I blushed for my own impertinence as I pressed this inquiry. What right had I to be given to understand anything about these honest Meynells? I saw poor uncle Joe's disconcerted face, and I felt that the hunter of an heir-at-law is apt to become a very obnoxious creature.
"Susan Meynell died in London—the poor lass died in London," replied Joseph Mercer, gravely; "and now we'll drop that subject, if you please, my lad. It isn't a pleasant one."
After this I could no longer doubt that there was some painful story involved in those two deprecating sentences of the gospel.
It was some time before uncle Joe was quite his own jovial and rather noisy self again, and on this evening we had no whist. I bade my friends good night a little earlier than usual, and departed, after having obtained permission to take a tracing of the fly-leaf as soon as possible.
On this night the starlit sky and lonesome moor seemed to have lost their soothing power. There was a new fever in my mind. The simple plan of the future which I had mapped out for myself was suddenly shattered. The Charlotte of to-night—heiress-at-law to an enormous fortune—ward in Chancery—claimant against the Crown—was a very different person from the simple maid "whom there were none"—or only a doating simpleton in the person of the present writer—"to praise, and very few to love."
The night before last I had hoped so much; to-night hope had forsaken me. It seemed as if a Titan's hand had dug a great pit between me and the woman I loved—a pit as deep as the grave.
Philip Sheldon might have consented to give me his stepdaughter unpossessed of a sixpence; but would he give me his stepdaughter with a hundred thousand pounds for her fortune? Alas! no; I know the Sheldonian intellect too well to be fooled by any hope so wild and baseless. The one bright dream of my misused life faded from me in the hour in which I discovered my dearest girl's claim to the Haygarthian inheritance. But I am not going to throw up the sponge before the fight is over. Time enough to die when I am lying face downward in the ensanguined mire, and feel the hosts of the foemen trampling above my shattered carcass. I will live in the light of my Charlotte's smiles while I can, and for the rest—"Il ne faut pas dire, fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau." There is no cup so bitter that a man dare say, I will not drain it to the very dregs. "What must be, shall be—that's a certain text;" and in the mean time carpe diem. I am all a Bohemian again.
Nov. 5th. After a day's delay I have obtained my tracing-paper, and made two tracings of the entries in the Meynell Bible. How intercourse with the Sheldonian race inclines one to the duplication of documents! I consider the copying-press of modern civilization the supreme incarnation of man's distrust of his fellow-men.
I spent this afternoon and evening with my dear love—my last evening in Yorkshire. To-morrow I shall see my Sheldon, and inform him of the very strange termination which has come to my researches. Will he communicate at once with his brother? Will he release me from my oath of secrecy? There is nothing of the masonic secretiveness in my organisation, and I am very weary of the seal that has been set upon my unwary lips. Will Charlotte be told that she is the reverend intestate's next of kin? These are questions which I ask myself as I sit in the stillness of my room at the Magpie, scribbling this wretched diary of mine, while the church clock booms three solemn strokes in the distance.
O, why did not the reverend intestate marry his housekeeper, and make a will, like other honest citizens, and leave my Charlotte to walk the obscure byways of honest poverty with me? I do believe that I could have been honest; I do believe that I could have been brave and true and steadfast for her dear sake. But it is the office of man to propose, while the Unseen disposes. Perhaps such a youth as mine admits of no redemption. I have written circulars for Horatio Paget. I have been the willing remorseless tool of a man who never eats his dinner without inflicting a wrong upon his fellow-creatures. Can a few moments of maudlin sentimentality, a vague yearning for something brighter and better, a brief impulse towards honesty, inspired by a woman's innocent eyes—can so little virtue in the present atone for so much guilt in the past? Alas! I fear not.