Part 28 (1/2)

”Ah-h! Yase! yase, yase!” nodded the M.C.'s husband.

”Do--you--know--when--she--will--come--back?”

The Frenchman looked puzzled for a moment, but with a foreigner's intuitive cleverness be guessed at the gist of the question. ”Ah, yase!

you vant to know _son retour_? Cee go walk mit monsieur. Cee go joost now _a huit heures_, and cee will retour byanby, _a neuf heures_, noine clock. _Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf_”--he said, counting on his fingers--”o'cloke!”

”Ooo!” said the doctor, giving a satisfied nod, ”I understand, she will be back again at nine o'clock,” holding up nine of his fingers in proof.

”I--am--much--obliged--to--you,--I--will--come back again--at nine!”

”Ah-h, yase! Dat is raite. You will retour?”

”Yes, I'll come back again!” said the doctor, as he walked away, after both had bowed politely to each other, and the Gaul had entreated him to accept a hundred thousand a.s.surances of his extreme subserviency.

”Confound those stoopid foreigners!” muttered the doctor, as he walked up the street in the direction of Ingouville, to pa.s.s the time.

”Confound those stoopid foreigners! Why, that fellow could have said all that in half the time in English.”

Volume 2, Chapter XV.

”END OF SECOND ACT.”

The engulfment of the last straw on which he, the drowning man, had leant his weight, left Markworth without a single loophole of escape: he did not know where to turn.

The Jew, Solomonson, had not only advanced him the money required for carrying on the unsuccessful lawsuit, but he was largely indebted to him besides; and Solomonson, he knew, was a very Shylock, and although he might bow and smile, and be the best of friends, and most cordial of bankers, while things were going on right and he saw some prospect of getting his money back with a large ”pershentage” in addition, still Markworth was equally well aware that the Jew would rigorously exact his pound of flesh as soon as he saw the game was up, and the cards exposed, and he would be the first one to come upon him for the three thousand pounds, for which he held his bill.

Markworth judged the child of Israel very rightly; and if he had not been a trifle earlier in the day in receiving that damming proof of the date of Susan's coming of age, its disagreement with the date of the marriage, and the consequent working of the clause in the will, and its effect on his claims, he would have found Mr Solomonson so anxious about his welfare, and considerate about his movements, that he might have discovered some slight check, in the shape of a _capias_, was placed in the way of any desire he might evince to leave the kingdom, and rejoin his wife. Messrs. Trump and Sequence had communicated with Markworth's lawyers at the same time as they had done with him, so the news would soon reach other ears which would be attentive enough to the information, and note its effects. He did not have a very long start in his advance news; still it was sufficient. That was something at all events, and he just managed to catch the tidal boat that night, and was soon on his way to that Alsatia on the other side, where debtors, unless their shortcomings are of a criminal nature, may laugh in safety at their creditors in England.

When Markworth was safely on board, and the steamer had ploughed through the muddy Southampton Water, and was dancing through the blue sea beyond, somewhat rough and leadeny at this season of the year, and the Southampton lights were far behind, his mind grew more composed, and he began to think over all that had happened.

”Dolt that I was,” he said to himself, ”not to have looked at that cursed register myself. In planning the whole scheme I neglected one of its most trifling, and yet most important points; and that has d.a.m.ned all! I see now how it all happened; the dates of Tom's and the girl's births came so close together, one on the 27th of August, and the other the 29th, that Clara jumbled the two together. The idiot! Curse her carelessness! But it was easy enough to mistake that 9 for a 7, and more fool I for trusting her! Curse my own folly! Treble fool, dolt, a.s.s that I was! not to see to the thing myself!” He spoke out bitterly, looking out over the sea. ”But I wonder how the devil it was those cursed lawyers and pettifoggers did not find out that mistake of the date before!” he added, afterwards, as if reflecting.

There was some cause for Markworth's wonderment at the lawyers'

oversight, as the discovery was as much a surprise to them as it was to him. But such things do happen sometimes; and many an important case having large interests at stake, has been decided ere now on just such a similar point, which has never been discovered or brought to light until just before, or indeed after, the case has gone into court. In many instances the lawyers have been grubbing and searching far and wide for remote proofs and impossible witnesses, when some little, straightforward clue has been lying under their eyes all the time, without being seized upon and made use of, or even dreamt of.

In the case of Susan Hartshorne, the date of her marriage and her majority had been taken for granted to be coeval; and, indeed, there was so little difference in the date and in the figures, that some little allowance must be made for the palpable error of Trump, Sequence, and Co., which was only discovered just in time, as their case could never have been sustained in court for Susan could have proved her own sanity on Markworth's side.

That date only saved the dowager from having to pay over her daughter's inheritance; but Markworth would never have allowed that mistake in the date to have occurred if he had known at first, as he knew latterly, what a great effect it would have in the working of Roger Hartshorne's will.

When he went down that first time to Doctors' Commons he had read through the will carefully, but not carefully enough to understand the absolute forfeiture of Susan's inheritance if she married before the age of twenty-one without her mother's consent. Even when he had subsequently digested this fact, he had been so certain about the date that he had not given it an afterthought; and had, like Mrs Hartshorne's lawyers, thought that the only thing he had to prove was her sanity at the time she married him.

The three months that had pa.s.sed since her marriage, the change of scene from the place of her childhood which was a.s.sociated with her calamity, and the novel influences which had been brought to bear upon her, had so thoroughly altered her, as has been observed before, although too much stress cannot be placed on that point, that Susan was completely cured, to all intents and purposes. She was no more silly, foolish, or insane than Markworth himself, and few people would have taken him for an idiot.

He had so thoroughly worked out her cure which he had planned when he had seen how malleable and easily influenced she was, for this especial purpose of putting her in the witness-box, having represented to her that she would have to come forward at some time and prove their marriage, or that her mother would tear her away from him--that she was quite prepared to be very strong evidence on his side. The very idea of her being taken back to The Poplars, and her mother, at whose name she still trembled, and grew frightened still, was sufficient to nerve her up to face a thousand juries, for the sake of her liberty and for Markworth, whom she now loved with more than the child's trusting love with which she had first regarded him.

That was all past now, however!

There was no more necessity for her coming forward, Markworth thought savagely; no chance now for him to produce her triumphantly at the last moment before his adversaries, and say--

”There! you say I have cajoled a lunatic into entering into an illegal contract of marriage with me, for the sake of appropriating her fortune.