Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!

“Well, Mr Alwyn, if you do,” said Harry, laughing, “poachers must have improved since our time. Perhaps they have, for I didn’t think I was quite the cut of one myself, and, for sure, that lad took me for some such customer. Keep up heart, sir, I’ll be on the look-out.”

So saying, he jumped over the stile, while his companion turned round and walked slowly through the wood. He threaded the tracks and glades with perfect case; but at the point where the next turn would bring him into view of the great ash-tree and the open space overlooking the water-lily pond he paused and grew visibly paler.

“I must remember that it cannot be much to him; if he has answered my appeal it cannot be much to him – it cannot be agreeable. I wish I’d asked a little more about him. However, now for it.” He turned round the dump of trees by which he stood, and stopped with a start.

“What! someone else! Oh, of all the ill luck,” he thought, as he saw under the tree a grey pony and a wheeled chair, in which was a young man sketching the pond and the trees beyond it.

Edgar was half sitting up against his cushions, and had pushed the soft cap which he wore back from his brows, so that his face was clearly visible; but he himself was looking the other way, and, intent on his sketch, did not observe that anyone was approaching.

The new-comer looked at him at first without any recognition. Who could the invalid be who had permission to sketch in the Ashcroft wood and seemed so much at home there? He had better walk quietly on, and pass by as if by accident. But, as he came nearer, Edgar threw back his head to look at his drawing, and something in the gesture struck on the stranger with a sudden thrill. He saw the dark hair, the long, delicate features. Could it be – was it possible? Was this the one he came to meet – evidently unwarned and unexpectant – and – like this?

As he paused, bewildered, doubtful how to proceed, Edgar turned his head and saw him. He saw the dark man with a pointed beard, whom Wyn had described on the authority of Florence as having been in the wood the day before, and, laying down his pencil, said, courteously, but with some decision, and in a voice at once recognisable:

“Excuse me, but perhaps you are not aware that this wood is private?”

The stranger made three or four steps forward, till he stood close beside the pony chair.

“Oh yes,” he said, “of course I know that. You – you did not receive my letter?”

“You are – you are Alwyn!” gasped Edgar, breathless and dizzy with the shock that came without a moment’s doubt or a moment’s warning.

“Edgar! Yes, yes, I wrote. I did not mean to take you by surprise. But it is I – prepared for what welcome you will give me.”

Edgar was so near fainting that welcome of any sort was beyond his power; but, as his senses came back, he saw Alwyn leaning over him, looking at him with frightened eyes, not daring to lift, hardly to touch him, and almost as much taken aback as himself by the unexpected state in which he found him.

Edgar lay looking at him for a moment or two.

“Then – you are alive?” he said slowly.

“Yes,” said Alwyn, “I wrote to you to ask you if you would see me. I gave the letter to a boy, here in the wood – ”

“He lost it,” said Edgar, still as if half awake.

“What can I do for you?” said Alwyn anxiously. “Are you better? but no – rest a little don’t mind about it yet.”

Edgar still looked at him. Yes, it was Alwyn – perfectly unmistakable – only as much altered as the eight years made inevitable – with the face he remembered so clearly; yes, and with the softened look he had seen in his dream.

He put out his hand, and Alwyn took it timidly, and still with the same shocked, startled look.

“Of course,” he said gently, “I did not know you had been ill, or I would not have written to you, nor risked startling you.”

“I’m not ill,” said Edgar, still rather confusedly. “It’s only my back, you know – quite an old thing.”

“But when – how?”

“I fell downstairs,” said Edgar; “never mind, tell me – ”

“Not then? Not that flight? You did fall, I remember. What? then I was the cause.”

Alwyn started up and turned his back on his brother, evidently shocked and overpowered almost beyond control. The meeting was utterly unlike what either of them had fancied to himself as probable.

“Alwyn,” said Edgar, “there’s nothing to mind – I’m quite used to it. It was a mere chance, and it’s not so very bad. I can walk – a little, and I can get out here and have very jolly times, you see.”

But the boyish language, and the still boyish voice, so well remembered, completely overcame Alwyn, who had not expected to be agitated, only perhaps embarrassed, at seeing his brother. He struggled hard with himself before he could turn round, and, coming back and leaning against the tree beside Edgar, said:

“What would you like me best to do?”

“Why!” said Edgar, with recovered energy, “tell me something. I am dazed with surprise. Tell me everything.”

“I went to New York, as I suppose you know,” said Alwyn; “Whittaker with me. I wasn’t altogether a fool, and I accepted the introductions the New York bankers gave me, and with the money my father had lodged there for me I bought some land in Massachusetts. Well, after a good deal of uncertainty it not only proved a success in the farming way, but we found coal on it, which proved well worth working, and, in short, we have done well. Whittaker is what I suppose you would call my agent and manager, and a good friend into the bargain. Well, two years ago he married – well. He had quite made up his mind to give up the old country. And I – I only wished to be independent. We made no effort, you understand, at concealment – used our own names always. Anyone could have found us out. Well, I must tell you very briefly.

“I made an acquaintance in Boston – an Episcopal clergyman. We took a walking tour together – had sundry adventures. I went home with him. He has a sister. After a little while I felt what it was to have such a past behind me. And a Boston gentleman such as Mr Dallas was not likely to accept a wandering Englishman for a son-in-law without inquiry, nor to think it natural that my father’s eldest son should be living over there. I knew what sort of thing a few inquiries would tell him, and I knew what I had flung away.” Alwyn paused for a moment and then went on hurriedly – “All my views changed – changed utterly.”

“You decided to come home,” said Edgar.

“Yes,” said Alwyn, “but then something else happened.”

He took a pocket-book out of his pocket, opened it, and, unrolling a little packet of tissue paper, laid something bright and glittering on Edgar’s hand.

“Did you ever see that before?” he said. “Yes,” as Edgar looked at him with startled eyes, “I see you remember it. But say what it is.”

“It is one of Mrs Fletcher’s lost jewels,” said Edgar, as if under a spell.

It was a curious enamelled bird with a great ruby in its breast, and set in a sort of frame of emeralds, a curiosity as well as an object of intrinsic value.

“Yes. I didn’t steal it, though,” said Alwyn; “nor did Harry Whittaker.”

The cool dry tone in which this was said was exactly that of the old Alwyn.

“I know who did, though,” he said, “and I have come back to try to prove it. Curious proof, don’t you think, of innocence, to produce the stolen object?”

“What proof can be needed?” said Edgar, warmly.

Alwyn smiled.

“I never thought there would be – for you,” he said. “But it’s a very long story. I think I must write it for you. There are some things I must ask. Shall we be interrupted? How can I see you again alone? My father – is he well – is he altered?”

“He is pretty well,” said Edgar, “and – not altered. Wyn Warren will be back directly, I think I must tell him. You see I can’t get anywhere alone. I couldn’t even post a letter for myself. And my father, you know, unlocks the post-bag. I hardly ever get letters.”

Edgar spoke merely as if considering the difficulties of the case – quite cheerfully; but to Alwyn the words sounded most pitiful.

“Then try not to trouble about me,” he said; “you have given me a welcome. I must manage for myself. Of course I am only keeping quiet till I can get one or two things in train. I am staying in London. You mustn’t have to bear the brunt of any discovery.”

“I don’t care a straw for that,” said Edgar. “I’ll answer for little Wyn. He shall bring me here again to-morrow, if possible; in any case he shall come himself. When I understand dearly I can tell my father that I’ve seen you, and everything else you think proper.”

“No, no,” said Alwyn, almost laughing at the coolness with which this fragile, helpless brother proposed to face the difficulty for him. “You were always a plucky fellow, but when the time comes I’ll make my own confession. I’ll go now.”

But he still lingered.

“Ought you to be alone?” he said. “Do you want anything? You will not be the worse for the fright I gave you?”

“No. I’m quite jolly. If you’ll just put this cushion lower for me, that’s all, so that I can lie down.”

“I am too rough to touch you. There – is that right, dear boy?” said Alwyn, anxiously.

“Oh yes, you are very clever!” said Edgar.

He spoke lightly; but suddenly tears filled the keen eyes at the touch that was more tender than all the skilled attention at his command.

“I’m glad you’re found, Val; it’s been rather lonely,” he said.

“If I had guessed!” said Alwyn hoarsely; but at this moment a tremendous rush was heard, and Wyn’s voice in loud tones of dismay broke in on them.

“What are you about – you? Here I am, Mr Edgar. Father ain’t far off.”

Alwyn, who had been bending over his brother, started up, and Edgar began to laugh.

“All right, Wyn,” he said, “stop that row. This gentleman isn’t smothering me, nor stealing my watch; look at him – you’ll see him again. You’d better ask his pardon for losing his letter.”

Wyn’s mouth and eyes opened wider and wider.

“Please, sir,” he stammered, “he ain’t the one that gave me the letter; and please, sir, I’ve lighted on the envelope, and someone has took the letter out.”

Alwyn and Edgar looked at each other in dismay.

“There is my address,” said Alwyn, after a moment; “if anything unexpected turns up, send a telegram to me. But I shall be here to-morrow, and then you shall know all. Here, boy, Mr Edgar will tell you what you’re to do. Be sure you are very careful of him. Can you lead the pony safely?” Edgar laughed again at Wyn’s indignant stare, first at the speaker, and then at the half-sovereign dropped into his palm.

“All right, Wyn,” he said, “he has every right to order you; yes, and give you a tip too. Put it in your pocket, and come along.”

Wyn unfastened Dobbles, and turned him round, a light slowly breaking in on him as his master put both hands into the stranger’s, and a few rapid whispers were exchanged between them. Then Edgar made a sign to him to go on, and Wyn, with one shrewd glance at the face and figure of the object of his suspicions, drew a long breath and said:

“Sir – sir – that’s Mr Alwyn!”

Chapter Twelve

Aunt Stroud’s Surprise

That same evening, while Alwyn Cunningham at his hotel in London was writing the story of his life to his brother, hardly able to fix his thoughts on anything but the interview of the afternoon, Harry Whittaker was walking through the streets of Rapley. Nobody noticed him there, or wondered to see a stout, good-looking man, with a long beard, and rather a rough coat, among the passers-by. Certainly no one identified him with the saucy errand-boy who had idled at street corners and engaged in a free fight, with parcels and bandboxes for missiles and weapons, eight years or so before. He walked on till he came to the small but respectable-looking ironmonger’s shop, over the door of which was painted the name of Stroud. He walked in, glanced round, and a well-dressed woman came forward.

“What can I show you, sir?”

Harry asked for a clasp knife, looked at her keenly for a moment, then said:

“That’s an American mowing machine, I think, ma’am?”

“Yes, sir, the newest patent, very light and handy. Anything in the way of garden tools, sir?”

Harry Whittaker was Harry Whittaker still; he appreciated the exquisite joke of being ceremoniously treated by his Aunt Stroud. But he could not afford to indulge it. He looked at her, smiled a little, and said:

“No, thank you, my farm’s across the water in State. It’d hardly pay to take over machinery from the old country.”

Mrs Stroud gave a start, and, as she afterwards expressed it, “nearly sunk down upon the rakes.”

“Could I have a word in private?” said Harry.

“Step this way – sir,” she said, still in a state of doubt, and leading him into the comfortable parlour behind the shop.

“Aunt Eliza,” said Harry, as the door closed behind them, “I felt sure that you would know me at once.”

Mrs Stroud did sink down into an arm-chair exclaiming:

“Bless us and save us, it’s Harry!”

“Yes, aunt,” said Harry, “it is; and I’ve come first to you, knowing your influence with father, and that you could be trusted with an important secret; to ask you to give me a welcome, and to overlook my past undutiful behaviour.”

“Oh, my! And I’d imagined you a convict, or drowned dead!”

“Not at all,” said Harry, “I never was drowned, and I haven’t yet been hanged. On the contrary, finding myself well-to-do in the world, and happily settled in life, I felt that it was time to endeavour to undo the past.”

Harry spoke quite earnestly, but with a boldness of manner, and confidence of look, that established his identity at once. He put out his hand; but Mrs Stroud, bursting into tears, launched herself on his neck.

“You were always my favourite, Harry, and if you’ve done well for yourself I’m most glad to see you.”

“Thank you, Aunt Eliza, you’re very good, I’m sure; it’s more than I deserve. My father, my sisters and brothers?”

“Your father’s very hearty, and your brothers and sisters doing well, except Florrie, who gives a deal of trouble, as you did yourself. But what’ll you take, Henry? Sit down and tell me where you’ve been living. What will you have?”

“A cup of tea, aunt, if it’s your tea-time; I’m a teetotaller,” said Harry, unable to help a twinkle of fun at his aunt’s astonished rapture at this evidence of virtue.

As she got the tea he began to tell his story much as Alwyn had already related it to Edgar; but at greater length, and with many interruptions from his aunt.

“Mr Alwyn,” he went on, after some preliminaries about the buying of the land, and the discovery of the coal upon it, “never played the fool any more after he was on his own hands as it were. He seemed to want to justify himself, and prove those mistaken that thought we should both go to the bad. He never let on that he felt parting from home and being cut off from his expectations, nor did I. But, when there’s no longer anyone to pull a young fellow up, it’s one of two things: either he goes down altogether, or he has to pull up himself. And I can tell you, aunt, if all the graceless young chaps knew what a much easier sort of thing it is to get a good blowing up at the time, and the consequences saved you afterwards, than to go scot-free and find out for yourself what you’ve brought about, they’d not be in such a hurry to kick over the traces. But Mr Alwyn said that he’d brought suspicion and trouble on me, and he wouldn’t be the ruin of me further. So we kept straight and got on, and thought a deal of ourselves for doing it.”

“It’s what no one never expected!” ejaculated Mrs Stroud.

“No,” said Harry. “Well, I got married, as I’ll tell more about by-and-by, and I thought I’d done with the old country altogether, and went on as comfortable as could be till my little boy came. Then, Aunt Eliza, somehow it came over me more and more what it would be to have that little chap hear that there were those over here that thought I was a thief, and have him know that I was an undutiful son that left my father in his old age. If that there baby was for eight years without so much as thinking of me, or caring what I thought of him, why, it’d go near to break my heart, and I’d sooner follow him to his grave now, and never see him again. God forgive me! I’d been a bad son, but ‘don’t care’ was a word I couldn’t say before the little chap, nor have him say after me.

“Well, when all this was waking in me, Mr Alwyn was away in Boston, and I’d reason to guess what kept him there, and how there was a young lady in the case. He came back sudden, and while I was thinking how to tell him what was in my mind he turned round upon me and said, says he ‘Harry, I’m going home to beg pardon.’

”‘If you do,’ says I, ‘I’ll go with you.’

“And then he told me how he couldn’t ask Miss Dallas to marry him till he had told about his quarrel with his father; but his pride had held him back from trying to make it up, and going to seek for what he’d thrown away. He’d had a very hard time, he told me, what with the oath he’d made, and all that lay behind him. And he did look pale and changed, I can tell you, and seemed as if he couldn’t speak what was in his mind. But he should go, he said, whether the jewels were found or not, and even if the opening up of all the old scandal put him further off the young lady. And then I told him the thoughts I’d had on the subject, and he said: ‘There’s more than that, Harry, for through all this I’ve come to see that I sinned against God.’”

“Well,” said Mrs Stroud, “I never did think to hear as Mr Alwyn was a converted man! It’s a miracle!”

“Well,” said Harry gravely, “as you may say it was; but ’twas that conviction that conquered his pride and made him resolve to go home again. Just as we’d settled on this conclusion, and were wondering what to do next, there was an accident with some paraffin, and a young fellow working for us was near burnt to death, and would have been killed on the spot but for Mr Alwyn. Now we knew that this young man Lennox had been footman at Ravenshurst, and had left the place about a week before we did, to go abroad with a gentleman. He told us he came to seek work because he had known us formerly.

“To make a long story short, Mr Alwyn, worse luck, sent the only other man about for the doctor, and he and I stayed with Lennox. Then, says he, he’d been a great sinner, and he’d like to own it before he died. And he told Mr Alwyn a number of dishonest actions, small and great, and at last he said he’d taken the Ravenshurst jewels. He’d come back on the sly to see his sweetheart after he left the place, and saw the young lady come down and slip the jewels under the ferns on the rockery, and he took them on the spur of the moment. Well, he was just off with his new master on a trip to India; but he contrived to hear how I was suspected before he started.”

“And took the jewels with him?”

“Well – it’s all in the confession Mr Alwyn wrote down. But one of the jewels he had still, and that he gave us, and Mr Alwyn has it row. But he said it had been on his conscience all the time he was knocking about the world, and that when he heard our names he came and got work with us on purpose, though he put off owning his guilt from day to day. He’d near put it off too late, for before he’d told us all we wanted to know the death struggle came on him and he could tell us no more. And ’twas then, Aunt Eliza, by the words Mr Alwyn said, and the prayers he made that I knew of the change that had come on him and first thought of my sin against God, as well as against the little one.

“Well, the doctor came as Lennox died, and Mr Alwyn made him stay with us and keep us in sight while, without a word to one another, we each wrote down what the dying man had said to us; and the doctor witnessed that we had written it without speech with one another since Lennox’s death. Then we took the papers before the nearest judge, and made our affidavits that they contained a true confession. But it’s all on our words after all; howsoever, on that confession we came back.”

“Well, Harry,” said Mrs Stroud, “I’d take my dying oath you was innocent. But whatever made you decamp just at that moment?”

“My father knew where I was,” said Harry. “He knew I joined Mr Alwyn. But he declared that after the jewels had been named in connection with us he’d never go home, if they were found twenty times over, without the squire made him an apology.”

Mrs Stroud sat and looked at her recovered nephew, at his good clothes, his watch chain, his air of undoubted respectability, and also at the unembarrassed and cheerful air with which he faced her.

“What are you going to do now?” she said.

“That must depend on Mr Alwyn. He thought Mr Edgar would perhaps have helped him search, or told him how the land lay, anyhow; so he wrote him a note appointing a meeting, which I gave to little Wyn Warren in the wood. It seems he lost it; and, though the meeting came about, Mr Alwyn was so distracted at the state in which he found his poor brother that he never laid any plans at all. When I joined him he couldn’t hardly speak of him. ’Twas the heaviest punishment of all, he said.”

“Ah, poor young gentleman,” said Mrs Stroud; “it’s a sad business, and I doubt he’s not long for this world. But do I take you to say, Harry, that you’re a family man?”

Harry nodded, and produced a photograph of his wife and baby, and another of the substantial house in which he lived; and over the tea a great many more questions and answers were interchanged. Harry heard all about his sisters, and where Florence was, and what his brother George was doing. He couldn’t help enjoying the joke of appearing to his aunt in so new a light – even while he asked with real affection after Mattie, and studied the photographs of his family in his aunt’s book. He could not make himself known to his father, he said, until Mr Alwyn had taken some action, and, of course, he could not but hope that the explanation of the lost jewels would be accepted at Ashcroft.

His coming to see his aunt had been, he said, a sudden thought, prompted by Mr Alwyn’s shock and distress at his brother’s illness.

“I didn’t know then what I might find at the old place,” he said. “But if you could keep my coming quiet for a few days, aunt, it would be all for the better.”

“Well, Henry,” said Mrs Stroud, “there’s nothing declares to me that you’re a reformed character so much as your coming and consulting me, as was your true friend in the past always. It’s a lucky thing that Stroud has gone down the line to-day to his cousin’s funeral. I’ll keep your secret, Harry, though the thought of you, sitting there so broad-shouldered, and so well-to-do looking, is so amazing that I feel as if it would ooze out of me at the seams of my gown!”

“Well, aunt,” said Harry, “you’re very good, and I hope in a couple of days the concealment will be over.”

“It’s well,” said Mrs Stroud, “that that unlucky Florrie knows nothing of it, or she’d have controverted your intentions to a dead certainty.”

Chapter Thirteen

Most Haste, Worst Speed!

Unfortunately for his scheme of meeting with his brother again, poor Edgar awoke the next morning to one of the blinding and overpowering headaches to which over-fatigue and excitement always rendered him liable. There was no chance of getting that day to the trysting-place, no possibility of anything but lying still. He could not write a note to be given to Alwyn, he could hardly even think of a safe message for him.

“Tell Wyn – I cannot go out – tell him to – get what I told him – in the wood – he will understand,” he said, with a great effort at something that would be comprehensible.

“Yes, sir; don’t trouble yourself, sir,” said Robertson; “it shall be attended to.”

“And tell him to come for orders to-morrow; I shall be able to go to-morrow.”

“Very well, sir,” said Robertson, privately thinking that his master would be quite unequal to such fatigue to-morrow, or probably for two or three days to come.

Edgar chafed and fretted at his incapacity in a way that of course aggravated the headache. It was such a disappointment, besides the anxiety and suspense, not to see Alwyn again. He had not known how much he should care about it. Robertson thought that he had never known his master so restless and impatient.