Rupert Godwin

A PITILESS CLAIMANT.

After that sad scene in Mrs. Westford’s bedchamber, peace seemed to reign in the household of the Grange.

Bitter and profound was the grief felt by each member of that little household; but the heroic hearts battled bravely with their sorrow. Very little was said of the lost husband and father. Those who had so dearly loved him, who now so deeply lamented him, dared not speak that familiar name; but he reigned supreme in the thoughts of all.

In Clara Westford’s bedchamber a black curtain hung before the sailor’s portrait. Another portrait in the drawing-room was also shrouded in the same manner.

Violet looked very pale and fragile in her deep mourning robes. Her golden hair gleamed with all its old brightness under the black crape bonnet; but there was a settled sadness in the dark blue eyes which had once beamed with such bewitching smiles.

Everyone in the neighbourhood of the Grange now knew that Harley Westford’s ship had been lost, and many friends gathered round the widow to condole with her in the hour of her affliction.

But, alas, their presence only tortured her. She wanted to be alone—alone with her despair, alone with the image of her lost husband. If she had been of the old Catholic faith, she would have gladly fled to the quiet shelter of some convent; where the remainder of her joyless days might have been devoted to charitable works and pious meditations, and where no sound of the clamorous outer world might have reached her weary ears.

She endured her grief in silence, but the anguish was not the less keen. The thought of her loss was ever present to her—not to be put aside even for a moment. She spent days in wandering listlessly from room to room, recalling the happy hours which had been spent with him in each familiar chamber. Everything reminded her of him, every association was torture. Even the society of her children afforded no consolation to her. Their burden was not like hers, she said to herself. The future might bring them new hope; for her all hope, all joy, was buried with the past.

Amongst the friends who came to the Grange was a Mr. Maldon, a retired attorney, who had made a large fortune in Chancery practice, and who was a person of some importance in the neighbourhood.

This gentleman questioned Clara about her husband’s property. What proceedings was she about to take? What was the extent of her children’s fortune?

Then Clara related to him Rupert Godwin’s extraordinary statement about the money advanced by him to Harley Westford, and the title-deeds lodged in his hands as a security for that loan.

“Strange!” exclaimed Mr. Maldon. “I always thought your husband had saved a comfortable little fortune.”

“I thought the same,” answered Clara, “and I think so still. Upon the day of his departure my dear husband told me he was about to deposit a sum of twenty thousand pounds in the hands of Rupert Godwin.”

“And Mr. Godwin denies having received that money?”

“He does; and he further declares my husband to be his debtor. But I will never believe it, unless I see the proof in Harley’s own handwriting.”

“My dear Mrs. Westford, this is all very mysterious,” exclaimed the lawyer. “I don’t see how we can possibly doubt such a man as Mr. Godwin. His position is that of one of the commercial princes of this country. He would not be likely to advance any false assertion with regard to his claims upon your husband.”

“I do not know that. I have a very bad opinion of Rupert Godwin,” Mrs. Westford answered coldly.

“You know him, then?”

“I knew him once, very long ago; and I knew him then to be one of the meanest and worst of men.”

The lawyer looked at Clara with a bewildered stare. “That is very strong language, my dear Mrs. Westford.”

“This matter is one upon which I feel very strongly. I believe that my husband lodged twenty thousand pounds in Rupert Godwin’s hands; and I believe also that Rupert Godwin is quite capable of cheating myself and my children out of that money.”

“Well, well, my dear Mrs. Westford,” exclaimed the bewildered attorney, “I think you allow your prejudices to mislead you in this matter. But in any case, I will make it my business to go up to town and see Mr. Godwin immediately. You shall be protected from any attempted wrong. I liked and respected your husband. I love and admire yourself and your children. And you shall not be cheated. No, no, you shall not be cheated; old Stephen Maldon must indeed be changed, if he can be done by the sharpest banker in London.”

The lawyer lost no time in paying a visit to the City, where he had a long interview with Rupert Godwin. The result of that interview was that the banker showed Stephen Maldon a deed signed by Harley Westford, and duly witnessed by Jacob Danielson, and by John Spence, a lawyer’s clerk. The document bore the date of June 26th, in the previous year.

This deed gave Rupert Godwin full power to take possession of the Grange estate, pictures, plate, furniture, and all appertaining to house and homestead, on or after the 25th March in the present year, unless the sum of six thousand five hundred pounds was paid to him in the interim.

It was now late in January. For only two months more would the widow and orphans be secure in their once happy home.

Mr. Maldon was a very clever lawyer; but he could see nothing in the deed shown him by Rupert Godwin that would justify any dispute of the banker’s claim.

The catastrophe seemed very terrible, but none the less inevitable because it was a hard thing for the widow and orphans. The law does not take widows and orphans into any special consideration. The estate must be abandoned to Mr. Godwin, unless the six thousand five hundred pounds could be paid on or before the ensuing quarter-day.

Mr. Maldon searched amongst the Captain’s papers at the Grange, but he could not find any document calculated to throw the smallest light on the sailor’s affairs. He called upon the Winchester attorney who had made Captain Westford’s will, and carefully studied the wording of that document.

The will left all property, real and personal, to Clara, who was appointed sole executrix. But the will was dated a year earlier than the deed in the possession of Mr. Godwin, and there was no evidence that the sailor was possessed of any property except his Hampshire estate, when he sailed on his fatal voyage.

The lawyer knew that men have often deceived their wives as to their pecuniary position. Might not Harley Westford have invented that story of the twenty thousand pounds, in order to lull those he loved with a false sense of peace and security?

“A generous, impulsive sailor would be the worst possible man of business,” thought Stephen Maldon. “What more likely than that Harley Westford was a ruined man, while all the world fancied him a rich one?”

Meanwhile, the weeks sped by. Soon, very soon, the 25th of March would be at hand.

Clara Westford knew full well that she must expect no mercy from Rupert Godwin.

The heroism of her nature asserted itself, and she prepared herself with calm resignation to leave the home where she had been so unspeakably happy.

She had no money of her own—positively none; for she had fled from her father’s roof to become the wife of Harley Westford, and had been disinherited by him in favour of a grandchild, the daughter of an only son, who died at two-and-twenty years of age, leaving a baby girl, on whom stern Sir John Ponsonby doted with senile fondness.

Never had the sailor heard a hint or a whisper of that cruel slander which had blighted Clara Ponsonby’s youth—never had he heard the association of her name with that of the notorious young roué, Rupert Godwin.

From the moment of her marriage, Sir John Ponsonby’s daughter disappeared entirely from the circles in which she had been once a star of some magnitude.

She had gone to her husband quite penniless, and he had loved her more fondly than if she had been dowered with a million.

Now, when she examined into the state of her affairs, now that she was widowed and alone, and had no longer Harley’s strong arm to lean upon, she found that her circumstances were indeed desperate.

The yearly bills of the tradespeople who supplied the Grange were all unpaid, and amounted to some hundreds. The servants’ wages must also be paid; and to meet these claims Clara Westford had no money whatever.

The little stock of ready-money which her husband had left with her was entirely spent. He had promised to send his wife remittances from time to time, as it had been his habit to do; but he, and any money he possessed, had gone down to the fathomless depths of the ocean with the good ship Lily Queen and all on board her.

Only one resource remained to the widow. Her jewels, the costly gifts of a generous husband, these alone remained, and these must be sold in order that the tradespeople and servants might be paid.

There was a bitter pain in parting with these trinkets, every one of which had a tender association of its own.

But Clara Westford bore this sharp pain with quiet resignation. She arranged her jewel-box, and delivered it to her old friend Mr. Maldon, with instructions for the sale of the jewels at some London auction-room. They were sold, amongst others, at Debenham and Storr’s, as the property of “a lady going abroad.”

She was, indeed, going abroad—abroad into a world that to her inexperienced steps must needs be a trackless wilderness, full of pitiless thorns and brambles.

The valuables thus disposed of realized about four hundred pounds. With this sum Mrs. Westford discharged every claim upon her; leaving a balance of some thirty pounds.

Thirty pounds! And with this pitiful sum the widow and orphans, who had never known what it was to have a wish unfulfilled that money could gratify, were to begin the battle of life!