Anyone who reads this forged letter with a full knowledge of all the circumstances will see that it was at best, from the literary and dramatic point of view, a bungling composition. But style was not called for so long as the statements were coherent. For what did the forger's wife know of what her father's style would be under these or any abnormal circumstances? Had she ever had a letter at all from him before? Even that is doubtful. The shock, moreover, was enough to unbalance the most critical judgment.
Two things are very noticeable in the letter. One that it fights shy of strong expressions of feeling, as though its fabricator had felt that danger lay that way; the other that he manifestly enjoyed his Scripture references, familiar to him by his long experience of gaol-chaplains, and warranted by his knowledge of his father-in-law. We--who write this--have referred to the passages indicated, and found the connection of ideas to be about an average sample, as coherency goes when quotation from Scripture is afoot. No doubt Maisie's husband found their selection entertaining.
CHAPTER XII
THE LEGAL ACUMEN OF THOTHMES. OF COURSE IT WAS ISAAC RUNCIMAN'S SIGNATURE. THE ANTIPODEAN INK. HOW LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS WAS MADE OF WOOD. HOW GWEN AND HER FATHER CAME OFF THEIR P'S AND Q'S. THE RIDDLE AS GOOD AS SOLVED. HOW GWEN GOT A LIFT TO CAVENDISH SQUARE AND HER MOTHER WENT ON TO HELP TO ABOLISH SOUTH CAROLINA. ANOTHER LIFT, IN A PILL-BOX. SAPPS COURT'S VIEWS OF THE WAR. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S HALF-SISTER'S BROTHER-IN-LAW. LIVE EELS. BALL'S POND.
MRS. RILEY'S ELEVEN RELATIVES. MRS. TAPPING'S NAVAL CONNECTIONS.
OLD BILLY. RUM SHRUB. LOUIS NAPOLEON AND KING SOLOMON. A PARTY IN THE BAR. WHICH WAY DID HE GO?
Said his lordship next morning to Mr. Norbury, bringing him preliminary tea at eight o'clock:--"I want to catch Mr. Hawtrey before he goes to Lincoln's Inn. Send round to say.... No--give me one of my cards and a pencil.... There!--send that round at once, because he goes early."
The result was that Mr. Hawtrey was announced while the Earl was having real breakfast with Gwen and her mother at ten, and was shown into the library. Also that the real breakfast was hurried and frustrated, that Mr. Hawtrey should not be kept waiting. For the Earl counter-ordered his last cup of tea, and went away with his fast half broken. So her ladyship sent the cup after him to the library. He sent a message back to Gwen. Would her ladyship be sure not to go out without seeing him?
She would.
Mr. Hawtrey was known to Gwen as the Earl's solicitor, a man of perfectly incredible weight and importance. He was deep in the Lord Chancellor's confidence, and had boxes in tiers in his office, to read the names on which was a Whig and Tory education. If all the acres of land that had made Mr. Hawtrey's acquaintance, somehow or other, had been totalled on condition that it was fair to count twice over, the total total would have been as large as Asia, at a rough guess. His clerks--or his firm's, Humphrey and Hawtrey's--had witnessed leases, wills, transfers, and powers of attorney, numerous enough to fill the Rolls Office, but so far as was known none of them had ever been called on to attest his own signature. Personally, Mr. Hawtrey had always seemed to Gwen very like an Egyptian God or King, and she would speak of him as Thothmes and Rameses freely. Her father admitted the likeness, but protested against her levity, as this gentleman was his most trusted adviser, inherited with his title and estates. The Earldom of Ancester had always been in the habit of consulting Mr. Hawtrey about all sorts of things, not necessarily legal.
So when Gwen was sent for to her father's sanctum, and went, she was not surprised to hear that he had given Mr. Hawtrey all the particulars she had told him of Mrs. Prichard's history, and a clear outline of the incidents up to that date, ending with the seeming insanity of the old lady. "But," said the Earl, who appeared very serious, "I have given no names. I have sent for you now, Gwen, to get your consent to my making no reserves with Mr. Hawtrey, in whose advice I have great confidence."
Mr. Hawtrey acknowledged this testimony, and Gwen acknowledged that gentleman's desert; each by a bow, but Gwen's was the more flexible performance.
She just hung back perceptibly over giving the _carte blanche_ asked for. "I suppose no harm can come of it--to anybody?" said she. None whatever, apparently; so she assented.
"Very good," said the Earl. "And now, my dear, I want you, before I show it to Mr. Hawtrey, to read this letter, which I have opened on my own responsibility--nobody to blame but me! I found it among your old lady's letters you gave me to take care of."
"Oh dear!" said Gwen.
"I shall not show it to Mr. Hawtrey, unless you like. Take it and read it. No hurry." Gwen was conscious that the solicitor sat as still as his prototype Thothmes at the British Museum, and with as immovable a countenance.
She took the letter, glancing at the cover. "Who is Mrs. Thornton Daverill?" said she, quite in the dark.
"Go on and read," said the Earl.
Gwen read half to herself:--"'My dear daughter Maisie,'" and then said aloud:--"But that is Mrs. Prichard's name!"
"Read through to the end," said the Earl. And Gwen, with a painful feeling of bewilderment, obeyed orders, puzzling over phrases and sentences to find the thing she was to read for, and staggered a moment by the name "Cropredy," which she thought she must have misread. There was no clue in the letter itself, as she did not know who "Phoebe" and "Ruth" were.
Her father's observation of her face quickened as she visibly neared the end. She was quite taken aback by the signature, the moment it caught her eye. "Isaac Runciman!" she exclaimed. "Why--that's--that's ..."
"That's the name of Mrs. Marrable's father that old Mrs. Prichard lays claim to for hers," said the Earl quietly. "And this letter is written to his daughter, Mrs. Thornton Daverill, whose name is Maisie.... And old Mrs. Prichard's name is Maisie.... And this letter is in the keeping of old Mrs. Prichard." He left gaps, for his hearer to understand.
"Good God!" exclaimed Gwen. "Then old Mrs. Prichard is _not_ mad." She could only see that much for the moment--no details. "Oh, be quiet a moment and let me think." She dropped the letter, and sat with her face in her hands, as though to shut thought in and work the puzzle out. Her father remained silent, watching her.
Presently he said, quietly still, as though to help her:--"Norbury told me last night what we did not know, that old Mrs. Marrable's name is Phoebe, and that Widow Thrale's is Ruth...."
"That old Mrs. Marrable is Phoebe and her daughter is Ruth." Gwen repeated his words, as though learning a lesson, still with her fingers crushing her eyes.
"And that Ruth is not really Phoebe's daughter but her niece. And, according to Norbury, she is the daughter of a twin sister, whose husband was transported for forgery, and who followed him to Van Diemen's Land, and died there." He raised his voice slightly to say this.
A more amazed face than Gwen's when she withdrew her fingers to fix her startled eyes upon her father, would have been almost as hard to find as a more beautiful one.
"But that _is_ Mrs. Prichard, papa dear," she gasped. "Don't you _know_?
The story I told you!"
"Exactly!" said the Earl.
"But the letter--the letter! Phoebe and Ruth in the letter _cannot_ be drowned, if they are Granny Marrable and Widow Thrale." A rapid phantasmagoria of possibilities and impossibilities shot through her mind. How could order come of such a chaos?
"Excuse me," said Thothmes, speaking for the first time. "Do I understand--I assume I am admitted to confidence--do I understand that the letter states that these two women were drowned?"
"Crossing from Antwerp. Yes!"
"Then the letter is a falsehood, probably written with a bad motive."
"But by their father--their father! Impossible!"
"How does your ladyship know it was written by their father?"
"It is signed by their father--at Darenth Mill in Essex. Both say Isaac Runciman was their father."
"It is signed with Isaac Runciman's name--so I understand. Is it certain that it was signed by Isaac Runciman? May I now see the letter? _And_ the envelope, please!--oh, the direction is on the back, of course." He held the letter in front of him, but apparently took very little notice of it. "As if," thought Gwen to herself, "he was thinking about his Dynasty."
"What do you make of it, Hawtrey?" said the Earl, but, getting no answer, waited. Silence ensued.
"_Yes_," said the lawyer, breaking it suddenly. He seemed to have seen his way. "Now may I ask whether we have any means of knowing what the forgery was for which this man was transported?"
"Oh yes!" said Gwen. "Old Mrs. Prichard told me what he was accused of, at least. Forging an acceptance--if that's right? I think that was it."
"But whose signature? Did she say?"
"Oh yes--I made her tell me, her father's." Then Gwen fitted the name, just heard, into its place in old Mrs. Prichard's tale, and was illuminated. "I see what you think, Mr. Hawtrey," said she, interrupting herself. The lawyer was examining the direction on the letter-sheet.
"I think I did right to pry into the letter, Gwennie," said her father; seeking, nevertheless, a salve for conscience.
"Of course you did, you darling old thing!... What, Mr. Hawtrey? You were going to say?..."
"I was going to say had you seen an odd thing in the direction. Have you noticed that the word _Hobart_ has kept black, and all the rest has faded to the colour of the writing inside?" So it had, without a doubt, inexplicably. Mr. Hawtrey's impression was that the word was written in a different hand, perhaps filled in by someone who had been able to supply the name correctly, having been entrusted the letter to forward.
"But," said he, "the person who wrote Hobart must have been in England, and the forger of the letter was certainly in Van Diemen's Land."
"Why 'must have been in England'?"
"Bless the girl!" said the girl's father. "Why--_I_ can see that! Of course, an Australian convict, who could do such a fine piece of forgery, would never ask another person to spell the name of an Australian town. Do you suppose he sent it to England to get an accomplice to spell 'Hobart' right for him? No--no, Hawtrey, your theory won't hold water."
"That is the case," said Thothmes, more immovably than ever. "I see I was mistaken. That point must wait. Or ... stop one minute!... may we examine the other letters?"