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

trade. I wouldn't mind offering a fair price for the business,--I've got a tidy little bit of money put away, though my salary has been small enough, goodness knows; but I've lived with the old gentleman, and never wasted a penny upon pleasure; none of your music-halls, or dancing-saloons, or anything of that kind, for me,--or I wouldn't mind paying an annual sum out of the profits of the trade for a reasonable term. If you've any influence with the young lady, perhaps you could put it to her, and get her to look at things in that light," Mr. Tulliver added, becoming quite obsequious as it dawned upon him that this interloping stranger might be able to do him a service.

"I'll do my best for you, Tulliver," Mr. Nowell replied, in a patronising tone. "I daresay the young lady will be quite willing to entertain any reasonable proposition you may make."

Faithful to his promise Mr. Nowell appeared at a quarter past six next morning, at which hour he found his daughter quite ready for her journey. She was very glad to get away from that dreary house, made a hundredfold more dismal by the sense of what lay in the closed chamber, where the candles were still burning in the yellow fog of the November morning, and to which Marian had gone with hushed footsteps to kneel for the last time beside the old man who was so near her by the ties of relationship, and whom she had known for so brief a space. She was glad to leave that dingy quarter of the town, which to one who had never lived in an English city seemed unspeakably close and wretched; still more glad to think that she was going back to the quiet home, where her husband would most likely join her very soon. She might find him there when she arrived, perhaps; for he knew nothing of this journey to London, or could only hear of it at the Grange, where she had left a letter for him, enclosing that brief note of Gilbert Fenton's which had informed her of her grandfather's fatal illness. There were special reasons why she should not ask him to meet her in Queen Anne's Court, however long she might have been compelled to stay there.

Mr. Nowell was much more affectionate in his manner to his daughter this morning, as they sat in the cab driving to the station, and walked side by side upon the platform in the quarter of an hour's interval before the departure of the train. He questioned her closely upon her life in the present, and her plans for the future, expressing himself in a remarkably generous manner upon the subject of her grandfather's will, and declaring himself very well pleased that his own involuntary neglect was to be so amply atoned for by the old man's liberality. He found his daughter completely ignorant of the world, as gentle and confiding as he had found her mother in the past. He sounded the depths of her innocent mind during that brief promenade; and when the train bore her away at last, and the platform was clear, he remained for some time walking up and down in profound meditation, scarcely knowing where he was. He looked round him in an absent way by-and-by, and then hurriedly left the station, and drove straight to Mr. Medler's office, which was upon the ground floor of a gloomy old house in one of the dingier streets in the Soho district, and in the upper chambers whereof the attorney's wife and numerous offspring had their abode. He came down to his client from his unpretending breakfast-table in a faded dressing-gown, with smears of egg and greasy traces of buttered toast about the region of his mouth, and seemed not particularly pleased to see Mr. Nowell. But the conference that followed was a long one; and it is to be presumed that it involved some chance of future profit, since the lawyer forgot to return to his unfinished breakfast, much to the vexation of Mrs. Medler, a faded lady with everything about her in the extremest stage of limpness, who washed the breakfast-things with her own fair hands, in consideration of the multitudinous duties to be performed by that hapless solitary damsel who in such modest households is usually denominated "the girl."


CHAPTER XXII.


AT LIDFORD AGAIN.

Gilbert Fenton called in Queen Anne's Court within a few hours of Marian's departure, and was not a little disappointed when he was told that she had gone back to Hampshire. He had relied upon seeing her again--not once only, but several times--before her return. He had promised Jacob Nowell that he would watch over and protect her interests; and it was a sincere unqualified wish to do this that influenced him now. More than a dear friend, the sweetest and dearest of all womankind, she could never be to him. He accepted the position with resignation. The first sharp bitterness of her loss was over. That he should ever cease to love her was impossible; but it seemed to him that a chivalrous friendship for her, a disinterested brotherly affection, was in no manner incompatible with that hapless silent love. No word of his, in all their intercourse to come, should ever remind her of that hidden devotion; no shadow of the past should ever cloud the calm brightness of the present. It was a romantic fancy, perhaps, for a man of business, whose days were spent in the very press and tumult of commercial life; but it had lifted Gilbert Fenton out of that slough of despond into which he had fallen when Marian seemed utterly lost to him--vanished altogether out of his existence.

He had a sense of bitter disappointment, therefore, when he found that she had gone, leaving neither letter nor message for him. How little value his friendship must needs possess for her, when she could abandon him thus without a word! He had felt sure that she would consult him upon her affairs; but no, she had her husband to whom to appeal, and had no need of any other counsellor.

"I was a fool to think that I could ever be anything to her, even a friend," he said to himself bitterly; "women are incapable of friendship. It is all or nothing with them; a blind self-abnegation or the coldest indifference. Devotion cannot touch them, unless the man who gives it happen to be that one man out of a thousand who has the power to bewitch their senses. Truth and affection, of themselves, have no value with them. How many people spoke to me of this Holbrook as an unattractive man; and yet he won my love away from me, and holds her with an influence so complete, that my friendship seems worthless to her. She cannot give me a word or a thought."

Mr. Fenton made some inquiries about the funeral arrangements and found that these had been duly attended to by the lawyer, and a gentleman who had been with Jacob Nowell a good deal of late, who seemed to be some relation to the old man, Mr. Tulliver said, and took a great deal upon himself. This being done, there was, of course, no occasion for Gilbert to interfere, and he was glad to be released from all responsibility. Having ascertained this, he asked for the address of the late Mr. Nowell's lawyer; and being told it, went at once to Mr. Medler's office. He did not consider himself absolved from the promise he had made the old man by Marian's indifference, and was none the less anxious to watch over her interests because she seemed to set so little value on his friendship.

He told Mr. Medler who he was, and the promise he had given to Jacob Nowell, abstaining, of course, from any reference to the position he had once occupied towards Marian. He described himself as her friend only--a friend of long standing, who had been intimate with her adopted guardian.

"I know how ignorant Mrs. Holbrook is of the world and of all business matters," he went on to say, "and I am naturally anxious that her interests should be protected."

"I should think there was very little doubt that her husband will see after those," the lawyer answered, with something of a sneer; "husbands are generally supposed to do that, especially where there is money at stake."

"I do not know Mr. Holbrook; and he has kept himself in the background so persistently up to this point, and has been altogether so underhanded in his proceedings, that I have by no means a good opinion of him. Mr. Nowell told me that he intended to leave his money to his granddaughter in such a manner, that it would be hers and hers only--free from the control of any husband. He has done so, I presume?"

"Yes," Mr. Medler replied, with the air of a man who would fain have withheld the information; "he has left it for her own separate use and maintenance."

"And it is a property of some importance, I conclude?"

"Of some importance--yes," the lawyer answered, in the same tone.

"Ought not Mrs. Holbrook to have remained to hear the reading of the will?"

"Well, yes, decidedly; it would have been more in the usual way of things; but her absence can have no ill effect upon her interests. Of course it will be my duty to make her acquainted with the contents of the will."

Gilbert Fenton was not prepossessed by Mr. Medler's countenance, which was not an open candid index to a spotless soul, nor by his surroundings, which were of the shabbiest; but the business being in this man's hands, it might be rather difficult to withdraw it--dangerous even. The man held the will, and in holding that had a certain amount of power.

"There is no one except Mrs. Holbrook interested in Mr. Nowell's will, I suppose?" Gilbert said presently.

"No one directly and immediately, except an old charwoman, who has a legacy of five-and-twenty pounds."

"But there is some one else interested in an indirect manner I infer from your words?"

"Yes. Mrs. Holbrook takes the whole of the personalty, but she has only a life-interest in the real estate. If she should have children, it will go to them on her death; if she should die childless, it will go to her father, supposing him to survive her."

"To her father? That is rather strange, isn't it?"

"I don't know that. It was the old man's wish that the will should be to that effect."

"I understood from him that he did not know whether his son was alive or dead."

"Indeed! I believe he had news of his son very lately."

"Curious that he should not have told me, knowing as he did my interest in everything relating to Mrs. Holbrook."

"Old people are apt to be close; and Jacob Nowell was about one of the closest customers I ever met with," answered the lawyer.

Gilbert left him soon after this, and chartered a hansom in the next street, which carried him back to the City. He was very uncertain as to what he ought to do for Marian, doubtful of Mr. Medler's integrity, and yet anxious to abstain from any act that might seem uncalled for or officious. She had her husband to look after her interests, as the lawyer had reminded him, and it was scarcely probable that Mr. Holbrook would neglect any steps necessary to secure his wife's succession to whatever property Jacob Nowell had left. It seemed to Gilbert that he could do nothing at present, except write to