CONVERSATION, AND THE INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT
The twilight was beginning to close in, when Mr. Brownlow
alighted from a hackney-coach at his own door, and knocked softly.
The door being opened, a sturdy man got out of the coach and
stationed himself on one side of the steps, while another man, who
had been seated on the box, dismounted too, and stood upon the other
side. At a sign from Mr. Brownlow, they helped out a third man, and
taking him between them, hurried him into the house. This man was
Monks.
They walked in the same manner up the stairs without speaking, and
Mr. Brownlow, preceding them, led the way into a back-room. At
the door of this apartment, Monks, who had ascended with evident
reluctance, stopped. The two men looked at the old gentleman as if
for instructions.
‘He knows the alternative,’ said Mr. Browlow. ‘If he hesitates or
moves a finger but as you bid him, drag him into the street, call
for the aid of the police, and impeach him as a felon in my name.’
‘How dare you say this of me?’ asked Monks.
‘How dare you urge me to it, young man?’ replied Mr. Brownlow,
confronting him with a steady look. ‘Are you mad enough to leave
this house? Unhand him. There, sir. You are free to go, and we to
follow. But I warn you, by all I hold most solemn and most sacred,
that instant will have you apprehended on a charge of fraud and
robbery. I am resolute and immoveable. If you are determined to be
the same, your blood be upon your own head!’
‘By what authority am I kidnapped in the street, and brought here by
these dogs?’ asked Monks, looking from one to the other of the men
who stood beside him.
‘By mine,’ replied Mr. Brownlow. ‘Those persons are indemnified by
me. If you complain of being deprived of your liberty--you had power
and opportunity to retrieve it as you came along, but you deemed
it advisable to remain quiet--I say again, throw yourself for
protection on the law. I will appeal to the law too; but when you
have gone too far to recede, do not sue to me for leniency, when the
power will have passed into other hands; and do not say I plunged
you down the gulf into which you rushed, yourself.’
Monks was plainly disconcerted, and alarmed besides. He hesitated.
‘You will decide quickly,’ said Mr. Brownlow, with perfect firmness
and composure. ‘If you wish me to prefer my charges publicly, and
consign you to a punishment the extent of which, although I can,
with a shudder, foresee, I cannot control, once more, I say, for
you know the way. If not, and you appeal to my forbearance, and the
mercy of those you have deeply injured, seat yourself, without a
word, in that chair. It has waited for you two whole days.’
Monks muttered some unintelligible words, but wavered still.
‘You will be prompt,’ said Mr. Brownlow. ‘A word from me, and the
alternative has gone for ever.’
Still the man hesitated.
‘I have not the inclination to parley,’ said Mr. Brownlow, ‘and, as
I advocate the dearest interests of others, I have not the right.’
‘Is there--’ demanded Monks with a faltering tongue,--‘is there--no
middle course?’
‘None.’
Monks looked at the old gentleman, with an anxious eye; but, reading
in his countenance nothing but severity and determination, walked
into the room, and, shrugging his shoulders, sat down.
‘Lock the door on the outside,’ said Mr. Brownlow to the attendants,
‘and come when I ring.’
The men obeyed, and the two were left alone together.
‘This is pretty treatment, sir,’ said Monks, throwing down his hat
and cloak, ‘from my father’s oldest friend.’
‘It is because I was your father’s oldest friend, young man,’
returned Mr. Brownlow; ‘it is because the hopes and wishes of young
and happy years were bound up with him, and that fair creature of
his blood and kindred who rejoined her God in youth, and left me
here a solitary, lonely man: it is because he knelt with me beside
his only sisters’ death-bed when he was yet a boy, on the morning
that would--but Heaven willed otherwise--have made her my young
wife; it is because my seared heart clung to him, from that time
forth, through all his trials and errors, till he died; it is
because old recollections and associations filled my heart, and even
the sight of you brings with it old thoughts of him; it is because
of all these things that I am moved to treat you gently now--yes,
Edward Leeford, even now--and blush for your unworthiness who bear
the name.’
‘What has the name to do with it?’ asked the other, after
contemplating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the
agitation of his companion. ‘What is the name to me?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Mr. Brownlow, ‘nothing to you. But it was _hers_,
and even at this distance of time brings back to me, an old man,
the glow and thrill which I once felt, only to hear it repeated by a
stranger. I am very glad you have changed it--very--very.’
‘This is all mighty fine,’ said Monks (to retain his assumed
designation) after a long silence, during which he had jerked
himself in sullen defiance to and fro, and Mr. Brownlow had sat,
shading his face with his hand. ‘But what do you want with me?’
‘You have a brother,’ said Mr. Brownlow, rousing himself: ‘a
brother, the whisper of whose name in your ear when I came behind
you in the street, was, in itself, almost enough to make you
accompany me hither, in wonder and alarm.’
‘I have no brother,’ replied Monks. ‘You know I was an only child.
Why do you talk to me of brothers? You know that, as well as I.’
‘Attend to what I do know, and you may not,’ said Mr. Brownlow. ‘I
shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage,
into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all
ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the
sole and most unnatural issue.’
‘I don’t care for hard names,’ interrupted Monks with a jeering
laugh. ‘You know the fact, and that’s enough for me.’
‘But I also know,’ pursued the old gentleman, ‘the misery, the slow
torture, the protracted anguish of that ill-assorted union. I know
how listlessly and wearily each of that wretched pair dragged on
their heavy chain through a world that was poisoned to them both.
I know how cold formalities were succeeded by open taunts; how
indifference gave place to dislike, dislike to hate, and hate to
loathing, until at last they wrenched the clanking bond asunder,
and retiring a wide space apart, carried each a galling fragment,
of which nothing but death could break the rivets, to hide it in
new society beneath the gayest looks they could assume. Your mother
succeeded; she forgot it soon. But it rusted and cankered at your
father’s heart for years.’
‘Well, they were separated,’ said Monks, ‘and what of that?’
‘When they had been separated for some time,’ returned Mr. Brownlow,
‘and your mother, wholly given up to continental frivolities, had
utterly forgotten the young husband ten good years her junior, who,
with prospects blighted, lingered on at home, he fell among new
friends. This circumstance, at least, you know already.’
‘Not I,’ said Monks, turning away his eyes and beating his foot upon
the ground, as a man who is determined to deny everything. ‘Not I.’
‘Your manner, no less than your actions, assures me that you have
never forgotten it, or ceased to think of it with bitterness,’
returned Mr. Brownlow. ‘I speak of fifteen years ago, when you
were not more than eleven years old, and your father but
one-and-thirty--for he was, I repeat, a boy, when _his_ father
ordered him to marry. Must I go back to events which cast a shade
upon the memory of your parent, or will you spare it, and disclose
to me the truth?’
‘I have nothing to disclose,’ rejoined Monks. ‘You must talk on if
you will.’
‘These new friends, then,’ said Mr. Brownlow, ‘were a naval officer
retired from active service, whose wife had died some half-a-year
before, and left him with two children--there had been more, but,
of all their family, happily but two survived. They were both
daughters; one a beautiful creature of nineteen, and the other a
mere child of two or three years old.’
‘What’s this to me?’ asked Monks.
‘They resided,’ said Mr. Brownlow, without seeming to hear the
interruption, ‘in a part of the country to which your father in
his wandering had repaired, and where he had taken up his abode.
Acquaintance, intimacy, friendship, fast followed on each other.
Your father was gifted as few men are. He had his sister’s soul and
person. As the old officer knew him more and more, he grew to love
him. I would that it had ended there. His daughter did the same.’
The old gentleman paused; Monks was biting his lips, with his eyes
fixed upon the floor; seeing this, he immediately resumed:
‘The end of a year found him contracted, solemnly contracted, to
that daughter; the object of the first, true, ardent, only passion
of a guileless girl.’
‘Your tale is of the longest,’ observed Monks, moving restlessly in
his chair.
‘It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man,’
returned Mr. Brownlow, ‘and such tales usually are; if it were one
of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief. At length one
of those rich relations to strengthen whose interest and importance
your father had been sacrificed, as others are often--it is
no uncommon case--died, and to repair the misery he had been
instrumental in occasioning, left him his panacea for all
griefs--Money. It was necessary that he should immediately repair to
Rome, whither this man had sped for health, and where he had died,
leaving his affairs in great confusion. He went; was seized with
mortal illness there; was followed, the moment the intelligence
reached Paris, by your mother who carried you with her; he died the
day after her arrival, leaving no will--_no will_--so that the whole
property fell to her and you.’
At this part of the recital Monks held his breath, and listened
with a face of intense eagerness, though his eyes were not directed
towards the speaker. As Mr. Brownlow paused, he changed his position
with the air of one who has experienced a sudden relief, and wiped
his hot face and hands.
‘Before he went abroad, and as he passed through London on his way,’
said Mr. Brownlow, slowly, and fixing his eyes upon the other’s
face, ‘he came to me.’
‘I never heard of that,’ interrupted Monks in a tone intended to
appear incredulous, but savouring more of disagreeable surprise.
‘He came to me, and left with me, among some other things, a
picture--a portrait painted by himself--a likeness of this poor
girl--which he did not wish to leave behind, and could not carry
forward on his hasty journey. He was worn by anxiety and remorse
almost to a shadow; talked in a wild, distracted way, of ruin and
dishonour worked by himself; confided to me his intention to convert
his whole property, at any loss, into money, and, having settled
on his wife and you a portion of his recent acquisition, to fly the
country--I guessed too well he would not fly alone--and never see
it more. Even from me, his old and early friend, whose strong
attachment had taken root in the earth that covered one most dear
to both--even from me he withheld any more particular confession,
promising to write and tell me all, and after that to see me once
again, for the last time on earth. Alas! _That_ was the last time. I
had no letter, and I never saw him more.’
‘I went,’ said Mr. Brownlow, after a short pause, ‘I went, when all
was over, to the scene of his--I will use the term the world would
freely use, for worldly harshness or favour are now alike to him--of
his guilty love, resolved that if my fears were realised that erring
child should find one heart and home to shelter and compassionate
her. The family had left that part a week before; they had called in
such trifling debts as were outstanding, discharged them, and left
the place by night. Why, or whither, none can tell.’
Monks drew his breath yet more freely, and looked round with a smile
of triumph.
‘When your brother,’ said Mr. Brownlow, drawing nearer to the
other’s chair, ‘When your brother: a feeble, ragged, neglected
child: was cast in my way by a stronger hand than chance, and
rescued by me from a life of vice and infamy--’
‘What?’ cried Monks.
‘By me,’ said Mr. Brownlow. ‘I told you I should interest you before
long. I say by me--I see that your cunning associate suppressed my
name, although for ought he knew, it would be quite strange to
your ears. When he was rescued by me, then, and lay recovering from
sickness in my house, his strong resemblance to this picture I have
spoken of, struck me with astonishment. Even when I first saw him
in all his dirt and misery, there was a lingering expression in his
face that came upon me like a glimpse of some old friend flashing on
one in a vivid dream. I need not tell you he was snared away before
I knew his history--’
‘Why not?’ asked Monks hastily.
‘Because you know it well.’
‘I!’
‘Denial to me is vain,’ replied Mr. Brownlow. ‘I shall show you that
I know more than that.’
‘You--you--can’t prove anything against me,’ stammered Monks. ‘I
defy you to do it!’
‘We shall see,’ returned the old gentleman with a searching glance.
‘I lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover him. Your
mother being dead, I knew that you alone could solve the mystery if
anybody could, and as when I had last heard of you you were on
your own estate in the West Indies--whither, as you well know,
you retired upon your mother’s death to escape the consequences of
vicious courses here--I made the voyage. You had left it, months
before, and were supposed to be in London, but no one could tell
where. I returned. Your agents had no clue to your residence.
You came and went, they said, as strangely as you had ever done:
sometimes for days together and sometimes not for months: keeping
to all appearance the same low haunts and mingling with the
same infamous herd who had been your associates when a fierce
ungovernable boy. I wearied them with new applications. I paced the
streets by night and day, but until two hours ago, all my efforts
were fruitless, and I never saw you for an instant.’
‘And now you do see me,’ said Monks, rising boldly, ‘what then?
Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words--justified, you think, by
a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead
man’s Brother! You don’t even know that a child was born of this
maudlin pair; you don’t even know that.’
‘I _did not_,’ replied Mr. Brownlow, rising too; ‘but within the
last fortnight I have learnt it all. You have a brother; you know
it, and him. There was a will, which your mother destroyed, leaving
the secret and the gain to you at her own death. It contained
a reference to some child likely to be the result of this sad
connection, which child was born, and accidentally encountered by
you, when your suspicions were first awakened by his resemblance to
your father. You repaired to the place of his birth. There existed
proofs--proofs long suppressed--of his birth and parentage. Those
proofs were destroyed by you, and now, in your own words to your
accomplice the Jew, “_the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at
the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the
mother is rotting in her coffin_.” Unworthy son, coward, liar,--you,
who hold your councils with thieves and murderers in dark rooms at
night,--you, whose plots and wiles have brought a violent death
upon the head of one worth millions such as you,--you, who from your
cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father’s heart, and in
whom all evil passions, vice, and profligacy, festered, till they
found a vent in a hideous disease which had made your face an index
even to your mind--you, Edward Leeford, do you still brave me!’
‘No, no, no!’ returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumulated
charges.
‘Every word!’ cried the gentleman, ‘every word that has passed
between you and this detested villain, is known to me. Shadows on
the wall have caught your whispers, and brought them to my ear; the
sight of the persecuted child has turned vice itself, and given it
the courage and almost the attributes of virtue. Murder has been
done, to which you were morally if not really a party.’
‘No, no,’ interposed Monks. ‘I--I knew nothing of that; I was going
to inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me. I didn’t
know the cause. I thought it was a common quarrel.’
‘It was the partial disclosure of your secrets,’ replied Mr.
Brownlow. ‘Will you disclose the whole?’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘Set your hand to a statement of truth and facts, and repeat it
before witnesses?’
‘That I promise too.’
‘Remain quietly here, until such a document is drawn up, and proceed
with me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for the
purpose of attesting it?’
‘If you insist upon that, I’ll do that also,’ replied Monks.
‘You must do more than that,’ said Mr. Brownlow. ‘Make restitution
to an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is, although
the offspring of a guilty and most miserable love. You have not
forgotten the provisions of the will. Carry them into execution so
far as your brother is concerned, and then go where you please. In
this world you need meet no more.’
While Monks was pacing up and down, meditating with dark and evil
looks on this proposal and the possibilities of evading it: torn by
his fears on the one hand and his hatred on the other: the door was
hurriedly unlocked, and a gentleman (Mr. Losberne) entered the room
in violent agitation.
‘The man will be taken,’ he cried. ‘He will be taken to-night!’
‘The murderer?’ asked Mr. Brownlow.
‘Yes, yes,’ replied the other. ‘His dog has been seen lurking about
some old haunt, and there seems little doubt that his master either
is, or will be, there, under cover of the darkness. Spies are
hovering about in every direction. I have spoken to the men who
are charged with his capture, and they tell me he cannot escape. A
reward of a hundred pounds is proclaimed by Government to-night.’
‘I will give fifty more,’ said Mr. Brownlow, ‘and proclaim it with
my own lips upon the spot, if I can reach it. Where is Mr. Maylie?’
‘Harry? As soon as he had seen your friend here, safe in a coach
with you, he hurried off to where he heard this,’ replied the
doctor, ‘and mounting his horse sallied forth to join the first
party at some place in the outskirts agreed upon between them.’
‘Fagin,’ said Mr. Brownlow; ‘what of him?’
‘When I last heard, he had not been taken, but he will be, or is, by
this time. They’re sure of him.’
‘Have you made up your mind?’ asked Mr. Brownlow, in a low voice, of
Monks.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You--you--will be secret with me?’
‘I will. Remain here till I return. It is your only hope of safety.’
They left the room, and the door was again locked.
‘What have you done?’ asked the doctor in a whisper.
‘All that I could hope to do, and even more. Coupling the poor
girl’s intelligence with my previous knowledge, and the result of
our good friend’s inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole
of escape, and laid bare the whole villainy which by these lights
became plain as day. Write and appoint the evening after to-morrow,
at seven, for the meeting. We shall be down there, a few hours
before, but shall require rest: especially the young lady, who _may_
have greater need of firmness than either you or I can quite foresee
just now. But my blood boils to avenge this poor murdered creature.
Which way have they taken?’
‘Drive straight to the office and you will be in time,’ replied Mr.
Losberne. ‘I will remain here.’
The two gentlemen hastily separated; each in a fever of excitement
wholly uncontrollable.