Part 68 (2/2)

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 n.o.body 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 cha.s.seur, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.surance 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 princ.i.p.al 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 s.h.i.+lling of the marriage portion which was imposed on it as a debt, and a.s.sociated 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 ent.i.tled, 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 antic.i.p.ated, &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 princ.i.p.al 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 inst.i.tute 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 a.s.sociations, 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 h.e.l.l; in that h.e.l.l had been engulfed all the monies he had received--a h.e.l.l 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 a.s.sisted by a lady who, in the course of her amiable life, had a.s.sisted 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sistance, 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 a.s.sured 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 w.i.l.l.y!” 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 h.e.l.l! 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?”

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