Reappearance of an unexpected customer; together with what passed at a certain interview.

DAY had pretty well broken as Colin trudged back homewards alone. It was one of those dull, leaden, misty, and chilly mornings, which in a town newly stirring from sleep seems to put the stamp and seal of melancholy upon everything external. The buildings at hand looked black,—those at a distance fused into mere shadows by the density of the windless atmosphere,—while the unextinguished lamps grew red-eyed and dim in the white light that had risen over them. Early labourers were trudging to their work; an occasional milkmaid, who looked precisely as though she had never seen a cow in the whole course of her life, banged her pail-handles, and whooped at area-gates; while bakers, who had been up nearly all night manufacturing hot rolls for that interesting portion of the community now snug in bed, slipped down the shutters of their houses leisurely, and stared lack-a-daisically upon the portents of the weather.

Altogether, it was a description of scenery by no means calculated to inspire heavy hearts with unusual joy, or to raise the spirits of any one situated as was poor Colin.

Scarcely knowing what else to do, he turned off at the top of Cheapside, and walked into a well-known coffeehouse in the immediate vicinity of the Post-office, where he ordered breakfast. Two or three tables occupied the room, at which a few early risers were sitting quaffing coffee from cups which, from their size and shape, might readily have been mistaken for so many half-pint pots of ale. Well-fingered books were scattered about the place, and monthly magazines of all sorts, fitted into temporary covers, lay in piles upon the broad chimney-piece. Shortly afterwards the morning papers were brought in by a lad with a large bundle of them under his arm—a circumstance productive of a momentary scramble on the part of those who were anxious to possess themselves of the earliest intelligence of the day, before departing to their occupations. Colin's breakfast was introduced by a little active boy, as brisk as a sand-eel, who waited in the place; and scarcely had Colin begun stirring the mysterious-looking fluid before him with an old dingy pewter spoon, bent one way out at the bottom and the other way at top, by way, perhaps, of producing a counteracting influence, than he involuntarily started as though he had received the shock of an overcharged battery. The spoon dropped from his hand, and his hand dropped upon his coffee-cup, and upset it. He had heard the voice of Jerry Clink in another part of the room!

It appeared to Colin, if not absolutely impossible, at least the height of improbability, that the veritable Jerry Clink himself could be there in his own proper person. There, however, he assuredly was; a fact which his grandson's eyes soon confirmed, when he peeped round a projecting corner of the room, and beheld the man with whom he had recently had so fierce a struggle sitting in his wet clothes, and minus his coat, within a very short distance of him.

For reasons sufficiently obvious, and to prevent any farther public demonstration of Jerry's temper, Colin suffered him to take his meal in quiet, and afterwards his departure, without making his own presence known to him. Anxious, however, not wholly to lose sight of him again, as the liberation of Mr. Woodruff appeared very singularly to depend upon him, though in a manner yet unaccounted for, Colin quietly followed and dodged him along the streets, until he observed him enter an old clothes shop in the Goswell-road, from which, after a convenient lapse of time, he again emerged with a coat on,—new to the present possessor, though old in the opinion of the gentleman whose shoulders it had previously adorned.

In this manner he followed unperceived in the old man's wake, but did not venture to accost him until, after a very considerable walk, he pulled up for refreshment at a small deserted-looking public house at the rear of Islington, which appeared to offer the privacy requisite for their second meeting, and the conversation that might thereon ensue.

As Jerry had no particular desire, under present circumstances, to mingle with all such chance customers as might come in, he avoided the common drinking-room, and walked into a parlour, the air of which smelt like that of a well some time since fumigated with tobacco smoke, that required more than ordinary time finally to make its escape. The floor was spread with coarse sand, not unlike gravel in a state of childhood; while the window looked out upon a back-yard nearly as large as an ordinary closet, and in obscurity very strongly resembling a summer twilight.

As the old man seemed inclined to stop a while, a fat untidy girl, with her hair half out of her cap, and her countenance curiously smeared with ashes and black-lead, came in to light a fire already “built” in the grate.

“Glass of ale?” demanded the girl, as she blew out her candle, and nipped the snuff with her fingers.

Jerry fixed his eyes upon her with a degree of sternness amounting almost to ferocity.

“What master or mistress taught you, young woman,” said he, “to ask a gentleman coming into your house to take a glass of ale, before it is ascertained that he drinks such a thing as malt liquor of any kind? Learn your business better, miss, and go and bring me some hot water, and half a quartern of rum in it.”

Scarcely had the girl departed before Colin entered the room. Jerry looked at him during a space of some moments, and then turned to the fire, or rather fire-place, without uttering a word.

“It is almost more than might have been expected,” observed Colin, taking a chair, and speaking in an assumed tone of careless surprise, “that I should have the good fortune to meet with you so early again this morning. But I am thankful indeed to find you alive and unharmed, after expecting nothing less than that you must have met your death in a dozen different dangers.”

“You thankful!” exclaimed Jerry. “Nay, nay, now!—What! hypocritical, like all the rest of the world? You care nothing for me, so don't pretend it,—no, nor for your mother either. Though a poor old man, sir, I am proud to be honest; and from this day forwards shall disown you, and would, though you were made the greatest man in England. You are too great a coward, sir.'”

“To be induced to lift my hand against the life of a man who has befriended me, and is my own father, too, most certainly I am,” replied Colin.

“What—bribery! bribery?” exclaimed Jerry; “purchased with fine clothes, I see! Well, well, you are your father's son, not mine. I say, you are too much of the worm.”

“To injure my father, I am.”

“Or to revenge your mother's wrongs.”

“No, sir; I deny it. But I will not do it as you wish.”

“And any other way it is impossible.”

“I hope not,” replied Colin. “An injury may be great; but there is such a thing as restitution. Mr. Lupton is very kind to me.”

“To you? But what is that to your mother, or to me, her father? Ay, ay, I see, young man, it is all self, self! Mr. Lupton is very kind to me—true—to me, and that is enough.”

“No, it is not enough,” answered our hero. “A great deal more must be done, and may be done, if, to begin with, I can but make you and Mr. Lupton friends.”

“Friends!” exclaimed Jerry—“friends! Utter that word again, sir—”

“I do; I repeat it,” he continued; “and I am not such a coward as to fear that you will attempt to harm me, because I say that, both for my mother's sake and your own, for Mr. Lupton's and mine, you must be friends. Remember, if you have something to forgive him, he has a great deal to forgive you also.”

“He something to forgive me! What is it? I suppose for having spared him so long. But if I spare him much longer, may I never be forgiven where I shall better want it!”

“It is but an hour or two ago,” replied Colin, “that I prevailed on him not to raise the hue and cry after you until things could be better explained, although you have twice attempted his life.”

“Is that it? Is that his forgiveness? Then I hurl it back in his face, and in yours, and tell him I want none of it! If he wants to take me let him, and I will sit here till he comes. Fetch him, and let him try; and then, if the third time does not do for all, I shall well deserve a gallows for being such a bungler at my business.”

“He has no desire to injure you at all,” said Colin.

“How very kind of him!” retorted Jerry, “seeing how good he has been to my only daughter, and how badly I have rewarded him for it!”

“But you must know how much the law puts in his power.”

“I care neither for the law nor his power. My law is my own, and that I shall abide by.”

Not to prolong this dialogue, of which sufficient has been given to show the character of the speakers, I shall merely observe, that Jerry Clink concluded it by emphatically declaring, that never to the end of his life should he, on any consideration whatever, give up this the great object for which he lived, unless he was so far fortunate as to achieve it at an earlier period; and this asseveration he ratified by all such infernal powers as could conveniently be summed up into one long oathlike sentence,—a sentence which it is not necessary here to repeat.

Finding all his efforts to overcome, or even to mollify, the desperate determination of vengeance, which Jerry still so violently entertained, altogether vain, Colin could not at the moment form in his own mind any other conclusion than that which pointed out the propriety of securing Jerry, in order to insure Mr. Lupton's personal safety. This, however, from the inevitable consequences which must follow, was a step on the brink of which he hesitated, and from which he turned with horror. Was there no way by which to avoid the dreadful necessity of involving his own mother's parent in the pains of a fearful criminal law?—to her lasting shame and grief, and his own as lasting sorrow and regret. How devoutly in his heart did he wish that he could be a peace-maker, an allayer of bad passions, a reconciler of those whose own evils had brought them into this depth of trouble! Then, indeed, all might be well; or at least so far well, as any ending may be which comes of so sad a beginning; for he felt that, after the painful disclosures which had that morning been made to him, the brightest light of his future life was dimmed, and the most he could hope for was to go through existence under those subdued feelings of enjoyment which ever result from the consciousness of evils past, and for ever irremediable.

Still he clung to the hope that the old man's violence might be mitigated, as he became more familiar with the thoughts of reconciliation, of atonement being made to his daughter, and as the kindness of Mr. Lupton to himself should be rendered more evident.

The agitation and excitement of his mind, consequent on these and similar reflections, caused him for the time almost to forget the object he had in view with respect to the imprisoned James Woodruff. Before, however, their present interview terminated, Colin again alluded to the subject, and requested at least to be informed by what singular chance of fortune it could have happened that the unfortunate gentleman alluded to could possibly have been confided to the keeping of Jerry Clink.

“Why, as to that,” replied Jerry, “I 've no particular objection to tell you, and then you 'll believe me; but mind, I shall go no farther. Don't inquire whether he is likely to be dead or alive next week,—where he is, or anything else about him. I clap that injunction on you beforehand. As to the other part of the business, it happened this way. If you 've any memory, you'll remember that night I jumped out o' the window at Kiddal Hall, when, but for your meddling, I should have brought down my game without twice loading. Well, I got into the woods safe enough; but, knowing the place would be a deal too hot to hold me for a while, I next day went clandestinely off into a different part of the country, in order to make safe. I partly changed my dress and name, and at last pitched my tent under a rock in a solitary part of Sherwood Forest, where I never saw a man, and no man saw me for weeks together. However, as I gathered ling for making besoms, and carried them about the surrounding country, I got to be pretty well known; and, amongst the rest, I fell in with a Mr. Rowel, who lived on the edge of the waste, and who behaved very well to me. Well, one day he came down to my rock-hole, and told me he wanted me to take a madman under my keeping, who had been brought to his house by his brother, and whom they wanted, for very particular reasons, to get out of the way. 'Well, well,' said I to him, 'bring him down: I care for neither a madman nor the devil, and can manage either when occasion calls. They accordingly brought him, tied hand and foot and blindfolded, pitched him into my place, and there I have had him ever since, and been well paid for my trouble, or else I should not have been here. However, when the man himself told me his story, I found he was not more mad, perhaps, than those that sent him; and so, as your mother had told me all about your part of the affair besides,—for she knew where I was gone to,—I thought it a fair chance for making you do as a son ought to do, and revenging her dishonour, when, perhaps, it did not lie so conveniently in my power. But I am deceived in you altogether; and sooner than I 'll ask anybody else again to do my business, may I be sunk to the lowest pit of perdition! No, may I—”

“Say no more,” observed Colin, interrupting him, “but just answer me this—”

“Mind,” said Jerry, “I clapped an injunction on you.”

“Very well,” remarked Colin; “I 'll ask no questions.”

But he reflected within himself that the place of Jerry's abode would now be no difficult thing to discover, and that, with a convenient force and quiet management, it might readily be surprised, and Woodruff's liberation be effected.

One thing more only did he now wish to be made acquainted with, for on that depended the course he should at the present moment adopt with respect to old Jerry himself. He wished to ascertain whether it was the old man's intention to remain and lurk about the town, seeking opportunities for gratifying his revenge, or to return at once to the place whence he had come.

“I shall not stay here,” replied Jerry, “for I can trust none of you; but some time, when least it is expected, Mr. Lupton will find me by his side.”

Trusting to put Mr. Lupton effectually on his guard against immediate danger, and hoping by his future proceedings ultimately to avert that danger altogether, without any appeal to legal protection or to violence, Colin concluded not to molest the old man at present.

Thus, then, he parted with Jerry, forming in his own mind, as he returned townwards, a very ingenious scheme for countermining all the plans of which Rowel and his brother had made Jerry Clink the instrument and depositary.