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What Will He Do With It, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 4 - Chapter 2 |
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_ BOOK IV CHAPTER II The Mayor is so protected that he cannot help himself. A commotion without,--a kind of howl, a kind of hoot. Mr. Williams, the warehousemen, the tanners, Mike Callaghan, share between them the howl and the hoot. The Mayor started: is it possible! His door is burst open, and, scattering all who sought to hold him back,--scattering them to the right and left from his massive torso in rushed the man who had taken in the Mayor,--the fellow with one eye, and with that fellow, shaggy and travel-soiled, the other dog! "What have you done with the charge I intrusted to you? My child! my child! where is she?" Waife's face was wild with the agony of his emotions, and his voice was so sharply terrible that it went like a knife into the heart of the men, who, thrust aside for the moment, now followed him, fearful, into the room. "Mr.--Mr. Chapman, sir," faltered the Mayor, striving hard to recover dignity and self-possession, "I am astonished at your--your--" "Audacity!" interposed Mr. Williams. "My child! my Sophy! my child! answer me, man!" "Sir," said the Mayor, drawing himself up, "have you not got the note which I left at my bailiff's cottage in case you called there?" "Your note! this thing!" said Waife, striking a crumpled paper with his hand, and running his eye over its contents. "You have rendered up, you say, the child to her lawful protector? Gracious heavens! did I trust her to you, or not?" "Leave the room all of you," said the Mayor, with a sudden return of his usual calm vigour. "You go,--you, sirs; what the deuce do you do here?" growled Williams to the meaner throng. "Out! I stay, never fear, men, I'll take care of him!" The bystanders surlily slunk off: but none returned to their work; they stood within reach of call by the shut door. Williams tucked up his coat-sleeves, clenched his fists, hung his head doggedly on one side, and looked altogether so pugnacious and minatory that Sir Isaac, who, though in a state of great excitement, had hitherto retained self-control, peered at him under his curls, stiffened his back, showed his teeth, and growled formidably. "My good Williams, leave us," said the Mayor; "I would be alone with this person." "Alone,--you! out of the question. Now you have been once taken in, and you own it,--it is my duty to protect you henceforth; and I will to the end of my days." The Mayor sighed heavily. "Well, Williams, well!--take a chair, and be quiet. Now, Mr. Chapman, so to call you still; you have deceived me." "I? how?" The Mayor was puzzled. "Deceived me," he said at last, "in my knowledge of human nature. I thought you an honest man, sir. And you are--but no matter." WAIFE (impatiently).--"My child! my child! you have given her up to--to--" MAYOR.--"Her own father, sir." WAIFE (echoing the words as he staggers back).--"I thought so! I thought it!" MAYOR.--"In so doing I obeyed the law: he had legal power to enforce his demand." The Mayor's voice was almost apologetic in its tone; for he was affected by Waife's anguish, and not able to silence a pang of remorse. After all, he had been trusted; and he had, excusably perhaps, necessarily perhaps, but still he had failed to fulfil the trust. "But," added the Mayor, as if reassuring himself, "but I refused at first to give her up even to her own father; at first insisted upon waiting till your return; and it was only when I was informed what you yourself were that my scruples gave Way." Waife remained long silent, breathing very hard, passing his hand several times over his forehead; at last he said more quietly than he had yet spoken, "Will you tell me where they have gone?" "I do not know; and, if I did know, I would not tell you! Are they not right when they say that that innocent child should not be tempted away by--by--a--in short by you, sir?" "They said! Her father--said that!--he said that!--Did he--did he say it? Had he the heart?" MAYOR.--"No, I don't think he said it. Eh, Mr. Williams? He spoke little to me!" MR. WILLIAMS.--"Of course he would not expose that person. But the woman,--the lady, I mean." WAIFE.--"Woman! Ah, yes. The bailiff's wife said there was a woman. What woman? What's her name?" MAYOR.--"Really you must excuse me. I can say no more. I have consented to see you thus, because whatever you might have been, or may be, still it was due to myself to explain how I came to give up the child; and, besides, you left money with me, and that, at least, I can give to your own hand." The Mayor turned to his desk, unlocked it, and drew forth the bag which Waife had sent to him. As he extended it towards the Comedian, his hand trembled, and his cheek flushed. For Waife's one bright eye had in it such depth of reproach, that again the Mayor's conscience was sorely troubled; and he would have given ten times the contents of that bag to have been alone with the vagrant, and to have said the soothing things he did not dare to say before Williams, who sat there mute and grim, guarding him from being once more "taken in." "If you had confided in me at first, Mr. Chapman," he said, pathetically, "or even if now, I could aid you in an honest way of life!" "Aid him--now!" said Williams, with a snort. "At it again! you're not a man: you're an angel!" "But if he is penitent, Williams." "So! so! so!" murmured Waife. "Thank Heaven it was not he who spoke against me: it was but a strange woman. Oh!" he suddenly broke off with a groan. "Oh--but that strange woman,--who, what can she be? and Sophy with her and him. Distraction! Yes, yes, I take the money. I shall want it all. Sir Isaac, pick up that bag. Gentlemen, good day to you!" He bowed; such a failure that bow! Nothing ducal in it! bowed and turned towards the door; then, when he gained the threshold, as if some meeker, holier thought restored to him dignity of bearing, his form rose, though his face softened, and stretching his right hand towards the Mayor, he said, "You did but as all perhaps would have done on the evidence before you. You meant to be kind to her." "If you knew all, how you would repent! I do not blame,--I forgive you." He was gone: the Mayor stood transfixed. Even Williams felt a cold comfortless thrill. "He does not look like it," said the foreman. "Cheer up, sir, no wonder you were taken in: who would not have been?" "Hark! that hoot again. Go, Williams, don't let the men insult him. Go, do,--I shall be grateful." But before Williams got to the door, the cripple and his dog had vanished; vanished down a dark narrow alley on the opposite side of the street. The rude workmen had followed him to the mouth of the alley, mocking him. Of the exact charge against the Comedian's good name they were not informed; that knowledge was confined to the Mayor and Mr. Williams. But the latter had dropped such harsh expressions, that bad as the charge might really be, all in Mr. Hartopp's employment probably deemed it worse, if possible, than it really was. And wretch indeed must be the man by whom the Mayor had been confessedly taken in, and whom the Mayor had indignantly given up to the reproaches of his own conscience. But the cripple was now out of sight, lost amidst those labyrinths of squalid homes which, in great towns, are thrust beyond view, branching off abruptly behind High Streets and Market Places, so that strangers passing only along the broad thoroughfares, with glittering shops and gaslit causeways, exclaim, "Ah here do the poor live?" _ |
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