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

a month would give ample time for the two journeys; and John Saltram had been away more than a month.

Gilbert could see that Marian was quick to take alarm on discovering this.

"My dear Mrs. Saltram, be reasonable," he said gently. "Finding such a cheat put upon him, your husband would naturally be anxious to bring your father to some kind of reckoning, to extort from him the real secret of your fate. He would no doubt stay in New York to do this; and we cannot tell how difficult the business might prove, or how long it would occupy him."

"But if he had been detained like that, he would surely have written to you," said Marian; "and you have heard nothing from him since he left England."

"Unhappily nothing. But he is not the best correspondent in the world, you know."

"Yes, yes, I know that. Yet, in such a case as this, he would surely have written, if he were well." Her eyes met Gilbert's as she said this. She stopped abruptly, dismayed by something in his face.

"You are hiding some misfortune from me," she cried; "I can see it in your face. You have had bad news of him."

"Upon my honour, no. He was not in very strong health when he left England, that is all; and, like yourself, I am naturally anxious."

He had not meant to admit even as much as this just yet; but having said this, he found himself compelled to say more. Marian questioned him so closely, that she finally extorted from him the whole history of John Saltram's illness. After that it was quite in vain to attempt consolation. She was very gentle, very patient, troubling him with no vain wailings and lamentations; but he could see that her heart was almost broken.

He left her at the end of a few hours to return to London, promising to go on to Liverpool next day, in order to be on the spot to await her husband's return, and to send her the earliest possible tidings of it.

"Your friendship for us has given you nothing but trouble and pain," she said; "but if you will do this for me, I shall be grateful to you for the rest of my life."

There was no occasion for that journey to Liverpool. When he arrived in London that night, Gilbert Fenton found a letter waiting for him at his Wigmore-street lodgings--a letter with the New York post-mark, but _not_ addressed in his friend's hand. He tore it open hurriedly, just a little alarmed by this fact.

His first feeling was one of relief. There were three separate sheets of paper in the envelope, and the first which he took up was in John Saltram's hand--a hurried eager letter, dated some weeks before.

"My dear Gilbert," he wrote, "I have been duped. This man Nowell is a most consummate scoundrel. The woman with him is not Marian, but some girl whom he has picked up to represent her--his wife perhaps, or something worse. I was very ill on the passage out, and only discovered the trick at the last. Since then I have traced the scoundrel to his quarters, and have had an interview with him--rather a stormy one, as you may suppose. But the long and short of it is that he defies me. He tells me that my wife is in England, and safe, but will admit no more. I have consulted a lawyer here, but it seems I can do nothing against him--or nothing that will not involve a more complicated and protracted business than I have time or patience for. I don't want this wretch to go scot-free. It is evident that he has hatched this plot in order to get possession of his daughter's money, and I have little doubt the lawyer Medler is in it. But of course my first duty, as well as my most ardent desire, is to find Marian; and for this purpose I shall come back to England by the first steamer that will convey me, leaving Mr. Nowell's punishment to the chances of the future. My dear girl's property, as well as herself, will be best protected by my presence in England."

There was a pause here, and the next paragraph was dated two days after.

"If I have strength to come, I shall return by the next steamer; but the fact is, my dear Gilbert, I am very ill--have been completely prostrate since writing the above--and a doctor here tells me I must not think of the voyage yet awhile. But I shan't allow his opinion to govern me. If I can crawl to the steamer, which starts three days hence, I shall come."

Then there was another break, and again the writer went on in a weak and more straggling hand, without any date this time.

"My dear Gil, it's nearly a week since I wrote the last lines, and I've been in bed ever since. I'm afraid there's no hope for me; in plain words, I believe I'm dying. To you I leave the duty I am not allowed to perform. Marian is living, and in England. I believe that scoundrelly father of hers told me the truth when he declared that. You will not rest till you find her, I know; and you will protect her fortune from that wretch. God bless you, faithful old friend! Heaven knows how I yearn for the sight of your honest face, lying here among strangers, to be buried in a foreign land. See that my wife pays Mrs. Branston the money I borrowed to come here; and tell her that I was grateful to her, and thought of her on my dying bed. To my wife I send no message. She knows that I loved her; but how dear she has been to me in this bitter time of separation, she can never know.

"You will find a bulky MS. at my chambers, in the bottom drawer on the right side of my desk. It is my Life of Swift--unfinished as my own life. If, after reading it, you should think it worth publishing, as a fragment, with my name to it, I should wish you to arrange its publication. I should be glad to leave my name upon something."

In a stranger's hand, and upon another sheet of paper, Gilbert read the end of his friend's history.

"Sir,--I regret to inform you that your friend Mr. Saltram expired
at eleven o'clock last night (Wednesday, May 2nd), after an
illness of a fortnight's duration, throughout which I gave him my
best attention as his medical adviser. He will be buried in the
Cypress-hill Cemetery, on Long Island, at his own request; and he
has left sufficient funds for the necessary expenses, and the
payment of his hotel bill, as well as my own small claim against
him. Any surplus which may be left I shall forward to you, when
these payments have been made. I enclose a detailed account of the
case for your satisfaction, and have the honour to be, sir,

"Yours very obediently,

"SILAS WARREN, M.D.

"113 Sixteenth-street, New York,

"May 3, 186--."

This was all.

And Gilbert had to carry these tidings to Marian. For a time he was almost paralyzed by the blow. He had loved this man as a brother; if he had ever doubted the strength of his attachment to John Saltram, he knew it now. But the worst of all was, that one bitter fact--Marian must be told, and by him.

He went back to the Grange next day. Again and again upon that miserable journey he acted over the scene which was to take place when he came to the end of it--in spite of himself, as it were--going over the words he was to say, while Marian's face rose before him like a picture. How was he to tell her? Would not the very fact of this desolation coming to her from his lips be sufficient to make him hateful to her in all the days to come? More than once upon that journey he was tempted to turn back, and to leave his dismal news to be told in a letter.

But when the fatal moment did at last arrive, the event in no manner realized the picture of his imagination. Time was not given to him to speak those solemn preliminary words by which he had intended to prepare the victim for her deathblow. His presence there, and his presence alone, were all sufficient to prepare her for some calamity.

"You have come back to me, and without him!" she exclaimed. "Tell me what has happened; tell me at once."

He had no time to defer the stroke. His face told her so much. In a few moments--before his broken words could shape themselves into coherence--she knew all.

There are some things that can never be forgotten. Never, to his dying day, can Gilbert Fenton forget the quiet agony he had to witness then.

She was very ill for a long time after that day--in danger of death. All that she had suffered during her confinement at Wyncomb seemed to fall upon her now with a double weight. Only the supreme devotion of those who cared for her could have carried her through that weary time; but the day did at last come when the peril was pronounced a thing of the past, and the feeble submissive patient might be carried away from the Grange--from the scene of her brief married life and of her bitter widowhood.

She went with Ellen Whitelaw to Ventnor. It was late in August before she was able to bear this journey; and in this mild refuge for invalids she remained throughout the winter.

Even during that trying time, when it seemed more than doubtful whether she could live to profit by her grandfather's bequest, her interests had been carefully watched by Gilbert Fenton. It was tolerably evident to his mind that Mr. Medler had been a tacit accomplice in Percival Nowell's fraud; or, at any rate, that he had enabled the pretended Mrs. Holbrook to obtain a large sum of ready money with greater ease than she could have done had he, as executor, been scrupulously careful to obtain her identification from some more trustworthy person than he knew Percival Nowell to be.

Whether these suspicions of Gilbert's were correct, whether the lawyer had been actually deceived, or had willingly lent himself to the furtherance of Nowell's design, must remain, unascertained; as well as the amount of profit which Mr. Medler may have secured to himself by the transaction. The law held him liable for the whole of the moneys thus paid over in fraud or error; but the law could do very little against a man whose sole earthly possessions appeared to be comprised by the worm-eaten desks and shabby chairs and tables in his dingy offices. The poor consolation remained of making an attempt to get him struck off "the Rolls;" but when the City firm of solicitors in whose hands Gilbert had placed Mrs. Saltram's affairs suggested this. Marian herself entreated that the man might have the benefit of the doubt as to his complicity with her father, and that no effort should be made to bring legal ruin upon him.

"There has been enough misery caused by this money already," she said. "Let the matter rest. I am richer than I care to be, as it is."

Of course Mr. Medler was not