“I HAVE no knowledge,” said Creel—“I have no knowledge whatever, Mr. Tuke, of this ‘Lake of Wine.’ Very probably it was as you suggest. I was acquainted with the man’s character by report, of course, and judge it infinitely likely that he would have been the principal in a fraud so masterly ingenious. But that goes for nothing.”
“Very well, sir. Then, by your permission, we will come to the matter which is of a greater private importance to me. Surely you cannot justify to yourself the fact of withholding evidence of my father’s integrity from my father’s son?”
“And surely you are hasty. Did I express such an intention. On the contrary, I am ready, at this date, to inform you of all the details I am in possession of as to Sir Robert’s bequest.”
“And why not earlier? May I not ask it?”
“Because, my ardent young sir, the time was not ripe. Because, having regard to the circumstances under which we first became intimate, I apprehended a distinct refusal on your part to accept of an advantage so strangely come by.”
“There is nothing shameful in the story?”
“Fie, sir, fie! Is this your tender concern for my old and honoured friend and patron? Be there shame, ’tis none of his.”
“Possibly of mine, you would say. Mr. Creel, I have grown very humble of late months.”
“Save us, save us!—Yet, I would not quench, but only control that fervid spirit. Go to! you shall have the history word for word as your father wrote it; and as such left it to my full discretion to acquaint you of or not. No doubt you have suffered and learnt since we last met, and are now in a state to appreciate the moral no less than the material value of your inheritance.”
He rose as he spoke, sparse and bent-backed and bowelless—like the figure 9, symbolic of the nine points of the law.
The other watched him with some amusement and a good deal of impatience, as he shuffled to a now familiar deed-box, unlocked it, and took thence a bundle of papers. These he brought to the table, sat himself down again, and selected two from the heap, as dryly deliberate as a monkey turning over a biscuit.
Presently he looked up, document in hand.
“This,” he said, “the full and true account of the late Sir Robert’s presentation to the property of ‘Delsrop,’ in the county of Hants, was writ down by him in this my office, and read over to me, and by me attested for its truth, inasmuch as I was nominated to act for both parties in the disposition of the estate. Albeit, Mr. Tuke, you must understand the testator was known to me hitherto but by report, the which would hardly have induced me to do his service but for the direction of his bequest—and that, without doubt, was his object in applying to me.”
“With favour, sir,” said Mr. Creel’s client; “and with all deference to the discriminatory acumen of the profession—might not this preface serve better as an epilogue?”
The attorney winced in his breath, looked over his spectacles which he had been slowly adjusting, and broke suddenly into a leathery smile.
“Sir,” said he, “the law stands so much in dead men’s shoes that, perhaps, itself hath lost the sensation to be ‘quick.’ But here’s for you, without more ado.”
And so he began his reading:—
“RE THE ESTATE OF ‘DELSROP’ AND IN THE MATTER OF SIR ROBERT LINNE, BART.
“In the winter of ’78, when I was home in England on furlough, being sick of a disordered spleen, I was crossing Bagshot Heath one night when I was stopped by a one-eyed gentleman of the road, who was set to coerce me with the usual menaces and braggadocio. But, looking in his face without fear—for it was a brilliant moonlit night and his features clear as print—I noticed them drawn and anguished in a manner beyond words, so that he seemed rather a ghost or boggle of my distemper, which gave me some concern. But quickly recovering myself: ‘My honest gentleman,’ says I, ‘meseems you are more in need of stand for yourself than me.’ Which hearing, he gave out a great groan, and so straightway dropped the muzzle of his pistol.
“‘Can you read it so plain?’ says he. ‘Then I tell you I am in hell, and it were a merciful thing to slay me here and now’—and with that he rends his vest, and ‘shoot,’ says he, ‘and end it!’
“Now I got talking to my man, and, to make a short story of it, found him to be a noted heath-cock, one Cutwater”—(Aye, sir—there you have him!)—“as he was called, who had drawn a free living from the road, but was now smitten of a morbid disease of the kidneys and like to die. However, in a clean retirement had he lived for a year—or perhaps two or more—till his disorder came like to madden him; when, with the hope to borrow surcease of agony from the distraction of his ancient calling, he made post to Bagshot and rode out on the heath.
“Well, I took him back to my inn, and made him up a drug of my knowledge, and kept him by me for a day or two, thinking to mend the poor sinner before I set upon the Lord’s work with him. And he made a surprising recovery, and was ready to kiss my very feet out of his gratitude. But, so it happened, a summons coming to me from his Majesty’s Court at Windsor, I was to leave him perforce; and presently—my own complaint mending—forth I passed to the war again and from all thought of Master Cutwater.
“And now, as worthy Mr. Creel will attest—which has conducted the business, and is my friend and an attorney (and this our same fellow of the road had discovered, it seems)—not three weeks ago, I being again in London this summer of the year ’79, was waited upon by him, and to my astonishment handed over the title deeds of an estate which I had never so much as heard named, being ‘Delsrop’ House in the County of Hants.
“For thus it appeared my highwayman had died after all—yet not of his complaint but in some ruffian mêlée—having first, however, in gratitude at my service to him willed me this property, which I cannot but regard with perplexity as the wages of sin, inasmuch as it appeareth the reward designed, in totidem verbis, for prolonging of a rascal’s life.
“But so am I resolved that by no means and on no condition will I soil my hands with its possession; for whether come by honestly or in fraud, it is and must be a mansion of the wicked. I take no concern for it, nor have I troubled to visit it, nor yet considered by what manner of agreement I am to dispose of the incubus.
“Only this I set down here and now, in the presence of Mr. Creel, who will attest it, that, should occasion of dispute arise, it may be accepted a true and honourable statement of the matter, and that whether or no it passeth the understanding of the incredulous. And, moreover, I do solemnly asseverate that, whether the man Cutwater held the estate in fee-simple, justly and of his own right, or whether he held it the fruits of his ill-doing, or again whether, indeed, it represent the entire or but a portion of his property, I know not nor seek to know. For he was a rogue undoubted, of whose politic methods no Christian gentleman could deign to consider on equal terms.”
“Now,” said the lawyer, when he had come to an end of the narrative, “you are in possession of the facts as related and witnessed. For you must know the testator discovered your father’s friendship to me, and visited me here and begged me to act for him in the matter. And this, under the circumstances, I agreed to do, having regard to my reputation in the respect that the transaction should be——”
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Tuke a little irritably. His face had fallen grave and full of trouble. “I understand—I understand completely. And is that all?”
“No, sir—it is not all.” (He was secretly attentive of his client.) “There is a later document, from which it appears that Sir Robert abated, for any reasons of his own, the rigour of his resolve respecting this strange inheritance. For, by deed executed” (he had taken up and was referring to, and partly reading from, another paper) “the eleventh of October, 1779, he makes over the estate of ‘Delsrop’ to one Barnabas Creel—in trust, that is, and under certain conditions—said Barnabas Creel to have and enjoy said property without dispute, and until his benefactor’s son shall attain his majority (the which event is to happen, if he live, in the year 1790), and thereafter for all time, provided Sir Robert the junior comes not to bankruptcy of his affairs and threatened indigence. But in the latter event, if it happen any time between said son’s majority and his fortieth year—by which period of his life a man should be established whether for good or evil—the estate is to devolve upon said son, that he may take his profit of a cut-purse’s legacy (which is yet good enough for a gambler or rakehell) to reform his ways and live cleanly thenceforth; but on the sole condition that he foreswear his title—the which hath ever stood foremost in honour—and take the name of Tuke. For this name was borne by an honest woman, that shall shame her son to do it no discredit under his new conditions of fortune.”
As he here ended, the lawyer precisely refolded the papers, tied all together, put the packet aside, and crossing his hands over his crossed knees, waited for the other to speak.
A silence of some minutes succeeded. Then said the distitled legatee, rousing himself with a sigh:
“I thank you, Mr. Creel, for your kindly discernment in hitherto withholding from me this intelligence. I confess it comes bitter to me. I rejoice in that re-assurance of my father’s integrity—which my heart, in truth, little misdoubted—but I confess the nature of this revelation a little overcomes me. ’Tis a bone to a dog, in all sovereign contempt.”
“Nay, Sir Robert, Sir Robert. ’Tis the anxious medicine to a soul wounded of its own rashness.”
“Well, sir, well. Pride may follow a fall, I find. Yet, if I may question the methods of a virtuous man, I could discover a flaw in my father’s particular morality. For the Crown, by all custom, is entitled to the reversion of an outlaw’s estates.”
“No doubt,” answered Creel, with a little dry snigger, “that is strictly so. The man’s possessions were forfeit of right to the Crown, it being his good fortune only that he passed unhung of the law that he had defied. But—his guilt being conjectural, and not, as it were, brought home to him—your father, in one of those Canterbury-gallops of conscience wherewith honest souls sometimes over-ride our fears for their guilelessness, would consider it no duty of his to forego the estate quixotically, and for a supposition of which the law had failed to take cognizance. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I will not throw the first stone at him whose immunity is my profit. And, as to the estate, I can apply it—saving the grace of his majesty, whose means are not restricted—to some worthy purpose which was doubtless forecast by the Providence that hath conducted the matter so far.’ And in this he was firm—not to outlaw the dead man, though he took no personal advantage of his bequest. ‘For,’ he declared, ‘he meant well by me, when all is said and done.’”
Mr. Tuke rose, and the attorney with him.
“I suppose,” said the former, rather sadly, “that no man may profit by repentance so far as to lay the ghost of his past. ’Tis the privilege of the virtuous to hunt down reformed sinners with the spectre-hounds of their own dead passions. I have sought honestly to redeem my name, and to do my best with the new life offered me. Yet, should I have accepted the trust, had I known in what spirit its reversion to me was conceived?”
“I hope so,” said the other; “for love, under all the show of rigour, prompted the bequest.”
He spoke with some deprecation. Perhaps, in his heart, was a little protesting sympathy with his young friend’s point of view.
“Well, sir,” answered the latter, “I will e’en take your word for it—for that it is the word of as generous and self-sacrificing a soul as ever stood between a saint and a scamp.”
And with that they shook hands warmly and parted, Mr. Tuke going back to his lodgings in the “Adelphi,” where he had put up to be near his friends, who lay at the “Golden Cross” hard by.