by Ellen Wood
“And yet you did not speak to me?”
“In your present state of health, I was willing to spare you unnecessary anxiety — —”
“Stay, George. If you really assumed that I had moved the deeds, asking me the question could not have been productive of anxiety. If any fear, such as that the deeds were missing without my agency, only crossed your mind as a suggestion, it was your bounden duty to acquaint me with it.”
“I wish I could have dealt with the matter now without acquainting you,” returned George. “Did not the London doctors warn you that repose of mind was essential to you?”
“George,” was the impressive answer, and Thomas had his hand upon his brother’s arm as he spoke it, “so long as I pretend to transact business, to come to this Bank, and sit here, its master, so long do I desire and request to be considered equal to discharging its duties efficiently. When I can no longer do that, I will withdraw from it. Never again suffer my state of health to be a plea for keeping matters from me, however annoying or complicated they may be.”
Thomas Godolphin spent half that day in looking into other strong boxes, lest perchance the missing deeds should have got into any — though he did not see how that could be. They could not be found; but, neither did any other paper of consequence, so far as could be discovered, appear to have gone. Thomas could not account for the loss in any way, or conjecture why it should have occurred, or who had taken the bonds. It was made known in the Bank that a packet of deeds was missing; but full particulars were not given.
There was no certain data to go upon, as to the time of the loss. George Godolphin stated that he had missed them a month ago; Thomas, when visiting Lord Averil’s box for some purpose about four months ago, had seen the deeds there, secure. They must have disappeared between those periods. The mystery was — how? The clerks could not get to the strong-room and to the safes and cases in it, unless by some strange accident; by some most unaccountable neglect. Very great neglect it would have been, to allow them the opportunity of getting to one key; but to obtain three or four, as was necessary before those deeds could have been taken, and to obtain them undiscovered, was next door to an impossibility. The internal arrangements in the house of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin were of a stringent nature; Sir George Godolphin had been a most particular man in business. Conjecture upon conjecture was hazarded: theory after theory discussed. When Mr. Hurde found the deeds were really gone, his amazement was excessive, his trouble great. George, as soon as he could, stole away from the discussion. He had got over his part, better perhaps than he had expected: all that remained now, was to make the best of the loss — and to institute a search for the deeds.
“I can’t call to mind a single one of them who would do it, or be likely to do it,” remarked Mr. Hurde to his master.
“Of whom?”
“Of the clerks in the house, sir. But, one of them, it must have been.”
“A stranger it could not have been,” replied Thomas Godolphin. “Had a midnight plunderer got into the Bank, he would not have contented himself with one packet of deeds.”
“Whoever took them, sir, took them to make money upon them. There’s not a doubt of that. I wonder — I wonder — —”
“What?” asked Mr. Godolphin.
“I wonder — I have often wondered, sir — whether Layton does not live above his income. If so — —”
“Hurde,” said Thomas Godolphin gravely, “I believe Layton to be as honest as you or I.”
“Well — I have always thought him so, or I should pretty soon have spoken. But, sir, the deeds must have gone somehow, by somebody’s hands: and Layton is the least unlikely of all. I see him on a Sunday driving his new wife out in a gig. She plays the piano, too!”
How these items in the domestic economy of the clerk, Layton, could bear upon the loss of the deeds, especially the latter item, Mr. Hurde did not further explain. He was of the old school, seeing no good in gigs, still less in pianos; and he determined to look a little after Mr. Layton.
Thomas Godolphin, straightforward and honourable, imparted to Lord Averil the fact of the deeds being missing. Whether he would have revealed it to a less intimate client at this early stage of the affair, might be a matter of speculation. The house would not yet call them lost, he said to Lord Averil: it trusted, by some fortunate accident, to put its hands upon them, in some remote pigeon-hole. Lord Averil received the communication with courteous friendliness: he thought it must prove that they had only been mislaid, and he hoped they would be found. Both gentlemen hoped that sincerely. The value of the deeds was about sixteen thousand pounds: too much for either of them to lose with equanimity.
“George must have known of this when I asked him for the deeds a month ago,” observed Lord Averil.
“I think not,” replied Thomas Godolphin. “It was your asking for the deeds which caused him to search the box for them, and he then found they were gone.”
“Perhaps you are right. But I remember thinking his manner peculiar.”
“How ‘peculiar’?” inquired Thomas.
“Hesitating: uncertain. He appeared, at first, not to know what I meant in asking for the deeds. Since you spoke to me of the loss, it struck me as accounting for George’s manner — that he did not like to tell me of it.”
“He could not have known of it then,” repeated Thomas Godolphin.
As this concluding part of the conversation took place, they were coming out of the room. Isaac Hastings was passing along the passage, and heard a portion of it.
“Are they deeds of Lord Averil’s that are missing?” he inquired confidentially of Mr. Hurde, later in the day.
The old clerk nodded an affirmative. “But you need not proclaim it there,” he added, by way of caution, glancing sideways at the clerks.
“Do you suppose I should do so?” returned Isaac Hastings.
CHAPTER XIII. A RED-LETTER DAY FOR MRS. BOND.
The scent of the new-mown hay was in the atmosphere around Prior’s Ash. A backward spring it had been until the middle of April, and wiseacres said the crops would be late. But then the weather had suddenly burst into the warmth of summer, vegetation came on all the more rapidly for its previous tardiness, and the crops turned out to be early, instead of late.
Never a more lovely day gladdened the world than that particular day in June. Maria Godolphin, holding Miss Meta by the hand, walked along under the shady field-hedge, all glorious with its clusters of wild roses. The field was covered with hay, now being piled into cocks by the haymakers, and Meta darted ever and anon from her mother’s side, to afford the valuable aid of her tiny hands. Meta would have enjoyed a roll on the hay with the most intense delight; but unfortunately Meta was in the full grandeur of visiting attire; not in simple haymaking undress. Had you asked Meta, she would have told you she had on her “best things.” Things too good to be allowed to come to grief in the hay. Maria soothed the disappointment by a promise for the morrow. Meta should come in her brown holland dress with Margery, and roll about as much as she pleased. Children are easily satisfied, and Meta paced on soberly under the promise, only giving covetous glances at the hay. With all her impulsive gaiety, her laughter and defiance of Margery, she was by nature a most gentle child, easily led.
Maria was on her way to call at Lady Godolphin’s Folly; and thence at Ashlydyat. Maria was not given to making morning calls: she deemed it a very unsatisfactory waste of time. Very pleasant no doubt for gossips, but a hindrance to the serious business of life. She made them now and then; just enough to save her credit, and that was all. Mrs. Pain had honoured Maria with about fifteen visits, and Maria was now going to return them all in one. No one could say Charlotte went in for ceremony; she would run in and out of people’s houses, as the whim took her, every day in the week sometimes, and of Maria’s amidst the rest. Of late, she had called more frequently on Maria than usual: and Maria, her conscience weighty with the obligation, at last set out to return it.
But s
he had not dressed for it — as some people would consider dress; Charlotte herself, for instance; Charlotte would arrive, splendid as the sun; not a colour of the rainbow came amiss to her; a green dress one day, a violet another, a crimson a third, and so on. Dresses with flounces and furbelows; jackets interlaced with gold and silver; brimless hats surmounted by upright plumes. All that Charlotte wore was good, as far as cost went: as far as taste went, opinions differed. Maria had inherited the taste of her mother: she could not have been fine had you bribed her with gold. She wore to-day a pale dress of watered silk; a beautiful Cashmere shawl of thin texture, and a white bonnet, all plain and quiet, as befitted a lady. The charming day had induced her to walk; and the faint perfume of the hay, wafting through Prior’s Ash, had caused her to choose the field way. The longest way, but infinitely the pleasantest.
It took her past those tenements familiarly called the Pollard cottages: in one of which lived troublesome Mrs. Bond. All the inmates of these cottages were well known to Maria: had been known to her from childhood: the Rector of All Souls’ was wont to say that he had more trouble with the Pollard cottages than with all the rest of his parish. For one thing, sickness was often prevalent in them; sometimes death; and sickness and death give trouble and anxiety to a conscientious pastor.
“Mamma, you going to see old Susan to-day?” chattered Miss Meta, as they approached the cottages.
“Not to-day, Meta. I am going straight on to Mrs. Pain’s.”
Meta, who was troubled with no qualms on the score of ceremony herself, perceiving one of the doors open, darted suddenly into it. Meta was rather in the habit of darting into any open door that it took her fancy so to do. Maria walked on a few steps, and then turned and waited: but the little truant did not appear to be in a hurry to come out, and she went back and followed her in.
A lady in a rusty black stuff gown covered with snuff, her cap awry and her face somewhat flushed, was seated in state before a round deal table, doing nothing; except contemplating certain articles that were on the table, with a remarkably gratified expression of countenance. The lady was Mrs. Bond: and this, as Maria was soon to hear, had been a decidedly red-letter day with her. On the table — and it was this which appeared to be fascinating the attention of Meta — was a large wicker cage containing a parrot; a small parrot with a plumage as fine as Mrs. Charlotte Pain’s, an angry-looking tuft on its head, not at all unlike her hat’s tuft of feathers. Mrs. Bond’s attention appeared not to be so much absorbed by the parrot and cage, as by a green medicine-bottle, containing some clear-looking liquid, and a tea-cup without a handle. These latter articles were standing immediately before her.
Two or three years ago, Mrs. Bond’s eldest daughter, Peggy, a damsel who had not borne the brightest of characters for steadiness, had been taken out to Australia by a family to whom she engaged herself as nurse-girl. After sundry vicissitudes in that country — which she duly chronicled home to her mother, and that lady was wont to relate in convivial moments, over tea or any other social beverage — Peggy had come to an anchor by marrying. She wrote word that her husband was an industrious young carpenter, who was making his fortune, and they were quite at ease in the world. As a proof of the latter statement, she had sent over a parrot to her mother as a keepsake, and a trifle of money; which would be safely delivered by a friend, who was going the home voyage.
The friend was faithful. He had arrived on his mission that very morning at Mrs. Bond’s, delivering the parrot uninjured and in rude health — if its capacity for screaming might be taken as an indication. The money turned out to be eleven pounds: a ten-pound note, and a sovereign in gold. Peggy probably knew enough of her mother to be certain that the first outlay made would be for “something comforting,” and this may have induced her to add a sovereign, in some faint hope that the note would be preserved intact. Mrs. Bond had the sense to discern Peggy’s motive, and openly spoke of it to Maria. She was in an open mood. In point of fact she had gone right off to Prior’s Ash and changed the sovereign, bringing home that green bottle full of — comfort. It was three parts empty now, and Mrs. Bond, in consequence, had become rather red in the face, and was slipping some of her long words.
“But you will not think of changing the note, will you?” returned Maria, in answer to what Mrs. Bond disclosed. “How useful it would be to you in the winter for clothing and fire — if you would only keep it until then!”
“So it ‘ould,” responded Mrs. Bond.
She dived into her pocket, and brought forth the note and a handful of silver, all lying loose, amidst a miscellaneous collection. “Don’t it look pretty?” cried she.
“Very,” said Maria, not certain whether she alluded to the parrot or the money, for Mrs. Bond’s eyes were not remarkably direct in their glances just then. “Too pretty to spend,” she added, in reference to the note. “You had better give it to papa, Mrs. Bond, and let him take care of it for you.”
Mrs. Bond shook her head at this proposition. “Once the parson gets hold on any little bit of our money to keep, he ain’t free to give it up again,” she objected. “‘Keep it for this,’ says he, or ‘keep it for that;’ and it ends in its being laid out as he likes, not as us do.”
“As you please, of course,” rejoined Maria. “I only thought it a pity you should not derive some real benefit from this money. If you keep it yourself you may be induced to change it, and then it would dwindle away in trifles, and do you no good.”
“That it ‘ould!” acknowledged Mrs. Bond. “I’ve a’most a mind to let it be took care on, after all. If ’twas anybody but the Rector!”
“Shall I keep it for you?” asked Maria.
“Well now, ‘ould you, ma’am?”
“Yes, I will. If you please.”
Mrs. Bond detached the note from the silver and other articles which she had brought up indiscriminately from her pocket. They lay in her capacious lap, and appeared to afford food for gratification to Meta, who had come round from the parrot to look at them. A brass thimble, a damp blue-bag, some halfpence, a recipe for toothache, a piece of ginger, and the end of a tallow candle, being amongst the items.
“You’ll promise to let me have it back if I asks for it?” cried she, clutching the note, and waiting for Maria’s promise before she would surrender it.
“Certainly I will. Whenever you wish for it, you shall have it. Only,” Maria added, smiling, “if you ask for it too soon, I shall beg you still to let me keep it. Don’t you remember how badly off you were last winter? Just think what a ten-pound note would have done for you then, Mrs. Bond!”
“Lawks, ay! It would a got me through the cold beautiful.”
“And I hope you will let this get you through next year’s cold,” returned Maria, putting the note into her purse.
“Ay, sure! But now, ain’t it kind o’ Peggy?”
“Yes. It is delightful to hear that she is so well settled at last.”
“I’ve been drinking her health, and better luck still,” said Mrs. Bond, taking the cork out of the bottle, and pouring out half its remaining contents. “‘Ould ye just take a drain, ma’am?”
“No, thank you,” replied Maria. “I don’t like the smell of it.”
“No!” returned Mrs. Bond, who, truth to say, but for the “drains” she had taken herself, and which had tended slightly to muddle her perceptions, would never have thought of proffering the invitation. “Not like the smell! It were tenpence the half-pint.”
Maria took the child’s hand. Meta gave it reluctantly: the new parrot possessed great attractions for her. “I’ll come again and see it to-morrow,” said she to Mrs. Bond. “I’ll come with Margery. I am coming to play in the hayfield.”
“Ay,” returned Mrs. Bond. “Ain’t it pretty! It’s the best Old Tom.”
She was evidently getting a little confused in her intellects. Had Maria been a strong-minded district visitor, given to reforming the evils of the parish, she might have read Mrs. Bond a lecture on sobriety, and walked
off with the bottle. Mrs. Bond and such medicine-bottles had however been too long and too well acquainted with each other, to admit any hope of their effectually parting now: and the last thing Maria caught, as she glanced back, was a vision of that lady’s head thrown back, the inverted tea-cup to her lips.
“The note would have been changed before the week was out!” was Maria’s mental comment.
Without further adventure, she reached Lady Godolphin’s Folly. Charlotte had visitors. A country squire’s wife with her two daughters had come for a few days from their sober residence at a few miles’ distance to the attractions of the Folly. Charlotte could make it attractive when she liked; and invitations to it were in demand — which has been previously remarked. If people did think Mrs. Pain somewhat “fast” in her manners, she was no faster than some others.
Charlotte was in one of her pleasantest moods, and Maria had rarely seen her looking so well. She wore a morning-dress of pink muslin, made simply, and confined at the waist by a band. Her hair was dressed simply also, brought rather low on her face, and rolled: even Margery could not have found fault with her looks this morning.
Or with her manner, either. She regaled Meta with strawberries; and when they were finished, caught her up in her arms and carried her out by the glass door.
“Do not keep her long, Mrs. Pain,” said Maria. “I must be going.”
“Where is your hurry?” asked Charlotte.
“I am going on to Ashlydyat.”
Charlotte departed with Meta, and Maria continued with the ladies, Charlotte’s guests. They had been talking a few minutes, when loud screams of terror from Meta alarmed their ears. Maria hastened out in the direction of the sound, her cheeks and lips alike blanched.
She came upon them — Charlotte and the child — in that secluded, lovely spot amidst the grove of trees, where Charlotte Pain — and you saw her — had held an interview with her future husband, Rodolf, on George Godolphin’s wedding-day. Charlotte had now carried the child there, and set her on the mossy turf, and called her dogs around. She had done it thinking to give pleasure to the child. But Meta was of a timid nature; she was not used to dogs; and upon one of them springing on her with a bark, “all for play,” as Charlotte said, her fear broke forth in terrified cries. When Maria reached them, Charlotte had caught up Meta in her arms, and was kicking the dogs off.
