Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  But she had her secret also, which she had been keeping from her husband. She told it now to Mrs. Dundyke. Something was wrong with affairs at Rotterdam. The surviving partners of the house, three covetous old Dutchmen, disputed their late partner’s right (or rather that of his children) to draw out certain monies from the house; at the death of Robert Carr it lapsed to the house, they said. This was the account Mrs. Carr gave, but it was not a very clear one, neither did she seem to understand the case. The Carrs had in the house other money, about which there was no dispute, but even this the firm refused to pay out until the other matter was settled. The effect was, that the Carrs had no money to go on with; and there would probably be litigation.

  “I did not tell Robert, because I was in hopes it would be comfortably decided without him,” said Mrs. Carr. “By the way, you wrote me word that Robert said I was to bring over the desk. Which desk did he mean? his own or his father’s?”

  “I really don’t know,” replied Mrs. Dundyke; “he was very ill when he spoke, and I wrote the words down just as he spoke them.”

  “Well, I have brought both; I know he examined Mr. Carr’s desk after his death, and he locked it up again, and has the key with him. His own desk also was at home; so, not knowing which was meant, I brought the two.”

  When Robert Carr came home that evening he looked awfully ill. The expression is not too strong a one; there was something in his attenuated face, its sunken eyes, its ghastly colour, and its working nostrils, that struck the beholder with awe. Mrs. Dundyke was alone in the dining parlour when he came in, and was shocked to see him. Whether it was the long day’s work on his decreasing strength — for he had remained later than usual — she could not tell, but he had never looked so near death as this.

  “Oh, Robert!” was her involuntary exclamation; “I had better go up and prepare your wife before she sees you.”

  He suffered her to put him in the great invalid chair she had surreptitiously had brought in a day or two before; he drank the restoring cordial she tendered him; he was passive in her hands as a child, in his great weakness. “I’m afraid I must have a week’s rest,” he said to her, as she busied herself taking off his gloves, and smoothing his poor damp hair. “My strength seems to be failing unaccountably; I don’t know how I have got through the day.”

  “Oh yes, yes,” she eagerly assented; “a little rest; that is what you want. You shall lie in bed all to-morrow.”

  “Has Emma brought the children?”

  “No. They are quite well,” she says; “I am going to send her down to you. And, Robert, she knows all, and says she’ll help to search the registers herself.”

  Mrs. Dundyke spoke in a light-hearted tone, but before she went upstairs she sent an urgent message for the doctor.

  And when the surgeon came, he said there was no further hope whatever, as, indeed, there had not been for some time now, and that a day or two would “decide.”

  Decide what? But that he did not say.

  In one sense of the word, it may be said that death had come suddenly upon Robert Carr. Had he been less absorbed in that one point of worldly interest, he might have seen its approach more clearly. Not until the morning succeeding his wife’s arrival, did he look it fully in the face; and then he found that it was upon the very threshold, was entering in at the opened door.

  All the bustle, the anxiety as to temporal interests, the plans and provisions for the future for those to be left behind, ensued. Mrs. Dundyke hastily summoned a legal gentleman, Mr. Littelby. He was a solicitor of many years’ standing, not in practice for himself, but conducting the business of an eminent legal firm. He was an old friend of the Dundykes, and Robert Carr had seen him several times; indeed his advice and assistance had been of much service in the search of the church registers. Mr. Littelby was about leaving his present situation, and was in negotiation with a firm in the country for another. Mrs. Dundyke sent up a hasty summons for him.

  A handsome bedchamber, in which was every comfort, a bright fire in the hearth, a bed, on which lay a shadowy form, a pale shadowy face, a young weeping girl standing near, soon to be a widow, and you have almost the last scene in the short life of Robert Carr.

  He was dying, poor fellow, with that secret, which he had no doubt shortened his life in endeavouring to trace, still unsolved; and he was dying with the conviction, that the proofs did exist somewhere, as fully upon him as it ever had been.

  “Emma!”

  She dried her eyes, and tried to hide that they had been wet, as she heard the call. The day was getting on.

  “Is Littelby not come yet?”

  “Yes, I think he is. Some one came a few minutes ago, and is downstairs with Mrs. Dundyke. I think I hear them coming up.”

  Mrs. Dundyke was coming into the room with a gentleman, a middle-aged man with a sharp nose and pleasant dark eyes. It was Mr. Littelby. They were left alone together — the lawyer and the dying man. But it was a very short and simple task, this will-making. Over almost as soon as begun.

  “He asked me to tie you up with trustees, Emma,” said the dying man; “but I have left all to you — children, and money, and all else. You will love them, won’t you, when I am gone?”

  “Oh, Robert, yes!” she said, with a burst of sorrow. “I wish I and they could go with you.”

  “And, Emma, mind that you prosecute this search. I have asked Littelby to help you, and he will. He says he expects to leave London at the end of the year, for he is in negotiation with another firm; but I dare say it will be found before then. Let that search be your first and greatest task.”

  She said it should be — she would have promised anything in that parting hour. She lay, with her pretty hair on the counterpane, and her wet eyes turned to him, devouring his last looks, listening to his last words. Almost literally the last in this world, for, before the close of the afternoon, Robert Carr fell into a lethargy, from which he did not awake alive.

  And those two lone women were together in the house of the dead — widows indeed. The one deprived of her young husband almost on the threshold of life; the other bereft, she knew not how, of her many years’ partner. Poor Mrs. Dundyke had hardly wanted more sorrow in her desolate home.

  So far as ease in the future went, she was well off. The large income mentioned by her to Robert Carr would indeed be hers. It was chiefly the result of that first thousand pounds Mr. Dundyke had risked on the Stock Exchange. Fortune had favoured him in an unusual degree. You remember the nails in the horse-shoe, how they doubled and doubled: so it had seemed to be with the thousand pounds of Mr. Dundyke. But poor Mrs. Carr’s future fortune was all uncertain. Whether she would have sufficient to keep her children in easy competency, or whether she would find herself, like so many more gentlewomen, obliged to do something for her bread in this world of changes, she did not know.

  Even in this week that succeeded her husband’s death, she was applied to for money, which she could not find. The application came from Mr. Fauntleroy. Lawyers have a peculiar facility for getting rid of money, as some of us have been obliged to know to our cost; and Mr. Fauntleroy had already disposed of the first fifty pounds advanced to him, and wanted more if he was to go on with the case.

  Mrs. Carr had it not. Until affairs should be settled in Rotterdam, she had no such sum at her command. She could have procured it indeed from many friends, but she was sorely puzzled what to do for the best. On the one hand, there was the dying promise to her husband to pursue this cause; on the other, there was the extreme doubt whether there was any real cause to pursue. If there was no cause, why, then, how worse than foolish it would be to spend money over a chimera. Many and many were the anxious consultations she had with Mrs. Dundyke, even while her husband lay dead in the house.

  On the day after the funeral — and there had been no mourner found to follow that poor young man to his last home, but one who had been fellow curate with him, and who was now in London — Mrs. Dundyke and her visitor were alone when a gentlem
an was shown in. A fine man yet, of middle age, but with a slight bend in the shoulders, as if from care, and grey threads mingling with his dark hair. It was not a time for Mrs. Carr to see strangers, and she rose to quit the drawing-room, after hurriedly replacing some papers in a desk she was examining. But there was something so noble, so pleasing, so refined, in the countenance of the man standing there, his hands held out to Mrs. Dundyke, and a sweet smile upon his lips, that she stopped involuntarily.

  “Have you forgotten me, Betsey?”

  For the moment she really had, for he was much changed; but the voice and the smile recalled her memory, and with a glad cry of recognition Mrs. Dundyke sprang forward, and received on her lips a sisterly kiss.

  “Emma, don’t go. This is your husband’s friend, and my brother-in-law, William Arkell.”

  Mrs. Carr gladly held out her hand; her pretty face raised in its widow’s cap. A shade came over William Arkell’s at seeing that badge on one so young.

  He had a little business in London, he explained, connected with the transfer of some of his property, and came up, instead of writing; came up — there was no doubt of it, though he did not say so — that he might have the opportunity of seeing Mrs. Dundyke.

  Mrs. Carr left the room, and Mr. Arkell drew his chair nearer to his sister-in-law.

  “You have heard nothing further, Betsey, of — of of your lost husband?”

  She shook her head; she should never hear that again.

  It was only natural that she should relate the circumstances to him, now that they met, although he had heard them so fully from Mr. Prattleton. Where much mystery exists, especially pertaining to undiscovered crime, it seems that we can never be tired of attempting to solve it. Human nature is the same all the world over, and these things do possess an irrepressible attraction for the human heart — very human it is, now and then. Mr. Arkell sat with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his chin resting on his hand; he was looking dreamily into the fire as they talked.

  “I should strongly suspect that Mr. Hardcastle, Betsey; should you know him if you saw him again?”

  “Know him! know that same Mr. Hardcastle!” she repeated, wondering at what seemed so superfluous a question. “I should know him to the very end of my life. I should know him by his eyes, if by nothing else. They seem to be always before mine.”

  “Were they peculiar eyes, then?”

  “Very. The first time I saw him, that morning at breakfast, his eyes seemed to strike upon my memory with a sort of repulsion. I felt sure I had seen eyes like them somewhere; and that the other eyes had caused me repulse likewise. All the time we were together at Geneva, his eyes kept puzzling me; it was like a word we have on the tip of the tongue, every moment thinking we must recollect it, but it keeps baffling us. So was it with Mr. Hardcastle’s eyes; and it was only in the moment he was leaving for Genoa that I recollected whose they were like.”

  “And whose were they like?”

  “A gentleman’s I never saw but twice; once at your house, at your own wedding breakfast, and once in the week subsequent to it at Mrs. Daniel Arkell’s: Benjamin Carr.”

  “Who?” exclaimed Mr. Arkell.

  “Benjamin Carr, the present squire’s son.”

  He sat with sudden uprightness in his chair, staring at her. The strange scene, when Robert Carr had likened Benjamin to the suspected murderer, was flashing into his mind. What did it mean, that agitation of Benjamin’s? What did this likeness, now spoken of, mean? A wild doubt of horror came creeping over Mr. Arkell.

  He opened his lips to speak, but recollected himself before the hasty impulse was put in force. Mrs. Dundyke noticed nothing unusual; her eyes and her thoughts were alike absorbed in the past.

  “Will you describe this Mr. Hardcastle to me?” he asked presently, breaking the pause of silence: “as accurately and minutely as you can.”

  He noted every point that she gave in answer, every little detail. And he came to the conclusion that if Benjamin Carr was not Mr. Hardcastle, he might certainly have sat for his portrait.

  “Unfortunately,” said Mr. Arkell, speaking more to himself than to her, “were this man apprehended and punished, it could not bring poor Mr. Dundyke back to life.”

  “Alas no, it could not. I would almost rather let things remain as they are. If the man is guilty, his daily life must be one perpetual, ever-present punishment.”

  “Ay, indeed,” murmured Mr. Arkell; “better leave him to it.”

  And he rather persistently, had her suspicions been awakened, led the conversation into other channels.

  “Let me say to you what I chiefly came to say, Betsey,” he whispered to Mrs. Dundyke in parting. “This has been a sudden and unexpected blow for you. I do not know how you may be left in regard to means; but if you have need of help, temporary or otherwise, you will let me know it. I have a right to give it, you know: you are Charlotte’s sister.”

  The tears fell from her eyes on his hands as she pressed them gratefully in hers. She did not say how well she was left off, for her heart was full; she only thanked him, and intimated that she had enough.

  Mr. Arkell went away in a sort of perplexed dream. Could that suspicion of Benjamin Carr be a true one? He would be silent; but it was nearly certain to come out in some other way: murder generally does. From Mrs. Dundyke’s he went straight up to Lady Dewsbury’s, and found that she and Miss Arkell had again gone out of town. It was a disappointment; he had not seen Mildred for years and years.

  Mrs. Carr came back to the room, and resumed her occupation after he had gone — that of searching amid the papers in the desk of the late Robert Carr the elder. It had proved to be his own desk that her husband had wanted her to bring over — but that is of no consequence. She was searching for a very simple thing — merely a receipt for a small sum of money which she had herself paid for Mr. Carr just before he died, and had returned the receipt to him; but it is often upon the merest trifles that the great events of life turn. The claim for this small sum she heard was sent in again, and she thought perhaps she might find the receipt in the desk, where Mr. Carr had sometimes used to place such papers. She did not find that, but she found something else.

  Mrs. Dundyke was sitting by, between the other side of the table and the fire. She was talking about the Arkells — the kindly generosity of William, the selfishness and persistent ill-will of Charlotte.

  “And the children?” asked Mrs. Carr, as she stood, opening paper after paper. “Do they follow their father or mother in their treatment of you?”

  “Of the daughters I know little; I may say nothing. They have never noticed me, even by a message. But the son — ah! you should know Travice Arkell! I cannot tell you how I love him. Will you believe that Charlotte —— What is the matter?”

  Emma Carr had come upon a sealed letter in an old blotting-book. The superscription was in the handwriting of her father-in-law, and ran as follows:— “To my son Robert. Not to be opened until after the death of my father, Marmaduke Carr.”

  She uttered the exclamation which had attracted the attention of Mrs. Dundyke, and sat down on her chair. With a prevision that this letter had something to do with the question of the marriage, she tore the letter open and sat gazing on it spellbound.

  “Have you found the receipt, my dear?”

  Not the receipt. With her cheeks flushing, her pulses quickening, her hands trembling, she laid the letter open before Mrs. Dundyke. “Robert was right; Robert was right! Oh! if he had but lived to read this! How could he have overlooked this, when he examined the desk after his father’s death? It must have slipped between the leaves of the blotting-book, and been hidden there.”

  “My dear Son Robert, — There may arise a question of your legitimacy when the time shall arrive for you to take possession of your grandfather’s property. On the day I left Westerbury for ever, I married your mother, Martha Ann Hughes — she would not else have come with me. We were married in her parish church at Westerbury, St. James
the Less, and you will find it duly entered in the register. This will be sufficient to prove your rights, so that there may be no litigation.

  “Your affectionate father,

  “Rt. Carr.”

  And, scarcely knowing whether she was awake or dreaming, while Mrs. Dundyke, in vain attempted to recover her astonishment, Mrs. Carr wrote a line of explanation inside an envelope, and despatched the all-important document to Westerbury to Mr. Fauntleroy.

  CHAPTER XII.

  MR. RICHARDS’ MORNING CALL.

  Mr. Fauntleroy was seated at breakfast, when this missive reached him. His two strapping daughters were with him: buxom, vulgar damsels, attired this morning in Magenta skirts and straw-coloured jackets. Mrs. Fauntleroy had been some years dead, and they ruled the house, and nearly ruled the lawyer. Strong-willed man though he was, carrying things out of doors with an iron hand, and sometimes a coarse one, he would yield to domestic tyranny; as many another has to do, if it were but known. It was fond tyranny, however, here; for whatever may have been the faults of the Miss Fauntleroys, they loved their father with a tender love. They were the only children of the lawyer — his co-heiresses — and to him they were as the apple of his eye.

  The room they sat in faced the garden — a large fine garden at the back of the house. The leaves were red with the glowing tints of autumn, and as Mr. Fauntleroy looked up from his well-covered breakfast-table at the October sky, he made some remark upon the famous run the hounds would make; and a half sigh escaped his lips that his own hunting days were gone for ever.

  “Would you be afraid to ride now, pa?”

  “Look at my weight, Lizzy.”

  “I think some who ride are as heavy as you,” was Miss Elizabeth’s answer.

  “Ah! but they are used to it; they have kept the practice up. Never a better follower than I in my younger days — always in at the death — but that’s a long while ago now. I gave up hunting when I settled down. What d’ye call that, Bab?”