Works of Ellen Wood, page 1173
“I should like to see him! Good old Collinson! He and I were close friends. He is a nice fellow.”
“Old, you style him!” cried Dr. Knox. “I should rather call him young — of the two.”
Major Leckie laughed. “It is a word we are all given to using, doctor. Of course Collinson’s not old in years. Why is he staying at Lefford?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Unless it is that he has fallen in love. I heard him remark one day that the air of the place suited him.”
“Ah ah, Master Collinson!” laughed the major. “In love, are you, sir! Caught at last, are you! Who is the lady?”
“Nay, I spoke only in jest,” returned Dr. Knox. “He seems to be a general admirer; but I don’t know that it is any one in particular. Report has mentioned one or two ladies, but report is often a false town-crier.”
“Well, she will be in luck — whoever gets him. He is one of the nicest, truest fellows I know; and will make a rare good husband.”
“It is said he has private means. Do you know whether that’s true?”
“He has very good private means. His father left him a fortune. Sometimes we fancy he will not stay with us long. I should not be surprised if he sells out while he is at home, and settles down.”
“Johnny Ludlow heard him say something the other night to that effect,” observed the doctor, looking at me.
“Yes,” I said, confirming the words. “He is about buying an estate now, I believe. But he talked of going back to India for a few years.”
“I hope he will. There’s not a man amongst us, that I would not rather spare than Collinson. I should like to see him. I might walk into Lefford now — if you will give me his address, doctor. Will you spare me for an hour or two, Sir Henry?”
“Well, I must, I suppose,” grumbled Sir Henry. “It’s rather bad of you, though, Leckie; and after putting me off with so miserably short a stay. You get here at ten o’clock last night, and you go off at ten o’clock to-night! Fine behaviour that!”
“I am obliged to go to-night, Westmorland; you know I am, and I could not get to you earlier, although I tried. I won’t be away a minute longer than I can help. I can walk into Lefford in half-an-hour — my pace is a quick one. No; and I won’t stay an unconscionable time with Collinson,” he added, in answer to a growl of the baronet’s. “Trust me. I’ll be back under two hours.”
“Bring him back with you for the rest of the day,” said Sir Henry.
“Oh, thank you. And I am sure you will say he is the best fellow going. I wonder you and he have not found out one another before.”
“If you don’t mind taking a seat in yonder nondescript vehicle — that Mr. Johnny Ludlow here has the audacity to say must have been built in the year One,” laughed Dr. Knox, pointing outside, “I can drive you to Captain Collinson’s lodgings.”
“A friend in need is a friend indeed,” cried the major, laughing also. “What style of vehicle do you call it?”
“We call it the conveyance. As to its style — well I never had the opportunity of asking that of the builder. I believe my father bought it second-hand when he first went into practice many a year ago.”
The doctor drove this time; Major Leckie sitting beside him, I in the perch behind. Leaving the major at the hairdresser’s, upon reaching Lefford, Dr. Knox and I went home. And this is what occurred — as we heard later.
Ringing at the private door, which was Captain Collinson’s proper entrance, a young servant-girl appeared, and — after the manner of many young country servants — sent Major Leckie alone up to Captain Collinson’s rooms, saying she supposed the captain was at home. It turned out that he was not at home. Seated before the fire was a gentleman in a crimson dressing-gown and slippers, smoking a huge pipe.
“Come in,” cried out he, in answer to the major’s knock.
“I beg your pardon,” said the major, entering. “I understood that Captain Collinson lodged here.”
“He does lodge here,” replied he of the dressing-gown, putting his pipe into the fender, as he rose. “What is it that you want with him?”
“I only called to see him. I am one of his brother-officers — home on sick leave; as I understand he is.”
“Collinson is out,” said the gentleman. “I am sorry it should happen so. Can you leave any message?”
“Will he be long? I should much like to see him.”
“He will be back to dinner to-night; not much before that, I think. He is gone by train to — to — some place a few miles off. Boom — or Room — or Doom — or some such name. I am a stranger here.”
“Toome, I suppose,” remarked the major. “It’s the last station before you get to Lefford — I noticed the name last night. I am very sorry. I should liked to have seen Collinson. Tell him so, will you. I am Major Leckie.”
“You will be calling again, perhaps?”
“I can’t do that. I must spend the rest of this day with my friend, Sir Henry Westmorland, and I leave to-night. Tell Collinson that I embark in a few days. Stay: this is my address in London, if he will write to me. I wonder he did not attempt to find me out — I came home before he did: and he knew that he could always get my address at my bankers’.”
“I will tell Collinson all you say, Major Leckie,” said the stranger, glancing at the card. “It is a pity he is out.”
“Should he come back in time — though I fear, by what you say, there’s little chance of it — be so good as to say that Sir Henry Westmorland will be happy to see him to dinner this evening at Foxgrove, at six o’clock — and to come over as much earlier as he can.”
With the last words, Major Leckie left, Collinson’s friend politely attending him down to the front-door. I was standing at Mr. Tamlyn’s gate as he passed it on his way back to Foxgrove. Dr. Knox, then going off on foot to see a patient, came across the yard from the surgery at the same moment.
“Such a mischance!” the major stopped in his rapid walk to say to us. “Collinson has gone to Toome to-day. I saw a friend of his, who is staying with him, and he thinks he won’t be back before night.”
“I did not know Collinson had any one staying with him,” remarked the doctor. “Some one called in upon him, probably.”
“This man is evidently staying with him; making himself at home too,” said the major. “He was in a dressing-gown and slippers, and had his feet on the fender, smoking a pipe. A tall, dark fellow, face all hair.”
“Why, that is Collinson himself,” cried I.
“Not a bit of it,” said the major. “This man is no more like Collinson — except that Collinson is dark and has a beard — than he is like me. He said he was a stranger in the place.”
A rapid conclusion crossed me that it must be a brother of Collinson’s — for a resemblance to himself, according to the major’s description, there no doubt was. Major Leckie wished me good-day, and continued his way up the street, Dr. Knox with him.
“What are you gazing at, Johnny Ludlow?”
I turned at the question, and saw Charlotte Knox. She was coming to call on Janet. We stood there talking of one thing and another. I told Charlotte that Collinson’s brother, as I took it to be, was staying with him; and Charlotte told me of a quarrel she had just had with Mina on the score of the captain.
“Mina won’t believe a word against him, Johnny. When I say he is nothing but a flirt, that he is only playing with her, she bids me hold my tongue. She quite scorns the notion that he would like to marry Miss Belmont.”
“Have you seen any more letters, that concern me, in at Madame St. Vincent’s?” I asked.
“Do you think I should be likely to? — or that such letters are as plentiful as blackberries?” retorted Charlotte. “And you? — have you discovered the key to that letter?”
“I have not discovered it, Charlotte. I have taxed my memory in vain. Never a girl, no matter whose sister she may be, can I recall to mind as being likely to owe me a grudge.”
“It was not that the girl owed you a grudge,” quickly spoke Charlotte. “It was that she must not meet you.”
“Does not the one thing imply the other? I can’t think of any one. There was a young lady, indeed, in the years gone by, when I was not much more than a lad, who — may — have — taken up a prejudice against me,” I added slowly and thoughtfully, for I was hardly sure of what I said. “But she cannot have anything to do with the present matter, and I am quite sure she was not a sister of Madame St. Vincent.”
“What was her name?” asked Charlotte.
“Sophie Chalk.”
LADY JENKINS. LIGHT.
I.
Tod arrived at Lefford. I met him at the train, just as I had met Miss Cattledon, who was with us still. As we walked out of the station together, many a man cast a glance after the tall, fine young fellow — who looked strong enough to move the world, if, like Archimedes, the geometrician of Syracuse, he had only possessed the necessary lever.
“Shall you be able to stay a week, Tod?”
“Two weeks if they’d like it, Johnny. How you have picked up, lad!”
“Picked up?”
“In looks. They are all your own again. Glad to see it, old fellow.”
Some few days had elapsed since the latest event recorded in this veritable little history — the call that Major Leckie made on Captain Collinson, and found his brother there, instead of himself — but no change worth noting to the reader had occurred in the town politics. Lady Jenkins was ailing as much as ever, and Madame St. Vincent was keeping a sharp watch on the maid, Lettice Lane, without, as yet, detecting her in any evil practices: the soirées were numerous, one being held at some house or other every night in the work-a-day week: and the engagement of Captain Collinson to Miss Belmont was now talked of as an assured fact. Collinson himself had been away from Lefford during these intervening days. Pink, the hairdresser, thought he had taken a run up to London, on some little matter of business. As to the brother, we had heard no more of him.
But, if Captain Collinson had taken a run up to London, he had unquestionably run down again, though not to Lefford. On the day but one before the coming of Tod, Janet and Miss Cattledon went over by train to do some shopping at the county town, which stood fifteen miles from Lefford, I being with them. Turning into a pastry-cook’s in the middle of the day to get something to eat, we turned in upon Captain Collinson. He sat at a white marble-topped table in the corner of the shop, eating an oyster patty.
“We heard you were in London,” said Janet, shaking hands with him, as he rose to offer her his seat.
“Got back this morning. Shall be at Lefford to-morrow: perhaps to-night,” he answered.
He stood gobbling up his patty quickly. I said something to him, just because the recollection came into my mind, about the visit of his brother.
“My brother!” he exclaimed in answer, staring at me with all his eyes. “What brother? How do you know anything about my brother?”
“Major Leckie saw him when he called at your lodgings. Saw him instead of you. You had gone to Toome. We took it to be your brother, from the description; he was so like yourself.”
The captain smiled. “I forgot that,” he said. “We are much alike. Ned told me of Leckie’s call. A pity I could not see him! Things always happen cross and contrary. Has Leckie left Foxgrove yet?”
“Oh, he left it that same night. I should think he is on his way back to India by this time.”
“His visit to Lefford seems to have been as flying a one as my brother’s was, and his did not last a day. How much?” to the girl behind the counter. “Sixpence? There it is.” And, with a general adieu nodded to the rest of us, the captain left the shop.
“I don’t like that dandy,” spoke Cattledon, in her severest tone. “I have said so before. I’m sure he is a man who cannot be trusted.”
I answered nothing: but I had for a little time now thought the same. There was that about him that gave you the idea he was in some way or other not true. And it may as well be mentioned here that Captain Collinson got back to Lefford that same evening, in time to make his appearance at Mrs. Parker’s soirée, at which both Miss Belmont and Mina Knox were present.
So now we come to Tod again, and to the day of his arrival. Talking of one thing and another, telling him of this and that, of the native politics, as we all like to do when a stranger comes to set himself down, however temporarily, amidst us, I mentioned the familiarity that in two of the people struck upon my memory. Never did I see this same Captain Collinson, never did I see Madame St. Vincent, or hear them speak, or listen to their laugh, but the feeling that I had met them before — had been, so to say, intimate with both one and the other — came forcibly upon me.
“And yet it would seem, upon the face of things, that I never have been,” I continued to Tod, when telling of this. “Madame St. Vincent says she never left the South of France until last year; and the captain has been nearly all his life in India.”
“You know you do take fancies, Johnny.”
“True. But, are not those fancies generally borne out by the result? Any way, they puzzle me, both of them: and there’s a ring in their voices that — —”
“A ring in their voices!” put in Tod, laughing.
“Say an accent, then; especially in madame’s; and it sounds, to my ears, unmistakably Worcestershire.”
“Johnny, you are fanciful!”
I never got anything better from Tod. “You will have the honour of meeting them both here to-night,” I said to him, “for it is Janet’s turn to give the soirée, and I know they are expected.”
Evening came. At six o’clock the first instalment of guests knocked at the door; by half-past six the soirée was in full glory: a regular crowd. Every one seemed to have come, with the exception of the ladies from Jenkins House. Sam Jenkins brought in their excuses.
Sam had run up to Jenkins House with some physic for the butler, who said he had a surfeit (from drinking too much old ale, Tamlyn thought), and Sam had made use of the opportunity to see his aunt. Madame St. Vincent objected. It would try the dear old lady too much, madame said. She was lying in a sweet sleep on the sofa in her own room; had been quite blithe and lively all day, but was drowsy now; and she had better not be disturbed until bedtime. Perhaps Mr. Sam would kindly make their excuses to Mrs. Arnold Knox.
“Can’t you come yourself, madame?” asked Sam, politely. “If Aunt Jenkins is asleep, and means to keep asleep till bed-time, she can’t want you.”
“I could not think of leaving her,” objected madame. “She looks for me the moment she wakes.”
So Sam, I say, brought back the message. Putting himself into his evening-coat, he came into the room while tea was going on, and delivered madame’s excuses to Janet as distinctly as the rattle of cups and saucers allowed. You should have seen Cattledon that evening: — in a grey silk gown that stood on end, a gold necklace, and dancing shoes.
“This is the second soirée this week that Lady Jenkins has failed to appear at,” spoke Mrs. Knox — not Janet — in a resentful tone. “My firm opinion is that Madame St. Vincent keeps her away.”
“Keeps her away,” cried Arnold. “Why should she do that?”
“Well, yes; gives way to her fads and fancies about being ill, instead of rousing her out of them. As to why she does it,” continued Mrs. Knox, “I suppose she is beginning to grow nervous about her. As if an innocent, quiet soirée could hurt Lady Jenkins!”
“Johnny,” whispered Sam, subsiding into the background after delivering his message, “may I never stir again if I didn’t see Collinson hiding in aunt’s garden!”
“Hiding in your aunt’s garden!” I exclaimed. “What was he doing that for?”
“Goodness knows. Did you ever notice a big bay-tree that you pass on the left, between the door and the gate? Well, he was standing behind it. I came out of the house at a double quick pace, knowing I should be late for the soirée, cleared the steps at a leap, and the path to the gate at another. Too quick, I suppose, for Collinson. He was bending forward to look at the parlour windows, and drew back as I passed.”
“Did you speak, Sam?”
“No, I came flying on, taking no notice. I dare say he thinks I did not see him. One does not like, you know, to speak to a man who evidently wants to avoid you. But now — I wonder what he was doing there?” continued Sam, reflectively. “Watching Madame St. Vincent, I should say, through the lace curtains.”
“But for what purpose?”
“I can’t even imagine. There he was.”
To my mind this sounded curious. But that Mina Knox was before my eyes — just at the moment listening to the whispers of Dan Jenkins — I should have thought the captain was looking after her. Or, rather, not listening to Dan. Mina had a pained, restless look on her face, not in the least natural to it, and kept her head turned away. And the more Dan whispered, the more she turned it from him.
“Here he is, Sam.”
Sam looked round at my words, and saw Captain Collinson, then coming in. He was got up to perfection as usual, and wore a white rose in his button-hole. His purple-black hair, beard, whiskers and moustache were grand; his voice had its ordinary fashionable drawl. I saw Tod — at the opposite side of the room — cease talking with old Tamlyn, to fix his keen eyes on the captain.
“Very sorry to be so late,” apologized the captain, bowing over Janet’s hand. “Been detained at home writing letters for India. Overland mail goes out to-morrow night.”
Sam gave me a knock with his elbow. “What a confounded story!” he whispered. “Wonder what the gallant captain means, Johnny! Wonder what game he is up to?”
It was, I dare say, nearly an hour after this that I came across Tod. He was standing against the wall, laughing slightly to himself, evidently in some glee. Captain Collinson was at the piano opposite, his back to us, turning over the leaves for Caroline Parker, who was singing.
“What are you amused at, Tod?”
“At you, lad. Thinking what a muff you are.”
