by Ellen Wood
That morning was destined to be one of elucidation. Mr. Tamlyn was in the surgery, saying a last word to Dr. Knox before the latter went out to visit his patients, when Lettice Lane marched in. She looked so fresh and innocent that three parts of Tamlyn’s suspicions of her melted away.
“Anything amiss at home?” asked he.
“No, sir,” replied Lettice, “I have only brought this note” — handing one in. “Madame St. Vincent told the butler to bring it; but his pains are worse this morning; and, as I chanced to be coming out at the moment, he asked me to leave it here for him.”
“Wait an instant,” said Mr. Tamlyn, as he opened the note.
It contained nothing of consequence. Madame St. Vincent had written to say that Lady Jenkins was pretty well, but had finished her medicine: perhaps Mr. Tamlyn would send her some more. Old Tamlyn’s injunction to wait an instant had been given in consequence of a sudden resolution he had then come to (as he phrased it in his mind), to “tackle” Lettice.
“Lettice Lane,” he began, winking at Dr. Knox, “your mistress’s state is giving us concern. She seems to be always sleeping.”
“She is nearly always dozing off, sir,” replied Lettice, her tone and looks open and honest as the day.
“Ay. I can’t quite come to the bottom of it,” returned old Tamlyn, making believe to be confidential. “To me, it looks just as though she took — took opiates.”
“Opiates, sir?” repeated Lettice, as if she hardly understood the word: while Dr. Knox, behind the desk, was glancing keenly at her from underneath his compressed eyebrows.
“Opium. Laudanum.”
Lettice shook her head. “No, sir, my mistress does not take anything of that sort, I am sure; we have nothing of the kind in the house. But Madame St. Vincent is for ever dosing her with brandy-and-water.”
“What?” shouted old Tamlyn.
“I have said a long while, sir, that I thought you ought to know it; I’ve said so to the housemaid. I don’t believe an hour hardly passes, day or night, but madame administers to her a drop of brandy-and-water. Half a wine-glass, maybe, or a full wine-glass, as the case may happen; and sometimes I know it’s pretty strong.”
“That’s it,” said Dr. Knox quietly: and a curious smile crossed his face.
Mr. Tamlyn sat down on the stool in consternation. “Brandy-and-water!” he repeated, more than once, “Perpetually dosed with brandy-and-water! And now, Lettice Lane, how is it you have not come here before to tell me of this?”
“I did not come to tell you now, sir,” returned Lettice. “Madame St. Vincent says that Lady Jenkins needs it: she seems to give it her for her good. It is only lately that I have doubted whether it can be right. I have not liked to say anything: servants don’t care to interfere. Ten times a-day she will give her these drops of cold brandy-and-water: and I know she gets up for the same purpose once or twice in the night.”
“Does Lady Jenkins take it without remonstrance?” asked Dr. Knox, speaking for the first time.
“She does, sir, now. At first she did not. Many a time I have heard my lady say, ‘Do you think so much brandy can be good for me, Patty? I feel so dull after it,’ and Madame St. Vincent has replied, that it is the only thing that can get her strength back and bring her round.”
“The jade!” spoke Dr. Knox, between his teeth. “And to assure us both that all the old lady took was a drop of it weak twice a-day at her meals! Lettice Lane,” he added aloud, and there was a great sternness in his tone, “you are to blame for not having spoken of this. A little longer silence, and it might have cost your mistress her life.” And Lettice went out in contrition.
“What can the woman’s motive be, for thus dosing her into stupidity?” spoke the one doctor to the other when they were shut in together.
“That: the dosing her into it,” said Dr. Knox.
“But the motive, Arnold? — the reason? She must have had a motive.”
“That remains to be found out.”
It turned out to be too true. The culprit was Madame St. Vincent. She had been administering these constant doses of brandy-and-water for months. Not giving enough at a time to put Lady Jenkins into a state of intoxication; only to reduce her to a chronic state of semi-stupidity.
Tod called me, as I tell you, a muff: first for not knowing Madame St. Vincent; and next for thinking to screen her. Of course this revelation of Lettice Lane’s had put a new complexion upon things. I left the matter with Tod, and he told the doctors at once: Madame St. Vincent was, or used to be, Martha Jane Pell, own sister to Captain Collinson the false.
III.
Quietly knocking at the door of Jenkins House this same sunny morning went three gentlemen: old Tamlyn, Mr. Lawrence, and Joseph Todhetley. Mr. Lawrence was a magistrate and ex-mayor; he had preceded the late Sir Daniel Jenkins in the civic chair, and was intimate with him as a brother. Just as old Tamlyn tackled Lettice, so they were now about to tackle Madame St. Vincent on the score of the brandy-and-water; and they had deemed it advisable to take Tod with them.
Lady Jenkins was better than usual; rather less stupid. She was seated with madame in the cheerful garden-room, its glass-doors standing open to the sunshine and the flowers. The visitors were cordially received; it was supposed they had only come to pay a morning visit. Madame St. Vincent sat behind a table in the corner, writing notes of invitation for a soirée, to be held that day week. Tod, who had his wits about him, went straight up to her. It must be remembered that they had not yet met.
“Ah! how are you?” cried he, holding out his hand. “Surprised to see you here.” And she turned white, and stared, uncertain how to take his words, or whether he had really recognized her, and bowed stiffly as to a stranger, and never put out her own hand in answer.
I cannot tell you much about the interview: Tod’s account to me was not very clear. Lady Jenkins began talking about Captain Collinson — that he had turned out to be some unworthy man of the name of Pell, and had endeavoured to kidnap poor little Mina. Charlotte Knox imparted the news to her that morning, in defiance of Madame St. Vincent, who had tried to prevent her. Madame had said it must be altogether some mistake, and that no doubt Captain Collinson would be able to explain: but she, Lady Jenkins, did not know. After that there was a pause; Lady Jenkins shut her eyes, and madame went on writing her notes.
It was old Tamlyn who opened the ball. He drew his chair nearer the old lady, and spoke out without circumlocution.
“What is this that we hear about your taking so much brandy-and-water?”
“Eh?” cried the old lady, opening her eyes. Madame paused in her writing, and looked up. Tamlyn waited for an answer.
“Lady Jenkins does not take much brandy-and-water,” cried madame.
“I am speaking to Lady Jenkins, madame,” returned old Tamlyn, severely: “be so kind as not to interfere. My dear lady, listen to me” — taking her hand; “I am come here with your life-long old friend, William Lawrence, to talk to you. We have reason to believe that you continually take, and have taken for some time past, small doses of brandy-and-water. Is it so?”
“Patty gives it me,” cried Lady Jenkins, looking first at them and then at Patty, in a helpless sort of manner.
“Just so: we know she does. But, are you aware that brandy-and-water, taken in this way, is so much poison?”
“Tell them, Patty, that you give it me for my good,” said the poor lady, in affectionate appeal.
“Yes, it is for your good, dear Lady Jenkins,” resentfully affirmed Madame St. Vincent, regarding the company with flashing eyes. “Does any one dare to suppose that I should give Lady Jenkins sufficient to hurt her? I may be allowed, I presume, as her ladyship’s close companion, constantly watching her, to be the best judge of what is proper for her to take.”
Well, a shindy ensued — as Tod called it — all of them talking altogether, except himself and poor Lady Jenkins: and madame defying every one and everything. They told her that she could no longer be trusted wi
th Lady Jenkins; that she must leave the house that day; and when madame defied this with a double defiance, the magistrate intimated that he had come up to enforce the measure, if necessary, and he meant to stay there until she was gone.
She saw it was serious then, and the defiant tone changed. “What I have given Lady Jenkins has been for her good,” she said; “to do her good. But for being supported by a little brandy-and-water, the system could never have held out after that serious attack she had in Boulogne. I have prolonged her life.”
“No, madame, you have been doing your best to shorten her life,” corrected old Tamlyn. “A little brandy-and-water, as you term it, might have been good for her while she was recovering her strength, but you have gone beyond the little; you have made her life a constant lethargy; you would shortly have killed her. What your motive was, Heaven knows.”
“My motive was a kind one,” flashed madame. “Out of this house I will not go.”
So, upon that, they played their trump card, and informed Lady Jenkins, who was crying softly, that this lady was the sister of the impostor, Collinson. The very helplessness, the utter docility to which the treatment had reduced her, prevented her expressing (and most probably feeling) any dissent. She yielded passively to all, like a child, and told Patty that she must go, as her old friends said so.
A bitter pill for madame to take. But she could not help herself.
“You will be as well as ever in a little time,” Tamlyn said to Lady Jenkins. “You would have died, had this gone on: it must have induced some malady or other from which you could not have rallied.”
Madame St. Vincent went out of the house that afternoon, and Cattledon entered it. She had offered herself to Lady Jenkins for a few days in the emergency.
It was, perhaps, curious that I should meet Madame St. Vincent before she left the town. Janet was in trouble over a basket of butter and fowls that had been sent her by one of the country patients, and of which the railway people denied the arrival. I went again to the station in the afternoon to see whether they had news of it: and there, seated on the platform bench, her boxes around her, and waiting for the London train, was madame.
I showed myself as respectful to her as ever, for you can’t humiliate fallen people to their faces, telling her, in the pleasantest way I could, that I was sorry things had turned out so. The tone seemed to tell upon her, and she burst into tears. I never saw a woman so subdued in the space of a few hours.
“I have been treated shamefully, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, gulping down her sobs. “Day and night for the past nine months have I been about Lady Jenkins, wearing myself out in attendance on her. The poor old lady had learnt to love me and to depend upon me. I was like a daughter to her.”
“I dare say,” I answered, conveniently ignoring the dosing.
“And what I gave her, I gave her for the best,” went on madame. “It was for the best. People seventy years old need it. Their nerves and system require soothing: to induce sleep now and then is a boon to them. It was a boon to her, poor old thing. And this is my recompense! — turned from the house like a dog!”
“It does seem hard.”
“Seem! It is hard. I have had nothing but hardships all my life,” she continued, lifting her veil to wipe away the tears. “Where I am to go now, or how make a living, I know not. They told me I need not apply to Lady Jenkins for references: and ladies won’t engage a companion who has none.”
“Is your husband really dead?” I ventured to ask.
“My poor husband is really dead, Johnny Ludlow — I don’t know why you should imply a doubt of it. He left me nothing: he had nothing to leave. He was only a master in the college at Brétage — a place in the South of France — and he died, I verily believe, of poor living. We had not been married twelve months. I had a little baby, and that died. Oh, I assure you I have had my troubles.”
“How are — Mr. and Mrs. Clement-Pell?” I next asked, with hesitation. “And Conny? — and the rest of them?”
“Oh, they were well when I last heard,” she answered, slightingly. “I don’t hear often. Foreign postage is expensive. Conny was to have come here shortly on a visit.”
“Where is Gusty? Is — —”
“I know nothing at all about my brothers,” she interrupted sharply. “And this, I suppose, is my train. Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow; you and I at least can part friends. You are always kind. I wish the world was like you.”
I saw her into the carriage — first-class — and her boxes into the van. And thus she disappeared from Lefford. And her brother, “Captain Collinson,” as we found later, had taken his departure for London by an early morning train, telling little Pink, his landlord, as he paid his week’s rent, that he was going up to attend a levee.
It was found that the rumour of his engagement to Miss Belmont was altogether untrue. Miss Belmont was rather indignant about it, freely saying that she was ten years his senior. He had never hinted at such a thing to her, and she should have stopped him if he had. We concluded that the report had been set afloat by himself, to take attention from his pursuit of Mina Knox.
Madame St. Vincent had feathered her nest. As the days went on, and Lady Jenkins grew clearer, better able to see a little into matters, she could not at all account for the money that had been drawn from the bank. Cheque after cheque had been presented and cashed; and not one-tenth of the money could have been spent upon home expenses. Lady Jenkins had been always signing cheques; she remembered that much; never so much as asking, in her loss of will, what they were needed for. “I want a cheque to-day, dear Lady Jenkins,” her companion would say, producing the cheque-book from her desk; and Lady Jenkins would docilely sign it. That a great portion of the proceeds had found their way to Mr. Fabian Pell was looked upon as a certainty.
And to obtaining this money might be traced the motive for dosing Lady Jenkins. Once let her intellect become clear, her will reassert itself, and the game would be stopped. Madame St. Vincent had also another scheme in her head — for the past month or two she had been trying to persuade Lady Jenkins to make a codicil to her will, leaving her a few thousand pounds. Lady Jenkins might have fallen blindly into that; but they had not as yet been able to agree upon the details: Madame St. Vincent urging that a lawyer should be called in from a distance; Lady Jenkins clinging to old Belford. That this codicil would have been made in time, and by the remote lawyer, there existed no doubt whatever.
Ah, well: it was a deep-laid plot altogether. And my visit to Lefford, with Tod’s later one, had served, under Heaven, to frustrate it.
Lady Jenkins grew rapidly better, now that she was no longer drugged. In a few days she was herself again. Cattledon came out amazingly strong in the way of care and kindness, and was gracious to every one, even to Lettice.
“She always forbade me to say that I took the brandy-and-water,” Lady Jenkins said to me one day when I was sitting with her under the laburnum tree on her lawn, talking of the past, her bright green silk dress and pink cap ribbons glistening in the sun. “She made my will hers. In other respects she was as kind as she could be to me.”
“That must have been part of her plan,” I answered. “It was the great kindness that won you to her. After that, she took care that you should have no will of your own.”
“And the poor thing might have been so happy with me had she only chosen to be straightforward, and not try to play tricks! I gave her a handsome salary, and new gowns besides; and I don’t suppose I should have forgotten her at my death.”
“Well, it is all over, dear Lady Jenkins, and you will be just as well and brisk as you used to be.”
“Not quite that, Johnny,” she said, shaking her head; “I cannot expect that. At seventy, grim old age is laying its hand upon us. What we need then, my dear,” she added, turning her kindly blue eyes upon me, in which the tears were gathering, “is to go to the mill to be ground young again. And that is a mill that does not exist in this world.”
“Ah no!”
The first use Lady Jenkins made of her liberty was to invite all her relations, the young nephews and nieces, up to dinner, as she used to do. Madame St. Vincent had set her face against these family entertainments, and they had fallen through. The ex-mayor, William Lawrence, and his good old wife, made part of the company, as did Dr. Knox and Janet. Lady Jenkins beamed on them once more from her place at the head of the table, and Tamlyn sat at the foot and served the big plum-pudding.
“Never more, I trust, shall I be estranged from you, my dears, until it pleases Heaven to bring about the final estrangement,” she said to the young people when they were leaving. And she gave them all a sovereign a-piece.
Cattledon could not remain on for ever. Miss Deveen wanted her: so Mina Knox went to stay at Jenkins House, until a suitable lady should be found to replace Madame St. Vincent. Upon that, Dan Jenkins was taken with an anxious solicitude for his aunt’s health, and was for ever finding his way up to inquire after it.
“You will never care to notice me again, Dan,” Mina said to him, with a swelling heart and throat, one day when he was tilting himself by her on the arm of the sofa.
“Shan’t I!” returned Dan.
“Oh, I am so ashamed of my folly; I feel more ashamed of it, day by day,” cried Mina, bursting into tears. “I shall never, never get over the mortification.”
“Won’t you!” added Dan.
“And I never liked him much: I think I dis-liked him. At first I did dislike him; only he kept saying how fond he was of me; and Madame St. Vincent was always praising him up. And you know he was all the fashion.”