The Queen of Hearts

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The funeral--Mary's funeral! It is well that the straits and
difficulties I am in keep my mind on the stretch. If I had
leisure to grieve, where should I find the courage to face
to-morrow?

Thank God they did not want me at the inquest. The verdict given,
with the doctor, the policeman, and two persons from the place
where she worked, for witnesses, was Accidental Death. The end of
the cravat was produced, and the coroner said that it was
certainly enough to suggest suspicion; but the jury, in the
absence of any positive evidence, held to the doctor's notion
that she had fainted and fallen down, and so got the blow on her
temple. They reproved the people where Mary worked for letting
her go home alone, without so much as a drop of brandy to support
her, after she had fallen into a swoon from exhaustion before
their eyes. The coroner added, on his own account, that he
thought the reproof was thoroughly deserved. After that, the
cravat-end was given back to me by my own desire, the police
saying that they could make no investigations with such a slight
clew to guide them. They may think so, and the coroner, and
doctor, and jury may
think so; but, in spite of all that has passed, I am now more
firmly persuaded than ever that there is some dreadful mystery in
connection with that blow on my poor lost Mary's temple which has
yet to be revealed, and which may come to be discovered through
this very fragment of a cravat that I found in her hand. I cannot
give any good reason for why I think so, but I know that if I had
been one of the jury at the inquest, nothing should have induced
me to consent to such a verdict as Accidental Death.

After I had pawned my things, and had begged a small advance of
wages at the place where I work to make up what was still wanting
to pay for Mary's funeral, I thought I might have had a little
quiet time to prepare myself as I best could for to-morrow. But
this was not to be. When I got home the landlord met me in the
passage. He was in liquor, and more brutal and pitiless in his
way of looking and speaking than ever I saw him before.

"So you're going to be fool enough to pay for her funeral, are
you?" were his first words to me.

I was too weary and heart-sick to answer; I only tried to get by
him to my own door.

"If you can pay for burying her," he went on, putting himself in
front of me, "you can pay her lawful debts. She owes me three
weeks' rent. Suppose you raise the money for that next, and hand
it over to me? I'm not joking, I can promise you. I mean to have
my rent; and, if somebody don't pay it, I'll have her body seized
and sent to the workhouse!"

Between terror and disgust, I thought I should have dropped to
the floor at his feet. But I determined not to let him see how he
had horrified me, if I could possibly control myself. So I
mustered resolution enough to answer that I did not believe the
law gave him any such wicked power over the dead.

"I'll teach you what the law is!" he broke in; "you'll raise
money to bury her like a born lady, when she's died in my debt,
will you? And you think I'll let my rights be trampled upon like
that, do you? See if I do! I'll give you till to-night to think
about it. If I don't have the three weeks she owes before
to-morrow, dead or alive, she shall go to the workhouse!"

This time I managed to push by him, and get to my own room, and
lock the door in his face. As soon as I was alone I fell into a
breathless, suffocating fit of crying that seemed to be shaking
me to pieces. But there was no good and no help in tears; I did
my best to calm myself after a little while, and tried to think
who I should run to for help and protection.

The doctor was the first friend I thought of; but I knew he was
always out seeing his patients of an afternoon. The beadle was
the next person who came into my head. He had the look of being a
very dignified, unapproachable kind of man when he came about the
inquest; but he talked to me a little then, and said I was a good
girl, and seemed, I really thought, to pity me. So to him I
determined to apply in my great danger and distress.

Most fortunately, I found him at home. When I told him of the
landlord's infamous threats, and of the misery I was suffering in
consequence of them, he rose up with a stamp of his foot, and
sent for his gold-laced cocked hat that he wears on Sundays, and
his long cane with the ivory top to it.

"I'll give it to him," said the beadle. "Come along with me, my
dear. I think I told you you were a good girl at the inquest--if
I didn't, I tell you so now. I'll give it to him! Come along with
me."

And he went out, striding on with his cocked hat and his great
cane, and I followed him.

"Landlord!" he cries, the moment he gets into the passage, with a
thump of his cane on the floor, "landlord!" with a look all round
him as if he was King of England calling to a beast, "come out!"

The moment the landlord came out and saw who it was, his eye
fixed on the cocked hat, and he turned as pale as ashes.

"How dare you frighten this poor girl?" says the beadle. "How
dare you bully her at this sorrowful time with threatening to do
what you know you can't do? How dare you be a cowardly, bullying,
braggadocio of an unmanly landlord? Don't talk to me: I won't
hear you. I'll pull you up, sir. If you say another word to the
young woman, I'll pull you up before the authorities of this
metropolitan parish. I've had my eye on you, and the authorities
have had their eye on you, and the rector has had his eye on you.
We don't like the look of your small shop round the corner; we
don't like the look of some of the customers who deal at it; we
don't like disorderly characters; and we don't by any manner of
means like you. Go away. Leave the young woman alone. Hold your
tongue, or I'll pull you up. If he says another word, or
interferes with you again, my dear, come and tell me; and, as
sure as he's a bullying, unmanly, braggadocio of a landlord, I'll
pull him up."

With those words the beadle gave a loud cough to clear his
throat, and another thump of his cane on the floor, and so went
striding out again before I could open my lips to thank him. The
landlord slunk back into his room without a word. I was left
alone and unmolested at last, to strengthen myself for the hard
trial of my poor love's funeral to-morrow.

March 13th. It is all over. A week ago her head rested on my
bosom. It is laid in the churchyard now; the fresh earth lies
heavy over her grave. I and my dearest friend, the sister of my
love, are parted in this world forever.

I followed her funeral alone through the cruel, hustling streets.
Sally, I thought, might have offered to go with me, but she never
so much as came into my room. I did not like to think badly of
her for this, and I am glad I restrained myself; for, when we got
into the churchyard, among the two or three people who were
standing by the open grave I saw Sally, in her ragged gray shawl
and her patched black bonnet. She did not seem to notice me till
the last words of the service had been read and the clergyman had
gone away; then she came up and spoke to me.

"I couldn't follow along with you," she said, looking at her
ragged shawl, "for I haven't a decent suit of clothes to walk in.
I wish I could get vent in crying for her like you, but I can't;
all the crying's been drudged and starved out of me long ago.
Don't you think about lighting your fire when you get home. I'll
do that, and get you a drop of tea to comfort you."

She seemed on the point of saying a kind word or two more, when,
seeing the beadle coming toward me, she drew back, as if she was
afraid of him, and left the churchyard.

"Here's my subscription toward the funeral," said the beadle,
giving me back his shilling fee. "Don't say anything about it,
for it mightn't be approved of in a business point of view, if it
came to some people's ears. Has the landlord said anything more
to you? no, I thought not. He's too polite a man to give me the
trouble of pulling him up. Don't stop crying here, my dear. Take
the advice of a man familiar with funerals, and go home."

I tried to take his advice, but it seemed like deserting Mary to
go away when all the rest forsook her.

I waited about till the earth was thrown in and the man had left
the place, then I returned to the grave. Oh, how bare and cruel
it was, without so much as a bit of green turf to soften it! Oh,
how much harder it seemed to live than to die, when I stood alone
looking at the heavy piled-up lumps of clay, and thinking of what
was hidden beneath them!

I was driven home by my own despairing thoughts. The sight of
Sally lighting the fire in my room eased my heart a little. When
she was gone, I took up Robert's letter again to keep my mind
employed on the only subject in the world that has any interest
for it now.

This fresh reading increased the doubts I had already felt
relative to his having remained in America after writing to me.
My grief and forlornness have made a strange alteration in my
former feelings about his coming back. I seem to have lost all my
prudence and self-denial, and to care so little about his
poverty, and so much about himself, that the prospect of his
return is really the only comforting thought I have now to
support me. I know this is weak in me, and that his coming back
can l ead to no good result for either of us; but he is the only
living being left me to love; and--I can't explain it--but I want
to put my arms round his neck and tell him about Mary.

March 14th. I locked up the end of the cravat in my
writing-desk. No change in the dreadful suspicions that the bare
sight of it rouses in me. I tremble if I so much as touch it.

March 15th, 16th, 17th. Work, work, work. If I don't knock up,
I shall be able to pay back the advance in another week; and
then, with a little more pinching in my daily expenses, I may
succeed in saving a shilling or two to get some turf to put over
Mary's grave, and perhaps even a few flowers besides to grow
round it.

March 18th. Thinking of Robert all day long. Does this mean
that he is really coming back? If it does, reckoning the distance
he is at from New York, and the time ships take to get to
England, I might see him by the end of April or the beginning of
May.

March 19th. I don't remember my mind running once on the end of
the cravat yesterday, and I am certain I never looked at it; yet
I had the strangest dream concerning it at night. I thought it
was lengthened into a long clew, like the silken thread that led
to Rosamond's Bower. I thought I took hold of it, and followed it
a little way, and then got frightened and tried to go back, but
found that I was obliged, in spite of myself, to go on. It led me
through a place like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in an old
print I remember in my mother's copy of the Pilgrim's Progress. I
seemed to be months and months following it without any respite,
till at last it brought me, on a sudden, face to face with an
angel whose eyes were like Mary's. He said to me, "Go on, still;
the truth is at the end, waiting for you to find it." I burst out
crying, for the angel had Mary's voice as well as Mary's eyes,
and woke with my heart throbbing and my cheeks all wet. What is
the meaning of this? Is it always superstitious, I wonder, to
believe that dreams may come true?

* * * * * * *

April 30th. I have found it! God knows to what results it may
lead; but it is as certain as that I am sitting here before my
journal that I have found the cravat from which the end in Mary's
hand was torn. I discovered it last night; but the flutter I was
in, and the nervousness and uncertainty I felt, prevented me from
noting down this most extraordinary and unexpected event at the
time when it happened. Let me try if I can preserve the memory of
it in writing now.

I was going home rather late from where I work, when I suddenly
remembered that I had forgotten to buy myself any candles the
evening before, and that I should be left in the dark if I did
not manage to rectify this mistake in some way. The shop close to
me, at which I usually deal, would be shut up, I knew, before I
could get to it; so I determined to go into the first place I
passed where candles were sold. This turned out to be a small
shop with two counters, which did business on one side in the
general grocery way, and on the other in the rag and bottle and
old iron line.

There were several customers on the grocery side when I went in,
so I waited on the empty rag side till I could be served.
Glancing about me here at the worthless-looking things by which I
was surrounded, my eye was caught by a bundle of rags lying on
the counter, as if they had just been brought in and left there.
From mere idle curiosity, I looked close at the rags, and saw
among them something like an old cravat. I took it up directly
and held it under a gaslight. The pattern was blurred lilac lines
running across and across the dingy black ground in a
trellis-work form. I looked at the ends: one of them was torn
off.

How I managed to hide the breathless surprise into which this
discovery threw me I cannot say, but I certainly contrived to
steady my voice somehow, and to ask for my candles calmly when
the man and woman serving in the shop, having disposed of their
other customers, inquired of me what I wanted.

As the man took down the candles, my brain was all in a whirl
with trying to think how I could get possession of the old cravat
without exciting any suspicion. Chance, and a little quickness on
my part in taking advantage of it, put the object within my reach
in a moment. The man, having counted out the candles, asked the
woman for some paper to wrap them in. She produced a piece much
too small and flimsy for the purpose, and declared, when he
called for something better, that the day's supply of stout paper
was all exhausted. He flew into a rage with her for managing so
badly. Just as they were beginning to quarrel violently, I
stepped back to the rag-counter, took the old cravat carelessly
out of the bundle, and said, in as light a tone as I could
possibly assume:

"Come, come, don't let my candles be the cause of hard words
between you. Tie this ragged old thing round them with a bit of
string, and I shall carry them home quite comfortably."

The man seemed disposed to insist on the stout paper being
produced; but the woman, as if she was glad of an opportunity of
spiting him, snatched the candles away, and tied them up in a
moment in the torn old cravat. I was afraid he would have struck
her before my face, he seemed in such a fury; but, fortunately,
another customer came in, and obliged him to put his hands to
peaceable and proper use.Ê

"Quite a bundle of all-sorts on the opposite counter there," I
said to the woman, as I paid her for the candles.

"Yes, and all hoarded up for sale by a poor creature with a lazy
brute of a husband, who lets his wife do all the work while he
spends all the money," answered the woman, with a malicious look
at the man by her side.

"He can't surely have much money to spend, if his wife has no
better work to do than picking up rags," said I.

"It isn't her fault if she hasn't got no better," says the woman,
rather angrily. "She's ready to turn her hand to anything.
Charing, washing, laying-out, keeping empty houses--nothing comes
amiss to her. She's my half-sister, and I think I ought to know."

"Did you say she went out charing?" I asked, making believe as if
I knew of somebody who might employ her.

"Yes, of course I did," answered the woman; "and if you can put a
job into her hands, you'll be doing a good turn to a poor
hard-working creature as wants it. She lives down the Mews here
to the right--name of Horlick, and as honest a woman as ever
stood in shoe-leather. Now, then, ma'am, what for you?"

Another customer came in just then, and occupied her attention. I
left the shop, passed the turning that led down to the Mews,
looked up at the name of the street, so as to know how to find it
again, and then ran home as fast as I could. Perhaps it was the
remembrance of my strange dream striking me on a sudden, or
perhaps it was the shock of the discovery I had just made, but I
began to feel frightened without knowing why, and anxious to be
under shelter in my own room.

It Robert should come back! Oh, what a relief and help it would
be now if Robert should come back!

May 1st. On getting indoors last night, the first thing I did,
after striking a light, was to take the ragged cravat off the
candles, and smooth it out on the table. I then took the end that
had been in poor Mary's hand out of my writing-desk, and smoothed
that out too. It matched the torn side of the cravat exactly. I
put them together, and satisfied myself that there was not a
doubt of it.

Not once did I close my eyes that night. A kind of fever got
possession of me--a vehement yearning to go on from this first
discovery and find out more, no matter what the risk might be.
The cravat now really became, to my mind, the clew that I thought
I saw in my dream--the clew that I was resolved to follow. I
determined to go to Mrs. Horlick this evening on my return from
work.

I found the Mews easily. A crook-backed dwarf of a man was
lounging at the corner of it smoking his pipe. Not liking his
looks, I did not inquire of him where Mrs. Horlick lived, but
went down the Mews till I met with a woman, and asked her. She
directed me to the right number. I knocked at the door, and Mrs.
Horlick herself--a lean,
ill-tempered, miserable-looking woman--answered it. I told her
at once that I had come to ask what her terms were for charing.
She stared at me for a moment, then answered my question civilly
enough.

"You look surprised at a stranger like me finding you out," I
said. "I first came to hear of you last night, from a relation of
yours, in rather an odd way."

And I told her all that had happened in the chandler's shop,
bringing in the bundle of rags, and the circumstance of my
carrying home the candles in the old torn cravat, as often as
possible.

"It's the first time I've heard of anything belonging to him
turning out any use," said Mrs. Horlick, bitterly.

"What! the spoiled old neck-handkerchief belonged to your
husband, did it?" said I, at a venture.

"Yes; I pitched his rotten rag of a neck-'andkercher into the
bundle along with the rest, and I wish I could have pitched him
in after it," said Mrs. Horlick. "I'd sell him cheap at any
ragshop. There he stands, smoking his pipe at the end of the
Mews, out of work for weeks past, the idlest humpbacked pig in
all London!"

She pointed to the man whom I had passed on entering the Mews. My
cheeks began to burn and my knees to tremble, for I knew that in
tracing the cravat to its owner I was advancing a step toward a
fresh discovery. I wished Mrs. Horlick good evening, and said I
would write and mention the day on which I wanted her.

What I had just been told put a thought into my mind that I was
afraid to follow out. I have heard people talk of being
light-headed, and I felt as I have heard them say they felt when
I retraced my steps up the Mews. My head got giddy, and my eyes
seemed able to see nothing but the figure of the little
crook-backed man, still smoking his pipe in his former place. I
could see nothing but that; I could think of nothing but the mark
of the blow on my poor lost Mary's temple. I know that I must
have been light-headed, for as I came close to the crook-backed
man I stopped without meaning it. The minute before, there had
been no idea in me of speaking to him. I did not know how to
speak, or in what way it would be safest to begin; and yet, the
moment I came face to face with him, something out of myself
seemed to stop me, and to make me speak without considering
beforehand, without thinking of consequences, without knowing, I
may almost say, what words I was uttering till the instant when
they rose to my lips.

"When your old neck-tie was torn, did you know that one end of it
went to the rag-shop, and the other fell into my hands?"

I said these bold words to him suddenly, and, as it seemed,
without my own will taking any part in them.

He started, stared, changed color. He was too much amazed by my
sudden speaking to find an answer for me. When he did open his
lips, it was to say rather to himself than me:

"You're not the girl."

"No," I said, with a strange choking at my heart, "I'm her
friend."

By this time he had recovered his surprise, and he seemed to be
aware that he had let out more than he ought.

"You may be anybody's friend you like," he said, brutally, "so
long as you don't come jabbering nonsense here. I don't know you,
and I don't understand your jokes."

He turned quickly away from me when he had said the last words.
He had never once looked fairly at me since I first spoke to him.

Was it his hand that had struck the blow? I had only sixpence in
my pocket, but I took it out and followed him. If it had been a
five-pound note I should have done the same in the state I was in
then.

"Would a pot of beer help you to understand me?" I said, and
offered him the sixpence.

"A pot ain't no great things," he answered, taking the sixpence
doubtfully.

"It may lead to something better," I said. His eyes began to
twinkle, and he came close to me. Oh, how my legs trembled--how
my head swam!

"This is all in a friendly way, is it?" he asked, in a whisper.

I nodded my head. At that moment I could not have spoken for
worlds.

"Friendly, of course," he went on to himself, "or there would
have been a policeman in it. She told you, I suppose, that I
wasn't the man?"

I nodded my head again. It was all I could do to keep myself
standing upright.

"I suppose it's a case of threatening to have him up, and make
him settle it quietly for a pound or two? How much for me if you
lay hold of him?"

"Half."

I began to be afraid that he would suspect something if I was
still silent. The wretch's eyes twinkled again and he came yet
closer.

"I drove him to the Red Lion, corner of Dodd Street and Rudgely
Street. The house was shut up, but he was let in at the jug and
bottle door, like a man who was known to the landlord. That's as
much as I can tell you, and I'm certain I'm right. He was the
last fare I took up at night. The next morning master gave me the
sack--said I cribbed his corn and his fares. I wish I had."

I gathered from this that the crook-backed man had been a
cab-driver.

"Why don't you speak?" he asked, suspiciously. "Has she been
telling you a pack of lies about me? What did she say when she
came home?"

"What ought she to have said?"

"She ought to have said my fare was drunk, and she came in the
way as he was going to get into the cab. That's what she ought to
have said to begin with."

"But after?"

"Well, after, my fare, by way of larking with her, puts out his
leg for to trip her up, and she stumbles and catches at me for to
save herself, and tears off one of the limp ends of my rotten old
tie. 'What do you mean by that, you brute?' says she, turning
round as soon as she was steady on her legs, to my fare. Says my
fare to her: 'I means to teach you to keep a civil tongue in your
head.' And he ups with his fist, and--what's come to you, now?
What are you looking at me like that for? How do you think a man
of my size was to take her part against a man big enough to have
eaten me up? Look as much as you like, in my place you would have
done what I done--drew off when he shook his fist at you, and
swore he'd be the death of you if you didn't start your horse in
no time."

I saw he was working himself up into a rage; but I could not, if
my life had depended on it, have stood near him or looked at him
any longer. I just managed to stammer out that I had been walking
a long way, and that, not being used to much exercise, I felt
faint and giddy with fatigue. He only changed from angry to sulky
when I made that excuse. I got a little further away from him,
and then added that if he would be at the Mews entrance the next
evening I should have something more to say and something more to
give him. He grumbled a few suspicious words in answer about
doubting whether he should trust me to come back. Fortunately, at
that moment, a policeman passed on the opposite side of the way.
He slunk down the Mews immediately, and I was free to make my
escape.

How I got home I can't say, except that I think I ran the greater
part of the way. Sally opened the door, and asked if anything was
the matter the moment she saw my face. I answered:
"Nothing--nothing." She stopped me as I was going into my room,
and said:

"Smooth your hair a bit, and put your collar straight. There's a
gentleman in there waiting for you."

My heart gave one great bound: I knew who it was in an instant,
and rushed into the room like a mad woman.

"Oh, Robert, Robert!"

All my heart went out to him in those two little words.

"Good God, Anne, has anything happened? Are you ill?"

"Mary! my poor, lost, murdered, dear, dear Mary!"

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