CHAPTER XXX.
In the mean time----
It is curious to begin a new chapter with such words as, "In the mean time." But yet, dear reader, they are the most comprehensive, and nearly the most important, in any language. They comprise the present infinity, all except one small point, and even that they affect in all its consequences. The man who is an actor in the great world's drama performs his solitary deed; but all the results of that deed are modified by what is doing in the mean time. The man who is a recorder of other men's actions chronicles what is done by one or another; but still, to judge, even in the least, of the essence and the bearings and the consequences of the deeds recorded, we must ask, what was doing in the mean time? A stone rolled out of its place, a casual and thoughtless jest, the sport of a child, a grain of sand wafted by the wind, in the mean time, may overset all that we are labouring to perform, frustrate our best devised schemes, render fruitless our most skilfully performed actions.
Do you doubt it, reader? Listen, then. I will take one of the assertions I have made, and work it out. There was a rich merchant who had an only daughter. He laboured for twenty years to make her a great heiress. His hopes and his happiness were all built upon her. His efforts were all for her, nor were they unwisely directed. He cultivated her mind. He improved her understanding. He enlarged her heart. He looked round for some one who was to make the happiness of her who was his happiness. He was difficult in his choice, careful in his examination, scrupulous in his judgment. With rare good fortune, he found what he sought--a man, noble but not proud, good but not rigid, gentle but not weak: one, moreover, who sought her for herself, not for her wealth; and, to crown all, one whom she could love. The merchant was very happy. No difficulties arose. The marriage-day was appointed; the settlements were drawn up, and he and the bridegroom went to read them over together. They were all that either desired, and the father shook hands with his future son-in-law, expressing his perfect satisfaction. In the mean time, at the very moment when their hands were clasped in each other, a little boy of eight years old, an orphan nephew of the merchant, lighted a piece of paper at the fire in the drawing-room. The paper burnt his fingers, and he let it fall. It dropped upon his clothes; they caught fire, and he screamed. His cries brought his fair cousin rushing from the adjoining room. She caught him in her arms, endeavouring to stifle the flame; her own apparel took fire; and before night the merchant was childless. Let no man ever calculate upon success, for he never can tell what is doing in the mean time.
In the mean time, while Lady Anne Mellent was acting as we have seen in the most remote part of Northumberland, two series of operations were going forward in London, with which it is necessary the reader should be acquainted; but, like the long-eared animal between the two bundles of hay, I am sorely puzzled which to go on with first. We left Lady Fleetwood just ready to go out, after having dismissed Mr. Mingy Bowes. We left Mr. Mingy Bowes just entering the room where Carlo Carlini and the pedlar sat, with a look of surprise upon his countenance.
Which would the reader like to go on with? Let us toss up. If the luck should be against the reader's inclination, he has nothing to do but invert the order of this and the following chapter. Now, then--heads or tails? Lady Fleetwood wins the day!
After Mingy Bowes had taken his departure, the excellent lady sat for a moment or two to recover breath and composure; for both were in a somewhat exhausted state, at the end of her conversation with the respectable person who had just left her. She then rose, rang the bell, and walked out, taking her way direct towards the house of Mr. Scriven. As she went, indeed, she became a good deal agitated. She had previously made up her mind to act most diplomatically with her brother, had arranged all her plans, was fully convinced that she comprehended every particular of Maria's situation, and saw through all her secrets; but her conversation with Mr. Mingy Bowes had shaken and confused all her thoughts, views, and purposes, so that she could lay her hand upon nothing; and when she did find the skein of thought, it was so tangled and twisted that she could not unravel it for the life of her.
In these circumstances it would have been only wise to have gone back quietly to her own house, and left matters exactly as they were, without meddling with them at all: but, as I have shown, the demon of activity was upon her, and spurred her on to help her friends and relations, against their will. So, forward she was carried upon her way, by the power of the locomotive within, till she reached Mr. Scriven's door, and John rapped loud and strong. Then, indeed, she would have given her ears to have got away, or to have found that her brother was out.
No such good fortune awaited her. The door was opened almost immediately; Mr. Scriven was at home, and she was shown up to his drawing-room. He had got three printed papers before him, the London "Gazette," the "Shipping List," and another, I don't know what, besides a little scrap of white paper, not bigger than my hand--for Mr. Scriven was very careful of his paper--on which he was jotting down various cabalistic signs and a number of figures, which nobody in Europe could have made anything of but himself. The result did not seem satisfactory to him, however, for his face was certainly gloomy; and, pointing with the butt-end of his pencil to a chair, he uttered the laconic and incomplete sentence, "In a minute," and then went on with his calculations again.
Lady Fleetwood sat down; and perhaps no worse mode of torture could have been devised by Mr. Scriven than that of making her wait in silence; for she did not employ the interval calmly and orderly, in thinking what she had best do, but suffered pros and cons, and the recollections of everything that had taken place between Maria and herself, and Mr. Bowes and herself, and all the deductions she had formerly drawn, and all the doubts which had since sprung up, and a great many other considerations besides, to settle down upon her like a swarm of bees, and sting her till she was half mad with the irritation.
Her mind was in a very swollen and inflamed state when Mr. Scriven stopped, folded up the paper, and put it in his waistcoat pocket, drew in the nose of his pencil, like the head of a tortoise into its shell, and then, looking straight at Lady Fleetwood, said--
"Well, Margaret, what do you want? I could not come at eleven, for, as you see, I had something else to do; but I suppose your business is important, or you would not hunt me down here."
His uncivil speech gave Lady Fleetwood an opportunity of escape, if she had had wit enough to avail herself of it: and indeed she did make an effort, though it was not a very successful one.
"Oh, I don't want to disturb you at all," she said; "I did not know you were particularly engaged."
Had she stopped there, it would have been all very well; for her brother, in his dry, unpleasant way, was just about to say that he was particularly engaged, and the matter might have dropped. But Lady Fleetwood was a terrible person for standing upon the defensive. She did not at all like the very insinuation of trifling; and she added, unluckily--
"Of course, what I wanted to say was important, or I should not have asked you to come, and should not have come here."
"Well, what is it?" asked Mr. Scriven. "I suppose you have got into some important scrape, and want me to get you out of it."
"Not at all," answered Lady Fleetwood, with an indignant air: "I wished merely to speak with you, not about myself, but about Maria and Colonel Middleton."
"Oh!" said Mr. Scriven, not well pleased at the collocation of his niece's name with that of an object of antipathy; "pray, what has Maria to do with Colonel Middleton, or Colonel Middleton with Maria?"
Now, his bitter, sneering way at times roused even Lady Fleetwood into something like resistance. But, unfortunately, Mr. Scriven knew that such was the case, and knew that in her fits of indignation his sister would tell him all he wanted to hear, more plainly, straightforwardly, and concisely, than she would under any other circumstances--that she was thrown off her guard, in short. He therefore occasionally irritated her upon calculation, for Mr. Scriven was a great calculator. In the present instance, the way in which he put the question, more than the question itself, induced her to reply--
"Now, my dear brother, if you're inclined to hear patiently and act reasonably, I will go on; for I came here with the purpose of persuading you not to struggle against what you cannot resist, but to let Maria seek her own happiness in her own----"
"Now, my dear sister," answered Mr. Scriven, in a somewhat mocking tone, "I am inclined to hear patiently if the story is told briefly, and to act reasonably however it is told; for I think you ought to know that I always act upon reason, and that reason is my sole guide. Thank God, I have neither imagination, nor caprice, nor fine feelings, nor delicate sentiments, nor any of the trash with which your very tender and extremely sensitive people befool themselves. Reason is the only guide I ever applied to, and I don't think she is likely to leave me now. As to letting Maria seek her own happiness in her own way, I have no means of preventing her. If she is going to make a fool of herself, I shall tell her so; and having told her once, I have done my duty, and there the matter ends. She is of age. She can do what she pleases; and I have only to do the best that I can to prevent anything she does from affecting her more injuriously than it otherwise might. Now, then, our ground is clear; what's the matter?"
Lady Fleetwood hesitated, but it was too late to retreat.
"Why," she said--and be it remarked, that whenever woman makes use of the little word "why," as an expletive, she knows she is coming on difficult ground--"Why, I cannot help seeing--that is to say, fancying--that is to say, believing--that Maria has a partiality for Colonel Middleton," said Lady Fleetwood; and during her stammering enunciation of this proposition Mr. Scriven sat provokingly silent and quiet. He did not help her even by a look.
"What makes you think so?" he inquired laconically.
"Oh, many things," answered his sister, taking courage a little.
"Many things!" rejoined Mr. Scriven, "that is the refuge of the destitute. Let me hear one or two of these things."
"Why, you know, my dear brother, one judges from what one sees," said Lady Fleetwood; "women's eyes are sharp in such matters."
Mr. Scriven was well-nigh tempted to condemn women's eyes in the vernacular; but he never swore, or used imprecations of any kind; and therefore he asked, simply--
"But what have the sharp eyes seen?"
"I have seen them talking together, you know, and all that," answered his sister.
"So have I," answered the merchant; "and I have seen her and half-a-dozen young men talking, and all that."
"Well, but then her looks and her manner," said Lady Fleetwood, driven to the wall; "and, besides, I have had some conversation with her upon the subject."
"And she told you that she intended to marry him?" demanded Mr. Scriven; "is not that the plain truth?"
"No, she did not in so many words say that," was the reply; "but she did not deny it, certainly."
Mr. Scriven got up and walked across the room three or four times--not fast, be it remarked--not with the slightest agitation of word, look, or manner; but calmly, considerately, as if he were thinking of the Royal Exchange. He asked himself if that was all his sister had come to tell him--if it was likely she should come upon such an errand. But he knew her well, and was not unaware of her peculiar talent for increasing difficulties by trying to smooth them away. He saw it was likely in her, though unlikely in any one else.
"Well, I suppose, before she does such a thing," he replied at length, "we shall hear something more of this Colonel Middleton. He is wonderfully like Henry Hayley; but the evidence of everything but one's own senses is the other way."
"And if he were Henry Hayley, my dear brother," said Lady Fleetwood, wonderfully revived and encouraged by the progress which from his calm tone she had made. "I am quite sure you would not be disposed to persecute the young man. I, for one, feel quite sure he did not commit the forgery. If it was any one, it was his father, for Henry could have no need for such a sum of money, and we all know poor Mr. Hayley had, for you told me yourself that he was given to gambling."
A new light broke upon Mr. Scriven. His sister did know more than she had said. There was a secret trembling on her lips; he saw that, or at least imagined it; and he knew that to frighten her would drive it back again at once. His course was determined in a moment.
"Very true," he said, thoughtfully; "that never struck me before. Hayley was capable of anything--he was a notorious gambler. What you say is very likely, Margaret; and if that be the case, far from persecuting the young gentleman, I would--but no matter for that--persecuting is quite out of the question. The matter has been over so many years, you know, that it may almost be said to be forgotten. However, that has nothing to do with the business; for, as I said just now, though very like poor Henry Hayley, it is evident that Colonel Middleton cannot be the same person: all the proofs are against it, and you and I must have committed a blunder in thinking so even for a moment."
"I don't know that," said Lady Fleetwood, with a very sagacious air: "I have still my doubts, brother."
"Pooh! pooh!" cried Mr. Scriven. "I made inquiries of the young count and countess. It cannot be: you are quite mistaken, depend upon it."
"Do not be too sure," replied his sister. "Something very strange happened to me this very day; and I cannot help thinking that some bad people have got hold of the secret, and intend to extract money from the poor young man. Now, I know that, if you did discover it, you would never make use of it for any bad purpose;" and she looked up in her brother's face with the most appealing look in the world.
"Most assuredly I would not," replied Mr. Scriven, solemnly; and he meant it too, for to have hanged Henry Hayley he would have looked upon as a highly meritorious act. "But what is this that has happened to you, Margaret? I am afraid you are making one of your mistakes."
The words, "one of your mistakes," were very galling: and Lady Fleetwood hastened to prove that she was making no mistake at all, by telling her brother all that had taken place between her and Mr. Mingy Bowes.
Mr. Scriven listened with profound attention; but his mind was carrying on two processes at once. He was weighing every syllable his sister uttered, to judge whether her tale could leave any doubt whatever of the identity of Colonel Middleton with Henry Hayley; and he was arranging and preparing his own plan of action, to be ready to reply accordingly when she had done. Long before her story was concluded, Mr. Scriven had made up his mind. Not a doubt remained. Henry Hayley was alive, in England, within his grasp; and that grasp was a fell one, which did not easily let go. But although he had now extracted all he wanted from Lady Fleetwood, yet he had a strong conviction that she was even more likely to spoil his schemes than those of any other person, if he allowed her to get the least glimpse of his game, and therefore he replied--
"Indeed, Margaret, this seems something like the truth: and now we must think what can best be done, under such dangerous and difficult circumstances. I would not, if I were you, say a word to the poor young man of what I had discovered. It would only alarm him to no purpose. Nor, indeed, would I have any more dealings with that rascal who called. Ladies are not fit to meet such men, and indeed it is dangerous----"
"Oh, I told him to come at twelve the day after to-morrow, on purpose," replied Lady Fleetwood, "because then I and Maria will both be gone into the north, to this party of Lady Anne's; so he will find no one but old Mrs. Hickson and the maids. As to telling Colonel Middleton, I shall not have any opportunity for three or four days. He is going down too; but you see it would not, of course, be proper for Maria and him to travel together, so we shall first meet at Milford Castle."
"Very improper, indeed," said Mr. Scriven, musing. "Pray, Margaret, where is this man to be found who called upon you this morning?"
"Dear me! how should I know?" replied Lady Fleetwood: "of course I did not ask him."
"I do not see the of course," said her dry brother, "and indeed it would have been much better to ask him; for, you see, it is in some degree endangering your young friend. However, I will be at your house when the man comes the day after to-morrow, will see him and settle all with him, so as to ensure that nothing goes amiss."
Now, Lady Fleetwood knew her brother to be very clever at settling all matters of business; but in this case Mr. Mingy Bowes had specifically demanded the sum of one thousand pounds; and it was not within possibility for any one who knew Mr. Scriven well to believe that he would pay a thousand pounds on any account, if he could help it. She therefore said, in a somewhat timid tone--
"But the money, my dear brother--what is to be done about the money which these men demand? I do not see how it can be got, without telling Colonel Middleton what they say."
"Leave it all to me," said Mr. Scriven, somewhat impatiently. "Do not say a word to Colonel Middleton, for it would only fill him, and Maria too, with anxiety; and it is very likely, after all, that no money will be needed. The very act of attempting to extort money by threats of accusation is punishable by transportation; and the good gentlemen will not like the prospect of that, when it is clearly stated to them. Leave it to me, Margaret, I say; and now I must go to the city."
Lady Fleetwood, in accordance with this last hint, left him, and bent her steps back towards her own house. At first she walked joyously and well satisfied, as if she had performed a great feat; but gradually, as a doubt stole in as to whether her brother was the best person to whom she could have revealed secrets affecting Henry Hayley, her self-satisfaction began to sink considerably, and she asked herself, what use might Mr. Scriven make of the information if he chose?
It is one of the unpleasant consequences of such a character as Mr. Scriven's, that even those who, from the ties of blood or old intimacy, feel that sort of negative regard which springs less from esteem and affection than from mere habit, always rely on them imperfectly. The indiscreet, in their paroxysms of loquacity, may give them their secrets; the timid, in order to disarm their opposition or win their assistance, may furnish them with dangerous information; but both, as soon as it is done, doubt the prudence of the act, and wait in trembling uncertainty for the result.
It occurs also, nine times out of ten, with persons of the disposition and character of Lady Fleetwood, that they are discreet at the wrong moment; the angel visits of discretion come at times when they are unserviceable; and so poor Lady Fleetwood found it. She had told her brother what she had better have left untold; but after having done so, she did not dare inform more trustworthy people of the fact, lest she should draw down blame upon her own indiscretion; and she resolved to let things take their course, especially as Maria and Colonel Middleton would both be at a distance from London, so that some time must pass before they heard indirectly of what she had thought fit to do. Indeed, she rather hurried all the preparations for their departure from London, for fear anything should force an explanation before they went; and very glad she was when she and her niece, safely packed up in the carriage, had passed the first turnpike on the great north road.