“O, I’ll allow you, my man!” said the virago, with an enormous mimicry which bore not the faintest resemblance to my voice; and, as I passed out, flounced at me with her apron as if I were a strayed chicken.
But I hadn’t walked a hundred yards down the street when I heard the sound of running footsteps behind me; and, turning round, there was Mr Churton labouring on my tracks. His breath was pumping in him, his weak eyes watered, the shavings in his whiskers shook like ringlets.
“I must say it, sir,” he gasped. “I had to break from her and follow you.” He smacked one ineffective fist into the palm of the other. “She’ll have to find out who’s master some time, and as well to begin now as later.”
He looked up piteously into my face.
“I were always a feckless creatur’. I know what I ought to ha’ done about that man arter I see him; but I couldn’t do it, sir, I couldn’t. It’s been on my conscience these years, dear God—my little Ellen that was so happy with me, and that he seduced from her plighted word!” He rubbed his bare wrist across his eyes.
“Was he the cause of her death?” I asked gravely.
“The cause, sir,” he said, “and not the cause. She told it me all in the hospital where she lay. She’d sent for me while she could speak. I was the only one left to her, and she owed it to me, she thought. She was frightened of him, sir—and why?—why was she frightened of him?”
“Well?”
“Because he’d just taken her mistress’s baby away to a woman called Carey, and had it killed.”
There—it was out. I was in possession of the secret which “Mark” had dared this invertebrate witness to reveal. The poor fellow entreated me not to turn his confession to his ruin.