A Plunge into the Maze.
“Her plea is simply that she is married--that seems all there is to
say.”
“I am aware she says that,” said Mr. Tottenham. “I hope to heaven she
can prove it, Earnshaw, and end this tempest in a tea-cup! I am sick of
the whole affair! Has her husband deserted her, or is he dead, or what
has become of him? I hope she gave you some proofs.”
“I must make inquiries before I can answer,” said Edgar. “By some
miserable chance friends of my own are involved. I must get at the
bottom of it. Her husband--if he is her husband--has married again; in
his own rank--a lady in whom I am deeply interested----”
“My dear fellow!” said Mr. Tottenham, “what a business for you! Did the
woman know, confound her? There, I don’t often speak rashly, but some of
these women, upon my honour, would try the patience of a saint! I
daresay it’s all a lie. That sort of person cares no more for a lie!
I’ll pack her off out of the establishment, and we’ll think of it no
more.”
“Pardon me, I must think of it, and follow it out,” said Edgar; “it is
too serious to be neglected. Altogether independent of this woman, a
lady’s--my friend’s happiness, her reputation, perhaps her life--for how
could she outlive name and fame, and love and confidence?” he said,
suddenly feeling himself overcome by the horrible suggestion. “It looks
like preferring my own business to yours, but I must see to this first.”
“Go, go, my dear Earnshaw--never mind my business--have some money and
go!” cried Mr. Tottenham. “I can’t tell you how grieved I am to have
brought you into this. Poor lady! poor lady!--I won’t ask who it is. But
recollect they lie like the devil!--they don’t mind what they say, like
you or me, who understand the consequences; they think of nothing beyond
the spite of the moment. I am in for three quarrels, and a resignation,
all because I want to please them!” cried the poor master of the great
shop, dolorously. He accompanied Edgar out to the private door,
continuing his plaint. “A nothing will do it,” he said; “and they don’t
care for what happens, so long as they indulge the temper of the moment.
To lose their employment, or their friends, or the esteem of those who
would try to help them in everything--all this is nought. I declare I
could almost cry like a baby when I think of it! Don’t be cast down,
Earnshaw. More likely than not it’s all a lie!”
“If I cannot get back this evening in time for you--” Edgar began.
“Never mind, never mind. Go to the Square. I’ll tell them to have a room
ready for you. And take some money--nothing is to be done without
money. And, Earnshaw,” lie added, calling after him some minutes later,
when Edgar was at the door, “on second thoughts, you won’t say anything
to Mary about my little troubles? After all, the best of us have got our
tempers; perhaps I am injudicious, and expect too much. She has always
had her doubts about my mode of treatment. Don’t, there’s a good fellow,
betray to them at home that I lost my temper too!”
This little preliminary to the Entertainment was locked in Edgar’s
bosom, and never betrayed to anyone. To tell the truth, his mind was
much too full of more important matters to think upon any such
inconsiderable circumstance; for he was not the Apostle of the Shop, and
had no scheme to justify and uphold in the eyes of all men and women.
Edgar, I fear, was not of the stuff of which social reformers are made.
The concerns of the individual were more important to him at all times
than those of the mass; and one human shadow crossing his way,
interested his heart and mind far beyond a mere crowd, though the crowd,
no doubt, as being multitudinous, must have been more important. Edgar
turned his back upon the establishment with, I fear, very little
Christian feeling towards Tottenham’s, and all concerned with it--hating
the Entertainment, weary of Mr. Tottenham himself, and disgusted with
the strange impersonation of cruelty and selfishness which had just been
revealed to him in the form of a woman. He could not shut out from his
eyes that thin white face, so full of self, so destitute of any generous
feeling.
Such stories have been told before in almost every tone of sympathy and
reprobation; women betrayed have been wept in every language under
heaven, and their betrayer denounced, but what was there to lament
about, to denounce here? A woman sharp and clever to make the best of
her bargain; a man trying legal cheats upon her; two people drawn
together by some semblance of what is called passion, yet each watching
and scheming, how best, on either side, to outwit the other. Never was
tale of misery and despair so pitiful; for this was all baseness,
meanness, calculation on both hands. They were fitly matched, and it was
little worth any man’s while to interfere between them--but, O heaven!
to think of the other fate involved in theirs. This roused Edgar to an
excitement which was almost maddening. To think that these two base
beings had wound into their miserable tangle the feet of Clare--that her
innocent life must pay the penalty for their evil lives, that she must
bear the dishonour while spotless from the guilt!
Edgar posted along the great London thoroughfare, through the
continually varying crowd of passers-by, absorbed in an agitation and
disquiet which drove all his own affairs out of his head. His own
affairs might involve much trouble and distress; but neither shame nor
guilt was in them. Heaven above! to think that guilt or shame could have
anything to do with Clare!
Now Clare had not been, at least at the last, a very good sister to
Edgar--she was not his sister at all, so far as blood went; and when
this had been discovered, and the homeliness of his real origin
identified, Clare had shrunk from him, notwithstanding that for all her
life, in childish fondness and womanly sympathy, she had loved him as
her only brother. Edgar had mournfully consented to a complete severance
between them. She had married his enemy; and he himself had sunk so much
out of sight that he had felt no further intercourse to be possible,
though his affectionate heart had felt it deeply. But as soon as he
heard of her danger, all his old love for his sister had sprung up in
Edgar’s heart. He took back her name, as it were, into the number of
those sounds most familiar to him. “Clare,” he said to himself, feeling
a thrill of renewed warmth go through him, mingled with poignant
pain--“Clare, my sister, my only sister, the sole creature in the world
that belongs to me!” Alas! she did not belong to Edgar any more than any
inaccessible princess; but in his heart this was what he felt. He pushed
his way through the full streets, with the air and the sentiment of a
man bound upon the most urgent business, seeing little on his way,
thinking of nothing but his object--the object in common which Miss
Lockwood had supposed him to have with herself. But Edgar did not even
remember that--he thought of nothing but Clare’s comfort and well-being
which were concerned, and how it would be possible to confound her
adversaries, and save her from ignoble persecution. If he could keep it
from her knowledge altogether! But, alas! how could that be done? He
went faster and faster, driven by his thoughts.
The address Miss Lockwood had given him was in a small street off the
Hampstead Road. That strange long line of street, with here and there a
handful of older houses, a broader pavement, a bit of dusty garden, to
show the suburban air it once had possessed; its heterogeneous shops,
furniture, birdcages, perambulators, all kinds of out-of-the-way wares
fled past the wayfarer, taking wings to themselves, he thought. It is
not an interesting quarter, and Edgar had no time to give to any
picturesque or historical reminiscences. When he reached the little
street in which the chapel he sought was situated, he walked up on one
side and down on the other, expecting every moment to see the building
of which he was in search. A chapel is not a thing apt to disappear,
even in the changeful district of Camden Town. Rubbing his eyes, he went
up and down again, inspecting the close lines of mean houses. The only
break in the street was where two or three small houses, of a more
bilious brick than usual, whose outlines had not yet been toned down by
London soot and smoke, diversified the prospect. He went to a little
shop opposite this yellow patch upon the old grimy garment to make
inquiries.
“Chapel! there ain’t no chapel hereabouts,” said the baker, who was
filling his basket with loaves.
“Hold your tongue, John,” said his wife, from the inner shop. “I’ll set
you all right in a moment. There’s where the chapel was, sir, right
opposite. There was a bit of a yard where they’ve built them houses. The
chapel is behind; but it ain’t a chapel now. It’s been took for an
infant school by our new Rector. Don’t you see a little bit of an entry
at that open door? That’s where you go in. But since it’s been shut up
there’s been a difference in the neighbourhood. Most of us is church
folks now.”
“And does nothing remain of the chapel--nobody belonging to it, no books
nor records?” cried Edgar, suddenly brought to a standstill. The woman
looked at him surprised.
“I never heard as they had any books--more than the hymn-books, which
they took with them, I suppose. It’s our new Rector as has bought it--a
real good man, as gives none of us no peace----”
“And sets you all on with your tongues,” said her husband, throwing his
basket over his shoulder.
Edgar did not wait to hear the retort of the wife, and felt no interest
in the doings of the new Rector. He did not know what to do in this
unforeseen difficulty. He went across the road, and up the little entry,
and looked at the grimy building beyond, which was no great satisfaction
to his feelings. It was a dreary little chapel, of the most ordinary
type, cleared of its pews, and filled with the low benches and staring
pictures of an infant school, and looked as if it had been thrust up
into a corner by the little line of houses built across the scrap of
open space which had formerly existed in front of its doors. As he gazed
round him helplessly, another woman came up, who asked with bated breath
what he wanted.
“We’re all church folks now hereabouts,” she said; “but I don’t mind
telling you, sir, as a stranger, I was always fond of the old chapel.
What preaching there used to be, to be sure!--dreadful rousing and
comforting! And it’s more relief, like, to the mind, to say, ‘Lord, ha’
mercy upon us!’ or, ‘Glory, glory!’ or the like o’ that, just when you
pleases, than at set times out o’ a book. There’s nothing most but
prayers here now. If you want any of the chapel folks, maybe I could
tell you. I’ve been in the street twenty years and more.”
“I want to find out about a marriage that took place here ten years
ago,” said Edgar.
“Marriage!” said the woman, shaking her head. “I don’t recollect no
marriage. Preachings are one thing, and weddings is another. I don’t
hold with weddings out of church. If there’s any good in church--”
Edgar had to stop this exposition by asking after the “chapel-folks” to
whom she could direct him, and in answer was told of three tradesmen in
the neighbourhood who “held by the Methodys,” one of whom had been a
deacon in the disused chapel. This was a carpenter, who could not be
seen till his dinner-hour, and on whom Edgar had to dance attendance
with very indifferent satisfaction; for the deacon’s report was that the
chapel had never been, so far as he could remember, licensed for
marriages, and that none had taken place within it. This statement,
however, was flatly contradicted by the pork-butcher, whose name was the
next on his list, and who recollected to have heard that some one had
been married there just about the time indicated by Miss Lockwood.
Finally, Edgar lighted on an official who had been a local preacher in
the days of the chapel, and who was now a Scripture-reader, under the
sway of the new Rector, who had evidently turned the church and parish
upside-down. This personage had known something of the Lockwoods, and
was not disinclined--having ascertained that Edgar was a stranger, and
unlikely to betray any of his hankerings after the chapel--to gossip
about the little defunct community. Its books and records had, he said,
been removed, when it was closed, to some central office of the
denomination, where they would, no doubt, be shown on application. This
man was very anxious to give a great deal of information quite apart
from the matter in hand. He gave Edgar a sketch of the decay of the
chapel, in which, I fear, the young man took no interest, though it was
curious enough; and he told him about the Lockwoods, and about the
eldest daughter, who, he was afraid, had come to no good.
“She said as she was married, but nobody believed her. She was always a
flighty one,” said the Scripture-reader.
This was all that Edgar picked up out of a flood of unimportant
communications. He could not even find any clue to the place where these
denominational records were kept, and by this time the day was too far
advanced to do more. Drearily he left the grimy little street, with its
damp pavements, its poor little badly-lighted shops and faint lamps, not
without encountering the new Rector in person, an omniscient personage,
who had already heard of his inquiries, and regarded him suspiciously,
as perhaps a “Methody” in disguise, planning the restoration of dissent
in a locality just purged from its taint. Edgar was too tired, too
depressed and down-hearted to be amused by the watchful look of the
muscular Christian, who saw in him a wolf prowling about the fold. He
made his way into the main road, and jumped into a hansom, and drove
down the long line of shabby, crowded thoroughfare, so mean and small,
yet so great and full of life. Those miles and miles of mean, monotonous
street, without a feature to mark one from another, full of crowds of
human creatures, never heard of, except as counting so many hundreds,
more or less, in the year’s calendar of mortality--how strangely
impressive they become at last by mere repetition, mass upon mass, crowd
upon crowd, poor, nameless, mean, unlovely! Perhaps it was the general
weariness and depression of Edgar’s whole being that brought this
feeling into his mind as he drove noisily, silently along between those
lines of faintly-lighted houses towards what is impertinently, yet
justly, called the habitable part of London. For one fair, bright path
in the social, as in the physical world, how many mean, and darkling,
and obscure!--how small the spot which lies known and visible to the
general eye!--how great the confused darkness all round! Such
reflections are the mere growth of weariness and despondency, but they
heighten the depression of which they are an evidence.
The whole of noisy, crowded London was as a wilderness to Edgar. He
drove to his club, where he had not been since the day when he met Mr.
Tottenham. So short a time ago, and yet how his life had altered in the
interval! He was no longer drifting vaguely upon the current, as he had
been doing. His old existence had caught at him with anxious hands.
Notwithstanding all the alterations of time, circumstances, and being,
he was at this moment not Edgar Earnshaw at all, but the Edgar Arden of
three years ago, caught back into the old sphere, surrounded by the old
thoughts. Such curious vindications of the unchangeableness of
character, the identity of being, which suddenly seize upon a man, and
whirl him back in a moment, defying all external changes, into his old,
his unalterable self, are among the strangest things in humanity. Dizzy
with the shock he had received, harassed by anxiety, worn out by
unsuccessful effort, Edgar felt the world swim round with him, and
scarcely could answer to himself who he was. Had all the Lockwood
business been a dream? Was it a dream that he had been as a stranger for
three long years to Clare, his sister--to Gussy, his almost bride? And
yet his mind at this moment was as full of their images as if no
interval had been.
After he had dined and refreshed himself, he set to work with, I
think,--notwithstanding his anxiety, the first shock of which was now
over,--a thrill of conscious energy, and almost pleasure in something to
do, which was so much more important than those vague lessons to Phil,
or vaguer studies in experimental philosophy, to which his mind had
been lately turned. To be here on the spot, ready to work for Clare when
she was assailed, was something to be glad of, deeply as the idea of
such an assault upon her had excited and pained him. And at the same
time as his weariness wore off, and the first excitement cooled down, he
began to feel himself more able to realize the matter in all its
particulars, and see the safer possibilities. It began to appear to him
likely enough that all that could be proved was Arthur Arden’s villainy,
a subject which did not much concern him, which had no novelty in it,
and which, though Clare was Arthur Arden’s wife, could not affect her
more now than it had done ever since she married him. Indeed, if it was
but this, there need be no necessity for communicating it to Clare at
all. It was more probable, when he came to think of it, that an educated
and clever man should be able to outwit a dressmaker girl, however
deeply instructed in the laws of marriage by novels and _causes
célèbres_, than that she should outwit him; and in this case there was
nothing that need ever be made known to Clare.
Edgar was glad, and yet I don’t know that a certain disappointment,
quite involuntary and unawares, did not steal into his mind with this
thought; for he had begun to cherish an idea of seeing his sister, of
perhaps resuming something of his old intercourse with her, and at least
of being known to have worked for and defended her. These thoughts,
however, were but the secondary current in his mind, while the working
part of it was planning a further enterprise for the morrow. He got the
directory, and, after considerable trouble, found out from it the names
and addresses of certain officials of the Wesleyan body, to whom he
could go in search of the missing registers of the Hart Street
Chapel--if registers there were--or who could give him definite and
reliable information, in face of the conflicting testimony he had
already received, as to whether marriages had ever been celebrated in
it.
Edgar knew, I suppose, as much as other men generally do about the
ordinary machinery of society, but he did not know where to lay his hand
on any conclusive official information about the Hart Street Chapel,
whether it had ever been licenced, or had any legal existence as a place
of worship, any more than--you or I would, dear reader, were we in a
similar difficulty. Who knows anything about such matters? He had lost a
day already in the merest A B C of preliminary inquiry, and no doubt
would lose several more.
Then he took out the most important of Miss Lockwood’s papers, which he
had only glanced at as yet. It was dated from a small village in the
Western Highlands, within reach, as he knew, of Loch Arroch, and was a
certificate, signed by Helen Campbell and John Mactaggart, that Arthur
Arden and Emma Lockwood had that day, in their presence, declared
themselves to be man and wife. Edgar’s knowledge of such matters had, I
fear, been derived entirely from novels and newspaper reports, and he
read over the document, which was alarmingly explicit and
straightforward, with a certain panic. He said to himself that there
were no doubt ways in law by which to lessen the weight of such an
attestation, or means of shaking its importance; but it frightened him
just as he was escaping from his first fright, and brought back all his
excitement and alarm.
He did not go to Berkeley Square, as Mr. Tottenham had recommended, but
to his old lodgings, where he found a bed with difficulty, and where
once more his two lives seemed to meet in sharp encounter. But his head
by this time was too full of schemes for to-morrow to permit of any
personal speculation; he was far, as yet, from seeing any end to his
undertaking, and it was impossible to tell what journeys, what
researches might be still before him.