The Castle Inn: Chapter 34

Chapter 34

BAD NEWS

The attorney entered the Mastersons' room a little before eleven next
morning; Julia was there, and Mrs. Masterson. The latter on seeing him
held up her hands in dismay. 'Lord's wakes, Mr. Fishwick!' the good
woman cried, 'why, you are the ghost of yourself! Adventuring does not
suit you, that's certain. But I don't wonder. I am sure I have not slept
a wink these three nights that I have not dreamt of Bessy Canning and
that horrid old Squires; which, she did it without a doubt. Don't go to
say you've bad news this morning.'

Certain it was that Mr. Fishwick looked woefully depressed. The night's
sleep, which had restored the roses to Julia's cheeks and the light to
her eyes, had done nothing for him; or perhaps he had not slept. His
eyes avoided the girl's look of inquiry. 'I've no news this morning,' he
said awkwardly. 'And yet I have news.'

'Bad?' the girl said, nodding her comprehension; and her colour slowly
faded.

'Bad,' he said gravely, looking down at the table.

Julia took her fostermother's hand in hers, and patted it; they were
sitting side by side. The elder woman, whose face was still furrowed by
the tears she had shed in her bereavement, began to tremble. 'Tell us,'
the girl said bravely. 'What is it?'

'God help me,' Mr. Fishwick answered, his face quivering. 'I don't know
how I shall tell you. I don't indeed. But I must.' Then, in a voice
harsh with pain, 'Child, I have made a mistake,' he cried. 'I am wrong,
I was wrong, I have been wrong from the beginning. God help me! And God
help us all!'

The elder woman broke into frightened weeping. The younger grew pale and
paler: grew presently white to the lips. Still her eyes met his, and did
not flinch. 'Is it--about our case?' she whispered.

'Yes! Oh, my dear, will you ever forgive me?'

'About my birth?'

He nodded.

'I am not Julia Soane? Is that it?'

He nodded again.

'Not a Soane--at all?'

'No; God forgive me, no!'

She continued to hold the weeping woman's hand in hers, and to look at
him; but for a long minute she seemed not even to breathe. Then in a
voice that, notwithstanding the effort she made, sounded harsh in his
ears, 'Tell me all,' she muttered. 'I suppose--you have found
something!'

'I have,' he said. He looked old, and worn, and shabby; and was at once
the surest and the saddest corroboration of his own tidings. 'Two days
ago I found, by accident, in a church at Bristol, the death certificate
of the--of the child.'

'Julia Soane?'

'Yes.'

'But then--who am I?' she asked, her eyes growing wild: the world was
turning, turning with her.

'Her husband,' he answered, nodding towards Mrs. Masterson, 'adopted a
child in place of the dead one, and said nothing. Whether he intended to
pass it off for the child entrusted to him, I don't know. He never made
any attempt to do so. Perhaps,' the lawyer continued drearily, 'he had
it in his mind, and when the time came his heart failed him.'

'And I am that child?'

Mr. Fishwick looked away guiltily, passing his tongue over his lips. He
was the picture of shame and remorse.

'Yes,' he said. 'Your father and mother were French. He was a teacher of
French at Bristol, his wife French from Canterbury. No relations
are known.'

'My name?' she asked, smiling piteously.

'Par�,' he said, spelling it. And he added, 'They call it Parry.'

She looked round the room in a kind of terror, not unmixed with wonder.
To that room they had retired to review their plans on their first
arrival at the Castle Inn--when all smiled on them. Thither they had
fled for refuge after the brush with Lady Dunborough and the rencontre
with Sir George. To that room she had betaken herself in the first flush
and triumph of Sir George's suit; and there, surrounded by the same
objects on which she now gazed, she had sat, rapt in rosy visions,
through the livelong day preceding her abduction. Then she had been a
gentlewoman, an heiress, the bride in prospect of a gallant
gentleman. Now?

What wonder that, as she looked round in dumb misery, recognising these
things, her eyes grew wild again; or that the shrinking lawyer expected
an outburst. It came, but from another quarter. The old woman rose and
trembling pointed a palsied finger at him. 'Yo' eat your words!' she
said. 'Yo' eat your words and seem to like them. But didn't yo' tell me
no farther back than this day five weeks that the law was clear? Didn't
yo' tell me it was certain? Yo' tell me that!'

'I did! God forgive me,' Mr. Fishwick murmured from the depths of his
abasement.

'Didn't yo' tell me fifty times, and fifty times to that, that the case
was clear?' the old woman continued relentlessly. 'That there were
thousands and thousands to be had for the asking? And her right besides,
that no one could cheat her of, no more than me of the things my
man left me?'

'I did, God forgive me!' the lawyer said.

'But yo' did cheat me!' she continued with quavering insistence, her
withered face faintly pink. 'Where is the home yo' ha' broken up? Where
are the things my man left me? Where's the bit that should ha' kept me
from the parish? Where's the fifty-two pounds yo' sold all for and ha'
spent on us, living where's no place for us, at our betters' table? Yo'
ha' broken my heart! Yo' ha' laid up sorrow and suffering for the girl
that is dearer to me than my heart. Yo' ha' done all that, and yo' can
come to me smoothly, and tell me yo' ha' made a mistake. Yo' are a
rogue, and, what maybe is worse, I mistrust me yo' are a fool!'

'Mother! mother!' the girl cried.

'He is a fool!' the old woman repeated, eyeing him with a dreadful
sternness. 'Or he would ha' kept his mistake to himself. Who knows of
it? Or why should he be telling them? 'Tis for them to find out, not for
him! Yo' call yourself a lawyer? Yo' are a fool!' And she sat down in a
palsy of senile passion. 'Yo' are a fool! And yo' ha' ruined us!'

Mr. Fishwick groaned, but made no reply. He had not the spirit to defend
himself. But Julia, as if all through which she had gone since the day
of her reputed father's death had led her to this point, only that she
might show the stuff of which she was wrought, rose to the emergency.

'Mother,' she said firmly, her hand resting on the older woman's
shoulder, 'you are wrong--you are quite wrong. He would have ruined us
indeed, he would have ruined us hopelessly and for ever, if he had kept
silence! He has never been so good a friend to us as he has shown
himself to-day, and I thank him for his courage. And I honour him!' She
held out her hand to Mr. Fishwick, who having pressed it, his face
working ominously, retired to the window.

'But, my deary, what will yo' do?' Mrs. Masterson cried peevishly. 'He
ha' ruined us!'

'What I should have done if we had never made this mistake,' Julia
answered bravely; though her lips trembled and her face was white, and
in her heart she knew that hers was but a mockery of courage, that must
fail her the moment she was alone. 'We are but fifty pounds worse
than we were.'

'Fifty pounds!' the old woman cried aghast. 'Yo' talk easily of fifty
pounds. And, Lord knows, it is soon spent here. But where will yo'
get another?'

'Well, well,' the girl answered patiently, 'that is true. Yet we must
make the best of it. Let us make the best of it,' she continued,
appealing to them bravely, yet with tears in her voice. 'We are all
losers together. Let us bear it together. I have lost most,' she
continued, her voice trembling. Fifty pounds? Oh, God! what was fifty
pounds to what she had lost. 'But perhaps I deserve it. I was too ready
to leave you, mother. I was too ready to--to take up with new things
and--and richer things, and forget those who had been kin to me and kind
to me all my life. Perhaps this is my punishment. You have lost your
all, but that we will get again. And our friend here--he, too,
has lost.'

Mr. Fishwick, standing, dogged and downcast, by the window, did not say
what he had lost, but his thoughts went to his old mother at Wallingford
and the empty stocking, and the weekly letters he had sent her for a
month past, letters full of his golden prospects, and the great case of
Soane _v_. Soane, and the grand things that were to come of it. What a
home-coming was now in store for him, his last guinea spent, his hopes
wrecked, and Wallingford to be faced!

There was a brief silence. Mrs. Masterson sobbed querulously, or now and
again uttered a wailing complaint: the other two stood sank in bitter
retrospect. Presently, 'What must we do?' Julia asked in a faint voice.'
I mean, what step must we take? Will you let them know?'

'I will see them,' Mr. Fishwick answered, wincing at the note of pain in
her voice. 'I--I was sent for this morning, for twelve o'clock. It is a
quarter to eleven now.'

She looked at him, startled, a spot of red in each cheek. 'We must go
away,' she said hurriedly, 'while we have money. Can we do better than
return to Oxford?'

The attorney felt sure that at the worst Sir George would do something
for her: that Mrs. Masterson need not lament for her fifty pounds. But
he had the delicacy to ignore this. 'I don't know,' he said mournfully.
'I dare not advise. You'd be sorry, Miss Julia--any one would be sorry
who knew what I have gone through. I've suffered--I can't tell you what
I have suffered--the last twenty-four hours! I shall never have any
opinion of myself again. Never!'

Julia sighed. 'We must cut a month out of our lives,' she murmured. But
it was something else she meant--a month out of her heart!

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