Dead!
"What? Susan dead!" She could not believe it; she wouldn't, and that
was a fact. "Stuff and nonsense! don't tell me," she exclaimed; "I
won't believe it."
"But, my dear madam," interposed Mr Trump, who had come down especially
to The Poplars, for the purpose of breaking the news, and considering
what was to be done on receiving Miss Kingscott's letter. "But, my dear
madam, I have received the most satisfactory intelligence about the
unfortunate event, and we must do something."
"Nonsense! don't tell me! Susan dead, indeed! What should make her
die? She is a hale, strong girl, much stronger than I am, and I am not
going to die yet. It's all some lying nonsense or other; that woman,
the governess, who wrote to you, is capable of anything, after what you
told me of her helping that villain to go away--and she as meek as a
mouse all the time as if butter would not melt in her mouth! Stuff and
nonsense! It's all a lie from beginning to end." But the old dowager
did not speak with her customary absolute quality of expression. There
was a lingering dread in her voice as if she wanted to be assured of the
truth of what she herself had declared, and as if she feared the worst
to be confirmed.
Mr Trump, from his previous knowledge of the family, did not think that
Mrs Hartshorne would grieve very much about her daughter, and so he did
not mince matters. He took out Miss Kingscott's letter, and showed it
her.
The old lady grasped it with trembling hands, and read it from first to
last in silence, although her fingers shook, and the paper rustled in
her clutch.
"I can't read it," she said, after a long pause, in a faint voice,
without its usual querulous intonation. "My eyes are weak; they are not
so strong as they were. The light to-day is very bad. That handwriting
is so small, I cannot make it out. Here, take the worthless thing and
read it out to me yourself. I cannot make head or tail of it."
Mr Trump resumed possession of the document; his sight was not
deficient, nor the light too bad for him, or the calligraphy beyond his
comprehension. He read as follows, in his loud, clear voice:--
"Havre.
"Mr Trump,--
"Sir,--You will remember our conversation some days since with reference
to the abduction of Susan Hartshorne by Markworth, and the desire I
expressed to avow my share in the conspiracy? I have something now far
more dreadful to communicate; the poor girl Susan has been murdered by
that villain, Markworth! Finding, I suppose, all his hopes of gaining
the girl's fortune fruitless, after his explanation with you, he
returned to Havre the same evening. For reasons of my own, I followed
him over from England. The very same evening he returned here he took
out the girl for a walk, and this ended in his throwing her over a
precipice and murdering her--I suppose, in order to get rid of her, as
he could not secure the money. How I came to be present will be
explained in the accompanying attested copies of my deposition, and that
of the other witnesses taken before the Juge de Paix, or principal
magistrate of this town. The body of the poor girl was found this
afternoon, floating in the river Seine, close to the scene of the brutal
murder. I have seen it, and there is no doubt of its being Susan
Hartshorne, but the authorities need some further identification by some
member of the unfortunate victim's family (or by some person authorised
by them) before it is buried, or any further proceedings taken. I
entreat you, my dear sir, to come over here at once. The murderer has
escaped, the police seem undetermined; and although I have done all I
could to stir them up, still I am only a woman, and cannot have that
influence over them which a man would possess. They say that Markworth
has gone to America, but surely something ought to be done, so you had
better come over here, if you have got any interest in the fate of the
poor girl. I believe the chief of the police has written to Mrs
Hartshorne, but whether she will be able to come I do not know, and I
think she had better not. Pray come yourself at once, or else the
murderer will escape, and his crime be unavenged; and, besides, there
are many other things to be attended to, notwithstanding that I have
done my best. Come at once, and see what is to be done; you can take
the night boat, which leaves Southampton at midnight, after seeing Mrs
Hartshorne on your way.
"Yours, in haste,
"Clara Kingscott.
"Messrs. Trump, Sequence, and Co.,
"Bedford Row, London."
The old lady never moved, or spoke once during the time which Mr Trump
was occupied in reading the governess's long letter and the legal
documents that accompanied it, although if the lawyer had looked at her,
instead of at the papers, which he was perusing, he would have observed
a strange and wonderful change in her face.
"Is that all? Have you done?" she asked, in a deep, hollow voice, so
unlike her own, that the lawyer started and looked at her inquiringly.
"That is all," he answered.
The old dowager had received no intimation before of the startling news.
The Chef had undoubtedly forwarded a communication to the _veuve_
bereaved; but, addressed as it was _au sud de l'Angleterre_, it would
take some weeks for it to reach The Poplars, if it ever got there.
Mr Trump waited in vain for some time for what the old lady would say,
glancing over the depositions, which Clara Kingscott had had translated
for his benefit.
At last the dowager spoke.
"Go! Go!" she screamed out in a shrill, unearthly voice. "Pursue him!
The murderer! The villain! The swindling rogue!"
As Mr Trump looked at her in amazement her face became of a blue and
livid colour.
"I--I will go too! Get my--" The blue colour had now turned to black,
and the old lady seemed to draw herself up as she exclaimed in
disjointed sentences. "Get my--Susan!--Husband!--Where am I!"
And with a still shriller shriek she fell forward on her face on the
floor.
"Apoplexy, my dear sir," as Mr Trump said afterwards in detailing the
circumstance to a _confrere_. "Apoplexy, my dear sir! It often happens
to people like her from a sudden shock!" But he was wrong, it was a
more insidious if not so fatal a disease--it was paralysis, the fell
enemy of muscularity.
The lawyer at once sent for a doctor; and "Garge," the messenger
despatched, went to Bigton for Doctor Jolly, as he was the only medical
man recognised in the country round. But our old friend was not at
home, he had not returned yet from his unusual absence abroad; and
Dobbins, the whilom coal merchant, who was acting in his stead, shortly
came to see the dowager. After a hasty inspection he saw what was the
case, and telling Mr Trump that further assistance would be required,
the lawyer telegraphed up to London for the great doctor, Stephanos
Jenner, who arrived in the evening. This great authority confirmed the
opinion of the lesser medical light. He said, after a preliminary "Ha!
Hum!" that the treatment of the patient was everything that could be
desired; and, accepting a fee of fifty guineas, which Mr Trump
presented him by cheque, went off again to London after a few minutes'
consultation, leaving the dowager in the hands of Dobbins, who, to do
him justice, knew what he was about; and of Mr Trump, who hardly knew
what to do.
The lawyer was puzzled at the first; but his logical mind, keen to
action, comprehended the situation, and prepared to act. He could not
help moralising for a moment, however, on the vanity of human wishes,
and the truthfulness of the proverb which tells us that "_L'homme
propose mais le bon Dieu dispose_." The dowager had not been "going to
die yet;" she had been ready to do anything and everything, and derided
the idea of death and sickness; but here she was struck down in all her
strength, and lying stretched out there a senseless lump of humanity
without either the power or even the will to do anything. _Tali sunt
solicitae vitae_!
However, as she could not, he had to act. So, after a hasty whisper
with Dobbins--it was now getting late in the December night--he
determined to proceed to Havre alone. Somebody had to go, for much had
to be done; so much does not fall on all lawyer's shoulders as rested on
Mr Trump's then. The dowager was accordingly left in the hands of
Dobbins--who said that Doctor Jolly would probably return the next day,
when he would undoubtedly take charge--and of the old woman-servant, who
had described herself as being as hard-worked as "a pore nigger slave,"
but who now cheerfully attended to her mistress, with whom she had lived
for some twenty years, having treated with indignation the suggestion of
calling in a hired nurse. "Not if I knows it," she said, vehemently,
"these hands wot 'ave worked for her twenty year will nuss her now; I
should like ter know who else has any right to displace I?" So Dobbins
conceded the points, at all events until Aesculapius proper should
return; and he and the old woman nursed the dowager between them, and
got her to bed, while Mr Trump went off on his travels. There was
quite a revolution and a dark shadow in the old house, while the
leafless poplars which encircled it seemed like funeral plumes, and the
old house itself a hearse, in the hazy light of the dull December night.
The lawyer's journey was a comparatively easy one in comparison with
that which our old friend the doctor had taken some time before.
He travelled rapidly to Southampton by the express, which he caught at
Bigton--only occasional trains stopped at Hartwood--and was in plenty of
time to despatch sundry telegraphic instructions to his clerks in London
before embarking in the night boat for Havre. At midnight, instead of
going to his warm bed in his comfortable suburban retreat, as he usually
did at that hour, Mr Trump had to pull on his nightcap between the
rolls of the waves, and ensconce himself in the narrow bunk that fell to
his share of the cabin in the channel-crossing steam-packet. However,
Mr Trump was a man of the world besides being a man of business, and
knew how to accommodate himself to circumstances, and make matters as
comfortable as he could under unforeseen data. So there is little doubt
that he went to sleep at last, in spite of the narrowness of his
lodging, and just as probably, he snored harmoniously to the
accompaniment of the steamboat's paddles.
The morning found him at Havre, prepared to set about his business as
methodically as if he were only going down to his chambers in Bedford
Row as usual, instead of being in a strange country.
He first went to the police office, and subsequently to the address
given by Miss Kingscott. Mr Trump never trusted to individual
evidence. With the governess and Monsieur le Chef, he proceeded to view
the remains of what had been Susan Hartshorne, and identify them. The
inspection was merely a work of detail, for the face was irrecognisable,
even more so now than when it had been first taken out of the water.
The lawyer, to the best of his belief, thought it to be Susan. And then
the corpse was buried in the cemetery with a single headstone above the
grave, on which the name "Susan," alone was inscribed, and her age.
Mr Trump had already explained his position, and stated himself to be
the representative of the deceased's family to the chief of the police,
who was most cordial and polite to him on learning that he was _un
avocat Anglais_. The chef, to the lawyer's astonishment, spoke English
fluently, just as if he were a native, and told him he knew Bedford Row
as well as the Palais Royal in Paris. From him also, Mr Trump learnt a
more coherent, and less one-sided story than from Miss Kingscott,
although her statements were confirmed. From the evidence of the one
witness, the case was evidently strong against Markworth, both the chef
and the lawyer determined; but then the one witness was, on her own
testimony, and from Mr Trump's previous knowledge, strongly
antagonistic to Markworth; and his legal mind compassed the
probabilities of something to be said on the other side. Markworth's
disappearance was the great thing against him, for the girl might have
drowned herself, and the scene which Clara Kingscott described never
have taken place at all. It is true her story was somewhat
corroborated, and the doctors had said, on the examination of the dead
girl's body, that death might have ensued from a jagged wound in the
head which probably had been caused by a fall; but they had only said
this when they had been asked their opinion on these points, and Miss
Kingscott's revelations been told them.
Altogether, Mr Trump thought it better to let the French police pursue
their own course in the matter, and not interfere with them by any
proceedings of his own. He also gave up to their possession all the
poor girl's things which had been left behind at the Rue Montmartre; and
he had a kindly word to say to the Mere Cliquelle and her husband for
their kindness and treatment towards the ill-fated Susan.
Miss Kingscott was in a rage of mortification at the lawyer's apparent
apathy; but her words had no weight with him; he had conceived a species
of aversion towards her ever since her disclosure to him that night in
Bedford Row; and the avowal of her purpose since, to track Markworth to
the death, had not increased his regard, although it heightened his
judgment on her as a "woman with a purpose."
After an absence of three days or more, Mr Trump returned to England.
His hands drew up the advertisement of Susan's death, which he caused to
be inserted in the _Times_. The circumstances of the mystery had not
got abroad, and he did not wish to court public enquiry as yet, so he
worded the announcement very simply:
At Havre, on the 27th ultimo, from an accident, Susan, wife of Allynne
Markworth, and only daughter of Roger Hartshorne, Esq., of The Poplars,
Sussex.
The lawyer then went down to see how the old lady was getting on.
She was still speechless--thoughtless--lying as it were on the brink of
eternity; and Doctor Jolly, who had now returned, and was attending her,
did not yet know whether she would recover or not. The doctor and Mr
Trump had a long conversation together, and mutual explanations. The
lawyer was more than ever glad that he had taken no further proceedings
about Susan's death, although he wrote out to Tom Hartshorne, now among
the heights of Abyssinia, telling him all about it.
Meanwhile, the old lady--struck down in her prime--was hovering on the
edge of the grave, in her great, old solitary house at The Poplars. Her
son had flown away, her daughter was among the departed, and she alone
was left to struggle with the Mower's scythe, alone--although she
neither seemed to think nor feel--Doctor Jolly and strangers ministering
to her. It is sad being alone--sadder being alone at the last! May
you, reader, never feel it!
Volume 3, Chapter VII.