by Ellen Wood
Mr. Duffham released the hands. Looking back in reflection, he had little doubt it was as she said — that Monk had done it out of pure sport, not intending ill.
“He might have confessed: it would have been more honest. And you! why did you deny that it was Monk?”
Mrs. Picker at first could only stare in reply. Confess to it? Him? What, and run the risk o’ being put into ancuffs by that there Jones with his fat legs? And she! a poor old widder? If Monk went and said he didn’t do it, she couldn’t go and say he did. Doctor Duff’m might see as there were no choice left for her. Never should she forget the fright when the two young gents come in with their querries the next day; her fingers was took with the palsy and dropped the pudd’n basin, as she’d had fifteen year. Monk, poor fellow, couldn’t sleep for a peck o’ nights after, thinking o’ Phœbe.
“There; that’s enough,” said Mr. Duffham. “Who is Monk? Where does he come from?”
From the moon, for all Mrs. Picker knew. A civiler young man she’d not wish to have lodging with her; paid reg’lar as the Saturdays come round; but he never told her nothing about hisself.
“Which is his room? The one at the back, I suppose.”
Without saying with your leave, or by your leave, as Mrs. Picker phrased it in telling the story a long while afterwards, Mr. Duffham penetrated at once into the lodger’s room. There he took the liberty of making a slight examination, good Mrs. Picker standing by with round eyes and open mouth. And what he discovered caused him to stride off at once to the pater.
Roger Monk was not Monk at all, but somebody else. He had been implicated in some crime (whether guilty or not remained yet a question), and to avoid exposure had come away into this quiet locality under a false name. In short, during the time he had been working as gardener at Dyke Manor and living at Mother Picker’s, he was in hiding. As the son of a well-known and most respectable landscape and ornamental nursery-man, he had become thoroughly conversant with the requisite duties.
“They are fools, at the best, these fellows,” remarked Duffham, as he finished his narrative. “A letter written to him by some friend betrayed to me all this. Now why should not Monk have destroyed that letter, instead of keeping it in his room, Squire?”
The Squire did not answer. All he could do just now was to wipe his hot face and try to get over his amazement. Monk not a gardener or servant at all, but an educated man! Only living there to hide from the police; and calling himself by any name that came uppermost — which happened to be Monk!
“I must say there’s a certain credit due to him for his patient industry, and the perfection to which he has brought your grounds,” said Mr. Duffham.
“And for blighting all my hot-house plants at a blow — is there credit due to him for that?” roared out the Squire. “I’ll have him tried for it, as sure as my name’s Todhetley.”
It was easier said than done. For when Mr. Jones, receiving his private orders from the pater, went, staff in hand, to arrest Monk, that gentleman had already departed.
“He come into the house just as Dr. Duff’m left it,” explained Mrs. Picker. “Saying he had got to take a short journey, he put his things into his port-manty, and went off carrying of it, leaving me a week’s rent on the table.”
“Go and catch him, Jones,” sternly commanded the Squire, when the constable came back with the above news.
“Yes, your worship,” replied Jones. But how he was to do it, taking the gouty legs into consideration, was quite a different thing.
The men were sent off various ways. And came back again, not having come up with Monk. Squire Todhetley went into a rage, abused old Jones, and told him he was no longer worth his salt. But the strangest thing occurred in the evening.
The pater walked over to the Court after tea, carrying the grievance of his destroyed plants to the Sterlings. In coming up Dyke Lane as he returned at night, where it was always darker than in other places because the trees hid the moonlight, somebody seemed to walk right out of the hedge upon him.
It was Roger Monk. He raised his hat to the Squire as a gentleman does — did not touch it as a gardener — and began pleading for clemency.
“Clemency, after destroying a whole hot-houseful of rare plants!” cried the Squire.
“I never did it, sir,” returned Monk, passionately. “On my word as a man — I will not to you say as a gentleman — if the plants were not injured by the candles, as I fully believe, I know not how they could have been injured.”
The pater was staggered. At heart he was the best man living. Suppose Monk was innocent?
“Look here, Monk. You know your name is — —”
“Hush, sir!” interposed Monk, hastily, as if to prevent the hedges hearing the true name. “It is of that I have waited to speak to you; to beseech your clemency. I have no need to crave it in the matter of plants which I never harmed. I want to ask you to be silent, sir; not to proclaim to the world that I am other than what I appeared to be. A short while longer and I should have been able to prove my innocence; things are working round. But if you set the hue-and-cry upon me — —”
“Were you innocent?” interposed the Squire.
“I was; I swear it to you. Oh, Mr. Todhetley, think for a moment! I am not so very much older than your son; he is not more innocent than I was; but it might happen that he — I crave your pardon, sir, but it might — that he should become the companion of dissipated young men, and get mixed up unwittingly in a disgraceful affair, whose circumstances were so complicated that he could only fly for a time and hide himself. What would you say if the people with whom he took refuge, whether as servant or else, were to deliver him up to justice, and he stood before the world an accused felon? Sir, it is my case. Keep my secret; keep my secret, Mr. Todhetley.”
“And couldn’t you prove your innocence?” cried the Squire, as he followed out the train of ideas suggested.
“Not at present — that I see. And when once a man has stood at a criminal bar, it is a ban on him for life, although it may be afterwards shown he stood there wrongly.”
“True,” said the Squire, softening.
Well — for there’s no space to go on at length — the upshot was that Monk went away with a promise; and the Squire came home to the Manor and told Duffham, who was waiting there, that they must both be silent. Only those two knew of the discovery; they had kept the particulars and Monk’s real name to themselves. Duff gave his head a toss, and told the pater he was softer than old Jones.
“How came you to suspect him, Johnny?” he continued, turning on me in his sharp way.
“I think just for the same things that you did, Mr. Duffham — because neither his face nor his voice is true.”
And — remembering his look of revenge when accused in mistake for the magpie — I suspected him still.
THE EBONY BOX.
I.
In one or two of the papers already written for you, I have spoken of “Lawyer Cockermuth,” as he was usually styled by his fellow-townspeople at Worcester. I am now going to tell of something that happened in his family; that actually did happen, and is no invention of mine.
Lawyer Cockermuth’s house stood in the Foregate Street. He had practised in it for a good many years; he had never married, and his sister lived with him. She had been christened Betty; it was a more common name in those days than it is in these. There was a younger brother named Charles. They were tall, wiry men with long arms and legs. John, the lawyer, had a smiling, homely face; Charles was handsome, but given to be choleric.
Charles had served in the militia once, and had been ever since called Captain Cockermuth. When only twenty-one he married a young lady with a good bit of money; he had also a small income of his own; so he abandoned the law, to which he had been bred, and lived as a gentleman in a pretty little house on the outskirts of Worcester. His wife died in the course of a few years, leaving him with one child, a son, named Philip. The interest of Mrs. Charles Cockermuth’s money would be enjoyed
by her husband until his death, and then would go to Philip.
When Philip left school he was articled to his uncle, Lawyer Cockermuth, and took up his abode with him. Captain Cockermuth (who was of a restless disposition, and fond of roving), gave up his house then and went travelling about. Philip Cockermuth was a very nice steady young fellow, and his father was liberal to him in the way of pocket-money, allowing him a guinea a-week. Every Monday morning Lawyer Cockermuth handed (for his brother) to Philip a guinea in gold; the coin being in use then. Philip spent most of this in books, but he saved some of it; and by the time he was of age he had sixty golden guineas put aside in a small round black box of carved ebony. “What are you going to do with it, Philip?” asked Miss Cockermuth, as he brought it down from his room to show her. “I don’t know what yet, Aunt Betty,” said Philip, laughing. “I call it my nest-egg.”
He carried the little black box (the sixty guineas quite filled it), back to his chamber and put it back into one of the pigeon-holes of the old-fashioned bureau which stood in the room, where he always kept it, and left it there, the bureau locked as usual. After that time, Philip put his spare money, now increased by a salary, into the Old Bank; and it chanced that he did not again look at the ebony box of gold, never supposing but that it was safe in its hiding-place. On the occasion of his marriage some years later, he laughingly remarked to Aunt Betty that he must now take his box of guineas into use; and he went up to fetch it. The box was not there.
Consternation ensued. The family flocked upstairs; the lawyer, Miss Betty, and the captain — who had come to Worcester for the wedding, and was staying in the house — one and all put their hands into the deep, dark pigeon-holes, but failed to find the box. The captain, a hot-tempered man, flew into a passion and swore over it; Miss Betty shed tears; Lawyer Cockermuth, always cool and genial, shrugged his shoulders and absolutely joked. None of them could form the slightest notion as to how the box had gone or who was likely to have taken it, and it had to be given up as a bad job.
Philip was married the next day, and left his uncle’s house for good, having taken one out Barbourne way. Captain Cockermuth felt very sore about the loss of the box, he strode about Worcester talking of it, and swearing that he would send the thief to Botany Bay if he could find him.
A few years more yet, and poor Philip became ill. Ill of the disorder which had carried off his mother — decline. When Captain Cockermuth heard that his son was lying sick, he being (as usual) on his travels, he hastened to Worcester and took up his abode at his brother’s — always his home on these visits. The disease was making very quick progress indeed; it was what is called “rapid decline.” The captain called in all the famed doctors of the town — if they had not been called before: but there was no hope.
The day before Philip died, his father spoke to him about the box of guineas. It had always seemed to the captain that Philip must have, or ought to have, some notion of how it went. And he put the question to him again, solemnly, for the last time.
“Father,” said the dying man — who retained all his faculties and his speech to the very end— “I declare to you that I have none. I have never been able to set up any idea at all upon the loss, or attach suspicion to a soul, living or dead. The two maids were honest; they would not have touched it; the clerks had no opportunity of going upstairs. I had always kept the key safely, and you know that we found the lock of the bureau had not been tampered with.”
Poor Philip died. His widow and four children went to live at a pretty cottage on Malvern Link — upon a hundred pounds a-year, supplied to her by her father-in-law. Mr. Cockermuth added the best part of another hundred. These matters settled, Captain Cockermuth set off on his rovings again, considering himself hardly used by Fate at having his limited income docked of nearly half its value. And yet some more years passed on.
This much has been by way of introduction to what has to come. It was best to give it.
Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson, our neighbours at Dyke Manor, had a whole colony of nephews, what with brothers’ sons and sisters’ sons; of nieces also; batches of them would come over in relays to stay at Elm Farm, which had no children of its own. Samson Dene was the favourite nephew of all; his mother was sister to Mr. Jacobson, his father was dead. Samson Reginald Dene he was christened, but most people called him “Sam.” He had been articled to the gentleman who took to his father’s practice; a lawyer in a village in Oxfordshire. Later, he had gone to a firm in London for a year, had passed, and then came down to his uncle at Elm Farm, asking what he was to do next. For, upon his brother-in-law’s death, Mr. Jacobson had taken upon himself the expenses of Sam, the eldest son.
“Want to know what you are to do now, eh?” cried old Jacobson, who was smoking his evening pipe by the wide fire of the dark-wainscoted, handsome dining-parlour, one evening in February. He was a tall, portly man with a fresh-coloured, healthy face; and not, I dare say, far off sixty years old. “What would you like to do? — what is your own opinion upon it, Sam?”
“I should like to set up in practice for myself, uncle.”
“Oh, indeed! In what quarter of the globe, pray?”
“In Worcester. I have always wished to practise at Worcester. It is the assize town: I don’t care for pettifogging places: one can’t get on in them.”
“You’d like to emerge all at once into a full-blown lawyer there? That’s your notion, is it, Sam?”
Sam made no answer. He knew by the tone his notion was being laughed at.
“No, my lad. When you have been in some good office for another year or two maybe, then you might think about setting-up. The office can be in Worcester if you like.”
“I am hard upon twenty-three, Uncle Jacobson. I have as much knowledge of law as I need.”
“And as much steadiness also, perhaps?” said old Jacobson.
Sam turned as red as the table-cover. He was a frank-looking, slender young fellow of middle height, with fine wavy hair almost a gold colour and worn of a decent length. The present fashion — to be cropped as if you were a prison-bird and to pretend to like it so — was not favoured by gentlemen in those days.
“You may have been acquiring a knowledge of law in London, Sam; I hope you have; but you’ve been kicking up your heels over it. What about those sums of money you’ve more than once got out of your mother?”
Sam’s face was a deeper red than the cloth now. “Did she tell you of it, uncle?” he gasped.
“No, she didn’t; she cares too much for her graceless son to betray him. I chanced to hear of it, though.”
“One has to spend so much in London,” murmured Sam, in lame apology.
“I dare say! In my past days, sir, a young man had to cut his coat according to his cloth. We didn’t rush into all kinds of random games and then go to our fathers or mothers to help us out of them. Which is what you’ve been doing, my gentleman.”
“Does aunt know?” burst out Sam in a fright, as a step was heard on the stairs.
“I’ve not told her,” said Mr. Jacobson, listening— “she is gone on into the kitchen. How much is it that you’ve left owing in London, Sam?”
Sam nearly choked. He did not perceive this was just a random shot: he was wondering whether magic had been at work.
“Left owing in London?” stammered he.
“That’s what I asked. How much? And I mean to know. ‘Twon’t be of any use your fencing about the bush. Come! tell it in a lump.”
“Fifty pounds would cover it all, sir,” said Sam, driven by desperation into the avowal.
“I want the truth, Sam.”
“That is the truth, uncle, I put it all down in a list before leaving London; it comes to just under fifty pounds.”
“How could you be so wicked as to contract it?”
“There has not been much wickedness about it,” said Sam, miserably, “indeed there hasn’t. One gets drawn into expenses unconsciously in the most extraordinary manner up in London. Uncle Jacobson, you may believe me o
r not, when I say that until I added it up, I did not think it amounted to twenty pounds in all.”
“And then you found it to be fifty! How do you propose to pay this?”
“I intend to send it up by instalments, as I can.”
“Instead of doing which, you’ll get into deeper debt at Worcester. If it’s Worcester you go to.”
“I hope not, uncle. I shall do my best to keep out of debt. I mean to be steady.”
Mr. Jacobson filled a fresh pipe, and lighted it with a spill from the mantelpiece. He did not doubt the young fellow’s intentions; he only doubted his resolution.
“You shall go into some lawyer’s office in Worcester for two years, Sam, when we shall see how things turn out,” said he presently. “And, look here, I’ll pay these debts of yours myself, provided you promise me not to get into trouble again. There, no more” — interrupting Sam’s grateful looks— “your aunt’s coming in.”
Sam opened the door for Mrs. Jacobson. A little pleasant-faced woman in a white net cap, with small flat silver curls under it. She carried a small basket lined with blue silk, in which lay her knitting.
“I’ve been looking to your room, my dear, to see that all’s comfortable for you,” she said to Sam, as she sat down by the table and the candles. “That new housemaid of ours is not altogether to be trusted. I suppose you’ve been telling your uncle all about the wonders of London?”
“And something else, too,” put in old Jacobson gruffly. “He wanted to set up in practice for himself at Worcester: off-hand, red-hot!”
“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Jacobson.
“That’s what the boy wanted, nothing less. No. Another year or two’s work in some good house, to acquire stability and experience, and then he may talk about setting up. It will be all for the best, Sam; trust me.”
“Well, uncle, perhaps it will.” It was of no use for him to say perhaps it won’t: he could not help himself. But it was a disappointment.