The Pit Town Coronet Volume Ii Part 14

There wasn't a soul in sight. And then Mr. Parsons did a very curious thing; he gave a low growl, then a little yelp, and then an aggressive bark like an irritated dog. Then he began to bark again in a louder and still more defiant manner. But there was no answer to the strange challenge. Mr. Parsons gave a satisfied smile, walked quietly out of the empty house, re-lighted his pipe and resumed his walk.

It's hardly likely that Mr. Parsons thought of renting the empty house next door to Azalea Lodge, but he walked past at least four times that afternoon. He went home to Matilda Street on the top of an omnibus, and then, like a respectable man as he was, he sat down to a good substantial tea.

Before commencing a campaign a great general sits down to think it out.

This is exactly what Mr. Parsons did. The tenant of number 13, Matilda Street had declared war against Azalea Lodge. From what he had seen, Mr.

Parsons had no doubt whatever in his own mind that, should his campaign prove successful, he would secure the competence he had yearned for, for so many years and be able to retire from business altogether.

That night Mr. Parsons visited a public house, paid for a gla.s.s of ale, and consulted the directory. He found that Azalea Lodge was occupied by Lord Hetton; the name seemed familiar to him; he turned to the landlord, who was a well-known sporting character, and sought for information.

"Lord Hetton's a political chap, ain't he, Mr. Mason?" said he, addressing the great man with much humility.

"Not as ever I heard of; why his lordship's a racing man. Every one knows Lord Hetton--him as owned Dark Despair, and lost the Derby once by a short head."

"Oh, that's him, is it?" replied Mr. Parsons, "and what's his address when he's at home?"

"How should I know his address?" said the landlord. "If you wants to call on him, you might try the Jockey Club, or I shouldn't be surprised if you was to find him at Tattersall's of a Sunday afternoon; that sort mostly shows up there. What might you want with him?"

"Oh, it's no great matter," replied Mr. Parsons; "it's only a little bit of business about a dog," and then he changed the conversation.

"Racing plate," he thought, "there is never any mistake about that; that's the real genuine article, thank goodness." And then Mr. Parsons, who was of a sentimental turn of mind and a humble patron of the drama, sauntered off to the Britannia Theatre, at Hoxton, and derived no small degree of mental comfort in four hours of the sorrows of "Ada, the Betrayed."

It has been said that Lord Hetton was an economical man; every farthing that he could sc.r.a.pe together invariably went to settle his accounts with his trainer. He had begun life as a pigeon, to all appearances he would end it as a hawk. Dark rumours of shady things which had been done in his name rendered men shy of backing his horses. Scandal had said that the boy who rode Dark Despair, when that animal was beaten on the post, had pulled the great raking chestnut by his lordship's orders. But though Lord Hetton had done many shabby things in his time, it was by no fault of his that Dark Despair failed to win the blue ribbon of the turf. It is quite possible that the boy who rode the animal had made a mess of the race at the critical moment, or he may even have been "got at," but that was not Lord Hetton's opinion or that of his astute trainer; and the same stunted youth still always rode in his lordship's colours in any big event in which Lord Hetton's animals might be engaged. Owner and trainer had neither of them been to blame in the matter; his lordship had honestly backed Dark Despair, and had had considerable difficulty in meeting his engagements at the time. There had even been an execution in Azalea Lodge. Azalea Lodge was the one luxury that his lordship permitted himself; he looked upon it as his home, and the t.i.tular mistress of Azalea Lodge had been the original cause of all his differences with his father. Hetton was quite a boy when he first fell into the toils of the syren; he was not quite fool enough to marry her, his fear of the old lord prevented that; for her sake Lord Hetton declined to marry; for her sake he was shut out from society; and he was a man to be pitied after all, for he hadn't a friend in the world, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in satisfying her numerous extravagant demands for money. The lady was _pa.s.see_, vulgar, and her temper was almost diabolical; but she still retained her hold upon Lord Hetton's affections. She had succeeded in riveting the fetters which bound Lord Hetton to her in a rather original manner--by an act of generosity for which none of her acquaintances would have given her credit, least of all his lordship. When he made his great _fiasco_ with Dark Despair, and the execution was already in Azalea Lodge, by an impulse of generosity the lady had driven over to Messrs. Israels, and had pledged with them her entire collection of valuable jewelry. She had handed the cheque to Lord Hetton, and he did settle at Tattersall's on the fatal Monday following the race. Lord Hetton was agreeably astonished; he found, much to his surprise, that he had one real friend in the world. Is it then to be wondered at that from that day Lord Hetton clung to his only friend, and that he looked upon Azalea Lodge as his home? Things went better with Lord Hetton, and he settled Azalea Lodge and its valuable contents upon the object of his grat.i.tude.

When anything remained to him after paying his trainer whenever he made a _coup_, or landed a good stake, he invariably made a thank-offering at the shrine in St. John's Wood. It was all very wrong, and very wicked, no doubt, but after all it was perhaps very natural.

It was nine o'clock one Sunday night, and Mr. Parsons was very busy indeed--he was preparing for the war-path. On his table were arranged a number of polished steel implements, which looked like surgical instruments; they were burglar's tools. Half-a-dozen handy bits of candle and a box of silent matches were quickly placed in his pocket; a piece of strong Manilla cord some four yards long, with a sharp three-p.r.o.nged hook at the end of it, was wrapped around his waist, beneath his virtuous waistcoat; his plain tweed coat carried numerous canvas bags lined with washleather in its back. It was a wonderful coat with innumerable pockets in the inside; in each of these mysterious receptacles he placed one or other of the implements of his trade; a short crow-bar in three pieces, which could be screwed together, formed the last of these, while a big bunch of skeleton keys, a phial full of oil and another of acid were slipped into his waistcoat pockets. He popped a pair of loose felt slippers into his hat, calmly lighted his pipe and proceeded to Old Street. He then called a hansom cab and told the driver to take him to the Swiss Cottage.

CHAPTER XI.

ESAU WAS THE FIRSTBORN.

"Are you trying to tell his fortune, Georgie?" said Haggard as, cigar in mouth, he entered his wife's little boudoir.

The young mother was sitting in an American rocking-chair, her baby in her lap. The little creature stared at her in that peculiar way which infants do when they are being "amused." It wasn't altogether a meaningless stare, for what it meant was very obvious indeed; this peculiar look is a threat, and may be translated thus:

"If you do not give me your entire attention, and become thoroughly absorbed in me, I will rend the air with eldritch screams, and my piercing cries shall give you the headache you deserve."

"I think I was making a fool of myself, Reginald," said young Mrs.

Haggard; "I certainly was predicting all sorts of good fortune for him, in baby language."

"Yes, baby language as you call it, is one of women's ridiculous fads; the child learns it, and he'll have to unlearn it again to pick up the Queen's English. You don't mean to say that you believe in palmistry, Georgie?" continued Haggard.

"Well, everybody says there's something in it, Reginald; besides, it's only an old belief revived, and it's better fun than spirit-rapping, thought-reading, or Madam Blavatsky."

The husband sat down, and critically inspected the child.

"Poor little devil!" he said; "he's like a young bear with all his troubles to come. I'll tell you his fortune, Georgie. If he's got brains he'll have to go and live in the Law Courts, pinching and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g to make both ends meet, starving his belly to feed his back, working early and late, and hoping for the briefs that never come. Perhaps he'll drift into something, or finding that he can't earn a farthing he may turn paper stainer in despair, and gradually get a crust by writing dull farces or novels that n.o.body reads; in fact he may become a modern Grub Street free lance. If he is a humbug he'll go into the Church; or he may want to wear a red coat, or a blue one, and vegetate on his pay and the trifle he would get from me."

"Poor little fellow," said his wife; "but what has he done to be disinherited?"

"He's committed the crime of existing, my dear," replied the husband.

"Can't you see, dear, that every farthing we have in the world will have to go to Lucius, for he will be the head of the family. Gad," he said, "he may be a peer of the realm, though that's a rather unlikely contingency. This child, Georgie, is not born in the purple, as is his elder brother; the one is clay, the other china."

The young mother nervously clutched the child to her breast and smothered him with kisses.

"Make the most of him, my dear, lavish your affection upon him. Unless the squire means doing something for him, his fortune is what I have predicted. Younger sons in England, George, have to live on monkey's allowance--more kicks than halfpence, and if there are half-a-dozen more of them, poor little chaps, the fewer halfpence they will get and the more kicks."

Careless idle words, spoken jestingly, but every one of which went home like a barbed arrow to the mother's heart. As she buried her face in the child's neck, she thought of her vow of eternal secrecy to her cousin.

It had been extracted from her when under the influence of intense fear and horror. Her cousin had only forced a solemn promise from her with the intention of covering her own ignominy. It would have needed more than even the diabolical ingenuity of a Machiavel to have extorted from any mother her adhesion to a conspiracy for the ruin of her own child.

But now she saw to her horror that each and every child she might bear to her own husband would, as a matter of course, be practically disinherited in favour of the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. At that instant, there dawned on her for the first time the remote possible contingency of the child who was supposed to be Haggard's firstborn son ultimately inheriting the Pit Town t.i.tle; that troubled her far less than do the probabilities of his ultimate succession to the Woolsack affect young Mr. Briefless when he is first called to the bar. But that each and every one of her children should by her own deliberate act, and for the benefit of an interloper, himself but a child of shame, be deprived of what was legitimately their own, their share of their father's heritage, did seem a very bitter cup.

"I can tell you one thing, Georgie," said her husband; "your father's quite of my mind in the matter, and it is our universal respect for the law of primogeniture that has made England what she is. It's a sort of natural law of selection, and the survival of the fittest. The eldest son must be taken care of at the expense of the rest; he is the tribal chief, his brothers and sisters are but his henchmen and his slaves.

Why, look at the French; since the Code Napoleon, which chopped up the land into little blocks and gave each child his share, there have been no great families in France. Money a young fellow can squander, but he cannot get rid of his ancestral acres, when they are tightly tied up to come to his eldest son. There's no way out of it, Georgie; the Warrenders and the Haggards wouldn't content themselves with turning in their graves, they'd haunt the pair of us, if we hesitated to do the regulation thing."

On hearing these words, which for the first time in her life brought the real state of things home to her, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that young Mrs. Haggard's heart died within her. Was it not her duty to her child, to her husband, and to herself, to instantly make a clean breast of the whole mystery? Perhaps it was, but she struggled fiercely against the natural impulse to adopt this simple course. The fact has been insisted upon that secrecy was foreign to Georgie Haggard's nature; she hated deception and the very idea of anything which was underhand.

Had she given way to her natural impulse, and then and there told her husband the truth, the dark web of intrigue which surrounded her innocent life would have been torn aside and dispersed at once and for ever. But with Georgie, unhappily for herself, her promise bound her as tightly as the most terrible oath. She had promised never to reveal Lucy's secret, and come what might, should this moral Juggernaut crush her, her child, and her offspring yet unborn, yet she would be true to it; her word, once plighted, should be kept to the bitter end.

"I think it's cruel, Reginald," she said, and the tears were in her eyes, "cruel and wicked too. What has he done, poor little fellow, that he should be made to inherit a sort of curse?"

But before her husband could answer this very natural objection, the door was flung violently open and the child Lucius, his face suffused with angry colour, bounced into the room. To his breast he clutched a tiny white kitten, it was quite young, its eyes not being yet open.

"Dad," he cried in a tone of rage, "Auntie says I shan't see the t.i.ttens drowned. I do want so much to see them drowned. I hate Auntie Lucy, and I hate Fanchette."

Fanchette now appeared upon the scene, indignant and out of breath. The child, tossing the kitten from him, sprung upon Haggard's lap, and again expressed his intense desire to be present at the execution of the kittens.

"Dad," he said in a tone of affectionate entreaty, "I never seed a t.i.tten drowned."

Perhaps it was natural after all. Just in the same way as an adult goes to an execution, because he "never has seen one, you know"--he forgets that it is "a thing to shudder at not to see"--so the little Lucius was anxious to a.s.sist at the immolation of the kittens.

"No, my man, you mustn't be cruel," and then Haggard attempted to argue with the child. But the little fellow pleaded, looking up into Haggard's face with his big brown eyes.

"Me tiss oo, dad," he said, and he did so vehemently. Haggard stroked the child's long golden curls, and placed him gently on the floor.

"Can't be done, my man," he said. At once the child's face changed and became frightful to behold; the corners of his mouth went down, the whites of his eyes became injected, the tears coursed freely down his cheeks, he clenched his little fists and screamed aloud in his rage and fury.

"Debil!" he shouted in his pa.s.sion, and he shook his fists at Haggard in impotent rage.

"Take him away, Fanchette," said Haggard with a laugh.

The _bonne_ smiled and caught the infuriated child up in her arms.

"_Ah ma foi, monsieur_," she exclaimed, "_apres tout, c'est naturel, il aime le spectacle, le beau bebe_."

"Well, he's not to have the spectacle, mind that, Fanchette."