On one side of the door, at Dawson's Buildings, was Mr. Randle's shop; and on the other was Mr. Randle's little dining parlor. In this room Mrs. Peckover left Mat, while she went up stairs to see if her sick brother wanted anything. Finding that he was still quietly sleeping, she only waited to arrange the bed-clothes comfortably about him, and to put a hand-bell easily within his reach in case he should awake, and then went down stairs again immediately.
She found Mat sitting with his elbows on the one little table in the dining-parlor, his head resting on his hands. Upon the table lying by the side of the Bracelet, was the lock of hair out of Jane Holdsworth's letter, which he had yet once more taken from his pocket to look at. "Why, mercy on me!" cried Mrs. Peckover, glancing at it, "surely it's the same hair that's worked into the Bracelet! Wherever, for goodness sake, did you get that?"
"Never mind where I got it. Do you know whose hair it is? Look a little closer. The man this hair belonged to was the man she trusted in—and he laid her in the churchyard for her pains."
"Oh! who was he? who was he?" asked Mrs. Peckover, eagerly
"Who was he?" repeated Matthew, sternly. "What do you mean by asking me that?"
"I only mean that I never heard a word about the villain—I don't so much as know his name."
"You don't?" He fastened his eyes suspiciously on her as he said those two words.
"No; as true as I stand here I don't. Why, I didn't even know that your poor dear sister's name was Grice till you told me."
His look of suspicion began to change to a look of amazement as he heard this. He hurriedly gathered up the Bracelet and the lock of hair, and put them into his pocket again.
"Let's hear first how you met with her," he said. "I'll have a word or two about the other matter afterwards."
Mrs. Peckover sat down near him, and began to relate the mournful story which she had told to Valentine, and Doctor and Mrs. Joyce, now many years ago, in the Rectory dining-room. But on this occasion she was not allowed to go through her narrative uninterruptedly. While she was speaking the few simple words which told how she had sat down by the road-side, and suckled the half-starved infant of the forsaken and dying Mary Grice, Mat suddenly reached out his heavy, trembling hand, and took fast hold of hers. He griped it with such force that, stout-hearted and hardy as she was, she cried out in alarm and pain, "Oh, don't! you hurt me—you hurt me!"
He dropped her hand directly, and turned his face away from her; his breath quickening painfully, his fingers fastening on the side of his chair, as if some great pang of oppression were trying him to the quick. She rose and asked anxiously what ailed him; but, even as the words passed her lips, he mastered himself with that iron resolution of his which few trials could bend, and none break, and motioned to her to sit down again.
"Don't mind me," he said; "I'm old and tough-hearted with being battered about in the world, and I can't give myself vent nohow with talking or crying like the rest of you. Never mind; it's all over now. Go on."
She complied, a little nervously at first; but he did not interrupt her again. He listened while she proceeded, looking straight at her; not speaking or moving—except when he winced once or twice, as a man winces under unexpected pain, while Mary's death-bed words were repeated to him. Having reached this stage of her narrative, Mrs. Peckover added little more; only saying, in conclusion: "I took care of the poor soul's child, as I said I would; and did my best to behave like a mother to her, till she got to be ten year old; then I give her up—because it was for her own good—to Mr. Blyth."
He did not seem to notice the close of the narrative. The image of the forsaken girl, sitting alone by the roadside, with her child's natural sustenance dried up within her—travel-worn, friendless, and desperate—was still uppermost in his mind; and when he next spoke, gratitude for the help that had been given to Mary in her last sore distress was the one predominant emotion, which strove roughly to express itself to Mrs. Peck over in these words:
"Is there any living soul you care about that a trifle of money would do a little good to?" he asked, with such abrupt eagerness that she was quite startled by it.
"Lord bless me!" she exclaimed, "what do you mean? What has that got to do with your poor sister, or Mr. Blyth?"
"It's got this to do," burst out Matthew, starting to his feet, as the struggling gratitude within him stirred body and soul both together; "you turned to and helped Mary when she hadn't nobody else in the world to stand by her. She was always father's darling—but father couldn't help her then; and I was away on the wrong side of the sea, and couldn't be no good to her neither. But I'm on the right side, now; and if there's any friends of yours, north, south, east, or west, as would be happier for a trifle of money, here's all mine; catch it, and give it 'em." (He tossed his beaver-skin roll, with the bank-notes in it, into Mrs. Peckover's lap.) "Here's my two hands, that I dursn't take a holt of yours with, for fear of hurting you again; here's my two hands that can work along with any man's. Only give 'em something to do for you, that's all! Give 'em something to make or mend, I don't care what—"
"Hush! hush!" interposed Mrs. Peckover; "don't be so dreadful noisy, there's a good man! or you'll wake my brother up stairs. And, besides, where's the use to make such a stir about what I done for your sister? Anybody else would have took as kindly to her as I did, seeing what distress she was in, poor soul! Here," she continued, handing him back the beaver-skin roll; "here's your money, and thank you for the offer of it. Put it up safe in your pocket again. We manage to keep our heads above water, thank God! and don't want to do no better than that. Put it up in your pocket again, and then I'll make bold to ask you for something else."
"For what?" inquired Mat, looking her eagerly in the face.
"Just for this: that you'll promise not to take little Mary from Mr. Blyth. Do, pray do promise me you won't."
"I never thought to take her away," he answered. "Where should I take her to? What can a lonesome old vagabond, like me, do for her? If she's happy where she is—let her stop where she is."
"Lord bless you for saying that!" fervently exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, smiling for the first time, and smoothing out her gown over her knees with an air of inexpressible relief. "I'm rid of my grand fright now, and getting to breathe again freely, which I haven't once yet been able to do since I first set eyes on you. Ah! you're rough to look at; but you've got your feelings like the rest of us. Talk away now as much as you like. Ask me about anything you please—"
"What's the good?" he broke in, gloomily. "You don't know what I wanted you to know. I come down here for to find out the man as once owned this,"—he pulled the lock of hair out of his pocket again—"and you can't help me. I didn't believe it when you first said so, but I do now."
"Well, thank you for saying that much; though you might have put it civiler—"
"His name was Arthur Carr. Did you never hear tell of anybody with the name of Arthur Carr?"
"No: never—never till this very moment."
"The Painter-man will know," continued Mat, talking more to himself than to Mrs. Peckover. "I must go back, and chance it with the Painter-man, after all."
"Painter-man?" repeated Mrs. Peckover. "Painter? Surely you don't mean Mr. Blyth?"
"Yes, I do."
"Why, what in the name of fortune can you be thinking of! How should Mr. Blyth know more than me? He never set eyes on little Mary till she was ten year old; and he knows nothing about her poor unfortunate mother except what I told him."