AGITATIONS
THERE came an odd letter from Mrs. Torquil, to her cousin Mrs. Jenner.
It dwelt in an affectionate strain upon old recollections, and deplored the unhappy occurrences in which the name of her dear cousin at Golden Friars was involved, and which had placed her own dear husband in an attitude of, she feared, very determined antagonism to hers.
Her husband could not in the least conceive what motive actuated Mr. Jenner in sanctioning the conduct of that flagitious servant, Hileria Pullen, and in disputing his (Captain Torquil’s) right to the custody of the child. That right does not rest upon the language of the will, but upon the earnest entreaty of poor Alice, conveyed, not in conversation only, but in repeated letters of a conclusive and unmistakeable kind. These, of course, would be put in evidence at the proper time. To her, nothing could have occurred more painful than that their husbands should stand mutually in such relations, especially as it had been her cherished hope and project to come down to Golden Friars, and to make it their headquarters; and so coon as the dear child had been with them a sufficient time to satisfy the solemn promises under which they were both bound to poor Alice, to endeavour to induce her (Mrs. Jenner) to undertake the care of the dear infant, which she felt would severely task her own strength.
All this, to her inexpressible grief, had been frustrated by the wickedness of one artful servant. Her husband was supported by a wealthy relation in the expensive-and, to Mr. Jenner she feared, the ruinous — litigation into which they were about to plunge. Her husband, Captain Torquil, was very angry; and all she implored of her dear cousin was charitably to dissociate her from the oppressive litigation which the captain was about to direct against the Reverend Hugh Jenner. She hoped to hear from her to say that she would view these miserable proceedings in the same charitable way.
This letter, somehow, produced an unpleasant effect even upon the vicar. It was so very plausible — even so alarming. He went down with it in his pocket to Mr. Tarlcot, who, with the suspicion of his craft, treated it simply as a piece of cajolery and brag — the concoction of a cunning terrorist.
“It never was she who wrote that letter, Mr. Jenner. It’s not a lady’s letter. That letter, sir, was written by Captain Torquil, and copied by his wife; and it satisfies me that he has no notion of going on; he has not means for such a thing. I happen to know of an execution against him for four hundred and eighteen pounds. He’s in no position to throw away money; and he knew all along he had not a leg to stand on. Suppose we go down and ask Mrs. Pullen what she thinks of it?”
“But — but — don’t you see, we really know nothing about this Mrs. Pullen,” said the vicar.
“Don’t be influenced by that letter, my dear sir. That woman is as straight as an arrow. I wish I had such a witness in Hazel and Wrangham. She’s as honest as the sun.”
“You understand such people better than I. I confess I thought her a most respectable person; and I’m quite sure it was this letter that made me hesitate. Let us go to the George and see her.”
Mrs. Pullen was a great deal better, and sitting up, and about to set out on her travels next day.
“Well, Mrs. Pullen, what do you think of that letter?” inquired the attorney, so soon as the vicar, having read it aloud, replaced it in his pocket. “Mrs. Torquil must like writing letters, else she’d hardly write so long a one.”
“Bless you, sir,” said Hileria Pullen disdainfully, “the poor lady has never wrote a line of that letter. Allow me to see, sir, please, whether it is even in her hand-writing. Well, yes, I know her writing,” she resumed after inspection. “I think it is. But that was wrote for her — every word. She daren’t write a line of any such thing of her own will — she dursn’t-oh, no, no!” And she shook her head slowly with a melancholy scorn. “Why, sir, she never writes a line if she can help it; and that she dursn’t write. Why, if you knewed, sir, she’d as ready put her hand in the fire as write a line of that, without she was, I may say, ordered to do it by master.”
So the attorney looked and nodded gravely to the vicar, who said, returning his nod-
“Yes, I dare say you are right.”
And the vicar walked away with a sense of relief — very delightful relief — in thinking that he was in no serious danger of being involved in the tremendous eddy of litigation.
Even Tom Shackles had suffered mentally under apprehensions of a similar sort, being a responsible man, and clerk of Golden Friars, and conscious of that box on the ear which he had dealt the desperate captain.
Kitty Bell, too, had given him what she called a bang on his black, curly pate, and cried serious tears at the chaff with which Dick Wykes threatened her with transportation for “walin’” a soger.
The relief was therefore general when, a fortnight having passed, nothing had occurred to corroborate the captain’s threats uttered when, in Kitty Bell’s phrase, “he banged out o’ t’dure, and we saa na meyar on him.”
But these holloing folk were not quite out of the wood yet, for, like a brief, stem clap of thunder, that made his ears ring, there came an attorney’s letter from a firm in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to the vicar, demanding to be put in communication with his “solicitor.”
Still Mr. Tarlcot was sceptical. He communicated, and so did the vicar by return.