When her sister left her, accompanied by Thornton Carey, Mrs. Jenkins returned to her watch in Helen's room, from which she removed the infant, by this time awake.
Lurking under all her true womanly sympathy and acts of helpfulness in the great calamity of the household was a sense of deep personal disappointment; the heart of Mrs. Jenkins was filled with two great affections, one towards her husband, the other towards her sister, and her intellect contemplated but two absorbing pleasures; the first, the presence of her Ephraim was denied to her by Fate in so conclusive a manner that she had ceased to fret over it, for practical common sense had a large share in her organisation; the second, a personal observation of her sister's celebrity, success, and proficiency in her profession she had counted upon as within her reach, and now the great event had taken place, the star actor and his company were in possession of the boards of the Varieties, all New York was talking of Miss Montressor, the papers contained specific and voluminous descriptions of her appearance, dress, manners, and also indulged in dainty anecdotes respecting off-the-boards utterances of hers to the favoured few who had yet seen her in private. From all these glories and delights Mrs. Jenkins was excluded by hard Fate, which had hit her by a back-handed blow. Once or twice she had cherished for a moment the notion of slipping out for half an hour, and occupying some unobtrusive corner of the theatre, where she might see her sister for a few minutes in one of her great impersonations, and slipping back again unsuspected, but her better feelings utterly prevailed over the temptation. She could not leave her mistress, and she could not bear the contrast which the gaiety and brilliancy and pleasure of a theatre would present to the awful desolation of the fine house to which she had once thought of coming from the poverty and the difficulties that had condemned her to parting with Ephraim. 'It must be sheer heaven to live so,' she said with just one sigh, given to the recollection of the high hope with which she had heard the promise of her sister's coming, she went back to the painful round of her duties, many of them self-imposed.
Helen Griswold had the faculty of winning the love of all those in her employment, and there was not a servant in the house who would not willingly have shared Mrs. Jenkins's watch, but she had a notion that as she was the only wife and mother among them, she could draw nearer to the bereaved wife and mother who still lay there in merciful unconsciousness; so the hours wore away and Mrs. Jenkins watched her patient. The doctor came, looked at the sleeping form on the bed, felt the pulse, touched the clammy forehead, listened to the faltering breath, and went his way, declaring it still safe to leave her undisturbed.
'If she could sleep all round the clock,' said he, 'so much the better. Twenty-four hours' oblivion is not to be lightly thought of in such a case as hers.'
'I am afraid, sir,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'she will have to see the police people tomorrow, that it cannot be put off longer, because they talk of sending an agent to England by the next mail.'
'In that case,' said the doctor, 'when she wakes let her have food and stimulants; take her up, give her a warm bath, and, according as you find her nerves stronger and her mind clearer, prepare her for the task that lies before her. I shall see her in the morning, and will remain here to meet the gentlemen who are coming.'
Late that night Thornton Carey again called to hear the doctor's last report, which he did from Mrs. Jenkins, and then, begging, if possible, to prepare Mrs. Griswold for the trying visit upon which they were obliged to insist, at eleven o'clock on the following day, he went down to the theatre, where the performance was just coming to a close, and joined Bryan Duval. They returned to the Fifth-avenue Hotel together, and held a long conference, which lasted long into the night.
Immediately after Thornton Carey left Mrs. Jenkins, she once more pressed into her service the indefatigable Jim, despatching him with a note to Miss Montressor, adopting the periodical fiction that Mr. Carey had employed her to communicate on his behalf with that lady, who wished to know the latest accounts of Mrs. Griswold; but the purport of her note was to beg that Clara would come up to the house as early as she could on the following morning. 'The truth is,' wrote Mrs. Jenkins to her sister, 'I am exceedingly worn out, and though they are very willing up here, they have not much sense; and in case there is a great to-do to-morrow morning with the gentlemen and the police people, I do not feel equal to it all by myself or with only Justine, who is as incapable as any foreigner I have ever met, though not bad meaning. So, my dear Clara, come up if you can at all. Mrs. Griswold, who has been sitting up and talking quite rational, has taken a great fancy to you, and would, I am sure, be very glad that you should be with her in case I broke down altogether, which does not seem unlikely, and would be a very had job, especially for baby.'
As this invention jumped precisely with Miss Montressor's own wishes, she acceded to it with great alacrity, and with the full and cordial consent of Bryan Duval, with whom she communicated that very night.
'Quite right, my dear Clara; you are a capital person in emergencies, and everything of the sort is first-rate study.'
Miss Montressor arrived early, and was again conducted to the dining-room where her sister soon joined her.
'Mrs. Griswold had passed a good night, and was wonderfully composed.' Mrs. Jenkins related admiringly how she had risen early that morning, allowed herself to be carefully dressed, striven to eat the food which was prepared for her, and made a great effort to be cheerful and considerate towards her attendants. 'The only thing she is not equal to,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'is trying to play with baby. She just looks at her until the tears come, and then she turns away. Now she is quite ready to see Mr. Duval and Mr. Carey, and I have left her sitting before her writing-table, with a pile of papers and letters, sorting them all as regularly and orderly as possible. She said so meekly, "I must not waste these gentlemen's time, or give them trouble, you know. I must be prepared for them." They do say in the house that she never knew anything about business, and that Mr. Griswold thought she had no head for it; but I am greatly mistaken if she hasn't a head for anything she might choose to employ it in. She knows you are coming, Clara, and said she thought it very kind of you, indeed, and that she would be quite able to see you before the gentlemen came; but I think that would be a risk. She would get talking to you about everything Mr. Griswold said and did during the time you knew him, and that would be sure to make her cry. I daresay there is not much composure really in her; but the more she can keep her manner composed the better, and those violent fits of crying are so exhausting.'
'You are quite right, Bess,' returned Miss Montressor. 'I would much rather not see her until after they have all gone away; then it will do her good to talk it over in detail with me, and then to cry her poor eyes out if she likes. So if you will just put me into a room handy to the one you will put these people in, I will be ready in case you are wanted. The only thing you must not do is give me the baby to hold, for I don't know anything about babies, and, to tell the truth, I don't like them.'
With this amicable understanding, the two sisters were about to walk up-stairs, and Mrs. Jenkins had assumed the distant manner which she always put on when there was a risk of their encountering any of the other servants, when their progress was interrupted by overhearing a dialogue which was taking place in the hall between Jim and an unknown individual.
'Whoever can it be?' said Mrs. Jenkins. 'There are such strict orders for no one but Mr. Duval and Mr. Carey, and the people with them, to come in, that I cannot understand who Jim can be parleying with. I will just go and see.'
Mrs. Jenkins opened the dining-room door just sufficient to enable her to catch sight of the unknown individual, and to whom Jim was protesting, with characteristic vehemence, that something or other which he had demanded was an out-and-out impossibility.
The stranger was a man of rather low stature and slight figure, dressed in a loose, shaggy coat, with a low felt hat pulled down over his eyes, so as effectually to hide all the upper part of the face, and he was speaking to Jim with great urgency, placing one hand against the door, as if he dreaded that the servant, in the strict appreciation of his duty, would close it against him by force. 'I must see Mrs. Griswold,' he said; 'I must, indeed.'
'It is quite impossible, sir; Mrs. Griswold cannot see any one. You surely do not know the trouble the house is in, or you would not think of asking such a thing. You must send up your message.'
'I cannot send up my message,' said the stranger, 'it is totally impossible; pray take up my request to Mrs. Griswold.'
'I assure you, sir, it is useless to persist,' said Jim, 'and quite out of the question that you should see Mrs. Griswold. Do you really not know what has happened?'
'I know nothing,' returned the man.
'Then, sir,' said Jim, 'you had better know it--Mr. Griswold is dead, and what's more, he has met with foul play.'
The stranger started a little and exclaimed: 'How very dreadful! But is there nothing else wrong? Is there nothing wrong with any one in the house?'
'No, nothing,' replied Jim, 'except that Mrs. Griswold is very ill indeed, as might be expected; and you will now see, sir, how impossible it is that she could receive you.'
'I fear it is impossible. Can I not see any other member of the family?'
'There is no female,' returned Jim, 'except the baby, and she ain't weaned; but you can see Mrs. Jenkins, the nurse, if you will step into the dining-room; in case that can do you any good, I will go and call her down to you.'
In the general confusion, Jim, who had momentarily forgotten all about Miss Montressor, advanced to the dining-room, followed by the stranger, simply threw the door open, allowed him to pass through it. and without having glanced into the room, went on his errand in search of Mrs. Jenkins, who had withdrawn from the door and closed it as the sound of the stranger's voice reached her ears; also, to Miss Montressor's amazement, she had sat down, looking exceedingly pale and faint; she was realising her apprehensions, Miss Montressor thought, and breaking down in earnest.
It was only a minute from the time Mrs. Jenkins stepped back from the door until the stranger walked into the dining-room, at the farther end of which were the two women, who both rose at the sight of him. One, Mrs. Jenkins, cried out, 'Ephraim!' and rushed towards him; while the other, standing still in rigid amazement, exclaimed, 'Mr. Dolby!'
The amazement of Miss Montressor had a double origin; the primary one, that Mr. Dolby should turn up, in this unexpected and extraordinary manner, in a place with which he had no connection that she had the most remote suspicion of; the secondary one, that her sister should have rushed into that gentleman's arms, and called him 'Ephraim.' Within the last few days her mind had been so absorbed in the terrible details of the Griswold story, that Mr. Dolby had hardly crossed it; and positively since that morning she had never remembered his existence until the fact was recalled to her in this unprecedented fashion. When she had thought of him at all, it was always with the fixed idea that he had preceded her to America for the purpose of watching her, and now she firmly believed her suspicions to be realised; but even the rapidity of thought did not enable her to do more than realise this fact before her sister said, turning to her, while she still clutched the stranger by the arm, 'This is my husband, Clara; what can you mean by calling him Mr. Dolby?'
Never had the self-possession inseparable from anything like a fair proficiency in her art stood Miss Montressor in such stead as at this moment. She recovered herself instantly, and replied, 'My dear Bess, is this really your husband, your Ephraim of whom we were talking only a few minutes ago? How very odd that an accidental but strong likeness should have led me to have imagined he was a friend of mine!'
'So he will be a friend of yours, I suppose,' said Mrs. Jenkins, with just the slightest possible revival of a combatant tone in her voice; for even the joy of her husband's unexpected return could not silence her from some measure of protest against her sister's indifference. 'And what in the world has brought you back, Eph, and why did you not tell me you were coming?'
'Why in the world was I sent for, Bess?' was Ephraim Jenkins's reply, as he fixed his eyes upon his wife's face with an unmistakably sincere expression of surprise.
Miss Montressor was not prepared to find her sister's husband a good-looking, gentlemanly, and well-dressed man; but these circumstances made no difference at all in the sensation of quiet, sincere, and irrepressible vexation with which she regarded this meeting. It was her most earnest wish that she should never be brought in contact with Jenkins under any circumstances; but to meet him under the present, and at Mrs. Griswold's, where she had such strong motives for disguising her identity with Mrs. Jenkins's sister, was especially annoying to her. Of course the secret could not be kept now, was almost her first thought, but it was worth trying for, and so she unceremoniously interrupted the explanation which Ephraim was about to give to his astonished wife by hurriedly explaining to him that no one must know of their relationship.
'Bess has made me a solemn promise,' she said, 'that she will not tell it, and I expect you to observe it for her sake.'
'Whoever do you suppose I am going to talk to about you,' said Jenkins roughly, with an instantaneous relief, throwing off all the gentlemanly manner and appearance, which was the merest disguise, and with which he equally discarded his previously striking resemblance to Mr. Dolby. 'Bess knows her own business, so do you; and if you don't want to acknowledge her, I'm not going to peach.'
'Thank you,' said Miss Montressor, with great self-command, and she actually put out her hand graciously to her detested brother-in-law.
He took it rather sulkily, and growled out that she need not be in such a hurry to disavow folks that didn't want anything from her.
'That's not my motive,' said Miss Montressor, 'as Bess will explain to you. But I must go now; she won't want me to stay with her now she has got you.'
'O, pray don't go!' exclaimed Mrs. Jenkins. 'I do want to talk to Ephraim, and find out how it is that he has dropped from the clouds in this unexpected way, but perhaps you won't mind staying all the same. There is no one in the boudoir, and I could take you up there while I talk to Ephraim. Mr. Duval and Mr. Carey will be here very shortly.'
Good-nature and curiosity united induced Miss Montressor to comply with her sister's request. 'Very well,' she said; 'I will go to the boudoir; you need not take me up, I know my own way there. Don't you remember, Bess, I have been all over the house with you.' And she went towards the door, but just as she had reached it, Ephraim Jenkins stopped her with a question.
'Would you mind telling me, Miss Montressor,' he said ceremoniously, and with a half-ironical sort of bow, 'who was the individual for whom you did me the honour to mistake me just now? Would you mind mentioning his name? I find it quite unpleasant enough to have one double, as I have already, without being accommodated with two.'
'I mistook you,' she said, 'for Mr. George Dolby, who is an American, like yourself, whom I knew very well in London. Pray don't be offended; I assure you you might very well accept my error as a compliment.'
'Mr. George Dolby,' repeated Ephraim, with an intent frown upon his face as of one trying painfully to retrace a track of thought or to work out a puzzle; 'Mr. George Dolby, an American? Is the gentleman in New York just now?'
'To the best of my belief,' returned Miss Montressor briefly, 'he is;' and with that she left the room.
'By Jove, Bess,' said Jenkins, laying his hand upon his wife's shoulder, holding her at a little distance from him, and looking into her face with an expression of strange mingled suspicion, curiosity, and amusement, 'it is Warren, and he has been up to his game with her in London--it must be, you know; but I am precious glad he has come back, though why he should not have let me know he is back, I cannot tell. However, his being here at New York gets me out of a devil of a mess that I should have been very much puzzled how to get out of myself; though I will tell you what it is,' he continued, drawing her close to him and kissing her fondly, 'I would have got into it ten times over, and trusted to my own luck, or the devil's own luck, to get out of it, for the relief the sight of your face gave me, and when I found there was nothing wrong with you.'
'But what brought you here, Eph, and how came you to think there was anything wrong with me?'
His wife was not to be won from her uneasiness, or diverted from her wish to understand precisely what had occurred, by even the affectionate assurance which was so dear to her, and she reiterated her question very earnestly.
'We shall have very little uninterrupted time, Eph,' she said; 'awful things have happened here. Mr. Griswold has been murdered in England--you must have seen all about it in the papers?'
'No, I didn't; I should have known the meaning if I had, on account of Warren as well as on account of you, Bess; for I haven't forgot, and I don't mean to, how kind Mrs. Griswold has been to you. Poor thing, she is awfully cut up, I suppose.'
'She's just heartbroken, Eph, and the police are coming here presently to make her tell all she knows, poor soul; and as I was saying to Nelly--to Clara, I mean--just now, that's not much, for they do say Mr. Griswold was the closest man in New York about his affairs; and I must leave you then and go to her; so you must tell me as much as you can as quick as you can. Take off that great heavy coat, Eph, and that hat, and sit down.'
'No, no; I mustn't do that, Bess,' replied Jenkins, drawing the coat still more closely round him, and ramming the hat still further down over his eyes by a blow on the crown. 'Whatever are you thinking about? They know Warren perfectly well here, and if they either took me for him, and found out I'm somebody else, or else if they discovered that there's anybody about so uncommon like him as I am, they might have their suspicions roused, and set to look for him directly. And that would not pay, Bess, my dear, neither on his account nor on my own; for though I don't suppose they could do me much harm, and for certain they couldn't make me out to be up to any--deliberate harm, I mean--of course, it ain't altogether on the square, this lay I'm on for Warren. And, then, if he should be up to anything out-of-the-way-fishy, which I'm sometimes tempted to suspect, and they find out that he is not at Chicago while he's pretending to be there, even suppose they couldn't molest me at all, they certainly could stophislittle game; and in our present circumstances, Bess, my girl, we must remember that stopping his little game means stopping our rations.'
'Yes, yes,' said Mrs. Jenkins mournfully, twisting the end of her apron about in her fingers in a way habitual to her in perplexity. 'I know that, Eph; and yet I cannot tell you how uneasy and wretched I am feeling, and have been feeling ever since we parted, and you went to undertake this dark and dirty business for Warren. Dark we know it is, and dirty I cannot but suspect it to be. O Eph, could you but give it up? If you only would be satisfied to stick regularly to some kind of fixed work, and let us live respectable, however poor!'
'We couldn't easily be poorer than we've been when we lived disrespectable,' said Jenkins, with a kind of surly good humour; 'and I think I could stick to work if only the pay would stickto me,--but where is it to be had? You can't have forgotten, Bess, how hard I have had to work in this place, and how I never got any for a constancy--yes, yes, I know what your shake of the head means, and you've good right to shake it, I'm not going for a moment to deny that--and how, then, Warren was always giving me, or getting somebody else to get me, odd jobs. Well, one can't work steadily at odd jobs; it ain't in the nature of things, nor yet in one's own nature. If one's business is unsteady, one must be unsteady with it; and where any thing except odd jobs is to come from, especially if I vex Warren, and he shunts me off in earnest, I cannot guess. Can you?'
'I think, Eph--indeed I am sure--Mrs. Griswold would be a good friend to us, if you would let me tell her the truth--I don't mean about Warren, of course, but about our difficulties. I think she would get you a fixed place somewhere, through Mr. Carey's influence--and Warren would never hear of it; or if he did hear of it, he would know, by her ignorance of your being his brother, that you had not betrayed his secret. And, after all, he would then be effectually rid of us, Ephraim, and I think he would be very glad to be rid of us--or I should say of you, because he does not know of my existence--at the price of having his pride hurt by Mrs. Griswold or Mr. Carey observing that there is a strong likeness between him and the husband of her baby's nurse. Do think of it, Ephraim, and let me ask her, when she has got over her great trouble a little, and can look beyond it for the sake of other people. It will not be long first, for she is the most unselfish woman, I do believe, in all the world. Will you let me speak to her, Eph, when I can get an opportunity?'
'Well,' replied Ephraim Jenkins, with a little reluctance in his tone, as of an instinctive, irrepressible shrinking from the burden of a threatened respectability in the future, combined with regular hours and regular work, 'I don't mind--only, you know,I mustsee this piece of business through to the end; and now, Bess, I must tell you what has brought me here; you were awfully anxious to know a few minutes ago, until you went off at a tangent all about Mrs. Griswold, and a fixed occupation and what not, and now you seem to have forgotten all about it.'
'No, I haven't, Ephraim dear,' replied his wife, as she put her arm round his neck, and looked earnestly into his face; 'only the first feeling of fright has gone off in the pleasure of seeing you again so unexpected--for it did give me a shock of fright as well as a shock of joy. I suppose it was some business of Warren's?'
'Isuppose it is too,' he said; 'but I only suppose, for I don'tknow--and you have thrown more light on it since I came than it has had on it all through the journey, and before I started; for I came off in such a desperate mortal fright about you, my girl, that I never remembered, until I was hours on my way, that the telegram was intended for Warren, and not for me at all.'
'What telegram, Ephraim? I am all astray--I don't understand you. Did you get a telegram? From whom?'
'Yes,Igot a telegram, but I suppose, as you are all right, the message could not have had anything to do with me.'
He took out of a breast-pocket in his shaggy overcoat a crumpled and a dirty telegraph form, which was to the following effect:
'From Thornton Carey, New York, to Trenton Warren, 3 Bryan's Block, Chicago. You are earnestly requested by Mrs. Griswold to come to New York without delay. It is of the utmost importance that she should see you. A terrible calamity has occurred.'
Mrs. Jenkins read this document twice over with the seriousness of a person unaccustomed to telegrams, and then returned it to Ephraim. 'The terrible calamity, of course, means Mr. Griswold's murder.'
'Of course that is clear enough now; but can you not understand, Bess, that not knowing a word of that, and merely having this vague instruction, and being so accustomed to be and see myself called Trenton Warren in words and in writing, and, above all, having my mind so full of you, the mere notion of a calamity in connection with this house meant merelyyoufor my fears, and I started at once, never remembering that Mrs. Griswold could not possibly have meant to address me. It all came quite clear to me after a while, but then I began to torment myself again with fresh fears. "What," I thought, "if Bess should be very ill and dying, and have confessed it all to this kind woman whom she likes, and Mrs. Griswold should have taken this clever way of letting me know that she knows, and that I need not be afraid of anything but just come to her at once?" From the instant that flashed into my thoughts, Bess, you may guess I was in an agony to get on every mile of the road, and I give you my word I could hardly drag myself up the stoop to ring at the door-bell, so completely had that second notion taken possession of my mind. I was in such a state of alarm and suspense that, God forgive me, I do believe the news that old fellow told me at the door did not seem half terrible to me.'
'You were always fond of me, Eph, any way,' said his wife, as she kissed him heartily, while tears glittered in her frank sweet eves.
'I should think so, Bess,' he replied. 'I am bad enough, I know, but not such a duffer, no, nor such a brute neither, as I should be if I ever leave off beingthat. Hollo! there's somebody coming. I hope it isn't the police people, in which case I had better clear out. I can come back, you know, when they're gone; but I've a constitutional objection, to say nothing of the present circumstances, to being inside a house with them.'
The approaching steps were not those of undesirable intruders. It was only Annette, who had brought the baby--she carried the little creature very much as Moggs carried Gabriel Varden's sword, as if she was terribly afraid of it--to her nurse. Annette explained that the child having grown restless, madame had rung her bell, and asked for Mrs. Jenkins and on being told that Mrs. Jenkins had a friend to see her, she had merely asked her to carry the child down to her. Annette reported that madame was still where Mrs. Jenkins had left her, sitting at her writing-table sorting letters and other papers, and that she was quite composed, though looking very ill and mortally pale. And Annette, to whom Miss Montressor had been most gracious, had just glanced into the boudoir as she came down-stairs, and found the celebrity fast asleep.
Mrs. Jenkins laughed. Her sister had always been famous for a most enviable power of going to sleep. 'I never remember a time when Nelly--Clara, I mean--could not eat and sleep, no matter what happened, or to whom it occurred,' she said admiringly to Ephraim, who remembered that those faculties were useful, but not particularly sentimental, 'and that for his part, he liked a touch of nerves about a woman; least-ways what some people called nerves, but he called feelings.'
In this pointed remark Ephraim Jenkins did injustice to his fair sister-in-law. Miss Montressor was by no means deficient in feeling, but she was very healthy, and just now she was very tired, so that it was her nature to sleep under the circumstances, and sleep she accordingly did. Having made her communications, Annette tripped out of the room, after having honoured Mrs. Jenkins's visitor with a condescending bow and a long, steady, attentive stare, of which he was uncomfortably conscious, and which he tried to avoid, but in vain.
He need not have felt alarmed, however, at any risk of recognition by Mdlle. Annette. She merely remarked in soliloquy, 'How all these Yankees resemble one another in an astonishing fashion. When one has seen one of them, one has seen them all, except just in the regard of height and thinness. It is only in France that we find variety of physiognomy.'
'What a pretty child!' said Ephraim Jenkins, touching the infant's dimpled cheek with his finger, as it lay close to his wife's breast--'not much like our poor little man, Bess?'
'No, bless her heart; not like him in the plump healthy face, but sweet and clever like him;' and the mother, who had not buried her dead out of her memory, hugged the baby with a slight rapidly-suppressed sob, and loved her husband all the more dearly for the reference to the little crippled sufferer who had been her treasure and her heartache in one.
'Now then, Bess, we must consult about what is to be done, for I do think things look extremely queer. The last communication I had from Warren was from London, and there was nothing at all unusual in it; he merely enclosed some letters to be sent on to New York, and sent me a lot of blank signatures. He has never given me the slightest inkling of what his business in England is really about. By the bye, isn't it odd that there should be the same sort of mystery about what Mr. Griswold has been doing over there? I wonder if they were in the same boat.'
'I have heard Mr. Warren spoken of among the servants,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'as being Mr. Griswold's greatest friend, but I have never heard them say anything about any business partnership between them, and there is no other name in the firm that I know of.'
'O, then I suppose they were not mixed up in business,' said Ephraim, 'and I must say, knowing what I do of my worthy brother, I should feel inclined to add, so much the better for poor Mr. Griswold during his own lifetime, and for those whom he has left to profit by his gains. I suspect they would find them materially reduced if Warren had had the handling of any of them. Of course, I have not had much to do with his affairs down at Chicago; but there is a precious lot of bogus in what I have had to do with, and I have been asked some very nasty questions lately--in writing, of courser I mean, and in his person, which I was totally unable to answer; and as he didn't authorise me to go in for cable expenses, I have been obliged to leave them unanswered, and I expect some of my correspondents are getting rather impatient under these circumstances. Bess, you will observe that what Miss Montressor let out just now when she took me for Mr. Dolby has rather a curious meaning; for suppose Warren should have left London, as her account of Mr. Dolby seems to imply, he will not have got my last letters informing him of the dilemma in which I find myself; and how I am to get out of it I am sure I can't tell should this be the case. Of course, as long as I felt sure he was in England, it was tolerably plain sailing; there was nothing to fear but delay; but if he has left England and come back here, and is hiding about anywhere and not communicating with me, I consider something much worse than delay is to be apprehended, and I don't at all bargain for getting into any extensive and difficult scrape in the matter. So that you see I had more motives than one in coming up immediately on receipt of the telegram; because, though I really did make the blunder I have told you of in forgetting that it could not be addressed to me in reality, I have had for some weeks a great wish to find out, if possible, what Warren is about. I don't think I can be involved in any serious mischief, because I have taken such care never to forge his name--all papers that have left my hands bearing it are genuine signatures.'
'That's a comfort,' said Bess; 'but how can you find out anything about him here? You can't go to any of the places where he is known without betraying him.'
'That's just my difficulty,' said Jenkins, 'because it's a perfectly new light to me that his real business friends here, the people with whom he is actually mixed up in big transactions, verily and indeed believe him to be at Chicago. My notion was that it was only some one or two particular persons he wanted to impose upon; but the matter takes a completely different complexion now that I find out his most confidential people here believe him to be where he is not.'
'How do you know they are also imposed upon?' asked Bess.
'By the telegram, my dear. Of course Mr. Carey must have got the address from Mrs. Griswold, or at Warren's office--there can be no two ways about that--and of course, under the circumstances, they would not deceive him, nor can Mrs. Griswold be reasonably supposed to be in ignorance of his whereabouts. If any one was to be in the secret, it would be the people in this house; and now it is plain that Warren is deceiving them all round, and, you see, it isn't pleasant. He was always a good hand at getting from out of one more than one bargained for; but I must say, in this matter I should like to know what amount of dirty work I am expected to do, and how deep the dirtiness is.'
Jenkins had said all this in his usual light and careless way, and while he was speaking had kept playing with the baby in his wife's arms; but she, watching him closely, discerned very real alarm and anxiety under his slightly-swaggering manner and at once well-founded fright.
'Ephraim,' she said, laying her hand upon his arm impressively, 'have you ever been sorry for listening to my advice?'
'Never, Bess', he replied; 'but I have very often been sorry for not listening to it.'
'Well,' she said, 'hear it and take it now. Of course, I understand no more, but a good deal less, of what your brother's object and actions are than you do; but something within me, something which I have heard before now in my life, and which never told me a lie, says plainly to me that you have put yourself into a dreadful danger; that whatever Warren is about it can be no good, and it is going wrong. Just think for a moment. I suppose it was for the best of purposes in the world, but how mad a thing it must be for any man well known in business in a great city like New York to imagine that he could successfully pretend to be in one place while he is in another, in these days of telegraphs, for any length of time beyond a few hours or days at the outside. He is a clever man, well up in business, and must have known this,--the difficulty would have been quite plain to him,--and therefore it is only reasonable to conclude that he had some motive for running this great risk strong enough to induce him to throw aside all his knowledge of business, and all his shrewd habits of calculating the consequences. Is this motive likely to be a good one, to say nothing of the crooked ways and the deceit through which he has to carry it out? I think you know your brother by this time too well to give him credit for good motives; besides, good things do not need doing in the dark. Now I will tell you what you must do, Eph, and you must do it at once if you want to save me from distraction, and yourself from being mixed up in the ruin which I am certain is coming on Warren. Whatever he intended to do while he was supposed to be at Chicago he intended to do quicker than this; he never can have imagined that the sham could be prolonged up to this time; and your not having heard from him, his not having returned, or, if what Miss Montressor says is the case, that he has been passing under the name of Dolby, and that he has come back to America, which would make it all look much more extraordinary and more dangerous, it is plain that he has failed, and failure in any object which he had to gain by such risky means must have a big meaning, and you must get out of it, Eph.'
'Get out of it, Bess? How am I to get out of it? I will do anything you tell me; you have got a clearer head than mine--since I have been down there at Chicago I have come to think myself no end of a bungler--but all your clear-headedness won't see my way out of this fix, at all events until we can get hold of Warren. If he comes back and shows up, I will promise you I will face him, and tell him at once that I will have no more of it, come what may; and I can't stir a peg until he does come.'
'Yes you can, Eph, and you must,' said his wife; 'you must, or we shall be utterly ruined, without doing him any good. I feel convinced this is no business matter, but something very bad, in which he has not succeeded, and which will involve us all. Now this is what you must do. Get back to Chicago without an hour's delay, without seeing any one, bring away all the business papers, take them to Warren's real place of business, and get off to England.'
Jenkins stared at her in open-eyed wonder. 'Get off to England! What on earth for?'
'How can I tell?' she said, rather impatiently. 'I speak under an irresistible impulse and a great fear. You must have done with this thing, and this is the only way to get rid of it.'
'But I haven't money to do all this,' said Jenkins. 'You don't suppose Warren would trust me with more than he could help; and if I were to leave him in the lurch in this way, I shouldn't like to take any in advance, you know; that would look as ugly as anything he may have been doing, for I suppose the worst of it has been dabbling in other people's dollars.'
'Don't fret about that,' said his wife; 'there is a good deal coming to me, and I have had some handsome presents since I have been here, from people who have come to see the baby. I said nothing about it to you in my letters, because I thought I should like to have a little fund saved to give you a pleasant surprise. How thankful I am for it now! Even if it should not be enough, I know Mrs. Griswold, who has been most kind and generous to me, will help me, help me too in her ladylike and considerate way, without asking me any distressing questions. Besides, there is Nelly--Clara, I mean--she would help me in a minute; but I would rather not ask her for any help of that kind, but rather trust her to get you some employment in England.'
'You're settling it all, Bess,' said Eph, shaking his head doubtfully, but still with a lightening of his countenance and an additional cheerfulness in his voice, which brought the consoling conviction to his wife's mind that he was rapidly being swayed by her argument, and seeing in her own she was tracing relief and a future. 'You're settling it all very comfortably, and I believe you're right that it is about the best thing I could do.'
'It is the only thing!' said Bess emphatically.
'I don't like leaving you behind,' he said; 'there's a big difference between being parted as we are now, you in New York and I in Chicago, and being parted as we should be then, you in New York and I Heaven knows where, on the other side of the ferry; and I don't like it.'
'I don't like it either,' said Mrs. Jenkins; 'but it can't be otherwise, Eph dear, just now. You and I have to turn over a new leaf--you know you have promised me you will begin, and I believe you--but it is likely to be hard work just at first, and we shall want help from good friends. The best I have in the world, I feel quite sure, is Mrs. Griswold, and I could not desert her in this great trouble; first, for gratitude sake; secondly, for policy sake; and thirdly, because if I ask her to help us I must be ready to say I am prepared to help her. That is only fair, you know; but I will follow you, Eph, before very long, before the little store of money I shall be able to let you take with you is exhausted, even if you should not have good luck. But I feel you will have good luck, and Nelly--Clara, I mean--will be sure to be able to get something for you, even from the very first; now that she has seen you, she will know that you won't disgrace her recommendation.'
A rapidly-suppressed smile at his wife's enthusiasm crossed Jenkins's face. He did not absolutely believe that Miss Montressor had been captivated by her brief interview with him; but he secretly thought it by no means improbable that Miss Montressor would be glad to secure herself from any ill-timed allusion on his part to his extraordinary likeness to her very intimate friend Mr. Dolby, which might be embarrassing on this side the Atlantic, by facilitating his passage to the other; so that as his reflections on those Bess had reached the same result, he did not think it necessary to descant upon the divergence of their mental paths.
The desperate intentness of his wife's representations was seconded by Ephraim Jenkins's own conviction, and he became more and more serious as she pointed out how it must be known that Warren was being personated, since he was mixed up with the affairs of the Griswolds, and had been sent for in this emergency. She impressed upon her husband that his own danger of discovery could at best be delayed only until, weary of getting no reply to their telegrams and letters, Mrs. Griswold's friends should send some one to Chicago, and their ambassador would instantly discover that Warren was not at that city. This final representation had more effect upon him than any of her foregoing arguments. It showed him that the bubble was close upon bursting, and immediately won him to obedience to her wishes.
After that their interview lasted only a few minutes. It was arranged that he should start for Chicago that night, and immediately on his arrival should telegraph, in reply to Mrs. Griswold's message, that Warren was absent when it arrived; that he should then make immediate preparations for his own departure, warning Warren by letter to London of his determination, and come away, bringing all the business papers with him for deposit at Warren's office. This done, he was again to see his wife, receive from her the promised funds, and sail for England within a week, leaving Warren forewarned as far as lay in his power, but otherwise to get out of the Chicago scrape as well as he could.
It did not escape either Ephraim or his wife that there might be danger, supposing Warren should have returned to New York, of Eph's encountering him, which would have the double disadvantage of involving Ephraim in either the abandonment of his project of escape, or in a violent quarrel with his arbitrary brother. Mrs. Jenkins was much more disturbed when this possibility occurred to her mind; but recollecting that if Warren should be skulking about New York, he would be quite certain to avoid either his own offices or the steamer wharves, Eph would be safe from the risk of encounter, provided on his return he went to only those two places.
All this, and much more, having been hurriedly agreed upon between them, the husband and wife parted most affectionately, and though with much distress, with a dawning of hope in both hearts, and a conviction on the part of Mrs. Jenkins that Ephraim had really and truly turned over a new leaf.
A few minutes after Ephraim Jenkins had left the house, and before his wife had checked her tears and resumed her composure sufficiently to present herself before Helen, Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey arrived. They were accompanied by two persons of grave exterior and formal manner, with that peculiar stamp upon them which distinguishes the police-officer, whether of Scotland-yard, or the Rue Jérusalem, or the Tombs; calm men, lean and inscrutable, to whom the atmosphere of crime and difficulty was air naturally breathed, and on which they throve in a not jubilant, but nevertheless satisfactory, sort of way.
'It gave me a dreadful turn, my dear,' said Mrs. Jenkins to Miss Montressor, 'when they came in. I was just crossing the hall and going up-stairs with baby, and I cannot tell you what a curious feeling it was, and how glad I was my Ephraim was out of the house.'
'Why, what on earth had your Ephraim been doing, that you should be afraid of two police-officers?' said Miss Montressor, who was not easily impressed by sentimental imaginations.
'He hadn't been doing anything,' returned her sister rather indignantly; 'but they had such an extraordinary manner about them, as though everything in the place belonged to them, and after they came in our souls were not our own, that I assure you I felt as if I had been doing something that I might be taken up for, and every one of the servants might have been stealing the plate, to judge by their looks. As for Annette, she disappeared altogether. Mrs. Griswold wanted her to find some keys for her, and I had to go up-stairs and cause her to come out of her room, where she was double-locked in, as if there were a warrant out for her.'
'Silly French idiot!' said Miss Montressor parenthetically. 'I should rather like to have a look at these police-officers. I have seen our magistrates at home, you know, at least some of them--beaks, they call them--remarkably jolly and good-natured men, I thought.'
'Then, you see, you were not a prisoner, my dear,' said Mrs. Jenkins.
'Well, no more are you, nor any other people in the house. What a set of geese you all are!'
'You're so strong-minded, Clara; and it is uncomfortable, and always seems like bad luck somehow, when any of these people come about a quiet, well-conducted house.'
'Ah,' said Miss Montressor, with a very genuine sigh, 'the bad luck has come in here before the police, not with them, and it will stay after them. Poor creature, how is she?'
'She received the gentlemen quite calm and quiet,' said Mrs. Jenkins; 'but of course I don't know anything, since I was only a minute in the room.'
This short dialogue took place in Helen's boudoir, whither Mrs. Jenkins had gone to seek her sister after she had ushered Helen's ominous visitors into her husband's library, where she was awaiting them. Miss Montressor had by this time awakened from her nap, greatly refreshed and reinvigorated, and was looking very dainty and captivating; she had arranged her hair by the aid of a pocket-comb and a pocket-mirror which invariably accompanied her, together with a cunningly-devised little casket containing pearl-powder, to the use of which, to say the truth, she was too much addicted off the stage; and she was now perfectly prepared to undergo a whole set of new sensations with regard to the Griswold murder, for in that familiar phrase had the at-first-vague calamity ranged itself in the minds of Miss Montressor and Bryan Duval.
The interview between Helen Griswold, her two friends, and the police officers lasted so long, that the grievous apprehension possessed Mrs. Jenkins as to the effect which such sustained interrogation, with all its horrors of assumption and actual pain, must produce on Helen's enfeebled frame. To the acute and experienced eye of Mrs. Jenkins, who had done a great deal in the way of nursing invalids in her time, and who had that quick perception of illness natural to woman, however uneducated, Helen's health had suffered much more severely under the excruciating trial of the last three days than Thornton Carey or Bryan Duval believed. In her very composure Mrs. Jenkins saw partly an unnatural effort and partly physical exhaustion; she did not cry, or scream, or throw herself about, or give way to any violent demonstration of the suffering which was racking her, quite as much because she was unable to do so, as because her good sense and her resolution induced her to give as little trouble and inflict as little distress upon the friends who were nobly endeavouring to aid her as possible; but they perceived only one of these reasons for her quietude.
In voice, that most distinctive symptom, as well as in face, Helen Griswold was changed; something was gone from both destined never to return to them: the sweet cleartimbrein the former, the roundlike brightness in the latter. In after years Helen was a handsomer woman than she had been in those days of honoured and happy matronhood, in her splendid home with the husband who was so devoted to her; but the beauty of these latter years was of a different cast from that in which he had taken such delight and it indicated a mind matured and a heart strengthened, both results reached by a process of untold severity.
That Helen would be very ill, so seriously ill that she would be unable to think of anything except her bodily ailments for some time after the immediate pressure of the actual business imposed upon her by her calamity should have been removed, Mrs. Jenkins felt thoroughly convinced, and therefore she was anxious that all the business which could be got through to-day should be got through; and as the time went on, and no sound of departing footsteps could be heard passing the door from the boudoir, where she and Miss Montressor remained, she was satisfied that they were going into all the matters connected with Mr. Griswold's affairs within Helen's sphere of knowledge thoroughly and at once.
In this supposition Mrs. Jenkins was perfectly correct. It had been agreed between Bryan Duval and Thornton Carey that all the information which could possibly be extracted from Mrs. Griswold should be acquired on the present occasion; so that, if possible, she should not again be troubled with the distressing presence of the judicial side of the dreadful occurrence, but left to the tranquillising effect of time and quiet.
So, when the four men were ushered into the presence of the young widow, who received them in her husband's library, to enter which and meddle with the papers to which she had never had, during his lifetime, any access, gave her a pang of exceeding sharpness, they found her, as Mrs. Jenkins had described her to her sister at an earlier hour in the morning, very calm, but mortally pale.
Throughout the whole of that prolonged interview, under all the forms interrogative, retrospective, speculative, and narrative which it assumed, no change fell upon Helen's face, no tinge of colour touched its waxen paleness; she was perfectly collected, and her natural quickness of apprehension was entirely unimpeded, but her eyes had a fixed vagueness and lightness, produced by overwhelming fatigue and the influence of opiate. Her mechanical, unexcited manner, and patient waiting and submission to the question-and-answer mood adopted by her interlocutors, assisted them materially, and caused them no little astonishment. A woman who always gave the exact answer to the exact question, and never required to have it asked twice, was a novelty in their experience; and as the examination, including in it all the circumstances which had preceded Alston Griswold's departure, progressed, it was plain that unless they could find a clue in the information which they were receiving from Mrs. Griswold, that clue must be sought for in a totally different set and combination of circumstances, for there could be no doubt of the retentiveness and accuracy of her memory and the unembarrassed plainness of her statement of facts.
Copious notes were taken of her narrative of everything which had occurred up to the eve of Alston Griswold's departure. She was closely questioned as to his and her own social relations. Her statements on that point were few and simple. She and her husband had a large acquaintance but few friends, in the sense of habitual daily intimates. It was not her taste to cultivate such, and Mr. Griswold, though a man of very genial disposition, was almost as reserved and home-loving as an Englishman; she could, in fact, indicate but one intimacy on her husband's part of the nature and extent which the questions put to her indicated--this intimacy existed in the person of Trenton Warren.
At this point in Helen's statement Thornton Carey informed her for the first time of the steps that had been taken in order to procure Trenton Warren's attendance at New York, and his intervention in the efforts which they were making to obtain a clue to the perpetrators of the crime.
She had almost forgotten him, until the questions of the police-officers respecting the daily habits and associates of her husband had recalled him to her mind; the recollection arose even while she was speaking of him, with a dreary wonder that a few days ago a complication in her domestic history caused by him should have seemed so serious, and have been struck into absolute nullity by the undreaded calamity that had come to teach her how far facts might outweigh fancies in terror and in pain. While the men were speaking to her, asking her questions, to which she was giving almost mechanical answers, her mind was busy with that interview between herself and Trenton Warren, which now seemed hundreds of years old, and of infinite unimportance; and she had suffered it to worry her, she had thought about it and let it interfere with the frankness and brightness of her very last communications with the husband who was never to know a thought or word of hers more.
How she hated her folly, but doubly she hated the man who had inspired it! What did it matter now--what could it really have mattered then? Had she not allowed a chimera to take possession of her mind, to intervene between her and that full confidence, that full acquiescence, in every wish of Alston's that was due to him? Then Helen's good sense told her that she must not allow feelings of this kind to intrude just at present; that she was not in a fit state to disentangle the real from the imaginary, or to weigh with the scrupulous exactitude which it deserved the influence that that interview had had upon her recent life. Then she said simply, in reply to Thornton Carey's communication with regard to the telegram, 'I suppose he has arrived?'
'No, he has not,' said Carey; 'and that forms one of the difficulties in our way of proceeding just at present, besides constituting a very vexatious delay in the information, which we hoped to have completed by this time for transmission to Liverpool.'
'Where is he, then?'
'We don't know.'
'In what terms did he answer the telegram?'
'We have received no answer, and this puzzles us extremely.'
'Would you mind telling me,' asked Helen, 'in what words you put your message?'
Thornton Carey took out his pocketbook, and read a memorandum of the exact form of his despatch to Trenton Warren at Chicago.
Helen repeated it slowly, and then said, 'I am not so surprised at your receiving no answer. It is best, gentlemen, though this is a matter which cannot possibly have any bearing upon the subject into which you are inquiring, that I should tell you at once, in justice to Mr. Warren, who would otherwise seem to have acted a strange part with regard to so intimate a friend as my Alston, that he did not extend his friendship to me, and that Mr. Warren and I are not at present on good terms. I therefore think it very likely that your having sent the message in my name has occasioned him to take no notice of it. He would not associate it with Alston, because he is in direct communication, as he believes, with him, whereas he knows that I have not been; so he would naturally suppose that any news affecting him in any way would have been transmitted direct to Chicago, and therefore his mind would be quite easy with regard to anything which might have occurred here.'
Thornton Carey and Bryan Duval exchanged looks. They admired the candour and the courage of this woman, who thus told a fact which might naturally excite grave suspicions in the minds of the two officers in her presence, grave suspicions of her own loyalty to her dead husband, by the admission that, so far as this man's intimate friendship was concerned, there had been a decided division of interest between them.
The police-officers also exchanged looks, and probably each understood the meaning of that of the other--they were not identical with those of the two gentlemen. In that moment Helen Griswold put the end of the thread into the hands of Justice; the ball was a long way off and hidden in some windings of the mass, but the way to it would be found by that hint.
'I think, gentlemen,' continued Helen, 'that if you believe Mr. Warren's presence at New York to be indispensable to your arriving at a true comprehension of my husband's affairs, you had better telegraph to him again in the name of the police authorities.'
The two men bowed acquiescence.
'And tell him in the message quite distinctly what it is that has occurred.'
'Certainly, Helen,' said Thornton Carey; 'this shall be done at once. If you had been able to hear that I had already telegraphed for Warren, or that I had anticipated any delay in his reply, I would have told you, and thus a great many hours would have been saved. If I telegraph immediately, at what hour could he leave Chicago, do you know?' he said, addressing one of the police-officers.
'If he left to-night,' was the reply, 'we could not possibly see him until Saturday morning. You must send your message at once, Mr. Carey, and make it as pressing, conclusive, and indeed imperative, as may be.'
'That's a long and serious delay,' said Bryan Duval. 'At what hour on Saturday does the steamer sail for England?'
'It will be late next Saturday,' said Thornton; 'the tide doesn't serve till five.'
'Lots of time,' returned Bryan Duval cheerfully. 'We shall have Mr. Warren here in the middle of Friday night, interview him on Saturday morning, and send our man by the mail.'
'Sharp practice, Mr. Duval,' said the police-officer who had spoken before, 'but quite within possibility, provided Mr. Warren can put us on the track so unerringly as it looks like.'
'Then, as it is clear that nothing more can be settled at present,' said Thornton Carey, rising from his seat and approaching Helen, whose hand he took gently in his own, 'I think, dear Helen, we may now release you. You have told us everything which you can tell; you have given us all the papers which poor Alston left here. Your immediate concern with our wretched business has come to an end; we will leave you to rest and peace.'
'Peace!' she interrupted, but her face was still unchanged, and no tears came to refresh the dimness of her black eyes.
Bryan Duval and the two police-officers rose.
'Have you any further suggestion to make, madam?' asked the one who had already spoken.
'No,' she replied faintly.
'Perhaps you will allow me to make one?' he continued.
She bowed acquiescence.
'Though your husband's letters from London have been, as you have explained to us, entirely free from any allusion to business, they may have contained indications which would escape your notice, but which may be of much utility in our researches. Have you any objection to confide them to us, in addition to the business papers you have already given us?'
A large packet tied up with red tape lay on the table by the speaker's elbow.
'I have not the slightest objection,' returned Helen. 'Every word he wrote to me from England was, like himself, generous and affectionate, and I cannot conceive that any such traces as you allude to exist in them, but I will put neither my judgment nor my will against your experience. Thornton, will you kindly ring for Annette?'
In reply to the summons Annette made her appearance, with a scared expression of countenance and a tight hold of her skirts. She glanced askance and fearful at the harmless-looking gentlemen, who were standing bolt upright in front of her mistress's chair, and received in silence Mrs. Griswold's order to bring her a certain green-morocco casket which stood upon the little shelf at her bedside.
Silence was maintained during the few moments of Annette's absence.
She presently returned, and placed the casket on the table before Mrs. Griswold, who opened it and took out a large packet of letters, carefully arranged according to the date of their receipt, and tied with pink ribbon.
'They are all there,' she said sadly, as she handed the packet to Thornton Carey. 'I placed the last there on the day I expected to hear from him again--I little thought that story was true.' Still her face was unchanged and her eyes were tearless.
The quick eye of the police-officer had seen another object lying at the bottom of the box from which Mrs. Griswold had taken her husband's letters. It was a prettily-bound and gilt manuscript-book, with a lock, indorsed in gold letters, 'My Journal.'
'I beg your pardon,' he said, advancing and laying his hand upon the open box, as Helen stretched out hers for the purpose of closing it; 'may I ask if this journal is yours?'
'It is,' she replied simply; 'it is my journal since the day of my husband's departure, kept at his request, written up for transmission to him by every mail, and copied into this book.'
'Madam,' said the police-officer, 'I have a difficulty in expressing the wish that you should confide this journal, not indeed to us, but to your friends. The smallest and most unexpected particular of the occurrences of your life and household at home may aid in this investigation. We are at present all abroad, and we must neglect no source of information within our reach. May I ask if you have recorded visits made to you, letters received by you, and any reports or impressions in any way connected with Mr. Griswold's business, of which he unfortunately kept you in ignorance, which may have reached you during his absence?'
'I do not think so,' said Helen. 'I know it is very full of gossiping and trivial things, as well as of the daily occupations of my life; but such as it is, Mr. Carey and Mr. Bryan Duval are perfectly at liberty to read it, and, indeed, you gentlemen also, should you think it well to do so. I had but a simple story to tell, and I have told it simply.'
With the same gentleness, the same mechanical steadiness that had marked her conduct throughout, Helen removed the manuscript-book from the box, and handed it, not to Thornton Carey, but to Bryan Duval, who received it from her hands in silence and with a bow. He was infinitely touched by the whole scene, and by the almost solemn simplicity of the young widow.
As had been arranged on their way, the two police-officers now took leave of Mrs. Griswold, Thornton Carey and Bryan Duval remaining with her for a few minutes after their departure. On leaving her they were to go direct to the telegraph-office, to send the despatch in the terms agreed upon to Trenton Warren.
'I fear you are extremely exhausted,' said Thornton Carey, when he and Duval remained alone with Helen. 'This has been a most trying ordeal for you; but I trust it will be the last.'
'There will be no need for my seeing Mr. Warren, will there?' said Helen, in a low voice, her face for the first time changing and assuming an expression of deep distress and anxiety. 'O Thornton, keep that from me if you can!'
'I don't foresee that there will be any necessity at all for your seeing him,' returned Thornton, 'if it is repugnant and unpleasant for you to do so; and I need not say that we will make every effort to extract such full information from him as to enable us to act without any further reference either of him or ourselves to you. You know that well, Helen, and therefore you will be prepared, in case we should find it indispensable to bring him in contact with you, to acquiesce in the necessity--will you not?'
'Of course I will. I have only asked you to spare if possible, and "if possible" means not at the expense of avenging my Alston. I will bear anything for that purpose, and few things could be more painful to me than an interview with Trenton Warren.'
'I think I know why,' was Mr. Duval's comment upon her words and her expression, spoken inwardly of course, and with the additional reflection that he had known few stronger situations, with more to be made out of them, than the present.
'What are you going to do for the rest of the day?' said Thornton Carey. 'Are you going to try to sleep?'
'No,' she replied; 'I have had enough of unnatural sleep, and natural sleep won't come to me just yet. I am going to see my child for a while, as long as I can bear it, and Miss Montressor has been good enough to promise to come to me.'
'Clara is a good soul,' said Bryan Duval parenthetically and heartily. 'Is she here now?'
'I think so,' said Mrs. Griswold. 'She promised Mrs. Jenkins that she would come early, and I fear that she has been detained. Now that this morning's work is over, you will not object, will you, Thornton,' she said, raising her eyes to him with a look of dependence and submission, from which he shrunk, so full was it of her helplessness and her pain, 'that I should take to her who saw my Alston last? Do you know, Mr. Duval,' she continued, turning to the actor, and producing the same effect upon him by that infinitely pathetic look, 'I have been thinking that the very last person to whom he ever spoke a friendly word must have been Miss Montressor or yourself--I wonder which it was?'
'I don't remember, my dear Mrs. Griswold,' said Bryan, 'but I have no doubt she will; women have fine memories for these small points, which sometimes are of so much importance in their world of feeling. I don't doubt that you will find hers faultless, and I am sure no friend of yours will object to your talking it out now with this kind creature, who feels for you, as I can bear witness, more than I thought it was in her to feel. You have been very good and wonderfully composed hitherto, and I confess I should not be sorry to hear that you had given way to your feelings, and that all this composure was broken up for a while at least. So Carey and I will go and work for you and do our very best, and you must try and put this part of it out of your mind for the present, knowing that you will not be disturbed or called upon again unless it is a very desperate necessity indeed, and Clara Montressor shall come and talk to you about your husband, and go over every word he said to her; and, if I remember her account of it right, there were few of them that were not about yourself.' With these words he raised her hand respectfully to his lips, turned on his heel and left the room, buttoning his tight-fitting frock-coat over the flat manuscript volume which she had confided to him.
He had stood in the corridor little more than a minute when Thornton Carey joined him. They went down-stairs and out of the house without exchanging a word; but when they had reached the street, they fell into close consultation, and walked away towards the telegraph station arm in arm.
From her long interview with Helen Griswold, which came to an end barely in time to enable Miss Montressor to get back to the hotel for dinner, that kind-hearted celebrity returned very deeply affected. The simplicity of Helen's life and mind, the quiet and matter-of-course devotion to her duties, and her great courage and submission in her trouble, affected the actress strangely, giving her glimpses of realities in life and heroism in character to be found in everyday spheres and commonplace actions of which she had entertained no previous conception.
She and Bryan Duval had a long talk that night after the performance at the Varieties about Helen Griswold. In the interval Bryan Duval had peeped into the pages of the manuscript volume which she had confided to him, but which, together with the letters written by Alston Griswold to his wife during his residence in England, it had been arranged was to be formally examined by himself and Thornton Carey on the following day.
Until the arrival of Trenton Warren this was all that could be done, and neither Duval nor Carey cared to meet before the appointed time. The delay was trying them a good deal, and though their expectations of success in ultimately bringing the murderer to justice were not affected by it, they both felt considerable weariness and strong inclination to be alone. This did not, however, interfere with the curiosity with which Bryan Duval heard Miss Montressor's account of the hours which she had passed with Helen Griswold. Bryan Duval was accustomed to reading between the lines; he had read between the lines of Helen's innocent, unsophisticated, and perfectly sincere record of her life under its past and its present aspects, and he had formed a theory of her mind, conduct, and future singularly near the truth, though he believed implicitly that she was entirely unconscious that any such indications as he had extracted from it were contained in the simple annals of her girlhood and her married life, which had been continued in her journal literally up to the day of its unconscious close.
On this point he said not one word to Miss Montressor, nor did he then confide to Thornton Carey even the last of his impressions of Helen's journal when they came to discuss it. He bestowed many words of good-humoured approval upon the actress for her womanly kindness and sympathy with Mrs. Griswold, and when they parted, Miss Montressor carried away with her a not unpleasant impression that Bryan Duval entertained rather a higher opinion of her as an individual than he had previously done; an impression which was perfectly well founded, and had arisen quite as much to the surprise as to the pleasure of Mr. Duval, who entertained but a low estimate of human nature in general, and was much too philosophical to exclude the types with which he was most familiar and most closely allied.
Thornton Carey had gone straight home after the despatch of the telegram, which, as agreed upon, he had couched in most decisive words and supported with the authority of emanation from the police magnates. He strove hard to turn his mind away from the subject of his grave preoccupation during the evening, reading resolutely on one of his old lines of study, and resolved to rest his faculties thoroughly in order to recommence his work upon the morrow with brightness and efficiency.
Most of the visitors to the hotel in which he was staying had breakfasted before he came down to the dining-room, only a few almost as belated as himself were finishing their meal. He stopped in the hall as usual, and bought his morning supply of journalistic literature, and having seated himself and called for his coffee, he turned the pages of theNew York Heraldwith but languid interest, which, however, was changed into vehement excitement by the very first announcement in the long list of latest intelligences which met his eye, stated in the largest capitals, and with all the emblems which indicate the record of a great disaster.