Works of Ellen Wood, page 1284
She had not been faithless, like the Faithless Emma of the song, for she had never cared for anyone but Tom Chandler, had never given the smallest encouragement to another. Oliver had only deluded himself. To his heart, filled and blinded with its impassioned love, her open, pleasing manners had seemed to be a response, and so he had mistaken her. That was all.
But this is sentiment, which the world, having grown enlightened of late years, practically despises; and we must go on to something more sensible and serious.
The answer sent by Mr. Preen to John Paul of Islip brought forth an answer in its turn. It was to the effect that Mr. Paul had not seen anything of the letter spoken of by Mr. Preen, or of the money it was said to contain.
This reached Duck Brook on the Saturday morning. Mr. Preen, more puzzled this time than angry, could not make it out.
“Oliver,” said he, “which day was it last week that I wrote that letter to Paul of Islip, enclosing a ten-pound note?”
“I don’t remember,” carelessly replied Oliver. They had not yet settled to work, and Oliver was stretched out at the open window, talking to a little dog that was leaping up outside.
“Not remember!” indignantly echoed Mr. Preen. “My memory is distracted with a host of cares, but yours has nothing to trouble it. Bring your head in, sir, and attend to me properly.”
Oliver dutifully brought his head in, his face red with stooping. “What was it you asked me, father? I did not quite catch it,” he said.
“I asked you if you could remember which day I sent that money to Paul. But I think I remember now for myself. It was the day after I received the bank-note from Mr. Todhetley. That was Monday. Then I sent the letter to Paul with the bank-note in it on the Tuesday. You sealed it for me.”
“I remember quite well that it was Tuesday — two days before the picnic,” said Oliver.
“Oh, of course; a picnic is a matter to remember anything by,” returned Mr. Preen, sarcastically. “Well, Paul says he has never received either money or letter.”
“The letter was posted — —” began Oliver, but his father impatiently interrupted him.
“Certainly it was posted. You saw me post it.”
“It was too late for the evening’s post; Dame Sym said it would go out the next morning,” went on Oliver. “Are Paul’s people sure they did not receive it?”
“Paul tells me so. Paul is an exact man, and would not tolerate any but exact clerks about him. He writes positively.”
“I suppose Mrs. Sym did not forget to forward it?” suggested Oliver.
“What an idiot you are!” retorted his father, by way of being complimentary. “The letter must have gone out safely enough.”
Nevertheless, after Mr. Preen had attended to his other letters and to two or three matters they involved, he put on his hat and went to Mrs. Sym’s.
The debt for which the money was owing appeared to be a somewhat mysterious one. Robert Derrick, a man who dealt in horses, or in anything else by which he could make money, and attended all fairs near and far, lived about two miles from Islip. One day, about a year back, Derrick presented himself at the office of Mr. Paul, and asked that gentleman if he would sue Gervais Preen for a sum of money, forty pounds, which had been long owing to him. What was it owing for, Mr. Paul inquired; but Derrick declined to say. Instead of suing him, the lawyer wrote to request Mr. Preen to call upon him, which Mr. Preen did. He acknowledged that he did owe the debt — forty pounds — but, like Derrick, he evaded the question when asked what he owed it for. Perhaps it was for a horse, or horses, suggested Mr. Paul. No, it was for nothing of that kind, Mr. Preen replied; it was a strictly private debt.
An arrangement was come to. To pay the whole at once was not, Mr. Preen said, in his power; but he would pay it by instalments. Ten pounds every six months he would place in Mr. Paul’s hands, to be handed to Derrick, whom Mr. Preen refused to see. This arrangement Derrick agreed to. Two instalments had already been paid, and one which seemed to have now miscarried in the post was the third.
“Mrs. Sym,” began Mr. Preen, when he had dived into the sweet-stuff shop, and confronted the post-mistress behind her counter, “do you recollect, one day last week, my asking you to give me back a letter which I had just posted, addressed to Mr. Paul of Islip, and you refused?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” answered Mrs. Sym. “I was sorry, but — —”
“Never mind that. What I want to ask you is this: did you notice that letter when you made up the bag?”
“I did, sir. I noticed it particularly in consequence of what had passed. It was sealed with a large red seal.”
“Just so. Well, Mr. Paul declares that letter has not reached him.”
“But it must have reached him,” rejoined Mrs. Sym, fastening her glittering spectacles upon the speaker’s face. “It had Mr. Paul’s address upon it in plain writing, and it went away from here in the bag with the rest of the letters.”
“The letter had a ten-pound note in it.”
Mrs. Sym paused. “Well, sir, if so, that would not endanger the letter’s safety. Who was to know it had? But letters that contain money ought to be registered, Mr. Preen.”
“You are sure it went away as usual from here — all safe?”
“Sure and certain, sir. And I think it must have reached Mr. Paul, if I may say so. He may have overlooked it; perhaps let it fall into some part of his desk, unopened. Why, some years ago, there was a great fuss made about a letter which was sent to Captain Falkner, when he was living at the Hall. He came here one day, complaining to me that a letter sent to him by post, which had money in it, had never been delivered. The trouble there was over that lost letter, sir, I couldn’t tell you. The Captain accused the post-office in London, for it was London it came from, of never having forwarded it; then he accused me of not sending it out with the delivery. After all, it was himself who had mislaid the letter. He had somehow let it fall unnoticed into a deep drawer of his writing-table when it was handed to him with other letters at the morning’s delivery; and there it lay all snug till found, hid away amid a mass of papers. What do you think of that, sir?”
Mr. Preen did not say.
“In all the years I have kept this post-office I can’t call to memory one single letter being lost in the transit,” she ran on, warming in her own cause. “Why, how could it, sir? Once a letter’s sent away safe in the bag, there it must be; it can’t fall out of it. Your letter was so sent away by me, Mr. Preen, and where should it be if Mr. Paul hasn’t got it? Please tell him, sir, from me, that I’d respectfully suggest he should look well about his desk and places.”
Evidently it was not at this side the letter had been lost — if lost it was. Mr. Preen wished the post-mistress good morning, and walked away. Her suggestion had impressed him; he began to think it very likely indeed that Paul had overlooked the letter on its arrival, and would find it about his desk, or table, or some other receptacle for papers.
He drove over to Islip in the gig in the afternoon, taking Oliver with him. Islip reached, he left Oliver in the gig, to wait at the door or drive slowly about as he pleased, while he went into the office to, as he expressed it, “have it out with Paul.”
Not at once, however, could he do that, for Mr. Paul was out; but he saw Tom Chandler.
The offices, situated in the heart of Islip, and not a stone’s throw from the offices of Valentine Chandler, consisted of three rooms, all on the ground floor. The clerks’ room was in front, its windows (painted white, so that no one could see in or out) faced the street; Mr. Paul’s room lay behind it and looked on to a garden. There was also a small slip of a room, not much better than a passage, into which Mr. Paul could take clients whose business was very private indeed. Tom Chandler, about to be made a partner, had a desk in Mr. Paul’s room as well as one in the clerks’ room. It was at the latter that he usually sat.
On this afternoon he was seated at his desk in Mr. Paul’s room when Gervais Preen entered. Tom received him with a smile and a hand-shake, and gave him a chair.
“I’ve come about that letter, Mr. Chandler,” began the visitor; “my letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having received.”
“I assure you no such letter was received by us — —”
“It was addressed in a plain handwriting to Mr. Paul himself, and protected by a seal of red wax with my crest upon it,” irritably interrupted the applicant, who hated to be contradicted.
“Mr. Preen, you may believe me when I tell you the letter never reached us,” said Tom, a smile crossing his candid, handsome face, at the other’s irritability.
“Then where is the letter? What became of it?”
“I should say perhaps it was never posted,” mildly suggested Tom.
“Not posted!” tartly echoed Mr. Preen. “Why, I posted it myself; as Dame Sym, over at Duck Brook, can testify. And my son also, for that matter; he stood by and saw me put it into the box. Dame Sym sent it away in the bag with the rest; she remembers the letter perfectly.”
“It never was delivered to us,” said Tom, shaking his head. “If —— oh, here is Mr. Paul.”
The portly lawyer came into the room, pushing back his iron-grey hair. He sat down at his own desk-table; Mr. Preen drew his chair so as to face him, and the affair was thoroughly gone into. It cannot be denied that the experienced man of law, knowing how difficult it was to Mr. Preen to find money for his debts and his needs, had allowed some faint doubt to float within him in regard to this reported loss. Was it a true loss? — or an invented one? But old Paul read people’s characters, as betrayed in their tones and faces, tolerably well; he saw that Preen was in desperate earnest, and he began to believe his story.
“Let me see,” said he. “You posted it on Tuesday, the fifteenth. You found it was too late for that night’s post, and would not go off until the morrow morning, when, as Dame Sym says, she despatched it. Then we ought to have received it that afternoon — Wednesday, the sixteenth.”
“Yes,” assented Mr. Preen. “Mrs. Sym wished to respectfully suggest to you, Paul, that you might have overlooked it amidst the other letters at the time it was delivered, and let it drop unseen into some drawer or desk.”
“Oh, she did, did she?” cried old Paul, while Tom Chandler laughed. “Give my respects to her, Preen, and tell her I’m not an old woman. We don’t get many letters in an afternoon, sometimes not any,” he went on. “Can you carry your memory back to that Wednesday afternoon, Chandler?”
“I daresay I shall be able to do so,” replied Tom. “Wednesday, the sixteenth. — Was not that the day before the picnic at Aunt Cramp’s?”
“What on earth has the picnic to do with it?” sharply demanded Mr. Preen. “All you young men are alike. Oliver could only remember the date of my posting the letter by recalling that of the picnic. You should be above such frivolity.”
Tom Chandler laughed. “I remember the day before the picnic for a special reason, sir. MacEveril asked for holiday that he might go to it. I told him he could not have the whole day, we were too busy, but perhaps he might get half of it; upon which he said half a day was no good to him, and gave me some sauce. Yes, that was Wednesday, the sixteenth; and now, having that landmark to go by, I may be able to trace back other events and the number of letters which came in that afternoon.”
“Is MacEveril back yet?” asked Preen.
“No,” replied Paul. “The captain does not know where he is; no one does know, that I’m aware of. Look here, Preen; as this letter appears to be really lost, and very unaccountably, since Mrs. Sym is sure she sent it off, and I am sure it was never delivered to me, I shall go to our office here now, and inquire about it. Will you come with me?”
Mr. Preen was only too glad to go to any earthly place that was likely to afford news of his ten-pound note, for the loss would be his, and he knew not where he should find another ten pounds to satisfy the insatiable Derrick.
They proceeded along the pavement together, passing Oliver, who was slowly parading the gig up and down the street. His sad face — unusually sad it looked — had a sort of expectancy on it as he turned his gaze from side to side, lest by some happy chance it might catch the form of Emma Paul. Emma might be going to marry another; but, all the same, Oliver could not drop her out of his heart.
They disclaimed all recollection of the letter at the post-office. Had it been for a private individual it might have been remembered, but Mr. Paul had too many letters to allow of that, unless something special called attention to any one of them. Whether the letter in question had reached them by the Islip bag, or whether it had not, they could not say; but they could positively affirm that, if it had, it had been sent out to Mr. Paul.
In returning they overtook the postman on his round, with the afternoon delivery: a young, active man, who seemed to skim over the ground, and was honest as the day.
“Dale,” said Lawyer Paul, “there has been a letter lost, addressed to me. I wonder whether you chanced to notice such a letter?” And he mentioned the details of the case.
“One day is like another to me in its round of duties, you see, sir,” observed the man. “Sealed with a big red seal, you say, sir? Well, it might be, but that’s nothing for me to go by; so many of your letters are sealed, sir.”
The lawyer returned to his office with Mr. Preen, and entered his own room. Tom Chandler heard them and came swiftly through the door which opened from the clerks’ department, a smile of satisfaction on his face.
“I remember all about the letters that were brought in on Wednesday week,” said he. “I can recall the whole of the circumstances; they were rather unusual.”
III. — MYSTERY
I
Thomas Chandler possessed a clear, retentive memory by nature, and he had done nothing to cloud it. After his master, Lawyer Paul — soon to be no longer his master, but his partner — had gone out with Mr. Preen to make inquiries at the post-office for the missing letter, he sat down to bring his memory into exercise.
Carrying his thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon, some ten days ago, when the letter ought to have been delivered at Mr. Paul’s office, and was not — at least, so far as could be traced at present — he had little difficulty in recalling its chief events, one remembered incident leading up to another.
Then he passed into the front room, and spoke for some minutes with Michael Hanborough, a steady little man of middle age, who had been with Mr. Paul over twenty years. There was one clerk under him, Tite Batley (full name Titus), and there had been young Richard MacEveril. The disappearance of the latter had caused the office to be busy just now, Michael Hanborough especially so. He was in the room alone when Mr. Chandler entered.
“You have not gone to tea yet, Mr. Hanborough!”
“No, sir. I wanted to finish this deed, first. Batley’s gone to his.”
“Look here, Hanborough, I want to ask you a question or two. That deed’s in no particular hurry, for I am sure Mr. Paul will not be ready to send it off to-day,” continued Mr. Chandler. “There’s going to be a fuss over that letter of Preen’s, which appears to have been unaccountably lost. I have been carrying my thoughts back to the Wednesday afternoon when it ought to have been delivered here, and I want you to do the same. Try and recollect anything and everything you can, connected with that afternoon.”
“But, Mr. Chandler, the letter could not have been delivered here; Mr. Paul says so,” reasoned Michael Hanborough, turning from his desk while he spoke and leaning his elbow upon it.
His desk stood between the window and the door which opened from the passage; the window being at his right hand as he sat. Opposite, beside the other window, was Mr. Chandler’s desk. A larger desk, used by MacEveril and young Batley, crossed the lower end of the room, facing the window; and near it was the narrow door that opened to Mr. Paul’s room.
Thomas Chandler remained talking with Hanborough until he saw the lawyer and Mr. Preen return, when he joined them in the other room. They mentioned their failure at the post-office, and he then related to them what he had been able to recall.
Wednesday afternoon, the sixteenth of June, had been distinguished in Mr. Paul’s office by a little breeze raised by Richard MacEveril. Suddenly looking up from his writing, he disturbed Mr. Chandler, who was busy at his desk, by saying he expected to have holiday on the morrow for the whole day. Hanborough was just then in Mr. Paul’s room; Batley was out. Batley had been sent to execute a commission at a distance, and would not be back till evening.
“Oh, indeed!” responded Tom Chandler, laughing at MacEveril’s modest request, so modestly put. “What else would you like, Dick?”
Dick laughed too. “That will serve me for the present moment, Mr. Chandler,” said he.
“Well, Dick, I’m sorry to deny you, but you can’t have it. You have a conscience to ask it, young man, when you know the Worcester Sessions are close at hand, and we are so busy here we don’t know which way to turn!”
“I mean to take it,” said Dick.
“But I don’t mean you to; understand that. See here, Dick: I won’t be harder than I’m obliged; I should like to go to the pic-nic myself, though there’s no chance of that for me. Come here in good time in the morning, get through as much work as you can, and I daresay we can let you off at one o’clock. There!”
This concession did not satisfy MacEveril. When Mr. Hanborough came in from the other room he found the young man exercising his saucy tongue upon Tom Chandler, calling him a “Martinet,” a “Red Indian Freebooter,” and other agreeable names, which he may have brought with him from Australia. Tom, ever sweet-tempered, took it all pleasantly, and bade him go on with his work.
That interlude passed. At half-past four o’clock MacEveril went out, as usual, to get his tea, leaving Chandler and Hanborough in the office, each writing at his own desk. Presently the former paused; looked fixedly at the mortgage-deed he was engaged upon, and then got up to carry it to the old clerk. As he was crossing the room the postman came in, put a small pile of letters into Mr. Chandler’s hand, and went out again. Tom looked down at the letters but did not disturb them; he laid them down upon Mr. Hanborough’s desk whilst he showed him the parchment.
