Torwood's trust

t was on a Tuesday morning that Maud said good-bye to her brother, and saw him set out for Yorkshire; and on the Wednesday morning, whilst riding out through the great avenue, she was surprised to see her Aunt Celia, walking in her resolute way up to the house.

Mrs. Belassis seldom visited Ladywell, and never before had she been there at so unseasonable an hour. Maud looked wonderingly at her, and stopped her horse, as she met the business-like figure.

‘Do you want anybody, Aunt Celia?’ she asked. ‘You will only find Aunt Olive at home. Phil has gone into Yorkshire, but he will be back this evening. Can I do anything for you?’

‘Your brother is away, is he?’ asked Mrs. Belassis, as though surprised. In reality she was perfectly well aware of the fact. Had her nephew been at home, she would not have taken the trouble to pay this visit.

‘Yes; but he comes back to-night. Can I give him any message?’

Mrs. Belassis seemed to consider.

‘Well, as I am so near I will go on and see your Aunt Olive,’ she said indifferently. ‘I had a question I wished to ask Philip; but that can wait. I will not interrupt you, my dear. I hope you will have a pleasant ride.’

Maud rode on, a disdainful look crossing her pretty face.

‘I wonder if Aunt Celia is up to anything,’ she mused. ‘She generally is when she smiles and says “my dear,” and puts on her gracious air. How I do loathe Aunt Celia! I do believe she is worse than Uncle Belassis. I am afraid she is Phil’s enemy—not that that matters much, for she couldn’t do him any harm. Sometimes I fancy Phil has something on his mind; but I don’t see that he need. I wonder why he said yesterday that he was sure Aunt Olive and I would always stand his friends, through thick and thin. I should think I just would!’ and Maud’s eyes flashed. ‘I’d stand by him whatever happened—whatever he’d said or done, or whatever people said of him. There’s nobody like my Phil. I love his little finger better than all the rest of the world put together. If ever he is in any danger, won’t I show him how I love him!’

Maud’s whole face glowed, and she urged her horse to a gallop in her generous enthusiasm, and rode far and fast that day.

Mrs. Belassis walked boldly up to the house. She did not ring the bell, although she was on anything but intimate terms with the household at Ladywell; she preferred to walk straight into the great hall, where she paused and looked about her.

Nobody was in sight. Neither manservant nor maidservant, bond nor free, had observed her entrance, and with a certain snake-like look of satisfaction, she quietly crossed the hall, and entered a small room which looked over the garden, and which generally went by the name of ‘Phil’s den.’

Once inside this room, she closed the door softly and stealthily, and looked for a moment as though she would have locked it too; but on second thoughts she seemed to decide against doing so, and muttering, ‘It might look suspicious if anyone should come,’ turned away.

The room was not large, and was furnished quite in bachelor fashion, with a shabby but luxuriously easy leather chair, a multitude of pipes and cigar-boxes; one small table beside the easy-chair, which was strewn with newspapers and smoking apparatus, and a large writing-table full of drawers which stood in the window. The walls were adorned by guns and fishing-tackle, and by some engravings which showed greater taste for art, and less for sport, than do most bachelors’ pictures. It was a snug, cosy room; and the presence of a second and much daintier armchair, in the opposite corner, seemed to indicate that Maud liked at times to be her brother’s ‘den companion.’

Mrs. Belassis’ keen eye took all this in at a glance. She saw in a moment where lay her work, and she seated herself in a quiet business-like way at the writing-table.

‘It will be rather odd,’ she muttered to herself, ‘if amongst all his papers I do not find something to give me a clue, if there is anything wrong, and I’m not generally deceived when I take an idea into my head.’

Mrs. Belassis set to work in a methodical way. She began with the small drawers at the top of the table, and turned the contents rapidly over, spreading out the papers and glancing quickly over them. She did not seem to find anything of any interest amongst these, and in ten minutes that part of her search was completed.

It was with greater deliberation that she commenced to open the larger drawers on either side of her; and her face was more set, her eyes more curious than ever, as this task proceeded.

First came papers and memoranda connected with the Ladywell property, bills, receipts, correspondence as to cattle, hay, poultry, and the thousand and one transactions necessitated by a farm and estate. Tor was not a specially orderly man, but he had a method of classification with his papers, which enabled him to lay his hand readily upon anything he wanted.

A few minutes’ study convinced Mrs. Belassis that there was nothing to be gained by a minute inspection of these papers, so they were replaced in their drawer, and the next one opened.

This contained private bills and correspondence, and Mrs. Belassis looked as if she anticipated considerable information from the heap of papers she drew out.

‘Extravagant!’ she muttered more than once; a dark look crossing her face as she came across receipted bills for dresses, jewellery, and finery of all kinds for Maud, and handsome silks and laces, in which she knew her sister Olive had appeared.

Still, amongst all these bills and papers she did not seem to find what she wanted, although more than enough to annoy and anger her. The letters were all addressed to ‘Philip Debenham, Esq.,’ and were for the most part petitions from charitable institutions, notices from picture-dealers, or offers of everything for nothing from companies and tradespeople.

These papers were replaced in their drawer, and the search continued.

The third drawer upon that side was locked, so with rather a significant smile Mrs. Belassis tried the first on the next side. This opened readily enough, but merely contained a supply of writing-paper, envelopes, stamps, and pens, which, by its orderly appearance, seemed to have been given over to Maud’s willing care. The drawer below contained the farm-books, the garden-book and the stable-book, which had been kept with scrupulous exactness by old Mr. Maynard, and which his successor had taken some apparent pains to keep in their old accuracy under a new régime.

The third drawer, again, was locked.

‘These must be the two that I want,’ said Mrs. Belassis under her breath; and again she glanced towards the door, as though she would have liked to lock it, but considered it more prudent to abstain.

A looker-on might have been tempted to wonder how Mrs. Belassis proposed to get at the contents of those locked drawers. Was she going to force the locks? Not at all. Whatever her husband might be, Mrs. Belassis was never clumsy. What she undertook to do, was done neatly, and even artistically.

Ladies of some social standing do not usually visit their friends’ houses with skeleton-keys hidden away in their pockets; but it was nothing more nor less than this useful little implement that Mrs. Belassis drew out now; and with the snake-like look more visible than ever in her eyes, she set about her task.

Kneeling down upon the floor, she soon had the first drawer open, and had taken from thence the documents it held.

There was Phil’s cheque-book first of all, and then a few papers folded and held together by an elastic band. There was a bag, which evidently held some money, and behind all these some papers and relics, which were evidently all that had come to him from the effects of the father and mother. Belassis had taken care that such mementoes should be but few.

The cheque-book first claimed Mrs. Belassis’ earnest attention. She studied the counterfoils closely, and then began comparing the sums with the amounts upon the bills she had previously found. Naturally they corresponded accurately enough; but what Mrs. Belassis noticed was this, that for at least six bills (all presents for Maud) which were specified to have been settled ‘by cheque,’ no counterfoil was to be found: and this fact seemed significant of something, though of what she could not yet say.

Next the family relics were contemptuously turned over, and put back in their place, and Mrs. Belassis now commenced the study of the papers enclosed by the elastic band.

There were but two of them after all, though one was of a bulk and importance that gave it the substance of half a dozen ordinary letters. The crabbed characters were familiar to her eye, and it did not need the colossal signature ‘T. M. Maynard’ to tell her that it had been penned by her late uncle, the former master of Ladywell.

It was, in fact, nothing less than the dead man’s letter to his nephew, Philip Debenham, which Tor had read in the little hotel at Hornberg.

With a subdued exclamation of curiosity and satisfaction, Mrs. Belassis sat down to read the document; and as she did so, her face assumed an expression not at all agreeable to look upon. She read the paper not once, but twice; and the venomous expression deepened upon her face, until it grew positively hideous in its intensity.

Then she turned the paper over and over, and opened out its stiff folds, although the writing had only occupied the first page, and in so doing her attention was caught by a few pencilled words written on the inside, as if by an afterthought. And she was convinced by the manner in which the paper opened, that hers had been the first hand which had unfolded it. An eager yet dark look crossed her face, as she took in the sense of that after-message.

‘Your father once gave me to understand that he had drawn up a more equitable will, and had hidden it away somewhere in my library. I told him he had better take it out and give it to a lawyer to keep. And I think he must have taken it out—and destroyed it; for I never could find it, though I took the trouble to make a thorough search. He was just a muddler with his affairs, and a dreamer too. You may be sure he made away with the will in a moment of weakness; but of course if you choose to search for it, you can—you won’t find it.’

As she took in the import of these words, Mrs. Belassis fairly trembled. The anger which had disfigured her face before, gave way now to a look more nearly approaching terror; and then, after a few minutes of deep thought, she folded the paper once more and put it in her pocket.

‘I will show it to Alfred. He must see it. Then the pencilled words shall be erased, and I will take an early opportunity to return the paper. There are a hundred chances to one that it will not be missed. Now for the other.’

The other was Maud’s eager letter to her brother, written to him at Hornberg, to announce her delight and eager anticipation. The terms in which it was couched were not calculated to soothe Mrs. Belassis, and a look of bitter hatred crossed her face.

‘The little reptile, the little toad—making mischief from the very first! Oh, but I will be even with her! She shall learn to rue the day when first she tried to poison her brother’s minds against us—putting all sorts of suspicions into his head. Faugh! the ingratitude of the little viper!’

Mrs. Belassis folded the letter, and flung it into the drawer after the other things, and then she viciously locked it. Her mind was so much disturbed by her late discoveries, that she was almost tempted to pursue her researches no further, confident that she had found the most important papers in existence. But the dogged stubbornness of her character prevailed over her preoccupation and dismay, and she remembered that although she had found something of the greatest importance, she had not found anything of the character she had hoped—nothing to compromise her nephew, or to verify the very dim suspicion that had entered into her head. What that suspicion was she would have found it hard to say; all that she told even herself as yet was that there was ‘something odd’ about Phil, and that she believed there was ‘some mystery’ going on. So far, however, she had found nothing to encourage such an idea, and with a certain sense of having been baffled, she opened the sixth and last drawer.

There were not many papers here; but there was a second cheque-book, and upon the inside of the cover was written ‘Tor’s cheque-book.’ There was also a bank-book labelled ‘Torrington Torwood, Esq.;’ and rapid reference to the former showed Mrs. Belassis that the missing counterfoils of cheques she knew to have been written by Phil, were to be found, not in his, but in Mr. Torwood’s cheque-book.

This was something of a facer, and she felt a triumphant joy in finding anything so like a mystery. She did not pause now to try and unravel it, but passed on to the other contents of the drawer.

There were two letters from a certain ‘Marjory Descartes,’ asking Phil to go over to ‘Whitbury’ to settle some business for Mr. Torwood, and there were one or two business communications from agents or bankers, referring to Phil some question about Mr. Torwood’s affairs. These were read with a certain sense of disappointment, as they seemed to show that Phil was openly acting as his friend’s agent; but hope rose again when a deeper dive into the drawer brought out a little packet of papers, some quite old and yellow, which proved to be I O U’s for various sums, all signed ‘Philip Debenham.’

‘Moneys Mr. Torwood lent him, evidently,’ mused Mrs. Belassis. ‘Oh, then Phil’s friend was not quite so disinterested, after all, as we were led to think. I thought there was something odd about it. But how comes Phil to have these papers now? There is no evidence that he has redeemed them. It is a large sum—nearly £3,000, I should say. His cheque-book shows no mention of Mr. Torwood, and I should have heard from Alfred, I think, if he had handed over any very large sum whilst the securities were being settled. I don’t understand why he keeps them if they are redeemed, and why he has not a receipt for the amount if it is paid. If not, how comes he by the papers at all?’

Certainly, what with one thing and what with another, Mrs. Belassis had ample food for meditation; but she had stayed so long that she feared to linger. She locked up the drawer, and was preparing to leave, when Maud came suddenly in, in her riding-habit.

‘Aunt Celia, you here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have you been here all this while? Aunt Olive says she has never even seen you. What can you have been doing all this time? Two whole hours!’

Maud looked both excited and suspicious. This was her house, and she was mistress; and she considered that her Aunt Celia had taken a great liberty in making her way in unobserved, and shutting herself up in Phil’s den. Her face showed as much very plainly.

Mrs. Belassis looked at her with her cold smile.

‘Do not act and speak like a spoilt child, my dear. It is not becoming to a young mistress. I fear you are forgetting the lessons I instilled into your mind at Thornton House.’

‘Oh, there is no fear of my forgetting your lessons or Thornton House either,’ cried Maud, with what sounded very like defiance in her tone. ‘But I hope I have shaken off the effects of that yoke. What I want to know is, why you have been shut up in Phil’s room for two hours—in his private room.’

Mrs. Belassis looked at the indignant Maud with a smile of cool disdain.

‘As this is your brother’s house, over which you preside, I will condescend to reply, otherwise I should decline to answer such an insolent interrogation. After I left you I made a tour of the gardens and hot-houses, which I am never invited to inspect, of course, owing to the kind politeness of the mistress of Ladywell. After I had enjoyed the sweetness of the flowers and trees for above an hour, I came here to write a note to Philip; but what I wrote did not satisfy me, and I tore up the letter and determined to wait till I could see him personally. Just as I was about to leave the room my niece entered, and here we are now, face to face. Are you satisfied?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered Maud; ‘but I hear what you say. Are you going? Good-bye. If you care to see Aunt Olive she is in the drawing-room. We shall have lunch in an hour.’

‘I will go home, thank you,’ said Mrs. Belassis coldly. ‘Good-bye, my dear.’

Maud watched her cross the hall, a distrustful and angry light in her eyes.

‘She always gets the best of it with me. I can never be politely cutting to Aunt Celia, as Phil is. I am always rude, and she makes me feel like a schoolgirl. How I detest her! I wonder why she came. I know what she said was all lies. What can she have been up to? I wonder what that letter to Phil was that she wrote and destroyed. Did she write a letter at all?’ Maud went forward and carefully looked about for torn fragments of paper, but could find none.

‘If she wrote it she took it away in her pocket,’ said Maud; and then she opened the ink-bottle and saw that it had been washed out that morning and not refilled. Mrs. Belassis had certainly written no letter there that day. What she had done, the girl was at a loss to imagine. All that she could tell was that her aunt’s visit was certain to mean mischief of some kind.

Mrs. Belassis had ample food for reflection on her homeward way, and very earnestly did she strive to form some theory as to the respective position of Phil and his friend, so as to prove, if possible, that the former was acting in a reprehensible manner.

At last an idea was hit upon which seemed to satisfy her; at any rate, it gave a semblance of reality to her suspicions.

‘I believe he has got his friend shut up in a lunatic asylum somewhere—unless he has put him out of the way altogether; and he is playing a double game—sometimes Torwood and sometimes himself. I suppose he was Torwood abroad, whilst he was the rich man; and here he is Debenham; thus reaping the benefits of both characters. Perhaps Mr. Torwood’s mind has been failing of late, so that he has learned to depend upon Philip; yes, that is very likely. And now that he has money of his own, he has just disposed of his friend anyhow—no doubt in a madhouse—and is figuring about here as a great man, and spending his friend’s money as well as his own. Oh, you’re a nice young man, Philip Debenham! No wonder you keep your friend at a distance, and don’t trouble yourself about him. No wonder nobody can get to know anything definite about the “Tor” who was once all your talk. A very nice thing it will be for you when I bring it home to you! Oh yes, you will enjoy that very much; and I wonder what the law will say to these little transactions with Torwood’s money;’ and in this strain Mrs. Belassis kept on, her spirits rising and her confidence in her theory increasing with every step she took. But when she felt in her pocket, and her hand came in contact with the stiff paper it held, her face changed suddenly, and the old look of rage and fear returned.

‘If old Maynard is right, if there is another will, and if that will is ever found—then we shall be ruined! Why did I ever marry such a fool as Alfred Belassis? I could do anything if it were not for his clumsiness!’