Of course, our first thought was, 'Was she really married?' And it
was settled betwixt us that Harry should go up to London to the
church named in her marriage lines and see if it was a real marriage
or a make-up, like what you read of in the weekly papers. And Harry
went up, I settling to go the same day to fetch my clothes from
Charleston.
So as soon as I had seen him off by the train, I walked up to
Charleston, and father with me, to fetch my things.
Mrs. Blake--for Mrs. Alderton I can't and won't call her--was out,
and I was able to get my bits of things together comfortable without
her fussing and interfering. But there was a pair of scissors of
mine I couldn't find, and I looked for them high and low till I
remembered that I had lent them to Mrs. Blake the week before. So I
went to her room to look for them, thinking no harm; and there,
looking in her corner cupboard for my scissors, as I had a right to
do, I found something else that I hadn't been looking for; and,
right or wrong, I put that in my pocket and said nothing to father,
and so we went home and sat down to wait for Harry.
He came in by the last train, looking tired and gloomy.
'They were married right enough,' he said. 'I've seen the register,
and I've seen the clerk, and he remembers them being married.'
'Then you'd better have a bit of supper, my boy,' says mother, and
takes it smoking hot out of the oven.
The next day when I had cleared away breakfast, I stood looking into
the street. It was a cold day, and a day when nobody would be out of
doors that could anyways be in. I shouldn't have had my nose out of
the door myself, except that I wanted to turn my back on other folks
now, and think of what I had found at Charleston, for I hadn't even
told Harry of it yet.
And as I sat there, who should come along but the postman, as is my
second cousin by the mother's side, and, 'Well, Polly,' says he,
'times do change. They tell me young Alderton is biding with your
folks now.'
'They tell you true for once,' says I.
'Then 'tain't worth my while to be trapesing that mile and a quarter
to leave a letter at the farm, I take it, especially as it's a
registered letter, and him not there to sign for it.'
So I calls Harry out, who was smoking a pipe in the chimney-corner,
as humped and gloomy as a fowl on a wet day, and he was as surprised
as me at getting a letter with a London postmark, and registered
too; and he was that surprised that he kept turning it over and
over, and wondering who it could have come from, till we thought it
would be the best way to open and see, and we did.
'Well, I'm blowed!' says Harry; and then he read it out to me. It
was--
'MY DEAR BROTHER,--I have seen in the papers the melancholy account
of our poor father's decease, and the disastrous circumstances of
his second marriage; and the more I have thought of it, the more it
seems to me that there was a screw loose somewhere. I had the
misfortune, as you know, to offend him by my choice of a profession;
but you will be glad to hear that I have risen from P.C. to
detective-sergeant, and am doing well.
'I have made a few inquiries about the movements of our lamented
father and Mrs. Blake on the day when they were united, and if the
same will be agreeable to you, I will come down Sunday morning and
talk matters over with you.--I remain, my dear brother, your
affectionate brother,