Fenton's Quest Part 12

"Yes," Gilbert answered huskily, looking at her in an absent unseeing way.

He had seen her often during his visits to the cottage, busy at work in her garden, which was much smaller than the Captain's, but he had never spoken to her before to-day.

She was a maiden lady, who eked out her slender income by letting a part of her miniature abode whenever an opportunity for so doing occurred. The care of this cottage occupied all her days, and formed the delight and glory of her life. It was a little larger than a good-sized doll's house, and furnished with spindle-legged chairs and tables that had been polished to the last extremity of brightness.

"Perhaps you would be so good as to walk into my sitting-room for a few moments, sir," said this lady, opening her garden-gate. "I shall be most happy to afford you any information about your friends."

"You are very good," said Gilbert, following her into the prim little parlour.

He had recovered his self-possession in some degree by this time, telling himself that this desertion of Hazel Cottage involved no more than a change of residence.

"My name is Dodd," said the lady, motioning Mr. Fenton to a chair, "Miss Let.i.tia Dodd. I had the pleasure of seeing you very often during your visits next door. I was not on visiting terms with Captain Sedgewick and Miss Nowell, although we bowed to each other out of doors. I am only a tradesman's daughter--indeed my brother is now carrying on business as a butcher in Fairleigh--and of course I am quite aware of the difference in our positions. I am the last person to intrude myself upon my superiors."

"If you will be so kind as to tell me where they have gone?" Gilbert asked, eager to stop this formal statement of Miss Dodd's social standing.

"Where _they_ have gone!" she repeated. "Dear, dear! Then you do not know----"

"I do not know what?"

"Of Captain Sedgewick's death."

"Good G.o.d! My dear old friend! When did he die?"

"At the beginning of the year. It was very sudden--a fit of apoplexy. He was seized in the night, poor dear gentleman, and it was only discovered when the servant went to call him in the morning. He only lived two days after the seizure; and never spoke again."

"And Miss Nowell--what made her leave the cottage? She is still at Lidford, I suppose?"

"O dear no, Mr. Fenton. She went away altogether about a month after the Captain's death."

"Where did she go?"

"I cannot tell you that, I did not even know that she intended leaving Hazel Cottage until the day after she left. When I saw the shutters closed and the board up, you might have knocked me down with a feather.

Miss Nowell was so much liked in Lidford, and she had more than one invitation from friends to stay with them for the sake of a change after her uncle's death; but she would not visit anywhere. She stayed quite alone in the cottage, with only the old servant."

"But there must surely be some one in the place who knows where she has gone!" exclaimed Gilbert.

"I think not. The landlord of Hazel Cottage does not know. He is my landlord also, and I was asking him about Miss Nowell when I paid my rent the other day. He said he supposed she had gone away to be married. That has been the general impression, in fact, at Lidford. People made sure that Miss Nowell had left to be married to you."

"I have only just returned from Australia. I have come back to fulfil my engagement to Miss Nowell. Can you suggest no one from whom I am likely to obtain information?"

"There is the family at the Rectory; they knew her very well, and were extremely kind to her after her uncle's death. It might be worth your while to call upon Mr. Marchant."

"Yes, I will call," Gilbert answered; "thanks for the suggestion."

He wished Miss Dodd good-afternoon, and left her standing at the gate of her little garden, watching him with profound interest as he walked away towards the village. There was a pleasing mystery in the affair, to the mind of Miss Dodd.

Gilbert Fenton went at once to the Rectory, although it was now past seven o'clock. He had met Mr. and Mrs. Marchant several times, and had visited them with the Listers.

The Rector was at home, sitting over his solitary gla.s.s of port by the open window of his snug dining-room, looking lazily out at a group of sons and daughters playing croquet on the lawn. He was surprised to see Mr. Fenton, but welcomed him with much cordiality.

"I have come to you full of care, Mr. Marchant," Gilbert began; "and the pressing nature of my business must excuse the lateness of my visit."

"There is no occasion for any excuse. I am very glad to see you at this time. Pray help yourself to some wine, there are clean gla.s.ses near you; and take some of those strawberries, on which my wife prides herself amazingly. People who live in the country all their days are obliged to give their minds to horticulture. And now, what is this care of yours, Mr. Fenton? Nothing very serious, I hope."

"It is very serious to me at present. I think you know that I am engaged to Miss Nowell."

"Perfectly. I had imagined until this moment that you and she were married. When she left Lidford, I concluded that she had gone to stay with friends of yours, and that the marriage would, in all probability, take place at an early period, without any strict observance of etiquette as to her mourning for her uncle. It was natural that we should think this, knowing her solitary position."

"Then you do not know where she went on leaving this place?"

"Not in the faintest degree. Her departure was altogether unexpected by us. My wife and daughters called upon her two or three times after the Captain's death, and were even anxious that she should come here to stay for a short time; but she would not do that. She seemed grateful, and touched by their anxiety about her, but they could not bring her to talk of her future."

"And she told them nothing of her intention to leave Lidford?"

"Not a word."

This was all that Gilbert Fenton could learn. His interview with the Rector lasted some time longer; but it told him nothing. Whom next could he question? He knew all Marian's friends, and he spent the next day in calling upon them, but with the same result; no one could tell him her reason for leaving Hazel Cottage, or where she had gone.

There remained only one person whom he could question, and that was the old servant who had lived with Captain Sedgewick nearly all the time of his residence at Lidford, and whom Gilbert had conciliated by numerous gifts during his visits to Hazel Cottage. She was a good-humoured honest creature, of about fifty, and had been devoted to the Captain and Marian.

After a good deal of trouble, Gilbert ascertained that this woman had not accompanied her young mistress when she left Lidford, but had taken service in a grocer's family at Fairleigh. Having discovered this, Mr.

Fenton set off immediately for the little market-town, on foot this time, and with his mind full of the days when he and Marian had walked this way together.

He found the shop to which he had been directed--a roomy old-fas.h.i.+oned emporium in the High-street, sunk three or four feet below the level of the pavement, and approached by a couple of steps; a shop with a low ceiling, that was made lower by bunches of candles, hams, bacon, and other merchandise hanging from the ma.s.sive beams that spanned it. Mr.

Fenton, having duly stated his business, was shown into the grocer's best parlour--a resplendent apartment, where there were more ornaments in the way of sh.e.l.l-and-feather flowers under gla.s.s shades, and Bohemian gla.s.s scent-bottles, than were consistent with luxurious occupation, and where every chair and sofa was made a perfect veiled prophet by enshrouding antimaca.s.sors. Here Sarah Down, the late Captain's servant, came to Mr.

Fenton, wiping her hands and arms upon a spotless canvas ap.r.o.n, and generally apologetic as to her appearance. To this woman Gilbert repeated the question he had asked of others, with the same disheartening result.

"The poor dear young lady felt the Captain's loss dreadfully; as well she might, when they had been so fond of each other," Sarah Down said, in answer to one of Gilbert's inquiries. "I never knew any one grieve so deeply. She wouldn't go anywhere, and she couldn't bear to see any one who came to see her. She used to shut herself up in the Captain's room day after day, kneeling by his bedside, and crying as if her heart would break. I have looked through the keyhole sometimes, and seen her there on her knees, with her face buried in the bedclothes. She didn't care to talk about him even to me, and I had hard work to persuade her to eat or drink enough to keep life in her at this time. When the days were fine, I used to try and get her to walk out a little, for she looked as white as a ghost for want of air; and after a good deal of persuasion, she did go out sometimes of an afternoon, but she wouldn't ask any one to walk with her, though there were plenty she might have asked--the young ladies from the Rectory and others. She preferred being alone, she told me, and I was glad that she should get the air and the change anyhow. She brightened a little after this, but very little. It was all of a sudden one day that she told me she was going away. I wanted to go with her, but she said that couldn't be. I asked her where she was going, and she told me, after hesitating a little, that she was going to friends in London. I knew she had been very fond of two young ladies that she went to school with at Lidford, whose father lived in London; and I thought it was to their house she was going. I asked her if it was, and she said yes. She made arrangements with the landlord about selling the furniture. He is an auctioneer himself, and there was no difficulty about that. The money was to be sent to her at a post-office in London. I wondered at that, but she said it was better so. She paid every sixpence that was owing, and gave me a handsome present over and above my wages; though I didn't want to take anything from her, poor dear young lady, knowing that there was very little left after the Captain's death, except the furniture, which wasn't likely to bring much. And so she went away about two days after she first mentioned that she was going to leave Lidford. It was all very sudden, and I don't think she bade good-bye to any one in the place. She seemed quite broken down with grief in those two last days. I shall never forget her poor pale face when she got into the fly."

"How did she go? From the station here?"

"I don't know anything about that, except that the fly came to the cottage for her and her luggage. I wanted to go to the station with her, to see her off, but she wouldn't let me."

"Did she mention me during the time that followed Captain Sedgewick's death?"

"Only when I spoke about you, sir. I used to try to comfort her, telling her she had you still left to care for her, and to make up for him she'd lost. But she used to look at me in a strange pitiful sort of way, and shake her head. 'I am very miserable, Sarah,' she would say to me; 'I am quite alone in the world now my dear uncle is gone, and I don't know what to do.' I told her she ought to look forward to the time when she would be married, and would have a happy home of her own; but I could never get her to talk of that."

"Can you tell me the name and address of her friends in London--the young ladies with whom she went to school?"

"The name is Bruce, sir; and they live, or they used to live at that time, in St. John's-wood. I have heard Miss Nowell say that, but I don't know the name of the street or number of the house."

"I daresay I shall be able to find them. It is a strange business, Sarah.

It is most unaccountable that my dearest girl should have left Lidford without writing me word of her removal and her intentions with regard to the future--that she should have sent me no announcement of her uncle's death, although she must have known how well I loved him, I am going to ask you a question that is very painful to me, but which must be asked sooner or later. Do you know of any one else whom she may have liked better than me--any one whose influence may have governed her at the time she left Lidford?"

"No, indeed, sir," replied the woman, promptly. "Who else was there? Miss Nowell knew so few gentlemen, and saw no one except the Rector's family and two or three ladies after the uncle's death."

"Not at the cottage, perhaps. But she may have seen some one out-of-doors. You say she always went out alone at that time, and preferred to do so."