By-and-by, when the letter was written, John Saltram said,—”I do not want to go out of town at all, Gilbert. It’s no use for the doctor to talk; I can’t leave London till we have news of Marian.”
Gilbert had been prepared for this, and set himself to argue the point with admirable patience. Mr. Proul’s work would go on just as well, he urged, whether they were in London or at Hampton. A telegram would bring them any tidings as quickly in the one place as the other. “I am not asking you to go far, remember,” he added. “You will be within an hour’s journey of London, and the doctors declare this change is indispensable to your recovery. You have told us what a horror you have of these rooms.”
“Yes; I doubt if any one but a sick man can understand his loathing of the scene of his illness. That room in there is filled with the shadows that haunted me in all those miserable nights — when the fever was at its worst, and I lived amidst a crowd of phantoms. Yes, I do most profoundly hate that room. As for this matter of change of air, Gilbert, dispose of me as you please; my worthless existence belongs to you.”
Gilbert was quick to take advantage of this concession. He went down to Hampton next day, and explored the neighbourhood on both sides of the Thames. His choice fell at last on a pretty little house within a stone’s throw of the Palace gates, the back windows whereof looked out upon the now leafless solitude of Bushy Park, and where there was a comfortable-looking rosy-faced landlady, whose countenance was very pleasant to contemplate after the somewhat lachrymose visage of Mrs. Pratt. Here he found he could have all the accommodation he required, and hither he promised to bring the invalid early in the following week.
There were as yet no tidings worth speaking of from Mr. Proul. That distinguished member of the detective profession waited upon Gilbert Fenton with his budget twice a week, but the budget was a barren one. Mr. Proul’s agent pronounced Mr. Medler’s clerk the toughest individual it had ever been his lot to deal with. No amount of treating at the public-house round the corner — and the agent had ascended from the primitive simplicity of a pint of porter to the highest flights in the art of compound liquors — could exert a softening influence upon that rigid nature. Either the clerk knew nothing about Percival Nowell, or had been so well schooled as to disclose nothing of what he knew. Money had been employed by the agent, as well as drink, as a means of temptation; but even every insidious hint of possible gains had failed to move the ill-paid underling to any revelation.
“It’s my belief the man knows nothing, or else I should have had it out of him by hook or by crook,” Mr. Proul’s agent told him, and Mr. Proul repeated to his client.
This first agent having thus come to grief, and having perhaps made himself a suspected person in the eyes of the Medler office by his manoeuvres, a second spy had been placed to keep close watch upon the house, and to follow any person who at all corresponded with the detective idea of Mr. Nowell. It could be no more than an idea, unfortunately, since Gilbert had been able to give the accomplished Proul no description of the man he wanted to trace. Above all, the spy was to take special note of any lady who might be seen to enter or leave the office, and to this end he was furnished with a close description of Marian.
Gilbert called upon Mrs. Branston before carrying John Saltram out of town; he fancied that her offer of the Maidenhead villa would be better acknowledged personally than by a letter. He found the pretty little widow sorely disappointed by Mr. Saltram’s refusal to occupy her house, and it was a little difficult to explain to her why they both preferred other quarters for the convalescent.
“Why will he not accept the smallest favour from me?” Adela Branston asked plaintively. “He ought to know that there is no arrière pensée in any offer which I make him — that I have no wish except for his welfare. Why does he not trust me a little more?”
“He will do so in future, I think, Mrs. Branston,” Gilbert answered gravely. “I fancy he has learned the folly and danger of all underhand policy, and that he will put more faith in his friends for the rest of his life.”
“And he is really much better, quite out of danger? Do the doctors say that?”
“He is as much out of danger as a man can well be whose strength has all been wasted in a perilous illness. He has that to regain yet, and the recovery will be slow work. Of course in his condition a relapse would be fatal; but there is no occasion to apprehend a relapse.”
“Thank heaven for that! And you will take care of him, Mr. Fenton, will you not?”
“I will do my very best. He saved my life once; so you see that I owe him a life.”
The invalid was conveyed to Hampton on a bright February day, when there was an agreeable glimpse of spring sunshine. He went down by road in a hired brougham, and the journey seemed a long one; but it was an unspeakable relief to John Saltram to see the suburban roads and green fields after the long imprisonment of the Temple, — a relief that moved him almost to tears in his extreme weakness.
“Could you believe that a man would be so childish, Gilbert?” he said apologetically. “It might have been a good thing for me to have died in that dismal room, for heaven only knows what heavy sorrow lies before me in the future. Yet the sight of these common things touches me more keenly than all the glory of the Jungfrau touched me ten years ago. What a gay bright-looking world it is! And yet how many people are happy in it? how many take the right road? I suppose there is a right road by which we all might travel, if we only knew how to choose it.”
He felt the physical weariness of the journey acutely, but uttered no complaint throughout the way; though Gilbert could see the pale face growing paler, the sunken cheeks more pinched of aspect, as they went on. To the last he pronounced himself delighted by that quiet progress through the familiar landscape; and then having reached his destination, had barely strength to totter to a comfortable chintz-covered sofa in the bright-looking parlour, where he fainted away. The professional nurse had been dismissed before they left London, and Gilbert was now the invalid’s only attendant. The woman had performed her office tolerably well, after the manner of her kind; but the presence of a sick nurse is not a cheering influence, and John Saltram was infinitely relieved by her disappearance.
“How good you are to me, Gilbert!” he said, that first evening of his sojourn at Hampton, after he had recovered from his faint, and was lying on the sofa sipping a cup of tea. “How good! and yet you are my friend no longer; all friendship is at an end between us. Well, God knows I am as helpless as that man who fell among thieves; I cannot choose but accept your bounty.”
* * *
CHAPTER XXXVIII
AN ILL-OMENED WEDDING
After that promise wrung from her by such a cruel agony, that fatal bond made between her and Stephen Whitelaw, Ellen Carley’s life seemed to travel past her as if by some enchantment. Time lost its familiar sluggishness; the long industrious days, that had been so slow of old, flew by the bailiff’s daughter like the shadows from a magic-lantern. At the first, after that desperate miserable day upon which the hateful words were uttered that were to bind her for life to a detested master, the girl had told herself that something must happen to prevent the carrying out of this abhorrent bargain. Something would happen. She had a vague faith that Providence would interfere somehow to save her. Day after day she looked into her father’s face, thinking that from him, perhaps, might come some sign of wavering, some hint of possible release. Vain hope. The bailiff having exacted the sacrifice, pretended to think his daughter’s welfare secured by that very act. He did not hesitate to congratulate her on her good fortune, and to protest, with an accustomed oath, that there was not a sensible woman in England who would not envy her so excellent a match. Once poor Ellen, always impetuous and plain-spoken, lost all patience with him, and asked how he dared to say such things.
“You know that I hate this man, father!” she cried passionately; “and that I hate myself for what I am going to do. You know that I have promised to be his wife for your sake, fo
r your sake only; and that if I could have saved you from disgrace by giving you my life, I should have done it gladly to escape this much greater sacrifice. Never speak to me about Stephen Whitelaw again, father, unless you want to drive me mad. Let me forget what sin I am going to commit, if I can; let me go on blindfold.”
It was to be observed that from the hour of her betrothal Ellen Carley as far as possible avoided her father’s companionship. She worked more busily than ever about the big old house, was never tired of polishing the little-used furniture and dusting the tenantless bed-chambers; she seemed, indeed, to be infected with Mrs. Tadman’s passion for superhuman cleanliness. To her dairy duties also she devoted much more time than of old; anything to escape the parlour, where her father sat idle for a considerable portion of the day, smoking his pipe, and drinking rather more than was good for him. Nor did Mr. Carley, for his part, appear to dislike this tacit severance between his daughter and himself. As the foolish young woman chose to accept good fortune in a perverse spirit, it was well that they two should see as little of each other as possible. Every evening found Mr. Whitelaw a punctual visitor in the snug panelled parlour, and at such times the bailiff insisted upon his daughter’s presence; she was obliged to sit there night after night, stitching monotonously at some unknown calico garment — which might well from the state of mind of the worker have been her winding-sheet; or darning one of an inexhaustible basket of woollen stockings belonging to her father. It was her irksome duty to be there, ready to receive any awkward compliment of her silent lover’s, ready to acquiesce meekly in his talk of their approaching wedding. But at all other times Mr. Carley was more than content with her absence.
At first the bailiff had made a feeble attempt to reconcile his daughter to her position by the common bribe of fine clothes. He had extorted a sum of money from Stephen Whitelaw for this purpose, and had given that sum, or a considerable part of it, to his daughter, bidding her expend it upon her wedding finery. The girl took the money, and spent a few pounds upon the furbishing-up of her wardrobe, which was by no means an extensive one; but the remaining ten-pound note she laid by in a secret place, determined on no account to break in upon it.
“The time may come when all my life will depend upon the possession of a few pounds,” she said to herself; “when I may have some chance of setting myself free from that man.”
She had begun to contemplate such a possibility already, before her wedding-day. It was for her father’s sake she was going to sell her liberty, to take upon herself a bondage most odious to her. The time might come when her father would be beyond the reach of shame and disgrace, when she might find some manner of escape from her slavery.
In the meantime the days hurried on, and Providence offered her no present means of rescue. The day of doom came nearer and nearer; for the bailiff took part with his future son-in-law, and would hear of no reasons which Ellen could offer for delay. He was eager to squeeze the farmer’s well-filled purse a little tighter, and he fancied he might do this when his daughter was Stephen Whitelaw’s wife. So suitor and father were alike pitiless, and the wedding was fixed for the 10th of March. There were no preparations to be made at Wyncomb Farmhouse. Mr. Whitelaw did not mean to waste so much as a five-pound note upon the embellishment of those barely-furnished rooms in honour of his bright young bride; although Mrs. Tadman urged upon him the necessity of new muslin curtains here, and new dimity there, a coat or so of paint and new whitewash in such and such rooms, and other small revivals of the same character; not sorry to be able to remind him in this indirect manner that marriage was an expensive thing.
“A young woman like that will expect to see things bright and cheerful about her,” said Mrs. Tadman, in her most plausible tone, and rubbing her thin hands with an air of suppressed enjoyment. “If you were going to marry a person of your own age, it would be different, of course; but young women have such extravagant notions. I could see Miss Carley did not think much of the furniture when I took her over the house on new-year’s-day. She said the rooms looked gloomy, and that some of them gave her the horrors, and so on. If you don’t have the place done up a bit at first, you’ll have to get it done at last, depend upon it; a young wife like that will make the money spin, you may be sure.”
“Will she?” said Mr. Whitelaw, with a satisfied grin. “That’s my look-out. I don’t think you’ve had very much chance of making my money spin, eh, Mrs. Tadman?”
The widow cast up her hands and eyes towards the ceiling of the parlour where they were sitting.
“Goodness knows I’ve had precious little chance of doing that, Stephen Whitelaw,” she replied.
“I should reckon not; and my wife will have about as much.”
There was some cold comfort in this. Mrs. Tadman had once hoped that if her cousin ever exalted any woman to the proud position of mistress of Wyncomb, she herself would be that favoured individual; and it was a hard thing to see a young person, who had nothing but a certain amount of good looks to recommend her, raised to that post of honour in her stead. It was some consolation, therefore, to discover that the interloper was to reign with very limited powers, and that none of the privileges or indulgences usually granted to youthful brides by elderly bridegrooms were to be hers. It was something, too, for Mrs. Tadman to be allowed to remain beneath the familiar shelter of that gloomy old house, and this boon had been granted to her at Ellen’s express request.
“I suppose she’s going to turn lazy as soon as she’s married, or she wouldn’t have wanted to keep you,” the farmer said in rather a sulky manner, after he had given Mrs. Tadman his gracious permission to remain in his service. “But if she is, we must find some way of curing her of that. I don’t want a fine lady about my place. There’s the dairy, now; we might do more in that way, I should think, and get more profit out of butter-making than we do by sending part of the milk up to London. Butter fetches a good price now-a-days from year’s end to year’s end, and Ellen is a rare hand at a dairy; I know that for certain.”
Thus did Mr. Whitelaw devote his pretty young wife to an endless prospect of butter-making. He had no intention that the alliance should be an unprofitable one, and he was already scheming how he might obtain some indirect kind of interest for that awful sum of two hundred pounds advanced to William Carley.
Sir David Forster had not come to make that threatened investigation of things at the Grange. Careless always in the management of his affairs, the receipt of a handsome sum of money from the bailiff had satisfied him, and he had suffered his suspicions to be lulled to rest for the time being, not caring to undertake the trouble of a journey to Hampshire, and an examination of dry business details.
It was very lucky for Mr. Carley that his employer was so easy and indolent a master; for there were many small matters at the Grange which would have hardly borne inspection, and it would have been difficult for Sir David to come there without making some discovery to his bailiff’s disadvantage. The evil day had been warded off, however, by means of Stephen Whitelaw’s money, and William Carley meant to act more cautiously, more honestly even, in future. He would keep clear of race-courses and gambling booths, he told himself, and of the kind of men who had beguiled him into dishonourable dealing.
“I have had an uncommon narrow squeak of it,” he muttered to himself occasionally, as he smoked a meditative pipe, “and have been as near seeing the inside of Portland prison as ever a man was. But it’ll be a warning to me in future. And yet who could have thought that things would have gone against me as they did? There was Sir Philip Christopher’s bay colt Pigskin, for instance; that brute was bound to win.”
February came to an end; and when March once began, there seemed no pause or breathing-time for Ellen Carley till the 10th. And yet she had little business to occupy her during those bleak days of early spring. It was the horror of that rapid flight of time, which seemed independent of her own life in its hideous swiftness. Idle or busy, it was all the same. The days would not linger for her;
the dreaded 10th was close at hand.
Frank Randall was still in London, in that solicitor’s office — a firm of some standing in the City — to which he had gone on leaving his father. He had written two or three times to Ellen since he left Hampshire, and she had answered his letters secretly; but pleasant though it was to her to hear from him, she begged him not to write, as her father’s anger would be extreme if a letter should by any evil chance fall into his hands. So within the last few months there had been no tidings of Ellen’s absent lover, and the girl was glad that it was so. What could she have said to him if she had been compelled to tell him of her engagement to Stephen Whitelaw? What excuse could she have made for marrying a man about whom she had been wont to express herself to Frank Randall in most unequivocal terms? Excuse there was none, since she could not betray her father. It was better, therefore, that young Randall should hear of her marriage in the common course of things, and that he should think of her just as badly as he pleased. This was only one more poisoned drop in a cup that was all bitterness.
“He will believe that I was a hypocrite at heart always,” the unhappy girl said to herself, “and that I value Stephen Whitelaw’s money more than his true heart — that I can marry a man I despise and dislike for the sake of being rich. What can he think worse of me than that? and how can he help thinking that? He knows that I have a good spirit of my own, and that my father could not make me do anything against my will. He will never believe that this marriage has been all my father’s doing.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 515