A House to Let, et al by Charles Dickens (spicy books to read TXT) đ
- Author: Charles Dickens
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âQuite right,â I said.
âThe second daughter,â Trottle went on, âand Mr. Forleyâs favourite, set her fatherâs wishes and the opinions of the world at flat defiance, by running away with a man of low originâa mate of a merchant-vessel, named Kirkland. Mr. Forley not only never forgave that marriage, but vowed that he would visit the scandal of it heavily in the future on husband and wife. Both escaped his vengeance, whatever he meant it to be. The husband was drowned on his first voyage after his marriage, and the wife died in child-bed. Right again, I believe, maâam?â
âAgain quite right.â
âHaving got the family matter all right, we will now go back, maâam, to me and my doings. Last Monday, I asked you for leave of absence for two days; I employed the time in clearing up the matter of Benjaminâs face. Last Saturday I was out of the way when you wanted me. I played truant, maâam, on that occasion, in company with a friend of mine, who is managing clerk in a lawyerâs office; and we both spent the morning at Doctorsâ Commons, over the last will and testament of Mr. Forleyâs father. Leaving the will-business for a moment, please to follow me first, if you have no objection, into the ugly subject of Benjaminâs face. About six or seven years ago (thanks to your kindness) I had a weekâs holiday with some friends of mine who live in the town of Pendlebury. One of those friends (the only one now left in the place) kept a chemistâs shop, and in that shop I was made acquainted with one of the two doctors in the town, named Barsham. This Barsham was a first-rate surgeon, and might have got to the top of his profession, if he had not been a first-rate blackguard. As it was, he both drank and gambled; nobody would have anything to do with him in Pendlebury; and, at the time when I was made known to him in the chemistâs shop, the other doctor, Mr. Dix, who was not to be compared with him for surgical skill, but who was a respectable man, had got all the practice; and Barsham and his old mother were living together in such a condition of utter poverty, that it was a marvel to everybody how they kept out of the parish workhouse.â
âBenjamin and Benjaminâs mother!â
âExactly, maâam. Last Thursday morning (thanks to your kindness, again) I went to Pendlebury to my friend the chemist, to ask a few questions about Barsham and his mother. I was told that they had both left the town about five years since. When I inquired into the circumstances, some strange particulars came out in the course of the chemistâs answer. You know I have no doubt, maâam, that poor Mrs. Kirkland was confined while her husband was at sea, in lodgings at a village called Flatfield, and that she died and was buried there. But what you may not know is, that Flatfield is only three miles from Pendlebury; that the doctor who attended on Mrs. Kirkland was Barsham; that the nurse who took care of her was Barshamâs mother; and that the person who called them both in, was Mr. Forley. Whether his daughter wrote to him, or whether he heard of it in some other way, I donât know; but he was with her (though he had sworn never to see her again when she married) a month or more before her confinement, and was backwards and forwards a good deal between Flatfield and Pendlebury. How he managed matters with the Barshams cannot at present be discovered; but it is a fact that he contrived to keep the drunken doctor sober, to everybodyâs amazement. It is a fact that Barsham went to the poor woman with all his wits about him. It is a fact that he and his mother came back from Flatfield after Mrs. Kirklandâs death, packed up what few things they had, and left the town mysteriously by night. And, lastly, it is also a fact that the other doctor, Mr. Dix, was not called in to help, till a week after the birth AND BURIAL of the child, when the mother was sinking from exhaustionâexhaustion (to give the vagabond, Barsham, his due) not produced, in Mr. Dixâs opinion, by improper medical treatment, but by the bodily weakness of the poor woman herselfââ
âBurial of the child?â I interrupted, trembling all over. âTrottle! you spoke that word âburialâ in a very strange wayâyou are fixing your eyes on me now with a very strange lookââ
Trottle leaned over close to me, and pointed through the window to the empty house.
âThe childâs death is registered, at Pendlebury,â he said, âon Barshamâs certificate, under the head of Male Infant, StillBorn. The childâs coffin lies in the motherâs grave, in Flatfield churchyard. The child himselfâas surely as I live and breathe, is living and breathing nowâa castaway and a prisoner in that villainous house!â
I sank back in my chair.
âItâs guess-work, so far, but it is borne in on my mind, for all that, as truth. Rouse yourself, maâam, and think a little. The last I hear of Barsham, he is attending Mr. Forleyâs disobedient daughter. The next I see of Barsham, he is in Mr. Forleyâs house, trusted with a secret. He and his mother leave Pendlebury suddenly and suspiciously five years back; and he and his mother have got a child of five years old, hidden away in the house. Wait! please to waitâI have not done yet. The will left by Mr. Forleyâs father, strengthens the suspicion. The friend I took with me to Doctorsâ Commons, made himself master of the contents of that will; and when he had done so, I put these two questions to him. âCan Mr. Forley leave his money at his own discretion to anybody he pleases?â âNo,â my friend says, âhis father has left him with only a life interest in it.â âSuppose one of Mr. Forleyâs married daughters has a girl, and the other a boy, how would the money go?â âIt would all go,â my friend says, âto the boy, and it would be charged with the payment of a certain annual income to his female cousin. After her death, it would go back to the male descendant, and to his heirs.â Consider that, maâam! The child of the daughter whom Mr. Forley hates, whose husband has been snatched away from his vengeance by death, takes his whole property in defiance of him; and the child of the daughter whom he loves, is left a pensioner on her low-born boy-cousin for life! There was goodâtoo good reasonâwhy that child of Mrs. Kirklandâs should be registered stillborn. And if, as I believe, the register is founded on a false certificate, there is better, still better reason, why the existence of the child should be hidden, and all trace of his parentage blotted out, in the garret of that empty house.â
He stopped, and pointed for the second time to the dim, dust-covered garret-windows opposite. As he did so, I was startledâa very slight matter sufficed to frighten me nowâby a knock at the door of the room in which we were sitting.
My maid came in, with a letter in her hand. I took it from her. The mourning card, which was all the envelope enclosed, dropped from my hands.
George Forley was no more. He had departed this life three days since, on the evening of Friday.
âDid our last chance of discovering the truth,â I asked, ârest with HIM? Has it died with HIS death?â
âCourage, maâam! I think not. Our chance rests on our power to make Barsham and his mother confess; and Mr. Forleyâs death, by leaving them helpless, seems to put that power into our hands. With your permission, I will not wait till dusk to-day, as I at first intended, but will make sure of those two people at once. With a policeman in plain clothes to watch the house, in case they try to leave it; with this card to vouch for the fact of Mr. Forleyâs death; and with a bold acknowledgment on my part of having got possession of their secret, and of being ready to use it against them in case of need, I think there is little doubt of bringing Barsham and his mother to terms. In case I find it impossible to get back here before dusk, please to sit near the window, maâam, and watch the house, a little before they light the street-lamps. If you see the front-door open and close again, will you be good enough to put on your bonnet, and come across to me immediately? Mr. Forleyâs death may, or may not, prevent his messenger from coming as arranged. But, if the person does come, it is of importance that you, as a relative of Mr. Forleyâs should be present to see him, and to have that proper influence over him which I cannot pretend to exercise.â
The only words I could say to Trottle as he opened the door and left me, were words charging him to take care that no harm happened to the poor forlorn little boy.
Left alone, I drew my chair to the window; and looked out with a beating heart at the guilty house. I waited and waited through what appeared to me to be an endless time, until I heard the wheels of a cab stop at the end of the street. I looked in that direction, and saw Trottle get out of the cab alone, walk up to the house, and knock at the door. He was let in by Barshamâs mother. A minute or two later, a decently-dressed man sauntered past the house, looked up at it for a moment, and sauntered on to the corner of the street close by. Here he leant against the post, and lighted a cigar, and stopped there smoking in an idle way, but keeping his face always turned in the direction of the house-door.
I waited and waited still. I waited and waited, with my eyes riveted to the door of the house. At last I thought I saw it open in the dusk, and then felt sure I heard it shut again softly. Though I tried hard to compose myself, I trembled so that I was obliged to call for Peggy to help me on with my bonnet and cloak, and was forced to take her arm to lean on, in crossing the street.
Trottle opened the door to us, before we could knock. Peggy went back, and I went in. He had a lighted candle in his hand.
âIt has happened, maâam, as I thought it would,â he whispered, leading me into the bare, comfortless, empty parlour. âBarsham and his mother have consulted their own interests, and have come to terms. My guess-work is guess-work no longer. It is
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