Chapter 36

A PRIVATE CONSULTATION.

"Remove from me the way of lying...I have chosen the way of truth."--PSALM cxix. 29, 30.

"Why, you young rogues, you make your father blush for your appetites," said John Mortimer to his boys, when he saw Valentine at the head of the table, serving out great slices of roast beef at a luncheon which was also to be early dinner for the children.

Valentine had placed Emily at the other end of the table. "Take my place, John," he now said laughing, "I always was a most wretched carver."

"No, love, no," pleaded Emily to her husband in a quick low tone of entreaty, and John, just in time to check himself in the act of rising, turned the large dish toward him instead, and began to carve it, making as if he had not heard Valentine's request. But Valentine having taken some wine and rested for a few moments, after the slight exertion, which had proved too much for his strength, looked at his sister till she raised her eyes to meet his, smiled, and murmured to her across the table, "You daughter of England, 'I perceive that in many things you are too superstitious.'"

Emily had nothing to say in reply. She had made involuntary betrayal of her thought. She shrank from seeing her husband in her brother's place, because she was anxious about, afraid for, this same brother. She had even now and then a foreboding fear lest ere long she should see John there for good. But to think so, was to take a good deal for granted, and now Valentine chose to show her that he had understood her feeling perfectly.

She would fain not have spoken, but she could not now amend her words. "Never was any one freer from superstition than he," she thought, "but after all, in spite of what John tells me of his doctor's opinion, and how the voyage is to restore him, why must I conceal an anxiety so natural and so plainly called for? I will not. I shall speak. I shall try to break down his reserve; give him all the comfort and counsel I can, and get him to open his mind to me in the view of a possible change."

Emily was to take a drive at four o'clock, her husband and her brother with her.

In the meantime Valentine told her he was going to be busy, and John had promised to help him. "An hour and a half," he sighed, as he mounted the stairs with John to his old grandmother's sitting-room, "an hour and a half, time enough and too much. I'll have it out, and get it over."

"Now then," said John Mortimer, seating himself before a writing-table, "tell me, my dear fellow, what it is that I can do to help you?"

He did not find his position easy. Valentine had let him know pointedly that he should not leave the estate to his half brother. All was in his own power, yet John Mortimer might have been considered the rightful heir. What so natural and likely as that it should be left to him? John did not even feign to his own mind that he was indifferent about this, he had all the usual liking for an old family place or possession. He thought it probable that Valentine meant it to come to him, and wanted to consult with him as to some burdens to be laid on the land for the benefit of his mother's family.

If Valentine's death in early youth had been but a remote contingency, the matter could have been very easily discussed, but hour by hour John Mortimer felt less assured that the poor young fellow's own hopeful view was the true one.

Valentine had extended himself again on the sofa. "I want you presently to read some letters," he said; "they are in that desk, standing before you."

John opened it, and in the act of turning it towards him his eyes wandered to the garden, and then to the lovely country beyond; they seemed for the moment to be arrested by its beauty, and his hand paused.

"What a landscape!" he said, "and how you have improved the place, Val! I did not half do it justice the last time I came here."

"I hate it," said Valentine with irritation, "and everything belonging to it."

John looked at him with scarcely any surprise.

"That is only because you have got out of health since you came here; you have not been able to enjoy life. But you are better, you know. You are assured that you have good hope of coming back recovered. I devoutly trust you may. Forget any morbid feelings that may have oppressed you. The place is not to blame. Well, and these letters--I only see two. Are they all?"

"Yes. But, John, you can see that I am not very strong."

"Yes, indeed," said John with an involuntary sigh.

"Well, then, I want you to be considerate. I mean," he added, when he perceived that he had now considerably astonished John Mortimer--"I mean that when you have read them. I want you to take some little time to think before you speak to me at all."

"Why, this is in my uncle's handwriting!" exclaimed John.

"Yes," answered Valentine, and he turned away as he still reclined, that he might not see the reader, "so it is."

Silence then--silence for a longer time than it could have taken to read that letter. Valentine heard deep breathing from time to time, and the rustling of pages turned and turned again. At last, when there was still silence, he moved on the sofa and looked at his cousin.

John was astonished, as was evident, and mystified; but more than that, he was indignant and exceedingly alarmed.

Valentine had asked him to be considerate. His temper was slightly hasty; but he was bearing the request in mind, and controlling it, though his heightened colour and flashing eyes showed that he suffered keenly from a baffling sense of shame and impending disgrace. These feelings, however, were subsiding, and as they retired his astonishment seemed to grow, and his hand trembled when he folded up the letter for the last time and laid it down.

He took up the second letter, which was addressed to his grandmother, and read it through.

It set forth that the writer, Cuthbert Melcombe, being then in London, had heard that morning the particulars of his young uncle's death at sea, had heard it from one of the young man's brother officers, and felt that he ought to detail them to his mother; he then went on to relate certain commonplace incidents of a lingering illness and death at sea.

After this he proceeded to inform his mother that he had bought for her in Leadenhall Street the silver forks she had wished for, and was about to pack them up, and send them (with this letter enclosed in the parcel) by coach to Hereford, where his mother then was.

"Why did you show me this?" said John in a low, husky tone. "There is nothing in it."

"I found it," Valentine replied, "carefully laid by itself in a desk, as being evidently of consequence."

"We know that all the other Melcombes died peaceably in their beds," John answered; "and it shows (what I had been actually almost driven to doubt) that this poor young fellow did also. There is no real evidence, however, that the letter was written in London; it bears no post-mark."

"No," said Valentine; "how could there be? It came in a parcel. THE LETTER, John, will tell you nothing."

"I don't like it," John Mortimer answered. "There is a singular formality about the narrative;" and before he laid it down he lifted it slightly, and, as it seemed half unconsciously, towards the light, and then his countenance changed, and he said beneath his breath, "Oh, that's it, is it!"

Valentine started from the sofa.

"What have you found?" he cried out, and, coming behind John, he also looked through the paper, and saw in the substance of it a water-mark, showing when it had been pressed. Eighteen hundred and seven was the date. But this letter was elaborately dated from some hotel in London, 1804. "A lie! and come to light at last!" he said in an awe-struck whisper. "It has deceived many innocent people. It has harboured here a long time."

"Now, wait a minute," answered John. "Stop--no more. You asked me to be considerate to you. Be also considerate to me. If, in case of your death, there is left on earth no wrong for me to right, I desire you to be silent for ever."

He took Valentine by the arm and helped him to the sofa, for he was trembling with excitement and surprise.

"There is no wrong that can be righted now," Valentine presently found voice enough to say; "there never has been from the first, unless I am mistaken."

"Then I depend on your love for me and mine--your own family--to be silent in life, and silent after death. See that no such letters as these are left behind you."

"I have searched the whole place, and there is not another letter--not one line. You may well depend on me. I will be silent."

John stood lost in thought and amazement; he read Daniel Mortimer's letter again, folded it reverently, and pressed it between his hands. "Well, I am grateful to him," Valentine heard him whisper, and he sank into thought again.

"Our fathers were perfectly blameless," said Valentine.

John roused himself then. "Evidently, thank God! And now these two letters--they concern no one but ourselves." He approached the grate; a fire was burning in it. He lifted off the coals, making a hollow bed in its centre. "You will let me burn them now, of course?"

"Yes," said Valentine; "but not together."

"No; you are right," John answered, and he took old Daniel Mortimer's letter and laid it into the place he had prepared, covering it with the glowing cinders, then with the poker he pushed the other between the lower bars, and he and Valentine watched it till every atom was consumed.

There was no more for him to tell; John Mortimer thought he knew enough. Valentine felt what a relief this was, but also that John's amazement by no means subsided. He was trying hard to be gentle, to be moderately calm; he resolutely forbore from any comment on Valentine's conduct; but he could not help expressing his deep regret that the matter should have been confided to any one--even to Brandon--and finding, perhaps, that his horror and indignation were getting the better of him, he suddenly started up, and declared that he would walk about in the gallery for awhile. "For," he said pointedly to Valentine, "as you were remarking to me this morning, there is a good deal that ought to be done at once," and out he dashed into the fresh spring air, and strode about in the long wooden gallery, with a vigour and vehemence that did not promise much for the quietness of their coming discussion.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, went by--almost half an hour--before John Mortimer came in again.

Valentine looked up and saw, as John shut himself in, that he looked almost as calm as usual, and that his face had regained its customary hue.

"My difficulty, of course, is Emily," he said. "If this had occurred a year ago it would have been simpler." Valentine wondered what he meant; but he presently added in a tone, however, as of one changing the subject, "Well, my dear fellow, you were going to have a talk with me, you know, about the making of your will. You remarked that you possessed two thousand pounds."

Valentine wondered at his coolness, he spoke so completely as usual.

"And what would you have me do with that?" he answered with a certain directness and docility that made John Mortimer pause; he perceived that whatever he proposed would be done.

"I think if you left a thousand pounds to the old aunt who brought your mother up, and has a very scanty pittance, it would be worthy of your kindly nature, and no more than her due."

"Well, John, I'll do it. And the other thousand?"

"Louisa has married a rich man's son, and I have made a handsome settlement on Emily, but your sister Lizzie has nothing."

"I will leave her the other thousand; and--and now, John, there is the estate--there is Melcombe. I thought you had a right to know that there had been a disadvantage as regarded my inheritance of it, but you are perfectly----" He hesitated for a word.

John turned his sentence rather differently for him, and went on with it. "But you feel that I am perfectly entitled to give you my opinion?"

"Certainly."

"I advise that you leave it for a county hospital."

"John!"

"Unconditionally and for ever, for," John went on calmly and almost gently, "we are here a very long way from the county town, where the only hospital worth anything is situated. This house has, on two stories, a corridor running completely through it, and is otherwise so built that it would require little alteration for such a purpose. The revenue from the land would go a good way towards supporting it. Therefore, as I said before--" Then pausing, when he observed the effect of his words on Valentine, he hesitated, and instead of going on, said, "I am very sorry, my dear Valentine."

"This is a shock to me," said Valentine. "It shows me so plainly that you would not have acted as I have done, if you had been in my place."

As he seemed to wait for an answer, John said, with more decided gentleness, "I suppose it does;" and went on in a tone half apology, half persuasion, "But you will see your lawyer to-morrow, and, using all discretion, direct him as I propose."

"Yes. Nothing at all is to go to you then?"

"I should like to have this portrait of your father; and, Val, I wish to assure you most sincerely that I do not judge your conduct. I have no opinion to give upon it."

"I have a good right to tell you now, that I have for some months fully intended to give up the place."

"Well, I am glad of that."

"I hope to recover, and then to work, living abroad, the better to conceal matters. I had quite decided, John; and yet what you have done is a shock to me. I feel that I am judged by it. I told you in the autumn that I meant to go away; I did. But though I took the estate so easily, so almost inevitably, I could not get away from it, though I wished and tried."

"But you can now. If you want money, of course you will look to me to help you. And so you could not manage to go?"

"No. So long as I was well and in high spirits I never meant to go; but one night I got a great shock, and walking home afterwards by the mere, I felt the mist strike to my very marrow. I have never been well since. I had no heart to recover; but when I might have got away I was detained by that trumpery trial till I was so ill that I could not safely travel; but now, John, I am ready, and you cannot imagine how I long to be off, and, please God, begin a better life, and serve Him as my old father