It was quite by chance that Philip Winslade did not travel down to Iselford on the second Saturday by the same train that Fanny went by. As it fell out, however, he was detained at the last moment and had to wait for a later train. On Sunday morning his mother went to church without him. If Fanny had reached home she would be sure to be there, and it seemed better not to run the risk of a chance meeting with her on the way to or from church, in view of his impending interview with her father.
When morning service was over and the Rev. Louth Sudlow retired to the vestry to disrobe himself, he found his wife and eldest daughter there before him. Mrs. Sudlow had just taken up a note addressed to her husband which she had found on the table. "Now, who can this be from?" she was saying as the Vicar entered. Fanny, who had recognised the writing, blushed and turned away, but did not answer her mother. The Vicar took the note, opened it, read it in silence, and then handed it to his wife. It was from Philip Winslade, asking the Vicar to name an hour when it would be convenient for him to see the writer on the morrow about "a matter of urgent moment."
"A matter of urgent moment!" repeated Mrs. Sudlow. "What can that be, I wonder?"
The Vicar did not reply, but there and then he sat down and wrote an answer to the note, naming, as before, the vestry for the place of meeting, and the hour of eleven.
It was only natural that, as Fanny walked home with her parents, she should feel somewhat disquieted. Why had her lover not written to her in the course of the week, as he had promised to do? That he was at Whiteash Cottage was proved by his note; why, then, had he omitted to accompany his mother to church? Above all, what could be the matter of urgent moment he was so anxious to see her father about?
As yet the Vicar had not mentioned her lover's name, nor as much as hinted at any knowledge of her engagement. But that did not surprise her. Probably he did not care to enter upon the subject on the Sabbath. Doubtless he would say what he had to say on the morrow. His manner towards her had been, or so she fancied, more than commonly kind and affectionate, and how could she accept that as anything but a happy augury? Had the news of her engagement displeased him, or proved a source of annoyance to him, he would scarcely have failed to make the fact patent to her in one way or another. She longed for the morrow to come, as young people have a way of doing. Never had the even-paced hours seemed to drag themselves to so wearisome a length. She was glad when bedtime had come, and gladder still when, after a restless night, she saw the April dawn begin to brighten in the eastern sky.
It wanted a quarter to eleven when the Vicar left home, and the clock had just struck twelve when Fanny, from the window of the morning-room, saw him coming back across the lawn. Her heart sank, so grave and preoccupied did he look. She would fain have opened the long window and have run to meet him, but her mother's cold eyes were upon her, and she refrained. When the Vicar entered the room two minutes later his first act was to cross to where his daughter was sitting, and taking her head gently between his hands, to kiss her on the forehead.
"Papa!" exclaimed Fanny, looking up into his face with frightened eyes, and laying her hand for a moment on his sleeve. That he was the messenger of ill news her heart portended but too surely.
Mrs. Sudlow was too accustomed to reading her husband's looks not to know that something was amiss; but although her curiosity was keen to hear whatever news he might be the bearer of, she set her thin lips tight and seemed to be intent on her sewing and on nothing beyond it. The Vicar sat down in his easy-chair and proceeded to rub his spectacles with his handkerchief.
"Little did I dream when I left home this morning," he began, sighing as he did so, "that I should have such a strange and distressing story to tell on my return. Dear me--dear me! Who could have believed in the possibility of such a thing?"
"My dear, if you would but endeavour to be a little less prolix!" said Mrs. Sudlow. "If you cannot see that Fanny is dying of impatience, I can."
The Vicar hemmed and fidgeted in his chair.
"Really, my love," he murmured deprecatingly. Then turning to Fanny and addressing himself directly to her, he said: "I am afraid, my child, that what I am about to tell you will distress you greatly, but unfortunately the blow is one which there are no means of averting. The reason Philip Winslade wished to see me this morning was that he might impart to me, in strict confidence, a certain circumstance connected with his personal history which only came to his own knowledge a few days ago. It appears that when Mrs. Winslade became aware of the existence of some sort of an engagement between her son and you, and was told he was about to seek your parents' sanction thereto, she revealed to him the circumstance in question, which had hitherto been kept carefully from him. What she had to tell him was that her husband and his father was a certain notorious bank-note forger, Philip Cordery by name, who was tried and convicted upwards of twenty years ago, and who died in prison a little while afterwards."
"Ah!" was the sole comment vouchsafed by Mrs. Sudlow; but although a word of two letters only, it can be made to convey a variety of meanings, and on the present occasion what it conveyed to the Vicar was, "I always felt sure that there was something discreditable in that woman's past, and now you see how right I was."
Fanny's cheek had turned a shade paler, but as yet she scarcely realised the full significance of her father's news. After the silence had lasted a few moments she said, "But why, after keeping the fact a secret for so many years, should Mrs. Winslade have thought it needful to speak of it now?"
"Whatever may have been her trials and misfortunes, Mrs. Winslade is a high-principled woman," replied the Vicar. "When informed that her son was seeking to become engaged to a certain young lady, she revealed to him the story of his parentage as a measure of simple right both to the person in question and her parents. It would rest with them to accept or dismiss him as they might deem best, when the truth about him had been told; but in any case Mrs. Winslade was determined that there should be no risk of accepting him blindfold and under a cloak of false pretence."
"It seems to me," said Fanny, with a little glow of colour, "that it was a very magnanimous thing of Mrs. Winslade to do."
"You talk like a school-girl," broke in Mrs. Sudlow. "For very shame the woman could not do otherwise than as she did."
"On that point, my dear, I must venture to differ from you," remarked her husband in his blandest accents. "I fully believe there are many women who would have continued to keep silence in the future as they had in the past rather than run the risk of spoiling their son's chance of marrying into a reputable family. Such persons might not unreasonably allege that the fact of their having been able to keep their secret for so long a time might be taken as a strong argument that they would be able to keep it for ever." Then, a moment later, he added: "Poor young fellow! I felt truly sorry for him. There was a touch of manly pathos in the way he told his tale, which affected me more than anything it has been my lot to listen to for a very long time."
"It is an extremely disagreeable episode well ended," remarked Mrs. Sudlow with an air of satisfaction, as her sharp teeth bit in two the thread she was sewing. "Of course, you gave the young man hiscongéthere and then?"
Fanny stared at her mother as if doubting whether she had heard aright.
"I told him that I would write to him in the course of a day or two--nothing more."
"I think it a great pity you did not send him packing at once. I have no patience with such temporising ways."
"But, mamma----" began Fanny, and then stopped at sight of her father's uplifted hand.
"My dear, it was not for me to dismiss the young man after so summary a fashion. It seemed to me due to Fanny that before arriving at any decision in the matter, the whole of the circumstances should be made known to her."
"There I differ from youin toto," said Mrs. Sudlow with accentuated acidity. "You are Fanny's father, and as such it was your bounden duty to give young Winslade clearly to understand that all is at an end between him and her, now and for ever."
"But, mamma, all is not at an end between us. Far from it," said Fanny, with that little air of determination which her mother was learning to know so well.
Mrs. Sudlow turned quickly on her.
"Girl, are you mad?" she demanded with a stamp of her foot. "What way but one can there be of dealing with a man whose father was a forger and a felon, and whose mother for years has been passing under a name not her own? Why, even to shake hands with such a person would make me feel as if there was a gaol taint about me for days to come."
The Vicar coughed uneasily. "Pardon me, my dear, but your sentiments are scarcely such as become the wife of a minister of the Gospel."
Mrs. Sudlow sniffed, but did not condescend to any reply.
"That Philip Winslade's father was what he was," said Fanny, "is Philip's misfortune, but in no wise his fault; and why such a fact should be allowed to affect anyone's estimate of him is what, so far, I fail to understand."
Mrs. Sudlow's dull eyes flamed out as they did on rare occasions only. "Do you mean to tell me, Fanny Sudlow," she said with a cold, slow emphasis, which was the more effective in that her anger was so evidently at white-heat--"do you wish me for one moment to credit that, after what you have been told, it is not your intention at once to break off whatever engagement (oh, how rashly entered into!) may heretofore have existed between yourself and this unhappy young man?"
"You are right, mamma, when you term him an unhappy young man. But is not that the very reason why our engagement, instead of being broken off, should, if possible, be riveted more firmly than before? Who should stand by him now this great trouble has come upon him if not I, to whom he has given the greatest treasure a man has to give?" Her cheeks glowed, her eyes shone with an inner radiance--never, to her father's thinking, had she looked so beautiful as at that moment.
Mrs. Sudlow turned upon her husband. "Louth, speak to her!" she commanded. "If she has so far forgotten herself and the lessons of her upbringing as no longer to heed her mother's wishes and commands, it is to be hoped that this new evil influence has not yet obtained such complete control over her as to induce her to treat her father's admonitions as contemptuously as she has seen fit to treat mine."
The Rev. Louth Sudlow felt that his position was anything but an enviable one. His sympathies were altogether with his daughter; but to a man who loved peace and quietness as he loved them, to sanction the unfurling of the flag of rebellion on the domestic hearth might well represent itself as a very serious thing indeed. Such being the case, he did what weak men nearly always do when they find themselves in a corner--he resolved to play the timid game of expediency, and to attempt the impossible feat of steering a straight course between two strongly opposite currents.
Addressing himself to Fanny, he said: "My dear girl, while fully agreeing with you that in the case of a person who has been overtaken by a misfortune which he has had no hand in bringing on himself, and yet from the consequences of which it is impossible for him to escape, it is the duty of those who know him and respect him--and--and like him--to rally round him, and prove to him that though the world at large may look askance on him, he will find no change in them, it is still possible, I think, to push even so admirable a sentiment to a point at which it not only becomes Quixotic, but--but, so to speak, indefensible. And this, my dear, as it appears to me, is just what you seem inclined to do in the case under discussion. Young Winslade by his action in coming to me first of all has proved his entire willingness to release you from any promise you may have made him--such promise having been given in ignorance of what has since become known, and accepted by him in equal ignorance. The question therefore now is, whether you ought not at once to reclaim your promise, and release him from any he may have given you. Although at present, as far as we are aware, the knowledge of this painful episode is confined to us three, there is no knowing how soon, nor by what mischance, it may become common property. Think, then--consider, I beg of you most seriously--what in such a case would be your position as a member of a family which society (always terribly unrelenting in such cases) would shun and contemn almost as if it were plague-smitten. Are you willing for the sake of a passing girlish fancy--(you shake your head; but, knowing the world far better than you know it, I hold by the phrase)--to run the risk of overshadowing and embittering your whole future life? Strive to realise all that you would sacrifice by such a step, and then ask yourself what compensation you can reasonably expect in return. The wrench of parting might be a sharp one, and just at first the pain might seem almost intolerable, but time would heal the wound, as it does the wounds of all of us, and before long life would again look as bright to you, and as full of promise, as ever it had done."
When the Vicar ceased he rubbed his white hands softly one within the other like a man well satisfied with himself. He had not been oblivious of certain contemptuous sniffs on the part of his wife during the progress of his little oration; but he was too familiar with such tokens of disparagement to allow himself to be affected thereby. Fanny felt that one of the most important moments of her life had come. Drawing a deep breath she said:
"Papa, when I gave my promise to Philip Winslade that I would one day become his wife, it was with no intention of ever taking it back, and far less than ever should I think of doing so now that a shadow has crept over his life of which neither he nor I knew anything when my promise was given. As for the world, or that small section of it which, as you say, would look askance at him and his if his story were to become known, it seems to me not worth a moment's consideration when weighed in the balance against other things. Disgrace comes but as we bring it on ourselves. Papa--and you too, mamma--permit me, therefore, with all due deference and respect, to say, once for all, that I have given my heart into the keeping of Philip Winslade, and in his keeping I mean it to remain."
"If such be the case, my dear child, there is nothing more to be said," remarked the Vicar.
"Nothing more to be said? Oh!" said Mrs. Sudlow, as she started to her feet, a vivid spot of colour flaming in either cheek. Then staring her husband full in the face, she said, in quiet, venomous accents, "Louth Sudlow, you are a fool!" After which emphatic asseveration she swept slowly from the room with all the dignity of which so little a woman was capable, leaving father and daughter gazing blankly at each other.
A couple of hours after the somewhat stormy scene detailed above, the following note was delivered at Whiteash Cottage:
"Dear Phil,--Papa has told meeverything. The only effect has been to make me love you the more, if, indeed, that be possible. This afternoon I am going to Frimpton to see my old nurse, who is ill, and I shall return by the footpath through the meadows between six and seven o'clock. You may come part of the way and meet me if you like.
"Always and always yours,
"F. S."
They met at the stile where the footpath through the fields loses itself in the high road, about a quarter of a mile on the hither side of Frimpton--Phil being determined that the walk back to Iselford should be as long a one as possible. They had only seen each other once since their parting on the landing-stage at Liverpool, and they now stood for a moment or two, hand clasped in hand and eyes gazing into eyes, trying to read whatever secrets of the heart might perchance be revealed therein, and feeling their inmost being flooded with a gladness which, for the little while they stood thus, made speech seem an impertinence.
Fanny was the first to find her tongue. She withdrew her hand from Phil's grasp, and, instead, slipped it under his arm. Then they set their faces towards Iselford.
"Do you know, Phil," began Miss Fan, "it was very noble of you to come to my father and tell him what you did."
"It was simply my duty. No other course was open to me."
"But we don't, some of us, always care to do our duty, even when we see it clearly before us. And, in your case, I am by no means sure that it was a duty, or, indeed, anything more than a piece of modern-day chivalry, beyond the reach of folk of ordinary stature."
"I am afraid you rate what I have done far more highly than it deserves."
"I can, at least, think my own thoughts about it," replied Fan softly. "But poor Mrs. Winslade--what she must have suffered at finding herself driven to make such a confession! My heart bleeds for her." As she spoke she could feel a shiver run through the arm on which her hand was resting.
For a minute or two they walked on in silence. Phil felt that it was now his turn to speak. "My dear," he began, "in the note I received from you this afternoon you tell me that you only love me the more after what I said to your father."
"I told you no more than the truth."
He lifted her hand and pressed it passionately to his lips.
"But there are your parents to think of," he went on. "It is your place, your duty to consider them first of all. It is too much to expect that they should welcome to their fireside, or be willing to allow their daughter to ally herself to, the son of a felon. They would deem both her and themselves disgraced by so doing." Here an involuntary sigh broke from him. "Listen, then, dearest. Let the cost to myself be what it may, I here and now cancel the promise you gave me three weeks ago on board ship. Take it back and try to forget that it ever had an existence. We did not know then all that we have learnt since. To you a far different fate is due than to wed the son of Philip Cordery the forger."
Fanny laughed a little laugh that had in it more of tears than mirth. "You foolish, foolish Phil!" she exclaimed. "And is that the sort of young woman you take me for? What a low opinion you must have formed of me! How strangely you must have misread me! No, sir, you not only have my promise, but I have yours, and I mean to keep it fast--fast---fast! So 'no more of that, Hal, an' thou lovest me.' As for papa, I feel sure that in his heart he admires and likes you to-day far more than he ever did before. He will never as much as lift his little finger in opposition to our engagement. With mamma I admit that it is different. She is not without her opinions, and there is always that fetich of our noble relations to block the way. But this she knows from me and clearly understands, that neither on account of our relatives (who care nothing for us), nor for any other cause--certainly not by reason of anything you told papa--will I take back my plighted word. I am yours, and you are mine." Then, a moment later, she added: "Beyond my father and mother, there is no one else to consider, for that your and Mrs. Winslade's secret is safe in their keeping cannot for one moment be doubted. The world will never be any wiser than it is now."
In the face of such a declaration of unwavering love, so unfalteringly given, so instinct with loyalty and determination, what could Philip, what could any lover, have done save that which he did? The place was solitary, not a creature was in sight; his arms encircled her, he drew her to him, and then his lips pressed hers in a lingering kiss which was repeated again and again. "O my love--my love!" he murmured. "I am not worthy, indeed I am not, of all that you are sacrificing for my sake."
With her head resting against his shoulder, she looked up into his face with a heavenly smile. "Where true love exists there can be no such thing as a sacrifice."
Although Mrs. Empson, the Rev. Louth Sudlow's widowed sister, was a cross-grained, selfish old woman, to whom existence, unseasoned by the fulsome flatteries of Miss Pudsey, or one of her genus, would have seemed barely tolerable, she was not quite oblivious of the claims of relationship. She knew that, for his position in life, her brother was a poor man, encumbered with a numerous and increasingly expensive family, and it was probably her knowledge of those facts that was her inducement for writing the following letter:
"My dear Louth,--That you rarely trouble yourself so far as to inquire whether I am alive or dead is a fact which, with that regard for truth which is supposed to pertain to your cloth, but does not invariably do so, you would find it difficult to deny; still, it does not on that account follow that I should treat you and your interests with an equal amount of indifference.
"Although your eldest daughter, who, as far as I can judge, must, when young, have been allowed to have far too much her own way, and cannot now help betraying the results of her defective bringing-up, chose to quit my roof in a very abrupt and off-hand fashion, after flouting certain suggestions which, entirely for her own good, I was at pains to lay before her, I bear no ill-feeling towards her on that account. Indeed, were you here, Miss Pudsey, mydame-de compagnie, would tell you that one of the most marked traits of my character is that I invariably strive to return good for evil.
"As a proof that such is the case, I write these few lines to inform you that Lady Charlotte Mawby is looking out for a companion (who must be a young gentlewoman) for her daughter, who is somewhat of an invalid; and should you think it worth your while to allow Fanny to leave home in the capacity in question, I have little doubt about being able to secure the position for her. The salary would be thirty-five guineas a year.
"Don't shilly-shally over this offer, as you have a way of doing over most things, but let me have a positive 'yes' or 'no' by return of post.
"Your affectionate sister,
"Charlotte Empson."
"P.S.--Pray remember me to Mrs. Sudlow."
This characteristic effusion was like another apple of discord dropped among the inmates of the Vicarage. Needless to say, Mrs. Sudlow's indignation took immediate flame. What business, she should like to know, had Mrs. Empson to assume thatherdaughter, who was second cousin once removed (on her mother's side) to the Earl of Beaumaris, was desirous on her own account, or would be permitted by her parents, to accept the position of companion to anyone?--much less to the daughter of a woman whose husband was nothing more than a rich tallow-chandler who had been created a baronet, for what reason nobody seemed to know, at the close of his year of office as Lord Mayor. It was like Mrs. Empson's low-bred impertinence to dare to propose such a thing.
But fully one-half of Mrs. Sudlow's indignation was due to the tone in which the letter was written. It was gall and wormwood to her to have to submit to reflections on the manner in which her daughter had been brought up. And then, too, the way in which all reference to herself was relegated to a postscript! Yet she dared not, by way of retort courteous, wing even the tiniest of envenomed shafts in return. For her children's sake she could not afford to quarrel with their rich, but odious, old aunt. It was very hard.
But what was Mrs. Sudlow's amazement and bitter indignation when Fanny remarked in her calmly aggravating way that she felt greatly obliged to her aunt, whose offer had come at a most opportune moment, seeing that she had been on the point of asking her parents to allow her to look out for some such situation as the one in question. She was quite aware, she went on to say, that her father's means were cramped, and it seemed to her that she was now of an age when she ought no longer to be a burden to him, but in a position to earn her own living. Her next sister, Winifred, was quite old enough to help her mother with the younger children and to take that position in the household which had heretofore been filled by her--Fanny. In short, this self-opinionated young person made it clearly manifest that she was possessed by a strong desire to work out an independent position for herself, pending a certain event which just now was only dimly discernible as something which pertained to a far-distant future.
As regards this little episode it is enough to add that, in the result, Fanny had her way, and a fortnight later was duly installed as companion to Miss Mawby.
In her encounter with her daughter Mrs. Sudlow had been beaten "all along the line," but even in her defeat she contrived to extract a grain of comfort from the fact that, as Miss Mawby rarely visited London, but spent nearly all her time at one or another watering-place, either in England or on the Continent, it would not be possible for Fanny and her lover to see much, if anything, of each other. That they would correspond was a foregone conclusion, but Mrs. Sudlow had seen something of the world, and had very limited faith in the axiom that "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Within her experience she had not infrequently found that absence has a precisely opposite effect, and that young men--and young maidens too, for that matter--lacking the presence of the object on whom their affections are supposed to be fixed, have a habit of gradually cooling down and of being drawn, as by a magnetic influence which they are unable to resist, to worship at some other shrine, and to conveniently forget, or ignore, the vows they have already whispered in the ear of another. Fanny had told her parents that, as regarded her engagement, no further steps should be taken by her till she was of age; therefore did Mrs. Sudlow derive some barren comfort from the thought that in two years many things might happen.
She found it far easier to forgive Philip Winslade than to forgive his mother; indeed, the latter was a piece of magnanimity which transcended the scope of her limited nature. After all, the young man had not been so much to blame. Fanny was an attractive girl, and it was small wonder that he had fallen in love with her. The head and front of his offending lay in the fact that he had been presumptuous enough to aspire to the hand of one in whose veins ran the blood of the ennobled Penmarthens.
Philip Winslade had been educated at the Iselford Grammar School, whence he had gone, with a scholarship, to Cambridge. As he did not conceive himself adapted for either the Church or the Bar, after taking his degree he had cast about for an opening in a tutorial capacity by way of making a start in life. This he had not been long in finding in the family of a certain Mr. Layland, a wealthy London merchant, who engaged him to take charge of the education of his two sons--backward boys who had been spoiled by their mother, lately dead. Under Phil's supervision the lads soon began to make marked progress, and Mr. Layland had every reason to congratulate himself on his choice.
It was when his engagement with the merchant was about two years old that, as a matter of curiosity and more in order to kill a few idle hours than with any ulterior purpose, he took up and began to study the details of a recent mysterious robbery of bonds and securities of which his employer had been the victim, and which had baffled all the efforts of policedom to bring the criminals to justice. As it was, Winslade presently found that the task he had taken in hand had an absorbing interest for him, as also that it brought into play a certain faculty of analysis of the possession of which he had been only half conscious before, as well as a gift for the sifting of contradictory evidence and the marshalling in orderly sequence of a complicated array of apparently disconnected details, thereby enabling him to build up a theory which indicated how and where the missing clue should be looked for. The result was that Winslade succeeded in doing that which Scotland Yard had failed to effect. As a consequence, his success got talked about in certain City circles, and, a little later, he was asked to take another case in hand which so far had proved to be as great a puzzle as the previous one. Here again Phil was successful in evolving a clue which in the result proved to be the right one.
Such was Mr. Layland's belief in his tutor's abilities that when Phil's engagement came to an end, in consequence of the departure of his pupils for a public school, the merchant requested him to go to the States and there carry out a certain diplomatic business commission which, for reasons of his own, he did not care to entrust to any recognised member of his staff. It was while on his voyage back to England that he encountered Miss Sudlow and her aunt, and thereby brought about a crisis in the affairs of Fanny and himself such as had entered into the dreams of neither.
So unwilling was Mr. Layland to dispense with Phil's services that on his return from America he offered him an influential position in his counting-house at a liberal salary to start with, and with a promise of promotion before he should be much older. But tempting as the offer was in some ways, Phil, feeling that he had neither liking nor aptitude for a commercial career, found himself compelled to decline it. As the next best thing the merchant could do for hisprotégé, he recommended him to his friend Mr. Robert Melray, who just then happened to be in need of the services of a secretary and amanuensis.
Mr. Melray had lately returned from an expedition into the interior of Borneo, and Winslade's duties consisted chiefly in transcribing his diary, together with a miscellaneous collection of notes written in all sorts of places and under all sorts of circumstances, and in working up the whole into a connected narrative of travel with a view to its proximate publication in volume form.
Winslade, working at his employer's rooms in London, had only been engaged a few weeks at his new duties when news came to hand of the tragic and mysterious death of Mr. James Melray. Robert Melray at once hurried down to Merehampton, and Phil was left to go on with his task alone.
One day, about a month later, Robert Melray being up in town for the first time since his brother's death, seized the opportunity to call on his friend Mr. Layland. Naturally their talk gravitated to the strange circumstances connected with the death of the elder Mr. Melray, the younger brother deploring in forcible terms the fact that, despite his offer of a reward of five hundred pounds, so far not the slightest clue to the perpetrator of the crime was forthcoming. Then it was that Mr. Layland brought Winslade's name on the carpet, instancing the able way in which he had succeeded in tracking down the criminals in the case of the bond robbery, as also in the second case he had taken in hand, and strongly advising his friend to induce Phil to take up the affairsub rosâand see whathecould make of it. Robert Melray, who was ready to catch at the slightest straw in his burning desire to bring his brother's murderer to justice, did not fail to act on the merchant's advice. He went direct to Winslade, told him what he had heard with reference to his abilities in a certain line, and begged of him, as a great favour, to take the Loudwater Case in hand and bring all his efforts to bear on its unravelment.
It was not without reluctance that Phil acceded to his employer's request. He had a strong objection to being regarded in the light of a private detective, but the circumstances of the affair being such as they were, it would have seemed a very ungracious act on his part to refuse his aid, whether it might prove worth much or little, in the elucidation of the mystery of James Melray's death.
Accordingly, a few hours later found him at Merehampton duly installed in Loudwater House in the position of Mr. Robert Melray's amanuensis. Not a syllable was breathed to anyone that any ulterior motive was at the bottom of his sojourn under the roof of the old mansion.
But, as we have already seen, all Winslade's efforts proved, as those of the police had already done, wholly unavailing to trace the assassin of James Melray. The mystery baffled him as it had baffled them, and at the end of a month he went back to London no wiser in one respect than he had left it. A month or two later his services with Mr. Melray came to an end.
While he was taking a brief holiday and considering in what way he could best put to account such talents and experience as he possessed, a communication reached him from Mr. Layland. That gentleman was the chief promoter, financially, of a new weekly newspaper which was on the eve of making its appearance, and he was good enough to offer Phil an appointment on the staff. It was an offer which was gratefully accepted. The new venture proved to be a success from every point of view. Phil was still engaged on it, and was likely to be so for an indefinite time to come. He had at length found themétierwhich seemed best suited to his tastes and abilities, and that of itself ought to afford a large measure of content to any reasonable being.
A close correspondence had been kept up all this time between himself and Miss Sudlow. Only twice had they met, and that for an hour only on each occasion. Miss Mawby, the semi-invalid to whom Fanny filled the office of companion, as a rule detested London, but there were times when she was seized by an irresistible longing to do a day's shopping at the West-end, on which occasions she would rush up to town from wherever she might be, dragging Fanny with her, only to go back, exhausted and worn out, a couple of days later. On two such occasions it was that Fanny and her lover had contrived to meet.
Philip Winslade had never felt quite the same man from the date of his mother's confession. It seemed to him as if he had grown half-a-dozen years older in the course of the first few hours after he was told. Circumstances had forced him to confront the skeleton which for long years had been his mother's companion, and it seemed to him that its grisly presence would haunt him till the last day of his life. With it ever in the background, only felt to be there while he was mixing among the crowd of his fellowmen, but intruding itself as a ghastly reality on his hours of solitude, a measure of that sunshine which his life's morning had heretofore held had vanished, never to return. It was only his supreme love for Fanny which strengthened him and nerved him to oppose with all the power of his will the insidious encroachment of that baleful shadow which, but for that, would have gradually enfolded him in its chill embrace, and have darkened the issues of his life through all the years to come.
We now come to the date of the letter written by Fanny to her lover, the contents of which are already known to the reader. That letter was answered to the following effect a week later.
"My darling Fanny,--That your letter, with its accompanying number ofThe Family Cornucopia, was a great surprise to me I at once admit. After reading it, I turned to the story, which I went through very carefully, some parts of it more than once, and I quite agree with you that the writer of it seems to have been mixed up in some, to me, inexplicable way with the Loudwater Tragedy.
"So much, indeed, was I impressed with several points in the narrative, so startling was the new theory of possibilities which it had the effect of opening up, so minute did the writer's acquaintance seem to be with the details of the crime, that a strong desire to find out some particulars about him, and, if it were possible, to make his acquaintance, took possession of me. All the more strongly did I feel myself urged thereto in that it was impossible for me to forget how thoroughly the case had baffled all my attempts at its elucidation.
"Accordingly, the following forenoon found me at the office ofThe Family Cornucopia, where, after having sent in my card, I was presently asked into the presence of the editor--a pleasant, middle-aged gentleman, Mr. Philpot by name. When I told him that my object in calling on him was to obtain the name and address of the writer of an article in such and such a number of his magazine, he shook his head and said with a smile that I was asking for a kind of information which he was not prepared to give save in very exceptional cases. To this I replied that my case was a very exceptional one indeed, and thereupon I went on to tell him of my connection with the Loudwater affair (leaving him to infer that I was still in the service of Mr. Melray), how struck I had been by the perusal of the story entitled 'How, and Why,' and proceeded to detail some of my reasons for wishing to make the author's acquaintance. After that there was no further difficulty. 'Here is what you ask for,' he said a couple of minutes later, as he handed me a slip of paper.
"'May I ask, Mr. Philpot, whether you have had any previous contributions from Mr. Frank Timmins?' I queried, after a glance at the name on the paper.
"'None that we have seen our way to accept. From time to time he has sent us several little things, none of which, however, have proved to be quite up to our mark; but the story entitled "How, and Why," was so far superior to anything Mr. Timmins had sent us before that we were glad to retain it.'
"There being nothing further to learn from Mr. Philpot, I presently went my way. A hansom took me to the address in Pentonville which the editor had given me. Mr. Timmins, however, proved to be not at home. He was a single man, his landlady told me, and I further elicited from her that he was a reporter for certain newspapers, as also that the most likely time for finding him at home was after seven o'clock in the evening.
"Seven-thirty sharp saw me again at Pentonville. This time, fortunately, Mr. Timmins was at home, and I was at once shown to his sitting-room, which, I may add, was also his bedroom. He had just finished his tea and was in the act of charging his pipe as I was shown in. When his landlady disappeared she took the tea-tray with her.
"Mr. Timmins is a man of four or five and twenty, with a fair but somewhat freckled face, straw-coloured hair, and weak eyes. By the time I had been ten minutes in his company I had discovered him to be one of that numerous class of young men who have a very excellent opinion of themselves and their abilities, without having anything to offer the world in justification thereof.
"The first thing I did was to hand him my card.
"'To what may I attribute the honour of this visit, Mr. Winslade?' he asked, as, after glancing at the card, he laid it on the table.
"'I am given to understand by the editor ofThe Family Cornucopiathat you are the author of a story entitled "How, and Why" which appeared in a recent number of that magazine. May I assume, Mr. Timmins, that such is the fact?'
"He changed colour and hesitated for a second or two before answering. Then he said: 'Really, Mr. Winslade, I am at a loss to imagine how it can possibly matter to you whether I am, or am not, the author of the story in question. Still, if, as you state, Mr. Philpot has seen fit to acknowledge the fact, I am not going to run counter to his statement.'
"'Thank you for your frankness, Mr. Timmins,' I replied, as I drew my chair a little closer to the table which divided us. 'You may take it for granted that the information I am here to seek at your hands has not for its object the satisfaction of an idle curiosity; very far indeed is that from being the case. What I should like you to tell me first of all is, whence and how you obtained the information, in other words, the basis of fact, on which your story is built up.'
"As before, there was the same hesitation prior to answering. Then he said: 'I fail to understand why you should assume that my story has any, even the slightest substratum of fact, or that it is anything more than a specimen of purely imaginative writing.'
"'That is a point as to which I can speedily enlighten you,' was my reply.
"Thereupon I entered into the reasons, one by one, which had sufficed to convince me that, whoever the writer of the story might be, he was someone who had not merely a suspiciously intimate knowledge of all the details of the Loudwater Tragedy, but one who professed to account for the crime after a fashion so startling and original that I, as a person connected to some extent with the case, felt bound to ascertain what amount of truth, if any, underlaid his statements.
"Mr. Timmins listened with growing wonder, and when I had come to an end he lay back in his chair, and for several seconds could do nothing but stare blankly at me. At length he said: 'It is, perhaps, a fortunate thing for me, Mr. Winslade, that my share in the story, or whatever it may be called, is one that can very readily be explained. To begin with, I am only part author of it. But perhaps I had better, first of all, explain by what a singular conjunction of circumstances the original MS. came into my hands. Possibly you may remember that, some months ago, several people were killed owing to a railway accident about a couple of miles beyond Eastwich?' I nodded. 'I, sir, happened to be in the train when the accident took place, but was fortunate enough to escape with nothing worse than a few bruises and a severe shaking, while the only other passenger in the same compartment with me was killed on the spot. I had been to report the speeches at a great political meeting in the country, and was on my way back to London by the night mail, travelling first-class in order that I might be the better enabled to transcribe my notesen route. For a part of the time I was alone, but at some station, I forget which, I was joined by another passenger. I was too immersed in my work to take more than the most casual notice of him, and all I can remember is that he was young and dark-complexioned and had a black moustache. I did notice, however, and I had occasion to remember the fact later on, that after he had been some time in the carriage he took out of his pocket a number of loose sheets of paper covered with writing, and began to read them with what seemed to me the closest attention, making an occasional pencil memorandum in the margin of one or another of them as he went on. We were both at work, each in his own fashion, when, without any other warning than a prolonged shriek of the engine, of which neither of us took any notice, the crash came. All I knew, or felt, of it was a momentary shock, as if all my limbs had been suddenly dislocated, after which came an utter blank.
"'When consciousness returned, and I was able to realise what had happened, I found myself lying on the sloping embankment of the line, where I had been laid by the men who had extricated me from the wrecked carriage. A yard or two away lay stretched the body of my travelling companion, stone dead. A little brandy, administered by I know not whom, revived me wonderfully, and thereupon I woke to the necessity of recovering my missing shorthand notes, which doubtless were somewhere among thedébrisof the carriage. Feeling still too shaken and bruised to go in search of them myself, I gave a platelayer half-a-crown to find them for me by the aid of his hand-lamp. After a quarter of an hour he returned with a jumble of loose papers, which he said were all that he could find. Without looking at them, I thrust them into my pocket, and it was not I after I reached home, some five or six hours later, and came to examine them, that I found among them the sheets which my dead travelling companion had been reading at the moment of the accident, which the platelayer, in ignorance of their not being my property, had rescued from the wreck together with my own.
"'For the time being I laid them aside, but later in the day, when my own work had been despatched, I sat down to read them; and next day, when I went down by train to attend the inquest to which I had been summoned as a witness, I took the papers with me. And now comes a very singular feature of the affair. The body of my travelling companion was never identified; nor, so far as I am aware, is it known to this day who he was; nor, beyond such information on the point as the railway-ticket found in one of his pockets afforded, whence he had come or for what place other than London--which is a big address--he was bound. He seemed to have been travelling without luggage of any kind; his linen was unmarked, and there was nothing whatever found on him by the aid of which his identity could be established. Under those circumstances, I kept the dead man's papers by me, saying no word about them to anybody. As a matter of course, I took the precaution of looking carefully through them with a view of ascertaining whether they furnished any clue to the personality of the writer, but none such could I find. When I tell you this, Mr. Winslade, you will at once understand in what light I regarded the MS. To me it seemed neither more nor less than a rather clever little magazine story--a piece of pure fiction, in point of fact. As such I read it, and such I should have still believed it to be but for what you have told me this evening.
"'Well, sir, some three or four months after the unknown writer of the MS. had been buried, I said to myself one day, "Why not write it out in my own hand, invent an ending to it, give it a name, and send it to one of the magazines? If it comes back it will only be one failure the more." And failures in that line were things to which I was becoming pretty well used.'
"Here I interrupted Mr. Timmins for the first time.
"'You say "invent an ending to it,"' I remarked. 'Had the MS., then, a different ending from that which it has in the printed story?'
"'I ought, perhaps, to have remarked before that it had no ending of any kind,' replied Timmins, 'but broke off abruptly at the bottom of a page. Whether the writer had never finished it, or whether, if a more thorough search had been made in the carriage, the continuation of it would have been found, I am, of course, unable to say. In any case, as far as I am concerned, unfinished it was; consequently all the latter part of the story, as printed, is from my pen.'
"I at once saw, how important a knowledge of this fact might prove to be, should the Loudwater Case ever come to be reopened. Laying the open periodical before him on the table, I said, 'Will you be good enough, Mr. Timmins, to point out the place where the original MS. left off, and your pen took up the running?'
"After drawing the magazine to him and casting his eye over the columns, he said presently, marking a certain place with his thumb-nail as he did so, 'Here is where the original writer ends and I begin.'
"'May I take it, then, as a fact that up to the point indicated by you the printed story follows exactly on the lines of the MS.?'
"'As nearly so as makes no matter. Here and there a word may have been changed or transposed, or the turn of a sentence altered, but it may be accepted as being to all intents and purposes a faithful copy of the MS.'
"You, my dear Fan, have read the story; so, when I tell you that the point at which the break occurs is where 'Ernestine' and her former lover find themselves together in the old merchant's office, you will not fail to call to mind what a very important share of the narrative proves to be wholly due to the inventive genius of Mr. Timmins. And yet, perhaps, on further consideration, it is not really so important as at first sight it seems. You and I knew, the moment we read it, that the latter half of the narrative was nothing more than a farrago of fiction; but who, in view of the little that is really known of the causes which led to Mr. Melray's death, dare venture to assert that the incidents, as detailed in the early part of it, may not be based on fact? That is just what one would like to be in a position to determine.
"But to return.
"'By the way, Mr. Timmins,' I said, 'I should like very particularly to inspect the original MS.; indeed, I may add that I should like to take possession of it for a little while.'
"'I am sorry to say that it is no longer in existence. I kept it till I heard that my story was accepted; then I burnt it.'
"'Oh, you idiot!' was my mental exclamation; but aloud I only said it was a great pity he had done so.
"'Judging from what you have told me,' I went on presently, 'I suppose I may take it for a fact that there was no hint whatever in the MS. about suspicion fixing itself on "Mr. Day," the head clerk, nor anything about his arrest and subsequent trial and conviction? Neither, I presume, was there any mention made of the writer's intention to commit suicide?'
"'All those portions of the narrative were of my own invention. The thing needed an ending of some kind in order to render it acceptable to a magazine editor, and, to tell you the truth, I rather prided myself on the way in which I got over the difficulty.'
"Evidently there was nothing more to be got out of Mr. Timmins. The truthfulness of what he had told me I did not for a moment doubt. He made no difficulty, before I left him, about pledging me his word not to speak of our interview to anyone.
"The first thing I did next day was to hunt through a file of old newspapers for the particulars of the Eastwich railway accident. What I there read confirmed Timmins's statement in every respect. One of the four victims of the accident was buried without having been identified. Still, it was just possible that someone might have since come forward and, by means of his clothes and the minute personal description of him which would doubtless be taken prior to his interment, have been able to claim him as the missing relative, or friend, of whom they were in search, in which case his name and address when living, with, possibly, other particulars concerning him, would doubtless be now in the possession of the railway authorities.
"But my hope that such might prove to be the case was doomed to disappointment. The next post took a note from me to the railway company, to which they promptly replied. No one, they informed me, had ever come forward to claim, or identify, the unknown victim of the Eastwich accident. My next step was to write to Mr. Robert Melray and ask him to inform me when and where I could have half an hour's talk with him. His reply was to the effect that he should be in town a couple of days later and would call upon me.
"My justification for so doing lay in the fact that in the MS.--supposing that any value was to be attached to its statements--there were certain allegations so seriously affecting the reputation of the widow of the murdered man that it seemed to me absolutely essential that the present head of the family should be made acquainted with them. It would then rest with him to decide whether any further action, and if so, of what kind, should be taken in the affair, or whether it should be allowed to rest where it does and remain an unsolved mystery till the end of time.
"Well, my interview with Mr. Melray came off in due course. As I think I have told you before, he is a man of strong feelings, although he shows little of them on the surface, and his burning desire to bring to justice the unknown person, or persons, who were concerned in his brother's tragic fate remains just as strong as ever it was. I found him more inclined than I confess I am to look upon the MS. (so to term that portion of the narrative found in the railway carriage) as a genuine recital of facts. To him it seems by no means unlikely that the assassin of his brother may, in very truth, have been a former lover of Mrs. Melray. Of course the question did not fail to put itself to him, as it had already put itself to me: Were the murderer and the unknown man who was killed in the railway accident one and the same person? And if so, was he also the writer of the MS.? But those were questions which he was no more able to answer than I had been.
"I had already cause for believing that the feeling with which Mr. Robert Melray regards his brother's widow is not of the most friendly kind. That to a certain extent she is inimical to him I cannot doubt. Consequently I was not much surprised when he avowed his intention of having the case reopened--to the extent, at least, if such a thing should prove possible, of testing the accuracy of the MS. so far as it concerned itself with the relations between 'Ernestine,' otherwise the wife, and her lover. But such a course was far easier to determine on than to carry into effect, and how to set about it was a point which puzzled both of us. Finally Mr. Melray and I parted without having come to an agreement as to any definite course of action. He has promised to call on me again three days hence. Meanwhile, at his request, I am going down to Solchester with the view of making a few cautious inquiries having reference to the existence there of any possible lover of Mrs. Melray prior to her marriage.
"And now to change the subject to something more personal to ourselves.
* * * * * *
"Yours unalterably,
"Philip Winslade.
"P.S.--If any further evidence were needed to prove that the story 'How, and Why' is based on the Loudwater Tragedy, one might find it in several of the thinly-veiled names which the anonymous writer has thought fit to make use of. Thus, in the story Mr. Melray becomes 'Mr. Melville'; the head clerk, Mr. Cray, is changed into 'Mr. Day'; Silston, the chief constable, becomes 'Dilston'; while, in place of Merehampton as thelocaleof the narrative, we are introduced to the town of 'Hampton Magna.'"