The Yellow Flag: A Novel. Volume 3 (of 3)

by Edmund Yates

LONDON
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME III.
CHAP.
[I.]	Rose Cottage to let.
[II.]	Duly presented.
[III.]	Thinking it out.
[IV.]	Humphrey Statham grows uneasy.
[V.]	Martin Gurwood's Reckoning with Himself.
[VI.]	An Explosion.
[VII.]	Thou art the Man.
[VIII.]	The sealed Packet.
[IX.]	Hagar's Visit.
[X.]	Mr. Wetter is interviewed.
[XI.]	Recompense.
[XII.]	L'Envoi.

THE YELLOW FLAG.

[CHAPTER I.]

ROSE COTTAGE TO LET.

It was probably not without a certain amount of consideration and circumspection that John Calverley had fixed upon Hendon as the place in which to establish his second home, to which to take the pretty trusting girl who believed herself to be his wife. It was a locality in which she could live retired, and in which there was very little chance of his being recognised. It offered no advantages to gentlemen engaged in the City--it was not accessible by either boat, 'bus, or rail; the pony-carriages of the inhabitants were for the most part confined to a radius of four miles in their journeys, and Davis's coach and the carrier's wagon were the sole means of communication with the metropolis.

Also, in his quiet, undemonstrative way, Mr. Calverley had taken occasion to make himself acquainted with the names, social position, and antecedents of all the inhabitants, and to ascertain the chances of their ever having seen or heard of him, which he found on inquiry were very remote. They were for the most part Hendon born and bred, and the few settlers amongst them were retired tradesmen, who had some connection with the place, and who were not likely, from the nature of the business they had pursued while engaged in commerce, to have become acquainted with the person, or even to have heard the name of the head of the firm in Mincing-lane. About the doctor and the clergyman, as being the persons with whom he would most likely be brought into contact, he was specially curious. But his anxiety was appeased on learning that Mr. Broadbent was of a Devonshire family, and had practised in the neighbourhood of Tavistock previous to his purchase of old Doctor Fleeme's practice; while the vicar, Mr. Tomlinson, after leaving Oxford, had gone to a curacy near Durham, whence he had been transferred to Hendon.

So, when he had decided upon the house, and Alice had taken possession of it, John Calverley congratulated himself on having settled her down in a place where not merely he was unknown, but where the spirit of inquisitiveness was unknown also. He heard of no gossiping, no inquiries as to who they were, or where they had come from. Comments, indeed, upon the disparity of years between the married couple reached his ears; but that he was prepared for, and did not mind, so long as Alice was loving and true to him. What cared he how often the world called him old, and wondered at her choice?

It must be confessed that concerning the amount of gossip talked about him and his household, John Calverley was very much deceived. The people of Hendon was not different from the people of any other place, and though they lived remote from the world, they were just as fond of talking about the affairs of their neighbours as fashionable women round the tea-table in their boudoirs, or fashionable men in the smoking-room of their clubs. They discussed Mrs. A.'s tantrums and Mrs. B.'s stinginess, the doctor's wife's jealousy, and the parson's wife's airs; all each others' shortcomings were regularly gone through, and it was not likely that the household at Rose Cottage would be suffered to escape. On the contrary, it was a standing topic, and a theme for infinite discussion. Not that there was the smallest doubt amongst the neighbours as to the propriety of Alice's conduct, or the least question about her being the old gentleman's wife, but the mere fact of Mr. Claxton's being an old gentleman, and having such a young and pretty wife, excited a vast amount of talk; and when it was found that Mr. Claxton's business caused him to be constantly absent from home, there was no end to the speculation as to what that absence might not give rise. There seemed to be some sort of notion among the inhabitants that Alice would some day be carried bodily away, and many an innocent artist with his sketch-book in his breast-pocket, looking about him in search of a subject, has been put down by Miss M'Craw and her friends as a dangerous character, full of desperate designs upon Mr. Claxton's domestic happiness.

Miss M'Craw was a lady who took great interest in her neighbours' affairs, having but few of her own to attend to, and being naturally of an excitable and inquiring disposition, she had made many advances towards Alice, which had not been very warmly reciprocated, and the consequence was that Miss M'Craw devoted a large portion of her time to espionage over the Rose Cottage establishment, and to commenting on what she gleaned in a very vicious spirit. Early in the year in which the village was startled by the news of Mr. Claxton's death, Miss M'Craw was entertaining two or three of her special friends at tea in her little parlour, from the window of which she could command a distant view of the Rose Cottage garden gate, when the conversation, which had been somewhat flagging, happened to turn upon Alice, and thenceforth was carried on briskly.