CHAPTER XXVIII.
Ada’s Wanderings.—The Pearl Necklace.—A Kind Heart.—The Park.—A Joyous Meeting.—The Arrangement.
Cold and hunger now began to exercise a sensible influence upon the fragile frame of Ada. Her step became languid and slow, and she began to feel that her strength was fast deserting her. Her dislike to return to Jacob Gray was very great, and yet where else in that great city could she find a place whereon to lay her aching limbs? The sense of her own extreme destitution came vividly across her imagination, and had it not been for the curious gaze of the early passengers she met, she could have wept freely in her bitterness of heart. Listlessly she walked onwards, and thought, from its very intensity, became at last a positive pain. Money she had none; and, in fact, so secluded from the world had she been kept by the fears of Jacob Gray, that she would not have known how to procure the means of supporting life, even had she possessed valuable property about her.
A cold, glaring winter’s sun shone forth from a clear sky, mocking the earth with an appearance of warmth, which made the sharp wind that whistled round the corners of the streets seem doubly keen and piercing.
“Must I return to that dismal house?” thought Ada—“must I again throw myself on the mercy of that man who calls himself my father?”
She paused in doubt and irresolution, and no one who passed could fail to mark the air of deep dejection which sat upon the pale anxious face of the young girl.
It so chanced that she stopped opposite to the shop-door of a jeweller and dealer in precious stones, in Parliament-street, and as she clung to the little wooden rail that guarded the window, she saw the keen, sparkling eyes of an old man fixed on her from within. His beard and general appearance proclaimed him a Jew, and scarcely had Ada shrank from his gaze, and paused a step or two onwards, when she heard a voice behind her saying,—
“My dear, will you sell that necklace?”
Ada turned quickly. The old man from the shop stood before her, and repeated his question.
“Will you sell that necklace?”
“Necklace?” said Ada.
“Yes; the little necklace you have round your pretty little neck, my dear.”
Ada now recollected that among her female attire she had found the necklace; and hastily clasped it on when dressing, to elude the search of Jacob Gray’s furious visitors.
“I am tired and hungry,” said Ada.
“Are you indeed. Bless me!” cried the old man. “Walk into my shop. You see I am an old man. Walk in—do walk in.”
Ada suffered herself to be led into the little shop, and unclasping the necklace, she said—
“Will it fetch me a meal?”
“A meal?” said the jeweller, and his eyes sparkled as he took the necklace. “A meal? Why it’s real—no, I mean mock—mock pearls—”
“And valueless?” said Ada.
“No—no—not quite—not quite, my dear. Here is a new guinea—a bright new guinea!”
Ada took the coin, and said, languidly—
“Alas! I am so strange here, I know not even how to dispose of this to procure me food.”
“Indeed?” said the jeweller. “Do you know nobody? Have you no friends?”
“Do you—can you,” said Ada, and a radiant blush suffused her cheeks as she spoke—“can you tell me, if you know where a Sir Seyton lives?”
“Does he know you had a necklace?” said the Jew.
“No, I scarcely knew it myself.”
“Indeed!” cried the jeweller, lifting up his eyes and hands. “My dear, I don’t know the gentleman you mention.”
“I thank you,” said Ada, rising.
She left the shop, and looking back after she had gone a few paces, she could not derive how it was that the Jew was putting up his shutters with nervous haste. She little knew that her necklace was of Indian pearls, and worth a very large sum indeed.
To her joy, after she had proceeded a few paces further, she saw that the second house, down a small turning to her left, was a little dairy—and immediately entering, she requested of the old woman who served, a draft of milk.
It was handed to her, and she drank it off with great pleasure and laid on the little counter her guinea.
“Would you like the rest, miss?” said the old woman; “you do seem tired, to be sure.”
“I am tired,” said Ada, “and would gladly rest myself, if I am not in your way.”
“Dear heart, no,” said the old woman. “Come in here, it’s warmer than the shop. What weather we do have to be sure.”
Ada accompanied, the woman to the little parlour at the back of the shop, and the good dame placed before her some rolls and more milk, of which the wearied girl partook with more pleasure than she ever made breakfast with before.
“You are too young to be out by yourself,” said the dame; “and a great deal too pretty too.”
Ada shook her head, as she said,—
“Do you know where resides a Mr. Seyton?”
“No,” replied the woman. “This London is such an immense place, that it’s like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay to find anybody.”
“If I could find him,” sighed Ada, “he would be my friend. Is there a gentleman named Sir Francis Hartleton?”
“Indeed there is; and if you want him, he lives close at hand. He is a magistrate, and as good a man as ever breathed.”
“Indeed,” said Ada, “’Tis very strange!”
“What’s strange, my dear?”
“Oh, nothing—nothing. Can you show me to his house?”
“Yes; if you come to the door, I can point it out for you, though he very likely to be at his office, and that’s across the park.”
Ada accompanied the old woman to her outer door, and she pointed out to the refreshed and much revived girl a handsome house, as the residence of Sir Francis Hartleton.
She again tendered her guinea, but the kind-hearted woman replied—
“Pho, pho, my dear. You sha’n’t change your guinea for a sup of milk.”
The tears gathered to Ada’s eyes at this trifling act of kindness, and she grasped the hand of the good dame, warmly, as she said, in a voice of emotion,—
“I am not used to kindness.”
“Not used to kindness? Ah, well, poor thing! If your friend, Sir Francis Hartleton, ain’t in the way, come here again.”
“If I live,” said Ada, “I will visit you again.”
She then, with a sweet smile, walked from the little dairy, and slowly approached the house of Sir Francis Hartleton. She paused as she neared it, and many anxious doubts and fears crossed her mind, concerning the result of an interview with the magistrate; to whom Jacob Gray’s mysterious bundle of papers was addressed, and above all, rose like a spectre, the still clinging horrible supposition that Jacob Gray might possibly be her father. She could not positively swear that he was not. In defiance of all probability he might have spoken the truth.
She stood by the portico of the magistrate’s house, and her irresolution increased each moment that she strove to reason with her fears.
“Dare I,” she thought, “run this dreadful risk? Heaven knows what that paper may contain which Gray sets such store by. Some awful history of crime and suffering, perchance, which would bring him to a scaffold and proclaim me the child of a murderer. Can I make conditions with the magistrates? Can I say to him, I will direct you to a packet addressed to yourself, containing, I know not what, which you can send a force, if necessary, to possess yourself of, but which you must act upon only so far as may be consistent with my feelings? Alas, no! I feel that such would not be acceded to, and I am tortured by doubts and anxieties—dreadful fears—Jacob Gray, what devil tempted you to raise so dreadful a supposition in my mind that you might be my father? And yet I do not, cannot believe you. No—but I doubt—ay doubt. There lies the agony! The fearful irresolution that cramped my very soul—cripples my exertions to be free, and makes me the unhappy, wretched thing I am. No, I cannot yet betray thee to death, Jacob Gray, although you would have taken my life, even while I slept unsuspectingly beneath your roof, I cannot, dare not yet betray thee.”
Scarcely, in the confusion of other feelings, knowing whither she went, she passed the door of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house, nor paused till she found herself in the Bird Cage Walk, in St. James’s Park. It was still very early, but the fine bracing morning had attracted many pedestrians to the park, and the various walks were beginning to assume a gay appearance, the fashionable hour of promenading being then much earlier than it is at present.
Many an admiring glance was cast upon the beautiful Ada as she slowly took her uncertain way beneath the tall ancient trees which have now given place to young saplings, the fall beauty of which the present generations will never enjoy. The cool air that blew across the wide expanse imparted a delicate bloom to her cheeks, that many a court beauty would have bartered a portion of her existence to obtain. The hat she wore but partially confined the long dancing black ringlets that fell in nature’s own freedom on her neck and shoulders; and, withal, there was a sweet pensiveness in her manner, and the expressions of her face, which greatly charmed and interested all the gentlemen, and greatly vexed and discomposed all the ladies, who, with one accord, voted it to be affectation.
How little they dreamt of the deep sorrow that was in the young girl’s heart.
She walked on till she reached the Great Mall, and then, feeling somewhat weary she sat down on one of the wooden seats, and seeing nothing, hearing nothing, she gave herself up to her own thoughts, and tears trickled slowly from her eyes, as all her meditations tended to the one conclusion that she must starve or go back to the lone house and Jacob Gray.
She was aroused from her reverie by some one repeatedly, in an affected drawl pronouncing the word,—
“Delicious: de—licious; oh, de—licous!” immediately in front of where she sat.
Ada looked up, and balancing himself before her, nearly on his toes, was an affectedly dressed person who was staring at her through an opera-glass, and repeating the word delicious, as conveying his extreme admiration of her. When Ada looked up he advanced with a smirk and a bow, and laying his hand on his embroidered waistcoat, said, in the same drawling, affected tone—
“My charming little Hebe—what unearthly change—what glorious concatenation of sublime events have procured St. James’s Park the felicity of beholding you? Eh, eh, my delicious charmer?”
“Sir,” said Ada, annoyed by the tone of the remarks, the substance of which she scarcely heard or comprehended.
“Charming simplicity!” cried the beau; “permit me.”
He seated himself with these words by the side of Ada, and attempted, by an affected, apeish manner, to take her hand.
Ada shrunk from his touch, and rising with an innocent dignity, that appalled for a moment the fine gentleman, she said—
“I do not know you, sir,” and walked onwards, leaving him the questionable credit of having turned her out of the seat.
“Charming! charming!” she heard him say, after a few moments, as he pursued her along the Mall.
Ada was excessively annoyed at this most disagreeable intrusion, and she quickened her pace in the hope of distancing the gallant; such, however, was not the event, for he was nearly close to her when she arrived at the next seat, which was occupied but by one gentleman, who was reading a book.
“One stranger,” thought Ada, “may protect me from the insults of another,” and she paused close to the seat on which was the gentleman reading.
“’Pon honour,” cried the beau who had followed her; “you walk most vulgarly fast. Ah! Ah! Really now, a delicious little creature like you ought to glide, not walk—to glide—positively glide. Ah! Ah! That would be delicious.”
The gentleman who was reading looked up, his eyes met Ada’s.
“Harry!” he cried.
“Albert!” she replied, and bursting into tears, she clung convulsively to the arms of Albert Seyton.