A Perilous Secret Part 60

The article concluded with a hope that these monsters "would be taught that even if they were below the standard of humanity they were not above the law."

Middleton attended the summonses, gave his name and address, and informed the magistrate that his client was a large landed proprietor, and it looked like a case of mistaken ident.i.ty. His client was actually dying of his injuries, but his wife hoped for justice.

But the detectives had taken care to be present, and so they put in their word. They said that they were prepared to prove, at a proper time, that the wounded man was really the person who had been heard by Mrs. Walter Clifford to bribe Ben Burnley to fire the mine.

"We have nothing to do with that now," said the magistrate. "One thing at a time, please. I can not let these people murder a convicted felon, far less a suspected criminal that has not been tried. The wounded man proceeds, according to law, through a respectable attorney. These men, whom you are virtually defending, have taken the law into their own hands. Are your witnesses here, Mr. Middleton?"

"Not at present, sir; and when I was interrupted, I was about to ask your wors.h.i.+p to grant me an adjournment for that purpose. It will not be a great hards.h.i.+p to the accused, since we proceed by summons. I fear I have been too lenient, for two or three of them have absconded since the summons was served."

"I am not surprised at that," said the magistrate; "however, you know your own business."

Then the police applied for a warrant of arrest against Monckton.

"Oh!" cried Middleton, with the air of a man thoroughly shocked and scandalized.

"Certainly not," said the magistrate; "I shall not disturb the course of justice; there is not even an _exparte_ case against this gentleman at present. Such an application must be supported by a witness, and a disinterested one." So all the parties retired crest-fallen except Mr.

Middleton; as for him, he was imitating a small but ingenious specimen of nature--the cuttle-fish. This little creature, when pursued by its enemies, discharges an inky fluid which obscures the water all around, and then it starts off and escapes.

One dark night, at two o'clock in the morning, there came to the door of the Dun Cow an invalid carriage, or rather omnibus, with a spring-bed and every convenience. The wheels were covered thick with India-rubber; relays had been provided, and Monckton and his party rolled along day and night to Liverpool. The detectives followed, six hours later, and traced them to Liverpool very cleverly, and, with the a.s.sistance of the police, raked the town for them, and got all the great steamers watched, especially those that were bound westward, ho! But their bird was at sea, in a Liverpool merchant's own steamboat, hired for a two months' trip.

The pursuers found this out too, but a fortnight too late.

"It's no go, Bill," said one to the other. "There's a lawyer and a pot of money against us. Let it sleep awhile."

The steamboat coasted England in beautiful weather; the sick man began to revive, and to eat a little, and to talk a little, and to suffer a good deal at times. Before they had been long at sea Mr. Middleton had a confidential conversation with Mrs. Monckton. He told her he had been very secret with her for her good. "I saw," said he, "this Monckton had no deep regard for you, and was capable of turning you adrift in prosperity; and I knew that if I told you everything you would let it out to him, and tempt him to play the villain. But the time is come that I must speak, in justice to you both. That estate he left your son half in joke is virtually his. Fourteen years ago, when he last looked into the matter, there _were_ eleven lives between it and him; but, strange to say, whilst he was at Portland the young lives went one after the other, and there were really only five left when he made that will. Now comes the extraordinary part: a fortnight ago three of those lives perished in a single steamboat accident on the Clyde; that left a woman of eighty-two and a man of ninety between your husband and the estate. The lady was related to the persons who were drowned, and she has since died; she had been long ailing, and it is believed that the shock was too much for her.

The survivor is the actual proprietor, Old Carruthers; but I am the London agent to his solicitor, and he was reported to me to be _in extremis_ the very day before I left London to join you. We shall run into a port near the place, and you will not land; but I shall, and obtain precise information. In the meantime, mind, your husband's name is Carruthers. Any communication from me will be to Mrs. Carruthers, and you will tell that man as much, or as little, as you think proper; if you make any disclosure, give yourself all the credit you can; say you shall take him to his own house under a new name, and s.h.i.+eld him against all pursuers. As for me, I tell you plainly, my great hope is that he will not live long enough to turn you adrift and disinherit your boy."

To cut short for the present this extraordinary part of our story, Lewis Carruthers, _alias_ Leonard Monckton, entered a fine house and took possession of eleven thousand acres of hilly pasture, and the undivided moiety of a lake brimful of fish. He accounted for his change of name by the favors Carruthers, deceased, had shown him. Therein he did his best to lie, but his present vein of luck turned it into the truth. Old Carruthers had become so peevish that all his relations disliked him, and he disliked them. So he left his personal estate to his heir-at-law simply because he had never seen him. The personality was very large. The house was full of pictures, and China, and cabinets, etc. There was a large balance at the banker's, a heavy fall of timber not paid for, rents due, and as many as two thousand four hundred sheep upon that hill, which the old fellow had kept in his own hands. So, when the new proprietor took possession as Carruthers, n.o.body was surprised, though many were furious. Lucy installed him in a grand suite of apartments as an invalid, and let n.o.body come near him. Waddy was dismissed with a munificent present, and could be trusted to hold his tongue. By the advice of Middleton, not a single servant was dismissed, and so no enemies were made. The family lawyer and steward were also retained, and, in short, all conversation was avoided. In a month or two the new proprietor began to improve in health, and drive about his own grounds, or be rowed on his lake, lying on soft beds.

But in the fifth month of his residence local pains seized him, and he began to waste. For some time the precise nature of the disorder was obscure; but at last a rising surgeon declared it to be an abscess in the intestines (caused, no doubt, by external violence).

By degrees the patient became unable to take solid food, and the drain upon his system was too great for a mere mucilaginous diet to sustain him. Wasted to the bone, and yellow as a guinea, he presented a pitiable spectacle, and would gladly have exchanged his fine house and pictures, his heathery hills dotted with sheep, and his gla.s.sy lake full of spotted trout, for a ragged Irishman's bowl of potatoes and his mug of b.u.t.termilk--and his stomach.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CURTAIN.

Striking incidents will draw the writer; but we know that our readers would rather hear about the characters they can respect. It seems, however, to be a rule in life, and in fiction, that interest flags when trouble ceases. Now the troubles of our good people were pretty well over, and we will put it to the reader whether they had not enough.

Grace Clifford made an earnest request to Colonel Clifford and her father never to tell Walter he had been suspected of bigamy. "Let others say that circ.u.mstances are always to be believed and character not to be trusted; but I, at least, had no right to believe certificates and things against my Walter's honor and his love. Hide my fault from him, not for my sake but for his; perhaps when we are both old people I may tell him."

This was Grace Clifford's pet.i.tion, and need we say she prevailed?

Walter Clifford recovered under his wife's care, and the house was so large that Colonel Clifford easily persuaded his son and daughter-in-law to make it their home. Hope had also two rooms in it, and came there when he chose; he was always welcome; but he was alone again, so to speak, and not quite forty years of age, and he was ambitious. He began to rise in the world, whilst our younger characters, contented with their happiness and position, remained stationary. Master of a great mine, able now to carry out his invention, member of several scientific a.s.sociations, a writer for the scientific press, etc., he soon became a public and eminent man; he was consulted on great public works, and if he lives will be one of the great lights of science in this island. He is great on electricity, especially on the application of natural forces to the lighting of towns. He denounces all the cities that allow powerful streams to run past them and not work a single electric light. But he goes further than that. He ridicules the idea that it is beyond the resources of science to utilize thousands of millions of tons of water that are raised twenty-one feet twice in every twenty-four hours by the tides. It is the skill to apply the force that is needed; not the force itself, which exceeds that of all the steam-engines in the nation. And he says that the great scientific foible of the day is the neglect of natural forces, which are cheap and inexhaustible, and the mania for steam-engines and gas, which are expensive, and for coal, which is not to last forever. He implores capital and science to work in this question.

His various schemes for using the tides in the creation of motive power will doubtless come before the world in a more appropriate channel than a work of fiction. If he succeeds it will be a glorious, as it must be a difficult, achievement.

His society is valued on social grounds; his well-stored mind, his powers of conversation, and his fine appearance, make him extremely welcome at all the tables in the county; he also accompanies his daughter with the violin, and, as they play beauties together, not difficulties, they ravish the soul and interrupt the torture, whose instrument the piano-forte generally is.

Bartley is a man with beautiful silvery hair and beard; he cultivates, nurses, and tends fruit-trees and flowers with a love little short of paternal. This sentiment, and the contemplation of nature, have changed the whole expression of his face; it is wonderfully benevolent and sweet, but with a touch of weakness about the lips. Some of the rough fellows about the place call him a "softy," but that is much too strong a word; no doubt he is confused in his ideas, but he reads all the great American publications about fruit and flowers, and executes their instructions with tact and skill. Where he breaks down--and who would believe this?--is in the trade department. Let him succeed in growing apple-trees and pear-trees weighed down to the ground with choice fruit; let him produce enormous cherries by grafting, and gigantic nectarines upon his sunny wall, and acres of strawberries too large for the mouth. After that they may all rot where they grow; he troubles his head no more. This is more than his old friend Hope can stand; he interferes, and sends the fruit to market, and fills great casks with superlative cider and perry, and keeps the account square, with a little help from Mrs. Easton, who has returned to her old master, and is a firm but kind mother to him.

Grace Clifford for some time could not be got to visit him. Perhaps she is one of those ladies who can not get over personal violence; he had handled her roughly, to keep her from going to her father's help. After all, there may have been other reasons; it is not so easy to penetrate all the recesses of the female heart. One thing is certain: she would not go near him for months; but when she did go with her father--and he had to use all his influence to take her there--the rapture and the tears of joy with which the poor old fellow received her disarmed her in a moment.

She let him take her through hot-houses and show her his children--"the only children I have now," said he--and after that she never refused to visit this erring man. His roof had sheltered her many years, and he had found out too late that he loved her, so far as his nature could love at that time.

Percy Fitzroy had an elder sister. He appealed to her against Julia Clifford. She cross-questioned him, and told him he was very foolish to despair. She would hardly have slapped him if she was quite resolved to part forever.

"Let me have a hand in reconciling you," said she.

"You shall have b-b-both hands in it, if you like," said he; "for I am at my w-w-wit's end."

So these two conspired. Miss Fitzroy was invited to Percy's house, and played the mistress. She asked other young ladies, especially that fair girl with auburn hair, whom Julia called a "fat thing." That meant, under the circ.u.mstances, a plump and rounded model, with small hands and feet; a perfect figure in a riding habit, and at night a satin bust and sculptured arms.

The very first ride Walter took with Grace and Julia they met the bright cavalcade of Percy and his sister, and this red-haired Venus.

Percy took off his hat with profound respect to Julia and Grace, but did not presume to speak.

"What a lovely girl!" said Grace.

"Do you think so?" said Julia.

"Yes, dear; and so do you."

"What makes you fancy that?"

"Because you looked daggers at her."

"Because she is setting her cap at that little fool."

"She will not have him without your consent, dear."

And this set Julia thinking.

The next day Walter called on Percy, and played the traitor.

"Give a ball," said he.

Miss Fitzroy and her brother gave a ball. Percy, duly instructed by his sister, wrote to Julia as meek as Moses, and said he was in a great difficulty. If he invited her, it would, of course, seem presumptuous, considering the poor opinion she had of him; if he pa.s.sed her over, and invited Walter Clifford and Mrs. Clifford, he should be unjust to his own feelings, and seem disrespectful.

Julia's reply:

"DEAR MR. FITZROY,--I am not at all fond of jealousy, but I am very fond of dancing. I shall come.

"Yours sincerely,