Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘Ah,’ said the village trader,.’ that’s all you know about it. Dr. Carrick warned me against letting him have chloroform, and there was that in the doctor’s manner which made me think it was a serious matter.’

  David Skelter ruminated upon this disclosure of the shopman’s. His sturdy English self-respect was offended at the idea of Dr. Carrick’s interference with his master’s liberty. That any man should go behind Mr. Tregonnell’s back, and warn a shopkeeper against treating him as a reasonable being, roused the faithful David’s indignation. It was treating the master of Tregonnell Manor like a lunatic.

  That evening, after he had arranged his master’s room for the night, David looked at the medicine-chest, which had been brought from the manor with Mr. Tregonnell’s effects, and stood on the dressing-table, unlocked.

  There was the little bottle of chloroform, three parts full. David remembered his master sending him to get it at a chemist’s in Genoa, three years ago, when he was suffering from spasmodic pains in the head. The bottle was carefully stoppered.

  ‘ I don’t believe master has ever opened it since we left Genoa,’ David said to himself.

  A few days after this Mr. Tregonnell began to talk of his yacht, ominously for Dr. Carrick. It was just the weather for a cruise, neither too cold nor too hot.

  ‘ I shan’t go far afield,’ said Mr. Tregonnell, ‘but I feel that a breath of the sea would do me good. I shall go and cruise about the Scilly Isles, for a week or so, or perhaps sail as far as Madeira, and then come back and settle down again.’

  David, who was of a roving temper, was delighted at the idea of getting to sea again. His master sent him to Falmouth next day, to buy certain things that were wanted on board the Water Fay.

  Mr. Tregonnell went to his room a little earlier than usual upon the evening after David’s departure. He had ridden a long way that day, and his horse had been restive and troublesome. He had come home late in the afternoon, much fatigued.

  ‘Oh, by-the-way, Hester,’ said Dr. Carrick, after his cousin had wished him good-night, ‘I must ask you not to go to bed just yet, and you can tell Betsy to wait up for an hour or so. I shall want you both in Mr. Tregonnell’s room for a minute or two, to witness a deed he is going to execute.’

  Hester looked puzzled.

  ‘Mr. Tregonnell did not say anything —— ,’she began.

  ‘No; he forgot that the deed would require to be witnessed. He is not very business-like in his habits. The fact is, Hester — it would be a foolish delicacy to withhold the truth from you — Mr. Tregonnell has taken a very noble view of the professional services I have rendered him. He is going to make his will before he goes to sea, and he intends to put me in for a handsome legacy. Of course, taking into consideration the difference in our ages, it is to the last degree improbable that I shall live to profit by his generous intention, but I am not the less grateful.’

  ‘It is very good of him, ‘Said Hester, thoughtfully; ‘but I wonder that he, who is so careless about all business matters, and to indifferent to money, should think of making his will.’

  ‘It is a thing that every man ought to do, and which a man must be an idiot if he neglects to do. Especially a man in Mr. Tregonnell’s position, whose property would go to some remote heir-at-law, or possibly to the Crown. Remember he is the last of his race!’

  ‘How sad that seems,’ sighed Hester.

  She, too, had every reason to believe herself the last frail sprig upon a withered tree. She knew of no kinsman living, save this distant cousin, who had sheltered her.

  An hour later, Dr. Carrick summoned Hester and the servant Betsy to Mr. Tregonnell’s sitting-room. Eustace Tregonnell was seated in front of the table at which he usually read and wrote. The shaded reading-lamp threw its light on the papers lying on the table, and left all things else in shadow.

  Dr. Carrick stood beside his patient.

  ‘Now sign,’ he said, with his fingers laid lightly on Mr. Tregonnell’s wrist.

  Mr. Tregonnell signed the paper before him.

  ‘This is Mr. Tregonnell’s will,’ said Dr. Carrick to the two girls, written entirely in his own hand, upon a single sheet of paper. You, Hester Rushton, and you, Betsy Thomas, are now to sign as witnesses.’

  He showed them where they were to put their names, still standing by his patient’s chair. Hester had not seen Mr. Tregonnell’s face since she entered the room.

  She signed her name as the doctor directed, and Betsy signed after her.

  ‘You acknowledge this as your will?’ said the doctor to Mr. Tregonnell.

  ‘I acknowledge this as my will,’ repeated the patient.

  ‘That is all. Good-night, Hester; good-night, Betsy. Remember you are neither of you to mention this business of to-night to anybody. Mr. Tregonnell doesn’t want it talked about.’

  CHAPTER V. MYSTERY.

  THAT night scene in Mr. Tregonnell’s room made a curious impression upon Hester. She was angry with herself for dwelling upon it so continually, angry at the weakness of mind which made her look back upon the occurrence with a kind of superstitious horror. What was more natural than that a man should make his will? What more praiseworthy than that a grateful patient should reward his physician with a legacy? Could she blame Dr. Carrick for accepting such a boon? Assuredly not. Yet the memory of her kinsman’s conduct that night troubled her. It seemed to her as if Mr. Tregonnell, though to all appearance a free agent, had been acting under the influence of the doctor.

  She felt that to doubt Dr. Carrick’s honour, was to be guilty of base ingratitude, and hated herself for her formless suspicions.

  ‘What would have become of me without his help? ‘ she asked herself. ‘ I might have starved.’

  Eustace Tregonnell said not a word about the will, and this puzzled her; for, as their friendship ripened, he had fallen into the habit of confiding all his thoughts to her attentive ear. He had told her much about himself of late. She had listened tearfully to his story of that early blight which had ruined his life — his first and only love.

  ‘There was a time when I thought that I could never love again,’ he said to her one day; ‘ but God is good, Hester, and now I begin to hope that even for me there may be some deep unspeakable joy waiting in the future. I would not hasten or anticipate the hour of its coming. I would not rush impetuously to meet my fate. I would rather let my happiness come gently, by degrees, like the morning light. And those are the brightest days, you know, on which the dawn creeps over the hill-tops gradually, mysteriously, pale, soft, placid.

  One afternoon the conversation turned unawares upon Dr. Carrick.

  ‘I don’t think I can ever be half grateful enough to him,’ exclaimed Mr. Tregonnell; ‘he has made a new man of me.’

  ‘There are few patients so grateful as you,’ said Hester.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Do you forget the will you made the other night?’

  ‘What will? I make a will? Why, Hester, I never did such a thing in my life. I never even thought of such a thing; though I ought to think of it, by-the-by. If I were to die unmarried, my estate would go to some remote next-of-kin; some Mr. Snooks, perhaps, who would call himself Snooks Tregonnell, and come and lord it over my Cornish tenantry. The idea is hateful. I’ll go up to Plymouth next week, see my lawyer, and make a will that shall, at any rate, shut out all possible Snookses.’

  Hester turned her face towards the rose-bush she was clipping, to hide her sudden pallor. All her doubts, all her fears, all her vague horror of that unforgotten scene in Mr. Tregonnell’s room, came back upon her with new force. In this quiet nature of hers there were latent powers which had never been exercised. This gentle creature was a woman of strong will. She determined to question Dr. Carrick, and get to the bottom of this mysterious business, even at the risk of offending her benefactor.

  Next morning, when she was pouring out the tea at Dr. Carrick’s early breakfast, she attacked the subject boldly.

  ‘Do y
ou know that Mr. Tregonnell denies that he ever made a will?’ she said. ‘I happened to speak to him about it yesterday, by accident.’

  ‘You had no right to speak to him about it,’ exclaimed the doctor, white with anger — Hester had never seen such a look in his face before. ‘I told you that the subject was not to be mentioned.’

  ‘Not to other people, but my speaking of it to him could not matter.’

  ‘It does matter a great deal. Men are sensitive about such things. He chose to make his will, but he may not choose to be reminded of it.’

  ‘He most distinctly denied having made a will.’

  ‘He chose to deny it.’

  ‘What, he chose to tell a deliberate lie? No, Dr. Carrick; I would never believe that of Eustace Tregonnell.’

  ‘You would not believe, indeed; and pray what do you know of Eustace Tregonnell, or of psychology? What do you know of the eccentricities of the human intellect? Mr. Tregonnell is extremely eccentric. There are people who call him mad.”

  Hester was pale as death. Mad! That awful word froze her young blood. Might not that be indeed a clue to the mystery? She had heard Eustace Tregonnell acknowledge that will with the same lips which afterwards denied having made it. There could be no cheat, no joggle there. His own voice had declared the fact.

  ‘If he is mad, the will is useless,’ She said.

  ‘You are a clever lawyer, no doubt, young lady. I suppose you have never heard of testamentary capacity, which may exist in a patient subject to intervals of mania. A holograph will, executed by a madder man than Eustace Tregonnell, would stand against stronger opposition than is likely to be offered to any will of his.’

  ‘He is not mad,’ protested Hester. ‘His brain is as clear as mine.’

  ‘Very likely. He merely reproves your impertinence in speaking of a forbidden subject, by denying that he ever made a will.’

  Hester was more unhappy, after that conversation with Dr. Carrick, than she had been before. She had formed a high estimate of Eustace Tregonnell’s character. The idea that he could tell a deliberate falsehood was horrible to her. Yet it was almost worse to think of him as a madman. And who but a madman would have looked her calmly in the face, and denied a fact which she had seen with her eyes, and attested with her signature?

  ‘If he is mad,’ she said to herself, ‘my woman’s wit must keep watch for him.’

  And then, for the first time, a secret that had lain hidden in her heart for many days past came boldly forth into the light, and looked Hester Rushton in the face. She loved him — she, the obscure orphan, the dependant on a poor man’s charity, blest with neither beauty nor accomplishments, a humble household drudge — she loved Eustace Tregonnell, the proudest and richest landowner in that part of the country. She blushed rosy-red, and hid her face from the bold, glad sunlight, abashed and stricken by the discovery. How could she dare to lift her eyes to that perfect face, to think of Eustace Tregonnell as a being on the same level with her insignificant self?

  ‘But I don’t think of him as my equal,’ she said to herself; ‘not for worlds would I have him come down to my level. He is my bright particular star. I only want to look up to him, and worship him all the days of my life.’

  The idea of some evil mystery in that scene of the will haunted her perpetually. She began to have a horror of the house that sheltered her — that strange old house, with its long narrow passages, winding stairs, queer little closets, many doors, and ghostly reputation. She began to have a horror of her benefactor, Dr. Carrick. Precious as Eustace Tregonnell’s society was to her, she longed for him to depart upon his yachting expedition.

  June began with stormy winds and driving rains, and the yachting expedition was pub off. Indeed, Mr. Tregonnell seemed in no hurry to leave St. Hildred House. He appeared perfectly happy, idling in the garden while Hester weeded her flower-beds, or reading to her while she worked in her favourite seat by a window that looked seaward.

  One evening, however, he announced his intention of running up to Plymouth at the end of that week.

  ‘I want to see my lawyer. Can you guess what I am going to do, Dr. Carrick?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ answered the doctor, sipping his tea.

  Hester and the doctor were seated at the lamplit tea-table. Eustace Tregonnell was standing with his back to the empty fire-place, looking down at them.

  ‘I am going to make my will. It’s a disagreeable operation, and reminds one unpleasantly of one’s mortality. But I suppose every man ought to go through it. I shan’t forget you, doctor; nor you, Hester. Let me see: a mourning ring, I suppose, will be an appropriate mark of my gratitude to you, doctor; and a silver thimble will form a pleasing memento of my friendship for you, Miss Rushton.’

  Dr. Carrick joined in Mr. Tregonnell’s cheery laughter, but he cast a furtive glance at Hester, who sat looking downward, very pale in the lamplight.

  CHAPTER VI FOR LOVE AND LIFE.

  ST. HILDRED HOUSE was said to be haunted. There was hardly an inhabitant of the village who would not have vouched for the fact. Noises had been heard; ghosts had been been, at intervals, and by divers persons, ever since the oldest inhabitant’s childhood. The exact form of the apparition, or the precise nature of the noises, was not easy to determine, since every one gave a different description, and almost every one’s knowledge was derived from hearsay. Till very lately, Hester Rushton had laughed at these rumours, and had never known what it was to feel a thrill of fear in the musty old passages, or to shudder as the gathering twilight peopled the corners of the panelled rooms with shadows. Now all was changed, she was nervous and apprehensive. She started at a shadow, and fancied she heard a human voice mixed with the night winds that sobbed in the wide old chimneys. One night she was disturbed by sounds that seemed distinctly human: heavy breathing, footsteps moving close to the head of her bed.

  She started up, and lighted her candle, convinced that there was some one in the room. Yet she had bolted her door before going to bed.

  The room was empty, but again she heard footsteps moving stealthily, close at hand.

  ‘The cupboard,’ she thought. ‘There is some one in that cupboard.’

  It was a long narrow cupboard, a kind of enclosed passage between her room and Mr. Tregonnell’s. There was a third door in this cupboard, opening on to a corkscrew staircase that led down to the servant’s offices. But this staircase was rarely used, the door leading into Mr. Tregonnell’s room was never opened, and the cupboard was only a receptacle for disused and forgotten lumber.

  Hester unlocked the cupboard, and looked in. A man was in the act of escaping by the door that opened on the staircase. She pursued him, candle in hand, her heart beating violently.

  Something told her that this was Dr. Carrick, who had been paying a stealthy visit to his patient’s room; but, to her surprise, on the first step of the stairs David Skelter turned and faced her, with his finger on his lip, and a look that implored her forbearance.

  ‘Oh, please, miss, don’t say anything. I’m not doing any harm.’

  ‘But why are you here — hiding in this cupboard — in the middle of the night?’

  ‘It isn’t the middle of the night, miss. I was uneasy about master.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, miss, to be candid, I don’t like the doctor’s goings on. I’ve had my suspicions of him for a long time. It’s too much like witchcraft, the power he’s got over my master. It isn’t natural you know, miss, and I happened to find out that he’d been putting it into people’s heads that my master wasn’t to be treated like a rational being, and that turned me against him, and made me think that there was something wrong going on.’

  ‘But what wrong can Dr. Carrick do your master, David?’ asked Hester, with her earnest eyes searching the young man’s face.

  ‘Oh, miss, can I trust you? Are you a friend or a foe?’

  ‘I am a friend to Mr. Tregonnell, David; a sincere one.’

  ‘Yes, I believe
it, miss; I’ve seen that, and I know some thing more. I know that he’s a friend to you — more than a friend, nearer and dearer. He’s been happier and better since he’s known you. But I can’t make the doctor out. He’s too dark for me. Do you see that cupboard door? ‘pointing to the door opening into Mr. Tregonnell’s room. ‘ The other morning, when I was putting away my master’s things, it struck me that we might as well have the use of this cupboard. I tried the door, and found it locked inside. I could see the nozzle of the key in it. Then it struck me that this cupboard-door must communicate with some other room or passage, and then I remembered the door at the head of these stairs, which I’d never seen open. I came round by the stairs, and examined the cupboard, and I found a little shutter or flap opening in that door — it had been made for ventilation, I suppose — through which I could look into my master’s room. And that very night, feeling uneasy about him in my mind, after I’d gone up to bed, I crept down again, and looked through the little shutter to see if he was all right. And there I saw — —’

  ‘What, David? It was very wrong to play the spy upon your master.’

  ‘I saw the doctor conjuring him — hocussing him, miss.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘So, miss — like this.’

  And David made solemn passes with his hands before Hester’s face.

  ‘He did that, miss, and sent master to sleep as quiet as a lamb. Now. I don’t like to think that any man should have the power of sending my master to sleep.’

  Hester heard him in silence, deadly pale, breathless. She had the clue to the mystery now. It was mesmeric influence that composed the patient’s restless mind to sleep; it was under mesmeric influence that Eustace Tregonnell had written and signed the will, of which in his waking state he knew nothing. Among the books which Mr. Tregonnell had brought her, and one which she had I read with deepest interest, was Bulwer’s ‘Strange Story.’ She had read also that thrilling story, by the same author, ‘The House and the Brain,’ and the theory of magnetic influence was not unknown to her. Dr. Carrick was just the kind of man — studious, passionless, self-contained — to exert such influence, to be familiar with that unholy art. He had used his power to get a will executed — a will which doubtless bestowed more upon him than the legacy he had spoken of to Hester. But that will would give him nothing so long as Eustace Tregonnell lived, and Eustace Tregonnell was at least eighteen years his junior. How remote must he the benefit which Dr. Carrick could hope for from that will. Again, it would be cancelled, mere waste-paper, the moment Mr. Tregonnell made another will, and he talked of doing so at the end of the week. All through the night Hester lay broad awake, thinking of Dr. Carrick, and trying to fathom his motive for a deed, which was, to her mind, as dark a crime as the worst forgery that had ever been perpetrated.