Chapter Thirty Two.
Mr Mannering was sitting in his library the next morning, when Mr Bennett was announced. It was not yet twelve o’clock, and the Underham lawyer was generally deep in his work at that hour, so that Mr Mannering met him with a touch of wonder in his cordiality.
“The more welcome because I should as soon have expected Thorpe to receive a visit from the Mayor and Corporation as from you at this time of day. Sit down, pray. My papers are all over the place, but I believe you can find a chair.”
“If I had not known better, I should have said you were still in harness, I own,” said Mr Bennett, looking round upon the familiar signs of business.
“Harness? I sometimes think that for men who have passed the greater part of their lives at work there is no getting out of it. There is a review in the last Quarterly which all the world is talking about, and I can assure you I have not yet found five minutes in which to look at it. The truth is that an unlucky mortal who has neither time, money, nor health, should make up his mind to endure a great deal in this world.”
“What’s that, Charles?” said Mr Robert, coming in with a ruddy glow upon his face. “If you had Stokes for a gardener, you might begin to talk about endurance. Glad to see you, Bennett, this fine fresh morning. All well, I hope?”
“All my household, thank you,” said Mr Bennett, settling himself to his story with great satisfaction. “But we had a sad accident in Thorpe last night. Anthony Miles had been dining with us, and had not left half an hour when back he came, and really it was fortunate that Ada had gone up stairs, or she might have been terribly alarmed to see him dripping from head to foot at that hour of the night. However, the ladies were out of the way, by a stroke of good fortune.”
“Dripping! Had he tumbled into the water?”
“Not at all, not at all. It was a foolish thing to do, but it seems he saw the man fall, and jumped in after him. And then, of course, he came to me for dry clothes.”
Mr Mannering was leaning forward in a trim attitude of attention, with his legs crossed, and his head a little bent. Mr Robert was fidgeting as usual under Mr Bennett’s prose.
“But who was drowned or dragged out, or what was the end of it?” he said hastily. “Bless the boy, he’ll be himself again, if people believe him to be a hero. Who was it, Bennett?”
“Ah, there is the extraordinary coincidence. It was such a fortunate thing that I went back with Anthony, because, although it was not the case for a formal deposition, I am ready to prove that he made a voluntary declaration.”
“He—who, who?”
“The young man’s name is David Stephens,” said Mr Bennett in a tone of mild reproof. “He is a clerk at the post-office.”
“Young Stephens, the humpback preacher! Deposition?—Do you mean there had been a quarrel or anything?”
“My dear Mr Robert, if you were to guess for a week you would never imagine what he had to say,” said Mr Bennett, sitting back in his chair, and tapping one hand lightly with the other, too secure of his story to mind the little pokes and digs that were being administered. “I can assure you that in the whole course of my experience I have never met with anything I consider so strange. It just appeared the shadowy kind of accusation which is most difficult to rebut; and, although I was convinced that it might be explained in some perfectly honourable manner, it cannot be doubted that there were persons whom it did influence otherwise.”
Mr Mannering looked as courteously attentive as ever, Mr Robert had sunk into a despairing silence.
“My most sanguine hopes hardly amounted to an actual acquittal, owing, as I have said, to the difficulty of proving anything in the matter—”
“You are talking about Anthony Miles,” cried Mr Robert, jumping up, and becoming very red in the face. “But what on earth had that young Stephens to do with it?”
“Could you have imagined that he had in his hands this letter which made all the stir, that he gave it to a certain person, and that, it having been destroyed, Stephens was able to tell us where we might find one or two of its fragments, minute fragments I need not say, but sufficient for the purpose of identification, and such as under the circumstances may be considered conclusive.”
“Conclusive?—but of what? The existence of that letter is the very fact to which we have all been trying to shut our eyes,” said Mr Mannering, dubiously joining his fingers.
“The letter existed,” said Mr Bennett, leaning forward and speaking emphatically,—“the letter existed, but it never reached the owner to whom it was addressed. Another person received it from Stephens, and, as I have told you, apparently destroyed it. One or two things must have excited Stephens’s suspicions, for he managed to possess himself of a shred or two of the writing. I have them with me.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. Mr Robert walked to the window and blew his nose violently. Mr Mannering took the tiny witnesses, and fitted them together with his long slender fingers.
“Here are four,” he said at last, “one with only the word ‘will,’ which is valueless; another may be ‘proposal’ with the first letter and half of the second missing, and the remaining two are, I should say, unmistakably part of the signature. You are right, Bennett. They prove nothing, and yet under the circumstances they prove a great deal. I am heartily pleased.”
“Who was the rascal?” asked his brother from the window.
Mr Bennett pursed up his lips and did not answer until Mr Robert repeated his question, and then he said,—
“That is the most unsatisfactory part of the business, I lament to say. Will you believe that Anthony Miles knew all that I have told you from the first, and would not speak, and that now he has prevented our becoming acquainted with the name of the person?”
“Whew! That complicates the matter again. How can Anthony be such a fool!”
“I have urged everything in my power,” Mr Bennett went on, rather pompously. “His position in regard to my family gave me the right to do so. But he is exceedingly determined. He says the information is not new to himself, and he even requests me to keep complete silence on the subject.”
“Don’t pay any attention to his crotchets, Bennett,” said Mr Robert, marching back from the window. “Silence?—Tell everybody, everybody!—it’s the only thing to do. He has proved himself too incapable to be allowed any longer to manage his own affairs. Besides, for Miss Lovell’s sake—I’m delighted, more than delighted; that business has been a load on my mind ever since I first heard of it. We’ll give a dinner-party, Charles, and ask the whole neighbourhood; I’ll write to that dry old Pitt, and insist that he shall come down and eat his words before he has any other dinner. Poor boy, we’ve treated him shamefully. But, I say, Bennett, what of Stephens? It seems to me that he comes badly enough out of it. What has he got to say for himself, eh?”
His kind, ugly face was radiant. Mr Bennett looked up nervously, for the tragedy of the night before had touched him more deeply than he knew himself.
“I don’t think we had better say anything further about his part of the business, poor fellow,” he answered, a little apologetically. “He is dead now, and he did his utmost at the last. Perhaps it’s easier to judge than to understand.”
“Dead! I thought that Anthony Miles had saved him?”
“Bowles said from what he saw and heard from a miserable boy—who, by the way, belongs to your village—that Stephens had got down to a very low ebb with want of food and want of rest, and the shock was too great. It really was very affecting, the boy’s grief and all that, and this morning the house is besieged. I think the poor fellow must have had some good in him, in spite of the ugly look his silence has.”
When Mr Bennett had gone, Mr Robert came back to the library, rubbing his hands.
“Well, Charles,” he said.
“Well, my dear Robert.”
“I am going to the cottage at once.”
“I would go with you if this lumbago only left me the power of moving. But let me forewarn you not to expect a very warm reception from Anthony.”
“Warm or not, I couldn’t stay away an hour. I shall go on to Hardlands, and perhaps somehow or other get a lift to the Milmans or to Stanton. It seems a sin to leave that matter uncleared another day. You’ll write to Pitt, Charles,” added his brother, suddenly becoming grave. “I suppose we both guess who was the other person?”
“I am afraid we do.”
“It was sheer folly to have sacrificed himself, but, naturally, their relationship added to his reluctance. Well, we have no right to make other people acquainted with what is simply conjecture, but I shall be surprised if others besides ourselves do not put two and two together.”
“Nevertheless, remember that as the story cannot be made altogether clear, we may expect incredulity yet.”
“The story is clear enough,” said Mr Robert, indignantly. “Nobody can doubt it who is not wilfully malicious. Anthony’s statement was that on a certain date he had received no letter. People could not prove that he had, but it was just open to doubt,—upon my word, I don’t think I’ll ever doubt again to my dying day,—now comes a witness who can swear that Anthony is correct, who saw the letter in other hands, and produces a portion of that letter destroyed. What on earth can be asked for more? If you are not satisfied, Charles, I shall say you are as unreasonable as Stokes.”
He went away laughing and rubbing his hands. The day was warm and damp, the clouds had a uniform tint of grey, drops clung to the beautiful bare boughs, which had so much cheerful undergrowth of green that they lost their wintry aspect, as Mr Robert started on his triumphal progress, which, however, like other triumphs, was not free from disappointment. Anthony was not at the cottage, and Mrs Miles would have resented any rejoicing over a proof which it seemed to her absolutely wickedness to demand. Mr Mannering could not be sure that her son had told her anything, and the only compensation of which he dared to avail himself was praise of Anthony’s courage the night before.
“Which way has he gone?” he asked, as he stood at the door.
“I think he has walked up to Hardlands. I wish he would have kept quiet to-day, after the shock and all,” said Mrs Miles, proudly.
“I suspect the shock was in the right direction, in spite of my gentleman’s pride,” Mr Robert reflected, walking out of the gate. “It will not hurt me to trudge to the Milmans, and then he shall make his own revelations at Hardlands. If only the Squire could have seen the day!”