Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  She found he had a habit of repeating her words. She had noticed the same peculiarity before, in cases of decaying intellect.

  “The bank note that he did not find was the one you had written for over and above what you wanted. Why did you write for it, David?”

  This was a back question, and it took a great many others before David could answer. “He might have wanted to borrow more,” he said at length; “I’d have lent him all then.”

  Poor man! That he should have had such blind faith in Mr. Hardcastle as to send for money in case he should “want to borrow more!” Mrs. Dundyke had taken this view of the case from the first.

  “You don’t believe in him now, David?”

  “I don’t believe in him now. He has got my bank notes; and he left me in the sun. Paul, put me in the cart when it came by.”

  “David, why did you not write to me?”

  David stared. “I came,” he said. And she found afterwards, that he could not write; she was to find that he never attempted to write again.

  “Did you send to Geneva? — to me?”

  “To Geneva? — to me?”

  “To me — me, David; not to you. Did you send to Geneva?”

  He shook his head, evidently not knowing what she meant, and seemed to think. Mrs. Dundyke felt nearly sure that he must have lain long insensible, for weeks, perhaps months; that is, not sufficiently conscious to understand or remember; and that when he grew better, Geneva and its doings had faded from his remembrance.

  “How did you come home, David?” she asked again. “Did you come alone?”

  “Did you come alone — yes, in the diligences, and rail, and sea. I told them all to take me to England; Paul got the money for me; he took the note and brought it back.”

  Paul had changed it into French money; that must be the meaning of it. Mr. Dundyke put his hand in his pocket and pulled out sundry five-franc pieces.

  “Marie’s got some. I gave her half.”

  Mrs. Dundyke hoped it was so. She could hardly understand yet, how he could have found his way home alone; even with the help of “I told them all to take me to England.”

  “David!” she whispered, “David! I don’t know how I shall ever be thankful enough to God!”

  “I’d like some porter.”

  It was a contrast that grated on her ear; the animal want following without break on the spiritual aspiration. She was soon to find that any finer feeling he might ever have possessed, had gone with his mind. He could eat and drink still, and understand that; but there was something wrong with the brain.

  “How did you come down here to-night, David?”

  “How did I come down here to-night? There was the omnibus.”

  The questions began to pain her. “He is fatigued,” she thought; “perhaps he will answer better to-morrow.” The porter was brought to him, and he fell asleep immediately after drinking it. She rose from her low seat, and sat down in a chair opposite to him.

  It was like a dream; and Mrs. Dundyke all but pinched herself to see whether she was awake or asleep. She believed that she could tell pretty accurately what the past had been. Mr. Hardcastle had followed her husband to the side of the lake that morning, had in some way induced him to go away from it; had taken him a long, long way into the cross country — and it must have been at that time that the Swiss peasant, who gave his testimony at Geneva, had seen them. At the proper opportunity, Mr. Hardcastle must have, perhaps, given him some stupefying drink, and then robbed him and left him; but Mrs. Dundyke inclined to the opinion that the man must have believed Mr. Dundyke insensible, or he surely would never have allowed him to see him take the notes. He must then have lain, it was hard to say how long, before Paul found him; and the lying thus in the sun probably induced the fit, or sun-stroke, or brain fever, whatever it was, that attacked him. He spoke of a cart: and she concluded that Paul must have been many miles out of the route of his home, or else the search instituted would surely have found him, had he been within a few miles of Geneva. Why these people had kept him, had not declared him to the nearest authorities, it was hard to say. They might have kept him from benevolent motives; or might have seen the bank note in his pocket-book, and kept him from motives of worldly interest. However it might be, they had shown themselves worthy Christian people, and she should ever be deeply grateful. He had evidently no idea of the flight of time since; perhaps —

  “What do you wear that for?”

  He was lying with his eyes open, and pointing to the widow’s cap. She rose and bent over him, as she answered —

  “David! David, dear! we have been mourning you as dead.”

  “Mourning me as dead! I am not dead.”

  No, he was not dead, and she was shedding happy tears for it, as she threw the cap off from the braids of her still luxuriant hair.

  As well, perhaps, almost that he had been dead! for the best part of his life, the mind’s life, was over. No more intellect; no more business for him in Fenchurch-street; no more ambitious aspirations after the civic chair! — it was all over for ever for poor David Dundyke.

  But he had come home. He who was supposed to be lying dead — murdered — had come home. It was a strange fact to go forth to the world: one amidst the extraordinary tales that now and then arise to startle it almost into disbelief.

  CHAPTER II.

  A DOUBTFUL SEARCH.

  On the 3rd of February the college boys reassembled for school, after the Christmas holidays. Rather explosive were the choristers at times at getting no holidays — as they were pleased to regard it; for they had to attend the cathedral twice daily always. Strictly speaking, the boys had assembled on the previous day, the 2nd of February, and those who lived at a distance, or had been away visiting, had to be back for that day. It is Candlemas Day, as everybody knows, and a saint’s day; and on saints’ days the king’s scholars had to attend the services.

  On the 3rd the duties of the school began, and at seven in the morning the boys were clattering up the steps. It was not a propitious morning: snow and sleet doing battle, one against the other. Jocelyn had left, and the eldest of the two Prattletons had succeeded him as senior. Cookesley was second senior, Lewis third, and the eldest of the Aultanes was fourth.

  The boys were not assembling in any great amount of good feeling. Lewis, who with his brother had passed the holidays at the house of the late Marmaduke Carr, and consequently had been in Westerbury, did not forget the grudge he owed to Henry Arkell. It had been Mr. Lewis’s pleasure to spend his leisure-hours (time, possibly, hanging somewhat heavily on his hands) in haunting the precincts of the cathedral. Morning, noon, and night had he been seen there; now hovering like a ghost in one of the cloister quadrants, now playing at solitary pitch-and-toss in the grounds, and now taking rather slow, meditative steps past the deanery. He had thus made himself aware that Henry Arkell and Miss Beauclerc not unfrequently met; whether by accident or design on the young lady’s part, she best knew. Four times each day had Henry Arkell to be in the grounds and cloisters on his way to and from college; and, at the very least, on two of those occasions, Miss Beauclerc would happen to be passing. She always stopped. Lewis had seen him sometimes walking on with only a lift of the trencher, and Miss Beauclerc would not have it, but stopped as usual. There was no whispering, there were apparently few secrets; the talking was open and full of gaiety on the young lady’s part, if her laughter was anything to judge by; but Lewis was not the less savage. When he met her, she would say indifferently, “How d’ye do, Lewis?” and pass on. Once, Lewis presumed to stop her with some item of news that ought to have proved interesting, but Miss Beauclerc scarcely listened, made some careless remark in answer, and continued her way: the next minute she met Henry Arkell, and stayed with him. That Lewis was in love with the dean’s daughter, he knew to his sorrow. How worse than foolish it had been on his part to suffer himself to fall in love with her, we might say, but that this passion comes to us without our will. Lewis believed that she loved
Henry Arkell; he believed that but for Henry Arkell being in the field, some favour might be shown to him; and he had gone on hating him with a fierce and bitter hatred. One day, Henry had come springing down the steps of the cathedral, and encountered Miss Beauclerc close to him. They stood there on the red flagstones of the cloisters, no gravestone being in that particular spot, Georgina laughing and talking as usual. Lewis was in the opposite quadrant of the cloisters, peeping across stealthily, and a devout wish crossed his heart that Arkell was buried on the spot where he then stood. Lewis was fated not to forget that wish.

  How he watched, day after day, none save himself saw or knew. He was training for an admirable detective in plain clothes. He suspected there had been some coolness between Henry and Miss Beauclerc, and that she was labouring to dispel it; he knew that Arkell did not go to the deanery so much as formerly, and he heard Miss Beauclerc reproach him for it. Lewis had given half his life for such a reproach from her lips to be addressed to him.

  There were so many things for which he hated Henry Arkell! There was his great progress in his studies, there was the brilliant examination he had undergone, and there was the gold medal. Could Lewis have conveniently got at that medal, it had soon been melted down. He had also taken up an angry feeling to Arkell on account of the doings of that past November night — the locking up in the church of St. James the Less. Lewis had grown to nourish a very strange notion in regard to it. After puzzling his brain to torment, as to how Arkell could have got out, and finding no solution, he arrived at length at the conclusion that he had never been in. He must have left the church previously, Lewis believed, and he had locked up an empty church. It is true he had thought he heard the organ going, but he fully supposed now that he heard it only in fancy. Arkell’s silence on the point contributed to this idea: it was entirely beyond Lewis’s creed to suppose a fellow could have such a trick played him and not complain of it. Arkell had never given forth token of cognisance from that hour to this, and Lewis assumed he had not been in.

  It very much augmented his ill feeling, especially when he remembered his own night of horrible anticipation. Mr. Lewis had come to the final conclusion that Arkell had been “out on the spree;” and but for a vague fear that his own share in the night’s events might be dragged to light, he would certainly have contrived that it should reach the ears of Mr. Wilberforce. He and his brother were to be for another half year boarders at the master’s house. Cookesley acted there as senior; the senior boy, Prattleton, living at home.

  The boys trooped into the schoolroom, and Prattleton stood with the roll in his hand. Lewis had not joined on the previous day; he had obtained grace until this, for he wanted to spend it at Eckford. As he came in now, he made rather a parade of shaking hands with Prattleton, and wishing him joy of his honours. Most of the boys liked to begin by being in favour with a new senior, however they might be fated to end, and Lewis and Prattleton were great personal friends — it may be said confidants. Lewis had partially trusted Prattleton with the secret of his love for Miss Beauclerc; and he had fully entrusted him with his hatred of Henry Arkell. Scarcely a minute were they together at any time, but Lewis was speaking against Arkell; telling this against him, telling that. Constant dropping will wear away a stone; and Prattleton listened until he was in a degree imbued with the same feeling. Personally, he had no dislike to Arkell himself; but, incited by Lewis, he was quite willing to do him any ill turn privately.

  The roll was called over when Henry Arkell entered. He put down a load of books he carried, and went up to Prattleton to shake hands, as Lewis had done; being a chorister, he had not gone into the schoolroom on the previous day; and he wished him all good luck.

  “I am sorry to have to mark you late on the first morning, Arkell,” Prattleton quietly said as he shook hands with him. “The school has a superstition, you know — that anyone late on the first morning will be so, as a rule, through the half.”

  “I know,” answered Henry. “It is no fault of mine. Mr. Wilberforce desired me to tell you that he detained me, therefore I am to be marked as having been present.”

  “Did he detain you?”

  “For ten minutes at least. I met him as I was coming in, and he caused me to go back with him to his house and bring in these books. He then gave me the message to you.”

  “All right,” said Prattleton, cheerfully: and he erased the cross against Arkell’s name, and marked him as present.

  Even this little incident exasperated Lewis. His ill feeling rendered him unjust. No other boy, that he could remember, had been marked as present, not being so. He was beginning to say something sarcastic upon the point, when the entrance of the master himself shut up his tongue for the present.

  But we cannot stop with the college boys just now.

  On this same day, later, when the sun, had there been any sun to see, was nearing the meridian, Lawyer Fauntleroy sat in his private office, deep in business. Not a more clever lawyer than he throughout the town of Westerbury; and to such men business flocks in. His table stood at a right angle with the fireplace, and the blazing fire burning there, threw its heat upon his face, and his feet rested on a soft thick mat of wool. Mr. Fauntleroy, no longer young, was growing fonder and fonder of the comforts of life, and he sat there cosily, heedless of the hail that beat on the window without.

  The door softly opened, and a clerk came in. It was Kenneth. “Are you at home, sir?”

  Mr. Fauntleroy glanced up from the parchment he was bending over — a yellow-looking deed, and his brow looked forth displeasure. “I told you I did not care to be interrupted this morning, Kenneth, unless it was for anything very particular. Who is it?”

  “A lady, sir. ‘Mrs. Carr’ was the name she gave in.”

  “Carr — Carr?” debated Mr. Fauntleroy, unable to recal any lady of the name amidst his acquaintance. “No. I have no leisure for ladies to-day.”

  Kenneth hesitated. “It’s not likely to be the Mrs. Carr in Carr v. Carr; the lady you have had some correspondence with, is it, sir?” he waited to ask. “She is a stranger, and is dressed as a widow.”

  “The Mrs. Carr in Carr v. Carr!” repeated Mr. Fauntleroy. “By Jupiter, I shouldn’t wonder if she’s come to Westerbury! But I thought she was in Holland. Show her in.”

  Mr. Kenneth retired, and came back with the visitor. It was Mrs. Carr. Mr. Fauntleroy pushed aside the deed before him, and rose to salute her, wondering at her extreme youth. She spoke English fluently, but with a foreign accent, and she entered at once upon the matter which had brought her to Westerbury.

  “A circumstance has occurred to renew the old anxiety about this cause,” she said to Mr. Fauntleroy. “Should we lose it, I shall lose all I have at present to look forward to, for our affairs in Holland are more complicated than ever. It may turn out, Mr. Fauntleroy, that my share of this inheritance will be all I and my little children will have to depend upon in the world.”

  “But the cause is safe,” returned Mr. Fauntleroy. “The paper you found and forwarded to me last October — or stay, November, wasn’t it — —”

  “Would you be so kind as let me see that paper?” she interrupted.

  Mr. Fauntleroy rose and brought forward a bundle of papers labelled “Carr.” He drew out a letter, and laid it open before his visitor. It was the one you saw before; the letter written by Robert Carr the elder to his son, stating that the marriage had been solemnized at the church of St. James the Less, and that the entry of it would be found there.

  “And there the marriage is entered, as I subsequently wrote you word,” observed Mr. Fauntleroy. “It is singular how your husband could have overlooked that letter.”

  “It had slipped between the leaves of the blotting-book, or else been placed there purposely by Mr. Carr,” she answered; “and my husband may not have been very particular in examining the desk, for at that time he did not know his legitimacy would be disputed. Are you sure it is in the register, sir?” she continued, some anxiety in her tone
.

  “Quite sure,” replied Mr. Fauntleroy. “I sent to St. James’s to search as soon as I got this letter, glad enough to have the clue at last; and there it was found.”

  “Well — it is very strange,” observed Mrs. Carr, after a pause. “I will tell you what it is that has made me so anxious and brought me down. But, in the first place, I must observe that I concluded the cause was at an end. I cannot understand why the other side did not at once give up when that letter was discovered.”

  Knowing that he had kept the other side in ignorance of the letter, Mr. Fauntleroy was not very explanatory on this point. Mrs. Carr continued —

  “My husband had a friend of the name of Littelby, a solicitor. He was formerly the manager of an office in London, but about two months since he left it for one in the country, Mynn and Mynn’s — —”

  “Mynn and Mynn,” interrupted Mr. Fauntleroy; “that’s the firm who are conducting the case for your adversaries — the Carrs, of Eckford. Littelby? Yes, it is the name of their new man, I remember.”

  “Well, sir, last week Mr. Littelby was in London, and he called at Mrs. Dundyke’s, where I had been staying since I came over from Holland, a fortnight before. The strangest thing has happened there! Mr. Dundyke — but you will not thank me to take up your time, perhaps, with matters that don’t concern you. Mr. Littelby spoke to me upon the subject of the letter that I had found, and he said he feared there was something wrong about it, though he could not conceive how, for that there had been no marriage, so far as could be discovered.”

  “He can say the moon’s made of green cheese if he likes,” cried Mr. Fauntleroy.

  “He said that the opinion of Mynn and Mynn was, that the pretended letter had been intended as a ruse — a false plea, written to induce the other side to give up peaceably; but that most positively there was no truth in the statement of the marriage being in the register. Sir, I am sure Mr. Littelby must have had good cause for saying this,” emphatically continued Mrs. Carr “He is a man incapable of deceit, and he wishes well to me and my children. The last advice he gave me was, not to be sanguine; for Mynn and Mynn were clever and cautious practitioners, and he knew they made sure the cause was theirs.”