Fenton's Quest Part 30

"It is not for that. But I have promised to return directly I was free to do so."

"And you go back to Hampshire? To what part of Hampshire?"

Marian told him the name of the place where she was living. He wrote the address in his pocket-book, and was especially careful that it should be correctly written, as to the name of the nearest town, and in all other particulars.

"I may have to write to you, or to come to you, perhaps," he said. "It's as well to be prepared for the contingency."

After this Mr. Nowell sent out for a "Railway Guide," in order to give his daughter all necessary information about the trains for Malsham.

There was a tolerably fast train that left Waterloo at seven in the morning, and Marian decided upon going by that. She had to spend the evening alone with her father while Mrs. Mitchin kept watch in the dismal chamber upstairs. Mr. Nowell asked his daughter's permission to light his cigar, and having obtained it, sat smoking moodily all the evening, staring into the fire, and very rarely addressing his companion, who had taken a Bible out of her travelling-bag, and was reading those solemn, chapters which best harmonised with her feelings at this moment; thinking as she read of the time when her guardian and benefactor lay in his last calm rest, and she had vainly tried to find comfort in the same words, and had found herself staring blankly at the sacred page, with eyes that were dry and burning, and to which there came no merciful relief from tears.

Her father glanced at her askance now and then from his arm-chair by the fire, as she sat by the little round table looking down at her book, the light of the candles shining full upon her pensive face. He looked at her with no friendliness in his eyes, but with that angry sparkle which had grown almost habitual to them of late, since the world had gone ill with him. After one of those brief stolen looks, a strange smile crept over his face. He was thinking of a little speech of Shakespeare's Richard about his nephew, the youthful Prince of Wales:

So young, so wise, they say do ne'er live long.

"How pious she is!" he said to himself with a diabolical sneer. "Did the half-pay Captain teach her that, I wonder? or does church-going, and psalm-singing, and Bible-reading come natural to all women? I know my mother was good at it, and my wife too. She used to fly to her Bible as a man flies to dram-drinking, or his pipe, when things go wrong."

He got tired of his cigar at last, and went out into the shop, where he began to question Mr. Tulliver as to the extent and value of the stock-in-trade, and upon other details of the business; to all of which inquiries the shopman replied in a suspicious and grudging spirit, giving his questioner the smallest possible amount of information.

"You're an uncommonly cautious young man," Mr. Nowell exclaimed at last.

"You'll never stand in your own light by being too anxious to oblige other people. I daresay, though, you could speak fast enough, if it was made worth your while."

"I don't see what is to make it worth my while," Luke Tulliver answered coolly. "My duty is to my dead master, and those that are to come after him. I don't want strangers coming sniffing and prying into the stock.

Mr. Nowell's books were kept so that I couldn't cheat him out of a sixpence, or the value of a sixpence; and I mean to hand 'em over to the lawyer in a manner that will do me credit. My master has not been a generous master to me, considering how I've served him, and I've got nothing but my character to look to; but that I have got, and I don't want it tampered with."

"Who is going to tamper with it?" said Mr. Nowell. "So you'll hand over the stock-books to the lawyer, will you, without a leaf missing, or an erasure, or an item marked off as sold that never was sold, or any little dodges of that kind, eh, Mr. Tulliver?"

"Of course," answered the shopman, looking defiantly at the questioner, who was leaning across the counter with folded arms, staring at Luke Tulliver with an ironical grin upon his countenance.

"Then you are a very remarkable man. I should have thought such a chance as a death as unexpected as my--as old Mr. Nowell's would have made the fortune of a confidential clerk like you."

"I'm not a thief," answered Mr. Tulliver with an air of virtuous indignation; "and you can't know much about old Jacob Nowell if you think that anybody could cheat him, living or dead. There's not an entry in the book that isn't signed with his initials, in his own hand. When a thing was sold and crossed off the book, he put his initials to the entry of the sale. He went through the books every night till a week ago, and he'd as soon have cut his own head off as omit to do it, so long as he could see the figures in the book or hold his pen."

Mr. Medler the lawyer came in while Percival Nowell and the shopman were talking. He had been away from his office upon business that evening, and had only just received the tidings of the silversmith's death.

Luke Tulliver handed him the books and keys of the cases in which the tarnished plate was exhibited. He went into all the details of the business carefully, setting his seal upon books and papers, and doing all that he could to make matters secure without hindrance to the carrying on of the trade.

He was surprised to hear that Mrs. Holbrook was in the house, and proposed paying his respects to her that evening; but this Mr. Nowell prevented. She was tired and out of spirits, he told the attorney; it would be better for him to see her next day. It was convenient to Mr.

Nowell to forget Marian's intention of returning to Hampshire by an early train on the following morning at this juncture.

When he went back to the parlour by-and-by, after Mr. Medler had finished his business in the shop, and was trudging briskly towards his own residence, Mr. Nowell told his daughter that the lawyer had been there, but did not inform her of his desire to see her.

"I suppose you know all about your grandfather's will?" he said by-and-by, when he had half-finished another cigar.

Marian had put away her book by this time, and was looking dreamily at the fire, thinking of her husband, who need never know those weary sordid cares about money again, now that she was to be rich.

Her father's question startled her out of that agreeable day-dream.

"Yes," she said; "my grandfather told me that he had left all his money to me. I know that must seem unjust to you, papa; but I hope my husband will allow me to do something towards repairing that injustice in some measure."

"In some measure!" Mr. Nowell thought savagely. "That means a pittance that would serve to keep life in a pauper, I suppose; and that is to be contingent upon her husband's permission." He made no audible reply to his daughter's speech, and seemed, indeed, so much absorbed in his own thoughts, that Marian doubted if he had heard her; and so the rest of the long evening wore itself out in dismal silence, whilst stealthy footsteps sounded now and then upon the stairs. Later Mr. Nowell was summoned to a conference with some mysterious person in the shop, whom Marian supposed to be the undertaker; and returning from this interview with a gloomy face, he resumed his seat by the fire.

It seemed very strange to Marian that they two, father and daughter, should be together thus, so near and yet so wide apart; united by the closest tie of kindred, brought together thus after years of severance, yet with no bond of sympathy between them; no evidence of remorseful tenderness on the side of him whose life had been one long neglect of a father's duty.

"How could I expect that he would care for me in the smallest degree, after his desertion of my mother?" Marian thought to herself, as she meditated upon her father's coldness, which at first had seemed so strange to her. She had fancied that, what ever his sins in the past had been, his heart would have melted at the sight of his only child. She had thought of him and dreamed of him so often in her girlhood, elevating him in her romantic fancy into something much better and brighter than he really was--a sinner at best, it is true, but a sinner of a lofty type, a n.o.ble nature gone astray. She had imagined a reunion with him in the days to come, when it should be her delight to minister to his declining years--to be the consolation of his repentant soul. And now she had found him she knew these things could never be--that there was not one feeling of sympathy possible between her and that broken-down, dissipated-looking man of the world.

The dismal evening came to an end at last, and Marian bade her father good-night, and went upstairs to the little room where the traces of his boyhood had interested her so keenly when first she looked upon them.

Mr. Nowell promised to come to Queen Anne's Court at a quarter past six next morning, to escort his daughter to the station, an act of parental solicitude she had not expected from him. He took his departure immediately afterwards, being let out of the shop-door by Luke Tulliver, who was in a very cantankerous humour, and took no pains to disguise the state of his feelings. The lawyer Mr. Medler had pried into everything, the shopman told Percival Nowell; had declared himself empowered to do this, as the legal adviser of the deceased; and had seemed as suspicious as if he, Luke Tulliver, meant to rob his dead master. Mr. Tulliver's sensitive nature had been outraged by such a line of conduct.

"And what has he done with the books?" Mr. Nowell asked.

"They're all in the desk yonder, and that fellow Medler has taken away the keys."

"Sharp practice," said Mr. Nowell; "but to a man with your purity of intention it can't matter what precautions are taken to insure the safety of the property."

"Of course it don't matter," the other answered peevishly; "but I like to be treated as a gentleman."

"Humph! And you expect to retain your place here, I suppose, if the business is carried on?"

"It's too good a business to be let drop," replied Mr. Tulliver; "but I shouldn't think that young lady upstairs would be much of a hand at trade. I wouldn't mind offering a fair price for the business,--I've got a tidy little bit of money put away, though my salary has been small enough, goodness knows; but I've lived with the old gentleman, and never wasted a penny upon pleasure; none of your music-halls, or dancing-saloons, or anything of that kind, for me,--or I wouldn't mind paying an annual sum out of the profits of the trade for a reasonable term. If you've any influence with the young lady, perhaps you could put it to her, and get her to look at things in that light," Mr. Tulliver added, becoming quite obsequious as it dawned upon him that this interloping stranger might be able to do him a service.

"I'll do my best for you, Tulliver," Mr. Nowell replied, in a patronising tone. "I daresay the young lady will be quite willing to entertain any reasonable proposition you may make."

Faithful to his promise Mr. Nowell appeared at a quarter past six next morning, at which hour he found his daughter quite ready for her journey.

She was very glad to get away from that dreary house, made a hundredfold more dismal by the sense of what lay in the closed chamber, where the candles were still burning in the yellow fog of the November morning, and to which Marian had gone with hushed footsteps to kneel for the last time beside the old man who was so near her by the ties of relationship, and whom she had known for so brief a s.p.a.ce. She was glad to leave that dingy quarter of the town, which to one who had never lived in an English city seemed unspeakably close and wretched; still more glad to think that she was going back to the quiet home, where her husband would most likely join her very soon. She might find him there when she arrived, perhaps; for he knew nothing of this journey to London, or could only hear of it at the Grange, where she had left a letter for him, enclosing that brief note of Gilbert Fenton's which had informed her of her grandfather's fatal illness. There were special reasons why she should not ask him to meet her in Queen Anne's Court, however long she might have been compelled to stay there.

Mr. Nowell was much more affectionate in his manner to his daughter this morning, as they sat in the cab driving to the station, and walked side by side upon the platform in the quarter of an hour's interval before the departure of the train. He questioned her closely upon her life in the present, and her plans for the future, expressing himself in a remarkably generous manner upon the subject of her grandfather's will, and declaring himself very well pleased that his own involuntary neglect was to be so amply atoned for by the old man's liberality. He found his daughter completely ignorant of the world, as gentle and confiding as he had found her mother in the past. He sounded the depths of her innocent mind during that brief promenade; and when the train bore her away at last, and the platform was clear, he remained for some time walking up and down in profound meditation, scarcely knowing where he was. He looked round him in an absent way by-and-by, and then hurriedly left the station, and drove straight to Mr. Medler's office, which was upon the ground floor of a gloomy old house in one of the dingier streets in the Soho district, and in the upper chambers whereof the attorney's wife and numerous offspring had their abode. He came down to his client from his unpretending breakfast-table in a faded dressing-gown, with smears of egg and greasy traces of b.u.t.tered toast about the region of his mouth, and seemed not particularly pleased to see Mr. Nowell. But the conference that followed was a long one; and it is to be presumed that it involved some chance of future profit, since the lawyer forgot to return to his unfinished breakfast, much to the vexation of Mrs. Medler, a faded lady with everything about her in the extremest stage of limpness, who washed the breakfast-things with her own fair hands, in consideration of the mult.i.tudinous duties to be performed by that hapless solitary damsel who in such modest households is usually denominated "the girl."

CHAPTER XXII.

AT LIDFORD AGAIN.

Gilbert Fenton called in Queen Anne's Court within a few hours of Marian's departure, and was not a little disappointed when he was told that she had gone back to Hampshire. He had relied upon seeing her again--not once only, but several times--before her return. He had promised Jacob Nowell that he would watch over and protect her interests; and it was a sincere unqualified wish to do this that influenced him now.

More than a dear friend, the sweetest and dearest of all womankind, she could never be to him. He accepted the position with resignation. The first sharp bitterness of her loss was over. That he should ever cease to love her was impossible; but it seemed to him that a chivalrous friendship for her, a disinterested brotherly affection, was in no manner incompatible with that hapless silent love. No word of his, in all their intercourse to come, should ever remind her of that hidden devotion; no shadow of the past should ever cloud the calm brightness of the present.

It was a romantic fancy, perhaps, for a man of business, whose days were spent in the very press and tumult of commercial life; but it had lifted Gilbert Fenton out of that slough of despond into which he had fallen when Marian seemed utterly lost to him--vanished altogether out of his existence.

He had a sense of bitter disappointment, therefore, when he found that she had gone, leaving neither letter nor message for him. How little value his friendship must needs possess for her, when she could abandon him thus without a word! He had felt sure that she would consult him upon her affairs; but no, she had her husband to whom to appeal, and had no need of any other counsellor.

"I was a fool to think that I could ever be anything to her, even a friend," he said to himself bitterly; "women are incapable of friendship.

It is all or nothing with them; a blind self-abnegation or the coldest indifference. Devotion cannot touch them, unless the man who gives it happen to be that one man out of a thousand who has the power to bewitch their senses. Truth and affection, of themselves, have no value with them. How many people spoke to me of this Holbrook as an unattractive man; and yet he won my love away from me, and holds her with an influence so complete, that my friendship seems worthless to her. She cannot give me a word or a thought."

Mr. Fenton made some inquiries about the funeral arrangements and found that these had been duly attended to by the lawyer, and a gentleman who had been with Jacob Nowell a good deal of late, who seemed to be some relation to the old man, Mr. Tulliver said, and took a great deal upon himself. This being done, there was, of course, no occasion for Gilbert to interfere, and he was glad to be released from all responsibility.

Having ascertained this, he asked for the address of the late Mr.

Nowell's lawyer; and being told it, went at once to Mr. Medler's office.

He did not consider himself absolved from the promise he had made the old man by Marian's indifference, and was none the less anxious to watch over her interests because she seemed to set so little value on his friendship.