Night and Morning Part 74

"Foolish child!--give me that paper!"

"Never but with my life!" And f.a.n.n.y's cry for help rang through the house.

"Then--" the speech died on his lips, for at that instant a rapid stride was heard without--a momentary scuffle--voices in altercation;--the door gave way as if a battering ram had forced it;--not so much thrown forward as actually hurled into the room, the body of d.y.k.eman fell heavily, like a dead man's, at the very feet of Lord Lilburne--and Philip Vaudemont stood in the doorway!

The grasp of Lilburne on f.a.n.n.y's arm relaxed, and the girl, with one bound, sprung to Philip's breast. "Here, here!" she cried, "take it--take it!" and she thrust the paper into his hand. "Don't let them have it--read it--see it--never mind me!" But Philip, though his hand unconsciously closed on the precious doc.u.ment, did mind f.a.n.n.y; and in that moment her cause was the only one in the world to him.

"Foul villain!" he said, as he strode to Lilburne, while f.a.n.n.y still clung to his breast: "Speak!--speak!--is--she--is she?--man--man, speak!--you know what I would say!--She is the child of your own daughter--the grandchild of that Mary whom you dishonoured--the child of the woman whom William Gawtrey saved from pollution! Before he died, Gawtrey commended her to my care!--O G.o.d of Heaven!--speak!--I am not too late!"

The manner, the words, the face of Philip left Lilburne terror-stricken with conviction. But the man's crafty ability, debased as it was, triumphed even over remorse for the dread guilt meditated,--over grat.i.tude for the dread guilt spared. He glanced at Beaufort--at d.y.k.eman, who now, slowly recovering, gazed at him with eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; and lastly fixed his look on Philip himself. There were three witnesses--presence of mind was his great attribute.

"And if, Monsieur de Vaudemont, I knew, or, at least, had the firmest persuasion that f.a.n.n.y was my grandchild, what then? Why else should she be here?--Pooh, sir! I am an old man."

Philip recoiled a step in wonder; his plain sense was baffled by the calm lie. He looked down at f.a.n.n.y, who, comprehending nothing of what was spoken, for all her faculties, even her very sense of sight and hearing, were absorbed in her impatient anxiety for him, cried out:

"No harm has come to f.a.n.n.y--none: only frightened. Read!--Read!--Save that paper!--You know what you once said about a mere sc.r.a.p of paper!

Come away! Come!"

He did now cast his eyes on the paper he held. That was an awful moment for Robert Beaufort--even for Lilburne! To s.n.a.t.c.h the fatal doc.u.ment from that gripe! They would as soon have s.n.a.t.c.hed it from a tiger! He lifted his eyes--they rested on his mother's picture! Her lips smiled on him! He turned to Beaufort in a state of emotion too exulting, too blest for vulgar vengeance--for vulgar triumph--almost for words.

"Look yonder, Robert Beaufort--look!" and he pointed to the picture.

"Her name is spotless! I stand again beneath a roof that was my father's,--the Heir of Beaufort! We shall meet before the justice of our country. For you, Lord Lilburne, I will believe you: it is too horrible to doubt even your intentions. If wrong had chanced to her, I would have rent you where you stand, limb from limb. And thank her",--(for Lilburne recovered at this language the daring of his youth, before calculation, indolence, and excess had dulled the edge of his nerves; and, unawed by the height, and manhood, and strength of his menacer, stalked haughtily up to him)--"and thank your relations.h.i.+p to her," said Philip, sinking his voice into a whisper, "that I do not brand you as a pilferer and a cheat! Hush, knave!--hush, pupil of George Gawtrey!--there are no duels for me but with men of honour!"

Lilburne now turned white, and the big word stuck in his throat. In another instant f.a.n.n.y and her guardian had quitted the house.

"d.y.k.eman," said Lord Lilburne after a long silence, "I shall ask you another time how you came to admit that impertinent person. At present, go and order breakfast for Mr. Beaufort."

As soon as d.y.k.eman, more astounded, perhaps, by his lord's coolness than even by the preceding circ.u.mstances, had left the study, Lilburne came up to Beaufort,--who seemed absolutely stricken as if by palsy,--and touching him impatiently and rudely, said,--

"'Sdeath, man!--rouse yourself! There is not a moment to be lost! I have already decided on what you are to do. This paper is not worth a rush, unless the curate who examined it will depose to that fact. He is a curate--a Welsh curate;--you are yet Mr. Beaufort, a rich and a great man. The curate, properly managed, may depose to the contrary; and then we will indict them all for forgery and conspiracy. At the worst, you can, no doubt, get the parson to forget all about it--to stay away. His address was on the certificate:

"--C-----. Go yourself into Wales without an instant's delay-- Then, having arranged with Mr. Jones, hurry back, cross to Boulogne, and buy this convict and his witnesses, buy them! That, now, is the only thing.

Quick! quick!--quick! Zounds, man! if it were my affair, my estate, I would not care a pin for that fragment of paper; I should rather rejoice at it. I see how it could be turned against them! Go!"

"No, no; I am not equal to it! Will you manage it? will you? Half my estate!--all! Take it: but save--"

"Tut!" interrupted Lord Lilburne, in great disdain. "I am as rich as I want to be. Money does not bribe me. I manage this! I! Lord Lilburne. I!

Why, if found out, it is subornation of witnesses. It is exposure--it is dishonour--it is ruin. What then? You should take the risk--for you must meet ruin if you do not. I cannot. I have nothing to gain!"

"I dare not!-I dare not!" murmured Beaufort, quite spirit-broken.

"Subornation, dishonour, exposure!--and I, so respectable--my character!--and my son against me, too!--my son, in whom I lived again!

No, no; let them take all! Let them take it! Ha! ha! let them take it!

Good-day to you."

"Where are you going?"

"I shall consult Mr. Blackwell, and I'll let you know." And Beaufort walked tremulously back to his carriage. "Go to his lawyer!" growled Lilburne. "Yes, if his lawyer can help him to defraud men lawfully, he'll defraud them fast enough. That will be the respectable way of doing it! Um!--This may be an ugly business for me--the paper found here--if the girl can depose to what she heard, and she must have heard something.--No, I think the laws of real property will hardly allow her evidence; and if they do--Um!--My granddaughter--is it possible!--And Gawtrey rescued her mother, my child, from her own mother's vices! I thought my liking to that girl different from any other I have ever felt: it was pure--it was!--it was pity--affection. And I must never see her again--must forget the whole thing! And I sin growing old--and I am childless--and alone!" He paused, almost with a groan: and then the expression of his face changing to rage, he cried out, "The man threatened me, and I was a coward! What to do?--Nothing! The defensive is my line. I shall play no more.--I attack no one. Who will accuse Lord Lilburne? Still, Robert is a fool. I must not leave him to himself. Ho!

there! d.y.k.eman!--the carriage! I shall go to London."

Fortunate, no doubt, it was for Philip that Mr. Beaufort was not Lord Lilburne. For all history teaches us--public and private history--conquerors--statesmen--sharp hypocrites and brave designers--yes, they all teach us how mighty one man of great intellect and no scruple is against the justice of millions! The One Man moves--the Ma.s.s is inert. Justice sits on a throne. Roguery never rests,--Activity is the lever of Archimedes.

CHAPTER XVI.

"Quam inulta injusta ac prava fiunt moribus."--TULL.

[How many unjust and vicious actions are perpetrated under the name of morals.]

"Volat ambiguis Mobilis alis Hera."--SENECA.

[The hour flies moving with doubtful wings.]

Mr. Robert Beaufort sought Mr. Blackwell, and long, rambling, and disjointed was his narrative. Mr. Blackwell, after some consideration, proposed to set about doing the very things that Lilburne had proposed at once to do. But the lawyer expressed himself legally and covertly, so that it did not seem to the sober sense of Mr. Beaufort at all the same plan. He was not the least alarmed at what Mr. Blackwell proposed, though so shocked at what Lilburne dictated. Blackwell would go the next day into Wales--he would find out Mr. Jones--he would sound him! Nothing was more common with people of the nicest honour, than just to get a witness out of the way! Done in election pet.i.tions, for instance, every day.

"True," said Mr. Beaufort, much relieved.

Then, after having done that, Mr. Blackwell would return to town, and cross over to Boulogne to see this very impudent person whom Arthur (young men were so apt to be taken in!) had actually believed. He had no doubt he could settle it all. Robert Beaufort returned to Berkeley Square actually in spirits. There he found Lilburne, who, on reflection, seeing that Blackwell was at all events more up to the business than his brother, a.s.sented to the propriety of the arrangement.

Mr. Blackwell accordingly did set off the next day. That next day, perhaps, made all the difference. Within two hours from his gaining the doc.u.ment so important, Philip, without any subtler exertion of intellect than the decision of a plain, bold sense, had already forestalled both the peer and the lawyer. He had sent down Mr. Barlow's head clerk to his master in Wales with the doc.u.ment, and a short account of the manner in which it had been discovered. And fortunate, indeed, was it that the copy had been found; for all the inquiries of Mr. Barlow at A---- had failed, and probably would have failed, without such a clue, in fastening upon any one probable person to have officiated as Caleb Price's amanuensis. The sixteen hours' start Mr. Barlow gained over Blackwell enabled the former to see Mr. Jones--to show him his own handwriting--to get a written and witnessed attestation from which the curate, however poor, and however tempted, could never well have escaped (even had he been dishonest, which he was not), of his perfect recollection of the fact of making an extract from the registry at Caleb's desire, though he owned he had quite forgotten the names he extracted till they were again placed before him. Barlow took care to arouse Mr. Jones's interest in the case--quitted Wales--hastened over to Boulogne--saw Captain Smith, and without bribes, without threats, but by plainly proving to that worthy person that he could not return to England nor see his brother without being immediately arrested; that his brother's evidence was already pledged on the side of truth; and that by the acquisition of new testimony there could be no doubt that the suit would be successful--he diverted the captain from all disposition towards perfidy, convinced him on which side his interest lay, and saw him return to Paris, where very shortly afterwards he disappeared for ever from this world, being forced into a duel, much against his will (with a Frenchman whom he had attempted to defraud), and shot through the lungs. Thus verifying a favourite maxim of Lord Lilburne's, viz.

that it does not do, in the long run, for little men to play the Great Game!

On the same day that Blackwell returned, frustrated in his half-and-half attempts to corrupt Mr. Jones, and not having been able even to discover Mr. Smith, Mr. Robert Beaufort received a notice of an Action for Ejectment to be brought by Philip Beaufort at the next a.s.sizes. And, to add to his afflictions, Arthur, whom he had hitherto endeavoured to amuse by a sort of ambiguous s.h.i.+lly-shally correspondence, became so alarmingly worse, that his mother brought him up to town for advice.

Lord Lilburne was, of course, sent for; and on learning all, his counsel was prompt.

"I told you before that this man loves your daughter. See if you can effect a compromise. The lawsuit will be ugly, and probably ruinous. He has a right to claim six years' arrears--that is above L100,000. Make yourself his father-in-law, and me his uncle-in-law; and, since we can't kill the wasp, we may at least soften the venom of his sting."

Beaufort, still perplexed, irresolute, sought his son; and, for the first time, spoke to him frankly--that is, frankly for Robert Beaufort!

He owned that the copy of the register had been found by Lilburne in a secret drawer. He made the best of the story Lilburne himself furnished him with (adhering, of course, to the a.s.sertion uttered or insinuated to Philip) in regard to f.a.n.n.y's abduction and interposition; he said nothing of his attempt to destroy the paper. Why should he? By admitting the copy in court--if so advised--he could get rid of f.a.n.n.y's evidence altogether; even without such concession, her evidence might possibly be objected to or eluded. He confessed that he feared the witness who copied the register and the witness to the marriage were alive. And then he talked pathetically of his desire to do what was right, his dread of slander and misinterpretation. He said nothing of Sidney, and his belief that Sidney and Charles Spencer were the same; because, if his daughter were to be the instrument for effecting a compromise, it was clear that her engagement with Spencer must be cancelled and concealed. And luckily Arthur's illness and Camilla's timidity, joined now to her father's injunctions not to excite Arthur in his present state with any additional causes of anxiety, prevented the confidence that might otherwise have ensued between the brother and sister. And Camilla, indeed, had no heart for such a conference. How, when she looked on Arthur's gla.s.sy eye, and listened to his hectic cough, could she talk to him of love and marriage? As to the automaton, Mrs. Beaufort, Robert made sure of her discretion.

Arthur listened attentively to his father's communication; and the result of that interview was the following letter from Arthur to his cousin:

"I write to you without fear of misconstruction; for I write to you unknown to all my family, and I am the only one of them who can have no personal interest in the struggle about to take place between my father and yourself. Before the law can decide between you, I shall be in my grave. I write this from the Bed of Death. Philip, I write this--I, who stood beside a deathbed more sacred to you than mine--I, who received your mother's last sigh. And with that sigh there was a smile that lasted when the sigh was gone: for I promised to befriend her children.

Heaven knows how anxiously I sought to fulfil that solemn vow! Feeble and sick myself, I followed you and your brother with no aim, no prayer, but this,--to embrace you and say, 'Accept a new brother in me.' I spare you the humiliation, for it is yours, not mine, of recalling what pa.s.sed between us when at last we met. Yet, I still sought to save, at least, Sidney,--more especially confided to my care by his dying mother. He mysteriously eluded our search; but we had reason, by a letter received from some unknown hand, to believe him saved and provided for. Again I met you at Paris. I saw you were poor. Judging from your a.s.sociate, I might with justice think you depraved. Mindful of your declaration never to accept bounty from a Beaufort, and remembering with natural resentment the outrage I had before received from you, I judged it vain to seek and remonstrate with you, but I did not judge it vain to aid. I sent you, anonymously, what at least would suffice, if absolute poverty had subjected you to evil courses, to rescue you from them it your heart were so disposed. Perhaps that sum, trifling as it was, may have smoothed your path and a.s.sisted your career. And why tell you all this now? To dissuade from a.s.serting rights you conceive to be just?--Heaven forbid! If justice is with you, so also is the duty due to your mother's name. But simply for this: that in a.s.serting such rights, you content yourself with justice, not revenge--that in righting yourself, you do not wrong others. If the law should decide for you, the arrears you could demand would leave my father and sister beggars. This may be law--it would not be justice; for my father solemnly believed himself, and had every apparent probability in his favour, the true heir of the wealth that devolved upon him. This is not all. There may be circ.u.mstances connected with the discovery of a certain doc.u.ment that, if authentic, and I do not presume to question it, may decide the contest so far as it rests on truth; circ.u.mstances which might seem to bear hard upon my father's good name and faith. I do not know sufficiently of law to say how far these could be publicly urged, or, if urged, exaggerated and tortured by an advocate's calumnious ingenuity.

But again, I say justice, and not revenge! And with this I conclude, inclosing to you these lines, written in your own hand, and leaving you the arbiter of their value.

"ARTHUR BEAUFORT."

The lines inclosed were these, a second time placed before the reader

"I cannot guess who you are. They say that you call yourself a relation; that must be some mistake. I knew not that my poor mother had relations so kind. But, whoever you be, you soothed her last hours--she died in your arms; and if ever-years, long years, hence-- we should chance to meet, and I can do anything to aid another, my blood, and my life, and my heart, and my soul, all are slaves to your will! If you be really of her kindred I commend to you my brother; he is at ---- with Mr. Morton. If you can serve him, my mother's soul will watch over you as a guardian angel. As for me, I ask no help from any one; I go into the world, and will carve out my own way. So much do I shrink from the thought of charity from others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now, if your kindness to me did not close with the stone upon my mother's grave.

PHILIP."

This letter was sent to the only address of Monsieur de Vaudemont which the Beauforts knew, viz., his apartments in town, and he did not receive it the day it was sent.

Meanwhile Arthur Beaufort's malady continued to gain ground rapidly.