"Yes, it was a parcel--a small oblong box--about the size of those pasteboard receptacles which are usually a.s.sociated with Seidlitz powders--an oblong box, neatly packed in white paper, secured with several seals, and addressed to Clement Austin, Esq., Willow Bank, Clapham.
"But the hand, the dear, well-known hand, which had addressed the packet--my blood thrilled through my veins as I recognized the familiar characters.
""Who brought this parcel?" I asked, starting from my comfortable easy-chair, and going straight out into the hall.
"The astonished parlour-maid told me that the packet had been given her by a lady, "a lady who was dressed in black, or dark things," the girl said, "and whose face was quite hidden by a thick veil." After leaving the small packet, this lady got into a cab a few paces from our gate, the girl added, "and the cab had tore off as fast as it could tear!"
"I went out into the open yard, and looked despairingly London-wards.
There was no vestige of any cab: of course there had been ample time for the cab in question to get far beyond reach of pursuit. I felt almost maddened with this disappointment and vexation. It was Margaret, Margaret herself most likely, who had come to my door; and I had lost the opportunity of seeing her.
"I stood staring blankly up and down the road for some time, and then went back to the parlour, where my mother, with pardonable weakness, had pounced upon the packet, and was examining it with eyes opened to their widest extent.
""It is Margaret"s hand!" she exclaimed. "Oh, do open--do, please, open it directly. What on earth can it be?"
"I tore off the white paper covering, and revealed just such an object as I had expected to see--a box, a common-place pasteboard box, tied securely across and across with thin twine. I cut the twine and opened the box. At the top there was a layer of jewellers" wool, and on that being removed, my mother gave a little shriek of surprise and admiration.
"The box contained a fortune--a fortune in the shape of unset diamonds, lying as close together as their nature would admit--unset diamonds, which glittered and flashed upon us in the lamplight.
"Inside the lid there was a folded paper, upon, which the following lines were written in the dear hand, the never-to-be-forgotten hand:
""EVER-DEAREST CLEMENT,--_The sad and miserable secret which led to our parting is a secret no longer. You know all, and you have no doubt forgiven, and perhaps in part forgotten, the wretched woman to whom your love was once so dear, and to whom the memory of your love will ever be a consolation and a happiness. If I dared to pray to you to think pitifully of that most unhappy man whose secret is now known to you, I would do so; but I cannot hope for so much mercy from men: I can only hope it from G.o.d, who in His supreme wisdom alone can fathom the mysteries of a repentant heart. I beg of you to deliver to Lady Jocelyn the diamonds I place in your hands. They belong of right to her; and I regret to say they only represent apart of the money withdrawn from the funds in the name of Henry Dunbar. Good-bye, dear and generous friend; this it the last you will ever hear of one whose name must sound odious to the ears of honest men. Pity me, and forget me; and may a happier woman be to you that which I can never be!_ M. W."
"This was all. Nothing could be firmer than the tone of this letter, in spite of its pensive gentleness. My poor girl could not be brought to believe that I should hold it no disgrace to make her my wife, in spite of the hideous story connected with her name. In my vexation and disappointment, I appealed once more to the unfailing friend of parted or persecuted lovers, the Jupiter of Printing-House Square.
""_Margaret_," I wrote in the advertis.e.m.e.nt which adorned the second column of the _Times_ Supplement on twenty consecutive occasions, "_I hold you to your old promise, and consider the circ.u.mstances of our parting as in no manner a release from your old engagement. The greatest wrong you can inflict upon me will be inflicted by your desertion_.
C. A."
"This advertis.e.m.e.nt was as useless as its predecessor. I looked in vain for any answer.
"I lost no time in fulfilling the commission intrusted to me I went down to Shorncliffe, and delivered the box of diamonds into the hands of John Lovell, the solicitor; for Lady Jocelyn was still on the Continent. He packed the box in paper, and made me seal it with my signet-ring, in the presence of one of his clerks, before he put it away in an iron safe near his desk.
"When this was done, and when the _Times_ advertis.e.m.e.nt had been inserted for the twentieth time without eliciting any reply, I gave myself up to a kind of despair about Margaret. She had failed to see my advertis.e.m.e.nt, I thought; for she would scarcely have been so hard-hearted as to leave it unanswered. She had failed to see this advertis.e.m.e.nt, as well as the previous appeal made to her through the same medium, and she would no doubt fail to see any other. I had reason to know that she was, or had been, in England, for she would scarcely have intrusted the diamonds to strange hands; but it was only too likely that she had chosen the very eve of her own and her father"s departure for some distant country as the most fitting time at which to leave the valuable parcel with me.
""Her influence over her father must be complete," I thought, "or he would scarcely have consented to surrender such a treasure as the diamonds. He has most likely retained enough to pay the pa.s.sage out to America for himself and Margaret; and my poor darling will wander with her wretched father into some remote corner of the United States, where she will be hidden from me for ever."
"I remembered with unspeakable pain how wide the world was, and how easy it would be for the woman I loved to be for ever lost to me.
"I gave myself up to despair; it was not resignation, for my life was empty and desolate without Margaret; try as I might to carry my burden quietly, and put a brave face upon my sorrow. Up to the time of Margaret"s appearance on that bleak winter"s night, I had cherished the hope--or even more than hope--the belief that we should be reunited: but after that night the old faith in a happy future crumbled away, and the idea that Joseph Wilmot"s daughter had left England grew little by little into conviction.
"I should never see her again. I fully believed this now. There was never to be any more sunshine in my life: and there was nothing for me to do but to resign myself to the even tenor of an existence in which the quiet duties of a business career would leave little time for any idle grief or lamentation. My sorrow was a part of my life: but even those who knew me best failed to fathom the depth of that sorrow. To them I seemed only a grave business man, devoted to the dry details of a business life.
"Eighteen months had pa.s.sed since the bleak winter"s night on which the box of diamonds had been intrusted to me; eighteen months, so slow and quiet in their course that I was beginning to feel myself an old man, older than many old men, inasmuch as I had outlived the wreck of the one bright hope which had made life dear to me. It was midsummer time, and the counting-house in St. Gundolph Lane, and the parlour in which--in virtue of my new position--I had now a right to work, seemed peculiarly hot and frowsy, dusty and obnoxious. My work being especially hard at this time knocked me up; and I was compelled, under pain of solemn threats from my mother"s pet medical attendant, to stay at home, and take two or three days" rest. I submitted, very unwillingly; for however dusty and stifling the atmosphere in St. Gundolph Lane might be, it was better to be there, victorious over my sorrow, by means of man"s grandest ally in the battle with black care--to wit, hard work--than to be lying on the sofa in my mother"s pleasant drawing-room, listening to the cheery click of two knitting-needles, and thinking of my wasted life.
"I submitted, however, to take the three days" holiday; and on the second day, after a couple of hours" penance on the sofa, I got up, languid and tired still, but bent on some employment by which I might escape from the sad monotony of my own thoughts.
""I think I"ll go into the next room and put my papers to rights, mother," I said.
"My dear indulgent mother remonstrated: I was to rest and keep myself quiet, she said, and not to worry myself about papers and tiresome things of that kind, which appertained only to the office. But I had my own way, and went into the little room, where there were flowers blooming and caged birds singing in the open window.
"This room was a sort of snuggery, half library, half breakfast-parlour, and it was in this room my mother and I had been sitting on the night on which the diamonds had been brought to me.
"On one side of the fireplace stood my mother"s work-table, on the other the desk at which I wrote, whenever I wrote any letters at home--a ponderous old-fashioned office desk, with a row of drawers on each side, a deep well in the centre, and under that a large waste-paper basket, full of old envelopes and torn sc.r.a.ps of letters.
"I wheeled a comfortable chair up to the desk, and began my task. It was a very long one, and involved a great deal of folding, sorting, and arranging of doc.u.ments, which perhaps were scarcely worth the trouble I took with them. At any rate, the work kept my fingers employed, though my mind still brooded over the old trouble.
"I sat for nearly three hours; for it was a very long time since I had had a day"s leisure, and the acc.u.mulation of letters, bills, and receipts was something very formidable. At last all was done, the letters and bills endorsed and tied into neat packets that would have done credit to a lawyer"s office; and I flung myself back in my chair with a sigh of relief.
"But I had not finished my work yet; for I drew out the waste-paper basket presently, and emptied its contents upon the floor, in order that I might make sure of there being no important paper thrown by chance amongst them, before I consigned them to be swept away by the housemaid.
"I tossed over the chaotic fragments, the soiled envelopes, the circulars of enterprising Clapham tradesmen, and all the other rubbish that had acc.u.mulated within the last two years. The dust floated up to my face and almost blinded me.
"Yes, there was something of consequence amongst the papers--something, at least, which I should have held it sacrilegious to consign to Molly, the housemaid--the wrapper of the box containing the diamonds; the paper wrapper, directed in the dear hand I loved, the hand of Margaret Wilmot.
"I must have left the wrapper on the table on the night when I received the box, and one of the servants had no doubt put it into the waste-paper basket. I picked up the sheet of paper and folded it neatly; it was a very small treasure for a lover to preserve, perhaps: but then I had so few relics of the woman who was to have been my wife.
"As I folded the paper, I looked, half in absence of mind, at the stamp in the corner. It was an old-fashioned sheet of Bath post, stamped with the name of the stationer who had sold it--Jakins, Kylmington.
Kylmington; yes, I remembered there was a town in Hampshire,--a kind of watering-place, I believed,--called Kylmington! And the paper had been bought there--and if so, it was more than likely that Margaret had been there.
"Could it be so? Could it be really possible that in this sheet of paper I had found a clue which would help me to trace my lost love? Could it be so? The new hope sent a thrill of sudden life and energy through my veins. Ill--worn out, knocked up by over-work? Who could dare to say I was any thing of the kind? I was as strong as Hercules.
"I put the folded paper in the breast-pocket of my coat, and took down Bradshaw. Dear Bradshaw, what an interesting writer you seemed to me on that day! Yes, Kylmington was in Hampshire; three hours and a half from London, with due allowance for delays in changing carriages. There was a train would convey me from Waterloo to Kylmington that afternoon--a train that would leave Waterloo at half-past three.
"I looked at my watch. It was half-past two. I had only an hour for all my preparations and the drive to Waterloo. I went to the drawing-room, where my mother was still sitting at work near the open window. She started when she saw my face, for my new hope had given it a strange brightness.
""Why, Clem," she said, "you look as pleased as if you"d found some treasure among your papers."
""I hope I have, mother. I hope and believe that I have found a clue that will enable me to trace Margaret."
""You don"t mean it?"
""I"ve found the name of a town which I believe to be the place where she was staying before she brought those diamonds to me. I am going there to try and discover some tidings of her. I am going at once. Don"t look anxious, dear mother; the journey to Kylmington, and the hope that takes me there, will do me more good than all the drugs in Mr. Bainham"s surgery. Be my own dear indulgent mother, as you have always been, and pack me a couple of clean shirts in a portmanteau. I shall come back to-morrow night, I dare say, as I"ve only three days" leave of absence from the office."
"My mother, who had never in her life refused me anything, did not long oppose me to-day. A hansom cab rattled me off to the station; and at five minutes before the half-hour I was on the platform, with my ticket for Kylmington in my pocket."
CHAPTER XLVII.
THE DAWN.
"The clock of Kylmington church, which was as much behind any other public timekeeper I had ever encountered as the town of Kylmington was behind any other town I had ever explored, struck eight as I opened the little wooden gate of the churchyard, and went into the shade of an avenue of stunted sycamores, which was supposed to be the chief glory of Kylmington.
"It was twenty minutes past eight by London time, and the summer sun had gone down, leaving all the low western sky bathed in vivid yellow light, which deepened into crimson as I watched it.
"I had been more than an hour and a half in Kylmington. I had taken some slight refreshment at the princ.i.p.al hotel--a queer, old-fashioned place, with a ruinous, weedy appearance pervading it, and the impress of incurable melancholy stamped on the face of every sc.r.a.p of rickety furniture and lopsided window-blind. I had taken some slight refreshment--to this hour I don"t know _what_ it was I ate upon that balmy summer evening, so entirely was my mind absorbed by that bright hope, which was growing brighter and brighter every moment. I had been to the stationer"s shop, which still bore above its window the faded letters of the name "Jakins," though the last of the Jakinses had long left Kylmington. I had been to this shop, and from a good-natured but pensive matron I had heard tidings that made my bright hope a still brighter certainty.