“Whatever this man’s secrets are,”
thought Robert, as Mrs. Plowson hustled little George
Talboys out of the room, “that woman has no
unimportant share of them. Whatever the mystery
may be, it grows darker and thicker at every step;
but I try in vain to draw back or to stop short upon
the road, for a stronger hand than my own is pointing
the way to my lost friend’s unknown grave.”
LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
“I am going to take your grandson away with
me, Mr. Maldon,” Robert said gravely, as Mrs.
Plowson retired with her young charge.
The old man’s drunken imbecility was slowly
clearing away like the heavy mists of a London fog,
through which the feeble sunshine struggles dimly
to appear. The very uncertain radiance of Lieutenant
Maldon’s intellect took a considerable time
in piercing the hazy vapors of rum-and-water; but
the flickering light at last faintly glimmered athwart
the clouds, and the old man screwed his poor wits
to the sticking-point.
“Yes, yes,” he said, feebly; “take
the boy away from his poor old grandfather; I always
thought so.”
“You always thought that I should take him away?”
scrutinizing the half-drunken countenance with a searching
glance. “Why did you think so, Mr. Maldon?”
The fogs of intoxication got the better of the light
of sobriety for a moment, and the lieutenant answered
vaguely:
“Thought so—’cause I thought
so.”
Meeting the young barrister’s impatient frown,
he made another effort, and the light glimmered again.
“Because I thought you or his father would fetch
’m away.”
“When I was last in this house, Mr. Maldon,
you told me that George Talboys had sailed for Australia.”
“Yes, yes—I know, I know,”
the old man answered, confusedly, shuffling his scanty
limp gray hairs with his two wandering hands—“I
know; but he might have come back—mightn’t
he? He was restless, and—and—queer
in his mind, perhaps, sometimes. He might have
come back.”
He repeated this two or three times in feeble, muttering
tones; groping about on the littered mantle-piece
for a dirty-looking clay pipe, and filling and lighting
it with hands that trembled violently.
Robert Audley watched those poor, withered, tremulous
fingers dropping shreds of tobacco upon the hearth
rug, and scarcely able to kindle a lucifer for their
unsteadiness. Then walking once or twice up and
down the little room, he left the old man to take
a few puffs from the great consoler.
Presently he turned suddenly upon the half-pay lieutenant
with a dark solemnity in his handsome face.
“Mr. Maldon,” he said, slowly watching
the effect of every syllable as he spoke, “George
Talboys never sailed for Australia—that
I know. More than this, he never came to Southampton;
and the lie you told me on the 8th of last September
was dictated to you by the telegraphic message which
you received on that day.”
