CHAPTER X.
A Plunge into the Maze.
“HER plea is simply that she is married—that seems all there is to say.”
“I am aware she says that,” said Mr. Tottenham. “I hope to heaven she can prove it, Earnshaw, and end this tempest in a tea-cup! I am sick of the whole affair! Has her husband deserted her, or is he dead, or what has become of him? I hope she gave you some proofs.”
“I must make inquiries before I can answer,” said Edgar. “By some miserable chance friends of my own are involved. I must get at the bottom of it. Her husband—if he is her husband—has married again; in his own rank—a lady in whom I am deeply interested——”
“My dear fellow!” said Mr. Tottenham, “what a business for you! Did the woman know, confound her? There, I don’t often speak rashly, but some of these women, upon my honour, would try the patience of a saint! I daresay it’s all a lie. That sort of person cares no more for a lie! I’ll pack her off out of the establishment, and we’ll think of it no more.”
“Pardon me, I must think of it, and follow it out,” said Edgar; “it is too serious to be neglected. Altogether independent of this woman, a lady’s—my friend’s happiness, her reputation, perhaps her life—for how could she outlive name and fame, and love and confidence?” he said, suddenly feeling himself overcome by the horrible suggestion. “It looks like preferring my own business to yours, but I must see to this first.”
“Go, go, my dear Earnshaw—never mind my business—have some money and go!” cried Mr. Tottenham. “I can’t tell you how grieved I am to have brought you into this. Poor lady! poor lady!—I won’t ask who it is. But recollect they lie like the devil!—they don’t mind what they say, like you or me, who understand the consequences; they think of nothing beyond the spite of the moment. I am in for three quarrels, and a resignation, all because I want to please them!” cried the poor master of the great shop, dolorously. He accompanied Edgar out to the private door, continuing his plaint. “A nothing will do it,” he said; “and they don’t care for what happens, so long as they indulge the temper of the moment. To lose their employment, or their friends, or the esteem of those who would try to help them in everything—all this is nought. I declare I could almost cry like a baby when I think of it! Don’t be cast down, Earnshaw. More likely than not it’s all a lie!”
“If I cannot get back this evening in time for you—” Edgar began.
“Never mind, never mind. Go to the Square. I’ll tell them to have a room ready for you. And take some money—nothing is to be done without money. And, Earnshaw,” lie added, calling after him some minutes later, when Edgar was at the door, “on second thoughts, you won’t say anything to Mary about my little troubles? After all, the best of us have got our tempers; perhaps I am injudicious, and expect too much. She has always had her doubts about my mode of treatment. Don’t, there’s a good fellow, betray to them at home that I lost my temper too!”
This little preliminary to the Entertainment was locked in Edgar’s bosom, and never betrayed to anyone. To tell the truth, his mind was much too full of more important matters to think upon any such inconsiderable circumstance; for he was not the Apostle of the Shop, and had no scheme to justify and uphold in the eyes of all men and women. Edgar, I fear, was not of the stuff of which social reformers are made. The concerns of the individual were more important to him at all times than those of the mass; and one human shadow crossing his way, interested his heart and mind far beyond a mere crowd, though the crowd, no doubt, as being multitudinous, must have been more important. Edgar turned his back upon the establishment with, I fear, very little Christian feeling towards Tottenham’s, and all concerned with it—hating the Entertainment, weary of Mr. Tottenham himself, and disgusted with the strange impersonation of cruelty and selfishness which had just been revealed to him in the form of a woman. He could not shut out from his eyes that thin white face, so full of self, so destitute of any generous feeling.
Such stories have been told before in almost every tone of sympathy and reprobation; women betrayed have been wept in every language under heaven, and their betrayer denounced, but what was there to lament about, to denounce here? A woman sharp and clever to make the best of her bargain; a man trying legal cheats upon her; two people drawn together by some semblance of what is called passion, yet each watching and scheming, how best, on either side, to outwit the other. Never was tale of misery and despair so pitiful; for this was all baseness, meanness, calculation on both hands. They were fitly matched, and it was little worth any man’s while to interfere between them—but, O heaven! to think of the other fate involved in theirs. This roused Edgar to an excitement which was almost maddening. To think that these two base beings had wound into their miserable tangle the feet of Clare—that her innocent life must pay the penalty for their evil lives, that she must bear the dishonour while spotless from the guilt!
Edgar posted along the great London thoroughfare, through the continually varying crowd of passers-by, absorbed in an agitation and disquiet which drove all his own affairs out of his head. His own affairs might involve much trouble and distress; but neither shame nor guilt was in them. Heaven above! to think that guilt or shame could have anything to do with Clare!
Now Clare had not been, at least at the last, a very good sister to Edgar—she was not his sister at all, so far as blood went; and when this had been discovered, and the homeliness of his real origin identified, Clare had shrunk from him, notwithstanding that for all her life, in childish fondness and womanly sympathy, she had loved him as her only brother. Edgar had mournfully consented to a complete severance between them. She had married his enemy; and he himself had sunk so much out of sight that he had felt no further intercourse to be possible, though his affectionate heart had felt it deeply. But as soon as he heard of her danger, all his old love for his sister had sprung up in Edgar’s heart. He took back her name, as it were, into the number of those sounds most familiar to him. “Clare,” he said to himself, feeling a thrill of renewed warmth go through him, mingled with poignant pain—“Clare, my sister, my only sister, the sole creature in the world that belongs to me!” Alas! she did not belong to Edgar any more than any inaccessible princess; but in his heart this was what he felt. He pushed his way through the full streets, with the air and the sentiment of a man bound upon the most urgent business, seeing little on his way, thinking of nothing but his object—the object in common which Miss Lockwood had supposed him to have with herself. But Edgar did not even remember that—he thought of nothing but Clare’s comfort and well-being which were concerned, and how it would be possible to confound her adversaries, and save her from ignoble persecution. If he could keep it from her knowledge altogether! But, alas! how could that be done? He went faster and faster, driven by his thoughts.
The address Miss Lockwood had given him was in a small street off the Hampstead Road. That strange long line of street, with here and there a handful of older houses, a broader pavement, a bit of dusty garden, to show the suburban air it once had possessed; its heterogeneous shops, furniture, birdcages, perambulators, all kinds of out-of-the-way wares fled past the wayfarer, taking wings to themselves, he thought. It is not an interesting quarter, and Edgar had no time to give to any picturesque or historical reminiscences. When he reached the little street in which the chapel he sought was situated, he walked up on one side and down on the other, expecting every moment to see the building of which he was in search. A chapel is not a thing apt to disappear, even in the changeful district of Camden Town. Rubbing his eyes, he went up and down again, inspecting the close lines of mean houses. The only break in the street was where two or three small houses, of a more bilious brick than usual, whose outlines had not yet been toned down by London soot and smoke, diversified the prospect. He went to a little shop opposite this yellow patch upon the old grimy garment to make inquiries.
“Chapel! there ain’t no chapel hereabouts,” said the baker, who was filling his basket with loaves.
“Hold your tongue, John,” said his wife, from the inner shop. “I’ll set you all right in a moment. There’s where the chapel was, sir, right opposite. There was a bit of a yard where they’ve built them houses. The chapel is behind; but it ain’t a chapel now. It’s been took for an infant school by our new Rector. Don’t you see a little bit of an entry at that open door? That’s where you go in. But since it’s been shut up there’s been a difference in the neighbourhood. Most of us is church folks now.”
“And does nothing remain of the chapel—nobody belonging to it, no books nor records?” cried Edgar, suddenly brought to a standstill. The woman looked at him surprised.
“I never heard as they had any books—more than the hymn-books, which they took with them, I suppose. It’s our new Rector as has bought it—a real good man, as gives none of us no peace——”
“And sets you all on with your tongues,” said her husband, throwing his basket over his shoulder.
Edgar did not wait to hear the retort of the wife, and felt no interest in the doings of the new Rector. He did not know what to do in this unforeseen difficulty. He went across the road, and up the little entry, and looked at the grimy building beyond, which was no great satisfaction to his feelings. It was a dreary little chapel, of the most ordinary type, cleared of its pews, and filled with the low benches and staring pictures of an infant school, and looked as if it had been thrust up into a corner by the little line of houses built across the scrap of open space which had formerly existed in front of its doors. As he gazed round him helplessly, another woman came up, who asked with bated breath what he wanted.
“We’re all church folks now hereabouts,” she said; “but I don’t mind telling you, sir, as a stranger, I was always fond of the old chapel. What preaching there used to be, to be sure!—dreadful rousing and comforting! And it’s more relief, like, to the mind, to say, ‘Lord, ha’ mercy upon us!’ or, ‘Glory, glory!’ or the like o’ that, just when you pleases, than at set times out o’ a book. There’s nothing most but prayers here now. If you want any of the chapel folks, maybe I could tell you. I’ve been in the street twenty years and more.”
“I want to find out about a marriage that took place here ten years ago,” said Edgar.
“Marriage!” said the woman, shaking her head. “I don’t recollect no marriage. Preachings are one thing, and weddings is another. I don’t hold with weddings out of church. If there’s any good in church—”
Edgar had to stop this exposition by asking after the “chapel-folks” to whom she could direct him, and in answer was told of three tradesmen in the neighbourhood who “held by the Methodys,” one of whom had been a deacon in the disused chapel. This was a carpenter, who could not be seen till his dinner-hour, and on whom Edgar had to dance attendance with very indifferent satisfaction; for the deacon’s report was that the chapel had never been, so far as he could remember, licensed for marriages, and that none had taken place within it. This statement, however, was flatly contradicted by the pork-butcher, whose name was the next on his list, and who recollected to have heard that some one had been married there just about the time indicated by Miss Lockwood. Finally, Edgar lighted on an official who had been a local preacher in the days of the chapel, and who was now a Scripture-reader, under the sway of the new Rector, who had evidently turned the church and parish upside-down. This personage had known something of the Lockwoods, and was not disinclined—having ascertained that Edgar was a stranger, and unlikely to betray any of his hankerings after the chapel—to gossip about the little defunct community. Its books and records had, he said, been removed, when it was closed, to some central office of the denomination, where they would, no doubt, be shown on application. This man was very anxious to give a great deal of information quite apart from the matter in hand. He gave Edgar a sketch of the decay of the chapel, in which, I fear, the young man took no interest, though it was curious enough; and he told him about the Lockwoods, and about the eldest daughter, who, he was afraid, had come to no good.
“She said as she was married, but nobody believed her. She was always a flighty one,” said the Scripture-reader.
This was all that Edgar picked up out of a flood of unimportant communications. He could not even find any clue to the place where these denominational records were kept, and by this time the day was too far advanced to do more. Drearily he left the grimy little street, with its damp pavements, its poor little badly-lighted shops and faint lamps, not without encountering the new Rector in person, an omniscient personage, who had already heard of his inquiries, and regarded him suspiciously, as perhaps a “Methody” in disguise, planning the restoration of dissent in a locality just purged from its taint. Edgar was too tired, too depressed and down-hearted to be amused by the watchful look of the muscular Christian, who saw in him a wolf prowling about the fold. He made his way into the main road, and jumped into a hansom, and drove down the long line of shabby, crowded thoroughfare, so mean and small, yet so great and full of life. Those miles and miles of mean, monotonous street, without a feature to mark one from another, full of crowds of human creatures, never heard of, except as counting so many hundreds, more or less, in the year’s calendar of mortality—how strangely impressive they become at last by mere repetition, mass upon mass, crowd upon crowd, poor, nameless, mean, unlovely! Perhaps it was the general weariness and depression of Edgar’s whole being that brought this feeling into his mind as he drove noisily, silently along between those lines of faintly-lighted houses towards what is impertinently, yet justly, called the habitable part of London. For one fair, bright path in the social, as in the physical world, how many mean, and darkling, and obscure!—how small the spot which lies known and visible to the general eye!—how great the confused darkness all round! Such reflections are the mere growth of weariness and despondency, but they heighten the depression of which they are an evidence.
The whole of noisy, crowded London was as a wilderness to Edgar. He drove to his club, where he had not been since the day when he met Mr. Tottenham. So short a time ago, and yet how his life had altered in the interval! He was no longer drifting vaguely upon the current, as he had been doing. His old existence had caught at him with anxious hands. Notwithstanding all the alterations of time, circumstances, and being, he was at this moment not Edgar Earnshaw at all, but the Edgar Arden of three years ago, caught back into the old sphere, surrounded by the old thoughts. Such curious vindications of the unchangeableness of character, the identity of being, which suddenly seize upon a man, and whirl him back in a moment, defying all external changes, into his old, his unalterable self, are among the strangest things in humanity. Dizzy with the shock he had received, harassed by anxiety, worn out by unsuccessful effort, Edgar felt the world swim round with him, and scarcely could answer to himself who he was. Had all the Lockwood business been a dream? Was it a dream that he had been as a stranger for three long years to Clare, his sister—to Gussy, his almost bride? And yet his mind at this moment was as full of their images as if no interval had been.
After he had dined and refreshed himself, he set to work with, I think,—notwithstanding his anxiety, the first shock of which was now over,—a thrill of conscious energy, and almost pleasure in something to do, which was so much more important than those vague lessons to Phil, or vaguer studies in experimental philosophy, to which his mind had been lately turned. To be here on the spot, ready to work for Clare when she was assailed, was something to be glad of, deeply as the idea of such an assault upon her had excited and pained him. And at the same time as his weariness wore off, and the first excitement cooled down, he began to feel himself more able to realize the matter in all its particulars, and see the safer possibilities. It began to appear to him likely enough that all that could be proved was Arthur Arden’s villainy, a subject which did not much concern him, which had no novelty in it, and which, though Clare was Arthur Arden’s wife, could not affect her more now than it had done ever since she married him. Indeed, if it was but this, there need be no necessity for communicating it to Clare at all. It was more probable, when he came to think of it, that an educated and clever man should be able to outwit a dressmaker girl, however deeply instructed in the laws of marriage by novels and causes célèbres, than that she should outwit him; and in this case there was nothing that need ever be made known to Clare.
Edgar was glad, and yet I don’t know that a certain disappointment, quite involuntary and unawares, did not steal into his mind with this thought; for he had begun to cherish an idea of seeing his sister, of perhaps resuming something of his old intercourse with her, and at least of being known to have worked for and defended her. These thoughts, however, were but the secondary current in his mind, while the working part of it was planning a further enterprise for the morrow. He got the directory, and, after considerable trouble, found out from it the names and addresses of certain officials of the Wesleyan body, to whom he could go in search of the missing registers of the Hart Street Chapel—if registers there were—or who could give him definite and reliable information, in face of the conflicting testimony he had already received, as to whether marriages had ever been celebrated in it.
Edgar knew, I suppose, as much as other men generally do about the ordinary machinery of society, but he did not know where to lay his hand on any conclusive official information about the Hart Street Chapel, whether it had ever been licenced, or had any legal existence as a place of worship, any more than—you or I would, dear reader, were we in a similar difficulty. Who knows anything about such matters? He had lost a day already in the merest A B C of preliminary inquiry, and no doubt would lose several more.
Then he took out the most important of Miss Lockwood’s papers, which he had only glanced at as yet. It was dated from a small village in the Western Highlands, within reach, as he knew, of Loch Arroch, and was a certificate, signed by Helen Campbell and John Mactaggart, that Arthur Arden and Emma Lockwood had that day, in their presence, declared themselves to be man and wife. Edgar’s knowledge of such matters had, I fear, been derived entirely from novels and newspaper reports, and he read over the document, which was alarmingly explicit and straightforward, with a certain panic. He said to himself that there were no doubt ways in law by which to lessen the weight of such an attestation, or means of shaking its importance; but it frightened him just as he was escaping from his first fright, and brought back all his excitement and alarm.
He did not go to Berkeley Square, as Mr. Tottenham had recommended, but to his old lodgings, where he found a bed with difficulty, and where once more his two lives seemed to meet in sharp encounter. But his head by this time was too full of schemes for to-morrow to permit of any personal speculation; he was far, as yet, from seeing any end to his undertaking, and it was impossible to tell what journeys, what researches might be still before him.