What Will He Do with It? — Complete

But still it is due even to Jasper to state here that, in Losely’s recent design to transfer Sophy from Mr. Waife’s care to that of Madame Caumartin, the Sharper harboured no idea of a villany so execrable as the character of the Parisienne led the jealous Arabella to suspect. His real object in getting the child at that time once more into his power was (whatever its nature) harmless compared with the mildest of Arabella’s dark doubts. But still if Sophy had been regained, and the object, on regaining her, foiled (as it probably would have been), what then might have become of her,—lost, perhaps, forever, to Waife,—in a foreign land and under such guardianship? Grave question, which Jasper Losely, who exercised so little foresight in the paramount question, namely, what some day or other would become of himself? was not likely to rack his brains by conjecturing!

Meanwhile Mrs. Crane was vigilant. The detective police-officer sent to her by Mr. Rugge could not give her the information which Rugge desired, and which she did not longer need. She gave the detective some information respecting Madame Caumartin. One day towards the evening she was surprised by a visit from Uncle Sam. He called ostensibly to thank her for her kindness to his godson and nephew; and to beg her not to be offended if he had been rude to Mr. Losely, who, he understood from Dolly, was a particular friend of hers. “You see, ma’am, Samuel Dolly is a weak young man, and easily led astray; but, luckily for himself, he has no money and no stomach. So he may repent in time; and if I could find a wife to manage him, he has not a bad head for the main chance, and may become a practical man. Repeatedly I have told him he should go to prison, but that was only to frighten him; fact is, I want to get him safe down into the country, and he don’t take to that. So I am forced to say, ‘My box, home-brewed and South-down, Samuel Dolly, or a Lunnon jail and debtors’ allowance.’ Must give a young man his choice, my dear lady.”

Mrs. Crane observing that what he said was extremely sensible, Uncle Sam warmed in his confidence.

“And I thought I had him, till I found Mr. Losely in his sick-room; but ever since that day, I don’t know how it is, the lad has had something on his mind, which I don’t half like,—cracky, I think, my dear lady,—cracky. I suspect that old nurse passes letters. I taxed her with it, and she immediately wanted to take her Bible-oath, and smelt of gin, two things which, taken together, look guilty.”

“But,” said Mrs. Crane, growing much interested, “if Mr. Losely and Mr. Poole do correspond, what then?”

“That’s what I want to know, ma’am. Excuse me; I don’t wish to disparage Mr. Losely,—a dashing gent, and nothing worse, I dare say. But certain sure I am that he has put into Samuel Dolly’s head something which has cracked it! There is the lad now up and dressed, when he ought to be in bed, and swearing he’ll go to old Latham’s to-morrow, and that long arrears of work are on his conscience! Never heard him talk of conscience before: that looks guilty! And it does not frighten him any longer when I say he shall go to prison for his debts; and he’s very anxious to get me out of Lunnon; and when I threw in a word about Mr. Losely (slyly, my good lady,—just to see its effect), he grew as white as that paper; and then he began strutting and swelling, and saying that Mr. Losely would be a great man, and he should be a great man, and that he did not care for my money; he could get as much money as he liked. That looks guilty, my dear lady. And oh,” cried Uncle Sam, clasping his hands, “I do fear that he’s thinking of something worse than he has ever done before, and his brain can’t stand it. And, ma’am, he has a great respect for you; and you’ve a friendship for Mr. Losely. Now, just suppose that Mr. Losely should have been thinking of what your flash sporting gents call a harmless spree, and my sister’s son should, being cracky, construe into something criminal. Oh, Mrs. Crane, do go and see Mr. Losely, and tell him that Samuel Dolly is not safe,—is not safe!”

“Much better that I should go to your nephew,” said Mrs. Crane; “and with your leave I will do so at once. Let me see him alone. Where shall I find you afterwards?”

“At the Gloucester Coffee-house. Oh, my dear lady, how can I thank you enough? The boy can be nothing to you; but to me, he’s my sister’s son,—the blackguard!”

CHAPTER XVII

          “Dices laborantes in uno           Penelopen vitreamque Circen.” —HORAT.

Mrs. Crane found Poole in his little sitting-room, hung round with prints of opera-dancers, prize-fighters, race-horses, and the dog Billy. Samuel Dolly was in full dress. His cheeks, usually so pale, seemed much flushed. He was evidently in a state of high excitement, bowed extremely low to Mrs. Crane, called her Countess, asked if she had been lately on the Continent and if she knew Madame Caumartin, and whether the nobility at St. Petersburg were jolly, or stuck-up fellows, who gave themselves airs,—not waiting for her answer. In fact his mind was unquestionably disordered.

Arabella Crane abruptly laid her hand on his shoulder. “You are going to the gallows,” she said suddenly. “Down on your knees, and tell me all, and I will keep your secret, and save you; lie, and you are lost!”

Poole burst into tears, and dropped on his knees as he was told.

In ten minutes Mrs. Crane knew all that she cared to know, possessed herself of Losely’s letters, and, leaving Poole less light-headed and more light-hearted, she hastened to Uncle Sam at the Gloucester Coffee-house. “Take your nephew, out of town this evening, and do not let him from your sight for the next six months. Hark you, he will never be a good man; but you may save him from the hulks. Do so. Take my advice.” She was gone before Uncle Sam could answer. She next proceeded to the private house of the detective with whom she had before conferred; this time less to give than to receive information. Not half an hour after her interview with him, Arabella Crane stood in the street wherein was placed the showy house of Madame Caumartin. The lamps in the street were now lighted; the street, even at day a quiet one, was comparatively deserted. All the windows in the Frenchwoman’s house were closed with shutters and curtains, except on the drawing-room floor. From those the lights within streamed over a balcony filled with gay plants; one of the casements was partially open. And now and then, where the watcher stood, she could just catch the glimpse of a passing form behind the muslin draperies, or hear the sound of some louder laugh. In her dark-gray dress and still darker mantle, Arabella Crane stood motionless, her eyes fixed on those windows. The rare foot-passenger who brushed by her turned involuntarily to glance at the countenance of one so still, and then as involuntarily to survey the house to which that countenance was lifted. No such observer so incurious as not to hazard conjecture what evil to that house was boded by the dark lurid eyes that watched it with so fixed a menace. Thus she remained, sometimes, indeed, moving from her post, as a sentry moves from his, slowly pacing a few steps to and fro, returning to the same place, and again motionless; thus she remained for hours. Evening deepened into night; night grew near to dawn: she was still there in that street, and still her eyes were on that house. At length the door opened noiselessly; a tall man tripped forth with a gay light step, and humming the tune of a gay French chanson. As he came straight towards the spot where Arabella Crane was at watch, from her dark mantle stretched forth her long arm and lean hand and seized him. He started and recognized her.

“You here!” he exclaimed, “you!—at such an hour,—you!”

“Ay, Jasper Losely, here to warn you. To-morrow the officers of justice will be in that accursed house. To-morrow that woman—not for her worst crimes, they elude the law, but for her least by which the law hunts her down—will be a prisoner,—no, you shall not return to warn her as I warn you” (for Jasper here broke away, and retreated some steps towards the house); “or, if you do, share her fate. I cast you off.”

“What do you mean?” said Jasper, halting, till with slow steps she regained his side. “Speak more plainly: if poor Madame Caumartin has got into a scrape, which I don’t think likely, what have I to do with it?”

“The woman you call Caumartin fled from Paris to escape its tribunals. She has been tracked; the French government have claimed her—ho!—you smile. This does not touch you?”

“Certainly not.”

“But there are charges against her from English tradesmen; and if it be proved that you knew her in her proper name,—the infamous Gabrielle Desmarets; if it be proved that you have passed off the French billets de banque that she stole; if you were her accomplice in obtaining goods under her false name; if you, enriched by her robberies, were aiding and abetting her as a swindler here,—though you may be safe from the French law, will you be safe from the English? You may be innocent, Jasper Losely; if so, fear nothing. You may be guilty: if so, hide, or follow me!”

Jasper paused. His first impulse was to trust implicitly to Mrs. Crane, and lose not a moment in profiting by such counsels of concealment or flight as an intelligence so superior to his own could suggest. But suddenly remembering that Poole had undertaken to get the bill for L1,000 by the next day,—that if flight were necessary, there was yet a chance of flight with booty,—his constitutional hardihood, and the grasping cupidity by which it was accompanied, made him resolve at least to hazard the delay of a few hours. And, after all, might not Mrs. Crane exaggerate? Was not this the counsel of a jealous woman? “Pray,” said he, moving on, and fixing quick keen eyes on her as she walked by his side, “pray, how did you learn all these particulars?”

“From a detective policeman employed to discover Sophy. In conferring with him, the name of Jasper Losely as her legal protector was of course stated; that name was already coupled with the name of the false Caumartin. Thus, indirectly, the child you would have consigned to that woman saves you from sharing that woman’s ignominy and doom.”

“Stuff!” said Jasper, stubbornly, though he winced at her words: “I don’t, on reflection, see that anything can be proved against me. I am not bound to know why a lady changes her name, nor how she comes by her money. And as to her credit with tradesmen,—nothing to speak of: most of what she has got is paid for; what is not paid for is less than the worth of her goods. Pooh! I am not so easily frightened; much obliged to you all the same. Go home now; ‘t is horridly late. Good-night, or rather good-morning.”

“Jasper, mark me, if you see that woman again; if you attempt to save or screen her,—I shall know, and you lose in me your last friend, last hope, last plank in a devouring sea!”

These words were so solemnly uttered that they thrilled the heart of the reckless man. “I have no wish to screen or save her,” he said, with selfish sincerity. “And after what you have said I would as soon enter a fireship as that house. But let me have some hours to consider what is best to be done.”

“Yes, consider—I shall expect you to-morrow.”

He went his way up the twilight streets towards a new lodging he had hired not far from the showy house. She drew her mantle close round her gaunt figure, and, taking the opposite direction, threaded thoroughfares yet lonelier, till she gained the door, and was welcomed back by the faithful Bridget.

CHAPTER XVIII

Hope, tells a flattering tale to Mr. Rugge. He is undeceived by a solicitor; and left to mourn; but in turn, though unconsciously, Mr. Rugge deceives the solicitor, and the solicitor deceives his client,—which is 6s. 8d. in the solicitor’s pocket.

The next morning Arabella Crane was scarcely dressed before Mr. Rugge knocked at her door. On the previous day the detective had informed him that William and Sophy Waife were discovered to have sailed for America. Frantic, the unhappy manager hurried away to the steam-packet office, and was favoured by an inspection of the books, which confirmed the hateful tidings. As if in mockery of his bereaved and defrauded state, on returning home he found a polite note from Mr. Gotobed, requesting him to call at the office of that eminent solicitor, with reference to a young actress, named Sophy Waife, and hinting “that the visit might prove to his advantage!” Dreaming for a wild moment that Mr. Losely, conscience-stricken, might through his solicitor pay back his L100, he rushed incontinent to Mr. Gotobed’s office, and was at once admitted into the presence of that stately practitioner.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Gotobed, with formal politeness, “but I heard a day or two ago accidentally from my head clerk, who had learned it also accidentally from a sporting friend, that you were exhibiting at Humberston, during the race-week, a young actress, named on the play-bills (here is one) ‘Juliet Araminta,’ and whom, as I am informed, you had previously exhibited in Surrey and elsewhere; but she was supposed to have relinquished that earlier engagement, and left your stage with her grandfather, William Waife. I am instructed by a distinguished client, who is wealthy, and who from motives of mere benevolence interests himself in the said William and Sophy Waife, to discover their residence. Please, therefore, to render up the child to my charge, apprising me also of the address of her grandfather, if he be not with you; and without waiting for further instructions from my client, who is abroad, I will venture to say that any sacrifice in the loss of your juvenile actress will be most liberally compensated.”

“Sir,” cried the miserable and imprudent Rugge, “I paid L100 for that fiendish child,—a three years’ engagement,—and I have been robbed. Restore me the L100, and I will tell you where she is, and her vile grandfather also.”

At hearing so bad a character lavished upon objects recommended to his client’s disinterested charity, the wary solicitor drew in his pecuniary horns.

“Mr. Rugge,” said he, “I understand from your words that you cannot place the child Sophy, alias Juliet Araminta, in my hands. You ask L100 to inform me where she is. Have you a lawful claim on her?”

“Certainly, sir: she is my property.”

“Then it is quite clear that though you may know where she is, you cannot get at her yourself, and cannot, therefore, place her in my hands. Perhaps she ‘s—in Heaven!”

“Confound her, sir! no—in America! or on the seas to it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have just come from the steam-packet office, and seen the names in their book. William and Sophy Waife sailed from Liverpool last Thursday week.”

“And they formed an engagement with you, received your money; broke the one, absconded with the other. Bad characters indeed!”

“Bad! you may well say that,—a set of swindling scoundrels, the whole kit and kin. And the ingratitude!” continued Rugge; “I was more than a father to that child” (he began to whimper); “I had a babe of my own once; died of convulsions in teething. I thought that child would have supplied its place, and I dreamed of the York Theatre; but”—here his voice was lost in the folds of a marvellously dirty red pocket-handkerchief.

Mr. Gotobed having now, however, learned all that he cared to learn, and not being a soft-hearted man (first-rate solicitors rarely are), here pulled out his watch, and said,

“Sir, you have been very ill-treated, I perceive. I must wish you good-day; I have an engagement in the City. I cannot help you back to your L100, but accept this trifle (a L5 note) for your loss of time in calling” (ringing the bell violently). “Door,—show out this gentleman.”

That evening Mr. Gotobed wrote at length to Guy Darrell, informing him that, after great pains and prolonged research, he had been so fortunate as to ascertain that the strolling player and the little girl whom Mr. Darrell had so benevolently requested him to look up were very bad characters, and had left the country for the United States, as happily for England bad characters were wont to do.

That letter reached Guy Darrell when he was far away, amidst the forlorn pomp of some old Italian city, and Lionel’s tale of the little girl not very fresh in his gloomy thoughts. Naturally, he supposed that the boy had been duped by a pretty face and his own inexperienced kindly heart. And so, and so,—why, so end all the efforts of men who entrust to others the troublesome execution of humane intentions! The scales of earthly justice are poised in their quivering equilibrium, not by huge hundred-weights, but by infinitesimal grains, needing the most wary caution, the most considerate patience, the most delicate touch, to arrange or readjust. Few of our errors, national or individual, come from the design to be unjust; most of them from sloth, or incapacity to grapple with the difficulties of being just. Sins of commission may not, perhaps, shock the retrospect of conscience. Large and obtrusive to view we have confessed, mourned, repented, possibly atoned them. Sins of omission so veiled amidst our hourly emotions, blent, confused, unseen, in the conventional routine of existence,—alas! could these suddenly emerge from their shadow, group together in serried mass and accusing order,—alas, alas! would not the best of us then start in dismay, and would not the proudest humble himself at the Throne of Mercy?

CHAPTER XIX

Joy, nevertheless, does return to Mr. Rugge: and hope now inflicts herself on Mrs. Crane; a very fine-looking hope too,—six feet one, —strong as Achilles, and as fleet of foot!

Buy we have left Mr. Rugge at Mrs. Crane’s door; admit him. He bursts into her drawing-room wiping his brows. “Ma’am, they’re off to America!”

“So I have heard. You are fairly entitled to the return of your money—”

“Entitled, of course, but—”

“There it is; restore to me the contract for the child’s services.”

Rugge gazed on a roll of bank-notes, and could scarcely believe his eyes. He darted forth his hand,—the notes receded like the dagger in Macbeth. “First the contract,” said Mrs. Crane. Rugge drew out his greasy pocket-book, and extracted the worthless engagement.

“Henceforth, then,” said Mrs. Crane, “you have no right to complain; and whether or not the girl ever again fall in your way, your claim over her ceases.”

“The gods be praised! it does, ma’am, I have had quite enough of her. But you are every inch a lady, and allow me to add that I put you on my free list for life.”

Rugge gone, Arabella Crane summoned Bridget to her presence.

“Lor’, miss,” cried Bridget, impulsively, “who’d think you’d been up all night raking! I have not seen you look so well this many a year.”

“Ah,” said Arabella Crane, “I will tell you why. I have done what for many a year I never thought I should do again,—a good action. That child,—that Sophy,—do you remember how cruelly I used her?”

“Oh, miss, don’t go for to blame yourself; you fed her, you clothed her, when her own father, the villing, sent her away from hisself to you,—you of all people, you. How could you be caressing and fawning on his child,—their child?”

Mrs. Crane hung her head gloomily. “What is past is past. I have lived to save that child, and a curse seems lifted from my soul. Now listen. I shall leave London—England—probably this evening. You will keep this house; it will be ready for me any moment I return. The agent who collects my house-rents will give you money as you want it. Stint not yourself, Bridget. I have been saving and saving and saving for dreary years,—nothing else to interest me, and I am richer than I seem.”

“But where are you going, miss?” said Bridget, slowly recovering from the stupefaction occasioned by her mistress’s announcement.

“I don’t know; I don’t care.”

“Oh, gracious stars! is it with that dreadful Jasper Losely?—it is, it is. You are crazed, you are bewitched, miss!”

“Possibly I am crazed,—possibly bewitched; but I take that man’s life to mine as a penance for all the evil mine has ever known; and a day or two since I should have said, with rage and shame, ‘I cannot help it; I loathe myself that I can care what becomes of him.’ Now, without rage, without shame, I say, ‘The man whom I once so loved shall not die on a gibbet if I can help it’ and, please Heaven, help it I will.”

The grim woman folded her arms on her breast, and raising her head to its full height, there was in her face and air a stern gloomy grandeur, which could not have been seen without a mixed sensation of compassion and awe.

“Go now, Bridget; I have said all. He will be here soon: he will come; he must come; he has no choice; and then—and then—” she closed her eyes, bowed her head, and shivered.

Arabella Crane was, as usual, right in her predictions. Before noon Jasper came,—came, not with his jocund swagger, but with that sidelong sinister look—of the man whom the world cuts—triumphantly restored to its former place in his visage. Madame Caumartin had been arrested; Poole had gone into the country with Uncle Sam; Jasper had seen a police-officer at the door of his own lodgings. He slunk away from the fashionable thoroughfares, slunk to the recesses of Podden Place, slunk into Arabella Crane’s prim drawing-room, and said sullenly, “All is up; here I am!”

Three days afterwards, in a quiet street in a quiet town of Belgium,—wherein a sharper, striving to live by his profession, would soon become a skeleton,—in a commodious airy apartment, looking upon a magnificent street, the reverse of noisy, Jasper Losely sat secure, innocuous, and profoundly miserable. In another house, the windows of which—facing those of Jasper’s sitting-room, from an upper story-commanded so good a view therein that it placed him under a surveillance akin to that designed by Mr. Bentham’s reformatory Panopticon, sat Arabella Crane. Whatever her real feelings towards Jasper Losely (and what those feelings were no virile pen can presume authoritatively to define; for lived there ever a man who thoroughly understood a woman?), or whatever in earlier life might have been their reciprocated vows of eternal love,—not only from the day that Jasper, on his return to his native shores, presented himself in Podden Place, had their intimacy been restricted to the austerest bonds of friendship, but after Jasper had so rudely declined the hand which now fed him, Arabella Crane had probably perceived that her sole chance of retaining intellectual power over his lawless being necessitated the utter relinquishment of every hope or project that could expose her again to his contempt. Suiting appearances to reality, the decorum of a separate house was essential to the maintenance of that authority with which the rigid nature of their intercourse invested her. The additional cost strained her pecuniary resources, but she saved in her own accommodation in order to leave Jasper no cause to complain of any stinting in his. There, then, she sat by her window, herself unseen, eying him in his opposite solitude, accepting for her own life a barren sacrifice, but a jealous sentinel on his. Meditating as she sat and as she eyed him,—meditating what employment she could invent, with the bribe of emoluments to be paid furtively by her, for those strong hands that could have felled an ox, but were nerveless in turning an honest penny, and for that restless mind hungering for occupation, and with the digestion of an ostrich for dice and debauch, riot and fraud, but queasy as an exhausted dyspeptic at the reception of one innocent amusement, one honourable toil. But while that woman still schemes how to rescue from hulks or halter that execrable man, who shall say that he is without a chance? A chance he has: WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?