A Little World Part 14

"No, not lady--woman, sir. Says she must see you, sir."

"Must!" exclaimed Richard, scowling.

"Yes, sir, and will."

"Tell her to call to-morrow; I'm engaged."

Mr Bokes bowed and left the room, and his master continued--

"Limited liability companies generally, gentlemen, are becoming the ruin of our land. I don't believe in them. You never see my name down anywhere as a director. Why, I've had no less than four applications-- no less than four, gentlemen--to sell my little bit of a business, so that it may be formed into a company, with your humble servant to act as manager, with a n.o.ble price, a n.o.ble salary, and no end of shares into the bargain. But no, gentlemen; I am determined--Now, Bokes,"

impatiently, "what is it?"

"Woman, sir--will see you, sir," whispered the butler; "says I was to say 'Borton Street,' sir, and 'Gone!'"

So strange a pallor overspread Richard Pellet's face that it was observed by all his guests, as, rising with a forced attempt at a smile, he asked them to excuse him for five minutes.

"If she should only have made her way here to-night!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Richard Pellet, as he pa.s.sed the dining-room door, perspiring profusely the while. "If she were but dead--if she were but dead!"

"What's wrong?" whispered Alderman Espicier to his neighbour. "Pellet's bank gone to the bad?"

"Writ, more likely," said the other, charitably; and then they made a few pleasant comments upon the wine they were drinking, calculated its cost per dozen, wondered whether the epergne and ice-pails were silver or electro, but hardly liked to seek for the hall-marks, in case the host should return and find them so engaged. In short, during Richard Pellet's absence, they looked upon everything in a truly commercial spirit, that might not have been quite agreeable to their host had he been aware of the proceedings.

Meanwhile, taking up a chamber candlestick, Richard Pellet had hurried into the library, where he found Mrs Walls, the woman from the Borton Street house--Ellen's gaoler.

"Now!" he harshly exclaimed, "what is it?"

"Gone!" said the woman, abruptly.

"Who--what--Ellen?" stammered Richard, for he had clung to the doubt.

"How?--when?"

"Do you want all that answered at once?" said the woman, in a cool insolent tone--the voice of one who might have taken her last cheque from her employer, or felt herself safe of her position.

"There! speak out; I'm busy--company," exclaimed Richard, excitedly.

"Well," said the woman, "I've nothing more to tell you, only that she is gone, and I don't know how she managed it. Of course, my responsibility was at an end after the notice I had given you, and I considered that she was only staying to oblige you. But I never thought she would slip away, or I'd have watched her. P'raps she's off again to see the little one--she has been talking to herself about it a good deal lately."

"And you never watched her!" hissed Richard, standing with knitted brows and clenched fists before the woman.

"No," she replied, coolly. "You took care only to pay me up to this morning, so it's your affair now, _Mr Herrisey_."

The last word was said with a meaning emphasis, which made Richard wince.

"How did you know I was staying here?" he said, more quietly.

"How did I know that you lived here!" laughed the woman; "you told me-- at least, you took care to drop one of your cards one day, and to sign the cheque one day as Richard Pellet. Of course, when it was money, I wanted to know which was right--Herrisey or Pellet. It didn't much matter to me, but I thought I'd know while I was about it. You may call yourself Smith if you like."

Richard Pellet glared at the woman, as he thought of the trouble he had been at to keep a little separate banking account solely for this purpose, and then, unknown to himself, force of habit had made him make one payment according to custom. He was at the woman's mercy, in spite of the precautions he thought he had taken, and no doubt she knew the whole of his affairs. Well, money would buy her, he thought; and then he was brought back from his short musing by the woman's hard voice.

"If you choose to be mean, you must put up with the consequences; and what's more, you ought to thank and pay me for coming to put you on your guard."

"Do you think she--she knows that I live here?" said Richard, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

The woman smiled contemptuously, as she replied--

"No, she don't know it, poor mad thing! at least, I don't think so. She kept to the name, too, right enough, and wouldn't answer to the name of Pellet."

"Of course not," exclaimed Richard, fiercely; and then the two stood gazing in each other's eyes for a minute before the woman spoke, saying, maliciously--

"Perhaps she may find her way here though, after all; these mad folks are very cunning when they are after anything."

"Here! go now," exclaimed Richard, hurriedly thrusting some money into the woman's hands. "You must not give her up, Mrs Walls. We'll make a fresh settlement, and--and we'll talk it over to-morrow when I come."

The woman smiled as she made her way out of the library, and Richard Pellet stood for a few moments wiping the cold dew from his forehead, before rejoining his guests.

The city gentlemen heard no more that night respecting limited liability companies, when, after giving the strictest orders that, if anybody else should come, _she_ was to be shown into the library, Richard Pellet returned to the a.s.sembled company, and took coffee, unaware that the two gentlemen in coach-lace had thrust their tongues into their cheeks at one another, after a fashion meant to express the extreme of derision; and then, as soon as they were at liberty, went and related the affair in large text, with redundant flourishes, in the servants' hall.

"If she had chosen any other day it would not so much have mattered,"

said Richard Pellet to himself, as he probed a lump of sugar at the bottom of his half-cold coffee: "but to have come to-day!"

It was no wonder that, until the last guest departed, Richard Pellet's eyes were turned anxiously towards the door every time it opened, when, Nemesis-like, he expected to see enter the tall, pale figure he had looked upon that day in Borton Street, his heart too much crusted with gold to allow of a single tender thought for the afflicted woman, who was sure enough to clasp her hands and ask that she might be with her child.

Volume 1, Chapter XXI.

Tr.i.m.m.i.n.g THE LAMP.

"There you are," said Tim Ruggles, shaking up a bottle, and carefully pouring out a dessert-spoonful of cod-liver oil into a winegla.s.s, previously well wetted round with the thin blue fluid which the Carnaby Street people bought under the impression that it was milk. "There you are," said Tim, as he sat cross-legged upon his board; "and now look sharp, and get a lump of sugar out of the basin, and take your oil before she comes back."

"Brayvo! capital! and never made one ugly face," exclaimed Tim, as little Pine drank the contents of the gla.s.s, but not without a slight shudder. "That's the thing to bring you round, little one--bring you round and turn you round, and make you round as a little tub. Oil turns into fat, you know, and fat keeps you warm in winter. Fat's Nature's greatcoat, you know, for quilting and padding people's ribs, and wants no st.i.tching on, nor pressing down. That's the way to--scissors--thank you, my pet--the way to trim the--trim the--now my twist and a short needle--that's him--to trim the lamp of life, that is; and you only want to swallow a long skein of cotton and light one end, and then you'd burn. My eye! what a go it would be for her to come home and find you burning! But come, I say, put that bottle away before she comes back."

Tim was very particular that the cod-liver oil bottle should be put away before Mrs Ruggles' return from marketing; for though the dispensary doctor had ordered that medicine twice a day for the child's cough, and a reasonable quant.i.ty was supplied, Tim had an idea of his own that if it were taken twice as often, it would act with double rapidity. So he used to invest all his very spare cash in the purchase of more of the nauseous medicine, and kept a private stock, out of which he replenished the bottle in the cupboard, so that it should not appear in Mrs Ruggles'

eyes to disappear too quickly.

"Does seem such a thing," said Tim to himself, "to see any one suffering when you can't do anything to help them. There's her poor little cough getting worse and worse, and them fits coming on, and I can't help her a bit. It's dreadful, that it is. If one has to rub, or hold, or lift, or do something, it don't seem half so bad; but to stand and do nothing but look on is the worst itself. Never saw such a child as she is, though; and it makes me shiver when she gets looking in that far-off way of hers, as if she could see more than any one else. Takes her stuff without a word; but I'd sooner see her kick and cry out, and then have a good laugh after, when I talk rubbish about tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the lamp. I don't know what it's a coming to--for she ain't like no other child--ain't like a child at all, that she ain't."

It was not once that Tim would mutter in that fashion over his work, but often and often; and in spite of his words, he did know in his heart what was coming, though, st.i.tching away there upon his board, early and late, he tried to shut his eyes to the ray of light that fell upon them--a ray of pale wondrous light, as from another world; light which shone with a cold l.u.s.tre in upon his heart, to tell him that something must soon come to pa.s.s.

For little Pine had of late grown quieter day by day; dull and heavy, too, at times, falling asleep in her chair, and more than once upon the bare floor, where Tim had found her, and gently raised her head to place beneath it the list-tied roll of newly-cut cloth for a pair of trousers, and then covered her with his coat.

As the days lengthened, a hectic red settled in her little cheeks, and a cough came on to rack her chest; when, night after night, would Tim creep out of bed to give her lozenges and various infallible sweets which he had purchased to allay the irritating tickle that kept her awake hour after hour.

"'Pon my word," Tim would say, "I don't think I should take more notice of that child if she was my very own; but somehow I can't help this here."

And it was plain enough that Tim could not help "this here;" and, intent as he seemed upon his work by day, his thoughts were fixed upon the poor child, whom he watched hour after hour unnoticed by his domestic tyrant.

"I don't like it," muttered Tim; "it's all rules of contrary. That there cough ought to make her pale and poorly, and it don't, for it makes her little cheeks red, and her eyes bright; and it ain't nat'ral for her to not eat nothing one time, and to eat savage another; and I'm 'most afraid to say anything to her, because she's so old and deep."

"Am I going to die?" said the child one day, suddenly, as she left off work to gaze up earnestly in Tim's face.