The form of breakfast gone through, and appearances thus maintained, Churchill went up to his dressing-room, where he had a neat, business-like oak Davenport, and a small iron safe let into the wall, in which he kept his bankers’ book and all important papers.
He had been spending very nearly up to his income during his reign at Penwyn. His improvements had absorbed a good deal of money, and he had spared nothing that would embellish or substantially improve the estate. The half-year’s rents had not long been got in, however, and he had a balance of over two thousand pounds at his bankers. This, which he could draw out at once, would make a decent beginning for his new life. His wife’s jewels were worth at least two thousand more, exclusive of those gems which he had inherited under the old Squire’s will, and which would naturally be transferred with the estate. It was a hard thing for Churchill to write to Mr. Pergament, formally surrendering the estate, and leaving it to the lawyer to investigate the claim of Justina Penwyn, alias Elgood, and—if that claim were a just one—to effect the transfer of the property to that lady, without any litigation whatsoever.
‘Pergament will think me mad,’ he said to himself, as he signed this letter. ‘However, I have kept my promise to Madge. My poor girl! I did not know till I looked in her face this morning what hard lines care had written there.’
He wrote a second letter to his bankers, directing them to invest sixteen hundred in Grand Trunk of Canada First Preference Bonds, a security of which the interest was not always immediately to be relied upon, but which could be realized without trouble at any moment. He told them also to send him four hundred pounds in notes—tens, twenties, fifties.
His third letter was to the agents of a famous Australian line, telling them to reserve a state cabin for himself and wife, in the Merlin, which was to sail in a week, and enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds on account of the passage money.
‘I have left no time for repentance, or change of plans,’ he said to himself.
His letters despatched by the messenger who was wont to carry the postbag to Penwyn village, Churchill went to his wife’s room. The blinds were closely drawn, shutting out the sunlight. Madge was sleeping soundly, but heavily—and the anxious husband fancied that her breathing was more laboured than usual. Her cheek, so pale when he had seen her last, was now flushed to a vivid crimson, and the hand he gently touched as he bent over her was dry and burning.
He went downstairs and out to the stables, where he told Hunter, the groom, to put Wallace in the dog-cart and drive over to Seacomb to fetch Dr. Hillyard, the most important medical man in that quiet little town.
‘Wallace is not so fresh as he might be, sir; you drove him rather fast last night.’
‘Take Tarpan, then.’