“Yes; it certainly did. I also gave him a cheque for five hundred to pay off everything the day I left Shirani. I was so bothered, that I conclude that I never filled in the cheque properly.”
“Evidently not, and your little oversight cost me four thousand five hundred pounds. Well, never mind that now. I heard pretty stories of Clarence at the hotel—people talking at the table beside me; how he had gambled, betted, and played the deuce, and made a regular cat’s-paw of the young fool he was travelling with, meaning you—an undeniable fact. I then, having finished off Waring, came straight away to look you up, Master Mark. Pedro, that’s my fellow, took great care of me, and I have had as many adventures as would fill a volume of Punch. I travelled in comfort as long as I was on the rail, bar the heat; but once the rail came to an end, and I had to take to a box—I am too old to begin riding—I was uncommonly sorry for myself. However, everything I saw was new and interesting, the scenery splendid; I came viâ Shirani, of course, and I broke my journey at the Brandes—Sir Pelham and Lady Brande. By the way, you never told me that he had a handle to his name! Eh, how was that?”
“And how came you to know the Brandes?” asked his nephew gravely.
“Ah, that is another story! And how came you to tell Sir Pelham that there was insanity in the Jervis family, eh?”
“Because it is true. And I only heard it since I came here. My grandfather died in Richmond lunatic asylum, my uncle jumped overboard at sea, my father has now, thank God, a lucid interval, but he has been insane for years.”
“Lies, every one of them!” blazed out Mr. Pollitt.
“Uncle Dan, what do you mean?” demanded Jervis, with trembling lips and a pair of sternly searching eyes.
“I know the Jervis family; why, man, I made it my business to study it up. Your grandfather, a splendid old soldier, died at Richmond in his own house, as sane as I am—saner, indeed, for I’ve been near losing my senses several times of late. Your uncle, noble fellow, jumped overboard to save life and lost his own. Your father’s head was cracked by a fall. Who told you this other balderdash?”
“Fernandez, my father’s heir. He was informed by Mrs. Jervis, my late step-mother. And it is all true what you tell me?”
“As true as I am a living man and sinner. Your father, no doubt, believed every one of his people to be lunatics, a phase of his own delusions.”