LUCIUS IN QUEST OF JUSTICE.
Lucius went to Messrs. Pullman and Everill’s office the day after
Ferdinand Sivewright’s death. Mr. Pullman, an active-looking elderly
man, received him with that stock-in-trade kind of politeness which
thriving solicitors keep for unknown clients, heard his story, smiled
somewhat incredulously at some of its details, but reserved his opinion
until he should have mastered the case.
‘Isn’t it rather strange that we should never have heard of this
youthful marriage of Mr. Henry Glenlyne’s,’ he said, with his sceptical
smile, when the story was finished, ‘if there had been such a marriage?’
‘Not more strange than that other clandestine marriages should be kept
secret,’ said Lucius.
‘Ah, but they so seldom are kept secret for more than a year or two;
they always transpire somehow. Facts are like water, Mr. Davoren, and
have an odd way of leaking out. This supposed marriage, according to
your showing, is an event of twenty years ago.’
‘There is really no room for speculation upon the subject,’ said
Lucius coolly. ‘You can easily verify my statement by a reference to
the registries of St. James’s, Piccadilly, where Félicie Dumarques’
marriage is no doubt recorded.’
This was unanswerable. Mr. Pullman looked meditative, but said nothing.
‘And what is your motive for coming to me?’ he asked at last.
‘I came here presuming that you, as Mr. Henry Glenlyne’s solicitor,
would be naturally desirous to see his daughter righted.’
‘But suppose I should be disinclined to believe in the parentage of
this young lady, your protegée?’
‘My future wife, Mr. Pullman.’
‘Ah, I understand,’ returned the lawyer quickly, as much as to say, ‘We
are getting to the motive of your conduct, my young gentleman.’
‘I have been engaged to Miss Glenlyne for nearly a year,’ said Lucius,
as if answering Mr. Pullman’s degrading supposition, ‘but it is
only within the last week that I have discovered the secret of her
parentage.’
‘Indeed; then whatever hope you may entertain of future profit from
this discovery is a recent hope, and has had no influence in the matter
of your regard for this young lady?’
‘None whatever. I do not pretend to be superior to human nature in
general, but I think I may safely say that there are few men who set
less value on money, in the abstract, than I do. But whatever portion
my wife may be entitled to receive I am ready to fight for, and to
fight still more resolutely for the name which she is entitled to bear.’
‘But granted that the marriage which I hear of for the first time
to-day did actually take place, what is to prove to any legal mind that
this young lady whom you put forward is the issue of that marriage?’
Yes, as Ferdinand Sivewright had said, here was the weakness of the
case. Lucius now for the first time perceived that he ought to have
secured the dying man’s deposition of the facts concerning Lucille.
But, standing by that bed of pain, he had hardly been in a condition to
consider the case from the lawyer’s standpoint. He had forgotten that
Sivewright’s statement was but fleeting breath, and that this single
witness of the truth was swiftly passing beyond the jurisdiction of
earthly tribunals.
‘For that we must rely on circumstantial evidence,’ he said after a
longish pause. ‘The woman who nursed Lucille Glenlyne may be still
alive.’
‘How old was the child when this nurse left her?’
‘About four, I believe.’
‘You believe!’ echoed Mr. Pullman contemptuously. ‘Before you
approached me upon such a subject as this, Mr. Davoren, you might
at least have taken the trouble to be certain about your facts. You
believe that the child was about four years old when her nurse left
her, and you rely upon this nurse, who may or may not be living, to
identify the four-year-old child she nursed in the young lady of
nineteen whom you put forward.’
‘You are somewhat hard upon me, Mr. Pullman.’
‘Sir,’ said the lawyer, with a Johnsonian air, ‘I abhor chimeras.’
‘I do not, however, despair of making Miss Glenlyne’s identity clear
even to your legal mind. As I have told you, Mr. and Mrs. Glenlyne
occupied a cottage near Sidmouth for the few years of their wedded
life. The little girl was born there, nursed there, and conveyed
straight from that cottage to the house in Bond-street, where she
was brought up in the care of old Mr. Sivewright. Now the date of
her removal from Sidmouth will fit into the date of her arrival in
Bond-street, to which Mr. Sivewright can testify; and it will go hard
if we cannot find people in Sidmouth—servants, tradesmen, the landlord
of the cottage—who will remember the child’s abrupt removal and be able
to swear to the date.’
‘Able to swear,’ exclaimed Mr. Pullman, again contemptuous. ‘What fact
is there so incredible that legions of unimpeachable witnesses will not
sustain it by their testimony? You mentioned the name of Sivewright
just now. Is the person you spoke of one Ferdinand Sivewright?’
‘No; the person in question is Ferdinand Sivewright’s father.’
‘A pretty disreputable set, those Sivewrights, I should think,’ said
Mr. Pullman, ‘so far as I can judge from the transactions between
Ferdinand Sivewright and my late client, Mr. Henry Glenlyne, which were
chiefly of the bill-discounting order.’
‘I have nothing to say in favour of Ferdinand Sivewright, who died
yesterday at the London Hospital,’ answered Lucius; ‘but his father is
an honest man, and it was his father who brought up Lucille, knowing
nothing more of her parentage than the vague idea which he gathered
from certain letters written by Mr. Glenlyne.’
‘O, Ferdinand Sivewright is dead, is he?’ retorted Mr. Pullman, with
a suspicious look; ‘and it is only after his death that this claim
arises.’
There was such an insolent doubt implied by the lawyer’s words and
manner that Lucius rose with an offended look, and was about to leave
Mr. Pullman’s office.
‘You have chosen to discredit my statements,’ he said; ‘I can go to
some other lawyer who will be more civil and less suspicious.’
‘Stop, sir,’ cried Mr. Pullman, wheeling round in his revolving chair
as Lucius approached the door. ‘I don’t say I won’t help you; I don’t
say your case is not a sound one; nor do I doubt your good faith. Sit
down again, and let us discuss the matter quietly.’
‘I have endeavoured to do that, Mr. Pullman, but you have chosen to
adopt an offensive tone, and the discussion is ended.’
‘Come, Mr. Davoren, why be so thin-skinned? You come to me with a story
which at the first glance seems altogether incredible, and before I
have had time to weigh the facts or to recover my breath after the
surprise occasioned by your startling disclosure, you take offence and
wish me good-morning. Go to another lawyer if you please; but if your
case is a sound one, there is no one who can help you so well as I.’
‘You are perhaps solicitor to some other branch of the family—to people
whose interests would be injuriously affected by the assertion of
Lucille Glenlyne’s claims.’
‘No, Mr. Davoren. When Mr. Spalding Glenlyne came into his cousin’s
property, he chose to employ another solicitor. My connection with the
Glenlyne family then terminated, except as concerns Miss Glenlyne.’
‘Miss Glenlyne—who is that?’
‘Henry Glenlyne’s aunt. The sister of Mr. Reginald Glenlyne, who left
him his fortune.’
‘Is it possible that Miss Glenlyne is still living?’ exclaimed Lucius,
remembering Monsieur Dolfe’s description of the little elderly lady,
thin, pale, and an invalid. And this description had applied to
her twenty-two years ago. Miss Glenlyne must surely belong to the
Rosicrucians, or to the house of Methuselah.
‘Yes,’ replied Mr. Pullman, ‘Miss Glenlyne is a very old lady; between
seventy and eighty, I daresay.’
‘But Miss Glenlyne was an invalid two-and-twenty years ago.’
‘She was; and she has gone on being an invalid ever since; no more
healthy mode of life. She lives on mutton cutlets and sago puddings,
dry toast and weak tea, and if she indulges in a second glass of dry
sherry thinks it a debauch. She believes in the homœopathists, and
experimentalises upon her system with minute doses, which, if they do
her no good, can hardly do her much harm. She spends her winters at
Nice or Dawlish, knows not the meaning of emotion, and at the rate she
lives—expenditure of vital force reduced to the lowest figure—she may
go on living twenty-two years longer.’
‘If you have no relations with Mr. Spalding Glenlyne, there is no
reason why you should not undertake to protect the interests of your
late client’s daughter,’ said Lucius. ‘I am quite ready to believe that
your knowledge of the family may render your services better worth
having than anybody else’s. I came to you in perfect good faith, and in
ignorance of everything except the fact of Mr. Glenlyne’s marriage, and
the melancholy fate of his wife, who died away from her husband and her
child, as I have already told you.’
‘A sad case for the lady,’ said the lawyer. ‘I should like to see those
letters, by the way, of which you spoke a little while ago.’
‘I have brought them with me,’ answered Lucius, producing the precious
packet and the miniature.
‘What, a picture?’ cried Mr. Pullman. ‘Yes; that is my client’s
portrait, undoubtedly, and a good likeness. A very handsome young man,
Henry Glenlyne, but a weak one. Humph! These are the letters, are they?’
The lawyer read them carefully, and from time to time shook his head
over them, with a slow and meditative shake, as who should say, ‘These
are poor stuff.’
‘There is very little to help your case here,’ he said, when he had
finished this deliberate perusal. ‘The child is spoken of as _your
little girl_, or _the little girl_, throughout. The most rational
conclusion would be that the child was Sivewright’s child.’
‘Yet in that case why should Mr. Glenlyne, a young man about town,
be interested in the child? Why should he give money? Why should he
supplicate for secrecy?’
‘Matter for philosophical speculation, but hardly a question to submit
to a jury, or put in an affidavit,’ replied Mr. Pullman coolly.
‘If there is nothing in those letters to help me, I will find the
evidence I want elsewhere,’ said Lucius, inwardly fuming at this
graybeard’s impenetrability. ‘I will go down myself to Sidmouth—hunt
out the landlord of that cottage.’
‘Of whose very name you are ignorant,’ interposed the man of business.
‘Find the servant; advertise for the nurse; discover the doctor who
attended Mrs. Glenlyne when that child was born; and link by link forge
the chain of evidence which shall reinstate Lucille Glenlyne in the
name her cowardly father stole from her.’
‘_De mortuis_,’ said the lawyer. ‘I admit that if your idea—mind, I
fully believe in your own good faith, but you may be mistaken for
all that—if your idea is correct, I repeat this girl has been badly
treated. But my client is in his grave; let us make what excuses we can
for conduct that at first sight appears unmanly.’
‘I can make no excuse for a man who repudiated his child; who suffered
his wife to die broken-hearted, lest by a manly avowal of his marriage
he should hazard the loss of fortune.’
‘Recollect that Henry Glenlyne was brought up and educated in the
expectation of his uncle’s fortune, that he was deeply in debt for some
years before his uncle died, and that the forfeiture of that fortune
would have been absolute ruin.’
‘It was a large fortune, I suppose?’
‘It was a fortune that would have been counted large when I was a
youngster, but which now might be called mediocre. It was under
rather than over a hundred thousand pounds, and chiefly invested in
land. Reginald Glenlyne had been in the Indian Civil Service when
the pagoda-tree was better worth shaking than it is nowadays, and in
a lengthened career had contrived to do pretty well for himself. He
belonged to an old family, and a rich one, and had started in life with
a competence.’
‘Henry Glenlyne did inherit this fortune, I conclude?’
‘Yes, though the Spalding Glenlynes ran him hard for it.’
‘How long did he survive his uncle?’
‘Nearly ten years. He married a year after the old man’s death—married
a fashionable woman, handsome, extravagant, and it was whispered a
bit of a tartar. She brought him two sons and a daughter, who all
died—a taint of consumption in the blood, people said; and the lady
herself died of rapid consumption two years before her husband. The
loss of wife and children broke him up altogether; and Joseph Spalding
Glenlyne, who had watched the estate like a harpy ever since he left
Cambridge, had the satisfaction of coming into possession of it after
all.’
‘Did Henry Glenlyne make a will?’
‘No; he died suddenly, though his constitution had been broken for some
time before the end. Joseph Glenlyne inherited under the uncle’s will.’
‘And that left the estate—’
‘To Henry Glenlyne, and his children after him. Failing such issue,
to Joseph Spalding Glenlyne, and his children after him. Mr. Spalding
Glenlyne has plenty of children—raw-boned boys, who prowl about
Westminster between school-hours with their luncheons in blue bags.
A saving man, Mr. Glenlyne. I have seen his boys in the abbey itself
munching surreptitious sandwiches.’
‘Then this estate now held by Mr. Spalding Glenlyne actually belongs of
right to Lucille.’
‘If you can prove her to be the legitimate daughter of Henry Glenlyne,
she is most decidedly entitled to claim it.’
‘If I cannot prove that, I must be unworthy of success in any walk of
life,’ said Lucius.
‘Leave the case in my hands, Mr. Davoren, and leave me those letters.
My clerk shall make copies of them if you like, and return you the
original documents. I’ll think the matter over, and, if I find it ripe
enough, take counsel’s opinion.’
‘I should like to see Miss Glenlyne—the lady in whose service
Lucille’s mother came to England,’ said Lucius. ‘Would there be any
harm in my endeavouring to obtain an interview with her?’
‘I think not. Old Miss Glenlyne hates the Spalding Glenlynes worse than
she hates allopathy. They contrived to offend her in some unpardonable
manner while they were courting her brother. She is at Brighton just
now. If you would really like to call upon her, I shouldn’t mind giving
you a letter of introduction. She and I were always good friends.’
‘I’ll go down to Brighton to-morrow, and take Lucille with me. She is
wonderfully like that portrait of Félicie Dumarques, and it will be
strange if Miss Glenlyne fails to see the likeness, unless age has
darkened “those that look out of the windows.”’
‘Miss Glenlyne is as sharp as a needle—a wonderful old lady.’
Mr. Pullman, who had now, as it were, taken Lucius under his wing,
wrote a letter of introduction, stating Mr. Davoren’s motive
for seeking an interview, addressed his note to Miss Glenlyne,
Selbrook-place, and handed it to his new client. And thus they parted,
on excellent terms with each other, the lawyer promising to send a
clerk to inspect the St. James’s registries that afternoon, in quest of
that particular entry which was in a manner the keystone of Lucille’s
case.
‘Upon my word, I don’t know why I should be fool enough to take
up such a chimerical business,’ Mr. Pullman said to himself, half
reproachfully, as he stood upon his hearthrug, and enjoyed the genial
warmth of his seacoal fire, after Lucius had left him.
But in his heart of hearts Mr. Pullman was pretty well aware that he
took up Lucius and Lucille’s case because he detested Joseph Spalding
Glenlyne.
Lord Lytton has written an admirable chapter upon the value of Hate as
a motive power, and it was assuredly Hate that prompted Mr. Pullman
to undertake the championship of Lucille. Mr. Spalding Glenlyne had
removed the Glenlyne estate from Mr. Pullman’s office. The poetry of
retribution would be achieved by the return of the estate to the office
without the encumbrance of Spalding Glenlyne.
Mr. Pullman polished his spectacles with his oriental handkerchief, and
sighed gently to himself as he thought what a nice thing that would be.