Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1000 page)

I shall say nothing of the secret anxieties which weighed on my mind, under these circumstances. Happily for me, on every account, my mother’s strength held out. The easy and (as we then thought) the rapid rate of traveling had its invigorating effect on her nerves. She slept better when we rested for the night than she had slept at home. After twice being delayed on the road, we arrived in London at three o’clock on the afternoon of the last day of the month. Had I reached my destination in time?

As I interpreted the writing of the apparition, I had still some hours at my disposal. The phrase, “at the month’s end,” meant, as I understood it, at the last hour of the last day in the month. If I took up my position “under the shadow of Saint Paul’s,” say, at ten that night, I should arrive at the place of meeting with two hours to spare, before the last stroke of the clock marked the beginning of the new month.

At half-past nine, I left my mother to rest after her long journey, and privately quit the house. Before ten, I was at my post. The night was fine and clear; and the huge shadow of the cathedral marked distinctly the limits within which I had been bid to wait, on the watch for events.

The great clock of Saint Paul’s struck ten — and nothing happened.

The next hour passed very slowly. I walked up and down; at one time absorbed in my own thoughts; at another, engaged in watching the gradual diminution in the number of foot passengers who passed me as the night advanced. The City (as it is called) is the most populous part of London in the daytime; but at night, when it ceases to be the centre of commerce, its busy population melts away, and the empty streets assume the appearance of a remote and deserted quarter of the metropolis. As the half hour after ten struck — then the quarter to eleven — then the hour — the pavement steadily became more and more deserted. I could count the foot passengers now by twos and threes; and I could see the places of public refreshment within my view beginning already to close for the night.

I looked at the clock; it pointed to ten minutes past eleven. At that hour, could I hope to meet Mrs. Van Brandt alone in the public street?

The more I thought of it, the less likely such an event seemed to be. The more reasonable probability was that I might meet her once more, accompanied by some friend — perhaps under the escort of Van Brandt himself. I wondered whether I should preserve my self-control, in the presence of that man, for the second time.

While my thoughts were still pursuing this direction, my attention was recalled to passing events by a sad little voice, putting a strange little question, close at my side.

“If you please, sir, do you know where I can find a chemist’s shop open at this time of night?”

I looked round, and discovered a poorly clad little boy, with a basket over his arm, and a morsel of paper in his hand.

“The chemists’ shops are all shut,” I said. “If you want any medicine, you must ring the night-bell.”

“I dursn’t do it, sir,” replied the small stranger. “I am such a little boy, I’m afraid of their beating me if I ring them up out of their beds, without somebody to speak for me.”

The little creature looked at me under the street lamp with such a forlorn experience of being beaten for trifling offenses in his face, that it was impossible to resist the impulse to help him.

“Is it a serious case of illness?” I asked.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Have you got a doctor’s prescription?”

He held out his morsel of paper.

“I have got this,” he said.

I took the paper from him, and looked at it.

It was an ordinary prescription for a tonic mixture. I looked first at the doctor’s signature; it was the name of a perfectly obscure person in the profession. Below it was written the name of the patient for whom the medicine had been prescribed. I started as I read it. The name was “Mrs. Brand.”

The idea instantly struck me that this (so far as sound went, at any rate) was the English equivalent of Van Brandt.

“Do you know the lady who sent you for the medicine?” I asked.

“Oh yes, sir! She lodges with mother — and she owes for rent. I have done everything she told me, except getting the physic. I’ve pawned her ring, and I’ve bought the bread and butter and eggs, and I’ve taken care of the change. Mother looks to the change for her rent. It isn’t my fault, sir, that I’ve lost myself. I am but ten years old — and all the chemists’ shops are shut up!”

Here my little friend’s sense of his unmerited misfortunes overpowered him, and he began to cry.

“Don’t cry, my man!” I said; “I’ll help you. Tell me something more about the lady first. Is she alone?”

“She’s got her little girl with her, sir.”

My heart quickened its beat. The boy’s answer reminded me of that other little girl whom my mother had once seen.

“Is the lady’s husband with her?” I asked next.

“No, sir — not now. He was with her; but he went away — and he hasn’t come back yet.”

I put a last conclusive question.

“Is her husband an Englishman?” I inquired.

“Mother says he’s a foreigner,” the boy answered.

I turned away to hide my agitation. Even the child might have noticed it!

Passing under the name of “Mrs. Brand” — poor, so poor that she was obliged to pawn her ring — left, by a man who was a foreigner, alone with her little girl — was I on the trace of her at that moment? Was this lost child destined to be the innocent means of leading me back to the woman I loved, in her direst need of sympathy and help? The more I thought of it, the more strongly the idea of returning with the boy to the house in which his mother’s lodger lived fastened itself on my mind. The clock struck the quarter past eleven. If my anticipations ended in misleading me, I had still three-quarters of an hour to spare before the month reached its end.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

The boy mentioned a street, the name of which I then heard for the first time. All he could say, when I asked for further particulars, was that he lived close by the river — in which direction, he was too confused and too frightened to be able to tell me.

While we were still trying to understand each other, a cab passed slowly at some little distance. I hailed the man, and mentioned the name of the street to him. He knew it perfectly well. The street was rather more than a mile away from us, in an easterly direction. He undertook to drive me there and to bring me back again to Saint Paul’s (if necessary), in less than twenty minutes. I opened the door of the cab, and told my little friend to get in. The boy hesitated.

“Are we going to the chemist’s, if you please, sir?” he asked.

“No. You are going home first, with me.”

The boy began to cry again.

“Mother will beat me, sir, if I go back without the medicine.”

“I will take care that your mother doesn’t beat you. I am a doctor myself; and I want to see the lady before we get the medicine.”

The announcement of my profession appeared to inspire the boy with a certain confidence. But he still showed no disposition to accompany me to his mother’s house.

“Do you mean to charge the lady anything?” he asked. “The money I’ve got on the ring isn’t much. Mother won’t like having it taken out of her rent.”

“I won’t charge the lady a farthing,” I answered.

The boy instantly got into the cab. “All right,” he said, “as long as mother gets her money.”

Alas for the poor! The child’s education in the sordid anxieties of life was completed already at ten years old!

We drove away.

CHAPTER XXV. I KEEP MY APPOINTMENT.

THE poverty-stricken aspect of the street when we entered it, the dirty and dilapidated condition of the house when we drew up at the door, would have warned most men, in my position, to prepare themselves for a distressing discovery when they were admitted to the interior of the dwelling. The first impression which the place produced on
my
mind suggested, on the contrary, that the boy’s answers to my questions had led me astray. It was simply impossible to associate Mrs. Van Brandt (as
I
remembered her) with the spectacle of such squalid poverty as I now beheld. I rang the door-bell, feeling persuaded beforehand that my inquiries would lead to no useful result.

As I lifted my hand to the bell, my little companion’s dread of a beating revived in full force. He hid himself behind me; and when I asked what he was about, he answered, confidentially: “Please stand between us, sir, when mother opens the door!”

A tall and truculent woman answered the bell. No introduction was necessary. Holding a cane in her hand, she stood self-proclaimed as my small friend’s mother.

“I thought it was that vagabond of a boy of mine,” she explained, as an apology for the exhibition of the cane. “He has been gone on an errand more than two hours. What did you please to want, sir?”

I interceded for the unfortunate boy before I entered on my own business.

“I must beg you to forgive your son this time,” I said. “I found him lost in the streets; and I have brought him home.”

The woman’s astonishment when she heard what I had done, and discovered her son behind me, literally struck her dumb. The language of the eye, superseding on this occasion the language of the tongue, plainly revealed the impression that I had produced on her: “You bring my lost brat home in a cab! Mr. Stranger, you are mad.”

“I hear that you have a lady named Brand lodging in the house,” I went on. “I dare say I am mistaken in supposing her to be a lady of the same name whom I know. But I should like to make sure whether I am right or wrong. Is it too late to disturb your lodger to-night?”

The woman recovered the use of her tongue.

“My lodger is up and waiting for that little fool, who doesn’t know his way about London yet!” She emphasized those words by shaking her brawny fist at her son — who instantly returned to his place of refuge behind the tail of my coat. “Have you got the money?” inquired the terrible person, shouting at her hidden offspring over my shoulder. “Or have you lost
that
as well as your own stupid little self?”

The boy showed himself again, and put the money into his mother’s knotty hand. She counted it, with eyes which satisfied themselves fiercely that each coin was of genuine silver — and then became partially pacified.

“Go along upstairs,” she growled, addressing her son; “and don’t keep the lady waiting any longer. They’re half starved, she and her child,” the woman proceeded, turning to me. “The food my boy has got for them in his basket will be the first food the mother has tasted today. She’s pawned everything by this time; and what she’s to do unless you help her is more than I can say. The doctor does what he can; but he told me today, if she wasn’t better nourished, it was no use sending for
him
. Follow the boy; and see for yourself if it’s the lady you know.”

I listened to the woman, still feeling persuaded that I had acted under a delusion in going to her house. How was it possible to associate the charming object of my heart’s worship with the miserable story of destitution which I had just heard? I stopped the boy on the first landing, and told him to announce me simply as a doctor, who had been informed of Mrs. Brand’s illness, and who had called to see her.

We ascended a second flight of stairs, and a third. Arrived now at the top of the house, the boy knocked at the door that was nearest to us on the landing. No audible voice replied. He opened the door without ceremony, and went in. I waited outside to hear what was said. The door was left ajar. If the voice of “Mrs. Brand” was (as I believed it would prove to be) the voice of a stranger, I resolved to offer her delicately such help as lay within my power, and to return forthwith to my post under “the shadow of Saint Paul’s.”