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Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)

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Title: Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)

Author: Mrs. Henry Wood


        
Release date: April 5, 2012 [eBook #39377]

Language: English

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Credits: E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Paula Franzini, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org)


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MILDRED ARKELL.

A Novel.

by

MRS. HENRY WOOD,

Author of
"East Lynne," "Lord Oakburn's Daughters," "Trevlyn Hold,"
etc. etc.

In Three Volumes.

VOL. II.







London:
Tinsley Brothers, Catherine Street, Strand.
1865.
All rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved.

London:
Savill and Edwards, Printers, Chandos-Street,
Covent-Garden.




CONTENTS.


  CHAP.                                            PAGE

     I. THE SCHOOL-BOY'S LOVE                         1
    II. THE TOUR OF DAVID DUNDYKE, ESQUIRE           20
   III. A MEETING AT GRENOBLE                        37
    IV. A MYSTERY                                    65
     V. HOME IN DESPAIR                              87
    VI. NEWS FOR WESTERBURY                         102
   VII. ROBERT CARR'S VISIT                         118
  VIII. GOING OVER TO SQUIRE CARR'S                 137
    IX. A STARTLED LUNCHEON-TABLE                   153
     X. A MISSIVE FOR SQUIRE CARR                   175
    XI. THE LAST OF ROBERT CARR                     191
   XII. MR. RICHARDS' MORNING CALL                  214
  XIII. A DISLIKE THAT WAS TO BEAR ITS FRUITS       230
   XIV. THE EXAMINATION                             251
    XV. A NIGHT WITH THE GHOSTS                     272
   XVI. PERPLEXITY                                  294
  XVII. A SHADOW OF THE FUTURE                      315




MILDRED ARKELL.




CHAPTER I.

THE SCHOOL-BOY'S LOVE.


A brilliant evening in July. The sun had been blazing all day with
intense force, glittering on the white pavement of the streets,
scorching the dry and thirsty earth; and it was not until his beams
shone from the very verge of the horizon that the gay butterflies of
humanity ventured to come forth.

Groups were wending their way to the Bishop's Garden: not the private
garden of the respected prelate who reigned over the diocese of
Westerbury, but a semi-public garden-promenade called by that name. In
the years long gone by, a bishop of Westerbury caused a piece of waste
land belonging to the grounds of his palace to be laid out as an
ornamental garden. Broad sunny walks for the cold of winter, shady
winding ones for the heat of summer, shrubberies and trees, flower-beds
and grass-plots, miniature rocks and a fountain, were severally formed
there; and then the bishop threw it open to the public, and it had ever
since gone by the name of the Bishop's Garden. Not to the public
indiscriminately--only to those of superior degree; the catering for the
recreation of the public indiscriminately had not come into fashion
then. It had always lain especially under the patronage of the residents
of the grounds, and they took care--or the Cerberus of a gatekeeper did
for them--that no inferior person should dare venture within yards of
it: a tradesman might not so much as put his nose through the iron
railings to take a peep in.

The garden was getting full when a college boy--he might be known by his
trencher--passed the gate with a slow step. A party had just gone in
whose movements his eyes had eagerly followed, but he was not near
enough to speak. As he looked after them wistfully, his eye caught
something glittering on the ground, and he stooped and picked it up. It
was a small locket of gold, bearing the initials "G. B."

He knew to whom it belonged. He would have given half his remaining
life, as it seemed, to go in and restore it to its owner. But that might
not be; for the college boys, whether king's scholars or private pupils,
were rigorously excluded by custom from the Bishop's Garden. And
Williams, the gatekeeper, was stealing up then.

He was tall of his age, looking about sixteen, though he was not quite
so much; tall enough to lean over the iron railings, which he did with
intense eagerness; and never did woman's face betray more beauty,
whether of form or colouring, than did his.

It was Henry Arkell. For the years have gone on, and the lovely boy of
ten or eleven, has grown into this handsome youth. Other people and
other things have grown with him.

"Now then! What be you doing here? You just please to take yourself off,
young gentleman."

He quitted the railings in obedience; the college boys never thought of
disputing the orders of the gatekeeper. Stepping backwards with a sort
of spring, he stepped upon the foot of some one who was approaching the
gate.

"Take care, Arkell."

He turned hastily and raised his trencher. The speaker was the
good-natured Bishop of Westerbury; his widowed daughter on his arm.

"I beg your lordship's pardon."

"Too intent to see me, eh! You were gazing into the garden as if you
longed to be there."

"I was looking for Miss Beauclerc, sir; I thought she might be coming
near the gate. I have just picked up this, which she must have dropped
going in."

"How do you know it is Miss Beauclerc's?" cried the bishop, glancing at
the gold locket.

"I know it's hers, sir; and her initials are on it." But Henry turned
his face out of sight, as he spoke. And lest any critic should set up a
cavil at the bishop being addressed as "sir," it may be as well to
mention that it was the custom with the college boys. Very few of them
could bring their shy lips to utter any other title.

"Go in and give it to Miss Beauclerc, if it is hers," cried the bishop.

"The gatekeeper will not let me," said Henry, with a smile. "He tells us
all that it is as much as his place is worth to admit a college boy."

"They ain't fit for such a place as this, nohow, my lord," spoke up the
keeper. "Once let 'em in, and they'd be for playing at hare and hounds
over the flower-beds."

"Nonsense!" said the bishop. "I don't see what harm there would be in
admitting the seniors. You need not be so over-strict, Williams. Come in
with me, Arkell, if you wish to find Miss Beauclerc; and come in
whenever you like. Do you hear, Williams, I give this young gentleman
the _entree_ of the garden."

The bishop laid his hand on Henry's shoulder, and they walked in
together, all three, his daughter on his other side. Many a surprised
eye-glass was lifted; many an indignant eye regarded them.

Never yet had a college boy--St. John always excepted--ventured within
the pale of that guarded place. And if the bishop and his daughter had
appeared accompanied by a fiery serpent, it could not have caused more
inward commotion. But nobody dared betray it: the bishop was the bishop,
and not to be interfered with.

"There's Miss Beauclerc, my lad."

And in a few minutes--Henry could not tell how, in his mind's tumultuous
confusion--Georgina Beauclerc had turned into a side walk with him, and
they were alone. Georgina was the same Georgina as ever--impulsive,
wilful, and daringly independent. Everybody paid court to the dean's
daughter.

"Did you drop this in coming in, Miss Beauclerc?"

"My locket! Of course I must have dropped it. Harry, I would not have
lost it for the world."

His sensitive cheek wore a crimson flush at the words. _He_ had given it
to her on her last birthday, when she was eighteen. As she took it from
him, their fingers touched. That touch thrilled through his veins, while
hers were unconscious, or at best heedless of the contact.

It was the not uncommon tale; the tale that has been enacted many times
in life, and which Lord Byron has made familiar to us as being his own
heart's history--

    "The maid was on the eve of womanhood:
    The boy had fewer summers; but his heart had far outgrown his years:
    And to his sight there was but one fair face on earth,
    And that was shining on him."

It has been intimated that Georgina Beauclerc had inherited the dean's
innate taste for what is called beauty, both human and statuesque. In
the dean it was very marked. This, it may have been, that first drew
forth her regard for Henry Arkell. Certain it was, she saw him
frequently, and took no pains to disguise her admiration. He was a great
favourite of the dean's--was often invited to the deanery. That he was
no common boy, in nature, mind, or form, was apparent to the dean, as it
was to many others, and Dr. Beauclerc evinced his regard openly.
Georgina did the same. At first she had merely liked to patronize the
young college boy; rather to domineer over him, looking upon him as a
child in comparison with herself. But as they grew older, the difference
in their years became less marked, and now they appeared nearly of the
same age, for he looked older than he was, and Georgina younger. She was
very pretty, with her large, rich blue eyes, and her small, fair
features.

He had grown to love her; to love her with that impassioned love, which,
pure and refined though it is, can only bring unhappiness. What did he
think could be the ending? Did he reflect that it was utter madness in
_him_ to love the dean's daughter? It was nothing less than madness; and
there were odd moments when the truth, that it was so, rose up in his
mind, turning his whole soul to faintness.

And she, Georgina Beauclerc? She liked Henry Arkell very much indeed;
she took pleasure in being with him, in talking with him, in _flirting_
with him; she was conscious of a degree of pride when the handsome boy
walked, as now, by her side; she encouraged his too-evident admiration
for her; _but she did not love him_. She loved another too deeply to
have any love left for him.

And she was so utterly careless of consequences. Had it been suggested
to Miss Beauclerc that she was doing a wrong thing, bordering upon a
wicked one, in thus trifling with that school-boy's heart, she would
have laughed in very glee, and thought it fun. Though she must have
known, if she ever took the trouble to glance forward, that in the years
to come, did things continue as they were now, and Henry Arkell told his
love to the ear, as well as to the eye and heart, the explosion must
have place, and he would know how he had been deceived. What would her
excuse be? that she liked him; that she liked his companionship; that
she could not afford to reject his admiration? The gratification of the
present moment was paramount with Georgina.

But what was Mrs. Beauclerc about, to suffer this? Mrs. Beauclerc! Had
her daughter flirted with the whole forty king's scholars on a string,
and the head master's private pupils to boot, she would never have seen
it; no, nor understood it if pointed out to her. Her daughter was Miss
Beauclerc, a young lady of high degree, and the college boys were
inferior young animals with whom it was utterly impossible Georgina
could possess anything in common.

"But how did you get in here, Harry?" began Miss Beauclerc, slipping the
locket on her chain. "Has crusty old Williams gone to sleep this
evening?"

"The bishop brought me in. He has given Williams orders that I am to be
admitted here."

"Has he? What a glorious fellow! I'll give him ten kisses for that, as I
used to do when I was a little girl. And now, pray, what became of you
this afternoon? You said you should be in the cloisters."

"I know. I could not get out. I was doing Greek with my father."

"Doing Greek! It's always that. 'Doing Greek,' or 'doing Latin,' it's
nothing else with you everlastingly. What a wretched pedant you'll be,
Harry Arkell!"

"Never, I hope. But you know I _must_ study; I have only my talents to
depend upon for advancement in life; and my father, his heart is set on
seeing me a bril--a good scholar."

"You are a brilliant scholar already," grumbled Georgina, bringing out
the word which his modesty had left unspoken. "There's no reason why you
should be at your books morning, noon, and night. I always said Mr.
Peter Arkell was a martinet from the first hour he came to drill
literature into me. Which he couldn't accomplish."

"The school meets in a week or two, you know, and----"

"Tiresome young reptiles!" interjected Miss Beauclerc. "We are quieter
without them."

"And I must make the best use of my holidays for study," continued
Henry. "They wish me to get to Oxford early."

"Goodness me! you might go now, if that's what you mean; you know
enough. Harry, I do hope when you are ordained you'll get some high
preferment."

"Such luck is not for me, Miss Beauclerc. I may never get beyond a
curacy; or at most a minor canonry."

"Nonsense, and double nonsense! With the influential friends you may
count even now! You know that everybody makes much of you. I should like
to see you dean of this cathedral."

"And you----" Henry stopped in time. A tempting vision had mentally
arisen, and for the moment led him out of himself. Did Georgina scent
the treason, all but uttered? She resumed volubly, hastily--

"I have a great mind to tell you something; I think I will. But don't
you let it go farther, Henry, for it is a secret as yet. There's going
to be a school examination."

"No!" exclaimed Henry, some consternation in his tone.

"Why! are you afraid of it?"

"I am not. But I was thinking how very unfit the school is to stand it.
What will Mr. Wilberforce say?"

"There's the fun," cried Georgina in glee. "When I heard papa talking of
this, I said it would drive the head master's senses upside down. The
dean and chapter are going to introduce all sorts of improvements into
the school."

"What can have set them on to it!" exclaimed Henry, unable to recover
his surprise and concern.

"The spelling, I think," said Georgina, pursing up her pretty mouth.
"Jocelyn--and he'll be the senior boy this next half, you know--wrote a
letter to his aunt; she rents her house and land under old Meddler, and
knows the Meddlers--visits them, in fact. What should she do but take
the letter to old Meddler, and asked him whether it was not a disgrace
to any civilized community. Old Meddler kept the letter and brought it
here, when he came into residence last week, and showed it to papa.
There were not ten words spelt right in it. Altogether, there's going to
be something or other done. But I'm sure you need not look so concerned
over it, Henry Arkell; you are safe."

"I am safe. Yes, thanks to my father, I have enjoyed great advantages.
But I am thinking of the others."

"Serve them right! They are a lazy set. Papa said, 'I should think Henry
Arkell does not write like this!' _I_ could have answered that, you
know, had I chosen to bring out some of your letters."

There was a pause of silence. The tone had been significant, and his
poor heart was beating wildly. "What a lovely rose!" he exclaimed, when
the silence had become painful. "I wish I dare pluck it!"

"Dare! Nonsense! Pluck it if you wish."

"I thought it was forbidden to touch the flowers here!"

"So it is," said Georgina, snapping off the rose, one of the variegated
species, and a great beauty. "But I do as I please. I would pluck all
the flowers in the garden for two pins, just to see the old gardener's
dismay."

"What would the visitors say to you?"

"Bow to me, and wish they dare perform such feats. Pshaw! I am the
dean's daughter. Here, Harry, I will make you a present of it."

She threw the rose into his hand as she spoke, and she saw what the gift
was to him.

"What shall you do with it, Harry?"

"Had I plucked the rose myself, I should have given it to my mother. I
shall keep it now--keep it for ever. I may not," he added, lowering his
tone, and speaking, as it were, to himself, "part with your gifts."

Georgina laughed lightly, an _encouraging_ laugh.

Oh! it was wrong; wrong of her to act so. They reached the end of the
shady walk and turned again.

"How long are you going to remain in that precious choir?" resumed
Georgina, "wasting your time for the public benefit."

"Mr. St. John put the very same question to me this morning. He----"

"Mr. St. John!" she interrupted, in startling, nay, wild impulse, and
her face became one glow of excitement. "But what do you mean?" she
added, subsiding into calmness as recollection returned to her. "He is
not in Westerbury."

The words, the emotion, told their own tale; and their true meaning
flashed upon his brain. It was an era in the unhappy boy's life. How was
it that he had been blind all these years?

"You take a strange interest in him, Miss Beauclerc," and there seemed
to be no life left in his pale face, as he turned to her with the
question.

"For another's sake," she evasively answered. "I told you some time ago
Frederick St. John was in love with _her_."

He knew to whom she alluded. "Do you think it _likely_ that he is, Miss
Beauclerc?"

"If he's not in love with herself, he is in love with her beauty," said
Georgina, with a laugh. "But you know what the popular belief is--that
the heir of the St. Johns, whatever he may do with his love, may only
give his hand to his cousin, Lady Anne."

"I hope it is so. She is the nicest girl, and he deserves a good wife. I
used to sing duets with her when she was last at the Palmery."

"Oh!" said Georgina, turning her pretty nose into the air, "and so you
fell in love with her."

"No," replied Henry; "my love was not mine to give."

Another pause. Georgina snatched a second flower--a carnation this
time--and began pulling it to pieces.

"I suppose you heard from him this morning?"

"Yes."

"And where is he now?"

"In Spain. But he talks of coming home."

He stole a glance at her; at the loving light that shone in her bright
blue eyes; at the soft glow, red as the carnation she was despoiling, on
her conscious cheek. _Why_ did he not read the signs in all their full
meaning? Why did hope struggle with the conviction that would have
arisen in his heart?

"Have you his letter?"

"Yes; you can read it if you like. There are no secrets. I have told him
that Miss Beauclerc was fond of looking at his letters. He is
enthusiastic, as usual, on the subject of pictures."

She closed her hand upon the foreign-looking letter which he took from
his jacket pocket to give to her. "I will take it home with me, and
return it to you to-morrow; I can't read it now. And, Harry, I am going
back to my party, or perhaps they'll be setting the crier to work. Mind
you don't breathe a word of that school examination: it would not do.
But I tell things to you that I'd not tell to anybody else in the
world."

She ran away up a side path, and Henry made his way to the more
frequented part of the garden. It happened that he found himself again
with the bishop; and the prelate laid his hand, as before, on the
shoulder of the handsome boy, and kept him at his side.

Mrs. Peter Arkell had not grown better with years; on the contrary, the
weakness in the back was greater, and her health in other ways began to
fail. A residence of some weeks at the sea-side was deemed essential for
her; absolutely necessary, said her medical attendant, Mr. Lane: and
indeed it was not much less necessary for Peter Arkell himself, who was
always ill now. His state of health told heavily upon them. He had been
obliged to give up a great portion of his teaching; and but for his
ever-ready friend and relative, Mr. Arkell, whose hand was always open,
and for certain five-pound notes that came sometimes in Mildred's
letters, Peter had not the remotest idea how he should have got along.
This going to the sea-side would have been quite out of the question,
but that they had met with a fortunate chance of letting their house for
two months, to a family desirous of coming to Westerbury. Lucy, of
course, would go with them; but the question was--what was to be done
with Henry? Travice Arkell, in his impulsive good nature, said he must
stop with them, and Mr. Arkell confirmed it. Henry supposed he must, but
he felt sure it would not be palatable to Mrs. Arkell.

Travice Arkell was in partnership with his father now. At the time of
his leaving school there had been a visible improvement in the prospects
of the manufacturers, and Mr. Arkell yielded to his son's wish to join
him, and hoped that the good times were coming back again. But the
improvement had not lasted long; and Mr. Arkell was wont to say that
Travice had cast in his lot with a sinking ship. The designation of the
firm had never been altered; it was still "George Arkell and Son." Times
fluctuated very much. Just now again there was a slight improvement; and
altogether Mr. Arkell was still upon the balance, to give up business or
not to give it up, as he had been for so many years.

Henry walked home from the Bishop's Garden, with the strange emotion
displayed by Georgina Beauclerc, at the mention of Mr. St. John, telling
upon his memory and his heart. Lucy met him at the door, her sweet face
radiant.

"Oh, Henry! such news! News in two ways. I don't know which to tell you
first. One part concerns you."

"Tell me that first, then," said he, laughing.

"You are not to be at Mr. Arkell's while we are away. You are to be
at----guess where."

"I can't guess at all. I don't know anybody who'd have me."

"At the master's."

His eye lightened as he looked up.

"Am I? I am so glad! Is it true, Lucy?"

"It is quite true. Mr. Wilberforce saw mamma at the window, and came in
to ask her how she was, and when she went, and all that. Mamma said how
puzzled she had been what to do with you, but it was decided now you
were to go to Mr. Arkell's. So then the master said he thought you had
better go to him, and he should be most happy to invite you there for
the time, no matter how long we remained away; and when mamma attempted
to say something about the great kindness, he interrupted her, saying
you had always been so good a pupil, and given him so little trouble,
and did him altogether so much credit, that he should consider the
obligation was on his side. So it is quite decided, Harry, and you are
to go there."

"That's good news, then. And what's the other, Lucy?"

"Ah! the other concerns me. It is good, too."

"Are you going to be married?"

The question was but spoken in jest, and Henry wondered to see his
sister's face change; but she only shook her head and laughed.

"Eva Prattleton is to accompany us to the sea-side."

"Eva Prattleton!"

"Mr. Prattleton came in just after the master left," resumed Lucy. "He
said he had come with a petition: would mamma take charge of Eva to the
sea-side, and let her go with us? He had intended--you know we heard of
it, Harry--to take his two daughters to Switzerland this summer for a
treat; but he begins to fear that Eva will not be equal to the
travelling, for she's not strong, and a little thing fatigues her; and
he thinks a month or two of quiet at the sea-side would do her more
good. So _that's_ arranged as well as the other."

"And what will Mary do?"

"Oh, she goes to Switzerland with her papa. He has not given up his
journey. The two boys are to stay at home, and George Prattleton's to
take care of them."

Henry laughed. The idea of Mr. George Prattleton's taking care of the
boys struck him as being something ludicrous.

"But what do you think mamma says?" added Lucy, dropping her voice. "The
terms hinted at by Mr. Prattleton for Eva were so liberal, that mamma
feels sure he is doing this as much to make our sojourn there more easy
to us, as for Eva's benefit; though she is not well, of course, and
never has been since her mother's death; the grief then seemed to take
such a hold upon her. How kind to us the Prattletons have always been!"

Henry mentally echoed the words--for they were true ones--all
unconscious that a time was quickly approaching when he should have to
repay this kindness with something very like ingratitude.




CHAPTER II.

THE TOUR OF DAVID DUNDYKE, ESQUIRE.


Perhaps of all the changes time had wrought, in those connected with our
history, not one was more remarkable than that in Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke,
in regard to their position in the world. They had changed in themselves
of course; we all change; and were now middle-aged people of some
five-and-forty years: Mr. Dundyke being red and portly; his wife, thin
and meek as ever.

Little by little, step by step, had David Dundyke risen in the world.
There had come a day when he was made a fourth partner in that famous
tea-importing house, with which he had been so long connected. He was
now the third partner, and his income was a large one. There had also
come a day when he was elected a common councilman (I am not sure but
this has been previously mentioned), and now the old longing, the height
of his ambition, was really and truly dawning upon him. In the
approaching autumn he was to be proposed for sheriff; and _that_, as we
all know, leads in time to the civic chair.

You will readily understand that it was not at all consistent for a
partner in a wealthy tea house, and a common councilman rising into note
and attending the civic feasts, to remain the tenant of two humble
rooms. Mr. Dundyke had made a change long ago. He and his wife, clinging
still to apartments, as being less trouble, and also less expense on the
whole, had moved into handsome ones; and there they remained for some
years. But the prospect of the shrievalty demanded something more; and
latterly Mr. Dundyke had taken a handsome villa at Brixton, had
furnished it well, and set himself up there with two maid servants and a
footman. In some degree his old miserly habits were on him still, and he
rarely spent where he could save, or launched into any extravagance
unless he had an end in view in doing it; but he had never very much
loved money for its own sake alone, only as means to an end.

His great care, now that the glorious end was near, was to blazon forth
his importance. He wanted the world (_his_ little world) to forget what
he had been; to forget the pinching and saving, the poor way of living,
the red-herring dinners, and the past in general. He did what he could
to blot out the past in the present. He looked out for correspondents
to address him as "esquire;" and he took to wear a ring with a crest
upon it.

In this very month of July, when you saw Henry Arkell and the dean's
daughter walking in the Bishop's Garden--and a very hot July it was--Mr.
Dundyke came to the decision of taking a tour. What first put it into
his unfortunate head to do so, his wife never knew; though she asked
herself the question afterwards many and many a time. He debated the
point with himself, to go or not to go, some little while; balancing the
advantages against the drawbacks. On the one hand, it would cost time
and money; on the other, it would certainly be another stepping-stone in
his advancing greatness, the more especially if he could get the _Post_
or some other fashionable organ to announce the departure of "David
Dundyke, Esquire, and Lady, on a Continental tour."

One sultry afternoon, when Mrs. Dundyke was sewing in her own
sitting-room, he returned home somewhat earlier than usual.

"My mind is made up, Mrs. Dundyke," he said, before he had had time to
look round, as he came in, wiping his hot brows. "I told you I thought I
should go that tour; and I mean to start as soon as we have fixed upon
our route. It must be somewhere foreign."

Mr. Dundyke's intellectual improvement had not advanced in an equal
ratio with his fortunes; he called tour tower, and route rout. Indeed,
he spoke almost exactly as he used to speak.

"Foreign!" echoed Mrs. Dundyke, somewhat aghast. Her geographical
knowledge had always been imperfect and confused; the retired life she
led, occupied solely in domestic affairs, had not tended to enlarge it;
and the word "foreign" suggested to her mind extremely remote parts of
the globe--the two poles and Cape Horn. "Foreign?"

"One can't travel anywhere now that's not foreign, Betsey," returned Mr.
Dundyke, testily. "One can't humdrum up and down England in a
stage-coach, as one used to do."

"True; but you said foreign. You don't mean America--or China--or any of
those parts, do you, David?"

"It's never of no use talking to you about anything, Mrs. D.," said the
common-councilman, in wrath. "Chinar! Why, it would be a life-journey! I
shall go to Geneva."

"But, David, is not that very far?" she asked. "Where is it? Over in
Greece, or Turkey, or some of those places."

"It is in Switzerland, Mrs. D. The tip-top quality go to it, and I mean
to go. It will cost a good deal, I know; but I can stand that."

"And how shall we manage to talk Swiss?"

"There is no Swiss," answered Mr. Dundyke. "The language spoke there is
French; the guide-book says so."

"It will be the same to us, David," she mildly said; "we cannot speak
French."

"I know that 'we' means 'yes,' and 'no' means 'no.' We shall rub on well
enough with that. So get all my stockings and shirts seen to, Betsey,
and your own things; for the day after to-morrow I shall be off."

His wife looked up, not believing in the haste. But it proved true,
nevertheless; for Mr. Dundyke had a motive in it. On the morning but one
after, an excursion opposition steamer was advertised to start for
Boulogne--fares, half-a-crown; return-tickets, four shillings. Of course
David Dundyke could not let so favourable an opportunity slip; he still
saved where he could.

Accordingly, on the said morning, which was very squally, they found
themselves on the crowded boat. Such a sight! such a motley freight!
Half London, as it seemed, had been attracted by the cheapness; but it
was by no means a fashionable assemblage, nor yet a refined one.

"I hear somebody saying we shall have it rough, David," whispered Mrs.
Dundyke, as they sat side by side, and the vessel passed Greenwich. "I
hope we shall not be sea-sick."

"Pooh! sea-sick! we shan't be sea-sick!" imperiously cried the sheriff
in prospective, as he turned his ring, now assumed for good, to the
front of all beholders. "I don't believe in sea-sickness for my part. We
did not feel sick when we went to Gravesend; you remember that, don't
you, Betsey? It is more brag than anything else with people, talking
about sea-sickness, that's my belief; a genteel way of letting out that
they can afford to be travellers."

Excepting that one trip to Gravesend, of which he spoke, neither he nor
his wife had ever been on the water in their lives. Neither of them had
seen the sea. They had possessed really no inclination to stir from
home; and _saving_ had been, the ruling motive in David Dundyke's life.

The steamer went on. The river itself growing rough at Gravesend, the
dead-lights were put in; and as they got nearer to the sea, the wind was
freshening to a gale. Oh, the good steamer! will she ever live through
it? The unbelieving common-councilman, to his horror and dismay, found
sea-sickness was not a _brag_. He lay on the floor of the cabin,
groaning, and moaning, and bewailing his ill fate in having come to sea.

"Heaven forgive me for having thought of this foreign tour! Steward! He
stops up with them outsiders on deck! Heavens! Steward! Call him,
somebody! Tell him it's for a common-councilman!"

Mrs. Dundyke was in the ladies' cabin--very ill, but very quiet. A
dandy-looking man, impervious to the miseries of the passage, who had
nothing to do but gape and yawn, took a sudden look in, by way of
gratifying his curiosity, and, having done so, withdrew again--not,
however, before one of the lady passengers had marked him. She took him
for the captain.

"Capting! capting!" she called out; "if you please is that the capting?"

"Which?--where?" asked the steward's boy, to whom the question was
addressed, turning round with a glass of brandy-and-water in his hand,
which he was presenting to another lady, groaning up aloft in a berth.

"He came in at the door; he have got on tan kid gloves and shiny boots."

"_That_ the captain!" cried the boy, gratified beyond everything at the
lady's notion of a captain's rigging. "No, ma'am, he's up on deck."

"Just call the captain here, will you?" resumed the lady; "I know we are
going down. I'm never ill aboard these horrid boats; but I'm worse, I'm
dreadful timid."

"There ain't no danger, ma'am," said the boy.

"I know there _is_ danger, and I know we are a going to be emerged to
the bottom. If you'll call the capting down here, boy, I'll give you
sixpence; and if you don't call him, I'll have you punished for
insolence."

"Call him directly, ma'am," said the boy, rushing off with alacrity.

"I am the captain," exclaimed a rough voice, proceeding from a rough
head, poking itself down the companion ladder; "what's wanted of me?"

"Oh! capting, we are going to the fishes fast! and some of us is dead of
fright already. The vessel'll be in pieces presently! see how she rolls
and pitches! and there's the sea dashing over the decks and against them
boards at the windows, such as I never heard it; and all that awful
crashing and cording, what is it?"

"There ain't no danger," shortly answered the commander, mentally vowing
to punch the boy's head for calling him for nothing.

"Can't you put back, and land us somewhere, or take us into smooth
water?" implored the petitioner; "we'd subscribe for a reward for you,
capting, sir."

"Oh, yes, yes," echoed a faint chorus of voices; "any reward."

"There's no danger whatever, I tell ye, ladies," repeated the
exasperated captain. "When we've got round this bit of headland, we
shall have the wind at our starn, and go ahead as if the dickens druv
us."

With this consolatory information, the rough head turned round and
vanished. The grinning boy came out of a corner where he had hid
himself, and appealed to the lady for his promised sixpence.

"I know we are going down!" she cried, as she fumbled in her bag for
one. "That capting ought to lose his place for saying there's no danger;
to me it's apparent to be seen. If he'd any humanity in him, he'd put
back and land us somewhere, if 'twas only on the naked shore. Good
mercy! what a lurch!--and now we're going to t'other side. No danger
indeed! And all my valuable luggage aboard: my silk gownds, and my
shawls, and my new lace mantle! Good gracious, ma'am, don't pitch out of
your berth! you'll fall atop of me. Can't you hold on? What were hands
made for?"

Some hours more yet, and then the steward, who had been whisking and
whirling like one possessed, now on deck, now in the cabins, and now in
his own especial sanctum, amid his tin jugs and his broken crockery,
came whirling in once more to the large cabin, and said they were at the
mouth of Boulogne harbour. "Just one pitch more, ladies and
gentlemen--there it is--and now we are in the port, safe and sound."

"Don't talk to me about being in," cried poor Mr. Dundyke, from his
place on the floor, not quite sure yet whether he was dead or alive, but
rather believing he'd prefer to be the former. "Please don't step upon
me, anybody. I couldn't stir yet."

All minor disasters of the journey overcome, the travellers reached
Paris in safety. So far, Mr. Dundyke had found no occasion to rub on
with his "we" and "no," for he encountered very few people who were not
able to speak, or at least understand, a little English. But when they
quitted Paris--and they remained in it but two days--then their
difficulties commenced; and many were the distresses, and furious the
fits of anger, of the common-councilman. It pleased Mr. Dundyke to
travel by diligence on cross-country roads, rather than take the rail to
Lyons--of which rail, and of all rails, he had a sort of superstitious
dread--but this he found easy to do, though it caused him to be somewhat
longer on the road. Here his tongue was at fault. He wanted to know the
names of the towns and villages they passed through, the meaning of any
puzzling object of wonder he saw on his way, and he could not ask; or,
rather, he did ask repeatedly, but the answers conveyed to his ears only
an unmeaning sound. It vexed him excessively.

"I don't think they understand you, David," Mrs. Dundyke said to him one
day.

"And how should they understand, speaking nothing but heathen
gibberish?" he returned. "It's enough to make a saint swear."

Another source of annoyance was the living. Those who have travelled by
diligence in the more remote parts of France, and sat down to the
tables-d'hote at the road-side inns where the diligence halted, and
remember the scrambling haste observed, may imagine the distresses of
Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke. In common with their countrymen in general, they
partook strongly of the national horror of frog-eating, and also of the
national conviction that that delicate animal furnished the component
parts of at least every second dish served up in France: so that it was
little short of martyrdom to be planted down to a dinner, where half the
dishes, for all the information they gave to the eye, might be composed
of frogs, or something equally obnoxious. There would be the bouilli
first, but Mr. Dundyke, try as he would, could not swallow it, although
he had once dined on red-herrings; and there would be a couple of skinny
chickens, drying on a dish of watercress, but before _he_ could hope, in
his English deliberation, to get at them, they were snapped up and
devoured. Few men liked good living better than David Dundyke,--how
else would he have been fit to become one of the renowned metropolitan
body-corporate?--and when it was to be had at anybody else's cost, none
enjoyed it more. At these tables-d'hote, eat or not eat, he had to pay,
and bitter and frequent were the heartburnings at throwing away his good
money, yet rising up with an empty stomach. Not a tenth part of the
cravings of hunger did he and his wife ever satisfy at these miserable
tables-d'hote. The very idea of but the minutest portion of a frog's leg
going into their mouths, was more repulsive to their minds than that
shuddering reminiscence of the steam-packet; and, what with this dread,
and their inability to ask questions, Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke were nearly
starved.

One day in particular it was very sad. They had halted at an inn in a
good-sized town, not very far distant from Lyons. While the soup and
bouilli were being devoured, the two unfortunates ate a stray radish or
two, when up bustled the waiter with a funny-looking dish, its contents
wonderfully like what a roast-beef eater might suppose cooked frogs to
be, and presented it to Mr. Dundyke.

"What's this?" inquired Mr. Dundyke, delicately adventuring the tip of a
fork towards the suspicious-looking compound, by way of indicating the
nature of his question.

"Plait-il, monsieur?"

"This, _this_," rapping the edge of the dish with the fork; "what is it
made of? what do you call it?"

"Une fricassee de petits pigeons, a l'oseille, monsieur," replied the
discerning waiter.

Poor Mr. Dundyke pushed the dish away from him with a groan. "Une
fricassee de petits pigeons, a l'oseille" in French, might be "Stewed
frogs" in English.

"What was all that green mess in the dish?" asked his wife.

"The saints know," groaned the common-councilman. "Perhaps it's the
fashion here to cook frogs in their own rushes."

Up came the waiter with another dish, that attentive functionary
observing that the Monsieur Anglais ate nothing. A solid piece of meat,
with little white ends sticking out of it, rising out of another bed of
green. "Oseille" is much favoured in these parts of France.

"Whatever's this?" ejaculated the common-councilman, eyeing the dish
with wondering suspicion. "It's as much like a porkipine as anything I
ever saw. What d'ye call it?" rapping the edge of the dish as before.

"Foie-de-veau larde, a l'oseille, monsieur."

The common-councilman was as wise as before, and sat staring at it.

"It can't be frogs, David, this can't," suggested Mrs. Dundyke, "it is
too large and solid; and I don't think it's any foreign animal. It looks
to me like veal. Veal, waiter?" she asked, appealingly.

"Oui, madame," was the answer, at a venture.

"And the green stuff round it is spinach, of course. Veal and spinach,
my dear."

"That's good, that is, veal and spinach. I'll try it," said Mr. Dundyke.

He helped himself plentifully, and, pushing the dish to his wife,
voraciously took the first mouthful, for he was fearfully hungry.

It was a rash proceeding. What in the world had he got hold of! Veal and
spinach!--Heaven protect him from poison! It was some horrible, soft
compound, sharp and sour; it turned him sick at once, and set his teeth
on edge. He became very pale, and called faintly for the waiter.

But the garcon had long ago whisked off to other parts of the room, and
there was Mr. Dundyke obliged to sit with that nauseous mystery
underneath his very nose.

"Waiter!" he roared out at length, with all the outraged dignity of a
common-councilman, "I say, waiter! For the love of goodness take this
away: it's only fit for pigs. There's a dish there, with two little
ducks upon it, and some carrots round 'em--French ducks I suppose they
are: an Englishman might shut up shop if _he_ placed such on his table.
Bring it here."

"Plait-il, monsieur?"

"Them ducks--there--at the top, by the pickled cowcumbers. I'll take
one."

The waiter ranged his perplexed eyes round and round the table. "Pardon,
monsieur, plait-il?"

"I think you are an idiot, I do!" roared out Mr. Dundyke, unable to keep
both his hunger and his temper. "That dish of ducks, I said, and it is
being seized upon! They are tearing them to pieces! they are gone! Good
Heavens! are we to famish like this?"

The waiter, in despair, laid hold of a slice of melon in one hand and
the salt and pepper in the other, and presented them.

"The man _is_ an idiot!" decided the exasperated Englishman. "What does
he mean by offering me melon for dinner, and salt and pepper to season
it?--that's like their putting sugar to their peas! I want something
that I can eat," he cried, piteously.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est que je peux vous offrir, monsieur?" asked the
agonized garcon.

"Don't you see we want something to eat," retorted the gentleman; "this
lady and myself? We can't touch any of the trash on the table. Get us
some mutton chops cooked."

"Pardon, monsieur, plait-il?"

"Some--mut--ton--chops," repeated the common-councilman, very
deliberately, thinking that the slower he spoke, the better he should be
understood. "And let 'em look sharp about it."

The waiter sighed and shrugged, and, after pushing the bread and butter
and young onions within reach, moved away, giving up the matter as a
hopeless job.

"Let's peg away at this till the chops come," cried Mr. Dundyke. And in
the fallacious hope that the chops _were_ coming, did the unconscious
couple "peg" away till the driver clacked his long whip, and summoned
his passengers to resume their seats in the diligence.

"I have had nothing to eat," screamed Mr. Dundyke. "They are doing me
some mutton chops. I can't go yet."

"Deux diners, quatre francs, une bouteille de vin, trente sous," said
the waiter in Mr. Dundyke's ear. "Fait cinq francs, cinquante,
monsieur."

"Fetch my mutton chops," he implored; "we can't go without them: we can
eat them in the diligence."

"Allons! depechons-nous, messieurs et dames," interrupted the conductor,
looking in, impatiently. "Prenez vos places. Nous sommes en retard."

"They are swindlers, every soul of them, in this country," raved the
common-councilman, passionately throwing down the money, when he could
be made to comprehend its amount, and that there were no chops to come.
"How dare you be so dishonest as charge for dinners we don't eat."

"I am faint now for the want of something," bewailed poor Mrs. Dundyke.

"If ever I am caught out of Old England again," he sobbed, climbing to
his place in the diligence, "I'll give 'em leave to make a Frenchman of
me, that's all."




CHAPTER III.

A MEETING AT GRENOBLE.


They arrived at Lyons; but here Mr. Dundyke's total ignorance of the
language led him into innumerable misapprehensions and mishaps, not the
least of which was his going from Lyons to Grenoble, thinking all the
time that he was on the shortest and most direct road to Switzerland.
This was in consequence of his rubbing on with "we" and "no." They had
arrived at Lyons late in the evening, and after a night's rest, Mr.
Dundyke found his way to the coach-office, to take places on to
Switzerland. There happened to be standing before the office door a huge
diligence, with the word "Grenoble" painted on it.

"I want to engage a place in a diligence; two places; direct for
Switzerland," began Mr. Dundyke; "in a diligence like that," pointing to
the great machine.

"You spoke French, von littel, sare?" asked the clerk, who could himself
speak a very little imperfect English.

"We," cried Mr. Dundyke, eagerly, not choosing to betray his ignorance.

Accordingly, the official proceeded to jabber on in French, and Mr.
Dundyke answered at intervals of hazard "we" and "no."

"Vous desirez aller a Grenoble, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?" remarked the
clerk.

"We," cried out Mr. Dundyke at random.

"Combien de places, monsieur?"

"We," repeated the gentleman again.

"I do demande of the monsieur how few of place?" said the official,
suspecting his French was not understood quite so well as it might be.

"Two places for Switzerland," answered Mr. Dundyke. "I'm going on to
Geneva, in a diligence like that."

"C'est ca. The monsieur desire to go to Gren-haub; et encore jusqu'a
Geneve--on to Geneva."

"We," rapturously responded the common-councilman.

"I do comprends. Two place in the Gren-haub diligence. Vill the monsieur
go by dat von?" pointing to the one at the door. "She do go in de half
hour."

"Not that one," retorted Mr. Dundyke, impatient at the clerk's obscure
English. "I said in one like that, later."

"Yes, sare, I comprends now. You would partir by anoder von like her,
the next one that parts. Vill you dat I retienne two place for
Gren-haub?"

"We, we," responded Mr. Dundyke. "Two places. My wife's with me, Mrs.
D.: I'm a common-councilman, sir, at home. Two places for Gren-haub.
Corner ones, mind: in the interior."

"C'est bien, monsieur. She goes a six of de hours."

"She! Who?"

"The diligence, I do say."

"Oh," said the common-councilman to himself, "they call coaches 'she's'
in this country. I wonder what they call women. Six hours you say we
shall take going."

"Oui, monsieur," answered the clerk, without quite understanding the
question, "il faut venir a six heures."

"And when does it start?"

"What you ask, sare?"

"_She_--the diligence--at what o'clock does it start for Gren-haub?"

"I do tell de sare at de six of de hours dis evening."

"We'll be here a quarter afore it then: never was late for anything in
my life. Gren-haub's a little place, I suppose, sir, as it's not in my
guide-book?"

"Comme ca," said the clerk, shrugging his shoulders. "She's not von
Lyon."

"Who's she?" exclaimed the bewildered Mr. Dundyke; "who's not a lion?"

"Gren-haub, sare. I thought you did ask about her."

"The asses that these French make of themselves when they attempt to
converse in English!" ejaculated the common-councilman. "Who's to
understand him?"

He turned away, and went back to the hotel in glee, dreadfully
unconscious that he had booked himself for Grenoble, and imagining that
Gren-haub (as the word Grenoble in the Frenchman's mouth sounded to his
English ears) must be the first town on the Swiss frontiers. "It's an
awkward hour, though, to get in at," he deliberated: "six hours, that
fellow said we should be, going: that will make it twelve at night when
we get to the place. Things are absurdly managed in this country." This
was another mistake of his: the anticipated six hours necessary, as he
fancied, to convey him from Lyons to "Gren-haub," would prove at least
sixteen.

At the appointed hour Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke took their seats in the
diligence, which began its journey and went merrily on; at least as
merrily as a French diligence, of the average weight and size, can be
expected to go. Mr. Dundyke was merry, too, for him; for he had
fortified himself with a famous dinner before starting: none of your
frogs and rushes and "oseille," but rosbif saignant, and pommes de terre
au naturel, specially ordered. Both the travellers had done it ample
justice, and seasoned it with some hot brandy-and-water; Mr. Dundyke
taking two glasses and making his wife take one. Therefore it was not
surprising that both should sink, about nine o'clock, into a sound
sleep. They had that compartment of the coach, called the interieur, to
themselves, and could recline almost at full length; and so comfortable
were they, that all the various changing of horses and clackings of the
whip failed to arouse them.

Not until six o'clock in the morning did Mr. Dundyke open his eyes, and
then only partially. He was in the midst of the most delicious
dream--riding in that coveted coach, all gilt and gingerbread, on a
certain 9th of November to come, moving in stately dignity through
Cheapside, amidst the plaudits of little boys, the crowding of windows,
and the arduous exertions of policemen to preserve order in the admiring
mob; sitting with the mace and sword-bearer beside him, _his_ mace and
sword-bearer! Mr. Dundyke had been pleased that his sleep, with such a
dream, had lasted for ever, and he unwillingly aroused himself to
reality.

It was broad daylight; the sun was shining with all the glorious beauty
of a summer morning, shining right into the diligence, and roasting the
face of the common-councilman. He rubbed his eyes and wondered where he
was. Recollection began to whisper that when he had gone to sleep the
previous evening it was dusk, and that ere that dusk had well subsided
into the darkness of midnight he had expected to be at his destination,
"Gren-haub;" whereas--was he asleep still, and dreaming it?--or was it
really morning, and he still in the diligence?--or had some unexampled
phenomenon of nature caused the sun to shine out at midnight? WHAT was
it? In the greatest perturbation he tore his watch from his pocket, and
found it was five minutes past six; but he knew that he was rather
slower than French time.

A fine hubbub ensued. Mr. Dundyke startled his wife up in such a fright,
that he nearly sent her into fits: he roared out to the coachman, he
called for the conductor: he shook the doors, he knocked at the windows:
he caused the utmost consternation amongst the quiet passengers in the
rotonde and banquette, and woke up a deaf old gentleman in the coupe,
who all thought he had gone suddenly mad. The diligence was stopped in
haste, and out of the door rushed Mr. Dundyke.

"Where were they taking him to? Why had they not left him at Gren-haub?
Did they know he was a common-councilman of the great city of London, a
brother of the Lord Mayor and aldermen? How dared they run away with him
and his wife in that style? _Where_ were they carrying him to? Were they
going to smuggle him off to Turkey or any of them heathen places to sell
him for a slave? They must turn round forthwith, and drive him back to
Gren-haub."

All this, and a great deal more of it, delivered in the English tongue
and interspersed with not a few English expletives, was as Greek to the
astonished lookers-on; and when they had sufficiently exercised their
curiosity and stared at the enraged speaker, standing there without his
hat, stamping his feet in the dust, and gesticulating more like a
Frenchman than a stout specimen of John Bull, they all let loose their
tongues together, in a jargon equally incomprehensible to the distressed
Englishman. In vain did Mr. Dundyke urge their return to "Gren-haub,"
now with angry fury, now with tears, now with promises of reward; in
vain the other side demanded to know what was the matter, and tried to
coax him into the diligence. Not a word could one party understand of
the other.

"Montez, monsieur; montez, mon pauvre monsieur. Dieu! qu'est-ce qu'il a?
Montez, donc!"

Not a bit of it. Mr. Dundyke would not have mounted till now, save by
main force. It took the conductor and three passengers to push and
condole him in; and indeed they never would have accomplished it, but
for the sudden dread that flashed over his mind of what would become of
him if he were left there in the road, hatless, hopeless, and
Frenchless, while his wife and his luggage and the diligence went on to
unknown regions. Some of those passengers, if you could come across them
now, would give you a dolorous history of the pauvre monsieur Anglais
who went raving mad one summer's morning in the diligence.

There was little haste or punctuality in those old days of French
posting--driver, conductor, passengers, and horses all liking to take
their own leisure; and it was not far off twelve o'clock at noon, six
hours after the morning's incomprehensible scene, and eighteen from the
time of departure from Lyons, that the lazy old diligence reached its
destination, and Mr. Dundyke discovered that he was in Grenoble. How he
would ever have found his way out of it, and on the road to Switzerland,
must be a question, had not an Englishman, a young man, apparently in
delicate health, who was sojourning in the town, fortunately chanced to
be in the diligence yard, and heard Mr. Dundyke's fruitless exclamations
and appeals, as he alighted.

"Can I do anything for you?" asked the stranger, stepping forward. "I
perceive we are countrymen."

Overjoyed at hearing once more his own language, the unhappy traveller
seized the Englishman's hand with a rush of delight, and explained the
prolonged torture he had gone through, and the doubt and dilemma he was
still in--at least as well as he could explain what was to him still a
mystery. "The savages cannot understand me," he concluded politely, "and
of course I cannot be expected to understand them."

Neither could the stranger understand just at first; but with the
conductor's tale on one side and Mr. Dundyke's on the other, he made out
the difficulty, and set things straight for him, and went with him to
the diligence office. No coach started for Chambery, by which route they
must now proceed, till the next morning at nine, so the stranger took
two places for them in that.

"I'm under eternal obligations to you, sir," exclaimed the relieved
traveller, "and if ever I should have it in my power to repay you, be
sure you count on me. It's a common-councilman, sir, that you have
assisted; that's what I am at home, and I'm going on to be Lord Mayor.
You shall have a card for my inauguration dinner, sir, if you are within
fifty miles of me. You will tell me your name, and where you live?"

"My name is Robert Carr," said the stranger. "I am a clergyman. I am
from Holland."

The name struck on a chord of Mrs. Dundyke's memory. It took her back to
the time when she was Betsey Travice, and on a certain visit at
Westerbury. Though not in the habit of putting herself forward when in
her husband's company, she turned impulsively to the stranger now.

"Have you relations at Westerbury, sir? Was your mother's name Hughes?"

"Yes," he said, looking very much surprised. "Both my father and mother
were from Westerbury. I have a grandfather, I believe, living there
still. My mother is dead."

"How very strange!" she exclaimed. "Can you come in this evening to us
at the hotel for half-an-hour?"

"I would, with pleasure, but I leave Grenoble this afternoon," was the
young clergyman's answer. "Can I do anything for you in London?"

"Nothing," said Mrs. Dundyke. "But my husband has given you our address;
and if you will call and see us when we get home----"

"And you'll meet with a hearty welcome, sir," interrupted the
common-councilman, shaking his hand heartily. "I'm more indebted to you
this day than I care to speak."

Mrs. Dundyke watched him out of the yard. He might be about
four-and-twenty; and was of middle height and slightly made, and he
walked away coughing, with his hand upon his chest.

"David," she said to her husband, "I do think he must be a relative of
yours! The Hughes's of Westerbury were related in some way to your
mother."

"I'm sure I don't know," said David Dundyke. "I think I have heard her
talk about them, but I am not sure. Any way I'm obliged to _him_; and
mind, Betsey, if he does come to see us in London, I'll give him a right
good dinner."

Ah, how little! how little do we foresee even a week or two before us!
Never in this world would those two meet again.

And Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke proceeded under convoy to the Hotel des Trois
Dauphins, and made themselves as comfortable for the night as
circumstances and the stinging gnats permitted.

Arriving at Geneva without further let or hindrance, David Dundyke,
Esquire, and his wife, put up at the Hotel des Bergues. And on the
morning afterwards, when Mrs. Dundyke had dressed herself and looked
about her, she felt like a fish out of water. The size of the hotel, the
style pervading it, the inmates she caught chance glimpses of in the
corridors, were all so different from anything poor humble Betsey
Dundyke had been brought into contact with, that she began to feel her
inferiority. And yet she looked like a lady, in her good and neat dress,
and her simple cap half covering her fair and still luxuriant hair. Her
face was red, tanned with the journey; but it was a pleasing and a nice
face yet to look upon.

They descended to the great _salle_ a little before ten. Many groups
were breakfasting there at the long tables; most of them English, as
might be heard by their snatches of quiet conversation. Some of them
possessed an air of distinction and refinement that bespoke their
standing in society. An English servant came in once and accosted his
master as "my lord;" and a plain little body in a black silk gown and
white net cap, was once spoken to as "Lady Jane." Mr. Dundyke had never,
to the best of his knowledge, been in a room with a lord before; had
never but once set eyes on a Lady Jane; and that was King Henry the
Eighth's wife in waxwork; and, alive to his own importance though the
common-councilman was, he felt unpleasantly out of place amidst them. In
spite of his ambition his nature was a modest one.

Scarcely had he and his wife begun breakfast, when a lady and gentleman
came in and took the seats next to him. The stranger was a tall, dark,
rather handsome man; taller than Mr. Dundyke, who was by no means
undersized, and approaching within three or four years to the same age.
But while the common councilman was beginning to get rather round and
puffy, just as an embryo alderman is expected to be, the stranger's form
was remarkable for wiry strength and muscle: in a tussle for life or
death, mark you, reader, the one would be a very child in the handling
of the other.

Mr. Dundyke moved his chair a little to give more room, as they sat
down, and the gentleman acknowledged it with a slight bow of courtesy.
He spoke soon after.

"If you are not using that newspaper, sir," pointing to one that lay
near Mr. Dundyke, "may I trouble you for it?"

"No use to me, sir," said the common-councilman, passing the journal. "I
understand French pretty well when it's spoke, but am scarcely scholar
enough in the language to read it."

"Ah, indeed," replied the stranger. "This, however, is German," he
continued, as he opened the paper.

"Oh--well--they look sufficiently alike in print," observed the
common-councilman. "Slap-up hotel, this seems, sir."

"Comfortable," returned the stranger, carelessly. "You are a recent
arrival, I think."

"Got here last night, sir, by the diligence. We are travelling on
pleasure; taking a holiday."

"There's nothing like an occasional holiday, a temporary relaxation from
the cares of business," remarked the stranger, scanning covertly Mr.
Dundyke. "As I often say."

"I am delighted to hear you say it, sir," exclaimed the
common-councilman, hastily assuming a fact, from the words, which
probably the speaker never thought to convey. "I am in business myself,
sir, and this is the first holiday from it I have ever took: I gather
that you are the same. Nothing so respectable as commercial pursuits: a
London merchant, sir, stands as a prince of the world."

"Respectable and satisfactory both," joined in the stranger. "What
branch of commerce--if you don't deem me impertinent--may you happen to
pursue?"

"I'm a partner in a wholesale tea-house, sir," cried Mr. Dundyke,
flourishing his hand and his ring for the stranger's benefit. "Our
establishment is one of the oldest and wealthiest in Fenchurch-street;
known all over the world, sir, and across the seas from here to Chinar.
And as respected as it is known."

"Sir, allow me to shake hands with you," exclaimed the stranger, warmly.
"To be a member of such a house does you honour."

"And I am a common-councilman," continued Mr. Dundyke, his revelations
increasing with his satisfaction, "rising on fast to be a alderman and
Lord Mayor. No paltry dignity that, sir, to be chief magistrate of the
city of London, and ride to court in a gold and scarlet dress, and
broidered ruffles! I suspect we have got some lords round about us
here," dropping his voice to a still lower key, "but I'm blest, sir, if
I'd change my prospects with any of them. I'm to be put up for sheriff
in October."

"Ah," said the stranger, casting his deep black eyes around, "young
scions with more debts than brains, long pedigrees and short purses,
dealers in post obits and the like--_they_ can't be put in comparison
with a Lord Mayor of London."

"And what line are you in, sir?" resumed the gratified Lord Mayor in
prospective. "From our great city, of course?"

The stranger nodded, but, before he answered, he finished his second
_cotelette_, poured out some wine--for his breakfast disdained the more
effeminate luxuries of tea and coffee--popped a piece of ice in, and
drank it. "Have you heard of the house of Hardcastle and Co.?" he asked,
in a tone meant only for Mr. Dundyke's ear.

"The East India merchants?" exclaimed the latter.

The stranger nodded again.

"Of course I have heard of them: who has not? A firm of incalculable
influence, sir; could buy up half London. What of them?"

"Do you know the partners personally?"

"Never saw any of them in my life," replied Mr. Dundyke. "They are
top-sawyers, they are; a move or two above us city tea-folks. Perhaps
you have the honour of being a clerk in the house, sir?"

"I am Mr. Hardcastle," observed the stranger, smiling.

"Bless my soul, sir!" cried the startled Mr. Dundyke. "I'm sure I beg
pardon for my familiarity. But stop--eh--I thought----"

"Thought what?" asked the stranger, for Mr. Dundyke came to a pause.

"That Mr. Hardcastle was an old man. In fact, the impression on my mind
was, that he was something like seventy."

"Pooh, my dear sir! your thoughts are running on my uncle. He has been
virtually out of the firm these ten years, though his name is still
retained as its head. He is just seventy. A hale, hearty man he is too,
and trots about the grounds of his mansion at Kensington as briskly as
one of his own gardeners. But not a word here of who I am," continued
the gentleman, pointing slightly round the room: "I am travelling
quietly, you understand--_incog._, if one may say so--travelling
without form or expense, in search of a little peace and quietness. I
have not a single attendant with me, nor has my wife her maid. Mrs.
Hardcastle," he said, leaning back, the better to introduce his wife.

The lady bowed graciously to Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke, and the former, in
his flurry to acknowledge the condescension, managed to upset the
coffee-pot. Mrs. Dundyke saw a stylish woman of thirty--at least, if a
great deal of dress can constitute style. She had a handsome, but deadly
pale face, with bold eyes, black as her husband's.

"I feel really glad to make your acquaintance," resumed Mr. Hardcastle.
"Standing aloof, as I have purposely done, from the persons of condition
staying in the hotel, I had begun to find it slow."

"Sir, I am sure I'm greatly flattered," said Mr. Dundyke. "Have you been
long here, sir?"

"About three weeks or a month," replied the gentleman, carelessly. "We
shall soon be thinking of going."

Mr. Dundyke did indeed feel flattered, and with reason, for the firm in
question was of the very first consideration, and he was overwhelmed
with the honour vouchsafed him. "A Lord Mayor might be proud to know
him," he exclaimed to his wife, when they got upstairs from the
breakfast. "I hope he'll give me his friendship when I am in the Chair."

"I think they have the next room to ours," observed Mrs. Dundyke. "I saw
the lady standing at the door there this morning, when I was peeping
out, wondering which was the way down to breakfast. Is it not singular
they should be travelling in this quiet way, without any signs of their
wealth about them?"

"Not at all singular," said the shrewd common-councilman. "They are so
overdone with grandeur at home, these rich merchants, with their
servants, and state, and ceremony, that it must be a positive relief to
get rid of it altogether for a time, and live like ordinary people. I
can understand the feeling very well."

It was more than Mrs. Dundyke could; and though, from that morning, the
great merchant and his lady took pains to cultivate the intimacy thus
formed, she never took to them so cordially as her husband. He, if one
may use the old saying in such a sense, fell over head and ears in love
with both, but Mrs. Dundyke never could feel quite at home with either.
No doubt the sense of her own inferiority of position partly caused
this: _she_ felt, if her husband did not, that they were no society,
even abroad, for the powerful Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle. And, in her
inmost heart, she did not like the lady. Her attire was ten times as
costly and abundant as Mrs. Dundyke's, and she would wear more jewellery
at one time than the latter had ever seen in all her life; and that was
perhaps as it should be; but Mrs. Dundyke was apt to take likings and
dislikings, and she could not like this lady, try as she would. She was
certainly not a gentlewoman; and Mrs. Dundyke, with all her previous
life's disadvantages of position, was that at heart, and could
appreciate one. She decidedly wore rouge on her cheeks in an evening;
she was not choice in her expressions at all times; and she was fond of
wine, and did not object to brandy.

One morning Mrs. Dundyke happened to be in Mrs. Hardcastle's room, when
the English waiter entered.

"My master's compliments, madam," he said, "and he hopes Mr. Hardcastle
has some news for him this morning."

The lady's face went crimson, the first time Mrs. Dundyke had seen any
natural colour on it, and she answered, in a haughty tone, that Mr.
Hardcastle was not then in--when he was, the man could speak with him.

"For it is now a fortnight, madam, since he has daily promised to----"

"I have nothing to do with it," interrupted Mrs. Hardcastle,
imperiously motioning the waiter from the room; "you must address
yourself to my husband."

Mrs. Dundyke wondered what this little scene could mean. Had it been
people of less known wealth than the Hardcastles, she might have thought
it bore reference to the settlement--or non-settlement--of the bill. But
that could scarcely happen with them.

"What are you thinking of, Betsey?" Mr. Dundyke asked her that same day,
she sat so deep in thought.

"I was thinking of Mr. Hardcastle's eyes."

"Of Mr. Hardcastle's eyes!" echoed the common-councilman.

"Just then I was, David. The fact is, they puzzle me--they are always
puzzling me. I feel quite certain I have seen them somewhere, or eyes
exactly like them."

"They are as handsome eyes as ever I saw," was the answer.

"They may be handsome, but I don't like them. But that it is wrong to
say it, I could almost say I hate them. They frighten me, David."

"That's just one of your foolish fancies," cried Mr. Dundyke, in wrath.
"You are always taking them up, you know."

A day or two after this, Mr. Hardcastle came straight into the presence
of Mr. Dundyke, some papers in his hand. "My dear sir," he said, "I want
you to do me a favour."

The common-councilman jumped up and placed a chair for the great man,
delighted at the prospect of doing _him_ a favour.

"I wrote home a few days ago for them to send me a letter of credit on
the bankers here. It came this morning, and just see what they have
done!"

Mr. Hardcastle tossed, as he spoke, the letter of credit to Mr. Dundyke.
Now the latter, shrewd man of business though he was amid his own chests
of tea, knew very little of these foreign letters of credit, their
forms, or their appearance. All he could make out of the present one
was, that it was a sort of order to receive one hundred pounds.

"Don't you see the error?" exclaimed Mr. Hardcastle. "They have made it
payable to my uncle, Stephen Hardcastle, instead of to me. _My_ name's
not Stephen, so it would be perfectly useless for me to present it. How
the clerks came to make so foolish a mistake I cannot tell. Some one of
them I suppose, in the pressure of business, managed to give
unintelligible orders to the bankers, and so caused the error."

"Dear me!" said Mr. Dundyke.

"Now I want to know if you can let me have this sum. I shall write
immediately to get the thing rectified, and if you can accommodate me
for a few days, until the needful comes, I will then repay you with many
thanks."

"But, dear me, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Dundyke,--"not but what I should be
proud to do anything for you that I could, in my poor way--you don't
suppose I've got a hundred pound here? Nor the half! nor the quarter of
it!"

Mr. Hardcastle carelessly smiled, and played with his glittering cable
watch-chain.

"I should not like to offer you what I _have_ got, sir," continued the
common-councilman, "but I am sure if you took it as no offence, and it
would be of any temporary use to you----"

"Oh, thank you! No, it's not that," interrupted the great merchant.
"Less than the hundred pounds would not be worth the trouble of
borrowing. You have nothing like that sum, you say?"

Out came Mr. Dundyke's purse and pocket-book. He counted over his store,
and found that, English and French money combined, he possessed
twenty-two pounds, eleven shillings. The twenty pounds, notes and gold,
he pushed towards Mr. Hardcastle, the odd money he returned to his
pocket. "You are quite welcome, sir, for a few days, if you will
condescend to make use of it."

"I feel extremely obliged to you," said Mr. Hardcastle; "I am half
inclined to avail myself of your politeness. The fact is, Dundyke," he
continued, confidentially, "my wife has been spending money wholesale,
this last week--falling in love with a lot of useless jewellery, when
she has got a cartload of it at home. I let her have what money she
wanted, counting on my speedy remittances, and, upon my word, I am
nearly drained. I will write you an acknowledgment."

"Oh no, no, sir, pray don't trouble to do that," cried the confiding
common-councilman, "your word would be your bond all over the world."
And Mr. Hardcastle laughed pleasantly, as he gathered up the money.

"Can you let me have five francs, David," said Mrs. Dundyke, coming in
soon afterwards, when her husband was alone.

"Five francs! What for?"

"To pay our washing bill. It comes to four francs something; so far as I
can make out their French figures."

"I don't know that you can have it, Mrs. D."

"But why?" she inquired, meekly.

"I have just lent most of my spare cash to Mr. Hardcastle. He received a
hundred pound this morning from England, but there was a stupid error in
the letter of credit, and he can't touch the money till the order has
been back home to be rectified."

The information set Mrs. Dundyke thinking. She had just returned from a
walk, and it was in coming up the stairs that a chambermaid had met her
and given her the washing-bill. Not being accustomed to French writing
and accounts, she could not readily puzzle it out, and, bill in hand,
had knocked at Mrs. Hardcastle's door, intending to crave that lady's
assistance. Mr. Hardcastle opened it only a little way.

"Is Mrs. Hardcastle at leisure, if you please, sir?" she asked.

"No; she's not in. I'll send her to you when she comes," was his reply,
as he re-closed the door. And yet Mrs. Dundyke was almost certain she
saw the tip of Mrs. Hardcastle's gown, as if she were sitting in the
room on the right, the door opening to the left. And she also saw
distinctly the person who had been once pointed out to her as the
landlord of the hotel. He was standing at the table, counting money--a
note or two, it looked, and a little gold. There was food in this to
employ Mrs. Dundyke's thoughts, now she knew, or supposed, that very
money was her husband's. A sudden doubt whether all was right--she
afterwards declared it many times--flashed across her mind. But it left
her as soon as thought: left her ashamed of doubting such people as the
Hardcastles, even for a moment. She remained thinking, though.

"I know these foreign posts are uncertain," she observed, arousing
herself, "and it will take, I suppose, eight or ten days before Mr.
Hardcastle's remittance can reach him. Suppose it should not come when
he expects, or that there should be another mistake in it?"

"Well?"

"Why--as we cannot afford to remain on here an indefinite period,
waiting; at least, I suppose you would not like to do so, David; I was
thinking it might be better for you to write home for more money
yourself, and make certain."

"Just leave me to manage my own business, Betsey, will you: I am
capable, I hope," was the common-councilman's ungracious answer.
Nevertheless, he adopted his wife's suggestion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle continued all grace and smiles, pressing their
champagne upon Mr. Dundyke and his wife at dinner, and hiring carriages,
in which all the four drove out together. The common-councilman was
rapidly overcoming his repugnance to a table-d'hote, but the sumptuous
one served in the hotel was very different from those he had been
frightened with on his journey, and in the third week of his stay his
wife had to let out all his waistcoats. The little excursions in the
country he cared less for. The lovely country about Geneva was driven
over again and again: Ferney, Coppet, the houses of Madame de Stael and
Voltaire, all were visited, not much, it is to be feared, to the
edification of the common-councilman. Thus three weeks from the time of
their first arrival, passed rapidly away, and Mr. Dundyke and his wife
felt they could not afford the time to linger longer in Geneva. They now
only waited for the repayment of the twenty pounds from Mr. Hardcastle,
and, strange to say, that gentleman's money did not arrive. _He_ could
not account for it, and gave vent to a few lordly explosions each
morning that the post came in and brought him no advice of it.

"I'll tell you what it is!" he suddenly observed one morning--"I'll lay
a thousand pounds to a shilling they have misunderstood my instructions,
and have sent the money on to Genoa, whither we are bound after leaving
here!"

"What a disaster!" uttered Mr. Dundyke. "Will the money be lost, sir?"

"No fear of that: nobody can touch it but myself. But look at the
inconvenience it is causing, keeping me here! And you also!"

"I cannot remain longer," said Mr. Dundyke; "my time is up, and I may
not exceed it. You can give me an order to receive the 20_l._ in London,
sir: it will be all the same."

"But, my good fellow, how will you provide for the expenses of your
journey to London?"

"I have managed that, sir," said the common-councilman. "I wrote home
for thirty pounds."

"And is it come?" asked Mr. Hardcastle, turning his eye full upon the
common-councilman with the startling rapidity of a flash of lightning.
Mrs. Dundyke noticed, with astonishment, the look and the eager gesture:
neither ever faded from her recollection.

"They came this morning," said the common-councilman. "I have them both
safe here," touching the breast-pocket of his coat. "They were in them
letters you saw me receive."

On rising from breakfast, Mr. Dundyke strolled out of the hotel, and
found himself on the borders of the lake. The day was fearfully hot, and
he began to think a row might be pleasant. A boat and two men were at
hand, waiting to be hired, and he proceeded to haggle about the price,
for one of the boatmen spoke English.

"I have spent a deal of money since I have been here, one way or
another," he soliloquized, "and the bill I expect will be awful. But it
won't be much addition, this row--as good be hung for a sheep as a
lamb--so here goes."

He stepped into the boat, anticipating an hour's enjoyment. A short
while after this, Mrs. Hardcastle, accompanied by Mrs. Dundyke, came on
to Rousseau's Island. Mr. Dundyke was not so far off then, but that his
wife recognised him. Mr. Hardcastle was the next to come up.

"What are you looking at? Why, who's that in a boat there? Surely not
Dundyke! Give me the glass."

"Yes, it is," said Mrs. Dundyke.

"Where in the name of wonder is he off to, this melting day? To drown
himself?"

The ladies laughed.

"Ah! I see; he can't stand it. The men are bearing off to the
side--going to land him there. They had better put back."

Mrs. Dundyke sat down underneath the poplar trees, spreading a large
umbrella over her head, and took out her work. Mrs. Hardcastle was never
seen to do any work, but she seated herself under the shade of the
umbrella; and the gentleman, leaving them to themselves, walked back
again over the suspension bridge.




CHAPTER IV.

A MYSTERY.


Which of the three wore the deepest tint, the darkest blue--the skies,
the hills, or the lake? Each was of a different shade, but all were blue
and beautiful; and on all lay the aspect of complete repose. The two
ladies, in that little garden near the Hotel des Bergues, Rousseau's
Island, as it is called, and which you who have sojourned in Geneva
remember well, looking out over the lake at the solitary boat bearing
away towards the right, noticed that no other object broke the
prospect's stillness. It was scarcely a day for a row on Geneva's lake.
Not a breath of air arose to counteract the vivid heat of the August
sun; hot and shadeless he poured forth his overpowering blaze; and,
lovely as the lake is, favoured by nature and renowned in poetry, it was
more lovely that day to look at than to glide upon.

So thought the gentleman in that solitary boat, our friend Mr. David
Dundyke--or, let us give him the title he had of late aspired to, David
Dundyke, Esquire. He felt, to use his own words, "piping hot;" he sat on
one side of the boat, and the sun burnt his back; he changed to the
other, and it blistered his face; he tried the stern, and the sun seemed
to be all round him. He looked up at the Jura, with a vain longing that
they might be transported from their site to where they could screen him
from his hot tormentor: he turned and gazed at the Alps, and wished he
could see on them a shady place, and that he was in it; but, wherever he
looked and turned, the sun seemed to blind and to scorch him. Some
people, clayey mortals though the best of us are, might have found
poetry, or food for it, in all that lay around; but David Dundyke had no
poetry in his heart, still less in his head. He glanced, with listless,
half-shut eyes, at the two men who were rowing him along; and began to
wonder how any men could be induced to row, that burning day, even to
obtain a portion of the world's idol--money. David Dundyke cared not,
not he, for the scenery around; he never cared for anything in his life
that was not substantial and tangible. What was the common scenery of
nature to him, since it could not add to his wealth or enhance his
importance?--and that was all the matter at _his_ heart. He had never
looked at it all the way from London to Geneva; he did not look at that
around him now. Geneva itself, its lovely surrounding villas, its
picturesque lake, the glorious chain of mountains on either side, even
Mont Blanc in the distance, were as nothing to him. For some days after
his arrival at Geneva, the mountain had remained obstinately enshrouded
in clouds; but one evening that he and his wife were walking outside the
town with Mr. Hardcastle, it was pointed out to him, standing proudly
forth in all its beauty; and he had stared at it with just as much
interest as he would have done at the hill in Greenwich Park covered
with snow. He had seen the lovely colour, the dark, brilliant blue of
the Rhone's waters, as they escaped from the lake to mingle with those
of the thick, turbulent Arve; and he did not care to notice the contrast
in the streams. There were no associations in his mind connected with
that fair azure lake, whence coursed the one; he had no curiosity as to
the never-changing glaciers that were the source of the other.

But, had Mr. Dundyke's soul been wholly given up to poetry and
sentiment, it would have been lost that day in the overpowering heat. He
bore it as long as he could, and then suddenly told the men to bear to
the right and put him on shore. This movement had been observed by Mr.
Hardcastle, from the little island, as you may remember. The men, not
sorry perhaps to be off the lake themselves, inured though they were to
Geneva's August sun, made speedily for a shady place, and landed him.

"Ah! this is pleasant," exclaimed Mr. Dundyke, throwing himself at full
length on the cool and shady grass. "It is quite Heaven, this is, after
that horrid burning lake." The two boatmen laid on their oars and
rested.

"How thirsty it has made me!" he resumed, "I could drink the lake dry.
What a luxury some iced wine would be now! And ice is so cheap and
plentiful up at the hotel yonder. Suppose I send the boat back for Mr.
Hardcastle, and the two women? And tell 'em it's Paradise, sitting here,
in comparison with the hot hotel; and drop in a hint about the iced
wine? He will be sure to take it, and be glad of the excuse. The women
would find it rather of the ratherest for heat, coming across the lake,
but charming when they got here. 'Tain't far, and their complexions are
not of the spoiling sort. Mrs. D.'s ain't of no particular colour at all
just now, except red; and t'other's is like chalk. Oh! let 'em risk it."

Taking out his silver pencil-case (as the men deposed to subsequently)
he tore a leaf from his pocket-book, scribbled a few lines on it, and
folding it, directed it to ---- Hardcastle, Esquire: and it had never
occurred to Mr. Dundyke until that moment, and the fact struck him as a
singular one, that he was ignorant of ---- Hardcastle, Esquire's
Christian name. The men received the note and their orders, and then
prepared to push off.

"We com back when we have give dis; com back for de jontilmans?" asked
the one who spoke English.

"Come back! of course you are to come back," responded the
common-councilman. "How am I to get home, else? But you are to bring the
two ladies and the gentleman, and some ice and some wine; and to look
sharp about it. Take care that the bottles don't get broke in the boat."

The men rowed away, leaving Mr. Dundyke lying there. They made good
speed to the Hotel des Bergues, according to orders, but were told that
neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hardcastle was in. This caused a delay of two good
hours. The boatmen lingered near the door of the hotel, waiting; and at
last one of the waiters bethought himself that the ladies might be on
Rousseau's Island. There they were found, and Mrs. Hardcastle read the
note.

"What do you say?" she asked, tossing it to Mrs. Dundyke. "Shall we go?"

"But where is Mr. Hardcastle, ma'am?"

"Who's to know? He may be gone round to meet your husband. He saw the
probable spot the boat was making for. We may as well go. Perhaps they
are both waiting for us. Waiter," continued Mrs. Hardcastle, in her
customary imperious manner, "let some wine be placed in the boat, and
plenty of ice."

Under cover of umbrellas, the two ladies were rowed across the hot lake
to the place where the men had left Mr. Dundyke. But no trace of that
gentleman could now be seen; and they sat down in the shade to cool
their heated faces, glad of the respite. Mrs. Hardcastle helped herself
to some wine and ice, and Mrs. Dundyke presently took her work out of
her pocket.

"How industrious you are!" exclaimed the idle woman. "What do you say
the embroidery is for? A shirt front?"

Mrs. Dundyke displayed her work. It was for a shirt-front, and the
embroidery was beautiful. She was doing two of them, she said. Her
husband would require them during his shrievalty.

"I'd not take such trouble for my husband, though he were made king
to-morrow," exclaimed Mrs. Hardcastle.

After making that remark she took some more wine, and subsequently
dropped asleep. Mrs. Dundyke, engaged in her labour of love, for she
loved both the work itself and him who was to wear it, let the time slip
on unconsciously. It was only when the afternoon shadows struck on her
view as becoming long, when the sun had changed his place from one part
of the heavens to another, that a vague feeling of alarm stole over her.

"Where _can_ he be? What is the time?"

She spoke aloud. Mrs. Hardcastle started at the words, and stared to see
how the day had gone on. She, Mrs. Hardcastle, was the first to call out
the name of Mr. Dundyke. She called it several times, and she had a
loud, coarse, harsh voice; but only echo answered her. The boatmen woke
up from their slumbers, and shouted in their patois, but there came no
response from Mr. Dundyke. A sickening fear, whose very intensity made
her heart cold, rushed over Mrs. Dundyke. Her hands shook; the red of
her face turned to pallor.

"Why, you never mean to say you are alarmed!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardcastle,
looking at her in surprise.

"No--no, ma'am, not exactly alarmed," returned poor Mrs. Dundyke, half
ashamed to confess to the feeling. But her quivering lips gave the lie
to her words. "I do think it strange he should go away, knowing he had
sent for us. I was quite easy at first, thinking he had gone to sleep
somewhere, overpowered with the heat. There is no danger, I suppose,
that--that--anyone could fall into the water from this spot?"

There was certainly no danger of that: and the boatmen laughed at the
notion, for the bank and the water were at that place nearly on a level.

"A man might walk in if he felt so inclined," observed Mrs. Hardcastle,
jestingly, "but he could scarcely enter it in any other manner. And your
husband is not one to cut short his life for pleasure."

Not he, indeed! Never a man less likely to make his own quietus than
plain practical David Dundyke, with his future aspirations and his
harmless ambition. His wife knew that the Lord Mayor's chair, shining in
the distant vista, would alone have kept him from plunging head foremost
into the most tempting lake that ever bubbled in the sunlight.

"There is no marvel about it," said Mrs. Hardcastle. "The boatmen were
kept two hours at the hotel, remember, before we were found, and Mr.
Dundyke naturally grew tired of waiting, and went away, thinking we
should not come."

"But where can he be?" cried Mrs. Dundyke. "What has he done with
himself?"

"He has gone back by land. There was no other course for him, if he
thought--as he no doubt did think--that the boatman had misunderstood
his orders and would not return."

"But, ma'am, he does not know his way back."

"Not know it! Instinct would tell it him. He has only to keep the lake
on his right, and follow his nose; he would soon be in Geneva."

It was so probable a solution of the mystery, that Mrs. Dundyke had been
unreasonable not to adopt it; indeed she was glad to do it; and they got
into the boat, and were rowed back again, expecting Mr. Dundyke would be
at the hotel. But they did not find him there. And it was nearly five
o'clock then.

"That's nothing," said Mrs. Hardcastle. "The day is so hot he would take
his time walking. My husband has not been in either, it seems. Rely upon
it they have met and are together; they have turned into some cool
cafe."

The ladies went upstairs together, each into her respective chamber: it
has been said that the rooms joined. But that undefined dread, amounting
to a positive agony, weighed still on the spirits of Mrs. Dundyke. She
could not rest. Mrs. Hardcastle was attiring herself for dinner; not so
Mrs. Dundyke; she stood at the door peeping out, hoping to see her
husband appear in the long corridor. While thus looking, there came,
creeping up the stairs, Mr. Hardcastle, stealing along, as it seemed to
Mrs. Dundyke, to shun observation, his boots white, as if he had walked
much in the dusty roads, his face scratched, and one of his fingers
sprained (as she learnt afterwards) and bound up with a handkerchief.

"Oh, sir!" she cried, darting forward in high excitement, "where is he?
where is Mr. Dundyke? What has happened to him?"

Mr. Hardcastle stood for a moment transfixed, and, unless Mrs. Dundyke
was strangely mistaken, his face changed colour. She associated no
suspicion with that pallor _then_; she but thought of her own ill
manners in accosting him so abruptly.

"What of your husband?" he asked, rallying himself. "_I_ don't know
anything of him. Is he not in?"

Mrs. Dundyke explained. Mrs. Hardcastle, hearing their voices, came out
of her room and helped her.

"Is that all?" exclaimed Mr. Hardcastle, when he had listened, and his
tone was one of indifference. "Oh, he will soon be back. If he is not
in, in time for dinner, Mrs. Dundyke, you can go down with us. Don't
alarm yourself."

"But have you not seen him?--not been with him?" urged poor Mrs.
Dundyke.

"I have never seen him since breakfast."

"We thought you might have walked round by the shore to join him, as you
saw this morning where the boat was making for," remarked Mrs.
Hardcastle.

He turned savagely upon her, his eyes glaring like a tiger's.

"No, madam," he said, with concentrated passion, "none save a fool would
undertake such a walk to-day. I have been in the town, executing various
commissions," he added, changing his tone, and addressing Mrs. Dundyke,
"and a pretty accident I had nearly met with: in avoiding a restive
horse on the dusty quays, I slipped down, with my face on some flint
stones."

Mrs. Dundyke would not go down to dinner, but Mrs. Hardcastle fetched
her into her own room afterwards, and ordered tea brought up, and they
were both very kind to her, buoying up her spirits, and laughing at her
fears. Her husband had only lost his way, they urged, and would be home
fast enough by morning--a rare joke they would have with him about
running away, when he did come.

It was eleven o'clock when Mrs. Dundyke wished them good night, and
retired to her chamber, feeling like one more dead than alive. It is
probable that few of us can form any adequate idea of her sensations.
But for that horrible, mysterious dread, which seemed to have come upon
her without sufficient cause, the mere absence of her husband ought not
so very much to have alarmed her. She felt a conviction, sure and
certain, that some dreadful fate had overtaken him; and, in that dread
torture of suspense, she would have given her own life up the next
moment, oh, how willingly, to see him return.

She stood at the open window of her room, leaning far out of it, hoping
to see him come round the corner of the street, (stay, not so much
hoping as _wishing_,) foot-sore and travel-worn, having lost his way and
found it again. She wondered whether anyone was still up, to let him in,
if he did come; if not, she would steal downstairs herself, and work at
the door fastenings until she undid them. It was with great difficulty,
exercising the very utmost self-control, that she stopped where she was,
that she did not go out into the streets, searching for him.

While thus thinking, Mrs. Dundyke became aware that strange sounds were
proceeding from the next room, though not at first had she heeded them.
A fearful quarrel appeared to be taking place between Mr. and Mrs.
Hardcastle, and Mrs. Dundyke drew back and closed her window in tremor.
Its substance she could not hear, did not wish to hear; but wild sobs
and reproaches seemed to come from the lady, and sharp words, not
unmixed with oaths, from the gentleman. Twice Mrs. Dundyke heard her
husband's name mentioned, or her own ("Dundyke"); and the quarrel seemed
to have reference to him. One sentence of Mr. Hardcastle's came
distinctly on her ear, apparently in answer to some threat or reproach;
it was to the effect that Mrs. Hardcastle might leave him as soon as she
pleased; might take her departure then, in the midnight hour. After
awhile the anger appeared to subside, silence supervened, and Mrs.
Dundyke watched through the live-long night. But her husband did not
come.

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; did 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. Voila 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 thief 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.

But nothing further could be heard of Mr. Dundyke; nothing further was
heard, and it became useless to linger on in Geneva. That he was in
Geneva's lake, she never doubted, and the place became hateful to her.

She travelled towards home in company with Mr. Prattleton and his
daughter. At Paris they parted; they remaining in it for a few days, she
proceeding to London direct, which she reached in safety. Poor Mrs.
Dundyke! As she sat alone in the dark cab which was to take her to her
now solitary home at Brixton, she perhaps felt the loss, the dreadful
circumstances of it altogether, more keenly than she had felt them yet.
She sat with dry eyes, but a throbbing brain, feeling that life for her
had ended; that she was left in a world whose happiness had died out.

It was a very pretty white villa, with a lawn before it, and encircled
by carriage drive, with double gates. As the man drove in at one, and
stopped before the entrance, and the door was thrown open to the light
of the hall, Mrs. Dundyke became aware that some gentleman was standing
there, behind the servant.

"Who is that, John?" she whispered.

"It's a stranger, ma'am; a gentleman who has just called. He seemed so
surprised when I said you had not returned yet; but you drove up at the
moment. And master, ma'am?"

Mrs. Dundyke did not answer. The servants knew that something was amiss;
but she had not courage to explain then; in fact, she could scarcely
suppress her emotion sufficiently to speak with composure. The stranger
came forward to meet her, and she recognised the gentleman who had
assisted them in Grenoble, and had given his name as Robert Carr.

"You see I have availed myself of your invitation to call," he said. "It
is curious I should happen to come to-night when you are only returning.
I fancied you did not intend to remain away so long. But where is Mr.
Dundyke?"

She turned with him into one of the sitting-rooms--an elegant room of
good proportions. The chandelier was lighted; a handsome china
tea-service, interspersed with articles of silver, stood on the table;
cold meats and other good things were ready; and altogether it was a
complete picture of home comfort, of easy competency. The thought that
_he_, who had been the many years partner of her life, would never come
back to this again, combined with the home question of the Rev. Mr.
Carr, struck out of her what little composure she had retained, and Mrs.
Dundyke sank down in an easy chair, and burst into a storm of sobs.

To say that the young clergyman stood in consternation, would be saying
little. He was not used to scenes, did not like them; and he felt
inwardly uncomfortable, not knowing what he ought to say or do.

"Pray, forgive me," she murmured, when she had recovered sufficiently to
speak. "You asked after my husband. He is lost--he is gone. He will
never come home again."

"Lost!" repeated Robert Carr.

Mrs. Dundyke told her tale, and the young man listened in utter
astonishment. He had never heard of such a thing in all his life; had
never imagined anything so strange. It seemed that he could not be tired
of asking questions--of hazarding conjectures. He _wished_ he had been
there, he said; he was sure that the search _he_ would have instituted
would have found him, dead or alive. And it was a somewhat remarkable
fact that everybody, forthwith destined to hear the story, said the
same. So prone are we to under-rate the exertions of other people, and
over-rate our own.

But simple, courteous Mrs. Dundyke, could not forget the duties of
hospitality amid her great sorrow. She went upstairs for a minute to
take off her travelling things, and then quietly made tea for Robert
Carr, asking him questions about himself as he drank it.

He had come straight to London from Grenoble, on business connected with
an assistant ministry he expected to get in November, and then went to
Holland. He had been back in London now about a week, but should soon be
returning to Holland, as his wife was not in good health.

"His wife!" Mrs. Dundyke repeated in surprise. She thought he looked too
young to have a wife.

Robert Carr laughed. He had a wife and two children, he said; he had
married young.

Mrs. Dundyke told him that she thought they were connected--in fact, she
knew they were, for old Mrs. Dundyke used to say so. "I do not quite
remember how she made it out," continued Mrs. Dundyke; "I think she was
a cousin in the second degree to the Miss Hughes's of Westerbury. They
were----"

Mrs. Dundyke stopped short. None were more considerate than she of the
feelings of others; and it suddenly struck her that the young clergyman
before her, a gentleman himself, might not like to be reminded of these
things.

"They were dressmakers, if you speak of my mother's sisters," he quietly
said; "I have heard her say so. She was a lady herself in mind and
manners; but her family were quite inferior."

Mrs. Dundyke did not feel her way altogether clear. She remembered
hearing of the elopement; she remembered certain unpleasant subsequent
rumours--that Martha Ann Hughes remained with Mr. Carr in Holland,
although the ceremony of marriage had not passed between them. Always
charitably judging, she supposed now that they must have been married at
some subsequent period; and this, their eldest son, called himself
Robert _Carr_. But it was not a topic that she felt comfortable in
pursuing.

"You say that your mother is dead?" she resumed.

"She has been dead about five years. We are three of us: I; my brother
Thomas, who was born two years after me; and my sister, Mary Augusta,
who is several years younger. There were two other girls between my
brother and Mary, but they died."

"Mr. Carr is in business in Rotterdam?"

"Yes; partner in a merchant's house there. He has saved money, and is
well off."

Mrs. Dundyke faintly smiled; she was glad for a moment to make a
semblance of forgetting her own woes. "Those random young men often make
the most sober ones when they settle down. Your father was wild in his
young days."

"Was he? I'm sure I don't know. You should see him now: a regular
steady-going old Dutchman, fat and taciturn, who smokes his afternoons
away in the summer-house. He has not been very well of late years; and I
tell him he ought to spend his hours of recreation in taking exercise,
not in sitting still and smoking."

"Does he keep up any intercourse with his relatives in Westerbury?"
asked Mrs. Dundyke, for she had heard through Mildred Arkell that
Westerbury never heard anything of its renegade son, Robert Carr, and
did not know or care whether he was dead or alive--in fact, had
forgotten all remembrance of him.

"Not any--not the least. I fancy my father and mother must have had some
disagreement with their home friends, for they never spoke of them. I
remember, when I was a little boy, my mother getting news of the death
of a sister; but how it came to her I'm sure I don't know."

"She had two sisters, and she had a brother," said Mrs. Dundyke. "I
heard that Mary died. Are the other sister and the brother living?"

"I really do not know. If we had possessed no relatives in the world, we
could not have lived more completely isolated from them. I believe my
grandfather is living, and in Westerbury--at least, I have not heard of
his death."

"Have you lived entirely in Rotterdam?" she asked, her interest very
much awakened, she scarcely knew why, for this young man. Perhaps it
took its rise in the faint, sad thought, which _would_ keep arising in
spite of herself, that a terrible blow might be in future store for him,
of whose possible existence he was evidently in utter ignorance.

"Our home has been in Rotterdam, but I and my brother have been educated
in England. We were with a clergyman for some years in London, and then
went to Cambridge. It would not have done for me to preach with a
foreign accent," he added, with a smile.

"But you speak with a perfect accent," said Mrs. Dundyke; "as well as if
you had never been out of England. Do you speak Dutch?"

"As a native; in fact, I suppose it may be said that I _am_ a native.
Dutch, English, German, and French--we speak them all well."

Poor Mrs. Dundyke heaved a bitter sigh. The words brought to her
remembrance what her husband had said about their rubbing on with "we"
and "no;" but she would not let it go on again to emotion. She observed
the same delicate look on this young man that had struck her at
Grenoble; and he coughed rather frequently, always putting his hand to
his chest at the time, as if the cough gave him pain.

"Will you let me ask you if you are very strong?" she said. "I do not
think you look so."

"I was strong," he replied, "no one more so, until I met with a hurt. In
riding one day at Cambridge, the horse threw me, and kicked me here,"
touching his chest. "Since then, I have had a cough, more or less, and
am sometimes in slight pain. My father despatched me on that tour, when
I met you, with a view of making me strong."

"Was the injury great at the time?"

"No, I think not; the doctors said not. I believe some of the small
arteries were ruptured. I spit blood for some time after it; and, do you
know," he added, looking suddenly up at her, "the last day or two I have
been spitting it a little again."

"You must take care of yourself," said Mrs. Dundyke, after a pause.

"So I do. I am going to a doctor to-morrow morning, for I want to get
into duty again, and should be vexed if anything stopped it."

"Have you ever done duty?"

"Of course; for a twelvemonth. I had my title in the diocese of Ely. I
am in full orders now, and hope to be at work in November."

A doubt came over Mrs. Dundyke as she looked at his slender hands and
his hollow cheek, whether he would ever work again. Robert Carr rose to
bid her good-bye.

"Can I be of any service to you in any way?" he said, in a low, earnest
tone, as he held her hand in his. "You cannot tell what a strange
impression this tale has made upon me; and I feel as if I should like to
go to Geneva, and prosecute the search still."

"You are very kind," she said; "but indeed there is nothing else that
can be done. The environs of Geneva were scoured, especially on the side
where, as I have told you, two gentlemen were seen who bore the
resemblance to my husband and Mr. Hardcastle."

"I don't like that Mr. Hardcastle," cried the young man; "no, I don't.
He ought not to have gone away, and left you in the midst of your
distress. It was an unfeeling thing to do."

"He could not help it. He said he had urgent business at Genoa."

"The business should have waited, had it been mine. Well, if I can do
anything for you, Mrs. Dundyke, now or later, do let me. If what you
say is correct--that we are related--I have a right to help you."

"Thank you very much. And remember," she added, in a voice almost as low
as a whisper, "that should you ever be in--in--trouble, or distress, or
need a friend in any way, you have only to come to me."

What was in Mrs. Dundyke's mind as she spoke? What made her say it? She
was thinking of that shock which might be looming for him in the future,
it was hard to say how near or how distant. And she felt that she could
love this young man almost like a son.

"I will see you again, Mrs. Dundyke, before I leave town," were his last
words.

But he did not. When he reached his lodgings that night, he found a
telegraphic despatch awaiting him from Rotterdam, saying that his father
was taken dangerously ill.

And the Reverend Robert Carr hastened to Dover by the first train, en
route for Holland.




CHAPTER VI.

NEWS FOR WESTERBURY.


It cannot be denied that the present time, this first day after coming
home, was one of peculiar pain to Mrs. Dundyke. She would have to go
over the sad and strange story again and again, and there was no help
for it. The chief partners in Fenchurch-street naturally required the
particulars; the few friends she had, the household servants, wished to
hear them, and there was only herself to tell the tale.

By ten o'clock, on the morning after her arrival, the second partner of
the house, who wore rings and a moustache, and had altogether been an
object of envy to the unfortunate common-councilman, was sitting with
Mrs. Dundyke. She had not put on widow's weeds; she would not yet; she
had said to Mary Prattleton, with a burst of grief, that a widow's cap
would take the last remnant of lingering hope out of her. She wore a
rich black silk gown, trimmed with much crape, but the cap and bonnet of
the widow she assumed not.

Mr. Knowles, a kind-hearted man, who did not want for good sense, dandy
though he was in dress, sat twirling his sandy moustache, the very
gravest concern pervading his countenance. Mrs. Dundyke, who had never
seen this gentleman more than once or twice, sat in humility, struggling
with her grief. His social position was of a different standing from
what poor Mr. Dundyke's had ever been.

"You see, Mrs. Dundyke, one hardly knows how to act, or what to be at,"
he remarked, after they had talked for some time, and she had related to
him the details (always excepting any suspicion she might once have
entertained of Mr. Hardcastle) as closely as she could. "Apart from the
grief, the concern for your husband personally, it is altogether so
awkward an affair, in a business point of view: we don't know whether we
are to consider him as dead or alive."

She shook her head.

"There is little hope that he is alive, sir."

"Well, it would really seem like it. But what _can_ have become of him?"

"There was the lake, you know."

"Yes."

A pause. Presently Mr. Knowles went on.

"When the letter came from that clergyman--Prattleton, wasn't his
name?--saying that Mr. Dundyke was missing, and asking for the
particulars of the money we had forwarded to him, we could not
understand it. '_Missing!_' cried old Mr. Knowles, who happened to have
come to Fenchurch-street that day, 'one talks of a child being missing,
but not of a man.' And when Mr. Prattleton's second letter came to us,
giving some of the facts, I assure you we could with difficulty give
credence to them."

"There is one little point I did not know of, sir; the sending to you
for a fifty-pound note. My husband told me he was sending for the thirty
pounds, but he did not say anything of the other. I cannot think why he
sent for it."

Mr. Knowles took out his pocket-book.

"I happen to have Mr. Dundyke's letter, which was preserved quite
accidentally, not being a strictly business one. You see, he only asks
for the fifty pounds in a postscript, as if it were an afterthought. In
fact, he says as much:" and Mrs. Dundyke's eyes filled as she looked on
the well-known characters.

"P.S. Upon second thoughts, I doubt whether the 30_l._ will be enough
for me. Be so good as to send me a 50_l._ note in addition to it; in
halves as the other."

"Which accordingly we did," resumed Mr. Knowles, as Mrs. Dundyke
returned him the letter. "And that note, you say, has not been traced?"

"No, sir, it has not."

"Well, it is altogether most strange. Of course whoever found the
pocket-book (if the supposition that it was picked up on the bank of the
lake be correct) may be keeping the fifty-pound note by him, but the
probability is that he would have got rid of it at once, as he did the
others."

"The most singular point to my mind throughout, sir, is the finding of
the pencil-case in Mr. Hardcastle's room," said Mrs. Dundyke. "I can't
get over that."

"Can't you? It appears to me easily explainable. The supposition that
Mr. Dundyke took it out with him that morning must be a mistake. Mr.
Hardcastle probably borrowed it from him at breakfast."

"I am quite sure, sir, he did not. I saw my husband put the pencil in
its place in the pocket-book, and return the pocket-book to his pocket."

"Then he must have taken it out again when outside the room, and perhaps
dropped it. Mr. Hardcastle may have picked it up, and carried it up to
the chamber and forgotten it. There are many ways of accounting for
that; but it is a pity the pencil was not found before Mr. Hardcastle's
departure."

Mrs. Dundyke opened her lips to ask how then could her husband have
written the pencilled note afterwards--that he never carried but that
one; but she was weary with reiterating the same thing over and over
again; and, after all, what Mr. Knowles said was possible. He might have
dropped the pencil afterwards; Mr. Hardcastle might have picked it up
and carried it to his room; and it certainly _might_ have happened, it
was not impossible, that her husband, contrary to custom, had a second
pencil in his pocket.

"Shall we send the twenty-pound order to Hardcastle's house and get it
cashed for you?" Mr. Knowles asked, when he was leaving. "I fancy that
young Hardcastle is not very steady. He is a great deal on the
continent, and I have heard he gambles."

Mrs. Dundyke thanked him and handed him the order. "Perhaps you would
let the clerk inquire for Mr. Hardcastle's address at the same time,
sir?" she said; "and whether he is still at Genoa. I should like to
write and ask how he did find the pencil."

But when the order on Hardcastle and Co. was presented--as it was that
same day--the house in Leadenhall-street declined to pay it, disclaiming
all knowledge of the drawer. Upon the clerk's saying that it had been
given by the nephew of Mr. Hardcastle, senior, to Mrs. Dundyke, in
liquidation of money borrowed at Geneva, the firm shrugged their
shoulders, and recommended the clerk to apply personally to that
gentleman, at his residence at Kensington. This information was conveyed
to Mrs. Dundyke, and she at once said she should like to go herself.

She went up to Mr. Hardcastle's the next day, and the old gentleman
received her very courteously. He was a venerable man with white hair,
and was walking up and down the room, which opened to a conservatory.
Mrs. Dundyke did not state any particulars at first; she merely said
that she had an order on the house in Leadenhall-street for twenty
pounds, money borrowed by his nephew; that the house had declined to pay
it, and had referred it to him.

"Borrowed money?" he repeated, in a sharp tone, as if the words visibly
annoyed him.

"Yes, sir," he borrowed it of my husband; "his remittances did not
arrive from England."

Mr. Hardcastle put on his spectacles, and she noticed that his hands
trembled, she thought with agitation. "I have a nephew," he said, "who
lives principally upon the continent; a thankless scapegrace he is, and
has caused me a world of trouble. He has not been in England for
eighteen months now, and I hope he will not come to it in a hurry; but
he is always threatening it."

Mrs. Dundyke was surprised. "He told us, sir, that he had come from
London recently; in fact, he said--he certainly implied--that he took a
principal and active part in your house in Leadenhall-street."

"All boast, madam, all boast. He has not anything to do with it, and we
would not let him have. I wonder he should say that, too! He is
tolerably truthful, making a confession of his shortcomings, rather than
hiding them."

"Is he at Genoa still, sir?"

"At where?" asked Mr. Hardcastle, looking at Mrs. Dundyke through his
spectacles, which he had been all the time adjusting.

"He went on to Genoa, sir, from Geneva. I asked whether he was there
still."

"He has not been at Geneva or at Genoa," said Mr. Hardcastle; "latterly,
at any rate."

"Yes he has, sir; he was at Geneva when we got to it in July, and he
stayed some time. He then went on to Genoa."

"Then he has deceived me," said Mr. Hardcastle, in a vexed tone. "I
don't know why he should; it does not matter to me what place he is in.
What is this, madam--the order? This is not his handwriting," hastily
continued Mr. Hardcastle, at the first glance, as he unfolded the
paper.

"I saw him write it, sir," said Mrs. Dundyke.

"Madam, it is no more like his writing than it is like yours or mine,"
was the testy answer. "And--what is this signature, _B._ Hardcastle? My
nephew's name is Thomas."

There was a momentary silence. Mr. Hardcastle sat looking at the written
order, knitting his brow in reflection.

"Madam, I do not think he could have been at Geneva when this was
dated," he resumed; "I had a letter from him just about this time,
written from Brussels. Stay, I will get it."

He opened a desk in the room and produced the letter. Singular to say,
it bore date the 10th of August, the very day that the order was dated.
The post-marks, both in Brussels and London, agreed with the date.

"It is impossible that it could have been he who wrote this order,
madam, as you must perceive. Being in Brussels, he could not have been
in Geneva. That this letter is in my nephew's handwriting, I assure you
on my honour. You may read it; it is about family affairs, but that does
not matter."

Mrs. Dundyke read the letter: it was not a long one. And then she looked
in a dreamy sort of way at Mr. Hardcastle.

"Madam, I fear you must have been imposed upon."

"Have you two nephews, sir?"

"I never had but this one in my life, ma'am; and I have found him one
too many."

"His wife is a showy woman, very pale, with handsome features,"
persisted Mrs. Dundyke, in a tone as dreamy as her gaze. Not that she
disbelieved that venerable old man, but it all seemed so great a
mystery.

"His wife! my nephew has no wife: I don't know who'd marry him. I tell
you, ma'am, you have been taken in by some swindler who must have
assumed his name. Though egad! my nephew's little better than a swindler
himself, for he gets into debt with everybody who will let him."

Mrs. Dundyke sat silent a few moments, and she then told her tale--told
everything that had occurred in connexion with her husband's mysterious
fate. But when she came to hint her suspicions of Mr. Hardcastle's
having been his destroyer, the old gentleman was visibly shocked and
agitated.

"Good heavens! no! Spendthrift though he is, he is not capable of that
awful crime. Madam, how do you suppose your husband lost his life? In a
struggle? Did they quarrel?"

"I know nothing," answered poor Mrs. Dundyke.

"A quarrel and struggle it may have been. Mr. Hardcastle was a powerful
man."

"A what? A powerful man, did you say, this Mr. Hardcastle?"

"Very powerful, sir; tall and strong. Standing nearly six feet high, and
as dark as a gipsy."

"Thank Heaven for that relief!" murmured Mr. Hardcastle. "My nephew is
one of the smallest men you ever saw, ma'am, short and slight, with fair
curls: in fact, an effeminate dandy. There's his picture," added the old
gentleman, throwing open the door of an inner room, "and when he next
comes to England, and he is threatening it now, as you read in that
letter, you shall see him. But, meanwhile, I will refer you to fifty
persons, if you like, who will bear testimony that he is, in person, as
I describe. There is no possible identity between them. Once more, thank
Heaven!"

Mrs. Dundyke returned to her home. The affair seemed to wear a darker
appearance than it had yet worn. And again her suspicions reverted to
the man who had called himself Mr. Hardcastle.

We must now turn to Westerbury. That generally supine city was awakened
out of its lethargy one morning, by hearing that Death had claimed
Marmaduke Carr. On the very night that his grandson was at Mrs.
Dundyke's, he was dying: and in the morning, Westerbury heard that he
was dead.

On the same day, the instant the news was conveyed to them, Squire Carr
and his son and heir came over with all the speed that the train could
bring them, and went bustling to the house of the dead man. There they
found Mr. Fauntleroy, the solicitor to the just deceased Mr. Carr. He
was a tall, large man, this lawyer; a clever practitioner, a fast-living
man, and, by the way, the same scapegrace who had done that injury, in
the shape of money, to Peter Arkell. But Mr. Fauntleroy had settled down
since then, and had made an enormous deal of money; and he held some
sway in Westerbury.

"Here's a pretty go!" cried Mr. Fauntleroy, in his loud, blustering
tones. "To think that he should die off like this, and nobody know of
it!"

"I never knew he was ill," said the squire. "I should, of course, have
come over if I had."

"Oh, he has been ill--that is to say, ailing--a good month now,"
returned the lawyer. "And when these aged healthy men begin to droop,
their life is not worth much."

"Well, what's to be done now?" cried Squire Carr.

"Nothing of consequence until we hear from the son. I sent down to the
carpenter this morning about the shell, but I shall do nothing more
until we hear from Mr. Carr in Holland. I wrote a line to him the moment
I heard what had happened, and was in time to get it off by the day
mail. He will come over, there's no doubt."

"You knew his address, then?" cried Valentine. It was the first word he
had spoken, and he had stood, with his little mean figure, rather behind
his father, and his little mean light eyes furtively scanning the
lawyer's countenance.

"I believe I know it," replied Mr. Fauntleroy. "There has been an
address in our books as long as I have had anything to do with the
office, 'Robert Carr, Messrs. something (I forget the name), Rotterdam.'
I once asked Mr. Carr if it was his son's correct address, and he said
it was, for all he knew. That is the address I have written to."

"Are you sure that the old man did not make a will?" asked the squire,
alluding to his relative, Marmaduke.

"I am sure that I never made one for him," returned Mr. Fauntleroy.
"Will? no, not he! The very mention of the subject used to anger him?
Where was the use of his making a will, he said. His son would inherit
just as well without a will as with one: he was heir-at-law."

Squire Carr's covetous heart gave vent to a resentful sigh. They were
the very self-same words that Mr. Carr had used to him so many years
ago, on the same topic. That old Marmaduke had _not_ made a will, he
felt as certain as that he should go to his own bed that night, but he
could not help harping upon the contrary hope. As to Valentine, he could
almost have found in his heart to forge one, had such doings not been
unfashionable.

"Well, I must say Marmaduke might have remembered that he had other
relatives besides that runagate son," grumbled the squire. "Had he been
mine, I'd have cut him off with a shilling."

"Not a bit on't, Carr," laughed the lawyer, in his coarse way. "You'll
not leave your chattels away from your own progeny; not even from the
roving sheep, Ben."

Now it was a singular coincidence, amid the many small coincidences of
this history, that Marmaduke Carr's son Robert should die at the same
time as his father. But so it was. The exile of many, many years died
without ever having seen his father, or sought for a word of
reconciliation with him: he had died suddenly in a fit, _before_ his
father, but not above an hour or two; and without seeing one of his
three children, for all were away from home when it occurred.

In reply to Mr. Fauntleroy's letter there arrived a short note, written
by a lady who signed herself "Emma Carr, nee D'Estival." The language
was English, and good English, too; but the handwriting was unmistakably
French. In acknowledging the receipt of Mr. Fauntleroy's letter, it
stated that "her husband" was from home; and it gave the information
that Mr. Carr was dead--had died after a few hours' illness.

Nothing could exceed the commotion that this news excited at Squire
Carr's. Robert Carr dead! then they were the heirs-at-law. They beset
the office of Mr. Fauntleroy; they took the conduct of affairs into
their own hands; they ordered the funeral, and they fixed the day of
interment. Not by any means a remote day; scarcely decently so,
according to English notions of keeping the dead. It was hot weather,
Valentine remarked; and that was true: but Westerbury said they wanted
to get the poor old man under ground that they might ransack the house,
and see what valuables were in it. Mr. Fauntleroy was rather taken aback
at these proceedings; at the summary wrestling of affairs out of _his_
hands; and he had promised himself some nice little pickings out of all
this, the funeral and the acting for Robert Carr, and one thing or
another; but he did not see his way clear to hinder it. If Robert Carr
was dead, and the old man had left no will, Squire Carr was undoubtedly
the heir-at-law.

It was not, however, to be quite smooth sailing. On their return home
from the funeral--and the only stranger invited to it was Mr. Arkell, he
and Mr. Fauntleroy, with the two Carrs forming the mourners--Mr.
Fauntleroy produced from his pocket a letter which he had received that
morning. It was from the Reverend Robert Carr, the son of the deceased
gentleman in Holland, requesting Mr. Fauntleroy to take all necessary
arrangements upon himself for the interment of old Mr. Carr, his
grandfather, and regretting that he was prevented journeying to attend
it, in consequence of the melancholy circumstances already known to Mr.
Fauntleroy. It desired that the style of the funeral should be handsome,
in accordance with the fortune and position of the deceased. It was
signed Robert Carr.

"Robert _Carr_!" contemptuously ejaculated the squire. "What a fool he
must be to write in that strain to us!"

Mr. Fauntleroy chuckled over the letter; especially over that part of it
ordering a suitable funeral. In his opinion, and in the opinion of
Westerbury generally, the funeral of Mr. Carr had _not_ been suitable.
There were no mutes, no pall-bearers, no superfluous plumes, no
anything: none but a mean-minded man would have ordered such a one.

Mr. Fauntleroy wrote back to the Reverend Robert Carr. He gave him a
statement of the case in a dry, lawyery sort of way, and told him that
Squire Carr being, under the apparent circumstances, heir-at-law, had
taken possession of the affairs and property. This elicited a most
indignant reply from Robert Carr. There could not be the slightest doubt
that his father and mother were married, he said, and he should be in
Westerbury as speedily as he could to maintain his own rights.

"Does he think he can impose upon us, this young fellow of a parson?"
cried Squire Carr, when the letter was shown him. "He will be for making
out next that his mother, that Hughes girl, was my cousin's wife. Let
him prove it. Old birds are not caught with chaff."

And Squire Carr took out letters of administration.




CHAPTER VII.

ROBERT CARR'S VISIT.


Mrs. Arkell sat in her drawing-room with a visitor. She was listening to
what struck her as being the very strangest tale she had ever heard or
dreamt of. The Reverend Mr. Prattleton, who had reached home the
previous night, had come this afternoon to tell her of the disappearance
of Mr. Dundyke.

"Your sister wished me to give you the particulars as soon as I got
home," he observed. "There was little, if any, acquaintance between you
and Mr. Dundyke," he said, "but she felt sure you would feel concern for
him, now he was dead, and would like to hear the details. It is a sad
thing; I may say an awful thing."

"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Mrs. Arkell, forgetting her
contempt for the Dundykes in the moment's interest. "It appears
incredible that such a thing could happen. Do you really think he was
murdered, Mr. Prattleton?"

"No, no; I don't think that," said the minor canon. "Of course there is
the possibility; but I incline to the belief that he must have fallen
into the lake, leaving his pocket-book on the shore. Indeed, I feel
convinced of it, and I think Mrs. Dundyke felt so at last. In the first
uncertainty and suspense, I hardly know what horrible things she did not
fancy."

"But surely all proper search was made for him!"

"Of course it was. I am not sure that the police took so much interest
in it, all of us being foreigners, and temporary sojourners in the town,
as they would have done if a native had been missing. It was with
difficulty they were persuaded to take a serious view of the case. The
gentleman had only gone off somewhere else, they thought, without
telling his wife. However, they did their best to find traces of him;
but it proved useless."

"What could have taken them to Geneva?" exclaimed Mrs. Arkell.

"A desire for change and recreation, I suppose. The same that took
me--that takes us all."

"But----those common working-people don't require change," had been on
Mrs. Arkell's tongue; but she altered the words. Mrs. Dundyke _was_ her
sister, and unfortunately she could not deny it. "But----Geneva was very
far to go."

"Not very, in these days of travelling. It is twenty years, Mrs.
Arkell, since I was on the continent, and one seems to get about there
ten times as quick as formerly. It's true I took the rail this time as
much as I could; the Dundykes, on the contrary, preferred the old
diligences, wherever they were to be had."

"Did you see Mr. Dundyke?"

"No," said the minor canon. "He had disappeared--is it not a strangely
sounding word?--before we reached Geneva."

"What a mercy that it was not after it!" thought Mrs. Arkell,
remembering the graces of manner of the ill-fated common-councilman.
"Mrs. Dundyke has returned home, you say?"

"Oh, yes. When all hope was gone, we left Geneva. She went on home
direct, but we stayed in Paris. I very much wished to call upon her as
we came through London, but we had remained beyond our time, and I could
not. I assure you, Mrs. Arkell, I do not know when I have met with
anyone that so won on my regard and on Mary's, as your sister."

Mrs. Arkell raised her eyes in pure surprise. _Her_ sister, humble
Betsey Dundyke, win upon anybody's regard! It struck her that the
clergyman must be saying it out of some notion of politeness; he could
surely never mean it. The fact was, Mrs. Arkell had so long been
accustomed to regard her sister in a disparaging point of view, that
she could not look upon her in any other light.

"She was always a poor, weak sort of girl, between ourselves, Mr.
Prattleton. Otherwise you know she never could have made such a
marriage. The man was most inferior; dreadfully inferior."

"Indeed! Then I think he must have got on well," said Mr. Prattleton.
"He was to have been one of the sheriffs, I believe, next year."

Mrs. Arkell superciliously drew down her still pretty lips. "A great
many of those civic London people are quite inferior tradesmen," she
said; "at least I have heard so. I only hope poor Betsey has enough left
to keep her from want. When these business people die, it often happens
that all they have dies with them, and--oh, William, Mr. Prattleton has
brought us the strangest news! Mr. Dundyke--Betsey's husband, you
know--is either murdered or drowned."

She had broken off thus on the entrance of her husband. Mr. Arkell,
as he shook hands with the clergyman, listened in amazement little
less great than his wife's, and asked question upon question,
greatly interested. You see there was sufficient--what shall I
say?--uncertainty, about the matter still, to make them look upon it
more as an uncleared-up mystery, than a certain tragedy, and perhaps
the chief feeling excited in all minds when they first heard it, was
that of marvel. In the midst of Mr. Prattleton's explanations, the
college clock struck three, and the bell rang out for afternoon
service. It was the minor canon's signal.

"I must go," he said, as he rose; "it is my week for chanting. Mr.
Wilberforce took the duty for me the two first days. I did intend to get
home on Saturday last, but somehow the time slipped on."

Mr. Arkell was going into the town, and he walked with Mr. Prattleton as
far as the large cathedral gates; for the minor canon went round to the
front way that afternoon, as it lay in the road for Mr. Arkell. Lounging
about in an idle mood, now against the contiguous railings, now against
a post of the great doorway, in a manner not often seen at cathedral
doors, and not altogether appropriate to them, was a rather tall,
bilious-looking young man, with fair hair. He did not see them; his head
was turned the other way.

"Can't you find anything better to do, George?"

The words came from the clergyman, and the young man turned with a
start. It was George Prattleton, the half-brother of the minor canon,
but very, very much younger. Mr. George held a good civil appointment in
India, but he was now home on sick leave, and his days were eaten up
with _ennui_. He made the Rev. Mr. Prattleton's his home, who
good-naturedly allowed him to do it; but he was inclined to be what the
world calls fast, and, except at the intervals (somewhat rare ones) when
he had plenty of money in his pocket, he felt that the world was a
wearisome sort of place, of no good to anybody. A good-natured,
inoffensive young fellow on the whole; free from actual vice; but
extravagant, incorrigibly lazy, and easily imposed upon. He generally
called his brother "Mr. Prattleton." The difference in their ages
justified it, and they had not been brought up together.

"I was deliberating whether I should go in to service this afternoon,"
said George--a sort of excuse for lounging against the door-post, as he
shook hands with Mr. Arkell.

"By way of passing away the time!" cried the clergyman, some covert
reproof in his tone.

"Well--yes," returned George, who was by no means unwilling to confess
to his shortcomings. "It _is_ a bore, having nothing to do."

"When you first came home you brought a cartload of books with you,
red-hot upon studying Hindustanee. I wonder how many times you have
opened them!"

Mr. Prattleton passed into the cathedral as he spoke. It was time he
did, for the bell had been going twelve minutes. George pulled a rueful
face as he thought of his Hindustanee.

"I tried it for six whole days after I came home, Mr. Arkell--I give you
my word I did; but I couldn't get on at all by myself, and there is not
a master to be had in the town. I shall set to it in right earnest
before I go out again."

Mr. Arkell laughed. He rather liked the good-natured young man, and
Travice he knew was fond of him.

"But, George, you should remember one thing," he said: "idleness does
not get a man on in the world. You have a fine career before you out
yonder, if you only take the trouble to secure it."

"I know that, Mr. Arkell; and I assure you not a fellow in all the three
presidencies is steadier than I am, or works harder than I do, when I am
there. It is only here, where I have no work before me, that I get into
this dawdling way."

Mr. Arkell left him, passed out of the cathedral inclosure, and
continued his way up the town. George Prattleton remained where he was,
wondering what on earth he could do with himself. It was too late to go
in to service, for the bell had ceased, the organ was pealing out, and
he caught a glimpse, across the great body of the cathedral, of the
white surplices of the dean and two of the chapter, as they whisked in
at the cloister door. George Prattleton believed time must be given to
mortals as a punishment for their sins. He had not a sixpence in his
pocket; he owed so much at the billiard-rooms that he did not like to
show his face there; he was in debt to all the tobacconists of the
place; he had borrowed money from private friends; and altogether he
rather wished for an earthquake, or something of that light nature, by
way of a diversion to the general stagnation of the sultry afternoon.

Mr. Arkell meanwhile reached the house of lawyer Fauntleroy, for that
was the place he was bound for. Mr. Fauntleroy was not his solicitor,
but he had a question to ask him on a matter unconnected with
professional business. As he was turning out of the office again, he
nearly ran against a stranger in deep mourning, who was looking up, as
though he wanted to find the number of the house. He was a slight,
delicate-looking young man; and it instantly struck Mr. Arkell that he
had seen his face before, or one like it.

"I beg your pardon," said the stranger, taking his hat more completely
off than an Englishman generally does to one of his own sex, "can you
tell me whether this is Mr. Fauntleroy's?"

"It is Mr. Fauntleroy's. I think--I think you are the son of Robert
Carr!" impulsively cried Mr. Arkell, as the resemblance to the exiled
and now dead friend of his boyhood flashed across his memory.

It was no other. The Reverend Robert Carr had hastened to Westerbury as
soon as family arrangements and his own health permitted him. A few
moments of conversation, and Mr. Arkell turned back with him to
introduce him to Lawyer Fauntleroy, thinking at the same time that he
had rarely seen anyone look so thin, so pale, so shadowy as Robert Carr.

It was a handsome house, this of Lawyer Fauntleroy's--and if you object
to the term "Lawyer Fauntleroy," as old-fashioned, you must not blame me
for using it. Westerbury rarely called him anything else; does not call
him anything else now, if it has occasion to recal him or his doings.
The offices were on either side of the door, as you entered; Mr.
Fauntleroy's private room, a large, well fitted-up apartment, being on
the right; a small ante-room led to it, generally the sanctum of the
managing clerk.

Mr. Fauntleroy was at leisure, and the whole affair in all its details,
past and present, was related to Robert Carr. Mr. Arkell remained also.
It was not a pleasant office to have to seek to convince this young man
of his own illegitimacy, never a doubt of which had arisen in his mind.

"My mother not married!" he repeated, a streak of suspicious
crimson--suspicious when taken in conjunction with that hacking cough,
those shadowy hands--"indeed you would not entertain such a thought had
you known her. She was, I believe, of inferior family, but in herself
she was a lady, and her children had cause to love and bless her. Not
married! Why, are you aware, Mr. Fauntleroy, that my father was a
partner in one of the first merchant's houses in Rotterdam, and that my
mother held her own, and was visited, and respected as few are, so long
as she lived?"

Lawyer Fauntleroy shook his head. He was a man who took practical views
of most things, utterly scorning theoretical ones.

"I don't doubt your word, Mr. Carr, that your mother was a most
estimable lady; I remember her myself, an uncommon pretty girl; but that
does not prove that she was married."

Mr. Carr's eyes flashed. "Not prove it! Do you think, being what I tell
you she was, a good, religious woman, that she would have lived with my
father unless they had been married?"

"I have known such cases," cried the lawyer, with his dry practicalness,
if there is such a word. "One of the first men in this city--if you
except the clergy and that set--Haughton was his name, and plenty of
money he had, and lived in style, as Mr. Arkell here can tell you, his
sons sticking themselves above everybody, his wife and daughters
setting the fashions--well, Mr. Carr, when he died, it was discovered
that his wife was not his wife; that his children were nothing in the
eyes of the law. Westerbury was electrified, I can tell you, and bestows
hard names upon old Haughton to this day, for having so imposed upon
them."

"You should not put such a case on a parallel with ours," said the young
clergyman, in pained reproof.

"But, my good sir, it _is_ on a parallel; so far, at all events. I tell
you this family were looked upon as superior, as everything that was
moral; not a word could be urged against the wife (as we'll call her for
the argument's sake); she was respected and visited; and not until old
Haughton died, and his will came to be read, did the secret ooze out. He
left his money to them, but he could not leave it in the usual
straightforward way. By the way," added the lawyer briskly, as a thought
struck him; "in what manner was your father's will worded? How was your
mother styled in it?"

"You forget that my mother has been dead for some time. The will was
made only two years ago. It was a perfectly legally-drawn-up will,
according to the Dutch laws; there can be no doubt of that."

"Do you remember how you are described in it, and your brothers and
sisters?" persisted Mr. Fauntleroy.

"I have but one brother and one sister; we are described in what I
suppose is the usual manner, by our Christian names, Robert, Thomas, and
Mary Augusta, the sons and daughter of Robert Carr. It is something to
that effect; I did not take particular notice of the wording."

"I wonder what the law is, over there, with regard to legitimacy?" mused
Mr. Fauntleroy, his eyes seeing an imaginary Holland in the distance.
"But, Mr. Carr, this is waste of time," he added, rousing himself; "the
plain case round which the question will revolve, is not so much whether
your father and mother were married, as whether it can be _proved_ that
they were. The law, in a case like this, requires proof actual--and very
right that it should."

"I suppose there will not be the slightest difficulty in proving it,"
said Robert Carr, resenting the very suggestion.

"Can _you_ prove it? Do you know where it took place?"

The young man shook his head. "I never heard where. It can be readily
found out."

"Did you ever question your father upon the point?"

"No; it was not likely I should, seeing that my attention was never
drawn to any doubt of the sort."

"Well, Westerbury has never entertained any doubt the other way," said
the lawyer. "It is not agreeable to say these things to your face, Mr.
Carr; but there's no help for it; and the sooner the question is set at
rest for you, one way or the other, the better. I should not think
there's a single person living still in Westerbury, who recollects the
circumstances as they took place, that would believe your father married
Miss Hughes after she went away with him."

"It is probable they were married before they did go away," spoke Robert
Carr, hating more than he liked to show the being compelled to this
discussion.

"That, I can answer for, they were not. When they left here she was
Martha Ann Hughes."

"Mr. Fauntleroy is right so far," interposed Mr. Arkell. "They were not
married when they left Westerbury: on that point there can be no
mistake. The question that remains is, were they married subsequent to
it?"

"They must have been," said Robert Carr.

"But there is no must in the case," dissented the lawyer. "The
probabilities are that they were not: the belief is such."

"I do not see why you should persistently seek to cast this opprobrium
on my father and mother, Mr. Fauntleroy!" exclaimed Robert Carr, his
hollow face lighting up with reproach.

"Bless you, my good sir, I don't seek to cast it," said the lawyer,
good-humouredly. "Facts are facts. If you can prove that Robert Carr
married Miss Hughes, and your own legal birth with it, you will take the
property; but if you can't prove it, Squire Carr must keep possession,
and things will remain as they are. Where's the use of shutting our eyes
to the truth?"

"There can be no doubt whatever of the marriage. I am sure of it; I
would stake all my hopes upon it here and--I was going to
say--hereafter."

"But you so speak only according to your belief, sir? You have no shadow
of proof."

"True; but----"

"Just so," interrupted Mr. Fauntleroy, in his decisive and rather
overbearing manner. "All the proofs lie on the other side--negative
proofs, at any rate. They went away together without being married; that
is certain--and, by the way, they hoaxed my friend here, William Arkell,
into helping them off; and I believe his father never forgave him for
it. Neither were there wanting subsequent proofs--negative ones,
perhaps, as I say--that they remained unmarried; at any rate, for some
years. Rely upon one thing, Mr. Robert Carr: that old Marmaduke, just
dead, would have left his money away from his son unless he had been
thoroughly certain that no marriage took place. He had sworn to
disinherit his son if he married Miss Hughes, and he was a man to keep
his word."

"Excuse me," said Robert Carr: "you do not perceive that this very fact
may have been the motive that induced my father to keep his marriage a
secret."

"I perceive it very well. But it is a great deal more probable that
there never was a marriage. Weigh all the circumstances well, Mr. Carr;
without prejudice: though, of course, it is difficult for you to do so.
Over and over again your father was heard to say that he had no
intention of marrying the girl----"

"You forget that you are speaking to me of my mother," interrupted
Robert Carr.

"Well, yes, I did," acknowledged the lawyer. "It is difficult to speak
to a son upon these things; but I think, Mr. Carr, you had better hear
them. Mr. Arkell there, who was your father's intimate acquaintance, can
testify how positively he disclaimed, even to him, any intention of
marriage. Next came the----"

"Allow me," interposed the clergyman, his haughty tone bespeaking how
painful all this was to him. "I presume no suspicion was cast upon my
mother's name while she was in Westerbury?"

"Not a breath of it. Blame was cast, though, on her and her sisters for
allowing the visits of Robert Carr: as is usual in all cases where there
is much disparity in the social standing of the parties. Next came the
elopement, I was about to say. They went direct to London, where they
stayed together----"

"The marriage must have taken place there," again interrupted Robert
Carr.

"I believe not," said Mr. Fauntleroy, dryly. "Marmaduke Carr took care
to acquaint himself with particulars, and it was ascertained that they
did not remain in London long enough to allow of it. The law, more
particular then than it is now, required a residence of three weeks in a
place, before a marriage could be solemnized, and they left for Holland
ere the expiration of a fortnight. It was our house--my father then
being its head--which sought out these particulars for old Marmaduke.
No; rely upon it there was no marriage in London."

His tone plainly said, "Rely upon it there was no marriage, there or
elsewhere." Mr. Carr was about to speak, but the lawyer raised his hand
and continued.

"Some little time after they had settled in Rotterdam, John Carr--Squire
Carr now--went over and saw them. There's no doubt his visit was a
fishing one, hoping to find out that a marriage _had_ taken place; for
in that case, Marmaduke Carr would have wanted another heir than his
son. I am sure that John, close-fisted as he was known to be, would have
given a hundred pounds out of his pocket to be able to come back and
report that they were married; but he could not. He was obliged to
confess not only that his cousin and Miss Hughes were not married, but
that Robert had told him he never should marry her. And, indeed, it was
hardly to be supposed that he would then."

"But----"

"A moment yet, if you please, Mr. Carr. Some considerable time after
this, and when I think there was one child born--which must have been
you, sir--Mr. Carr got to see a letter written by Martha Ann Hughes to
her sister Mary. I think he got the sight of it through you, Mr.
Arkell?"

"Through my father. Mary Hughes was at work at our house, and Tring, our
maid, brought the letter on the sly to my mother. My father, I remember,
said he should like to show it to Marmaduke Carr; and he did so."

"Ay. Well, Mr. Carr, nothing could have been plainer than that letter.
Mary Ann Hughes acknowledged that she had no hope of Robert's marrying
her; but he was kind to her, she said, and she was as happy as anyone
well could be under her unfortunate circumstances. Indeed, I fear you
have no room for hope."

"Where is that letter?" asked the clergyman.

"It's impossible to say. Destroyed most likely long ago. None of your
mother's family are remaining in Westerbury."

"Are they all dead?"

"Dead or dispersed. The brother went off to America or somewhere; and
the second sister, Mary, died: it was said she grieved a great deal
about her sister, your mother. The eldest sister married a young man of
the name of Pycroft, and they also emigrated. Nothing has been heard of
any of them for years."

"You must permit me to maintain my own opinion, Mr. Fauntleroy," pursued
Robert Carr; "and I shall certainly not allow anyone to interfere with
my grandfather's property. If the other branch of the family--Squire
Carr and his sons--wish to put forth any pretensions to it, they must
first prove their right."

Mr. Fauntleroy laughed. He was amused at the clergyman's idea of law.

"The proof lies with you, Mr. Carr," he said; "and not with them. They
cannot prove a negative, you know; and they say that no marriage took
place. It is for you to prove that it did. Failing that proof, the
property will be theirs."

"And meanwhile? While we are searching for the proof?" questioned Robert
Carr, after a pause.

"Meanwhile they retain possession. I understand that Mrs. Lewis has
already come over and taken up her abode in the house."

"Who is Mrs. Lewis?" asked the clergyman.

"Squire Carr's widowed daughter. She has been living at home since her
husband died. I was told this morning that she had come to the house
with the intention of remaining."

Mr. Fauntleroy's information was correct. Mrs. Lewis _had_ come to
Marmaduke Carr's house, and was fully resolved to stop in it, fate and
the squire permitting. Mr. Lewis had died about a year before, and left
her not so well off as she could have wished. She had a competency; but
she had not riches. She broke up her household in the Grounds, and went
on a long visit to her father's, to save housekeeping temporarily;
leaving her two boys, who were on the foundation of the college school,
as boarders at the house of Mr. Wilberforce.




CHAPTER VIII.

GOING OVER TO SQUIRE CARR'S.


Mr. Arkell put his arm within Robert Carr's, as they walked away
together. It would be difficult to express how very much he felt for
this young man. His father's fault was not his, and Mr. Arkell, at
least, would not be one to visit it upon him. For a few yards their
steps were taken in silence; but the clergyman spoke at last, his eye
dilating, his voice vehement.

"If they had only known my mother as I knew her, they would see how
improbable is this tale that they are telling! I do not care what their
suspicions are, what their want of proof; I _know_ that my mother was my
father's wife."

"Indeed I hope it will prove so," said Mr. Arkell, rather at a loss what
else to say.

"She was modest, gentle, good, refined; she was respected as few are
respected. There never was a trace of shame upon her brow. Could her
children have been trained as she trained hers, if--if--I can hardly
trust myself to speak of this. It is a cruel calumny."

Perhaps so. But, looking at it in its best light; allowing that they
were really married; the calumny was alone the fault of this young man's
father. If he could have removed the stigma, he should have done it. Did
this poor young man begin to think so? Did unwilling doubts arise, even
to him? Scarcely, yet. But the lines grew hard in his face as they
walked along, and his troubled eyes looked out straight before him into
space, seeing nothing.

"I wish you would give me the whole history of the past yourself, Mr.
Arkell, now that I can listen quietly. I was hardly in a state to pay
attention just now; somehow I distrusted that old lawyer."

"You need not have done that. He was your grandfather's man of business;
and, though a little rough, he is sufficiently honest."

"Is he not acting for Squire Carr?"

"I think not. I am sure not."

"Will you give me the history of the past, quietly? as correctly as you
can remember it."

Mr. Arkell did so; telling, with a half laugh, the ruse Robert Carr had
exercised in getting his father's carriage to take them away, and the
hot water he, William, got into in consequence. He told the whole
affair from its earliest beginning to its ending, concealing nothing; he
mentioned how Mary Hughes had happened to be at work at his mother's
house that day; and the dreadful distress she experienced, as soon as
the matter was made known to her; he even told how severe in its
judgment on the fugitives was Westerbury.

"And were _you_ severe upon them also?" asked Robert Carr.

"Just at first. That is, I believed the worst. But afterwards my opinion
changed, and I thought it most likely that Robert married her in London.
I thought that for some time. In fact, until I saw the letter that you
heard Mr. Fauntleroy speak of, as having been written by your mother to
her sister Mary."

"You saw that letter yourself, then?"

"Yes, my father showed it to me. Not in any gossiping spirit, but as a
convincing proof that the opinion I had held was wrong, and his was
right. He had been very greatly vexed at the whole affair, and would
never listen to me when I said I hoped and thought they were married. It
was, as Mr. Fauntleroy observed, a plain, convincing letter; and from
the moment I saw it, I felt sure that there had been no marriage, and
would be none. I am so grieved to tell you this, my dear young friend;
but I might not be doing my duty if I were to suppress it."

Robert Carr's face turned a shade paler.

"I see exactly how it is," he said: "that it is next to impossible for
you, or anyone else, to believe there was a marriage; all the
circumstances telling against it. Nevertheless, I declare to you, Mr.
Arkell, on my sacred word as a clergyman, that I am as certain a
marriage did take place, as that there is a heaven above us."

Mr. Arkell did not think so, and there ensued a pause.

"Your father died rather suddenly, I believe," he said to Robert Carr.

"Very suddenly. He was taken with a sort of fit; I really cannot tell
you its exact nature, for the medical men differed, but I suppose it was
apoplexy. They agreed in one thing, that there was no hope from the
first; and he never recovered consciousness. I was in London when they
telegraphed to me, but when I got home he had been for some hours dead."

"I will send to the hotel for your portmanteau," said Mr. Arkell; "you
must be our guest while you stay. My son will be delighted. He is about
your own age."

"Thank you, no; you are very kind, but I would rather be alone just
now," was Robert Carr's answer. "This is not a pleasant visit for me,
and I am in poor health, besides. I shall not stay here long; I must
enter upon a search for the register of the marriage. But I should like
to pay a visit to the Carr's before I leave, and I am too fatigued to go
back to-day."

"To pay a visit to the Carr's?" Mr. Arkell echoed.

"Yes. Why should I not? They are my relatives, and I do not see that
there need be ill blood between us. As to the property, they have no
real right to it whatever, and I hope I shall speedily produce proof
that it is mine, and so put an end to any heartburning. I suppose," he
added, reverting to the one subject, "that you are quite sure the
marriage did not take place before they left Westerbury?"

"You may put that idea entirely aside," replied Mr. Arkell. "There's no
doubt that their going away was in consequence of a bitter quarrel
Robert had with his father; that it was unpremeditated until the night
previous to their departure. In Westerbury they were not married, could
not have been; but perhaps they were in London. It is true, I believe,
they did not stay there anything like three weeks--and you heard what
Mr. Fauntleroy said; but I suppose it is possible to evade the law,
which exacts a residence of that length of time in a place, before the
ceremony can be performed."

"Yes, there's no doubt they were married in London," concluded Robert
Carr. "I must ascertain what parish they stayed in there; and the rest
will be easy."

Not another word was said. Robert Carr walked on in silence, and Mr.
Arkell did not interrupt it. Mr. Arkell took him into his house. In the
dining-room, the old familiar room you have so often seen, sat a lady,
languidly looking over a parcel of books just come in. By her side,
leaning over her chair, grasping the books more eagerly than she, the
stranger saw a young man of about his own age--tall, slender,
gentlemanly--with a face of peculiar refinement, and a sweet smile.

"Now, I wonder what they mean by their negligence? The two books I
ordered are not here. I wish _they_ knew what it was to have these fine
starry nights, and be without a book of reference; they----"

"Travice," interrupted Mr. Arkell, "I have brought you a visitor, the
son of a once close friend of mine. My wife, Mrs. Arkell. Charlotte,
this is Mr. Robert Carr, Mr. Carr's grandson."

Mrs. Arkell turned and received him with a curtsey and a dubious look.
Always inclined to judge on the uncharitable side, she had had nothing
but indifferent scorn to cast to the rumour that Robert Carr's children
were going to lay claim to the property, just as she had scorned Robert
Carr himself in the old days. She knew that this must be one of the
children.

Travice went up at once and shook him warmly by the hand, his pleasant
face smiling its own welcome. "I have often heard my father speak of
yours," he said; "I am so pleased to see you."

Very little was said in the presence of Mrs. Arkell, touching the
business that had brought Robert Carr to Westerbury; but one subject led
to another, and Robert Carr told, as one of the strange occurrences of
the world, that which had made so strong an impression on himself--the
story of the disappearance of Mr. Dundyke. He told it as to strangers;
and not, until he had related his own meeting with them at Grenoble, and
his visit to Mrs. Dundyke on the night of her return to London, did he
find that Mrs. Arkell was her sister. It was Travice Arkell's
impetuosity that brought it out then; Mrs. Arkell had been better
pleased that it should remain a secret.

"We have heard it all," said Travice; "and Mrs. Dundyke is my aunt and
my godmother. She and my mother are sisters."

"I was not aware of it," said Robert Carr. "Is it not a strange tale?"

"Strange!" repeated Travice, "I never heard of anything half so strange.
I have been waylaying Mr. Prattleton as he came out of college, wanting
to hear more than my mother could tell me. I wish I had been at Geneva!"

"So do I," said Robert Carr.

Robert Carr remained to dinner. He still expressed a wish to make
himself known to his relatives, the Carrs; and Mr. Arkell offered to
drive him to Eckford on the following morning. A railway now went near
the place; but the seven miles' drive was pleasanter than the ten of
rail, and Squire Carr's house was a good mile and a half from the
Eckford station. So it was arranged.

"Travice," said Mr. Arkell, as Robert Carr took his departure, "I was
glad to see your reception of this gentleman. Be to him a _friend_ in
any way that you can. It may be, that he will not find too many of them
in Westerbury."

Mrs. Arkell tossed her head. "I am rather surprised that you should
bring him here, and introduce him on this familiar footing. The past
history of the father is not a passport for the son. I should not have
cared so much had Charlotte and Sophy been away."

"Charlotte and Sophy! He'll not poison them. What are you thinking of,
Charlotte? He has been reared a gentleman; he is a clergyman of the
Church of England. Whatever may have been the truth of the past, _he_ is
not to blame for it."

Travice Arkell was full of sympathy. "How ill he looks!" he exclaimed;
"though he seems to think nothing of it, and says it is the result of a
hurt. Is it not curious that he should have met with Mrs. Dundyke? He
says his mother was in some way related to the Dundykes."

"There, that will do, Travice," interposed Mrs. Arkell. "I shall dream
of that Geneva lake to-night, and of seeing dead men in it. But,
William," she added in a lower tone to her husband, "what a misfortune
it will be for Betsey, should she have nothing left to live upon! She
would have to go out as a housekeeper, or something of that sort."

Squire Carr's residence was a low, rambling, red-brick building, with a
quantity of outhouses lying around it, and an avenue of oaks leading
almost up to the low-porched entrance door. Pacing before this porch, a
clay pipe in his mouth, and his dark hair uncovered to the September
sun, was Benjamin Carr. He seemed in a moody study, from which the sound
of wheels aroused him, and he saw Mr. Arkell driving up in his open
carriage, a stranger sitting with him, and the groom in the back seat.
Benjamin Carr wore a short velveteen shooting-coat--it set off his tall
form to advantage; and Robert Carr thought what a fine man he was.

"Why, Benjamin, I did not know you were at home."

"I got here a day or two ago," returned Benjamin, putting aside his
pipe, and shaking hands with Mr. Arkell. "The squire's slice of luck
brought me. One of the girls wrote me word of it; so I've come to see
whether I can't drop in for a few of the pickings."

It was an awkward answer, considering that Robert Carr was listening;
perhaps he did not understand it. Mr. Arkell made rather a bustle of
getting out, and of standing aside for Robert, telling his groom to take
the horse round to the stables. "Is your father in, Benjamin?" he asked.

"For all I know. I have seen none of them since breakfast. Valentine's
gone over to Eckford, I believe; but--here's the squire."

The squire, attracted by the sounds of the arrival, was peeping forth
from the house door. He wore a shabby old coat, and his poor shrunken
clothes looked altogether too small even for his miserable little
figure. Robert Carr was struck with the contrast to his fine son.

A word or two of explanation from Mr. Arkell, delivered in a low tone, a
prolonged, astonished stare from Benjamin, and the squire, in a
bewilderment of surprise, was shaking hands with Robert Carr.

"It is the first visit I have made to my father's native place, and
though unpleasant circumstances have brought me, I do not see that they
need be any reason for my shunning my relatives; I daresay we only wish,
on both sides, all that is fair and right," began Robert Carr. "I
expressed a wish to come and see you, sir, and Mr. Arkell kindly offered
to drive me over."

Had the squire followed his first impulse, he might possibly have
ordered Mr. Robert Carr off his premises again; for he could only look
upon him as a secret enemy, who had very nearly wrested from him a brave
inheritance. But his policy throughout life had been to conciliate, no
matter at what expense of hypocrisy. It was the safest course, he held;
and he pursued it now. Besides, if there was one man that the squire did
not care to stand altogether a sneak before, it was William Arkell with
his well-known uprightness.

The squire led the way to his study, turning over in his mind what
secret end Robert Carr could hope to answer by coming over and spying
into the enemy's quarters. That he had come as a spy, or in some
character as base, it was out of the squire's nature to do other than
believe. Benjamin followed, in a state of wonder. As they went along the
stone passage, Robert Carr caught sight of some pretty girls peeping
here and there like scared pheasants; but the squire raised his finger
meaningly, and they scuttered away.

The visit was not a pleasant one, after all; and perhaps it was a
mistake to have made it. The restraint was too visibly evident. Robert
himself spoke of the inheritance--spoke openly, as one honourable, or we
may as well say, indifferent, man would discuss it with another. There
could be no possible doubt that his father and mother were married, he
said; and he hoped the property of all sorts would be allowed to rest in
abeyance until the fact was ascertained, which might be done in a week's
time.

The squire was rather taken aback, especially at the easy, confident
tone; not a boasting tone--one of quiet, calm surety. "Why, how do you
think to ascertain it?" he asked.

"I shall search the registers of the London churches."

The squire burst into a laugh. Had Robert Carr told him he was going to
search the moon, it could not have struck upon his ear as a more absurd
proceeding. Squire Carr was as sure that there had been no marriage as
that the sun was then shining on his visitor's head; he had been sure of
it, to his cost, all these long years.

"Well," said he, "you'll do as you like, of course, but don't go to much
expense over it."

"Why?"

"Because you will _never_ find what you are looking for, and it's a sin
to throw away good money. I asked your father myself whether he had been
married to the girl in London, and he told me he had not, that he had
never been inside a church in London in his life; he told me also that
he never should marry her. He spoke on his honour, and therefore I know
he spoke the truth."

There was an unpleasant silence. Robert Carr began to feel that the
topic could not be pursued.

"Look here, Mr. Carr," resumed the squire, in his piping voice: "you, as
a university man, must be in a degree a man of the world, and must know
that what's fair for the goose is fair for the gander. Had Marmaduke
Carr's son lived and come over here to take possession, he would have
taken it, uninterfered with by us; it would have been his own, and we
should have wished him joy. But he did not live, he died; he died, in
the eyes of the law, childless, and I am the inheritor. As good tell me
you lay claim to this house of mine here, as to the property I have just
come into of my uncle Marmaduke's."

"You will not allow it to lie in abeyance for a while?"

"Most certainly not. Nobody else would: and you must be a very young man
to ask it. I have the law on my side: you cannot in England act contrary
to the law, Mr. Carr."

"Well, I daresay you _think_ you are right," said Robert Carr in a
tolerant spirit. "Let us drop the subject. I did not, I assure you, come
here to enter upon it; I came to make acquaintance with you, my
relatives, and to say, but in no spirit of anger or contention, that I
intend to establish and maintain my rights. We need not be enemies, or
speak as such."

"Very well," said the squire, "I'll ask you one thing, and then we'll
drop it, as you say; and it was not I who began it, mind. How came you
to think of advancing your claim to my uncle Marmaduke's property? What
put it in your head?"

"I believe it to be my property--that I have succeeded to it, with my
brother and sister, in consequence of the death of my father. You must
understand, Squire Carr, it is only now, since this question arose, that
I have heard there was any doubt cast upon our birth."

"I see. Robert kept it from you. He was a simpleton for his pains; and
you must not mind my being plain enough to say it. Next to the wrong
itself, the worst wrong that parents can inflict is the keeping it a
secret from their children. And now let us go to luncheon. I told them
to lay it. Never mind about its being early: you shall not go back
without first taking something to eat."

"If you go away without partaking of our bread and salt, we shall think
you bear us malice," said Benjamin, courteously, as he walked on to the
dining-room with the clergyman.

Mr. Arkell was following, but the squire laid his finger on his arm to
detain him. "Don't let him do it," he whispered.

"Do what?" asked Mr. Arkell.

"All this searching of registers and stuff that he talks of. Mind! I am
not speaking in a selfish spirit, as I might if I were afraid of
it,"--and for once the squire's earnest tones, and eyes, raised full in
Mr. Arkell's face, proved that he was really speaking truth. "I am sorry
for the young man; he is evidently a gentleman, and he looks sickly; and
his father has done an ill part by him in letting this come upon him as
a blow. There's not the smallest probability that they were married; I
know what Robert said to me, and I would stake my life that they were
not. If he searches every register in the three kingdoms, he'll never
find its record; and it is a pity he should spend his money, and his
time, and his hopes over it. Don't let him do it."

"That he will do it, I am quite certain," was the reply of Mr. Arkell.
"He seems perfectly to reverence the memory of his mother; and it is as
much to vindicate her fame that he will make the search, as for the sake
of the inheritance. Robert Carr was grievously to blame to let it come
to this. He ought to have set the question at rest, one way or the
other, before his death."

"The fact is, Robert overreached himself," said Squire Carr. "I can see
it plainly. He did not marry the girl, because it would have been the
means of forfeiting his father's property--for old Marmaduke would have
kept his word. He wanted to come into that property, and then to have
made a will and left it to these children, relying on their foreign
birth and residence to keep always the fact of their illegitimacy from
them. But he died suddenly, you see, before he had come into it, and
therefore the property goes from them. Robert overreached himself."

Mr. Arkell nodded his head. His opinion coincided with Squire Carr's.




CHAPTER IX.

A STARTLED LUNCHEON-TABLE.


The luncheon was laid in a low room, with a beam running across the
ceiling; the walls, once bright with red flock paper and much gilding,
were soiled and dull now, after the manner of a great many of our
dining-rooms. Squire Carr took the head of the table. He apologised for
the fare: cold veal, ham (which Benjamin, who sat at the foot of the
table, carved), and salad. The squire's daughters did not appear at it.
There were too many of them, he said to Robert; but Mrs. Lewis, who had
just come over from Westerbury by the train, did. She was a big woman,
with little eyes like the squire's, and a large face--the latter very
red just now, through her mile-and-a-half walk in the sun from Eckford.
She turned her back on the young clergyman when he said grace, as though
he had no business there. Benjamin had whispered to her who he was, and
the search of the marriage register books that was in prospect; and
Mrs. Lewis resented it visibly. She had no mind to give up that bijou of
a house just entered upon. She believed she should have trouble enough
with her father to keep it, without another opponent coming into the
field.

"What brings you over to-day, Emma?" asked the squire of Mrs. Lewis, as
the meal proceeded. "Anything turned up?"

A rather ambiguous question, the latter one, to uninitiated ears; but
the squire had been burning to put it, and Mrs. Lewis understood. He
looked covertly at her for a moment with his blinking eyes, and then
dropped them again.

"I only came over to see Ben, papa," she answered. "The news reached me
this morning that he had come home. I have not had time to do anything
yet."

Now, the fact was, Squire Carr had placed his daughter, knowing her
admirable ferreting propensities, in Marmaduke Carr's house for one sole
purpose--that of visiting its every hole and corner. "There _may_ be a
will," the squire had said to himself, in his caution, several times
since the death. "I don't think there is; I could stake a great deal
that there is not, for Marmaduke was not likely to make one; but it's as
well to be on the safe side, and such things have been heard of as
wills hid away in houses." And when the squire saw Mrs. Lewis, whom he
had not expected that day, he began to fear that something of the sort
had "turned up." The relief was great.

"Oh, to see Ben. You'll see enough of him, I expect, before he's off
again."

"Are you going to make a long stay here, this time, Ben?" asked Mr.
Arkell.

"Yes, I think I shall. Will you take some more ham, Emma?"

"Your name is the same as my wife's," observed the young clergyman, with
a smile, as he passed Mrs. Lewis's plate for more ham: for it was Squire
Carr's pleasure that servants did not wait at luncheon.

"Is it? It is a very ugly one," roughly replied Mrs. Lewis, who could
not recover her equanimity in the presence of this gentleman. "I can't
think how they came to give it me, for my part. I have a prejudice
against the name 'Emma.' The woman bore it whom, of all the women I have
known in the world, I most disliked."

"It was your mother's name, my dear," said the squire.

"And _I_ think a charming name," said Robert Carr. "I am not sure but it
was Emma D'Estival's name that first attracted me to her."

The squire looked up with a sort of start. He remembered the letter
written by "Emma Carr, _nee_ D'Estival." Of course! she was this young
man's wife.

"You look young to have a wife," was all the squire said.

"You look, to me, as if you had no business with one at all," added Mrs.
Lewis with blunt plainness. "Sickly men should be cautious how they
marry, lest they leave their wives widows. I have been so left. I threw
aside my widow's cap only last week."

Robert Carr explained to them what his hurt had been, and how his chest
had suffered at times since. He was aware he looked unusually ill just
now, he said; but he had looked just as much so about a year and a half
before--had coughed also. He should get well now, he supposed, like he
did then. For one thing, speaking of his present looks, this matter was
harassing him a good deal, and there had been his father's sudden death.

"Oh, by the way, Mr. Arkell, let me ask you something," exclaimed Mrs.
Lewis suddenly. "I have heard the strangest thing. That a gentleman, a
Mr. Dundas, or some such name, had been drowned or murdered, or
something, at Geneva; a relative of your wife's. What _is_ the truth of
it?"

"That is the truth, as far as we can learn it," replied Mr. Arkell. "It
was Mr. Dundyke, the husband of Mrs. Arkell's sister. You saw her once,
I know, at my mother's house, a great many years ago; she was Miss
Betsey Travice then----"

"But about the murder?" interrupted Mrs. Lewis. "_Was_ he murdered?
Roland ran home from Mr. Wilberforce's for a minute last night, and I
heard it from him. I think he said the young Prattletons told him. I
know he was quite up in arms about it. What is it?"

Mr. Arkell pointed to Robert Carr. "That gentleman can tell you better
than I can," he said. "He heard the particulars from Mrs. Dundyke
herself. I only heard them from Mr. Prattleton secondhand."

"I suppose you want me to tell the story, instead of yourself," said
Robert Carr, with a glance and a smile at Mr. Arkell. "Mr. Prattleton
was on the spot, and instituted the search, so _his_ information cannot
be secondhand."

They began it between them, but Mr. Arkell gradually ceased, and left it
to Robert Carr. It appeared to take a singular hold on the squire's
interest. He had just asked his son for more ham, but was too absorbed
to send his plate for it. Ben held the slice between his knife and fork,
and had to let it drop at last.

"Then he was not murdered!" exclaimed Mrs. Lewis. "It was only a case of
drowning, after all!"

"Of drowning," assented Robert Carr. "At least that is the most probable
supposition."

"It may rather be called at present a case of mysterious disappearance,
as the sensational weekly papers would phrase it," interposed Mr.
Arkell, speaking again. "Mrs. Dundyke at one time felt convinced that a
murder had been committed, as Mr. Prattleton tells me, and afterwards
modified her opinion. Now she feels her doubts renewed again."

"What a shocking thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Lewis. "And who does she think
murdered him--if he was murdered?"

"The Mr. Hardcastle of whom mention has been made. Mrs. Dundyke has
discovered that he was an impostor."

"Has she!" exclaimed Robert Carr.

"Mr. Prattleton heard from her by last evening's post, and he came in
late, and showed me her letters," said Mr. Arkell. "This man,
Hardcastle, had passed himself off as being a partner of the great
Hardcastle house in Leadenhall-street--a nephew of its head and
chief--whereas he turns out to be entirely unknown to them."

"And she thinks he did the murder?" quickly cried Mrs. Lewis, who was
possessed of all a woman's curiosity on such subjects.

"She thinks the suspicions look very dark against him," said Mr.
Arkell. "I confess I think the same."

"But I thought Mr. Carr, here, said she had completely exonerated this
Mr. Hardcastle!" cried the squire. "Be quiet, Emma; you would let nobody
speak but yourself, if you had your way."

"So I believe she did exonerate him," returned Mr. Arkell; "but in all
cases the same facts wear so different an aspect, according to their
attendant surroundings. When Mr. Hardcastle was supposed to _be_ Mr.
Hardcastle, one of the chief partners of the great East India house, the
nephew of its many-years' chief, it was almost impossible to suppose
that he _could_ have committed the murder, however little trifling
circumstances might seem to give point to the suspicion. But when we
know that this man was not Mr. Hardcastle, but an impostor--probably a
_chevalier d'industrie_, travelling about to see what prey he could
bring down--those same trifling circumstances change into alarming
facts, every one of which bears its own significance."

"I don't clearly understand what the facts were," said the squire. "He
borrowed money, didn't he?"

"He borrowed money--twenty pounds; he would have borrowed a hundred, but
Mr. Dundyke had it not with him. He, poor Mr. Dundyke, was utterly taken
in by them from the first--never had a shadow of suspicion that
anything was wrong; Mrs. Dundyke, on the contrary, tells Mr. Prattleton
that she had. She feels quite sure that their running account at the
hotel, for which she knows they were pressed, was paid with that twenty
pounds, or part of it; and she says they----"

"In saying 'they,' of whom do you speak besides Mr. Hardcastle?" asked
the squire.

"Of his wife. And Mrs. Dundyke did not like _her_. But let us come to
the day of the disappearance. On that morning, as they sat at breakfast,
Mr. Dundyke told Mr. Hardcastle that he was about to leave; and that
some money he had written for, notes for thirty pounds, had come that
morning--were inclosed in two letters which Mr. Hardcastle saw him
receive and put in his pocket. Mrs. Dundyke says that she shall never
forget the strangely eager glance--something like a wolf's when it
scents prey--that he cast on Mr. Dundyke at mention of the thirty
pounds. Mr. Dundyke went out alone, and hired a boat, as you have heard;
and they afterwards saw him on the lake bearing away to the spot where
he landed; Mr. Hardcastle saw him, and then walked away. Nothing more
was seen of either of them until dinner-time, six o'clock, when Mr.
Hardcastle returned; he came creeping into the house as if he wished to
shun observation, travel-soiled, dusty, his face scratched, his hand
hurt--just as if he had been taking part in some severe struggle; and
Mrs. Dundyke is positive that his face turned white when she rushed up
and asked where her husband was."

"Did she suspect him then?"

"Oh dear no; not with the faintest suspicion. That same night she heard
a fearful quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle; weepings, lamentings,
reproaches from Mrs. Hardcastle, ill-language from him; and twice she
heard her husband's name mentioned. She told Mr. Prattleton subsequently
that it was just as though the fact of the murder had been then
disclosed to Mrs. Hardcastle, and she, the wife, had received it with a
storm of horror and reproach. But the most suspicious circumstance was
the pencil-case."

"What was that?" came the eager question from the squire and his
daughter, for this had not yet been named.

"Well, what Mr. Prattleton tells me is this," said Mr. Arkell. "When Mr.
Dundyke went out in the boat he had his pencil-case with him; Mrs.
Dundyke saw him return it to his pocket-book the last thing before
leaving the breakfast-room, and put the book in his pocket. It was the
same pocket-book in which he had just placed the letters containing the
bank-notes. The pencil-case was silver; it had been given to Mr. Dundyke
by my cousin Mildred, and had his initials upon it; Mrs. Dundyke says
he never carried any other--had not, she feels convinced, any other with
him that morning. After he had landed on the opposite side of the lake,
he must have made use of this pencil to write the note, which note he
sent back to the hotel by the boatmen. So that it appears to be a pretty
certain fact that, whatever evil overtook Mr. Dundyke, this pencil must
have been about him. Do you follow me?"

"Yes, yes," answered the squire, testily. He did not like the narrative
to be interrupted by so much as a thread.

"Good. But this same pencil-case was subsequently found in Mr. and Mrs.
Hardcastle's room at the hotel."

"What!" exclaimed Benjamin Carr, looking up as if startled to sudden
interest.

"The droll question is, how did it come there?" continued Mr. Arkell.
"It was found in the room the Hardcastles had occupied at the hotel.
They had left there some days; had gone on, they said, to Genoa. Mr.
Prattleton's daughter was put in this room after their departure, and
the silver pencil-case was picked up from behind the drawers. Mr.
Prattleton and Mrs. Dundyke were in the chamber at the time, and the
latter was dreadfully agitated; she quite startled him, he says, by
saying that Mr. Hardcastle must have murdered her husband."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Squire Carr. "I see. The pencil-case which
was lost with Mr. Dundyke reappeared in their room! How very strange! I
should have had the man apprehended."

"The hypothesis of course is, that Mr. Hardcastle had in some manner
possessed himself of the things the missing man had about his person,"
pursued Mr. Arkell. "Mr. Prattleton thought at the time that this could
perhaps have been explained away. I mean the finding of the
pencil-case--that Mr. Dundyke might have dropped it on going out from
breakfast, and the other have picked it up; but since the arrival of
Mrs. Dundyke's letter yesterday, he says he does not like the look of it
at all."

"And the bank-notes that Mr. Dundyke had undoubtedly about his person
were found to have been changed the subsequent day in Geneva," spoke up
Robert Carr. "The money-changer thought they had been changed by a man
whose appearance agreed with that of Mr. Hardcastle. And then there was
the testimony of the Swiss peasant."

"What was the testimony?" asked the squire.

"A peasant, or small farmer, testified that he saw two gentlemen
together walking away from the direction of the lake on the day of the
disappearance; and in describing them, he exactly described the persons
and dress of Mr. Hardcastle and Mr. Dundyke. I told Mrs. Dundyke," added
the clergyman, "that I did not like her account of this Mr. Hardcastle;
and she had expressed to me no suspicion of him then."

"And why did they not cause him to be apprehended?" asked the squire.
"There could not well be a clearer case. I have committed many a man
upon half the evidence. What sort of a man was he in person, this
Hardcastle?"

"A tall, strong man, very dark; a fine man, Mrs. Dundyke says. I should
think," added the clergyman, ranging his eyes around, lest haply he
might find anyone in the present company to illustrate his meaning by
ever so slight a likeness, as we are all apt to do in trying to describe
a stranger--"I should think----"

Robert Carr stopped; his eyes were resting on the white face of Benjamin
Carr. Those sallow, dark faces when they turn white are not pleasant to
look upon.

"I should think," he continued, "that he must have been some such a man
as your son here, sir. Yes, just such another; tall, strong

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