write – he made me. But you’ve no call to complain; she’s been here now best part of nine years, and always well taken care of, and at a lower rate than you would have paid at a private asylum. You ought to have let me have the child as well. No one could have kept her closer.”
“What?” said Richard, harshly.
“Well, that was only once; and I took precious good care that she did not play me such a trick a second time. She wasn’t away long, though,” said the woman, laughing.
“There! send her down,” said Richard Pellet, impatiently.
“I don’t mind telling you, now,” said the woman, not heeding the remark, “she’s very little trouble; sits and works all day long without speaking.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Richard Pellet; “now that there’s no more money to be made by contrary statements, you can be honest.”
“Well,” said the woman, “other people may find out things for themselves. Nobody taught me.”
Then she left the room.
A few minutes elapsed, and then a pale, dark-haired woman, with a pitiful, almost imploring aspect, entered the room, clasped her hands tightly together, and stood gazing in Richard’s Pellet’s face.
“I’m going to take you away from here, Ellen,” he said.
For a few moments the pale face lit up as with some show of animation; the woman exclaimed – “To see my child, Richard?”
“I’m going to take you away from here,” he replied, coldly; “so be ready to-morrow.”
The light faded from the countenance of the woman in an instant, to leave it dull and inanimate. She pressed her hand for an instant upon her side, and winced as if a pain had shot through her. Then slowly drawing a scrap of needlework from her pocket, she began to sew hastily.
“I have made arrangements for you to stay at an institution where you will be well cared for,” he continued; “that is, provided that you behave well.”
The faint shadow of a sad smile crossed the pale face as the woman glanced at him for a moment, and then sighed and looked down.
“Do you hear what I say?” said Richard, roughly.
“Yes, Richard,” she said, quietly, and as if quite resigned to her fate; “I never do anything that you would not wish, only when – when – when my head gets hot and strange. I am quite ready, but – ”
“Well?” said the great city man.
“You will let me see my little one before I go, Richard? I won’t let my head get hot. You will not mind that. I will do all that you wish. But why not let us be together? She is not mad; but that would not matter. Let me have her, and go away from here. She is so little, I could carry her; and we would never trouble you again. Indeed, indeed – never, never again!”
If he could only have placed faith in those words, what a burden Richard Pellet would have felt to be off his shoulders! But no; he dared not trust her; and in the few moments while she stood with her wild strange eyes gazing appealingly in his face, he saw her coming to his office for help, then down to Norwood, declaring that she was his wedded wife, and trouble, exposure, perhaps punishment, to follow, because, he told himself, he had declined to let this poor helpless maniac stand in the way of his advancement.
Richard Pellet’s face grew darker as he turned to leave the room.
“But you will let me see her once, Richard – only once before I go? Think how obedient I have been, how I have attended always to your words – always. I know what you mean to do – to shut me up in a dreadful madhouse, and all because – because my poor head grows so hot. It was not so once, Richard.”
She dropped her work upon the floor, and elapsed her hands as she stood before him.
“Only once, Richard,” she exclaimed again; “only once, for ever so short a time,” and the voice grew more and more plaintive and appealing – the tones seeming to ring prophetically in Richard Pellet’s ears, so that he found himself thinking – “Suppose those words haunt me at my deathbed!”
He started the next moment.
“Be quiet,” he exclaimed, harshly, as he might have said “Down!” to a dog; when, rightly interpreting his words, the woman uttered a low wail, letting herself sink upon the floor, as she covered her face with her hands, and convulsively sobbed. But the trembling hands fell again as she shook her head with the action of one throwing back thick masses of curling hair, and looking sharply up, she listened, for the sound of a bell fell upon her ear. The cause was plain enough, for Richard Pellet stood before her with the rope in his hand.
Then she slowly rose, sighing as she closed her eyes, and stood motionless until the woman of the house came into the room and laid her talon-like hand upon her shoulder. But though the prisoner shivered, she did not move from her place; she only opened her eyes and gazed once more imploringly at Richard, who avoided her look, and, walking to the window, peered through the bar-like blinds.
“Ellen!” said the woman, in a harsh voice, which seemed to grate through the room, and then unresistingly a prisoner, for the sake of Richard Pellet’s prosperity, she followed her gaoler from the room, Richard Pellet waiting with knitted brows till the woman came back.
A long and somewhat angry conversation ensued, in which Richard Pellet tried very hard to make out whether the woman he had employed for so many years as his wife’s attendant was in earnest concerning the written desire to give up the charge, or whether it was merely a bit of business-fencing to obtain a higher rate of payment. He left at last, boasting of the ease with which he could make fresh arrangements for “Ellen Herrisey’s” reception. “But I will not take any further steps till I hear from you again,” he said, while the woman watched him as he left the room with a strange meaning smile.
“Another twenty pounds a year will do it,” said Richard, as he walked away. “He won’t let her give up the money.”
“You’re like the ostrich we read about,” muttered the woman, as she watched her visitor down the street. “Do you think I don’t know you’re married again, you brute? Ellen Herrisey, indeed! It shall be fifty pounds a year more, or I’ll know the reason why!”
Volume One – Chapter Twenty.
Startling
Mr Richard Pellet was back at Norwood Station at about the same time as his stepson reached the terminus at Shoreditch, where he caught the express, and ran back to Cambridge, to find a letter which made considerable alterations in his arrangements, of which more after a while. As for Richard Pellet, he had all the cares upon him that night of a great dinner-party, for Mrs Richard, in happy ignorance of all that might work to her mortification, had, in obedience to Richard’s commands, issued her cards to a select circle of city magnates, of course including their wives and daughters – men who matched well with Richard Pellet, some of them worth a plum – golden drop, no doubt.
The stout butler and the men in coach-lace were hard-worked that evening, for the best dinner-service was in use, the choice plate, too, had been taken out of green baize bags, from green baize-lined boxes; the three extra dark-hued leaves had been fitted into the dining-table; the large epergne was filled with flowers and waxlights. Bokes the butler had turned eighteen damask dinner-napkins into as many cocked-hats, all crimp, crease, and pucker; prepared his salad – a point which
