CHAPTER IX.
Shakspeare.
“And what has become of Mr. Oakley since his late acquisition?” was one of the first questions Lady Latimer asked of Germain. Perhaps the reader may share her ladyship’s curiosity upon that subject, and may wish for more detailed information than Germain had then an opportunity of giving in reply.
It was impossible for any two places to be more different in every respect than those to which Oakley had succeeded by the same event—Rockington Castle and Goldsborough Park; the first of which had been subject to all the caprices arising from the actual presence of its late strange proprietor; the other had enjoyed the benefit of the delegated authority of a more rational agent. If the farms upon the Goldsborough estate, when accidentally vacant, were always in the greatest request amongst agriculturists; if the relations between landlord and tenant were here so well understood as for the two parties to be convinced that their interests were concurrent, not conflicting—this was entirely owing to the excellent management of Mr. Gardner, who conducted affairs in Lord Rockington’s name quite differently from the way in which he would have conducted them himself, and therefore as beneficially as possible. He was indeed one of the best specimens of a practical agriculturist; a perfect knowledge of his subject being joined with an anxious desire to do the best for his employer, an endeavour that was more likely to be successful, as he was free from the blind ignorance and self-interest combined which are apt to defeat their own object. The park was perfectly well kept up, as were the rest of the grounds, gardens, &c.; and the house, though a small one, had always been used by Mr. Gardner as his own residence, was in perfect repair, and fit for immediate habitation.
There was something in all this, which Oakley could not understand; for, as he approached the place, leaning back in his post-chaise, and brooding over past events and future prospects, the one thing that he had settled in his mind as quite beyond dispute, was, that the uncontrolled agent of such a property as Goldsborough must be a rogue. He had contrived several cunning devices, by which he would detect him if he was a clever rogue, and had rather enjoyed the idea of the summary expulsion he would inflict if he should be a palpable scoundrel.
But, in spite of all this prepossession, there was a frankness in Mr. Gardner’s first abord which puzzled him, till he succeeded in persuading himself that it must arise from the consummate assurance of long-undetected villainy. Having accepted Mr. Gardner’s offer of using his servants, &c. till the arrival of his own establishment, it was still with jaundiced eyes that Oakley witnessed the little comforts of this contented man’s adopted home, all of which he looked upon as so many fraudulent appropriations out of what ought to have been his inheritance. Even Mrs. Gardner’s self-satisfied allusion to her scientific care of the garden, he perverted into a bare-faced acknowledgment that she had made the most of it. In riding the boundaries with Mr. Gardner, the friendly greeting which that gentleman received from every one they met, arising from a long experience of kind and neighbourly offices at his hands, Oakley attributed to the intimacy arising from the common partnership in his spoils.
“That piece of rising ground, with that oak grove upon it facing your house, is freehold property, Mr. Oakley,” said Mr. Gardner; “it would be a very desirable acquisition to you, and is at present upon sale.”
“Not mine? to be sure it ought to be. To whom does it belong?” inquired Oakley.
“The proprietor is an acquaintance of mine; indeed, a sort of connexion of Mrs. Gardner’s.”
“Hum!” said Oakley, who was now convinced he saw through it all.
“The ground is, fairly speaking, worth some more years’ purchase to you than to any one else.”
“Hum!” repeated Oakley.
“Perhaps, as it is shortly to be put up to auction, and the affair therefore presses, you would authorize me to offer, which I could easily do, something more than what, at a fair valuation, it might be worth to an indifferent person.”
“Not the fraction of a farthing, Mr. Gardner,” answered Oakley.
Mr. Gardner, though rather surprised, thought he had done his duty, and dropped the subject, which was never resumed between them. How far Oakley’s suspicious nature was here an advantage to him, will hereafter be seen.
It was in such a state of mind, pampered too with fond indulgence, whilst chewing the cud of such congenial food as twenty years unaudited accounts afford, that Germain found his friend, when Fitzalbert, on his way to Boreton Hall, dropped him at the park-gate. It was no wonder then, that Germain did not prolong his visit beyond the one night he had originally intended, but hastened to rejoin more lively society; and Oakley remained some time longer undisturbed in trying to detect fresh grounds for suspicion.
There were some circumstances, connected with one of the annual items contained in Mr. Gardner’s accounts, which might have been supposed to require explanation even by a more candid or careless auditor than Oakley. This was a yearly sum of 500l. mentioned as paid over by order of Lord Rockington to a banker at a neighbouring country town. Now it so happened that this banker was also a connexion of Mrs. Gardner’s, which was found out by Oakley from his bearing the same name with the gentleman who owned the freehold. Mr. Gardner, however, protested utter ignorance of the purpose to which the money was applied, the banker never having communicated with him on the subject. But, on the other hand, he could produce no other authority for the annual payment, than that he had been desired by his predecessor to continue what he represented himself as having been ordered by Lord Rockington to do. He had once endeavoured to obtain from Lord Rockington more precise instructions on this, as well as other subjects, but the only reply he received consisted of these words:—“Communicate with me only in figures—not letters.” “As to this payment, it will now be my duty,” said Mr. Gardner, “to obtain for you all the information in my power—to-morrow I should have had to make a quarterly remittance of it. I will at the same time make the necessary inquiries.”
“Stop it, and say nothing. If this leads to explanation, ’tis well; if not, I shall know what to infer.”
This happened a few days previous to Germain’s visit. A few days more had passed after it: nothing had been heard with regard to the stopped annuity, and Oakley was beginning to feast upon the certainty that he had detected Mr. Gardner in bare-faced appropriation, when a packet, in a woman’s hand, was forwarded to him from Messrs. Maxwell’s office, and it was with no small surprise that he read as follows:—
“It is only from an anxious desire to ensure a patient perusal of what I have to communicate, and from no vain hope of avoiding the bitter humiliation which this act must entail upon the writer, that I have many times thrown down my pen dissatisfied with any attempt even at opening the subject. Utterly unknown as I am to you, I feel that you may be as little disposed to believe, as I am to mention as a boast, that if the utter destitution of myself alone was effected by the stoppage of the annuity you have withdrawn, I should a thousand times have preferred a silent acquiescence to saying what I have to say. But it is one of the difficulties of the appeal I have to make to you, that founded as it must be, upon the disclosure of disgraceful facts, I have no right to blend them with the assumption of credit for those better feelings, which under other circumstances, I trust you would not be disposed to refuse.
“The person who is attempting to muster courage sufficient to send you this paper, though the daughter of a general officer in the British army, is not a native of these islands, but of a very different climate, and educated in a very different society from that to which her father’s rank might have entitled her, had he remained at home. It was in one of our distant colonies that I was born, and it was as the idol of its small circle, that I was brought up. I need no further disclaim any vestiges of vanity as to the personal admiration I then excited, than by owning, that it is now twenty years since I first began to overrate their value. I owe no gratitude to that which was the cause, first of my union with a man older than my father, one of the principal government officers of the colony, and afterwards of all my subsequent errors and disgrace.
“But, though with a feeling far removed from pride, I must, (to enable you at all to comprehend what I have to say,) acknowledge that for many giddy years I reigned in undisputed possession of the admiration of all the small society in which I moved. Lord Rockington’s appointment as governor, which followed some political movements which had passed utterly unheeded by me, was an event which seemed likely completely to change the state of society in the settlement. His arrival had been preceded by that of many officers and their wives and daughters, belonging to the enlarged staff which his appointment entailed.
“Amongst these ladies, to my surprise, I found, not only pretensions of declared rivalship, but an air of decided superiority, founded upon their arrival from Europe. You have never seen, you cannot imagine, the rancorous jealousies to which an insulated settlement is subject. There are many virtues honourable to human nature, which are peculiarly found in such a state of society; but it is also impossible to conceive by what trifles the worst passions are there excited.
“The new state of things produced by these recent additions to the society, had almost frenzied my frivolous mind, when the arrival of Lord Rockington himself again completely revolutionized every thing. It pleased him from the first, to single me out as the undisputed leader of the courtly circle by which he was surrounded. What he then was, and how far the undisguised homage of such a man was calculated to fascinate a foolish weak woman, who had never before even seen any one of his distinguished rank and reputation, I will not pretend to plead; there are, if fame be not more than usually false, in more exalted circles, living witnesses of his seductive arts. But, shame upon me! the mere recalling of events so long past, seems to have conjured up with it all those bad feelings I had hoped were for ever eradicated.
“Let me escape any further detail of, or comment upon this part of my subject. I had no excuse; I could not call it love—all the evil passions of my nature, for a while united in their victory over better feelings and principles. The intoxication was short-lived: my husband, who had been absent in a distant part of the colony, abruptly returned. His suspicions were excited, and eagerly confirmed by those whose envy had been kindled by my guilty elevation. My innocent child, my only comfort, was born but to be denounced and disclaimed by its legal parent. My disgrace, of course, immediately followed, and was but the forerunner of the ruin of that distinguished individual, who had rather dazzled my imagination, and triumphed over my passions, than won my heart. My husband was one of the principal instigators of his threatened impeachment: in the excited state of our disorganised society, there were plenty found to back his accusations; whether they were well-founded or not, is out of my power to decide; it is sufficient to remember, that they were successful; and it is but justice to him to say, that even whilst writhing under that degradation, which his proud spirit must have rendered insupportable, the arrangements of that allowance which you have stopped, was the last act which showed sympathy with his kind.
“Now, Mr. Oakley, if in what I have related you have seen any symptom of a weak desire to extenuate my guilt, or to work upon your feelings, by finding out subtle excuses for my conduct—then heed not the earnest appeal I am about to make, not for myself, but for one whom I should not, even after another twenty years of bitter repentance, be worthy to describe as she deserves,—the best, kindest, and most affectionate of daughters. But if you can enter into the bitter feelings of humiliation, with which I have avowed myself to an utter stranger such as I was, then perhaps you will credit the assurance, that the fatal errors of my own early life have not been without their due impression, and that the harrowing recollections derived from them have been but another incitement, to instil better principles into the willing mind of her, who has the misfortune to owe her being to me.
“What the circumstances of her birth were, I am sure you will think I have not done wrong in concealing from my innocent girl. To assume a fictitious name, was a necessary consequence of that concealment. That thus unexplained, she has borne with the utmost cheerfulness, and without ever repining, that life of solitude, to which I have always adhered, is one of the least of her virtues. Accident made her acquainted with a lady, whose friendship her merits obtained her. That at that lady’s request I have allowed her, under her protection, to leave me for a while to mix in that society she is so calculated to adorn, I now feel to have been my greatest error in regard to her; for Helen would never submit to move in the world as a dependent beggar. My only excuse is, that at the time I so permitted her, from the mystery with which your uncle’s affairs have long been conducted, I was ignorant that the provision he had made for his child was not legally settled.
“I have finished my irksome task. I have confined myself, as much as the agitation of my feelings would allow, to a statement of facts. I make no request; but hope that at least you will understand the motive of this intrusion by her, who has long been known only as
“Emily Mordaunt.”
This appeal was, on many accounts, peculiarly calculated to excite Oakley’s sympathy. Candour was a quality, the existence of which he was often inclined to dispute, but that once acknowledged, no one was more ready to do justice to its value. The utter absence of any attempt at self-justification on the part of Mrs. Mordaunt, which in her case arose spontaneously from the habitual discipline of a contrite spirit, would, even if only artfully assumed, have been the best method to win his favourable attention.
The idea too, of scrupulously attending to the wishes of his late uncle, would at the present moment, independent of any other consideration, have been one of the most powerful incentives to action. He wished in person to have explained, and apologised to Mrs. Mordaunt for the temporary stoppage of the annuity, but on communicating through Messrs. Maxwell his desire to do so, he found that it was an effort she wished to be spared.
He lost no time however, in directing that the settlement should be made legally binding on himself, and grumbled not a little at the delay in the execution of his orders, caused by the crampt movements of his lawyer’s fingers, in whose hands the most volatile quill ever plucked from the feathered tribe, would have lost all its former winged properties. Certain it is, that his better feelings had been roused by the appeal that had been made to them. He recurred with satisfaction to the part it had enabled him to act; and whilst he remained in his present solitude, even in the midst of a doubtful “dot and carry one” in a disputed account, an indistinct vision would sometimes cross him of a figure, in whose features the fine outlines of his uncle’s portrait were softened into feminine loveliness, and whose gentle eyes beamed with gratitude to her benefactor.