WHEN Calvert rejoined his friend, he was full of the adventure of the
morning--such a glorious discovery as he had made. What a wonderful
old woman, and what charming girls! Milly, however, he owned, rather
inclined to the contemptuous. “She was what you Cockneys call ‘sarcy,’
Loyd; but the sick girl was positively enchanting; so pretty, so gentle,
and so confiding withal. By-the-way, you must make me three or four
sketches of Nile scenery--a dull flat, with a palm-tree, group of
camels in the fore, and a pyramid in the background; and I’ll get up the
journal part, while you are doing the illustrations. I know nothing of
Egypt beyond the overland route, though I have persuaded them I kept a
house in Cairo, and advised them by all means to take Florence there for
the winter.”
“But how could you practise such a deception in such a case, Calvert?”
said Loyd, reproachfully.
“Just as naturally as you have ‘got up’ that grand tone of moral
remonstrance. What an arrant humbug you are, Loyd. Why not keep all this
fine indignation for Westminster, where it will pay?”
“Quiz away, if you like; but you will not prevent me saying that the
case of a poor sick girl is not one for a foolish jest, or a--”
He stopped and grew very red, but the other continued:--
“Out with it, man. You were going to say, a falsehood. I’m not going
to be vexed with you because you happen to have a rather crape-coloured
temperament, and like turning things round till you find the dark side
of them.” He paused for a few seconds and then went on: “If you had been
in my place this morning, I know well enough what you’d have done. You’d
have rung the changes over the uncertainty of life, and all its miseries
and disappointments. You’d have frightened that poor delicate creature
out of her wits, and driven her sister half distracted, to satisfy what
you imagine to be your conscience, but which, I know far better, is
nothing but a morbid love of excitement--an unhealthy passion for
witnessing pain. Now, I left her actually looking better for my
visit--she was cheered and gay, and asked when I’d come again, in a
voice that betrayed a wish for my return.”
Loyd never liked being drawn into a discussion with his friend, seeing
how profitless such encounters are in general, and how likely to
embitter intercourse; so he merely took his hat and moved towards the
door.
“Where are you going? Not to that odious task of photography, I hope?”
cried Calvert.
“Yes,” said the other, smiling; “I am making a complete series of views
of the lake, and some fine day or other I’ll make water-colour drawings
from them.”
“How I hate all these fine intentions that only point to more work. Tell
me of a plan for a holiday, some grand scheme for idleness, and I am
with you; but to sit quietly down and say, ‘I’ll roll that stone up a
hill next summer, or next autumn,’ that drives me mad.”
“Well, I’ll not drive you mad. I’ll say nothing about it,” said Loyd,
with a good-natured smile.
“But won’t you make me these drawings, these jottings of my tour amongst
the Pyramids?”
“Not for such an object as you want them to serve.”
“I suppose, when you come to practise at the bar, you’ll only defend
innocence and protect virtue, eh? You’ll, of course, never take the
brief of a knave, or try to get a villain off. With your principles, to
do so would be the basest of all crimes.”
“I hope I’ll never do that deliberately which my conscience tells me I
ought not to do.”
“All right. Conscience is always in one’s own keeping--a guest in the
house, who is far too well bred to be disagreeable to the family.
Oh, you arch hypocrite! how much worse you are than a reprobate like
myself!”
“I’ll not dispute that.”
“More hypocrisy!”
“I mean that, without conceding the point, it’s a thesis I’ll not
argue.”
“You ought to have been a Jesuit, Loyd. You’d have been a grand fellow
in a long black soutane, with little buttons down to the feet, and a
skull-cap on your head. I think I see some poor devil coming to you
about a ‘cas de conscience,’ and going away sorely puzzled with your
reply to him.”
“Don’t come to me with one of yours, Calvert, that’s all,” said Loyd,
laughing, as he hurried off.
Like many men who have a strong spirit of banter in them, Calvert was
vexed and mortified when his sarcasm did not wound. “If the stag will
not run, there can be no pursuit,” and so was it that he now felt angry
with Loyd, angry with himself. “I suppose these are the sort of fellows
who get on in life. The world likes their quiet subserviency, and
their sleek submissiveness. As for me, and the like of me, we are
‘not placed.’ Now for a line to my Cousin Sophy, to know who is the
‘Grainger’ who says she is so well acquainted with us all. Poor Sophy,
it was a love affair once between us, and then it came to a quarrel,
and out of that we fell into the deeper bitterness of what is called ‘a
friendship.’ We never really hated each other till we came to that!”
“Dearest, best of friends,” he began, “in my broken health,
fortunes, and spirits, I came to this place a few weeks ago,
and made, by chance, the acquaintance of an atrocious old
woman called Grainger--Miss or Mrs., I forget which--who is
she, and why does she know _us_, and call us the ‘dear
Calverts,’ and your house ‘sweet old Rocksley?’ I fancy she
must be a begging-letter impostor, and has a design--it will
be a very abortive one--upon my spare five-pound notes. Tell
me all you know of her, and if you can add a word about her
nieces twain--one pretty, the other prettier--do so.
“Any use in approaching my uncle with a statement of my
distresses--mind, body, and estate? I owe him so much
gratitude that, if he doesn’t want me to be insolvent, he
must help me a little further.
“Is it true you are going to be married? The thought of it
sends a pang through me, of such anguish as I dare not speak
of. Oh dear! oh dear! what a flood of bygones are rushing
upon me, after all my pledges, all my promises! One of
these girls reminded me of your smile; how like, but how
different, Sophy. Do say there’s no truth in the story of
the marriage, and believe me--what your heart will tell you
I have never ceased to be--your devoted
“Harry Calvert.”
“I think that ought to do,” said he, as he read over the letter; “and
there’s no peril in it since her marriage is fixed for the end of the
month. It is, after all, a cheap luxury to bid for the lot that will
certainly be knocked down to another. She’s a nice girl, too, is Sophy,
but, like all of us, with a temper of her own.
“I’d like to see her married to Loyd, they’d make each other perfectly
miserable.”
With this charitable reflection to turn over in various ways, tracing
all the consequences he could imagine might spring from it, he sauntered
out for a walk beside the lake.
“This box has just come by the mail from Chiasso,” said his host,
pointing to a small parcel, corded and sealed. “It is the box the
signora yonder has been searching for these three weeks; it was broken
when the diligence upset, and they tied it together as well as they
could.”
The writing-desk was indeed that which Miss Grainger had lost on
her Rhine journey, and was now about to reach her in a lamentable
condition--one hinge torn off the lock strained, and the bottom split
from one end to the other.
“I’ll take charge of it I shall go over to see her in a day or two,
perhaps to-morrow;” and with this Calvert carried away the box to his
own room.
As he was laying the desk on his table, the bottom gave way, and the
contents fell about the room. They were a mass of papers and letters,
and some parchments; and he proceeded to gather them up as best he
might, cursing the misadventure, and very angry with himself for being
involved in it. The letters were in little bundles, neatly tied, and
docketed with the writers’ names. These he replaced in the box, having
inverted it, and placing all, as nearly as he could, in due order, till
he came to a thick papered document tied with red tape at the corner,
and entitled Draft of Jacob Walter’s Will, with Remarks of Counsel “This
we must look at,” said Calvert “What one can see at Doctors’ Commons for
a shilling is no breach of confidence, even if seen for nothing;” and
with this he opened the paper.
It was very brief, and set forth how the testator had never made, nor
would make, any other will, that he was sound of mind, and hoped to die
so. As to his fortune, it was something under thirty thousand pounds
in Bank Stock, and he desired it should be divided equally between his
daughters, the survivor of them to have the whole, or, in the event
of each life lapsing before marriage, that the money should be divided
amongst a number of charities that he specified.
“I particularly desire and beg,” wrote he, “that my girls be brought up
by Adelaide Grainger, my late wife’s half-sister, who long has known the
hardships of poverty, and the cares of a narrow subsistence, that they
may learn in early life the necessity of thrift, and not habituate
themselves to luxuries, which a reverse of fortune might take away
from them. I wish, besides, that it should be generally believed their
fortune was one thousand pounds each, so that they should not become a
prey to fortune-hunters, nor the victims of adventurers, insomuch that
my last request to each of my dear girls would be not to marry the
man who would make inquiry into the amount of their means till twelve
calendar months after such inquiry, that time being full short enough to
study the character of one thus palpably worldly-minded and selfish.”
A few cautions as to the snares and pitfalls of the world followed,
and the document finished with the testator’s name, and that of three
witnesses in pencil, the words “if they consent,” being added in ink,
after them.
“Twice fifteen make thirty--thirty thousand pounds--a very neat sum
for a great many things, and yielding, even in its dormant state, about
fifteen hundred a year. What can one do for that? Live, certainly--live
pleasantly, jovially, if a man were a bachelor. At Paris, for instance,
with one’s pleasant little entresol in the Rue Neuve, or the Rue
Faubourg St Honoré, and his club, and his saddle-horses, with even
ordinary luck at billiards, he could make the two ends meet very
satisfactorily. Then, Baden always pays its way, and the sea-side places
also do, for the world is an excellent world to the fellow who travels
with his courier, and only begs to be plucked a little by the fingers
that wear large diamonds.
“But all these enchantments vanish when it becomes a question of a wife.
A wife means regular habits and respectability. The two most costly
things I know of. Your scampish single-handed valet, who is out all day
on his own affairs, and only turns up at all at some noted time in your
habits, is not one tenth as dear as that old creature with the powdered
head and the poultice of cravat round his neck, who only bows when the
dinner is served, and grows apoplectic if he draws a cork.
“It’s the same in everything! Your house must be taken, not because
it is convenient or that you like it, but because your wife can put a
pretentious address on her card. It must be something to which you can
tag Berkeley Square, or Belgravia. In a word, a wife is a mistake, and,
what is worse, a mistake out of which there is no issue.”
Thus reasoning and reflecting--now, speculating on what he should
feel--now, imagining what “the world” would say--he again sat down, and
once more read Over Mr. Walter’s last will and testament.