“This doesn’t end here, Mr. Linzie!”
Launce smiled satirically. “For once I agree with you,” he answered. “It doesn’t end here, as you say.”
Lady Winwood stopped, and looked back at them from the drawing-room door. They were keeping her waiting—they had no choice but to follow the mistress of the house.
Arrived in the next room, both Turlington and Launce resumed their places among the guests with the same object in view. As a necessary result of the scene in the boudoir, each had his own special remonstrance to address to Sir Joseph. Even here, Launce was beforehand with Turlington. He was the first to get possession of Sir Joseph’s private ear. His complaint took the form of a protest against Turlington’s jealousy, and an appeal for a reconsideration of the sentence which excluded him from Muswell Hill. Watching them from a distance, Turlington’s suspicious eye detected the appearance of something unduly confidential in the colloquy between the two. Under cover of the company, he stole behind them and listened.
The great Bootmann had arrived at that part of the Nightmare Sonata in which musical sound, produced principally with the left hand, is made to describe, beyond all possibility of mistake, the rising of the moon in a country churchyard and a dance of Vampires round a maiden’s grave. Sir Joseph, having no chance against the Vampires in a whisper, was obliged to raise his voice to make himself audible in answering and comforting Launce. “I sincerely sympathize with you,” Turlington heard him say; “and Natalie feels about it as I do. But Richard is an obstacle in our way. We must look to the consequences, my dear boy, supposing Richard found us out.” He nodded kindly to his nephew; and, declining to pursue the subject, moved away to another part of the room.
Turlington’s jealous distrust, wrought to the highest pitch of irritability for weeks past, instantly associated the words he had just heard with the words spoken by Launce in the boudoir, which had reminded him that he was not married to Natalie yet. Was there treachery at work under the surface? and was the object to persuade weak Sir Joseph to reconsider his daughter’s contemplated marriage in a sense favorable to Launce? Turlington’s blind suspicion overleaped at a bound all the manifest improbabilities which forbade such a conclusion as this. After an instant’s consideration with himself, he decided on keeping his own counsel, and on putting Sir Joseph’s good faith then and there to a test which he could rely on as certain to take Natalie’s father by surprise.
“Graybrooke!”
Sir Joseph started at the sight of his future son-in-law’s face.
“My dear Richard, you are looking very strangely! Is the heat of the room too much for you?”
“Never mind the heat! I have seen enough tonight to justify me in insisting that your daughter and Launcelot Linzie shall meet no more between this and the day of my marriage.” Sir Joseph attempted to speak. Turlington declined to give him the opportunity. “Yes! yes! your opinion of Linzie isn’t mine, I know. I saw you as thick as thieves together just now.” Sir Joseph once more attempted to make himself heard. Wearied by Turlington’s perpetual complaints of his daughter and his nephew, he was sufficiently irritated by this time to have reported what Launce had actually said to him if he had been allowed the chance. But Turlington persisted in going on. “I cannot prevent Linzie from being received in this house, and at your sister’s,” he said; “but I can keep him out of my house in the country, and to the country let us go. I propose a change in the arrangements. Have you any engagement for the Christmas holidays?”
He paused, and fixed his eyes attentively on Sir Joseph. Sir Joseph, looking a little surprised, replied briefly that he had no engagement.
“In that case, “resumed Turlington, “I invite you all to Somersetshire, and I propose that the marriage shall take place from my house, and not from yours. Do you refuse?”
“It is contrary to the usual course of proceeding in such cases, Richard,” Sir Joseph began.
“Do you refuse?” reiterated Turlington. “I tell you plainly, I shall place a construction of my own upon your motive if you do.”
“No, Richard,” said Sir Joseph, quietly, “I accept.”
Turlington drew back a step in silence. Sir Joseph had turned the tables on him, and had taken him by surprise.
“It will upset several plans, and be strongly objected to by the ladies,” proceeded the old gentleman. “But if nothing less will satisfy you, I say, Yes! I shall have occasion, when we meet tomorrow at Muswell Hill, to appeal to your indulgence under circumstances which may greatly astonish you. The least I can do, in the meantime, is to set an example of friendly sympathy and forbearance on my side. No more now, Richard. Hush! the music!”
It was impossible to make him explain himself further that night. Turlington was left to interpret Sir Joseph’s mysterious communication with such doubtful aid to success as his own unassisted ingenuity might afford.
The meeting of the next day at Muswell Hill had for its object— as Turlington had already been informed—the drawing of Natalie’s marriage-settlement. Was the question of money at the bottom of Sir Joseph’s contemplated appeal to his indulgence? He thought of his commercial position. The depression in the Levant trade still continued. Never had his business at any previous time required such constant attention, and repaid that attention with so little profit. The Bills of Lading had been already used by the firm, in the ordinary course of trade, to obtain possession of the goods. The duplicates in the hands of Bulpit Brothers were literally waste paper. Repayment of the loan of forty thousand pounds (with interest) was due in less than a month’s time. There was his commercial position! Was it possible that money-loving Sir Joseph had any modification to propose in the matter of his daughter’s dowry? The bare dread that it might be so struck him cold. He quitted the house—and forgot to wish Natalie goodnight.
Meanwhile, Launce had left the evening party before him—and Launce also found matter for serious reflection presented to his mind before he slept that night. In other words, he found, on reaching his lodgings, a letter from his brother marked “private.” Had the inquiry into the secrets of Turlington’s early life—now prolonged over some weeks—led to positive results at last? Launce eagerly opened the letter. It contained a Report and a Summary. He passed at once to the Summary, and read these words:
“If you only want moral evidence to satisfy your own mind, your end is gained. There is, morally, no doubt that Turlington and the sea-captain who cast the foreign sailor overboard to drown are on e and the same man. Legally, the matter is beset by difficulties, Turlington having destroyed all provable connection between his present self and his past life. There is only one chance for us. A sailor on board the ship (who was in his master’s secrets) is supposed to be still living (under his master’s protection). All the black deeds of Turlington’s early life are known to this man. He can prove the facts, if we can find him, and make it worth his while to speak. Under what alias he is hidden we do not know. His own name is Thomas Wildfang. If we are to make the attempt to find him, not a moment is to be lost. The expenses may be serious. Let me know whether we are to go on, or whether enough has been done to attain the end you have in view.”