Ruth Willis bending forward, her gloved fingers clasped upon the open
letter that she held, and her pale face on fire, as it were, with eager
passion, seemed sadly out of tune with the still beauty of that silvan
spot, where first the crystal Start, freed from its moorland cradle,
gushed forth as a real river, although of puny dimensions, bearing
its watery tribute to the sea. Above, arched the feathery larch, the
slender hazel, and the tapering ash. Branches of the mountain-ash
projected like the stone frettings of some medieval belfrey. The clear
sweet warble of mavis and merle came throbbing softly to the ear
from the dim green heart of the summer woodlands. The letter which
she had purloined—the theft may have been prompted by the impulse of
the moment, and it is charitable to hope that such deeds were new to
her—was now hers, to peruse at her leisure. She read it then, did
Ruth Willis, again and again, slowly and deliberately, scanning and
weighing every word, as though she had been a student of the cuneiform
character, puzzling out Babylonian tablets by the aid of vague and
tentative keys to the long-dead language of which they bore the impress.
The letter ran thus:
8 BOND’S CHAMBERS,
ST NICHOLAS POULTNEY, LONDON.
DEAR SIR SYKES—It might be as well perhaps that we should come
to an understanding at once respecting the business on which I
spoke to you at the _De Vere Arms_ some days since. I do not
know whether you are aware that I hold evidence substantiating
the entire circumstances of the case, which I could at any time
reveal. I will mention no names of place or person, since this
is unwelcome to you; but in return for my consideration for
your interests, and for those whose prosperity and good name
are _now_ knit up in yours, I consider myself to possess a
claim upon your confidence. I therefore permit myself to think
that as your legal adviser I could conduct your affairs so that
you should be under no apprehension for the future, provided
always that the entire management (professionally) of your
estate and property should be placed in my hands. This, after
due consideration, I think would be the most expedient manner
of settling matters for the advantage of all parties concerned.
Trusting that you may see this arrangement in the same light as
myself, and that it may meet with your approval, as the only
means of arriving at a definitive understanding, I shall await
your reply. I beg to remain, my dear sir, very obediently and
faithfully yours,
ENOCH WILKINS, _Solicitor_.
Such was the letter which Sir Sykes Denzil had unguardedly left upon
his library table; and it may be admitted that a more impudent epistle
has rarely been addressed to a gentleman of equal station to that of
the proprietor of Carbery. It was difficult at first sight to believe
that a demand so audacious in itself, and so offensively urged, could
be intended as anything else than a sorry jest. Yet that the writer was
quite in earnest, nay more, that he felt himself assured of not craving
in vain for the coveted boon, was palpable to so attentive a critic as
was Ruth Willis.
‘If any man had dared to write thus to me,’ she said, slowly hissing
out the words between her half-shut teeth, ‘and I had filled the
position held by yonder pompous dolt, I would have—ay, given him cause
to repent it.’
And the lurid light that glimmered in her dark eyes, and the hardening
of her shrewd pale face until it seemed as though of chiselled marble
rather than sentient flesh, and the swift and sudden gesture with
which she raised and shook her clenched hand, as though it held a
dagger—these signs were the revelation of a fierce and unscrupulous
nature, kept down by the pressure of circumstances, but ready at pinch
of need to flame forth, as the hot lava bubbles and seethes beneath
the crust of cold ashes in which the vines of the Italian peasant have
struck root.
Again and with deliberate care did the baronet’s ward read the letter
through. Then she refolded it and replaced it in her pocket, and then
consulted her watch. Only a few minutes had as yet elapsed since her
escape—for it was little else—from the mansion.
‘I must not go back as yet,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘By this time the
whole household will be astir like a hive of angry bees, if, as is all
but certain, Sir Sykes has not had self-control enough to keep his own
counsel as to the loss he has sustained. He should have burned this
choice epistle the moment he had made himself master of its purport;
but he is of that order of men who treasure up the very proofs that
sooner or later overwhelm them with a weight of silent evidence. Was it
not the learned forger, silver-tongued, plausible Dr Dodd, who was left
alone with the fatal document that brought him to the gallows, alone
in a room where a brisk fire was blazing? One flash of mother-wit,
one motion of the hand, and nothing but a heap of tinder would have
remained to bear witness of the fraud. But no! The doomed wretch waited
passive for the hangman’s fingers to adjust the hempen noose about his
miserable neck. So would not I!’
Again the girl glanced impatiently at her watch.
‘How Time lags!’ she exclaimed petulantly, as she marked the slow
crawling of the thin black minute-hand around the dial; ‘heeding
nothing, influenced by nothing, inexorable in his measured pace. It is
a pain to such as I am to be forced to loiter here inactive, when there
is a foe to cope with, a peril to avert.’
She said no more, but paced restlessly to and fro along the river-bank,
beneath the arching boughs, with somewhat of the air and tread of a
caged panther wearing away the sullen hours of captivity behind the
restraining bars. Her very step had in it somewhat of the litheness
which we notice in the movements of the savage, and the working of
her keen features told how deeply her busy brain was pondering on the
events of the day. Ruth’s face, when once it was withdrawn from the
observation of others, was a singularly expressive one. When she had
left the room wherein Jasper had fallen asleep among his pillows,
the countenance of Sir Sykes’s ward had been eloquent with weariness
and contempt. Now it told of resentment restrained, but only in part
restrained, by a caution that was rather of habit than of instinct.
‘An hour more! yet an hour,’ said the girl at length, again looking
at her watch, and then she stood leaning against the tough stem of a
quivering mountain-ash that almost overhung the brawling torrent. She
still kept in her left hand the book which she had had with her when
entering the library at Carbery; but even had not the volume been
one which she had lately perused, she was in no mood for reading.
Manifestly her mind was shaping out some desperate resolution.
‘I will do it!’ she said at last, lifting her head with a defiant
glitter in her lustrous eyes; ‘before I sleep it shall be written. I
know and gauge beforehand the risk of such a course; know too that I
am loosening my own grasp on the helm if I invite another to aid me.
But that is better than to be foiled at the outset, and after weeks
spent in this self-schooling, and in the sickening task of cajoling a
shallow, knavish egotist, such as the future Sir Jasper will be until
his dying day. Let those look to it who for their own schemes venture
to cross my path!’
The hour, however slowly it might appear to pass in the estimation of
one whose nerves were on fire with excitement, nevertheless did wear
itself out, and there was an end of waiting. With tranquil step and
unruffled brow, Sir Sykes’s ward returned to her guardian’s house, to
find, as she had anticipated, confusion and dismay prevalent there; the
servants sullen or clamorous, the baronet’s daughters distressed, and
Sir Sykes himself in a state of feverish suspicion, which almost made
him forget the traditions of good-breeding.
‘Do you, Miss Willis, know anything of this?’ he asked half rudely, the
instant that he caught sight of his ward.
‘I—know of what?’ returned Ruth innocently, as she lifted her eyes,
with a startled look, to his.
‘You forget, papa,’ said Lucy Denzil, almost indignantly, ‘that Ruth
has heard of nothing. She was away from the house all the time.’
‘Yes, yes; I beg pardon of course,’ exclaimed the baronet reddening,
but still fixing his eyes searchingly on the placid face of his ward.
The Indian orphan bore his scrutiny with an admirable composure. Her
lower lip trembled a little, as was natural, when she turned towards
Lucy. ‘Pray do tell me,’ she said, ‘what has happened? for it really
does seem as though I had been unfortunate enough to make Sir Sykes
angry with me.’
‘Papa has lost a letter—a letter of importance,’ said Lucy, blushing
as she spoke; ‘and as the servants deny all knowledge of it, and its
loss’——
‘Say theft, not loss!’ interrupted the baronet with unwonted harshness.
‘I make no doubt that the letter was stolen from my desk in the
library, on which I had left it for but some two minutes, while I went
to speak with my son in the White Room. The French window nearest to
the fireplace was open, giving an easy means of entry, as of egress,
for the purloiner of this letter, who must have been on the watch for
an opportunity of surprising my secrets—that is to say,’ stammered Sir
Sykes, who felt the imprudence of these last words—‘of basely prying
into my private correspondence.’
‘Are you quite, quite sure, papa dear,’ pleaded Blanche, ‘that you
left the letter there, instead of bestowing it in some safe place for
safe keeping, which may afterwards have escaped your memory, and will
presently be recollected? Such things have happened often and often,
even to the most methodical, and’——
‘There, there, my girl!’ broke in the baronet peevishly. ‘Have I not
heard that argument repeated _ad nauseam_ by every man and maid that I
have questioned; and is it not the stock answer to all inquiries after
missing trinkets or valuables unaccounted for? I grant that I can prove
nothing. If I could’——
He did not complete the sentence, but crushing down the wrath that
almost choked his voice, turned away. Nothing, at this unpleasant
conjuncture, could be in better taste, or more simple, than Ruth’s
demeanour. She began to cry. It was the first time since the day of her
arrival that any one at Carbery had seen her in tears, and now both
Blanche and Lucy came kindly to kiss her and console her with whispered
entreaties to excuse Sir Sykes for an indiscriminate anger which there
was much to palliate. But Ruth soon dried her eyes, and going up to her
guardian laid her hand upon his arm and looked up timidly in his face.
‘Let me be useful,’ she said. ‘Let me help in hunting high and low for
this letter; pray, pray do, dear Sir Sykes, you who have been so very,
very kind to me since I have been here.’
Nothing could be prettier. And Sir Sykes, though in his present
irritable condition he actually shuddered at her light touch upon his
arm, as though he had been in contact with a snake, was compelled to
say a word or two of apology.
‘I am greatly annoyed,’ he said awkwardly, ‘and have been unjust and
inhospitable, I fear, and must ask you to forget my rudeness. I am best
alone.’
Sir Sykes therefore withdrew, and for some time was seen no more; while
Jasper, who had been an amused spectator of the turmoil, sauntered
back to the White Room, muttering as he went: ‘Lucky, rather, that
this child had so perfect an alibi, or the governor would have tried,
convicted, and sentenced his only son and heir as the light-fingered
captor of his lost property. A new sensation, it strikes me, that of
injured innocence. And talking of that—how nicely Miss Ruth, be she
who she may, played her part—not one bit overdone—it was perfect! We
breathe here an atmosphere of mystery; but it will be strange if, when
I am all right again, I do not make a push to get at the governor’s
secret, whatever it may be.’
The letter, it need hardly be said, remained undiscovered by the
volunteer searchers who undertook the quest of it; but gradually the
indignant household became more calm, and the general voice confirmed
the comfortable opinion, that Sir Sykes had unwittingly locked up the
missing document in some desk or drawer, whence it would one day be
satisfactorily extracted.