The Man of Gold (21 page)

All that she had ever heard about the notorious Rookery at St Giles, of which Seven Dials with its seven converging streets and seven roaring gin palaces was the centre, came back into her head. There were thieves to be seen there of every sort, safe from the police who ventured into the area only in bands and who, when they did make a capture, were likely to hear the cry of ‘Rescue’ and find themselves assaulted by a mob. There, drinking where Vilkins had undertaken to find weak-willed Mr Bessom, were the bludgers who would think nothing of beating anyone of obvious wealth into insensibility and the broadsmen, less cruel but tenacious of their gains at faked card games and all too ready to spend them on any girl who took their fancy. Or there were the flimps, slipping adroit fingers into pockets and purses, and the pudding snammers, stealing from careless people coming out of cookshops. Would one of these take, by force or cunning, the small, hard-earned sum she had given Vilkins as cab fare?

Or was Vilkins coming safely home in a cab even now? It was late enough to have justified the spending of some of that diminishing amount of her savings. Or was she out of foolish kindness coming home by omnibus?

But was she coming back at all? And, if she was, had she found Mr Bessom? And had she succeeded in worming out of him what he knew about Cousin Cornelia and her visits to the chemist’s shop? Was there even, after all, nothing sinister in those visits?

And how late it was.

Was Vilkins even at this moment in some vile nethersken on a broken-down bed at the mercy of some bully or other?

She should never have allowed her to make that offer out of their long friendship.

And here at home, what was it that Louisa had been up to? Stealing mustard from the kitchen? What could be her purpose? And in the morning when she and Maria were asked again, would they tell?

The night wore on. The whole household was asleep now, and had been for some hours. Miss Unwin had long ago blown out her candle. But, though the night was chill, she kept her window open the better to look out for the first sign of her friend, the better to hear in the night-time silence at the edge of the great city the sound of a cab-horse’s hooves clacking out on the cobbles, or even Vilkins’ sturdy boots clumping wearily along the last stretch of the long walk home.

But when at last the faint whitening of the sky through Miss Unwin’s window indicated that the new day was coming Vilkins had still not returned. Miss Unwin was in despair. She had made up her mind that at some moment she would have to go and see Inspector Redderman and tell him just what she had done, how she had allowed Vilkins to go on that ridiculous and dangerous errand. She would have to throw herself on the Inspector’s mercy and beg him to ask his fellow policemen at the station house near the Rookery to raid the area.

But, even if the Inspector would consent to that, she knew that the chances of finding Vilkins in the Rookery with its scores of underground passages linking one tumbledown house with another, with its specially contrived escape ways over roofs and along the tops of walls, were slim indeed. Vilkins could be being held by some desperate man who had taken a fancy to her, and no one would know for weeks or months where she was. She could have been murdered and it would be long, long, if ever, before her body was found.

But though she had made up her mind that Inspector Redderman sooner or later would have to be told, she could not decide at what precise moment it would be best to give him the news. It was possible that, even at this dawn hour, Vilkins would return. It was worth waiting still.

Then, early though it was, she heard the twins talking in their room. Another problem.

She resolved at least to deal with that. Perhaps by the
time she had learnt what on earth it was that had possessed them to steal mustard from the larder and what they had intended to do with their prize, Vilkins would have returned and her other dilemma be ended.

But the moment she entered the girls’ room she knew she was to be faced with a stiff battle. They had each fallen abruptly silent, and now they gave one another quick glances of complicity before, sitting up in their beds with the curtains pulled back, they began looking with studious care at the story books they had on the tables beside them.

‘You can put away those books,’ Miss Unwin said drily. ‘And I shall not ask you to tell me what you have been reading in them.’

She half-expected Louisa to ask impertinently why not. But the girl said not a word and let her book fall closed on the bedclothes in front of her. Maria, more tidily, shut her volume with care and placed it on her table.

‘Now,’ Miss Unwin said, ‘when we last saw each other you were clutching a handful of mustard powder, Louisa. Why was that?’

‘I just was, Miss.’

‘No, that will not do. What had you taken the mustard from the larder for?’

‘We just thought it would be a good idea.’

‘Well, it was not. Maria, can you give me a better answer than your sister?’

‘No, Miss Unwin.’

‘Come, Maria, you’re a sensible girl. You cannot think I will believe you when you say you “just did” take the mustard. Tell me why you did, and perhaps we will hear no more about it.’

‘She has told you, Miss Unwin,’ Louisa said quickly.

‘No, Louisa, she has not. And neither have you. And what is more when I ask Maria something I will thank you not to answer for her.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ Louisa replied, with great humility.

Miss Unwin felt a dart of anger. But she suppressed it.

‘Now, Maria, I will ask you once again. Why were you two down in the larder in the middle of the night taking mustard powder?’

‘Don’t know, Miss.’

‘Oh, come, Maria.’

Silence.

‘Maria, this is your very last chance. Now, why did you two take that mustard?’

And Maria, who Miss Unwin had hoped would prove the weaker vessel, once more stayed silent, though she hung her head and blushed a deep and anxious red.

Miss Unwin sighed.

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘since you are both so obstinate you will have to be punished.’

Maria then did give her a half-glance in which there was a good measure of fear.

She waited hopefully. At the last moment would the girl break? Would she reveal a secret which, with every passing minute it seemed, might be connected with that greater, looming, more terrible secret under which the whole house had lain ever since old Mr Partington’s death?

But if Louisa, the leader, did not flagrantly disobey the injunction not to answer on behalf of her twin, she nevertheless managed by as little as a single twitch of her blankets to convey a warning. And Maria took it in, hung her head again, hunched her shoulders in obstinacy and said not a word.

‘Very well. Now you will both get dressed in silence. Then you, Louisa, will go to the schoolroom and you will remain there all day. You, Maria, will stay in here. And all either of you will get to eat will be bread and water.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

Miss Unwin watched the two girls in silence while they dressed and washed. Then she escorted Louisa to the schoolroom and left her there.

But she was not happy as she went downstairs. She had hoped that in the time she had been the girls’ governess she had won their confidence. They ought to have yielded to the pressures she had put on them to confess their misdemeanour. But they had not. She felt she had failed as an instructress. And, worse, she feared that the girls’ obstinacy meant it was no trivial misdemeanour they had committed, or had been beginning to commit, when she had surprised them down in the basement.

Well, she would have to tell their father of the steps she had taken when she met him at the breakfast table. And where was Vilkins?

Although it wanted some minutes to the breakfast hour Miss Unwin made her way towards the dining room since, with the twins confined, she had no immediate task.

Just as she was about to open the door she heard a sound. For a moment she paused. Then she took in what it was. The sound of the breakfast cutlery being put in place. With more than a little noisy clumsiness. Vilkins.

She flung the door open, hastily closed it behind her.

‘Vilkins, how did you get here? When did you come?’

‘Oh, lawks, Unwin, I ‘ad such a time an’ all. Only just got to the ‘ouse five minutes ago, an’ Mrs Miller looking for me high an’ low.’

‘Yes, I ought to have gone down and warned her you were not here, but I had some trouble with the girls.’

‘Good thing you didn’t say nothing. I told ‘er I just slipped out to post a letter. Not that I’ve ever done such a thing as write a letter in me life, only she ain’t to know that, is she?’

‘No, I suppose not. But, Vilkins, what kept you? What happened to you? Are you all right?’

‘Well, all right I am. More or less. Scraped me leg
something terrible getting off of the omnibus this morning. Driver wouldn’t stop in course, weren’t no toffs on board.’

Miss Unwin knew well that few bus drivers did more than slow their horses to a walk if their passengers were not from among the gentry. But she had more urgent business than commiserating with Vilkins over her injury, which hardly seemed to prevent her in any case from banging rapidly round the table.

‘But, Vilkins, why were you out all night? Let me know.’

‘Well, it’s a long story.’

Vilkins glanced at the dining-room door.

‘But it wants nearly ten minutes till breakfast time. Tell me, Vilkins, tell me. First, were you in danger?’

‘Danger? Well, I’ s’pose I was in a way. But I got out of it in the end with me skin ‘ole.’

‘Thank goodness that you did. Thank goodness. I would never have forgiven –’

And then, behind her, she heard the door briskly opened.

She turned.

It was Richard. Richard, looking well and spruce, dressed in one of his best new coats, so different from the turned garment that until not so long ago had been the only coat he possessed.

He had been smiling when he had entered, a broad grin that lit his whole round face. But at the sight of Vilkins he checked.

‘Ah. Ah, Mary, it’s you. Good morning.’

‘’Morning, sir.’

‘Mary, I wonder if you would leave us for a few minutes.’

‘Well, I has got to get the table laid. An’ I’m all behindhand this morning.’

‘Yes, well, never mind. We can breakfast a little late and no harm done.’

‘Well, I dunno what Mrs M will say. Stickler for getting ‘er bacon just so, she is.’

Miss Unwin thought it high time to intervene.

‘I’ll say a word to Cook, Mary,’ she said. ‘Do go along now.’

‘All right. Never said I wasn’t going, did I?’

She trailed off.

‘I’m not so sure about your recommendation of that girl,’ Richard said. ‘But never mind about that now. I’ve – I’ve something much more important to say.’

For a moment Miss Unwin wondered whether there and then before breakfast the impetuous man she loved was going to put to her in form the proposal he had been prevented from making before.

But even Richard was not quite such a dashing lover.

‘Harriet,’ he said, ‘I thought of this in the middle of the night. Now, listen. This evening, will you come down with me to Greenwich, on one of the boats and dine with me at the Trafalgar Inn. It’s – It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and of course –’

He came to a full stop.

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘it has never been possible before. So, Harriet, will you? Will you? Say you will.’

Miss Unwin knew well that it was more than a trip down the river and a fine dinner at Greenwich that Richard was offering her. She saw at once that at that dinner, or perhaps immediately after it, he was intending to put the question to her that would change her whole life. And though, before, she had felt some inner, indefinable unwillingness to accept that which with all her heart she thought she was willing to accept, now with the flood of relief at Vilkins’ safety strong within her she did not hesitate for a moment.

‘Well, sir, if you wish me to go down to Greenwich with you, I will, with the greatest pleasure.’

Then, feeling it very much to be a cloud on an azure sea of happiness, she felt obliged to tell Richard about the
unusual misbehaviour of his daughters and what she had had to do about it.

‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Well, this does mar the occasion. But you did quite right. You did quite right indeed, though I doubt if I would have managed to be as stern. No. As just. Yes, I doubt if I would have managed to be as just myself.’

‘Well, sir, we must hope that they repent before very long. Then, though they will not eat a fine Greenwich dinner, we can ask Cook to give them something special to make up for their hard regime.’

‘Yes. Yes, we’ll do that. And perhaps another box of those sugar-plums they like so much.’

‘Well, you are indulgent, sir. But I suppose occasional indulgence is not too bad a thing.’

But even as she spoke Miss Unwin realised what the mustard that the twins had been so secretive about had been intended for. The box of sugar-plums she had taken from them. They must have been meaning, when she had let them have them again, to fill each plum and then to offer it to – To herself as a little revenge? Or to their father as a prank?

Well, in either case, though it was a piece of naughtiness which ought to meet with a rebuke, it was not something that was as serious as she had feared.

But this was no time to think about a trivial piece of mischief. There was more, much more, to think about. There was the evening that was to lie ahead, a trip down the broad flowing Thames by steamer – thank goodness the day was fine and promised to stay so – and then dinner in one of the big inns overlooking the river with perhaps the moon shining on its tranquil waters. And then … And then Richard to say something to her, to say words that once she had thought she might never hear said. And then …

After that, mistiness. Let what would happen after those words had been spoken, that question asked,
remain at least for the present deliciously unknown.