Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1875 page)

Moody hastened back to the part of the grounds (close to the shrubbery) in which Isabel was waiting his return.

She looked at him, while he was telling her of his interview with Hardyman, with an expression in her eyes which he had never seen in them before — an expression which set his heart beating wildly, and made him break off in his narrative before he had reached the end.

“I understand,” she said quietly, as he stopped in confusion. “You have made one more sacrifice to my welfare. Robert! I believe you are the noblest man that ever breathed the breath of life!”

His eyes sank before hers; he blushed like a boy. “I have done nothing for you yet,” he said. “Don’t despair of the future, if the pocketbook should not be found. I know who the man is who received the bank note; and I have only to find him to decide the question whether it
is
the stolen note or not.”

She smiled sadly as his enthusiasm. “Are you going back to Mr. Sharon to help you?” she asked. “That trick he played me has destroyed
my
belief in him. He no more knows than I do who the thief really is.”

“You are mistaken, Isabel. He knows — and I know.” He stopped there, and made a sign to her to be silent. One of the servants was approaching them.

“Is the pocketbook found?” Moody asked.

“No, sir.”

“Has Mr. Hardyman left the cottage?”

“He has just gone, sir. Have you any further instructions to give us?”

“No. There is my address in London, if the pocketbook should be found.”

The man took the card that was handed to him and retired. Moody offered his arm to Isabel. “I am at your service,” he said, “when you wish to return to your aunt.”

They had advanced nearly as far as the tent, on their way out of the grounds, when they were met by a gentleman walking towards them from the cottage. He was a stranger to Isabel. Moody immediately recognised him as Mr. Felix Sweetsir.

“Ha! our good Moody!” cried Felix. “Enviable man! you look younger than ever.” He took off his hat to Isabel; his bright restless eyes suddenly became quiet as they rested on her. “Have I the honour of addressing the future Mrs. Hardyman? May I offer my best congratulations? What has become of our friend Alfred?”

Moody answered for Isabel. “If you will make inquiries at the cottage, sir,” he said, “you will find that you are mistaken, to say the least of it, in addressing your questions to this young lady.”

Felix took off his hat again — with the most becoming appearance of surprise and distress.

“Something wrong, I fear?” he said, addressing Isabel. “I am, indeed, ashamed if I have ignorantly given you a moment’s pain. Pray accept my most sincere apologies. I have only this instant arrived; my health would not allow me to be present at the luncheon. Permit me to express the earnest hope that matters may be set right to the satisfaction of all parties. Good-afternoon!”

He bowed with elabourate courtesy, and turned back to the cottage.

“Who is that?” Isabel asked.

“Lady Lydiard’s nephew, Mr. Felix Sweetsir,” Moody answered, with a sudden sternness of tone, and a sudden coldness of manner, which surprised Isabel.

“You don’t like him?” she said.

As she spoke, Felix stopped to give audience to one of the grooms, who had apparently been sent with a message to him. He turned so that his face was once more visible to Isabel. Moody pressed her hand significantly as it rested on his arm.

“Look well at that man,” he whispered. “It’s time to warn you. Mr. Felix Sweetsir is the worst enemy you have!”

Isabel heard him in speechless astonishment. He went on in tones that trembled with suppressed emotion.

“You doubt if Sharon knows the thief. You doubt if I know the thief. Isabel! as certainly as the heaven is above us, there stands the wretch who stole the bank-note!”

She drew her hand out of his arm with a cry of terror. She looked at him as if she doubted whether he was in his right mind.

He took her hand, and waited a moment trying to compose himself.

“Listen to me,” he said. “At the first consultation I had with Sharon he gave this advice to Mr. Troy and to me. He said, ‘Suspect the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly fall.’ Those words, taken with the questions he had asked before he pronounced his opinion, struck through me as if he had struck me with a knife. I instantly suspected Lady Lydiard’s nephew. Wait! From that time to this I have said nothing of my suspicion to any living soul. I knew in my own heart that it took its rise in the inveterate dislike that I have always felt for Mr. Sweetsir, and I distrusted it accordingly. But I went back to Sharon, for all that, and put the case into his hands. His investigations informed me that Mr. Sweetsir owed ‘debts of honour’ (as gentlemen call them), incurred through lost bets, to a large number of persons, and among them a bet of five hundred pounds lost to Mr. Hardyman. Further inquiries showed that Mr. Hardyman had taken the lead in declaring that he would post Mr. Sweetsir as a defaulter, and have him turned out of his clubs, and turned out of the betting-ring. Ruin stared him in the face if he failed to pay his debt to Mr. Hardyman on the last day left to him — the day after the note was lost. On that very morning, Lady Lydiard, speaking to me of her nephew’s visit to her, said, ‘If I had given him an opportunity of speaking, Felix would have borrowed money of me; I saw it in his face.’ One moment more, Isabel. I am not only certain that Mr. Sweetsir took the five-hundred pound note out of the open letter, I am firmly persuaded that he is the man who told Lord Rotherfield of the circumstances under which you left Lady Lydiard’s house. Your marriage to Mr. Hardyman might have put you in a position to detect the theft. You, not I, might, in that case, have discovered from your husband that the stolen note was the note with which Mr. Sweetsir paid his debt. He came here, you may depend on it, to make sure that he had succeeded in destroying your prospects. A more depraved villain at heart than that man never swung from a gallows!”

He checked himself at those words. The shock of the disclosure, the passion and vehemence with which he spoke, overwhelmed Isabel. She trembled like a frightened child.

While he was still trying to soothe and reassure her, a low whining made itself heard at her feet. They looked down, and saw Tommie. Finding himself noticed at last, he expressed his sense of relief by a bark. Something dropped out of his mouth. As Moody stooped to pick it up, the dog ran to Isabel and pushed his head against her feet, as his way was when he expected to have the handkerchief thrown over him, preparatory to one of those games at hide-and-seek which have been already mentioned. Isabel put out her hand to caress him, when she was stopped by a cry from Moody. It was
his
turn to tremble now. His voice faltered as he said the words, “The dog has found the pocketbook!”

He opened the book with shaking hands. A betting-book was bound up in it, with the customary calendar. He turned to the date of the day after the robbery.

There was the entry: “Felix Sweetsir. Paid £500. Note numbered, N 8, 70564; dated 15th May, 1875.”

Moody took from his waistcoat pocket his own memorandum of the number of the lost bank-note. “Read it Isabel,” he said. “I won’t trust my memory.”

She read it. The number and date of the note entered in the pocketbook exactly corresponded with the number and date of the note that Lady Lydiard had placed in her letter.

Moody handed the pocketbook to Isabel. “There is the proof of your innocence,” he said, “thanks to the dog! Will you write and tell Mr. Hardyman what has happened?” he asked, with his head down and his eyes on the ground.

She answered him, with the bright colour suddenly flowing over her face.

“
You
shall write to him,” she said, “when the time comes.”

“What time?” he asked.

She threw her arms round his neck, and hid her face on his bosom.

“The time,” she whispered, “when I am your wife.”

A low growl from Tommie reminded them that he too had some claim to be noticed.

Isabel dropped on her knees, and saluted her old playfellow with the heartiest kisses she had ever given him since the day when their acquaintance began. “You darling!” she said, as she put him down again, “what can I do to reward you?”

Tommie rolled over on his back — more slowly than usual, in consequence of his luncheon in the tent. He elevated his four paws in the air and looked lazily at Isabel out of his bright brown eyes. If ever a dog’s look spoke yet, Tommie’s look said, “I have eaten too much; rub my stomach.”

POSTSCRIPT.

Persons of a speculative turn of mind are informed that the following document is for sale, and are requested to mention what sum they will give for it.

“IOU, Lady Lydiard, five hundred pounds (£500), Felix Sweetsir.”

Her Ladyship became possessed of this pecuniary remittance under circumstances which surround it with a halo of romantic interest. It was the last communication she was destined to receive from her accomplished nephew. There was a Note attached to it, which cannot fail to enhance its value in the estimation of all right-minded persons who assist the circulation of paper money.

The lines that follow are strictly confidential:

“Note. — Our excellent Moody informs me, my dear aunt, that you have decided (against his advice) on ‘refusing to prosecute.’ I have not the slightest idea of what he means; but I am very much obliged to him, nevertheless, for reminding me of a circumstance which is of some interest to yourself personally.

“I am on the point of retiring to the Continent in search of health. One generally forgets something important when one starts on a journey. Before Moody called, I had entirely forgotten to mention that I had the pleasure of borrowing five hundred pounds of you some little time since.

“On the occasion to which I refer, your language and manner suggested that you would not lend me the money if I asked for it. Obviously, the only course left was to take it without asking. I took it while Moody was gone to get some curaçoa; and I returned to the picture-gallery in time to receive that delicious liqueur from the footman’s hands.

“You will naturally ask why I found it necessary to supply myself (if I may borrow an expression from the language of State finance) with this ‘forced loan.’ I was actuated by motives which I think do me honour. My position at the time was critical in the extreme. My credit with the money-lenders was at an end; my friends had all turned their backs on me. I must either take the money or disgrace my family. If there is a man living who is sincerely attached to his family, I am that man. I took the money.

“Conceive your position as my aunt (I say nothing of myself), if I had adopted the other alternative. Turned out of the Jockey Club, turned out of Tattersalls’, turned out of the betting-ring; in short, posted publicly as a defaulter before the noblest institution in England, the Turf — and all for want of five hundred pounds to stop the mouth of the greatest brute I know of, Alfred Hardyman! Let me not harrow your feelings (and mine) by dwelling on it. Dear and admirable woman! To you belongs the honour of saving the credit of the family; I can claim nothing but the inferior merit of having offered you the opportunity.

“My IOU, it is needless to say, accompanies these lines. Can I do anything for you abroad? — F. S.”

To this it is only necessary to add (first) that Moody was perfectly right in believing F. S. to be the person who informed Hardyman’s father of Isabel’s position when she left Lady Lydiard’s house; and (secondly) that Felix did really forward Mr. Troy’s narrative of the theft to the French police, altering nothing in it but the number of the lost bank-note.

What is there left to write about? Nothing is left — but to say good-by (very sorrowfully on the writer’s part) to the Persons of the Story.

Good-by to Miss Pink — who will regret to her dying day that Isabel’s answer to Hardyman was No.