Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 97

The history of the Clement-Pells and their downfall was given in the First Series of these stories, and the reader can have no difficulty in recalling Fabian to his memory. There are times, even to this day, when it seems to me that I must have been a m.u.f.f, as Tod said, not to know him. But, some years had elapsed since I saw him; and those years, with their ill-fortune and exposure, and the hard life he had led in Australia, had served to change him greatly; above all, there was now the ma.s.s of hair disguising the greater part of his face. Bit by bit my recollection came to me, and I knew that he was, beyond all shadow of doubt, Fabian Pell.

How long we sat up that night at Mr. Tamlyn's, talking over its events, I cannot precisely tell. For quite the half of what was left of it.

Mina, brought to his own home by Arnold for safety, was consigned to Cattledon's charge and bed, and retired to the latter in a state of humiliation and collapse.

The scene on the platform had soon come to a conclusion. With the security of Mina a.s.sured by the presence of her brother and the rest of us, Sam let go his hold of the captain. It had been a nice little plot this, that the captain had set on foot in secret, and persuaded that silly girl, not much better than a child, to accede to. They were to have run away to London that night, and been married there the next day; the captain, as was found out later, having already managed to procure a licence. You see, if Mina became his wife without any settlement, her money at once lapsed to him and he could do what he would with it. How, as Captain Collinson, he would have braved the matter out to Dr. Knox that night, and excused himself for his treachery, he best knew. Tod checkmated him by proclaiming him as Fabian Pell. A lame attempt at denial, which Tod, secure in his a.s.sertion, laughed at; a little bravado, and Captain Collinson collapsed. Against the truth--that he was Fabian Pell--brought home to him so suddenly and clearly, he could not hold out; the man's hardihood deserted him; and he turned tail and went off the platform, calling back that Mr. Todhetley should hear from him in the morning.

We came away then, bringing Mina. Sam went to escort Charlotte home, where they would have the pleasure of imparting the news to Mrs. Knox, who probably by that time was thinking that Lotty had eloped as well as Mina. And now we were sitting round the fire in old Tamlyn's room, discussing what had happened. Sam came back in the midst of it. Arnold _was_ down in the mouth, and no mistake.

"Did you see Mrs. Knox?" he asked of Sam.

"Not to speak to, sir. I saw her through the kitchen window. She was spreading bread-and-jam for d.i.c.ky, who had come down in his night-gown and would not be coaxed back to bed."

"What an injudicious woman she is!" put in old Tamlyn. "Enough to ruin the boy."

Perhaps Dr. Knox was thinking, as he sat there, his hand pressed upon his brow, that if she had been a less injudicious woman, a different mother altogether, Mina might not have been in danger of falling into the present escapade: but he said nothing.

"I remember hearing of the notorious break-up of the Clement-Pells at the time it took place," observed old Tamlyn to Tod. "And to think that this man should be one of them!"

"He must carry his impudence about with him," was Tod's remark.

"They ruined hundreds of poor men and women, if not thousands,"

continued old Tamlyn. "I conclude your people knew all about it?"

"Indeed, yes. We were in the midst of it. My father lost--how much was it, Johnny?"

"Two hundred pounds," I answered; the question bringing vividly back to me our adventures in Boulogne, when the pater and Mr. Brandon went over there to try to get the money back.

"I suppose," resumed the surgeon, "your father had that much balance lying in their hands, and lost it all?"

"No," said Tod, "he did not bank with them. A day or two before Clement-Pell burst up, he drove to our house as bold as bra.s.s, asking my father in the most off-hand manner to let him have a cheque for two hundred pounds until the next day. The Squire did let him have it, without scruple, and of course lost it. He would have let him have two thousand had Pell asked for it."

"But that was a fraud. Pell might have been punished for it."

"I don't know that it was so much a fraud as many other things Pell did, and might have been punished for," observed Tod. "At any rate, not as great a one. He escaped out of the way, as I dare say you know, sir, and his family escaped with him. It was hard on them. They had been brought up in the greatest possible extravagance, in all kinds of luxury. This one, Fabian, was in the army. He, of course, had to retire. His own debts would have forced that step upon him, apart from the family disgrace."

"Did he re-enter it, I wonder."

Tod laughed. "_I_ should say not. He went to Australia. Not above a year ago I heard that he was still there. He must have come back here fortune-hunting; _bread_-hunting; and pa.s.sed himself off as Captain Collinson the better to do it. Miss Mina Knox's seven thousand pounds was a prize to fight for."

"That's it!" cried Sam. "Dan has said all along it was the money he was after, dishonourable wretch, not Mina herself. He cares too much for Madame St. Vincent to care for Mina: at least we think so. How did he get the funds, I wonder, that he has been flouris.h.i.+ng about upon?"

"Won them at billiards," suggested Tod.

"No," said Sam, "I don't think that. By all accounts he lost more than he won in the billiard-rooms."

Dr. Knox looked up from a reverie. "Was it himself that Major Leckie saw?--and did he pa.s.s himself off as another man to escape detection?

Did he go off for the remainder of the week lest the major should look him up again?"

And we knew it must have been so.

Little sleep did I get that night, or, rather, morning, for the small hours had struck when we went to bed. The a.s.sociation of ideas is a great thing in this world; a help in many an emergency. This a.s.sociation led me from Fabian Pell to his sisters: and the mysterious memory of Madame St. Vincent that had so puzzled my mind cleared itself up. As though a veil had been withdrawn from my eyes, leaving the recollection unclouded and distinct, I saw she was one of those sisters: the eldest of them, Martha Jane. And, let not the reader call me a m.u.f.f, as Tod again did later, for not having found her out before. When I knew her she was an angular, raw-boned girl, with rather a haggard and very pale face, and nothing to say for herself. Now she was a filled-out woman, her face round, her colour healthy, and one of the most self-possessed talkers I ever listened to. In the old days her hair was reddish and fell in curls: now it was dark, and worn in braids and plaits fas.h.i.+onably incomprehensible. Whether the intervening years had darkened the hair, or whether madame cunningly dyed it, must remain a question.

Dan Jenkins and his brother were right. They no doubt had seen looks of anxious interest given to Madame St. Vincent by Captain Collinson. Not as a lover, however; they were mistaken there; but as a brother who was living in a state of peril, and whom she was doubtless protecting and trying to aid. But how far had her aid gone? That she kept up the ball, as to his being Captain Collinson, the rich, honourable, and well-connected Indian officer, went without saying, as the French have it; and no one could expect her to proclaim him as Fabian Pell, the swindler; but had she been helping him in his schemes upon Mina? As to her display of formal coolness to him, it must have been put on to mislead the public.

And what was I to do? Must I quietly bury my discovery within me and say nothing? or must I tell Dr. Knox that Madame St. Vincent was no other than Martha Jane Pell? What _ought_ I to do? It was that question that kept me awake. Never liking to do harm where I could not do good, I asked myself whether I had any right to ruin her. It might be that she was not able to help herself; that she had done no worse than keep Fabian's secret: it might be that she had wanted him gone just as much as Dan Jenkins had wanted it.

"I'll tell Tod in the morning," was my final conclusion, "and hear what he thinks."

When I got downstairs they were beginning breakfast, and Miss Cattledon was turning from the table to carry up Mina's tea. Mina remained in the depths of tears and contrition, and Cattledon had graciously told her she might lie in bed. Breakfast was taken very late that morning, the result of the previous night's disturbance, and the clock was striking ten when we rose from it.

"Tod, I want to speak to you," I said in his ear. "I want to tell you something."

"All right, lad. Tell away."

"Not here. Won't you come out with me somewhere? We must be alone."

"Then it must wait, Johnny. I am going round to the stables with Tamlyn. He wishes me to see the horse they have got on trial. By the description, I don't think much of him: should give him a pretty long trial before I bought him."

They went out. Not long after that, I was strolling across the court-yard with Sam Jenkins, who had been despatched on some professional errand, when we saw Sir Henry Westmorland ride up and rein in his horse. He asked for Dr. Knox. Sam went back to the house to say so, while Sir Henry talked to me.

"Look here," said Sir Henry to the doctor, after they had shaken hands, "I have had a curious letter from Major Leckie this morning. At least"--taking the letter from his pocket and opening it--"it contains an odd bit of news. He says--where is it?--stand still, sir,"--to the horse. "Here it is; just listen, doctor. 'Dr. Knox must have made a mistake in saying Collinson was at Lefford. Collinson is in India; has not been home at all. I have had a letter from him by the overland mail just in, asking me to do a commission for him. Tell Dr. Knox this. If the man he spoke of is pa.s.sing himself off for Collinson of ours, he must be an impostor.' What do you think of that, doctor?" concluded Sir Henry, folding the letter again.

"He is an impostor," replied Dr. Knox. "We found him out last night."

"What a rogue! Has he been taking people in--fleecing them?"

"He has taken us all in, Sir Henry, in one sense of the word; he was on the point of doing it more effectually, when he was stopped. As to fleecing people, I don't know about that. He seems to have had plenty of money at his command--whence obtained is another question."

"Cheated some one out of it; rely upon that," remarked the baronet, as he nodded a good-day to us, and rode off.

Mina was downstairs when we returned indoors. Anything more pitiful than her state of contrition and distress I should not care to see. No doubt the discovery, just made, tended to strengthen her repentance. In a silly girl's mind some romance might attach to the notion of an elopement with a gallant captain of consideration, brave in Her Majesty's service; but to elope with Mr. Fabian Pell, the chevalier d'industrie, was quite another affair. Mina was mild in temperament, gentle in manners, yet she might have flown at the ex-captain's face with sharp nails, had he come in her way.

"I did not really like him," she sobbed forth: and there was no doubt that she spoke truth. "But they were always on at me, persuading me; they never let me alone."

"Who persuaded you, my dear?" asked Janet.

"He did. He was for ever meeting me in private, and urging me. I could not go out for a walk, or just cross the garden, or run into the next door, but he would be there. Madame St. Vincent persuaded me. She did not say to me, in words, 'you had better do as he asks you and run away,' but all her counsels tended towards it. She would say to me how happy his wife would be; what a fine position it was for any young lady lucky enough to be chosen by him; and that all the world thought me old enough to marry, though Arnold did not, and for that reason Arnold would do his best to prevent it. And so--and so----"

"And so they persuaded you against your better judgment," added Janet pityingly, as Mina broke down in a burst of tears.

"There, child, take this, and don't cry your eyes out," interposed Cattledon, bringing in a beaten-up egg.

Cattledon was coming out uncommonly strong in the way of compa.s.sion, all her tartness gone. She certainly did not look with an eye of favour on elopements; but she was ready to take up Mina's cause against the man who had deceived her. Cattledon hated the Pells: for Cattledon had been done out of fifty pounds at the time of old Pell's failure, money she had rashly entrusted to him. She could not very well afford to lose it, and she had been bitter on the Pells, one and all, ever since.

That morning was destined to be one of elucidation. Mr. Tamlyn was in the surgery, saying a last word to Dr. Knox before the latter went out to visit his patients, when Lettice Lane marched in. She looked so fresh and innocent that three parts of Tamlyn's suspicions of her melted away.

"Anything amiss at home?" asked he.

"No, sir," replied Lettice, "I have only brought this note"--handing one in. "Madame St. Vincent told the butler to bring it; but his pains are worse this morning; and, as I chanced to be coming out at the moment, he asked me to leave it here for him."