“IN EXTREMIS.”
THE interview which he had had with Dr. Massenger, and the letters
he had received and read from Lord Guttleborough and the young Duke
of Ribblesdale, had day by day a greater effect upon the mind of
the Squire. Not only were Messrs. Prodgers and Sharpin ordered to
redouble their inquiries, but a telegram was despatched to Melbourne to
anticipate the arrival of the _Windsor Castle_, and a trustworthy
messenger was actually despatched to Australia to find out the exile,
and to bring him home with all possible speed. Advertisements also were
inserted in the _Times_ and other daily papers in the following
form:--
THOMAS BROWN is informed that all is satisfactorily explained, and he
is earnestly requested to return at once to his anxious and sorrowing
relations.
These advertisements had no effect whatsoever. At last, one day,
a letter arrived from his London correspondents which for ever
extinguished the hopes of the unhappy and criminal father. It contained
a copy of a despatch from Lloyds’ Agents, declaring that there was no
doubt that, from some at present unexplained cause, the _Windsor
Castle_ had got out of her course, and had foundered in the open
ocean, and that all hands had perished.
Pinfold had brought to his master in the library the letter-bag of the
Manor, upon which was a brass plate with the inscription,
“Cuthbert Piercey Manwaring, Esquire,
Holmcastle Manor,”
and the arms of the Manwarings--to wit, “On a field argent, a chevronel
gules, with three martlets sable,” and he had laid it on the accustomed
table, but going in shortly afterwards, he found the Squire prostrate
on the floor, and insensible, but clutching in his right hand the fatal
letter which told him of the death of his banished son. Evelyn, his
much-tried, much-enduring daughter, was speedily at her father’s side,
and caused him to be removed to bed, and the Rector and the Doctor,
summoned in haste, were speedily in attendance. After the application
of various remedies, the old Squire gradually recovered consciousness,
and then the bystanders discovered to their horror that the sufferer
was almost entirely deprived of speech, and that it was evident his
hours in this world were numbered. Several times he tried to speak,
but in vain, and then, at length, those around him with difficulty
recognised the words, “The Tree! the Tree!” Upon this they brought to
him the emblazoned Pedigree on which he had expended so much thought
and labour, and on account of which, a mere toy and bauble, he had
neglected his duty to God and man. They opened it out before him, like
those who display a picture to a child. The Squire, however, regarded
the early part of it with a stony stare. When they exposed to view the
lowest portion, the old man seemed to rally his failing powers, and
putting out his trembling right hand, he scrabbled feebly at a blank
space close to the lowest margin.
“A p-p-pen,” at last he gibbered out; and then they understood, or at
all events thought they understood, that he wanted to restore to its
original place the name of his drowned son. They brought him a pen, and
he clutched it eagerly in his palsied hand, but it was too late. The
old man uttered one despairing cry, and then fell back--_dead_.
Thus, with a grievous wrong unrepaired, unconsoled by the last solemn
rites of the Church in which he had been baptised, weighed down by the
sense of a great crime, “unhouseled, unannealed,” the erewhile proud
soul of Cuthbert Piercey Manwaring passed away to its “own place” in
the Shadowland of Futurity, the mysterious Intermediate State or Place
of Hades.
What availed it then the “Family” in whose supposed behalf It had been
wrecked? What profited It the coat of sixty quarterings, the long-dead
Knights of high degree, the men of worship in Church and State?
“Let the Dead bury their dead,” but let the Living occupy themselves,
so long as Life remains, with works of love to those that are alive.