Run to Earth, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [classic literature books txt] 📗

woman, she's an out-and-outer; for she looks one in the face, with those superb black eyes of hers, as bright and clear as the image of truth itself. She must be good and true. She must! And yet that night's absence, and that story about Yarborough Tower--that seems too much for anybody on earth to believe."

CHAPTER XIV.


A GHOSTLY VISITANT.

For nearly three years Thomas Milsom had been far away from London. He had been arrested on a charge of burglary, within a month of Valentine Jernam's death, and condemned to five years' transportation. In less than three years, by some kind of artful management, and by the exercise of consummate hypocrisy, Mr. Milsom had contrived to get himself free again, and to return to England his own master.

He landed in Scotland, and tramped from Granton to Yorkshire, where an accidental encounter with an old acquaintance tempted him to linger at Raynham. The two tramps, scoundrels both, and both alike penniless and shoeless, had stood side by side at the gates of the park, to see the stately funeral train pass out.

And thus Thomas Milsom had beheld her whom he called his daughter,--the girl who had fled, with her old grandfather, from the shelter of his fatal roof three years before.

After that unprofitable interview with Honoria, Thomas Milsom his face Londonwards.

"The day will come when you and I will square accounts, my lady," he muttered, as he looked up to those battlemented turrets, with a blasphemous curse, and then turned his back upon Raynham Castle, and the peaceful little village beneath it.

The direction in which Mr. Milsom betook himself, after he passed the border-land of waste ground and newly-built houses which separates London from the country, was the direction of Ratcliff Highway. He walked rapidly through the crowded streets, in which the crowd grew thicker as he approached the regions of the Tower. But rapidly as he walked, the steps of Time were faster. It had been bright noon when he entered the quiet little town of Barnet. It was night when he first heard the scraping fiddles and stamping feet of Ratcliff Highway. He went straight to the 'Jolly Tar'.

Here all was unchanged. There were the flaring tallow candles, set in a tin hoop that hung from the low ceiling, dropping hot grease ever and anon on the loungers at the bar. There was the music--the same Scotch reels and Irish jigs, played on squeaking fiddles, which were made more inharmonious by the accompaniment of shrill Pandean pipes. There was the same crowd of sailors and bare-headed, bare-armed, loud-voiced women assembled in the stifling bar, the same cloud of tobacco-smoke, the same Babel of voices to be heard from the concert-room within; while now and then, amongst the shouts and the laughter, the oaths and the riot, there sounded the tinkling of the old piano, and the feeble upper notes of a very poor soprano voice.

Black Milsom had drawn his hat over his eyes before entering the "Jolly Tar."

The bar of that tavern was sunk considerably below the level of the street, and standing on the uppermost of the steps by which Mr. Wayman's customers descended to his hospitable abode, Black Milsom was able to look across the heads of the crowd to the face of the landlord busy behind his bar.

In that elevated position Black Milsom waited until Dennis Wayman happened to look up and perceive the stranger on the threshold.

As he did so, Thomas Milsom drew the back of his hand rapidly across his mouth, with a gesture that was evidently intended as a signal.

The signal was answered by a nod from Wayman, and then Black Milsom descended the three steps, and pushed his way to the bar.

"Can I have a bed, mate, and a bit of supper?" he asked, in a voice that was carefully disguised.

"Ay, ay, to be sure you can," answered Wayman; "you can have everything that is comfortable and friendly by paying for it. This house is one of the most hospitable places there is--to those that can pay the reckoning."

This rather clumsy joke was received with an applauding guffaw by the sailors and women next the bar.

"If you'll step through that door yonder, you'll find a snug little room, mate," said Dennis Wayman, in the tone which he might have used in speaking to a stranger; "I'll send you a steak and a potato as soon as they can be cooked."

Thomas Milsom nodded. He pushed open the rough wooden door which was so familiar to him, and went into the dingy little den which, in the 'Jolly Tar', was known as the private parlour.

It was the room in which he had first seen Valentine Jernam. Two years and a half had passed since he had last entered it; and during that time Mr. Milsom had been paying the penalty of his misdeeds in Van Dieman's Land. This dingy little den, with its greasy walls and low, smoky ceiling, was a kind of paradise to the returned wanderer. Here, at least, was freedom. Here, at least, he was his own master: free to enjoy strong drinks and strong tobacco--free to be lazy when he pleased, and to work after the fashion that suited him best.

He seated himself in one chair, and planted his legs on another. Then he took a short clay pipe from his pocket, filled and lighted it, and began to smoke, in a slow meditative manner, stopping every now and then to mutter to himself, between the puffs of tobacco.

Mr. Milsom had finished his second pipe of shag tobacco, and had given utterance to more than one exclamation of anger and impatience, when the door was opened, and Dennis Wayman made his appearance, bearing a tray with a couple of covered dishes and a large pewter pot.

"I thought I'd bring you your grub myself, mate," he said; "though I'm precious busy in yonder. I'm uncommonly glad to see you back again. I've been wondering where you was ever since you disappeared."

"You'd have left off wondering if you'd known I was on the other side of this blessed world of ours. I thought you knew I was--"

Mr. Milsom's delicacy of feeling prevented his finishing this speech.

"I knew you had got into trouble," answered Mr. Wayman. "At least, I didn't know for certain, but I guessed as much; though sometimes I was half inclined to think you had turned cheat, and given me the slip."

"Bolted with the swag, I suppose you mean?"

"Precisely!" answered Dennis Wayman, coolly.

"Which shows your suspicious nature," returned Milsom, in a sulky tone. "When an unlucky chap turns his back upon his comrades, the worst word in their mouths isn't half bad enough for him. That's the way of the world, that is. No, Dennis Wayman; I didn't bolt with the swag--not sixpence of Valentine Jernam's money have I had the spending of; no even what I won from him at cards. I was nobbled one day, without a moment's warning, on a twopenny-halfpenny charge of burglary--never you mind whether it was true, or whether it was false--that ain't worth going into. I was took under a false name, and I stuck to that false name, thinking it more convenient. I should have sent to let you know, if I could have found a safe hand to take my message; but I couldn't find a living creature that was anything like safe--so there I was, remanded on a Monday, tried on a Tuesday, and then a fortnight after shipped off like a bullock, along of so many other bullocks; and that's the long and the short of it."

After having said which, Mr. Milsom applied himself to his supper, which consisted of a smoking steak, and a dish of still more smoking potatoes.

Dennis Wayman sat watching him for some minutes in thoughtful silence. The intent gaze with which he regarded the face of his friend, was that of a man who was by no means inclined to believe every syllable he had heard. After Milsom had devoured about a pound of steak, and at least two pounds of potatoes, Mr. Wayman ventured to interrupt his operations by a question.

"If you didn't collar the money, what became of it?" he asked.

"Put away," returned the other man, shortly; "and as safe as a church, unless my bad luck goes against me harder than it ever went yet."

"You hid it?" said Wayman, interrogatively.

"I did."

"Where?"

Mr. Milsom looked at his friend with a glance of profound cunning.

"Wouldn't you like to know--oh, wouldn't you just like to know, Mr. Wayman?" he said. "And wouldn't you just dose me with a cup of drugged coffee, and cut off to ransack my hiding-place while I was lying helpless in your hospitable abode. That's the sort of thing you'd do, if I happened to be a born innocent, isn't it, Mr. Wayman? But you see I'm not a born innocent, so you won't get the chance of doing anything of the kind."

"Don't be a fool," returned Dennis Wayman, in a surly tone. "You'll please to remember that one half of Valentine Jernam's money belongs to me, and ought to have been in my possession long before this. I was an idiot to trust it in your keeping."

"You trusted it in my keeping because you were obliged to do so," answered Black Milsom, "and I owe you no gratitude for your confidence. I happened to know a Jew who was willing to give cash for the notes and bills of exchange; and you trusted them to me because it was the only way to get them turned into cash."

The landlord of the 'Jolly Tar' nodded a surly assent to this rather cynical statement.

"I saw my friend the Jew, and made a very decent bargain," resumed Milsom. "I hid the money in a convenient place, intending to bring you your share at the earliest opportunity. I was lagged that very night, and had no chance of touching the cash after I had once stowed it away. So, you see, it was no fault of mine that you didn't get the money."

"Humph!" muttered Mr. Wayman. "It has been rather hard lines for me to be kept out of it so long. And now you have come back, I suppose you can take me at once to the hiding place. I want money very badly just now."

"Do you?" said Thomas Milsom, with a sneer. "That's a complaint you're rather subject to, isn't it--the want of money? Now, as I've answered your questions, perhaps you'll answer mine. Has there been much stir down this way while I've been over the water?"

"Very little; things have been as dull as they well could be."

"Ah! so _you'll_ say, of course. Can you tell me whether any one has lived in my old place while my back has been turned?"

The landlord of the 'Jolly Tar' started with a gesture of alarm.

"It wasn't _there_ you hid the money, was it?" he asked, eagerly.

"Suppose it was, what then?"

"Why every farthing of it is lost. The place has been taken by a man, who has pulled the best part of it down, and rebuilt it. If you hid your money _there_, there's little chance of your ever seeing it again," said Wayman.

Black Milsom's dark face grew livid, as he started from his chair and dragged on the crater coat which he had taken off on