Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  She repeated the boy’s name, in a louder key, two or three times.

  But she was not alarmed at finding there was no answer; the stupor of drunkenness had not yet passed away. She stood for some moments motionless, with the light in her hand, staring straight before her.

  Suddenly she perceived the letter on the chimney piece “Gilbert’s hand!” she cried; “he has been home, then!”

  She set down her candle, opened the letter, and then taking up the light again in her left hand, read Gervoise Gilbert’s farewell.

  She read the letter twice — hurriedly first, and then slowly — till at last the fumes of the spirit she had drunk slowly dispersed before the sense of a great calamity.

  Then she uttered a loud cry — a long, ringing shriek, that vibrated shrilly through the house — and fell prostrate upon the ground.

  There are strange contradictions, perplexing knots, wonderful intricacies, in that tangled web which we call the human mind.

  Agatha Gilbert passionately loved the man whose life she had blighted, the child whose clothes she had pledged in order to buy gin.

  CHAPTER III. THE MARK UPON GEORGEY’S ARM

  THE moon which rose late upon this August night shone like an orb of molten gold low in the sky, as the man who called himself Gervoise Gilbert emerged from a dusty road upon the pleasant expanse of Putney-heath.

  It was eleven o’clock, lights were twinkling here and there in the town through which the traveller had just passed, and in a few scattered houses looking towards the open ground, and on a waste patch of land skirting the common, a gipsy fire, burning under an iron kettle, revealed the outline of a travelling-van.

  Gervoise Gilbert stopped upon the edge of the road a few yards from this van, and looked yearningly at a group of men standing near the fire, and some women seated on the steps of the vehicle.

  The boy had grown tired after the first mile, and Gervoise had carried him ever since. Slender as the child was, he was tall for his age, and no inconsiderable weight to be carried for a five-mile walk. He had fallen asleep now, with his head upon his father’s breast.

  The artist had chosen this road with the intention of joining any party of tramps he might fall in with, if they should prove willing to accept him as one of their fraternity. He knew that it was worse than useless to remain in London.

  There starvation and death stared him in the face. But there might be some chance for him in tramping hither and thither about the country. Surely now and then he would be able to sell a picture, or to paint a portrait for some simple country tradesman. If he could get nothing better than signboards to paint, he was ready to paint them. He had done with pride. He was willing to do anything to win bread for his child.

  He had another motive too for wishing to join some party of humble wanderers. He knew that his wife loved him, with a passionate, jealous love, only known to violent natures. There was little doubt that she would seek him, that she would use every effort in her power to trace his footsteps.

  There was less chance of her finding him if he had no fixed abode, but was perpetually shifting from place to place.

  This second motive was more powerful than the first, and decided him.

  The party encamped this night upon Putney-heath was a larger one than he had expected to fall in with. The van was a ponderous vehicle, and three powerful-looking horses cropped the grass upon a patch of ground behind it.

  One of the men sitting on the turf by the fire looked up at Gervoise, after the artist had stood for some minutes gazing thoughtfully at the group of wanderers.

  “Perhaps when you pass this way next time,” this man said, taking a short clay-pipe from his mouth, “you’ll know us again, my friend. You’ve stared long enough, and if you’re anythink in the pottery line, and wants a noo design for a fancy beer-jug, I should think you’d got a c’rect pattern of our mugs by this time.”

  Gervoise Gilbert drew a little nearer to the gipsy fire — so near that his handsome face and the child’s golden hair were illuminated by the ruddy blaze.

  “There was no offence in my stare, my good fellow,” he said. “I’m too low in the world to be insolent. I’m an artist, and my sympathies all go with such a life as yours. What’s more, I’m a destitute man, and if I live at all, I must live something as I presume you do — from hand to mouth, trusting to the chances of each day for a meal and a shelter at night.”

  “That’s candid, anyhow,” said the man, emptying the ashes of his pipe upon the ground by his side.

  “It’s the truth,” Gervoise Gilbert answered moodily.

  One of the women had risen from her seat upon the steps of the van, and approached the painter.

  “Is that your child?” she asked, looking at the golden head still nestling in the father’s waistcoat.

  “He is,” answered Gervoise; “and but for him I might find a sound sleep at the bottom of one of the pools on this heath to-night.”

  “Poor little fellow!” the woman murmured tenderly. “Is his mother dead?”

  “Yes,” Gilbert answered firmly.

  She was dead to him, he thought. His best hope was that «he would be dead to all the world before long.

  “That’s bad,” the woman said gently; “it’s very bad for such a little chap as him to be without a mother. You seem fond of him, though.”

  “Fond of him!” cried Gervoise; “my heart’s blood is not so precious to me as this child. I only live for his sake. Low as I have sunk, the day may come when he will be rich and powerful. It is a far-away chance, perhaps, but it may come. Wise men, who have never been made desperate by poverty, might call me mad for even dreaming of it. Bat I do dream of it, by day and by night too.”

  He said this rather to himself than the woman.

  “Are you going far to-night?” asked the man who had spoken first.

  “Not if I can help it. I want to get a shelter for this little one if I can. I’m not afraid of sleeping under a haystack, or on the bare ground amongst the furze-bushes yonder; but the boy has never slept in the open air.”

  “And he sha’n’t sleep in the open air to-night, master,” said the woman, “if you’ll let him lie along with my two youngsters, in the van yonder.”

  Would he let him? Gervoise Gilbert gratefully accepted the offer.

  “I thought there must be charity somewhere or other in this wide world,” he said, “and, thank Heaven, I’ve come the right way to find it.”

  The woman laughed good-naturedly.

  “It’s no such great charity to give a night’s shelter to a child,” she said, taking the boy from Gilbert’s arms.

  Georgey was completely worn out. He neither opened his eyes nor stirred his slender limbs as the woman carried him into the van, and laid him in a homely little bed, beside two sleeping lads of ten and twelve years old.

  “Come,” said the man with the clay-pipe, “if you are going to sleep out o’ doors, you’d better sleep hereabouts, and I dessay one of us can lend yer a rug; besides which, you can peck a bit o’ supper along of us. Our French cook give us warning last Toosday week, ‘cos that gentleman there, who’s werry partic’lar in his eatin’” — he pointed to a man whose hair was bound upon his forehead after the manner common to street-acrobats, and whose sole outer garment seemed a long rough overcoat which enveloped him from the chin to the heels—” ‘cos Mr. William Stokes, which his professional name is Mountmorency, complained about the fricasseed frogs’ legs bein’ underdone. So you must take pot-luck, which, I believe, is liver and bacon.”

  Gervoise accepted the invitation so cordially given.

  “I shall be glad to stay with you to-night,” he said, “and glad to go on with you into the bargain, if it’s agreeable — that’s to say, if I can turn my hand to anything that’ll enable me to get a living.”

  The gentleman with the long hair and the rough greatcoat chimed in at this point of the conversation.

  “As to yer gettin’ a livin’,” he said, “that depends
upon what yer able to do. You said you was a hartist jest now; you don’t mean a hartist in the ground and lofty, do yer?”

  “The ground and lofty?” asked Gervoise, puzzled.

  “He means to ask if yer a hacrobat,” explained the man with the pipe; “I never see such a cove as Bill; he’s that wrapped up in his purfession that he seems to think as there ain’t no other purfession goin’. Lord bless you, sir, that chap ‘ud have his breakfast on the tight-rope if he could, and eat his dinner standin’ on his ‘ed, if the laws of gravitation and centrifugal what’s-his-name, which was discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh all along of seeing a potato fall off a tree, didn’t purvent his swallerin’ his food upside down. He’s got one of them limited intellects, which never sees any farther than his own family circle. — No, Bill, I’ll lay all the money as I’ve got invested in the Three-per-cents — for the convenience of Queen Victoria when she finds the washing-bills at Buckingham Palace too heavy for the privy puss, and has to come upon the country before she can pay the laundress — that this here gent ain’t anythink in the acrobat line.”

  “No, Heaven help me, I’m not,” answered Gervoise Gilbert. “Perhaps if I could dance upon a tight-rope, I might be able to earn bread for my boy; but I can’t — I’m only a painter.”

  “A portrait-painter?”

  “Yes, I can paint portraits.”

  The speaker, who was an important personage, being, in fact, no other than the proprietor of the van, gave a long whistle.

  “If you’re a good hand at portraits,” he said, “I think as I can give you a job. We’re a hequestrian company, you must understand, and we travels through England in the summer time, sometimes performin’ at fairs, sometimes performin’ altogether on our own hook. Now, what I should like you to do for us is three or four fancy portraits of Mounseer Mountmorency, there — which he ain’t much to look at now — but comes out wonderful strong in his purfessional togs; and of Mademoiselle l’Amour, which is my wife, Nancy Cadgers, and of the two other ladies, as is Madame Zepherine and Signora Floribella, and the two gents sittin’ beside Mr. Mountmorency, which one of ’em is the Desert Whirlwind, as rides three wild Arab steeds barebacked — the Arab steeds is them animals as you see a-grazin’ yonder — and the other is Herr von Volterchoker, our German clown what was born in Bermondsey. Now, do you think as you could knock off two or three pictur’s of ‘em, in different costooms and attitoodes — eh?”

  “Most decidedly,” answered Gervoise; “the ladies and gentlemen shall have their portraits taken in my very best style.”

  “What we want, you see,” continued Mr. Cadgers, “is something cheap and showy, warranted fast colours, as will stand the open air and sunshine. We’ll send a boy along with ’em the day before we go into a town ourselves, and get ’em hung up in the shop-winders. They’ll be about the best advertisement as we can have. I don’t suppose you and me’ll quarrel about the price, and you can live along of us, and rough it with us till they’re done.”

  “Agreed,” exclaimed the painter; “and the child?”

  “Never you bother yourself about him. Nancy’ll take care of him. It was her as took him into the van jest now.” So Gervoise Gilbert slept that night more peacefully beneath the purple canopy of heaven than he had ever slumbered in the fetid atmosphere of Purvis-court. He slept peacefully, for there was hope, at least, of bread for the morrow, and for many morrows; and the black shadow of despair vanished away before the light of hope.

  At sunrise next morning Mr. Cadgers’s troupe left Putney-heath. The women travelled in the van, which was pretty well loaded with the fittings of the circus, the dresses and properties of the performers, and the domestic requisites of the company. Mr. Cadgers drove. The rest of the men tramped upon the dusty high-road, a few yards ahead of the van. They crossed to the Middlesex side of the water, skirted London, and bore towards the midland districts of England.

  The pedestrian travellers were Gervoise Gilbert; Mr. William Stokes, alias Mounseer Mountmorency; the Desert Whirlwind, whose real name was Samuel Bolter; and Herr von Volterchoker, who declined to reveal his genuine patronymic, and who was familiarly believed to have no name whatever, saving always such cognomen as in the flight of fancy he might elect to be known by for the time being.

  He was an elderly man, grim and dark, with very black eyes and grizzled hair; and it was difficult to imagine that he could ever be funny himself, or the cause of fun in others. He was unlike his comrades, who were lively and communicative; for he was rarely known to open his lips, except when compelled to do so by the common business of life. He seemed like a man who, at the very outset of his life, had taken upon him the heavy burden of some gloomy secret, and had never been able to shake off the load, or to recover from the sense of its responsibility.

  Gervoise, Mr. Stokes, and Samuel Bolter walked abreast along the dusty roads, talking cheerfully enough as they went. But the clown stalked behind them, smoking perpetually, and as silent as the grave.

  “Is he clever?” Gervoise asked once of his companions, after looking back for a moment at this man.

  “Uncommon,” Mr. Bolter answered. “He’s uncommon clever with conjurin’ tricks, swallerin’ fire and carvin’-knives, and chuckin’ a dagger agen a mark on a wall, and all that sort of think. But he ain’t any great things at a joke, and it alius gives me the cold shivers to look at him when’he’s tryin’ to be funny.”

  Gervoise Gilbert stopped in one of the towns through which they passed, and bought colours and canvas with some money Mr. Cadgers advanced to him for that purpose.

  At two o’clock in the day they came upon a patch of common land, upon the outskirts of a wood; and here, under the shadow of the trees, the horses were taken from the van, and the wanderers sat down to eat some bread and meat which Mr. Cadgers distributed amongst them, together with a very liberal allowance of beer, brought in a great stone jar from the last public-house they had passed.

  The horses were to rest here for some hours; and after sharing this simple meal, Gervoise took out his brushes and palette, mixed his colours, prepared his canvas, and made everything ready for his work.

  “We’ll begin with your portrait, Herr Volterchoker,” he said; “if you’ve no objection?”

  The young man made this selection because he had been drawn by a species of fascination towards the silent clown.

  The other men were good-natured fellows, commonplace and uninteresting enough. But about this man there was an air of mystery which interested Gilbert in spite of himself.

  The clown made no objection to having his picture taken before any of his comrades. He slipped away to change his dress, and returned in about ten minutes in his grotesque professional costume.

  This costume was loose about the body and sleeves, and left his thin, muscular arms bare from the elbow.

  Gervoise Gilbert looked with surprise at these long bare arms. They were covered from the wrist upwards with strange figures, tattooed in indigo and vermilion — figures which no time could erase.

  The painter commenced his task, and worked industriously till sunset. By that time Herr von Volterchoker’s portrait was finished; carelessly painted, but painted with an artistic dash which reveals the force and vigour of genius.

  The men and women crowded round to look at the portrait of their companion. Everyone of them had half a dozen remarks to make — remarks of surprise, approbation, delight. But the clown said nothing. He stood apart with his arms folded, looking moodily at the painter and the noisy group around him.

  Presently Gervoise Gilbert addressed him: “Do you think it’s like?” he asked, pointing to the portrait.

  “Like enough,” the clown answered, glancing over the painter’s shoulder at the wet picture; “like enough, I daresay. It isn’t the first time I’ve had my picture painted, but I hope it may be the last. I’m not so very handsome that people should want to be reminded of me when I’m dead and gone.”

  Gervoise Gilbert noticed that though this man
spoke in a sullen tone, his accent and manner of speaking were very superior to the vulgar twang and cockney English of his companions.

  The moon had risen when the horses were put to, and the van started once more upon its wandering way. This time Gervoise left Mr. Stokes and Mr. Bolter, and fell back by the side of the clown. Herr von Volterchoker looked at him rather suspiciously.

  “You’d better stick to your friends,” he said quietly; “you’ll find them livelier than me, and I don’t much care about company.”

  “I won’t trouble you long,” answered Gervoise; “I’ll go back to them presently, but I want to ask you a question first.”

  “Ask away, then,” muttered the clown, without taking the stem of his pipe from between his lips, “and be quick about it.”

  “How long have you had those marks upon your arms?”

  “Thirty years.”

  “Did you do them yourself?”

  “Not all of them. Some were done by a sailor on board ship, more than a thousand miles from here. I did the rest myself.”

  “Will you do me a favour?”

  “That depends upon what it is. If it isn’t much trouble I don’t suppose I shall refuse.”

  “The little boy travelling in yonder van is my only child, dearer to me than anything else in the world. There is a person who would be very glad to get him from me if she could, and all last night I was haunted by the fear that he might be taken from me. If he were taken from me now, in his early childhood, he might alter as he grew to manhood, and the chances are that, after years of searching for him, I might meet him and not recognise him. More than this, the day may come — I don’t say it ever will, but it may — in which that boy will be the heir to a great fortune. If this should ever happen, it will be necessary to prove his identity. I want you to set such a mark on him as will never fade or alter, though he should change so much that the most loving eyes would fail to recognise him. Will you do this for me?”