London's Heart: A Novel

"Because you are drunk, and in your present state would not desire to appear before her, if you knew – "

"If I knew what? Is mother worse? Why don't you answer? I will go in and see her!"

"Stop, Alfred," said the old man, quietly and solemnly; "Your mother is dead!"

CHAPTER VII

THE IRON BOX

The shock of the news sobered Alfred instantly; the full disgrace of his condition came upon him, and made him ashamed to look his sister in the face.

"You-you have been very hard to me, grandfather," he said hesitatingly.

"I have been to you as you deserved, Alfred. Has your conduct to-night been such as should make me affectionate to you?"

"I have no excuse to make," replied Alfred, thoroughly humbled; "but you will do me the justice to believe that it would not have been so with me had I known."

"The remorse of a too-late repentance, Alfred, is a bitter experience."

A resentful answer rose to Alfred's lips, but he checked it.

"When-when did mother die, sir?" he asked.

The words were long in coming. It seemed to him a hard question to ask.

"An hour ago. I saw a change come over her, and Mr. Gribble ran for the doctor." Alfred remembered seeing Gribble junior tear along, struggling with his coat, and it was another sting to him that a stranger should have performed his duty. "When the doctor came she had passed away."

"What did she say? Did she ask for me?"

"She did not speak; she was unconscious."

"And she died without a word to you or Lily, grandfather? without a thought of me?"

"Who can tell her thoughts? Her mind may have been awake. She passed away in her sleep-peacefully, thank God! Her life has not been a happy one; and it is God's mercy that she was spared in her last moments the pain of seeing you as you are. It would have recalled her bitterest memories."

"I am better now, grandfather. May I see her?"

"Yes. Lily, my darling!" and the old man took her in his arms and kissed her; "you must go to bed-you are tired."

But she clung to him, and entreated to be allowed to sit up with them.

"No, dear child," he said; "we shall want you to be strong to-morrow. What is that you say? You are frightened! Nay, nay, dear child! Sleep will compose you. Alfred and I have much to talk of, and we must be alone. Good night, dear child!"

When they left the room, Lily looked round and shuddered. The silence was full of terrors for her, and it was with difficulty she restrained herself from calling out. The events of the night had unnerved her. She went into the passage, and, listening, heard the buzz of voices in her grandfather's room. She could not catch the words, but it was a comfort to her to hear the sound; it was companionship. She crouched upon the ground, and lay there, with her head against the wall. A thousand fancies crowded her brain: the music-hall, with its glare of lights, and its great concourse of people, laughing, and drinking and applauding, presented itself to her in a variety of fantastic shapes, each image being perfect in itself and utterly engrossing, and yet fading entirely away in a moment, and giving place to a successor as vivid and as engrossing as any that had gone before. Other images presented themselves. Mr. Sheldrake, with his studied polished manner, and his smooth voice; Alfred and she in the dark passage; her grandfather, with a stern bearing quite unusual to him: the doctor, with his grave face and measured tones; and her mother lying dead, with grey stony face. Everything but the image of her mother was quick with life; through all the bustle and vivid movements of the other figures in her fevered fancies, that one figure presented and intruded itself in many strange ways, but always cold, and grey, and still. Presently the entire interest of her dreams centred itself in this image. Between her and her mother no great love had ever existed; the dead woman's nature had been repressive; an overwhelming grief had clouded her life, and she had yielded to it and sunk under it. She had hugged this grief close, as it were, and so wrapped herself in it, that her natural love had become frozen. So that the feeling which Lily experienced now in her dreams, for her dead mother, had nothing in it of that agonising grief which springs from intense love. And yet she shuddered at the part she was playing towards that grey cold form. It was lying before her, and she, dressed in bright colours, was dancing and singing round it. The contrast between her own gaiety and the dreadful stillness of the form she was dancing and singing to, impressed her with horror, and she strove to be still, but could not. Her struggles made her hysterical in her sleep-for Lily was sleeping now-when suddenly peace stole upon her, and she was calm. But it was not a comforting, refreshing peace; it was oppressive and painfully intense. A man stood before her, with his eyes fixed steadily upon hers. This man was one who, a few weeks before, had performed for a benefit at the music-hall. He was an electro-biologist, and Lily had been terrified by his performances. He had stolen away the wills of some of the persons upon whom he had operated, and made them do this and that at his pleasure; to pull down the moon; to drink water and believe it wine, then soapsuds; to shiver with cold; to be oppressed with heat; to dance; to stand still; to be transfixed like stone; to form friendships, hatreds, and a hundred other things as strange and inexplicable. She watched him do all these things. When the performance was over, the man, coming off the stage, had noticed the interest with which she had followed his experiments, and had said to her, "You are a good subject; I could do with you as I please." She was terrified at his words, and tried to move away from him, but could not, and could not take her eyes from his face. Perceiving this, he said to her, "Stretch out your arm," and she obeyed him; "Take my hand," and she took it, surrendering her will entirely to him. At this point they were interrupted, and she escaped him, thankfully; but for hours afterwards she was dazed, and thought much of the incident, dreading to meet the man again. Now he stood before her in her dreams, and commanded her to rise; she had no power to resist him, and she rose at his bidding. Here a diversion occurred by the word "Father!" falling upon her ears. It was not fancy, being uttered rather loudly by one of the speakers in the room, and it raised the image of her father. The last time she saw him, she was quite a little child, and then he was drunk, and was leaving her mother with words of anger on his lips. As he turned his face, in her sleeping fancies, towards the form of her mother lying dead before her, it suddenly changed to the face of Alfred, and she was pained and grieved at the likeness between father and son. Thus far the running commentary of her dreams.

Meantime an impressive scene was being enacted between her brother and her grandfather. Alfred went behind the screen, and uncovered the face of his mother. It was hard and cold in death, as it had been hard and cold in life. The light of love had not illumined her latter days, and strength had not been given her to fight with grief. Alfred was awed into good resolution as he looked at the dumb inanimate clay. "I won't drink so much," he thought, "I'll try and be better. If Christopher Sly wins the Northumberland Plate, I shall be able to be better." And then a strange half-prayer dwelt in his mind, that Christopher Sly might win the race.

To his side came old Wheels.

"She looks like an old woman," he said; "almost too old to be my daughter."

Alfred turned his eyes to the old man's face. Youth had not departed from it; it seemed indeed younger than the face of his dead daughter.

"You were her first-born, Alfred. Think of the joy that filled her when she first pressed you in her arms, and look at her now. Time is but a breath-but a breath-but a breath!"

Old Wheels mused of the time gone by, and wondered, as we all must wonder when we think of them and now, and of the changes that have occurred in our lives. The gay spirit chilled; the cheerful heart dulled by long suffering; the hope that made life bright dead and cold long, long ago-killed in the battle we have fought! But if love be left! —

Ay, if love be left, all the bruises we have received in the fight, all the hurts and wounds, shall not make life despairing. The flowers we have gathered and held to our hearts shall never wither if love be left!

"She looks very peaceful, grandfather," said Alfred almost in a whisper.

"She is at peace; she is with God and nature."

Better influences were stirred into action by the old man's words, and Alfred sank upon his knees by the bedside, and perhaps loved her better at that moment than ever he had done before.

"I have heard," continued the old man, "that many faces in death assume the beauty they possessed in youth. I would give much that it had been so with your mother, and that you might have seen her face as it was when she was young."

The old man's thoughts travelled back to the time when he first looked upon the baby-face of the cold hard grey form before him. He recalled the thrills of pleasure that hurried through him as he held the pretty child in his arms, and looked at his wife smiling happily in bed. His wife had died soon after the birth of this their only child, who had been a comfort to him until trouble came. It was all over now, and a new life had commenced for her.

"I have thought sometimes," he said aloud, pursuing the commentary of his thoughts, "of the strangeness of spirits meeting under certain conditions of things."

Alfred looked up in wonder, and the old man answered the look.

"Ay, of spirits meeting. If you believe in immortality, you must believe in the meeting of spirits. What shape or form do they bear? Here, before us, is my daughter and your mother, an old woman in looks, aged by a grief that was hard enough to bear without being made harder by constant brooding. When my wife died, your mother was a babe, and my wife was almost a girl. So they parted. How do they meet now? This child of mine looks old enough to be the mother of my wife. How do they meet? – as mother and babe again? It is a strange thought, not to be answered. Yet by and by it shall be made plain to us."

Alfred listened and wondered. Although he had not been unaccustomed to hear his grandfather speak of such matters, he had never before been impressed by them. As he bowed his head to the bed, other thoughts than selfish ones came to him, – thoughts which brought with them a consciousness of something higher than the aspirations by which he had hitherto been guided. If such influences as those which softened him and made him better for the time were less fleeting and more endurable, we should be the gainers. But in most cases they are as intangible in their effect as a breeze that touches us lightly. Winds come, and rain, and heavy clouds; and the unhealthful passion and desire that are stirred by the storm sweep the chastening thought into a lost oblivion.

The old man looked hopefully upon the form of his grandson in its attitude of contrition and softened feeling, and he waited long before he desired Alfred to rise. With a distinct purpose, which he was anxious not to disguise, he at the same time moved the screen, so that, as he and Alfred sat at the table, the bed upon which the dead daughter and mother lay was not hidden from sight.

"Alfred," the old man said, after a slight pause, "have you anything to tell me?"

"What should I have to tell you, grandfather, except-except to repeat that I am ashamed of myself for coming home dr – not quite sober, and that I beg your pardon?"

The old man did not look up; he toyed with Lily's workbox, which was on the table, and said gently, pointing to the bed,

"Ask pardon there. But you have done that, I think."

"Yes, grandfather, indeed."

"That is something. At such a time as this we should be considerate of one another. These occasions happily come but seldom in life, and sometimes they open the road to amendment. Tell me, Alfred, have I been kind to you?"

"Yes, grandfather."

"And you look upon me as a friend?"

"Yes."

"Yet you have nothing to say to me-no confidence to repose in me?"

"Nothing particular that I can think of."

A shade of disappointment passed across the old man's face like a cloud. But a rift of light chased it away as he said,

"You love Lily?"

"Indeed I do that, grandfather."

"She has but you and me, Alfred, as protectors; and she needs protection. She is surrounded by temptation. I am growing very old; my strength may fail me any day, and you may be called upon suddenly to play the part of guardian to her. You are young for it."

"But I'm strong enough, don't fear, grandfather. Lily will be all right; I'll see to that! I'll take her away from the music-hall soon. I don't like her being there – "

"You forget, Alfred, she earns our living."

"Yes, I know; but it isn't to be expected that she should always do that."

"I am glad to hear you say so. Yet you yourself are doing but little at present; you only earn – "

"Fifteen shillings a week. I know! Tickle and Flint are the stingiest old brutes in London. Of course I can't do much out of fifteen shillings a week. I must have clothes, and other things; and I can't help spending a shilling or two, and somehow or other it all goes. I must do as other young men do. I asked Tickle and Flint for a rise once; but the old screws shook their heads, referred to the agreement, and told me not to ask again."

"They were right. If you are industrious and painstaking, a prosperous future is before you."

"O, but it's too slow!" exclaimed Alfred, with an impatient shake of the head. "I am bound to them for three years more before I can make a start. It's preposterous! Never mind, I'll show them! I know a way."

"What way?" asked the old man suddenly, looking at his grandson.

"Never mind now," replied Alfred evasively. "You'll see by-and-by."

"There is but one way," observed the old man quietly-"the straight way. Alfred, go to the cupboard, and bring me a small iron box you will see there."

A sudden paleness came over Alfred's face.

"A small iron box, grandfather?" he echoed, with a curious indecision, and with a nervous trembling of the lips.

"Yes," said the old man sadly; "you know the box. You have seen it many times."

Alfred hesitated for one moment only, and then, as if much depended upon prompt action, walked swiftly to the cupboard, and taking out a small iron box, laid it before his grandfather. The old man took a key from his pocket, and put it into the lid, but did not turn the lock.

"I daresay," he said, slowly and distinctly, "you have often wondered what was in this little box. Every house, every family, has its skeleton. This box has contained ours."

"Why speak of it to-night, grandfather?" asked Alfred, nervously. "Surely it is time to go to bed. Leave this matter till to-morrow."

"Nay, it must be spoken of now, in the presence of your dead mother and my daughter. I asked you a few minutes since if you had anything to tell me. You answered not in the manner I hoped and expected. I ask you again now. Have you anything to say to me? Is there anything on your mind that it would relieve you to speak of? Think a little. Errors may be repaired; but a time comes when it is too late for reparation. Look at your mother, and say if it is not too late to make reparation for unatoned suffering. If I wrong you in speaking thus to you, I ask your pardon, my boy; but I am speaking with a strong fear upon me-a fear that a life may be wrecked by wrong-doing, as was one very near to you."

Alfred, who had listened with eyes averted from the table, caught eagerly at the last sentence.

"You do me wrong, grandfather," he said, in tones which he vainly strove to make firm-"a cruel wrong-in speaking in this way to me! I don't understand you. It is not the first time to-night that you have thrown out these insinuations. What did you mean by saying to me that the remorse of a too-late repentance is a bitter experience? And then, saying, God keep me free from crime?"

"I repeat it, Alfred. Once more I pray to God to keep you from crime! Once more I say that the remorse of a too-late repentance is the bitterest of experiences!"

"I deny your right to say these things to me!" cried Alfred violently. "I deny it entirely. I'll not stand it, grandfather! I shall go!"

"Stay!" exclaimed the old man in a tone of command. "I made a promise to your mother to speak to you this night of your father."

"My father!" Alfred caught at the table, and his heart beat wildly at the thought of what was to come.

"I have never spoken of him to you before, but the wishes of the dead must be respected. Sit down and listen. In this box I have been accustomed for years to put by small savings for a special purpose, of which you shall presently hear. Lily's earnings lately and my own trifling pittance were more than sufficient for our wants, and money was saved, little by little, until a fortnight ago I had very nearly one hundred pounds in this box. When you learn to what purpose this money was to be applied, you will better understand my motives for speaking of it in this manner. One hundred pounds was the exact sum required, and I hoped in a month to have counted it out, and to have completed a tardy atonement for a life's disgrace." Alfred turned to his grandfather in amazement, but did not speak. "Shilling by shilling," continued the old man steadily, "the little heap grew and grew. No miser ever valued gold and silver more than I did the money this box contained. I hoarded it, counted it, reckoned upon my fingers how many days would elapse before the sum was reached. No one knew of it, as I thought, but your mother and I. Certainly no one but we two knew the purpose to which it was to be applied. Three weeks this night, leaving the box in the cupboard, I went to bring Lily home from the hall. I was away for more than an hour. When I returned, I found your mother strangely agitated, but could not ascertain the cause. I questioned her, but learned nothing. The following day I opened this box. It was empty. The money was gone!"

He turned the key and opened the box. It contained nothing but two pieces of faded yellow paper.

"See," said the old man, directing Alfred's attention to the box; "there is nothing in it but these sheets of paper. Every shilling was stolen."

"I see, grandfather," said Alfred, with a furtive look into the box. "Do you know who took the money?"

"No, I do not know."

"Did mother know?"

"I am not sure."

"How not sure, grandfather?" asked Alfred, with an effort to appear at his ease. "Did mother speak of it?"

"No; and I spared her the grief that telling her of the loss would have caused her."

"Then how can you say you are not sure whether mother knew? If she had known, she would have spoken. You know," added Alfred, his manner, which had hitherto been moody and embarrassed, brightening a little, "that I am going to be a lawyer, and lawyers are fond of asking questions."

The change in Alfred's manner produced a singular effect upon the old man; it rendered him more sad and troubled. Hitherto he had exhibited a strange eagerness when Alfred showed most embarrassment; and as this disappeared, and Alfred became more at his ease, an expression of absolute grief stole into the old man's face.

"The lock has not been tampered with," observed Alfred, examining the box carefully; "how could it have been opened? You kept the key in your pocket always, of course?"

"I have been foolish enough on occasions to leave it on the mantelshelf, but on those occasions I think I may say with certainty that the cupboard in which the box was placed was always locked. I was never without one key or the other. Say that once when this occurred, the thief, knowing that the box contained money, watched me out of the house. That then he entered the room, and, going to the cupboard, found it locked. That, being baffled by this circumstance, he saw upon the mantelshelf a key, which he guessed was the key of the iron box; that he took an impression of this key – "

"In what?" interrupted Alfred, almost gaily. "In wax or putty? If he had either by him he must be a professional burglar. There are plenty of lodgers in the house, but I hardly suspected there was a person of that description here."

"I don't think there is a person of that description in the house. Remember, Alfred, that what I am narrating is merely guess-work."

"Capital guess-work, I should say, grandfather; you ought to have been a lawyer. But go on."

"That he took an impression of this key," continued the old man, "in wax or putty, as you suggest. He may have come in prepared, or taking an impression in either may have been an afterthought. That from this impression he had a false key made. That on this night three weeks, when I had gone to the music-hall for Lily, the thief entered the room, found the cupboard open-it was open, I remember-and completed the robbery."

"A good case, grandfather, but quite circumstantial, you know."

"Yes, I know, Alfred; quite circumstantial. In my thoughts I go farther even than this. I think that when the thief was opening the box, your mother may have been awake, or perhaps in that half-wakeful condition during which fancy and reality are so strangely commingled as not to be distinguishable one from the other. I think that, being in this condition, she saw the robbery committed, and that perhaps she knew the thief – "

"Grandfather!" The exclamation was forced from Alfred's trembling lips; he could not have repressed it for his life.

"What is the matter, Alfred?"

"Nothing," stammered the young man; "it is late, and I was not well when I came home. Go on."

"That knowing the thief, and not knowing whether what she saw was reality or a trick of the imagination, she dreaded, for a reason you shall presently be made acquainted with, to assure herself of the truth. I saw the dread in her watchful face and manner whenever I went to the cupboard; I saw the subject upon her lips and the fear to speak. I saw gratefulness struggling with doubt, as day after day went by and I did not refer to the loss. She yearned to know, and dreaded to ask. For had she asked and learned the truth, the bitterness of the past would have been sweet compared to the bitterness of the present! And so she passed away and was not sure."

"I don't understand all this," said Alfred sullenly; "you are speaking in enigmas, and I'm not good at solving them. I have no doubt that one of the lodgers took the money."

"It would not be very difficult to ascertain, Alfred. There were notes in the box of which I have the numbers, and a shrewd detective would most likely soon discover where the false key was made. But I have resolved to let the matter rest; perhaps I, like your mother, dread to know the truth."

"Suppose you leave it to me, grandfather?" suggested Alfred with nervous eagerness: "it will be practice for me you know."

"Yes, Alfred, I will leave it to you; I promise not to stir in the matter myself. You may be able to recover the money, or part of it, and it may be applied to its original purpose."

Alfred gave a sigh of relief, and his manner brightened again, as he inquired what was the purpose to which his grandfather referred.

"Do you remember your father?" was the question asked in return by the old man after a pause.

"But slightly grandfather. I was very young when we lost him."

"When we lost him!" mused the old man. "What memories come to light at the thought of that time! To what end your mother made me promise to tell you the story of her life and to speak plainly of your father, it is not for me to say, but I believe she intended it to act as a warning to you."

"There again!" exclaimed Alfred fretfully. "Why as a warning?"

"That is for you to answer. Perhaps she saw in you the faults that brought shame to your father, misery to her. As you sit before me now, so sat your father when he asked me for my daughter's hand. I did not know the vices that were in him, or I would have seen her dead at my feet rather than have given her to him. She loved him and had already pleaded with me for him. We were living then near Gravesend. I had money and a house of my own. Remembrance of the happy life she lived there before she was married caused her last week to express a wish to be buried there, and I shall respect her wish. Your father, I thought, had a fair future before him. I gave him my daughter's hand, and they came to London to live-not in such poor lodgings as these, but after a better fashion. I gave my daughter such a dower as I could afford, and they started in life with the fairest of prospects. It was not long before troubles came; it was not long before your mother learned that she had married a drunkard-worse, that she had married a gambler. These things are hard for me, your mother's father, to tell, and hard for you, your father's son to hear. But they are true, and if they serve to point a warning finger to the quicksands of life where, if you do not avoid them, all that is honourable and good for you may be engulfed, they will not be told in vain! I spare you the pain of a long recital; I simply tell you that step by step your father sank, and dragged your mother with him. He would not work, and constant appeals were made to my purse to supply the means of living. I gave and gave; spoke to your father again and again; appealed to his self respect, to his feelings of honour; and received in return-promises of amendment, promises of amendment, promises forgotten as soon as each temporary want was provided for. Shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you that, so low did drink and gambling bring him, he raised his hand against his wife – "