“So he was, my Lord,—so he was,” said Twining, gathering up his gold. “And for a moment, I own, I was disposed to distrust my eyes, not seeing your Lordship in mourning.”
“In mourning? and for whom?”
“For the late Viscount, your Lordship's brother!”
“Lackington! Is Lackington dead?”
“Why, it's not possible your Lordship hasn't heard it? It cannot be that your letters have not brought you the tidings? It happened six—ay, seven weeks ago; and I know that her Ladyship wrote, urgently entreating you to come out to Italy.” Twining continued to detail, in his own peculiar and fitful style, various circumstances about Lord Lackington's last illness. But Beecher never heard a word of it, but stood stunned and stupefied by the news. It would be too tangled a web were we to inquire into the complicated and confused emotions which then swayed his heart. The immense change in his own fortunes, his sudden accession to rank, wealth, and station, came, accompanied by traits of brotherly love and affection bestowed on him long, long ago, when he was a Harrow boy, and “Lack” came down to see him; and then, in after life, the many kind things he had done for him,—helping him out of this or that difficulty,—services little estimated at the time, but now remembered with more than mere gratitude. “Poor Lackington! and that I should not haver been with you!” muttered he; and then, as if the very words had set another chord in vibration, he started as he thought that he had been duped. Davis knew it all; Davis had intercepted the letters. It was for this he had detained him weeks long in the lonely isolation of that Rhenish village. It was for this his whole manner had undergone such a marked change to him. Hence the trustfulness with which he burned the forged acceptances; the liberality with which he supplied him with money, and then—the marriage! “How they have done me!” cried he, in an agony of bitterness,—“how they have done me! The whole thing was concerted,—a plant from the very beginning; and she was in it!” While he thus continued to mutter to himself imprecations upon his own folly, Twining led him away, and imperceptibly induced him to stroll along one of the unfrequented alleys. At first Beecher's questions were all about his brother's illness,—how it began, what they called it, how it progressed. Then he asked after his sister-in-law,—where she then was, and how. By degrees he adverted to Lackington's affairs; his will,—what he had left, and to whom. Twining was one of the executors, and could tell him everything. The Viscount had provided handsomely, not extravagantly, for his widow, and left everything to his brother! “Poor Lackington, I knew he loved me always!” Twining entered into a somewhat complicated narrative of a purchase the late Viscount had made, or intended to make, in Ireland,—an encumbered estate,—but Beecher paid no attention to the narrative. All his thoughts were centred upon his own position, and how Davis had done him.
“Where could you have been, my Lord, all that time, not to have heard of this?” asked Twining.
“I was in Germany, in Nassau. I was fishing amongst the mountains,” said the other, in confusion.
“Fishing?—great fun, capital fun; like it immensely,—no expense, rods and hooks,—rods and hooks; not like hunting,—hunting perfectly ruinous,—I mean for men like myself, not, of course, for your Lordship.”
“Poor Lackington!” muttered Beecher, half unconsciously.
“Ah!” sighed Twining, sympathetically.