CHAPTER LXVIII.—LEWIS OUT-GENERALS THE GENERAL, AND THE TRAIN STOPS.
Lewis’s recovery was not retarded by his imprudent visit to the Palazzo Grassini; and Frere had the satisfaction, ere many weeks elapsed, of perceiving that he was strong enough to render their return to England practicable. Accordingly, the “Giaour” pictures and the sketch of Annie and Faust were carefully packed (Lewis having determined to retain them as mementos of the eventful portion of his career which led to their execution), old Antonelli received a present of money sufficient to enable him to carry out the darling wish of his heart—viz., to bestow upon his son the education of a painter; and Lewis and Frere, having wound up their affairs in Venice, quitted that city, which, filled with a rabble of revolutionary demagogues and their dupes, had become no longer a desirable place of residence. The friends reached England without any adventures worthy of record; and Rose was compensated for many a weary hour of anxiety and suspense by her joy in welcoming her brother, and learning from his lips the unmitigated satisfaction with which he had heard of her engagement to Richard Frere; and how that “glorious fellow” had redoubled all his former obligations to him by his sound advice and tender and judicious nursing. If for a moment Frere could have regretted the part he had played, the loving smile of warm approval with which Rose received him would have compensated him for any far greater expenditure of time and trouble. But Lewis had much to tell, which gave rise to very different emotions in his auditor; and Rose, as she grieved for the untimely fate of poor Jane Hardy, and shuddered at the awful retribution which had overtaken her betrayer, breathed a silent thanksgiving that her brother had been restrained from any deed of violence, to which his impetuous disposition, keen sensibilities, and quick sense of injury might have impelled him. Lewis had also something to hear as well as to communicate.
Mrs. Arundel, in her spirit of opposition to the artless and bereaved relict of the late Colonel Brahmin, had carried her flirtation with that victim of literary ambition, Dackerel Dace, Esq., to such a pitch, that when the blighted barrister determined to resign his destiny altogether in favour of matrimony, and made her an offer of his limp hand, flabby heart, and five thousand a year to give piquancy and flavour to the tasteless and insipid “trifle” he tendered for her acceptance, that volatile matron felt that she had committed herself too deeply to retract, and that, setting off the money against the man, the bargain after all might not be such a bad one, and so said “Yes.” Rose disliked the match greatly, and fearing Lewis would do so still more strongly, ventured upon a mild remonstrance; but when once she had taken a thing into her head, Mrs. Arundel was very determined, and Rose gained nothing but an intimation, half earnest, half playful, that as she (Mrs. Arundel) had not interfered with her daughter when she chose to engage herself to Ursa Major, she expected the same forbearance (and she emphasised the vile pun most unmistakably) to be exercised towards her and her odd fish, by which nickname she irreverently paraphrased the ichthyological appellation of her “future.”
Lewis, as Rose had feared, was both hurt and annoyed at this fresh and convincing proof of his mother’s volatile and worldly nature, but there was nothing in the connection to justify his taking measures to break off the match; Mrs. Arundel was perfectly free to do as she pleased, and competent to decide her own course in life; so after one conversation with her on the subject, the nature of which may be gathered from the result, he left the affair to take its own course. His first step on reaching London was to seek an interview with his legal adviser; their conference proving satisfactory, eventuated (to use an affected but expressive word) in sending for a patent cab, wherein Lewis ensconced himself, in company with a small lawyer and a large blue bag, and the trio drove to Park Crescent.
The feelings with which Lewis once again stood within the library of General Grant’s mansion—that library where he had first been engaged to act as poor Walter’s tutor—the chamber into which he and Annie had been shown on the night when he had rescued her from insult in the crush-room of the opera—the night of the unhappy Mellerton’s suicide—may well be imagined. Then he had been poor, friendless, in the situation of a dependant, and made to feel that situation, alike by the open insults of Lord Bellefield and the frigid courtesy of the General and Miss Livingstone, his youth, his inexperience, sensitive disposition, and proud, impassioned nature rendering all these trials doubly galling to him; while, still more to embitter his lot, came that “sorrow’s crown of sorrow,” his hopeless attachment to Annie. Now heir to an ancient and honourable name and an ample fortune, his affection returned by her he loved, his rival swept from his path without his having to reproach himself with participation in the act which wrought his downfall, his mind strengthened, his principles raised, and his faults diminished, if not eradicated, by the struggle he had undergone, and above all, his soul fortified by the recollection that, through God’s grace, he had been enabled, at the turning-point of his career, to sacrifice everything rather than sin against his Maker’s law, how different was his position! He received a moderately cordial welcome from General Grant, which tepid reception was occasioned by a conflict in the mind of that noble commander, between his strong regard for Lewis, a sense of the obligations he lay under to him, and an uncomfortable recollection of his attachment to Annie, together with the moral impossibility of allowing his daughter to marry a man whose present income consisted of the savings of an ex-tutorship, and whose prospects embraced the doubtful gainings of a professional artist; Lewis perceived his embarrassment, and rightly conjectured its cause, which it was the object of his visit to remove. But General Grant’s cold imperturbability had caused him so much annoyance in bygone hours, that a slight spice of what the French term esprit malin actuated him, and under its influence he began, after a few desultory remarks—
“It may possibly not have escaped your mind, General, that during a conversation I had the honour to hold with you before I finally quitted Broadhurst, I mentioned to you my devoted attachment to Miss Grant.”
The General bowed in token of assent, but the cloud upon his brow grew darker. Not heeding this, Lewis continued—
“I remember expressing myself somewhat strongly against certain conventional prejudices relating to inequality of position, which opposed an effectual bar to the realisation of my wishes. I was young and inexperienced then—I have since become wiser in the ways of the world, and am perfectly aware that, in speaking as I did on that occasion, I alike wasted my words and your valuable time.”
He paused; and the General, who had been considerably puzzled during the speech to make out what his companion might be aiming at, settled, to his own satisfaction, that the increased knowledge of human nature to which Lewis alluded had shown the young man the folly of which he had been guilty, and that this speech was intended as an apology—nothing could be more respectful and correct. Accordingly the cloud vanished, as in his most gracious manner he replied, “Sir, your observations do you credit. Pray set your mind at rest on this subject; fortunately my daughter never had the slightest suspicion of your feelings towards her; and for my own part, I have long ago dismissed the affair from my recollection; and you may rest assured that in our future intercourse the subject shall never again be broached between us.”
As the General alluded to his daughter’s happy ignorance of Lewis’s attachment a slightly ironical smile curled that young gentleman’s handsome mouth; repressing it instantly, he replied with a calm, almost nonchalant air, “I scarcely see how that can be accomplished, General Grant, as the object of my visit here to-day is to make you a formal proposal for your daughter’s hand!”
If Lewis had suddenly risen from his chair, and with the full power of his returning strength had hurled that article of furniture at General Grant’s head, it might have knocked him down more literally than the foregoing speech, but, figuratively, nothing could have done so. For a minute or two he appeared utterly unable to frame a reply; then, drawing himself up to a degree suggestive of a telescopic conformation, he began in an awful tone of voice, “Sir, you have astonished me—nay, more than that, sir, you have disappointed me—very greatly disappointed me. I had hoped better things of you, sir; I had hoped, from the early promise you evinced, that your judgment and good sense would, when matured and strengthened by a little more knowledge of the world, have enabled you to conquer your strangely misplaced attachment—would, in fact, have saved me from the painful situation in which you have—to which you have—that is—you would have saved yourself (you must not blame me, sir, if the truth sounds unpalatable) the humiliation of a refusal.”
“Then am I to understand that you unhesitatingly reject my suit?” inquired Lewis, something of the old stern look coming across his features.
“Most unequivocally and decidedly,” was the concise reply.
“It would have been more courteous, and therefore more in accordance with General Grant’s usual conduct towards those whom he considers beneath him in the social scale, to inquire whether any, and if so, what amelioration might have taken place in my future prospects to have induced me to hazard so bold a step ere my proposal was thus unmistakably declined,” observed Lewis in a marked yet respectful tone of displeasure; “it will, however, make no difference in my intentions, as when I shall have obtained your answers to a few important questions, and explained to you my object in making them, it is possible you may view my conduct in a different light.”
The General, who grew taller and stiffer every moment, merely acknowledged this speech by an inclination of the head, so slight as to be scarcely perceptible; and Lewis continued—
“The late Sir Hugh Desborough, Walter’s grandfather, was, I believe, your intimate friend?”
“Bless my soul, yes, sir; we served together in India, were for six years in the same regiment, and lived as if we had been brothers. Why do you ask such extraordinary questions?” exclaimed the General, startled completely out of his dignity.
“Because, in that case, you are probably well acquainted with the circumstances of his family history, and can set me right if I state them incorrectly,” replied Lewis, upon whom the mantle of the General’s cast-off dignity appeared suddenly to have fallen. “Sir Hugh had two sons, I believe; the elder married imprudently, quarrelled with his father, who refused to receive the lady he had espoused, and severing all family ties, lived abroad under a feigned name, and was believed to have died without issue. The second son was Walter’s father, and Walter inherits the baronetcy in default of male issue of the elder son.”
He paused, and the General observed, “You are correct in your facts, sir, but to what does all this lead?”
“That you will be better able to perceive, sir, when I inform you that I am prepared to prove, indisputably, and to your full satisfaction, the following additional particulars. Sir Hugh’s eldest son, Captain Desborough——”
“Right; he was captain in the ——th Lancers, and threw up his commission when he chose to live abroad. It was said he entered the Austrian army, and attained the same rank in that service,” interrupted the General.
“He did so,” resumed Lewis, who spoke in the same calm, unimpassioned voice which he had used throughout the interview, though to any one who knew him well it would have been perceivable that he did so by the greatest effort; “but those who believed that he died abroad, and without male issue, were misinformed: he died in England, in the spring of 18——, and left (besides a daughter) one son, who is still living.”
“Left a son! why he would be heir to the title and estates instead of Walter. Where is he, sir? who is he?” exclaimed the General impetuously.
Lewis rose, drew himself up to his full height, advanced slowly till he stood face to face with the General, and then, fixing his piercing glance upon him, said, “He now stands before you, General Grant, and asks you whether, when he has established his rights before the eyes of the world, you will again refuse him your daughter’s hand?”
Reader, the only little bit of mystery in our story (if indeed it has presented any mystery at all to your acuteness) is now cleared up; and the interest ended, the sooner the tale itself arrives at a conclusion the better. But for the satisfaction of the unimaginative, the strong-minded women and practical men of the world, who cannot rest assured that two and two make four till they have counted it on their fingers, we will write a few more last words, winding up the various threads of this veracious history.
In his interview with General Grant, Lewis had only stated that which he was fully prepared to prove; and when the lawyer and his blue bag (not that lawyers ever do carry blue bags anywhere but in farces at the minor theatres, or those still more “unreal mockeries,” the pages of modern novels) were called in to assist at the conference, the following facts were elicited:—
The packet of letters which Lewis found amongst Hardy’s papers, and which gave him the first intimation that he, and not poor Walter, was heir to the title and estates of Desborough, had been written by Captain Arundel, or, as his name really was, Desborough, to his younger brother, Walter Desborough (the father of the poor idiot, who was in fact first cousin to Lewis); the object with which these letters were written being to bring about a reconciliation between Sir Hugh and his eldest son—Walter Desborough having undertaken the office of mediator. In order to do this, it was first of all necessary to disabuse Sir Hugh’s mind of an idea that Captain Desborough’s marriage was not valid and that the children were illegitimate; for this purpose the wedding certificate was enclosed (proving that he had been married in his own name and by a properly constituted authority), together with certificates of the baptism of Rose and of Lewis. The letters also contained an account of his having taken the name of Arundel, and his reasons for so doing; in fact, without going into minutiae, the papers afforded complete evidence legally to establish the identity of Captain Desborough and Captain Arundel, and to render Lewis’s claim to the baronetcy indisputable. To account for their having been found among Hardy’s papers, it must be borne in mind that Walter Desborough was the scoundrel who first roused the evil nature in that misguided man by eloping with his wife. Hardy, be it remembered, followed the guilty pair, and assaulted the betrayer of his honour to such good effect as to confine him to his bed for months; his companion in crime returned to her father’s house, and died shortly after giving birth to the unfortunate Miles.
When she returned to her father, she brought with her a writing-case, in which were letters she had received from her seducer previous to her elopement; in this desk, for convenience of travelling, Walter Desborough had placed papers of his own, and amongst others, the letters, etc., which he had shortly before received from his brother. Long ere he recovered from the effects of Hardy’s chastisement he had forgotten where he had placed these papers, and Hardy never discovering them (he left his home and enlisted as a soldier on his release from the imprisonment the assault entailed upon him), the letters were to all intents and purposes lost, till by a chapter of accidents they fell into the hands of Lewis. The shock which led to Captain Arundel’s (or Desborough, as he should rightly have been called) sudden death was caused by reading an account of his father, Sir Hugh’s demise, in the newspaper. The clue Messrs. Jones & Levi had gained was from a shopman in the public library in which Captain Arundel had been sitting when he first became aware of his father’s decease, who gathered, from an involuntary exclamation he made at the moment, that Sir Hugh Desborough’s death was the subject which had so much excited him; this shopman had been a clerk of Messrs. Jones & Levi, and learning in their employ that knowledge was sometimes money as well as power, sold them for a couple of sovereigns the information he had acquired, giving at the same time an account of the strange death of Captain Arundel; hence their subsequent application to Lewis.
The evidence being so clear and full, Lewis had little difficulty in establishing his claim, more especially as General Grant, convinced of its justice, did not attempt to resist it on Walter’s behalf. The poor fellow himself could not be made to comprehend his change of fortune; but he did comprehend, to his inexpressible delight, that for some reason or other he was always to live with his dear Mr. Arundel, who, when months had gone by and arrangements made which he neither understood nor heeded, took him to a grand house of his own, where Faust was waiting to receive them in a great state of boisterous tail-wagging affection; and when Faust, having licked them all over, and having made them damp, dusty, and rumpled in the excess of his love, had quite done with them and gone back to a large bone on the drawing-room rug, and Lewis placing his arm round Walter’s neck, had whispered to him that he was never to go away any more, and that he hoped before very long Annie would come and live with them, Walter felt sure he had never known what it was to be quite happy till then, which fact he afterwards communicated to Faust in the strictest confidence.
Lewis’s assertion in regard to Annie was not based on mere conjecture; for General Grant—albeit he felt that, in the interview we have lately recorded between himself and Lewis, he had been decidedly out-generalled—did not again reject his late tutor’s proposal for his daughter’s hand. On the contrary, with the usual self-knowledge of worldly elderly people (that is, of those who, nine times out of ten, dictate the actions, and influence for weal or woe the future of the young and generous-hearted), the moment he became convinced that Lewis was about to inherit a baronetcy and an income little short of £10,000 a year, he contrived to persuade himself that when his first surprise had been passed, and he had become aware how deeply his daughter’s happiness was involved, he should certainly have allowed her to unite herself with Sir Lewis Desborough under his former phase of a precarious portrait-painter. But if we had been Sir Lewis, we should have felt heartily glad we had not been forced to rely on such a very “forlorn hope.”
Rose, no longer Arundel, did not enjoy the name of Desborough many weeks, for although she had particularly desired to be married on the same day as Lewis and Annie, she yet yielded the point when Ursa Major, hearing that General Grant would not allow his daughter’s wedding to take place till a year after the death of Lord Bellefield, grew so outrageous that Rose was forced to marry him out of the way, in order to prevent him from snapping and growling at every one that came near him. But this was Richard Frere’s last bearish episode; for constant association with Rose softened his little asperity of temper, which, having arisen solely from the unloved and unloving existence he had been forced by circumstances to lead, disappeared in the sunshine of a happy home.
Lord Ashford did not long survive the loss of his eldest son, and Charley Leicester, the portionless younger brother, with “a good set of teeth and nothing to eat,” is now a highly respectable peer of the realm, with a rent-roll to be computed by tens of thousands. Happy in the affection of his wife and children (for “Tarley” has already had two successors to dispute the chance of being “spoiled by papa, only that mamma won’t let him”), Charles, Lord Ashford, has but one trouble in life, though that unfortunately appears likely to prove an increasing one—viz., that those confounded fellows, Schneider & Shears, won’t make his waistcoats to fit him as they used to do, they are all too tight round the waist—and Schneider & Shears bear the blame meekly, having only last week discharged an injudicious foreman, who had been rash enough to declare that their excellent customer, Lord Ashford, was growing stout. For a short time the Countess Portici resided with her brother and sister-in-law, Alessandro having obligingly got himself knocked on the head in the cause of liberty, the reversion of this popular watchword being about the only legacy he bequeathed to his young, interesting, and not particularly disconsolate widow, who, having sown her romance, replaced the handsome Italian by a rich old French nobleman, Le Marquis de Carosse-Tranquille, irreverently translated by Bracy, who is still a bachelor and makes more puns than ever, into “My Lord Slow Coach”—a title which the mental incapacities of that venerable foreigner rendered unpleasantly appropriate.
The mighty Marmaduke de Grandeville purchased with his wife’s money a large estate in ————shire, which had belonged to his family some five hundred years before; he has since instituted a set of regulations for his tenantry, formed on the model of the feudal system, and if he be not prematurely suffocated by his own greatness, bids fair to “add a new lustre to the noble name which—ar—ahem!” etc., etc.
Mrs. Arundel carried out her design of marrying her “blighted barrister,” and by her liveliness of disposition has done more towards removing the mildew from his mind than could have been expected. As, however, in accordance with her taste, they live chiefly abroad, Lewis and Annie see but little of them.
Miss Livingstone, as she increased in years, grew harsher, stififer, and more frozen than ever, until one bitter winter’s day, happening to catch a slight additional cold, her temperature sank below the point at which animal life could be maintained, and becoming rather stififer and colder than usual, the first half of her patronymic ceased to be any longer appropriate—her last word was a cross one.
General Grant lived to a good old age, improving, under the influence of certain bright-eyed little Desboroughs, into a very amiable grandpapa.
The fate of Miles Hardy still remains a mystery; that he did not die of the wounds received in the death-struggle with Lord Bellefield was ascertained; but whether he perished in the Italian revolution, in which he was known to take an active part, or, as was rumoured, escaped in safety to America, the few who are interested in him have failed to learn.
Annie and Lewis, after their stormy transit along that portion of the RAILROAD OF LIFE in which we have accompanied them, were at length happily united; their future fortunes yet lie hid amid the uncut leaves of the great book of Fate; but one thing we may safely predict—viz., that whatever trials may be in store for them, they will find in their mutual affection a source of constant joy and consolation, of which the lonely-hearted are unhappily ignorant.