A House to Let by Charles Dickens Page B

tell
you—only you must never breathe it to any one, and you and I must hide
it away for ever. I thought to have done it all by myself, but I see I
cannot. Yon poor man—yes! the dead, drowned creature is, I fear, Mr.
Frank, my mistress's first husband!"
    Mr. Openshaw sate down, as if shot. He did not speak; but, after a
while, he signed to Norah to go on.
    "He came to me the other night—when—God be thanked—you were all away
at Richmond. He asked me if his wife was dead or alive. I was a brute,
and thought more of our all coming home than of his sore trial: spoke out
sharp, and said she was married again, and very content and happy: I all
but turned him away: and now he lies dead and cold!"
    "God forgive me!" said Mr. Openshaw.
    "God forgive us all!" said Norah. "Yon poor man needs forgiveness
perhaps less than any one among us. He had been among the
savages—shipwrecked—I know not what—and he had written letters which
had never reached my poor missus."
    "He saw his child!"
    "He saw her—yes! I took him up, to give his thoughts another start; for
I believed he was going mad on my hands. I came to seek him here, as I
more than half promised. My mind misgave me when I heard he had never
come in. O, sir I it must be him!"
    Mr. Openshaw rang the bell. Norah was almost too much stunned to wonder
at what he did. He asked for writing materials, wrote a letter, and then
said to Norah:
    "I am writing to Alice, to say I shall be unavoidably absent for a few
days; that I have found you; that you are well, and send her your love,
and will come home to-morrow. You must go with me to the Police Court;
you must identify the body: I will pay high to keep name; and details out
of the papers.
    "But where are you going, sir?"
    He did not answer her directly. Then he said:
    "Norah! I must go with you, and look on the face of the man whom I have
so injured,—unwittingly, it is true; but it seems to me as if I had
killed him. I will lay his head in the grave, as if he were my only
brother: and how he must have hated me! I cannot go home to my wife till
all that I can do for him is done. Then I go with a dreadful secret on
my mind. I shall never speak of it again, after these days are over. I
know you will not, either." He shook hands with her: and they never
named the subject again, the one to the other.
    Norah went home to Alice the next day. Not a word was said on the cause
of her abrupt departure a day or two before. Alice had been charged by
her husband in his letter not to allude to the supposed theft of the
brooch; so she, implicitly obedient to those whom she loved both by
nature and habit, was entirely silent on the subject, only treated Norah
with the most tender respect, as if to make up for unjust suspicion.
    Nor did Alice inquire into the reason why Mr. Openshaw had been absent
during his uncle and aunt's visit, after he had once said that it was
unavoidable. He came back, grave and quiet; and, from that time forth,
was curiously changed. More thoughtful, and perhaps less active; quite
as decided in conduct, but with new and different rules for the guidance
of that conduct. Towards Alice he could hardly be more kind than he had
always been; but he now seemed to look upon her as some one sacred and to
be treated with reverence, as well as tenderness. He throve in business,
and made a large fortune, one half of which was settled upon her.
*
    Long years after these events,—a few months after her mother died,
Ailsie and her "father" (as she always called Mr. Openshaw) drove to a
cemetery a little way out of town, and she was carried to a certain mound
by her maid, who was then sent back to the carriage. There was a head-
stone, with F. W. and a date. That was all. Sitting by the grave, Mr.
Openshaw told her the story; and for the sad fate of that poor father
whom she had never seen, he shed the only tears she ever saw fall from
his eyes.
*
    "A most interesting story, all through," I said, as Jarber folded up the
first of