The Mystery of Lincoln's Inn Part 3

"Pleased! I should say I am!"

"And when is he coming?" asked Gilbert.

"He says he will be here very soon," answered Kitty--"in a few days after his letter. He does not say quite when, but he writes, 'I will pop in and surprise you some day in the week next after that in which you receive this.' The very uncertainty as to the date," remarked the girl, brightly, "gives a keener edge to one's pleasure."

"I dare say that is what he intended," said Mrs. Eversleigh.

The three ladies looked delighted--as indeed they were. Gilbert seemed delighted also, but inwardly the news made him feel downcast.

Pa.s.sionately as he loved Kitty Thornton, the thought of the large fortune she would inherit, which Morris Thornton's approaching visit brought home to him afresh, had been a check upon him; so, too, was the fact that she was the ward, in a measure, of his father. These considerations had imposed upon him silence and a certain self-control; still he had an idea that Kitty could not be altogether unconscious of his love for her. He knew she liked him, and it was his fond hope that he might "drive this liking to the name of love." But so far he had not ventured to voice his hope in words. And now he wondered if her father's return would make a difference, and what her father would think of him and his suit.

"He will think I am not good enough for her," he said to himself, "and of course I'm not. Besides, as she's a great heiress, he will expect her to make some splendid match--and I am only a young barrister with my career just beginning."

All this pa.s.sed through his mind on hearing Kitty's "good news," which he felt might not be equally good news so far as he was concerned, but he strove to look as happy over it as she was.

"We shall all be very glad to see him," said he to the girl, mendaciously.

"What shall we do with ourselves this afternoon?" asked Kitty, changing the topic. "Now you are here, Gilbert, we must make some use of you."

"He was talking of going on the river," remarked Helen.

"Yes, yes," said Kitty, eagerly. "I never tire of the river."

"Will you come, mother?" inquired Gilbert of Mrs. Eversleigh.

But Mrs. Eversleigh declined on the plea of having some household matters to attend to.

"I can't go with you," she said, "but I'll tell you what to do. You two girls can take your cycles, and Gilbert can borrow his brother Ernest's wheel, and ride to Molesey."

"And get a punt there. The very thing," said Gilbert, in the mood to welcome hard exercise, and so to work off his trouble. "I suppose," he said to his mother, "I'll find some of Ernie's boating things in his room?"

"Oh yes," said Mrs. Eversleigh, and he went off to change his clothes.

Presently the three young people were cycling to Molesey, which they soon reached. A punt was quickly procured, and, in a few seconds more, Gilbert was poling it up-stream with remarkable vigour considering the heat of the day.

"You are working hard," said Kitty, noting his extraordinary exertions.

"Oh, never mind him," sweetly remarked his sister. "It's good for him."

"But won't you over-heat yourself, Gilbert?" asked Kitty. And though he replied with thanks that he was all right, she insisted after a short while that he must take an easy, and moor the punt under a shady bank.

He obeyed her, and then Kitty, to his secret discomfiture, must needs talk about the coming of her father, her heart being full of the subject. And as she talked his trouble seemed to melt away, for she spoke of the happy times they all would have when Morris Thornton was in England, and obviously included Gilbert in her notion of these happy times. The three chatted gaily for an hour, and then they set off down-stream.

They had gone several hundred yards, perhaps, when they met, moving at top speed, a racing-skiff, the occupant of which bowed to them with a rapid inclination of his head, but did not stop.

"It's Harry Bennet," said Helen Eversleigh, gazing after him, and waving her hand.

"How are you, Harry?" Gilbert had shouted, as the boat went past.

Bennet, now some distance away, rested on his oars, and waved his hand to Helen, who was still regarding him, as was also Kitty; but it was the latter at whom he looked. However, he did not seek to talk, but watched the punt until it disappeared round a bend of the stream. His face thereupon expressed mingled feelings--a tremendous admiration of Kitty Thornton, and an intense hatred of Gilbert Eversleigh, whom he proceeded to curse aloud when out of sight, being the chief.

"He's a fine oarsman, a fine athlete," observed Helen, as the punt went on down-stream. She referred to Harry Bennet, whom she had known all her life, and for whom she had a liking. "I can't believe he is the bad lot they say he is. If only he was not so keen on racing and betting! It's said that he is losing all his money and ruining himself. It seems such a pity!" And she sighed.

"Yes," said Kitty, glancing at her friend; but she did not continue the conversation. She knew of Helen's feeling for Bennet, but it was a feeling she herself did not share.

As for Gilbert, he said nothing at all either good or bad about the man whom he understood very well was his rival. But he had heard what was being said about Bennet quite openly, the sum and substance of which was that Harry had become a reckless and inveterate gambler.

The girls had heard something of this too, but only in the most general way. All three, however, were cognisant of the main facts of Bennet's life: how his father had died when he was a child, and how he had been petted, spoiled, and indulged by a foolish doting mother; how he had consequently grown into a wilful, headstrong, intractable boy; how, as he neared man-hood, he showed a gift of marvellous physical strength, in the development of which there for a time lay an illusory hope of his improvement; how, in his first year at the university, he had been a member of the crew which, after a long series of Oxford triumphs, had at last given a victory to the light blues; and how, on coming into his property a few months later, he had forthwith left Cambridge and taken to racing with frantic zest.

"It is such a pity," Helen went on; "but I think that so long as he keeps up his rowing there is a chance for him."

But now they were back at Molesey, and nothing more was said of Bennet at the time. At dinner in the evening, however, Helen spoke of their having seen him on the river, and repeated what she had said about it being a hopeful sign that he kept up his rowing.

"I think he doesn't row very much now," said her brother Ernest, who was a solicitor like his father, and expected soon to be a partner in the Lincoln's Inn firm. "He simply can't have the time. His stable and his horses and his betting-book absorb him entirely. I wonder what that new horse of his--he calls it 'Go Nap'--will do for him. He's sure to back it heavily."

"'Go Nap'!" said Gilbert. "That's rather suggestive of a plunge."

"Isn't it? Harry is a terrific plunger anyway."

"Oh, don't let us talk about Harry Bennet," said Francis Eversleigh, from the head of the table, where he had been sitting in moody silence.

He was so utterly unlike himself, indeed, that his wife was alarmed, but when she asked what ailed him he said he had "a rather bad headache"--a statement which scarcely rea.s.sured her, as she knew he never had headaches; and when she pressed him further, he replied sharply and irritably. But the wretched man hardly knew what he was saying or doing.

One part of Silwood's advice he had made up his mind to accept and act upon, and this was that he would do nothing to forestall the fate which must over-take the firm, but to let things drift till the crash came.

And, having come to this conclusion, the unfortunate solicitor told himself that he must try to behave as usual in his family circle. But he found it impossible. The tragic swiftness and completeness of the stroke dealt him by Silwood was too much for him. Now, as he thought of his home, and of his wife and children, and of the frightful secret he carried in his breast of the ruin hanging over them, a bitterness worse than that of death possessed him. Generally full of easy agreeable small-talk, that night he was gloomy and dumb.

He made one effort only to talk.

Kitty mentioned having had a letter from her father, whereupon he stated that the firm had also had one from Mr. Thornton.

"By the way," he said, striving to speak in his ordinary tones, "your father made a curious omission in his letter to us; he does not specify when he is coming--gives no precise date. I dare say it was an oversight. I suppose he tells you in your letter just when to expect him, Kitty?"

"No, he doesn't, Mr. Eversleigh--at least, not very precisely. He says he'll come soon after his letter, but he does not fix any date, as he wants to give me a little surprise. Still, I think he'll be here some day next week."

"Next week!" said Eversleigh, slowly and painfully. To him it was the voice of doom, and he relapsed into silence again.

CHAPTER IV

Dinner over, Francis Eversleigh retired to his room, again excusing himself on the plea of headache, adding in a very uncertain voice that he would no doubt be better in the morning; but he looked hara.s.sed, worn, and ill. His wife concealed her consternation at his state as well as she could, and mentally tried to a.s.sign some cause for it; on reflection she thought that his reference at table to Harry Bennet, whose affairs, now much involved, she knew to be in the hands of the firm, probably suggested the correct explanation. Anxious to minister to her husband, and to find out if possible what distressed him so sorely, she wished to be alone with him, and she urged the others to go out for a stroll by the river.

As the young people, nothing loth, went out, the two brothers exchanged a few words, Gilbert asking Ernest if he knew of anything in the office that had upset their father.

"I saw him in the forenoon," he remarked, "and he was looking as well as could be then. I hope he's not going to have an illness."

"I know of nothing particularly worrying in the office," returned Ernest. "How should there be? I fancy it is just as he says--he's got a bad headache, perhaps from the heat. I don't fancy that there is anything else the matter with him. He'll be all right to-morrow, you'll see."