A LEGAL "FRIEND."
Constance never smiled again; yet in the presence of Sybil she never
gave way to the paroxysms of passionate grief that came over her when
she was alone or in the seclusion of her own chamber. Wealth and
title, so long looked forward to in the years that were gone, seemed
alike most worthless now, save that with the loss of these her
children lost their position in life, and herself her name and
honour! Ever present was the idea, Oh that her husband could look up
from his grave, and see the impending ruin and desolation of their
once-happy home! for, as we have already said, their means of
subsistence died with him.
And now, how were they to live? The present time was agony; the
future dark and gloomy.
Paragraphs, the tenour of which proved intensely annoying to Downie
Trevelyan and all his family, and which were painful and degrading to
Constance and Sybil (for such they felt them to be), began to find
their way into the local and even the London papers, under exciting
titles or headings, such as "Singular Case of Presumption," or
"Insanity," "The Cornish Widow again," "The Lamorna Peerage," and so
forth; and Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole, as "his Lordship's
solicitors," in writing answers or contradictions to some of these
effusions, were but too happy, by such legal advertisements, to mix
their somewhat obscure and vulgar names with the affair.
Audley read those insulting notices, assertions, and contradictions
with infinite sorrow and pain, for then Sybil's pleading and
upbraiding eyes would come before him. Through such uncourted
publicity, however, the mother and daughter began to find themselves
coldly viewed by neighbours now. The rector ceased to come near the
villa; the village doctor whipped up his horse as he passed the end
of the willow avenue; and even the usually friendly Trecarrels left
for town--rumour said correctly, for India--without paying another
visit, though perhaps, as theirs had never been returned, they could
not do otherwise.
All the charity and good they had performed, in all the necessities
relieved, all the ailments alleviated, all the countless little
kindnesses done, went for nothing now; for the world is a malevolent
and censorious one; and that devilish maxim of Rochefoucauld, that
people feel a strange satisfaction in the misfortunes of their best
friends, was fully exemplified. Constance's new and startling
assertion of rank and position, however meekly done, formed excellent
food for the tongues of the malicious and vulgar, who exist
everywhere. She had to bear unjustly the contempt of many, the
ridicule of all; so that her pretty villa became daily less and less
a home.
From the tenour of that horrible interview at Rhoscadzhel, where
every word that passed seemed as if burned into her heart with
letters of fire, Sybil felt a sure conviction that all must and
should be at an end between herself and Audley Trevelyan. The
treatment of her mother, of her absent brother's claims, of her own,
and of her dead father's memory, his will and wishes, all required
this sacrifice at her hands; so resolutely and calmly--though a few
tears rolled silently down her cheek the while--she drew his diamond
ring from her "engaged" finger--an engaged one now no longer--and
making it up in a packet, together with a few letters he had written
to her, she despatched it, addressed by her own trembling hand, and
without a word of comment, to Rhoscadzhel; and this packet it was
which we have just seen Jasper Funnel place in the hands of his
excited young master.
Her mother's embraces, tenderness, and kisses were her sole but best
reward for acting thus; yet poor Sybil seemed the very impersonation
of beauty, grief, and girlhood bordering on womanhood. The buoyancy
of the former was gone; a change had come over her soft and once
bright face, which wore a sad and settled expression now. It was
that white woe which someone styles "the deepest mourning features
can put on."
Her pencil and her piano, each so much the solace of her lonely
hours, were, of course, relinquished now; and it seemed as if she
should never take to them again. She looked ill, and appeared to be
pining: but, sooth to say, it was less the loss of Audley than her
mother's grief that affected her. The doctor, when summoned,
pocketed his guinea, but did nothing more; so Winny Braddon urged
Constance, but in vain, that "their poor chealveen" should be taken
to the nearest _Mean-tol_ (or Holed Stone) so that she might try the
sovereign old Cornish cure for all mysterious ailments, by creeping
through the orifice thereof; for in the ancient duchy, as in some
parts of Ireland and the remote Scottish Isles, where such natural or
artificial perforations were used of old by the Druids to initiate
and dedicate their children to the offices of rock-worship, they are
still regarded with superstition, as possessing the gift of effecting
miraculous cures.
Constance, too, was ill, and in the excess of her grief and lowness
of heart, she fancied herself worse than she really was; and ever
present was the thought, how perilous the lonely path of life would
be to a girl so beautiful as Sybil, if she--her mother--were taken
away by the hand of death before another and fitting protector were
provided. Morbid at times by sorrow, this reflection made the breast
of Constance a prey to the most craving and clamorous anxiety.
But a short time before, and their worldly prospects had all been so
different--so brilliant and happy. Now all was dark indeed! When
she thought over all the baronial splendours of Rhoscadzhel, and the
many mementoes of her husband which must be there, something of
hatred for the invaders of her children's patrimony and her own
marital rights began to mingle with her dull despair of ever proving
that she had the latter; and with all her constitutional gentleness,
when she recalled the glance bestowed upon her by Mr. Trevelyan on
quitting the library, and the insinuations uttered by Downie against
her, in presence of General Trecarrel, too, her blood boiled up
within her.
"Oh, Sybil!" she exclaimed one day, after sitting long buried in
thought, "some author says, 'there are wild beasts in the human
race;' and truly your uncle Downie is one of these. Can it be
possible that they had the same parents--he and your frank, generous,
and open-hearted papa?--that they share the same blood, were nursed
at the same breast, and nestled together, as I have heard, in the
same little cot?"
Sybil was silent; she had, in this view of the matter, but one secret
and reclaiming thought. Downie was Audley's father, and she would be
merciful.
But it was when inspired by one of those gusts of indignation that
Constance received, perhaps unfortunately, a visitor--an attorney
from a neighbouring town--who stated that he had heard her strange
and painful story, and had come to make a "friendly" offer of his
legal services.
Now Mr. Sharkley--for such was his name--was exactly, in many
respects, what Downie, in his rage, called him, and was an excellent
specimen of perhaps the most dangerous character in society--a needy
and unscrupulous lawyer. He was attired in rusty black garments,
that seemed to have been made for a much taller man. The collar of
his swallow-tailed coat rose above the nape of his neck, while the
cuffs nearly reached to the points of his fingers, and the legs of
his trousers flapped loosely over his instep. He had a low
projecting forehead and keen eyes, the expression of which varied
only between intense cunning and the lowest suspicion. His ears were
enormous, set high upon his head; and the right one, from being long
used as a pen-holder, projected from his skull more than the left.
His features would have shocked Lavater, while Gall and Spurzheim
would have augured the worst of his character by the development of
his head.
His legal practice--though Constance was in blessed ignorance of the
circumstance--was of the lowest kind, and had seldom proved
beneficial in a monetary or any other sense to those for whom he
unluckily acted as agent; but the fellow could be, when it suited
him, suave, artful, and plausible when he had a purpose to serve, and
a relentless bully when it was achieved; thus, seeing that though
little or nothing could be made of the present case with the hope of
success, much might be made of it in the way of money, perhaps, of
notoriety certainly, and that in the end he might betray all he knew
to Downie Trevelyan for a consideration--with these amiable views, he
sought to worm himself as a friend and legal volunteer into the
confidence of the otherwise friendless Constance.
Mr. Sharkley heard her story attentively, and committed it all to
writing. That her marriage had been duly celebrated in a chapel at
Montreal he doubted not, nor the reason for keeping it so secret--the
absurd pride of old Lord Lamorna, whose aristocratic prejudices were
a local proverb and hence her having, so unfortunately for her own
honour, passed so long under her maiden name of Devereaux with her
son and daughter.
But how was all this to be proved?
Père Latour was dead; the records of his chapel had been burned in
one of the many conflagrations incident to the city; the certified
extract from them had perished in the sea with her husband. Dick
Braddon too had been drowned, and the acolyte, the other witness in
the little French chapel, had been long since laid under a wooden
cross in the little burial-ground that adjoined it. A few letters
alone were not sufficient proof to upset in England--whatever they
might have done in Scotland--the title and succession of a wealthy
peer already in possession; yet nevertheless Mr. Sharkley talked
about the instant institution of legal proceedings, having the matter
brought before a select committee of privileges in the House of
Lords, and so forth, quite as confidently and as pompously as if he
was a Q.C. and high-class parliamentary lawyer; and poor Constance
felt a glow of hope for her children's future rising in her heart,
while he compiled a narrative, took away the letters of her husband,
and, receiving in advance a handsome sum for certain imaginary fees
and expenses, departed with nearly all the ready money she possessed.
He really attempted, however, to get up a case against "Lord
Lamorna," and hence the bulky and presumptuous document which
exasperated Downie; but from the weakness of her cause and the
character of her legal adviser it speedily fell to the ground, only
to fix a deeper stigma on the hapless and innocent Constance.
Rumours of misfortune and mystery brought all their creditors, now
pretty numerous (for during her husband's lifetime they had lived in
good style at the villa), down upon her in a pitiless horde.
Denzil, she knew, would now lose the liberal allowance his father had
promised him after leaving Sandhurst on appointment; but with
tentage, batta, and other allowance, a subaltern can live on his pay
in India, when he might starve elsewhere. In her misery Constance
gathered some comfort from this knowledge, though ruin and penury--or
work for which they were both unfitted--were all that remained to her
and Sybil now.