Works of Ellen Wood
Page 939
“Ay, if he had gone. But it’s all moonshine.”
“What do you mean by ‘moonshine?’ Has he gone, or has he not?”
“They say at the Maze he has; but I am sure he has not,” was the answer. “There was a motive for his being denied to me, Dr. Cavendish; and so — and so — when I went in this morning they concocted an impromptu tale of his departure. That’s what I think.”
“They must have concocted it last night then,” said the doctor. “The letter, informing me of the circumstance, was posted last night at Foxwood — and therefore must have been written last night.”
“Did they write to tell you he had gone!” asked the detective, after a slight pause.
“Mrs. Grey wrote. I got it by the post this morning. She would not trouble me to come over again, she said, as my patient had found himself obliged to leave last night But I have troubled myself to come,” added the doctor, wrathfully, “and to see about it; for, of all mad acts, that man’s getting up from his bed yesterday, and starting off by a shaking railway train was the maddest. Drive on, James.”
The groom touched the horse at the short command, and the animal sprang forward. Mr. Strange thought he would let the station alone for a bit, and loiter about where he was. This letter, written last night, to tell of the departure, somewhat complicated matters.
A very short while, and the doctor came out again. Mr. Strange accosted him as he was about to step into his gig.
“Well, Dr. Cavendish, have you seen your patient?”
“No, I have not seen him,” was the reply. “It is quite true that he is gone. I find he is embarking on a sea voyage, going off somewhere to the other end of the world, and he had to go up, or forfeit his passage-money.”
“They told you, then, what they told me. As, of course, they would he added inwardly.
“But there’s something in it I don’t altogether understand,” resumed the doctor. “Not a syllable was spoken by the patient yesterday to denote that he was on the move, or that he had been on the move, even only to journey down from London. On the contrary, I gathered, or fancied I gathered, from the tenor of his remarks that he had been for some time stationary, and would be stationary for an indefinite period to come. It was when I spoke to him about the necessity of keeping himself quiet and free from exertion. What I don’t understand is why he should not candidly have told me that he had this voyage before him.”
Mr. Strange did not answer. Various doubts were crowding upon him. Had the man got away? in disguise, say? But no, he did not think it “By the way, you did not tell me your name,” said the doctor, as he took his seat in the gig.
“My name! oh, did I not? My name is Tatton.”
Dr. Cavendish bent down his head and spoke in a low tone. His groom was adjusting the apron.
“You hinted last night at some great trouble that this gentleman was in, Mr. Tatton. I have been wondering whether that has to do with this sudden departure — whether he had reasons for being afraid to stay?”
“Just the question that has occurred to me, Dr. Cavendish,” confessed the detective. “If he has gone away, it is fear that has driven him.”
The gig bowled onwards. Mr. Strange stood still as he looked after it: and had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Philip Smith smoking his long pipe at his own window, and regarding the landscape with equanimity. He went on the other way.
“Good morning, Mr. Tatton.”
Mr. Tatton turned on his heel and saluted Sir Karl Andinnian, who had followed him up. There was a degree of suppressed indignation in Karl’s face rarely seen.
“Is this true that I have just heard, Mr. Tatton,” he began, calling the man by his true name— “that you have been again searching the Maze? My butler informs me that he saw you and two policemen quit it but now.”
“It is true enough, Sir Karl. Salter is there. At least, he was there yesterday. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the sick man to whom Dr. Cavendish was called was Salter. I obtained a description of him from the doctor, and should have recognized it anywhere.”
What was Karl to say? He could not attempt to deny that a sick man had been there. It was an unfortunate circumstance that Sir Adam, in regard to height and colour of hair, somewhat answered to the description of Philip Salter.
“Sir Karl, you must yourself see that there’s a mystery somewhere,” resumed the detective, who (having taken his clue from Superintendent Game) honestly believed that the baronet of Foxwood Court cared hot a rap for Salter, and had no covert interest in the matter, beyond that of protecting his tenant at the Maze. “Some one, who is never seen by the public, is living at the Maze, that’s certain; or, at any rate, dodging us there. Remember the gentleman in evening attire seen by the surgeon and nurse; and now there’s this gentleman sick abed yesterday. These men could not be myths, Sir Karl. Who, then, are they?”
From sheer inability to advance any theory upon the point, lest he should do mischief, Karl was silent These repeated trials, these shocks of renewed dread, were getting more than he knew how to bear. Had they come upon Adam this morning? He did not dare to ask.
“As to the tale told me by the woman servant and Mrs. Grey — that the sick gentleman was a relative who had come down by train and left again, it will not hold water,” contemptuously resumed the detective. “Men don’t go out for a day’s journey when they are as ill as he is — no, nor take long sea voyages. Why, if what Dr. Cavendish fears is correct, there cannot be many weeks of life left in the man he saw yesterday; neither, if it be so, can the man himself be unconscious of it.”
Karl’s heart stood still with its shock of pain.
“Did Dr. Cavendish tell you that, Mr. Tatton?”
“Yes. Well, now, Sir Karl, that man is at the Maze still — I am convinced of it; and that man is Salter.”
“What did you find this morning?”
“Nothing. Nothing more than I found before. When I spoke of the sick man, and asked where he was, this cock-and-bull tale was told me, which, of course, they had got up among themselves.”
“As I said before, Mr. Tatton, I feel certain — I am certain — that you will never find Salter at the Maze; from the simple fact that he is not there to find — I am sure of it. I must most earnestly protest against these repeated annoyances to my tenant, Mrs. Grey; and if you do not leave her alone for the future, I shall see whether the law will not compel you. I do not — pray understand — I do not speak this in enmity to you, but simply to protect her.”
“Of course I understand that, Sir Karl,” was the ready answer. “There’s no offence meant, and none taken. But if you could put yourself in my place, you’d see my difficulty. Upon my word, I never was so mystified before. There Salter is. Other people can see him, and have seen him; and yet, when I search I find no traces of him. A thought actually crossed my mind just now, whether there could be a subterranean passage from the Maze to Clematis Cottage, and that Salter makes his escape there to his cousin on occasion. I should like to search it.”
“Come and do so at once,” said Karl, half laughing. “Nothing convinces like ocular demonstration. I give you full permission, as owner of the cottage; I doubt not Smith will, as its tenant. Come and ask him.”
The detective was in earnest, and they crossed over. Seeing them making for the gate, Mr. Smith came out of his house, pipe in hand. It was one of those long churchwardens. Karl spoke a few words of explanation. Mr. Detective Tatton suspected there might be secret rooms, or doors, or fugitives hidden in Clematis Cottage, and would like to search it. After the first momentary look of surprise, the agent remained unruffled.
“Pass on, sir,” said he, extending the thin end of his pipe to indicate the way. “You are welcome. Go where you please: search into every nook and corner; up the spouts and down the drains. If you surprise old Betty, tell her you’re the plumber.”
Mr. Strange took him at his word. Karl and the agent waited in the sitting-room together.
“Is it after Sir Adam, sir?�
� breathed the agent, “No. No suspicion of him. It’s after the other I told you of. Hush! Better be silent.”
The agent put his pipe away. Karl stood at the open window. Old Betty, the ancient servant, came in with a scared face. She was a little deaf, but not with a deafness like Hopley’s over the way.
“It’s all right, Betty,” called out her master. “Only looking to the drains and spouts.”
Satisfied in one sense of the word — for in truth it was readily seen by the most unprofessional eye that there were no means afforded for concealment in the shallow-built cottage — the officer soon joined them again. He had not had really a suspicion of the cottage, he said by way of apology: it was merely a thought that crossed him. Mr. Smith, however, did not seem inclined to take the matter quite indifferently now, and accosted him.
“Now that you are satisfied, sir, perhaps you will have no objection to tell me who the individual may be, that you have fancied I would harbour in my house. I heard before from Sir Karl that you were after some one.”
From the tone he spoke in, a very civil tone, tinged with mockery, the detective caught up the notion that Smith already knew; that Sir Karl must have told him: therefore he saw no occasion for observing any reticence.
“When you know that we are looking for Philip Salter, you need not be so much surprised that we have cast a thought to this house as Salter’s possible occasional refuge, Mr. Smith.”
The very genuine astonishment that seized hold of Smith, pervading his every look, and word, and gesture, was enough to convince those who saw it that he was unprepared for the news.
“Philip Salter!” he exclaimed, gazing from one to the other, as if unable to believe. “Philip Salter! Why, is he here? Have you news that he is back in England?”
“We have news that he is here,” said the detective blandly. “We suspect that he is concealed at the Maze. Did you not know it, Mr. Smith?”
Mr. Smith sat down in the chair that was behind him as if sitting came easier than standing, in his veritable astonishment.
“As Heaven is my judge, it is a mistake,” he declared. “Salter is not at the Maze; never has been. We have never heard that he is back in England.”
“Did you know that he left England?”
“Yes. At least, we had good reason to believe that he got away shortly after that dangerous escape of his. It’s true it was never confirmed; but the confirmation to his family lies in the fact that we have never since heard of him, or from him.”
“Never?”
“Never. Were he in England we should have been sure to have had some communication from him, had it only been an application for aid — for he could not live upon air; and outlets of earning are here closed to him. One thing you and ourselves may alike rest assured of, Mr. Detective — that, once he got safely away from the country he would not venture into it again.”
What with one disappointment and another, the detective almost questioned whether it were not as Smith said; and that Salter, so far as Foxwood was concerned, would turn out to be indeed a myth. But then — who was this mysterious man at the Maze? He was passing out with a good day when Mr. Smith resumed.
“Have you any objection to tell me what gave rise to your suspicion that Salter was at Foxwood? Or in England at all?”
But the officer had tact; plenty of it; or he would not have done for his post; and he turned the question off without any definite answer. For the true originator of the report, he who had caused it to reach the ears of Great Scotland Yard, was Sir Karl Andinnian.
Very conscious of the fact was Karl himself. He raised his hat from his brow as he went home, to wipe away the fever-damp gathered there. He remembered to have read somewhere of one of the tortures devised by inquisitionists in the barbarous days gone by. An unhappy prisoner would be shut in a spacious room; and, day by day, watched the walls contracting by some mysterious agency, and closing around him. It seemed to Karl that the walls of the world were closing around him now. Or, rather, round one who had become dearer to him in his dread position than himself — his most ill-fated brother.
At home or abroad there was not a single ray of light to illumine or cheer the gloom. Abroad lay apprehension; at home only unhappiness, an atmosphere of estrangement that seemed to have nothing homelike or true in it. Karl went in, expecting to see the pony-chaise waiting. He had been about to drive his wife out; but, alarmed by the report whispered to him by Hewitt, and unable to rest in tranquillity, he had gone forth to see about what it meant. But the chaise was not there. Maclean was at work on the lawn.
“Has Lady Andinnian gone?” he enquired, rather surprised — for Lucy had not learned to drive yet.
“My leddy is somewhere about the garden I think, Sir Karl,” was the gardener’s answer. “She sent the chay away again.”
He found his wife sitting in a retired walk, a book in her hand, apparently reading it. Lucy was fading. Her face, worn and thin, had that indescribable air of pitiful sadness in it that tells of some deep-seated, ever-present sorrow. Karl was all too conscious of it. He blamed her for her course of conduct; but he did not attempt to conceal from himself that the trouble had originated with him.
“I am very sorry to have kept you waiting, Lucy,” he began. “I had to go to Smith’s on a little matter of business. You have sent the chaise away.”
“I sent it away. The pony was tired of waiting. I don’t care to go out at all to-day.”
She spoke in an indifferent, almost a contemptuous tone. We must not blame her. Her naturally-sweet temper was being sorely tried: day by day her husband seemed to act so as to afford less promise of any reconciliation.
“I could not help it,” was all he answered.
She glanced up at the weary accent. If ever a voice spoke of unresisted despair, his did then. Her resentment vanished: her sympathy was aroused.
“You look unusually ill,” she said.
“I am ill,” he replied. “So ill that I should be almost glad to die.”
Lucy paused. Somehow she never liked these semi-explanations. They invariably imbued her with a sense of self-reproach, an idea that she was acting harshly.
“Do you mean ill because of our estrangementt.”
“Yes, for one thing. That makes all other trouble so much worse for me that at times I find it rather difficult to put up with.”
Lucy played with her book. She wished she knew where her true duty lay. Oh how gladly, but for that dreadful wrong ever being enacted upon herself, would she fall upon his arm and whisper out her beseeching prayer: “Take me to you again, Karl!”
“Should the estranged terms we are living on, end in a total and visible separation, you will have the satisfaction of remembering in your after life, Lucy, that you have behaved cruelly to me. I repeat it: cruelly.”
“I do not wish to separate,” murmured Lucy. “The time may soon come when you will be called upon to decide, one way or the other; when there will be nothing left to wait for; when all will be known to the world as it is known to us.”
“I cannot understand you,” said Lucy.
“Let it pass,” he answered, declining as usual to speak openly upon the dreaded subject; for, to him, every word, so spoken, seemed fraught with danger. “You can guess what I mean, I daresay: and the less said the better.”
“You seem always to blame me, Karl,” she rejoined, her voice softening almost to tears.
“Your own heart should tell you that I have cause.”
“It has been very hard for me to bear.”
“Yes; no doubt. It has hurt your pride.”
“And something besides my pride,” rejoined Lucy, with a faint flush of resentment.
“What has the bearing and the pain for you been, in comparison with what I have had to bear and suffer?” he asked with emotion. “I, at least, have not tried to make it worse for you, Lucy, though you have for me. In my judgment, we ought to have shared the burden; and so made it lighter, if possible, for one another.”
“Is it to last for ever?” she asked, after a pause.
“Heaven knows!” he answered. “Heaven knows that I have striven to do my best. I have committed no sin against you, Lucy, save that of having married you when — when I ought not. I have most bitterly expiated it.”
He spoke like one from whom all hope in life has gone; his haggard and utterly spiritless face was bent downwards. Lucy, her love all in force, her conscience aroused, touched his hand.
“If I have been more harshly judging than I ought, Karl, I pray you and heaven alike to forgive me.”
He gave no answer: but he turned his hand upwards so that hers lay in it. Thus they sat for some time, saying nothing. A singing bird was perched on a tree in front of them; a light cloud passed over the face of the blue sky.
“But — you know, Karl,” she began again in a half whisper, “it has not been right, or well, for — for those to have been at the Maze who have been there.”
“I do know it I have repeatedly told you I knew it I would almost have given my life to get them out It will not be long now; I fear, one way or the other, the climax I have been dreading seems to be approaching.”
“What climax?”
“Discovery. Bringing with it disgrace and pain and shame. It is when I fear that, Lucy, that I feel most bitterly how wrong it was of me to marry. But I did not know all the complication; I never anticipated the evils that would ensue. You must forgive me, for I did it three-parts in ignorance.”
He clasped her hand as he spoke. Her tears were gathering fast Karl rose to depart, but she kept his fingers in hers, her tears dropping as she looked up at him.
“I ask, Karl, if we are to live this kind of life for ever?”
“As you shall will, Lucy. The life is of your choosing, not of mine.”
One long look of doubt, of compassion, of love, into each other’s eyes; and then the hand-clasp that so thrilled through each of them was loosed; the fingers fell apart Karl went off to the house, and Lucy burst into a storm of sobs so violent as to startle the little bird, and stop its song.