The Trail of the Serpent/Book 2/Chapter 3
Chapter III.
A Golden Secret.
Mr. Jabez North, being of such a truly benevolent character, came the next day to Blind Peter, full of kind and sympathetic inquiries for the sick man. For once in a way he offered something more than sympathy, and administered what little help he could afford from his very slender purse. Truly a good young man, this Jabez.
The dilapidated house in Blind Peter looked still more dreary and dilapidated in the daylight, or in such light as was called daylight by the denizens of that wretched alley. By this light, too, Jim Lomax looked none the better, with hungry pinched features, bloodshot eyes, and two burning crimson spots on his hollow cheeks. He was asleep when Jabez entered. The girl was still seated by his side, never looking up, or taking her large dark eyes from his face—never stirring, except to rearrange the poor bundle of rags which served as a pillow for the man's weary head, or to pour out his medicine, or moisten his hot forehead with wet linen. The old woman sat by the great gaunt fireplace, where she had lighted a few sticks, and made the best fire she could, by the doctor's orders; for the place was damp and draughty, even in this warm June weather. She was rocking herself to and fro on a low three-legged stool, and muttering some disconnected jargon.
When Jabez had spoken a few words to the sick man, and made his offer of assistance, he did not leave the place, but stood on the hearth, looking with a thoughtful face at the old woman.
She was not quite right in her mind, according to general opinion in Blind Peter; and if a Commission of Lunacy had been called upon to give a return of her state of intellect on that day, I think that return would have agreed with the opinion openly expressed in a friendly manner by her neighbours.
She kept muttering to herself, "And so, my deary, this is the other one. The water couldn't have been deep enough. But it's not my fault, Lucy dear, for I saw it safely put away."
"What did you see so safely put away?" asked Jabez, in so low a voice as to be heard neither by the sick man nor the girl.
"Wouldn't you like to know, deary?" mumbled the old hag, looking up at him with a malicious grin. "Don't you very much want to know, my dear? But you never will; or if you ever do, you must be a rich man first; for it's part of the secret, and the secret's gold—as long as it is kept, my dear, and it's been kept a many years, and kept faithful."
"Does he know it?" Jabez asked, pointing to the sick man.
"No, my dear; he'd want to tell it. I mean to sell it some day, for it's worth a mint of money! A mint of money! He doesn't know it—nor she—not that it matters to her; but it does matter to him."
"Then you had best let him know before three days are over or he'll never know it!" said the schoolmaster.
"Why not, deary?"
"Never you mind! I want to speak to you; and I don't want those two to hear what I say. Can we go anywhere hereabouts where I can talk to you without the chance of being overheard?"
The old woman nodded assent, and led the way with feeble tottering steps out of the house, and through a gap in a hedge to some broken ground at the back of Blind Peter. Here the old crone seated herself upon a little hillock, Jabez standing opposite her, looking her full in the face.
"Now," said he, with a determined look at the grinning face before him, "now tell me,—what was the something that was put away so safely? And what relation is that man in there to me? Tell me, and tell me the truth, or" He only finishes the sentence with a threatening look, but the old woman finishes it for him,—
"Or you'll kill me—eh, deary? I'm old and feeble, and you might easily do it—eh? But you won't—you won't, deary! You know better than that! Kill me, and you'll never know the secret!—the secret that may be gold to you some day, and that nobody alive but me can tell. If you'd got some very precious wine in a glass bottle, my dear, you wouldn't smash the bottle now, would you? because, you see, you couldn't smash the bottle without spilling the wine. And you won't lay so much as a rough finger upon me, I know."
The usher looked rather as if he would have liked to lay the whole force of ten very rough fingers upon the most vital part of the grinning hag's anatomy at that moment—but he restrained himself, as if by an effort, and thrust his hands deep into his trousers-pockets, in order the better to resist temptation.
"Then you don't mean to tell me what I asked you?" he said impatiently.
"Don't be in a hurry, my dear! I'm an old woman, and I don't like to be hurried. What is it you want to know?"
"What that man in there is to me."
"Own brother—twin brother, my dear—that's all. And I'm your grandmother—your mother's mother. Ain't you pleased to find your relations, my blessed boy?"
If he were, he had a strange way of showing pleasure; a very strange manner of welcoming newly-found relations, if his feelings were to be judged by that contracted brow and moody glance.
"Is this true?" he asked.
The old harridan looked at him and grinned. "That's an ugly mark you've got upon your left arm, my dear," she said, "just above the elbow; it's very lucky, though, it's under your coat-sleeve, where nobody can see it."
Jabez started. He had indeed a scar upon his arm, though very few people knew of it. He remembered it from his earliest days in the Slopperton workhouse.
"Do you know how you came by that mark?" continued the old woman. "Shall I tell you? Why, you fell into the fire, deary, when you were only three weeks old. We'd been drinking a little bit, my dear, and we weren't used to drinking much then, nor to eating much either, and one of us let you tumble into the fireplace, and before we could get you out, your arm was burnt; but you got over it, my dear, and three days after that you had the misfortune to fall into the water."
"You threw me in, you old she-devil!" he exclaimed fiercely.
"Come, come," she said, "you are of the same stock, so I wouldn't call names if I were you. Perhaps I did throw you into the Sloshy. I don't want to contradict you. If you say so, I dare say I did. I suppose you think me a very unnatural old woman?"
"It wouldn't be so strange if I did."
"Do you know what choice we had, your mother and me, as to what we were to do with our youngest hope—you're younger by two hours than your brother in there? Why, there was the river on one side, and a life of misery, perhaps starvation, perhaps worse, on the other. At the very best, such a life as he in there has led—hard labour and bad food, long toilsome days and short nights, and bad words and black looks from all who ought to help him. So we thought one was enough for that, and we chose the river for the other. Yes, my precious boy, I took you down to the river-side one very dark night and dropped you in where I thought the water was deepest; but, you see, it wasn't deep enough for you. Oh, dear," she said, with an imbecile grin, "I suppose there's a fate in it, and you were never born to be drowned."
Her hopeful grandson looked at her with a savage frown.
"Drop that!" he said, "I don't want any of your cursed wit."
"Don't you, deary? Lor, I was quite a wit in my young, days. They used to call me Lively Betty; but that's a long time ago."
There was sufficient left, however, of the liveliness of a long time ago to give an air of ghastly mirth to the old woman's manner, which made that manner extremely repulsive. What can be more repulsive than old age, which, shorn of the beauties and graces, is yet not purified from the follies or the vices of departed youth?
"And so, my dear, the water wasn't deep enough, and you were saved. How did it all come about? Tell us, my precious boy?"
"Yes; I dare say you'd like to know," replied her "precious boy,"—"but you can keep your secret, and I can keep mine. Perhaps you'll tell me whether my mother is alive or dead?"
Now this was a question which would have cruelly agitated some men in the position of Jabez North; but that gentleman was a philosopher, and he might have been inquiring the fate of some cast-off garment, for all the fear, tenderness, or emotion of any kind that his tone or manner betrayed.
"Your mother's been dead these many years. Don't you ask me how she died. I'm an old woman, and my head's not so right but what some things will set it wrong. Talking of that is one of 'em. She's dead. I couldn't save her, nor help her, nor set her right. I hope there's more pity where she's gone than she ever got here; for I'm sure if trouble can need it, she needed it. Don't ask me anything about her."
"Then I won't," said Jabez. "My relations don't seem such an eligible lot that I should set to work to write the history of the family. I suppose I had a father of some kind or other. What's become of him? Dead or"
"Hung, eh, deary?" said the old woman, relapsing into the malicious grin.
"Take care what you're about," said the fascinating Mr. North, "or you'll tempt me to shake the life out of your shrivelled old carcass."
"And then you'll never know who your father was. Eh? Ha, ha! my precious boy; that's part of the golden secret that none but me can tell."
"Then you won't tell me my father's name?"
"Perhaps I've forgotten it, deary; perhaps I never knew it—who knows?"
"Was he of your class—poor, insignificant, and wretched, the scum of the earth, the mud in the streets, the slush in the gutters, for other people to trample upon with their dirty boots? Was he that sort of thing? Because if he was, I shan't put myself out of the way to make any tender inquiries about him."
"Of course not, deary. You'd like him to have been a fine gentleman—a baronet, or an earl, or a marquis, eh, my blessed boy? A marquis is about the ticket for you, eh? What do you say to a marquis?"
It was not very polite, certainly, what he did say; not quite the tone of conversation to be pleasing to any marquis, or to any noble or potentate whatever, except one, and him, by the laws of polite literature, I am not allowed to mention.
Puzzled by her mysterious mumblings, grinnings, and gesticulations, our friend Jabez stared hard in the old crone's face for about three minutes—looking very much as if he would have liked to throttle her; but he refrained from that temptation, turned on his heel, and walked off in the direction of Slopperton.
The old woman apostrophized his receding figure.
"Oh, yes, deary, you're a nice young man, and a clever, civil-spoken young man, and a credit to them that reared you; but you'll never have the golden secret out of me till you've got the money to pay for it."