Miss Brancker had scarcely been five minutes back at home before Doctor Hazeldine's boy came in search of his master. The services of the latter were required immediately at an address which the lad had brought with him; Clem must hurry off without a moment's delay. He would dearly have liked to give Hermia a parting kiss--it may be more than one--but nothing had yet been said to Miss Brancker, and such a proceeding on his part would certainly have surprised, and might possibly have shocked, that somewhat staid though by no means puritanical spinster. Accordingly, Clem had to content himself with a simple pressure of Hermia's hand, but that of itself conveyed a world of meaning from one to the other. As he was bidding her good-night, he contrived to whisper, "I will call to-morrow after my first round, and seek an interview with your uncle."
His words gave Hermia a certain shock. She turned hot from head to foot. In the great rush of gladness with which Clem's confession had filled her, she had forgotten all about the strange secret which had been imparted to her only a few days before. She had accepted him without telling him. What would he think of her, what would he say, when he learned the truth? How foolish--how forgetful she had been! He had asked her to be his wife under the belief that she was the orphan daughter of a sister of John Brancker. What would his feelings be when told that she was a "nobody's child"--that neither she nor those under whose roof she had been brought up knew anything whatever about her parentage or history, and that in all probability they never would know? Ah, if she had but remembered to tell him before allowing his lips to touch hers! In that case, perhaps--but it was too late to think of that now. All she could do was to intercept Clement on the morrow before he should have time to see her uncle--as she still continued to call John--and tell him all.
She was on the watch for him next day, and opened the door before he had time to knock. "Come in here, I want to speak to you," she said, as she shut the front door behind him, and opened that of the little parlor, the ordinary living-room of the family being on the opposite side of the entrance-hall. As soon as they were in the room and the door shut, Clem found it impossible to refrain from repeating the osculatory process of the previous evening.
Hermia's resistance was not a very determined one. "It may be for the last time," she said to herself with lips that quivered a little. "He may never want to kiss me again after I have told him."
"Sit there," she said to him, indicating a chair. "I have something to tell you which I ought to have told you last evening before"--(here she blushed and hesitated for an instant)--"before I allowed you to think that I cared for you a little; only, somehow, I don't know why, I quite forgot all about it at the time."
She paused and drew a deep breath. Then she went on to tell him in her own words that which John and his sister had so recently told her, including all about the twelve hundred and odd pounds lying in her name in the Dulminster Bank, of which she positively refused to touch a shilling.
The young Doctor listened gravely silent, till she had finished all she had to say. Her dark-blue eyes, a little wider open than ordinary, were fixed on him with an air of expectancy; the sweet curve of her lips showed a glint of pearly teeth between; her bosom was rising and falling more quickly than ordinary; evidently she attached far more importance than he did to the revelation she had just made him. He gave her a reassuring smile; then he said gently,
"Would it have mattered greatly, darling, if you had never told me this? As far as I am concerned, it certainly would not. Mr. Brancker and his sister will still continue to be your uncle and aunt as they have always been, and you will still continue to be their orphan niece. Nothing is changed. Of course, it is only natural that now you understand so much, you should be desirous of knowing more, and----"
"But I am by no means sure that I am desirous of knowing more," interposed Hermia, softly, and yet proudly. "Whoever my relatives may be--that is, providing I have any at all--they have thought well to discard me, and such being the case, I do not know why I should trouble myself greatly about them."
"Your words are words of wisdom. Whoever the people may be who placed you with Mr. Brancker, and whatever the connection between you and them may be, it is quite evident that, for the present at least, they are determined to keep their secret to themselves, and that any attempt on your part to force it from them would probably be met by rebuffs and disappointment. As you say, why trouble yourself about them? Here are your true relations; here is the only home you have ever known. Let them go their way; all you ask is to be allowed to go yours without any interference on their part.
"You do but echo my own thoughts," said Hermia, with a heavenly smile.
"Which merely serves to prove still more clearly the affinity that exists between us."
"Ah, but have you sufficiently considered what you are doing--what risks you may be running in proffering to marry a nameless girl--for how can I be sure what my name really is?--about whose parentage and antecedents you know absolutely nothing? For aught you or I can tell to the contrary, there may be some dreadful disgrace hanging over my birth, or attaching itself in some way to those who have thought well to cast me off. Think what it would be if, after your marriage, something should come to light which would make you ashamed of your wife, something which would cause you to wish you had never met her! That would be enough to make her sorry she had ever been born, while, as for you----" She ceased, her sensitive lips quivering almost imperceptibly, while a tear shone in the corner of each of her eyes.
Again Clement smiled. "My dearest, are you not making a mountain out of a molehill?" he said. "It is a way your sex sometimes has. For my own part, I do not for one moment suppose that there is any disgrace, as you choose to term it, connected with your birth or parentage, or any secret which, if made known to the world to-morrow, you would have the slightest cause to be ashamed of. Such cases as yours are by no means so infrequent as you seem to think, and the explanation, when one is forthcoming, is usually of a very commonplace kind indeed. My advice to you is, to think as little as may be about that which Mr. Brancker has deemed it his duty to tell you--in fact, to treat it as though you had never heard it. You shake your head. Well, then, to adopt for the moment your own extreme view of the matter, do you, can you think that whatever may happen, whatever secret the future may bring to light, such a revelation can or will influence my love in the slightest degree, or make me care for you one jot less than I care for you now? If you do think so, you must indeed have a contemptible opinion of me."
"No, no," protested Hermia; "indeed I have no such opinion of you. You know differently from that. If such were the case, is is likely that I should have given you"---- A blush finished the sentence.
"The greatest treasure a woman can bestow on a man," said Clem, as if he knew exactly what she would have said. "No, it is not likely--indeed, quite the reverse. All which merely brings us round to the point we started from. As I said at first, it would have mattered little or nothing, as far as I am concerned, if you had never told me all this. So now, to change the subject----"
His way of changing the subject was to encircle her waist with his arm.
"But about the money," said Hermia, two or three minutes later, as she stood before the chimney-glass, trying to put her hair to rights, which, owing to some accident, had become considerably disarranged--"about the twelve hundred pounds. Was I not right in acting as I did?"
"My dearest and best, it was out of the question that you should have acted otherwise. Whatever your uncle may choose to say, the money is not yours, but his. If it pleases him to let it accumulate in your name, well and good; no one can hinder him from doing as he likes in the matter, but his doing so in nowise alters the facts of the case. The money remains his just the same; he cannot give you what you are not willing to take, and this is a kind of gift, or so it seems to me, which it is impossible for you to accept."
"I was sure you would say so; I was sure you would think exactly as I do in the matter," said Hermia, with shining eyes. "What will uncle and aunt say now?"
"Which reminds me that I have not yet had my little interview with your uncle," said Clem. "But as I can't stay much longer--for a doctor's time is never his own--and as one should never omit to gather honey while one has the chance," he added artfully, "it seems to me that it will be better to put off my interview with Mr. Brancker till this evening, or to-morrow."
"Indeed, sir, but you will do no such thing," cried Hermia. "I begin to discern a certain selfishness of disposition about you, which I trust you will do your utmost to check while it is yet in the bud. I will ask Uncle John to come at once, in case any of your poor patients should fancy you are neglecting them," and before Clem could intercept her she was gone.
On the interview between the young doctor and John Brancker it is not needful that we should dwell. Presently Miss Brancker was called into the room by her brother. The kind-hearted spinster could not help letting fall a few tears when told the news, although she had not been without her suspicions of what was in the air for some time past. "There is no one in the wide world," she said, with fervor, "to whom my brother and I would sooner entrust our darling than to you, Mr. Clement. And as for her, she is worthy of all the care and love which any man can bestow on her."
"On that point I am quite sure," replied Clem, earnestly, "and if I know anything of myself, she will never lack either one or the other at my hands."
Then John brought up the subject of the twelve hundred pounds. It would be such a nice little nest-egg to start housekeeping with, he said. Clem only laughed, and replied that both he and Hermia were fully agreed that the money belonged to John and to him only, and that neither by deed or gift nor in any other form would Hermia accept a shilling of it.
"Then hang me!" cried John, with what for him was a burst of passion, as he banged his fist on the table, "if I don't give every farthing of it to the Dulminster Hospital."
"I question whether you could put it to a better purpose," was all the consolation he got from Clem.
But already in Miss Brancker's brain a scheme was germinating for getting rid of the golden incubus after an altogether different fashion.
Said John to his sister after Clement had gone, "I am not quite sure, my dear, that we are justified in giving our sanction to Hermy's engagement without having first obtained Mr. Hodgson's leave to do so. There may be something in the background of which you and I know nothing, to render such an engagement objectionable to Hermy's unknown relatives; for, of course, the dear girl must have relatives somewhere. I am afraid we have acted rather precipitately in the matter, and that we ought first to have taken Mr. Hodgson's opinion on the occasion of his next visit."
"You seem to forget one little fact, my dear, which is, that you could not very well help yourself," replied his sister, dryly. "You, at least, have no legal control over Hermy, and I question very much whether Mr. Hodgson has. I consider that it was very nice on her part to pay you the compliment, through her lover, of asking your consent to an arrangement which it was not in your power to forbid, or interfere with in any way."
This was a way of looking at the affair such as had never struck John, but he could not help acknowledging that there was a certain amount of force in it. "For all that," he said, dubiously, "I should have been better satisfied if Mr. Hodgson had known of and approved the engagement."
"When you adopted Hermia, it was understood, although there was no specific arrangement to that effect, that she should become to you the same as if she were, your own child. We wanted no money with her, indeed we would not accept of any, and although Mr. Hodgson has insisted on forwarding a cheque every quarter, we know how each has been disposed of as it came to hand. I fail to see, therefore, what claim Mr. Hodgson, or those who are at his back, have upon the girl's future, or by what right they could, assuming them to be so disposed, attempt to exercise any control over her. If she needed to be controlled by anyone, which, thank heaven, she doesn't, you are the only person, if there is such a thing as moral law, who has any right to exercise authority over her; and Hermia herself would be the first to declare that she would recognize no one's wishes, either in this or other matters, than yours."
It was only on very rare occasions that Aunt Charlotte launched out in this style, but whenever she did, John was wise enough to know that his only plan was to strike his colors at once.
He did so on the present occasion. "In any case," he said, "there can be no possible harm in my mentioning to Mr. Hodgson, when I see him next, the fact of Hermia's engagement;" and with that he made haste to change the subject.
Life at Broome reverted to its old monotonous groove after the death of Miss Letitia. At the funeral it was noticed by the few people who attended it that Miss Pengarvon never once lifted to her eyes the handkerchief which she carried in her hand, but her face was hidden by a thick crape veil, and no one could tell how far she might be otherwise affected. It is not the custom among families of the social rank of the Pengarvons for the female members to be present at the celebration of funeral obsequies, but Miss Barbara had always been a law unto herself, and that which she willed to do, she did. In the present instance, indeed, had she not chosen to follow the remains of her sister, there would have been no one to do so save the doctor who had attended her in her last illness, and the family solicitor, with--at a respectful distance and on foot--Barney Dale and his wife, who were mourners in the truest sense of the word.
As soon as Miss Pengarvon got back from the funeral, she shut herself up in the Green Parlor, and resumed her needle as if nothing had happened, and sat at work till far into the night, as though she were desirous of making up for lost time. But from that day forward her sister's empty chair was always placed over against her own on the opposite side of the little oval worktable, just as when Miss Letitia was alive; and as the autumn nights deepened into winter, Barney would sometimes hear his mistress talking aloud, as though there was someone with her in the room. She would ask questions, the answers to which were audible to no one but herself, or answer others which no one but herself had heard put. Sometimes it seemed to be Miss Letitia who was there with her, sometimes poor, lost Isabel, at others, that fine gentleman, Sir Jasper.
"It's all very uncanny, and I don't ken what to make of it," Barney would sometimes remark to his wife, with a slow, ruminating shake of the head--and uncanny indeed it was.
With Miss Pengarvon the love of hoarding had grown in intensity year by year, till it had become the ruling passion of her life. Now as always, her food was served up ceremoniously on some relics of the family plate, but it consisted only of the plainest and least expensive viands. With the passage of each year, the old house was becoming more ruinous and dilapidated; nothing in the way of repairs had been done to it since Sir Jasper's death. The whole of the rooms, with the exception of the three or four occupied by the sisters, and the kitchen and domestic offices, were locked and shuttered and left to dust, mildew, and decay. What remained of the park was rented by a farmer as pasturage for his cattle. In one corner of the garden Barney cultivated a few vegetables, just enough for home consumption, but further than that no hand ever touched the grounds or shrubberies, which, in the course of years, had degenerated into a veritable wilderness, not lacking in a certain wild, luxuriant beauty of their own during the spring and summer months, but unspeakably dreary when the leaves lay rotting and sodden on sad-eyed, still November afternoons, or when the chill December rains fell with dull, hopeless persistency, as over the deathbed of the passing year.
Early in January, Mrs. Dale died after a few hours' illness, and Barney had to send for one of his nieces, Lucy Grice by name, to fill her place. But the girl, after having been at Broome for a week, declared that she would sleep there no longer. The place was haunted, she averred. She had no objection to go there in the daytime and do what work might be required of her, but stay there after nightfall she would not.
Miss Pengarvon listened with a contemptuous stare while Barney explained the state of the case to her.
"The girl is a fool," she said curtly. "Of course the house is haunted, just as every house which has been inhabited by people who are dead, is haunted--no more and no less. You and she can arrange the matter between you as you think best."
Accordingly, the girl was allowed to go backward and forward, morning and evening, between her mother's cottage at Dritton and Broome.
A few weeks after the foregoing little episode had taken place, a stranger arrived one evening at the "King's Arms" Hotel, Stavering, where he ordered supper and a bed. He was a handsome, well-preserved man of sixty-five or thereabouts, and of semi-military appearance. Next morning, after breakfast, he expressed a wish to see the landlord, and was accordingly at once waited upon by that functionary, a man about the same age as the stranger.
"Pray, sit down," said the latter, indicating a chair; "that is, if you can spare me ten minutes of your company."
"Ten minutes! An hour, sir, if you wish it. Since the coaches were knocked off the road there ain't----But I needn't trouble you on that score, sir."
"May I ask whether you have lived in Stavering for any considerable number of years?"
"For half a century, sir; a little more or a little less."
"In that case, you have probably some knowledge of the existence of a family of the name of Pengarvon--the Pengarvons of Broome, I believe they are generally called in these parts."
"There are not many folks in Stavering or for miles round about but what have heard talk of the Pengarvons of Broome. A queer family, sir, very!"
"So I have been told," answered the stranger, dryly. "Who lives at Broome at the present time?"
"Miss Pengarvon, sir, a lady getting well on into years, eldest daughter of the late Sir Jasper Pengarvon--with whom the title died, there being no heir male in the family."
"Sir Jasper was twice married, was he not?"
"He was, sir. When he died he left two daughters by his first wife and one by his second."
"Just so. Now, as to the daughter by the second wife--she is still living, I presume?" He leaned forward a little as he put the question, and seemed to wait almost breathlessly for an answer.
"That is more than I can say, sir; more than anybody can say, I should imagine, unless it be Miss Pengarvon herself. Miss Isabel--that is the daughter of Sir Jasper's second marriage--ah, what a sweet young lady she was!--ran away, more than twenty years ago, with a gentleman who had been stopping for a couple of months at this very hotel before he and she disappeared. There was a fine to-do, I can tell you, sir, at the time."
"And did Miss Isabel never come back?"
"Never that I heard tell of, sir. It was said that Miss Pengarvon forbade her name ever being mentioned at the Hall, and that she even went so far as to burn such of the poor young lady's clothes as she had left behind her. An old witch, sir, if ever there was one!"
The stranger seemed not to have heard the last remark, but sat with his chin on his breast, pondering silently. Presently he roused himself with a sigh, and said:
"I am much obliged to you for your information. There is nothing more I want to ask you at present."
The landlord rose.
"About dinner, sir: at what hour would you like it?"
"Eh? Oh, yes. At five sharp. Anything you can get me. I leave it to you."
A quarter of an hour later the stranger sallied forth, with closely-buttoned overcoat, buckskin gloves and silver-mounted cane. After an inquiry or two, he found himself on the road which, among other places, led to Broome. A walk of two miles and three-quarters brought him to the Park gates, thick with the rust and grime of many years, and hanging askew on their hinges. A heavy chain with a padlock attached held them against all intruders. There was, however, a narrow arched entrance in the wall hard by through which wayfarers could gain access to the park, but the original door had rotted away long ago, and its place was now filled by a rude make-shift of rough unpainted planking, the handiwork of Barney Dale. A little way within the gates stood the whilom lodge, windowless and partially roofless, its flooring and other fittings having been torn away piecemeal by tramps and vagabonds of various kinds, who had a kettle to boil, or a savory stew which would be all the better for simmering over a fire of wood ashes. Nettles and dockweed were now the sole lodge-keepers at Broome.
The stranger, as he walked through the park towards the house, did not fail to note the further signs of neglect which were everywhere visible. The carriage drive was so overgrown with grass and weeds as to be barely distinguishable; such few trees as Sir Jasper had left standing had been left unpruned and uncared for since his death; here and there a few cows were cropping the ragged grass. When a turn of the drive brought into view the front of the Hall, the stranger paused for a few moments to contemplate it. On that grey, sunless winter noon, with its rows of shuttered windows, it looked as if it might have held inside it not one dead person, but a dozen--not one grim secret only, but a score.
Miss Pengarvon, sitting at work in the Green Parlor, was suddenly startled by a loud knocking at the front entrance of the Hall. Never did that sound fall on her ears without recalling with startling vividness that December night, now twenty years ago, when she who knocked was repulsed with contumely, and left to find a winding-sheet in the darkness and the snow.
A few moments later, Lucy Grice, after a preliminary tap at the door, entered the Parlor, carrying the stranger's card gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. It was the first time she had ever seen such an article, and she was at a loss to know the use or meaning of it.
"A gentleman at the front door, ma'am, asked me to give you this," said Lucy. "He says he wants to see you very perticlar."
Miss Pengarvon took the card and peered at it through her spectacles.
"The name is altogether strange to me," she muttered. "What possible business can have brought him here?" Then to the girl, after a moment's cogitation, "You may show the gentleman in."
Accordingly Lucy ushered the stranger into the Green Parlor and shut the door upon the two. Then she retired a little way down the corridor and listened. The stranger's voice reached her as a low, deep murmur, but the walls were too thick and she was too far away to distinguish anything that was said. Then presently she heard Miss Pengarvon's voice as if in reply, rising gradually to a pitch of shrillness and vituperative energy such as she would not have believed possible in the mistress of Broome. Involuntarily Lucy crept further away, and it was as well she did so, seeing that before the stranger had been more than five minutes in the room, the door was flung suddenly open.
"Leave my house this instant, and never dare to set foot in it again," exclaimed Miss Pengarvon in her harshest tones.
"Then you positively refuse to give me the information I ask for?" said the stranger, as if urging some point for the last time. "Let me beg of you to reconsider your determination."
"I have no information to give you, as I have already told you. Go; that is all I demand of you! Go!" Then, if Lucy had been there, she would have seen Miss Pengarvon with trembling fingers tear up the stranger's card and fling the fragments contemptuously at his feet.
"You may pretend not to believe what I have told you, but you are assured in your heart that it is true," he said, still speaking in the cold, level tones he had adopted throughout the interview.
"Lies--lies--lies! I feel no assurance of the kind. I place no credence in anything you have told me. Go, and never darken the threshold of this house again!"
Without a word more the stranger passed out of the Green Parlor, and the instant he had done so the door was shut and locked behind him.
"A fiend--nothing less than a fiend!" he remarked half aloud, as Lucy, with a scared face, proceeded to let him out at the front door.
Barney Dale, who had been away on some errand for his mistress at the time of the stranger's visit, was duly informed by his niece of all that had happened during his absence, as far as the facts were known to her. After Miss Pengarvon had retired for the night, Barney, perceiving the pieces of torn card on the floor, picked them carefully up, and succeeded, after a little trouble, in arranging them in their proper order, That being done he read, "Major Strickland, Army and Navy Club, Pall Mall."
"I canna call the name to mind nohow," muttered the old fellow. "What business can it ha' been that brought him all the way from London to Broome? Not----? No--that was all passed and over years ago. No, anything but that."
Ephraim Judd's mother was a widow. Her husband, a journeyman carpenter by trade, had died many years before, leaving her with three young children and a small legacy of debts. Help, however, had come to her from various quarters. A home had been found for her two younger children, both of whom were girls, in a certain charitable institution, while she herself had been set up in a small way of business as a clearstarcher, and presently enough work had come to her in that line to keep her constantly employed. At this time Ephraim was at school, an earnest, painstaking lad, who wrote a beautiful hand, and had a clever head for figures. As it happened, Mr. Avison the elder was one of the school visitors, and Ephraim being one of the show scholars, his attention was drawn to the boy; and thus it fell out that when the latter was fourteen years old, a position as boy-messenger was found for him in the Bank. There, in the course of years, he had gradually worked himself up from the lowest rung of the ladder to the position we now find him occupying.
Mrs. Judd still lived in the same humble domicile in which her husband had died, and Ephraim lodged with her, paying her a fixed weekly sum. To do the young fellow justice, he would fain have had the widow give up her clear-starching business, and remove with him to a house in a better class neighborhood.
"I can afford it, mother," he used to say. "There's no need for you to do another day's work as long as you live."
"And how should I contrive to get through the day, Ephy, my lad, if I had no work to do?" she would reply. "I'm not one of your fine ladies as can sit with their arms folded on their lap by the hour together. Thou must just let me go on as I have since thy father died, and instead of spending thy extry money on me, put it away in the Bank. Thou'll mayhap want it all one o' these days."
Mrs. Judd's two daughters had left the institution long ago, and were away in domestic service. Now, Ephraim, like a great many other people, had two totally opposite sides to his character. To the majority of people he was merely an ordinary, painstaking young clerk, but there were others who knew him under quite a different aspect. The fact was that Ephraim was a prominent member of a certain numerically small sect of Noncomformists, who for the purposes of this narrative may be called "Templetonians." They were not a wealthy body by any means, and their meeting-place was a large room up a narrow court in one of the least reputable streets in Ashdown, which had at one time been used as a granary. Like other and far more pretentious religious bodies, the Templetonians were desirous of making as many proselytes as possible; and, with that end in view, were in the habit, during the summer months, of sending out such of their members as showed any gifts in the way of extempore preaching and praying into the villages round about, where, on Sunday evenings, they made a point of "holding forth" to such of the rural population as cared to listen to them.
Among those rough-and-ready expounders of the peculiar tenets of the Templetonians, Ephraim Judd was one of the most popular and effective. He had that baneful gift of fluency which enables its possessor to bury the platitudes and commonplaces which, five times out of six, form his sole stock in trade, under a flow of words which his ignorant hearers mistake for eloquence, and which, for the time being, imparts to what he has to say some of the relish of original thought.
It was a faculty the possession of which Ephraim had discovered by accident--it is almost needless to say that he regarded it as a special gift from a Superior power--but after he had once become aware of its existence, he did not fail to exercise it as often as an opportunity of doing so offered itself. But Ephraim was thoroughly in earnest in his preaching and expounding; whatever his other failings might be, he was far from being a conscious hypocrite.
It was only during the light evenings between April and September that Ephraim and his co-workers could look to get an open-air audience together. Had they attempted to do so during the ordinary hours of morning service, the rural police would undoubtedly have ordered them to "move on;" while on hot summer afternoons, after the heavy Sunday dinner, the bucolic inclination is for sleep, rather than for mental excitations of even the most rudimentary kind, however stimulating the latter may be when indulged in at proper times and seasons.
To say that Ephraim Judd was not troubled in his mind by the part he had played--or, as he preferred to put it to himself, had been compelled to play--at the inquest, and subsequently at the trial of John Brancker, would be to do him scant justice indeed. Circumstances--of his own bringing about, it is true--had so conspired against him that only one of two alternatives remained open to him: he must either tell what he knew, and thereby bring about his own ruin, or otherwise, by keeping silent, help to brand his best friend with the stigma of a most heinous crime. He was a moral coward, and when the crucial moment came, his courage failed him. He allowed John Brancker to go to his trial, when a dozen words spoken by him would have gone far towards his exculpation.
Like Edward Hazeldine, he told himself that, should John be found guilty, then, at that extreme moment, he would unburden himself of his secret, let the consequences to himself be what they might. As it fell out, however, neither he nor Edward were called upon to make any such sacrifice.
But not only had Ephraim kept silent when it behoved him to speak; he had done worse than that; in a moment of weakness he had perjured himself--he had sworn to a lie. The Coroner had asked him whether he had seen Mr. Brancker leave the Bank after the latter had entered it to obtain possession of his umbrella, and he had replied that he had not; whereas the fact was that he had remained lurking no great way off, until he had seen John quit the Bank not more than three or four minutes later. Since then, to make matters worse, from the ruin he had tacitly helped to bring about there had come to him both preferment and a liberal increase of salary. Small wonder was it that the young bank clerk was a most unhappy man.
On a certain Saturday evening towards the end of January, Ephriam was sent for to the house of Mr. Hoskins, the pastor of the Ashdown Templetonians. There he found John Iredale, an elderly man, a cabinetmaker by trade, one of his co-religionists, and the leader of the choir. Mr. Hoskins had slipped on the ice, and had sprained his ankle so severely that it would be impossible for him to leave the house for several days to come, and his object in sending for Iredale and Judd was that between them they should conduct the service on the morrow in lieu of himself. The former was to take charge of the preliminary part of it, and the latter to deliver one of those discourses for which his name was already so favorably known.
Ephraim flushed with pride and pleasure when told what was expected of him. He felt it to be a great honor--the greatest that had ever been accorded him. He had plenty of self-confidence, and never for a moment doubted his ability to pass creditably through the ordeal. Although not the least bit nervous, he lay awake a great part of the night, thinking of the morrow, and turning over a variety of texts in his mind, each of which seemed to afford scope for amplification and illustration, before finally deciding on a particular one. Of course his discourse, like Mr. Hoskins' own, was to be wholly extempore: not a note or scrap of paper would he take with him to the desk--placed on a platform a couple of feet above the floor--from behind which Mr. Hoskins was in the habit of holding forth to his somewhat limited congregation.
It had never been Ephraim's lot to break down, nor even to hesitate for longer than a passing moment owing to a paucity of language in which to give expression to his ideas. Rather did he suffer from a plenitude of words, finding that his ideas--such as they were--were capable of being clothed in so many different suits of verbiage that he had often to put a curb on himself, lest, in the heat and fervor of his fluency, he should impose upon his hearers by giving them the same thought more than twice over.
A proud man was Ephraim when he arose and dressed himself that Sunday morning. For the time being the prickings of his conscience were forgotten, or perhaps it would be better to say that they were thrust remorselessly into the background. At length the opportunity for which he had so often longed had offered itself: to-day he would be able to show of what stuff he was made. Hitherto the majority of his co-religionists had only known from hearsay of the gift that was in him. At length they would be brought directly into contact with it, and would be in a position to judge of it for themselves. Evidently Ephraim Judd was not one of those foolish people who are content to hide their light under a bushel.
Scarcely less elated, in her own quiet, undemonstrative way, was Mrs. Judd, who was a staunch Templetonian. It was far more, from her point of view, that her son should be an eloquent expounder of the tenets of the sect to which they both belonged than that he should be a rising official at Avison's Bank, with a prosperous and assured future stretching clearly before him.
The meeting-house of the Templetonians was filled this morning to repletion. Never had Mr. Hoskins succeeded in gathering round him so numerous a congregation. The news that Ephraim Judd was to discourse had spread in some mysterious way, the consequence being that there was a large influx of strangers belonging to the other sects who were drawn there out of curiosity to hear the rising young local preacher, the fame of whose untutored eloquence had not failed to reach their ears.
When Ephraim, who was seated on the front bench next his mother till the time should come for him to take his place on the platform, glanced round as the first hymn was being given out, his heart swelled within him. All these people had been drawn there to hear him--him! Well, he hoped they would not be disappointed. He was quite aware that the audience of to-day was a far more intelligent and critical one than any he had been in the habit of addressing on Sunday evenings on village greens, and that he would be tested by a very different standard from any which had heretofore been applied to him.
The thought, however, did not daunt him in the least, but tended rather to elate and brace him for the ordeal before him; for Ephraim had a good measure of that audacity, of that thorough belief in himself and his powers, which goes so far towards the achievement of success, whatever may be the line of action on which it is brought to bear.
The portion of the service conducted by John Iredale was brought to a close in due course, and the moment came for Ephraim Judd to take the place of the latter on the platform. A general but decorous movement was discernible among the congregation. Some relieved themselves by coughing, others by blowing their noses, here and there came a putting together of heads and a low whispering. Mrs. Judd gave her son's hand a reassuring squeeze. Then Ephraim rose and mounting the three steps to the platform, he limped slowly across it, his eyes bent on the ground, till he reached the little reading-desk, where he turned to face his audience.
But first he bent his head and covered his face with his hands for a little while, then he stood upright and gazed calmly around. His face was a little paler than common, but his lips were firm-set, and his eyes clear and untroubled. At once he proceeded to give out his text, which he did in quiet but emphatic tones, so that not a word was unheard by anyone there. Then came a brief pause, during which his audience finally settled themselves; and then Ephraim, bending slightly forward, and grasping the ledge of the desk with both hands, began as follows:
"My dear brothers and sisters: we are this morning about to consider, from what to some of you may seem a peculiar standpoint, one of the most vital and all-important questions with which, as thinking and responsible beings, it is competent for us to deal. We are about----"
Here the speaker came to a sudden pause; then, after a momentary hesitation, he began his last sentence again.
Then he faltered, broke down, began afresh in different words, hesitated, broke down finally, threw an agonizing, appealing glance round the startled, upturned faces of his auditors, turned deathly pale, and remained silent.
In one moment of time his mind had become an utter blank--an utter blank, that is to say, so far as his intended discourse was concerned. It was as though a hideous black curtain had been suddenly dropped between him and that section of his brain in which originated the thoughts and ideas it had been his intention this morning to expound and illustrate for, as he had fondly hoped, the spiritual profit of those who were there to listen to him. But thoughts and ideas were all gone, and in their place was nothing but an awful blank. Then, deep down in his heart, he heard a low, clear voice:
"Impious wretch!" it said. "How dare you stand here to preach to others a doctrine to which your own life offers so emphatic a lie? You have perjured yourself--you have accepted the wages of a lie, and have helped to rob your best friend of his daily bread. You an expounder of the Word! You a preacher of morality to your fellows! Hide your face, vile hypocrite! Go down on your knees, and crave forgiveness for your heinous sin."
All this and more flashed like a fiery scroll across Ephraim's mental vision in far less time than it would have taken to speak the words. He stood dumbfounded and aghast. To the eyes of everyone there he looked as though he had been seized with a sudden illness, and might at any moment fall back in a faint. Half the audience rose impulsively to their feet, while Iredale and a couple of "Elders" hastily made their way to the platform.
"What's come over you? Are you ill?" whispered Iredale.
Ephraim's sole reply was a stare. Then they placed him in a chair, and someone brought a glass of water. Then John Iredale, after a few words of apology and a brief prayer, dismissed the congregation. Before this Mrs. Judd was by her son's side. All Ephraim said was:
"Take me home, mother--take me away from here."
Miss Brancker had told her brother that, whether he liked it or no, she should insist on his taking a month's holiday before he even began to look for another situation, and at the time she quite believed in her power to make him to do so. It was not as if he could not afford a holiday, for he had between three and four hundred pounds put away, which he had saved up month by month, a little at a time, out of his salary. But John in a situation and John out of one were two very different people. To have taken a holiday under his present circumstances would, to his thrifty notions, have seemed both a waste of time and a waste of money. Instead of enjoying himself he would simply have "grizzled," to use his own term, and would have come back worse in health, both of mind and body, then he went. Even Miss Brancker, after a day or two, was compelled to admit that it would be useless to press the point further.
John did not lose much time in setting about looking for something to do. His first proceeding was to call on Mr. Umpleby, the chief partner and manager of the Dulminster Bank, to whom he was personally known as one of Mr. Avison's most trusted officials.
No one could have received him more kindly than Mr. Umpleby received him, to whom, of course, all the facts connected with the trial and verdict were well known. While John went on to unfold, which he did without reserve, his reasons for sending in his resignation, the Banker simply interjected an occasional "Ah! yes," or "Just so," or "I quite understand," but was careful to commit himself to no opinion in the case either one way or the other. John had told him frankly at the beginning of the interview with what purpose he had sought him, and Mr. Umpleby now went on to explain that, highly as he thought of Mr. Brancker's business abilities, and greatly as he esteemed his personal character, he was afraid it was out of his power to do anything for him in the way he, Mr. Brancker, seemed to have half-expected he could do. In the first place, at the present time there was no vacancy of any kind in the Bank staff; and, in the second, even had there been a vacancy worthy of Mr. Brancker's acceptance, it would scarcely have been right and fair, as Mr. Brancker would doubtless be the first to admit, not to have filled it up from the ranks of the more subordinate members of their own staff, among whom, Mr. Umpleby was sorry to say, the chances of promotion were by no means so frequent as he would have liked them to be. This latter was a point which it was impossible for John to contend against: in a similar position he would have acted in a similar way. He came away with his hopes a little dashed, and feeling much less sanguine about his future than he had hitherto done.
The next thing he did was to advertise in the local newspaper for a situation, but although the advertisement appeared for three consecutive weeks, it elicited no response whatever. Then John fell back on the London dailies, or rather, on two of them, in which an advertisement, drawn up by him, made its appearance day after day with praiseworthy regularity, while, at the same time, he did not fail to wade through the daily lists of situations vacant. It was a heart-wearying task, as hundreds, nay thousands, of others have proved to their cost. Sometimes he replied to a likely advertisement; occasionally he received an answer to his own. In the majority of cases his age and his lack of general commercial experience proved fatal barriers to success. In other cases, where his acquirements seemed to be the very things advertised for, and after he had been asked to furnish his name and address, together with those of his referees, would come the inevitable question:
"Are you the person who was lately tried on a charge of murder?"
On John's replying in the affirmative, the correspondence would abruptly cease. Heart-wearying work, truly! For the first time in his life John began to despair.
Hitherto no one save his sister and his friend, Mr. Kittaway, had been made the confidants of his many disappointments. The knowledge had been carefully kept from Hermia. He was unwilling that the sunshine of her young life should be overshadowed by ever so faint a cloud, if he could in any way help it. One evening, however, when his heart felt more than commonly sore, and he and Clement Hazeldine happened to be alone together, Miss Brancker and Hermia being out shopping, he could not resist pouring the story of his trials and troubles into the sympathetic ears of the young surgeon. Sympathy, of course, was all the latter could give in return, and John asked for nothing more.
A few days later, Clem made it in his way to call upon his brother at Beecham. His chief object in doing so was to tell him of his engagement to Hermia, but he determined to mention John Brancker's case at the same time, knowing how fully convinced Edward was of the latter's innocence.
Clem found Edward in his office, and was glad to see how much better he was looking than he had looked during the two months immediately following their father's death.
After a little conversation, having reference chiefly to Mrs. Hazeldine and her affairs, Clem said, a faint flush dyeing his cheeks the while:
"And now I've an item of news to tell you which may, or may not, interest you. I am engaged to be married."
Edward gave vent to a low whistle. "May I ask the lady's name?"
"Miss Hermia Rivers. I don't think you are acquainted with her, but you may, perhaps, have heard of her existence. She is niece to John Brancker, and lives with him at Nairn Cottage."
Edward Hazeldine's jaw dropped a little, and he sat staring at his brother for a few moments without speaking. "John Brancker's niece!" he exclaimed presently, but not as if addressing himself to Clem.
"What is there to be surprised at, may I ask?" queried the latter, with just a shade of annoyance in his voice.
"Has the young lady any dowry--any fortune of her own?"
"Not one penny," was Clem's emphatic reply.
"Hum! That's rather a pity, is it not, when there are so many well-to-do young ladies in Ashdown--you know how scarce eligible men are in these small provincial towns--among whom, and I say it with no wish to flatter you, you might have your pick and choice."
"That may or may not be the case, but seeing that there is not one among the young ladies in question whom I have any wish to make my wife, there is no need to drag them into the question."
"I was not aware that you were in a position to marry," said Edward, coldly; "that is to say, to marry anyone who has nothing but herself to bring you."
"I simply said that I was engaged to be married," rejoined Clem equably. "I mentioned no date for the ceremony. In all probability it won't take place for a couple of years at the soonest, by which time I hope to be in a position which will render my marriage with a portionless girl not quite such an imprudence as you seem, and perhaps rightly, to think it would be now. Till that time comes," he added, smilingly, "I will refrain from asking you to congratulate me."
Edward sat trimming his nails. His manner implied, or so his brother seemed to think, that he either did not care, or did not wish to discuss the matter further, and Clem, on his part, was quite willing to let it drop. He was too used to his brother's little peculiarities of temper and manner to feel in the slightest degree offended at the way his news had been received. He had not deemed it needful to mention that Hermia was only the adopted niece of John Brancker. He felt that the secret was not his own to tell. It would be time enough to reveal it when he and Hermia were man and wife.
"The mention of what I have just told you," he presently resumed, "reminds me of something else which I think it only right that you should be made acquainted with. John Brancker----"
"What of him?" demanded Edward quickly, his apathy gone in a moment.
"He is in great trouble and distress of mind, and well he may be." With that, Clem proceeded to relate all that John in his burst of confidence had told him a few evenings before. Edward listened with the deepest attention. When Clem had ended, he said hotly, "It seems a great shame, an infamous shame, that an innocent man should be so treated. To have such facts brought home to one is enough to make one despair of one's fellow creatures."
"Something ought to be done for him in view of all he has suffered and gone through, but I must confess that at present I don't see what that something ought to be," remarked the younger brother.
"Something must and shall be done," said Edward, emphatically. "Leave the matter with me to think over. I will either call on you, or drop you a line as soon as I see my way."
Although matters with Edward Hazeldine had gone so far well that John Brancker had been acquitted, while his father's shameful secret remained unsuspected by anyone, he was far from being a happy man, far from being able to boast of that peace of mind--untouched by anything more serious than trivial business annoyances--which had been his before his father's death. The secret he carried about with him was the nightmare of his life. Never was there a man less prone than he to introspective brooding, or the creation of imaginary troubles, yet, despite his native strength of mind, despite his persistent reassurances of himself that, after this lapse of time, after the authorities had apparently given up all expectation of ever being able to solve the mystery, and now that the whole affair seemed buried out of sight and done with, anything could ever happen which would reveal it to the world, and therewith the base and ignoble part played by him throughout--despite all this, the secret which he hid up in his breast was like a slow poison working in his blood, unstringing his nervous system, and to some extent, or so it seemed to him, devitalizing his brain. It was as if his ambition were paralyzed. He lived in perpetual dread of he knew not what. Any day, in some mysterious way he could not even guess at, the secret of his father's death might be brought to light. The monstrous injustice of which he had allowed John Brancker to be the victim did not fail to still rankle in his heart, an unhealed sore for which it seemed hopeless to find a cure. And now, on the top of all this, came his brother's communication. What was to be done?
It had been his intention to propose to Miss Winterton early in the new year, but with that black shadow keeping him company wherever he went and refusing to be laid, he had kept putting off the decisive moment from day to day till, for the time being, the opportunity was gone. Lord and Lady Elstree had left Seeham Lodge for Torquay, taking Miss Winterton with them, and the date of their return was uncertain. Edward Hazeldine, although he would have been loth to confess it, was not sorry for the reprieve.
Ten days after their interview, he drove into Ashdown and called on his brother. He had not let the grass grow under his feet in the interim. He had been successful in obtaining the promise of a situation for John Brancker in the office of one of his friends, a London merchant in an extensive way of business. Mr. Lucas, the merchant in question, was under certain obligations to Edward Hazeldine, and had at once acceded to his request to find a stool in his counting-house for John, who was to present himself there on the Monday morning next ensuing. Thereupon he handed his brother a note of introduction, requesting him, at the same time, to see John as soon as possible and give him the note, together with the writer's best wishes for his prosperity and success in his new calling. He felt a singular repugnance to calling in person upon the man to whom his moral cowardice had been the cause of such unmerited suffering. It seemed to him as if he should breathe more freely when John was a hundred miles away.
John gave expression to his gratitude in warm terms for the service Mr. Edward had rendered him, and yet--and yet he felt that it would be very hard to have to break up his little home and sever the many ties which the habitude of years had worn into his daily life till they seemed to have become part and parcel of it. But there was no help for it, and when that is the case to murmur is foolishness. To meet the inevitable with repinings had never been John's way, and it was not so now.
There was no need, however, to make any sudden or immediate change at the Cottage. John was to go a month on trial, and should everything prove satisfactory at the end of that time, then would a new home in one of the metropolitan suburbs have to be looked for and settled upon and the dreaded change made. Neither by John nor his sister was the probable change regarded with more apprehension than by Hermia and her lover. They would be parted; they could only hope to see each other at infrequent intervals; the thought was infinitely bitter to both, but it was a bitterness which they kept to themselves and only spoke of to each other. Not for worlds would they have added to the weight of regret which Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte had put up with already.
Monday morning came in due course, and John took his departure for London by the seven o'clock train.