SUSPENSE.
Rupert Godwin was too desperately circumstanced, and too hardened
a sinner, to be much affected by the revelation made by the Duke
of Harlingford with regard to Esther Vanberg’s identity with his
deserted daughter. Are there human beings created without that
attribute of the mind, that natural love and tenderness, pity and
remorse, which we blend into one general whole and call “a heart”?
It would seem so; it would seem as if there are some natures in
which there is no such element as heart or conscience. These are the
exceptional criminals whom men wonder at, and whose iniquities the
merciful are apt to ascribe to mental disease.
The banker had been struck by Esther Vanberg’s likeness to the lovely
Spanish Jewess whom his treachery had lured from the home of a
doting father, a rich wine-merchant of Seville, who had toiled long
and patiently in order to amass the fortune which was to secure the
future welfare of his only child, Lola. The girl was engaged to be
married to the cashier in the Seville banking-house belonging to the
Godwin firm, when the young _roué_ saw her, and at once determined to
oust his inferior.
Rupert Godwin was handsomer and more polished than his _employé_.
He was already a man of the world; the cashier was only an honest
and devoted lover, eager to achieve a better position in life before
he claimed the heiress of old Isaac Mendez. While the young man
worked at his bureau, the employer hung about the footsteps of the
merchant’s daughter, followed her to church and bull-fight, bribed
her old nurse, flattered and fooled her doting father, and turned the
poor girl’s head by his impassioned pleading. The end came only too
quickly--the hackneyed conclusion of the hackneyed story.
Lola let herself quietly out of the paternal dwelling one starless,
airless summer night, and left Seville under the protection of Rupert
Godwin. They started at once for Paris, where Lola had been told the
marriage would take place. There were reasons why it could not be
performed at Seville. Mr. Godwin’s father had formed plans of his own
for his son’s matrimonial settlement, and for a time the marriage
would have to be kept secret.
“There is no safer place than Paris,” said Rupert; and Lola, who had
heard Paris talked of as a kind of earthly elysium, was quite ready
to agree to this proposal.
In Paris the banker lodged his divinity in one of the prettiest
villas in the Champs Elysées, a _bijou_ mansion built and decorated
in the Moorish style, at a fabulous outlay, for a Muscovite prince
lately deceased, and bought under the hammer by Mr. Godwin at about
ten per cent of its original cost. In this luxurious nest Lola Mendez
found herself a kind of fairy princess--flattered, beloved; but she
never became the wife of Rupert Godwin.
Rupert Godwin had thought it quite probable that the _figurante_
might be his own daughter; but he had concerned himself no more about
her fortunes in her lovely and reckless womanhood than he had done in
her deserted girlhood.
But when the Duke showed him the portrait of his victim, the proud
man did feel the humiliation of his position. He winced beneath
the cold contempt of the generous young patrician, for he was not
without the plebeian’s natural reverence for rank, and it was hard to
be despised by a duke. He had sunk so very low now, that every new
stroke wounded him to the quick. Hemmed in on every side by danger, a
superstitious terror had taken possession of him, and he saw in every
incident of his troubled life a new omen of ruin.
His daughter’s flight had filled him with unspeakable fear. He had
loved this girl with the bad man’s selfish love, which sees in the
beloved object only a source of pleasure or happiness to himself;
still, he had loved her, and he felt her desertion deeply.
But this was the least element in his trouble. Julia knew his guilty
secret; she doubtless possessed the proof that in intention, if not
in act, he was a poisoner.
Would she betray him? Surely, not willingly. But she might be seized
with a fever, such as that which had stricken Lionel Westford, and
in her delirium she might utter the accusing words which would lead,
perhaps, step by step, to the discovery of all his crimes.
Ah, if the criminal could only foresee the agonies that follow the
commission of crime, even when the torturing voice of conscience
is dumb; if he could calculate the labour, the patience, the
self-abnegation, the watchfulness which will be required of him
during every hour of his ensuing existence, in which the one end
and aim of his life will be to keep _that_ secret,--surely the very
selfishness which suggests the crime would restrain the hand of the
criminal.
The search for Julia had been, so far, made in vain. Advertisements
had been inserted in the papers; inquiries had been made in every
direction, but without avail. If she had read the appeals in those
advertisements, Julia had been inexorable, for she had never answered
them.
But Julia had not read those advertisements. While private detectives
were searching for her in every direction suggested by Rupert Godwin,
the missing girl had fled to a neighbourhood which the banker had
never dreamt of suggesting.
She had dressed herself, upon the morning of her flight, in some dark
homely garments which she had been making for the poor; and, thus
disguised, with an unfashionable straw bonnet, and a thick veil over
her face, she had walked to Hertford in the dewy morning, while it
was yet scarcely light. She had taken the first train for London,
stepping quite unobserved into a second-class carriage. From the
station at King’s Cross she had driven straight to Waterloo, going
thence by express to Winchester. At the Winchester station she had
taken a fly, which drove her to a quiet retreat in the New Forest.
In her journey thither she had evidently a settled purpose, for her
conduct from first to last had betrayed no hesitation as to whither
she should go.
* * * * *
Three or four days after the old clerk’s visit to the lodging in the
Waterloo-road, Clara Westford received a letter in the handwriting
which had been so familiar to her in her early girlhood, when the
deformed schoolmaster had devoted himself to her education, inspired
by a passion which had been the keynote of his life,--such a passion
as Quasimodo felt for the beautiful dancing-girl--such a passion as
in the breast of Quasimodo’s master, the priest of Nôtre Dame, called
itself fatality.
The old clerk’s letter was very brief:--
“I told you I could atone in some measure for the wrong I inflicted
upon you when I imagined your father’s treatment of me was inspired
by your express request. You shall see that I can make some amends
for having thus suspected you of conduct which was foreign to your
noble nature. If you will come with your daughter to the bank parlour
this day week, at twelve o’clock, you will receive my atonement; and
at the same time you will, perhaps, experience the greatest and the
happiest surprise that you have ever known in the whole course of
your life.
“--Your respectful and obedient
“JACOB DANIELSON.
“_Tuesday morning._”
A surprise! An atonement! It was quite in vain that Clara Westford
perused and reperused the old clerk’s letter in the hope of
discovering something of its meaning.
A surprise--a happy surprise--wrote Jacob Danielson. Alas, what happy
surprise could there be for her, since her husband, the lover of her
youth, the adored friend and companion of her womanhood, met his fate
at the hands of an assassin?
“Unless Jacob Danielson can bring the dead back to life, I know not
what happiness he can give me,” thought Clara mournfully.
She was almost crushed down by the weight of her sorrows. They had
come upon her, one after another, without even a brief interval of
peace. Only a short time had elapsed since her daughter had been
restored to her, and already a new grief was racking the mother’s
heart.
Her son had never responded to that letter in which she had told
him of her meeting with Gilbert Thornleigh--a letter which was of a
nature to demand an immediate answer.
Day after day she had expected the reply; but none had come--for the
reader knows the cause of Lionel Westford’s silence, and how little
power he had to respond to that appalling communication. The mother
wrote again and again, imploring some answer to her anxious letters;
but still the post brought no tidings of the beloved son.
Mrs. Westford had no address, except the Hertford post-office, to
which she could direct her letters. She believed her son to be living
in the town of Hertford, and she had imagined that forgetfulness
alone had prevented his sending her the address of the house in which
he lived.
But as time wore on, and still no answer came to her letters, Clara
Westford felt that something must have happened to her son. Lionel
was the last in the world to neglect a mother’s supplicating letters;
he had always been the most attentive and devoted of sons.
“My boy is ill,” exclaimed Clara, when she found herself no longer
able to keep her uneasiness hidden from Violet. “He must be
dangerously ill,” she cried; “dying, perhaps; for if he were able to
hold his pen, if he were able to dictate a letter, I am sure that he
would not leave me in this state of suspense.”
On the day after she had received Jacob Danielson’s letter, Mrs.
Westford determined on going to Hertford. Her little stock of money
was nearly exhausted; but she had just enough to pay the expenses
of the journey, and she had no longer the grim visage of starvation
frowning upon her darkly in the future, for Violet’s mysterious
good fortune had changed the worldly position of the widow and her
daughter.
“Do not despair, dearest mother,” pleaded Violet; “even amidst all
our bitter miseries, Providence has not wholly deserted us. What can
be more providential than the chance by which I inherit a fortune
from some mysterious benefactress, whose name I do not even know?
Depend upon it, dearest mother, the turning-point has come on the
dark road, and in future our path will be smoother than it has been
during the last year, even though we may have little sunshine to
illumine our lives,” murmured Violet sadly.
She was thinking of George Stanmore, the lover whose fancied
inconstancy was the settled sorrow of her life--a grief endured so
patiently, a burden borne with such Christian resignation, that
it had left no shadow on the calm loveliness of her pensive face.
Her beauty was altered in character since the days when she had
wandered, light-hearted as some wood-nymph, in the depths of the New
Forest; but it was even more exquisite now in its pensive gravity of
expression than it had been when radiant with the smiles of careless
girlhood.
Mrs. Westford set out alone for Hertford. Violet had entreated to be
allowed to accompany her mother, but Clara refused.
“No, Violet,” she said; “Heaven only knows what I may have to go
through. I may find my boy lying in his grave, buried by strangers
who did not even know of his mother’s existence. I may find him on a
sick-bed: in that case I need not tell you that I shall remain with
him. But, whatever may happen, I will telegraph to you, Violet, if I
am detained.”
It was with a very heavy heart that Clara Westford started on that
journey. She seated herself in the corner of a second-class carriage,
with her face hidden by a shabby crape veil; and she took little
notice of her fellow-passengers, or of the autumn landscape that
spun past the open windows of the carriage. Her heart was oppressed
by the anticipation of some calamity. The image of her beloved son,
racked by sickness, or lying still in death, haunted her brain with
a torturing persistence. The voices of her companions jarred upon
her ears. It was so terrible to hear their careless laughter--their
gay discussions of the pleasures awaiting them at the end of their
journey--their eager talk of business to be done, and money to
be gained, at this or that market-town--their speculation and
argumentation about the state of the crops in the country they were
passing through--while before her there was only a blank horizon,
darkened by the shadow of a hideous fear. It seemed to her that her
life and her sorrows must be exceptional in a world where people
could be so busy and so free from care as all these fellow-passengers
appeared to be.
At last she reached her destination, and a sickness like death itself
came over her as she told herself that she would soon learn the
worst. She went at once to one of the porters, and inquired her way
from the station to the post-office.
Here she fancied that her suspense would end. The people belonging to
the office would be able to tell her the address of her son, and she
would have nothing to do but to go straight to his lodging.
But an unutterable despair took possession of her when the woman who
answered her inquiries told her that she knew nothing whatever of the
gentleman whose letters had been addressed to him under the name of
Lionel Westford.
“We have so many people call for letters,” she said, “that it is
quite impossible we can remember them all.”
On looking into the pigeon-hole where the letters addressed under the
initial W. were deposited, the woman found three letters directed to
Lionel Westford.
Clara asked permission to look at them, and found that they were her
own three letters of inquiry, written one after the other during the
period of her alarm respecting Lionel.
The woman returned them to the pigeon-hole, as she could give them up
to no one but the person to whom they were addressed.
Mrs. Westford asked the postmistress if she remembered the gentleman
who had been accustomed to call for letters bearing that address.
Yes, the woman remembered him perfectly. She had been struck by his
good looks, his affable manner. She remembered the last time he
called. It was on a very bright afternoon, but she could not say
exactly how long ago.
Had he ever told her in what part of the town he lived?
No, he had been very reserved, though so pleasant-spoken. He had
never said anything about himself.
After this, Clara Westford wandered hopelessly about the town until
long after dark, making inquiries in every direction where she
thought there might be the smallest chance of obtaining a clue to
Lionel’s whereabouts.
She went to a printseller’s, to several booksellers’, to all the
inns, even to humble little taverns in obscure by-streets and
alleys, where poverty alone would seek a resting-place. But there
was only one answer to her inquiries. No one had heard the name of
Westford--no one had met with any stranger from London answering to
the description which Mrs. Westford gave of her son.
It was ten o’clock when Clara returned to the railway station,
disconsolate and broken-hearted. Fortunately for her, the last train
had not yet left; and after waiting some time she took her place in
one of the second-class carriages, and was conveyed back to London as
ignorant of her son’s whereabouts as she had been when she set out
that morning to seek for him.
Violet knew by her mother’s face, the moment she looked at her, that
no good tidings had greeted her at Hertford.
She knelt by Mrs. Westford’s side, removed the heavy black shawl from
her shoulders with gentle, caressing hands, and tried by every means
in her power to console the unhappy woman.
“You have not found him, mother,” she said. “I can see that by your
face. But is it not better to be still uncertain of his fate than
to know, perhaps, that we have lost him? There is always hope where
there is uncertainty. Ill news travels fast, you know, dearest. I
am sure we should have heard if anything serious had happened to my
brother. If he had been seized with illness, we should have been told
of it. He must have had letters about him containing our address, and
in such cases there is always some good Samaritan to summon a sick
man’s relations. Do you know, mamma darling, I have an idea that the
surprise alluded to in Mr. Danielson’s letter must be something that
concerns Lionel. Try to hope this, dearest; and do not give way to
grief which may be entirely groundless.”
With such a loving comforter, Clara Westford could not quite despair.
At the worst, it was a relief not to have heard ill news of Lionel.
He had left Hertford most likely. His letters had been intrusted to
strangers, perhaps, to carry to the post, and had never been posted.
And again, in spite of herself, Clara could not help feeling some
confidence in the mysterious hints of the old clerk.
A surprise, and a happy surprise, he had written. Ah, surely some
great joy must be in store for her. She had suffered so much, that
it was scarcely unreasonable she should expect some blessing at the
hands of Providence.
“But they cannot give me back the dead,” thought Clara. “I can only
hope to go down to the grave in peace, with my children by my side.
No power on earth can restore the lost, nor give me back the happy
days in which my husband and I walked side by side in the dear old
garden at the Grange.”
As she mused thus, the widow’s thoughts went back to that happy time.
She fancied herself once more leaning on her husband’s arm--proud of
him, and of his love; the happiest wife whose heart ever beat faster
at the sound of a husband’s footstep.
On the day which had been mentioned in the clerk’s letter, Clara
Westford and her daughter dressed themselves neatly in their mourning
garments and walked into the City.
Clara’s mind had been much disturbed by the mysterious tenor of the
old man’s letter.
That he should ask her to meet him in the bank parlour was in itself
very extraordinary. That room was the sanctuary of Rupert Godwin; and
the clerk must have unusual power if he could venture to make any
appointment of his own in that apartment.
But the entire contents of the letter were a mystery to Clara, and
she resolved on obeying the old clerk in blind confidence, since she
was quite unable to penetrate his motives. His manner had impressed
her with the perfect sincerity of his wish to serve her.
Thus it was that she presented herself at the bank in Lombard-street
at the appointed hour, accompanied by her daughter.
The two ladies were shown at once into the parlour, where they found
Rupert Godwin seated at the table, with Jacob Danielson standing at
the back of his chair.