The Mystery of Lincoln's Inn Part 9

"It is your love I want, not your sorrow," he said roughly.

"That I cannot give you," said Kitty. "Wait a moment, Harry. A few minutes ago you asked me if I had any news. Well, I did not tell you all the news. There was one piece of news I felt a certain reticence about.

I wish now I had mentioned it to you. For, if I had done so you would not have said--what you have said. It is that I am engaged to be married."

"Oh, Kitty!" cried Bennet, in a voice that seemed to ask her how she dared become engaged to any one but himself. "You are engaged! This is news indeed ... I wish I had known ... engaged!" And Bennet, who was not able to contain his rage and mortification, glowered at the girl, as these words came brokenly from him. Then he looked at her for some seconds in silence, and his look was not pleasant.

"I am sorry," said Kitty once more, but her accent was cold. She thought he was not behaving prettily, and that it was time for him to go.

"May I ask who is the lucky man?" he inquired, his face dark with wrath; but in his heart he had already guessed that Gilbert Eversleigh was his successful rival.

"I do not know that you have any right to address me as you are doing,"

said Kitty with dignity. "You asked a question and you have had your answer." But as she looked at Bennet she relented a little. "I am sorry to disappoint you, Harry," she went on, "but there is nothing more to be said."

"I suppose it is Gilbert," said Bennet.

Kitty nodded a.s.sent.

Bennet gazed at her gloomily; there was something threatening in the black gleams he shot at her.

"Have you no good wishes for me?" she asked, making an effort to remind him that he should at least try to play the part of a gentleman.

But Bennet only glared at her speechlessly.

At length, muttering some words so incoherently that the girl could not catch them, he turned and left the room abruptly.

And he kept muttering the same words over and over again as he returned to his home; they made an infernal chorus in his thoughts, the burden of which was, "She shall never marry you, Master Gilbert, never, never, if I can prevent her. She shall marry me, me, me, n.o.body but me." And yet, even while he kept on saying this to himself, he could not conceal from his innermost soul that he was powerless. Kitty and Gilbert were engaged; there was the bitter fact. Still, he whispered in his heart, they were not married, and until Kitty was actually united to Gilbert there was always room for a little hope.

Of Gilbert Eversleigh he thought with burning hatred, and longed for an opportunity of doing him an injury. In his first rage he had an idea that he would withdraw all his business from Eversleigh, Silwood and Eversleigh, but after he had somewhat cooled he came to the conclusion not to do so. The firm, he argued, was far too big and well-established and wealthy to be hurt much by the loss of a single client like him.

Bennet's opinion of the standing of the firm was the same as that held by everybody else. Besides, there was another reason for continuing with the Lincoln's Inn solicitors. He told himself that if he placed his affairs in the hands of other lawyers, Francis Eversleigh would inevitably be displeased, and this would lead to a coolness between them which would make it impossible for him to visit at Ivydene. But while Kitty remained beneath the roof of Francis Eversleigh, Bennet had no desire to cut himself off from seeing her there. And he meant to go on seeing her. For, so long as she was unmarried he did not altogether despair. He said to himself that he would wait and see if chance did not throw something in his way.

As for Kitty, she thought it best to say not a word to Gilbert of Harry Bennet's proposal, but she took an opportunity of cautioning her lover to beware of him.

To say that Kitty was amazed and dismayed at the presumptuousness, the boorishness, the bad manners Bennet had exhibited, would give but a faint indication of what she felt. She considered his behaviour, with its unconcealed menace, little short of an outrage. Yet, at the same time, an alarmed instinct in her apprised her that the man was dangerous, and that vigilance was necessary in dealing with him.

Gilbert was rather inclined gently to laugh down the warning Kitty gave him; in his abounding happiness he smiled at her fears, but she insisted none the less that Bennet was a man to be watched.

"You must always be on your guard with him," she said.

"What can he do, my darling?" asked Gilbert. "Nothing," he said, with rea.s.suring caresses.

CHAPTER VIII

It was now approaching the end of the week, and still there was no sign of Morris Thornton, to the intense disappointment of his daughter Kitty, who was all impatience to see him.

As each day in that week of terror to Francis Eversleigh went past, he sank further and further into a slough of despond, and became a prey to deep melancholy. The routine of his office work, with its appeal to long-established habit, and the pressure to keep up appearances so far as it was possible, helped him a little during the day; but in the evenings, when his family were around him, and in the long, broken nights, when his wife lay asleep by his side, he abandoned himself to the deepest dejection.

Going to his office each morning, he speculated drearily, with aching heart, whether this day or the next would see Morris Thornton walk in, bringing ruin with him. "How am I to meet him?" Eversleigh asked himself over and over again, but saw no answer.

Silwood had not spoken to him again except on such items of business as had to be discussed by them together. These consultations would have had something farcical in them for him if the situation had not been so wholly tragical. He marvelled at the matter-of-fact way Silwood went about these and other affairs.

Very quietly and methodically Silwood went on maturing his plans, nor did he refer to them any more when talking to Eversleigh; but he had paid another visit in disguise to Douglas Street, Stepney, and had warned his wife to be ready to move when he gave the word. He had also intimated, but more plainly, to Williamson, that he would take a holiday very soon--his reason, he alleged for taking it, being the great heat which still continued. Never had there been known so hot a July.

Williamson admitted in his thoughts that the reason was an excellent one, but wondered why Mr. Eversleigh, who continued to look very ill, did not talk of taking a vacation instead of his partner, who seemed to be very much in his usual health.

On the Sat.u.r.day of that week, Cooper Silwood, whose punctuality had hitherto been invariable, did not appear at the office when half-past ten came round, and Williamson waited for him in vain for some time. A little after eleven, however, the head-clerk received a note from him, saying that he had gone to the Continent, and intended making for the north of Italy, where he had been some years before. He went on to say he was not certain how long he would be away, but it would be for two or three weeks, perhaps a month.

Carefully as Silwood had prepared the way, Williamson could not but be surprised at the suddenness with which, in the end, his princ.i.p.al had departed, and naturally his suspicions of there being something wrong were increased; but they remained indefinite and vague, for he could fasten on nothing tangible.

In the course of the morning, Francis Eversleigh, for the purpose of asking Silwood a question, went into the latter's room, and found it empty. It was evident, too, from the state in which it was, that Silwood had not been there that day. He at once leapt to the conclusion that Silwood had gone away--in plain terms, had absconded--an eventuality for which he was not altogether unprepared, as it had been part of the scheme Silwood had mooted to him after the confession of the defalcations, and also on the occasion of their interview at Ivydene.

Still, this might not be the explanation, and Eversleigh, after a few seconds' thought, put on his hat and walked up to Silwood's private chambers in Stone Buildings. Here he found the door locked, and a sheet of paper pinned to it, on which was written, "Out of Town."

His conjecture thus confirmed, it was none the less a terrible shock to Francis Eversleigh; even though he had antic.i.p.ated it, it was nevertheless hard to bear.

"He has left me to stand it all alone," he thought, but even as he said this to himself, his common sense rea.s.serted itself. "But what will his flight benefit him? Ultimately he will be hunted down; he cannot escape the law; no one can."

Then, hardly knowing what he was doing, he tried the door again, pulling at the handle with all his might, but it was to no purpose. He stood gazing gloomily at the closed door.

"I have a great mind to have it broken open," he muttered. "I can easily frame some excuse for doing so--say he has forgotten something. But if I did have the door opened, what would be the use? What good would it do?

It would not bring him back; it would not bring the money back. No, best leave it alone."

Moving with slow, halting steps down the stairs, he kept asking himself the question, "What am I to do now?" His agony of mind was almost beyond human endurance as this question incessantly hammered on his brain, obscuring and dulling his powers. Then, in a muddled sort of way, he began to reason.

First, he might go to the authorities and incriminate himself; but no one, he told himself, was required to do that; it was too much to expect any one to do.

Second, he might destroy himself, and so make an end. Was this not the best course to pursue? With this idea in his mind, he remembered a shop in the Strand, in the window of which he had seen revolvers for sale.

Why not buy one and be done with it all? "Why not?" he asked himself, and turned his face towards the Strand. But he had only gone a few paces when the thought of his wife and children was too poignant to allow him to proceed further with his desperate purpose, and so he faced about and returned to New Square, thinking, thinking of what he was to do.

There was only one thing to do, he concluded, and that was to continue doing his work at the office as best he could till the crash came. It could not be long in coming, he reflected with indescribable bitterness, for was not Morris Thornton already overdue?

He had scarcely got seated in his own room when his son Ernest came in, and remarked that Mr. Silwood had gone for a holiday.

"I had not heard that he intended going," he went on; "in fact, I was astonished to hear of his taking a holiday just now. Mr. Williamson tells me he has left for the Continent."

"Yes," said Francis Eversleigh, somewhat vacantly, "he has gone for a holiday. I suppose I have forgotten to mention to you that he was going abroad for a while," he continued, pulling himself together. "He has not had a holiday for some years."

"I see. By-the-way," said Ernest, "who in his absence is to look after his department?"

"I'll do so myself," observed the other, quietly.

"But, father," objected Ernest, "you are not well enough----"

"Oh, yes, I am," protested Eversleigh. "I'll attend to it myself, my boy."

"Why not let me do it?"