READING THE WILL.
Wheresoever that which had given fire to the eye, purpose to the heart,
thought to the brain, and life to the person, of Sir Ernest Ivraine,
might have departed,—whether to peace or torment, happiness or
misery,—one thing was self-evident to the attorney’s comprehension,
viz., that it had gone forth from his body; and, thoroughly convinced of
that fact, after silently regarding the corpse for a moment, Mr. Medill
closed the eyelids softly upon the staring sightless orbs, and then
taking possession of the last paper to which that now lifeless hand had
attached a signature, he left the apartment, where nothing remained of
him who had darkened and clouded the mansion for almost half a century,
save the rigid outward visible form of clay.
“Where is Mr. Ivraine?” asked the solicitor, as he flung open the
drawing-room door.
“Not here,” was the universal response. “How is Sir Er——?” but the
affectionate inquiry was cut short by Mr. Medill’s abrupt exit. _They_
were nothing to him; why should he be civil or communicative to people
he despised in his very soul?
Lights were passing to and fro in the hall beneath; there was a hum of
strange voices, a hurry and bustle of new arrivals. Mr. Medill hastily
descended the staircase.
“Where is your master?” he inquired of Humphrey, whom he encountered at
its foot.
“At the door, sir, with Mr. Henry,” was the reply; and the lawyer,
casting his eyes in the direction indicated, beheld Ernest and a tall
military looking man, whom, spite of time and change and exposure to a
burning sun, he recognized as his brother, and a lady, whom he hastily
concluded to be that brother’s wife, enter the house together.
“One moment, Sir Ernest,” said Mr. Medill, detaining him, and at the
words the elder son started and turned pale; “your father is dead.”
Time was when the new baronet would have asked the solicitor a question
after such intelligence had been communicated; but that time was passed,
never to return; and, uttering a sudden exclamation, he turned and
looked at Henry.
“Just too late,” said the latter in a broken voice; “I had hoped it
might have been otherwise.”
Thus they met, who had parted full fifteen years previously: orphans,
they ascended the wide staircase slowly, drearily, side by side. Nor
bolt, nor chain, nor bar prevented their ingress into any room in the
house; for he who had fastened the door so securely after the departure
of his youngest born, had now done with locks and bolts and fastenings
for ever, had passed to another state of things, where all his piles of
earthly treasure could avail him nothing.
And the attorney buttoned up his coat, and drew his hat down over his
eyes, and mounted his horse and rode tranquilly away, feeling that, as
Henry Ivraine’s son was the legatee, he had made the best of a bad
business; and often he put his hand to his pocket, in order to ascertain
if the all-important document were safe, and whenever he did so, he
murmured in indistinct accents,
“Thank Heaven those wretches will get none of it, at any rate.”
It was an affecting sight to see those three, the two new comers and the
new owner of Paradise, enter the chamber of death and stand
contemplating the face of the departed. Henry’s wife fastened her eyes
on those pinched miserly features; she seemed to scan the icy
countenance of the corpse with that earnest gaze, as if to gain
therefrom knowledge of the old man’s real character during life: she
looked around, not curiously, but thoughtfully, on the appointments of
the room, the glimmering taper, the cheerless hearth, the dilapidated
furniture, the wrecks of former splendour, the traces of present
parsimony and shabbiness; she gazed steadily on Ernest’s stern troubled
face; she turned towards the door each time a step passed along the
corridor, as though expecting the entrance of some fourth person; but
the person she waited for never appeared.
At last Henry, with a deep sigh, concluded his long sad scrutiny of the
dead.
“He is not so much changed, Ernest,” he said, after a pause; “not so
much as I expected; not so much as you.”
And the younger man raised his hand as though he would fain have
smoothed away the deep wrinkles from his brother’s brow, the
unmistakeable traces of care from his face. There was sorrow written in
the countenances of both,—sorrow of different kinds. Henry could not
comprehend why such a deep gloom should dwell in Ernest’s eyes; why it
seemed such an effort to him to speak; why his words of welcome had been
uttered as if they were choking him; why he had greeted his beloved
Ellen with such constrained politeness. There was something very wrong;
something worse than the death of a parent he had never pretended to
care for, must have occurred: and, missing a new face, he had expected
to see for the first time, the second born demanded, with a sort of
hesitation in his voice,
“And your wife, Ernest; how is she?”
As if the question had not been heard by him, the new baronet turned
towards one who had waited somewhat anxiously for a reply, and said, in
a low courteous tone,
“I regret that your first visit to this house should have occurred at a
time which renders it impossible for me to make you as comfortable as I
could desire; I trust, however, you will forgive all deficiences and
believe in the sincerity of the welcome I now give to you, who are so
dear to my brother.”
He held out his hand more cordially than he had done when Henry first
presented her to him; and, as they all paused for a moment in the
corridor, where the above words were uttered, the lady pressed his icy
fingers in her little palm, and entreated so much that she might never
be regarded as a stranger—that no apologies might be made—that he would
consider her as a sister, as one to whom the joys and sorrows of her
husband’s family came as near as the pleasures and troubles of her
own—that Ernest, grave and unimpressible though he usually was, felt
won. He looked down at the sweet face of the speaker; it was one no
mortal had ever gazed on without going on his way the better for the
sight—pure, calm, loving, and gentle: if ever an angel dwelt on earth in
the guise of a woman, that angel was Ellen Ivraine, who had come to the
house of mourning, and who changed its aspect almost by her very advent;
Ernest, her stern brother-in-law, scarcely knew how.
The news of his father’s dangerous illness had met Henry in London; and,
without further pause than that needful to leave their three children
under the care of a relative in the metropolis, he and his wife started
for Lorton, and travelled night and day till the goal was reached, till
Paradise was gained—the old dreary home whence Sir Ernest had departed
for ever.
Henry had, indeed, wished his wife to remain behind; but she, whose
heart was capacious enough to feel for all, whose last thought was of
herself, who always fancied her fitting place was where she could be of
the slightest use, prayed to accompany him.
“Malcolm Frazer’s sister,” she said; “that girl for whom my soul has
grieved, will surely be the better for some female companionship now.
Let me go and talk to her in that melancholy house you have so often
described: a woman always likes to have a woman near her in times of
sorrow, sickness, and death. You say your relatives would not be friends
to anybody; let me go and speak to her, she is so young.”
So young she knew, for she had heard most of the story from Malcolm just
before their departure from India during a long tedious illness, through
which she had tended him as no one save herself could. So young! and so
she went, meaning to lay the tired head of the elder brother’s wife
tenderly on her breast, and tell her to be of good cheer, and win her
from her reserved sadness, and force her to confide in and love her.
She had looked in the hall, on the staircases, beside the bed of death,
for a slight delicate figure,—for a pale, careworn, melancholy face; she
had listened for the fall of a light footstep; she had expected a
greeting from female lips; she had waited for a sight of one whose
unhappy lot she and her husband had often lamented: but nothing, save
darkness, met her straining gaze along the passages; her
brother-in-law’s grave face was the first which met her at the door; in
the chamber, whence so lately a soul had departed, she beheld nothing
but the corpse of an old man with grey hair, and wrinkled brow and
countenance, the sharp, clearly marked features of which were
disfigured, even in their last unchanging sleep, by a sardonic
sneer,—the same he had brought to perfection during life. None but
masculine hands clasped hers in friendship; deep voices alone echoed in
her ears; it was an elderly servant who conducted her to the apartments
hastily arranged for her reception; not a syllable was said of Lady
Ivraine, the wretched mistress of that miserable house; Ernest had never
named her—had affected not to hear a question concerning his wife, had
turned the subject with a look which forbade further allusion to it.
Where was she? what had happened? where could she be gone? what could
possibly be wrong?
Henry and she speculated about the matter till they were tired; the
former endeavoured to obtain some light, but Ernest was impracticable:
he would not understand, he would not answer, he would not afford
information; and, indeed, until the interment was over, there was so
little opportunity for private conversation, that up to that time the
new comers remained in doubt as to what had actually become of the new
baronet’s wife.
Rumours reached their ears from the assembled relatives of the lady’s
flight; but why and where, and how she had departed, nobody seemed to
know; with whom she had quarrelled; whether Sir Ernest, lately deceased,
had turned her out of doors; whether his sister was the cause of the
rupture, or whether the fault, if fault there were, lay with Ernest or
herself, no one could tell: the whole thing was a mystery, and so was
the new baronet; Ellen Ivraine tried with all her might to get at the
bottom of both, but was unable to do so.
“I suppose,” Henry once hopelessly remarked to his brother, “it would be
no use ordering these people out of the house just at present.”
“Not the slightest,” replied Ernest; “a regiment of horse could not
clear the premises until they have heard the will read.”
“I wish I had the command of a squadron and I would try the experiment,”
returned the other. “Then my father has left a will?”
“Yes,” was the brief reply.
“Do you know anything of the contents?” demanded Henry.
“Not a syllable!”
“I hope you may be rich at last,” said the younger brother,
affectionately and yet sadly; “I hope from my heart you may, and that
not a shilling is bequeathed to any of that herd below.”
“And you, Henry——”
“I do not need it; thank God in heaven, I do not need it,” the younger
man replied, looking up gratefully towards the high throne of Him who
had thus relieved him from the temptation of desiring a portion of the
dead man’s gold.
Ernest turned away, and a deadly sickness came over him; he had never
felt the same sensation previously save once, and that once he now
remembered was in Belerma Square, the morning John Merapie died years
before.
Sir Ernest’s funeral was professedly a private one; yet the array of
carriages following the deceased to the grave was, as his eldest-born
bitterly remarked, a something “quite edifying.” If to go to the very
mouth of the tomb be, as many imagine, a proof of respect, the old miser
must have been held in great esteem by every relative he possessed in
the world, near and remote; but alas! it is in death as it is in
life—the man with most money will always have the greatest show of
friends. Yet the beggar, wept over by one solitary mourner, is
frequently richer in that rarest of earth’s blessings—the love of one
true heart, than he who goes to his last narrow resting-place under the
shade of nodding plumes, followed by scores of worldlings, who hide
their sorrow behind fine cambric handkerchiefs that never wipe away a
tear.
But the funeral train, winding down the avenue of Paradise, and along
the road to Lorton churchyard, was a goodly sight; hypocrites and
legacy-hunters might have been counted there by coachfulls; all the
grand company went decorously through the ceremony; it was an “edifying”
spectacle truly, to notice the array of black coats and hat-bands, the
ostentatiously-displayed handkerchiefs, and the lugubrious faces; it was
delightful to see how slowly they drove with their “dear brother
departed” to the family vault, and how rapidly they whirled away from
him, after leaving him safely there, to hear the will read, and
ascertain at once what they were entitled to under it.
On the old principle of “short hanging being the easiest,” Mr. Medill
kindly put them at once out of torture: he made no stops; he scarcely
paused to take breath, but read through the last will and testament of
his late client like a curate publishing banns in London, or a lad
repeating his lesson in the country.
But when he came to a very speedy conclusion, a general “Is that all?”
broke, with the effect of a congregational response, from the lips of
most present.
“That is all,” replied the attorney.
And then what a howl of disappointment, and rage, and envy, and malice,
and malediction, and threatening, arose and echoed through that large
dreary dining hall, where the baronet had been wont to crouch beside the
smouldering fire.
“The will was a forgery; they had been duped out of Mrs. Close’s money,
and robbed of the baronet’s: the deed was a fraudulent one; they were
the victims of a foul conspiracy, to which Mr. Medill had been a
principal party;” and, accordingly, they rose _en masse_, and surrounded
the solicitor, as though they intended either to wrest the obnoxious
paper from him, or else tear him limb from limb on the spot.
“We have been duped!” they cried, as with one voice; “the will is a vile
forgery!”
“That, gentlemen, is a matter to be proven elsewhere,” remarked Mr.
Medill, moving towards the door, but just directing one rapid
professional glance towards the brothers, to see “how they took it.”
Henry looked deadly pale; he was sitting in the embrasure of one of the
windows, and involuntarily he had fastened his eyes on Ernest’s face, as
though apprehensive of the effect the unexpected announcement might
produce upon him,—whether it would snap the bond that had hitherto bound
them together, and withstood the changes of time, absence, and
circumstances. Would this unjust bequest to his boy estrange his brother
from him?—that was the question the solicitor read in the countenance of
the miser’s second born as he turned his gaze on that of the elder for
an answer.
A sharp quick pang of disappointment passed through Ernest’s soul as he
found his last hope of an inheritance dispelled, his last chance of
competency shattered: for an instant his brain absolutely reeled, when
he heard the result of fifteen years’ servitude—beggary! the end of all
his sinful waiting; something, not many degrees, removed from pauperism!
when he discovered for what a bubble of the imagination he had wasted
his own life and embittered Mina’s! when he listened to the words that
placed a child he had never seen,—a child who required no money, who was
blest with kind prosperous parents, before him, before Henry, before
every one, as the old man’s successor,—which reduced him to the
necessity of dwelling at Paradise a baronet too poor to live even like
an ordinary country gentleman; a man who lacked gold sufficient to
enable him to go forth into the world to try to forget his sorrows and
himself; a person without a single cheerful or agreeable thought, doomed
to drag out the remainder of his existence as he had chosen to spend the
first portion of it; a lonely, desolate misanthrope, whose wife had left
him, and carried her child away also,—and who was uncared for by any
one, save the father of the boy who so innocently had cheated him out of
his inheritance. But then the thought, Can money buy love? flashed
through his mind. If it were true, as he persisted in affirming, that
Mina had married him for sake of the metal which, though yellow in its
own colour, tempts man on to commit deeds so black that the daylight
refuses to look upon them; if this were true, then it appeared that it
was unable even to win the semblance of affection, for she had never
professed to care for him—she had deceived him by saying nothing. What
could wealth, then, do for him?—so very little, he confessed, that,
spite of this final blow, he felt himself able, after the momentary
shock, to turn towards his brother and take his hand, and press it in
all sincerity.
“I wish you and yours joy, Henry,” he said in a low tone; “may he live
to make a good use of it.”
“Oh! Ernest,” returned the younger, “I am so sorry; I would it had been
any other than my boy who stepped thus into your property; from my soul
I grieve.”
And Henry moved towards the casement, flung it open, and looked out:
there was a film obscuring the sight of the brave officer as he did so.
“Do not let that trouble you,” said Ernest, gently: “money, dear
brother, is not, can never be now, to me what it would once have been:
it has no power to soothe some griefs—to mend a broken heart—to pour
balm upon a wounded spirit: the curse of our race must never separate
us, Henry; you are the only true friend I have in the world; why,
therefore, should I grieve when fortune has only passed by my door in
order to make a more satisfactory halt at yours; and, besides this, our
desire is gratified: those clamouring harpies are disappointed—the prey
has been torn from their clutches; only listen to them!” and a grim
smile of satisfaction and exultant revenge stole over Ernest’s grave
face as he hearkened to the deafening clamour raised by the group at the
door from which Mr. Medill was vainly endeavouring to extricate himself.
“For heaven’s sake, silence them, can’t you,” exclaimed Henry: “it is
like the yelling of demons—they drive me frantic: you are sole owner of
Paradise now, clear the premises.”
“Gentlemen,” began Ernest, stepping towards the circle, and, like oil
poured on trouble waters, that word produced a lull: he was equally
injured with them, and they waited to hear what further he had to say:
“Am I correct in my belief that the visit with which, uninvited, you
have honoured this house was paid not to me but to my late father”——
“We came to see my brother-in-law,” began the spokesman, the husband of
a deceased sister of the late baronet.
“Precisely so,” continued Ernest: “you came to see him, and you remained
to see what he would leave you. The latter point being now fully
ascertained, and his death having removed the necessity for any
prolongation of your stay, may I beg that you will, at your earliest
convenience, leave the house, of which I am now master; and that, whilst
you do remain, you will conduct yourselves in a manner beseeming a home
you never contributed to render less gloomy to me, and which is now a
place of mourning: this disgraceful altercation is extremely painful
both to my brother and myself, and I must therefore request you to
excuse our retiring from the apartment.”
He opened the door as he spoke, and held it so for Henry to pass out.
“But we have been robbed, we have been deceived,” they cried.
“Robbed by whom?” demanded Ernest, scornfully: “by a man who, after
fifteen years’ absence, returned home to hear his father was dead? by a
solicitor of standing and reputation, who cannot, by human possibility,
be benefited by the transaction? Perhaps you feel yourselves injured by
me, whom this will leaves an absolute pauper! No, no: deceived you may
have been by your own absurd visions, and wild expectations, but for
that you have no one to blame but yourselves.”
“The will is a fraudulent one,” the brother-in-law said doggedly.
“Prove it,” replied Ernest; “and argue and wrangle about it till
doomsday if you will, but not here, nor in my presence. I beg you will
no longer intrude on the privacy of my house; and have the honour to bid
you all farewell, and to wish you pleasant journeys to your respective
homes. Mr. Medill, will you favour me with a few minutes’ conversation,”
and the baronet, gravely and contemptuously inclining his head to his
kindred, passed out into the hall, followed by the solicitor, who forced
his way through the malcontents, and felt thankful to find himself alone
with the new Sir Ernest, secure from further molestation or annoyance.
“I had nothing particular to say to you,” said the latter; “but thought
it was a charity to free you from them.”
“I hope,” began the attorney, “you acquit me of all blame in the matter;
believe me, I had much rather have drawn out a more equitable deed, but
I was merely an instrument.”
“Strong enough to overthrow the air castles of a score of brains,”
remarked Ernest, with a smile: “do not imagine I am offended; no, no,
Mr. Medill; Henry has more need of money than I, and his son cannot do
otherwise than make a good use of it: sit down and take some lunch; I am
sure you must feel exhausted with the stormy discussion;” and as he
arose to ring the bell for refreshments, the attorney’s keen eye
followed him to detect whether this were reality, not acting.
He read sorrow and scorn—grief, regret, and contempt—in the face of the
stern grave man; but no hypocrisy.
“He is better than I thought him,” soliloquized the solicitor; and it
was true: Ernest Ivraine was better than many thought him,—than you
perhaps, dear reader, have occasionally felt tempted to consider him.
Meanwhile Henry had gone to tell his wife that their son had supplanted
his brother; and even the proud heart of the mother could not prevent
the just soul of the woman lamenting that a more equal division had not
been made.
“What a pity,” she said, when Henry explained to her that he had no
power over the money, that no means of reparation lay in his hands,
“what a pity my fortune is tied up, or you could have given him it, you
know, Henry.”
“And our other children, Ellen,” he suggested.
“You could have worked, and we would both have saved for them. Poor
Ernest! I wish he were more happily situated.”
“It is something worse, and yet still something better than money, which
oppresses him,” answered Henry; “not the love of gold, but the love of
his wife: I wish he would explain that affair to me; I cannot get him
even to name her.”
“I am surely not a stranger to him, now,” said Ellen Ivraine; “I am his
sister; I am your wife: I will ask him about that desolate creature,
whose heart must have been broken here. Oh, Henry! think of what a life
she must have led amongst them!” and the gentle lady looked around the
dreary apartment and then out on the swampy earth, and, contrasting her
own happier lot with poor Mina’s, breathed a compassionate sigh for one
whom she had never personally known, but whom she had long pitied.
That evening, when all the clamorous guests had departed, when the
shadows fell darkly on the walls of the tenantless apartments, when no
voices echoed along the galleries, when the place had relapsed into its
previous death-like stillness, and Ernest Ivraine stood moodily
contemplating the logs of blazing, crackling wood, whilst the flames
went leaping and dancing up the wide chimney, as if rejoicing at the
opportunity afforded them for this unwonted display,—a quiet step came
stealing across the room, a small soft hand was laid on his arm, and a
face like that of an angel from heaven looked up entreatingly and
sympathizingly in his countenance, whilst a voice, low and sweet,
uttered the words,
“Tell me about your wife, Ernest.”
“Wife!” he repeated, striving to free himself, but the slender fingers
were not to be unloosed, excepting by violence, and so he was compelled
to remain quiet. “Wife—I have none!”
“She is not dead?” said the lady.
“Dead to me!” was the abrupt reply.
“Where is she?” demanded his sister-in-law. “_I_ want to go and see
her.”
“I know nothing of her,” he responded gloomily; “nothing; her place of
abode is a mystery to me,—one which I do not desire to solve: let us
talk no more of her.”
“Don’t think me intrusive, Ernest,” said the lady; “only answer one
other question, and I ask no more,—what came between you? what made her
go?”
“Knowledge came to both of us,” he answered in a suppressed voice, and
speaking as if the steady gaze of those calm truthful eyes forced him to
do so; “knowledge came to both of us,—to me of what she had married
for,—to her of what she had married to: she could not bear her portion
of the common sorrow; she found that it was difficult to endure the
misery of this house for the sake of a man she never loved: so we
parted, or rather so she went, and I have now no wife, no child, no
hopes, no anything.”
“Save a brother and a sister,” she added, looking sorrowfully into his
troubled face; and from that time forth she strove to win him from his
griefs, to gain his confidence, to understand his character, to learn
more of his wife; in silence she worked, as the good and the true always
work,—but for long no result crowned her efforts with success. She
persuaded him to return with them to London, to mingle more in society,
to become acquainted with most of her relatives, to visit, and drag
himself away for a period from Paradise. Yet still, when—towards the end
of the summer—they all returned there together, to enable the brothers
to complete some business arrangements, the gloom on the brow of the
elder was deep as ever; there was no great change, save perhaps in his
bodily health, which seemed failing.
He said one day to Henry that he fancied, before the latter returned to
India, he would be “Sir,” vice Ernest deceased, and continued,
“When we are both dead, Harry, your eldest born will be a rich baronet;
I am glad he is called Ernest, though it was my father’s name:” but his
brother seemed so grieved at the very allusion to such a possibility,
that the subject was never mentioned again; only it made Ellen Ivraine
watch him with double solicitude, and write more urgently than ever to
India for any information, even the faintest, which might enable her to
trace the poor fugitive, who would have been welcomed so eagerly home.
And no event worth narrating took place about Paradise until, in the
first week of the month of August following the demise of Sir Ernest
Claude Ivraine, Colin Saunders received a letter from his daughter,
informing him, amongst other less important affairs, that “John (her
husband) was in treaty for a large house in Belerma Square, which they
intended fitting up as an extensive boarding-house,—belonging to the
widow of the late Mr. John Merapie, Mrs. Ivraine’s uncle, you know,
father; and who do you think she turns out to be? Margaret Maxwell, old
Nancy Maxwell’s granddaughter!”
Beyond this passage Colin never got; he read it over and over and over,
as if to persuade himself it was a reality and no mistake; he seemed
unable to credit the evidence of his clear blue eyes; he sat with his
elbows resting on the cottage table, as “Jessie” said, “glowering at the
paper as if there were glamour in it.”
“It is very like glamour at ony rate, lassie,” he explained; “but I
trust it is na that a’ thegither; if it’s a truth, it’s a good
truth,—God send it may be one;” and so he folded up the paper, and,
taking down the Bible, selected for the evening’s reading the
sixty-eighth Psalm, chanting it forth in a sort of exultant voice, and
laying so marked an emphasis on the fifth and sixth verses as clearly
demonstrated he had found for them that night some peculiar special
application.
And so he had, true, honest, faithful-hearted man; and for that he
thanked the Giver of all Good, in tremulous accents, after he had closed
the Holy Book, and went down on his knees to bless his Creator for all
the mercies of that day; and the last words the old Highlander devoutly
murmured that night ere he went thankfully to sleep, were those
contained in one of the verses mentioned above,
“A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in His
holy habitation.”