Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

'I did not know she had been at Cintra or Toledo,' said Mr. Semple thoughtfully.

'I won't swear that she had,' said Peter. 'The Peninsula wasn't so generally known twenty-five years ago as it is now. Travelling was difficult then, and people in England, who have not themselves travelled much, are very liable to get confused about the names of foreign places.'

'Still,' said the lawyer, 'Cintra and Toledo are places that every one knows.'

'You mean,' said Peter, 'that in a well-known place, with English people living in it, there would be more likelihood of getting the information which we want?'

'I mean,' said Mr. Semple, 'that, as there is no evidence of your brother ever having been seen at Juarez, the next thing is to find out in what place there is evidence of his appearance.'

It was late afternoon, and as all clerical work for the day was now finished, Peter suggested and Mr. Semple readily agreed to a walk in the gardens. There was nothing left in the flower-beds, but the conservatories and the orchid-house were a real feast of pleasure to the lawyer. He went into the outer hall to fetch his stick and coat, and then, turning back towards his host, he made a humorous signal to convey the intelligence that some callers had driven up to the door. Peter retreated precipitately; but Mr. Semple had already been seen and was hailed by Mr. Lawrence, who had, a few minutes before, drawn up to the entrance in his big red motor-car. Already Mr. Lawrence was in earnest conversation with the butler, and his feminine-like ejaculations could be heard now as he stood and conversed with the man at the hall door. He stood on the doorstep while his guests in the motor, who seemed to fear that they might be intrusive, looked as though they would prefer to hasten their departure.

'Ah, how-do-you-do, Mr. Semple,' said Mr. Lawrence in his high-pitched voice, advancing a few steps into the hall. 'It is a great piece of luck meeting you like this! I have just driven over with my friends, Sir John and Lady Falconer.—Lady Falconer, may I introduce my friend, Mr. Semple?—This is a very sad house to come to, Mr. Semple, is it not?' he said, and paused, hoping for a little gossip from the lawyer. 'I was just driving through the village, and I have been to see the church with my friends, and we thought we would run in and inquire how everything was going on.'

'Everything,' said the lawyer dryly, 'is going on as well as could be expected.'

'How is Peter?' said Mr. Lawrence, putting on an appropriate expression of woe, which sat oddly on his big healthy red face. He was a kindly man at heart, but an idle existence and his inveterate love of gossip had made a poor creature of him. His healthy muscular frame did not know the sensation of that honest fatigue which follows a good day's work, and his mind travelled on lines of so little resistance that he may be said to have exercised it almost as infrequently as he exercised his body.

Mr. Semple replied that Peter seemed well; and Mr. Lawrence, taking him in an affectionate and familiar manner by the sleeve of his coat, said: 'I should so much like my friends to see the gardens; Peter would not mind, would he?'

Lady Falconer, the least intrusive of women, who had heard the whispered colloquy, here interposed and said that, as she was very cold, she would much prefer to go home; and Sir John added with simple directness that he thought that, as the place was more or less shut up at present, the gardens had better wait for a more fitting occasion.

Mr. Lawrence protested that a walk would do Lady Falconer good, and that, further, as they were leaving so soon, there would be no other chance of seeing the famous gardens. In fact Mr. Lawrence had the door of his motor-car open, and was helping Lady Falconer to alight almost before he had obtained Mr. Semple's permission to make a tour of the grounds.

'It's all right,' he said, in his fussy, dictatorial way, divesting himself of his heavy motor-coat, and preparing to act as cicerone. 'This place is thrown open once a week to the public; and although this isn't a visitors' day all sorts of people come to visit Bowshott on the other days of the week.'

Lady Falconer felt slightly ruffled by the way in which her wishes had been ignored in a small matter, and confined herself to talking to the lawyer; but Mr. Lawrence overtook them on the pretext of pointing out some special beauty of the design of the gardens, or of the fine view that could be obtained from the high position of the terraces, and the next moment he had plunged somewhat ruthlessly into the absorbing topic of Mrs. Ogilvie's sudden death.

'We were all shocked by it,' he said, emphasizing his words in his gushing way; 'and of course to our little circle,' he said, turning to Mr. Semple in an explanatory manner, 'it is more particularly painful and distressing, because Sir John and Lady Falconer had only just renewed a very old acquaintance with the deceased lady.'

'We knew Mrs. Ogilvie very well in Spain,' said Lady Falconer in her charming voice, still confining her remarks to Mr. Semple.

'Ah!' said the lawyer, 'you knew her in Spain?'

'Yes,' said Lady Falconer, 'and it was one of those friendships which I believe it was intended on both sides should be renewed when we should return to England; for, on my own and on my husband's part, it was a matter of real liking. But we have been on foreign service ever since we were married, and I never met Mrs. Ogilvie again till she drove over to the races at Sedgwick.'

Mr. Semple detached himself and his companion from the little group which Mr. Lawrence was showing round with so much assiduity, and, as they paced the broad walks of the terrace together, he said to her, with an air of frank confidence, 'You were with her, perhaps, before her elder child died?'

'No,' said Lady Falconer, 'and rather strangely I never knew till the other day that Mrs. Ogilvie had lost a child. There was only one boy with her when we knew her at Juarez; and, although she was in deep mourning at the time, we knew, of course, that she was in the first year of her widowhood. But we had no idea, as I was telling Mrs. Wrottesley the other day, that Mrs. Ogilvie had suffered a double loss.'

Mr. Semple led the way through the orchid-house and stopped to examine some of the blooms with absorbed attention. 'It is very chilly,' he said, as he stepped out into the cold air after that of the hot greenhouse; 'I hope you will not catch cold.' He locked his hands lightly behind his back as he walked, and continued to talk to the companion by his side. 'I wonder,' he said, 'if you could tell me exactly the year and the month when you first met Mrs. Ogilvie? There are various formalities to be gone through, in connection with Captain Ogilvie's accession to the property, which necessitate hunting up family records, and these have been very badly kept in the Ogilvie family. Also, may I say this to you in confidence? There was an idea in many people's minds that, about the time of Colonel Ogilvie's death and the early infancy of the second son, Peter, Mrs. Ogilvie's mind was slightly unhinged for a time. It may not have been so, but one cannot help wondering if the concealment which she has used to keep from her family the knowledge of the existence of this disease from which she has died may not have been something like a return of an old mental malady.'

Lady Falconer looked genuinely distressed, and protested that certainly when she knew Mrs. Ogilvie she was in all respects the most sane as well as one of the most charming of women. 'And as for giving you dates,' she said pleasantly, 'that is very easily done, for it was in the year and the month of my marriage that I first met her.'

'That would be?' said Mr. Semple, unlocking his clasped hands and touching his fingers together in the characteristic manner of the confidential lawyer.

'That was in December 1885,' she said.

'Ah!' said Mr. Semple contemplatively, 'then it must have been after little Edward Ogilvie's death, of course.'

'I cannot tell you,' said Lady Falconer, 'because, as I say, Mrs. Ogilvie never spoke of her loss. Perhaps that does not seem to you very remarkable, as we only met her in a most casual manner in an out-of-the-way village in Spain; but we really were on terms of some intimacy together, and one can only explain her silence by the fact, which seems to be pretty generally known, that she was a woman of quite unusual reserve.'

'Yes,' said Mr. Semple; 'I believe no one ever knew Mrs. Ogilvie very well.'

Mr. Lawrence called to them from behind to suggest that the new row of greenhouses was an immense improvement, and that they had cost over a thousand pounds to build.

Lady Falconer politely turned to look back, and then found herself rather determinedly appropriated by the lawyer.

'I always understood,' he said, 'that Mrs. Ogilvie travelled considerably in Spain; and, of course, in those days when railways were fewer, this was considered rather unusual, especially for a lady travelling with no gentleman with her. How courageous she was!'

'Much more courageous than I was even with my husband with me!' said Lady Falconer. 'Mrs. Ogilvie had been in quite out-of-the-way parts of the country; but she spoke the language perfectly, and I believe I used to hear that she had Spanish blood in her veins.'

'Yes; she had property at Granada, and beyond where the railway now extends, in some of the more southern provinces,' hazarded Mr. Semple.

'I think if I remember aright,' said Lady Falconer, 'that she had just returned from Cintra when I met her.'

'I have always heard that Cintra is a most lovely place,' said Mr. Semple conversationally; 'and Mrs. Ogilvie had a peculiar love for beautiful things.'

'Cintra is beautiful, and Lisbon itself is a particularly fine town,' assented Lady Falconer.

'Mrs. Ogilvie was not there when you knew her?'

Lawyers are inquisitive by profession, and Mr. Semple made his inquiries with easy tact; his manner was kind and pleasant, and betrayed so much real feeling for his clients that Lady Falconer was tempted to continue the subject of conversation in which he seemed so deeply interested.

'I wish,' she said cordially, 'that I could remember more details that might be of interest or of use to you. My husband and I have spent a most varied life, in which many interesting experiences have, alas! been almost forgotten; but we were both considerably impressed by Mrs. Ogilvie's vivid personality and her very real charm. These made much more impression on me than anything that she told us about her journeys. She was fond of travelling by sea, I remember, and I perfectly well recollect her telling my husband and me that she had come by ship to Lisbon when she first came to travel in Spain for her health.'

'Yes, I remember hearing that,' said Mr. Semple. 'Indeed, I believe that we took her passage for her, and in going over her papers the other day we came across two letters which she had written home from the ship.'

'Talking of that,' said Lady Falconer, 'I wonder if the maid who was with her during the time I was there could be of service to you? I often think a maid must know her mistress with even a greater degree of intimacy than many of her friends, and I remember it was a particularly nice Spanish woman whose services she lent me when I was ill.'

Mr. Semple would like to know if Lady Falconer remembered whether the woman had come out from England with Mrs. Ogilvie.

'I am afraid I cannot,' said Lady Falconer. 'But stop! Yes, I can. The maid who came out from England with Mrs. Ogilvie left her because she objected to the sea-voyage. It seems that the poor thing was so ill that she never appeared the whole time, and as soon as the ship touched port she went straight back to England by land. I remember it quite well now, because that was a particularly stormy winter, with dreadful gales; and when my illness was at its worst it was another very stormy night, and this Spanish woman whom I mentioned just now told me the story, and was evidently full of sympathy for the English maid. She enlivened the whole of her watch during the night by lamentations over the danger of sea-voyages, interspersed with prayers to the Virgin. I shall never forget how it blew! The house shook with the violence of the gale, and this Spanish woman sat by my bed and told me stories of shipwreck and of bodies washed up on the beach. Mrs. Ogilvie, I understand, had but lately parted with friends. Ah, I see now! I do not speak Spanish well, and I remember I had an idea at the time that this parting which the woman spoke of had something to do with friends who had left her. But, of course, what the Spanish woman must really have meant was that Mrs. Ogilvie had lately suffered a bereavement.'

'It is strange, then, is it not,' said the lawyer, 'that you should connect this parting in your own mind with the storm that was raging on the night of which you spoke?'

'That doesn't seem to me very strange,' said Lady Falconer, 'because, as I have said, I know so little Spanish. And yet I have an idea that this very emotional serving-woman seemed to predict some horrible catastrophe to the travellers.'

'How little self-control some of these people have!' commented Mr. Semple. 'I always wonder how it is that ladies choose foreign women to be their personal attendants. I suppose you don't happen to know if this maid remained long with Mrs. Ogilvie?'

'I do not indeed,' said Lady Falconer; 'but I am under the impression that Mrs. Ogilvie changed her maids frequently. This will coincide with your view that she was in a nervous, uncontrolled condition at the time, although in other respects I cannot honestly say that I ever noticed the least sign of an unhinged mind. One thought that she was too much alone; but, of course, her loss was a very recent one, and everybody knows that in grief there often comes a desire for solitude.'

'It was sad, therefore,' said Mr. Semple, 'that these friends of hers should be leaving her just then. Mrs. Ogilvie would have been all the better for having a few intimates about her. It would be useful if you could remember their names.'

'I do not even know that they were friends,' protested Lady Falconer; 'and, as I told you, the Spanish maid may well have been alluding to a recent death. But indeed the incident made very little impression on my mind; even if I were able to give you information about these unknown friends I do not know how it could in any way help you to solve the sad question of her mental state at the time.'

'You think these friends of hers whom you speak of would not be able to do so either?'

'Ah!' cried Lady Falconer, 'you are accepting my vague recollections almost as if they were legal evidence, whereas I really cannot tell you whether the Spanish maid alluded to friends or to the death of Mrs. Ogilvie's husband and her little boy. I can only say that the impression that remains with me is that Mrs. Ogilvie had been seeing some friends off on a voyage.'

'It would be important to know who those friends were,' said Mr. Semple.

'I wish I could help you!' said Lady Falconer.

They made a longer détour in the gardens than Lady Falconer would have cared to make had she not been interested in the man by her side, whose inquisitiveness was based upon friendship, and whose most persistent interrogations had been touched with a quiet and sober tact which contrasted pleasantly with Mr. Lawrence's dictatorial manner. That genial and rubicund person was now seen approaching with Sir John, and suggested that they 'ought to draw Peter for tea.'

Lady Falconer declined the refreshment with considerable emphasis. This visit to the closed house so recently shadowed by death seemed to her in doubtful taste, and she would now have preferred to return home; but Peter had seen them from the house, and being the least churlish of men he came out on to the terrace and invited the party to come in. He disliked Mr. Lawrence as much as it was in his uncritical nature to dislike any one; but it is more than possible that he would have resented a word said in his disfavour. 'Lawrence is a good fellow,' he used to say charitably, 'only he is so beastly domestic.'

Mr. Lawrence's conversation was indeed principally of the intimate order of things, and was concerned with details of births, deaths, and marriages, such as the feminine rather than the male mind is more generally supposed to indulge in. He drank several cups of tea, and was deeply interested in the fact that the tea-service was not the one in common use at Bowshott, and that, therefore, probably the bulk of the silver had been sent to the bank. He would have liked to make a tour of the rooms to see if there were any other changes noticeable anywhere, and he more than once remarked to his friends as they drove home in the motor-car that he could not understand why the drawing-rooms were swathed in brown holland unless Peter meant to go away again. If so, when was the marriage to be? Why should it be postponed for more than a brief period of mourning? And why did the rooms which he had seen through the windows wear such a shut-up and dismantled appearance? He found food for speculation during the whole afternoon call, and in his inquisitive way gave his mind to finding out as much as possible about his neighbour's doings.

Lady Falconer sat by the fire of logs, while Mr. Lawrence's garrulous conversation went on uninterruptedly. Peter found her quiet manner attractive, and began to feel grateful to Mr. Lawrence for his intrusiveness, without which he would not have enjoyed a conversation with this pleasant, gentle-mannered woman seated thoughtfully by the fire.

'May I ask a favour?' said Mr. Lawrence gushingly, laying his hand upon Peter's shoulder. 'I want awfully to see that new heating apparatus you have had put in downstairs. I was recommending it the other day to Carstairs; but I want to know something more about it, and then I shall be able to explain it better. How much coal, for instance, do you find it consumes?'

When the two had sought the lower regions Mr. Semple took Peter's vacant chair by the fire. Lady Falconer held her muff between her and the blaze, and her face was in shadow. The lawyer said briefly, 'We are in great perplexity, and I think you can help us, and I feel sure'—he looked at her with admiration—'that whatever I say to you will be received in confidence.'

'It shall be in confidence,' said Lady Falconer.

'At the same time,' said Mr. Semple, 'I must tell you that I mean to ask you a great many questions, and tell you very little in return—at least for the present. In the first place, it is all-important that we should know when Mrs. Ogilvie's elder boy died.'

'And I,' said Lady Falconer hopelessly, 'did not even know until the other day that she had had another boy.'

'And yet,' said the lawyer, 'however slight the chain of evidence is, we must follow it closely. You are probably the person who saw Mrs. Ogilvie first after the death of the child.'

'That I can hardly believe,' protested Lady Falconer. 'It seems to me that, however reserved a woman might be, she would still let another woman know about so intimate a trouble.'

'Mrs. Ogilvie was a very unusual woman,' said Mr. Semple.

'But even so–' began Lady Falconer.

'Even so,' repeated the lawyer, 'my friend Peter and his talkative neighbour will soon be back again, and I must examine my witness before they return.'

'But a witness,' exclaimed Lady Falconer, 'whose evidence is based on the only-half-intelligible gossip of a Spanish serving-woman made twenty-five years ago, and a week spent in an out-of-the-way mountain-village where she was ill nearly the whole time!'

Mr. Semple waved aside protests. 'Do forgive me for bothering you,' he said, 'and try to remember positively if there were any friends or neighbours who came about the house of whom we could perhaps ask tidings?'

'I am sure there were none,' said Lady Falconer. 'The charm of the place to Mrs. Ogilvie was, I know, its solitude, just as was its charm for us also.'

'No English people?'

'None, I am quite sure.'

'You have no idea who those friends were to whom Mrs. Ogilvie had lately said good-bye, and who were starting on a voyage?'

'I think,' said Lady Falconer slowly, 'it was because the storm blew so loudly that we spoke of them; and, yes, I am sure the woman crossed herself and prayed for those at sea.'

She hesitated, and Mr. Semple giving her a quick glance said, 'I am only asking for a woman's impression.'

'And at this length of time I cannot even tell you how I came to have this impression,' she replied, 'and yet the picture remains in my mind that these people, whoever they were, were sailing from Lisbon. The maid who waited upon me had evidently been engaged in Lisbon.'

Peter and Mr. Lawrence were heard in the hall outside, and the motor-car was at the door.

'Thank you very much,' said the lawyer, as the door opened.

Mr. Semple left the following morning, and did not return until the end of the week. He was a contented man, and made an excellent companion, and Peter enjoyed seeing him again and having his companionship at dinner on the night of his return. He was always interested in something, and quite disposed to take a book and remain quiet when his client was busy or disinclined for conversation. He and Peter smoked in silence for a considerable time after the servants had left the room, and even when an adjournment had been made to the library the lawyer, who was possibly tired after his journey, sat quietly in a leather armchair by the fire without saying anything.

Peter began to talk about the small items of news of the neighbourhood. 'The Falconers have left,' he said. 'I wonder what they found to amuse them at Lawrence's place?'

'Lawrence himself, perhaps,' said Mr. Semple dryly.

'But Lady Falconer does not even laugh at people,' replied Peter. 'I thought her a very charming woman.'

'She is a very charming woman,' replied Mr. Semple, 'and she used to know your mother long ago in Spain.'

Peter took his cigar out of his mouth, and turned interrogatively towards the lawyer. 'I don't suppose she was able to tell you anything?' he said, with a sharp note of interest in his voice.

'She was able to tell me nothing,' said Mr. Semple, 'except a woman's impression of a conversation she had with a Spanish serving-woman.'

'I should like to hear all she had to say,' said Peter briefly.

'Ships sailing for Argentine stop at Lisbon and take up passengers there,' said Mr. Semple. 'I have been to Lisbon since I last saw you. Mrs. Ogilvie paid the passage-money for a married couple and a child who sailed from that place in December of the year in which your brother is said to have died.'

CHAPTER IX

'I think I 'll go over and see Toffy,' said Peter to himself one day in the following week. Mr. Semple had been down to Bowshott again, bringing a mass of correspondence with him, and had left that morning. Nigel Christopherson was ill at Hulworth with one of his usual appalling colds, which brought him as nearly as possible to the grave every time they attacked him. Peter once again read through the letters and papers which he and the family lawyer had pored over until the small hours of this morning, and then he ordered his horse and rode over to see his friend.

No one ever arrived at Hulworth without remarking on the almost grotesque ugliness of the house. It was a flat-faced, barrack-like residence, with a stuccoed front and rows of ill-designed windows. A grim-looking flight of stone stairs with iron railings led to the front door, and beyond that were large and hideous rooms filled with treasures of art incongruously hung on lamentable wall-papers or pendent over pieces of furniture which would have made a connoisseur's eyes ache. The house and its furnishings were a strange mixture; the owner of the grim pile, be it said, had a mind which presented a blank to the dictates of art, and it puzzled him sorely to determine which of his possessions was beautiful and which was not. He had heard people become enthusiastic over his pictures, which he thought hideous, while they had frankly abused his furniture, which he was inclined to think was everything that was desirable.

'There 's only one way,' he used to say hopelessly, 'in which a fellow can know whether a thing is ugly or the reverse, and that is by fixing a price to it. If only some one would be kind enough to stick on a lot of labels telling me what the things are worth I should know what to admire and what to shudder at; but, as it is, the things which I personally like are always the things which other people abuse.'