CLEVE VERNEY SEES THE CHATEAU DE CRESSERON.
I FANCY that these estimates, on a rather large scale, moved by Mr.
Dingwell, were agreed to, for sufficient reasons, by the parties
interested in disputing them.
Mr. Dingwell kept very close during the daytime. He used to wander
listlessly to and fro, between his bed-room and his drawing-room, with
his hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown, and his feet in a pair of
hard leather slippers, with curled-up toes and no heels, that clattered
on the boards like sabots.
Miss Sarah Rumble fancied that her lodger was a little shy of the
windows; when he looked out into the court, he stood back a yard or more
from the window-sill.
Mr. Larkin, indeed, made no secret of Mr. Dingwell's uncomfortable
position, in his conferences with the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney. Mr.
Dingwell had been a bankrupt, against whom many transactions to which
the Court had applied forcible epithets, had been proved; to whom, in
fact, that tribunal had refused quarter; and who had escaped from its
fangs by a miracle. There were judgments, however, in force against him;
there was a warrant procurable any day for his arrest; he was still "in
contempt;" I believe he was an "outlaw;" and, in fact, there was all but
a price set on his head. Thus, between him and his outcast acquaintance,
the late Hon. Arthur Verney, had subsisted some strong points of
sympathy, which had no doubt helped to draw them into that near intimacy
which stood the Hon. Kiffyn, no less than Mr. Dingwell (to whose mill it
was bringing very comfortable grist), so well in stead, at this moment.
It behoved Mr. Dingwell, therefore, to exercise caution. Many years had
passed since he figured as a London trader. But time, the obliterator,
in some cases works slowly; or rather, while the pleasant things of
memory are sketched in with a pencil, the others are written in a bold,
legible, round hand, as it were, with a broad-nibbed steel pen, and the
best durable japanned ink; on which Father Time works his India-rubber
in vain, till his gouty old fingers ache, and you can fancy him
whistling curses through his gums, and knocking his bald pate with his
knuckles. Mr. Dingwell, on the way home, was, to his horror, half
recognised by an ancient Cockney at Malta. Time, therefore, was not to
be relied upon, though thirty years had passed; and Mr. Dingwell began
to fear that a debtor is never forgotten, and that the man who is
thoroughly dipt, like the lovely woman who stoops to folly, has but one
way to escape consequences, and that is to die--a step which Mr.
Dingwell did not care to take.
The meeting on the 15th, at the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney's house, Mr.
Dingwell was prevented by a cold from attending. But the note of his
evidence sufficed, and the consultation, at which Mr. Larkin assisted,
was quite satisfactory. The eminent parliamentary counsel who attended,
and who made, that session, nearly fifty-thousand pounds, went to the
heart of the matter direct; was reverentially listened to by his junior,
by the parliamentary agent, by the serious Mr. Larkin, at whom he thrust
sharp questions, in a peremptory and even fierce way, like a general in
action, to whom minutes are everything; treated them once or twice to a
recollection or short anecdote, which tended to show what a clever,
sharp fellow the parliamentary counsel was, which, indeed, was true; and
talked to no one quite from a level, except to one Hon. Kiffyn Fulke
Verney, to whom he spoke confidentially in his ear, and who himself
quickly grew into the same confidential relations.
"I'm glad you take my view--Mr.--Mr. Forsythe--very happy about it, that
we should be in accord. I've earned some confidence in my opinion,
having found it more than once, I may say, come out right; and it gives
me further confidence that you take my view," said the Honourable Kiffyn
Fulke Verney, grandly.
That eminent parliamentary counsel, Forsythe, was on his way to the
door, when Mr. Verney interposed with this condescension.
"Oh! Ha! Do I? Very happy. What is it?" said Forsythe, smiling briskly,
glancing at his watch and edging towards the door, all together.
"I mean the confident view--the cheerful--about it," said the Hon. Mr.
Verney, a little flushed, and laying his thin hand on his counsel's arm.
"Certainly--confident, of course, smooth sailing, _quite_. I see no
hitch _at present_."
Mr. Forsythe was now, more decidedly, going. But he could not treat the
Hon. Kiffyn Verney quite like an ordinary client, for he was before him
occasionally in Committees of the House of Commons, and was likely soon
to be so in others of the Lords, and therefore, chafing and smiling, he
hesitated under the light pressure of the old gentleman's stiff fingers.
"And you know the, I may say, _absurd_ state of the law, about it--there
was, you know, my unfortunate brother, Arthur--you are aware--_civiliter
mortuus_, stopping the way, you know, for nearly twenty years, about it,
ever since my poor father, Lord Verney, you know, expired, about it, and
I've been, as you know, in the most painful position--_absurd_, you
know."
"_Quite_ so; I'm _afraid_--" Forsythe was again edging toward the door.
"And I always contended that where the heir was civilly dead, about it,
the law should make proper provision--don't you see?"
"Quite so, only _fair_--a very wise and politic statute--and I wish very
much, with your experience, you'd turn your attention to draw one. I'm
obliged to be off now, to meet the New Discount directors; consultation
at my chambers."
And so, smiling, Forsythe, Q.C., did vanish, at last.
All this over, Mr. Cleve Verney proposed to himself a little excursion,
of a day or two, to Paris, to which his uncle saw no objection.
Not very far from the ancient town of Caen, where the comparative
quietude of Normandy, throughout the throes of the great revolution,
has spared so many relics of the bygone France, is an old chateau, still
habitable--still, after a fashion, comfortable--and which you may have
at a very moderate rent indeed.
Here is an old wood, cut in a quincunx; old ponds stocked with carp;
great old stables gone to decay; and the chateau itself, is
indescribably picturesque and sad.
It is the Chateau de Cresseron--withdrawn in historic seclusion, amid
the glories and regrets of memory, quite out of the tide of modern
traffic.
Here, by the side of one of the ponds, one evening, was an old lady,
throwing in little bits of bread to the carp that floated and flitted,
like golden shadows, this way and that, as the crumbs sank in the water,
when she heard a well-known voice near her which made her start.
"Good heavens! Mr. Verney! _You_ here?" she exclaimed, with such utter
wonderment, her little bit of bread raised in her fingers, that Cleve
Verney, though in no merry mood, could not help smiling.
"Yes--here indeed--and after all, is it quite so wonderful?" said he.
"Well, of course you know, Mr. Verney, I'm very glad to see you. Of
course, you know _that_; but I'm very far from being certain that you
have done a wise or a prudent thing in coming here, and I don't know
that, under the circumstances, I _ought_ to be glad to see you; in fact,
I'm afraid it is _very rash_," said Miss Sheckleton, growing more
decided as she proceeded.
"No, not rash. I've been very miserable; _so_ miserable, that the worst
certainty which this visit might bring upon me would be almost a relief
compared with the intolerable suspense I have lived in; therefore, you
see, it really is not rash."
"I'm very bad at an argument," persisted the old lady; "but it _is_
rash, and _very_ rash. You can't conceive," and here she lowered her
voice, "the state of exasperation in which he is."
"He," of course, could only mean Sir Booth Fanshawe; and Cleve
answered,--
"I assure you, I can't blame him. I don't wonder. I think a great deal
has been very wantonly done to aggravate his misfortunes; but surely, he
can't fancy that I could sympathise with any such proceedings, or feel
anything but horror and disgust. Surely, _you_ would not allow him to
connect me, however slightly? I _know_ you would not."
"My dear Mr. Verney, you don't know Booth Fanshawe, or rather, you do, I
believe, know him a great deal too well, to fancy that I could venture
to speak to him upon the subject. _That_, I assure you, is quite out of
the question; and I may as well tell you frankly, if he were at home, I
mean _here_, I should have begged you at once, inhospitable as it might
seem, to leave this place, and trust to time and to letters, but _here_
I would not have allowed you to linger."
"He's away from home, then!" exclaimed Cleve.
"Yes; but he'll be back to-night at ten o'clock."
"At ten o'clock," repeated Cleve, and the young man thought what a
treasure of minutes there was in the interval. "And Miss
Fanshawe--Margaret--she's quite well?"
"Yes, she's quite well," answered kind Miss Sheckleton, looking in his
earnest eyes, and thinking that he looked a little thin and pale. "She's
quite well, and, I hope, _you_ have been."
"Oh, yes," answered the young man, "as well as a man with a good many
troubles can be. In fact, I may tell _you_, I've been very unhappy. I
was thinking of writing to Sir Booth."
"_Don't_," implored Miss Sheckleton, looking quite wildly into his eyes,
and with her hand upon his arm, as if to arrest the writing of that
letter, "you have no notion how he feels. I assure you, an allusion--the
slightest thing is quite enough to set him in a blaze. The other day,
for instance, I did not know what it was, till I took up the paper he
had been reading, and I found there something about the Verney peerage,
and proof that Arthur Verney was dead, and your uncle to get it; and
really I can't wonder--some people seem so unaccountably fortunate, and
others, everything goes wrong with--even _I_ felt vexed when I read it,
though, of course, any good fortune happening to _you_, I should be very
glad of. But he did not see any of us till next day--even Macklin."
"Yes, it is very true," said Cleve, "my uncle _is_ dead, and we shall
prove it, that is, my uncle Kiffyn will. But you are quite right to
distinguish as you do. It involves nothing for me. Since it has come so
near, I have lost all faith in it's ever reaching me. I have, I can't
call it a conviction, but a _superstition_, that it never will. I must
build my own fortunes from their foundations, with my own hand. There is
but one success on earth that can make me very proud and very happy. Do
you think, that having come all this way, in that hope, on that one
chance, that Margaret will see me?"
"I wish you had written to me before coming," said Anne Sheckleton,
after a little pause. "I should have liked to find out first, all I
could, from herself; she is so odd. I've often told you that she _is_
odd. I think it would have been wiser to write to me before coming over,
and I should have talked to her,--that is, of course, if she had allowed
me,--for I can't in the least say that she would even hear me on the
subject."
"Well," said Cleve, with a sigh, "I have come--I am here--and go I
cannot without seeing her--I cannot--and you, I think, are too kind to
wish that I should. Yes, Miss Sheckleton, you have been my true friend
throughout this--what shall I call it?--wild and terrible dream--for I
cannot believe it real--I wonder at it myself--I ought to wish I had
never seen her--but I cannot--and I think on the result of this visit
depends the whole course of my life. You'll not see me long, I think, in
the House of Commons, nor in England; but I'll tell you more by-and-by."
The sun had gone down now. A red and melancholy glow, rising from piles
of western cloud, melted gradually eastward into the deep blue of night
in which the stars were already glimmering.
Along one of the broad avenues cut through the forest that debouches
upon the court-yard of the quaint old chateau they were now walking,
and, raising his eyes, he saw Margaret approaching from the antique
house.