Put Yourself in His Place Part 102

Little, pleasantly.

Her brother rather avoided her, by order of Jael Dence; but so many probable reasons were given for his absences that she suspected nothing.

Only she said one day, "What a gad-about he is now. This comes of not marrying. We must find him a wife."

When he was at home they breakfasted together, all three, and then Mrs.

Little sometimes spoke of Henry, and so hopefully and cheerfully that a great qualm ran through her hearers, and Raby, who could not command his features so well as Jael could, looked gloomy, and sometimes retired behind his newspaper.

Mrs. Little observed this one day, and pointed it out to Jael. "Oh,"

said Jael, "take no notice. You know he wanted Mr. Henry to stay quietly here and be his heir."

"And so did I. But his very name seems to--"

"He likes him well, for all that, ma'am; only he won't own it yet. You know what Squire is."

"THE Squire you should say, dear. But, 'Mr. Raby' is better still. As a rule, avoid all small t.i.tles: the doctor, the squire, the baronet, the mayor."

Jael seized this handle, and, by putting questions to her teacher, got her away from the dangerous topic.

Ever on the watch, and occupied in many ways with Mrs. Little, Jael began to recover resignation; but this could not be without an occasional paroxysm of grief.

These she managed to hide from Mrs. Little.

But one day that lady surprised her crying. She stood and looked at her a moment, then sat down quietly beside her and took her hand. Jael started, and feared discovery.

"My child," said Mrs. Little, "if you have lost a father, you have gained a mother; and then, as to your sister, why my Henry is gone to the very same country; yet, you see, I do not give way to sorrow. As soon as he writes, I will beg him to make inquiries for Patty, and send them home if they are not doing well." Then Mrs. Little kissed Jael, and coaxed her and rocked with her, and Jael's tears began to flow, no longer for her own great grief, but for this mother, who was innocently consoling her, unconscious of the blow that must one day fall upon herself.

So matters went on pretty smoothly; only one morning, speaking of Henry, Mrs. Little surprised a look of secret intelligence between her brother and Jael Dence. She made no remark at the time, but she puzzled in secret over it, and began at last to watch the pair.

She asked Raby at dinner, one day, when she might hope to hear from Henry.

"I don't know," said he, and looked at Jael Dence like a person watching for orders.

Mrs. Little observed this, and turned keenly round to Jael.

"Oh," said Jael, "the doctor--I beg pardon, Dr. Amboyne--can tell you that better than I can. It is a long way to Australia."

"How you send me from one to another," said Mrs. Little, speaking very slowly.

They made no reply to that, and Mrs. Little said no more. But she pondered all this. She wrote to Dr. Amboyne, and asked him why no letter had come from Henry.

Dr. Amboyne wrote back that, even if he had gone in a steamboat, there was hardly time for a letter to come back: but he had gone in a sailing-vessel. "Give him three months and a half to get there, and two months for his letters to come back."

In this same letter he told her he was glad to hear she was renewing her youth like an eagle, but reminded her it would entail some consequences more agreeable to him than to her.

She laid down the letter with a blush and fell into a reverie.

Dr. Amboyne followed up this letter with a visit or two, and urged her to keep her promise and marry him.

She had no excuse for declining, but she procrastinated: she did not like to marry without consulting Henry, or, at least, telling him by letter.

And whilst she was thus temporizing, events took place at Eastbank which ended by rudely disturbing the pious falsehood at Raby Hall.

That sequence of events began with the interview between Mr. Carden and Mr. Coventry at Woodbine Villa.

"Little had made a will. My own solicitor drew it, and holds it at this moment." This was the intelligence Coventry had to communicate.

"Very well; then now I shall know who is coming to the 'Gosshawk' for the five thousand pounds. That will be the next act of the comedy, you will see."

"Wait a moment. He leaves to Mrs. Little his own reversion to a sum of nineteen hundred pounds, in which she has already the life interest; he gives a hundred pounds to his sweetheart Dence: all the rest of his estate, in possession or expectation, he bequeaths to--Miss Carden."

"Good heavens! Why then--" Mr. Carden could say no more, for astonishment.

"So," said Coventry, "If he is alive, she is the confederate who is to profit by the fraud; those five thousand pounds belong to her at this moment."

"Are you sure? Who is your authority?"

"A communicative clerk, who happens to be the son of a tenant of mine.

The solicitor himself, I believe, chooses to doubt his client's decease.

It is at his private request that horrible object is refused Christian burial."

"On what grounds, pray?"

"Legal grounds, I suppose; the man did not die regularly, and according to precedent. He omitted to provide himself with two witnesses previously to being blown up. In a case of this kind we may safely put an old-fas.h.i.+oned attorney's opinion out of the question. What do YOU think? That is all I care to know."

"I don't know what to think now. But I foresee one thing: I shall be placed in rather an awkward position. I ought to defend the 'Gosshawk;'

but I am not going to rob my own daughter of five thousand pounds, if it belongs to her honestly."

"Will you permit me to advise you?"

"Certainly, I shall be very much obliged: for really I don't see my way."

"Well, then, I think you ought to look into the matter carefully, but without prejudice. I have made some inquiries myself: I went down to the works, and begged the workmen, who knew Little, to examine the remains, and then come here and tell us their real opinion."

"Oh, to my mind, it all depends on the will. If that answers the description you give--hum!" Next morning they breakfasted together, and during breakfast two workmen called, and, at Coventry's request, were ushered into the room. They came to say they knew Mr. Little well, and felt sure that was his dead hand they had seen at the Town Hall. Coventry cross-examined them severely, but they stuck to their conviction; and this will hardly surprise the reader when I tell him the workmen in question were Cole and another, suborned by Coventry himself to go through this performance.

Mr. Carden received the testimony readily, for the best of all reasons--he wanted to believe it.

But, when they were gone, he recurred to the difficulty of his position.

Director of the "Gosshawk," and father to a young lady who had a claim of five thousand pounds on it, and that claim debatable, though, to his own mind, no longer doubtful.

Now Mr. Coventry had a great advantage over Mr. Carden here: he had studied this very situation profoundly for several hours, and at last had seen how much might be done with it.

He began by artfully complimenting Mr. Carden on his delicacy, but said Miss Carden must not be a loser by it. "Convince her, on other grounds, that the man is dead; encourage her to reward my devotion with her hand, and I will relieve you of everything disagreeable. Let us settle on Miss Carden, for her separate use, the five thousand pounds, and anything else derivable from Mr. Little's estate; but we must also settle my farm of Hindhope: for it shall never be said she took as much from that man as she did from me. Well, in due course I apply to the 'Gosshawk' for my wife's money. I am not bound to tell your Company it is not mine but hers; that is between you and me. But you really ought to write to London at once and withdraw the charge of fraud; you owe that piece of justice to Miss Carden, and to the memory of the deceased."

"That is true; and it will pave the way for the demand you propose to make on Mrs. Coventry's behalf. Well, you really are a true friend, as well as a true lover."

In short, he went back to Hillsborough resolved to marry his daughter to Coventry as soon as possible. Still, following that gentleman's instructions, he withheld from Grace that Little had made a will in her favor. He knew her to be quite capable of refusing to touch a farthing of it, or to act as executrix. But he told her the workmen had identified the remains, and that other circ.u.mstances had also convinced him he had been unjust to a deceased person, which he regretted.

When her father thus retracted his own words, away went Grace's last faint hope that Henry lived; and now she must die for him, or live for others.