SILAS MONK.
A TALE OF LONDON OLD CITY.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.
One evening—a pitch-dark evening in autumn—a girl stood at one of the doors in a row of old houses in the neighbourhood of Crutched Friars, watching. It was difficult to see many yards up or down the street, for it was only lighted by three widely-separated gas-lamps. Under one of these lamps, at a corner of the street, there presently appeared a little old man. He came along slowly, but with a jerky step like a trot; his head was bent and his shoulders raised; and he seemed to be rubbing his hands together cheerfully and hugging himself from time to time, as though his thoughts were of a congratulatory nature.
‘Why, grandfather,’ said the girl, descending into the street as soon as she caught sight of this figure—‘why, grandfather, how late you are!’
The old man came jogging on, still in his jerky manner, though faster, at the sound of her voice. ‘Ay, ay!’ said he, shaking out his words, ‘ay, Rachel, my dear. Always late. Don’t you take any notice of that. It has been so for years—fifty years; ay, more than fifty.’
‘Fifty years, grandfather, is a long time,’ remarked the girl as they passed in at the doorway together, her arms placed protectingly around him—‘a very long time.’
‘Ay, Rachel; so it is, my dear,’ continued the old man—‘so it is.’
They entered a small front-room on the ground-floor. An oil-lamp was burning on the mantel-shelf; it threw a dim light upon bare and dingy walls, upon an old deal table, two wooden seats without backs, and a well-worn leathern armchair near the fire. Towards this chair the girl now led the old man as one might lead a child. Then she began to lay the cloth for the evening meal. She was a pretty, homely-looking girl of about eighteen; perhaps a little too pale; and with eyes, though large and lustrous, somewhat sad and weary for one so young. But as she busied herself about the room preparing the supper, her eyes gradually brightened; and her face, growing more animated, gained colour, as though to match the better with her red lips.
The old man, crouching in his armchair before the fire, took no notice of the girl. His look had become deeply thoughtful, and he seemed to be gaining a year in age with every minute that was passing. The wrinkles increased, and covered his face like the intersecting lines in cobwebs; the white eyebrows drooped thick as a fringe, and meeting over the brow, seemed to be helping to hide some secret, vaguely expressed in the small gray eyes. His head was bald, except at the sides, where scanty locks of snowy white hair hung about his neck. His long lean fingers were occasionally spread out upon his knees, though sometimes the hands grew restless when an incoherent word escaped his lips. The workings of the mind indeed were expressed in the nervously shaped figure as much as in the face. There were moments when the fingers clawed and clutched perplexedly; then there came into the eyes a look of avarice, and the whole form would seem busily engaged in solving mysterious problems. There was something almost repellent in the workings of the mind and body of this strange old man.
‘Come, grandfather!’ cried the girl, when the meal was presently spread. ‘The supper is ready now; and I hope,’ she added, assisting him to a place at the table—‘I hope you have a better appetite than usual.’ She spoke in a cheerful tone, though looking doubtfully the while at what she had spread on the board. There was a small piece of cheese, part of a loaf, and a stone pitcher filled with water—nothing more.
The old man eyed the food keenly. ‘No, Rachel, no,’ said he; ‘not much appetite, my dear.’
The girl sighed, and took her place opposite to the old man. ‘I wish,’ said she, ‘that I could provide something more tempting. You must be almost famished, after all these hours of work. But’——
‘Eh?’
‘But we cannot afford it. Can we?’
‘No, my dear, no,’ said the old man, very shaky in voice; ‘we can hardly afford what we have.’
Rachel cut her grandfather a slice of bread.
‘Too much, my dear!’ cried he, with a wave of his hand—‘too much! I’ve no appetite at all.’
The girl divided the bread, a painful look passing over her face. The old man, although there was a ravenous glance in his eyes strangely contradictory to his words, began to eat his bread slowly.
Presently the girl, as though expressing her thought impulsively, cried: ‘Grandfather! why are we so poor?’
The old man, who was munching his crust, and staring abstractedly at the morsel of cheese, looked up with bewilderment at Rachel.
‘I cannot understand why,’ she continued, forcing out the words—‘why we are so very, very poor! I cannot understand why such a wealthy House as Armytage and Company, where you have been a clerk for more than fifty years, should pay you such a small salary.’
‘Small, Rachel?’ asked her grandfather. ‘Fifteen shillings a week, small?’
‘Well, it does seem so to me,’ the girl replied in a modest tone.
The old man rubbed his knees nervously and bent his head, and deep furrows gathered on his brow. ‘Small, eh? Fifteen shillings a week, small? Why, Rachel, you talk as though you knew nothing of this hard-working world. How many clerks are there in this old city who would go down on their knees and thank Armytage and Company for fifteen shillings a week!’
‘Many—very many,’ said the girl sorrowfully. ‘I know that too well. But, grandfather, not one like you—not one who has served a great House for more than fifty years.’ She placed her hand upon the long lean hand of her grandfather. ‘No,’ she continued; ‘not so long as you have. And,’ she added, ‘surely not so faithfully? The House of Armytage and Company—I have often heard you say—place every confidence in you as their head-cashier. Thousands and thousands of pounds in the course of the year pass through your hands: piles of bank-notes, bags and bags of bright sovereigns, have been paid by you into the bank’——
‘Ay, ay!’ cried the old man, looking straight before him, as though at a vision—‘ay, ay! Bright sovereigns—bags and bags of them—bags and bags of bright sovereigns!—ah! how they shine!’ While speaking, he rose from his seat, rubbing his hands slowly together and hugging himself, as he had done on his way through the dark street. He began to pace the room, still staring at the vision, and muttering: ‘Ay, ay! how they shine!’
Rachel, watching him with a wondering expression, said in a low voice, as if speaking aloud her thoughts rather than addressing her grandfather: ‘What a blessing, if only some of those shining sovereigns were ours!’
The old man stopped suddenly, staggering as though he had received a blow, and looked fixedly at the girl. ‘What can have put that idea into your head?’
Rachel hung her pretty head as she replied: ‘I want them, grandfather, for you! I want to see you placed at your ease.’
The old man was silent. His eyes remained for a moment bent upon the girl’s face; then he sat down before the fire, and gradually seemed to fall back into his thoughtful mood, his face wrinkling more deeply, and the nervous movements of his hands answering to the constant plodding of his brain.
Rachel now rose from her seat to clear the table, moving silently about the room. When she had finished, she seated herself at her grandfather’s feet, upon the threadbare patch of carpet before the hearth, and raising her eyes to his face, she said: ‘You are not angry with me, grandfather, for speaking my mind?’
The old man placed his hand tenderly upon the girl’s head. ‘No, my child—no. There is nothing in your words to make me angry. But you know little of the world. You think that we are poor. You do not know, Rachel, what poverty is. Does,’ he added, with a sudden glance at the girl’s face—‘does starvation threaten us?’
‘Why, no, grandfather.’
‘Is there any danger,’ he demanded, ‘that we shall be turned out of our old home?’
‘None, grandfather, that I know of.’
‘Then, my dear, do not let us say that we are poor. It sounds as though we were in sight of the workhouse; and that, you know,’ he concluded, ‘that is not true: no, no—not true.’
These words seemed to pacify the girl; and the two remained silent for a while. Rachel retained her place at the old man’s feet, her head drooping on his knee, his hand laid protectingly around her shoulder.
‘You are tired, Rachel,’ said the old man presently, noticing that her eyes were half-closed with sleep. ‘Go, my dear, get to bed. I shall find my way to my room soon. Don’t mind me.’
‘Shall you stay up, grandfather?’ asked Rachel, looking at him with surprise.
‘A little while, Rachel—a little while.’
The girl lingered, and looked reluctantly around the room. ‘Are you sure you would not like me to stay with you?’
‘Quite sure, my dear.—Good-night.’
The girl kissed her grandfather. Deep affection was expressed in her whole demeanour as she bent over him to say good-night. Then she placed a very ancient-looking candlestick on the table and left the room.
When she was gone, a striking change came over the old man—his face became more animated; he was younger in look and manner. Presently, he rose from his seat with surprising ease for one so old. He stood for a moment in the middle of the room, leaning forward and listening, with keenness and cunning expressed in his eyes. There was not a sound. The street outside, little frequented even during daylight, was silent. The old man lit the candle, blew out the lamp, and went up the old staircase noiselessly. On one side of the landing above there were two rooms—the first the bedchamber of the grandfather, the second that of the girl. Reaching the landing, he entered his room and closed the door very cautiously, and always listening.
The room was grotesquely furnished. In one corner was a large bed, with four black, bare, oaken posts, with spikes, nearly touching the low ceiling. The bed-coverings were neat and clean; and beside the bed was a strip of carpet. But here all appearance of comfort began and ended. The contrast gave to the rest of the room a dreary aspect: the sombre walls, the patched-up window-panes, the uneven floor, suggested nothing beyond abject poverty and decay.
Still in a listening attitude, and frequently glancing keenly about, as though the fear of being taken by surprise amounted almost to terror, the old man placed the candle on the drawers, and taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked a cupboard in the wall and took out sundry articles. Firstly, a thick long overcoat, into which he disappeared, leaving only his head visible; secondly, a large fur-cap, which he drew down to his eyebrows and over his ears; thirdly, he brought forth a dark-lantern; this he carefully trimmed, lighted, and closed. These strange proceedings completed, he threw the bedclothes, with evident intention, into some disorder, put out the candle, and left the room. For a moment he stood on the landing, listening at his grand-daughter’s half-open door. It was dark within her room, and a soft regular breathing, as from one who sleeps, fell upon the old man’s ear. Apparently satisfied, he nodded his head slowly; and then he began to descend the dark staircase. Step by step he crept down, casting at intervals a trembling ray of light before him from the lantern which he held in his shaky hand. When he reached the passage, he opened the front-door and went into the night, closing the portal without a sound. As he had come, when his grand-daughter stood waiting for him on the doorstep, so he went, hugging himself, and moving with a jerky trot along the silent, lonely way, under the dim lamps fixed in the walls over his head. So he went, like a mysterious, restless shadow. Where? The old city clocks are striking midnight; they awaken echoes in tranquil courts and alleys; their droning tones die out, and break forth again upon the night, as though demanding in their deep monotonous voices—‘Where?’
When Rachel arose at an early hour on the following morning, her pretty face expressed no surprise when she found that her grandfather was up and away without awakening her. The same thing had occurred so often in her young life, that although she felt regret at not seeing him at the breakfast-table, she took for granted that the important affairs of the great firm of Armytage and Company had called him away to the counting-house; so she made herself as happy and contented as might be under the circumstances. She lit the fire, breakfasted, and then busied herself about the old house until towards noon, when she sat down by the window in the sitting-room with her work, looking out upon the dismal row. A dismal place, even upon a bright autumn morning. The row faced a plot of waste ground. On this plot there had once stood, in all probability, a row of houses similar to the row in which Rachel and her grandfather lived; but nothing now remained except the foundations of houses, filled with rubbish of every description in the midst of broken bricks. In the centre of the place there was planted a wooden beam with a crossbar, like a gibbet, from which was suspended a lantern, broken and covered with dust. Whether this lantern had ever been lighted, may be doubtful; but that some one had placed it there with the intention of warning people who had some regard for their shins against trespassing after dark, and had afterwards forgotten to light it, is the probable explanation of the matter. Be this as it may, Rachel sat regarding this scarecrow-looking lamp dreamily, as she had often done, without being conscious that it was there, with the piles of dark houses in the background, when the figure and, more especially, the handsome face of a young man on the opposite side of the street, somehow got in front of the lantern and blotted it out.
As Rachel’s eyes met the eyes of the young man, a smile of recognition crossed the girl’s face. She threw open the window. ‘Good-morning, Mr Tiltcroft.’
To which the young man answered, as he stepped across the road: ‘Good-morning, Miss Rachel.’
‘Have you come from the counting-house?’
‘Yes; I’m on my “rounds,” you know, as usual,’ replied the young man; ‘and happening by mere accident to be passing this way on matters of business for Armytage and Company, I thought it would scarcely be polite to go by the house of Silas Monk without inquiring after the health of Miss Monk, his grand-daughter.’
‘You are very kind. Won’t you come in?’
The young man willingly assented. The girl opened the front-door, and they went in together, and sat down side by side near the fire.
‘You have always been such a kind friend to my grandfather and to me, Walter,’ said the girl, ‘that although it may seem strange to you that I should put the question I am going to ask, still I am sure you will believe I have a good reason for doing so. Tell me, if you can, why it is that my grandfather, who has served the House of Armytage and Company so many years—so many, many years,’ she repeated with emphasis, ‘and so faithfully too, should receive so paltry a salary? Can you explain it?’
The young man looked up with some surprise expressed in his frank eyes. ‘Paltry, Rachel?’ asked he. ‘I call it princely!’
A look of disappointment, even of regret, came into the girl’s face. ‘That is what grandfather says. He talks as though he thought it princely too. He always reminds me, when I mention the subject, that there are hundreds of poor clerks in this old city of London who would be only too glad if they could make sure of a like remuneration.’
‘So I should think,’ cried the young man, laughing. ‘Why, Rachel, if I had a salary half as large as your grandfather, I’d ask you to marry me to-morrow!’
‘Be serious, please.’
‘So I am serious! What astonishes me is, that Silas Monk, with the fine salary—in my opinion, very fine salary—which he draws from Armytage and Company, should live in a back street like this. It’s downright incomprehensible!’
‘What can you mean?’ The girl uttered the words in a hurried voice, as though a sudden thought had crossed her mind. She placed her hand upon Walter’s arm and said: ‘Don’t speak!’
What troubled her was the discovery that her grandfather had deceived her. There was no truth in what he had led her to believe about their intense poverty. They were perhaps rich, and had been for years, while she had remained in ignorance of the fact. What was his object in concealing this from her? She could not doubt that it was a good one. He knew the world and all the horrors of poverty; how often he had spoken of that! He wished to leave her in a position of independence; and doubtless he had the intention of telling her this secret as an agreeable surprise.
‘Walter,’ said she, looking up into the youth’s face after this pause, ‘you must think me strangely discontented to speak as I have just done of Armytage and Company. I value my grandfather’s services to the firm perhaps far too high. But he was a clerk in the House before the oldest living partner was born. No salary, not even the offer of a share in the business, would seem to me more than he merits.’
‘Exactly what we all say in the office,’ replied Walter. ‘But then, you know, five hundred a year is not so bad. I shall think myself lucky if I ever get within two hundred of it—I shall indeed.’
Could she be dreaming? Five hundred pounds a year! Ever since her earliest childhood, she had implicitly believed that fifteen shillings a week was the amount her grandfather earned—not a farthing more.
Rachel rose from her seat and went to the window. Her perplexity was too great to allow her, without betraying it, to utter a word. Yet she wished to speak; she wanted to question Walter in a hundred ways. There were perhaps other mysteries—at least so she began to think—which he might assist her to solve. Calming herself as best she could, she turned to him, and said: ‘Can you stay a moment longer? There is something I should like to know about my grandfather.’
‘There are many things, Rachel, that I should like to know,’ said the young man, laughing. ‘Many things that most of us at the office would like to know about the dear, eccentric, old fellow!—Well, Rachel, what is it?’
The girl, hesitating a moment, replied: ‘One thing puzzles me greatly—why is grandfather kept so very late every evening at the office?’
Walter Tiltcroft looked round quickly. ‘What do you call late, Rachel?’
‘Ten o’clock, eleven, sometimes midnight.’
‘No one remains after six.’
‘No one?’ asked the girl—‘not even grandfather?’
‘That,’ replied the young man, ‘no one knows. He is always the last. He locks up the place. He is First Lord of the Treasury. He looks after the cash: he stays to see that all is safe in the strong-room. That has been his office for years. He is, some of them think, getting too old for the post. But that’s a matter for the partners to settle. He is still hale and hearty. There is, therefore, no reason why he should be superseded—at least, none that I can see.’
‘But surely, Walter, the mere matter of locking up the strong-room cannot occupy grandfather from six o’clock until even ten, much, less until midnight.’
‘That’s the mystery,’ said the young man thoughtfully.
Rachel clasped her hands and turned her pale face towards Walter. ‘What you tell me, makes me very anxious,’ said she. ‘Indeed, I know not why, but I begin to be seriously alarmed. What can all this mean?’
‘What, indeed? That’s the mystery,’ repeated the young man, in a still more meditative tone.
‘Then again, Walter, I cannot understand why grandfather leaves home for the counting-house, as he tells me, at five o’clock in the morning. Can that be necessary?’
‘Oh, no, no! The hours are from nine till six,’ cried Walter. ‘But at what hour Silas Monk arrives, no one knows, or ever did know. We always find him seated at his desk in the morning when we come, just as we leave him there when we go in the evening.—Do you know, Rachel,’ added Walter, ‘if I was ignorant of the fact that he had his home and this little housekeeper, I should be disposed to agree with the fellows at the office who declare Silas Monk haunts the counting-house all night long.’
Rachel started. These words, uttered by the young man half in jest, brought thoughts into the girl’s head which had never entered there before.
‘Good-bye, Rachel,’ said Walter. ‘Armytage and Company will be wondering what has become of me.’
The lovers went together to the front-door, where Walter hastily took his leave. He looked back, however, more than once, as he went down the street, and saw Rachel standing on the doorstep watching him. So, when he reached the corner, he waved his hand to her, and then plunged into the busy thoroughfare.