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

months to a degree that has frightened her; and a man of my regular habits must be very far gone in love, Miss Carley, when his appetite forsakes him. From the time I came to know you as a young woman, in the bloom of a young woman's beauty, I said to myself, 'That's the girl I'll marry, and no other.' Your father can bear me out in that, for I said the same to him. And finding that I had his approval, I was satisfied to bide my time, and wait till you came round to the same way of thinking. Your father tells me yesterday afternoon, and again this afternoon, that you have come round to that way of feeling. I hope he hasn't deceived me, Miss Carley."

This was a very long speech for Stephen Whitelaw. It was uttered in little gasps or snatches of speech, the speaker stopping at the end of every sentence to take breath.

Ellen Carley sat on that side of the comfortable round table most remote from Mr. Whitelaw, deadly pale, with her hands clasped before her. Once she lifted her eyes with a piteous look to her father's face; but he was smoking his pipe solemnly, with his gaze fixed upon the blazing logs in the grate, and contrived not to see that mute despairing appeal. He had not looked at his daughter once since Stephen Whitelaw's arrival, nor had he made any attempt to prepare her for this visit, this rapid consummation of the sacrifice.

"Come, Miss Carley," said the former rather impatiently, after there had been a dead silence of some minutes, "I want to get an answer direct from your own lips. Your father hasn't been deceiving me, has he?"

"No," Ellen said in a low voice, almost as if the reply were dragged from her by some physical torture. "If my father has given you a promise for me, I will keep it. But I don't want to deceive you, on my part, Mr. Whitelaw," she went on in a somewhat firmer tone. "I will be your wife, since you and my father have settled that it must be so; but I can promise no more than that. I will be dutiful and submissive to you as a wife, you may be sure--only----"

Mr. Whitelaw smiled a very significant smile, which implied that it would be his care to insure his wife's obedience, and that he was troubled by no doubts upon that head.

The bailiff broke-in abruptly at this juncture.

"Lord bless the girl, what need is there of all this talk about what she will be and what she won't be? She'll be as good a wife as any woman in England, I'll stake my life upon that. She's been a good daughter, as all the world knows, and a good daughter is bound to make a good wife. Say no more about it, Nell. Stephen Whitelaw knows he'll make no bad bargain in marrying you."

The farmer received this remark with a loud sniff, expressive of offended dignity.

"Very likely not, William Carley," he said; "but it isn't every man that can make your daughter mistress of such a place as Wyncomb; and such men as could do it would look for money with a wife, however young and pretty she might be. There's two sides to a bargain, you see, William, and I should like things to be looked at in that light between you and me."

"You've no call to take offence, Steph," answered the bailiff with a conciliating grin. "I never said you wasn't a good match for my girl; but a pretty girl and a prudent clever housekeeper like Nell is a fortune in herself to any man."

"Then the matter's settled, I suppose," said Mr. Whitelaw; "and the sooner the wedding comes off the better, to my mind. If my wife that is to be wants anything in the way of new clothes, I shall be happy to put down a twenty-pound note--or I'd go as far as thirty--towards 'em."

Ellen shook her head impatiently.

"I want nothing new," she said; "I have as many things as I care to have."

"Nonsense, Nell," cried her father, frowning at her in a significant manner to express his disapproval of this folly, and in so doing looking at her for the first time since her suitor's advent. "Every young woman likes new gowns, and of course you'll take Steph's friendly offer, and thank him kindly for it. He knows that I'm pretty hard-up just now, and won't be able to do much for you; and it wouldn't do for Mrs. Whitelaw of Wyncomb to begin the world with a shabby turn-out."

"Of course not," replied the farmer; "I'll bring you the cash to-morrow evening, Nell; and the sooner you buy your wedding-gown the better. There's nothing to wait for, you see. I've got a good home to take you to. Mother Tadman will march, of course, between this and my wedding-day. I sha'n't want her when I've a wife to keep house for me."

"Of course not," said the bailiff. "Relations are always dangerous about a place--ready to make mischief at every hand's turn."

"O, Mr. Whitelaw, you won't turn her out, surely--your own flesh and blood, and after so many years of service. She told me how hard she had worked for you."

"Ah, that's just like her," growled the farmer. "I give her a comfortable home for all these years, and then she grumbles about the work."

"She didn't grumble," said Ellen hastily. "She only told me how faithfully she had served you."

"Yes; that comes to the same thing. I should have thought you would have liked to be mistress of your house, Nell, without any one to interfere with you."

"Mrs. Tadman is nothing to me," answered Ellen, who had been by no means prepossessed by that worthy matron; "but I shouldn't like her to be unfairly treated on my account."

"Well, we'll think about it, Nell; there's no hurry. She's worth her salt, I daresay."

Mr. Whitelaw seemed to derive a kind of satisfaction from the utterance of his newly-betrothed's Christian name, which came as near the rapture of a lover as such a sluggish nature might be supposed capable of. To Ellen there was something hideous in the sound of her own name spoken by those hateful lips; but he had a sovereign right so to address her, now and for evermore. Was she not his goods, his chattels, bought with a price, as much as a horse at a fair?

That nothing might be wanting to remind her of the sordid bargain, Mr. Whitelaw drew a small canvas bag from his pocket presently--a bag which gave forth that pleasant chinking sound that is sweet to the ears of so many as the music of gold--and handed it across the hearth to William Carley.

"I'm as good as my word, you see," he said with a complacent air of patronage. "There's the favour you asked me for; I'll take your IOU for it presently, if it's all the same to you--as a matter of form--and to be given back to you upon my wedding-day."

The bailiff nodded assent, and dropped the bag into his pocket with a sigh of relief. And then the two men went on smoking their pipes in the usual stolid way, dropping out a few words now and then by way of social converse; and there was nothing in Mr. Whitelaw's manner to remind Ellen that she had bound herself to the awful apprenticeship of marriage without love. But when he took his leave that night he approached her with such an evident intention of kissing her as could not be mistaken by the most inexperienced of maidens. Poor Ellen indulged in no girlish resistance, no pretty little comedy of alarm and surprise, but surrendered her pale lips to the hateful salute with the resignation of a martyr. It was better that she should suffer this than that her father should go to gaol. That thought was never absent from her mind. Nor was this sacrifice to filial duty quite free from the leaven of selfishness. For her own sake, as much as for her father's, Ellen Carley would have submitted to any penalty rather than disgrace. To have him branded as a thief must needs be worse suffering than any life-long penance she might endure in matrimony. To lose Frank Randall's love was less than to let him learn her father's guilt.

"The daughter of a thief!" she said to herself. "How he would despise himself for having ever loved me, if he knew me to be that!"


CHAPTER XXXVI.


COMING ROUND.

Possessed with a thorough distrust of Mr. Medler and only half satisfied as to the fact of Marian's safety, Gilbert Fenton lost no time in seeking professional aid in the work of investigating this perplexing social mystery. He went once more to the metropolitan detective who had been with him in Hampshire, and whose labours there had proved so futile. The task now to be performed seemed easy enough. Mr. Proul (Proul was the name of the gentleman engaged by Gilbert) had only to discover the whereabouts of Percival Nowell; a matter of no great difficulty, Gilbert imagined, since it was most likely that Marian's father had frequent personal communication with the lawyer; nor was it improbable that he would have business with his agent or representative, Mr. Tulliver, in Queen Anne's Court. Provided with these two addresses, Gilbert fancied that Mr. Proul's work must needs be easy enough.

That gentleman, however, was not disposed to make light of the duty committed to him; whether from a professional habit of exaggerating the importance of any mission undertaken by him, or in perfect singleness of mind, it is not easy to say.

"It's a watching business, you see sir," he told Gilbert, "and is pretty sure to be tedious. I may put a man to hang about this Mr. Medler's business all day and every day for a month at a stretch, and he may miss his customer at the last, especially as you can't give me any kind of description of the man you want."

"Surely your agent could get some information out of Medler's clerk; it's in his trade to do that kind of thing, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, sir; I don't deny that I might put a man on to the clerk, and it might answer. On the other hand, such a gentleman's clerk would be likely to be uncommon well trained and uncommon little trusted."

"But we want to know so little," Gilbert exclaimed impatiently; "only where this man lives, and who lives with him."

"Yes," murmured Mr. Proul, rubbing his chin thoughtfully; "it ain't much, as you say, and it might be got out of the clerk, if the clerk knows it; but as to Mrs. Holbrook having got away from Hampshire and come to London, that's more than I can believe. I worked that business harder and closer than ever I worked any business yet. You told me to spare neither money nor time, and I didn't spare either; though it was more a question of time than money, for my expenses were light enough, as you know. I don't believe Mrs. Holbrook could have got away from Malsham station up to the time when I left Hampshire. I'm pretty certain she couldn't have left the place any other way than by rail; I'm more than certain she couldn't have been living anywhere in the neighbourhood when I was hunting for her. In short, it comes to this--I stick to my old opinion, that