The White Virgin Part 27

"Hold me accountable, eh?" muttered Sturgess; and he went in and shut the door, to throw himself into a chair and sit gnawing portions of his thick beard.

That night, when the mine gap was dark and still, a lanthorn was visible swinging here and there as it was borne towards the mouth of the pit, where it disappeared in the cage, and a dark shadowy figure followed it.

"Sit fast!"

"Stop!" came in a husky whisper; "how are we to get back?"

"I can manage that. Not afraid, are you?"

"Afraid!" was the scornful reply.

"All right, then. Now, down."

The ingenious mechanism was started, and the two men, with their lanthorn, descended swiftly into the bowels of the earth, while a perfectly-balanced empty cage rose to take its fellow's place.

"Any one likely to come and surprise us?" said the man who had been told to sit fast.

"Not likely. There! you shall see for yourself. But that's it. You can't better it. A blind lead."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

JESSOP AND CO. AT HOME.

"No, my dear, I'm not going to play the tragedy parent and talk about cursing and all that sort of thing. I'm only a plain matter-of-fact Englishman, leading too busy a life to be bothered. You write to me, and call me my dear father and talk of affection--my affectionate daughter; but how do I know that you are not still under the influence of the man whom you have chosen for your husband? How do I know that he has not said to you that you had better try and make it up with the old man, because the old man's money may be useful one of these days? Mind, I don't say that you have so base and sordid an idea; but I give him the credit of being moved in this spirit. I am glad to hear that you are well, and of course I wish you to be perfectly happy; but you proved to me that you thought you could run alone, so I feel that my responsibility as a father has ceased. I can't reproach myself with any lapses. I did my duty by you; with your liking to the front. I chose you a husband--a good fellow, who would have made you happy; but you chose to flirt with a scoundrel and let him delude you even to making a disgraceful elopement, so you must take your course. Let him see this letter by all means, and thoroughly gauge my opinion of him. If he amends, and behaves well to you, perhaps some day I may accede to what you propose, and receive you both here. But he will have to alter a good deal first. I have no enmity against you, Heaven forbid! for I do not forget that you are my child; but, once for all, I will not have him here, and you may let him know at once that, as to what little money I have, that goes to my hospital, unless Clive Reed happens to want it, and that will alter the case.

"There; this is a very long letter, but as it is the first I have written to you since your marriage, I may as well say in it all I have to say, and this is one very particular part, so keep it in mind. If in the future Jessop Reed behaves badly to you--that is to say, more badly than you can bear, come home. There is your bedroom, and your little drawing-room, too, just as you left them. They shall be kept so, ready for you, and I shall cut all the past out of our lives again as of old; but mind this, Jessop Reed does not have you back again, lord or no lord. I'll buy a yacht first and live upon the high seas.

"There! that is all I have to say as your father."

Janet let the letter fall in her lap, and sat in her commonly-furnished room at Norwood, hot and red of eye. No tears came to her relief, for their source seemed to have long been dried-up. Every word had combined with its fellows to form for her the old saying in the ballad: "As you have made your bed, so on it you must lie."

Her father had been correct enough. She had fought against making any advances in her great despair; but Jessop had insisted, and actually brutally used the very words about the old man's money, with the addition that he had been trapped into marrying a beggar, and he must make the best of it.

"I must have been mad," she sighed, as she laid the letter on the table and looked at the clock on the chimney-piece; but it was a cheap French affair under a gla.s.s shade, and one which doubtless considered that so long as it looked attractive its duty was done. The hour hand pointed to six, and the minute hand to three.

Janet sighed, and looked at her watch, but she had not wound it up.

At that moment a sleepy-looking servant-girl entered the room.

"Want me to sit up any longer, ma'am?"

"No; you can go to bed."

"I don't think master means to come home to-night, ma'am, again. He took his best clothes with him o' Chewsday."

"I'm afraid not," said Janet quietly. "He is very busy now."

"I'll sit up if you like, mum. I don't think it's no use for both to sit up again to-night."

"No. Go and get a good long night's rest, Mary."

"Yes, mum, thankye, mum," said the girl, with a yawn. "But won't you come, too?"

"Presently. I'll sit up till twelve."

"Twelve, mum?" said the girl, staring. "Why, it's 'most one now."

"Then go to bed. I'll come soon."

"Don't ketch me gettin' married and settin' up for no husbands,"

muttered the girl. "I'd soon let my gentleman know what the key of the street meant."

Left alone, Janet again read the letter she had received from her father, though she hardly needed this, for she pretty well knew it by heart. Then, laying it on the table again for her husband to see, she sat thinking of what might have been, and contrasted the brothers, her brow wrinkling up as she felt that day by day she was sounding some deeper depth, and finding but a fresh meanness in Jessop's nature.

"But it was only right after all," she told herself; and she went over again the scene in Guildford Street, the hot jealous blood rising to her cheeks, as she thought of Lyddy and her acts and words.

"I could never have forgiven that. Poor father does not believe he was guilty, or else looks upon the offence with the eyes of a man."

She started up listening, for a cab had stopped at the gate, and her first impulse was to go to the door; but she sank back wearily, and listened for the clang of the gate and the rattle of the latch-key in the door.

She had not long to wait, and she was preparing herself for her husband's coming, when the door was shut loudly. There was a scuffling sound in the little hall, and as she turned pale with alarm, dreading some new trouble, there was a strange voice. The door was flung open, and, supported by his friend Wrigley, Jessop Reed staggered into the room.

Both men were in evening dress, Wrigley's faultless, his gla.s.s in his eye, and the flower in his b.u.t.ton-hole unfaded, while Jessop's shirt front was crumpled and wine-stained, and his flushed face told of the number of times the gla.s.s had been raised to his lips. As he entered the little drawing-room he made a staggering lurch towards a chair, and would have fallen, as his hat did, but for the tight hold which Wrigley kept of his arm.

"Now, then," he cried resentfully; "what's the matter? Don't get hauling a man all over the room like that."

"Really I am very sorry," said Wrigley, guiding Jessop into the chair and taking off his hat, "but the fact is, Mrs Reed, Jessop here was quite out of order when I met him this evening to attend a dinner at the Crystal Palace."

"Yes. Dinner at Crystal Palace. But that'll do. You leave my wife alone, Mr Solicitor."

"Yes, yes, dear boy. Let me get you up to bed."

"What for? I'm all right."

"You will be after a night's rest, my dear Jessop. There's nothing much the matter, Mrs Reed. Pray don't be alarmed. The wine was rather bad, too. I really think I drank more of it than he did."

Janet was standing looking from one to the other with her eyes full of the misery and despair in her breast. Miserable as her life had been, full of bickering and quarrel, reproach and neglect, she had never yet seen her husband like this; and for a few moments she was ready to believe in his companion's words.

"Have you a little soda-water in the house?" said Wrigley.

"Yes; bring some soda-water and the brandy," cried Jessop, with an idiotic laugh which contradicted all that his friend had said.

Janet's anger was rising now.

"We have no soda-water or brandy," she replied.

"Never mind, Mrs Reed. Let me get him up to his room."

"You sit down and hold your tongue," cried Jessop, with tipsy sternness.