Elster's Folly

Lady Hartledon would not reply. She felt vexed with her mother, vexed with her husband, vexed on all sides; and she took refuge in her fatigue and was silent.

The dowager went to church on the following day. Maude would not go. The hot anger flushed into her face at the thought of showing herself there for the first time, unaccompanied by her husband: to Maude's mind it seemed that she must look to others so very much like a deserted wife. She comes home alone; he stays in London! "Ah, why did he not come down only for this one Sunday, and go back again—if he must have gone?" she thought.

A month or two ago Maude had not cared enough for him to reason like this. The countess-dowager ensconced herself in a corner of the Hartledon state-pew, and from her blinking eyes looked out upon the Ashtons. Anne, with her once bright face looking rather wan, her modest demeanour; Mrs. Ashton, so essentially a gentlewoman; the doctor, sensible, clever, charitable, beyond all doubt a good man—a feeling came over the mind of the sometimes obtuse woman that of all the people before her they looked the least likely to enter on the sort of lawsuit spoken of by Maude. But never a doubt occurred to her that they had entered on it.

Lady Hartledon remained at home, her prayer-book in her hand. She was thinking she could steal out to the evening service; it might not be so much noticed then, her being alone. Listlessly enough she sat, toying with her prayer-book rather than reading it. She had never pretended to be religious, had not been trained to be so; and reading a prayer-book, when not in church, was quite unusual to her. But there are seasons in a woman's life, times when peril is looked forward to, that bring thought even to the most careless nature. Maude was trying to play at "being good," and was reading the psalms for the day in an absent fashion, her thoughts elsewhere; and the morning passed on. The quiet apathy of her present state, compared with the restless fever which had stirred her during her last sojourn at Hartledon, was remarkable.

Suddenly there burst in upon her the countess-dowager: that estimable lady's bonnet awry, her face scarlet, herself in a commotion.

"I didn't suppose you'd have done it, Maude! You might play tricks upon other people, I think, but not upon your own mother."

The interlude was rather welcome to Maude, rousing her from her apathy. Not for some few moments, however, could she understand the cause of complaint.

It appeared that the countess-dowager, with that absence of all sense of the fitness of things which so eminently characterized her, had joined the Ashtons after service, inquiring with quite motherly solicitude after Mrs. Ashton's health, complimenting Anne upon her charming looks; making herself, in short, as agreeable as she knew how, and completely ignoring the past in regard to her son-in-law. Gentlewomen in mind and manners, they did not repulse her, were even courteously civil; and she graciously accompanied them across the road to the Rectory-gate, and there took a cordial leave, saying she would look in on the morrow.

In returning she met Dr. Ashton. He was passing her with nothing but a bow; but he little knew the countess-dowager. She grasped his hand; said how grieved she was not to have had an opportunity of explaining away her part in the past; hoped he would let bygones be bygones; and finally, whilst the clergyman was scheming how to get away from her without absolute rudeness, she astonished him with a communication touching the action-at-law. There ensued a little mutual misapprehension, followed by a few emphatic words of denial from Dr. Ashton; and the countess-dowager walked away with a scarlet face, and an explosion of anger against her daughter.

Lady Hartledon was not yet callous to the proprieties of life; and the intrusion on the Ashtons, which her mother confessed to, half frightened, half shamed her. But the dowager's wrath at having been misled bore down everything. Dr. Ashton had entered no action whatever against Lord Hartledon; had never thought of doing it.

"And you, you wicked, ungrateful girl, to come home to me with such an invention, and cause me to start off on a fool's errand! Do you suppose I should have gone and humbled myself to those people, but for hoping to bring the parson to a sense of what he was doing in going-in for those enormous damages?"

"I have not come home to you with any invention, mamma. Dr. Ashton has entered the action."

"He has not," raved the dowager. "It is an infamous hoax you have played off upon me. You couldn't find any excuse for your husband's staying in London, and so invented this. What with you, and what with Kirton's ingratitude, I shall be driven out of house and home!"

"I won't say another word until you are calm and can talk common sense," said Maude, leaning back in her chair, and putting down her prayer-book.

"Common sense! What am I talking but common sense? When a child begins to mislead her own mother, the world ought to come to an end."

Maude took no notice.

There happened to be some water standing on a table, and the dowager poured out a tumblerful and drank it, though not accustomed to the beverage. Untying her bonnet-strings she sat down, a little calmer.

"Perhaps you'll explain this at your convenience, Maude."

"There is nothing to explain," was the answer. "What I told you was the truth. The action has been entered by the Ashtons."

"And I tell you that the action has not."

"I assure you that it has," returned Maude. "I told you of the evening we first had notice of it, and the damages claimed; do you think I invented that, or went to sleep and dreamt it? If Val has gone down once to that Temple about it, he has gone fifty times. He would not go for pleasure."

The countess-dowager sat fanning herself quietly: for her daughter's words were gaining ground.

"There's a mistake somewhere, Maude, and it is on your side and not mine. I'll lay my life that no action has been entered by Dr. Ashton. The man spoke the truth; I can read the truth when I see it as well as anyone: his face flushed with pain and anger at such a thing being said of him. It may not be difficult to explain this contradiction."

"Do you think not?" returned Maude, her indifference exciting the listener to anger.

"I should say Hartledon is deceiving you. If any action is entered against him at all, it isn't that sort of action; or perhaps the young lady is not Miss Ashton, but some other; he's just the kind of man to be drawn into promising marriage to a dozen or two. Very clever of him to palm you off with this tale: a man may get into five hundred troubles not convenient to disclose to his wife."

Except that Lady Hartledon's cheek flushed a little, she made no answer; she held firmly—at least she thought she held firmly—to her own side of the case. Her mother, on the contrary, adopted the new view, and dismissed it from her thoughts accordingly.

Maude went to church in the evening, sitting alone in the great pew, pale and quiet. Anne Ashton was also alone; and the two whilom rivals, the triumphant and the rejected, could survey each other to their heart's content.

Not very triumphant was Maude's feeling. Strange perhaps to say, the suggestion of the old dowager, like instilled poison, was making its way into her very veins. Her thoughts had been busy with the matter ever since. One positive conviction lay in her heart—that Dr. Ashton, now reading the first lesson before her, for he was taking the whole of the service that evening, could not, under any circumstance, be guilty of a false assertion or subterfuge. One solution of the difficulty presented itself to her—that her mother, in her irascibility, had misunderstood the Rector; and yet that was improbable. As Maude half sat, half lay back in the pew, for the faint feeling was especially upon her that evening, she thought she would give a great deal to set the matter at rest.

When the service was over she took the more secluded way home; those of the servants who had attended returning as usual by the road. On reaching the turning where the three paths diverged, the faintness which had been hovering over her all the evening suddenly grew worse; and but for a friendly tree, she might have fallen. It grew better in a few moments, but she did not yet quit her support.

Very surprised was the Rector of Calne to come up and see Lady Hartledon in this position. Every Sunday evening, after service, he went to visit a man in one of the cottages, who was dying of consumption, and he was on his way there now. He would have preferred to pass without speaking: but Lady Hartledon looked in need of assistance; and in common Christian kindness he could not pass her by.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Hartledon. Are you ill?"

She took his offered arm with her disengaged hand, as an additional support; and her white face turned a shade whiter.

"A sudden faintness overtook me. I am better now," she said, when able to speak.

"Will you allow me to walk on with you?"

"Thank you; just a little way. If you will not mind it."

That he must have understood the feeling which prompted the concluding words was undoubted: and perhaps had Lady Hartledon been in possession of her keenest senses, she might never have spoken them. Pride and health go out of us together. Dr. Ashton took her on his arm, and they walked slowly in the direction of the little bridge. Colour was returning to her face, strength to her frame.

"The heat of the day has affected you, possibly?"

"Yes, perhaps; I have felt faint at times lately. The church was very hot to-night."

Nothing more was said until the bridge was gained, and then Maude released his arm.

"Dr. Ashton, I thank you very much. You have been a friend in need."

"But are you sure you are strong enough to go on alone? I will escort you to the house if you are not."

"Quite strong enough now. Thank you once again."

As he was bowing his farewell, a sudden impulse to speak, and set the matter that was troubling her at rest, came over her. Without a moment's deliberation, without weighing her words, she rushed upon it; the ostensible plea an apology for her mother's having spoken to him.

"Yes, I told Lady Kirton she was labouring under some misapprehension," he quietly answered.

"Will you forgive me also for speaking of it?" she murmured. "Since my mother came home with the news of what you said, I have been lost in a sea of conjecture: I could not attend to the service for dwelling upon it, and might as well not have been in church—a curious confession to make to you, Dr. Ashton. Is it indeed true that you know nothing of the matter?"

"Lady Kirton told me in so many words that I had entered an action against Lord Hartledon for breach of promise, and laid the damages at ten thousand pounds," returned Dr. Ashton, with a plainness of speech and a cynical manner that made her blush. And she saw at once that he had done nothing of the sort; saw it without any more decisive denial.

"But the action has been entered," said Lady Hartledon.

"I beg your pardon, madam. Lord Hartledon is, I should imagine, the only man living who could suppose me capable of such a thing."

"And you have not entered on it!" she reiterated, half bewildered by the denial.

"Most certainly not. When I parted with Lord Hartledon on a certain evening, which probably your ladyship remembers, I washed my hands of him for good, desiring never to approach him in any way whatever, never hear of him, never see him again. Your husband, madam, is safe for me: I desire nothing better than to forget that such a man is in existence."

Lifting his hat, he walked away. And Lady Hartledon stood and gazed after him as one in a dream.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MR. CARR AT WORK

Thomas Carr was threading his way through the mazy precincts of Gray's Inn, with that quick step and absorbed manner known only, I think, to the busy man of our busy metropolis. He was on his way to make some inquiries of a firm of solicitors, Messrs. Kedge and Reck, strangers to him in all but name.

Up some dark and dingy stairs, he knocked at a dark and dingy door: which, after a minute, opened of itself by some ingenious contrivance, and let him into a passage, whence he turned into a room, where two clerks were writing at a desk.

"Can I see Mr. Kedge?"

"Not in," said one of the clerks, without looking up.

"Mr. Reck, then?"

"Not in."

"When will either of them be in?" continued the barrister; thinking that if he were Messrs. Kedge and Reck the clerk would get his discharge for incivility.

"Can't say. What's your business?"

"My business is with them: not with you."

"You can see the managing clerk."

"I wish to see one of the partners."

"Could you give your name?" continued the gentleman, equably.

Mr. Carr handed in his card. The clerk glanced at it, and surreptitiously showed it to his companion; and both of them looked up at him. Mr. Carr of the Temple was known by reputation, and they condescended to become civil.

"Take a seat for a moment, sir," said the one. "I'll inquire how long Mr. Kedge will be; but Mr. Reek's not in town to-day."

A few minutes, and Thomas Carr found himself in a small square room with the head of the firm, a youngish man and somewhat of a dandy, especially genial in manner, as though in contrast to his clerk. He welcomed the rising barrister.

"There's as much difficulty in getting to see you as if you were Pope of Rome," cried Mr. Carr, good humouredly.

The lawyer laughed. "Hopkins did not know you: and strangers are generally introduced to Mr. Reck, or to our managing clerk. What can I do for you, Mr. Carr?"

"I don't know that you can do anything for me," said Mr. Carr, seating himself; "but I hope you can. At the present moment I am engaged in sifting a piece of complicated business for a friend; a private matter entirely, which it is necessary to keep private. I am greatly interested in it myself, as you may readily believe, when it is keeping me from circuit. Indeed it may almost be called my own affair," he added, observing the eyes of the lawyer fixed upon him, and not caring they should see into his business too clearly. "I fancy you have a clerk, or had a clerk, who is cognizant of one or two points in regard to it: can you put me in the way of finding out where he is? His name is Gordon."

"Gordon! We have no clerk of that name. Never had one, that I remember. How came you to fancy it?"

"I heard it from my own clerk, Taylor. One day last week I happened to say before him that I'd give a five-pound note out of my pocket to get at the present whereabouts of this man Gordon. Taylor is a shrewd fellow; full of useful bits of information, and knows, I really believe, three-fourths of London by name. He immediately said a young man of that name was with Messrs. Kedge and Reck, of Gray's Inn, either as clerk, or in some other capacity; and when he described this clerk of yours, I felt nearly sure that it was the man I am looking for. I got Taylor to make inquiries, and he did, I believe, of one of your clerks; but he could learn nothing, except that no one of that name was connected with you now. Taylor persists that he is or was connected with you; and so I thought the shortest plan to settle the matter was to ask yourselves."

"We have no clerk of that name," repeated Mr. Kedge, pushing back some papers on the table. "Never had one."

"Understand," said Mr. Carr, thinking it just possible the lawyer might be mistaking his motives, "I have nothing to allege against the man, and do not seek to injure him. The real fact is, that I do not want to see him or to be brought into personal contact with him; I only want to know whether he is in London, and, if so, where?"

"I assure you he is not connected with us," repeated Mr. Kedge. "I would tell you so in a moment if he were."

"Then I can only apologise for having troubled you," said the barrister, rising. "Taylor must have been mistaken. And yet I would have backed his word, when he positively asserts a thing, against the world. I hardly ever knew him wrong."

Mr. Kedge was playing with the locket on his watch-chain, his head bent in thought.

"Wait a moment, Mr. Carr. I remember now that we took a clerk temporarily into the office in the latter part of last year. His writing did not suit, and we kept him only a week or two. I don't know what his name was, but it might have been Gordon."

"Do you remember what sort of a man he was?" asked Mr. Carr, somewhat eagerly.

"I really do not. You see, I don't come much into contact with our clerks. Reck does; but he's not here to-day. I fancy he had red hair."

"Gordon had reddish hair."

"You had better see Kimberly," said the solicitor, ringing a bell. "He is our managing clerk, and knows everything."

A grey-haired, silent-looking man came in with stooping shoulders. Mr. Kedge, without any circumlocution, asked whether he remembered any clerk of the name of Gordon having been in the house. Mr. Kimberly responded by saying that they never had one in the house of the name.

"Well, I thought not," observed the principal. "There was one had in for a short time, you know, while Hopkins was ill. I forget his name."

"His name was Druitt, sir. We employed a man of the name of Gorton to do some outdoor business for us at times," continued the managing clerk, turning his eyes on the barrister; "but not lately."

"What sort of business?"

"Serving writs."

"Gorton is not Gordon," remarked Mr. Kedge, with legal acumen. "By the way, Kimberly, I have heard nothing of Gorton lately. What has become of him?"

"I have not the least idea, sir. We parted in a huff, so he wouldn't perhaps be likely to come in my way again. Some business that he mismanaged, if you remember, sir, down at Calne."

"When he arrested one man for another," laughed the lawyer, "and got entangled in a coroner's inquest, and I don't know what all."

Mr. Carr had pricked up his ears, scarcely daring to breathe. But his manner was careless to a degree.

"The man he arrested being Lord Hartledon; the man he ought to have arrested being the Honourable Percival Elster," he interposed, laughing.

"What! do you know about it?" cried the lawyer.

"I remember hearing of it; I was intimate with Mr. Elster at the time."

"He has since become Lord Hartledon."

"Yes. But about this Gorton! I should not be in the least surprised if he is the man I am inquiring for. Can you describe him to me, Mr. Kimberly?"

"He is a short, slight man, under thirty, with red hair and whiskers."

Mr. Carr nodded.

"Light hair with a reddish tinge it has been described to me. Do you happen to be at all acquainted with his antecedents?"

"Not I; I know nothing about, the man," said Mr. Kedge. "Kimberly does, perhaps."

"No, sir," dissented Kimberly. "He had been to Australia, I believe; and that's all I know about him."

"It is the same man," said Mr. Carr, quietly. "And if you can tell me anything about him," he continued, turning to the older man, "I shall be exceedingly obliged to you. To begin with—when did you first know him?"

But at this juncture an interruption occurred. Hopkins the discourteous came in with a card, which he presented to his principal. The gentleman was waiting to see Mr. Kedge. Two more clients were also waiting, he added, Thomas Carr rose, and the end of it was that he went with Mr. Kimberly to his own room.

"It's Carr of the Inner Temple," whispered Mr. Kedge in his clerk's ear.

"Oh, I know him, sir."

"All right. If you can help him, do so."

"I first knew Gorton about fifteen months ago," observed the clerk, when they were shut in together. "A friend of mine, now dead, spoke of him to me as a respectable young fellow who had fallen in the world, and asked if I could help him to some employment. I think he told me somewhat of his history; but I quite forget it. I know he was very low down then, with scarcely bread to eat."

"Did this friend of yours call him Gorton or Gordon?" interrupted Mr. Carr.

"Gorton. I never heard him called Gordon at all. I remember seeing a book of his that he seemed to set some store by. It was printed in old English, and had his name on the title-page: 'George Gorton. From his affectionate father, W. Gorton.' I employed him in some outdoor work. He knew London perfectly well, and seemed to know people too."

"And he had been to Australia?"

"He had been to Australia, I feel sure. One day he accidentally let slip some words about Melbourne, which he could not well have done unless he had seen the place. I taxed him with it, and he shuffled out of it with some excuse; but in such a manner as to convince me he had been there."

"And now, Mr. Kimberly, I am going to ask you another question. You spoke of his having been at Calne; I infer that you sent him to the place on the errand to Mr. Elster. Try to recollect whether his going there was your own spontaneous act, or whether he was the original mover in the journey?"

The grey-haired clerk looked up as though not understanding.

"You don't quite take me, I see."

"Yes I do, sir; but I was thinking. So far as I can recollect, it was our own spontaneous act. I am sure I had no reason to think otherwise at the time. We had had a deal of trouble with the Honourable Mr. Elster; and when it was found that he had left town for the family seat, we came to the resolution to arrest him."

Thomas Carr paused. "Do you know anything of Gordon's—or Gorton's doings in Calne? Did you ever hear him speak of them afterwards?"

"I don't know that I did particularly. The excuse he made to us for arresting Lord Hartledon was, that the brothers were so much alike he mistook the one for the other."

"Which would infer that he knew Mr. Elster by sight."

"It might; yes. It was not for the mistake that we discharged him; indeed, not for anything at all connected with Calne. He did seem to have gone about his business there in a very loose way, and to have paid less attention to our interests than to the gossip of the place; of which there was a tolerable amount just then, on account of Lord Hartledon's unfortunate death. Gorton was set upon another job or two when he returned; and one of those he contrived to mismanage so woefully, that I would give him no more to do. It struck me that he must drink, or else was accessible to a bribe."

Mr. Carr nodded his head, thinking the latter more than probable. His fingers were playing with a newspaper which happened to lie on the clerk's desk; and he put the next question with a very well-assumed air of carelessness, as if it were but the passing thought of the moment.

"Did he ever talk about Mr. Elster?"

"Never but once. He came to my house one evening to tell me he had discovered the hiding-place of a gentleman we were looking for. I was taking my solitary glass of gin and water after supper, the only stimulant I ever touch—and that by the doctor's orders—and I could not do less than ask him to help himself. You see, sir, we did not look upon him as a common sheriff's man: and he helped himself pretty freely. That made him talkative. I fancy his head cannot stand much; and he began rambling upon recent affairs at Calne; he had not been back above a week then—"

"And he spoke of Mr. Elster?"

"He spoke a good deal of him as the new Lord Hartledon, all in a rambling sort of way. He hinted that it might be in his power to bring home to him some great crime."

"The man must have been drunk indeed!" remarked Mr. Carr, with the most perfect assumption of indifference; a very contrast to the fear that shot through his heart. "What crime, pray? I hope he particularized it."

"What he seemed to hint at was some unfair play in connection with his brother's death," said the old clerk, lowering his voice. "'A man at his wits' end for money would do many queer things,' he remarked."

Mr. Carr's eyes flashed. "What a dangerous fool he must be! You surely did not listen to him!"

"I, sir! I stopped him pretty quickly, and bade him sew up his mouth until he came to his sober senses again. Oh, they make great simpletons of themselves, some of these young fellows, when they get a little drink into them."

"They do," said the barrister. "Did he ever allude to the matter again?"