Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  With the morning Mrs. Hardcastle came to her. She said they had received letters which must cause them to depart for Genoa, where they found their remitted money had really been sent.

  “But, ma’am,” urged poor Mrs. Dundyke, “surely Mr. Hardcastle will not go and leave me alone in this dreadful uncertainty!”

  “He intends to stay until the evening; he will not leave you a moment earlier than he is obliged. Perhaps your husband will make his appearance this morning.”

  In the course of the morning, Mr. Hardcastle went with the two boatmen to the place where they had landed Mr. Dundyke on the previous day, and a gentleman named by the proprietor of the hotel accompanied them; but not the slightest trace of him could be found, though some hours were spent in exploring. In the evening, by the six o’clock diligence, Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle left Geneva, the former handing to Mrs. Dundyke an order upon the house in London, Hardcastle and Co., for the twenty pounds he had borrowed of her husband. He regretted, he said, his inability to furnish her, then, with any funds she might require, but he had barely sufficient to carry himself and wife to Genoa. If Mrs. Dundyke approved, he would, with the greatest pleasure, forward from that city any sum she chose to name; for, being known there, his credit was unlimited. Mrs. Dundyke declined his offer, with thanks: she reflected that, if her husband returned, he would have his money with him; and in the event of his mysterious absence being prolonged, she might as well write home for money as borrow it from Mr. Hardcastle at Genoa. She wondered, but did not presume to ask, how he had procured funds for his own journey, and to discharge his hotel bill, which he paid before starting.

  “Keep up your spirits, Mrs. Dundyke,” he cheeringly said as he shook hands with her at parting. “Depend upon it, your husband will come home, and bring some good reason for his absence; and if it were not that I am compelled — compelled by business — to go on to Genoa, I would not leave you.”

  She sat down as if some cold shiver had seized upon her heart. It was in her own room that this farewell was spoken; and in that one moment, as he released her hand, and his peculiar eyes rested on her in the parting, and then were lost sight of, it flashed into her mind where she had seen those eyes before. They were the eyes she had once so shrunk from at Westerbury; at least, they bore the same expression — Benjamin Carr’s.

  Mrs. Dundyke’s pulses quickened, and she clasped her hands. For one single moment a doubt arose to her whether Mr. Hardcastle could be Mr. Hardcastle — whether he was not an impostor, Benjamin Carr, or any other, travelling under a false name; and a whole host of trifling incidents, puzzles to her hitherto, arose to her mind as if in confirmation. But the doubt did not last. That he was really anybody but the great Mr. Hardcastle — head, under his uncle, of the great house of Hardcastle and Co. — she did not believe. As to the resemblance in the eyes to those of Benjamin Carr, she concluded it must be accidental; and of Benjamin Carr’s features she retained no recollection. She opened the order he had given her to receive the twenty pounds, and found it was signed “B. Hardcastle:” no Christian name in full. Mrs. Dundyke dismissed all doubts from her memory, and continued to believe implicitly in Mr. Hardcastle.

  It was, perhaps, a somewhat curious coincidence — at least, you may deem it so, as events go on — that on this same evening an English clergyman should arrive at Geneva, and put up at the hotel. It was the Rev. Wheeler Prattleton, who was visiting Switzerland in pursuance of his intentions (as you once heard mention of), accompanied by his eldest daughter. The strange disappearance of Mr. Dundyke had caused some stir in the hotel, and the clergyman was told of it.

  “It is an uncommon name, papa — Dundyke,” observed Miss Prattleton. “Do you think it can be the Dundykes who are relatives of Mrs. Arkell’s?”

  “What Dundykes?” returned Mr. Prattleton, his memory on these points not so retentive as his daughter’s. “Has Mrs. Arkell relatives of the name?”

  “Oh, papa, you forget. Mrs. Arkell’s sister is a Mrs. Dundyke. I have often heard Travice Arkell speak of her; he calls her Aunt Betsey. They live in London.”

  “We will ascertain, Mary,” said Mr. Prattleton, his sympathies aroused. “If this lady should prove to be Mrs. Arkell’s sister, we must do all we can for her.”

  It was very soon ascertained, for the clergyman at once sent up his card, and requested an interview with Mrs. Dundyke. Mr. Prattleton threw himself completely into the affair, and became almost painfully interested in it. He believed, as did all others, that nothing serious had occurred, but that from some unaccountable cause Mr. Dundyke remained absent — perhaps from temporary illness or accident; and every hour, as the days went on, was his return looked for. Mary Prattleton had the room vacated by the Hardcastles, Mr. Prattleton had one on the same floor; and their presence was of the very greatest comfort to poor, lonely, bereaved Mrs. Dundyke.

  “Mary, I cannot tell you how I like her!” Mr. Prattleton impulsively exclaimed to his daughter. “She is a true lady; but so unobtrusive, so simple, so humble — there are few like her.”

  All the means they could think of were put in force to endeavour to obtain some clue to Mr. Dundyke, and to the circumstances of his disappearance. Mr. Prattleton took the conduct of the search upon himself. A Swiss peasant, or very small farmer, a man of known good character, and on whose word reliance might be placed, came forward and stated that on the day in question he had seen two gentlemen, whom he took to be English by their conversation, walking amicably together away from the lake, and about a mile distant from the spot of Mr. Dundyke’s landing. The description he gave of these tallied with the persons of the missing man and Mr. Hardcastle. The stouter of the two, he said, who wore a straw hat and a narrow green ribbon tied round it, carried a yellow silk handkerchief, and occasionally wiped his face, which looked very red and hot. The other — a tall, dark man — had a cane in his hand with a silver top, looking like a dog’s head, which cane he whirled round and round as he walked, after the manner of a child’s rattle. All this agreed exactly. Mr. Dundyke’s hat was straw, its ribbon green and narrow, and the handkerchief, which Mrs. Dundyke had handed him clean that morning, was yellow, with white spots. And again, that action of whirling his cane round in the air, was a frequent habit of Mr. Hardcastle’s. The country was scoured in the part where this peasant had seen them, and also in the direction that they appeared to be going, but nothing was discovered. Mr. Prattleton reminded Mrs. Dundyke that there were more yellow silk handkerchiefs in the world than one, that straw hats and green ribbons were common enough in Geneva, and that many a gentleman, even of those staying at the hotel, carried a silver-headed cane, and might twirl it in walking. “Besides,” added the clergyman, “if Mr. Hardcastle had been that day with Mr. Dundyke, what possible motive could he have for denying it?”

  “True; most true,” murmured the unhappy lady. She was still unsuspicious as a child.

  One of Mr. Prattleton’s first cares had been to write to London, asking for the number of the notes, forwarded by the house in Fenchurch-street to Mr. Dundyke. It had of course been lost with him; as also anything else he might have had in the shape of letters and papers, for they were all in his pocket-book, and he had it about him. When the answer was received by Mr. Prattleton, he made inquiries at the different money-changers, and traced the notes, a twenty-pound and a ten-pound. They had been changed for French money at Geneva, on the day subsequent to Mr. Dundyke’s disappearance: the halves were in the shop still, and were shown to the clergyman. The money-changer could not recollect who had changed them, except that it was an Englishman; he thought a tall man: but so many English gentlemen came in to change money, he observed, that it was difficult to recollect them individually.

  The finding of these notes certainly darkened the case very much, and Mr. Prattleton went home with a slow step, thinking how he could break the news to Mrs. Dundyke. She was sitting in his daughter’s room, and he disclosed the facts as gently as possible.

  Mrs. Dundyke did not weep; di
d not cry aloud: her quiet hands were pressed more convulsively together in her lap; and that was all.

  “If my husband were living, how could anyone else have the notes to change?” she said. “Oh, Mr. Prattleton, there is no hope! It is as I have thought from the first: he fell into the lake and was drowned.”

  “Nay,” said the clergyman, “had he been drowned the notes would have been drowned too. Indeed, I do not think there is even a chance that he was drowned: had he got into the lake accidentally, (which is next to impossible, unless he rolled in from the grass,) he could readily have got out again. But I find that more money was sent him than this thirty pounds, Mrs. Dundyke. The two halves of a fifty-pound note were sent as well. Do you know anything of it?”

  “Nothing,” she answered. “I knew he wrote home for thirty pounds; I knew of no more.”

  Mr. Prattleton gave her the letter, received that morning from Fenchurch-street, and she found it was as the clergyman said. Mr. Dundyke had written for fifty pounds, as well as the thirty; and it had been sent in two half notes, the whole of the notes in two separate letters: three half notes in one letter, and three in the other, and both letters had been dispatched by the same post. There could be no reasonable doubt therefore that all the money had been received by Mr. Dundyke.

  “But I cannot trace the fifty,” observed Mr. Prattleton, “and I have been to every money-changer’s, and to every other likely place in Geneva. I went to the bank; I asked here at the hotel, but I can’t find it. What do you want, Mary?”

  Mary Prattleton had been for some few minutes trying to move a chest of drawers; the marble top made them heavy, and she desisted and looked at her father.

  “I wish you would help me push aside these drawers, papa. My needle-book has fallen behind.”

  He advanced, and helped her to move the drawers from the wall. A chink, as of something falling, was heard, and a silver pencil-case rolled towards the feet of Mrs. Dundyke. She stooped mechanically to pick it up; and Miss Prattleton, who was stooping for her needle-book, was startled by a suppressed shriek of terror. It came from Mrs. Dundyke.

  “It is my husband’s pencil-case! it is my husband’s pencil-case!”

  “Dear, dear Mrs. Dundyke!” cried the alarmed clergyman, “you should not let the sight of it agitate you like this.”

  “You do not understand,” she reiterated. “He had it with him on that fatal morning; he took it out with him. What should bring it back here, and without him? Where is he?”

  Mr. Prattleton stood confounded; not able at first to take in quite the bearings of the case.

  “How do you know he had it? He may have left it in the hotel.”

  “No, no, he did not. He went straight out from the breakfast-room, and, not a minute before, I saw him make a note with it on the back of a letter, and then return the pencil to the case in his pocket-book, where he always kept it, and put the pocket-book back into his pocket. How could he have written the note after the men landed him, telling us to join him there, without it? — he never carried but this one pencil. And now it is back in this room, and —— oh, sir! the scales seem to fall from my eyes! If I am wrong, may Heaven forgive me for the thought!”

  Her hands were raised, her whole frame was trembling; her livid face was quite drawn with the intensity of fear, of horror. Mr. Prattleton stood aghast.

  “What do you say?” he asked, bending his ear, for the words on her lips had dropped to a low murmur. “What?”

  “He has surely been murdered by Mr. Hardcastle.”

  CHAPTER V.

  HOME, IN DESPAIR.

  The Reverend Mr. Prattleton literally recoiled at the words, and staggered back a few steps in his dismay. Not at first could he recover his amazement. The suggestion was so dreadful, so entirely, as he believed, uncalled for, that he began to doubt whether poor Mrs. Dundyke’s trouble had not turned her brain.

  “It surely, surely is so!” she impressively repeated. “He has been murdered, and by Mr. Hardcastle.”

  “Good heavens, my dear lady, you must not allow your imagination to run away with you in this manner!” cried the shocked clergyman. “A gentleman in Mr. Hardcastle’s position of life — —”

  “Oh, stop! stop!” she interrupted; “is it his position of life? Is he indeed Mr. Hardcastle?”

  And she began, in her agitation, to pour out forthwith the whole tale: the various half doubts of the Hardcastles, suppressed until now. Her conviction that Mrs. Hardcastle was certainly not a lady, their embarrassments for money, and other little items. Then there had been the long absence of Mr. Hardcastle on the day of the disappearance; his sneaking upstairs quietly on his return, hurt and scratched, warm and dusty, as if he had walked far; his sudden change of colour when she asked after her husband, and the angry look turned upon his wife when she suggested that he had possibly been with Mr. Dundyke. There was the description given by the Swiss peasant of the two gentlemen he had seen walking together that day, and the furious quarrel she had heard at night, when her husband’s name was mentioned. All was told to Mr. Prattleton, what she knew, what she thought; all with an exception: the one faint suspicion that had crossed her as to whether Mr. Hardcastle could be Benjamin Carr. She did not mention that. Perhaps it had faded from her memory; and Benjamin Carr, a gentleman born, would be no more likely to commit a murder than the real Mr. Hardcastle. However it may have been, she did not mention it, then, or at any other time.

  How could the pencil have got back to the hotel, and into that room, unless brought by Mr. Hardcastle? The testimony of the Swiss peasant, of the two gentlemen he had seen walking together, was terribly significant now. Mr. Prattleton, who had never been brought into contact with anything like murder in his life, felt as if he were on the eve of some awful discovery.

  “It was so strange that people of the Hardcastles’ position should be up here in one small room on the third floor of the hotel!” cried Mrs. Dundyke, mentioning the thought that had often struck her. “Mrs. Hardcastle said no other room was vacant when they came, and that may have been so; but would they not have changed afterwards?”

  Mr. Prattleton went downstairs. He sought an interview with the host, and gleaned what information he could, not imparting a hint of these new suspicions. Could the host inform him who Mr. Hardcastle was?

  The host supposed Mr. Hardcastle was — Mr. Hardcastle. Voilà tout! Although he did think that the name given in to the hotel at first was not so long as Hardcastle, but he was not quite sure; it had not been written down, only the number of the room they occupied. Monsieur and Madame had very much resented being put up on the third floor. It was the only room then vacant in all the hotel, and at first Madame said she would not take it, she would go to another hotel; but she was tired, and stopped, and the luggage, too, had been all brought in. Afterwards, when Madame was settled in it, she did not care to change. In what name were Monsieur’s letters addressed — Hardcastle? Ma foi, yes, for all he knew; but Monsieur’s letters stopped at the post-office, as did those of three parts of the company in the hotel, and Monsieur went for them himself. Money? Well, Monsieur did seem short of money at times; but he had plenty at others, and he had paid up liberally at last. Other gentlemen sometimes ran short, when their remittances were delayed.

  There was not a word in this that could tell really against Mr. Hardcastle. The host evidently spoke in all good faith; and Mr. Prattleton began to look upon Mrs. Dundyke’s suspicions as the morbid fancies of a woman in trouble. He put another question to the landlord — what was his private opinion of this singular disappearance of Mr. Dundyke?

  The landlord shook his head; he had had but one opinion upon the point for some days past. The poor gentleman, there was not the least doubt, had in some way got into the lake and been drowned. But the notes in his pocket-book? urged the clergyman — the money that had been changed at the money-changer’s? Well, the fact must be, the host supposed, that his pocket-book was left upon the grass, or had floated on the water, and some t
hief had come across it and appropriated the contents.

  Mr. Prattleton, after due reflection, became convinced that this must have been the case; and for the pencil-case, he believed that Mrs. Dundyke was in error in supposing her husband took it out with him.

  Mrs. Dundyke was not so easily satisfied. She urged the strange fact of Mr. Hardcastle’s appearance when he returned that day: his scratched face, his dusty clothes, his altogether disordered look, his sneaking up the stairs as if he did not want to be seen. But upon inquiry it was found that a gentleman, whose appearance tallied with the person of Mr. Hardcastle, did so fall on the dusty flint stones, in trying to avoid a restive horse, and his face was scratched and his hand hurt in consequence; and, as Mr. Prattleton observed, he really might be trying to avoid observation in coming up the hotel stairs, not caring to be met in that untidy state. The pencil-case was next shown to the boatmen; but they could not say whether it was the one the gentleman had written the note with. They were tired with the row in the hot sun, and did not take particular notice. One of them was certain that, whatever pencil the gentleman had used, he took it from his pocket; and he saw him tear the leaf out of the pocket-book to write upon.

  Altogether it amounted to just this — that while Mr. Hardcastle might be guilty, he probably was innocent. Mr. Prattleton inclined to the latter belief; and as the days went on, Mrs. Dundyke inclined to it also. The points fraught with suspicion began to lose their dark hue, and when there arrived a stranger at the hotel, who happened to know that old Mr. Hardcastle’s nephew was travelling on the continent, and was much inclined to spend money faster than he got it, though otherwise honourable, Mrs. Dundyke’s suspicions faded, and she reproached herself for having entertained them.