The lackeys in their dress liveries stood at the porch of Laughton as
the postilions drove rapidly along the road, sweeping through venerable
groves, tinged with the hues of autumn, up to that stately pile. From
the window of the large, cumbrous vehicle which Percival, mindful of
Madame Dalibard’s infirmity, had hired for her special accommodation,
Lucretia looked keenly. On the slope of the hill grouped the deer, and
below, where the lake gleamed, the swan rested on the wave. Farther on
to the left, gaunt and stag-headed, rose, living still, from the depth
of the glen, Guy’s memorable oak. Coming now in sight, though at a
distance, the gray church-tower emerged from the surrounding masses of
solemn foliage. Suddenly the road curves round, and straight before her
(the rooks cawing above the turrets, the sun reflected from the vanes)
Lucretia gazes on the halls of Laughton. And didst thou not, O Guy’s
oak, murmur warning from thine oracular hollows? And thou who sleepest
below the church-tower, didst thou not turn, Miles St. John, in thy
grave, when, with such tender care, the young lord of Laughton bore that
silent guest across his threshold, and with credulous, moistened eyes,
welcomed Treason and Murder to his hearth?
There, at the porch, paused Helen, gazing with the rapt eye of the
poetess on the broad landscape, checkered by the vast shadows cast
from the setting sun. There, too, by her side lingered Varney, with an
artist’s eye for the stately scene, till a thought, not of art, changed
the face of the earth, and the view without mirrored back the Golgotha
of his soul.
Leave them thus; we must hurry on.
One day a traveller stopped his gig at a public-house in a village
in Lancashire. He chucked the rein to the hostler, and in reply to a
question what oats should be given to the horse, said, “Hay and water;
the beast is on job.” Then sauntering to the bar, he called for a glass
of raw brandy for himself; and while the host drew the spirit forth from
the tap, he asked carelessly if some years ago a woman of the name of
Joplin had not resided in the village.
“It is strange,” said the host, musingly. “What is strange?”
“Why, we have just had a gent asking the same question. I have only
been here nine year come December; but my old hostler was born in the
village, and never left it. So the gent had in the hostler, and he is
now gone into the village to pick up what else he can learn.”
This intelligence seemed to surprise and displease the traveller.
“What the deuce!” he muttered; “does Jason mistrust me? Has he set
another dog on the scent? Humph!” He drained off his brandy, and sallied
forth to confer with the hostler.
“Well, my friend,” said Mr. Grabman,--for the traveller was no other
than that worthy,--“well, so you remember Mrs. Joplin more than twenty
years ago, eh?”
“Yees, I guess; more than twenty years since she left the pleck
[Lancashire and Yorkshire synonym for place].”
“Ah, she seems to have been a restless body. She had a child with her?”
“Yees, I moind that.”
“And I dare say you heard her say the child was not her own,--that she
was paid well for it, eh?”
“Noa; my missus did not loike me to chaffer much with neighbour Joplin,
for she was but a bad ‘un,--pretty fease, too. She lived agin the wogh
[Anglice, wall] yonder, where you see that gent coming out.”
“Oho! that is the gent who was asking after Mrs. Joplin?”
“Yes; and he giv’ me half-a-croon!” said the clever hostler, holding out
his hand.
Mr. Grabman, too thoughtful, too jealous of his rival, to take the hint
at that moment, darted off, as fast as his thin legs could carry him,
towards the unwelcome interferer in his own business.
Approaching the gentleman,--a tall, powerful-looking young man,--he
somewhat softened his tone, and mechanically touched his hat as he
said,--
“What, sir, are you, too, in search of Mrs. Joplin?”
“Sir, I am,” answered the young man, eying Grabman deliberately; “and
you, I suppose, are the person I have found before me on the same
search,--first at Liverpool; next at C----, about fifteen miles from
that town; thirdly, at I----; and now we meet here. You have had the
start of me. What have you learned?”
Mr. Grabman smiled. “Softly, sir, softly. May I first ask--since open
questioning seems the order of the day--whether I have the honour to
address a brother practitioner,--one of the law, sir, one of the law?”
“I am one of the law.”
Mr. Grabman bowed and scowled.
“And may I make bold to ask the name of your client?”
“Certainly you may ask. Every man has a right to ask what he pleases, in
a civil way.”
“But you’ll not answer? Deep! Oh, I understand! Very good. But I am deep
too, sir. You know Mr. Varney, I suppose?”
The gentleman looked surprised. His bushy brows met over his steady,
sagacious eyes; but after a moment’s pause the expression of his face
cleared up.
“It is as I thought,” he said, half to himself. “Who else could have
had an interest in similar inquiries?--Sir,” he added, with a quick and
decided tone, “you are doubtless employed by Mr. Varney on behalf of
Madame Dalibard and in search of evidence connected with the loss of
an unhappy infant. I am on the same quest, and for the same end. The
interests of your client are mine. Two heads are better than one; let us
unite our ingenuity and endeavours.”
“And share the pec, I suppose?” said Grabman, dryly, buttoning up his
pockets.
“Whatever fee you may expect you will have, anyhow, whether I assist you
or not. I expect no fee, for mine is a personal interest, which I serve
gratuitously; but I can undertake to promise you, on my own part, more
than the ordinary professional reward for your co-operation.”
“Well, sir,” said Grabman, mollified, “you speak very much like a
gentleman. My feelings were hurt at first, I own. I am hasty, but I can
listen to reason. Will you walk back with me to the house you have just
left? And suppose we then turn in and have a chop together, and compare
notes.”
“Willingly,” answered the tall stranger, and the two inquisitors
amicably joined company. The result of their inquiries was not, however,
very satisfactory. No one knew whither Mrs. Joplin had gone, though all
agreed it was in company with a man of bad character and vagrant habits;
all agreed, too, in the vague recollection of the child, and some
remembered that it was dressed in clothes finer than would have been
natural to an infant legally and filially appertaining to Mrs. Joplin.
One old woman remembered that on her reproaching Mrs. Joplin for some
act of great cruelty to the poor babe, she replied that it was not her
flesh and blood, and that if she had not expected more than she had got,
she would never have undertaken the charge. On comparing the information
gleaned at the previous places of their research, they found an entire
agreement as to the character personally borne by Mrs. Joplin. At the
village to which their inquiry had been first directed, she was known as
a respectable, precise young woman, one of a small congregation of rigid
Dissenters. She had married a member of the sect, and borne him a child,
which died two weeks after birth. She was then seen nursing another
infant, though how she came by it none knew. Shortly after this,
her husband, a journeyman carpenter of good repute, died; but to the
surprise of the neighbours, Mrs. Joplin continued to live as comfortably
as before, and seemed not to miss the wages of her husband,--nay, she
rather now, as if before kept back by the prudence of the deceased,
launched into a less thrifty mode of life, and a gayety of dress at
variance both with the mourning her recent loss should have imposed, and
the austere tenets of her sect. This indecorum excited angry curiosity,
and drew down stern remonstrance. Mrs. Joplin, in apparent disgust at
this intermeddling with her affairs, withdrew from the village to a
small town, about twenty miles distant, and there set up a shop. But her
moral lapse became now confirmed; her life was notoriously abandoned,
and her house the resort of all the reprobates of the place. Whether her
means began to be exhausted, or the scandal she provoked attracted the
notice of the magistrates and imposed a check on her course, was not
very certain, but she sold off her goods suddenly, and was next tracked
to the village in which Mr. Grabman met his new coadjutor; and there,
though her conduct was less flagrant, and her expenses less reckless,
she made but a very unfavourable impression, which was confirmed by her
flight with an itinerant hawker of the lowest possible character. Seated
over their port wine, the two gentlemen compared their experiences,
and consulted on the best mode of remending the broken thread of their
research; when Mr. Grabman said coolly, “But, after all, I think it most
likely that we are not on the right scent. This bantling may not be the
one we search for.”
“Be not misled by that doubt. To arrive at the evidence we desire, we
must still track this wretched woman.”
“You are certain of that?”
“Certain.”
“Hem! Did you ever hear of a Mr. Walter Ardworth?”
“Yes, what of him?”
“Why, he can best tell us where to look for the child.”
“I am sure he would counsel as I do.”
“You know him, then?”
“I do.”
“What, he lives still?”
“I hope so.”
“Can you bring me across him?”
“If necessary.”
“And that young man, who goes by his name, brought up by Mr. Fielden?”
“Well, sir?”
“Is he not the son of Mr. Braddell?”
The stranger was silent, and, shading his face with his hand, seemed
buried in thought. He then rose, took up his candle, and said quietly,--
“Sir, I wish you good-evening. I have letters to write in my own room. I
will consider by to-morrow, if you stay till then, whether we can really
aid each other further, or whether we should pursue our researches
separately.” With these words he closed the door; and Mr. Grabman
remained baffled and bewildered.
However, he too had a letter to write; so, calling for pen, ink, and
paper, and a pint of brandy, he indited his complaints and his news to
Varney.
“Jason, (he began) are you playing me false? Have you set another man on
the track with a view to bilk me of my promised fee? Explain, or I throw
up the business.”
Herewith, Mr. Grabman gave a minute description of the stranger, and
related pretty accurately what had passed between that gentleman and
himself. He then added the progress of his own inquiries, and renewed,
as peremptorily as he dared, his demand for candour and plain dealing.
Now, it so happened that in stumbling upstairs to bed, Mr. Grabman
passed the room in which his mysterious fellow-seeker was lodged, and
as is the usage in hotels, a pair of boots stood outside the door, to
be cleaned betimes in the morning. Though somewhat drunk, Grabman still
preserved the rays of his habitual astuteness. A clever and a natural
idea shot across his brain, illuminating the fumes of the brandy; he
stooped, and while one hand on the wall steadied his footing, with the
other he fished up a boot, and peering within, saw legibly written:
“John Ardworth, Esq., Gray’s Inn.” At that sight he felt what a
philosopher feels at the sudden elucidation of a troublesome problem.
Downstairs again tottered Grabman, re-opened his letter, and wrote,--
“P.S.--I have wronged you, Jason, by my suspicions; never
mind,--jubilate! This interloper who made me so jealous, who think you
it is? Why, young Ardworth himself,--that is, the lad who goes by such
name. Now, is it not clear? Of course no one else has such interest
in learning his birth as the lost child himself,--here he is! If old
Ardworth lives (as he says), old Ardworth has set him to work on his own
business. But then, that Fielden,--rather a puzzler that! Yet--no. Now I
understand,--old Ardworth gave the boy to Mrs. Joplin, and took it away
from her again when he went to the parson’s. Now, certainly, it may
be quite necessary to prove,--first, that the boy he took from Mr.
Braddell’s he gave to Mrs. Joplin; secondly, that the boy he left with
Mr. Fielden was the same that he took again from that woman: therefore,
the necessity of finding out Mother Joplin, an essential witness. Q. E.
D., Master Jason!”
It was not till the sun had been some hours risen that Mr. Grabman
imitated that luminary’s example. When he did so, he found, somewhat to
his chagrin, that John Ardworth had long been gone. In fact, whatever
the motive that had led the latter on the search, he had succeeded in
gleaning from Grabman all that that person could communicate, and their
interview had inspired him with such disgust of the attorney, and so
small an opinion of the value of his co-operation (in which last
belief, perhaps, he was mistaken), that he had resolved to continue his
inquiries alone, and had already, in his early morning’s walk through
the village, ascertained that the man with whom Mrs. Joplin had quitted
the place had some time after been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment
in the county jail. Possibly the prison authorities might know something
to lead to his discovery, and through him the news of his paramour might
be gained.