'Tis grievous that with all amplification of travel both by sea and
land, a man can never separate himself from his past history.
Mr. Jermyn's handsome house stood a little way out of the town,
surrounded by garden and lawn and plantations of hopeful trees. As
Christian approached it he was in a perfectly easy state of mind: the
business he was going on was none of his, otherwise than as he was well
satisfied with any opportunity of making himself valuable to Mr. Philip
Debarry. As he looked at Jermyn's length of wall and iron railing, he
said to himself, "These lawyers are the fellows for getting on in the
world with the least expense of civility. With this cursed conjuring
secret of theirs called Law, they think everybody is frightened at them.
My Lord Jermyn seems to have his insolence as ready as his soft sawder.
He's as sleek as a rat, and has as vicious a tooth. I know the sort of
vermin well enough. I've helped to fatten one or two."
In this mood of conscious, contemptuous penetration, Christian was shown
by the footman into Jermyn's private room, where the attorney sat
surrounded with massive oaken bookcases, and other furniture to
correspond, from the thickest-legged library-table to the calendar frame
and card-rack. It was the sort of a room a man prepares for himself when
he feels sure of a long and respectable future. He was leaning back in
his leather chair, against the broad window opening on the lawn, and had
just taken off his spectacles and let the newspaper fall on his knees,
in despair of reading by the fading light.
When the footman opened the door and said, "Mr. Christian," Jermyn said,
"Good evening, Mr. Christian. Be seated," pointing to a chair opposite
himself and the window. "Light the candles on the shelf, John, but leave
the blinds alone."
He did not speak again till the man was gone out, but appeared to be
referring to a document which lay on the bureau before him. When the
door was closed he drew himself up again, began to rub his hands, and
turned toward his visitor, who seemed perfectly indifferent to the fact
that the attorney was in shadow, and that the light fell on himself.
"A--your name--a--is Henry Scaddon."
There was a start through Christian's frame which he was quick enough,
almost simultaneously, to try and disguise as a change of position. He
uncrossed his legs and unbuttoned his coat. But before he had time to
say anything, Jermyn went on with slow emphasis.
"You were born on the sixteenth of December, 1782, at Blackheath. Your
father was a cloth-merchant in London: he died when you were barely of
age, leaving an extensive business: before you were five-and-twenty you
had run through the greater part of the property, and had compromised
your safety by an attempt to defraud your creditors. Subsequently you
forged a check on your father's elder brother, who had intended to make
you his heir."
Here Jermyn paused a moment and referred to the document. Christian was
silent.
"In 1808 you found it expedient to leave this country in a military
disguise, and were taken prisoner by the French. On the occasion of an
exchange of prisoners you had the opportunity of returning to your own
country, and to the bosom of your own family. You were generous enough
to sacrifice that prospect in favor of a fellow-prisoner, of about your
own age and figure, who had more pressing reasons than yourself for
wishing to be on this side of the water. You exchanged dress, luggage,
and names with him, and he passed to England instead of you as Henry
Scaddon. Almost immediately afterward you escaped from your
imprisonment, after feigning an illness which prevented your exchange of
names from being discovered; and it was reported that you--that is, you
under the name of your fellow-prisoner--were drowned in an open boat,
trying to reach a Neapolitan vessel bound for Malta. Nevertheless I
have to congratulate you on the falsehood of that report, and on the
certainty that you are now, after the lapse of more than twenty years,
seated here in perfect safety."
Jermyn paused so long that he was evidently awaiting some answer. At
last Christian replied in a dogged tone--
"Well, sir, I've heard much longer stories than that told quite as
solemnly, when there was not a word of truth in them. Suppose I deny the
very peg you hang your statement on. Suppose I say I am not Henry
Scaddon."
"A--in that case--a," said Jermyn, with wooden indifference, "you would
lose the advantage which--a--may attach to your possession of Henry
Scaddon's knowledge. And at the same time, if it were in the
least--a--inconvenient to you that you should be recognized as Henry
Scaddon, your denial would not prevent me from holding the knowledge and
evidence which I possess on that point; it would only prevent us from
pursuing the present conversation."
"Well, sir, suppose we admit, for the sake of the conversation, that
your account of the matter is the true one: what advantage have you to
offer the man named Henry Scaddon?"
"The advantage--a--is problematical; but it may be considerable. It
might, in fact, release you from the necessity of acting as courier,
or--a--valet, or whatever other office you may occupy which prevents you
from being your own master. On the other hand, my acquaintance with your
secret is not necessarily a disadvantage to you. To put the matter in a
nutshell, I am not inclined--a--gratuitously--to do you any harm, and I
may be able to do you a considerable service."
"Which you want me to earn somehow?" said Christian. "You offer me a
turn in a lottery?"
"Precisely. The matter in question is of no earthly interest to you,
except--a--as it may yield you a prize. We lawyers have to do with
complicated questions, and--a--legal subtleties, which are
never--a--fully known even to the parties immediately interested, still
less to the witnesses. Shall we agree, then, that you continue to retain
two-thirds of the name which you gained by exchange, and that you oblige
me by answering certain questions as to the experience of Henry
Scaddon?"
"Very good. Go on."
"What articles of property once belonging to your fellow-prisoner,
Maurice Christian Bycliffe, do you still retain?"
"This ring," said Christian, twirling round the fine seal-ring on his
finger, "his watch, and the little matters that hung with it, and a case
of papers. I got rid of a gold snuff-box once when I was hard up. The
clothes are all gone, of course. We exchanged everything; it was all
done in a hurry. Bycliffe thought we should meet again in England before
long, and he was mad to get there. But that was impossible--I mean that
we should meet soon after. I don't know what's become of him, else I
would give him up his papers and the watch, and so on--though, you know,
it was I who did _him_ the service, and he felt that."
"You were at Vesoul together before being moved to Verdun?"
"Yes."
"What else do you know about Bycliffe?"
"Oh, nothing very particular," said Christian pausing, and rapping his
boot with his cane. "He'd been in the Hanoverian army--a high-spirited
fellow, took nothing easily; not over-strong in health. He made a fool
of himself with marrying at Vesoul; and there was the devil to pay with
the girl's relations; and then, when the prisoners were ordered off,
they had to part. Whether they ever got together again I don't know."
"Was the marriage all right then?"
"Oh, all on the square--civil marriage, church--everything. Bycliffe was
a fool--a good-natured, proud, headstrong fellow."
"How long did the marriage take place before you left Vesoul?"
"About three months. I was witness to the marriage."
"And you know no more about the wife?"
"Not afterward. I knew her very well before--pretty Annette--Annette
Ledru was her name. She was of a good family, and they had made up a
fine match for her. But she was one of your meek little diablesses, who
have a will of their own once in their lives--the will to choose their
own master."
"Bycliffe was not open to you about his other affairs?"
"Oh, no--a fellow you wouldn't dare to ask a question of. People told
him everything, but he told nothing in return. If Madame Annette ever
found him again, she found her lord and master with a vengeance; but she
was a regular lapdog. However, her family shut her up--made a prisoner
of her--to prevent her running away."
"Ah--good. Much of what you have been so obliging as to say is
irrelevant to any possible purpose of mine, which, in fact, has only to
do with a mouldy law-case that might be aired some day. You will
doubtless, on your own account, maintain perfect silence on what has
passed between us, and with that condition duly preserved--a--it is
possible that--a--the lottery you have put into--as you observe--may
turn up a prize."
"This, then, is all the business you have with me?" said Christian,
rising.
"All. You will, of course, preserve carefully all the papers and other
articles which have so many--a--recollections--a--attached to them?"
"Oh, yes. If there's any chance of Bycliffe turning up again, I shall be
sorry to have parted with the snuff-box; but I was hard-up at Naples. In
fact, as you see, I was obliged at last to turn courier."
"An exceedingly agreeable life for a man of some--a--accomplishments
and--a--no income," said Jermyn, rising, and reaching a candle, which he
placed against his desk.
Christian knew this was a sign that he was expected to go, but he
lingered standing, with one hand on the back of his chair. At last, he
said rather sulkily--
"I think you're too clever, Mr. Jermyn, not to perceive that I'm not a
man to be made a fool of."
"Well--a--it may perhaps be a still better guarantee for you," said Jermyn,
smiling, "that I see no use in attempting that--a--metamorphosis."
"The old gentleman, who ought never to have felt himself injured, is
dead now, and I'm not afraid of creditors after more than twenty years."
"Certainly not;--a--there may indeed be claims which can't assert
themselves--a--legally, which yet are molesting to a man of some
reputation. But you may perhaps be happily free from such fears."
Jermyn drew round his chair toward the bureau, and Christian, too acute
to persevere uselessly, said, "Good-day," and left the room.
After leaning back in his chair to reflect a few minutes, Jermyn wrote
the following letter:--
DEAR JOHNSON,--I learn from your letter, received this morning,
that you intend returning to town on Saturday.
While you are there, be so good as to see Medwin, who used to be
with Batt & Cowley, and ascertain from him indirectly, and in the
course of conversation on other topics, whether in that old
business in 1810-11, Scaddon _alias_ Bycliffe, or Bycliffe _alias_
Scaddon, before his imprisonment, gave Batt & Cowley any reason to
believe that he was married and expected to have a child. The
question, as you know, is of no practical importance; but I wish to
draw up an abstract of the Bycliffe case, and the exact position in
which it stood before the suit was closed by the death of the
plaintiff, in order that, if Mr. Harold Transome desires it, he may
see how the failure of the last claim has secured the
Durfey-Transome title, and whether there is a hair's breadth of
chance that another claim should be set up.
Of course there is not a shadow of such a chance. For even if Batt
& Cowley were to suppose that they had alighted on a surviving
representative of the Bycliffes, it would not enter their heads to
set up a new claim, since they brought evidence that the last life
which suspended the Bycliffe remainder was extinct before the case
was closed, a good twenty years ago.
Still I want to show the present heir of the Durfey-Transomes the
exact condition of the family title to the estates. So get me an
answer from Medwin on the above mentioned point.
I shall meet you at Duffield next week. We must get Transome
returned. Never mind his having been a little rough the other day,
but go on doing what you know is necessary for his interest. His
interest is mine, which I need not say is John Johnson's.
Yours faithfully, MATTHEW JERMYN.
When the attorney had sealed this letter and leaned back in his chair
again, he was inwardly saying--
"Now, Mr. Harold, I shall shut up this affair in a private drawer till
you choose to take any extreme measures which will force me to bring it
out. I have the matter entirely in my own power. No one but old Lyon
knows about the girl's birth. No one but Scaddon can clench the evidence
about Bycliffe, and I've got Scaddon under my thumb. No soul except
myself and Johnson, who is a limb of myself, knows that there is one
half-dead life which may presently leave the girl a new claim to the
Bycliffe heirship. I shall learn through Methurst whether Batt & Cowley
knew, through Bycliffe, of this woman having come to England. I shall
hold all the threads between my thumb and finger. I can use the evidence
or I can nullify it.
"And so, if Mr. Harold pushes me to extremity, and threatens me with
chancery and ruin, I have an opposing threat, which will either save me
or turn into a punishment for him."
He rose, put out his candles, and stood with his back to the fire,
looking out on the dim lawn, with its black twilight fringe of shrubs,
still meditating. Quick thought was gleaming over five-and-thirty years
filled with devices more or less clever, more or less desirable to be
avowed. Those which might be avowed with impunity were not always to be
distinguished as innocent by comparison with those which it was
advisable to conceal. In a profession where much that is noxious may be
done without disgrace, is a conscience likely to be without balm when
circumstances have urged a man to overstep the line where his good
technical information makes him aware that (with discovery) disgrace is
likely to begin?
With regard to the Transome affairs, the family had been in pressing
need of money, and it had lain with him to get it for them: was it to be
expected that he would not consider his own advantage where he had
rendered services such as are never fully paid? If it came to a question
of right and wrong instead of law, the least justifiable things he had
ever done had been done on behalf of the Transomes. It had been a
deucedly unpleasant thing for him to get Bycliffe arrested and thrown
into prison as Henry Scaddon--perhaps hastening the man's death in that
way. But if it had not been done by dint of his (Jermyn's) exertions and
tact, he would like to know where the Durfey-Transomes might have been
by this time. As for right or wrong, if the truth were known, the very
possession of the estate by the Durfey-Transomes was owing to law-tricks
that took place nearly a century ago, when the original old Durfey got
his base fee.
But inward argument of this sort now, as always, was merged in anger, in
exasperation, that Harold, precisely Harold Transome, should have turned
out to be the probable instrument of a visitation which would be bad
luck, not justice; for is there any justice where ninety-nine out of
every hundred escape? He felt himself beginning to hate Harold as he had
never--
Just then Jermyn's third daughter, a tall slim girl, wrapped in a white
woollen shawl, which she had hung over her blanket-wise, skipped across
the lawn toward the greenhouse to get a flower. Jermyn was startled, and
did not identify the figure, or rather he identified it falsely with
another tall white-wrapped figure which had sometimes set his heart
beating quickly more than thirty years before. For a moment he was fully
back in those distant years when he and another bright-eyed person had
seen no reason why they should not indulge their passion and their
vanity, and determine for themselves how their lives should be made
delightful in spite of unalterable external conditions. The reasons had
been unfolding themselves gradually ever since through all the years
which had converted the handsome, soft-eyed, slim young Jermyn (with a
touch of sentiment) into a portly lawyer of sixty, for whom life had
resolved itself into the means of keeping up his head among his
professional brethren and maintaining an establishment--into a
gray-haired husband and father, whose third affectionate and expensive
daughter now rapped at the window and called to him, "Papa, papa, get
ready for dinner; don't you remember that the Lukyns are coming?"