CHAPTER IX.

How would his wife bear it? Dolly knew her friend pretty well, yet she could not answer this question to her own satisfaction. Mrs. Werner was a noble, generous-hearted, unselfish woman, and yet Dolly comprehended in some vague, instinctive sort of way that wealth and position and social consideration were very dear to this fresh bankrupt's wife.

There are some people who do not much care whether they walk or drive through the world's thoroughfares; indeed, there are those who, given the choice, would prefer to walk. Now Mrs. Werner's mind was not so ill-regulated an one as all this comes to. Most emphatically she liked her carriages and horses and servants, and all the luxuries money can purchase. She had married for these things, as Mrs. Mortomley understood perfectly, and Dolly did not think—no, she did not, that Leonora would be satisfied to relinquish them.

Further, Mr. Werner had always set himself up as such a model of business capacity and business prudence, that he really had no right to fall into difficulties; certainly not to continue to flounder through difficulties as, according to his own confession, had been the case for years.

He had been living a lie, just one of the things Dolly knew his wife would find it most difficult to forgive. Had he told her duty demanded the sacrifice, she might—Mrs. Mortomley understood—have agreed to live in a house at twenty pounds a year, and wear print dresses, and be extremely strict about the tea and sugar, but she could not have done this with a good grace.

Nevertheless, Dolly believed she could have borne that better than the consciousness that the rich raiment she purchased, the luxurious dinner she provided, the rare wines they drank, had been paid for by a man all the time virtually bankrupt—a man keeping up an appearance so as to obtain fresh credit, and defer the striking of that hour of reckoning which could now be deferred no longer.

Mrs. Mortomley loved Mrs. Werner, and she did not love Mr. Werner, yet certainly her sympathies were that night with the man rather than with the woman.

One's affections are not perhaps strong for the naughty boy who is always persecuting one's cat, and stoning one's dog, and slaying one's chickens, or stealing one's fruit, and yet, when the wicked little wretch comes to grief and goes home with a battered face and cut shins, one's heart is more one with him than with the strong-minded mother, a strict disciplinarian, who we know will lecture or beat him for his sins, as the case may be.

I do not say it is right, for I cannot think it is, that our sympathies should generally be with the evil-doer, but it is very difficult not to feel sorry for the man who, being down, is struck his bitterest blow by those of his own household; and Dolly—well, Dolly did not think if she were in Mr. Werner's shoes she would like to tell the unvarnished truth to Leonora.

Upon the whole Dolly decided he was wise to go abroad, instead of remaining to face the domestic difficulty. "He will write to her," she thought, "tell her all, and she will be very indignant, and think about honour and honesty, and all the rest of it; but she will not, if he is wise, know where to address a letter to him at present. Then she will grow anxious, both about him and the future of the children, and at the end of six months I give her this parcel, when the whole affair is settled and she need feel no scruples about taking the money, and then she will feel touched to remember he thought of her, and then she will relent and we will find out where he is; perhaps he may write now and then to me, and she will go to him, or he will come back to her, my poor dear Lenny!"

Having completed which pleasing programme of the Werners' future, Mrs. Mortomley ought to have gone to sleep, but she could not do so, and towards four o'clock she became so intolerant of her own wakefulness that she rose and, stealing into the room where Lenore lay fast asleep, dressed herself noiselessly and went downstairs, and, letting herself out, walked across the road and along a footpath leading to the Lea, which crossed the field in which stood the shed where she had established her factory.

Not a likely-looking building, and yet it is in the least pretentious factories that fortunes are made,—successes won; and Mrs. Mortomley thanked God every time she looked across the meadow and beheld the red-tiled roof which covered the "Hertfordshire Colour Works" that Lang had so strenuously and—as it turned out—so wisely advised her to establish.

The name of Mortomley had a certain power still, and, though the business letters were signed in Dolly's scrawl, "D. Mortomley," people did not stop to inquire whether it was an A or a D who was able to supply them with the colours they required.

Neither was the new company worse thought of because they were able to supply so very little. The public, always liable to be gulled, did not attribute this to any paucity of means of production, but rather to the extent of orders received by the "Hertfordshire Colour Company." Acting under Lang's advice, Dolly had taken the business bull by the horns, and the moment she had settled upon a residence, a neat circular informed all the customers whose names Lang could recollect, or Dolly wring at intervals out of her husband's intermittent memory, that future orders intended for Mortomley and Co. should be addressed to Newham, Herts. Further, she amazed Mr. Swanland by giving directions at the post-office that all letters intended for her husband should be forwarded to that address; and as no fewer than three other persons had applied for the letters, each claiming a right in them, the post-office was somewhat perplexed. First, Mr. Swanland, who, after Dolly had proved to him by chapter and verse that he could claim no letters after the expiration of three months from the meeting of creditors, was forced to strike his flag; secondly, the Thames Street clerk, who had—being trusted by Mr. Swanland—been opening the town letters and suppressing them during the time when the accountant had a right to their possession, and who, so far as I know, is opening and suppressing them to this day; and, third, Hankins, who, being a modified sort of blackguard, made all right with the postmen who delivered at Homewood by representing himself as Mr. Mortomley's chief in absence, and forwarded some letters and retained others.

Dolly never got a tithe of the letters; the battle was one beyond her strength to fight, but it was a battle any accountant worth his salt would have prevented ever being necessary.

Still, in spite of all, the Mortomleys were prospering. The business was a very poor and a very small affair, but, after paying Lang, who was not a cheap coadjutor, and deducting all expenses, Dolly, even in those early days, felt she could safely take a pound a week out of the returns; and, my dear readers, I can assure you that if you have ever known what it is to look nothing a year in the face, you would be very thankful indeed to be able to reckon upon fifty-two pounds as a certainty.

And so Dolly regarded the red-tiled shed gratefully, and did her work in it carefully, for still, as her husband's substitute, she had her work to do. The special amount of water required, the final grains of the special ingredient that shed a lustre over the Mortomley colours! hers it was to add those trifles which ensured success. Had the manipulation been confided to any other, the secret must have passed out of Mortomley's keeping.

Was not she faithful to her trust! Lang himself never could tell when the magic touch was given which illumined the colours they sent to market. Sometimes in the twilight, sometimes when the moonbeams streamed through the skylights, sometimes in the early, early morning, but always in due and proper time, Dolly took her slight but all-important share of the labour, and she did so on the morning after her interview with Mr. Werner.

As she did so some faint idea that perhaps he might be able hereafter to help her husband, and her husband help him, crossed her mind. She did not like Mr. Werner, but she had a vague comprehension that he was gifted with some business quality Mortomley lacked, while Mortomley had capabilities a man such as Henry Werner might materially assist to develop.

Already Dolly was beginning to experience that difficulty which always arises when labour goes into partnership with capital. Very faithfully she believed Lang was dealing with her, but he never seemed contented. He never lost an opportunity of letting her know he considered if she would only put full faith in him, the business might be quadrupled.

Jealousy, which is at the root of all strikes, had taken up its abode in Mr. Lang's bosom, and though he tried to avoid giving expression to it, still Mrs. Mortomley knew the fire was there and smouldering.

Like a bad general she kept conceding point after point to keep him in a good humour, and the result was greater dissatisfaction; and less confidence in her fairness of dealing, as week after week rolled by.

She raised his wages, for he had settled wages as a matter of course. She gave him a larger share of the profits; she allowed him unlimited control over the buying and selling; and still Mr. Lang thought himself hardly done by.

He could not say openly he wanted Mrs. Mortomley to place the whole of her husband's formulæ at his discretion, but that was what he really did want; and if he had dared to make the observation, he would have remarked that no woman ought to know so much as Mrs. Mortomley had managed to learn about the process of manufacturing colours.

It was impossible for Dolly not to feel anxious about that future time, when her husband and Lang must come into collision, for she knew perfectly well he ought to have some one on whom he could depend to share the burden with him, and she did not for an instant believe he and her present factotum would be able to stable their horses together, even for a couple of months.

Therefore she could not help considering, that if, when the first trouble and worry were over, Mr. Werner and her husband liked to try to push their fortunes together, she should not feel at all sorry. Lang might have a present of a few recipes, and go away to make a fortune of his own, or he might remain and, under Mr. Werner's stricter discipline, prove more content.

Thinking in a vague rambling sort of way of all these things, Dolly walked slowly along the field-path, a little to the left of which stood the shed, which seemed in her eyes fair as any palace. There was peace in all directions. The fields whence the hay had been carried were glittering with dew, and the cows were lying with the early sun shining upon them, chewing the cud industriously.

At the end of the field flowed the Lea, and a boat was moored to the bank, indicating, as Dolly imagined, the presence of some ardent angler, though she could not discern his whereabouts.

Everything was quiet—so quiet that the stillness of the hour and the scene seemed to lay a quieting hand on Dolly's heart, which was wont sometimes to beat too rapidly and unevenly.

It seemed as if the world and its cares could not come to such a place,—as if there were some virtue of repose in that country Eden into which the serpent of strife and trouble could not enter.

And so with a light buoyant step Dolly left the main path and tripped along that leading to the shed, styled in pretentious circulars, The Hertfordshire Colour Works.

All at once she stood still, staring like one who did not believe the evidence of her senses, for as she neared the door of the works it was opened cautiously, and a man's face looked out as if reconnoitring.

At sight of Mrs. Mortomley the face was withdrawn, and the door closed with a bang.

For a second Dolly hesitated, and something as like physical fear as she had ever experienced seemed to hold her back. Though within sight of her house, she was utterly unprotected.

There was not a creature within call. There was a man, who certainly had no right on the premises, within the works, and Lang was not likely to appear for another half-hour at any rate.

Nevertheless, after that second's pause Dolly went on. She pulled out her key and put it in the lock, and found the key would not turn because the lock had been set on the inside. "Open the door whoever you may be," she cried, but there came no answer, only a sound as of some moving about, to which there succeeded a sudden stillness, then a smash of glass, then a rattle of loosened tiles, and finally a man running off as fast as his legs would take him in the direction of the Lea. He jumped into the boat she had seen moored, unloosed his rope, and seizing his oars was fifty yards distant before Mrs. Mortomley could reach the bank of the river.

She retraced her steps to the shed, and sat down beside the door until Lang should arrive.

When he did, his first comment on the affair was—

"You'll get yourself murdered one of these nights or mornings, ma'am, coming out all alone with no soul to help you if any one had a mind to do you harm."

"I shall have protection with me for the future," she said calmly. "Now, what do you suppose that man was doing here?"

"He was after the Yellow," pronounced Mr. Lang solemnly. "There'll be many a one after that now it has gone to market. There'll be people, I know, who wouldn't mind standing five hundred pounds if they could only buy our process. Like enough that fellow has burst open the drawer and gone away with the receipt."

"I do not think that very likely, as I never leave a paper of any importance in the drawer," Dolly answered.

"Well, if you carry that receipt about with you I should not care, if I was in your place, about coming across these fields alone."

"Don't talk nonsense, Lang," was the reply, "but go and get a ladder and open the door, and let us see what the man has really been doing."

When the door was opened, they found Lang's prophecy fulfilled. The drawer was broken open and all the parcels it contained abstracted.

"I'll be bound the fellow has spoiled all our colours too," remarked Mr. Lang, but in this he chanced to be mistaken. Their colours then in process of making turned out as good as ever.

"I wouldn't for fifty pounds this had happened," remarked Lang.

"Nor I, for five times fifty," Mrs. Mortomley answered; and without uttering another word, she walked slowly and thoughtfully back to Wood Cottage.

CHAPTER X.

But Dolly put them both aside, and sitting down all of a tremble, spread the letter on the table, for her hands were shaking so she could not hold it steady, and read to herself,

"Dreadful news has reached us to-night; a telegram to say Mr. Werner is dead. Leonora is like one distracted, and poor Mrs. Trebasson completely prostrated. Leonora left by the express, and I write to entreat you to go to her at once. We forgot to ask her Lord Darsham's present address. Get it and telegraph to him immediately. Mrs. Trebasson wishes me to go to London to see if I can be of any use, so I shall see you soon. Do not lose a moment in going to Leonora.

"Yours,
"A. G."

Dolly rose up like a person who had received some dreadful blow.

"Fetch me my hat and shawl, Esther," she said. "I must go to London by the next train."

"But you have not had any breakfast ma'am," expostulated the girl.

Mrs. Mortomley made no reply. She only walked through the open door and began pacing up and down the plot of grass.

Lenore ran after her crying, "My dear, dear mamma, what is the matter?" and Esther followed with "Oh! my dear mistress, speak to me."

"Mrs. Werner is in great trouble, and I must go to her. Do not ask me anything more," was the reply, and then Dolly leaned up against a great tree growing in the hedgerow, and shut her eyes, and felt as if the earth were going round and round. She understood, if no one else did,—she comprehended that of his own free will Henry Werner had gone on the longest and darkest journey the human mind can imagine—that his message to his wife would be given from one who sent it, knowing ere eight hours of the six months had elapsed he would have passed into eternity. This was why he had spoken so freely to her, and this was the reason he had extorted her forgiveness, and asked her to remember him in her prayers. Every other consideration in life was for the moment blotted out by the shadow of that man dead—dead by his own act—dead because the trouble was too great to be contended with, because the ruin was too utter to be endured.

Dolly went upstairs. She had paused by the way and swallowed some wine and water, to enable her tongue to perform its office.

"Archie," she said, as she nervously smoothed her husband's pillows, "I must go to London, and I want you to be quiet and satisfied while I am away. Leonora is in dreadful distress, and wants me. Mr. Werner is dangerously ill, not expected to recover, and she has great need of me. I do not like leaving you, dear, but—"

"Go at once," he interrupted. "Kiss me and go, dear. I shall do very well indeed. Poor Werner! It is a curious thing I was dreaming about him yesterday. I dreamt he was here, and—"

"I must go, love," she said, unable to bear the interview longer. "Good-bye."

And she was gone.

Now it so happened that Mrs. Mortomley chanced, without any reference to Mrs. Werner, to know Lord Darsham's then address, and consequently the moment she got into town she telegraphed this message to him.

"Leonora's husband has committed suicide. Pray come to her at once."

Mrs. Mortomley only sent this message because she considered that, by stating what she believed to be the literal truth, she would bring Leonora's cousin more rapidly to her assistance. In the then state of her nerves, sudden death by the Visitation of God seemed to her so slight a misfortune that she fancied pure death would appear a trifle to Lord Darsham.

That any one could ever really have supposed Mr. Werner died through illness or misadventure, never occurred to Dolly, who felt quite positive he had fully made up his mind to destroy himself when with her on the preceding day, and it was therefore with a frightful shock she learned upon arriving at her friend's house that every soul in it believed Mr. Werner, who was suffering from a severe attack of neuralgia, had died accidentally while inhaling chloroform to lull the pain.

"What a dreadful thing I have done!" she thought. "How shall I ever be able to make it right with Lord Darsham?" And then Dolly went upstairs into that very room where Mr. and Mrs. Werner had held their colloquy about the Mortomleys, and found Mrs. Werner as nearly insane as a rational woman can ever be.

She was full of self-reproach, and Dolly thanked God for it. Knowing what she knew of the man's misery, it would have tried her almost beyond endurance to have listened to the faintest whisper of self-pity, but there was none.

Nothing save sorrow for the husband, taken so suddenly, for his children left orphaned, for the years during which she might have made him happier.

"I thought myself a good wife," she moaned, "but I was not a good wife. I helped him as I imagined, but, Dolly dear, an ounce of love is worth a pound of pride any day. He wanted, he must have wanted, something more when he returned to this great cold, handsome house than a woman to sit at the head of his dinner table. I have thought about it all at Dassell, Dolly darling. I made up my mind, God helping me, to be more a wife to him than I had ever been, and it is all too late—too late—too late."

"I am afraid he had a great deal on his mind," Dolly ventured.

"Yes, there can be no doubt about that. He was so fond of business, and thought so much of money, and—"

"We won't talk about it, dear, now," Mrs. Mortomley said softly.

"Have you—seen him?" Mrs. Werner asked, after a pause.

"No," Dolly answered. "I should like to do so, though, if I may."

"You have quite forgiven him?"

"I had done that, Lenny, thank God, before this."

Just a faint pressure of the trembling fingers, and Dolly rose to go downstairs.

"Williams, I want to see your master," she said, and Williams forthwith conducted her into the same room where Messrs. Forde and Kleinwort had sat on that night when they came to Mr. Werner's house in quest of Mortomley. There in the same dress he wore when last she saw him alive, he lay stiff and dead.

"Why has not something been done with him?" Dolly asked shuddering. "Why do you let him lie there like that?"

"We must not move him until after the inquest," said the man.

Mrs. Mortomley crept upstairs again—in her folly what had she done?

But for her this inquest might have passed over quietly, and a verdict of killed by an accidental dose of chloroform returned.

The hours of that day lengthened themselves into years, and when at last Miss Gerace arrived, she found her niece looking the picture of death itself.

"My dear child, you must go home," she said, gazing in shocked amazement at Dolly's changed face and figure. "All this is too much for you."

But Dolly said, "No; if you love me, aunt, go to Wood Cottage and take care of Archie till I can leave Leonora. I must see the end of it. I will tell you why some day. I cannot leave now."

So Miss Gerace went to Wood Cottage, and wrapping her bonnet in a handkerchief laid it on the drawers in Lenore's room, and so solemnly set up her Lares and Penates in Dolly's house, and she broke the news of Mr. Werner's sudden death wisely and calmly to Mr. Mortomley, who turned his head from the light and lay very still and quiet, thinking mighty solemn thoughts for an hour afterwards.

"I think my poor Dolly ought not to stay there," he said at last. "She has had trouble enough of her own to bear lately."

"And I think your Dolly is at this moment just where God means her to be," answered Miss Gerace, a little gruffly, for she herself was uneasy about her niece's appearance, and in her heart considered Dolly stood in as much need of tender care as Mrs. Werner.

Just about the time when Miss Gerace was leaving, in order to make the, to her, unaccustomed journey to London, Mr. Forde sat alone in his office waiting impatiently for the appearance of Werner, or a note from him.

"You shall hear from me to-morrow before midday, without fail," Werner had promised on the previous forenoon, and whatever his faults he had never failed in a promise of this nature before.

"Ah! if that little wretch Kleinwort, who loved always to be talking evil about Werner, had only been like him, I need never have been reduced to the straits in which I find myself to-day," thought the unfortunate manager.

"Had any one planted an acre of reeds, Mr. Forde would have gone on transferring his simple faith from one to another till the last one broke." So Henry Werner declared; and no person understood so well as he that when his collapse ensued, the last poor reed on which the manager leaned would be broken to pieces.

That very morning when Mr. Forde waited for his constituents, as for some reason best known to himself he had latterly began to call the customers of the General Chemical Company, he had gone through one of those interviews with his directors, which, to quote his own phrase, "made him feel old," and he had pretty good grounds for believing that if Henry Werner, the last big card in his hand, failed to win him a trick he could not stay at St. Vedast Wharf.

In that case all must come out. The shareholders would begin to ask troublesome questions which the directors must answer; and he—well—he, with all his heart and soul wished when he put on his hat over Mortomley's affairs, he had kept it on and left St. Vedast Wharf for ever, shaking the dust off his shoes as he did so.

But now all he had to hope for was that Henry Werner would obey his commands, issued in no doubtful terms, and bring that which might satisfy his, Mr. Forde's, directors.

Werner had ordered him out of his office, indeed, words grew so high between them; but he had still said he should be heard of by midday, and now it was one o'clock and neither he nor any tidings had come.

Mr. Forde felt he could not endure being treated in this way any longer, so he walked across to Mr. Werner's office, where he asked young Carless, once in Mortomley's Thames Street Warehouse, if his master was in.

"He has not come yet," was the answer; and had Mr. Forde been looking at the clerks' faces instead of thinking of Mr. Werner's shortcomings, he would have noticed an expression on them which might well have puzzled his comprehension.

"I will wait for him," and Mr. Forde made a step towards the inner office as if intending to take up a position there.

"Better sit down here," said one of the senior clerks, offering him a chair; "the inner office is locked."

"Locked! who locked it?" asked Mr. Forde angrily.

"Mr. Werner, when he left yesterday," was the reply.

Ten minutes passed, quarter of an hour struck, then the manager said,

"It does not seem of much use my waiting here. Tell Mr. Werner to come round to me the instant he arrives—the instant, remember. What are you looking at each other for in that manner?" he continued, shouting at them passionately. "Do you mean to do what I tell you or not?"

All the clerks but one drew back a little abashed; they had silently countenanced the perpetration of a grim practical joke, which, while the clock went on ticking, seemed to grow flat and stale and unprofitable to each of them save Carless.

He it was who now answered.

"Perhaps you are not aware that our governor is dead."

"You had better take care, sir," said Mr. Forde. "I do not know whether Mr. Werner has granted you a licence for impertinence, but if he has—by—he shall rue it and you too."

"It is true though," interposed a man sitting in a dark part of the office, who had not hitherto spoken, but remained, his head supported by his hands, reading 'The Times.'

"What is true," demanded the manager. "That Mr. Werner is dead. I had occasion to go to his house this morning and found that he died last night."

"It is a lie; it is a —— put off. He is gone like that villain Kleinwort; but he need not think to escape me. I will find him if he is above ground!"

"You won't have far to go then," was the reply. "He is lying stiff and safe enough in his own study."

"And he is gone to a land with which we have no extradition treaty," observed Carless, as Mr. Forde banged the door behind him.

"Hold your tongue, do," entreated the 'Times'' student, who, having been in a fashion confidential clerk to Mr. Werner, had some comprehension how the matter stood. "Our governor has been badgered into his grave, and I only hope they will call me on the inquest that I may be able to state my belief."

"And he was not half a bad sort, the governor," said Carless, shutting up the day-book.

"I say let's all go to the funeral," suggested a third; and so these young men wrote their employer's epitaph.

Meantime Mr. Forde was proceeding westward as fast as the legs of a swift horse could take him. To describe what he felt would be as impossible as to detail the contents and occupants of each vehicle the hansom passed—the hopes and fears—the miseries and joys hidden behind the walls of the countless houses, which lay to left and right of his route.

He believed; he did not believe. He dreaded; no it was all a sham. Now in imagination he started himself with the detectives in pursuit, again with dry parched lips he was answering the questions of his directors.

If he had realized the fact, he suffered in the course of that rapid drive enough misery to have driven many a man insane. Misery of his own causing if you will, but misery all the harder to endure on that account.

Happily for himself, however, Mr. Forde was a person who did not realize. He was a man who before he had grasped the worst decided there must be some means of escape from it, and accordingly, the first words he uttered to Williams were—

"Now, then, what's all this?"

"Have not you heard, sir," answered that well-trained functionary, startled for once out of his propriety of demeanour by Mr. Forde's tremendous knock, by Mr. Forde's loud utterance, "my master died last night!"

"Died! Nonsense; went away you mean."

"Passed away, sir, if you prefer that expression," acquiesced the man. "He had been out all day, and when he returned in the evening he said it was of no use serving dinner, for he was suffering such agonies from neuralgia that he could not eat anything. He had called at the doctor's on his way, but he was not at home.

"He asked me to bring him a cup of strong coffee, which I did.

"About eight o'clock I went in to the study to light the gas, and when I opened the door there was a strong smell of some apothecary's stuff," (here the man became visibly affected), "and something in that and the way my master was lying on the sofa attracted my attention. I spoke to him, but he did not answer me. I lifted his arm which was hanging over on the carpet, but it fell again when I let it go.

"Then I ran out of the house for a doctor. I had seen a doctor's carriage standing at the next door. He came in and looked at him. I asked what could be done, and he said 'Nothing, the poor gentleman is dead.'"

"Where is he?" asked Mr. Forde, who had listened impatiently to this statement.

"In the study, sir."

Mr. Forde crossed the hall and turned the handle of the door, but the door was locked.

"Have you the key?" he asked. "Yes, sir," answered Williams, fumbling in his pocket nervously—the fact being that, notwithstanding his large experience of the world and knowledge of society, he had never before come in contact with any one who did not consider it necessary at all events, to assume a certain sympathy with misfortune, and it is no exaggeration to say Mr. Forde's utter callousness frightened the man.

He had never previously seen a human being whose intense thought for self swallowed up every thought for other people; to whom the death or ruin of any number of his fellow-creatures was simply a bagatelle when compared with any misfortune which could touch himself.

"If you cannot unlock the door, let me do it," remarked Mr. Forde, taking the key out of Williams' fingers, and shooting back the bolt with a quick sharp click; with a steady determined step he crossed the room.

"Raise that blind," he said.

Williams hesitated, but then obeyed, and at the same moment Mr. Forde drew aside, with no faltering or gentle touch, the handkerchief which covered the dead man's face.

There he lay, as he had died. There was no sneer curling the lip now, no scowl disfiguring the forehead. There was no expression of despair, no look of anguish. Death was fast smoothing the hard lines out of that dark face; and as Mr. Forde realized all this—realized there was no deception about the matter—that no insult could reach his sense, no dread affect him more, he could have cursed the man who long and long before had told him if ever misfortune came upon him he should know how to meet it. This was how he had met it; this was what he had in his mind then. Mr. Forde understood perfectly that when once he found the battle going against him, when once he found the tide setting too strongly for him to resist its flow, he had always meant to end the difficulty thus.

"Yes, he is dead sure enough," commented Mr. Forde at length. "He has taken precious good care to leave other people in the lurch as any one who ever knew Henry Werner might safely have sworn he would do."

"I do not quite understand, sir," said the butler deprecatingly.

"Oh! you don't, my friend. Well, perhaps not; perhaps you think your master really had neuralgia, and really took that stuff to cure it."

"Certainly, sir."

"Oh! you do, do you? Well, then, I can tell you, the coward took it because he was afraid to meet his creditors, because he was afraid to meet me, because he knew he was a beggar, and that if he did not do something of this sort, his fine feathers would be stripped off, and he and his turned out into the world without a shilling, as better people have been before now.

"I must see his wife before I leave," he added abruptly.

"See Mrs. Werner, sir? Impossible."

"Impossible! Why is it impossible? Who is she that she should not be seen; who is she that she should not hear what I have to say? She has had all the smooth, she must now take her share of the rough."

"My mistress, sir, is very ill," remarked Williams, who really was in a state of mind baffling description.

He believed Mr. Forde was mad, but he could not determine how to get him out of the house.

"Ill," repeated Mr. Forde; "and so am I very ill, yet I have to be about. I shall have to face my directors to-morrow over that villain's affairs. Sick or well I shall have to be in the City. Don't talk to me about illness. I must and I will see Mrs. Werner, and you may go and tell her so."

"If you will please to walk into the dining-room, sir, I will deliver your message," said the butler. He really was afraid of leaving Mr. Forde alone with the corpse, uncertain whether, in default of the living man, he might not wreak his vengeance on the dead, and it was with a gasp of relief he saw Mr. Forde out of the study, and locked the door behind him.

"Ask Mrs. Mortomley to speak to me for a minute," he whispered to Mrs. Werner's maid, and when Dolly came to him on the landing, he told her all Mr. Forde had said.

Dolly listened to the end, then she answered,

"Tell Mr. Forde from me, that if he waits in this house for ever, he shall never speak to Mrs. Werner, but that if he has any communication to make, Lord Darsham will see him this evening at eight o'clock."

Downstairs went Williams with this message, which Dolly, leaning over the banisters, heard him deliver in less curt language.

"I know nothing of Lord Darsham," answered Mr. Forde, walking up and down the hall. "I have had no transactions with him, but I have with that fellow," an intimation indicating Werner lying dead in the study. "He has robbed us, and ruined me, and by—I will see his wife."

"Williams," rang out Dolly's voice at this juncture, clear and shrill, and yet with an undertone of intensified passion in it, "if that person insists on remaining in a house where there is so much misery, send for a policeman. I will take the responsibility."

And forthwith Dolly retreated to Mrs. Werner's dressing-room, and bolted the doors of that and her friend's apartment.

She had once been brave, but the days and the weeks and the months had been draining her courage. Physically, she felt she was not strong enough to encounter one of the people who had compassed her husband's ruin; and though she would have fought for Leonora till she died, still her woman's nature warned her to shun a fight if possible.

"You will go now please, sir," urged poor Williams, "and come back and see his lordship to-night."

Whereupon Mr. Forde anathematized his lordship, and asked,

"How does that woman, that wife of Mortomley's, come here?"

"She was sent for, sir; my mistress has been quieter since her arrival. They are old friends."

"Humph," ejaculated Mr. Forde; "then any fool can tell where Henry Werner's money went." And he permitted himself to be edged out to the door-step by Williams, who took an early opportunity of saying he was wanted and of shutting the door hastily on that unwelcome visitor.

All that afternoon Williams surveyed callers doubtfully from a side window before opening the door. Had Mr. Forde again appeared, he would have put up the chain, and parleyed with him like a beleaguered city to the opposing force.

About six o'clock Lord Darsham came rattling up in a hansom. He had telegraphed back a reply to Dolly, and followed that reply as fast as an express train could bring him.

She ran downstairs, thankful for his arrival, and after years, long, long years, the Vicar of Dassell's little girl and Charley Trebasson, Leonora's first lover, met again.

"I should have known you anywhere," he said, after the first words of greeting and exclamations of pity and horror were uttered.

"Am I so little changed?" she asked, with a forced smile.

"Ah! you are so much changed," he answered; "you look so many years too old, you look so much too thin. What is the matter with you Mrs. Mortomley? I cannot bear to—"

"Never mind me," she said almost brusquely; "Your business now is with Leonora; I ought not to have sent you that telegram, you must forget it."

"Is Mr. Werner not dead then?" he asked.

"Dead! yes, indeed he is poor fellow!" she answered; "but I acted on a fancy when I telegraphed that he committed suicide. He took chloroform to relieve the pain of neuralgia, and the chloroform killed him."

Mrs. Werner's cousin looked Mrs. Mortomley steadily in the face while she uttered this sentence, then, when she paused and hesitated, he said,

"You had better be perfectly frank with me. I remember, if you do not, how when you were a child, it was of no use your trying to tell a fib because your eyes betrayed you, and I must say to you now, as I often said to you then, speak the truth, for with that tell-tale face no one will believe you when you try to invent a likely falsehood."

"To be perfectly straightforward then," answered Dolly; "when I sent that telegram to you I believed Mr. Werner had destroyed himself; when I arrived here, I found every one believed his death was due entirely to accident."

"And may I inquire why you believed he had committed suicide?"

"No," she replied; "that is my secret, and for very special reasons I want to have nothing to do with the matter—special reasons," she repeated; "not selfish, pray understand. I did not think of the inquest; I did not think of anything except that, on Leonora's account, you ought to be here, when I wrote that telegram, and—"

"I know what you mean," he interrupted; seeing the subject affected her deeply, and he took a turn up and down the room before he spoke again.

"What could have induced him to kill himself?" he said, at length stopping abruptly in his walk.

"A Mr. Forde, who has been here to-day, demanding to see Leonora, and who is coming this evening to see you, told Williams he was afraid to meet his creditors. Williams, who has never seen the slightest evidence of shortness of money about this house, inclines to the opinion that Mr. Forde is mad, and I have done my best to confirm that opinion, but Mr. Forde I believe to be right; I am afraid you will find he destroyed himself, because he was a ruined man."

There was silence for a minute, broken only by the sound of Dolly's suppressed sobs.

"Poor fellow," said Lord Darsham; "he must have suffered horribly before it came to this."

"Only those who have gone through such an ordeal can imagine what he must have endured," she answered simply; "depend upon it his heart was broken days before he died."

"I never liked Werner," commented her auditor. "I always thought him a self-contained money-worshipping snob, and I never believed, spite of the purple and fine linen, that Leonora was happy in her marriage, but I am sorry for him now. A man who commits suicide must have an enormous capacity for misery, and a man who has an enormous capacity for misery must have had an enormous capacity for something better, had any opportunity for developing it occurred."

"You will forget my telegram," she entreated.

"I shall say nothing about it, which will amount to much the same thing," he answered.

CHAPTER XI.

The business of living goes on all the same let who will retire from active participation in it, and, accordingly, Mrs. Mortomley and Lord Darsham sat down to dinner, although the whilom master of the house lay dead in that small room on the other side the hall, where he had made his exit from this world. But, in truth, that dinner was a very funereal affair. There was a something ghastly in eating of the ruined man's substance; in drinking of the wines he had selected; in occupying the apartment where he must often have sat at table with a guest no one else could see facing him; and the conversation in Williams's presence, compulsorily of no private nature, flagged as conversation did not often flag when Dolly held one of the battledores.

With great persuasion Mrs. Werner had been induced to swallow a draught ordered for her by the family physician, and she lay in a sleep as sound and almost as dreamless as that which enfolded the silent figure lying all alone in the twilight of the summer's evening.

Thirty hours before, he was alive; and now, his spirit had started on the long, lonesome journey; and through the gloom of the Valley of the Shadow no human eye could follow him.

Dolly could not get over the horror of it all; and when Mr. Forde's knock woke the echoes of the house, she started from her seat in an access of terror, and exclaiming,

"Oh! let me get upstairs before he comes in," left the room, and ran upstairs to Mrs. Werner's apartment.

Meanwhile, Williams, before answering the summons, inquired whether his Lordship would be pleased to see the expected visitor, and if so, where.

"Yes," was the answer; "show him in here."

Mr. Forde entered. He had employed the interval between his two visits in alternating between two opinions. One, that Henry Werner would come to life again; the other, that Lord Darsham would wipe off the deceased's indebtedness to the St. Vedast Wharf Company.

As the last would be by far the most satisfactory result to him, he finally decided that a miracle would not be wrought in Henry Werner's favour, but that Lord Darsham would pay, which Mr. Forde decided would be better than a miracle.

Full of this idea, he entered the room with so subdued an expression, and so deferential a manner, and so sympathising a face, that Lord Darsham, who had heard Williams's account of his demeanour a few hours previously, could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes.

"Sad affair this, my Lord," remarked Mr. Forde when Williams, having placed a chair for the visitor, had left the room.

"My Lord" agreed that it was a very sad affair.

"Particularly under the circumstances, my Lord," proceeded Mr. Forde.

"My Lord" thought that sudden death, under any circumstances must always be regarded as very awful.

"And when a man dies by his own act—" Mr. Forde was commencing, when Lord Darsham stopped him.

"Pardon me for interrupting you," he said, "but will you kindly inform me upon what circumstance you ground your opinion that Mr. Werner did die by his own act?"

"The state of his affairs, my Lord."

"Are his affairs embarrassed?"

"If you are not aware of the fact, my Lord, you are fortunate; for that proves he is not in your Lordship's debt."

"He certainly owes me no money," was the reply. "But all this is not an answer to my question. I entirely fail to see the connection between his death and his debts. Is it a usual thing in the City for a man to kill himself when he finds he cannot pay his way?"

"Not usual, my Lord; but still, such things are; and when one hears a man in difficulties has taken chloroform for neuralgia, and is found dead in consequence, one draws one's own conclusions."

"Well, I do not know," said the other thoughtfully; "but it seems to me very hard that because a man owes money any one should imagine he has thought it necessary to destroy himself. Mr. Werner, I imagine, was not destitute of friends who would have been willing to assist him; at all events, Mrs. Werner was not. To the utmost of their ability, I think I may say, all her relations would have helped her husband had they been aware of his embarrassments."

"That remark does you honour, my Lord. The sentiment is precisely what I should have expected to hear you utter. In fact, I felt so satisfied you would wish, for Mrs. Werner's sake, to keep this matter quiet, that, at some inconvenience to myself, I ran up this evening to talk the affair over."

"He is coming to some point now; he has, in his eagerness, forgotten to milord me," thought Mrs. Werner's cousin, and he said aloud,

"I am much obliged; it was very kind and thoughtful of you, Mr. Forde."

"Don't mention it, I beg, my Lord," replied that gentleman. "Anything I could do to serve you or Mrs. Werner would give me the greatest pleasure. It is a very sad thing—very sad, indeed; but I think the affair can be kept quiet if I tell my directors you are prepared to meet their claims upon Mr. Werner. I do not wish to be troublesome, but I think if you gave me a scrap of writing to that effect (the merest line would do, just to prove that what I say is all bonâ fide), it might make matters easier."

Lord Darsham stared at the speaker in unfeigned amazement.

"I am utterly at a loss to understand your meaning," he said.

"I merely meant that, as it is your Lordship's honourable intention to wipe off Mr. Werner's liability to our firm, the sooner my directors are satisfied on that point, the better it will be for every one concerned."

"I have not the slightest intention of paying any of Mr. Werner's debts," was the reply. "I cannot imagine what could have induced you to leap to such a conclusion."

"Your own words, my Lord—your own words!" retorted Mr. Forde, growing a little hot. "Your Lordship said distinctly that had Mrs. Werner's relations, amongst whom of course I reckon your Lordship, been aware of Mr. Werner's embarrassments, he would have received substantial assistance from the family."

"So he would," agreed Lord Darsham. "Had assistance been possible, we should have given it."

"Then it follows as a matter of course, my Lord, that so far as lies in your Lordship's power you will like to save his honour by paying his debts."

"Such a deduction follows by no means," said Lord Darsham decidedly. "We should have been very glad for Mrs. Werner's sake to assist her husband; but we cannot assist him now. It is impossible we should have the slightest interest in his creditors, and I can say most emphatically they will never receive one penny from me."

"Do you consider this honourable conduct, my Lord?" asked Mr. Forde.

"Decidedly I do. While Mr. Werner was living we should have been willing to help him, as I have already stated; now he is dead, he is beyond the possibility of help."

"Now he is dead, it is a very easy thing for your Lordship to say you would have helped him had he been living," observed Mr. Forde tauntingly, with the nearest approach to a sneer of which his features were capable.

Lord Darsham made no reply. He only smiled, and taking a fern from the basket nearest to where he sat, laid it on the cloth and contemplated its tracery.

"Am I to understand that it is your Lordship's deliberate determination to do nothing?" asked Mr. Forde after a, to him, heart-breaking pause.

"I shall certainly not pay his debts, if that is what you mean," was the reply.

Mr. Forde sat silent for a moment. He could scarcely believe in such depravity. He had thought some degree of right and proper feeling prevailed amongst the aristocracy, and now here was a lord, a creature who happened to be a lord, who deliberately said he would not pay Henry Werner's liabilities to the General Chemical Company, Limited!

At length he said,

"Perhaps your Lordship is not aware that this is a very serious matter to me?"

"I am very sorry to hear it," was the reply, but Lord Darsham did not look in the least sorry.

"If your Lordship will do nothing to enable me to tide over the anger of my directors, I shall have to leave, and what will become of my wife and children I cannot imagine. Your Lordship ought to consider them and me; brought to beggary through the misconduct and cowardice of your relative. Your Lordship will see me safe through this matter?" he finished entreatingly.

"Mr. Forde," said his Lordship very gravely and very decidedly, "I wish you would take my 'no' as final. In the first place, Mr. Werner was not my relative; in the second, he is dead; in the third, if his affairs should prove to be in the hopeless state you indicate, I shall have to maintain his wife and family; and in the fourth, a man who violates decency towards the dead and respect towards the living by using such language as you thought fit to employ when speaking to-day to a servant, must be held to have forfeited all claim to pity and consideration if he ever possessed any."

"Why, what did I say?" inquired Mr. Forde.

Incredible as it may seem, he retained no recollection of having used any phrase capable of giving the slightest offence. He had but one idea—money—and of how he expressed himself when trying to get it or when he found he had lost it, he had no more remembrance than a man of his utterances in delirium.

"If your memory is so bad you must not come to me to refresh it," answered Lord Darsham. "I will only say that the next time you wish to propitiate a man's friends, it may be more prudent for you not to open proceedings by telling his servants he is a coward, who has committed suicide because he feared to meet his creditors."

"That was true though," explained Mr. Forde.

"You are not in a position to know whether it is true or false," was the reply; "but whether true or false, it was a most unseemly observation."

"I am the best judge of that, sir!" retorted Mr. Forde, rising as Lord Darsham rose, and buttoning his coat up. "And when all comes out about Henry Werner which must come out, you will be sorry you did not try to come to some sort of a settlement with me. I hold his forged acceptances for thousands, sir—thousands! I held him in the hollow of my hand. I could have transported him any hour, but I refrained, and this is all I get for my forbearance. I will make your ears tingle yet, my Lord Darsham."

Without answering a word, Lord Darsham walked to the fireplace and rang the bell, which Williams answered with unwonted celerity.

"Show Mr. Forde out," said Mrs. Werner's cousin, "and never let him enter the house again."

"You do not mean it, my Lord; you cannot," urged the unfortunate believer in human reeds, with a desperation which was almost pathetic. "You will do something in the matter; you will think over it. Consider my wife and children."

"Mr. Forde, I have nothing to do, and I will have nothing to do, with you or your wife or your children."

Lord Darsham's tone was as conclusive as his words. Nevertheless, Mr. Forde would have clung to this last straw, and shown him still more reasons why he should make all right with his directors, had not Williams taken him by the arm and half pushed, half dragged him to the front door, and thrust him without ceremony out into the night.

"I really think the best thing I could do would be to go and drown myself," he thought, as he looked up at the window of the room where Henry Werner lay dead; but he was not of the stuff suicides are made of.

He neither drowned nor hanged himself, swallowed poison nor cut his throat. He went home and slept upon his trouble instead.

To Mrs. Mortomley's relief, the coroner's inquest, held to find out the why and wherefore attending Mr. Werner's decease, resulted in a verdict of "Accidental Death." The jury, it is perhaps unnecessary to state, added a recommendation that chloroform should never be inhaled save under the advice and in the presence of a medical man.

What good purpose they proposed to effect by this advice was known only to themselves, but the next day it appeared in all the dignity of print in the daily papers, and was in due time copied from them into the country papers, and so read in London and throughout the provinces by all whom it might or might not concern.

Whatever Williams' opinion of Mr. Forde's utterances might be, after a night's reflection he was too discreet a servant to give utterance to it, and consequently his statements were perfectly satisfactory to jurymen and coroner alike. The City and the West End were so far apart that not a whisper of embarrassment had reached the ears of the two doctors who gave evidence in the case. The dead man had been far too astute to leave even a scrap of writing indicating his design, and it was with a feeling of no common satisfaction that Lord Darsham, after that anxious hour was over, gave an attendant undertaker audience, and instructed him to provide a strictly private funeral for the morning next but one following.

Having done this, he walked with a lighter heart to his hotel, having told Mrs. Mortomley he would see her again the following day, but he had not left the house ten minutes before a man sprucely dressed, jaunty in manner, fluent of speech, assured as to demeanour, rang at the visitors' bell and asked to see Mr. Werner.

"Mr. Werner is dead," answered Williams, looking doubtfully at the new-comer, who wore a geranium in his coat, and used a toothpick freely during the interview.

"I heard something about that. Awkward, ain't it?" remarked the free-and-easy individual. "I'll have to see Mrs. Werner, that is all," he added, after a moment's pause.

"My mistress cannot see any one," Williams replied, closing the door about an inch, as he saw an intention on the stranger's part of entering uninvited.

The other laughed, and put his foot on the threshold.

"Not so fast, my friend," he said. "I have come concerning a little matter which must be attended to immediately. We can talk about it more at our ease inside," and with a quick and unexpected movement he put Williams on one side and stood within the hall. "That is all right," he said, drawing his breath with a sigh of relief. "Now I want half a year's rent, that is my business."

"There is no one here who can attend to any business at present," replied Williams. "My master is lying dead in the house. The funeral is to be the day after to-morrow. My mistress has not left her room since yesterday morning, and Lord Darsham has just gone to his hotel."

"Then you had better send to his hotel after him," answered the visitor, sitting down on one of the hall chairs and commencing music-hall reminiscences by softly whistling a negro melody through his teeth.

Now, it is a fact, Williams had not the faintest idea who or what this man really was. He had lived all his life, if not in the best families, at least in families that paid their way, and knew nothing of duns or writs, or summonses or sheriff's officers, and he, therefore, stood looking in astonishment, not unmixed with indignation, at the gentleman possessed of musical proclivities till that person, out of patience with his hesitation, exclaimed,

"Now then, stupid, are you going to send for that lord you were speaking of, or are you not? I can't wait here all day while you are making up your small brains into a big parcel. If you don't look sharp I must leave a man in possession, and I don't expect your people would thank you much for that."

"Will you tell me what you mean?" Williams entreated.

First the death, then Mr. Forde, then this—it was too much experience thrust upon him all at once.

"I mean," said the other, speaking very slowly, and looking very intently at Williams from under the brim of his hat, which was tilted well over his eyes, "that I am sent here to get two quarters' rent, and that I must either have it or leave a man in charge of enough to cover the amount. So now you had better see about the getting the money, for I ain't a-going to waste my blessed time here much longer for any man living or dead—Lords or Commons."

And he rose as if to give emphasis to his words, rose and yawned and stretched himself, after which performances he sat down again.

"If you wait for a few minutes I will see what can be done," said Williams, his thoughts turning in this dire extremity to Mrs. Mortomley.

"I'll wait, never fear," answered the other; and he took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read it with a nonchalant manner which fairly appalled the butler.

Dolly was sitting alone in the great drawing-room, that which Mr. Werner had furnished so gorgeously after his own taste—a taste Mrs. Mortomley always considered vile, when Williams came quietly in.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, but a most unpleasant thing has occurred, and I thought it better to mention it to you. A person is below who says he wants two quarters' rent, and that he must have it."

"I do not know where or from whom he is to get it then," remarked Mrs. Mortomley, lifting her heavy eyes from the book she was reading.

"But—excuse me, ma'am, I hardly like to repeat his words, only I really do not know how to get rid of him. He says he must leave a man in possession if he is not paid immediately."

"If he must we cannot prevent him," Dolly answered. She had gone through it all. She understood this was the beginning of the end for her friend Leonora, and she felt no good could possible accrue from exciting herself about the matter.

Not so Williams; fortunately he attributed Mrs. Mortomley's indifference to non-comprehension, otherwise her sang froid would have shocked him beyond measure. Personally he felt he could scarcely outlive the degradation of being in the house with a bailiff. He was willing to make any exertion, to endure any sacrifice, to avert so great a calamity.

"Had not I better go for his Lordship?" he suggested.

"You can if you like," she answered; "but I do not think your doing so can serve any good purpose. In the first place you may not find Lord Darsham at his hotel; in the second, I do not believe this man would wait till you could return. Then, these people never will take a cheque, and it is long past bank hours, and finally, I very much doubt whether Lord Darsham ought to pay any account until he has seen Mr. Werner's lawyers."

Williams was scandalized. She not merely understood what it meant perfectly, but she took the whole matter as coolly as though told her milliner had called about fitting on a dress. It was time he asserted his position and vindicated his respectability; so he ventured,

"These things are very unpleasant, ma'am."

Dolly looked at him and understood that, shown the slightest loophole of an excuse, he would have given notice on the instant. Now this was precisely what she wished to avoid. That the servants must be dispersed and the house dismantled she knew, but she wanted Leonora back amongst her own people, and the body of the poor pretender, who had wrought such evil for himself and others, laid in its quiet grave before the work of destruction commenced, and so she answered,

"Yes, indeed, Williams, they are and must seem particularly unpleasant to you. I ought to have thought of that. I will see this person myself." And before Williams could interpose, or by look or hint explain to her how much worse than improper he considered her personal interference, she had descended the staircase and was crossing the hall.

At sight of her the man rose from his seat, and believing her to be Mrs. Werner, he began some awkward apology for his presence.

Then Dolly explained she was only a friend staying in the house; that she feared at so late an hour in the evening it would be useless sending for Lord Darsham, and that in short, she worded it delicately but explicitly, he had better do whatever was necessary, and go about his business.

Which without the slightest unnecessary delay he did. First he opened the outer door, and whistled for his man as if whistling for a dog. Then he made a rapid inventory of a few articles in the dining-room, and after handing a paper to Mrs. Mortomley, took his leave.

Then appeared Williams, more erect in his respectability, more severe in his deportment, more correct in his speech than ever. He had made up his mind. He would give notice to Lord Darsham in the morning.