A voice Micky knew growled from a recess:--"Give the young beggar full measure, Juli_ar_. What he means is, you go by a blooming average."
Miss Hawkins filled up the glass this once, but said:--"You tell your Aunt Treadwell she'll have to keep below the average till Christmas. _I_ never see such a glass!"
Micky was not sorry to find that he could deliver his message direct. He had not hoped to come upon the man himself. He paid for his beer on contract terms, and said confidentially:--"I say, missis, I got a message for him in there."
"Mrs. Treadwell's nephew Michael from next door says he's got a message for you, and you can say if you'll see him. Or not." This was spoken snappishly, as though a coolness were afoot.
The man replied with mock amiability, meant to irritate. "You can send him in here, Juliar. You're open to." But when in compliance with the woman's curt:--"You hear--you can go in," the boy entered the little back-parlour, he turned on him suddenly and fiercely, saying:--"You're the * * * young nark of some damned teck--some * * * copper, by Goard!"
If the boy had flinched before this accusation, which meant that he was a police-spy employed by a detective, he might have repented it. But Micky was no coward, and stood his ground; all the more firmly that he fully grasped the man's precarious position, in the very house where he had been once before captured. He answered resolutely:--"I could snitch upon you this minute, master, if I was to choose. But you aren't no concern of mine, further than I've got a message for you."
"The boy's all safe," said Miss Hawkins briefly, outside. Whereupon the man, after a subsiding growl or two, said:--"You gave the party my message? What had she got to say back again? You may mouth it out and cut your lucky."
Micky gave his message in a plain and business-like manner. "Mrs. Wardle she's back after the accident, and Mrs. Prichard she's in the country, and she don't know where."
"Who don't know where? Mrs. Prichard?"
"Mrs. Wardle. I said you was a-coming to see your mother, onlest the old lady wasn't your mother. Then you shouldn't come."
"What did she say about Skillicks?"
"Said Mrs. Prichard come from Skillickses. Three year agone."
"You hear that, Miss Hawkins?" Mr. Wix seemed pleased, as one who had scored, adding:--"I knew it was the old woman.... Anything else she said?"
Micky appeared to consider his answer; then replied:--"Said I wasn't to split upon you."
"What the Hell does she say that for? She don't know who I am."
Micky considered again, and astutely decided, perceiving his mistake, to say as little as possible about Aunt M'riar's seeming interest in Mr.
Wix's safety from the Law. Then he said:--"She don't know nothing about you, but when I says to her the Police was after you, she cuts in sharp, and says, she does, that was no concern o' mine, and I was to say nothing to them, and they wouldn't say nothing to me."
Mr. Wix said, "Rum!" and Miss Hawkins, who had been keeping her ears open close at hand, looked in through the barcasement to say:--"You go _there_, Wix, and back to gaol you go! I only tell you." And retired, leaving the convict knitting tighter the perplexed scowl on his face. He called after her:--"Come back here, you Juliar!"
"I can hear you."
"What the Devil do you mean?"
"Can't you see for yourself? This woman don't want the boy to get fifty pound. If I was in her shoes, I shouldn't neither." Micky only heard this imperfectly.
"You wouldn't do anything under a hundred, _you_ wouldn't. Good job for me they don't double the amount.... Easy does it, Juliar--only a bit of my fun!" For Miss Hawkins, even as a woman stung by a cruel insult, had shown her flashing eyes, heightened colour, and panting bosom at the bar-opening as before. Mr. Wix seemed gratified. "Pity you don't flare up oftener, Juliar," said he. "You've no idea what a much better woman you look. Damn it, but you _do_!"
The woman made an effort, and choked her anger. "God forgive you, Wix!"
said she, and fell back out of sight. Michael thought he heard her sob.
He was not too young to understand this little drama, which took less time to act than to tell.
The convict had lost the thread of his examination, and had to hark back. _Why_ was it, Mrs. Prichard had gone away into the country?... Oh, the house had fallen down, had it? But, then, how came Mrs. Wardle to be living in it still? Because, said Michael, it was only the wall fell off of the front, and now Mr. Bartlett he'd made all that good, and Mrs.
Prichard was only kep' out by the damp. Did Mrs. Wardle _really_ not know where Mrs. Prichard was? She had not told Michael, that was all he could say. Old Mo he'd never slept out of the house, only the family.
And they was coming back soon now. Was old Mo an invalid, who never went out? "No fear!" said Michael. "He's all to rights, only a bit oldish, like. He spends the afternoons round at The Sun, and then goes home to supper." The interview ended with a present of half-a-bull to Micky from the convict, which the boy seemed to stickle at accepting. But he took it, and it strengthened his resolution not to turn informer, which was probably Mr. Wix's object.
He came away with an impression that Miss Hawkins had said:--"The boy's lying. How could the front-wall of a house fall down?" But he had heard no more and was glad to come away. He went back to his Aunt Betsy and cooked his chop under her tutelage. What a time he had been away, said she!
If Micky had remembered word for word the whole of this interview, he might have had misgivings of the effect of one thing he had said unawares. It was his reference to Uncle Mo's absence at The Sun during the late afternoon. Manifestly, it left the house in Mr. Wix's imagination untenanted, during some two hours of the day, except by Aunt M'riar, and the children perhaps. And what did _they_ matter?
"You're mighty wise, Juliar, about the party of the house and the fifty-pun' reward." So said the convict when the woman came back, after seeing that Micky had crossed the wall unmolested by authority. "Folk ain't in any such a hurry to get a man hanged when they know what'll happen if they fail of doing it. Not even for fifty pound!"
"What _will_ happen?"
"Couldn't say to a nicety. But she would stand a tidy chance of getting ripped up, next opportunity." He seemed pleased at his expression of this fact, as he took the first pulls at a fresh pipe, on the window-seat with his boots against the shutter and a grip of interlaced fingers behind his close-cut head for support. Why in Heaven's name does the released gaol-bird crop his hair? One would have thought the first instinct of regained freedom would have been to let it grow.
Miss Hawkins looked at him without admiration. "I often wonder," said she, "at the many risks I run to shelter you, for you're a bloody-minded knave, and that's the truth. It was a near touch but I might have lost my licence, last time."
"The Beaks were took with your good looks, Juliar. They're good judges of a fine woman. An orphan you was, too, and the mourning sooted you, prime!" He looked lazily at her, puffing--not without admiration, of a sort. Her resentment seemed to gratify him more than any subserviency.
He continued:--"Well, nobody can say I haven't offered to make an honest woman of _you_, Juliar."
"Much it was worth, your offer! As if you was free! And me to sell The Pigeons and go with you to New York! No--no! I'm better off as I am, than that."
"I'm free, accordin' to Law. Never seen the girl, nor heard from her--over twenty years now--twenty-three at least. Scot-free of _her_, anyhow! Don't want none of her, cutting in to spoil my new start in life. Re-spectable man--justice of peace, p'r'aps." He puffed at his pipe, pleased with the prospect. Then he sounded the keynote of his thought, adding:--"Why--how much could you get for the freehold of this little tiddleywink?"
If Miss Julia had been ever so well disposed towards being made technically an honest woman by her betrayer of auld lang syne, this declaration of his motives might easily have hardened her heart against him. What fatuity of affection could have survived it? Yet his candour was probably his only redeeming feature. He was scarcely an invariable hypocrite; he was merely heartless, sensual, and cruel to the full extent of man's possibilities. Nevertheless, he could and would have lied black white with a purpose. He was, this time, thrown off his guard, as it were, and truthful by accident. Whether the way in which the woman silently repelled his offer was due to her disgust at its terms, or whether she had her doubts of the soundness of his jurisprudence, the story can only guess. Probably the latter. She merely said:--"I'm going to open the house," and left his inquiry unanswered.
This was notice to him that his free run of the lower apartments was ended. He went upstairs to some place of concealment.
"What was you and young Carrots so busy about below here?" said Uncle Mo next day, coming down the stairs to breakfast in the kitchen an hour later than Aunt M'riar.
"Telling me of his Aunt Betsy yesterday. Mind your shirt-sleeve. It's going in the butter."
"What's Aunt Betsy's little game?... No, it's all right--the butter's too hard to hurt.... Down Chiswick way, ain't she?"
"Hammersmith." Aunt M'riar wasn't talkative; but then, this morning, it was bloaters. They should only just hot through, or they dry.
"Who was the bloke he was talking about? Somebody he called _him_."
Uncle Mo's ears had been too sharp.
"There!--I've no time to be telling what a boy says. No one any good, I'll go bail!" Whereupon, as Uncle Mo's curiosity was not really keenly excited, the subject dropped.
But, as a matter of fact, Michael had contrived in a short time to give an account of his experience of yesterday. And he had left Aunt M'riar in a state of disquiet and apprehension which had to be concealed, somehow. For she was quite clear that she would not take Mo into her confidence. She saw she had to choose between risking an interview with this convict husband of hers, and giving him up to the Law, probably to the gallows.
The man would come again to seek out his old mother, to extort money from her; that was beyond a doubt. But would he of necessity recognise the wife of twenty-three years ago in the very middle-aged person Aunt M'riar saw in the half of a looking-glass that Mr. Bartlett's careful myrmidons had not broken? Would she recognise him? Need either see the other? Well--no! Communications might be restricted to speech through a door with the chain up.
She took the boy Michael freely into her confidence about her unwillingness to see this man. But that she could do on the strength of his bad character; her own relation to him of course remained concealed.
She puzzled her confidant not a little by her seeming inconsistency--so repugnant was she to the miscreant himself, yet so anxious that he should not fall into the hands of the Police. Micky kept his perplexity to himself, justifying his mother's estimate of his character.
But this much was clearly understood between them, that should the convict be seen by Micky on his way to the house, he should forthwith take one of two courses. If Uncle Mo was absent at the time, he was to warn Aunt M'riar of Mr. Wix's approach. If otherwise, he was to warn the unwelcome visitor of the risk he would run if he persisted in his attempt to procure an interview. Of course the chances were that Micky would be away on business, selling apples, potatoes, and turnips.
As it turned out, however, he was able to observe one of the conditions of this compact.