Only a clod
something better than a human creature; and having always found him so
much the gentleman myself, and so open-hearted and frank in all his
ways, I could scarcely do otherwise than believe her. But still I urged
her all I could against trusting him. ‘Don’t go, my dear,’ I said; ‘or,
if you must go, let me go with you.’ But she blushed very red, and said,
‘Oh, Mrs. Burfield, the marriage is to be a secret, and I promised
Robert again and again that I wouldn’t say a word about it to you or any
living creature. Only you’ve been so good to me, and I couldn’t bear to
go away without telling you the whole truth.’ And upon this I begged her
still harder not to go away; I told her no good ever came out of secret
marriages, and that there was generally something underhand and false at
the bottom of them, that brought about all kinds of trouble and
suffering afterwards. And I told her how my Burfield married me publicly
in St. Pancras’ Church, and would have his two sisters--one in pink and
one in blue--besides the Miss Parkinses, his first cousins, who were
sweetly dressed in green and salmon, to walk after me to the altar. But
it was no more use talking to Susan than if she’d been a stone statue,
though she sat herself on the little hassock at my feet, and kept crying
one minute and smiling the next, and talking about her darling Robert,
and kissing me, till I almost thought her brain was turned. It was no
use talking. ‘I love him so dearly,’ she said, ‘and I know how noble and
generous he is.’ And that was her only argument; and long before
daylight the next morning she went away by the early train; and though
my heart seemed bleeding for her, I couldn’t kiss her when she said
good-bye, and I couldn’t go to the station to see her off. ‘No, Susan,’
I said, ‘if you must go, you must, and I’ve no power to keep you back;
but I’ll be neither act nor part in your going.’ But I stood at my
window to see her go away, and I shall never forget the dark, drizzly
morning, with streaks of gray like on one side of the sky, and white
sickly-looking stars on the other, and Susan walking across the waste
ground all alone, with the rain driving at her, and the wind beating at
her, and a bit of a shabby carpet-bag in her hand. It seemed so dreadful
to think she was going to be married like that.”
“But she _did_ go away?” cried Francis. “She must have come back to you,
then; for the letter with the Coltonslough post-mark reached her father
less than eighteen months ago.”
“I’m coming to that,” answered Mrs. Burfield. “It’s about eighteen
months ago that she came back to me, looking, Oh! so changed, so broken
down, that I hadn’t the heart to ask her any questions. I could see that
all had gone wrong, and I could guess pretty well what kind of wrong it
was. She never mentioned Mr. Lesley’s name; and there was something in
her face that seemed to make me afraid to mention it myself. She wanted
to lodge with me, she said, and would pay me for her lodgings. I could
see that she wore a wedding-ring on her finger, but she had no other
jewellery whatever. She was dressed in black,--black silk that had once
been very handsome, but which was rusty and shabby then. The first night
she came to me she sat up very late writing, and in the morning she went
out with a letter in her hand. She was with me more than two months; but
that was the last time I ever saw her write. She used to be fond of
reading; but now she never took up a book, though Mr. Lesley had left a
good many of his books in the little chiffonier in the parlour, thinking
to come back, as he told me. She used to be fond of the children; but
now she never noticed them, and after a little while they seemed to
shrink away from her, as if she was strange to them somehow. For hours
and days together she used to sit in the bow-window, watching the road
from the station, as if she expected some one. At dusk she would go out
and walk upon the Esplanade, just at the time that he used to walk with
his cigar. It was the dull season, and there was no one to notice her.
At last, about the middle of May, when the visitors began to come to
Coltonslough, she told me one day that she must leave me. I said, ‘Was
it on account of the lodgings?’ because she knew I used to raise the
rent at that time of year, and I thought that might be the cause of her
wanting to go. But she said, ‘Oh! no, no.’ She had only had one purpose
in stopping so long, and that was in the hope of seeing some one, or
getting an answer to a letter she had written; and now there was no
longer any hope of that. So I couldn’t persuade her to stay any longer,
do what I would, and she went away. She had friends in London, she told
me, who had promised to put her in the way of getting her own living
somehow or other. I kissed her this time, willing enough, poor child,
and I went with her to the station; and I thought her pale face looked
almost like a ghost’s as she waved her hand to me from the carriage
window.”
“You’re a good woman!” cried Mr. Tredethlyn, half crushing Mrs.
Burfield’s skinny hands in his strong fingers,--“you’re a good woman,
and you did your best to befriend that poor girl.”
Mrs. Burfield sighed, and wiped her eyes with the corner of a rusty
black-silk apron. The world had been very hard for her; but there was a
gentle, womanly haven somewhere in her breast, and Susan Tredethlyn had
taken shelter there.
“She’d been gone a little over six weeks, when an old gentleman came one
morning, and asked to see a girl called Susan. That’s how he put it. He
was very stern looking, and he threw me all in a tremble, somehow, with
his ways; but I asked him down here, and then, little by little, he made
me tell him pretty nearly all I’ve told you. I couldn’t keep anything
back from him; he put his questions so fierce and sudden; and every time
I hesitated ever so little, he accused me of prevaricating with him, and
trying to deceive him. I could see his eyes glaring at me like coals of
fire, and his face turned of a bluish white, so that I was almost
frightened he’d drop down in a fit. But when he’d got all the story out
of me, he stood up as straight and stern as if he’d been only twenty
years old, and said, ‘No man of my name ever knew what disgrace was
until to-day; and may the heaviest curse that ever fell upon a woman’s
head come down upon my shameful daughter!’ He stretched up his two
hands,--and I shall never forget him as he stood there with his white
hair, and the bluish white of his face, and the dreadful glare in his
eyes. Then he put on his hat and walked out of the house, taking no more
notice of me than if I’d been a stock or a stone. I heard the front door
bang to after him; and I ran upstairs to the parlour window, and saw him
walking away towards the station; and that’s the last I saw of him.”
“Can you remember upon what day this occurred?”
“Yes, I can; for I’d had the parlour lodgers leave me the day before. It
was the 29th of June.”
The 29th of June! and on the 30th Oliver Tredethlyn had executed that
will which made Francis master of thirty thousand a year. The young man
knew now why his uncle had left him a great fortune, and found it still
more difficult to feel very grateful to his benefactor.
There was a long pause, during which vengeful thoughts had their full
way in the breast of Francis Tredethlyn.
“Can you tell me nothing more of this man,” he said presently,--“this
scoundrel, who called himself Robert Lesley?”
Mrs. Burfield only answered by a hopeless shake of her head.
“He left some books, you say. Was there none among them that would give
any clue to who or what he was?”
Again Mrs. Burfield shook her head.
“You’re welcome to look at the books,” she said; “there’s plenty of
pencil-writing in them, but no name or address,--only initials.”
She knelt down before a little chiffonier in a corner by the fireplace,
and took out a few volumes, some handsomely, some shabbily bound, and
placed them before Francis Tredethlyn.
Upon the handsomely-bound books the initials “R. L.” appeared in a
gilded monogram. Four of the volumes were German translations of some
recondite classics; but there was a fifth upon which Mr. Tredethlyn
fastened eagerly. It was a small flat volume, bound in sheepskin, and
fastened with a brass lock--a very superior kind of lock. On the cover
was written the one word “Journal.”
“Let me have this book,” he said; “I’ll give you a hundred pounds for
it.”
Mrs. Burfield’s mouth opened with a spasmodic action, and for once in
her life she forgot to sigh.
“A hundred pounds!”
“A hundred--two, if you like. Haven’t I told you that I’m a rich man?
and you’ve been kind to my cousin. I’ll give you the money as a free
gift, for the matter of that; but I must have this book. It’s a
journal--a book in which a man writes a history of his own life. An
officer I knew in Van Diemen’s Land used to write such a history by fits
and starts. How do I know what this may tell me about my cousin? Let me
have it. I know the book isn’t yours; but there can be no such thing as
honour or faith to be kept with a man like that. Let me have the book.”
There was a good deal more said upon the matter; but the end of it was
that Francis Tredethlyn went back to London with the sheepskin-covered
volume in his pocket; and Mrs. Burfield, retiring to rest after a heavy
supper of cold meat and cucumber, dreamt that she had inherited a
million of money from one of the Coltonslough tax-collectors.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII.
A MODERN GENTLEMAN’S DIARY.
Francis Tredethlyn went back to the hotel in Covent Garden with the
little sheepskin-covered volume appertaining to the gentleman who called
himself Robert Lesley, safely stowed in his pocket. He went straight
back to the hotel, ate his simple dinner, drew the candles near him, and
then, taking up a poker from the hearth, made short work of the lock
under which the stranger had kept his secrets. All thought of those
sunny gardens and drawing-rooms at Twickenham, the glancing river, the
woody background, faded out of his mind for a time, and gave place to
one settled purpose--the discovery of his missing cousin’s destroyer.
Yes, her destroyer! He had only been able to read Mrs. Burfield’s story
in one fashion. The solitary departure in the chill light of a winter’s
morning, the haste and secrecy, the lonely return long afterwards; these
things seemed to the young man to point only to one conclusion;--the
simple Cornish girl’s faith had been betrayed by the man she had so
implicitly trusted.
In the little volume before him Francis Tredethlyn hoped to find some
further clue to that sad history. He seemed to take a savage pleasure in
punishing the neat brazen lock, which he shattered with a couple of
vigorous blows from the handle of the poker.
“I wonder whether, when a man’s a villain, he writes _that_ down?”
thought Mr. Tredethlyn. “I can’t fancy a scoundrel putting the truth
about himself even on paper; and if the truth isn’t here, I can’t see
how the book will help me. And yet there must be secrets in it, too, or
he’d never have had such a lock as this. Mr. Lowther used to throw his
journal about any where, and I don’t think _he_ ever did anything that
was particularly worth writing down.”
The Cornishman began to turn over the volume very slowly, looking at the
pages cautiously, almost as if he expected to see some venomous creature
crawl out from between the leaves. The first twenty pages of the book
were filled with the records of a college life, in which brief memoranda
of study were interspersed with boating slang and turf calculations. The