“I have no knowledge,” said Creel--“I have no knowledge whatever,
Mr. Tuke, of this ‘Lake of Wine.’ Very probably it was as you suggest.
I was acquainted with the man’s character by report, of course, and
judge it infinitely likely that he would have been the principal in a
fraud so masterly ingenious. But that goes for nothing.”
“Very well, sir. Then, by your permission, we will come to the matter
which is of a greater private importance to me. Surely you cannot
justify to yourself the fact of withholding evidence of my father’s
integrity from my father’s son?”
“And surely _you_ are hasty. Did I express such an intention. On the
contrary, I am ready, at this date, to inform you of all the details I
am in possession of as to Sir Robert’s bequest.”
“And why not earlier? May I not ask it?”
“Because, my ardent young sir, the time was not ripe. Because, having
regard to the circumstances under which we first became intimate, I
apprehended a distinct refusal on your part to accept of an advantage
so strangely come by.”
“There is nothing shameful in the story?”
“Fie, sir, fie! Is this your tender concern for my old and honoured
friend and patron? Be there shame, ’tis none of his.”
“Possibly of mine, you would say. Mr. Creel, I have grown very humble
of late months.”
“Save us, save us!--Yet, I would not quench, but only control that
fervid spirit. Go to! you shall have the history word for word as your
father wrote it; and as such left it to my full discretion to acquaint
you of or not. No doubt you have suffered and learnt since we last
met, and are now in a state to appreciate the moral no less than the
material value of your inheritance.”
He rose as he spoke, sparse and bent-backed and bowelless--like the
figure 9, symbolic of the nine points of the law.
The other watched him with some amusement and a good deal of
impatience, as he shuffled to a now familiar deed-box, unlocked it,
and took thence a bundle of papers. These he brought to the table, sat
himself down again, and selected two from the heap, as dryly
deliberate as a monkey turning over a biscuit.
Presently he looked up, document in hand.
“This,” he said, “the full and true account of the late Sir Robert’s
presentation to the property of ‘Delsrop,’ in the county of Hants, was
writ down by him in this my office, and read over to me, and by me
attested for its truth, inasmuch as I was nominated to act for both
parties in the disposition of the estate. Albeit, Mr. Tuke, you must
understand the testator was known to me hitherto but by report, the
which would hardly have induced me to do his service but for the
direction of his bequest--and that, without doubt, was his object in
applying to me.”
“With favour, sir,” said Mr. Creel’s client; “and with all deference
to the discriminatory acumen of the profession--might not this preface
serve better as an epilogue?”
The attorney winced in his breath, looked over his spectacles which he
had been slowly adjusting, and broke suddenly into a leathery smile.
“Sir,” said he, “the law stands so much in dead men’s shoes that,
perhaps, itself hath lost the sensation to be ‘quick.’ But here’s for
you, without more ado.”
And so he began his reading:--
“_Re_ the Estate of ‘Delsrop’ and in the matter of Sir Robert Linne,
Bart.
“In the winter of ’78, when I was home in England on furlough, being
sick of a disordered spleen, I was crossing Bagshot Heath one night
when I was stopped by a one-eyed gentleman of the road, who was set to
coerce me with the usual menaces and braggadocio. But, looking in his
face without fear--for it was a brilliant moonlit night and his
features clear as print--I noticed them drawn and anguished in a
manner beyond words, so that he seemed rather a ghost or boggle of my
distemper, which gave me some concern. But quickly recovering myself:
‘My honest gentleman,’ says I, ‘meseems you are more in need of stand
for yourself than me.’ Which hearing, he gave out a great groan, and
so straightway dropped the muzzle of his pistol.
“‘Can you read it so plain?’ says he. ‘Then I tell you I am in hell,
and it were a merciful thing to slay me here and now’--and with that
he rends his vest, and ‘shoot,’ says he, ‘and end it!’
“Now I got talking to my man, and, to make a short story of it, found
him to be a noted heath-cock, one Cutwater”--(Aye, sir--there you have
him!)--“as he was called, who had drawn a free living from the road,
but was now smitten of a morbid disease of the kidneys and like to
die. However, in a clean retirement had he lived for a year--or
perhaps two or more--till his disorder came like to madden him; when,
with the hope to borrow surcease of agony from the distraction of his
ancient calling, he made post to Bagshot and rode out on the heath.
“Well, I took him back to my inn, and made him up a drug of my
knowledge, and kept him by me for a day or two, thinking to mend the
poor sinner before I set upon the Lord’s work with him. And he made a
surprising recovery, and was ready to kiss my very feet out of his
gratitude. But, so it happened, a summons coming to me from his
Majesty’s Court at Windsor, I was to leave him perforce; and
presently--my own complaint mending--forth I passed to the war again
and from all thought of Master Cutwater.
“And now, as worthy Mr. Creel will attest--which has conducted the
business, and is my friend and an attorney (and this our same fellow
of the road had discovered, it seems)--not three weeks ago, I being
again in London this summer of the year ’79, was waited upon by him,
and to my astonishment handed over the title deeds of an estate which
I had never so much as heard named, being ‘Delsrop’ House in the
County of Hants.
“For thus it appeared my highwayman had died after all--yet not of his
complaint but in some ruffian _mêlée_--having first, however, in
gratitude at my service to him willed me this property, which I cannot
but regard with perplexity as the wages of sin, inasmuch as it
appeareth the reward designed, _in totidem verbis_, for prolonging of
a rascal’s life.
“But so am I resolved that by no means and on no condition will I soil
my hands with its possession; for whether come by honestly or in
fraud, it is and must be a mansion of the wicked. I take no concern
for it, nor have I troubled to visit it, nor yet considered by what
manner of agreement I am to dispose of the incubus.
“Only this I set down here and now, in the presence of Mr. Creel, who
will attest it, that, should occasion of dispute arise, it may be
accepted a true and honourable statement of the matter, and that
whether or no it passeth the understanding of the incredulous. And,
moreover, I do solemnly asseverate that, whether the man Cutwater held
the estate in fee-simple, justly and of his own right, or whether he
held it the fruits of his ill-doing, or again whether, indeed, it
represent the entire or but a portion of his property, I know not nor
seek to know. For he was a rogue undoubted, of whose politic methods
no Christian gentleman could deign to consider on equal terms.”
“Now,” said the lawyer, when he had come to an end of the narrative,
“you are in possession of the facts as related and witnessed. For you
must know the testator discovered your father’s friendship to me, and
visited me here and begged me to act for him in the matter. And this,
under the circumstances, I agreed to do, having regard to my
reputation in the respect that the transaction should be----”
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Tuke a little irritably. His face had fallen
grave and full of trouble. “I understand--I understand completely. And
is that all?”
“No, sir--it is not all.” (He was secretly attentive of his client.)
“There is a later document, from which it appears that Sir Robert
abated, for any reasons of his own, the rigour of his resolve
respecting this strange inheritance. For, by deed executed” (he had
taken up and was referring to, and partly reading from, another paper)
“the eleventh of October, 1779, he makes over the estate of ‘Delsrop’
to one Barnabas Creel--in trust, that is, and under certain
conditions--said Barnabas Creel to have and enjoy said property
without dispute, and until his benefactor’s son shall attain his
majority (the which event is to happen, if he live, in the year 1790),
and thereafter for all time, provided Sir Robert the junior comes not
to bankruptcy of his affairs and threatened indigence. But in the
latter event, if it happen any time between said son’s majority and
his fortieth year--by which period of his life a man should be
established whether for good or evil--the estate is to devolve upon
said son, that he may take his profit of a cut-purse’s legacy (which
is yet good enough for a gambler or rakehell) to reform his ways and
live cleanly thenceforth; but on the sole condition that he foreswear
his title--the which hath ever stood foremost in honour--and take the
name of Tuke. For this name was borne by an honest woman, that shall
shame her son to do it no discredit under his new conditions of
fortune.”
As he here ended, the lawyer precisely refolded the papers, tied all
together, put the packet aside, and crossing his hands over his
crossed knees, waited for the other to speak.
A silence of some minutes succeeded. Then said the distitled legatee,
rousing himself with a sigh:
“I thank you, Mr. Creel, for your kindly discernment in hitherto
withholding from me this intelligence. I confess it comes bitter to
me. I rejoice in that re-assurance of my father’s integrity--which my
heart, in truth, little misdoubted--but I confess the nature of this
revelation a little overcomes me. ’Tis a bone to a dog, in all
sovereign contempt.”
“Nay, Sir Robert, Sir Robert. ’Tis the anxious medicine to a soul
wounded of its own rashness.”
“Well, sir, well. Pride may follow a fall, I find. Yet, if I may
question the methods of a virtuous man, I could discover a flaw in my
father’s particular morality. For the Crown, by all custom, is
entitled to the reversion of an outlaw’s estates.”
“No doubt,” answered Creel, with a little dry snigger, “that is
strictly so. The man’s possessions were forfeit of right to the Crown,
it being his good fortune only that he passed unhung of the law that
he had defied. But--his guilt being conjectural, and not, as it were,
brought home to him--your father, in one of those Canterbury-gallops
of conscience wherewith honest souls sometimes over-ride our fears for
their guilelessness, would consider it no duty of his to forego the
estate quixotically, and for a supposition of which the law had failed
to take cognizance. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I will not throw the first stone
at him whose immunity is my profit. And, as to the estate, I can apply
it--saving the grace of his majesty, whose means are not
restricted--to some worthy purpose which was doubtless forecast by the
Providence that hath conducted the matter so far.’ And in this he was
firm--not to outlaw the dead man, though he took no personal advantage
of his bequest. ‘For,’ he declared, ‘he meant well by me, when all is
said and done.’”
Mr. Tuke rose, and the attorney with him.
“I suppose,” said the former, rather sadly, “that no man may profit by
repentance so far as to lay the ghost of his past. ’Tis the privilege
of the virtuous to hunt down reformed sinners with the spectre-hounds
of their own dead passions. I have sought honestly to redeem my name,
and to do my best with the new life offered me. Yet, should I have
accepted the trust, had I known in what spirit its reversion to me was
conceived?”
“I hope so,” said the other; “for love, under all the show of rigour,
prompted the bequest.”
He spoke with some deprecation. Perhaps, in his heart, was a little
protesting sympathy with his young friend’s point of view.
“Well, sir,” answered the latter, “I will e’en take your word for
it--for that it is the word of as generous and self-sacrificing a soul
as ever stood between a saint and a scamp.”
And with that they shook hands warmly and parted, Mr. Tuke going back
to his lodgings in the “Adelphi,” where he had put up to be near his
friends, who lay at the “Golden Cross” hard by.