Home > Authors Index > George Alfred Henty > Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California > This page
Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California, a novel by George Alfred Henty |
||
Chapter 14. Captain Bayley |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XIV. CAPTAIN BAYLEY DURING the time which had elapsed between the departure of Frank Norris from England, and his arrival at the gold-diggings in California, much had happened at home which he would have been interested to learn had he maintained any communication with his relatives there. On the morning when Frank had been accused by Dr. Litter of abstracting the note from his table, the latter had, as he had informed Frank he intended to do, sent a note to Captain Bayley informing him that a most painful circumstance had taken place with reference to his nephew, and begging him to call upon him between twelve and one. Captain Bayley had done so, and had, as Fred Barkley stated, been furious at the news which the Doctor conveyed to him; his fury, however, being in no degree directed towards his nephew, but entirely against the head-master for venturing to bring so abominable an accusation against Frank. The evidence which Dr. Litter adduced had no effect whatever in staying his wrath, and so vehement and angry was the old officer, that Dr. Litter was obliged to ring the bell and order the servant to show him out. From Dean's Yard he took a cab, and drove direct to his solicitor, and requested him instantly to take proceedings against the head-master for defamation of character. "But, Captain Bayley," the lawyer urged, "we must first see whether this gentleman had any reasonable cause for his belief. If the evidence is what may be considered as strong, we must accept his action as taken _bona fide_." "Don't tell me, sir," Captain Bayley exclaimed angrily. "What do I care for evidence? Of course he told me a long rigmarole story, but he could not have believed it himself. No one but a fool could believe my nephew Frank guilty of theft; the idea is preposterous, it was as much as I could do to restrain myself from caning him when he was speaking." The lawyer smiled inwardly, for Dr. Litter was a tall, stately man, six feet two in height, while Captain Bayley was a small, slight figure, by no means powerful when in his prime, and now fully twenty years the senior of the head-master. "Well, Captain Bayley," he said, "in the first place it is necessary that I should know the precise accusation which this gentleman has brought against your nephew. Will you be good enough to repeat to me, as nearly as you can, the statement which he made, as, of course, if we proceed to legal measures, we must be exact in the matter?" "Well, this is about the story he told me," Captain Bayley said, more calmly. "In the first place, it seems that the lad broke bounds one night, and went with a man named Perkins--who is a prize-fighter, and who I know gave him lessons in boxing, for I gave Frank five pounds last half to pay for them--to a meeting of these Chartist blackguards somewhere in the New Cut. "Well, there was a row there, as there naturally would be at such a place, and it seems Frank knocked down some Radical fellow--a tailor, I believe--and broke his nose. Well, you know, I am not saying this was right; still, you know, lads will be lads, and I used to be fond of getting into a row myself when I was young, for I could spar in those days pretty well, I can tell you, Griffith. I would have given a five-pound note to have seen Frank set to with that Radical tailor. Still, I dare say, if the lad had told me about it I should have got into a passion and blown him up." "I shouldn't be surprised at all," the lawyer said drily. "No. Well that would do him no harm; he knows me, and he knows that I am peppery. Well, it seems this fellow found out who he was, and threatened to report the thing to the head-master, in which case this Dr. Litter said he should have expelled him for being out of bounds, a thing which in itself I call monstrous. Now, here is where Frank was wrong. He ought to have come straight to me and told me the whole affair, and got his blowing-up and his money. Instead of that, he asked three or four of the other boys--among them my nephew Fred--to lend him the money, but they were all out of funds. Well, somebody, it seems, sent Frank a ten-pound note in an envelope, with the words, 'From a friend,' and no more. Frank showed the envelope to the others, and they all agreed that it was a sort of godsend, and Frank sent the note to the tailor. Now it seems that the day before Frank got the note, the head-master, when he was hearing his form, had put a ten-pound note, with some other things, on the table, and being called out, he, like a careless old fool, left them lying there. "Some time afterwards he missed the note, and does not remember taking it up from the table; still, he says, he did not suspect any of the boys of his form of taking it, and thinking that he had dropt it on the way to his house, he stopped the note at the bank, happening to have its number. A few days afterwards the note was presented; it was traced to the tailor, who admitted having received it from Frank; and would you believe it, sir, this man now pretends to believe that my nephew stole it from the table, and sent it to himself in an envelope. It's the most preposterous thing I ever heard." Mr. Griffith looked grave. "Of course, Captain Bayley, having met your nephew at your house several times, I cannot for a moment believe him guilty of taking the note; still, I must admit that the evidence is strongly circumstantial, and were it a stranger who was accused, I should say at once the thing looked nasty." "Pooh! nonsense, Griffith," the old officer said angrily; "there's nothing in it, sir--nothing whatever. Somebody found the note kicking about, I dare say, and didn't know who it belonged to; he knew Frank was in a corner, and sent it to him. The thing is perfectly natural." "Yes," the lawyer assented doubtfully; "but the question is, Who did know it? Was the fact of your nephew requiring the money generally known in the school?" "No," Captain Bayley admitted. "The doctor examined the four boys before Frank. They all declared that they knew nothing of the note, and that they had not mentioned the circumstance to a soul; but my opinion is that one of them is a liar." "It is certainly necessary to believe," Mr. Griffith said slowly, "that one of them is either a liar or a thief. Of course there may be some other solution of the matter, but the only one that I can see, just at the present moment, is this: Your nephew is the sort of lad to be extremely popular among his schoolmates; either one of these four boys took the note from the master's table, with the good-natured but most mistaken idea of getting him out of a scrape, or they must have mentioned his need of money to some of their school-fellows, one of whom finding the note, perhaps in the yard, where the head-master may have dropped it, sent it to Frank to relieve him of the difficulty. "These are possible solutions of the mystery, at any rate. But if you will take my advice, Captain Bayley, you will not, in the present state of affairs, take the steps which you propose to me against Dr. Litter. It will be time enough to do that when your nephew's innocence is finally and incontestably proved. Of course," he said, seeing that his listener was about to break out again, "you and I, knowing him, know that he is innocent; but others who do not know him might entertain some doubt upon the subject, and a jury might consider that the Doctor was justified, with the evidence before him, in acting as he did, in which case an immense deal of damage might be done by making the matter a subject of general talk." With some difficulty Captain Bayley was persuaded to allow his intention to rest for a while. "It is late now," he said, "but I shall go and see Frank to-morrow. I wish I had seen him this afternoon before I came to you. However, I have no doubt when I get home I shall find a letter from him--not defending himself, of course, as he would know that to be unnecessary, but telling me the story in his own way." But no letter came that evening, to Captain Bayley's great irritation. He told Alice Hardy the whole circumstances, and she was as indignant as himself, and warmly agreed that the head-master should be punished for his unjust suspicions. "And do you say he is really going to be expelled to-morrow?" she asked, in a tone of horror. "So the fellow said, my dear; but he shall smart for it, and the laws of the land shall do Frank justice." At half-past nine the next morning Fred Barkley arrived at Captain Bayley's. "Well," his uncle exclaimed, as he entered, "I suppose you have been sent to tell me they have got to the bottom of this rigmarole affair." "No, uncle," Fred said, "I have, I am sorry to say, been sent to tell you that Frank last night left his boarding-house and is not to be found." Captain Bayley leapt from his seat in great wrath. "The fool! the idiot! to run away like a coward instead of facing it out; and not a line or a message has he sent to me. Did you know, sir, that your cousin was going to run away?" Fred hesitated. "Yes, uncle, I knew that he was going, and did my best to dissuade him, but it was useless." Captain Bayley walked up and down the room with quick steps, uttering exclamations testifying his anger and annoyance. "Has he got any money?" he said suddenly, halting before Fred. "Did he get any money from you?" Fred hesitated again, and then said. "Well, uncle, since you insist upon knowing, I did let him have twenty pounds which I got for the sale of my books." "I believe, sir," the old officer said furiously, "that you encouraged him in this step, a step which I consider fatal to him." Fred hesitated again, and then said. "Well, uncle, I am sorry that you should be so angry about it, but I own that I did not throw any obstacle in the way." "You did not, sir," Captain Bayley roared, "and why did you not? Are you a fool too? Don't you see that this running away instead of facing matters out cannot but be considered, by people who do not know Frank, as a proof of his guilt, a confession that he did not dare to stay to face his accusers?" Fred was silent. "Answer me, sir," Captain Bayley said; "don't stand there without a word to explain your conduct. Do you or do you not see that this cowardly flight will look like a confession of guilt?" "I did see that, uncle," Fred said, "but I thought that better than a public expulsion." "Oh! you did, did you?" his uncle said sarcastically, "when you knew that if he had stopped quietly at home we should have proved his innocence in less than no time." Fred made no reply. "Do you think we shouldn't have proved his innocence?" roared his uncle. "I am sorry to say anything which is displeasing to you, uncle, but I fear that you would never have proved Frank's innocence." The words seemed to have a sobering effect on Captain Bayley. The blood seemed to die out of his face; he put one hand on a chair, as if to steady himself, while he looked fixedly in his nephew's face. "Do you mean, Fred," he said, in a low voice, "do you mean that you have a doubt of Frank's innocence?" "I should rather not say anything about it," Fred replied. "I hope with all my heart that Frank is not guilty, but----" "What do you think?" Captain Bayley repeated; "have you any grounds whatever for believing him guilty?" "No, sir, and I do not wish you to be in the slightest degree influenced by what I said." He paused, but Captain Bayley's eyes were still fixed upon him, as if commanding a complete answer. "Well, sir," he went on hesitatingly, "I must own that, sad as it is to say so, I fear Frank did it." "Did he confess it to you?" Captain Bayley asked, in a strained, strange voice. "No, uncle, not in so many words, but he said things which seemed to me to mean that. When I tried to dissuade him from running away, and urged him to remain till his innocence could be proved, he said angrily, 'What's the use of talking like that, when you know as well as I do that it can't be proved.' Afterwards he said, 'It is a bad job, and I have been an awful fool. But who could have thought that note would ever be traced back to Litter?' and other remarks of the same kind. He may be innocent, uncle--you know how deeply I wish we could prove him so--but I fear, I greatly fear, that we shall be doing Frank more service by letting the matter drop. You know the fellows in the school all believe him innocent, and though his going away has staggered some of them, the general feeling is still all in his favour; therefore they are sure to speak of him as a sort of victim, and when he returns, which of course he will do in a few years' time, the matter will have died away and have been altogether forgotten." The old officer sat down at the table and hid his face in his hands. All this time Alice, pale and silent, had sat and listened with her eyes fixed upon the speaker, but she now leapt up to her feet. "Uncle," she said, "don't believe him, he is not speaking the truth, I am sure he is not. He hates Frank, and I have known it all along, because Frank is bigger and better than he; because Frank was generous and kind-hearted; because every one liked Frank and no one liked him. He is telling a lie now, and I believe every word he has said since he came into the room is false." "Hush! child," the old officer said; "you must not speak so, my dear. If it was only the word of one lad against another, it would be different; but it is not so. The proof is very strong against Frank. I would give all I am worth if I could still believe him innocent, and had he come to me and put his hand in mine, and said, 'Uncle, I am innocent,' I would have believed him against all the evidence in the world. It is not I who condemn him, he has condemned himself. He sends me no word; he cannot look me in the face and declare himself innocent. He runs away at night, knowing well that there could be but one construction as to this, and that all would judge him guilty. No, Alice, it breaks my heart to say so, but I can struggle no longer against these facts. The lad whom I have loved as a son has turned out a thief." "No, uncle, no," the girl cried passionately, "I will never believe it, not to the end of my life. I cannot prove him innocent, but I know he is so, and some day it will be proved; but till then I shall still think of him as my dear brother, as my true-hearted brother, who has been wrongfully accused, and who is the victim of some wicked plot of which, perhaps, Fred Barkley knows more than any one else," and, bursting into a passion of tears, she ran from the room. Fred looked after her with an expression of pity and sorrow. "Poor child!" he said, "it is a terrible blow for her, and she scarce knows what she is saying." "It is a terrible blow," Captain Bayley said, in a dreary voice, "a most terrible blow to me and to her. No wonder she feels it; and I have been planning and hoping that some day, a few years hence, those two would get to like each other in a different way. I had, by my will, divided my fortune equally between you and him, but I have liked him best. Of course, I brought him up, and he has been always with me; it was natural that I should do so. Still I wanted to be fair, and I divided it equally. But I was pleased at the thought that her fortune, which is, as you know, a very large one, would be his, and enable him to make a great figure in the world if he had chosen; and now it is all over. "Go away now, my boy, the blow has been too much for me. I am getting an old man, and this is the second great blow I have had. Do not take to heart the wild words of poor little Alice. You see she scarcely knows what she is saying." Without another word Fred took his departure. When once out of sight of the house his steps quickened, and he walked briskly along. "Splendid!" he said to himself; "a grand stroke indeed, and perfectly safe. Frank is not likely to return for twenty years, if ever, and I don't think the old man is good for another five. I expect I shall have some trouble with that little cat, Alice; but she is only a child, and will come round in time, and her fortune will be quite as useful to me as it would have been to him. I always knew he was little better than a fool, but I could hardly have hoped that he would have walked into the trap as he has done. I suppose that other blow old Bayley spoke of was that affair of his daughter. That was a lucky business for me too." Fred Barkley was not mistaken, it was of his daughter Captain Bayley had been thinking when he spoke. He had married young when he first went out to India, and had lost his wife two years later, leaving him with a daughter six months old. He had sent her home to England, and after a twenty years' absence he had returned and found her grown up. She had inherited something of her father's passionate disposition, and possessed, in addition, an amount of sullen obstinacy which was wholly alien to his nature. But her father saw none of these defects in her character. She was very beautiful, with an air of pride and hauteur which he liked. She had a right to be proud, he thought, for she was a very wealthy heiress, for, his two elder brothers having died childless while he was in India, the fine property of their father had all descended to him. Though the girl had many suitors, she would listen to none of them, having formed a strong attachment to a man in station altogether beneath her. He had given lessons in drawing at the school which had been her home as well as her place of education during her father's absence, for Captain Bayley had quarrelled with his sisters, both of whom, he considered, had married beneath them. The fact that Ella Bayley was an only child, and that her father was a wealthy man, was known in the school, and had, in some way, come to the ears of the drawing-master, who was young, and by no means ill-looking. He had played his cards well. Ella was romantic and impetuous, and, before long, returned the devotion which her teacher expressed for her. When her father returned home, and Ella left school to take her place at the head of his establishment, she had hoped that she should be able to win from him a consent to her engagement; but she found his prejudices on the subject of birth were strong, and she waited two years before she broached the subject. The wrath of Captain Bayley was prodigious; he heaped abusive epithets upon the man of her choice, till Ella's temper rose also. There was a passionate quarrel between father and daughter. The next morning Ella was missing; a week afterwards Captain Bayley received a copy of the certificate of her marriage, with a short note from Ella, saying that when he could make his mind up to forgive her and her husband, and to acknowledge that the latter did not deserve the abusive language that he had applied to him, she should be glad to return and resume her place as his affectionate and loving daughter. She gave an address at which he could communicate to her. Three years passed before Captain Bayley's anger had sufficiently calmed down for him to write to his daughter saying that he forgave her. The letter was returned by the people at the house, with a note saying that many months had elapsed since any inquiries had been made for letters for Mrs. Smedley, and that they had altogether lost sight of her. Now that the Captain had once made up his mind to forgive his daughter, he was burning with impatience to see her again, and he at once employed a detective to find out what had become of her. From the person to whose house the letter had been directed the detective learned the address where she and her husband had resided while in London. For a time it seemed they had lived expensively, the sale of Ella's jewels keeping them in luxury for some months. Then hard times had come upon them; the man had altogether lost his connection as a teacher, and could, or would, do nothing to support his wife and himself; they had moved from the place they had first lived at, and taken much smaller lodgings. Here the people of the house reported their life had been very unhappy; the husband had taken to drink, and there had been fierce and frequent quarrels between them, arising--the landlady had gleaned, from the loud and angry utterance of the husband--from the wife's refusal to appeal to her father for assistance. They had left this place suddenly, and in debt; thence they had moved from lodging to lodging at short intervals, their position getting worse, until they were last lodged in a wretched garret. From this point they were traced with great trouble down to Nottingham, where the husband obtained a precarious living by producing designs for embroidery and curtains. Had he been steady he might have soon done fairly, but a great part of his time was spent in public-houses, and he was seldom sober. When returning home one night in a state of drunkenness, he was run over by a heavy van and killed. As his wife possessed but a few shillings in the world, he was buried at the expense of the parish and his widow at once left the town. The people where she lodged believed that she had gone to London, taking with her her six months old child, and had started to tramp the way on foot. The woman said that she doubted whether she could ever have got there. She was an utterly broken woman, with a constant racking cough, which was like to tear her to pieces, and before she set out her landlady had urged upon her that the idea of her starting to carry a heavy child to London was nothing short of madness. After this all trace of Ella had been lost. Advertisements offering large rewards appeared in the papers; the books of every workhouse between Nottingham and London, and indeed of almost every workhouse in England, were carefully searched to see if there was any record of the death of a woman with a child about the time of her disappearance. A similar search was made at all the London hospitals, and at every institution where she might have crawled to die; but no trace had ever been found of her. That she was dead was not doubted; for it was found that at Nottingham she had once gone to the parish doctor for some medicine for her child. The physician had taken particular notice of her, had asked her some questions, and had made a note in his case-book that the mother of the child he had prescribed for was in an advanced stage of consumption, and had probably but a few weeks, certainly not more than a few months, to live. It was long before the search was given up as hopeless, and many hundreds of pounds were spent by Captain Bayley before he abandoned all hope of discovering, if not his daughter, at least her child. During the year which elapsed before he was forced to acknowledge that it was hopeless, Captain Bayley had suffered terribly. His self-reproaches were unceasing, and he aged many years in appearance. It was three years after this, on the death of his sister, Mrs. Norris, whose husband had died some years before, that he took Frank into his house and adopted him as his son, stating, however, to all whom it might concern, that he did not regard him as standing nearer to him as his heir than his other nephew, Fred Barkley, but that his property would be divided between them as they might show themselves worthy of it. It was three years later still, that, at the death of her father, an old fellow-officer, his household was increased by the addition of Alice, who had been left to his guardianship, but who had soon learned, like Frank, to address him as uncle. _ |
||