JONES OR RATTLER
When Lord Northmoor had occasion to be in London he usually went alone,
for to take the whole party was too expensive, and not good for little
Michael. Besides, Bertha Morton had so urgently begged him to regard her
house as always ready for him, that the habit had been established of
taking up his quarters there.
Some important measures were coming on after Easter, and he had some
other business, so that, in the form of words of which she longed to cure
him, he told her that he was about to trespass on her hospitality for a
week or fortnight.
'As long as ever you please,' she said. 'I am glad to have some one to
sit opposite to me and tell me home news,' and they met at the station,
she having been on an expedition on her own account, so that they drove
home together.
No sooner were they within the house door than the parlour-maid began,
'That man has been here again, ma'am.'
'What, Jones?' said Bertha, in evident annoyance.
'Yes, ma'am, and I am sorry to say he saw little Cea. The child had run
down after me when I answered the door, and he asked her if she did not
know her own father, and if she would come with him. "No," she says,
"I'm Miss Morton's," and he broke out with his ugly laugh, and says he,
"You be, be you, you unnatural little vagabond?"--those were his very
words, ma'am--"but a father is a father, and if he gives up his rights he
must know the reason why." He wanted me, the good-for-nothing, to give
him half a sovereign at once, or he would take off the child on the spot,
but, by good luck, she had been frightened and run away, the dear, and I
had got the door between me and him, so I told him to be off till you
came home, or I would call for the police. So he was off for that time.'
'Quite right, Alice,' said Miss Morton, and then, leading the way
upstairs and throwing herself down on a chair, she exclaimed, 'There, it
ought to be a triumph to you, Northmoor! You told me that I should have
trouble about poor little Cea's father, the brute!'
'Is he levying blackmail on you?'
'Yes. It is horribly weak of me, I know, and I can scarcely believe it
of myself, but one can't abandon a child to a wretch like that, and he
has the law on his side.'
'Are you quite sure of that? He deserted her, I think you said. If you
could establish that, or prove a conviction against him--'
'Oh, I know she might be sent to an industrial school if I took it before
a magistrate, but if the other alternative would be destruction, that
would be misery to her. See--' and there was a little tap at the door.
'Come in, Cea. There, make your curtsey to his lordship.'
A pretty little fair-haired pale-cheeked girl, daintily but simply
dressed, came in and made her curtsey very prettily, and replied nicely
to Lord Northmoor's good-natured greeting and information that Michael
had sent her a basket of primroses and a cowslip ball, which she would
find in the hall.
'What do you say, Cea?' said Bertha, anxious to demonstrate her manners.
'Thank you, my lord, and Master Michael,' she uttered, but she was
evidently preoccupied with what she had to tell Miss Morton. 'Oh'm,
there was such a nasty man here! And he wanted me, and said he was my
father, but he wasn't. He was the same man that gave Master Mite and me
the bull's-eyes when we were naughty and Louisa went away.'
'Are you sure, Cea?' both exclaimed, but to the child of six the very
eagerness of the question brought a certain confusion, and though more
gently Lord Northmoor asked her to describe him, she could not do it, and
indeed she had been only five when the encounter had taken place. The
urgency of the inquiry somehow seemed to dispose her to cry, as if she
thought she had been naughty, and she had to be dismissed to the cowslip
ball.
'If the child is right, that man cannot be her father at all,' said Lord
Northmoor. 'That man's name is Rattler, and he is well known at
Westhaven.'
'Should you know him?'
'I never saw him, but I could soon find those who have done so.'
'If we could only prove it! Oh, what a relief it would be! I dare not
even send the child to school--as I meant to do, Northmoor, for indeed we
don't spoil her--for fear she should be kidnapped; and I don't know if
the school-board officer won't be after her, and I can't give as a reason
"for fear she should be stolen by her father."'
'Not exactly. It ought to be settled once for all. Perhaps the child
will tell more when you have her alone.'
'Is not Rattler only too like a nickname, or is he a native of
Westhaven?'
This Lord Northmoor thought he could find out, but the dinner was hardly
over before a message came that the man Jones had called again.
'Perhaps I had better see him alone,' said the guest, and Bertha was only
too glad to accept the offer, so he proceeded to the little room opening
into the hall, where interviews with tradesfolk or petitioners were held.
The man had a blue jersey, a cap, and an evidently sailor air, or rather
that of the coasting, lower stamp of seaman; but he was tall, rather
handsome, and younger-looking than would have been expected of Cea's
father. He looked somewhat taken aback by the appearance of a gentleman,
but he stood his ground.
'So I understand that you have been making demands upon Miss Morton,'
Lord Northmoor began.
'Well, sir, my lord, a father has his feelings. There is a situation
offered me in Canada, and I intend to take the little girl with me.'
'Oh, indeed!' And there was a pause.
'Or if the lady has taken a fancy to her, I'd not baulk her for a sum
down of twenty or five-and-twenty, once for all.'
'Oh, indeed!' again; then 'What do you say is the child's name?'
'Jones, my lord.'
'Her Christian name, I mean?'
He scratched his head. 'Cissy, my lord--Celia--Cecilia. Blest if I'm
sure!' as he watched the expression of the questioner. 'You see, the
women has such fine names, and she was always called Baby when her poor
mother was alive.'
'Where was she baptized?'
'Well, you see, my lord, the women-folk does all that, and I was at sea;
and by and by I comes home to find my poor wife dead, and the little one
gone.'
'I suppose you are aware that you can have no legal claim to the child
without full proof of her belonging to you--the certificate of your
marriage and a copy of the register of her birth?'
The man was scarcely withheld from imprecations upon the work that was
made about it, when Miss Morton had been quite satisfied on a poor
fellow's word.
'Yes, ladies may be satisfied for a time, but legally more than your word
is required, and you will remember that unless you can bring full proof
that this is your child, there is such a thing as prosecution for
obtaining money on false pretences.'
'And how is a poor fellow to get the fees for them register clerks and
that?' said the man, in a tone waxing insolent.
'I will be answerable for the fees, if you will tell me where the
certificates are to be applied for.'
'Well, how is a cove to know what the women did when he was at sea? She
died at Rotherhithe, anyway, so the child will be registered there.'
'And the marriage? You were not at sea then, I suppose?'
But the man averred that there were so many churches that there was no
telling one from another, and with a knowing look declared that the gals
were so keen after a man that they put up the banns and hauled him where
they would.
He was at last got rid of, undertaking to bring the proofs of his
paternity, without which Lord Northmoor made it clear to him that he was
to expect neither child nor money.
'I greatly doubt whether you will see any more of him,' said Lord
Northmoor when describing the interview.
'Oh, Frank,' cried Bertha, calling him thus for the first time, 'I do not
know how to thank you enough. You have done me an infinite kindness.'
'Do not thank me yet,' he answered, 'for though I do not in the least
believe that this fellow is the child's father, he may find his way to
the certificates or get them forged; and it would be well to trace what
has become of the real Jones, as well as to make out about this Rattler.
Is it true that the wife died at Rotherhithe?'
'Quite true, poor thing. I believe they had lived there since the
marriage.'
'I will run down there if you can give me the address, and see if I can
make out anything about her husband, and see whether any one can speak to
his identity with this man.'
'You are a man of gold! To think of your taking all this trouble!'
'I only hope I may succeed. It is a return to old habits of hunting up
evidence.'
Bertha was able to give the address of the lodging-house where poor Mrs.
Jones had died, and the next morning produced another document, which had
been shut up in the Bible that had been rescued for the child, namely the
marriage lines of David Jones and Lucy Smith at the parish church of the
last Lord Northmoor's residence in town.
To expect a clergyman or clerk to remember the appearance of a bridegroom
eight years ago was too much, even if they were the same who had
officiated; but Bertha undertook to try, and likewise to consult a former
fellow-servant of poor Lucy, who was supposed to have abetted her
unfortunate courtship. Frank, after despatching a letter of inquiry to
his sister-in-law about 'Sam Rattler,' set forth by train and river
steamer for Rotherhithe.
When they met again in the evening, Bertha had only made out from the
fellow-servant that the stoker was rather small, and had a reddish beard
and hair, wherewith Cea's complexion corresponded.
The Rotherhithe discoveries had gone farther. Lord Northmoor had
penetrated to the doleful den where the poor woman had died, and no
wonder! for it seemed, as Bertha had warned him, a nest of fever and
horrible smells. The landlady remembered her death, which had been made
memorable by Miss Morton's visits; but knew not whence she had come,
though, stimulated by half-a-crown, she mentioned a small grocery shop
where more might be learnt. There the woman did recollect Mrs. Jones as
a very decent lady, and likewise her being in better lodgings until
deserted by her husband, the scamp, who had gone off in an Australian
steamer.
At these lodgings the inquiry resulted in the discovery of the name of
the steamer; and there was still time to look up the agent and the date
approximately enough to obtain the list of the crew, with David Jones
among them. It further appeared that this same David Jones had fallen
overboard and been drowned, but as he had not entered himself as a
married man, his wife had remained in ignorance of his fate. It was,
however, perfectly clear that the little girl was an orphan, and that
Bertha might be quite undisturbed in the possession of her.
And thus Lord Northmoor came home a good deal fagged, and shocked by the
interior he had seen at Rotherhithe, but quite triumphant.
Bertha was delighted, and declared herself eternally grateful to him; and
she could not but entertain the hope that the _soi-disant_ parent would
make another application, in which case she was quite prepared to give
him into custody; and she proceeded to reckon up the number of times that
he had applied to her, and the amount that he had extracted, wondering at
herself for not having asked for proofs, but owning that she had been
afraid of being thus compelled to give up the child to perdition.
The applications had all been within the last year, so that the man had
probably learnt from Louisa Hall, the nursery-maid, that Cea was the
child of a deserted wife.
A letter from Mrs. Morton gave some of the antecedents of Sam Rattler, as
learnt from Mrs. Hall, the charwoman, whose great dread he was. His real
surname was Jones, and he was probably a Samuel Jones whose name Lord
Northmoor had noted as a boy on board David's ship. He belonged to a
decent family in a country village, but had run away to sea, and was
known at Westhaven by this nickname. He had a brother settled in Canada,
who had lately written to propose to him a berth on one of the Ontario
steamers, and it was poor Mrs. Hall's dread that her daughter should
accompany him, though happily want of money prevented it. As to his
appearance, as to which there had been special inquiries, he was a tall
fine-looking man, with a black beard, and half the girls at Westhaven
were fools enough to be after him.
All this tallied with what had been gathered from the child, and this
last had probably been a bold attempt to procure the passage-money for
his sweetheart.
He never did call again, having probably been convinced of the failure of
his scheme, and scenting danger, so that every day for a fortnight Bertha
met her cousin with a disappointed 'No Rattler!'