i looked in mr. quayle’s face; but i asked him no question. the mud we trod seemed colder, the houses we passed more frowning than before; but i asked no question. i could not form one in my mind; only suddenly and somehow i felt frightened, as if in dreams before a great solitude. then in a moment i was sobbing fast and thickly.
ah, what is the use to skate round the memory! let it clutch me for a moment, and be faced and dismissed. my father, my dear, ardent, noble father was dead—struck down in an instant—shaken out of life by the poignant utterances of his own spirit. while the flower of his fervour was blossoming and bearing fruit, the roots thereof were dead already—smitten in their place in his heart. that, its work done, had ceased beating. sometimes afterwards in my desolation i recalled the church clock, with its poised motionless hands, and thought what a melancholy omen it had been.
mr. quayle was kindness itself to me in my utter terror and loneliness. he took upon himself, provisionally, the whole conduct of my affairs. one morning he came in, and drew me to him.
“dicky—dicky-bird, me jewl!” he said. “i’ve found the fine cuckoo that’s to come and father the poor little orphaned nestling.”
i must observe that he had his own theories about this same “harbinger of spring,” which, according to him, was the “bird that looked after another bird’s young.” i remembered the occasion on which he had so defined it, and the laughter which had greeted him; and his alternative, “well, then, ’tis the bird that doesn’t lay its own eggs, and that’s all one!” but the first definition, it appeared, was the one he kept faith in.
“d’you remember mr. paxton?” he said.
“uncle jenico?” i asked.
he nodded.
“uncle jenico paxton, mamma’s own only brother. poor papa, my dear—always a wonder and an honour to his profession—has left, it seems, a will, in which he bequeathes everything to uncle jenico in trust for his little boy, master dicky bowen. and uncle jenico has been found, and is coming to take charge of little dicky bowen.”
was i glad or sorry? i was too stunned, i think, to care one way or the other. any one would do to stop the empty place which none could ever fill, and neither my sympathies nor my dislikes were active in the case of uncle jenico. i had seen him only once or twice, when he had come to spend a night or so with us in town. my memory was of a stout, hoarse old man in spectacles, rather lame, with a little nose and twinkling eyes. he had seemed always busy, always in a hurry. he bore an important, mysterious reputation with us as a great inventive genius, who carried a despatch-box with him choked with invaluable patents, and always left something behind—a toothbrush or an umbrella—when he left. let it be uncle jenico as well as another.
while we were talking there was a flurry at the door of the room, and a man, overcoming some resistance outside, forced his way in. i gave a little cry, and stood staring. it was the acquitted prisoner, joshua pilbrow. george appeared just behind him, flushed and truculent.
“he would do it, sir,” said the servant, “for all i warned him away.”
mr. quayle had put me from him and arisen. there was a bad look on his face; but he motioned to george to go, and we were left alone.
the intruder stood shrugging his disordered clothes into place, and looking the while with a sort of black stealth at the barrister. his face held and haunted me. it was bleak and sallow, and grey in the hollows, with fixed dark eyes—the face, i thought, of a malignant, though injured, creature. but it did not so affect mr. quayle, it was evident.
“the verdict was ‘not guilty,’ sir,” said the man, quite suddenly and vehemently.
mr. quayle gave an unpleasant laugh.
“or else you wouldn’t be intrudin’ here,” he said shortly.
“i came to thank my benefactor,” said the man. “i had heard nothing till this moment of the tragic sequel.”
“well,” said the barrister, in the same cynical tone, “you have come too late. the price of your acquittal is this little orphaned life.”
he put his arm about my shoulders. the stranger looked hard at me.
“his son?” he muttered.
“there are some verdicts,” said mr. quayle, “bought too dear.”
in a moment the man turned upon him in a sort of fierce concentrated bitterness.
“with the inconsistency of your evil profession,” he cried, “you discount your own conclusions. the law guarantees and grudges me my innocence. a curse upon it, i say! did he there sacrifice his life for me? he sacrificed it for truth, sir, and it’s that which you, as a lawyer, can’t forgive.”
“you will observe,” said mr. quayle, icily, “that i have not questioned the truth.”
“not directly,” answered the visitor. “i know, i know. you damn by innuendo; it’s your trade.”
the little lawyer laughed again.
“you malign our benevolence,” he said. “the law, by its artless verdict, has entitled you to sue on the insurance question. think, mr. pilbrow; it actually offers itself to witness to your right to the thousand pounds.”
“and i shall force it to,” cried the other; “and would to heaven i could make it bleed another thousand for the wrong it has done me. it would, if equity were justice.”
“equity is justice,” said mr. quayle. “good morning.”
the man did not move for a moment, but stood looking gloomily at me.
now, i cannot define what was working in my little soul. the pinched, shorn face was not lovely, the eyes in it were not good; yet there was something there of loss and hopelessness that touched me cruelly. and was not my father lying in the next room in solemn witness to its innocence? suddenly, before mr. quayle could stay me, i had run to the visitor and plucked at his coat.
“you did not do it,” i cried. “my father said so!”
he gave a little gasp, and fluttered his hand across his eyes, sweeping in a wonderful way the evil out of them.
“ah!” he said, “if your father, young gentleman, would whisper to you where abel lies hidden! he knows now.”
he stepped back, with a strange, wintry smile on his lips, stopped, seemed about to speak, waved his hand to me, and was gone.
“dicky, dicky,” cried mr. quayle, “you’re the son of your father; but, dear me, not so good a lawyer!”
