"Is he ill?" asked Marjorie quickly.
"Well, no, not what you can call ill, but he soon will be if he goes on as he's going on now."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, he doesn't get enough to eat. At least, he has plenty to eat of a kind, but it isn't what a man like him, as is working hard all day, ought to have. He gives me the money for his food, and I gets the best I can for the little he gives me. Look at his tea now. It don't look as it ought to be for a grown man, do it now? And his dinner. He has it out some days, and what he gets then I can't say. Not much, I'll be bound. But some days he comes home for it, and I assure you I'm fair shamed to get him the dinners he orders. One day it will be, 'Mrs. Hall, I'm very fond of herrings. Do you think you could get me a couple of nice ones for my dinner?' Another day he'll say, 'Mrs. Hall, you make awfully good soup. I should like that better than anything today.' 'And what to follow, sir?' I says. 'Oh, one of your nice rice puddings. That will be just the kind of dinner I like.' Another day it's sausage, or a bit of bacon, or bread and cheese, and not too much of any of them, either. Why, my last lodger would clear off in one meal double what he eats in a day. And such a nice gentleman, too. Always so pleasant, and thanks you for all you do for him just as if you didn't get paid for doing it. And so hard he works, too. Why, if you'll believe me, he's at them books and accounts, and them business letters of his, long after I've gone to bed. I hear him come upstairs, and I know he's tired by his step, and well he may be, for he's tramping about visiting clients most of his time."
Mrs. Hall clearly loved a chat, and would have gone on for much longer enlarging on the many good qualities of her lodger if she had not at that moment heard the sound of a key being put into the latch of the door.
"Why, there he is at last," she said. "I'll go and make the tea."
Marjorie's heart was beating quickly now. She heard the door open and Mrs. Hall's voice outside.
"Why, you're not half wet, sir. Let me take your coat."
Then the well-known voice. "Thank you, Mrs. Hall, it will be all the better for a dry by your fire."
"There's a lady waiting to see you, sir, in the parlour there. She's been here the best part of the afternoon."
"A lady for me?" He stopped to ask no question, but came quickly into the room. "Miss Douglas! I have been thinking of you as I came up the street, wondering how you were getting on in your hard life at Daisy Bank. And now here you are. This is the last place I would ever have dreamed of seeing you, sitting in the armchair by the fire in my little room."
She rose to meet him, and at once held out the precious tin. "Captain Fortescue, I have come to bring you this. It is something which I think -- I hope -- you will be glad to get."
He took the tin in his hand but did not open it. "What is it?" he asked. "Do sit down, Miss Douglas."
He noticed how agitated she was, and he wondered what had caused her to be so.
"Have you not lost something?" she asked.
"Only an umbrella," he said, laughing. "I lost one last week, but that can't be in here."
"No," she said, "I believe this is something that was lost much longer ago. Think, Captain Fortescue. Did you not tell me that you lost a letter that you wanted to find? Was a letter not stolen from you by someone? And have you not tried in all ways to find that letter, but in vain?"
He understood now. All the color faded from his face. Was it possible, could it be that his father's letter had been found -- and by her?
"Is it in this tin?" he asked.
"There is a letter, and I do hope it is the right one. Will you open it and see?"
He cut the string which she had knotted tightly round it, and drew out several sheets of paper. He saw his father's well-known irregular handwriting.
Yes, it was evidently the letter which he ought to have found in that envelope in the safe, the envelope of which was still in his possession, and which was addressed, For my son. To be opened after my death.
"Is it the right one?"
"Yes, it is, Miss Douglas. How can I thank you?"
"May I tell you how I found it? And then I must go."
She knew how he was longing to read the letter, and she thought that he would want to read it alone. Her one desire was to tell him how it had come into her possession, and then to leave him. But he would not hear of her doing this. He made her sit down again, and before she could stop him, he rang the bell for Mrs. Hall and told her to bring another cup so that his visitor could have some tea before she left.
Then Marjorie told her story as briefly as she could. She spoke of old Mother Hotchkiss' unhappiness during her illness; she told him of her midnight call to the old house, and of the secret that had then been told her about the letter stolen by Josiah Makepeace's sister. She described the place in which she had discovered the tin. She confessed that she had broken the seals and opened it, to see the name at the end of the letter to know whether Mr. Forty Screws and Mr. Fortescue were the same. And now, she said, as she got up from her chair again, she was thankful, very glad and thankful that it was safely in his hands, and she must go. She really must go. She knew how he was longing to read it, and she would not keep him another moment.
"Miss Douglas," said Kenneth Fortescue, "I am not going to allow you to leave until you've had some tea, and then I am going with you to the station. But if you are sure you do not mind, I will read the letter first, and then I shall be able to tell you what it is about, and for what I have to thank you."
When she saw that it was of no use to protest any further, Marjorie Douglas sat down again by the fire while he took a chair to the table, and by the dim light of the solitary gas burner sat down to read the letter. She glanced at him from time to time as he bent over it, wondering what its contents might be. He read on intently, and without once looking up. Marjorie could hear the clock in the passage ticking loudly, but no other sound disturbed the stillness of the room. He did not speak a word, nor utter a sound, till he turned to the last page, and then he gave a loud exclamation of dismay.
"Is it bad news?" she asked fearfully.
"No, not bad news. It is good news. Very good news," he said, "but those rascals have tampered with the letter."
He held it up to her, and she saw that one word, a long word too, had been completely blotted out.
"It has evidently been done on purpose," he said, "lest this letter should by any means fall into my hands."
"Is the word of much importance?"
"Of every importance. In fact, it is the most important word in the whole letter, Miss Douglas. We will have some tea, and then I want you, if you do not mind, to read the letter you have brought."
"May I? But are you sure you would like me to read it?"
"I am quite sure. Indeed, so far from minding it, I am most anxious that you should read it."
He put the armchair near the table for her, and began to pour out the tea, but his hand trembled so much with strong emotion that she asked him if she could do it for him. He told her that if she did not mind doing it, he would like to remember it after she had gone. It would be something to think of when he was alone.
"It's rather different to the last tea we had together," he said. "Do you remember that homely tea in Fernbank? If I had known you were coming, I would have had some cake."
At that moment Mrs. Hall came into the room with a hot teacake in her hand. "I've just baked 'em, sir, and they're nice and light, and I thought as the lady was here, perhaps you would accept of one."
Kenneth Fortescue took the plate. "Thank you, Mrs. Hall. It looks delicious."
They did not talk much during tea, for his mind was on the letter he had just read. He asked Marjorie from time to time to give him further details of the history which she had heard from Mother Hotchkiss. He had no doubt whatever that the bookseller and printer Josiah Makepeace was the man who had married Carrie Hotchkiss, and he remembered hearing that his father's housekeeper Watson had a half-brother living in Sheffield. Evidently, then, he had been right in
his former suspicion: Watson had undoubtedly been the thief. She must have been listening at the bedroom door when his father told him to look under the will in the safe for the important letter that he wished him to receive.
Then, when she found herself alone with the old man for the night, Watson must have taken the keys from the table while he was asleep, unlocked the safe and taken out the letter, replacing it, either then or afterwards, with a blank sheet of foolscap paper. Then, when she had satisfied her curiosity, and had also discovered the importance of its contents, she had evidently carried the letter to her brother Josiah Makepeace, and they must have plotted together that they would keep it back in the hope of making it into a kind of goldmine -- were they fortunate enough to discover the father who had deserted his infant child.
Watson and Makepeace could not help being aware that the information in the letter was of such a nature that it would be of the utmost importance to that man to have it suppressed. Then, after that, Watson must have found that other letter, the one the printer Makepeace had brought him, lying un-posted on the table, and then either she or her brother must have invented the plausible story which Josiah Makepeace had told him when he called that night, in order to prevent any suspicion from falling upon Watson.
All this probable explanation of the strange mystery flashed through Kenneth Fortescue's mind, and Marjorie could see that from time to time his thoughts were far away, although he always seemed to notice in a moment if she wanted anything, and he was not content until she had done justice to Mrs. Hall's large teacake. He ate very little himself, and as soon as she had finished he drew her chair nearer to the fire and handed her the letter.
"Are you quite sure you want me to read it?" she asked again. "Do say if you would rather I did not."
"It will be a comfort to me if you do not mind reading it, Miss Douglas."
She could not refuse after that. She took the sheets of paper and began to read.
Chapter 18
A Strange Letter
MARJORIE held the letter in her hand, and this is what she read:
My Dear Ken,
I feel as if I might not live for many years longer, so I am writing this, so that you can read it when I am dead and gone. I feel as if I ought to let you know, and yet I promised him to keep his secret as long as I lived, all the days of my life. Them was the words as he made me say. But I didn't promise not to tell when the days of my life was over, Ken, and they will be over when you get this here letter.
Well, Ken, I'm a-going to tell you something that happened to me about twenty-five years ago. I heard as there was good luck to be had in the gold mines out in South Africa. So me and your ma talked it over, and we settled we would go out there and make our fortunes. We had saved a bit of money, and we paid our passage and we went out, and we got on pretty fair. The work was good, and so was the pay, but things was a lot dearer out there than at home. I worked on, Ken, first in one place and then in another, and at last we settled down near some mines not far from Kimberley. There was a lot of miners there, a rough set most of them, and the life was a pretty hard one. I made good money there, though I spent it pretty nigh as fast as I made it. We got a decent sort of a house, and your ma took a pride in it, and I bought some furniture off a man who was going back to England, and we fed on the fat of the land. It was when we was there that I got a man, who had been an artist afore he left England, to paint a big picture of my missus, and I paid him well for doing it. That's it as hangs in the library, Ken.
Well, it was while we was living there in a ramshackle sort of town, that one night after dark Jack McDougall, him as kept the Inn there, came to our house. "Joe," he says, "here's a nice job we're in for at our house. Here's a gent as is travelling on to Kimberley, and he came to our house with a lady last night, and now there's the lady ill in bed and a little baby born in the night. And doctor, him from over yonder, has just been here, and he says the lady is very bad and going to die."
"That's a bad job, Jack." I says. "Yes, Joe," he says, "and my missus is that scared she don't know what to do, and there's nobody else about but old Nurse Grindle, and she's half drunk. So I came across to see if your missus would come over and help us a bit."
Well, your ma went. She were that handy when folks was ill, and she did what she could for the poor lady. But it weren't of no use, and the next day she died. My missus was fair cut up when she had passed away. She said she had the prettiest face and the loveliest hair she had ever seen, and she looked so young too. Your ma brought the baby over to our house, such a poor little thing it was. Doctor said he didn't think it had a chance to live. Well, we said we would keep it till after the funeral, but that night, when I was just a-going to bed, I heard someone at the door. I went down, and there was a fine-looking gentleman, the handsomest man I've ever seen, excepting one, and that's yourself, Ken. I guessed it was the baby's father. I thought he had come to fetch his child, and I told him my missus had taken it up to bed, but I would tell her he had come for it. He said, No, he hadn't come for the baby, but he had come to talk to me. So I asked him in, and we sat over the fire together.
He did not speak at first, and then he said, "How would I like to be a very rich man?" I said as how I would like it very much, nothing better. And then he said he could put me in the way of being one if I liked. He could make a gentleman of me, and I would never have to work anymore. You can think I opened my ears then, Ken, and I asked him how he was going to manage it, and what he wanted me to do. He didn't answer for a bit, and then he said he would tell me. He wanted me and my missus to take charge of the baby. "For how long?" I asked.
"For always," he said. "I want it to stop with you altogether, if so be that it lives, which it won't do. The doctor gives it three months at most. Still, there's just the chance it may. So I want you to adopt it, in fact," he says.
I thought it was awfully strange of him, Ken, to want to get rid of his own child. It seemed to me unnatural-like, so I asked him why he did it. He told me he was in a bit of a difficulty, and this would help him out of it. I said I wouldn't do it unless he told me what the bother was. So then he went so far as to say his father had written him a letter, and that letter obliged him to do it. But I wasn't satisfied, Ken. I said I must know what the letter was about, and then it all came out.
His father, he said, was a very wealthy man in England who had married an American lady with a big fortune of her own. She was now dead, and all her money had come to him. But of course it was nothing to what he would get when his father died, for his father had a grand estate somewhere, and he was the heir to it.
However, his father had married again about a year ago, and this second wife now had a child by him -- also a boy. So he was a step-brother. Then this gentleman went on to tell me that his father had for a long time set his heart on him marrying a lady who owned the next estate. She had one of the biggest rent-rolls in England, and if he married her they would own the whole county between them. She was older than he was, but he had no objection to marrying her now that his young wife was dead so suddenly. In fact, he thought it was the best thing he could do. But of course this woman in England would never dream of marrying him if she had any idea that he had been married before, or had a child living who would be heir to his title and estates.
He said he had been married abroad, and his father knew nothing about it. She was the daughter of a chaplain at one of the places he had stopped at. I told him if he was so fond of his wife, he ought to be fond of her child. But he said the child had cost her her life, and how could he bear to look at it? He felt as if he never wanted to see it again. Besides, it was no use talking about the child. If he was to take it back to England (and how could he possibly travel with so young a baby?) what would his father say? He had had a letter from his father, in which he told him that, if he didn't do as he wanted him about marrying this girl (or this woman, whatever she was) that lived near them, he would leave all his money to the little boy -- the child of his second wif
e. He couldn't leave him the title or the estate. They had to go to the eldest son. But he could leave his money to whoever he liked.
Well, Ken, he talked and he argued with me half the night, and at last I called my missus and told her to get up and come downstairs. She didn't like the thought of it at first. It seemed like cheating the poor child, she said, and keeping him out of his rights. But he offered us a big sum of money, a fortune, Ken, half of what he'd got from his step-mother, that rich American lady, if I would only say I would keep the child. So at last me and my missus came round to it. She told him he was a heartless man, and she didn't like doing it, but you see the money was a big temptation, Ken. Never to have to work anymore, and to live like grand folks, seemed almost more than we could put aside. And then we had no children of our own, and the missus had always wanted one, and she were kind of wrapped up in this little baby.
Well, the end of the matter was that we said we would consent, and then he made me take a solemn promise that I wouldn't ever tell anybody that it wasn't my own child, but that I would keep his secret all the days of my life.
He asked me then what my name was, and I said Tomkins, and he laughed and said, "Give the poor little beggar a better-sounding name than that. Change your name, Tomkins," he says, "to something that sounds a bit more aristocratic than that." "What shall it be, sir?" I says. "I'm not going to tell you, Tomkins, nor do I want to know," he says. "Get a pen and I'll write you out a check. But no, that won't do!" he says. Then he sits and thinks a bit. You see, Ken, he didn't want me to know his name nor who he was, and the check would have told me. "I know," he says at last, "I'll cash the check myself, and bring you the money. They can easily wire to my English bankers from the Kimberley Bank, and they'll find it's all right."
So a day or two after that he brings the money, Ken -- a great roll of notes it was, and each note was for £100. He counted it all out, what he'd agreed to give me. And then he said he was going to give me £5000 extra for the poor little beggar, in case he lived. He would like him to be educated as a gentleman, he said. I think his conscience had smote him, Ken.
Well, I promised that I would do the best I could for the baby, and then my missus said should she fetch it, so that he could give it a kiss? But he said No, he thought he had rather not see it. He was a heartless man -- very.