Uncle Max Part 71

'It is only faintness; it will pa.s.s off directly,' he said quietly. 'I will not leave you; but I have some sal volatile in that cupboard, and I think you will be the better for it.' And he mixed me some, and stood by me without speaking until the colour came back to my face. 'You are better now, Ursula--I mean,' biting his lips--'well, never mind. Do you feel a little less shaky?'

'Yes, thank you. I did not mean to be so foolish, but it was dark, and I got frightened and nervous; and oh, Mr. Hamilton, I must not lose time, or they will be coming in.'

'Who will be coming in?' he asked, rather bewildered at this. 'There is no one out, is there?'

'Yes, Miss Darrell and Leah. I heard them talking in "Conspiracy Corner"; you know that seat in the asphalt walk?'

'Well?' regarding me with an astonished air.

'Mr. Hamilton, I am better now. I am not frightened any longer now I am with you. Will you please call Leah when she comes in from the garden? I want to speak to her in your presence. I have a most serious charge to make against her and against your cousin Miss Darrell. It relates,' and here I felt my lips getting white again,--'it relates to your brother Eric.'

He started, and an expression of pain crossed his face,--a sudden look of fear, as though he dreaded what I might have to tell him; but the next moment he was thinking only of me.

'You shall speak to Leah to-morrow,' he said gently; 'it is late now,--nearly ten o'clock,--and you are ill, and had better go to bed and rest yourself. I can wait until to-morrow,' taking my cold hand.

But I would not be silenced. I implored him earnestly to do this for me,--to summon Leah into the study, but not to let Miss Darrell know.

'I suppose you think you could not sleep until you had relieved your mind,' he said, looking at me attentively. 'Well, they are coming in now.

Leah is fastening the door. Finish that sal volatile while I fetch her.'

I took it at a draught. But Mr. Hamilton's kindness had been my best restorative: I was no longer faint or miserable: he had cheered and comforted me.

I heard Leah's voice approaching the study door with perfect calmness.

'Miss Etta has gone up to bed, sir,' I heard her say; 'she has a headache: that is what makes her eyes so weak.'

'I should have said myself that she was crying,' returned Mr. Hamilton drily. 'Come in here a moment, Leah; I want to speak to you.'

She did not see me until the door was closed behind her, and then I saw her glance at me uneasily. Mr. Hamilton had evidently not prepared her for my presence in the study.

'Did you or Miss Garston wish to speak to me, sir?' she asked, with a veiled insolence of manner that she had shown to me lately; but I could see that no suspicion of the truth had dawned on her.

'It is I who wish to speak to you, Leah,' I returned severely; 'and I have asked your master to send for you that I might speak in his presence. Mr. Hamilton, I am going to repeat the conversation that I have just overheard between Leah and her mistress when they were in the seat in the asphalt walk: you shall hear it from my lips word for word.'

I never saw a countenance change as Leah's did that moment: her ordinary sallow complexion became a sort of dead-white; from insolence, her manner grew cringing, almost abject; the shock deprived her of all power of speech; only directly I began she caught hold of my gown with both hands, as though to implore me to stop; but Mr. Hamilton shook off her touch angrily, and asked her if it looked as though she were an honest woman to be so afraid of her own words. And then the sullen look came back to her face and never left it again.

I repeated every word. I do not believe I omitted a sentence, except that part that referred to Uncle Max. I could see Leah shrink and collapse as I mentioned her convict-brother, and such a gleam of fierce concentrated hatred shot from beneath her drooping lids that Mr. Hamilton instinctively moved to my side; but a low groan escaped him when I repeated Leah's words about the cheque. 'Good heavens! do you mean that Eric never took it?' he exclaimed, in a horror-stricken tone; but the woman merely raised her eyes and looked at him, and he was silent again until I had finished.

There was a moment's ominous silence after that: perhaps Mr. Hamilton was praying for self-control; he had grown frightfully pale, and yet he was a man who rarely changed colour: the veins on his forehead were swollen, and when he spoke his voice was hoa.r.s.e with repressed pa.s.sion.

'What have you to say for yourself, Leah? Do you know I could indict you for conspiracy and conniving at theft?'

'I know that very well,' returned the woman, trying to brave it out; but she could not meet his indignant look. 'But it is your own flesh and blood that is in fault here. Miss Etta is more to blame than I.'

Mr. Hamilton crossed the room and locked the door, putting the key coolly in his pocket; then he made me sit down,--for I had been standing all this time,--and, as though to enforce obedience, he kept his hand on my arm. I could see Leah looking about her as though she were caught in a trap: her light-coloured eyes had a scintillating look of fear in them.

'Now, Leah,' observed her master, in a terrible voice, 'if you are to expect any mercy at my hand you will make a clean breast; but first you will answer my question: Has Miss Garston repeated the conversation between you and Miss Etta correctly?'

'Yes, I believe so,' very sullenly.

'You saw Miss Etta take the cheque with your own eyes the night before Mr. Eric left home?'

'Yes.' Then, as though these questions tortured her, she said doggedly--

'Look here, sir; I am caught in a trap, and there is no getting out of it. I have lost my place and my character, thanks to Miss Garston,'--another vindictive look at me. 'If you will promise like a gentleman not to take advantage of my evidence, I will tell you all about it.'

'I will make no promises,' he returned, in the same stern voice; 'but if you do not speak I will send for the police at once, and have you up before a magistrate. You have connived at theft; that will be sufficient to criminate you.'

'I know all about that,' was the unflinching answer; 'and I know for the old mistress's sake you will be glad to hush it all up: it would not be pleasant to bring your own cousin before a magistrate, especially after promising the old mistress on her death-bed to be as good to Miss Etta as though she were your own sister.'

I saw the shadow of some sorrowful recollection cross his face as she said this. I had heard from Max how dearly he had loved his aunt Margaret: though her daughter had wrought such evil in his life, he would still seek to s.h.i.+eld her. Leah knew this too, and took advantage of her knowledge in her crafty manner.

'It would be best to tell you all, for Mr. Eric's sake. I know Miss Etta will be safe with you. She has done a deal of mischief since she has been under your roof. Somehow crooked ways come natural to her: the old mistress knew that, for she once said to me towards the last, "Leah, I am afraid my poor child has got some twist or warp in her nature; but I hope my nephew will never find out her want of straightforwardness." And she begged me, with tears in her eyes, to watch over her and try to influence her, although I was only a servant; and for a little while I tried, only the devil tempted me, for the sake of poor Bob.'

'Bob is the name of your brother who is at Millbank?' asked Mr. Hamilton, in the same hard voice.

'Yes, sir; he got into a bit of trouble through mixing with bad companions. But there,'--with a sudden fierce light in her eyes that reminded me of a tigress protecting her young,--'I am not going to talk of Bob: lads will get into trouble sometimes. If Mr. Eric had not been so interfering at that time, ordering Bob off the premises whenever he caught sight of him, and calling him a good-for-nothing loafer and all sorts of hard names,--why, he gave Bob a black eye one day when he was doing nothing but shying stones at the birds in the kitchen-garden,--if it had not been for Mr. Eric's treatment of Bob I might have acted better by him.'

'Will you keep to the subject, Leah?' observed her master, in a warning voice. 'I wish to hear how that cheque was taken from my study that night.'

'Well, sir, if you must know,' returned Leah reluctantly, 'Miss Etta was in a bit of a worry about money just then: she had got the accounts wrong somehow, and there was a heavy butcher's bill to be paid. She had let it run on too long, and all the time you believed it was settled every week: it was partly your fault, because you so seldom looked at the accounts, and was always trusting her with large sums of money. Miss Etta did not mean to be dishonest, but she was extravagant, and sometimes her dressmaker refused to wait for the money, and sometimes her milliner threatened to dun her; but she would quiet them a bit with a five- or ten-pound note filched from the housekeeping, always meaning, as she said, to pay it back when she drew her quarterly allowance.

'I used to know of these doings of hers, for often and often she has sent me to pacify them with promises. I told her sometimes that she would do it once too often, but she always said it was for the last time.

'She got afraid to tell me at last, but I knew all about the butcher's bill, for Mr. Dryden had been up to the house asking to see you, as he wanted his account settled. You were out when he called, but I never saw Miss Etta in such a fright: she had a fit of hysterics in her own room after he had left the house, and I had trouble enough to pacify her. She said if you found out that Dryden's account had not been settled for three months that you would never trust her again; that she was afraid Mr. Eric suspected her, and that she did not feel safe with him, and a great deal more that I cannot remember.

'It ended with her making up her mind to p.a.w.n most of her jewellery, and we arranged that Bob should manage the business. He was up at the cottage for a night or two, though no one was aware of that fact, for he kept close, for fear Mr. Eric should spy upon him.

'He slept at the cottage the very night the cheque was stolen from the study'; but as Leah paused here Mr. Hamilton lifted his head from his hands and bade her impatiently go on with the history of that night.

CHAPTER XLIV

LEAH'S CONFESSION

'You know what happened that day, sir,' observed Leah, hesitating a moment, for even her hard nature felt some compunction at the look of suffering on her master's face. She had eaten his bread for years, and had deceived and duped him; but she must have felt remorse stirring in her as she saw him drop his head on his clasped hands again, as though he were compelling himself to listen without interruption.

'You had been talking to Mr. Eric a long time in the study, Miss Etta told me; he had been going on like mad about Mr. Edgar Brown, and having to go to Mr. Armstrong's office; but you had been very firm, and had refused to hear any more, and he had flung off to his own room in one of his pa.s.sions. Miss Gladys had followed him, and I heard him telling her that he had forgotten himself and struck you, and that you had turned him out of the study, and that he was in difficulties and must have money, for Mr. Edgar had got him into some trouble.'

'You heard this by listening at Mr. Eric's door, for Miss Gladys saw you,' I observed, not willing to let this pa.s.s.

'What has that got to do with it?' she returned rudely. 'I am speaking to the master, not you': but she grew a shade paler as I spoke. 'You were up late that night, sir; I was waiting to speak to Miss Etta, and encountered you in the pa.s.sage. I went back to my own room for a little while, and then I knocked at her door; but there was no answer. I could see the room was dark, but I could hardly believe she was asleep: so I went to the bed and called Miss Etta, but I very soon found she was not there: her gown was on the couch and her dressing-gown missing from its place.

'I had a notion that I might as well follow her, for somehow I guessed that she had gone to the study; but I was certainly not prepared to see Mr. Eric stooping over your desk. He had a letter in his hand, and had just put down his chamber candlestick. All at once it flashed upon my mind that Miss Etta had told me that you had received a large cheque that night, and that you were going up to London the next day to cash it, and she hoped Dryden would not call again before you went. She said it quite casually, and I am sure then she had not thought of helping herself. Then the thought must have come to her all of a sudden.

'I remembered the cheque, and for an instant I suspected Mr. Eric. But as I was watching him I saw the curtain of one of the windows move, and I had a glimpse of yellow embroidery that certainly belonged to Miss Etta's dressing-gown. In a moment I grasped the truth: she had taken the cheque to settle Dryden's bill. But I must make myself certain of the fact: so I asked Mr. Eric, rather roughly, what he was doing, and he retorted by bidding me mind my own business.