A Rent In A Cloud Part 4

"I suppose, when you come to practise at the bar, you'll only defend innocence and protect virtue, eh? You'll, of course, never take the brief of a knave, or try to get a villain off. With your principles, to do so would be the basest of all crimes."

"I hope I'll never do that deliberately which my conscience tells me I ought not to do."

"All right. Conscience is always in one's own keeping--a guest in the house, who is far too well bred to be disagreeable to the family.

Oh, you arch hypocrite! how much worse you are than a reprobate like myself!"

"I'll not dispute that."

"More hypocrisy!"

"I mean that, without conceding the point, it's a thesis I'll not argue."

"You ought to have been a Jesuit, Loyd. You'd have been a grand fellow in a long black soutane, with little b.u.t.tons down to the feet, and a skull-cap on your head. I think I see some poor devil coming to you about a 'cas de conscience,' and going away sorely puzzled with your reply to him."

"Don't come to me with one of yours, Calvert, that's all," said Loyd, laughing, as he hurried off.

Like many men who have a strong spirit of banter in them, Calvert was vexed and mortified when his sarcasm did not wound. "If the stag will not run, there can be no pursuit," and so was it that he now felt angry with Loyd, angry with himself. "I suppose these are the sort of fellows who get on in life. The world likes their quiet subserviency, and their sleek submissiveness. As for me, and the like of me, we are 'not placed.' Now for a line to my Cousin Sophy, to know who is the 'Grainger' who says she is so well acquainted with us all. Poor Sophy, it was a love affair once between us, and then it came to a quarrel, and out of that we fell into the deeper bitterness of what is called 'a friends.h.i.+p.' We never really hated each other till we came to that!"

"Dearest, best of friends," he began, "in my broken health, fortunes, and spirits, I came to this place a few weeks ago, and made, by chance, the acquaintance of an atrocious old woman called Grainger--Miss or Mrs., I forget which--who is she, and why does she know _us_, and call us the 'dear Calverts,' and your house 'sweet old Rocksley?' I fancy she must be a begging-letter impostor, and has a design--it will be a very abortive one--upon my spare five-pound notes. Tell me all you know of her, and if you can add a word about her nieces twain--one pretty, the other prettier--do so.

"Any use in approaching my uncle with a statement of my distresses--mind, body, and estate? I owe him so much grat.i.tude that, if he doesn't want me to be insolvent, he must help me a little further.

"Is it true you are going to be married? The thought of it sends a pang through me, of such anguish as I dare not speak of. Oh dear! oh dear! what a flood of bygones are rus.h.i.+ng upon me, after all my pledges, all my promises! One of these girls reminded me of your smile; how like, but how different, Sophy. Do say there's no truth in the story of the marriage, and believe me--what your heart will tell you I have never ceased to be--your devoted

"Harry Calvert."

"I think that ought to do," said he, as he read over the letter; "and there's no peril in it since her marriage is fixed for the end of the month. It is, after all, a cheap luxury to bid for the lot that will certainly be knocked down to another. She's a nice girl, too, is Sophy, but, like all of us, with a temper of her own.

"I'd like to see her married to Loyd, they'd make each other perfectly miserable."

With this charitable reflection to turn over in various ways, tracing all the consequences he could imagine might spring from it, he sauntered out for a walk beside the lake.

"This box has just come by the mail from Chia.s.so," said his host, pointing to a small parcel, corded and sealed. "It is the box the signora yonder has been searching for these three weeks; it was broken when the diligence upset, and they tied it together as well as they could."

The writing-desk was indeed that which Miss Grainger had lost on her Rhine journey, and was now about to reach her in a lamentable condition--one hinge torn off the lock strained, and the bottom split from one end to the other.

"I'll take charge of it I shall go over to see her in a day or two, perhaps to-morrow;" and with this Calvert carried away the box to his own room.

As he was laying the desk on his table, the bottom gave way, and the contents fell about the room. They were a ma.s.s of papers and letters, and some parchments; and he proceeded to gather them up as best he might, cursing the misadventure, and very angry with himself for being involved in it. The letters were in little bundles, neatly tied, and docketed with the writers' names. These he replaced in the box, having inverted it, and placing all, as nearly as he could, in due order, till he came to a thick papered doc.u.ment tied with red tape at the corner, and ent.i.tled Draft of Jacob Walter's Will, with Remarks of Counsel "This we must look at," said Calvert "What one can see at Doctors' Commons for a s.h.i.+lling is no breach of confidence, even if seen for nothing;" and with this he opened the paper.

It was very brief, and set forth how the testator had never made, nor would make, any other will, that he was sound of mind, and hoped to die so. As to his fortune, it was something under thirty thousand pounds in Bank Stock, and he desired it should be divided equally between his daughters, the survivor of them to have the whole, or, in the event of each life lapsing before marriage, that the money should be divided amongst a number of charities that he specified.

"I particularly desire and beg," wrote he, "that my girls be brought up by Adelaide Grainger, my late wife's half-sister, who long has known the hards.h.i.+ps of poverty, and the cares of a narrow subsistence, that they may learn in early life the necessity of thrift, and not habituate themselves to luxuries, which a reverse of fortune might take away from them. I wish, besides, that it should be generally believed their fortune was one thousand pounds each, so that they should not become a prey to fortune-hunters, nor the victims of adventurers, insomuch that my last request to each of my dear girls would be not to marry the man who would make inquiry into the amount of their means till twelve calendar months after such inquiry, that time being full short enough to study the character of one thus palpably worldly-minded and selfish."

A few cautions as to the snares and pitfalls of the world followed, and the doc.u.ment finished with the testator's name, and that of three witnesses in pencil, the words "if they consent," being added in ink, after them.

"Twice fifteen make thirty--thirty thousand pounds--a very neat sum for a great many things, and yielding, even in its dormant state, about fifteen hundred a year. What can one do for that? Live, certainly--live pleasantly, jovially, if a man were a bachelor. At Paris, for instance, with one's pleasant little entresol in the Rue Neuve, or the Rue Faubourg St Honore, and his club, and his saddle-horses, with even ordinary luck at billiards, he could make the two ends meet very satisfactorily. Then, Baden always pays its way, and the sea-side places also do, for the world is an excellent world to the fellow who travels with his courier, and only begs to be plucked a little by the fingers that wear large diamonds.

"But all these enchantments vanish when it becomes a question of a wife.

A wife means regular habits and respectability. The two most costly things I know of. Your scampish single-handed valet, who is out all day on his own affairs, and only turns up at all at some noted time in your habits, is not one tenth as dear as that old creature with the powdered head and the poultice of cravat round his neck, who only bows when the dinner is served, and grows apoplectic if he draws a cork.

"It's the same in everything! Your house must be taken, not because it is convenient or that you like it, but because your wife can put a pretentious address on her card. It must be something to which you can tag Berkeley Square, or Belgravia. In a word, a wife is a mistake, and, what is worse, a mistake out of which there is no issue."

Thus reasoning and reflecting--now, speculating on what he should feel--now, imagining what "the world" would say--he again sat down, and once more read Over Mr. Walter's last will and testament.

CHAPTER VI. SOPHY'S LETTER.

IN something over a week the post brought two letters for the fellow-travellers. Loyd's was from his mother--a very homely affair, full of affection and love, and overflowing with those little details of domestic matters so dear to those who live in the small world of home and its attachments.

Calvert's was from his Cousin Sophy, much briefer, and very different in style. It ran thus:

"Dear Henry--"

"I used to be Harry," muttered he.

"Dear Henry,--It was not without surprise I saw your handwriting again. A letter from you is indeed an event at Rocksley.

"The Miss Grainger, if her name be Adelaide (for there were two sisters) was our nursery governess long ago. Cary liked, I hated her. She left us to take charge of some one's children--relatives of her own, I suspect--and though she made some move about coming to see us, and presenting 'her charge,' as she called it, there was no response to the suggestion, and it dropped. I never heard more of her.

"As to any hopes of a.s.sistance from papa, I can scarcely speak encouragingly. Indeed, he made no inquiry as to the contents of your letter, and only remarked afterwards to Cary that he trusted the correspondence was not to continue.

"Lastly, as to myself, I really am at a loss to see how my marriage can be a subject of joy or grief, of pleasure or pain, to you. We are as much separated from each other in all the relations of life, as we shall soon be by long miles of distance. Mr. Wentworth Graham is fully aware of the relations which once subsisted between us,--he has even read your letters--and it is at his instance I request that the tone of our former intimacy shall cease from this day, and that there may not again be any reference to the past between us. I am sure in this I am merely antic.i.p.ating what your own sense of honourable propriety would dictate, and that I only express a sentiment your own judgment has already ratified.

"Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,

"Sophia Calvert."

"Oh dear! When we were Sophy and Harry, the world went very differently from now, when it has come to Henry and Sophia. Not but she is right--right in everything but one. She ought not to have shown the letters. There was no need of it, and it was unfair! There is a roguery in it too, which, if I were Mr. Wentworth Graham, I'd not like. It is only your most accomplished sharper that ever plays 'cartes sur table.'

I'd sorely suspect the woman who would conciliate the new love by a treachery to the old one. However, happily, this is his affair, not mine. Though I could make it mine, too, if I were so disposed, by simply reminding her that Mr. W. G. has only seen one half, and, by long odds, the least interesting half, of our correspondence, and that for the other he must address himself to me. Husbands have occasionally to learn that a small sealed packet of old letters would be a more acceptable present to the bride on her wedding morning than the prettiest trinket from the Rue de la Paix. Should like to throw this sh.e.l.l into the midst of the orange-flowers and the wedding favours, and I'd do it too, only that I could never accurately hear of the tumult and dismay it caused.

I should be left to mere imagination for the mischief and imagination no longer satisfies me."

While he thus mused, he saw Loyd preparing for one of his daily excursions with the photographic apparatus, and could not help a contemptuous pity for a fellow so easily amused and interested, and so easily diverted from the great business of life--which he deemed "getting on"--to a pastime which cost labour and returned no profit.

"Come and see 'I Grangeri' (the name by which the Italians designated the English family at the villa), it's far better fun than hunting out rocky bits, or ruined fragments of masonry. Come, and I'll promise you something prettier to look at than all your feathery ferns or drooping foxgloves."

Loyd tried to excuse himself. He was always shy and timid with strangers.

His bashfulness repelled intimacy and so he frankly owned that he would only be a bar to his friend's happiness, and throw a cloud over this pleasant intercourse.

"How do you know but I'd like that?" said Calvert with a mocking laugh.

"How do you know but I want the very force of a contrast to bring my own merits more conspicuously forward?"

"And make them declare when we went away, that it is inconceivable why Mr. Calvert should have made a companion of that tiresome Mr. Loyd--so low-spirited and so dreary, and so uninteresting in every way?"

"Just so! And that the whole thing has but one explanation--in Calvert's kindness and generosity; who, seeing the helplessness of this poor depressed creature, has actually sacrificed himself to vivify and cheer him. As we hear of the healthy people suffering themselves to be bled that they might impart their vigorous heart's blood to a poor wretch in the cholera."

"But I'm not blue yet," said Loyd laughing. "I almost think I could get on with my own resources."