Part 17

It will be enough to further state that the old creature made application for admission into the union workhouse, and that the relieving-officer investigated her case; that a report was laid before the board of guardians; and that, without much difficulty, she obtained an order of admission. So the fraud upon the ratepayers was effected and prolonged; so the doctor's crime was further concealed.

The old pauper was accustomed in the house, and out of the house when permitted to go beyond its walls, to laud the praises of her kind doctor, who, on his visits to the place, would inquire after her, who would find her very often ailing, and who very frequently ordered her luxuries that did not fall to the lot of other paupers not so cared for.

Three years rolled away, and during this time the pauper grew richer and richer (as she thought) out of the usufruct of her savings. The doctor all the while continued with growing certainty to look upon the fund he had employed for his own advantage as money he would never be called upon to replace. He had only to keep up the deception a little longer, and the real owner of that fund would pass into her grave unnoticed and unknown.

One day the old woman obtained her customary leave of absence, and wandered beyond the usual track of her accustomed visitations when so liberated. She called first upon the doctor, and obtained from him a small sum of money--a few shillings--and afterwards among the places she visited was the miserable home of an old acquaintance. Here she took dinner and tea, and after tea drew out the money, which she said had been given her by her dear kind friend the parish doctor, and insisted upon standing treat for her companion.

About nine in the evening a conversation took place between the two women.

"Goody," said her friend, "you know I don't want to hurry you. You know I am very glad to have you here. I am very fond of you; but it is getting late; and if you don't make haste, you will get shut out,"

The speaker was what is called a little the worse for liquor, and Goody was more than a little intoxicated.

She spluttered out in reply something about not caring for the porter, or the relieving-officer, or the board of guardians, or the overseers, or the church-wardens, or any body. That if she was late, it did not matter, and that she would not stand any of their nonsense. That if she was late, why--she was late. If she could not get in the house, she must stay out; and if they did not care to keep her, why, she could keep herself.

"What nonsense you talk! What would you do, at your time of life, to keep yourself? Why, if they were to turn you out, you must starve. You could not work, and you have not got any thing to live upon."

"Oh, haven't I, though!" the old woman incoherently exclaimed. "That is all you know about it. I don't care for them all. Dr. Jalaype has got my money. He takes care of it for me. Why, I tell you, I have got a fortune; that is, I mean he has got it keeping for me. I have got more than a thousand pounds. Is not that a fortune? Would not you like to have it, old girl? I dare say the chairman of the board would like to have it, but he won't. No, that he sha'n't. I won't go back to the house. I will stop here. There, go and get a quartern more gin."

With the shilling now produced another quartern of gin was fetched, and the old lady imbibed a further quantity, and got considerably worse, and was soon reduced to a state of beastly, hopeless, and helpless intoxication.

After having drunk themselves into this condition, the two wretched creatures left the scene of their dissipation and endeavoured to toddle in the direction of the workhouse. They had not gone far, when two riotous boys, returning from their work to their homes, saw them reeling, and began to poke fun at them. The female pauper, smarting under a rude juvenile insult, endeavoured to rush forward and seize one of the delinquents, but instead of effecting the capture of the offender, fell flat on her face. Her companion endeavoured to pick her up, but rolled over; and while the sympathetic woman maundered, in her intoxication, words of consolation to the disfigured pauper, a policeman came up, and, observing their condition, took them both to the station-house.

Next morning, on being brought before the magistrate, they told an artful tale, which that worthy functionary accepted as true, about having met an old friend, who treated them to a half-quartern of gin (they were sure it was no more), and it overcame them. They were discharged with an admonition, and toddled off to the house, at the gate of which they parted,--the one to find her home, like an independent woman; the other to sneak into her ward, and bear the gibes of her associates as best she might.

It was some time before these women could meet again. When they did so, among other things, they talked about the fortune. Goody the pauper would have liked to have said nothing about the matter, but her companion was not to be put off in that way. She had a principle which led her to argue that what people said in their cups might be regarded as their most sincere belief, and that the words uttered in drunkenness had a truth not always attaching to the words of soberness. She persisted in her inquiries, and the result was that the pauper Goody took her friend into confidence.

"Why, you see here," she said, "nobody knows what may turn up. I have been a lone woman these many years. I have got a son, leastways I believe I have, and some day _he_ may turn up, you see. I love that boy, and I have screwed and contrived for him; and in case any thing should happen to me, why I should like to have a little money by me; so I saved and put my money in a savings-bank. But, then, one day I told the doctor about my money, and he told me not to let it be there. I asked if so be he would be so kind as to look after it for me, which he said yes, he would do so. So I gave the money to him, and he lays it out, and gets me the best interest for my money, and I place that interest along with the money, which makes the money bigger, do you see, every year. I have done this for many years, and now I have no doubt I have got hard upon a thousand pounds."

"Lor! You don't say so?"

"Yes, 'pon my honour, I have."

"Well, I wish I had got a hundred pounds, that's all I know."

"A hundred is not much," said Goody, whose ideas were prone to expand on financial theories.

In this way the couple chatted, until Goody's friend became almost as wise as Goody herself upon the matter of the investment, and the doctor's fiduciary relationship became equally well known to two females as it had previously been known to one.

Now, it is said that women cannot keep a secret. I believe this doctrine is not to be accepted or taken as a rule without exceptions. But it is certain that Goody's friend prattled and tattled long and pertinaciously, although in solemn confidence, to a variety of people. At last the fact or fiction of the pauper's fortune became known to Mr. Doe, a popular baker, and chairman of the board of guardians of the union which had the honour of maintaining out of its public funds the wealthy pauper.

Mr. Doe was a man of independent mind. How he won his way, as he frequently had occasion to say, to the distinction of a member of the vestry and chairman of the board of guardians, was by his own talents (sometimes he said genius), and his untiring energy, and his uncompromising honesty. He was not the man to overlook any abuse; he was the last man in the world to permit a fraud to go unnoticed or unpunished. When he heard of the case of this female pauper with a fortune, he determined to sift it to the last. He told the story as he received it to his colleagues or subordinate members of the board of guardians; and a sub-committee was appointed to investigate the matter. The clerk to the board was directed to write to the doctor demanding from him an explanation. Upon that the board dropped the subject for a fortnight, in order that, as Mr. Doe said, every body might have ample opportunity for their proper defence against the grave charges he had to make against them.

The doctor still held his situation of medical adviser and attendant to the workhouse.

The female pauper was unfortunately ill, and at the time when this outcry arose she was an inmate of the infirmary or sick-ward. The doctor was then in attendance upon her.

When the surgeon received the letter, he was of course naturally amazed. Long-continued success and concealment had led him to confidently believe it was unknown to any body but himself that he held the money. How the secret had leaked out he could not tell or guess. A conversation, which he found no difficulty in obtaining, with the patient did not help the solution of the mystery; for she, like an old sinner that she was, denied having mentioned the thing to a living soul. She affected to be as much in the dark as he was as to the mode in which the intelligence had reached the board. She did not affect to be, but really was, terribly alarmed by the discovery. The doctor heightened that alarm by telling her she would be prosecuted and punished; no doubt sent to the treadmill; or, it might be, transported for fraud upon the board of guardians. He told her that the only course for her to adopt was one of entire secrecy. She must deny every thing; she must declare she had never said that she had money; utterly deny that he had received any from her for any purpose; and if she did so, he would back her statement up by declaring that he had none of her money in his control. The poor deluded wretch saw that she was placing herself entirely in the hands of her doctor, and that he might turn round upon her; or at least she thought so. But still, as between the treadmill and transportation, she hesitated to run the risk of the doctor's possible fraud upon her.

The meeting of the board took place. The doctor, in reply to the letter sent him, wrote a short pithy answer, declaring the statement touching him and the female pauper and patient to be a flimsy fabrication, which he thought it beneath him to answer in detail. He gave his unqualified denial, and should do no more. As for entering on a defence against such accusations, why, his character was before the world, and he left the guardians to judge the mere probability of such a statement as that which had been made by somebody to his discredit. If the guardians felt inclined for any further information, perhaps he might be disposed to give it; but his present opinion was, that he should not.

The female pauper on being brought up before the guardians for examination,--or, to speak more correctly, a deputation of the board, or its committee, waited at her bedside,--she stoutly denied every thing. She declared most solemnly that she had no money, and asked the inquirer, if she had such money, would she be there, in that wretched infirmary, on their bed, in unsavoury pauperism, and taking the noxious workhouse physic? One member of the deputation was convinced that the chairman had led them on a wild-goose chase: that the woman had no such fortune as had been represented; that the whole affair was a bag of moonshine. Another had no opinion at all; he said, in frankness, that he did not know what to make of the matter; and a third had a notion directly contrary to the first, and thought the ratepayers had been swindled for a long while; that the chairman of the board was quite right, and that the matter ought to be further looked into.

It unfortunately happened between the date of this inquiry of the baker and the deputation that the pauper died. Poor creature! she expired under the treatment of her friend and conspirator against the ratepayers,--the Workhouse Doctor. That death was a godsend to him, for it practically stopped all further investigation.

The chairman of the board of guardians, Mr. Doe, at the meeting when the report of the committee was brought up, expressed himself dissatisfied; he said he thought he smelt a rat; he had his suspicions that the doctor had got the woman's money; he was sure, almost certain, that the ratepayers had been robbed. He would like to have the whole thing out, and at once. He did not like that evasive letter of their surgeon's; he should like that gentleman brought before them at once, and be asked to explain. If he came, and did explain, well and good; Mr. Doe would not object to apologise when he had been convinced that he had been in the wrong. Until he was so convinced, he should hold his own opinion, and vindicate it. The upshot of the whole investigation of this worthy, and energetic, and prosperous, and dignified tradesman was, that the surgeon was sent for by a special messenger, and that he attended their deliberations at the board meeting I have last referred to. He manifested a lofty spirit of mock dignity. He protested against the outrage to which he had been subjected by their suspicions and by their demand, and by having him arraigned before them like a criminal at a public tribunal. He did not know that he was doing at all right in noticing these charges; but concluded by laying his hand melodramatically upon his heart, offering many objurgations, and ultimately, in the most familiar way, offering to prove--as he did prove, to the satisfaction of the majority, and the dissatisfaction of the minority, of the board--that the tattle of the chairman's informant was a tissue of falsehood, or the wild imaginings of a lunatic.

The sequel to the whole of these incidents and this investigation was a resolution, passed by a majority of the board, expressing confidence in their medical officer, embodying an opinion that he had been unjustly aspersed, and requesting him to continue to bestow upon the paupers of the union under the control of that board of guardians his eminent services and truly Christian-like mercies.

THE MISSING WILL.

Mr. Franklin was a solicitor in good practice at the West End of London, having offices at ---- Chambers, Regent Street, and a private residence near Fulham. He was a man of somewhat peculiar habits, although very shrewd, able in his profession, and generous towards his friends--who were not a few. His domestic life had been far from comfortable. He had been separated from his wife, through incompatibility of temper; and that lady, with one of her children, lived in a distant part of the metropolis, upon a liberal allowance from his purse.

This description will cover the life and pursuits of Mr. Franklin during a series of about fifteen years. All this while, and probably much earlier than the beginning of this epoch, he saved a considerable portion of his earnings, and invested it with that success a prudent lawyer was able to command. He was not, it is true, what is called a speculative or "enterprising" man. He was rather a plodding or hard-working man. He had a notion that lawyers ought not to engage in risks, lest they should be tempted, in the frenzy of greed, or to cover some unusual loss, to use the money which clients might by necessity or choice leave in their hands. He never made "lumps of money," but grew rich by slow degrees, as the accumulated instalments of his frugality were piled on each other, and as the usufruct thereof, year by year, swelled the total of his husbanded gains.

At the head of his staff or firm was a managing clerk; and at the top of his rather small establishment in the country was a housekeeper. In both these persons Mr. Franklin had the utmost confidence. That comfortable feeling, I suppose, grew out of long experience; but it was not one I found it possible to share on my first introduction to these worthy persons. The clerk exhibited all the salient features of his calling. He was cunning, reticent, and conceited. I dare say he was faithful to his master. Fidelity is a peculiar merit of the attorney's clerk. I have known many in my time, but never knew one treacherous to his master; and never heard, on reliable authority, of one who betrayed a client's secret. I have often had occasion to know that bribes have been offered to the wretched copyist, whose earnings have probably not averaged a pound per week; and to office-lads, whose wages were but a few shillings--bribes equal to at least a quarter's honest income--but not a secret could be extracted in this mode. I have often mused on this phenomenon, but never could fully understand the exact relation between the cause and the effect. The reader is perhaps a better psychologist than I am, and can explain it. I leave the fact in his hands, or head--merely vouching for it as a fact. As I have said, there was this faithful clerk at the head of the staff in Mr. Franklin's office.

The housekeeper who presided over the domestic economy of the lawyer's dwelling was a very ordinary sort of person. She was somewhere about forty-eight or fifty years of age. She was rather tall, and somewhat bulky in form. Her features were a little harsh, her voice was not one that could be described as musical, and her manners were not of that order denominated ladylike. She also was a faithful servant--or at least she very often told me so, and I have no evidence to the contrary. She declared to me, soon after my introduction to her, that she had never robbed the good man (that is, her then late master) of a penny. She had always laid out his money to the best advantage, never got a commission from the tradesmen who supplied butter, cheese, eggs, or other comestibles; and, in fact, never plundered him after the manner of her sisterhood. She was in fact--I take it for granted, and ask the reader to assume--a model housekeeper.

This is a censorious and scandalmongering age. I cannot, I fear, rely upon it that my pages may not fall into the hands of some one or two persons always ready to suspect and say ill of their neighbours. Let me, therefore, at once clearly and emphatically state, that no relationship whatever subsisted between Mr. Franklin and this lady but the ostensible one of master and servant. On this head there ought to be no doubt.

Mr. Franklin one day, after a short illness, died.

The fact of his death was almost immediately communicated to his relatives and friends, who mingled a few natural and conventional tears over his dead body, which, in due course, was interred, without needless pomp or ceremony, in a churchyard not far off.

After and before the funeral much surprise was expressed at the non-discovery of a will.

Had he made a will, or had he died intestate? On that head there was much speculation, and many decided opinions formed. Some folks argued that it was very foolish for a lawyer, above all men in the world, to leave his intentions undisclosed, and bequeath a negative legacy of trouble, distrust, suspicion, heart-burning, and social war among his acquaintances and kindred. They didn't think he could do it. Others contended that there was nothing remarkable in a solicitor's not making a will. These persons may be divided into two classes. One lot cynically remarked that shoemakers' children were usually worse shod than other brats; that the offspring of tailors were to be usually known by the seediness of their costume; that publicans never drank the liquors they vended; that parsons rarely illustrated, by their practice the virtues they taught in their pulpits; and that a lawyer should betray a crowning want of prudence was not, therefore, wonderful. This was the reasoning by which some were led up to the belief that Mr. Franklin had certainly not made a will. Another lot sneered at this circumlocutory and unsatisfactory process of argument. They said that the thing was plain enough. The deceased was a lawyer. He well knew, and was satisfied with, the arrangements made by the wisdom of the legislature for the distribution of the personal estate of intestates. Against all this speculation there was, however, the unswerving and oft-repeated declarations of the managing clerk, who said that his late master did, about two years before his death, make a will. The draft thereof was in the handwriting of Mr. Franklin. He had also engrossed or copied it for the executors with his own right hand. The attestation had, however, been made by that faithful clerk and by "that rascal Edwards," a junior clerk, whose skill in the imitation of autographs had secured him gratuitous and comfortable board and lodging at Portland.

If the deceased made a will, where could it be? That was a knotty and interesting question. In its solution nobody took a deeper interest than the housekeeper. If it could be found, it would. She was as sure as of the fact of her existence (and of this, as she had never heard the Berkleyian theory propounded, she had not the slightest shadow of a doubt), that it would secure her the reward of long and meritorious servitude. The relatives and friends, who desired to find a will, and thought she might aid in its discovery, promised to reward her if her faith were not justified by the document when it turned up. The clerk was also zealous in searching for it every where that his sagacity pointed out as its probable lurking-place. Neither will nor draft of a will could, however, be found. The office and the house were ransacked. The safe, all the tin cases, drawers, and bundles of papers, were critically examined without success. Suspicion, it is needless to say, was rife. It must have been destroyed, was the conclusion almost uniformly arrived at; and the delinquent was marked out by the imagination of several.

The lawyer's only son, who had been a riotous youth, and a sore trouble to his father, was the suspected criminal. It was notorious that this young man had drawn heavily upon his parent from time to time. He did not like the honourable profession of the law, and, in order to accommodate his taste, Mr. Franklin had paid considerable premiums to men of repute in other professions; but the student, or apprentice, forfeited the money thus paid at different times for his benefit. He had twice robbed his father of large amounts. The lawyer's patience and affection had apparently been exhausted some time before his death. The son, deprived of all allowance by which to sustain an idle life, was ultimately compelled to gain his living in a comparatively humble position, and when the father died he was earning a pound a week in a merchant's counting-house. Mr. Franklin, junior, who lodged with his mother, heard of his loss as soon as that lady did. He at once threw up his engagement, under the vague belief that a fortune had been dropped into his lap. He practically took possession of the offices and the house of the deceased, and had abundant opportunities of getting rid of any document obnoxious to his interests. Uncharitable rumour, therefore, set down as fact that this young man, had ascertained that an indignant parent had cut him off with or without the proverbial shilling; that the missing will was the instrument by which his just punishment had been effected; that he had discovered the will, and in it his fate; and that, in order to get the benefit of the statutable distribution of the estate, he had destroyed both the document and the draft thereof.

About a fortnight after Mr. Franklin's death I was instructed to probe the mystery of this lost will. It was chiefly desired that I should find the will itself; but that was thought a hopeless task. The next thing desired was, that I should get clear evidence of its former existence, its provisions, and bequests. It was also desired that I should get evidence enough to sustain a prosecution against the young man.

My task, which appeared almost hopeless, and not likely to be profitable, turned out short, easy, and satisfactory.