Quietly knocking at the door of Jenkins House this same sunny morning
went three gentlemen: old Tamlyn, Mr. Lawrence, and Joseph Todhetley.
Mr. Lawrence was a magistrate and ex-mayor; he had preceded the late
Sir Daniel Jenkins in the civic chair, and was intimate with him as a
brother. Just as old Tamlyn tackled Lettice, so they were now about to
tackle Madame St. Vincent on the score of the brandy-and-water; and they
had deemed it advisable to take Tod with them.
Lady Jenkins was better than usual; rather less stupid. She was seated
with madame in the cheerful garden-room, its glass-doors standing open
to the sunshine and the flowers. The visitors were cordially received;
it was supposed they had only come to pay a morning visit. Madame St.
Vincent sat behind a table in the corner, writing notes of invitation
for a soirée, to be held that day week. Tod, who had his wits about him,
went straight up to her. It must be remembered that they had not yet
met.
"Ah! how are you?" cried he, holding out his hand. "Surprised to see
you here." And she turned white, and stared, uncertain how to take his
words, or whether he had really recognized her, and bowed stiffly as to
a stranger, and never put out her own hand in answer.
I cannot tell you much about the interview: Tod's account to me was not
very clear. Lady Jenkins began talking about Captain Collinson--that
he had turned out to be some unworthy man of the name of Pell, and had
endeavoured to kidnap poor little Mina. Charlotte Knox imparted the news
to her that morning, in defiance of Madame St. Vincent, who had tried
to prevent her. Madame had said it must be altogether some mistake, and
that no doubt Captain Collinson would be able to explain: but she, Lady
Jenkins, did not know. After that there was a pause; Lady Jenkins shut
her eyes, and madame went on writing her notes.
It was old Tamlyn who opened the ball. He drew his chair nearer the old
lady, and spoke out without circumlocution.
"What is this that we hear about your taking so much brandy-and-water?"
"Eh?" cried the old lady, opening her eyes. Madame paused in her
writing, and looked up. Tamlyn waited for an answer.
"Lady Jenkins does not take much brandy-and-water," cried madame.
"I am speaking to Lady Jenkins, madame," returned old Tamlyn, severely:
"be so kind as not to interfere. My dear lady, listen to me"--taking her
hand; "I am come here with your life-long old friend, William Lawrence,
to talk to you. We have reason to believe that you continually take, and
have taken for some time past, small doses of brandy-and-water. Is it
so?"
"Patty gives it me," cried Lady Jenkins, looking first at them and then
at Patty, in a helpless sort of manner.
"Just so: we know she does. But, are you aware that brandy-and-water,
taken in this way, is so much poison?"
"Tell them, Patty, that you give it me for my good," said the poor lady,
in affectionate appeal.
"Yes, it is for your good, dear Lady Jenkins," resentfully affirmed
Madame St. Vincent, regarding the company with flashing eyes. "Does any
one dare to suppose that I should give Lady Jenkins sufficient to hurt
her? I may be allowed, I presume, as her ladyship's close companion,
constantly watching her, to be the best judge of what is proper for her
to take."
Well, a shindy ensued--as Tod called it--all of them talking altogether,
except himself and poor Lady Jenkins: and madame defying every one and
everything. They told her that she could no longer be trusted with Lady
Jenkins; that she must leave the house that day; and when madame defied
this with a double defiance, the magistrate intimated that he had come
up to enforce the measure, if necessary, and he meant to stay there
until she was gone.
She saw it was serious then, and the defiant tone changed. "What I have
given Lady Jenkins has been for her good," she said; "to do her good.
But for being supported by a little brandy-and-water, the system could
never have held out after that serious attack she had in Boulogne. I
have prolonged her life."
"No, madame, you have been doing your best to shorten her life,"
corrected old Tamlyn. "A little brandy-and-water, as you term it, might
have been good for her while she was recovering her strength, but you
have gone beyond the little; you have made her life a constant lethargy;
you would shortly have killed her. What your motive was, Heaven knows."
"My motive was a kind one," flashed madame. "Out of this house I will
not go."
So, upon that, they played their trump card, and informed Lady Jenkins,
who was crying softly, that this lady was the sister of the impostor,
Collinson. The very helplessness, the utter docility to which the
treatment had reduced her, prevented her expressing (and most probably
feeling) any dissent. She yielded passively to all, like a child, and
told Patty that she must go, as her old friends said so.
A bitter pill for madame to take. But she could not help herself.
"You will be as well as ever in a little time," Tamlyn said to Lady
Jenkins. "You would have died, had this gone on: it must have induced
some malady or other from which you could not have rallied."
Madame St. Vincent went out of the house that afternoon, and Cattledon
entered it. She had offered herself to Lady Jenkins for a few days in
the emergency.
It was, perhaps, curious that I should meet Madame St. Vincent before
she left the town. Janet was in trouble over a basket of butter and
fowls that had been sent her by one of the country patients, and of
which the railway people denied the arrival. I went again to the station
in the afternoon to see whether they had news of it: and there, seated
on the platform bench, her boxes around her, and waiting for the London
train, was madame.
I showed myself as respectful to her as ever, for you can't humiliate
fallen people to their faces, telling her, in the pleasantest way I
could, that I was sorry things had turned out so. The tone seemed to
tell upon her, and she burst into tears. I never saw a woman so subdued
in the space of a few hours.
"I have been treated shamefully, Johnny Ludlow," she said, gulping down
her sobs. "Day and night for the past nine months have I been about Lady
Jenkins, wearing myself out in attendance on her. The poor old lady had
learnt to love me and to depend upon me. I was like a daughter to her."
"I dare say," I answered, conveniently ignoring the dosing.
"And what I gave her, I gave her for the best," went on madame. "It
_was_ for the best. People seventy years old need it. Their nerves and
system require soothing: to induce sleep now and then is a boon to them.
It was a boon to her, poor old thing. And this is my recompense!--turned
from the house like a dog!"
"It does seem hard."
"Seem! It _is_ hard. I have had nothing but hardships all my life," she
continued, lifting her veil to wipe away the tears. "Where I am to go
now, or how make a living, I know not. They told me I need not apply to
Lady Jenkins for references: and ladies won't engage a companion who has
none."
"Is your husband really dead?" I ventured to ask.
"My poor husband is really dead, Johnny Ludlow--I don't know why you
should imply a doubt of it. He left me nothing: he had nothing to leave.
He was only a master in the college at Brétage--a place in the South of
France--and he died, I verily believe, of poor living. We had not been
married twelve months. I had a little baby, and that died. Oh, I assure
you I have had my troubles."
"How are--Mr. and Mrs. Clement-Pell?" I next asked, with hesitation.
"And Conny?--and the rest of them?"
"Oh, they were well when I last heard," she answered, slightingly. "I
don't hear often. Foreign postage is expensive. Conny was to have come
here shortly on a visit."
"Where is Gusty? Is----"
"I know nothing at all about my brothers," she interrupted sharply. "And
this, I suppose, is my train. Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow; you and I at
least can part friends. You are always kind. I wish the world was like
you."
I saw her into the carriage--first-class--and her boxes into the van.
And thus she disappeared from Lefford. And her brother, "Captain
Collinson," as we found later, had taken his departure for London by an
early morning train, telling little Pink, his landlord, as he paid his
week's rent, that he was going up to attend a levee.
It was found that the rumour of his engagement to Miss Belmont was
altogether untrue. Miss Belmont was rather indignant about it, freely
saying that she was ten years his senior. He had never hinted at such a
thing to her, and she should have stopped him if he had. We concluded
that the report had been set afloat by himself, to take attention from
his pursuit of Mina Knox.
Madame St. Vincent had feathered her nest. As the days went on, and Lady
Jenkins grew clearer, better able to see a little into matters, she
could not at all account for the money that had been drawn from the
bank. Cheque after cheque had been presented and cashed; and not
one-tenth of the money could have been spent upon home expenses. Lady
Jenkins had been always signing cheques; she remembered that much; never
so much as asking, in her loss of will, what they were needed for. "I
want a cheque to-day, dear Lady Jenkins," her companion would say,
producing the cheque-book from her desk; and Lady Jenkins would docilely
sign it. That a great portion of the proceeds had found their way to Mr.
Fabian Pell was looked upon as a certainty.
And to obtaining this money might be traced the motive for dosing Lady
Jenkins. Once let her intellect become clear, her will reassert itself,
and the game would be stopped. Madame St. Vincent had also another
scheme in her head--for the past month or two she had been trying to
persuade Lady Jenkins to make a codicil to her will, leaving her a few
thousand pounds. Lady Jenkins might have fallen blindly into that; but
they had not as yet been able to agree upon the details: Madame St.
Vincent urging that a lawyer should be called in from a distance; Lady
Jenkins clinging to old Belford. That this codicil would have been made
in time, and by the remote lawyer, there existed no doubt whatever.
Ah, well: it was a deep-laid plot altogether. And my visit to Lefford,
with Tod's later one, had served, under Heaven, to frustrate it.
Lady Jenkins grew rapidly better, now that she was no longer drugged. In
a few days she was herself again. Cattledon came out amazingly strong in
the way of care and kindness, and was gracious to every one, even to
Lettice.
"She always forbade me to say that I took the brandy-and-water," Lady
Jenkins said to me one day when I was sitting with her under the
laburnum tree on her lawn, talking of the past, her bright green silk
dress and pink cap ribbons glistening in the sun. "She made my will
hers. In other respects she was as kind as she could be to me."
"That must have been part of her plan," I answered. "It was the great
kindness that won you to her. After that, she took care that you should
have no will of your own."
"And the poor thing might have been so happy with me had she only chosen
to be straightforward, and not try to play tricks! I gave her a handsome
salary, and new gowns besides; and I don't suppose I should have
forgotten her at my death."
"Well, it is all over, dear Lady Jenkins, and you will be just as well
and brisk as you used to be."
"Not quite that, Johnny," she said, shaking her head; "I cannot expect
that. At seventy, grim old age is laying its hand upon us. What we need
then, my dear," she added, turning her kindly blue eyes upon me, in
which the tears were gathering, "is to go to the mill to be ground young
again. And that is a mill that does not exist in this world."
"Ah no!"
"I thank God for the mercy He has shown me," she continued, the tears
overflowing. "I might have gone to the grave in the half-witted state to
which I was reduced. And, Johnny, I often wonder, as I lie awake at
night thinking, whether I should have been held responsible for it."
The first use Lady Jenkins made of her liberty was to invite all her
relations, the young nephews and nieces, up to dinner, as she used
to do. Madame St. Vincent had set her face against these family
entertainments, and they had fallen through. The ex-mayor, William
Lawrence, and his good old wife, made part of the company, as did Dr.
Knox and Janet. Lady Jenkins beamed on them once more from her place at
the head of the table, and Tamlyn sat at the foot and served the big
plum-pudding.
"Never more, I trust, shall I be estranged from you, my dears, until it
pleases Heaven to bring about the final estrangement," she said to the
young people when they were leaving. And she gave them all a sovereign
a-piece.
Cattledon could not remain on for ever. Miss Deveen wanted her: so Mina
Knox went to stay at Jenkins House, until a suitable lady should be
found to replace Madame St. Vincent. Upon that, Dan Jenkins was taken
with an anxious solicitude for his aunt's health, and was for ever
finding his way up to inquire after it.
"You will never care to notice me again, Dan," Mina said to him, with a
swelling heart and throat, one day when he was tilting himself by her on
the arm of the sofa.
"Shan't I!" returned Dan.
"Oh, I am so ashamed of my folly; I feel more ashamed of it, day by
day," cried Mina, bursting into tears. "I shall never, never get over
the mortification."
"Won't you!" added Dan.
"And I never liked him much: I think I _dis_-liked him. At first I did
dislike him; only he kept saying how fond he was of me; and Madame St.
Vincent was always praising him up. And you know he was all the
fashion."
"Quite so," assented Dan.
"Don't you think it would be almost as well if I were dead, Dan--for all
the use I am likely to be to any one?"
"Almost, perhaps; not quite," laughed Dan; and he suddenly stooped and
kissed her.
* * * * *
That's all. And now, at the time I write this, Dan Jenkins is a
flourishing lawyer at Lefford, and Mina is his wife. Little feet patter
up and down the staircase and along the passages that good old Lady
Jenkins used to tread. She treads them no more. There was no mill to
grind her young again here; but she is gone to that better land where
such mills are not needed.
Her will was a just one. She left her property to her nephews and
nieces; a substantial sum to each. Dan had Jenkins House in addition.
But it is no longer Jenkins House; for he had that name taken off the
entrance pillars forthwith, replacing it by the one that had been there
before--Rose Bank.