On the forenoon of the day that followed Mat’s return to Kirk Street,
the ordinarily dull aspect of Baregrove Square was enlivened by a
procession of three handsome private carriages which stopped at Mr.
Thorpe’s door.
From each carriage there descended gentlemen of highly respectable
appearance, clothed in shining black garments, and wearing, for the
most part, white cravats. One of these gentlemen carried in his hands a
handsome silver inkstand, and another gentleman who followed him, bore
a roll of glossy paper, tied round with a broad ribbon of sober purple
hue. The roll contained an Address to Mr. Thorpe, eulogizing his
character in very affectionate terms; the inkstand was a Testimonial to
be presented after the Address; and the gentlemen who occupied the three
private carriages were all eminent members of the religious society
which Mr. Thorpe had served in the capacity of Secretary, and from which
he was now obliged to secede in consequence of the precarious state of
his health.
A small and orderly assembly of idle people had collected on the
pavement to see the gentlemen alight, to watch them go into the house,
to stare at the inkstand, to wonder at the Address, to observe that Mr.
Thorpe’s page wore his best livery, and that Mr. Thorpe’s housemaid had
on new cap-ribbons and her Sunday gown. After the street door had
been closed, and these various objects for popular admiration had
disappeared, there still remained an attraction outside in the square,
which addressed itself to the general ear. One of the footmen in
attendance on the carriages, had collected many interesting particulars
about the Deputation and the Testimonial, and while he related them in
regular order to another footman anxious for information, the small and
orderly public of idlers stood round about, and eagerly caught up any
stray words explanatory of the ceremonies then in progress inside the
house, which fell in their way.
One of the most attentive of these listeners was a swarthy-complexioned
man with bristling whiskers and a scarred face, who had made one of the
assembly on the pavement from the moment of its first congregating.
He had been almost as much stared at by the people about him as the
Deputation itself; and had been set down among them generally as a
foreigner of the most outlandish kind: but, in plain truth, he was
English to the back-bone, being no other than Matthew Grice.
Mat’s look, as he stood listening among his neighbors, was now just as
quietly vigilant, his manner just as gruffly self-possessed, as usual.
But it had cost him a hard struggle that morning, in the solitude of
one of his longest and loneliest walks, to compose himself--or, in his
favorite phrase, to “get to be his own man again.”
From the moment when he had thrown the lock of hair into the fire, to
the moment when he was now loitering at Mr. Thorpe’s door, _he_ had
never doubted, whatever others might have done, that the man who had
been the ruin of his sister, and the man who was the nearest blood
relation of the comrade who shared his roof, and lay sick at that moment
in his bed, were one and the same. Though he stood now, amid the casual
street spectators, apparently as indolently curious as the most careless
among them--looking at what they looked at, listening to what they
listened to, and leaving the square when they left it--he was resolved
all the time to watch his first opportunity of entering Mr. Thorpe’s
house that very day; resolved to investigate through all its
ramifications the secret which he had first discovered when the
fragments of Zack’s hair were playfully held up for him to look at in
the deaf and dumb girl’s hand.
The dispersion of the idlers on the pavement was accelerated, and the
footman’s imaginary description of the proceedings then in progress at
Mr. Thorpe’s was cut short, by the falling of a heavy shower. The frost,
after breaking up, had been succeeded that year by prematurely mild
spring weather--April seemed to have come a month before its time.
Regardless of the rain, Mat walked slowly up and down the streets round
Baregrove Square, peering every now and then, from afar off, through
the misty shower, to see if the carriages were still drawn up at Mr.
Thorpe’s door. The ceremony of presenting the Testimonial was evidently
a protracted one; for the vehicles were long kept waiting for their
owners. The rain had passed away--the sun had reappeared--fresh clouds
had gathered, and it was threatening a second shower, before the
Deputation from the great Religious Society re-entered their vehicles
and drove out of the square.
When they had quitted it, Mat advanced and knocked at Mr. Thorpe’s door.
The clouds rolled up darkly over the sun, and the first warning drops of
the new shower began to fall, as the door opened.
The servant hesitated about admitting him. He had anticipated that
this sort of obstacle would be thrown in his way at the outset, and had
provided against it in his own mind beforehand. “Tell your master,” he
said, “that his son is ill, and I’ve come to speak to him about it.”
This message was delivered, and had the desired effect. Mat was admitted
into the drawing-room immediately.
The chairs occupied by the members of the Deputation had not been
moved away--the handsome silver inkstand was on the table--the Address,
beautifully written on the fairest white paper, lay by it. Mr. Thorpe
stood before the fireplace, and bending over towards the table,
mechanically examined, for the second time, the signatures attached to
the Address, while his strange visitor was being ushered up stairs.
Mat’s arrival had interrupted him just at the moment when he was going
to Mrs. Thorpe’s room, to describe to her the Presentation ceremony
which she had not been well enough to attend. He had stopped
immediately, and the faint smile that was on his face had vanished from
it, when the news of his son’s illness reached him through the servant.
But the hectic flush of triumph and pleasure which his interview
with the Deputation had called into his cheeks, still colored them as
brightly as ever, when Matthew Grice entered the room.
“You have come, sir,” Mr. Thorpe began, “to tell me--”
He hesitated, stammered out another word or two, then stopped. Something
in the expression of the dark and strange face that he saw lowering at
him under the black velvet skull-cap, suspended the words on his lips.
In his present nervous, enfeebled state, any sudden emotions of doubt
or surprise, no matter how slight and temporary in their nature, always
proved too powerful for his self-control, and betrayed themselves in his
speech and manner painfully.
Mat said not a word to break the ominous silence. Was he at that moment,
in very truth, standing face to face with Arthur Carr? Could this
man--so frail and meager, with the narrow chest, the drooping figure,
the effeminate pink tinge on his wan wrinkled cheeks--be indeed the man
who had driven Mary to that last refuge, where the brambles and weeds
grew thick, and the foul mud-pools stagnated in the forgotten corner of
the churchyard?
“You have come, sir,” resumed Mr. Thorpe, controlling himself by an
effort which deepened the flush on his face, “to tell me news of my son,
which I am not entirely unprepared for. I heard from him yesterday;
and, though it did not strike me at first, I noticed on referring to his
letter afterwards, that it was not in his own handwriting. My nerves are
not very strong, and they have been tried--pleasurably, most pleasurably
tried--already this morning, by such testimonies of kindness and
sympathy as it does not fall to the lot of many men to earn. May I beg
you, if your news should be of an alarming nature (which God forbid!) to
communicate it as gently--”
“My news is this,” Mat broke in: “Your son’s been hurt in the head, but
he’s got over the worst of it now. He lives with me; I like him; and I
mean to take care of him till he gets on his legs again. That’s my news
about your son. But that’s not all I’ve got to say. I bring you news of
somebody else.”
“Will you take a seat, and be good enough to explain yourself?”
They sat down at opposite sides of the table, with the Testimonial and
the Address lying between them. The shower outside was beginning to
fall at its heaviest. The splashing noise of the rain and the sound of
running footsteps, as the few foot passengers in the square made for
shelter at the top of their speed, penetrated into the room during the
pause of silence which ensued after they had taken their seats. Mr.
Thorpe spoke first.
“May I inquire your name?” he said, in his lowest and calmest tones.
Mat did not seem to hear the question. He took up the Address from the
table, looked at the list of signatures, and turned to Mr. Thorpe.
“I’ve been hearing about this,” he said. “Are all them names there, the
names of friends of yours?”
Mr. Thorpe looked a little astonished; but he answered after a moment’s
hesitation:
“Certainly; the most valued friends I have in the world.”
“Friends,” pursued Mat, reading to himself the introductory sentence in
the address, _“who have put the most affectionate trust in you.”_
Mr. Thorpe began to look rather offended as well as rather astonished.
“Will you excuse me,” he said coldly, “if I beg you to proceed to the
business that has brought you here.”
Mat placed the Address on the table again, immediately in front of him;
and took a pencil from a tray with writing materials in it, which stood
near at hand. “Friends _‘who have put the most affectionate trust in
you,’”_ he repeated. “The name of one of them friends isn’t here. It
ought to be; and I mean to put it down.”
As the point of his pencil touched the paper of the Address, Mr. Thorpe
started from his chair.
“What am I to understand, sir, by this conduct?” he began haughtily,
stretching out his hand to possess himself of the Address.
Mat looked up with the serpent-glitter in his eyes, and the angry red
tinge glowing in the scars on his cheek. “Sit down,” he said, “I’m not
quick at writing. Sit down, and wait till I’m done.”
Mr. Thorpe’s face began to look a little agitated. He took a step
towards the fireplace, intending to ring the bell.
“Sit down, and wait,” Mat reiterated, in quick, fierce, quietly uttered
tones of command, rising from his own chair, and pointing peremptorily
to the seat just vacated by the master of the house.
A sudden doubt crossed Mr. Thorpe’s mind, and made him pause before he
touched the bell. Could this man be in his right senses? His actions
were entirely unaccountable--his words and his way of uttering them were
alike strange--his scarred, scowling face looked hardly human at that
moment. Would it be well to summon help? No, worse than useless. Except
the page, who was a mere boy, there were none but women servants in
the house. When he remembered this, he sat down again, and at the same
moment Mat began, clumsily and slowly, to write on the blank space
beneath the last signature attached to the Address.
The sky was still darkening apace, the rain was falling heavily and more
heavily, as he traced the final letter, and then handed the paper to Mr.
Thorpe, bearing inscribed on it the name of MARY GRICE.
“Read that name,” said Mat.
Mr. Thorpe looked at the characters traced by the pencil. His face
changed instantly--he sank down into the chair--one faint cry burst from
his lips--then he was silent.
Low, stifled, momentary as it was, that cry proclaimed him to be the
man. He was self-denounced by it even before he cowered down, shuddering
in the chair, with both his hands pressed convulsively over his face.
Mat rose to his feet and spoke; eyeing him pitilessly from head to foot.
“Not a friend of all of ‘em,” he said, pointing down at the Address,
“put such affectionate trust in you, as she did. When first I see her
grave in the strange churchyard, I said I’d be even with the man who
laid her in it. I’m here to-day to be even with _you._ Carr or Thorpe,
whichever you call yourself; I know how you used her from first to last!
_Her_ father was _my_ father; _her_ name is _my_ name: you were _her_
worst enemy three-and-twenty year ago; you are _my_ worst enemy now. I’m
her brother, Matthew Grice!”
The hands of the shuddering figure beneath him suddenly dropped--the
ghastly uncovered face looked up at him, with such a panic stare in the
eyes, such a fearful quivering and distortion of all the features, that
it tried even his firmness of nerve to look at it steadily. In spite of
himself; he went back to his chair, and sat down doggedly by the table,
and was silent.
A low murmuring and moaning, amid which a few disconnected words made
themselves faintly distinguishable, caused him to look round again.
He saw that the ghastly face was once more hidden. He heard the
disconnected words reiterated, always in the same stifled wailing
tones. Now and then, a half finished phrase was audible from behind the
withered hands, still clasped over the face, He heard such fragments of
sentences as these:--“Have pity on my wife”--“accept the remorse of many
years”--“spare me the disgrace--”
After those four last words, he listened for no more. The merciless
spirit was roused in him again the moment he heard them.
“Spare you the disgrace?” he repeated, starting to his feet. “Did you
spare _her?_--Not you!”
Once more the hands dropped; once more the ghastly face slowly and
horribly confronted him. But this time he never recoiled from it. There
was no mercy in him--none in his looks, none in his tones--as he went
on.
“What! it would disgrace you, would it? Then disgraced you shall be!
You’ve kep’ it a secret, have you? You shall tell that secret to every
soul that comes about the house! You shall own Mary’s disgrace, Mary’s
death, and Mary’s child before every man who’s put his name down on that
bit of paper!--You shall, as soon as to-morrow if I like! You shall, if
I have to bring your child with me to make you; if I have to stand up,
hand in hand along with her, here on your own hearthstone.”
He stopped. The cowering figure was struggling upward from the chair:
one of the withered hands, slowly raised, was stretching itself out
towards him; the panic-stricken eyes were growing less vacant, and were
staring straight into his with a fearful meaning in their look; the pale
lips were muttering rapidly--at first he could not tell what; then he
succeeded in catching the two words, “Mary’s child?” quickly, faintly,
incessantly reiterated, until he spoke again,
“Yes,” he said, pitiless as ever. “Yes: Mary’s child. Your child.
Haven’t you seen her? Is it _that_ you’re staring and trembling about?
Go and look at her: she lives within gunshot of you. Ask Zack’s friend,
the Painter-Man, to show you the deaf and dumb girl he picked up among
the horse-riders. Look here--look at this bracelet! Do you remember
your own hair in it? The hands that brought up Mary’s child, took that
bracelet from Mary’s pocket. Look at it again! Look at it as close as
you like--”
Once more he stopped. The frail figure which had been feebly rising out
of the chair, while he held up the Hair Bracelet, suddenly and heavily
sank back in it--he saw the eyelids half close, and a great stillness
pass over the face--he heard one deep-drawn breath: but no cry now, no
moaning, no murmuring--no sound whatever, except the steady splash of
the fast-falling rain on the pavement outside.
Dead?
A thought of Zack welled up into his heart, and troubled it.
He hesitated for a moment, then bent over the chair, and put his hand on
the bosom of the deathly figure reclining in it. A faint fluttering was
still to be felt; and the pulse, when he tried that next, was beating
feebly. It was not death he looked on now, but the swoon that is near
neighbor to it.
For a minute or two, he stood with his eyes fixed on the white calm
face beneath him, thinking. “If me and Zack,” he whispered to himself;
“hadn’t been brothers together--” He left the sentence unfinished, took
his hat quickly, and quitted the room.
In the passage down-stairs, he met one of the female servants, who
opened the street-door for him.
“Your master wants you,” he said, with an effort. He spoke those words,
passed by her, and left the house.