THE LAST OF ROBERT CARR.
By a bright fire in her handsome and most comfortable drawing-room, in
her widow's cap--assumed, now that all hope had died out--sat Mrs.
Dundyke. The October wind was whistling without, the October rain was
falling on the window panes; and there was a look of anxiety on her
otherwise calm face, still so fair and attractive, as she listened to
the storm. The summer and autumn, up to the close of September, had been
remarkably warm and fine; but when October came in, it brought bad
weather with it.
A gust and a patter, worse than any that had gone before, aroused Mrs.
Dundyke from her seat. She laid her work--a woollen comforter, that she
was knitting--on the small and beautiful table at her side, inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, and walked to the window.
"I wonder whether he is out in it?" she said, as she watched the trees
bending in the storm. "This anxiety is killing him. The very work is
killing him. Abroad in all weathers; out of one damp church into
another; getting heated with his weak state and the ardour of the
pursuit, and then becoming chilled in some sudden storm such as this! He
may find the record, perhaps, but he will never live to reap the
benefit."
Need you be told that Mrs. Dundyke's soliloquy applied to Robert Carr?
He was staying with her. When he went back to London from Westerbury,
and sought Mrs. Dundyke, to deliver certain messages of the kindest
nature sent by him from Mr. Arkell and Travice, she had insisted upon
his making her house his home while he remained in London to pursue his
search.
And he did so; and began his toilsome search of the London church
marriage registers. What a wearying task it was, let those testify who
may have been obliged to enter upon such. By dint of a great deal of
trouble, and of correspondence with Mr. Fauntleroy, and recalled
recollections from middle-aged people in Westerbury, who had been young
men once and friends of the elder Robert Carr, he, the present Robert
Carr, succeeded in ascertaining the place where his father and mother
had sojourned that fortnight in London. It was in one of the quiet
streets of the Strand, in the parish of St. Clement Danes. But when St.
Clement Danes' register was examined, no entry of any such marriage
could be found there; and for the first time since the blow fell, Robert
Carr felt his heart sink with a vague fear that he dared not dwell upon.
It had seemed to him so easy! He had felt as sure a trust in his
mother's marriage as he felt in Heaven. It was only to find out where
they had stayed that fortnight in London, and search the parish church
register; for there, and only there, Robert Carr argued, the marriage
had taken place. But there, it was now evident, that it had _not_ taken
place, and he was all at sea.
He began with the other churches; he knew not what else to do. In
Holland they could not have been married, from the want of legal papers,
and other matters, necessary to foreigners united abroad. He searched
the churches nearest to St. Clement Danes first, and then went on to
others, and others, and others. He would go up after breakfast from his
kind friend, who was nursing him like a mother, and begin his daily
task; out of one church into another, as she had phrased it, in all
weathers--rain, hail, storm--and go back at night again utterly wearied
out.
Mrs. Dundyke stood at the window watching the rain. She fancied it was
beginning to grow dusk; but it was not time just yet, and the afternoon
was a dark one. He would not be home yet awhile, she was thinking. He
stopped in those cold churches as long as there was a ray of light to
see by. Mrs. Dundyke was turning from the window, when she saw an
omnibus stop, and Robert Carr get out of it. He seemed worse than usual;
weaker in strength, more tottering in frame; and as he looked up at her
with a faint, sad smile, a conviction came over her that she should not
be able to save the life of this poor young man; that all her care, all
her comforts, all her ample income would not benefit him. And how very
ample her income would for the future be, she had not known until that
day. She was a rich lady for this world; she might ride in her carriage,
if she chose, and be grand for all time.
"Oh! Robert!" she exclaimed, meeting him on the stairs--and she had
taken to call him by the familiar name, as she might a son--"I fear you
have got very wet! I am so glad you came home early!"
He walked unsteadily to the easy chair by the fire, and sunk in it. Mrs.
Dundyke, with him daily, saw not the change that every hour was surely
making in him; but she did notice how wan and ill he looked this
evening.
"Have you not been well to-day, Robert?"
"Not very. I have been spitting so much of that blood again. And I felt
so weary too; so sick of it all."
"There's no success, then, again!"
"None. Altogether, I thought I'd leave it for the day, and come back and
take a rest."
He sighed as he spoke, but the sigh broke off with a moaning sound. Mrs.
Dundyke glanced at him. She had resumed her knitting--which was a chest
protector for himself--until the wine that she had rung for should be
brought.
"Robert, are you losing heart?"
"No, I can never lose that. There _was_ a marriage, if we could only
find out where. You would be as sure of it as I am, dear Mrs. Dundyke,
had you known my mother."
Mrs. Dundyke made no rejoinder. For herself, she had never fully
believed in the marriage at all, but she was not cruel enough to say so.
She sat watching him over her knitting: now bending forward with his
thin hands spread out to the warmth of the fire; now suddenly bringing
his hands to his chest as he coughed, choked; now lying back in the
chair, panting, his thin nostrils working, his breath coming in great
gasps; and there came in that moment over Mrs. Dundyke as she looked, a
conviction--she knew not whence or why--that a very, very short period
would bring the end.
She felt her face grow moist with a cold moisture. How was it that she
had been so blind to the obvious truth? She knitted two whole rows of
knitting before she spoke, and then she told him, with a calm voice,
that she should write for his wife.
"How kind you are!" he murmured. "I shall never repay you."
Mrs. Dundyke laughed cheerfully.
"I don't want repayment. There is nothing to repay."
"Nothing to repay! No kindly friendship, no trouble, no cost! I wonder
how much I cost you in wine alone?"
"Robert," she said, in a low, earnest tone--though she wondered whether
he might not be jesting--"do you know what they tell me my future income
will be? Mr. Littelby was here to-day, giving me an account of things,
for I put my poor husband's affairs into his hands on my return. It will
not be much less than two thousand a year."
The amount of the sum quite startled him.
"Two thousand a year!"
"It will indeed, as they tell me. By the articles of partnership I am
allowed a handsome income from the house in Fenchurch-street; but the
chief of the money comes from speculations my husband has been engaged
in for many years, in connexion with a firm on the Stock Exchange. Safe
speculations, and profitable; not hazardous ones. This money is
realized, and put out in the Funds, in what they call the
Five-per-Cents.; and I shall have nearly two thousand a year. I had no
idea of it; and the puzzle to me now is, how I shall spend it. Don't you
think I require a few kind visitors to help me?"
Before he could answer, there came on a violent fit of coughing, worse
than any she had yet seen, and quite a little stream of blood trickled
from his mouth. It was nothing particularly new, but that night Mrs.
Carr was written for in haste.
"Tell her to bring the desk with her," said Robert; and Mrs. Dundyke
wrote down the words just as he spoke them.
But he rallied again, and in a day or two was actually out as before,
prosecuting his search amidst those hopeless churches. He confided what
he called a secret to Mrs. Dundyke--namely, that he had not confessed to
his wife that any suspicion was cast upon his birth. The honest truth
was, Robert Carr shrunk from it; for he knew it would so alarm and
grieve her. She was well connected; had fallen in love with the young
Cambridge student during a visit she was paying in England; and when the
time came that marriage was spoken of, her friends raised some objection
because Robert Carr's father was not of gentle blood, but was in
business as a merchant. What she would say when she came to know that he
was suspected of not being even that merchant's legitimate son, Robert
scarcely cared to speculate.
She arrived in an afternoon at Mrs. Dundyke's, having come direct to
London Bridge by the steamer from Rotterdam. Robert was out in London,
as usual; but Mrs. Dundyke was not alone: Mildred Arkell was with her.
Perhaps of all people, next to his wife, Mildred had been most shocked
at the fate of Mr. Dundyke. This was the first time she had seen his
widow, for she had been away in the country with Lady Dewsbury.
A young, pretty woman, looking little more than a girl, with violet-blue
eyes, dark hair, and a flush upon her cheeks. Mrs. Dundyke marvelled at
her youth--that she should be a wife since three years, and the mother
of two children.
"I wrote to you to be sure to bring the children," said Mrs. Dundyke.
"I know: it was very kind. But I thought, as Robert was ill, they might
disturb him with their noise. They are but babies; and I left them
behind."
Mrs. Dundyke was considering how she could best impart the news of the
suspected birth to this poor, unconscious young lady. "If you could give
her a hint of it yourself, should she arrive during my absence!" Robert
Carr had said to Mrs. Dundyke that very morning, with the hectic
deepening on his hollow cheeks. And Mrs. Dundyke began her task.
And a sad shock it proved to be. Mrs. Carr, accustomed to the legal
formalities that attend a marriage in the country of her birth, and
without which formalities the ceremony cannot be performed, could not
for some time be led to understand how, if there was a marriage, it
could have been kept a secret. There were many points difficult to make
her, a foreigner, understand; but when she had mastered them, she grew
strangely interested in the recital of the past, and Mildred Arkell, as
a resident in Westerbury at the time, was called upon to repeat every
little detail connected with the departure of her husband's father and
mother from their native place. In listening, Mrs. Carr's cheek grew
hectic as her husband's.
But she had her secret also, which she had been keeping from her
husband. She told it now to Mrs. Dundyke. Something was wrong with
affairs at Rotterdam. The surviving partners of the house, three
covetous old Dutchmen, disputed their late partner's right (or rather
that of his children) to draw out certain monies from the house; at the
death of Robert Carr it lapsed to the house, they said. This was the
account Mrs. Carr gave, but it was not a very clear one, neither did she
seem to understand the case. The Carrs had in the house other money,
about which there was no dispute, but even this the firm refused to pay
out until the other matter was settled. The effect was, that the Carrs
had no money to go on with; and there would probably be litigation.
"I did not tell Robert, because I was in hopes it would be comfortably
decided without him," said Mrs. Carr. "By the way, you wrote me word
that Robert said I was to bring over the desk. Which desk did he mean?
his own or his father's?"
"I really don't know," replied Mrs. Dundyke; "he was very ill when he
spoke, and I wrote the words down just as he spoke them."
"Well, I have brought both; I know he examined Mr. Carr's desk after his
death, and he locked it up again, and has the key with him. His own desk
also was at home; so, not knowing which was meant, I brought the two."
When Robert Carr came home that evening he looked awfully ill. The
expression is not too strong a one; there was something in his
attenuated face, its sunken eyes, its ghastly colour, and its working
nostrils, that struck the beholder with awe. Mrs. Dundyke was alone in
the dining parlour when he came in, and was shocked to see him. Whether
it was the long day's work on his decreasing strength--for he had
remained later than usual--she could not tell, but he had never looked
so near death as this.
"Oh, Robert!" was her involuntary exclamation; "I had better go up and
prepare your wife before she sees you."
He suffered her to put him in the great invalid chair she had
surreptitiously had brought in a day or two before; he drank the
restoring cordial she tendered him; he was passive in her hands as a
child, in his great weakness. "I'm afraid I must have a week's rest," he
said to her, as she busied herself taking off his gloves, and smoothing
his poor damp hair. "My strength seems to be failing unaccountably; I
don't know how I have got through the day."
"Oh yes, yes," she eagerly assented; "a little rest; that is what you
want. You shall lie in bed all to-morrow."
"Has Emma brought the children?"
"No. They are quite well," she says; "I am going to send her down to
you. And, Robert, she knows all, and says she'll help to search the
registers herself."
Mrs. Dundyke spoke in a light-hearted tone, but before she went upstairs
she sent an urgent message for the doctor.
And when the surgeon came, he said there was no further hope whatever,
as, indeed, there had not been for some time now, and that a day or two
would "decide."
Decide what? But that he did not say.
In one sense of the word, it may be said that death had come suddenly
upon Robert Carr. Had he been less absorbed in that one point of worldly
interest, he might have seen its approach more clearly. Not until the
morning succeeding his wife's arrival, did he look it fully in the face;
and then he found that it was upon the very threshold, was entering in
at the opened door.
All the bustle, the anxiety as to temporal interests, the plans and
provisions for the future for those to be left behind, ensued. Mrs.
Dundyke hastily summoned a legal gentleman, Mr. Littelby. He was a
solicitor of many years' standing, not in practice for himself, but
conducting the business of an eminent legal firm. He was an old friend
of the Dundykes, and Robert Carr had seen him several times; indeed his
advice and assistance had been of much service in the search of the
church registers. Mr. Littelby was about leaving his present situation,
and was in negotiation with a firm in the country for another. Mrs.
Dundyke sent up a hasty summons for him.
A handsome bedchamber, in which was every comfort, a bright fire in the
hearth, a bed, on which lay a shadowy form, a pale shadowy face, a
young weeping girl standing near, soon to be a widow, and you have
almost the last scene in the short life of Robert Carr.
He was dying, poor fellow, with that secret, which he had no doubt
shortened his life in endeavouring to trace, still unsolved; and he was
dying with the conviction, that the proofs did exist somewhere, as fully
upon him as it ever had been.
"Emma!"
She dried her eyes, and tried to hide that they had been wet, as she
heard the call. The day was getting on.
"Is Littelby not come yet?"
"Yes, I think he is. Some one came a few minutes ago, and is downstairs
with Mrs. Dundyke. I think I hear them coming up."
Mrs. Dundyke was coming into the room with a gentleman, a middle-aged
man with a sharp nose and pleasant dark eyes. It was Mr. Littelby. They
were left alone together--the lawyer and the dying man. But it was a
very short and simple task, this will-making. Over almost as soon as
begun.
"He asked me to tie you up with trustees, Emma," said the dying man;
"but I have left all to you--children, and money, and all else. You will
love them, won't you, when I am gone?"
"Oh, Robert, yes!" she said, with a burst of sorrow. "I wish I and they
could go with you."
"And, Emma, mind that you prosecute this search. I have asked Littelby
to help you, and he will. He says he expects to leave London at the end
of the year, for he is in negotiation with another firm; but I dare say
it will be found before then. Let that search be your first and greatest
task."
She said it should be--she would have promised anything in that parting
hour. She lay, with her pretty hair on the counterpane, and her wet eyes
turned to him, devouring his last looks, listening to his last words.
Almost literally the last in this world, for, before the close of the
afternoon, Robert Carr fell into a lethargy, from which he did not awake
alive.
And those two lone women were together in the house of the dead--widows
indeed. The one deprived of her young husband almost on the threshold of
life; the other bereft, she knew not how, of her many years' partner.
Poor Mrs. Dundyke had hardly wanted more sorrow in her desolate home.
So far as ease in the future went, _she_ was well off. The large income
mentioned by her to Robert Carr would indeed be hers. It was chiefly the
result of that first thousand pounds Mr. Dundyke had risked on the Stock
Exchange. Fortune had favoured him in an unusual degree. You remember
the nails in the horse-shoe, how they doubled and doubled: so it had
seemed to be with the thousand pounds of Mr. Dundyke. But poor Mrs.
Carr's future fortune was all uncertain. Whether she would have
sufficient to keep her children in easy competency, or whether she would
find herself, like so many more gentlewomen, obliged to do something for
her bread in this world of changes, she did not know.
Even in this week that succeeded her husband's death, she was applied to
for money, which she could not find. The application came from Mr.
Fauntleroy. Lawyers have a peculiar facility for getting rid of money,
as some of us have been obliged to know to our cost; and Mr. Fauntleroy
had already disposed of the first fifty pounds advanced to him, and
wanted more if he was to go on with the case.
Mrs. Carr had it not. Until affairs should be settled in Rotterdam, she
had no such sum at her command. She could have procured it indeed from
many friends, but she was sorely puzzled what to do for the best. On the
one hand, there was the dying promise to her husband to pursue this
cause; on the other, there was the extreme doubt whether there was any
real cause to pursue. If there was no cause, why, then, how worse than
foolish it would be to spend money over a chimera. Many and many were
the anxious consultations she had with Mrs. Dundyke, even while her
husband lay dead in the house.
On the day after the funeral--and there had been no mourner found to
follow that poor young man to his last home, but one who had been fellow
curate with him, and who was now in London--Mrs. Dundyke and her visitor
were alone when a gentleman was shown in. A fine man yet, of middle age,
but with a slight bend in the shoulders, as if from care, and grey
threads mingling with his dark hair. It was not a time for Mrs. Carr to
see strangers, and she rose to quit the drawing-room, after hurriedly
replacing some papers in a desk she was examining. But there was
something so noble, so pleasing, so refined, in the countenance of the
man standing there, his hands held out to Mrs. Dundyke, and a sweet
smile upon his lips, that she stopped involuntarily.
"Have you forgotten me, Betsey?"
For the moment she really had, for he was much changed; but the voice
and the smile recalled her memory, and with a glad cry of recognition
Mrs. Dundyke sprang forward, and received on her lips a sisterly kiss.
"Emma, don't go. This is your husband's friend, and my brother-in-law,
William Arkell."
Mrs. Carr gladly held out her hand; her pretty face raised in its
widow's cap. A shade came over William Arkell's at seeing that badge on
one so young.
He had a little business in London, he explained, connected with the
transfer of some of his property, and came up, instead of writing; came
up--there was no doubt of it, though he did not say so--that he might
have the opportunity of seeing Mrs. Dundyke.
Mrs. Carr left the room, and Mr. Arkell drew his chair nearer to his
sister-in-law.
"You have heard nothing further, Betsey, of--of of your lost husband?"
She shook her head; she should never hear that again.
It was only natural that she should relate the circumstances to him, now
that they met, although he had heard them so fully from Mr. Prattleton.
Where much mystery exists, especially pertaining to undiscovered crime,
it seems that we can never be tired of attempting to solve it. Human
nature is the same all the world over, and these things do possess an
irrepressible attraction for the human heart--very human it is, now and
then. Mr. Arkell sat with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his
chin resting on his hand; he was looking dreamily into the fire as they
talked.
"I should strongly suspect that Mr. Hardcastle, Betsey; should you know
him if you saw him again?"
"Know him! know that same Mr. Hardcastle!" she repeated, wondering at
what seemed so superfluous a question. "I should know him to the very
end of my life. I should know him by his eyes, if by nothing else. They
seem to be always before mine."
"Were they peculiar eyes, then?"
"Very. The first time I saw him, that morning at breakfast, his eyes
seemed to strike upon my memory with a sort of repulsion. I felt sure I
had seen eyes like them somewhere; and that the _other_ eyes had caused
me repulse likewise. All the time we were together at Geneva, his eyes
kept puzzling me; it was like a word we have on the tip of the tongue,
every moment thinking we must recollect it, but it keeps baffling us. So
was it with Mr. Hardcastle's eyes; and it was only in the moment he was
leaving for Genoa that I recollected whose they were like."
"And whose were they like?"
"A gentleman's I never saw but twice; once at your house, at your own
wedding breakfast, and once in the week subsequent to it at Mrs. Daniel
Arkell's: Benjamin Carr."
"Who?" exclaimed Mr. Arkell.
"Benjamin Carr, the present squire's son."
He sat with sudden uprightness in his chair, staring at her. The
strange scene, when Robert Carr had likened Benjamin to the suspected
murderer, was flashing into his mind. What did it _mean_, that agitation
of Benjamin's? What did this likeness, now spoken of, mean? A wild doubt
of horror came creeping over Mr. Arkell.
He opened his lips to speak, but recollected himself before the hasty
impulse was put in force. Mrs. Dundyke noticed nothing unusual; her eyes
and her thoughts were alike absorbed in the past.
"Will you describe this Mr. Hardcastle to me?" he asked presently,
breaking the pause of silence: "as accurately and minutely as you can."
He noted every point that she gave in answer, every little detail. And
he came to the conclusion that if Benjamin Carr was not Mr. Hardcastle,
he might certainly have sat for his portrait.
"Unfortunately," said Mr. Arkell, speaking more to himself than to her,
"were this man apprehended and punished, it could not bring poor Mr.
Dundyke back to life."
"Alas no, it could not. I would almost rather let things remain as they
are. If the man is guilty, his daily life must be one perpetual,
ever-present punishment."
"Ay, indeed," murmured Mr. Arkell; "better leave him to it."
And he rather persistently, had her suspicions been awakened, led the
conversation into other channels.
"Let me say to you what I chiefly came to say, Betsey," he whispered to
Mrs. Dundyke in parting. "This has been a sudden and unexpected blow for
you. I do not know how you may be left in regard to means; but if you
have need of help, temporary or otherwise, you will let me know it. I
have a right to give it, you know: you are Charlotte's sister."
The tears fell from her eyes on his hands as she pressed them gratefully
in hers. She did not say how well she was left off, for her heart was
full; she only thanked him, and intimated that she had enough.
Mr. Arkell went away in a sort of perplexed dream. _Could_ that
suspicion of Benjamin Carr be a true one? _He_ would be silent; but it
was nearly certain to come out in some other way: murder generally does.
From Mrs. Dundyke's he went straight up to Lady Dewsbury's, and found
that she and Miss Arkell had again gone out of town. It was a
disappointment; he had not seen Mildred for years and years.
Mrs. Carr came back to the room, and resumed her occupation after he had
gone--that of searching amid the papers in the desk of the late Robert
Carr the elder. It had proved to be his own desk that her husband had
wanted her to bring over--but that is of no consequence. She was
searching for a very simple thing--merely a receipt for a small sum of
money which she had herself paid for Mr. Carr just before he died, and
had returned the receipt to him; but it is often upon the merest trifles
that the great events of life turn. The claim for this small sum she
heard was sent in again, and she thought perhaps she might find the
receipt in the desk, where Mr. Carr had sometimes used to place such
papers. She did not find that, but she found something else.
Mrs. Dundyke was sitting by, between the other side of the table and the
fire. She was talking about the Arkells--the kindly generosity of
William, the selfishness and persistent ill-will of Charlotte.
"And the children?" asked Mrs. Carr, as she stood, opening paper after
paper. "Do they follow their father or mother in their treatment of
you?"
"Of the daughters I know little; I may say nothing. They have never
noticed me, even by a message. But the son--ah! you should know Travice
Arkell! I cannot tell you how I love him. Will you believe that
Charlotte----What is the matter?"
Emma Carr had come upon a sealed letter in an old blotting-book. The
superscription was in the handwriting of her father-in-law, and ran as
follows:--"To my son Robert. Not to be opened until after the death of
my father, Marmaduke Carr."
She uttered the exclamation which had attracted the attention of Mrs.
Dundyke, and sat down on her chair. With a prevision that this letter
had something to do with the question of the marriage, she tore the
letter open and sat gazing on it spellbound.
"Have you found the receipt, my dear?"
Not the receipt. With her cheeks flushing, her pulses quickening, her
hands trembling, she laid the letter open before Mrs. Dundyke. "Robert
was right; Robert was right! Oh! if he had but lived to read this! How
could he have overlooked this, when he examined the desk after his
father's death? It must have slipped between the leaves of the
blotting-book, and been hidden there."
"MY DEAR SON ROBERT,--There may arise a question of your legitimacy
when the time shall arrive for you to take possession of your
grandfather's property. On the day I left Westerbury for ever, I
married your mother, Martha Ann Hughes--she would not else have
come with me. We were married in her parish church at Westerbury,
St. James the Less, and you will find it duly entered in the
register. This will be sufficient to prove your rights, so that
there may be no litigation.
"Your affectionate father,
"RT. CARR."
And, scarcely knowing whether she was awake or dreaming, while Mrs.
Dundyke, in vain attempted to recover her astonishment, Mrs. Carr wrote
a line of explanation inside an envelope, and despatched the
all-important document to Westerbury to Mr. Fauntleroy.