by George Eliot
CHAPTER XXI.
'Tis grievous that with all amplification of travel both by sea and land, a man can never separate himself from his past history.
Mr. Jermyn's handsome house stood a little way out of the town,surrounded by garden and lawn and plantations of hopeful trees. AsChristian approached it he was in a perfectly easy state of mind: thebusiness he was going on was none of his, otherwise than as he was wellsatisfied with any opportunity of making himself valuable to Mr. PhilipDebarry. As he looked at Jermyn's length of wall and iron railing, hesaid to himself, "These lawyers are the fellows for getting on in theworld with the least expense of civility. With this cursed conjuringsecret of theirs called Law, they think everybody is frightened at them.My Lord Jermyn seems to have his insolence as ready as his soft sawder.He's as sleek as a rat, and has as vicious a tooth. I know the sort ofvermin well enough. I've helped to fatten one or two."
In this mood of conscious, contemptuous penetration, Christian was shownby the footman into Jermyn's private room, where the attorney satsurrounded with massive oaken bookcases, and other furniture tocorrespond, from the thickest-legged library-table to the calendar frameand card-rack. It was the sort of a room a man prepares for himself whenhe feels sure of a long and respectable future. He was leaning back inhis leather chair, against the broad window opening on the lawn, and hadjust taken off his spectacles and let the newspaper fall on his knees,in despair of reading by the fading light.
When the footman opened the door and said, "Mr. Christian," Jermyn said,"Good evening, Mr. Christian. Be seated," pointing to a chair oppositehimself and the window. "Light the candles on the shelf, John, but leavethe blinds alone."
He did not speak again till the man was gone out, but appeared to bereferring to a document which lay on the bureau before him. When thedoor was closed he drew himself up again, began to rub his hands, andturned toward his visitor, who seemed perfectly indifferent to the factthat the attorney was in shadow, and that the light fell on himself.
"A--your name--a--is Henry Scaddon."
There was a start through Christian's frame which he was quick enough,almost simultaneously, to try and disguise as a change of position. Heuncrossed his legs and unbuttoned his coat. But before he had time tosay anything, Jermyn went on with slow emphasis.
"You were born on the sixteenth of December, 1782, at Blackheath. Yourfather was a cloth-merchant in London: he died when you were barely ofage, leaving an extensive business: before you were five-and-twenty youhad run through the greater part of the property, and had compromisedyour safety by an attempt to defraud your creditors. Subsequently youforged a check on your father's elder brother, who had intended to makeyou his heir."
Here Jermyn paused a moment and referred to the document. Christian wassilent.
"In 1808 you found it expedient to leave this country in a militarydisguise, and were taken prisoner by the French. On the occasion of anexchange of prisoners you had the opportunity of returning to your owncountry, and to the bosom of your own family. You were generous enoughto sacrifice that prospect in favor of a fellow-prisoner, of about yourown age and figure, who had more pressing reasons than yourself forwishing to be on this side of the water. You exchanged dress, luggage,and names with him, and he passed to England instead of you as HenryScaddon. Almost immediately afterward you escaped from yourimprisonment, after feigning an illness which prevented your exchange ofnames from being discovered; and it was reported that you--that is, youunder the name of your fellow-prisoner--were drowned in an open boat,trying to reach a Neapolitan vessel bound for Malta. Nevertheless Ihave to congratulate you on the falsehood of that report, and on thecertainty that you are now, after the lapse of more than twenty years,seated here in perfect safety."
Jermyn paused so long that he was evidently awaiting some answer. Atlast Christian replied in a dogged tone--
"Well, sir, I've heard much longer stories than that told quite assolemnly, when there was not a word of truth in them. Suppose I deny thevery peg you hang your statement on. Suppose I say I am not HenryScaddon."
"A--in that case--a," said Jermyn, with wooden indifference, "you wouldlose the advantage which--a--may attach to your possession of HenryScaddon's knowledge. And at the same time, if it were in theleast--a--inconvenient to you that you should be recognized as HenryScaddon, your denial would not prevent me from holding the knowledge andevidence which I possess on that point; it would only prevent us frompursuing the present conversation."
"Well, sir, suppose we admit, for the sake of the conversation, thatyour account of the matter is the true one: what advantage have you tooffer the man named Henry Scaddon?"
"The advantage--a--is problematical; but it may be considerable. Itmight, in fact, release you from the necessity of acting as courier,or--a--valet, or whatever other office you may occupy which prevents youfrom being your own master. On the other hand, my acquaintance with yoursecret is not necessarily a disadvantage to you. To put the matter in anutshell, I am not inclined--a--gratuitously--to do you any harm, and Imay be able to do you a considerable service."
"Which you want me to earn somehow?" said Christian. "You offer me aturn in a lottery?"
"Precisely. The matter in question is of no earthly interest to you,except--a--as it may yield you a prize. We lawyers have to do withcomplicated questions, and--a--legal subtleties, which arenever--a--fully known even to the parties immediately interested, stillless to the witnesses. Shall we agree, then, that you continue to retaintwo-thirds of the name which you gained by exchange, and that you obligeme by answering certain questions as to the experience of HenryScaddon?"
"Very good. Go on."
"What articles of property once belonging to your fellow-prisoner,Maurice Christian Bycliffe, do you still retain?"
"This ring," said Christian, twirling round the fine seal-ring on hisfinger, "his watch, and the little matters that hung with it, and a caseof papers. I got rid of a gold snuff-box once when I was hard up. Theclothes are all gone, of course. We exchanged everything; it was alldone in a hurry. Bycliffe thought we should meet again in England beforelong, and he was mad to get there. But that was impossible--I mean thatwe should meet soon after. I don't know what's become of him, else Iwould give him up his papers and the watch, and so on--though, you know,it was I who did _him_ the service, and he felt that."
"You were at Vesoul together before being moved to Verdun?"
"Yes."
"What else do you know about Bycliffe?"
"Oh, nothing very particular," said Christian pausing, and rapping hisboot with his cane. "He'd been in the Hanoverian army--a high-spiritedfellow, took nothing easily; not over-strong in health. He made a foolof himself with marrying at Vesoul; and there was the devil to pay withthe girl's relations; and then, when the prisoners were ordered off,they had to part. Whether they ever got together again I don't know."
"Was the marriage all right then?"
"Oh, all on the square--civil marriage, church--everything. Bycliffe wasa fool--a good-natured, proud, headstrong fellow."
"How long did the marriage take place before you left Vesoul?"
"About three months. I was witness to the marriage."
"And you know no more about the wife?"
"Not afterward. I knew her very well before--pretty Annette--AnnetteLedru was her name. She was of a good family, and they had made up afine match for her. But she was one of your meek little diablesses, whohave a will of their own once in their lives--the will to choose theirown master."
"Bycliffe was not open to you about his other affairs?"
"Oh, no--a fellow you wouldn't dare to ask a question of. People toldhim everything, but he told nothing in return. If Madame Annette everfound him again, she found her lord and master with a vengeance; but shewas a regular lapdog. However, her family shut her up--made a prisonerof her--to prevent her running away."
"Ah--good. Much of what you have been so obliging as to say isirrelevant to any possible purpose of mine, which
, in fact, has only todo with a mouldy law-case that might be aired some day. You willdoubtless, on your own account, maintain perfect silence on what haspassed between us, and with that condition duly preserved--a--it ispossible that--a--the lottery you have put into--as you observe--mayturn up a prize."
"This, then, is all the business you have with me?" said Christian,rising.
"All. You will, of course, preserve carefully all the papers and otherarticles which have so many--a--recollections--a--attached to them?"
"Oh, yes. If there's any chance of Bycliffe turning up again, I shall besorry to have parted with the snuff-box; but I was hard-up at Naples. Infact, as you see, I was obliged at last to turn courier."
"An exceedingly agreeable life for a man of some--a--accomplishmentsand--a--no income," said Jermyn, rising, and reaching a candle, which heplaced against his desk.
Christian knew this was a sign that he was expected to go, but helingered standing, with one hand on the back of his chair. At last, hesaid rather sulkily--
"I think you're too clever, Mr. Jermyn, not to perceive that I'm not aman to be made a fool of."
"Well--a--it may perhaps be a still better guarantee for you," said Jermyn,smiling, "that I see no use in attempting that--a--metamorphosis."
"The old gentleman, who ought never to have felt himself injured, isdead now, and I'm not afraid of creditors after more than twenty years."
"Certainly not;--a--there may indeed be claims which can't assertthemselves--a--legally, which yet are molesting to a man of somereputation. But you may perhaps be happily free from such fears."
Jermyn drew round his chair toward the bureau, and Christian, too acuteto persevere uselessly, said, "Good-day," and left the room.
After leaning back in his chair to reflect a few minutes, Jermyn wrotethe following letter:--
DEAR JOHNSON,--I learn from your letter, received this morning, that you intend returning to town on Saturday.
While you are there, be so good as to see Medwin, who used to be with Batt & Cowley, and ascertain from him indirectly, and in the course of conversation on other topics, whether in that old business in 1810-11, Scaddon _alias_ Bycliffe, or Bycliffe _alias_ Scaddon, before his imprisonment, gave Batt & Cowley any reason to believe that he was married and expected to have a child. The question, as you know, is of no practical importance; but I wish to draw up an abstract of the Bycliffe case, and the exact position in which it stood before the suit was closed by the death of the plaintiff, in order that, if Mr. Harold Transome desires it, he may see how the failure of the last claim has secured the Durfey-Transome title, and whether there is a hair's breadth of chance that another claim should be set up.
Of course there is not a shadow of such a chance. For even if Batt & Cowley were to suppose that they had alighted on a surviving representative of the Bycliffes, it would not enter their heads to set up a new claim, since they brought evidence that the last life which suspended the Bycliffe remainder was extinct before the case was closed, a good twenty years ago.
Still I want to show the present heir of the Durfey-Transomes the exact condition of the family title to the estates. So get me an answer from Medwin on the above mentioned point.
I shall meet you at Duffield next week. We must get Transome returned. Never mind his having been a little rough the other day, but go on doing what you know is necessary for his interest. His interest is mine, which I need not say is John Johnson's.
Yours faithfully, MATTHEW JERMYN.
When the attorney had sealed this letter and leaned back in his chairagain, he was inwardly saying--
"Now, Mr. Harold, I shall shut up this affair in a private drawer tillyou choose to take any extreme measures which will force me to bring itout. I have the matter entirely in my own power. No one but old Lyonknows about the girl's birth. No one but Scaddon can clench the evidenceabout Bycliffe, and I've got Scaddon under my thumb. No soul exceptmyself and Johnson, who is a limb of myself, knows that there is onehalf-dead life which may presently leave the girl a new claim to theBycliffe heirship. I shall learn through Methurst whether Batt & Cowleyknew, through Bycliffe, of this woman having come to England. I shallhold all the threads between my thumb and finger. I can use the evidenceor I can nullify it.
"And so, if Mr. Harold pushes me to extremity, and threatens me withchancery and ruin, I have an opposing threat, which will either save meor turn into a punishment for him."
He rose, put out his candles, and stood with his back to the fire,looking out on the dim lawn, with its black twilight fringe of shrubs,still meditating. Quick thought was gleaming over five-and-thirty yearsfilled with devices more or less clever, more or less desirable to beavowed. Those which might be avowed with impunity were not always to bedistinguished as innocent by comparison with those which it wasadvisable to conceal. In a profession where much that is noxious may bedone without disgrace, is a conscience likely to be without balm whencircumstances have urged a man to overstep the line where his goodtechnical information makes him aware that (with discovery) disgrace islikely to begin?
With regard to the Transome affairs, the family had been in pressingneed of money, and it had lain with him to get it for them: was it to beexpected that he would not consider his own advantage where he hadrendered services such as are never fully paid? If it came to a questionof right and wrong instead of law, the least justifiable things he hadever done had been done on behalf of the Transomes. It had been adeucedly unpleasant thing for him to get Bycliffe arrested and throwninto prison as Henry Scaddon--perhaps hastening the man's death in thatway. But if it had not been done by dint of his (Jermyn's) exertions andtact, he would like to know where the Durfey-Transomes might have beenby this time. As for right or wrong, if the truth were known, the verypossession of the estate by the Durfey-Transomes was owing to law-tricksthat took place nearly a century ago, when the original old Durfey gothis base fee.
But inward argument of this sort now, as always, was merged in anger, inexasperation, that Harold, precisely Harold Transome, should have turnedout to be the probable instrument of a visitation which would be badluck, not justice; for is there any justice where ninety-nine out ofevery hundred escape? He felt himself beginning to hate Harold as he hadnever--
Just then Jermyn's third daughter, a tall slim girl, wrapped in a whitewoollen shawl, which she had hung over her blanket-wise, skipped acrossthe lawn toward the greenhouse to get a flower. Jermyn was startled, anddid not identify the figure, or rather he identified it falsely withanother tall white-wrapped figure which had sometimes set his heartbeating quickly more than thirty years before. For a moment he was fullyback in those distant years when he and another bright-eyed person hadseen no reason why they should not indulge their passion and theirvanity, and determine for themselves how their lives should be madedelightful in spite of unalterable external conditions. The reasons hadbeen unfolding themselves gradually ever since through all the yearswhich had converted the handsome, soft-eyed, slim young Jermyn (with atouch of sentiment) into a portly lawyer of sixty, for whom life hadresolved itself into the means of keeping up his head among hisprofessional brethren and maintaining an establishment--into agray-haired husband and father, whose third affectionate and expensivedaughter now rapped at the window and called to him, "Papa, papa, getready for dinner; don't you remember that the Lukyns are coming?"