The Heart of a Mystery

by T. W. Speight

"And now I've another item of news that will please you," said Edward. "The position of chief bookkeeper at the Hollowdale Smelting Works happens to be vacant. Lord Elstree is Chairman of the Company, and the appointment rests with him. At my intercession he has agreed to offer the post in question to John Brancker, whom he considers to have been very shamefully treated by Mr. Avison. The salary will be a hundred and eighty pounds a year to start with, and as the works are only a dozen miles away, John will be able to go backward and forward morning and evening by train--that is to say, provided he thinks the post worthy of his acceptance."

"I feel nearly sure that I can answer for John's acceptance of the offer," said Clem, with sparkling eyes. "And then to think what a weight it will lift off both your shoulders and mine!"

John Brancker had replied to Mr. Hodgson's somewhat peremptorily-worded note on the day following that of his return from London. Miss Rivers, he told him, absolutely declined to break off her engagement with Mr. Hazeldine, or even to consider the question at all, unless the command to do so emanated from some one who was legally entitled to control her actions until she should come of age. In short, Mr. Hodgson must lift the veil which concealed her parentage, and prove to her that there was someone still living who had a right to her obedience, or to so much of it as could be looked for by anyone who for seventeen years had neglected to put forward the slightest claim thereto. It was a very outspoken letter, and John meant it for such. He was heart and soul with the young people, and totally opposed to their having their fate settled by someone as to whose identity they knew no more than they did of that of the proverbial man in the moon.

But day passed after day without bringing any answer to John's letter. Hermia shrugged her pretty shoulders, and said it was quite evident that the information she had asked for was more than Mr. Hodgson was prepared, or empowered, to furnish her with. Meanwhile she was quite content to let matters go on as they were at present.

John had not failed to tell his sister all that had passed at the momentous interview between himself and Clement, and how he had resolved to keep the true story of Mr. Hazeldine's death as a sacred secret to be divulged to no one save her to whom he now told it. It was a course which received the full approval of Aunt Charlotte. However much her brother might have suffered in the past, and however dark the prospect ahead might still be, to have revealed the dead man's secret, which he had been at such terrible pains to hide from everyone save his two sons, would have seemed to these worthy souls almost as much an act of profanation as if they had rifled his grave.

It was left to Clement to disclose to Hermia as much, or as little, relating to the affair as he might deem advisable. With what he told her, or what, in the exercise of a wise reticence, he omitted to tell her, we have nothing here to do.

And now came the offer from Lord Elstree. "At last--at last the sun is breaking through the clouds," exclaimed Aunt Charlotte, with tears of joy in her eyes when the news was told her. "What will the Ashdown people think now, dear, when they find that his Lordship has taken you by the hand?" she added. "There will be no more looking askance at you in future, I'll warrant. Not one of them but will discover that he, or she, was quite convinced from the first that you were an innocent man who had been deeply wronged."

To Frank Derison life seemed a somewhat tame affair after he had broken off his engagement to Miss Rivers and had given his word to Mr. Avison that the billiard table of the "Crown and Cushion" should see him no more. Now that he had lost Hermia, he felt that he loved her far more than he had ever loved her before. He could not get her image out of his thoughts; her face haunted his dreams by night and came between him and his work by day. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing that he had made her unhappy. He might and did regret her, but he had no proof that she regretted him. Evidently she had told him no more than the truth, although he could not credit it at the time, when she said in her letter that she should hail the rupture of their engagement as a relief. The news of her engagement to Clement Hazeldine had not failed to reach his ears--it had been no hole-and-corner affair; more than once, in the pleasant spring evenings, he saw them walking out together, and he ground his teeth and raged inwardly as he watched them.

Frank, however, was not without his compensations, although they were of a kind which he was not the one to value as many in his place would have done. He was made aware through his mother, who had her information from the elder Mr. Avison, that he was rising slowly but surely in his employer's estimation. It was Mrs. Derison's opinion, and doubtless she had good reasons for giving expression to it, that if only he were careful to keep on as he had begun, there was nothing to hinder him from attaining in the course of a few years to a partnership in the business. Ephraim Judd's death had been the means of giving him another step upward and another increase of salary. Already he stood next to Mr. Howes, who had succeeded Mr. Hazeldine as managing clerk.

Yet Frank no more liked his work at the Bank now than he had liked it when a youth of sixteen, although that was a fact which he confided to no one's ear but his mother's. He hated banking and everything connected with it, save and except the drawing of his salary at the close of each month. He was not without a certain amount of surface cleverness, together with a degree of tact which had in it an element of cunning; and by the aid of these, in combination with a frankly audacious manner and a handsome presence, he contrived to throw dust in the eyes of most people, and to pass for a much cleverer fellow than he was. He was not brought much into personal contact with Mr. Avison, who seemed, indeed, for reasons best known to himself, to keep aloof from him of set purpose; and as to how far his shallow pretensions to business ability were accurately gauged by Mr. Howes, was best known by Mr. Howes himself. In any case, the new managing clerk treated Frank with much consideration, not unmixed with a finely shaded measure of deference; but it may have been that the astute old official was not without his suspicions that Master Frank might one day sit in the curule chair of authority at the Bank.