Rupert Godwin

“VENGEANCE IS MINE.”

After the first wild confusion of that scene in the bank parlour there was a pause, a brief silence, which Jacob Danielson was the first to break.

“When you flung your victim to his dark hiding-place in the cellar under the northern wing,” said the old clerk, addressing himself slowly and deliberately to his employer, “you might as well have taken the trouble to ascertain that he was really dead. It would have been a more business-like mode of proceeding, and I am surprised that you, a business man, should have failed to adopt it: but, perhaps, your courage failed you at the last moment, and you had not sufficient firmness to remain by the body of your victim, and to listen for the last pulsation of the heart which you had done your best to put to silence. However this may have been, you left your work half undone. And when I returned to Wilmingdon Hall, after contriving to miss my train, I returned in time to save at least the life of your intended victim. I had suspected some sinister motive in your desire to get rid of me, and I managed to lose the train, after having dismissed your servant. I was thus free to hurry back to the park, and to re-enter the grounds unobserved. I made my way rapidly towards the house, and the nearest way took me past the north garden. In one of the windows of the deserted wing I saw a light shining through the chinks in the shutters. Heavy and ponderous though those shutters are, they were not strong enough to conceal the secrets which you would have hidden behind them. I crept softly towards the window, and should have looked in through the chink, but the post of spy was already occupied. An old man, a gardener, was standing with his face flattened against the window, peeping into the room. When I saw this I crept away as quietly as I had approached, and went round to the occupied portion of the house. I went to the dining-room, where I took the opportunity to secure that deposit-receipt which has just proved so valuable to Mrs. Westford. Five minutes after I had seated myself, you made your appearance. Your face, your manner, both told me that something terrible had happened in that deserted room, in spite of your wonderful self-command. When you left me, I went straight to the window where I had seen the light. There the old gardener was lying senseless on the ground. I stooped over him, and found that he was in a kind of swoon. Then I felt convinced some hideous crime had been committed in that room, and that the witness of it had fallen senseless, horror-stricken with the awful sight he had beheld. I peeped into the room, but I could see nothing. All was dark. Then I remembered that during my earliest visits to the Hall I had heard of an underground passage leading from the grotto to the cellars of the northern wing, and communicating by means of a staircase with the ground floor. I determined on groping my way into this passage, and from thence to the room where I felt convinced a horrible deed had been done. I returned to the house, and waited in the dining-room till you had gone to your own apartments. I then went to the servants’ hall, where I procured a dark lantern, under pretence of searching for a purse I had lost in coming through the grounds; and, armed with this, I reached the grotto unobserved, entered the subterranean passage, followed its windings to the cellars, and then groped along to the cellar staircase, intending to penetrate to the room above. But I had no occasion to do so, for at the foot of the cellar-stairs I stumbled upon the body of the captain yonder.

“I tore open his waistcoat, which was soaked with blood; and when I felt for the beating of the heart, a faint throb told me that the murderer had not completed his work. I found the wound, and staunched it with a woollen handkerchief from my neck; then of a heap of straw and rubbish which I discovered in a corner I made a kind of bed, on which I laid the unconscious victim of an intended assassination.

“Having done this, I hurried back to the gardens, returned to the house, allowed one of the servants to conduct me to my room; and to all appearance retired for the night. But no sooner was the household wrapped in slumber, or at least in silence—for surely one member of that household could have slept little that night—no sooner was all quiet, than I crept from my room, left the house, and went to a little inn in the neighbourhood where I was known, and where I hired a horse and gig on the plea of having lost the mail-train, and wanting to drive to London in the dead of the night rather than miss an early appointment on the following morning.

“With this horse and gig I returned to the park, and drove to a sheltered spot near the entrance of the grotto. Then the most difficult part of my work had to be done. Alone and unaided I half carried, half dragged the unconscious sea captain from the cellar to the place where I had left the gig. I contrived to fasten him securely in the vehicle, and then drove at a walking pace to a house I had known in the past, and where I was sure of finding easy admission for my almost lifeless charge.

“That house was the Retreat; a private lunatic asylum, kept by a man whose life I knew to be one long career of charlatanism and villany. There I knew that only one question would be asked: Was I prepared to pay for the care of the patient? If my answer to that inquiry was satisfactory, all would be settled.

“I drove slowly along the lonely road leading to the Retreat. I met only one solitary horseman, and he asked me if my friend sitting in a heap at the bottom of the gig was ill or drunk. I answered, ‘Drunk,’ and passed on without further question.

“Arrived at the Retreat I rang up the attendants, and was received by Dr. Wilderson Snaffley, who rose from his comfortable bed to see me. I told him that my charge was a relation who had stabbed himself in a fit of lunacy, induced by delirium tremens; and that in order to keep his infirmity a profound secret, I had brought him straight to the Retreat, where I knew every effort would be made to save his life. I said that I was prepared to pay liberally for his maintenance.

“That was quite enough. Dr. Wilderson Snaffley examined his still unconscious patient; but he did not ask me any troublesome questions, nor did he even remark that people do not usually stab themselves in the back when they endeavour to commit suicide.

“You will ask me, Clara Westford, why I acted thus—why I did not denounce the would-be assassin, and restore Harley Westford to the wife and children who loved him. I answer you, that one fatal passion had warped my nature, and transformed me into something between a madman and a drunkard. It pleased me to think that, by keeping the secret of Mr. Godwin’s crime, I should be revenged upon you, Clara; for I had loved you, and I believed that my presumptuous love had been revenged by you with the cruel pride of a woman who thinks it sport to trample on the heart of the plebeian wretch who dares to adore her. I sought for power over Rupert Godwin—for since my blighted youth had passed into premature old age, avarice had been the ruling passion of my life; and, possessed of the secret of Harley Westford’s supposed murder, I knew that I should have unlimited command over the purse of my employer. Thus a double motive prompted me to secrecy. And for more than a year I have kept my secret, disturbed by no pang of remorse, moved by no contrition, until destiny brought me once more face to face with the woman I had once so fatally loved.

“Then all at once the ice melted, the hardened nature softened, and I could no longer endure the thought of what I had done.

“I sought you out, Mrs. Westford, and from your own lips I discovered how deeply I had wronged your noble nature. From that moment my course lay clear before me: the only atonement in my power was to undo what I had done. For that purpose I went to the madhouse where your husband was hidden. A few words to Dr. Wilderson Snaffley, informing him that circumstances were altered with me, and that I was no longer able to pay for my patient, were quite sufficient.

“The learned and conscientious physician discovered immediately that his charge was quite well, and perfectly able to enter the world again. I was thus enabled to quit the Retreat with Captain Westford as my companion. But we were obliged to leave behind us a patient whom we should have been glad to bring with us. That patient, Mrs. Westford, is no other than your son, to whom the finger of Providence had indicated the secret of his father’s attempted murder, and whom Mr. Godwin incarcerated in a prison which was intended to entomb him until he was transferred from that living grave to a more comfortable resting-place in some obscure churchyard. Had Lionel Westford been placed in any other lunatic asylum than the Retreat, you might have had some difficulty in discovering his prison house. Fortunately, he was confided to the care of Dr. Wilderson Snaffley and father and son met beneath that gentleman’s hospitable roof.—A strange meeting, was it not, Rupert Godwin, between the son who believed his father had been murdered, and the father who never thought to look upon a familiar face again?

“But Providence sometimes brings about very strange meetings. Lionel Westford’s release from imprisonment under Dr. Snaffley’s tender care will be easily managed, I daresay. The doctor will not be particularly anxious to retain his patient when he discovers that his wealthy patron is a bankrupt and a felon.—That is all I have to tell, Captain Westford; it is for you to seek redress for the wrongs that have been done to you and yours. An aggravated attempt at assassination is a crime rather heavily punished even by our mild legislature.”

“Stop!” cried Harley Westford, holding up his hand, with a warning gesture; “‘Vengeance is mine’ saith the Lord. The law of the land will have very little hold upon that man. Look at Rupert Godwin’s face. Send for a doctor, some one.” There was sudden confusion and alarm. The clerk loosened his employer’s cravat, while Captain Westford opened the door of the outer office and despatched a messenger post haste for the nearest surgeon.

Rupert Godwin had fallen back in his chair a lifeless, shapeless heap of stricken mortality. The fevered, unresting brain, so long kept on the rack, had succumbed at last to a paralytic shock of an aggravated character. For weeks past the banker had been subject to convulsive starts and unwonted nervous sensations; but these sensations had affected him at long intervals, and had been very transient in their nature. They had therefore caused no alarm in the breast of the unhappy wretch who had so many other reasons for fear.

The shock of Danielson’s demand, of Harley Westford’s reappearance, the overwhelming sense of failure and ruin, had been too much for even that vigorous intellect. The chord, so long strained to its utmost tension, snapped suddenly, and Rupert Godwin became a creature whom his worst enemies could afford to pity.

A medical man came in hot haste to the bank parlor, and then another, and another, till there was quite a bevy of solemn-looking gentlemen hovering over the prostrate man. The tidings of Rupert Godwin’s affliction had spread like wildfire; and before his attendants had carried the heavy lifeless form to a sofa in an adjoining room, the fact that the banker had been stricken by paralysis was common talk on ’Change. Those who had prophesied the downfall of his house shrugged their shoulders, and lowered the corners of their mouths ominously.

“This will bring matters to a crisis,” said one.

“How do we know that he hasn’t made away with himself?” asked another.

The medical gentlemen announced that the spark called life was not extinguished, although the other and more subtle flame called consciousness had gone out, never again to illumine this earth for Rupert Godwin.

There was very little hope of his recovery, the doctors said; but their looks and tones implied that there was no hope. The stricken wretch lay with his dim eyes half shut; and his medical attendants said that he might lie thus for hours—or, indeed, for days.

It was even possible that he might continue to live in that miserable state; and thus the Westfords left him to the care of his clerk Danielson.

“He hasn’t a friend in the world, or a creature who ever loved him, except his daughter,” said the clerk; “and even she has deserted him. I’ll look after him somehow or other for the rest of his life. I’ve nothing particular to do with myself or my money, so I may as well take care of him. I must get him away from this place, by hook or by crook; for there may be a run on the bank to-morrow, and when people find out the state of the case they may want to tear Mr. Godwin to pieces.”

In the course of that afternoon the clerk contrived to remove the awful wreck of humanity which had once been his employer. He carried Mr. Godwin to a place of safety. Not to Wilmingdon Hall; for that splendid mansion, with all its treasures, would in all probability fall very speedily into the hands of the officials of the Bankruptcy Court, to be dealt with for the benefit of the banker’s creditors, or to be mysteriously absorbed in the legal costs attendant on his bankruptcy.

The shelter to which Jacob Danielson took his employer was a very humble one. It was a second floor in a little square behind the Borough, where Mr. Danielson had been for some years a lodger.

Here, upon a flock-bed, the banker lay for some dreary days and nights, staring at the bare wall opposite him; and even the man who watched him so closely failed to discover the precise moment in which the vacant stare of idiocy changed to the blindness of death.

Thus closed the existence of a man who had drained the cup of life’s excitements and enjoyments to the very dregs, and who had tasted to the uttermost the bitterness of the drops at the bottom of the chalice. There was an inquest, very quietly conducted, and the usual verdict of “Death from natural causes;” and this was all. The secret of Rupert Godwin’s crimes was known only to his confidential clerk, and those who had suffered so heavily at his hands.

But many knew and lost by his commercial disasters, his reckless speculation, his unjustifiable extravagance, by which the foundations of a once substantial house of business had been undermined, until the whole fabric fell in one mass of ruin. Many an innocent victim suffered—many an impoverished creditor cursed the name of Rupert Godwin.

Let us turn to a brighter picture. Let us turn to that pleasant home on the borders of the New Forest, that quaint old dwelling-place surrounded by picturesque gardens, the beloved home in which Clara Westford had passed all her happy married life.

Once more she could call that dear home her own. Once more she wandered in the well-kept gardens, where the autumn flowers bloomed gaily under a bright October sky—where the rustle of the forest leaves fell upon her ear like a soothing murmur of loving voices, as she walked on the smooth lawn, leaning—O how proudly!—on her husband’s arm. Once more she occupied the pretty rooms, which bore no evidence of a stranger’s occupation, for an old servant of the Westfords had been left in charge of the Grange during Rupert Godwin’s brief hold upon the estate, and the smallest trifles had been held sacred for the love of an exiled house.

She did not return alone with her loved husband. Lionel went with them, and Violet—happy in the society of the father and mother they loved so tenderly.

But the brother and sister soon found another kind of happiness in other society; for in one of their forest walks they came upon a young man sketching, with a beautiful girl dressed in deep mourning by his side.

The girl was Julia Godwin, and the artist was Edward Godwin, the young man whom Violet had known under the name of George Stanmore.

It was to the protection of her brother that Julia had fled, when her father’s presence had become unendurable. Edward Godwin had returned to England after an artistic tour in Belgium, and had established himself again in the little cottage in the New Forest, hoping to meet his promised wife once more among the shadowy walks she had so dearly loved.

His surprise on hearing that the Westfords had left the Grange, and that the estate had become the property of a Mr. Godwin, a banker in Lombard-street, was extreme. He wrote immediately to his sister announcing his whereabouts, and asking her if she could throw any light upon the circumstances under which his father had acquired this new property.

The reply to that letter came in the person of Julia herself. She told her brother that she had left home because that home had become intolerable to her; but he could not extort from her any account of the causes that had made it so. She was loyal to the father whom she had once so dearly loved, whom she still thought of with a passionate regret.

Here, in this quiet haven, the news of her father’s death reached her. That event, which at one time would have been so bitter a calamity for her, seemed now a kind of relief. He was dead—and at rest. He could be called before no earthly tribunal to answer for his crimes. He had gone to be judged by the All-just, and the All-merciful.

If he had but repented—

That was a question which no earthly lips could answer. Julia fondly hoped that repentance had come to the sinner before the closing-in of that dark scene, which she contemplated with unutterable horror.

Strange explanations followed the first surprise of that meeting. The presence of Julia Godwin compelled the revelation of a secret which until this moment the painter had hidden from the woman he loved. He was compelled to tell Violet that his name was not George Stanmore, but Edward Godwin; and that he was the son of that unhappy man whose bankruptcy and death had lately been recorded in all the newspapers.

Violet did not tell her lover that his father had been the cruel enemy of her family—the sole cause of the sad interval of poverty and suffering during which she had been absent from the Grange. The generous girl had not the heart to tell Edward Godwin this; but she received his explanations very coldly notwithstanding.

“I wonder you remember me now, Mr. Godwin,” she said proudly, “for when you saw me last, on the stage of the Circenses, you did not seek to renew your acquaintanceship with me.”

And then Edward’s earnest protestations convinced her in a few moments that he had not recognized her, and that he had only been struck by what he imagined was a most wonderful accidental likeness. After that all went smoothly between the reunited lovers, and they began to talk of how the secret of their love was to be broken to the merchant captain and his wife.

They were alone together under the arching trees; for, by the merest accident of course, Julia and Lionel had strolled one way, while Edward and Violet went the other.

“I can ask for your hand boldly now, Violet dearest,” said Edward Godwin. “Fortune has been very good to me since last we met. My pictures have been successful, both in English and Continental Exhibitions, and I have received very liberal prices for my work. I am growing rich, darling, and I have splendid prospects for the future. I want nothing but a dear little wife to sit beside my easel—a sweet household divinity, whose fair young face will inspire me with all kinds of poetical ideas. My life has been a very hard one, Violet; and when I was reticent as to my own history, it was because the subject was a most painful one. There was bad blood between my father and me. I cannot speak harshly of the dead, and therefore I will say nothing as to the cause of our quarrel. But we did quarrel, and we parted at once, and for ever. I went into the world penniless, and I have lived by my pencil ever since, having sworn to starve sooner than touch a sixpence of my father’s money. There is no spur so sharp as poverty. I have worked hard, and I have been amply rewarded for my work.”

It is needless to linger with these lovers. They walked long under the shadow of those solemn forest trees, and they could have walked there for hours with no sense of weariness, with no consciousness of the monotony of their conversation, though it was very monotonous.

While they lingered in the red westering light, another pair of lovers strolled near them, arm-in-arm. Lionel had declared his affection for Julia, and had won from her the confession that he had been loved almost from the first. But she did not tell him how she had saved his life when he had so nearly fallen a victim to a midnight assassin.

That night Lionel and Violet confessed all to their parents.

The communication was by no means a pleasant one to Harley Westford and his wife. Imagine the countenances of Signor and Signora Capulet, when informed that their sole daughter and heiress has set her affections on the young scion of the Montagues!

It was difficult for Clara Westford to believe that the son of Rupert Godwin could be worthy of any woman’s love, much less of the love of that pearl amongst women, her own idolized daughter.

But idolized children generally have their own way, however irrational their caprices may appear. And after considerable pleading, Violet and Lionel won Clara and her husband to consent to receive Rupert Godwin’s children.

When once this consent had been gained, all the rest was easy. Edward Godwin was not a man to be misunderstood by his fellow-men; and the acquaintance which Harley Westford had so reluctantly begun speedily promised to ripen into friendship. “Is the young man to suffer because his father was a scoundrel?” the sailor asked himself. “That may be the letter of the old Jewish law, but I’m sure it isn’t Christianity. The Teacher who refused to cast a stone at a guilty woman would have been the last to punish her innocent children. Let young Godwin stand upon his own merits; and if I find he’s a good fellow, he shall marry my daughter, in spite of the scar under my left shoulder which bears witness against his father.”

Mrs. Westford had been still less inclined than her husband to look kindly on the children of her merciless enemy; but even she was not inexorable. Julia’s grace and beauty—to say nothing of her evident devotion to Lionel—were quite irresistible; and before long the visitors from the forest cottage were as gladly welcomed at the Grange as any guests who had ever crossed the hospitable threshold.

It was early in the following June, yet quite midsummer weather, when the bells of the little village church pealed gaily for a double wedding.

Two fairer brides have rarely stood before an altar; two nobler bridegrooms seldom pledged the solemn vows which influence a lifetime.

Captain Westford and his wife looked on with eyes that were dimmed by a mist of happy tears. Their own life lay before them, bright and sunny as it had been when they too had stood side by side before the altar of a sacred fane. Might these two young lives, now beginning, be as happy! That was the prayer breathed silently from the heart of husband and wife.

Two pretty little rustic villas arose in the neighbourhood of the Grange. Not the builder’s ideal of Italian-Gothic, with a rickety-looking campanello tower for the stowage of empty crates and servants’ luggage, but trim little Tudor cottages, with broad stone-mullioned windows and roomy porches—a happy blending of the substantial and picturesque.

Edward Godwin’s pencil soon won for him a world-wide fame; but he was known only to the world by the name he had assumed when he first met Violet at the county-ball and in the forest glades.

Lionel, who had always been at heart a painter, followed the profession of his brother-in-law, and in his own style was almost equally successful.

If he had loved art for no other reason, he would have loved it very dearly for the sake of that meeting in the printseller’s shop, when he looked for the first time on the beautiful face of his wife.

And thus the curtain falls upon three happy homes—three united households, in which the days glide smoothly by, across whose threshold the demon Discord never passes; households on which the angels may look with approving smiles—households wherein “Love is lord of all.”

THE END