A Perilous Secret by Charles Reade
C >>
Charles Reade >> A Perilous Secret
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 A PERILOUS SECRET
BY CHARLES READE
AUTHOR OF "HARD CASH" "PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE" "GRIFFITH GAUNT" "IT IS
NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND" ETC., ETC.
1884
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE POOR MAN'S CHILD
CHAPTER II.
THE RICH MAN'S CHILD
CHAPTER III.
THE TWO FATHERS
CHAPTER IV.
AN OLD SERVANT
CHAPTER V.
MARY'S PERIL
CHAPTER VI.
SHARP PRACTICE
CHAPTER VII.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
CHAPTER VIII.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
CHAPTER IX.
LOVERS PARTED
CHAPTER X.
THE GORDIAN KNOT
CHAPTER XI.
THE KNOT CUT.--ANOTHER TIED
CHAPTER XII.
THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SERPENT LET LOOSE
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SERPENT
CHAPTER XV.
THE SECRET IN DANGER
CHAPTER XVI.
REMINISCENCES.--THE FALSE ACCUSER.--THE SECRET EXPLODED
CHAPTER XVII.
LOVERS' QUARRELS
CHAPTER XVIII.
APOLOGIES
CHAPTER XIX.
A WOMAN OUTWITS TWO MEN
CHAPTER XX.
CALAMITY
CHAPTER XXI.
BURIED ALIVE
CHAPTER XXII.
REMORSE
CHAPTER XXIII.
BURIED ALIVE.--THE THREE DEADLY PERILS
CHAPTER XXIV.
STRANGE COMPLICATIONS
CHAPTER XXV.
RETRIBUTION
CHAPTER XXVI.
STRANGE TURNS
CHAPTER XXVII.
CURTAIN
A PERILOUS SECRET.
CHAPTER I.
THE POOR MAN'S CHILD.
Two worn travellers, a young man and a fair girl about four years old,
sat on the towing-path by the side of the Trent.
The young man had his coat off, by which you might infer it was very hot;
but no, it was a keen October day, and an east wind sweeping down the
river. The coat was wrapped tightly round the little girl, so that only
her fair face with blue eyes and golden hair peeped out; and the young
father sat in his shirt sleeves, looking down on her with a loving but
anxious look. Her mother, his wife, had died of consumption, and he was
in mortal terror lest biting winds and scanty food should wither this
sweet flower too, his one remaining joy.
William Hope was a man full of talent; self-educated, and wonderfully
quick at learning anything: he was a linguist, a mechanic, a
mineralogist, a draughtsman, an inventor. Item, a bit of a farrier, and
half a surgeon; could play the fiddle and the guitar; could draw and
paint and drive a four-in-hand. Almost the only thing he could not do was
to make money and keep it.
Versatility seldom pays. But, to tell the truth, luck was against him;
and although in a long life every deserving man seems to get a chance,
yet Fortune does baffle some meritorious men for a limited time.
Generally, we think, good fortune and ill fortune succeed each other
rapidly, like red cards and black; but to some ill luck comes in great
long slices; and if they don't drink or despair, by-and-by good luck
comes continuously, and everything turns to gold with him who has waited
and deserved.
Well, for years Fortune was hard on William Hope. It never let him get
his head above-water. If he got a good place, the employer died or sold
his business. If he patented an invention, and exhausted his savings to
pay the fees, no capitalist would work it, or some other inventor
proved he had invented something so like it that there was no basis for
a monopoly.
At last there fell on him the heaviest blow of all. He had accumulated
L50 as a merchant's clerk, and was in negotiation for a small independent
business, when his wife, whom he loved tenderly, sickened.
For eight months he was distracted with hopes and fears. These gave way
to dismal certainty. She died, and left him broken-hearted and poor,
impoverished by the doctors, and pauperized by the undertaker. Then his
crushed heart had but one desire--to fly from the home that had lost its
sunshine, and the very country which had been calamitous to him.
He had one stanch friend, who had lately returned rich from New Zealand,
and had offered to send him out as his agent, and to lend him money in
the colony. Hope had declined, and his friend had taken the huff, and
had not written to him since. But Hope knew he was settled in Hull, and
too good-hearted at bottom to go from his word in his friend's present
sad condition. So William Hope paid every debt he owed in Liverpool, took
his child to her mother's tombstone, and prayed by it, and started to
cross the island, and then leave it for many a long day.
He had a bundle with one brush, one comb, a piece of yellow soap, and two
changes of linen, one for himself, and one for his little Grace--item,
his fiddle, and a reaping hook; for it was a late harvest in the north,
and he foresaw he should have to work his way and play his way, or else
beg, and he was too much of a man for that. His child's face won her many
a ride in a wagon, and many a cup of milk from humble women standing at
their cottage doors.
Now and then he got a day's work in the fields, and the farmer's wife
took care of little Grace, and washed her linen, and gave them both clean
straw in the barn to lie on, and a blanket to cover them. Once he fell in
with a harvest-home, and his fiddle earned him ten shillings, all in
sixpences. But on unlucky days he had to take his fiddle under his arm,
and carry his girl on his back: these unlucky days came so often that
still as he travelled his small pittance dwindled. Yet half-way on this
journey fortune smiled on him suddenly. It was in Derbyshire. He went a
little out of his way to visit his native place--he had left it at ten
years old. Here an old maid, his first cousin, received Grace with
rapture, and Hope pottered about all day, reviving his boyish
recollections of people and places. He had left the village ignorant; he
returned full of various knowledge; and so it was that in a certain
despised field, all thistles and docks and every known weed, which field
the tenant had condemned as a sour clay unfit for cultivation, William
Hope found certain strata and other signs which, thanks to his
mineralogical studies and practical knowledge, sent a sudden thrill all
through his frame. "Here's luck at last!" said he. "My child! my child!
our fortune is made."
The proprietor of this land, and indeed of the whole parish, was a
retired warrior, Colonel Clifford. Hope knew that very well, and hurried
to Clifford Hall, all on fire with his discovery.
He obtained an interview without any difficulty. Colonel Clifford, though
proud as Lucifer, was accessible and stiffly civil to humble folk. He was
gracious enough to Hope; but, when the poor fellow let him know he had
found signs of coal on his land, he froze directly; told him that two
gentlemen in that neighborhood had wasted their money groping the bowels
of the earth for coal, because of delusive indications on the surface of
the soil; and that for his part, even if he was sure of success, he would
not dirty his fingers with coal. "I believe," said he, "the northern
nobility descend to this sort of thing; but then they have not smelled
powder, and seen glory, and served her Majesty. _I have_."
Hope tried to reason with him, tried to get round him. But he was
unassailable as Gibraltar, and soon cut the whole thing short by
saying: "There, that's enough. I am much obliged to you, sir, for
bringing me information you think valuable. You are travelling--on
foot--short of funds perhaps. Please accept this trifle,
and--and--good-morning." He retreated at marching pace, and the hot
blood burned his visitor's face. An alms!
But on second thoughts he said: "Well, I have offered him a fortune, and
he gives me ten shillings. One good turn deserves another." So he
pocketed the half-sovereign, and bought his little Grace a
neck-handkerchief, blue with white spots; and so this unlucky man and his
child fought their way from west to east, till they reached that place
where we introduced them to the reader.
That was an era in their painful journey, because until then Hope's only
anxiety was to find food and some little comfort for his child. But this
morning little Grace had begun to cough, a little dry cough that struck
on the father's heart like a knell. Her mother had died of consumption:
were the seeds of that fatal malady in her child? If so, hardship,
fatigue, cold, and privation would develop them rapidly, and she would
wither away into the grave before his eyes. So he looked down on her in
an agony of foreboding, and shivered in his shirt sleeves, not at the
cold, but at the future. She, poor girl, was, like the animals, blessed
with ignorance of everything beyond the hour; and soon she woke her
father from his dire reverie with a cry of delight.
"Oh, what's they?" said she, and beamed with pleasure. Hope followed the
direction of her blue eyes, open to their full extent; and lo! there was
a little fleet of swans coming round a bend of the river. Hope told her
all about the royal birds, and that they belonged to sovereigns in one
district, to cities in another. Meantime the fair birds sailed on, and
passed stately, arching their snowy necks. Grace gloated on them, and for
a day or two her discourse was of swans.
At last, when very near the goal, misfortunes multiplied. They came into
a town on a tidal river, whence they could hope to drift down to their
destination for a shilling or two; but here Hope spent his last farthing
on Grace's supper at an eating-house, and had not wherewithal to pay for
bed or breakfast at the humble inn. Here, too, he took up the local
paper, praying Heaven there might be some employment advertised, however
mean, that so he might feed his girl, and not let the fiend Consumption
take her at a gift.
No, there was nothing in the advertising column, but in the body of the
paper he found a paragraph to the effect that Mr. Samuelson, of Hull,
had built a gigantic steam vessel in that port, and was going out to New
Zealand in her on her trial trip, to sail that morning at high tide, 6.45
A.M., and it was now nine.
How a sentence in a newspaper can blast a man! Bereavement, Despair, Lost
Love--they come like lightning in a single line. Hope turned sick at
these few words, and down went his head and his hands, and he sat all of
a heap, cold at heart. Then he began to disbelieve in everything,
especially in honesty. For why? If he had only left Liverpool in debt and
taken the rail, he would have reached Hull in ample time, and would have
gone out to New Zealand in the new ship with money in both pockets.
But it was no use fretting. Starvation and disease impended over his
child. He must work, or steal, or something. In truth he was getting
desperate. He picked himself up and went about, offering his many
accomplishments to humble shop-keepers. They all declined him, some
civilly. At last he came to a superior place of business. There were
large offices and a handsome house connected with it in the rear. At the
side of the offices were pulleys, cranes, and all the appliances for
loading vessels, and a yard with horses and vans, so that the whole
frontage of the premises was very considerable. A brass plate said, "R.
Bartley, ship-broker and commission agent"; but the man was evidently a
ship-owner and a carrier besides; so this miscellaneous shop roused hopes
in our versatile hero. He rapidly surveyed the outside, and then cast
hungry glances through the window of the man's office. It was a
bow-window of unusual size, through which the proprietor or his employees
could see a long way up and down the river. Through this window Hope
peered. Repulses had made him timid. He wanted to see the face he had to
apply to before he ventured.
But Mr. Bartley was not there. The large office was at present occupied
by his clerks; one of these was Leonard Monckton, a pale young man with
dark hair, a nose like a hawk, and thin lips. The other was quite a young
fellow, with brown hair, hazel eyes, and an open countenance. "Many a
hard rub puts a point on a man." So Hope resolved at once to say nothing
to that pale clerk so like a kite, but to interest the open countenance
in him and his hungry child.
There were two approaches to the large office. One, to Hope's right,
through a door and a lobby. This was seldom used except by the habitues
of the place. The other was to Hope's left, through a very small office,
generally occupied by an inferior clerk, who kept an eye upon the work
outside. However, this office had also a small window looking inward;
this opened like a door when the man had anything to say to Mr. Bartley
or the clerks in the large office.
William Hope entered this outer office, and found it empty. The clerk
happened to be in the yard. Then he opened the inner door and looked in
on the two clerks, pale and haggard, and apprehensive of a repulse. He
addressed himself to the one nearest him; it was the one whose face had
attracted him.
"Sir, can I see Mr. Bartley?"
The young fellow glanced over the visitor's worn garments and dusty
shoes, and said, dryly, "Hum! if it is for charity, this is the
wrong shop."
"I want no charity," said Hope, with a sigh; "I want employment. But I do
want it very badly; my poor little girl and I are starving."
"Then that is a shame," said the young fellow, warmly. "Why, you are a
gentleman, aren't you?"
"I don't know for that," said Hope. "But I am an educated man, and I
could do the whole business of this place. But you see I am down in
the world."
"You look like it," said the clerk, bluntly. "But don't you be so green
as to tell old Bartley that, or you are done for. No, no; I'll show you
how to get in here. Wait till half past one. He lunches at one, and he
isn't quite such a brute after luncheon. Then you come in like Julius
Caesar, and brag like blazes, and offer him twenty pounds' worth of
industry and ability, and above all arithmetic, and he will say he has no
opening (and that is a lie), and offer you fifteen shillings, perhaps."
"If he does, I'll jump at it," said Hope, eagerly. "But whether I succeed
with him or not, take my child's blessing and my own."
His voice faltered, and Bolton, with a young man's uneasiness under
sentiment, stopped him. "Oh, come, old fellow, bother all that! Why, we
are all stumped in turn." Then he began to chase a solitary coin into a
corner of his waistcoat pocket. "Look here, I'll lend you a
shilling--pay me next week--it will buy the kid a breakfast. I wish I
had more, but I want the other for luncheon. I haven't drawn my screw
yet. It is due at twelve."
"I'll take it for my girl," said Hope, blushing, "and because it is
offered me by a gentleman and like a gentleman."
"Granted, for the sake of argument," said this sprightly youth; and so
they parted for the time, little dreaming, either of them, what a chain
they were weaving round their two hearts, and this little business the
first link.
CHAPTER II.
THE RICH MAN'S CHILD.
The world is very big, and contains hundreds of millions who are
strangers to each other. Yet every now and then this big world seems to
turn small; so many people whose acquaintance we make turn out to be
acquaintances of our acquaintances. This concatenation of acquaintances
is really one of the marvels of social life, if one considers the
chances against it, owing to the size and population of the country. As
an example of this phenomenon, which we have all observed, William Hope
was born in Derbyshire, in a small parish which belonged, nearly all of
it, to Colonel Clifford; yet in that battle for food which is, alas! the
prosaic but true history of men and nations, he entered an office in
Yorkshire, and there made friends with Colonel Clifford's son, Walter,
who was secretly dabbling in trade and matrimony under the name of
Bolton; and this same Hope was to come back, and to apply for a place to
Mr. Bartley; Mr. Bartley was brother-in-law to that same Colonel
Clifford, though they were at daggers drawn, the pair.
Miss Clifford, aged thirty-two, had married Bartley, aged thirty-seven.
Each had got fixed habits, and they soon disagreed. In two years they
parted, with plenty of bitterness, but no scandal. Bartley stood on his
rights, and kept their one child, little Mary. He was very fond of her,
and as the mother saw her whenever she liked, his love for his child
rather tended to propitiate Mrs. Bartley, though nothing on earth would
have induced her to live with him again.
Little Mary was two months younger than Grace Hope, and, like her, had
blue eyes and golden hair. But what a difference in her condition! She
had two nurses and every luxury. Dressed like a princess, and even when
in bed smothered in lace; some woman's eye always upon her, a hand always
ready to keep her from the smallest accident.
Yet all this care could not keep out sickness. The very day that Grace
Hope began to cough and alarm her father, Mary Bartley flushed and paled,
and showed some signs of feverishness.
The older nurse, a vigilant person, told Mr. Bartley directly; and the
doctor was sent for post-haste. He felt her pulse, and said there was
some little fever, but no cause for anxiety. He administered syrup of
poppies, and little Mary passed a tranquil night.
Next day, about one in the afternoon, she became very restless, and was
repeatedly sick. The doctor was sent for, and combated the symptoms; but
did not inquire closely into the cause. Sickness proceeds immediately
from the stomach; so he soothed the stomach with alkaline mucilages, and
the sickness abated. But next day alarming symptoms accumulated, short
breathing, inability to eat, flushed face, wild eyes. Bartley telegraphed
to a first-rate London physician. He came, and immediately examined
the girl's throat, and shook his head; then he uttered a fatal
word--Diphtheria.
They had wasted four days squirting petty remedies at symptoms, instead
of finding the cause and attacking it, and now he told them plainly he
feared it was too late--the fatal membrane was forming, and, indeed, had
half closed the air-passages.
Bartley in his rage and despair would have driven the local doctor out of
the house, but this the London doctor would not allow. He even consulted
him on the situation, now it was declared, and, as often happens, they
went in for heroic remedies since it was too late.
But neither powerful stimulants nor biting draughts nor caustic
applications could hinder the deadly parchment from growing and growing.
The breath reduced to a thread, no nourishment possible except by baths
of beef tea, and similar enemas. Exhaustion inevitable. Death certain.
Such was the hopeless condition of the rich man's child, surrounded by
nurses and physicians, when the father of the poor man's child applied to
the clerk Bolton for that employment which meant bread for his child, and
perhaps life for _her_.
William Hope returned to his little Grace with a loaf of bread he
bought on the road with Bolton's shilling, and fresh milk in a
soda-water bottle.
He found her crying. She had contrived, after the manner of children, to
have an accident. The room was almost bare of furniture, but my lady had
found a wooden stool that _could_ be mounted upon and tumbled off, and
she had done both, her parent being away. She had bruised and sprained
her little wrist, and was in the depths of despair.
"Ah," said poor Hope, "I was afraid something or other would happen if I
left you."
He took her to the window, and set her on his knee, and comforted her. He
cut a narrow slip off his pocket handkerchief, wetted it, and bound it
lightly and deftly round her wrist, and poured consolation into her ear.
But soon she interrupted that, and flung sorrow to the winds; she uttered
three screams of delight, and pointed eagerly through the window.
"Here they be again, the white swans!"
Hope looked, and there were two vessels, a brig and a bark, creeping
down the river toward the sea, with white sails bellying to a gentle
breeze astern.
It is experience that teaches proportion. The eye of childhood is
wonderfully misled in that matter. Promise a little child the moon, and
show him the ladder to be used, he sees nothing inadequate in the means;
so Grace Hope was delighted with her swans.
But Hope, who made it his business to instruct her, and not deceive her
as some thoughtless parents do, out of fun, the wretches, told her,
gently, they were not swans, but ships.
She was a little disappointed at that, but inquired what they were doing.
"Darling," said he, "they are going to some other land, where honest,
hard-working people can not starve, and, mark my words, darling," said
he--she pricked her little ears at that--"you and I shall have to go
with them, for we are poor."
"Oh," said little Grace, impressed by his manner as well as his words,
and nodded her pretty head with apparent wisdom, and seemed greatly
impressed.
Then her father fed her with bread and milk, and afterward laid her on
the bed, and asked her whether she loved him.
"Dearly, dearly," said she.
"Then if you do," said he, "you will go to sleep like a good girl, and
not stir off that bed till I come back."
"No more I will," said she.
However, he waited until she was in an excellent condition for keeping
her promise, being fast as a church.
Then he looked long at her beautiful face, wax-like and even-tinted, but
full of life after her meal, and prayed to Him who loved little children,
and went with a beating heart to Mr. Bartley's office.
But in the short time, little more than an hour and a half, which elapsed
between Hope's first and second visit, some most unexpected and
remarkable events took place.
Bartley came in from his child's dying bed distracted with grief; but
business to him was the air he breathed, and he went to work as usual,
only in a hurried and bitter way unusual to him. He sent out his clerk
Bolton with some bills, and told him sharply not to return without the
money; and whilst Bolton, so-called, was making his toilette in the
lobby, his eye fell on his other clerk, Monckton.
Monckton was poring over the ledger with his head down, the very picture
of a faithful servant absorbed in his master's work.
But appearances are deceitful. He had a small book of his own nestled
between the ledger and his stomach. It was filled with hieroglyphics, and
was his own betting book. As for his brown-study, that was caused by his
owing L100 in the ring, and not knowing how to get it. To be sure, he
could rob Mr. Bartley. He had done it again and again by false accounts,
and even by abstraction of coin, for he had false keys to his employer's
safe, cash-box, drawers, and desk. But in his opinion he had played this
game often enough, and was afraid to venture it again so soon and on so
large a scale.
He was so absorbed in these thoughts that he did not hear Mr. Bartley
come to him; to be sure, he came softly, because of the other clerk, who
was washing his hands and brushing his hair in the lobby.
So Bartley's hand, fell gently, but all in a moment, on Monckton's
shoulder, and they say the shoulder is a sensitive part in conscious
rogues. Anyway, Monckton started violently, and turned from pale to
white, and instinctively clapped both hands over his betting book.
"Monckton," said his employer, gravely, "I have made a very ugly
discovery."
Monckton began to shiver.
"Periodical errors in the balances, and the errors always against me."
Monckton began to perspire. Not knowing what to say, he faltered, and at
last stammered out, "Are you sure, sir?"
"Quite sure. I have long seen reason to suspect it, so last night I went
through all the books, and now I am sure. Whoever the villain is, I will
send him to prison if I can only catch him."
Monckton winced and turned his head away, debating in his mind whether he
should affect indignation and sympathy, and pretend to court inquiry, or
should wait till lunch-time, and then empty the cash-box and bolt.
Whilst thus debating, these words fell unexpectedly on his ear:
"And you must help me."
Then Monckton's eyes turned this way and that in a manner that is common
among thieves, and a sardonic smile curled his pale thin lip.
"It is my duty," said the sly rogue, demurely. Then, after a pause,
"But how?"
Then Mr. Bartley glanced at Bolton in the lobby, and not satisfied with
speaking under his breath, drew this ill-chosen confidant to the other
end of the office.
"Why, suspect everybody, and watch them. Now there's this clerk Bolton: I
know nothing about him; I was taken by his looks. Have your eye on
_him_."
"I will, sir," said Monckton, eagerly. He drew a long breath of
relief. For all that, he was glad when a voice in the little office
announced a visitor.
It was a clear, peremptory voice, short, sharp, incisive, and decisive.
The clerk called Bolton heard it in the lobby, and scuttled into the
street with a rapidity that contrasted drolly enough with the composure
and slowness with which he had been brushing his hair and titivating his
nascent whiskers.
A tall, stiff military figure literally marched into the middle of the
office, and there stood like a sentinel.
Mr. Bartley could hardly believe his senses.
"Colonel Clifford!" said he, roughly.
"You are surprised to see me here?"
"Of course I am. May I ask what brings you?"
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22