’I had a line from Mr. Mark Wylder yesterday
afternoon, as usual without any address but the postmark;’
and good Mr. Larkin laughed a mild, little patient
laugh, and lifted his open hand, and shook his head.
’It really is growing too absurd—a
mere order upon you to hand me 200_l._ How I’m
to dispose of it, I have not the faintest notion.’
And he laughed again; at the same time he gracefully
poked the little note, between two fingers, to Captain
Lake, who glanced full on him, for a second, as he
took it.
‘And how is Mark?’ enquired Lake, with
his odd, sly smile, as he scrawled a little endorsement
on the order. ‘Does he say anything?’
‘No; absolutely nothing—he’s
a very strange client!’ said Larkin, laughing
again. ’There can be no objection, of course,
to your reading it; and he thinks—he thinks—he’ll
be here soon again—oh, here it is.’
Mr. Larkin had been fumbling, first in his deep waistcoat,
and then in his breast-pocket, as if for the letter,
which was locked fast into the iron safe, with Chubb’s
patent lock, in his office at the Lodge. But it
would not have done to have kept a secret from Captain
Lake, of Brandon; and therefore his not seeing the
note was a mere accident.
’Oh! no—stupid!—that’s
Mullett and Hock’s. I have not got it with
me; but it does not signify, for there’s nothing
in it. I hope I shall soon be favoured with his
directions as to what to do with the money.’
’He’s an odd fellow; and I don’t
know how he feels towards me; but on my part there
is no feeling, I do assure you, but the natural desire
to live on the friendly terms which our ties of family
and our position in the county’—
Stanley Lake was writing the cheque for 200_l._ meanwhile,
and handed it to Larkin; and as that gentleman penned
a receipt, the captain continued—his eyes
lowered to the little vellum-bound book in which he
was now making an entry:—
’You have handed me a large sum, Mr. Larkin—3,276_l._
11_s._ 4_d._ I undertook this, you know, on the understanding
that it was not to go on very long; and I find my
own business pretty nearly as much as I can manage.
Is Wylder at all definite as to when we may expect
his return?’
’Oh, dear no—quite as usual—he
expects to be here soon; but that is all. I so
wish I had brought his note with me; but I’m
positive that is all.’
So, this little matter settled, the lawyer took his
leave.
AN EVIL EYE LOOKS ON THE VICAR.
There were influences of a wholly unsuspected kind
already gathering round the poor vicar, William Wylder;
as worlds first begin in thinnest vapour, and whirl
themselves in time into consistency and form, so do
these dark machinations, which at times gather round
unsuspecting mortals as points of revolution, begin
nebulously and intangibly, and grow in volume and
in density, till a colossal system, with its inexorable
tendencies and forces, crushes into eternal darkness
the centre it has enveloped.
