"Direct to me, Monsieur Smith--always a safe name--Ship Inn, Bullone."
"Jeremiah--Smith--Jeremiah!"
"Do you know the name then?" said Mr. Barlow. "Well; the poor man owns that he was frightened at his brother--that he wished to do what is right--that he feared his brother would not let him--that your father was very kind to him--and so he came off at once to me; and I was very luckily at home to a.s.sure him that the heir was alive, and prepared to a.s.sert his rights. Now then, Mr. Beaufort, we have the witness, but will that suffice us? I fear not. Will the jury believe him with no other testimony at his back? Consider!--When he was gone I put myself in communication with some officers at Bow Street about this brother of his--a most notorious character, commonly called in the police slang Dashing Jerry--"
"Ah! Well, proceed!"
"Your one witness, then, is a very poor, penniless man, his brother a rogue, a convict: this witness, too, is the most timid, fluctuating, irresolute fellow I ever saw; I should tremble for his testimony against a sharp, bullying lawyer. And that, sir, is all at present we have to look to."
"I see--I see. It is dangerous--it is hazardous. But truth is truth; justice--justice! I will run the risk."
"Pardon me, if I ask, did you ever know this brother?--were you ever absolutely acquainted with him--in the same house?"
"Many years since--years of early hardship and trial--I was acquainted with him--what then?"
"I am sorry to hear it," and the lawyer looked grave. "Do you not see that if this witness is browbeat--is disbelieved, and if it be shown that you, the claimant, was--forgive my saying it--intimate with a brother of such a character, why the whole thing might be made to look like perjury and conspiracy. If we stop here it is an ugly business!"
"And is this all you have to say to me? The witness is found--the only surviving witness--the only proof I ever shall or ever can obtain, and you seek to terrify me--me too--from using the means for redress Providence itself vouchsafes me--Sir, I will not hear you!"
"Mr. Beaufort, you are impatient--it is natural. But if we go to law--that is, should I have anything to do with it, wait--wait till your case is good. And hear me yet. This is not the only proof--this is not the only witness; you forget that there was an examined copy of the register; we may yet find that copy, and the person who copied it may yet be alive to attest it. Occupied with this thought, and weary of waiting the result of our advertis.e.m.e.nt, I resolved to go into the neighbourhood of Fernside; luckily, there was a gentleman"s seat to be sold in the village. I made the survey of this place my apparent business. After going over the house, I appeared anxious to see how far some alterations could be made--alterations to render it more like Lord Lilburne"s villa. This led me to request a sight of that villa--a crown to the housekeeper got me admittance. The housekeeper had lived with your father, and been retained by his lordship. I soon, therefore, knew which were the rooms the late Mr. Beaufort had princ.i.p.ally occupied; shown into his study, where it was probable he would keep his papers, I inquired if it were the same furniture (which seemed likely enough from its age and fashion) as in your father"s time: it was so; Lord Lilburne had bought the house just as it stood, and, save a few additions in the drawing-room, the general equipment of the villa remained unaltered.
You look impatient!--I"m coming to the point. My eye fell upon an old-fashioned bureau--"
"But we searched every drawer in that bureau!"
"Any secret drawers?"
"Secret drawers! No! there were no secret drawers that I ever heard of!"
Mr. Barlow rubbed his hands and mused a moment.
"I was struck with that bureau; for any father had had one like it. It is not English--it is of Dutch manufacture."
"Yes, I have heard that my father bought it at a sale, three or four years after his marriage."
"I learned this from the housekeeper, who was flattered by my admiring it. I could not find out from her at what sale it had been purchased, but it was in the neighbourhood she was sure. I had now a date to go upon; I learned, by careless inquiries, what sales near Fernside had taken place in a certain year. A gentleman had died at that date whose furniture was sold by auction. With great difficulty, I found that his widow was still alive, living far up the country: I paid her a visit; and, not to fatigue you with too long an account, I have only to say that she not only a.s.sured me that she perfectly remembered the bureau, but that it had secret drawers and wells, very curiously contrived; nay, she showed me the very catalogue in which the said receptacles are noticed in capitals, to arrest the eye of the bidder, and increase the price of the bidding. That your father should never have revealed where he stowed this doc.u.ment is natural enough, during the life of his uncle; his own life was not spared long enough to give him much opportunity to explain afterwards, but I feel perfectly persuaded in my mind--that unless Mr. Robert Beaufort discovered that paper amongst the others he examined--in one of those drawers will be found all we want to substantiate your claims. This is the more likely from your father never mentioning, even to your mother apparently, the secret receptacles in the bureau. Why else such mystery? The probability is that he received the doc.u.ment either just before or at the time he purchased the bureau, or that he bought it for that very purpose: and, having once deposited the paper in a place he deemed secure from curiosity--accident, carelessness, policy, perhaps, rather shame itself (pardon me) for the doubt of your mother"s discretion, that his secrecy seemed to imply, kept him from ever alluding to the circ.u.mstance, even when the intimacy of after years made him more a.s.sured of your mother"s self-sacrificing devotion to his interests. At his uncle"s death he thought to repair all!"
"And how, if that be true--if that Heaven which has delivered me hitherto from so many dangers, has, in the very secrecy of my poor father, saved my birthright front the gripe of the usurper--how, I say, is---"
"The bureau to pa.s.s into our possession? That is the difficulty. But we must contrive it somehow, if all else fail us; meanwhile, as I now feel sure that there has been a copy of that register made, I wish to know whether I should not immediately cross the country into Wales, and see if I can find any person in the neighbourhood of A----- who did examine the copy taken: for, mark you, the said copy is only of importance as leading to the testimony of the actual witness who took it."
"Sir," said Vaudemont, heartily shaking Mr. Barlow by the hand, "forgive my first petulance. I see in you the very man I desired and wanted--your acuteness surprises and encourages me. Go to Wales, and G.o.d speed you!"
"Very well!--in five minutes I shall be off. Meanwhile, see the witness yourself; the sight of his benefactor"s son will do more to keep him steady than anything else. There"s his address, and take care not to give him money. And now I will order my chaise--the matter begins to look worth expense. Oh! I forgot to say that Monsieur Liancourt called on you yesterday about his own affairs. He wishes much to consult you.
I told him you would probably be this evening in town, and he said he would wait you at your lodging."
"Yes--I will lose not a moment in going to London, and visiting our witness. And he saw my mother at the altar! My poor mother--Ah, how could my father have doubted her!" and as he spoke, he blushed for the first time with shame at that father"s memory. He could not yet conceive that one so frank, one usually so bold and open, could for years have preserved from the woman who had sacrificed all to him, a secret to her so important! That was, in fact, the only blot on his father"s honour--a foul and grave blot it was. Heavily had the punishment fallen on those whom the father loved best! Alas, Philip had not yet learned what terrible corrupters are the Hope and the Fear of immense Wealthy, even to men reputed the most honourable, if they have been reared and pampered in the belief that wealth is the Arch blessing of life. Rightly considered, in Philip Beaufort"s solitary meanness lay the vast moral of this world"s darkest truth!
Mr. Barlow was gone. Philip was about to enter his own chaise, when a dormeuse-and-four drove up to the inn-door to change horses. A young man was reclining, at his length, in the carriage, wrapped in cloaks, and with a ghastly paleness--the paleness of long and deep disease upon his cheeks. He turned his dim eye with, perhaps, a glance of the sick man"s envy on that strong and athletic, form, majestic with health and vigour, as it stood beside the more humble vehicle. Philip did not, however, notice the new arrival; he sprang into the chaise, it rattled on, and thus, unconsciously, Arthur Beaufort and his cousin had again met. To which was now the Night--to which the Morning?
CHAPTER XII.
"Bakam. Let my men guard the walls.
Syana. And mine the temple."--The Island Princess.
While thus eventfully the days and the weeks had pa.s.sed for Philip, no less eventfully, so far as the inner life is concerned, had they glided away for f.a.n.n.y. She had feasted in quiet and delighted thought on the consciousness that she was improving--that she was growing worthier of him--that he would perceive it on his return. Her manner was more thoughtful, more collected--less childish, in short, than it had been.
And yet, with all the stir and flutter of the aroused intellect, the charm of her strange innocence was not scared away. She rejoiced in the ancient liberty she had regained of going out and coming back when she pleased; and as the weather was too cold ever to tempt Simon from his fireside, except, perhaps, for half-an-hour in the forenoon, so the hours of dusk, when he least missed her, were those which she chiefly appropriated for stealing away to the good school-mistress, and growing wiser and wiser every day in the ways of G.o.d and the learning of His creatures. The schoolmistress was not a brilliant woman. Nor was it accomplishments of which f.a.n.n.y stood in need, so much as the opening of her thoughts and mind by profitable books and rational conversation.
Beautiful as were all her natural feelings, the schoolmistress had now little difficulty in educating feelings up to the dignity of principles.
At last, hitherto patient under the absence of one never absent from her heart, f.a.n.n.y received from him the letter he had addressed to her two days before he quitted Beaufort Court;--another letter--a second letter--a letter to excuse himself for not coming before--a letter that gave her an address that asked for a reply. It was a morning of unequalled delight approaching to transport. And then the excitement of answering the letter--the pride of showing how she was improved, what an excellent hand she now wrote! She shut herself up in her room: she did not go out that day. She placed the paper before her, and, to her astonishment, all that she had to say vanished from her mind at once.
How was she even to begin? She had always. .h.i.therto called him "Brother."
Ever since her conversation with Sarah she felt that she could not call him that name again for the world--no, never! But what should she call him--what could she call him? He signed himself "Philip." She knew that was his name. She thought it a musical name to utter, but to write it!
No! some instinct she could not account for seemed to whisper that it was improper--presumptuous, to call him "Dear Philip." Had Burns"s songs--the songs that unthinkingly he had put into her hand, and told her to read--songs that comprise the most beautiful love-poems in the world--had they helped to teach her some of the secrets of her own heart? And had timidity come with knowledge? Who shall say--who guess what pa.s.sed within her? Nor did f.a.n.n.y herself, perhaps, know her own feelings: but write the words "Dear Philip" she could not. And the whole of that day, though she thought of nothing else, she could not even get through the first line to her satisfaction. The next morning she sat down again. It would be so unkind if she did not answer immediately: she must answer. She placed his letter before her--she resolutely began.
But copy after copy was made and torn. And Simon wanted her--and Sarah wanted her--and there were bills to be paid; and dinner was over before her task was really begun. But after dinner she began in good earnest.
"How kind in you to write to me" (the difficulty of any name was dispensed with by adopting none), "and to wish to know about my dear grandfather! He is much the same, but hardly ever walks out now, and I have had a good deal of time to myself. I think something will surprise you, and make you smile, as you used to do at first, when you come back. You must not be angry with me that I have gone out by myself very often--every day, indeed. I have been so safe. n.o.body has ever offered to be rude again to f.a.n.n.y" (the word "f.a.n.n.y" was carefully scratched out with a penknife, and me subst.i.tuted). "But you shall know all when you come. And are you sure you are well--quite--quite well? Do you never have the headaches you complained of sometimes? Do say this? Do you walk out-every day? Is there any pretty churchyard near you now? Whom do you walk with?
"I have been so happy in putting the flowers on the two graves. But I still give yours the prettiest, though the other is so dear to me. I feel sad when I come to the last, but not when I look at the one I have looked at so long. Oh, how good you were! But you don"t like me to thank you."
"This is very stupid!" cried f.a.n.n.y, suddenly throwing down her pen; "and I don"t think I am improved at it;" and she half cried with vexation.
Suddenly a bright idea crossed her. In the little parlour where the schoolmistress privately received her, she had seen among the books, and thought at the time how useful it might be to her if ever she had to write to Philip, a little volume ent.i.tled, The Complete Letter Writer. She knew by the t.i.tle-page that it contained models for every description of letter--no doubt it would contain the precise thing that would suit the present occasion. She started up at the notion. She would go--she could be back to finish the letter before post-time. She put on her bonnet--left the letter, in her haste, open on the table--and just looking into the parlour in her way to the street door, to convince herself that Simon was asleep, and the wire-guard was on the fire, she hurried to the kind schoolmistress.
One of the fogs that in autumn gather sullenly over London and its suburbs covered the declining day with premature dimness. It grew darker and darker as she proceeded, but she reached the house in safety. She spent a quarter of an hour in timidly consulting her friend about all kinds of letters except the identical one that she intended to write, and having had it strongly impressed on her mind that if the letter was to a gentleman at all genteel, she ought to begin "Dear Sir," and end with "I have the honour to remain;" and that he would be everlastingly offended if she did not in the address affix "Esquire" to his name (that, was a great discovery),--she carried off the precious volume, and quitted the house. There was a wall that, bounding the demesnes of the school, ran for some short distance into the main street. The increasing fog, here, faintly struggled against the glimmer of a single lamp at some little distance. Just in this spot, her eye was caught by a dark object in the road, which she could scarcely perceive to be a carriage, when her hand was seized, and a voice said in her ear:--
"Ah! you will not be so cruel to me, I hope, as you were to my messenger! I have come myself for you."
She turned in great alarm, but the darkness prevented her recognising the face of him who thus accosted her. "Let me go!" she cried,--"let me go!"
"Hush! hush! No--no. Come with me. You shall have a house--carriage--servants! You shall wear silk gowns and jewels! You shall be a great lady!"
As these various temptations succeeded in rapid course each new struggle of f.a.n.n.y, a voice from the coach-box said in a low tone,--
"Take care, my lord, I see somebody coming--perhaps a policeman!"
f.a.n.n.y heard the caution, and screamed for rescue.
"Is it so?" muttered the molester. And suddenly f.a.n.n.y felt her voice checked--her head mantled--her light form lifted from the ground. She clung--she struggled it was in vain. It was the affair of a moment: she felt herself borne into the carriage--the door closed--the stranger was by her side, and his voice said:--
"Drive on, d.y.k.eman. Fast! fast!"
Two or three minutes, which seemed to her terror as ages, elapsed, when the gag and the mantle were gently removed, and the same voice (she still could not see her companion) said in a very mild tone:--
"Do not alarm yourself; there is no cause,--indeed there is not. I would not have adopted this plan had there been any other--any gentler one.
But I could not call at your own house--I knew no other where to meet you.
"This was the only course left to me--indeed it was. I made myself acquainted with your movements. Do not blame me, then, for prying into your footsteps. I watched for you all last night-you did not come out.
I was in despair. At last I find you. Do not be so terrified: I will not even touch your hand if you do not wish it."