Time glided on, and the brothers Pellet did not meet. There was
estrangement too between Richard Pellet and his stepson, who came up
during his vacations, but only to leave home again in disgust. For the
fact was, Richard Pellet looked upon him as being in the way,--a manner
he had of considering all those who were not of present use to him in
his designs. So Harry Clayton saw but little of Norwood.
He made calls in Duplex Street at intervals, but always in vain, for
Jared remained inflexible, and received the young man in a way which
chilled him, and sent him away declaiming against people's
hard-heartedness. Never once was Patty visible, for she followed out
the role she had been taught, and had in consequence many a bitter cry
in secret.
Would she have liked to see Henry Clayton? That, too, she kept secret;
and fate seemed to fight on Richard Pellet's side, for somehow the young
people never encountered, in spite of the long hours which Harry
loitered about Clerkenwell, till he knew every brass plate by heart in
the neighbourhood, without counting the signboards that he read till he
was weary.
The effect of all these crosses upon Harry Clayton was to quite change
the young man's disposition; from being light-hearted and cheerful, he
grew stern and quiet, almost morose. He determined at last, in a fit of
anger, after a call at Duplex Street and a vain application to Richard
Pellet for money, that he would turn dissipated, and began at once.
His first plunge was into billiards, but he gave the game up at the end
of a week. Rowing followed, and he almost lived upon the river in
gaudy-coloured flannels. But that soon palled upon him, and at the end
of a month a cold business-like letter from Richard Pellet, advising him
curtly to take to business, for his late father's settlements would not
permit of the expenses of a college life, settled the affair. The
consequence was, that. Harry knit his brows, went down to Norwood, and
announced his intention of staying up at Cambridge and reading for
honours.
The result was a quarrel, and Richard Pellet slammed the door as he went
out, bound for the city. Mrs Richard kissed her son, and said she hoped
he would be a good boy and obey Mr Pellet, who was all that was wise and
clever, and then Harry said good-bye, and went off with an aching heart
to make a last call at Duplex Street.
It was the old story; Jared received him kindly, and shook hands when
they parted, but there were no ladies visible.
Harry looked sterner, and felt sterner of purpose as he came away, and
these troubles were the turning-point in the young man's career, for
henceforward he seemed to cast youth and its frivolities behind, so as
to be untrammelled in the firmer purposes of life.
He was wandering slowly and thoughtfully along, wondering as to what the
future would bring forth. He told himself that he was certainly very
fond of Patty, and though she had perhaps never since given to him a
thought, yet he would be true to his intentions, and in spite of her
humble position, if she proved to be as he believed she would, no
difference of station should interfere.
"No," he said, half aloud; "not even if I get to be senior wrangler,"--
of which, by the way, there did not seem to be much probability. Then
his thoughts turned to Richard Pellet, and it seemed to him that his
father's affairs had somehow got into a state of strange confusion. He
could get no satisfactory explanation. One thing was evident, and that
was that Richard Pellet had full influence over his wife, and that
nothing save recourse to law would enforce a full declaration of how
matters stood.
"And I can't do that," muttered Harry. Then he began going over once
more his mother's marriage, and wondered how she could have been so weak
as to marry one so hard, and close, and cold.
Just then he saw a Hansom cab stop a short distance from him, out of
which stepped Richard Pellet, who paid his driver, and, without seeing
his stepson, strode off hastily, making his way through the gloomy
streets of Pentonville.
Harry hesitated for a while, feeling half tempted to follow, but he
turned off the next moment to seek his hotel.
Meanwhile Richard Pellet hurried on, his way lying through streets that
seemed to be the favourite playgrounds of the roaming children of the
neighbourhood. And here he walked as if he felt a peculiar spite
against every child he passed. He kicked this one's top half across the
road; he purposely obliterated the chalked-out hopscotch marks with his
feet; nearly knocked down a boy carrying a shawl-swathed infant,--not
that there was much force needed, for the weight of the shawl-swathed
nearly overbalanced its porter; and he ended by treading upon a thin
girl's toes.
Another turn or two, and he was in a pleasant street rejoicing in the
name of Borton, at whose end there was a pleasing glimpse to be obtained
of the great jail with its blank walls, and the low hum of Tullochgorum
Road murmured on the ear.
Richard stopped at a dingy sleepy-looking house, with its blinds down,
and knocked a slinking kind of double knock, as if afraid of its being
heard by any one outside the house. It was a double knock certainly,
but it had a mean degraded sound about it, beside which a poor man's
single thump would have sounded massive and grand.
After waiting for a reasonable space he knocked a second time, when,
after fidgeting about upon the door-step, glancing up and down the
street, and acting after the fashion of a man troubled with the
impression that every one is watching him, he was relieved by the door
being opened a very little way, and a sour-looking woman confronting
him.
Upon seeing who was her visitor, the woman admitted him to stand for a
minute or two upon the shabby worn oil-cloth of the badly-lighted
passage before ushering him into a damp earthy-smelling parlour, over
whose windows were drawn Venetian blinds of a faded sickly green, the
bar-like laths giving a prison aspect to the place.
"Send her down?" said the woman, shortly, as she removed a handkerchief
from her face and looked toothache.
"Yes," was the curt gruff reply; but the woman held her handkerchief to
the aching tooth and remained waiting, when Richard Pellet drew out his
pocket-book and passed a piece of crisp paper to the woman.
The paper was taken, carefully examined, and then seemed to have an
anodyne effect upon the toothache of its recipient, who folded it
carefully small and then tied it in a knot in one corner of the dingy
pocket-handkerchief, after the fashion of elderly ladies from the
country who ride in omnibuses, and then seek in such corners for the
small coin wherewith to pay the fare. In this case, though, the
tying-up was followed by the deposit of the handkerchief in its owner's
bosom, the act been accompanied by a grim nod which said plainly enough,
"that's safe."
The woman left the room; there was the sound of the key being drawn from
the front door, pattering of steps on the oil-cloth, and then she
re-appeared.
"'Taint my fault, you know," she said, in a hoarse voice; "it's him--he
made me write. I'd keep her to the end, but he says that we won't have
it any more. It's a fool's trick, for she never leaves her room."
"It's plain enough," said Richard, contemptuously, "you want more
money."
The woman smiled grimly. "He says he won't have it any more," was all
she said.
"What reason does he give?" said Richard, sharply.
"Oh!" said the woman, "he says that it has got about that we keep a mad
woman in the house without having a license; and the neighbours talk,
and there will be a summons about it some time or another. He hates to
go out, he says--just as if that matters. Don't you think it might be
managed after all? I don't want to part with her."
"Yes--no," said Richard Pellet, correcting himself. "You've thrown up a
good thing, and now I shall make another arrangement."
"Well," said the woman, in surly tones, "I was obliged to write--he made
me. But you've no call to complain; she's been here now best part of
nine years, and always well taken care of, and at a lower rate than you
would have paid at a private asylum. You ought to have let me have the
child as well. No one could have kept her closer."
"What?" said Richard, harshly.
"Well, that was only once; and I took precious good care that she did
not play me such a trick a second time. She wasn't away long, though,"
said the woman, laughing.
"There! send her down," said Richard Pellet, impatiently.
"I don't mind telling you, now," said the woman, not heeding the remark,
"she's very little trouble; sits and works all day long without
speaking."
"Humph!" ejaculated Richard Pellet; "now that there's no more money to
be made by contrary statements, you can be honest."
"Well," said the woman, "other people may find out things for
themselves. Nobody taught me."
Then she left the room.
A few minutes elapsed, and then a pale, dark-haired woman, with a
pitiful, almost imploring aspect, entered the room, clasped her hands
tightly together, and stood gazing in Richard's Pellet's face.
"I'm going to take you away from here, Ellen," he said.
For a few moments the pale face lit up as with some show of animation;
the woman exclaimed--"To see my child, Richard?"
"I'm going to take you away from here," he replied, coldly; "so be ready
to-morrow."
The light faded from the countenance of the woman in an instant, to
leave it dull and inanimate. She pressed her hand for an instant upon
her side, and winced as if a pain had shot through her. Then slowly
drawing a scrap of needlework from her pocket, she began to sew hastily.
"I have made arrangements for you to stay at an institution where you
will be well cared for," he continued; "that is, provided that you
behave well."
The faint shadow of a sad smile crossed the pale face as the woman
glanced at him for a moment, and then sighed and looked down.
"Do you hear what I say?" said Richard, roughly.
"Yes, Richard," she said, quietly, and as if quite resigned to her fate;
"I never do anything that you would not wish, only when--when--when my
head gets hot and strange. I am quite ready, but--"
"Well?" said the great city man.
"You will let me see my little one before I go, Richard? I won't let my
head get hot. You will not mind that. I will do all that you wish.
But why not let us be together? She is not mad; but that would not
matter. Let me have her, and go away from here. She is so little, I
could carry her; and we would never trouble you again. Indeed, indeed--
never, never again!"
If he could only have placed faith in those words, what a burden Richard
Pellet would have felt to be off his shoulders! But no; he dared not
trust her; and in the few moments while she stood with her wild strange
eyes gazing appealingly in his face, he saw her coming to his office for
help, then down to Norwood, declaring that she was his wedded wife, and
trouble, exposure, perhaps punishment, to follow, because, he told
himself, he had declined to let this poor helpless maniac stand in the
way of his advancement.
Richard Pellet's face grew darker as he turned to leave the room.
"But you will let me see her once, Richard--only once before I go?
Think how obedient I have been, how I have attended always to your
words--always. I know what you mean to do--to shut me up in a dreadful
madhouse, and all because--because my poor head grows so hot. It was
not so once, Richard."
She dropped her work upon the floor, and elapsed her hands as she stood
before him.
"Only once, Richard," she exclaimed again; "only once, for ever so short
a time," and the voice grew more and more plaintive and appealing--the
tones seeming to ring prophetically in Richard Pellet's ears, so that he
found himself thinking--"Suppose those words haunt me at my deathbed!"
He started the next moment.
"Be quiet," he exclaimed, harshly, as he might have said "Down!" to a
dog; when, rightly interpreting his words, the woman uttered a low wail,
letting herself sink upon the floor, as she covered her face with her
hands, and convulsively sobbed. But the trembling hands fell again as
she shook her head with the action of one throwing back thick masses of
curling hair, and looking sharply up, she listened, for the sound of a
bell fell upon her ear. The cause was plain enough, for Richard Pellet
stood before her with the rope in his hand.
Then she slowly rose, sighing as she closed her eyes, and stood
motionless until the woman of the house came into the room and laid her
talon-like hand upon her shoulder. But though the prisoner shivered,
she did not move from her place; she only opened her eyes and gazed once
more imploringly at Richard, who avoided her look, and, walking to the
window, peered through the bar-like blinds.
"Ellen!" said the woman, in a harsh voice, which seemed to grate through
the room, and then unresistingly a prisoner, for the sake of Richard
Pellet's prosperity, she followed her gaoler from the room, Richard
Pellet waiting with knitted brows till the woman came back.
A long and somewhat angry conversation ensued, in which Richard Pellet
tried very hard to make out whether the woman he had employed for so
many years as his wife's attendant was in earnest concerning the written
desire to give up the charge, or whether it was merely a bit of
business-fencing to obtain a higher rate of payment. He left at last,
boasting of the ease with which he could make fresh arrangements for
"Ellen Herrisey's" reception. "But I will not take any further steps
till I hear from you again," he said, while the woman watched him as he
left the room with a strange meaning smile.
"Another twenty pounds a year will do it," said Richard, as he walked
away. "He won't let her give up the money."
"You're like the ostrich we read about," muttered the woman, as she
watched her visitor down the street. "Do you think I don't know you're
married again, you brute? Ellen Herrisey, indeed! It shall be fifty
pounds a year more, or I'll know the reason why!"
Volume 1, Chapter XX.