The Queen of Hearts, Wilkie Collins [freenovel24 TXT] 📗

why, and anxious to be under shelter in my own room.

It Robert should come back! Oh, what a relief and help it would be now if Robert should come back!

 

May 1st. On getting indoors last night, the first thing I did, after striking a light, was to take the ragged cravat off the candles, and smooth it out on the table. I then took the end that had been in poor Mary’s hand out of my writing-desk, and smoothed that out too. It matched the torn side of the cravat exactly. I put them together, and satisfied myself that there was not a doubt of it.

Not once did I close my eyes that night. A kind of fever got possession of me—a vehement yearning to go on from this first discovery and find out more, no matter what the risk might be. The cravat now really became, to my mind, the clew that I thought I saw in my dream—the clew that I was resolved to follow. I determined to go to Mrs. Horlick this evening on my return from work.

I found the Mews easily. A crook-backed dwarf of a man was lounging at the corner of it smoking his pipe. Not liking his looks, I did not inquire of him where Mrs. Horlick lived, but went down the Mews till I met with a woman, and asked her. She directed me to the right number. I knocked at the door, and Mrs. Horlick herself—a lean, ill-tempered, miserable-looking woman—answered it. I told her at once that I had come to ask what her terms were for charing. She stared at me for a moment, then answered my question civilly enough.

“You look surprised at a stranger like me finding you out,” I said. “I first came to hear of you last night, from a relation of yours, in rather an odd way.”

And I told her all that had happened in the chandler’s shop, bringing in the bundle of rags, and the circumstance of my carrying home the candles in the old torn cravat, as often as possible.

“It’s the first time I’ve heard of anything belonging to him turning out any use,” said Mrs. Horlick, bitterly.

“What! the spoiled old neck-handkerchief belonged to your husband, did it?” said I, at a venture.

“Yes; I pitched his rotten rag of a neck-‘andkercher into the bundle along with the rest, and I wish I could have pitched him in after it,” said Mrs. Horlick. “I’d sell him cheap at any ragshop. There he stands, smoking his pipe at the end of the Mews, out of work for weeks past, the idlest humpbacked pig in all London!”

She pointed to the man whom I had passed on entering the Mews. My cheeks began to burn and my knees to tremble, for I knew that in tracing the cravat to its owner I was advancing a step toward a fresh discovery. I wished Mrs. Horlick good evening, and said I would write and mention the day on which I wanted her.

What I had just been told put a thought into my mind that I was afraid to follow out. I have heard people talk of being light-headed, and I felt as I have heard them say they felt when I retraced my steps up the Mews. My head got giddy, and my eyes seemed able to see nothing but the figure of the little crook-backed man, still smoking his pipe in his former place. I could see nothing but that; I could think of nothing but the mark of the blow on my poor lost Mary’s temple. I know that I must have been light-headed, for as I came close to the crook-backed man I stopped without meaning it. The minute before, there had been no idea in me of speaking to him. I did not know how to speak, or in what way it would be safest to begin; and yet, the moment I came face to face with him, something out of myself seemed to stop me, and to make me speak without considering beforehand, without thinking of consequences, without knowing, I may almost say, what words I was uttering till the instant when they rose to my lips.

“When your old neck-tie was torn, did you know that one end of it went to the ragshop, and the other fell into my hands?”

I said these bold words to him suddenly, and, as it seemed, without my own will taking any part in them.

He started, stared, changed color. He was too much amazed by my sudden speaking to find an answer for me. When he did open his lips, it was to say rather to himself than me:

“You’re not the girl.”

“No,” I said, with a strange choking at my heart, “I’m her friend.”

By this time he had recovered his surprise, and he seemed to be aware that he had let out more than he ought.

“You may be anybody’s friend you like,” he said, brutally, “so long as you don’t come jabbering nonsense here. I don’t know you, and I don’t understand your jokes.”

He turned quickly away from me when he had said the last words. He had never once looked fairly at me since I first spoke to him.

Was it his hand that had struck the blow? I had only sixpence in my pocket, but I took it out and followed him. If it had been a five-pound note I should have done the same in the state I was in then.

“Would a pot of beer help you to understand me?” I said, and offered him the sixpence.

“A pot ain’t no great things,” he answered, taking the sixpence doubtfully.

“It may lead to something better,” I said. His eyes began to twinkle, and he came close to me. Oh, how my legs trembled—how my head swam!

“This is all in a friendly way, is it?” he asked, in a whisper.

I nodded my head. At that moment I could not have spoken for worlds.

“Friendly, of course,” he went on to himself, “or there would have been a policeman in it. She told you, I suppose, that I wasn’t the man?”

I nodded my head again. It was all I could do to keep myself standing upright.

“I suppose it’s a case of threatening to have him up, and make him settle it quietly for a pound or two? How much for me if you lay hold of him?”

“Half.”

I began to be afraid that he would suspect something if I was still silent. The wretch’s eyes twinkled again and he came yet closer.

“I drove him to the Red Lion, corner of Dodd Street and Rudgely Street. The house was shut up, but he was let in at the jug and bottle door, like a man who was known to the landlord. That’s as much as I can tell you, and I’m certain I’m right. He was the last fare I took up at night. The next morning master gave me the sack—said I cribbed his corn and his fares. I wish I had.”

I gathered from this that the crook-backed man had been a cab-driver.

“Why don’t you speak?” he asked, suspiciously. “Has she been telling you a pack of lies about me? What did she say when she came home?”

“What ought she to have said?”

“She ought to have said my fare was drunk, and she came in the way as he was going to get into the cab. That’s what she ought to have said to begin with.”

“But after?”

“Well, after, my fare, by way of larking with her, puts out his leg for to trip her up, and she stumbles and catches at me for to save herself, and tears off one of the limp ends of my rotten old tie. ‘What do you mean by that, you brute?’ says she, turning round as soon as she was steady on her legs, to my fare. Says my fare to her: ‘I means to teach you to keep a civil tongue in your head.’ And he ups with his fist, and—what’s come to you, now? What are you looking at me like that for? How do you think a man of my size was to take her part against a man big enough to have eaten me up? Look as much as you like, in my place you would have done what I done—drew off when he shook his fist at you, and swore he’d be the death of you if you didn’t start your horse in no time.”

I saw he was working himself up into a rage; but I could not, if my life had depended on it, have stood near him or looked at him any longer. I just managed to stammer out that I had been walking a long way, and that, not being used to much exercise, I felt faint and giddy with fatigue. He only changed from angry to sulky when I made that excuse. I got a little further away from him, and then added that if he would be at the Mews entrance the next evening I should have something more to say and something more to give him. He grumbled a few suspicious words in answer about doubting whether he should trust me to come back. Fortunately, at that moment, a policeman passed on the opposite side of the way. He slunk down the Mews immediately, and I was free to make my escape.

How I got home I can’t say, except that I think I ran the greater part of the way. Sally opened the door, and asked if anything was the matter the moment she saw my face. I answered: “Nothing—nothing.” She stopped me as I was going into my room, and said:

“Smooth your hair a bit, and put your collar straight. There’s a gentleman in there waiting for you.”

My heart gave one great bound: I knew who it was in an instant, and rushed into the room like a mad woman.

“Oh, Robert, Robert!”

All my heart went out to him in those two little words.

“Good God, Anne, has anything happened? Are you ill?”

“Mary! my poor, lost, murdered, dear, dear Mary!”

That was all I could say before I fell on his breast.

 

May 2d. Misfortunes and disappointments have saddened him a little, but toward me he is unaltered. He is as good, as kind, as gently and truly affectionate as ever. I believe no other man in the world could have listened to the story of Mary’s death with such tenderness and pity as he. Instead of cutting me short anywhere, he drew me on to tell more than I had intended; and his first generous words when I had done were to assure me that he would see himself to the grass being laid and the flowers planted on Mary’s grave. I could almost have gone on my knees and worshiped him when he made me that promise.

Surely this best, and kindest, and noblest of men cannot always be unfortunate! My cheeks burn when I think that he has come back with only a few pounds in his pocket, after all his hard and honest struggles to do well in America. They must be bad people there when such a man as Robert cannot get on among them. He now talks calmly and resignedly of trying for any one of the lowest employments by which a man can earn his bread honestly in this great city—he who knows French, who can write so beautifully! Oh, if the people who have places to give away only knew Robert as well as I do, what a salary he would have, what a post he would be chosen to occupy!

I am writing these lines alone while he has gone to