This was far from being a place of doubtful character; for it had long been known as the residence of none but low ruffians, who, under various pretences of living by their labour, subsisted chiefly on plunder and crime. It was a collection of mere hovels: some, hastily built with loose bricks: others, of old worm-eaten ship-timber: jumbled together without any attempt at order or arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a few feet of the river’s bank. A few leaky boats drawn up on the mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it: and here and there an oar or coil of rope: appeared, at first to indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by, without much difficulty, to the conjecture that they were disposed there, rather for the preservation of appearances, than with any view to their being actually employed.
In the heart of this cluster of huts; and skirting the river, which its upper stories overhung; stood a large building, formerly used as a manufactory of some kind. It had, in its day, probably furnished employment to the inhabitants of the surrounding tenements. But it had long since gone to ruin. The rat, the worm, and the action of the damp, had weakened and rotted the piles on which it stood; and a considerable portion of the building had already sunk down into the water; while the remainder, tottering and bending over the dark stream, seemed to wait a favourable opportunity of following its old companion, and involving itself in the same fate.
It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple paused, as the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the air, and the rain commenced pouring violently down.
“The place should be somewhere here,” said Bumble, consulting a scrap of paper he held in his hand.
“Halloa there!” cried a voice from above.
Following the sound, Mr. Bumble raised his head, and descried a man looking out of a door, breast-high, on the second story.
“Stand still, a minute,” cried the voice; “I’ll be with you directly.” With which the head disappeared, and the door closed.
“Is that the man?” asked Mr. Bumble’s good lady.
Mr. Bumble nodded in the affirmative.
“Then, mind what I told you,” said the matron: “and be careful to say as little as you can, or you’ll betray us at once.”
Mr. Bumble, who had eyed the building with very rueful looks, was apparently about to express some doubts relative to the advisability of proceeding any further with the enterprise just then, when he was prevented by the appearance of Monks: who opened a small door, near which they stood, and beckoned them inwards.
“Come in!” he cried impatiently, stamping his foot upon the ground. “Don’t keep me here!”
The woman, who had hesitated at first, walked boldly in, without any other invitation. Mr. Bumble, who was ashamed or afraid to lag behind, followed: obviously very ill at ease and with scarcely any of that remarkable dignity which was usually his chief characteristic.
“What the devil made you stand lingering there, in the wet?” said Monks, turning round, and addressing Bumble, after he had bolted the door behind them.
“We—we were only cooling ourselves,” stammered Bumble, looking apprehensively about him.
“Cooling yourselves!” retorted Monks. “Not all the rain that ever fell, or ever will fall, will put as much of hell’s fire out, as a man can carry about with him. You won’t cool yourselves so easily; don’t think it!”
With this agreeable speech, Monks turned short upon the matron, and bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not easily cowed, was fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them towards the ground.
“This is the woman, is it?” demanded Monks.
“Hem! That is the woman,” replied Mr. Bumble, mindful of his wife’s caution.
“You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose?” said the matron, interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching look of Monks.
“I know they will always keep
one
till it’s found out,” said Monks.
“And what may that be?” asked the matron.
“The loss of their own good name,” replied Monks. “So, by the same rule, if a woman’s a party to a secret that might hang or transport her, I’m not afraid of her telling it to anybody; not I! Do you understand, mistress?”
“No,” rejoined the matron, slightly colouring as she spoke.
“Of course you don’t!” said Monks. “How should you?”
Bestowing something half-way between a smile and a frown upon his two companions, and again beckoning them to follow him, the man hastened across the apartment, which was of considerable extent, but low in the roof. He was preparing to ascend a steep staircase, or rather ladder, leading to another floor of warehouses above: when a bright flash of lightning streamed down the aperture, and a peal of thunder followed, which shook the crazy building to its centre.
“Hear it!” he cried, shrinking back. “Hear it! Rolling and crashing on as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the devils were hiding from it. I hate the sound!”
He remained silent for a few moments; and then, removing his hands suddenly from his face, showed, to the unspeakable discomposure of Mr. Bumble, that it was much distorted, and discoloured.
“These fits come over me, now and then,” said Monks, observing his alarm; “and thunder sometimes brings them on. Don’t mind me now; it’s all over for this once.”
Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing the window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a lantern which hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through one of the heavy beams in the ceiling: and which cast a dim light upon an old table and three chairs that were placed beneath it.
“Now,” said Monks, when they had all three seated themselves, “the sooner we come to our business, the better for all. The woman knows what it is, does she?”
The question was addressed to Bumble; but his wife anticipated the reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with it.
“He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she died; and that she told you something—”
“About the mother of the boy you named,” replied the matron, interrupting him. “Yes.”
“The first question is, of what nature was her communication?” said Monks.
“That’s the second,” observed the woman with much deliberation. “The first is, what may the communication be worth?”
“Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it is?” asked Monks.
“Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,” answered Mrs. Bumble: who did not want for spirit, as her yokefellow could abundantly testify.
“Humph!” said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager inquiry; “there may be money’s worth to get, eh?”
“Perhaps there may,” was the composed reply.
“Something that was taken from her,” said Monks. “Something that she wore. Something that—”
“You had better bid,” interrupted Mrs. Bumble. “I have heard enough, already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to talk to.”
Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed, listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended eyes: which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in undisguised astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter sternly demanded what sum was required for the disclosure.
“What’s it worth to you?” asked the woman, as collectedly as before.
“It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,” replied Monks. “Speak out, and let me know which.”
“Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me five-and-twenty pounds in gold,” said the woman; “and I’ll tell you all I know. Not before.”
“Five-and-twenty pounds!” exclaimed Monks, drawing back.
“I spoke as plainly as I could,” replied Mrs. Bumble. “It’s not a large sum, either.”
“Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when it’s told!” cried Monks impatiently; “and which has been lying dead for twelve years past or more!”
“Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their value in course of time,”answered the matron, still preserving the resolute indifference she had assumed. “As to lying dead, there are those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to come, or twelve million, for anything you or I know, who will tell strange tales at last!”
“What if I pay it for nothing?” asked Monks, hesitating.
“You can easily take it away again,” replied the matron. “I am but a woman; alone here; and unprotected.”
“Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected neither,” submitted Mr. Bumble, in a voice tremulous with fear: “I am here, my dear. And besides,” said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke, “Mr. Monks is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on porochial persons. Mr. Monks is aware that I am not a young man, my dear, and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say; but he has heerd: I say I have no doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my dear: that I am a very determined officer, with very uncommon strength, if I’m once roused. I only want a little rousing; that’s all.”
As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his lantern with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the alarmed expression of every feature, that he
did
want a little rousing, and not a little, prior to making any very warlike demonstration: unless, indeed, against paupers, or other person or persons trained down for the purpose.
“You are a fool,” said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; “and had better hold your tongue.”
“He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can’t speak in a lower tone,” said Monks, grimly. “So! He’s your husband, eh?”
“He my husband!” tittered the matron, parrying the question.
“I thought as much, when you came in,” rejoined Monks, marking the angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she spoke. “So much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing with two people, when I find that there’s only one will between them. I’m in earnest. See here!”
He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas bag, told out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to the woman.
“Now,” he said, “gather them up; and when this cursed peal of thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top, is gone, let’s hear your story.”
The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and break almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks, raising his face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should say. The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also leant forward to render her whisper audible. The sickly rays of the suspended lantern falling directly upon them, aggravated the paleness and anxiety of their countenances: which, encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in the extreme.
“When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,” the matron began, “she and I were alone.”
“Was there no one by?” asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper; “no sick wretch or idiot in some other bed? No one who could hear, and might, by possibility, understand?”
“Not a soul,” replied the woman; “we were alone. I stood alone beside the body when death came over it.”
“Good,” said Monks, regarding her attentively. “Go on.”
“She spoke of a young creature,” resumed the matron, “who had brought a child into the world some years before; not merely in the same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.”
“Ay?” said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his shoulder, “Blood! How things come about!”
“The child was the one you named to him last night,” said the matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; “the mother this nurse had robbed.”
“In life?” asked Monks.
“In death,” replied the woman, with something like a shudder. “She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to keep for the infant’s sake.”
“She sold it?” cried Monks, with desperate eagerness; “did she sell it? Where? When? To whom? How long before?”
“As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,” said the matron, “she fell back and died.”
“Without saying more?” cried Monks, in a voice which, from its very suppression, seemed only the more furious. “It’s a lie! I’ll not be played with. She said more. I’ll tear the life out of you both, but I’ll know what it was.”
“She didn’t utter another word,” said the woman, to all appearance unmoved (as Mr. Bumble was very far from being) by the strange man’s violence; “but she clutched my gown, violently, with one hand, which was partly closed; and when I saw that she was dead, and so removed the hand by force, I found it clasped a scrap of dirty paper.”
“Which contained—” interposed Monks, stretching forward.
“Nothing,” replied the woman; “it was a pawnbroker’s duplicate.”
bz
“For what?” demanded Monks.
“In good time I’ll tell you,” said the woman. “I judge that she had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to better account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped together money to pay the pawnbroker’s interest year by year, and prevent its running out; so that if anything came of it, it could still be redeemed. Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you, she died with the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand. The time was out in two days; I thought something might one day come of it too; and so redeemed the pledge.”
“Where is it now?” asked Monks quickly.
“There,” replied the woman. And, as if glad to be relieved of it, she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely large enough for a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore open with trembling hands. It contained a little gold locket: in which were two locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.