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Roy Glashan's Library
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"Johnny Ludlow" was the name used by Ellen Wood as the by-line for a series of 90 popular stories and serial novels published in the British monthly Argosy, which she bought in 1867 and edited under her married name, Mrs. Henry Wood. The first story signed by and featuring "Johnny Ludlow" appeared in January 1868, the last in January-June 1891.
Six collections of stories in the series were published in book form. The first story, "Shaving the Ponies' Tails," was not included in any of these collections, presumably because some elements of the narrative and characterization are atypical in comparison with the rest of the series. The 48th story, "Fred Temple's Warning," was also omitted.
—Roy Glashan
"HAD I better go? I should like to."
"Go! why of course you had better go," answered the Squire, putting down the letter.
"It will be the very thing for you, Johnny," added Mrs. Todhetley. "We were saying yesterday that you ought to have a change."
I had not been well for some time; not strong. My old headaches stuck to me worse than usual; Duffham complained that the pulse was feeble. Therefore a letter from Dr. Knox of Lefford, pressing me to go and stay with them, seemed to have come on purpose. Janet had added a postscript: "You must come, Johnny Ludlow, if it is only to see my two babies, and you must not think of staying less than a month." Tod was from home, visiting in Leicestershire.
Three days, and I was off, bag and baggage. To Worcester first, and then onwards again, direct for Lefford. The very journey seemed to do me good. It was a lovely spring day: the hedges were bursting into bud; primroses and violets nestled in the mossy banks.
You have not forgotten, I dare say, how poor Janet Carey's hard life, her troubles, and the sickness those troubles brought, culminated in a brave ending when Arnold Knox, of Lefford, made her his wife. Some five years had elapsed since then, and we were all of us that much older. They had asked me to visit them over and over again, but until now I had not done it. Mr. Tamlyn, Arnold's former master and present partner, with whom they lived, was growing old; he only attended to a few of the old patients now.
It was a cross-grained kind of route, and much longer than it need have been could we have gone straight as a bird flies. The train made all sorts of detours, and I had to change no less than three times. For the last few miles I had had the carriage to myself, but at Toome Junction, the last station before Lefford, a gentleman got in: a rather elderly man with grey hair. Not a syllable did we say, one to another—Englishmen like—and at length Lefford was gained.
"In to time exactly," cried this gentleman then, peering out at the gas-lighted station. "The clock's on the stroke of eight."
Getting my portmanteau, I looked about for Dr. Knox's brougham, which would be waiting for me, and soon pitched upon one, standing near the flys. But my late fellow- passenger strode on before me.
"I thought I spied you out, Wall," he said to the coachman. "Quite a chance your being here, I suppose?"
"I'm waiting for a gentleman from Worcester, sir," answered the man, looking uncommonly pleased, as he touched his hat. "Dr. Knox couldn't come himself."
"Well, I suppose you can take me as well as the gentleman from Worcester," answered the other, as he turned from patting the old horse, and saw me standing there. And we got into the carriage.
It proved to be Mr. Shuttleworth, he who had been old Tamlyn's partner for a short time, and had married his sister. Tamlyn's people did not know he was coming to-night, he told me. He was on his way to a distant place, to see a relative who was ill; by making a round of it, he could take Lefford, and drop in at Mr. Tamlyn's for the night—and was doing so.
Janet came running to the door, Mr. Tamlyn walking slowly behind her. He had a sad countenance, and scanty grey hair, and looked ever so much older than his actual years. Since his son died, poor Bertie, life's sunshine had gone out for him. Very much surprised were they to see Mr. Shuttleworth as well as me.
Janet gave us a sumptuous high-tea, pouring out unlimited cups of tea and pressing us to eat of all the good things. Except that she had filled out a little from the skeleton she was, and looked as joyous now as she had once looked sad, I saw little difference in her. Her boy, Arnold, was aged three and a half: the little girl, named Margaret, after Miss Deveen, could just walk.
"Never were such children in all the world before, if you listen to Janet," cried old Tamlyn, looking at her fondly—for he had learnt to love Janet as he would a daughter—and she laughed shyly and blushed.
"You don't ask after mine," put in Mr. Shuttleworth, quaintly; "my one girl. She is four years old now. Such a wonder! such a paragon! other babies are nothing to it; so Bessy says. Bessy is silly over that child, Tamlyn."
Old Tamlyn just shook his head. They suddenly remembered the one only child he had lost, and changed the subject.
"And what about everything!" asked Mr. Shuttleworth, lighting a cigar, as we sat round the fire after our repast, Janet having gone out to see to a room for Shuttleworth, or perhaps to contemplate her sleeping babies. "I am glad you have at last given up the parish work."
"There's enough to do without it; the practice increases daily," cried Tamlyn. "Arnold is much liked."
"How are all the old patients?"
"That is a comprehensive question," smiled Tamlyn. "Some are flourishing, and some few are, of course, dead."
"Is Dockett with you still?"
"No. Dockett is in London at St. Thomas's. Sam Jenkins is with us in his place. A clever young fellow; worth two of Dockett."
"Who is Sam Jenkins?"
"A nephew of Lady Jenkins—you remember her? At least, of her late husband's."
"I should think I do remember Lady Jenkins," laughed Shuttleworth. "How is she? Flourishing about the streets as usual in that red-wheeled carriage of hers, dazzling as the rising sun?"
"Lady Jenkins is not well," replied Tamlyn, gravely. "She gives me some concern."
"In what way does she give you concern?"
"Chiefly because I can't find out what it is that's amiss with her?"
"Has she been ill long?"
"For some months now. She is not very ill: goes out in her carriage to dazzle the town, as you observe, and has her regular soirées at home. But I don't like her symptoms: I don't understand them, and they grow worse. She has never been well, really well, since that French journey."
"What French journey?"
"At the end of last summer, my Lady Jenkins must needs get it into her head that she should like to see Paris. Stupid old thing, to go all the way to France for the first time in her life! She did go, taking Mina Knox with her—who is growing up as pretty a girl as you'd wish to see. And, by the way, Shuttleworth, Mina is in luck. She has had a fortune left her. An old gentleman, not related to them at all, except that he was Mina's godfather, left her seven thousand pounds last year in his will. Arnold is trustee."
"I am glad of it. Little Mina and I used to be great friends. Her mother is as disagreeable as ever, I suppose?"
"As if she'd ever change from being that!" returned Tamlyn. "I have no patience with her. She fritters away her own income, and then comes here and worries Arnold's life out with her embarrassments. He does for her more than I should do. Educates young Dicky, for one thing."
"No doubt. Knox always had a soft place in his heart. But about Lady Jenkins?"
"Lady Jenkins went over to Paris with her maid, taking Mina as her companion. It was in August. They stayed three weeks there, racketing about to all kinds of show-places, and overdoing it, of course. When they arrived at Boulogne on their way back, expecting to cross over at once, they found they had to wait. A gale was raging, and the boats could not get out. So they put up at an hotel there; and, that night, Lady Jenkins was taken alarmingly ill—the journey and the racketing and the French living had been too much for her. Young people can stand these things, Johnny Ludlow; old ones can't," added Tamlyn, looking at me across the hearth.
"Very true, sir. How old is Lady Jenkins?"
"Just seventy. But you wouldn't have thought her so much before that French journey. Until then she was a lively, active, bustling woman, with a good-natured, pleasant word for every one. Now she is weary, dull, inanimate; seems to be, half her time, in a sort of lethargy."
"What was the nature of the illness?" asked Shuttleworth. "A seizure?"
"No, nothing of that sort. I'm sure I don't know what it was," added old Tamlyn, rubbing back his scanty grey hair in perplexity. "Any way, they feared she was going to die. The French doctor said her getting well was a miracle. She lay ill ten days, keeping her bed, and was still ill and very weak when she reached home. Mina believes that a lady who was detained at the same hotel by the weather, and who came forward and offered her services as nurse, saved Lady Jenkins's life. She was so kind and attentive; never going to her bed afterwards until Lady Jenkins was up from hers. She came home with them."
"Who did? This lady?"
"Yes; and has since remained with Lady Jenkins as companion. She is a Madame St. Vincent; a young widow——"
"A Frenchwoman!" exclaimed Mr. Shuttleworth.
"Yes; but you wouldn't think it. She speaks English just as we do, and looks English. A very nice, pleasant young woman; as kind and loving to Lady Jenkins as though she were her daughter. I am glad they fell in with her. She—— Oh, is it you, Sam?"
A tall smiling young fellow of eighteen, or so, had come in. It was Sam Jenkins: and, somehow, I took to him at once. Mr. Shuttleworth shook hands and said he was glad to hear he promised to be a second Abernethy. Upon which Sam's wide mouth opened in laughter, showing a set of nice teeth.
"I thought Dr. Knox was here, sir," he said to Mr. Tamlyn, as if he would apologize for entering.
"Dr. Knox is gone over to the Brook, but I should think he'd be back soon now. Why? Is he wanted?"
"Only a message, sir, from old Willoughby's. They'd like him to call there as soon as convenient in the morning."
"Now, Sam, don't be irreverent," reproved his master. "Old Willoughby! I should say Mr. Willoughby if I were you. He is no older than I am. You young men of the present day are becoming very disrespectful; it was different in my time."
Sam laughed pleasantly. Close upon that, Dr. Knox came in. He was more altered than Janet, looking graver and older, his light hair as wild as ever. He was just thirty now.
Mr. Shuttleworth left in the morning, and afterwards Dr. Knox took me to see his step-mother. Her house (but it was his house, not hers), Rose Villa, was in a suburb of the town, called the London Road. Mrs. Knox was a dark, unpleasing-looking woman; her voice harsh, her crinkled black hair untidy—it was never anything else in a morning. The two eldest girls were in the room. Mina was seventeen, Charlotte twelve months younger. Mina was the prettiest; a fair girl with a mild face and pleasant blue eyes, her manner and voice as quiet as her face. Charlotte seemed rather strong-minded.
"Are you going to the soirée next door to-night, Arnold?" cried Mrs. Knox, as we were leaving.
"I think not," he answered. "Janet wrote to decline."
"You wished her to decline, I dare say!" retorted Mrs. Knox. "You always did despise the soirées, Arnold."
Dr. Knox laughed pleasantly. "I have never had much time for soirées," he said; "and Janet does not care for them. Besides, we think it unkind to leave Mr. Tamlyn alone." At which latter remark Mrs. Knox tossed her head.
"I must call on Lady Jenkins, as I am up here," observed Dr. Knox to me, when we were leaving. "You don't mind, do you, Johnny?"
"I shall like it. They were talking about her last night."
It was only a few yards higher up. A handsome dwelling, double the size of Rose Villa, with two large iron gates flanked by imposing pillars, on which was written in gold letters, as large as life, "Jenkins House."
Dr. Knox laughed. "Sir Daniel Jenkins re-christened it that," he said, dropping his voice, lest any ears should be behind the open windows: "it used to be called 'Rose Bank.' They moved up here four years ago; he was taken ill soon afterwards and died, leaving nearly all his money to his wife unconditionally: it is over four thousand a-year. He was in business as a drysalter, and was knighted during the time he was mayor."
"Who will come in for the money?"
"That is as Lady Jenkins pleases. There are lots of relations, Jenkinses. Sir Daniel partly brought up two orphan nephews—at least, he paid for their schooling and left each a little money to place them out in life. You have seen the younger of them, Sam, who is with us; the other, Dan, is articled to a solicitor in the town, old Belford. Two other cousins are in the drysalting business; and the ironmonger, Sir Daniel's youngest brother, left several sons and daughters. The old drysalter had no end of nephews and nieces, and might have provided for them all. Perhaps his widow will do so."
Not possessing the faintest idea of what "drysalting" might be, unless it had to do with curing hams, I was about to inquire, when the house-door was thrown open by a pompous-looking gentleman in black—the butler—who showed us into the dining-room, where Lady Jenkins was sitting. I liked her at first sight. She was short and stout, and had pink cheeks and a pink turned-up nose, and wore a "front" of flaxen curls, surmounted by a big smart cap with red roses and blue ribbons in it; but there was not an atom of pretence about her, and her blue eyes were kindly. She took the hands of Dr. Knox in hers, and she shook mine warmly, saying she had heard of Johnny Ludlow.
Turning from her, I caught the eyes of a younger lady fixed upon me. She looked about seven-and-twenty, and wore a fashionable black-and-white muslin gown. Her hair was dark, her eyes were a reddish brown, her cheeks had a fixed bloom upon them. The face was plain, and it struck me that I had seen it somewhere before. Dr. Knox greeted her as Madame St. Vincent.
When we first went in, Lady Jenkins seemed to wake up from a doze. In two minutes she had fallen into a doze again, or as good as one. Her eyelids drooped, she sat perfectly quiet, never speaking unless spoken to, and her face wore a sort of dazed, or stupid look. Madame St. Vincent talked enough for both of them; she appealed frequently to Lady Jenkins—"Was it not so, dear Lady Jenkins?"—or "Don't you remember that, dear Lady Jenkins?" and Lady Jenkins docilely answered "Yes, dear," or "Yes, Patty."
That Madame St. Vincent was a pleasant woman, as Mr. Tamlyn had said, and that she spoke English as we did, as he had also said, there could not be a doubt. Her tongue could not be taken for any but a native tongue; moreover, unless my ears deceived me, it was native Worcestershire. Ever and anon, too, a homely word would be dropped by her in the heat of conversation that belonged to Worcestershire proper, and to no other county.
"You will come to my soirée this evening, Mr. Ludlow," Lady Jenkins woke up to say to me as we were leaving.
"Johnny can come; I dare say he would like to," put in Dr. Knox; "although I and Janet cannot——"
"Which is very churlish of you," interposed Madame St. Vincent.
"Well, you know what impediments lie in our way," he said, smiling. "Sam can come up with Johnny, if you like, Lady Jenkins."
"To be sure; let Sam come," she answered, readily. "How is Sam? and how does he get on?"
"He is very well, and gets on well."
Dr. Knox walked down the road in silence, looking grave. "Every time I see her she seems to me more altered," he observed presently, and I found he was speaking of Lady Jenkins. "Something is amiss with her, and I cannot tell what. I wish Tamlyn would let me take the case in hand!"
Two peculiarities obtained at Lefford. The one was that the universal dinner hour, no-matter how much you might go in for fashion, was in the middle of the day; the other was that every evening gathering, no matter how unpretentious, was invariably called a "soirée." They were the customs of the town.
The soirée was in full swing when I reached Jenkins House that night—at six o'clock. Madame St. Vincent and Charlotte Knox sat behind the tea-table in a cloud of steam, filling the cups as fast as the company emptied them; a footman, displaying large white calves, carried round a tray of bread-and-butter and cake. Lady Jenkins sat near the fire in an easy-chair, wearing a red velvet gown and lofty turban. She nodded to the people as they came in, and smiled at them with quite a silly expression. Mina and Charlotte Knox were in white muslin and pink roses. Mina looked very pretty indeed, and as mild as milk; Charlotte was downright and strong-minded. Every five minutes or so, Madame St. Vincent—the white streamers on her rich black silk dress floating behind her—would leave the tea-table to run up to Lady Jenkins and ask if she wanted anything. Sam had not come with me: he had to go out unexpectedly with Dr. Knox.
"Mr. Jenkins," announced the pompous butler, showing in a tall young fellow of twenty. He had just the same sort of honest, good-natured face that had taken my fancy in Sam, and I guessed that this was his brother, the solicitor. He came up to Lady Jenkins.
"How do you do, aunt?" he said, bending to kiss her. "Hearing of your soirée to-night, I thought I might come."
"Why, my dear, you know you may come; you are always welcome. Which is it?" she added, looking up at him stupidly, "Dan, or Sam?"
"It is Dan," he answered; and if ever I heard pain in a tone, I heard it in his.
"You are Johnny Ludlow, I know!" he said, holding out his hand to me in the warmest manner, as he turned from his aunt. "Sam told me about you this morning." And we were friends from that moment.
Dan brought himself to an anchor by Mina Knox. He was no beauty certainly, but he had a good face. Leaning over Mina's chair, he began whispering to her—and she whispered back again. Was there anything between them? It looked like it—at any rate, on his side—judging by his earnest expression and the loving looks that shot from his honest grey eyes.
"Are you really French?" I asked of Madame St. Vincent, while standing by her side to drink some tea.
"Really," she answered, smiling. "Why?"
"Because you speak English exactly like ourselves."
"I speak it better than I do French," she candidly said. "My mother was English, and her old maid-servant was English, and they educated me between them. It was my father who was French— and he died early."
"Was your mother a native of Worcestershire?"
"Oh dear, no: she came from Wales. What made you think of such a thing?"
"Your accent is just like our Worcestershire accent. I am Worcestershire myself: and I could have thought you were."
She shook her head. "Never was there in my life, Mr. Ludlow. Is that why you looked at me so much when you were here with Dr. Knox this morning?"
"No: I looked at you because your face struck me as being familiar," I frankly said: "I thought I must have seen you somewhere before. Have I, I wonder?"
"Very likely—if you have been much in the South of France," she answered: "at a place called Brétage."
"But I have never been at Brétage."
"Then I don't see how we can have met. I have lived there all my life. My father and mother died there: my poor husband died there. I only came away from it last year."
"It must be my fancy, I suppose. One does see likenesses——"
"Captain Collinson," shouted the butler again.
A military-looking man, got up in the pink of fashion, loomed in with a lordly air; you'd have said the room belonged to him. At first he seemed all hair: bushy curls, bushy whiskers, a moustache, and a fine flowing beard, all purple black. Quite a flutter stirred the room: Captain Collinson was evidently somebody.
After making his bow to Lady Jenkins, he distributed his favours generally, shaking hands with this person, talking with that. At last he turned our way.
"Ah, how do you do, madame?" he said to Madame St. Vincent, his tone ceremonious. "I fear I am late."
It was not a minute that he stood before her, only while he said this: but, strange to say, something in his face or voice struck upon my memory. The face, as much as could be seen of it for hair, seemed familiar to me—just as madame's had seemed.
"Who is he?" I whispered to her, following him with my eyes.
"Captain Collinson."
"Yes, I heard the name. But—do you know anything of him?—who he is?"
She shook her head. "Not much; nothing of my own knowledge. He is in an Indian regiment, and is home on sick leave."
"I wonder which regiment it is? One of our fellows at Dr. Frost's got appointed to one in Madras, I remember."
"The 30th Bengal Cavalry, is Captain Collinson's. By his conversation, he appears to have spent nearly the whole of his life in India. It is said he is of good family, and has a snug private fortune. I don't know any more about him than that," concluded Madame St. Vincent, as she once more rose to go to Lady Jenkins.
"He may have a snug private fortune, and he may have family, but I do not like him," put in Charlotte Knox, in her decisive manner.
"Neither do I, Lotty," added Dan—who was then at the tea-table: and his tone was just as emphatic as Charlotte's.
He had come up for a cup of tea for Mina. Before he could carry it to her, Captain Collinson had taken up the place he had occupied at Mina's elbow, and was whispering to her in a most impressive manner. Mina seemed all in a flutter—and there was certainly no further room for Dan.
"Don't you want it now, Mina?" asked Dan, holding the cup towards her, and holding it in vain, for she was too much occupied to see it.
"Oh, thank you—no—I don't think I do want it now. Sorry you should have had the trouble."
Her words were just as fluttered as her manner. Dan brought the tea back and put it on the tray.
"Of course, she can't spare time to drink tea while he is there," cried Charlotte, resentfully, who had watched what passed. "That man has bewitched her, Dan."
"Not quite yet, I think," said Dan, quietly. "He is trying to do it. There is no love lost between you and him, I see, Lotty."
"Not a ghost of it," nodded Lotty. "The town may be going wild in its admiration of him, but I am not; and the sooner he betakes himself back to India to his regiment, the better."
"I hope he will not take Mina with him," said Dan, gravely.
"I hope not, either. But she is silly enough for anything."
"Who is that, that's silly enough for anything?" cried Madame St. Vincent, whisking back to her place.
"Mina," promptly replied Charlotte. "She asked for a cup of tea, and then said she did not want it."
Some of the people sat down to cards; some to music; some talked. It was the usual routine at these soirées, Mrs. Knox condescended to inform me—and, what more, she added, could be wished for? Conversation, music, and cards—they were the three best diversions of life, she said, not that she herself much cared for music.
Poor Lady Jenkins did not join actively in any one of the three: she for the most part dozed in her chair. When any one spoke to her, she would wake up and say Yes or No; but that was all. Captain Collinson stood in a corner, talking to Mina behind a sheet of music. He appeared to be going over the bars with her, and to be as long doing it as if a whole opera were scored there.
At nine o'clock the supper-room was thrown open, and Captain Collinson handed in Lady Jenkins. Heavy suppers were not the mode at Lefford; neither, as a rule, did the guests sit down, except a few of the elder ones; but the table was covered with dainties. Sandwiches, meats in jelly, rissoles, lobster salad, and similar things that could be eaten with a fork, were supplied in abundance, with sweets and jellies.
"I hope you'll be able to make a supper, my dear," said Lady Jenkins to me in her comfortable way—for supper seemed to wake her up. "You see, if one person began to give a grand sitting-down supper, others would think themselves obliged to do it, and every one can't afford that. So we all confine ourselves to this."
"And I like this best," I said.
"Do you, my dear? I'm glad of that. Dan, is that you? Mind you make a good supper too."
We both made a famous one. At least, I can answer for myself. And, at half-past ten, Dan and I departed together.
"How very good-natured Lady Jenkins seems to be!" I remarked.
"She is good-nature itself, and always was," Dan warmly answered. "She has never been a bit different from what you see her to-night—kind to us all. You should have known her though in her best days, before she grew ill. I never saw any one so altered."
"What is it that's the matter with her?"
"I don't know," answered Dan. "I wish I did know. Sam tells me Tamlyn does not know. I'm afraid he thinks it is the break-up of old age. I should be glad, though, if she did not patronize that fellow Collinson so much."
"Every one seems to patronize him."
"Or to let him patronize them," corrected Dan. "I can't like the fellow. He takes too much upon himself."
"He seems popular. Quite the fashion."
"Yes, he is that. Since he came here, three or four months ago, the women have been running after him. Do you like him, Johnny Ludlow?" abruptly added Dan.
"I hardly know whether I do or not: I've not seen much of him," was my answer. "As a rule, I don't care for those people who take much upon themselves. The truth is, Dan," I laughed jokingly, "you think Collinson shows too much attention to Mina Knox."
Dan walked on for a few moments in silence. "I am not much afraid of that," he presently said. "It is the fellow himself I don't like."
"And you do like Mina?"
"Well—yes; I do. If Mina and I were older and my means justified it, I would make her my wife to- morrow—I don't mind telling you so much. And if the man is after her, it is for the sake of her money, mind, not for herself. I'm sure of it. I can see."
"I thought Collinson had plenty of money of his own."
"So he has, I believe. But money never comes amiss to an extravagant and idle man; and I think that Mina's money makes her attraction in Collinson's eyes. I wish with all my heart she had never had it left her!" continued Dan, energetically. "What did Mina want with seven thousand pounds?"
"I dare say you would not object to it, with herself."
"I'd as soon not have it. I hope I shall make my way in my profession, and make it well, and I would as soon take Mina without money as with it. I'm sure her mother might have it and welcome, for me! She is always hankering after it."
"How do you know she is?"
"We do her business at old Belford's, and she gets talking about the money to him, making no scruple of openly wishing it was hers. She bothers Dr. Knox, who is Mina's trustee, to lend her some of it. As if Knox would!—she might just as well go and bother the moon. No! But for that confounded seven thousand pounds Collinson would let Mina alone."
I shook my head. He could not know it. Mina was very pretty. Dan saw my incredulity.
"I will tell you why I judge so," he resumed, dropping his voice to a lower key. "Unless I am very much mistaken, Collinson likes some one else—and that's Madame St. Vincent. Sam thinks so too."
It was more than I thought. They were cool to one another.
"But we have seen them when no one else was by," contended Dan: "when he and she were talking together alone. And I can tell you that there was an expression on his face, an anxiousness, an eagerness—I hardly know how to word it—that it never wore for Mina. Collinson's love is given to madame. Rely upon that."
"Then why should he not declare it?"
"Ah, I don't know. There may be various reasons. Her poverty perhaps—for she has nothing but the salary Lady Jenkins pays her. Or, he may not care to marry one who is only a companion: they say he is of good family himself. Another reason, and possibly the most weighty one, may be, that madame does not like him."
"I don't think she does like him."
"I am sure she does not. She gives him angry looks, and she turns away from him with ill-disguised coldness. And so, that's about how the state of affairs lies up there," concluded Dan, shaking hands with me as we reached the door of his lodgings. "Captain Collinson's love is given to Madame St. Vincent, on the one hand, and to Mina's money on the other; and I think he is in a pretty puzzle which of the two to choose. Good-night, Johnny Ludlow. Be sure to remember this is only between ourselves."
A week or so passed on. Janet was up to her eyes in
preparations, expecting a visitor. And the visitor was no
other than Miss Cattledon—if you have not forgotten
her. Being fearfully particular in all ways, and given to
fault-finding, as poor Janet only too well remembered, of
course it was necessary to have things in apple-pie
order.
"I should never hear the last of it as long as Aunt Jemima stayed, if so much as a speck of dust was in any of the rooms, or a chair out of place," said Janet to me laughingly, as she and the maids dusted and scrubbed away.
"What's she coming for, Janet?"
"She invited herself," replied Janet: "and indeed we shall be glad to see her. Miss Deveen is going to visit some friends in Devonshire, and Aunt Jemima takes the opportunity of coming here the while. I am sorry Arnold is so busy just now. He will not have much time to give to her—and she likes attention."
The cause of Dr. Knox's increased occupation, was Mr. Tamlyn's illness. For the past few days he had had feverish symptoms, and did not go out. Few medical men would have found the indisposition sufficiently grave to remain at home; but Mr. Tamlyn was an exception. He gave in at the least thing now: and it was nothing at all unusual for Arnold Knox to find all the patients thrown on his own hands.
Amongst the patients so thrown this time was Lady Jenkins. She had caught cold at that soirée I have just told of. Going to the door in her old-fashioned, hospitable way, to speed the departure of the last guests, she had stayed there in the draught, talking, and began at once to sneeze and cough.
"There!" cried Madame St. Vincent, when my lady got back again, "you have gone and caught a chill."
"I think I have," admitted Lady Jenkins. "I'll send for Tamlyn in the morning."
"Oh, my dear Lady Jenkins, we shall not want Tamlyn," dissented madame. "I'll take care of you myself, and have you well in no time."
But Lady Jenkins, though very much swayed by her kind companion, who was ever anxious for her, chose to have up Mr. Tamlyn, and sent him a private message herself.
He went up at once—evidently taking madame by surprise—and saw his patient. The cold, being promptly treated, turned out to be a mere nothing, though Madame St. Vincent insisted on keeping the sufferer some days in bed. By the time Mr. Tamlyn was ill, she was well again, and there was not much necessity for Dr. Knox to take her: at least, on the score of her cold. But he did it.
One afternoon, when he was going up there late, he asked me if I would like the drive. And, while he paid his visit to Lady Jenkins, I went in to Rose Villa. It was a fine, warm afternoon, almost like summer, and Mrs. Knox and the girls were sitting in the garden. Dicky was there also. Dicky was generally at school from eight o'clock till six, but this was a half-holiday. Dicky, eleven years old now, but very little for his age, was more troublesome than ever. Just now he was at open war with his two younger sisters and Miss Mack, the governess, who had gone indoors to escape him.
Leaning against the trunk of a tree, as he talked to Mrs. Knox, Mina, and Charlotte, stood Captain Collinson, the rays of the sun, now drawing westward, shining full upon him, bringing out the purple gloss of his hair, whiskers, beard, and moustache deeper than usual. Captain Collinson incautiously made much of Dicky, had told him attractive stories of the glories of war, and promised him a commission when he should be old enough. The result was, that Dicky had been living in the seventh heaven, had bought himself a tin sword, and wore it strapped to his waist, dangling beneath his jacket. Dicky, wild to be a soldier, worshipped Captain Collinson as the prince of heroes, and followed him about like a shadow. An inkling of this ambition of Dicky's, and of Captain Collinson's promise, had only reached Mrs. Knox's ears this very afternoon. It was a ridiculous promise of course, worth nothing, but Mrs. Knox took it up seriously.
"A commission for Dicky!—get Dicky a commission!" she exclaimed in a flutter that set her bracelets jangling, just as I arrived on the scene. "Why, what can you mean, Captain Collinson? Do you think I would have Dicky made into a soldier—to be shot at? Never. He is my only son. How can you put such ideas into his head?"
"Don't mind her," cried Dicky, shaking the captain's coat-tails. "I say, captain, don't you mind her."
Captain Collinson turned to young Dicky, and gave him a reassuring wink. Upon which, Dicky went strutting over the grass-plat, brandishing his sword. I shook hands with Mrs. Knox and the girls, and, turning to salute the captain, found him gone.
"You have frightened him away, Johnny Ludlow," cried Charlotte: but she spoke in jest.
"He was already going," said Mina. "He told me he had an engagement."
"And a good thing too," spoke Mrs. Knox, crossly. "Fancy his giving dangerous notions to Dicky!"
Dicky had just discovered our loss. He came shrieking back to know where the captain was. Gone away for good, his mother told him. Upon which young Dicky plunged into a fit of passion and kicking.
"Do you know how Lady Jenkins is to-day?" I asked of Charlotte, when Dicky's noise had been appeased by a promise of cold apple-pudding for tea.
"Not so well."
"Not so well! I had thought of her as being much better."
"I don't think her so," continued Charlotte. "Madame St. Vincent told Mina this morning that she was all right; but when I went in just now she was in bed and could hardly answer me."
"Is her cold worse?"
"No; I think that is gone, or nearly so. She seemed dazed— stupid, more so than usual."
"I certainly never saw any one alter so greatly as Lady Jenkins has altered in the last few months," spoke Mrs. Knox. "She is not like the same woman."
"I'm sure I wish we had never gone that French journey!" said Mina. "She has never been well since. Oh, here's Arnold!"
Dr. Knox had come straight into the garden from Jenkins House. Dicky rushed up to besiege his arms and legs; but, as Dicky was in a state of flour—which he had just put upon himself in the kitchen, or had had put upon him by the maids—the doctor ordered him to keep at arm's-length; and the doctor was the only person who could make himself obeyed by Dicky.
"You have been to see Lady Jenkins, Arnold," said his step-mother. "How is she?"
"Nothing much to boast of," lightly answered Dr. Knox. "Johnny, are you ready?"
"I am going to be a soldier, Arnold," put in Dicky, dancing a kind of war-dance round him. "Captain Collinson is going to make me a captain like himself."
"All right," said Arnold. "You must grow a little bigger first."
"And, Arnold, the captain says—— Oh, my!" broke off Dicky, "what's this? What have I found?"
The boy stooped to pick up something glittering that had caught his eye. It proved to be a curiously-shaped gold watch-key, with a small compass in it. Mina and Lotty both called out that it was Captain Collinson's, and must have dropped from his chain during a recent romp with Dicky.
"I'll take it in to him at Lady Jenkins's," said Dicky.
"You will do nothing of the sort, sir," corrected his mother, taking the key from him: she had been thoroughly put out by the suggestion of the "commission."
"Should you chance to see the captain when you go out," she added to me, "tell him his watch-key is here."
The phaeton waited outside. It was the oldest thing I ever saw in regard to fashion, and might have been in the firm hundreds of years. Its hood could be screwed up and down at will; just as the perch behind, where Thomas, the groom, generally sat, could be closed or opened. I asked Dr. Knox whether it had been built later than the year One.
"Just a little, I suppose," he answered, smiling. "This vehicle was Dockett's special aversion. He christened it the 'conveyance,' and we have mostly called it so since."
We were about to step into it, when Madame St. Vincent came tripping out of the gate up above. Dr. Knox met her.
"I was sorry not to have been in the way when you left, doctor," she said to him in a tone of apology: "I had gone to get the jelly for Lady Jenkins. Do tell me what you think of her?"
"She does not appear very lively," he answered; "but I can't find out that she is in any pain."
"I wish she would get better!—she does give me so much concern," warmly spoke madame. "Not that I think her seriously ill, myself. I'm sure I do everything for her that I possibly can."
"Yes, yes, my dear lady, you cannot do more than you do," replied Arnold. "I will be up in better time to-morrow."
"Is Captain Collinson here?" I stayed behind Dr. Knox to ask.
"Captain Collinson here!" returned Madame St. Vincent, tartly, as if the question offended her. "No, he is not. What should bring Captain Collinson here?"
"I thought he might have called in upon leaving Mrs. Knox's. I only wished to tell him that he dropped his watch- key next door. It was found on the grass."
"I don't know anything of his movements," coldly remarked madame. And as I ran back to Dr. Knox, I remembered what Dan Jenkins had said—that she did not like the captain. And I felt Dan was right.
Dr. Knox drove home in silence, I sitting beside him, and Thomas in the perch. He looked very grave, like a man preoccupied. In passing the railway-station, I made some remark about Miss Cattledon, who was coming by the train then on its way; but he did not appear to hear me.
Sam Jenkins ran out as we drew up at Mr. Tamlyn's gate. An urgent message had come for Dr. Knox: some one taken ill at Cooper's—at the other end of the town.
"Mr. Tamlyn thinks you had better go straight on there at once, sir," said Sam.
"I suppose I must," replied the doctor. "It is awkward, though"— pulling out his watch. "Miss Cattledon will be due presently and Janet wanted me to meet her," he added to me. "Would you do it, Johnny?"
"What—meet Miss Cattledon? Oh yes, certainly."
The conveyance drove on, with the doctor and Thomas. I went indoors with Sam. Janet said I could meet her aunt just as well as Arnold, as I knew her. The brougham was brought round to the gate by the coachman, Wall, and I went away in it.
Smoothly and quietly glided in the train, and out of a first-class carriage stepped Miss Cattledon, thin and prim and upright as ever.
"Dear me! is that you, Johnny Ludlow?" was her greeting to me when I stepped up and spoke to her; and her tone was all vinegar. "What do you do here?"
"I came to meet you. Did you not know I was staying at Lefford?"
"I knew that. But why should they send you to meet me?"
"Dr. Knox was coming himself, but he has just been called out to a patient. How much luggage have you, Miss Cattledon?"
"Never you mind how much, Johnny Ludlow: my luggage does not concern you."
"But cannot I save you the trouble of looking after it? If you will get into the brougham, I will see to the luggage and bring it on in a fly, if it's too much to go on the box with Wall."
"You mean well, Johnny Ludlow, I dare say; but I always see to my luggage myself. I should have lost it times and again, if I did not."
She went pushing about amongst the porters and the trucks, and secured the luggage. One not very large black box went up by Wall; a smaller inside with us. So we drove out of the station in state, luggage and all, Cattledon holding her head bolt upright.
"How is Janet, Johnny Ludlow?"
"Quite well, thank you."
"And those two children of hers—are they very troublesome?"
"Indeed, no; they are the best little things you ever saw. I wanted to bring the boy with me to meet you, but Janet would not let me."
"Um!" grunted Cattledon: "showed a little sense for once. What is that building?"
"That's the Town Hall. I thought you knew Lefford, Miss Cattledon?"
"One cannot be expected to retain the buildings of a town in one's head as if they were photographed there," returned she in a sharp tone of reproof. Which shut me up.
"And, pray, how does that young woman continue to conduct herself?" she asked presently.
"What young woman?" I said, believing she must be irreverently alluding to Janet.
"Lettice Lane."
Had she mentioned the name of some great Indian Begum I could not have been more surprised. That name brought back to memory all the old trouble connected with Miss Deveen's emeralds, their loss and their finding: which, take it for all in all, was nothing short of a romance. But why did she question me about Lettice Lane. I asked her why.
"I asked it to be answered, young man," was Cattledon's grim retort.
"Yes, of course," I said, with deprecation. "But how should I know anything about Lettice Lane?"
"If there's one thing I hate more than another, Johnny Ludlow, it is shuffling. I ask you how that young woman is going on; and I request you to answer me."
"Indeed, I would if I could. I don't understand why you should ask me. Is Lettice Lane not living still with you—with Miss Deveen?"
Cattledon evidently thought I was shuffling, for she looked daggers at me. "Lettice Lane," she said, "is with Janet Knox."
"With Janet Knox! Oh dear, no, she is not."
"Don't you get into a habit of contradicting your elders, Johnny Ludlow. It is very unbecoming in a young man."
"But—see here, Miss Cattledon. If Lettice were living with Janet, I must have seen her. I see the servants every day. I assure you Lettice is not one of them."
She began to see that I was in earnest, and condescended to explain in her stiff way. "Janet came to town last May to spend a week with us," she said. "Before that, Lettice Lane had been complaining of not feeling strong: I thought it was nothing but her restlessness; Miss Deveen and the doctor thought she wanted country air—that London did not agree with her. Janet was parting with her nurse at the time; she engaged Lettice to replace her, and brought her down to Lefford. Is the matter clear to you now, young man?"
"Quite so. But indeed, Miss Cattledon, Lettice is not with Janet now. The nurse is named Harriet, and she is not in the least like Lettice Lane."
"Then Lettice Lane must have gone roving again—unless you are mistaken," said Cattledon, severely. "Wanting country air, forsooth! Change was what she wanted."
Handing over Miss Cattledon, when we arrived, to the care of Janet, who took her upstairs, and told me tea would be ready soon, I went into Mr. Tamlyn's sitting-room. He was in the easy-chair before the fire, dozing, but opened his eyes at my entrance.
"Visitor come all right, Johnny?"
"Yes, sir; she is gone to take her cloaks off. Janet says tea is nearly ready."
"I am quite ready for it," he remarked, and shut his eyes again.
I took up a book I was reading, "Martin Chuzzlewit," and sat down on the broad window-seat, legs up, to catch the now fading light. The folds of the crimson curtain lay between me and Mr. Tamlyn— and I only hoped Mrs. Gamp would not send me into convulsions and disturb him.
Presently Dr. Knox came in. He went up to the fire, and stood at the corner of the mantelpiece, his elbow on it, his back to me; and old Tamlyn woke up.
"Well," began he, "what was the matter at Cooper's, Arnold?"
"Eldest boy fell off a ladder and broke his arm. It is only a simple fracture."
"Been very busy to-day, Arnold?"
"Pretty well."
"Hope I shall be out again in a day or two. How did you find Lady Jenkins?"
"Not at all to my satisfaction. She was in bed, and—and in fact seemed hardly to know me."
Tamlyn said nothing to this, and a silence ensued. Dr. Knox broke it. He turned his eyes from the fire on which they had been fixed, and looked full at his partner.
"Has it ever struck you that there's not quite fair play going on up there?" he asked in a low tone.
"Up where?"
"With Lady Jenkins."
"How do you mean, Arnold?"
"That something is being given to her?"
Tamlyn sat upright in his chair, pushed back his scanty hair, and stared at Dr. Knox.
"What do you mean, Knox? What do you suspect?"
"That she is being habitually drugged; gradually, slowly——"
"Merciful goodness!" interrupted Tamlyn, rising to his feet in excitement. "Do you mean slowly poisoned?"
"Hush!—I hear Janet," cried Dr. Knox.
YOU might have heard a pin drop in the room. They were
listening to the footsteps outside the door, but the
footsteps did not make the hush and the nameless horror that
pervaded it: the words spoken by Dr. Knox had done that. Old
Tamlyn stood, a picture of dismay. For myself, sitting in
the window-seat, my feet comfortably stretched out before
me, and partially sheltered by the red curtains, I could
only gaze at them both.
Janet's footsteps died away. She appeared to have been crossing the hall to the tea-room. And they began to talk again.
"I do not say that Lady Jenkins is being poisoned; absolutely, deliberately poisoned," said Dr. Knox, in the hushed tones to which his voice had dropped; "I do not yet go quite so far as that. But I do think that she is in some way being tampered with."
"In what way?" gasped Tamlyn.
"Drugged."
The doctor's countenance wore a puzzled expression as he spoke; his eyes a far-away look, just as though he did not see his own theory clearly. Mr. Tamlyn's face changed: the astonishment, the alarm, the dismay depicted on it gave place suddenly to relief.
"It cannot be, Arnold. Rely upon it you are mistaken. Who would harm her?"
"No one that I know of; no suspicious person is about her to do it," replied Dr. Knox. "And there lies the puzzle. I suppose she does not take anything herself? Opium, say?"
"Good Heavens, no," warmly spoke old Tamlyn. "No woman living is less likely to do that than Lady Jenkins."
"Less likely than she was. But you know yourself how unaccountably she has changed."
"She does not take opium or any other drug. I could stake my word upon it, Arnold."
"Then it is being given to her—at least, I think so. If not, her state is to me inexplicable. Mind you, Mr. Tamlyn, not a breath of this must transpire beyond our two selves," urged Dr. Knox, his tone and his gaze at his senior partner alike impressively earnest. "If anything is wrong, it is being wilfully and covertly enacted; and our only chance of tracing it home is to conceal our suspicion of it."
"I beg your pardon, Dr. Knox," I interrupted at this juncture, the notion, suddenly flashing into my mind, that he was unaware of my presence, sending me hot all over; "did you know I was here?"
They both turned to me, and Dr. Knox's confused start was a sufficient answer.
"You heard all I said, Johnny Ludlow?" spoke Dr. Knox.
"All. I am very sorry."
"Well, it cannot be helped now. You will not let it transpire?"
"That I certainly will not."
"We shall have to take you into our confidence—to include you in the plot," said Arnold Knox, with a smile. "I believe we might have a less trustworthy adherent."
"You could not have one more true."
"Right, Johnny," added Mr. Tamlyn. "But I do hope Dr. Knox is mistaken. I think you must be, Arnold. What are your grounds for this new theory?"
"I don't tell you that it is quite new," replied Dr. Knox. "A faint idea of it has been floating in my mind for some little time. As to grounds, I have no more to go upon than you have had. Lady Jenkins is in a state that we do not understand; neither you nor I can fathom what is amiss with her; and I need not point out that such a condition of things is unsatisfactory to a medical man, and sets him thinking."
"I am sure I have not been able to tell what it is that ails her," concurred old Tamlyn, in a helpless kind of tone. "She seems always to be in a lethargy, more or less; to possess no proper self-will; to have parted, so to say, with all her interest in life."
"Just so. And I cannot discover, and do not believe, that she is in any condition of health to cause this. I believe that the evil is being daily induced," emphatically continued Dr. Knox. "And if she does not herself induce it, by taking improper things, they are being administered to her by others. You will not admit the first theory, Mr. Tamlyn?"
"No, that I will not. Lady Jenkins no more takes baneful drugs of her own accord than I take them."
"Then the other theory must come up. It draws the point to a narrow compass, but to a more startling one."
"Look here, Arnold. If I did admit the first theory you would be no nearer the light. Lady Jenkins could not obtain drugs, and be everlastingly swallowing them, without detection. Madame St. Vincent would have found her out in a day."
"Yes."
"And would have stopped it at once herself, or handed it over to me to be dealt with. She is truly anxious for Lady Jenkins, and spares no pains, no time, no trouble for her."
"I believe that," said Dr. Knox. "Whatsoever is being done, Madame St. Vincent is kept in the dark—just as much as we are. Who else is about her?"
"No one much but her maid, that I know of," replied old Tamlyn, after a pause of consideration. "And I should think she was as free from suspicion as madame herself. It seems a strange thing."
"It is. But I fear I am right. The question now will be, how are we to set about solving the mystery?"
"She is not quite always in a lethargic state," observed Tamlyn, his thoughts going off at a tangent.
"She is so more or less," dissented Dr. Knox. "Yesterday morning I was there at eight o'clock; I went early purposely, and she was in a more stupidly lethargic state than I had before seen her. Which of course proves one thing."
"What thing? I fail to catch your meaning, Arnold."
"That she is being drugged in the night as well as the day."
"If she is drugged at all," corrected Mr. Tamlyn, shaking his head. "But I do not give in to your fancy yet, Arnold. All this must edify you, Johnny!"
Tamlyn spoke the words in a jesting sense, meaning of course that it had done nothing of the kind. He was wrong, if to edify means to interest. Hardly ever during my life had I been more excited.
"It is a frightful shame if any one is playing with Lady Jenkins," I said to them. "She is as good-hearted an old lady as ever lived. And why should they do it? Where's the motive?"
"There lies one of the difficulties—the motive," observed Dr. Knox. "I cannot see any; any end to be obtained by it. No living being that I know of can have an interest in wishing for Lady Jenkins's death or illness."
"How is her money left?"
"A pertinent question, Johnny. I do not expect any one could answer it, excepting herself and Belford, the lawyer. I suppose her relatives, all the nephews and nieces, will inherit it: and they are not about her, you see, and cannot be dosing her. No; the motive is to me a complete mystery. Meanwhile, Johnny, keep your ears and eyes open when you are up there; there's no telling what chance word or look may be dropped that might serve to give you a clue: and keep your mouth shut."
I laughed.
"If I could put aside my patients for a week, and invent some excuse for taking up my abode at Jenkins House, I know I should soon find out all the mystery," went on Dr. Knox.
"Arnold, why not take Madame St. Vincent into your confidence?"
Dr. Knox turned quickly round at the words to face his senior partner. He held up his finger warningly.
"Things are not ripe for it," he said. "Let me get, or try to get, a little more inkling into matters than I have at present, as touching the domestic economy at Jenkins House. I may have to do as you say, later: but women are only chattering magpies; marplots, often with the best intentions; and Madame St. Vincent may be no exception."
"Will you please come to tea?" interrupted Janet, opening the door.
Miss Cattledon, in a sea-green silk gown that I'm sure I had seen many times before, and the velvet on her thin throat, and a bow of lace on her head, shook hands with Mr. Tamlyn and Dr. Knox, and we sat down to tea. Little Arnold, standing by his mother in his plaid frock and white drawers (for the time to dress little children as men had not come in then by many a year), had a piece of bread-and-butter given to him. While he was eating it, the nurse appeared.
"Are you ready, Master Arnold? It is quite bedtime."
"Yes, he is ready, Harriet; and he has been very good," spoke Janet. And the little fellow went contentedly off without a word.
Miss Cattledon, stirring her tea at the moment, put the spoon down to look at the nurse, staring at her as if she had never seen a nurse before.
"That's not Lettice Lane," she observed sententiously, as the door closed on Harriet. "Where is Lettice Lane?"
"She has left, Aunt Jemima."
If a look could have withered Janet, Cattledon's was severe enough to do it. But the displeasure was meant for Lettice, not for Janet.
"What business had she to leave? Did she misbehave herself?"
"She stayed with me only two months," said Janet. "And she left because she still continued poorly, and the two children were rather too much for her. The baby was cutting her teeth, which disturbed Lettice at night; and I and Arnold both thought we ought to have some one stronger."
"Did you give her warning?" asked Cattledon, who was looking her very grimmest at thought of the absent Lettice; "or did she give it you?"
Janet laughed presently. "I think it was a sort of mutual warning, Aunt Jemima. Lettice acknowledged to me that she was hardly equal to the care of the children; and I told her I thought she was not. We found her another place."
"A rolling-stone gathers no moss," commented Cattledon. "Lettice Lane changes her places too often."
"She stayed some time with Miss Deveen, Aunt Jemima. And she likes her present place. She gets very good wages, better than she had with me, and helps to keep her mother."
"What may her duties be? Is she housemaid again?"
"She is lady's-maid to Lady Jenkins, an old lady who lives up the London Road. Lettice has grown much stronger since she went there. Why, what do you think, Aunt Jemima?" added Janet, laughing, "Lettice has actually been to Paris. Lady Jenkins went there just after engaging Lettice, and took her."
Miss Cattledon tossed her head. "Much good that would do Lettice Lane! Only fill her up with worse conceits than ever. I wonder she is not yet off to Australia! She used always to be talking of it."
"You don't appear to like Lettice Lane, ma'am," smiled old Tamlyn.
"No, I do not, sir. Lettice Lane first became known to me under unfavourable circumstances, and I have not liked her since."
"Indeed! What were they?"
"Some of Miss Deveen's jewels disappeared—were stolen; and Lettice Lane was suspected. It turned out later that she was not guilty; but I could not get over my dislike to her. We cannot help our likes and dislikes, which often come to us without rhyme or reason," acknowledged Miss Cattledon, "and I admit that I am perhaps too persistent in mine."
Not a soul present, myself excepted, had ever heard about the loss of the emeralds: and somehow I felt sorry that Cattledon had spoken of it. Not that she did it in ill- nature—I give her that due. Questions were immediately poured out, and she had to give the full history.
The story interested them all, Dr. Knox especially.
"And who did take the jewels?" he asked.
But Cattledon could not enlighten him, for Miss Deveen had not betrayed Sophie Chalk, even to her.
"I don't know who it was," tartly confessed Cattledon, the point being a sore one with her. "Miss Deveen promised, I believe, to screen the thief; and did so."
"Perhaps it was really Lettice Lane?"
"I believe not. I am sure not. It was a lady, Miss Deveen told me that much. No; of that disgraceful act Lettice Lane was innocent: but I should never be surprised to hear of her falling into trouble. She is capable of it."
"Of poisoning somebody, perhaps?" spoke Dr. Knox.
"Yes," acquiesced Cattledon, grimly.
How prejudiced she was against Lettice Lane! But she had given this last answer only in the same jesting spirit in which it appeared to have been put, not really meaning it.
"To be wrongly suspected, as poor Lettice Lane was, ought to make people all the more considerate to her," remarked Janet, her thoughts no doubt reverting to the time when she herself was falsely suspected—and accused.
"True, my dear," answered old Tamlyn. "Poor Lettice must have had her troubles."
"And she has had her faults," retorted Cattledon.
But this story had made an impression on Dr. Knox that Cattledon never suspected, never intended. He took up the idea that Lettice Lane was guilty. Going into Mr. Tamlyn's sitting-room for "Martin Chuzzlewit," when tea was over, I found his hand on my shoulder. He had silently followed me.
"Johnny Ludlow," he said, looking down into my eyes in the dim room, which was only lighted by the dim fire, "I don't like this that I have heard of Lettice Lane."
And the next to come in was Tamlyn. Closing the door, he walked up to the hearthrug where we stood, and stirred the fire into a blaze.
"I am telling Johnny Ludlow that this story of Miss Deveen's emeralds has made an unfavourable impression on me," quoth Dr. Knox to him. "It does not appear to me to be at all clear that Lettice Lane did not take them; and that Miss Deveen, in her benevolence, screened her from the consequences."
"But, indeed——" I was beginning, when Dr. Knox stopped me.
"A moment, Johnny. I was about to add that a woman who is capable of one crime can sometimes be capable of another; and I should not be surprised if it is Lettice Lane who is tampering with Lady Jenkins."
"But," I repeated, "Lettice Lane did not take the jewels. She knew nothing about it. She was perfectly innocent."
"You cannot answer for it, Johnny."
"Yes, I can; and do. I know who did take them."
"You know, Johnny Ludlow?" cried old Tamlyn, while Dr. Knox looked at me in silence.
"I helped Miss Deveen to find it out. At least, she had me with her during the progress of the discovery. It was a lady who took the jewels—as Miss Cattledon told you. She fainted away when it was brought home to her, and fell on my shoulder."
I believe they hardly knew whether to give me credit or not. Of course it did sound strange that I, young Johnny Ludlow, should have been entrusted by Miss Deveen with a secret she would not disclose even to her many years' companion and friend, Jemima Cattledon.
"Who was it, then, Johnny?" began Mr. Tamlyn.
"I should not like to tell, sir. I do not think it would be right to tell. For the young lady's own sake, Miss Deveen hushed the matter up, hoping it would be a warning to her in future. And I dare say it has been."
"Young, was she?"
"Yes. She has married since then. I could not, in honour, tell you her name."
"Well, I suppose we must believe you, Johnny," said Dr. Knox, making the admission unwillingly. "Lettice Lane did get fingering the jewels, it appears; you admit that."
"But she did not take them. It was—another." And, cautiously choosing my words, so as not to say anything that could direct suspicion to Sophie Chalk—whose name most likely they had never heard in their lives—I gave them an outline of the way in which Miss Deveen had traced the matter out. The blaze lighted up Mr. Tamlyn's grey face as I told it.
"You perceive that it could not have been Lettice Lane, Dr. Knox," I said, in conclusion. "I am sorry Miss Cattledon should have spoken against her."
"Yes, I perceive Lettice could not have been guilty of stealing the jewels," answered Dr. Knox. "Nevertheless, a somewhat unfavourable impression of the girl has been made upon me, and I shall look a little after her. Why does she want to emigrate to Australia?"
"Only because two of her brothers are there. I dare say it is all idle talk—that she will never go."
They said no more to me. I took up my book and quitted the room, leaving them to talk it out between themselves.
MR. TAMLYN might be skilful in medicine; he certainly was
not in diplomacy. Dr. Knox had particularly impressed upon
him the desirability of keeping their suspicion a secret for
the present, even from Madame St. Vincent; yet the first use
old Tamlyn made of his liberty was to disclose it to
her.
Tossed about in the conflict of doubts and suspicions that kept arising in his mind, Mr. Tamlyn, from the night I have just told you of, was more uneasy than a fish out of water, his opinion constantly vacillating. "You must be mistaken, Arnold; I feel sure there's nothing wrong going on," he would say to his junior partner one minute; and, the next minute, decide that it was going on, and that its perpetrator must be Lettice Lane.
The uneasiness took him abroad earlier than he would otherwise have gone. A slight access of fever attacked him the day after the subject had been broached—which fever he had no doubt worried himself into. In the ordinary course of things he would have stayed at home for a week after that: but he now went out on the third day.
"I will walk," he decided, looking up at the sunshine. "It will do me good. What lovely weather we are having."
Betaking himself through the streets to the London Road, he reached Jenkins House. The door stood open; and the doctor, almost as much at home in the house as Lady Jenkins herself, walked in without knocking.
The dining-room, where they mostly sat in the morning, was empty; the drawing-room was empty; and Mr. Tamlyn went on to a third room, that opened to the garden at the back with glass-doors.
"Any one here? or is the house gone a-maying?" cried the surgeon as he entered and came suddenly upon a group of three people, all upon their knees before a pile of old music—Madame St. Vincent, Mina Knox, and Captain Collinson. Two of them got up, laughing. Mina remained where she was.
"We are searching for a manuscript song that is missing," explained madame, as she gave her hand to the doctor. "Mina feels sure she left it here; but I do not remember to have seen it."
"It was not mine," added Mina, looking round at the doctor in her pretty, gentle way. "Caroline Parker lent it to me, and she has sent for it twice."
"I hope you'll find it, my dear."
"I must have left it here," continued Mina, as she rapidly turned over the sheets. "I was singing it yesterday afternoon, you remember," she added, glancing up at the captain. "It was while you were upstairs with Lady Jenkins, Madame St. Vincent."
She came to the end of the pile of music, but could not find the song. Putting it all on a side-table, Mina said a general good-bye, escaped by the glass-doors, and ran home by the little gate that divided the two gardens.
Captain Collinson left next. Perhaps he and Mina had both a sense of being de trop when the doctor was there. Waiting to exchange a few words with Mr. Tamlyn, and bidding Madame St. Vincent an adieu that had more of formality in it than friendship, the captain bowed himself out, taking his tasselled cane with him, madame ringing for one of the men- servants to attend him to the hall-door. Tasselled canes were the fashion then.
"They do not make a practice of meeting here, do they?" began old Tamlyn, when the captain was beyond hearing.
"Who? What?" asked Madame St. Vincent.
"The captain and little Mina Knox."
For a minute or two it appeared that madame could not catch his meaning. She looked at him in perplexity.
"I fail to understand you, dear Mr. Tamlyn."
"The captain is a very attractive man, no doubt; a good match, I dare say, and all that: but still we should not like poor little Mina to be whirled off to India by him. I asked if they often met here."
"Whirled off to India?" repeated madame, in astonishment. "Little Mina? By him? In what capacity?"
"As his wife."
"But—dear me!—what can have put such an idea into your head, my good sir? Mina is a mere child."
"Old enough to take up foolish notions," quoth the doctor, quaintly; "especially if they are put into it by a be-whiskered grenadier, such as he. I hope he is not doing it! I hope you do not give them opportunities of meeting here!"
Madame seemed quite taken aback at the implication. Her voice had a sound of tears in it.
"Do you suppose I could be capable of such a thing, sir? I did think you had a better opinion of me. Such a child as Mina! We were both on our knees, looking for the song, when Captain Collinson came in; and he must needs go down on his great stupid knees too. He but called to inquire after Lady Jenkins."
"Very thoughtful of him, of course. He is often up here, I fancy; at the next house, if not at this."
"Certainly not often at this. He calls on Lady Jenkins occasionally, and she likes it. I don't encourage him. He may be a brave soldier, and a man of wealth and family, and everything else that's desirable; but he is no especial favourite of mine."
"Well, Sam Jenkins has an idea that he would like to get making love to Mina. Sam was laughing about it in the surgery last night with Johnny Ludlow, and I happened to overhear him. Sam thinks they meet here, as well as next door: and you heard Mina say just now that she was singing to him here yesterday afternoon. Stay, my dear lady, don't be put out. I am sure you have thought it no harm, have been innocent of all suspicion of it. Mistaken, you tell me? Well, it may be I am. Mina is but a child, as you observe, and—and perhaps Sam was only jesting. How is our patient to-day?"
"Pretty well. Just a little drowsy."
"In bed, or up?"
"Oh, up."
"Will you tell her I am here?"
Madame St. Vincent, her plumage somewhat ruffled, betook herself to the floor above, Mr. Tamlyn following. Lady Jenkins, in a loose gown of blue quilted silk and a cap with yellow roses in it, sat at the window, nodding.
"Well," said he, sitting down by her and taking her hand, "and how do you feel to-day?"
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Better, she thought: oh yes, certainly better.
"You are sleepy."
"Rather so. Getting up tired me."
"Are you not going for a drive to-day? It would do you good."
"I don't know. Ask Patty. Patty, are we going out to- day?"
The utter helplessness of mind and body which appeared to be upon her as she thus appealed to another, Mr. Tamlyn had rarely seen equalled. Even while listening to Madame St. Vincent's answer— that they would go if she felt strong enough—her heavy eyelids closed again. In a minute or two she was in a sound sleep. Tamlyn threw caution and Dr. Knox's injunction to the winds, and spoke on the moment's impulse to Madame St. Vincent.
"You see," he observed, pointing to the sleeping face.
"She is only dozing off again."
"Only! My dear, good lady, this perpetual, stupid, lethargic sleepiness is not natural. You are young, perhaps inexperienced, or you would know it to be not so."
"I scarcely think it altogether unnatural," softly dissented madame, with deprecation. "She has really been very poorly."
"But not sufficiently so to induce this helplessness. It has been upon her for months, and is gaining ground."
"She is seventy years of age, remember."
"I know that. But people far older than that are not as she is without some cause: either of natural illness, or—or—something else. Step here a minute, my dear."
Old Tamlyn walked rapidly to the other window, and stood there talking in low tones, his eyes fixed on Madame St. Vincent, his hand, in his eagerness, touching her shoulder.
"Knox thinks, and has imparted his opinion to me—ay, and his doubts also—that something is being given to her."
"That something is being given to her!" echoed Madame St. Vincent, her face flushing with surprise. "Given to her in what way?"
"Or else that she is herself taking it. But I, who have known her longer than Knox has, feel certain that she is not one to do anything of the sort. Besides, you would have found it out long ago."
"I protest I do not understand you," spoke madame, earnestly. "What is it that she could take? She has taken the medicine that comes from your surgery. She has taken nothing else."
"Knox thinks she is being drugged."
"Drugged! Lady Jenkins drugged? How, drugged? What with? What for? Who would drug her?"
"There it is; who would do it?" said the old doctor, interrupting the torrent of words poured forth in surprise. "I confess I think the symptoms point to it. But I don't see how it could be accomplished and you not detect it, considering that you are so much with her."
"Why, I hardly ever leave her, day or night," cried madame. "My bedroom, as you know, is next to hers, and I sleep with the intervening door open. There is no more chance, sir, that she could be drugged than that I could be."
"When Knox first spoke of it to me I was pretty nearly startled out of my senses," went on Tamlyn. "For I caught up a worse notion than he meant to convey—that she was being systematically poisoned."
A dark, vivid, resentful crimson dyed madame's face. The suggestion seemed to be a reproof on her vigilance.
"Poisoned!" she repeated in angry indignation. "How dare Dr. Knox suggest such a thing?"
"My dear, he did not suggest it against you. He and I both look upon you as her best safeguard. It is your being with her, that gives us some sort of security: and it is your watchfulness we shall have to look to for detection."
"Poisoned!" reiterated madame, unable to get over the ugly word. "I think Dr. Knox ought to be made to answer for so wicked a suspicion."
"Knox did not mean to go so far as that: it was my misapprehension. But he feels perfectly convinced that she is being tampered with. In short, drugged."
"It is not possible," reasoned madame. "It could not be done without my knowledge. Indeed, sir, you may dismiss all idea of the kind from your mind; you and Dr. Knox also. I assure you that such a thing would be simply impracticable."
Mr. Tamlyn shook his head. "Any one who sets to work to commit a crime by degrees, usually possesses a large share of innate cunning—more than enough to deceive lookers- on," he remarked. "I can understand how thoroughly repulsive this idea is to you, my good lady; that your mind shrinks from admitting it; but I wish you would, just for argument's sake, allow its possibility."
But madame was harder than adamant. Old Tamlyn saw what it was— that she took this accusation, and would take it, as a reflection on her care.
"Who is there, amidst us all, that would attempt to injure Lady Jenkins?" she asked. "The household consists only of myself and the servants. They would not seek to harm their mistress."
"Not so sure; not so sure. It is amidst those servants that we must look for the culprit. Dr. Knox thinks so, and so do I."
Madame's face of astonishment was too genuine to be doubted. She feebly lifted her hands in disbelief. To suspect the servants seemed, to her, as ridiculous as the suspicion itself.
"Her maid, Lettice, and the housemaid, Sarah, are the only two servants who approach her when she is ill, sir: Sarah but very little. Both of them are kind-hearted young women."
Mr. Tamlyn coughed. Whether he would have gone on to impart his doubt of Lettice cannot be known. During the slight silence Lettice herself entered the room with her mistress's medicine. A quick, dark-eyed young woman, in a light print gown.
The stir aroused Lady Jenkins. Madame St. Vincent measured out the physic, and was handing it to the patient, when Mr. Tamlyn seized the wine-glass.
"It's all right," he observed, after smelling and tasting, speaking apparently to himself: and Lady Jenkins took it.
"That is the young woman you must especially watch," whispered Mr. Tamlyn, as Lettice retired with her waiter.
"What! Lettice?" exclaimed madame, opening her eyes.
"Yes; I should advise you to do so. She is the only one who is much about her mistress," he added, as if he would account for the advice. "Watch her."
Leaving madame at the window to digest the mandate and to get over her astonishment, he sat down by Lady Jenkins again, and began talking of this and that: the fineness of the weather, the gossip passing in the town.
"What do you take?" he asked abruptly.
"Take?" she repeated. "What is it that I take, Patty?" appealing to her companion.
"Nay, but I want you to tell me yourself," hastily interposed the doctor. "Don't trouble madame."
"But I don't know that I can recollect."
"Oh yes, you can. The effort to do so will do you good—wake you out of this stupid sleepiness. Take yesterday: what did you have for breakfast?"
"Yesterday? Well, I think they brought me a poached egg."
"And a very good thing, too. What did you drink with it?"
"Tea. I always take tea."
"Who makes it?"
"I do," said madame, turning her head to Mr. Tamlyn with a meaning smile. "I take my own tea from the same tea- pot."
"Good. What did you take after that, Lady Jenkins?"
"I dare say I had some beef-tea at eleven. Did I, Patty? I generally do have it."
"Yes, dear Lady Jenkins; and delicious beef-tea it is, and it does you good. I should like Mr. Tamlyn to take a cup of it."
"I don't mind if I do."
Perhaps the answer was unexpected: but Madame St. Vincent rang the bell and ordered up a cup of the beef-tea. The beef-tea proved to be "all right," as he had observed of the medicine. Meanwhile he had continued his questions to his patient.
She had eaten some chicken for dinner, and a little sweetbread for supper. There had been interludes of refreshment: an egg beaten up with milk, a cup of tea and bread-and-butter, and so on.
"You don't starve her," laughed Mr. Tamlyn.
"No, indeed," warmly replied madame. "I do what I can to nourish her."
"What do you take to drink?" continued the doctor.
"Nothing to speak of," interposed madame. "A drop of cold brandy-and-water with her dinner."
"Patty thinks it is better for me than wine," put in Lady Jenkins.
"I don't know but it is. You don't take too much of it?"
Lady Jenkins paused. "Patty knows. Do I take too much, Patty?"
Patty was smiling, amused at the very idea. "I measure one table-spoonful of brandy into a tumbler and put three or four table-spoonfuls of water to it. If you think that is too much brandy, Mr. Tamlyn, I will put less."
"Oh, nonsense," said old Tamlyn. "It's hardly enough."
"She has the same with her supper," concluded madame.
Well, old Tamlyn could make nothing of his suspicions. And he came home from Jenkins House and told Knox he thought they must be both mistaken.
"Why did you speak of it to madame?" asked Dr. Knox. "We agreed to be silent for a short time."
"I don't see why she should not be told, Arnold. She is straightforward as the day—and Lettice Lane seems so, too. I tasted the beef-tea they gave her—took a cup of it, in fact—and I tasted the physic. Madame says it is impossible that anything in the shape of drugs is being given to her; and upon my word I think so too."
"All the same, I wish you had not spoken."
And a little time went on.
III.
The soirée to-night was at Rose Villa; and Mrs. Knox, attired in a striped gauze dress and the jangling ornaments she favoured, stood to receive her guests. Beads on her thin brown neck, beads on her sharp brown wrists, beads in her ears, and beads dropping from her waist. She looked all beads. They were drab beads to-night, each resting in a little cup of gold. Janet and Miss Cattledon went up in the brougham, the latter more stiffly ungracious than usual, for she still resented Mrs. Knox's former behaviour to Janet. I walked.
"Where can the people from next door be?" wondered Mrs. Knox, as the time went on and Lady Jenkins did not appear.
For Lady Jenkins went abroad again. In a day or two after Mr. Tamlyn's interview with her, Lefford had the pleasure of seeing her red-wheeled carriage whirling about the streets, herself and her companion within it. Old Tamlyn said she was getting strong. Dr. Knox said nothing; but he kept his eyes open.
"I hope she is not taken ill again? I hope she is not too drowsy to come!" reiterated Mrs. Knox. "Sometimes madame can't rouse her up from these sleepy fits, do what she will."
Lady Jenkins was the great card of the soirée, and Mrs. Knox grew cross. Captain Collinson had not come either. She drew me aside.
"Johnny Ludlow, I wish you would step into the next door and see whether anything has happened. Do you mind it? So strange that Madame St. Vincent does not send or come."
I did not mind it at all. I rather liked the expedition, and passed out of the noisy and crowded room to the lovely, warm night-air. The sky was clear; the moon radiant.
I was no longer on ceremony at Jenkins House, having been up to it pretty often with Dan or Sam, and on my own score. Lady Jenkins had been pleased to take a fancy to me, had graciously invited me to some drives in her red-wheeled carriage, she dozing at my side pretty nearly all the time. I could not help being struck with the utter abnegation of will she displayed. It was next door to imbecility.
"Patty, Johnny Ludlow would like to go that way, I think, to-day may we?" she would say. "Must we turn back already, Patty?—it has been such a short drive." Thus she deferred to Madame St. Vincent in all things, small and great: if she had a will or choice of her own, it seemed that she never thought of exercising it. Day after day she would say the drives were short: and very short indeed they were made, upon some plea or other, when I made a third in the carriage. "I am so afraid of fatigue for her," madame whispered to me one day, when she seemed especially anxious.
"But you take a much longer drive, when she and you are alone," I answered, that fact having struck me. "What difference does my being in the carriage make?—are you afraid of fatigue for the horses as well?" At which suggestion madame burst out laughing.
"When I am alone with her I take care not to talk," she explained; "but when three of us are here there's sure to be talking going on, and it cannot fail to weary her."
Of course that was madame's opinion: but my impression was that, let us talk as much as we would, in a high key or a low one, that poor nodding woman neither heard nor heeded it.
"Don't you think you are fidgety about it, madame?"
"Well, perhaps I am," she answered. "I assure you, Lady Jenkins is an anxious charge to me."
Therefore, being quite at home now at Jenkins House (to return to the evening and the soirée I was telling of), I ran in the nearest way to do Mrs. Knox's behest. That was through the two back gardens, by the intervening little gate. I knocked at the glass-doors of what was called the garden-room, in which shone a light behind the curtains, and went straight in. Sitting near each other, conversing with an eager look on their faces, and both got up for Mrs. Knox's soirée, were Captain Collinson and Madame St. Vincent.
"Mr. Ludlow!" she exclaimed. "How you startled me!"
"I beg your pardon for entering so abruptly. Mrs. Knox asked me to run in and see whether anything was the matter, and I came the shortest way. She has been expecting you for some time."
"Nothing is the matter," shortly replied madame, who seemed more put out than the occasion called for: she thought me rude, I suppose. "Lady Jenkins is not ready; that is all. She may be half-an-hour yet."
"Half-an-hour! I won't wait longer, then," said Captain Collinson, catching up his crush hat. "I do trust she has not taken another chill. Au revoir, madame."
With a nod to me, he made his exit by the way I had entered. The same peculiarity struck me now that I had observed before: whenever I went into a place, be it Jenkins House or Rose Villa, the gallant captain immediately quitted it.
"Do I frighten Captain Collinson away?" I said to madame on the spur of the moment.
"You frighten him! Why should you?"
"I don't know why. If he happens to be here when I come in, he gets up and goes away. Did you never notice it? It is the same at Mrs. Knox's. It was the same once at Mrs. Hampshire's."
Madame laughed. "Perhaps he is shy," said she, jestingly.
"A man who has travelled to India and back must have rubbed his shyness off, one would think. I wish I knew where I had met him before!—if I have met him. Every now and again his face seems to strike on a chord of my memory."
"It is a handsome face," remarked madame.
"Pretty well. As much as can be seen of it. He has hair enough for a Russian bear or a wild Indian."
"Have wild Indians a superabundance of hair?" asked she gravely.
I laughed. "Seriously speaking, though, Madame St. Vincent, I think I must have met him somewhere."
"Seriously speaking, I don't think that can be," she answered; and her jesting tone had become serious. "I believe he has passed nearly all his life in India."
"Just as you have passed yours in the South of France. And yet there is something in your face also familiar to me."
"I should say you must be just a little fanciful on the subject of likenesses. Some people are."
"I do not think so. If I am I did not know it. I——"
The inner door opened and Lady Jenkins appeared, becloaked and beshawled, with a great green hood over her head, and leaning on Lettice Lane. Madame got up and threw a mantle on her own shoulders.
"Dear Lady Jenkins, I was just coming to see for you. Captain Collinson called in to give you his arm, but he did not wait. And here's Mr. Johnny Ludlow, sent in by Mrs. Knox to ask whether we are all dead."
"Ay," said Lady Jenkins, nodding to me as she sat down on the sofa: "but I should like a cup of tea before we start."
"A cup of tea?"
"Ay; I'm thirsty. Let me have it, Patty."
She spoke the last words in an imploring tone, as if Patty were her mistress. Madame threw off her mantle again, untied the green hood of her lady, and sent Lettice to make some tea.
"You had better go back and tell Mrs. Knox we are coming, though I'm sure I don't know when it will be," she said aside to me.
I did as I was told; and had passed through the garden- gate, when my eye fell upon Master Richard Knox. He was standing on the grass in the moonlight, near the clump of laurels, silently contorting his small form into cranks and angles, after the gleeful manner of Punch in the show when he has been giving his wife a beating. Knowing that agreeable youth could not keep himself out of mischief if he tried, I made up to him.
"Hush—sh—sh!" breathed he, silencing the question on my lips.
"What's the sport, Dicky?"
"She's with him there, beyond the laurels; they are walking round," he whispered. "Oh my! such fun! I have been peeping at 'em. He has his arm round her waist."
Sure enough, at that moment they came into view—Mina and Captain Collinson. Dicky drew back into the shade, as did I. And I, to my very great astonishment, trod upon somebody else's feet, who made, so to say, one of the laurels.
"It's only I," breathed Sam Jenkins. "I'm on the watch as well as Dicky. It looks like a case of two loviers, does it not?"
The "loviers" were parting. Captain Collinson held her hand between both his to give her his final whisper. Then Mina tripped lightly over the grass and stole in at the glass-doors of the garden-room, while the captain stalked round to the front-entrance and boldly rang, making believe he had only then arrived.
"Oh my, my!" repeated the enraptured Dicky, "won't I have the pull of her now! She'd better tell tales of me again!"
"Is it a case, think you?" asked Sam of me, as we slowly followed in the wake of Mina.
"It looks like it," I answered.
Janet was singing one of her charming songs, as we stole in at the glass-doors: "Blow, blow, thou wintry wind:" just as she used to sing it in that house in the years gone by. Her voice had not lost its sweetness. Mina stood near the piano now, a thoughtful look upon her flushed face.
"Where did you and Dicky go just now, Sam?"
Sam turned short round at the query. Charlotte Knox, as she put it, carried suspicion in her low tone.
"Where did I and Dicky go?" repeated Sam, rather taken aback. "I—I only stepped out for a stroll in the moonlight. I don't know anything about Dicky."
"I saw Dicky run out to the garden first, and you went next," persisted Charlotte, who was just as keen as steel. "Dick, what was there to see? I will give you two helpings of trifle at supper if you tell me."
For two helpings of trifle Dick would have sold his birthright. "Such fun!" he cried, beginning to jump. "She was out there with the captain, Lotty: he came to the window here and beckoned to her: I saw him. I dodged them round and round the laurels, and I am pretty nearly sure he kissed her."
"Who was?—who did?" But the indignant glow on Lotty's face proved that she scarcely needed to put the question.
"That nasty Mina. She took and told that it was me who eat up the big bowl of raspberry cream in the larder to-day; and mother went and believed her!"
Charlotte Knox, her brow knit, her head held erect, walked away after giving us all a searching look apiece. "I, like Dicky, saw Collinson call her out, and I thought I might as well see what he wanted to be after," Sam whispered to me. "I did not see Dicky at all, though, until he came into the laurels with you."
"He is talking to her now," I said, directing Sam's attention to the captain.
"I wonder whether I ought to tell Dr. Knox?" resumed Sam. "What do you think, Johnny Ludlow? She is so young, and somehow I don't trust him. Dan doesn't, either."
"Dan told me he did not."
"Dan fancies he is after her money. It would be a temptation to some people,—seven thousand pounds. Yet he seems to have plenty of his own."
"If he did marry her he could not touch the money for three or four years to come."
"Oh, couldn't he, though," answered Sam, taking me up. "He could touch it next day."
"I thought she did not come into it till she was of age, and that Dr. Knox was trustee."
"That's only in case she does not marry. If she marries it goes to her at once. Here comes Aunt Jenkins!"
The old lady, as spruce as you please, in a satin gown, was shaking hands with Mrs. Knox. But she looked half silly: and, may I never be believed again, if she did not begin to nod directly she sat down.
"Do you hail from India? as the Americans phrase it," I suddenly ask of Captain Collinson, when chance pinned us together in a corner of the supper-room, and he could not extricate himself.
"Hail from India!" he repeated. "Was I born there, I conclude you mean?"
"Yes."
"Not exactly. I went there, a child, with my father and mother. And, except for a few years during my teens, when I was home for education, I have been in India ever since. Why do you ask?"
"For no particular reason. I was telling Madame St. Vincent this evening that it seemed to me I had seen you before; but I suppose it could not be. Shall you be going back soon?"
"I am not sure. Possibly in the autumn, when my leave will expire: not till next year if I can get my leave extended. I shall soon be quitting Lefford."
"Shall you?"
"Must do it. I have to make my bow at a levée; and I must be in town for other things as well. I should like to enjoy a little of the season there: it may be years before the opportunity falls to my lot again. Then I have some money to invest: I think of buying an estate. Oh, I have all sorts of business to attend to, once I am in London."
"Where's the use of buying an estate if you are to live in India?"
"I don't intend to live in India always," he answered, with a laugh. "I shall quit the service as soon as ever I can, and settle down comfortably in the old country. A home of my own will be of use to me then."
Now it was that very laugh of Captain Collinson's that seemed more familiar to me than all the rest of him. That I had heard it before, ay, and heard it often, I felt sure. At least, I should have felt sure but for its seeming impossibility.
"You are from Gloucestershire, I think I have heard," he observed to me.
"No; from Worcestershire."
"Worcestershire? That's a nice county, I believe. Are not the Malvern Hills situated in it?"
"Yes. They are eight miles from Worcester."
"I should like to see them. I must see them before I go back. And Worcester is famous for—what is it?—china?—yes, china. And for its cathedral, I believe. I shall get a day or two there if I can. I can do Malvern at the same time."
"Captain Collinson, would you mind giving Lady Jenkins your arm?" cried Mrs. Knox at this juncture. "She is going home."
"There is no necessity for Captain Collinson to disturb himself: I can take good care of Lady Jenkins," hastily spoke Madame St. Vincent, in a tart tone, which the room could not mistake. Evidently she did not favour Captain Collinson.
But the captain had already pushed himself through the throng of people and taken the old lady in tow. The next minute I found myself close to Charlotte Knox, who was standing at the supper-table, with a plate of cold salmon before her.
"Are you a wild bear, Johnny Ludlow?" she asked me privately, under cover of the surrounding clatter.
"Not that I know of. Why?"
"Madame St. Vincent takes you for one."
I laughed. "Has she told you so?"
"She has not told me: I guess it is some secret," returned Charlotte, beginning upon the sandwiches. "I learnt it in a curious way."
A vein of seriousness ran through her half-mocking tone; seriousness lay in her keen and candid eyes, lifted to mine.
"Yes, it was rather curious, the way it came to me: and perhaps on my part not altogether honourable. Early this morning, Johnny, before ten o'clock had struck, mamma made me go in and ask how Lady Jenkins was, and whether she would be able to come to-night. I ran in the nearest way, by the glass-doors, boisterously of course—mamma is always going on at me for that—and the breeze the doors made as I threw them open blew a piece of paper off the table. I stooped to pick it up, and saw it was a letter just begun in madame's handwriting."
"Well?"
"Well, my eyes fell on the few words written; but I declare that I read them heedlessly, not with any dishonourable intention; such a thought never entered my mind. 'Dear Sissy,' the letter began, 'You must not come yet, for Johnny Ludlow is here, of all people in the world; it would not do for you and him to meet.' That was all."
"I suppose madame had been called away," continued Charlotte, after a pause. "I put the paper on the table, and was going on into the passage, when I found the room-door locked: so I just came out again, ran round to the front- door and went in that way. Now if you are not a bear, Johnny, why should you frighten people?"
I did not answer. She had set me thinking.
"Madame St. Vincent had invited a sister from France to come and stay with her: she does just as she likes here, you know. It must be she who is not allowed to meet you. What is the mystery?"
"Who is talking about mystery?" exclaimed Caroline Parker; who, standing near, must have caught the word. "What is the mystery, Lotty?"
And Lotty, giving her some evasive reply, made an end of her sandwiches and turned to the lemon sponge.
"IF Aunt Jenkins were the shrewd woman she used to be,
I'd lay the whole case before her, and have it out; but she
is not," contended Dan Jenkins, tilting the tongs in his
hand, as we sat round the dying embers of the surgery
fire.
His brother Sam and I had walked home together from Mrs. Knox's soirée, and we overtook Dan in the town. Another soirée had been held in Lefford that night, which Dan had promised himself to before knowing Mrs. Knox would have one. We all three turned into the surgery. Dr. Knox was out with a patient, and Sam had to wait up for him. Sam had been telling his brother what we witnessed up at Rose Villa—the promenade round the laurels that Captain Collinson and Mina had stolen in the moonlight. As for me, though I heard what Sam said, and put in a confirming word here and there, I was thinking my own thoughts. In a small way, nothing had ever puzzled me much more than the letter Charlotte Knox had seen. Who was Madame St. Vincent? and who was her sister, that I, Johnny Ludlow, might not meet her?
"You see," continued Dan, "one reason why I can't help suspecting the fellow, is this—he does not address Mina openly. If he were honest and above board, he would go in for her before all the world. He wouldn't do it in secret."
"What do you suspect him of?" cried Sam.
"I don't know. I do suspect him—that he is somehow not on the square. It's not altogether about Mina; but I have no confidence in the man."
Sam laughed. "Of course you have not, Dan. You want to keep Mina for yourself."
Dan pitched his soft hat at Sam's head, and let fall the tongs with a clatter.
"Collinson seems to be all right," I put in. "He is going up to London to a levée, and he is going to buy an estate. At least, he told me so to-night in the supper-room."
"Oh, in one sense of the word the fellow is all right," acknowledged Dan. "He is what he pretends to be; he is in the army list; and, for all I know to the contrary, he may have enough gold to float an argosy of ships. What I ask is, why he should go sneaking after Mina when he does not care for her."
"That may be just a fallacy of ours, Dan," said his brother.
"No, it's not. Collinson is in love with Madame St. Vincent; not with Mina."
"Then why does he spoon after Mina?"
"That's just it—why?"
"Any way, I don't think madame is in love with him, Dan. It was proposed that he should take aunt home to-night, and madame was as tart as you please over it, letting all the room know that she did not want him."
"Put it down so," agreed Dan, stooping to pick up the tongs. "Say that he is not fond of madame, but of Mina, and would like to make her his wife: why does he not go about it in a proper manner; court her openly, speak to her mother; instead of pursuing her covertly like a sneak?"
"It may be his way of courting."
"May it! It is anything but a right way. He is for ever seeking to meet her on the sly. I know it. He got her out in the garden to-night to a meeting, you say: you and Johnny Ludlow saw it."
"Dicky saw it too, and Charlotte got the truth out of him. There may be something in what you say, Dan."
"There's a great deal in what I say," contended Dan, his honest face full of earnestness. "Look here. Here's an officer and a gentleman; a rich man, as we are given to believe, and we've no reason to doubt it. He seems to spend enough—Carter saw him lose five pounds last night, betting at billiards. If he is in love with a young lady, there's nothing to hinder a man like that from going in for her openly——"
"Except her age," struck in Sam. "He may think they'll refuse Mina to him on that score."
"Stuff! I wish you wouldn't interrupt me, Sam. Every day will help to remedy that—and he might undertake to wait a year or two. But I feel sure and certain he does not really care for Mina; I feel sure that, if he is seeking in this underhand way to get her to promise to marry him, he has some ulterior motive in view. My own belief is he would like to kidnap her."
Sam laughed. "You mean, kidnap her money?"
"Well, I don't see what else it can be. The fellow may have outrun the constable, and need some ready money to put him straight. Rely upon this much, Sam—that his habits are as fast as they can well be. I have been learning a little about him lately."
Sam made no answer. He began to look grave.
"Not at all the sort of man who ought to marry Mina, or any other tender young girl. He'd break her heart in a twelvemonth."
Sam spoke up. "I said to Johnny Ludlow, just now, that it might be better to tell Dr. Knox. Perhaps——"
"What about?" interrupted the doctor himself, pouncing in upon us, and catching the words as he opened the door. "What have you to tell Dr. Knox about, Sam? And why are all you young men sitting up here? You'd be better in bed."
The last straw, you know, breaks the camel's back. Whether Sam would really have disclosed the matter to Dr. Knox, I can't say; the doctor's presence and the doctor's question decided it.
Sam spoke in a low tone, standing behind the drug-counter with the doctor, who had gone round to look at some entry in what they called the day-book, and had lighted a gas-burner to do it by. Dr. Knox made no remark of any kind while he listened, his eyes fixed on the book: one might have thought he did not hear, but his lips were compressed.
"If she were not so young, sir—a child, as may be said—I should not have presumed to speak," concluded Sam. "I don't know whether I have done wrong or right."
"Right," emphatically pronounced the doctor.
But the word had hardly left his lips when there occurred a startling interruption. The outer door of the surgery, the one he had come in by, was violently drummed at, and then thrown open. Charlotte Knox, Miss Mack the governess, and Sally the maid—the same Sally who had been at Rose Villa when the trouble occurred about Janet Carey, and the same Miss Mack who had replaced Janet—came flocking in.
"Dicky's lost, Arnold," exclaimed Charlotte.
"Dicky lost!" repeated Dr. Knox. "How can he be lost at this time of night?"
"He is lost. And we had nearly gone to bed without finding it out. The people had all left, and the doors were locked, when some one—Gerty, I think—began to complain of Dicky——"
"It was I who spoke," interposed the governess; and though she was fat enough for two people she had the meekest little voice in the world, and allowed herself to be made a perfect tool of at Rose Villa. "Dicky did behave very ill at supper, eating rudely of everything, and——"
"Yes, yes," broke in Charlotte, "I remember now, Macky. You said Dicky ought to be restrained, and you wondered he was not ill; and then mamma called out, 'But where is Dicky?' 'Gone to bed to sleep off his supper,' we all told her: and she sent Sally up to see that he had put his candle out."
"And of course," interrupted Sally, thinking it was her turn to begin, "when I found the room empty, and saw by the moonlight that Master Dicky had not come to bed at all, I ran down to say so. And his mamma got angry, accusing us servants of having carelessly locked him out-of-doors. And he can't be found, sir— as Miss Lotty says."
"No, he cannot be found anywhere," added Lotty. "We have searched the house and the gardens, and been in to inquire at Lady Jenkins's; and he is gone. And mamma is frantic, and said we were to come to you, Arnold."
"Master Dicky's playing truant: he has gone off with some of the guests," observed Dr. Knox.
"Well, mamma is putting herself into a frightful fever over him, Arnold. That old well in the field at the back was opened the day before yesterday; she says Dicky may have strayed there and fallen in."
"Dicky's after more mischief than that," said the doctor, sagely. "A well in a solitary field would have no charms for Dicky. I tell you, Lotty, he must have marched home with some one or other. Had you any lads up there to-night?"
"No, not any. You know mamma never will have them. Lads, and Dicky, would be too much."
"If Master Dicky have really gone off, as the doctor thinks, I'd lay my next quarter's wages that it's with Captain Collinson," cried Sally. "He is always wanting to be after the captain."
Lotty lifted her face, a gleam of intelligence flashing across it. "Perhaps that's it," she said; "I should not wonder if it is. He has strayed off after, or with, Captain Collinson. What is to be done, Arnold?"
"Not strayed with him, I should think," observed the doctor. "Captain Collinson, if he possesses any sense or consideration, would order Dicky back at once."
"Won't you come with us to the captain's lodgings, Arnold, and see?" cried Charlotte. "It would not do, would it, for us to go there alone at this time of night? The captain may be in bed."
Arnold Knox looked at his sister; looked at the three of them, as if he thought they were enough without him. He was nearly done up with his long day's work.
"I suppose I had better go with you, Lotty," he said. "Though I don't think Captain Collinson would kidnap any one of you if you went alone."
"Oh dear, no; it is Mina he wants to kidnap, not us," answered Lotty, freely. And Arnold glanced at her keenly as he heard the words.
Did you ever know a fellow in the hey-dey of his health and restlessness who was not ready for any night expedition— especially if it were to search after something lost? Dr. Knox took up his hat to accompany the visitors, and we three took up ours.
We proceeded in a body through the moonlit streets to Collinson's lodgings; the few stragglers we met no doubt taking us all for benighted wayfarers, trudging home from some one or other of the noted Lefford soirées. Collinson had the rooms at the hairdresser's—good rooms, famed as the best lodgings in the town. The gas was alight in his sitting-room over the shop; a pretty fair proof that the captain was yet up.
"Stay, Lotty," said Dr. Knox, arresting her impatient hand, that was lifted to pull the bell. "No need to arouse the house: I dare say Pink and his family are in bed. I will go up to Collinson."
It was easy to say so, but difficult to do it. Dr. Knox turned the handle of the door to enter, and found it fastened. He had to ring, after all.
Nobody answered it. Another ring and another shared the same fate. Dr. Knox then searched for some small loose stones, and flung them up at the window. It brought forth no more than the bell had.
"Dicky can't be there, or that gravel would have brought him to the window," decided Lotty. "I should say Captain Collinson is not there, either."
"He may be in his room at the back," observed Dr. Knox. And he rang again.
Presently, after a spell of at least ten minutes' waiting, and no end of ringing, an upper window was opened and a head appeared— that of the hairdresser.
"Whatever's the matter?" called out he, seeing us all below. "It's not fire, is it?"
"I am sorry to disturb you, Pink," called back Dr. Knox. "It is Captain Collinson I want. Is he in, do you know?"
"Yes, sir; he came in about twenty minutes ago, and somebody with him, for I heard him talking," answered Pink. "He must be in his sitting-room, if he is not gone to bed."
"There is a light in the room, but I don't think he can be in. I have thrown up some gravel, and he does not answer."
"I'll come down and see, sir."
Pink, the most obliging little man in the world, descended to the captain's room and thence to us at the door. Captain Collinson was not in. He had gone out again, and left his gas alight.
"You say some one came in with him, Pink. Was it a young lad?"
"I can't tell, sir. I heard the captain's latch-key, and I heard him come on upstairs, talking to somebody; but I was just dropping off to sleep, so did not take much notice."
That the somebody was young Dick, and that Captain Collinson had gone out to march Dick home again, seemed only probable. There was nothing for it but to go on to Rose Villa and ascertain; and we started for it, after a short consultation.
"I shall not have the remotest idea where to look for Dick if he is not there," remarked Dr. Knox.
"And in that case, I do believe mamma will have a fit," added Charlotte. "A real fit, I mean, Arnold. I wish something could be done with Dicky! The house is always in a commotion."
Captain Collinson was at Rose Villa, whether Dicky was or not. At the garden-gate, talking to Mina in the moonlight, stood he, apparently saying good-night to her.
"Dicky? oh dear, yes; I have just brought Dicky back," laughed the captain, before Dr. Knox had well spoken his young half-brother's name, while Mina ran indoors like a frightened hare. "Upon getting home to my rooms just now I found some small mortal stealing in after me, and it proved to be Dicky. He followed me home to get a top I had promised him, and which I forgot to bring up here when I came to- night."
"I hope you did not give it him," said Dr. Knox.
"Yes, I did. I should never have got him back without," added the captain. "Good-night."
He laughed again as he went away. Dicky's vagaries seemed to be rare fun for him.
Dicky was spinning the top on the kitchen table when we went in— for that's where they had all gathered: Mrs. Knox, Gerty, Kate, and the cook. A big humming-top, nearly as large and as noisy as Dick. Dr. Knox caught up the top and caught Dicky by the hand, and took both into the parlour.
"Now then, sir!" he sternly asked. "What did you mean by this night's escapade?"
"Oh, Arnold, don't scold him," implored Mrs. Knox, following them in with her hands held up. "It was naughty of him, of course, and it gave me a dreadful fright; but it was perhaps excusable, and he is safe at home again. The captain was to bring the top, and did not, and poor Dicky ran after him to get it."
"You be quiet, Arnold; I am not to be scolded," put in cunning Dicky. "You just give me my top."
"As to scolding you, I don't know that it would be of any further use: the time seems to have gone by for it, and I must take other measures," spoke Dr. Knox. "Come up to bed now, sir. I shall see you in it before I leave."
"But I want my top."
"Which you will not have," said the doctor: and he marched off Dicky.
"How cross you are with him, Arnold!" spoke his step- mother when the doctor came down again, leaving Dicky howling on his pillow for the top.
"It needs some one to be cross with him," observed Dr. Knox.
"He is only a little boy, remember."
"He is big enough and old enough to be checked and corrected—if it ever is to be done at all. I will see you to-morrow: I wish to have some conversation with you."
"About Dicky?" she hastily asked.
"About him and other things. Mina," he added in a low tone, as he passed her on his way out, but I, being next to him, caught the words, "I did not like to see you at the gate with Captain Collinson at this hour. Do not let it occur again. Young maidens cannot be too modest."
And, at the reproof, Miss Mina coloured to the very roots of her hair.
II.
They sat in the small garden-room, its glass-doors open to the warm spring air. Mrs. Knox wore an untidy cotton gown, of a flaming crimson-and-white pattern, and her dark face looked hot and angry. Dr. Knox, sitting behind the table, was being annoyed as much as he could be annoyed—and no one ever annoyed him but his step- mother—as the lines in his patient brow betrayed.
"It is for his own good that I suggest this; his welfare," urged Dr. Knox. "Left to his own will much longer, he must not be. Therefore I say that he must be placed at school."
"You only propose it to thwart me," cried Mrs. Knox. "A fine expense it will be!"
"It will not be your expense. I pay his schooling now, and I shall pay it then. My father left me, young though I was, Dicky's guardian, and I must do this. I wonder you do not see that it will be the very best thing for Dicky. Every one but yourself sees that, as things are, the boy is being ruined."
Mrs. Knox looked sullenly through the open doors near which she sat; she tapped her foot impatiently upon the worn mat, lying on the threshold.
"I know you won't rest until you have carried your point and separated us, Arnold; it has been in your mind to do it this long while. And my boy is the only thing I care for in life."
"It is for Dicky's own best interest," reiterated Dr. Knox. "Of course he is dear to you; it would be unnatural if he were not; but you surely must wish to see him grow up a good and self-reliant man: not an idle and self-indulgent one."
"Why don't you say outright that your resolve is taken and nothing can alter it; that you are going to banish him to school to-morrow?"
"Not to-morrow, but he shall go at the half-quarter. The child will be ten times happier for it; believe that."
"Do you really mean it?" she questioned, her black eyes flashing fury at Arnold. "Will nothing deter you?"
"Nothing," he replied, in a low, firm tone. "I—bear with me a moment, mother—I cannot let Dicky run riot any longer. He is growing up the very incarnation of selfishness; he thinks the world was made for him alone; you and his sisters are only regarded by him as so many ministers to his pleasure. See how he treats you all. See how he treats the servants. Were I to allow this state of things to continue, how should I be fulfilling my obligation to my dead father?—my father and Dicky's."
"I will hear no more," spoke Mrs. Knox, possibly thinking the argument was getting too strong for her. "I have wanted to speak to you, Arnold, and I may as well do it now. Things must be put on a different footing up here."
"What things?"
"Money matters. I cannot continue to do upon my small income."
Arnold Knox passed his hand across his troubled brow, almost in despair. Oh, what a weary subject this was! Not for long together did she ever give him rest from it.
"Your income is sufficient, mother; I am tired of saying it. It is between three and four hundred a-year; and you are free from house-rent."
"Why don't you remind me that the house is yours, and have done with it!" she cried, her voice harsh and croaking as a raven's.
"Well, it is mine," he said good-humouredly.
"Yes; and instead of settling it upon me when you married, you must needs settle it on your wife! Don't you talk of selfishness, Arnold."
"My wife does not derive any benefit from it. It has made no difference to you."
"She would derive it, though, if you died. Where should I be then?"
"I am not going to die, I hope. Oh, mother, if you only knew how these discussions vex me!"
"Then you should show yourself generous."
"Generous!" he exclaimed, in a pained tone. And, goaded to it by his remembrance of what he had done for her in the present and in the past, he went on to speak more plainly than he had ever spoken yet. "Do you forget that a great portion of what you enjoy should, by right, be mine? Is mine!"
"Yours!" she scornfully said.
"Yes: mine. Not by legal right, but by moral. When my father died he left the whole of his property to you. Considerably more than the half of that property had been brought to him by my mother: some people might have thought that much should have descended to her son."
"He did not leave me the whole. You had a share of it."
"Not of the income. I had a sum of five hundred pounds left me, for a specific purpose—to complete my medical education. Mother, I have never grumbled at this; never. It was my father's will and pleasure that the whole should be yours, and that it should go to your children after you; and I am content to think that he did for the best; the house was obliged to come to me; it had been so settled at my mother's marriage; but you have continued to live in it, and I have not said you nay."
"It is like you to remind me of all this!"
"I could remind you of more," he rejoined, chafing at her unjust words, her resentful manner. "That for years I impoverished myself to help you to augment this income. Three parts of what I earned, before my partnership with Mr. Tamlyn, I gave to you."
"Well, I needed it. Do, for goodness' sake, let the past alone, if you can: where's the use of recalling it? Would you have us starve? Would you see me taken off to prison? And that's what it will come to, unless I can get some money to pay up with. That table-drawer that you've got your elbow on, is full of bills. I've not paid one for these six months."
"I cannot think what it is you do with your money!"
"Do with my money! Why, it goes in a hundred ways. How very ignorant you are, Arnold. Look at what dress costs, for myself and four girls! Look at what the soirées cost! We have to give all sorts of dishes now; lobster salads and raspberry creams, and all kinds of expensive things. Madame St. Vincent introduced that."
"You must put down the soirées and the dress—if you cannot keep them within the bounds of your income."
"Thank you. Just as I had to put down the pony-carriage and James. How cruel you are, Arnold!"
"I hope I am not. I do not wish to be so."
"It will take two hundred pounds to set me straight; and I must have it from you, or from somebody else," avowed Mrs. Knox.
"You certainly cannot have it, or any portion of it, from me. My expenses are heavy now, and I have my own children coming on."
His tone was unmistakably decisive, and Mrs. Knox saw that it was so. For many years she had been in the habit of regarding Arnold as something like a bucket in a well, which brings up water every time it is let down. Just so had he brought up money for her from his pocket every time she worried for it. But that was over now: and he had to bear these reproaches periodically.
"You know that you can let me have it, Arnold. You can lend it me from Mina's money."
His face flushed slightly, he pushed his fair hair back with a gesture of annoyance.
"The last time you spoke of that I begged you never to mention it again," he said in a low tone. "Why, what do you take me for, mother?"
"Take you for?"
"You must know that I could not touch Mina's money without becoming a false trustee. Men have been brought to the criminal bar to answer for a less crime than that would be."
"If Mina married, you would have to hand over the whole of it."
"Of course I should. First of all taking care that it was settled upon her."
"I don't see the necessity of that. Mina could let me have what she pleased of it."
"Talking of Mina," resumed Dr. Knox, passing by her remark, "I think you must look a little closely after her. She is more intimate, I fancy, with Captain Collinson than is desirable, and-—-"
"Suppose Captain Collinson wants to marry her?" interrupted Mrs. Knox.
"Has he told you that he wants to do so?"
"No; not in so many words. But he evidently likes her. What a good match it would be!"
"Mina is too young to be married yet. And Captain Collinson cannot, I should suppose, have any intention of the sort. If he had, he would speak out: when it would be time enough to consider and discuss his proposal. Unless he does speak, I must beg of you not to allow Mina to be alone with him."
"She never is alone with him."
"I think she is, at odd moments. Only last night I saw her with him at the gate. Before that, while your soirée was going on, Dicky—I believe he could tell you so, if you asked him—saw them walking together in the garden, the captain's arm round her waist."
"Girls are so fond of flirting! And young men think no harm of a little passing familiarity."
"Just so. But for remembering this, I should speak to Captain Collinson. The thought that there may be nothing serious in it prevents me. At any rate, I beg of you to take care of Mina."
"And the money I want?" she asked, as he took up his hat to go.
But Dr. Knox, shortly repeating that he had no money to give her, made his escape. He had been ruffled enough already. One thing was certain: that if some beneficent sprite from fairyland increased Mrs. Knox's annual income cent. per cent. she would still, and ever, be in embarrassment. Arnold knew this.
Mrs. Knox sat on, revolving difficulties. How many similar interviews she had held with her step-son, and how often he had been brought round to pay her bills, she could but remember. Would he do it now? A most unpleasant doubt, that he would not, lay upon her.
Presently the entrance was darkened by some tall form interposing itself between herself and the sunlight. She glanced up and saw Captain Collinson. He stood there smiling, his tasselled cane jauntily swayed in his left hand.
"My dear madam, you looked troubled. Is anything wrong?"
"Troubled! the world's full of trouble, I think," spoke Mrs. Knox, in a pettish kind of way. "Dr. Knox has been here to vex me."
Captain Collinson stepped airily in, and sat down near Mrs. Knox, his eyes expressing proper concern: indignation blended with sympathy.
"Very inconsiderate of Dr. Knox: very wrong! Can I help you in any way, my dear lady?"
"Arnold is always inconsiderate. First, he begins upon me about Dicky, threatening to put him altogether away at school, poor ill-used child! Next, he——"
"Sweet little angel?" interlarded the captain.
"Next, he refuses to lend me a trifling sum of money—and he knows how badly I want it!"
"Paltry!" ejaculated the captain. "When he must be making so much of it!"
"Rolling in it, so to say," confirmed Mrs. Knox. "Look at the practice he has! But if he did not give me any of his, he might advance me a trifle of Mina's."
"Of course he might," warmly acquiesced Captain Collinson.
What with the warmth and the sympathy, Mrs. Knox rather lost her head. Many of us are betrayed on occasion into doing the same. That is, she said more than she should have said.
"You see, if Mina married, as I pointed out to Arnold, the money would no longer be under his control at all. It would be hers to do as she pleased with. She is a dear, good, generous girl, and would not scruple to let me have one or two hundred pounds. What would such a trifle be out of the whole seven thousand?"
"Very true; nothing at all," cried the captain, toying with his handsome beard.
"But no; Arnold will not hear of it: he answered me in a way that I should not like to repeat. He also said he should take care, if Mina did marry before she was of age, that her money was settled upon her; said it on purpose to thwart me."
"Cruel!" aspirated the captain.
"Some girls might be tempted to marry off-hand, and say nothing to him, if only to get her fortune out of his control. I don't say Mina would."
"Miser! My dear madam, rely upon it that whenever Miss Mina does marry, her husband will join with her in letting you have as much money as you wish. I am sure it would be his pride and pleasure to do so."
Was it an implied promise? meant to be so understood? Mrs. Knox took it for one. She came out of her dumps, and felt exalted to the seventh heaven.
Meanwhile, Arnold Knox was with Lady Jenkins, to whom he had gone on quitting his step-mother. The old lady, up and dressed, sat in her dining-room. There appeared to be no change in her condition: drowsy, lethargic, gentle, yielding; imbecile, or not many shades removed from it. And yet, neither Dr. Knox nor his fellow-practitioner could see any cause to account for this. Of bodily illness she had none: except that she seemed feeble.
"I wish you would tell me what it is you are taking," said Dr. Knox, bending over her and speaking in low, persuasive tones. "I fear that you are taking something that does you harm."
Lady Jenkins looked up at him, apparently trying to consider. "I've not had anything since I took the physic," she said.
"What physic?"
"The bottles that Mr. Tamlyn sent me."
"But that was when you were ill. Are you sure you have not taken anything else?—that you are not taking anything? Any"—he dropped his voice to a still lower key—"opiates? Laudanum, for instance?"
Lady Jenkins shook her head. "I never took any sort of opiate in my life."
"Then it is being given to her without her knowledge," mentally decided the doctor. "I hear you were at the next door last night, as gay as the best of them," he resumed aloud, changing his tone to a light one.
"Ay. I put on my new bronze satin gown: Patty said I was to. Janet sang her pretty songs."
"Did she? When are you coming to spend an evening with us? She will sing them again for you."
"I should like to come—if I may."
"If you may! There's nothing to prevent it. You are quite well enough."
"There's Patty. We shall have to ask her whether I may."
Anything Arnold Knox might have rejoined to this was stopped by the entrance of Patty herself, a light blue shawl on her shoulders. A momentary surprise crossed her face at sight of the doctor.
"Oh, Dr. Knox! I did not know you were here," she said, as she threw off the shawl. "I was running about the garden for a few minutes. What a lovely day it is!—the sun so warm."
"It is that. Lady Jenkins ought to be out in it. Should you not like to take a run in the garden?" he laughingly added to her.
"Should I, Patty?"
The utter abnegation of will, both of tone and look, as she cast an appealing glance at her companion, struck Dr. Knox forcibly. He looked at both of them from under his rather overhanging eyebrows. Did Madame St. Vincent extort this obedience?—or was it simply the old lady's imbecility? Surely it must be the latter.
"I think," said madame, "a walk in the garden will be very pleasant for you, dear Lady Jenkins. Lettice shall bring down your things. The may-tree is budding beautifully."
"Already!" said the doctor: "I should like to see it. Will you go with me, madame? I have two minutes to spare."
Madame St. Vincent, showing no surprise, though she may have felt it, put the blue shawl on her shoulders again and followed Dr. Knox. The may-tree was nearly at the end of the garden, down by the shrubbery.
"Mr. Tamlyn mentioned to you, I believe, that we suspected something improper, in the shape of opiates, was being given to Lady Jenkins," began Dr. Knox, never as much as lifting his eyes to the budding may-tree.
"Yes; I remember that he did," replied Madame St. Vincent. "I hardly gave it a second thought."
"Tamlyn said you had a difficulty in believing it. Nevertheless, I feel assured that it is so."
"Impossible, Dr. Knox."
"It seems impossible to you, I dare say. But that it is being done, I would stake my head upon. Lady Jenkins is being stupefied in some way: and I have brought you out here to tell you so, and to ask your co-operation in tracing the culprit."
"But—I beg your pardon, Dr. Knox—who would give her anything of the kind? You don't suspect me, I hope?"
"If I suspected you, my dear lady, I should not be talking to you as I am. The person we must suspect is Lettice Lane."
"Lettice Lane!"
"I have reason to think it. Lettice Lane's antecedents are not, I fear, quite so clear as they might be: though it is only recently I have known this. At any rate, she is the personal attendant of Lady Jenkins; the only one of them who has the opportunity of being alone with her. I must beg of you to watch Lettice Lane."
Madame St. Vincent looked a little bewildered; perhaps felt so. Stretching up her hand, she plucked one of the budding may-blossoms.
"Mr. Tamlyn hinted at Lettice also. I have always felt confidence in Lettice. As to drugs—Dr. Knox, I don't believe a word of it."
"Lady Jenkins is being drugged," emphatically pronounced Dr. Knox. "And you must watch Lettice Lane. If Lettice is innocent, we must look elsewhere."
"Shall I tax Lettice with it?"
"Certainly not. You would make a good detective," he added, with a laugh; "showing your hand to the enemy. Surely, Madame St. Vincent, you must yourself see that Lady Jenkins is being tampered with. Look at her state this morning: though she is not quite as bad as she is sometimes."
"I have known some old people sleep almost constantly."
"So have I. But theirs is simply natural sleep, induced by exhausted nature: hers is not natural. She is stupefied."
"Stupefied with the natural decay of her powers," dissented madame. "But—to drug her! No, I cannot believe it. And where would be the motive?"
"That I know not. But I am sure I am not mistaken," he added decisively. "You will watch Lettice Lane?"
"I will," she answered, after a pause. "Of course it may be as you say; I now see it. I will watch her to the very utmost of my ability from this hour."
"Dear Johnny,
"I expect your stay at Lefford is drawing towards a close; mine is, here. It might be pleasant if we travelled home together. I could take Lefford on my way—starting by an early train—and pick you up. You need some one to take care of you, you know. Let me hear when you intend to be ready. I will arrange my departure accordingly.
"Hope you have enjoyed yourself, old fellow."
"Ever yours,
"J.T."
The above letter from Tod, who was still in Leicestershire, reached me one morning at breakfast-time. Dr. Knox and Janet, old Tamlyn—all the lot of them—called out that they could not spare me yet. Even Cattledon graciously intimated that she should miss me. Janet wrote to Tod, telling him he was to take Lefford on his way, as he proposed, and to stay a week when he did come.
It was, I think, that same day that some news reached us touching Captain Collinson—that he was going to be married. At least that he had made an offer, and was accepted. Not to Mina Knox; but to an old girl (the epithet was Sam's) named Belmont. Miss Belmont lived with her father at a nice place on the London Road, half-a-mile beyond Jenkins House; he had a great deal of money, and she was his only child. She was very plain, very dowdy, and quite forty years of age; but very good, going about amongst the poor with tracts and soup. If the tidings were true, and Captain Collinson had made Miss Belmont an offer, it appeared pretty evident that his object was her money: he could not well have fallen in love with her, or court a wife so much older than himself.
When taxed with the fact—and it was old Tamlyn who did it, meeting him opposite the market- house—Collinson simpered, and stroked his dark beard, and said Lefford was fond of marvels. But he did not deny it. Half-an-hour later he and Miss Belmont were seen together in the High Street. She had her old cloth mantle on and her brown bonnet, as close as a Quaker's, and carried her flat district basket in her hand. The captain presented a contrast, with his superb dandy-cut clothes and flourishing his ebony cane.
"I think it must be quite true," Janet observed, as we watched them pass the house. "And I shall be glad if it is: Arnold has been tormenting himself with the fancy that the gallant captain was thinking of little Mina."
A day or two after this, it chanced that Dr. Knox had to visit Sir Henry Westmorland, who had managed to give a twist to his ankle. Sir Henry was one of those sociable, good- hearted men that no one can help liking; a rather elderly bachelor. He and Tamlyn were old friends, and we had all dined at Foxgrove about a week before.
"Would you like to go over with me, Johnny?" asked Dr. Knox, when he was starting.
I said I should like it very much, and got into the "conveyance," the doctor letting me drive. Thomas was not with us. We soon reached Foxgrove: a low, straggling, red- brick mansion, standing in a small park, about two miles and a half from Lefford.
Dr. Knox went in; leaving me and the conveyance on the smooth wide gravel-drive before the house. Presently a groom came up to take charge of it, saying Sir Henry was asking for me. He had seen me from the window.
Sir Henry was lying on a sofa near the window, and Knox was already beginning upon the ankle. A gentlemanly little man, nearly bald, sat on the ottoman in the middle of the room. I found it was one Major Leckie.
Some trifle—are these trifles chance?—turned the conversation upon India. I think Knox spoke of some snake-bite in a man's ankle that had laid him by for a month or two: it was no other than the late whilom mayor, Sir Daniel Jenkins. Upon which, Major Leckie began relating his experience of some reptile bites in India. The major had been home nearly two years upon sick leave, he said, and was now going back again.
"The 30th Bengal Cavalry!" repeated Dr. Knox, as Major Leckie happened to mention that regiment—which was his, and the doctor remembered that it was Captain Collinson's. "One of the officers of that regiment is staying here now."
"Is he!" cried the major, briskly. "Which of them?"
"Captain Collinson."
"Collinson!" echoed the major, his whole face alight with pleasure. "Where is he? How long has he been here? I did not know he had left India."
"He came home last autumn, I fancy; was not well, and got twelve months' leave. He has been staying at Lefford for some time."
"I should like to see him! Good old Collinson! He and I were close friends. He is a nice fellow."
"Old, you style him!" cried Dr. Knox. "I should rather call him young—of the two."
Major Leckie laughed. "It is a word we are all given to using, doctor. Of course Collinson's not old in years. Why is he staying at Lefford?"
"I'm sure I don't know. Unless it is that he has fallen in love. I heard him remark one day that the air of the place suited him."
"Ah ah, Master Collinson!" laughed the major. "In love, are you, sir! Caught at last, are you! Who is the lady?"
"Nay, I spoke only in jest," returned Dr. Knox. "He seems to be a general admirer; but I don't know that it is any one in particular. Report has mentioned one or two ladies, but report is often a false town-crier."
"Well, she will be in luck—whoever gets him. He is one of the nicest, truest fellows I know; and will make a rare good husband."
"It is said he has private means. Do you know whether that's true?"
"He has very good private means. His father left him a fortune. Sometimes we fancy he will not stay with us long. I should not be surprised if he sells out while he is at home, and settles down."
"Johnny Ludlow heard him say something the other night to that effect," observed the doctor, looking at me.
"Yes," I said, confirming the words. "He is about buying an estate now, I believe. But he talked of going back to India for a few years."
"I hope he will. There's not a man amongst us, that I would not rather spare than Collinson. I should like to see him. I might walk into Lefford now—if you will give me his address, doctor. Will you spare me for an hour or two, Sir Henry?"
"Well, I must, I suppose," grumbled Sir Henry. "It's rather bad of you, though, Leckie; and after putting me off with so miserably short a stay. You get here at ten o'clock last night, and you go off at ten o'clock to-night! Fine behaviour that!"
"I am obliged to go to-night, Westmorland; you know I am, and I could not get to you earlier, although I tried. I won't be away a minute longer than I can help. I can walk into Lefford in half-an-hour—my pace is a quick one. No; and I won't stay an unconscionable time with Collinson," he added, in answer to a growl of the baronet's. "Trust me. I'll be back under two hours."
"Bring him back with you for the rest of the day," said Sir Henry.
"Oh, thank you. And I am sure you will say he is the best fellow going. I wonder you and he have not found out one another before."
"If you don't mind taking a seat in yonder nondescript vehicle— that Mr. Johnny Ludlow here has the audacity to say must have been built in the year One," laughed Dr. Knox, pointing outside, "I can drive you to Captain Collinson's lodgings."
"A friend in need is a friend indeed," cried the major, laughing also. "What style of vehicle do you call it?"
"We call it the conveyance. As to its style—well I never had the opportunity of asking that of the builder. I believe my father bought it second-hand when he first went into practice many a year ago."
The doctor drove this time; Major Leckie sitting beside him, I in the perch behind. Leaving the major at the hairdresser's, upon reaching Lefford, Dr. Knox and I went home. And this is what occurred—as we heard later.
Ringing at the private door, which was Captain Collinson's proper entrance, a young servant-girl appeared, and—after the manner of many young country servants—sent Major Leckie alone up to Captain Collinson's rooms, saying she supposed the captain was at home. It turned out that he was not at home. Seated before the fire was a gentleman in a crimson dressing-gown and slippers, smoking a huge pipe.
"Come in," cried out he, in answer to the major's knock.
"I beg your pardon," said the major, entering. "I understood that Captain Collinson lodged here."
"He does lodge here," replied he of the dressing-gown, putting his pipe into the fender, as he rose. "What is it that you want with him?"
"I only called to see him. I am one of his brother- officers—home on sick leave; as I understand he is."
"Collinson is out," said the gentleman. "I am sorry it should happen so. Can you leave any message?"
"Will he be long? I should much like to see him."
"He will be back to dinner to-night; not much before that, I think. He is gone by train to—to—some place a few miles off. Boom—or Room—or Doom—or some such name. I am a stranger here."
"Toome, I suppose," remarked the major. "It's the last station before you get to Lefford—I noticed the name last night. I am very sorry. I should liked to have seen Collinson. Tell him so, will you. I am Major Leckie."
"You will be calling again, perhaps?"
"I can't do that. I must spend the rest of this day with my friend, Sir Henry Westmorland, and I leave to-night. Tell Collinson that I embark in a few days. Stay: this is my address in London, if he will write to me. I wonder he did not attempt to find me out—I came home before he did: and he knew that he could always get my address at my bankers'."
"I will tell Collinson all you say, Major Leckie," said the stranger, glancing at the card. "It is a pity he is out."
"Should he come back in time—though I fear, by what you say, there's little chance of it—be so good as to say that Sir Henry Westmorland will be happy to see him to dinner this evening at Foxgrove, at six o'clock—and to come over as much earlier as he can."
With the last words, Major Leckie left, Collinson's friend politely attending him down to the front-door. I was standing at Mr. Tamlyn's gate as he passed it on his way back to Foxgrove. Dr. Knox, then going off on foot to see a patient, came across the yard from the surgery at the same moment.
"Such a mischance!" the major stopped in his rapid walk to say to us. "Collinson has gone to Toome to-day. I saw a friend of his, who is staying with him, and he thinks he won't be back before night."
"I did not know Collinson had any one staying with him," remarked the doctor. "Some one called in upon him, probably."
"This man is evidently staying with him; making himself at home too," said the major. "He was in a dressing-gown and slippers, and had his feet on the fender, smoking a pipe. A tall, dark fellow, face all hair."
"Why, that is Collinson himself," cried I.
"Not a bit of it," said the major. "This man is no more like Collinson—except that Collinson is dark and has a beard—than he is like me. He said he was a stranger in the place."
A rapid conclusion crossed me that it must be a brother of Collinson's—for a resemblance to himself, according to the major's description, there no doubt was. Major Leckie wished me good-day, and continued his way up the street, Dr. Knox with him.
"What are you gazing at, Johnny Ludlow?"
I turned at the question, and saw Charlotte Knox. She was coming to call on Janet. We stood there talking of one thing and another. I told Charlotte that Collinson's brother, as I took it to be, was staying with him; and Charlotte told me of a quarrel she had just had with Mina on the score of the captain.
"Mina won't believe a word against him, Johnny. When I say he is nothing but a flirt, that he is only playing with her, she bids me hold my tongue. She quite scorns the notion that he would like to marry Miss Belmont."
"Have you seen any more letters, that concern me, in at Madame St. Vincent's?" I asked.
"Do you think I should be likely to?—or that such letters are as plentiful as blackberries?" retorted Charlotte. "And you?—have you discovered the key to that letter?"
"I have not discovered it, Charlotte. I have taxed my memory in vain. Never a girl, no matter whose sister she may be, can I recall to mind as being likely to owe me a grudge."
"It was not that the girl owed you a grudge," quickly spoke Charlotte. "It was that she must not meet you."
"Does not the one thing imply the other? I can't think of any one. There was a young lady, indeed, in the years gone by, when I was not much more than a lad, who—may—have—taken up a prejudice against me," I added slowly and thoughtfully, for I was hardly sure of what I said. "But she cannot have anything to do with the present matter, and I am quite sure she was not a sister of Madame St. Vincent."
"What was her name?" asked Charlotte.
"Sophie Chalk."
TOD arrived at Lefford. I met him at the train, just as I
had met Miss Cattledon, who was with us still. As we walked
out of the station together, many a man cast a glance after
the tall, fine young fellow—who looked strong enough
to move the world, if, like Archimedes, the geometrician of
Syracuse, he had only possessed the necessary lever.
"Shall you be able to stay a week, Tod?"
"Two weeks if they'd like it, Johnny. How you have picked up, lad!"
"Picked up?"
"In looks. They are all your own again. Glad to see it, old fellow."
Some few days had elapsed since the latest event recorded in this veritable little history—the call that Major Leckie made on Captain Collinson, and found his brother there, instead of himself—but no change worth noting to the reader had occurred in the town politics. Lady Jenkins was ailing as much as ever, and Madame St. Vincent was keeping a sharp watch on the maid, Lettice Lane, without, as yet, detecting her in any evil practices: the soirées were numerous, one being held at some house or other every night in the work-a-day week: and the engagement of Captain Collinson to Miss Belmont was now talked of as an assured fact. Collinson himself had been away from Lefford during these intervening days. Pink, the hairdresser, thought he had taken a run up to London, on some little matter of business. As to the brother, we had heard no more of him.
But, if Captain Collinson had taken a run up to London, he had unquestionably run down again, though not to Lefford. On the day but one before the coming of Tod, Janet and Miss Cattledon went over by train to do some shopping at the county town, which stood fifteen miles from Lefford, I being with them. Turning into a pastry-cook's in the middle of the day to get something to eat, we turned in upon Captain Collinson. He sat at a white marble-topped table in the corner of the shop, eating an oyster patty.
"We heard you were in London," said Janet, shaking hands with him, as he rose to offer her his seat.
"Got back this morning. Shall be at Lefford to-morrow: perhaps to-night," he answered.
He stood gobbling up his patty quickly. I said something to him, just because the recollection came into my mind, about the visit of his brother.
"My brother!" he exclaimed in answer, staring at me with all his eyes. "What brother? How do you know anything about my brother?"
"Major Leckie saw him when he called at your lodgings. Saw him instead of you. You had gone to Toome. We took it to be your brother, from the description; he was so like yourself."
The captain smiled. "I forgot that," he said. "We are much alike. Ned told me of Leckie's call. A pity I could not see him! Things always happen cross and contrary. Has Leckie left Foxgrove yet?"
"Oh, he left it that same night. I should think he is on his way back to India by this time."
"His visit to Lefford seems to have been as flying a one as my brother's was, and his did not last a day. How much?" to the girl behind the counter. "Sixpence? There it is." And, with a general adieu nodded to the rest of us, the captain left the shop.
"I don't like that dandy," spoke Cattledon, in her severest tone. "I have said so before. I'm sure he is a man who cannot be trusted."
I answered nothing: but I had for a little time now thought the same. There was that about him that gave you the idea he was in some way or other not true. And it may as well be mentioned here that Captain Collinson got back to Lefford that same evening, in time to make his appearance at Mrs. Parker's soirée, at which both Miss Belmont and Mina Knox were present.
So now we come to Tod again, and to the day of his arrival. Talking of one thing and another, telling him of this and that, of the native politics, as we all like to do when a stranger comes to set himself down, however temporarily, amidst us, I mentioned the familiarity that in two of the people struck upon my memory. Never did I see this same Captain Collinson, never did I see Madame St. Vincent, or hear them speak, or listen to their laugh, but the feeling that I had met them before—had been, so to say, intimate with both one and the other—came forcibly upon me.
"And yet it would seem, upon the face of things, that I never have been," I continued to Tod, when telling of this. "Madame St. Vincent says she never left the South of France until last year; and the captain has been nearly all his life in India."
"You know you do take fancies, Johnny."
"True. But, are not those fancies generally borne out by the result? Any way, they puzzle me, both of them: and there's a ring in their voices that——"
"A ring in their voices!" put in Tod, laughing.
"Say an accent, then; especially in madame's; and it sounds, to my ears, unmistakably Worcestershire."
"Johnny, you are fanciful!"
I never got anything better from Tod. "You will have the honour of meeting them both here to-night," I said to him, "for it is Janet's turn to give the soirée, and I know they are expected."
Evening came. At six o'clock the first instalment of guests knocked at the door; by half-past six the soirée was in full glory: a regular crowd. Every one seemed to have come, with the exception of the ladies from Jenkins House. Sam Jenkins brought in their excuses.
Sam had run up to Jenkins House with some physic for the butler, who said he had a surfeit (from drinking too much old ale, Tamlyn thought), and Sam had made use of the opportunity to see his aunt. Madame St. Vincent objected. It would try the dear old lady too much, madame said. She was lying in a sweet sleep on the sofa in her own room; had been quite blithe and lively all day, but was drowsy now; and she had better not be disturbed until bedtime. Perhaps Mr. Sam would kindly make their excuses to Mrs. Arnold Knox.
"Can't you come yourself, madame?" asked Sam, politely. "If Aunt Jenkins is asleep, and means to keep asleep till bed-time, she can't want you."
"I could not think of leaving her," objected madame. "She looks for me the moment she wakes."
So Sam, I say, brought back the message. Putting himself into his evening-coat, he came into the room while tea was going on, and delivered madame's excuses to Janet as distinctly as the rattle of cups and saucers allowed. You should have seen Cattledon that evening:—in a grey silk gown that stood on end, a gold necklace, and dancing shoes.
"This is the second soirée this week that Lady Jenkins has failed to appear at," spoke Mrs. Knox—not Janet—in a resentful tone. "My firm opinion is that Madame St. Vincent keeps her away."
"Keeps her away," cried Arnold. "Why should she do that?"
"Well, yes; gives way to her fads and fancies about being ill, instead of rousing her out of them. As to why she does it," continued Mrs. Knox, "I suppose she is beginning to grow nervous about her. As if an innocent, quiet soirée could hurt Lady Jenkins!"
"Johnny," whispered Sam, subsiding into the background after delivering his message, "may I never stir again if I didn't see Collinson hiding in aunt's garden!"
"Hiding in your aunt's garden!" I exclaimed. "What was he doing that for?"
"Goodness knows. Did you ever notice a big bay-tree that you pass on the left, between the door and the gate? Well, he was standing behind it. I came out of the house at a double quick pace, knowing I should be late for the soirée, cleared the steps at a leap, and the path to the gate at another. Too quick, I suppose, for Collinson. He was bending forward to look at the parlour windows, and drew back as I passed."
"Did you speak, Sam?"
"No, I came flying on, taking no notice. I dare say he thinks I did not see him. One does not like, you know, to speak to a man who evidently wants to avoid you. But now—I wonder what he was doing there?" continued Sam, reflectively. "Watching Madame St. Vincent, I should say, through the lace curtains."
"But for what purpose?"
"I can't even imagine. There he was."
To my mind this sounded curious. But that Mina Knox was before my eyes—just at the moment listening to the whispers of Dan Jenkins—I should have thought the captain was looking after her. Or, rather, not listening to Dan. Mina had a pained, restless look on her face, not in the least natural to it, and kept her head turned away. And the more Dan whispered, the more she turned it from him.
"Here he is, Sam."
Sam looked round at my words, and saw Captain Collinson, then coming in. He was got up to perfection as usual, and wore a white rose in his button-hole. His purple-black hair, beard, whiskers and moustache were grand; his voice had its ordinary fashionable drawl. I saw Tod—at the opposite side of the room—cease talking with old Tamlyn, to fix his keen eyes on the captain.
"Very sorry to be so late," apologized the captain, bowing over Janet's hand. "Been detained at home writing letters for India. Overland mail goes out to-morrow night."
Sam gave me a knock with his elbow. "What a confounded story!" he whispered. "Wonder what the gallant captain means, Johnny! Wonder what game he is up to?"
It was, I dare say, nearly an hour after this that I came across Tod. He was standing against the wall, laughing slightly to himself, evidently in some glee. Captain Collinson was at the piano opposite, his back to us, turning over the leaves for Caroline Parker, who was singing.
"What are you amused at, Tod?"
"At you, lad. Thinking what a muff you are."
"I always am a muff, I know. But why am I one just now in particular?"
"For not knowing that man," nodding towards Collinson. "I thought I recognized him as he came in; felt sure of him when I heard him speak. Men may disguise their faces almost at will; but not their voices, Johnny."
"Why, who is he?" I asked in surprise.
"I'll tell you when we are alone. I should have known him had we met amid the Hottentots. I thought he was over in Australia; knew he went there."
"But—is he not Captain Collinson?"
Tod laughed. "Just as much as I am, Johnny. Of course he may have assumed the name of Collinson in place of his own: if so, nobody has a right, I take it, to say him nay. But, as to his being a captain in the Bengal Cavalry—well, I don't think he is."
"And you say I know him!"
"I say you ought to—but for being a muff. I suppose it is the hair he is adorned with that has thrown you off the scent."
"But, where have I seen him, Tod? Who——"
"Hush, lad. We may be overheard."
As a general rule, all the guests at these soirées left together. They did so to-night. The last to file out at the door were the Hampshires, with Mrs. Knox, her daughter, and Miss Mack—for Janet had made a point of inviting poor hard-worked, put-upon Macky. Both families lived in the London Road, and would go home in company. Dan had meant to escort Mina, but she pointedly told him he was not wanted, and took the offered arm of Captain Collinson. Upon which, Dan turned back in a huff. Sam laughed at that, and ran after them himself.
How long a time had elapsed afterwards, I hardly know. Perhaps half-an-hour; perhaps not so much. We had not parted for the night: in fact, Mr. Tamlyn and Tod were still over the game at chess they had begun since supper; which game seemed in no mood to be finished. I watched it: Dr. Knox and Miss Cattledon stood talking over the fire; while Janet, ever an active housekeeper, was in the supper-room, helping the maids to clear the table. In the midst of this, Charlotte Knox came back, rushing into the room in a state of intense excitement, with the news that Mina and Captain Collinson were eloping together.
The account she gave was this—though just at first nothing clear could be made out of her. Upon starting, the Hampshires, Mrs. Knox, and Miss Mack went on in front; Captain Collinson and Mina walked next, and Charlotte fell behind with Sam. Fell very much behind, as it appeared; for when people are talking of what interests them, their steps are apt to linger; and Sam was telling her of having seen Captain Collinson behind the bay-tree. It was a beautiful night, warm and pleasant.
Charlotte and Sam let the captain and Mina get pretty nearly the length of a street before them; and they, in their turn, were as much behind the party in advance. Suddenly Sam exclaimed that the captain was taking the wrong way. His good eyes had discerned that, instead of keeping straight on, which was the proper (and only) route to the London Road, he and Mina had turned down the lane leading to the railway-station. "Halloa!" he exclaimed to Charlotte, "what's that for?" "They must be dreaming," was Charlotte's laughing reply: "or, perhaps the captain wants to take an excursion by a night-train!" Whether anything in the last remark, spoken in jest, struck particularly on the mind of Sam, Charlotte did not know: away he started as if he had been shot, Charlotte running after him in curiosity. Arrived at the lane, Sam saw the other two flying along, just as if they wanted to catch a train and had not a minute to do it in. Onward went Sam's long legs in pursuit; but the captain's legs were long also, and he was pulling Mina with him: altogether Sam did not gain much upon them. The half- past eleven o'clock train was then gliding into the station, where it was timed to halt two minutes. The captain and Mina dashed on to the platform, and, when Sam got up, he was putting her into the nearest carriage. Such was Charlotte's statement: and her eyes looked wild, and her breath was laboured as she made it.
"Have they gone?—gone on by the train?" questioned Dr. Knox, who seemed unnaturally calm.
"Goodness, no!" panted the excited Charlotte. "Sam managed to get his arm round Mina's waist, and the captain could not pull her away from him. It was a regular struggle on the platform, Arnold. I appealed to the station-master, who stood by. I told him it was my sister, and that she was being kidnapped against her will; Sam also appealed to him. So he gave the signal when the time was up, and let the train go on."
"Not against her will, I fear," spoke Arnold Knox from between his condemning lips. "Where are they now, Lotty?"
"On the platform, quarrelling; and still struggling which shall keep possession of Mina. I came running here to fetch you, Arnold, and I believe I shall never get my breath again."
With one accord we all, Cattledon excepted, set off to the station; even old Tamlyn proved he had some go in his legs yet. Tod reached it first: few young men could come up to him at running.
Sam Jenkins had exchanged his hold of Mina for a hold on Captain Collinson. The two were struggling together; but Sam's grasp was firm, and he held him as in a vice. "No, no," he was saying, "you don't escape me, captain, until some one comes here to take charge of Mina." As to Mina, little simpleton, she cowered in the shade of the corner, shivering and crying. The station-master and the two night- porters stood about, gaping and staring.
Tod put his hand on the captain's shoulder; his other hand momentarily holding back Dr. Knox. "Since when have you been Captain Collinson," he quietly asked.
The captain turned his angry eyes upon him. "What is that to you?" he retorted. "I am Captain Collinson; that is enough for you."
"Enough for me, and welcome. Not enough, as I judge, for this gentleman here," indicating the doctor. "When I knew you your name was not Collinson."
"How dare you insult me?" hissed the captain. "My name not Collinson!"
"Not at all!" was Tod's equable answer. "It used to be Fabian Pell."
THERE are times, even to this day, when it seems to me that I have been a muff, as Tod said, not to know him. But,
some years had elapsed since I saw him; and those years,
with their ill-fortune and exposure, and the hard life he
had led in Australia, had served to change him greatly;
above all, there was now the mass of hair disguising the
greater part of his face. Bit by bit my recollection came to
me, and I knew that he was, beyond all shadow of doubt,
Fabian Pell.
How long we sat up that night at Mr. Tamlyn's, talking over its events, I cannot precisely tell. For quite the half of what was left of it. Mina, brought to his own home by Arnold for safety, was consigned to Cattledon's charge and bed, and retired to the latter in a state of humiliation and collapse.
The scene on the platform had soon come to a conclusion. With the security of Mina assured by the presence of her brother and the rest of us, Sam let go his hold of the captain. It had been a nice little plot this, that the captain had set on foot in secret, and persuaded that silly girl, not much better than a child, to accede to. They were to have run away to London that night, and been married there the next day; the captain, as was found out later, having already managed to procure a licence. You see, if Mina became his wife without any settlement, her money at once lapsed to him and he could do what he would with it. How, as Captain Collinson, he would have braved the matter out to Dr. Knox that night, and excused himself for his treachery, he best knew. Tod checkmated him by proclaiming him as Fabian Pell. A lame attempt at denial, which Tod, secure in his assertion, laughed at; a little bravado, and Captain Collinson collapsed. Against the truth—that he was Fabian Pell—brought home to him so suddenly and clearly, he could not hold out; the man's hardihood deserted him; and he turned tail and went off the platform, calling back that Mr. Todhetley should hear from him in the morning.
We came away then, bringing Mina. Sam went to escort Charlotte home, where they would have the pleasure of imparting the news to Mrs. Knox, who probably by that time was thinking that Lotty had eloped as well as Mina. And now we were sitting round the fire in old Tamlyn's room, discussing what had happened. Sam came back in the midst of it. Arnold was down in the mouth, and no mistake.
"Did you see Mrs. Knox?" he asked of Sam.
"Not to speak to, sir. I saw her through the kitchen window. She was spreading bread-and-jam for Dicky, who had come down in his night-gown and would not be coaxed back to bed."
"What an injudicious woman she is!" put in old Tamlyn. "Enough to ruin the boy."
Perhaps Dr. Knox was thinking, as he sat there, his hand pressed upon his brow, that if she had been a less injudicious woman, a different mother altogether, Mina might not have been in danger of falling into the present escapade: but he said nothing.
"I remember hearing of the notorious break-up of the Clement-Pells at the time it took place," observed old Tamlyn to Tod. "And to think that this man should be one of them!"
"He must carry his impudence about with him," was Tod's remark.
"They ruined hundreds of poor men and women, if not thousands," continued old Tamlyn. "I conclude your people knew all about it?"
"Indeed, yes. We were in the midst of it. My father lost—how much was it, Johnny?"
"Two hundred pounds," I answered; the question bringing vividly back to me our adventures in Boulogne, when the pater and Mr. Brandon went over there to try to get the money back.
"I suppose," resumed the surgeon, "your father had that much balance lying in their hands, and lost it all?"
"No," said Tod, "he did not bank with them. A day or two before Clement-Pell burst up, he drove to our house as bold as brass, asking my father in the most off-hand manner to let him have a cheque for two hundred pounds until the next day. The Squire did let him have it, without scruple, and of course lost it. He would have let him have two thousand had Pell asked for it."
"But that was a fraud. Pell might have been punished for it."
"I don't know that it was so much a fraud as many other things Pell did, and might have been punished for," observed Tod. "At any rate, not as great a one. He escaped out of the way, as I dare say you know, sir, and his family escaped with him. It was hard on them. They had been brought up in the greatest possible extravagance, in all kinds of luxury. This one, Fabian, was in the army. He, of course, had to retire. His own debts would have forced that step upon him, apart from the family disgrace."
"Did he re-enter it, I wonder."
Tod laughed. "I should say not. He went to Australia. Not above a year ago I heard that he was still there. He must have come back here fortune-hunting; bread-hunting; and passed himself off as Captain Collinson the better to do it. Miss Mina Knox's seven thousand pounds was a prize to fight for."
"That's it!" cried Sam. "Dan has said all along it was the money he was after, dishonourable wretch, not Mina herself. He cares too much for Madame St. Vincent to care for Mina: at least we think so. How did he get the funds, I wonder, that he has been flourishing about upon?"
"Won them at billiards," suggested Tod.
"No," said Sam, "I don't think that. By all accounts he lost more than he won in the billiard-rooms."
Dr. Knox looked up from a reverie. "Was it himself that Major Leckie saw?—and did he pass himself off as another man to escape detection? Did he go off for the remainder of the week lest the major should look him up again?"
And we knew it must have been so.
Little sleep did I get that night, or, rather, morning, for the small hours had struck when we went to bed. The association of ideas is a great thing in this world; a help in many an emergency. This association led me from Fabian Pell to his sisters: and the mysterious memory of Madame St. Vincent that had so puzzled my mind cleared itself up. As though a veil had been withdrawn from my eyes, leaving the recollection unclouded and distinct, I saw she was one of those sisters: the eldest of them, Martha Jane. And, let not the reader call me a muff, as Tod again did later, for not having found her out before. When I knew her she was an angular, raw-boned girl, with rather a haggard and very pale face, and nothing to say for herself. Now she was a filled- out woman, her face round, her colour healthy, and one of the most self-possessed talkers I ever listened to. In the old days her hair was reddish and fell in curls: now it was dark, and worn in braids and plaits fashionably incomprehensible. Whether the intervening years had darkened the hair, or whether madame cunningly dyed it, must remain a question.
Dan Jenkins and his brother were right. They no doubt had seen looks of anxious interest given to Madame St. Vincent by Captain Collinson. Not as a lover, however; they were mistaken there; but as a brother who was living in a state of peril, and whom she was doubtless protecting and trying to aid. But how far had her aid gone? That she kept up the ball, as to his being Captain Collinson, the rich, honourable, and well-connected Indian officer, went without saying, as the French have it; and no one could expect her to proclaim him as Fabian Pell, the swindler; but had she been helping him in his schemes upon Mina? As to her display of formal coolness to him, it must have been put on to mislead the public.
And what was I to do? Must I quietly bury my discovery within me and say nothing? or must I tell Dr. Knox that Madame St. Vincent was no other than Martha Jane Pell? What ought I to do? It was that question that kept me awake. Never liking to do harm where I could not do good, I asked myself whether I had any right to ruin her. It might be that she was not able to help herself; that she had done no worse than keep Fabian's secret: it might be that she had wanted him gone just as much as Dan Jenkins had wanted it.
"I'll tell Tod in the morning," was my final conclusion, "and hear what he thinks."
When I got downstairs they were beginning breakfast, and Miss Cattledon was turning from the table to carry up Mina's tea. Mina remained in the depths of tears and contrition, and Cattledon had graciously told her she might lie in bed. Breakfast was taken very late that morning, the result of the previous night's disturbance, and the clock was striking ten when we rose from it.
"Tod, I want to speak to you," I said in his ear. "I want to tell you something."
"All right, lad. Tell away."
"Not here. Won't you come out with me somewhere? We must be alone."
"Then it must wait, Johnny. I am going round to the stables with Tamlyn. He wishes me to see the horse they have got on trial. By the description, I don't think much of him: should give him a pretty long trial before I bought him."
They went out. Not long after that, I was strolling across the court-yard with Sam Jenkins, who had been despatched on some professional errand, when we saw Sir Henry Westmorland ride up and rein in his horse. He asked for Dr. Knox. Sam went back to the house to say so, while Sir Henry talked to me.
"Look here," said Sir Henry to the doctor, after they had shaken hands, "I have had a curious letter from Major Leckie this morning. At least"—taking the letter from his pocket and opening it—"it contains an odd bit of news. He says—where is it?—stand still, sir,"—to the horse. "Here it is; just listen, doctor. 'Dr. Knox must have made a mistake in saying Collinson was at Lefford. Collinson is in India; has not been home at all. I have had a letter from him by the overland mail just in, asking me to do a commission for him. Tell Dr. Knox this. If the man he spoke of is passing himself off for Collinson of ours, he must be an impostor.' What do you think of that, doctor?" concluded Sir Henry, folding the letter again.
"He is an impostor," replied Dr. Knox. "We found him out last night."
"What a rogue! Has he been taking people in—fleecing them?"
"He has taken us all in, Sir Henry, in one sense of the word; he was on the point of doing it more effectually, when he was stopped. As to fleecing people, I don't know about that. He seems to have had plenty of money at his command—whence obtained is another question."
"Cheated some one out of it; rely upon that," remarked the baronet, as he nodded a good-day to us, and rode off.
Mina was downstairs when we returned indoors. Anything more pitiful than her state of contrition and distress I should not care to see. No doubt the discovery, just made, tended to strengthen her repentance. In a silly girl's mind some romance might attach to the notion of an elopement with a gallant captain of consideration, brave in Her Majesty's service; but to elope with Mr. Fabian Pell, the chevalier d'industrie, was quite another affair. Mina was mild in temperament, gentle in manners, yet she might have flown at the ex-captain's face with sharp nails, had he come in her way.
"I did not really like him," she sobbed forth: and there was no doubt that she spoke truth. "But they were always on at me, persuading me; they never let me alone."
"Who persuaded you, my dear?" asked Janet.
"He did. He was for ever meeting me in private, and urging me. I could not go out for a walk, or just cross the garden, or run into the next door, but he would be there. Madame St. Vincent persuaded me. She did not say to me, in words, 'you had better do as he asks you and run away,' but all her counsels tended towards it. She would say to me how happy his wife would be; what a fine position it was for any young lady lucky enough to be chosen by him; and that all the world thought me old enough to marry, though Arnold did not, and for that reason Arnold would do his best to prevent it. And so—and so——"
"And so they persuaded you against your better judgment," added Janet pityingly, as Mina broke down in a burst of tears.
"There, child, take this, and don't cry your eyes out," interposed Cattledon, bringing in a beaten-up egg.
Cattledon was coming out uncommonly strong in the way of compassion, all her tartness gone. She certainly did not look with an eye of favour on elopements; but she was ready to take up Mina's cause against the man who had deceived her. Cattledon hated the Pells: for Cattledon had been done out of fifty pounds at the time of old Pell's failure, money she had rashly entrusted to him. She could not very well afford to lose it, and she had been bitter on the Pells, one and all, ever since.
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.
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 with 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!"
"I thank God for the mercy He has shown me," she continued, the tears overflowing. "I might have gone to the grave in the half-witted state to which I was reduced. And, Johnny, I often wonder, as I lie awake at night thinking, whether I should have been held responsible for it."
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."
"Quite so," assented Dan.
"Don't you think it would be almost as well if I were dead, Dan— for all the use I am likely to be to any one?"
"Almost, perhaps; not quite," laughed Dan; and he suddenly stooped and kissed her.
THAT'S all. And now, at the time I write this, Dan
Jenkins is a flourishing lawyer at Lefford, and Mina is his
wife. Little feet patter up and down the staircase and along
the passages that good old Lady Jenkins used to tread. She
treads them no more. There was no mill to grind her young
again here; but she is gone to that better land where such
mills are not needed.
Her will was a just one. She left her property to her nephews and nieces; a substantial sum to each. Dan had Jenkins House in addition. But it is no longer Jenkins House; for he had that name taken off the entrance pillars forthwith, replacing it by the one that had been there before—Rose Bank.
Roy Glashan's Library
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