“The business was hardly worth explaining,” answered the other moodily. “A bill that I had forgotten for the time fell due just then, and I hurried off to set things straight.”
“Let me help you somehow or other, Jack.”
“No, Gilbert; I will never suffer you to become entangled in the labyrinth of my affairs. You don’t know what a hopeless wilderness you would enter if you were desperate enough to attempt my rescue. I have been past redemption for the last ten years, ever since I left Oxford. Nothing but a rich marriage will ever set me straight; and I sometimes doubt if that game is worth the candle, and whether it would not be better to make a clean sweep of my engagements, offer up my name to the execration of mankind and the fiery indignation of solvent journalists, — who would find subject for sensation leaders in my iniquities, — emigrate, and turn bushranger. A wild free life in the wilderness must be a happy exchange for all the petty worries and perplexities of this cursed existence.”
“And how about Mrs. Branston, John? By the way, I thought that she might have had something to do with your sudden journey to London.”
“No; she had nothing to do with it. I have not seen her since I came back from Lidford.”
“Indeed!”
“No. Your lecture had a potent effect, you see,” said Mr. Saltram, with something of a sneer. “You have almost cured me of that passion.”
“My opinion would have very little influence if you were far gone, John. The fact is, Mrs. Branston, pretty and agreeable as she may be, is not the sort of woman to acquire any strong hold upon you.”
“You think not?”
“I am sure of it.”
After this John Saltram became more expansive. They sat together until late in the night, talking chiefly of the past, old friends, and half-forgotten days; recalling the scenes through which they had travelled together with a pensive tenderness, and dwelling regretfully upon that careless bygone time when life was fresh for both of them, and the future seemed to lie across the straightest, easiest high-road to reputation and happiness.
Gilbert spoke of that perilous illness of his in Egypt, the fever in which he had been given over by every one, and only saved at last by the exemplary care and devotion of his friend. John Saltram had a profound objection to this thing being talked about, and tried immediately to change the drift of the conversation; but to-night Gilbert was not to be stopped.
“You refuse the help of my purse, Jack,” he said, “and forget that I owe you my life. I should never have been to the fore to navigate the good ship Fenton and Co., if it hadn’t been for your care. The doctor fellow at Cairo told me as much in very plain terms. Yes, John, I consider myself your debtor to the amount of a life.”
“Saving a man’s life is sometimes rather a doubtful boon. I think if I had a fever, and some officious fool dragged me through it when I was in a fair way to make a decent end, I should be very savagely disposed towards him.”
“Why, John Saltram, you are the last man in the world from whom I should expect that dreary kind of talk. Yet I suppose it’s only a natural consequence of shutting yourself up in these rooms for ten days at a stretch.”
“What good use have I made of my life in the past, Gilbert?” demanded the other bitterly; “and what have I to look forward to in the future? To marry, and redeem my position by the aid of a woman’s money. That’s hardly the noblest destiny that can befall a man. And yet I think if Adela Branston were free, and willing to marry me, I might make something of my life. I might go into Parliament, and make something of a name for myself. I could write books instead of anonymous articles. I should scarcely sink down into an idle mindless existence of dinner-giving and dinner-eating. Yes, I think the best thing that could happen to me would be to marry Adela Branston.”
They parted at last, John Saltram having faithfully promised his friend to work no more that night, and they met at Euston Square early the next morning for the journey to Liverpool. Gilbert had never found his friend’s company more delightful than on this last day. It seemed as if John Saltram put away every thought of self in his perfect sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the traveller. They dined together, and it was dusk when they wished each other good-bye on the deck of the vessel.
“Good-bye, Gilbert, and God bless you! If — if anything should happen to me — if I should have gone to the bad utterly before you come back, you must try to remember our friendship of the past. Think that I have loved you very dearly — as well as one man ever loved another, perhaps.”
“My dear John, you have no need to tell me to think that. Nothing can ever weaken the love between us. And you are not likely to go to the bad. Good bye, dear old friend. I shall remember you every day of my life. You are second only to Marian in my heart. I shall write you an account of my proceedings, and shall expect to hear from you. Once more, good bye.”
The bell rang. Gilbert Fenton and his friend shook hands in silence for the last time, and in the next moment John Saltram ran down the steps to the little steamer which had brought them out to the larger vessel. The sails spread wide in the cool evening wind, and the mighty ship glided away into the dusk. John Saltram’s last look showed him his friend’s face gazing down upon him over the bulwarks full of trust and affection.
He went back to London by the evening express, and reached his chambers at a late hour that night. There had been some attempt at tidying the rooms in his absence; but his books and papers had been undisturbed. Some letters were lying on the desk, amongst them one in a big scrawling hand that was very familiar to Mr. Saltram, the envelope stamped “Lidford.” He tore this open eagerly. It was from Sir David Forster.
“DEAR SALTRAM” (wrote the Baronet),—”What do you mean by this iniquitous conduct? You only obtained my consent to your hurried departure the other day on condition you should come back in a week, yet there are no signs of you. Foljambe and the lawyer are gone, and I am alone with Harker, whose stupidity is something marvellous. I am dying by inches of this dismal state of things. I can’t tell the man to go, you see, for he is really a most worthy creature, although such a consummate fool. For pity’s sake come to me. You can do your literary work down here as well as in London, and I promise to respect your laborious hours. — Ever yours,
“DAVID FORSTER.”
John Saltram stood with this letter open in his hand, staring blankly at it, like a man lost in a dream.
“Go back!” he muttered at last—”go back, when I thought I did such a great thing in coming away! No, I am not weak enough for that folly.”
* * *
CHAPTER VIII
MISSING
On the 5th of July in the following year, Gilbert Fenton landed in England, after nearly ten months of exile. He had found hard work to do in the colonial city, and had done it; surmounting every difficulty by a steady resolute course of action.
Astley Fenton had tried to shelter his frauds, heaping falsehood upon falsehood; and had ended by making a full confession, after receiving his cousin’s promise not to prosecute. The sums made away with by him amounted to some thousands. Gilbert found that he had been leading a life of reckless extravagance, and was a notorious gambler. So there came an evening when after a prolonged investigation of affairs, Astley Fenton put on his hat, and left his cousin’s office for ever. When Gilbert heard of him next, he was clerk to a bookseller in Sydney.
The disentanglement of the Melbourne trading had occupied longer than Gilbert expected; and his exile had been especially dreary to him during the last two months he spent in Australia, from the failure of his English letters. The first two mails after his arrival had brought him letters from Marian and her uncle, and one short note from John Saltram. The mails that followed brought him nothing, and he was inexpressibly alarmed and distressed by this fact. If he could by any possibility have returned to England immediately after the arrival of the first mail which brought him no letter, he would have done so. But his journey would have been wasted had he not remain
ed to complete the work of reorganization he had commenced; so he stayed, sorely against the grain, hoping to get a letter by the next mail.
That came, and with the same dispiriting result to Gilbert Fenton. There was a letter from his sister, it is true; but that was written from Switzerland, where she was travelling with her husband, and brought him no tidings of Marian. He tried to convince himself that if there had been bad news, it must needs have come to him; that the delay was only the result of accident, some mistake of Marian’s as to the date of the mail. What more natural than that she should make such a mistake, at a place with such deficient postal arrangements as those which obtained at Lidford? But, argue with himself as he might, this silence of his betrothed was none the less perplexing to him, and he was a prey to perpetual anxiety during the time that elapsed before the sailing of the vessel that was to convey him back to England.
Then came the long monotonous voyage, affording ample leisure for gloomy thoughts, for shapeless fears in the dead watches of the night, when the sea washed drearily against his cabin window, and he lay broad awake counting the hours that must wear themselves out before he could set foot on English ground. As the time of his arrival drew nearer, his mind grew restless and fitful, now full of hope and happy visions of his meeting with Marian, now weighed down by the burden of some unspeakable terror.
The day dawned at last, that sultry summer day, and Gilbert was amongst those eager passengers who quitted the vessel at daybreak.
He went straight from the quay to the railway-station, and the delay of an hour which he had to endure here seemed almost interminable to him. As he paced to and fro the long platform waiting for the London express, he wondered how he had borne all the previous delay, how he had been able to live through that dismal agonizing time. His own patience was a mystery to him now that the ordeal was over.
The express started at last, and he sat quietly in his corner trying to read a newspaper; while his fellow-travellers discussed the state of trade in Liverpool, which seemed from their account to be as desperate and hopeless as the condition of all commerce appears invariably to be whenever commercial matters come under discussion. Gilbert Fenton was not interested in the Liverpool trade at this particular crisis. He knew that he had weathered the storm which had assailed his own fortunes, and that the future lay clear and bright before him.
He did not waste an hour in London, but went straight from one station to another, and was in time to catch a train for Fairleigh, the station nearest to Lidford. It was five o’clock in the afternoon when he arrived at this place, and chartered a fly to take him over to Lidford — a lovely summer afternoon. The sight of the familiar English scenery, looking so exquisite in its summer glory, filled him with a pleasure that was almost akin to pain. He had often walked this road with Marian; and as he drove along he looked eagerly at every distant figure, half hoping to see his darling approach him in the summer sunlight.
Mr. Fenton deposited his carpet-bag at the cosy village inn, where snow-white curtains fluttered gaily at every window in the warm western breeze, and innumerable geraniums made a gaudy blaze of scarlet against the wooden wall. He did not stop here to make any inquiries about those he had come to see. His heart was beating tumultuously in expectation of the meeting that seemed so near. He alighted from the fly, dismissed the driver, and walked rapidly across a field leading by a short cut to the green on which Captain Sedgewick’s house stood. This field brought him to the side of the green opposite the Captain’s cottage. He stopped for a moment as he came through the little wooden gate, and looked across the grass, where a regiment of geese was marching towards the still pool of willow-shadowed water.
The shutters of the upper rooms were closed, and there was a board above the garden-gate. The cottage was to be let.
Gilbert Fenton’s heart gave one great throb, and then seemed to cease beating altogether. He walked across the green slowly, stunned by this unlooked-for blow. Yes, the house was empty. The garden, which he remembered in such exquisite order, had a weedy dilapidated look that seemed like the decay of some considerable time. He rang the bell several times, but there was no answer; and he was turning away from the gate with the stunned confused feeling still upon him, unable to consider what he ought to do next, when he heard himself called by his name, and saw a woman looking at him across the hedge of the neighbouring garden.
“Were you wishing to make any inquiries about the last occupants of Hazel Cottage, sir?” she asked.
“Yes,” Gilbert answered huskily, looking at her in an absent unseeing way.
He had seen her often during his visits to the cottage, busy at work in her garden, which was much smaller than the Captain’s, but he had never spoken to her before to-day.
She was a maiden lady, who eked out her slender income by letting a part of her miniature abode whenever an opportunity for so doing occurred. The care of this cottage occupied all her days, and formed the delight and glory of her life. It was a little larger than a good-sized doll’s house, and furnished with spindle-legged chairs and tables that had been polished to the last extremity of brightness.
“Perhaps you would be so good as to walk into my sitting-room for a few moments, sir,” said this lady, opening her garden-gate. “I shall be most happy to afford you any information about your friends.”
“You are very good,” said Gilbert, following her into the prim little parlour.
He had recovered his self-possession in some degree by this time, telling himself that this desertion of Hazel Cottage involved no more than a change of residence.
“My name is Dodd,” said the lady, motioning Mr. Fenton to a chair, “Miss Letitia Dodd. I had the pleasure of seeing you very often during your visits next door. I was not on visiting terms with Captain Sedgewick and Miss Nowell, although we bowed to each other out of doors. I am only a tradesman’s daughter — indeed my brother is now carrying on business as a butcher in Fairleigh — and of course I am quite aware of the difference in our positions. I am the last person to intrude myself upon my superiors.”
“If you will be so kind as to tell me where they have gone?” Gilbert asked, eager to stop this formal statement of Miss Dodd’s social standing.
“Where they have gone!” she repeated. “Dear, dear! Then you do not know — —”
“I do not know what?”
“Of Captain Sedgewick’s death.”
“Good God! My dear old friend! When did he die?”
“At the beginning of the year. It was very sudden — a fit of apoplexy. He was seized in the night, poor dear gentleman, and it was only discovered when the servant went to call him in the morning. He only lived two days after the seizure; and never spoke again.”
“And Miss Nowell — what made her leave the cottage? She is still at Lidford, I suppose?”
“O dear no, Mr. Fenton. She went away altogether about a month after the Captain’s death.”
“Where did she go?”
“I cannot tell you that, I did not even know that she intended leaving Hazel Cottage until the day after she left. When I saw the shutters closed and the board up, you might have knocked me down with a feather. Miss Nowell was so much liked in Lidford, and she had more than one invitation from friends to stay with them for the sake of a change after her uncle’s death; but she would not visit anywhere. She stayed quite alone in the cottage, with only the old servant.”
“But there must surely be some one in the place who knows where she has gone!” exclaimed Gilbert.
“I think not. The landlord of Hazel Cottage does not know. He is my landlord also, and I was asking him about Miss Nowell when I paid my rent the other day. He said he supposed she had gone away to be married. That has been the general impression, in fact, at Lidford. People made sure that Miss Nowell had left to be married to you.”
“I have only just returned from Australia. I have come back to fulfil my engagement to Miss Nowell. Can you suggest no one from whom I am likely to obtain information?”
“There is the family at the Rectory; they knew her very well, and were extremely kind to her after her uncle’s death. It might be worth your while to call upon Mr. Marchant.”
“Yes, I will call,” Gilbert answered; “thanks for the suggestion.”
He wished Miss Dodd good-afternoon, and left her standing at the gate of her little garden, watching him with profound interest as he walked away towards the village. There was a pleasing mystery in the affair, to the mind of Miss Dodd.
Gilbert Fenton went at once to the Rectory, although it was now past seven o’clock. He had met Mr. and Mrs. Marchant several times, and had visited them with the Listers.
The Rector was at home, sitting over his solitary glass of port by the open window of his snug dining-room, looking lazily out at a group of sons and daughters playing croquet on the lawn. He was surprised to see Mr. Fenton, but welcomed him with much cordiality.
“I have come to you full of care, Mr. Marchant,” Gilbert began; “and the pressing nature of my business must excuse the lateness of my visit.”
“There is no occasion for any excuse. I am very glad to see you at this time. Pray help yourself to some wine, there are clean glasses near you; and take some of those strawberries, on which my wife prides herself amazingly. People who live in the country all their days are obliged to give their minds to horticulture. And now, what is this care of yours, Mr. Fenton? Nothing very serious, I hope.”
“It is very serious to me at present. I think you know that I am engaged to Miss Nowell.”
“Perfectly. I had imagined until this moment that you and she were married. When she left Lidford, I concluded that she had gone to stay with friends of yours, and that the marriage would, in all probability, take place at an early period, without any strict observance of etiquette as to her mourning for her uncle. It was natural that we should think this, knowing her solitary position.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 485
