MR. RICHARDS' MORNING CALL.
Mr. Fauntleroy was seated at breakfast, when this missive reached him.
His two strapping daughters were with him: buxom, vulgar damsels,
attired this morning in Magenta skirts and straw-coloured jackets. Mrs.
Fauntleroy had been some years dead, and they ruled the house, and
nearly ruled the lawyer. Strong-willed man though he was, carrying
things out of doors with an iron hand, and sometimes a coarse one, he
would yield to domestic tyranny; as many another has to do, if it were
but known. It was fond tyranny, however, here; for whatever may have
been the faults of the Miss Fauntleroys, they loved their father with a
tender love. They were the only children of the lawyer--his
co-heiresses--and to him they were as the apple of his eye.
The room they sat in faced the garden--a large fine garden at the back
of the house. The leaves were red with the glowing tints of autumn, and
as Mr. Fauntleroy looked up from his well-covered breakfast-table at
the October sky, he made some remark upon the famous run the hounds
would make; and a half sigh escaped his lips that his own hunting days
were gone for ever.
"Would you be afraid to ride now, pa?"
"Look at my weight, Lizzy."
"I think some who ride are as heavy as you," was Miss Elizabeth's
answer.
"Ah! but they are used to it; they have kept the practice up. Never a
better follower than I in my younger days--always in at the death--but
that's a long while ago now. I gave up hunting when I settled down. What
d'ye call that, Bab?"
He was pointing with his fork to a dish apart. Miss Barbara looked at it
critically, and did not recognise it. "I dare say it's some dish the new
cook has sent up. It looks nice, pa."
"Hand some of it over, then," said Mr. Fauntleroy.
She helped him plentifully. The lawyer and his daughters were all fond
of nice dishes, and liked good servings of them; as perhaps their large
frames and their high colours testified. Miss Lizzy pushed up her plate.
"I'll take some, too, Bab."
"About that pic-nic, pa? Are we----"
"Oh! I don't know," interrupted the lawyer, with his mouth full. "You
girls are always bothering for something of the sort. Get it up if you
like, only don't expect me to go."
"The Arkells will join us, pa; Bab has asked them."
"Of course," said the lawyer with a loud laugh. "She'd not fail to ask
_them_. How was Mr. Travice, Bab?"
"I shan't tell you, pa," answered Miss Bab, tossing her head in
demonstrative indignation, though her whole face beamed with a gratified
smile. "The idea! How should I know anything about Mr. Travice Arkell!"
"A good-looking young fellow," said the lawyer, significantly. "Perhaps
others may be finding him so as well as you, Bab."
"Pa, then, you are a stupid! And I want to know who it is that's coming
to dinner to-day?"
"Coming to dinner to-day, Bab? Nobody that I know of."
"You said last night you had invited somebody, but you went to sleep
when I asked who."
"Oh! I remember. I met him yesterday, and he said he was going to call
to-day. I told him to come in and dine, if he liked. It's Ben Carr."
"Oh!" said Miss Bab, with a depreciating sniff. "Only Ben Carr!"
"He's over here for a few days, stopping with Mrs. Lewis. He wants to be
off to Australia or some place, but the squire turns crusty about
advancing the funds. Ben and he came to an explosion over it, and Ben
has made himself scarce at home in consequence. What's the time, Bab?"
Barbara Fauntleroy glanced over her father's head at the French clock
behind him. "It's twenty-five minutes after nine, pa."
"Eh!" cried the lawyer, starting up. "Why, what a time I have been at
breakfast! You girls should not keep me with your chatter."
He gathered up his letters, which lay in a stack beside him, and
hastened into his office. The head clerk, Kenneth, was in the outer
room, with one of the other clerks, a young man named Omer. Mr.
Fauntleroy went in to ask a question.
"Have those deeds come in yet from the engrosser's, Kenneth?"
"No, sir."
"Not come! Why they promised them for nine o'clock this morning, and now
it's half-past. Go for them yourself, Kenneth, at once, and give them a
word of a sort. It's not the first time by many that they've been
behindhand."
Mr. Kenneth took his hat and went out; and his master shut himself in
his private room and began to open his letters. Sometimes he opened his
letters at breakfast time, at others he carried them, as now, into the
office.
Amidst these letters was the envelope despatched by Mrs. Carr,
containing the important letter found in the desk. To describe Mr.
Fauntleroy's astonishment when he read it, would be beyond mortal pen.
To think that they should have been looking half over the world for this
marriage record, when it was lying quietly under their very nose!
"By George!" exclaimed Mr. Fauntleroy. "A clever trick, though, of
Robert Carr's--if he _did_ so marry her. The secret was well kept. He
would be sure we should suspect any place rather than Westerbury."
"Omer!" he called out aloud.
The clerk came in, in answer, and stood before the table of Mr.
Fauntleroy.
"Go down to St. James the Less, and look through the register. See if
there's a marriage entered between Robert Carr and--what was the girl's
Christian name?--Martha Ann Hughes. Stop a minute, I'll give you the
date of the year. And--Omer--keep a silent tongue in your head."
Mr. Fauntleroy nodded significantly, and his clerk went out, knowing
what that mandate meant, and that it might not be disobeyed. He came
back after a while and went in to Mr. Fauntleroy.
"Well?" said the latter, looking up eagerly.
"It is there, sir."
"By George!" repeated the lawyer. "Only to think of that! That's all,
Omer," he added, after a pause. "Mr. Kenneth wants you. And mind what I
charged you as to a silent tongue."
"No fear, sir," said Omer, as he retired. And to give him his due there
was no fear. One clerk had been discharged from Mr. Fauntleroy's office
six months before, some tattling having been traced back to him; but
Omer was of a silent nature, and cautious besides.
"I shall never be surprised at anything again," soliloquized Mr.
Fauntleroy. "A week longer, and I should have thrown up the cause,
unless the Holland Carrs had come forward with money. Won't I go on with
it now! But--I suppose--" he continued more slowly, and in due
deliberation, "the cause will be at an end now. Old Carr can't hold out
in the face of this. Shall _I_ tell of it? If I don't--and they don't
else come to know of it--and the cause goes on, there'll be a pretty
picking for both sides; and old Carr can afford it, for it's his pocket
that will have to stand costs now. I'm not obliged to tell them; and I
_won't_," concluded Mr. Fauntleroy.
But this little cunning plan of secresy on the part of Mr. Fauntleroy
was destined to be defeated. Mynn and Mynn, the solicitors of Eckford,
were in negotiation with a gentleman in London to take the head of their
office, and act as its chief during their own frequent absence. This
gentleman, by one of those coincidences that arise in this world, to
help our projects or baffle them, as the case may be, happened to be Mr.
Littelby. The negotiation had been opened for some little time, and was
only waiting for a personal interview for completion; Mr. Littelby
himself being rather anxious for it, as it held out greater advantages
than he enjoyed in his present post, one of which was a possible
partnership. Mr. George Mynn made a journey to London to see him; and
while he was gone, it chanced that the clerk, Richards, had occasion to
see Mr. Fauntleroy.
He, Richards, arrived in Westerbury betimes on this same morning, and
was told by Kenneth that he might go in to Mr. Fauntleroy. Richards
found, however, that the room was empty; Mr. Fauntleroy having quitted
it for an instant, leaving the inner door ajar.
The morning's letters, open, lay in a stack on the table, one upon
another, faces upwards. Mr. Richards, a prying man, with a curiosity as
sharp as his nose, and both were sharp as a needle, saw these letters,
and took the liberty of bending his body forward from the spot where he
stood, to bring his eyes within range of their contents. He read the
first, which did him no good whatever; and then gently lifted it an inch
slant-wise with his thumb and finger, and so came to the second. That
likewise afforded him scant gratification; for it did not concern him at
all, or any business with which he could possibly be connected, and he
lifted it gingerly and came to the third. The third was the
all-important letter of the deceased Robert Carr; and Mr. Richards read
it with devouring eyes.
He did not care to go on now to the other letters. _This_ was enough;
and he regaled himself with a second perusal. A faint foot-fall in the
passage warned him, and Mr. Richards stole away from danger.
Mr. Fauntleroy entered, coming bustling in by the door he had left ajar.
Surprised perhaps to see the room tenanted which he had left empty, he
glanced at his letters. Thought is quick. They were lying in the stack
just as he had placed them, certainly undisturbed for any sign they
gave; and the visitor was sitting yards off, in a remote chair behind
the other door, his legs crossed and his hat held on his knees.
"Ah, Richards! you are here early this morning!"
"I was obliged to come early, sir, to get back in time," said Richards
as he rose. "Mr. Mynn is ill, as usual, and Mr. George went to London
yesterday afternoon; so the office is left to me."
"Gone to engage his new clerk, isn't he?" asked Mr. Fauntleroy, who had
no more objection than Richards to hear somewhat of his neighbours'
business.
"I believe so; gone to see him, at all events," replied Richards,
speaking with scant ceremony; but it was in his nature so to do. "They
want him to come next month, I hear."
"What's his name?"
"Littelton, or Littelby, or some such name. I heard them talking of him
in their room. We are going to have a busy winter of it, Mr.
Fauntleroy," continued the candid Richards, brushing a speck off his
hat; "so the governors want the new man to come to us next month, or in
December at latest. We have three causes already on hand for the spring
assizes."
"That's pretty well for your quiet folks," returned Mr. Fauntleroy, as
he sat down and placed a large weight on the stack of letters. "Whose
are they?"
"Well, there's that old-standing cause of the Whitcombs, the remanet
from last assizes; and there's a new one that I suppose I must not talk
about: it's a breach of trust affair, and our side want it kept close,
meaning to have a try at going in for a compromise, which they'll never
get: and then there's your cause, Carr _versus_ Carr. But, Mr.
Fauntleroy, surely you'll never bring that into court! you _can't_ win,
you know."
Mr. Fauntleroy's eyes rested lovingly for a moment on the stack of
letters. "If clients are sanguine without reasonable cause, we can't
help it you know, Richards."
"Well, how those Holland Carrs _can_ be sanguine bangs me hollow!" was
the retort of Mr. Richards. "They've never had the ghost of a case from
the first. I was dining at the old squire's on Sunday again, and we got
talking of it. The old man was saying he thought the Carrs over in
Holland must be mad, to persist risking their money in this way; and so
they must be. There never could have been any marriage, Mr. Fauntleroy:
I dare say you feel as sure of it as everybody else does."
Mr. Fauntleroy shrugged his huge shoulders. "The clergyman is dead; and
the rest may not be so sanguine as he was. I confess I did think him a
little mad. And now to your business, Richards. I suppose you have come
about that tithe affair. Will Kenneth do for you? I am busy this
morning."
"Kenneth won't do until I have had a word with yourself, and shown you a
paper," replied Richards, taking out his letter-case. "Just look at
that, Mr. Fauntleroy."
Mr. Fauntleroy unfolded the paper handed to him. It had nothing to do
with our history; but he apparently found it so interesting or
important, that Richards was not dismissed for nearly an hour. And at
his departure, to make up for lost time, Mr. Fauntleroy set to work with
a will: one of his first tasks being to drop a line to Mrs. Carr,
acknowledging the receipt of the important letter, and cautioning her to
keep the discovery a strict secret. All unconscious, as he was, that one
had seen it in his own office.
Mr. Richards was scuttering along the street to the railway station,
when he encountered Benjamin Carr. He could hardly stop to speak, for
his own office really wanted him. In the past few weeks, since their
first introduction, he and Benjamin Carr had been a great deal together,
and the latter placed himself right in his path.
"I can't stay a minute, Ben,"--they had grown familiar, as you
perceive,--"I shall lose the train."
Benjamin Carr turned, and stepped out alongside him, with a pace as
quick. He began telling him, as they walked, of an outbreak he had had
with the "old man," as he was pleased to call his father. "It was all
about this money," exclaimed Ben. "He refuses to give me any until this
affair is settled; persists in saying he may lose the inheritance:
altogether we got in a passion, both of us. As if he _could_ lose it!"
"I suppose it is within the range of possibility," said Richards.
"Nonsense!" replied Benjamin Carr. "You'll say there was a marriage
next."
"There might have been."
"Pigs might fly."
"Suppose there _was_ a marriage--and that it can be proved? What then?"
"Suppose there wasn't," wrathfully returned Ben Carr. "I'm not in a mood
for joking, Richards."
They stepped on to the platform. The train was not in yet; was scarcely
due: one of the porters remarked that "that there mid-day train didn't
keep her time as well as some on 'em did." Richards familiarly passed
his arm within Benjamin Carr's, and drew him beyond the platform. They
turned sideways and halted before a dwarf wall, looking over it at the
town, which lay beneath.
"You say you are not in a mood for joking, Ben: neither am I; and what I
said to you I said with a meaning," began Richards in a low tone. "It
has come to my knowledge--and you needn't ask me how or when or where,
for I shan't tell you--that old Marmaduke's money, so far as you Eckford
Carrs go, _is_ imperilled. If the thing goes on to trial, you'll lose
it: but I should think it won't go on to trial, for you'd never let it
when you come to know what I know. The other side has got hold of a
piece of evidence that would swamp you."
Benjamin Carr's great dark eyes turned themselves fiercely upon his
companion: he saw that he was, in truth, not jesting. "It's not the
record of the marriage, is it?" he asked, after a pause.
"Something like it."
Not a word was spoken for a couple of minutes. A little tinkling bell
was heard in the station. Benjamin Carr broke the silence.
"Real, or forged?"
"Ah, I don't know. Real, I suppose. The man's dead you see, that young
clergyman-fellow who came down, so he'd be hardly likely to get it up. I
don't see how it could be done, either, in the present case. It's easier
to suppress evidence of a marriage than it is to invent it. Still it
_may_ be on the cross."
"Can't you speak plain English, Richards."
"I hardly dare. But I suppose you could be silent, if I were to."
"I suppose I could. I have had secrets to carry in my lifetime weightier
than this, whatever it may be."
Benjamin Carr lifted his hat, and wiped his brow with his handkerchief,
as if the secrets were there and felt heavy still. Richards looked at
him.
"You may speak out, Richards. You can't believe," he added, his tone
changed to one of passionate pain, "that it is not safe with me."
"It must be kept safe for your own sake, for your family's sake. If any
evidence _has_ turned up, there's no cause to let the world know it
before you are compelled. It would be damaging your cause irreparably."
Ben Carr nodded assent. "What is it?" he asked.
"Well, I think they have found out where the marriage was solemnized. I
_think_ so, mind; I am not positive. That is, I am not positive of the
fact; only that they think it so."
"How did you hear it?"
"Now, Ben, you'll not get me to let out that. I've said so. Perhaps I
dreamt it; perhaps a little bird told me: never mind. I mean to go over
to your place to see Valentine to-night, and drop him a hint of the
state of affairs. Shall you be at home?"
"I didn't mean to be at home for some days to come; but I'll meet you
there. Take care of one thing: that you say nothing to the squire."
Mr. Richards gave a knowing nod sideways, as if to intimate that he knew
just as well what to do and what not to do as Benjamin Carr. Just then
the noise of a train was heard puffing up.
"Here it comes, Richards."
"Here it doesn't," was the reply. "It's coming the wrong way. This is
the London train coming in."
The train came in, and stopped on the other side of the platform, while
it discharged its passengers and any luggage pertaining to them. It then
went puffing on, and the passengers crossed the line to this side, as
they had to do before they could leave the station. Benjamin Carr and
his friend stood still to look at them, and the former recognised in one
of them Mr. Arkell.
"How d'ye do, Mr. Arkell," said Ben, holding out his hand. "Been out
anywhere?"
But Mr. Arkell did not see the hand. What with the jostling crowd, what
with a small portmanteau he was carrying, what with wondering who the
stranger might be, hanging lovingly on Ben's arm, for Mr. Arkell had not
the honour of knowing Mr. Richards by sight, he certainly did not appear
to see the held-out hand. "Where have you been?" inquired Ben,
inquisitively.
"I have been to London, Mr. Benjamin, as you wish to know. A short
visit, though."
"Oh," said Ben, meaning to be jocular. "Seen any of my friends there?"
"I saw Mrs. Carr, the clergyman's young widow: I don't know whether you
count her as one of your friends. And I saw Mrs. Dundyke."
There was a look in Mr. Arkell's face, not usual on it: a peculiar,
solemn, penetrating look. Somehow Mr. Ben Carr's jocularity and his
courage went out of him together.
"Mrs. Dundyke?" he repeated, vaguely, staring over the heads of the
passing passengers. "Oh, ah, I remember, that connexion of yours. I
don't know her."
"I got her to give me a description of the man, calling himself
Hardcastle, who lies under the suspicion of knowing rather too clearly
what became of Mr. Dundyke. Poor Robert Carr, just dead, attempted the
description of him, you may remember, at your father's table."
"Ah; yes," said Ben, striving to be more vague than before: and his dark
face perceptibly changed its hue.
"And I may tell you that this description of Mrs. Dundyke's has made a
singular impression upon me, and a very disagreeable one. It is not my
affair," he added, slowly and distinctly; "and for the present I shall
not make it mine: but----"
"Here's your train, Richards. Got a return ticket?"
The two walked forward to meet it, Richards evidently pulled along by
his companion. The train came dashing in too far, and had to be backed:
porters ran about, departing passengers hustled each other. And
altogether, in the general confusion, there was no more to be seen of
Mr. Benjamin Carr.