But on the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against him was very strong; and evidence which might be insufficient to prove him guilty in a trial for his life might be a sufficient defence for his enemies against an action for slander; if, indeed, the course which Dr. Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had taken did in itself constitute a slanderous and malicious imputation. Nor could any such action invalidate the marriage solemnized that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. No shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to him.
His ruin was complete and dire. For a long time his circumstances had been desperate—no avenue of escape open to him but the one dark way which he had trodden; and now that last road was closed against him. The day was very near at hand when his fictitious bills on shadowy companies must be dishonoured; and with the dishonour of those bills came the end of all things for him,—a complete revelation of all those dishonest artifices by which he had kept his piratical bark afloat on the commercial waters.
He surveyed his position in every light, calmly and deliberately, and saw there was no hope. The whole scheme of his existence was reduced to the question of how much ready-money he could carry out of that house in his pocket, and in what direction he should betake himself after leaving it.
His first care must be to ascertain whether the marriage described in the duplicate certificate had really taken place; his next, to repossess himself of the papers left with Mr. Kaye.
Before leaving the house he went to his study, where he examined his banker's book. Yes, it was as they had told him at the bank. He was overdrawn. Among the letters lying unopened on his writing-table he found a letter from one of the officials of the Unitas, calling his attention, politely and respectfully, to that oversight upon his part. He read the letter, and crumpled it into his pocket with an angry gesture.
"I am just about as well off now as I was twelve years ago, before Tom Halliday came to Fitzgeorge Street," he said to himself; "and I have the advantage of being twelve years older."
Yes, this is what it all came to, after all. He had been travelling in a circle. The discovery was humiliating. Mr. Sheldon began to think that his line of life had not been a paying one.
He opened his iron safe, and forced the lock of the jewel-case in which his wife had kept the few handsome ornaments that he had given her in the early days of their marriage, as a reward for being good—that is to say, for allowing her second husband to dispose of her first husband's patrimony without let or hindrance. The jewels were only a few rings, a brooch, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet; but they were good of their kind, and in all worth something like two hundred pounds.
These, and the gold chronometer which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket, constituted all the worldly wealth which Mr. Sheldon could command, now that the volcanic ground upon which his commercial position had been built began to crumble beneath his feet, and the bubbling of the crater warned him of his peril. He put the trinkets into his pocket without compunction, and then went upstairs to his dressing-room, where he proceeded to pack his clothes in a capacious portmanteau, which in itself might constitute his credentials among strangers, so eminently respectable was its appearance.
In this dread crisis of his life he thought of everything that affected his own interests. To what was he going? That question was for the moment unanswerable. In every quarter of the globe there are happy hunting-grounds for the soldier of fortune. Some plan for the future would shape itself in his mind by-and-by. His wife's desertion had left him thoroughly independent. He had no tie to restrain his movements, nothing to dread except such proceedings as might be taken against him by the holders of those bills. And such proceedings are slow, while modern locomotion is swift.