The curate bent his head once more, as they stood facing the street, and said, in low, impressive tones, "I do believe you;" but he took no heed to a light, stealthy pace in the alley behind.

"What shall I do, sir?" cried Agnes eagerly.

"Take the child away at once," replied Mr Sterne, "and leave this life.

But will you?"

"If the gates of heaven were opened, sir, and One said, `Come in, poor sinner, and rest,' should I go?"

The stealthy step came nearer, but was unnoticed.

"Now tell me your name, and how came the intimacy of which I complain,"

said Mr Sterne.

"I--I knew the family; I knew Lucy--Miss Grey--before her father--and-- pray, pray ask me no more," gasped Agnes appealingly. "I will do all you wish, sir. Help me to get my child, and I will go anywhere you may tell me; but don't ask me that, sir."

"Nay," said Mr Sterne, with beating heart, for he felt that her reply would drive away his last doubt, "tell me now; you may trust me."

"Yes, yes," sobbed Agnes; "I know, but I cannot."

The step sounded very close now, while the light from the lamp in the alley was for a moment obscured.

"I will do all that you ask," sobbed Agnes. "Tell me what else you wish, and I will be as obedient as a child, but--"

"Prove it, then, by telling me how began your intimacy with Miss--"

There was a wild scream from Agnes Hardon as she thrust the curate aside; but too late, for a heavy, dull blow from behind crushed through his hat, and stretched him upon the pavement, where, for an instant, a thousand lights seemed dancing before his eyes, and then all was blank.

It was no unusual sound that, a woman's shriek, especially the half-drunken cry of some street wanderer; but one window was opened, and a head thrust out, whose owner muttered for a moment and then closed the sash, for though he had seen a woman struggling with a man, he did not hear the words that pa.s.sed, nor could he see that the man was trying hard to extricate himself from the woman's grasp; but there were other wakeful eyes upon the watch.

Volume Three, Chapter VIII.

WASTE-PAPER.

"Well, yes, sir," said Matt, standing hat in hand, "'tis snug and comfortable, sir; and I'm glad to see the change, and I'm sure I wish you long life to enjoy it. Glad you've got here all right, sir; and sorry I was too weak to help you move. I've got the address down all right in my memo-book: look here, sir--150 Ess.e.x-street, Strand, sir."

"And now we'll go, then, Matt," said Septimus, rising.

"Go, sir?" said Matt.

"Yes," said Septimus, "if you will; for the thing has been too long neglected already."

"Very true, sir," said Matt: "but you told me as the parson, sir, Mr Sterne, was going to take it in hand; and if so--"

"Now, Matt," said Septimus appealingly, "isn't he lying upon a bed of sickness, weak and helpless, and unable to move?"

"Well, yes, sir, that's true; and a rum start that was, too. Wonder who would have a spite against him? But I thought that now, sir, as you'd--"

Septimus Hardon took the old man by the arm and placed him in a chair; for it was evident that he was a little testy and jealous of other interposition in the matters in which he had taken so much interest; but the cordiality of Mrs Septimus seemed to chase it away; while Lucy, returning from a walk, beamed so happily upon the old man, that he looked his old self again, and owned to the feeling that, as he expressed it, he had expected that he was going to be "pitched overboard," now there were new friends.

It was partly by Mr Sterne's advice that Septimus had sought out and asked Matt to accompany him this day; for though much hurt, and weak from loss of blood, the curate had taken great interest in the future of the Hardon family. At his request Septimus had sought and removed to lodgings in Ess.e.x-street, and since then pa.s.sed an evening by the curate's bedside; for he had been found by a policeman perfectly insensible, and carried home; and, though nearly certain of who was his a.s.sailant, he felt indisposed to take any steps in the matter for fear that affairs might be made public which he wished concealed. He had not seen Lucy since; but somehow there was a feeling of repose and content within his breast that it had not known for months; and he longed for the time when he could again meet with the woman whose words would have, he now felt, set him at rest for ever.

There seemed, too, a brightness in Lucy foreign to her looks, as Septimus leaned over her and whispered a few words before leaving; then, after kissing her tenderly, he descended to the street with old Matt, who, though weak, still refused st.u.r.dily every offer of a ride, and they trudged steadily on till they reached Finsbury.

"Hallo!" said Matt, "what d'ye call this? Same name, but the business is changed, and that's her a-cutting up paper. To be sure--why it is her! I thought I knew her face, but I was in such a muddle just then that all my letter was mixed, and whenever I wanted a p, I got a q, and all on like that. Why, she came and chattered away, and bought an old set of tobacco-jars and covers and a heap of waste-paper of Mother Slagg, just before I went into hospital; and there they are, sir--that's them, fresh varnished and painted, and stuck on the shelf. Ikey took 'em home for her, and I remember asking myself ever so long as to where I'd seen her before. Well, come on, sir. I want a bit of snuff, so that's an excuse for going in. P'r'aps, after all, she's bought the very paper."

The visitors made their way into the old formal registry-office, turned into a very smart little shop, fitted up with some taste; where Miss Tollicks herself was busily weighing and packing a pile of those little rolls of tobacco known as "screws." Fine thick paper, too, she was using, such as would weigh well and add to the rather fine profit she obtained upon her fragrant weed. For there was no mistake: Miss Tollicks had executed her threat, turned the registering out of doors, and taken to the business most popular in the streets of London. No seat now existed for maids to sit and wait to be hired from ten to four; no green baize; no intense air of respectability, but all quite the correct thing as established by custom in the weedy way. There was a monster cigar outside, set perpendicularly, with an internal gas-jet, and a transparency bearing the legend, "Take a light." On the other side of the door was a little, freshly-varnished, red-nosed, chip-elbowed Scotchman, taking snuff in the imperfect tense, with his fingers half-way to his nose; an imitation roll of tobacco hung over the door; while just inside, upon a tub, stood a small black gentleman in a very light feather petticoat, smoking a pipe about double the length of his body. Then there were clay pipes, crossed and tied into diamond-pattern d'oyleys, swung in the top panes of the windows; while beneath them "so gracefully curled" a perfect anaconda of a hookah--one that it would have taken a bold Turk to smoke. There were meerschaums and brier-roots, cutty- and billiard-pipes; gla.s.s, cherry, and jasmine stems; tobacco-pouches of india-rubber, looking like fresh-flayed negro-skin; snuff-boxes of all sorts and sizes, embracing miniature, scene, and tartan of every pattern; stacks of cigar-boxes carefully branded but very European in their look; bundles of cigars tied with fancy ribbon; the day's playbills on the walls; rows of snuff- and tobacco-jars, as pointed out by Matt, and labelled from "Scotch" to "Hardham's 37," and from "Returns" to "Latakia." There was a whole tubful of odorous s.h.a.g, and a stack of packets of Bristol bird's-eye; the scales were of the glossiest, the gla.s.s-case of the cleanest, and altogether the shop owned by Miss Tollicks seemed to be of the most prosperous; for things looked smart and well attended to--a rare sign of plenty of business, as, according to the old saying, "the less there is to do, the worse it is done;" but there was a strong smell of varnish, and it was evident that Miss Tollicks had been picking up her fittings here and there at various secondhand stores, or, as Matt s.p.a.ce called it, "on the cheap."

Matt advanced to the counter and asked for his penn'orth of snuff.

"Then you're not dead!" exclaimed Miss Tollicks, putting down the jar in a most businesslike way, with motions rapid as her speech; for she had banished the black-velvet blackbird and deportment along with the green baize; but, not quite used to her business, in spite of her ability of adapting herself to circ.u.mstances, she sneezed loudly as she lifted the lid. "And how do you do?--there, dear me, how I do sneeze!--and I thought I had quite conquered it, for it does look so--tchisher-er--so-- er-tchisher! There, I'm sure I beg your pardon. And how do you do? and you've got well again, like poor Mary did, in that horrible place, who was dying too, and didn't. And Mr Harding too! and I'm so glad to see you, for you were _that_ kind to me, I don't know what I should have done else. Now you've come to ask me about the doctor again--now haven't you?"

Septimus said he had.

"Well, now, I hadn't forgotten it, and you were both right, you know; but I shall never forget your kindness, Mr Harding, for but for you that day, everyone must have seen that I had been crying. But you were right; and the doctor did live here, and died here too, ages ago; and then his widow went to live somewhere in one of those quiet streets by the Strand, going down to the river, you know; and then she died, and there was a sale, and that's all; and it isn't much, is it?"

Septimus said it was not, certainly.

"But then, you know," said Miss Tollicks, "it's no use to try and make more of things of that sort, is it? No, he didn't know the street, nor anything more about it, for he bought the lease of the house of someone else."

As for Matt, he did not speak, but took snuff ferociously, and glared at the paper squares upon the counter.

"But there, do come in," cried Miss Tollicks; "and, dear me, Mr--Mr--I don't know your name, but don't, pray, take snuff like that; you'll make yourself ill. But there, do come in;" and in spite of refusals Miss Tollicks soon had her visitors seated in her bower, in company with a spirit-bottle and a couple of tumblers and sugar, a tiny kettle upon the fire singing merrily.

"I do suffer so from spasms," said Miss Tollicks as she placed the suspicious-looking spirit-bottle upon the table; but all these preparations were not made at once, for, from her many pops in and out of the shop, and the rattling of the scales, it was evident that Miss Tollicks had chosen the right business at last, and was prospering famously. The decanter was brought out of a Berlin-wool-worked overgrown dice-box on one side of the fire, the gla.s.ses from its ditto on the other, the kettle out of a window-locker, and divers other ways of economising s.p.a.ce were shown; while the visitors were informed that so much of the house was let off. "It all helps so," said Miss Tollicks; "for London rents are enough to kill you; and you doing nothing but feed your landlord."

Old Matt grunted acquiescence.

"Now one each, please," said Miss Tollicks, "just to be sociable; and then you can speak up for the quality of my goods. How do you find the snuff, Mr --?"

"s.p.a.ce, ma'am," said Matt. "Good; very good, ma'am, but not durable."

"That's right," exclaimed Miss Tollicks, as she pressed the two mild Havannas she had brought in upon her visitors. "Don't mind me, pray--I am trying to get used to smoke as well as snuff."

Septimus and Matt were both non-smokers, but as they exchanged glances they came to the conclusion that they could extinguish their cigars as soon as they were outside. So Septimus set the example, with a very ludicrous cast of countenance, by placing the little vegetable roll in his mouth, and Miss Tollicks tore off a piece of paper from a square on the counter, doubled, lit, and handed it to the smoker.

Septimus Hardon's face was a regular study as Matt, grumbling to himself, "Why didn't she make it snuff?" watched him trying to light his cigar--a new feat to him entirely.

"The other end first, sir," growled Matt; and in a rather confused way Septimus made the requisite alteration, and then sucked and puffed so vigorously that he extinguished the light, which he re-lit at the fire.

But the next moment his face changed from one of comical resignation to a state of intense wonder, as old Matt, under the excuse of helping himself to a light, was turning over some leaves of a heap of waste-paper on a chair by the door.

Suddenly Septimus dashed the lighted paper upon the table, hurriedly extinguishing it with trembling hands, but not without oversetting his gla.s.s of spirits-and-water.

"What is the matter? Have you burnt yourself?" cried Miss Tollicks.

"Is it, sir?" cried old Matt, reaching across the table.

But Septimus Hardon did not move for a few seconds, but stood with his hands pressed down over the roughly-folded piece of paper, into which the spirits-and-water was now soaking, as it made a way between his fingers.