Mildred Arkell Volume Ii Part 23

All the bustle, the anxiety as to temporal interests, the plans and provisions for the future for those to be left behind, ensued. Mrs.

Dund.y.k.e hastily summoned a legal gentleman, Mr. Littelby. He was a solicitor of many years' standing, not in practice for himself, but conducting the business of an eminent legal firm. He was an old friend of the Dund.y.k.es, and Robert Carr had seen him several times; indeed his advice and a.s.sistance had been of much service in the search of the church registers. Mr. Littelby was about leaving his present situation, and was in negotiation with a firm in the country for another. Mrs.

Dund.y.k.e sent up a hasty summons for him.

A handsome bedchamber, in which was every comfort, a bright fire in the hearth, a bed, on which lay a shadowy form, a pale shadowy face, a young weeping girl standing near, soon to be a widow, and you have almost the last scene in the short life of Robert Carr.

He was dying, poor fellow, with that secret, which he had no doubt shortened his life in endeavouring to trace, still unsolved; and he was dying with the conviction, that the proofs did exist somewhere, as fully upon him as it ever had been.

"Emma!"

She dried her eyes, and tried to hide that they had been wet, as she heard the call. The day was getting on.

"Is Littelby not come yet?"

"Yes, I think he is. Some one came a few minutes ago, and is downstairs with Mrs. Dund.y.k.e. I think I hear them coming up."

Mrs. Dund.y.k.e was coming into the room with a gentleman, a middle-aged man with a sharp nose and pleasant dark eyes. It was Mr. Littelby. They were left alone together--the lawyer and the dying man. But it was a very short and simple task, this will-making. Over almost as soon as begun.

"He asked me to tie you up with trustees, Emma," said the dying man; "but I have left all to you--children, and money, and all else. You will love them, won't you, when I am gone?"

"Oh, Robert, yes!" she said, with a burst of sorrow. "I wish I and they could go with you."

"And, Emma, mind that you prosecute this search. I have asked Littelby to help you, and he will. He says he expects to leave London at the end of the year, for he is in negotiation with another firm; but I dare say it will be found before then. Let that search be your first and greatest task."

She said it should be--she would have promised anything in that parting hour. She lay, with her pretty hair on the counterpane, and her wet eyes turned to him, devouring his last looks, listening to his last words.

Almost literally the last in this world, for, before the close of the afternoon, Robert Carr fell into a lethargy, from which he did not awake alive.

And those two lone women were together in the house of the dead--widows indeed. The one deprived of her young husband almost on the threshold of life; the other bereft, she knew not how, of her many years' partner.

Poor Mrs. Dund.y.k.e had hardly wanted more sorrow in her desolate home.

So far as ease in the future went, _she_ was well off. The large income mentioned by her to Robert Carr would indeed be hers. It was chiefly the result of that first thousand pounds Mr. Dund.y.k.e had risked on the Stock Exchange. Fortune had favoured him in an unusual degree. You remember the nails in the horse-shoe, how they doubled and doubled: so it had seemed to be with the thousand pounds of Mr. Dund.y.k.e. But poor Mrs.

Carr's future fortune was all uncertain. Whether she would have sufficient to keep her children in easy competency, or whether she would find herself, like so many more gentlewomen, obliged to do something for her bread in this world of changes, she did not know.

Even in this week that succeeded her husband's death, she was applied to for money, which she could not find. The application came from Mr.

Fauntleroy. Lawyers have a peculiar facility for getting rid of money, as some of us have been obliged to know to our cost; and Mr. Fauntleroy had already disposed of the first fifty pounds advanced to him, and wanted more if he was to go on with the case.

Mrs. Carr had it not. Until affairs should be settled in Rotterdam, she had no such sum at her command. She could have procured it indeed from many friends, but she was sorely puzzled what to do for the best. On the one hand, there was the dying promise to her husband to pursue this cause; on the other, there was the extreme doubt whether there was any real cause to pursue. If there was no cause, why, then, how worse than foolish it would be to spend money over a chimera. Many and many were the anxious consultations she had with Mrs. Dund.y.k.e, even while her husband lay dead in the house.

On the day after the funeral--and there had been no mourner found to follow that poor young man to his last home, but one who had been fellow curate with him, and who was now in London--Mrs. Dund.y.k.e and her visitor were alone when a gentleman was shown in. A fine man yet, of middle age, but with a slight bend in the shoulders, as if from care, and grey threads mingling with his dark hair. It was not a time for Mrs. Carr to see strangers, and she rose to quit the drawing-room, after hurriedly replacing some papers in a desk she was examining. But there was something so n.o.ble, so pleasing, so refined, in the countenance of the man standing there, his hands held out to Mrs. Dund.y.k.e, and a sweet smile upon his lips, that she stopped involuntarily.

"Have you forgotten me, Betsey?"

For the moment she really had, for he was much changed; but the voice and the smile recalled her memory, and with a glad cry of recognition Mrs. Dund.y.k.e sprang forward, and received on her lips a sisterly kiss.

"Emma, don't go. This is your husband's friend, and my brother-in-law, William Arkell."

Mrs. Carr gladly held out her hand; her pretty face raised in its widow's cap. A shade came over William Arkell's at seeing that badge on one so young.

He had a little business in London, he explained, connected with the transfer of some of his property, and came up, instead of writing; came up--there was no doubt of it, though he did not say so--that he might have the opportunity of seeing Mrs. Dund.y.k.e.

Mrs. Carr left the room, and Mr. Arkell drew his chair nearer to his sister-in-law.

"You have heard nothing further, Betsey, of--of of your lost husband?"

She shook her head; she should never hear that again.

It was only natural that she should relate the circ.u.mstances to him, now that they met, although he had heard them so fully from Mr. Prattleton.

Where much mystery exists, especially pertaining to undiscovered crime, it seems that we can never be tired of attempting to solve it. Human nature is the same all the world over, and these things do possess an irrepressible attraction for the human heart--very human it is, now and then. Mr. Arkell sat with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his chin resting on his hand; he was looking dreamily into the fire as they talked.

"I should strongly suspect that Mr. Hardcastle, Betsey; should you know him if you saw him again?"

"Know him! know that same Mr. Hardcastle!" she repeated, wondering at what seemed so superfluous a question. "I should know him to the very end of my life. I should know him by his eyes, if by nothing else. They seem to be always before mine."

"Were they peculiar eyes, then?"

"Very. The first time I saw him, that morning at breakfast, his eyes seemed to strike upon my memory with a sort of repulsion. I felt sure I had seen eyes like them somewhere; and that the _other_ eyes had caused me repulse likewise. All the time we were together at Geneva, his eyes kept puzzling me; it was like a word we have on the tip of the tongue, every moment thinking we must recollect it, but it keeps baffling us. So was it with Mr. Hardcastle's eyes; and it was only in the moment he was leaving for Genoa that I recollected whose they were like."

"And whose were they like?"

"A gentleman's I never saw but twice; once at your house, at your own wedding breakfast, and once in the week subsequent to it at Mrs. Daniel Arkell's: Benjamin Carr."

"Who?" exclaimed Mr. Arkell.

"Benjamin Carr, the present squire's son."

He sat with sudden uprightness in his chair, staring at her. The strange scene, when Robert Carr had likened Benjamin to the suspected murderer, was flas.h.i.+ng into his mind. What did it _mean_, that agitation of Benjamin's? What did this likeness, now spoken of, mean? A wild doubt of horror came creeping over Mr. Arkell.

He opened his lips to speak, but recollected himself before the hasty impulse was put in force. Mrs. Dund.y.k.e noticed nothing unusual; her eyes and her thoughts were alike absorbed in the past.

"Will you describe this Mr. Hardcastle to me?" he asked presently, breaking the pause of silence: "as accurately and minutely as you can."

He noted every point that she gave in answer, every little detail. And he came to the conclusion that if Benjamin Carr was not Mr. Hardcastle, he might certainly have sat for his portrait.

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Arkell, speaking more to himself than to her, "were this man apprehended and punished, it could not bring poor Mr.

Dund.y.k.e back to life."

"Alas no, it could not. I would almost rather let things remain as they are. If the man is guilty, his daily life must be one perpetual, ever-present punishment."

"Ay, indeed," murmured Mr. Arkell; "better leave him to it."

And he rather persistently, had her suspicions been awakened, led the conversation into other channels.

"Let me say to you what I chiefly came to say, Betsey," he whispered to Mrs. Dund.y.k.e in parting. "This has been a sudden and unexpected blow for you. I do not know how you may be left in regard to means; but if you have need of help, temporary or otherwise, you will let me know it. I have a right to give it, you know: you are Charlotte's sister."

The tears fell from her eyes on his hands as she pressed them gratefully in hers. She did not say how well she was left off, for her heart was full; she only thanked him, and intimated that she had enough.

Mr. Arkell went away in a sort of perplexed dream. _Could_ that suspicion of Benjamin Carr be a true one? _He_ would be silent; but it was nearly certain to come out in some other way: murder generally does.

From Mrs. Dund.y.k.e's he went straight up to Lady Dewsbury's, and found that she and Miss Arkell had again gone out of town. It was a disappointment; he had not seen Mildred for years and years.

Mrs. Carr came back to the room, and resumed her occupation after he had gone--that of searching amid the papers in the desk of the late Robert Carr the elder. It had proved to be his own desk that her husband had wanted her to bring over--but that is of no consequence. She was searching for a very simple thing--merely a receipt for a small sum of money which she had herself paid for Mr. Carr just before he died, and had returned the receipt to him; but it is often upon the merest trifles that the great events of life turn. The claim for this small sum she heard was sent in again, and she thought perhaps she might find the receipt in the desk, where Mr. Carr had sometimes used to place such papers. She did not find that, but she found something else.