"Ay," said Cole, "Ben Rymer. Ben has got through and is a surgeon now,
like the rest of us. And, upon my word, I believe the fellow has his
profession thoroughly in hand. He will make a name in the world, the
chances for it being afforded him, unless I am mistaken."
Something like moisture stood in the Squire's good old eyes. "If his
father, poor Rymer, had but lived to see it!" he softly said. "Anxiety,
touching Ben, killed him."
"So we three doctors make a pilgrimage to Sir Dace regularly everyday;
sometimes together, sometimes apart," added Cole. "And, of the three of
us, I believe the patient likes young Rymer best--has most confidence in
him."
"Shall you cure him?"
"Well, we do not yet give up hope. If the disease does set in, it
will----"
"What?"
"Run its course quickly."
"An instant yet, Cole," cried the Squire, stopping the surgeon as he
was turning away. "You have told us nothing. How does the parish get
on?--and the people? How is Letsom?--and Crabb generally? Tanerton--how
is he?--and Timberdale? Coming here fresh, we are thirsting for news."
Cole laughed. He knew the pater liked gossip as much as any old woman:
and the reader must understand that, as yet, we had not heard any,
having reached Crabb Cot late the previous afternoon.
"There is no particular news, Squire," said he. "Letsom is well; so is
Crabb. Herbert Tanerton's not well. He is in a crusty way over Jack."
"He is always in a way over something. Where is Jack?"
"Jack's here, at the Rectory; just come to it. Robert Ashton's bailiff
is about to take a farm on his own account, and Jack came rushing over
from Liverpool to apply for the post."
Tod, who had been too much occupied with his fishing-flies to take much
heed before, set up a shrill whistle at this. "How will the parson like
that?" he asked.
"The parson does not like it at all. Whether he will succeed in
preventing it, is another matter," concluded Cole. And, with that, he
made his escape.
Close upon the surgeon's departure, Colonel Letsom came in; he had heard
of our arrival. It was a pity, he said, the two brothers should be at
variance. Jack wanted the post--he must make a living somehow; and the
Rector was in a way over it; not quite mad, but next door to it; Ashton
of course not knowing what to do between them. From that subject, he
began to speak of the Fontaines.
A West Indian planter, one George Bazalgette, had been over on a visit,
he said, and had spent Christmas at Maythorn Bank; his object being to
induce Verena to accept him as her husband. Verena would not listen to
him, and he wasted his eloquence in vain. She made no hesitation in
vowing to him that her affections were buried in the grave of Edward
Pym.
"Fontaine told me confidentially in London that he intended she _should_
have Bazalgette," remarked the Squire. "It was the evening we went
looking for her at that wax-work place."
"Ay; but Fontaine is changed," returned the colonel: "all his old
domineering ways are gone out of him. When Bazalgette was over here, he
did not attempt even to persuade her: she must take her own course, he
said. So poor Bazalgette went back as he came--wifeless. It was a pity."
"Why?"
"Because this George Bazalgette was a nice fellow," replied Colonel
Letsom. "An open-hearted, fine-looking, generous man, and desperately in
love with her. Miss Verena will not readily find his compeer in a summer
day's march."
"As old as Adam, I suppose, colonel," interjected Tod.
"Yes--if you choose to put Adam's age down at three or four and thirty,"
laughed the colonel, as he took his leave.
To wait many hours, once she was at Crabb, without laying in a stock
of those delectable "family pills," invented by the late Thomas Rymer,
would have been quite beyond the philosophy of Mrs. Todhetley. That
first morning, not ten minutes after Colonel Letsom left us, taking the
Squire with him, she despatched me to Timberdale for a big box of them.
Tod would not come: said he had his flies to see to.
Dashing through the Ravine and out on the field beyond it, I came upon
Jack Tanerton. Good old Jack! The Squire had said Sir Dace was changed:
I saw that Jack was. He looked taller and thinner, and the once beaming
face had care upon it.
"Where are you bound for, Jack?"
"Not for any place in particular. Just sauntering about."
"Walk my way, then. I am going to Rymer's."
"It is such nonsense," cried Jack, speaking of his brother, after we had
plunged a bit into affairs. "Calling it derogatory, and all the rest of
it! I could be just as much of a gentleman as Ashton's bailiff as I am
now. Everybody knows me. He gives a good salary, and there's a pretty
house; and I have also my own small income. Alice and I and the little
ones should be as happy as the day's long. If I give in to Herbert and
don't take it, I don't see what I am to turn to."
"But, Jack, why do you give up the sea?" I asked. And Jack told me what
he had told others: he should never take command again until he was a
free man.
"Don't you think you are letting that past matter hold too great an
influence over you?" I presently said. "You must be conscious of your
own innocence--and yet you seem as sad and subdued as though you were
guilty!"
"I am subdued because other people think me guilty!" he answered.
"Changed? I am. It is that which has changed me; not the calamity
itself."
"Jack, were I you, I should stand up in the face and eyes of all the
world, and say to them, 'Before God, I did not kill Pym.' People would
believe you then. But you don't do it."
"I have my reasons for not doing it, Johnny Ludlow. God knows what they
are; He knows all things. I dare say I may be set right with the world
in time: though I don't see how it is to be done."
A smart young man, a new assistant, was behind the counter at Ben
Rymer's, and served me with the pills. Coming out, box in hand, we met
Ben himself. I hardly knew him, he was so spruce. His very hair and
whiskers were trimmed down to neatness and looked of a more reasonable
colour; his red-brown beard was certainly handsome, and his clothes were
well cut.
"Why, he has grown into a dandy, Jack," I said, after we had stood a
minute or two, talking with the surgeon.
"Yes," said Jack, "he is going in for the proprieties of life now. Ben
may make a gentleman yet--and a good man to boot."
That same afternoon, it chanced that the Squire met Ben Rymer. Striding
along in his powerful fashion, Ben came full tilt round the sharp corner
that makes the turning to the Islip Road, and nearly ran over the pater.
Ben had been to Oxlip Grange.
"So, sir," cried the pater, stopping him, "I hear you are in practice
now, and intend to become a respectable man. It's time you did."
"Ay, at last," replied Ben good-humouredly. "It is a long lane, Squire,
that has no turning."
"Don't you lapse back again, Mr. Ben."
"Not if I know it, sir. I hope I shall not."
"It was anxiety on your score, you know, that troubled your good
father's mind in dying."
"If it did not bring his death on," readily conceded Ben, his light tone
changing. "I know it all, Squire--and have felt it."
"Look here," cried the Squire, catching at Ben's button-hole, which had
a lovely lily-of-the-valley in it, "there was nothing on earth your poor
patient father prayed for so earnestly as for your welfare; that you
might be saved for time and eternity. Now I don't believe such prayers
are ever lost. So you will be helped on your way if you bear steadfastly
onwards."
Giving the young man's hand a wring, the Squire turned off on his way.
In half-a-minute he was back again.
"Hey, Mr. Benjamin?--here. How is Sir Dace Fontaine? I suppose you have
just left him?"
So Ben had to come back at the call. To the pater's surprise he saw his
eyes were moist.
"He is worse, sir, to-day; palpably worse."
"Will he get over it?"
Ben gave his head an emphatic shake, which somehow belied his words:
"Cole and Darbyshire think there is hope yet, Squire."
"And you do not; that's evident. Well, good-day."
* * * * *
The next move in this veritable drama was the appearance of Alice
Tanerton and her six-months-old baby at Timberdale. Looking upon the
Rectory as almost her home--it had been Jack's for many years of his
life--Alice came to it without the ceremony of invitation: the object
of her coming now being to strive to induce Herbert to let her husband
engage himself to Robert Ashton. And this visit of Alice's was destined
to bring about a most extraordinary event.
One Wednesday evening when Jack and his wife were dining with us--and
that troublesome baby, which Alice could not, as it seemed, stir abroad
without, was in the nursery squealing--Alice chanced to say that she had
to go to Islip the following day, her mother having charged her to see
John Paul the lawyer, concerning a little property that she, Aunt Dean,
held in Crabb. It would be a tremendously long walk for Alice from
Timberdale, especially as she was not looking strong, and Mrs. Todhetley
proposed that I should drive her over in the pony-carriage: which Alice
jumped at.
Accordingly, the next morning, which was warm and bright, I took the
pony-carriage to the Rectory, picked up Alice, and then drove back
towards Islip. As we passed Oxlip Grange, which lay in our way, Sir Dace
Fontaine was outside in the road, slowly pacing the side-path. I thought
I had never seen a man look so ill: so _down_ and gloomy. He raised his
eyes, as we came up, to give me a nod. I was nodding back again, when
Alice screamed out and startled me. She started the pony too, which
sprang on at a tangent.
"Johnny! Johnny Ludlow!" she gasped, her face whiter than death and her
lips trembling like an aspen leaf, "did you see that man? Did you see
him?"
"Yes. I was nodding to him. What is the matter?"
"It was the man I saw in my dream: the man who had committed the murder
in it."