CHAPTER XLV. THE DUST-HEAP DISTURBED.
My head turned giddy. I was obliged to wait and let my overpoweringagitation subside, before I could read any more.
Looking at the letter again, after an interval, my eyes fellaccidentally on a sentence near the end, which surprised and startledme.
I stopped the driver of the carriage, at the entrance to the streetin which our lodgings were situated, and told him to take me to thebeautiful park of Paris--the famous Bois de Boulogne. My object was togain time enough, in this way, to read the letter carefully throughby myself, and to ascertain whether I ought or ought not to keep thereceipt of it a secret before I confronted my husband and his mother athome.
This precaution taken, I read the narrative which my good Benjaminhad so wisely and so thoughtfully written for me. Treating the variousincidents methodically, he began with the Report which had arrived, indue course of mail, from our agent in America.
Our man had successfully traced the lodgekeeper's daughter and herhusband to a small town in one of the Western States. Mr. Playmore'sletter of introduction at once secured him a cordial reception from themarried pair, and a patient hearing when he stated the object of hisvoyage across the Atlantic.
His first questions led to no very encouraging results. The woman wasconfused and surprised, and was apparently quite unable to exert hermemory to any useful purpose. Fortunately, her husband proved to be avery intelligent man. He took the agent privately aside, and said tohim, "I understand my wife, and you don't. Tell me exactly what it isyou want to know, and leave it to me to discover how much she remembersand how much she forgets."
This sensible suggestion was readily accepted. The agent waited forevents a day and a night.
Early the next morning the husband said to him, "Talk to my wife now,and you'll find she has something to tell you. Only mind this. Don'tlaugh at her when she speaks of trifles. She is half ashamed to speak oftrifles, even to me. Thinks men are above such matters, you know. Listenquietly, and let her talk--and you will get at it all in that way."
The agent followed his instructions, and "got at it" as follows:
The woman remembered, perfectly well, being sent to clean the bedroomsand put them tidy, after the gentlefolks had all left Gleninch. Hermother had a bad hip at the time, and could not go with her and helpher. She did not much fancy being alone in the great house, afterwhat had happened in it. On her way to her work she passed two ofthe cottagers' children in the neighborhood at play in the park. Mr.Macallan was always kind to his poor tenants, and never objected to theyoung ones round about having a run on the grass. The two children idlyfollowed her to the house. She took them inside, along with her--notliking the place, as already mentioned, and feeling that they would becompany in the solitary rooms.
She began her work in the Guests' Corridor--leaving the room in theother corridor, in which the death had happened, to the last.
There was very little to do in the two first rooms. There was not litterenough, when she had swept the floors and cleaned the grates, toeven half fill the housemaid's bucket which she carried with her. Thechildren followed her about; and, all things considered, were "very goodcompany" in the lonely place.
The third room (that is to say, the bedchamber which had been occupiedby Miserrimus Dexter) was in a much worse state than the other two, andwanted a great deal of tidying. She did not much notice the childrenhere, being occupied with her work. The litter was swept up from thecarpet, and the cinders and ashes were taken out of the grate, and thewhole of it was in the bucket, when her attention was recalled to thechildren by hearing one of them cry.
She looked about the room without at first discovering them.
A fresh outburst of crying led her in the right direction, and showedher the children under a table in a corner of the room. The youngest ofthe two had got into a waste-paper basket. The eldest had found an oldbottle of gum, with a brush fixed in the cork, and was gravely paintingthe face of the smaller child with what little remained of the contentsof the bottle. Some natural struggles, on the part of the littlecreature, had ended in the overthrow of the basket, and the usualoutburst of crying had followed as a matter of course.
In this state of things the remedy was soon applied. The woman took thebottle away from the eldest child, and gave it a "box on the ear."The younger one she set on its legs again, and she put the two "in thecorner" to keep them quiet. This done, she swept up such fragments ofthe torn paper in the basket as had fallen on the floor; threw them backagain into the basket, along with the gum-bottle; fetched the bucket,and emptied the basket into it; and then proceeded to the fourth andlast room in the corridor, where she finished her work for that day.
Leaving the house, with the children after her, she took the filledbucket to the dust-heap, and emptied it in a hollow place among therubbish, about half-way up the mound. Then she took the children home;and there was an end of it for the day.
Such was the result of the appeal made to the woman's memory of domesticevents at Gleninch.
The conclusion at which Mr. Playmore arrived, from the facts submittedto him, was that the chances were now decidedly in favor of the recoveryof the letter. Thrown in, nearly midway between the contents of thehousemaid's bucket, the torn morsels would be protected above as well asbelow, when they were emptied on the dust-heap.
Succeeding weeks and months would add to that protection, by adding tothe accumulated refuse. In the neglected condition of the grounds,the dust-heap had not been disturbed in search of manure. There it hadstood, untouched, from the time when the family left Gleninch tothe present day. And there, hidden deep somewhere in the mound, thefragments of the letter must be.
Such were the lawyer's conclusions. He had written immediately tocommunicate them to Benjamin. And, thereupon, what had Benjamin done?
After having tried his powers of reconstruction on his owncorrespondence, the prospect of experimenting on the mysterious letteritself had proved to be a temptation too powerful for the old man toresist. "I almost fancy, my dear, this business of yours has bewitchedme," he wrote. "You see I have the misfortune to be an idle man. I havetime to spare and money to spare. And the end of it is that I am hereat Gleninch, engaged on my own sole responsibility (with good Mr.Playmore's permission) in searching the dust-heap!"
Benjamin's description of his first view of the field of action atGleninch followed these characteristic lines of apology.
I passed over the description without ceremony. My remembrance of thescene was too vivid to require any prompting of that sort. I saw again,in the dim evening light, the unsightly mound which had so strangelyattracted my attention at Gleninch. I heard again the words in whichMr. Playmore had explained to me the custom of the dust-heap in Scotchcountry-houses. What had Benjamin and Mr. Playmore done? What hadBenjamin and Mr. Playmore found? For me, the true interest of thenarrative was there--and to that portion of it I eagerly turned next.
They had proceeded methodically, of course, with one eye on the pounds,shillings, and pence, and the other on the object in view. In Benjamin,the lawyer had found what he had not met with in me--a sympathetic mind,alive to the value of "an abstract of the expenses," and conscious ofthat most remunerative of human virtues, the virtue of economy.
At so much a week, they had engaged men to dig into the mound and tosift the ashes. At so much a week, they had hired a tent to shelterthe open dust-heap from wind and weather. At so much a week, they hadengaged the services of a young man (personally known to Benjamin), whowas employed in a laboratory under a professor of chemistry, and who haddistinguished himself by his skillful manipulation of paper in arecent case of forgery on a well-known London firm. Armed with thesepreparations, they had begun the work; Benjamin and the youngchemist living at Gleninch, and taking it in turns to superintend theproceedings.
Three days of labor with the spade and the sieve produced no results ofthe slightest importance. However, the matter was in the hands of twoquietly determined men. They declined
to be discouraged. They went on.
On the fourth day the first morsels of paper were found.
Upon examination, they proved to be the fragments of a tradesman'sprospectus. Nothing dismayed, Benjamin and the young chemist stillpersevered. At the end of the day's work more pieces of paper wereturned up. These proved to be covered with written characters.Mr. Playmore (arriving at Gleninch, as usual, every evening onthe conclusion of his labors in the law) was consulted as to thehandwriting. After careful examination, he declared that the mutilatedportions of sentences submitted to him had been written, beyond alldoubt, by Eustace Macallan's first wife!
This discovery aroused the enthusiasm of the searchers to fever height.
Spades and sieves were from that moment forbidden utensils. Howeverunpleasant the task might be, hands alone were used in the furtherexamination of the mound. The first and foremost necessity was to placethe morsels of paper (in flat cardboard boxes prepared for the purpose)in their order as they were found. Night came; the laborers weredismissed; Benjamin and his two colleagues worked on by lamplight. Themorsels of paper were now turned up by dozens, instead of by ones andtwos. For a while the search prospered in this way; and then themorsels appeared no more. Had they all been recovered? or would renewedhand-digging yield more yet? The next light layers of rubbish werecarefully removed--and the grand discovery of the day followed. There(upside down) was the gum-bottle which the lodge-keeper's daughterhad spoken of. And, more precious still, there, under it, were morefragments of written paper, all stuck together in a little lump, by thelast drippings from the gum-bottle dropping upon them as they lay on thedust-heap!
The scene now shifted to the interior of the house. When the searchersnext assembled they met at the great table in the library at Gleninch.
Benjamin's experience with the "Puzzles" which he had put together inthe days of his boyhood proved to be of some use to his companions.The fragments accidentally stuck together would, in all probability,be found to fit each other, and would certainly (in any case) be theeasiest fragments to reconstruct as a center to start from.
The delicate business of separating these pieces of paper, and ofpreserving them in the order in which they had adhered to eachother, was assigned to the practiced fingers of the chemist. But thedifficulties of his task did not end here. The writing was (as usualin letters) traced on both sides of the paper, and it could only bepreserved for the purpose of reconstruction by splitting each morselinto two--so as artificially to make a blank side, on which couldbe spread the fine cement used for reuniting the fragments in theiroriginal form.
To Mr. Playmore and Benjamin the prospect of successfully puttingthe letter together, under these disadvantages, seemed to be almosthopeless. Their skilled colleague soon satisfied them that they werewrong.
He drew their attention to the thickness of the paper--note-paper of thestrongest and best quality--on which the writing was traced. It wasof more than twice the substance of the last paper on which he hadoperated, when he was engaged in the forgery ease; and it was, on thataccount, comparatively easy for him (aided by the mechanical applianceswhich he had brought from London) to split the morsels of the tornpaper, within a given space of time which might permit them to begin thereconstruction of the letter that night.
With these explanations, he quietly devoted himself to his work. WhileBenjamin and the lawyer were still poring over the scattered morselsof the letter which had been first discovered, and trying to piecethem together again, the chemist had divided the greater part of thefragments specially confided to him into two halves each; and hadcorrectly put together some five or six sentences of the letter on thesmooth sheet of cardboard prepared for that purpose.
They looked eagerly at the reconstructed writing so far.
It was correctly done: the sense was perfect. The first result gainedby examination was remarkable enough to reward them for all theirexertions. The language used plainly identified the person to whom thelate Mrs. Eustace had addressed her letter.
That person was--my husband.
And the letter thus addressed--if the plainest circumstantial evidencecould be trusted--was identical with the letter which Miserrimus Dexterhad suppressed until the Trial was over, and had then destroyed bytearing it up.
These were the discoveries that had been made at the time when Benjaminwrote to me. He had been on the point of posting his letter, when Mr.Playmore had suggested that he should keep it by him for a few dayslonger, on the chance of having more still to tell me.
"We are indebted to her for these results," the lawyer had said. "Butfor her resolution; and her influence over Miserrimus Dexter, we shouldnever have discovered what the dust-heap was hiding from us--we shouldnever have seen so much as a glimmering of the truth. She has the firstclaim to the fullest information. Let her have it."
The letter had been accordingly kept back for three days. That intervalbeing at an end, it was hurriedly resumed and concluded in terms whichindescribably alarmed me.
"The chemist is advancing rapidly with his part of the work" (Benjaminwrote); "and I have succeeded in putting together a separate portionof the torn writing which makes sense. Comparison of what he hasaccomplished with what I have accomplished has led to startlingconclusions. Unless Mr. Playmore and I are entirely wrong (and Godgrant we may be so!), there is a serious necessity for your keeping thereconstruction of the letter strictly secret from everybody about you.The disclosures suggested by what has come to light are so heartrendingand so dreadful that I cannot bring myself to write about them untilI am absolutely obliged to do so. Please forgive me for disturbing youwith this news. We are bound, sooner or later, to consult with you inthe matter; and we think it right to prepare your mind for what may beto come."
To this there was added a postscript in Mr. Playmore's handwriting:
"Pray observe strictly the caution which Mr. Benjamin impresses onyou. And bear this in mind, as a warning from _me:_ If we succeed inreconstructing the entire letter, the last person living who ought (inmy opinion) to be allowed to see it is--your husband."
The Law and the Lady Page 45