Thus was I, and, what mattered much more, my mother, reduced quite
suddenly from a position of rank and luxury, and a prospective income of
L15,000 a-year (so much had the land increased in value) to a revenue of
nothing, and no home. Even to me it was a heavy blow, but what could my
poor mother do?
We were assured by counsel that a legal struggle could end in expense
alone, and advised by the family lawyers to throw ourselves on the good
feeling and appeal to the honour of Mr. Edgar Vaughan. Mr. Vaughan he
must henceforth be called. I cannot well understand, still less can I
explain, small and threadbare technicalities (motes, which too often are
the beam of Justice), but the circumstances which robbed me of my
father's home were somewhat as follows:--
By the will of my father's grandfather, Hubert Vaughan, who died in the
year 1782, the whole of the family property was devised to his son,
Vaughan Powis Vaughan, for life, and after his decease, to his sons
successively _in tail male_, failing these to his right heirs in
general. This will was said to have been prepared in haste: it was, in
fact, drawn by a country attorney, when the testator was rapidly
sinking. It was very brief, and by no means accurately worded; neither
did it contain those powers to meet family exigencies, which I am told a
proper practitioner would have inserted.
There was no reason to suppose that the testator had contemplated
anything more than a strict settlement of the usual kind, _i.e._ a
common estate entail, expectant upon a life-interest; and under which I
should have succeeded my father, as his heiress, in the ordinary course.
But it is the chief fault of smatterers in the law (and country
attorneys at that time were no better) that they will attempt to be too
definite. The country lawyer in this case, grossly ignorant of his
profession, and caught by the jangle of the words _tail male_, had
inserted them at hazard, possibly not without some idea that they would
insure a stricter succession than a common entail would do.
When my father became of age, measures were taken for barring the entail
created by the will of Hubert Vaughan; and at the time it was believed
that these were quite effectual, and therefore that my father was now
entitled in fee-simple, and could dispose of the property.
Upon his marriage with my mother, she, with worthy pride, refused most
firmly to accept a jointure charged on his estates, alleging that as she
brought no fortune into the family, she would not incumber the family
property, which had but recently been relieved of incumbrances. More
than this--she had even insisted upon expressly abandoning, by her
marriage settlement, all claim to dower. This unusual course she had
adopted, because of some discontent expressed by relatives of my father
at his marriage with a portionless bride, whereby her self-respect had
been deeply wounded. So nothing was settled upon her, except her own
little estate in Devonshire, which was secured to her separate use.
My father had never permitted this excess of generosity on her part, but
that he was by nature careless upon such subjects, and hoped to provide
amply for her interests by his will: moreover he was hot to remove all
obstacles to their marriage. But it was now discovered that he had no
power to charge the real estate for her benefit, in the manner his will
imported; that he had never been more than a tenant in tail, and that
entail such that I could not inherit. Neither, of course, could I take
under his will, as he possessed no power of disposition. One quarter of
all that has been written upon the subject I never could understand; and
even as to the simplest points, sometimes I seem to apprehend them
clearly, and then I feel that I do not. My account of the matter is
compressed from what I remember of the legal opinions.
The leading fact, at any rate, and the key to all the mischief, was,
that the entail had never been barred at all: the legal process (called
a "recovery") which was to have had that effect, being null and void
through some absurd informality. They told me something about a tenant
to a precipice, but they must have made a mistake, for there was no
precipice on the estate, unless some cliffs near the church could be
called so, and they were never let.
Be that as it may, my father's will was declared to be waste paper,
except as regarded what they called the personalty, or, in good English,
the money he had to bequeath. And of this there was very little, for,
shortly before his death, he had spent large sums in drainage,
farm-buildings, and other improvements. Furthermore, he had always
maintained a profuse hospitality, and his charity was most lavish. The
lawyers told us that, under the circumstances (a favourite expression of
theirs when they mean some big robbery), a court of equity would perhaps
consider our application to be "recupped," as they called it, out of the
estate, for the money laid out in improvements under a false impression.
But we had been cupped enough already. Grossly plundered by legal
jargon, robbed by statute, and scourged by scriveners' traditions, we
flung away in disgust the lint the bandits offered, and left them "all
estate, right, title, interest, and claim, whether at law or in equity,
in to or out of" the licking of our blood.
But now my long suspicions, and never-discarded conviction of my
guardian's guilt, were, by summary process, not only revived, but
redoubled. This arose partly from the discovery of the stake he had on
my father's life, and partly, perhaps, from a feeling of hatred towards
our supplanter. That he knew not till now the flaw in our title, and
his own superior claim, was more than I could believe. I felt sure that
he had gained this knowledge while in needy circumstances and sharp
legal practice, brought, as he then most probably was, into frequent
contact with the London agents who had the custody of the documents.
To be in the same room with him, was now more than I could bear, and it
became impossible that we should live any longer in the same house. He,
indeed, wished, or feigned to wish, that we should remain there, and
even showed some reluctance to urge his unrighteous rights. But neither
my mother (who bore the shock with strange resignation) nor myself would
hear of any compromise, or take a farthing at his hands, and he was too
proud and stern to press upon us his compunctions.
Statements of our case had been prepared and submitted to three most
eminent conveyancers, and the three opinions had been found to agree,
except upon some trivial points. More than two months had been thus
consumed, and it was now once more the anniversary of my father's death.
I had spent the time in narrowly watching my ex-guardian's conduct,
though keeping aloof, as much as possible, from any intercourse with
him.
One night, I stole into the room which he called his study, and where
(with a child's simplicity) I believed him to keep his private
documents. Through Thomas Kenwood, to whom I now confided almost
everything, and whose suspicions were even stronger than mine, I
obtained clandestine possession of the keys of the large bureau. As I
stood before that massive repository in the dead of night, the struggle
within me was intense and long. What letters, what journals, documents,
or momentous relics of a thousand kinds, might be lurking here, waiting
only for a daughter's hand to turn the lock, and cast the light she bore
on the death-warrant of her father! How easy then to snatch away the
proof, clutching it, though it should burn the hand or bosom, to wave
it, with a triumph wilfully prolonged, before the eyes of justice's
dull-visioned ministers; and then to see, without a shudder or a thrill
of joy, but with the whole soul gazing, the slow, struggling, ghastly
expiation. As this thought came crawling through my heart, lighting up
its depth as would a snake of fire, the buhl before me grew streaks of
blood, and the heavy crossbars a gallows. I lifted my hand to open the
outer lock. Already the old cruciform key was trembling in the silver
scutcheon. I raised the lamp in my left hand to show the lunette guard
which curved above the hole, when a heavy mass all cold and dark fell
across my eyes. I started, and thought for the moment, in my strong
excitement, that it was my father's hand. One instant more, and,
through the trembling of my senses, I saw that it was only a thick fold
of my long black hair, shaken down on the face by my bending and
quivering posture. But the check was enough. A Vaughan, and that the
last one of so proud and frank a race, to be prowling meanly, with a
stolen tool, to violate confidence, and pry through letters! No
suspicion, however strong, nothing short of certainty (if even that)
could warrant it. Driven away by shame combined with superstition, I
glided from the cold silent room, and restored the keys to my faithful
friend, whom I had left in the passage, ordering him at once to replace
them, and never touch them again.
"Well, miss," he whispered, with a smile, "I knew you couldn't do it,
because I seemed, somehow, it wasn't like a Vaughan."
We were already preparing to quit the house, no longer ours, when our
dismissal became abrupt, through another act of mine. What drove me to
such a wild deed I can scarcely tell. Shame, perhaps, for the furtive
nature of my last attempt hurried me into the other extreme; and now I
was so shaken by conflicting impulse, that nothing was too mad for me.
On the seventh anniversary of my father's death, and the last which I
was likely ever to spend beneath that roof, I passed the whole day in
alternate sadness and passion, in the bedroom where he died. All the
relics I possessed, both of his love and of his death, I brought
thither; and spread them out, and wept upon the one, and prayed upon the
other. I also brought my choicest histories of murder and revenge, and
pored over them by the waning daylight and the dull lamp, and so on
through the night, until my mind became the soul's jetsam.
Then I procured four very large wax candles, and lit them at the head of
the bed, two on each side, and spread a long white cloth between, as if
my father were lying in state; and hung a row of shorter lights above,
to illuminate the letters of blood. Then I took a small alarum clock,
given me by dear father, that I might rise for early walks with him, and
set it upon a chest by the door, and fixed it so as to ring five minutes
before the hour at which the murder befell. A cold presentiment crawled
through me that, at the fatal time, I should see the assassin. After
all these arrangements I took my volume again, and sat in the shade of
the curtain, with a strong light on the page. I was deep in some
horrible record, and creeping with terror and hope, when the clear bell
rang a long and startling peal. I leaped up, like one shot through the
heart, and what I did was without design or purpose. My glance fell on
the dagger; I caught it up, and snatched the lamp, and hurried down
corridor and staircase, straight to my guardian's private room.
He was sitting at the table, for he never passed that night in bed. At
the sound of the lock he leaped up, and pointed a pistol, then hid it.
Straight up to him I went, as swiftly and quietly as a spirit, and
spoke:
"Seven years ago, at this very moment, my father was killed. Do you
know this dagger?" He started back, as if I had stabbed him with it,
then covered his eyes with both hands.
"You know it, then?" I said, with a triumph chill all over me. "It was
your hand that used it."
Another moment, and I should have struck him with it. I lifted it in my
frenzy; when he looked at me by some wonderful effort, calmly, steadily,
even coldly. "Yes," he said, "I have seen that weapon before. Alas my
poor dear brother!"
Whether it was true feeling that made his voice so low and deep, or only
fierce self-control, I knew not then, nor tried to think.
"You know who owned it?" I asked, with my life upon his answer.
"Yes. I know who owned it once; but many years ago. And I know not in
the least what is become of him now."
The baffled fury and prostrate hope--for at the moment I fully believed
him--were too much for my reeling brain and fasting body. For one
minute's command of my faculties, I would have sold them for ever; but I
felt them ebbing from me, as the life does from a wound. The
hemispheres of my brain were parting one from the other, and a grey void
spreading between them. I tried to think, but could not. I strove to
say _anything_, but failed. Fainter and fainter grew the room, the
lamp, the ceiling, the face at which I tried to look. Things went to
and fro with a quicker quiver, like flame in the wind, then, round and
round like whirling water; my mouth grew stiff, and the tongue between
my teeth felt like a glove; and with a rush of sound in my brain and
throat, and a scream pent up, yet bursting, I fell, as I thought,
through the earth. I was only on the floor, in a fit.
When I came to myself, I was in my own bed, and my own dear mother
bending over me, pale, and haggard, and full of tears. The broad
daylight was around us, and the faint sunshine on her face. She had
been with me ever since. In my weakness, I looked up at her with a pang
of self-reproach, to think how little I had valued her love; and I vowed
to myself to make up for it by future care and devotion.
That violent convulsion, and the illness after it, changed me not a
little both in mind and body.