"Why, how on earth could _he_ know?" cried Maitland. "No one was present when her poor father died. His body was found in a--," and Maitland paused rather awkwardly. There was, perhaps, no necessity for adding to the public information about the circ.u.mstances of Mr. Shields" decease.
"He was overcome by the cold and snow, I mean, on the night of the great storm."
"I have always heard that the death of people made drowsy by snow and fatigue is as painless as sleep," said Miss Marlett with some tact.
"I suppose that is what the man must have meant," Maitland answered.
There was nothing more to be said on either side, and yet he lingered, trying to think over any circ.u.mstance which might lend a clew in the search for Margaret and of the mysterious Mr. Lithgow.
At last he said "Good-night," after making the superfluous remark that it would be as well to let everyone suppose that nothing unusual or unexpected had happened. In this view Miss Marlett entirely concurred, for excellent reasons of her own, and now she began to regret that she had taken Miss Harman into her counsels. But there was no help for it; and when Maitland rejoined his cabman (who had been refreshed by tea), a kind of informal treaty of peace was concluded between Janey and the schoolmistress. After all, it appeared to Miss Marlett (and correctly) that the epistle from the young officer whom Janey regarded as a brother was a natural and harmless communication. It chiefly contained accounts of contemporary regimental sports and pastimes, in which the writer had distinguished himself, and if it did end "Yours affectionately,"
there was nothing very terrible or inflammatory in that, all things considered. So the fair owner of the letter received it into her own keeping, only she was "never to do it again."
Miss Marlett did not ask Janey to say nothing about Margaret"s inexplicable adventure. She believed that the girl would have sufficient sense and good feeling to hold her peace; and if she did not do so of her own accord, no vows would be likely to bind her. In this favorable estimate of her pupil"s discretion Miss Marlett was not mistaken.
Janey did not even give herself airs of mystery among the girls, which was an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of the school never doubted that, on the death of Miss Shields" father, she had been removed by one of her friends. As for Maitland, he was compelled to pa.s.s the night at Tiverton, revolving many memories. He had now the gravest reason for anxiety about the girl, of whom he was the only friend and protector, and who was, undeniably, the victim of some plot or conspiracy. Nothing more practical than seeking the advice of Bielby of St. Gatien"s occurred to his perplexed imagination.
CHAPTER VI.--At St. Gatien"s.
The following day was spent by Maitland in travel, and in pushing such inquiries as suggested themselves to a mind not fertile in expedients.
He was not wholly unacquainted with novels of adventure, and he based his conduct, as much as possible, on what he could remember in these "authorities." For example, he first went in search of the man who had driven the cab which brought the mysterious Mr. Lithgow to flutter the Dovecot. So far, there was no difficulty. One of the cabdrivers who plied at the station perfectly remembered the gentleman in furs whom he had driven to the school After waiting at the school till the young lady was ready, he had conveyed them back again to the station, and they took the up-train. That was all _he_ knew. The gentleman, if his opinion were asked, was "a scaly varmint." On inquiry, Maitland found that this wide moral generalization was based on the limited _pour-boire_ which Mr.
Lithgow had presented to his charioteer. Had the gentleman any luggage?
Yes, he had a portmanteau, which he left in the cloak-room, and took away with him on his return to town--not in the van, in the railway carriage. "What could he want with all that luggage?" Maitland wondered.
The next thing was, of course, to find the guard of the train which conveyed Margaret and her mysterious friend to Taunton. This official had seen the gentleman and the young lady get out at Taunton. They went on to London.
The unfortunate guardian of Margaret Shields was now obliged to start for Taunton, and thence pursue his way, and his inquiries, as far as Paddington. The position was extremely irksome to Maitland. Although, in novels, gentlemen often a.s.sume the _role_ of the detective with apparent relish, Maitland was not cast by Nature for the part. He was too scrupulous and too shy. He detested asking guards, and porters, and station-masters, and people in refreshment-rooms if they remembered having seen, yesterday, a gentleman in a fur coat travelling with a young lady, of whom he felt that he had to offer only a too suggestive description. The philanthropist could not but see that everyone properly constructed, in imagination, a satisfactory little myth to account for all the circ.u.mstances--a myth in which Maitland played the unpopular part of the Avenging Brother or Injured Husband.
What other path, indeed, was open to conjecture? A gentleman in a fur coat, and a young lady of prepossessing appearance, are travelling alone together, one day, in a carriage marked "Engaged." Next day, another gentleman (not prepossessing, and very nervous) appears on the same route, asking anxious questions about the wayfarer in the notable coat (bearskin, it seemed to have been) and about the interesting young lady.
Clearly, the pair were the fond fugitives of Love; while the pursuer represented the less engaging interests of Property, of Law, and of the Family. All the romance and all the popular interest were manifestly on the other side, not on Maitland"s side. Even his tips were received without enthusiasm.
Maitland felt these disadvantages keenly; and yet he had neither the time nor the power to explain matters. Even if he had told everyone he met that he was really the young lady"s guardian, and that the gentleman in the fur coat was (he had every reason to believe) a forger and a miscreant, he would not have been believed. His opinion would, not unjustly, have been looked on as distorted by what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls "the personal bias." He had therefore to put up with general distrust and brief discourteous replies.
There are many young ladies in the refreshment-bar at Swindon. There they gather, numerous and fair as the sea-nymphs--Doto, Proto, Doris, and Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them Maitland sought to be instructed. But the young ladies were arch and uncommunicative, pretending that their attention was engaged in their hospitable duties.
Soup it was their business to minister to travellers, not private information. They _had_ seen the gentleman and lady. Very attentive to her he seemed. Yes, they were on the best terms: "very sweet on each other," one young lady averred, and then secured her retreat and concealed her blushes by ministering to the wants of a hungry and hurried public. All this was horribly disagreeable to Maitland.
Maitland finally reached Paddington, still asking questions. He had telegraphed the night before to inquire whether two persons answering to the oft-repeated description had been noticed at the terminus. He had received a reply in the negative before leaving Tiverton. Here, then, was a check. If the ticket-collector was to be credited, the objects of his search had reached Westbourne Park, where their tickets had been taken. There, however, all the evidence proved that they had not descended. n.o.body had seen them alight Yet, not a trace was to be found at Paddington of a gentleman in a fur coat, nor of any gentleman travelling alone with a young lady.
It was nearly nine o"clock when Maitland, puzzled, worn out, and disgusted, arrived in town. He did what he could in the way of interrogating the porters--all to no purpose. In the crowd and bustle of pa.s.sengers, who skirmish for their luggage under inadequate lights, no one remembered having seen either of the persons whom Maitland described. There remained the chance of finding out and cross-examining all the cab-drivers who had taken up pa.s.sengers by the late trains the night before. But that business could not be transacted at the moment, nor perhaps by an amateur.
Maitland"s time was limited indeed. He had been obliged to get out at Westbourne Park and prosecute his inquisition there. Thence he drove to Paddington, and, with brief enough s.p.a.ce for investigations that yielded nothing, he took his ticket by the 9.15 evening train for Oxford. His whole soul was set on consulting Bielby of St. Gatien"s, whom, in his heart, Maitland could not but accuse of being at the bottom of all these unprecedented troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it were, out of Oxford, by urging him to acquire a wider knowledge of humanity, and to expand his character by intercourse with every variety of our fallen species, Maitland felt that he might now be vegetating in an existence peaceful, if not well satisfied. "Adventures are to the adventurous." It is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not adventurous at all. If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby"s, Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic enterprise, he never would have taken the _Hit or Miss_ he never would have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he would not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated old wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl.
Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing anxiety of speculating on what had befallen Margaret.
His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plausible solutions of the mystery of her disappearance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland"s confidence in the sagacity of his old tutor was unshaken. Bielby had not been responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was trying to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not taken Bielby"s advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs.
St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.
So the time pa.s.sed, the minutes flitting by, like the telegraph posts, in the dark, and Maitland reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped into a hansom, and said, "Gatien"s." Past Worcester, up Carfax, down the High Street, they struggled through the snow; and at last Maitland got out and kicked at the College gate. The porter (it was nearly midnight) opened it with rather a scared face:
"Horful row on in quad, sir," he said. "The young gentlemen "as a bonfire on, and they"re a larking with the snow. Orful A they"re a making, sir."
The agricultural operation thus indicated by the porter was being forwarded with great vigor. A number of young men, in every variety of garb (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically piling up a huge Alp of snow against the door of the Master"s lodge. Meanwhile, another band had carried into the quad all the light tables and cane chairs from a lecture-room. Having arranged these in a graceful pyramidal form, they introduced some of the fire-lighters, called "devils" by the College servants, and set a match to the whole.
Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, in the lurid glare, very like a magician who has raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work for them. He felt no disposition to interfere, though the venerable ma.s.s of St Ga-tien"s seemed in momentary peril, and the noise was enough to waken the dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. But Maitland was a non-resident Fellow, known only to the undergraduates, where he was known at all, as a "Radical," with any number of decorative epithets, according to the taste and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he could identify any of the rioters, and he was not certain that they would not carry him to his room, and there screw him up, according to precedent. Maitland had too much sense of personal dignity to face the idea of owing his escape from his chambers to the resources of civilization at the command of the college blacksmith. He, therefore, after a moment of irresolution, stole off under a low-browed old door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided little quadrangle; for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle should, in this least mathematical of universities, be quadrangular. Groping and stumbling his familiar way up the darkest of spiral staircases, Maitland missed his footing, and fell, with the whole weight of his body, against the door at which he had meant to knock.
"Come in," said a gruff voice, as if the knocking had been done in the most conventional manner.
Maitland had come in by this time, and found the distinguished Mr.
Bielby, Fellow of St. Gatien"s, sitting by his fireside, attired in a gray shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. This gentleman had, on taking his degree, gone to town, and practised with singular success at the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust or disappointment, he threw up his practice, returned to College, and there lived a retired life among his "brown Greek ma.n.u.scripts." He was a man of the world, turned hermit, and the first of the kind whom Maitland had ever known.
He had "coached" Maitland, though he usually took no pupils, and remained his friend and counsellor.
"How are you, Maitland?" said the student, without rising. "I thought, from the way in which you knocked, that you were some of the young men, coming to "draw me," as I think they call it."
Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that the undergraduates were as likely to "draw" him as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a fierce old bear that "dwells among bones and blood."
Mr. Bielby"s own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped beard, wore the air of content. Around him were old books that had belonged to famous students of old--Scaliger, Meursius, Muretus--and before him lay the proof-sheets of his long-deferred work, a new critical edition of "Demetrius of Scepsis."
Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the learned calm of a man who had not contrived, in the task of developing his own human nature, to become involved, like his pupil, in a singular and deplorable conjuncture of circ.u.mstances.
"The men are making a terrible riot in quad," he said, answering the other"s remark.
"Yes, yes," replied Bielby, genially; "boys will be boys, and so will young men. I believe our Torpid has b.u.mped Keble, and the event is being celebrated."
Here there came a terrific howl from without, and a crash of broken gla.s.s.
"There go some windows into their battels," said Mr. Bielby. "They will hear of this from the Provost But what brings you here, Maitland, so unexpectedly? Very glad to see you, whatever it is."
"Well, sir," said Maitland, "I rather want to ask your advice on an important matter. The fact is, to begin at the beginning of a long story, that some time ago I got, more or less, engaged to be married."
This was not a very ardent or lover-like announcement, but Bielby seemed gratified.
"Ah-ha," replied the tutor, with a humorous twinkle. "Happy to hear it Indeed, I _had_ heard a rumor, a whisper! A little bird, as they say, brought a hint of it--I hope, Maitland, a happy omen! A pleasant woman of the world, one who can take her own part in society, and your part, too, a little--if you will let me say so--is exactly what you need. I congratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to see the young lady in Oxford? Where is she just now?"
Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed heard something, and not the right thing. He flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and of Mrs. St John Deloraine.
"I"m sure I wish I knew," said Maitland at last, beginning to find this consulting of the oracle a little difficult. "The fact is, that"s just what I wanted to consult you about. I--I"m afraid I"ve lost all traces of the young lady."
"Why, what do you mean?" asked the don, his face suddenly growing grave, while his voice had not yet lost its humorous tone. "She has not eloped?
You don"t mean to tell me she has run away from you?"
"I really don"t know what to say," answered Maitland. "I"m afraid she has been run away with, that she is the victim of some plot or conspiracy."
"You surely can"t mean what you say" (and now the voice was gruffer than ever). "People don"t plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which probably they didn"t! And who are the young lady"s people? Why don"t they look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have friends."
"She is not a widow--she is an orphan," said Maitland, blushing painfully. "I am her guardian in a kind of way."
"Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I"m sure I beg your pardon, but did you tell me her name?"
"Her name is Shields--Margaret Shields"--("Not the name I was told,"