Fenton's Quest - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

which Gilbert was powerless to dissipate.

"Is there anything amiss, Jack?" he asked. "I know high spirits are not always a sign of inward contentment with you. Is there anything wrong to-night?"

"No."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite sure. I may be a little knocked up perhaps; that's all."

No hint of his intended departure fell from him when they shook hands and wished each other good-night; but early next morning a brief note was delivered to Mr. Fenton at his sister's house to the following effect:--

"MY DEAR GILBERT,--I find myself obliged to leave this place for
London at once, and have not time to thank anyone for the kindness
I have received during my stay. Will you do the best to repair
this omission on my part, and offer my warmest expressions of
gratitude to Captain Sedgewick and Miss Nowell for their goodness
to me? Pray apologise for me also to Mr. and Mrs. Lister for my
inability to make my adieux in a more formal manner than this, a
shortcoming which I hope to atone for on some future visit. Tell
Lister I shall be very pleased to see him if he will look me up at
the Pnyx when he is next in town.

"Ever yours,--JOHN SALTRAM."

This was all. There was no explanation of the reason for this hurried journey,--a strange omission between men who were on terms of such perfect confidence as obtained with these two. Gilbert Fenton was not a little disturbed by this unlooked-for event, fearing that some kind of evil had befallen his friend.

"His money matters may have fallen into a desperate condition," he thought; "or perhaps that woman--that Mrs. Branston, is at the bottom of the business."

He went to the cottage that morning as usual, but not with his accustomed feeling of unalloyed happiness. The serene heaven of his tranquil life was clouded a little by this strange conduct of John Saltram's. It wounded him to think that his old companion was keeping a secret from him.

"I suppose it is because I lectured him a little about Mrs. Branston the other day," he said to himself. "The business is connected with her in some way, I daresay, and poor Jack does not care to arouse my virtuous indignation. That comes of taking a high moral tone with one's friend. He swallows the pill with a decent grace at the time, and shuts one out of his confidence ever afterwards."

Captain Sedgewick expressed himself much surprised and disappointed by Mr. Saltram's departure. Marian said very little upon the subject. There seemed nothing extraordinary to her in the fact that a gentleman should be summoned to London by the claims of business.

Gilbert might have brooded longer upon the mystery involved in his friend's conduct, but that evening's post brought him trouble in the shape of bad news from Melbourne. His confidential clerk--an old man who had been with his father for many years, and who knew every intricacy of the business--wrote him a very long letter, dwelling upon the evil fortune which attended all their Australian transactions of late, and hinting at dishonesty and double-dealing on the part of Gilbert's cousin, Astley Fenton, the local manager.

The letter was a very sensible one, calculated to arouse a careless man from a false sense of security. Gilbert was so much disturbed by it, that he determined upon going back to London by the earliest fast train next morning. It was cutting short his holiday only by a few days. He had meant to return at the beginning of the following week, and he felt that he had already some reason to reproach himself for his neglect of business.

He left Lidford happy in the thought that Captain Sedgewick and Marian were to come to London in October. The period of separation would be something less than a month. And after that? Well, he would of course spend Christmas at Lidford; and he fancied how the holly and mistletoe, the church-decorations and carol-singing, and all the stereotyped genialities of the season,--things that had seemed trite and dreary to him since the days of his boyhood,--would have a new significance and beauty for him when he and Marian kept the sacred festival together. And then how quickly would begin the new year, the year whose spring-tide would see them man and wife! Perhaps there is no period of this mortal life so truly happy as that in which all our thoughts are occupied in looking forward to some great joy to come. Whether the joy, when it does come, is ever so unqualified a delight as it seemed in the distance, or whether it ever comes at all, are questions which we have all solved for ourselves somehow or other. To Gilbert Fenton these day-dreams were bright and new, and he was troubled by no fear of their not being realized.

He went at his business with considerable ardour, and made a careful and detailed investigation of all affairs connected with their Melbourne trading, assisted throughout by Samuel Dwyer, the old clerk. The result of his examination convinced him that his cousin had been playing him false; that the men with whom his pretended losses had been made were men of straw, and the transactions were shadows invented to cover his own embezzlements. It was a complicated business altogether; and it was not until Gilbert Fenton had been engaged upon it for more than a week, and had made searching inquiries as to the status of the firms with which the supposed dealings had taken place, that he was able to arrive at this conclusion. Having at last made himself master of the real state of things, as far as it was in any way possible to do so at that distance from the scene of action, Gilbert saw that there was only one line of conduct open to him as a man of business. That was to go at once to Melbourne, investigate his cousin's transactions on the spot, and take the management of the colonial house into his own hands. To do this would be a sore trial to him, for it would involve the postponement of his marriage. He could scarcely hope to do what he had to do in Melbourne and to get back to England before a later date than that which he had hoped would be his wedding-day. Yet to do anything less than this would be futile and foolish; and it was possible that the future stability of his position was dependent upon his arrangement of these Melbourne difficulties. It was his home, the prosperity of his coming life that he had to fight for; and he told himself that he must put aside all weakness, as he had done once before, when he turned away from the easy-going studies and pleasures of young Oxford life to undertake a hand-to-hand fight with evil fortune.

He had conquered then, as he hoped to conquer now, having an energetic nature, and a strong faith in man's power to master fortune by honest work and patience.

There was no time lost after once his decision was arrived at. He began to put his affairs in order for departure immediately, and wrote to Marian within a few hours of making up his mind as to the necessity of this voyage. He told her frankly all that had happened, that their fortune was at stake, and that it was his bounden duty to take this step hard as it might seem to him. He could not leave England without seeing her once more, he said, recently as they had parted, and brief as his leisure must needs be. There were so many things he would have to say to her on the eve of this cruel separation.

He went down to Lidford one evening when all the arrangements for his voyage were complete, and he had two clear days at his disposal before the vessel he was to go in left Liverpool. The Listers were very much surprised and shocked when he told them what he was going to do; Mrs. Lister bitterly bewailing the insecurity of all commercial positions, and appearing to consider her brother on the verge of bankruptcy.

He found a warm welcome at the cottage from the Captain, who heartily approved of the course he was taking, and was full of hopefulness about the future.

"A few months more or less can make little difference," he said, when Gilbert was lamenting the postponement of his wedding. "Marian will be quite safe in her old uncle's care; and I do not suppose either of you will love each other any the less for the delay. I have such perfect confidence in you, Gilbert, you see; and it is such a happiness to me to know that my darling's future is in the hands of a man I can so thoroughly trust. Were you reduced to absolute poverty, with the battle of life to fight all over again, I would give you my dear girl without fear of the issue. I know you are of the stuff that is not to be beaten; and I believe that neither time nor circumstance could ever change your love for her."

"You may believe that. Every day makes her dearer to me. I should be ashamed to tell you how bitterly I feel this parting, and what a desperate mental struggle I went through before I could make up my mind to go."

Marian came into the room in the midst of this conversation. She was very pale, and her eyes had a dull, heavy look. The bad news in Gilbert's letter had distressed her even more than he had anticipated.

"My darling," he said tenderly, looking down at the changed face, with her cold hand clasped in his own, "how ill you are looking! I fear I made my letter too dismal, and that it frightened you."

"Oh no, no. I am very sorry you should have this bad fortune, Gilbert, that is all."

"There is nothing which I do not hope to repair, dear. The losses are not more than I can stand. All that I take to heart is the separation from you, Marian."

"I am not worth so much regret," she said, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her hands clasping and unclasping each other nervously.

"Not worth so much regret, Marian!" he exclaimed. "You are all the world to me; the beginning and end of my universe."

She looked a little brighter by-and-by, when her lover had done his best to cheer her with hopeful talk, which cost him no small effort in the depressed state of his mind. The day went by very slowly, although it was the last which those two were to spend together until Gilbert Fenton's return. It was a hopelessly wet day, with a perpetual drizzling rain and a leaden-gray sky; weather which seemed to harmonise well enough with the pervading gloom of Gilbert's thoughts as he stood by the fire, leaning against an angle of the mantelpiece, and watching Marian's needle moving monotonously in and out of the canvas.

The Captain, who led an easy comfortable kind of life at all times, was apt to dispose of a good deal of his leisure in slumber upon such a day as this. He sat down in his own particular easy-chair, dozing behind the shelter of a newspaper, and lulled agreeably by the low sound of Gilbert and Marian's conversation.

So the quiet hours went by, overshadowed by the gloom of that approaching