"MISSING--A GENTLEMAN"
"Age about thirty. Height five feet nine inches and a half--fair
complexion--light-grey eyes--small reddish-brown whiskers,
close-trimmed--short dark hair. Speaks fast, in a high key, and has a
habit of drawing out his shirt-sleeves from beneath his cuffs. When
last seen, was dressed in a dark surtout, fancy necktie, black-cloth
waist-coat, Oxford-mixture trousers, and Balmoral boots. Wore a black
hat with maker's name inside--Block and Co., 401 Regent Street.
Whoever will give such information to the authorities as may lead to
the discovery of the above, shall receive--A Reward!"
Such was the placard that afforded a few minutes' speculation for the
few people who had leisure to read it, one fine morning about a week
after Mrs. Stanmore's eventful ball, and towards the close of the
London season; eliciting at the same time criticism not altogether
favourable on the style of composition affected by our excellent
police. The man was missing no doubt, and had been missing for some
days before anxiety, created by his absence, growing into alarm for
his safety, had produced the foregoing advertisement, prompted by
certain affectionate misgivings of Mr. Bargrave, since the lost sheep
was none other than his nephew Tom Ryfe. The old man felt, indeed,
seriously discomposed by the prolonged absence of this the only member
of his family. It was unjustifiable, as he remarked twenty times a
day, unfeeling, unheard-of, unaccountable. He rang for the servants at
his private residence every quarter of an hour or so to learn if the
truant had returned. He questioned the boy at the office sharply and
repeatedly as to orders left with him by Mr. Ryfe before he went away,
only to gather from the answers of this urchin, who would, indeed,
have forgotten any number of such directions, that he looked on the
present period of anxiety in the light of a holiday and festival,
devoutly praying that his taskmaster might never come back again.
Finally in despair poor Bargrave cast himself on the sympathy of
Dorothea, who listened to his bewailings with stolid indifference when
sober, and replied to them by surmises of the wildest improbability
when drunk.
Alas, in common with so many others of her class, the charwoman
took refuge from care in constant inebriety. Her imagination thus
stimulated, pointed, like that of some old Castilian adventurer,
steadily to the west.
"Lor, Mr. Bargrave," she would say, staring helplessly in his face,
and yielding to the genial hiccough which refused to be kept down, "he
be gone to 'Merriky, poor dear, to better hisself, I make no doubt.
Don't ye take on so. It's a weary world, it is; and that's where he be
gone, for sure!"
Yet she knew quite well where he was hidden all the time; and,
inasmuch as she had some regard for her kind old employer, the
knowledge almost drove her mad. Therefore it was that Dorothea,
harassed by conflicting feelings, drowned her sorrows perseveringly in
the bowl.
For a considerable period this poor woman had suffered a mental
torture, the severest, perhaps, to which her sex can be subjected. She
had seen the man she loved--and, though she was only a drudge, and not
by any means a tidy one, she could love very dearly--she had seen, I
say, the man she loved gradually learning to despise her affection,
and to estrange himself from her society. She was a good deal afraid
of "Gentleman Jim"--perhaps she liked him none the less for that--and
dared neither tax him with falsehood nor try to worm out of him the
assurance that she had or had not a rival. Nevertheless, she was
determined to ascertain the cause of her lover's indifference to
herself, and his changed conduct in other relations of life.
Jim had always been somewhat given to the adornment of his person,
affecting that flash and gaudy style of decoration so much in favour
with dog-stealers and men of like dubious professions. Of late,
however, he had adopted, with different tastes and habits, a totally
different costume--when "off duty," as he called it--meaning thereby
release from the fulfilment of some business engagement subject to
penalties affixed by our criminal code. He now draped himself in white
linen, dark-coloured clothes, a tall hat, and such outward marks of
respectability, if not station, going even so far as to invest in kid
gloves and an "umbrellier," as he called that instrument. At first
sight, but for his boots, Jim might almost have been mistaken for a
real gentleman. About this period, too, he left off vulgar liquors,
and shamefully abandoned a short black pipe that had stuck by him
through many ups and downs, substituting for these stimulants a great
deal of brown sherry and certain sad-coloured cigars, demanding strong
lungs and a strong stomach as well. These changes did the forlorn
Dorothea note with increasing anxiety, and, because every woman
becomes keen-sighted and quick-witted where her heart is concerned,
drew from them an augury fatal to her future happiness. After a while,
when the suspense grew intolerable, she resolved on putting a stop to
it by personal inquiry, and with that view, as a preliminary,
kept herself tolerably sober for twenty-four hours, during which
probationary period she instituted a grand "clean up" of his premises;
and so, as she mentally expressed it, "with a cool head and a clean
house and a clear conscience," confronted her employer on the stairs.
Old Bargrave had of late become very nervous and uneasy. The full
meals, the daily bottle of port, the life of self-indulgence, though
imparting an air of portliness and comfort while everything went well,
had unfitted him sadly for a contest with difficulty or reverse.
Like the fat troop-horse that looks so sightly on parade, a week's
campaigning reduced him to a miserable object--flabby, shrunk,
dispirited, and with a sinking heart at least, if not a sore back.
Dorothea's person blocked up the staircase before him, or he would
have slipped by and locked himself unnoticed in his chambers.
"Can I speak with you, sir?" said the charwoman. "Now, sir, if you
please--himmediate."
Old Bargrave trembled.
"Certainly, Dorothea, certainly. What is it, my good girl? You've
heard something. They've traced him--they've found him. One minute, my
good girl--one minute, if you please."
He had preceded her through the office to his own inner room, and now,
shaking all over, sat down in his easy-chair, pressing both hands hard
on its arms to steady himself. Dorothea, staring helplessly at the
wall over his head, made a muff of her apron, and curtsied; nothing
more.
"Speak!" gasped the old gentleman convulsively.
"It's my haunt, if you please, sir," said Dorothea, with another
curtsey.
"D----n your aunt!" vociferated Bargrave. "It's my nephew! Have you
heard nothing? I'm hasty, my good girl; I'm anxious. I--I haven't
another relation in the world. Have they told you anything more?"
Dorothea began to cry.
"He be gone to 'Meriker, for sure," she whimpered, trying back on the
old consolatory suggestion; "to better hisself, no doubt. It's me,
sir; that's my haunt. She's wuss this turn. An' if so be as you could
spare me for the day--I've been and cleaned up everythink, and I'd
wipe over that there table and shake the dust out o' them curtains in
five minutes, and----"
"That will do--that will do!" exclaimed the old gentleman, aghast,
as well he might be, at the proposal, since none of the furniture in
question had been subjected to such a process for years, and immediate
suffocation, with intolerable confusion of papers, must have been the
result. "If you want to go and see your aunt, my girl, go, in heaven's
name. I can spare you as long as you like. But you mustn't tidy up
here. No; that would never do. And, Dorothea, if you should hear
anything, come and tell me that instant. Never mind the expense. I'd
give a great deal to know he was safe. Ah, I'd give all I have in the
world to see him back again."
She curtsied and hurried out, leaving Bargrave to immerse himself
in law-papers and correspondence. From sheer force of habit he took
refuge in his daily work at this hour of anxiety and sad distress. In
such sorrows it is well for a man to have disciplined his mind till
it obeys him instinctively, like a managed steed bearing its rider at
will out of the crowd of assailants by whom he is beset.
Dorothea, scrubbing her face with yellow soap till it shone again,
proceeded to array herself in raiment of many colours, and, when got
up to her own satisfaction, scuttled off to a distant part of London,
making use of more than one omnibus in her journey; and so, returning
almost upon her tracks, confronted Gentleman Jim as he emerged from
his usual house of call in the narrow street out of Holborn.
He started, and his face lengthened with obvious disgust.
"What's up now, lass?" said he. "I've business tonight. D'ye mind?
Blessed if my mouth isn't as dry as a cinder-heap. You go home, like
a good gal, and I'll take ye to the theaytre, perhaps, to-morrow. I
haven't a minnit to stop. I didn't ought to be here now."
The promised treat, the hurried manner, above all the affected
kindness of tone, roused her suspicions to the utmost; and Dorothea
was woman enough to feel for the moment that she dared match her wits
against those of her betrayer.
"It's lucky," she answered coolly; "for I've got to be home afore
dark, and they're lighting the lamps now. I've been down to see arter
him, Jim, an' I thought I'd just step round and let you know. I footed
it all the way back, that's why I'm so late now."
She paused and looked steadily in his face.
"Well?" said Jim, turning very pale, while his eyes glared in hers
with a wild horrible meaning.
She answered his look rather than his exclamation.
"He's a trifle better since morning. He don't know nothing yet, nor he
won't neither, not for a while to come. But he ain't a-goin' to die,
Jim--not this turn."
His colour came back, and he laughed brutally. "Blast him! d'ye think
I care?" said he, with a wild flourish of his arm; but added in a
quieter voice, "Perhaps it's as well, lass. Cold meat isn't very handy
to hide, and he's worth more alive than dead. I couldn't hardly keep
from laffin' this mornin' when I saw them bills. I'll stand ye a drop,
lass, if you're dry, but I mustn't stop with ye to drink it."
Dorothea declined this liberal offer.
"Good-night, Jim," said she, and turned coldly away. She had no heart
for a more affectionate farewell; and could their positions have been
reversed he must have detected something strange in this unusual lack
of cordiality. But men are seldom close observers in such matters,
and Jim was full of his own interests, his own projects, his own wild
senseless infatuation.
He watched her round her homeward turn, and then started off at a
quick pace in an opposite direction. With all his cunning he would
never have suspected that Dorothea, whose intellect he considered
little better than an idiot's, could presume to dog his footsteps; and
the contempt he entertained for her--of which she was beginning to be
uncomfortably conscious--no doubt facilitated this unhappy creature's
operations.
Overhead the sky was dark and lowering, the air thick as before
thunder; and though the gaslights streamed on every street in London,
it was an evening well suited to watch an unsuspecting person
unobserved.
Dorothea, returning on her footsteps, kept Jim carefully in sight,
walking from twenty to fifty yards behind him, and as much as possible
on the other side of the street. There was no danger of her losing
him. She could have followed that figure--to her the type of
comeliness and manhood--all over the world; but she dreaded, with a
fear that was almost paralysing, the possibility of his turning back
and detecting that he was tracked. "He'd murder me, for sure," thought
Dorothea, trembling in every limb. Nevertheless, the love that is
strong as death, the jealousy that is cruel as the grave, goaded her
to persevere; and so she flitted in his wake with a noiseless step,
wonderfully gliding and ghostlike considering the solidity of her
proportions.
Jim turned out of Oxford Street to stop at an ill-looking dirty little
house, the door of which seemed to open to him of its own accord. She
spied a small grocer's shop nearly opposite not yet shut up. To dodge
rapidly in and sit down for a few minutes while she cheapened a couple
of ounces of tea, afforded Dorothea an excellent chance of watching
his further movements unseen.
He emerged again almost immediately with a false beard and a pair of
spectacles, carrying a large parcel carefully wrapped in oiled silk;
then, after looking warily up and down the street, turned into the
main thoroughfare for the chase to begin once more.
"He must be dreadful hot, poor Jim!" thought Dorothea, pitying him in
spite of herself for his false beard and heavy parcel, while she wiped
away the drops already beginning to pour off her own forehead.
The night was indeed close and sultry. A light warm air, reeking like
the steam from a cook-shop, breathed in her face, while a low roll of
thunder, nearly lost in the noise of wheels, growled and rumbled among
the distant Surrey hills.
She followed him perseveringly through the more fashionable streets
and squares of London, tolerably silent and deserted now in the
interval between dinner and concert, ball or drum. Here and there
through open windows might be seen a few gentlemen at their wine, or
a lady in evening dress coming out for a gasp of fresh air on the
balcony overhead; but on the pavement below, a policeman under a lamp
or a lady's-maid hurrying on an errand were the only occupants, and
these took no heed of the bearded man with his parcel, nor of the
dirty gaudily-dressed woman who followed like his shadow. So they
turned down Grosvenor Place and through Belgrave Square into one of
the adjoining streets. Here Jim, slackening pace, took his hat off
and wiped his brow. Dorothea, with all her faculties on the stretch,
slipped into a portico at the very moment when he glanced round on
every side to make sure he was not watched. From this hiding-place she
observed him, to her great astonishment, ring boldly at the door of
a large handsome house. That astonishment was increased to see him
admitted without demur by an irreproachable footman, powder, plush,
and all complete. Large drops of rain began to fall, and outside
London, beyond the limits of our several gas companies, it lightened
all round the horizon.
Dorothea crept nearer the house where Jim had disappeared. On the
ground floor, in a dining-room of which the windows stood open for the
heat, she saw his figure within a few yards of her. He was unpacking
his bundle and arranging its contents on the table, where a servant
had placed a lamp when he admitted this unusual visitor. The rain fell
now in good earnest, and not a living creature remained in the street.
Dorothea cowered down by the area railings and watched.
Not for long. The dining-room door opened, and into the lamplight,
like a vision from some world of which poor Dorothea could scarcely
form the vaguest conception, came a pale haughty woman, beautiful
exceedingly, before whom Jim, her own Jim, usually so defiant, seemed
to cower and tremble like a dog. Even in that moment of bewilderment
Dorothea's eye, woman-like, marked the mode in which Miss Bruce's long
black hair was twisted, and missed neither the cut nor texture of her
garments.
Jim spread his goods out for inspection. It was obvious that he had
gained admission to the house under the guise of a dealer in rare
silks and Eastern brocades. We, who know everything, know that Mrs.
Stanmore was dozing over her coffee up-stairs, and that this scheme,
too, originated in the fertile brain and determined character of her
niece.
"I'll take that shawl, if you please," said Maud, in her cool
authoritative way. "I dare say it's better than it looks. Put it aside
for me. And--you were to ask your own price."
Dorothea, drenched to the skin, felt nevertheless a fire burning
within; for, raising her face to peer above the area railings, she
marked a mute worship in Jim's adoring eyes; she marked the working
of his features, pale, as it seemed, with some new and overpowering
emotion. Could this be Gentleman Jim? She had seen him asleep and
awake, pleased and angry, drunk and sober, but she had never seen that
face before. Through all its agony there rose in her heart a feeling
of anger at such transparent folly--almost of contempt for such
weakness in a man.
His voice came hoarse and thick while he answered--
"Never name it, miss, never name it. I done as you desired, an' a
precious awkward job it were! _He'll tell no tales now!_"
She started. The hand in which she held a small embroidered note-case
trembled visibly; but her voice, though low, was perfectly firm and
clear.
"If you exceeded my order," said she, "you have nothing to hope from
my forbearance. I shall be the first to have you punished. I told you
so."
He could scarcely contain his admiration.
"What a plucked 'un!" he muttered; "what a plucked 'un! No, miss," he
added, "you needn't fear. Fear, says I! You never feared nothink in
your life. You needn't think of that 'ere. Me and another party we
worked it off as neat as wax, without noise and without violence.
We've a-trapped him safe, miss, and you've got nothink to do but just
you lift up your hand, and we'll put him back, not a ha'porth the
wuss, on the very spot as we took him from."
She drew a great breath of relief, but suffered not a muscle of her
countenance to betray her feelings.
"It is better so," she observed quietly. "Remember, once for all, when
I give orders they must be obeyed to the letter. I am satisfied with
you, Jim--I think your name is Jim?"
There was just the least possible inflection of kindness in her voice,
and this ruffian's heart leaped to meet it, while the tears came to
his eyes. He dashed them savagely away, and took a letter from his
breast-pocket.
"That's all we found on him, miss," said he, "that an' a couple o'
cigars. He hadn't no watch, no blunt, no latch-key, no nothink. I
kep' this here careful to bring it you. Bless ye, I can read, I can,
_well_, but I've not read that there. I couldn't even smoke of his
cigars. No, I guv 'em to a pal. This here job warn't done for money,
miss! It were done for--for--well--for _you_!"
She took the letter with as little emotion as if it had been an
ordinary tradesman's bill for a few shillings; yet had she once pawned
a good many hundred pounds' worth of diamonds only on the chance of
recovering its contents.
"At least, I must pay you for the shawl," said she, pulling the notes
out of their case.
"For the shawl, miss? Yes," answered Jim. "Ten pounds will buy that,
an' leave a fair profit for my pal as owns it. Not a shilling more,
miss--no--no. D'ye mind the first time as ever I see you? D'ye mind
what I said then? There's one chap, miss, in this world, as belongs of
you, body and soul. He's a poor chap, he is, and a rough chap, but he
asks no better than to sarve of you, be the job what it may--ay, if he
swings for it! Now it's out!"
Over her pale haughty face swept a flash of mingled triumph, malice,
and even amusement, while she listened to this desperate man's
avowal of fidelity and belief. But she only vouchsafed him a cold
condescending smile, observing, as she selected a ten-pound note--
"Is there nothing I can do to mark my satisfaction and approval?"
He fidgeted, glanced at the note-case, and began packing up his goods.
"If _you're_ pleased, miss, that's enough. But if so be as you _could_
do without that there empty bit of silk, and spare it me for a
keepsake--well, miss, I'd never part with it--no, not if the rope was
rove, and the nightcap drawed over my blessed face!"
She put the empty note-case in his hand.
"You're a fool," she said, ringing the bell for a servant to show him
out; "but you're a stanch one, and I wish there were more like you."
"Blast me, I _am_!" he muttered; adding, as he turned into the wet
street, and walked on through the rain like a man in a dream, "if
there was more such gals as you, maybe there'd be more fools like me.
It would be a rum world then, blessed if it wouldn't! And now it will
be a whole week afore I shall see her again!"
Dorothea, clinging to the area railings, even in the imminence of
discovery had not the heart to leave them as he went out. Stupefied,
bewildered, benumbed, she could scarcely believe in the reality of the
scene she had witnessed. She felt it explained much that had lately
puzzled her exceedingly; but at present she was unequal to the task
of arranging her ideas so as to understand the mystery that enveloped
her.
Gradually the thunderstorm rolled away, the rain cleared off, the moon
shone out, and Dorothea reached her squalid home, drenched, cold,
weary, and sick at heart.