Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)
"That man, Timmons, who was to get me the gold, has a place in Tunbridge Street, London Road, across the river. He believes that a man was burned in that fire. He believes my deputy winder lost his life in the miserable fire that destroyed my clock. Go to Timmons, and tell him that no one was lost in that fire, that the winder of the clock is alive, that I am dying, and that the best thing he can do is to leave the country. He will understand, when I am dead, no secrets will be kept. I do not want to give him up. I have no conscience. But the country may as well be rid of him and me together."
"But, need I go? Can I not send?" asked Hanbury, not liking the idea of such a message from such a man to such a man. It looked like shielding a criminal. Leigh had, according to his own account, coquetted with crime, but kept clear of it.
"No, it would not be nearly so good to me, for you know the secrets, and if he showed any disposition to rebel, you could drop a word that would convince him you were authorized by me, and knew what might be dangerous to him."
"You are asking me too much. I cannot do it."
"Where is your promise of a moment ago?"
"No honest man would assist the escape of this thief."
"Hush! Let me think awhile."
"It is not clear to me, that I ought not to give this villain up to the police, and that you are not bound to give him up. I would do anything I could, in reason, for you; but is it reasonable to ask me to carry a message from you to a man who, you tell me, or hint to me, is a thief, or receiver of stolen goods?"
"I did not regard it in that way. I fancied you would like to rid the country of such a man."
"Yes, by locking him up. I think you are in duty bound to denounce him."
"But, in honour, I am bound not; and honour is more binding on a man than any law."
"But you cannot have any honourable bond with a man like that."
"What about honour among thieves? Even they recognize honour."
"But, are you a thief, that you want to shield yourself under their code?"
"No. I am no thief. I haven't a penny that isn't fairly mine. I told you I have no conscience, at least nothing that people are accustomed to call conscience; but do you think honour does not bind a man to a thief?"
"Surely not about the fruits of his theft."
"I have not looked at it in that way. When a man has no conscience, what binds him?"
"Nothing, except the law of the land, or handcuffs."
"Ah, that is your view. Well, it is not mine. Of course, I have not given you the man's real name or address. I gave you merely a fictitious name and address. Whom did I say? The Prince of Wales, was it, and Marlborough House, or the Prime Minister, and 10, Downing Street? Which was it? I forget."
"Well," said Hanbury, "can I do anything for you?"
"Are you going to Curzon Street on Thursday?"
"No." Hanbury reddened, but he was standing with his back to the light. "The family are leaving Town suddenly."
"Are you going too?"
"No." Hanbury was anything but pleased with all this, but who could be angry with a dying man, and such a dying man too?
"If you were going I should like to send a message. But of course you cannot be going if they are leaving town. I told you I have some money of my own. I have made my will since I saw you. After my mother's death all will go, I mean the yearly interest of all will go in equal shares to any hunchbacks that apply for shares. The conditions will be advertised in the papers."
"I think you could not have done better with it," said Hanbury, cordially.
"Yes. When you see her next, tell her I gave up all thought of making Miracle Gold, because she said she wished me. What a wonderful likeness there is between Miss Grace and Miss Ashton. I had not begun to model those figures of time. That clock was getting too much for me. Often when I was away from it, and when I was in bed, the movement was reversed, and all went backwards until the weights were wound up so tight against the beam, that something must give way if the machinery did not stop. Then, all at once, the machinery would stop, and suddenly begin running in the ordinary manner, and I used often to shout out and cry with relief. You don't know all that clock was to me. And yet it would have killed me. It has killed me."
"The strain must have been very great. I wonder it did not break you down."
"Yes."
"In reality, though, it was the Miracle Gold did the mischief. Only for it I should not have been away from my clock, or left the gas lighting. I know it is not fair of me to keep you here. You want to go. Say good-bye to her before she leaves town. This is Wednesday. You must not stay here any longer. Will you say good-bye to me also? Two good-byes in one day. One to her and one to me."
Hanbury rose and held out his hand, saying "Good-bye."
Leigh did not stir.
"Are we not to shake hands?"
"Yes, in a moment."
Hanbury waited a while. "I am going now. You have nothing more to say?"
He had not.
He had nothing more to say. He would say no more to anyone. He was dead.
CHAPTER XLI
FUGITIVES
Hanbury had, during the past few days, carefully avoided meeting friends or acquaintances. He went near no club and kept in the house a good deal. When he went abroad he drove. He did not wish to be asked questions of the most ordinary kind respecting the Ashtons.
The discovery of his foreign extraction had not yet got abroad, but, although Mrs. Grace and her grand-daughter were under his mother's roof, and they were the only persons besides his mother in whom he had confided, he felt as though every one must know. Such things got about in most unaccountable ways.
That morning he had seen in a newspaper that Mr., Mrs., and Miss Ashton were leaving for a tour in Norway and Sweden. That was all the paragraph said.
At the very moment Hanbury was speaking to Oscar Leigh, the Ashton family were leaving Curzon Street.
When Dora Ashton sat that afternoon in her own room, after writing to her lover, she knew the engagement was at an end, and realized the knowledge. But she had not said anything of it. When she got his answer all was over beyond any chance whatever. He had apologized amply for his offence, and accepted her decision.
His letter had a bracing effect upon her. She had been perfectly sincere in writing her letter and she had never wavered in her resolution of breaking off the engagement, yet deep down in her nature was a formless hope, which she would not acknowledge to herself for a moment, that he might disregard her request and insist upon her re-consideration. But with the advent of his letter, that hope vanished wholly, and she felt more firm and secure. Now all was plain. She should tell her mother, and tell her, moreover, in an easy and light manner. The letter had been a tonic. If he were so easily dismissed, he had not been very much in earnest.
She went to Mrs. Ashton at once, and said, "Of course, mother, you knew that there was something between John Hanbury and me."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Ashton in surprise that grew as she looked at the girl.
"Well, I have come to say that we have decided it would be better to put an end to it; we have come to the conclusion it would not be for our happiness it should go on any further. It is all over."
"All over! my dear! All over! But I thought it was fully arranged that you were to be married as soon as he had made a beginning in the world."
"I am sure, mother, you do not want me to say more than I wish to say, and I don't think speaking about the affair can do good to anyone. He and I understand each other fully. This is no mere quarrel. At my suggestion the affair has been broken off. I wrote to him, saying I desired it broken off, and gave him my reasons, and he wrote me back saying that he is very sorry, and that it is to be as I wish."
"But, my dear, although I judge by your manner you are not very much distressed, I cannot help feeling a good deal of concern about you."
"Oh," said the girl with a smile, "you must not imagine I am desperate. I am not, I assure you. The breaking off has been done in two very sensible letters, and we have arranged to be fast friends, and to meet one another as though there never had been anything but friendship between us. You see, mother, there are a great many things upon which we don't agree, and most likely never should, and it would never do to risk life-long bickering. I assure you we behaved more like two elderly people with money or something else practical in view, than two of our age. You know I am not a sentimental girl, and although the thing is unpleasant I shall I am certain never regret the step I have taken in putting an end to what could not otherwise end well for either of us. And now mother do me one favour, will you?"
"Oh, yes, my darling. My darling Dora. My own poor child."
For a moment the girl was compelled to pause to steady her lips and her voice. "Do not speak to me again about this until I speak to you, and-and-and don't let father speak to me either."
"It will kill you, child. It will kill you, my Dora."
Again the girl was compelled to pause. "No. It will not. And mother, don't treat me in any other way than as if it had not occurred. Be just the same to me."
"My darling."
"And," again she had to stop, "above all don't be more affectionate. That would break my heart. Promise."
"I promise."
The girl threw her arms round her mother's neck and kissed her, and the mother burst out crying, and the girl hushed her and petted her, and tried to console her, and asked her to bear up and not to cry.
"I'll try, child, I'll try; but it's very hard, darling."
"Yes, mother, but bear up for me, for my sake."
"I will, dear! I will indeed. We shall not stop here. We shall go away at once."
"Very well. Just what you please, mother."
"I couldn't bear to stay here and see you, my child."
"If you wish it, mother, let us go away at once. Look at me how brave I am. Do not give way. Do not give way, for my sake."
"I will try-I will try."
The grief seemed to be all the mother's, and the duty of consolation all the daughter's duty.
It is the sorrows of others that most hurt noble natures, and the natures of noble women most of all.
That night it was settled that the Ashtons should go to Norway and Sweden for three months. Norway and Sweden had been put into Mr. Ashton's head by the announcement of Sir Julius Whinfield months ago that he was making up a party for his yacht to go north that summer, and that the Dowager Lady Forcar and Mrs. Lawrence, Sir Julius's married sister, and her husband, Mr. James Lawrence, had promised to be of the party. "We can arrange to meet somewhere," said Mr. Ashton, and so the expedition was arranged.
When John Hanbury left Dr. Shaw's, he thought that now, all being over with Leigh, he was bound in common rectitude to disclose the source of the gold which Leigh had intended passing off as the result of his imaginary discovery in chemistry or alchemy. The simplest course would be to go to Scotland Yard and there tell all he knew. Against this course prudence suggested that perhaps the name and address given were imaginary, and that there was no such man or street. He was not anxious to pass through streets in which he was known, and he was glad of anything to do. How better could he employ an hour than by driving to London Road and trying to find out if any such man as Timmons existed? He did not like the whole thing, but he could not rest easy while he had the name of a man whom Leigh said dealt largely in the fruit of robberies and thefts. At all events, supposing the whole story told him by the dwarf was fiction, no harm could come of a visit to Tunbridge Street.
He jumped into a hansom and was rapidly driven to London Road, and alighted at the end of Tunbridge Street.
Yes, sure enough, there was the name and the place: "John Timmons, Marine Store Dealer." But how did one get in, supposing one wanted to get in? The place was all shut up, and he could see no door.
A man was busy with one of the many up-ended carts. He had the wheel off and was leisurely greasing the axletree.
"Has Mr. Timmons left this place, please?" he asked of the man.
"I think so. Ay, he has."
"Do you know how long?"
"A few days. Since Monday, I think. Anyway, the place hasn't been open since Monday, and I hear that he is gone since Saturday night."
"Have you any notion where he's gone?"
The man stopped greasing the wheel and looked up curiously. "Are you from the Yard too?"
"What yard?"
"Why Scotland Yard, of course."
"No, I am not. Have people been here from Scotland Yard?"
"Ay. And if you was in with Timmons and that crew, you'd better show a clean pair of heels. There's something wrong about a dwarf or a cripple that's missed down Chelsea way, burned up in a fire. Timmons and a cracksman was seen hanging about that place, and they do say that if they're catched they'll be hanging about somewhere else. So if you're in with that lot, you'd better clear out too. They say Timmons has got out of the country, but they'll ketch him by Atlantic cable, and hang him with British rope." The man laughed at his own wit, and resumed his work upon the axle. Hanbury thanked him and turned away. He had nothing to do here. The police had information already.
CHAPTER XLII
THE END
"Well," he said, "what is the matter? Oh, breakfast." He put down his newspaper. "I see," he added, "they have given this fellow Timmons five years, and serve him very right."
"John, you have forgotten something!" she said, stopping him on his way to the breakfast table and laying one of her delicate white hands on his shoulder.
"Eh? Forgotten something? Have I? What? I have a lot of important things on my mind," said he, looking down on the clear sweet, oval face, turned up to his.
"Whatever is on your mind, sir, you ought not to forget the duties of your lips. I have not had my good-morrow kiss, sir."
"I never had anything so important on my mind, or on my lips, Edy, as your kiss, dear." He took her in his arms and kissed her fondly.
"You grow better at compliments as the days go by."
"No dear, deeper in love."
"With such a commonplace kind of thing as a wife?"
"With the most un-commonplace sweetheart-wife in all the world."
"John, I am already beginning to feel quite a middle-aged wife, and my ring where it touches the guard is getting worn."
"That's a desperately serious thing-about the ring, I mean. Gold was too easily-worn a metal to marry you with, Edith. It should have been a plain band of adamant, and even that would not last long enough, dear."
"Are you practising a speech to win a constituency?"
"No. I am speaking out of my heart to keep what I have won."
"Do you know I envy you only for one thing?"
"And what is that?"
"All the love that you give me."
"But we are quits there, for I give all, you give all."
"But yours seems so much richer than mine."
"Does it, sweetheart? Then I am glad of that. For what I give is yours and you cannot help yourself but give it all back to me again."
"Oh, but what pains me is that I never seem to be able to give you any of mine. All you have got from me seems to be only your own going back and I long-oh, my darling, I do long-to show you that when all you gave me is given back to you I never could exhaust my own. Indeed, I could not, and keeping so much as I have is like a pain."
"Then what must I do to soothe my sweetheart's pain?"
"I do not know. I often think few people know what this love is."
"There is nothing worth calling love that is not such as ours. Love is more than content, more than joy, and not delusive with rapture. It is full and steady and unbroken, like the light of day."
"It is a pain, a pain, a pain! A secret pain. And do you know it is no less when you are away, and no greater when you are near? And it often seems to me that it is not exactly you as you are I love, but something that is beyond speech and thought, and the reason I want you is that you may hold my hand and love it too."
"My Sibyl! My Seer!"
"You and I are, as it were, waiting, and I should not wait if you were not with me."
"But I am with you, and always shall be. You are not afraid of my leaving you?"
"In the vulgar sense? Oh, no! Afraid of your going away and caring for some one else? Oh, no! That could not be."
"No, indeed. No, indeed."
"For I should call you back and show you my heart, and how could you leave me when you saw that there was nothing in all my heart but you? Your pity would not let you do that. You might take something else away, but you could not take away all that I had in my heart."
"You dreamer of holy dreams."
"It is by the firmness of the clasp of our hands we may know that we shall be together at the revelation. I think people coarsen their minds against love. I have heard that people think it is a sign of foolishness. But it can't be. Where, I think, the harm is that people harden their natures against it before it has time to become all-before it has time to spiritualize the soul. It seems to me that this love of one another that Christ taught is the beginning of being with God."
"Surely child, my child, my dear, you have come from some blessed place, you have come to us from some place that is better than this."
"No," she said softly. "No. There is no better place for me. I am where God placed me-in my husband's arms."
They had been married a couple of months, and it was June once more. Not a cloud had arisen between them for these two months, or during the months before. John Hanbury's mother said that Edith Grace had the same witchery in appearance as that village beauty of the days of George II., and that some quality of the blood which flowed in his veins made him succumb at once to her; for otherwise how could it be that he should almost immediately after parting from Dora Ashton fall helplessly in love with a girl so extraordinarily like Dora as Edith? How else could the fascination be accounted for?
Edith herself could give no reason except that things of the kind invariably arranged themselves independently of reason. All she knew was that at first she was disposed to worship him because of his illustrious origin, and gradually she lost this feeling and grew to love him for himself. And with that explanation and him she was content.
He, being a man, could not, of course, admit he did anything without not only a reason but an excellent reason too. He began by saying that she was even lovelier than Dora herself, which was a thing more astonishing in one at all like Dora that it counted for more than an even still more wonderful beauty of another type. Then he had been chiefly drawn towards the girl during her tardy convalescence because of her weakness and dependence, and the thousand little services he could render her, which kept him always watchful and attentive when near her, and devising little pleasures of fruit or flowers, or books, when not by her side.
"I do not believe," he would say to himself, "that I was ever in love with Dora. I do think we should never have got on well together, and I am certain when she and Whinfield are married, there will not be a happier couple in England excepting Edith and me. When I heard that Dora was to be one of the party on the homeward cruise of Whinfield's yacht, I knew all would be arranged before they saw England again. They are most admirably suited to one another.
"But she and I were not. I was always thinking of what I should like her to do and what I should not, and her political views had a serious interest for me, and I was perpetually trying to get her to adopt this, and modify that, and abandon the third. Nice way of making love, indeed!
"I never went forth to her with song and timbrel and careless joy. My mind ran more on propositions and principles. If at any time she said what I did not approve, I was ready to stop and argue the point. I did not know what love was then, and if I married Dora, I should have worn down her heart and turned into a selfish, crusty old curmudgeon in no time.
"But with Edith all was different. I never thought for a moment of what I should like her to do or say or think. I only thought of what the girl might like. I lost hold of myself, and did not care for searching in the mirror of the mind as to how I myself looked, or how she and I compared together. I did not pause to ask whether I was happy or not, so long as I saw she was happy. There was no refinement in the other feeling. It was sordid and exacting. With Edith a delicate subtlety was reached, undreamed-of before. An inspired accord arose between us. She leaned upon me, and I grew strong enough to support the burden of Atlas. I flung myself aside, so that I might not be impeded in my services to her. And I was welcomed in the spirit I came. She would take what I had to give, and she would like to take it. And so she accepted me, and all I had, and I had no care in my mind of myself or any of the gifts or graces which had been mine and now were hers. So I had enough time to think of her and no care to distract me from her."
That was his way of putting it to himself when he was in a very abstract and figurative humour. When he was not quite so abstract or figurative, he would say to himself, "It is sympathy, nothing more than sympathy. That is the Miracle Gold we should all try to make in the crucible of our hearts."
THE END
