Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

WHAT A BABY'S HAND UNLOCKED.

thoroughfares beyond. There is no alteration in this place from year to year, except such differences as are brought about by the change of seasons: no civic improvement troubles its sedate gloomno adventurous speculator regards it as a promising site for building blocks of offices-no railway company casts an evil eye upon its seclusion.

To get away from the place, however, and come to our story (it shows what a queer, dreamy, outof-the-way, lost, forlorn, silent, incompetent, old neighbourhood it is when only to begin to talk about it involves utter forgetfulness of the business that took you there)—to get away from the place to the people-the dimmest, darkest, and dirtiest of all the houses round the yard was that of Richard Dryce and Co., factors and general merchants. It was never known who was the Co., for Richard Dryce managed his own business, and lived in the house, in one of the back rooms of which, overlooking a square, paved courtyard, he had been born; for the business belonged to his father before him, and he himself had married into the business of another factor and general merchant. His wife had died some twenty years before the period of this story-died in giving birth to a boy, who was sometimes mistaken for the Co., but who at present occupied no better position than that of a superior clerk, with the questionable advantage of living with his father in the dull old house, where he had to go through the warehouse, amidst innumerable bales and crates and packages, to reach the staircase which conducted him to the gloomy rooms, the old-fashioned furniture of which suited his father, but was sorely against his own taste.

How he should have come to have any opinion of his own is perhaps a mystery, for he resembled his mother, who was a simple creature, easily influenced, and with all her tastes apparently moulded on the pattern set before her by her husband. Still, however it may have been, though he was born in the gloomy house, and was subject to the same influences, the younger Dryce-whose name was Robert-never took kindly to the dull routine to which his father's habits doomed him. He was too dutiful and too mild in disposition-in fact, too unlike his own father-to offer any direct opposition to it, or to complain very often of its exactions; but he felt that at twenty he was kept with too tight a hand, and that there were worlds beyond St. Simon Swynherde which might be harmlessly explored.

Richard Dryce was not a bad man; but he had been himself devoted from early life to one condition of things, which were in some strange way in accordance with his natural constitution, or with which he had become identified till they grew into a necessary part of his existence. He was a self-contained man-an undemonstrative man, whose mind was attuned to respectable

139

solitude, and who, without being a misanthrope, regarded his fellow-creatures through a groundglass medium, which made them seem shadowy and unapproachable. A few business acquaintances he had, with whom he would sometimes take his chop and glass of old port at a City tavern of an evening; he would even, on rare occasions, go the length of smoking a cigar in company with one or two of his less distant companions; but his laugh was like the harsh echo of a disused violin, and he seldom or never invited anybody to see him at home. One of the people whom he disliked most said that he was a button-up man," and Richard Dryce could never forgive him the description was so true.

66

One of his most intimate friends, an alderman, of congenial temperament, who had greatly distinguished himself by quarrelling and exchanging vituperative epithets with another alderman on the magisterial bench, seriously advised him to become a candidate for civic honours; but he strenuously refused, although he ultimately permitted his son Robert to achieve something like independence by becoming a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Twidlers, whose hall stood within the precincts of St. Simon Swynherde. It was only on the occasion of one of their dinners that Robert was allowed to be out after ten o'clock; but that restriction did not prevent his spending the larger number of his evenings between eight o'clock and ten at the Twidlers' Hall, which mouldy old structure, with its great, cold, lonely banqueting hall and awkward polygonal ante-rooms decorated with portraits of deceased dignitaries, held an attraction, not to be found elsewhere, in the person of pretty Agnes Raincliffe, the only daughter of the company's beadle.

For six months they had been under the sweet illusion that disinterested affection must eventually win for itself a way to union; but old Mr. Raincliffe had spoken seriously to them, and altogether for pade their further meeting until Robert had spoken to his father. He went home that very night, and, nerved to a sort of desperation, did speak to his father, ending with too usual declarations that his choice was unalterable. Perhaps it was; but, whether or not, Richard Dryce went the very way to make it so when he laughed that discordant laugh, and, with a taunt against his son's weakness of purpose and his dependent position, told him to dismiss such a scheming little hussey from his thoughts, for he was to marry when he had permission, which would never be granted to such a match as the beadle wanted to bring about.

Robert left his father's presence without a word; but in a week from that date he had followed Agues down into the country, whither she had been sent out of the way. When he returned he wrote a letter to his father, to say that they wore married.

It is easy to guess what followed. When he called for an answer to his communication, he received a brief note, saying that he was discarded from that hour, need never trouble himself to enter the doors of the old house again, and that henceforth he must look to his own exertions for the means of living. This letter was sent by the hand of a sort of managing clerk, one Jaggers, who was at the same time commissioned to tell Robert that he could, if he chose, obtain a situation in a house at Liverpool, where his father's interest was sufficient to secure him a clerkship at a very moderate salary. Now it so happened that Jaggers had always appeared to be the best friend young Robert ever had: he had sympathised with him on the subject of his father's harshness; had applauded his noble sentiments when he had imparted the secret of his engagement to Agnes; had wished that he was master of the establishment in St. Simon's Yard, that justice might be done to disinterested virtue; and had generally assumed the part of guide, philosopher, and friend, tempered by humble deference, to the young man. It was arranged between them, therefore, that after a time, during which Robert should accept the situation at Liverpool, a more successful appeal might be made to Dryce, Senior, and that a letter addressed to him should be sent under cover to Jaggers, who would lay it on his table. Then Robert and his young wife went away, leaving this good-natured fellow to watch their interests. A year passed, and the letter had been written, but remained unanswered; indeed, according to Jaggers's showing, Richard Dryce was more inveterate than ever, and was unapproachable on the subject of his undutiful son, in pleading whose cause he (Jaggers) had nearly obtained his own dismissal. The house in which Robert was a clerk went to pieces in the commercial crisis, and he was thrown out of employment. Again he wrote to his father, saying that he had an appointment offered him in Australia, and only wanted the money to pay his passage. He received no reply, but some people who knew him in Liverpool made up the sum, and his wife came to London to live with her father (who was superannuated in favour of a new beadle), and to wait for his return, or for the remittance that was to come by the first mail, that she might join him there,

Their first child, a girl, had been a poor sickly little creature, and was dead; but Agnes was likely again to become a mother, and waited anxiously for the money which would enable her to prepare for such an event. Anxiously as she waited, it never came, and Jaggers, to whom it was to have been directed, advanced her a sovereign, as he said, "out of his small means," and then lost sight of her, for she and her father had moved into fresh lodgings, where the managing clerk could scarcely

trouble himself to go, unless he had good news to take with him. Indeed, he had so much to occupy his attention, that some months had elapsed since he had seen Agnes; once only he had written a short reply to a note imploring him to say whether any remittance had arrived; but how could he spare time to attend to such matters when Mr. Dryce was every week taking a less active part in the business, and the Christmas quarter was stealing on, with the balance-sheet not even thought of in the press of country orders? Mr. Richard Dryce was still hale and active; but those who knew him best thought that he was breaking. His voice was less harsh, his hair had turned from iron grey to white. Once or twice old acquaintances ventured to ask after his son, but he shook his head, and said he knew nothing of him; he had written to his last address, but had received no reply.

So Christmas came-Christmas Eve, that is; and the old man looked so solitary, that one or two tried to rally him, and even asked him to spend the next day with them, to which he responded by his old harsh laugh, and putting on his worsted gloves trudged home through the

snow.

On Christmas morning he awoke early-almost before the daylight had penetrated the dull rooms where he lived-and had a sudden fancy to walk into the church. It was already daylight in the streets, but the interior of St. Simon Swynherde was dim with mist and with the obscurity of the windows. Some attempt had been made at decoration even here, however, and branches of holly and evergreens were placed about the pillars and against the organ, where his own name had been painted in gilt letters since the time that he had been churchwarden and helped to restore it. Even as he looked up at it, the notes of the Christmas hymn came trembling into the chill morning air, for the organist had come there to play before the early service. To most people there might have been nothing in the place or its associations to evoke much gentle feeling; but as the tones of the organ swelled and the music grew louder, old Richard Dryce sat down in the corner of his own pew, and leaned his head upon the book-board, with his hands clasped before his face. Not till the warm tears had trickled from between his fingers did he raise his head, and then it was to look round him to the cushion at the other end of the pew, for from some place near him he thought he had heard a sound that was out of all harmony with the organ, but not altogether apart from the associa tions of the Christmas hymn-the wailing of a child. Another moment he was bending over a bundle seemingly composed of a coarse blue cloak, but from which there presently came out a baby hand, and-the covering once pulled aside-a little round rosy face, in which a pair of large blue eyes

[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

less than impious, and expressed his determination of taking the little one home with him.

were wide awake in utter astonishment. Who | workhouse, he regarded their suggestion as little can tell what had been the thoughts busy in old Dryce's mind? Was it prayer? Was it that yearning which finds no words of entreaty, but yet ardently and dumbly implores-all vaguely-that the crooked paths of former error may be made straight at last-that the rough places of a mistaken course may beco: divinely plain? He could not tell; and yet in some way he accepted this child as a visible answer to a petition that he had meant to frame. When the organist and the sextoness came down presently, and with indignant virtue advised the removal of the child to the

His old housekeeper and the younger servants were not a little surprised, perhaps they were even scandalised, to see the merchant come home with such a Christmas offering; but Mr. Dryce was master in his own house, and the little guest was fed. Then Dr. Banks was sent for, and he declared that it would be necessary to provide a nurse; while, as luck would have it, he had that very morning (Christmas morning) been sent for to see a casual applicant for relief at the Union

-a woman who had just lost a child. Temporarily she might do well enough, and Dr. Banks wanted to get home to dinner; so away went the housekeeper in a cab with a letter from the doctor, and in two hours came back, bringing with her a pale, pretty young woman whose name was Jane Harris, and who her husband having gone abroad and left her with a child which she had just lost-was reduced to apply at the workhouse. She was so timid, and had at first such a scared look, that Mr. Dryce had much trouble to induce her to stay; but it was quite wonderful the way in which the child took to her, and so a room was got ready for them both, and she was comfortably settled, almost, as the housekeeper said, "as if she was a lady, though for the matter of that, Dr. Banks knew more about her than he said, and things looked very queer." At any rate, Dr. Banks said the next day, after he had had a little conversation with the new nurse, that she was thoroughly trustworthy, and that he himself had known her father, who once held a very respectable position in the City, but was now dead. So Mrs. Harris became an inmate at the dim old house, and her charge throve under her care.

When the boy at last grew able to crawl about, and even to walk from chair to chair, he seemed to have so grown to the old man's heart that Dryce became subject to a kind of transformation. His laugh grew more mellow, as though the violin had been laid near the fire, and played upon gently; a dozen old and forgotten picture-books were disinterred from some box, and toys strewed the floor of the dingy sitting-room. At about this time Mrs. Harris was, for a week or more, strangely agitated by a letter which was brought to her one morning, and came, as she said, from her husband, who had been for some time in Australia. Upon her recovery, Mr. Dryce inquired a little into her husband's circumstances, and hearing that he was endeavouring to establish an agency in Sydney, wrote a letter requesting him to make some inquiries about a house to which Dryce and Co. had made large consignments, but whose promised remittance had not duly arrived. He soon had enough to occupy him, however, for Christmas was coming round again; and, with something like a resumption of the old vigour in his business habits, he had called for the books, for he had had some serious losses lately, and began to think it necessary to give some personal attention to the current accounts. Still, every day he had his little pet in the room to play about his knees, and, indeed, refused to part with him even when Nurse Harris came to put him to bed, often making her stay and take some wine, or consulting her as to some future provision for her little charge.

It was on another Christmas Eve that he sat talking to her in this way, but still with a rather

absent manner, for his heavy ledgers and cashbooks lay beside him on the table. She would have taken the child away, but Mr. Dryce told her to let him remain, and at the same time asked her to step down into the counting-house, and if Mr. Jaggers had not left for the night, to ask him to come up. Now Mr. Jaggers had so seldom been invited to come up-stairs, that, although he of course knew of the adoption of the little foundling, he had never seen the nurse; but that was scarcely any reason for her stopping on her way downstairs, and pressing her hand to her side with a sudden spasm of fear.

She got down at last, however, and opening the two doors which led to the passage, at the end of which was the private counting-house, stood there in the shadow and looked in.

Mr. Jaggers was busy at his desk tearing up papers, some of which already blazed upon the hearth. The desk itself was open, and by the light of the shaded lamp she could see that it contained a heavily-bound box, in which hung a bunch of keys. As she delivered Mr. Dryce's message, still in the shadow of the door, he looked up with a scared face, and, dropping the lid of the desk with a loud slam, peered into the darkness.

Mrs. Harris repeated her message, and returned swiftly up the stairs, nor stopped even to go in for the child, but shut herself in her own room. Somehow or other, Mr. Jaggers felt a cold perspiration break out all over him; and yet he need scarcely have been cold, for he already had his great-coat on, and there was a decent fire in the grate burning behind a guard. Still, he shivered, and after taking the lamp, and once more looking into the entry, gave a deep sigh of relief, and in a half-absent manner, locked both box and desk, and carefully placed the keys in a breast-pocket. Leaving the lamp still burning, he went up-stairs and found Mr. Dryce alone, sitting at the table with the books open before him. He looked up. "Take a seat, Jaggers," he said; "I shall want you for an hour or more, for there are several things here that require explanation."

Mr. Jaggers turned pale, but he took off his coat and laid it, along with his hat, on the great horsehair sofa at the other end of the room. Then both he and his employer plunged into figures, till the chimes of a distant clock sounded nine. "We must finish this the day after Christmas Day," said Mr. Dryce; "I won't keep you longer."

Mr. Jaggers put on his coat and hat, and bade his employer good night. He had no sooner left the room than Mrs. Harris came in to fetch the little one, for, as she said, "it was already past his bedtime." Richard Dryce fell into his chair, and was as near having a fit as ever he had been in his life. "Good gracious! Mrs. Harris-you don't mean to say you haven't got the boy! He's

16

WHAT A BABY'S HAND UNLOCKED.

not here; run and see whether he has gone into Betsy's room; she runs away with him sometimes." Mamma!" said a sleepy little voice under the sofa, and Mr. Dryce and the nurse were both on their knees in a moment.

"The precious! why, if he hasn't been asleep all the time," said Mr. Dryce, kissing the warm rosy cheek. "Take him off to bed directly, and bring him down to breakfast in the morning."

Mrs. Harris only just escaped meeting Jaggers on the stairs, up which he was coming, followed by Betty with a flaring tallow candle, and looking carefully on every stair. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, with a scared look, as he opened the room door, "but have you seen my keys anywhere? I must have dropped them somewhere in the room, I think."

"No," replied Mr. Dryce, "I've seen nothing most extraordinary!" he said to himself, thinking of the child and forgetting Jaggers.

"It is, sir, very extraordinary," said the clerk, groping on the floor. "I know I had them when I came up here, and I can't open my desk, where I keep my money."

"Oh, never mind, Jaggers," said Mr. Dryce, sleepily. "Here are a couple of sovereigns. If we find the keys, you can have them on Boxing Day. Come, good night! I'll come down and bolt the office door after you."

Jaggers entreated his employer not to take so much trouble, and delayed so long that the old gentleman began to grow a little impatient. At last he got rid of him by giving him permission to come early next morning, when, if his keys were not discovered, he might pick the lock.

Mr. Dryce was in a brown study, sitting looking at the fire, and sipping a glass of hot negus, when Mrs. Harris knocked at the door.

[ocr errors]

'Excuse me, sir, but have you missed your keys?"

"Hang the keys!" said Mr. Dryce, absently. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harris; sit down a moment. I was thinking what I could buy our little fellow for a Christmas present."

"But these keys, sir: I took them out of the bosom of baby's frock when I undressed him. How he got them I can't tell."

Mr. Dryce took the keys in his hand, and looked at them mechanically; then started, and singling out one particular key, held it nearer the light, at the same time comparing it with one of a bunch which he took from his own pocket. He had turned stern and pale.

"I want you to come down-stairs with me, Mrs. Harris," he said; "these are the keys Mr. Jaggers has lost, and I'm afraid I shall want a policeman." First the door of the great iron safe let into the wall. Mr. Dryce knew that it was a cunninglymade lock, and thought that no key but his would

143

open it. It opened easily with Jaggers's key, however; and from the lower drawer was missing property, in those days often kept in such places -bills, gold, and notes-to the value of £4,500.

The

With feverish haste the old man unlocked the desk and the brass-bound box within it. latter contained all the missing property, evidently placed there for immediate removal. In the desk were found bills, letters, and correspondence, a glance at which disclosed a long system of fraud and peculation. Above all, amongst the loose papers were the letters that Robert sent to his father, and those which had been written by him. self in repentance of the harsh parting which he had brought about with his lost son.

While they were both looking with mute astonish. ment at these evidences of Jaggers's villany, there came a low knocking at the door, and two men entered, one of them a broad, brown-bearded man, in a half seafaring dress; the other a policeman.

"A clerk of yours, named Jaggers," said the latter; "I want to know whether he has robbed you, or if you have reason to suspect him? This party has given him in custody on another charge."

There was a loud scream, and Mrs. Harris fell into the arms of the stranger, who had taken her aside to whisper to her.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

"Don't you know me, sir?" said the stranger, taking Mr. Dryce's hand. "My name is Robert Dryce, and this is my child, whose mother left it to the mercy of Heaven, and found that it had reached its natural home. Forgive us, sir, for our child's sake."

Old Dryce was a shrewd man, but it took an hour to make him understand it all: events had come about so strangely.

"Well," said Robert, at last, "I'm glad you were in time to save the money."

"Hang the money!" ejaculated the old man; "at least, too much of it," he added, correcting himself. "Tls baby's hand has unlocked more treasures for me than all the Bank of England could count on a summer's day."

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »