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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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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
CRABB COT, Squire Todhetley's estate in Worcestershire, lay close to North Crabb, and from two to three miles off Islip, both of which places you have heard of already. Half way on the road to Islip from Crabb, a side road, called Brook Lane, branched straight off on the left towards unknown wilds, for the parts there were not at all frequented. Passing a solitary homestead here and there, Brook Lane would bring you at the end of less than two miles to a small hamlet, styled Duck Brook.
I am not responsible for the name. I don't know who is. It was called Duck Brook long before my time, and will be, no doubt, long after I have left time behind me. The village rustics called it Duck Bruck.
Duck Brook proper contains some twenty or thirty houses, mostly humble dwellings, built in the form of a triangle, and two or three shops. A set of old stocks for the correction of the dead-and-gone evil-doers might be seen still, and a square pound in which to imprison stray cattle. And I would remark, as it may be of use further on, that the distance from Duck Brook to either Islip or Crabb was about equal—some three miles, or so; it stood at right angles between them. Passing down Brook Lane (which was in fact a fairly wide turnpike road) into the high road, turning to the right would bring you to Crabb; turning to the left, to Islip.
Just before coming to that populous part of Duck Brook, the dwelling places, there stood in a garden facing the road a low, wide, worn house, its bricks dark with age, and now partly covered with ivy, which had once been the abode of a flourishing farmer. The land on which this lay belonged to a Captain Falkner—some hundred acres of it. The Captain was in difficulties and, afraid to venture into England, resided abroad.
A Mr. Preen lived in the house now—Gervais Preen, a gentleman by descent. The Preens were Worcestershire people; and old Mr. Preen, dead now, had left a large family of sons and daughters, who had for the most part nothing to live upon. How or where Gervais Preen had lately lived, no one knew much about; some people said it was London, some thought it was Paris; but he suddenly came back to Worcestershire and took up his abode, much to the general surprise, at this old farmhouse at Duck Brook. It was soon known that he lived in it rent-free, having undertaken the post of agent to Captain Falkner.
"Agent to Captain Falkner—what a mean thing for a Preen to do!" cried Islip and Crabb all in a breath.
"Not at all mean; gentlemen must live as well as other people," warmly disputed the Squire. "I honour Preen for it." And he was the first to walk over to Duck Brook and shake hands with him.
Others followed the Squire's example, but Mr. Preen did not seem inclined to be sociable. He was forty-five years old then; a little shrimp of a man with a dark face, small eyes like round black beads, and a very cross look. He met his visitors civilly, for he was a gentleman, but he let it be known that he and his wife did not intend to visit or be visited. The Squire pressed him to bring Mrs. Preen to a friendly dinner at Crabb Cot; but he refused emphatically, frankly saying that as they could not afford to entertain in return, they should not themselves go out to entertainments.
Thus Gervais Preen and his wife began their career at Duck Brook, keeping themselves to themselves, locked up in lavender, so to say, as if they did not want the world outside to remember their existence. Perhaps that was the ruling motive, for he owed a few debts of long standing. One or two creditors had found him out, and were driving, it was said, a hard bargain with him, insisting upon payment by degrees if it could not be handed over in a lump.
But there was one member of the family who declined to keep herself laid up in lavender, and that was the only daughter, Jane. She came to Crabb Cot of her own accord, and made friends with us; made friends with Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her girls, and with Emma Paul at Islip. She was a fair, lively, open-natured girl, and welcomed everywhere.
Mr. and Mrs. Preen and Jane were seated at the breakfast-
table one fine morning in the earliest days of spring. A
space of about two years had gone by since they first came
to Duck Brook. Breakfast was laid, as usual, in a small
flagged room opening from the kitchen. A piece of cold
boiled bacon, three eggs, a home-made loaf and a pat of
butter were on the table, nothing more luxurious. Mrs.
Preen, a thin woman, under the middle height, poured out the
coffee. She must once have been very pretty. Her face was
fair and smooth still, with a bright rose tint on the
cheeks, and a peevish look in her mild blue eyes. Jane's
face was very much like her mother's, but her blue eyes had
no peevishness in them as yet. Poor Mrs. Preen's life was
one of rubs and crosses, had been for a long while, and that
generally leaves its marks upon the countenance. When Mr.
Preen came in he had a letter in his hand, which he laid
beside his plate, address downwards. He looked remarkably
cross, and did not speak. No one else spoke. Conversation
was seldom indulged in at meal times, unless the master
chose to begin it. But in passing something to him, Jane's
eyes chanced to fall on the letter, and saw that it was of
thin, foreign paper.
"Papa, is that from Oliver?"
"Don't you see it is?" returned Mr. Preen.
"And—is anything different decided?" asked Mrs Preen, timidly, as if she were afraid of either the question or the answer.
"What is there different to decide?" he retorted.
"But, Gervais, I thought you wrote to say that he could not come home."
"And he writes back to say that he must come. I suppose he must. The house over there is being given up; he can't take up his abode in the street. There's what he says," continued Mr. Preen, tossing the letter to the middle of the table for the public benefit. "He will be here to- morrow."
A glad light flashed into Jane's countenance. She lifted her handkerchief to hide it.
Oliver Preen was her brother; she and he were the only children. He had been partly adopted by a great aunt, once Miss Emily Preen, the sister of his grandfather. She had married Major Magnus late in life, and was left a widow. Since Oliver left school, three years ago now, he had lived with Mrs. Magnus at Tours, where she had settled down. She was supposed to be well off; and the Preen family—Gervais Preen and all his hungry brothers and sisters—had cherished expectations from her. They thought she might provide slenderly for Oliver, and divide the rest of her riches among them. But a week or two ago she had died after a short illness, and then the amazing fact came out that she had nothing to leave. All Mrs. Magnus once possessed had been sunk in an annuity on her own life.
This was bad enough for the brothers and the sisters, but it was nothing compared with the shock it gave to him of Duck Brook. For you see he had to take his son back now and provide for him; and Oliver had been brought up to do nothing. A mild young man, he, we understood, not at all clever enough to set the Thames on fire.
Mr. Preen finished his breakfast and left the room, carrying the letter with him. Jane went at once into the garden, which in places was no better than a wilderness, and ran about the sheltered paths that were out of sight of the windows, and jumped up to catch the lower branches of trees, all in very happiness. She and Oliver were intensely attached to one another; she had not seen him for three years, and now they were going to meet again. To-morrow! oh, to-morrow! To-morrow, and he would be here! She should see him face to face!
"Jane!" called out a stern voice, "I want you."
In half a moment Jane had appeared in the narrow front path that led between beds of sweet but common flowers from the entrance gate in the centre of the palings to the door of the house, and was walking up demurely. Mr. Preen was standing at an open window.
"Yes, papa," she said. And Mr. Preen only answered by looking at her and shutting down the window.
The door opened into a passage, which led straight through to the back of the house. On the left, as you entered, was the parlour; on the right was the room which Mr. Preen used as an office, in which were kept the account books and papers relating to the estate. It was a square room, lighted by two tall narrow windows. A piece of matting covered the middle of the floor, and on it stood Mr. Preen's large flat writing-table, inlaid with green leather. Shelves and pigeon-holes filled one side of the walls, and a few chairs stood about. Altogether the room had a cold, bare look.
It was called the "Buttery." When Mr. and Mrs. Preen first came to the house, the old man who had had charge showed them over it. "This is the parlour," he said, indicating the room they were then looking at; "and this," he added, opening the door on the opposite side of the passage, "is the Buttery." Jane laughed: but they had adopted the name.
"I want these letters copied, Jane," said Mr. Preen, who was now sitting at his table, his back to the fire, and the windows in front of him; and he handed to her two letters which he had just written.
Jane took her seat at the table opposite to him. Whenever Mr. Preen wanted letters copied, he called upon her to do it. Jane did not much like the task; she was not fond of writing, and was afraid of making mistakes.
When she had finished the letters this morning she escaped to her mother, asking how she could help in the preparations for Oliver. They kept one maid-servant; a capless young lady of sixteen, who wore a frock and pinafore of a morning. There was Sam as well; a well-grown civil youth, whose work lay chiefly out of doors.
The day passed. The next day was passing. From an early hour Jane Preen had watched for the guest's arrival. In the afternoon, when she was weary of looking and looking in vain, she put on a warm shawl and her pink sun-bonnet and went out of doors with a book.
A little lower down, towards the Islip Road, Brook Lane was flanked on one side by a grove of trees, too dense to admit of penetration. But there were two straight paths in them at some distance from each other, which would carry you to the back of the grove, and to the stream running parallel with the highway in front; from which stream Duck Brook derived its name. These openings in the trees were called Inlets curiously. A few worn benches stood in front of the trees, and also behind them, and had been there for ages. If you took your seat upon one of the front benches, you could watch the passing and re-passing (if there chanced to be any) on the high road; if you preferred a seat at the back, you might contemplate the pellucid stream and the meads beyond it, like any knight or fair damsel of romance.
This was a favourite resort of Jane Preen's, a slight relief from the dullness at home. She generally sat by the stream, but to-day faced the road, for she was looking for Oliver. It was not a frequented road at all, but I think this has been said; sometimes an hour would pass away and not so much as a farmer's horse and cart jolt by, or a beggar shambling on foot.
Jane had brought out a favourite book of the day, one of Bulwer Lytton's, which had been lent to her by Miss Julietta Chandler. Shall we ever have such writers again? Compare a work over which a tremendous fuss is made in the present day with one of those romances or novels of the past when some of us were young—works written by Scott, and Bulwer, and others I need not mention. Why, they were as solid gold compared with silver and tinsel.
Jane tried to lose herself in the romantic love of Lucy and Paul, or in the passionate love-letters of Sir William Brandon, written when he was young; and she could not do so. Her eyes kept turning, first to that way of the road, then to this: she did not know which way Oliver would come. By rail to Crabb station she supposed, and then with a fly onwards; though being strange to the neighbourhood he might pitch upon any out-of-the-way route and so delay his arrival.
Suddenly her heart stopped beating and then coursed on to fever heat. A fly was winding along towards her in the distance, from the direction of Crabb. Jane rose and waited close to the path. It was not Oliver. Three ladies and a child sat in the fly. They all stared at her, evidently wondering who she was and what she did there. She went back to the bench, but did not open her book again.
It must be nearing four o'clock: she could tell it by the sun, for she had no watch: and she thought she would go in. Slowly taking up the book, she was turning towards home, which was close by, when upon giving a lingering farewell look down the road, a solitary foot passenger came into view: a gentlemanly young man, with an umbrella in his hand and a coat on his arm.
Was it Oliver? She was not quite sure at first. He was of middle height, slight and slender: had a mild fair face and blue eyes with a great sadness in them. Jane noticed the sadness at once, and thought she remembered it; she thought the face also like her own and her mother's.
"Oliver?"
"Jane! Why—is it you? I did not expect to find you under that peasant bonnet, Jane."
They clung to each other, kissing fondly, tears in the eyes of both.
"But why are you walking, Oliver? Did you come to Crabb?"
"Yes," he said. "I thought I might as well walk; I did not think it was quite so far. The porter will send on my things."
There was just a year between them; Oliver would be twenty-one in a month, Jane was twenty-two, but did not look as much. She took his arm as they walked home.
As she halted at the little gate, Oliver paused in surprise and gazed about: at the plain wooden palings painted green, which shut in the crowded, homely garden; at the old farmhouse.
"Is this the place, Jane?"
"Yes. You have not been picturing it a palace, have you?"
Oliver laughed, and held back the low gate for her. But as he passed in after her, a perceptible shiver shook his frame. It was gone in a moment; but in that moment it had shaken him from head to foot. Jane saw it.
"Surely you have not caught a chill, Oliver?"
"Not at all; I am warm with my walk. I don't know why I should have shivered," he added. "It was like the feeling you have when people say somebody's 'walking over your grave.'"
Mr. Preen received his son coldly, but not unkindly; Mrs. Preen did the same; she was led by her husband's example in all things. Tea, though it was so early, was prepared at once, with a substantial dish for the traveller; and they sat down to it in the parlour.
It was a long room with a beam running across the low ceiling. A homely room, with a coarse red-and-green carpet and horse-hair chairs. A few ornaments of their own (for the furniture belonged to the house), relics of better days, were disposed about; and Jane had put on the table a glass of early primroses. The two windows, tall and narrow, answered to those in the Buttery. Oliver surveyed the room in silent dismay: it wore so great a contrast to the French salons at Tours to which he was accustomed. He gave them the details of his aunt's death and of her affairs.
When tea was over, Mr. Preen shut himself into the Buttery; Mrs. Preen retired to the kitchen to look after Nancy, who had to be watched, like most young servants, as you watch a sprightly calf. Jane and Oliver went out again, Jane taking the way to the Inlets. This time she sat down facing the brook. The dark trees were behind them, the clear stream flowed past in a gentle murmur; nothing but fields beyond. It was a solitary spot.
"What do you call this place—the Inlets?" cried Oliver. "Why is it called so?"
"I'm sure I don't know: because of those two openings from the road, I suppose. I like to sit here; it is so quiet. Oliver, how came Aunt Emily to sink all her money in an annuity?"
"For her own benefit, of course; it nearly doubled her income. She did it years ago."
"And you did not know that she had nothing to leave?"
"No one knew. She kept the secret well."
"It is very unfortunate for you."
"Yes—compared with what I had expected," sighed Oliver. "It can't be helped, Jane, and I try not to feel disappointed. Aunt Emily in life was very kind to me; apart from all selfish consideration I regret and mourn her."
"You will hardly endure this dreary place after your gay and happy life at Tours, Oliver. Duck Brook is the fag-end of the world."
"It does not appear to be very lively," remarked Oliver, with a certain dry sarcasm. "How was it that the Pater came to it?"
"Well, you know—it was a living, and we had nothing else."
"I don't understand."
"When Uncle Gilbert died, there was no other of our uncles, those who were left, who could help papa; at least they said so; and I assure you we fell into great embarrassment as the weeks went on. It was impossible to remain in Jersey; we could pay no one; and what would have been the ending but for papa's falling in with Captain Falkner, I can't imagine. Captain Falkner owns a good deal of land about here; but he is in difficulties himself and cannot be here to look after it; so he offered papa the agency and a house to live in. I can tell you, Oliver, it was as a godsend to us."
"Do you mean to say that my father is an agent?" cried the young man, his face dyed with a red flush.
Jane nodded. "That, and nothing less. He looks after the estate and is paid a hundred pounds a-year salary, and we live rent free. Lately he has taken something else, something different; the agency of some new patent agricultural implements."
Oliver Preen looked very blank. He had been living the life of a gentleman, was imbued with a gentleman's notions, and this news brought him the most intense mortification.
"He will expect you to help him in the Buttery," continued Jane.
"In the what?"
"The Buttery," laughed Jane. "It is the room where papa keeps his accounts and writes his letters. Letters come in nearly every morning now, inquiring about the new agricultural implements; papa has to answer them, and wants some of his answers copied."
"And he has only a hundred a year!" murmured Oliver, unable to get over that one item of information. "Aunt Emily had from eight to nine hundred, and lived up to her income."
"The worst is that we cannot spend all the hundred. Papa has back debts upon him. Have you brought home any money, Oliver?"
"None to speak of," he answered; "there was none to bring. Aunt Emily's next quarter's instalment would have been due this week; but she died first, you see. She lived in a furnished house; and as to the few things she had of her own, and her personal trinkets, Aunt Margaret Preen came down and swooped upon them. Jane, how have you managed to put up with the lively state of affairs here?"
"And this lively spot—the fag-end of the world. It was Emma Paul first called it so. I put up with it because I can't help myself, Oliver."
"Who is Emma Paul?"
"The daughter of Lawyer Paul, of Islip."
"Oh," said Oliver, slightingly.
"And the nicest girl in the world," added Jane. "But I can tell you this much, Oliver," she continued, after a pause: "when we came first to Duck Brook it seemed to me as a haven of refuge. Our life in Jersey had become intolerable, our life here was peaceful—no angry creditors, no daily applications for debts that we could not pay. Here we were free and happy, and it gave me a liking for the place. It is dull, of course; but I go pretty often to see Emma Paul, or to take tea at Mrs. Jacob Chandler's, and at Crabb Cot when the Todhetleys are staying there. Sam brings the gig for me in the evening, when I don't walk home. You will have to bring it for me now."
"Oh, there's a gig, is there?"
"Papa has to keep that for his own use in going about the land: sometimes he rides."
"Are the debts in Jersey paid, Jane?"
A shadow passed over her face, and her voice dropped to a whisper.
"No. It makes me feel very unhappy sometimes, half- frightened. Of course papa hopes he shall not be found out here. But he seems to have also two or three old debts in this neighbourhood, and those he is paying off."
The sun, setting right before them in a sea of red clouds, fell upon their faces and lighted up the sadness of Oliver's. Then the red ball sank, on its way to cheer and illumine another part of the world, leaving behind it the changes which set in after sunset. The bright stream became grey, the osiers bordering it grew dark. Oliver shook himself. The whole place to him wore a strange air of melancholy. It was early evening yet, for the month was only February; but the spring had come in with a kindly mood, and the weather was bright.
Rising from the bench, they slowly walked up the nearest Inlet, side by side, and gained the high road just as a pony-chaise was passing by, an elderly gentleman and a young lady in it; Mr. and Miss Paul.
"Oh, papa, please pull up!" cried the girl. "There's Jane Preen."
She leaped out, almost before the pony had stopped, and ran to the pathway with outstretched hands.
"How pleasant that we should meet you, Jane! Papa has been taking me for a drive this afternoon."
Oliver stood apart, behind his sister, looking and listening. The speaker was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen, with a blushing, dimpled face, a smiling mouth displaying small white teeth, shy blue eyes, and bright hair. Her straw hat had blue ribbons and her dress was one of light silk. Never in his life, thought Oliver, had he seen so sweet a face or heard so sweet a voice.
"Have you been for a walk?" she asked of Jane.
"No," answered Jane. "We have been down the Inlet, and sitting to watch the sun set. This is my brother, Emma, of whom you have heard. He arrived this afternoon, and has left Tours. Will you allow me to introduce him to you? Oliver, this is Miss Paul."
Mr. Oliver Preen was about to execute a deep bow at a respectful distance, after the manner of the fashionable blades of Tours, and swung off his hat to begin with; but Emma Paul, who was not fashionable at all, but sociable, inexperienced and unpretending, held out her hand. She liked his looks; a slender young fellow, in deep mourning, with a fair, mild, pleasing face.
"Papa," she said, turning to the gig, which had drawn up close to the foot-path, "this is Mr. Oliver Preen, from France. He has come home, Jane says."
John Paul, a portly, elderly gentleman, with iron-grey hair and a face that looked stern to those who did not know him, bent forward and shook hands with the stranger.
Emma began plunging into all sorts of gossip, for she liked nothing better than to talk. Jane liked it too.
"I have been telling Oliver we call Duck Brook the fag end of the world, and that it was you who first said it," cried Jane.
"Oh, how could you?" laughed Emma, turning her beaming face upon Oliver. And they might have gone on for ever, if left alone; but Mr. Paul reminded his daughter that it was growing late, and he wanted to get home to dinner. So she lightly stepped into the low chaise, Oliver Preen assisting her, and they drove off, Emma calling to Jane not to forget that they were engaged to drink tea at North Villa on the morrow.
"What's Preen going to do with that young fellow?" wondered the lawyer, as he drove on.
"I'm sure I don't know, papa," said Emma. "Take him into the Buttery, perhaps."
Old Paul laughed a little at the idea. "Not much more work there than Preen can do himself, I expect."
"When I last saw Jane she said she thought her brother might be coming home. It may be only for a visit, you know."
Old Paul nodded, and touched up the pony.
Oliver stood in the pathway gazing after the chaise until it was out of sight. "What a charming girl!" he cried to his sister. "I never saw one so unaffected in all my life."
IF the reader has chanced to read the two papers entitled "Chandler and Chandler," he may be able to recall North Villa, and those who lived in it.
It stood in the Islip Road—hardly a stone's throw from Crabb Cot. Jacob Chandler's widow lived in it with her three daughters. She was empty-headed, vain, frivolous, always on the high ropes when in company, wanting to give people the impression that she had been as good as born a duchess: whereas everyone knew she had sprung from small tradespeople in Birmingham. The three daughters, Clementina, Georgiana, Julietta, took after her, and were as fine as their names.
But you have heard of them before—and of the wrong inflicted by their father, Jacob Chandler, upon his brother's widow and son. The solicitor's business at Islip had been made by the elder brother, Thomas Chandler; he had taken Jacob into partnership, and given him a half share without cross or coin of recompense: and when Thomas died from an accident, leaving his only son Tom in the office to succeed him when he should be of age, Jacob refused to carry out the behest. Ignoring past obligations, all sense of right or wrong, he made his own son Valentine his partner in due course of time, condemning Tom, though a qualified solicitor, to remain his clerk.
It's true that when Jacob Chandler lay on his death-bed, the full sense of what he had done came home to him: any glaring injustice we may have been committing in our lives does, I fancy, often take hold of the conscience at that dread time: and he enjoined his son Valentine to give Tom his due—a full partnership. Valentine having his late father's example before him (for Jacob died), did nothing of the kind. "I'll raise your salary, Tom," said he, "but I cannot make you my partner." So Tom, thinking he had put up with injustice long enough, quitted Valentine there and then. John Paul, the other Islip lawyer, was only too glad to secure Tom for his own office; he made him his manager and paid him a good salary.
About two years had gone on since then. Tom Chandler, a very fine young fellow, honest and good-natured, was growing more and more indispensable to Mr. Paul; Valentine was growing (if the expression may be used) downwards. For Valentine, who had been an indulged son, and only made to work when he pleased, had picked up habits of idleness, and other habits that we are told in our copy-books idleness begets. Gay, handsome, pleasant-mannered, with money always in his pocket, one of those young men sure to be courted, Valentine had grown fonder of pleasure than of work: he liked his game at billiards; worse than that, he liked his glass. When a client came in, ten to one but a clerk had to make a rush to the Bell Inn opposite, to fetch his master; and it sometimes happened that Valentine would not return quite steady. The result was, that his practice was gradually leaving him, to be given to Mr. Paul. All this was telling upon Valentine's mother; she had an ever-haunting dread of the poverty which might result in the future, and was only half as pretentious as she used to be.
Her daughters did not allow their minds to be disturbed by anxiety as yet; the young are less anxious than the old. When she dropped a word of apprehension in their hearing, they good-humouredly said mamma was fidgety—Valentine would be all right; if a little gay now it was only what other young men were. It was a pleasant house to visit, for the girls were gay and hospitable; though they did bedeck themselves like so many peacocks, and put on airs and graces.
Jane Preen found it pleasant; had found it so long ago; and she introduced Oliver to it, who liked it because he sometimes met Emma Paul there. It took a very short time indeed after that first meeting by the Inlets for him to be over head and ears in love with her. Thus some weeks went on.
More pure and ardent love than that young fellow's for Emma was never felt by man or woman. It filled his every thought, seemed to sanctify his dreary days at Duck Brook, and made a heaven of his own heart. He would meet her at North Villa, would encounter her sometimes in her walks, now and then saw her at her own house at Islip. Not often—old Mr. Paul did not particularly care for the Preens, and rarely gave Emma leave to invite them.
Emma did not care for him. She had not found out that he cared for her. A remarkably open, pleasant girl in manner, to him as to all the world, she met him always with frank cordiality—and he mistook that natural cordiality for a warmer feeling. Had Emma Paul suspected his love for her she would have turned from it in dismay; she was no coquette, and all the first love of her young heart was privately given to someone else.
At this time there was a young man in Mr. Paul's office named Richard MacEveril. He was a nephew of Captain MacEveril of Oak Mansion—a pretty place near Islip. Captain MacEveril—a retired captain in the Royal Navy—had a brother settled in Australia. When this brother died, his only son, Richard, came over to his relatives, accompanied by a small income, about enough to keep him in coats and waistcoats.
The arrival very much put out Captain MacEveril. He was a good-hearted man, but afflicted with gout in the feet, and irascible when twinges took him. Naturally the question arose to his mind—how was he to put Richard in the way of getting bread and cheese. Richard seemed to have less idea of how it was to be done than his uncle and aunt had. They told him he must go back to Australia and find a living there. Richard objected; said he had only just left it, and did not like Australia. Upon the captain's death, whenever that should take place, Richard would come into a small estate of between two and three hundred a-year, of which nothing could deprive him; for Captain MacEveril had no son; only a daughter, who would be rich through her mother.
Richard was a gay-mannered young fellow and much liked, but he was not very particular. He played billiards at the Bell Inn with Valentine Chandler, with young Scott, and with other idlers; he hired horses, and dashed across country on their backs; he spent money in all ways. When his own ready money was gone he went into debt, and people came to the Captain to ask him to liquidate it. This startled and angered the old post-captain as no twinge of gout had ever yet done.
"Something must be done with Dick," said Mrs. MacEveril.
"Of course it must," her husband wrathfully retorted; "but what the deuce is it to be?"
"Can't you get John Paul to take him into his office as a temporary thing? It would keep him out of mischief."
Mrs. MacEveril's suggestion bore fruit. For the present, until something eligible should "turn up," Dick was placed in the lawyer's office as a copying clerk. Mr. Paul made a favour of taking him in; but he and Captain MacEveril had been close friends for many a year. Dick wrote a bold, clear hand, good for copying deeds.
He and Oliver became intimate. It is said that a fellow- feeling makes us wondrous kind, and they could feel for one another. Both were down in life, both had poverty-stricken pockets. They were of the same age, twenty-one, and in appearance were not dissimilar—fair of face, slight in person.
So that Oliver Preen needed no plea for haunting Islip three or four times a week. "He went over to see Dick MacEveril," would have been his answer had any inquisitive body inquired what he did there: while, in point of fact, he went hoping to see Emma Paul—if by delightful chance he might obtain that boon.
Thus matters were going on: Oliver, shut up the earlier part of the day in the Buttery with his father, answering letters, and what not; in the latter part of it he would be at Islip, or perhaps with Jane at North Villa. Sometimes they would walk home together; or, if they could have the gig, Oliver drove his sister back in it. But for the love he bore Emma, he would have found his life intolerable; nothing but depression, mortification, disappointment: but when Love takes up its abode in the heart the dreariest lot becomes one of sunshine.
THE garden attached to North Villa was large and very old-fashioned: a place crowded with trees and shrubs, intersected with narrow paths and homely flowers. The Malvern hills could be seen in the distance, as beautiful a sight in the early morning, with the lights and shadows lying upon them, as the world can show.
It was summer now, nearly midsummer. The garish day was fading, the summer moon had risen, its round shield so delicately pale as to look like silver; and Valentine Chandler was pacing the garden with Jane Preen in the moonlight. They had been singing a duet together at the piano, "I've wandered in dreams," and he had taken the accompaniment. He played well; and never living man had sweeter voice than he. They were wandering in dreams of their own, those two, had been for some time now.
Silence between them as they paced the walk; a sort of discomforting, ominous silence. Valentine broke it.
"Why don't you reproach me, Jane?"
"Do I ever reproach you?" she answered.
"No. But you ought to do so."
"If you would only keep your promises, Valentine!"
Young Mr. Valentine Chandler, having stayed his steps while they spoke, backed against the corner of the latticed arbour, which they were just then passing. The same arbour in which his aunt, Mrs. Mary Ann Cramp, had sat in her copper-coloured silk gown to convict her brother Jacob, Valentine's father, of his sins against Tom Chandler, one Sunday afternoon, not so very long gone by.
Val did not answer. He seemed to be staring at the moon, to investigate what it was made of. In reality he saw no moon; neither moon, nor sky above, nor any earthly thing beneath; he only saw his own reckless folly in his mind's clouded mirror.
"You know you do make promises, Valentine!"
"And when I make them I fully mean to keep them; but a lot of idle fellows get hold of me, and—and—I can't," said he, in a savage tone.
"But you might," said Jane. "If I made promises I should keep them to you—whatever the temptation."
"I cannot think who it is that comes tattling to you about me, Jane! Is it Oliver?"
"Oliver! Never. Oliver does not know, or suspect—anything."
"Then it must be those confounded girls indoors!"
"Nor they, either. It is not anyone in particular, Valentine; but I hear one and another talking about you."
"I should like to know what they say. You must tell me, Jane."
Jane caught her breath, as if she did not like to answer. But Valentine was waiting.
"They say you are not steady, Val," she spoke in a whisper; "that you neglect your business; that unless you pull up, you will go to the bad."
For a few moments Valentine remained quite still; you might have thought he had gone to sleep. Then he put out his hand, drew Jane gently to him, and bent down his head to her with a long-drawn sigh.
"I will pull up, Jane. It is not as bad as story- tellers make out. But I will pull up; I promise you; and I'll begin from this day."
Jane Preen did not like to remind him that he had said the same thing many times before; rather would she trust to his renewed word. When a girl is in love, she has faith in modern miracles.
Valentine held her to him very closely. "You believe me, don't you, my darling?"
"Yes," she whispered.
Down came a voice to them from some remote path near the house, that was anything but a whisper. "Jane! Jane Preen! Are you in the garden? or are you upstairs with Julietta?"
Jane stole swiftly forward. "I am here, Clementina—it is cool and pleasant in the night air. Do you want me?"
"Your boy is asking how long he is to wait. The horse is fresh this evening, and won't stand."
"Has the gig come!" exclaimed Jane, as she met Miss Clementina. "And has Sam brought it! Why not Oliver?"
Clementina Chandler shook her head and the yellow ribbons which adorned it, intimating that she did not know anything about Oliver. It was the servant boy, Sam, who had brought the gig.
Jane hastily put on her bonnet and scarf, said good night, and was helped into the gig by Valentine—who gave her hand a tender squeeze as they drove off.
"Where is Mr. Oliver?" she inquired of Sam.
"Mr. Oliver was out, Miss Jane. As it was getting late, the missis told me to get the gig ready, and bring it."
After that, Jane was silent, thinking about Valentine and his renewed promises. It might be that the air was favourable to love catching: anyway, both the young Preens had fallen desperately into it; Jane with Valentine Chandler and Oliver with Emma Paul.
Duck Brook was soon reached, for the horse was swift that evening. On the opposite side of the road to the Inlets, was a large field, in which the grass was down and lying in cocks, the sweet smell of the hay perfuming the air of the summer night. Leaping across this field and then over its five-barred gate into the road, came Oliver Preen. Jane, seeing him, had no need to wonder where he had been.
For across this field and onwards, as straight as the crow flies, was a near way to Islip. Active legs, such as Oliver's, might get over the ground in twenty minutes, perhaps in less. But there was no path, or right of way; he had to push through hedges and charge private grounds, with other impediments attending. Thomas Chandler, Conveyancer and Attorney-at-law, had laughingly assured Oliver that if caught using that way, he would of a surety be had up before the justices of the peace for trespass.
"Stop here, Sam," said Jane. "I will get out now."
Sam stopped the gig, and Jane got down. She joined her brother, and the boy drove on to the stables.
"It was too bad, Oliver, not to come for me!" she cried.
"I meant to be home in time; I did indeed, Jane," he answered; "but somehow the evening slipped on."
"Were you at Mr. Paul's?"
"No; I was with MacEveril."
"At billiards, I suppose!—and it's very foolish of you, Oliver, for you know you can't afford billiards."
"I can't afford anything, Janey, as it seems to me," returned Oliver, kicking up the dust in the road as they walked along. "Billiards don't cost much; it's only the tables: anyway, MacEveril paid for all."
"Has MacEveril talked any more about going away?"
"He talks of nothing else; is full of it," answered Oliver. "His uncle says he is not to go; and old Paul stopped him at the first half-word, saying he could not be spared from the office. Dick says he shall start all the same, leave or no leave."
"Dick will be very silly to go just now, when we are about to be so gay," remarked Jane, "There's the picnic coming off; and the dance at Mrs. Jacob Chandler's; and no end of tea-parties."
For just now the neighbourhood was putting on a spurt of gaiety, induced to it perhaps by the lovely summer sunshine. Oliver's face wore a look of gloom, and he made no answer to Jane's remark. Several matters, cross and contrary, were trying Oliver Preen; not the least of them that he seemed to make no way whatever with Miss Emma.
When we left school for the midsummer holidays that year,
Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley were staying at Crabb Cot. We got
there on Friday, the eleventh of June.
On the following Monday morning the Squire went to his own small sitting-room after breakfast to busy himself with his accounts and papers. Presently I heard him call me.
"Have you a mind for a walk, Johnny?"
"Yes, sir; I should be glad of one." Tod had gone to the Whitneys for a couple of days, and without him I felt like a fish out of water.
"Well, I want you to go as far as Massock's. He is a regular cheat; that man, Johnny, needs looking after—— What is it, Thomas?"
For old Thomas had come in, a card between his fingers. "It's Mr. Gervais Preen, sir," he said, in answer, putting the card on the Squire's table. "Can you see him?"
"Oh, yes, I can see him; show him in. Wait a bit, though, Thomas," broke off the Squire. "Johnny, I expect Preen has come about that pony. I suppose we may as well keep him?"
"Tod said on Saturday, sir, that we should not do better," I answered. "He tried him well, and thinks he is worth the price."
"Ay; ten pounds, wasn't it? We'll keep him, then. Mr. Preen can come in, Thomas."
Some few days before this the Squire had happened to say in Preen's hearing that he wanted a pony for the two children to ride, Hugh and Lena. Preen caught up the words, saying he had one for sale—a very nice pony, sound and quiet. So the pony had been sent to Crabb Cot upon trial, and we all liked him. His name was Taffy.
Mr. Preen came into the room, his small face cool and dark as usual; he had driven from Duck Brook. "A fine morning," he remarked, as he sat down; but it would be fiery hot by-and-by, too hot for the middle of June, and we should probably pay for it later. The Squire asked if he would take anything, but he declined.
"What of the pony—Taffy—Squire?" went on Mr. Preen. "Do you like him?"
"Yes, we like him very well," said the Squire, heartily, "and we mean to keep him, Preen."
"All right," said Mr. Preen. "You will not repent it."
Then they fell to talking of horses in general, and of other topics. I stayed on, sitting by the window, not having received the message for Massock. Mr. Preen stayed also, making no move to go away; when it suddenly occurred to the Squire—he mentioned it later—that perhaps Preen might be waiting for the money.
"Ten pounds, I think, was the price agreed upon," observed the Squire with ready carelessness. "Would you like to be paid now?"
"If it does not inconvenience you."
The Squire unlocked his shabby old bureau, which stood against the wall, fingered his stock of money, and brought forth a ten-pound bank-note. This he handed to Preen, together with a sheet of paper, that he might give a receipt.
When the receipt was written, Mr. Preen took up the note, looked at it for a moment or two, and then passed it back again.
"Would you mind writing your name on this note, Squire?"
The Squire laughed gently. "Not at all," he answered; "but why should I? Do you think it is a bad one? No fear, Preen; I had it from the Old Bank at Worcester."
"No, I do not fear that," said Preen, speaking quietly. "But since a disagreeable trouble which happened to me some years ago, I have always liked, when receiving a bank-note, to get, if possible, the donor's name upon it in his own handwriting."
"What was the trouble?"
"I was playing cards at the house of a man of fashion, who was brother to an earl, and lived in a fashionable square at the West End of London, and I had a ten-pound note paid me, for I won, by a man who, I understood, had recently retired with honours from the army, a Major D——. I will not give you his name. The next day, or next but one, I paid this note away to a tradesman, and it was found to be forged; cleverly forged," repeated Preen, with emphasis.
"What did you do?" asked the Squire.
"I got Major D.'s address from the house where we had played, carried the note to him, and inquired what it meant and whence he got it. Will you believe, Mr. Todhetley," added the speaker, with slight agitation, "that the man utterly repudiated the note, saying——"
"But how could he repudiate it?" interrupted the Squire, interested in the tale.
"He said it was not the note he had paid me; he stood it out in the most impudent manner. I told him, and it was the pure truth, that it was impossible there could be any mistake. I was a poor man, down on my luck just then, and it was the only note I had had about me for some time past. All in vain. He held to it that it was not the note, and there the matter ended. I could not prove that it was the note except by my bare word. It was my word against his, you see, and naturally I went to the wall."
The Squire nodded. "Who was at the loss of the money?"
"I was. Besides that, I had the cold shoulder turned upon me. Major D. was believed; I was doubted; some people went so far as to say I must have trumped up the tale. For some time after that I would not take a bank-note from any man unless he put his signature to it, and it has grown into a habit with me. So, if you don't mind, Squire——"
The Squire smiled goodnaturedly, drew the bank-note to him, and wrote upon the back in a corner, "J. Todhetley."
"There, Preen," said he, returning it, "I won't repudiate that. Couldn't if I would."
Mr. Preen put the note into his pocket-book, and rose to leave. We strolled with him across the front garden to the gate, where his gig was waiting.
"I have to go as far as Norton; and possibly after that on to Stoulton," he remarked, as he took the reins in his hand and got in.
"You will have a hot drive of it," said the Squire.
"Yes; but if one undertakes business it must be attended to," said Preen, as he drove off.
THE windows of the room, called the Buttery, which Mr. Preen used as an office in his house at Duck Brook, were thrown open to the warm, pure air. It was about the hottest part of the afternoon. Oliver Preen sat back in his chair before the large table covered with papers, waiting in idleness and inward rebellion—rebellion against the untoward fate which had latterly condemned him to this dreary and monotonous life. Taking out his pocket- handkerchief with a fling, he passed it over his fair, mild face, which was very hot just now.
To-day, of all days, Oliver had wanted to be at liberty, whereas he was being kept a prisoner longer than usual, and for nothing. When Mr. Preen rode out after breakfast in the morning he had left Oliver a couple of letters to copy as a beginning, remarking that there was a great deal to do that day, double work, and he should be back in half-an-hour. The double work arose from the fact that none had been done the day before, as Mr. Preen was out. For that day, Monday—this was Tuesday—was the day Mr. Preen had paid us a visit at Crabb Cott, to be paid for Taffy, the pony, and had then gone to Norton, and afterwards to Stoulton, and it had taken him the best part of the day. So the double work was waiting. But the half hours and the hours had passed on, and Mr. Preen had not yet returned. It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and they had dined without him.
Oliver, who did not dare to absent himself without permission, and perhaps was too conscientious to do so, left his chair for the window. The old garden was quite a wilderness of blossom and colour, with all kinds of homely flowers crowded into it. The young man stretched forth his hand and plucked a spray or two of jessamine, which grew against the wall. Idly smelling it, he lost himself in a vision of the days gone by; his careless, happy life at Tours, in his aunt's luxurious home, when he had no fear of a dark future, had only to dress well and ride or drive out, and idly enjoy himself.
Suddenly he was brought back to reality. The sound of hoofs clattering into the fold-yard behind the house struck upon his ear, and he knew his father had come home.
Ten minutes yet, or more, and then Mr. Preen came into the room, his little dark face looking darker and more cross than usual. He had been snatching some light refreshment, and sat down at once in his place at the table, facing the windows; Oliver sat opposite to him.
"What have you done?" asked he.
"I have only copied those two letters; there was nothing else to do," replied Oliver.
"Could you not have looked over the pile of letters which came this morning, to see whether there were any you could answer?" growled Mr. Preen.
"Why, no, father," replied Oliver in slight surprise; "I did not know I might look at them. And if I had looked I should not have known what to reply."
Mr. Preen began reading the letters over at railroad speed, dictating answers for Oliver to write, writing some himself. This took time. He had been unexpectedly detained at the other end of Captain Falkner's land by some business which had vexed him. Most of these letters were from farmers and others, about the new patent agricultural implements for which Mr. Preen had taken the agency. He wished to push the sale of them, as it gave him a good percentage.
The answers, addressed and stamped for the post, at length lay ready on the table. Mr. Preen then took out his pocket-book and extracted from it that ten-pound bank-note given him the previous morning by Mr. Todhetley for the children's pony, the note he had got the Squire to indorse, as I have already told. Letting the bank-note lie open before him, Mr. Preen penned a few lines, as follows, Oliver looking on:—
"Dear Sir,—
I enclose you the ten pounds. Have not been able to send it before.
Truly yours,
G. Preen."
Mr. Preen folded the sheet on which he had written this, put the bank-note within it, and enclosed all in a good- sized business envelope, which he fastened securely down. He then addressed it to John Paul, Esquire, Islip, and put on a postage stamp.
"I shall seal this, Oliver," he remarked; "it's safer. Get the candle and the wax. Here, you can seal it," he added, taking the signet ring from his finger, on which was engraved the crest of the Preen family.
Oliver lighted a candle kept on a stand at the back for such purposes, brought it to the table, and sealed the letter with a large, imposing red seal. As he passed the ring and letter back to his father, he spoke.
"If you are particularly anxious that the letter should reach Mr. Paul safely, father, and of course you are so, as it contains money, why did you not send it by hand? I would have taken it to him."
"There's nothing safer than the post," returned Mr. Preen, "and I want him to have it to-morrow morning."
Oliver laughed. "I could have taken it this evening, father. I can do so still, if you like."
"No, it shall go by post. You want to be off to MacEveril, I suppose."
"No, I do not," replied Oliver. "Had I been able to finish here this morning I might have gone over this afternoon; it is too late now."
"You had nothing to do all day yesterday," growled his father.
"Oh, yes, I know. I am not grumbling."
Mr. Preen put the letter into his pocket, gathered up the pile of other letters, handed half of them to his son, for it was a pretty good heap, and they started for the post, about three minutes' walk.
The small shop containing the post-office at Duck Brook was kept by Mrs. Sym, who sold sweetstuff, also tapes and cottons. Young Sym, her son, a growing youth, delivered the letters, which were brought in by a mail-cart. She was a clean, tidy woman of middle age, never seen out of a muslin cap with a wide border and a black bow, a handkerchief crossed over her shoulders, and a checked apron.
Oliver, of lighter step than his father, reached the post-office first and tumbled his portion of the letters into the box placed in the window to receive them. The next moment Mr. Preen put his in also, together with the letter addressed to Mr. Paul.
"We are too late," observed Oliver. "I thought we should be."
"Eh?" exclaimed Mr. Preen, in surprise, as he turned round. "Too late! Why how can the afternoon have gone on?" he continued, his eyes falling on the clock of the little grey church which stood beyond the triangle of houses, the hands of which were pointing to a quarter past five.
"If you knew it was so late why did you not say so?" he asked sharply of his son.
"I was not sure until I saw the clock; I only thought it must be late by the time we had been at work," replied Oliver.
"I might have sent you over with that letter as you suggested, had I known it would not go to-night. I wonder whether Dame Sym would give it back to me."
He dived down the two steps into the shop as he spoke, Oliver following. Dame Sym—so Duck Brook called her—stood knitting behind the little counter, an employment she took up at spare moments.
"Mrs. Sym, I've just put some letters into the box, not perceiving that it was past five o'clock," began Mr. Preen, civilly. "I suppose they'll not go to-night?"
"Can't, sir," replied the humble post-mistress. "The bag's made up."
"There's one letter that will hardly bear delay. It is for Mr. Paul of Islip. If you can return it me out of the box I will send it over by hand at once; my son will take it."
"But it is not possible, sir. Once a letter is put into the box I dare not give it back again," remonstrated Mrs. Sym, gazing amiably at Mr. Preen through her spectacles, whose round glasses had a trick of glistening when at right angles with the light.
"You might stretch a point for once, to oblige me," returned Mr. Preen, fretfully.
"And I'm sure I'd not need to be pressed to do it, sir, if I could," she cried in her hearty way. "But I dare not break the rules, sir; I might lose my place. Our orders are not to open the receiving box until the time for making-up, or give a letter back on any pretence whatever."
Mr. Preen saw that further argument would be useless. She was a kindly, obliging old body, but upright to the last degree in all that related to her place. Anything that she believed (right or wrong) might not be done she stuck to.
"Obstinate as the grave," muttered he.
Dame Sym did not hear; she had turned away to serve a child who came in for some toffee. Mr. Preen waited.
"When will the letter go?" he asked, as the child went out.
"By to-morrow's day mail, sir. It will be delivered at Islip—I think you said Islip, Mr. Preen—about half-past four, or so, in the afternoon."
"Is the delay of much consequence, sir?" inquired Oliver, as he and his father turned out of the shop.
"No," said Mr. Preen. "Only I hate letters to be delayed uselessly in the post."
Tea was waiting when they got in. A mutton chop was
served with it for Mr. Preen, as he had lost his dinner.
Jane ran downstairs, drank a cup of tea in haste, and ran
back again. She had been busy in her bedroom all day,
smartening-up a dress. A picnic was to be held on Thursday,
the next day but one; Jane and Oliver were invited to it,
and Jane wanted to look as well as other girls.
After tea Oliver sat for ever so long at the open window, reading the Worcester Journal. He then strolled out to the Inlets, sauntered beside the brook, and presently threw himself listlessly upon one of the benches facing it. The sun shone right upon his face there, so he tilted his straw hat over his eyes. That did not do, and he moved to another bench which the trees shaded. He often felt lonely and weary now; this evening especially so; even Jane was not with him.
His thoughts turned to Emma Paul; and a glow, bright as the declining sun rays, shot up in his heart. As long as she filled it, he could not be all gloom.
"If I had means to justify it I should speak to her," mused he—as he had told himself forty times over, and forty more. "But when a fellow has no fortune, and no prospect of fortune; when it may be seen by no end of odd signs and tokens that he has not so much as a silver coin in his pocket, how can he ask a girl the one great question of life? Old Paul would send me to the right-about."
He leaned his head sideways for a few minutes against the trunk of a tree, gazing at the reddening sky through the green tracery of the waving boughs; and fell to musing again.
"If she loved me as I love her, she would be glad to wait on as things are, hoping for better times. Lovers, who are truly attached to each other, do wait for years and years, and are all the happier for it. Sometimes I feel inclined to enlist in a crack regiment. The worst of it is that a fellow rarely rises from the ranks in England to position and honour, as he does in France; they manage things better over there. If old Uncle Edward would only open his purse-strings and buy me a commission, I might—— Halloa!"
A burst of girlish laughter, and a pair of girlish arms, flung round his neck from behind, disturbed Oliver's castles-in-the-air. Jane came round and sat down beside him. "I thought I should find you here, Oliver," she said.
"Frock finished, Janey?"
"Finished! why no," she exclaimed. "It will hardly be finished by this time to-morrow."
"Why, how idle you must have been!"
"Idle? You don't understand things, or the time it takes to make an old frock into a new one. A dressmaker might have done it in a day, but I'm not a dressmaker, you know, Oliver."
"Is it a silk gown?"
"It is a mousseline-de-laine, if you chance to be acquainted with that material," answered Janey. "It was very pretty when it was new: pale pink and lilac blossoms upon a cream ground. But it has been washed, and that has made it shrink, and it has to be let out everywhere and lengthened, and the faded silk trimming has to be turned, and—oh, ever so much work. And now, I daresay you are as wise as you were before, Oliver."
"I've heard of washed-out dresses," remarked Oliver. "They look like rags, don't they?"
"Some may. Mine won't. It has washed like a pocket- handkerchief, and it looks as good as new."
"Wish my coats would wash," said Oliver. "They are getting shabby, and I want some new ones."
Not having any consolation to administer in regard to the coats, Jane did not take up the subject. "What have you been doing all day, Oliver?" she asked.
"Airing my patience in that blessed Buttery," replied he. "Never stirred out of it at all, except for dinner."
"I thought you wanted to get over to Islip this afternoon."
"I might want to get over to the North Pole, and be none the nearer to it. MacEveril was bound for some place a mile or two across fields this afternoon, on business for the office, and I promised to go over to walk with him. Promises, though, are like pie-crust, Janey: made to be broken."
Jane nodded assent. "And a promise which you are obliged to break is sure to be one you particularly want to keep. I wish I had a pair of new gloves, Oliver. Pale grey."
"I wish I had half-a-dozen new pairs, for the matter of that. Just look at those little minnows, leaping in the water. How pretty they are!"
He went to the edge of the brook and stood looking down at the small fry. Jane followed. Then they walked about in the Inlets, then sat down again and watched the sunset; and so the evening wore away until they went home.
Jane was shut up again the following day, busy with her dress; Oliver, as usual, was in the Buttery with his father. At twelve o'clock Mr. Preen prepared to go out to keep an appointment at Evesham, leaving Oliver a lot of work to do, very much to his aggravation.
"It's a shame. It will take me all the afternoon to get through it," ran his thoughts—and he would have liked to say so aloud.
"You don't look pleased, young man," remarked his father. "Recollect you will be off duty to-morrow."
Oliver's countenance cleared; his disposition was a pleasant one, never retaining anger long, and he set to his task with a good will. The morrow being the day of the picnic, he would have whole holiday.
At five o'clock the young servant carried the tea-tray into the parlour. Presently Mrs. Preen came in, made the tea, and sat down to wait for her son and daughter. Tired and hot, she was glad of the rest.
Jane ran downstairs, all happiness. "Mamma, it is finished," she cried; "quite finished. It looks so well."
"It had need look well," fretfully retorted Mrs. Preen, who had been unable to get at Jane for any useful purpose these two days, and resented it accordingly.
"When all trades fail I can turn dressmaker," said the girl, gaily. "Where's Oliver?"
"In the Buttery, I expect; he said he had a great deal to do there this afternoon, and I have not seen him about," replied Mrs. Preen, as she poured out the tea. "Not that I should have been likely to see him—shut into that hot kitchen with the ironing."
Jane knew this was a shaft meant for herself. At ordinary times she did her share of the ironing. "I will tell Oliver that tea is ready, mamma," she said, rising to go to the other room. "Why, there he is, sitting in the shade under the walnut tree," she exclaimed, happening to look from the window.
"Sitting out in the cool," remarked Mrs. Preen. "I don't blame him, poring all day long over those accounts and things. Call him in, Jane."
"Coming," said Oliver, in response to Jane's call from the open window.
He crossed the grass slowly, fanning himself with his straw hat. His fair face—an unusual thing with him—was scarlet.
"You look red-hot, Oliver," laughed his sister.
"If it is as hot to-morrow as it is to-day we shall get a baking," returned Oliver.
"In this intense weather nothing makes one feel the heat like work, and I suppose you've been hard at it this afternoon," said his mother in a tone of compassion, for she disliked work naturally very much herself.
"Of course; I had to be," answered Oliver.
He and Jane sat together under the shade of the walnut tree after tea. When it grew a little cooler they went to the Inlets, that favourite resort of theirs; a spot destined to bear a strange significance for one of them in the days to come; a haunting remembrance.
THE white mist, giving promise of a hot and glorious day, had hardly cleared itself from the earth, when, at ten o'clock on the Thursday morning, Jane and Oliver Preen set off in the gig for North Villa, both of them as spruce as you please; Jane in that pretty summer dress she had spent so much work over, a straw hat with its wreath of pink may shading her fair face, Oliver with a white rose in his button-hole. The party was first to assemble at Mrs. Jacob Chandler's, and to go from thence in waggonettes. There had been some trouble about the gig, Mr. Preen wanting it himself that day, or telling Jane and Oliver that he did, and that they could walk. Jane almost cried, declaring she did not care to arrive at North Villa looking like a milkmaid, hot and red with walking; and Mr. Preen gave way. Oliver was to drive himself and Jane, Sam being sent on to Crabb to bring back the gig.
Mr. Preen did not regard the picnic with favour. Mr. Preen could not imagine what anybody could want at one, he said, when ungraciously giving consent to Oliver's absenting himself from that delightful Buttery for a whole day.
Picnics in truth are nearly all alike, and are no doubt more agreeable to the young than to the old. This one was given conjointly by the Jacob Chandlers, the Letsoms, the Coneys, and the Ashtons of Timberdale. A few honorary guests were invited. I call them honorary because they had nothing to do with finding provisions. Tod got an invitation, myself also; and uncommonly vexed we were not to be able to arrive till late in the afternoon. The Beeles from Pigeon Green were coming to spend the day at Crabb Cot, and the Squire would not let us off earlier.
The picnic was held upon Mrs. Cramp's farm, not far from Crabb, and a charming spot for it. Gentle hills and dales, shady groves and mossy glens surrounded the house, which was a very good one. So that it may be said we all were chiefly Mrs. Cramp's guests. Mrs. Cramp made a beaming hostess, and was commander-in-chief at her own tea-table. Tea was taken in her large parlour, to save the bother of carrying things out. Dinner had been taken in the dell, under shade of the high and wide-spreading trees.
They were seated at tea when we got there. Such a large company at the long table; and such tempting things to eat! I found a seat by Emma Paul, the prettiest girl there; Oliver Preen was next her on the other side. Mary MacEveril made room for Tod beside her. The MacEverils were proud, exclusive people, and Miss MacEveril privately looked down on some of her fellow guests; but Tod was welcome; he was of her own order.
Two or three minutes later Tom Chandler came in; he also had not been able to get away earlier. He shook hands with his aunt, Mrs. Cramp, nodded to the rest of us, and deftly managed to wedge himself in between Emma Paul and young Preen. Preen did not seem pleased, Emma did; and made all the room she could, by crushing me.
"I wouldn't be in your shoes to-morrow morning, young man," began Mr. Chandler, in a serio-comic tone, as he looked at Dick MacEveril across the table. "To leave the office to its own devices the first thing this morning, in defiance of orders——"
"Hang the musty old office!" interrupted MacEveril, with a genial laugh.
Valentine Chandler had done the same by his office; pleasure first and business later always with both of them; but Valentine was his own master and MacEveril was not. In point of fact, Mr. Paul, not a man to be set at defiance by his clerks, was in a great rage with Dick MacEveril.
I supposed the attractions of the picnic had been too powerful for Dick, and that he thought the sooner he got to it the better. But this proved to be a fallacy. Mrs. Cramp was setting her nephew right.
"My dear Tom, you are mistaken. Mr. MacEveril did not come this morning; he only got here an hour ago—like two or three more of the young men."
"Oh, did he not, Aunt Mary Ann?" replied Tom, turning his handsome, pleasant face upon her.
"Yes, and if you were not at the office I should like to know what you did with yourself all day, Dick," severely cried Miss MacEveril, bending forward to regard her cousin.
"I went to see the pigeon-match," said Dick, coolly.
"To see the pigeon-match!" she echoed. "How cruel of you! You had better not let papa know."
"If anyone lets him know it will be yourself, Miss Mary. And suppose you hold your tongue now," cried Dick, not very politely.
This little passage-at-arms over, we went on with tea. Afterwards we strolled out of doors and disposed of ourselves at will. Some of the Chandler girls took possession of me, and I went about with them.
When it was getting late, and they had talked me deaf, I began looking about for Tod, and found him on a bench within the Grove. A sheltered spot. Sitting there, you could look out, but people could not look in. Mary MacEveril and Georgiana Chandler were with him; Oliver Preen stood close by, leaning against the stump of a tree. I thought how sad his look was, and wondered what made it so.
Within view of us, but not within hearing, in a dark, narrow walk Tom Chandler and Emma Paul were pacing side by side, absorbed evidently in one another. The sun had set, the lovely colours in the sky were giving place to twilight. It was the hour when matter-of-fact prosaic influences change into romance; when, if there's any sentiment within us it is safe to come out.
"It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word,"
as Lord Byron says. And who could discourse on love—the true ring of it, mind you—as he did?
"Do sing," said Tod to Miss MacEveril; and I found they had been teasing her to do so for the last five minutes. She had a pleasant voice and sang well.
"I'm sure you don't care to hear me, Mr. Todhetley."
"But I'm sure I do," answered Tod, who would flirt with pretty girls when the fit took him. Flirt and flatter too.
"We should have everyone coming round us."
"Not a soul of them. They are all away somewhere, out of hearing. Do sing me one song."
She began at once, without more ado, choosing an old song that Mrs. Todhetley often chose; one that was a favourite of hers, as it was of mine: "Faithless Emma." Those songs of the old days bore, all of them, a history.
"I wandered once at break of day,
While yet upon the sunless sea
In wanton sighs the breeze delayed,
And o'er the wavy surface played.
Then first the fairest face I knew,
First loved the eye of softest blue,
And ventured, fearful, first to sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma.
So mixed the rose and lily white
That nature seemed uncertain, quite,
To deck her cheek which flower she chose,
The lily or the blushing rose.
I wish I ne'er had seen her eye,
Ne'er seen her cheeks of doubtful dye,
Nor ever, ever dared to sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma.
Now though from early dawn of day,
I rove alone and, anxious, stray
Till night with curtain dark descends,
And day no more its glimmering lends;
Yet still, like hers no cheek I find,
No eye like hers, save in my mind,
Where still I fancy that I sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma."
"I think all Emmas are faithless," exclaimed Georgiana, speaking at random, as the last sounds of the sweet song died away.
"A sweeping assertion, Miss Georgie," laughed Tod.
"Any way, I knew two girls named Emma who were faithless to their engaged lovers, and one of them's not married yet to any one else," returned Georgie.
"I think I know one Emma who will be true for ever and a day," cried Tod, as he pointed significantly to Emma Paul, still walking side by side with Tom Chandler in the distance.
"I could have told you that before now," said Mary MacEveril. "I have seen it for a long time, though Miss Emma will never confess to it."
"And now, I fancy it will soon be a case," continued Tod.
"A case!" cried Georgie. "What do you mean?"
"A regular case; dead, and gone, and done for," nodded Tod. "Church bells and wedding gloves, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Looks like it, anyhow, to-night."
"Oh!" exclaimed Georgie, "then how sly Tom has been over it, never to tell us! Is it really true? I shall ask Valentine."
"The last person likely to know," said Tod. "You'll find it's true enough, Georgie."
"Then——" Georgie began, and broke off. "Listen!" she cried. "They are beginning to dance on the lawn. Come, Mary." And the two girls moved away, attracted by the scraping of the fiddle.
Oliver Preen moved a step forward from the tree, speaking in a low, calm tone; but his face was white as death.
"Were you alluding to them?" he asked, looking across to those two pacing about. "Why do you say it is a 'case'?"
"Because I am sure it is one," answered Tod. "They have been in love with one another this many a day past, those two, months and months and years. As everyone might see who had eyes, except old Paul. That's why, Preen."
Oliver did not answer. He had his arm round the trunk of a tree looking across as before.
"And I wouldn't stake a fortune that Paul has not seen it also," went on Tod. "All the same, I had a rumour whispered to me to-day that he sees it now, and has said, 'Bless you, my children.' Tom Chandler is to be made his partner and to marry Emma."
"We are too many girls there, and want you for partners," cried Eliza Letsom, dashing up. "Do come and dance with us, Johnny!"
What else could I do? Or Tod, either.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when the party separated. The waggonettes held us all, and nice scrambling and crowding we had for seats. One of the vehicles, after setting down some of its freight—ourselves and the Miss Chandlers—continued its way to Duck Brook with Jane and Oliver Preen.
It was a lovely night. The moon had risen, and was flooding the earth with its soft light. Jane sat looking at it in romantic reverie. Suddenly it struck her that her brother was unusually still; he had not spoken a single word.
"How silent you are, Oliver. You are not asleep, are you?"
Oliver slowly raised his bent head. "Silent?" he repeated. "One can't talk much after a tiring day such as this."
"I think it must be getting on for twelve o'clock," said Jane. "What a delightfully happy day it has been!"
"The one bad day of all my life," groaned Oliver, in spirit. But he broke into the two lines, in pretended gaiety, that some one had sung on the box-seat of the waggonette when leaving Mrs. Cramp's:
"For the best of all ways to lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear."
"My Dear Sir,—
"Robert Derrick is getting troublesome. He has been here three times in as many days, pressing for ten pounds, the instalment of your debt now due to him. Will you be good enough to transmit it to me, that I may pay and get rid of him.
"Truly yours,
"John Paul."
This letter, written by Lawyer Paul of Islip, came to Mr. Preen by the Thursday morning post, just a week after the picnic. It put him into a temper.
"What do Paul's people mean by their carelessness?" he exclaimed angrily, as he snatched a sheet of paper to pen the answer.
"Dear Mr. Paul,—
"I don't know what you mean. I sent the money to you ten days ago—a bank-note, enclosed in a letter to yourself.
"Truly yours,
"G. Preen."
Calling Oliver from his breakfast, Mr. Preen despatched this answer by him at once to the post-office. There was no hurry whatever, since the day mail had gone out, and it would lie in Mrs. Sym's drawer until towards evening, but an angry man knows nothing of patience.
The week since the picnic had not been productive of any particular event, except a little doubt and trouble regarding Dick MacEveril. Mr. Paul was so much annoyed, at Dick's taking French leave to absent himself from the office that day, that he attacked him with hot words when he entered it on the Friday morning. Dick took it very coolly—old Paul said "insolently," and retorted that he wanted a longer holiday than that, a whole fortnight, and that he must have it. Shortly and sharply Mr. Paul told him he could not have it, unless he chose to have it for good.
Dick took him at his word. Catching up his hat and stick, he went out of the office there and then, and had not since appeared at it. Not only that: during the Friday he disappeared also from Islip. Nobody knew for certain whither he had gone, or where he was: unless it might be London. He had made no secret of what he wanted a holiday for. Some young fellow whom he had known in Australia had recently landed at the docks and was in London, and Dick wanted to go up to see him.
Deprived of his friend, and deprived of his heart's love, Oliver Preen was in a bad case. The news of Emma Paul's engagement to Thomas Chandler, and the news that Chandler was to have a share in her father's business, had been made public; the speedy marriage was already talked of. No living person saw what havoc it was making of Oliver Preen. Jane found him unnaturally quiet. He would sit by the hour together and never say a word to her or to anyone else, apparently plunged in what might be either profound scientific calculations or grim despondency. It was as if he had the care of the world upon his mind, and at times there would break from him a sudden long-drawn sigh. Poor Oliver! Earth's sunshine had gone out for him with sweet Emma Paul.
She had not been faithless, like the Faithless Emma of the song, for she had never cared for anyone but Tom Chandler, had never given the smallest encouragement to another. Oliver had only deluded himself. To his heart, filled and blinded with its impassioned love, her open, pleasing manners had seemed to be a response, and so he had mistaken her. That was all.
But this is sentiment, which the world, having grown enlightened of late years, practically despises; and we must go on to something more sensible and serious.
The answer sent by Mr. Preen to John Paul of Islip brought forth an answer in its turn. It was to the effect that Mr. Paul had not seen anything of the letter spoken of by Mr. Preen, or of the money it was said to contain.
This reached Duck Brook on the Saturday morning. Mr. Preen, more puzzled this time than angry, could not make it out.
"Oliver," said he, "which day was it last week that I wrote that letter to Paul of Islip, enclosing a ten-pound note?"
"I don't remember," carelessly replied Oliver. They had not yet settled to work, and Oliver was stretched out at the open window, talking to a little dog that was leaping up outside.
"Not remember!" indignantly echoed Mr. Preen. "My memory is distracted with a host of cares, but yours has nothing to trouble it. Bring your head in, sir, and attend to me properly."
Oliver dutifully brought his head in, his face red with stooping. "What was it you asked me, father? I did not quite catch it," he said.
"I asked you if you could remember which day I sent that money to Paul. But I think I remember now for myself. It was the day after I received the bank-note from Mr. Todhetley. That was Monday. Then I sent the letter to Paul with the bank-note in it on the Tuesday. You sealed it for me."
"I remember quite well that it was Tuesday—two days before the picnic," said Oliver.
"Oh, of course; a picnic is a matter to remember anything by," returned Mr. Preen, sarcastically. "Well, Paul says he has never received either money or letter."
"The letter was posted——" began Oliver, but his father impatiently interrupted him.
"Certainly it was posted. You saw me post it."
"It was too late for the evening's post; Dame Sym said it would go out the next morning," went on Oliver. "Are Paul's people sure they did not receive it?"
"Paul tells me so. Paul is an exact man, and would not tolerate any but exact clerks about him. He writes positively."
"I suppose Mrs. Sym did not forget to forward it?" suggested Oliver.
"What an idiot you are!" retorted his father, by way of being complimentary. "The letter must have gone out safely enough."
Nevertheless, after Mr. Preen had attended to his other letters and to two or three matters they involved, he put on his hat and went to Mrs. Sym's.
The debt for which the money was owing appeared to be a somewhat mysterious one. Robert Derrick, a man who dealt in horses, or in anything else by which he could make money, and attended all fairs near and far, lived about two miles from Islip. One day, about a year back, Derrick presented himself at the office of Mr. Paul, and asked that gentleman if he would sue Gervais Preen for a sum of money, forty pounds, which had been long owing to him. What was it owing for, Mr. Paul inquired; but Derrick declined to say. Instead of suing him, the lawyer wrote to request Mr. Preen to call upon him, which Mr. Preen did. He acknowledged that he did owe the debt—forty pounds—but, like Derrick, he evaded the question when asked what he owed it for. Perhaps it was for a horse, or horses, suggested Mr. Paul. No, it was for nothing of that kind, Mr. Preen replied; it was a strictly private debt.
An arrangement was come to. To pay the whole at once was not, Mr. Preen said, in his power; but he would pay it by instalments. Ten pounds every six months he would place in Mr. Paul's hands, to be handed to Derrick, whom Mr. Preen refused to see. This arrangement Derrick agreed to. Two instalments had already been paid, and one which seemed to have now miscarried in the post was the third.
"Mrs. Sym," began Mr. Preen, when he had dived into the sweet-stuff shop, and confronted the post-mistress behind her counter, "do you recollect, one day last week, my asking you to give me back a letter which I had just posted, addressed to Mr. Paul of Islip, and you refused?"
"Yes, sir, I do," answered Mrs. Sym. "I was sorry, but——"
"Never mind that. What I want to ask you is this: did you notice that letter when you made up the bag?"
"I did, sir. I noticed it particularly in consequence of what had passed. It was sealed with a large red seal."
"Just so. Well, Mr. Paul declares that letter has not reached him."
"But it must have reached him," rejoined Mrs. Sym, fastening her glittering spectacles upon the speaker's face. "It had Mr. Paul's address upon it in plain writing, and it went away from here in the bag with the rest of the letters."
"The letter had a ten-pound note in it."
Mrs. Sym paused. "Well, sir, if so, that would not endanger the letter's safety. Who was to know it had? But letters that contain money ought to be registered, Mr. Preen."
"You are sure it went away as usual from here—all safe?"
"Sure and certain, sir. And I think it must have reached Mr. Paul, if I may say so. He may have overlooked it; perhaps let it fall into some part of his desk, unopened. Why, some years ago, there was a great fuss made about a letter which was sent to Captain Falkner, when he was living at the Hall. He came here one day, complaining to me that a letter sent to him by post, which had money in it, had never been delivered. The trouble there was over that lost letter, sir, I couldn't tell you. The Captain accused the post- office in London, for it was London it came from, of never having forwarded it; then he accused me of not sending it out with the delivery. After all, it was himself who had mislaid the letter. He had somehow let it fall unnoticed into a deep drawer of his writing-table when it was handed to him with other letters at the morning's delivery; and there it lay all snug till found, hid away amid a mass of papers. What do you think of that, sir?"
Mr. Preen did not say.
"In all the years I have kept this post-office I can't call to memory one single letter being lost in the transit," she ran on, warming in her own cause. "Why, how could it, sir? Once a letter's sent away safe in the bag, there it must be; it can't fall out of it. Your letter was so sent away by me, Mr. Preen, and where should it be if Mr. Paul hasn't got it? Please tell him, sir, from me, that I'd respectfully suggest he should look well about his desk and places."
Evidently it was not at this side the letter had been lost—if lost it was. Mr. Preen wished the post- mistress good morning, and walked away. Her suggestion had impressed him; he began to think it very likely indeed that Paul had overlooked the letter on its arrival, and would find it about his desk, or table, or some other receptacle for papers.
He drove over to Islip in the gig in the afternoon, taking Oliver with him. Islip reached, he left Oliver in the gig, to wait at the door or drive slowly about as he pleased, while he went into the office to, as he expressed it, "have it out with Paul."
Not at once, however, could he do that, for Mr. Paul was out; but he saw Tom Chandler.
The offices, situated in the heart of Islip, and not a stone's throw from the offices of Valentine Chandler, consisted of three rooms, all on the ground floor. The clerks' room was in front, its windows (painted white, so that no one could see in or out) faced the street; Mr. Paul's room lay behind it and looked on to a garden. There was also a small slip of a room, not much better than a passage, into which Mr. Paul could take clients whose business was very private indeed. Tom Chandler, about to be made a partner, had a desk in Mr. Paul's room as well as one in the clerks' room. It was at the latter that he usually sat.
On this afternoon he was seated at his desk in Mr. Paul's room when Gervais Preen entered. Tom received him with a smile and a hand-shake, and gave him a chair.
"I've come about that letter, Mr. Chandler," began the visitor; "my letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having received."
"I assure you no such letter was received by us——"
"It was addressed in a plain handwriting to Mr. Paul himself, and protected by a seal of red wax with my crest upon it," irritably interrupted the applicant, who hated to be contradicted.
"Mr. Preen, you may believe me when I tell you the letter never reached us," said Tom, a smile crossing his candid, handsome face, at the other's irritability.
"Then where is the letter? What became of it?"
"I should say perhaps it was never posted," mildly suggested Tom.
"Not posted!" tartly echoed Mr. Preen. "Why, I posted it myself; as Dame Sym, over at Duck Brook, can testify. And my son also, for that matter; he stood by and saw me put it into the box. Dame Sym sent it away in the bag with the rest; she remembers the letter perfectly."
"It never was delivered to us," said Tom, shaking his head. "If—— oh, here is Mr. Paul."
The portly lawyer came into the room, pushing back his iron-grey hair. He sat down at his own desk-table; Mr. Preen drew his chair so as to face him, and the affair was thoroughly gone into. It cannot be denied that the experienced man of law, knowing how difficult it was to Mr. Preen to find money for his debts and his needs, had allowed some faint doubt to float within him in regard to this reported loss. Was it a true loss?—or an invented one? But old Paul read people's characters, as betrayed in their tones and faces, tolerably well; he saw that Preen was in desperate earnest, and he began to believe his story.
"Let me see," said he. "You posted it on Tuesday, the fifteenth. You found it was too late for that night's post, and would not go off until the morrow morning, when, as Dame Sym says, she despatched it. Then we ought to have received it that afternoon—Wednesday, the sixteenth."
"Yes," assented Mr. Preen. "Mrs. Sym wished to respectfully suggest to you, Paul, that you might have overlooked it amidst the other letters at the time it was delivered, and let it drop unseen into some drawer or desk."
"Oh, she did, did she?" cried old Paul, while Tom Chandler laughed. "Give my respects to her, Preen, and tell her I'm not an old woman. We don't get many letters in an afternoon, sometimes not any," he went on. "Can you carry your memory back to that Wednesday afternoon, Chandler?"
"I daresay I shall be able to do so," replied Tom. "Wednesday, the sixteenth.—Was not that the day before the picnic at Aunt Cramp's?"
"What on earth has the picnic to do with it?" sharply demanded Mr. Preen. "All you young men are alike. Oliver could only remember the date of my posting the letter by recalling that of the picnic. You should be above such frivolity."
Tom Chandler laughed. "I remember the day before the picnic for a special reason, sir. MacEveril asked for holiday that he might go to it. I told him he could not have the whole day, we were too busy, but perhaps he might get half of it; upon which he said half a day was no good to him, and gave me some sauce. Yes, that was Wednesday, the sixteenth; and now, having that landmark to go by, I may be able to trace back other events and the number of letters which came in that afternoon."
"Is MacEveril back yet?" asked Preen.
"No," replied Paul. "The captain does not know where he is; no one does know, that I'm aware of. Look here, Preen; as this letter appears to be really lost, and very unaccountably, since Mrs. Sym is sure she sent it off, and I am sure it was never delivered to me, I shall go to our office here now, and inquire about it. Will you come with me?"
Mr. Preen was only too glad to go to any earthly place that was likely to afford news of his ten-pound note, for the loss would be his, and he knew not where he should find another ten pounds to satisfy the insatiable Derrick.
They proceeded along the pavement together, passing Oliver, who was slowly parading the gig up and down the street. His sad face—unusually sad it looked—had a sort of expectancy on it as he turned his gaze from side to side, lest by some happy chance it might catch the form of Emma Paul. Emma might be going to marry another; but, all the same, Oliver could not drop her out of his heart.
They disclaimed all recollection of the letter at the post-office. Had it been for a private individual it might have been remembered, but Mr. Paul had too many letters to allow of that, unless something special called attention to any one of them. Whether the letter in question had reached them by the Islip bag, or whether it had not, they could not say; but they could positively affirm that, if it had, it had been sent out to Mr. Paul.
In returning they overtook the postman on his round, with the afternoon delivery: a young, active man, who seemed to skim over the ground, and was honest as the day.
"Dale," said Lawyer Paul, "there has been a letter lost, addressed to me. I wonder whether you chanced to notice such a letter?" And he mentioned the details of the case.
"One day is like another to me in its round of duties, you see, sir," observed the man. "Sealed with a big red seal, you say, sir? Well, it might be, but that's nothing for me to go by; so many of your letters are sealed, sir."
The lawyer returned to his office with Mr. Preen, and entered his own room. Tom Chandler heard them and came swiftly through the door which opened from the clerks' department, a smile of satisfaction on his face.
"I remember all about the letters that were brought in on Wednesday week," said he. "I can recall the whole of the circumstances; they were rather unusual."
THOMAS CHANDLER possessed a clear, retentive memory by nature, and he had done nothing to cloud it. After his master, Lawyer Paul—soon to be no longer his master, but his partner—had gone out with Mr. Preen to make inquiries at the post-office for the missing letter, he sat down to bring his memory into exercise.
Carrying his thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon, some ten days ago, when the letter ought to have been delivered at Mr. Paul's office, and was not—at least, so far as could be traced at present—he had little difficulty in recalling its chief events, one remembered incident leading up to another.
Then he passed into the front room, and spoke for some minutes with Michael Hanborough, a steady little man of middle age, who had been with Mr. Paul over twenty years. There was one clerk under him, Tite Batley (full name Titus), and there had been young Richard MacEveril. The disappearance of the latter had caused the office to be busy just now, Michael Hanborough especially so. He was in the room alone when Mr. Chandler entered.
"You have not gone to tea yet, Mr. Hanborough!"
"No, sir. I wanted to finish this deed, first. Batley's gone to his."
"Look here, Hanborough, I want to ask you a question or two. That deed's in no particular hurry, for I am sure Mr. Paul will not be ready to send it off to-day," continued Mr. Chandler. "There's going to be a fuss over that letter of Preen's, which appears to have been unaccountably lost. I have been carrying my thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon when it ought to have been delivered here, and I want you to do the same. Try and recollect anything and everything you can, connected with that afternoon."
"But, Mr. Chandler, the letter could not have been delivered here; Mr. Paul says so," reasoned Michael Hanborough, turning from his desk while he spoke and leaning his elbow upon it.
His desk stood between the window and the door which opened from the passage; the window being at his right hand as he sat. Opposite, beside the other window, was Mr. Chandler's desk. A larger desk, used by MacEveril and young Batley, crossed the lower end of the room, facing the window; and near it was the narrow door that opened to Mr. Paul's room.
Thomas Chandler remained talking with Hanborough until he saw the lawyer and Mr. Preen return, when he joined them in the other room. They mentioned their failure at the post- office, and he then related to them what he had been able to recall.
Wednesday afternoon, the sixteenth of June, had been distinguished in Mr. Paul's office by a little breeze raised by Richard MacEveril. Suddenly looking up from his writing, he disturbed Mr. Chandler, who was busy at his desk, by saying he expected to have holiday on the morrow for the whole day. Hanborough was just then in Mr. Paul's room; Batley was out. Batley had been sent to execute a commission at a distance, and would not be back till evening.
"Oh, indeed!" responded Tom Chandler, laughing at MacEveril's modest request, so modestly put. "What else would you like, Dick?"
Dick laughed too. "That will serve me for the present moment, Mr. Chandler," said he.
"Well, Dick, I'm sorry to deny you, but you can't have it. You have a conscience to ask it, young man, when you know the Worcester Sessions are close at hand, and we are so busy here we don't know which way to turn!"
"I mean to take it," said Dick.
"But I don't mean you to; understand that. See here, Dick: I won't be harder than I'm obliged; I should like to go to the pic-nic myself, though there's no chance of that for me. Come here in good time in the morning, get through as much work as you can, and I daresay we can let you off at one o'clock. There!"
This concession did not satisfy MacEveril. When Mr. Hanborough came in from the other room he found the young man exercising his saucy tongue upon Tom Chandler, calling him a "Martinet," a "Red Indian Freebooter," and other agreeable names, which he may have brought with him from Australia. Tom, ever sweet-tempered, took it all pleasantly, and bade him go on with his work.
That interlude passed. At half-past four o'clock MacEveril went out, as usual, to get his tea, leaving Chandler and Hanborough in the office, each writing at his own desk. Presently the former paused; looked fixedly at the mortgage-deed he was engaged upon, and then got up to carry it to the old clerk. As he was crossing the room the postman came in, put a small pile of letters into Mr. Chandler's hand, and went out again. Tom looked down at the letters but did not disturb them; he laid them down upon Mr. Hanborough's desk whilst he showed him the parchment.
"I don't much like this one clause, Hanborough," he said. "Just read it; it's very short. Would it be binding on the other party?"
They were both reading the clause, heads together, when Mr. Paul was heard speaking in haste. "Chandler! Tom Chandler! Come here directly"—and Tom turned and went at once.
"Is Hanborough there?" cried Mr. Paul.
"Yes, sir."
"Tell him to come in also; no time to lose."
Mr. Paul wanted them to witness his signature to a deed which had to go off by the evening post. That done, he detained them for a minute upon some other matter; after which, Hanborough left the room. Chandler turned to follow him.
"Bring the letters in as soon as they come," said Mr. Paul. "There may be one from Burnaby."
"Oh, they have come," replied Tom; and he went into the other room and brought the letters to the lawyer.
It was this which Tom Chandler now related to his master and to Mr. Preen. By dint of exercising his own memory and referring to his day-book, Mr. Paul was enabled to say that the letters that past afternoon were four in number, and to state from whom they came. There was no letter amongst them from Mr. Preen; none at all from Duck Brook. So there it was: the letter seemed to have mysteriously vanished; either out of the post bag despatched by Mrs. Sym, or else after its arrival at Islip. The latter was of course the more probable; since, as Dame Sym had herself remarked, once a letter was shut up in the bag, there it must remain; it could not vanish from it.
But, assuming this to be the case, how and where had it vanished? From the Islip post-office? Or from the postman's hands when carrying it out for delivery? Or from Mr. Paul's front room?
They were yet speaking when Dale the postman walked in. He came to say that he had been exercising his mind upon the afternoons of the past week and could now distinguish Wednesday from the others. He recalled it by remembering that it was the afternoon of the accident in the street, when a tax-cart was overturned and the driver had broken his arm; and he could positively say that he had that afternoon delivered the letters to Mr. Chandler himself.
"Yes, yes, we remember all that ourselves, Dale," returned Mr. Paul, somewhat testily. "The thing we want you to remember is, whether you observed amidst the letters one with a large red seal."
Dale shook his head. "No, sir, I did not. The letters lay one upon another, address upwards, and I took no particular notice of them. There were four or five of them, I should think."
"Four," corrected the lawyer. "Well, that's all, Dale, for the present. The letter is lost, and we must consider what to do in the matter."
Yes, it was all very well to say that to Dale, but what could they do? How set about it? To begin with, Preen did not know the number of the note, but supposed he might get it from Mr. Todhetley. He stayed so long in discussion with the lawyer, that his son, waiting in the gig outside, grew tired and the horse impatient.
Oliver was almost ready to die of weariness, when an acquaintance of his came out of the Bell. Fred Scott; a dashing young fellow, who had more money than brains.
"Get up," said Oliver. And Scott got into the gig.
They were driving slowly about and talking fast, when two young ladies came into view at the end of the street. Oliver threw the reins to his friend, got out in a trice and met them. No need to say that one of them was Emma Paul.
"I beg your pardon," said Oliver to her, lifting his hat from his suddenly flushed face, as he shook hands with both of them. "I left two books at your house yesterday: did you get them? The servant said you were out."
"Oh, yes, I had them; and I thank you very much," answered Emma, with a charming smile: whilst Mary MacEveril went away to feast her eyes at the milliner's window. "I have begun one of them already."
"Jane said you would like to read them; and so—I—I left them," returned Oliver, with the hesitating shyness of true love.
"It is very kind of you, Sir. Oliver, to bring them over, and I am sorry I was not at home," said Emma. "When are you and Jane coming to see me?"
With her dimpled face all smiles, her blue eyes beaming upon him, her ready handshake still tingling in his pulses, her cordial tones telling of pleasure, how could that fascinated young man do otherwise than believe in her? The world might talk of her love for Tom Chandler: he did not and would not believe it held a grain of truth. Oh, if he could but know that she loved him! Mary MacEveril turned.
"Emma, are you not coming? We have that silk to match, you know."
With another handshake, another sweet smile, she went away with Mary. Oliver said adieu, his heart on his lips. All his weariness was gone, lost in a flood of sunshine.
Mr. Preen was seen, coming along. Scott got out of the gig, and Oliver got into it. Preen took his seat and the reins, and drove off.
Mr. Paul went home to dinner at the usual hour that evening, but the clerks remained beyond the time for closing. Work had been hindered, and had to be done. Batley was the first to leave; the other two lingered behind, talking of the loss.
"It is the most surprising thing that has happened for a long while," remarked Hanborough. He had locked his desk and had his hat and gloves at his elbow. "That letter has been stolen, Mr. Chandler; it has not been accidentally lost."
"Ay," assented Tom. "Stolen—I fear—from here. From this very room that you and I are standing in, Hanborough."
"My suspicions, sir, were directed to the Islip post- office."
"I wish mine were," said Tom. "I don't think—think, mind, for we cannot be sure—that the post-office is the right quarter to look to. You see the letters were left here on your desk, while we were occupied with Mr. Paul in his room. About two minutes, I suppose, we stayed with him; perhaps three. Did anyone come in during that time, Hanborough, and take the letter?"
Mr. Hanborough drew off his spectacles, which he wore out of doors as well as in; he was sure to take them off when anything disturbed him.
"But who would do such a thing?" he asked.
Tom laughed a little. "You wouldn't, old friend, and I wouldn't; but there may be people in the neighbourhood who would."
Doubts were presenting themselves to Michael Hanborough's mind: he did not "see" this, as the saying runs. "Why should anyone single out that one particular letter to take, and leave the rest?" he resumed.
"That point puzzles me," remarked Tom. "If the letter was singled out, as you put it, from the rest, I should say the thief must have known it contained money: and who could, or did, know that? I wish I had carried the letters in with me when Mr. Paul called to me!"
"If the letters had been left alone for a whole day in our office, I should never have supposed they were not safe," said the clerk, impulsively. "But, now that my attention has been drawn to this, I must mention something, Mr. Chandler."
"Yes. Go on."
"When the master called me in after you, I followed you in through that door," he began, pointing to the door of communication between the two rooms. "But I left it by the other, the passage door, chancing to be nearest to it at the moment. As I went out, I saw the green baize door swinging, and supposed that someone had come in; MacEveril, perhaps, from his tea. But he had not done so. I found neither him nor anyone else; the room here was vacant as when I left it."
The green baize door stood in the passage, between the street door, always open in the daytime, and the door that led into the front office.
"Seeing no one here, I concluded I was mistaken; and I have never thought of it from that hour to this," continued the clerk. "No, not even when it came out that a letter had been lost with a bank-note in it."
Tom nodded his head several times, as much as to say that was when the thief must have come in. "And now, Hanborough, I'll tell you something in turn," he went on. "Dale put the letters into my hand that afternoon, as you know; and I laid them on your desk here while showing you that clause in the mortgage deed. Later, when I took up the letters to carry them to Mr. Paul, an idea struck me that the packet felt thinner. It did indeed. I of course supposed it to be only fancy, and let it slip from my mind. I have never thought of it since—as you say by the green door—until this afternoon."
Michael Hanborough, who had put his spectacles on again, turned them upon his young master, and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"Who is it that—that we may suspect, sir?"
"Say yourself, Hanborough."
"I'm afraid to say. Is it—MacEveril?"
"It looks like it," replied Tom, in the same low tone. "But while there are reasons for suspecting him, there are also reasons against it," he added, after a pause. "MacEveril was in debt, petty little odds and ends of things which he owes about the place and elsewhere; that's one reason why money would be useful to him. Then his running away looks suspicious; and another reason is that there's positively no one else to suspect. All that seems to tell against him; but on the other hand, MacEveril, though random and heedless, is a gentleman and has a gentleman's instincts, and I do not think he would be guilty of such a thing."
"Well, and I can't think it, either," said Michael Hanborough; "despite his faults and his saucy tongue, I liked him. He did not come in again that afternoon till half-past five, I remember. I told him he was late; he answered, laughing, that he had dropped asleep over his tea—though I didn't believe a word of it."
"If MacEveril really took the letter, how had he ascertained that it contained money?" mused Tom Chandler. "Hanborough, at present I think this suspicion had better lie entirely between ourselves."
"Yes, Mr. Chandler, and so do I. Perhaps a few days may bring forth something to confirm or dispel it."
PREEN was a great deal too anxious and restless to let the following day pass over quietly; and on that Sunday afternoon when we were all sitting in the garden at Crabb Cot, under the scent and shade of the large syringa trees, he walked in. His little dark face looked darker than ever, the scowl of pain on his brow deeper.
"No, I can't take anything," he said, in answer to the Squire's hospitable offers of having wine, or ale, or lemonade brought out. "Thirsty? Yes, I am thirsty, Squire, but it is with worry, not with the walk. Wine and lemonade won't relieve that."
And, sitting down to face us, in a swinging American chair, which Tod had brought out for his own benefit, Gervais Preen surprised us with the history of his mysterious loss, and inquired whether the Squire could give him the number of the note.
"Yes, I can," replied the Squire; "my name is on the note also; you made me write it, you know. How on earth has it got lost?"
"It is just one of those things there's no accounting for," said Preen, bending forward in his earnestness. "The letter left Duck Brook in safety; I posted it myself, and Mrs. Sym took notice of it when she shut it up in the bag. That is as far as it can be traced. The Islip post-office, though not remembering it in particular, have no doubt it reached them, as it could not have been lost from the bag, or that they sent it out for delivery to Mr. Paul by Dale, who is cautious and trustworthy. Paul declares it never reached him; and of course he is trustworthy. Dale says, and it is a fact, that he delivered the letters that afternoon into Mr. Chandler's own hands. One cannot see where to look for a weak point, you perceive, Todhetley."
The Squire was rubbing his face, the account having put it into a white heat. "Bless my heart!" cried he. "It reminds me of that five-pound note of mine which was changed in the post for a stolen one! You remember that, Johnny."
"Yes, sir, that I do."
"Wednesday, the sixteenth, was the day it ought to have reached old Paul!" exclaimed Tod, who was balancing himself on the branch of a tree. "Why, that was the day before the pic-nic!"
"And what if it was?" retorted Preen, enraged that everybody should bring up that pic-nic in conjunction with his loss. "The pic-nic had nothing to do with my bank-note and letter."
"Clearly not," agreed Tod, laughing at his ire.
"I should advertise, Preen," said the Squire, "and I should call in the detectives. They——"
"I don't like detectives," growled Preen, interrupting him, "and I think advertising might do more harm than good. I must get my money back somehow; I can't afford to lose it. But as to those detectives—— Mercy upon us!"
In the ardour of declamation, Mr. Preen had bent a little too forward. The chair backed from under him, and he came down upon the grass, hands and knees. Tod choked with laughter, and dashed off to get rid of it. The man gathered himself up.
"Nasty tilting things, those chairs are!" he exclaimed. "Please don't trouble, ma'am," for Mrs. Todhetley had sprung forward; "there's no harm done. And if you don't mind giving me the number of the note to-day, Squire, I shall be much obliged."
He declined to stay for tea, saying he wanted to get back home. When he and the Squire went indoors, we talked of the loss; Mrs. Todhetley thought it strangely unaccountable.
As the days went on, and the bank-note did not turn up, Mr. Preen fell into the depths of gloom. He had lost no time in proceeding to the Old Bank, at Worcester—from whence Mr. Todhetley had drawn the note, in conjunction with other notes—recounting to its principals the history of its loss, and giving in its number, together with the information that Mr. Todhetley's name was written on it. The bank promised to make inquiries of other banks, and to detain the note should it be paid in.
"As if that were likely!" groaned Preen. "A rogue filching a note would not go and pay it into the place it came from."
Thomas Chandler was gazetted the partner of Mr. Paul, the firm to be known henceforth as Paul and Chandler. In the first private conference that the young man held with his partner, he imparted to him the suspicions which he and Hanborough held of Dick MacEveril. For as that erratic gentleman continued to absent himself, and the time was going on without bringing a shadow of doubt upon anyone else, the new partner felt that in duty he must speak to his chief and elder. Old Paul was overwhelmed.
"What a dreadful thing!" he exclaimed testily. "And why couldn't you or Hanborough mention this before?"
"Well," said Tom, "for one thing I was always expecting something might crop up to decide it one way or another; and, to tell the truth, sir, I cannot bring myself to believe that MacEveril did it."
"He is a villainous young dog for impudence, but—to do such a thing as that? No, I can hardly think it, either," concluded the lawyer.
That same evening, after his dinner, Mr. Paul betook himself to Oak Mansion, to an interview with his old friend, Captain MacEveril. Not to accuse that scapegrace nephew of the Captain's to his face, but to gather a hint or two about him, if any might be gathered.
The very first mention of Dick's name set the old sailor off. His right foot was showing symptoms of gout just then; between that and Dick he had no temper at all. Calming down presently, he called his man to produce tobacco and grog. They sat at the open window, smoking a pipe apiece, the glasses on a stand between them, and the lame foot upon a stool. For the expost-captain made a boast that he did not give in to that enemy of his any more than he had ever given in to an enemy at a sea-fight. The welcome evening breeze blew in upon them through the open bow window, with the sweet-scent of the July roses; and the sky was gorgeous with the red sunset.
"Where is Dick, you ask," exploded the Captain. "How should I know where he is? Hang him! When he has taken his fill of London shows with that Australian companion of his, he'll make his way back again here, I reckon. Write? Not he. He knows he'd get a letter back from me, Paul, if he did."
Leading up to it by degrees, talking of this and that, and especially of the mysterious loss of Preen's note, the lawyer spoke doubtingly of whether it could have been lost out of his own office, and, if so, who had taken it. "That young rascal would not do such a thing, you know, MacEveril," he carelessly remarked.
"What, Dick? No, no, he'd not do that," said the Captain, promptly. "Though I've known young fellows venture upon queer things when they were hard up for money. Dick's honest to the backbone. Had he wanted money to travel with, he'd have wormed it out of my wife by teasing, but he wouldn't steal it."
"About that time, a day or so before it, he drew out the linings of his pockets as he sat at his desk, and laughingly assured Hanborough, that he had not a coin of ready money in the world," remarked Mr. Paul.
"Like enough," assented the Captain. "Coin never stays in his pockets."
"I wonder where he found the money to travel with?"
"Pledged his watch and chain maybe," returned the Captain with composure. "He would be quite equal to that. Stockleigh, the fellow he is with in London, had brought home heaps of gold, 'twas said; he no doubt stands treat for Dick."
John Paul did not, could not, say anything more definite. He thought of nothing else as he walked home; now saying to himself that Dick had stolen the money, now veering over to the Captain's opinion that Dick was incapable of doing so. The uncertainty bothered him, and he hated to be bothered.
The man to whom the money was owing, Robert Derrick, was becoming very troublesome. Hardly a day passed but he marched into Mr. Paul's office, to press for payment, threatening to take steps if he did not get it shortly. The morning following the lawyer's visit to Captain MacEveril, he went in again, vowing it was for the last time, for that he should cite Mr. Preen before the County Court.
"And mark you this," he added to Hanborough, with whom the colloquy was taking place, "some past matters will come out that Preen wants kept in. He'll wish he had paid me, then."
Now, old Paul overheard this, for the door was partly open. Rugged in look, and in manner too when he chose to be, he was not rugged at heart. He was saying to himself that if this money had really been lost out of his office, stolen possibly by one of his clerks, he might replace it from his own pocket, to ward off further damage to Preen. Preen had not at present a second ten-pound note to give, could not find one anyway; Preen wished he could. Ten pounds would not affect the lawyer's pocket at all: and his resolution was taken. Ringing his bell, which was answered by Batley, he bade him show Derrick to his room.
The man came in with a subdued face. He supposed he had been overheard, and he did not care to offend Mr. Paul.
"I cannot have you coming here to disturb my clerks, Derrick," said the lawyer, with authority. "If you write out a receipt, I will pay you."
"And sure enough that's all I want, sir," returned Derrick, who was Irish. "But I can't let the thing go on longer—and it's Preen I'd like to disturb, Lawyer Paul, not you."
"Sit down yonder and write the receipt," said the lawyer, shortly. "You know how to word it."
So Derrick wrote the receipt and went off with the ten pounds. And Gervais Preen said a few words of real thanks to Mr. Paul in a low tone, when he heard of it.
On Tuesday morning, the thirteenth of July, exactly four weeks to the day since the bank-note left Mr. Preen's hands, he had news of it. The Old Bank at Worcester wrote to him to say that the missing note had been paid in the previous day, Monday, by a well-known firm of linen-drapers in High Street. Upon which the bank made inquiry of this firm as to whence they received the note, and the answer, readily given, was that they had had it from a neighbour opposite—the silversmith. The silversmith, questioned in his turn, replied with equal readiness that it had been given him in payment of a purchase by young Mr. Todhetley.
Preen, hardly believing his eyes, went off with all speed to Islip, and laid the letter before Lawyer Paul.
"What does it all mean?" he asked. "How can young Todhetley have had the note in his possession? I am going on to Crabb Cot to show the Squire the letter."
"Stop, stop," said the far-seeing lawyer, "it won't do to take this letter to Todhetley. Let us consider, first of all, how we stand. There must be some mistake. The bank and the silversmith have muddled matters between them; they may have put young Todhetley's name into it through seeing his father's on the bank-note. I will write at once to Worcester and get it privately inquired into. You had better leave it altogether in my hands, Preen, for the present." A proposal Preen was glad to agree to.
Lawyer Paul wrote to another lawyer in Worcester with whom he was on friendly terms, Mr. Corles; stating the particulars of the case. That gentleman lost no time in the matter; he made the inquiries himself, and speedily wrote back to Islip.
There had been no mistake, as Mr. Paul had surmised. The linen-drapers, a long-established and respectable firm, as Paul knew, had paid the note into the Old Bank, with other monies, in the ordinary course of business; and the firm repeated to Mr. Corles that they had received it from their neighbour, the silversmith.
The silversmith himself was from home at this time; he was staying at Malvern for his health, going to Worcester on the market days only, Saturdays and Wednesdays, when the shop expected to be busy. He had one shopman only, a Mr. Stephenson, who took charge in his master's absence. Stephenson assured Mr. Corles that he had most positively taken the note from Squire Todhetley's son. Young Mr. Todhetley had gone into the shop, purchased some trifling article, giving the note in payment, and received the change in gold. Upon referring to his day-book, Stephenson found that the purchase was made and the note paid to him during the morning of Thursday, the seventeenth of June.
When this communication from Mr. Corles reached Islip, it very much astonished old Paul. "Absurd!" he exclaimed, flinging it upon his table when he had read it; then he took it up and read it again.
"Here, Chandler," said he, calling his new partner to him, "what do you make of this?"
Tom Chandler read it twice over in his turn. "If Joseph Todhetley did change the note," he observed, "he must have done it as a practical joke, and be keeping up the joke."
"It is hardly likely," returned Mr. Paul. "If he has, he will have a bad quarter of an hour when the Squire hears of it."
On this same morning, Thursday, we were preparing for
Worcester; the Squire was going to drive us in—that
is, myself and Tod. The phaeton was actually being brought
round to the gate and we were getting our hats, when Tom
Chandler walked in, saying he had come upon a little matter
of business.
"No time to attend to it now, Tom," said the Squire, all in a bustle; "just starting for Worcester. You look hot."
"I am hot, for I came along at a trotting pace," said Tom; "the matter I have come upon makes me hot also. Mr. Todhetley, I must explain it, short as your time may be; it is very important, and—and peculiar. Mr. Paul charged me to say that he would have come himself, but he is obliged to stay at home to keep an appointment."
"Sit down, then," said the Squire, "and make it as brief as you can. Johnny, lad, tell Giles to drive the horses slowly about."
When I got back, after telling Giles, Tom Chandler had two letters in his hand; and was apologising to the Squire and to Tod for what he was obliged to enter upon. Then he added, in a few words, that the lost bank-note had come to light; it had been changed at Worcester, at the silversmith's in High Street, by, it was asserted, young Mr. Todhetley.
"Why, what d'ye mean?" cried the Squire sharply.
To explain what he meant, Tom Chandler read aloud the two letters he held; the short one, which had been first addressed to Mr. Preen by the Old Bank, and then the longer one written by Mr. Corles.
"Edward Corles must be a fool to write that!" exclaimed the Squire in his hot fashion.
"Well, he is not that, you know," said Tom Chandler. "The question is, Squire, what the grounds can be upon which they so positively state it. According to their assertion, young Mr. Todhetley changed the note at the silversmith's on the morning of Thursday, the seventeenth of June."
"Young Mr. Todhetley" in a general way was just as hot as his father, apt to fly out for nothing. I expected to see him do so now. Instead of which, he had a broad smile on his face, evidently regarding the accusation as a jest. He had perched himself on the arm of the sofa, and sat there grinning.
This struck Tom Chandler. "Did you do it for a joke?" he asked promptly.
"Do what?" rejoined Tod.
"Change the note."
"Not I."
"The only conclusion Mr. Paul and I could come to was, that—if you had done it—you did it to play a practical joke upon Preen, and were keeping it up still."
The Squire struck his hand in anger upon the table by which he sat.
"What is the meaning of this, Joe? A practical joke? Did you do the thing, or didn't you? Speak out seriously. Don't sit there, grinning like a Chinese image."
"Why of course I did not do it, father. How should Preen's bank-note get into my hands? Perhaps Johnny there got it and did it. He is sometimes honoured by being put down as your son, you know."
He was jesting still. The Squire was not in a mood for jesting; Tom Chandler either. A thought struck me.
"Did you say the note was changed on Thursday, the seventeenth of June?" I asked him.
"They say so," answered Tom Chandler.
"Then that was the day of the picnic at Mrs. Cramp's. Neither I nor Tod left the house at all until we went there."
"Why bless me, so it was! the seventeenth," cried the Squire. "I can prove that they were at home till four o'clock: the Beeles were spending the day here from Pigeon Green. Now, Chandler, how has this false report arisen?"
"I am as much at sea as you can be, sir," said Tom Chandler. "Neither I nor Paul can, or do, believe it—or understand why the other people stick to it so positively. You are going into Worcester, Squire; make your own inquiries."
"That I will," said the Squire. "You had better drive in with us, Chandler, if you can. Giles can stay at home."
It was thus decided, and we started for Worcester, Chandler sitting beside the Squire. And the way the Squire touched up Bob and Blister, and the pace we flew along at, was a sight for the road to see.
THURSDAY morning, the seventeenth of June—for we have to go back to that day. High Street was basking in the rays of the hot sun; foot passengers, meeting each other on the scorching pavement, lifted their hats for a moment's air, and said what a day it was going to be. The clean, bright shops faced each other from opposite sides. None of their wares looked more attractive than those displayed in the two windows of the silversmith.
Mr. Stephenson—a trustworthy, civil little man of thirty, with a plain face and sandy hair that stood upright on his head—was keeping guard over his master's goods, some of them being very valuable. The shop was a long one and he was far down in it, behind the left-hand counter. Before him lay a tray of small articles of jewellery, some of which he was touching up with a piece of wash-leather. He did not expect to be busy that day; the previous day, Wednesday, had been a busy one, so many country people came into town for the market.
While thus engaged a gentleman, young, good looking, and well dressed, entered the shop. Mr. Stephenson went forward.
"I have called for Mrs. Todhetley's brooch," said the stranger. "Is it ready?"
"What brooch, sir?" returned Stephenson.
"The one she left with you to be mended."
The shopman felt a little puzzled. He said he did not remember that any brooch had been left by that lady to be mended.
"Mrs. Todhetley of Crabb Cot," explained the applicant, perhaps thinking the man was at fault that way.
"Oh, yes, sir, I know who you mean; I know Mrs. Todhetley. But she has not left any brooch here."
"Yes, she has; she left it to be mended. I was to call to-day and ask for it."
Stephenson turned to reach the book in which articles left to be mended were entered, with their owners' names. Perhaps his master might have taken in the brooch and omitted to tell him. But no such entry was recorded in it.
"I am afraid it is a mistake, sir," he said. "Had Mrs. Todhetley left a brooch, or anything else, for repair, it would be entered here. She may have taken it to some other shop."
"No, no; it is yours I was to call at. She bought it here a few months ago," added the young man. "She came in to ask you about the polishing-up of an old silver cake-basket, and you showed her the brooches, some you had just had down from London, and she bought one of them and gave four guineas for it."
Stephenson remembered the transaction perfectly. He had stood by while his principal showed and sold the brooch to Mrs. Todhetley. Four only of these brooches had been sent to them on approval by their London agent, they were something quite new. Mrs. Todhetley admired them greatly; said she wanted to make a wedding present to a young lady about to be married, but had not meant to give as much as four guineas. However, the beauty of the brooch tempted her; she bought it, and took it home.
Stephenson's silence, while he was recalling this to his memory, caused the gentleman to think his word was doubted, and he entered into further particulars.
"It was last March, I think," he said. "The brooch is a rather large one; a white cornelian stone, or something of that sort, with a raised spray of flowers upon it, pink and gold; the whole surrounded by a border of gold filagree work. I never saw a nicer brooch."
"Yes, yes, sir, it was just as you say; I recollect it all quite well. Mrs. Todhetley bought it to give away as a wedding present."
"And the wedding never came off," said the young man, with ease. "Before she had time to despatch the brooch, news came to her of the rupture.—So she had to keep it herself: and the best thing too, the Squire said. Well, it is that brooch I have come for."
"But I assure you it has not been left with us, Mr. Todhetley," said Stephenson, presuming he was speaking to the Squire's son.
"The little pink flower got broken off last week as Mrs. Todhetley was undoing her shawl; she brought it in at once to be mended," persisted the young man.
"But not here indeed, sir," reiterated Stephenson. "I'm sorry to hear it is broken."
"She wouldn't take it anywhere but to the place it was bought at, would she? I'm sure it was here I had to come for it."
Stephenson felt all abroad. He did not think it likely the brooch would be taken elsewhere, and began to wonder whether his master had taken it in, and forgotten all about it. Opening a shallow drawer or two in the counter, in one of which articles for repair were put, in the other the repaired articles when finished, he searched both, but could not see the brooch. This took him some little time, as most of the things were in paper and he had to undo it.
Meanwhile the applicant amused himself by looking at the articles displayed under the glass frame on the counter. He seemed to be rather struck with some very pretty pencils.
"Are those pencils gold?" he inquired of Stephenson, when the latter came forward with the news that the brooch was certainly not in the shop.
"No, sir; they are silver gilt."
Lifting the glass lid, Stephenson took out the tray on which the pencils and other things lay, and put it right under the young man's nose, in the persuasive manner peculiar to shopmen. The pencils were chased richly enough for gold, and had each a handsome stone at the end, which might or might not be real.
"What is the price?"
"Twelve shillings each, sir. We bought them a bargain; from a bankrupt's stock in fact; and can afford to sell them as such."
"I should like to take this one, I think," said the young man, choosing out one with a pink topaz. "Wait a bit, though: I must see if I've enough change to pay for it."
"Oh, sir, don't trouble about that; we will put it down to you."
"No, no, that won't do. One, two, four, six. Six shillings; all I have in the world," he added laughing, as he counted the coin in his porte-monnaie, "and that I want. You can change me a ten-pound note, perhaps?"
"Yes, sir, if you wish it."
The purchaser extracted the note from a secret pocket of his porte-monnaie, and handed it to the shopman.
"The Squire's name is on it," he remarked.
Which caused Stephenson to look at the back. Sure enough, there it was—"J. Todhetley," in the Squire's own handwriting.
"Give me gold, if you can."
Stephenson handed over nine pounds in gold and eight shillings in silver. He then wrapped the pencil in soft white paper, and handed over that.
Wishing the civil shopman good morning, the young man left. He stood outside the door for a minute, looking about him, and then walked briskly up the street. While Stephenson locked up the ten-pound note in the cash-box.
There it lay, snug and safe, for two or three weeks. One day Stephenson, finding he had not enough change for a customer who came in to pay a bill, ran over to the draper's opposite and got change for it there. These were the particulars which Stephenson had furnished, and furnished readily, upon inquiries being made of him.
Squire Todhetley drove like the wind, and we soon reached
Worcester, alighting as usual at the Star-and-Garter. The
Squire's commotion had been growing all the way; that goes
without telling. He wanted to take the bank first; Tom
Chandler recommended that it should be the
silversmith's.
"The bank comes first in the way," snapped the Squire.
"I know that, sir; but we can soon come back to it when we have heard what the others say."
Yet I think he would have gone into the bank head- foremost, as we passed it, but chance had it that we met Corles, the lawyer, at the top of Broad Street. Turning quickly into High Street, on his way from his office, he came right upon us. The Squire pinned him by the button- hole.
"The very man I wanted to see," cried he. "And now you'll be good enough to tell me, Edward Corles, what you meant by that rigmarole you wrote to Paul yesterday about my son."
"I cannot tell what was meant, Squire, any more than you can; I only wrote in accordance with my information," said Mr. Corles, shaking hands with the rest of us. "You have done well to come over; and I will accompany you now, if you like, to see Stephenson."
The Squire put his arm within the younger man's, and marched on down High Street to the silversmith's, never so much as looking at the bank door. Stephenson was in the shop alone: such a lot of us, it seemed, turning in!
The Squire, hot and impulsive, attacked him as he had attacked Edward Corles. What did Stephenson mean by making that infamous accusation about his son?
It took Stephenson aback, as might be seen; his eyes opened and his hair stood on end straighter than ever. Looking from one to the other of us, he last looked at Mr. Corles, as if seeking an explanation.
"The best thing you can do, to begin with, Stephenson, is to relate to Squire Todhetley and these gentlemen the particulars you gave me yesterday morning," said Mr. Corles. "I mean when you took the bank-note, a month ago."
Without more ado, Stephenson quietly followed the advice; he seemed of as calm a temperament as the Squire was the contrary, and recited the particulars just given. The Squire's will was good to interrupt at every second word, but Mr. Corles begged him to listen to the end.
"Oh, that's all very well," cried he at last, "all true, I dare say; what I want to know is, how you came to pitch upon that customer as being my son."
"But he was your son, sir. He was young Mr. Todhetley."
"Nonsense!" retorted the Squire. "Was this he?" drawing Tod forward.
"No, sir; certainly not."
"Well, this is my only son; except a little who is not yet much more than out of his petticoats. Come! what do you say now?"
Stephenson looked again at one and the other of us. His pale face took a sort of thoughtful haze as if he had passed into a fog.
"It must have been young Mr. Todhetley," spoke he; "everything seemed to uphold the fact."
"Now don't you turn obstinate and uphold what is not the fact," reproved the Squire. "When I tell you this is my only son, except the child, how dare you dispute my word?"
It should be stated that Stephenson had been with the silversmith since the beginning of the year only, and had come from Birmingham. He knew Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley by sight, from their coming sometimes to the shop, but he had never yet seen Tod or me.
"I don't suppose you want Squire Todhetley's word confirmed, Stephenson, but I can do so if necessary," said Mr. Corles. "This is his only grown-up son."
"No, no, sir, of course I don't," said Stephenson. "This gentleman," looking at Tod, "does not bear any resemblance to the one who changed the note."
"What was he like?" said Tom Chandler, speaking for the first time; and he asked it because his thoughts were full.
"He was fair, sir," replied Stephenson.
"What height?"
"About middle height. A young, slender man."
"Well dressed? Spoke like a gentleman?"
"Oh, quite like a gentleman, and very well dressed indeed."
"Just as MacEveril was that morning, on the strength of getting to the picnic," ran through Tom Chandler's thoughts. "Did he come off here first, I wonder?"
"He seemed to know all about you, sir, just as though he lived at your house," said Stephenson to the Squire; "and Mrs. Todhetley sent him for her brooch that day. Perhaps you may know, sir, who it was she sent?"
"Sent! why, nobody," spluttered the Squire. "It must have been a planned thing. The brooch is not broken."
"He said the little pink flower had got broken off, and that Mrs. Todhetley did it with her shawl," persisted Stephenson, unable to stare away his perplexity. And I think we were all feeling perplexed too.
"He knew what the brooch cost, and that it was bought for a wedding present, and that Mrs. Todhetley kept the brooch for herself because the wedding did not come off," went on Stephenson. "How could I suppose, sir, it was anybody but your own son? Why once I called him 'Mr. Todhetley;' I remember it quite well; and he did not tell me I was mistaken. Rely upon it, if you'll excuse me for saying so, Squire Todhetley, that it is some young gentleman who is intimate at your house and familiar with all its ways."
"Hang him for a young rogue!" retorted the Squire.
"And your own name was on the note, sir, which he bade me notice, and all! And—and I don't see how it was possible to help falling into the mistake that he came from you," concluded Stephenson, with a slightly injured accent.
Upon which the Squire, having had time to take in the bearings of the matter, veered round altogether to the same opinion, and said so, and shook hands with Stephenson when we departed.
Tom Chandler let us go on, remaining behind for a minute or two. He wanted to put quietly a few questions about the appearance of the young man who had changed the note. He also examined the silver-gilt pencils, finally buying one which was precisely similar, stone and all, to the one which had been sold that other morning.
Stephenson answered the questions to the best of his ability and recollection. And Tom Chandler found that while on some points the description would have served very well for that of Richard MacEveril, on other points it did not seem to fit in with it at all.
DINNER was over. Emma Paul had gone out to stroll in the shady garden and wait for the evening breeze that would soon come on, and was so delightful after the heat of the day. Her father remained at the table. He was slowly sipping at his one glass of port wine, which he took in a large claret glass, when the door opened and Thomas Chandler entered.
"Oh," said Mr. Paul. "So you are back, are you, young man!"
"I went on to Worcester, sir," explained Tom; who though he was now made Mr. Paul's partner, could not get rid all at once of the old mode of addressing him. Managing clerks in these days, who are qualified solicitors, do not condescend to say "Sir" to their chief, no matter though he be their elder by half a life-time; but they did in the days gone by.
"When I got to Crabb Cot this morning, sir, Mr. Todhetley was on the point of starting for Worcester in the phaeton with his son and Johnny Ludlow," went on Tom. "After listening to the news I took him, he naturally wished me to go also, and I did so. He was in a fine way about it."
"But you need not have stayed at Worcester all day."
"Well, being there, I thought—after I had conferred with Corles at his office upon this other matter—I should do well to go on to Oddingley and see William Smith about that troublesome business of his; so I hired a gig and went there; and I've just got back by train, walking from Crabb," answered Tom Chandler.
"Had any dinner?"
"Oh, yes, thank you; and some tea also at Shrub Hill station, while waiting for the train: this weather makes one thirsty. No, thank you, sir," as Mr. Paul pushed the decanter towards him; "wine would only make me still more thirsty than I am."
"I never saw you looking so hot," remarked the old lawyer.
Tom laughed, and rubbed his face. The walk from Crabb was no light one: and, of course, with Miss Emma at the end of it, he had come at a steaming pace.
"Well, and what did you and Todhetley make of the matter?"
It was the day, as may readily be understood, when we had gone to Worcester to have it out at the silversmith's. Tom Chandler recounted all that passed, and repeated the description given to himself by Stephenson of the fellow who had changed the bank-note. Mr. Paul received it with an impatient and not at all orthodox word, meant for Richard MacEveril.
"But I cannot feel sure, no, nor half sure, that it was MacEveril," said Tom Chandler.
"What have your feelings got to do with it?" asked old Paul, in his crusty way. "It seems to me, the description you give would be his very picture."
"Stephenson says he had blue eyes. Now Dick's are brown."
"Eyes be sugared," retorted the lawyer. "As if any man could swear to a chance customer's eyes after seeing them for just a minute or two! It was Dick MacEveril; he caught up the letter as it lay on Hanborough's desk in the office and decamped with it; and went off the next day to Worcester to get the note changed, as bold as though he had been Dick Turpin!"
Still Tom was not convinced. He took out the pencil he had bought and showed it to Mr. Paul.
"Ay," said the old gentleman, "it's a pretty thing, and perhaps he may get traced by it. Do you forget, Mr. Thomas, that the young rascal absented himself all that day from the office on pretext of going to the picnic at Mrs. Cramp's, and that, as you told me, he never made his appearance at the picnic until late in the afternoon?"
"I know," assented Tom. "He said he had been to the pigeon match."
"If he said he had been to the moon, I suppose you'd believe it. Don't tell me! It was Dick MacEveril who stole the note; every attendant circumstance helps to prove it. There: we'll say no more about the matter, and you can be off to the garden if you want to; I know you are on thorns for it."
From that day the matter dropped into oblivion, and nothing was allowed to transpire connecting MacEveril with the theft. Mr. Paul enjoined silence, out of regard for his old friend the captain, on Tom Chandler and Mr. Hanborough, the only two, besides himself, who suspected Dick. Some letters arrived at Islip about this time from Paris, written by Dick: one to Captain MacEveril, another to Mr. Paul, a third to his cousin Mary. He coolly said he was gone to Paris for a few weeks with Jim Stockleigh, and they were both enjoying themselves amazingly.
So, the ball of gossip not being kept up, the mysterious loss of the letter containing the bank-note was soon forgotten. Mr. Paul was too vexed to speak of it; it seemed a slur on his office; and he shielded Dick's good name for his uncle's sake; whilst Preen was silent because he did not wish the debt talked about.
We left Crabb Cot for Dyke Manor, carrying our wonder with us. The next singular point to us was, how the changer of the note could have been so well acquainted with the circumstances attending the buying of the brooch. Mrs. Todhetley would talk of it by the hour together, suggesting now this person and now that; but never seeming to hit upon a likely one.
July passed away, August also, and September came in. On the Thursday in the first week of the latter month, Emma Paul was to become Emma Chandler.
All that while, through all those months and weeks, poor Oliver Preen had been having a bad time of it. No longer able to buoy himself up with the delusive belief that Emma's engagement to Chandler was nothing but a myth, he had to accept it, and all the torment it brought him. He had grown pale and thin; nervous also; his lips would turn white if anyone spoke to him abruptly, his hot hand trembled when in another's grasp. Jane thought he must be suffering from some inward fever; she did not know much about her brother's love for Emma, or dream that it could be so serious.
"I'm sure I wish their wedding was over and done with; Oliver might come to his proper senses then," Jane told herself. "He is very silly. I don't see much in Emma Paul."
September, I say, came in. It was somewhat singular that we should again be for just that one first week of it at Crabb Cot. Sir Robert Tenby had invited the Squire to take a few days' shooting with him, and included Tod in the invitation—to his wild delight. So Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley went from Dyke Manor to Crabb Cot for the week, and we accompanied them.
On the Monday morning of this eventful week—and terribly eventful it was destined to be—Mr. Paul's office had a surprise. Richard MacEveril walked into it. He was looking fresh and blooming, as if he had never heard of such a thing as running away. Mr. Hanborough gazed up at him from his desk as if he saw an apparition; Tite Batley's red face seemed illumined by sudden sunshine.
"Well, and is nobody going to welcome me back?" cried Dick, as he put out his hand, in the silence, to Mr. Hanborough.
"The truth is, we never expected to see you back; we thought you had gone for good," answered Hanborough.
Dick laughed. "The two masters in there?" he asked, nodding his head at the inner door.
Hearing that they were, he went in. Old Paul, in his astonishment, dropped a penful of ink upon a letter he was writing.
"Why, where do you spring from?" he cried.
"From my uncle's now, sir; got home last night. Been having a rare time of it in Paris. I suppose I may take my place at the desk again?" added Dick.
The impudence of this supposition drove all Mr. Paul's wisdom out of him. Motioning to Tom Chandler to close the doors, he avowed to Dick what he was suspected of, and accused him of taking the letter and the bank-note.
"Well, I never!" exclaimed Dick, meeting the news with equanimity. "Go off with a letter of yours, sir, and a bank- note! Steal it, do you mean? Why, you cannot think I'd be capable of such a dirty trick, Mr. Paul. Indeed, sir, it wasn't me."
And there was something in the genuine astonishment of the young fellow, a certain honesty in his look and tone, that told Mr. Paul his suspicion might be a mistaken one. He recounted a brief outline of the facts, Tom Chandler helping him.
"I never saw the letter or the note, sir," persisted Dick. "I remember the Wednesday afternoon quite well. When I went out to get my tea I met Fred Scott, and he persuaded me into the Bull for a game at billiards. It was half-past five before I got back here, and Mr. Hanborough blew me up. He had not been able to get out to his own tea. Batley was away that afternoon. No, no, sir, I wouldn't do such a thing as that."
"Where did you get the money to go away to London with, young man?" questioned old Paul, severely.
Dick laughed. "I won it," he said; "upon my word of honour, sir, I did. It was the day of the picnic, and I persisted in going straight to it the first thing—which put the office here in a rage, as it was busy. Well, in turning out of here I again met Scott. He was hastening off to the pigeon-shooting match. I went with him, intending to stay only half an hour. But, once there, I couldn't tear myself away. They were betting; I betted too, though I had only half a crown in my pocket, and I won thirty shillings; and I never got to Mrs. Cramp's till the afternoon, when it was close upon tea-time. Tom Chandler knows I didn't."
Tom Chandler nodded.
"But for winning that thirty shillings I could not have got up to London, unless somebody had lent me some," ran on Dick, who, once set going, was a rare talker. "You can ask anyone at that pigeon match, sir, whether I was not there the whole time: so it is impossible I could have been at Worcester, changing a bank-note."
The words brought to Mr. Paul a regret that he had not thought to ask that question of some one of the sportsmen: it would have set the matter at rest, so far as MacEveril was concerned. And the suspicion had been so apparently well grounded, as to prevent suspicion in other quarters.
Tom Chandler, standing beside Dick at Mr. Paul's table, quietly laid a pencil upon it, as if intending to write something down. Dick took it up and looked at it.
"What a pretty pencil!" he exclaimed. "Is it gold?"
It should be understood that in those past days, these ornamental pencils were rare. They may be bought by the bushel now. And Tom Chandler would have been convinced by the tone, had he still needed conviction, that Dick had not seen any pencil like it before.
"Well," struck in old Paul, a little repentant for having so surely assumed Dick's guilt, and thankful on the captain's account that it was a mistake: "if you promise to be steady at your work, young man, I suppose you may take your place at the desk again. This gentleman here is going a-roving this week," pointing the feather-end of his pen at Tom Chandler, "for no one knows how long; so you'll have to stick to it."
"I know; I've heard," laughed Dick. "I mean to get a few minutes to dash into the church and see the wedding. Hope you'll not dismiss me for it, sir!"
"There, there; you go to your desk now, young man, and ask Mr. Hanborough what you must do first," concluded the lawyer.
It was not the only time on that same day that Thomas Chandler displayed his pencil. Finding his theory, that Dick MacEveril possessed the fellow one, to be mistaken, he at once began to take every opportunity of showing it to the world—which he had not done hitherto. Something might possibly come of it, he thought. And something did.
Calling in at Colonel Letsom's in the evening, I found Jane Preen there, and one or two more girls. The Squire and Tod had not appeared at home yet, neither had Colonel Letsom, who made one at the shooting-party; we decided that Sir Robert must be keeping them to an unceremonious dinner. Presently Tom Chandler came in, to bring a note to the Colonel from Mr. Paul.
Bob Letsom proposed a round game at cards—Speculation. His sister, Fanny, objected; speculation was nothing but screaming, she said, and we couldn't sit down to cards by daylight. She proposed music; she thought great things of her singing: Bob retorted that music might be shot, and they talked at one another a bit. Finally we settled to play at "Consequences." This involves, as everyone knows, sitting round a table with pencils and pieces of writing-paper.
I sat next to Tom Chandler, Jane Preen next to me. Fanny was on the other side of Tom—but it is not necessary to relate how we all sat. Before we had well begun, Chandler put his pencil on the table, carelessly, and it rolled past me.
"Why, that is Oliver's pencil!" exclaimed Jane, picking it up.
"Which is?" quietly said Tom. "That? No; it is mine."
Jane looked at it on all sides. "It is exactly like one that Oliver has," she said. "It fell out of a drawer in his room the other day, when I was counting up his collars and handkerchiefs. He told me he brought it from Tours."
"No doubt," said Tom. "I bought mine at Worcester."
In taking the pencil from Jane, Tom's eye caught mine. I did feel queer; he saw I did; but I think he was feeling the same. Little doubt now who had changed the note!
"You will not talk of it, will you?" I whispered to Tom, as we were dispersing about the room when the game was over.
"No," said he, "it shall not come out through me. I'm afraid, though, there's no mistake this time, Johnny. A half doubt of it has crossed my mind at odd moments."
Neither would I talk of it, even to Tod. After all, it was not proof positive. I had never, never thought of Oliver.
The Letsoms had a fine old garden, as all the gardens at Crabb were, and we strolled out in the twilight. The sun had set, but the sky was bright in the west. Valentine Chandler, for he had come in, kept of course by Jane Preen's side. Anyone might see that it was, as Tod called it, a gone case with them. It was no end of a pity, Val being just as unsteady and uncertain as the wind.
People do bolder things in the gloaming than in the garish daylight; and we fell to singing in the grotto—a semi-circular, half-open space with seats in it, surrounded at the back by the artificial rocks. Fanny began: she brought out an old guitar and twanged at it and sang for us, "The Baron of Mowbray;" where the false knight rides away laughing from the Baron's door and the Baron's daughter: that far-famed song of sixty years ago, which was said to have made a fortune for its composer.
The next to take up the singing was Valentine Chandler: and in listening to him you forgot all his short-comings. Never man had sweeter voice than he; and in his singing there was a singular charm impossible to be described. In his voice also—I mean when he spoke—there was always melody, and in his speech, when he chose to put it forth, a persuasive eloquence. This might have been instrumental in winning Jane Preen's heart; we are told that a man's heart is lost through his eye, a woman's through her ear. Poor Valentine! he might have been so nice a fellow—and he was going to the bad as fast as he could go.
The song he chose was a ridiculous old ditty all about love; it went to the tune of "Di tanti palpiti." Val chose it for Miss Jane and sung it to her; to her alone, mind you; the rest of us went for nothing.
"Here we meet, too soon to part,
Here to part will raise a smart,
Here I'd press thee to my heart,
Where none are set above thee.
Here I'd vow to love thee well;
Could but words unseal the spell,
Had but language power to tell,
I'd tell thee how I've loved thee.
Here's the rose that decks the door,
Here's the thorn that spreads the moor,
Here's the willow of the bower,
And the birds that rest above thee.
Had they power of life to see,
Sense of souls, like thee—and me,
Then would each a witness be
How dotingly I love thee.
Here we meet, too soon to part,
Here to part will raise a smart,
Here I'd press thee to my heart,
None e'er were there but thee."
Now, as you perceive, it is a most ridiculous song, foolish as love-songs in general are. But had you been sitting there with us in all the subtle romance imparted by the witching hour of twilight, the soft air floating around, the clear sky above, one large silver star trembling in its blue depths, you would have felt entranced. The wonderful melody of the singer's voice, his distinct enunciation, the tender passion breathing through his soft utterance, and the slight yet unmistakable emphasis given to the avowal of his love, thrilled us all. It was as decided a declaration of what he felt for Jane Preen as he could well make in this world. Once he glanced at her, and only once throughout; it was where I have placed the pause, as he placed it himself, "like thee—and me." As if his glance drew hers by some irresistible fascination, Jane, who had been sitting beneath the rock just opposite to him, her eyes cast down—as he made that pause and glanced at her, I say, she lifted them for a moment, and caught the glance. I may live to be an old man, but I shall never forget Val's song that night, or the charm it held for us. What, then, must it have held for Jane? And it is because that song and its charm lie still fresh on my memory, though many a year has since worn itself out, that I inscribe it here.
As the singing came to an end, dying softly away, no one for a moment or two broke the hushed silence that ensued. Valentine was the first to do it. He got up from his seat; went round to a ledge of rock and stood upon it, looking out in the distance. Had the sea been near, one might have thought he saw a ship, homeward bound.
HAD the clerk of the weather been bribed with a purse of gold, he could not have sent a finer day than Thursday turned out to be. The sun shone, the air sparkled, and the bells of Islip church rang out from the old steeple. Islip was much behind other churches in many respects; so primitive, indeed, in some of its ways, that had an edifice of advanced views come sailing through the air to pay it a visit, it would have turned tail again and sailed away; but Islip could boast of one thing few churches can boast of—a delightful peal of bells.
The wedding took place at eleven o'clock, and was a quiet one. Its attendants were chiefly confined to the parties themselves and their immediate relatives, but that did not prevent other people from flocking in to see it.
I and Dick MacEveril went in together, and got a good place close up; which was lucky, for the old church is full of pillars and angles that obstruct the view. Emma was in white silk; her bridesmaid, Mary MacEveril, the same; it was the custom in those days. Tom looked uncommonly well; but he and she were both nervous. Old Paul gave her away; and a thin aunt, with a twisted nose, who had come on a visit to superintend the wedding, in place of Emma's dead mother, did nothing but weep. She wore an odd gown, pink one way, blue another; you might have thought she had borrowed its colours from their copper teakettle. Mrs. Chandler, Tom's mother, in grey silk, was smarter than she had ever been in her life; and his aunt, Mrs. Cramp, was resplendent in a dress bordering upon orange.
The ceremony came to an end very quickly, I thought—you do think so at most simple weddings; and Tom and his wife went away together in the first carriage. Next came the breakfast at Mr. Paul's; the aunt presiding in a gentle stream of tears. Early in the afternoon the bride and bridegroom left for London, on their way to the Continent.
Everyone does not care to dash to a church to see a
marriage: some would as soon think of running to look on at
a funeral. Mr. Preen was one of these insensible people, and
he, of course, did not care to go near it. He made game of
Jane for doing so; but Jane wanted to see the dresses and
the ceremony. Oliver had not the opportunity of going; and
would not have gone though he had had it. Just about eleven
o'clock, when the gay doings were in full swing, Mr. Preen
took Oliver off to Worcester in the gig.
About a fortnight before, Mr. Preen had appointed a saddler in Worcester to be his agent for the new patent agricultural implements, for which he was himself agent-in- chief. Until this under agency should be well in hand, Mr. Preen considered it necessary to see the saddler often: for which purpose he drove into Worcester at least three times a week. Once, instead of going himself, he had sent Oliver, but this day was the first time the two had gone together. It might have been—one cannot tell—but it might have been that Mr. Preen discerned what this wedding of Emma Paul's must be to his son, and so took him out to divert his mind a bit.
Now, upon entering Worcester, to get to the saddler's it was necessary to drive through High Street and turn into Broad Street. At least, that was the straightforward route. But Oliver had not taken it the day he drove in alone; he had preferred the more roundabout way of the back streets. After driving through Sidbury, he—instead of going forward up College Street and so into High Street—went careering along Friar Street, along the whole length of New Street, turned up St. Swithin Street, or Goose Lane, or one of those dingy thoroughfares, made a dash across the top of High Street, and so into his destination, Broad Street. In returning he took the same way. What his objection to the better streets could be, he alone knew. To-day, however, Mr. Preen held the reins.
Mr. Preen was driving quietly up College Street, when Oliver spoke.
"I wish you'd put me down here, father."
"Put you down here!" repeated Mr. Preen, turning to look at him. "What for?"
"I want to get a little book for Jane," answered Oliver, glancing towards Mr. Eaton's house. "I shall be up in Broad Street nearly as soon as you are, if you want me there."
"I don't particularly want you," said Mr. Preen, crustily, "but you needn't be long before you come." And, drawing up to the side, he let Oliver get out.
Driving on to the saddler's, Mr. Preen transacted his business with him. When it was over, he went to the door, where his gig waited, and looked up and down the street, but saw nothing of Oliver.
"Hasn't given himself the trouble to come up! Would rather put his lazy legs astride one of those posts opposite the college, and watch for my passing back again!"
Which was of course rather a far-fetched idea of Mr. Preen's; but he spoke in a temper. Though, indeed, of late Oliver had appeared singularly inert; as if all spirit to move had gone out of him.
Mr. Preen got into his gig at the saddler's door and set off again. Turning into High Street, he drove gently down it, looking out on all sides, if truth must be told, for Oliver. This caused him to see Stephenson standing at the silversmith's door, the silversmith himself, back now for good at his business, being behind the counter. Now and then, since the bank-note was traced, Mr. Preen had made inquiries of Stephenson as to whether any news had been heard of its changer, but he had not done so lately. Not being in a hurry, he pulled up against the curb-stone. Stephenson crossed the flags to speak.
"Nothing turned up yet, I suppose?" said Mr. Preen.
"Well, I can hardly say it has," replied Stephenson; "but I've seen the gentleman who paid it in to us."
"And who is it? and where was he?" cried Preen, eagerly.
Stephenson had stepped back a pace, and appeared to be looking critically at the horse and gig.
"It was last Saturday," he said, coming close again. "I had to take a parcel into Friar Street for one of our country customers, a farmer's wife who was spending the day with some people living down there, and I saw a gig bowling along. The young fellow in it was the one who changed the note."
"Are you sure of it?" returned Mr. Preen.
"Quite sure, sir. I had no opportunity of speaking to him or stopping him. He was driving at a good pace, and the moment he caught sight of me, for I saw him do that, he touched the horse and went on like a whirlwind."
Mr. Preen's little dark face took a darker frown. " I should have stopped him," he said, sternly. "You ought to have rushed after him, Stephenson, and called upon the street to help in the pursuit. You might, at least, have traced where he went to. A gig, you say he was in?"
"Yes," said Stephenson. "And, unless I am greatly mistaken, it was this very gig you are in now."
"What do you mean by that?" retorted Preen, haughtily.
"I took particular notice of the horse and gig, so as to recognise them again if ever I got the chance; and I say that it was this gig and this horse, sir. There's no mistake about it."
They stared into one another's eyes, one face looking up, and the other looking down. All in a moment, Stephenson saw the other face turn ghastly white. It had come into Mr. Preen's recollection amidst his bewilderment, that Oliver had gone into Worcester last Saturday afternoon, driving the horse and gig.
"I can't understand this! Who should be in my gig?" he cried, calling some presence of mind to his aid. "Last Saturday, you say? In the afternoon?"
"Last Saturday afternoon, close upon four o'clock. As I turned down Lich Street, I saw the lay-clerks coming out of College. Afternoon service is generally over a little before four," added Stephenson. "He was driving straight into Friar Street from Sidbury."
Another recollection flashed across Mr. Preen: Oliver's asking just now to be put down in College Street. Was it to prevent his passing through High Street? Was he afraid to pass through it?
"He is a nice-looking young fellow," said Stephenson; "has a fair, mild face; but he was the one who changed the note."
"That may be; but as to his being in my gig, it is not—— Why, I was not in town at all on Saturday," broke off Mr. Preen, with a show of indignant remonstrance.
"No, Mr. Preen; the young man was in it alone," said Stephenson, who probably had his own thoughts upon the problem.
"Well, I can't stay longer now; I'm late already," said Mr. Preen. "Good morning, Stephenson." And away he drove with a dash.
Oliver was waiting in College Street, standing near the Hare and Hounds Inn. Mr. Preen pulled up.
"So you did not chose to come on!" he said.
"Well, I—I thought there'd be hardly time, and I might miss you; I went to get my hair cut," replied Oliver, as he settled himself in his place beside his father.
Mr. Preen drove on in silence until they were opposite the Commandery gates in the lower part of Sidbury. Then he spoke again.
"What made you drive through Friar Street on Saturday last, instead of going the direct way?"
"Through—Friar Street?" stammered Oliver.
"Through Friar Street, instead of High Street," repeated Mr. Preen, in a sharp, passionate accent.
"Oh, I remember. High Street is so crowded on a market day; the back streets are quiet," said Oliver, as if he had a lump in his throat, and could not make his voice heard.
"And in taking the back streets you avoid the silversmith's, and the risk you run of being recognised; is that it?" savagely retorted Mr. Preen.
Not another word did he speak, only drove on home at a furious pace. Oliver knew all then: the disgrace for which he had been so long waiting had come upon him.
But when they got indoors, Mr. Preen let loose the vials of his wrath upon Oliver. Before his mother, before Jane, he published his iniquity. It was he, Oliver, who had stolen the ten-pound note; it was he who had so craftily got it changed at Worcester. Oliver spoke not a word of denial, made no attempt at excuse or defence; he stood with bent head and pale, meek face, his blue eyes filled with utter misery. The same look of misery lay in Mrs. Preen's eyes as she faintly reproached him amid tears and sobs. Jane was simply stunned.
"You must go away now and hide yourself; I can't keep you here to be found and pounced upon," roared Mr. Preen. "By the end of the week you must be gone somewhere. Perhaps you can pick up a living in London."
"Yes, I will go," said Oliver, meekly. And at the first lull in the storm he crept up to his room.
He did not come down to dinner; did not come to tea. Jane carried up a cup of tea upon a waiter and some bread-and- butter, and put it down outside the chamber door, which he had bolted.
Later, in passing his room, she saw the door open and went in. Cup and plate were both empty, so he had taken the refreshment. He was not in the house, was not in the garden. Putting on her sun-bonnet and a light shawl, she ran to the Inlets.
Oliver was there. He sat, gazing moodily at the brook and the melancholy osier-twigs that grew beside it. Jane sat down and bent his poor distressed face upon her shoulder.
"Dear Oliver! Don't take it so to heart. I know you must have been sorely tempted."
Bending there upon her, her arms clasping him, yielding to the loving sympathy, so grateful after those harsh reproaches, he told her all, under cover of the gathering shades of evening. Yes, he had been tempted—and had yielded to the temptation.
He wanted money badly for necessary things, and things that he had learned to deem necessaries, and he had it not. A pair of new gloves now and again, a necktie to replace his shabby ones, a trifle of loose silver in his pocket. He owed a small sum to MacEveril, and wanted to repay him. Once or twice he had asked a little money of his father, and was refused. His mother would give him a few shillings, when pressed, but grumbled over it. So Oliver wrote to a friend at Tours, whom he had known well, asking if he would lend him some. That was the first week in June. His friend wrote back in answer that he could lend him some after quarter day, the 24th, but not before; he would send him over ten pounds then, if that would do.
Never a thought had presented itself to Oliver of touching the ten pounds in his father's letter to Mr. Paul, which he had sealed and saw posted. But on the following afternoon, Wednesday, he saw the letter lying on Mr. Hanborough's desk; the temptation assailed him, and he took it.
It may be remembered that Mr. Preen had gone out that hot day, leaving Oliver a lot of work to do. He got through it soon after four o'clock, and went dashing over the cross route to Islip and into Mr. Paul's office, for he wanted to see Dick MacEveril. The office was empty; not a soul was in it; and as Oliver stood, rather wondering at that unusual fact, he saw a small pile of letters, evidently just left by the postman, lying on the desk close to him. The uppermost of the letters he recognised at once; it was the one sent by his father. "If I might borrow the ten pounds inside that now, I should be at ease; I would replace it with the ten pounds coming to me from Tours, and it might never get known," whispered Satan in his ear, with plausible cunning.
Never a moment did he allow himself for thought, never an instant's hesitation served to stop him. Catching up the letter, he thrust it into his breast pocket, and set off across country again at a tearing pace, not waiting to see MacEveril.
He seemed to have flown over hedges and ditches and to be home in no time. Little wonder that when he was seen sitting under the walnut tree in the garden and was called in to tea, his mother and sister exclaimed at his heated face. They never suspected he had been out.
All that night Oliver lay awake: partly wondering how he should dispose of his prize to make it available; partly telling himself, in shame-faced reproach, that he would not use it, but send it back to old Paul. It came into his mind that if he did use it he might change it at the silversmith's as if for the Todhetleys, the Squire's name on the back suggesting the idea to him. It would not do, he thought, to go into a shop, any shop, purchase some trifling article and tender a ten-pound note in payment. That might give rise to suspicion. Some months before, when at Crabb Cot, he had heard Mrs. Todhetley relate the history of her brooch, where she bought it, what she paid for it, and all about it, to Colonel Letsom's wife and other people, for it happened that several callers had come in together. The brooch had been passed round the company and admired. Oliver remembered this, and resolved to make use of it to disarm suspicion at the silversmith's. He knew the principal shops in Worcester very well indeed, and Worcester itself. He had stayed for some time, when sixteen, with an uncle who was living there; but he had not visited the city since coming to Duck Brook.
Thursday, the day following that on which he took the
money, was the day of the picnic. Oliver started with Jane
for it in the morning, as may be remembered, the ten-pound
note hidden safely about him. Much to Oliver's surprise his
mother put seven shillings into his hand. "You'll not want
to use it, and must give it me back to-morrow," she said,
"but it does not look well to go to a thing of this sort
with quite empty pockets." Oliver thanked her, kissed her,
and they drove off. Before reaching Mrs. Jacob Chandler's,
after passing Islip Grange—the property of Lady
Fontaine, as may be remembered, who was first cousin to John
Paul—they overtook Sam, walking on to take back the
gig. "We may as well get out here," said Oliver, and he
pulled up. Getting out, and helping out Jane, he sent Sam
and the gig back at once. He bade his sister walk on alone
to Mrs. Chandler's, saying he wanted to do a little errand
first. But he charged her not to mention that; only to say,
if questioned, that he would join them by-and-by. He ran all
the way to the station, regardless of the heat, and caught a
train for Worcester.
The rest is known. Oliver changed the note at the silversmith's, bought himself a pair of dandy gloves, with one or two other small matters, and made the best of his way back again. But it was past the middle of the afternoon when he got to the picnic: trains do not choose our time for running, but their own. Jane wondered where he had been. Hearing of the pigeon-match, she thought it was there. She asked him, in a whisper, where he had found those delicate gloves; Oliver laughed and said something about a last relic from Tours.
And there it was. He had taken the note; he, Oliver Preen; and got the gold for it. That day of the picnic was in truth the worst he had ever experienced, the one hard day of all his life, as he had remarked to Jane. Not only had he committed a deed in it which might never be redeemed, but he also learnt that Emma Paul's love was given not to him, but to another. It was for her sake he had coveted new gloves and money in his pockets, that he might not look despicable in her sight.
The dearest and surest of expectations are those that fail. While Oliver, as the days went on, was feverishly looking out, morning after morning, for the remittance from Tours, he received a letter to say it was not coming. His friend, with many expressions of regret, wrote to the effect that he was unable to send it at present; later, he hoped to do so. Of course, it never came. And Oliver had not been able to replace the money, and—this was the end of it.
In a whispering, sobbing tone, he told these particulars by degrees to Jane as they sat there. She tried to comfort him; said it might never be known beyond themselves at home; rather advocated his going away for a short time, as proposed, while things righted themselves, and their father's anger cooled down. But Oliver could not be comforted. Then, leaving the unsatisfactory theme, she tried another, and began telling him of the wedding at Islip that morning, and of how Tom and Emma looked——
"Don't, Jane," he interrupted; and his wailing, shrinking tone seemed to betray the keenest pain of all.
They walked home together in silence, Jane clinging to his arm. The night shades lay upon the earth, the stars were shining in the sky. Oliver laid his hand upon the garden gate and paused.
"Do you remember, Jane, when I was coming in here for the first time, how a strange shiver took me, and you thought I must have caught a chill. It was a warning, my dear; a warning of the evil that lay in store for me."
He would not go into the parlour to supper, but went softly up to his room and shut himself in for the night. Poor Oliver! Poor, poor Oliver!
The following day, Friday, Mr. Preen, allowing himself the unwonted luxury of a holiday for a day's shooting, was away betimes. For the afternoon and evening, Mrs. Jacob Chandler's daughters, Clementina, Georgiana, and Julietta, had organised a party to celebrate their cousin Tom's wedding; Miss Julietta called it a "flare-up."
Jane Preen had promised, for herself and for Oliver, to be there by three o'clock. For Oliver! She made herself ready after dinner; and then, looking everywhere for her brother, found him standing in the road just outside the garden gate. He said he was not going. Jane reproached him, and he quite laughed at her. He go into company now! she might know better. But Jane had great influence over him, and as he walked with her along the road—for she was going to walk in and walk back again at night—she nearly persuaded him to fetch her. Only nearly; not quite. Oliver finally refused, and they had almost a quarrel.
Then the tears ran down Jane's cheeks. Her heart was aching to pain for him; and her object in pressing him to come was to take him out of his loneliness.
"Just this one evening, Oliver!" she whispered, clinging to him and kissing him. "I don't ask you a favour often."
And Oliver yielded. "I'll come for you, Janey," he said, kissing her in return. "That is, I will come on and meet you; I cannot go to the house."
With that, they parted. But in another minute, Jane was running back again.
"You will be sure to come, Oliver? You won't disappoint me? You won't go from your word?"
Oliver felt a little annoyed; the sore heart grows fretful. "I swear I'll come, then," he said; "I'll meet you, alive or dead."
I was at the party. Not Tod; he had gone shooting. We spent the afternoon in the garden. It was not a large party, after all; only the Letsoms, Jane Preen, and the Chandler girls; but others were expected later. Jane had a disconsolate look. Knowing nothing of the trouble at Duck Brook, I thought she was sad because Valentine had not come early, according to promise. We knew later that he had been kept by what he called a long-winded client.
At five o'clock we went indoors to tea. Those were the days of real, old-fashioned teas, not sham ones, as now. Hardly had we seated ourselves round the table, and Mrs. Jacob Chandler was inquiring who took sugar and who didn't, when one of the maids came in.
"If you please, Miss Preen, the gig is come for you," she said.
"The gig!" exclaimed Jane. "Come for me! You must be mistaken, Susan."
"It is at the gate, Miss Jane, and Sam's in it. He says that his master and missus have sent him to take you home immediate."
Jane, all astonishment, followed by some of us, went out to see what Sam could mean. Sam only repeated in a stolid kind of way the message he had given to Susan. His master and mistress had despatched him for Miss Jane and she must go home at once.
"Is anything the matter?—anyone ill?" asked Jane, turning pale.
Sam, looking more stolid than before, professed not to know anything; he either did not or would not. Miss Jane had to go, and as quick as she could, was all he would say.
Jane put on her things, said good-bye in haste, and went out again to the gig. Sam drove off at a tangent before she had well seated herself.
"Now, Sam, what's the matter?" she began.
Sam, in about three stolid words, protested, as before, he couldn't say what was the matter; except that he had been sent off for Miss Jane.
Jane noticed, and thought it odd, that he did not look at her as he spoke, though he was frank and open by habit; he had never looked in any of their faces since coming to the door.
"Where's Mr. Oliver?" she asked. But Sam only muttered that he "couldn't say," and drove swiftly.
They went on in silence after that, Jane seeing it would be useless to inquire further, and were soon at Duck Brook. She felt very uneasy. What she feared was, that her father and Oliver might have quarrelled, and that the latter was about to be turned summarily out of doors.
"Why, there's Mr. Oliver!" she exclaimed. "Pull up, Sam."
They were passing the first Inlet. Oliver stood at the top of it, facing the road, evidently looking out for her, as Jane thought. His gaze was fixed, his face white as death.
"I told you to pull up, Sam; how dare you disobey me and drive on in that way?" cried Jane; for Sam had whipped up the horse instead of stopping. Jane, looking at his face saw it had gone white too.
"There he is! there he is again! There's Mr. Oliver!"
They had approached the other Inlet as Jane spoke. Oliver stood at the top of it, exactly as he had stood at the other, his gaze fixed on her, his face ghastly. Not a muscle of his face moved; a dead man could not be more still. Sam, full of terror, was driving on like lightning, as if some evil thing were pursuing him.
And now Jane turned pale. What did it mean? these two appearances? It was totally impossible for Oliver to be at the last Inlet, if it was he who stood at the other. A bird of the air might have picked him up, carried him swiftly over the trees and dropped him at the second Inlet; nothing else could have done it in the time. What did it mean?
Mr. Preen was waiting at the door to receive Jane. He came a little way with slow steps down the path to meet her as the gig stopped. She ran in at the gate.
"What has happened, papa?" she cried. "Where's Oliver?"
Oliver was upstairs, lying upon his bed—dead. Mr. Preen disclosed it to her as gently as he knew how.
It was all too true. Oliver had died about two hours
before. He had shot himself at the Inlets, close by the
melancholy osiers that grew over the brook.
Oliver had accompanied Jane to the end of Brook Lane. There, at the Islip Road, they parted; she going on to Crabb, Oliver walking back again. Upon reaching the Inlets, that favourite spot of his, he sat down on the bench that faced the highway; the self-same bench Jane had sat on when she was watching for his arrival from Tours, in the early days of spring. He had not sat there above a minute when he saw his father, with one or two more gentlemen, get over the gate from the field opposite. They were returning from shooting, and had their guns in their hands. Mr. Preen walked quickly over the road to Oliver.
"Take my gun indoors," he said; "I am not going in just yet. It is loaded."
He walked away down the road with his friends, after speaking. Oliver took the gun, walked slowly down one of the Inlets, and placed himself on the nearest bench there, lodging the gun against the end. In a few minutes there arose a loud report.
Sam was in the upper part of the field on the other side the brook with the waggon and waggoner. He turned to look where the noise came from, and thought he saw some one lying on the ground by the bench. They both came round in haste, he and the waggoner, and found Oliver Preen lying dead with the gun beside him. Running for assistance, Sam helped to carry him home, and then went for the nearest doctor; but it was all of no avail. Oliver was dead.
Was it an accident, or was it intentional? People asked the question. At the coroner's inquest, Mr. Preen, who was so affected he could hardly give evidence, said that, so far as he believed, Oliver was one of the last people likely to lay violent hands on himself; he was of too calm and gentle a temperament for that. The rustic jury, pitying the father and believing him, gave Oliver the benefit of the doubt. Loaded guns were dangerous, they observed, apt to go off of themselves almost; and they brought it in Accidental Death.
But Jane knew better. I thought I knew better. I'm afraid Mr. Preen knew better.
And what of that appearance of Oliver which Jane saw? It could not have been Oliver in the flesh, but I think it must have been Oliver in the spirit. Many a time and oft in the days that followed did Jane recount it over to me; it seemed a relief to her distress to talk of it. "He said he would come, alive or dead, to meet me; and he came."
And I, Johnny Ludlow, break off here to state that the account of this apparition is strictly true. Every minute particular attending it, even to the gig coming with Sam in it to fetch Jane from the tea-table, is a faithful record of that which occurred.
I took an opportunity of questioning Sam, asking whether he had seen the appearance. It was as we were coming away from the grave after the funeral. Oliver was buried in Duck Brook churchyard, close under the clock which had told him the time when he stood with his father posting the letters that past afternoon at Dame Sym's window. "We are too late, father," he had said. But for being too late the tragedy might never have happened, for the letter, which caused all the trouble and commotion, would have reached Mr. Paul's hands safely the next morning.
"No, sir," Sam answered me, "I can't say that I saw anything. But just as Miss Jane spoke, calling out that Mr. Oliver was there, a kind of shivering wind seemed to take me, and I turned icy cold. It was not her words that could have done it, sir, for I was getting so before she spoke. And at the last Inlet, when she called it out again, I went almost out of my mind with cold and terror. The horse was affrighted too; his coat turned wet."
That was the tragedy: no one can say I did wrong to call
it one. For years and years it has been in my mind to write
it. But I had hoped to end the paper less sadly; only the
story has lengthened itself out, and there's no space left.
I meant to have told of Jane's brighter fate in the after
days with Valentine, the one lover of her life. For Val
pulled himself up from his reckless ways, though not at
Islip; and in a distant land they are now sailing down the
stream of life together, passing through, as we all have to
do, its storms and its sunshine. All this must be left for
another paper.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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