Part 69 (1/2)
”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; 'n.o.blesse 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 ident.i.ty 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 ident.i.ty 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 a.s.surance--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, pa.s.sionately. 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.
CHAPTER XI.
OUR OLD FRIEND THE POCKET-CANNIBAL EVINCES UNEXPECTED PATRIOTISM AND PHILOSOPHICAL MODERATION, CONTENTED WITH A STEAK OFF HIS OWN SUCCULENT FRIEND IN THE AIRS OF HIS OWN NATIVE SKY.