As rapidly as post-horses and postillions would permit, Beauchamp's
courier returned from London, bringing with him the officers who had
been in Paris already on the same business, both of whom paid the
young gentleman a great many compliments on his skill and proficiency
in their particular branch of science; but, as Beauchamp would very
well have dispensed with such a flattering testimony of his abilities
in thief-catching, we shall not give the somewhat circumlocutory
praises of the officers at length.
By this time the operation of extracting the ball had been performed
upon the young sailor; and although there appeared no chance of his
being able to bear a long journey for some time, yet he was already so
far convalescent that no doubt was entertained of his ultimate
recovery.
Harding, Smithson, and the woman, Sarah Ings, confined apart, had
already shown the difference of the characters in the different manner
in which they had borne their situation. The woman wept continually,
declaring with loud lamentations that she would tell all she knew, if
they would but spare her life. Smithson alternately stormed and raved,
or gave way to brutal jests and wild merriment. Harding remained calm,
cool, and silent, quite disposed to philosophize upon his situation
with any one who would philosophize with him, or to sneer at any who
offered him one word of compassion or admonition; but at the same
time, a great deal too wary to utter a syllable that might endanger
the slight hope of escape which still remained.
After a brief interview with Beauchamp, the officers, with very
natural impatience, hastened to visit their prisoners; and R----, who
held the principal post, immediately addressed Harding with a great
deal of civility. "Oh, Mr. Harding," he said, "I am sorry to see you
here!"
"You mistake, sir," said Harding, "I do not remember you at all."
"What! not when you were secretary to Mr. ----, the banker who
failed?" said the officer. "Poo! poo! that cock won't fight, Master
Harding. Don't you remember going up with me to Mr. Tims's, at
Clement's Inn; and how, after a great piece of work, he promised not
only to drop proceedings against you, but to get you a good place into
the bargain, if you would tell all about the embezzlement of the
money; and a good place he did get you I find--pity you didn't keep it
when you had got it. Howsoever, that is no business of mine--but you
must take part of a shay with me over to England, Master Harding; and
I dare say we shall be very good friends on the road."
"Perhaps so!" replied the prisoner; and, after a few more words, the
officers proceeded to visit the other male culprit. To him, however,
their manner was totally different. "Ha! Tony, my lad!" cried the head
officer; "how do you do this many a day? Why? how the devil were you
such a soft chap as to get taken in for such a bad job as this--but
you had nearly bilked us all, by jingo!"
"Oh, R----," he replied, "Oh, it is a bad job, indeed! But I knew well
enough that I was well nigh up to my weight; and that d--d fellow,
Harding, persuaded me, you see! But I say, R----, tell me, is that
young Harrison like to die? Harding gave him a h--ll of a shot, and
d--n him, if he would die, if I would not take to talking, and plead
the king's pardon, do you see!"
"No, no!" answered the officer. "No chance of his dying! No, no, Tony
It's all up with you! They must hang two of you; and if any one gets
off, in course it will be the woman."
At this hopeless picture of his situation, the ruffian first swore and
blasphemed for two or three minutes, and then, relapsing into the
other extreme, cast himself down and wept like a child.
"Fie, fie, Tony!" cried the officer. "Die game, anyhow; why, I thought
you were more varment than that comes to--a man must die somehow, you
know--and you have had a long pull at it, my lad--besides, it's all
nonsense when one knows that it must be so."
"Ay, that's the job!" said the prisoner. "If one could but think of
someway of getting off--"
"Don't you fancy that," replied the officer. "Why, look ye now, Tony,
if you could get off for this last job, I'll tell you as a friend,
they'd hang you for that burning business; for they've got proof
enough against you for that."
This last argument seemed completely to dispel all Mr. Anthony
Smithson's objections to being hanged; and after two or three
exhortations to those virtues that Bow-street officers expect from
thieves, the two children of Mercury went on to visit the female
prisoner. As, however, we have fully as great a disgust to scenes of
low vice and misery as our readers can have, and only introduce them
where compelled to do so in accordance with truth, we shall leave the
officers to conduct their prisoners to England, and proceed to notice
the events which occurred to Henry Beauchamp.
That gentleman then set off from Paris with all speed, as soon as he
had seen the prisoners safely consigned to the Bow-street officers. He
well knew that such adventures as those in which he had lately been
engaged could not fail to find their way into the mouth of rumor; and
for many reasons he wished to reach London ere that lady was ready to
go a trumpeting before him, like the man with the box on his back, who
walks before Punch.
He succeeded tolerably well; so that the fact of Henry Beauchamp being
living instead of dead, upon dry land instead of under the sea, was
not known to above fifty thousand people when he arrived in London.
Out of this number about a thousand had congratulated Lord Ashborough
on the resuscitation of his nephew; but the noble lord had so
impressed upon his mind that his nephew was dead, that he would not
believe a word of the story, gravely saying, that he would give it
implicit credence as soon as he heard it from any one who would say
that they had seen Henry Beauchamp with their own eyes.
As none of those could be met with, and as the story could be traced
to no authentic source, Lord Ashborough held fast his conviction; and,
up to the hour of Beauchamp's arrival, continued in the same belief.
It was late at night, or rather early in the morning, when Beauchamp
did once more reach the capital; and as he imagined that he was not
likely to find any thing prepared for his accommodation in the house
of a dead man, he directed the post boys to drive to a hotel, rather
than his own dwelling. It was later the next morning when he rose than
he had purposed over night; but nevertheless, as soon as he was up, he
set forth for Lord Ashborough's, and walked immediately into the
drawing-room, where, although the earl himself had breakfasted and
gone out, Beauchamp had soon the pleasure of holding his sister in his
arms.
Although Maria Beauchamp was not in the least surprised to see him, as
she had long before received convincing assurances of his safety--and
though she was as light a hearted girl as ever danced through life,
unconscious of its sorrows--yet when she first met her brother, after
all the dangers he had encountered, the tears rose up in her eyes,
from the more vivid impression which his presence produced upon her
mind of the loss she would have suffered had the report of his death
been true.
The conversation between Henry and Maria Beauchamp was long, and to
them highly interesting; and had the world ever been known to forgive
those who write dialogues between brothers and sisters, it should have
been here transcribed for general edification. In the course of it,
Maria made herself acquainted with a great many of the secrets of her
brother's heart, and, in return, gave him a far more clear and minute
insight into all the views and designs of Lord Ashborough and his
worthy agent, Mr. Peter Tims, than Beauchamp had imagined so gay and
careless a girl could have been shrewd enough to obtain. From her
quick-sightedness in all those particulars, however, in which the
interests of William Delaware were concerned, Beauchamp concluded--a
result which his sister certainly neither wished nor anticipated--that
the surmise of his good lawyer, Mr. Wilkinson, was not so far wrong as
he had at first imagined; and he paused, musing with a smile over all
the events that yet might be in the wheel of fortune.
The anatomy of a smile is sometimes a curious thing, and that which
then played upon Beauchamp's lip was not without its several parts and
divisions. In the first place, the idea of his gay, smart, and dashing
sister falling in love with a frank, straightforward, simple-hearted
sailor, who had neither rank nor fortune to offer her, made him smile.
In the next place, he felt the slightest possible shade of
disappointment at the idea of Maria Beauchamp not marrying the marquis
of this, or the earl of that; and the very absurdity of such a feeling
in his bosom, of all the bosoms in the world, made him smile at
himself; and the two smiles blended together. The third part of the
smile, and which was the purest part too, proceeded from many a sweet
feeling and bland hope which rose up when he suffered his mind's eye
to gaze on into futurity, and thought of the varied sorts of happiness
it might be in the power of him and his to bestow on a noble and
generous race, weighed down by long misfortunes.
As soon as all these feelings had had their moment and were gone, and
he had given his sister an account of his wondrous accidents by flood
and field--Beauchamp wrote a brief note to his uncle, informing him of
his return, and then
"Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum,"
he set forth with all speed to his lawyer's chambers, in order to
carry on the whole proceedings in exculpation of William Delaware, as
rapidly as possible.
In regard to his conversation with Mr. Wilkinson, it may be only
necessary to notice, that Beauchamp found, that with prompt and
judicious zeal, that gentleman, on discovering that some thoughts were
really entertained at the Admiralty of inflicting a signal disgrace
upon Captain Delaware for his evasion, had waited personally on the
First Lord, and had laid before him that part of his client's
deposition which admitted, in the clearest manner, that the money had
been placed by Beauchamp himself in the young officer's room; thus
showing, that the chief circumstance of suspicion was taken from the
evidence. He farther informed him that Beauchamp had discovered the
real murderers, and was at that moment in pursuit of them; and he
ended by beseeching him to pause ere he took any step in the
proceedings which rumor declared to be in agitation.
He was met, in every respect, with frank and gentlemanly courtesy, and
was assured that nothing could be more gratifying to his majesty than
to find just cause for suspending that expression of his indignation
against any officer in his service which the stern voice of justice
could alone compel him to publish.
So far every thing was satisfactory. "And now," said Beauchamp, "all
that remains to be done for the present, is to open the eyes of my
uncle to the conduct of this base attorney of his."
"Spare us! spare us! Mr. Beauchamp, I beg," said Mr. Wilkinson. "But,
without attempting to defend attorneys, who, as a body, have got a bad
name, not so much, I believe, from having more rogues among them than
are to be found in other professions, but from having greater
opportunities of roguery, allow me to say that I am afraid you will
find it a difficult thing to open your uncle's eyes."
"Why, why, my dear sir?" demanded Beauchamp; "we can prove the facts.
Tell me why?"
"Oh, for many reasons," answered Mr. Wilkinson, musing, and perhaps
not exactly liking to state the real basis of his opinion. "The fact
is, it is like eating garlic, Mr. Beauchamp, or drinking spirits, or
taking any other of those things which a man nauseates at first, but
gets very fond of by degrees--when a person grows fond of a rogue he
gradually gets to like him beyond any one else, and soon finds he can
not do without him."
Beauchamp smiled, though there was a slight sort of mistiness about
the conclusion of Mr. Wilkinson's illustration which he did not
exactly like. However, he pressed him no farther and having learned
that Lord Ashborough was carrying on a suit against Sir Sidney
Delaware in regard to the annuity, with somewhat sharper measures than
the generality of the profession considered reputable, he obtained the
bill for ten thousand pounds which Mr. Tims had presented in lieu of
the money due from the earl, and then returned to his uncle's
dwelling.
Lord Ashborough was now at home; and although Miss Beauchamp had broke
the news of her brother's return, and added a number of reasons and
apologies for his not having sooner communicated the fact of his
safety, the earl was still both agitated and offended, and his
reception of Beauchamp showed a strange mixture of pride, and
irritation, and pleasure.
"And pray, Henry, may I ask--" he said, after their first salutations
were over--"may ask, I say--for your movements and their causes may
both require the same diplomatic secrecy which you have of late so
skillfully displayed--may I ask, I say, why you were pleased to
conceal your existence from your nearest relations? Your sister has,
indeed, already favored me with so many reasons, that I confess I have
become puzzled and bewildered by the number, and would fain hear your
own motives from your own lips."
Beauchamp was not a man to make any excuse to any one, if he had not a
true one ready at his hand. In the present instance, he thought it
best to tell Lord Ashborough the simple truth, and then leave him to
receive it as an excuse or not, as he might think best; taking care,
at the same time, to word it with all due respect and kindness, in
deference to the affection which he knew his uncle felt toward him.
"The fact is, my dear sir," he answered, "for the first fortnight or
three weeks after you had fancied me drowned, I was not at all aware
of such a report. I was first detained at a cottage, with a dislocated
ankle, and next ill of a fever at Hartford Bridge; and at the time I
learned the rumor of my own death I was under the absolute necessity
of going to Paris, in order to pursue the miscreants who committed the
horrid murder, of which you have heard, at Ryebury. As I was the only
person who could prove the facts against them, or lead to their
apprehension, the rumor of my death I knew would throw them off their
guard; and therefore it was necessary to leave it uncontradicted.
Besides--"
"But, surely," interrupted Lord Ashborough, who, though strongly
inclined to inquire farther concerning the murderers, was resolved to
press Beauchamp home in the first instance. "But surely you could have
trusted to my discretion in the business."
"Undoubtedly, my lord!" replied Beauchamp; "and I need not tell you
that, under any ordinary circumstances, you would have been the very
first person to whom I should have communicated my situation, and whom
I should have consulted in what I was undertaking."
Lord Ashborough bowed his bead with a placable smile, and Beauchamp
continued--"But I could only have done so by writing to you, or by
coming to see you. The latter, of course, was out of the question; for
I was not willing to trust my secret to your host of servants, and to
write was equally impossible, as there were circumstances to explain
which could only be done personally."
"How so? Why so?" demanded the earl.
"That is what I was about to explain," answered Beauchamp. "The fact
is, that the man of all others whose greatest interest it was to foil
me in endeavoring to bring the murderers to justice--with the
exception, of course, of the murderers themselves--is your
confidential man of business and lawyer, Mr. Peter Tims."
Lord Ashborough started; for though this carried him back again to the
subject of the murderers, it was not exactly in the way he best liked.
"You are mistaken, Henry," he said; "quite mistaken! No man has been
more anxious in thought, or more strenuous in exertion, than Mr. Tims,
to bring the murderers of his uncle to justice--you forget their near
relationship, and he is a great deal too--too--too--"
Lord Ashborough would fain have added, "Too honest a man!" but the
words stuck in his throat, and, as he paused, Beauchamp finished the
sentence for him--"Too great a rogue, my lord, he most certainly is,
ever to think of relationship where interest is concerned. I found
that out some time ago, ere I took the step of removing my affairs
from his hands to those of Messrs. Steelyard and Wilkinson."
Lord Ashborough drew himself up--"I believe, sir," he said, "that I
have not acquired the character in the world of a man who is likely to
employ a rogue, either from folly or knavery. But, as you have brought
a serious accusation against my ordinary man of business, I shall of
course expect you to substantiate it fully."
"That I will do completely to your lordship's satisfaction," replied
Beauchamp; "and indeed, I trust you will believe me, my dear uncle,
when I assure you, that the certainty of this man having, by a gross
misrepresentation of facts, involved you in circumstances, which will
be very painful to you when you learn all the details, is the great
inducement which makes me accuse your agent at once to yourself,
before I take such measures as must expose him to the world."
Beauchamp paused; but his intimate acquaintance with his uncle's
character had given him a sort of intuitive insight into what was
passing in his mind, and had revealed a great many secrets which, as
his nephew, he would rather not have learned, but which of course he
acted upon in his transactions with the noble earl. In the present
instance, he clearly perceived that Lord Ashborough's vanity was
getting irritable at the very idea of having been cheated, and that,
at the same time, curiosity and anxiety were both striving hard to
keep vanity down till they were satisfied; but that vanity being the
strongest, was likely to have her own way. Under these circumstances,
Beauchamp thought it would be best to throw in a little soothing
matter to quiet the more restive animal of the three, and keep her
from kicking. He therefore added, after a very brief pause, "I
know, my lord, that the plans of this man, which could deceive even
your sagacity, must have been very deeply and artfully laid; and
unless"--he added, anxious not to assume superior wisdom--"and unless
accident and his own imprudence had thrown into my hands the means of
establishing his knavery beyond a doubt, I should not have ventured to
make such a charge as I have brought against him. I know, however,
that you are too candid not to yield to conviction; and my purpose is
to request that you would call him to your presence, and suffer me to
ask him a question or two before you."
"Of course, Henry," replied the earl, "I am not only willing, but
anxious in the highest degree to give up my mind entirely to truth;
for, besides the great personal interest which I have in the honesty
of a man to whom I confide so much as to this Mr. Tims, the abstract
love of severe and impartial justice also, requires that I should hear
any evidence that can be brought in support of so grave a charge, so
boldly made. But tell me," he continued, feeling that there were
particular points on which he would not particularly like to have his
agent questioned in his presence; "tell me, do the questions you
intend to put refer to any affairs of mine, or to affairs of your
own!--for I know you have several times employed this Mr. Tims. If to
mine, I must say nay, most decidedly; for I can permit no one either
to investigate or interfere with business which I am competent to
manage myself."
"My questions will refer entirely to business of my own, my lord,"
replied Beauchamp. "With yours, I should never presume to meddle,
though I feel perfectly convinced that you would not have proceeded at
law against Sir Sidney Delaware for a sum that had been already paid
to your agent, had you not been persuaded by an infamous villain that,
the money received did not constitute a legal payment, inasmuch as he
affirmed that it was the fruits of a robbery."
Lord Ashborough turned a little pale; but he had canvassed the matter
so often with Mr. Tims, and considered all the contingencies so
accurately, that he was prepared at every point for defense. "Nay,
Henry, nay," he said, assuming a benignant smile--"Nay; I see which
way your prejudices lead you. The most connected evidence would not
convince either yourself or your sister of that unhappy young man's
guilt--but even taking the converse of the matter, and supposing that
he has been accused erroneously, still you do great injustice to the
poor little lawyer, who surely commits no great crime in believing a
man to be guilty, against whom a coroner's jury, after calm
investigation and mature deliberation, have given a verdict of willful
murder."
"In the first place, my lord," replied Beauchamp coolly, "in regard to
William Delaware, as I know your lordship would be as much delighted
to see his innocence clearly established as any one--"
"Oh, certainly, certainly!" interrupted the earl, with all the energy
that a man adds to a falsehood in order to make it weigh as much as
truth. "Certainly--let justice be done, and let the innocent be
cleared!"
"Well, then," added Beauchamp, with the slightest possible touch of
causticity in his manner, "you will be delighted to hear, that there
remains not the slightest doubt of William Delaware's innocence. In
the first place, I myself was encountered by the murderers at the very
door of the dead man's house; was carried off by them, after being
knocked down and stunned; which facts I can distinctly prove against
at least two of them. In the next place I have the confession of one
in my writing-desk; and, in the third place, three of them are by this
time at Dover, on their way to trial. The fourth is in Paris, but in
safe hands, too, and will come over to give his testimony as king's
evidence."
Lord Ashborough again turned pale; and while he declared that he
trusted most sincerely it would prove as his nephew anticipated, he
rang the bell, and, in an under tone, bade the servant bring him some
of the drops to which we have before seen him apply.
Beauchamp's next sentences, however, were in some degree a relief, for
they afforded a fair hope of being able to cast all the blame upon Mr.
Tims, should it be rendered necessary by any after-disclosures. "So
much for that matter, my lord," added his nephew; "and of course I can
not blame Mr. Tims for not divining all the evidence that might
ultimately be collected to exculpate Captain Delaware. But what I
intend to establish is, that at the very time that he, Mr. Tims, was
retaining--under the pretense that the money was a part of his uncle's
property--a sum which of right belonged to you, having been paid in
redemption of the Emberton annuity--that at the very time he was
urging you on, to proceed severely against a family which he taught
you to believe was criminal--that while he was doing all this, he was
perfectly well aware that the money did not belong to his uncle; that
it had never been the fruits of robbery; and that I must have placed
it in the chamber of Captain Delaware, as that gentleman himself
asserted."
"If you can prove that, Henry," replied his uncle, "I will admit that
I have been most grossly deceived, and will abandon the fellow
forever; but I should like to hear what evidence you can bring forward
in corroboration of these assertions."
"You shall hear, my lord, to-morrow, if you will order him to be here
after breakfast," replied Beauchamp. "You must confront the accuser
and the accused, before you judge--and in the mean time, as I intend
to dine with you, I will go and dress, for it is growing late."