ON THE TRACK.
The feelings of Clara Westford on that night upon which Violet
was lured away from the theatre may be more easily imagined than
described.
She arrived at the stage-door of the Circenses only ten minutes after
Violet had left the theatre with Rupert Godwin’s servant.
Mrs. Westford had by this time become well known to the people
employed at the stage-entrance to the theatre, as she had come every
night to wait for her daughter and accompany her home. She was not
allowed to go behind the scenes, nor had she any wish to penetrate
those mysterious regions; but she was always accommodated with a
seat in a quiet corner of the hall. To-night, however, instead of
his usual civil “Good-evening, ma’am,” the tall-porter greeted Mrs.
Westford with a stare expressive of intense astonishment.
The widow was quite at a loss to understand the meaning of the man’s
gaze. But she walked quietly to her accustomed seat in the most
retired corner of the hall.
“Why, ma’am,” exclaimed the porter at last, “when you walked in just
now anyone might have knocked me down with a feather. I thought you
was ill--very ill.”
“No, indeed, my good friend. What should have put such an idea into
your head?” asked Mrs. Westford, smiling at the man’s earnestness.
“Well, I’m blest! But there must be some mistake, ma’am, for your
daughter was fetched away just now all in a hurry, by a man who said
he was a doctor’s servant, and had brought his master’s carriage to
fetch her; and I never did see a poor young lady in such a state of
agitation. She was as pale as death, she was, and trembling like a
hasping leaf.”
“My daughter! You must be mistaken! It must have been some one else.”
“O no, indeed, ma’am. I knows your daughter very well, and a sweet
pretty-spoken young lady she is too. The doctor’s servant had brought
a note, he had, to say as Miss Watson’s mother was took very ill,
and she was to go home directly minute. He told me so while he was
waitin’ for your daughter to come down stairs.”
“And Violet, my daughter, went away with this man?”
“She did, ma’am. She hadn’t been gone above ten minutes when you came
in.”
Clara Westford lifted her hand to her forehead with a gesture
expressive of bewilderment. Her face had grown ashy pale. She
felt that some great calamity was close at hand; but as yet she
was too entirely bewildered to understand the full import of the
communication that had startled her.
“Only ten minutes!” she murmured, echoing the porter’s words. “I must
go in search of her. She cannot be gone far.”
“It must be twenty minutes by this time, ma’am,” said the man; “for
it’s full ten since you came in. And as for lookin’ for the young
lady in such a neighbourhood as this, you might us well expect to
find a needle in a bundle of hay. The best thing that you can do is
to go quietly home. Of course, as soon as your daughter finds she’s
been fetched away by mistake for somebody else, as she must have
been, she’ll go home, and perhaps will get there before you can.”
“But if it should not have been a mistake! If it should have been a
plot--some villanous scheme to get my daughter into the power of a
scoundrel!”
Clara Westford said this to herself, rather than to the man. She was
thinking of Rupert Godwin’s threats--his dark hints at dangers to
which her daughter was exposed in that theatre.
She had defied him, secure in the belief that Providence would have
pity upon her helplessness, and would shield her from the power of
her persecutor.
She had defied the sworn enemy who had cast so black a shadow upon
her youth. She had dared to defy him, and already he had asserted his
power; already she felt how feeble a creature she was to cope against
his vengeful machinations.
“I ought to have remembered how often the wicked are permitted to
triumph upon this earth,” she thought. “O heaven! if the blow had
fallen upon me only, I could have borne it; but my daughter--my
innocent darling! I cannot bear that she should suffer. Welcome any
misery to me, if my suffering could preserve that bright blossom from
being trampled in the dust!”
Thought flits through the brain almost as rapidly as summer lightning
flashes across the face of heaven. These thoughts passed through
Clara Westford’s mind as she leant half-fainting against the back of
the chair from which she had risen.
The porter’s compassion was excited by her evident distress.
“You just go quietly home, ma’am,” he said, in a consoling tone; “and
I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you was to find your daughter had
got there before you.”
Clara shook her head despairingly.
“You don’t know what reason I have to be terrified by this business,”
she said. “I will trust you, my good man, for I can see that you pity
me. You are well acquainted with the dangers of a theatre. I daresay
you know everything that goes on in this place?”
“Well, ma’am, I hear pretty nigh all that is to be heard, I daresay,”
answered the porter.
“My daughter was very young--very inexperienced. She was much
admired, perhaps; and I know that unprincipled men are sometimes
admitted behind the scenes of a theatre. Tell me, my good man, did
you ever hear that my daughter was persecuted by the attentions of
any of these men?”
“Never,” answered the man heartily; “there ain’t so many as ever
come behind the scenes in this house. People as don’t know no better
talk a great deal of nonsense about theatres, and think that my
Lord This and Sir Harry That are always lolling about behind the
scenes. But, bless your heart, ma’am, oftener than not you’d find our
green-room as quiet as a church; though I don’t say but what one or
two particular patrons do get let in once in a way. And as for your
daughter, I have heard say from them as have took notice of her, that
she was one of those modest quiet young ladies as the wildest of
young men going would never dare to insult.”
In the intensity of her gratitude for these comforting assurances
Clara Westford stretched out her hand, and grasped the grimy paw of
the stage-doorkeeper.
“My good friend,” she exclaimed, “you have spoken the pleasantest
words that I have heard for long from any stranger’s lips. I will go
home. I will try to think that this business has been only a mistake,
and that my daughter will return to me in safety. But stay; let me
ask you one question. You heard the name of the doctor who sent for
my daughter?”
“No, ma’am; the servant may have mentioned the name; but I can’t say
I caught it, if he did.”
“Nor the address?”
“No, ma’am; unfortunately, I didn’t hear that either.”
“Then I have no clue,” murmured Clara despairingly.
She bade the porter good-night, and left the theatre. She walked
rapidly through those crowded streets, in which she could not count
a single friend. But quickly as she made her way homewards, the time
seemed cruelly long, so eager was she to reach her lodging, where it
was just possible that she might find Violet safe.
But, alas, only heart-sickening disappointment awaited her. All
was dark in the window of the little sitting-room. Violet had not
returned. Clara Westford tottered with feeble footsteps up the
narrow staircase, and entered the empty room. Hitherto she had
been supported by hope. Now despair came upon her: all at once
her strength seemed to forsake her. She threw herself upon the
old-fashioned rickety sofa, and gave way to a paroxysm of grief.
For a long time she was completely overwhelmed by that convulsive
outburst of despair. But at last she grew calm, with the dull
calmness of misery.
“I must save her! I must save her!” she thought,--“even at the peril
of my own soul!”
She did not kindle any light, but sat in the darkness, with her head
resting on the arm of the sofa, and her forehead tightly pressed in
her two hands.
The unhappy woman was trying to think of a friend--some
long-forgotten friend, who might help her in this bitter hour of
calamity.
But the poor have few friends on earth. Clara Westford had been
long-forgotten by those aristocratic relations who had believed in
the disgrace of Sir John Ponsonby’s beautiful daughter. She had
disappeared from the world as completely as if the grave had hidden
her. She had scrupulously avoided all possibility of any meeting with
those who had known her before her marriage with the merchant captain.
Now, therefore, she could only count those friends whom she had
known in Hampshire during her happy married life--simple, well-to-do
country people, unversed in the ways of the world, who would be quite
incompetent to help her in this crisis of her life, even if they had
been within call, and their friendship of that sterling metal which
resists the biting influence of adversity.
Clara had known them only during the summer of her existence. Their
friendship had been very pleasant to her; but she had found no
opportunity of testing its quality or measuring its force. She had
dined with her friends, and her friends had dined with her. They had
killed the fatted calf to do her honour; but while doing it they had
been perfectly aware that she had fatted calves of her own in the
homestead. It was not to such untried friendship as this that Mrs.
Westford could appeal in a desperate crisis.
“It is to my direst enemy I must appeal,” she thought. “Rupert Godwin
has triumphed, and he alone on earth can help me to recover my lost
child.”
Early the next morning Mrs. Westford walked to a quiet street near
St. James’s-square. On his visit to her lodging the banker had left
his card on her table, inscribed with the address of his London abode.
But even this desperate step resulted in disappointment. At the
banker’s lodgings Mrs. Westford only found James Spence, the valet,
who informed her that his master was out of town, and was not likely
to return until the following day.
“If Mr. Godwin is at his country-house, I will go down there to
see him,” Clara said to the valet. “My business is most important;
indeed, it is a matter of life and death.”
“Unfortunately, madam, Mr. Godwin is not at Wilmingdon Hall,” the man
answered very politely; “and I am sorry to say I cannot inform you
where he is. He told me nothing, except that he was going into the
country, and would return to-morrow morning.”
“To-morrow! Then I will call here again,” said Clara, with a sigh of
real despair.
She turned away, sick at heart, to retrace her steps to the dreary
lodging, now so utterly desolate.
She walked slowly, for her feeble limbs could scarcely drag
themselves along. She had money in her purse; but she never thought
of hailing any vehicle. The dull stupor of her brain seemed to render
her almost unconscious of physical suffering. The sunlit streets,
gay with busy people hastening hither and thither, lively with that
bustling activity which looks like happiness, swam before her weary
eyes, worn and dim with long weeping: yet she walked on, wending her
steps mechanically towards her joyless home. She was in the busiest
part of the Strand, when she suddenly heard her name spoken, in a
voice that sounded strangely familiar--a voice that was associated
with the happy past.
She started like a creature newly awakened from some hideous dream,
and a taint flush passed over her wan face.
A hand was laid gently upon her arm. A young man, with a frank, manly
countenance, bronzed to an almost Indian hue by exposure to sun and
wind, was looking earnestly in her face.
“Mrs. Westford!” he exclaimed, “dear Mrs. Westford! Is it really you?
I am so surprised to meet you thus--in London, and alone.”
Clara Westford looked at the speaker with a dreamy bewildered
gaze. The bronzed face seemed at first strange to her; but the
well-remembered voice brought back the past.
She looked at the stranger for some moments in silence; then her lips
parted, and she gasped the familiar name--
“Gilbert Thornleigh!”
Yes; this bronzed stranger was no other than Gilbert Thornleigh, the
first mate of the _Lily Queen_.
“Gilbert!” said Clara Westford; “can it indeed be you?”
“Yes, dear Mrs. Westford; myself, and no other. I have survived all
the perils of shipwreck--the dangers and privations of a difficult
journey in the wildest part of the coast of Africa--and have set foot
once more on British ground. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see
the old streets, the familiar faces, and to hear my mother tongue
spoken on every side of me. Need I tell you the delight I feel in
seeing you? And yet, dear Mrs. Westford,” exclaimed the young man,
changing his tone suddenly, and looking anxiously at Clara’s face, “I
confess that I am sorry to see you looking so pale and careworn, so
sadly altered since I saw you in Hampshire. And your dress--You are
in deep mourning. Great heavens! Violet! she is not dead?”
The sailor’s bronzed check changed to an almost livid line as he
asked that terrible question.
“Not dead! No, no; not dead!” Mrs. Westford answered in a strange,
half-bewildered way.
“But I am sure that some calamity has happened to you,” exclaimed
Gilbert Thornleigh. “There are traces of sorrow in your face. You are
ill. I am sure you are ill.”
“I am ill,” answered Clara; “the street in which we stand spins round
me. I cannot understand what has happened. I meet you here--you whom
I thought dead. You were saved, then? You were rescued from the wreck
of the _Lily Queen_?”
“Yes; I and three of the crew contrived to swim ashore. We had a
hard fight for it, I can tell you, for it was no common squall that
sent the _Lily Queen_ against the rock that shattered her brave old
timbers as you’d shatter a wine-glass if you were to dash it against
the curbstone yonder. We had nothing but our life-belts and our
strong arms to rely upon, and we had to swim against a terrific sea;
but somehow or other we did reach the land. The poor fellows who
trusted to the boats went down to the bottom, every one of them; and
the ship herself was ground to powder.”
“And my husband--Harley? He was no doubt the last to abandon the
sinking vessel? I know his brave true heart. You were saved, but
Harley perished.”
Gilbert Thornleigh stared at his companion in utter bewilderment.
“Dear Mrs. Westford,” he exclaimed, “you are surely trying to mystify
me. Your husband was not on board when the ship was lost. Captain
Westford did not sail with us in the _Lily Queen_.”
“He did not sail in the _Lily Queen_!”
Clara Westford repeated the sailor’s words almost mechanically,
looking at him with wild dilated eyes.
“He did not sail? He was not with you when you were wrecked?” she
exclaimed.
“No, most decidedly not. He intrusted the ship’s papers to me, and
I sailed as his deputy. I was at this very moment on my way to
the Waterloo Terminus, where I meant to have taken the train to
Winchester, fully expecting to find yourself and Captain Westford at
the Grange.”
“Gilbert Thornleigh,” exclaimed Clara, “I must be mad--surely I must
be mad! You say my husband did not sail in the _Lily Queen_? Yet this
black dress has been worn for him, and for him alone. From the hour
in which he left the Grange to sail for China on the 27th of last
June, I have never seen my husband’s face, nor have I received the
faintest token of his existence.”
“You have not seen him? You believed that he had sailed last June?”
“Most firmly.”
“Great heavens!” cried Gilbert Thornleigh, “there must be some
terrible mystery here. Some calamity must have happened to the
Captain.”
“Yes,” answered Clara, with the dull accent of utter hopelessness,
“nothing but death could separate Harley from his wife and children.”
The sailor had offered her his arm, and she had taken it almost
unconsciously. He led her out of the bustle and confusion of the
Strand into one of those quiet streets that lead down to the river.
Here they were undisturbed; here they could talk freely of the
strange mystery that surrounded the fate of Harley Westford.
“I cannot understand it,” murmured Clara, with a dreary despair in
her tone. “It’s all a bewildering dream.”
Little by little Gilbert Thornleigh contrived to subdue Mrs.
Westford’s agitation, while he told her, slowly and deliberately,
the story of the last day before the sailing of the _Lily Queen_.
He told her how Harley Westford had quitted the ship, declaring that
he would recover his money from Rupert Godwin’s hands at any hazard.
He told her how the vessel had waited in the dock, not only until
the following morning, as Harley Westford had ordered, but until the
following sunset, the young man deferring departure to the very last,
in the hope that the Captain would rejoin his ship.
Then a lurid light broke upon Clara Westford’s mind.
In this calamity, as in every other, she saw the one dark figure
always between her and happiness--Rupert Godwin, always Rupert
Godwin, her implacable enemy, her relentless persecutor.
And now a hideous fear took possession of her. Rupert Godwin had
destroyed her husband!
Yes; with his own desperate hand, or by the hand of some hired
assassin, Rupert Godwin had murdered his fortunate rival.
By slow degrees this conviction shaped itself in Clara Westford’s
mind.
“I can understand it all now,” she said. “There was good reason for
my dark forebodings, my gloomy presentiments. When Harley left me on
that bright summer morning, he left me to go to his death.”
“Dear Mrs. Westford, let us hope for the best,” murmured the sailor;
but there was little hopefulness in his tone.
“Tell me one thing,” said Clara: “are you positive that my husband
lodged the sum of twenty thousand pounds in Rupert Godwin’s hands?
Are you sure that Harley did not owe money to the banker?”
“As certain as I am of my own name. Your husband had been a very
fortunate man, and the twenty thousand pounds were the savings of his
life.”
“Then the document by which my children were made penniless and
homeless was a forgery,” exclaimed Clara.
She told Gilbert Thornleigh the story of Rupert Godwin’s seizure
of the Grange and all its contents. But she could not speak or
dwell long on this subject; she could only think of one thing--the
mysterious disappearance of her husband.
“He has been murdered, Gilbert,” she said; “my heart tells me that it
is so. He has fallen a victim to the relentless Rupert Godwin.”
Gilbert Thornleigh shook his head incredulously.
“Impossible, dear Mrs. Westford!” he exclaimed. “Rupert Godwin has
a high position in the world. He would never be guilty of such a
crime--a crime which must ultimately be discovered, and for which he
could have no adequate motive.”
“I tell you, Gilbert, there is no infamy--no deed, however dark--of
which Rupert Godwin is not capable. I know him. I know the cruelty
of his heart. He is a man without conscience and without mercy. Why
should such a man hesitate to commit murder?”
The sailor was still incredulous. It is so difficult for a generous
nature to believe in the possibility of crime.
“Some accident may have happened to the Captain,” he said. “He may
never have reached the bank.”
“If any accident had happened, I should have been almost sure to hear
of it,” Clara Westford replied decisively. “Gilbert Thornleigh, I
think you loved my husband?”
“I did, as truly as ever a son loved his father; and I had good
reason to love him. No father was ever kinder to his son than the
Captain was to me.”
“Give me a proof of your devotion,” said Clara, with passionate
energy; “aid me to discover my husband’s fate.”
“I will,” replied the young man; “my life is at your service. I will
shrink from neither trouble nor peril in the performance of the duty
I owe to my Captain.”
“Then let us begin our work immediately. O, Gilbert, I can neither
know peace nor rest till this dark enigma has been solved.”
The young man was silent for some moments, thinking deeply. He was
trying to form some plan of action.
“When Captain Westford left me on board the _Lily Queen_, I know that
he was going straight to Mr. Godwin’s banking-house,” he said at
last. “The first fact we have to ascertain is whether he ever reached
that place. We can at least attempt to settle that question by making
inquiries of the clerks at the bank.”
“I have not much faith in any of Rupert Godwin’s creatures; but let
us lose no time in questioning them. Providence may give us help in
an attempt to fathom the mystery of this man’s crime. Let us go at
once to the bank.”
Gilbert Thornleigh was almost as earnest as Mrs. Westford. He called
a cab, and told the man to drive to Lombard-street. They alighted
before the door of the banking-house. Gilbert went into the principal
office, followed by Mrs. Westford.
An old man, with a queer, almost humpbacked, figure and a wizen face,
was seated at one of the desks, bending over a ledger. He looked
up as Gilbert and his companion entered the office. He cast at the
sailor only a brief and careless glance of indifference; but the
whole aspect of his face changed as he looked at Clara Westford.
The eyes were fixed in a long earnest gaze, and the lips trembled. It
was evident that some sudden and violent emotion shook the man to his
inmost soul.
This man was no other than Rupert Godwin’s confidential clerk, Jacob
Danielson.
“I have come to ask a question relating to an event that happened
more than a year ago,” said the mate of the _Lily Queen_. “Can you
call to mind the dealings of this house during last June twelvemonth?”
“Perhaps I can,” answered the clerk, not looking at Gilbert
Thornleigh, but keeping his small deep-set eyes fixed intently upon
Clara Westford, who stood a little way behind the sailor. “It depends
very much upon the nature of those dealings. What is it that you want
me to remember?”
“A captain in the merchant service, named Harley Westford, lodged
a sum of money in the hands of your principal during that month,
a large sum for a single deposit--twenty thousand pounds. Do you
remember the circumstances?”
“I do.”
“He returned the same day to withdraw the money, or he intended to do
so?”
“He did return: and not finding Mr. Godwin here, he followed him to
his country seat, Wilmingdon Hall, in Hertfordshire. I was there when
he arrived.”
“And he claimed the return of his money?”
“He did.”
“Were his claims acceded to?”
“Mr. Godwin told me as much.”
“The money was returned?”
“I repeat that Mr. Godwin told me so. I left Wilmingdon Hall to catch
the ten-o’clock train from Hertford. When I left, Captain Westford
was still with Mr. Godwin. I was so unlucky as to lose the train. I
returned to the Hall. When I returned the Captain had left, no doubt
carrying his twenty thousand pounds with him. Mr. Godwin told me that
he had restored the money that evening, as the Captain was obliged to
rejoin his ship by daybreak; otherwise she would have sailed without
him.”
“She did sail without him,” answered Gilbert Thornleigh; “from that
hour to this, the Captain has never been seen by his friends. He
disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened to swallow him
up.”
“Strange!” murmured the clerk thoughtfully.
“Very strange,” replied the sailor; “there has been foul play
somewhere. I should not care to be in Rupert Godwin’s position.
Harley Westford was last seen in his house. Harley Westford’s fortune
was lodged in his hands. There are two questions that I must have
answered, somehow or other; the first is, was that fortune ever
restored to its rightful owner? The second is one of even darker
meaning: Did Harley Westford ever leave Wilmingdon Hall alive?”
Jacob Danielson looked at the speaker with a strange expression.
“Bah!” he exclaimed. “Do you suppose such a man as Rupert Godwin
would lie in wait to murder one of his customers for the sake of
twenty thousand pounds? Mr. Godwin is a millionaire, and that which
seemed a wonderful fortune to the merchant captain would have been
only a trifle to him.”
“Mr. Godwin may be a millionaire to-day,” answered Gilbert
Thornleigh; “but if the tongue of common report spoke truly, he was
no millionaire last June twelvemonth. He had just made great losses,
and there was a rumour that he was likely to become bankrupt.”
“The tongue of common report is a lying tongue,” replied Jacob
Danielson. “Come, young man, this talk is madness. Rich men, such as
Rupert Godwin, do not commit crimes. Seek for your captain elsewhere;
we are not responsible for his safety.”
“Perhaps not,” answered Gilbert; “but the law may ask you and your
employer some strange questions about that meeting at Wilmingdon
Hall. My first task shall be to put the case in the hands of the
police; they may be able to discover whether Harley Westford ever
left that place alive.”
“Perhaps so,” responded the clerk coolly. “The police are very
clever, no doubt; but they are sometimes baffled. They have made two
or three rather notable _fiascos_ lately. Good morning. Stay! In
spite of your insolent insinuations, I should really be glad to be of
service to you. If I should obtain any information likely to aid you
in your search for the missing Captain, I will send it to you. Where
shall I address my letter?”
He looked at Clara Westford as he spoke, and it was she who answered
him.
“You can address your letter to me, Harley Westford’s wife, at No. 4,
Little Vincent-street, Lambeth,” she said eagerly.
Jacob Danielson started at the sound of her low earnest voice, but
neither Clara nor her companion observed his emotion. They were too
deeply engrossed by their own anxiety.
They left the bank immediately after this. The young man put his
companion into a cab, and then parted from her, promising to go
at once to the proper quarter, where he might place the matter of
Harley Westford’s disappearance in the hands of the detective police,
and promising also to call upon her early the next day, in order
to tell her the result of his interview with the chief official at
Scotland-yard.
Before she took off her bonnet and shawl Clara Westford seated
herself at her desk and wrote a letter to her son, telling him of the
return of Gilbert Thornleigh, and of the mysterious disappearance of
the Captain, and imploring him to exert himself to the utmost in his
endeavours to fathom the mystery.
“By a providential chance you happen to be in the near neighbourhood
of Wilmingdon Hall,” wrote Clara Westford, “which I am told is
within a few miles of Hertford. For Heaven’s sake, my dear Lionel,
make a good use of that chance, and try by every means to discover
whether your unhappy father left Rupert Godwin’s house alive on the
night of the 27th of June.”