by Ellen Wood
When the service was over she took the more secluded way home; those of the servants who had attended returning as usual by the road. On reaching the turning where the three paths diverged, the faintness which had been hovering over her all the evening suddenly grew worse; and but for a friendly tree, she might have fallen. It grew better in a few moments, but she did not yet quit her support.
Very surprised was the Rector of Calne to come up and see Lady Hartledon in this position. Every Sunday evening, after service, he went to visit a man in one of the cottages, who was dying of consumption, and he was on his way there now. He would have preferred to pass without speaking: but Lady Hartledon looked in need of assistance; and in common Christian kindness he could not pass her by.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Hartledon. Are you ill?”
She took his offered arm with her disengaged hand, as an additional support; and her white face turned a shade whiter.
“A sudden faintness overtook me. I am better now,” she said, when able to speak.
“Will you allow me to walk on with you?”
“Thank you; just a little way. If you will not mind it.”
That he must have understood the feeling which prompted the concluding words was undoubted: and perhaps had Lady Hartledon been in possession of her keenest senses, she might never have spoken them. Pride and health go out of us together. Dr. Ashton took her on his arm, and they walked slowly in the direction of the little bridge. Colour was returning to her face, strength to her frame.
“The heat of the day has affected you, possibly?”
“Yes, perhaps; I have felt faint at times lately. The church was very hot to-night.”
Nothing more was said until the bridge was gained, and then Maude released his arm.
“Dr. Ashton, I thank you very much. You have been a friend in need.”
“But are you sure you are strong enough to go on alone? I will escort you to the house if you are not.”
“Quite strong enough now. Thank you once again.”
As he was bowing his farewell, a sudden impulse to speak, and set the matter that was troubling her at rest, came over her. Without a moment’s deliberation, without weighing her words, she rushed upon it; the ostensible plea an apology for her mother’s having spoken to him.
“Yes, I told Lady Kirton she was labouring under some misapprehension,” he quietly answered.
“Will you forgive me also for speaking of it?” she murmured. “Since my mother came home with the news of what you said, I have been lost in a sea of conjecture: I could not attend to the service for dwelling upon it, and might as well not have been in church — a curious confession to make to you, Dr. Ashton. Is it indeed true that you know nothing of the matter?”
“Lady Kirton told me in so many words that I had entered an action against Lord Hartledon for breach of promise, and laid the damages at ten thousand pounds,” returned Dr. Ashton, with a plainness of speech and a cynical manner that made her blush. And she saw at once that he had done nothing of the sort; saw it without any more decisive denial.
“But the action has been entered,” said Lady Hartledon.
“I beg your pardon, madam. Lord Hartledon is, I should imagine, the only man living who could suppose me capable of such a thing.”
“And you have not entered on it!” she reiterated, half bewildered by the denial.
“Most certainly not. When I parted with Lord Hartledon on a certain evening, which probably your ladyship remembers, I washed my hands of him for good, desiring never to approach him in any way whatever, never hear of him, never see him again. Your husband, madam, is safe for me: I desire nothing better than to forget that such a man is in existence.”
Lifting his hat, he walked away. And Lady Hartledon stood and gazed after him as one in a dream.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MR. CARR AT WORK.
Thomas Carr was threading his way through the mazy precincts of Gray’s Inn, with that quick step and absorbed manner known only, I think, to the busy man of our busy metropolis. He was on his way to make some inquiries of a firm of solicitors, Messrs. Kedge and Reck, strangers to him in all but name.
Up some dark and dingy stairs, he knocked at a dark and dingy door: which, after a minute, opened of itself by some ingenious contrivance, and let him into a passage, whence he turned into a room, where two clerks were writing at a desk.
“Can I see Mr. Kedge?”
“Not in,” said one of the clerks, without looking up.
“Mr. Reck, then?”
“Not in.”
“When will either of them be in?” continued the barrister; thinking that if he were Messrs. Kedge and Reck the clerk would get his discharge for incivility.
“Can’t say. What’s your business?”
“My business is with them: not with you.”
“You can see the managing clerk.”
“I wish to see one of the partners.”
“Could you give your name?” continued the gentleman, equably.
Mr. Carr handed in his card. The clerk glanced at it, and surreptitiously showed it to his companion; and both of them looked up at him. Mr. Carr of the Temple was known by reputation, and they condescended to become civil.
“Take a seat for a moment, sir,” said the one. “I’ll inquire how long Mr. Kedge will be; but Mr. Reek’s not in town to-day.”
A few minutes, and Thomas Carr found himself in a small square room with the head of the firm, a youngish man and somewhat of a dandy, especially genial in manner, as though in contrast to his clerk. He welcomed the rising barrister.
“There’s as much difficulty in getting to see you as if you were Pope of Rome,” cried Mr. Carr, good humouredly.
The lawyer laughed. “Hopkins did not know you: and strangers are generally introduced to Mr. Reck, or to our managing clerk. What can I do for you, Mr. Carr?”
“I don’t know that you can do anything for me,” said Mr. Carr, seating himself; “but I hope you can. At the present moment I am engaged in sifting a piece of complicated business for a friend; a private matter entirely, which it is necessary to keep private. I am greatly interested in it myself, as you may readily believe, when it is keeping me from circuit. Indeed it may almost be called my own affair,” he added, observing the eyes of the lawyer fixed upon him, and not caring they should see into his business too clearly. “I fancy you have a clerk, or had a clerk, who is cognizant of one or two points in regard to it: can you put me in the way of finding out where he is? His name is Gordon.”
“Gordon! We have no clerk of that name. Never had one, that I remember. How came you to fancy it?”
“I heard it from my own clerk, Taylor. One day last week I happened to say before him that I’d give a five-pound note out of my pocket to get at the present whereabouts of this man Gordon. Taylor is a shrewd fellow; full of useful bits of information, and knows, I really believe, three-fourths of London by name. He immediately said a young man of that name was with Messrs. Kedge and Reck, of Gray’s Inn, either as clerk, or in some other capacity; and when he described this clerk of yours, I felt nearly sure that it was the man I am looking for. I got Taylor to make inquiries, and he did, I believe, of one of your clerks; but he could learn nothing, except that no one of that name was connected with you now. Taylor persists that he is or was connected with you; and so I thought the shortest plan to settle the matter was to ask yourselves.”
“We have no clerk of that name,” repeated Mr. Kedge, pushing back some papers on the table. “Never had one.”
“Understand,” said Mr. Carr, thinking it just possible the lawyer might be mistaking his motives, “I have nothing to allege against the man, and do not seek to injure him. The real fact is, that I do not want to see him or to be brought into personal contact with him; I only want to know whether he is in London, and, if so, where?”
“I assure you he is not connected with us,” repeated Mr. Kedge. “I would tell you so in a moment if he were.”
; “Then I can only apologise for having troubled you,” said the barrister, rising. “Taylor must have been mistaken. And yet I would have backed his word, when he positively asserts a thing, against the world. I hardly ever knew him wrong.”
Mr. Kedge was playing with the locket on his watch-chain, his head bent in thought.
“Wait a moment, Mr. Carr. I remember now that we took a clerk temporarily into the office in the latter part of last year. His writing did not suit, and we kept him only a week or two. I don’t know what his name was, but it might have been Gordon.”
“Do you remember what sort of a man he was?” asked Mr. Carr, somewhat eagerly.
“I really do not. You see, I don’t come much into contact with our clerks. Reck does; but he’s not here to-day. I fancy he had red hair.”
“Gordon had reddish hair.”
“You had better see Kimberly,” said the solicitor, ringing a bell. “He is our managing clerk, and knows everything.”
A grey-haired, silent-looking man came in with stooping shoulders. Mr. Kedge, without any circumlocution, asked whether he remembered any clerk of the name of Gordon having been in the house. Mr. Kimberly responded by saying that they never had one in the house of the name.
“Well, I thought not,” observed the principal. “There was one had in for a short time, you know, while Hopkins was ill. I forget his name.”
“His name was Druitt, sir. We employed a man of the name of Gorton to do some outdoor business for us at times,” continued the managing clerk, turning his eyes on the barrister; “but not lately.”
“What sort of business?”
“Serving writs.”
“Gorton is not Gordon,” remarked Mr. Kedge, with legal acumen. “By the way, Kimberly, I have heard nothing of Gorton lately. What has become of him?”
“I have not the least idea, sir. We parted in a huff, so he wouldn’t perhaps be likely to come in my way again. Some business that he mismanaged, if you remember, sir, down at Calne.”
“When he arrested one man for another,” laughed the lawyer, “and got entangled in a coroner’s inquest, and I don’t know what all.”
Mr. Carr had pricked up his ears, scarcely daring to breathe. But his manner was careless to a degree.
“The man he arrested being Lord Hartledon; the man he ought to have arrested being the Honourable Percival Elster,” he interposed, laughing.
“What! do you know about it?” cried the lawyer.
“I remember hearing of it; I was intimate with Mr. Elster at the time.”
“He has since become Lord Hartledon.”
“Yes. But about this Gorton! I should not be in the least surprised if he is the man I am inquiring for. Can you describe him to me, Mr. Kimberly?”
“He is a short, slight man, under thirty, with red hair and whiskers.”
Mr. Carr nodded.
“Light hair with a reddish tinge it has been described to me. Do you happen to be at all acquainted with his antecedents?”
“Not I; I know nothing about, the man,” said Mr. Kedge. “Kimberly does, perhaps.”
“No, sir,” dissented Kimberly. “He had been to Australia, I believe; and that’s all I know about him.”
“It is the same man,” said Mr. Carr, quietly. “And if you can tell me anything about him,” he continued, turning to the older man, “I shall be exceedingly obliged to you. To begin with — when did you first know him?”
But at this juncture an interruption occurred. Hopkins the discourteous came in with a card, which he presented to his principal. The gentleman was waiting to see Mr. Kedge. Two more clients were also waiting, he added, Thomas Carr rose, and the end of it was that he went with Mr. Kimberly to his own room.
“It’s Carr of the Inner Temple,” whispered Mr. Kedge in his clerk’s ear.
“Oh, I know him, sir.”
“All right. If you can help him, do so.”
“I first knew Gorton about fifteen months ago,” observed the clerk, when they were shut in together. “A friend of mine, now dead, spoke of him to me as a respectable young fellow who had fallen in the world, and asked if I could help him to some employment. I think he told me somewhat of his history; but I quite forget it. I know he was very low down then, with scarcely bread to eat.”
“Did this friend of yours call him Gorton or Gordon?” interrupted Mr. Carr.
“Gorton. I never heard him called Gordon at all. I remember seeing a book of his that he seemed to set some store by. It was printed in old English, and had his name on the title-page: ‘George Gorton. From his affectionate father, W. Gorton.’ I employed him in some outdoor work. He knew London perfectly well, and seemed to know people too.”
“And he had been to Australia?”
“He had been to Australia, I feel sure. One day he accidentally let slip some words about Melbourne, which he could not well have done unless he had seen the place. I taxed him with it, and he shuffled out of it with some excuse; but in such a manner as to convince me he had been there.”
“And now, Mr. Kimberly, I am going to ask you another question. You spoke of his having been at Calne; I infer that you sent him to the place on the errand to Mr. Elster. Try to recollect whether his going there was your own spontaneous act, or whether he was the original mover in the journey?”
The grey-haired clerk looked up as though not understanding.
“You don’t quite take me, I see.”
“Yes I do, sir; but I was thinking. So far as I can recollect, it was our own spontaneous act. I am sure I had no reason to think otherwise at the time. We had had a deal of trouble with the Honourable Mr. Elster; and when it was found that he had left town for the family seat, we came to the resolution to arrest him.”
Thomas Carr paused. “Do you know anything of Gordon’s — or Gorton’s doings in Calne? Did you ever hear him speak of them afterwards?”
“I don’t know that I did particularly. The excuse he made to us for arresting Lord Hartledon was, that the brothers were so much alike he mistook the one for the other.”
“Which would infer that he knew Mr. Elster by sight.”
“It might; yes. It was not for the mistake that we discharged him; indeed, not for anything at all connected with Calne. He did seem to have gone about his business there in a very loose way, and to have paid less attention to our interests than to the gossip of the place; of which there was a tolerable amount just then, on account of Lord Hartledon’s unfortunate death. Gorton was set upon another job or two when he returned; and one of those he contrived to mismanage so woefully, that I would give him no more to do. It struck me that he must drink, or else was accessible to a bribe.”
Mr. Carr nodded his head, thinking the latter more than probable. His fingers were playing with a newspaper which happened to lie on the clerk’s desk; and he put the next question with a very well-assumed air of carelessness, as if it were but the passing thought of the moment.
“Did he ever talk about Mr. Elster?”
“Never but once. He came to my house one evening to tell me he had discovered the hiding-place of a gentleman we were looking for. I was taking my solitary glass of gin and water after supper, the only stimulant I ever touch — and that by the doctor’s orders — and I could not do less than ask him to help himself. You see, sir, we did not look upon him as a common sheriff’s man: and he helped himself pretty freely. That made him talkative. I fancy his head cannot stand much; and he began rambling upon recent affairs at Calne; he had not been back above a week then—”
“And he spoke of Mr. Elster?”
“He spoke a good deal of him as the new Lord Hartledon, all in a rambling sort of way. He hinted that it might be in his power to bring home to him some great crime.”
“The man must have been drunk indeed!” remarked Mr. Carr, with the most perfect assumption of indifference; a very contrast to the fear that shot through his heart. “What crime, pray? I hope he particularized it.”
“What he seemed to hint at was
some unfair play in connection with his brother’s death,” said the old clerk, lowering his voice. “‘A man at his wits’ end for money would do many queer things,’ he remarked.”
Mr. Carr’s eyes flashed. “What a dangerous fool he must be! You surely did not listen to him!”
“I, sir! I stopped him pretty quickly, and bade him sew up his mouth until he came to his sober senses again. Oh, they make great simpletons of themselves, some of these young fellows, when they get a little drink into them.”
“They do,” said the barrister. “Did he ever allude to the matter again?”
“Never; and when I saw him the next day, he seemed ashamed of himself, and asked if he had not been talking a lot of nonsense. About a fortnight after that we parted, and I have never seen him since.”
“And you really do not know what has become of him?”
“Not at all. I should think he has left London.”
“Why?”
“Because had he remained in it he’d be sure to have come bothering me to employ him again; unless, indeed, he has found some one else to do it.”
“Well,” said Mr. Carr, rising, “will you do me this favour? If you come across the man again, or learn tidings of him in any way, let me know it at once. I do not want him to hear of me, or that I have made inquiries about him. I only wish to ascertain where he is, if that be possible. Any one bringing me this information privately will find it well worth his while.”
He went forth into the busy streets again, sick at heart; and upon reaching his chambers wrote a note for a detective officer, and put some business into his hands.