THE ROAD TO FORTUNE.
Months previously the baronet’s son had returned home, looking, as Sir
Ernest kindly told him, like a “resuscitated corpse:” and, in truth, his
long illness had produced anything rather than a beneficial change in
his appearance. His pale face, haggard looks, and emaciated person,
completely removed a suspicion his father had entertained, that Ernest,
for some unknown purpose, “was shamming;” it was a vast deal clearer
than a finger-post that the young man was just recovering from
sickness,—long, severe, dangerous; and having satisfied his mind on this
point by one keen scrutinising glance, the baronet’s thoughts, which
constantly turned to gold—“true as the needle to the pole”—reverted to
money, and he began to consider what a deal his son’s accident must have
cost, and how the fees and medicines and etceteras were to be paid.
“So you have been very ill, you say,” was almost the first remark he
vouchsafed.
“Yes, sir, nearly dead,” responded Ernest, laying an unconscious, but
still most mournful, emphasis on the “nearly,” as if he regretted an
answer could not have been given regarding him without the presence of
that word.
The baronet mentally calculated the cost of having his body conveyed
from London and buried at Lorton; debited and credited the accounts of
life and death, so to speak, and finding the balance decidedly in favour
of the former, the expenses of the latter being, at a moderate
computation, more than double, he said, in a much more satisfied tone,
“Well, but you’re better now, are not you?”
“A great deal; I am, I may say, quite strong again.”
“And so your journey might have been saved; the opinion is——”
“What I wrote you,” supplied Ernest, as his father stopped, “that you
have not an inch of ground to stand upon. Scott and Smeek took that view
from the first; but as they did not like to go by their own judgment
alone, they said it would be better to lay the affair before some
eminent barrister, which we did. The very first legal opinion of the day
has, therefore, been taken on the question, and the sum and substance of
that opinion is, that if you wish to go to law you can, but it will be
with a positive certainty of being beaten.”
“Humph! that would scarcely suit Sir Ernest Ivraine,” said the baronet
reflectively.
“So I told Scott, and he said he knew that, and intimated to the
barrister you were not accustomed to that sort of thing. The other said
shortly, ‘He had heard of your having twenty law suits and never losing
one; but that if you brought this into court you would get the worst of
it.’”
“A straightforward honest speech,” remarked the baronet, who was pleased
to find his fame, in respect of successful litigation, had spread even
to the heart of England’s metropolis. “Lawyers are the only class of men
I care to have any dealings with; they are up to every kind of villainy,
and make no pretence about it; and when they say, ‘Don’t go to law,’ you
may depend they are sincere, seeing it is their interest everybody
should be at loggerheads with his neighbour. The first ‘case’ I have, I
will retain that fellow, and my opponent shall pay him: ha, ha! Well,
Ernest, anything else?”
“Nothing, excepting that, in return for the guineas he received from me,
he sent back a ‘full opinion’ to you, which you can read at your
leisure, I having now condensed the matter of it; and further, Mr. Scott
called frequently upon me during my illness, or, rather, when I was
getting better—not in the way of business, but as a friend—and, before I
left, he advised me to urge you by no means to go to law, as it would
certainly entail enormous expense and could serve no good purpose,
except to give your opponents a triumph over you.”
“And he styles that a good purpose,” soliloquised the baronet; “well, so
be it, only it’s one I won’t be the means of accomplishing just at
present: and he went to see you without wanting to be paid for it, did
he?”
“I presume, on account of certain former business transactions with you,
he considered it only respectful to call on your son after I had been so
unfortunate as to get my arm broken; besides which, Belerma Square is
scarcely a stone’s throw from his office in Arras Street.”
“I wonder,” said Sir Ernest with his usual benevolence, “you could not
have watched where you were going, and avoided such an accident; I never
heard of anything so clumsy or provoking in my life,—stumbling for no
other conceivable purpose than to make work for the doctors. Pshaw! I
thought you had more sense; the expense of them alone must have been
something frightful; set of leeches as they are, they never let a
patient out of their hands till they have sucked his pockets dry: I
would hang the half of them, and that might be a warning to the
remainder of their brethren.” And the baronet, who loved lawyers,
delivered this sentence with peculiar gusto, and chuckled, in his
customary savage manner, at the idea of how summarily he would settle
the bills of the numerous and much libelled class, who either prefix Dr.
to their surnames or else stick M.D., as an appropriate and ornamental
finish to the same.
“I beg to assure you,” said Ernest, when the old man, having thought
better about suffocating himself, had stopped his detestable laugh
before it fairly took away his breath for ever, “I beg to assure you, my
expenses for medical attendance were so moderate as quite to surprise
me, and you must remember I was at none other.”
“None other? ah, yes! I had forgotten: somebody picked you up and
carried you home,—a philanthropist was it, or an undertaker anxious to
get the job of burying a gentleman, or a lady desirous for a good
matrimonial settlement, who thought if she could bring you round, you
might ‘do,’ eh! Ernest, which was it?”
The blood mounted into the young man’s cheeks, and he bit his lip to
find it doing so, particularly as the baronet’s cold, shrewd, searching
eye was upon him; but he answered with an attempt at unconcern.
“I do not think the person who performed the very kind act of rescuing
me from the tender mercies of a policeman and an hospital can lay any
claim to the character of a philanthropist, or, indeed, would wish to do
so; but that certainly is the only one of the three personages you have
named he even faintly resembles.”
“Don’t like philanthropists,” remarked the baronet, determined to sift
the matter to the very bottom; “glad to hear he does not set up for one,
though I admit they are occasionally useful, as in a case of this kind,
for instance; but who was your entertainer? open your mouth wide for
once, Ernest, and tell me: I am desirous of knowing who saved the life
of my son; naturally anxious—you understand,” and the wretched,
ungrateful old man smiled like a fiend and fastened his glistening eyes
on the thin worn face of him who grew alternately red and pale under a
scrutiny which was becoming almost unbearable.
“My entertainer was a Mr. John Merapie, of the firm of Merapie and
Westwood—rich I should think, kind I know, eccentric I believe—who
resides at number 12, Belerma Square, and is reported to be a first-rate
man of business and to stand high in the commercial world as a person of
strict integrity, and so forth.”
“What family has he?” demanded Sir Ernest, as his son paused.
“None: he never was married and seems a confirmed bachelor,” was the
reply.
“Humph!” This favourite ejaculation of the baronet’s was uttered after
the fashion of a confidential soliloquy, and his son was just praying he
had got to the end of his queries—in other words, he either had never
smelt the game at all or else been lured off the scent of it, when
suddenly out came the next question, and the one Ernest had been
dreading from the commencement.
“What kind of a feminine creature keeps house for him? He does not live
all alone in one of those Belerma Square mansions without some female
relative, I suppose, eh?” and the miser finished off this interrogatory
by stretching forth one hand, as if he would fain have shaken
information full and accurate out of his son.
“His sister, or, rather, his half sister, manages the establishment,”
Ernest responded.
“And what may she be like?” persisted his father; “is she young or old,
handsome or plain, rich or poor, a dependant or what? Tell me at once,
sir; I—I want to understand this business thoroughly. I always suspect
these disinterested people: I am not going to have you inveigled into a
vulgar pauper marriage, I——”
“For heaven’s sake, sir, don’t agitate yourself so unnecessarily!”
interposed Ernest, in the calm sarcastic tone he had surely inherited
from his parent, for it was one Sir Ernest could assume at pleasure;
“the lady is neither young, handsome, nor peculiarly attractive; she may
either be a dependant or not for aught I know about her: John Merapie
never made the slightest effort to ‘catch’ her for me, and if you remain
without a daughter-in-law till I ask you to receive that gentleman’s
sister, greatly indebted as I feel myself to both of them, you will live
to see the youngest oak on your property a giant tree. Pray set your
mind at ease; nobody has spread the net matrimonial for me since I left
here; great catch as I admit I would be for the relative of a man who is
worth some quarter of a million at any rate.”
For about the first time in his life the baronet found himself at fault;
there was a quiet scorn in his son’s manner that threw him off the
trail: it was long before fresh occurrences set him on it again, and
caused him to reflect that there might be other ladies living at number
12, Belerma Square, than John Merapie’s sister. Ernest’s tone satisfied
him the young man was not in love with the merchant’s relative; and, as
he had no particular fault to find with the pair who had saved him from
the infliction of a long hotel bill, and no very good pretence for
quarrelling with Ernest, and as, moreover, he wanted to inform him he
had thought of a way of “doing” Sir Hugh Xifer and the rest, without
going to law with them, he contented himself by saying,
“If he have a quarter of a million, he will hardly ask you to marry his
sister, I am perfectly satisfied about that; only I like to see my way
and not to be blinded: Henry has brought disgrace enough into our
family, without your making us any worse; and for what he has done I
have renounced him, cut him off from my heart and my home, blotted out
his name as child of mine; remember that, sir, never forget it.”
“It strikes me you were a little premature with regard to my brother,
just as, a few minutes since, you were too hasty in reference to
myself,” remarked Ernest, still maintaining the withering tone which
alone ever seemed to produce the slightest effect on his parent; “I told
you years ago Henry would rise to name and fortune yet, and you then
laughed my assertion to scorn; but the boy had the materials in him out
of which heroes are moulded; he has risen, as I asserted he would; he
has flung back the lie in the teeth of those who would have prejudiced
you against him by tales of his rashness, his discontent, his
waywardness; he has struggled, he has conquered, he has won; your son is
no longer a ‘common private, a vagabond soldier.’ Without money, without
influence, almost without a friend, he has raised himself from the
ranks, and now stands in a position in which you will not blush to
acknowledge him. To what station he may further attain it is impossible
to say; perhaps his name may yet become one famous in history; if life
be spared, he will certainly achieve some brilliant destiny for himself:
meantime, you will learn from this letter what he has already
accomplished; he enclosed it in one to me, and bade me be sure to give
it, whether you were willing or not, into the hands of ‘his father.’”
These were the concluding words of the longest sentence Ernest had ever
uttered in his life; but this time the miser did not inform him he was
“becoming eloquent.” No; during the progress of the speech he turned
pale, livid almost with excitement; his face assumed a totally different
expression, his whole frame quivered and trembled, as though shaken by
some violent emotion; and when, at last, his son held out the missive,
he looked at him, first wildly for a moment, and then clutching it with
convulsive eagerness, he bade Ernest, in a voice almost inaudible from
emotion, leave him alone—leave him alone quickly.
And when Ernest obeyed, the old man tore open the letter, and devoured
rather than read its contents. If Henry’s speeches had been of the
longest, assuredly his epistle was of the shortest: but what did that
signify; “good news,” like “good goods,” go in small bulk, and thus a
few honest manly lines sufficed to tell the struggles, the
disappointments, the success of the younger brother; he possessed
nothing to give in exchange for a commission, he said, “but his blood,”
and of that he had not been sparing: his upward course was marked by a
deep broad track of crimson, but he had won, at length, name, fame,
epaulettes, position; and standing—after years of toil and struggle, of
weary climbing and of sickening disappointments, on the broad sure
stone, Success—he wrote, for the first time since they parted, to his
parent, and conveyed to him the story of his experiences, his
long-deferred hopes and their final realization, in a score or so of
concise decided words.
But oh! what volumes did those words not contain: the story of manhood’s
toil; the exultation of youthful pride; the firm purpose of a noble
soul; the unalterable steadiness of a truthful generous heart; the
natural triumph of one who, having been misunderstood and traduced, was
able to fling the undeniable fact of having carved out his own way to
fortune, unassisted, unpatronised, unsullied, in the faces of his former
calumniators: there was everything in that short letter, everything—even
to a vague instinctive attachment for his miser parent—save love of
home.
He desired not to revisit Paradise, that was self-evident; he loathed
the very memory of that place, amid the fields and the trees and the
swamps of which the old miser baronet sate him down to read and re-read,
with a half-proud and a half-angry heart, the history of his disobedient
son’s wild projects, and their just commenced fulfilment.
“It was in him, in him always, Henry, my brave rash son.”
So muttered Sir Ernest, and the letter shook in his hand, and something
very like a film came for a moment over his restless grey eyes as the
record of step after step—how longed for, how won—swam before him; no
one could have believed it was actually the unfeeling old baronet who
thus grasped, who thus perused, the letter of a soldier—his gallant boy;
he seemed as different as night is from day, as the tempest from
sunshine, as storm from calm, as good from evil; but still he was just
the same, only the single good chord in his nature having been touched,
a sort of harmony—not the less affecting because strange and wild and a
little harsh and irregular—pervaded his whole being; he was thinking
then, kindly, gently, of the only creature under heaven he loved, after
his selfish sordid fashion, well and disinterestedly; and as the words
and the looks and the tones of old came stealing into his soul, and with
their magic fingers woke the music of that one solitary string which
alone ever vibrated at the swell of gentle passions, the miser became,
for a brief space, a man, the cynic a father, the sneerer a something
capable of experiencing human emotions, and being melted for a moment by
them.
There was a wild joy and a strange sorrow in the heart of Ernest Ivraine
when he beheld how his parent received the news of Henry’s success, when
he noted how, for a period after the receipt of that letter, the miser
seemed softened, subdued, altered: a mingling of many feelings,—triumph,
regret, impatience, anger, grief; boundless exultation at the leap his
brother had so unexpectedly made from the dull dark shore, called
poverty, to that other, its bright opposite comparative, prosperity.
Henry’s pride was his pride; he could now, in his name, give back scorn
for scorn to those who had dared to question the abilities and the sense
of his brother, to measure the exact height at which he should always
remain stationary, to point out with sarcastic finger a spot close to
the base of the hill of fame where he was ever to stand still, gazing
wistfully up to that summit, which it would never be his good fortune to
reach; he could now keep them at bay better than formerly; he possessed
a hold over the old miser, more potent than flattery, or subservience,
or cleverness; the second chance was again restored, and its influence
he found to be, not merely unimpaired by the lapse of time and change of
circumstances, but strengthened fourfold; it had almost ceased to be a
“chance,” for their hope of a goodly inheritance might now, Ernest saw,
be called a certainty.
And if the hate he bore some of his kindred made him rejoice their
assertions had been proved false, a far better and more Christian
feeling, the love he felt for his brother, caused every pulse of his
heart to beat quicker in fraternal sympathy with the triumphant
expressions of the young officer.
The weight was at last lifted from his soul; he no longer lay awake at
night, mourning for the generous youth whose spirit had been crushed by
disappointments; who, having chosen his lot, was forced to drag out year
after year in weary servitude, uncheered by congenial companionship,
unillumined by a hope; who had no friend out there or anywhere to help
him up; who loved no one and was loved by no one, save Ernest, his
silent, melancholy, absent brother.
No; light had dawned in India at length: the night was passed, the
morning come, and sometimes when sorrow pressed sorely upon him, when
his own chains galled and his own thoughts oppressed him, the elder
brother turned his mournful gaze away to the glorious east, to the land
of splendid luxury, of pearls and perfumes, of gorgeous flowers and
towering mountains, of cactus hedges and impenetrable forests, of
palaces and magnificence; to the land where great destinies have been
achieved and valour recognized and diplomacy rewarded; to the land which
had become that of promise to the miser’s youngest born. From the dreary
fens of Lincolnshire he turned his mournful gaze away to the east, and,
forgetful of himself for a period, drew comfort and gratification from
watching the proud confident strides that were being taken in rapid
succession by him who so resembled the fairhaired, gentle woman they
both had called, in childhood’s first faltering accents, “Mother.”
So much for the joy; so far all was as, perhaps, it ought to have been,
as pure, as unselfish as human feelings ever are; but a craving,
never-sleeping sorrow, which devoured his peace, intervened at this
point and prevented his good thoughts obtaining entire mastery over
him,—prevented, in one sentence, Ernest Ivraine from rejoicing so fully
and completely with him who rejoiced as he would unquestionably have
mourned had ill fortune fallen to the lot of the youth, who, having gone
forth nobly to breast the stream of fate, had reached, with the help of
Him in whom he had put his trust, a safe and happy port at last.
Oh! why in those far back years had Ernest not been strong in faith,
brave in honest self-reliance, too? why had he not ventured out into the
strife, that he might now have been free, unfettered, independent? why,
when with a sickening heart, a vague repentance oppressing him, he asked
himself these questions, did he not, earnest in purpose, hopeful in
spirit, leave Paradise behind him, and casting from off his soul the
shackles of that which Henry had called “accursed gold,” commence, even
at the eleventh hour, the struggle of existence?
Because their dispositions, temperaments, and gifts were so different;
because the one was rash and the other prudent; because the one was
enthusiastic and the other calculating; because Ernest had more patience
and Henry more energy; because the former saw no sin in lingering,
watching, waiting for a parent’s death, while the latter felt, as he
said, the guilt of even the idea oppress his soul; because the elder had
inherited something of his father’s indomitable obstinacy and adhesive
persistence; because a little of woman’s blind impulsiveness, of her
foolish impetuosity, and absurd ideality, had been bequeathed by his
dead mother to the younger.
Difference of character! in that brief sentence was contained the key to
diversity of conduct; the bold fearlessness of the one had sent him out
on a vague desperate errand into the world; the cold cautiousness of the
other kept him hanging on for ever about Paradise, a man toiling and
slaving for another’s benefit, enduring, hoping, waiting for a chance.
But now when, without his assistance, Henry had climbed so high as to be
able to reach down a helping hand to aid him in his ascent, when each
Indian letter, as it arrived, came laden with words of affection and
promises of assistance if he only would join the writer, when he called
all the money he had so long and uselessly hoarded for Henry’s benefit
his own, and was thus possessed of enough to leave his father’s house
and take his first step in life’s highway—a gentleman, with gold
sufficient to buy civility and courtesy from the cringing throng,—when
after years of anxious waiting, the end he had longed for seemed far off
as ever, why did he hesitate?
Because, though circumstances might have altered he had not: the old
temptation was strong as ever to retain, the new lure feeble as formerly
to attract; he repented him, it is true, that he had not gone _then_,
but he asserted it was too late for him to commence _now_; if his father
bequeathed them wealth, he should be better off than any exertions of
his own could possibly make him; and if, on the other hand, he left
Paradise and failed—ay, there was the old doubt again—Henry could only
give him assistance, not wealth; whilst, by lingering a little longer,
taking a fresh stock of patience on board to serve him for a brief
space, he should become a rich baronet without a care.
And what if Mina married in the interim? What if, before he was able to
go and tell her, with unclouded brow, the history of his secret
troubles, of his former reserve, of his affection for the sister of one
who had saved his life? What if, before death’s kind hand left him at
liberty to try whether a woman could be induced to love him as well as
Henry had done, she—the only creature, save his mother and Henry, for
whom he ever entertained a sincere attachment—should have made new ties
for herself and become incapable of being ever aught unto him, save a
sad memory and a gentle-hearted friend?
The thought flickered through his brain at intervals, and so surely as
it struggled to light, Ernest smothered it with a sentence he tried to
believe, but could not, “She is nothing to me, can never be;” and as
rapidly as he smothered the reflection in one form, it sprang to life in
another, and thus—a vague, indefinite, painful idea,—it remained with
and constantly haunted him.
Thus the summer, passed in dim reveries under spreading trees, wore
slowly away, and autumn came,—that autumn when Cecilia Warmond was
married, and the baronet’s son read all about the ceremony in the
aristocratic columns of the _Morning Post_.