Volume One – Chapter Nineteen.
Richard’s Secret

Time glided on, and the brothers Pellet did not meet. There was estrangement too between Richard Pellet and his stepson, who came up during his vacations, but only to leave home again in disgust. For the fact was, Richard Pellet looked upon him as being in the way, – a manner he had of considering all those who were not of present use to him in his designs. So Harry Clayton saw but little of Norwood.

He made calls in Duplex Street at intervals, but always in vain, for Jared remained inflexible, and received the young man in a way which chilled him, and sent him away declaiming against people’s hard-heartedness. Never once was Patty visible, for she followed out the rôle she had been taught, and had in consequence many a bitter cry in secret.

Would she have liked to see Henry Clayton? That, too, she kept secret; and fate seemed to fight on Richard Pellet’s side, for somehow the young people never encountered, in spite of the long hours which Harry loitered about Clerkenwell, till he knew every brass plate by heart in the neighbourhood, without counting the signboards that he read till he was weary.

The effect of all these crosses upon Harry Clayton was to quite change the young man’s disposition; from being light-hearted and cheerful, he grew stern and quiet, almost morose. He determined at last, in a fit of anger, after a call at Duplex Street and a vain application to Richard Pellet for money, that he would turn dissipated, and began at once.

His first plunge was into billiards, but he gave the game up at the end of a week. Rowing followed, and he almost lived upon the river in gaudy-coloured flannels. But that soon palled upon him, and at the end of a month a cold business-like letter from Richard Pellet, advising him curtly to take to business, for his late father’s settlements would not permit of the expenses of a college life, settled the affair. The consequence was, that. Harry knit his brows, went down to Norwood, and announced his intention of staying up at Cambridge and reading for honours.

The result was a quarrel, and Richard Pellet slammed the door as he went out, bound for the city. Mrs Richard kissed her son, and said she hoped he would be a good boy and obey Mr Pellet, who was all that was wise and clever, and then Harry said good-bye, and went off with an aching heart to make a last call at Duplex Street.

It was the old story; Jared received him kindly, and shook hands when they parted, but there were no ladies visible.

Harry looked sterner, and felt sterner of purpose as he came away, and these troubles were the turning-point in the young man’s career, for henceforward he seemed to cast youth and its frivolities behind, so as to be untrammelled in the firmer purposes of life.

He was wandering slowly and thoughtfully along, wondering as to what the future would bring forth. He told himself that he was certainly very fond of Patty, and though she had perhaps never since given to him a thought, yet he would be true to his intentions, and in spite of her humble position, if she proved to be as he believed she would, no difference of station should interfere.

“No,” he said, half aloud; “not even if I get to be senior wrangler,” – of which, by the way, there did not seem to be much probability. Then his thoughts turned to Richard Pellet, and it seemed to him that his father’s affairs had somehow got into a state of strange confusion. He could get no satisfactory explanation. One thing was evident, and that was that Richard Pellet had full influence over his wife, and that nothing save recourse to law would enforce a full declaration of how matters stood.

“And I can’t do that,” muttered Harry. Then he began going over once more his mother’s marriage, and wondered how she could have been so weak as to marry one so hard, and close, and cold.

Just then he saw a Hansom cab stop a short distance from him, out of which stepped Richard Pellet, who paid his driver, and, without seeing his stepson, strode off hastily, making his way through the gloomy streets of Pentonville.

Harry hesitated for a while, feeling half tempted to follow, but he turned off the next moment to seek his hotel.

Meanwhile Richard Pellet hurried on, his way lying through streets that seemed to be the favourite playgrounds of the roaming children of the neighbourhood. And here he walked as if he felt a peculiar spite against every child he passed. He kicked this one’s top half across the road; he purposely obliterated the chalked-out hopscotch marks with his feet; nearly knocked down a boy carrying a shawl-swathed infant, – not that there was much force needed, for the weight of the shawl-swathed nearly overbalanced its porter; and he ended by treading upon a thin girl’s toes.

Another turn or two, and he was in a pleasant street rejoicing in the name of Borton, at whose end there was a pleasing glimpse to be obtained of the great jail with its blank walls, and the low hum of Tullochgorum Road murmured on the ear.

Richard stopped at a dingy sleepy-looking house, with its blinds down, and knocked a slinking kind of double knock, as if afraid of its being heard by any one outside the house. It was a double knock certainly, but it had a mean degraded sound about it, beside which a poor man’s single thump would have sounded massive and grand.

After waiting for a reasonable space he knocked a second time, when, after fidgeting about upon the door-step, glancing up and down the street, and acting after the fashion of a man troubled with the impression that every one is watching him, he was relieved by the door being opened a very little way, and a sour-looking woman confronting him.

Upon seeing who was her visitor, the woman admitted him to stand for a minute or two upon the shabby worn oil-cloth of the badly-lighted passage before ushering him into a damp earthy-smelling parlour, over whose windows were drawn Venetian blinds of a faded sickly green, the bar-like laths giving a prison aspect to the place.

“Send her down?” said the woman, shortly, as she removed a handkerchief from her face and looked toothache.

“Yes,” was the curt gruff reply; but the woman held her handkerchief to the aching tooth and remained waiting, when Richard Pellet drew out his pocket-book and passed a piece of crisp paper to the woman.

The paper was taken, carefully examined, and then seemed to have an anodyne effect upon the toothache of its recipient, who folded it carefully small and then tied it in a knot in one corner of the dingy pocket-handkerchief, after the fashion of elderly ladies from the country who ride in omnibuses, and then seek in such corners for the small coin wherewith to pay the fare. In this case, though, the tying-up was followed by the deposit of the handkerchief in its owner’s bosom, the act been accompanied by a grim nod which said plainly enough, “that’s safe.”

The woman left the room; there was the sound of the key being drawn from the front door, pattering of steps on the oil-cloth, and then she re-appeared.

“’Taint my fault, you know,” she said, in a hoarse voice; “it’s him – he made me write. I’d keep her to the end, but he says that we won’t have it any more. It’s a fool’s trick, for she never leaves her room.”

“It’s plain enough,” said Richard, contemptuously, “you want more money.”

The woman smiled grimly. “He says he won’t have it any more,” was all she said.

“What reason does he give?” said Richard, sharply.

“Oh!” said the woman, “he says that it has got about that we keep a mad woman in the house without having a license; and the neighbours talk, and there will be a summons about it some time or another. He hates to go out, he says – just as if that matters. Don’t you think it might be managed after all? I don’t want to part with her.”

“Yes – no,” said Richard Pellet, correcting himself. “You’ve thrown up a good thing, and now I shall make another arrangement.”

“Well,” said the woman, in surly tones, “I was obliged to write – he made me. But you’ve no call to complain; she’s been here now best part of nine years, and always well taken care of, and at a lower rate than you would have paid at a private asylum. You ought to have let me have the child as well. No one could have kept her closer.”

“What?” said Richard, harshly.

“Well, that was only once; and I took precious good care that she did not play me such a trick a second time. She wasn’t away long, though,” said the woman, laughing.

“There! send her down,” said Richard Pellet, impatiently.

“I don’t mind telling you, now,” said the woman, not heeding the remark, “she’s very little trouble; sits and works all day long without speaking.”

“Humph!” ejaculated Richard Pellet; “now that there’s no more money to be made by contrary statements, you can be honest.”

“Well,” said the woman, “other people may find out things for themselves. Nobody taught me.”

Then she left the room.

A few minutes elapsed, and then a pale, dark-haired woman, with a pitiful, almost imploring aspect, entered the room, clasped her hands tightly together, and stood gazing in Richard’s Pellet’s face.

“I’m going to take you away from here, Ellen,” he said.

For a few moments the pale face lit up as with some show of animation; the woman exclaimed – “To see my child, Richard?”

“I’m going to take you away from here,” he replied, coldly; “so be ready to-morrow.”

The light faded from the countenance of the woman in an instant, to leave it dull and inanimate. She pressed her hand for an instant upon her side, and winced as if a pain had shot through her. Then slowly drawing a scrap of needlework from her pocket, she began to sew hastily.

“I have made arrangements for you to stay at an institution where you will be well cared for,” he continued; “that is, provided that you behave well.”

The faint shadow of a sad smile crossed the pale face as the woman glanced at him for a moment, and then sighed and looked down.

“Do you hear what I say?” said Richard, roughly.

“Yes, Richard,” she said, quietly, and as if quite resigned to her fate; “I never do anything that you would not wish, only when – when – when my head gets hot and strange. I am quite ready, but – ”

“Well?” said the great city man.

“You will let me see my little one before I go, Richard? I won’t let my head get hot. You will not mind that. I will do all that you wish. But why not let us be together? She is not mad; but that would not matter. Let me have her, and go away from here. She is so little, I could carry her; and we would never trouble you again. Indeed, indeed – never, never again!”

If he could only have placed faith in those words, what a burden Richard Pellet would have felt to be off his shoulders! But no; he dared not trust her; and in the few moments while she stood with her wild strange eyes gazing appealingly in his face, he saw her coming to his office for help, then down to Norwood, declaring that she was his wedded wife, and trouble, exposure, perhaps punishment, to follow, because, he told himself, he had declined to let this poor helpless maniac stand in the way of his advancement.

Richard Pellet’s face grew darker as he turned to leave the room.

“But you will let me see her once, Richard – only once before I go? Think how obedient I have been, how I have attended always to your words – always. I know what you mean to do – to shut me up in a dreadful madhouse, and all because – because my poor head grows so hot. It was not so once, Richard.”

She dropped her work upon the floor, and elapsed her hands as she stood before him.

“Only once, Richard,” she exclaimed again; “only once, for ever so short a time,” and the voice grew more and more plaintive and appealing – the tones seeming to ring prophetically in Richard Pellet’s ears, so that he found himself thinking – “Suppose those words haunt me at my deathbed!”

He started the next moment.

“Be quiet,” he exclaimed, harshly, as he might have said “Down!” to a dog; when, rightly interpreting his words, the woman uttered a low wail, letting herself sink upon the floor, as she covered her face with her hands, and convulsively sobbed. But the trembling hands fell again as she shook her head with the action of one throwing back thick masses of curling hair, and looking sharply up, she listened, for the sound of a bell fell upon her ear. The cause was plain enough, for Richard Pellet stood before her with the rope in his hand.

Then she slowly rose, sighing as she closed her eyes, and stood motionless until the woman of the house came into the room and laid her talon-like hand upon her shoulder. But though the prisoner shivered, she did not move from her place; she only opened her eyes and gazed once more imploringly at Richard, who avoided her look, and, walking to the window, peered through the bar-like blinds.

“Ellen!” said the woman, in a harsh voice, which seemed to grate through the room, and then unresistingly a prisoner, for the sake of Richard Pellet’s prosperity, she followed her gaoler from the room, Richard Pellet waiting with knitted brows till the woman came back.

A long and somewhat angry conversation ensued, in which Richard Pellet tried very hard to make out whether the woman he had employed for so many years as his wife’s attendant was in earnest concerning the written desire to give up the charge, or whether it was merely a bit of business-fencing to obtain a higher rate of payment. He left at last, boasting of the ease with which he could make fresh arrangements for “Ellen Herrisey’s” reception. “But I will not take any further steps till I hear from you again,” he said, while the woman watched him as he left the room with a strange meaning smile.

“Another twenty pounds a year will do it,” said Richard, as he walked away. “He won’t let her give up the money.”

“You’re like the ostrich we read about,” muttered the woman, as she watched her visitor down the street. “Do you think I don’t know you’re married again, you brute? Ellen Herrisey, indeed! It shall be fifty pounds a year more, or I’ll know the reason why!”