CHAPTER XV.

THE DAWN OF HOPE.

The glory of the summer had departed from the Shadrack-road. The costermongers no longer bawled their fine fresh ‘Arline’ plums, their ‘gages’ at four-pence per quart; cucumbers had grown too yellow and seedy even for the Shadrackites; green apples were exhibited on the stalls and barrows; the cracking of walnuts was heard at every street-corner; and the great bloater season—which was a kind of minor saturnalia in this district—had been inaugurated by the first triumphal cry of ‘Rale Yarmouths, two for threehalfpence!’ The pork-butchers, whose trade had somewhat slackened during the dog-days—though the Shadrackites were always pork-eaters—now began to find demand growing brisker. In a word, autumn was at hand. Not by wide plains of ripening corn, or the swift flight of the scared covey rising from their nest in the long grass, did the Shadrackites perceive the change of seasons, but by the contents of the costermongers’ barrows. At this time, also, that raven cry of cholera—generally arising out of the sufferings of those unwary citizens who had indulged too freely in such luxuries as conger-eel and cucumber—dwindled and died away; and the Shadrackites, moved by that gloomy spirit which always beheld clouds upon the horizon, prophesied that the harvest would be a bad one, and bread dear in the coming winter.

Lucius went among them day after day, and ministered to them, and was patient with them, and smiled at the little children, and talked cheerily to the old people, despite that growing anxiety in his own breast. He neglected not a single duty, and spent no more of his day in Cedar House than he had done before he took up his quarters there. He ate his frugal meals in his own house, and only went to Mr. Sivewright’s dreary old mansion at a late hour in the evening. He had carried some of his medical books there, and often sat in his little bedroom reading, long after midnight. His boy had orders to run on to Cedar House should there be any call for his aid in the dead hours of the night.

He brooded much over that small packet of letters which he counted among his richest treasures—those letters from the man who signed himself ‘H. G.,’ and the lady whom he wrote of as Madame Dumarques, the lady whose own delicate signature appeared in clearest characters upon the smooth foreign paper—written with ink that had paled with the lapse of years—Félicie.

Lucius read these letters again and again; and the result of this repeated perusal was the conviction that the writers of those lines were the parents of Lucille. Why should they have been thus deeply interested in Ferdinand Sivewright’s child, or how should he have been able to put forward a claim for money on that child’s behalf?

Lucius had taken these letters into his custody with the determination to turn them to good account. If it were within the limits of possibility, he would discover the secret to which these letters afforded so slight a clue. That was the resolve he had made when he took the packet from Homer Sivewright’s desk—and time in nowise diminished the force of his intention. But he had no heart to begin his search just yet, while Lucille was dangerously ill.

In the mean time he thought the matter over, repeatedly deliberating as to the best means of beginning a task which promised to be difficult. Should he consult Mr. Otranto—should he commit his chances to the wisdom and experience of that famous private detective?

His own answer to his own question was a decided negative. ‘No,’ he said to himself, ‘I will not vulgarise the woman I love by giving the broken links of the story of her birth to a professional spy, leaving him to put them together after his own fashion. If there should be a blot upon her lineage, his worldly eyes shall not be the first to discover the stain. Heaven has given me brains which are perhaps as good as Mr. Otranto’s; and constancy of purpose shall stand me in the stead of experience. I will do this thing myself. Directly Lucille is in a fair way to recovery, I will begin my task; and it shall go hard with me if I do not succeed.’

The days passed slowly enough for the parish doctor’s hard-worked brain, which felt weary of all things on earth, or of all those things which made up the sum of his monotonous life. September had begun, and a slight improvement had arisen in Lucille’s condition. She was a little stronger, a little more cheerful—had rewarded her doctor’s care with just a faint shadow of her once-familiar smile. She had been lifted out of her bed too one warm afternoon, and wrapped in her dressing-gown and an old faded Indian shawl that had belonged to Homer Sivewright’s Spanish wife, and placed in an easy-chair by the open window to drink tea with Mrs. Milderson. Whereupon there had been a grand tea-drinking, to which Lucius was admitted, and in which there was some touch of the happiness of bygone days.

‘Do you remember the first time you gave me a cup of tea, Lucille,’ said Lucius, ‘that winter’s night, in the parlour down-stairs?’

The girl’s eyes filled with sudden tears, and she turned her head aside upon the pillow that supported it.

‘I was so happy then, Lucius,’ she said; ‘now I am full of cares.’

‘Needless cares, believe me, dearest,’ answered her lover. ‘Your grandfather is a great deal better—weak still, but much stronger than you are. He will be down-stairs first, depend upon it. I should have brought him in to take tea with us this afternoon if I had not been afraid of agitating you. I never had such a nervous excitable patient.’

‘Ah, you may well say that, Dr. Davoren,’ said Nurse Milderson, with her good-natured scolding tone. ‘I never see such an eggsitable patient—toss and turn, and worrit her poor dear self, as if she had all the cares of this mortial world upon her blessed shoulders. Why, Mrs. Beck, in Stevedor-square, that has seven children and a chandler’s business to look after, doesn’t worrit half as much when she keeps her bed, tho’ she knows as everythink is at sixes and sevens down-stairs; those blessed children tumbling down and hurting of themselves at every hand’s turn—and a bit of a girl serving in the shop that don’t know where to lay her hand upon a thing, and hasn’t headpiece to know the difference between best fresh and thirteen-penny Dorset.’

Altogether this tea-drinking had been a happy break in Lucius Davoren’s life, despite those tears of Lucille. He had been with her once more; it had seemed something like old times. He saw a great peril past, and was thankful. After tea he read to her a little—some mild tender lines of Wordsworth’s—and then they sat talking in the dusk.

Many times during her illness Lucille had embarrassed her lover by her anxious inquiries about the Winchers. He had hitherto waived the question; now he told her briefly that they were gone—Mr. Sivewright had dismissed them.

She protested against this as a great cruelty.

‘They were devoted to my grandfather; they were the best and most faithful servants that ever any one had,’ she said.

‘They might seem so, Lucille, and yet be capable of robbing their old master on the first good opportunity. Your grandfather’s long illness afforded them that opportunity, and I believe they took it.’

‘How can you know that? Was anything stolen?’ she asked eagerly.

‘Yes; some valuable pieces of old silver, and other property, were taken.’

A look of intense pain came into the pale care-worn face.

‘How can you be sure those things were taken by the Winchers?’ she asked.

‘Simply because there is no one else who could possibly get at them. Jacob Wincher showed himself very clever throughout the business, acted a little comedy for my edification, and evidently thought to hoodwink me. But I was able to see through him. In point of fact, the evidence against him was conclusive. So at my advice your grandfather dismissed him, without an hour’s warning; and strange to say, his health has been slowly mending ever since his faithful servant’s departure.’

‘What!’ cried Lucille, with a horrified look, ‘you think it possible that Wincher can have—’

‘Tampered with the medicine by your grandfather’s bedside. Yes, Lucille, that is what I do believe; but he is now safe on the outside of this house, and you need not give yourself a moment’s uneasiness upon the subject. Think of it as something that has never been, and trust in my care for the security of the future. No evil-disposed person shall enter this house while I am here to guard it.’

The girl looked at him with a wild despairing gaze—looked at him without seeing him—looked beyond him, as if in empty space her eyes beheld some hideous vision. She flung her head aside upon the pillow, with a gesture of supreme dejection.

‘A thief and a murderer!’ she said in tones too low to reach the lover’s ear. ‘O, my dream, my dream!’