CHAPTER VI.
THE SECRET PACKET.
The broken health brought by Lennard from the miasmatic Terai of Nepaul was rapidly becoming more broken than ever, and, though not yet fifty, he was a premature old man, and it seemed as if the first part of Florian's presentiment or prevision of coming sorrow would soon be fulfilled.
His steps became very feeble, and he could only get about, in the autumn sunshine, with the aid of a stick and Florian's arm; and the latter watched him with grief and pain, tottering like the aged, panting and leaning heavily on his cane, as ever and anon he insisted on being led up a steep slope from which he could clearly see the old church of Revelstoke on its wave-beaten promontory, overlooked by sad and solitary hills, and his hollow eyes glistened as he gazed on it, with a kind of yearning expression, as if he longed to be at peace, and by the side of her he had laid there, it seemed long years ago—a lifetime ago.
Poor Lennard was certainly near his tomb, and all who looked upon him thought so; yet his calm eye, ever looking upward, betrayed no fear.
One day when Florian was absent—no doubt sketching, boating with Dulcie on the Yealm, or idling with her on the moors—Lennard besought Shafto to stay beside him as he sat feeble and languid in his easy chair, sinking with the wasting and internal fever, with which the country practitioners were totally incapable of grappling; and on this day, for the first time, he began to speak to him of Scotland and the home he once had there; and he was listened to with the keenest interest by Shafto, who had ever—even as a child—been cunning, selfish, and avaricious, yet wonderfully clever and complaisant in his uncle's prejudiced eyes, as he remembered only Flora's dead and devoted sister.
'I have been thinking over old times and other days, Shafto,' said he, with his attenuated hands crossed on the head of his bamboo cane; 'and, all things considered, it seems an occupation I had better avoid did the memory concern myself alone: but I must think of others and their interests—of Florian and of you—so I can't help it, boy, in my present state of health, or rather want of health,' he added, as a violent fit of spasmodic coughing came upon him.
After a pause he spoke again.
'You, Shafto, are a couple of years older than Florian, and are, in many ways, several years older in thought and experience by the short training you have received in Carlyon's office.'
The Major paused again, leaving Shafto full of wonder and curiosity as to what this preamble was leading up to.
The former had begun to see things more clearly and temperately with regard to the sudden death of Cosmo, and to feel that, though he had renounced all family ties, name, and wealth, so far as concerned himself, to die, with the secret of all untold, would be to inflict a cruel wrong on Florian. At one time Lennard thought of putting his papers and the whole matter in the hands of Mr. Lewellen Carlyon, and it was a pity he did not do so instead of choosing to entrust them to his long-headed nephew.
'Hand here my desk, and unlock it for me—my hands are so tremulous,' said he.
When this was done he selected a packet from a private drawer, and briefly and rapidly told the story of his life, his proper name, and rank to Shafto, who listened with open-eyed amazement.
When the latter had thoroughly digested the whole information, he said, after a long pause:
'This must be told to Florian!'
And with Florian came the thought of Dulcie, and how this sudden accession of her lover to fortune and position would affect her.
'Nay, Shafto—not yet—not till I am gone—a short time now. I can trust you, with your sharpness and legal acumen, with the handling of this matter entirely. When I am gone, and laid beside your aunt Flora, by the wall of the old church yonder,' he continued with a very broken voice—one almost a childish treble, 'you will seek the person to whom this packet is addressed, Kenneth Kippilaw, a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh—he is alive still; place these in his hands, and he will do all that is required; but treasure them, Shafto—be careful of them as you would of your soul's salvation—for my sake, and more than all for the sake of Florian! Now, my good lad, give me the composing draught—I feel sleepy and so weary with all this talking, and the thoughts that have come unbidden—unbidden, sad, bitter, and angry thoughts—to memory.'
Shafto locked the desk, put it aside, and, giving his uncle the draught, stole softly away to his own room with the papers, to con them over and to—think!
He had not sat at a desk for three years in Lawyer Carlyon's office without having his wits sharpened. He paused as he put the documents away.
'Stop—stop—let me think, let me consider!' he exclaimed to himself, and he certainly did consider to some purpose. He was cold and calculating; he was never unusually agitated or flustered, but he became both with the thoughts that occurred to him now.
Among the papers and letters entrusted to him were the certificates of the marriage of Lennard and Flora, and another which ran thus:
'Certificate of entry of birth, under section 37 of 17 and 18 Vict., cap. 80.' It authenticated the birth of their child Florian at Revelstoke, with the date thereof to a minute.
These documents were enclosed in a letter written in a tremulous and uncertain hand by Lennard Melfort to Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw, part of which was in these terms:
The child was baptized by a neighbouring clergyman—the Rev. Paul Pentreath—who has faithfully kept the promise of secrecy he gave me, and, dying as I now feel myself to be, I pray earnestly that my father and mother will be kind to my orphan son. Let them not—as they one day hope for mercy at that dread throne before which I am soon to appear—visit upon his innocent head my supposed and most heavily punished offence. Let him succeed in poor Cosmo's place to that which is his due; let him succeed to all I renounced in anger—an anger that has passed away, for now, my dear old friend, I am aged beyond my years, and my hair is now white as snow through ill-health contracted in India, where, to procure money necessary for my poor Flora, I volunteered on desperate service, and in seasons destructive to existence. In your hands I leave the matter with perfect hope and confidence. The bearer will tell you all more that may be necessary.'
After having read, reread, and made himself thoroughly master of the contents of this to him certainly most astounding packet, he requested the Major to re-address it in his own tremulous and all but illegible handwriting, and seal it up with his long-disused signet ring, which bore the arms of Fettercairn.
Prior to having all this done, Shafto had operated on one of the documents most dexterously and destructively with his pen-knife!
'A peerage! a peerage!—rank, wealth, money, mine—all mine!' he muttered under his breath, as he stored the packet away in a sure and secret place, and while whistling softly to himself, a way he had when brooding (as he often did) over mischief, he recalled the lines of Robert Herrick:
'Our life is like a narrow raft,
Afloat upon the hungry sea;
Hereon is but a little space,
And all men, eager for a place,
Do thrust each other in the sea.'
'So why should I not thrust him into the hungry briny? If life is a raft—and, by Jove, I find it so!—why should one not grasp at all one can, and make the best of life for one's self, by making the worst of it for other folks? Does such a chance of winning rank and wealth come often to any one's hands? No! and I should be the biggest of fools—the most enormous of idiots—not to avail myself to the fullest extent. I see my little game clearly, but must play warily. "Eat, drink, and be merry," says Isaiah, "for to-morrow we die." They say the devil can quote Scripture, and so can Shafto Gyle. But I don't mean to die to-morrow, but to have a jolly good spell for many a year to come!'
And in the wild exuberance of his spirits he tossed his hat again and again to the ceiling.
From that day forward the health of Lennard Melfort seemed to decline more rapidly, and erelong he was compelled by the chill winds of the season to remain in bed, quite unable to take his place at table or move about, save when wheeled in a chair to the window, where he loved to watch the setting sun.
Then came one evening when, for the last time, he begged to be propped up there in his pillowed chair. The sun was setting over Revelstoke Church, and throwing its picturesque outline strongly forward, in a dark indigo tint, against the golden and crimson flush of the west, and all the waves around the promontory were glittering in light.
But Lennard saw nothing of all this, though he felt the feeble warmth of the wintry sun as he stretched his thin, worn hands towards it; his eyesight was gone, and would never come again! There was something very pathetic in the withered face and sightless eyes, and the drooping white moustache that had once been a rich dark-brown, and waxed à l'Empereur.
His dream of life was over, and his last mutterings were a prayer for Florian, on whose breast his head lay as he breathed his last.
The two lads looked at each other in that supreme moment—but with very different thoughts in their hearts. Florian felt only desolation, blank and utter, and even Shafto, in the awful presence of Death, felt alone in the world.