The trail of the serpent
were at Kuppins’s service; and her reign as heroine-in-chief of this
dark romance in real life was only put an end to by the appearance
of Mr. Peters, the hero, who came home by-and-by, hot and dusty, to
announce to the world of Little Gulliver Street, by means of the
alphabet, very grimy after his exertions, that the dead man had been
recognized as the principal usher of a great school up at the other
end of the town, and that his name was, or had been, Jabez North. His
motive for committing suicide he had carried a secret with him into
the dark and mysterious region to which he was a voluntary traveller;
and Mr. Peters, whose business it was to pry about the confines of
this shadowy land, though powerless to penetrate the interior, could
only discover some faint rumour of an ambitious love for his master’s
daughter as being the cause of the young usher’s untimely end. What
secrets this dead man had carried with him into the shadow-land, who
shall say? There might be one, perhaps, which even Mr. Peters, with his
utmost acuteness, could not discover.
CHAPTER VII.
THE USHER RESIGNS HIS SITUATION.
ON the very day on which Mr. Peters treated Kuppins and the “fondling”
to tea and watercresses, Dr. Tappenden and Jane his daughter returned
to their household gods at Slopperton.
Who shall describe the ceremony and bustle with which that great
dignitary, the master of the house, was received? He had announced
his return by the train which reached Slopperton at seven o’clock;
so at that hour a well-furnished tea-table was ready laid in the
study--that terrible apartment which little boys entered with red eyes
and pale cheeks, emerging therefrom in a pleasant glow, engendered
by a specific peculiar to schoolmasters whose desire it is not to
spoil the child. But no ghosts of bygone canings, no infantine
whimpers from shadow-land--(though little Allecompain, dead and gone,
had received correction in this very room)--haunted the Doctor’s
sanctorum--a cheerful apartment, warm in winter, and cool in summer,
and handsomely furnished at all times. The silver tea-pot reflected
the evening sunshine; and reflected too Sarah Jane laying the table,
none the handsomer for being represented upside down, with a tendency
to become collapsed or elongated, as she hovered about the tea-tray.
Anchovy-paste, pound-cake, Scotch marmalade and fancy bread, all seemed
to cry aloud for the arrival of the doctor and his daughter to demolish
them; but for all that there was fear in the hearts of the household as
the hour for that arrival drew near. What would he say to the absence
of his factotum? Who should tell him? Every one was innocent enough,
certainly; but in the first moment of his fury might not the descending
avalanche of the Doctor’s wrath crush the innocent? Miss Smithers--who,
as well as being presiding divinity of the young gentlemen’s wardrobes,
was keeper of the keys of divers presses and cupboards, and had sundry
awful trusts connected with tea and sugar and butchers’ bills--was
elected by the whole household, from the cook to the knife-boy, as
the proper person to make the awful announcement of the unaccountable
disappearance of Mr. Jabez North. So, when the doctor and his daughter
had alighted from the fly which brought them and their luggage from the
station, Miss Smithers hovered timidly about them, on the watch for a
propitious moment.
“How have you enjoyed yourself, miss? Judging by your looks I should
say very much indeed, for never did I see you looking better,” said
Miss Smithers, with more enthusiasm than punctuation, as she removed
the shawl from the lovely shoulders of Miss Tappenden.
“Thank you, Smithers, I am better,” replied the young lady, with
languid condescension. Miss Tappenden, on the strength of never having
anything the matter with her, was always complaining, and passed her
existence in taking sal-volatile and red lavender, and reading three
volumes a day from the circulating library.
“And how,” asked the ponderous voice of the ponderous Doctor, “how
is everything going on, Smithers?” By this time they were seated at
the tea-table, and the learned Tappenden was in the act of putting
five lumps of sugar in his cup, while the fair Smithers lingered in
attendance.
“Quite satisfactory, sir, I’m sure,” replied that young lady, growing
very much confused. “Everything quite satisfactory, sir; leastways----”
“What do you mean by _leastways_, Smithers?” asked the Doctor,
impatiently. “In the first place it isn’t English; and in the next
it sounds as if it meant something unpleasant. For goodness sake,
Smithers, be straightforward and business-like. Has anything gone
wrong? What is it? And why wasn’t I informed of it?”
Smithers, in despair at her incapability of answering these three
questions at once, as no doubt she ought to have been able to do, or
the Doctor would not have asked them, stammered out,--
“Mr. North, sir----”
“‘Mr. North, sir’! Well, what of ‘Mr. North, sir’? By the bye, where is
Mr. North? Why isn’t he here to receive us?”
Smithers feels that she is in for it; so, after two or three nervous
gulps, and other convulsive movements of the throat, she continues
thus--“Mr. North, sir, didn’t come home last night, sir. We sat up for
him till one o’clock this morning--last night, sir.”
The rising storm in the Doctor’s face is making Smithers’s English more
_un_-English every moment.
“Didn’t come last night? Didn’t return to my house at the hour of ten,
which hour has been appointed by me for the retiring to rest of every
person in my employment?” cried the Doctor, aghast.
“No, sir! Nor yet this morning, sir! Nor yet this afternoon, sir! And
the West-Indian pupils have been looking out of the window, sir, and
would, which we told them not till we were hoarse, sir.”
“The person intrusted by me with the care of my pupils abandoning
his post, and my pupils looking out of the window!” exclaimed Dr.
Tappenden, in the tone of a man who says--“The glory of England has
departed! You wouldn’t, perhaps, believe it; but it has!”
“We didn’t know what to do, sir, and so we thought we’d better not do
it,” continued the bewildered Smithers. “And we thought as you was
coming back to-day, we’d better leave it till you did come back--and
please, sir, will you take any new-laid eggs?”
“Eggs!” said the Doctor; “new-laid eggs! Go away, Smithers. There must
be some steps taken immediately. That young man was my right hand, and
I would have trusted him with untold gold; or,” he added, “with my
cheque-book.”
As he uttered the words “cheque-book,” he, as it were instinctively,
laid his hand upon the pocket which contained that precious volume;
but as he did so, he remembered that he had used the last leaf but one
when writing a cheque for a midsummer butcher’s bill, and that he had
a fresh book in his desk untouched. This desk was always kept in the
study, and the Doctor gave an involuntary glance in the direction in
which it stood.
It was a very handsome piece of furniture, ponderous, like the Doctor
himself; a magnificent construction of shining walnut-wood and dark
green morocco, with a recess for the Doctor’s knees, and on either
side of this recess two rows of drawers, with brass handles and Bramah
locks. The centre drawer on the left hand side contained an inner and
secret drawer, and towards the lock of this drawer the Doctor looked,
for this contained his new cheque-book. The walnut-wood round the lock
of this centre drawer seemed a little chipped; the Doctor thought he
might as well get up and look at it; and a nearer examination showed
the brass handle to be slightly twisted, as if a powerful hand had
wrenched it out of shape. The Doctor, taking hold of the handle to
pull it straight, drew the drawer out, and scattered its contents upon
the floor; also the contents of the inner drawer, and amongst them the
cheque-book, half-a-dozen leaves of which had been torn out.
“So,” said the Doctor, “this man, whom I trusted, has broken open my
desk, and finding no money, he has taken blank cheques, in the hope of
being able to forge my name. To think that I did not know this man!”
To think that you did not, Doctor; to think, too, that you do not even
now, perhaps, know half this man may have been capable of.
But it was time for action, not reflection; so the Doctor hurried to
the railway station, and telegraphed to his bankers in London to
stop any cheques presented in his signature, and to have the person
presenting such cheques immediately arrested. From the railway station
he hurried, in an undignified perspiration, to the police-office,
to institute a search for the missing Jabez, and then returned
home, striking terror into the hearts of his household, ay, even to
the soul of his daughter, the lovely Jane, who took an extra dose
of sal-volatile, and went to bed to read “Lady Clarinda, or the
Heart-breaks of Belgravia.”
With the deepening twilight came a telegraphic message from the bank
to say that cheques for divers sums had been presented and cashed by
different people in the course of the day. On the heels of this message
came another from the police-station, announcing that a body had been
found upon Halford Heath answering to the description of the missing
man.
The bewildered schoolmaster, hastening to the station, recognises,
at a glance, the features of his late assistant. The contents of
the dead man’s pocket, the empty bottle with the too significant
label, are shown him. No, some other hand than the usher’s must have
broken open the desk in the study, and the unfortunate young man’s
reputation had been involved in a strange coincidence. But the motive
for his rash act? That is explained by a most affecting letter in the
dead man’s hand, which is found in his desk. It is addressed to the
Doctor, expresses heartfelt gratitude for that worthy gentleman’s past
kindnesses, and hints darkly at a hopeless attachment to his daughter,
which renders the writer’s existence a burden too heavy for him to
bear. For the rest, Jabez North has passed a threshold, over which the
boldest and most inquisitive scarcely care to follow him. So he takes
his own little mystery with him into the land of the great mystery.
There is, of course, an inquest, at which two different chemists, who
sold laudanum to Jabez North on the night before his disappearance,
give their evidence. There is another chemist, who deposes to having
sold him, a day or two before, a bottle of patent hair-dye, which is
also a poisonous compound; but surely he never could have thought of
poisoning himself with hair-dye.
The London police are at fault in tracing the presenters of the
cheques; and the proprietors of the bank, or the clerks, who maintain
a common fund to provide against their own errors, are likely to be
considerable losers. In the meanwhile the worthy Doctor announces, by
advertisements in the Slopperton papers, that “his pupils assemble on
the 27th of July.”
=Book the Third.=
HOLY INSTITUTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE VALUE OF AN OPERA-GLASS.
PARIS!--City of fashion, pleasure, beauty, wealth, rank, talent, and
indeed all the glories of the earth. City of palaces, in which La
Vallière smiled, and Scarron sneered; under whose roofs the echoes
of Bossuet’s voice have resounded, while folly, coming to be amused,
has gone away in tears, only to forget to-morrow what it has heard
to-night. Glorious city, in which a _bon mot_ is more famous than
a good action; which is richer in the records of Ninon de Lenclos than
in those of Joan of Arc; for which Beaumarchais wrote, and Marmontel