him, or her, who returns not? The dial that we stare at so often, marks fresh hours, and still further alarms us; but the night is long and tedious, and there"s a stab in every tick of that sepulchral clock on the landing. We disguise our alarm from the servants, even from ourselves, and sit down patiently for the coming one--nervous at the footfalls in the streets without, and feeling heart-sick as they pa.s.s our door, and die away in the distance. We set our books and newspapers aside at last, and _wait_--we give up pretension to coolness, and watch with our hearts also.
Mattie waited, tried to hope, then to pray again; gave up wholly after three in the morning, and cried as for one lost to her for ever. There was a reasonable hope in Harriet having missed the train, or in her having been induced to stay the night at the Eveleighs"; a reasonable fear--in these times of railway mismanagement and error--of an accident having occurred to the up-train. But these hopes and fears were not Mattie"s; they flashed by her once or twice, but she felt that Harriet"s absence was not to be accounted for by them. At four in the morning she took the big key from the lock, put on her bonnet and shawl, and then paused on the stairs, hesitating in her mind whether to apprise Ann Packet of her new intention or not.
Ann Packet would hear a knock if Harriet returned, which was unlikely now; she would not alarm Ann, or betray her friend unnecessarily. It might be necessary, who knows, to keep this ever a secret--she could not tell, all was mystery, dark and unfathomable.
"It"s not a runaway match, either," thought Mattie, "for there was no occasion to run away, when Harriet and her lover could have married quietly and without any opposition, at least on _their_ side. Harriet knows that, and is not a girl to be led away if she did not. Weak in many ways, but not in that, I know."
Mattie disliked mystery.
"I"ll follow this to the end!" she cried with a stamp of her foot--"to the very end if possible."
Mattie might have been spelling over a sensation novel, wherein the hero or heroine--_i.e._ the villain catcher--goes through the last two volumes on the detective principle; and it might have possibly struck her that if the "catcher" had started earlier and gone a less roundabout way to work--certainly a bad way for the volumes!--the matter might have been more expeditiously arranged. She could always see to the end pretty clearly--why not the "cute-minded party in search?
Mattie closed the street-door behind her, and went out into the cold morning. The pavement was still wet and clammy; there was no "drying-air" in the streets, although the stars looked bright and aggravatingly frosty.
Mattie turned to the left at the end of Great Suffolk Street, and proceeded at a rapid pace towards the railway station; there were stragglers still in the Borough--a broad thoroughfare, that never rests, but is ever alive with sound. Life still at the great terminus; a train hissing and fuming from its long journey, a handful of pa.s.sengers by the mail, a few cabmen still looking out for fares, guards full of bustle as usual, one Kent Street gamin out on business, and dodging the policeman behind a Patent Safety.
Mattie went to business at once.
"Has any accident happened on the line to-night, sir?"
"Not any."
"What is the next train from New Cross that will reach here?"
"No train calls at New Cross till six in the morning."
"What is the next train that will leave here and call at New Cross?"
"Twenty minutes to six."
"Oh! dear."
A short spasmodic sigh, and then Mattie turned away and went back to Great Suffolk Street, opened the door, and stole cautiously up-stairs to the room wherein Harriet had been sleeping. Not there--still away from home!
"If anything has happened, I must be the first to find it out," thought Mattie, descending the stairs, listening at the foot thereof, and then pa.s.sing out into the street again, closing the shop-door very cautiously behind her.
She had made up her mind to walk at once to New Cross, to seek out the Eveleighs, whose address she thought that she remembered. She went on at a rapid pace, with her veil thrown back, and her face full of interest--not a woman in the streets, hurrying like herself on special missions, or lurking at street corners, but Mattie glanced at for an instant as she sped along. She was a quick walker and lost no time; after all, New Cross was not a great distance away; she was not easily tired, and once in action, her fears for Harriet went further into the distance. She began to think, almost to hope, that Harriet would be at the Eveleighs", and all would end with a wild fancy on her part, at which Harriet and she would laugh later in the day. Down the Dover Road, past the Bricklayer"s Arms, and along the Old Kent Road, till the long lines of closed shops ended in long lines of private houses, the railway station and the Royal Naval School--that model of good management, by which we recommend all directors of seedy inst.i.tutions to profit.
Near the railway station Mattie found a policeman, who directed her to the particular terrace wherein the Eveleighs were located. It was nearly half-past five when she read by the light of the street lamp the name of Eveleigh on the bra.s.s plate affixed to the iron gate. With her hands upon the gate, Mattie held a council of war with herself as to the best method of procedure.
Mattie had soon arranged her plan of action; hers was a mind that jumped rapidly at conclusions--was quick to see the best way. Arousing the house would create an alarm, and if Harriet were not there--of which in her heart she was already a.s.sured--it would only set the people within talking about her. That would be to cast the first stone at her poor friend, and set the tongues of gossips wagging--that must not be! Mattie resolved to wait till some signs about the Eveleigh window blinds indicated a servant stirring in the house; she thought with a shudder of the shop in Great Suffolk Street, and the customers waiting for their papers; of Ann Packet"s alarm, and Mr. Hinchford"s perplexity; of the food for scandal which her absence would afford to a few inquisitive neighbours. Still all that might be easily explained, and it was only she who would receive the blame, if all turned out better than she dreamed; and if the worst were known, why, alas! her actions would readily be guessed at.
Fortune favoured Mattie in the most unromantic way that morning: the Eveleighs had resolved upon having their kitchen chimney swept at half-past five, and young Erebus, true to the minute, came round the corner with his soot-bag, went up the fore-court towards the side gate, rang the bell, and gave vent to his doleful cry. The maid-servant, however, was not prompt in her responses, and Mattie stood and watched in the distance, until the sweep, becoming impatient, rang again, and rattled with his brush against the side of the door steps. From Mattie"s post of vigilance she could just make him out in the darkness--a shadowy figure, that might have represented evil to her and hers.
Presently the bolts of the side gate were withdrawn, and Mattie with hasty steps, crossed the road and hurried up the path. The sweep was being admitted at that time, and a red-eyed, white-faced, sulky-looking servant-maid of not more than sixteen years of age, was closing the door, when Mattie called to her to wait.
Surprised at this strange apparition at so early an hour, the girl waited and stared.
Mattie"s plan of action would have done credit to a detective policeman; her questions seemed so wide of the mark, and kept suspicion back from her whom she loved so well. Certainly they implicated another, and drew attention to him in a marked manner; but he was a man, and could bear it, thought Mattie, and if he were at the bottom of the mystery, there was no need to study _him_--rather to track him out and come face to face with him!
"Will you tell Mr. Darcy that I wish to speak a few words with him immediately?"
"Mr. Darcy don"t live here," said the astonished servant.
"He visits here--he stayed here last night."
"No, he didn"t," was the abrupt reply; "he went away at ten o"clock."
"With Miss Wesden, of course," was the apparently careless answer.
"Yes, with Miss Wesden. He never stops here."
"Where does he live?"
"I don"t know--somewhere about here, I believe."
"Ask his address of your mistress," cried Mattie, becoming excited as the truth seemed to loom before her with all its horror; "I must see him!"
The servant-maid"s eyes became rounder, and she gasped forth--
"I"ll--I"ll wake missus."
"Ask her to oblige me with Mr. Darcy"s address--and please make haste."
The servant withdrew, leaving Mattie standing in the draughty side pa.s.sage, dark and dense as the fate of her whom she loved appeared to be from that day. She could hear the sweep bustling and bundling about the kitchen noisily; it seemed an age before the servant"s feet came clumpeting down the stairs again.
"It"s number fourteen, St. Olave"s Terrace, Old Kent Road."
"Thank you."
Mattie turned away, and ran down the fore court at a rapid pace.
"Well--I _never_!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the amazed domestic. "What"s Mr. Darcy gone and done, I wonder!"