Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart

by G. P. R. James

In about half-an-hour the courier returned with the letters. There were several to each of the gentlemen; but the two or three first that each of them opened, seemed to excite very little interest, for they were read carelessly, in one instance, eliciting a passing smile, in another, a momentary look of thought, and then cast aside. At length, however, Lieberg came to one which brought a dark look of triumph upon his handsome features; and after reading it twice, he folded it carefully up and put it by, turning his bright dark eyes slowly to the countenance of Morley, who now stood in one of the windows, perusing with anxious attention a long letter of several sheets. The young Englishman's brow was contracted, his lip was curled, his eye straining on the paper. When he had read one sheet he re-read it, and then glanced more rapidly over the second and third which seemed to be written in another hand.

But we must turn to the first sheet, and give the reader some account of its contents. It was addressed to Morley by his guardian, Mr. Hamilton, and conveyed some of the most unpleasant tidings that could meet his eye, as far as his pecuniary affairs were concerned.

"My dear Morley (the letter said), I am distressed not to know exactly where to find you, as I have to write to you on business of a very urgent nature. I shall, however, address this letter to Rome, trusting that you may receive it ere long. A fortnight ago I received what I then considered a very extraordinary application from a solicitor, informing me that a bill in chancery was about to be filed against you immediately, for the recovery of the estate of Warmstone Castle, your title to which he maintained to be bad. At first I felt inclined to treat the affair with contempt, but upon this legal gentleman calling upon me again, I saw him, and found that several eminent lawyers had been engaged in the affair, and consequently that it was more serious than I at first imagined. At the same time there was a degree of fairness about the tone of the opposite party, which induced me to meet them in the same manner, and I have had two interviews with all the parties in which I find they ground their claim upon the following assertions. You are aware, I dare say, that your father became possessed of Warmstone by purchase from a Mr. Barham. The sum given was ninety-three thousand pounds, and the title at the time seemed perfectly good. A will, however, and deed of settlement is now produced, showing that this Mr. Barham did not succeed to the estate as his father's direct heir, but under this will and settlement, by which the estate was strictly tied up. The father left but one son, indeed, the person who sold the estate to your father, but that son at the time the will was signed was married and had a child, and the will strictly limits the estate to that child and his children, appointing in a diffuse manner certain contingent provisions for younger children, with which we have nothing to do. The youth who now claims the property is the grandson of the person who sold the estate to your father, and the papers necessary to prove his claim were discovered, I hear, by a Mr. Carr, with whom I well remember your father once had a severe dispute concerning what he believed to be a very nefarious transaction in which poor Lady Malcolm suffered severely. Thus, as the character of the finder of this document is undoubtedly very bad, and the young man himself not the most prepossessing person in the world, I naturally concluded that the will might be manufactured. The parties gave me every opportunity of examining the document with my own lawyer and yours; and your friend, Mr. Wills, whose eyes you know are very sharp where your interests are concerned, remembered that there is an old clerk still living who belonged to the house, the name of which is upon one of the documents. This clerk, after some difficulty, was discovered, and, I am sorry to say, he remembers distinctly having seen the will itself, when it was submitted on some legal point to the house with which he served his time. I have at once caused the whole case to be laid before the highest legal authorities, and send you their opinion. You will see that they believe you could keep the claimants out of the estate for years, but must yield at last, as the case is quite clear. It is for you to decide; but I think I know how you will act. The worst part of the whole, however, is still to be told: the estate has been in possession of your family for thirty years, and though the fault lies not with you or yours, but in the fraudulent conduct of the man who sold it, you are held to be responsible for all the rents which have been received, and which now amount to more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. You would recover the ninety-three thousand pounds with interest, if the man who sold the estate had left any effects; but the present claimant comes in as heir of entail, and his grandfather who illegally sold the estate died in poverty. Perhaps a composition may be entered into in regard to these back rents, and, at all events, we must obtain time for the payment, as, I believe, that after the purchase of the small estate in Sussex, there remained no more of the guardianship account than fifty thousand pounds, and it would take ten years of the whole rents of the Morley Court property to clear off the sum still unpaid. Unauthorized by you, I have of course not been able to act; but I beg of you to write to me at once, giving me your own views."

The banker went on to consider the subject in various ways, but the terrible fact remained, that one estate was virtually gone, another deeply encumbered, and that all the long and careful savings of his minority were to be swept away at once.

What was the effect upon Morley Ernstein? Very different from that which might be supposed. The first blow was undoubtedly startling; he looked round like one bewildered; re-read what Mr. Hamilton had written; and then turning to the legal opinions inclosed, perused them accurately. They confirmed but too fully the account which his banker had given, and Morley Ernstein made up his mind in an instant. After the first stunning effect of the intelligence was over, it seemed to give him strength and energy; and merely telling Lieberg that he must instantly answer the letter he had received, he quitted the room, sent for his writing-desk, and applied himself busily, and with a steadfast mind, to put down, in a letter to Mr. Hamilton, the resolutions which he had immediately taken.

"My dear Mr. Hamilton," he said, "I will never defend an untenable cause. The present case is one in which it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the law to deal justly with both parties, and proves the utter absurdity of the axiom, which we hear so continually repeated by lawyers, that according to English law there is no wrong without a remedy. A notorious and shameful fraud was evidently committed in the sale of the Warmstone estate to my father, and in the concealment of the entail. The law has now only to judge which must suffer--myself, or the persons on whom it was entailed. Perhaps it is right that I should be the victim; but, at all events, a wrong is done and suffered somewhere. You have my full authority to concede the whole question, to give up Warmstone to the rightful owners, and to make the best arrangement that you can for paying the back rents with as little inconvenience as possible. All that I have in the funds must be immediately sold out for that purpose; but you say that there will still remain about a hundred thousand pounds to be paid. Morley Court I will part with on no account--not an acre of it; and the other little estate in Sussex, if sold, would still be but a drop of water in the ocean. What I propose, then, is this: immediately to cut off every superfluous expense, and to live as so many do, comfortably and happily upon the rents of the Sussex estate--seven hundred and thirty pounds per annum, I think we made it. This is not poverty, my dear sir, though the change is certainly great to me, but still I can endure it without a murmur. The Morley Court estate I propose to place immediately in the hands of trustees, for the purpose of paying off the debt. In the first place, the house and grounds must be kept up in the most thorough repair; the game must be properly protected; none of the old servants or labourers must be discharged. I would rather deprive myself of every superfluity than such should be the case. As near as I can recollect, not having my accounts with me, these charges amount to about eleven hundred per annum. That paid, there will still remain between nine and ten thousand per annum, to discharge the amount now claimed, and in eleven years it will be done. I have a considerable sum with me here, in money and letters of credit; but there are various things to be paid, some old people and pensioners to be provided for, and thus I shall soon get through that which I have. I think these proposals are so fair that they will not be refused, especially if by any chance one of those extraordinary coincidences, which sometimes cross us in life, has occurred in this instance, as I am led to suspect by some words in your letter. Is the young man you mention a fair-haired, pale-faced lad, with a look of sickly dissipation about him? If so, I rather imagine I once saved him from the gallows, and it is his sister, in regard to whom I wrote you a long epistle. Shakspeare says that our bad deeds turn round and whip us; but it would seem that our good deeds do so too, if I am to lose almost all I possess in consequence of having interposed between this youth and destruction. I am sorry to say that owing to the uncertain course I have pursued, your letter has been lying here for two months;"--and Morley went on to enter into the details of the changes he intended to make in his own mode of living, and to give directions for all the necessary papers to be forwarded for his signature as speedily as possible. When he had concluded, he returned to the saloon, where he found Lieberg seated near one of the windows, gazing forth in meditation.

"I am afraid, Morley," said the latter, as soon as he heard his friend's step, "that you have had bad tidings from England."

"I have," replied Morley. "You are a strange reader of human countenances, Lieberg. I thought I had guarded mine so carefully that no emotion could be apparent."

"It is my belief," rejoined Lieberg, "that everything that seems extraordinary may be accounted for with the most perfect ease; so that there is not a miracle, from the creation of this world down to Aaron's voracious walking-stick, which ate up the walking-sticks of all the Egyptians, that could be explained to us in a single word, only that poor fool Eve, after having eaten half the apple, stopped short in a fright, and was not wise enough to make even one good meal of the tree of knowledge. See how everything that we think strange becomes ridiculously simple when it is explained. You judge me a great reader of countenances; now, I never looked at your face at all, but merely read my letters while you read yours, and there found news which of course has reached you."

"That I have lost a considerable property," replied Morley, "and have to pay back rents to an immense amount."