NEWS FOR WESTERBURY.
It cannot be denied that the present time, this first day after coming
home, was one of peculiar pain to Mrs. Dundyke. She would have to go
over the sad and strange story again and again, and there was no help
for it. The chief partners in Fenchurch-street naturally required the
particulars; the few friends she had, the household servants, wished to
hear them, and there was only herself to tell the tale.
By ten o'clock, on the morning after her arrival, the second partner of
the house, who wore rings and a moustache, and had altogether been an
object of envy to the unfortunate common-councilman, was sitting with
Mrs. Dundyke. She had not put on widow's weeds; she would not yet; she
had said to Mary Prattleton, with a burst of grief, that a widow's cap
would take the last remnant of lingering hope out of her. She wore a
rich black silk gown, trimmed with much crape, but the cap and bonnet of
the widow she assumed not.
Mr. Knowles, a kind-hearted man, who did not want for good sense, dandy
though he was in dress, sat twirling his sandy moustache, the very
gravest concern pervading his countenance. Mrs. Dundyke, who had never
seen this gentleman more than once or twice, sat in humility, struggling
with her grief. His social position was of a different standing from
what poor Mr. Dundyke's had ever been.
"You see, Mrs. Dundyke, one hardly knows how to act, or what to be at,"
he remarked, after they had talked for some time, and she had related to
him the details (always excepting any suspicion she might once have
entertained of Mr. Hardcastle) as closely as she could. "Apart from the
grief, the concern for your husband personally, it is altogether so
awkward an affair, in a business point of view: we don't know whether we
are to consider him as dead or alive."
She shook her head.
"There is little hope that he is alive, sir."
"Well, it would really seem like it. But what _can_ have become of him?"
"There was the lake, you know."
"Yes."
A pause. Presently Mr. Knowles went on.
"When the letter came from that clergyman--Prattleton, wasn't his
name?--saying that Mr. Dundyke was missing, and asking for the
particulars of the money we had forwarded to him, we could not
understand it. '_Missing!_' cried old Mr. Knowles, who happened to have
come to Fenchurch-street that day, 'one talks of a child being missing,
but not of a man.' And when Mr. Prattleton's second letter came to us,
giving some of the facts, I assure you we could with difficulty give
credence to them."
"There is one little point I did not know of, sir; the sending to you
for a fifty-pound note. My husband told me he was sending for the thirty
pounds, but he did not say anything of the other. I cannot think why he
sent for it."
Mr. Knowles took out his pocket-book.
"I happen to have Mr. Dundyke's letter, which was preserved quite
accidentally, not being a strictly business one. You see, he only asks
for the fifty pounds in a postscript, as if it were an afterthought. In
fact, he says as much:" and Mrs. Dundyke's eyes filled as she looked on
the well-known characters.
"P.S. Upon second thoughts, I doubt whether the 30_l._ will be enough
for me. Be so good as to send me a 50_l._ note in addition to it; in
halves as the other."
"Which accordingly we did," resumed Mr. Knowles, as Mrs. Dundyke
returned him the letter. "And that note, you say, has not been traced?"
"No, sir, it has not."
"Well, it is altogether most strange. Of course whoever found the
pocket-book (if the supposition that it was picked up on the bank of the
lake be correct) may be keeping the fifty-pound note by him, but the
probability is that he would have got rid of it at once, as he did the
others."
"The most singular point to my mind throughout, sir, is the finding of
the pencil-case in Mr. Hardcastle's room," said Mrs. Dundyke. "I can't
get over that."
"Can't you? It appears to me easily explainable. The supposition that
Mr. Dundyke took it out with him that morning must be a mistake. Mr.
Hardcastle probably borrowed it from him at breakfast."
"I am quite sure, sir, he did not. I saw my husband put the pencil in
its place in the pocket-book, and return the pocket-book to his pocket."
"Then he must have taken it out again when outside the room, and perhaps
dropped it. Mr. Hardcastle may have picked it up, and carried it up to
the chamber and forgotten it. There are many ways of accounting for
that; but it is a pity the pencil was not found before Mr. Hardcastle's
departure."
Mrs. Dundyke opened her lips to ask how then could her husband have
written the pencilled note afterwards--that he never carried but that
one; but she was weary with reiterating the same thing over and over
again; and, after all, what Mr. Knowles said was possible. He might have
dropped the pencil afterwards; Mr. Hardcastle might have picked it up
and carried it to his room; and it certainly _might_ have happened, it
was not impossible, that her husband, contrary to custom, had a second
pencil in his pocket.
"Shall we send the twenty-pound order to Hardcastle's house and get it
cashed for you?" Mr. Knowles asked, when he was leaving. "I fancy that
young Hardcastle is not very steady. He is a great deal on the
continent, and I have heard he gambles."
Mrs. Dundyke thanked him and handed him the order. "Perhaps you would
let the clerk inquire for Mr. Hardcastle's address at the same time,
sir?" she said; "and whether he is still at Genoa. I should like to
write and ask how he did find the pencil."
But when the order on Hardcastle and Co. was presented--as it was that
same day--the house in Leadenhall-street declined to pay it, disclaiming
all knowledge of the drawer. Upon the clerk's saying that it had been
given by the nephew of Mr. Hardcastle, senior, to Mrs. Dundyke, in
liquidation of money borrowed at Geneva, the firm shrugged their
shoulders, and recommended the clerk to apply personally to that
gentleman, at his residence at Kensington. This information was conveyed
to Mrs. Dundyke, and she at once said she should like to go herself.
She went up to Mr. Hardcastle's the next day, and the old gentleman
received her very courteously. He was a venerable man with white hair,
and was walking up and down the room, which opened to a conservatory.
Mrs. Dundyke did not state any particulars at first; she merely said
that she had an order on the house in Leadenhall-street for twenty
pounds, money borrowed by his nephew; that the house had declined to pay
it, and had referred it to him.
"Borrowed money?" he repeated, in a sharp tone, as if the words visibly
annoyed him.
"Yes, sir," he borrowed it of my husband; "his remittances did not
arrive from England."
Mr. Hardcastle put on his spectacles, and she noticed that his hands
trembled, she thought with agitation. "I have a nephew," he said, "who
lives principally upon the continent; a thankless scapegrace he is, and
has caused me a world of trouble. He has not been in England for
eighteen months now, and I hope he will not come to it in a hurry; but
he is always threatening it."
Mrs. Dundyke was surprised. "He told us, sir, that he had come from
London recently; in fact, he said--he certainly implied--that he took a
principal and active part in your house in Leadenhall-street."
"All boast, madam, all boast. He has not anything to do with it, and we
would not let him have. I wonder he should say that, too! He is
tolerably truthful, making a confession of his shortcomings, rather than
hiding them."
"Is he at Genoa still, sir?"
"At where?" asked Mr. Hardcastle, looking at Mrs. Dundyke through his
spectacles, which he had been all the time adjusting.
"He went on to Genoa, sir, from Geneva. I asked whether he was there
still."
"He has not been at Geneva or at Genoa," said Mr. Hardcastle; "latterly,
at any rate."
"Yes he has, sir; he was at Geneva when we got to it in July, and he
stayed some time. He then went on to Genoa."
"Then he has deceived me," said Mr. Hardcastle, in a vexed tone. "I
don't know why he should; it does not matter to me what place he is in.
What is this, madam--the order? This is not his handwriting," hastily
continued Mr. Hardcastle, at the first glance, as he unfolded the
paper.
"I saw him write it, sir," said Mrs. Dundyke.
"Madam, it is no more like his writing than it is like yours or mine,"
was the testy answer. "And--what is this signature, _B._ Hardcastle? My
nephew's name is Thomas."
There was a momentary silence. Mr. Hardcastle sat looking at the written
order, knitting his brow in reflection.
"Madam, I do not think he could have been at Geneva when this was
dated," he resumed; "I had a letter from him just about this time,
written from Brussels. Stay, I will get it."
He opened a desk in the room and produced the letter. Singular to say,
it bore date the 10th of August, the very day that the order was dated.
The post-marks, both in Brussels and London, agreed with the date.
"It is impossible that it could have been he who wrote this order,
madam, as you must perceive. Being in Brussels, he could not have been
in Geneva. That this letter is in my nephew's handwriting, I assure you
on my honour. You may read it; it is about family affairs, but that does
not matter."
Mrs. Dundyke read the letter: it was not a long one. And then she looked
in a dreamy sort of way at Mr. Hardcastle.
"Madam, I fear you must have been imposed upon."
"Have you two nephews, sir?"
"I never had but this one in my life, ma'am; and I have found him one
too many."
"His wife is a showy woman, very pale, with handsome features,"
persisted Mrs. Dundyke, in a tone as dreamy as her gaze. Not that she
disbelieved that venerable old man, but it all seemed so great a
mystery.
"His wife! my nephew has no wife: I don't know who'd marry him. I tell
you, ma'am, you have been taken in by some swindler who must have
assumed his name. Though egad! my nephew's little better than a swindler
himself, for he gets into debt with everybody who will let him."
Mrs. Dundyke sat silent a few moments, and she then told her tale--told
everything that had occurred in connexion with her husband's mysterious
fate. But when she came to hint her suspicions of Mr. Hardcastle's
having been his destroyer, the old gentleman was visibly shocked and
agitated.
"Good heavens! no! Spendthrift though he is, he is not capable of that
awful crime. Madam, how do you suppose your husband lost his life? In a
struggle? Did they quarrel?"
"I know nothing," answered poor Mrs. Dundyke.
"A quarrel and struggle it may have been. Mr. Hardcastle was a powerful
man."
"A what? A powerful man, did you say, this Mr. Hardcastle?"
"Very powerful, sir; tall and strong. Standing nearly six feet high, and
as dark as a gipsy."
"Thank Heaven for that relief!" murmured Mr. Hardcastle. "My nephew is
one of the smallest men you ever saw, ma'am, short and slight, with fair
curls: in fact, an effeminate dandy. There's his picture," added the old
gentleman, throwing open the door of an inner room, "and when he next
comes to England, and he is threatening it now, as you read in that
letter, you shall see him. But, meanwhile, I will refer you to fifty
persons, if you like, who will bear testimony that he is, in person, as
I describe. There is no possible identity between them. Once more, thank
Heaven!"
Mrs. Dundyke returned to her home. The affair seemed to wear a darker
appearance than it had yet worn. And again her suspicions reverted to
the man who had called himself Mr. Hardcastle.
We must now turn to Westerbury. That generally supine city was awakened
out of its lethargy one morning, by hearing that Death had claimed
Marmaduke Carr. On the very night that his grandson was at Mrs.
Dundyke's, he was dying: and in the morning, Westerbury heard that he
was dead.
On the same day, the instant the news was conveyed to them, Squire Carr
and his son and heir came over with all the speed that the train could
bring them, and went bustling to the house of the dead man. There they
found Mr. Fauntleroy, the solicitor to the just deceased Mr. Carr. He
was a tall, large man, this lawyer; a clever practitioner, a fast-living
man, and, by the way, the same scapegrace who had done that injury, in
the shape of money, to Peter Arkell. But Mr. Fauntleroy had settled down
since then, and had made an enormous deal of money; and he held some
sway in Westerbury.
"Here's a pretty go!" cried Mr. Fauntleroy, in his loud, blustering
tones. "To think that he should die off like this, and nobody know of
it!"
"I never knew he was ill," said the squire. "I should, of course, have
come over if I had."
"Oh, he has been ill--that is to say, ailing--a good month now,"
returned the lawyer. "And when these aged healthy men begin to droop,
their life is not worth much."
"Well, what's to be done now?" cried Squire Carr.
"Nothing of consequence until we hear from the son. I sent down to the
carpenter this morning about the shell, but I shall do nothing more
until we hear from Mr. Carr in Holland. I wrote a line to him the moment
I heard what had happened, and was in time to get it off by the day
mail. He will come over, there's no doubt."
"You knew his address, then?" cried Valentine. It was the first word he
had spoken, and he had stood, with his little mean figure, rather behind
his father, and his little mean light eyes furtively scanning the
lawyer's countenance.
"I believe I know it," replied Mr. Fauntleroy. "There has been an
address in our books as long as I have had anything to do with the
office, 'Robert Carr, Messrs. something (I forget the name), Rotterdam.'
I once asked Mr. Carr if it was his son's correct address, and he said
it was, for all he knew. That is the address I have written to."
"Are you sure that the old man did not make a will?" asked the squire,
alluding to his relative, Marmaduke.
"I am sure that I never made one for him," returned Mr. Fauntleroy.
"Will? no, not he! The very mention of the subject used to anger him?
Where was the use of his making a will, he said. His son would inherit
just as well without a will as with one: he was heir-at-law."
Squire Carr's covetous heart gave vent to a resentful sigh. They were
the very self-same words that Mr. Carr had used to him so many years
ago, on the same topic. That old Marmaduke had _not_ made a will, he
felt as certain as that he should go to his own bed that night, but he
could not help harping upon the contrary hope. As to Valentine, he could
almost have found in his heart to forge one, had such doings not been
unfashionable.
"Well, I must say Marmaduke might have remembered that he had other
relatives besides that runagate son," grumbled the squire. "Had he been
mine, I'd have cut him off with a shilling."
"Not a bit on't, Carr," laughed the lawyer, in his coarse way. "You'll
not leave your chattels away from your own progeny; not even from the
roving sheep, Ben."
Now it was a singular coincidence, amid the many small coincidences of
this history, that Marmaduke Carr's son Robert should die at the same
time as his father. But so it was. The exile of many, many years died
without ever having seen his father, or sought for a word of
reconciliation with him: he had died suddenly in a fit, _before_ his
father, but not above an hour or two; and without seeing one of his
three children, for all were away from home when it occurred.
In reply to Mr. Fauntleroy's letter there arrived a short note, written
by a lady who signed herself "Emma Carr, nee D'Estival." The language
was English, and good English, too; but the handwriting was unmistakably
French. In acknowledging the receipt of Mr. Fauntleroy's letter, it
stated that "her husband" was from home; and it gave the information
that Mr. Carr was dead--had died after a few hours' illness.
Nothing could exceed the commotion that this news excited at Squire
Carr's. Robert Carr dead! then they were the heirs-at-law. They beset
the office of Mr. Fauntleroy; they took the conduct of affairs into
their own hands; they ordered the funeral, and they fixed the day of
interment. Not by any means a remote day; scarcely decently so,
according to English notions of keeping the dead. It was hot weather,
Valentine remarked; and that was true: but Westerbury said they wanted
to get the poor old man under ground that they might ransack the house,
and see what valuables were in it. Mr. Fauntleroy was rather taken aback
at these proceedings; at the summary wrestling of affairs out of _his_
hands; and he had promised himself some nice little pickings out of all
this, the funeral and the acting for Robert Carr, and one thing or
another; but he did not see his way clear to hinder it. If Robert Carr
was dead, and the old man had left no will, Squire Carr was undoubtedly
the heir-at-law.
It was not, however, to be quite smooth sailing. On their return home
from the funeral--and the only stranger invited to it was Mr. Arkell, he
and Mr. Fauntleroy, with the two Carrs forming the mourners--Mr.
Fauntleroy produced from his pocket a letter which he had received that
morning. It was from the Reverend Robert Carr, the son of the deceased
gentleman in Holland, requesting Mr. Fauntleroy to take all necessary
arrangements upon himself for the interment of old Mr. Carr, his
grandfather, and regretting that he was prevented journeying to attend
it, in consequence of the melancholy circumstances already known to Mr.
Fauntleroy. It desired that the style of the funeral should be handsome,
in accordance with the fortune and position of the deceased. It was
signed Robert Carr.
"Robert _Carr_!" contemptuously ejaculated the squire. "What a fool he
must be to write in that strain to us!"
Mr. Fauntleroy chuckled over the letter; especially over that part of it
ordering a suitable funeral. In his opinion, and in the opinion of
Westerbury generally, the funeral of Mr. Carr had _not_ been suitable.
There were no mutes, no pall-bearers, no superfluous plumes, no
anything: none but a mean-minded man would have ordered such a one.
Mr. Fauntleroy wrote back to the Reverend Robert Carr. He gave him a
statement of the case in a dry, lawyery sort of way, and told him that
Squire Carr being, under the apparent circumstances, heir-at-law, had
taken possession of the affairs and property. This elicited a most
indignant reply from Robert Carr. There could not be the slightest doubt
that his father and mother were married, he said, and he should be in
Westerbury as speedily as he could to maintain his own rights.
"Does he think he can impose upon us, this young fellow of a parson?"
cried Squire Carr, when the letter was shown him. "He will be for making
out next that his mother, that Hughes girl, was my cousin's wife. Let
him prove it. Old birds are not caught with chaff."
And Squire Carr took out letters of administration.