Foul Play Part 61

As he pa.s.sed Robert, the general said: "Take leave of her alone. I will come for her in five minutes. You see how sure I feel you are a man of honor."

When Robert went in, she rose and tottered to him, and fell on his neck.

She saw it was the death-bed of their love, and she kissed his eyes, and clung to him. They moaned over each other, and clung to each other in mute despair.

The general came back, and he and Robert took Helen, shivering and fainting, to the boat. As the boat put off, she awoke from her stupor, and put out her hands to Robert with one piercing cry.

They were parted.

CHAPTER LIII.

IN that curious compound, the human heart, a respectable motive is sometimes connected with a criminal act. And it was so with Joseph Wylie.

He had formed an attachment to Nancy Rouse, and her price was two thousand pounds.

This Nancy Rouse was a character. She was General Rolleston's servant for many years; her place was the kitchen. But she was a woman of such restless activity, and so wanting in the proper pride of a servant, that she would help a house-maid, or a lady's maid, or do anything almost, except be idle. To use her own words, she was one as couldn't abide to sit mum-chance. That fatal foe to domestic industry, the _London Journal,_ fluttered in vain down her area, for she could not read. She supported a sick mother out of her wages, aided by a few presents of money and clothes from Helen Rolleston, who had a great regard for Nancy, and knew what a hard fight she had to keep a sick woman out of her twenty pounds a year.

In love, Nancy was unfortunate; her buxom looks and sterling virtues were balanced by a provoking sagacity, and an irritating habit of speaking her mind. She humbled her lovers' vanity, one after another, and they fled.

Her heart smarted more than once.

Nancy was ambitious; and her first rise in life took place as follows: When the Rollestons went to Australia, she had a good cry at parting with Helen; but there was no help for it. She could not leave her mother.

However, she told Helen she could not stomach any other service, and, since she must be parted, was resolved to better herself. This phrase is sometimes drolly applied by servants, because they throw Independence into the scale. In Nancy's case it meant setting up as a washerwoman.

Helen opened her hazel eyes with astonishment at this, the first round in the ladder of Nancy's ambition; however, she gave her ten pounds, and thirty introductions, twenty-five of which missed fire, and with the odd five Nancy set up her tub in the suburbs, and by her industry, geniality and frugality, got on tolerably well. In due course she rented a small house backed by a small green, and advertised for a gentleman lodger. She soon got one; and soon got rid of him. However, she was never long without one.

Nancy met Joseph Wylie in company. And, as sailors are brisk wooers, he soon became her acknowledged suitor, and made some inroad into her heart, though she kept on the defensive, warned by past experience.

Wylie's love-making had a droll feature about it; it was most of it carried on in the presence of three washerwomen, because Nancy had no time to spare from her work, and Wylie had no time to lose in his wooing, being on sh.o.r.e for a limited period. And this absence of superfluous delicacy on his part gave him an unfair advantage over the tallow-chandler's foreman, his only rival at present. Many a sly thrust, and many a hearty laugh, from his female auditors, greeted his amorous eloquence. But, for all that, they sided with him, and Nancy felt her importance, and brightened along with her mates at the sailor's approach, which was generally announced by a cheerful hail. He was good company, to use Nancy's own phrase, and she accepted him as a sweetheart on probation. But, when Mr. Wylie urged her to marry him, she demurred, and gave a string of reasons, all of which the sailor and his allies, the subordinate washerwomen, combated in full conclave.

Then she spoke out: "My lad, the washtub is a saddle as won't carry double. I've seen poverty enough in my mother's house; it shan't come in at my door to drive love out o' window. Two comes together with just enough for two; next year instead of two they are three, and one of the three can't work and wants a servant extra, and by and by there is half a dozen, and the money coming in at the spigot and going out at the bung-hole."

One day, in the middle of his wooing, she laid down her iron, and said: "You come along with me. And I wonder how much work will be done while my back is turned, for you three gabbling and wondering what ever I'm a going to do with this here sailor."

She took Wylie a few yards down the street, and showed him a large house with most of the windows broken. "There," said she, "there's a sight for a seafaring man. That's in Chancery."

"Well, it's better to be there than in H--," said Wylie, meaning to be sharper.

"Wait till you've tried 'em both," said Nancy.

Then she took him to the back of the house, and showed him a large garden attached to it.

"Now, Joseph," said she, "I've showed you a lodging-house and a drying-ground; and I'm a cook and a clear-starcher, and I'm wild to keep lodgers and do for 'em, washing and all. Then, if their foul linen goes out, they follows it. The same if they has their meat from the cook-shop.

Four hundred pounds a year lies there a waiting for me. I've been at them often to let me them premises. But they says no, we have got no horder from the court to let. Which the court would rather see 'em go to rack an' ruin for nothing, than let 'em to an honest woman as would pay the rent punctual, and make her penny out of 'em, and n.o.body none the worse.

And to sell them, the price is two thousand pounds, and if I had it I'd give it this minit. But where are the likes of you and me to get two thousand pounds? But the lawyer he says, 'Miss Rouse, from _you_ one thousand down, and the rest on mortgige at forty-five pounds the year,'

which it is dirt cheap, I say. So now, my man, when that house is mine, I'm yours. I'm putting by for it o' my side. If you means all you say, why not save a bit o' yours? Once I get that house and garden, you needn't go to sea no more; nor you shan't. If I am to be bothered with a man, let me know where to put my finger on him at all hours, and not lie shivering and shaking at every window as creaks, and him out at sea. And if you are too proud to drive the linen in a light cart, why, I could pay a man." In short, she told him plainly she would not marry till she was above the world; and the road to above the world was through that great battered house and seedy garden in Chancery.

Now it may appear a strange coincidence that Nancy's price to Wylie was two thousand pounds, and Wylie's to Wardlaw was two thousand pounds. But the fact is it was a forced coincidence. Wylie, bargaining with Wardlaw, stood out for two thousand pounds, because that was the price of the house and garden and Nancy.

Now, when Wylie returned to England safe after his crime and his perils, he comforted himself with the reflection that Nancy would have her house and garden, and he should have Nancy.

But young Wardlaw lay on his sick bed; his father was about to return to the office, and the gold disguised as copper was ordered up to the cellars in Fenchurch Street. There, in all probability, the contents would be examined ere long, the fraud exposed, and other unpleasant consequences might follow over and above the loss of the promised 2,000 pounds.

Wylie felt very disconsolate, and went down to Nancy Rouse depressed in spirits. To his surprise she received him with more affection than ever, and, reading his face in a moment, told him not to fret.

"It will be so in your way of life," said this homely comforter; "your sort comes home empty-handed one day, and money in both pockets the next.

I'm glad to see you home at all, for I've been in care about you. You're very welcome, Joe. If you are come home honest and sober, why, that is the next best thing to coming home rich."

Wylie hung his head and pondered these words; and well he might, for he had not come home either so sober or so honest as he went out, but quite as poor.

However, his elastic spirits soon revived in Nancy's sunshine, and he became more in love with her than ever.

But when, presuming upon her affection, he urged her to marry him and trust to Providence, she laughed in his face.

"Trust to himprovidence, you mean," said she; "no, no, Joseph. If you are unlucky, I must be lucky, before you and me can come together."

Then Wylie resolved to have his 2,000 pounds at all risks. He had one great advantage over a landsman who has committed a crime. He could always go to sea and find employment, first in one ship, and then in another. Terra firma was not one of the necessaries of life to him.

He came to Wardlaw's office to feel his way, and talked guardedly to Michael Penfold about the loss of the _Proserpine._ His apparent object was to give information; his real object was to gather it. He learned that old Wardlaw was very much occupied with fitting out a steamer; that the forty chests of copper had actually come up from the _Shannon_ and were under their feet at that moment, and that young Wardlaw was desperately ill and never came to the office. Michael had not at that time learned the true cause of young Wardlaw's illness. Yet Wylie detected that young Wardlaw's continued absence from the office gave Michael singular uneasiness. The old man fidgeted, and washed the air with his hands, and with simple cunning urged Wylie to go and see him about the _Proserpine,_ and get him to the office, if it was only for an hour or two. "Tell him we are all at sixes and sevens, Mr. Wylie; all at sixes and sevens."

"Well," said Wylie, affecting a desire to oblige, "give me a line to him; for I've been twice, and could never get in."

Michael wrote an earnest line to say that Wardlaw senior had been hitherto much occupied in fitting out the _Springbok,_ but that he was going into the books next week. What was to be done?

The note was received; but Arthur declined to see the bearer. Then Wylie told the servant it was Joseph Wylie, on a matter of life and death.

"Tell him I must stand on the staircase and hallo it out, if he won't hear it any other way."

This threat obtained his admission to Arthur Wardlaw. The sailor found him on a sofa, in a darkened room, pale and worn to a shadow.

"Mr. Wardlaw," said Wylie, firmly, "you mustn't think I don't feel for you; but, sir, we are gone too far to stop, you and me. There is two sides to this business; it is 150,000 pounds for you, and 2,000 pounds for me, or it is--"

"What do I care for money now?" groaned Wardlaw. "Let it all go to the Devil, who tempted me to destroy her I loved better than money, better than all the world."

"Well, but hear me out," said Wylie. "I say it is 150,000 pounds to you and 2,000 pounds to me, or else it is twenty years' penal servitude to both on us."

"Penal servitude!" And the words roused the merchant from his lethargy like a shower-bath.

"You know that well enough," said Wylie. "Why, 'twas a hanging matter a few years ago. Come, come, there are no two ways; you must be a man, or we are undone."

Fear prevailed in that timorous breast, which even love of money had failed to rouse. Wardlaw sat up, staring wildly, and asked Wylie what he was to do.

"First, let me ring for a bottle of that old brandy of yours."

The brandy was got. Wylie induced him to drink a wine-gla.s.sful neat, and then to sit at the table and examine the sailors' declaration and the logs. "I'm no great scholard," said he. "I warn't a going to lay these before the underwriters till you had overhauled them. There, take another drop now--'twill do you good--while I draw up this thundering blind."

Thus encouraged and urged, the broken-hearted schemer languidly compared the seamen's declaration with the logs; and, even in his feeble state of mind and body, made an awkward discovery at once.

"Why, they don't correspond!" said he.

"What don't correspond?"