“Sweet are the uses of Adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Bears yet a precious jewel in its head.”
MOST PERSONS WILL AGREE THAT THE TOAD IS UGLY AND VENOMOUS, BUT FEW
INDEED ARE THE PERSONS WHO CAN BOAST OF HAVING ACTUALLY DISCOVERED
THAT “PRECIOUS JEWEL IN ITS HEAD,” WHICH THE POET ASSURES US IS
PLACED THERE. BUT CALAMITY MAY BE CLASSED IN TWO GREAT DIVISIONS—
1ST, THE AFFLICTIONS, WHICH NO PRUDENCE CAN AVERT; 2ND, THE
MISFORTUNES, WHICH MEN TAKE ALL POSSIBLE PAINS TO BRING UPON
THEMSELVES. AFFLICTIONS OF THE FIRST CLASS MAY BUT CALL FORTH OUR
VIRTUES, AND RESULT IN OUR ULTIMATE GOOD. SUCH IS THE ADVERSITY
WHICH MAY GIVE US THE JEWEL. BUT TO GET AT THE JEWEL WE MUST KILL
THE TOAD. MISFORTUNES OF THE SECOND CLASS BUT TOO OFTEN INCREASE
THE ERRORS OR THE VICES BY WHICH THEY WERE CREATED. SUCH IS THE
ADVERSITY WHICH IS ALL TOAD AND NO JEWEL. IF YOU CHOOSE TO BREED
AND FATTEN YOUR OWN TOADS, THE INCREASE OF THE VENOM ABSORBS EVERY
BIT OF THE JEWEL.
Never did I know a man who was an habitual gambler, otherwise than notably inaccurate in his calculations of probabilities in the ordinary affairs of life. Is it that such a man has become so chronic a drunkard of hope, that he sees double every chance in his favour?
Jasper Losely had counted upon two things as matters of course.
1st. Darrell’s speedy reconciliation with his only child. 2nd. That Darrell’s only child must of necessity be Darrell’s heiress.
In both these expectations the gambler was deceived. Darrell did not even answer the letters that Matilda addressed to him from France, to the shores of which Jasper had borne her, and where he had hastened to make her his wife under the assumed name of Hammond, but his true Christian name of Jasper.
In the disreputable marriage Matilda had made, all the worst parts of her character seemed suddenly revealed to her father’s eye, and he saw what he had hitherto sought not to see, the true child of a worthless mother. A mere mesalliance, if palliated by long or familiar acquaintance with the object, however it might have galled him, his heart might have pardoned; but here, without even a struggle of duty, without the ordinary coyness of maiden pride, to be won with so scanty a wooing, by a man who she knew was betrothed to another—the dissimulation, the perfidy, the combined effrontery and meanness of the whole transaction, left no force in Darrell’s eyes to the common place excuses of experience and youth. Darrell would not have been Darrell if he could have taken back to his home or his heart a daughter so old in deceit, so experienced in thoughts that dishonour.
Darrell’s silence, however, little saddened the heartless bride, and little dismayed the sanguine bridegroom. Both thought that pardon and plenty were but the affair of time a little more or little less. But their funds rapidly diminished; it became necessary to recruit them. One can’t live in hotels entirely upon hope. Leaving his bride for a while in a pleasant provincial town, not many hours distant from Paris, Jasper returned to London, intent upon seeing Darrell himself; and, should the father-in-law still defer articles of peace, Jasper believed that he could have no trouble in raising a present supply upon such an El Dorado of future expectations. Darrell at once consented to see Jasper, not at his own house, but at his solicitor’s. Smothering all opposing disgust, the proud gentleman deemed this condescension essential to the clear and definite understanding of those resolves upon which depended the worldly station and prospects of the wedded pair.
When Jasper was shown into Mr. Gotobed’s office, Darrell was alone, standing near the hearth, and by a single quiet gesture repelled that tender rush towards his breast which Jasper had elaborately prepared; and thus for the first time the two men saw each other, Darrell perhaps yet more resentfully mortified while recognising those personal advantages in the showy profligate which had rendered a daughter of his house so facile a conquest: Jasper (who had chosen to believe that a father-in-law so eminent must necessarily be old and broken) shocked into the most disagreeable surprise by the sight of a man still young, under forty, with a countenance, a port, a presence, that in any assemblage would have attracted the general gaze from his own brilliant self, and looking altogether as unfavourable an object, whether for pathos or for post-obits, as unlikely to breathe out a blessing or to give up the ghost, as the worst brute of a father-in-law could possibly be. Nor were Darrell’s words more comforting than his aspect.
“Sir, I have consented to see you, partly that you may learn from my own lips once for all that I admit no man’s right to enter my family without my consent, and that consent you will never receive; and partly that, thus knowing each other by sight, each may know the man it becomes him most to avoid. The lady who is now your wife is entitled by my marriage-settlement to the reversion of a small fortune at my death; nothing more from me is she likely to inherit. As I have no desire that she to whom I once gave the name of daughter should be dependent wholly on yourself for bread, my solicitor will inform you on what conditions I am willing, during my life, to pay the interest of the sum which will pass to your wife at my death. Sir, I return to your hands the letters that lady has addressed to me, and which, it is easy to perceive, were written at your dictation. No letter from her will I answer. Across my threshold her foot will never pass. Thus, sir, concludes all possible intercourse between you and myself; what rests is between you and that gentleman.”
Darrell had opened a side-door in speaking the last words—pointed towards the respectable form of Mr. Gotobed standing tall beside his tall desk—and, before Jasper could put in a word, the father-in-law was gone.
With becoming brevity, Mr. Gotobed made Jasper fully aware that not only all, Mr. Darrell’s funded or personal property was entirely at his own disposal—that not only the large landed estates he had purchased (and which Jasper had vaguely deemed inherited and in strict entail) were in the same condition—condition enviable to the proprietor, odious to the bridegroom of the proprietor’s sole daughter; but that even the fee-simple of the poor Fawley Manor House and lands were vested in Darrell, encumbered only by the portion of L10,000 which the late Mrs. Darrell had brought to her husband, and which was settled, at the death of herself and Darrell, on the children of the marriage.
In the absence of marriage-settlements between Jasper and Matilda, that sum at Darrell’s death was liable to be claimed by Jasper, in right of his wife, so as to leave no certainty that provision would remain for the support of his wife and family; and the contingent reversion might, in the mean time, be so dealt with as to bring eventual poverty on them all.
“Sir,” said the lawyer, “I will be quite frank with you. It is my wish, acting for Mr. Darrell, so to settle this sum of L10,000 on your wife, and any children she may bear you, as to place it out of your power to anticipate or dispose of it, even with Mrs. Hammond’s consent. If you part with that power, not at present a valuable one, you are entitled to compensation. I am prepared to make that compensation liberal. Perhaps you would prefer communicating with me through your own solicitor. But I should tell you, that the terms are more likely to be advantageous to you in proportion as negotiation is confined to us two. It might, for instance, be expedient to tell your solicitor that your true name (I beg you a thousand pardons) is not Hammond. That is a secret which, the more you can keep it to yourself, the better I think it will be for you. We have no wish to blab it out.”
Jasper, by this time, had somewhat recovered the first shock of displeasure and disappointment; and with that quickness which so erratically darted through a mind that contrived to be dull when anything honest was addressed to its apprehension, he instantly divined that his real name of Losely was worth something. He had no idea of reusing—was, indeed, at that time anxious altogether to ignore and eschew it; but he had a right to it, and a man’s rights are not to be resigned for nothing. Accordingly, he said with some asperity: “I shall resume my family name whenever I choose it. If Mr. Darrell does not like his daughter to be called Mrs. Jasper Losely—or all the malignant tittle-tattle which my poor father’s unfortunate trial might provoke—he must, at least, ask me as a favour to retain the name I have temporarily adopted—a name in my family, sir. A Losely married a Hammond, I forget when—generations ago—you’ll see it in the Baronetage. My grandfather, Sir Julian, was not a crack lawyer, but he was a baronet of as good birth as any in the country; and my father, sir”—(Jasper’s voice trembled) “my father,” he repeated, fiercely striking his clenched hand on the table, “was a gentleman every inch of his body; and I’ll pitch any man out of the window who says a word to the contrary!”
“Sir,” said Mr. Gotobed, shrinking towards the bell pull, “I think, on the whole, I had better see your solicitor.”
Jasper cooled down at that suggestion; and, with a slight apology for natural excitement, begged to know what Mr. Gotobed wished to propose. To make an end of this part of the story, after two or three interviews, in which the two negotiators learned to understand each other, a settlement was legally completed, by which the sum of L10,000 was inalienably settled on Matilda, and her children by her marriage with Jasper; in case he survived her, the interest was to be his for life—in case she died childless, the capital would devolve to himself at Darrell’s decease. Meanwhile, Darrell agreed to pay L500 a year, as the interest of the L10,000 at five per cent., to Jasper Hammond, or his order, provided always that Jasper and his wife continued to reside together, and fixed that residence abroad.
By a private verbal arrangement, not even committed to writing, to this sum was added another L200 a year, wholly at Darrell’s option and discretion. It being clearly comprehended that these words meant so long as Mr. Hammond kept his own secret, and so long, too, as he forbore, directly or indirectly, to molest, or even to address, the person at whose pleasure it was held. On the whole, the conditions to Jasper were sufficiently favourable: he came into an income immeasurably beyond his right to believe that he should ever enjoy; and sufficient—well managed—for even a fair share of the elegancies as well as comforts of life, to a young couple blest in each other’s love, and remote from the horrible taxes and emulous gentilities of this opulent England, where out of fear to be thought too poor nobody is ever too rich.
Matilda wrote no more to Darrell. But some months afterwards he received an extremely well-expressed note in French, the writer whereof represented herself as a French lady, who had very lately seen Madame Hammondwho was now in London, but for a few days, and had something to communicate, of such importance as to justify the liberty she took in requesting him to honour her with a visit. After some little hesitation, Darrell called on this lady. Though Matilda had forfeited his affection, he could not contemplate her probable fate without painful anxiety. Perhaps Jasper had ill-used her—perhaps she had need of shelter elsewhere. Though that shelter could not again be under a father’s roof—and though Darrell would have taken no steps to separate her from the husband she had chosen, still, in secret, he would have felt comparative relief and ease had she herself sought to divide her fate from one whose path downwards in dishonour his penetration instinctively divined. With an idea that some communication might be made to him, to which he might reply that Matilda, if compelled to quit her husband, should never want the home and subsistence of a gentlewoman, he repaired to the house (a handsome house in a quiet street) temporarily occupied by the French lady. A tall chasseur, in full costume, opened the door—a page ushered him into the drawing-room. He saw a lady—young-and with all the grace of a Parisieune in her manner—who, after some exquisitely-turned phrases of excuse, showed him (as a testimonial of the intimacy between herself and Madame Hammond) a letter she had received from Matilda, in a very heart-broken, filial strain, full of professions of penitence—of a passionate desire for her father’s forgiveness—but far from complaining of Jasper, or hinting at the idea of deserting a spouse with whom, but for the haunting remembrance of a beloved parent, her lot would be blest indeed. Whatever of pathos was deficient in the letter, the French lady supplied by such apparent fine feeling, and by so many touching little traits of Matilda’s remorse, that Darrell’s heart was softened in spite of his reason. He went away, however, saying very little, and intending to call no more. But another note came. The French lady had received a letter from a mutual friend—“Matilda,” she feared, “was dangerously ill.” This took him again to the house, and the poor French lady seemed so agitated by the news she had heard—and yet so desirous not to exaggerate nor alarm him needlessly, that Darrell suspected his daughter was really dying, and became nervously anxious himself for the next report. Thus, about three or four visits in all necessarily followed the first one. Then Darrell abruptly closed the intercourse, and could not be induced to call again. Not that he for an instant suspected that this amiable lady, who spoke so becomingly, and whose manners were so high-bred, was other than the well-born Baroness she called herself, and looked to be, but partly because, in the last interview, the charming Parisienne had appeared a little to forget Matilda’s alarming illness, in a not forward but still coquettish desire to centre his attention more upon herself; and the moment she did so, he took a dislike to her which he had not before conceived; and partly because his feelings having recovered the first effect which the vision of a penitent, pining, dying daughter could not fail to produce, his experience of Matilda’s duplicity and falsehood made him discredit the penitence, the pining, and the dying. The Baroness might not wilfully be deceiving him—Matilda might be wilfully deceiving the Baroness. To the next note, therefore, despatched to him by the feeling and elegant foreigner, he replied but by a dry excuse—a stately hint, that family matters could never be satisfactorily discussed except in family councils, and that if her friend’s grief or illness were really in any way occasioned by a belief in the pain her choice of life might have inflicted on himself, it might comfort her to know that that pain had subsided, and that his wish for her health and happiness was not less sincere, because henceforth he could neither watch over the one nor administer to the other. To this note, after a day or two, the Baroness replied by a letter so beautifully worded, I doubt whether Madame de Sevigne could have written in purer French, or Madame de Steel with a finer felicity of phrase. Stripped of the graces of diction, the substance was but small: “Anxiety for a friend so beloved—so unhappy—more pitied even than before, now that the Baroness had been enabled to see how fondly a daughter must idolise a father in the Man whom the nation revered!—(here two lines devoted to compliment personal)—compelled by that anxiety to quit even sooner than she had first intended the metropolis of that noble Country,” &c.—(here four lines devoted to compliment national)—and then proceeding through some charming sentences about patriot altars and domestic hearths, the writer suddenly checked herself—“would intrude no more on time sublimely dedicated to the Human Race—and concluded with the assurance of sentiments the most distinguees.” Little thought Darrell that this complimentary stranger, whom he never again beheld, would exercise an influence over that portion of his destiny which then seemed to him most secure from evil; towards which, then, he looked for the balm to every wound—the compensation to every loss!
Darrell heard no more of Matilda, till, not long afterwards, her death was announced to him. She had died from exhaustion shortly after giving birth to a female child. The news came upon him at a moment; when, from other causes—(the explanation of which, forming no part of his confidence to Alban, it will be convenient to reserve)—his mind was in a state of great affliction and disorder—when he had already buried himself in the solitudes of Fawley—ambition resigned and the world renounced—and the intelligence saddened and shocked him more than it might have done some months before. If, at that moment of utter bereavement, Matilda’s child had been brought to him—given up to him to rear—would he have rejected it? would he have forgotten that it was a felon’s grandchild?
I dare not say. But his pride was not put to such a trial. One day he received a packet from Mr. Gotobed, enclosing the formal certificates of the infant’s death, which had been presented to him by Jasper, who had arrived in London for that melancholy purpose, with which he combined a pecuniary proposition. By the death of Matilda and her only child, the sum of L10,000 absolutely reverted to Jasper in the event of Darrell’s decease. As the interest meanwhile was continued to Jasper, that widowed mourner suggested “that it would be a great boon to himself and no disadvantage to Darrell if the principal were made over to him at once. He had been brought up originally to commerce. He had abjured all thoughts of resuming such vocation during his wife’s lifetime, out of that consideration for her family and ancient birth which motives of delicacy imposed. Now that the connection with Mr. Darrell was dissolved, it might be rather a relief than otherwise to that gentleman to know that a son-in-law so displeasing to him was finally settled, not only in a foreign land, but in a social sphere in which his very existence would soon be ignored by all who could remind Mr. Darrell that his daughter had once a husband. An occasion that might never occur again now presented itself. A trading firm at Paris, opulent, but unostentatiously quiet in its mercantile transactions, would accept him as a partner could he bring to it the additional capital of L10,000.” Not without dignity did Jasper add, “that since his connection had been so unhappily distasteful to Mr. Darrell, and since the very payment, each quarter, of the interest on the sum in question must in itself keep alive the unwelcome remembrance of that connection, he had the less scruple in making a proposition which would enable the eminent personage who so disdained his alliance to get rid of him altogether.” Darrell closed at once with Jasper’s proposal, pleased to cut off from his life each tie that could henceforth link it to Jasper’s, nor displeased to relieve his hereditary acres from every shilling of the marriage portion which was imposed on it as a debt, and associated with memories of unmingled bitterness. Accordingly, Mr. Gotobed, taking care first to ascertain that the certificates as to the poor child’s death were genuine, accepted Jasper’s final release of all claim on Mr. Darrell’s estate. There still, however, remained the L200 a year which Jasper had received during Matilda’s life, on the tacit condition of remaining Mr. Hammond, and not personally addressing Mr. Darrell. Jasper inquired “if that annuity was to continue?” Mr. Gotobed referred the inquiry to Darrell, observing that the object for which this extra allowance had been made was rendered nugatory by the death of Mrs. Hammond and her child; since Jasper henceforth could have neither power nor pretext to molest Mr. Darrell, and that it could signify but little what name might in future be borne by one whose connection with the Darrell family was wholly dissolved. Darrell impatiently replied, “That nothing having been said as to the withdrawal of the said allowance in case Jasper became a widower, he remained equally entitled, in point of honour, to receive that allowance, or an adequate equivalent.”
This answer being intimated to Jasper, that gentleman observed “that it was no more than he had expected from Mr. Darrell’s sense of honour,” and apparently quite satisfied, carried himself and his L10,000 back to Paris. Not long after, however, he wrote to Mr. Gotobed that “Mr. Darrell having alluded to an equivalent for the L200 a year allowed to him, evidently implying that it was as disagreeable to Mr. Darrell to see that sum entered quarterly in his banker’s books, as it had been to see there the quarterly interest of the L10,000, so Jasper might be excused in owning that he should prefer an equivalent. The commercial firm to which he was about to attach himself required a somewhat larger capital on his part than he had anticipated, &c., &c. Without presuming to dictate any definite sum, he would observe that L1,500 or even L1000 would be of more avail to his views and objects in life than an annuity of L200 a year, which, being held only at will, was not susceptible of a temporary loan.” Darrell, wrapped in thoughts wholly remote from recollections of Jasper, chafed at being thus recalled to the sense of that person’s existence wrote back to the solicitor who transmitted to him this message, “that an annuity held on his word was not to be calculated by Mr. Hammond’s notions of its value. That the L200 a year should therefore be placed on the same footing as the L500 a year that had been allowed on a capital of L10,000; that accordingly it might be held to represent a principal of L4,000, for which he enclosed a cheque, begging Mr. Gotobed not only to make Mr. Hammond fully understand that there ended all possible accounts or communication between them, but never again to trouble him with any matters whatsoever in reference to affairs that were thus finally concluded.” Jasper, receiving the L4,000, left Darrell and Gotobed in peace till the following year. He then addressed to Gotobed an exceedingly plausible, business-like letter. “The firm he had entered, in the silk trade, was in the most flourishing state—an opportunity occurred to purchase a magnificent mulberry plantation in Provence, with all requisite magnanneries, &c., which would yield an immense increase of profit. That if, to insure him a share in this lucrative purchase, Mr. Darrell could accommodate him for a year with a loan of L2,000 or L3,000, he sanguinely calculated on attaining so high a position in the commercial world as, though it could not render the recollection of his alliance more obtrusive to Mr. Darrell, would render it less humiliating.”
Mr. Gotobed, in obedience to the peremptory instructions he had received from his client, did not refer this letter to Darrell, but having occasion at that time to visit Paris on other business, he resolved (without calling on Mr. Hammond) to institute there some private inquiry—into that rising trader’s prospects and status. He found, on arrival at Paris, these inquiries difficult. No one in either the beau monde or in the haut commerce seemed to know anything about this Mr. Jasper Hammond. A few fashionable English roues remembered to have seen, once or twice during Matilda’s life, and shortly after her decease, a very fine-looking man shooting meteoric across some equivocal salons, or lounging in the Champs Elysees, or dining at the Cafe de Paris; but of late that meteor had vanished. Mr. Gotobed, then anxiously employing a commissioner to gain some information of Mr. Hammond’s firm at the private residence from which Jasper addressed his letter, ascertained that in that private residence Jasper did not reside. He paid the porter to receive occasional letters, for which he called or sent; and the porter, who was evidently a faithful and discreet functionary, declared his belief that Monsieur Hammond lodged in the house in which he transacted business, though where was the house or what was the business, the porter observed, with well-bred implied rebuke, “Monsieur Hammond was too reserved to communicate, he himself too incurious to inquire.” At length, Mr. Gotobed’s business, which was, in fact, a commission from a distressed father to extricate an imprudent son, a mere boy, from some unhappy associations, having brought him into the necessity of seeing persons who belonged neither to the beau monde nor to the haut commerce, he gleaned from them the information he desired. Mr. Hammond lived in the very heart of a certain circle in Paris, which but few Englishmen ever penetrate. In that circle Mr. Hammond had, on receiving his late wife’s dowry, become the partner in a private gambling hell; in that hell had been engulfed all the monies he had received—a hell that ought to have prospered with him, if he could have economised his villanous gains. His senior partner in that firm retired into the country with a fine fortune—no doubt the very owner of those mulberry plantations which were now on sale! But Jasper scattered napoleons faster than any croupier could rake them away. And Jasper’s natural talent for converting solid gold into thin air had been assisted by a lady who, in the course of her amiable life, had assisted many richer men than Jasper to lodgings in St. Pelagie, or cells in the Maison des Fous. With that lady he had become acquainted during the lifetime of his wife, and it was supposed that Matilda’s discovery of this liaison had contributed perhaps to the illness which closed in her decease; the name of that lady was Gabrielle Desinarets. She might still be seen daily at the Bois de Boulogne, nightly at opera-house or theatre; she had apartments in the Chaussee d’Antin far from inaccessible to Mr. Gotobed, if he coveted the honour of her acquaintance. But Jasper was less before an admiring world. He was supposed now to be connected with another gambling-house of lower grade than the last, in which he had contrived to break his own bank and plunder his own till. It was supposed also that he remained good friends with Mademoiselle Desmarets; but if he visited her at her house, he was never to be seen there. In fact, his temper was so uncertain, his courage so dauntless, his strength so prodigious, that gentlemen who did not wish to be thrown out of the window, or hurled down a staircase, shunned any salon or boudoir in which they had a chance to encounter him. Mademoiselle Desmarets had thus been condemned to the painful choice between his society and that of nobody else, or that of anybody else with the rigid privation of his. Not being a turtle-dove, she had chosen the latter alternative. It was believed, nevertheless, that if Gabrielle Desmarets had known the weakness of a kind sentiment, it was for this turbulent lady-killer; and that, with a liberality she had never exhibited in any other instance, when she could no longer help him to squander, she would still, at a pinch, help him to live; though, of course, in such a reverse of the normal laws of her being, Mademoiselle Desmarets set those bounds on her own generosity which she would not have imposed upon his, and had said with a sigh: “I could forgive him if he beat me and beggared my friends! but to beat my friends and to beggar me,—that is not the kind of love which makes the world go round!”
Scandalised to the last nerve of his respectable system by the information thus gleaned, Mr. Gotobed returned to London. More letters from Jasper—becoming urgent, and at last even insolent—Mr. Gotobed worried into a reply, wrote back shortly “that he could not even communicate such applications to Mr. Darrell, and that he must peremptorily decline all further intercourse, epistolary or personal, with Mr. Hammond.”
Darrell, on returning from one of the occasional rambles on the Continent, “remote, unfriended, melancholy,” by which he broke the monotony of his Fawley life, found a letter from Jasper, not fawning, but abrupt, addressed to himself, complaining of Mr. Gotobed’s improper tone, requesting pecuniary assistance, and intimating that he could in return communicate to Mr. Darrell an intelligence that would give him more joy than all his wealth could purchase. Darrell enclosed that note to Mr. Gotobed; Mr. Gotobed came down to Fawley to make those revelations of Jasper’s mode of life which were too delicate—or too much the reverse of delicate—to commit to paper. Great as Darrell’s disgust at the memory of Jasper had hitherto been, it may well be ‘conceived how much more bitter became that memory now. No answer was, of course, vouchsafed to Jasper, who, after another extremely forcible appeal for money, and equally enigmatical boast of the pleasurable information it was in his power to bestow, relapsed into sullen silence.
One day, somewhat more than five years after Matilda’s death, Darrell, coming in from his musing walks, found a stranger waiting for him. This stranger was William Losely, returned from penal exile; and while Darrell, on hearing this announcement, stood mute with haughty wonder that such a visitor could cross the threshold of his father’s house, the convict began what seemed to Darrell a story equally audacious and incomprehensible—the infant Matilda had borne to Jasper, and the certificates of whose death had been so ceremoniously produced and so prudently attested, lived still! Sent out to nurse as soon as born, the nurse had in her charge another babe, and this last was the child who had died and been buried as Matilda Hammond’s. The elder Losely went on to stammer out a hope that his son was not at the time aware of the fraudulent exchange, but had been deceived by the nurse—that it had not been a premeditated imposture of his own to obtain his wife’s fortune.
When Darrell came to this part of his story, Alban Morley’s face grew more seriously interested. “Stop!” he said; “William Losely assured you of his own conviction that this strange tale was true. What proofs did he volunteer?”
“Proofs! Death, man, do you think that at such moments I was but a bloodless lawyer, to question and cross examine? I could but bid the impostor leave the house which his feet polluted.”
Alban heaved a sigh, and murmured, too low for Darrell to overhear, “Poor Willy!” then aloud: “But, my dear friend, bear with me one moment. Suppose that, by the arts of this diabolical Jasper, the exchange really had been effected, and a child to your ancient line lived still, would it not be a solace, a comfort—”
“Comfort!” cried Darrell, “comfort in the perpetuation of infamy! The line I promised my father to restore to its rank in the land, to be renewed in the grandchild of a felon!—in the child of the yet viler sharper of a hell! You, gentleman and soldier, call that thought—‘comfort!’ O Alban!—out on you! Fie! fie! No!—leave such a thought to the lips of a William Losely! He indeed, clasping his hands, faltered forth some such word; he seemed to count on my forlorn privation of kith and kindred—no heir to my wealth—no representative of my race—would I deprive myself of—ay—your very words—of a solace—a comfort! He asked me, at least, to inquire.”
“And you answered?”
“Answered so as to quell and crush in the bud all hopes in the success of so flagrant a falsehold—answered: ‘Why inquire? Know that, even if your tale were true, I have no heir, no representative, no descendant in the child of Jasper—the grandchild of William-Losely. I can at least leave my wealth to the son of Charles Haughton. True, Charles Haughton was a spendthrift, a gamester; but he was neither a professional cheat nor a convicted felon.’”
“You said that—Oh, Darrell!”
The Colonel checked himself. But for Charles Haughton, the spendthrift and gamester, would William Losely have been the convicted felon? He checked that thought, and hurried on: “And how did William Losely reply?”
“He made no reply—he skulked away without a word.” Darrell then proceeded to relate the interview which Jasper had forced on him at Fawley during Lionel’s visit there—on Jasper’s part an attempt to tell the same tale as William had told—on Darrell’s part, the same scornful refusal to hear it out. “And,” added Darrell, “the man, finding it thus impossible to dupe my reason, had the inconceivable meanness to apply to me for alms. I could not better show the disdain in which I held himself and his story than in recognising his plea as a mendicant. I threw my purse at his feet, and so left him.
“But,” continued Darrell, his brow growing darker and darker—“but wild and monstrous as the story was, still the idea that it MIGHT be true—a supposition which derived its sole strength from the character of Jasper Losely—from the interest he had in the supposed death of a child that alone stood between himself and the money he longed to grasp—an interest which ceased when the money itself was gone, or rather changed into the counter-interest of proving a life that, he thought, would re-establish a hold on me—still, I say, an idea that the story might be true would force itself on my fears, and if so, though my resolution never to acknowledge the child of Jasper Losely as a representative, or even as a daughter, of my house, would of course be immovable—yet it would become my duty to see that her infancy was sheltered, her childhood reared, her youth guarded, her existence amply provided for.”
“Right—your plain duty,” said Alban bluntly. “Intricate sometimes are the obligations imposed on us as gentlemen; ‘noblesse oblige’ is a motto which involves puzzles for a casuist; but our duties as men are plain—the idea very properly haunted you—and—”
“And I hastened to exorcise the spectre. I left England—I went to the French town in which poor Matilda died—I could not, of course, make formal or avowed inquiries of a nature to raise into importance the very conspiracy (if conspiracy there were) which threatened me. But I saw the physician who had attended both my daughter and her child—I sought those who had seen them both when living—seen them both when dead. The doubt on my mind was dispelled—not a pretext left for my own self-torment. The only person needful in evidence whom I failed to see was the nurse to whom the infant had been sent. She lived in a village some miles from the town—I called at her house—she was out. I left word I should call the next day—I did so—she had absconded. I might, doubtless, have traced her, but to what end if she were merely Jasper’s minion and tool? Did not her very flight prove her guilt and her terror? Indirectly I inquired into her antecedents and character. The inquiry opened a field of conjecture, from which I hastened to turn my eyes. This woman had a sister who had been in the service of Gabrielle Desmarets, and Gabrielle Desmarets had been in the neighbourhood during my poor daughter’s life-time, and just after my daughter’s death. And the nurse had had two infants under her charge; the nurse had removed with one of them to Paris—and Gabrielle Desmarets lived in Paris—and, O Alban, if there be really in flesh and life a child by Jasper Losely, to be forced upon my purse or my pity—is it his child, not by the ill-fated Matilda, but by the vile woman for whom Matilda, even in the first year of wedlock, was deserted? Conceive how credulity itself would shrink appalled from the horrible snare!—I to acknowledge, adopt, proclaim as the last of the Darrells, the adulterous offspring of a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets!—or, when I am in my grave, some claim advanced upon the sum settled by my marriage articles on Matilda’s issue, and which, if a child survived, could not have been legally transferred to its father—a claim with witnesses suborned—a claim that might be fraudulently established—a claim that would leave the representative—not indeed of my lands and wealth, but, more precious far, of my lineage and blood—in—in the person of—of—”
Darrell paused, almost stifling, and became so pale that Alban started from his seat in alarm.
“It is nothing,” resumed Darrell, faintly, “and, ill or well, I must finish this subject now, so that we need not reopen it.”
“I remained abroad, as you know, for some years. During that time two or three letters from Jasper Losely were forwarded to me; the latest in date more insolent than all preceding ones. It contained demands as if they were rights, and insinuated threats of public exposure, reflecting on myself and my pride: ‘He was my son-in-law after all, and if he came to disgrace, the world should know the tie.’ Enough. This is all I knew until the man who now, it seems, thrusts himself forward as Jasper Losely’s friend or agent, spoke to me the other night at Mrs. Haughton’s. That man you have seen, and you say that he—”
“Represents Jasper’s poverty as extreme; his temper unscrupulous and desperate; that he is capable of any amount of scandal or violence. It seems that though at Paris he has (Poole believes) still preserved the name of Hammond, yet that in England he has resumed that of Losely; and seems by Poole’s date of the time at which he, Poole, made Jasper’s acquaintance, to have done so after his baffled attempt on you at Fawley—whether in so doing he intimated the commencement of hostilities, or whether, as is more likely, the sharper finds it convenient to have one name in one country, and one in another, ‘tis useless to inquire; enough that the identity between the Hammond who married poor Matilda, and the Jasper Losely whose father was transported, that unscrupulous rogue has no longer any care to conceal. It is true that the revelation of this identity would now be of slight moment to a man of the world-as thick-skinned as myself, for instance; but to you it would be disagreeable—there is no denying that—and therefore, in short, when Mr. Poole advises a compromise, by which Jasper could be secured from want and yourself from annoyance, I am of the same opinion as Mr. Poole is.”
“You are?”
“Certainly. My dear Darrell, if in your secret heart there was something so galling in the thought that the man who had married your daughter, though without your consent, was not merely the commonplace adventurer whom the world supposed, but the son of that poor dear—I mean that rascal who was transported, Jasper, too, himself a cheat and a sharper-if this galled you so, that you have concealed the true facts from myself, your oldest friend, till this day—if it has cost you even now so sharp a pang to divulge the true name of that Mr. Hammond, whom our society never saw, whom even gossip has forgotten in connection with yourself—how intolerable would be your suffering to have this man watching for you in the streets, some wretched girl in his hand, and crying out, ‘A penny for your son-in-law and your grandchild!’ Pardon me—I must be blunt. You can give him to the police—send him to the treadmill. Does that mend the matter? Or, worse still, suppose the man commits some crime that fills all the newspapers with his life and adventures, including of course his runaway marriage with the famous Guy Darrell’s heiress—no one would blame you, no one respect you less; but do not tell me that you would not be glad to save your daughter’s name from being coupled with such a miscreant’s at the price of half your fortune.”
“Alban’” said Darrell, gloomily, “you can say nothing on this score that has not been considered by myself. But the man has so placed the matter, that honour itself forbids me to bargain with him for the price of my name. So long as he threatens, I cannot buy off a threat; so long as he persists in a story by which he would establish a claim on me on behalf of a child whom I have every motive as well as every reason to disown as inheriting my blood—whatever I bestowed on himself would seem like hush-money to suppress that claim.”
“Of course—I understand, and entirely agree with you. But if the man retract all threats, confess his imposture in respect to this pretended offspring, and consent to retire for life to a distant colony, upon an annuity that may suffice for his wants, but leave no surplus beyond, to render more glaring his vices, or more effective his powers of evil; if this could be arranged between Mr. Poole and myself, I think that your peace might be permanently secured without the slightest sacrifice of honour. Will you leave the matter in my hands on this assurance—that I will not give this person a farthing except on the conditions I have premised?”
“On these conditions, yes, and most gratefully,” said Darrell. “Do what you will; but one favour more: never again speak to me (unless absolutely compelled) in reference to this dark portion of my inner life.”
Alban pressed his friend’s hand, and both were silent for some moments. Then said the Colonel, with an attempt at cheerfulness: “Darrell, more than ever now do I see that the new house at Fawley, so long suspended, must be finished. Marry again you must!—you can never banish old remembrances unless you can supplant them by fresh hopes.”
“I feel it—I know it,” cried Darrell, passionately. And oh! if one remembrance could be wrenched away! But it shall—it shall!”
“Ah!” thought Alban—“the remembrance of his former conjugal life!—a remembrance which might well make the youngest and the boldest Benedict shrink from the hazard of a similar experiment.”
In proportion to the delicacy, the earnestness, the depth of a man’s nature, will there be a something in his character which no male friend can conceive, and a something in the secrets of his life which no male friend can ever conjecture.
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