“Sweet are the uses of Adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Bears yet a precious jewel in its head.”
MOST PERSONS WILL AGREE THAT THE TOAD IS UGLY AND VENOMOUS, BUT FEW
INDEED ARE THE PERSONS WHO CAN BOAST OF HAVING ACTUALLY DISCOVERED
THAT “PRECIOUS JEWEL IN ITS HEAD,” WHICH THE POET ASSURES US IS
PLACED THERE. BUT CALAMITY MAY BE CLASSED IN TWO GREAT DIVISIONS--
1ST, THE AFFLICTIONS, WHICH NO PRUDENCE CAN AVERT; 2ND, THE
MISFORTUNES, WHICH MEN TAKE ALL POSSIBLE PAINS TO BRING UPON
THEMSELVES. AFFLICTIONS OF THE FIRST CLASS MAY BUT CALL FORTH OUR
VIRTUES, AND RESULT IN OUR ULTIMATE GOOD. SUCH IS THE ADVERSITY
WHICH MAY GIVE US THE JEWEL. BUT TO GET AT THE JEWEL WE MUST KILL
THE TOAD. MISFORTUNES OF THE SECOND CLASS BUT TOO OFTEN INCREASE
THE ERRORS OR THE VICES BY WHICH THEY WERE CREATED. SUCH IS THE
ADVERSITY WHICH IS ALL TOAD AND NO JEWEL. IF YOU CHOOSE TO BREED
AND FATTEN YOUR OWN TOADS, THE INCREASE OF THE VENOM ABSORBS EVERY
BIT OF THE JEWEL.
Never did I know a man who was an habitual gambler, otherwise than
notably inaccurate in his calculations of probabilities in the ordinary
affairs of life. Is it that such a man has become so chronic a drunkard
of hope, that he sees double every chance in his favour?
Jasper Losely had counted upon two things as matters of course.
1st. Darrell’s speedy reconciliation with his only child. 2nd. That
Darrell’s only child must of necessity be Darrell’s heiress.
In both these expectations the gambler was deceived. Darrell did not
even answer the letters that Matilda addressed to him from France, to
the shores of which Jasper had borne her, and where he had hastened
to make her his wife under the assumed name of Hammond, but his true
Christian name of Jasper.
In the disreputable marriage Matilda had made, all the worst parts of
her character seemed suddenly revealed to her father’s eye, and he saw
what he had hitherto sought not to see, the true child of a worthless
mother. A mere mesalliance, if palliated by long or familiar
acquaintance with the object, however it might have galled him, his
heart might have pardoned; but here, without even a struggle of duty,
without the ordinary coyness of maiden pride, to be won with so scanty
a wooing, by a man who she knew was betrothed to another--the
dissimulation, the perfidy, the combined effrontery and meanness of the
whole transaction, left no force in Darrell’s eyes to the common place
excuses of experience and youth. Darrell would not have been Darrell if
he could have taken back to his home or his heart a daughter so old in
deceit, so experienced in thoughts that dishonour.
Darrell’s silence, however, little saddened the heartless bride, and
little dismayed the sanguine bridegroom. Both thought that pardon and
plenty were but the affair of time a little more or little less. But
their funds rapidly diminished; it became necessary to recruit them. One
can’t live in hotels entirely upon hope. Leaving his bride for a while
in a pleasant provincial town, not many hours distant from Paris, Jasper
returned to London, intent upon seeing Darrell himself; and, should the
father-in-law still defer articles of peace, Jasper believed that he
could have no trouble in raising a present supply upon such an El Dorado
of future expectations. Darrell at once consented to see Jasper, not at
his own house, but at his solicitor’s. Smothering all opposing disgust,
the proud gentleman deemed this condescension essential to the clear and
definite understanding of those resolves upon which depended the worldly
station and prospects of the wedded pair.
When Jasper was shown into Mr. Gotobed’s office, Darrell was alone,
standing near the hearth, and by a single quiet gesture repelled that
tender rush towards his breast which Jasper had elaborately prepared;
and thus for the first time the two men saw each other, Darrell
perhaps yet more resentfully mortified while recognising those personal
advantages in the showy profligate which had rendered a daughter of his
house so facile a conquest: Jasper (who had chosen to believe that a
father-in-law so eminent must necessarily be old and broken) shocked
into the most disagreeable surprise by the sight of a man still young,
under forty, with a countenance, a port, a presence, that in any
assemblage would have attracted the general gaze from his own brilliant
self, and looking altogether as unfavourable an object, whether for
pathos or for post-obits, as unlikely to breathe out a blessing or to
give up the ghost, as the worst brute of a father-in-law could possibly
be. Nor were Darrell’s words more comforting than his aspect.
“Sir, I have consented to see you, partly that you may learn from my own
lips once for all that I admit no man’s right to enter my family without
my consent, and that consent you will never receive; and partly that,
thus knowing each other by sight, each may know the man it becomes
him most to avoid. The lady who is now your wife is entitled by my
marriage-settlement to the reversion of a small fortune at my death;
nothing more from me is she likely to inherit. As I have no desire that
she to whom I once gave the name of daughter should be dependent wholly
on yourself for bread, my solicitor will inform you on what conditions
I am willing, during my life, to pay the interest of the sum which will
pass to your wife at my death. Sir, I return to your hands the letters
that lady has addressed to me, and which, it is easy to perceive, were
written at your dictation. No letter from her will I answer. Across my
threshold her foot will never pass. Thus, sir, concludes all possible
intercourse between you and myself; what rests is between you and that
gentleman.”
Darrell had opened a side-door in speaking the last words--pointed
towards the respectable form of Mr. Gotobed standing tall beside his
tall desk--and, before Jasper could put in a word, the father-in-law was
gone.
With becoming brevity, Mr. Gotobed made Jasper fully aware that not only
all, Mr. Darrell’s funded or personal property was entirely at his own
disposal--that not only the large landed estates he had purchased (and
which Jasper had vaguely deemed inherited and in strict entail) were in
the same condition--condition enviable to the proprietor, odious to
the bridegroom of the proprietor’s sole daughter; but that even the
fee-simple of the poor Fawley Manor House and lands were vested in
Darrell, encumbered only by the portion of L10,000 which the late Mrs.
Darrell had brought to her husband, and which was settled, at the death
of herself and Darrell, on the children of the marriage.
In the absence of marriage-settlements between Jasper and Matilda, that
sum at Darrell’s death was liable to be claimed by Jasper, in right of
his wife, so as to leave no certainty that provision would remain for
the support of his wife and family; and the contingent reversion might,
in the mean time, be so dealt with as to bring eventual poverty on them
all.
“Sir,” said the lawyer, “I will be quite frank with you. It is my wish,
acting for Mr. Darrell, so to settle this sum of L10,000 on your wife,
and any children she may bear you, as to place it out of your power to
anticipate or dispose of it, even with Mrs. Hammond’s consent. If you
part with that power, not at present a valuable one, you are entitled to
compensation. I am prepared to make that compensation liberal. Perhaps
you would prefer communicating with me through your own solicitor. But
I should tell you, that the terms are more likely to be advantageous to
you in proportion as negotiation is confined to us two. It might, for
instance, be expedient to tell your solicitor that your true name (I beg
you a thousand pardons) is not Hammond. That is a secret which, the more
you can keep it to yourself, the better I think it will be for you. We
have no wish to blab it out.”
Jasper, by this time, had somewhat recovered the first shock of
displeasure and disappointment; and with that quickness which so
erratically darted through a mind that contrived to be dull when
anything honest was addressed to its apprehension, he instantly divined
that his real name of Losely was worth something. He had no idea of
reusing--was, indeed, at that time anxious altogether to ignore and
eschew it; but he had a right to it, and a man’s rights are not to be
resigned for nothing. Accordingly, he said with some asperity: “I shall
resume my family name whenever I choose it. If Mr. Darrell does not
like his daughter to be called Mrs. Jasper Losely--or all the malignant
tittle-tattle which my poor father’s unfortunate trial might provoke--he
must, at least, ask me as a favour to retain the name I have temporarily
adopted--a name in my family, sir. A Losely married a Hammond, I forget
when--generations ago--you’ll see it in the Baronetage. My grandfather,
Sir Julian, was not a crack lawyer, but he was a baronet of as good
birth as any in the country; and my father, sir”--(Jasper’s voice
trembled) “my father,” he repeated, fiercely striking his clenched hand
on the table, “was a gentleman every inch of his body; and I’ll pitch
any man out of the window who says a word to the contrary!”
“Sir,” said Mr. Gotobed, shrinking towards the bell pull, “I think, on
the whole, I had better see your solicitor.”
Jasper cooled down at that suggestion; and, with a slight apology for
natural excitement, begged to know what Mr. Gotobed wished to propose.
To make an end of this part of the story, after two or three interviews,
in which the two negotiators learned to understand each other, a
settlement was legally completed, by which the sum of L10,000 was
inalienably settled on Matilda, and her children by her marriage with
Jasper; in case he survived her, the interest was to be his for life--in
case she died childless, the capital would devolve to himself at
Darrell’s decease. Meanwhile, Darrell agreed to pay L500 a year, as the
interest of the L10,000 at five per cent., to Jasper Hammond, or his
order, provided always that Jasper and his wife continued to reside
together, and fixed that residence abroad.
By a private verbal arrangement, not even committed to writing, to
this sum was added another L200 a year, wholly at Darrell’s option and
discretion. It being clearly comprehended that these words meant so long
as Mr. Hammond kept his own secret, and so long, too, as he forbore,
directly or indirectly, to molest, or even to address, the person at
whose pleasure it was held. On the whole, the conditions to Jasper were
sufficiently favourable: he came into an income immeasurably beyond
his right to believe that he should ever enjoy; and sufficient--well
managed--for even a fair share of the elegancies as well as comforts of
life, to a young couple blest in each other’s love, and remote from the
horrible taxes and emulous gentilities of this opulent England, where
out of fear to be thought too poor nobody is ever too rich.
Matilda wrote no more to Darrell. But some months afterwards he
received an extremely well-expressed note in French, the writer whereof
represented herself as a French lady, who had very lately seen Madame
Hammondwho was now in London, but for a few days, and had something to
communicate, of such importance as to justify the liberty she took in
requesting him to honour her with a visit. After some little hesitation,
Darrell called on this lady. Though Matilda had forfeited his affection,
he could not contemplate her probable fate without painful anxiety.
Perhaps Jasper had ill-used her--perhaps she had need of shelter
elsewhere. Though that shelter could not again be under a father’s
roof--and though Darrell would have taken no steps to separate her
from the husband she had chosen, still, in secret, he would have felt
comparative relief and ease had she herself sought to divide her fate
from one whose path downwards in dishonour his penetration instinctively
divined. With an idea that some communication might be made to him, to
which he might reply that Matilda, if compelled to quit her husband,
should never want the home and subsistence of a gentlewoman, he repaired
to the house (a handsome house in a quiet street) temporarily occupied
by the French lady. A tall chasseur, in full costume, opened the door--a
page ushered him into the drawing-room. He saw a lady--young-and
with all the grace of a Parisieune in her manner--who, after some
exquisitely-turned phrases of excuse, showed him (as a testimonial
of the intimacy between herself and Madame Hammond) a letter she had
received from Matilda, in a very heart-broken, filial strain, full
of professions of penitence--of a passionate desire for her father’s
forgiveness--but far from complaining of Jasper, or hinting at the idea
of deserting a spouse with whom, but for the haunting remembrance of a
beloved parent, her lot would be blest indeed. Whatever of pathos was
deficient in the letter, the French lady supplied by such apparent fine
feeling, and by so many touching little traits of Matilda’s remorse,
that Darrell’s heart was softened in spite of his reason. He went away,
however, saying very little, and intending to call no more. But
another note came. The French lady had received a letter from a mutual
friend--“Matilda,” she feared, “was dangerously ill.” This took him
again to the house, and the poor French lady seemed so agitated by the
news she had heard--and yet so desirous not to exaggerate nor alarm him
needlessly, that Darrell suspected his daughter was really dying, and
became nervously anxious himself for the next report. Thus, about three
or four visits in all necessarily followed the first one. Then Darrell
abruptly closed the intercourse, and could not be induced to call again.
Not that he for an instant suspected that this amiable lady, who spoke
so becomingly, and whose manners were so high-bred, was other than the
well-born Baroness she called herself, and looked to be, but partly
because, in the last interview, the charming Parisienne had appeared a
little to forget Matilda’s alarming illness, in a not forward but still
coquettish desire to centre his attention more upon herself; and the
moment she did so, he took a dislike to her which he had not before
conceived; and partly because his feelings having recovered the first
effect which the vision of a penitent, pining, dying daughter could not
fail to produce, his experience of Matilda’s duplicity and falsehood
made him discredit the penitence, the pining, and the dying. The
Baroness might not wilfully be deceiving him--Matilda might be wilfully
deceiving the Baroness. To the next note, therefore, despatched to him
by the feeling and elegant foreigner, he replied but by a dry excuse--a
stately hint, that family matters could never be satisfactorily
discussed except in family councils, and that if her friend’s grief or
illness were really in any way occasioned by a belief in the pain her
choice of life might have inflicted on himself, it might comfort her to
know that that pain had subsided, and that his wish for her health and
happiness was not less sincere, because henceforth he could neither
watch over the one nor administer to the other. To this note, after a
day or two, the Baroness replied by a letter so beautifully worded, I
doubt whether Madame de Sevigne could have written in purer French, or
Madame de Steel with a finer felicity of phrase. Stripped of the graces
of diction, the substance was but small: “Anxiety for a friend so
beloved--so unhappy--more pitied even than before, now that the Baroness
had been enabled to see how fondly a daughter must idolise a father in
the Man whom the nation revered!--(here two lines devoted to compliment
personal)--compelled by that anxiety to quit even sooner than she had
first intended the metropolis of that noble Country,” &c.--(here four
lines devoted to compliment national)--and then proceeding through some
charming sentences about patriot altars and domestic hearths, the writer
suddenly checked herself--“would intrude no more on time sublimely
dedicated to the Human Race--and concluded with the assurance of
sentiments the most _distinguees_.” Little thought Darrell that this
complimentary stranger, whom he never again beheld, would exercise an
influence over that portion of his destiny which then seemed to him most
secure from evil; towards which, then, he looked for the balm to every
wound--the compensation to every loss!
Darrell heard no more of Matilda, till, not long afterwards, her death
was announced to him. She had died from exhaustion shortly after giving
birth to a female child. The news came upon him at a moment; when,
from other causes--(the explanation of which, forming no part of his
confidence to Alban, it will be convenient to reserve)--his mind was
in a state of great affliction and disorder--when he had already buried
himself in the solitudes of Fawley--ambition resigned and the world
renounced--and the intelligence saddened and shocked him more than
it might have done some months before. If, at that moment of utter
bereavement, Matilda’s child had been brought to him--given up to him to
rear--would he have rejected it? would he have forgotten that it was a
felon’s grandchild?
I dare not say. But his pride was not put to such a trial. One day he
received a packet from Mr. Gotobed, enclosing the formal certificates of
the infant’s death, which had been presented to him by Jasper, who had
arrived in London for that melancholy purpose, with which he combined a
pecuniary proposition. By the death of Matilda and her only child, the
sum of L10,000 absolutely reverted to Jasper in the event of Darrell’s
decease. As the interest meanwhile was continued to Jasper, that widowed
mourner suggested “that it would be a great boon to himself and no
disadvantage to Darrell if the principal were made over to him at
once. He had been brought up originally to commerce. He had abjured all
thoughts of resuming such vocation during his wife’s lifetime, out of
that consideration for her family and ancient birth which motives
of delicacy imposed. Now that the connection with Mr. Darrell was
dissolved, it might be rather a relief than otherwise to that gentleman
to know that a son-in-law so displeasing to him was finally settled,
not only in a foreign land, but in a social sphere in which his very
existence would soon be ignored by all who could remind Mr. Darrell
that his daughter had once a husband. An occasion that might never
occur again now presented itself. A trading firm at Paris, opulent, but
unostentatiously quiet in its mercantile transactions, would accept him
as a partner could he bring to it the additional capital of L10,000.”
Not without dignity did Jasper add, “that since his connection had been
so unhappily distasteful to Mr. Darrell, and since the very payment,
each quarter, of the interest on the sum in question must in itself
keep alive the unwelcome remembrance of that connection, he had the less
scruple in making a proposition which would enable the eminent personage
who so disdained his alliance to get rid of him altogether.” Darrell
closed at once with Jasper’s proposal, pleased to cut off from his life
each tie that could henceforth link it to Jasper’s, nor displeased to
relieve his hereditary acres from every shilling of the marriage portion
which was imposed on it as a debt, and associated with memories of
unmingled bitterness. Accordingly, Mr. Gotobed, taking care first
to ascertain that the certificates as to the poor child’s death were
genuine, accepted Jasper’s final release of all claim on Mr. Darrell’s
estate. There still, however, remained the L200 a year which Jasper had
received during Matilda’s life, on the tacit condition of remaining Mr.
Hammond, and not personally addressing Mr. Darrell. Jasper inquired
“if that annuity was to continue?” Mr. Gotobed referred the inquiry to
Darrell, observing that the object for which this extra allowance had
been made was rendered nugatory by the death of Mrs. Hammond and her
child; since Jasper henceforth could have neither power nor pretext to
molest Mr. Darrell, and that it could signify but little what name might
in future be borne by one whose connection with the Darrell family was
wholly dissolved. Darrell impatiently replied, “That nothing having been
said as to the withdrawal of the said allowance in case Jasper became
a widower, he remained equally entitled, in point of honour, to receive
that allowance, or an adequate equivalent.”
This answer being intimated to Jasper, that gentleman observed “that it
was no more than he had expected from Mr. Darrell’s sense of honour,”
and apparently quite satisfied, carried himself and his L10,000 back
to Paris. Not long after, however, he wrote to Mr. Gotobed that “Mr.
Darrell having alluded to an equivalent for the L200 a year allowed to
him, evidently implying that it was as disagreeable to Mr. Darrell to
see that sum entered quarterly in his banker’s books, as it had been
to see there the quarterly interest of the L10,000, so Jasper might be
excused in owning that he should prefer an equivalent. The commercial
firm to which he was about to attach himself required a somewhat larger
capital on his part than he had anticipated, &c., &c. Without presuming
to dictate any definite sum, he would observe that L1,500 or even L1000
would be of more avail to his views and objects in life than an annuity
of L200 a year, which, being held only at will, was not susceptible of
a temporary loan.” Darrell, wrapped in thoughts wholly remote from
recollections of Jasper, chafed at being thus recalled to the sense of
that person’s existence wrote back to the solicitor who transmitted
to him this message, “that an annuity held on his word was not to be
calculated by Mr. Hammond’s notions of its value. That the L200 a year
should therefore be placed on the same footing as the L500 a year that
had been allowed on a capital of L10,000; that accordingly it might be
held to represent a principal of L4,000, for which he enclosed a cheque,
begging Mr. Gotobed not only to make Mr. Hammond fully understand that
there ended all possible accounts or communication between them, but
never again to trouble him with any matters whatsoever in reference to
affairs that were thus finally concluded.” Jasper, receiving the L4,000,
left Darrell and Gotobed in peace till the following year. He then
addressed to Gotobed an exceedingly plausible, business-like letter.
“The firm he had entered, in the silk trade, was in the most flourishing
state--an opportunity occurred to purchase a magnificent mulberry
plantation in Provence, with all requisite magnanneries, &c., which
would yield an immense increase of profit. That if, to insure him a
share in this lucrative purchase, Mr. Darrell could accommodate him
for a year with a loan of L2,000 or L3,000, he sanguinely calculated on
attaining so high a position in the commercial world as, though it
could not render the recollection of his alliance more obtrusive to Mr.
Darrell, would render it less humiliating.”
Mr. Gotobed, in obedience to the peremptory instructions he had received
from his client, did not refer this letter to Darrell, but having
occasion at that time to visit Paris on other business, he resolved
(without calling on Mr. Hammond) to institute there some private
inquiry--into that rising trader’s prospects and status. He found, on
arrival at Paris, these inquiries difficult. No one in either the _beau
monde_ or in the _haut commerce_ seemed to know anything about this Mr.
Jasper Hammond. A few fashionable English _roues_ remembered to have
seen, once or twice during Matilda’s life, and shortly after her
decease, a very fine-looking man shooting meteoric across some equivocal
_salons_, or lounging in the Champs Elysees, or dining at the Cafe de
Paris; but of late that meteor had vanished. Mr. Gotobed, then anxiously
employing a commissioner to gain some information of Mr. Hammond’s
firm at the private residence from which Jasper addressed his letter,
ascertained that in that private residence Jasper did not reside. He
paid the porter to receive occasional letters, for which he called
or sent; and the porter, who was evidently a faithful and discreet
functionary, declared his belief that Monsieur Hammond lodged in the
house in which he transacted business, though where was the house or
what was the business, the porter observed, with well-bred implied
rebuke, “Monsieur Hammond was too reserved to communicate, he himself
too incurious to inquire.” At length, Mr. Gotobed’s business, which was,
in fact, a commission from a distressed father to extricate an imprudent
son, a mere boy, from some unhappy associations, having brought him into
the necessity of seeing persons who belonged neither to the _beau monde_
nor to the _haut commerce_, he gleaned from them the information he
desired. Mr. Hammond lived in the very heart of a certain circle in
Paris, which but few Englishmen ever penetrate. In that circle Mr.
Hammond had, on receiving his late wife’s dowry, become the partner in a
private gambling hell; in that hell had been engulfed all the monies he
had received--a hell that ought to have prospered with him, if he could
have economised his villanous gains. His senior partner in that firm
retired into the country with a fine fortune--no doubt the very owner of
those mulberry plantations which were now on sale! But Jasper scattered
napoleons faster than any croupier could rake them away. And Jasper’s
natural talent for converting solid gold into thin air had been assisted
by a lady who, in the course of her amiable life, had assisted many
richer men than Jasper to lodgings in _St. Pelagie_, or cells in the
_Maison des Fous_. With that lady he had become acquainted during the
lifetime of his wife, and it was supposed that Matilda’s discovery of
this liaison had contributed perhaps to the illness which closed in her
decease; the name of that lady was Gabrielle Desinarets. She might
still be seen daily at the Bois de Boulogne, nightly at opera-house
or theatre; she had apartments in the Chaussee d’Antin far from
inaccessible to Mr. Gotobed, if he coveted the honour of her
acquaintance. But Jasper was less before an admiring world. He was
supposed now to be connected with another gambling-house of lower grade
than the last, in which he had contrived to break his own bank and
plunder his own till. It was supposed also that he remained good friends
with Mademoiselle Desmarets; but if he visited her at her house, he
was never to be seen there. In fact, his temper was so uncertain, his
courage so dauntless, his strength so prodigious, that gentlemen who
did not wish to be thrown out of the window, or hurled down a staircase,
shunned any salon or boudoir in which they had a chance to encounter
him. Mademoiselle Desmarets had thus been condemned to the painful
choice between his society and that of nobody else, or that of anybody
else with the rigid privation of his. Not being a turtle-dove, she had
chosen the latter alternative. It was believed, nevertheless, that if
Gabrielle Desmarets had known the weakness of a kind sentiment, it was
for this turbulent lady-killer; and that, with a liberality she had
never exhibited in any other instance, when she could no longer help him
to squander, she would still, at a pinch, help him to live; though, of
course, in such a reverse of the normal laws of her being, Mademoiselle
Desmarets set those bounds on her own generosity which she would not
have imposed upon his, and had said with a sigh: “I could forgive him if
he beat me and beggared my friends! but to beat my friends and to beggar
me,--that is not the kind of love which makes the world go round!”
Scandalised to the last nerve of his respectable system by the
information thus gleaned, Mr. Gotobed returned to London. More letters
from Jasper--becoming urgent, and at last even insolent--Mr. Gotobed
worried into a reply, wrote back shortly “that he could not even
communicate such applications to Mr. Darrell, and that he must
peremptorily decline all further intercourse, epistolary or personal,
with Mr. Hammond.”
Darrell, on returning from one of the occasional rambles on the
Continent, “remote, unfriended, melancholy,” by which he broke the
monotony of his Fawley life, found a letter from Jasper, not fawning,
but abrupt, addressed to himself, complaining of Mr. Gotobed’s improper
tone, requesting pecuniary assistance, and intimating that he could in
return communicate to Mr. Darrell an intelligence that would give him
more joy than all his wealth could purchase. Darrell enclosed that
note to Mr. Gotobed; Mr. Gotobed came down to Fawley to make those
revelations of Jasper’s mode of life which were too delicate--or too
much the reverse of delicate--to commit to paper. Great as Darrell’s
disgust at the memory of Jasper had hitherto been, it may well be
‘conceived how much more bitter became that memory now. No answer was,
of course, vouchsafed to Jasper, who, after another extremely forcible
appeal for money, and equally enigmatical boast of the pleasurable
information it was in his power to bestow, relapsed into sullen silence.
One day, somewhat more than five years after Matilda’s death, Darrell,
coming in from his musing walks, found a stranger waiting for him.
This stranger was William Losely, returned from penal exile; and while
Darrell, on hearing this announcement, stood mute with haughty wonder
that such a visitor could cross the threshold of his father’s house,
the convict began what seemed to Darrell a story equally audacious
and incomprehensible--the infant Matilda had borne to Jasper, and the
certificates of whose death had been so ceremoniously produced and so
prudently attested, lived still! Sent out to nurse as soon as born, the
nurse had in her charge another babe, and this last was the child who
had died and been buried as Matilda Hammond’s. The elder Losely went
on to stammer out a hope that his son was not at the time aware of the
fraudulent exchange, but had been deceived by the nurse--that it had not
been a premeditated imposture of his own to obtain his wife’s fortune.
When Darrell came to this part of his story, Alban Morley’s face grew
more seriously interested. “Stop!” he said; “William Losely assured you
of his own conviction that this strange tale was true. What proofs did
he volunteer?”
“Proofs! Death, man, do you think that at such moments I was but a
bloodless lawyer, to question and cross examine? I could but bid the
impostor leave the house which his feet polluted.”
Alban heaved a sigh, and murmured, too low for Darrell to overhear,
“Poor Willy!” then aloud: “But, my dear friend, bear with me one moment.
Suppose that, by the arts of this diabolical Jasper, the exchange really
had been effected, and a child to your ancient line lived still, would
it not be a solace, a comfort--”
“Comfort!” cried Darrell, “comfort in the perpetuation of infamy! The
line I promised my father to restore to its rank in the land, to be
renewed in the grandchild of a felon!--in the child of the yet
viler sharper of a hell! You, gentleman and soldier, call that
thought--‘comfort!’ O Alban!--out on you! Fie! fie! No!--leave such a
thought to the lips of a William Losely! He indeed, clasping his
hands, faltered forth some such word; he seemed to count on my forlorn
privation of kith and kindred--no heir to my wealth--no representative
of my race--would I deprive myself of--ay--your very words--of a
solace--a comfort! He asked me, at least, to inquire.”
“And you answered?”
“Answered so as to quell and crush in the bud all hopes in the success
of so flagrant a falsehold--answered: ‘Why inquire? Know that, even if
your tale were true, I have no heir, no representative, no descendant
in the child of Jasper--the grandchild of William-Losely. I can at least
leave my wealth to the son of Charles Haughton. True, Charles Haughton
was a spendthrift, a gamester; but he was neither a professional cheat
nor a convicted felon.’”
“You said that--Oh, Darrell!”
The Colonel checked himself. But for Charles Haughton, the spendthrift
and gamester, would William Losely have been the convicted felon?
He checked that thought, and hurried on: “And how did William Losely
reply?”
“He made no reply--he skulked away without a word.” Darrell then
proceeded to relate the interview which Jasper had forced on him at
Fawley during Lionel’s visit there--on Jasper’s part an attempt to tell
the same tale as William had told--on Darrell’s part, the same scornful
refusal to hear it out. “And,” added Darrell, “the man, finding it thus
impossible to dupe my reason, had the inconceivable meanness to apply to
me for alms. I could not better show the disdain in which I held himself
and his story than in recognising his plea as a mendicant. I threw my
purse at his feet, and so left him.
“But,” continued Darrell, his brow growing darker and darker--“but wild
and monstrous as the story was, still the idea that it MIGHT be true--a
supposition which derived its sole strength from the character of Jasper
Losely--from the interest he had in the supposed death of a child
that alone stood between himself and the money he longed to grasp--an
interest which ceased when the money itself was gone, or rather changed
into the counter-interest of proving a life that, he thought, would
re-establish a hold on me--still, I say, an idea that the story might
be true would force itself on my fears, and if so, though my resolution
never to acknowledge the child of Jasper Losely as a representative, or
even as a daughter, of my house, would of course be immovable--yet
it would become my duty to see that her infancy was sheltered, her
childhood reared, her youth guarded, her existence amply provided for.”
“Right--your plain duty,” said Alban bluntly. “Intricate sometimes are
the obligations imposed on us as gentlemen; ‘noblesse oblige’ is a
motto which involves puzzles for a casuist; but our duties as men are
plain--the idea very properly haunted you--and--”
“And I hastened to exorcise the spectre. I left England--I went to the
French town in which poor Matilda died--I could not, of course, make
formal or avowed inquiries of a nature to raise into importance the very
conspiracy (if conspiracy there were) which threatened me. But I saw
the physician who had attended both my daughter and her child--I sought
those who had seen them both when living--seen them both when dead.
The doubt on my mind was dispelled--not a pretext left for my own
self-torment. The only person needful in evidence whom I failed to see
was the nurse to whom the infant had been sent. She lived in a village
some miles from the town--I called at her house--she was out. I left
word I should call the next day--I did so--she had absconded. I might,
doubtless, have traced her, but to what end if she were merely Jasper’s
minion and tool? Did not her very flight prove her guilt and her terror?
Indirectly I inquired into her antecedents and character. The inquiry
opened a field of conjecture, from which I hastened to turn my eyes.
This woman had a sister who had been in the service of Gabrielle
Desmarets, and Gabrielle Desmarets had been in the neighbourhood during
my poor daughter’s life-time, and just after my daughter’s death. And
the nurse had had two infants under her charge; the nurse had removed
with one of them to Paris--and Gabrielle Desmarets lived in Paris--and,
O Alban, if there be really in flesh and life a child by Jasper Losely,
to be forced upon my purse or my pity--is it his child, not by the
ill-fated Matilda, but by the vile woman for whom Matilda, even in the
first year of wedlock, was deserted? Conceive how credulity itself
would shrink appalled from the horrible snare!--I to acknowledge, adopt,
proclaim as the last of the Darrells, the adulterous offspring of a
Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle Desmarets!--or, when I am in my grave,
some claim advanced upon the sum settled by my marriage articles on
Matilda’s issue, and which, if a child survived, could not have been
legally transferred to its father--a claim with witnesses suborned--a
claim that might be fraudulently established--a claim that would
leave the representative--not indeed of my lands and wealth, but, more
precious far, of my lineage and blood--in--in the person of--of--”
Darrell paused, almost stifling, and became so pale that Alban started
from his seat in alarm.
“It is nothing,” resumed Darrell, faintly, “and, ill or well, I must
finish this subject now, so that we need not reopen it.”
“I remained abroad, as you know, for some years. During that time two
or three letters from Jasper Losely were forwarded to me; the latest in
date more insolent than all preceding ones. It contained demands as if
they were rights, and insinuated threats of public exposure, reflecting
on myself and my pride: ‘He was my son-in-law after all, and if he came
to disgrace, the world should know the tie.’ Enough. This is all I
knew until the man who now, it seems, thrusts himself forward as
Jasper Losely’s friend or agent, spoke to me the other night at Mrs.
Haughton’s. That man you have seen, and you say that he--”
“Represents Jasper’s poverty as extreme; his temper unscrupulous and
desperate; that he is capable of any amount of scandal or violence. It
seems that though at Paris he has (Poole believes) still preserved the
name of Hammond, yet that in England he has resumed that of Losely;
and seems by Poole’s date of the time at which he, Poole, made Jasper’s
acquaintance, to have done so after his baffled attempt on you
at Fawley--whether in so doing he intimated the commencement of
hostilities, or whether, as is more likely, the sharper finds it
convenient to have one name in one country, and one in another, ‘tis
useless to inquire; enough that the identity between the Hammond
who married poor Matilda, and the Jasper Losely whose father was
transported, that unscrupulous rogue has no longer any care to conceal.
It is true that the revelation of this identity would now be of slight
moment to a man of the world-as thick-skinned as myself, for instance;
but to you it would be disagreeable--there is no denying that--and
therefore, in short, when Mr. Poole advises a compromise, by which
Jasper could be secured from want and yourself from annoyance, I am of
the same opinion as Mr. Poole is.”
“You are?”
“Certainly. My dear Darrell, if in your secret heart there was something
so galling in the thought that the man who had married your daughter,
though without your consent, was not merely the commonplace adventurer
whom the world supposed, but the son of that poor dear--I mean
that rascal who was transported, Jasper, too, himself a cheat and a
sharper-if this galled you so, that you have concealed the true facts
from myself, your oldest friend, till this day--if it has cost you even
now so sharp a pang to divulge the true name of that Mr. Hammond, whom
our society never saw, whom even gossip has forgotten in connection
with yourself--how intolerable would be your suffering to have this man
watching for you in the streets, some wretched girl in his hand, and
crying out, ‘A penny for your son-in-law and your grandchild!’ Pardon
me--I must be blunt. You can give him to the police--send him to the
treadmill. Does that mend the matter? Or, worse still, suppose the
man commits some crime that fills all the newspapers with his life and
adventures, including of course his runaway marriage with the famous Guy
Darrell’s heiress--no one would blame you, no one respect you less; but
do not tell me that you would not be glad to save your daughter’s name
from being coupled with such a miscreant’s at the price of half your
fortune.”
“Alban’” said Darrell, gloomily, “you can say nothing on this score that
has not been considered by myself. But the man has so placed the matter,
that honour itself forbids me to bargain with him for the price of my
name. So long as he threatens, I cannot buy off a threat; so long as he
persists in a story by which he would establish a claim on me on behalf
of a child whom I have every motive as well as every reason to disown
as inheriting my blood--whatever I bestowed on himself would seem like
hush-money to suppress that claim.”
“Of course--I understand, and entirely agree with you. But if the man
retract all threats, confess his imposture in respect to this pretended
offspring, and consent to retire for life to a distant colony, upon an
annuity that may suffice for his wants, but leave no surplus beyond, to
render more glaring his vices, or more effective his powers of evil; if
this could be arranged between Mr. Poole and myself, I think that your
peace might be permanently secured without the slightest sacrifice of
honour. Will you leave the matter in my hands on this assurance--that
I will not give this person a farthing except on the conditions I have
premised?”
“On these conditions, yes, and most gratefully,” said Darrell. “Do
what you will; but one favour more: never again speak to me (unless
absolutely compelled) in reference to this dark portion of my inner
life.”
Alban pressed his friend’s hand, and both were silent for some moments.
Then said the Colonel, with an attempt at cheerfulness: “Darrell, more
than ever now do I see that the new house at Fawley, so long suspended,
must be finished. Marry again you must!--you can never banish old
remembrances unless you can supplant them by fresh hopes.”
“I feel it--I know it,” cried Darrell, passionately. And oh! if one
remembrance could be wrenched away! But it shall--it shall!”
“Ah!” thought Alban--“the remembrance of his former conjugal life!--a
remembrance which might well make the youngest and the boldest Benedict
shrink from the hazard of a similar experiment.”
In proportion to the delicacy, the earnestness, the depth of a man’s
nature, will there be a something in his character which no male friend
can conceive, and a something in the secrets of his life which no male
friend can ever conjecture.