CONFESSION.
October came in; and we were married early in the month, the wedding
taking place from Mrs. Brightman's residence, as was of course only
right and proper. It was so very quiet a wedding that there is not the
least necessity for describing it--and how can a young man be expected
to give the particulars of his own? Mr. Serjeant Stillingfar was
present; Lord and Lady Level, now staying in London, drove down for
it; and Captain Chantrey gave his niece away. For Mrs. Brightman had
chosen to request him to accept her invitation to do so, and to be
accompanied by his wife, Lady Grace. Miss Brightman was also present,
having travelled up from Hastings the day before. Three or four days
later on, she would sail for Madeira.
I could not spare more than a fortnight from work, leaving Lennard as
my locum tenens. Annabel would have been glad to spare less, for she
was haunted by visions of what might happen to her mother. Though
there was no especial cause for anxiety in that quarter just now, she
could never feel at ease. And on my part I was more anxious than ever
about Tom Heriot, for more reasons than one.
The fortnight came to an end, all too soon: and late on the Saturday
evening we reached home. Watts threw open the door, and there stood
Leah in a silk gown. The drawing-room, gayer than it used to be, was
bright with a fire and preparations for tea.
"How homelike it looks!" exclaimed Annabel. "Charles," she whispered,
turning to me with her earnest eyes, as she had been wont to do when a
child: "I will not make the least noise when you have clients with
you. You shall not know I am in the house: I will take care not to
drop even a reel of cotton on the carpet. I do thank you for letting
me come to Essex Street: I should not have seemed so completely your
wife had you taken me to any but your old home."
The floors above were also in order, their chambers refurnished. Leah
went up to them with her new mistress, and I went down to the clerks'
office, telling Annabel I should not be there five minutes. One of the
clerks, Allen, had waited; but I had expected Lennard.
"Is Mr. Lennard not here?" I asked. "Did he not wait? I wrote to him
to do so."
"Mr. Lennard has not been here all day, sir," was Allen's reply. "A
messenger came from him this morning, to say he was ill."
We were deep in letters and other matters, I and Allen, when the front
door opened next the office door, and there stood Arthur Lake,
laughing, a light coat on his arm.
"Fancy! I've been down the river for a blow," cried he. "Just landed
at the pier here. Seeing lights in your windows, I thought you must
have got back, Charley."
We shook hands, and he stayed a minute, talking. Then, wishing
good-night to Allen, he backed out of the room, making an almost
imperceptible movement to me with his head. I followed him out,
shutting the office door behind me. Lake touched my arm and drew me
outside.
"I suppose you've not heard from Tom Heriot since you were away,"
breathed Lake, in cautious tones, as we stood together on the outer
step.
"No; I did not expect to hear. Why?"
"I saw him three days ago," whispered Lake. "I had a queer-looking
letter on Wednesday morning from one Mr. Dominic Turk, asking me to
call at a certain place in Southwark. Of course, I guessed it was
Tom, and that he had moved his lodgings again; and I found I was
right."
"Dominic Turk!" I repeated. "Does he call himself _that_?"
Lake laughed. "He is passing now for a retired schoolmaster. Says he's
sure nobody can doubt he is one as long as he sticks to that name."
"How is he? Has any fresh trouble turned up? I'm sure you've something
bad to tell me."
"Well, Charley, honestly speaking, it is a bad look-out, in more ways
than one," he answered. "He is very ill, to begin with; also has an
idea that a certain policeman named Wren has picked up an inkling of
his return, and is trying to unearth him. But," added Lake, "we can't
very well talk in this place. I've more to say----"
"Come upstairs, and take tea with me and Annabel," I interrupted.
"Can't," said he; "my dinner's waiting. I'm back two hours later than
I expected to be; it has been frizzling, I expect, all the time.
Besides, old fellow, I'd rather you and I were alone. There's fearful
peril looming ahead, unless I'm mistaken. Can you come round to my
chambers to-morrow afternoon?"
"No: we are going to Mrs. Brightman's after morning service."
"It must be left until Monday, then; but I don't think there's much
time to be lost. Good-night."
Lake hastened up the street, and I returned to Allen and the letters.
With this interruption, and with all I found to do, the five minutes'
absence I had promised my wife lengthened into twenty. At last the
office was closed for the night, Allen left, and I ran upstairs,
expecting to have kept Annabel waiting tea. She was not in the
drawing-room, the tea was not made, and I went up higher and found her
sobbing in the bedroom. It sent me into a cold chill.
"My love, what is this? Are you disappointed? Are you not happy?"
"Oh, Charles," she sobbed, clinging to me, "you _know_ I am happy. It
is not that. But I could not help thinking of my father. Leah got
talking about him; and I remembered once his sitting in that very
chair, holding me on his knee. I must have been about seven years old.
Miss Methold was ill----"
At that moment there came a knock and a ring at the front door. Not a
common knock and ring, but sharp, loud and prolonged, resounding
through the house as from some impatient messenger of evil. It
startled us both. Annabel's fears flew to her mother; mine to a
different quarter, for Lake's communication was troubling and
tormenting me.
"Charles! if----"
"Hush, dear. Listen."
As we stood outside on the landing, her heart beating against my
encircling hand, and our senses strained to listen, we heard Watts
open the front door.
"Has Mr. Strange come home?" cried a voice hurriedly--that of a
woman.
"Yes," said Watts.
"Can I speak to him? It is on a matter of life and death."
"Where do you come from?" asked Watts, with habitual caution.
"I come from Mr. Lennard. Oh, pray do not waste time!"
"All right, my darling; it is not from your mother," I whispered to
Annabel, as I ran down.
A young woman stood at the foot of the stairs; I was at a loss to
guess her condition in life. She had the face and manner of a lady,
but her dress was poor and shabby.
"I have come from my father, sir--Mr. Lennard," she said in a low
tone, blushing very much. "He is dangerously ill: we fear he is dying,
and so does he. He bade me say that he must see you, or he cannot die
in peace. Will you please be at the trouble of coming?"
One hasty word despatched to my wife, and I went out with Miss
Lennard, hailing a cab, which had just set down its freight some
doors higher up. "What is the matter with your father?" I questioned,
as we whirled along towards Blackfriars Bridge, in accordance with her
directions.
"It is an attack of inward inflammation," she replied. "He was taken
ill suddenly last night after he got home from the office, and he has
been in great agony all day. This evening he grew better; the pain
almost subsided; but the doctor said that might not prove a favourable
symptom. My father asked for the truth--whether he was dying, and the
answer was that he might be. Then my father grew terribly uneasy in
mind, and said he must see you if possible before he died--and sent me
to ascertain, sir, whether you had returned home."
The cab drew up at a house in a side street, a little beyond
Blackfriars Bridge. We entered, and Miss Lennard left me in the front
sitting-room. The remnants of faded gentility were strangely mixed
with bareness and poverty. Poor Lennard was a gentleman born and bred,
but had been reduced by untoward misfortune. Trifling ornaments stood
about; "antimacassars" were thrown over the shabby chairs. Miss
Lennard had gone upstairs, but came down quickly.
"It is the door on the left, sir, on the second landing," said she,
putting a candle in my hand. "My father is anxiously expecting you,
but says I am not to go up."
It was a small landing, nothing in front of me but a bare white-washed
wall, and _two_ doors to the left. I blundered into the wrong one. A
night-cap border turned on the bed, and a girlish face looked up from
under it.
"What do you want?" she said.
"Pardon me. I am in search of Mr. Lennard."
"Oh, it is the next room. But--sir! wait a moment. Oh, wait, wait!"
I turned to her in surprise, and she put up two thin white hands in an
imploring attitude. "Is it anything bad? Have you come to take him?"
"To take him! What do you mean?"
"You are not a sheriff's officer?"
I smiled at her troubled countenance. "I am Mr. Strange--come to see
how he is."
Down fell her hands peacefully. "Sir, I beg your pardon: thank you for
telling me. I know papa has sometimes been in apprehension, and I lie
here and fear things till I am stupid. A strange step on the stairs,
or a strange knock at the door, sets me shaking."
The next room was the right one, and Lennard was lying in it on a low
bed; his face looked ghastly, his eyes wildly anxious.
"Lennard," I said, "I am sorry to hear of your illness. What's the
matter?"
"Sit down, Mr. Strange; sit down," he added, pointing to a chair,
which I drew near. "It is an attack of inflammation: the pain has
ceased now, but the doctor says it is an uncertain symptom: it may be
for better, or it may be for worse. If the latter, I have not many
hours to live."
"What brought it on?"
"I don't know: unless it was that I drank a draught of cold water
when I was hot. I have not been very strong for some time, and a
little thing sends me into a violent heat. I had a long walk, four
miles, and I made nearly a run of it half the way, being pressed for
time. When I got in, I asked Leah for some water, and drank two
glasses of it, one after the other. It seemed to strike a chill to me
at the time."
"It was at the office, then. Four miles! Why did you not ride?"
"It was not your business I was out on, sir; it was my own. But
whether that was the cause or not, the illness came on, and it cannot
be remedied now. If I am to die, I must die; God is over all: but I
cannot go without making a confession to you. How the fear of death's
approach alters a man's views and feelings!" he went on, in a
different tone. "Yesterday, had I been told I must make this
confession to you, I should have said, Let me die, rather; but it
appears to me now to be an imperative duty, and one I must nerve
myself to perform."
Lennard lay on his pillow, and looked fixedly at me, and I not less
fixedly at him. What, in the shape of a "confession," could he have to
make to me? He had been managing clerk in Mr. Brightman's office long
before I was in it, a man of severe integrity, and respected by all.
"The night Mr. Brightman died," he began under his panting breath,
"the bag of gold was missing--George Coney's. You remember it."
"Well?"
"I took it."
Was Lennard's mind wandering? He was no more likely to take gold than
I was. I sat still, gazing at him.
"Yes, it was I who took it, sir. Will you hear the tale?"
A deep breath, and the drawing of my chair closer to his bedside, was
my only answer.
"You are a young man, Mr. Strange. I have taken an interest in you
since you first came, a lad, into the office, and were under my
authority--Charles, do this; Charles, do the other. Not that I have
shown any especial interest, for outwardly I am cold and
undemonstrative; but I saw what you were, and liked you in my heart.
You are a young man yet, I say; but, liking you, hoping for your
welfare, I pray Heaven that it may never be your fate, in after-life,
to be trammelled with misfortunes as I have been. For me they seem to
have had no end, and the worst of them in later years has been that
brought upon me by an undutiful and spendthrift son."
In a moment there flashed into my mind _my_ later trouble in Tom
Heriot: I seemed to be comparing the one with the other. "Have you
been trammelled with an undutiful son?" I said aloud.
"I have been, and am," replied Lennard. "It has been my later cross.
The first was that of losing my property and position in life, for, as
you know, Mr. Strange, I was born and reared a gentleman. The last
cross has been Leonard--that is his name, Leonard Lennard--and it has
been worse than the first, for it has kept us _down_, and in a
perpetual ferment for years. It has kept us poor amongst the poor: my
salary, as you know, is a handsome one, but it has chiefly to be
wasted upon him."
"What age is he?"
"Six-and-twenty yesterday."
"Then you are not forced to supply his extravagance, to find money for
his faults and follies. You are not obliged to let him keep you down."
"By law, no," sighed poor Lennard. "But these ill-doing sons sometimes
entwine themselves around your very heartstrings; far rather would you
suffer and suffer than not ward off the ill from them. He has tried
his hand at many occupations, but remains at none; the result is
always trouble: and yet his education and intellect, his good looks
and perfect, pleasant manners, would fit him for almost any
responsible position in life. But he is reckless. Get into what scrape
he would, whether of debt, or worse, here he was sure of a refuge and
a welcome; I received him, his mother and sisters loved him. One of
them is bedridden," he added, in an altered tone.
"I went first by mistake into the next room. I probably saw her."
"Yes, that's Maria. It is a weakness that has settled in her legs;
some chronic affection, I suppose; and there she has lain for ten
months. With medical attendance and sea air she might be restored,
they tell me, but I can provide neither. Leonard's claims have been
too heavy."
"But should you waste means on him that ought to be applied to her
necessities?" I involuntarily interrupted.
He half raised himself on his elbow, and the effort proved how weak he
was, and his eyes and his voice betrayed a strange earnestness. "When
a son, whom you love better than life itself, has to be saved from the
consequences of his follies, from prison, from worse disgrace even
than that, other interests are forgotten, let them be what they may.
Silent, patient needs give way to obtrusive wants that stare you in
the face, and that may bear fear and danger in their train. Mr.
Strange, you can imagine this."
"I do. It must ever be so."
"The pecuniary wants of a young man, such as my son is, are as the cry
of the horse-leech. Give! give! Leonard mixes sometimes with distant
relatives, young fellows of fashion, who are moving in a sphere far
above our present position, although I constantly warn him not to do
it. One of these wants, imperative and to be provided for in some way
or other, occurred the beginning of February in this year. How I
managed to pay it I can hardly tell, but it stripped me of all the
money I could raise, and left me with some urgent debts upon me. The
rent was owing, twelve months the previous December, and some of the
tradespeople were becoming clamorous. The landlord, discerning the
state of affairs, put in a distress, terrifying poor Maria, whose
illness had then not very long set in, almost to death. That I had
the means to pay the man out you may judge, when I tell you that we
had not the money to buy a joint of meat or a loaf of bread."
Lennard paused to wipe the dew from his brow.
"Maria was in bed, wanting comforts; Charlotte was worn out with
apprehension; Leonard was away again, and we had nothing. Of my wife I
will not speak: of delicate frame and delicately reared, the
long-continued troubles have reduced her to a sort of dumb apathy. No
credit anywhere, and a distress in for rent! In sheer despair, I
resolved to disclose part of my difficulty to Mr. Brightman, and ask
him to advance me a portion of my next quarter's salary. I hated to do
it. A reduced gentleman is, perhaps, over-fastidious. I know I have
been so, and my pride rose against it. In health, I could not have
spoken to you, Mr. Charles, as I am now doing. I went on,
shilly-shallying for a few days. On the Saturday morning Charlotte
came to me with a whisper: 'That man in the house says if the rent is
not paid to-night, the things will be taken out and sold on Monday: it
is the very last day they'll give.' I went to the office, my mind made
up at length, and thinking what I should say to Mr. Brightman. Should
I tell him part of the truth, or should I urge some plea, foreign to
it? It was an unusually busy day: I dare say you remember it, Mr.
Charles, for it was that of Mr. Brightman's sudden death. Client after
client called, and no opportunity offered for my speaking to him in
private. I waited for him to come down, on his way out in the evening,
thinking I would speak to him then. He did not come, and when the
clients left, and I went upstairs, I found he was stopping in town to
see Sir Edmund Clavering. I should have spoken to him then, but you
were present. He told me to look in again in the course of the
evening, and I hoped I might find him alone then. You recollect the
subsequent events of the night, sir?"
"I shall never forget them."
"When I came in, as he directed me, between seven and eight o'clock,
there occurred that flurry with Leah--the cause of which I never knew.
She said Mr. Brightman was alone, and I went up. He was lying in your
room, Mr. Charles; had fallen close to his own desk, the deep drawer
of which stood open. I tried to raise him; I sprinkled water on his
face, but I saw that he was dead. On the desk lay a small canvas bag.
I took it up and shook it. Why, I do not know, for I declare that no
wrong thought had then come into my mind. He appeared to have
momentarily put it out of the drawer, probably in search of something,
for his private cheque-book and the key of the iron safe, that I knew
were always kept in the drawer, lay near it. I shook the bag, and its
contents sounded like gold. I opened it, and counted thirty
sovereigns. Mr. Brightman was dead. I could not apply to him; and yet
money I must have. The temptation upon me was strong, and I took it.
Don't turn away from me, sir. There are some temptations too strong to
be resisted by a man in his necessities."
"Indeed, I am not turning from you. The temptation was overwhelmingly
great."
"Indeed," continued the sick man, "the devil was near me then. I put
the key and the cheque-book inside, and I locked the drawer, and
placed the keys in Mr. Brightman's pocket, where he kept them, and I
leaped down the stairs with the bag in my hand. It was all done in a
minute or two of time, though it seems long in relating it. Where
should I put the bag, now I had it? Upon my person? No: it might be
missed directly, and inquired for. I was in a tumult--scarcely sane, I
believe--and I dashed into the clerks' office, and, taking off the lid
of the coal-box, put it there. Then I tore off for a surgeon. You know
the rest. When I returned with him you were there; and the next
visitor, while we were standing round Mr. Brightman, was George Coney,
after his bag of money. I never shall forget the feeling when you
motioned me to take Mr. Brightman's keys from his pocket to get the
bag out of the drawer. Or when--after it was missed--you took me with
you to search for it, in the very office where it was, and I moved the
coal-box under the desk. Had you only happened to lift the lid, sir!"
"Ah!"
"When the search was over, and I went home, I had put the bag in my
breastpocket. The gold saved me from immediate trouble, but----"
"You have sent it back to me, you know--the bag and the thirty
pounds."
"Yes, I sent it back--tardily. I _could_ not do it earlier, though the
crime coloured my days with remorse, and I never knew a happy moment
until it was restored. But Leonard had been back again, and
restoration was not easy."
Miss Lennard opened the door at this juncture. "Papa, the doctor is
here. Can he come up? He says he ought to see you."
"Oh, certainly, he must come up," I interposed.
"Yes, yes, Charlotte," said Lennard.
The doctor came in, and stood looking at his patient, after putting a
few questions. "Well," said he, "you are better; you will get over
it."
"Do you really think so?" I asked joyfully.
"Decidedly I do, now. It has been a sharp twinge, but the danger's
over. You see, when pain suddenly ceases, mortification sometimes sets
in, and I could not be sure. But you will do this time, Mr. Lennard."
Lennard had little more to say; and, soon after the doctor left, I
prepared to follow him.
"There's a trifle of salary due to me, Mr. Strange," he whispered;
"that which has been going on since Quarter Day. I suppose you will
not keep it from me?"
"Keep it from you! No. Why should I? Do you want it at once? You can
have it if you do."
Leonard looked up wistfully. "You do not think of taking me back
again? You will not do that?"
"Yes, I will. You and I shall understand each other better than ever
now."
The tears welled up to his eyes. He laid his other hand--I had taken
one--across his face. I bent over him with a whisper.
"What has passed to-night need never be recurred to between us; and I
shall never speak of it to another. We all have our trials and
troubles, Lennard. A very weighty one is lying now upon me, though it
is not absolutely my own--_brought_ upon me, you see, as yours was.
And it is worse than yours."
"Worse!" he exclaimed, looking at me.
"More dangerous in its possible consequences. Now mind," I broke off,
shaking him by the hand, "you are not to attempt to come to Essex
Street until you are quite strong enough for it. But I shall see you
here again on Monday, for I have two or three questions to ask you as
to some of the matters that have transpired during my absence.
Good-night, Lennard; keep up a good heart; you will outlive your
trials yet."
And when I left him he was fairly sobbing.