Orley Farm Part 51

This he did with slow, deliberate step, and stopping on the hearth-rug, he stood leaning with his back against the mantelpiece.

It was clear from his face to see that he had much to tell, and clear also that he was not pleased at the turn which affairs were taking.

"Well, gentlemen, I have examined the woman," he said, "and here is her deposition."

"And what does she say?" asked Mr. Mason.

"Come, out with it, sir," said Dockwrath. "Did she, or did she not sign two doc.u.ments on that day?"

"Mr. Mason," said Round, turning to that gentleman, and altogether ignoring Dockwrath and his question; "I have to tell you that her statement, as far as it goes, fully corroborates your view of the case. As far as it goes, mind you."

"Oh, it does; does it?" said Dockwrath.

"And she is the only important witness?" said Mr. Mason with great exultation.

"I have never said that; what I did say was this--that your case must break down unless her evidence supported it. It does support it--strongly; but you will want more than that."

"And now if you please, Mr. Round, what is it that she has deposed?"

asked Dockwrath.

"She remembers it all then?" said Mason.

"She is a remarkably clear-headed woman, and apparently does remember a great deal. But her remembrance chiefly and most strongly goes to this--that she witnessed only one deed."

"She can prove that, can she?" said Mason, and the tone of his voice was loudly triumphant.

"She declares that she never signed but one deed in the whole of her life--either on that day or on any other; and over and beyond this she says now--now that I have explained to her what that other deed might have been--that old Mr. Usbech told her that it was about a partners.h.i.+p."

"He did, did he?" said Dockwrath, rising from his chair and clapping his hands. "Very well. I don't think we shall want more than that, Mr. Mason."

There was a tone of triumph in the man's voice, and a look of gratified malice in his countenance which disgusted Mr. Round and irritated him almost beyond his power of endurance. It was quite true that he would much have preferred to find that the woman's evidence was in favour of Lady Mason. He would have been glad to learn that she actually had witnessed the two deeds on the same day. His tone would have been triumphant, and his face gratified, had he returned to the room with such tidings. His feelings were all on that side, though his duty lay on the other. He had almost expected that it would be so. As it was, he was prepared to go on with his duty, but he was not prepared to endure the insolence of Mr. Dockwrath. There was a look of joy also about Mr. Mason which added to his annoyance.

It might be just and necessary to prosecute that unfortunate woman at Orley Farm, but he could not gloat over such work.

"Mr. Dockwrath," he said, "I will not put up with such conduct here.

If you wish to rejoice about this, you must go elsewhere."

"And what are we to do now?" said Mr. Mason. "I presume there need be no further delay."

"I must consult with my partner. If you can make it convenient to call this day week--"

"But she will escape."

"No, she will not escape. I shall not be ready to say anything before that. If you are not in town, then I can write to you." And so the meeting was broken up, and Mr. Mason and Mr. Dockwrath left the lawyer's office together.

Mr. Mason and Mr. Dockwrath left the office in Bedford Row together, and thus it was almost a necessity that they should walk together for some distance through the streets. Mr. Mason was going to his hotel in Soho Square, and Mr. Dockwrath turned with him through the pa.s.sage leading into Red Lion Square, linking his own arm in that of his companion. The Yorks.h.i.+re county magistrate did not quite like this, but what was he to do?

"Did you ever see anything like that, sir?" said Mr. Dockwrath; "for by heavens I never did."

"Like what?" said Mr. Mason.

"Like that fellow there;--that Round. It is my opinion that he deserves to have his name struck from the rolls. Is it not clear that he is doing all in his power to bring that wretched woman off? And I'll tell you what, Mr. Mason, if you let him play his own game in that way, he will bring her off."

"But he expressly admitted that this woman Bolster's evidence is conclusive."

"Yes; he was so driven into a corner that he could not help admitting that. The woman had been too many for him, and he found that he couldn't cus.h.i.+on her. But do you mind my words, Mr. Mason. He intends that you shall be beaten. It's as plain as the nose on your face. You can read it in the very look of him, and in every tone of his voice.

At any rate I can. I'll tell you what it is"--and then he squeezed very close to Mr. Mason--"he and old Furnival understand each other in this matter like two brothers. Of course Round will have his bill against you. Win or lose, he'll get his costs out of your pocket. But he can make a deuced pretty thing out of the other side as well. Let me tell you, Mr. Mason, that when notes for a thousand pounds are flying here and there, it isn't every lawyer that will see them pa.s.s by him without opening his hand."

"I do not think that Mr. Round would take a bribe," said Mr. Mason very stiffly.

"Wouldn't he? Just as a hound would a pat of b.u.t.ter. It's your own look-out, you know, Mr. Mason. I haven't got an estate of twelve hundred a year depending on it. But remember this;--if she escapes now, Orley Farm is gone for ever."

All this was extremely disagreeable to Mr. Mason. In the first place he did not at all like the tone of equality which the Hamworth attorney had adopted; he did not like to acknowledge that his affairs were in any degree dependent on a man of whom he thought so badly as he did of Mr. Dockwrath; he did not like to be told that Round and Crook were rogues,--Round and Crook whom he had known all his life; but least of all did he like the feeling of suspicion with which, in spite of himself, this man had imbued him, or the fear that his victim might at last escape him. Excellent, therefore, as had been the evidence with which Bridget Bolster had declared herself ready to give in his favour, Mr. Mason was not a contented man when he sat down to his solitary beefsteak in Soho Square.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE ANGEL OF LIGHT.

In speaking of the character and antecedents of Felix Graham I have said that he was moulding a wife for himself. The idea of a wife thus moulded to fit a man's own grooves, and educated to suit matrimonial purposes according to the exact views of the future husband was by no means original with him. Other men have moulded their wives, but I do not know that as a rule the practice has been found to answer. It is open, in the first place, to this objection,--that the moulder does not generally conceive such idea very early in life, and the idea when conceived must necessarily be carried out on a young subject.

Such a plan is the result of much deliberate thought, and has generally arisen from long observation, on the part of the thinker, of the unhappiness arising from marriages in which there has been no moulding. Such a frame of mind comes upon a bachelor, perhaps about his thirty-fifth year, and then he goes to work with a girl of fourteen. The operation takes some ten years, at the end of which the moulded bride regards her lord as an old man. On the whole I think that the ordinary plan is the better, and even the safer. Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music--about affairs masculine and feminine,--then take the leap in the dark. There is danger, no doubt; but the moulded wife is, I think, more dangerous.

With Felix Graham the matter was somewhat different, seeing that he was not yet thirty, and that the lady destined to be the mistress of his family had already pa.s.sed through three or four years of her noviciate. He had begun to be prudent early in life; or had become prudent rather by force of sentiment than by force of thought. Mary Snow was the name of his bride-elect; and it is probable that, had not circ.u.mstances thrown Mary Snow in his way, he would not have gone out of his way to seek a subject for his experiment. Mary Snow was the daughter of an engraver,--not of an artist who receives four or five thousand pounds for engraving the chef-d'oeuvre of a modern painter,--but of a man who executed flourishes on ornamental cards for tradespeople, and a.s.sisted in the ill.u.s.tration of circus playbills. With this man Graham had become acquainted through certain transactions of his with the press, and had found him to be a widower, drunken, dissolute, and generally drowned in poverty. One child the man had, and that child was Mary Snow.

How it came to pa.s.s that the young barrister first took upon himself the charge of maintaining and educating this poor child need not now be told. His motives had been thoroughly good, and in the matter he had endeavoured to act the part of a kind Samaritan. He had found her pretty, half starved, dirty, ignorant, and modest; and so finding her had made himself responsible for feeding, cleaning, and teaching her,--and ultimately for marrying her. One would have said that in undertaking a task of such undoubted charity as that comprised in the three first charges, he would have encountered no difficulty from the drunken, dissolute, impoverished engraver. But the man from the beginning was cunning; and before Graham had succeeded in obtaining the custody of the child, the father had obtained a written undertaking from him that he would marry her at a certain age if her conduct up to that age had been becoming. As to this latter stipulation no doubt had arisen; and indeed Graham had so acted by her that had she fallen away the fault would have been all her own.

There wanted now but one year to the coming of that day on which he was bound to make himself a happy man, and hitherto he himself had never doubted as to the accomplishment of his undertaking.

He had told his friends,--those with whom he was really intimate, Augustus Staveley and one or two others,--what was to be his matrimonial lot in life; and they had ridiculed him for his quixotic chivalry. Staveley especially had been strong in his conviction that no such marriage would ever take place, and had already gone so far as to plan another match for his friend.

"You know you do not love her," he had said, since Felix had been staying on this occasion at Noningsby.

"I know no such thing," Felix had answered, almost in anger. "On the contrary I know that I do love her."

"Yes, as I love my niece Marian, or old Aunt Bessy, who always supplied me with sugar-candy when I was a boy."

"It is I that have supplied Mary with her sugar-candy, and the love thus engendered is the stronger."

"Nevertheless you are not in love with her, and never will be, and if you marry her you will commit a great sin."

"How moral you have grown!"

"No, I'm not. I'm not a bit moral. But I know very well when a man is in love with a girl, and I know very well that you're not in love with Mary Snow. And I tell you what, my friend, if you do marry her you are done for life. There will absolutely be an end of you."

"You mean to say that your royal highness will drop me."

"I mean to say nothing about myself. My dropping you or not dropping you won't alter your lot in life. I know very well what a poor man wants to give him a start; and a fellow like you who has such quaint ideas on so many things requires all the a.s.sistance he can get. You should look out for money and connection."

"Sophia Furnival, for instance."