Part 7 (1/2)
”Thou hast my name pat enough,” said I, very low, and s.h.i.+fted my fingers to his throat, which I must have held pretty tight, seeing his face went black and his eyes started forth of it. ”To the purpose,” I proceeded and released my grasp somewhat.
He wrested himself loose and stood away gasping.
”Who is the tall man of the narrowed eyes and black complexion?” I demanded.
”I dare not tell,” he whispered, and as it were shook that answer from his lips.
”He spies upon me, and uses thine house for that purpose,” I said, and gathered certainty from the mere relation of my doubts. ”But wherefore doth he so? That thou must tell me, master barber, and presently, else will I beat thee with thine own barber's staff.”
I made as if to seize him again, but he backed off, howling.
”If you swear,” he began, and seeing I paused, ”you must swear by the Book,” he said sharply, for I had squeezed his voice as thin as a knife; ”and take what guilt of perjury should be mine in speaking.”
I said I would vouchsafe not to reveal who it was that told me, but that was the extent of my promise; for the rest, I went in danger of my life, it seemed, or at least of my peace and quiet, which my absolute silence would but tend to confirm and increase.
The barber appeared satisfied of the justice of this, and having fetched out a Testament from a cupboard by the door, laid it open in my hand, but then again hesitated.
”This being so private a matter,” he mumbled, ”I will first bolt the door at the foot of the stair, and thereafter will let you into so great a secret”--he advanced his pinched and sallow face close to my own and let his voice fall so low that I could scarce hear him--”a secret so great that your blood shall run cold to hear it.”
This coming so pat upon my suspicions, I promise you my blood ran cold at the sheer hint of it, and I suffered him to leave me and bolt the great door on the stair, in order to our more perfect privacy. And bolt the door indeed he did, but upon the wrong side of it; himself fleeing away in an extremity of apprehension lest (I suppose) I should get at his pulpy fat neck again and strangle him outright: which consideration moved him to put the door betwixt us while there was time; although I believe I should have burst it down despite its great thickness had it not been that the haberdasher's 'prentices heard me, and opened it from without. But the barber was clean gone by that, with his yellow face and his fulsome big secret and the devil to boot.
The fellow's name was Pentecost Soper (so many syllables to so slight a man), and I have never set eyes on him since.
In no very good humour I returned to the family of the Malts and in ill case to be spoken to. Yet was I obliged to attend how Madam Malt's third (or fourth) daughter came to spill the small beer at breakfast yesterday, and the history being interrupted at the least a score of times by laughter and denials and (from the infant) by woeful lamentations, it fell out that I had concluded my meal while the tale still hung about the start, like an over-weighted galleon off a lee-sh.o.r.e; until at length Madam Malt (an indifferent mariner) confessed herself at fault, crying--
”But there! I will tell you all another time, Mr. Denis. It is a rare tale I warrant you, though Mistress Judith would have had me keep it secret; as a maid must have her secret, since time was a week gone in Genesis.”
A day that had begun thus, with two secrets so necessary to be divulged as were the barber's and Mistress Judith's, was (had I known it) to issue in such horrid disclosures as were to change for me the whole course of my living, and indeed awhile to suspend upon a doubtful balance the very living itself. Consequent upon my promise to the old attorney, I made haste to repair to his lodging as early as I judged it proper to do so, and therefore after breakfast, it lacking then a little of nine o'clock, I put on my cloak and hat and set forth. One consideration I had as I walked, which had weighed heavily upon me since my last conference with him, and that was whether, and if so when, I should attempt to get speech of my uncle in prison. It seemed to me right, and indeed due both to my father and myself (looking to the hards.h.i.+ps of my journey directly across England) that he should both know and thank us for the diligence we were using in his behalf; and it was to come at some means whereby I might procure this I had in view, that I intended to speak with Mr. Skene, no less than to conclude that we had already put in motion.
'Twas a foggy and thick morning, the weather having suddenly in the night pa.s.sed from its extreme of cold into an opposite of mildness, so that the snow was almost everywhere thawed, and the streets foul and deep in mire. I was glad enough to turn out of Fleet Street, where every cart and pa.s.senger I met with left me more filthily besprent; so that twice or thrice I was like to have drawn upon some peaceable citizen that unawares had sent his vestige mud upon my new bosom. So hastening into the Inn yard I traversed it and was soon at Mr. Skene's door, where I knocked loudly and awaited him. The door was soon opened to me. ”Is Mr. Skene within?” I asked; for he himself came not, as yesterday he had, but an ancient woman, in a soiled coif and apparel marvellous indecent, stood in the doorway.
”Lord! there be no Skenes here,” she said in a harsh voice, ”nor aught else but confusion and labour and sneaped wages, and they delayed.
Skenes!” she ran on like a course of mill-water, ”ay, Skenes and scalds and the quarten ague, and what doth the old fool live for, that was Ann by the Garlickhithe fifty year since, and worth nigh five-and-thirty marks or ever Tom Ducket beguiled her out of the virtuous way to the havoc of her salvation; with a murrain o' his like and small rest to their souls. A bright eye was mine then, master, that is dull now, and the bloom of a peach by the southward wall. But now 'tis age and a troubled mind that irks me, besides this pestering sort of knaves that live by the law. Ah! Garlickhithe was fair on a May morning once, lad, and the fairer, they told me, that Ann was fair featured who dwelt there.”
I had suffered the old hag to rave thus far, out of mere astonishment.
For how came it, I asked, that she who cleansed the chamber knew nothing of the man who occupied his business there. My brain faltered in its office, and I reeled under the weight of my fears.
”Who then uses these rooms?” I inquired when I could manage my words.
”None to-day nor to-morrow, I warrant, so foul it is,” replied the old wife, and fell to work upon the floor again with her soused clouts, while she proceeded, ”but the day after 'tis one Master Roman from Oxford removes. .h.i.ther to study at the law. Let him pay me my wages by the law, lawfully, as he shall answer for it at the Judgment, for I have been put to charges beyond belief in black soap (that is a halfpenny the pound in the shops at Bow), and let no one think I take less than fourpence by the day, for all I live on the Bank-side over against the Clink.”
Without more ado I flung into the chamber past her, and running to the closet where my money was, had it open on the instant. But the first sight showed it to me quite bare. Nevertheless, I groped about the vacancy like a man mad (as I was indeed), crying out that I was infamously deceived and robbed of five hundred pound. Now searching thus distractedly, and without either method or precaution, I chanced to hit my leg a sore great blow against the iron of the latch, and opened my wound afresh which was not near healed, so that it bled very profusely. But this, although it weakened me, hindered me nothing, I continuing a great while after to turn all upside down and to bewail my loss and Skene's villainy that had undone me.
In the end, however, my fever of dismay abating a little or giving place to reason, I bethought myself of Mr. Wall, the goldsmith, to whom perhaps the attorney had thought it safer to convey the gold; and straightway therefore made off to his house on Cornhill, in a remnant of hope that my apprehensions should after all prove to be ill-grounded.
He saw me coming, I suppose, for he left his shop to greet me; but when he observed my infinite distress, he would listen to no word of mine until he had fetched forth a bottle of Rhenish, and made me drink of it. The good wine refreshed me mightily, as also, and indeed more, did the quiet behaviour of Mr. Wall, who counselled me wisely to rest myself first and after to confine myself to relating the bare matter without heat or flourish of any kind. ”For out of an hot heart proceed many things inconvenient, as the Apostle plainly shewed,” he said, ”whereas out of a cold head proceedeth nothing but what is to the purpose, and generally profitable; at least in the way of business, Mr.
Denis, I mean in the way of business, which is doubtless the cause of your honouring me again with your company.”
Upon this I told him all, without pa.s.sion, and directly as it had befallen. His face, as I spoke, gradually came to a.s.sume a deeper gravity, but he did not interrupt my narration, though I perceived that in part it was not altogether clear. When I had made an end he sat long, and then rising, went to his desk and returned to me with a paper, which was the same I had given to Skene on the yesterday.