Fenn George Manville
A Little World

Volume Three – Chapter Seventeen.
John Brown

“It’s all against rule and regulation, and that sort of thing,” said the sergeant, as he and Harry Clayton were being jolted over the stones in a Hansom cab; “but ours is a particular case. The old gentleman’s there long before this, sir. He seemed to revive like magic as soon as ever I told him the news. He just hid his face for a few moments, and then said quite sharp, ‘Go and fetch Mr Clayton, and bring him after me,’ telling me, of course, where you were gone; and here I am, sir.”

“But it seems so strange,” said Clayton. “I can’t understand it.”

“Strange, sir! ’Pon my soul, sir, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, I’m quite ashamed of myself. Thought I was up to more than that. And yet, here’s all the wind taken out of my sails, and I’m nowhere.”

Harry nodded, for he wanted to think, but the sergeant rattled on —

“It’s always the way with your biggest puzzles, sir: the way to find them out is the simplest way – the way that’s so easy that you never even give it a thought if it occurs to you. Perhaps you remember that chap in the story, sir, as wanted to keep a certain dockyment out of the way of the foreign detectives – French police – over the water – secret police, I think they call themselves; not that there’s one of them who can hold a candle to our fellows. Spies, perhaps, would be the better name for them. Well, he knew that as soon as he was out, they’d search the place from top to bottom. Well, what does he do? Hide it in the most secret place he could think of? Not he; for places that he could think of as being the safest, perhaps they might think of too. He was too foxy, sir; and he just folds it up like a letter, sticks it in a dirty old envelope, and pops it into the card-rack over the chimney-piece, – plain, for all folk to see; and, as a matter of course, they never so much as look at it. That’s just been the case with the young squire here; he’s been stuck up in the card-rack over the chimney-piece, chock before my eyes, and I’ve been shutting ’em up close so as not to see him, when he’s been as good as asking me to look. There, sir! I haven’t patience with myself; and I’m going to ask to be put on the sooperannuation list, along with the pensioners as I call ’em. Mysterious disappearance! why, it wasn’t anything of the sort, sir. But here we are!”

The cab was checked as he spoke, and alighting before a great gloomy looking building, the sergeant led the way up a flight of stone steps, and into a hall, where a liveried porter saluted him with a nod.

“Here, bring us the book again, Tomkins,” said the sergeant; and the porter reached a large folio from a desk, and placed it before the sergeant upon a side-table.

“Here you are, sir,” said the sergeant, eagerly, as he turned back some leaves, till he came to one which bore the date of Lionel’s disappearance. “Now, look here!”

He pointed to an entry in the accident register; for they were in the entrance-hall of a large hospital.

“Look at that, sir,” said the sergeant again; “and tell me what you think of it.”

Harry Clayton bent over the book, and read —

“Brown, John, stableman, run over by a cab. Severe concussion of the brain.”

“Now, sir, what do you make of that?”

“Nothing at all,” said Clayton, blankly.

“No more did I, sir. I wasn’t looking after John Brown, a stableman; but Lionel Redgrave, Esq. But that wasn’t all. I’ve seen this case – I’ve been to the bedside, and then I didn’t think anything of it. I was so clever.”

“But does that relate to him?”

“To be sure it does, sir. I tell you it’s easy enough, now one can see through it; but I couldn’t put that and that together before. Name never struck me a bit, when it ought to have been the very key to it all. He was knocked down, and run over by a cab, when out on his larks. Got his hair cut short, and his mustacher shaved off. There’s his clothes too, up-stairs – reg’lar stableman’s suit – masquerading things – such togs for a gent like him to wear! Poor chap, it was a bad case, though, for he was nearly killed. Well, of course, they brought him here, and asked him his name, when, just being able to speak, he says the very last thing that was in his poor head, before the sense was knocked out of it, and all its works were brought to a stand still. ‘What’s your name?’ they says; and as I said before, he answers the very last thing as was in his head before he was stopped short, and that was the name of the place he had been to – Brownjohn Street; and, saying it, no doubt, very feebly, they didn’t hear any more than the Brownjohn, so they put him down as Brown, and his Christian name after it, as is their custom, John – Brown, John; and here he’s lain insensible to this day. But come on up, sir.”

Following an attendant, Harry and the sergeant were ushered into a long, whitewashed ward, where, on either side, in their iron bedsteads, lay sufferers from the many accidents constantly occurring in the London streets. Here was a man who had fallen from a scaffold; there one who had had his arm crushed by machinery, and, all around, suffering enough to affect the stoutest heart. The sergeant, though, had no eye for these, and swiftly leading the way down the centre, he conducted Harry to where, weak, pale, and helpless, on his bed of suffering, lay Lionel Redgrave, – his hair shaven from his temples, and the large surgical bandages about his head adding greatly to the cadaverous expression of his countenance.

There was not the slightest doubt of his having suffered severely – it was written too plainly on his face; but he seemed now to be perfectly sensible, and as Clayton approached, he tried feebly to hold out his hand, whispering as he did so, the one word —

“Harry!”

Sir Francis sat holding the other hand, anxiously watching his son’s face, and hardly reassured by the house-surgeon’s declaration that, with anything like care, the young man was now out of danger.

“Don’t speak to him, Clayton,” said Sir Francis. “Don’t talk, my dear boy. Pray remember your condition.”

“All right,” was the reply, but in very feeble tones. “Seems as if I had been to sleep, and only just woke up. Confounded Hansom! – over me in a moment – Martin’s Lane – remember no more.”

“Yes, yes, we know all,” said Sir Francis; “but for my sake now be silent.”

“I must put in a word, too,” said the house-surgeon, approaching. “I think he has borne as much as will be beneficial for one day. I must ask you to leave now. To-morrow he will be better able to bear a visit.”

“Another ten minutes,” pleaded Sir Francis. “Not one instant more. We will not talk.”

The surgeon bowed his head, when Harry, after warmly pressing the young man’s hand – for he somehow felt thoroughly at ease within his own breast – retired with the surgeon and the detective to another part of the ward.

“Curious case this, sir, eh?” said the sergeant.

“Well, yes,” said the surgeon. “But what a strange whim! We had not the most remote idea but that he was some young groom out of place. I judged the latter from the whiteness of his hands, and I must really do our young friend the credit of saying that he thoroughly looked his part.”

“I believe you, sir,” said the sergeant, “for I was took in, – as reg’lar as I was ever took in before. But they will do this sort of thing, these young gents, with nothing else upon their hands. I don’t wonder at it. Must be a miserable life!”

The last remark was made so seriously, and in such perfect good faith, that the surgeon and Harry Clayton exchanged glances, smiling the while.

“I hope,” said the latter, “that he will soon be fit to be removed.”

“Well, before long,” said the surgeon. “Ten days or so. Not sooner – bad case rather. It was only this morning that he became sensible; and I don’t think that even now he fairly realises the length of time that he has been lying there.”

“But this must be a most unusual case,” said Clayton. “Surely you never had a suspension of the faculties for so long?”

“Oh yes!” said the surgeon. “Such things do happen. Concussion of, or pressure upon the brain from a fracture, gives us at times some exceedingly interesting studies. In this case, the horse must have struck your friend full on the temple, and I wonder that he was not killed.”

Then, according to the custom of his confrères, the surgeon proceeded to dilate upon the number of eighths of an inch higher or lower which would have been sufficient for the blow to have caused death. But he was interrupted in his discourse by the approach of Sir Francis, who now came up, watch in hand.

“The ten minutes are at an end, and I thank you, sir,” he said. “I am indeed most grateful for your skilful treatment of my son. How can I ever disburden myself of the obligation?”

“Oh! if you come to that, easily enough,” laughed the surgeon, who fully believed, and held unflinchingly to the faith, that his hospital was the best in London, sparing no pains to let every one know that it was also one of the poorest. “We don’t want such patients as your son here, Sir Francis Redgrave; and you may depend in future upon receiving our yearly report, with, I hope, your name down as one of our donors.”

Sir Francis shook hands warmly, saying nothing, but thinking the more deeply; and then, bidding farewell to the sergeant at the door, he was accompanied by Clayton back to their temporary home.

They had not been back long though, before there was a step on the stair, and Mr Stiff, the landlord, came up to announce a visitor.

“Who?” said Sir Francis.

“That there little jigging man, sir, as Mr Lionel used to buy his dogs of in – ”

“Tell him that I am unwell – that I cannot see him,” exclaimed Sir Francis; and Mr Stiff took his departure, but only to return at the end of five minutes.

“Well, Mr Stiff?”

“I can’t get rid of him, please, Sir Francis. He says he should be so glad if you’d see him only for a minute. He won’t detain you more, and he’s in a terrible way about your saying you can’t.”

“Well, show him up,” said Sir Francis, who was not in the humour to refuse anything in the gladness and thankfulness which now filled his heart.

“Shall I see him?” said Clayton, offering to relieve Sir Francis of the task.

“No; perhaps it is something about poor Lionel. I will see him.”

The next minute there was the peculiar thumping noise of D. Wragg’s feet in the passage, but Sir Francis found time to say a few words before the dealer readied the room.

“Is not this the curious-looking man at the house we searched?”

“The same,” said Harry.

“Ah, yes! – I forgot,” said Sir Francis; “these troubles have tried me. But here he is.”

Sir Francis was right, for the noise increased, the door was thrown open, and the next moment, in a tremendous state of excitement, D. Wragg stood confessed.

Volume Three – Chapter Eighteen.
D. Wragg on Principle

“Sarvant, sir – sarvant, sir!” exclaimed D. Wragg, flourishing his hat first at Sir Francis, and then at Harry Clayton, while he worked and jerked himself about in a way that was perfectly frightful to contemplate. “Just give me a minute. I won’t keep you both more than that, only I couldn’t rest without coming in to tell you as it does us at home so much good ’cos that young gent’s found, as you can’t tell.”

Sir Francis knit his brow as he listened, for he could not help associating the man before him with the cause of Lionel’s disappearance; but he did not speak.

“Ah! I see you’re cross about it,” said D. Wragg, who caught the frown; “but never mind if you are; we’re glad all the same. You thought we had to do with it?”

“My good fellow, yes!” exclaimed Sir Francis, hastily; for this touched him upon a tender point – he had been unjust. “Yes; we did think so, and I beg your pardon for it most heartily. It was a gross piece of injustice, and I beg that you will forgive it. If – ”

“You’re a reg’lar, thorough-bred, game gentleman! that’s what you are,” said D. Wragg; “and I respect you, sir, that I do. And if you’re sorry for having my place searched, why, there’s an end of it; and as to forgiving you, why, we won’t say any more about that.”

“But if money – ” continued Sir Francis.

“No; money ain’t got nothing to do with it,” said D. Wragg, gruffly; “and yet it has too, something. You see, sir, I got hold of Sergeant Falkner, and he’s put me up to it all – how you found the young gent in the orspital and all; and so I wanted to come on about it. But what did I say to you when you came to me to search my place? Why, don’t you make no mistake, I says, and now I says it again. Don’t you make no mistake; I ain’t come after money; but just to say as I’m sorry as the young gent should have got into such trouble through coming to my place; and as to his getting better, all I’ve got to say now is, as he shan’t never come inside the shop again. I did have some of his money for different things; but there, lor’ bless you, I put it to you, Mr Clayton, sir, if I hadn’t had it to do me good, wouldn’t he have spent it in organ-grinders, or brass bands, or something? ’Pon my soul, sir, I never see a young gent as knowed so little of what money was worth.”

“And do you mean,” said Sir Francis, “that if my son gets well, and comes to your place again, you will not admit him?”

“Course I do. Don’t you make no mistake, sir. I’m in real earnest, I am; and if at any time you want a dorg, or a score o’ – Blow it! hold your tongue, will you,” he said, breaking off short in his speech, this portion of which was born of constant repetition. “But don’t you make no mistake, sir – he shan’t come no more; and as to the place being searched, that wasn’t your doing; that was spite, that was, and Mr Jack Screwby – an ugly cuss! But they’ve got him for ’sault and violence, and he’ll get it hot, and no mistake, sir. And now my sarvice to you both, gents, and I’m off; but I thought I’d come to say as I was sorry and glad too, and you understands me, I knows.”

As he turned to go, Sir Francis crossed the room, and tried to thrust a five-pound note into his hands; but D. Wragg waved him off.

“No, sir; I promised ’em at home, if you wanted to do anything of that kind, as I wouldn’t take it – and I won’t – so there now. But look here! don’t you make no mistake; I ain’t proud, and if you says to me, ‘Mr D. Wragg, will you take a glass of wine to drink my son back again to health?’ – why, hang me if I don’t.”

Crash went D. Wragg’s hat down upon the floor as he spoke, and after his arms had flown about at all manner of angles with his body, he folded them tightly, and stood gazing from one to the other.

“You shall drink his health, indeed, Mr Wragg,” said Sir Francis, smiling; and the decanters being produced, D. Wragg did drink Lionel’s health, and then in another glass that of Sir Francis, then took another to drink Harry Clayton’s, and yet one more for the benefit of all absent friends, when he stumped off, evidently wonderfully steadied in his action by what he had imbibed.

Volume Three – Chapter Nineteen.
Richard Pellet’s Visitors

The clerk whose duty it was to show visitors into Richard Pellet’s private office ought to have been well paid, for he must have been a valuable acquisition to his employer. Doubtless it was the result of training – he was for ever supposing that “the firm” was engaged. It was so when Jared last called. It was so when Harry Clayton determined to try and make friends with the husband of his late mother, and appeared at the office door. And it was so when, an hour after, a plainly-dressed, pale-looking woman asked to see Mr Richard Pellet. But if, the clerk said, she would give her name, he would go and see.

“Ellen Pellet,” was the calm, quiet answer.

“Mrs Ellen Pellet?” queried the clerk.

“Yes,” was the reply.

The man stared, hesitated, went half-way to the inner office, returned, hesitated again, and then turned to go; while more than one head was raised from ledger or letter to exchange meaning looks, after a glance at the very unusual kind of visitor to Austin Friars.

“It ain’t my business,” muttered the clerk to himself, and passing down the little passage, he opened the private office door of the firm, heedless of a light, gliding step behind him, and announced Mrs Ellen Pellet.

“Who?” roared Richard Pellet, leaping from his seat, and glaring at the clerk.

“It is I,” said a quiet voice in the doorway, and Richard sank back pale and gasping in his seat.

For the visitor was already in the room.

“Oh yes! Ah, to be sure!” stammered Richard, striving hard to recover himself, with a miserable mask-like smile overspreading his features. “Glad to see you – sit down. That will do, Bailly; I’m engaged if any one should call.”

The clerk left the office, and closed the door, walking back to his stool with a prominence in one cheek which drew forth sundry winks from fellow-labourers in Pellet and Company’s money-mill. But the door of Richard Pellet’s private office was thick and baize-lined, and no inkling of the scene within reached the ears of the clerks.

No sooner had the door closed upon them, than the smile was driven from Richard’s face by a bitter scowl, and rising from his chair, he took two or three strides to where his visitor stood, hissing between his teeth – “Curse you! what brings you here?” Such a fierce aspect, accompanied as it was by threatening gestures, would have made many recoil; but Richard’s visitor stepped towards him, and caught him by the breast, exclaiming —

“I have been unhappy lately; I could not rest there. I want my child!”

“Curse your child!” cried Richard, in an angry whisper, and then, with a cowardly, back-handed blow, he sent the poor creature staggering against the wall; but her countenance hardly underwent a change, as, starting forward again, she caught him once more by the coat, repeating her words —

“I want my child!”

“How dare you come here?” he exclaimed, in a low, angry voice. “How dare you come here to disgrace and annoy me? How came you away from – from your lodging that I got for you?”

“I came away – I want my child!” was the only reply.

“There! hush! Don’t speak so loud!” said Richard, in an angry whisper, as he glanced uneasily at the door, and stepping to it, slipped into its socket a little brass bolt. “Did I not tell you never to come here? and did you not promise?”

“Yes, yes!” was the hoarse answer; “but I want, I will have, our little one. I have been to the man who had it – I found him out; but he would not give it to me. You have told him not. I could not rest for thinking about it. I want my child, and then we will go far away together.”

“Go and seek it where it has gone,” said Richard, brutally, almost beside himself with suppressed rage; – “it is dead!”

“It is a lie – a lie!” cried the woman, excitedly, her pale face flushing with anger. “That man told me the same; but he is in your pay, and you have hidden it from me.”

She clung to him now fiercely, clutching the ostentatiously-displayed smoothly-plaited shirt-front, and turning it into a crumpled rag.

“Hush! hush! For God’s sake, be still!” he exclaimed. “They will hear you in the outer office. I have not got the child; it died months ago.”

“It is a lie!” exclaimed the woman, more angrily. “You drove me mad once with your ill-treatment, but you shall not do it again.” Then, raising her voice – “I will have my child!”

As Richard Pellet’s face turned of a ghastly muddy hue, he glanced again and again at the door, his hands trembling with the cowardly rage that, under different circumstances, might have made the life of the woman before him – his wife – not worth a moment’s purchase. The coarse, heavy, insolent smile was gone; for he was attacked in his weakest point, and already in imagination he could see the side looks and laughter of his clerks, and hear the sneering innuendoes of fellow-men of his own stamp when there was a public exposé, and Richard Pellet, the wealthy banker, who for the sake of money had kept his weak insane wife in obscurity for years, that he might commit bigamy for the fortune of the Widow Clayton, was arraigned for his offence against his country’s laws, and the story of his wife’s wrongs came forth.

What was he to do? He must get her away quietly – by subterfuge – he could lead her in one way he knew, and she would not believe the truth.

The scandal, after so many years lying hidden, would now most certainly be bruited abroad. Some men would have laughed it to scorn, and faced it with brazen effrontery; but Richard Pellet was a religious man – a patron of philanthropic societies – even now upon his table lay half-a-dozen annual reports with his name thereon as steward or committee-man, for all men to read. Why, his very sober beneficent look carried weight, and he was always placed in the front rank upon the platform at Exeter Hall meetings. In fact, in May, during the meetings, he adopted white cravats and frills. And now, in spite of money, care, secrecy, this matter would be spread abroad. He could hear it already; and to hide this example of his cruel love of greed, had he dared, and could have hidden the crime, he would have struck down the patient sufferer whom he had treated with such a mingling of cruelty and neglect, dead at his feet, with as little compunction as he had already shown in sending her staggering to the wall.

But the wife of long ago, whose reason had gone astray years before, the soft eyes, the pale face, and trembling lips were here no more; and Richard Pellet, as he shrank from her, felt himself to be almost helpless in the hands of one whose strength was augmented by her position, for he dared not raise his voice. He knew, too, that now the time had gone when he could command, and he must try subterfuge, and get her away abroad, where she would be safely kept. He blamed himself now that he had not placed her in an asylum, but he recalled his reason – it would have been too public a proceeding; and in these fleeting moments the question came, were the gold and position he had won worth the price that he had paid?

As he stood there in her grasp, his mind was made up, and he said quietly, “Sit down.”

“No – no – no!” was the hasty reply, as if she dreaded his influence. “I want my child: give me my child, and let me go.”

“But, Ellen, this is madness and folly,” he whispered. “You know it is not here. He told you that it was dead, did he?”

“Yes,” she cried, angrily; “but it was not true. You told him to say so. Where is she now?”

“Look here!” said Richard, writing an address upon a card – that of one of the boarding – houses in the neighbourhood. “Take this and go and wait there till I come, and we will go and see about it. But, for my sake, do not make a disturbance here – it would be ruin to me.”

The poor creature, half reft of her senses, gazed earnestly in his face for a few moments, while the angry light faded from her eye. In her tigress-like rage for her lost little one, if met by anger she was ready to dare, urged by her maternal instinct; but these gentle words disarmed her resentment, and falling on her knees at Richard Pellet’s feet, she burst into tears, sobbing as she begged of him to let her have her child.

“Yes, yes! you shall; only get up,” said Richard. “It shall all be made right, only go now.”

“Then you will give her to me?” she said, imploringly. “I will not say a word to any one about being your wife if you will give me my child. I know now why you shut me up there with Mrs Walls. I have thought it out: it was that you might marry some one rich; for I, when my head went, was not fit to be your wife. But I could not help it.”

“Well, well; go now,” cried Richard, impatiently; “and we will talk about that afterwards.”

She rose to her feet slowly, clasping his hand in both her own, and gazing earnestly in his face, as if trying to read his thoughts; and they must have been plain to read, for, as if she saw in his face cruelty, treachery, and a repetition of her long sufferings, she dashed the hand away, and stood defying him once more, the former rage flashing in her eyes as she repeated her demand – “Give me my child!”

“Go and wait for me there, then,” said Richard, sullenly.

“I will never leave you till I have my child,” she exclaimed.

Again the cruel, malignant look came into his face as Richard Pellet cursed laws, protection, everything that stayed him from crushing out the life that now rose in rebellion against him. He cursed his own hypocrisy, which now fettered him with chains such as stayed him from setting this burden at defiance and casting it off for ever.

“I told you before that she was dead,” he now said, throwing himself back in his chair.

“Dead – dead – dead!” echoed his wife, “and I told you it was a lie – a cruel lie – like those you have told me before. But she is not dead. She was too young, too beautiful to die. Why, I tried to die a hundred times there, in that cold, bare room, in the bitter winters, and I could not. She could not die. You have taken her away, and I will not be cheated again. She is not yours, but mine – mine – my very own. Give me my little one!” she cried, raising her voice.

“Here! come with me, then, and you shall have her!” cried Richard, desperately; and snatching up an overcoat, and buttoning it closely over his breast, he led the way into the outer office. “Back in an hour,” he said abruptly; and then, closely followed by his unwelcome visitor, he passed into the street, called the first cab he encountered, and, after giving some instructions to the driver, he motioned to his wife to enter; but she refused until he had set the example, when, following him, she took the opposite seat, and the door was slammed, and the vehicle driven off.

The clerks in the outer office suspended work as soon as the heavy door swung to, and began to give due attention to this strange visit, which was on all sides declared to be “a rum go,” when the door again opened, and Harry Clayton entered.

“Mr Pellet returned?” he asked.

“Been at the office again, sir; but he has just gone out with a lady. Said he would be back in an hour.”

“I’ll wait,” said Harry, and he sat for an hour, and then for another, but still Richard did not return, so he left, and slowly sauntered towards London Bridge.

“I don’t want to give him the opportunity of saying I avoided him,” thought Harry, and then his thoughts turned towards money matters, and the possibility of Richard being compelled to disgorge a portion of the money that should by rights have been Mrs Clayton’s son’s – he did not know that it was in his power to make him give up all. Then he began to wonder what sort of a reception he should meet with. The last encounter had been far from cordial, and since his mother’s funeral, Harry’s letters had been but few and far between.

“I will see him, though,” said Harry, “if I follow him for a week.”