AT MORTLAKE.
Events do not stand still at Mortlake. It is now about four o'clock on a
fine autumnal afternoon. Since we last saw her, Alice Arden has not once
sought to pass the hall-door. It would not have been possible to do so.
No one passed that barrier without a scrutiny, and the aid of the key of
the man who kept guard at the door, as closely as ever did the office at
the hatch of the debtor's prison. The suite of five rooms up-stairs, to
which Alice is now strictly confined, is not only comfortable, but
luxurious. It had been fitted up for his own use by Sir Reginald years
before he exchanged it for those rooms down-stairs which, as he grew
older, he preferred.
Levi every day visited the house, and took a report of all that was said
and planned up-stairs, in a _tête-à-tête_ with Phoebe Chiffinch, in the
great parlour among the portraits. The girl was true to her young and
helpless mistress, and was in her confidence, outwitting the rascally
Jew, who every time, by Longcluse's order, bribed her handsomely for the
information that was misleading him.
From Phoebe the young lady concealed no pang of her agony. Well was it
for her that in their craft they had exchanged the comparatively useless
Miss Diaper for this poor girl, on whose apprenticeship to strange ways,
and a not very fastidious life, they relied for a clever and
unscrupulous instrument. Perhaps she had more than the cunning they
reckoned upon. "But I 'av' took a liking to ye, Miss, and they'll not
make nothing of Phoebe Chiffinch."
Alice was alone in her room, and Phoebe Chiffinch came running up the
great staircase singing, and through the intervening suite of rooms,
entered that in which her young mistress awaited her return. Her song
falters, and dies into a strange ejaculation, as she passes the door.
"The Lord be thanked, that's over and done!" she exclaims, with a face
pale from excitement.
"Sit down, Phoebe; you are trembling; you must drink a little water. Are
you well?"
"La! quite well, Miss," said Phoebe, more cheerily, and then burst into
tears. She gulped down some of the water which the frightened young lady
held to her lips, and recovering quickly, she gets on her feet, and says
impatiently--"I'm sure, Miss, I don't know what makes me such a fool;
but I'm all right now, Ma'am; and you asked me, the other day, about the
big key of the old back-door lock that I showed you, and I said, though
it could not open no door, I would find a use for it, yet. So I 'av',
Miss."
"Go on; I recollect perfectly."
"You remember the bit of parchment I asked you to write the words on
yesterday evening, Miss? They was these: 'Passage on the left, from main
passage to housekeeper's room,' etc. Well, I was with Mr. Vargers when
he locked that passage up, and it leads to a door in the side of the
'ouse, which it opens into the grounds; and in that houter door he left
a key, and only took with him the key of the door at the other end,
which it opens from the 'ousekeeper's passage. So all seemed sure--sure
it is, so long as you can't get into that side passage, which it is
locked."
"I understand; go on, Phoebe."
"Well, Miss, the reason I vallied that key I showed you so much, was
because it's as like the key of the side passage as one egg is to
another, only it won't turn in the lock. So, as that key I must 'av', I
tacked the bit of parchment you wrote to the 'andle of the other, which
the two matches exactly, and I didn't tell you, Miss, thinking what a
taking you'd be in, but I went down to try if I could not take it for
the right one."
"It was kind of you not to tell me; go on," said the young lady.
"Well, Miss, I 'ad the key in my pocket, ready to change; and I knew
well how 'twould be, if I was found out--I'd get the sack, or be locked
up 'ere myself, more likely, and no more chances for you. Mr. Vargers
was in the room--the porter's room they calls it now--and in I goes. I
did not see no one there, but Vargers and he was lookin' sly, I thought,
and him and Mr. Boult has been talking me over, I fancy, and they don't
quite trust me. So I began to talk, wheedling him the best I could to
let me go into town for an hour; 'twas only for talk, for well I knew I
shouldn't get to go; but nothing but chaff did he answer. And then, says
I, is Mr. Levice come yet, and he said, he is, but he has a second key
of the back door and he may 'av' let himself hout. Well, I says,
thinking to make Vargers jealous, he's a werry pleasant gentleman, a bit
too pleasant for me, and I'm a-going to the kitchen, and I'd rayther he
wastnt there, smoking as he often does, and talking nonsense, when I'm
in it. There's others that's nicer, to my fancy, than him--so, jest you
go and see, and I'll take care of heverything 'ere till you come
back--and don't you be a minute. There was the keys, lying along the
chimney-piece, at my left, and the big table in front, and nothing to
hinder me from changing mine for his, but Vargers' eye over me. Little I
thought he'd 'av' bin so ready to do as I said. But he smiled to
himself-like, and he said he'd go and see. So away he went; and I
listens at the door till I heard his foot go on the tiles of the passage
that goes down by the 'ousekeeper's room, and the billiard-room, to the
kitchen; and then on tip-toe, as quick as light, I goes to the
chimney-piece, and without a sound, I takes the very key I wanted in my
fingers, and drops it into my pocket, but putting down the other in its
place, I knocked down the big leaden hink-bottle, and didn't it make a
bang on the floor--and a terrible hoarse voice roars out from the tother
side of the table--'What the devil are you doing there, huzzy?' Saving
your presence, Miss; and up gets Mr. Boult, only half awake, looking as
mad as Bedlam, and I thought I would have fainted away! Who'd 'av'
fancied he was in the room? He had his 'ead on the table, and the cloak
over it, and I think, when they 'eard me a-coming downstairs, they
agreed he should 'ide hisself so, to catch me, while Vargers would leave
the room, to try if I would meddle with the keys, or the like--and while
Mr. Boult was foxing, he fell asleep in right earnest. Warn't it a joke,
Miss? So I brazent it hout, Miss, the best I could, and I threatened to
complain to Mr. Levi, and said I'd stay no longer, to be talked to, that
way, by sich as he. And Boult could not tell Vargers he was asleep, and
so I saw him count over the keys, and up I ran, singing."
By this time the girl was on her knees, concealing the key between the
beds, with the others.
"Thank God, Phoebe, you have got it! But, oh! all that is before us
still!"
"Yes, there's work enough, Miss. I'll not be so frightened no more. Tom
Chiffinch, that beat the Finchley pet, after ninety good rounds, was my
brother, and I won't show nothing but pluck, Miss, from this out--you'll
see."
Alice had proposed writing to summon her friends to her aid. But Phoebe
protested against that extremely perilous measure. Her friends were away
from London; who could say where? And she believed that the attempt to
post the letters would miscarry, and that they were certain to fall into
the hands of their jailors. She insisted that Alice should rely on the
simple plan of escape from Mortlake.
Martha Tansey, it is true, was anxious. She wondered how it was that she
had not once heard from her young mistress since her journey to
Yorkshire. And a passage in a letter which had reached her, from the old
servant, at David Arden's town house, who had been mystified by Sir
Richard, perplexed and alarmed her further, by inquiring how Miss Alice
looked, and whether she had been knocked up by the journey to Arden on
Wednesday.
So matters stood.
Each evening Mr. Levi was in attendance, and this day, according to
rule, she went down to the grand old dining-room.
"How'sh Miss Chiffinch?" said the little Jew, advancing to meet her;
"how'sh her grashe the duchess, in the top o' the houshe? Ish my Lady
Mount-garret ash proud ash ever?"
"Well, I do think, Mr. Levice, there's a great change; she's bin growing
better the last two days, and she's got a letter last night that's
seemed to please her."
"Wha'at letter?"
"The letter you gave me last night for her."
"O-oh! Ah! I wonder--eh? Do you happen to know what wa'azh in that ere
letter?" he asked, in an insinuating whisper.
"Not I, Mr. Levice. She don't trust me not as far as you'd throw a bull
by the tail. You might 'av' managed that better. You must 'a frightened
her some way about me. I try to be agreeable all I can, but she won't
a-look at me."
"Well, I don't want to know, _I'm_ sure. Did she talk of going out of
doors since?"
"No; there's a frost in the hair still, and she says till that's gone
she won't stir out."
"That frost will last a bit, I guess. Any more newshe?"
"Nothing."
"Wait a minute 'ere," said Mr. Levi, and he went into the room beyond
this, where she knew there were writing materials.
She waited some time, and at length took the liberty of sitting down.
She was kept a good while longer. The sun went down; the drowsy crimson
that heralds night overspread the sky. She coughed; several fits of
coughing she tried at short intervals. Had Mr. Levice, as she called
him, forgotten her? He came out at length in the twilight.
"Shtay you 'ere a few minutes more," said that gentleman, as he walked
thoughtfully through the room and paused. "You wazh asking yesterday
where izh Sir Richard Arden. Well, hezh took hishelf off to Harden in
Yorkshire, and he'll not be 'ome again for a week."
Having delivered this piece of intelligence, he nodded, and slowly went
to the hall, and closed the door carefully as he left the room. She
followed to the door and listened. There was plainly a little fuss going
on in the hall. She heard feet in motion, and low talking. She was
curious and would have peeped, but the door was secured on the outside.
The twilight had deepened, and for the first time she saw that a ray of
candle-light came through the key-hole from the inner room. She opened
the door softly, and saw a gentleman writing at the table. He was quite
alone. He turned, and rose: a tall, slight gentleman, with a singular
countenance that startled her.
"You are Phoebe Chiffinch," said a deep, clear voice, sternly, as the
gentleman pointed towards her with the plume end of the pen he held in
his fingers. "I am Mr. Longcluse. It is I who have sent you two pounds
each day by Levi. I hear you have got it all right."
The girl curtseyed, and said "Yes, Sir," at the second effort, for she
was startled. He had taken out and opened his pocket-book.
"Here are _ten_ pounds," and he handed her a rustling new note by the
corner. "I'll treat you liberally, but you must speak truth, and do
exactly as you are ordered by Levi." She curtseyed again. There was
something in that gentleman that frightened her awfully.
"If you do so, I mean to give you a hundred pounds when this business is
over. I have paid you as my servant, and if you deceive me I'll punish
you; and there are two or three little things they complain of at the
'Guy of Warwick,' and" (he swore a hard oath) "you shall hear of them if
you do."
She curtseyed, and felt, not angry, as she would if any one else had
said it, but frightened, for Mr. Longcluse's was a name of power at
Mortlake.
"You gave Miss Arden a letter last night. You know what was in it?"
"Yes, Sir."
"What was it?"
"An offer of marriage from you, Sir."
"Yes: how do you know that?"
"She told me, please, Sir."
"How did she take it? Come, don't be afraid."
"I'd say it pleased her well, Sir."
He looked at her in much surprise, and was silent for a time.
He repeated his question, and receiving a similar answer, reflected on
it.
"Yes; it _is_ the best way out of her troubles; she begins to see that,"
he said, with a strange smile.
He walked to the chimney-piece, and leaned on it; and forgot the
presence of Phoebe. She was too much in awe to make any sign. Turning he
saw her, suddenly.
"You will receive some directions from Mr. Levi; take care you
understand and execute them."
He touched the bell, and Levi opened the door; and she and that person
walked together to the foot of the stair, where in a low tone they
talked.