Her husband pauses for a moment, as though nerving himself for a strong effort, and answers, speaking every word distinctly, and as if in acute physical pain—
“Then it must come out, wife; you must know it all, sooner or later; and why not now? Rachel, I’m wanted—they’re looking for me, the bloodhounds—it’s my belief they were after me this very morning. If I don’t cross the seas on my own account, the beaks will send me fast enough on theirs.”
“O Tom, Tom! what have you done?” interrupts his wife, clasping her hands, and straining her eyes, dilated with horror, upon her husband’s working features. “It’s not—— Tom, I can’t bring myself to say it. You haven’t lifted your hand against another?”
“No, no, Rachel,” says he; “not so bad as that, lass, not so bad as that; but it’s fourteen years, anyhow, if they bring it home to me. I must cut and run, whatever happens. Now, there’s some men would be off single-handed, and never stop to say good-bye; but I’m not one of that sort. I couldn’t bear to leave you and the child; and I won’t neither. Rachel, do you mind the time when we sat on the beach at St. Swithin’s, and what you said to me there? Well, dear, that’s past and gone, now; but you’re not changed, anyhow. Will you do it, Rachel, for my sake?”
The poor woman wavers more and more; she is white as a sheet, and the perspiration stands in beads on her lip and forehead. Tom produces a pen and ink, and a certain document we recognise as having lain in Mrs. Kettering’s writing-case the night she died at St. Swithin’s. But his wife shrinks from the pen as from a serpent, and he has to force it into her fingers.
“It’s the last time, Rachel,” he pleads; “I’ll never ask you to do such a thing again. It’s the last time I’ll do wrong myself, as I stand here. It’s but a word, and it will be the saving of us both; ay, and the little one yonder, too—think what she’d be growing up to, in such a place as this. You sign, dear, and I’ll witness—I can write my own name, and my old master’s too; he’s dead and gone now, but he didn’t teach me law for nothing.”
She does not hear him; her whole being is absorbed in the contemplation of her crime. But she does it. Pale, scared, and breathless, she leans over the coarse deal table; and though the dazzling sheet is dancing beneath her eyes, and her hands are icy cold, and her frame shakes like a leaf, every letter grows distinct and careful beneath her fingers, and burns itself into her brain, the very facsimile of her old mistress’s signature. The clock strikes eleven; and at the first clang she starts with the throb of newly-awakened guilt, and drops the pen from her failing grasp. But the deed is done. From that hour the once respectable woman is a felon; and she feels it. To-morrow morning, for the first time in her life, she will awake with the leaden, stupefying, soul-oppressive weight of actual law-breaking guilt; and from this night she will never sleep as soundly again.
Tom prided himself, above all things, on being “up to trap,” as he expressed it. He thought his own cunning more than a match for all the difficulties of his situation and the vengeance of the law. He was considered “a knowing hand” amongst his disreputable associates, and had the character of a man who was safe to keep his own neck out of the noose, whatever became of his comrades’. But, though a bold schemer, he was a very coward in action, and his nerves were now so shattered by hard drinking that he was almost afraid of his own shadow. A bad conscience is always the worst of company, but to a man not naturally brave it is a continual bugbear—a fiend that dogs his victim, sleeping or waking—sits with him at his meals, pledges him in his cups, and grins at him on his pillow. Tom possessed this familiar to perfection. Like all “suspected persons,” he conceived his movements to be of more importance in the eyes of Justice than they really were; and although the “hocussing” and robbery of Hairblower richly deserved condign punishment, he was suffering from causeless alarm when he informed his wife that he was “wanted” on that score. The truth is, the police were on a wrong scent. The landlord either could not, or would not, give them any actual information as to his guests; he “remembered the circumstance of the gentleman being taken ill—did not know the parties with whom he was drinking—thought they were friends of the gentleman—the parties paid for their liquor, and went away, leaving the other party asleep—it was no business of his—had never been in trouble before, he could swear—commiserated the party who had got drunk, and gave him half-a-crown out of sheer humanity—had known what it was to want half-a-crown himself, and to get drunk too—was doing an honest business now, and thought publicans could not be too particular.” So the blue-coated myrmidons of Scotland Yard got but little information from Boniface; and for once were completely at fault, more especially as Hairblower, more suorum, did not know the number of the note he had lost—could swear it was for five pounds, but was not quite clear as to its being Bank of England. Under these circumstances, Tom, had he only known it, might have walked abroad in the light of day, and put in immediate practice any schemes he had on hand. Instead of this he chose to lie in hiding, and only emerged in the evening, to take his indispensable stimulants at one or other of the low haunts which he frequented. Men cannot live without society; the most depraved must have friends, or such as they deem friends, on whom to repose their trust; and Tom Blacke, in an unguarded moment of gin and confidence, let out the whole story of the will (though he was cunning enough to omit the forgery) and boasted what an engine he could make of it to extort money from Miss Blanche’s guardian, and how he was certain of getting at least a hundred pounds, and detailed the proposed plan of emigration, and, in short, explained the general tenor of his future life and present fortunes to Mr. Fibbes; of all which matters, though by no means a gentleman of acute perception, that worthy did by degrees arrive at the meaning, quickening his intellects the while with many pipes and a prodigious quantity of beer. Now, Mr. Fibbes had been concerned in his earlier youth in a business from which his size and his stupidity had gradually emancipated him, but which, compared with his present trade, might almost be called an innocent and virtuous calling. It consisted in ascertaining by diligent and clandestine vigilance the relative merits of race-horses as demonstrated by their private trials, and is termed in the vernacular “touting.” What may be the moral guilt of such forbidden peeps we are not sufficient casuists to explain, but it is scarcely considered amongst the least particular classes a respectable way of obtaining a livelihood. Nor did the association gain additional lustre from the adhesion of Mr. Fibbes, who, until his great frame grew too large to be concealed, and his hard head too obtuse to make the best of his information, was the most presuming, as he was least to be depended on, of the whole brotherhood. In this capacity, however, he had made the acquaintance of Major D’Orville, a man who liked to have tools ready to his hand for whatever purpose he had in view; and Mr. Fibbes had been careful to keep up the connection, by respectful bows whenever they met in the streets, or at races, or such gatherings as bring together sporting gentlemen of all ranks. On these occasions Mr. Fibbes would make tender inquiries after the Major’s health, and his luck on the turf, and the well-being of his white charger, and sundry other ingratiating topics; or would inform him confidentially of certain rats in his possession which could be produced at half-an-hour’s notice, without fail—of terriers, almost imperceptible in weight, which could be backed to kill the rats aforesaid in an incredibly short space of time—of toy-dogs surpassing in beauty and discreet in behaviour—or of the pending match against time which “The Copenhagen Antelope” meant to square by running a cross, or, in other words, losing it on purpose to play booty. Primed with such conversation he amused the Major, who liked to study human nature in all its phases, and they seldom met without a lengthened dialogue and the transfer of a half-crown from the warrior’s pocket into Mr. Fibbes’ hand; the latter accordingly lost no opportunity of coming across his generous patron.
Now, Mr. Fibbes had observed, by hanging about Grosvenor Square and making use of his early education, that Major D’Orville was a constant visitant at a certain house in that locality; indeed, on more than one occasion he had held the white horse at the very door which was honoured by the egress and ingress of Blanche Kettering herself. We may be sure he lost no time in discovering the name of the owner, and mastering such particulars of her fortune, position, general habits, and appearance as were attainable through the all-powerful influence of beer; so when Tom Blacke made his ill-advised confidences to his boon companion, omitting neither names, facts, nor dates, Mr. Fibbes, who, to use his own words, was “not such a fool as he looked,” put that and that together quite satisfactorily enough, to be sure he had some information well worth a good round douceur, for the ear of his friend the Major. And he waylaid him in consequence, the first sunshiny afternoon on which, according to his wont, D’Orville appeared in the neighbourhood of his lady-love’s domicile.