She passed into the bedroom, and opening the shutters, threw light full on the bed. Then she drew back the sheet she had replaced. Oh, the beauty of that white marble face, and the stillness!
"You can come in, quietly."
"Is she having a snooze?"
"You will not wake her."
"This is one of your games." The sort was defined by an adjective, omitted. "What's your game? What the Hell are you at?" He said this as to himself.
"Go in. You will find your mother." Gwen took back the dog's chain from the table-leg, and the low thunder died down.
She hardly analysed her own motives. One may have been to touch the heart of the brute, if he had one; another to convince him, without a long parley, of his mother's death. He might have disputed it, and in any case she could not have refused him the sight of his own mother's body.
She could not have restrained that dog had he acted on his obvious impulse to strangle, rapidly and thoroughly, this vermin intruder. But he was an orderly and law-abiding dog, who would not have strangled a rat without permission.
Gwen did not catch the convict's exclamation at sight of his mother, beyond the "What the...!" that began it. Then he was silent. She saw him go nearer without fear of ill-demeanour on his part, and touch the cold white hand, not roughly or without a sort of respect. As well, perhaps, for him; for Gwen was quite capable of loosing that dog on him, under sufficient provocation. She thought he seemed to examine the fingers of the left hand. Then he came back, and they returned to the front-room.
She was the first to speak.
"Are you satisfied?"
"I couldn't have sworn to her myself, not from her face, but I made sure." Probably he had looked for the cut finger, his own handiwork of thirty-odd years ago. He said abruptly, after a moment's pause:--"I don't see nothing to gain by hanging about here."
"Nothing whatever."
He said not a word more, his only sign of emotion or excitement having been his exclamation at first sight of the corpse. He walked away towards the village, and had just reached the point where the road turns out of sight, when Gwen, watching his slow one-sided footsteps, saw him turn and come quickly back. She went back into the Cottage and closed the door, resolved not to admit him a second time.
But he passed by, going away by the road towards Denby's and the Towers, never even glancing at the Cottage. He was scarcely out of sight when a tax-cart with two men in it came quickly from the village and stopped.
"You will excuse me, madam. I am Police-Inspector Thompson, from Grantley Thorpe. A man whom I am looking for has been traced here...."
The speaker had alighted.
"A man with a limp? He came here and went away. He has only just gone."
"Which way?"
"He went away in that direction...."
"What I said!" struck in the second man on the driver's seat. "He's for getting back to the Railway. He'll cut across by Moreton Spinney. Jump up, Joe!"
Gwen could easily have added that he had come back, and was going the other way. But her promise to old Mrs. Picture, lying there dead, kept her silent. If the officers chose to jump to a false conclusion, let them! She had misled them by a literal truth. She would much rather have told a lie, honourably. But she could not remedy that now, without risk.
Another trot sounded from the opposite direction. It was Farmer Costrell's cart, and Ruth was in it, driven by her son-in-law. She was bringing some evergreens to place upon the body. Too anxious to remain in ignorance about her daughter, she had walked over to Denby's while it was still almost dark, and had found a new granddaughter and its mother, both doing well.
"And ne'er a soul would I have seen either way," said she, "if it had not been for a tramp a few steps down the road, who set me thinking it was as well I was not alone, by the looks of him. Yes--thank your ladyship--I got some sleep, till after five o'clock. Then I could not be easy till I knew about my child. But all has gone well, God be thanked!"
It was the only time she ever saw that brother, and she never knew it was he.
CHAPTER XXIX
HOW MICKY BECAME A LINKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MR. NIXON. HIS SELF-RESTRAINT, WIX'S MESSAGE. JULIA'S DILEMMA. HER VIEWS ON MARRIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL POLLY! HOW MICKY'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. OUR OLD LADY--GONE! WHO WILL TELL DAVE AND DOLLY? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE.
THE END
The irresolute winter only wavered some forty-eight hours, setting to work in earnest on the second day after Christmas Day, following on suggestions of seasonableness on Boxing Day. London awoke to a dense fog and a hard frost, and its spirits went up. Its citizens became possessed with an unnatural cheerfulness, as is their wont when they cannot breathe without choking, when the gas has to be lighted at what should be the hour of daybreak, when the vapour lies thick in places, and will not move from contact; though now and again the darkness, where the sky was once, seems at odds with a languid something, that may be light, beyond. Then, fires within, heaped with fresh coal, regardless of expense, to keep the fog at bay, contribute more and more through chimney-pots without to the unspeakable opacities overhead, and each seeming ultimatum of blackness is followed by another blacker still.
Then, while timid persons think the last day has come, the linkboys don't care whether it has or not, and enjoy themselves intensely.
A good example of the former class was Mrs. Treadwell, Michael Ragstroar's great-aunt at Hammersmith; of the latter, Michael himself.
On the afternoon of that Wednesday in Christmas week he had conducted an old bloke of enormous wealth, on foot, from the said bloke's residence in Russell Square to his son-in-law's less pretentious one at Chiswick, and had earned liberal refreshments, golden opinions, and silver coin by his intrepidity and perception of London localities in Egyptian darkness. And he had never so much as once asked the name of a blooming street! So ran his communication to his great-aunt, on whom he called afterwards; being, as he said, handy.
"Now you do like I tell you, Micky, and bank it with the Savings Bank, and you'll live to be thankful." This referred to Micky's harphacrownd, just earned. That was his exact pronunciation, delivered _ore rotundissimo_, to do full justice to so large an amount.
Micky's reply was:--"Ketch me at it! I don't put no faith in any of these here Banks, like you see at street corners. _The_ Bank, where you go on the green bus, is another pair o' stockin's.... No--I ain't going to put it on a 'orse. You carn't never say they ain't doctored." He went on to express an astute mistrust of investments, owing to the bad faith of Man, and wound up:--"The money won't run away of itself, so long as you don't let it out of your porket." Into which receptacle Micky returned it, slapping the same in ratification of its security.
"Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." But Michael shook his head, assuming a farsighted expression. He was immovable. Mrs. Treadwell continued:--"Bein' here, I do declare you might be a useful boy, and write _Dog Found_ large on a sheet of paper, and ask Miss Hawkins to put it up in her window for to find the owner."
"Wot's the dog?"
"Well now, he was here a minute back! Or he run out when you come in."
Fog-retarded search discovered a woebegone refugee under the stairs; who had been fetched in, said Mrs. Treadwell, by her puppy in the early morning, and whom she had not had the heart to drive away.
Michael was proud to show his skill as a penman, and with his aunt's assistance composed an intelligible announcement that the owner of a black-and-tan terrier with one eye might recover the same on production of some proof of ownership. Michael devised one, suggesting that any applicant might be told to say what name was wrote on the collar.
"But there now, Micky," said the old charwoman. "He hasn't _got_ no collar!"
"Werry good, then," said her nephew. "When he tells you what's wrote on the collar, you'll know he's a liar, and don't you give him up the dog."
"But shan't I be a story," said Mrs. Treadwell, "for to tell him the collar's wrote upon, when it's no such a thing?"
"Not you, Arnty! Don't you say anything's wrote. Just you ask him what, and cotch him out!"
The puppy wanted to help, and nearly blotted the composition. But this was avoided, and Micky went out into the fog bearing the placard, of which he was rather proud.
A typical sot was the only occupant of the bar, who was so far from sober that he imagined he was addressing a public meeting. Micky distinguished that he was referring to his second wife, and had some fault to find with the chairman. Voices in the little parlour behind the bar caught the boy's ear, and took his attention off. He was not bound to stop his ears. If parties hollered, it was their own lookout. Parties hollered, in this case, and Micky could hear, without listening. He was not sure, though, when he heard one of the voices, that he would not have listened, if he had any call to do so. For it was the voice of his old acquaintance the convict.
"No safety like a thick fog, Juliar! I'll pay her a visit this very afternoon, so soon as ever you've given me some belly-timber. Sapps Court'll be as black as an inch-thick of ink for twelve hours yet. Don't you let that steak burn!"
Michael heard the steak rescued--the hiss of its cookery intercepted.
Then he heard Miss Julia say with alarm in her voice:--"You're never going there, Wix! Not to Sapps Court?"
"And why the Hell shouldn't I go to Sapps Court? One place is as safe as another, a day like this." Insert if you will an adjective before "place," here.
Michael, sharp as he was, could not tell why the woman's answer sounded embarrassed, even through a half-closed door. The story knows. She had betrayed the knowledge she had acquired from the letter she had tampered with, that Sapps was being specially watched by the Police. How could she account for this knowledge, without full confession? And would not absolution be impossible? She could only fence with the cause of her confusion. "I got the idea on my mind, I expect," said she uneasily.
"Didn't you say she had a man hanging round?"
"Old Mo, sure enough. Yes, there's old Mo. But _he_ won't be there.