Part 95 (1/2)

”I will go down this afternoon.”

”That is prompt. That is right. All you do my boy, all I see of you, commends you more and more to my approval and esteem. Go this afternoon, by all means. I will myself meet you at the station, to see you off and leave with you my letter of introduction. Stay; by what train shall you go? Ah! you do not know anything about the trains. Ring the bell.”

The youth complied.

A waiter appeared, a Bradshaw was ordered and consulted, and the five P. M. express fixed upon as the train by which the youth should leave London.

The duke then took leave of the boy, with an admonition of punctuality.

”Well,” said John Scott to himself, as soon as he was left alone, ”if my father gives me nothing else, he is certainly disposed to give me my own way. Perhaps in time he may give me all my rights. If so, well. If not--I _bide my time_,” he repeated.

At the appointed hour the guardian and ward met at the depot.

The duke placed the promised letter in the youth's hand, saw him into a first-cla.s.s carriage, and there bade him good-by.

John Scott sped down into Suss.e.x as fast as the express train could carry him, and the Duke of Hereward went back to Hereward House, much relieved by the departure of the youth, whose presence in London had seemed like an incubus upon him.

The deeply injured boy had departed; but--so also had the father's peace of mind, forever! Certainly he was now relieved of all fear of an unpleasant ecclairciss.e.m.e.nt; but he was not freed from remorse for the past, or from dread for the future.

He told the d.u.c.h.ess that day at dinner that a ward had been left to his guardians.h.i.+p, that this ward was, in fact, the son of a near relation, and bore the family name, which made it the more inc.u.mbent upon him to accept the charge; and, finally, that he had sent the boy down to Dr.

Simpson, at the Greencombe Vicarage, to read for the university.

The d.u.c.h.ess was not in the least degree interested in the duke's ward, and rather wondered that he should have taken the trouble to tell her anything about him; but the duke did so to provide for the future contingency of an accidental meeting between the d.u.c.h.ess and the boy, so that she might suppose him to be a blood relation, and thus understand the family likeness without the danger of suspecting a truth that could not be explained to her.

But the duke could not silence the voice of conscience and affection. The deeply-wronged boy whom he had sent away was his own first-born son--the son of his first marriage and of his only love; and he had wronged him beyond the power of man to help! He was the rightful heir of his t.i.tle and estates, yet he could never inherit them; he had been delegalized by his father's own hasty, reckless and cruel act; and for no fault of the boy's own--before he was capable of committing any fault--before his birth--he was disinherited.

All this so worked upon the duke's conscience that he could not give his mind to his ordinary vocations.

But about this time, the d.u.c.h.ess, through the death of a near relative, inherited a very large fortune, princ.i.p.ally in money.

With this she wished to purchase an estate in Scotland. And so, when Parliament rose, the duke and d.u.c.h.ess went to Scotland, personally to inspect certain estates that were for sale there; for the d.u.c.h.ess said that, in the matter of choosing a home to live in, she would trust no eyes but her own.

It seemed, however, that neither of the seats in the market pleased the lady, and she had given up her quest in despair, when the duke suggested that, before leaving Scotland, they should make a visit to the famous historical ruins of Lone Castle, in Lone, on Lone Lake, which had been in the Scott-Hereward family for eight centuries.

It was while they were tarrying at the little hotel of the ”Hereward Arms,” and making daily excursions in a boat across the lake to the isle and to the ruins, that the stupendous idea of restoring the castle occurred to the duke's mind--and not only restoring it as it had stood centuries before, a great, impregnable Highland fortress, but by bringing all the architectural and engineering art and skill of the nineteenth century to bear upon the subject, transforming the ruined castle and rocky isle and mountain-bound lake into the earthly paradise and century's wonder it afterwards became.

What vast means were used, what fortunes were sacrificed, what treasures were drawn into the maelstrom of this mad enterprise, has already been shown.

It is probable, however, that the duke would not have thrown himself so insanely into this work had it not seemed a means of escaping the torture of his own thoughts.

He could restore the old Highland stronghold, and transform the barren, water-girt rock into a garden of Eden; but he could not restore the rights of his own disinherited son.

He had consulted some among the most eminent lawyers in England, putting the case suppositiously, or as the case of another father and son, and the unanimous opinion given was that there could be no help for such a case as theirs; and even though the father had had no other heir, he could not reclaim this disinherited one.

It was not with unmingled regret that the duke heard this opinion given.

It certainly relieved him from the fearful duty of having to oppose the d.u.c.h.ess and all her family, as he would have been obliged to do, had it been possible to restore his eldest son to his rights; for the d.u.c.h.ess would not have stood by quietly and seen her son set aside in favor of the elder brother.

The duke spoke of his ward from time to time, so that in case the d.u.c.h.ess should ever meet him, or hear of him from others, she could not regard him as a mystery that had been concealed from her, or look upon his likeness to the family with suspicion.

But the d.u.c.h.ess seemed perfectly indifferent to the duke's ward, or if she did interest herself, it was only slightly or good-naturedly, as when she answered the duke's remarks, one day, by saying: