CONCLUSION.
AND now all things with which, in these pages, we are concerned, are
come to that point at which they are best settled in a very few words.
The _one_ point required to establish Sedley's claim to the
peerage--the validity of the marriage--had been supplied by old Arthur
Verney, as we have seen, the night before his death.
The late Lord Verney of unscrupulous memory, Arthur's father, had, it
was believed, induced Captain Sedley, in whose charge the infant had
been placed, to pretend its death, and send the child in reality to
France, where it had been nursed and brought up as his. He was
dependent for his means of existence upon his employment as manager of
his estates, under Lord Verney; and he dared not, it was thought, from
some brief expressions in a troubled letter among the papers placed by
old Mrs. Mervyn in Wynne Williams's hands, notwithstanding many
qualms of conscience, disobey Lord Verney. And he was quieted further
by the solemn assurance that the question of the validity of the
pretended marriage had been thoroughly sifted, and that it was proved
to have been a nullity.
He carefully kept, however, such papers as were in his possession
respecting the identity of the child, and added a short statement of
his own. If that old Lord Verney had suspected the truth that the
marriage was valid, as it afterwards proved, he was the only member of
his family who did so. The rest had believed honestly the story that
it was fraudulent and illusory. The apparent proof of the child's
death had put an end to all interest in further investigating the
question, and so the matter rested, until time and events brought all
to light.
The dream that made Malory beautiful in my eyes is over. The image of
that young fair face--the beautiful lady of the chestnut hair and
great hazel eyes haunts its dark woods less palpably, and the glowing
shadow fades, year by year, away.
In sunny Italy, where her mother was born, those eyes having looked
their last on Cleve and on "the boy," and up, in clouded hope to
heaven--were closed, and the slender bones repose. "I think, Cleve,
you'll sometimes remember your poor Margaret. I know you'll always be
very kind to the little boy--_our_ darling, and if you marry again,
Cleve, _she'll_ not be a trouble to you, as I have been; and you said,
you'll sometimes think of me. You'll forget all my jealousy, and
temper, and folly, and you'll say--'Ah, she loved me.'"
And these last words return, though the lips that spoke them come no
more; and he _is_ very kind to that handsome boy--frank, generous, and
fiery like her, with the great hazel eyes and beautiful tints, and the
fine and true affections. At times comes something in the smile, in
the tone as he talks, in the laugh that thrills his heart with a
strange yearning and agony. Vain remorse! vain the yearnings; for the
last words are spoken and heard; not one word _more_ while the heavens
remain, and mortals people the earth!
* * * * *
Sedley--Lord Verney we should style him--will never be a politician,
but he has turned out a thoroughly useful business-like and genial
country gentleman. Agnes, now Lady Verney, is, I will not say how
happy; I only hope not too happy.
Need I say that the cloud that lowered for a while over the house of
Hazelden has quite melted into air, and that the sun never shone
brighter on that sweet landscape? Miss Etherage is a great heiress
now, for Sedley, as for sake of clearness I call him still, refused a
_dot_ with his wife, and that handsome inheritance will all belong to
Charity, who is as emphatic, obstinate, and kind-hearted as ever. The
admiral has never gone down the mill-road since his introduction to
the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney at the foot of the hill. He rolls
in his chair safely along the level uplands, and amuses himself with
occasional inspections of Ware through his telescope; and tells little
Agnes, when he sees her, what she was doing on a certain day, and asks
who the party with the phaeton and grays, who called on Thursday at
two o'clock, were, and similar questions; and likes to hear the news,
and they say is growing more curious as years increase. He and Charity
have revived their acquaintance with _ecarte_ and _piquet_, and play
for an hour or so very snugly in the winter evenings. Miss Charity is
a little cross when she loses, and won't let old Etherage play more
than his allotted number of games; and locks up the cards; and is
growing wife-like with the admiral; but is quite devoted to him, and
will make him live, I think, six years longer than any one else could.
Sedley wrote a very kind letter to the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney, to
set his mind at ease about _mesne rates_, and any other claims
whatsoever, that might arise against him, in consequence of his
temporary tenure of the title and estates, and received from Vichy a
very affronted reply, begging him to take whatever course he might be
advised, as he distinctly objected to being placed under any kind of
personal obligation, and trusted that he would not seek to place such
a construction upon a compulsory respect for the equities of the
situation, and the decencies enforced by public opinion; and he
declared his readiness to make any sacrifice to pay him whatever his
strict legal rights entitled him to the moment he had made up his mind
to exact them.
The Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney is, of course, quite removed from his
sphere of usefulness and distinction--parliamentary life--and spends
his time upon the Continent, and is remarkably reserved and
impertinent, and regarded with very general respect and hatred.
Sedley has been very kind, for Cleve's sake, to old Sir Booth
Fanshawe, with whom he is the only person on earth who has an
influence.
He wrote to the baronet, who was then in Paris, disclosing the secret
of Cleve's marriage. The old man burst into one of his frenzies, and
wrote forthwith a frantic letter direct to his mortal enemy, the Hon.
Kiffyn Fulke Verney, railing at Cleve, railing at _him_, and calling
upon him, in a tone of preposterous menace, to punish his nephew! Had
he been left to himself, I dare say he would have made Cleve feel his
resentment. But thus bullied he said--"Upon my life I'll do no such
thing. I'm in the habit of thinking before I take steps, about
it--with Booth Fanshawe's permission, I'll act according to my own
judgment, and I dare say the girl has got some money, and if it were
not good for Cleve in some way, that old person would not be so
angry." And so it ended for the present.
The new Lord Verney went over expressly to see him, and in the same
conversation, in which he arranged some law business in the
friendliest way, and entirely to Sir Booth Fanshawe's satisfaction, he
discussed the question of Cleve's marriage. At first the baronet was
incensed; but when the hurly-burly was done he came to see, with our
friend Tom, whose peerage gave his opinion weight on the subject of
marriages and family relations, that the alliance was not so bad--on
the contrary, that it had some very strong points to recommend it.
The Rev. Isaac Dixie has not got on in the Church, and is somehow no
favourite at Ware. The Hon. Miss Caroline Oldys is still unmarried,
and very bitter on the Verneys, uncle and nephew; people don't
understand why, though the reader may. Perhaps she thinks that the
Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney ought to have tried again, and was too ready
to accept a first refusal. Her hatred of Cleve I need not explain.
With respect to Mr. Larkin, I cite an old Dutch proverb, which says,
"Those who swim deep and climb high seldom die in their beds." In its
fair figurative sense it applies satisfactorily to the case of that
profound and aspiring gentleman who, as some of my readers are aware,
fell at last from a high round of the ladder of his ambition, and was
drowned in the sea beneath. No--not drowned; that were too painless,
and implies extinction. He fell, rather, upon that black flooring of
rock that rims the water, and was smashed, but not killed.
It was, as they will remember, after his introduction to the
management of the affairs of the Wylder, Brandon, and Lake families,
and on the eve, to all appearance, of the splendid consummation of his
subtle and audacious schemes, that in a moment the whole scaffolding
of his villany gave way, and he fell headlong--thenceforth, helpless,
sprawling, backbroken, living on from year to year, and eating
metaphoric dust, like the great old reptile who is as yet mangled but
not killed.
Happy fly the years at Ware. Many fair children have blessed the union
of pretty Agnes Etherage and the kindly heir of the Verneys. Cleve
does not come himself; he goes little to any gay country houses. A
kind of lassitude or melancholy is settling and deepening upon him. To
one passage of his life he looks back with a quickly averted glance,
and an unchanging horror--the time when he was saved from a great
crime, as it were, by the turning of a die. "Those three dreadful
weeks," he says within himself, "when I was _mad_!" But his handsome
son is constantly at Ware, where he is beloved by its master and
mistress like one of their own children. One day Lord Verney ran
across to Malory in his yacht, this boy with him. It was an accidental
_tete-a-tete_, and he talked to the boy a great deal of his "poor
mama," as he sauntered through the sunny woods of Malory; and he
brought him to the refectory, and pointed out to him from the window,
the spot where he had seen her, with her trowel in her hand, as the
morning sun threw the shadow of the spreading foliage over her, and he
described her beauty to him; and he walked down with him to
Cardyllian, the yacht was appointed to meet them at the pier, and
brought him into the church, to the pew where he was placed, and
showed him the seat where she and Anne Sheckleton sat on the Sunday
when he saw her first, and looked for a while silently into that void
shadow, for it is pleasant and yet sad to call up sometimes those old
scenes and images that have made us feel, when we were younger; and
somehow good Lady Verney did not care to hear her husband upon this
theme.
So for the present the story of the Verneys of Malory is told. Years
hence, when we shall not be here to read it, the same scenes and
family may have a new story to tell; for time, with his shuttle and
the threads of fate, is ever weaving new romance.
END OF VOL III.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note:-- |
| |
| Punctuation errors have been corrected. |
| |
| The following suspected printer's errors have been addressed.|
| |
| Page 14. chesnut changed to chestnut. |
| (rich chestnut hair) |
| |
| Page 44. than clever changed to clever than. |
| (more clever than I) |
| |
| Page 74. negociation changed to negotiation. |
| (engaged in a great negotiation) |
| |
| Page 98. reeluse changed to recluse. |
| (look in upon the recluse) |
| |
| Page 98 taet changed to tact. |
| (with the exquisite tact) |
| |
| Page 98. dietator changed to dictator. |
| (the airs of a dictator) |
| |
| Page 127. mattrass changed to mattress. |
| (the feather-bed and the mattress) |
| |
| Page 162. duplicate word 'give' deleted. |
| (Can I give you any more) |
| |
| Page 234. spo e changed to spoke. |
| (as he spoke) |
| |
| Page 250. villanously changed to villainously. |
| (and smiling villainously) |
| |
| Page 257. accompapanied changed to accompanied. |
| (accompanied this) |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
End of Project Gutenberg's The Tenants of Malory, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu