Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 73

CHAPTER XXVII. -- BLUEBEARD'S CLOSET.

A moment then the volume spread, And one short spell therein he read.

Scott.

The reality of John's intention to devote himself to medicine made Caroline anxious to look again at the terms of the trust on which she held the Magnum Bonum secret.

Moreover, she wanted some papers and accounts, and therefore on Monday morning, while getting up, she glanced towards the place where her davenport usually stood, and to her great surprise missed it. She asked Emma, who was dressing her, whether it had been moved, and found that her maid had been as much surprised as herself at its absence, and that the housekeeper had denied all knowledge of it.

"Other things is missing, ma'am," said Emma; "there's the key of the closet where your dresses hangs. I've hunted high and low for it, and n.o.body hasn't seen it."

"Keys are easily lost," said Caroline, "but my davenport is very important. Perhaps in some cleaning it has been moved into one of the other rooms and forgotten there. I wish you would look. You know I had it before I came here."

Not only did Emma look, but as soon as her mistress was ready to leave the room she went herself on a voyage of discovery, peeping first into the little dressing-room, where seeing Babie at her morning prayers, she said nothing to disturb her, and then going on to look into some spare rooms beyond, where she thought it might have been disposed of, as being not smart enough for my lady's chamber. Coming back to her room she found, to her extreme amazement, the closet open, and Babie pushing the davenport out of it, with her cheeks crimson and a look of consternation at being detected.

"My dear child! The davenport there! Did you know it? How did it get there?"

"I put it," said Barbara, evidently only forced to reply by sheer sincerity.

"You! And why?"

"I thought it safer," mumbled Babie.

"And you knew where the key of the closet was?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"In my doll's bed, locked up in the baby-house."

"This is most extraordinary. When did you do this?"

"Just before we came out to you at Leukerbad," said Babie, each reply pumped out with great difficulty.

"Four years ago! It is a very odd thing. I suppose you had a panic, for you were too old then for playing monkey tricks."

To which Babie made no answer, and the next minute her mother, who had become intent on the davenport, exclaimed, "I suppose you haven't got the key of this in your doll's bed?"

"Don't you remember, mother," said Barbara, "you sent it home to Janet, and it was lost in her bag on the crossing?"

"Oh, yes, I remember! And it is a Bramah lock, more's the pity. We must have the locksmith over from Kenminster to open it."

The man was sent for, the davenport was opened, desk, drawers, and all.

Caroline was once more in possession of her papers. She turned them over in haste, and saw no book of Magnum Bonum. Again, more carefully she looked. The white slate, where those precious last words had been written, was there, proving to her that her memory had not deceived her, but that she had really kept her treasure in that davenport.

Then, in her distress, she thought of Barbara's strange behaviour, went in quest of her, and calling her aside, asked her to tell her the real reason why she had thought fit to secure the davenport in the closet.

"Why," asked Babie, her eyes growing large and shining, "is anything missing?"

"Tell me first," said Caroline, trembling.

Then Babie told how she had wakened and seen Janet with the desk part raised up, reading something, and how, when she lay watching and wondering, Janet had shut it up and gone away. "And I did not feel comfortable about it, mother," said Babie, "so I thought I would lock up the davenport, so that n.o.body could get at it."

"You did not see her take anything away?"

"No, I can't at all tell," said Babie. "Is anything gone?"

"A book I valued very much. Some memoranda of your father were in that desk, and I cannot find them now. You cannot tell, I suppose, whether she was reading letters or a book?"

"It was not letters," said Babie, "but I could not see whether it was print or ma.n.u.script. Mother, I think she must have taken it to read and could not put it back again because I had hidden the davenport. Oh!

I wish I hadn't, but I couldn't ask any one, it seemed such a wicked, dreadful fancy that she could meddle with your papers."

"You acted to the best of your judgment, my dear," said Caroline. "I ought never to have let it out of my own keeping."

"Do you think it was lost in the bag, mother?"

"I hope not. That would be worst of all!" said Caroline. "I must ask Janet. Don't say anything about it, my dear. Let me think it over."

When Caroline recollected Janet's attempt, as related by Robert, to break open her bureau, she had very little doubt that the book was there. It could not have been lost in the bag, for, as she remembered, reference had been made to it when Janet had extorted permission to go to Zurich, and she had warned her that even these studies would not be a qualification for the possession of the secret. Janet had then smiled triumphantly, and said she would make her change her mind yet; had looked, in fact, very much as Bobus did when he put aside her remonstrances. It was not the air of a person who had lost the records of the secret and was afraid to confess, though it was possible she might have them in her own keeping. Caroline longed to search the bureau, but however dishonourably Janet might have acted towards herself, she could not break into her private receptacles without warning. So after some consideration, she made Barbara drive her to the station, and send the following telegraphic message to Janet's address at Edinburgh:--

"Come home at once. Father's memorandum book missing. Must be searched for."

All that day and the next the sons wondered what was amiss with their mother, she was so pensive, with starts of flightiness. Allen thought she was going to have an illness, and Bobus that it was a very strange and foolish way of taking his resistance, but all the time Armine was going about quite unperceiving, in a blissful state. The vicar's sister, a spirited, active, and very winning woman of thirty-five, had captivated him, as she did all the lads of the parish. He had been walking about with her, being introduced to all the needs of the parish, and his enthusiastic nature throwing itself into the cause of religion and beneficence, which was in truth his congenial element; he was ready to undertake for himself and his mother whatever was wanted, without a word of solicitation, nay rather, the vicar, who thought it all far too good to be true, held him back.

And when he came in and poured out his narrative, he was, for the first time in his life, even petulant that his mother was too much preoccupied to confirm his promises, and angry when Allen laughed at his vehemence, and said he should beware of model parishes.

By dinner-time the next day Janet had actually arrived. She looked thin and sharp, her keen black eyes roamed about uneasily, and some indescribable change had pa.s.sed over her. Her brothers told her study had not agreed with her, and she did not, as of old, answer tartly, but gave a stiff, mechanical smile, and all the evening talked in a woman-of-the-world manner, cleverly, agreeably, not putting out her p.r.i.c.kles, but like a stranger, and as if on her guard.

Of course there was no speaking to her till bedtime, and Caroline at first felt as if she ought to let one night pa.s.s in peace under the home roof; but she soon felt that to sleep would be impossible to herself, and she thought it would be equally so to her daughter without coming to an understanding. She yearned for some interchange of tenderness from that first-born child from whom she had been so long separated, and watched and listened for a step approaching her door; till at last, when the maid was gone and no one came, she yielded to her impulse; and in her white dressing-gown, with softly-slippered feet, she glided along the pa.s.sage with a strange mixed feeling of maternal gladness that Janet was at home again, and of painful impatience to have the interview over.

She knocked at the door. There was no answer. She opened it. There was no one there, but the light on the terrace below, thrown from the windows of the lower room, was proof to her that Janet was in her sitting-room, and she began to descend the private stairs that led down to it. She was as light in figure and in step as ever, and her soft slippers made no noise as she went down. The door in the wainscot was open, and from the foot of the stairs she had a strange view. Janet's candle was on the chair behind her, in front of it lay half-a-dozen different keys, and she herself was kneeling before the bureau, trying one of the keys into the lock. It would not fit, and in turning to try another, she first saw the white figure, and started violently at the first moment, then, as the trembling, pleading voice said, "Janet," she started to her feet, and cried out angrily--

"Am I to be always spied and dogged?"

"Hush, Janet," said her mother, in a voice of grave reproof, "I simply came to speak to you about the distressing loss of what your father put in my charge."

"And why should I know anything about it?" demanded Janet.

"You were the last person who had access to the davenport," said her mother.

"This is that child Barbara's foolish nonsense," muttered Janet to herself.

"Barbara has nothing to do with the fact that I sent you the key of the davenport where the book was. It is now missing. Janet, it is bitterly painful to me to say so, but your endeavours to open that bureau privately have brought suspicion upon you, and I must have it opened in my presence."

"I have a full right to my own bureau."