Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Third Series», sayfa 11

“Miss Carey was a downright nice young lady,” pronounced the cook. “Quite another sort from this one we’ve got now.”

“Well, give me all the particulars as correctly as you can remember,” said the doctor. “We may get some notion or other out of them.”

Eliza plunged into the narration. She was fond of talking. Sally stood over her ironing, sniffing and sighing. Dr. Knox listened.

“Mrs. Knox left the note on the table—which was much strewed with papers—when she went out with Lady Jenkins, and Miss Carey took her place at the accounts,” repeated Dr. Knox, summing up the profuse history in a few concise words. “While–”

“And Miss Carey declared, sir, that she never saw the note; never noticed it lying there at all,” came Eliza’s interruption.

“Yes, just so. While Miss Carey was at the table, the alarm came that Master Dick had fallen out of the tree, and she ran to him–”

“And a fine fright that fall put us into, sir! We thought he was dead. Jim went galloping off for the doctor, and me and Sally and Miss Carey stayed bathing his head on that there very ironing-board, a-trying to find out what the damage was.”

“And the children: where were they?”

“All round us here in the kitchen, sir, sobbing and staring.”

“Meanwhile the garden-room was deserted. No one went into it, as far as you know.”

“Nobody at all, sir. When Sally ran in to look at the fire, she found it had gone clean out. The doctor had been there then, and Master Richard was in bed. A fine pickle Sally found the room in, with the scraps of paper, and that, blown about the floor. The glass-doors was standing stark staring open to the wind.”

“And, I presume, you gathered up some of these scraps of paper, and lighted the fire with them, Sally?”

Dr. Knox did not appear to look at Sally as he spoke, but he saw and noted every movement. He saw that her hand shook so that she could scarcely hold the iron.

“Has it never struck you, Sally, that you might have put the bank-note into the grate with these scraps of paper, and burnt it?” he continued. “Innocently, of course. That is how I think the note must have disappeared. Had the wind taken it into the garden, it would most probably have been found.”

Sally flung her apron over her face and herself on to a chair, and burst into a howl. Eliza looked at her.

“If you think there is a probability that this was the case, Sally, you must say so,” continued Dr. Knox. “You will never be blamed, except for not having spoken.”

“’Twas only yesterday I asked Sally whether she didn’t think this was the way it might have been,” said the cook in a low tone to Dr. Knox. “She have seemed so put out, sir, for a week past.”

“I vow to goodness that I never knew I did it,” sobbed Sally. “All the while the bother was about, and Miss Carey, poor young lady, was off her head, it never once struck me. What Eliza and me thought was, that some tramps must have come round the side of the house and got in at the open glass-doors, and stole it. The night after Miss Carey left with her aunt, I was thinking about her as I lay in bed, and wondering whether the mistress would send the police after her or not, when all of a sudden the thought flashed across me that it might have gone into the fire with the other pieces of paper. Oh mercy, I wish I was somewhere!”

“What became of the ashes out of the grate?—the cinders?” asked Dr. Knox.

“They’re all in the ash-place, sir, waiting till the garden’s ready for them,” sobbed Sally.

With as little delay as possible, Dr. Knox had the cinders carefully sifted and examined, when the traces of what had once undoubtedly been a bank-note were discovered. The greater portion of the note had been reduced to tinder, but a small part of it remained, enough to show what it had been, and—by singular good fortune—its number. It must have fallen out of the grate partly consumed, while the fire was lighting up, and been swept underneath by Sally with other remnants, where it had lain quietly until morning and been taken away with the ashes.

The traces gathered carefully into a small box and sealed up, Dr. Knox went into the presence of his step-mother.

“I think,” he said, just showing the box as it lay in his hand, “that this proof will be accepted by the Bank of England; in that case they will make good the money to me. One question, mother, I wish to ask you: how could you possibly suspect Miss Carey?”

“There was no one else for me to suspect,” replied Mrs. Knox in fretful tones; for she did not at all like this turn in the affair.

“Did you really suspect her?”

“Why, of course I did. How can you ask such foolish questions?”

“It was a great mistake in any case to take it up as you did. I am not alluding to the suspicion now; but to your harsh and cruel treatment.”

“Just mind your own business, Arnold. It’s nothing to you.”

“For my own part, I regard it as a matter that we must ever look back upon with shame.”

“There, that’s enough,” said Mrs. Knox. “The thing is done with, and it cannot be recalled. Janet Carey won’t die of it.”

Dr. Knox went about Lefford with the box in his hand, making things right. He called in at the police-station; he caused a minute account to be put in the Lefford News; he related the details to his private friends. Not once did he allude to Janet Carey, or mention her name: it was as though he would proudly ignore the stigma cast on her and assume that the world did the same. The world did: but it gave some hard words to Mrs. Knox.

Mr. Tamlyn had not much sympathy for wonders of any kind just then. Poor Bertie, lying cold and still in the chamber above, took up all his thoughts and his grief. Arnold spent a good deal of time with him, and took his round of patients.

It was the night before the funeral, and they were sitting together at twilight in the dining-room. Dr. Knox was looking through the large window at the fountain in the middle of the grass-plat: Mr. Tamlyn had his face buried; he had not looked up for the last half-hour.

“When is the very earliest time that you can come, Arnold?” he began abruptly.

“As soon as ever they will release me in London. Perhaps that will be in a month; perhaps not until the end of June, when the six months will be up.”

Mr. Tamlyn groaned. “I want you at once, Arnold. You are all I have now.”

“Shuttleworth must stay until I come.”

“Shuttleworth’s not you. You must live with me, Arnold?”

“Live with you?”

“Why, of course you must. What am I to do in this large house by myself now he is gone? Bessy will be gone too. I couldn’t stand it.”

“It would be much more convenient for me to be here, as far as the practice is concerned,” remarked Dr. Knox, after reflection.

“And more sociable. Do you never think of marriage, Arnold?”

Dr. Knox turned a little red. “It has been of no use for me to think of it hitherto, you know, sir.”

“I wish you would. Some nice, steady girl, who would make things pleasant here for us in Bessy’s place. There’s room for a wife as well as for you, Arnold. Think of these empty rooms: no one but you and me in them! And you know people like a married medical man better than a single one.”

The doctor opened his lips to speak, but his courage failed him; he would leave it to the last thing before he left on the morrow, or else write from London. Tamlyn mistook his silence.

“You’ll be well enough off to keep two wives, if the law allowed it, let alone one. From the day you join me, Arnold, half the profits shall be yours—I’ll have the deed made out—and the whole practice at my death. I’ve no one to save for, now Bertie’s gone.”

“He is better off; he is in happiness,” said Dr. Knox, his voice a little husky.

“Ay. I try to let it console me. But I’ve no one but you now, Arnold. And I don’t suppose I shall forget you in my will. To confess the truth, turning you away to make room for Shuttleworth has lain on my conscience.”

When Arnold reached home that night, Mrs. Knox and her eldest daughter were alone; she reading, Mina dressing a doll. Lefford was a place that went in for propriety, and no one gave soirées while Bertie Tamlyn lay dead. Arnold told Mrs. Knox of the new arrangement.

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “Coming back to Lefford! Well, I shall be glad to have you at home again,” she added, thinking of the household bills.

“Mr. Tamlyn proposes that I shall live with him,” said Dr. Knox.

“But you will never be so stupid as to do that!”

“I have promised to do it. It will be much more convenient.”

Mrs. Knox looked sullen, and bit her lips. “How large a share are you to have?”

“I go in as full partner.”

“Oh, I am so glad!” cried out Miss Mina—for they all liked their good-natured brother. “Arnold, perhaps you’ll go and get married now!”

“Perhaps I may,” he answered.

Mrs. Knox dropped her book in the sudden fright. If Arnold married, he might want his house—and turn her out of it! He read the fear in her face.

“We may make some arrangement,” said he quietly. “You shall still occupy it and pay me a small nominal rent—five pounds a-year, say—which I shall probably return in toys for the children.”

The thought of his marriage had always lain upon her with a dread. “Who is the lady?” she asked.

“The lady? Oh, I can’t tell you, I’m sure. I have not asked any one yet.”

“Is that all!”

“Quite all—at present.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Knox slowly, as if deliberating the point with herself, and in the most affectionate of tones, “that you would be happier in a single life, Arnold. One never knows what a wife is till she’s tried.”

“Do you think so? Well, we must leave it to the future. What will be, will be.”

IV

And now I am taking up the story for myself; I, Johnny Ludlow. Had I gone straight on with it after that last night of Janet’s sleep-walking at Miss Deveen’s, you would never have understood.

It was on the Saturday night that Janet was found out—as any one must remember who took the trouble to count up the nights and days. On the Sunday morning early, Miss Deveen’s doctor was sent for. Dr. Galliard happened to be out of town, so Mr. Black attended for him. Cattledon was like vinegar. She looked upon Janet’s proceedings as a regular scandal, and begged Miss Deveen’s pardon for having brought her niece into the house. Upon which she was requested not to be silly.

Miss Deveen told the whole tale of the lost bank-note, to me and to Helen and Anna Whitney: at least, as much as she knew of it herself. Janet was innocent as a child; she felt sure of that, she said, and much to be pitied; and that Mrs. Knox, of Lefford, seemed to be a most undesirable sort of person. To us it sounded like a romance, or a story out of a newspaper police-report.

Monday came in; a warm, bright April day. I was returning to Oxford in the evening—and why I had not returned in the past week, as ought to have been the case, there’s no space to tell here. Miss Deveen said we might go for a walk if we liked. But Helen and Anna did not seem to care about it; neither did I, to say the truth. A house with a marvel in it has attractions; and we would by far rather have gone upstairs to see Janet. Janet was better, quite composed, but weak, they said: she was up and dressed, and in Miss Deveen’s own blue-room.

“Well, do you mean to go out, or not, you young people?” asked Miss Deveen. “Dear me, here are visitors!”

George came in bringing a card. “Dr. Knox.”

“Why!—it must be some one from that woman at Lefford!” exclaimed Miss Deveen, in an undertone to me. “Oh no; I remember now, Johnny; Dr. Knox was the step-son; he was away, and had nothing to do with it. Show Dr. Knox in, George.”

A tall man in black, whom one might have taken anywhere for a doctor, with a grave, nice face, came in. He said his visit was to Miss Carey, as he took the chair George placed near his mistress. Just a few words, and then we knew the whole, and saw a small sealed-up box in his hand, which contained the remains of the bank-note.

“I am more glad than if you brought Janet a purse of gold!” cried Miss Deveen, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. “Not that I think any one could have doubted her, Dr. Knox—not even your step-mother, in her heart,—but it is satisfactory to have it cleared up. It has made Miss Carey very ill; but this will set her at rest.”

“Your servant told me Miss Carey was ill,” he said. “It was for her I asked.”

With a face of concern, he listened to what Miss Deveen had to say of the illness. When she spoke of Janet’s fright at seeing the policeman at the Colosseum, his brow went red and he bit his lips. Next came the sleep-walking: she told it all.

“Her brain and nerves must have been overstrained to an alarming degree,” he observed, after a short silence. “Mr. Shuttleworth, who attended her at the time, spoke to me of the shock to the system. But I hoped she had recovered.”

“She would never have recovered, Dr. Knox, as long as the dread lay upon her that she was to be criminally prosecuted: at least, that is my opinion,” said Miss Deveen. “I believe the chief thing that ails her is fright. Not a knock at the door, not the marching past the house of a policeman, not the sudden entrance of a servant into the room, but has brought to her a shock of agonizing fear. It is a mercy that she has escaped brain-fever. After all, she must possess a good constitution. The sight of that Lefford man at the Colosseum did great mischief.”

“It was unfortunate that he should happen to be there,” said Dr. Knox: “and that the man should have dared to accost her with his insolence! But I shall inquire into it.”

“What you have in that box will be the best medicine for her,” said Miss Deveen. “It will speedily effect a cure—or call me an untrue prophet. Dear me! how strangely things come out!”

“May I be allowed to see Miss Carey?” asked Dr. Knox. “And to—to tell her the story of her clearance in my own way?”

Miss Deveen made no reply. She looked at Dr. Knox, and seemed to hesitate.

“I think it may be better for Miss Carey that I should, madam. For more reasons than one.”

“And really I don’t see why you should not,” said Miss Deveen, heartily. “I hesitated because Mr. Black forbade the admission of strangers. But—perhaps you are not a stranger to her?”

“Oh dear, no: I and Miss Carey are old friends,” he answered, a curious smile lighting up his face. “And I should also wish to see her in my medical capacity.”

But the one to put in her word against this, was Cattledon. She came down looking green, and protesting in Miss Deveen’s ear that no male subject in her Majesty’s dominions, save and except Mr. Black, ought to be admitted to the blue-room. Janet had no full dress on; nothing but skirts and a shawl.

“Oh, nonsense!” cried Miss Deveen. “Why, Dr. Knox might have seen her had she been in bed: he is a physician.” And she took him up herself to the blue-room.

“Of all old maids that Cattledon’s the worst!” nodded Helen Whitney.

Miss Deveen went in alone, leaving him outside the door. Janet sat in an armchair by the fire, muffled in an old brown shawl of Cattledon’s.

“And how do you feel now, my dear?” said Miss Deveen, quietly. “Better, I see. And oh, I have such pleasant news for you: an old friend of yours has called to see you; and I think—I think—he will be able to cure you sooner than Mr. Black. It is Dr. Knox, my dear: not of Lefford now, you know: of London.”

She called the doctor in, and Janet’s pale cheeks took a tint of crimson. Janet’s face had never been big: but as he stood looking at her, her hand in his, he was shocked to see how small it had become. Miss Deveen shut the door upon them. She hoped with all her heart he was not going to spare that woman at Lefford.

“Janet, my dear,” he said in a fatherly kind of way as he drew a chair near her and kept her hand, “when that trouble happened at home, how was it you did not write to me?”

“Write to you! Oh, sir, I could not do such a thing,” answered Janet, beginning to tremble.

“But you might have known I should be your friend. You might also have known that I should have been able to clear you.”

“I did once think of writing to you, Dr. Knox: just to tell you that I had not indeed touched the bank-note,” faltered Janet. “As the money came from you, I should have liked to write so much. But I did not dare.”

“And you preferred to suffer all these weeks of pain, and the fright brought upon you by Mrs. Knox—for which,” said he deliberately, “I shall never forgive her—rather than drop me a few lines! You must never be so foolish again, Janet. I should have gone to Lefford at once and searched out the mystery of the note—and found it.”

Janet moved her lips and shook her head, as much as to say that he could never have done that.

“But I have done it,” said he. “I have been down to Lefford and found it all out, and have brought the bank-note up with me—what remains of it. Sally was the culprit.”

“Sally!” gasped Janet, going from red to white.

“Sally—but not intentionally. She lighted the fire that afternoon with the note and some more scraps. The note fell out, only partly burnt; and I am going to take it to the bank that they may exchange it for a whole one.”

“And—will—they?” panted Janet.

“Of course they will; it is in the regular course of business that they should,” affirmed Dr. Knox, deeming it best to be positive for her sake. “Now, Janet, if you are to tremble like this, I shall go away and send up Miss Cattledon—and she does not look as if she had a very amiable temper. Why, my dear child, you ought to be glad.”

“Oh, so I am, so I am!” she said, breaking into sobs. “And—and does every one in Lefford know that I was innocent?”

“No one in Lefford believed you guilty. Of course, it is all known, and in the newspapers too—how Sally lighted the fire with a fifty-pound bank-note, and the remains were fished out of the ashes.”

“Mrs. Knox—Mrs. Knox–” She could not go on for agitation.

“As to Mrs. Knox, I am not sure but we might prosecute her. Rely upon one thing, Janet: that she will not be very well welcomed at her beloved soirées for some long time to come.”

Janet looked at the fire and thought. Dr. Knox kept silence, that she might recover herself after the news.

“I shall get well now,” she said in a half-whisper. “I shall soon”—turning to him—“be able to take another situation. Do you think Mrs. Knox will give me a recommendation?”

“Yes, that she will—when it’s wanted,” said he, with a queer smile.

She sat in silence again, a tinge of colour in her face, and seeing fortunes in the fire. “Oh, the relief, the relief!” she murmured, slightly lifting her hands. “To feel that I may be at peace and fear nothing! I am very thankful to you, Dr. Knox, for all things.”

“Do you know what I think would do you good?” said Dr. Knox suddenly. “A drive. The day is so fine, the air so balmy: I am sure it would strengthen you. Will you go?”

“If you please, sir. I do feel stronger, since you told me this.”

He went down and spoke to Miss Deveen. She heartily agreed: anything that would benefit the poor girl, she said; and the carriage was coming round to the door, for she had been thinking of going out herself. Cattledon could not oppose them, for she had stepped over to the curate’s.

“Would you very much mind—would you pardon me if I asked to be allowed to accompany her alone?” said Dr. Knox, hurriedly to Miss Deveen, as Janet was coming downstairs on Lettice’s arm, dressed for the drive.

Miss Deveen was taken by surprise. He spoke as though he were flurried, and she saw the red look on his face.

“I can take care of her as perhaps no one else could,” he added with a smile. “And I—I want to ask her a question, Miss Deveen.”

“I—think—I—understand you,” she said, smiling back at him. “Well, you shall go. Miss Cattledon will talk of propriety, though, when she comes home, and be ready to snap us all up.”

And Cattledon was so. When she found Janet had been let go for a slow and easy drive, with no escort but Dr. Knox inside and the fat coachman on the box, she conjectured that Miss Deveen must have taken leave of her senses. Cattledon took up her station at the window to wait for their return, firing out words of temper every other second.

The air must have done Janet good. She came in from the carriage on Dr. Knox’s arm, her cheeks bright, her pretty eyes cast down, and looking quite another girl.

“Have you put your question, Dr. Knox?” asked Miss Deveen, meeting him in the hall, while Janet came on.

“Yes, and had it answered,” he said brightly. “Thank you, dear Miss Deveen; I see we have your sympathies.”

She just took his hand in hers and squeezed it. It was the first day she had seen him, but she liked his face.

Cattledon began upon Janet at once. If she felt well enough to start off on promiscuous drives, she must be well enough to see about a situation.

“I have been speaking to her of one, Miss Cattledon,” said Dr. Knox, catching the words as he came in. “I think she will accept it.”

“Where is it?” asked Cattledon.

“At Lefford.”

“She shall never go back to Rose Villa with my consent, sir. And I think you ought to know better than to propose it to her.”

“To Rose Villa! Certainly not: at least at present. Rose Villa will be hers, though; the only little settlement that can be made upon her.”

The words struck Cattledon silent. But she could see through a brick wall.

“Perhaps you want her, young man?”

“Yes, I do. I should have wanted her before this, but that I had no home to offer her. I have one now; and good prospects too. Janet has had it all explained to her. Perhaps you will allow me to explain it to you, Miss Cattledon.”

“I’m sure it’s more than Janet Carey could have expected,” said Cattledon, growing pacified as she listened. “She’s a poor thing. I hope she will make a good wife.”

“I will risk it, Miss Cattledon.”

“And she shall be married from my house,” struck in Miss Deveen. “Johnny, if you young Oxford blades can get here for it, I will have you all to the wedding.”

And we did get there for it: I, and Tod, and William Whitney, and saw the end, so far, of Janet Carey.