The String of Pearls 92Mr. Lupin Meddles with Other Folks' Affairs
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 92
Mr. Lupin Meddles with Other Folks' Affairs
PrestEnglish
"Brother Oakley, is sister Oakley within?"
This rather cool speech--cool considering all the circumstances--was uttered by no other than the Reverend Mr. Lupin to Mr. Oakley, who was working in his shop on the morning after Johanna had gone upon her perilous enterprise to Todd's.
Mr. Oakley looked up with surprise upon his features.
"What?" he said.
"Is sister Oakley within, brother?"
"Don't call me brother, you canting hypocrite. How do you make out any such relationship, I should like to know?"
"Are we not all brothers in the Lord?"
"Pho! Go along."
"Nay, brother Oakley, my coming to you upon this day hath, in good truth, a meaning."
As he said these words, the countenance of the pious man had upon it a malignant expression, and there was a twinkle about his eyes, which said as plainly as possible, "And that meaning is mischief!" Old Oakley looked at him for some few seconds, and then he said--
"Hark you, Mr. Lupin, you have already meddled too much in my affairs, and I desire now that you will be so good as to leave them alone."
"Humph! brother Oakley, what I have to say, concerns thee to hear, but I would rather say it to thy wife, who is a sister in the faith, and assuredly one of the elect, than I would say it to you, who will assuredly go to a warm place below for your want of faith; so I say again, is sister Oakley within?"
"If you mean my wife," replied the old spectacle-maker, "I am sorry to say that nobody knows less of her going out and coming home than I do."
"Truly, she frequents the Tabernacle of the Lord, called Ebenezer, where we all put up a hearty and moving prayer for you."
"Nobody asks you. I believe you are a set of rascals."
"How pleasant this is."
"What is pleasant?"
"To be nailed. How charming it is for the friends of Satan to call the Saints hard names. Brother Oakley, you are lost, indeed."
"If you call me brother again, you shall be lost, Mr. Lupin. I tell you once for all, I don't know anything of my wife's going out or coming home, and I don't want to see you in my shop any more. If it were not for one person in this world, and that one an angel, if ever one lived upon the earth, I should not care how soon my head was laid low."
"Humph! brother Oakley! Humph!"
Oakley caught up a file to throw at the head of the hypocrite, but there was such an expression of triumph upon his face, that the heart of the old spectacle-maker sunk within him as he thought to himself, "This man brings ill news, or he would never look as he does." The file dropped from his hands, and pushing his spectacles up to the top of his head, he glared at Lupin as he said--
"Speak--speak! What have you to say?"
"Humph!"
"Speak man, if you be a man!"
"Humph, brother Oakley; you have a daughter--Johanna?"
"Yes, yes!" cried old Oakley. "My heart told me that it was of my child this wretch came to speak. Tell me all instantly. Speak--what of my dear Johanna? I will wrest the truth from you. Has anything happened--is she well? Speak--speak!"
Mr. Oakley sprang upon the preacher, and seizing him by the throat, forced him back until he fell upon an old chest in the shop that was full of tools and the lid of which giving way with Lupin's weight and the sudden concussion with which he came upon it, precipitated him into the box among a number of pointed implements, the effect of which may be better imagined than described, as the newspapers say.
"Murder! murder!" screamed the preacher.
"Now you rascal!" cried old Oakley. "Say what you have got to say, and at once, too."
"Murder!" again gasped Lupin. "Brother Oakley, spare my life."
"I will not spare it if you are not quite explicit as regards what you have hinted of my child. Speak at once. Tell me what you have to say?"
"Let me get up. Oh, be merciful, and let me get up."
"No. You can stay very well where you are. Be quiet and speak freely, in which case no harm will come to you."
"Did you say, be quiet, brother Oakley? Truly you would be anything but quiet in my situation. What induces you to keep all your tools in this chest with the points uppermost?"
"You are trying to prevaricate now," said Oakley, suddenly snatching from the wall of his shop an antique sword, that had hung there as a sort of ornament, not entirely inconsistent with his trade. "You are trying to prevaricate with me now, and I must and will have your life. Prepare for the worst. You have now aroused feelings that cannot be so easily quelled again. Your last hour has come!"
The sight of the sword awakened the most lively feelings of terror in the mind of the preacher. He gave a howl of dismay, and made the most frantic efforts to get up out of the tool-chest; but that was no easy matter, particularly as old Oakley flourished the antique sword in dangerous proximity to his nose. At length, lifting up his hands in the most supplicating manner, he cried--
"Mercy--mercy, and I will tell."
"Go on, then. Quick."
"Yes--yes. Oh, dear! Yes. I was sojourning in this ungodly city, and taking my way, deep in thought, upon the wickedness of the world, the greater portion of the inhabitants of which will assuredly go down below, where there is howling and--"
"You rascal, I'll make you howl if you do not come to the point quickly."
A flourish of the sword, so close to the face of Mr. Lupin that he really believed for the moment it had taken the end of his nose off, admonished him that the patience of Mr. Oakley was nearly exhausted, and in a whining tone, he added--
"Truly, I was in the street called Fleet-street; when as I was crossing the way, a young lad nearly upset me into the kennel. He did not see me, but I saw him. Truly, brother Oakley, I saw the face of that--that individual."
"Well, what is that to me? I ask you what is he to me? Go on."
"Oh, oh, oh! Don't say I have not prepared you for the worst. Oh, oh, oh! Now, brother Oakley, I will tell you, even although it provoke an abundance of wrath. That boy--that individual who nearly overthrew me, one of the elect as I am, into the kennel, had the face of your daughter, Johanna."
The spectacle-maker looked confused, as well he might.
"The face of my daughter, Johanna?" he said. "What do you mean? Is all this cock-and-a-bull story about some boy in the street, who happened in your eyes to bear a resemblance to my child?"
"Humph! Ay, truly. Humph! so striking a resemblance, that sitting here, even as I am upon the points of many instruments of steel and of iron, I aver that that boy was Johanna Oakley."
Oakley staggered back, and the antique sword dropped from his hand, a proceeding which Mr. Lupin proffited sufficiently by to scramble out of the tool-chest, and make towards the door. In another moment he would have left the shop, for he had done all the mischief he could, by telling the anxious father such a tale, but suddenly Oakley snatched the sword from the floor again, and rushing after Mr. Lupin, he caught him by the skirts at the very nick of time, and dragged him into the shop again. Holding then the sword to his throat, he said--
"Scoundrel! How dare you come and tell me such a thing? Your life, your worthless life, ought to pay the penalty of such an odious falsehood."
"No, no!" cried Lupin falling upon his knees, for he saw the sword uplifted. "No! What if it be true? What if it be true?"
The old man's hands shook, and the point of the sword which had been in most dreadful proximity to Mr. Lupin's throat, was gradually lowered until it touched the floor.
"Tell me again--tell me again!" gasped Oakley.
The preacher saw that his danger was over, and rising, he took a handkerchief from his pocket, and began deliberately to dust his knees, as he said in a low snuffling voice--
"Truly, you are a vessel of wrath, brother Oakley."
"Stop!" cried Oakley. "I have told you before not to call me brother: I have no fellowship or brotherhood with you. Do not tempt me to more violence by the use of that word."
"Let it be as you please," said Lupin, "but as regards the maiden, who for a surety is fair to look upon, although all flesh is grass, and beauty waneth after a season--"
"I want none of your canting reflections. To your tale. When and where was it that you saw my child?"
"In the street called Fleet, as I and all of us are sinners. She wore nether garments suitable and conformable unto a boy, but not to a girl, as the way of the world goeth; and yet she looked comely did the maiden--ay, very comely. I was moved to see her truly. Her eyes there was no mistaking, and her lips--Ay, it was the maiden; but after sitting in the kennel for one moment into which I fell, and getting up again amid the laughter of the ungodly bystanders, I found that she was gone."
"And so you have come on to me with this monstrous tale?"
"Monstrous tail?" said Mr. Lupin, turning round as though he expected to find such an appendage flourishing behind him. "I am not aware--"
The old spectacle-maker staggered into a seat, and holding his hands clasped before him for a few moments, he strove to think calmly of what had been told to him.
The preacher was not slow in taking advantage of this condition into which Mr. Oakley fell, to protect himself against any further danger from the sword. He picked up that weapon from the floor, and not finding any place readily in the shop where he might effectually hide it, he held it behind his back, and finally thrust the long blade of it between his coat and his waistcoat, where he thought it was to be sure wonderfully well hidden. He did not calculate that the point projected above his coat-collar and his head some six inches or so, presenting a very singular appearance indeed.
He then waited for Oakley to speak, for to tell the truth, the curiosity of Lupin was strongly excited concerning Johanna, as well as his sense of enjoyment, tickled by the distress of the father whom he considered his enemy.
After this he waited patiently enough to see what course the afflicted man would pursue, and, indeed, the whole conduct of Lupin was most convincing of the fact, that he entertained no doubt whatever as to the identity of the supposed boy he had seen in Fleet Street. The time at which he had seen Johanna, must have been when she ran over the road from Todd's shop, and took refuge in the fruiterer's.
Well, then, poor Mr. Oakley was trying to think. He was trying to convince himself that it could not possibly have been Johanna who had been seen by the preacher; but then there was still present to his mind, the impression that had been made upon it by the singular manner in which she had bidden him adieu upon the last occasion of his seeing her. He remembered how she had come back, after leaving the shop with her young friend, Arabella Wilmot, and how then, with a burst of feeling, she had taken of him a second farewell.
No wonder then that, by combining that with the information Lupin had brought, the father found enough to shudder at; and he did shudder.
Mr. Lupin watched him attentively.
Suddenly rising, with a face pale as death itself, Oakley advanced to Lupin, and laying his hand upon his breast, he said to him--
"Man, I suspect that there is much hypocrisy in your nature. It may be unjust to do so--it may be that I am doing you a wrong, but yet I do think in my heart that you are one of those who adopt the garb and the language of piety for the selfish purposes of human nature. And yet you must have some feeling: at the bottom of even such a heart as yours, there must be some touch of humanity; and by that I conjure you to say if you have told the truth to me in this matter concerning my child."
"I have," said Lupin.
"If you have not, I will say nothing to you, I will be guilty of no attempt at revengeful violence. Only tell me so, and you shall go in peace."
"What I have told you of the maiden is true," said Lupin. "I saw her--with these eyes I saw her."
The spectacle-maker slipped off his working apron and the black sleeves he wore over his coat to protect it from the dust and other destructive matters incidental to his work-bench, and then he snatched his hat from a peg upon which it hung in the shop.
"Come," he said. "Come. You and I will walk together to the house, where I was told Johanna was to be; and if I do not find her there, I will thank you for the information you have given to me. I will not stop to inquire what were your motives in giving it, but I will thank you for it. Come. Come with me."
"Truly I will come with you," said Lupin, "for I am curious--that is to say, I am in a religious point of view, anxious to know what has become of the maiden, who was so fair to look upon always, although she had not a godly spirit."
Oakley locked up his shop, and put the key in his pocket. Then taking the preacher by the arm, he set off at a fast pace for the house of Arabella Wilmot.
