by Ellen Wood
“It is a strange thing about those deeds, Mr. Hurde!” cried he, in a low tone.
Mr. Hurde nodded.
“It is troubling me amazingly,” went on Isaac.
This seemed to arouse the old clerk, and he looked up, speaking curtly.
“Why should it trouble you? You didn’t take them, I suppose?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Isaac.
“Very well, then. The loss won’t fall upon you. There’s no need for your troubling.”
Isaac was silent. In truth, he was unable to give any reason for the “troubling,” except on general grounds: he could not say that a doubt was haunting his mind as to the good faith of Mr. George Godolphin.
“It is a loss which I suppose Mr. George will have to make good, as they were in his custody,” he resumed. “My sister won’t like it, I fear.”
The observation recalled Mr. Hurde’s memory to the fact that Mrs. George Godolphin was the sister of Isaac Hastings. It afforded a sufficient excuse for the remarks in the mind of the clerk, and somewhat pacified him.
“It is to be hoped they’ll be found,” said he. “I don’t see how they could have gone.”
“Nor I,” returned Isaac. “The worst is, if they have gone — —”
“What?” asked Mr. Hurde, for Isaac had stopped.
“That perhaps money has been made of them.”
Mr. Hurde groaned. “They have not been taken for nothing, you may be sure.”
“If they have been taken,” persisted Isaac.
“If they have been taken,” assented Mr. Hurde. “I don’t believe they have. From the sheer impossibility of anybody’s getting to them, I don’t believe it. And I shan’t believe it, until every nook and corner between the four walls have been hunted over.”
“How do you account for their disappearance, then?”
“I think they must have been moved inadvertently.”
“No one could so move them except Mr. Godolphin or Mr. George,” rejoined Isaac.
“Mr. Godolphin has not moved them,” returned the clerk in a testy tone of reproof. “Mr. Godolphin is too accurate a man of business to move deeds inadvertently, or to move them and forget it the next moment. Mr. George may have done it. In searching for anything in the strong-room, if he has had more than one case open at once, he may have put these deeds back in their wrong place, or even brought them upstairs.”
Isaac considered for a minute, and then shook his head. “I should not think it,” he answered.
“Well, it is the only supposition I can come to,” was the concluding remark of Mr. Hurde. “It is next to an impossibility, Mr. Godolphin excepted, that any one else can have got to the deeds.”
He was drawing on his gloves as he spoke, to depart. Isaac went out with him, but their roads lay different ways. Isaac turned towards All Souls’ Rectory, and walked along in deep reverie.
The Rectory hours were early, and he found them at tea: his mother, Rose, and Grace. Grace — Mrs. Akeman by her new name — was spending the evening with them with her baby. The Rector, who had gone out in the afternoon, had not yet returned.
Isaac took his tea and then strolled into the garden. Rose and the baby were making a great noise, and Grace was helping them. It disturbed Isaac in his perplexed thought, and he made a mental vow that if he was ever promoted to a home of his own with babies in it, they should be confined to some top room, out of sight and hearing.
By-and-by, when he was leaning over the gate, looking into the road, Mr. Hastings came up. Isaac told him that tea was over: but Mr. Hastings said he had taken a cup with one of his parishioners. He had apparently walked home quickly, and he lifted his hat and wiped his brow.
“Glorious weather for the haymaking, Isaac!”
“Is it?” returned Isaac abstractedly.
“Is it!” repeated Mr. Hastings. “Where are your senses, boy?”
Isaac laughed and roused himself. “I fear they were buried just then, sir. I was thinking of something that has happened at the Bank to-day. A loss has been discovered.”
“A loss?” repeated Mr Hastings. “A loss of what?”
Isaac explained. He dropped his voice to a low tone, and spoke confidentially. They were leaning over the gate side by side. Mr. Hastings rather liked to take recreative moments there, exchanging a nod and a word with the passers-by. At this hour of the evening, however, the road was generally free.
“How can the deeds have gone?” exclaimed Mr. Hastings. As every one else had said.
“I don’t know,” replied Isaac, breaking off a spray from the hedge, and beginning to bite the thorns. “I suppose it is all right,” he presently added.
“Right in what way?” asked Mr. Hastings.
“I suppose George Godolphin’s all right, I mean.”
The words were as an unknown tongue to Mr. Hastings. He did not fathom them. “You suppose that George Godolphin is all right!” he exclaimed. “You speak in riddles, Isaac.”
“I cannot say I suspect anything wrong, sir; but the doubt has crossed me. It never would have done so, but for George Godolphin’s manner.”
Mr. Hastings turned his penetrating gaze on his son, “Speak out,” said he. “Tell me what you mean.”
Isaac did so. He related the circumstances of the loss; the confused manner he had observed in Mr. George Godolphin, on the visits of Lord Averil, and his reluctance to receive them. One little matter he suppressed: the stolen visit of George to London, and deceit to Maria, relative to it. Isaac did not see what that could have had to do with the loss of the deeds, and his good feeling told him that it was not a pleasant thing to name to his father. Mr. Hastings did not speak for a few minutes.
“Isaac, I see no reasonable grounds for your doubts,” he said at length. “The Bank is too flourishing for that. Perhaps you meant only as to George?”
“I can scarcely tell whether I really meant anything,” replied Isaac. “The doubts arose to me, and I thought I would mention them to you. I dare say my fancy is to blame: it does run riot sometimes.”
A silence ensued. Mr. Hastings broke it. “With a keen man of business, such as Mr. Thomas Godolphin, at the head of affairs, George could not go far wrong, I should presume. I think he spends enough on his own score, mark you, Isaac; but that has nothing to do with the prosperity of the Bank.”
“Of course not. Unless — —”
“Unless what? Why don’t you speak out?”
“Because I am not sure of my premises, sir,” frankly answered Isaac. “Unless he were to have become irretrievably embarrassed, and should be using the Bank’s funds for his own purposes, I believe I was about to say.”
“Pretty blind moles some of you must be, in that case! Could such a thing be done without the cognizance of the house? Of Mr. Hurde and of Thomas Godolphin?”
“Well — no — I don’t much think it could,” hesitated Isaac, who was not at all certain upon the point. “At any rate, not to any extent. I suppose one of my old crotchets — as Grace, used to call them — has taken possession of me, rendering me absurdly fanciful. I dare say it is all right: except that the deeds are mislaid.”
“I dare say it is,” acquiesced the Rector. “I should be sorry to think it otherwise — for many reasons. Grace is here, is she not?”
“Grace is here, and Grace’s son and heir, making enough noise for ten. I can’t think why Grace — —”
“What are you taking my name in vain for?” interrupted Grace’s own voice. She had come up to them carrying the very son and heir that Isaac had been complaining of: a young gentleman with a bald head, just beginning to exercise his hands in dumb fights; as well as his lungs. “Papa, mamma says are you not going in to tea?”
Before the Rector could answer, or Isaac extricate his hair from the unconsciously mischievous little hands which had seized upon it by Grace’s connivance, there came a gay party of equestrians round the corner of the road. Charlotte Pain, with the two young ladies, her guests; Lady Sarah and Miss Grame
, who sometimes hired horses for a ride; and three or four gentlemen. Amongst the latter were George Godolphin and Lord Averil. Lord Averil had met them accidentally and joined their party. He was riding by the side of Charlotte Pain.
“I say, Grace!” hastily exclaimed Isaac, twitching away his head, “take that baby in, out of sight. Look there!”
“Take my baby in!” resentfully spoke Grace. “What for? I am not ashamed to be seen holding it. Keeping only two servants, I must turn nurse sometimes: and people know it. I am not situated as Maria is, with a dozen at her beck and call.”
Isaac did not prolong the discussion. He thought if he owned an ugly baby with no hair, he should not be so fond of showing it off. Grace stood her ground, and the baby stood his, and lifted its head and its arms by way of greeting. Isaac wondered that it did not lift its voice as well.
The party exchanged bows as they rode past. George Godolphin — he was riding by the side of Sarah Anne Grame — withdrew his horse from the throng and rode up.
“How are you, Grace? How is the baby?”
“Look at him,” returned Grace in answer, holding the gentleman up to him.
“Shall I take him for a ride?” asked George, laughing.
“Not if you paid me his value in gold,” answered Grace bluntly.
George’s gay blue eyes twinkled. “What may that value be? Your estimation of it, Grace?”
“Never mind,” said Grace. “I can tell you that your Bank would not meet it. No, not if all its coffers were filled to the brim.”
“I see,” observed George: “he is inestimable. Do not set your heart too much upon him, Grace,” he continued, his voice changing.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Maria had to lose some, equally dear.”
“That is true,” said Grace in softened tones. “How is Maria to-day?”
“Quite well, thank you. She went to Ashlydyat this afternoon, and I dare say has remained there. Famous weather for the hay, is it not, sir?” he added to the Rector.
“Couldn’t be better,” replied Mr. Hastings.
George rode off at a canter. The baby burst into a cry; perhaps that he could not go off at a canter too: and Grace, after a vain attempt to hush him, carried him into the house. The Rector remained, looking over the gate.
“Things going wrong with him! — No! He could not be so easy under it,” was his mental conclusion. “It is all right, depend upon it,” he added aloud to his son.
“I think it must be, sir,” was the reply of Isaac Hastings.
CHAPTER XV. A NIGHTMARE FOR THE RECTOR OF ALL SOULS’.
The Reverend Mr. Hastings had audibly expressed a wish never again to be left in the responsible position of trustee, and the Reverend Mr. Hastings echoed it a second time as he ascended a gig which was to convey him to Binham. A vestry meeting at All Souls’ had been called for that evening at seven o’clock; but something arose during the day connected with the trust, and at four Mr. Hastings set off in a gig to see Brierly, the late agent to the Chisholm property. “I’ll be back by seven if I can, Smith,” he observed to his clerk. “If not, the meeting must commence without me.”
The way to Binham lay through shady lanes and unfrequented roads: unfrequented as compared with those where the traffic is great. It was a small place about six miles’ distance from Prior’s Ash, and the Rector enjoyed the drive. The day was warm and fine as the previous one had been — when you saw Maria Godolphin walking through the hayfield. Shady trees in some parts met overhead, the limes gave forth their sweet perfume, the heavy crops of grass gladdened the Rector’s eye, some still uncut, some in process of being converted into hay by labourers, who looked off to salute the well-known clergyman as he drove past.
“I might have brought Rose, after all,” he soliloquized. “She would have had a pleasant drive. Only she would have been half an hour getting ready.”
He found Mr. Brierly at home, and their little matter of business was soon concluded. Mr. Hastings had other places to call at in the town: he had always plenty of people to see when he went to Binham, for he knew every one in it.
“I wish you would take something,” said the agent.
“I can’t stay,” replied Mr. Hastings. “I shall find old Mrs. Chisholm at tea, and can take a cup with her, standing. That won’t lose time. You have not heard from Harknar?”
“No: not directly. His brother thinks he will be home next week.”
“The sooner the better. I want the affair settled, and the money placed out.”
He held out his hand as he spoke. Mr. Brierly, who, in days long gone by, when they were both boys together, had been an old school-fellow of the Rector’s, put his own into it. But he did not withdraw it: he appeared to be in some hesitation.
“Mr. Hastings, excuse me,” he said, presently, speaking slowly, “have you kept the money, which I paid over to you, in your own possession?”
“Of course not. I took it the same night to the Bank.”
“Ay. I guessed you would. Is it safe?” he added, lowering his voice.
“Safe!” echoed Mr. Hastings.
“I will tell you why I speak. Rutt the lawyer, over at your place, was here this afternoon, and in the course of conversation he dropped a hint that something was wrong at Godolphins’. It was not known yet, he said, but it would be known very soon.”
Mr. Hastings paused. “Did he state his grounds for the assertion?”
“No. From what I could gather, it appeared that he spoke from some vague rumour that was going about.”
“I think I can explain it,” said Mr. Hastings. “A packet of deeds belonging to one of their clients has been lost — has disappeared at least in some unaccountable manner; and this, I expect, must have given rise to the rumour. But the loss of twenty such packets, all to be made good, would not shake the solvency of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin.”
“That must be it, then! What simpletons people are! swallowing any absurd rumour that gets afloat; converting a molehill into a mountain! I thought it strange — for a stable old house like the Godolphins’.”
“Let me recommend you, Brierly, not to mention it further. If such a report got about, it might cause a run upon the Bank. Not but that, so far as I believe, the Bank could stand any run that might be made upon it.”
“I should not have mentioned it at all, except to you,” returned Mr. Brierly. “And only to you, because I expected the Chisholms’ money was there. Rutt is not a safe man to speak after, at the best of times. I told him I did not believe him. And I did not. Still — if anything were to happen, and I had bottled up the rumour, without giving you a hint of it, I should never cease to blame myself.”
“That is the origin of it, you may be sure; the loss of those deeds,” observed the Rector. “I know the clerks were questioned about it yesterday, and some of them must have got talking out of doors. Good day, Brierly.”
Mr. Hastings paid the rest of his visits, and drove home. In spite of himself, he could not keep his mind from reverting — and somewhat unpleasantly — to what he had heard. He believed the Bank to be perfectly solvent; to be more than solvent. Until the previous evening, when Isaac had made that communication to him, he had been ready to answer for its flourishing condition on his own responsibility, if required. He fully believed the rumour, spoken of by Rutt the lawyer, to arise from some distorted hints of the missing deeds which had oozed out, and to have no other foundation whatever: and yet he could not keep his mind from reverting to it uneasily.
The ting-tang (it deserved no better name, and Prior’s Ash gave it no other) of All Souls’ Church was sending forth its last notes as the Rector drove in. Handing over the horse and gig to the waiting servant of the friend from whom it was borrowed — a gig always at the disposal of the Rector — he made his way to the vestry, and had the pleasure of presiding at a stormy meeting. There were divided parties in the parish at that time, touching a rate to be paid, or a non-rate; and opposing eloquence ran high. Personal
ly, the Rector was not an interested party; but he had a somewhat difficult course to steer between the two, to avoid offending either. It was half-past nine when the meeting broke up.
“Any news of the missing deeds, Isaac?” he took an opportunity of asking his son.
“I think not,” replied Isaac. “We have heard nothing about it to-day.”
“I suppose things have gone on, then, as usual?”
“Quite so. We shall hear no more of it, I dare say, in the Bank. If the bonds can’t be found, the firm will have to make them good, and there’ll be an end of it.”
“A very unsatisfactory ending, I should think, if I had to make them good,” observed the Rector. “I don’t like things disappearing, nobody knows how or why.”
He said no more. He gave no hint to Isaac of the rumour that had been whispered to him, nor questioned him upon its probable foundation. It was the best proof that Mr. Hastings assigned to it no foundation. In sober reason he did not do so.
But things — troubles, cares, annoyances — wear different aspects in the day and in the night. More than all, suspense wears a different one. An undefined dread, whatever may be its nature, can be drowned in the daily bustle of life: business, pleasure, occupation. These fill up the mind, and the bugbear is lost sight of. But at night, when the head lies upon the sleepless pillow, and there is nothing to distract the thoughts; when all around is dark and silent, then, if there is an inner, secret dread, it asserts itself in guise worse than reality.
Mr. Hastings was not an imaginative man. Quite the contrary. He was more given to dealing with things, whether pleasant or painful, in a practical manner by daylight, than to racking his brains with them at night. Therefore, the way in which the new doubt troubled him as he lay in bed that night, was something wonderful. Had he been a fanciful woman, he could not have experienced worse treatment from his imagination. It was running riot within him. Could it be that the money entrusted to him was gone? — lost? Had he put it into that Bank for safety, only to find that the Bank would never refund it again? How was he to make it good? He could not make it good, and the little Chisholms, the children of his dead friend, would be beggars! He thought not of his own money, lodged in the charge of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin; that seemed as nothing in comparison with this. Mr. Hastings had had rather an expensive family; he had given money away in his parish — a conscientious clergyman is obliged to give, more or less — and his savings, all told, did not amount to more than two thousand pounds. It was not of that, equally at stake, that he thought, but of this other and larger sum, of which he was but the steward.