"Oh, no, no," said Jonas; "leave him alone. If I want to find out anything about him, I'll do it myself. Indeed it is nothing connected with himself, but the name struck me as being that of a person who owed my uncle some money; however, it cannot be him of course. And to return to matters of more consequence, I want to know what you've done with the tenements in Water Lane?" And having thus adroitly turned the conversation, the subject of the tenant with the odd name was referred to no more; but although it is true, that "out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," it is also frequently true, that that which most occupies the mind is the farthest from the lips, and this was eminently the case on the present occasion; for during the ensuing half hour that Mr. Jonas appeared to be listening with composure to the surveyor's reports and suggestions, the name of Tracy Walkingham was burning itself into his brain in characters of fire.
"Tracy Walkingham!" exclaimed he, as soon as Mr. Reynolds was gone, and he had turned the key in the lock to exclude interruptions; "here, and married to Lane's daughter! There's something in this more than meets the eye! The Lanes have got that will as sure as my name's Jonas Aldridge, and have been waiting to produce it till they had him fast noosed. But why do they withhold it now? Waiting till they hear of my return, I suppose." And as this conviction gained strength, he paced the room in a paroxysm of anguish. And there he was, so helpless, too! What could he do but wait till the blow came? He would have liked to turn them out of his house, but they had taken it for a year; and besides, what good would that do but to give them a greater triumph, and perhaps expedite the catastrophe? Sometimes he thought of consulting his friend Holland; but his pride shrank from the avowal that his uncle had disinherited him, and that the property he and everybody else had long considered so securely his, now in all probability justly belonged to another. Then he formed all sorts of impracticable schemes for getting the paper into his possession, or Tracy out of the way. Never was there a more miserable man; the sight of those two words, Tracy Walkingham, had blasted his sight, and changed the hue of everything he looked upon. Our readers will have little difficulty in guessing the reason: the young soldier, Mary's handsome husband, was the heir named in the missing will—the son of that sister of Ephraim who had married a sergeant, and had subsequently gone to the West Indies.
Tracy Walkingham, the father, was not exactly in his right position as a private in the 9th regiment, for he was the offspring of a very respectable family; but some early extravagance and dissipation, together with a passion for a military life, which was denied gratification, had induced him to enlist. Good conduct and a tolerable education soon procured him the favorable notice of his superiors, took him out of the ranks, and finally procured him a commission. When both he and his wife died in Jamaica, their only son was sent home to the father's friends; but the boy met with but a cold reception; and after some years passed, far from happily, he, as we have said, ran away from school; and his early associations being all military, seized the first opportunity of enlisting, as his father had done before him. But of the history of his parents he knew nothing whatever, except that his father had risen from the ranks; and he had as little suspicion of his connection with Ephraim Aldridge as Mary had. Neither did the name of Tracy Walkingham suggest any reminiscences to Lane, who had either forgotten, or more probably had never heard it, Mr. Aldridge's sister having married prior to the acquaintance of the two lads. But Jonas had been enlightened by the will; and although the regiment now quartered at P—— was not the one therein mentioned, the name was too remarkable not to imply a probability, which his own terror naturally converted into a certainty.
In the mean time, while the rich and conscious usurper was nightly lying on a bed of thorns, and daily eating the broad of bitterness, the poor and unconscious heir was in the enjoyment of a larger share of happiness than usually falls to the lot of mortals. The more intimately he became acquainted with Mary's character, the more reason he found to congratulate himself on his choice; and even Lane he had learned to love; while all the painful suspicions connected with Mr. Aldridge's death and the pocket-book had been entirely dissipated by the evident poverty of the family; since, after the expenditure of the little ready money Mr. Aldridge had given them, they had relapsed into their previous state of distress, having clearly no secret resources wherewith to avert it. Mary's shop was now beginning to get custom too, and she was by slow degrees augmenting her small stock, when the first interruption to their felicity occurred. This was the impending removal of the regiment, which, under present circumstances, was an almost inevitable sentence of separation; for even could they have resolved to make the sacrifice, and quit the home on which they had expended all their little funds, it was impossible for Mary to abandon her father, ever feeble, and declining in health. The money Tracy had saved toward purchasing his discharge was not only all gone, but, though doing very well, they were not yet quite clear of the debt incurred for their furniture. There was therefore no alternative but to submit to the separation, hard as it was; and all the harder, that they could not tell how long it might take to amass the needful sum to purchase Tracy's liberty. Lane, too, was very much affected, and very unwilling to part with his son-in-law.
"What," said he, "only twenty pounds?" And when he saw his daughter's tears, he would exclaim, "Oh, Mary! and to think that twenty pounds would do it!" And more than once he said, "Tracy should not go; he was determined he should not leave them;" and bade Mary dry her tears, for he would prevent it. But nevertheless the route came; and early one morning the regiment marched through Thomas Street, the band playing the tune of "The girl I left behind me;" while poor Mary, choking with sobs, peeped through the half-open shutter, to which the young husband's eyes were directed as long as the house was in sight. That was a sad day, and very sad were many that followed. Neither was there any blessed Penny Post then, to ease the sick hearts and deferred hopes of the poor; and few and rare were the tidings that reached the loving wife—soon to become a mother. The only pleasure Mary had now was in the amassing money. How eager she was for it! How she counted over and over her daily gains! How she economized! What self-denial she practiced! Oh for twenty pounds to set her husband free, and bring him to her arms again! So passed two years, circumstances always improving, but still this object so near her heart was far from being attained, when there arrived a letter from Tracy, informing her that the regiment was ordered abroad, and that, as he could not procure a furlough, there was no possibility of their meeting unless she could go to him. What was to be done? If she went, all her little savings would be absorbed in the journey, and the hope of purchasing her husband's discharge indefinitely postponed. Besides, who was to take care of her father, and the lodger, and the shop? The former would perhaps die from neglect, she should lose her lodger, and the shop would go to destruction for want of the needful attention. But could she forbear? Her husband might never return—they might never meet again—then how she should reproach herself! Moreover, Tracy had not seen the child: that was decisive. At all risks she must go; and this being resolved, she determined to shut up her shop, and engage a girl to attend to her father and her lodger. These arrangements made, she started on her long journey with her baby in her arms.
At the period of which we are treating, a humble traveler was not only subject to great inconveniences, but besides the actual sum disbursed, he paid a heavy per-centage from delay on every mile of his journey. Howbeit, "Time and the hour run through the roughest day," and poor Mary reached her destination at last; and in the joy of meeting with her husband, forgot all her difficulties and anxieties, till the necessity for parting recalled her to the sad reality that awaited them. If she stayed too long away from her shop, she feared her customers would forsake her altogether; and then how was the next rent-day to be provided for? So, with many a sigh and many a tear, the young couple bade each other farewell, and Mary recommenced her tedious journey. If tedious before, when such a bright star of hope lighted her on her way, how much more so now! While poor Tracy felt so wretched and depressed, that many a time vague thoughts of deserting glanced through his mind, and he was only withheld from it by the certainty that if they shot him—and deserters, when taken, were shot in those days—it would break his poor little wife's heart. Soon after Mary's departure, however, it happened that his master, Major D'Arcy, met with a severe accident while hunting; and as Tracy was his favorite servant, and very much attached to him, his time and thoughts were so much occupied with attendance on the invalid, that he was necessarily in some degree diverted from his own troubles.
In the mean time Mary arrived at home, where she found her affairs in no worse condition than might be expected. Her father was in health much as she had left him, and her lodger still in the house, though both weary of her substitute; and the latter—that is, the lodger—threatening to quit if the mistress did not make haste back. All was right now again—except Mary's heart—and things resumed their former train; the only event she expected being a letter to inform her of her husband's departure, which he had promised to post on the day of his embarkation.
Three months elapsed, however, before the postman stopped at her door with the dreaded letter. How her heart sank when she saw him enter the shop!
"A letter for you, Mrs. Walkingham—one-and-two-pence, if you please." Mary opened her till, and handed him the money.
"Poor thing!" thought the man, observing how her hand shook, and how pale she turned; "expects bad news, I suppose!"