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Chapter XXXIV.

Mr. and Mrs. Denby sat at the breakfast-table in their house in London. They were both looking exactly as they did when last Jack Stanley had seen them. All at once Mrs. Denby remarked,

“I wonder what has become of that young man, John Stanley?”

“It is very curious that you should have made that observation, my dear,” replied her husband; “for I was only waiting to finish this egg to tell you of a somewhat strange letter which I received yesterday—a letter which concerns John Stanley.”

“Indeed?” said Mrs. Denby, laying down her tea-spoon, with which she had been occupied, in order to show a proper interest; “indeed? who is it from?”

“That is the very thing I am going to tell you, my dear,” said Mr. Denby, who could not forget that he was a lawyer, even with his wife. “The letter is from Mr. William Maitland. Do you recollect the name?”

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Mrs. Denby pleaded ignorance, and so Mr. Denby had the satisfaction of telling over the whole story of William Maitland's friendship with Mr. Stanley, and his treachery and fraud, and the sale of The Beeches, and ultimate ruin of Jack's father, jotting off each incident as he told it on the tips of his fingers, touched with the fingers of the other hand.

I believe myself that Mrs. Denby knew almost as much of the story as her husband; but she was a dutiful wife, and knowing Mr. Denby's little weaknesses, she gave him the enjoyment of telling the story through.

“So you see,” concluded the lawyer, “that Mr. William Maitland, through his inexcusable behaviour, brought Mr. Stanley into the state of poverty in which we found him, my dear, and in which he died, and caused young John Stanley to lose The Beeches; though I have said before, and always will maintain, that the sale of The Beeches was a very unnecessary step, and that hardly any man but Stanley, with his rigid and overstrained ideas, would have done it.”

“He always was that sort of man, you know,” observed Mrs. Denby, who knew that this was the proper thing to say, and who, for her own part, had not any very clear idea what Mr. Stanley ought to have done in the matter.

“Well,” returned Mr. Denby, “The Beeches is gone, Stanley is dead, that hot-headed boy of his had made off to New Zealand, with the idea, I suppose, of making his fortune, or something equally sensible, when there comes page 318 this letter from the man Maitland, who every one would have supposed was dead. For my part, I have not had a word from him since he left England, although I have indirectly once or twice heard of him.”

Mrs. Denby here looked up, while her husband felt in his pockets for the letter.

“I intended to bring it home to show you; but no, I remember now, I locked it in my desk in the office. Well, I can tell you the contents: Maitland, for some unaccountable reason—he gives none whatever—wishes, as he expresses it, to endeavour to undo some of the harm he has done—as if what is once done could ever be undone: it is quite ridiculous. He commissions me, as I happen to know all the foregone parts of the case, to purchase The Beeches, if its present owner is willing to sell it, which I should think very doubtful, and to make it over—that is, the place—to John Stanley as his property, he not knowing, of course, that John Stanley is dead, poor fellow.

“That is usually the way in this world,” added Mr. Denby; “when people attempt to make restitution, they generally do it too late.”

“But there is young John Stanley,” suggested Mrs. Denby.

“Who is to find him?” returned her husband. “He may have been drowned going out or have died since he got there.”

“What shall you do?” asked Mrs. Denby.

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“I see nothing to be done but to make inquiries about The Beeches, and if it is to be sold, to communicate the fact to Mr. Maitland, at the same time informing him that the elder Stanley is dead, and that the son has gone to New Zealand, as I believe—at least, he gave it out as his intention to go there. From something young Stanley said on one occasion, I believe he had some Quixotic idea of finding Maitland in New Zealand; as if he were at all likely to come across him! and if he did find him, I imagine that there would not be a very friendly greeting between them.”

“What could be his object in wishing to find him?” asked Mrs. Denby, stupidly.

“Oh, John Stanley is not unlike his poor father: he has all sorts of highflown and exaggerated fancies. I do not myself quite understand what results he anticipated from meeting with Maitland. Such people as Stanley and his boy are beyond me, I confess.”

Mr. Denby said this with great satisfaction. He felt glad that such people were “beyond him;” but he did not mean the word “beyond” at all in the higher sense; and Mrs. Denby understood no more about it than her husband when she agreed with his remark with self-congratulation. They were quite right, both Mr. and Mrs. Denby: such people as the Stanleys were very much beyond them.

Upon inquiry, Mr. Denby found that the present owner of The Beeches was not averse to parting with it, although page 320 he had not as yet put it in the market. The lawyer therefore stipulated for the refusal of the estate; and by the mail then leaving wrote to Mr. Maitland to that effect, acquainting him also, as he said he would do, with the facts of Mr. Stanley's death, and of his son's having left England.

Naturally, Mr. Denby made inquiries of the few people who had known Jack Stanley in London, in case he might since his absence have communicated with one of them, by which means he discovered that the young surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital—whose name he now found to be Maitland—had left for New Zealand in the same ship as Stanley, although, had the lawyer taken the trouble to inquire at the shipping office, he would have seen no such name upon the books. The circumstance caused Mr. Denby to wonder, but it could not be explained either by himself or his wife.

Old Mrs. Bennett, of the lodging-house, was so overcome at the mere mention of Jack Stanley's name, when Mr. Denby went to make inquiries of her, and having to tell that she had “not heard one word of or from the blessed boy since last she had clapped eyes on him, which it was as he left the docks on board the ship which carried him away,” that she wept abundantly, so that Mr. Denby in his heart regretted that he had been so injudicious as to move her to such an extent, and gladly escaped from the house to avoid the old woman's further reminiscences.