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

Hanbury started. The excitement of seeing the place burned out, and meeting the dwarf and listening to his strange tale, had prevented him recollecting the connection between Edith Grace and Leigh. "Go on," said Hanbury, wishing the clockmaker to finish before he introduced the name of Edith.

"There is not much more to tell. Owing to a reason I need not mention, I made up my mind on Thursday morning to go on with the production of Miracle Gold. I resolved against my better judgment, and gave the word for the first lot of the gold to be delivered at my place at midnight exactly. You know how my afternoon was spent. While at Mrs. Ashton's, my better judgment and my worse one had a scuffle, and I made up my mind to decide upon nothing that night, and certainly to commit myself to nothing that night. What you would call the higher influence was at work."

"Pallas-Athena?"

"Yes, if you think that a good name. Any way I made up my mind to do nothing definite in the interest of Miracle Gold that night. I set my dummy figure and left my house at midnight exactly, saw my client and told him I could do nothing for a week. Next day I heard from Williams that I had wound up my clock and nodded at a quarter-past twelve, right time. Last night I went into the Hanover, as you heard Williams say, and passed into my house after speaking a while to a friend in the street. But I did not go upstairs. I went through the house and out into the mews at the back. I was supplied by the landlord with keys for the doors into Chetwynd Street and Welbeck Place, but had not one for the bakehouse door into the mews until I got one made unknown to anyone. Thus the landlord and the people all round to whom I spoke freely would never dream of my going through into the mews. It was my intention they should have a distinct impression I could not do it. Thus I had the use, as it were, of a secret door. When I got into the mews I hastened to Victoria and caught the last train for Millway, the 12.15. I wanted to see my mother about business which I need not mention. I had made up mind to have nothing to do with the Miracle Gold. On my way back to town I called on my client and learned that the place was burnt down and that I was believed to be dead. The latter belief is only a little premature. I am going fast. Is there no cab? I can hardly breathe. Have you seen Miss Ashton since?"

"Since I saw you last?"

"Yes."

"I have."

"Since yesterday afternoon?"

"No."

Leigh gave a sigh of pain and stopped. "I am done," he said. "I can go no further. I shall walk no more."

"Nonsense, you will be all right again. Here is a cab at last, thank goodness!"

"You will come with me. You will not desert me. My confession is over. I shall speak of this matter no more to any man. It was only a temptation, and I absolutely did no wrong. You will not desert me. I am very feeble. I do not know what the matter is with me. I have no strength in my body. I never had much, but the little I had is gone. You will not desert me, Mr. Hanbury. I have only listened to the voice of the tempter. I have not gone the tempter's ways, and mind, I was not tempted by the love of lucre. If I had had a voice, and stature, and figure like yours I might have been able to win fame in the big and open world, as I was I could win it only in the world that is little and occult. Come with me. You promised to be my friend before you heard of my temptation. Are you less inclined to be my friend because I was tempted and resisted the tempter, than if I had never been tempted at all? Get in and come with me. See me under a roof anyway. The next roof that covers me will be the last one I shall lie under over ground."

"I own," said Hanbury, "I was a little staggered at first, but only at first. I am quite willing to go with you. Where shall I tell the man to drive?" Hanbury had assisted Leigh into the cab, and was standing on the flagway.

Leigh gave the address, and the two drove off.

The dwarf's confession had not benefitted his position in Hanbury's mind. The fact that this man had been in communication with a fence, with a view to the disposal of stolen gold, was enough to make the average man shrink from contact with the dwarf. But then Hanbury remembered that the secret had been divulged by the clock-maker in a moment of extreme excitement, and after what to him must have been an enormous calamity. To have been tempted is not to have fallen; but, the temptation resisted, to have risen to heights proportionate to the strength of the temptation, and the degree of self-denial in the resistance of it.

Yet, this was a strange companion, friend, for John Hanbury, the well-known public speaker, a man who had made up his mind to adopt the career of a progressive and reforming politician, the descendant of Stanislaus II. of Poland! Contact with a man who had absolutely entertained the notion of trading in stolen goods was a thing most people would shun. But, then, were most people right? This man had claimed his good offices, first, because Hanbury was in his power, and now Leigh claimed his good offices, because he was in great affliction and prostration. Certainly Hanbury would be more willing to fall in with Leigh's views now, when he was supplicating, than on Thursday, when he was threatening. Who could withhold sympathy from this deformed, marred, wheezing, halting, sickly-looking man, who had just seen the work of a lifetime swept away for ever?

Then Hanbury remembered he had questions to ask Leigh, and that his motive for keeping with him was not wholly pure. How many motives, of the most impersonal and disinterested, are quite pure?

The young man did not know how exactly to introduce the subject of the Graces, and, for a moment, he hemmed and fidgetted in the cab.

At last he began, "You have not seen Mrs. Grace, since?"

"No; nor shall I ever again."

"Why, you have not quarrelled with her, have you?"

"Quarrelled with her! Not I. But I have explained to you that I am going home, that this is a funeral; my home is not in Grimsby Street. You did not say Grimsby Street to the cabman, I hope?"

"I did not. I gave him 12, Barnes Street, Chelsea. Is not that right?"

"Yes. That's right. No, I am not likely to see Mrs. Grace again. How wonderfully like Miss Ashton Miss Grace is! Oh, I may as well tell you, how I came to know Miss Grace, as she has really been the means of bringing us together as we are to-day. My mother is paralyzed, and I advertised for a companion for her. Miss Grace replied, and I engaged her. I said she should see little of me. But at the time it did not occur to me that I might like to see a great deal of her. I did not explain this before, for the explanation would have interrupted the story of my clock. Well, although you may hardly be able to credit it, I, who had, up to that time, avoided the crowning folly of even thinking of marriage, thought, not quite as calmly as I am speaking now, that I should like to marry a wife, and that I should like to marry her. She was to go to my mother on Wednesday. I was to test my automaton on Wednesday night. I ran down to my mother's place, and was at Eltham when Miss Grace arrived. My appearance there, after saying she should see me little, must have frightened her. I have often heard children call me bogie. At all events, she came back to Town next day. Ran away, is the truth. Ran away from the sight of me, of bogie. If she had staid with my mother, I should have had something to think of besides Miracle Gold. It was upon seeing her and arranging that she was to go to Eltham, that my interest in Miracle Gold began to diminish, and I grew to think that my clock alone would suffice for my fame, and that I might marry and leave London, and live at Eltham. Well, she ran away, as I said, and I came back to London the same day, and made up my mind to go on with Miracle Gold. Then I met you and Miss Ashton, and I went to Curzon Street, and I thought, If Mrs. Ashton will let me come on Thursdays, and breathe another atmosphere, and meet other kinds of people, I still may be able to live without the excitement of Miracle Gold. And so I wavered and wavered, and at last made up my mind to give up the Gold altogether, and now the clock is gone, and I am alone. Quite alone. This is the house. It belongs to Dr. Shaw. He has looked after my health for years, and has promised to let me come here and live with him, when I haven't long to live. I have your address, and you have this one. Will you come to see me again?"

"Indeed I will."

"When-to-morrow? To-morrow will be Sunday."

"Perhaps I may come to-morrow. I shall come as soon as ever I can."

They were standing at the door-step. Leigh had leaned his side against the area-railings for support. His breathing was terrible, and every now and then he gasped, and clutched his hands together.

"If you come, perhaps you may not come alone?"

Hanbury flushed. He did not want to make his confession just now.

"Perhaps I may not," he said. "Good-bye, now."

"Good-bye; and thank you for your goodness. You know whom I hope to see with you?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Pallas-Athena, of course."

"Of course."

CHAPTER XXXVII
FREE

With a feeling of relief, Hanbury walked rapidly away. The last words of Leigh had stirred within him once more the trouble which had made him shirk meeting his mother that morning. The burning down of Leigh's place and the destruction of the wonderful clock, and the meeting with the unfortunate clockmaker, would afford a story to be told when he got home, and he might interpose that history between the first words of meeting and the ultimate announcement that the engagement between Dora and himself was at an end.

Family considerations or desires had nothing to do with the understanding which had existed between Dora and him; but to his mother, from whom he had no secret, except that of the quarrel on Thursday night, he must explain, and explain fully too. There was no good in putting off the inevitable meeting any longer. He knew his mother had great respect and liking for Dora, but she had had nothing whatever to do with bringing about the understanding between the two of them. They had been quite as free in their choice of one another as though they had been the heroine and hero of a pastoral. He had never been a fool about Dora and she had never been a fool about him. In his life he meant to be no cypher among men; it would never do for him to be a cypher in his own home. Dora and he had acted with great reasonableness throughout their whole acquaintance, and with supreme reasonableness when they agreed to separate. If he had been an ordinary man, a man with no great public career before him, he might have been disposed to yield more to Dora's opinion or judgment; but as matters stood, any man with the smallest trace of common sense must commend Dora's decision of terminating the engagement, and his acceptance of her decision.

When he got back to Chester Square he heard, with great relief, that Mrs. and Miss Grace were at luncheon in the dining-room with Mrs. Hanbury. The presence of the two visitors and the general nature of the conversation necessary to their presence and the meal, would serve as an admirable softener of the story he had for his mother's private ear.

"You see, John, I have succeeded," said Mrs. Hanbury, after greetings were over. "I went the moment breakfast was finished and carried Mrs. and Miss Grace away from that awful Grimsby Street. We have had a good long chat, and, although I have done my best with Mrs. Grace, I cannot induce her to promise not to go back to that murderous street again. I must now ask you to join with me in forbidding her to leave us."

Hanbury spoke in favour of his mother's proposal and urged many arguments; but the old woman was quite firm. Back they must and would go. Why, if no other consideration would be allowed to weigh, there was the fact that her grand-daughter had not yet received her luggage from Eltham House.

This reference brought in Leigh's name, and then Hanbury told of the fire, the destruction of the clock, his meeting that morning with the dwarf, and the conviction of the latter that he would not long survive the destruction of his incomparable machine. He noticed as he went on that Miss Grace first flushed and then paled.

The girl had hardly spoken up to this. She sat silent and timid. She did not seem to hear quickly or to apprehend accurately. She had hesitated in her answers like one afraid. The table was small, and laid for four people. Hanbury sat opposite his mother, Edith opposite her grandmother. The heat was intense.

There was a buzzing and beating in the girl's ears. She heard as through a sound of plashing water. The talk of Leigh had carried her mind back to the country, back to Millway and Eltham House, and to the unexpected and unwelcome and disquieting apparition of the dwarf at the door of the house when she arrived there.

Through this strange noise of splashing water she heard in a low far-away voice the story of her fear and loneliness and desolation on that Wednesday, separated from her old home and the familiar streets, and the sustaining companionship of her old grandmother, who had been all the world to her. She heard this story chanted, intoned in this low, monotonous voice, and she had a dim feeling that all was changed, and that she was now environed by securities through which she could not be assailed by the attentions of that strange, ill-featured dwarf.

But her sight was very dim, and she could not see anything clearly or recollect exactly where she was. Gradually her sight cleared a little, and she was under trees heavy with leaves, alone on a lonely road by night. The rain fell unseen through the mute warm air. A thick perfume of roses made the air heavy with richness. She felt her breath come short, as though she had walked fast or run. The air was too rich to freshen life to cool the fevered blood.

Now she became dimly conscious of some sound other than the plashing of water. It was not the voice, for the voice had ceased. The sound was loud and distinct, and emphatic and tumultuous.

All at once she remembered what that sound was. She hastily put one hand to her left side, and the other to her forehead and rose, swaying softly to and fro.

"I-I-" she whispered, but could say no more.

Hanbury caught her, or she would have fallen. The two ladies got up.

"She is not well," said the old woman excitedly. "She has eaten nothing for days!"

The girl reclined, cold and pale as marble, in the young man's arms. Her eyes were half closed, her lips half open.

He half led her half lifted her to a couch. Restoratives such as stood at hand were applied, but she did not quite recover. She was not exactly unconscious. This was no ordinary faint.

The women were terrified. Mrs. Grace had never seen her in any such state before. To her knowledge the girl had never fainted.

The ladies were terrified, and Hanbury ran off for a doctor. When he came back, the girl had been got upstairs. She was still in the same state, not quite conscious, and not quite insensible.

The doctor made a long examination, and heard all that was to be told. When he came down to the dining-room, where Hanbury was excitedly walking up and down, he said the case was serious, but not exactly dangerous, that is, the patient's life was in no imminent peril. She had simply been overwrought and weakened by want of food, and jarred by suppressed and contending emotions. There was no organic disease, but the heart had been functionally affected by the vicissitudes of the past few days acting on an organism of exquisite sensibility. Quiet was the best medicine, and after quiet, careful strengthening, and then the drugs mentioned in this prescription. But above all, quiet.

Could she be moved? Mrs. Grace asked.

By no means. Moving might not bring about a fatal termination, but it would most assuredly enhance her danger, and most certainly retard her recovery.

Would she recover?

There was no reason to fear she would not. All was sound, but much was weak. Her anxiety of mind, and the excitement of going to that uncongenial home, and the long walk the morning she left, and the lack of food had weakened her much, but nothing had given way or was in immediate peril of giving way, and with care and quiet all would be well.

And when this was passed would she be quite well again?

Yes. In all possible likelihood under Heaven, quite well again.

It would leave no blemish in her life? No weak place? She would be as well as ever?

Well, that was asking a doctor to say a great deal, but it was probable, highly probable, she would be quite as well as if this had never happened. The key to her recovery lay in the one word, Quiet. After quiet came careful nurture and, a long way from the second of these, drugs. But recollect, Quiet.

Hanbury took up the prescription and hastened off with it.

The poor girl so sensitive and fragile! It was a mercy this illness came upon her here. How would it have fared with her down in that lonely Eltham House to which she had taken such a dislike? Why, it would have killed her.

What an exquisite creature she was, and so soft and gentle in her ways. It was fortunate this illness had not overtaken her in Eltham House, or in Grimsby Street, for that matter, because the street was detestable, and to be ill in lodgings must be much worse than to be ill in a public hospital, for in hospital there was every appliance and attendance, and in lodgings only noise, and bustle, and grumbling. It was dreadful to think of being sick in lodgings. And now Mrs. Grace and her grand-daughter were poor.

How horrible it would be to think of this girl lying stricken in that other house, and requiring first of all quiet, and then cherishing, and being able to get neither! It was dreadful to picture such things. And fancy, if these poor ladies had not enough money for a good doctor and what the poor weak child wanted! Fancy if they could not pay their rent and were obliged to leave. Oh! how fortunate it was he had come across them so soon, and how strange to think that Leigh had been the means of first bringing them together. He owed that good turn to Leigh.

On his way back from the druggist he reverted to the past of Leigh:

"Yes, I owed the introduction to him. I freely forgive him now. Indeed, I don't know what I have to forgive him of. He did not send or write that paragraph to the papers. He did not even write it, as far as I know, and although he was rough and rude, and levied a kind of blackmail on me, the price he asked me was not disgraceful from his point of view. If I had met him under happy circumstances, I might have brought him to a Thursday at Curzon Street. He was interesting, with his alchemy and clock and omniscience and insolence and intellectual swagger. Of course, I did not at the time know he was in treaty with a fence. According to his own account he never committed himself in that quarter, and as he had no need to tell me of that transaction at all, I daresay he kept pretty near the truth. How strange that when he lost his clock, he must straightway get a confidant! I wonder is there any truth in his own prophecy about his health?

"He, too, was the means of breaking off the Curzon Street affair. I must write there at once. I have behaved badly in not doing so before. I'll write the moment I get home. Yes, I must write when I get back, and then I'll put the affair out of my mind altogether, for good and ever."

Upon getting to the house, he went to the library and read over Dora Ashton's letter once more, slowly. He gathered no new impression from this second reading. Her resolution to put an end to the engagement seemed to him more strong than at first. That was the only change he noticed in the effect of the letter upon him. It was as cool and business-like and complete as could be. He was too much of a gentleman to give expression in his mind to any fault-finding with the woman to whom he had been engaged, and whom he had behaved so badly towards the other evening, but it seemed quite certain to him now that Dora Ashton was a girl of great cleverness and good sense and beauty-but no heart.

He did not at all like the task before him, but it must be done. When the letter was finished, it ran:

"My Dear Miss Ashton,

"I got your letter. It was very good of you to write to me in so kind and unreproaching a spirit, and I thank you with all my heart for your merciful forbearance. My conduct, my violence on Thursday evening, must always be a sorrow and a mystery to me. I only indistinctly recollect what I said, but I feel and know my words were perfectly monstrous and cruelly unjust. I feel most bitterly that no apology of mine can obliterate the impression my insanity must have made on you. To say I am profoundly sorry is only to say that I am once more in my right mind. I must in the most complete and abject manner beg your pardon for my shameful violence on Thursday evening. I must not even try to explain that violence away. I ask your pardon as an expression of my own horror of my conduct and of my remorse. But I do not hope for your forgiveness, I do not deserve it, I will not accept it. I shall bear with me in expiation of my offence the consciousness of my unpardonable conduct, and the knowledge that it remains unpardoned. Even lenity could ask no more indulgent treatment of my monstrous behaviour.

"As to terminating the engagement between us I have nothing to do but accept your decision, and since you ask it as a favour, the only favour you ever asked of me, I must receive your decision as irrevocable. I will not make any unpleasantness here by even referring to the difference of the ending I had in the hope of my mind. As you very justly say, the least said now the better. I shall say not a word to anyone about the immediate subject of this letter except to my mother. On that you may rely. I must tell her. You, I suppose, will inform Mrs. and Mr. Ashton (if they do not know of it); nobody else need hear of the abandonment of our designs. Let us by all means meet as you suggest, as though we never had been more than the best of friends, and were (as I hope we shall be) the best of friends still. I also quite agree with you about the notes, &c. Burn and destroy them. I will most scrupulously burn your letters, of which I have a few. This letter will I suppose be the last of the series.

"In a little time I trust we may meet again, but not just now for both our sakes.

"Yours ever most sincerely,

"John Hanbury."

When he had finished the letter he closed it without reading it over. "When one reads over a letter like this," he thought, "one grows nice about phrases and tries to alter, and finally tears up. I am satisfied that if I tried all day long I should do no better than this. I shall post it myself when I go out. That letter is a great weight off my mind, and now I am much less disinclined to break the matter to my mother. When that is over I shall feel that I am free."

He found his mother alone in her own room. Mrs. Grace was with Edith in a room which had been hastily prepared for her.

"She is just the same way," said Mrs. Hanbury. The young man had heard from a servant downstairs that there was no change. "We are not to expect much change for a while. She has quite recovered consciousness, but is very weak, and the doctor says she is not to be allowed to stir even a hand more than is necessary. There is no anxiety. With time and care all will be well."

"I am glad I found you alone, mother. I think you must have seen that I have been a good deal excited during the past few days."

"Yes, and very naturally too. That letter must have disturbed you a good deal."

The son paused in his walk and stared at her. "How did you know about that letter? Who told you? Have you seen Dora? But that is absurd. She would not speak of it."

Mrs. Hanbury looked at him in amazement and alarm. "What do you mean, John? You make me very uneasy. What has Dora Ashton to do with it? Miss Grace may, but not Dora. Surely you do not suppose I did not read your father's letter?"

"Oh!" he cried, "I did not mean my father's letter. I was referring to another letter. Upon reflection I quite agree with you and my father in attaching little or no importance to that discovery. I was thinking of a letter I had from Dora."

"Yes," said Mrs. Hanbury with a sigh of relief. For a moment she thought her son's head had been turned by the disclosure of his pedigree. "What does she say?"

He was walking up and down rapidly now. "Well, the fact is, mother, the thing is off."

"Off?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the thing is over between us, the engagement, you know. The fact is we had a scene on Thursday evening. I lost command of myself completely, and used very violent language-"

"To Dora!" cried the mother in bewilderment.

"Yes, to Dora. I don't know what came over me, but I was carried quite beyond myself and said things no gentleman, no man, ought to say to any girl-"

"John, I don't believe you-you are under some strange and miserable hallucination. You said something to Dora Ashton that no man ought to say to any girl! Impossible! Thank God, I know my son better than to believe anything of the kind," said Mrs. Hanbury, beginning in a manner of incredulity and ending in firm conviction.

"Unfortunately mother it is only too true. I need not repeat what passed, but the dispute-"

"Dispute-dispute with Dora! Why she would not dispute with you! How could she dispute with you? Dispute with you! It is nonsense. Why the girl _loves_ you, John, the girl _loves_ you. It is lunacy to say it!"

"I may have used an unhappy word-"

"A completely meaningless word, I assure you."

"At all events, we differed in opinion, and I completely lost my temper and told her in the end that in certain cases of importance she might betray me."

"Oh, this is too bad! I will not sit and listen to this raving. You never said such a childishly cruel thing to Dora Ashton? She is the noblest girl I know. The noblest girl I ever met."

"I was mad, mother."

"Most wickedly mad."

"Well you do not know how sorry I am I allowed myself to be carried away. But that cannot be helped now. I must abide the consequence of my folly and madness. She has broken off the engagement, for we were engaged, and I have written saying I cannot disapprove of her decision. We have agreed that as no one has known anything of the engagement no one is to hear of its being broken off. Are you angry with me, mother?"

"Angry-no; but greatly disappointed. I was as happy in thinking of Dora as your wife as if she were my own daughter, but I suppose I must become reconciled. If you and she have agreed to part no one has any right to say more than that it is a pity, and I think it is a pity, and I am very sorry."

That was the end of the interview of which the young man had stood in such dread, and now that it was over and he was going to post his last letter to Dora he felt relieved. The news had doubtless greatly surprised and shocked his mother, but this meeting had not been nearly so distressing as he had anticipated.

When he came to the post pillar into which he had dropped most of the letters he had written to Curzon Street, he felt an ugly twinge as this one slid from his fingers and he turned away-free.