CHAPTER IX.
London in 1742.—Gray’s Home.—The Child.—The Voice of Conscience.—A Visit.
The course of our narrative compels us now to leave the little village of Learmont and all its mysteries to direct the reader’s attention to the great metropolis, not as it is now, crowded with costly buildings, and its shops vying with palaces in splendour, but as it was a hundred years since, before Regent-street was thought of, and when we were still enjoying that piece of wisdom of our dear ancestors which induced them to make every street as narrow as possible, every house as dark as possible, and everything as inconvenient as possible.
In a long narrow street, which began somewhere about where the County Fire Office now stands, and terminated Heaven knows where, inasmuch as it branched off into a thousand intricacies of lanes, courts, and alleys, there stood one house in particular, to which we wish to call attention. It was a narrow, gloomy-looking habitation, and stood wedged in between two shops of very questionable character.
The person who rented this house was a Mistress Bridget Strangeways, and she did not belie her name, for her ways were strange indeed. This lady (from courtesy) professed to be a widow and she gained a very comfortable subsistence by letting to anybody and everybody the various furnished apartments in her house. With the curious collection of lodgers which Mrs. Strangeways had in her house on the occasion to which we refer—namely, the winter of 1742—we have little or nothing to do. The only one of her lodgers to whom we shall at present introduce the reader, was sitting alone in a back room boasting but of few comforts, and the walls of which were of a deep brown colour from age.
Still, if the furniture and appointments of the room were few, mean, and scanty, everything was arranged with great neatness and order. The hearth was cleanly swept, the little fire that blazed in the small grate was carefully tended, the windows were scrupulously clean, and it was clear that the most had been made of the scanty means of comfort which the place afforded.
Seated in a high-backed, ancient-looking chair, was a boy reading. His face was inclined towards his book, and a mass of raven curls, which he held from covering his face with his hand, fell, however, sufficiently over his countenance to hide it from observation. His figure was slight in the extreme, and the long tapered fingers which held back the tresses of his hair, were exquisitely white and delicate. The dress of the period was ill-suited to set off the figure to advantage, but still cumbrous and ungraceful, as was the long-flapped waistcoat, broad-skirted coat, and heavy shoe-buckles, no one could look for a moment upon that young boy without confessing him to be eminently handsome.
He was most intently engaged upon his book, and he moved neither hand nor foot for many minutes, so absorbed was he in the narrative he was reading. Suddenly, however, he lifted his head, and shaking back from his brow the clustering hair, he cried in a voice of enthusiasm,—
“Oh, what a dear romance! How these treasures of books cheat the hours of their weariness.”
As he spoke he turned his head to the window. What a world of intelligence and gentle beauty was in that face! It was a face to gaze at for hours and speculate upon.
“Five days my uncle has been gone now,” he said—“five whole days, and what should I have done without these dear books? How kind of Albert Seyton to lend them to me! I do love Albert Seyton, and if—if—no—no, I must not breathe that even to myself. Oh, Heavens! That I should be so unfortunate. When—oh, when will my uncle, who is so stern, and yet tender—so cruel, and yet sometimes so kind—when will he explain to me the awful mystery he hints at when with tears I urge him to let me—”
A low knock at the room door now attracted his attention, and the boy cried cheerfully,—
“Ha! I know that tap, ’Tis Albert. Come in—come in, Albert, I am here, and all alone.”
The door was immediately opened, and a boy of about fourteen or fifteen years of age, whose long flaxen hair and ruddy complexion proclaimed him to be of true Saxon origin, bounded into the room.
“Your uncle still absent, Harry?” he cried.
“Yes,” replied the lad who had been reading. “Five days now, Albert, he has been gone. What should I have done without you?”
“You know I love you, Harry Gray,” said Seyton. “You are very young, but you are a great deal more sensible than many lads of twice your age.”
“I’m past eleven!” said he who was called Harry Gray.
“That’s a great age,” said the other, laughing. “If you don’t think your uncle would pop in unawares, I would sit with you an hour. My poor father is out again. Ah, Harry, he still hopes to procure a recompense from the count. He lost his all in the cause of the present royal family, and now you see they have left him and myself to starve. It’s too bad!”
“It’s wicked,” said Harry Gray.
“So it is,” replied Albert. “But we won’t talk about it any more now.”
The lad who was the occupant of the apartment was silent for a few moments, then he said sadly,—
“Five days gone—five days. Albert, I think I will tell you a secret.”
“A secret, Harry?”
“Yes; it is a very strange one, and has made me very unhappy. Come here.”
He took the hand of his companion and led him to a corner of the room where there was a large, old-fashioned oaken chest, and taking from his breast a key, he opened it, and lifting the lid, disclosed lying at the bottom of it a roll of paper, and under that a large sealed packet.
Harry Gray lifted out the roll of paper and handed it to Albert, saying, “Read what is written there,” pointing to a few lines on the wrapper.
Albert read with surprise the following words:—
Wednesday.—Harry,—If I am not with you by twelve of the clock on next Wednesday, take this roll of papers to Sir Francis Hartleton, who lives in the Bird-cage. Walk by the Park. Do not let any hand but his own take it from you.
J.G.
“That’s very odd,” said Albert. “Sir Francis Hartleton is a great man. The king knighted him lately, I heard, and he is a magistrate. This is quite a mystery, my dear Harry. I dare say you are some prince, really.”
Harry looked up with a beaming smile in the face of his young friend, as he said,—
“Be I who or what I may, I shall never forget Albert Seyton.”
“You have a good heart, Harry,” cried Albert, throwing his arm affectionately round his young friend’s neck, “and when my father gets his own again, I will get him to ask your uncle to let you stay with us.”
“That would be joy,” said Harry, clasping his hands—“oh, such joy!”
“You are a little delicate thing, you know,” continued Albert, “and you want somebody to take care you are not affronted nor imposed upon; and woe to anybody who dared so much as to—”
The door was at this moment suddenly flung open, and, livid with rage, Jacob Gray stood on the threshold.
Harry gave a faint cry of alarm, and Albert started to his feet from kneeling by the box, and boldly confronted Gray.
“So,” cried Gray, striding into the room, and shutting the door violently behind him—“so, it is thus I find you engaged!”
“Sir,” said Albert Seyton, “if you have any fault to find, find it with me and not with Harry. If he has done wrong, it was my fault; and—and—”
“And what, young sir?”
“I suppose I must fight you,” added Albert.
“Brat! beggar’s brat!” shrieked Gray, rushing towards the box. “What have you seen—what have you done?”
“Seen very little, and done nothing,” said Albert.
Gray aimed a blow at Harry, which was warded by Albert, who cried,—
“For shame, sir—for shame to strike him. By Heavens! Mr. Gray, if you hurt Harry I’ll just go to Sir Francis Hartleton, and tell him there is something that concerns him in your big box here.”
Jacob Gray stood with his aim uplifted, as if paralysed at this threat. He trembled violently, and sank into a chair. Several times he tried to speak, and at length he said, with a forced smile, which sat hideously upon his distorted features,—
“Well—well, it’s not much matter. Never mind, Harry, I—I have come back, you see, so there need be no appeal made to the kindness of Sir Francis in your behalf. It was—that is, the papers merely say you were an orphan, and ask him to do something for you: but no matter—no matter.”
“Then you forgive Harry?” said Seyton.
“Yes, yes—oh, yes.”
“Thank you, sir—thanks; he meant no wrong. Good-bye, dear Harry. Your uncle will say no more about it now.”
Harry Gray raised his head from the edge of the box, and his eyes were filled with tears. He took Albert’s hand and pressed it to his lips.