Chapter Nineteen.
Full Satisfaction.
On the afternoon of the next day after his disclosure of the good news to Jane Bradly, the vicar received a note from herself, asking the favour, if quite convenient, of the company of himself and his sister, Miss Maltby, at a simple tea at Thomas’s house. Gladly complying with this request, the invited guests entered their host’s hospitable kitchen at half-past six o’clock, and found just himself and his family, ready to greet them.
“I’m glad to see you safe back again, Thomas,” said Mr Maltby, as he took his seat by Mrs Bradly, Jane being on his other hand.
“And right glad I am to find myself safe back again,” said the other. “London’s no place for me. I got my head so full of horses and carriages, and ladies and gentlemen, and houses of all sorts and sizes, that I could scarce get a wink of sleep last night; and as for that underground railway, why it’s like as if all the world was running away from all the rest of the world, without waiting to say ‘good-bye.’”
“And so you’ve found the bag at last?” said Miss Maltby.
“If you please, ma’am,” said Thomas, “I thought, with your leave, not meaning to be uncivil, and with the vicar’s leave, we’d just let that matter be till tea’s over, and then go right into it. None of us has looked inside the bag since I came back, not even Jane; she’s been quite content to wait and take my word for it as all’s right. I thought as I’d just tell my story in my own way, and then you’d all of you be able to see how wonderfully all has been ordered.”
“Nothing can be better than that, I’m sure; don’t you think so, Ernest?” said Miss Maltby.
“Yes,” replied her brother; “it is a privilege to be thus invited to ‘rejoice with them that do rejoice,’ as we have wept with you when you wept. So you shall tell us your story, Thomas, at your own time, for that will be the best.—And now let me know how you found Dr Prosser and his wife, and if all was right about poor Lydia Philips.”
Having replied to this question, and given due attention to the entertainment of his guests, Thomas Bradly, when tea was finished, helped his wife to remove the large table to one side, and then, having drawn forward a smaller one into the midst of the assembled company, placed on the very centre of it a bag, which he fetched out of his surgery. Certainly the article itself was not one much calculated to draw attention or excite curiosity; indeed, there was something almost burlesque in its extreme shabbiness, as it stood there the centre of attraction, or at any rate observation, to so many eyes.
“Shall we have your story now, Thomas?” said the vicar, when all were duly seated.
“You shall, sir; and you must bear with me if I try your patience by my way of telling it.
“We’d a very pleasant journey to London, and then took a cab to Dr Prosser’s. The door were opened by a boy in green, with buttons all over him; he looked summat like a young volunteer, and summat like a great big doll. I’d seen the like of him in the windows of two or three of the big clothing shops as we drove along. I couldn’t help thinking what a convenience them buttons must be; for if he didn’t mind you, you could lay hold on him by one of ’em, and if that’d come off there’d be lots more to take to. ‘Young man,’ says I, ‘is your master at home?’ He’d got his chin rather high in the air, and didn’t seem best pleased with the way in which I spoke to him. ‘Who do you mean by my master?’ says he. ‘Dr Prosser,’ says I; ‘I hope he’s your master, for certainly you don’t seem fit to be your own.’ He stares very hard at me, and then he says, ‘All right.’ So I gets out, and sees to Miss Philips and her boxes; and the doctor were very kind, and talked to me about Crossbourne, and so did the missus. She seemed quite a changed woman, so homely-like, and they both looked very happy, and were as kind as could be to poor Lydia, so she took heart at once.
“When I were ready to go, I says to Dr Prosser, ‘Doctor, may I have a word or two with your green boy?’ ‘My what?’ says the doctor, laughing. ‘Your green boy,’ says I; ‘him with the buttons.’ ‘Oh, by all means,’ he says; ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong?’ ‘Nothing at all, sir, thank you,’ I says.—‘Here, William,’ says he, ‘step into the dining-room with this gentleman; he wants to speak to you.’
“‘You don’t know who I am,’ I said to the boy when we was by ourselves. ‘No, nor don’t want to,’ says he.—‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked, holding up half-a-crown. ‘Yes, I know what that is well enough.’—‘Well, you’ve no need to be afraid of me; I’m not a policeman in plain clothes,’ says I. ‘Aren’t you?’ said he; ‘I thought you was.’—‘There, put that half-crown in your pocket,’ I said, ‘and answer me one or two civil questions.’ ‘With all the pleasure in the world,’ says he, as brisk as could be.—Then I asked him if he remembered the doctor’s coming home on Christmas-eve last year. ‘Yes, he remembered that very well.’—‘Did he bring anything with him besides his own luggage?’ He looked rather hard at me.—‘Nobody’s going to get you into trouble,’ says I, rather sharp. ‘Have you lost anything?’ he asks again very cautiously.—I told him ‘yes, I had.’ He wanted to know what it were like, but that wouldn’t do for me. So I asked my other question over again. ‘Yes, the doctor brought a bag with him as didn’t seem to belong to him; at least he hadn’t it with him when he left home.’—‘What sort of a bag?’ says I. ‘It was a small bag, and a very shabby one too.’—‘And what did you do with it?’ ‘I put it in the doctor’s study.’—‘And is it there now?’ ‘I suppose so; nobody never meddles with any of the doctor’s things.’—‘And you haven’t seen it, nor heard anything about it since?’ ‘No, I haven’t.’—‘Thank you, my boy; that’s all I want to know from you.’
“Then I asks the doctor to let me have five minutes alone with him, which he granted me most cheerfully; and I just tells him as much as were necessary to let him know what I wanted, and why I wanted it.—‘A bag,’ he said; ‘ah, I do remember something about it now; but, if I don’t mistake, there was nothing but paper in it. However, it’s pretty sure to be in my closet, and if so it will be just as I put it there, for no one goes to that closet but myself.’ So he unlocks the closet door, and comes back in a minute with a bag in his hand. ‘Is this it?’ he asks.—‘I suppose it is,’ says I, ‘for I never saw it; but we shall soon find out.’ The doctor had a key on his bunch which soon opened the padlock, and then we turned out what was inside. Paper, nothing but paper at first. I were getting in a bit of a fright; but after a bit we comes to summat hard wrapped up; and there, when we unfolded the paper, was the missing bracelet! And then we searched to the bottom, and found an envelope sealed up and directed, ‘Miss Jane Bradly;’ but what’s inside I don’t know, for of course I didn’t open it.
“We was both very glad, at least I was, you may be sure; and the doctor were very kind about it, and shook hands with me, and said he was sorry as we’d been kept out of the things so long: but I told him it were no fault of his, and it were all right, for the Lord’s hand were plainly in it; for if it had gone elsewhere we might never have seen it again. So I carried off the bag as carefully as if it had been made of solid gold, and it hasn’t been out of my sight a moment till I got it safe home.
“The doctor sent his best regards to you, sir, and the same to Miss Maltby, and so did his missus. And as I went out at the door, I just said to the green boy, ‘William, you keep a civil tongue in your head to everybody, my lad, and don’t be too proud of them buttons.’
“And now, dear friends, with your leave, I’ll open the bag again, and see what it’s got to tell us.” Having unlocked the padlock with an ordinary key, Thomas Bradly drew forth a quantity of paper, and then a small packet wrapped up in silver paper which he handed to his sister. Poor Jane’s hands trembled as she unfolded the covering, and she had some difficulty in maintaining her self-command as she drew forth the bracelet, the innocent occasion of so much trial and sorrow. It was evidently a costly article, and, though a little tarnished, looked very beautiful. As Jane held it up for inspection, tears of mingled sadness and thankfulness filled her eyes.
“Oh,” she said, “how little did I think, when I took the fellow to this bracelet into my hand at Lady Morville’s, and held it up to look at it, as I am doing now, that such a flood of sorrow would have come from such a simple act of mine! Ah, but I can see already how wonderfully the Lord has been bringing good to others out of what seemed so long to be full of nothing but evil for me.”
“You recognise the bracelet then, Jane,” asked the vicar, “as the match to the one which was found in your hand?”
“O yes, sir: the image of that bracelet has been burnt into my memory; I could never forget it; it has often haunted me in my dreams.”
While these words were being spoken, Thomas had emptied out the remaining contents of the bag on to the table, and thoroughly examined them. All that he found was the unopened envelope and a quantity of waste paper.
“This belongs to you, dear Jane,” said Bradly, giving her the letter.
She shook her head. “I cannot, Thomas,” she said. “Oh, do you open it, and read it out,” she added imploringly.
“Well, I don’t know,” replied her brother; “I feel just now more like a cry-baby than a grown man. Shall we ask our kind friend the vicar to open it and read it out for us?”
“O yes, yes,” cried Jane, “if he will be so good.”
“With pleasure, dear friends,” said Mr Maltby, and he held out his hand for the dingy-looking letter.—Little did the writer imagine, when he penned that wretched scrawl, what a value it would have in the eyes of so many interested and anxious hearers. It was as follows:—
“Dear Jane Bradly,
“I hardly know how to have the face to be a-writing to you, but I hope you’ll forgive me for all I’ve done, for I’ve behaved shameful to you, and I don’t mean to deny it. But I had better begin at the beginning. It were all of that lady’s-maid. I wish I’d never set eyes on her, that I do.
“Well, you know as we couldn’t either of us a-bear you, because you knew of our evil ways, and you was so bold as to tell us we was doing wrong. I knowed that you was right, and I wasn’t at all easy; but Georgina wouldn’t let me rest till we had got you out of the house. And so she took one of her ladyship’s bracelets and hid it away, and made her pretence to her ladyship as she couldn’t find it; and then we got you to look at it that morning as her ladyship found you with it.
“We was both very glad to get you away, and we had things all our own way for a little while, till her ladyship caught out Georgina in telling her some lies, and running her up a big bill at the mercer’s for things she’d never had. So, when Georgina got herself into trouble, she wanted to lay the blame on me; but I wasn’t going to stand that, so I complained to Sir Lionel, and Miss Georgina had to take herself off. That was about two years after you had left Monksworthy.
“When she were gone I began to get very uneasy. I didn’t feel at all comfortable about the hand I’d had in your going, and I couldn’t get what you had said to me about my bad ways out of my head day nor night. And there was another thing. Just to spite you, I got Georgina to get hold of your Bible a day or two before the bracelet was supposed to be lost. She gave it to me, and I put it in a drawer in my pantry where I kept some corks; it were a drawer I didn’t often go to, and there it were left, and I never seed it till a few weeks since, and then I was looking for something I couldn’t find, and poked your little Bible out from the back of the drawer. ‘What’s this?’ I thought; and I took it up and noticed the red-ink lines under so many of the verses. Oh, I was struck all of a heap when I read some of them. They showed me what a wicked man I had been, for they just told me what I ought to be, and what I could plainly see you was trying to be when you was living at the Hall. And they told me about the love of Jesus Christ, and that seemed to cut me to the heart most of all.
“I didn’t know what to do, I were quite miserable; and the other servants began to chaff me, so I tried to forget all about better things, and put the Bible back in the drawer. But I couldn’t let it rest there, so I kept reading it; but it didn’t give me no peace. So I ventured to kneel me down in my pantry one day and ask God to guide me, and I felt a little happier after that. But I soon saw as it wouldn’t do for me to remain any longer at the Hall, if I meant to mend my ways. I were mixed with so many of the others, I couldn’t see my way out of the bad road at all if I stayed. I know I ought to have gone straight to Sir Lionel, and told him how I had been a-cheating him; but then I should have brought my fellow-servants, and some of the tradesmen too, into the scrape, and I couldn’t see the end of it. So I made up my mind to cut and run. I know it’s wrong, but I haven’t got the courage just to confess all and face it out.
“And now, what I want to do before I leave the country, for I can’t stay in England, is to see and make amends to you, Jane, as far as I can. I have found out from one of your old friends here where you are living, and I mean to let you have this letter on my way. Sir Lionel has let me have a holiday to see my friends, and I haven’t said anything about not coming back again. But he’ll be glad enough that he’s got shut of me when he comes to find out what I’ve been—more’s the pity. I know better, and ought to be ashamed of myself; but, if I gets clear off into another country, I’ll try and make amends to them as I’ve wronged in Monksworthy. You’ll find the bracelet and the Bible along with this letter. Georgina took both bracelets, and left the one as didn’t turn up with me; for, she said, if there was any searching for it they’d never suspect me of taking it, but they might search her things.
“So now I think I have explained all; and when you get the Bible, and the bracelet, and this letter, the only favour I ask is that you will wait a month before you let her ladyship know anything about it, and that will give me time to get well out of the country.
“So you must forgive me for all the wicked things I have done—and do ask the Lord to forgive me too. I hope I shall be able to turn over a new leaf. I shan’t forget you, nor your good advice, nor what I did at you, nor the verses marked under with red-ink. So no more from your humble and penitent fellow-servant,
“JH.”
Such was the letter, which was listened to by all with breathless interest.
“And now what’s ‘the next step’?” said Thomas Bradly.
“I think your next step,” said the vicar, “will be to go yourself to Lady Morville, and lay before her this conclusive evidence of your sister’s innocence.”
“Yes; I suppose that will be right,” said Bradly. “I can explain it better than Jane could—indeed, I can see as Jane thinks so herself; and it would be too much for her, any way, to go about it herself and, besides, it’ll have a better look for me to go.”