The Mark Of Cain

But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. Gullick, the widowed landlady, or rather manager, was as eager to hear all the story of the finding of poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside had been. Again and again the narrative was repeated, till conjecture once more began to take the place of assertion.

“I wonder,” asked one of the men, “how old Dicky got the money for a boose?”

“The money, ay, and the chance,” said another. “That daughter of his – a nice-looking girl she is – kept poor Dicky pretty tight.”

“Didn’t let him get – ” the epigrammatist of the company was just beginning to put in, when the brilliant witticism he was about to utter burst at once on the intellect of all his friends.

“Didn’t let him get tight, you was a-goin’ to say, Tommy,” howled three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping of thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like crackers.

“Dicky ‘ad been ‘avin’ bad times for long,” the first speaker went on. “I guess he ‘ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful forever about here.”

“Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or else he was clean sold out, and hadn’t no capital to renew his stock of hairy cats and young parrots.”

“The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky’s shop, had got to look real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that ‘ere shiny old rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer and t’other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o’ a drain, let alone a booze, beats me, it does.”

“Why,” said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the conversation, “why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used to do him a turn of his trade – tattooing him, like. ‘I’m doing him to pattern, mum,’ Dicky sez, sez he: ‘a facsimile o’ myself, mum.’ It wasn’t much they drank neither – just a couple of pints; for sez the sailor gentleman, he sez, ‘I’m afeared, mum, our friend here can’t carry much even of your capital stuff. We must excuse’ sez he, ‘the failings of an artis’; but I doesn’t want his hand to shake or slip when he’s a doin’ me,’ sez he. ‘Might > spile the pattern,’ he sez, ‘also hurt’ And I wouldn’t have served old Dicky with more than was good for him, myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn’t I promised that poor daughter of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school – years ago now – I promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of – A hangel, if here isn’t Mr. Maitland his very self!”

And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord, the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.

Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by one – some with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced awkwardness – they shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland’s appearance had produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his tenant.

“Well, Mrs. Gullick,” said poor Maitland, ruefully, “I came here for a chat with our friends – a little social relaxation – on economic questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away.”

“Oh, sir, they’re a rough lot, and don’t think themselves company for the likes of you. But,” said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly – with the delight of the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale – “you ‘ve heard this hawful story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood – ”

What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland, growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:

“What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!”

“Nothing to herself, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir.”

Maitland seemed sensibly relieved.

“Well, what about her father?”

“Gone, sir – gone! In a cartload o’ snow, this very evening, he was found, just outside o* this very door.”

“In a cartload of snow!” cried Maitland. “Do you mean that he went away in it, or that he was found in it dead?”

“Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this very house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir, I do assure you. He had been steady – oh, steady for weeks.”

Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to a certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had known old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as a hopeless mauvais sujet. But Dicky’s daughter, Margaret, had been a daisy flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was having her educated there, and after she was educated – why, then, Maitland had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the way of their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle; not that he objected – on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his views in writing. There were times – there had lately, above all, been times – when Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in this document Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and pretty a girl his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an obstacle; he was no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man’s way; he was nobody’s enemy now, not even his own.

The vision of all these circumstances passed rapidly, like a sensation rather than a set of coherent thoughts, through Maitland’s consciousness.

“Tell me everything you know of this wretched business,” he said, rising and closing the door which led into the outer room.

“Well, sir, you have not been here for some weeks, or you would know that Dicky had found a friend lately – an old shipmate, or petty-officer, he called him – a sailor-man. Well-to-do, he seemed; the mate of a merchant vessel he might be. He had known Dicky, I think, long ago at sea, and he’d bring him here ‘to yarn with him,’ he said, once or twice it might be in this room, but mainly in the parlor up-stairs. He let old Dicky tattoo him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of earning an honest penny by his trade – a queer trade it was. Never more than a pint, or a glass of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. Most considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. Well, last night he brought him in about nine, and they sat rather late; and about twelve the sailor comes in, rubbing his eyes, and ‘Good-night, mum,’ sez he. ‘My friend’s been gone for an hour. An early bird he is, and I’ve been asleep by myself. If you please, I’ll just settle our little score. It’s the last for a long time, for I’m bound to-morrow for the China Seas, eastward. Oh, mum, a sailor’s life!’ So he pays, changing a half-sovereign, like a gentleman, and out he goes, and that’s the last I ever see o’ poor Dicky Shields till he was brought in this afternoon, out of the snow-cart, cold and stiff, sir.”

“And how do you suppose all this happened? How did Shields get into the cart?”

“Well, that’s just what they’ve been wondering at, though the cart was handy and uncommon convenient for a man as ‘ad too much, if ‘ad he ‘ad; as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot rum and water would not intoxicate a babe. May be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and never wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what’s that?” screamed Mrs. Gullick, leaping to her feet in terror.

The latched door which communicated with the staircase had been burst open, and a small brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, with a cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick’s bosom.

“Well, if ever I ‘ad a fright!” that worthy lady exclaimed, turning toward the startled Maitland, and embracing at the same time the little animal in an affectionate clasp. “Well, if ever there was such a child as you, Lizer! What is the matter with you now?”

“Oh, mother,” cried the bear, “I dreamed of that big Bird I saw on the roof, and I ran down-stairs before I was ‘arf awake, I was that horful frightened.”

“Well, you just go up-stairs again – and here’s a sweet-cake for you – and you take this night-light,” said Mrs. Gullick, producing the articles she mentioned, “and put it in the basin careful, and knock on the floor with the poker if you want me. If it wasn’t for that bearskin Mr. Toopny was kind enough to let you keep, you’d get your death o’ cold, you would, running about in the night. And look ‘ere, Lizer,” she added, patting the child affectionately on the shoulder, “do get that there Bird out o’ your head. It’s just nothing but indigestion comes o’ you and the other children – himps they may well call you, and himps I’m sure you are – always wasting your screws on pasty and lemonade and raspberry vinegar. Just-nothing but indigestion.”

Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its arms, in a tight embrace, about Mrs. Gullick’s neck; and then, without lavishing attention on Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be heard skipping up-stairs.

“I’m sure, sir, I ask your pardon,” exclaimed poor Mrs. Gullick; “but Lizer’s far from well just now, and she did have a scare last night, or else, which is more likely, her little inside (saving your presence) has been upset with a supper the Manager gave all them pantermime himps.”

“But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a bear?”

“She’s such a favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man, and all of them at the Hilarity, you can’t think, sir,” said Mrs. Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland’s general capacity for abstract speculation. “A regular little genius that child is, though I says it as shouldn’t. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father, sir.” And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron to her eyes.

Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown of considerable merit; but, like too many artists, he was addicted beyond measure to convivial enjoyment. Maitland had befriended him in his last days, and had appointed Mrs. Gullick (and a capital appointment it was) to look after his property when he became landlord of the Hit or Miss.

“What a gift, sir, that child always had! Why, when she was no more than four, I well remember her going to fetch the beer, and her being a little late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she came in with the jug, he made a cuff at her, not to hurt her, and if the little thing didn’t drop the jug, and take the knap! Lord, I thought Gullick would ‘a died laughing, and him so thirsty, too.”

“Take the knap?” said Maitland, who imagined that “the knap” must be some malady incident to childhood.

“Oh, sir, it’s when one person cuffs at another on the stage, you know, and the other slaps his own hand, on the far side, to make the noise of a box on the ear: that’s what we call ‘taking the knap’ in the profession. And the beer was spilt, and the jug broken, and all – Lizer was that clever? And this is her second season, just ended, as a himp at the Hilarity pantermime; and they’re that good to her, they let her bring her bearskin home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as the Little Bear in ‘The Three Bears,’ don’t you know, sir.”

Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the Great Bear, the Middle Bear, and the Little Tiny Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the Moon, and the Multitude of Stars in the Aryan myth. But he had not seen the pantomime founded on the traditional narrative.

“But what was the child saying about a big Bird?” he asked. “What was it that frightened her?”

“Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may be, a little something hot at that supper last night; and, besides, seeing so many queer things in pantermimes might put notions in a child’s head. But when she came home last night, a little late, Lizer was very strange. She vowed and swore she had seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common bird, skim over the street. Then when I had put her to bed in the attic, down she flies, screaming she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to get her to sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed and wear her theatre pantermime bearskin, that fits her like another skin – and she’ll be too big for it next year – just to keep her warm in that cold garret. That’s all about it, sir. She’ll be well enough in a day or two, will Lizer.”

“I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick,” said Maitland; “and, as I am passing his way, I will ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl. Now I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone about Miss Shields, you know, the better. It will be very dreadful for her to learn about her father’s death, and we must try to prevent Her from hearing how it happened.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing; “and being safe away at school, sir, we’ll hope she won’t be told no more than she needn’t know about it.”

Maitland went forth into the thick night: a half-hearted London thaw was filling the shivering air with a damp brown fog.

He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and did not observe, in the raw darkness and in the confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed at no great distance by a man muffled up in a great-coat and a woollen comforter. The stranger almost shouldered against him, as he stood reading his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a word here and there to save threepence,

“From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.

“The Dovecot, Conisbeare,

“Tiverton.

“I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Do

not let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead.

Break news.”

This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous badness of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the paper when we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there was no need for haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was buying stamps, and, finishing his bargain before the despatch was stamped and delivered, went out into the fog, and was no more seen.