Works of Ellen Wood, page 658
“I don’t understand you, squire.”
“You are turning against the money he left, which is the same thing, wanting to make ducks and drakes of it.”
“Marmaduke Curr’s grandson came here and asked me if I would act for him as his solicitor, and I assented,” said Mr. Fauntleroy. “In entering this action against you, I am but obeying his instructions.”
“Marmaduke Carr’s grandson!” scoffed the squire. “Who is he, the ill-born cur” — not but that the squire’s words were somewhat plainer— “that he should presume to set himself up in his false pretences?”
“Ill-born or well-born, my clients are the same to me, provided their cause is good, and they pay me,” coolly rejoined Mr. Fauntleroy.
“Well, is it a hoax?” asked the squire, coming nearer to the point, for Mr. Fauntleroy was taking a stealthy glance at his watch.
“If you mean is the action a hoax, most certainly it is not. Robert Carr looks upon it that he has the best right to his grandfather’s money, and — —”
“Why do you call him Robert Carr?” interposed the squire, in a flash of anger.
“What else can I call him? I wish you’d be a little cooler, and let me finish. And he has given me instructions to spare no pains, no expense, in maintaining this action against you.”
“Is he a fool?” asked the squire. “It’s one of two things: either he is a fool — for he must know that such an action can’t be sustained under present circumstances, and so must you — or else he has got some secret information that I am in ignorance of. Has he got it? Is there a will of Marmaduke’s found?”
“Of course there’s not,” said Mr. Fauntleroy, taken by surprise; “I should have heard of it, if there had been. As to any other information, I can’t say; I don’t know of any.”
“Look here, Fauntleroy: if there is to be an action — not that I should think the fellow will be mad enough to go on with it — will you act for me?”
“I can’t,” said Mr. Fauntleroy; “I am acting for him.”
“Turn him over. Who’s he? I’d rather have you myself. And I must say you might have been neighbourly enough not to take this up against me.”
“What does that signify? If I had not taken it up, somebody else would. And you have your own solicitors, you know, squire.”
The squire growled. His solicitors were Mynn and Mynn, of Eckford — quiet, steady-going practitioners; but in so desperate a cause as this, the squire would have felt himself safer with a keen and not over-scrupulous man, such as Mr. Fauntleroy.
“You will not act for me, then?”
“I can’t, squire.”
“And you mean to carry it on to action?”
“I must do it. They are my positive instructions.”
Squire Carr turned off in desperation, nearly upsetting Mr. Kenneth as he stamped through the outer office. As fast as he could, he stamped up to the railway station, and took the first train to Eckford, arriving at the office of Mynn and Mynn in a white heat.
Mynn and Mynn themselves were nearly myths, so far as their clients could get hold of them. Old Mynn had the gout perpetually; and the younger brother, George Mynn, had a chronic sort of asthma, and could not speak to people half his time. What business was absolutely necessary for a principal to do, George Mynn mostly did it. He made the journeys to London, he attended the sessions and assizes at Westerbury; but it very often happened that, when a client called at the office, neither would be there.
As it was, on this day. A young man of the name of Richards was head of the office just now, for the managing clerk had died, and Mynn and Mynn were looking out for another. A sharp, clever, unscrupulous man was this Richards, who, if he proved as clever when he got into practice for himself, would stand a fair chance of getting out of it again. He was alone when Squire Carr entered, and leaned over his desk to shake hands with him. He was a great friend of Valentine Carr’s, and sometimes dined at the squire’s on Sundays — a thin, weaselly sort of man, not unlike Valentine himself, with a cast in one eye.
“Mr. George Mynn here to-day?”
“He is here to-day, squire; but he is not in just now. He’s gone to Westerbury.”
“I want to see him; I must see him,” cried the squire, wiping his hot brows. “The most infamous thing has happened, Richards, that you ever heard of. They are going to try and wrest my Uncle Marmaduke’s property from me.”
“Who is?” asked Richards, in wonder.
“The son of that Robert Carr who went off with Martha Ann Hughes. It was before your time; but perhaps you have heard of it. There are children; and one of them has been down here, and has given Fauntleroy instructions to proceed against me and force me to give up the property.”
“But I thought there was no marriage?” cried Richards. “Mr. Mynn was talking about it the other day.”
“Neither was there.”
Richards paused a moment, and then burst into a fit of laughter. To make pretensions of claiming property in such a case, amused him excessively.
“Well, they are doing it,” said Squire Carr. “But I am astonished at Fauntleroy taking up such a cause. It’s infamous, you know. They can do it only to annoy me; for they must be aware it’s an action that will not lie.”
“I say, squire, you must take care of one thing,” said Richards, with the familiarity that characterised him, and which to some minds was exceedingly offensive— “mind they don’t get up a false marriage.”
“A false marriage! Why, the parties are dead.”
“Oh, I mean proofs — false proofs. I’ve known such things done. When a fortune’s at stake, you know, any means seem right ones.”
“And I dare say they’d be capable of it,” assented the squire. “Well, it must be seen to immediately. Here’s what I had sent from Fauntleroy.”
He drew out of his pocket the large letter, and Richards ran his eyes over it.
“They mean mischief,” was his laconic remark.
“When can I see Mr. George Mynn?” asked the squire, the usual difficulties of getting at that gentleman striking upon his mind, especially after the last sentence, as a personal wrong. “Why doesn’t he get a confidential clerk to do the outdoor work, so as to be in to see clients himself?”
“They are about engaging one, I believe,” said Mr. Richards, alluding to the confidential clerk; “but he won’t enter before December or January.”
“Not before December or January!” retorted Squire Carr, as if that were another personal wrong.
“I heard George Mynn say we could do without one until then. So we can. The assize business is over, and there won’t be much press for the next month or two. For my part, I wish they’d do without one for good. I could manage all they want done, if they’d let me.”
“Well, look you here, Richards. I shall go on to the ‘Bell’ and get a bit of dinner at the ordinary, and then I shall come back here and wait till he comes in.”
“He mayn’t come in at all again to-day — sure not to, if he doesn’t get back from Westerbury till late,” was the satisfactory rejoinder of Richards; and Squire Carr felt that he should like to strike somebody in the dilemma, if he only knew whom.
“Then you will have to take my instructions,” he said, sharply; “I shall be back in an hour.”
“Very good,” said Mr. Richards. “And we can talk this business over to-morrow, squire, as much as you like; for I am coming to your place for the day. I’ve promised Valentine, and I want to make the acquaintance of your second son.”
For this Mr. Richards was but a clerk of some months standing at Mynn and Mynn’s; to which situation he had come from a distance, and, therefore, had not yet enjoyed the honour of an introduction to Mr. Benjamin Carr.
Thus the great cause, “Carr versus Carr,” was inaugurated. Those connected with it little dreamt of the strange excitement it was to create, ere the termination came.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST OF ROBERT CARR.
By a bright fire in her handsome and most comfortable drawing-room, in her widow’s cap — assumed, now that all hope had died out — sat Mrs. Dundyke. The October wind was whistling without, the October rain was falling on the window panes; and there was a look of anxiety on her otherwise calm face, still so fair and attractive, as she listened to the storm. The summer and autumn, up to the close of September, had been remarkably warm and fine; but when October came in, it brought bad weather with it.
A gust and a patter, worse than any that had gone before, aroused Mrs. Dundyke from her seat. She laid her work — a woollen comforter, that she was knitting — on the small and beautiful table at her side, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and walked to the window.
“I wonder whether he is out in it?” she said, as she watched the trees bending in the storm. “This anxiety is killing him. The very work is killing him. Abroad in all weathers; out of one damp church into another; getting heated with his weak state and the ardour of the pursuit, and then becoming chilled in some sudden storm such as this! He may find the record, perhaps, but he will never live to reap the benefit.”
Need you be told that Mrs. Dundyke’s soliloquy applied to Robert Carr? He was staying with her. When he went back to London from Westerbury, and sought Mrs. Dundyke, to deliver certain messages of the kindest nature sent by him from Mr. Arkell and Travice, she had insisted upon his making her house his home while he remained in London to pursue his search.
And he did so; and began his toilsome search of the London church marriage registers. What a wearying task it was, let those testify who may have been obliged to enter upon such. By dint of a great deal of trouble, and of correspondence with Mr. Fauntleroy, and recalled recollections from middle-aged people in Westerbury, who had been young men once and friends of the elder Robert Carr, he, the present Robert Carr, succeeded in ascertaining the place where his father and mother had sojourned that fortnight in London. It was in one of the quiet streets of the Strand, in the parish of St. Clement Danes. But when St. Clement Danes’ register was examined, no entry of any such marriage could be found there; and for the first time since the blow fell, Robert Carr felt his heart sink with a vague fear that he dared not dwell upon.
It had seemed to him so easy! He had felt as sure a trust in his mother’s marriage as he felt in Heaven. It was only to find out where they had stayed that fortnight in London, and search the parish church register; for there, and only there, Robert Carr argued, the marriage had taken place. But there, it was now evident, that it had not taken place, and he was all at sea.
He began with the other churches; he knew not what else to do. In Holland they could not have been married, from the want of legal papers, and other matters, necessary to foreigners united abroad. He searched the churches nearest to St. Clement Danes first, and then went on to others, and others, and others. He would go up after breakfast from his kind friend, who was nursing him like a mother, and begin his daily task; out of one church into another, as she had phrased it, in all weathers — rain, hail, storm — and go back at night again utterly wearied out.
Mrs. Dundyke stood at the window watching the rain. She fancied it was beginning to grow dusk; but it was not time just yet, and the afternoon was a dark one. He would not be home yet awhile, she was thinking. He stopped in those cold churches as long as there was a ray of light to see by. Mrs. Dundyke was turning from the window, when she saw an omnibus stop, and Robert Carr get out of it. He seemed worse than usual; weaker in strength, more tottering in frame; and as he looked up at her with a faint, sad smile, a conviction came over her that she should not be able to save the life of this poor young man; that all her care, all her comforts, all her ample income would not benefit him. And how very ample her income would for the future be, she had not known until that day. She was a rich lady for this world; she might ride in her carriage, if she chose, and be grand for all time.
“Oh! Robert!” she exclaimed, meeting him on the stairs — and she had taken to call him by the familiar name, as she might a son— “I fear you have got very wet! I am so glad you came home early!”
He walked unsteadily to the easy chair by the fire, and sunk in it. Mrs. Dundyke, with him daily, saw not the change that every hour was surely making in him; but she did notice how wan and ill he looked this evening.
“Have you not been well to-day, Robert?”
“Not very. I have been spitting so much of that blood again. And I felt so weary too; so sick of it all.”
“There’s no success, then, again!”
“None. Altogether, I thought I’d leave it for the day, and come back and take a rest.”
He sighed as he spoke, but the sigh broke off with a moaning sound. Mrs. Dundyke glanced at him. She had resumed her knitting — which was a chest protector for himself — until the wine that she had rung for should be brought.
“Robert, are you losing heart?”
“No, I can never lose that. There was a marriage, if we could only find out where. You would be as sure of it as I am, dear Mrs. Dundyke, had you known my mother.”
Mrs. Dundyke made no rejoinder. For herself, she had never fully believed in the marriage at all, but she was not cruel enough to say so. She sat watching him over her knitting: now bending forward with his thin hands spread out to the warmth of the fire; now suddenly bringing his hands to his chest as he coughed, choked; now lying back in the chair, panting, his thin nostrils working, his breath coming in great gasps; and there came in that moment over Mrs. Dundyke as she looked, a conviction — she knew not whence or why — that a very, very short period would bring the end.
She felt her face grow moist with a cold moisture. How was it that she had been so blind to the obvious truth? She knitted two whole rows of knitting before she spoke, and then she told him, with a calm voice, that she should write for his wife.
“How kind you are!” he murmured. “I shall never repay you.”
Mrs. Dundyke laughed cheerfully.
“I don’t want repayment. There is nothing to repay.”
“Nothing to repay! No kindly friendship, no trouble, no cost! I wonder how much I cost you in wine alone?”
“Robert,” she said, in a low, earnest tone — though she wondered whether he might not be jesting— “do you know what they tell me my future income will be? Mr. Littelby was here to-day, giving me an account of things, for I put my poor husband’s affairs into his hands on my return. It will not be much less than two thousand a year.”
The amount of the sum quite startled him.
“Two thousand a year!”
“It will indeed, as they tell me. By the articles of partnership I am allowed a handsome income from the house in Fenchurch-street; but the chief of the money comes from speculations my husband has been engaged in for many years, in connexion with a firm on the Stock Exchange. Safe speculations, and profitable; not hazardous ones. This money is realized, and put out in the Funds, in what they call the Five-per-Cents.; and I shall have nearly two thousand a year. I had no idea of it; and the puzzle to me now is, how I shall spend it. Don’t you think I require a few kind visitors to help me?”
Before he could answer, there came on a violent fit of coughing, worse than any she had yet seen, and quite a little stream of blood trickled from his mouth. It was nothing particularly new, but that night Mrs. Carr was written for in haste.
“Tell her to bring the desk with her,” said Robert; and Mrs. Dundyke wrote down the words just as he spoke them.
But he rallied again, and in a day or two was actually out as before, prosecuting his search amidst those hopeless churches. He confided what he called a secret to Mrs. Dundyke — namely, that he had not confessed to his wife that any suspicion was cast upon his birth. The honest truth was, Robert Carr shrunk from it; for he knew it would so alarm and grieve her. She was well connected; had fallen in love with the young Cambridge student during a visit she was paying in England; and when the time came that marriage was spoken of, her friends raised some objection because Robert Carr’s father was not of gentle blood, but was in business as a merchant. What she would say when she came to know that he was suspected of not being even that merchant’s legitimate son, Robert scarcely cared to speculate.
She arrived in an afternoon at Mrs. Dundyke’s, having come direct to London Bridge by the steamer from Rotterdam. Robert was out in London, as usual; but Mrs. Dundyke was not alone: Mildred Arkell was with her. Perhaps of all people, next to his wife, Mildred had been most shocked at the fate of Mr. Dundyke. This was the first time she had seen his widow, for she had been away in the country with Lady Dewsbury.
A young, pretty woman, looking little more than a girl, with violet-blue eyes, dark hair, and a flush upon her cheeks. Mrs. Dundyke marvelled at her youth — that she should be a wife since three years, and the mother of two children.
“I wrote to you to be sure to bring the children,” said Mrs. Dundyke.
“I know: it was very kind. But I thought, as Robert was ill, they might disturb him with their noise. They are but babies; and I left them behind.”
Mrs. Dundyke was considering how she could best impart the news of the suspected birth to this poor, unconscious young lady. “If you could give her a hint of it yourself, should she arrive during my absence!” Robert Carr had said to Mrs. Dundyke that very morning, with the hectic deepening on his hollow cheeks. And Mrs. Dundyke began her task.
And a sad shock it proved to be. Mrs. Carr, accustomed to the legal formalities that attend a marriage in the country of her birth, and without which formalities the ceremony cannot be performed, could not for some time be led to understand how, if there was a marriage, it could have been kept a secret. There were many points difficult to make her, a foreigner, understand; but when she had mastered them, she grew strangely interested in the recital of the past, and Mildred Arkell, as a resident in Westerbury at the time, was called upon to repeat every little detail connected with the departure of her husband’s father and mother from their native place. In listening, Mrs. Carr’s cheek grew hectic as her husband’s.
