Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  On that same evening, Mr. Bede Greatorex arrived at the station by the six o’clock train from London; took a fly, and was driven to the Star and Garter Hotel. He was the son of old Mr. Greatorex, and the second partner in the firm. His journey down had reference to the next day’s action: something new had unexpectedly arisen; some slight information been gained of a favourable nature, and Mr. Greatorex, senior, had despatched his son to confer with Mr. Ollivera in preference to writing or telegraphing. Bede Greatorex was nothing loth, and entered on his flying journey with high good humour, intending to be back in London by the following mid-day. He was a tall, fine-looking man, in face not unlike Mr. Ollivera, except that his hair and eyes were dark, and his complexion a clear, pale olive; his age about thirty-four. The cousins were cordial friends.

  On arriving at the Star and Garter he declined refreshment then, having taken an early dinner before leaving town, and asked to be directed to Mr. Ollivera’s lodgings in High Street: which was readily done, High Street being in a direct line with the hotel. Mr. Bede Greatorex gained the house, and found it to be one of commodious proportions, the lower part occupied as a hosier’s shop, whose windows were of plate glass. Over the door in the middle was inscribed “Richard Jones, hosier and patent shirt-front maker.” There was a side entrance, wide and rather handsome; the house altogether being a good one. Ringing at the side bell, he enquired of the answering servant for Mr. Ollivera, and was at once shown up to him.

  Mr. Ollivera was seated at the table, his back to the door. The papers he had been engaged upon were neatly stacked now, as if done with; he appeared to be writing a note; and a pistol lay at his elbow. All this was shown both to Mr. Bede Greatorex and the maid, by the bright flame of the moderator lamp, then lighted.

  “Well, John!” cried the visitor, in a gay, laughing tone, before the girl could speak. “Don’t be surprised at seeing me.”

  Mr. Ollivera turned round at the voice and evidently was surprised: surprised and pleased.

  “Why, Bede!” he cried, starting up. “I’d as soon have expected to see a ghost.”

  They shook hands heartily, and Mr. Bede Greatorex sat down. The maid, to save coming up again to ask, took the opportunity of inquiring when Mr. Ollivera would like tea; and was answered that he might not want any; if he did, he’d ring: he might be going out. As the servant shut the door she heard the visitor begin to explain his errand, and that his father had sent him in preference to writing. Her ears were always full of curiosity.

  In about an hour’s time, Mr. Bede Greatorex departed. A young man belonging to the house, Alfred Jones, who happened to be passing up the stairs when Mr. Greatorex was quitting the drawing-room, heard that gentleman make an appointment with Mr. Ollivera for the morning.

  Mr. Bede Greatorex walked back to the hotel, ordered a fire made in his bed-room against night, took a glass of brandy-and-water, for he felt cold, washed the travelling dust off his face and hands, which he had not done before, had his coat brushed, and went out again. It was nine o’clock then, and he bent his steps quickly towards the cathedral to call on Mrs. Joliffe, having to inquire the way. It took him through High Street again, and as he passed his cousin’s lodgings, the same servant who had shown him in was standing at the front-door, recognized him and dropped a curtsey.

  In the drawing-room with Mrs. Joliffe were her three daughters, Louisa, Clare, and Mary; some three or four friends were also assembled. They were astonished to see Mr. Bede Greatorex: none of them knew him well, except Louisa, who had paid a long visit to his father’s house the previous year. She changed colour when he was announced: and it may have been that his voice took a tenderer tone as it addressed her; his hand lingered longer in clasping hers than it need have done. She was an excessively fashionable young lady: not very young, perhaps six or seven-and-twenty: and if Bede Greatorex coveted her for a wife it was to be hoped his pockets were well lined. He spoke just a word to Mrs. Joliffe of having come down on a mission to Mr. Ollivera; not stating explicitly what it was; and said he was going back home in the morning.

  “We are expecting Mr. Ollivera here to-night,” observed Mrs. Joliffe. “He is late.”

  “Are you?” was the reply of Mr. Greatorex. “John said he might be going out, I remember, but I did not know it was to your house. Don’t make too sure of him, Mrs. Joliffe. He seemed idle, and complained of headache.”

  “I suppose he is busy,” remarked Mrs. Joliffe. “All you law people are busy at assize time.”

  “Louisa, is it as it should be between us?” whispered Bede Greatorex, in an opportunity that occurred when they were alone near the piano.

  “Don’t be silly, Mr. Greatorex,” was the answer.

  “Silly!”

  She bent her head, not speaking.

  “What do you mean, Louisa? Our engagement was entered upon deliberately: you gave me every hope. You cannot play with me now. Speak Louisa.”

  He had taken possession of her hand, and was keeping her before him; his dark eyes, gleaming with their doubt and love, looked straight into hers.

  “What?” she faintly asked. “Why do you question it?”

  “Because your manner is strange: you have avoided me ever since I came in.”

  “The surprise was so great.”

  “Surely a pleasant surprise. I intended it as such. Do you suppose I should have cared to come down on this business to Mr. Ollivera, when writing would have answered every purpose? No: I came to see you. And to learn why—”

  “Not now. Don’t you see mamma is looking at me?”

  “And what though she is? I should have liked to speak to your mother to-night, but for—”

  “Not to-night. I pray you not to-night. Take another opportunity.”

  The words reassured him.

  “Then, Louisa, it is all right between us.”

  “Yes, yes, of course it is. You offended me, Bede, last January, and I — I have been vexed. I’ll write to you as soon as you get back home, and explain everything.”

  He pressed her hand with a lingering touch, and then released it. There was nothing in the wide world so coveted by Bede Greatorex as that false hand of hers: as many things, fair outside, false within, are coveted by us poor mortals, blind at the best. But Miss Joliffe looked half scared as she left him for a safer part of the room; her eyes and manner were alike restless. Bede followed her, and they were talking together at intervals in an under tone during the rest of the evening, Louisa being evidently ill at ease, but striving to conceal it.

  At a quarter to eleven Mr. Bede Greatorex took his departure. In passing up High Street, his cousin’s lodgings were on the opposite side of the way. He momentarily halted and stepped off the pavement as if he would have crossed to go in, and then hesitated, for the sitting-room was in darkness.

  “The light’s out: he’s gone to bed, I dare say,” said Mr. Greatorex, speaking aloud. “No good to disturb him.” And a tradesman, who happened to be fastening his side-door and had got it about an inch open, overheard the words, Mr. Greatorex having doubtless been quite unaware that he spoke to an auditor.

  Towards the top of High Street he met Mr. Kene, the barrister. The latter, after expressing some surprised seeing him, and assuming he had come direct from Mr. Ollivera’s, asked whether the latter was in.

  “In, and in bed,” replied Mr. Greatorex.

  “Indeed! Why, it’s not eleven o’clock.”

  “At any rate, there’s no light in his room, or I should have gone up. He complained of headache: perhaps he has gone to bed early to sleep it off.”

  “I want to see him particularly,” said the barrister. “Are you sure he is in bed?”

  “You can go and ascertain, Kene. Ring the people of the house up, should they have gone to bed too. I could see no light anywhere.”

  Mr. Kene did not care to ring people up, and decided to leave his business with Mr. Ollivera until the morning. He had been dining with some fellows, he said, and had no idea how the time was runnin
g on. Linking his arm within that of Bede Greatorex, they walked together to the Star, and there parted. Mr.

  Greatorex went up at once to his chamber, stirred the fire into a blaze, rang for the waiter, and ordered another glass of hot brandy-and-water.

  “I think I must have taken cold,” he observed to the man when it was brought to him. “There has been a chill upon me ever since I came here.”

  “Nothing more likely, sir,” returned the waiter. “Them trains are such draughty things.”

  However, Mr. Greatorex hoped he should be all right in the morning. He gave directions to be called at a quarter before eight, and the night wore on.

  Some time before that hour chimed out from the cathedral clock, when the morning had come, he found himself aroused by a knocking at his door. A waiter, speaking from the outside, said that something had happened to Mr. Ollivera. Mr. Bede Greatorex, thinking the words odd, and not best pleased to be thus summarily disturbed, possibly from dreams of Louisa Joliffe, called out from the downy pillow (in rather a cross tone, it must be confessed) to know what had happened to Mr. Ollivera: and was answered that he was dead.

  Springing out of bed, and dressing himself quickly, Bede Greatorex went down stairs, and found that Kene, who had brought the news, was gone again, leaving word that he had gone back to High Street. Mr. Greatorex hastened to follow him.

  The tale to be told was very singular, very sad, and Bede Greatorex could not help shivering as he heard it. His cold was upon him still. It appeared that nothing more had been seen or heard of Mr. Ollivera after Mr. Greatorex left him the previous evening. Mrs. Jones, the mistress of the house, had gone out at seven, when the shop closed, to sit by the bedside of a dying relative; her sister, Miss Rye, was also out; the maid left in charge, the only servant the house kept, had taken the opportunity to spend her time in the street; standing now at her own door, now at other doors half a score yards off, as she could get neighbours’ servants to gossip with. About halfpast ten it occurred to the maid that she might as well go up and enquire if Mr. Ollivera wanted anything: perhaps the fact of his not having rung at all struck her as singular. She knew he had not gone out, or she must have seen him, for she had contrived to keep a tolerably steady look-out on the street-door, however far she had wandered from it. Up she went, knocked at the door, got no answer, opened it, saw that the room was in darkness, and regarded it as a sure proof that Mr. Ollivera had left the room for the night, for he never put the lamp out in any other case.

  “He’s gone to bed early to-night,” thought the girl, shutting the door again. “I hope to goodness he didn’t ring, and me not hear it. Wouldn’t missis fly out at me!”

  And when Mrs. Jones came in, as she did soon after the girl got down stairs again, and enquired after Mr. Ollivera, she was told he had gone to bed.

  Now it appeared that Miss Rye sat over the sitting-room fire (a parlour behind the shop, underneath Mr. Ollivera’s bed-room) for some time after the rest of the house had retired to rest. When at length she went to bed, she was unable to sleep. Towards morning she dropped into a doze, and was awakened (according to her own account) by a dream. A very vivid dream, that startled and unnerved her. She dreamt she saw Mr. Ollivera in his sitting-room — dead. And, as she seemed to look at him, a terrible amount of self-reproach, far greater than any she could ever experience in life, rushed over her mind, for not having gone in earlier to discover him. It was this feeling that awoke her: it had seemed that he cast it on her, that it came out direct to her from his dead presence, cold and lifeless though he was. So real did it all appear, that for some minutes after Miss Rye awoke, she could not believe it to be only a dream. Turning to look at her watch she saw it was half-past six, and the sun had risen. An early riser always, for she had to get her living by dress-making, Miss Rye got up and dressed herself: but she could not throw off the impression made upon her; and a little before seven she went down and opened the door of Mr. Ollivera’s sitting-room. Not so much to see whether it might be true, or not, as to show to herself by ocular demonstration that it was not true: she might forget the impression then.

  But it was true. What was Miss Rye’s horror and astonishment at seeing him, Mr. Ollivera, there! At the first moment of opening the door, she observed nothing unusual. The white blinds were down before the windows; the tables, chairs, other furniture were as customary; but as she stood looking in, she saw in an easy chair near the table, whose back was towards her, the head of Mr. Ollivera. With a strange bounding-on of all her pulses; with a dread fear at her heart, that caused it to cease beating, Miss Rye went in and looked at him, and then flew out of the room, uttering startled cries.

  The cries arose the house. Mrs. Jones, the young man Alfred Jones, and the servant-maid came flocking forth: the two former were nearly dressed; the maid had been about her work down-stairs. Mr. Ollivera lay back in the easy-chair, dead and cold. The right arm hung down over the side, and immediately underneath it on the carpet, looking as if it had dropped from the hand, lay the discharged pistol.

  The servant and Alfred Jones ran two ways: the one for a doctor, the other to Mr. Kene the barrister, who had been intimate with Mr. Ollivera; Mrs. Jones, a shrewd, clever woman, locking the room up exactly as it was, until they should arrive.

  But now, by a singular coincidence, it happened that Mr. Butterby, abroad betimes, was the first to meet the running servant-maid, and consequently, he was first on the scene. The doctor and Mr. Kene came next, and then Bede Greatorex. Such was the story as it greeted Bede’s ears.

  On the table, just as both he and the servant had seen them the night before, were the neatly-stacked law papers. Also a folded legal document that had been brought from town by himself, Bede Greatorex. There were also pens, ink, and a sheet of note-paper, on which some lines were written. They were as follows: —

  “MY DEAR FRIEND, — It is of no use. Nothing more can be done. Should I never see you again, I beg you once for all to believe me when I say that I have made efforts, though they have been ineffectual. And when “The pistol is ready to my hand. Good-bye.”

  The first portion of this letter, up to the point of the abrupt breaking off, was written in Mr. Ollivera’s usual steady hand. The latter portion was scrawling, trembling, and blotted; the writing bearing but a faint resemblance to the rest. Acute Mr. Butterby remarked that it was just the kind of writing an agitated man might pen, who was about to commit an evil deed. There was no clue as to whom the note had been intended for, but it appeared to point too evidently to the intention of self-destruction. Nevertheless, there was one at least who doubted.

  “Is it so, think you?” asked Mr. Kene, in a low tone, as he stood by the side of Bede Greatorex, who was mechanically turning over the papers on the table one by one.

  “Is it what?” asked Bede, looking up, his tone sharp with pain.

  “Self-destruction. There never lived a man less likely to commit it than your cousin, John Ollivera.”

  “As I should have thought,” returned Mr. Greatorex. “But if it is not that, what else can it be?”

  “There is one other possible solution, at least: putting any idea of accident aside.”

  The supposition of accident had not occurred to Bede Greatorex. A gleam of surprised cheerfulness crossed his face.

  “Do you indeed think it could have been an accident, Kene? Then—”

  “No; I think it could not have been,” interrupted the barrister. “I said, putting the idea of that aside: it is the most improbable of any. I alluded to the other alternative.”

  Mr. Greatorex understood his meaning, and shrunk from its unpleasantness. “Who would harm Ollivera, Kene? He had not an enemy in the world.”

  “So far as we know. But I declare to you, Greatorex, I think it the more likely thing of the two.”

  Bede Greatorex shook his head. The facts, so far as they were yet disclosed, seemed decisive and unmistakable.

  They passed into the bed-room. It was all just as the servant had left i
t the past evening, ready for the occupation of Mr. Ollivera. On a small table lay his Prayer-book, and the pocket Bible he was wont to carry with him in travelling. Bede Greatorex felt a sudden faintness steal over him as he looked, and leaned for a few moments against the wall.

  But he had no time for indulging grief. He went out, enquired for the telegraph office, and sent a message with the news to his father in town, softening it as well as circumstances allowed: as we all like to do at first when ill news has to be told. He simply stated that John (the familiar name Mr. Ollivera was known by at home) had died suddenly. The message brought down his brother, Frank Greatorex, some hours later.

  To say that the town was thrown into a commotion almost equal to that of Mrs. Jones’s house, would be superfluous. A young barrister, known to many of the inhabitants, who had come in with the judges only on Saturday; who was to have led in a cause in the Nisi Prius Court on that very morning, Tuesday, and to be junior in another cause set down for Wednesday, in which Mr. Kene, the experienced and renowned Queen’s Counsel, led, had been found dead! And by such a death! It took the public by storm. Mrs. Jones’s shop was besieged to an extent that she had to put up her shutters: High Street was impassable: and all those in the remotest degree connected with the deceased or with the circumstances, were followed about and stared at as though they were wild animals. Five hundred conjectures were hazarded and spoken: five hundred tales told that had no foundation. Perhaps the better way to collect the various items of fact together for the reader, will be to transcribe some of the evidence given before the coroner. The inquest was fixed to take place on the Wednesday morning, in the club-room of an inn lying conveniently near.