Rupert Godwin

SUSPENSE.

Rupert Godwin was too desperately circumstanced, and too hardened a sinner, to be much affected by the revelation made by the Duke of Harlingford with regard to Esther Vanberg’s identity with his deserted daughter. Are there human beings created without that attribute of the mind, that natural love and tenderness, pity and remorse, which we blend into one general whole and call “a heart”?

It would seem so; it would seem as if there are some natures in which there is no such element as heart or conscience. These are the exceptional criminals whom men wonder at, and whose iniquities the merciful are apt to ascribe to mental disease.

The banker had been struck by Esther Vanberg’s likeness to the lovely Spanish Jewess whom his treachery had lured from the home of a doting father, a rich wine-merchant of Seville, who had toiled long and patiently in order to amass the fortune which was to secure the future welfare of his only child, Lola. The girl was engaged to be married to the cashier in the Seville banking-house belonging to the Godwin firm, when the young roué saw her, and at once determined to oust his inferior.

Rupert Godwin was handsomer and more polished than his employé. He was already a man of the world; the cashier was only an honest and devoted lover, eager to achieve a better position in life before he claimed the heiress of old Isaac Mendez. While the young man worked at his bureau, the employer hung about the footsteps of the merchant’s daughter, followed her to church and bull-fight, bribed her old nurse, flattered and fooled her doting father, and turned the poor girl’s head by his impassioned pleading. The end came only too quickly—the hackneyed conclusion of the hackneyed story.

Lola let herself quietly out of the paternal dwelling one starless, airless summer night, and left Seville under the protection of Rupert Godwin. They started at once for Paris, where Lola had been told the marriage would take place. There were reasons why it could not be performed at Seville. Mr. Godwin’s father had formed plans of his own for his son’s matrimonial settlement, and for a time the marriage would have to be kept secret.

“There is no safer place than Paris,” said Rupert; and Lola, who had heard Paris talked of as a kind of earthly elysium, was quite ready to agree to this proposal.

In Paris the banker lodged his divinity in one of the prettiest villas in the Champs Elysées, a bijou mansion built and decorated in the Moorish style, at a fabulous outlay, for a Muscovite prince lately deceased, and bought under the hammer by Mr. Godwin at about ten per cent of its original cost. In this luxurious nest Lola Mendez found herself a kind of fairy princess—flattered, beloved; but she never became the wife of Rupert Godwin.

Rupert Godwin had thought it quite probable that the figurante might be his own daughter; but he had concerned himself no more about her fortunes in her lovely and reckless womanhood than he had done in her deserted girlhood.

But when the Duke showed him the portrait of his victim, the proud man did feel the humiliation of his position. He winced beneath the cold contempt of the generous young patrician, for he was not without the plebeian’s natural reverence for rank, and it was hard to be despised by a duke. He had sunk so very low now, that every new stroke wounded him to the quick. Hemmed in on every side by danger, a superstitious terror had taken possession of him, and he saw in every incident of his troubled life a new omen of ruin.

His daughter’s flight had filled him with unspeakable fear. He had loved this girl with the bad man’s selfish love, which sees in the beloved object only a source of pleasure or happiness to himself; still, he had loved her, and he felt her desertion deeply.

But this was the least element in his trouble. Julia knew his guilty secret; she doubtless possessed the proof that in intention, if not in act, he was a poisoner.

Would she betray him? Surely, not willingly. But she might be seized with a fever, such as that which had stricken Lionel Westford, and in her delirium she might utter the accusing words which would lead, perhaps, step by step, to the discovery of all his crimes.

Ah, if the criminal could only foresee the agonies that follow the commission of crime, even when the torturing voice of conscience is dumb; if he could calculate the labour, the patience, the self-abnegation, the watchfulness which will be required of him during every hour of his ensuing existence, in which the one end and aim of his life will be to keep that secret,—surely the very selfishness which suggests the crime would restrain the hand of the criminal.

The search for Julia had been, so far, made in vain. Advertisements had been inserted in the papers; inquiries had been made in every direction, but without avail. If she had read the appeals in those advertisements, Julia had been inexorable, for she had never answered them.

But Julia had not read those advertisements. While private detectives were searching for her in every direction suggested by Rupert Godwin, the missing girl had fled to a neighbourhood which the banker had never dreamt of suggesting.

She had dressed herself, upon the morning of her flight, in some dark homely garments which she had been making for the poor; and, thus disguised, with an unfashionable straw bonnet, and a thick veil over her face, she had walked to Hertford in the dewy morning, while it was yet scarcely light. She had taken the first train for London, stepping quite unobserved into a second-class carriage. From the station at King’s Cross she had driven straight to Waterloo, going thence by express to Winchester. At the Winchester station she had taken a fly, which drove her to a quiet retreat in the New Forest.

In her journey thither she had evidently a settled purpose, for her conduct from first to last had betrayed no hesitation as to whither she should go.

Three or four days after the old clerk’s visit to the lodging in the Waterloo-road, Clara Westford received a letter in the handwriting which had been so familiar to her in her early girlhood, when the deformed schoolmaster had devoted himself to her education, inspired by a passion which had been the keynote of his life,—such a passion as Quasimodo felt for the beautiful dancing-girl—such a passion as in the breast of Quasimodo’s master, the priest of Nôtre Dame, called itself fatality.

The old clerk’s letter was very brief:—

“I told you I could atone in some measure for the wrong I inflicted upon you when I imagined your father’s treatment of me was inspired by your express request. You shall see that I can make some amends for having thus suspected you of conduct which was foreign to your noble nature. If you will come with your daughter to the bank parlour this day week, at twelve o’clock, you will receive my atonement; and at the same time you will, perhaps, experience the greatest and the happiest surprise that you have ever known in the whole course of your life.

“—Your respectful and obedient
“Jacob Danielson.

“Tuesday morning.”

A surprise! An atonement! It was quite in vain that Clara Westford perused and reperused the old clerk’s letter in the hope of discovering something of its meaning.

A surprise—a happy surprise—wrote Jacob Danielson. Alas, what happy surprise could there be for her, since her husband, the lover of her youth, the adored friend and companion of her womanhood, met his fate at the hands of an assassin?

“Unless Jacob Danielson can bring the dead back to life, I know not what happiness he can give me,” thought Clara mournfully.

She was almost crushed down by the weight of her sorrows. They had come upon her, one after another, without even a brief interval of peace. Only a short time had elapsed since her daughter had been restored to her, and already a new grief was racking the mother’s heart.

Her son had never responded to that letter in which she had told him of her meeting with Gilbert Thornleigh—a letter which was of a nature to demand an immediate answer.

Day after day she had expected the reply; but none had come—for the reader knows the cause of Lionel Westford’s silence, and how little power he had to respond to that appalling communication. The mother wrote again and again, imploring some answer to her anxious letters; but still the post brought no tidings of the beloved son.

Mrs. Westford had no address, except the Hertford post-office, to which she could direct her letters. She believed her son to be living in the town of Hertford, and she had imagined that forgetfulness alone had prevented his sending her the address of the house in which he lived.

But as time wore on, and still no answer came to her letters, Clara Westford felt that something must have happened to her son. Lionel was the last in the world to neglect a mother’s supplicating letters; he had always been the most attentive and devoted of sons.

“My boy is ill,” exclaimed Clara, when she found herself no longer able to keep her uneasiness hidden from Violet. “He must be dangerously ill,” she cried; “dying, perhaps; for if he were able to hold his pen, if he were able to dictate a letter, I am sure that he would not leave me in this state of suspense.”

On the day after she had received Jacob Danielson’s letter, Mrs. Westford determined on going to Hertford. Her little stock of money was nearly exhausted; but she had just enough to pay the expenses of the journey, and she had no longer the grim visage of starvation frowning upon her darkly in the future, for Violet’s mysterious good fortune had changed the worldly position of the widow and her daughter.

“Do not despair, dearest mother,” pleaded Violet; “even amidst all our bitter miseries, Providence has not wholly deserted us. What can be more providential than the chance by which I inherit a fortune from some mysterious benefactress, whose name I do not even know? Depend upon it, dearest mother, the turning-point has come on the dark road, and in future our path will be smoother than it has been during the last year, even though we may have little sunshine to illumine our lives,” murmured Violet sadly.

She was thinking of George Stanmore, the lover whose fancied inconstancy was the settled sorrow of her life—a grief endured so patiently, a burden borne with such Christian resignation, that it had left no shadow on the calm loveliness of her pensive face. Her beauty was altered in character since the days when she had wandered, light-hearted as some wood-nymph, in the depths of the New Forest; but it was even more exquisite now in its pensive gravity of expression than it had been when radiant with the smiles of careless girlhood.

Mrs. Westford set out alone for Hertford. Violet had entreated to be allowed to accompany her mother, but Clara refused.

“No, Violet,” she said; “Heaven only knows what I may have to go through. I may find my boy lying in his grave, buried by strangers who did not even know of his mother’s existence. I may find him on a sick-bed: in that case I need not tell you that I shall remain with him. But, whatever may happen, I will telegraph to you, Violet, if I am detained.”

It was with a very heavy heart that Clara Westford started on that journey. She seated herself in the corner of a second-class carriage, with her face hidden by a shabby crape veil; and she took little notice of her fellow-passengers, or of the autumn landscape that spun past the open windows of the carriage. Her heart was oppressed by the anticipation of some calamity. The image of her beloved son, racked by sickness, or lying still in death, haunted her brain with a torturing persistence. The voices of her companions jarred upon her ears. It was so terrible to hear their careless laughter—their gay discussions of the pleasures awaiting them at the end of their journey—their eager talk of business to be done, and money to be gained, at this or that market-town—their speculation and argumentation about the state of the crops in the country they were passing through—while before her there was only a blank horizon, darkened by the shadow of a hideous fear. It seemed to her that her life and her sorrows must be exceptional in a world where people could be so busy and so free from care as all these fellow-passengers appeared to be.

At last she reached her destination, and a sickness like death itself came over her as she told herself that she would soon learn the worst. She went at once to one of the porters, and inquired her way from the station to the post-office.

Here she fancied that her suspense would end. The people belonging to the office would be able to tell her the address of her son, and she would have nothing to do but to go straight to his lodging.

But an unutterable despair took possession of her when the woman who answered her inquiries told her that she knew nothing whatever of the gentleman whose letters had been addressed to him under the name of Lionel Westford.

“We have so many people call for letters,” she said, “that it is quite impossible we can remember them all.”

On looking into the pigeon-hole where the letters addressed under the initial W. were deposited, the woman found three letters directed to Lionel Westford.

Clara asked permission to look at them, and found that they were her own three letters of inquiry, written one after the other during the period of her alarm respecting Lionel.

The woman returned them to the pigeon-hole, as she could give them up to no one but the person to whom they were addressed.

Mrs. Westford asked the postmistress if she remembered the gentleman who had been accustomed to call for letters bearing that address.

Yes, the woman remembered him perfectly. She had been struck by his good looks, his affable manner. She remembered the last time he called. It was on a very bright afternoon, but she could not say exactly how long ago.

Had he ever told her in what part of the town he lived?

No, he had been very reserved, though so pleasant-spoken. He had never said anything about himself.

After this, Clara Westford wandered hopelessly about the town until long after dark, making inquiries in every direction where she thought there might be the smallest chance of obtaining a clue to Lionel’s whereabouts.

She went to a printseller’s, to several booksellers’, to all the inns, even to humble little taverns in obscure by-streets and alleys, where poverty alone would seek a resting-place. But there was only one answer to her inquiries. No one had heard the name of Westford—no one had met with any stranger from London answering to the description which Mrs. Westford gave of her son.

It was ten o’clock when Clara returned to the railway station, disconsolate and broken-hearted. Fortunately for her, the last train had not yet left; and after waiting some time she took her place in one of the second-class carriages, and was conveyed back to London as ignorant of her son’s whereabouts as she had been when she set out that morning to seek for him.

Violet knew by her mother’s face, the moment she looked at her, that no good tidings had greeted her at Hertford.

She knelt by Mrs. Westford’s side, removed the heavy black shawl from her shoulders with gentle, caressing hands, and tried by every means in her power to console the unhappy woman.

“You have not found him, mother,” she said. “I can see that by your face. But is it not better to be still uncertain of his fate than to know, perhaps, that we have lost him? There is always hope where there is uncertainty. Ill news travels fast, you know, dearest. I am sure we should have heard if anything serious had happened to my brother. If he had been seized with illness, we should have been told of it. He must have had letters about him containing our address, and in such cases there is always some good Samaritan to summon a sick man’s relations. Do you know, mamma darling, I have an idea that the surprise alluded to in Mr. Danielson’s letter must be something that concerns Lionel. Try to hope this, dearest; and do not give way to grief which may be entirely groundless.”

With such a loving comforter, Clara Westford could not quite despair. At the worst, it was a relief not to have heard ill news of Lionel. He had left Hertford most likely. His letters had been intrusted to strangers, perhaps, to carry to the post, and had never been posted. And again, in spite of herself, Clara could not help feeling some confidence in the mysterious hints of the old clerk.

A surprise, and a happy surprise, he had written. Ah, surely some great joy must be in store for her. She had suffered so much, that it was scarcely unreasonable she should expect some blessing at the hands of Providence.

“But they cannot give me back the dead,” thought Clara. “I can only hope to go down to the grave in peace, with my children by my side. No power on earth can restore the lost, nor give me back the happy days in which my husband and I walked side by side in the dear old garden at the Grange.”

As she mused thus, the widow’s thoughts went back to that happy time. She fancied herself once more leaning on her husband’s arm—proud of him, and of his love; the happiest wife whose heart ever beat faster at the sound of a husband’s footstep.

On the day which had been mentioned in the clerk’s letter, Clara Westford and her daughter dressed themselves neatly in their mourning garments and walked into the City.

Clara’s mind had been much disturbed by the mysterious tenor of the old man’s letter.

That he should ask her to meet him in the bank parlour was in itself very extraordinary. That room was the sanctuary of Rupert Godwin; and the clerk must have unusual power if he could venture to make any appointment of his own in that apartment.

But the entire contents of the letter were a mystery to Clara, and she resolved on obeying the old clerk in blind confidence, since she was quite unable to penetrate his motives. His manner had impressed her with the perfect sincerity of his wish to serve her.

Thus it was that she presented herself at the bank in Lombard-street at the appointed hour, accompanied by her daughter.

The two ladies were shown at once into the parlour, where they found Rupert Godwin seated at the table, with Jacob Danielson standing at the back of his chair.