CHAPTER XXII
AT LIDFORD AGAIN
Gilbert Fenton called in Queen Anne's Court within a few hours of Marian's departure, and was not a little disappointed when he was told that she had gone back to Hampshire. He had relied upon seeing her again—not once only, but several times—before her return. He had promised Jacob Nowell that he would watch over and protect her interests; and it was a sincere unqualified wish to do this that influenced him now. More than a dear friend, the sweetest and dearest of all womankind, she could never be to him. He accepted the position with resignation. The first sharp bitterness of her loss was over. That he should ever cease to love her was impossible; but it seemed to him that a chivalrous friendship for her, a disinterested brotherly affection, was in no manner incompatible with that hapless silent love. No word of his, in all their intercourse to come, should ever remind her of that hidden devotion; no shadow of the past should ever cloud the calm brightness of the present. It was a romantic fancy, perhaps, for a man of business, whose days were spent in the very press and tumult of commercial life; but it had lifted Gilbert Fenton out of that slough of despond into which he had fallen when Marian seemed utterly lost to him—vanished altogether out of his existence.
He had a sense of bitter disappointment, therefore, when he found that she had gone, leaving neither letter nor message for him. How little value his friendship must needs possess for her, when she could abandon him thus without a word! He had felt sure that she would consult him upon her affairs; but no, she had her husband to whom to appeal, and had no need of any other counsellor.
"I was a fool to think that I could ever be anything to her, even a friend," he said to himself bitterly; "women are incapable of friendship. It is all or nothing with them; a blind self-abnegation or the coldest indifference. Devotion cannot touch them, unless the man who gives it happen to be that one man out of a thousand who has the power to bewitch their senses. Truth and affection, of themselves, have no value with them. How many people spoke to me of this Holbrook as an unattractive man; and yet he won my love away from me, and holds her with an influence so complete, that my friendship seems worthless to her. She cannot give me a word or a thought."
Mr. Fenton made some inquiries about the funeral arrangements and found that these had been duly attended to by the lawyer, and a gentleman who had been with Jacob Nowell a good deal of late, who seemed to be some relation to the old man, Mr. Tulliver said, and took a great deal upon himself. This being done, there was, of course, no occasion for Gilbert to interfere, and he was glad to be released from all responsibility. Having ascertained this, he asked for the address of the late Mr. Nowell's lawyer; and being told it, went at once to Mr. Medler's office. He did not consider himself absolved from the promise he had made the old man by Marian's indifference, and was none the less anxious to watch over her interests because she seemed to set so little value on his friendship.
He told Mr. Medler who he was, and the promise he had given to Jacob Nowell, abstaining, of course, from any reference to the position he had once occupied towards Marian. He described himself as her friend only—a friend of long standing, who had been intimate with her adopted guardian.
"I know how ignorant Mrs. Holbrook is of the world and of all business matters," he went on to say, "and I am naturally anxious that her interests should be protected."
"I should think there was very little doubt that her husband will see after those," the lawyer answered, with something of a sneer; "husbands are generally supposed to do that, especially where there is money at stake."
"I do not know Mr. Holbrook; and he has kept himself in the background so persistently up to this point, and has been altogether so underhanded in his proceedings, that I have by no means a good opinion of him. Mr. Nowell told me that he intended to leave his money to his granddaughter in such a manner, that it would be hers and hers only—free from the control of any husband. He has done so, I presume?"
"Yes," Mr. Medler replied, with the air of a man who would fain have withheld the information; "he has left it for her own separate use and maintenance."
"And it is a property of some importance, I conclude?"
"Of some importance—yes," the lawyer answered, in the same tone.
"Ought not Mrs. Holbrook to have remained to hear the reading of the will?"
"Well, yes, decidedly; it would have been more in the usual way of things; but her absence can have no ill effect upon her interests. Of course it will be my duty to make her acquainted with the contents of the will."
Gilbert Fenton was not prepossessed by Mr. Medler's countenance, which was not an open candid index to a spotless soul, nor by his surroundings, which were of the shabbiest; but the business being in this man's hands, it might be rather difficult to withdraw it—dangerous even. The man held the will, and in holding that had a certain amount of power.
"There is no one except Mrs. Holbrook interested in Mr. Nowell's will, I suppose?" Gilbert said presently.
"No one directly and immediately, except an old charwoman, who has a legacy of five-and-twenty pounds."
"But there is some one else interested in an indirect manner I infer from your words?"
"Yes. Mrs. Holbrook takes the whole of the personalty, but she has only a life-interest in the real estate. If she should have children, it will go to them on her death; if she should die childless, it will go to her father, supposing him to survive her."
"To her father? That is rather strange, isn't it?"
"I don't know that. It was the old man's wish that the will should be to that effect."
"I understood from him that he did not know whether his son was alive or dead."
"Indeed! I believe he had news of his son very lately."
"Curious that he should not have told me, knowing as he did my interest in everything relating to Mrs. Holbrook."
"Old people are apt to be close; and Jacob Nowell was about one of the closest customers I ever met with," answered the lawyer.
Gilbert left him soon after this, and chartered a hansom in the next street, which carried him back to the City. He was very uncertain as to what he ought to do for Marian, doubtful of Mr. Medler's integrity, and yet anxious to abstain from any act that might seem uncalled for or officious. She had her husband to look after her interests, as the lawyer had reminded him, and it was scarcely probable that Mr. Holbrook would neglect any steps necessary to secure his wife's succession to whatever property Jacob Nowell had left. It seemed to Gilbert that he could do nothing at present, except write to Marian, telling her of his interview with the lawyer, and advising her to lose no time in placing the conduct of her affairs in more respectable hands than those of Mr. Medler. He mentioned his own solicitors, a City firm of high standing, as gentlemen whom she might wisely trust at this crisis of her life.
This done, he could only wait the issue of events, and he tried to occupy himself as much as possible with his business at St. Helens—that business which he seriously intended getting rid of as soon as he could meet with a favourable opportunity for so doing. He worked with that object in view. In spite of his losses in Australia, he was in a position to retire from commerce with a very fair income. He had lost all motive for sustained exertion, all desire to become rich. A man who has no taste for expensive bachelor pleasures and no home has very little opportunity for getting rid of large sums of money. Mr. Fenton had taken life pleasantly enough, and yet had never spent five hundred a year. He could retire with an income of eight hundred and having abandoned all idea of ever marrying this seemed to him more than sufficient.
The Listers had come back to England, and Mrs. Lister had written to her brother more than once, begging him to run down to Lidford. Of course she had expressed herself freely upon the subject of Marian's conduct in these letters, reprobating the girl's treachery and ingratitude, and congratulating Gilbert upon his escape from so ineligible a connection. Mr. Fenton had put his sister off with excuses hitherto, and had subjected himself thereby to sundry feminine reproaches upon his coldness and want of affection for Mrs. Lister and her children. "It was very different when Marian Nowell was here," she wrote; "you thought it no trouble to come to us then."
No answer came to his letter to Mrs. Holbrook—which scarcely called for a reply, unless it had been a few lines of thanks, in acknowledgment of his interest in her behalf. He had looked for such a letter, and was a little disappointed by its non-appearance. The omission, slight as it was, served to strengthen his bitter feeling that his friendship in this quarter was unneeded and unvalued.
Business in the City happened to be rather slack at this time; and it struck Mr. Fenton all at once that he could scarcely have a better opportunity for wasting two or three days in a visit of duty to the Listers, and putting an end to his sister's reproachful letters. He had a second motive for going to Lidford; a motive which had far greater weight with him than his brotherly affection just at this time. He wanted to see Sir David Forster, to call that gentleman to some account for the deliberate falsehood he had uttered at their last meeting. He had no bloodthirsty or ferocious feelings upon the subject, he could even understand that the Baronet might have been bound by his own ideas of honour to tell a lie in the service of his friend; but he wanted to extort some explanation of the line of conduct Sir David had taken, and he wanted to ascertain from him the character of Marian's husband. He had made inquiries about Sir David at the club, and had been told that he was still at Heatherly.
He went down to Lidford by an afternoon train, without having troubled himself to give Mrs. Lister any notice of his coming. The November evening had closed in upon the quiet rural landscape when he drove from the station to Lidford. A cold white mist enfolded all things here, instead of the stifling yellow fog that had filled the London streets when he walked westwards from the City at the same hour on the previous evening. Above his head the sky was clear and bright, the mist-wreaths melting away as they mounted towards the stars. The lighted windows in the village street had a pleasant homely look; the snug villas, lying back from the high road with a middle distance of dark lawn and glistening shrubbery, shone brightly upon the traveller as he drove by, the curtains not yet drawn before some of the windows, the rooms ruddy in the firelight. In one of them he caught a brief glimpse of a young matron seated by the fire with her children clustered at her knee, and the transient picture struck him with a sudden pang. He had dreamed so fondly of a home like this; pleasant rooms shining in the sacred light of the hearth, his wife and children waiting to bid him welcome when the day's work was done. All other objects which men live and toil for seemed to him poor and worthless in the absence of this one dear incentive to exertion, this one sweet recompense for every care. Even Lidford House, which had never before seemed to him the perfection of a home, had a new aspect for him to-night, and reminded him sharply of his own loss. He envied Martin Lister the quiet jog-trot happiness of his domestic life; his love for and pride in his children; the calm haven of that comfortable hearth by which he sat to-night, with his slippered feet stretched luxuriously upon a fender-stool of his wife's manufacture, and his daughter sitting on a hassock close to his easy-chair, reading in a book of fairy tales.
Of course they were all delighted to see him, at once pleased and surprised by the unexpected visit. He had brought a great parcel of toys for the two children; and Selwyn Lister, a fine boisterous boy in a Highland costume, was summoned downstairs to assist at the unpacking of these treasures. It was half-past seven, and the Listers had dined at six: but in an incredibly short space of time the Sutherland table had been drawn out to a cosy position near the fire and spread with a substantial repast, while Mrs. Lister took her place behind the ponderous old silver urn which had been an heirloom in her husband's family for the last two centuries. The Listers were full of talk about their own travels—a long-delayed continental tour which had been talked of ever since their return from the honeymoon trip to Geneva and Chamouni; and were also very eager to hear Gilbert's adventures in Australia, of which he had given them only very brief accounts in his letters. There was nothing said that night about Marian, and Gilbert was grateful for his sister's forbearance.
CHAPTER XXIII
CALLED TO ACCOUNT
Gilbert walked over to Heatherly after luncheon next day, taking of preference the way which led him past Captain Sedgewick's cottage and through the leafless wood where he and Marian had walked together when the foliage was in its summer glory. The leaves lay thick upon the mossy ground now; and the gaunt bare branches of the trees had a weird awful look in the utter silence of the place. His footsteps trampling upon the fallen leaves had an echo; and he turned to look behind him more than once, fancying he was followed.
The old house, with its long lines of windows, had a prison-like aspect under the dull November day. Gilbert wondered how such a man as Sir David Forster could endure his existence there, embittered as it was by the memory of that calamity which had taken all the sunlight out of his life, and left him a weary and purposeless hunter after pleasure. But Sir David had been prostrate under the heavy hand of his hereditary foe, the gout, for a long time past; and was fain to content himself with such company as came to him at Heatherly, and such amusement as was to be found in the society of men who were boon companions rather than friends. Gilbert Fenton heard the familiar clash of the billiard-balls as he went into the hall, where a couple of liver-coloured setters were dozing before a great fire that roared half-way up the wide chimney. There was no other life in the hall; and Mr. Fenton was conducted to the other end of the house, and ushered into that tobacco-tainted snuggery in which he had last seen the Baronet. His suspicions were on the alert this time; and he fancied he could detect a look of something more than surprise in Sir David's face when the servant announced him—an uneasy look, as of a man taken at a disadvantage.
The Baronet was very gracious, however, and gave him a hearty welcome.
"I'm uncommonly glad to see you, my dear Fenton," he said, "Indeed, I have been pleased to see worse fellows than you lately, since this infernal gout has laid me up in this dreary old place. The house is pretty full now, I am happy to say. I have friends who will come to shoot my partridges, though they won't remember my solitude in a charitable spirit before the first of September. You'll stop and dine, I hope; or perhaps you can put up here altogether for a week or so. My housekeeper shall find you a good room; and I can promise you pleasant company. Say yes, now, like a good fellow, and I'll send a man to Lidford for your traps."
"Thanks—no. You are very kind; but I am staying with my sister for a few days, and must return to town before the end of the week. The fact of the matter is, Sir David, I have come here to-day to ask you for some explanation of your conduct at our last interview. I don't want to say anything rude or disagreeable; for I am quite willing to believe that you felt kindly towards me, even at the time when you deceived me. I suppose there are some positions in which a man can hardly expect fair play, and that mine was such a position. But you certainly did deceive me, Sir David, and grossly."
"That last is rather an unpleasant word, Mr. Fenton. In what respect did I deceive you?"
"I came here on purpose to ask you if Mr. Holbrook, the man who robbed me of my promised wife, were a friend of yours, and you denied all knowledge of him."
"Granted. And what then, my dear sir?"
"When I came to ask you that question, I had no special reason for supposing this Mr. Holbrook was known to you. It only struck me that, being a stranger in the village, as the result of my inquiries had proved to me, he might be one of your many visitors. I knew at that time that Mr. Holbrook had taken his wife to a farm-house in Hampshire immediately after their marriage—a house lent to him by a friend; but I did not know that you had any estate in that county. I have been to Hampshire since then, and have found Mrs. Holbrook at the Grange, near Crosber—in your house."
"You have found her! Well, Mr. Fenton, the circumstantial evidence is too strong for me, so I must plead guilty. Yes; I did deceive you when I told you that Holbrook was unknown to me; but I pledged my word to keep his secret—to give you no clue, should you ever happen to question me, that could lead to your discovery of your lost love's whereabouts. It was considered, I conclude, that any meeting between you two must needs result unpleasantly. At any rate, there was a strong desire to avoid you; and in common duty to my friend I was compelled to respect that desire."
"Not a very manly wish on the part of my successful rival," said Gilbert.
"It may have been the lady's wish rather than Mr. Holbrook's."
"I have reason to know that it was otherwise. I have heard from Marian's own lips that she would have written a candid confession of the truth had she been free to do so. It was her husband who prevented her giving me notice of my desertion."
"I cannot pretend to explain his conduct," Sir David answered gravely. "I only know that I pledged myself to keep his secret; and felt bound to do so, even at the cost of a lie."
"And this man is your friend. You must know whether he is worthy to be Marian Nowell's husband. The circumstances of her life do not seem to me favourable to happiness, so far as I have been able to discover them; nor did I think her looking happy when we met. But I should be glad to know that she has not fallen into bad hands."
"And I suppose by this time your feelings have cooled down a little. You have abandoned those revengeful intentions you appeared to entertain, when you were last in this house?"
"In a great measure, yes. I have promised Marian that, should I and her husband meet, as we must do, I believe, sooner or later, she need apprehend no violence on my part. He has won the prize; any open resentment would seem mere schoolboy folly. But you cannot suppose that I feel very kindly towards him, or ever shall."
"Upon my soul, I think men are hardly responsible for their actions where a woman is concerned," Sir David exclaimed after a pause. "We are the veriest slaves of destiny in these matters. A man sees the only woman in the world he can love too late to win her with honour. If he is strong enough to act nobly, he turns his back upon the scene of his temptation, all the more easily should the lady happen to be staunch to her affianced, or her husband, as the case may be. But if she waver—if he sees that his love is returned—heaven help him! Honour, generosity, friendship, all go by the board; and for the light in those fatal eyes, for the dangerous music of that one dear voice, he sacrifices all that he has held highest in life until that luckless time. I know that Holbrook held it no light thing to do you this wrong; I know that he fought manfully against temptation. But, you see, fate was the stronger; and he had to give way at the last."
"I cannot agree with that way of looking at things, Sir David. The world is made up of people who take their own pleasure at any cost to others, and then throw the onus of their misdoings upon Providence. I have long ago forgiven the girl who jilted me, and have sworn to be her faithful and watchful friend in all the days to come. I want to be sure that her future is a bright one—much brighter than it seemed when I saw her in your lonely old house near Crosber. She has had money left her since then; so poverty can no longer be a reason for her being hidden from the world."
"I am very glad to hear that; my friend is not a rich man."
"So Marian told me. But I want to learn something more than that about him. Up to this moment he has been the most intangible being I ever heard of. Will you tell me who and what he is—his position in the world, and so on?"
"Humph!" muttered Sir David meditatively; "I don't know that I can tell you much about him. His position is like that of a good many others of my acquaintance—rather vague and intangible, to use the word you employed just now. He is not well off; he is a gentleman by birth, with some small means of his own, and he 'lives, sir, lives.' That is about all I can say of him—from a worldly point of view. With regard to his affection for Miss Nowell, I know that he loved her passionately, devotedly, desperately—the strongest expression you can supply to describe a man's folly. I never saw any fellow so far gone. Heaven knows, I did my best to argue him out of his fancy—urged your claim, the girl's poverty, every reason against the marriage; but friendly argumentation of that kind goes very little way in such a case. He took his own course. It was only when I found the business was decided upon, that I offered him my house in Hampshire; a place to which I never go myself, but which brings me in a decent income in the hands of a clever bailiff. I knew that Holbrook had no home ready for his wife, and I thought it would give them a pleasant retreat enough for a few months, while the honey and rose-leaves still sweetened the wine-cup of their wedded life. They have stayed there ever since, as you seem to know; so I conclude they have found the place agreeable. Confoundedly dreary, I should fancy it myself; but then I'm not a newly married man."
The Baronet gave a brief sigh, and his thoughts went back for a moment to the time when he too was in Arcadia; when a fair young wife was by his side, and when no hour of his existence seemed ever dull or weary to him. It was all changed now! He had billiards and whist, and horses and hounds, and a vast collection of gunnery, and great stores of wine in the gloomy arched vaults beneath the house, where a hundred prisoners had been kept under lock and key when Heatherly had fallen into the hands of the Cromwellian soldiery, and the faithful retainers of the household were fain to lay down their arms. He had all things that make up the common pleasures and delights of a man's existence; but he had lost the love which had given these things a new charm, and without which all life seemed to him flat, stale, and unprofitable. He could sympathise with Gilbert Fenton much more keenly than that gentleman would have supposed possible; for a man suffering from this kind of affliction is apt to imagine that he has a copyright in that species of grief, and that no other man ever did or ever can experience a like calamity. The same manner of trouble may come to others, of course, but not with a similar intensity. Others will suffer and recover, and find a balm elsewhere. He alone is constant until death!
"And you can tell me nothing more about Mr. Holbrook?" he asked after a pause.
"Upon my honour, nothing. I think you will do wisely to leave these two people to take their own way in the future without any interference on your part. You speak of watchful friendship and all that kind of thing, and I can quite appreciate your disinterested desire to befriend the woman whom you once hoped to make your wife. But, believe me, my dear Fenton, no manner of good can possibly come of your intervention. Those two have chosen their road in life, and must travel along it, side by side, through good or evil fortune. Holbrook would naturally be jealous of any friendship between his wife and you; while such a friendship could not fail to keep alive bitter thoughts in your mind—could not fail to sharpen the regret which you fancy just now is to be life-long. I have no doubt I seem to speak in a hard worldly spirit."
"You speak like a man of the world, Sir David," the other answered quietly; "and I cannot deny that there is a certain amount of wisdom in your advice. No, my friendship is not wanted by either of those two, supposing even that I were generous enough to be able to give it to both. I have learnt that lesson already from Marian herself. But you must remember that I promised her poor old grandfather—the man who died a few days ago—that I would watch over her interests with patient fidelity, that I would be her friend and protector, if ever the hour should come in which she would need friendship and protection. I am not going to forget this promise, or to neglect its performance; and in order to be true to my word, I am bound to make myself acquainted with the circumstances of her married life, and the character of her husband."
"Cannot you be satisfied with knowing that she is happy?"
"I have seen her, Sir David, and am by no means assured of her happiness."
"And yet it was a love-match on both sides. Holbrook, as I have told you, loved her passionately."
"That passionate kind of love is apt to wear itself out very quickly with some men. Your bailiff's daughter complained bitterly of Mr. Holbrook's frequent absence from the Grange, of the dulness and loneliness of my poor girl's life."
"Women are apt to be exacting," Sir David answered with a deprecating shrug of the shoulders. "My friend Holbrook has the battle of life to fight, and could not spend all his days playing the lover. If his wife has had money left her, that will make some difference in their position. A man is never at his best when he is worried by debts and financial difficulties."
"And Mr. Holbrook was in debt when he married, I suppose?"
"He was. I must confess that I find that complaint a very common one among my acquaintance," the Baronet added with a laugh.
"Will you tell me what this Holbrook is like in person, Sir David? I have questioned several people about him, and have never obtained anything beyond the vaguest kind of description."
Sir David Forster laughed aloud at this request.
"What! you want to know whether your rival is handsome, I suppose? like a woman, who always commences her inquiries about another woman by asking whether she is pretty. My dear Fenton, all personal descriptions are vague. It is almost impossible to furnish a correct catalogue of any man's features. Holbrook is just one of those men whom it is most difficult to describe—not particularly good-looking, nor especially ill-looking; very clever, and with plenty of expression and character in his face. Older than you by some years, and looking older than he really is."
"Thanks; but there is not one precise statement in your description. Is the man dark or fair—short or tall?"
"Rather dark than fair; rather tall than short."
"That will do, Sir David," Gilbert said, starting suddenly to his feet, and looking the Baronet in the face intently. "The man who robbed me of my promised wife is the man whom I introduced to her; the man who has come between me and all my hopes, who hides himself from my just anger, and skulks in the background under a feigned name, is the one friend whom I have loved above all other men—John Saltram!"
Sir David faced him without flinching. If it was acted surprise which appeared upon his countenance at the sound of John Saltram's name, the acting was perfect. Gilbert could discover nothing from that broad stare of blank amazement.
"In heaven's name, what can have put such a preposterous notion into your head?" Sir David asked coolly.
"I cannot tell you. The conviction has grown upon me, against my own will. Yes, I have hated myself for being able to suspect my friend. You do not know how I have loved that man, or how our friendship began at Oxford long ago with something like hero-worship on my side. I thought that he was born to be great and noble; and heaven knows I have felt the disappointments and shortcomings of his career more keenly than he has felt them himself. No, Sir David, I don't think it is possible for any man to comprehend how I have loved John Saltram."
"And yet, without a shred of evidence, you believe him guilty of betraying you."
"Will you give me your word of honour that Marian's husband and John Saltram are not one and the same person?"
"No," answered Sir David impatiently; "I am tired of the whole business. You have questioned and cross-questioned me quite long enough, Mr. Fenton, and I have answered you to the best of my ability, and have given you rational advice, which you will of course decline to take. If you think your friend has wronged you, go to him, and tax him with that wrong. I wash my hands of the affair altogether, from this moment; but, without wishing to be offensive, I cannot help telling you, that to my mind you are acting very foolishly in this business."
"I daresay it may seem so to you. You would think better of me if I could play the stoic, and say, 'She has jilted me, and is dead to me henceforward.' But I cannot do that. I have the memory of her peaceful girlhood—the happy days in which I knew her first—the generous protector who sheltered her life. I am pledged to the dead, Sir David."
He left Heatherly soon after this, though the Baronet pressed him to stay to dinner.
CHAPTER XXIV
TORMENTED BY DOUBT
The long homeward walk gave Gilbert ample leisure for reflection upon his interview with Sir David; a very unsatisfactory interview at the best. Yes, the conviction that the man who had wronged him was no other than his own familiar friend, had flashed upon him with a new force as the Baronet answered his questions about John Holbrook. The suspicion which had entered his mind after he left the lonely farm-house near Crosber, and which he had done his uttermost to banish, as if it had been a suggestion of the evil one, came back to him to-day with a form and reality which it had lacked before. It seemed no longer a vague fancy, a dark unwelcome thought that bordered on folly. It had taken a new shape altogether, and appeared to him almost a certainty.
Sir David's refusal to make any direct denial of the fact seemed to confirm his suspicion. Yet it was, on the other hand, just possible that Sir David, finding him on a false scent, should have been willing to let him follow it, and that the real offender should be screened by this suspicion of John Saltram. But then there arose in his mind a doubt that had perplexed him sorely for a long time. If his successful rival had been indeed a stranger to him, what reason could there be for so much mystery in the circumstances of the marriage? and why should Marian have so carefully avoided telling him anything about her husband? That his friend, having betrayed him, should shrink from the revelation of his falsehood, should adopt any underhand course to avoid discovery, seemed natural enough. Yet to believe this was to think meanly of the man whom he had loved so well, whom he had confided in so implicitly until the arising of this cruel doubt.
He had known long ago, when the first freshness of his boyish delusions faded away before the penetrating clear daylight of reality, he had known long ago that his friend was not faultless; that except in that one faithful alliance with himself, John Saltram had been fickle, wayward, vacillating, unstable, and inconstant, true to no dream of his youth, no ambition of his early manhood, content to drop one purpose after another, until his life was left without any exalted aim. But Gilbert had fancied his friend's nature was still a noble one in spite of the comparative failure of his life. It was very difficult for him to imagine it possible that this friend could act falsely and ungenerously, could steal his betrothed from him, and keep the secret of his guilt, pretending to sympathise with the jilted lover all the while.
But though Mr. Fenton told himself at one moment that this was impossible, his thoughts travelled back to the same point immediately afterwards, and the image of John Saltram arose before him as that of his hidden foe. He remembered the long autumn days which he and his friend had spent with Marian—those unclouded utterly happy days, which he looked back upon now with a kind of wonder. They had been so much together, Marian so bright and fascinating in her innocent enjoyment of the present, brighter and happier just then than she had ever seemed to him before, Gilbert remembered with a bitter pang. He had been completely unsuspicious at the time, untroubled by one doubtful thought; but it appeared to him now that there had been a change in Marian from the time of his friend's coming—a new joyousness and vivacity, a keener delight in the simple pleasures of their daily life, and withal a fitfulness, a tendency to change from gaiety to thoughtful silence, that he had not remarked in her before.
Was it strange if John Saltram had fallen in love with her? was it possible to see her daily in all the glory of her girlish loveliness, made doubly bewitching by the sweetness of her nature, the indescribable charm of her manner—was it possible to be with her often, as John Saltram had been, and not love her? Gilbert Fenton had thought of his friend as utterly impregnable to any such danger; as a man who had spent all his stock of tender emotion long ago, and who looked upon matrimony as a transaction by which he might mend his broken fortunes. That this man should fall a victim to the same subtle charm which had subjugated himself, was a possibility that never occurred to Gilbert's mind, in this happy period of his existence. He wanted his friend's approval of his choice; he wished to see his passion justified in the eyes of the man whom it was his habit to regard in somewise as a superior creature; and it had been a real delight to him to hear Mr. Saltram's warm praises of Marian.
Looking back at the past to-day from a new point of view, he wondered at his own folly. What was more natural than that John Saltram should have found his doom, as he had found it, unthought of, undreamed of, swift, and fatal? Nor was it difficult for him to believe that Marian—who had perhaps never really loved him, who had been induced to accept him by his own pertinacity and her uncle's eager desire for the match—should find a charm and a power in John Saltram that had been wanting in himself. He had seen too many instances of his friend's influence over men and women, to doubt his ability to win this innocent inexperienced girl, had he set himself to win her. He recalled with a bitter smile how his informants had all described his rival in a disparaging tone, as unworthy of so fair a bride; and he knew that it was precisely those qualities which these common people were unable to appreciate that constituted the subtle charm by which John Saltram influenced others. The rugged power and grandeur of that dark face, which vulgar critics denounced as plain and unattractive, the rare fascination of a manner that varied from an extreme reserve to a wild reckless vivacity, the magic of the deep full voice, with its capacity for the expression of every shade of emotion—these were attributes to be passed over and ignored by the vulgar, yet to exercise a potent influence upon sensitive sympathetic natures.
"How that poor little Anglo-Indian widow loves him, without any effort to win or hold her affection on his side!" Gilbert said to himself, as he walked back to Lidford in the darkening November afternoon, brooding always on the one subject which occupied all his thoughts; "and can I doubt his power to supersede me if he cared to do so—if he really loved Marian, as he never has loved Mrs. Branston? What shall I do? Go to him at once, and tell him my suspicion, tax him broadly with treachery, and force him to a direct confession or denial? Shall I do this? Or shall I bide my time, wait and watch with dull dogged patience, till I can collect some evidence of his guilt? Yes, let it be so. If he has been base enough to do me this great wrong—mean enough to steal my betrothed under a false name, and to keep the secret of his wrong-doing at any cost of lies and deceit—let him go on to the end, let him act out the play to the last; and when I bring his falsehood home to him, as I must surely do, sooner or later,—yes, if he is capable of deceiving me, he shall continue the lie to the last, he shall endure all the infamy of his false position."
And then, after a pause, he said to himself,—
"And at the end, if my suspicions are confirmed, I shall have lost all I have ever valued in life since my mother died—my plighted wife, and the one chosen friend whose companionship could make existence pleasant to me. God grant that this fancy of mine is as baseless as Sir David Forster declared it to be! God grant that I may never find a secret enemy in John Saltram!"
Tossed about thus upon a sea of doubts, Mr. Fenton returned to Lidford House, where he was expected to be bright and cheerful, and entertain his host and hostess with the freshest gossip of the London world. He did make a great effort to keep up a show of cheerfulness at the dinner-table; but he felt that his sister's eyes were watching him with a pitiless scrutiny, and he knew that the attempt was an ignominious failure.
When honest Martin was snoring in his easy-chair before the drawing-room fire, with the red light shining full upon his round healthy countenance, Mrs. Lister beckoned her brother over to her side of the hearth, where she had an embroidery-frame, whereon was stretched some grand design in Berlin wool-work, to which she devoted herself every now and then with a great show of industry. She had been absorbed in a profound calculation of the stitches upon the canvas and on the coloured pattern before her until this moment; but she laid aside her work with a solemn air when Gilbert went over to her, and he knew at once what was coming.
"Sit down, Gilbert," she said; and her brother dropped into a chair by her side with a faint sigh of resignation. "I want to talk to you seriously, as a sister ought to talk to a brother, without any fear of offending. I'm very sorry to see you have not yet forgotten that wicked ungrateful girl Marian Nowell."
"Who told you that I have not forgotten her?"
"Your own face, Gilbert. It's no use for you to put on a pretence of being cheerful and light-hearted with me. I know you too well to be deceived by that kind of thing—I could see how absent-minded you were all dinner-time, in spite of your talk. You can't hoodwink an affectionate sister."
"I don't wish to hoodwink you, my dear," Mr. Fenton answered quietly, "or to affect a happiness which I do not feel, any more than I wish to make a parade of my grief. It is natural for an Englishman to be reticent on such matters; but I do not mind owning to you that Marian Nowell is unforgotten by me, and that the loss of her will have an enduring influence upon my life; and having said as much as that, Belle, I must request that you will not expatiate any more upon this poor girl's breach of faith. I have forgiven her long ago, and I shall always regard her as the purest and dearest of women."
"What! you can hold her up as a paragon of perfection after she has thrown you over in the most heartless manner? Upon my word, Gilbert, I have no common patience with such folly. Your weakness in this affair from first to last has been positively deplorable."
"I am sorry you disapprove of my conduct, Belle; but as it is not a very pleasant subject, don't you think we may as well avoid it now and henceforward?"
"O, very well, Gilbert," the lady exclaimed, with an offended air; "of course, if you choose to exclude me from your confidence, I must submit; but I do think it rather hard that your only sister should not be allowed to speak of a business that concerns you so nearly."
"What good can arise out of any discussion of this subject, Belle? You think me weak and foolish; granted that I am both, you cannot cure me of my weakness or my folly."
"And am I never to hope that you will find some one else, better worthy of your regard than Marian Nowell?"
"I fear not, Belle. For me there is no one else."
Mrs. Lister breathed a profound sigh, and resumed the counting of her stitches. Yet perhaps, after all, it was better that her brother should cherish the memory of this unlucky attachment. It would preserve him from the hazard of any imprudent alliance in the future, and leave his fortune free, to descend by-and-by to the juvenile Listers. Isabella was not a particularly mercenary person, but she was a woman of the world, and had an eye to the future aggrandisement of her children.
She was very kind and considerate to Gilbert after this, carefully avoiding any farther allusions to his lost love, and taking all possible pains to make his visit pleasant to him. She was so affectionate and cordial, and seemed so really anxious for him to stay, that he could not in common decency hurry back to town quite so soon as he had intended. He prolonged his visit to the end of that week, and then to the beginning of the next; and when he did at last find himself free to return to London, the second week was nearly ended.
CHAPTER XXV
MISSING AGAIN
Gilbert Fenton was very glad to have made his escape from Lidford at last, for his mind was full of anxiety about Marian. Again and again he had argued with himself upon the folly and uselessness of this anxiety. She, for whose interests he was so troubled, was safe enough no doubt, protected by a husband, who was most likely a man of the world, and quite as able to protect her as Gilbert himself could be. He told himself this; but still the restless uneasy sense that he was neglecting his duty, that he was false to the promise made to old Jacob Nowell, tormented and perplexed him. He felt that he ought to be doing something—that he had no right to remain in ignorance of the progress of Marian's affairs—that he should be at hand to frustrate any attempt at knavery on the part of the lawyer—to be sure that the old man's wealth suffered no diminution before it reached the hands of his heiress.
Gilbert Fenton felt that his promise to the dead bound him to do these things, and felt at the same time the weakness of his own position with relation to Marian. By what right could he interfere in the conduct of her affairs? what claim could he assert to defend her interests? who would listen to any romantic notion about a promise made to the dead?
He went to Queen Anne's Court upon the night of his return to London. The silversmith's shop looked exactly the same as when he had first seen it: the gas burning dimly, the tarnished old salvers and tankards gleaming duskily in the faint light, with all manner of purple and greenish hues. Mr. Tulliver was in his little den at the back of the shop, and emerged with his usual rapidity at the ringing of the door-bell.
"O, it's you, is it, sir?" he asked in an indifferent, half-insolent tone. "What can I do for you this evening?"
"Is your late master's granddaughter, Mrs. Holbrook, here?" Gilbert asked.
"No; Mrs. Holbrook went away on the morning after my master's death. I told you that when you called here last."
"I am quite aware of that; but I thought it likely Mrs. Holbrook might return here with her husband, to take possession of the property, which I suppose you know now belongs to her."
"Yes, I know all about that; but she hasn't come yet to take possession; she doesn't seem in such a desperate hurry about it. I daresay she knows that things are safe enough. Medler the lawyer is not the kind of party to be cheated out of sixpence. He has taken an inventory of every article in the place, and the weight and value of every article. Your friend Mrs. Holbrook needn't be afraid. I suppose she's some relation of yours, by-the-bye, sir, judging by the interest you seem to take in her affairs?"
"Yes," Gilbert said, not caring to answer this question directly, "I do take a warm interest in Mrs. Holbrook's affairs, and I am very anxious to see her placed in undisputed possession of her late grandfather's property."
"I should think her husband would see after that," Mr. Tulliver remarked with a sneer.
Gilbert left the court after having asked a few questions about Jacob Nowell's funeral. The old man had been buried at Kensalgreen, followed to the grave only by the devoted Tulliver, Mr. Medler, and the local surgeon who had attended him in his last illness. He had lived a lonely friendless life, holding himself aloof from his fellow-creatures; and there were neither neighbours nor friends to lament his ending. The vagabond boys of the neighbourhood had clustered round the door to witness the last dismal ceremony of Mr. Nowell's existence, and had hung about the shop-front for some time after the funeral cortège had departed, peering curiously down into the darksome area, and speculating upon the hoards of wealth which the old miser had hidden away in coal-cellars and dust-bins, under the stone flags of the scullery, or in the crannies of the dilapidated walls. There were no bounds to the imagination of these street Arabs, who had been in the habit of yelping and whooping at the old man's heels when he took his infrequent walks abroad, assailing him with derisive epithets alluding to his miserly propensities. Amongst the elders of the court there was some little talk about the dead man, and the probable disposal of his property, with a good deal of argument and laying down of the law on the part of the graver and wiser members of that community; some people affecting to know to a sixpence the amount of Jacob Nowell's savings, others accrediting him with the possession of fabulous riches, and all being unanimous in the idea that the old man's heir or heirs, as the case might be, would speedily scatter his long-hoarded treasures. Many of these people could remember the silversmith's prodigal son; but none among them were aware of that gentleman's return. They wondered a good deal as to whether he was still living, and whether the money had been left to him or to that pretty young woman who had appeared in the last days of the old man's life, no one knowing whence she had come. There was nothing to be gained from questioning Luke Tulliver, the court knew of old experience. The most mysterious dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition, the secret chambers under the leads in Venice, were not closer or deeper than the mind of that young man. The court had been inclined to think that Luke Tulliver would come into all his master's money; and opinion inclined that way even yet, seeing that Mr. Tulliver still held his ground in the shop, and that no strangers had been seen to enter the place since the funeral.
From Queen Anne's Court Gilbert Fenton went on to the gloomy street where Mr. Medler had his office and abode. It was not an hour for a professional visit; but Gilbert found the lawyer still hard at work at his desk, under the lurid light of a dirty-looking battered old oil-lamp, which left the corners of the dingy wainscoted room in profound obscurity. He looked up from his papers with some show of surprise on hearing Mr. Fenton's name announced by the slipshod maid-of-all-work who had admitted the late visitor, Mr. Medler's solitary clerk having departed to his own dwelling some hours before.
"I must ask you to excuse this untimely call, Mr. Medler," Gilbert said politely; "but the fact of the matter is, I am a little anxious about my friend Mrs. Holbrook and her affairs, and I thought you the most likely person to give me some information about them. I should have called in business hours; but I have only just returned from the country, and did not care to delay my inquiries until to-morrow. I have just come from Queen Anne's Court, and am rather surprised to find that neither Mrs. Holbrook nor her husband has been there. You have seen or heard from them since the funeral, I suppose?"
"No, Mr. Fenton, I have neither seen nor heard of them. I wrote a formal letter to Mrs. Holbrook, setting out the contents of the will; but there has been no answer as yet."
"Strange, is it not?" Gilbert exclaimed, with an anxious look.
"Well, yes, it is certainly not the usual course of proceeding. However, there is time enough yet. The funeral has not been over much more than a week. The property is perfectly safe, you know."
"Of course; but it is not the less extraordinary that Mr. Holbrook should hang back in this manner. I will go down to Hampshire the first thing to-morrow and see Mrs. Holbrook."
"Humph!" muttered the lawyer; "I can't say that I see any necessity for that. But of course you know best."
Gilbert Fenton did start for Hampshire early the next morning by the same train in which Marian had travelled after her grandfather's death. It was still quite early in the day when he found himself at Malsham, that quiet comfortable little market-town where he had first discovered a clue to the abode of his lost love. He went to the hotel, and hired a fly to take him to Crosber, where he left the vehicle at the old inn, preferring to walk on to the Grange. It was a bright November day, with a pale yellow sunlight shining on the level fields, and distant hills that rose beyond them crowned with a scanty fringe of firs, that stood out black and sharp against the clear autumn sky. It was a cheerful day, and a solitary bird was singing here and there, as if beguiled by that pleasant warmth and sunshine into the fond belief that winter was still far off and the glory of fields and woods not yet departed. Gilbert's spirits rose in some degree under the influence of that late brightness and sweet rustic calm. He fancied that there might be still some kind of happiness for him in the long years to come; pale and faint like the sunlight of to-day—an autumnal calm. If he might be Marian's friend and brother, her devoted counsellor, her untiring servant, it seemed to him that he could be content, that he could live on from year to year moderately happy in the occasional delight of her society; rewarded for his devotion by a few kind words now and then,—a letter, a friendly smile,—rewarded still more richly by her perfect trust in him.
These thoughts were in his mind to-day as he went along the lonely country lane leading to the Grange; thoughts which seemed inspired by the tranquil landscape and peaceful autumn day; thoughts which were full of the purest love and charity,—yes, even for his unknown rival, even if that rival should prove to be the one man in all this world from whom a deep wrong would seem most bitter.
"What am I, that I should measure the force of his temptation," he said to himself, "or the strength of his resistance? Let me be sure that he loves my darling as truly as I love her, that the chief object of his life has been and will be her happiness, and then let me put away all selfish vindictive thoughts, and fall quietly into the background of my dear one's life, content to be her brother and her friend."
The Grange looked unchanged in its sombre lonely aspect. The chrysanthemums were all withered by this time, and there were now no flowers in the old-fashioned garden. The bell was answered by the same woman who had admitted him before, and who made no parley about letting him in this time.
"My young missus said I was to be sure and let her know if you came, sir," she said; "she's very anxious to see you."
"Your young mistress; do you mean Mrs. Holbrook?"
"No, sir; Miss Carley, master's daughter."
"Indeed! I remember the young lady; I shall be very happy to see her if she has anything to say to me; but it is Mrs. Holbrook I have come to see. She is at home, I suppose?"
"O dear no, sir; Mrs. Holbrook has left, without a word of notice, gone nobody knows where. That is what has made our young missus fret about it so."
"Mrs. Holbrook has left!" Gilbert exclaimed in blank amazement; "when?"
"It's more than a week ago now, sir."
"And do none of you know why she went away, or where she has gone?"
"No more than the dead, sir. But you'd better see Miss Carley; she'll be able to tell you all about it."
The woman led him into the house, and to the room in which he had seen Marian. There was no fire here to-day, and the room had a desolate unoccupied look, though the sun was shining cheerfully on the old-fashioned many-paned windows. There were a few books, which Gilbert remembered as Marian's literary treasures, neatly arranged on a rickety old chiffonier by the fire-place, and the desk and work-basket which he had seen on his previous visit.
He was half bewildered by what the woman had told him, and his heart beat tumultuously as he stood by the empty hearth, waiting for Ellen Carley's coming. It seemed to him as if the girl never would come. The ticking of an old eight-day clock in the hall had a ghastly sound in the dead silence of the house, and an industrious mouse made itself distinctly heard behind the wainscot.
At last a light rapid footstep came tripping across the hall, and Ellen Carley entered the room. She was looking paler than when Gilbert had seen her last, and the bright face was very grave.
"For heaven's sake tell me what this means, Miss Carley," Gilbert began eagerly. "Your servant tells me that Mrs. Holbrook has left you—in some mysterious way, I imagine, from what the woman said."
"O, sir, I am so glad you have come here; I should have written to you if I had known where to address a letter. Yes, sir, she has gone—that dear sweet young creature—and I fear some harm has come to her."
The girl burst into tears, and for some minutes could say no more.
"Pray, pray be calm," Gilbert said gently, "and tell me all you can about this business. How did Mrs. Holbrook leave this place? and why do you suspect that any harm has befallen her?"
"There is every reason to think so, sir. Is it like her to leave us without a word of notice, knowing, as she must have known, the unhappiness she would cause to me, who love her so well, by such a step? She knew how I loved her. I think she had scarcely a secret from me."
"If you will only tell me the manner of her departure," Gilbert said rather impatiently.
"Yes, yes, sir; I am coming to that directly. She seemed happier after she came back from London, poor dear; and she told me that her grandfather had left her money, and that she was likely to become quite a rich woman. The thought of this gave her so much pleasure—not for her own sake, but for her husband's, whose cares and difficulties would all come to an end now, she told me. She had been back only a few days, when I left home for a day and a night, to see my aunt—an old woman and a constant invalid, who lives at Malsham. I had put off going to her for a long time, for I didn't care about leaving Mrs. Holbrook; but I had to go at last, my aunt thinking it hard that I couldn't spare time to spend a day with her, and tidy up her house a bit, and see to the girl that waits upon her, poor helpless thing. So I started off before noon one day, after telling Mrs. Holbrook where I was going, and when I hoped to be back. She was in very good spirits that morning, for she expected her husband next day. 'I have told him nothing about the good fortune that has come to me, Nelly,' she said; 'I have only written to him, begging him to return as quickly as possible, and he will be here to-morrow by the afternoon express.' Mr. Holbrook is a great walker, and generally walks from Malsham here, by a shorter way than the high-road, across some fields and by the river-bank. His wife used always to go part of the way to meet him when she knew he was coming. I know she meant to go and meet him this time. The way is very lonely, and I have often felt fidgety about her going alone, but she hadn't a bit of fear; and I didn't like to offer to go with her, feeling sure that Mr. Holbrook would be vexed by seeing me at such a time. Well, sir, I had arranged everything comfortably, so that she should miss nothing by my being away, and I bade her good-bye, and started off to walk to Malsham. I can't tell you how hard it seemed to me to leave her, for it was the first time we had been parted for so much as a day since she came to the Grange. I thought of her all the while I was at my aunt's; who has very fidgety ways, poor old lady, and isn't a pleasant person to be with. I felt quite in a fever of impatience to get home again; and was very glad when a neighbour's spring-cart dropped me at the end of the lane, and I saw the gray old chimneys above the tops of the trees. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when I got home; father was at tea in the oak-parlour where we take our meals, and the house was as quiet as a grave. I came straight to this room, but it was empty; and when I called Martha, she told me Mrs. Holbrook had gone out at one o'clock in the day, and had not been home since, though she was expected back to dinner at three. She had been away three hours then, and at a time when I knew she could not expect Mr. Holbrook, unless she had received a fresh letter from him to say that he was coming by an earlier train than usual. I asked Martha if there had been any letters for Mrs. Holbrook that day; and she told me yes, there had been one by the morning post. It was no use asking Martha what kind of letter it looked, and whether it was from Mr. Holbrook, for the poor ignorant creature can neither read nor write, and one handwriting is the same as another to her. Mrs. Holbrook had told her nothing as to where she was going, only saying that she would be back in an hour or two. Martha let her out at the gate, and watched her take the way towards the river-bank, and, seeing this, made sure she was going to meet her husband. Well, sir, five o'clock struck, and Mrs. Holbrook had not come home. I began to feel seriously uneasy about her. I told my father so; but he took the matter lightly enough at first, saying it was no business of ours, and that Mrs. Holbrook was just as well able to take care of herself as any one else. But after five o'clock I couldn't rest a minute longer; so I put on my bonnet and shawl and went down by the river-bank, after sending one of the farm-labourers to look for my poor dear in the opposite direction. It's a very lonely walk at the best of times, though a few of the country folks do go that way between Malsham and Crosber on market-days. There's scarcely a house to be seen for miles, except Wyncomb Farmhouse, Stephen Whitelaw's place, which lies a little way back from the river-bank, about a mile from here; besides that and a solitary cottage here and there, you won't see a sign of human life for four or five miles. Anybody might be pushed into the river and made away with in broad daylight, and no one need be the wiser. The loneliness of the place struck me with an awful fear that afternoon, and from that moment I began to think that I should never see Mrs. Holbrook again."
"What of her husband? He was expected on this particular afternoon, you say?"
"He was, sir; but he did not come till the next day. It was almost dark when I went to the river-bank. I walked for about three miles and a half, to a gate that opened into the fields by which Mr. Holbrook came across from Malsham. I knew his wife never went farther than this gate, but used to wait for him here, if she happened to be the first to reach it. I hurried along, half running all the way, and calling aloud to Mrs. Holbrook every now and then with all my might. But there was no answer. Some men in a boat loaded with hay stopped to ask me what was the matter, but they could tell me nothing. They were coming from Malsham, and had seen no one along the bank. I called at Mr. Whitelaw's as I came back, not with much hope that I should hear anything; but what could I do but make inquiries anywhere and everywhere? I was almost wild with fright by this time. They could tell me nothing at Wyncomb Farm. Stephen Whitelaw was alone in the kitchen smoking his pipe by a great fire. He hadn't been out all day, he told me, and none of his people had seen or heard anything out of the common. As to any harm having come to Mrs. Holbrook by the river-bank, he said he didn't think that was possible, for his men had been at work in the fields near the river all the afternoon, and must have seen or heard if there had been anything wrong. There was some kind of comfort in this, and I left the farm with my mind a little lighter than it had been when I went in there. I knew that Stephen Whitelaw was no friend to Mrs. Holbrook; that he had a kind of grudge against her because she had been on some one else's side—in—in something." Ellen Carley blushed as she came to this part of her story, and then went on rather hurriedly to hide her confusion. "He didn't like her, sir, you see. I knew this, but I didn't think it possible he could deceive me in a matter of life and death. So I came home, hoping to find Mrs. Holbrook there before me. But there were no signs of her, nor of her husband either, though I had fully expected to see him. Even father owned that things looked bad now, and he let me send every man about the place—some one way, and some another—to hunt for my poor darling. I went into Crosber myself, though it was getting late by this time, and made inquiries of every creature I knew in the village; but it was all no good: no one had seen anything of the lady I was looking for."
"And the husband?" Gilbert asked again; "what of him?"
"He came next day at the usual hour, after we had been astir all night, and the farm-labourers had been far and wide looking for Mrs. Holbrook. I never saw any one seem so shocked and horrified as he did when we told him how his wife had been missing for more than four-and-twenty hours. He is not a gentleman to show his feelings much at ordinary times, and he was quiet enough in the midst of his alarm; but he turned as white as death, and I never saw the natural colour come back to his face all the time he was down here."
"How long did he stay?"
"He only left yesterday. He was travelling about the country all the time, coming back here of a night to sleep, and with the hope that we might have heard something in his absence. The river was dragged for three days; but, thank God, nothing came of that. Mr. Holbrook set the Malsham police to work—not that they're much good, I think; but he wouldn't leave a stone unturned. And now I believe he has gone to London to get help from the police there. But O, sir, I can't make it out, and I have lain awake, night after night thinking of it, and puzzling myself about it, until all sorts of dreadful fancies come into my mind."
"What fancies?"
"O, sir, I scarcely dare tell you; but I loved that sweet young lady so well, that I have been as watchful and jealous in all things that concerned her as if she had been my own sister. I have thought sometimes that her husband had grown tired of her; that, however dearly he might have loved her at first, as I suppose he did, his love had worn out little by little, and he felt her a burden to him. What other reason could there be for him to keep her hidden away in this dull place, month after month, when he must have seen that her youth and beauty and gaiety of heart were slowly vanishing away, if he had eyes to see anything?"
"But, good Heavens!" Gilbert exclaimed, startled by the sudden horror of the idea which Ellen Carley's words suggested, "you surely do not imagine that Marian's husband had any part in her disappearance? that he could be capable of——"
"I don't know what to think, sir," the girl answered, interrupting him. "I know that I have never liked Mr. Holbrook—never liked or trusted him from the first, though he has been civil enough and kind enough in his own distant way to me. That dear young lady could not disappear off the face of the earth, as it seems she has done, without the evil work of some one. As to her leaving this place of her own free will, without a word of warning to her husband or to me, that I am sure she would never dream of doing. No, sir, there has been foul play of some kind, and I'm afraid I shall never see that dear face again."
The girl said this with an air of conviction that sent a deadly chill to Gilbert Fenton's heart. It seemed to him in this moment of supreme anguish as if all his trouble of the past, all his vague fears and anxieties about the woman he loved, had been the foreshadowing of this evil to come. He had a blank helpless feeling, a dismal sense of his own weakness, which for the moment mastered him. Against any ordinary calamity he would have held himself bravely enough, with the natural strength of an ardent hopeful character; but against this mysterious catastrophe courage and manhood could avail nothing. She was gone, the fragile helpless creature he had pledged himself to protect; gone from all who knew her, leaving not the faintest clue to her fate. Could he doubt that this energetic warm-hearted girl was right, and that some foul deed had been done, of which Marian Holbrook was the victim?
"If she lives, I will find her," he said at last, after a long pause, in which he had sat in gloomy silence, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, meditating the circumstances of Marian's disappearance. "Living or dead, I will find her. It shall be the business of my life from this hour. All my serious thoughts have been of her from the moment in which I first knew her. They will be doubly hers henceforward."
"How good and true you are!" Ellen Carley exclaimed admiringly; "and how you must have loved her! I guessed when you were here last that it was you to whom she was engaged before her marriage, and told her as much; but she would not acknowledge that I was right. O, how I wish she had kept faith with you! how much happier she might have been as your wife!"
"People have different notions of happiness, you see, Miss Carley," Gilbert answered with a bitter smile. "Yes, you were right; it was I who was to have been Marian Nowell's husband, whose every hope of the future was bound up in her. But all that is past; whatever bitterness I felt against her at first—and I do not think I was ever very bitter—has passed away. I am nothing now but her friend, her steadfast and constant friend."
"Thank heaven that she has such a friend," Ellen said earnestly. "And you will make it your business to look for her, sir?"
"The chief object of my life, from this hour."
"And you will try to discover whether her husband is really true, or whether the search that he has made for her has been a blind to hide his own guilt?"
"What grounds have you for supposing his guilt possible?" asked Gilbert. "There are crimes too detestable for credibility; and this would be such a one. You may imagine that I have no friendly feeling towards this man, yet I cannot for an instant conceive him capable of harming a hair of his wife's head."
"Because you have not brooded upon this business as I have, sir, for hours and hours together, until the smallest things seem to have an awful meaning. I have thought of every word and every look of Mr. Holbrook's in the past, and all my thoughts have pointed one way. I believe that he was tired of his sweet young wife; that his marriage was a burden and a trouble to him somehow; that it had arisen out of an impulse that had passed away."
"All this might be, and yet the man be innocent."
"He might be—yes, sir. It is a hard thing, perhaps, even to think him guilty for a moment. But it is so difficult to account in any common way for Mrs. Holbrook's disappearance. If there had been murder done" (the girl shuddered as she said the words)—"a common murder, such as one hears of in lonely country places—surely it must have come to light before this, after the search that has been made all round about. But it would have been easy enough for Mr. Holbrook to decoy his wife away to London or anywhere else. She would have gone anywhere with him, at a moment's notice. She obeyed him implicitly in everything."
"But why should he have taken her away from this place in a secret manner?" asked Gilbert; "he was free to remove her openly. And then you describe him as taking an amount of trouble in his search for her, which might have been so easily avoided, had he acted with ordinary prudence and caution. Say that he wanted to keep the secret of his marriage from the world in which he lives, and to place his wife in even a more secluded spot than this—which scarcely seems possible—what could have been easier for him than to take her away when and where he pleased? No one here would have had any right to question his actions."
Ellen Carley shook her head doubtfully.
"I don't know, sir," she answered slowly; "I daresay my fancies are very foolish; they may have come, perhaps, out of thinking about this so much, till my brain has got addled, as one may say. But it flashed upon me all of a sudden one night, as Mr. Holbrook was standing in our parlour talking about his wife—it flashed upon me that he was in the secret of her disappearance, and that he was only acting with us in his pretence of anxiety and all that; I fancied there was a guilty look in his face, somehow."
"Did you tell him about his wife's good fortune—the money left her by her grandfather?"
"I did, sir; I thought it right to tell him everything I could about my poor dear young lady's journey to London. She had told him of that in her letters, it seemed, but not about the money. She had been keeping that back for the pleasure of telling him with her own lips, and seeing his face light up, she said to me, when he heard the good news. I asked him about the letter which had come in the morning of the day she disappeared, and whether it was from him; but he said no, he had not written, counting upon being with his wife that evening. It was only at the last moment he was prevented coming."
"You have looked for that letter, I suppose?"
"O yes, sir; I searched, and Mr. Holbrook too, in every direction, but the letter wasn't to be found. He seemed very vexed about it, very anxious to find it. We could not but think that Mrs. Holbrook had gone to meet some one that day, and that the letter had something to do with her going out. I am sure she would not have gone beyond the garden and the meadow for pleasure alone. She never had been outside the gate without me, except when she went to meet her husband."
"Strange!" muttered Gilbert.
He was wondering about that letter: what could have been the lure which had beguiled Marian away from the house that day; what except a letter from her husband? It seemed hardly probable that she would have gone to meet any one but him, or that any one else would have appointed a meeting on the river-bank. The fact that she had gone out at an earlier hour than the time at which she had been in the habit of meeting her husband when he came from the Malsham station, went some way to prove that the letter had influenced her movements. Gilbert thought of the fortune which had been left to Marian, and which gave her existence a new value, perhaps exposed her to new dangers. Her husband's interests were involved in her life; her death, should she die childless, must needs deprive him of all advantage from Jacob Nowell's wealth. The only person to profit from such an event would be Percival Nowell; but he was far away, Gilbert believed, and completely ignorant of his reversionary interest in his father's property. There was Medler the attorney, a man whom Gilbert had distrusted from the first. It was just possible that the letter had been from him; yet most improbable that he should have asked Mrs. Holbrook to meet him out of doors, instead of coming to her at the Grange, or that she should have acceded to such a request, had he made it.