CHAPTER IV.

POWDERED WITH TEARS.

A mounted footman, who approached him at full speed, pulled up for a moment and respectfully touched his hat, for he was one of the Lamorna household.

"What is the matter?" asked Richard.

"Oh, sir--oh, Mr. Richard--my lord is taken very ill."

"Ill--my uncle?"

"He is quite senseless, and Mr. Downie Trevelyan has sent me for the doctor."

"Then ride on and lose no time," replied Richard, as he hastened to the house, where he found confusion and dismay predominant, the servants hovering in the vestibule, conversing in whispers and listening at the library door, while Jasper Funnel and Mrs. Duntreath, the old housekeeper (a lineal descendant of the Dolly Duntreath, so well-known in Cornwall), were mingling their sighs and regrets for the loss of so good a master.

"Where is my uncle?" asked Richard, impetuously.

"In the lib--lib--library," sobbed the housekeeper, with her black silk apron at her eyes, and as Richard advanced, Jasper Funnel softly opened the door. The favourite nephew entered the long spacious and splendid apartment, which occupied nearly the entire length of one of the wings of Rhoscadzhel, its shelves of dark wainscot filled by books in rare and magnificent bindings, with white marble busts of the great and learned men of classical antiquity looking calmly down on what was passing below.

The fire-place wras deep and old; but a seacoal fire was burning cheerily in the bright steel modern grate; and as if he was in a dream, seeing the far stretching lawn, with its tufts of waving fern and stately lines of elm and oak, as he passed the tall windows noiselessly on the soft Turkey carpet, Richard drew hastily near the great arm-chair, in which his uncle was seated, dead--stone-dead, with Downie, somewhat pale and disordered in aspect, bending over him!

The old man had suddenly passed away--disease of the heart, as it proved eventually, had assailed him while seated at his writing-table.

On Richard's entrance and approach, Downie hurriedly took from the table and thrust into his pocket, a document which looked most legally and suspiciously like a "last will and testament;" but quick though the action, Richard could perceive that the document, whatever it was, had no signatures of any kind.

Richard knelt by his uncle's side; he felt his pulses; they had ceased to beat; his heart was cold and still, and there came no sign of breath upon the polished surface of the mirror he held before the fallen jaw; with something of remorse Richard thought,--

"No later than this morning I deceived him--and he loved me so--was ever my friend and second father!--I thought," he added aloud, to Downie, "that his eyes wore an unusual expression this morning--a weird, keen, farseeing kind of look, such as I never read in them before."

"I fancied that I perceived some such expression myself, and consequently, at his years, was the less alarmed, or shall I say shocked, when in the very act of speaking to me, a sudden spasm came over his features--a deep sigh, almost a faint cry escaped him, and he sank back in his chair, when just about to write. See, there is the pen on the floor, exactly where it fell from his relaxed fingers."

Richard's honest eyes were filled with tears, and mechanically he picked up the pen and laid it on the desk.

"Writing, say you, Downie; and what was he writing?"

"Oh, I cannot say--a letter to his steward, I believe."

"But--I see no letter."

"He was just about to commence it," replied Downie, whose usually pale face coloured a little.

"And that paper you pocketed in such haste, Downie, what was it?"

"Nothing, Richard, that can concern you (by-the-by, you are Lord Lamorna now!) or that fair one whose portrait you exhibit so ostentatiously just now."

Richard started, alike at the title so suddenly accorded to him by his brother, and at the reference to the portrait, for in the confusion or haste, as he bent over his dead uncle, a little miniature, which he wore at a ribbon round his neck, depicting a very beautiful dark-eyed woman, had slipped from his vest, and with an exclamation of annoyance, he hastened to conceal it.

"_Who_ is the lady, Richard?" asked Downie.

"As yet, that must remain my secret," replied Richard; "a little time, my dear fellow, and we shall have no mysteries among us."

Downie, secretly, was not ill-pleased by this diversion, in which Richard forgot the subject of the paper.

The doctor soon came--a village practitioner--fussy and full of importance; but nevertheless skilful; and he decided that disease of the heart--a malady under which, though ignorant of its existence, the deceased had long laboured--had proved the immediate cause of death. The poor shrivelled remains of the proud old lord were conveyed to the principal bed-room of the mansion, and there laid in a species of state, upon a four-posted bed, that rose from a daïs, and was all draped with black. His coronet and Order of the Bath, together with that of St. Anne, which he received when ambassador in Russia, were deposited at his feet upon a crimson velvet cushion, that was tasseled with gold; while two tall footmen in complete livery with long canes draped with crape, mounted guard beside the coffin day and night, to their own great disgust and annoyance, till the time of the funeral, of which Richard took the entire charge; and which, in a spirit of affection and good taste, he resolved should be in all respects exactly what the deceased peer would have wished it to be.

The features of the latter became, for a time, young and beautiful in their manliness and perfect regularity, while all the lines engraven there by Time were smoothed out, if not completely effaced.

"How like our father, as I can remember him, he looks!" whispered Downie, more softened than usual, by the hallowing presence of death.

But Richard was thinking of another face whom the dead man resembled--a young and beloved face to him.

"Denzil did you say?" he stammered.

"I said our father," replied Downie, sharply.

"True, he died young," was the confused reply.

"Your mind wanders, surely?" said Downie, with a dark and inexplicable expression in his now averted face; but Richard saw it not, he was simply taking a farewell glance of one who had loved him so well; his manly heart was soft, and his dark-blue eyes were full with the tears of honest affection and gratitude.

So Audley Lord Lamorna was dead, and all now turned to Richard as their new and future master; all the blinds in Rhoscadzhel were drawn down by order of Mrs. Duntreath, and all went about on tiptoe or spoke in subdued voices, especially Downie, who in his heart thought that Richard was spending "far too much in ostrich feathers, crimson coffins, and other mummery," among undertakers, and heraldic painters, too; but he was more politic than to say so--even to his wife, who, with her daughter Gartha, a pretty girl in her teens, had been on a visit to General Trecarrel, and now duly arrived to act as mistress of the mansion, _pro tem._, during the solemnities of which it was to be the scene.

She was warmly welcomed by Richard Trevelyan; she was his only brother's wife, and he had none of his own to take her place there--as yet.

A peevish and foolish woman of fashion, who had once possessed undoubted beauty, Mrs. Downie Trevelyan was generally treated as a kind of cypher now by her husband; but nevertheless he consulted her at times, on certain matters of common interest. She still clung tenaciously to the tradition of her former beauty, and sought to retain it by the aid of pearl powder, the faintest indication of rouge perhaps, and by the prettiest of matronly headdresses made of the costliest lace. She was always languid, somewhat dreary, and spent most of her time with a novel in one hand, and a magnificent little bottle of ether, or some strong perfume, in the other. To Richard her society was decidedly a bore; but at this crisis he was full of business, and occupied by a depth of thought that was apparent to all.

Six tall servants in mourning scarfs, and in the livery of the Trevelyans, bore upon their shoulders the crimson velvet coffin containing the remains of the late lord, to the vault where his forefathers lay, and where many of them had been interred by torchlight, in times long past.

There was something feudal, stately, and solemn in the aspect of the procession, when between two lines of all the tenantry, standing bare-headed, it wound down the old avenue, where the leaves were almost as thick, the sun as bright, and the birds singing as merrily as they might have been when Lord Launcelot rode there by the Queen's bridle, or when he and his cavaliers fled from Fairfax to seek shelter in Trewoofe; and so his descendant Audley was laid at last, where so many of his predecessors lie side by side, "ranged in mournful order and in a kind of silent pomp," each coffin bearing the names, titles and arms of its mouldering occupant.

Pondering on who might stand here when his turn came to be lowered down there, Richard, the new lord, stood at the head of the tomb, pale, and with more emotion than met the eye; Downie stood on his right hand, and the heir of the latter, well bronzed by the sun of India, on his left, three of his younger brothers, held with a ribbon. Their old friend, General Trecarrel, stood grimly and erect at the foot. The vault was closed, and the body of Audley, tenth Lord Lamorna, that frail tenement, which he had petted and pampered, of which he had been so careful and so vain, for some seventy years, was left to the worms at last!

The assemblage dispersed, and the world went on as usual.

The bell of the village church, which had all morning tolled minute strokes, ceased; and after a time the new chimes rang out a merry peal in honour of his successor. It was in Cornwall as at St. Cloud; _le Roi est mort--vive le Roi!_

The old general, who had no fancy for a mansion of gloom, departed, and took back with him Downie's son Audley, a jolly young subaltern, whom we shall soon meet elsewhere.

But prior to this departure, there had been the reading of the will, an affair of great solemnity, in the library, the same apartment where the late lord died; and his solicitors, Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole, a fat and a lean pair of lawyers, felt all their vulgar importance on the occasion.

There were a few handsome presents to old and faithful servants, including Jasper Funnel and Mrs. Duntreath (whose sobs became somewhat intrusive), and Richard found himself Lord of Rhoscadzhel and Lamorna, with an unfettered fortune of thirty thousand per annum; while Downie had a bequest of less than the third of that sum, together with some jewelry, including the Russian diamond ring for his wife and daughter Gartha.

So whatever had been the object or the tenor of that document which the astute barrister had so evidently prepared, and which he had thrust into his pocket so hastily and awkwardly on that eventful morning, Richard was as safely installed in the estates as in his hereditary title; and the moment he found himself alone, he became immersed in letter-writing.

Opening the crimson morocco blotting pad which his uncle had last used, and which had his coronet and crest, the wild-cat, stamped in gold thereon, he saw some words written in his brother's hand, and these, on investigation proved to be, "This is the last will and testament of me, L----" (doubtless Lord Lamorna); further on, as if at the bottom of the page, he could detect the name of "Porthellick," and a dark flush of passion crimsoned the face of Richard. He thought again of the document he had seen in Downie's hand; their uncle could certainly never have signed it, but some painful doubts--added to intense sorrow for their existence--grew strong in Richard's heart, which was a true and generous one.

"My dear Constance--my long suffering darling!" he muttered, almost aloud; "the day is now near when all your doubts and my dissimulation to the world shall end. Thank God, the time has almost come."

And he rode forth, to post with his own hand a letter he had written.

He was barely gone ere Downie, who had been quietly observing his motions, also made an investigation of the blotting pad which Richard had just closed, and therein he saw what seemed to be the address of a recent letter. He held the pink sheet between his eyes and the light, and read clearly enough, "Mrs. Devereaux, Porthellick Cottage."

And the lawyer smiled sourly, but with great uneasiness, nevertheless, and he muttered aloud,

"I had but vague suspicions before--and now all my knowledge has come too late--too late!"

"I am so sorry to hear you say so, dear," said his graceful little wife, the rustle of whose fashionable mourning suit he had been too much preoccupied to hear, as she glided into the library, in search of one of the many uncut novels that now littered the tables; "sorry chiefly for the sake of our dear Audley, and Gartha, and the other little ones."

"Your know to what I refer--the succession; it may not be so hopeless or irreparable as we think."

"But your uncle died with his will unchanged."

"True; I pressed upon him lately my belief that Richard had formed that--of which he had a horror so great--a _mésalliance_--in fact, a low or improper attachment for one beneath us in rank and name. My uncle's fury became great, and to take advantage of the time, I placed before him a will, leaving all his estates, as he had a hundred times threatened to do, to me and mine. I had the document ready written, and placed it before him; but as fate would have it, in his pride, fury, and resentment, a spasm seized the old man, and he fell back dying, actually with the pen in his hand, after I had dipped it in that silver inkstand and placed it between his fingers."

"How extremely unfortunate!" said Mrs. Downie Trevelyan, placing her scent-bottle languidly to her little pink nostrils.

"Unfortunate? It was a narrow chance by which to lose thirty thousand a year!" said Downie, grinding his teeth, while his eyes gleamed like two bits of grey glass in moonlight. "There is some mystery about Richard's life; moreover, he wears a woman's miniature at his neck."

"Young--is she?"

"Well--yes--she seems so."

"And pretty?" added Mrs. Downie, glancing at herself in a mirror.

"Very."

"His intended, perhaps?"

"I hope she is not more than that; but time must soon show now."

And over the porte-cochère of Rhoscadzhel there now hung a vast lozenge-shaped hatchment or funeral escutcheon, the sight of which would have delighted him, whose memory it was meant to honour, being the achievement of a bachelor peer, representing the arms of Lamorna in a shield complete--the demi-horse _argent_ of the Trevelyans rising from the sea; over all, the baron's coronet, crest, motto, and mantling, collared by the Orders of the Bath and St. Anne; and after some old fashion, retained still only in Germany, Scotland, and France, the herald-painter had depicted at each corner a death-head, while all the black interstices were _powdered with tears_.