A TRAGEDY II. IN THE BUTTERY I

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The windows of the room, called the Buttery, which Mr. Preen used as an office in his house at Duck Brook, were thrown open to the warm, pure air. It was about the hottest part of the afternoon. Oliver Preen sat back in his chair before the large table covered with papers, waiting in idleness and inward rebellion—rebellion against the untoward fate which had latterly condemned him to this dreary and monotonous life. Taking out his pocket-handkerchief with a fling, he passed it over his fair, mild face, which was very hot just now.

To-day, of all days, Oliver had wanted to be at liberty, whereas he was being kept a prisoner longer than usual, and for nothing. When Mr. Preen rode out after breakfast in the morning he had left Oliver a couple of letters to copy as a beginning, remarking that there was a great deal to do that day, double work, and he should be back in half-an-hour. The double work arose from the fact that none had been done the day before, as Mr. Preen was out. For that day, Monday—this was Tuesday—was the day Mr. Preen had paid us a visit at Crabb Cott, to be paid for Taffy, the pony, and had then gone to Norton, and afterwards to Stoulton, and it had taken him the best part of the day. So the double work was waiting. But the half hours and the hours had passed on, and Mr. Preen had not yet returned. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon, and they had dined without him.

Oliver, who did not dare to absent himself without permission, and perhaps was too conscientious to do so, left his chair for the window. The old garden was quite a wilderness of blossom and colour, with all kinds of homely flowers crowded into it. The young man stretched forth his hand and plucked a spray or two of jessamine, which grew against the wall. Idly smelling it, he lost himself in a vision of the days gone by; his careless, happy life at Tours, in his aunt’s luxurious home, when he had no fear of a dark future, had only to dress well and ride or drive out, and idly enjoy himself.

Suddenly he was brought back to reality. The sound of hoofs clattering into the fold-yard behind the house struck upon his ear, and he knew his father had come home.

Ten minutes yet, or more, and then Mr. Preen came into the room, his little dark face looking darker and more cross than usual. He had been snatching some light refreshment, and sat down at once in his place at the table, facing the windows; Oliver sat opposite to him.

“What have you done?” asked he.

“I have only copied those two letters; there was nothing else to do,” replied Oliver.

“Could you not have looked over the pile of letters which came this morning, to see whether there were any you could answer?” growled Mr. Preen.

“Why, no, father,” replied Oliver in slight surprise; “I did not know I might look at them. And if I had looked I should not have known what to reply.”

Mr. Preen began reading the letters over at railroad speed, dictating answers for Oliver to write, writing some himself. This took time. He had been unexpectedly detained at the other end of Captain Falkner’s land by some business which had vexed him. Most of these letters were from farmers and others, about the new patent agricultural implements for which Mr. Preen had taken the agency. He wished to push the sale of them, as it gave him a good percentage.

The answers, addressed and stamped for the post, at length lay ready on the table. Mr. Preen then took out his pocket-book and extracted from it that ten-pound bank-note given him the previous morning by Mr. Todhetley for the children’s pony, the note he had got the Squire to indorse, as I have already told. Letting the bank-note lie open before him, Mr. Preen penned a few lines, as follows, Oliver looking on:—

Dear Sir,—I enclose you the ten pounds. Have not been able to send it before. Truly yours, G. Preen.”

Mr. Preen folded the sheet on which he had written this, put the bank-note within it, and enclosed all in a good-sized business envelope, which he fastened securely down. He then addressed it to John Paul, Esquire, Islip, and put on a postage stamp.

“I shall seal this, Oliver,” he remarked; “it’s safer. Get the candle and the wax. Here, you can seal it,” he added, taking the signet ring from his finger, on which was engraved the crest of the Preen family.

Oliver lighted a candle kept on a stand at the back for such purposes, brought it to the table, and sealed the letter with a large, imposing red seal. As he passed the ring and letter back to his father, he spoke.

“If you are particularly anxious that the letter should reach Mr. Paul safely, father, and of course you are so, as it contains money, why did you not send it by hand? I would have taken it to him.”

“There’s nothing safer than the post,” returned Mr. Preen, “and I want him to have it to-morrow morning.”

Oliver laughed. “I could have taken it this evening, father. I can do so still, if you like.”

“No, it shall go by post. You want to be off to MacEveril, I suppose.”

“No, I do not,” replied Oliver. “Had I been able to finish here this morning I might have gone over this afternoon; it is too late now.”

“You had nothing to do all day yesterday,” growled his father.

“Oh, yes, I know. I am not grumbling.”

Mr. Preen put the letter into his pocket, gathered up the pile of other letters, handed half of them to his son, for it was a pretty good heap, and they started for the post, about three minutes’ walk.

The small shop containing the post-office at Duck Brook was kept by Mrs. Sym, who sold sweetstuff, also tapes and cottons. Young Sym, her son, a growing youth, delivered the letters, which were brought in by a mail-cart. She was a clean, tidy woman of middle age, never seen out of a muslin cap with a wide border and a black bow, a handkerchief crossed over her shoulders, and a checked apron.

Oliver, of lighter step than his father, reached the post-office first and tumbled his portion of the letters into the box placed in the window to receive them. The next moment Mr. Preen put his in also, together with the letter addressed to Mr. Paul.

“We are too late,” observed Oliver. “I thought we should be.”

“Eh?” exclaimed Mr. Preen, in surprise, as he turned round. “Too late! Why how can the afternoon have gone on?” he continued, his eyes falling on the clock of the little grey church which stood beyond the triangle of houses, the hands of which were pointing to a quarter past five.

“If you knew it was so late why did you not say so?” he asked sharply of his son.

“I was not sure until I saw the clock; I only thought it must be late by the time we had been at work,” replied Oliver.

“I might have sent you over with that letter as you suggested, had I known it would not go to-night. I wonder whether Dame Sym would give it back to me.”

He dived down the two steps into the shop as he spoke, Oliver following. Dame Sym—so Duck Brook called her—stood knitting behind the little counter, an employment she took up at spare moments.

“Mrs. Sym, I’ve just put some letters into the box, not perceiving that it was past five o’clock,” began Mr. Preen, civilly. “I suppose they’ll not go to-night?”

“Can’t, sir,” replied the humble post-mistress. “The bag’s made up.”

“There’s one letter that will hardly bear delay. It is for Mr. Paul of Islip. If you can return it me out of the box I will send it over by hand at once; my son will take it.”

“But it is not possible, sir. Once a letter is put into the box I dare not give it back again,” remonstrated Mrs. Sym, gazing amiably at Mr. Preen through her spectacles, whose round glasses had a trick of glistening when at right angles with the light.

“You might stretch a point for once, to oblige me,” returned Mr. Preen, fretfully.

“And I’m sure I’d not need to be pressed to do it, sir, if I could,” she cried in her hearty way. “But I dare not break the rules, sir; I might lose my place. Our orders are not to open the receiving box until the time for making-up, or give a letter back on any pretence whatever.”

Mr. Preen saw that further argument would be useless. She was a kindly, obliging old body, but upright to the last degree in all that related to her place. Anything that she believed (right or wrong) might not be done she stuck to.

“Obstinate as the grave,” muttered he.

Dame Sym did not hear; she had turned away to serve a child who came in for some toffee. Mr. Preen waited.

“When will the letter go?” he asked, as the child went out.

“By to-morrow’s day mail, sir. It will be delivered at Islip—I think you said Islip, Mr. Preen—about half-past four, or so, in the afternoon.”

“Is the delay of much consequence, sir?” inquired Oliver, as he and his father turned out of the shop.

“No,” said Mr. Preen. “Only I hate letters to be delayed uselessly in the post.”

Tea was waiting when they got in. A mutton chop was served with it for Mr. Preen, as he had lost his dinner. Jane ran downstairs, drank a cup of tea in haste, and ran back again. She had been busy in her bedroom all day, smartening-up a dress. A picnic was to be held on Thursday, the next day but one; Jane and Oliver were invited to it, and Jane wanted to look as well as other girls.

After tea Oliver sat for ever so long at the open window, reading the Worcester Journal. He then strolled out to the Inlets, sauntered beside the brook, and presently threw himself listlessly upon one of the benches facing it. The sun shone right upon his face there, so he tilted his straw hat over his eyes. That did not do, and he moved to another bench which the trees shaded. He often felt lonely and weary now; this evening especially so; even Jane was not with him.

His thoughts turned to Emma Paul; and a glow, bright as the declining sun rays, shot up in his heart. As long as she filled it, he could not be all gloom.

“If I had means to justify it I should speak to her,” mused he—as he had told himself forty times over, and forty more. “But when a fellow has no fortune, and no prospect of fortune; when it may be seen by no end of odd signs and tokens that he has not so much as a silver coin in his pocket, how can he ask a girl the one great question of life? Old Paul would send me to the right-about.”

He leaned his head sideways for a few minutes against the trunk of a tree, gazing at the reddening sky through the green tracery of the waving boughs; and fell to musing again.

“If she loved me as I love her, she would be glad to wait on as things are, hoping for better times. Lovers, who are truly attached to each other, do wait for years and years, and are all the happier for it. Sometimes I feel inclined to enlist in a crack regiment. The worst of it is that a fellow rarely rises from the ranks in England to position and honour, as he does in France; they manage things better over there. If old Uncle Edward would only open his purse-strings and buy me a commission, I might—— Halloa!”

A burst of girlish laughter, and a pair of girlish arms, flung round his neck from behind, disturbed Oliver’s castles-in-the-air. Jane came round and sat down beside him. “I thought I should find you here, Oliver,” she said.

“Frock finished, Janey?”

“Finished! why no,” she exclaimed. “It will hardly be finished by this time to-morrow.”

“Why, how idle you must have been!”

“Idle? You don’t understand things, or the time it takes to make an old frock into a new one. A dressmaker might have done it in a day, but I’m not a dressmaker, you know, Oliver.”

“Is it a silk gown?”

“It is a mousseline-de-laine, if you chance to be acquainted with that material,” answered Janey. “It was very pretty when it was new: pale pink and lilac blossoms upon a cream ground. But it has been washed, and that has made it shrink, and it has to be let out everywhere and lengthened, and the faded silk trimming has to be turned, and—oh, ever so much work. And now, I daresay you are as wise as you were before, Oliver.”

“I’ve heard of washed-out dresses,” remarked Oliver. “They look like rags, don’t they?”

“Some may. Mine won’t. It has washed like a pocket-handkerchief, and it looks as good as new.”

“Wish my coats would wash,” said Oliver. “They are getting shabby, and I want some new ones.”

Not having any consolation to administer in regard to the coats, Jane did not take up the subject. “What have you been doing all day, Oliver?” she asked.

“Airing my patience in that blessed Buttery,” replied he. “Never stirred out of it at all, except for dinner.”

“I thought you wanted to get over to Islip this afternoon.”

“I might want to get over to the North Pole, and be none the nearer to it. MacEveril was bound for some place a mile or two across fields this afternoon, on business for the office, and I promised to go over to walk with him. Promises, though, are like pie-crust, Janey: made to be broken.”

Jane nodded assent. “And a promise which you are obliged to break is sure to be one you particularly want to keep. I wish I had a pair of new gloves, Oliver. Pale grey.”

“I wish I had half-a-dozen new pairs, for the matter of that. Just look at those little minnows, leaping in the water. How pretty they are!”

He went to the edge of the brook and stood looking down at the small fry. Jane followed. Then they walked about in the Inlets, then sat down again and watched the sunset; and so the evening wore away until they went home.

Jane was shut up again the following day, busy with her dress; Oliver, as usual, was in the Buttery with his father. At twelve o’clock Mr. Preen prepared to go out to keep an appointment at Evesham, leaving Oliver a lot of work to do, very much to his aggravation.

“It’s a shame. It will take me all the afternoon to get through it,” ran his thoughts—and he would have liked to say so aloud.

“You don’t look pleased, young man,” remarked his father. “Recollect you will be off duty to-morrow.”

Oliver’s countenance cleared; his disposition was a pleasant one, never retaining anger long, and he set to his task with a good will. The morrow being the day of the picnic, he would have whole holiday.

At five o’clock the young servant carried the tea-tray into the parlour. Presently Mrs. Preen came in, made the tea, and sat down to wait for her son and daughter. Tired and hot, she was glad of the rest.

Jane ran downstairs, all happiness. “Mamma, it is finished,” she cried; “quite finished. It looks so well.”

“It had need look well,” fretfully retorted Mrs. Preen, who had been unable to get at Jane for any useful purpose these two days, and resented it accordingly.

“When all trades fail I can turn dressmaker,” said the girl, gaily. “Where’s Oliver?”

“In the Buttery, I expect; he said he had a great deal to do there this afternoon, and I have not seen him about,” replied Mrs. Preen, as she poured out the tea. “Not that I should have been likely to see him—shut into that hot kitchen with the ironing.”

Jane knew this was a shaft meant for herself. At ordinary times she did her share of the ironing. “I will tell Oliver that tea is ready, mamma,” she said, rising to go to the other room. “Why, there he is, sitting in the shade under the walnut tree,” she exclaimed, happening to look from the window.

“Sitting out in the cool,” remarked Mrs. Preen. “I don’t blame him, poring all day long over those accounts and things. Call him in, Jane.”

“Coming,” said Oliver, in response to Jane’s call from the open window.

He crossed the grass slowly, fanning himself with his straw hat. His fair face—an unusual thing with him—was scarlet.

“You look red-hot, Oliver,” laughed his sister.

“If it is as hot to-morrow as it is to-day we shall get a baking,” returned Oliver.

“In this intense weather nothing makes one feel the heat like work, and I suppose you’ve been hard at it this afternoon,” said his mother in a tone of compassion, for she disliked work naturally very much herself.

“Of course; I had to be,” answered Oliver.

He and Jane sat together under the shade of the walnut tree after tea. When it grew a little cooler they went to the Inlets, that favourite resort of theirs; a spot destined to bear a strange significance for one of them in the days to come; a haunting remembrance.

II

The white mist, giving promise of a hot and glorious day, had hardly cleared itself from the earth, when, at ten o’clock on the Thursday morning, Jane and Oliver Preen set off in the gig for North Villa, both of them as spruce as you please; Jane in that pretty summer dress she had spent so much work over, a straw hat with its wreath of pink may shading her fair face, Oliver with a white rose in his button-hole. The party was first to assemble at Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s, and to go from thence in waggonettes. There had been some trouble about the gig, Mr. Preen wanting it himself that day, or telling Jane and Oliver that he did, and that they could walk. Jane almost cried, declaring she did not care to arrive at North Villa looking like a milkmaid, hot and red with walking; and Mr. Preen gave way. Oliver was to drive himself and Jane, Sam being sent on to Crabb to bring back the gig.

Mr. Preen did not regard the picnic with favour. Mr. Preen could not imagine what anybody could want at one, he said, when ungraciously giving consent to Oliver’s absenting himself from that delightful Buttery for a whole day.

Picnics in truth are nearly all alike, and are no doubt more agreeable to the young than to the old. This one was given conjointly by the Jacob Chandlers, the Letsoms, the Coneys, and the Ashtons of Timberdale. A few honorary guests were invited. I call them honorary because they had nothing to do with finding provisions. Tod got an invitation, myself also; and uncommonly vexed we were not to be able to arrive till late in the afternoon. The Beeles from Pigeon Green were coming to spend the day at Crabb Cot, and the Squire would not let us off earlier.

The picnic was held upon Mrs. Cramp’s farm, not far from Crabb, and a charming spot for it. Gentle hills and dales, shady groves and mossy glens surrounded the house, which was a very good one. So that it may be said we all were chiefly Mrs. Cramp’s guests. Mrs. Cramp made a beaming hostess, and was commander-in-chief at her own tea-table. Tea was taken in her large parlour, to save the bother of carrying things out. Dinner had been taken in the dell, under shade of the high and wide-spreading trees.

They were seated at tea when we got there. Such a large company at the long table; and such tempting things to eat! I found a seat by Emma Paul, the prettiest girl there; Oliver Preen was next her on the other side. Mary MacEveril made room for Tod beside her. The MacEverils were proud, exclusive people, and Miss MacEveril privately looked down on some of her fellow guests; but Tod was welcome; he was of her own order.

Two or three minutes later Tom Chandler came in; he also had not been able to get away earlier. He shook hands with his aunt, Mrs. Cramp, nodded to the rest of us, and deftly managed to wedge himself in between Emma Paul and young Preen. Preen did not seem pleased, Emma did; and made all the room she could, by crushing me.

“I wouldn’t be in your shoes to-morrow morning, young man,” began Mr. Chandler, in a serio-comic tone, as he looked at Dick MacEveril across the table. “To leave the office to its own devices the first thing this morning, in defiance of orders——”

“Hang the musty old office!” interrupted MacEveril, with a genial laugh.

Valentine Chandler had done the same by his office; pleasure first and business later always with both of them; but Valentine was his own master and MacEveril was not. In point of fact, Mr. Paul, not a man to be set at defiance by his clerks, was in a great rage with Dick MacEveril.

I supposed the attractions of the picnic had been too powerful for Dick, and that he thought the sooner he got to it the better. But this proved to be a fallacy. Mrs. Cramp was setting her nephew right.

“My dear Tom, you are mistaken. Mr. MacEveril did not come this morning; he only got here an hour ago—like two or three more of the young men.”

“Oh, did he not, Aunt Mary Ann?” replied Tom, turning his handsome, pleasant face upon her.

“Yes, and if you were not at the office I should like to know what you did with yourself all day, Dick,” severely cried Miss MacEveril, bending forward to regard her cousin.

“I went to see the pigeon-match,” said Dick, coolly.

“To see the pigeon-match!” she echoed. “How cruel of you! You had better not let papa know.”

“If anyone lets him know it will be yourself, Miss Mary. And suppose you hold your tongue now,” cried Dick, not very politely.

This little passage-at-arms over, we went on with tea. Afterwards we strolled out of doors and disposed of ourselves at will. Some of the Chandler girls took possession of me, and I went about with them.

When it was getting late, and they had talked me deaf, I began looking about for Tod, and found him on a bench within the Grove. A sheltered spot. Sitting there, you could look out, but people could not look in. Mary MacEveril and Georgiana Chandler were with him; Oliver Preen stood close by, leaning against the stump of a tree. I thought how sad his look was, and wondered what made it so.

Within view of us, but not within hearing, in a dark, narrow walk Tom Chandler and Emma Paul were pacing side by side, absorbed evidently in one another. The sun had set, the lovely colours in the sky were giving place to twilight. It was the hour when matter-of-fact prosaic influences change into romance; when, if there’s any sentiment within us it is safe to come out.

“It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale’s high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers’ vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word,”

as Lord Byron says. And who could discourse on love—the true ring of it, mind you—as he did?

“Do sing,” said Tod to Miss MacEveril; and I found they had been teasing her to do so for the last five minutes. She had a pleasant voice and sang well.

“I’m sure you don’t care to hear me, Mr. Todhetley.”

“But I’m sure I do,” answered Tod, who would flirt with pretty girls when the fit took him. Flirt and flatter too.

“We should have everyone coming round us.”

“Not a soul of them. They are all away somewhere, out of hearing. Do sing me one song.”

She began at once, without more ado, choosing an old song that Mrs. Todhetley often chose; one that was a favourite of hers, as it was of mine: “Faithless Emma.” Those songs of the old days bore, all of them, a history.

“I wandered once at break of day,
While yet upon the sunless sea
In wanton sighs the breeze delayed,
And o’er the wavy surface played.
Then first the fairest face I knew,
First loved the eye of softest blue,
And ventured, fearful, first to sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma.
So mixed the rose and lily white
That nature seemed uncertain, quite,
To deck her cheek which flower she chose,
The lily or the blushing rose.
I wish I ne’er had seen her eye,
Ne’er seen her cheeks of doubtful dye,
Nor ever, ever dared to sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma.
Now though from early dawn of day,
I rove alone and, anxious, stray
Till night with curtain dark descends,
And day no more its glimmering lends;
Yet still, like hers no cheek I find,
No eye like hers, save in my mind,
Where still I fancy that I sip
The sweets that hung upon the lip
Of faithless Emma.”

“I think all Emmas are faithless,” exclaimed Georgiana, speaking at random, as the last sounds of the sweet song died away.

“A sweeping assertion, Miss Georgie,” laughed Tod.

“Any way, I knew two girls named Emma who were faithless to their engaged lovers, and one of them’s not married yet to any one else,” returned Georgie.

“I think I know one Emma who will be true for ever and a day,” cried Tod, as he pointed significantly to Emma Paul, still walking side by side with Tom Chandler in the distance.

“I could have told you that before now,” said Mary MacEveril. “I have seen it for a long time, though Miss Emma will never confess to it.”

“And now, I fancy it will soon be a case,” continued Tod.

“A case!” cried Georgie. “What do you mean?”

“A regular case; dead, and gone, and done for,” nodded Tod. “Church bells and wedding gloves, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Looks like it, anyhow, to-night.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Georgie, “then how sly Tom has been over it, never to tell us! Is it really true? I shall ask Valentine.”

“The last person likely to know,” said Tod. “You’ll find it’s true enough, Georgie.”

“Then——” Georgie began, and broke off. “Listen!” she cried. “They are beginning to dance on the lawn. Come, Mary.” And the two girls moved away, attracted by the scraping of the fiddle.

Oliver Preen moved a step forward from the tree, speaking in a low, calm tone; but his face was white as death.

“Were you alluding to them?” he asked, looking across to those two pacing about. “Why do you say it is a ‘case’?”

“Because I am sure it is one,” answered Tod. “They have been in love with one another this many a day past, those two, months and months and years. As everyone might see who had eyes, except old Paul. That’s why, Preen.”

Oliver did not answer. He had his arm round the trunk of a tree looking across as before.

“And I wouldn’t stake a fortune that Paul has not seen it also,” went on Tod. “All the same, I had a rumour whispered to me to-day that he sees it now, and has said, ‘Bless you, my children.’ Tom Chandler is to be made his partner and to marry Emma.”

“We are too many girls there, and want you for partners,” cried Eliza Letsom, dashing up. “Do come and dance with us, Johnny!”

What else could I do? Or Tod, either.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when the party separated. The waggonettes held us all, and nice scrambling and crowding we had for seats. One of the vehicles, after setting down some of its freight—ourselves and the Miss Chandlers—continued its way to Duck Brook with Jane and Oliver Preen.

It was a lovely night. The moon had risen, and was flooding the earth with its soft light. Jane sat looking at it in romantic reverie. Suddenly it struck her that her brother was unusually still; he had not spoken a single word.

“How silent you are, Oliver. You are not asleep, are you?”

Oliver slowly raised his bent head. “Silent?” he repeated. “One can’t talk much after a tiring day such as this.”

“I think it must be getting on for twelve o’clock,” said Jane. “What a delightfully happy day it has been!”

“The one bad day of all my life,” groaned Oliver, in spirit. But he broke into the two lines, in pretended gaiety, that some one had sung on the box-seat of the waggonette when leaving Mrs. Cramp’s:

“For the best of all ways to lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.”

III

My Dear Sir,—Robert Derrick is getting troublesome. He has been here three times in as many days, pressing for ten pounds, the instalment of your debt now due to him. Will you be good enough to transmit it to me, that I may pay and get rid of him.

“Truly yours, John Paul.”

This letter, written by Lawyer Paul of Islip, came to Mr. Preen by the Thursday morning post, just a week after the picnic. It put him into a temper.

“What do Paul’s people mean by their carelessness?” he exclaimed angrily, as he snatched a sheet of paper to pen the answer.

Dear Mr. Paul,—I don’t know what you mean. I sent the money to you ten days ago—a bank-note, enclosed in a letter to yourself.

“Truly yours, G. Preen.”

Calling Oliver from his breakfast, Mr. Preen despatched this answer by him at once to the post-office. There was no hurry whatever, since the day mail had gone out, and it would lie in Mrs. Sym’s drawer until towards evening, but an angry man knows nothing of patience.

The week since the picnic had not been productive of any particular event, except a little doubt and trouble regarding Dick MacEveril. Mr. Paul was so much annoyed, at Dick’s taking French leave to absent himself from the office that day, that he attacked him with hot words when he entered it on the Friday morning. Dick took it very coolly—old Paul said “insolently,” and retorted that he wanted a longer holiday than that, a whole fortnight, and that he must have it. Shortly and sharply Mr. Paul told him he could not have it, unless he chose to have it for good.

Dick took him at his word. Catching up his hat and stick, he went out of the office there and then, and had not since appeared at it. Not only that: during the Friday he disappeared also from Islip. Nobody knew for certain whither he had gone, or where he was: unless it might be London. He had made no secret of what he wanted a holiday for. Some young fellow whom he had known in Australia had recently landed at the docks and was in London, and Dick wanted to go up to see him.

Deprived of his friend, and deprived of his heart’s love, Oliver Preen was in a bad case. The news of Emma Paul’s engagement to Thomas Chandler, and the news that Chandler was to have a share in her father’s business, had been made public; the speedy marriage was already talked of. No living person saw what havoc it was making of Oliver Preen. Jane found him unnaturally quiet. He would sit by the hour together and never say a word to her or to anyone else, apparently plunged in what might be either profound scientific calculations or grim despondency. It was as if he had the care of the world upon his mind, and at times there would break from him a sudden long-drawn sigh. Poor Oliver! Earth’s sunshine had gone out for him with sweet Emma Paul.

She had not been faithless, like the Faithless Emma of the song, for she had never cared for anyone but Tom Chandler, had never given the smallest encouragement to another. Oliver had only deluded himself. To his heart, filled and blinded with its impassioned love, her open, pleasing manners had seemed to be a response, and so he had mistaken her. That was all.

But this is sentiment, which the world, having grown enlightened of late years, practically despises; and we must go on to something more sensible and serious.

The answer sent by Mr. Preen to John Paul of Islip brought forth an answer in its turn. It was to the effect that Mr. Paul had not seen anything of the letter spoken of by Mr. Preen, or of the money it was said to contain.

This reached Duck Brook on the Saturday morning. Mr. Preen, more puzzled this time than angry, could not make it out.

“Oliver,” said he, “which day was it last week that I wrote that letter to Paul of Islip, enclosing a ten-pound note?”

“I don’t remember,” carelessly replied Oliver. They had not yet settled to work, and Oliver was stretched out at the open window, talking to a little dog that was leaping up outside.

“Not remember!” indignantly echoed Mr. Preen. “My memory is distracted with a host of cares, but yours has nothing to trouble it. Bring your head in, sir, and attend to me properly.”

Oliver dutifully brought his head in, his face red with stooping. “What was it you asked me, father? I did not quite catch it,” he said.

“I asked you if you could remember which day I sent that money to Paul. But I think I remember now for myself. It was the day after I received the bank-note from Mr. Todhetley. That was Monday. Then I sent the letter to Paul with the bank-note in it on the Tuesday. You sealed it for me.”

“I remember quite well that it was Tuesday—two days before the picnic,” said Oliver.

“Oh, of course; a picnic is a matter to remember anything by,” returned Mr. Preen, sarcastically. “Well, Paul says he has never received either money or letter.”

“The letter was posted——” began Oliver, but his father impatiently interrupted him.

“Certainly it was posted. You saw me post it.”

“It was too late for the evening’s post; Dame Sym said it would go out the next morning,” went on Oliver. “Are Paul’s people sure they did not receive it?”

“Paul tells me so. Paul is an exact man, and would not tolerate any but exact clerks about him. He writes positively.”

“I suppose Mrs. Sym did not forget to forward it?” suggested Oliver.

“What an idiot you are!” retorted his father, by way of being complimentary. “The letter must have gone out safely enough.”

Nevertheless, after Mr. Preen had attended to his other letters and to two or three matters they involved, he put on his hat and went to Mrs. Sym’s.

The debt for which the money was owing appeared to be a somewhat mysterious one. Robert Derrick, a man who dealt in horses, or in anything else by which he could make money, and attended all fairs near and far, lived about two miles from Islip. One day, about a year back, Derrick presented himself at the office of Mr. Paul, and asked that gentleman if he would sue Gervais Preen for a sum of money, forty pounds, which had been long owing to him. What was it owing for, Mr. Paul inquired; but Derrick declined to say. Instead of suing him, the lawyer wrote to request Mr. Preen to call upon him, which Mr. Preen did. He acknowledged that he did owe the debt—forty pounds—but, like Derrick, he evaded the question when asked what he owed it for. Perhaps it was for a horse, or horses, suggested Mr. Paul. No, it was for nothing of that kind, Mr. Preen replied; it was a strictly private debt.

An arrangement was come to. To pay the whole at once was not, Mr. Preen said, in his power; but he would pay it by instalments. Ten pounds every six months he would place in Mr. Paul’s hands, to be handed to Derrick, whom Mr. Preen refused to see. This arrangement Derrick agreed to. Two instalments had already been paid, and one which seemed to have now miscarried in the post was the third.

“Mrs. Sym,” began Mr. Preen, when he had dived into the sweet-stuff shop, and confronted the post-mistress behind her counter, “do you recollect, one day last week, my asking you to give me back a letter which I had just posted, addressed to Mr. Paul of Islip, and you refused?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” answered Mrs. Sym. “I was sorry, but——”

“Never mind that. What I want to ask you is this: did you notice that letter when you made up the bag?”

“I did, sir. I noticed it particularly in consequence of what had passed. It was sealed with a large red seal.”

“Just so. Well, Mr. Paul declares that letter has not reached him.”

“But it must have reached him,” rejoined Mrs. Sym, fastening her glittering spectacles upon the speaker’s face. “It had Mr. Paul’s address upon it in plain writing, and it went away from here in the bag with the rest of the letters.”

“The letter had a ten-pound note in it.”

Mrs. Sym paused. “Well, sir, if so, that would not endanger the letter’s safety. Who was to know it had? But letters that contain money ought to be registered, Mr. Preen.”

“You are sure it went away as usual from here—all safe?”

“Sure and certain, sir. And I think it must have reached Mr. Paul, if I may say so. He may have overlooked it; perhaps let it fall into some part of his desk, unopened. Why, some years ago, there was a great fuss made about a letter which was sent to Captain Falkner, when he was living at the Hall. He came here one day, complaining to me that a letter sent to him by post, which had money in it, had never been delivered. The trouble there was over that lost letter, sir, I couldn’t tell you. The Captain accused the post-office in London, for it was London it came from, of never having forwarded it; then he accused me of not sending it out with the delivery. After all, it was himself who had mislaid the letter. He had somehow let it fall unnoticed into a deep drawer of his writing-table when it was handed to him with other letters at the morning’s delivery; and there it lay all snug till found, hid away amid a mass of papers. What do you think of that, sir?”

Mr. Preen did not say.

“In all the years I have kept this post-office I can’t call to memory one single letter being lost in the transit,” she ran on, warming in her own cause. “Why, how could it, sir? Once a letter’s sent away safe in the bag, there it must be; it can’t fall out of it. Your letter was so sent away by me, Mr. Preen, and where should it be if Mr. Paul hasn’t got it? Please tell him, sir, from me, that I’d respectfully suggest he should look well about his desk and places.”

Evidently it was not at this side the letter had been lost—if lost it was. Mr. Preen wished the post-mistress good morning, and walked away. Her suggestion had impressed him; he began to think it very likely indeed that Paul had overlooked the letter on its arrival, and would find it about his desk, or table, or some other receptacle for papers.

He drove over to Islip in the gig in the afternoon, taking Oliver with him. Islip reached, he left Oliver in the gig, to wait at the door or drive slowly about as he pleased, while he went into the office to, as he expressed it, “have it out with Paul.”

Not at once, however, could he do that, for Mr. Paul was out; but he saw Tom Chandler.

The offices, situated in the heart of Islip, and not a stone’s throw from the offices of Valentine Chandler, consisted of three rooms, all on the ground floor. The clerks’ room was in front, its windows (painted white, so that no one could see in or out) faced the street; Mr. Paul’s room lay behind it and looked on to a garden. There was also a small slip of a room, not much better than a passage, into which Mr. Paul could take clients whose business was very private indeed. Tom Chandler, about to be made a partner, had a desk in Mr. Paul’s room as well as one in the clerks’ room. It was at the latter that he usually sat.

On this afternoon he was seated at his desk in Mr. Paul’s room when Gervais Preen entered. Tom received him with a smile and a hand-shake, and gave him a chair.

“I’ve come about that letter, Mr. Chandler,” began the visitor; “my letter with the ten-pound bank-note in it, which Mr. Paul denies having received.”

“I assure you no such letter was received by us——”

“It was addressed in a plain handwriting to Mr. Paul himself, and protected by a seal of red wax with my crest upon it,” irritably interrupted the applicant, who hated to be contradicted.

“Mr. Preen, you may believe me when I tell you the letter never reached us,” said Tom, a smile crossing his candid, handsome face, at the other’s irritability.

“Then where is the letter? What became of it?”

“I should say perhaps it was never posted,” mildly suggested Tom.

“Not posted!” tartly echoed Mr. Preen. “Why, I posted it myself; as Dame Sym, over at Duck Brook, can testify. And my son also, for that matter; he stood by and saw me put it into the box. Dame Sym sent it away in the bag with the rest; she remembers the letter perfectly.”

“It never was delivered to us,” said Tom, shaking his head. “If—— oh, here is Mr. Paul.”

The portly lawyer came into the room, pushing back his iron-grey hair. He sat down at his own desk-table; Mr. Preen drew his chair so as to face him, and the affair was thoroughly gone into. It cannot be denied that the experienced man of law, knowing how difficult it was to Mr. Preen to find money for his debts and his needs, had allowed some faint doubt to float within him in regard to this reported loss. Was it a true loss?—or an invented one? But old Paul read people’s characters, as betrayed in their tones and faces, tolerably well; he saw that Preen was in desperate earnest, and he began to believe his story.

“Let me see,” said he. “You posted it on Tuesday, the fifteenth. You found it was too late for that night’s post, and would not go off until the morrow morning, when, as Dame Sym says, she despatched it. Then we ought to have received it that afternoon—Wednesday, the sixteenth.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Preen. “Mrs. Sym wished to respectfully suggest to you, Paul, that you might have overlooked it amidst the other letters at the time it was delivered, and let it drop unseen into some drawer or desk.”

“Oh, she did, did she?” cried old Paul, while Tom Chandler laughed. “Give my respects to her, Preen, and tell her I’m not an old woman. We don’t get many letters in an afternoon, sometimes not any,” he went on. “Can you carry your memory back to that Wednesday afternoon, Chandler?”

“I daresay I shall be able to do so,” replied Tom. “Wednesday, the sixteenth.—Was not that the day before the picnic at Aunt Cramp’s?”

“What on earth has the picnic to do with it?” sharply demanded Mr. Preen. “All you young men are alike. Oliver could only remember the date of my posting the letter by recalling that of the picnic. You should be above such frivolity.”

Tom Chandler laughed. “I remember the day before the picnic for a special reason, sir. MacEveril asked for holiday that he might go to it. I told him he could not have the whole day, we were too busy, but perhaps he might get half of it; upon which he said half a day was no good to him, and gave me some sauce. Yes, that was Wednesday, the sixteenth; and now, having that landmark to go by, I may be able to trace back other events and the number of letters which came in that afternoon.”

“Is MacEveril back yet?” asked Preen.

“No,” replied Paul. “The captain does not know where he is; no one does know, that I’m aware of. Look here, Preen; as this letter appears to be really lost, and very unaccountably, since Mrs. Sym is sure she sent it off, and I am sure it was never delivered to me, I shall go to our office here now, and inquire about it. Will you come with me?”

Mr. Preen was only too glad to go to any earthly place that was likely to afford news of his ten-pound note, for the loss would be his, and he knew not where he should find another ten pounds to satisfy the insatiable Derrick.

They proceeded along the pavement together, passing Oliver, who was slowly parading the gig up and down the street. His sad face—unusually sad it looked—had a sort of expectancy on it as he turned his gaze from side to side, lest by some happy chance it might catch the form of Emma Paul. Emma might be going to marry another; but, all the same, Oliver could not drop her out of his heart.

They disclaimed all recollection of the letter at the post-office. Had it been for a private individual it might have been remembered, but Mr. Paul had too many letters to allow of that, unless something special called attention to any one of them. Whether the letter in question had reached them by the Islip bag, or whether it had not, they could not say; but they could positively affirm that, if it had, it had been sent out to Mr. Paul.

In returning they overtook the postman on his round, with the afternoon delivery: a young, active man, who seemed to skim over the ground, and was honest as the day.

“Dale,” said Lawyer Paul, “there has been a letter lost, addressed to me. I wonder whether you chanced to notice such a letter?” And he mentioned the details of the case.

“One day is like another to me in its round of duties, you see, sir,” observed the man. “Sealed with a big red seal, you say, sir? Well, it might be, but that’s nothing for me to go by; so many of your letters are sealed, sir.”

The lawyer returned to his office with Mr. Preen, and entered his own room. Tom Chandler heard them and came swiftly through the door which opened from the clerks’ department, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

“I remember all about the letters that were brought in on Wednesday week,” said he. “I can recall the whole of the circumstances; they were rather unusual.”


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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