The copy of the certificate which the young clergyman had made from memory told him that the marriage had been solemnised at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and that the bride’s name was Pickshaw — Agatha Pickshaw, daughter of William Pickshaw, of —
Here Stephen’s memory had failed him. He had only been able to read the certificate once, and though he had read it very carefully, some of the details had escaped him. He remembered the name of the bride and the bride’s father, but he forgot the name of the street in which the bride and her father lived.
But this omission might easily be remedied. He sent for a Post-office Directory, and looked for the name of Pickshaw. There were several Pickshaws altogether; but there was only one Pickshaw in Westminster, and this Pickshaw was called William, and pursued the trade of carver and gilder, at No. 7 Little Tolmin-street.
Nothing could be clearer than this. Mr. Hurst took a hasty breakfast, sent for a cab, and was driven off to Little Tolmin-street. He found Mr. Pickshaw busily employed in the little workshop behind the half-glass door. He came out at the sound of the bell, and bowed deferentially to the young clergyman.
Stephen introduced himself very briefly. He was a clergyman, he said, and he came in the interests of one of his parishioners.
The old man left his work, and took his visitor to the sitting-room above the shop, the room in which his interview with Herr von Volterchoker had taken place.
“I believe yon are the father of Agatha Pickshaw,” he said, “who married a person named Grervoise Palgrave some years ago?”
“I am, sir,” the old man answered; “ and if you can give me any information about my poor daughter, you will be doing me a great favour.”
“Yon do not know, then, what has become of Mrs. Palgrave?”
“No, indeed, sir. And I would be very glad to know.”
Little by little Mr. Pickshaw told Stephen the same story he had told the clown.
“Then you can give me no news about my daughter, sir?” the old man said, after he had told Stephen all that he had to tell.
“No, Mr. Pickshaw, as yet I can tell you nothing,” Mr. Hurst answered gravely; “and I fear that there is little hope you will ever have any good tidings of your daughter.”
“O sir, you know that she is dead — you know that my poor Agatha is dead — and you won’t tell me the truth.”
Stephen Hurst shook his head.
“I know nothing,” he said. “I am certain of nothing.
I am groping in the dark, and anything I say may mislead you, since I am utterly ignorant of the truth. A woman was drowned last March near Avondale, in Warwickshire, and I have been told that she was your daughter, Agatha Palgrave. But I believe the man who told me this to be a scoundrel, and I attach no credit to his assertions. I want, if possible, to discover the identity of the man called Gervoise Palgraye, the man who married your daughter. Can you help me to do that?”
The old man reflected for some moments, scratching his head with a nervous feeble hand.
“There’s a photograph upstairs, sir,” he said at last. “There’s a photograph of my son-in-law, that was taken a twelvemonth after his marriage, if you’d like to see that.”
Stephen begged to be allowed to see the photograph. The old man went outside the sitting-room door, and called to his daughter. The girl’s voice answered him from the story above.
“There’s a photograph of Gervoise still hanging in the room your sister Agatha used to sleep in, isn’t there?” asked Mr. Pickshaw.
“Yes, father, there is.”
“Bring it down, then.”
The girl came down presently with the photograph in her hand. It was a very poor likeness, framed in a tawdry gilt border of Mr. Pickshaw’s workmanship; but the resemblance was quite sufficient to identify Gervoise Palgrave, Lord Haughton, as the Gervoise Palgrave who had married Agatha Pickshaw.
“Is my poor daughter’s husband the person you are looking for?” asked the old man anxiously.
“Yes; this is the portrait of the person I know.”
“And will that help you to find out what has become of my daughter?”
“I think the knowledge will help me to do so; but your daughter’s fate is a mystery to me as yet. Our first and most important duty is to find Gervoise Palgrave’s son. Can you give me a minute description of the man who called here with the boy?”
Mr. Pickshaw did his best to describe the personal appearance of Herr von Volterchoker. Wherever he was at fault, his daughter helped him out; and between them they gave a description which enabled Stephen to recognise Mr. Pickshaw’s visitor as the man who had intruded upon Lady Haughton.
“I think I know the man,” Stephen said, “and I have good reason to think him a villain. But it strikes me that he is one of those clever villains who are rather apt to overreach themselves. I will do my uttermost to find the clue to your daughter’s fate, Mr. Pickshaw, and it shall go hard but that your grandson shall have his rights, even if his mother is beyond the reach of justice.”
“My grandson’s rights!” murmured the old man; “little Georgey’s rights! Gervoise is better off, then, than he was when he left me?”
“He is,” answered Stephen, “much better off.”
The Pickshaws would fain have questioned him further, but he would tell them nothing more.
“There must be some foundation of truth in that man’s accusation of Lord Haughton,” Stephen thought, as he walked slowly away from Tolmin-street; “and if the story of the marriage was true, there may have been some truth in the darker story of — Heaven grant that the earl’s illness may be a mortal one, and that his death may save Ethel from the shame and anguish of knowing that she has married a villain!”
CHAPTER XXII. THE PARTING OF THE FOSTER-BROTHERS.
LORD HAUGHTON was dying. The doctors who attended on him — the grave physicians from London and Birmingham, who held daily consultations in one of the darksome old rooms at the Chase — no longer made any pretence of hope. They told Ethel that she must be prepared for the worst. Her husband was doomed: he had been foredoomed for a long time, the doctors told her. She received these sad tidings very quietly. The doctors wondered at her still white face, her blank tearless eyes.
It was better that it should be so, she thought. What was there in life for this poor guilty creature, whose existence was blighted by remorse for that foul crime in the doing of which he had been a tacit accomplice?
“O my God,” she cried, in her lonely hours of agony, to think that I, who love him so much, should confess that it is better for him to die!”
Night and day she kept watch beside the dying man’s bed, only lying down for a brief interval of broken slumber on a sofa in the adjoining room. Gervoise would have had her leave him, but she laid a gentle hand upon his lips, and implored him not to say that.
“Let me be with you, Gervoise,” she said entreatingly; “I am happy with you, my dear.”
They were quite alone when she said this; they were alone, and the earl seemed a little better than usual. Ethel was sitting in a low chair by the bedside, and the bright June sunshine was streaming into the room.
“You are happy with me?” exclaimed Gervoise in a faint, tremulous voice, looking at his wife with an expression of surprise; “you are happy with me; and yet—”
“And yet I know all, Gervoise,” Ethel answered, in a low earnest voice; “I know all. I did not believe what that man told me; and yet — and yet I thought he would scarcely dare to make such an accusation unless there was some truth in his words. But I heard something else; I overheard that most miserable young man, Humphrey Melwood, tell his mother the dreadful story of that which happened on the night before my wedding. I heard the story, Gervoise; I heard how yon were tempted by this man in his mistaken devotion to you — I heard and understood how he himself, poor ignorant creature, was tempted by his love for you. The crime was very dreadful — most horrible, most cruel; but O, my darling, there is forgiveness for all wron
gdoings; there is a God who has said that although our sins are as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow.”
The girl’s voice broke, and she burst into a torrent of sobs, and buried her face in one of the pillows that supported the wasted form of the invalid. Gervoise was silent, but great teardrops rolled slowly down his hollow cheeks. For the first time since the night of Agatha’s appearance at Palgrave Chase, the icy bonds that bound that stubborn soul gave way before the warm influence of holy words, and the guilty man wept. For the first time, and in that moment, his weary heart felt something nearer peace than it had ever known since that fatal night of crime.
“And you can love me still, Ethel?” he said, after a long pause — a long silence in which the two sorrowful hearts beat in unison, strengthened by the might of affection in that supreme hour of anguish; “you can love me still, in spite of all?”
“Yes, dearest, better than I ever yet loved you, for you have more need of my love. A wife’s affection would indeed be worthless if it grew less when it was most needed. I love you, Gervoise; and I know now what an unquestioning, unreasoning sentiment love is. In all my misery it has survived, unchanged and changeless. Trust in it, Gervoise — trust in it almost as you may trust in the mercy of God.”
The young wife sat long by her husband’s side, talking to him and reading to him. She read blessed words out of that holy gospel which brings sweet promises of mercy to the weary sinner; which offers the bright hope of redemption to the penitent heart. He fell asleep by and by, worn out by the emotions of that long interview; and Ethel slept too, in the easy-chair by the invalid’s bedside, until late in the evening, when she was awakened by her faithful maid, Lucy Trotter, who brought her mistress a cup of strong tea.
There was a shaded lamp burning on a table at some distance from the bed when Ethel woke, and there was a bright wood fire, which gave the invalid’s chamber a comfortable and cheerful appearance.
“And two more desolate creeturs than you two looked when I first came into the room, with the fire low, and no candles, and your white dress looking quite ghostly in the twilight, as if you was a warnin’ sperit sittin’ by poor Lord Haughton’s bedside, I never clapped eyes on. But I’ve tidied up and made things a bit comfortable, without disturbing of you; and now do take a cup of tea, Miss Ethel, like a Christian.”
Lucy had never left off calling her young mistress Miss Ethel in familiar converse. She had been a great comfort to the countess in this terrible hour of trial, although she had no suspicion of that dark secret which added such a terrible sting to Ethel’s natural grief.
Late that night Gervoise rose suddenly from a long sleep that had seemed strangely peaceful.
“I want to see Humphrey,” he said; “I want to see my foster-brother. I must see him.”
It was past eleven, but one of the servants was sent immediately to tell the gamekeeper; and after an interval of little more than a quarter of an hour the young man’s heavy footsteps sounded in the room next to Lord Haughton’s, and in the next minute Humphrey came into the sick-chamber. His hair was disordered, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had a strange, scared look in his pale face. He had been drinking that night, and almost every other night ever since the death of Agatha Palgrave; and he had only just staggered home from an alehouse when the messenger arrived at Margery Melwood’s cottage.
But at the sight of his foster-brother Humphrey seemed to grow suddenly sober. He went to the bedside, and fell on his knees, with his brawny arms clasped upon the silken coverlet.
“O master,” he cried, “O master, I loved thee so, and yet I have brought thee to this. Me and my wickedness have been a blight upon thy life, Master Gervoise; and yet God knows I’d have given my own life for thee, and held it no favour. But I have been a wicked wretch, Master Gervoise, and have brought him as I love to his death.”
“No, no!” gasped the Earl of Haughton, lifting himself into a sitting position, and laying his wasted fingers on the gamekeeper’s clasped hands. “My sin, Humphrey, my own sin, has brought me to this. I sent for you to tell you that it was my own sin, Humphrey. Let the full burden of it rest upon me. I have repented, Humphrey: an angel — an angel upon earth — has spoken holy words of consolation to me. I have repented of my dreadful sin; I have prayed, Humphrey, for you as well as for myself, and such peace has come down upon my soul — such heavenly peace — that I dare to think it is an earnest of God’s forgiveness for my sins. And you, Humphrey — you, too, will repent. Promise me that, by the fidelity which has been so fatal to us both; promise me that you will repent, and pray, as I have prayed, for pardon. Your life shall not be a hard one. My wife, who is an angel of patient love and forgiveness, she will see that no common troubles of want or poverty shall ever affect you, Humphrey. And now good-bye, old friend — foster-brother! My prayer is that we may meet again, purified from our sins, in a better world. Good-bye!”
The sick man’s feeble fingers tightened on the rough hands of his foster-brother. A rain of burning tears fell upon those wan fingers as Humphrey’s face bent over them. The gamekeeper wept aloud in passionate irrepressible grief.
Ethel heard his hoarse sobs, and came in to put an end to this agonising interview. She touched Humphrey on the shoulder as he knelt beside her husband’s bed, and motioned to him to leave the room.
He obeyed her without an attempt at remonstrance. With his hands clasped before his face, he moved with slow footsteps to the door; but at the door he turned and spoke to Ethel.
“It was for your sake, my lady,” he said; “it was all for your sake. You’d need love him well when you remember that.”
He turned away as he finished speaking, and closed the door after him as softly as if he had been accustomed to a sickroom.
That night, for the first time, Gervoise spoke to Ethel of his child — the missing boy whom he had mourned sincerely and truly enough, until his grief had melted away before the full sunshine of his new-born love.
“O Ethel, I must see him,” the sick man cried in eager, passionate accents; “I must see that boy before I die, or else — who — who will identify him — who will give the young earl his rights? I know that you will protect and love him, Ethel; but I must identify him before I die. Some impostor might be palmed off upon you if I die before I have identified my son. I had a mark made upon his arm — the initials ‘G. P.,’ and an earl’s coronet. But any wretch could simulate such a mark as that upon the arm of the base-born brat he might choose to substitute for my son. And yet there is one means by which you, Ethel, might recognise the boy. Last August, when I was very poor — penniless, Ethel, starving; ah, you look wonderingly at me, poor child! You have need to wonder, for mine is a strange history. Last August, when I was wandering destitute upon the stones of London, I sold a picture — a portrait of my boy — to a pawnbroker in Caslope-street, St. Giles’s. Can you remember the name of the street? Yes, yes, you will, I know; and you will find my boy for me, Ethel. Warboys will help you. The child must be found; remember that, Ethel. I must see him, and acknowledge him as my heir, before I die. Write, dearest; write to Warboys at once. He is a clever old man. I know that it is late to send to him but time is so short, Ethel, so short. I must see my boy before I die.”
Gervoise sank back upon his pillow. All the emotions of that day had terribly exhausted him, both bodily and mentally. He grew delirious presently, and rambled strangely in his talk, making a confused medley of all his past life; one moment fancying himself penniless in the streets of London, at another moment screaming the chorus of some convivial song that had been familiar to him at his spendthrift father’s table; anon echoing the shouts of the lookers-on when his cousin rode to his death.
The earl’s valet came in to bathe his master’s head with some cooling lotion; but Ethel would suffer no hired nurse to tend that beloved invalid. With her own hands she damped his burning forehead; with her own hands she administered the fever-draught to those parched lips.
Then, when the delirium
subsided, and the sick man sank at last into a peaceful sleep, Ethel opened a writing-portfolio that lay under the light of the shaded lamp on the table near the fire, and wrote to the Avondale solicitor, telling him all that her husband had told her about the missing child, and imploring him most piteously to employ every possible means of finding the boy, since the earl’s days and hours were numbered. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when the countess sealed this letter, and gave it into the hands of her husband’s valet.
“It is a matter of life and death,” she said. “You must wake one of the grooms, and tell him to ride to Avondale immediately with this letter.”
CHAPTER XXIII. THE LAST OF GERVOISE PALGRAVE.
STEPHEN HURST returned to Warwickshire the morning after Mr. Warboys received Lady Haughton’s letter, and the two men consulted together as to what could be done.
“The child must be found at any price,” said Stephen, after he had read Ethel’s letter; “he must be found in time to be recognised and acknowledged by his father. There is no hope, I suppose, for Lord Haughton? he is really dying?”
“Yes, he is dying. I saw Wilmington, of Birmingham, yesterday, and he told me that even the countess is resigned to the worst — to the inevitable.”
“The child must be found, Warboys. I shall go to the station at once, and send a telegram to Printing-house square. There must be an advertisement for the missing boy in tomorrow’s Times.”
Stephen Hurst seated himself at the table, took up a pen, and wrote an advertisement offering a hundred pounds’ reward for the production of George Palgrave. He gave a minute description of the child’s appearance, and of the mark upon his arm.
This advertisement he saw despatched to London by electric telegraph. To the advertisement he added an entreaty that it might be immediately inserted, as it related to a matter of life and death.
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