Charlotte's Inheritance Part 40

Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to the eye of the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's office in the City. There were the handsomely bound books behind the inviolable plate-gla.s.s doors, and there was the neat writing-table with the machine for weighing letters, and the large business-like looking blotting-pad, and the ponderous bra.s.s-rimmed inkstand, with no nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak table with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black iron lever, and a ma.s.sive screw with which to screw all the spontaneous feeling out of every letter that came beneath its crushing influence.

Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, with the demon of impatience raging in his breast. The July sunshine blazed hot upon the window, and the voices of croquet-players in adjacent gardens rose shrill upon the summer air. And there were girls playing croquet while she, his "rose of the garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death! O, why could he not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a subst.i.tute for that one fair spirit?

He looked into the garden--the prim modern garden, but a few years reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the "eligible lot of building land." Across the well-kept lawn there brooded no shadow of Old-World cedar; no century-old espaliers divided flower and kitchen ground; no box-edging of the early Hanoverian era bordered the beds of roses and mignonette. From one boundary-wall to the other there was not a bush old enough to hang an a.s.sociation upon. The stereotyped bed of flaming yellow calceolaria balanced the conventional bed of flaming crimson verbena; the lavender heliotrope faced the scarlet geranium, like the four corners in a quadrille. The garden was the modern nurserymen's ideal of suburban horticulture, and no more. But to Valentine this half-acre of smooth lawn and Wimbledon gravel pathway had seemed fair as those pleasure gardens of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanos mountain, the fame whereof tempted Alexander to turn aside from the direct road, during his march from Chelone to the Nysaic horse pastures.

To-day the contemplation of that commonplace garden gave him direful pain. Should he ever walk there again with his dear love, or in any other garden upon earth?

And then he thought of fairer gardens, in supernal regions whither his soul was slow to travel. "Not easy is the journey from earth to the stars," says the sage; and from this young wanderer the stain of earthly travel had yet to be washed away.

"If she is taken from me, shall I ever be pure enough to follow her?" he asked himself. "Will a life that began in such darkness ever rise to the light which is her natural element? If she is taken, and I stay behind, and bear my burden patiently in the hope to follow her, will there not be a gate closed against me in the skies, beyond which I shall see her, shining among her kindred spirits, in the white robes of perfect innocence? Ah, my love, my love, as between, us on this earth must for ever be a gulf your pure soul cannot pa.s.s, so between us in the skies will rise a barrier to sever me from your sweet company!"

The thought of probable separation upon earth, of possible separation in heaven, was too bitter to him.

"I will not think of these things," he said to himself; "I will not believe in that possibility of this sacrifice. Ah, no! she will be saved. Against the bright young life the awful fiat has not gone forth. Providence has been with me to-day. Providence will go with me till the end."

He thought how other men had so stood, as he was standing now, face to face with the great uncertainty, the crisis, the turning-point--the pivot on which life itself revolved. The pendulum of the mighty clock swings solemnly to and fro; with every vibration a moment; with every moment each man's shrouded fates move another step in their inexorable progress.

And the end? What was the goal towards which those dark relentless shapes were moving?

He thought of Rousseau, balancing the awful question of his soul's salvation--his poor weak soul adrift upon a sea of doubt.

"Behold yonder tree which faces me, as I sit and meditate the problem of my destiny--the destiny of me, Jean Jacques Rousseau, self-conscious genius, and future regenerator of my age. I pick up a pebble, and poise it between my fingers before taking my aim. In another moment the question will be answered. If the pebble hits the tree, I, Jean Jacques, am reserved for salvation. If I miss--O awful, overwhelming possibility!--my name will blaze upon that dreadful scroll which numbers the d.a.m.ned."

Happily the tree is bulky, and within but a few yards of the speculator; and the great enigma of the Calvinistic church is answered in favour of Madame de Warenne's protege, whose propensities and proclivities at that period did not very strongly indicate his claim to a place among the elect.

Valentine remembered the _sortes Virgilianae_--the Wesleyan's drawing of inferences from Bible texts. Ah, could he not find an answer to the question that was the one thought of his mind? He would find some answer--a lying oracle, perhaps. It might be a voice from heaven,--some temporary a.s.suagement of this storm of doubt that raged in his breast. "I doubt if Mr. Sheldon owns either a Bible or an 'AEneid,'" he said to himself, as he stopped in his rapid pacing of the room; "I will open the first book I can put my hand upon, and from the first line my eye falls on will draw an augury."

He looked about the room. Behind the glazed doors of the mahogany bookcase appeared Hume and Smollett, Scott and Shakespeare; and conspicuous among these a handsome family Bible. But the glazed doors were locked. In Mr. Sheldon's study there appeared to be no other books than these few standard works. Yes, on some obscure little shelves, low down in one of the recesses formed by the projection of the fireplace and the chimney, there were three rows of large quarto volumes, in dingy dark-green cloth cases.

What these volumes might contain Valentine Hawkehurst knew not; and the very fact of his ignorance rendered these books all the more suitable for the purpose of augury. To dip for a sentence into any of these unknown volumes would be a leap in darkness more profound than he could find in the Bible or the "AEneid," where his own foreknowledge of the text might unwittingly influence the oracle. He went over to the recess, bent down, and ran his hand along the backs of the volumes, with his face turned away from the books towards the window.

"The first obstruction that arrests my hand shall determine my choice of the volume," he said to himself.

His hand ran easily along the volumes on the upper shelf--easily along the volumes on the second shelf; and he began to doubt whether this mode of determining his choice could be persisted in. But in its progress along the third and lowest range of volumes, his hand was arrested midway by a book which projected about half an inch beyond its fellows.

He took this book out and carried it to the table, still without looking at it. He opened it, or rather let its leaves fall open of their own accord--still without looking at it; and then, with a strange superst.i.tious fear--mingled in his mind with the natural shame that accompanied his conscious folly--he looked at the page before him. The line on which he fixed his eye was the heading of a letter. It was in larger type than the rest of the page, and it was very plain to him as he stood a little way from the table, looking down at the open book.

The line ran thus:

"ON THE FALLIBILITY OF COPPER GAUZE AS A TEST FOR THE DETECTION OF a.r.s.eNIC."

The book was a volume of the _Lancet_; the date twenty years ago.

"What an oracle!" thought Valentine, with a cynical laugh at his own folly, and some slight sense of relief. In all feeble tamperings with powers invisible there lurks a sense of terror in the weak human heart.

He had tempted those invisible ones, and the oracle he only half believed in might have spoken to his confusion and dismay. He was glad to think the oracle meant nothing.

And yet, even in this dry as dust t.i.tle of a scientific communication from a distinguished toxicologist there was some sinister significance.

It was the letter of a great chemist, who demonstrated therein the fallibility of all tests in relation to a certain poison. It was one of those papers which, while they aid the cause of science, may also further the dark processes of the poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to encounter, and the weapons with which he may defend himself from their power. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this letter--one of a series on the same subject, or range of subjects. Valentine read it with eager interest. For him it had a terrible importance in its relation to the past and to the present.

"I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he thought to himself. "Will it open there a second time, I wonder?"

He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same place. Again; and again the book opened as before. Again, many times, and the result was still the same.

After this he examined the book, and found that it had been pressed open at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened volume. He examined it still more closely, and found here and there on the page faint indications of a pencil, which had under-scored certain lines, and the marks of which had been as far as possible erased. The deduction to be drawn from these small facts seemed only too clear to Valentine Hawkehurst. By some one reader the pages had been deliberately and carefully studied. Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in whose possession he found the book, the man whom that very day he had heard plainly denounced as a poisoner?

He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid search revealed to him a second fact, significant as the last.

An old envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and the diagnostics of a certain cla.s.s of poisons. Here the volume again opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the place had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the date of the year and the month in which Charlotte's father had died.

While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Woolper came into the room.

She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He had little more than half an hour at most in which to break the ice of absolute strangeness, and sound the very depths of this woman's character. If she had come to him earlier, when his plan of action was clear and definite, his imagination in abeyance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with slowness and deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by the discovery of fresh evidence against Philip Sheldon, was divided between the past and the present, she took him off his guard, and he plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all his thoughts.

Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the table with a vague terror in her face.

"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss--"

"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper--hopelessly, irrecoverably wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill--doomed to die, if she remain in your master's keeping."

"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?"

The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human countenance gave expression to human thought.

"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!"

"Dying! O, sir, for G.o.d's sake, don't say that!"

"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip Sheldon."

"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true.

It is not true. For G.o.d's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and have heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the long night; and O, if I had known that this could ever come to him, I should have wished him dead in the little crib where he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell you, sir, it can't be true! His father and mother had been respected and looked up to in Barlingford for many a year,--his grandfather and grandmother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in those parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a man would poison his friend?"

"_I_ said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," said Valentine, sternly.

This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the rest, it seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror in the thought that a cold-blooded murder could be thus perpetrated in the sight of several people, and yet no voice be raised to denounce the a.s.sa.s.sin.

"And this is our modern civilization!" he said to himself. "Give me the desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowanee are no worse than Mr. Sheldon, and one might be on one's guard against them."

Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing about poison!

What, then--had she betrayed her master?

He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst in the case of Tom Halliday, and that she would easily be influenced to do all he wanted of her.

"Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," he said, with intensity. "You made no attempt to save her father, though you suspected the cause of his death. I have this day seen Mr. Burkham, the doctor who attended Mr. Halliday, and from his lips I have heard the truth. I want you to accompany me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's bed, as her nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge of the past, and I have little doubt that he does"--a look in the housekeeper's face told him that he was right--"you are of all people best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not be a difficult one. If we dare remove her, we will remove her beyond the reach of that man's power. If not, your task will be to prevent food or medicine, that his hand has touched, from approaching her lips. You _can_ do it. It will only be a question of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the greatest doctors in London for our guide. Will you come?"

"I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy Woolper, doggedly; "nor I won't believe it. You can't force me to think bad of him I loved when he was little and helpless, and I carried him in my arms.

What are you and your fine London doctor, Mr. Burkham--he was but a poor fondy, as I mind well--that I should take your word against my master? If that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, why didn't he speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of work to bring it up against my master eleven years afterwards. As for young missy, she's as sweet a young creature as ever lived, and I'd do anything to serve her.

But I won't think, and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of her head. What would he gain by it?"