“No,” said Will, curtly.
“Ah! Well! I’ve often wondered
what became of your mother. She ran away from
her friends when she was a young lass—
a proud-spirited lass, and pretty, by Jove! I
knew the reason why she ran away,” said Raffles,
winking slowly as he looked sideways at Will.
“You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir,”
said Will, turning on him rather savagely. But
Mr. Raffles just now was not sensitive to shades of
manner.
“Not a bit!” said he, tossing his head
decisively “She was a little too honorable to
like her friends—that was it!” Here
Raffles again winked slowly. “Lord bless
you, I knew all about ’em— a little
in what you may call the respectable thieving line—
the high style of receiving-house—none of
your holes and corners— first-rate.
Slap-up shop, high profits and no mistake. But
Lord! Sarah would have known nothing about it—a
dashing young lady she was— fine boarding-school—fit
for a lord’s wife—only Archie Duncan
threw it at her out of spite, because she would have
nothing to do with him. And so she ran away
from the whole concern. I travelled for ’em,
sir, in a gentlemanly way—at a high salary.
They didn’t mind her running away at first—godly
folks, sir, very godly—and she was for
the stage. The son was alive then, and the daughter
was at a discount. Hallo! here we are at the
Blue Bull. What do you say, Mr. Ladislaw?—shall
we turn in and have a glass?”
“No, I must say good evening,” said Will,
dashing up a passage which led into Lowick Gate, and
almost running to get out of Raffles’s reach.
He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from
the town, glad of the starlit darkness when it came.
He felt as if he had had dirt cast on him amidst
shouts of scorn. There was this to confirm the
fellow’s statement—that his mother
never would tell him the reason why she had run away
from her family.
Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing
the truth about that family to be the ugliest?
His mother had braved hardship in order to separate
herself from it. But if Dorothea’s friends
had known this story—if the Chettams had
known it— they would have had a fine color
to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking
him unfit to come near her. However, let them
suspect what they pleased, they would find themselves
in the wrong. They would find out that the blood
in his veins was as free from the taint of meanness
as theirs.
“Inconsistencies,”
answered Imlac, “cannot both be right,
but imputed to man they may
both be true.”—Rasselas.
The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a
journey to Brassing on business, his good wife met
him in the entrance-hall and drew him into his private
sitting-room.
“Nicholas,” she said, fixing her honest
eyes upon him anxiously, “there has been such
a disagreeable man here asking for you—it
has made me quite uncomfortable.”
