CHAPTER IV.

THE HOPE OF THE DEAD.

The disappearance of the papers which had so terrible an effect upon the nervous system, and usually iron frame of Derrick Braddon, is accounted for by the circumstance that Sharkley on returning to see how matters were progressing in the room, lingered for a moment by the half-opened door, and saw his dupe pale, gasping, muttering, and though half-senseless, yet conscious enough to feel a necessity for providing against any trickery or future contingency, in the act of concealing the tin case among his bedding, from whence it was speedily drawn, after he had flung himself in sleepy torpor above it; and then stealing softly down stairs with the prize, Sharkley paid his bill and departed without loss of time and in high spirits, delighted with his own success.

Too wary to start westward in the direction of Rhoscadzhel, he made an ostentatious display of departing by a hired dog-cart for his own residence, at the village or small market town (which was afflicted by his presence) in quite an opposite direction. From thence, by a circuitous route, he now revisited his employer, and hence the delay which occasioned the latter so much torture and anxiety.

"Two thousand--a beggarly sum!" thought Sharkley, scornfully and covetously, as he walked up the stately and over-arching avenue, and found himself under the groined arches of the _porte-cochère_, the pavement of which was of black and white tesselated marble; "why should I not demand double the sum, or more--yes, or more--he is in my power, in my power, is he not?" he continued, with vicious joy, through his set teeth, while his eyes filled with green light, and the glow of avarice grew in his flinty heart, though even the first sum mentioned was a princely one to him.

Clutching the tin case with a vulture-like grasp, he broadly and coarsely hinted his wish to Downie, who sat in his library chair, pale, nervous, and striving to conceal his emotion, while hearing a narration of the late proceedings at the Trevanion Arms; and hastily drawing a cheque book towards him, be filled up another bank order, saying,--

"There, sir, this is a cheque for two thousand pounds; surely two thousand five hundred are quite enough for all you have done in procuring for my inspection, documents which may prove but as so much waste paper after all."

"Their examination will prove that such is not the case," said Sharkley, as he gave one of his ugly smiles, scrutinised the document, and slowly and carefully consigned it to where its predecessor lay, in the greasy old pocket-book, wherein many a time and oft the hard-won earnings of the poor, the unfortunate and confiding, had been swallowed up. When Downie had heard briefly and rapidly a narration of the means by which the papers had been abstracted, he rather shrunk with disgust from a contemplation of them; they seemed so disreputable, so felonious and vile!

He had vaguely hoped that by the more constitutional and legal plans of bribery and corruption Mr. W. S. Sharkley might have received them from the custodier; but now they were in his hands and he was all impatience, tremulous with eagerness, and spectacles on nose, to peruse them, and test their value by that legal knowledge which he undoubtedly possessed.

His fingers, white and delicate, and on one of which sparkled the magnificent diamond ring which his late uncle had received when on his Russian embassy, literally trembled and shook, as if with ague, when he opened the old battered and well-worn tin case. The first document drawn forth had a somewhat unpromising appearance; it was sorely soiled, frayed, and seemed to have been frequently handled.

"What the deuce is this, Mr. Sharkley?" asked Downie, with some contempt of tone.

"Can't say, my lord--never saw such a thing before; it ain't a writ or a summons, surely!"

It was simply a soldier's "Parchment Certificate," and ran thus:--

_Cornish Regiment of Light Infantry._

"These are to certify that Derrick Braddon, Private, was born in the Parish of Gulval, Duchy of Cornwall; was enlisted there for the said corps, &c., was five years in the West Indies, ten in North America, and six at Gibraltar; was twice wounded in action with the Canadian rebels, and has been granted a pension of one shilling per diem. A well conducted soldier, of unexceptionably good character." Then followed the signature of his colonel and some other formula.

"Pshaw!" said Downie, tossing it aside; but the more wary Sharkley, to obliterate all links or proofs of conspiracy, deposited it carefully in the fire, when it shrivelled up and vanished; so the little record of his twenty-one years' faithful service, of his two wounds, and his good character, attested by his colonel, whom he had ever looked up to as a demigod, and which Derrick had borne about with him as Gil Blas did his patent of nobility, was lost to him for ever.

But more than ever did Downie's hands tremble when he drew forth the other documents; when he saw their tenor, and by the mode in which they were framed, worded, stamped, and signed, he was compelled to recognise their undoubted authority! A sigh of mingled rage and relief escaped him; but, as yet, no thought of compunction. He glanced at the fire, at the papers, and at Sharkley, more than once in succession, and hesitated either to move or speak. He began to feel now that the lingering of his emissary in his presence, when no longer wanted, was intolerable; but he was too politic to destroy the papers before him, though no other witness was present.

Full of secret motives themselves, each of these men, by habit and profession, was ever liable to suspect secret motives in every one else; and each was now desirous to be out of the other's presence; Downie, of course, most of all. The lower in rank and more contemptible in character, perhaps was less so, having somewhat of the vulgar toady's desire to linger in the presence and atmosphere of one he deemed a greater, certainly more wealthy, and a titled man; till the latter said with a stiff bow full of significance,--

"I thank you, sir, and have paid you; these are the documents I wished to possess."

"I am glad your lordship is pleased with my humble services," replied Sharkley, but still tarrying irresolutely.

"Is there anything more you have to communicate to me?"

"No, my lord."

"Then I have the--I must wish you good evening."

Sharkley brushed his shiny hat with his dusty handkerchief, and the wish for a further gratuity was hovering on his lips.

"You have been well paid for your services, surely?"

"Quite, my lord--that is--but--"

"No one has seen those papers, I presume?" asked Downie.

"As I have Heaven to answer to, no eye has looked on them while in my hands--my own excepted."

"Good--I am busy--you may go," said Downie, haughtily, and as he had apparently quite recovered his composure, he rang the bell, and a servant appeared.

"Shew this--person out, please," said Downie.

And in a moment more Sharkley was gone. The door closed, and they little suspected they were never to meet again.

"Thank God, he is gone! Useful though the scoundrel has been, and but for his discovery of those papers we know not what may have happened, his presence was suffocating me!" thought Downie.

The perceptions of the latter were sufficiently keen to have his _amour propre_ wounded by a peculiar sneering tone and more confident bearing in Sharkley; there had been a companionship in the task in hand, which lowered him to the level of the other, and the blunt rejoinder he had used so recently--"there are a pair of us," still rankled in his memory. Thus he had felt that he could not get rid of him too soon, or too politely to all appearance; and with a grimace of mingled satisfaction and contempt, he saw the solicitor's thin, ungainly figure lessening as he shambled down the long and beautiful avenue of elms and oaks, which ended at the grey stone pillars, that were surmounted each by a grotesque koithgath, _sejant_, with its four paws resting on a shield, charged with a Cavallo Marino, rising from the sea.

"And _now_ for another and final perusal of these most accursed papers!" said Downie Trevelyan, huskily.

The first was the certificate of marriage, between Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan, Captain in the Cornish Light Infantry, and Constance Devereaux of Montreal, duly by banns, at the chapel of Père Latour. Then followed the date, and attestation, to the effect, "that the above named parties were this day married by me, as hereby certified, at Ste. Marie de Montreal.

"C. LATOUR, _Catholic Curé_, "BAPTISTE OLIVIER, _Acolyte_. "DERRICK BRADDON, _Private Cornish Light Infantry_.

"JEHAN DURASSIER, _Sacristan_."

About this document there could not be a shadow of a doubt--even the water-mark was anterior to the date, and the brow of Downie grew very dark as he read it; darker still grew that expression of malevolent wrath, and more swollen were the veins of his temples as he turned to the next document, which purported to be the "Last Will and Testament of Richard Pencarrow, Lord Lamorna," and which after the usual dry formula concerning his just debts, testamentary and funeral expenses, continued, "_I give, devise, and bequeath_ unto Constance Devereaux, Lady Lamorna, my wife," the entire property, (then followed a careful enumeration thereof,) into which he had come by the death of his uncle Audley, Lord Lamorna, for the term of her natural life; and after her death to their children Denzil and Sybil absolutely, in the several portions to follow. The reader Downie (to whom a handsome bequest was made), General Trecarrel, and the Rector of Porthellick were named as Executors, and then followed the duly witnessed signature of the Testator, written in a bold hand LAMORNA, and dated at Montreal, about nine months before.

"Hah!" exclaimed Downie, through his clenched teeth; "here is that in my hand, which, were Audley a wicked or undutiful son, might effect wonders at Rhoscadzhel, and furnish all England with food for gossip and surmise; but that shall never, never be; nor shall son nor daughter of that Canadian adventuress ever place their heads under this roof tree of ours!"

And as he spoke, he fiercely crumpled up the will and the certificate together.

Then he paused, spread them out upon his writing table, and smoothing them over, read them carefully over again. As he did so, the handsome face, the honest smile and manly figure of his brother Richard came upbraidingly to memory; there were thoughts of other and long-remembered days of happy boyhood, of their fishing, their bird-nesting expeditions, and of an old garret in which they were wont to play when the days were wet, or the snow lay deep on the hills. How was it, that, till now forgotten, the old garret roof, with its rafters big and brown, and which seemed then such a fine old place for sport, with the very sound of its echoes, and of the rain without as it came pouring down to gorge the stone gutters of the old house, came back to memory now, with Richard's face and voice, out of the mists of nearly half a century? "It was one of those flashes of the soul that for a moment unshroud to us the dark depths of the past." Thus he really wavered in purpose, and actually thought of concealing the documents in his strong box, to the end that there they might be found after his death, and after he had enjoyed the title for what remained to him of life.

Would not such duplicity be unfair to his own sons, and to his daughter? was the next reflection.

And if fate permitted Denzil to escape the perils of the Afghan war, was the son of that mysterious little woman, or was her daughter--the daughter of one whom he doubted not, and wished not to doubt--had entrapped his silly brother into a secret marriage, in a remote and sequestered chapel, and whose memory he actually loathed--ever to rule and reside in Rhoscadzhel?

No--a thousand times no! Then muttering the lines from Shakespeare,--

"Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls. Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:"

he drew near the resplendent grate of burnished steel, and resolutely casting in both documents, thrust them with the aid of the poker deep among the fuel, and they speedily perished. The deed was done, and could no more be recalled than the last year's melted snow!

He watched the last sparks die out in the tinder ashes of those papers, on the preservation and production of which so much depended, so much was won and lost; and a sigh of relief was blended with his angry laugh.

He felt that then, indeed, the richly carpeted floor beneath his feet; the gilded roof above his head, the sweet, soft landscape--one unusually so for bold and rugged Cornwall--that stretched away in the soft, hazy, and yellow twilight, and all that he had been on the verge of losing, were again more surely his, and the heritage of his children, and of theirs in the time to come, and that none "of Banquo's line"--none of that strange woman's blood, could ever eject them now!

Even Derrick's old tin-case--lest, if found, it should lead to a trace or suspicion of where the papers had gone--he carefully, and with a legal caution worthy of his satellite the solicitor, beat out of all shape with his heel and threw into the fire, heaping the coals upon it.

This was perhaps needless in Downie Trevelyan, that smooth, smug, closely shaven, and white-shirted lawyer-lord, that man of legal facts and stern truths, so abstemious, temperate, and regular in his habits and attendance at church, and to all the outward tokens of worldly rectitude. Do what he might, none could, would, or dare believe evil of him!

Yet, after the excitement he had undergone, there were moments when he felt but partially satisfied with himself, till force of habit resumed its sway--moments when he remained sunk in thought, with his eyes fixed on that portion of the sea and sky where the sun had set, while the sombre twilight deepened around, and strange shadows were cast by the oriels across the library floor.

"For what have I done this thing?" thought he; "for my children of course, rather than for myself. I would that I had not been tempted, for nothing on earth remains for ever--nothing!" And as he muttered thus, his eyes rested on the distant Isles of Scilly that loomed like dark purple spots in the golden sea, which yet weltered in the ruddy glory of the sun that had set, and he reflected, he knew not why, for it was not Downie's wont, on the mutability of all human things and wishes, of the change that inexorable Time for ever brought about, and of the futility of all that man might attempt to do in the hope of perpetuity; for did not even the mighty sea and firm land change places in the fulness of years!

"Where now was all the land tradition named as Lyonesse of old--the vast tract which stretched from the eastern shore of Mount's Bay, even to what are now the Isles of Scilly, on which his dreamy eyes were fixed--the land where once, in story and in verse we are told,

"That all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until king Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fall'n in Lyonesse about their lord."

There, where now he saw the sea rolling between the rocky isles and the Land's End, were once green waving woods and verdant meadows, lands that were arable, mills whose busy wheels revolved in streams now passed away, and one hundred-and-forty parish churches, whose bells summoned the people to prayer, but which are all now--if we are to believe William of Worcester--submerged by the encroaching sea; yet whether gradually, or by one mighty throe of nature, on that day when the first of the line of Trevelyan swain his wonderful horse from the north-western isle, back to the rent and riven land, we know not, but so the story runs.

From, these day-dreams, such as he was seldom used to indulge in, Downie's mind rapidly reverted to practical considerations.

"Two thousand five hundred pounds in two cheques!" he muttered; "will not my bankers, and more than all, Gorbelly and Culverhole, my solicitors, wonder what singular service a creature such as this William Schotten Sharkley can possibly have rendered me, to receive so large a sum? If that drunken old soldier, Braddon, tells this story of his last meeting with Sharkley, and the subsequent loss of the papers, and permits himself to make a noise about them, may there not be many who, while remembering the former affair, by putting this and that together, will patch up a scandalous story after all? Bah--let them; there lie the proofs!" he added, glancing with a fierce and vindictive smile at the fragments of black tinder which yet fluttered in the grate.

So perished, at his remorseless hands, all the past hopes of the tender and affectionate dead, and all the present hopes of the living--of Richard and his wife who were buried so far apart--of Denzil and his sister, who were separated by fate, by peril, and so many thousand miles of land and sea!

But our story may have a sequel for all that.