The old man started--"Sail for the West Indies!" he exclaimed. "Sail for the West Indies! That is very unfortunate. What could make him think of such a thing as that?--that is very unfortunate, indeed!"
"Perhaps not so much as you imagine," said Helen, colouring, and determined to meet the point at once, with the general truth, lest she should be cross-questioned in regard to the particulars. "My poor brother had got into very bad society, I am sorry to say, and some kind and generous friends have obtained for him a small post in one of those colonies."
"He must come back--he must come back!" said the old lawyer. "I was just going to bid you invite him down here. Do you think he is gone? Are you sure he is sailed?"
"By this time he certainly is," replied Helen. "In your kind daughter's letter, which I received two or three days ago, she informed me of the day that he was to sail, and enclosed to me a letter from himself, confirming the same tidings, and bidding me write to him at Deal, as that would be the last opportunity of communicating with him ere his departure. I wrote yesterday, accordingly."
"That is very unlucky," said the old man, "and now the post is gone out. He must come back--he must come back!"
"Nay," answered, Helen, somewhat surprised, and, to say the truth, thinking the old gentleman verging towards dotage. "It will be better for him, I believe, to stay where he is. You know that he has no means of gaining his bread in England, and there at least he has a provision."
"I know--I know," said the lawyer, impatiently. "You are all poor--you are all beggars--Juliet said so. But, I tell you, your brother must come back--he is heir to a large property unjustly withheld from him, and I will undertake to cause restitution. Why, I have got all the papers myself! I did not know, till Juliet wrote, that your father had any children; and your father himself was a fool, and would not let me act for him; but would have suffered you both to live like beggars and die on a dunghill, out of a mere idle whim. But your brother will be wiser, and I will get back the estates for him, if he will give me--give me ten thousand pounds."
Helen smiled, and in gayer days, she might have laughed, though many things that the lawyer had said had made her shrink as if he had put his hand upon a wound.
"Where is my brother to get ten thousand pounds, think you, Mr. Carr?" she said. "We are, as you said, if not quite beggars, very nearly so, and I think poor William would find it difficult to find ten thousand pence."
"I mean--I mean," cried Mr. Carr, "he shall give me ten thousand pounds when I have got the property for him. I will stand all the expenses in the meanwhile. Ten thousand pounds shall cover all, and he shall give me a bond to pay it when I have got back the property for him. I will be like the quack doctors--'no cure, no pay,' my dear Miss Barham. Ha, ha, ha!" and he laughed aloud. "Why the thing is as easy as possible," he continued; "the name is William Henslow Barham in the deed, and his name was John."