Chapter Twenty.
A Polite Letter-Writer.
Scarfe descended to the drawing-room, where he found Mrs Rimbolt alone.
“I am so sorry you are going,” said she. “Your visit has been greatly spoiled, I fear. You must come to us at Easter, when we shall be in London, you know.”
“Thank you; I shall be glad to come. I hope to find Percy well again. I went to wish him good-bye just now, but was pretty abruptly denied admission, so I must ask you to say good-bye for me.”
“Dear me, it is very annoying. I cannot understand the craze the boy has taken for this companion of his. I am so sorry you should have been annoyed.”
“I assure you I am far more annoyed on Percy’s account than my own. I happen to know something of Jeffreys before he came to Wildtree. To tell you the truth, Mrs Rimbolt, I don’t think he is a safe companion for Percy at all.”
“I have long felt the same; but what is to be done, Mr Scarfe? Mr Rimbolt has almost the same craze as Percy for this librarian of his, and I have really no voice in the matter. He contrives to leave nothing definite to lay hold of; I should be thankful if he did. But it is most uncomfortable to feel that one’s own son is perhaps being ruined under this roof.”
“It must be. It is no business of mine, of course, except that I am fond of Percy, and should be sorry to see harm come to him; and knowing what I do—”
At that moment Mr Rimbolt, with Mrs Scarfe, entered the room.
“What secrets are you two talking?” said the latter.
“Your son was just telling me how fond he is of Percy; and I am sure it will be a great loss to Percy when he is gone. He has promised me to come to see us in town at Easter.”
“It is a satisfaction that you can leave with the assurance that Percy is virtually well again,” said Mr Rimbolt. “Really, I do not know how we should have got on without Mr Jeffreys to nurse him. I never knew such devotion. He has never wanted for a thing all the time; and Jeffreys’ influence is of the highest and manliest sort. Percy will be able to reckon this illness among the blessings of his life.”
Mr Rimbolt spoke feelingly and warmly.
Scarfe and Mrs Rimbolt exchanged glances; and the conversation shortly afterwards turned to the journey before the travellers.
Scarfe had come down to the drawing-room resolved, cost what it would, to settle scores with Jeffreys there and then by denouncing him to the family on whose favour he was dependent; and had Mr Rimbolt’s entrance been delayed a few minutes, Mrs Rimbolt would have known all about young Forrester. Once again, however, he was stopped in time, and a few moments’ reflection convinced him it was as well.
Raby, he knew, whatever she might think of Jeffreys, would never forgive the informant who should be the means of turning him out of Wildtree, still less would Percy. Nor was Mr Rimbolt likely to esteem his guest more highly in the capacity of tale-bearer; and he decidedly wished to “keep in” with all three.
And there was another reason still.
Scarfe was at the bottom of his heart not quite a villain, and much as he detested Jeffreys, and longed to be revenged—for what injury do certain minds feel half so much as that which one man commits in being better than another?—he had an uncomfortable suspicion in his mind that after all Jeffreys was not quite the miscreant he tried to imagine him.
That he was guilty in the matter of young Forrester there was no doubt; but much as he should have liked to believe it, he could not be quite sure that the accident at Bolsover was the result of a deliberate murderous design, or indeed of anything more than the accidental catastrophe of a blundering fit of temper—criminal, if you like, and cowardly, but not fiendish. And his conscience made coward enough of him just now to cause him to hesitate before plunging into ruin one who, hateful as he was to him, was after all a poor wretch, miserable enough for any one.
Not having done what he intended to do, Scarfe felt decidedly virtuous, and considered himself entitled to any amount of credit for his forbearance! It seemed a pity Raby should not know of this noble effort of self-denial.
“Miss Atherton,” said he, just as they were about to separate for the night, “I’m afraid you will have forgotten all about me when you see me next.”
“You are very uncomplimentary, Mr Scarfe.”
“I do not mean to be; and I’m sure I shall not forget you.”
“Thank you. This has been a very eventful visit.”
“It has; but I shall never regret that day on the ice, although I fear I made one enemy by what I did.”
“You don’t understand Mr Jeffreys; he is very shy and proud.”
“I understand him quite well, and wish for Percy’s sake every one here did too. But I am not going to disobey you, and talk of people behind their backs, Miss Atherton. I am sure you will approve of that.”
“I do; I never like it unless it is something nice of them.”
“Then I certainly had better not talk to you about Mr Jeffreys,” said Scarfe with a sneer, which did him more damage in Raby’s eyes than a torrent of abuse from his lips. “Do you know you have never yet shown me the telegram you had about your father’s last battle? It came the morning I was away, you know.”
“Yes. I fancied perhaps you did not care to see it, as you never asked me,” said Raby, producing the precious paper from her dress, where she kept it like a sort of talisman.
“How could you think that?” said Scarfe reproachfully, who had quite forgotten to ask to see it.
He took the paper and glanced down it.
“Hullo!” said he, starting as Jeffreys had done. “Captain Forrester! I wonder if that’s poor young Forrester’s father?”
“Who is poor young Forrester?” inquired Raby.
Scarfe read the paper to the end, and then looked up in well-simulated confusion.
“Poor young Forrester? Oh—well, I dare say Jeffreys could tell you about him. The fact is, Miss Atherton, if I am not allowed to talk of people behind their backs it is impossible for me to tell you the story of poor young Forrester.”
“Then,” said Raby, flushing, as she folded up the paper, “I’ve no desire to hear it.”
Scarfe could see he had gone too far.
“I have offended you,” said he, “but really I came upon the name so unexpectedly that—”
“Do you expect to be working hard this term at Oxford?” said Raby, doing the kindest thing in turning the conversation.
It was hardly to be wondered at if she retired that night considerably perplexed and disturbed. There was some mystery attaching to Jeffreys, which, if she was to set any store by Scarfe’s insinuations, was of a disgraceful kind. And the agitation which both Scarfe and Jeffreys had shown on reading the telegram seemed to connect this Captain Forrester, or rather his son, whom Scarfe spoke of as “poor young Forrester,” with the same mystery. Raby was a young lady with the usual allowance of feminine curiosity, which, though she was charity itself, did not like to be baulked by a mystery.
She therefore opened a letter she had just finished to her father, to add the following postscript:—
“Was this brave Captain Forrester who saved the guns a friend of yours? Tell me all about him. Had he a wife and children? Surely something will be done for them, poor things.”
Early next morning Mrs Scarfe and her son left Wildtree.
Jeffreys, from Percy’s window, watched them drive away.
“Very glad you must be to see the back of them,” said Percy.
“I am glad,” responded Jeffreys honestly.
“I’m not so frightfully sorry,” said Percy. “Scarfe’s a jolly enough chap, but he’s up to too many dodges, don’t you know? And he’s dead on Raby, too. Quite as dead as you are, Jeff.”
“Percy, a fortnight’s congestion has not cured you of the bad habit of talking nonsense,” said Jeffreys.
“All very well, you old humbug, but you know you are, aren’t you?”
“Your cousin is very good and kind, and no one could help liking her. Everybody is ‘dead on her,’ as you call it, even Walker.”
Percy enjoyed this, and allowed himself to be led off the dangerous topic. He was allowed to sit up for the first time this day, and held a small levée in his room.
Jeffreys took the opportunity to escape for a short time to the library, which he had scarcely been in since the day on the mountain.
He knew Mrs Rimbolt would enjoy her visit to the sick-chamber better without him, and he decidedly preferred his beloved books to her majestic society.
Percy, however, was by no means satisfied with the arrangement.
“Where’s old Jeff?” said he presently, when his mother, Raby, and he were left alone. “Raby, go and tell Jeff, there’s a brick. You can bet he’s in the library. Tell him if he means to cut me dead, he might break it gently.”
“Raby,” said Mrs Rimbolt, as her niece, with a smile, started on his majesty’s errand, “I do not choose for you to go looking about for Mr Jeffreys. There is a bell in the room, and Walker can do it if required. It is unseemly in a young lady.”
“One would think old Jeff was a wild beast or a nigger by the way you talk,” said Percy complainingly. “All I know is, if it hadn’t been for him, you’d all have been in deep mourning now, instead of having tea up here with me.”
“It is quite possible, Percy,” said his mother, “for a person—”
“Person!” interrupted the boy. “Jeff’s not a person; he’s a gentleman. As good as any of us, only he hasn’t got so much money.”
“I fear, Percy, your illness has not improved your good manners. I wish to say that Mr Jeffreys may have done you service—”
“I should think he has,” interrupted the irrepressible one.
“But it by no means follows that he is a proper companion for a good innocent boy like you.”
Percy laughed hilariously.
“Really, ma, you are coming it strong. Do you see my blushes, Raby?”
“You must make up your mind to see a great deal less of Mr Jeffreys for the future; he is not the sort of person—”
“Look here, ma,” said Percy, terrifying his parent by the energy with which he sprang to his feet. “I’m jolly ill, and you’d be awfully sorry if I had a fit of coughing and brought up blood, wouldn’t you? Well, I shall if you call Jeff a person again. Where is Jeff, I say? I want Jeff. Why don’t you tell him, Raby?”
After this, for a season at any rate, Percy was allowed to have his own way, and jeopardised his moral welfare by unrestricted intercourse with the “person” Jeffreys.
They spent their time not wholly unprofitably. For, besides a good deal of reading of history and classics (for which Percy was rapidly developing a considerable taste), and a good deal of discussion on all sorts of topics, they were deep in constructing the model of a new kind of bookcase, designed by Percy, with some ingenious contrivances for keeping out dust and for marking, by means of automatic signals, the place of any book which should be taken from its shelf. This wonderful work of art promised to eclipse every bookcase ever invented. The only drawback to it was that it was too good. Percy insisted on introducing into it every “dodge” of which he was capable, and the poor model more than once threatened to collapse under the burden of its own ingenuity. However, they stuck to it, and by dint of sacrificing a “dodge” here and a “dodge” there, they succeeded in producing a highly curious and not unworthy model, which Percy was most urgent that his father should forthwith adopt for his library, all the existing bookcases being sacrificed for firewood to make way for the new ones.
Mr Rimbolt diplomatically promised to give the matter his consideration, and consult authorities on the subject when next in London, and meanwhile was not unsparing in his compliments to the inventor and his coadjutor.
So the time passed happily enough for Jeffreys, until about three weeks after the Scarfes’ departure, when the following amiable letter reached him with the Oxford post-mark on the envelope:—
Christ Church, February 20th.
“Jeffreys,—You may have supposed that because I left Wildtree without showing you up in your proper character as a murderer and a hypocrite, that I have changed my opinions as to what is my duty to Mr Rimbolt and his family in this matter. It is not necessary for me to explain to you why I did not do it at once, especially after the blackguardly manner in which you acted on the last evening of my stay there. You being Mr Rimbolt’s servant, I had to consider his convenience. I now write to say that you can spare me the unpleasant duty of informing the Wildtree household of what a miscreant they have in their midst by doing it yourself. If, after they know all, they choose to keep you on, there is nothing more to be said. You are welcome to the chance you will have of lying in order to whitewash yourself, but either I or you must tell what we know. Meanwhile I envy you the feelings with which I dare say you read of the death of poor young Forrester’s father in Afghanistan. How your cowardly crime must have brightened his last hours!
“Yours,—
“E. Scarfe.”
Jeffreys pitched this elegant specimen of polite Billingsgate contemptuously into the grate. He was not much a man of the world, but he could read through the lines of a poor performance like this.
Scarfe, for some reason or other, did not like to tell the Rimbolts himself, but he was most anxious they should know, and desired Jeffreys to do the dirty work himself. There was something almost amusing in the artlessness of the suggestion, and had the subject been less personally grievous, Jeffreys could have afforded to scoff at the whole business.
He sat down on the impulse of the moment and dashed off the following reply:—
“Dear Scarfe,—Would it not be a pity that your sense of duty should not have the satisfaction of doing its own work, instead of begging me to do it for you? I may be all you say, but I am not mean enough to rob you of so priceless a jewel as the good conscience of a man who has done his duty. So I respectfully decline your invitation, and am,—
“Yours,—
“J. Jeffreys.”
Having relieved himself by writing it, he tore the note up, and tried to forget all about it.
But that was not quite so easy. Scarfe’s part in the drama he could not forget, but the question faced him, not for the first time. Had he any right to be here, trusted, and by some of the family even respected? Was he not sailing under false colours, and pretending to be something he was not?
True, he had been originally engaged as a librarian, a post in which character was accounted of less importance than scholarship and general proficiency. But he was more than a librarian now. Circumstances had made him the mentor and companion of a high-spirited, honest boy. Was it fair to Percy to keep a secret what would certainly shut the doors of Wildtree against him for ever? Was it fair to Mr Rimbolt to accept this new responsibility without a word? Was it fair to Raby, who would shrink from him with detestation, did she know the whole story?
Scarfe would have been amply satisfied had he been present to note the disquietude which ensued for some days after the arrival of his letter. Jeffreys felt uncomfortable in his intercourse with Mr Rimbolt; he avoided Raby, and even with Percy he was often unaccountably reserved and pensive.
“What are you in the blues about?” demanded that quick-sighted young gentleman on the first day out of doors after his illness. “Are you sorry I’m all serene again?”
“Rather,” said Jeffreys; “it’s not been a bad time.”
“No more it has; but I must say I don’t mind feeling my legs under me. I shall soon be ready for the top of Wild Pike again. But, I say, aren’t you well? I expect you’ve been knocking yourself up over me?”
“Not a bit of it; I’m as well as anything.” Percy, however, was not satisfied. He had a vague idea that young gentlemen in love were as a rule sickly, and by a simple process of reasoning he guessed that Jeffreys and Raby “had had a row.” He therefore took an early opportunity of mentioning the matter to his cousin, greatly to that young lady’s confusion.
“Raby, I say, look here!” he began, a day or two afterwards, as he and his cousin were walking together. “What makes you so jolly down on Jeff?”
“I down on Mr Jeffreys? What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s so dismal, I’m certain he’s eating his heart out about you! Why don’t you back him up? He’s a good enough chap and no end of a brick, and say what you will, he meant to fish you out that day on the ice. He went off like a shot directly after the ice cracked.”
“Percy, you ridiculous boy!” said Raby, biting her lips; “how can you talk such nonsense?”
“Oh! but he did,” persisted the boy.
“I’m not talking about the ice,” said she. “Mr Jeffreys and I are very good friends; chiefly on your account, too,” added she, with a vague idea of qualifying her admission.
“Oh, ah, that won’t wash, you know,” said Percy. “Anyhow, it’s nonsense you being so precious stiff with him; I’m sure he’s as good as Scarfe.”
“Percy, if you cannot talk sense,” said Raby, nearly crying with vexation, “I shall not listen to you.”
“Oh, all serene!” responded Percy. “Of course you’re bound to make out it’s all humbug, but I know better. Come, don’t be in a rage, Raby; you forget I’m an invalid.”
So they made it up on the spot, and Percy flattered himself he had done a great deal to make things right for Jeffreys.
Jeffreys, however, was still harassed by perplexity, and was gradually veering round to the conclusion that he must at all costs relieve his mind of his secret to Mr Rimbolt. He put the task off day after day, shrinking from the wrench of all the ties which made his life happy.
One day, however, finding himself alone with Mr Rimbolt in the library, he suddenly resolved then and there to speak out.
“Oh, Jeffreys,” began Mr Rimbolt, “I am very anxious to get those books from the Wanley Abbey sale looked through and catalogued within the next few days if you can manage it. We all go up to London, you know, next week, and I should be glad to have all square before we start.”
“I have no doubt they can all be gone through before then.”
“I should like you to come to town, too,” said Mr Rimbolt. “Percy sets great store by your companionship; besides which, there are some very important book sales coming on in which I shall want your help.”
“I had been going to ask you—” began Jeffreys, feeling his temples throbbing like two steam-engines.
“Oh, by the way,” interrupted Mr Rimbolt, taking a letter from his pocket, “did not you tell me you were at a school called Bolsover?”
“Yes,” faltered Jeffreys, wondering what was coming.
“It’s very odd. I have a letter from an old Oxford acquaintance of mine, called Frampton, who appears to be head-master there, and whom I have never heard of for about sixteen years. He is fond of books, and writes to ask if he may come and see the library. I’ve asked him to stay a night, and expect him here to-morrow. I dare say you will be glad to meet him. Perhaps he knows you are here?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Jeffreys.
“Ah, then I dare say you will be glad to see one another again.”
Jeffreys was considerably staggered by this unexpected announcement, but it relieved him of all present perplexity as to speaking to Mr Rimbolt of young Forrester. He would at least wait till Mr Frampton came, and put himself in his hands.
Mr Frampton came, as young and fresh as ever. He was taking a three days’ run in the Lake country during a term holiday, and, determined to do and see all he could, had decided to visit his old college friend, and look over the now famous Wildtree library.
His surprise at meeting Jeffreys was very considerable; and at first it seemed to the quondam pupil that his old master was shy of him. This, however, was explained as soon as they were alone, and had to do with the seven pounds, which had burned holes in Mr Frampton’s pockets ever since he received them, but which, not knowing Jeffreys’ address, he had never been able to return.
“I was never more pained than when I received this money,” said he. “Your guardian was written to by the clerk in ordinary course, but I never imagined the bill would be passed on to you.”
Jeffreys had nothing for it but to take the money back, much as he disliked it. Until he did so, Mr Frampton was too fidgety to be approachable on any other subject.
The morning after his arrival, they went up Wild Pike together—the first time Jeffreys had been on the mountain since the death of Julius. They had a fine day and no difficulty; but the long talk which beguiled the way amply made up to Jeffreys for the lack of adventure.
Mr Frampton told him much about Bolsover, and of how it was at last beginning to thrive and recover from the dry-rot; how this winter the football team had got up a name for itself; how the school discussion society was crowded with members; how the cricket prospects were decidedly hopeful; and how two fellows had lately gained scholarships at Oxford. Then he began to ask Jeffreys about himself, and got from him a full account of all that had befallen him since he left school. Mr Frampton was a most sympathetic listener, and the poor “dog with a bad name,” who had almost forgotten the art of speaking his mind fully to any one, warmed insensibly to this friend as they talked, and reproached himself for the pride and shortsightedness which had induced him to shut himself out so long from his friendship.
Then they talked of young Forrester. Mr Frampton made no attempt to gloss over the wickedness of that unhappy act of passion. But he showed how fully he made allowances for the poor blundering offender, and how he, at least, saw more to pity than to upbraid in it all.
He knew nothing of young Forrester’s fate. He had seen in the papers the notice of Captain Forrester’s death, from whom, months before, he had had a letter of inquiry as to his son’s whereabouts, and to whom he had written telling all he knew, which was but little.
Then Jeffreys unfolded his present uncomfortable dilemma, and his intention of speaking to Mr Rimbolt, and they talked it over very seriously and anxiously. At last Mr Frampton said,—
“Let me speak to Mr Rimbolt.”
“Most thankfully I will.”
So Mr Frampton spoke to Mr Rimbolt, and told him frankly all there was to tell, and Mr Rimbolt, like a gentleman who knew something of Christian charity, joined his informant in pitying the offender.
“Jeffreys,” said he, the day after Mr Frampton’s departure, “your friend has told me a story about you which I heard with great sorrow. You are now doing all that an honest man can do, with God’s help, to make up for what is past. What I have been told does not shake my present confidence in you in any way, and I need not tell you that not a single person in this house beyond yourself and me shall know anything about this unhappy affair.”