"I'll be sure to come. Try to bear up, Mrs. Pemberton," said kind-hearted Mrs. Pearse, hurrying off just as the doctor came up to the door.
True to her promise, Mrs. Pearse was back at the Cross. By this time the shutters of Mrs. Pemberton's shop were up; but the door stood ajar. Mrs. Pearse pushed it open and entered.
Mrs. Pemberton was sitting on a chair, surrounded by hampers and baskets of fruit and vegetables, in the middle of the shop. She was weeping silently, unconsciously, the large tears rolling down her round florid face. Her hands were crossed in her lap. Her eyes were wide open, and her whole appearance that of one in helpless despair.
When she saw her visitor come in, she rose with a start, brushed the tears out of her eyes, and cried, seizing the hand of the other woman and pressing her down on a chair:
"I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Pearse! It is so good of you to come! I am in sore distress and trouble!"
"There, dear!" said the visitor in soothing tones. "Don't take on like that. All may yet be well. What does the doctor say about the poor soul?"
"All will never be well again for her. The doctor says she is not likely to see another day, short as these nights are. O my-O my heart! but it grieves me to think of her going, and she so young. And to think of what a pretty girl she must have been; to think of how handsome she must have been before the trouble, whatever it is, came upon her and wore her to a shadow."
"And I suppose she has not opened her mind to you even yet about this trouble?"
The question was not asked out of idle curiosity, but from deep-seated interest in the subject of the conversation. For this was not the first or the tenth talk these two kindly friends had about the sick woman upstairs.
"She has said no more to me than the dead. My reading of it is, that she made a bad match against the will of her people, and that her husband deserted her and her child."
"And what about the boy? Does the poor sufferer know how bad she is?"
"Yes; she knows that there's not any hope, and the doctor told me to be prepared for the worst, and that she might die in a couple of hours. Poor soul! I shall be sorry!"
Mrs. Pemberton threw her apron over her head and wept and sobbed; Mrs. Pearse weeping the while, for company.
When Mrs. Pemberton was able to control herself she drew down her apron and said:
"I never took to any other lodger I had so much as I took to this poor woman. Her loneliness and her sorrow made me feel to her as if she had been my own child. Then I know she must be very poor, although she always paid me to the minute. But bit by bit I have missed whatever little jewellery she had, and now I think all is gone. But she is not without money; for, when I was talking to her just now, she told me that she had enough in her work-box to pay all expenses. O, Mrs. Pearse, it is hard to hear the poor young thing talking in that way of going, and I, who must be twice her age, well and hearty!"
Again the good woman broke down and had to pause in her story.
"She told me no one should be at any expense on her account; and as for the boy, she said she knew a gentleman, one who had been a friend of hers years ago, and that he would surely take charge of the child, and that she had sent word to a trusty messenger to come and fetch the boy to this friend, and that she would not see or hear from any one who knew her in her better days. I can't make it out at all. There is something hidden, some mystery in the matter."
"Mystery, Mrs. Pemberton? Of course there is. But, as you say, most likely she made a bad match, and is afraid to meet her people, and has been left to loneliness and sorrow and poverty by a villain of a husband. She hasn't made away with her wedding-ring, has she?"
"No; nor with the keeper. But I think all else is gone in the way of jewellery. I left Susan, the servant, with her just now. She said she wished to be quiet for a while, as she wanted to write a letter. Now that the shop is shut I can't bear to be away from her, and when I am in the room I can't bear to see her with her poor swollen red face, and I don't think she is always quite right in her mind, for the disease has spread, and the doctor says she can hardly last the night. Poor, poor young creature!"
Here for the third time, kind sympathetic Mrs. Pemberton broke down, and for some minutes neither of the women spoke.
At length Mrs. Pemberton started and rose from her chair, saying hastily:
"She must have finished the letter. I hear Susan coming down the stairs."
The girl entered the shop quickly and with an alarmed face.
"The lady wants to see you at once, ma'am. She seems in a terrible hurry, and looks much worse."
Mrs. Pemberton hastened out of the shop, asking Mrs. Pearse to wait.
In a few minutes she returned, carrying a letter in her hand, and wearing a look of intense trouble and perplexity on her honest face.
"I am sure," she said, throwing herself on a chair, "I do not know whether I am asleep or awake, or whether I am to believe my eyes and my ears. Do you know where she told me she is sending the child now-to-night-for she cannot die easy until 'tis done."
"I cannot tell. Where?"
"I heard her say the words quite plainly, but I could not believe my ears. The words are quite plain on this letter, though they are written in pencil, but I cannot believe my eyes. Read what is on this envelope, and I shall know whether I have lost my reason or not. That's where she says the child is to go. This is the old friend she says will look after the little boy!"
She handed the letter she held in her hand to her friend. Mrs. Pearse read:
"Francis Bramwell, Esq., Boland's Ait, South London Canal."
CHAPTER IV.
THE MISSING MAN
It was near ten o'clock that night before Alfred Layard and his sister gave up trying to get their new home into order. Even then much remained to be done, but Mrs. Grainger, the charwoman who had been assisting Hetty all day, had to go home to prepare supper for her husband, and when she was gone the brother and sister sat down to their own.
Alfred Layard was employed in the gasworks. His duties did not oblige him to be at business early; but they kept him there until late in the evening. He had a very small salary, just no more than enough to live on in strict economy. He had rented a little cottage during his brief married life, and the modest furniture in the room where the brother and sister now sat at supper had been bought for his bride's home out of his savings. Just as his lease of the cottage expired he heard of this house, and that the owner or agent would be glad to let it at a rent almost nominal on the condition of two rooms being reserved and kept in order for him.
The place just suited Layard. It was within a short distance of the gashouse, and he calculated that the arrangement would save him twenty pounds a year.
"Well, Hetty," said he, with one of his surprisingly pleasant smiles, as the supper went on, "how do you like the life of a lodging-house keeper?"
"So far I like it very much indeed, although I have had no chance of pillage yet."
"Never mind the pillage for a while. I must see if there is any handbook published on the subject of the 'Lodger Pigeon.' I am not quite sure there is a book of the kind. I have a notion the art is traditional, handed down by word of mouth, and that you have to be sworn of the guild or something of that kind. Before we had our knockdown in the world, in father's time, when I lived in lodgings in Bloomsbury, I knew a little of the craft-as a victim, mind you; but now I have forgotten all about it, except that neither corks nor stoppers had appreciable effect in retarding the evaporation of wine or spirits, and that fowl or game or meat always went too bad twelve hours after it was cooked to be of further use to me. Tea also would not keep in the insalubrious air of Bloomsbury."
"Well," said the girl, with a smile, "I suppose I must only live in hope. I cannot expect to be inspired. It would, perhaps, be unreasonable to expect that the sight of our first lodger for half-an-hour would make me perfect in the art of turning him to good account. It is a