A House to Let - Charles Dickens (books for men to read .txt) 📗

certificate, under the head of Male Infant, Still-Born.  The child’s coffin lies in the mother’s grave, in Flatfield churchyard.  The child himself—as surely as I live and breathe, is living and breathing now—a castaway and a prisoner in that villainous house!”

I sank back in my chair.

“It’s guess-work, so far, but it is borne in on my mind, for all that, as truth.  Rouse yourself, ma’am, and think a little.  The last I hear of Barsham, he is attending Mr. Forley’s disobedient daughter.  The next I see of Barsham, he is in Mr. Forley’s house, trusted with a secret.  He and his mother leave Pendlebury suddenly and suspiciously five years back; and he and his mother have got a child of five years old, hidden away in the house.  Wait! please to wait—I have not done yet.  The will left by Mr. Forley’s father, strengthens the suspicion.  The friend I took with me to Doctors’ Commons, made himself master of the contents of that will; and when he had done so, I put these two questions to him.  ‘Can Mr. Forley leave his money at his own discretion to anybody he pleases?’  ‘No,’ my friend says, ‘his father has left him with only a life interest in it.’  ‘Suppose one of Mr. Forley’s married daughters has a girl, and the other a boy, how would the money go?’  ‘It would all go,’ my friend says, ‘to the boy, and it would be charged with the payment of a certain annual income to his female cousin.  After her death, it would go back to the male descendant, and to his heirs.’  Consider that, ma’am!  The child of the daughter whom Mr. Forley hates, whose husband has been snatched away from his vengeance by death, takes his whole property in defiance of him; and the child of the daughter whom he loves, is left a pensioner on her low-born boy-cousin for life!  There was good—too good reason—why that child of Mrs. Kirkland’s should be registered stillborn.  And if, as I believe, the register is founded on a false certificate, there is better, still better reason, why the existence of the child should be hidden, and all trace of his parentage blotted out, in the garret of that empty house.”

He stopped, and pointed for the second time to the dim, dust-covered garret-windows opposite.  As he did so, I was startled—a very slight matter sufficed to frighten me now—by a knock at the door of the room in which we were sitting.

My maid came in, with a letter in her hand.  I took it from her.  The mourning card, which was all the envelope enclosed, dropped from my hands.

George Forley was no more.  He had departed this life three days since, on the evening of Friday.

“Did our last chance of discovering the truth,” I asked, “rest with him?  Has it died with his death?”

“Courage, ma’am!  I think not.  Our chance rests on our power to make Barsham and his mother confess; and Mr. Forley’s death, by leaving them helpless, seems to put that power into our hands.  With your permission, I will not wait till dusk to-day, as I at first intended, but will make sure of those two people at once.  With a policeman in plain clothes to watch the house, in case they try to leave it; with this card to vouch for the fact of Mr. Forley’s death; and with a bold acknowledgment on my part of having got possession of their secret, and of being ready to use it against them in case of need, I think there is little doubt of bringing Barsham and his mother to terms.  In case I find it impossible to get back here before dusk, please to sit near the window, ma’am, and watch the house, a little before they light the street-lamps.  If you see the front-door open and close again, will you be good enough to put on your bonnet, and come across to me immediately?  Mr. Forley’s death may, or may not, prevent his messenger from coming as arranged.  But, if the person does come, it is of importance that you, as a relative of Mr. Forley’s should be present to see him, and to have that proper influence over him which I cannot pretend to exercise.”

The only words I could say to Trottle as he opened the door and left me, were words charging him to take care that no harm happened to the poor forlorn little boy.

Left alone, I drew my chair to the window; and looked out with a beating heart at the guilty house.  I waited and waited through what appeared to me to be an endless time, until I heard the wheels of a cab stop at the end of the street.  I looked in that direction, and saw Trottle get out of the cab alone, walk up to the house, and knock at the door.  He was let in by Barsham’s mother.  A minute or two later, a decently-dressed man sauntered past the house, looked up at it for a moment, and sauntered on to the corner of the street close by.  Here he leant against the post, and lighted a cigar, and stopped there smoking in an idle way, but keeping his face always turned in the direction of the house-door.

I waited and waited still.  I waited and waited, with my eyes riveted to the door of the house.  At last I thought I saw it open in the dusk, and then felt sure I heard it shut again softly.  Though I tried hard to compose myself, I trembled so that I was obliged to call for Peggy to help me on with my bonnet and cloak, and was forced to take her arm to lean on, in crossing the street.

Trottle opened the door to us, before we could knock.  Peggy went back, and I went in.  He had a lighted candle in his hand.

“It has happened, ma’am, as I thought it would,” he whispered, leading me into the bare, comfortless, empty parlour.  “Barsham and his mother have consulted their own interests, and have come to terms.  My guess-work is guess-work no longer.  It is now what I felt it was—Truth!”

Something strange to me—something which women who are mothers must often know—trembled suddenly in my heart, and brought the warm tears of my youthful days thronging back into my eyes.  I took my faithful old servant by the hand, and asked him to let me see Mrs. Kirkland’s child, for his mother’s sake.

“If you desire it, ma’am,” said Trottle, with a gentleness of manner that I had never noticed in him before.  “But pray don’t think me wanting in duty and right feeling, if I beg you to try and wait a little.  You are agitated already, and a first meeting with the child will not help to make you so calm, as you would wish to be, if Mr. Forley’s messenger comes.  The little boy is safe up-stairs.  Pray think first of trying to compose yourself for a meeting with a stranger; and believe me you shall not leave the house afterwards without the child.”

I felt that Trottle was right, and sat down as patiently as I could in a chair he had thoughtfully placed ready for me.  I was so horrified at the discovery of my own relation’s wickedness that when Trottle proposed to make me acquainted with the confession wrung from Barsham and his mother, I begged him to spare me all details, and only to tell me what was necessary about George Forley.

“All that can be said for Mr. Forley, ma’am, is, that he was just scrupulous enough to hide the child’s existence and blot out its parentage here, instead of consenting, at the first, to its death, or afterwards, when the boy grew up, to turning him adrift, absolutely helpless in the world.  The fraud has been managed, ma’am, with the cunning of Satan himself.  Mr. Forley had the hold over the Barshams, that they had helped him in his villany, and that they were dependent on him for the bread they eat.  He brought them up to London to keep them securely under his own eye.  He put them into this empty house (taking it out of the agent’s hands previously, on pretence that he meant to manage the letting of it himself); and by keeping the house empty, made it the surest of all hiding places for the child.  Here, Mr. Forley could come, whenever he pleased, to see that the poor lonely child was not absolutely starved; sure that his visits would only appear like looking after his own property.  Here the child was to have been trained to believe himself Barsham’s child, till he should be old enough to be provided for in some situation, as low and as poor as Mr. Forley’s uneasy conscience would let him pick out.  He may have thought of atonement on his death-bed; but not before—I am only too certain of it—not before!”

A low, double knock startled us.

“The messenger!” said Trottle, under his breath.  He went out instantly to answer the knock; and returned, leading in a respectable-looking elderly man, dressed like Trottle, all in black, with a white cravat, but otherwise not at all resembling him.

“I am afraid I have made some mistake,” said the stranger.

Trottle, considerately taking the office of explanation into his own hands, assured the gentleman that there was no mistake; mentioned to him who I was; and asked him if he had not come on business connected with the late Mr. Forley.  Looking greatly astonished, the gentleman answered, “Yes.”  There was an awkward moment of silence, after that.  The stranger seemed to be not only startled and amazed, but rather distrustful and fearful of committing himself as well.  Noticing this, I thought it best to request Trottle to put an end to further embarrassment, by stating all particulars truthfully, as he had stated them to me; and I begged the gentleman to listen patiently for the late Mr. Forley’s sake.  He bowed to me very respectfully, and said he was prepared to listen with the greatest interest.

It was evident to me—and, I could see, to Trottle also—that we were not dealing, to say the least, with a dishonest man.

“Before I offer any opinion on what I have heard,” he said, earnestly and anxiously, after Trottle had done, “I must be allowed, in justice to myself, to explain my own apparent connection with this very strange and very shocking business.  I was the confidential legal adviser of the late Mr. Forley, and I am left his executor.  Rather more than a fortnight back, when Mr. Forley was confined to his room by illness, he sent for me, and charged me to call and pay a certain sum of money here, to a man and woman whom I should find taking charge of the house.  He said he had reasons for wishing the affair to be kept a secret.  He begged me so to arrange my engagements that I could call at this place either on Monday last, or to-day, at dusk; and he mentioned that he would write to warn the people of my coming, without mentioning my name (Dalcott is my name), as he did not wish to expose me to any future importunities on the part of the man and woman.  I need hardly tell you that this commission struck me as being a strange one; but, in my position with Mr. Forley, I had no resource but to accept it without asking questions, or to break off my long and friendly connection with my client.  I chose the first alternative.  Business prevented me from doing my errand on Monday last—and if I am here to-day, notwithstanding Mr. Forley’s unexpected death, it is emphatically because I understood nothing of the matter, on knocking at this door; and therefore felt myself bound, as executor, to clear it up.  That, on my word of honour, is