Ada’s Escape.—The Magistrate.—Ada’s Ignorance of London
Localities.—Learmont’s Fright.
When Ada sunk insensible into the arms of a stranger, after denouncing
Jacob Gray as a murderer, she was conveyed into a shop by
Charing-cross, when her rare and singular beauty, and the peculiar
circumstances under which she had fainted, were the themes of every
tongue. Such restoratives as upon the moment could be procured were
immediately brought into requisition, and after a quarter of an hour
she gently opened her eyes with a faint sigh and looked inquiringly
about her.
Then she clasped her hands, and as she gazed upon the throng of
curious, yet compassionate faces that surrounded her, she exclaimed,—
“What has happened? Oh, speak to me; where am I?”
“You have fainted,” cried four or five voices in a breath.
“Fainted—fainted?”
“Yes; I brought you in after you had called after the man as a
murderer,” said the person who had caught Ada before she was brought
into the shop.
For the space of about another minute then the young girl looked
confused; after that a gush of recollections flashed across her mind,
and the feeling that she was really at last free from Jacob Gray, came
across her heart with so much happiness and joy, that covering her
beautiful face with her small slender hands, she burst into tears and
sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.
Those who stood by seemed to feel that there was something sacred in
the tears of the young thing before them, for they stood silent, and no
one attempted to insult her by the usual commonplace remarks of vulgar
consolation. There were tears in almost every eye, and when Ada
withdrew her hands from her face, and a smile, beautiful as a sunbeam
after an April shower, illumined her expressive countenance, it seemed
as if some universal joy had been awakened in every breast, and
murmured blessings upon her beauty, burst from several of the persons
who had crowded, from motives of curiosity, into the shop.
Then Ada looked from face to face, and oh, how different were those
honest sympathising countenances to the dark ever shifting expression
of the lineaments of Jacob Gray, where avarice, cruelty, and fear were
ever struggling together for a mastery.
“Thank you all—thank you all,” she cried; “I am very happy now.”
This was not a very comprehensible speech to those who had not gone
through the scene of misery and woe, that the young heart of Ada had
known, but still there was a deep truthfulness and sincerity in the
tone in which it was uttered that sensibly affected every one.
“Shall I take you home?” said the person who had supported her in the
street.
“Home—home?” cried Ada.
“Yes; you are not well enough to go home by yourself; I will see you
safely home.”
“I have no home,” said Ada.
“No home?”
“None—I never had a home.”
The people looked at each other in amazement, and several of them
significantly touched their foreheads in confirmation of their belief
that the beautiful young girl was not quite right in her head.
“Where are your friends?” said one.
“Alas, I know not,” cried Ada, mournfully. “Tell me, is he whom I
denounced in the street taken prisoner?”
“No, not that I am aware of,” said a man. “There has been one here who
says he ran up the Strand like a madman and escaped.”
Ada shuddered as she said,—
“Let him go now; his own conscience must be punishment enough. Let him
go now.”
“What has he done?” said several voices at once.
“Murder,” said Ada. “My eyes were shocked with the sight of blood. He
is a murderer.”
“A murderer?”
“Yes—I saw him do the deed.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jacob Gray.”
The people glanced at each other, and then several left the shop,
considering Jacob Gray as the more interesting person of the two to
make inquiries about.
“Where will you go, my dear?” said the owner of the shop.
“I have but one friend,” said Ada, “to whom there is any hope of
sending. He has called himself my friend, and his voice was sincere. I
will believe that he sought me with kindly feelings. His name is
Hartleton—he is a magistrate.”
“Sir Francis Hartleton?”
“Yes—the same.”
“If he knows you and is your friend,” said one, “you need look no
farther, for he is a good man, and universally esteemed.”
“I thank you for those words,” cried Ada. “And—and tell me—do any of
you know Albert Seyton?”
All shook their heads, and one man remarked,—“That he knew an Albert
Brown, which was the nearest he could come to it.”
“I will take you to Sir Francis Hartleton’s,” said the man of the shop.
Before Ada could reply, the door was opened, and a stranger walked in,
saying,—
“Where is the girl?”
“Here, here?” cried many voices.
The stranger stepped forward, and upon seeing Ada, he said,—
“My lass, you must come with me before a magistrate, and tell us what
you know of this man who has led us such a pretty race up the Strand.”
“Is he caught?” cried several.
“No,” replied the officer, for such he was; “we nearly had him by the
court next to Somerset-house, but he killed the man who laid hold of
him.”
“Another murder!” exclaimed Ada.
“Yes; I never saw such a sight as he left the man.”
“Take me to Sir Francis Hartleton,” said Ada.
“That I will,” said the officer.
Ada sprung to her feet, and then, turning to those in the shop, she
said,—
“Accept my heartfelt thanks? I am poor in all else.”
Then, taking the offered arm of the officer, who, though rough and
uncouth, meant to be quite kind and considerate in his way, she left
the shop, and the strangely-matched pair proceeded down Whitehall
towards Sir Francis Hartleton’s house.
“That fellow as you was with my dear,” remarked the officer, “is a
reg’lar out-and-outer; down as fifteen hammers, and a touch above
nothing.”
This speech was about as intelligible to Ada as if it had been spoken
in Chinese, and she replied mildly,—
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Bless your innocence!” said the officer; “I means as he’s the most
downiest cove as we’ve come across lately.”
“Indeed,” said Ada, who was quite as wise as before.
“Yes; he went up the Strand like twenty blessed lamplighters rolled
into one.”
“Where’s the Strand?” said Ada.
The officer stopped short at the question, and looked hard at Ada for
some moments to assure himself that he was not, in his own phraseology,
being “regularly done;” but there was something so very innocent and
guileless in the face of Ada that he very reluctantly came to the
conclusion that she really did not know where the Strand was, and from
that moment he looked upon her as a natural phenomenon, and spoke to
her with a curious kind of considerate voice, such as he would have
addressed to a person not quite right in her mind.
“Why, the Strand,” he said, “runs from the Cross to the Bar, you see.”
“Does it?” said Ada.
“This here is Whitehall.”
“Whitehall? I have read of Whitehall. Cardinal Wolsey held great state
here once.”
“Well, I never,” thought the officer, who had never heard of Cardinal
Wolsey in his life. “She’s wandering in her mind, poor thing.”
“What building is that?” inquired Ada, as they came opposite to the
Horse Guards.
“That ’ere is the Horse Guards, and leads into the Park.”
“St. James’s Park? I have been there,” said Ada. “That too is full of
recollection.”
“I believe ye,” said the officer. “Don’t you know as Bill Floggs, who
was called the ‘Nubbly Cove,’ robbed Lord Chief Justice Bones by
Buckingham Gate?”
“No,” said Ada, who, if there had been a Newgate Calendar in those
days, had never seen one.
“Oh! you doesn’t?—Nor Claude Duval, the ladies’ own highwayman, who
robbed a gentleman of his gold watch, while he, the gentleman, was
complaining of being stopped the very night before by him on Kennington
Common?”
“Indeed?”
“Lor,’ bless you, yes. The ladies used to take a drive out of town on
purpose to be robbed by Claude Duval.”
“A strange fancy,” said Ada.
They now proceeded for some distance in silence, until they came to a
large mansion, every window of which was blazing with light, and from
the interior of which came the sound of music.
Ada paused, and looked upon the illuminated windows as a sensation of
pleasure came across her mind, arising from the sweet sounds of melody
that came wafted to her ears from within the house of revelry.
“Ah!” remarked the officer, looking up at the house, “they do keep it
up finely. Almost every night now for a week there has been nothing but
feasting, dancing, and music in that house. They say its master don’t
like to be left alone, and that he is never satisfied unless the house
be full of company, and himself in the very midst of it.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, he is an odd-looking fellow; but they say he is so rich he might
pave his great hall with guineas.”
“And yet shrinks, as it were, from himself, that he dare not be alone!”
“Why, ’atween you and I, there’s Tyburn written upon his face.”
“What upon his face?”
“Tyburn.”
“What’s that?”
“Why—why—you don’t mean all to go to say as you never heard o’ Tyburn?”
“I have lived a lone and solitary life,” said Ada; “and, although so
near the haunts of thousands of my fellow-creatures, I have seen but
one, except rarely. The names of places in this great city, the habits,
the thoughts, and actions of its myriads of inhabitants, are all
strange to me. For all I know of the familiar things of life—those
every-day events and materials of life that make up the sum of most
persons’ existence—I am as ignorant as a child cast upon some desert
shore.”
There was a mournful pathos in the tone of voice in which Ada uttered
these words that gave them their full effect upon the rough man she was
with. Nature spoke in every soft melancholy word that fell from her
lips; and, although her language was to him as strange and
incomprehensible quite, as his to her, he understood sufficient to
reply to her.—
“Then, whosoever shut you up, and purvented you from going about and
amusing yourself, my dear, was a big brute, and only let him come
across me, that’s all.”
“Whose house is this?” said Ada, listening, at the same time, to a
beautiful melody which was being played as a prelude to the
commencement of a dance.
“Squire Learmont they call him,” replied the man; “but, if he lives a
little-longer, it’s said he’ll be a lord, or something of that kind.”
Ada placed her hand upon her brow, and repeated the name of Learmont,
as if its sound conjured up some long-forgotten images in her brain.
Then she shook her head, as memory could shape to her nothing tangible
in connexion with the name, which yet, as she again pronounced it, came
upon her heart as something far from new.
“Learmont—Learmont!” she murmured, as if pleased with the repetition.
“Yes, that’s his name,” rejoined the officer. “Nobody knows exactly
where he got all his money from; but got it he has, and he knows how to
spend it too.”
At this moment the doors of the mansion were flung open, and a splendid
carriage dashed up to the entrance.
“There’s somebody coming,” remarked the officer to Ada. “Let’s have a
look at them.”
Ada and her companion now crossed the road, and stood close to the step
of Learmont’s house, as a lacquey shouted to those in the hall,—
“Lord and Lady Brereton, and the Honourable Georgiana Brereton.”
A blaze of light shot from the interior of the mansion, and just as the
guests were alighting, Learmont himself descended the steps of his
house to receive them.
He was attired in a splendid suit of moreen velvet, and a diamond of
great lustre sparkled in his sword hilt. His fingers were covered with
rings, profusely studded with precious stones, and, take his appearance
altogether, he looked, indeed, like the man who could pave his hall
with gold.
A bland and courtly smile was upon his face, and he handed the
occupants of the carriage up the steps, with the air of a sovereign
prince, graciously condescending to an act of rare and unexampled
courtesy.
From the moment that he had appeared, Ada had never taken her eyes from
off his face; she seemed like one fascinated by the basilisk eyes of a
serpent, and, with a wild rush of mingled feelings, which she could
neither define nor understand, she watched each varying expression of
that cold, pale, haughty countenance that wore upon its surface so
hollow and so artificial a smile.
Learmont was one step below the Honourable Lady he was handing by the
extreme tips of her fingers, into his house, when the officer, in what
he thought a whisper, said to Ada,—
“That’s him.”
The guilty heart of Learmont throbbed even at this trifling remark, for
it did reach his ears, and he turned suddenly to see who had uttered
it, when his eyes met Ada’s, and for the space of about one moment they
looked full at each other.
The look on Ada’s part was one of intense and indescribable interest
and curiosity, but on Learmont’s, it was that concentrated
soul-stricken glare, with which a person might be supposed to regard
for about a breathing space, some awful blasting spectre, ere nature
gathers strength to scream.
A wild unearthly cry burst from his lips, and he stretched out his
hands towards her as he ascended the steps backwards, crying, or rather
shrieking,—
“Off—off—off—”
Then as he reached the top he reeled into the hall of his house, and
was caught by his servants as he fell insensible from the overwrought
agony of his mind.