THE INTERVIEW--THE PARCHMENT--AND THE NOBLEMAN'S COACH.
Sir Richard Ashwoode had never in the whole course of his life denied
himself the indulgence of any passion or of any whim. From his
childhood upward he had never considered the feelings or comforts of
any living being but himself alone. As he advanced in life, this
selfishness had improved to a degree of hardness and coldness so
intense, that if ever he had felt a kindly impulse at any moment in his
existence, the very remembrance of it had entirely faded from his mind:
so that generosity, compassion, and natural affection were to him not
only unknown, but incredible. To him mankind seemed all either fools,
or such as he himself was. Without one particle of principle of any
kind, he had uniformly maintained in the world the character of an
honourable man. The ordinary rules of honesty and morality he regarded
as so many conventional sentiments, to which every gentleman
subscribed, as a matter of course, in public, but which in private he
had an unquestionable right to dispense with at his own convenience. He
was imperious, fiery, and unforgiving to the uttermost; but when he
conceived it advantageous to do so, he could practise as well as any
man the convenient art of masking malignity, hatred, and inveteracy
behind the pleasantest of all pleasant smiles. Capable of any secret
meanness for the sake of the smallest advantage to be gained by it, he
was yet full of fierce and overbearing pride; and although this world
was all in all to him, yet there never breathed a man who could on the
slightest provocation risk his life in mortal combat with more alacrity
and absolute _sang froid_ than Sir Richard Ashwoode. In his habits he
was unboundedly luxurious--in his expenditure prodigal to recklessness.
His own and his son's extravagance, which he had indulged from a kind
of pride, was now, however, beginning to make itself sorely felt in
formidable and rapidly accumulating pecuniary embarrassments. These had
served to embitter and exasperate a temper which at the best had never
been a very sweet one, and of whose ordinary pitch the reader may form
an estimate, when he hears that in the short glimpses which he has had
of Sir Richard, the baronet happened to be, owing to the circumstances
with which we have acquainted him, in extraordinarily good humour.
Sir Richard had not married young; and when he did marry it was to pay
his debts. The lady of his choice was beautiful, accomplished, and an
heiress; and, won by his agreeability, and by his well-assumed
devotedness and passion, she yielded to the pressure of his suit. They
were married, and she gave birth successively to a son and a daughter.
Sir Richard's temper, as we have hinted, was not very placid, nor his
habits very domestic; nevertheless, the world thought the match
(putting his money difficulties out of the question) a very suitable
and a very desirable one, and took it for granted that the gay baronet
and his lady were just as happy as a fashionable man and wife ought to
be--and perhaps they were so; but, for all that, it happened that at
the end of some four years the young wife died of a broken heart. Some
strange scenes, it is said, followed between Sir Richard and the
brother of the deceased lady, Oliver French. It is believed that this
gentleman suspected the cause of Lady Ashwoode's death--at all events
he had ascertained that she had not been kindly used, and after one or
two interviews with the baronet, in which bitter words were exchanged,
the matter ended in a fierce and bloodily contested duel, in which the
baronet received three desperate wounds. His recovery was long
doubtful; but life burns strongly in some breasts; and, contrary to the
desponding predictions of his surgeons, the valuable life of Sir
Richard Ashwoode was prolonged to his family and friends.
Since then, Sir Richard had by different agencies sought to bring about
a reconciliation with his brother-in-law, but without the smallest
success. Oliver French was a bachelor, and a very wealthy one.
Moreover, he had it in his power to dispose of his lands and money just
as he pleased. These circumstances had strongly impressed Sir Richard
with a conviction that quarrels among relations are not only unseemly,
but un-Christian. He was never in a more forgiving and forgetting mood.
He was willing even to make concessions--anything that could be
reasonably asked of him, and even more, he was ready to do--but all in
vain. Oliver was obdurate. He knew his man well. He saw and appreciated
the baronet's motives, and hated and despised him ten thousand times
more than ever.
Repulsed in his first attempt, Sir Richard resolved to give his
adversary time to cool a little; and accordingly, after a lapse of
twelve or fourteen years, his son Henry being then a handsome lad, he
wrote to his brother-in-law a very long and touching epistle, in which
he proposed to send his son down to Ardgillagh, the place where the
alienated relative resided, with a portrait of his deceased lady,
which, of course, with no object less sacred, and to no relative less
near and respected, could he have induced himself to part. This, too,
was a total failure. Oliver French, Esquire, wrote back a very succinct
epistle, but one very full of unpleasant meaning. He said that the
portrait would be odious to him, inasmuch as it would be necessarily
associated in his mind with a marriage which had killed his sister, and
with persons whom he abhorred--that therefore he would not allow it
into his house. He stated, that to the motives which prompted his
attention he was wide awake--that he was, however, perfectly determined
that no person bearing the name or the blood of Sir Richard Ashwoode
should ever have one penny of his; adding, that the baronet could leave
his son, Mr. Henry Ashwoode, quite enough for a gentleman to live upon
respectably; and that, at all events, in his father's virtues the young
gentleman would inherit a legacy such as would insure him universal
respect, and a general welcome wherever he might happen to go,
excepting only one locality, called Ardgillagh.
With the failure of this last attempt, of course, disappeared every
hope of success with the rich old bachelor; and the forgiving baronet
was forced to content himself, in the absence of all more substantial
rewards, with the consciousness of having done what was, under all the
circumstances, the most Christian thing he could have done, as well as
played the most knowing game, though unsuccessful, which he could have
played.
Sir Richard Ashwoode limped downstairs to receive his intended
son-in-law, Lord Aspenly, on the day following the events which we have
detailed in our last and the preceding chapters. That nobleman had
intimated his intention to be with Sir Richard about noon. It was now
little more than ten, and the baronet was, nevertheless, restless and
fidgety. The room he occupied was a large parlour, commanding a view of
the approach to the house. Again and again he consulted his watch, and
as often hobbled over, as well as he could, to the window, where he
gazed in evident discontent down the long, straight avenue, with its
double row of fine old giant lime-trees.
"Nearly half-past ten," muttered Sir Richard, to himself, for at his
desire he had been left absolutely alone--"ay, fully half-past, and the
fellow not come yet. No less than, two notes since eight this morning,
both of them with gratuitous mendacity renewing the appointment for ten
o'clock; and ten o'clock comes and goes, and half-an-hour more along
with it, and still no sign of Mr. Craven. If I had fixed ten o'clock to
pay his accursed, unconscionable bill of costs, he'd have been prowling
about the grounds from sunrise, and pounced upon me before the last
stroke of the clock had sounded."
While thus the baronet was engaged in muttering his discontent, and
venting secret imprecations on the whole race of attorneys, a vehicle
rolled up to the hall-door. The bell pealed, and the knocker thundered,
and in a moment a servant entered, and announced Mr. Craven--a
square-built man of low stature, wearing his own long, grizzled hair
instead of a wig--having a florid complexion, hooked nose, beetle
brows, and long-cut, Jewish, black eyes, set close under the bridge of
his nose--who stepped with a velvet tread into the room. An unvarying
smile sate upon his thin lips, and about his whole air and manner there
was a certain indescribable sanctimoniousness, which was rather
enhanced by the puritanical plainness of his attire.
"Sir Richard, I beg pardon--rather late, I fear," said he, in a dulcet,
insinuating tone--"hard work, nevertheless, I do assure
you--ninety-seven skins--splendidly engrossed--quite a treat--five of
my young men up all night--I have got one of them outside to witness it
along with me. Some reading in the thing, I promise you; but I hope--I
_do_ hope, I am not very late?"
"Not at all--not at all, my dear Mr. Craven," said Sir Richard, with
his most engaging smile; for, as we have hinted, "dear Mr. Craven" had
not made the science of conveyancing peculiarly cheap in practice to
the baronet, who accordingly owed him more costs than it would have
been quite convenient to pay upon a short notice--"I'll just, with your
assistance, glance through these parchments, though to do so be but a
matter of form. Pray take a chair beside me--there. Now then to
business."
Accordingly to business they went. Practice, they say, makes perfect,
and the baronet had had, unfortunately for himself, a great deal of it
in such matters during the course of his life. He knew how to read a
deed as well as the most experienced counsel at the Irish bar, and was
able consequently to detect with wonderfully little rummaging and
fumbling in the ninety-seven skins of closely written verbiage, the
seven lines of sense which they enveloped. Little more than
half-an-hour had therefore satisfied Sir Richard that the mass of
parchment before him, after reciting with very considerable accuracy
the deeds and process by which the lands of Glenvarlogh were settled
upon his daughter, went on to state that for and in consideration of
the sum of five shillings, good and lawful money, she, being past the
age of twenty-one, in every possible phrase and by every word which
tautology could accumulate, handed over the said lands, absolutely to
her father, Sir Richard Ashwoode, Bart., of Morley Court, in the county
of Dublin, to have, and to hold, and to make ducks and drakes of, to
the end of time, constantly affirming at the end of every sentence that
she was led to do all this for and in consideration of the sum of five
shillings, good and lawful money. As soon as Sir Richard had seen all
this, which was, as we have said, in little more than half-an-hour, he
pulled the bell, and courteously informing Mr. Craven, the immortal
author of the interesting document which he had just perused, that he
would find chocolate and other refreshments in the library, and
intimating that he would perhaps disturb him in about ten minutes, he
consigned that gentleman to the guidance of the servant, whom he also
directed to summon Miss Ashwoode to his presence.
"Her signing this deed," thought he, as he awaited her arrival, "will
make her absolutely dependent upon me--it will make rebellion,
resistance, murmuring, impossible; she then _must_ do as I would have
her, or--Ah? my dear child," exclaimed the baronet, as his daughter
entered the room, addressing her in the sweetest imaginable voice, and
instantaneously dismissing the sinister menace which had sat upon his
countenance, and clothing it instead as suddenly with an absolute
radiance of affection, "come here and kiss me and sit down by my
side--are you well to-day? you look pale--you smile--well, well! it
cannot be anything _very_ bad. You shall run out just now with Emily.
But first, I must talk with you for a little, and, strange enough, on
business too." The old gentleman paused for an instant to arrange the
order of his address, and then continued. "Mary, I will tell you
frankly more of my affairs than I have told to almost any person
breathing. In my early days, and indeed _after_ my marriage, I was far,
_far_ too careless in money matters. I involved myself considerably,
and owing to various circumstances, tiresome now to dwell upon, I have
never been able to extricate myself from these difficulties. Henry too,
your brother, is fearfully prodigal--fearfully; and has within the last
three or four years enormously aggravated my embarrassments, and of
course multiplied my anxieties most grievously, most distractingly. I
feel that my spirits are gone, my health declining, and, worse than
all, my temper, yes--my _temper_ soured. You do not know, you cannot
know, how bitterly I feel, with what intense pain, and sorrow, and
contrition, and--and _remorse_, I reflect upon those bursts of
ill-temper, of acrimony, of passion, to which, spite of every
resistance, I am becoming every day more and more prone." Here the
baronet paused to call up a look of compunctious anguish, an effort in
which he was considerably assisted by an acute twinge in his great toe.
"Yes," he continued, when the pain had subsided, "I am now growing old,
I am breaking very fast, sinking, I feel it--I cannot be very long a
trouble to anybody--embarrassments are closing around me on all
sides--I have not the means of extricating myself--despondency, despair
have come upon me, and with them loss of spirits, loss of health, of
strength, of everything which makes life a blessing; and, all these
privations rendered more horrible, more agonizing, by the reflection
that my ill-humour, my peevish temper, are continually taxing the
patience, wounding the feelings, perhaps alienating the affections of
those who are nearest and dearest to me."
Here the baronet became _very_ much affected; but, lest his agitation
should be seen, he turned his head away, while he grasped his
daughter's hand convulsively: the poor girl covered his with kisses. He
had wrung her very heart.
"There is one course," continued he, "by adopting which I might
extricate myself from all my difficulties"--here he raised his eyes
with a haggard expression, and glared wildly along the cornice--"but I
confess I have great hesitation in leaving _you_."
He wrung her hand very hard, and groaned slightly.
"Father, dear father," said she, "do not speak thus--do not--you
frighten me."
"I was wrong, my dear child, to tell you of struggles of which none but
myself ought to have known anything," said the baronet, gloomily. "One
person indeed has the power to assist, I may say, to _save_ me."
"And who is that person, father?" asked the girl.
"Yourself," replied Sir Richard, emphatically.
"How?--I!" said she, turning very pale, for a dreadful suspicion
crossed her mind--"how can _I_ help you, father?"
The old gentleman explained briefly; and the girl, relieved of her
worst fears, started joyously from her seat, clapped her hands together
with gladness, and, throwing her arms about her father's neck,
exclaimed,--
"And is that all?--oh, father; why did you defer telling me so long?
you ought to have known how delighted I would have been to do anything
for you; indeed you ought; tell them to get the papers ready
immediately."
"They _are_ ready, my dear," said Sir Richard, recovering his
self-possession wonderfully, and ringing the bell with a good deal of
hurry--for he fully acknowledged the wisdom of the old proverb, which
inculcates the expediency of striking while the iron's hot--"your
brother had them prepared yesterday, I believe. Inform Mr. Craven," he
continued, addressing the servant, "that I would be very glad to see
him now, and say he may as well bring in the young gentleman who has
accompanied him."
Mr. Craven accordingly appeared, and the "young gentleman," who had but
one eye, and a very seedy coat, entered along with him. The latter
personage bustled about a good deal, slapped the deeds very
emphatically down on the table, and rumpled the parchments sonorously,
looked about for pen and ink, set a chair before the document, and then
held one side of the parchment, while Mr. Craven screwed his knuckles
down upon the other, and the parties forthwith signed; whereupon Mr.
Craven and the one-eyed young gentleman both sat down, and began to
sign away with a great deal of scratching and flourishing on the places
allotted for witnesses; after all which, Mr. Craven, raising himself
with a smile, told Miss Ashwoode, facetiously, that the Chancellor
could not have done so much for the deed as she had done; and the
one-eyed young gentleman held his nose contemplatively between his
finger and thumb, and reviewed the signatures with his solitary optic.
Miss Ashwoode then withdrew, and Mr. Craven and the "young gentleman"
made their bows. Sir Richard beckoned to Mr. Craven, and he glided back
and closed the door, having commanded the "young gentleman" to see if
the coach was ready.
"You see, Mr. Craven," said Sir Richard, who, spite of all his
philosophy, felt a little ashamed even that the attorney should have
seen the transaction which had just been completed--"you see, sir, I
may as well tell you candidly: my daughter, who has just signed this
deed, is about immediately to be married to Lord Aspenly; _he_ kindly
offered to lend me some fifteen thousand pounds, or thereabouts, and I
converted this offer (which I, of course, accepted), into the
assignment, from his bride, that is to be, of this little property,
giving, of course, to his lordship my personal security for the debt
which I consider as owed to him: this arrangement his lordship
preferred as the most convenient possible. I thought it right, in
strict confidence, of course, to explain the real state of the case to
you, as at first sight the thing looks selfish, and I do not wish to
stand worse in my friends' books than I actually deserve to do." This
was spoken with Sir Richard's most engaging smile, and Mr. Craven
smiled in return, most artlessly--at the same time he mentally
ejaculated, "d----d sly!" "You'll bring this security, my dear Mr.
Craven," continued the baronet, "into the market with all dispatch--do
you think you can manage twenty thousand upon it?"
"I fear not more than fourteen, or perhaps, sixteen, with an effort. I
do not think Glenvarlogh would carry much more--I fear not; but rely
upon me, Sir Richard; I'll do everything that can be done--at all
events, I'll lose no time about it, depend upon it--I may as well take
this deed along with me--I have the rest; and title is very--_very_
satisfactory--good-morning, Sir Richard," and the man of parchments
withdrew, leaving Sir Richard in a more benevolent mood than he had
experienced for many a long day.
The attorney had not been many seconds gone, when a second vehicle
thundered up to the door, and a perfect storm of knocking and ringing
announced the arrival of Lord Aspenly himself.