CHAPTER X.
CLEVE VERNEY SEES THE CHATEAU DE CRESSERON.
I FANCY that these estimates, on a rather large scale, moved by Mr.Dingwell, were agreed to, for sufficient reasons, by the partiesinterested in disputing them.
Mr. Dingwell kept very close during the daytime. He used to wanderlistlessly to and fro, between his bed-room and his drawing-room, withhis hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown, and his feet in a pair ofhard leather slippers, with curled-up toes and no heels, that clatteredon the boards like sabots.
Miss Sarah Rumble fancied that her lodger was a little shy of thewindows; when he looked out into the court, he stood back a yard or morefrom the window-sill.
Mr. Larkin, indeed, made no secret of Mr. Dingwell's uncomfortableposition, in his conferences with the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney. Mr.Dingwell had been a bankrupt, against whom many transactions to whichthe Court had applied forcible epithets, had been proved; to whom, infact, that tribunal had refused quarter; and who had escaped from itsfangs by a miracle. There were judgments, however, in force against him;there was a warrant procurable any day for his arrest; he was still "incontempt;" I believe he was an "outlaw;" and, in fact, there was all buta price set on his head. Thus, between him and his outcast acquaintance,the late Hon. Arthur Verney, had subsisted some strong points ofsympathy, which had no doubt helped to draw them into that near intimacywhich stood the Hon. Kiffyn, no less than Mr. Dingwell (to whose mill itwas bringing very comfortable grist), so well in stead, at this moment.
It behoved Mr. Dingwell, therefore, to exercise caution. Many years hadpassed since he figured as a London trader. But time, the obliterator,in some cases works slowly; or rather, while the pleasant things ofmemory are sketched in with a pencil, the others are written in a bold,legible, round hand, as it were, with a broad-nibbed steel pen, and thebest durable japanned ink; on which Father Time works his India-rubberin vain, till his gouty old fingers ache, and you can fancy himwhistling curses through his gums, and knocking his bald pate with hisknuckles. Mr. Dingwell, on the way home, was, to his horror, halfrecognised by an ancient Cockney at Malta. Time, therefore, was not tobe relied upon, though thirty years had passed; and Mr. Dingwell beganto fear that a debtor is never forgotten, and that the man who isthoroughly dipt, like the lovely woman who stoops to folly, has but oneway to escape consequences, and that is to die--a step which Mr.Dingwell did not care to take.
The meeting on the 15th, at the Hon. Kiffyn Fulke Verney's house, Mr.Dingwell was prevented by a cold from attending. But the note of hisevidence sufficed, and the consultation, at which Mr. Larkin assisted,was quite satisfactory. The eminent parliamentary counsel who attended,and who made, that session, nearly fifty-thousand pounds, went to theheart of the matter direct; was reverentially listened to by his junior,by the parliamentary agent, by the serious Mr. Larkin, at whom he thrustsharp questions, in a peremptory and even fierce way, like a general inaction, to whom minutes are everything; treated them once or twice to arecollection or short anecdote, which tended to show what a clever,sharp fellow the parliamentary counsel was, which, indeed, was true; andtalked to no one quite from a level, except to one Hon. Kiffyn FulkeVerney, to whom he spoke confidentially in his ear, and who himselfquickly grew into the same confidential relations.
"I'm glad you take my view--Mr.--Mr. Forsythe--very happy about it, thatwe should be in accord. I've earned some confidence in my opinion,having found it more than once, I may say, come out right; and it givesme further confidence that you take my view," said the Honourable KiffynFulke Verney, grandly.
That eminent parliamentary counsel, Forsythe, was on his way to thedoor, when Mr. Verney interposed with this condescension.
"Oh! Ha! Do I? Very happy. What is it?" said Forsythe, smiling briskly,glancing at his watch and edging towards the door, all together.
"I mean the confident view--the cheerful--about it," said the Hon. Mr.Verney, a little flushed, and laying his thin hand on his counsel's arm.
"Certainly--confident, of course, smooth sailing, _quite_. I see nohitch _at present_."
Mr. Forsythe was now, more decidedly, going. But he could not treat theHon. Kiffyn Verney quite like an ordinary client, for he was before himoccasionally in Committees of the House of Commons, and was likely soonto be so in others of the Lords, and therefore, chafing and smiling, hehesitated under the light pressure of the old gentleman's stiff fingers.
"And you know the, I may say, _absurd_ state of the law, about it--therewas, you know, my unfortunate brother, Arthur--you are aware--_civilitermortuus_, stopping the way, you know, for nearly twenty years, about it,ever since my poor father, Lord Verney, you know, expired, about it, andI've been, as you know, in the most painful position--_absurd_, youknow."
"_Quite_ so; I'm _afraid_--" Forsythe was again edging toward the door.
"And I always contended that where the heir was civilly dead, about it,the law should make proper provision--don't you see?"
"Quite so, only _fair_--a very wise and politic statute--and I wish verymuch, with your experience, you'd turn your attention to draw one. I'mobliged to be off now, to meet the New Discount directors; consultationat my chambers."
And so, smiling, Forsythe, Q.C., did vanish, at last.
All this over, Mr. Cleve Verney proposed to himself a little excursion,of a day or two, to Paris, to which his uncle saw no objection.
Not very far from the ancient town of Caen, where the comparativequietude of Normandy, throughout the throes of the great revolution,has spared so many relics of the bygone France, is an old chateau, stillhabitable--still, after a fashion, comfortable--and which you may haveat a very moderate rent indeed.
Here is an old wood, cut in a quincunx; old ponds stocked with carp;great old stables gone to decay; and the chateau itself, isindescribably picturesque and sad.
It is the Chateau de Cresseron--withdrawn in historic seclusion, amidthe glories and regrets of memory, quite out of the tide of moderntraffic.
Here, by the side of one of the ponds, one evening, was an old lady,throwing in little bits of bread to the carp that floated and flitted,like golden shadows, this way and that, as the crumbs sank in the water,when she heard a well-known voice near her which made her start.
"Good heavens! Mr. Verney! _You_ here?" she exclaimed, with such utterwonderment, her little bit of bread raised in her fingers, that CleveVerney, though in no merry mood, could not help smiling.
"Yes--here indeed--and after all, is it quite so wonderful?" said he.
"Well, of course you know, Mr. Verney, I'm very glad to see you. Ofcourse, you know _that_; but I'm very far from being certain that youhave done a wise or a prudent thing in coming here, and I don't knowthat, under the circumstances, I _ought_ to be glad to see you; in fact,I'm afraid it is _very rash_," said Miss Sheckleton, growing moredecided as she proceeded.
"No, not rash. I've been very miserable; _so_ miserable, that the worstcertainty which this visit might bring upon me would be almost a reliefcompared with the intolerable suspense I have lived in; therefore, yousee, it really is not rash."
"I'm very bad at an argument," persisted the old lady; "but it _is_rash, and _very_ rash. You can't conceive," and here she lowered hervoice, "the state of exasperation in which he is."
"He," of course, could only mean Sir Booth Fanshawe; and Cleveanswered,--
"I assure you, I can't blame him. I don't wonder. I think a great dealhas been very wantonly done to aggravate his misfortunes; but surely, hecan't fancy that I could sympathise with any such proceedings, or feelanything but horror and disgust. Surely, _you_ would not allow him toconnect me, however slightly? I _know_ you would not."
"My dear Mr. Verney, you don't know Booth Fanshawe, or rather, you do, Ibelieve, know him a great deal too well, to fancy that I could ventureto speak to him upon the subject. _That_, I assure you, is quite out ofthe question; and I may as well tell you frankly, if he were at home, Imean _here_, I should have begged you at once, inhospitable as it mightseem, to lea
ve this place, and trust to time and to letters, but _here_I would not have allowed you to linger."
"He's away from home, then!" exclaimed Cleve.
"Yes; but he'll be back to-night at ten o'clock."
"At ten o'clock," repeated Cleve, and the young man thought what atreasure of minutes there was in the interval. "And MissFanshawe--Margaret--she's quite well?"
"Yes, she's quite well," answered kind Miss Sheckleton, looking in hisearnest eyes, and thinking that he looked a little thin and pale. "She'squite well, and, I hope, _you_ have been."
"Oh, yes," answered the young man, "as well as a man with a good manytroubles can be. In fact, I may tell _you_, I've been very unhappy. Iwas thinking of writing to Sir Booth."
"_Don't_," implored Miss Sheckleton, looking quite wildly into his eyes,and with her hand upon his arm, as if to arrest the writing of thatletter, "you have no notion how he feels. I assure you, an allusion--theslightest thing is quite enough to set him in a blaze. The other day,for instance, I did not know what it was, till I took up the paper hehad been reading, and I found there something about the Verney peerage,and proof that Arthur Verney was dead, and your uncle to get it; andreally I can't wonder--some people seem so unaccountably fortunate, andothers, everything goes wrong with--even _I_ felt vexed when I read it,though, of course, any good fortune happening to _you_, I should be veryglad of. But he did not see any of us till next day--even Macklin."
"Yes, it is very true," said Cleve, "my uncle _is_ dead, and we shallprove it, that is, my uncle Kiffyn will. But you are quite right todistinguish as you do. It involves nothing for me. Since it has come sonear, I have lost all faith in it's ever reaching me. I have, I can'tcall it a conviction, but a _superstition_, that it never will. I mustbuild my own fortunes from their foundations, with my own hand. There isbut one success on earth that can make me very proud and very happy. Doyou think, that having come all this way, in that hope, on that onechance, that Margaret will see me?"
"I wish you had written to me before coming," said Anne Sheckleton,after a little pause. "I should have liked to find out first, all Icould, from herself; she is so odd. I've often told you that she _is_odd. I think it would have been wiser to write to me before coming over,and I should have talked to her,--that is, of course, if she had allowedme,--for I can't in the least say that she would even hear me on thesubject."
"Well," said Cleve, with a sigh, "I have come--I am here--and go Icannot without seeing her--I cannot--and you, I think, are too kind towish that I should. Yes, Miss Sheckleton, you have been my true friendthroughout this--what shall I call it?--wild and terrible dream--for Icannot believe it real--I wonder at it myself--I ought to wish I hadnever seen her--but I cannot--and I think on the result of this visitdepends the whole course of my life. You'll not see me long, I think, inthe House of Commons, nor in England; but I'll tell you more by-and-by."
The sun had gone down now. A red and melancholy glow, rising from pilesof western cloud, melted gradually eastward into the deep blue of nightin which the stars were already glimmering.
Along one of the broad avenues cut through the forest that debouchesupon the court-yard of the quaint old chateau they were now walking,and, raising his eyes, he saw Margaret approaching from the antiquehouse.