Miss Grantley's Girls Part 5

Mr. Jaggers put on his coat and hat, and bade his employer good-night, and he had no sooner left the room than Mrs. Harris came in to fetch the little one, for, as she said, "it was already past his bedtime."

Richard Dryce fell into his chair, and was as near having a fit as ever he had been in his life.

"Good heaven! Mrs. Harris--you don't mean to say you haven't got the boy. He's not here; run and see whether he has gone into Betsy's room; she runs away with him sometimes."

"Mamma!" said a sleepy little voice under the sofa, and Mr. Dryce and the nurse were both on their knees in a moment.

"The precious! why, if he hasn't been asleep all the time!" said Mr.

Dryce, kissing the warm rosy cheek; "take him off to bed directly, and bring him down to breakfast in the morning."

Mrs. Harris only just escaped meeting Jaggers on the stairs, up which he was coming, followed by Betty with a flaring tallow candle, and looking carefully on every stair. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, with a scared look, as he opened the room door, "but have you seen my keys anywhere? I must have dropped them somewhere in the room, I think."

"No," replied Mr. Dryce, "I've seen nothing--most extraordinary!" he said to himself, thinking of the child and forgetting Jaggers.

"It is, sir, very extraordinary," said the clerk, groping on the floor and patting the carpet with his hands. "I know I had them when I came up here, and I can't open my desk where I keep my money."

"Oh! never mind, Jaggers," said Mr. Dryce sleepily. "Here are a couple of sovereigns. If we find the keys, you can have them to-morrow; and if not, we will have a new lock. Come, good night! I'll come down and bolt the office door after you."

Jaggers entreated his employer not to take so much trouble, and delayed so long that the old gentleman began to grow a little impatient. At last he got rid of him by giving him permission to come early on the following morning, when, if his keys were not discovered by the servant in sweeping, he might pick the lock.

Mr. Dryce was in a brown study, sitting looking at the fire, and sipping a gla.s.s of hot negus, when Mrs. Harris knocked at the door.

"Excuse me, sir, but have you missed your keys?"

"Hang the keys!" said Mr. Dryce absently. "I beg your pardon, Mrs.

Harris; sit down a moment. I was thinking what I could buy our little fellow for a present."

"But these keys, sir? I took them out of the bosom of baby's frock when I undressed him. How he got them I can't tell."

Mr. Dryce took the keys in his hand and looked at them mechanically; then he started and singled out one particular key, held it nearer the light, at the same time comparing it with one of a bunch which he took from his own pocket. He had turned stern and pale.

"I want you to come downstairs with me, Mrs. Harris," he said: "these are the keys Mr. Jaggers has lost, and I'm afraid I shall want a policeman."

First the door of the great iron safe let into the wall. Mr. Dryce knew that it was a cunningly-made lock, and thought that no key but his would open it. It opened easily with Jaggers's key, however; and from the lower drawer was missing all the property which in those days were often kept in such places--bills, gold, and notes to the value of four thousand five hundred pounds.

With feverish haste the old man unlocked the desk and the bra.s.s-bound box within it. The latter contained all the missing property, evidently placed there for immediate removal. In the desk were found bills, letters, and correspondence, a glance at which disclosed a long system of fraud and peculation. Above all, amongst the loose papers were the letters that Robert sent to his father, and those which had been written by himself in repentance of the harsh parting which he had brought about with his lost son.

While they were both looking with mute astonishment at these evidences of Jaggers's villany, there came a low knocking at the door, and two men entered, one of them a broad, brown-bearded man in a half seafaring dress, the other a policeman.

"A clerk of yours, named Jaggers," said the latter. "I want to know whether he has robbed you, or if you have reason to suspect him. This party has given him in custody on another charge."

There was a loud scream, and Mrs. Harris fell into the arms of the stranger, who had taken her aside to whisper to her.

"She is my wife," said he to Mr. Dryce. "I am the person to whom you wrote, and I have brought the remittance with me from Australia."

They all went upstairs together, except the policeman, whose question was answered by a recital of the events of the night, and the present of a sovereign.

"Bring down the boy, and let me look at his dear little face," said old Dryce, when they were sitting round the fire.

The child was brought down tenderly, and still asleep.

"G.o.d bless him!" said the bearded stranger. "He's not like either of us, Aggy."

"Like either of you?" said Mr. Dryce, surprised. "How should he be like your husband, Mrs. Harris?"

"Don't you know me, sir," said the stranger, taking Mr. Dryce's hand and sitting in the firelight. "My name is Robert Dryce, and this is my child, whose mother left it to the mercy of Heaven, and found that it had reached its natural home. Forgive us, sir, for our child's sake."

Old Dryce was a shrewd man, but it took an hour to make him understand it all; events had come about so strangely.

"Well," said Robert at last, "I'm glad you were in time to save the money."

"Confound the money!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old man; "at least, too much of it," he added, correcting himself. "This baby's hand has unlocked more treasures for me than all the Bank of England could count on a summer's day."

"Oh, I shouldn't like to live in London always," said Kate Bell, whose father was one of the large mill-owners at Barton. "I've been up twice with papa, you know; but we lived in a great square where we could hear the noise of the cabs all night, and of the carts and wagons as soon as daylight came. And then there are such crowds of people in the streets; and if you walk you are pushed about so, and if you ride you can't see anything except from an open carriage. Except the theatre, where I went twice, and the Zoological Gardens and the Crystal Palace, and Hyde Park, where everybody goes before dinner, there's nothing to care for."

"Nothing to care for!" exclaimed Annie Bowers; "why, the streets and the old historical buildings--Westminster Abbey, the Picture Galleries, the great solemn churches, with monuments of poets and warriors, and the constant life and movement and change, must be grand, if one only could stay long enough to get over the feeling that you are only sight-seeing.

To be a part of it all, and to be able to go about quietly and live in it, looking and thinking and making one's own pictures and one's own romances of it, would be delightful for six months in the year. I often think it would be grand to spend a summer day in the middle of one of the bridges--Westminster or London Bridge--and watch the boats on the river and the tide of people coming and going, and see the clouds and the suns.h.i.+ne change the colour of the stream and the outlines of the great buildings, and then to go back just at dark and see the same scene by moonlight, with everything transformed and solemn, and listen to the rush of the tide and watch the lights twinkling on wharves and on board boats and barges, and the moon on the great lovely buildings of Westminster, and the dome of St. Paul's in the distance: that is what I should like to do."

"I used to think very much as you do, Annie, when I was last in London,"

said Miss Grantley; "but then I had very little opportunity of going to theatres or other amus.e.m.e.nts, for I had no one to take me except in a family party, and had to make the most of the pleasure that is to be found in the wonderful aspects of the great city itself. Of course it is only possible for a poor unprotected creature to see a part of the greatest capital in the world; and so when I went to explore the bridges or any other neighbourhood after dusk I took an escort, and one who knew London so well that he was able to say where I ought and where I ought not to go."

"A policeman, was it, Miss Grantley?" said Kate Bell.

"Oh, dear! no. Policemen have no time to go out as escorts to young or middle-aged ladies," said our governess laughing. "My cavalier was a boy who worked at a printing-office. His mother was a very respectable woman who lived in a tidy house in a very quiet street where she let two furnished rooms, and I was her tenant while I was studying to pa.s.s two examinations. I had been staying with old friends of my dear father, for they did not desert me altogether though I was only a governess; indeed, they gave me too large a share of the amus.e.m.e.nts and sight-seeing which take up so much time, so that I was obliged to bid them good-bye for a good while, and restrict my visits to Sundays or one evening a week. I think my landlady, who was a widow, had been their cook; but at all events she was a good motherly woman, and her boy of fourteen was always ready for an excursion when he came home from work.

"At first I was obliged to repress his sense of being a sort of champion; and once when a bigger and very dirty boy, who had a dog in a string, splashed my dress with mud and nearly threw me down, I had to go home again because my young friend gave him battle, and after fighting for several minutes came out of the fray with his collar so rumpled, his best cap so crushed, and his face so smirched that it was a dearly-bought victory. But he was an excellent boy and an apt pupil, for I used to give him easy lessons in French and mathematics sometimes, so that when I left he was able to attend an advanced cla.s.s at an evening college in the city. He had the sentiment of a gentleman too, though he was a printer's boy and was always called Bob. He never talked to me unless I spoke to him first or he had to give me some direction or tell me which way we were going; and in the great thoroughfares he would walk either just in front or at a little distance, so that no one would have known we were companions. I used to remonstrate with him sometimes, for it made me feel that I was selfish and discourteous to have him to guide or follow me without acknowledgment; but he always replied that people couldn't talk in the noise of the streets, and that what I came out for was 'to see London or to look at shop-windows, or to see how places looked after dark, or to get a walk and some fresh air on London or Blackfriars' Bridge, and to be able to fancy all manner of things, and yet to have somebody that knew all about London to keep me from being run over or pick-pocketed or interfered with by anybody.'

"Never had lady a more devoted squire; and I really believe he used to read up the history and anecdotes of some of the churches and public buildings, that he might be able to have something to say when I insisted on talking to him as we strolled quietly along in the less-crowded thoroughfares--especially those around St. Paul's and the Royal Exchange, where the city is nearly deserted after the hours of business."

"Well, Miss Grantley, and is it about this very agreeable boy that you are going to tell us a story?" asked Sarah Jorring, who was often rather abrupt and impertinent.

For a moment a shaft of light seemed to dart from those expressive eyes upon the questioner, but the instantaneous gleam of surprise and annoyance pa.s.sed into a smile.

"I would never willingly forget or be ashamed to speak of true service and real courtesy," she said. "I should--we most of us would--feel some satisfaction in acknowledging the politeness shown to us by a duke or an earl, even though to be scrupulously courteous should be regarded as duties and customs belonging to their station. To have received true and delicate consideration from a printer's boy is therefore more remarkable, and to speak of it with grateful recollection is only just.

My own want of courtesy, however, led me to forget that we seldom feel much enthusiasm about the attentions that are bestowed on other people."

We were all silent for a moment, for there was a rebuke even in the gentle tone in which the words were uttered; but presently Annie Bowers said:

"Did you ever know an actor, Miss Grantley?"

"Well, I cannot say I never met an actor," replied our governess; "and yet it was not in London, but at the village near which I lived when I was at home with my dear father, whose house and grounds were not far off, and whose pew in the church had belonged to his family from time immemorial."

"Oh! do let us hear something about that, then," we said.

"Well," replied our governess, "that shall be the story for to-morrow evening--the story of a stranger from London who visited our village."

[Ill.u.s.tration]