Volume Two—Chapter Twenty.
A Parcel by Carrier.
Dr Benson drove over daily from King’s Hampton to attend Sir Thomas Candlish, and, to do Dr Benson justice, he made a very good professional job of the injury to the young baronet, both from his own and the ordinary point of view.
Tom Candlish protested, but the doctor was inexorable.
“No, sir,” he said, “injuries like yours require time. Nature must be able to thoroughly mend the damage done. I could have helped her to patch you up—to cobble you, so to speak; but the tender spot would break out again. I must do my work thoroughly.”
“But your drives over here—your bill will be monstrous.”
“Large, but not monstrous, my dear sir,” said Dr Benson, smiling; “and what are a few pounds compared to your valuable life?”
Tom Candlish lay thinking that there was something in this, and that it was far better to pay even a hundred pounds than to have been carried to the Candlish mausoleum, and without paying out North for the injuries he had received.
“How’s North?” he said.
“Oh, very well, I believe. Dr North and I do not meet very often. A clever young man, though—a very clever young man.”
“Humph! Don’t believe in him,” said Tom Candlish. “But he has been very ill.”
“Little touch of sunstroke, or something of that kind, sir. I saw his patients for two days only; then he was about again.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Tom Candlish. “Doctor, I’m low to-day; I must have some champagne.”
“My dear sir! out of the question.”
“Brandy, then!”
“Worse and worse.”
“But I’m sinking. This cursed low feeling is horrible.”
“Well, well!” said the doctor smoothly, as, after a moment’s consideration, he felt that the wine would only throw his patient back for a few days, and give him a longer period for attendance; “perhaps a drop—say, half a glass—would not hurt you, but I would not exceed half a glass; champagne glass, mind. Good morning.”
Dr Benson took his departure, perfectly aware that the young baronet would be exceedingly ill the next morning; and so he was, for Tom Candlish had a medical sanction for taking a little champagne; and the butler produced the bottle—one of many dozens laid in by Squire Luke, who had purchased them through a friend as a special brand.
It was a special brand of paraffin quality, well doctored with Hambro’ spirit; and as, after the first glass, Tom Candlish argued that the rest would be wasted or drunk by the servants, an opened bottle of the effervescent wine being useless if not utilised at once, he, in spite of the protestations of the butler, finished the bottle, and threw himself back for another week.
At the Rectory, matters had settled down somewhat, the hours gliding by without any discovery being made; and, after the first excitement and dread, Leo began to feel that she would soon be able to resume her meetings with her lover.
North had ceased to call at the Rectory, and they had not yet come face to face. But this troubled Leo less and less. As the days had passed on, and the éclaircissement had halted, so had her strength of mind and feeling of defiance increased.
“He dare not face me after his brutal treatment of poor Tom,” she had said; “and he knows the contempt in which I hold him. He cannot be so pitiful as to tell Hartley, intimate as he and my brother are. I have nothing to fear.”
She feared, though, all the same, though she did not know from whence the stroke she anticipated would fall. Dally was extremely pert, but then she always had been. She could know nothing; and in a defiant spirit, Leo settled herself down in a fool’s paradise, eagerly waiting for the recovery of the squire.
The one policeman from King’s Hampton had been over and discoursed with the one policeman of Duke’s Hampton re the sacrilege at the church, and they had taken into their counsel the one policeman stationed at Chidley Beauwells, a village five miles away, but they had made nothing out of that. There was the attack, though, upon the squire, which seemed very promising, and the trio waited upon him as soon as he was pronounced well enough to be seen.
The injury must have had an acerbating effect upon Tom Candlish, for, to use the constables’ words, they came down out of the bedroom with fleas in their ears; and after having a horn of ale apiece, went back to the village.
Their way was by the churchyard, where Moredock was sunning himself by leaning over the wall, so that the heat could play well upon his back, and he entered into conversation with the three myrmidons of the law in a questioning spirit.
“Wouldn’t give you any information, would he?”
“No,” said he of King’s Hampton. “Told us to go to—you know.”
“No, I don’t,” said Moredock grimly, as if the allusion to this knowledge at his time of life was unsavoury. “But why wouldn’t he tell you? Don’t he want who it was caught?”
“Said it was nothing of the kind,” said he of Chidley Beauwells.
“Yes,” said the Duke’s Hampton man; “said it was an accident, old boy—a fall.”
“Hi! Yes. I s’pose it would be,” said Moredock drily. “Squire had a nasty accident before—a fall. Some people do have accidents of that sort.”
“Well,” said the Duke’s Hampton policeman, “we’ve done our duty, and that’s enough for us.”
“Ay,” said Moredock. “You’ve done your dooty, and that’s enough for you.”
They parted, and Moredock chuckled.
“Bats is nothing and moles is telescopes to ’em. Uniforms seems to make constables blind. Well, all the better for me. Hallo! where’s carrier going to-day? Doctor’s, p’raps, with some new stuff.”
The carrier was, however, not going to the doctor’s, but passed on.
“Don’t quite know what to make of him,” muttered Moredock. “That crack o’ the head don’t seem to have healed up, for he looks queer sometimes. I don’t like the look of things, somehow; but we shall see—we shall see. Why don’t Dally come down, too? I wanted to know how things is going there, and she ought to ha’ got that shirt made by now.
“Hi! hi! hi!” the old man laughed. “Make me two noo best shirts o’ fine linen as a man may be proud on. Ill wind as blows nobody any good.”
The old man went chuckling away, as he thought over the two new Sunday shirts he was to have made out of the surplice, which, after unpicking and cutting off edgings, he had washed and dried and handed as so much new material to Dally to make up, long immunity from detection having made him daring enough to trust the linen to the very place that, to an ordinary observer, would have seemed most dangerous.
But the shirts were not made yet, for Dally had declared it to be all bother, and had put the roll of linen in her drawer, inspired by a feeling that gran’fa couldn’t live much longer, and then the linen would do for her.
Oddly enough, as Moredock mused upon the whiteness and coolness of the coming undergarments, the carrier stopped at the Rectory gate, and delivered a parcel, carriage paid by North Midland Railway to King’s Hampton station, but sixpence to pay for the ten miles by cart.
“Dear me!” said Salis, turning over the package, which was evidently a box done up in very stout brown paper. “‘The Reverend Hartley Salis, Duke’s Hampton Rectory, Warwickshire. By N.M. Rail and Thompson, carrier. Carriage paid to King’s Hampton.’ Well, that’s plain enough, Mary.”
“Yes, dear; it’s evidently for you.”
“Yes, evidently for me; eh, Leo?”
“Yes,” said Leo, looking up from her book for a moment, and dropping her eyes again without displaying any further interest.
“It’s very curious,” said Salis, rather excitedly. “‘From Irish and Lawn, robe makers, Southampton Street.’ Why, surely—bless my soul, I never sent. I—”
He busily cut the string, and opened the paper and the neatly-tied box within, to find, as, after reading the label, he had expected, that the contents consisted of a new surplice of the finest quality with a note pinned thereto, and written within, in a tremulous, disguised hand:
“From an admirer.”
The word “admirer” had been lightly scratched across, and “constant attendant” placed above.
Salis looked at the note, and then at his sister Mary, colouring with excitement as ingenuously as a girl.
“Why, Mary,” he said, “who could have sent this? Do you know?”
Mary shook her head, but her eyes brightened with pleasure, as she felt how gratified her brother would be.
“Did not you and Leo contrive this as a surprise?”
Mary shook her head again, and Leo looked up languidly.
“What is it?” she said. “A present? No,” she added, with a frown, as she saw what it was, and lowered her eyes to her book to read apparently with great interest.
“Then it must be one of North’s tricks,” cried Salis. “It’s very kind and thoughtful of him, but I cannot think of letting him give me such a present as this. Look, Mary, dear. It is his writing disguised, is it not?”
Mary’s hand trembled a little as she took the note and glanced at it, to detect the writer at once from a peculiarity which had not been concealed.
“Well,” cried Salis, “I am right?”
Mary shook her head again.
“No, Hartley, it is certainly not Mr North’s writing.”
“Then, in the name of all that’s wonderful, whose is it? The people would not subscribe for it. Besides, it says ‘from a constant attendant.’ Why, good heavens! it cannot be from—”
Mary glanced at Leo, who was intent upon her reading, and then looked back at her brother, with a half-mischievous and amused smile, as she nodded her head.
“You think so, too,” he exclaimed, in a whisper. “Oh!”
There was a look of trouble and perplexity in his face that was intensely droll, for, though no name had been mentioned, both had hit upon the donor; and as the trouble deepened in the curate’s face, Mary stretched out her hand to him, and he took it, and sat down by her side.
“It’s impossible,” he whispered. “I could not think of taking it. How could she be so foolish?”
“It seems cruel to call it foolish,” said Mary gently. “The idea was prompted by a very kindly feeling.”
“Of course, of course; but, my dear Mary, it is putting me in a false position.”
“Not if you treat it as an anonymous gift.”
“How can I, when I feel certain that she sent it?”
“But even if you are, I think you might keep it, Hartley. See how common it is for ladies of a congregation to present the curate with slippers or braces.”
“Yes,” said Salis drily; “and all out of gratitude to their spiritual teacher. Bless ’em, they throw their gifts, and the weak man thinks they are bladders to enable him to float lightly along the social current of air, when, lo! and behold, he finds, poor weak, fluttering butterfly, that one of the fair naturalists has stuck a pin through him, right into the cork, and he is ‘set up’ for life.”
“Nonsense, you vain coxcomb!”
“No, my dear Mary, I am not a vain man; but I can generally tell which way the wind blows. I have a certain duty to perform in connection with my two sisters—a sort of paternal rôle to play, and consequently I am rather afraid of Mrs Berens.”
“Hartley, dear!”
“Yes, Mary. This surplice is going to be paid for by H. Salis, clerk in holy orders, ill as he can afford to do it, or it is going back to the donor.”
“But what can she do with it if your idea is correct?”
“Cut it up to make little garments for the poor children, if she likes. Bother the woman: I wish she would go.”