Smith with a red face; he had been eating his dinner, and had since been toasting himself over the fire, for it was a cold night.
The fire in the inner office, a small square room, where Mrs. Smith had been shown, was nearly out, but the lawyer cracked it up, and put on some more coal. They sat down, the table covered with the lawyer’s papers between them, and Mrs. Smith told her tale from beginning to end, the little lawyer, in his eagerness, interrupting her with perpetual questions.
The story astonished him beyond expression. Again and again he asked whether there could be no mistake. Mr. Carlton, who stood so well in the good graces of his fellow townsmen, the destroyer of that poor Mrs. Crane! and Mrs. Crane was his wife, and the sister of the Ladies Chesney? Mr. Drone thought he had never heard so improbable a tale—off the stage.
Mrs. Smith, calm, patient, persistent, went over it again. She spoke of Lady Jane’s visit to her that afternoon, she handed him the letter her ladyship had left with her. Mr. Drone began to think there must be something in the story, and he set himself to recall as many particulars as he could of Mrs. Crane’s death; he had been fully cognisant of them at the time, as clerk to the magistrates.
“Does Lady Jane Chesney suspect Mr. Carlton?” he asked.
“Not she,” replied Mrs. Smith.
“She has no idea it was Mr. Carlton that was Mrs. Crane’s husband. She suspects it was a Mr. Crane who married her, but she does think Mr. Carlton knew of the marriage, for he was a friend of Mr. Crane’s. I’m not sure but she fears Mr. Carlton knew more about the death than he’d like to say; only, however, as Mr. Crane’s friend.”
“But I can’t see why Mr. Carlton should have destroyed this poor young lady?—allowing that he did do so, as you suspect,” urged Mr. Drone.
“Nor I,” said Mrs. Smith. “Unless any of his plans were put out by her coming down, and he was afraid it would be found out that she was his wife.”
The lawyer pulled at his whiskers, his habit when in thought. “You see there’s no certainty that she was his wife—that she was married at all, in fact.”
“Then there is, for I’d stake my life upon it,” angrily returned Mrs. Smith. “I’m as certain she was married as that I was married myself. You are as bad as my husband, sir; he’d used to say as much.”
“The chief thing would be to get a proof of it,” composedly returned the lawyer. “It would supply the motive, you see. I suppose you never obtained the slightest clue as to where the ceremony took place?”
“N—o,” returned Mrs. Smith, hesitating at the word. “I remember once, the winter that she was at my house at Islington, we were talking about churches and marriages and such things, and she said, in a laughing sort of way, that old St. Pancras Church was as good a one to be married in as any. It did not strike me at the time that she meant anything in saying it; but it’s just possible, sir, she was married there.”
Mr. Drone’s brisk eyes twinkled, and he made a memorandum in his pocket-book. He made other memorandums; he asked about five hundred questions more than he had already asked. And when Mrs. Smith departed, he stood at the door to watch her away, and then jumped into the omnibus just starting for Great Wennock station, and sent the following telegram to London:
“Henry Drone, South Wennock, to John Friar, Bedford Row.
“Search old St. Pancras register for 1847. Certificate of marriage wanted: Lewis Carlton to Clarice Beauchamp, or perhaps Clarice Chesney. Lose no time; bribe clerk if necessary, and send special messenger down at once with it, if obtained;”
GOETHE AND FREDERIKA BRION;
A PILGRIMAGE TO SESENHEIM.
- ↑ The university fell to the ground during the troubles of the French Revolution. It is now represented by the Protestant Seminary.
