Charlotte's Inheritance by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

a certain poison. It was one of those papers which, while they aid the cause of science, may also further the dark processes of the poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to encounter, and the weapons with which he may defend himself from their power. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this letter--one of a series on the same subject, or range of subjects. Valentine read it with eager interest. For him it had a terrible importance in its relation to the past and to the present.

"I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he thought to himself. "Will it open there a second time, I wonder?"

He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same place. Again; and again the book opened as before. Again, many times, and the result was still the same.

After this he examined the book, and found that it had been pressed open at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened volume. He examined it still more closely, and found here and there on the page faint indications of a pencil, which had under-scored certain lines, and the marks of which had been as far as possible erased. The deduction to be drawn from these small facts seemed only too clear to Valentine Hawkehurst. By some one reader the pages had been deliberately and carefully studied. Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in whose possession he found the book, the man whom that very day he had heard plainly denounced as a poisoner?

He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid search revealed to him a second fact, significant as the last.

An old envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the place had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the date of the year and the month in which Charlotte's father had died.

While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Woolper came into the room.

She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He had little more than half an hour at most in which to break the ice of absolute strangeness, and sound the very depths of this woman's character. If she had come to him earlier, when his plan of action was clear and definite, his imagination in abeyance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with slowness and deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by the discovery of fresh evidence against Philip Sheldon, was divided between the past and the present, she took him off his guard, and he plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all his thoughts.

Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the table with a vague terror in her face.

"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss--"

"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper--hopelessly, irrecoverably wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill--doomed to die, if she remain in your master's keeping."

"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?"

The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human countenance gave expression to human thought.

"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!"

"Dying! O, sir, for God's sake, don't say that!"

"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip Sheldon."

"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true. It is not true. For God's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and have heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the long night; and O, if I had known that this could ever come to him, I should have wished him dead in the little crib where he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell you, sir, it can't be true! His father and mother had been respected and looked up to in Barlingford for many a year,--his grandfather and grandmother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in those parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a man would poison his friend?"

"_I_ said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," said Valentine, sternly.

This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the rest, it seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror in the thought that a cold-blooded murder could be thus perpetrated in the sight of several people, and yet no voice be raised to denounce the assassin.

"And this is our modern civilization!" he said to himself. "Give me the desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowanee are no worse than Mr. Sheldon, and one might be on one's guard against them."

Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing about poison! What, then--had she betrayed her master?

He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst in the case of Tom Halliday, and that she would easily be influenced to do all he wanted of her.

"Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," he said, with intensity. "You made no attempt to save her father, though you suspected the cause of his death. I have this day seen Mr. Burkham, the doctor who attended Mr. Halliday, and from his lips I have heard the truth. I want you to accompany me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's bed, as her nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge of the past, and I have little doubt that he does"--a look in the housekeeper's face told him that he was right--"you are of all people best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not be a difficult one. If we dare remove her, we will remove her beyond the reach of that man's power. If not, your task will be to prevent food or medicine, that his hand has touched, from approaching her lips. You _can_ do it. It will only be a question of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the greatest doctors in London for our guide. Will you come?"

"I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy Woolper, doggedly; "nor I won't believe it. You can't force me to think bad of him I loved when he was little and helpless, and I carried him in my arms. What are you and your fine London doctor, Mr. Burkham--he was but a poor fondy, as I mind well--that I should take your word against my master? If that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, why didn't he speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of work to bring it up against my master eleven years afterwards. As for young missy, she's as sweet a young creature as ever lived, and I'd do anything to serve her. But I won't think, and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of her head. What would he gain by it?"

"He has settled that with himself. He has gained by the death of Tom Halliday, and depend upon it he has made his plans to gain by the death of Tom Halliday's daughter."

"I won't believe it," the old woman repeated in the same dogged tone.

For such resistance as this Mr. Hawkehurst was in no manner prepared. He looked at his watch. The half hour was nearly gone. There was little more time for argument.

"Great Heaven!" he said to himself, "what argument can I employ to influence this woman's obdurate heart?"

What argument, indeed? He knew of none stronger than those he had used. He stood for some moments battled and helpless, staring absently at the face of his watch, and wondering what he was to do next.

As Valentine Hawkehurst stood thus, there came a loud ringing of the bell, following quickly on the sound of wheels grinding against the kerbstone.

Mrs. Woolper opened the door and looked out into the hall.

"It's master!" cried one of the maids, emerging from the disorganized dining-room, "and missus, and Miss Halliday, and Mass Paget--and all the house topsy-turvy!"

"Charlotte here!" exclaimed Valentine. "You are dreaming, girl!"

"And you told me she was dying!" said Mrs. Woolper, with a look of triumph. "What becomes of your fine story now?"

"It _is_ Miss Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened the door. "And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, "how bad she do look!"

Valentine ran out to the gate. Yes; there were two cabs, one laden with luggage, the two cabmen busy about the doors of the vehicles, a little group of stragglers waiting to see the invalid young lady alight. It was the next best thing to a funeral.

"O, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms.

"In a decline, I dessay, pore young thing," said a matron, in an audible aside to her companion.

Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He pushed away the girl with the baby, the housemaid who had run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the cabman, every one; and in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, and he was carrying her into the house.

He felt as if he had been in a dream; and all that exceptional force which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. He carried his dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. Sheldon and Diana Paget. The face that dropped upon his shoulder showed deadly white against his dark-blue coat; the hand which he clasped in his, ah, how listless and feeble!

"Valentine!" the girl said, in a low drowsy voice, lifting her eyes to his face, "is this you? I have been so ill, so tired; and they would bring me away. To be near the doctors, papa says. Do you think any doctors will be able to cure me?"

"Yes, dear, with God's help. I am glad he has brought you here. And now I must run away," he said; when he had placed Charlotte in Mr. Sheldon's arm-chair, "for a very little while, darling. I have seen a doctor, a man in whom I have more confidence than I have in Dr. Doddleson. I am going to fetch him, my dearest," he added tenderly, as he felt