When Hermia, in response to Mrs. Varrel's appeal, had said: "I will myself take the parcel to London," the answer had sprung to her lips of its own accord, so to speak, and as if her will had had no part in the framing of it.
It was a promise which, having once been given, she felt bound to fulfil; but, indeed, after consideration showed her no reason why she should wish to do otherwise than fulfil it. She was determined, in the first place, to carry out her promise, and, in the second, if it were by any means possible to do so, to clear up the terrible suspicion which had taken root in her mind, either by proving that it had no basis of fact to rest upon, or else, by the accumulation of further evidence, to put together a case sufficiently strong to warrant her in placing it in other and more competent hands, leaving it for them to work out to whatever issue it might lead them.
In pursuance of this resolution it was that, two days after Mrs. Varrel's death, and without affording the faintest hint to anyone of the real object she had in view, Hermia wrote the note, already given, to her lover; and after bidding Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte a tender farewell, set out for London on an errand which she herself felt all but convinced would prove to be nothing more than a bootless errand.
She drove direct from the London terminus to the house of her friend, Mrs. Wingate, in Maida Vale. Both Mrs. Wingate and her husband made Hermia as welcome as it was possible to make anyone. She explained to them the object of her journey as far as the delivery of the parcel was concerned, upon which Mr. Wingate kindly offered to keep her company on her errand, assuring her, after she had told him the address she wanted to go to, that the neighborhood in question was a very low one, being infested by loose characters of various kinds, and that a lady unattended--unless she were a Sister of Mercy, or a "visitor," and known to be such--could scarcely traverse it without the risk of being insulted, to say nothing of the further risk she would run of being hustled and robbed.
On consideration, Hermia deemed it best to accept Mr. Wingate's offer. She had not mentioned Richard Varrell's name, and, bearing in mind her promise to his mother, she determined not to do so.
Accordingly, they set out about six o'clock the following day, Mr. Wingate being of opinion that if the person Miss Rivers was in search of were in any kind of employment she would be more likely to find him at home in the evening than at any other time. Mr. Wingate had engaged a hansom, and after what had seemed to Hermia an interminable ride, but which was none the less strange and fascinating to her untutored eyes on that account, they were set down opposite a church having a spire so tall and stately that if it could have been transplanted to the flat country about Ashdown it would have served as a landmark for miles around. After skirting the churchyard and leaving behind all the main thoroughfares of traffic, they found themselves in a maze of streets, courts and alleys, the like of which Hermia had never dreamed of before and never wished to see again. The farther they penetrated, the more squalid and mean became their surroundings. The whole neighborhood swarmed with life--but such life! Could Hermia ever forget the dream of baleful faces which passed like a procession before her that evening; some scowling and sinister, some leering, some with an ape-like grin upon them, and others verging on the vacancy of an idiot's, with here and there one bearing the impress of a wickedness so unfathomable that the girl could but shudder and veil her eyes? "But the children--oh, my dears, the little children!" as she said afterwards, when recounting her experience to Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte, her blue eyes flushed with tears. "It was simply heartrending to see them and to feel and know that I could do nothing for them."
At length, but not till after two or three inquiries on Mr. Wingate's part, Plumtree Street was found, number sixteen. It was a narrow street of three-storey tenements, all of them looking unspeakably squalid and uncared for, with broken windows stuffed with rags and paper, and in many cases with doors which hardly hung together on their hinges. Mr. Wingate now gave Hermia the parcel, which he had hitherto taken charge of, and while he waited on guard, as it were, on the corner of the street, Hermia made her way to number sixteen, and not without a little fluttering of the nerves, knocked at the door. Again and again she knocked, first with her knuckles and then with the handle of her umbrella--the knocker itself, if there had ever been one, having apparently been wrenched away long ago--but to no purpose, although she could hear a woman inside objurgating someone at the top of her voice. A swarm of children watched her every movement, and presently, as if by some preconcerted signal, windows were thrown up, and the doorways near at hand began to fill with the shapes of slatternly women, and frowsy, disreputable-looking men.
Hermia began to feel far from comfortable, and she was just considering whether she had not better go back to Mr. Wingate, when the door was suddenly opened from within, and she found herself face to face with Richard Varrel.
She knew him again at a glance, despite the woeful change which a few short years had wrought in him. In days gone by, when he was a clerk, and she a girl of ten or twelve, she used often to meet him on her way to school, when he had always a smiling "Good-morning" for her. In those days he was a dandified, good-looking young man, with a facile smile, and the easy manner of one who was on excellent terms with himself and the world.
Hermia had not seen him after his "misfortune," as he termed it, till the evening of the trial when he spoke to John Brancker through the cab window, and even then she had been shocked to see the change in him; but now, when she beheld him again, the change was still more marked. His hands trembled like aspen leaves, his eyes were bleared and bloodshot, his face sallow and fallen away to little more than skin and bone.
He stood staring at Hermia, holding the open door in his hand, with a sort of half-gleam of recognition in his furtively suspicious eyes.
"Mr. Varrel," she said, "I see that you fail to remember me. My name is Hermia Rivers, and I am the niece of Mr. Brancker, of Ashdown."
The moment she began to speak his face lighted up with what seemed like the ghost of his old pleasant smile.
"What a stupid I must be to have forgotten you even for a moment!" he exclaimed. "Why of course I remember you, Miss Hermia--remember you from the time you were no higher than a table. Do you know what I used to think in those days? But how should you? I used to think that when you grew up I should like to marry you. Ah, I did, and I was in earnest about it, too!"
This was not at all what Hermia wanted, so she made haste to say:
"Are you not curious, Mr. Varrel, to know why I have come all this way to find you? But, first of all, why did you neglect to answer the letter I wrote you to this address more than a week ago?"
"Letter!--what letter?" he queried, with a half-mazed look, and with that he pushed back his hat and pressed his hands to his forehead for a few moments, as if trying to recall something to mind. Then, half-doubtingly, he thrust his hand into an inner pocket of his coat and drew from it a letter--the one Hermia had written him, as she saw at a glance, and still unopened. He stared at it for a space of a dozen seconds, and then he said, confusedly:
"I recollect, now, I put it in my pocket when it came--I wasn't very well at the time--and afterwards I forgot all about it. I did, upon my honor!"
"Open it and read it," was all Hermia could say.
When he had done so, he looked at her with............