He threw himself upon the corpse of his sire—uttered the most passionate lamentations—and even pushed his mother aside when she endeavoured to console him.
But at length a reaction came; and the violence of the young man’s grief gave way to a profound sorrow,—a sorrow that was deeply, deeply shared by many other hearts!
In the confusion that had taken place when Lady Georgiana’s scream echoed through the room, denoting the occurrence of something dreadful,—Green had risen from the floor and made his escape, inwardly cursing himself for having undertaken to become the agent of Perdita’s vengeance.
But Villiers, who entertained the most sincere friendship for Mr. Hatfield, and who was goaded almost to madness by the conduct of the vile attorney towards the man whom he thus loved as a brother, vowed that such infamy should not go unpunished. Scarcely, therefore, had the terrible conviction burst upon all present in the chamber of death, that Mr. Hatfield was indeed no more, when Villiers rushed franticly in pursuit of him whom he looked upon as the murderer!
The chase was successful—and in less than half an hour, Green was in custody on a charge of forgery!
CONCLUSION.
Our narrative is about to close: but ere we lay aside the pen, a few observations are requisite in order to render the history of each prominent character as complete as possible. Several have already been disposed of: but there yet remain many in whose fate the reader may feel more or less interested; and we accordingly proceed to sum up in a few words all the particulars which are wanting to the faithful accomplishment of our task.
Mr. Green in due time figured at the Old Bailey, where Clarence Villiers appeared to prosecute him for forgery; but the prisoner pleaded guilty in order to obtain the merciful consideration of the court, and was sentenced to transportation for seven years, instead of for the term of his natural life. Preparatory, however, to his expatriation, he was lodged in one of the convict-hulks at Woolwich; and there he encountered his friend Jack Rily the Doctor, who, instead of consoling the wretched attorney, only laughed at him for the tears which he shed and the useless repinings to which he gave vent. Mr. Green is at this present moment occupied in the healthy but disagreeable task of repairing the high roads in Van Diemen’s Land, in company with some of the greatest scoundrels that ever disgraced the human species; and he even looks back with bitter regret to those times when he was the oppressed, crushed, and despised instrument of James Heathcote. Nor was it a source of solace to Mr. Green when one fine morning, about ten months ago, he recognised the Doctor in a new-comer who was thus added to the gang of convicts: for Mr. Rily, having endeavoured to stir up his brethren in the Woolwich hulk to rebellion, was discovered in the attempt and forthwith packed off to the island which Nature had in the origin made a terrestrial paradise, but which the English Government has converted into “a den of thieves.”
James Heathcote, being utterly ruined by the transfer of all his property for the benefit of the numerous clients whom he had robbed,—for this affair was completely carried out by Green’s head clerk,—was compelled to abandon his fine house and take a humble office where he strove hard to reconstruct his once extensive business. But the exposure which his character had received in the Court of Queen’s Bench, proved a fatal blow to his prospects and an insurmountable obstacle in his path; and at the end of six months, being unable to pay his rent, he was turned out of the little nook to which he had retired, and plunged into the deepest poverty. At this juncture his brother Sir Gilbert returned to England; and James wrote him a penitential letter, imploring his succour. The baronet refused to see him, but generously undertook to allow him two guineas a-week in order to keep him from starving; and on this pittance—for such it is in comparison with the wealth he once possessed—the broken-down, baffled, and dispirited man still subsists in some suburb of the metropolis.
The Reverend Mr. Sheepshanks has experienced many ups and downs since we last saw him at the lunatic asylum in Bethnal Green. It appears that one evening Dr. Swinton gave a grand supper to the relatives and friends of his pensioners, who were present on the occasion as usual; and that previously to the repast being served up, the Doctor had been holding forth in a highly eulogistic style upon the excellent qualities, Christian virtues, and profound piety of his chaplain. Now the Reverend Mr. Sheepshanks was out at the time, the Doctor both declaring and believing that “the good man had gone to pay his usual evening visits to the poor in the neighbourhood;” and the guests were all very anxious for the return of the worthy individual who possessed such numerous claims upon their esteem, veneration, and respect. But the truth was—and the truth must be told—that the Reverend Mr. Sheepshanks, instead of visiting the poor or even dreaming of such a thing, was smoking his pipe and drinking his gin-and-water at the Cat and the Fiddle in Globe Town; and as he happened to take an extra pipe and two extra glasses on this particular occasion, the fumes thereof became more potent than the odour of sanctity. The consequence was that on his return to the lunatic asylum, his walk was so unsteady and irregular that his progress up the gravel walk to the front door resembled that of a ship tacking about in the Channel; and when he entered the supper-room, just as the company were sitting down to the well-spread table, his nose was so red, his cheeks were so flushed, and his eyes so vacant and watery, that the Doctor inquired in a tone of bland anxiety if he were unwell? “No, sir—I am quite well—and I am all right!” was the somewhat savage answer.—“Then will you have the kindness to ask a blessing, Mr. Sheepshanks?” said the Doctor.—“No, sir,” responded the pious gentleman: “I will see you and the blessing at the devil first. You’re drunk, sir—and I’m ashamed of you.”—It would be impossible to describe the dismay—we might almost term it horrified amazement—which this peremptory refusal to say grace, and the scandalous attack upon Dr. Swinton’s sobriety, produced amongst the guests. The physician himself started up in a furious rage, forgetful of all his propriety; and applying his right foot to the proper quarter, he kicked the Reverend Mr. Sheepshanks ignominiously forth from the lunatic asylum. On the following morning this pious gentleman, who was endowed with so many Christian virtues, awoke in a station-house to a sense of his altered position; but when introduced to the notice of a magistrate for being “drunk and disorderly, and kicking up a row at Dr. Swinton’s door,” he boldly proclaimed himself a martyr, and held forth at great length, and in a peculiar nasal drone, on the vanities of this world. The magistrate was, however, compelled to cut him short, by inflicting a fine: but as Mr. Sheepshanks had exhausted all his pecuniary resources at the Cat and the Fiddle on the preceding evening, he was doomed to extend his experience of worldly vanities beneath the roof of the House of Correction. There he found that the treadmill was one of the most uncomfortable vanities he had ever yet encountered; and the redness of his nose was considerably subdued by the prison skilly. On his emancipation at the end of a week, he took up his abode at the house of a poor widow with whom he was acquainted, and whom he induced to convert her front-parlour into a receptacle for prayer-meetings. This succeeded very well for a few months, the congregation being delighted with Mr. Sheepshanks’ discourse, and a tolerable amount of pence being collected every evening in furtherance of the pious gentleman’s holy purpose of supplying the benighted Esquimaux with flannel-jackets and religious tracts: but the widow proving at length to be in the family-way, and Mr. Sheepshanks not choosing to wait to have the paternity of the expected offspring fixed upon his reverend shoulders, his sudden evaporation from the neighbourhood led to the break-up of the prayer-meetings and the total ruin of the unfortunate woman. What became of Mr. Sheepshanks for the next six months, we cannot say: but one fine Sunday morning he turned up at the Obelisk in St. George’s Fields, where he addressed a crowd in his usual strain. His discourse was however suddenly cut short by the presence of the poor widow, who, wrapped in rags and with a baby in her arms, was begging in that neighbourhood; and when the reverend gentleman’s delinquencies were proclaimed by the miserable woman, he was hooted, pelted, and maltreated all up the Westminster-road, until he managed to escape from his assailants by diving into one of the narrow streets leading out of that great thoroughfare. After this affair, the pious man again disappeared for a season; and when we last heard of him, he had given up preaching as a trade which he had thoroughly worn out, and had betaken himself to the highly respectable and cheering avocation of beating the drum and playing the month-organ—alias pandean pipes—for a colleague who exhibited a Punch and Judy show.