Henry Wood

Mildred Arkell. Vol. 3 (of 3)


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a probability. He called in Arkell, and shut the door.

      "Now," said he, confronting him, "will you speak the truth to me, or will you not?"

      "I have hitherto spoken the truth to you, sir," answered Arkell, in a tone of pain.

      "Well; I believe you have: it would be bad for you now, if you had not. It is about that register, you know," added Mr. Wilberforce, speaking slowly, and staring at him.

      There was but one candle on the table, and Henry Arkell pulled out his handkerchief and rubbed it over his face: between the handkerchief and the dim light, the master failed to detect any signs of emotion.

      "Did you get fingering the register-book in St. James's, the night you were in the church?"

      "No, sir, that I did not," he readily answered.

      "Had you a light in the church?"

      "You boys have a propensity for concealing matches in your clothes, in defiance of the risk you run," interrupted Mr. Prattleton. "Had you any that night?"

      "I had no matches, and I had no light," replied Henry. "None of the boys keep matches about them except those who"—smoke, was the ominous word which had all but escaped his lips—"who are careless."

      "Pray what did you do with yourself all the time?" resumed the master.

      "I played the organ for a long while, and then I lay down on the singers' seat, and went to sleep."

      "Now comes the point: how did you get out?"

      "I can't say anything about it, sir, except that I found the door open towards morning, and I walked out."

      "You must have been dreaming, and fancied it," said the master.

      "No, sir, I was awake. The door was open, and I went out."

      "Is that the best tale you have got to tell?"

      "It is all I can tell, sir. I did get out that way."

      "You may go home for the present," said Mr. Wilberforce, in anger.

      "Are you satisfied?" asked Mr. Prattleton, as Arkell retired.

      "I am satisfied that he is innocent as to the register; but not as to how he escaped from the church. Allowing it to be as he says—and I have always found him so strictly truthful—that he found the door open in the middle of the night, how did it come open? Who opened it? For what purpose?"

      "It is an incomprehensible affair altogether," said the Rev. Mr. Prattleton. "Let us sit down and talk it over."

      As Arkell left the room, Lewis, senior, appeared at the opposite door, propelling forth the fire-tongs, a note held between them.

      "This is for you," cried he, rudely, to Arkell, who took the note. Lewis flung the tongs back in their place. "My hands shouldn't soil themselves by touching yours," said he.

      When Arkell got out, he opened the letter under a gas-lamp, and read it as well as he could for the blots. The penmanship was Lewis, junior's.

      "Mr. Arkell,—Has you have chozen to peech to the master, like a retch has you ar, we give you notise that from this nite you will find the skool has hot has the Inphernal Regeons, a deal to hot for you. And my brother don't care a phether for the oisting he is to get, for he'll serve you worce. And if you show this dockiment to any sole, you'l be a dowble-died sneek, and we will thresh your life out of you, and then duck you in the rivor."

      Henry Arkell tore the paper to bits, and ran home, laughing at the spelling. But it was a very fair specimen of the orthography of Westerbury collegiate school.

      CHAPTER IV.

      ASSIZE SATURDAY

      To attempt to describe the state of Mr. Fauntleroy would be a vain effort. It was the practice of that respected solicitor never to advance a fraction of money out of his pocket for any mortal client, unless the repayment was as safe and sure as the Bank of England. He had deemed the return so in the case of Mrs. Carr, and had really advanced a good bit of money; and now there was no marriage recorded in the register.

      How had it gone out of it? Mr. Fauntleroy's first thought, in his desperation, was to suspect Mynn and Mynn, clean-handed practitioners though he knew them to be, as practitioners went, of having by some sleight of hand spirited the record away. But for the assertion of Mr. Wilberforce, that he had read it, the lawyer would have definitely concluded that it had never been there, in spite of Mr. Omer and his pencilled names. He went tearing over to Mynn and Mynn's in a fine state of excitement, could see neither Mr. Mynn nor Mr. George Mynn, hired a gig at Eckford, and drove over to Mr. Mynn's house, two miles distant. Mr. Mynn, strong in the gout, and wrapped up in flannel and cotton wool in his warm sitting-room, thought at first his professional brother had gone mad, as he listened to the tale and the implied accusation, and then expressed his absolute disbelief that any record of any such marriage had ever been there.

      "You must be mad, Fauntleroy! Go and tamper with a register!—suspect us of stealing a page out of a church's register! If you were in your senses, and I had the use of my legs, I'd kick you out of my house for your impudence. I might just as well turn round and tell you, you had been robbing the archives of the Court of Chancery."

      "Nobody knew of the record's being there but you, and I, and the rector," debated Mr. Fauntleroy, wiping his great face. "You say you went and saw it."

      "I say I went and didn't see it," roared the afflicted man, who had a dreadful twinge just then. "It seems—if this story of yours is true—that I never heard it was there until it was gone. Don't be a simpleton, Fauntleroy."

      In his heart of hearts, of course Mr. Fauntleroy did not think Mynn and Mynn had been culpable, only in his passion. His voice began to cool down to calmness.

      "I'm ready to accuse the whole world, and myself into the bargain," he said. "So would you be, had you been played the trick. I wish you'd tell me quietly what you know about the matter altogether."

      "That's where you should have begun," said old Mynn. "We never heard of any letter having been found, setting forth that the record of the marriage was in the register of St. James's, never thought for a moment that there had been any marriage, and I don't think it now, for the matter of that," he added, par parenthèse, "until the day our new manager, Littelby, took possession, and I and George were inducting him a little into our approaching assize and other causes. We came to Carr versus Carr, in due course, and then Littelby, evidently surprised, asked how it was that the letter despatched to you—to you, Mr. Fauntleroy, and which letter it seems you kept to yourself, and gave us no notice of—had not served to put an end to the cause. Naturally I and my brother inquired what letter Mr. Littelby alluded to, and what were its contents, and then he told us that it was a letter written by Robert Carr, of Holland, stating that the marriage had taken place at the church of St. James the Less, and that its record would be found entered on the register. My impression at the first moment was—and it was George's very strongly—that there had been nothing of the sort; no marriage, and consequently no record; but immediately a doubt arose whether any fraud had been committed by means of making a false entry in the register. I went off at once to Westerbury, fully determined to detect and expose this fraud—and my eyes are pretty clear for such things—I paid my half-crown, and went with the clerk and examined the register, and found I had my journey for nothing. There was no such record in the register—no mention whatever of the marriage. That is all I know of the affair, Mr. Fauntleroy."

      Had Mr. Fauntleroy talked till now, he could have learnt no more. It evidently was all that his confrère knew; and he went back to Westerbury as wise as he came, and sought the house of Mr. Wilberforce. The record must have been taken out between the beginning of November and the 2nd of December, he told the master. Omer, and the master himself, had both seen it at the former time; old Mynn searched on the 2nd of December, and it was gone.

      This information did not help Mr. Wilberforce in his perplexity, as to who could have tampered with it. It was impossible but that his suspicion should be directed to the night already spoken of, when Arkell was locked up in the church, and seemed to have got out in a manner so mysterious nobody knew how. Arkell adhered to his story: he had found the door open in the night, and walked