Mr. Blyth’s spirits sank apace, as he bolted and locked the front door,
when his guests had left him. He actually sighed as he now took a turn
or two alone, up and down the studio.
Three times did he approach close to the garden door, as he walked
slowly from end to end of the room. But he never once looked up at
it. His thoughts were wandering after Zack, and Zack’s friend; and his
attention was keeping them company. “Whoever this mysterious Mat may
be,” mused Valentine, stopping at the fourth turn, and walking up to
the fireplace; “I don’t believe there’s anything bad about him; and so I
shall tell Mrs. Thorpe the next time I see her.”
He set himself to rake out the fire, leaving only a few red embers
and tiny morsels of coal to flame up fitfully from time to time in the
bottom of the grate. Having done this, he stood and warmed himself for
a little while, and tried to whistle a favorite tune. The attempt was a
total failure. He broke down at the third bar, and ended lamentably in
another sigh.
“What can be the matter with me? I never felt so miserable about going
away from home before.” Puzzling himself uselessly with such reflections
as these, he went to the supper-table, and drank a glass of wine, picked
a bit of a sandwich, and unnecessarily spoilt the appearance of two
sponge cakes, by absently breaking a small piece off each of them. He
was in no better humor for eating or drinking, than for whistling; so he
wisely determined to light his candle forthwith, and go to bed.
After extinguishing the lights that had been burning on the
supper-table, he cast a parting glance all round the room, and was then
about to leave it, when the drawing of the old five-barred gate, which
he had taken down for Mat to look at, and had placed on a painting-stand
at the lower end of the studio, caught his eye. He advanced towards
it directly--stopped half-way--hesitated--yawned--shivered a
little--thought to himself that it was not worth while to trouble about
hanging the drawing up over the garden door, that night--and so, yawning
again, turned on his heel and left the studio.
Mr. Blyth’s two servants slept up-stairs. About ten minutes after their
master had ascended to his bed-room, they left the kitchen for their
dormitory on the garret floor. Patty, the housemaid, stopped as she
passed the painting room, to look in, and see that the lights were
out, and the fire safe for the night. Polly, the cook, went on with
the bedroom candle; and, after having ascended the stairs as far as the
first landing from the hall, discreetly bethought herself of the
garden door, the general care and superintendence of which was properly
attached to her department in the household.
“I say, did you lock the garden door?” said Polly to Patty through the
banisters.
“Yes; I did it when I took up master’s tea,” said Patty to Polly,
appearing lazily in the hall, after one sleepy look round the
fast-darkening studio.
“Hadn’t you better see to it again, to make sure?” suggested the
cautious cook.
“Hadn’t _you?_ It’s _your_ place,” retorted the careless house-maid.
“Hush!” whispered Valentine, suddenly appearing on the landing above
Polly, from his bedroom, arrayed in his flannel dressing-gown and
nightcap. “Don’t talk here, or you’ll disturb your mistress. Go up to
bed, and talk there. Good night.”
“Good night, sir,” answered together the two faithful female dependents
of the house of Blyth, obeying their master’s order with simpering
docility, and deferring to a future opportunity all further
considerations connected with the garden door.
The fire was fading out fast in the studio grate. Now and then, at
long intervals, a thin tongue of flame leapt up faintly against the
ever-invading gloom, flickered for an instant over the brighter and more
prominent objects in the room, then dropped back again into darkness.
The profound silence was only interrupted by those weird house-noises
which live in the death of night and die in the life of day; by that
sudden crackling in the wall, by that mysterious creaking in the
furniture, by those still small ghostly sounds from inanimate bodies,
which we have all been startled by, over and over again, while lingering
at our book after the rest of the family are asleep in bed, while
waiting up for a friend who is out late, or while watching alone through
the dark hours in a sick chamber. Excepting such occasional night-noises
as these, so familiar, yet always so strange, the perfect tranquillity
of the studio remained undisturbed for nearly an hour after Mr. Blyth
had left it. No neighbors came home in cabs, no bawling drunken men
wandered into the remote country fastnesses of the new suburb. The
night-breeze, blowing in from the fields, was too light to be audible.
The watch-dog in the nurseryman’s garden hard by, was as quiet on this
particular night as if he had actually barked himself dumb at last.
Outside the house, as well as inside, the drowsy reign of old primeval
Quiet was undisturbed by the innovating vagaries of the rebel, Noise.
Undisturbed, till the clock in the hall pointed to a quarter past
eleven. Then there came softly and slowly up the iron stairs that led
from the back garden to the studio, a sound of footsteps. When these
ceased, the door at the lower end of the room was opened gently from
outside, and the black bulky figure of Mat appeared on the threshold,
lowering out gloomily against a back-ground of starry sky.
He stepped into the painting-room, and closed the door quietly behind
him; stood listening anxiously in the darkness for a moment or two;
then pulling from his pocket the wax taper and the matches which he had
bought that afternoon, immediately provided himself with a light.
While the wick of the taper was burning up, he listened again. Except
the sound of his own heavy breathing, all was quiet around him. He
advanced at once to the bureau, starting involuntarily as he brushed
by Mr. Blyth’s lay figure with the Spanish hat and the Roman toga; and
cursing it under his breath for standing in his way, as if it had been
a living creature. The door leading from the studio into the passage of
the house was not quite closed; but he never noticed this as he passed
to the bureau, though it stood close to the chink left between the door
and the post. He had the false key in his hand; he knew that he should
be in possession of the Hair Bracelet in another moment; and, his
impatience for once getting the better of his cunning, he pounced on the
bureau, without looking aside first either to the right or the left.
He had unlocked it, had pulled open the inner drawer, had taken out the
Hair Bracelet, and was just examining it closely by the light of his
taper (after having locked the bureau again)--when a faint sound on the
staircase of the house caught his ear.
At the same instant, a thin streak of candle-light flashed on him
through the narrow chink between the hardly-closed door and the
doorpost. It increased rapidly in intensity, as the sound of
softly-advancing footsteps now grew more and more distinct from the
stone passage leading to the interior of the house.
He had the presence of mind to extinguish his taper, to thrust the Hair
Bracelet into his pocket, and to move across softly from the bureau
(which stood against the lock-side doorpost) to the wall (which was by
the hinge-side doorpost); so that the door itself might open back upon
him, and thus keep him concealed from the view of any person entering
the room. He had the presence of mind to take these precautions
instantly; but he had not self-control enough to suppress the
involuntary exclamation which burst from his lips, at the moment when
the thin streak of candle-light first flashed into his eyes. A violent
spasmodic action contracted the muscles of his throat. He clenched his
fist in a fury of suppressed rage against himself, as he felt that his
own voice had turned traitor and betrayed him.
The light came close: the door opened--opened gently, till it just
touched him as he stood with his back against the wall.
For one instant his heart stopped; the next, it burst into action again
with a heave, and the blood rushed hotly through every vein all over
him, as his wrought-up nerves of mind and body relaxed together under
a sense of ineffable relief. He was saved almost by a miracle from the
inevitable consequence of the rash exclamation that had escaped him. It
was Madonna who had opened the door--it was the deaf and dumb girl whom
he now saw walking into the studio.
She had been taking her working materials out of the tobacco-pouch
in her own room before going to bed, and had then missed her
mother-of-pearl bodkin-case. Suspecting immediately that she must have
dropped it in the studio, and fearing that it might be trodden on and
crushed if she left it there until the next morning, she had now stolen
downstairs by herself to look for it. Her hair, not yet put up for the
night, was combed back from her face, and hung lightly down in long
silky folds over her shoulders. Her complexion looked more exquisitely
clear and pure than ever, set off as it was by the white dressing-gown
which now clothed her. She had a pretty little red and blue china
candlestick, given to her by Mrs. Blyth, in her hand; and, holding the
light above her, advanced slowly from the studio doorway, with her eyes
bent on the ground, searching anxiously for the missing bodkin-case.
Mat’s resolution was taken the moment he caught sight of her. He never
stirred an inch from his place of concealment, until she had advanced
three or four paces into the room, and had her back turned full upon
him. Then quietly stepping a little forward from the door, but still
keeping well behind her, he blew out her candle, just as she was raising
it over her head, and looking down intently on the floor in front of
her.
He had calculated, rightly enough, on being able to execute this
maneuver with impunity from discovery, knowing that she was incapable
of hearing the sound of his breath when he blew her candle out, and
that the darkness would afterwards not only effectually shield him from
detection, but also oblige her to leave him alone in the room again,
while she went to get another light. He had not calculated, however, on
the serious effect which the success of his stratagem would have upon
her nerves, for he knew nothing of the horror which the loss of
her sense of hearing caused her always to feel when she was left in
darkness; and he had not stopped to consider that by depriving her of
her light, he was depriving her of that all-important guiding sense of
sight, the loss of which she could not supply in the dark, as others
could, by the exercise of the ear.
The instant he blew her candle out, she dropped the china candlestick,
in a paroxysm of terror. It fell, and broke, with a deadened sound, on
one of the many portfolios lying on the floor about her. He had hardly
time to hear this happen, before the dumb moaning, the inarticulate cry
of fear which was all that the poor panic-stricken girl could utter,
rose low, shuddering, and ceaseless, in the darkness--so close at his
ear, that he fancied he could feel her breath palpitating quick and warm
on his cheek.
If she should touch him? If she should be sensible of the motion of
_his_ foot on the floor, as she had been sensible of the motion of
Zack’s, when young Thorpe offered her the glass of wine at supper-time?
It was a risk to remain still--it was a risk to move! He stood as
helpless even as the helpless creature near him. That low, ceaseless,
dumb moaning, smote so painfully on his heart, roused up so fearfully
the rude superstitious fancies lying in wait within him, in connection
with the lost and dead Mary Grice, that the sweat broke out on his face,
the coldness of sharp mental suffering seized on his limbs, the fever of
unutterable expectation parched up his throat, and mouth, and lips; and
for the first time, perhaps, in his existence, he felt the chillness of
mortal dread running through him to his very soul--he, who amid perils
of seas and wildernesses, and horrors of hunger and thirst, had played
familiarly with his own life for more than twenty years past, as a child
plays familiarly with an old toy.
He knew not how long it was before the dumb moaning seemed to grow
fainter; to be less fearfully close to him; to change into what sounded,
at one moment, like a shivering of her whole body; at another, like a
rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands
over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor.
She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way
out--he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the
half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the
stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along the wall;
then the lessening gasps of her affrighted breathing as she gained the
stairs.
When she was gone, and the change and comfort of silence and solitude
stole over him, his power of thinking, his cunning and resolution began
to return. Listening yet a little while, and hearing no sound of any
disturbance among the sleepers in the house, he ventured to light one of
his matches; and, by the brief flicker that it afforded, picked his
way noiselessly through the lumber in the studio, and gained the garden
door. In a minute he was out again in the open air. In a minute more,
he had got over the garden wall, and was walking freely along the lonely
road of the new suburb, with the Hair Bracelet safe in his pocket.
At first, he did not attempt to take it out and examine it. He had not
felt the slightest scruple beforehand; he did not feel the slightest
remorse now, in connection with the Bracelet, and with his manner
of obtaining possession of it. Callous, however, as he was in this
direction, he was sensitive in another. There was both regret and
repentance in him, as he thought of the deaf and dumb girl, and of the
paroxysm of terror he had caused her. How patiently and prettily she
had tried to explain to him her gratitude for his gift, and the use she
meant to put it to; and how cruelly he had made her suffer in return! “I
wish I hadn’t frighted her so,” said Mat to himself; thinking of this
in his own rough way, as he walked rapidly homewards. “I wish I hadn’t
frighted her so.”
But his impatience to examine the Bracelet got the better of his
repentance, as it had already got the better of every other thought and
feeling in him. He stopped under a gas lamp, and drew his prize out of
his pocket. He could see that it was made of two kinds of hair, and
that something was engraved on the flat gold of the clasp. But his hand
shook, his eyes were dimmer than usual, the light was too high above
him, and try as he might he could make out nothing clearly.
He put the Bracelet into his pocket again, and, muttering to himself
impatiently, made for Kirk Street at his utmost speed. His landlord’s
wife happened to be in the passage when he opened the door. Without the
ceremony of a single preliminary word, he astonished her by taking her
candle out of her hand, and instantly disappearing up-stairs with it.
Zack had not come from the theater--he had the lodgings to himself--he
could examine the Hair Bracelet in perfect freedom.
His first look was at the clasp. By holding it close to the flame of the
candle, he succeeded in reading the letters engraved on it.
“M. G. In memory of S. G.”
_“Mary Grice. In memory of Susan Grice.”_ Mat’s hand closed fast on the
Bracelet--and dropped heavily on his knee, as he uttered those words.
* * * * * *
The pantomime which Zack had gone to see, was so lengthened out by
encores of incidental songs and dances, that it was not over till close
on midnight. When he left the theater, the physical consequences of
breathing a vitiated atmosphere made themselves felt immediately in the
regions of his mouth, throat, and stomach. Those ardent aspirations in
the direction of shell-fish and malt liquor, which it is especially the
mission of the English drama to create, overcame him as he issued into
the fresh air, and took him to the local oyster shop for refreshment and
change of scene.
Having the immediate prospect of the private Drawing Academy vividly and
menacingly present before his eyes, Zack thought of the future for once
in his life, and astonished the ministering vassals of the oyster shop
(with all of whom he was on terms of intimate friendship), by enjoying
himself with exemplary moderation at the festive board. When he had done
supper, and was on his way to bed at the tobacconist’s across the road,
it is actually not too much to say that he was sober and subdued enough
to have borne inspection by the President and Council of the Royal
Academy, as a model student of the Fine Arts.
It was rather a surprise to him not to hear his friend snoring when
he let himself into the passage, but his surprise rose to blank
astonishment when he entered the front room, and saw the employment on
which his fellow lodger was engaged.
Mat was sitting by the table, with his rifle laid across his knees, and
was scouring the barrel bright with a piece of sand paper. By his side
was an unsnuffed candle, an empty bottle, and a tumbler with a little
raw brandy left in the bottom of it. His face, when he looked up, showed
that he had been drinking hard. There was a stare in his eyes that was
at once fierce and vacant, and a hard, fixed, unnatural smile on his
lips which Zack did not at all like to see.
“Why, Mat, old boy!” he said soothingly, “you look a little out of
sorts. What’s wrong?”
Mat scoured away at the barrel of the gun harder than ever, and gave no
answer.
“What, in the name of wonder, can you be scouring your rifle for
to-night?” continued young Thorpe. “You have never yet touched it since
you brought it into the house. What can you possibly want with it now?
We don’t shoot birds in England with rifle bullets.”
“A rifle bullet will do for _my_ game, if I put it up,” said Mat,
suddenly and fiercely fixing his eyes on Zack.
“What game does he mean?” thought young Thorpe. “He’s been drinking
himself pretty nearly drunk. Can anything have happened to him since we
parted company at the theater?--I should like to find out; but he’s such
an old savage when the brandy’s in his head, that I don’t half like to
question him--”
Here Zack’s reflections were interrupted by the voice of his eccentric
friend.
“Did you ever meet with a man of the name of Carr?” asked Mat. He looked
away from young Thorpe, keeping his eyes steadily on the rifle, and
rubbing hard at the barrel, as he put this question.
“No,” said Zack. “Not that I can remember.”
Mat left off cleaning the gun, and began to fumble awkwardly in one of
his pockets. After some little time, he produced what appeared to
Zack to be an inordinately long letter, written in a cramped hand, and
superscribed apparently with two long lines of inscription, instead of
an ordinary address. Opening this strange-looking document, Mat guided
himself a little way down the lines on the first page with a very
unsteady forefinger--stopped, and read somewhat anxiously and with
evident difficulty--then put the letter back in his pocket, dropped his
eyes once more on the gun in his lap, and said with a strong emphasis on
the Christian name:--
_“Arthur_ Carr?”
“No,” returned Zack. “I never met with a man of that name. Is he a
friend of yours?”
Mat went on scouring the rifle barrel.
Young Thorpe said nothing more. He had been a little puzzled early in
the evening, when his friend had exhibited the fan and tobacco pouch
(neither of which had been produced before), and had mentioned to Mr.
Blyth that they were once intended for “a woman” who was now dead. Zack
had thought this conduct rather odd at the time; but now, when it was
followed by these strangely abrupt references to the name of Carr, by
this mysterious scouring of the rifle and desperate brandy drinking
in solitude, he began to feel perplexed in the last degree about Mat’s
behavior. “Is this about Arthur Carr a secret of the old boy’s?” Zack
asked himself with a sort of bewildered curiosity. “Is he letting out
more than he ought, I wonder, now he’s a little in liquor?”
While young Thorpe was pondering thus, Mat was still industriously
scouring the barrel of his rifle. After the silence in the room had
lasted some minutes, he suddenly threw away his morsel of sand-paper,
and spoke again.
“Zack,” he said, familiarly smacking the stock of his rifle, “me and you
had some talk once about going away to the wild country over the waters
together. I’m ready to sail when you are, if--” He had glanced up at
young Thorpe with his vacant bloodshot eyes, as he spoke the last words.
But he checked himself almost at the same moment, and looked away again
quickly at the gun.
“If what?” asked Zack.
“If I can lay my hands first on Arthur Carr,” answered Mat, with very
unusual lowness of tone. “Only let me do that, and I shall be game to
tramp it at an hour’s notice. He may be dead and buried for anything I
know--”
“Then what’s the use of looking after him?” interposed Zack.
“The use is, I’ve got it into my head that he’s alive, and that I shall
find him,” returned Mat.
“‘Well?” said young Thorpe eagerly.
Mat became silent again. His head drooped slowly forward, and his
body followed it till he rested his elbows on the gun. Sitting in this
crouched-up position, he abstractedly began to amuse himself by snapping
the lock of the rifle. Zack, suspecting that the brandy he had
swallowed was beginning to stupefy him, determined, with characteristic
recklessness, to rouse him into talking at any hazard.
“What the devil is all this mystery about?” he cried boldly. “Ever since
you pulled out that feather-fan and tobacco-pouch at Blyth’s--”
“Well, what of them?” interrupted Mat, looking up instantly with a
fierce, suspicious stare.
“Nothing particular,” pursued Zack, undauntedly, “except that it’s odd
you never brought them out before; and odder still that you should
tell Blyth, and never say a word here to me, about getting them for a
woman--”
“What of _her?”_ broke out Mat, rising to his feet with flushed face
and threatening eyes, and making the room ring again as he grounded his
rifle on the floor.
“Nothing but what a friend ought to say,” replied Zack, feeling that, in
Mat’s present condition, he had ventured a little too far. “I’m sorry,
for your sake, that she never lived to have the presents you meant
for her. There’s no offense, I hope, in saying that much, or in asking
(after what you yourself told Blyth) whether her death happened lately,
or--”
“It happened afore ever you was born.”
He gave this answer, which amazed Zack, in a curiously smothered,
abstracted tone, as if he were talking to himself; laying aside the
rifle suddenly as he spoke, sitting down by the table again, and resting
his head on his hand, Young Thorpe took a chair near him, but wisely
refrained from saying anything just at that moment. Silence seemed to
favor the change that was taking place for the better in Mat’s temper.
He looked up, after awhile, and regarded Zack with a rough wistfulness
and anxiety working in his swarthy face.
“I like you, Zack,” he said, laying one hand on the lad’s arm and
mechanically stroking down the cloth of his sleeve. “I like you. Don’t
let us two part company. Let’s always pull together as brotherly and
pleasant as we can.” He paused. His hand tightened round young Thorpe’s
arm; and the hot, dry, tearless look in his eyes began to soften as he
added, “I take it kind in you, Zack, saying you were sorry for her just
now. She died afore ever you was born.” His hand relaxed its grasp: and
when he had repeated those last words, he turned a little away, and said
no more.
Astonishment and curiosity impelled young Thorpe to hazard another
question.
“Was she a sweetheart of yours?” he asked, unconsciously sinking his
voice to a whisper, “or a relation, or--”
“Kin to me. Kin to me,” said Mat quickly, yet not impatiently; reaching
out his hand again to Zack’s arm, but without looking up.
“Was she your mother?”
“No.”
“Sister?”
“Yes.”
For a minute or two Zack was silent after this answer. As soon as he
began to speak again, his companion shook his arm--a little impatiently,
this time--and stopped him.
“Drop it,” said Mat peremptorily. “Don’t let’s talk no more, my head--”
“Anything wrong with your head?” asked Zack.
Mat rose to his feet again. A change began to appear in his face. The
flash that had tinged it from the first, deepened palpably, and spread
up to the very rim of his black skull-cap. A confusion and dimness
seemed to be stealing over his eyes, a thickness and heaviness to be
impeding his articulation when he spoke again.
“I’ve overdone it with the brandy,” he said, “my head’s getting hot
under the place where they scalped me. Give me holt of my hat, and show
me a light, Zack. I can’t stop indoors no longer. Don’t talk! Let me out
of the house at once.”
Young Thorpe took up the candle directly; and leading the way
down-stairs, let him out into the street by the private door, not
venturing to irritate him by saying anything, but waiting on the
door-step, and watching him with great curiosity as he started for his
walk. He was just getting out of sight, when Zack heard him stop, and
strike his stick on the pavement. In less than a minute he had turned,
and was back again at the door of the tobacconist’s shop.
“Zack,” he whispered, “you ask about among your friends if any of ‘em
ever knowed a man with that name I told you of.”
“Do you mean the _‘Arthur Carr’_ you were talking about just now?”
inquired young Thorpe.
“Yes; _Arthur Carr,”_ said Mat, very earnestly. Then, turning away
before Zack could ask him any more questions, he disappeared rapidly
this time in the darkness of the street.