CHAPTER XXIX
FREDERICK HOLDFAST’S STATEMENT (CONCLUDED)
UNDER these circumstances the obstacles before me became almost insurmountable. The residents of the burning city were in a state of the wildest confusion, and my anxious inquiries for my father were fruitless; I could obtain no news of him; not a person to whom I spoke, not even those connected with the hotel, could inform me whether a gentleman named Holdfast, or one answering to my description of him, had stopped at the Briggs’ House.
I was perplexed how to act, but an idea that it would be well for me to remain upon the spot, on the chance that I might yet learn something of my father, caused me to resolve not to leave Chicago for awhile. To this resolution I was pledged by my necessities. I was penniless, and to return immediately to New York was a matter of impossibility.
I had no difficulty in obtaining sufficient to live upon from day to day. Assistance and food poured into the city from all parts of the States, and already upon the burning ruins men were beginning to rebuild their stores and houses. Every pair of hands was valuable, and I worked with the rest, never for a moment losing sight of the vital mission upon which I was engaged. For a month I remained in Chicago, and having by that time earned enough money to carry me to New York, and being also satisfied that I had exhausted every channel open to me through which I might hear of or from my father, I took the train back, and in thirty-six hours reached the hotel in New York from which my father had addressed his letters to me. It appeared as if I had taken the right step, for on the very day of my arrival I saw among the “Personals” in the New York Herald the following advertisement:
“F.H. – The day before you leave America for England advertise in the Herald’s Personal column the name of the ship in which you have taken your passage. It is of the utmost importance. Implicit silence until we meet.”
Mysterious as was this communication, it afforded me satisfaction. My father, doubtless, had his own good reasons for the course he was pursuing, but it hurt me that he had not, by a few words which I alone could have understood, removed from me the obligation entailed upon me by my solemn oath to pass myself off under a false name. Until he asked my forgiveness, or acknowledged his error, I could not resume my own.
I entered the hotel, and there another surprise awaited me. My father had, during my absence in Chicago, lived at the hotel for nearly a fortnight. In an interview with the manager, I was informed that the description my father had received of my personal appearance had much excited him. “I could not give him your name,” said the manager, “as you did not leave any. He made inquiries for you everywhere, and employed detectives to discover you, but they were not successful. He appeared as anxious to see you as you were to see him.”
“He has been to Chicago, has he not?” I asked. “He was there at the time of the fire, and stopped at the Briggs’ House?”
“Not to my knowledge,” replied the manager. “He has not spoken of it; and it is one of the things a man would speak of. Such a scene as that! – and the Briggs’ House burnt to the ground, too! No, I don’t think Mr. Holdfast went to Chicago.”
I made no comment upon this; doubtless my father did not wish his movements to be too widely known.
“Where is Mr. Holdfast now?” I inquired.
“Very near Liverpool,” was the reply. “He left in the Germanic this day week. There is a letter in the office for you which I was to deliver into your hands in case you called. No one else could do so, as you see no name is on the envelope, and as no other person but myself could identify you.”
The letter informed me that my father was returning to England, and I was desired to follow him immediately. To enable me to do this he enclosed Bank of England notes for £200, and in addition a draft for £500 payable at sight to bearer at a bank in London. The concluding words of the letter were “Upon your arrival in Liverpool go to the Post-office there, where a letter will await you, instructing you how to proceed.”
Made happy by this communication, but still more than ever impressed by the consciousness that a mystery existed which rendered it necessary to be cautious, I thanked the manager of the hotel, and hastened to a shipping office in Broadway, where I paid my passage in a steamer which was to leave in a couple of days. Then I went to the Herald office, and paid for an advertisement in the Personal column, giving the name of the ship in which I had taken passage, and the date of its departure. Before the expiration of two weeks I landed in Liverpool, and applied at the Post Office for a letter. One was handed to me in the handwriting of my father. Imagine my astonishment at its contents. So as to make this statement in a certain measure complete, I will endeavour to recall what it contained.
“Frederick, and whatever other name you choose to call yourself by. In sending you to Chicago, and causing you to follow me back to England, I have had but one motive – to impress upon you that you cannot escape the consequences of your slander upon the noblest woman breathing. In whatever part of the world you may be, my hate and curse shall follow you. Now, present yourself before me and beg upon your knees for mercy and forgiveness; it will be another proof of your currish spirit! I shall know how to receive you, Slanderer!”
I could scarcely believe the evidence of my senses. I trembled with amazement and indignation. That such a trick should have been played upon me was altogether so astonishing and incomprehensible that I looked about me in bewilderment for a faithful heart upon whose sympathy I could throw myself for consolation. I thought of you, and determined to come to you, and ask for counsel and comfort. But before I started for Exeter there was something to do which, to leave undone, would have brought a life-long shame upon me. I took from the money remaining of the £200 I received in New York as much as would carry me to your side; the rest I enclosed in an envelope, with the sight draft for £500, and sent it to my father’s address in London, with these words: “May God pardon you for the wrong you have done me! I will never seek you, nor, if you seek me, will I ever come to you. The money I have spent of the £200 I will endeavour to repay you; but what else, besides money, we owe to each other can never be repaid in this world.”
I posted this letter, and journeyed on to Exeter, and there another grief awaited me. You had left the town; your mother was dead, had been dead for weeks, and you had not informed me of it in your letters. I will be frank with you. So overwhelmed was I by what had taken place, so much was my spirit bruised, that it seemed as if faith in human kind had entirely deserted me. For a moment, my dear, I doubted even you; but then the better and truer hope dawned upon me that, knowing from my letters how unfortunate and unhappy I had been, you had withheld from me the news of your own deep trouble so that it might not add to mine.
What now was I to do? All that I could learn of you was that you had gone to London; there, then, was my duty. To London I must go, and endeavour to find you, and endeavour at the same time to hide myself from my father who had so shamefully abused me. But I had no money – not a shilling. I could raise a little, however. Before I left New York I had provided myself with good clothes, and these were on me now. I went to a vile shop in one of the worst parts of Exeter, and there I bartered the clothes I stood upright in for a sum of money barely sufficient to take me to London and to enable me to live there on dry bread for a few days. Included in this bargain, to my necessity and advantage, was a ragged suit of clothes in which I dressed, after divesting myself of my better habiliments, and thus, clothed like a beggar, and with a despairing heart beating in my bosom, I made my way to London. At the end of a week I had not a penny left, and I was so hungry that I had to beg for bread of a girl standing at the wooden gate of a poor-looking house.
The girl’s heart was touched – God bless her for it! – and she ran into the house, and brought out a few pieces of stale bread and cheese, wrapped in a bit of newspaper. I stood by a lamp-post, munching the hard bread, and looking at the bit of newspaper the while. What I read related to a mysterious, fearful murder which had been committed in Great Porter Square. Nothing was known of the murdered man, and his murderer had not been discovered. The names of both were shrouded in mystery. “So might it be with me,” I thought; “if I were murdered this night, there is about me or upon me absolutely no mark or sign by which I could be identified.”
Ah, my dear, London’s mysteries are many and terrible! Imagination cannot compass or excel them.
It was a dark night, and I wandered aimlessly through the streets, saving some of the bread for my supper later on. The hopelessness of the task before me, that of discovering you, filled me with a deeper despair. It was as though I were shut out from all sympathy with my kind. By what I now believe to be a kind of fate, I wandered, without knowing the direction I was taking, towards Great Porter Square. I came to the Square itself, and looked up at the name in the endeavour to read it. “Are you looking for Great Porter Square?” asked a woman who was passing by. “That’s it – where the murder was committed.” Well, it in no way concerned me. A man was murdered there. What of it? He was out of his misery. That was the substance of my reflections. He was out of his misery, as I wished I was out of mine. For the minutes were hours, every one of which deepened my despair. I worked myself into a condition so morbid and utterly wretched that I gave up all hope of finding you. I had no place to lie in that night, and on the previous night I had slept in the open. The morning light would shine upon me, penniless, starving, and so woe-begone as to be a mark for men. I began to think I had had enough of life. And all the while these gloomy thoughts were driving me to the lowest depths I continued to walk round and about the thoroughfares of the Square in which the murder had been committed. After a time, the consciousness of this forced itself upon me, and the idea entered my mind that I would go into the Square itself, and look at the house. I followed out my idea, and walked slowly round the Square until I came to No. 119. I lingered before it for a moment or two, and then walked the entire circuit; and as I did so another suggestion presented itself. From the appearance of the house I judged it to be deserted. If I could gain admittance I should have, at least, a shelter from the night for a few hours; if there were a bed in it I should have a bed; the circumstance of the murder having been committed there had no real terrors for me. I had arrived at this mental stage when I found myself once more before the house; I was munching some bread at the time. I ascended the steps and tried the street door, and as I laid my hand upon the handle a policeman came up to me and endeavoured to seize me. A sudden terror fell upon me, and I shook him off roughly, and flew as though I were flying for my life; and, as I have already described to you, as I flew, the fancy crept upon me that my presence in the Square, my trying the door, and now my flight, had brought me into deadly peril in connection with the murder. I heard the policeman running after me. He sprang his rattle; the air seemed filled with pursuing enemies hunting me down, and I flew the faster, but only to fall at last, quite exhausted, into the arms of men, in whose remarks I heard a confirmation of my fears. Then I became cooler, and was marched to a police station, mocking myself as it were in a temper of devilish taunting despair, to be accused of a crime of which no man living was more innocent. When I was asked for my name by the inspector I did not immediately answer. My own name I dared not give; nor could I give the name by which you knew me. I would endeavour to keep my disgrace from your knowledge; so I gave a false name, the first that occurred to me, Antony Cowlrick, and gave it in such a way that the police knew it to be false. After that, I was thrown into a cell, where in solitude I might repent of my crimes and misdeeds. So bitter was my mood that I resolved to keep my tongue silent and say no word about myself. I knew that I was an innocent man, and I looked forward somewhat curiously to learn by what villainous and skilful means my accusers could bring the crime of murder home to me.
I pass over the dismal weeks of my farce of a trial, and I come to our meeting in Leicester Square.
It was my first gleam of sunshine for many a week, but another was to warm me during the day. With you by my side my strength of mind, my hope returned. The only money I had was the sovereign lent to me by the Special Reporter of the “Evening Moon;” you were poorer than I, and had, when we so happily met, exhausted your resources. The very engagement ring I gave you had been pawned to enable you to live. Money was necessary. How could I obtain it? Could I not apply to one of my former friends? I ran over in my mind the list of those whose people lived in London, and I paused at the name of Adolph, who had played so memorable a part in the Sydney Campbell tragedy. His parents lived in London, and were wealthy. If Adolph were home I would appeal to him, and solicit help from him. We drove to his father’s house, stopping on the way at a barber’s, by whose aid I made myself more presentable. Adolph was in London, and luckily at home. I sent up my name, and he came to me, and wished me to enter the house, and be introduced to his people; but I pointed to my clothes and refused. He accompanied me from his house, and when we were in a secluded spot I told him my story under a pledge of secrecy. He has a good heart, and he expressed himself as owing me a debt of gratitude which he should never be able to repay. I pointed out to him how he could repay me, and the generous-hearted lad gave me not only a hundred pounds, but a bill, long-dated, which a money-lender discounted for me, and which placed me in possession of a comparatively large sum of money. I hope to be able to pay this debt. I think I shall be, in the course of time.
But Adolph served me in more ways than one, and in a way neither he nor I could have dreamt of. The money-lender he recommended me to go to lived in the City, and to reach his office I had to pass my father’s place of business. I drove there in a four-wheeled cab, and to avoid notice I kept the windows up. But as I passed my father’s City house I could not help looking towards it, and I was surprised to find it closed. My own name did not appear upon the bill, and the money-lender and I were strangers to each other. I did not hesitate, therefore, when our business was concluded, to inquire if he knew Mr. Holdfast, and he replied that the name was well-known in the City. I then inquired why his place of business was closed, and received, in answer, the unexpected information that my father was in America, and had been there for many months. Upon this, I said in a careless tone, as though it were a matter in which I was but slightly interested, that I had heard that Mr. Holdfast had returned from America two or three months ago.
“Oh, no,” was the reply; “Mr. Holdfast had not yet come back.”
This set me thinking, and added another link to the mystery and sorrow of my life. I determined to assure myself whether my father was really in London, and on the following day I sent to his house, by a confidential messenger, an envelope. It was simply a test of the money-lender’s statement. The messenger returned to me with the envelope unopened, and with the information that my father was in America. “I inquired of the workpeople,” said my messenger, “and was told that Mr. Holdfast had not been seen in the neighbourhood for quite half a year.”
What conclusion was I to draw from this startling disclosure? My father, returning to England in the Germanic, had never been heard of either at his house of business or at his home? What, then, had become of him? What motive had he for mysterious concealment? Arguing, as I believed to be the case when I received the first letter from him in New York, that he had discovered the infamous character of the woman he had made his wife, there was perhaps a motive for his not living in the house to which he had brought her; but it was surely reasonable to expect that his return would be known at his place of business. I reflected upon the nature and character of my father’s wife, and upon the character of her scheming lover, Mr. Pelham; I subjected them to a mental analysis of the most searching kind, and I could arrive at but one conclusion – Foul Play! Judging from what had occurred between them and my poor friend, Sydney Campbell, there was no plot too treacherous for them to engage in, no scheme too wicked for them to devise and carry out. Foul Play rose before me in a thousand hideous shapes, until in its many-sided mental guise it became a conviction so strong that I did not pause to doubt it. Then arose another phase of the affair. If there had been Foul Play with my father, was it not reasonable to suppose that I, also, had been made the victim of clever tricksters? This, too, in a vague inexplicable way, became a conviction. A number of conflicting circumstances at once occurred to me in confirmation. The advertisement in the New York Herald desiring me to proceed to Chicago attached itself to the statement of the manager of the hotel at which my father stopped that Mr. Holdfast had not been in Chicago. The second advertisement in the “Personal” column of the Herald desiring me to advertise the name of the ship I took passage in from New York to Liverpool, attached itself to the circumstance that my father’s letter, handed to me by the hotel manager, contained no wish to know what ship I sailed in. And upon this came the thought that at the time this last “Personal,” which I supposed was inserted by my father, appeared in the columns of the Herald, my father was on the Atlantic. Fool that I was to act without deliberation, to believe without questioning. Last of all, the conflicting tone of the two letters I received from my father, the one in New York, which was undoubtedly genuine, and the one from the Liverpool post office, which may have been forged! – This completed it. Conviction seemed added to conviction, confirmation to confirmation, doubt to doubt – although every point in the evidence was circumstantial, and, nothing as yet could be distinctly proved. How I regretted that I had not kept the letters! When I received the last in Liverpool, I tore up, in a fury of indignation, every letter my father had written to me, and had therefore no writing of his in my possession by which I could compare and judge. I find now, that it is too late, that there is no wisdom in haste.
It weighed heavily upon me, as a duty not to be avoided, to endeavour to ascertain whether my father arrived in the Germanic, and after that what had become of him. And with the consciousness of this unmistakable duty arose the memory of so many acts of tenderness and kindness from my father to myself, that I began to accuse myself of injustice towards him, and to believe that it was not he who had wronged me, but I who had wronged him. With this grievous thought in my mind, I left you, and proceeded to Liverpool.
My first visit was paid to the office of the White Star Line. There I learned that my father had taken passage in New York on the date I gave, that the Germanic arrived in Liverpool after a rapid passage of little more than eight days, that no casualty occurred on the voyage, and that there was no doubt that my father landed with the other passengers. This point was settled by the books of the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. My father had stopped there for six days, and his name was duly recorded. Another point, quite as important, was established by reference to the hotel books and by inquiring of persons employed in the hotel. When my father left Liverpool, he took train to London. I had arrived at this stage of my inquiries, and was debating on the next step to take, when my attention was attracted by the cries of the newspaper street boys, calling out at the top of their voices, fresh discoveries in the Evening Moon respecting the murder in Great Porter Square. With no suspicion of the awful disclosure which awaited me, but naturally interested in any new phase of the mysterious incident, I purchased the paper and looked at the headings of the Supplement, and, casually at the matter. Seeing my own name – the name of Holdfast – repeated over and over again in the paper, I hurried from the street to the solitude of my room, and there read the most wicked, monstrous, and lying romance that human minds ever invented. And in addition to the horrible calumnies which that “Romance of Real Life” contains in its references to me, I learned, to my unutterable grief, that the man who was so foully murdered in Great Porter Square was my own father.
My dear, for many minutes the terrible disclosure – the knowledge that my dear father had met his death in a manner so awful and mysterious, took such complete possession of my mind that I had no thought of myself. My father was dead! The last time we met we parted in anger, using words to each other such as bitter enemies would use. I swore in his presence that he was dishonouring the name of Holdfast, and that I would never use it until he asked my forgiveness for the cruel injustice he had done me; and he drove me from his heart and from his house. My forgiveness he could never ask for now; he was dead! And the wrong we each did to the other in that hot encounter, in which love was poisoned by a treacherous wanton’s scheming, could never be repaired until we met in another world. I wept bitter tears, and falling on my knees – my mind enlightened by the strange utterances of a worthless woman, as reported in the Evening Moon– I asked my father’s forgiveness, as I had warned him to ask mine. And yet, my dear, neither of us was wrong; he was right and I was right; and if the question between us were put to a high and worthy test, it would be found that we both were animated by impulses which, under other circumstances, would have been an honour to our manhood.
But these kindly feelings passed away in the indignation which a sense of monstrous injustice inspired. To see my name so blackened, so defamed, my character so outraged and malformed, inflamed me for a time to a pitch of fury which threatened to cloud my judgment and my reason. What brought me to my senses? My love for you. I should have been reckless had I only myself to protect, to provide for; but a dearer self than myself depended upon me, and my honour was engaged to you. It was due to you that I should clear myself of these charges. Herein, my dear, came home to me, in the most forcible manner in which it could have been presented, the value of responsibilities. They tend to check our selfish impulses, and to indicate to us our line of action – straight on.
At this time I had written to you my half-disapproval of the step you had taken in disguising yourself as a maid-of-all-work, and obtaining a situation next to that in Great Porter Square in which the murder had been committed – Great God! I cannot write it with calmness – the murder of my father. But after I had read the Romance in Real Life in the Evening Moon and had somewhat calmed myself, I seemed to see in your action a kind of Providence. Before these insanely-wicked inventions of my father’s widow were made public, before it was known that the man who was murdered in Great Porter Square was my father, it was comparatively unimportant that I should be cleared of a charge of which I was innocent; it was then, so to speak, a side issue; now it is a vital issue. And the murderer must be discovered. I say it solemnly —must be discovered! He will be. Not by the Government, nor by the police, nor by any judicial agency, but by one whose honour, whose future, whose faith and love, are dragged into this dread crisis. And I see that it will be so – I see that you have been guided by a higher than a human impulse in your love-directed and seemingly mad inspiration to transform and degrade yourself, for the purpose of clearing me from a wicked and cruel accusation. At one time I doubted whether truth and justice were more than words; I doubt no longer; reflecting over certain incidents and accidents – accidents as I believed them to be – I see that something more than chance directed them, and that of our own destinies we ourselves are not the sole arbiters.
In the extraordinary narration presented to the readers of the Evening Moon I read that I am dead. Well, be it so. How the falsehood was invented, and led up to, and strengthened by newspaper evidence, scarcely interests me in the light of the more momentous issue which affects my future and yours. Involved in it, undoubtedly, were wonderful inventive powers, much painstaking, and immense industry – the result of which was a newspaper paragraph of a few lines, every word of which is false. That the woman who was my father’s wife, that the man who is her lover, believe that I am dead, appears to be beyond doubt. Let them continue in their belief until their guilt is brought home to them. To all intents and purposes, to all useful ends at present in the service of truth and justice, it will be best that it should be believed that I am dead. So let it be, then, until the proper time comes. It will come, I believe and hope.
To one end I am pledged. I will avenge my father’s murder, if it is in my power. I will bring his murderer to justice, if it is in my power. Help me if you can, and if after you peruse this strange narrative, every word of which is as faithful and true as though an angel, instead of an erring mortal, wrote it, you can still believe in me, still have faith in me, I shall bless you all my life, as I shall love you all my life, whether you remain faithful to me or not.
To my own heart, buoyed as I am with hope, stricken down as I am with despair, it seems treason to me to doubt; but all belief and faith, human and divine, would fall into a dark and hopeless abyss if it did not have some image, human or divine, to cling to; and I cling to you! You are my hope and my anchor!
I will not attempt to describe, as dimly I comprehend it now, the character of the woman who has brought all this misery upon me. She is fair and beautiful to look upon; innocence appears to dwell in her face; her eyes meet yours frankly and smilingly; her manners are the manners of a child; her voice is as sweet as the voice of a child. Were she and I to appear before a human tribunal, accused of a crime of which she was guilty and I innocent, she would be acquitted and I condemned.
I am in your hands. Judge me quickly. If you delay, and say, “My faith is not shaken,” I am afraid I should not be satisfied, because of your delay. In hope, as in despair,
I am, for ever yours,Frederick.