Only an Ensign: A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul, Volume 3 (of 3)

PAR NOBILE FRATRUM!

"So, fellow, I am expected by you to swallow this 'tale of a tub,' which has been invented or revived solely for the purposes of monetary extortion!" exclaimed Downie Trevelyan, with the most intense and crushing hauteur, as he lay back in the same luxurious easy chair in which his uncle died, and played with his rich gold eye-glass and watered silk riband.

"It ain't a tale of a tub, my lord; but of the wreck of a _steamer_--the steamer Admiral of Montreal," replied Sharkley, meekly and sententiously.

Downie surveyed him through his double eyeglass, thinking that Sharkley was laughing covertly at him; but no such thought was hovering in the mind of that personage, who was not much of a laugher at any time, save when he had successfully outwitted or jockeyed any one. He seemed very ill at ease, and sat on the extreme edge of a handsome brass-nailed morocco chair, with his tall shiny hat placed upon his knees, and his long, bare, dirty-looking fingers played the while somewhat nervously on the crown thereof, as he glanced alternately and irresolutely from the speaker to the titular Lady Lamorna, who was also eyeing him, as a species of natural curiosity, through her glass, and whose absence he devoutly wished, but feared to hint that she might withdraw.

She was reclining languidly on a sofa, with her fan, her lace handkerchief, her agate scent-bottle, and her everlasting half-cut novel--she was never known to read one quite through--lying beside her; and she had only relinquished her chief employment of toying with Bijou, her waspish Maltese spaniel (which nestled in a little basket of mother-of-pearl, lined with white satin), when an aiguletted valet had ushered in "Mr. W. S. Sharkley, Solicitor."

"Leave us, Gartha, please," said her husband; "I must speak with this person alone."

Curiosity was never a prominent feature in the character of Downie's wife, who was too languid, lazy, or aristocratically indifferent to care about anything; so, with a proud sweep of her ample dress, she at once withdrew, followed by the gaze of the relieved Sharkley, who had a professional dislike for speaking before witnesses.

Mr. Sharkley's present surroundings were not calculated to add to his personal ease. The library at Rhoscadzhel--the same room in which poor Constance and Sybil had undergone, in presence of the pitying General Trecarrel, that humiliating interview, the bitterness of which the wife had never forgotten even to her dying hour, and in which Richard had, some time previously, found Downie by their dead uncle's side, with that suspicious-looking document in his hand, the history of which the former was too brotherly, too gentlemanly, and delicate ever to inquire about--the library, we say, was stately, spacious, and elegant enough, with its shelves of dark oak, filled by rare works in gay bindings, glittering in the sunlight; with the white marble busts of the great and learned of other days, looking stolidly down from the florid cornice that crowned the cases; with its massive and splendid furniture, gay with bright morocco and gilt nails; with the stained coats of arms, the koithgath and the seahorse of the Trevelyans, repeated again and again on the row of oriels that opened on one side, showing the far extent of field and chace, green upland and greener woodland, the present owner of which now sat eyeing him coldly, hostilely, and with that undoubted air and bearing which mark the high-bred and well-born gentleman--all combined to make the mean visitor feel very ill at ease.

He mentally contrasted these surroundings with those of his own dingy office, with its docquets of papers, dirty in aspect as in their contents; its old battered charter-boxes filled with the misfortunes of half the adjacent villages--a room, to many a hob-nailed client and grimy miner, more terrible than the torture chamber of the Spanish Inquisition--and the comparison roused envy and covetousness keenly in his heart, together with an emotion of malicious satisfaction, that he had it in his power perhaps to deprive of all this wealth, luxury, and rank, the cold, calm, and pale-faced personage who eyed him from time to time with his false and haughty smile--an expression that, ere long, passed away, and then his visage became rigid and stony as that of the Comandatore in Don Giovanni, for whatever he might feel, it was not a difficult thing for a man who possessed such habitual habits of self-command as Downie Trevelyan, to appear at ease when he was far from being so. Yet Sharkley's mission tried him to the utmost, whatever real pride or temper he possessed.

"My lord," resumed the solicitor, while the revengeful emotion was in his heart--"if, indeed, you are entitled to be called 'my lord'----"

"Fellow, what do you mean by this studied insolence?" demanded Downie, putting his hand on a silver bell, which, however, he did not ring, an indecision that caused a mocking smile to pass over the face of Sharkley, while the iris of his eyes dilated and shrunk as usual. "You are, I know, Sharkley the--aw, well I must say it--the low practitioner who got up by forgery and otherwise--don't look round, sir, we have no witnesses--the case of the adventuress Devereaux against me and my family. So what brings you here now?"

"To tell you what I was beginning to state--the story of the wreck, by which your brother Richard, Lord Lamorna, perished at sea; and to prove that the certificate of his marriage with Miss Constance Devereaux, daughter of a merchant trader in the city of Montreal, has been discovered and safely preserved, and is here in Cornwall now, together with his lordship's will."

Sharkley spoke with malicious bitterness, and Downie paused for a moment ere he said,--

"You have seen them?"

"Yes."

"Well, when I see those documents I shall believe in their existence--till then, you must hold me excused; but even their existence does not prove either their legality or authenticity. This is merely some new scheme to extort money," added Downie, almost passionately; "but it shall not succeed! That unhappy woman is dead--she died of paralysis I have heard--the victim, I doubt not, of her own evil passions. Her son--"

"Your nephew, is with the army in India. Her daughter--"

"Has disappeared," said Downie, almost exultingly, "too probably taking a leaf out of her charming mamma's book; and the army in Afghanistan has been destroyed--my son Audley's letters and the public papers assure me of that."

"Yet your lordship would like to see the documents?"

"Or what may seem to be the documents--certainly; in whose hands are they--yours?"

"No--in those of one who may be less your lordship's friend--Derrick Braddon."

"Braddon!" said Downie, growing if possible paler than usual; "Braddon, my brother's favourite servant, who was in all his secrets, and was with him in the Cornish regiment?"

"The same, my lord."

"D--n--but this looks ill!" stammered Downie, thrown off his guard.

"For your lordship--very," said Sharkley with a covert smile.

Downie felt that he had forgot himself, so he said,

"Of course, this Braddon will show--perhaps deliver them to me."

"You are the last man on earth to whom he will now either show or deliver them. Be assured of that."

"For what reason, sir?"

"The account he received from his sister and old Mike Treherne of your treatment of--well, I suppose we must call her yet--Mrs. Devereaux."

Downie's steel-gray eyes stared coldly, glassily, and spitefully at Sharkley. He longed for the power to pulverise, to annihilate him by a glance. He loathed and hated, yet feared this low-bred legal reptile, for he felt that he, and all his family, were somehow in his power. Yet he could not quite abandon his first position of indignant denial and proud incredulity.

He spread a sheet of foolscap paper before him, and making a broad margin on the left side thereof, an old office habit that still adhered to him, like many more that were less harmless, he dipped a pen in the inkstand, as if to make memoranda, and balancing his gold glasses on the bridge of his sharp slender nose, said, while looking keenly over them,

"Attend to me, sir--please. When was this pretended discovery made?"

"Some nine months ago."

"Where--I say, where?"

"At Montreal, in the chapel where this Latour, of whom we have heard so much, was curate."

"A rascally scheme--a forgery in which you have a share."

"Take care, my lord--I'll file a bill against you."

"You forget, scoundrel, that we are without witnesses."

"Well--there are a pair of us," was the impudent rejoinder; "but what good might such a scheme ever do an old pensioner like Derrick Braddon?"