Penny Dreadful Multipack Vol. 1 (Illustrated. Annotated. 'Wagner The Wehr-Wolf,' 'Varney The Vampire,' 'The Mysteries of London Vol. 1' + Bonus Features) (Penny Dreadful Multipacks) (258 page)

THE REVELATION

THAT same evening Mr. Chichester dined with his friend Sir Rupert
Harborough, at the dwelling of the latter in Tavistock Square.
    Whenever her husband invited this guest, Lady Cecilia
invariably made it a rule to accept an invitation elsewhere.
    The baronet and his friend were therefore alone together.
     "This is awkward - very awkward," said Chichester, when the
cloth was removed, and the two gentlemen were occupied with their wine.
    "Awkward! I believe you," exclaimed the baronet.
"Upon my honour, that Greenwood ought to be well thrashed!"
    "He is an insufferable coxcomb," said
Chichester. 
    "A conceited humbug," added the baronet.
    "A self-sufficient fool," remarked Chichester.
    "A consummate scoundrel," cried Sir Rupert.
    "So he is," observed Chichester.
    "But all this will not pay my bill," continued the
baronet; "and where to obtain six hundred pounds, the deuce take me if I
can tell."
    "No - nor I either," said Chichester; "unless
we get a couple of horses and ride down towards Hounslow upon a venture."
    "You never can be serious, Chichester? What! turn
highwaymen!"
    "I was only joking. But do you really think that
Greenwood will press you so hard?"
    "He will send the bill to Lord Tremordyn's banker's
to-morrow. Oh! I can assure you he was quite high about it, and pretended to forget
all the circumstances that had led to the transaction. To every word I said, it
was '
I don't recollect.
'  May the devil take him!"
    "And so he has got you completely in his power?"
    "Completely."
    "And you would like to have your revenge?"
    "Of course I should. But what is the use of talking in
this manner? You know very well that I can do him no injury!"
    "I am not quite so sure of that," said Chichester.
    "What do you mean?" demanded the baronet. "I
can see that there is something in your mind."
    "I was only thinking. Suppose we accused him ,of
something that he would not like exposed, and, could not very well refute - an
intrigue with any particular lady, for instance —"
    "Ah! if we could - even though it were with my own wife,"
exclaimed the baronet. "And, by the bye, he is very intimate with Lady
Cecilia."
   
 
"Of course he is," said
Chichester drily. "Have you never noticed that before."
    "It never struck me until now," observed the
baronet.
    "But it has struck me - frequently," added
Chichester.
    "And when I think of it," continued Sir Rupert
Harborough, "he has often been here for an hour or two together; for I
have gone out and left him with Lady Cecilia in the drawing-room; and when I
have come back, he has been there still."
    "Greenwood is not the man to waste his time at a lady's
apron-strings for nothing."
    "Chichester - you do not mean —"
    "Oh! no - I mean nothing more than you choose to
surmise."
    "And what would you have me surmise?"
    "I do not suppose," said Chichester, "that
you care very much for Lady Cecilia."
    "You are well aware of my feelings with regard to
her."
    "And out of all the money she has had lately - an
affluence that you yourself have noticed more than once - she has never
assisted you."
    "No - never. And I have often puzzled myself to think
whence came those supplies."
    "You cannot suppose that either Lord or Lady Tremordyn
replenish her purse?"
    "Yes - I have thought so."
    "Oh! very well; you know best;" and Chichester
sipped his wine with an affected indifference which was in itself most
eloquently significant.
    "My dear fellow," said the baronet, after a pause,
"I feel convinced that you have got some plan in your head, or else that
you know more than you choose to say. In either case, Lady Cecilia is
concerned, I have told you that I care not one fig about her - on my honour!
Have the kindness. then, to speak without reserve."
    "And then you may be offended," said Chichester.
    "How absurd! Speak."
    "What if I was to tell you that Lady Cecilia —"
    "Well?"
    "Is Greenwood's mistress!"
    "The proof! the proof!" ejaculated the baronet.
    "I myself saw them in each other's arms."
    Sir Rupert Harborough's countenance grew deadly pale, and his
lips quivered. He now revolted from the mere idea of what he had just before
wished to be a fact.
    "You remember the day that Greenwood called to acquaint
us with his success at Rottenborough in March last?" said Chichester,
after a pause. "You and I had been practising with the dice and cards; and
we went out together."
    "I recollect," exclaimed the baronet; " and
you returned for the dice-boxes which you had left behind."
    "It was upon that occasion. Greenwood followed me out
of the drawing-room, and gave me a hundred pounds to keep the secret."
    "True! you produced a hundred pounds immediately
afterwards; and you said that Greenwood had lent you the amount. Why did you
never tell me of this before? "
    "The deuce! Is it a pleasant thing to communicate to a
friend, Harborough? Besides, it always struck me that the discovery would one
day or another be of some use."
    "Of use indeed!" ejaculated the baronet. "And
Lady Cecilia is Greenwood's mistress I Ah! that explains the restoration of her
diamonds, as well as the improved condition of her finances. The false
creature!"
    "You must admit, Harborough," said Chichester,
"that you have never been over attentive to your wife; and if —"
    "Nonsense, my good fellow," interrupted the baronet
sharply. "That is no excuse for a woman. A man may do what he chooses; but
a woman's wife —"
    "Come, come - no moralizing," said Chichester.
" It is all your own fault. Not one woman out of fifty would go wrong, if
the husband behaved properly. But now that I have told you the secret, think
what use you can make of it."
    "I cannot see how the circumstance can serve me,
without farther proof," remarked the baronet. "Al! Lady Cecilia -
what duplicity! what deceit!"
    "Why not search her drawers - her boxes?" said
Chichester. " She is absent; no one can interrupt you; and perhaps you may
find a letter —"
    "Excellent thought!" cried Sir Rupert; and,
seizing a candle, he hurried from the room.
    Twenty minutes elapsed, during which Mr. Chichester sate
drinking his wine as comfortably as if he had done a good action, instead of
revealing so fearful a secret to his friend.
    At length Sir Rupert Harborough returned to the dining-room.
    He was very pale; and there was something
 
ghastly in his countenance, and
sinister in the expression of his eyes.
    "Well - any news?" inquired Chichester.
    "No proof - not a note, not a letter," answered
the baronet. "But I have found something," he added, with an
hysterical kind of laugh, "that will answer my purpose for the moment
better still."
    "What is that?" asked his friend.
    "Lady Cecilia's diamonds and other trinkets - presents,
most likely, from Greenwood - together with ninety pounds in notes and
gold."
    "Capital!" cried Chichester. " You can now
settle with Greenwood."
    "Yes - I will pay him his six hundred pounds, renew for
the remainder for three or four months, and then devise some plot to obtain
undeniable proof of his amour with Lady Cecilia., But when I think of that
woman, Chichester - not that she is any thing to me - still she is my wife
—"
    "Nonsense! It is fortunate for you that I told you of
the affair, or else you would never have thought of using her property for the
purpose of raising the sum you require."
    "Ah! I will be revenged on that Greenwood!" cried
Sir Rupert, in whose mind one idea was upper. most, in spite of his depraved
and selfish disposition " I will have the most signal vengeance upon the
seducer of my wife! But remember, Chichester - I care nothing for
 
her
;- still the outrage  - the
dishonour - the perfidy! Yes - by God!" he added, dashing his clenched
fist upon the table; "I will be avenged!"
    "And in the mean time convert the diamonds and jewels
into money," said Chichester. "It is only seven o'clock; we have
plenty of time for the pawnbroker's."
    "Come," cried the baronet, whose manner continued
to be excited and irritable; "I am ready."
    The two friends emptied their glasses, and took their
departure, the baronet having carefully secured about his person the booty he
had plundered from his wife. They then bent their steps towards the
pawnbroking-establishment of Mr. V—, in the Strand.
    What a strange type of all the luxury, dissipation,
extravagance, profligacy, misery, ruin, and want, which characterise the
various classes of society, is a pawnbroker's shop! It is the emporium whither
go the jewels of the aristocrat, the clothes of the mechanic, the ornaments of
the actress, and the necessaries of the poor. Genteel profligacy and pining industry
seek, at the same place - the one the means for fresh extravagance, the other
the wherewith to purchase food to sustain life. Two broad and direct roads
branch off from the pawnbroker's shop in different directions; the first
leading to the gaming-table, the second to the gin-palace; and then those paths
are carried onwards, past those half-way houses of destruction, and converge to
one point, at which they meet at last, and whose name is Ruin.
    Two working men have been seen standing at the corner of a
street, whispering together: at length one has taken off his coat, gone to the
pawnbroker's, come out with the proceeds, and accompanied the other to the
nearest gin-shop, where they have remained until all the money raised upon the
garment was expended. Again, during the absence from home of the hard-working
mechanic, his intemperate wife has collected together their few necessaries,
carried them to the pawnbroker's, and spent the few shillings, thus procured,
on gin. The thief, when he has picked a pocket of a watch, finds a ready means
of disposing of it at the pawnbroker's. Hundreds of working-men pledge their
Sunday garments regularly every Monday morning, and redeem them again on
Saturday night.
    Are pawnbrokers' shops a necessary evil? To some extent they
are. They afford assistance to those whom some pressing urgence suddenly
overtakes, or who are temporarily out of work. But are not the facilities which
they thus present to all classes liable to an abuse more than commensurate with
this occasional advantage? Decidedly. They supply a ready means for drink to
those who would hesitate before they sold their little property out-and-out;
for every one who pawns, under such circumstances, entertains the hope and
intention of redeeming the articles again. The enormous interest charged by
pawnbrokers crushes and effectually ruins the poor. We will suppose that a
mechanic pledges his best clothes every Monday morning, and redeems them every
Saturday night for wear on the Sabbath: we will presume that the pawnbroker
lends him one pound each time :- they will thus be in pawn 313 days in each
year, for which year he will pay 3s. 8
d.
 
interest, and 4s 4
d.
for duplicates - making a total of 8s.
Thus he pays 8s. for the use of his own clothes for 52 days!
    If the government were really a paternal one - if it had the
welfare of the industrious community at heart, it would take the system of
lending money upon deposits under its own supervision, and establish
institutions similar to the Mont do Piété in France. Correctly managed,
demanding is small interest upon loans, such institutions would become a
blessing :- now the shops of pawnbrokers are an evil and a curse!
    Sir Rupert Harborough entered the pawnbroker's shop by the
front door, while Mr. Chichester awaited him in the Lowther Arcade. The baronet
was well known in that establishment; and he accordingly entered into a
friendly and familiar chat with one of the young men behind the counter.
    "That is a very handsome painting," said Sir
Rupert, pointing to one suspended to the wall.
    "Yes, sir. It was pledged fifteen months ago for seven
pounds, by a young nobleman who had received it along with fifty pounds in cash
the same morning by way of discount for a thousand pound bill."
    "And what do you expect for it? "
    "Eighty guineas," answered the young man coolly.
" But here is one much finer than that," continued the pawnbroker's
assistant, turning towards another painting. "That expired a few days ago.
It was only pledged for thirty guineas."
    "And how much have you the conscience to ask for it?
"
    "One hundred and twenty," whispered the young man.
    "There is something peculiar connected with that
picture. It belonged to an upholsterer who was once immensely rich, but who was
ruined by giving credit to the Duke of York."
    "To the Duke of York - eh?"
    "Oh! yes, sir: we have received in pledge the goods of
many, many tradesmen who were once very wealthy, but who have been reduced to
absolute beggary - starvation - by his late Royal Highness. We call the pillar
in Saint James's Park the COLUMN OF INFAMY."
    "Well, it was too bad not to pay his debts before they
built that monument," said the baronet carelessly. "But, come - give
me a cool six hundred for these things."
 
 
"What! the diamonds again?" exclaimed the assistant.
    "Oh yes - they come and go, like good and bad fortune -
'pon my honour!" said Sir Rupert.
    "Like the jewels of many others at the West End,"
added the assistant; and, having made out the duplicates, he handed Sir Rupert
over the sum required.
    On the following morning the baronet paid Mr. Greenwood the
six hundred pounds, and gave a new bill for a thousand at four months, for
which the capitalist was generous enough not to charge him any interest.
    There was nothing in the baronet's conduct to create a
suspicion in Mr. Greenwood's mind that his intrigue with Lady Cecilia was
detected; but when the transaction was completed, Sir Rupert hastened to
consult with his friend Chichester upon some plan for obtaining positive
evidence of that amour.