Delaware; or, The Ruined Family. Vol. 3

by G. P. R. James

In consequence of this resolution, he rang the bell, and demanded the newspapers of the last two or three days; but for some minutes after they were brought, he could scarcely read the matter they contained, so fearfully did the letters dance before his sight, when he attempted to fix his eyes upon the page. He succeeded at length in gathering the contents; and, it may be unnecessary to say, that when he did so, he found sufficient, at once to determine his conduct. The whole account of what had taken place at Emberton was now before him; and with feelings, that it is impossible to describe, he perceived that the very means he had taken to remove the difficulties of Sir Sidney Delaware and his family, had, on the contrary, accumulated upon them a load of evils and distresses which his utmost apprehensions could never have anticipated.

Summoning the waiter once more, he ordered breakfast, and a place to be secured for him in the London coach. All was done according to his desire, with prompt activity; and by a quarter after ten, Henry Beauchamp was on his way to London, in the inside of a hot stage-coach, crammed full of humanity; while his own feelings consisted of a compound of intense mental anxiety, and all those horrible corporeal sensations which precede a violent attack of fever. His hands and his head burned like living coals; his feet were as cold as ice, and a faint sort of chilly shiverings thrilled over all his frame, alternating with a degree of heat that became sometimes intolerable.

He endured all this, with firm determination, for six mortal hours; but at length he found that nature would bear no more, and that he must stop. At Hartford Bridge, then, where his name and station in society were well known, from his having often spent a night in that most pleasant of all country inns--the White Lion--he desired the coachman to put him down, and entered the house. His appearance was so altered, that the old waiter did not recognize him for a moment; but the moment that he did so, he declared, upon his word then, that Major Beauchamp must be ill, in which assertion Beauchamp found strong reason within his own bosom to coincide.

The result therefore was, that, before the sixth day after he had been carried from Emberton was completely over, Henry Beauchamp was in bed, with an apothecary gently compressing his wrist on one side, and a waiter holding the candle on the other. After innumerable questions, to all of which the young gentleman answered like a lamb--which showed how ill he was--the apothecary declared him in a state of fever, and bled him considerably. By this depletion, he certainly felt relieved for the time, and the next morning was not at all worse than he had been the day before. Nevertheless, he was troubled with no inclination to rise; and the landlord asked anxiously of the man of medicine whether he conceived his patient to be in any danger, as he was aware that the gentleman had relations of high rank in London, whom he might wish to write to, if he knew himself in precarious circumstances.

Such a question, though so frequently put, remains still one of tremendous difficulty to the professors of the healing art, inasmuch as, on the one hand, they never can like, by acknowledging that there is great danger, to run the risk of other advice being called in, and yet, they neither choose to lose the credit which may accrue from curing a bad case, nor to incur the blame that will attach to them if their patient dies without their having admitted his peril. However, as vanity and covetousness are, generally speaking, stronger passions than apprehension, the followers of Esculapius usually seem to prefer running all risks, rather than have their cases interfered with by another practitioner. In the present instance, it occurred that the apothecary was really in the right, when he informed the worthy landlord, that, although his guest had certainly a sharp fever upon him, yet he did not see any present danger.

Thus passed over the day. No one was written to; and, before night, Beauchamp was not in a state to write to any one himself, having become completely delirious. The apothecary grew a little frightened; but as the landlord did not know the precise address of Beauchamp's friends, and as the patient could not give it himself, there was no remedy but patience and perseverance.

The delirium continued with but little interval for two days; but as the medical man was really a person of skill, his patient's constitution excellent, and the fever not very malignant in its nature, favourable symptoms began to show themselves sooner than could have been expected, and at the end of five days more the young gentleman was pronounced convalescent.

Though for some time he felt himself very weak, and incapable of much mental exertion; yet, from the moment the delirium left him, Henry Beauchamp found his thoughts much clearer and more exact than they had been since the day of his leaving Emberton; and, as he considered the various events which had taken place, a number of circumstances which the reader's mind may easily recall without minute recapitulation, led him to suspect that his uncle's lawyer, if not his uncle himself, had increased, if not created, many of those difficulties which, combined with accidental occurrences, had overwhelmed Sir Sidney Delaware and his family in ruin and in sorrow.

He was unwilling indeed to admit, to his own mind, that Lord Ashborough would descend to any thing mean or dishonourable, even to effect the very honourable purpose of revenge, which, when formalized by the rules of the monomachia, justifies murder; and therefore may surely equally well justify robbery, or fraud, or petty larceny, or any other peccadillo. But, at the same time, Beauchamp could not shut out the conviction, that the ruin of Sir Sidney Delaware and his family, by whatever means effected, would be in no degree disagreeable to the noble earl. In fact, he had seen more deeply into his uncle's character and into his uncle's heart, than Lord Ashborough knew; and though his discoveries were rendered less harsh by the natural affection of kindred, yet they had certainly not tended to increase that affection in any extraordinary degree.

However, all his reflections terminated in an uncertainty as to the past conduct of his uncle and his uncle's lawyer, which made him resolve to investigate the whole matter farther before he acted; for though he was unchangeably resolved that justice to William Delaware should be done, yet he was anxious, of course, that it should be rendered with as little obloquy to his own relation as possible. "Thank God, he has made his escape!" he thought; "and the earl, too, must have left London soon after I quitted it myself, so that he cannot be at all acquainted with my share in this unfortunate business at Ryebury. I will therefore remain quietly where I am till I can proceed to London, and then investigate every circumstance before I fix upon any farther plans. Of course, I shall easily discover the residence of Sir Sidney Delaware in France; and, when I have cleared his son's fair fame, may meet them all, with better hopes and brighter prospects."