A Little World. Fenn George Manville

stood.

      “And I can’t do that,” muttered Harry. Then he began going over once more his mother’s marriage, and wondered how she could have been so weak as to marry one so hard, and close, and cold.

      Just then he saw a Hansom cab stop a short distance from him, out of which stepped Richard Pellet, who paid his driver, and, without seeing his stepson, strode off hastily, making his way through the gloomy streets of Pentonville.

      Harry hesitated for a while, feeling half tempted to follow, but he turned off the next moment to seek his hotel.

      Meanwhile Richard Pellet hurried on, his way lying through streets that seemed to be the favourite playgrounds of the roaming children of the neighbourhood. And here he walked as if he felt a peculiar spite against every child he passed. He kicked this one’s top half across the road; he purposely obliterated the chalked-out hopscotch marks with his feet; nearly knocked down a boy carrying a shawl-swathed infant, – not that there was much force needed, for the weight of the shawl-swathed nearly overbalanced its porter; and he ended by treading upon a thin girl’s toes.

      Another turn or two, and he was in a pleasant street rejoicing in the name of Borton, at whose end there was a pleasing glimpse to be obtained of the great jail with its blank walls, and the low hum of Tullochgorum Road murmured on the ear.

      Richard stopped at a dingy sleepy-looking house, with its blinds down, and knocked a slinking kind of double knock, as if afraid of its being heard by any one outside the house. It was a double knock certainly, but it had a mean degraded sound about it, beside which a poor man’s single thump would have sounded massive and grand.

      After waiting for a reasonable space he knocked a second time, when, after fidgeting about upon the door-step, glancing up and down the street, and acting after the fashion of a man troubled with the impression that every one is watching him, he was relieved by the door being opened a very little way, and a sour-looking woman confronting him.

      Upon seeing who was her visitor, the woman admitted him to stand for a minute or two upon the shabby worn oil-cloth of the badly-lighted passage before ushering him into a damp earthy-smelling parlour, over whose windows were drawn Venetian blinds of a faded sickly green, the bar-like laths giving a prison aspect to the place.

      “Send her down?” said the woman, shortly, as she removed a handkerchief from her face and looked toothache.

      “Yes,” was the curt gruff reply; but the woman held her handkerchief to the aching tooth and remained waiting, when Richard Pellet drew out his pocket-book and passed a piece of crisp paper to the woman.

      The paper was taken, carefully examined, and then seemed to have an anodyne effect upon the toothache of its recipient, who folded it carefully small and then tied it in a knot in one corner of the dingy pocket-handkerchief, after the fashion of elderly ladies from the country who ride in omnibuses, and then seek in such corners for the small coin wherewith to pay the fare. In this case, though, the tying-up was followed by the deposit of the handkerchief in its owner’s bosom, the act been accompanied by a grim nod which said plainly enough, “that’s safe.”

      The woman left the room; there was the sound of the key being drawn from the front door, pattering of steps on the oil-cloth, and then she re-appeared.

      “’Taint my fault, you know,” she said, in a hoarse voice; “it’s him – he made me write. I’d keep her to the end, but he says that we won’t have it any more. It’s a fool’s trick, for she never leaves her room.”

      “It’s plain enough,” said Richard, contemptuously, “you want more money.”

      The woman smiled grimly. “He says he won’t have it any more,” was all she said.

      “What reason does he give?” said Richard, sharply.

      “Oh!” said the woman, “he says that it has got about that we keep a mad woman in the house without having a license; and the neighbours talk, and there will be a summons about it some time or another. He hates to go out, he says – just as if that matters. Don’t you think it might be managed after all? I don’t want to part with her.”

      “Yes – no,” said Richard Pellet, correcting himself. “You’ve thrown up a good thing, and now I shall make another arrangement.”

      “Well,” said the woman, in surly tones, “I was obliged to write – he made me. But you’ve no call to complain; she’s been here now best part of nine years, and always well taken care of, and at a lower rate than you would have paid at a private asylum. You ought to have let me have the child as well. No one could have kept her closer.”

      “What?” said Richard, harshly.

      “Well, that was only once; and I took precious good care that she did not play me such a trick a second time. She wasn’t away long, though,” said the woman, laughing.

      “There! send her down,” said Richard Pellet, impatiently.

      “I don’t mind telling you, now,” said the woman, not heeding the remark, “she’s very little trouble; sits and works all day long without speaking.”

      “Humph!” ejaculated Richard Pellet; “now that there’s no more money to be made by contrary statements, you can be honest.”

      “Well,” said the woman, “other people may find out things for themselves. Nobody taught me.”

      Then she left the room.

      A few minutes elapsed, and then a pale, dark-haired woman, with a pitiful, almost imploring aspect, entered the room, clasped her hands tightly together, and stood gazing in Richard’s Pellet’s face.

      “I’m going to take you away from here, Ellen,” he said.

      For a few moments the pale face lit up as with some show of animation; the woman exclaimed – “To see my child, Richard?”

      “I’m going to take you away from here,” he replied, coldly; “so be ready to-morrow.”

      The light faded from the countenance of the woman in an instant, to leave it dull and inanimate. She pressed her hand for an instant upon her side, and winced as if a pain had shot through her. Then slowly drawing a scrap of needlework from her pocket, she began to sew hastily.

      “I have made arrangements for you to stay at an institution where you will be well cared for,” he continued; “that is, provided that you behave well.”

      The faint shadow of a sad smile crossed the pale face as the woman glanced at him for a moment, and then sighed and looked down.

      “Do you hear what I say?” said Richard, roughly.

      “Yes, Richard,” she said, quietly, and as if quite resigned to her fate; “I never do anything that you would not wish, only when – when – when my head gets hot and strange. I am quite ready, but – ”

      “Well?” said the great city man.

      “You will let me see my little one before I go, Richard? I won’t let my head get hot. You will not mind that. I will do all that you wish. But why not let us be together? She is not mad; but that would not matter. Let me have her, and go away from here. She is so little, I could carry her; and we would never trouble you again. Indeed, indeed – never, never again!”

      If he could only have placed faith in those words, what a burden Richard Pellet would have felt to be off his shoulders! But no; he dared not trust her; and in the few moments while she stood with her wild strange eyes gazing appealingly in his face, he saw her coming to his office for help, then down to Norwood, declaring that she was his wedded wife, and trouble, exposure, perhaps punishment, to follow, because, he told himself, he had declined to let this poor helpless maniac stand in the way of his advancement.

      Richard Pellet’s face grew darker as he turned to leave the room.

      “But you will let me see her once, Richard – only once before I go? Think how obedient I have been, how I have attended always to your words – always. I know what you mean to do – to shut me up in a dreadful madhouse, and all because – because my poor head grows so hot. It was not so once, Richard.”

      She