Night and Morning Part 64

"Yours,

"LILBURNE "Park Lane, Sept. --"

"The Beauforts. Fate favors me--I will go. The date is for to-day."

He sent off a hasty line to accept the invitation, and finding he had a few hours yet to spare, he resolved to employ them in consultation with some lawyer as to the chances of ultimately regaining his inheritance--a hope which, however wild, he had, since his return to his native sh.o.r.e, and especially since he had heard of the strange visit made to Roger Morton, permitted himself to indulge. With this idea he sallied out, meaning to consult Liancourt, who, having a large acquaintance among the English, seemed the best person to advise him as to the choice of a lawyer at once active and honest,--when he suddenly chanced upon that gentleman himself.

"This is lucky, my dear Liancourt. I was just going to your lodgings."

"And I was coming to yours to know if you dine with Lord Lilburne. He told me he had asked you. I have just left him. And, by the sofa of Mephistopheles, there was the prettiest Margaret you ever beheld."

"Indeed!--Who?"

"He called her his niece; but I should doubt if he had any relation on this side the Styx so human as a niece."

"You seem to have no great predilection for our host."

"My dear Vaudemont, between our blunt, soldierly natures, and those wily, icy, sneering intellects, there is the antipathy of the dog to the cat."

"Perhaps so on our side, not on his--or why does he invite us?"

"London is empty; there is no one else to ask. We are new faces, new minds to him. We amuse him more than the hackneyed comrades he has worn out. Besides, he plays--and you, too. Fie on you!"

"Liancourt, I had two objects in knowing that man, and I pay to the toll for the bridge. When I cease to want the pa.s.sage, I shall cease to pay the toll."

"But the bridge may be a draw-bridge, and the moat is devilish deep below. Without metaphor, that man may ruin you before you know where you are."

"Bah! I have my eyes open. I know how much to spend on the rogue whose service I hire as a lackey's; and I know also where to stop. Liancourt,"

he added, after a short pause, and in a tone deep with suppressed pa.s.sion, "when I first saw that man, I thought of appealing to his heart for one who has a claim on it. That was a vain hope. And then there came upon me a sterner and deadlier thought--the scheme of the Avenger! This Lilburne--this rogue whom the world sets up to wors.h.i.+p--ruined, body and soul ruined--one whose name the world gibbets with scorn! Well, I thought to avenge that man. In his own house--amidst you all--I thought to detect the sharper, and brand the cheat!"

"You startle me!--It has been whispered, indeed, that Lord Lilburne is dangerous,--but skill is dangerous. To cheat!--an Englishman!--a n.o.bleman!--impossible!"

"Whether he do or not," returned Vaudemont, in a calmer tone, "I have foregone the vengeance, because he is--"

"Is what?"

"No matter," said Vaudemont aloud, but he added to himself,--"Because he is the grandfather of f.a.n.n.y!"

"You are very enigmatical to-day."

"Patience, Liancourt; I may solve all the riddles that make up my life, yet. Bear with me a little longer. And now can you help me to a lawyer?--a man experienced, indeed, and of repute, but young, active, not overladen with business;--I want his zeal and his time, for a hazard that your monopolists of clients may not deem worth their devotion."

"I can recommend you, then, the very man you require. I had a suit some years ago at Paris, for which English witnesses were necessary.

My avocat employed a solicitor here whose activity in collecting my evidence gained my cause. I will answer for his diligence and his honesty."

"His address?"

"Mr. Barlow--somewhere by the Strand--let me see--Ess.e.x-yes, Ess.e.x Street."

"Then good-bye to you for the present.--You dine at Lord Lilburne's too?"

"Yes. Adieu till then."

Vaudemont was not long before he arrived at Mr. Barlow's; a bra.s.s-plate announced to him the house. He was shown at once into a parlour, where he saw a man whom lawyers would call young, and spinsters middle-aged--viz., about two-and-forty; with a bold, resolute, intelligent countenance, and that steady, calm, sagacious eye, which inspires at once confidence and esteem.

Vaudemont scanned him with the look of one who has been accustomed to judge mankind--as a scholar does books--with rapidity because with practice. He had at first resolved to submit to him the heads of his case without mentioning names, and, in fact, he so commenced his narrative; but by degrees, as he perceived how much his own earnestness arrested and engrossed the interest of his listener, he warmed into fuller confidence, and ended by a full disclosure, and a caution as to the profoundest secrecy in case, if there were no hope to recover his rightful name, he might yet wish to retain, unannoyed by curiosity or suspicion, that by which he was not discreditably known.

"Sir," said Mr. Barlow, after a.s.suring him of the most scrupulous discretion,--"sir, I have some recollection of the trial inst.i.tuted by your mother, Mrs. Beaufort"--and the slight emphasis he laid on that name was the most grateful compliment he could have paid to the truth of Philip's recital. "My impression is, that it was managed in a very slovenly manner by her lawyer; and some of his oversights we may repair in a suit inst.i.tuted by yourself. But it would be absurd to conceal from you the great difficulties that beset us--your mother's suit, designed to establish her own rights, was far easier than that which you must commence--viz., an action for ejectment against a man who has been some years in undisturbed possession. Of course, until the missing witness is found out, it would be madness to commence litigation. And the question, then, will be, how far that witness will suffice? It is true, that one witness of a marriage, if the others are dead, is held sufficient by law. But I need not add, that that witness must be thoroughly credible.

In suits for real property, very little doc.u.mentary or secondary evidence is admitted. I doubt even whether the certificate of the marriage on which--in the loss or destruction of the register--you lay so much stress, would be available in itself. But if an examined copy, it becomes of the last importance, for it will then inform us of the name of the person who extracted and examined it. Heaven grant it may not have been the clergyman himself who performed the ceremony, and who, you say, is dead; if some one else, we should then have a second, no doubt credible and most valuable witness. The doc.u.ment would thus become available as proof, and, I think, that we should not fail to establish our case."

"But this certificate, how is it ever to be found? I told you we had searched everywhere in vain."

"True; but you say that your mother always declared that the late Mr.

Beaufort had so solemnly a.s.sured her, even just prior to his decease, that it was in existence, that I have no doubt as to the fact. It may be possible, but it is a terrible insinuation to make, that if Mr. Robert Beaufort, in examining the papers of the deceased, chanced upon a doc.u.ment so important to him, he abstracted or destroyed it. If this should not have been the case (and Mr. Robert Beaufort's moral character is unspotted--and we have no right to suppose it), the probability is, either that it was intrusted to some third person, or placed in some hidden drawer or deposit, the secret of which your father never disclosed. Who has purchased the house you lived in?"

"Fernside? Lord Lilburne. Mrs. Robert Beaufort's brother."

"Humph--probably, then, he took the furniture and all. Sir, this is a matter that requires some time for close consideration. With your leave, I will not only insert in the London papers an advertis.e.m.e.nt to the effect that you suggested to Mr. Roger Morton (in case you should have made a right conjecture as to the object of the man who applied to him), but I will also advertise for the witness himself. William Smith, you say, his name is. Did the lawyer employed by Mrs. Beaufort send to inquire for him in the colony?"

"No; I fear there could not have been time for that. My mother was so anxious and eager, and so convinced of the justice of her case--"

"That's a pity; her lawyer must have been a sad driveller."

"Besides, now I remember, inquiry was made of his relations in England.

His father, a farmer, was then alive; the answer was that he had certainly left Australia. His last letter, written two years before that date, containing a request for money, which the father, himself made a bankrupt by reverses, could not give, had stated that he was about to seek his fortune elsewhere--since then they had heard nothing of him."

"Ahem! Well, you will perhaps let me know where any relations of his are yet to be found, and I will look up the former suit, and go into the whole case without delay. In the meantime, you do right, sir--if you will allow me to say it--not to disclose either your own ident.i.ty or a hint of your intentions. It is no use putting suspicion on its guard.

And my search for this certificate must be managed with the greatest address. But, by the way--speaking of ident.i.ty--there can be no difficulty, I hope, in proving yours."

Philip was startled. "Why, I am greatly altered."

"But probably your beard and moustache may contribute to that change; and doubtless, in the village where you lived, there would be many with whom you were in sufficient intercourse, and on whose recollection, by recalling little anecdotes and circ.u.mstances with which no one but yourself could be acquainted, your features would force themselves along with the moral conviction that the man who spoke to them could be no other but Philip Morton--or rather Beaufort."

"You are right; there must be many such. There was not a cottage in the place where I and my dogs were not familiar and half domesticated."

"All's right, so far, then. But I repeat, we must not be too sanguine.

Law is not justice--"

"But G.o.d is," said Philip; and he left the room.

CHAPTER V.

"Volpone. A little in a mist, but not dejected; Never--but still myself."

BEN JONSON: Volpone.

"Peregrine. Am I enough disguised?