Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience

by Charles James Lever

Guided by the clew afforded in some of my father's letters, Dan proceeded to Wales, ascertained the cottage where they had passed their first month of married life, and found out many who had known them by sight; but could chance upon nothing which should lead him to the important fact where, and by whom, the marriage ceremony was solemnized.

The state of my mother's health was so precarious for a long time as to render all inquiry from her impracticable; while there was also a very natural fear of the consequences that might ensue, were she to suspect the object of any investigation, and learn the perilous position in which she stood. Her condition was, indeed, a pitiable one,—a young and widowed mother; a stranger in a foreign land, of whose language she knew scarcely anything; without one friend of her own sex, separated by what, in those days, seemed an immense distance from all belonging to her. It was a weary load of misfortune to be borne by one who till that moment had never known a sorrow.

Nor was MacNaghten's lot more enviable as, day by day, he received packets of letters detailing the slow but steady march of those legal proceedings which were to end in the ruin of those whom he felt to have been bequeathed to his friendship. Already two claimants for the estate had appeared in the field,—one, a distant relation of my father, a very rich southern baronet, a certain Carew O'Moore; the other, an unknown, obscure person, whose pretensions, it was said, were favored by Fagan, and at whose cost the suit was said to be maintained. With the former, MacNaghten at once proceeded to open relations personally, by a letter describing in simple but touching terms the sad state in which my poor mother yet lay, and appealing to his feelings as a gentleman and a man of humanity to stay the course of proceedings for a while, at least, and give time to enable her to meet them by such information as she might possess.

A very polite reply was at once returned to this, assuring MacNaghten that whatever delays could be accorded to the law proceedings—short of defeating the object altogether—should certainly be accorded; that nothing was further from Sir Carew's desire than to increase, in the slightest, the sorrows of one so heavily visited; and expressing, in conclusion, a regret that his precarious health should preclude him paying his personal visit of condolence at the Castle, where, he trusted, the lady would continue to reside so long as her health or convenience made it desirable. If the expressions of the letter were not as hearty and generous as honest Dan might have wished them, they were more gratifying than the note he received from Fagan, written with all the caution and reserve of the Grinder's manner; for, while not going so far as to admit that he was personally interested and concerned for the new claimant, he guardedly avoided giving any denial to the fact.

For three weeks did MacNaghten continue to search through immense masses of papers and documents; he ransacked musty drawers of mustier cabinets; he waded through piles of correspondence, in the hope of some faint flickering of light, some chance phrase that might lead him to the right track; but without success! He employed trusty and sharp-witted agents to trace back, through England, the journey my father and mother had come by, but so secretly had every step of that wedding-tour been conducted, that no clew remained.

Amidst the disappointments of this ineffectual pursuit, there came, besides, the disheartening reflection that from those who were most intimately acquainted with my father's affairs he met neither counsel nor co-operation. On the contrary, Crowther's manner was close and secret on every matter of detail, and as to the chances of a suit, avowed how little ground they had for resistance. Fagan even went further, and spoke with an assumed regret that my father should have made no provision for those belonging to him.

All these were, however, as nothing to the misery of that day in which McNaughten was obliged to break the disclosure to my mother, and explain to her the position of ruin and humiliation in which she was placed! She was still weak and debilitated from her illness, her bodily strength impaired, and her mind broken by suffering, when this new shock came upon her; nor could she at first be made to understand the full measure of her misfortune, nor to what it exactly tended. That the home of her husband was no longer to be hers was a severe blow; it was endeared to her by so many of the tenderest recollections. It was all that really remained associated with him she had lost. “But perhaps,” thought she, “this is the law of the country: such are the inevitable necessities of the land.” Her boy would, if he lived, one day possess it for his own, and upon this thought she fell back for consolation.

MacNaghten did not venture in his first interview to undeceive her; a second and even a third passed over without his being equal to the task: but the inexorable course of law gave, at last, no time for further delay. The tenants of the estate had received formal notice to pay the amount of their several holdings into court, pending the litigation of the property. A peremptory order to surrender the house and demesne was also issued. The servants talked openly of the approaching break-up of the household, and already vague and shadowy rumors ran that my father had died intestate, and that my mother was left without a shilling.

From early morning till late at night, MacNaghten had toiled without ceasing. He had visited lawyers, attended consultations, instituted fresh searches through Crowther's papers, but all with the same result. The most hopeful counsels only promised a barren resistance, the less sanguine advisers recommended any compromise that might secure to my mother some moderate competence to live on. So much had the course of events preyed upon his mind, and so dispirited had he grown that, as he afterwards owned, he found himself listening to arguments, and willing to entertain projects, which, had they been presented but a few weeks before, he had rejected with scorn and indignation. It was then, too, and for the first time, that the possibility struck him that my father's marriage might have been solemnized without that formality which should make it good in law. He remembered the reserve with which, in all their frank friendship, the subject was ever treated. He bethought him of the reluctance with which my father suffered himself to be drawn into any allusion to that event; and that, in fact, it was the only theme on which they never conversed in perfect frankness and sincerity.

“After all,” thought he, “the matter may be difficult of proof. There may have been reasons, real or imaginary, for secrecy; there may have been certain peculiar circumstances requiring unusual caution or mystery; but Watty was quite incapable of presenting to his friends and to the world as his wife one who had not every title to the name, while she who held that place gave the best guarantee, by her manner and conduct, that it was hers by right.” To this consolation he was obliged to fall back at each new moment of discomfiture; but although it served to supply him with fresh energy and courage, it also oppressed him with the sad reflection that conviction and belief in his friend's honor would have no weight in the legal discussion of the case, and that one scrawled fragment of paper would be better in evidence than all the trustfulness that was ever inspired by friendship.