This lady, Bertha Velderkaust, chose to be known among her neighbours in misfortune as Madame Bertha Fairfield of Wyvern, which style and title she preferred to that by which she had been committed to the safe keeping of the gaoler.
When Harry Fairfield stepped into her small apartment he found her dressed and bedizened in a way that a little surprised him.
She had on a sky-blue satin dress, caught up at one side with a bunch of artificial flowers. She had a lace scarf and a lace coiffure lying flat across her head, with a miniature coronet of Roman pearl in the centre, and lappets depending at each side. She had a double necklace of enormous Roman pearls about her throat, and a pair of pink velvet slippers, embroidered with beads and bugles, and this tawdry figure sat on the side of her truckle-bed to receive him, with the air of a princess in a pantomime. She accumulated her finery in this way, I think, for the purpose of impressing the people about the prison with a due sense of her position and importance. It may not have been quite without its effect.
“Hullo! madame, I came to tell you some news,” said he, as soon as the door was closed. “But, by the makins! you ’most took my breath away at first sight o’ ye.”
“Pity to have so nice a man breathless—deplorable pity!”—or biddy, as she pronounced it. “Suppose you go away. I did not ask you to come and get your breath again in the air of my place.”
“What place may that be—not Hoxton Old Town, hey?”
“Not at all—Wyvern, dear child?” she said, with a quiet sneer.
“Oh, thank ye—yes—well I will, I think, take a mouthful there as you are so good.”
As he concluded this speech Master Harry put out his tongue at the blind lady with a grimace that was outrageous.
“I’ll hide my name no longer,” she said, “I’m Mrs. Fairfield of Wyvern.”
“That’s as it may be,” he answered, serenely.
“I say, I’m Mrs. Fairfield of Wyvern,” repeated she.
“Boo!” answered Harry.
“Beast! By that noise what do you mean?”
“I’ll tell ye, by-and-by. Come, you mustn’t be cross, it wastes time.”
“More time than we know what to do with in this house,” she sneered.
“Well, that’s true for some, I’ll not deny; but there’s some as is pretty well worked I hear—eh?—and so long as we baint, we may endure the leisure, for as bad as that is, business here, I’m told, is a deal worse,” and Harry laughed.
“Pleasant was my Harry always,” again sneered the lady.
“And ye heard of poor Charlie, of course?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. Everyone is not like you. I did hear. I don’t thank you,” she answered, tartly, and turned her pale, malignant face toward him.
“But, dear girl, I could not. There was difficulties, eyes a-watchin’ on all hands, and ears cocked, and I knew you could not be long without knowing. So you heard; but mayhap you haven’t heard this—there’s a child born o’ that marriage.”
“Marriage!” and with an oath the big Dutchwoman burst into a discordant laugh.
For a moment Harry was alarmed, but the laugh was not hysterical—purely emotional, and an escape for pent-up scorn and fury.
“Well, anyhow there’s a child—a boy—and a fine hale little chap, wi’ a big bald head and a bawlin’ mouth as ever a mother hugged—the darlin’.”
“Well, let the brat lie on the dung heap, you’ll not lift him,” said the lady.
“I’ll not meddle or make. I’m not over-hot about Wyvern. I’d rather have a pocket full o’ money than a house full o’ debts any day; and anyhow there he is, and four bones that’s to walk off with my share o’t.”
“I should have got mourning,” said Bertha Velderkaust, speaking from some hidden train of thought.
“Bah! No one to see you here,” said Harry.
“If I had money or credit, I’d have got it,” she said.
“That’s very affectionate of you,” said Harry; “but why do you dress like that—why do you dress like the lady wi’ the glass slipper, Cinderella, at the king’s ball, in the story book?”
“I should dress, you think, like Cinderella over the coal-scuttle?”
“Well, I wouldn’t set the folk a-laughing when I was in no laughing humour myself—not that it makes much odds, and I do suppose it don’t matter—not it.”
“It does matter something, perhaps, and perhaps nothing; but I know who I am, and I won’t let myself down,” said she. “I don’t want to lose myself among these people; I’ll keep myself distinct. I’m too high to put my foot in the mud.”
“Too high to put your foot in the mud—too high to put your foot on the pavement,” said Harry, mischievously, with his eyes on this impulsive lady, and hitching his chair off a little to secure a fair start. “You’ll be too high, I’m thinkin’, to get your foot to ground at all, one o’ these days, if you don’t look sharp. It’s too high a flight, I’m told, to touch terra firma wi’ the top o’ your toe—the gallows, I mean—and that’s what you’re coming to quick, I’m afeard.”
As Harry concluded, he stood up, intending to get out, if possible, without the indignity of coming to handgrips with a woman.
The Herculean lady, in sky-blue satin and Roman pearls, leaned forward with sharpened features, but neither extended her arm nor attempted to rise. Then she sighed deeply, and leaned with her shoulders to the wall.
“Off in a coach for this bout,” thought Harry.
“Thank you, kind lad, always the same,” she sneered, quietly. “You wish it, no doubt, but, no, you don’t think it. I know better.”
“Why the devil should I wish you hanged, Bertha? Don’t be a fool; you’re not in my way, and never can be. There’s that boy, and, for reasons of my own, I’m glad he is—I’m glad he’s where he is—and Wyvern will be for him and not for me—never!”
“Harry, dear, you know
