"I don"t know what you call an available trace," replied Dandy, "but I can send you to a lady who knows where he is, and where you can find him."
The stranger returned from the door, and sitting down again covered his face with his hands, as if to collect himself; at length he said, "This is most extraordinary; tell me all about it."
Dandy related that with which the reader is already acquainted, and did so with such an air of comic gravity and pompous superiority, that his master, now in the best possible spirits, was exceedingly amused.
"Well, Dandy," said he, "if your information respecting Fenton prove correct, reckon upon another hundred, instead of the fifty I mentioned.
I suppose I may go now?" he added, smiling.
Dandy, still maintaining his gravity, waved his hand with an air of suitable authority, intimating that the other had permission to depart.
On going out, however, he said, "I beg your pardon, sir, but while you"re abroad, I"d take it as a favor if you"d find out the state o"
the funds. Of course, I"ll be investin"; and a man may as well do things with his eyes open--may as well examine both sides o" the candle-box, you know. You may go, sir."
"Well," thought the stranger to himself, as he literally went on his way rejoicing toward Birney"s office, "no man in this life should ever yield to despair. Here was I this morning encompa.s.sed by doubt and darkness, and I may almost say by despair itself. Yet see how easily and naturally the hand of Providence, for it is nothing less, has changed the whole tenor of my existence. Everything is beginning not only to brighten, but to present an appearance of order, by which we shall, I trust, be enabled to guide ourselves through the maze of difficulty that lies, or that did lie, at all events, before us. Alas, if the wretched suicide, who can see nothing but cause of despondency about him and before him, were to reflect upon the possibility of what only one day might evolve from the ongoing circ.u.mstances of life, how many would that wholesome reflection prevent from the awful crime of impatience at the wisdom of G.o.d, and a want of confidence in his government! I remember the case of an unhappy young man who plunged into a future life, as it were, to-day, who, had he maintained his part until the next, would have found himself master of thousands. No; I shall never despair. I will in this, as in every other virtue, imitate my beloved Lucy, who said, that to whatever depths of wretchedness life might bring her, she would never yield to that."
"Good news, Birney!" he exclaimed, on entering that gentleman"s office; "charming intelligence! Both are found at last."
"Explain yourself, my dear sir," replied the other; "how is it? What has happened? Both of whom?"
"Mrs. Norton and Fenton."
He then explained the circ.u.mstances as they had been explained to himself by Dandy; and Birney seemed gratified certainly, but not so much as the stranger thought he ought to have been.
"How is this?" he asked; "this discovery, this double discovery, does not seem to give you the satisfaction which I had expected, it would?"
"Perhaps not," replied the steady man of law, "but I am highly gratified, notwithstanding, provided everything you tell me turns out to be correct. But even then, I apprehend that the testimony of this Mrs.
Norton, unsupported as it is by doc.u.mentary evidence, will not be: sufficient for our purpose. It will require corroboration, and how are we to corroborate it?"
"If it will enable us to prevent the marriage," replied the other, "I am satisfied."
"That is very generous and disinterested, I grant," said Birney, "and what few are capable of; but still there are forms of law and principles of common justice to be observed and complied with; and these, at present, stand in our way for want of the doc.u.mentary evidence I speak of."
"What then ought our next step to be?--but I suppose I can antic.i.p.ate you--to see Mrs. Norton."
"Of course, to see Mrs. Norton; and I propose that we start immediately.
There is no time to be lost about it. I shall get on my boots, and change my dress a little, and, with this man of yours to guide us, we shall be on the way to Summerfield Cottage in half-an-hour."
"Should I not communicate this intelligence to Lady Gourlay?" said the stranger. "It will restore her to life; and surely the removal of only one day"s sorrow such as lies at her heart becomes a duty."
"But suppose our information should prove incorrect, into what a dreadful relapse would you plunge her then!"
"On, very true--very true, indeed: that is well thought of; let us first see that there is no mistake, and afterwards we can proceed with confidence."
Poor Lucy, unconscious that the events we have related had taken place, was pa.s.sing an existence of which every day brought round to her nothing but anguish and misery. She now not only refused to see her brother on any occasion, or under any circ.u.mstances, but requested an interview with her father, in order to make him acquainted with the abominable principles, by the inculcation of which, as a rule of life and conduct, he had attempted to corrupt her. Her father having heard this portion of her complaint, diminished in its heinousness as it necessarily was by her natural modesty, appeared very angry, and swore roundly at the young scapegrace, as he called him.
"But the truth is, Lucy," he added, "that however wrong and wicked he may have been, and was, yet we cannot be over severe on him. He has had no opportunities of knowing better, and of course he will mend. I intend to lecture him severely for uttering such principles to you; but, on the other hand, I know him to be a shrewd, keen young fellow, who promises well, notwithstanding. In truth, I like him, scamp as he is; and I believe that whatever is bad in him--"
"Whatever is bad in him! Why, papa, there is nothing good in him."
"Tut, Lucy; I believe, I say, that whatever is bad in him he has picked up from the kind of society he mixed with."
"Papa," she replied, "it grieves me to hear you, sir, palliate the conduct of such a person--to become almost the apologist of principles so utterly fiendish. You know that I am not and never have been in the habit of using ungenerous language against the absent. So far as I am concerned, he has violated all the claims of a brother--has foregone all t.i.tle to a sister"s love; but that is not all--I believe him to be so essentially corrupt and vicious in heart and soul, so thoroughly and blackly diabolical in his principles--moral I cannot call them--that I would stake my existence he is some base and plotting impostor, in whose veins there flows not one single drop of my pure-hearted mother"s blood.
I therefore warn you, sir, that he is an impostor, with, perhaps, a dishonorable t.i.tle to your name, but none at all to your property."
"Nonsense, you foolish girl. Is he not my image?"
"I admit he resembles you, sir, very much, and I do not deny that he may be"--she paused, and alternately became pale and red by turns--"what I mean to say, sir, is what I have already said, that he is not my mother"s son, and that although he may be privileged to bear your name, he has no claim on either your property or t.i.tle. Does it not strike you, sir, that it might be to make way for this person that my legitimate brother was removed long ago? And I have also heard yourself say frequently, while talking of my brother, how extremely like mamma and me he was."
"There is no doubt he was," replied her father, somewhat struck by the force of her observations; "and I was myself a good deal surprised at the change which must have taken place in him since his childhood.
However, you know he accounted for this himself very fairly and very naturally."
"Very ingeniously, at least," she replied; "with more of ingenuity, I fear, than truth. Now, sir, hear me further. You are aware that I never liked those Corbets, who have been always so deeply, and, excuse me, sir, so mysteriously in your confidence."
"Yes, Lucy, I know you never did; but that is a prejudice you inherited from your mother."
"I appeal to your own conscience, sir, whether mamma"s prejudice against them was not just and well founded. Yet it was not so much prejudice as the antipathy which good bears to evil, honesty to fraud, and truth to darkness, dissimulation, and falsehood. I entreat you, then, to investigate this matter, papa; for as sure as I have life, so certainly was my dear brother removed, in order, at the proper time, to make way for this impostor. You know not, sir, but there may be a base and inhuman murder involved in this matter--nay, a double murder--that of my cousin, too; yes, and the worst of all murders, the murder of the innocent and defenceless. As a man, as a magistrate, but, above all, a thousand times, as a father--as the father and uncle of the very two children that have disappeared, it becomes your duty to examine into this dark business thoroughly."
"I have no reason to suspect the Corbets, Lucy. I have ever found them faithful to me and to my interests."
"I know, sir, you have ever found them obsequious and slavish and ready to abet you in many acts which I regret that you ever committed. There is the case of that unfortunate man, Trailcudgel, and many similar ones; were they not as active and cheerful! in bearing out your very harsh orders against him and others of your tenantry, as if they I had been advancing the cause of humanity?"
"Say the cause of justice, if you please, Lucy--the rights of a landlord."
"But, papa, if the unfortunate tenantry by whose toil and labor we live in affluence and; luxury do not find a friend in their landlord, who is, by his relation to them, their natural protector, to whom else in the wide world can they turn? This, however, is not the subject on which I wish to speak. I do believe that Thomas Corbet is deep, designing, and vindictive. He was always a close, dark man, without either cheerfulness or candor. Beware, therefore, of him and of his family. Nay, he has a capacity for being dangerous; for it strikes me, sir, that his intellect is as far above his position in life as his principles are beneath it."
There was much in what Lucy said that forced itself upon her father"s reflection, much that startled him, and a good deal that gave him pain.
He paused for a considerable time after she had ceased to speak, and said,
"I will think of these matters, Lucy. I will probably do more; and if I find that they have played me foul by imposing upon me--" He paused abruptly, and seemed embarra.s.sed, the truth being that he knew and felt how completely he was in their power.
"Now, papa," said Lucy, "after having heard my opinion of this young man--after the wanton outrage upon all female delicacy and virtue of which he has been guilty, I trust you will not in future attempt to obtrude him upon me. I will not see him, speak to him, nor acknowledge him; and such, let what may happen, is my final determination."
"So far, Lucy, I will accede to your wishes. I shall take care that he troubles you with no more wicked exhortations."
"Thank you, dear papa; this is kind, and I feel it so."
"Now," said her father, after she had withdrawn, "how am I to act? It is not impossible but there may be much truth in what she says. I remember, however, the death of the only son that could possibly be imposed on me in the sense alluded to her. He surely does not live; or if he does, the far-sighted sagacity which made the account of his death a fraud upon my credulity, for such selfish and treacherous purposes, is worthy of being concocted in the deepest pit of h.e.l.l. Yet that some one of them has betrayed me, is evident from the charges brought against me by this stranger to whom Lucy is so devotedly attached, and which charges Thomas Corbet could not clear up. If one of these base but dexterous villains, or if the whole gang were to outwit me, positively I could almost blow my very brains out, for allowing myself, after all, to become their dupe and plaything. I will think of it, however. And again, there is the likeness; there does seem to be a difficulty in that; for, beyond all doubt, my legitimate child, up until his disappearance, did not bear in his countenance a single feature of mine but bore a strong resemblance to his mother; whereas this Tom is my born image! Yet I like him. He has all my points; knows the world, and despises it as much as I do. He did not know Lucy, however, or he would have kept his worldly opinions to himself. It is true he said very little but what we see about us as the regulating principles of life every day; but Lucy, on the other hand, is no every-day girl, and will not receive such doctrines, and I am glad of it They may do very well in a son; but somehow one shudders at the contemplation of their existence in the heart and principles of a daughter. Unfortunately, however I am in the power of these Corbets, and I feel that exposure at this period, the crisis of my daughter"s marriage, would not only frustrate my ambition for her, but occasion my very death, I fear. I know not how it is, but I think if I were to live my life over again, I would try a different course."
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII. An Unpleasant Disclosure to Dunroe
--Anthony Corbet gives Important Doc.u.ments to the Stranger--Norton catches a Tartar.
The next morning the stranger was agreeably surprised by seeing the round, rosy, and benevolent features of Father M"Mahon, as he presented himself at his breakfast table. Their meeting was cordial and friendly, with the exception of a slight appearance of embarra.s.sment that was evident in the manner of the priest.