CHAPTER XVI

FORGERY

OUR HUMBLE ACQUAINTANCES--THE SCRATCH OF A PEN--A SCOUT’S INFORMATION--THE MAJOR’S MEDITATIONS, NOT FANCY-FREE

In the meantime, whilst the higher characters of our drama are fluttering their gaudy hour in the bright sunshine of fashionable life, whilst the General and Blanche and Mary, and Mount Helicon and D’Orville and Lacquers, and all of that class are driving and dining, and dressing and flirting, and otherwise improving their time, grim Want is eating into the very existence of some amongst our humbler friends, and Vice, too often the handmaid of Penury, is shedding her poison even on the scanty morsel they wrest from the very jaws of danger and detection.

Tom Blacke, as we have already seen, has overleapt the narrow boundary which separates dissipation from crime; and poor Gingham knows too well that opportunity alone is wanting to confer on him a notoriety infamous as that which is boasted of by his more daring associates. He is out now at all hours, chiefly, however, during the night, and obtains supplies of money for which she cannot account, and about which she has been taught it is better not to question him. He drinks, too, with more circumspection than was his wont, and has dreadful fits of despondency, during which he trembles like a child, and from which nothing seems to arouse him save the prattle of his infant. He is very diligent, too, in making inquiries as to the sailing of divers ships for the United States; and, being a sharp fellow, has acquainted himself thoroughly with the geography of that country, and the amount of capital requisite to enable a man to set up for himself under the star-spangled banner. He has already hinted to his wife that if he could but get hold of a little money he should certainly emigrate; and by dint of talking the matter over, Gingham, although she has a dreadful horror of the sea, contracted at St. Swithin’s, is not entirely unfavourable to the plan. Poor woman! she has not much to regret in leaving England. Let us take a peep at their establishment in the Mews, as they sit by the light of a solitary tallow candle, the mother stitching as usual, though her eyes often fill with tears, whilst ever and anon she glances cautiously towards the cradle, to see if the child is asleep, and listening to its heavy, regular breathing, applies herself to the needle more diligently than before. This is the hour at which Tom usually goes out; but to-night he shows no signs of departure, sitting moodily with his chair resting against the wall, and his eyes fixed on vacancy. At length he rouses himself with an effort, and bids Rachel make him some tea.

“I’m glad you’re not going out to-night, Tom,” says his wife; “I feel poorly, somehow, and its lonesome when you’re away for long.”

“I’d never go out o’ nights, lass,” replies Tom--“never, if I wasn’t drove to it. But what’s a man to do?--this isn’t a country for a poor man to live in--there’s no liberty here. Ah, Rachel, you’re made for something better than this; stitching away day after day, and not a gown or a bonnet fit to put on. You’re losing your looks too--you that used to be so genteel every way.” Mrs. Blacke smiles through her tears; he has not spoken to her so kindly for many a long day. “There’s a country we might go to,” he adds, looking sideways at her, to watch the effect of his arguments, “where a man as is a man, and knows his right hand from his left, needn’t want a good house to cover him, nor good clothes to his back. We’d be there in six weeks at the farthest--what’s that?--why, it’s nothing; and the child all the better for the sea air. There’s a ship to start next Thursday, first class, and all regular. In two months from this day we might be in America; and they don’t _keep_ a man down there because he is down. Rachel, I’d like to see you dressed as you used to be; I’d like to bring up the little one to be as good as its parents, at least. I’d like to be there now; why, the dollars come in by handfuls, and silk’s as cheap as calico.”

How could woman resist such an El Dorado? How could such an inducement fail to have its due weight? His wife feels that she could start forthwith, but there is one insuperable difficulty, and she rejoins--

“Ah, that’s all very well, Tom, and we might get our heads above water over there, it’s likely enough. But how are we to get to America?--people can’t travel nor do anything else without money; and where is it to come from?”

“_You know_,” replied Tom, with a meaning smile on his pale, anxious face; and while he speaks the clock of a neighbouring church strikes ten.

“Any way but _that_, Tom,” says his wife, with a shudder. “I’d do anything, and bear anything for you; but not _that_, Tom--not _that_, as you’ve a soul to be saved!”

“It must be that way, or no way at all, missus,” Tom hisses between his teeth, keeping down his anger and a rising oath with a strong effort. “I’ve done all _I_ can; it’s time for _you_ to take your share. Why, look ye here, Rachel; a hundred pound’s a vast of money--a hundred pounds is five hundred dollars. Oh, I’m not going blindly to work, you may depend. If we could begin life with half that, over the water, it would be the making of us. I’d leave off drinking--so help me heaven, I would!--take the pledge, and work like a new one. You’d have a house of your own, Rachel, instead of such a dog-hole as this; and I’d like to see one of them that would take the shine out of my wife on Sundays, when she was tidied up and dressed. Then we’d put the little one to school, when she’s old enough, and we’d keep ourselves respectable, and attend to business, and be a sight happier than we’ve ever been in this miserable country. And all just for the scratch of a pen; Rachel, d’ye think I’d refuse _you_ a trifle like that, if you was to ask me?”

“O Tom, I never could do it,” says his wife; “good never would come of such a sin as that.”

“Well, Rachel,” rejoins her husband, “there’s some men would make ye. Well, you needn’t draw up so; I’m not going to come it so strong as all that. Let’s talk it over peaceably, any way. And first, where’s the harm? There’s Master Charlie, if ever he comes back from the wars, isn’t he to marry Miss Blanche? And so it’s six to one, and half-a-dozen to the other. And what’s a hundred pounds out of all their thousands? Besides, didn’t the old lady mean to leave you as much as that? and didn’t you deserve it? And if she had lived, wouldn’t she have signed her own name; and where’s the harm of your doing it for her? You can write like your old mistress, Rachel,” adds the tempter, with a ghastly smile; “there’s pen and ink yonder on the mantelpiece. Come!” Rachel wavers; but education and good principles are still too strong within her, and she assumes an air of resolution she does not feel, as she takes up her work, and replies--

“Never, Tom, never!--not if you was to go down upon your bended knees. O Tom, Tom! don’t ask me, and don’t look at me so, Tom. I’ve been a good wife to you; don’t ask me to do such a thing, Tom; don’t.”

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.

“Want yer horse held, Major?” said he, leaning his huge, dirty hand on the white charger’s mane. “Haven’t seen your honour since we won so cleverly at Hampton--no offence, Major!”

“None whatever, my good fellow,” said the Major, who, by the way, was never in a hurry, though few men loved going _fast_ better; “none whatever; but I’m busy now, I’ve no time to stop. Good-day to you.”

“Well, but, Major, see,” pleaded Mr. Fibbes, still smoothing the white horse’s mane, “I’ve got something at my place you _would_ like to look at--she’s a _real_ beauty, she is--I refused five sovereigns for her this blessed mornin’; for I said, says I, no, says I, not till the Major has seen her, ’cause she _is_ a rare one--not that you care for such in a general way, Major, but if once you clapped eyes on ‘Jessie,’ you’d never rest till you got her down at the barracks. I never see such a one.”

“Such a what?” inquired D’Orville, gradually waxing curious about such manifold perfections.

“Why, such an out-an’-outer,” retorted Mr. Fibbes, half angrily; “none of your _brindles_--I can’t abide a brindle--they may be good, but they look so _wulgar_. No, no, Jessie’s none of your brindles.”

“Well, but _what_ is she, my good fellow?” said the Major; “I can’t stay here all day.”

“_Bul_,” replied Mr. Fibbes, throwing into the monosyllable an expression of mingled anger and contempt, which, having given the Major sufficient time to digest, he followed up by the real topic on which he was anxious to enlarge. “No offence, Major,” he repeated, “but I’ve got something else to say--you’ll excuse me, sir--but you’ve stood a friend to me, and I won’t see you put upon. Major, there’s a screw loose here--it’s not _on the square_, you understand.”

“What do you mean?” said the Major, amused in spite of himself, at the ungainly nods and winks with which Mr. Fibbes eked out his mysterious communication.

“Well, Major,” replied his informant, “what I mean is this here. Some men would hold out in my place, and I’ve seen the day when my information was worth as much as my neighbours’; but when I’ve to do with a real gent, why, I trusts to him, and he gives _what he pleases_. Now, Major, look at that there house--it’s a good house up-stairs and down, fixtures and furniture all complete, I make no doubt--Major, there’s _a man of straw_ in that house.” Mr. Fibbes paused, having delivered himself of this oracular piece of information; but, finding his listener less interested in the discovery of the artificial stranger than he had reason to expect, he proceeded in his own way to clear up his metaphor. “What I says is this--a bargain’s a bargain; now the young woman as owns that house has got _the boot on the other leg_--my information’s _good_, Major, you may depend on it; there’s another horse in the stable, sir--there’s a young gent as owns all the property they keep such a talk about; I won’t ask ye to believe my naked word, Major” (such a request, indeed, would have been superfluous), “but what should you say if I was to tell you--I’ve spoke to the party as has _seen the will_?”

“Why, I should say that if you have any information that is really well-authenticated, I’ll pay you fairly for it, as I always have done,” replied D’Orville, unmoved as usual, though in his innermost heart a tide of doubts and hopes and fears was swelling up, in strange tumultuous confusion.

“Well, Major,” whispered his informant, “as far as I can learn, for I ain’t no scholar, you know--but _as_ far as I can learn, there’s been a will found, and by that will the young lady as owns this here house don’t own it by rights, and can’t keep it much longer. There’s a old gentleman as lives here, rayther a crusty old gentleman, so my mate tells _me_, and he knows _nothing_ good or bad; but it stands just as I’ve said, you may depend; and instead of Miss Kettering, if that’s her name, being such a grand lady, why she’s no better off than I am, and that’s _where_ it is. My mate wouldn’t deceive _me_ no more than I’m deceivin’ you. Thank ye, Major, you always was a real gentleman; thank you, sir, and good-day to you. You won’t come up and take a look at Jessie?” So saying, Mr. Fibbes put his dirty hand, not quite empty, however, into his pocket, and with a snatch at his rough hat, and an awkward obeisance, took his departure, his linen jacket and ankle-boots fading gradually in the direction of the nearest public-house, whither he proceeded incontinently to “wet his luck,” after the manner of his kind.

D’Orville laid the rein on his favourite’s neck, and paced along at a slow, thoughtful walk, the white horse wondering, doubtless, at his master’s unusual fit of equestrian meditation. And what were the suitor’s feelings as he pondered over the news he had just received, the downfall of his golden castles in the air, the blow which would surely fall heavy on that bright, happy girl, whom he had been endeavouring to attach to himself day by day? Did he mourn over his withered hopes of wealth and ease? did he regret the melting of the vision, and pine for the domestic future, now impossible, which he had contemplated so often of late? or did he chivalrously resolve to give his hand to a penniless bride where he had been wooing a wealthy heiress, and to love her even more in her misfortunes than he had admired her in her prosperity? Alas! far from it. Some fifteen years ago, indeed, young Gaston D’Orville would have sacrificed his all to a woman, almost to any woman, and been well pleased to throw his heart into the bargain; but fifteen years of the world have more effect on the inner than the outward man, and the boy of five-and-twenty thinks that a glory and a romance which the man who is getting on for forty deems a folly and a bore. The Major was not prepared to give up _everything_, at least for _Blanche_, and his first sensations were those of relief, almost of satisfaction, as he thought he was again free--for of course this arrangement couldn’t go on; it would be madness to talk of it now: no, he would make his bow while it was yet time: how lucky he had never positively committed himself: nobody could say _he_ had behaved ill. Of course he would take proper measures to ascertain the truth of that rascal’s report; and if it had foundation, why, he was once again at liberty. He had his sword and his debts, but India was open to him, as it had been before, and a vision stole over him (the hardened man of the world could scarce repress a smile at his own folly)--a vision stole over him of military distinction, active service, a return to England--and Mary Delaval. So the Major drew his rein through his fingers, pressed his good horse’s sides, and cantered off, but did not, _that_ afternoon, pay his usual visit in Grosvenor Square.