Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)

CHAPTER XXXV
THE RUINS

The morning following Hanbury's visit to Grimsby Street saw the order of arrival of the ladies in the sitting-room reversed. Mrs. Grace was there first. Edith had been too excited when she went to bed after the young man's disclosures to sleep, and it was not until the small hours were growing big that the girl could close her eyes. As a consequence, she was late.

But when at last she did awake, how different were her feelings from the day before! She could scarcely believe she was the same being, or it was the same world. That letter from Mr. Coutch, of Castleton, had plunged her into a depth of leaden hopelessness she had never known before. Now all was changed. Then she was the last of a race of shopkeepers; now she had for cousin a man whose ancestor had been a king. Whatever fate might do against her in the future, it could never take away that consoling consciousness. At Miss Graham's in Streatham the girls used to say she ought to be a queen. Well, a not very remote relative of hers would have sat on a throne if she had lived and come into her rights! Prodigious.

She found her grandmother waiting for her. The old lady was seated in the window, spectacles on nose, reading the morning paper. All the papers of that morning had not an account of the disaster at Chelsea, because of the late hour at which it occurred. Mrs. Grace's paper was one that did not get the news in time for insertion that morning, so that the old lady and Edith were spared the pain of believing that a man who sat in this room yesterday had met with a sudden and horrible death.

But Mrs. Grace's eye had caught a paragraph headed "The Last of the Poles." Without a word or comment she handed the paper to the girl and said merely, "Read that. It ought to interest you."

Edith looked at the heading, flushed, and then read the paragraph. It ran:

"The last survivor of one of the great historical families of Europe was buried at Chone, near Geneva, four days before Christmas. The venerable Mathilde Poniatowski, the widow of Count Szymanowski, had just passed her ninetieth year. Her family gave to Poland its last king, Stanislaus Augustus, under whose reign the death-struggle of the Polish nation began, and its last hero, Prince Joseph Poniatowski, who fell as one of Napoleon's generals when bravely attempting to cover the retreat of the French at the battle of Leipzig. The Tzar Alexander, with a generosity which did him credit, allowed his corpse to be buried in the church at Cracow amongst the old Kings and heroes of Poland. Count Szymanowski, the husband of the deceased lady, took a prominent part in the rising of the Poles in 1831, since which time she has lived a quiet and uneventful life in the hospitable republic of Geneva."

"And think," said Mrs. Grace, "that she who is just dead represented only the younger branch of Mr. Hanbury's family. It is all more like an Eastern romance than anything which could take place in Europe!"

Edith could not say much. She felt choking, and merely said it was wonderful, and that Mr. Hanbury would no doubt know all about the countess.

"I don't think so. You know he said he did not know much of the family. I must cut out this paragraph and keep it for him."

The notion of cutting a paragraph out of a penny paper and giving it to the head of the house here referred to, was grotesque. Besides, he had not said that he should come again. He said his mother would call, and he expressed a vague hope that they might be better friends. Edith knew no practical importance was to be attached to this man's parentage, as far as honours went; but still it could not be that he would move about as freely now as of yore, or mingle with the people he had formerly considered his equals. He could no more destroy the stream of noble and kingly blood in his veins than a costermonger could carry the arms of a Howard or a Percy.

Edith broke bread that morning, but made little more than a formal meal. Mrs. Hanbury would of course call. When? And what would she be like? The son had been much too condescending and familiar for one in his position. Would his mother make up in stateliness what he left aside? She would drive up between three and five with powdered footmen. The arrival of the carriage, and the footmen, and Mrs. Hanbury, mother of the well-known Mr. Hanbury, would be an event in Grimsby Street. Her old resolution of not knowing rich people must be waived in this case. There was no remedy for it; for he had said his mother would come.

Neither grandmother nor grand-daughter was in humour for talk. Edith was occupied with her own thoughts. They had nothing to do that day, for Edith had made up her mind to do nothing about a new situation until Monday. It being now Saturday, there was no time to take any steps that week.

They had not sat down to breakfast until half-past nine, and by ten they had not finished. As the little clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour the landlady's daughter entered to say a lady was below who desired to see Mrs. and Miss Grace.

Both rose. Whom could it be?

Mrs. Hanbury.

"I have taken the liberty of coming up without permission," said a voice at the door, and a tall, stately lady, with white hair and dressed in black, appeared at the threshold of the door left open by the attendant.

Mrs. Grace invited her to enter and be seated.

"I need not introduce myself further," the visitor said with a smile, as she sat down, after shaking hands with the two, "than to say I am the mother of Mr. Hanbury, who had the pleasure of calling upon you yesterday evening. I am afraid my visit this morning is as inconveniently early as his last night was late. But the discovery of the relationship between us is so extraordinary, and so pleasant to me, that I could not deny myself the happiness of calling at the very earliest moment I could get away. You have not even finished breakfast. I fear you will find it hard to forgive me." Her words, and smile, and manner were so friendly and unassuming, that grandmother and grand-daughter felt at ease immediately.

Mrs. Grace said that if the visitor would forgive the disorder of the table, they should have no reason to feel anything but extremely grateful to Mrs. Hanbury for coming so soon.

Mrs. Hanbury bowed and said, "I saw my son on his return from Derbyshire yesterday and when he came back from you last night. But he had not come down when I was leaving home just now. I am a very positive, self-willed old woman, and I have to ask you as a favour to make allowances for these infirmities. I have made up my mind that the best thing for us to do is to hold a little family council, and I have grown so used to my own room I never can feel equal to discussing family matters anywhere else. I have therefore come to ask you a favour to begin with. Do humour me, please, and come with me to my place. John will be down and done breakfast by the time we get there, and we four can talk over all this wonderful story at our leisure."

There were objections and demurs to this, but Mrs. Hanbury's insistent, good-humoured determination prevailed, and the end was that the three ladies set out together on foot for Chester Square. "And now," said Mrs. Hanbury, as they walked along, "that I have tasted the delights of conquest, I mean to turn from a mild and seemingly reasonable supplicant into a rigid tyrant. Back into that dreadful Grimsby Street neither of you shall ever go again. It is quite enough to destroy one's zest for life merely to look down it!"

The protests and demurs were more vehement than before.

"We shall not argue the point now. In my capacity of tyrant, I decline to argue anything. But we shall see-we shall see."

When they reached Mrs. Hanbury's, they went straight, to her own room. She left word that she was most particularly engaged, and could see no one. On enquiring for her son, she heard with surprise that he had come down shortly after she left and gone out without leaving any message for her.

That morning John Hanbury awoke to the most unpleasant thoughts about Dora. What ought he to do in the matter? Had he not acted badly to her in not writing the next morning after the scene in the drawing-room? – the very night?

Unquestionably it would have been much better if he had written at once. But then at the time he reached home, he was in no state of mind to write to any one, and when he read his father's letter, the contents of it drove all other matters into the background, and made it seem that they could easily wait. Now he had been to Derbyshire, and knew all that was to be learned at Castleton, and had seen Mrs. Grace and Miss Grace and told them of the discovery he had made. His mother had undertaken to go see them, and for the present there was nothing to press in front of his thought of Dora.

He had behaved very badly indeed to her. At the interview he had acted more like a lunatic brute than a sane gentleman, and afterwards his conduct had been-yes, cowardly. Curse it! was he always to behave like a coward in her eyes? She had reproached him with cowardice the other day, and he fully deserved her reproach. That is, he fully deserved the reproach of an impartial and passionless judge. But was the attitude of an impartial and passionless judge exactly the one a man expected from his sweetheart? Surely the ways of life would be very dusty and dreary if a man found his severest critics always closest to his side, if any deficiencies in the public indictment of his character or conduct were to be supplied by a voice from his own hearth, by his other self, by his wife?

John Hanbury had from his first thinking of Dora more than of any other girl he had met, looked on her as a possible wife. When he went further and made up his mind to ask her to marry him, he had regarded her as a future wife more than a present sweetheart. He had felt that she would be a credit and an ornament to him and that they should get on well together. He had never for an hour been carried away by his feelings towards her. He had never lost his head. He told himself he had lost his heart, because he was more happy in her society than in the society of any other young woman he had met.

He was an imaginative man, of good education, strong impulse, and skilful in the use of words. Yet he had not addressed a single piece of verse to her. She had not moved him to adopt that unfamiliar form of expression. He had nothing in his mind about her that he could not express in prose. This alone was a suspicious circumstance. He knew he was not a poet, and he felt it would be absurd to try to be a poet, because he was going to marry a woman he liked very much.

This was ample evidence she had not touched the inner springs of love in him. The young man who keeps his reason always about him, and won't make a fool of himself for the woman he wants to marry, isn't in love at all. There may be fifty words describing beautifully the excellence of his intentions towards the young woman, but love is not one of those words. He had felt all along that they were about to enter into a delicious partnership; not that he was going to drink the wine of a heavenly dream.

This morning he was wrestling and groaning in spirit when the servant brought the letters to his door. He recognised her writing at once, and tore the envelope open hastily.

He read the letter slowly and with decaying spirit. When he had finished he folded it up deliberately and put it back into the envelope. His face was pale, his lips were apart, his eyes dull, expressionless.

"Be it so," he said at length. "She is right," he added bitterly. "She is always right. She would always be right, and I when I differed from her always wrong. That is not the position a husband should occupy in a wife's esteem."

Then he sat down in the easy chair he had occupied two nights before, and fell into a reverie. He did not heed how time went. When he roused himself he learned that his mother had gone out. He did not want to meet her now. He did not want to meet anyone. He wished to be alone with his thoughts. Where can man be more alone than in the streets of a great city?

He went out with no definite object except to be free of interruption. His mind ran on Dora. Now he thought of her with anger, now with affection, now with sorrow. He had no thought of trying to undo her resolve. He acquiesced in it. He was glad it came from her and not from him.

Now that all was over between them, and they were by-and-by to be good friends, and no more, he became sentimental.

He passed in review the pleasant hours they had spent together. He took a melancholy delight in conjuring up the things they had said, the places they had gone to, the balls, and theatres, and galleries and meetings they had been at with one another. He thought of the last walk they took, the walk which led to the present breach between them. It was in this neighbourhood somewhere. Ah, he remembered. He would go and see the place once more.

Once more! Why it was only two days since they had come this way, she leaning on his arm. What a wonderful lot of things had been crowded into those two days!

This was the street. What was the meaning of the crowd? When she and he were here last, there had been a crowd too. Was there always a crowd here? By Jove! there had been a fire. And, by Jove! the house burned was the one against the end wall of which she and he had stood to watch the nigger.

Policemen were keeping people back from the front of Forbes's bakery, which was completely gutted, standing a mere shell, with its bare, roofless walls open to the light of Heaven. All the floors had fallen, and a fireman with a hose was playing on the smoking rubbish within.

"An unlucky place," thought Hanbury, as he stood to look at the ruins. "First that unfortunate nigger meets with an accident there, and now this house is burned quite out. An unlucky corner."

At that moment there was a cry of dismay from the crowd. Hanbury drew back. He thought the walls were falling. Presently the cry of dismay changed to a cheer, and the crowd at the corner of the Hanover swayed and opened, and through it, from a cab which had just drawn up, walked hastily towards the smoking pile, Oscar Leigh.

Where Hanbury stood was the nearest point from which the dwarf could command a view of the bakery. When he reached Hanbury's side, he stopped, looked up, dropped his stick, flung his hands aloft and uttered an awful yell of despair.

The people drew back from him.

No trace of even the floor of the clock-room remained in position, beyond a few charred fragments of joists. Everything was gone, wheels and pulleys, and levers, and shafts, and chains, and drums, and bands. Even the very frame itself, with its four strong pillars and thick cross-bars, left not a trace aloft, and its very position was not indicated in the heap of steaming rubbish.

"All gone! All gone! The work of seven years. The result of a lifetime. Gone! gone! gone!"

He reeled and would have fallen but that Hanbury caught him and supported him.

Williams appeared and between Williams and Hanbury the dwarf was led into the private bar in which his learning and occult knowledge had brought him distinction and respect.

A chair was fetched by Binns the potman and Leigh was set upon it with his back to the window, so that his eyes might not look upon the grave of his labour.

"All gone! All gone! Nothing left! Nothing left! The work of seven years day and night! Day and night! Day and night! Gone, all gone!"

"But, Mr. Leigh," said the pale-faced Williams, in a low and very kindly voice, "it might have been ever so much worse."

"Worse! How could it be worse? There is nothing saved."

"Why, thank God, Mr. Leigh, you are saved. It was said in some of the papers and we all believed you were burned in the fire."

"And what if I was? I wish I was."

"You oughtn't say that, Mr. Leigh. It is not right to say that. You ought to be grateful for being saved."

"Grateful for being saved! Who? I! Who should be grateful that I am saved? Not I, for one."

"Well, your friends are very glad, any way. Didn't you hear how the people cried out with fear first, for they thought you were a ghost, and didn't you hear how they cheered then when they saw it was you yourself, alive and well?"

"I! Who am I? What am I? My clock, sir, was all I had in this whole world. It was the savings bank of my heart, of my soul, and now the bank is broken and I am beggared."

"But, Mr. Leigh, you are not beggared indeed. You have plenty of money still," said Williams in the soft tone one uses to a reasonable child.

"Money, sir, what is money to me? I am not a pauper, but what good is mere money to me? Can I dance at balls, or ride fine horses or shoot? What good is money to me more than to get me food and drink for my body? and what a body! Who will feed my soul? What will feed my soul? How am I who am but a joke of nature to live with no spiritual food? My clock was my life, and my soul, and my fame, my immortal part and now-! Gone! gone! gone!"

"But how did you escape, Mr. Leigh? We saw you winding up after you left this, and you nodded to us as usual, when the easy part of the winding came, half-way through."

"I did. Curse my mandarin neck. If I had minded nothing but my clock it would be safe now, or I should be dead with it."

"But how did you escape, Mr. Leigh?"

"The devil takes care of his own, Mr. Hanbury," he said, speaking for the first time to the young man. "Whatever way you are going I should like to go, if you would have no objection? I have no way of my own now except the way common to us all."

"I shall be very glad to have your company," said Hanbury, who was sincerely moved at the loss and grief of the little clockmaker.

"Shall we walk or would you prefer to drive?"

"Let us drive, please. I have lost my stick. Ay, I have lost my crutch, my stick, my prop. You are very kind to let me go with you."

"Indeed I am very glad to be of any use I can."

And leaning on the arm of John Hanbury, Oscar Leigh limped out of the private bar of the Hanover.

CHAPTER XXXVI
OPEN CONFESSION

When the two men gained the open air no cab was in sight.

"If you will rest awhile here," said Hanbury, "I'll fetch a cab. I cannot see one up or down the street."

"No," said Leigh, a shudder passing through his frame. "Let us walk, if you do not mind. I could not bear to stay near this place any longer. Is it not strange that you should have wanted a cab in this spot forty-eight hours ago, and I should want it here now?"

"It is strange," said Hanbury, "but the world is very small, and our absolute wants in it are very closely circumscribed." The manner of Leigh had changed in a marked manner since they emerged from the door of the Hanover. His steps had become slow and more dragged, his breathing more laboured, and he had lost all swagger and bounce, and self-assertiveness.

"I know I am going very slowly. But I cannot get along quicker. I have had a great shock, and a slow step is becoming at a funeral."

"Pray, do not apologise. I assure you I have absolutely nothing to do."

"Nor I, nor shall I ever have anything to do in this world again. Sir, this slow pace befits a funeral. This is my funeral."

"Oh, you mustn't say so. I am sure your clock must have been a terrible loss, but not irreparable."

"Do you mean that the clock is reparable?"

"No. I am well aware the clock is past repair, but the loss may be repaired."

"No, sir. It may not. I do not want ever to see this street or that corner again. I have lived there seven years. I have toiled and planned there night and day for seven years, and now I am going away shorn of the growth of all my labours. Men of my make are never long-lived. When they meet a great shock and a great loss such as this they die. There is a hansom, but don't call that. Call a four-wheeler. It is more like a hearse, and this is a funeral. Let us dress the rehearsal of the play, the real play, as well as we can. I am rather glad I am done with life-"

"Why, you are quite a young man yet, Mr. Leigh."

"I am rather glad I am done with life, I was saying, for I was beginning to tire of it. A man formed as I am has a weary up-hill fight. He must either play the part of the subtle beast, or go under, and a man who cannot ever stand up and fight for himself does not like to go under. It is not fair to ask a man who has never been able to put up his hands if he has had enough."

"But you will begin another great clock, even a greater one."

For a moment the little man fired up, and seemed about to regain his old insolent combativeness. "Sir, it would be impossible to design a greater."

"Well, let us say as great," said the young man soothingly. He was beginning not only to take an interest in this strange being, but to sympathise with him.

"No, sir. I shall begin no other clock. The sands in my own hour-glass are running low already. When a man of my make endures a great shock and a great disappointment he does not endure much more. He dies. I am glad to meet you again. I am glad it was your arm kept me from falling. I want you to be my friend. I have no friend on earth excepting my poor mother, who is more helpless than I myself. I know what I am asking when I say I want you for my friend. I would not ask you to be my friend the day before yesterday. I would have preferred you for an enemy then, for then I was strong and able to take care of myself. Now I am too weak to be your enemy, and I am fit only to be your friend. You will not spurn me?" He paused in their walk, and looked up anxiously into Hanbury's face.

"Assuredly not. I will do anything I can for you. Please let me know what I can do for you?"

"I may presently, I may later. I may the last thing of all. But not now. Let us walk on. My clock is gone for ever, and on the ruins of my clock I have found a friend. I would much rather have my clock, ten thousand times rather have my clock, than you, but then I knew it so long and so well. If you had made that clock as I had, and had lost it as I have lost it, you would go mad and kill someone, maybe yourself, or perhaps both."

"I am sure I should feel bitterly the loss of so many years of labour."

"Of so many years of labour and love and confidence and pride, the depository of so many hopes, the garden in which grew all the flowers of my mind. Well, while I had the clock, I had a friend in which I could confide. The clock is gone past recall. My mother cannot, poor soul, be expected to understand me. As you have promised to be my friend, I will confide in you. I know I may do so with safety."

"I think you may."

"It is past _thinking_ in me: I _know_. I told you before, I never make mistakes about people." In all this talk Hanbury noticed that the old self-assertive "Hah!" had no place, nor was there any use of eau-de-cologne or reference to it. These had been nothing more than conversational fripperies, and had been laid aside with the spirit of aggression. The manner of aggression still prevailed in the form of thought and manner of expression. "You will be astonished to hear that I was attracted towards you from the moment I saw you in Welbeck Place-the attraction of repulsion, no doubt. But still you were not indifferent to me. I have had so long a life of loneliness and repression, I want a few hours of companionship and free-speaking before I die."

"Anything you may tell me to relieve your mind, I shall treat as a secret of my own-as a secret in keeping which my personal honour is concerned."

"I know. I wish I were as sure of anything else as I am of you. I tell you I never make mistakes about people. Never. I lied to you very considerably. I lied to everyone pretty considerably, partly because I have imagination, or fancy, or invention, or whatever you call the power of easily devising things that are not. I lied because I had imagination. I lied because I had vanity. I lied because people are such fools. How could a man tell the truth to a creature like Williams, the owner of that public-house? The creature could not appreciate it. Besides, lying is so amusing, and I had so little amusement. I used lies as at once a sword and buckler. I cut down a fool with a lie; I defended myself against the silly talk of fools by holding up a lie with a brazen boss the shining of which dazzled their eyes and choked their silly voices. I lied a good deal to you."

"Pray do not pain yourself by apologies. You said what you said to me merely for pastime."

"No; as an indication of my contempt for you. Did you not see I had a contempt for you? Did I not make it plain? Did you not see it?"

"Yes, I think you made it plain."

"I am glad of that, for my intention was to hurt you a good deal, and I hate to fail. I am very glad you saw I had a great contempt for you. This is my death-bed confession, and I shall keep back nothing, without warning you I am keeping something back."

"You are quite candid now, I am sure."

"Quite candid, as candid as a child is in its unspoken mind. What I said about those figures of time was mostly a lie."

"I guessed that."

"What I said about Miracle Gold was mostly a lie also."

"I knew that."

"You knew it! How could you know it? How can you _know_ a negative any more than _prove_ it, except by the evidence of your senses? – and then you do not _know_, you only fail to perceive."

"Well, let us not get into metaphysics."

"All right. _Most_ of what I told you about Miracle Gold was a lie. _All_ I told you about making it was a lie. I was about to enter into a league with thieves to take stolen gold, and pretend to make it. I was going to do this for the sake of the fame, not the profit."

"A very dangerous kind of alchemy."

"Yes; but very common, though not in its application to real metallic gold."

"It would be worse for us to get into a discussion on morals than even on metaphysics."

"It would. Anyway I have told you what my scheme was. I told Mrs. Ashton that my clock was independent of my hands for winding up. You heard Williams, the publican, say they saw me wind up my clock last night. Well I was not near my clock last night."

"But he said he saw you."

"He did. Now you can understand how necessary it was for me to lie."

"I candidly confess I cannot."

"Well to me it would be unbearable that a man like Williams should know of all my actions. I was not near my clock, not in the same room with it, not on the floor where it stood, from the early afternoon of yesterday. When I conceived the notion of making Miracle Gold I knew I ran a great risk. I thought it might become necessary to prove _affirmatives_ at all events. The proposition of an alibi is an affirmative, the deduction a negative. I told you my clock was my friend. Well, I made it help me in this. I gave out in the private bar of the Hanover that my clock had now become so complicated that I had arranged to connect all the movements, which had hitherto been more or less independent, awaiting removal to a tower. I said I was going to get all my power from one force, weights in the chimney. Hitherto I had said I used springs and weights. I said this change would involve half-an-hour's continual winding every night, with a brief break of a few seconds in the middle of the half hour. The clock was to be wound up by a lever fixed near the window, at which I sat when at work, the only window in the room. Night after night I worked at this lever for half-an-hour, turning round exactly at a quarter-past twelve to nod at the landlord of the Hanover and the people in the private bar. Meanwhile, I was busy constructing two life-sized figures. One of the body of a man in every way unlike me. The other of a man who should be as like me as possible. I have skill, a good deal of skill, in modelling. The face and figure unlike mine were the first finished. Both were made to be moved by the lever, not to move it. I easily timed the head so as to turn at a quarter-past. I inserted in the neck of the figure like myself a movement which would make the head nod before turning away to go on with the winding. You now see my idea?"

"Not quite clearly. But I suspect it."

"Suppose I had to meet one of my clients about the gold, I should make an appointment with him at a quarter-past twelve in Islington, or Wapping, or Wandsworth, or Twickenham. My clock, at twelve o'clock, slowly raised the figure from the floor to the place in which I sat in my chair, turned up the gas, which had been dimmed to the last glimmer that would live, and then released the weight in the chimney and set the figure moving as if working the lever, instead of the lever working it. Thus you see I should have a dozen to swear they saw me in my room at Chelsea, if anything went wrong in my interviews with my clients, or if from any other cause it became necessary for me to prove I was in my workshop between twelve and half-past twelve at night."

"Very ingenious indeed."

"The night before I met you in Welbeck Place, that is to say Wednesday night, I tried my first figure, the figure of the man unlike me."

"May I ask what was the object of this figure? Why had you one that was not like you?"

"To give emphasis to the figure of myself. I at first intended going into the Hanover on Wednesday and declaring that I had been obliged to employ a deputy in case of anything preventing my being able to attend between twelve and half-past. I had intended spending the half hour the figure was visible in the bar, but I changed my mind. I went to the country instead, and imparted as a secret to the landlord that I was to have a deputy that night, and that he was to keep an eye on him and see he did not shirk his work. I knew Williams could no more keep a secret of that kind than fly. I did not want him to keep it. My motive in cautioning him was merely that he might watch closely, for of course I was most anxious that the delusion should be complete and able to bear the test of strict watching from the private bar. I went down to the country partly to be out of the way and partly for another reason I need not mention."