Sampson gone, Harry was obliged to have recourse to his own negro servant, who was kept on the trot all day between Temple Bar and the Court end of the town with letters from his unlucky master. Firstly, then, Harry sent off a most private and confidential letter to his kinsman, the Right Honourable the Earl of Castlewood, saying how he had been cast into prison, and begging Castlewood to lend him the amount of the debt. “Please to keep my application, and the cause of it, a profound secret from the dear ladies,” wrote poor Harry.
“Was ever anything so unfortunate?” wrote back Lord Castlewood, in reply. “I suppose you have not got my note of yesterday? It must be lying at your lodgings, where—I hope in heaven!—you will soon be, too. My dear Mr. Warrington, thinking you were as rich as Croesus—otherwise I never should have sate down to cards with you—I wrote to you yesterday, begging you to lend me some money to appease some hungry duns whom I don't know how else to pacify. My poor fellow! every shilling of your money went to them, and but for my peer's privilege I might be hob-and-nob with you now in your dungeon. May you soon escape from it, is the prayer of your sincere CASTLEWOOD.”
This was the result of application number one: and we may imagine that Mr. Harry read the reply to his petition with rather a blank face. Never mind! There was kind, jolly Uncle Warrington. Only last night his aunt had kissed him and loved him like a son. His uncle had called down blessings on his head, and professed quite a paternal regard for him. With a feeling of shyness and modesty in presence of those virtuous parents and family. Harry had never said a word about his wild doings, or his horse-racings, or his gamblings, or his extravagances. It must all out now. He must confess himself a Prodigal and a Sinner, and ask for their forgiveness and aid. So Prodigal sate down and composed a penitent letter to Uncle Warrington, and exposed his sad case, and besought him to come to the rescue. Was not that a bitter nut to crack for our haughty young Virginian? Hours of mortification and profound thought as to the pathos of the composition did Harry pass over that letter; sheet after sheet of Mr. Amos's sixpence-a-sheet letter-paper did he tear up before the missive was complete, with which poor blubbering Gumbo (much vilified by the bailiff's followers and parasites, whom he was robbing, as they conceived, of their perquisites) went his way.
At evening the faithful negro brought back a thick letter in his aunt's handwriting. Harry opened the letter with a trembling hand. He thought it was full of bank-notes. Ah me! it contained a sermon (Daniel in the Lions' Den) by Mr. Whitfield, and a letter from Lady Warrington saying that, in Sir Miles's absence from London, she was in the habit of opening his letters, and hence, perforce, was become acquainted with a fact which she deplored from her inmost soul to learn, namely, that her nephew Warrington had been extravagant and was in debt. Of course, in the absence of Sir Miles, she could not hope to have at command such a sum as that for which Mr. Warrington wrote, but she sent him her heartfelt prayers, her deepest commiseration, and a discourse by dear Mr. Whitfield, which would comfort him in his present (alas! she feared not undeserved) calamity. She added profuse references to particular Scriptural chapters which would do him good. If she might speak of things worldly, she said, at such a moment, she would hint to Mr. Warrington that his epistolary orthography was anything but correct. She would not fail for her part to comply with his express desire that his dear cousins should know nothing of this most painful circumstance, and with every wish for his welfare here and elsewhere, she subscribed herself his loving aunt, MARGARET WARRINGTON.
Poor Harry hid his face between his hands, and sate for a while with elbows on the greasy table blankly staring into the candle before him. The bailiff's servant, who was touched by his handsome face, suggested a mug of beer for his honour, but Harry could not drink, nor eat the meat that was placed before him. Gumbo, however, could, whose grief did not deprive him of appetite, and who, blubbering the while, finished all the beer, and all the bread and the meat. Meanwhile, Harry had finished another letter, with which Gumbo was commissioned to start again, and away the faithful creature ran upon his errand.
Gumbo ran as far as White's Club, to which house he was ordered in the first instance to carry the letter, and where he found the person to whom it was addressed. Even the prisoner, for whom time passed so slowly, was surprised at the celerity with which his negro had performed his errand.
At least the letter which Harry expected had not taken long to write. “My lord wrote it at the hall-porter's desk, while I stood there then with Mr Mr. Morris,” said Gumbo, and the letter was to this effect:—
“DEAR SIR—I am sorry I cannot comply with your wish, I'm short of money at present, having paid large sums to you as well as to other gentlemen.—Yours obediently, MARCH AND R.
“Henry Warrington, Esq.”
“Did Lord March say anything?” asked Mr. Warrington looking very pale.
“He say it was the coolest thing he ever knew. So did Mr. Morris. He showed him your letter, Master Harry. Yes, Mr. Morris say, 'Dam his imperence!'” added Gumbo.
Harry burst into such a yell of laughter that his landlord thought he had good news, and ran in in alarm lest he was about to lose his tenant. But by this time poor Harry's laughter was over, and he was flung down in his chair gazing dismally in the fire.
“I—I should like to smoke a pipe of Virginia” he groaned.
Gumbo burst into tears: he flung himself at Harry's knees. He kissed his knees and his hands. “Oh, master, my dear master, what will they say at home?” he sobbed out.
The jailor was touched at the sight of the black's grief and fidelity, and at Harry's pale face as he sank back in his chair quite overcome and beaten by his calamity.
“Your honour ain't eat anything these two days,” the man said, in a voice of rough pity. “Pluck up a little, sir. You aren't the first gentleman who has been in and out of grief before this. Let me go down and get you a glass of punch and a little supper.”
“My good friend,” said Harry, a sickly smile playing over his white face, “you pay ready money for everything in this house, don't you? I must tell you that I haven't a shilling left to buy a dish of meat. All the money I have I want for letter-paper.”
“Oh, master, my master!” roared out Gumbo. “Look here, my dear Master Harry! Here's plenty of money—here's twenty-three five-guineas. Here's gold moidore from Virginia—here—no, not that—that's keepsakes the girls gave me. Take everything—everything. I go sell myself to-morrow morning; but here's plenty for to-night, master!”
“God bless you, Gumbo!” Harry said, laying his hand on the lad's woolly head. “You are free if I am not, and Heaven forbid I should not take the offered help of such a friend as you. Bring me some supper: but the pipe too, mind—the pipe too!” And Harry ate his supper with a relish: and even the turnkeys and bailiff's followers, when Gumbo went out of the house that night, shook hands with him, and ever after treated him well.
Mr. Gumbo's generous and feeling conduct soothed and softened the angry heart of his master, and Harry's second night in the spunging-house was passed more pleasantly than the first. Somebody at least there was to help and compassionate with him. Still, though softened in that one particular spot, Harry's heart was hard and proud towards almost all the rest of the world. They were selfish and ungenerous, he thought. His pious Aunt Warrington, his lordly friend March, his cynical cousin Castlewood,—all had been tried, and were found wanting. Not to avoid twenty years of prison would he stoop to ask a favour of one of them again. Fool that he had been, to believe in their promises, and confide in their friendship! There was no friendship in this cursed, cold, selfish country. He would leave it. He would trust no Englishman, great or small. He would go to Germany, and make a campaign with the king; or he would go home to Virginia, bury himself in the woods there, and hunt all day; become his mother's factor and land-steward; marry Polly Broadbent, or Fanny Mountain; turn regular tobacco-grower and farmer; do anything, rather than remain amongst these English fine gentlemen. So he arose with an outwardly cheerful countenance, but an angry spirit; and at an early hour in the morning the faithful Gumbo was in attendance in his master's chamber, having come from Bond Street, and brought Mr. Harry's letters thence. “I wanted to bring some more clothes,” honest Gumbo said; “but Mr. Ruff, the landlord, he wouldn't let me bring no more.”
Harry did not care to look at the letters: he opened one, two, three; they were all bills. He opened a fourth; it was from the landlord, to say that he would allow no more of Mr. Warrington's things to go out of the house,—that unless his bill was paid he should sell Mr. W.'s goods and pay himself: and that his black man must go and sleep elsewhere. He would hardly let Gumbo take his own clothes and portmanteau away. The black said he had found refuge elsewhere—with some friends at Lord Wrotham's house. “With Colonel Lambert's people,” says Mr. Gumbo, looking very hard at his master. “And Miss Hetty she fall down in a faint, when she hear you taken up; and Mr. Lambert, he very good man, and he say to me this morning, he say, 'Gumbo, you tell your master if he want me he send to me, and I come to him.'”
Harry was touched when he heard that Hetty had been afflicted by his misfortune. He did not believe Gumbo's story about her fainting; he was accustomed to translate his black's language and to allow for exaggeration. But when Gumbo spoke of the Colonel the young Virginian's spirit was darkened again. “I send to Lambert” he thought, grinding his teeth, “the man who insulted me, and flung my presents back in my face! If I were starving I would not ask him for a crust!” And presently, being dressed, Mr. Warrington called for his breakfast, and despatched Gumbo with a brief note to Mr. Draper in the Temple, requiring that gentleman's attendance.
“The note was as haughty as if he was writing to one of his negroes, and not to a freeborn English gentleman,” Draper said; whom indeed Harry had always treated with insufferable condescension. “It's all very well for a fine gentleman to give himself airs; but for a fellow in a spunging-house! Hang him!” says Draper, “I've a great mind not to go!” Nevertheless, Mr. Draper did go, and found Mr. Warrington in his misfortune even more arrogant than he had ever been in the days of his utmost prosperity. Mr. W. sat on his bed, like a lord, in a splendid gown with his hair dressed. He motioned his black man to fetch him a chair.
“Excuse me, madam, but such haughtiness and airs I ain't accustomed to!” said the outraged attorney.
“Take a chair and go on with your story, my good Mr. Draper!” said Madame de Bernstein, smiling, to whom he went to report proceedings. She was amused at the lawyer's anger. She liked her nephew for being insolent in adversity.
The course which Draper was to pursue in his interview with Harry had been arranged between the Baroness and her man of business on the previous day. Draper was an able man, and likely in most cases to do a client good service: he failed in the present instance because he was piqued and angry, or, more likely still, because he could not understand the gentleman with whom he had to deal. I presume that he who casts his eye on the present page is the most gentle of readers. Gentleman, as you unquestionably are, then, my dear sir, have you not remarked in your dealings with people who are no gentlemen, that you offend them not knowing the how or the why? So the man who is no gentleman offends you in a thousand ways of which the poor creature has no idea himself. He does or says something which provokes your scorn. He perceives that scorn (being always on the watch, and uneasy about himself, his manners and behaviour) and he rages. You speak to him naturally, and he fancies still that you are sneering at him. You have indifference towards him, but he hates you, and hates you the worse because you don't care. “Gumbo, a chair to Mr. Draper!” says Mr. Warrington, folding his brocaded dressing-gown round his legs as he sits on the dingy bed. “Sit down, if you please, and let us talk my business over. Much obliged to you for coming so soon in reply to my message. Had you heard of this piece of ill-luck before?”
Mr. Draper had heard of the circumstance. “Bad news travel quick, Mr. Warrington,” he said; “and I was eager to offer my humble services as soon as ever you should require them. Your friends, your family, will be much pained that a gentleman of your rank should be in such a position.”
“I have been very imprudent, Mr. Draper. I have lived beyond my means.” (Mr. Draper bowed.) “I played in company with gentlemen who were much richer than myself, and a cursed run of ill-luck has carried away all my ready money, leaving me with liabilities to the amount of five hundred pounds, and more.”
“Five hundred now in the office,” says Mr. Draper.
“Well, this is such a trifle that I thought by sending to one or two friends, yesterday, I could have paid my debt and gone home without further to do. I have been mistaken; and will thank you to have the kindness to put me in the way of raising the money as soon as may be.”
Mr. Draper said “Hm!” and pulled a very grave and long face.
“Why, sir, it can be done!” says Mr. Warrington, staring at the lawyer.
It not only could be done, but Mr. Draper had proposed to Madame Bernstein on the day before instantly to pay the money, and release Mr. Warrington. That lady had declared she intended to make the young gentleman her heir. In common with the rest of the world, Draper believed Harry's hereditary property in Virginia to be as great in money-value as in extent. He had notes in his pocket, and Madame Bernstein's order to pay them under certain conditions: nevertheless, when Harry said, “It can be done!” Draper pulled his long face, and said, “It can be done in time, sir; but it will require a considerable time. To touch the property in England which is yours on Mr. George Warrington's death, we must have the event proved, the trustees released: and who is to do either? Lady Esmond Warrington in Virginia, of course, will not allow her son to remain in prison, but we must wait six months before we hear from her. Has your Bristol agent any authority to honour your drafts?”
“He is only authorised to pay me two hundred pounds a year,” says Mr. Warrington. “I suppose I have no resource, then, but to apply to my aunt, Madame de Bernstein. She will be my security.”
“Her ladyship will do anything for you, sir; she has said so to me, often and often,” said the lawyer; “and, if she gives the word at that moment you can walk out of this place.”
“Go to her, then, from me, Mr. Draper. I did not want to have troubled my relations: but rather than continue in this horrible needless imprisonment, I must speak to her. Say where I am, and what has befallen me. Disguise nothing! And tell her, that I confide in her affection and kindness for me to release me from this—this disgrace,” and Mr. Warrington's voice shook a little, and he passed his hand across his eyes.
“Sir,” says Mr. Draper, eyeing the young man, “I was with her ladyship yesterday, when we talked over the whole of this here most unpleasant—I won't say as you do, disgraceful business.”
“What do you mean, sir? Does Madame de Bernstein know of my misfortune?” asked Harry.
“Every circumstance, sir; the pawning the watches, and all.”
Harry turned burning red. “It is an unfortunate business, the pawning them watches and things which you had never paid for,” continued the lawyer. The young man started up from the bed, looking so fierce that Draper felt a little alarmed.
“It may lead to litigation and unpleasant remarks being made, in court, sir. Them barristers respect nothing; and when they get a feller in the box——”
“Great Heaven, sir, you don't suppose a gentleman of my rank can't take a watch upon credit without intending to cheat the tradesman?” cried Harry, in the greatest agitation.
“Of course you meant everything that's honourable; only, you see, the law mayn't happen to think so,” says Mr. Draper, winking his eye. (“Hang the supercilious beast; I touch him there!) Your aunt says it's the most imprudent thing ever she heard of—to call it by no worse name.”
“You call it by no worse name yourself, Mr. Draper?” says Harry, speaking each word very slow, and evidently trying to keep a command of himself.
Draper did not like his looks. “Heaven forbid that I should say anything as between gentleman and gentleman,—but between me and my client, it's my duty to say, 'Sir, you are in a very unpleasant scrape,' just as a doctor would have to tell his patient, 'Sir, you are very ill.'”
“And you can't help me to pay this debt off,—and you have come only to tell me that I may be accused of roguery?” says Harry.
“Of obtaining goods under false pretences? Most undoubtedly, yes. I can't help it, sir. Don't look as if you would knock me down. (Curse him, I am making him wince, though.) A young gentleman, who has only two hundred a year from his ma', orders diamonds and watches, and takes 'em to a pawnbroker. You ask me what people will think of such behaviour, and I tell you honestly. Don't be angry with me, Mr. Warrington.”
“Go on, sir!” says Harry, with a groan.
The lawyer thought the day was his own. “But you ask if I can't help to pay this debt off? And I say Yes—and that here is the money in my pocket to do it now, if you like—not mine, sir, my honoured client's, your aunt, Lady Bernstein. But she has a right to impose her conditions, and I've brought 'em with me.”
“Tell them, sir,” says Mr. Harry.
“They are not hard. They are only for your own good: and if you say Yes, we can call a hackney-coach, and go to Clarges Street together, which I have promised to go there, whether you will or no. Mr. Warrington, I name no names, but there was a question of marriage between you and a certain party.”
“Ah!” said Harry; and his countenance looked more cheerful than it had yet done.
“To that marriage my noble client, the Baroness, is most averse—having other views for you, and thinking it will be your ruin to marry a party,—of noble birth and title it is true; but, excuse me, not of first-rate character, and so much older than yourself. You had given an imprudent promise to that party.”
“Yes; and she has it still,” says Mr. Warrington.
“It has been recovered. She dropped it by an accident at Tunbridge,” says Mr. Draper, “so my client informed me; indeed her ladyship showed it me, for the matter of that. It was wrote in bl——”
“Never mind, sir!” cries Harry, turning almost as red as the ink which he had used to write his absurd promise, of which the madness and folly had smote him with shame a thousand times over.
“At the same time letters, wrote to you, and compromising a noble family, were recovered,” continues the lawyer. “You had lost 'em. It was no fault of yours. You were away when they were found again. You may say that that noble family, that you yourself, have a friend such as few young men have. Well, sir, there's no earthly promise to bind you—only so many idle words said over a bottle, which very likely any gentleman may forget. Say you won't go on with this marriage—give me and my noble friend your word of honour. Cry off, I say, Mr. W.! Don't be such a d——fool, saving your presence, as to marry an old woman who has jilted scores of men in her time. Say the word, and I step downstairs, pay every shilling against you in the office, and put you down in my coach, either at your aunt's or at White's Club, if you like, with a couple of hundred in your pocket. Say yes; and give us your hand! There's no use in sitting grinning behind these bars all day!”
So far Mr. Draper had had the best of the talk. Harry only longed himself to be rid of the engagement from which his aunt wanted to free him. His foolish flame for Maria Esmond had died out long since. If she would release him, how thankful would he be! “Come! give us your hand, and say done!” says the lawyer, with a knowing wink. “Don't stand shilly-shallying, sir. Law bless you, Mr. W., if I had married everybody I promised, I should be like the Grand Turk, or Captain Macheath in the play!”
The lawyer's familiarity disgusted Harry, who shrank from Draper, scarcely knowing that he did so. He folded his dressing gown round him, and stepped back from the other's proffered hand. “Give me a little time to think of the matter, if you please, Mr. Draper,” he said, “and have the goodness to come to me again in an hour.
“Very good, sir, very good, sir!” says the lawyer, biting his lips, and, as he seized up his hat, turning very red. “Most parties would not want an hour to consider about such an offer as I make you: but I suppose my time must be yours, and I'll come again, and see whether you are to go or to stay. Good morning, sir, good morning:” and he went his way, growling curses down the stairs. “Won't take my hand, won't he? Will tell me in an hour's time! Hang his impudence! I'll show him what an hour is!”
Mr. Draper went to his chambers in dudgeon then; bullied his clerks all round, sent off a messenger to the Baroness, to say that he had waited on the young gentleman, who had demanded a little time for consideration, which was for form's sake, as he had no doubt; the lawyer then saw clients, transacted business, went out to his dinner in the most leisurely manner; and then finally turned his steps towards the neighbouring Cursitor Street. “He'll be at home when I call, the haughty beast!” says Draper, with a sneer. “The Fortunate Youth in his room?” the lawyer asked of the sheriff's officer's aide-de-camp who came to open the double doors.
“Mr. Warrington is in his apartment,” said the gentleman, “but——” and here the gentleman winked at Mr. Draper, and laid his hand on his nose.
“But what, Mr. Paddy from Cork?” said the lawyer.
“My name is Costigan; me familee is noble, and me neetive place is the Irish methrawpolis, Mr. Six-and-eightpence!” said the janitor, scowling at Draper. A rich odour of spirituous liquors filled the little space between the double doors where he held the attorney in conversation.
“Confound you, sir, let me pass!” bawled out Mr. Draper.
“I can hear you perfectly well, Six-and-eightpence, except your h's, which you dthrop out of your conversation. I'll thank ye not to call neems, me good friend, or me fingers and your nose will have to make an intimate hic-quaintance. Walk in, sir! Be polite for the future to your shupariors in birth and manners, though they may be your infariors in temporary station. Confound the kay! Walk in, sir, I say!—Madam, I have the honour of saluting ye most respectfully!”
A lady with her face covered with a capuchin, and further hidden by her handkerchief, uttered a little exclamation as of alarm as she came down the stairs at this instant and hurried past the lawyer. He was pressing forward to look at her—for Mr. Draper was very cavalier in his manners to women—but the bailiff's follower thrust his leg between Draper and the retreating lady, crying, “Keep your own distance, if you plaise! This way, madam! I at once recognised your ladysh——” Here he closed the door on Draper's nose, and left that attorney to find his own way to his client upstairs.
At six o'clock that evening the old Baroness de Bernstein was pacing up and down her drawing-crutch, and for ever running to the window when the noise of a coach was heard passing in Clarges Street. She had delayed her dinner from hour to hour: she who scolded so fiercely, on ordinary occasions, if her cook was five minutes after his time. She had ordered two covers to be laid, plate to be set out, and some extra dishes to be prepared as if for a little fete. Four—five o'clock passed, and at six she looked from the window, and a coach actually stopped at her door.
“Mr. Draper” was announced, and entered bowing profoundly.
The old lady trembled on her stick. “Where is the boy?” she said quickly. “I told you to bring him, sir! How dare you come without him?”
“It is not my fault, madam, that Mr. Warrington refuses to come.” And Draper gave his version of the interview which had just taken place between himself and the young Virginian.
Going off in his wrath from his morning's conversation with Harry, Mr. Draper thought he heard the young prisoner speak behind him; and, indeed, Harry had risen, and uttered a half-exclamation to call the lawyer back. But he was proud, and the other offended: Harry checked words, and Draper did not choose to stop. It wound Harry's pride to be obliged to humble himself before the lawyer, and to have to yield from mere lack and desire of money. “An hour hence will do as well,” thought Harry, and lapsed sulkily on to the bed again. No, he did not care for Maria Esmond! No: he was ashamed of the way in which he had been entrapped into that engagement. A wily and experienced woman, she had cheated his boyish ardour. She had taken unfair advantage of him, as her brother had at play. They were his own flesh and blood, and they ought to have spared him. Instead, one and the other had made a prey of him, and had used him for their selfish ends. He thought how they had betrayed the rights of hospitality: how they had made a victim of the young kinsman who came confiding within their gates. His heart was sore wounded: his head sank back on his pillow: bitter tears wetted it. “Had they come to Virginia,” he thought, “I had given them a different welcome!”
He was roused from this mood of despondency by Gumbo's grinning face at his door, who said a lady was come to see Master Harry, and behind the lad came the lady in the capuchin, of whom we have just made mention. Harry sat up, pale and haggard, on his bed. The lady, with a sob, and almost ere the servant-man withdrew, ran towards the young prisoner, put her arms round his neck with real emotion and a maternal tenderness, sobbed over his pale cheek and kissed it in the midst of plentiful tears, and cried out—
“Oh, my Harry! Did I ever, ever think to see thee here?”
He started back, scared as it seemed at her presence, but she sank down at the bedside, and seized his feverish hand, and embraced his knees. She had a real regard and tenderness for him. The wretched place in which she found him, his wretched look, filled her heart with a sincere love and pity.
“I—I thought none of you would come!” said poor Harry, with a groan.
More tears, more kisses of the hot young hand, more clasps and pressure with hers, were the lady's reply for a moment or two.
“Oh, my dear! my dear! I cannot bear to think of thee in misery,” she sobbed out.
Hardened though it might be, that heart was not all marble—that dreary life not all desert. Harry's mother could not have been fonder, nor her tones more tender than those of his kinswoman now kneeling at his feet.
“Some of the debts, I fear, were owing to my extravagance!” she said (and this was true). “You bought trinkets and jewels in order to give me pleasure. Oh, how I hate them now! I little thought I ever could! I have brought them all with me, and more trinkets—here! and here! and all the money I have in the world!”
And she poured brooches, rings, a watch, and a score or so of guineas into Harry's lap. The sight of which strangely agitated and immensely touched the young man.
“Dearest, kindest cousin!” he sobbed out.
His lips found no more words to utter, but yet, no doubt they served to express his gratitude, his affection, his emotion.
He became quite gay presently, and smiled as he put away some of the trinkets, his presents to Maria, and told her into what danger he had fallen by selling other goods which he had purchased on credit; and how a lawyer had insulted him just now upon this very point. He would not have his dear Maria's money—he had enough, quite enough for the present: but he valued her twenty guineas as much as if they had been twenty thousand. He would never forget her love and kindness: no, by all that was sacred he would not! His mother should know of all her goodness. It had had cheered him when he was just on the point of breaking down under his disgrace and misery. Might Heaven bless her for it! There is no need to pursue beyond this, the cousins' conversation. The dark day seemed brighter to Harry after Maria's visit: the imprisonment not so hard to bear. The world was not all selfish and cold. Here was a fond creature who really and truly loved him. Even Castlewood was not so bad as he had thought. He had expressed the deepest grief at not being able to assist his kinsman. He was hopelessly in debt. Every shilling he had won from Harry he had lost on the next day to others. Anything that lay in his power he would do. He would come soon and see Mr. Warrington: he was in waiting to-day, and as much a prisoner as Harry himself. So the pair talked on cheerfully and affectionately until the darkness began to close in, when Maria, with a sigh, bade Harry farewell.
The door scarcely closed upon her, when it opened to admit Draper.
“Your humble servant, sir,” says the attorney. His voice jarred upon Harry's ear, and his presence offended the young man.
“I had expected you some hours ago, sir,” he curtly said.
“A lawyer's time is not always his own, sir,” said Mr. Draper, who had just been in consultation with a bottle of port at the Grecian. “Never mind, I'm at your orders now. Presume it's all right, Mr. Warrington. Packed your trunk? Why, now there you are in your bedgown still. Let me go down and settle whilst you call in your black man and titivate a bit. I've a coach at the door, and we'll be off and dine with the old lady.”
“Are you going to dine with the Baroness de Bernstein, pray?”
“Not me—no such honour. Had my dinner already. It's you are a-going to dine with your aunt, I suppose?”
“Mr. Draper, you suppose a great deal more than you know,” says Mr. Warrington, looking very fierce and tall, as he folds his brocade dressing-gown round him.
“Great goodness, sir, what do you mean?” asks Draper.
“I mean, sir, that I have considered, and, that having given my word to a faithful and honourable lady, it does not become me to withdraw it.”
“Confound it, sir!” shrieks the lawyer, “I tell you she has lost the paper. There's nothing to bind you—nothing. Why she's old enough to be——”
“Enough, sir,” says Mr. Warrington, with a stamp of his foot. “You seem to think you are talking to some other pettifogger. I take it, Mr. Draper, you are not accustomed to have dealings with men of honour.”
“Pettifogger, indeed!” cries Draper in a fury. “Men of honour, indeed! I'd have you to know, Mr. Warrington, that I'm as good a man of honour as you. I don't know so many gamblers and horse-jockeys, perhaps. I haven't gambled away my patrimony, and lived as if I was a nobleman on two hundred a year. I haven't bought watches on credit, and pawned—touch me if you dare, sir,” and the lawyer sprang to the door.
“That is the way out, sir. You can't go through the window, because it is barred,” says Mr. Warrington.
“And the answer I take to my client is No, then!” screamed out Draper.
Harry stepped forward, with his two hands clenched. “If you utter another word,” he said, “I'll——” The door was shut rapidly—the sentence was never finished, and Draper went away furious to Madame de Bernstein, from whom, though he gave her the best version of his story, he got still fiercer language than he had received from Mr. Warrington himself.
“What? Shall she trust me, and I desert her?” says Harry, stalking up and down his room in his flowing, rustling brocade. “Dear, faithful, generous woman! If I lie in prison for years, I'll be true to her.”
Her lawyer dismissed after a stormy interview, the desolate old woman was fain to sit down to the meal which she had hoped to share with her nephew. The chair was before her which he was to have filled, the glasses shining by the silver. One dish after another was laid before her by the silent major-domo, and tasted and pushed away. The man pressed his mistress at last. “It is eight o'clock,” he said. “You have had nothing all day. It is good for you to eat.” She could not eat. She would have her coffee. Let Case go get her her coffee. The lacqueys bore the dishes off the table, leaving their mistress sitting at it before the vacant chair.
Presently the old servant re-entered the room without his lady's coffee and with a strange scared face, and said, “Mr. WARRINGTON!”
The old woman uttered an exclamation, got up from her armchair, but sank back in it trembling very much. “So you are come, sir, are you?” she said, with a fond shaking voice. “Bring back the——Ah!” here she screamed, “Gracious God, who is it?” Her eyes stared wildly: her white face looked ghastly through her rouge. She clung to the arms of her chair for support, as the visitor approached her.
A gentleman whose face and figure exactly resembled Harry Warrington and whose voice, when he spoke, had tones strangely similar, had followed the servant into the room. He bowed towards the Baroness.
“You expected my brother, madam?” he said “I am but now arrived in London. I went to his house. I met his servant at your door, who was bearing this letter for you. I thought I would bring it to your ladyship before going to him,”—and the stranger laid down a letter before Madam Bernstein.
“Are you”—gasped out the Baroness—“are you my nephew, that we supposed was——”
“Was killed—and is alive! I am George Warrington, madam and I ask his kinsfolk what have you done with my brother?”
“Look, George!” said the bewildered old lady “I expected him here to-night—that chair was set for him—I have been waiting for him, sir, till now—till I am quite faint—I don't like—I don't like being alone. Do stay an sup with me!”
“Pardon me, madam. Please God, my supper will be with Harry tonight!”
“Bring him back. Bring him back here on any conditions! It is but five hundred pounds! Here is the money, sir, if you need it!”
“I have no want, madam. I have money with me that can't be better employed than in my brother's service.”
“And you will bring him to me, sir! Say you will bring him to me!”
Mr. Warrington made a very stately bow for answer, and quitted the room, passing by the amazed domestics, and calling with an air of authority to Gumbo to follow him.
Had Mr. Harry received no letters from home? Master Harry had not opened all his letters the last day or two. Had he received no letter announcing his brother's escape from the French settlements and return to Virginia? Oh no! No such letter had come, else Master Harry certainly tell Gumbo. Quick, horses! Quick by Strand to Temple Bar! Here is the house of Captivity and the Deliverer come to the rescue!
Quick, hackneycoach steeds, and bear George Warrington through Strand and Fleet Street to his imprisoned brother's rescue! Any one who remembers Hogarth's picture of a London hackneycoach and a London street road at that period, may fancy how weary the quick time was, and how long seemed the journey:—scarce any lights, save those carried by link-boys; badly hung coaches; bad pavements; great holes in the road, and vast quagmires of winter mud. That drive from Piccadilly to Fleet Street seemed almost as long to our young man, as the journey from Marlborough to London which he had performed in the morning.
He had written to Harry, announcing his arrival at Bristol. He had previously written to his brother, giving the great news of his existence and his return from captivity. There was war between England and France at that time; the French privateers were for ever on the look-out for British merchant-ships, and seized them often within sight of port. The letter bearing the intelligence of George's restoration must have been on board one of the many American ships of which the French took possession. The letter telling of George's arrival in England was never opened by poor Harry; it was lying at the latter's apartments, which it reached on the third morning after Harry's captivity, when the angry Mr. Ruff had refused to give up any single item more of his lodger's property.
To these apartments George first went on his arrival in London, and asked for his brother. Scared at the likeness between them, the maid-servant who opened the door screamed, and ran back to her mistress. The mistress not liking to tell the truth, or to own that poor Harry was actually a prisoner at her husband's suit, said Mr. Warrington had left his lodgings; she did not know where Mr. Warrington was. George knew that Clarges Street was close to Bond Street. Often and often had he looked over the London map. Aunt Bernstein would tell him where Harry was. He might be with her at that very moment. George had read in Harry's letters to Virginia about Aunt Bernstein's kindness to Harry. Even Madam Esmond was softened by it (and especially touched by a letter which the Baroness wrote—the letter which caused George to pack off post-haste for Europe, indeed). She heartily hoped and trusted that Madam Beatrix had found occasion to repent of her former bad ways. It was time, indeed, at her age; and Heaven knows that she had plenty to repent of! I have known a harmless, good old soul of eighty, still bepommelled and stoned by irreproachable ladies of the straitest sect of the Pharisees, for a little slip which occurred long before the present century was born, or she herself was twenty years old. Rachel Esmond never mentioned her eldest daughter: Madam Esmond Warrington never mentioned her sister. No. In spite of the order for remission of the sentence—in spite of the handwriting on the floor of the Temple—there is a crime which some folks never will pardon, and regarding which female virtue, especially, is inexorable.
I suppose the Virginians' agent at Bristol had told George fearful stories of his brother's doings. Gumbo, whom he met at his aunt's door, as soon as the lad recovered from his terror at the sudden reappearance of the master whom he supposed dead, had leisure to stammer out a word or two respecting his young master's whereabouts, and present pitiable condition; and hence Mr. George's sternness of demeanour when he presented himself to the old lady. It seemed to him a matter of course that his brother in difficulty should be rescued by his relations. Oh, George, how little you know about London and London ways! Whenever you take your walks abroad how many poor you meet—if a philanthropist were for rescuing all of them, not all the wealth of all the provinces of America would suffice him!
But the feeling and agitation displayed by the old lady touched her nephew's heart when, jolting through the dark streets towards the house of his brother's captivity, George came to think of his aunt's behaviour. “She does feel my poor Harry's misfortune,” he thought to himself, “I have been too hasty in judging her.” Again and again, in the course of his life, Mr. George had to rebuke himself with the same crime of being too hasty. How many of us have not? And, alas, the mischief done, there's no repentance will mend it. Quick, coachman! We are almost as slow as you are in getting from Clarges Street to the Temple. Poor Gumbo knows the way to the bailiff's house well enough. Again the bell is set ringing. The first door is opened to George and his negro; then that first door is locked warily upon them, and they find themselves in a little passage with a little Jewish janitor; then a second door is unlocked, and they enter into the house. The Jewish janitor stares, as by his flaring tallow-torch he sees a second Mr. Warrington before him. Come to see that gentleman? Yes. But wait a moment. This is Mr. Warrington's brother from America. Gumbo must go and prepare his master first. Step into this room. There's a gentleman already there about Mr. W.'s business (the porter says), and another upstairs with him now. There's no end of people have been about him.
The room into which George was introduced was a small apartment which went by the name of Mr. Amos's office, and where, by a guttering candle, and talking to the bailiff, sat a stout gentleman in a cloak and a laced hat. The young porter carried his candle, too, preceding Mr. George, so there was a sufficiency of light in the apartment.
“We are not angry any more, Harry!” says the stout gentleman, in a cheery voice, getting up and advancing with an outstretched hand to the new-comer. “Thank God, my boy! Mr. Amos here says, there will be no difficulty about James and me being your bail, and we will do your business by breakfast-time in the morning. Why... Angels and ministers of grace! who are you?” And he started back as the other had hold of his hand.
But the stranger grasped it only the more strongly. “God bless you, sir!” he said, “I know who you are. You must be Colonel Lambert, of whose kindness to him my poor Harry wrote. And I am the brother whom you have heard of, sir; and who was left for dead in Mr. Braddock's action; and came to life again after eighteen months amongst the French; and live to thank God and thank you for your kindness to my Harry,” continued the lad with a faltering voice.
“James! James! Here is news!” cries Mr. Lambert to a gentleman in red, who now entered the room. “Here are the dead come alive! Here is Harry Scapegrace's brother come back, and with his scalp on his head, too!” (George had taken his hat off, and was standing by the light.) “This is my brother-bail, Mr. Warrington! This is Lieutenant-Colonel James Wolfe, at your service. You must know there has been a little difference between Harry and me, Mr. George. He is pacified, is he, James?”
“He is full of gratitude,” says Mr. Wolfe, after making his bow to Mr. Warrington.
“Harry wrote home about Mr. Wolfe, too, sir,” said the young man, “and I hope my brother's friends will be so kind as to be mine.”
“I wish he had none other but us, Mr. Warrington. Poor Harry's fine folks have been too fine for him, and have ended by landing him here.”
“Nay, your honours, I have done my best to make the young gentleman comfortable; and, knowing your honour before, when you came to bail Captain Watkins, and that your security is perfectly good,—if your honour wishes, the young gentleman can go out this very night, and I will make it all right with the lawyer in the morning,” says Harry's landlord, who knew the rank and respectability of the two gentlemen who had come to offer bail for his young prisoner.
“The debt is five hundred and odd pounds, I think?” said Mr. Warrington. “With a hundred thanks to these gentlemen, I can pay the amount at this moment into the officers' hands, taking the usual acknowledgment and caution. But I can never forget, gentlemen, that you helped my brother at his need, and, for doing so, I say thank you, and God bless you, in my mother's name and mine.”
Gumbo had, meanwhile, gone upstairs to his master's apartment, where Harry would probably have scolded the negro for returning that night, but that the young gentleman was very much soothed and touched by the conversation he had had with the friend who had just left him. He was sitting over his pipe of Virginia in a sad mood (for, somehow, even Maria's goodness and affection, as she had just exhibited them, had not altogether consoled him; and he had thought, with a little dismay, of certain consequences to which that very kindness and fidelity bound him), when Mr. Wolfe's homely features and eager outstretched hand came to cheer the prisoner, and he heard how Mr. Lambert was below, and the errand upon which the two officers had come. In spite of himself, Lambert would be kind to him. In spite of Harry's ill-temper, and needless suspicion and anger, the good gentleman was determined to help him if he might—to help him even against Mr. Wolfe's own advice, as the latter frankly told Harry, “For you were wrong, Mr. Warrington,” said the Colonel, “and you wouldn't be set right; and you, a young man, used hard words and unkind behaviour to your senior, and what is more, one of the best gentlemen who walks God's earth. You see, sir, what his answer hath been to your wayward temper. You will bear with a friend who speaks frankly with you? Martin Lambert hath acted in this as he always doth, as the best Christian, the best friend, the most kind and generous of men. Nay, if you want another proof of his goodness, here it is: He has converted me, who, as I don't care to disguise, was angry with you for your treatment of him, and has absolutely brought me down here to be your bail. Let us both cry Peccavimus! Harry, and shake our friend by the hand! He is sitting in the room below. He would not come here till he knew how you would receive him.”
“I think he is a good man!” groaned out Harry. “I was very angry and wild at the time when he and I met last, Colonel Wolfe. Nay, perhaps he was right in sending back those trinkets, hurt as I was at his doing so. Go down to him, will you be so kind, sir? and tell him I am sorry, and ask his pardon, and—and, God bless him for his generous behaviour.” And here the young gentleman turned his head away, and rubbed his hand across his eyes.
“Tell him all this thyself, Harry!” cries the Colonel, taking the young fellow's hand. “No deputy will ever say it half so well. Come with me now.”
“You go first, and I'll—I'll follow,—on my word I will. See! I am in my morning-gown! I will but put on a coat and come to him. Give him my message first. Just—just prepare him for me!” says poor Harry, who knew he must do it, but yet did not much like that process of eating of humble-pie.
Wolfe went out smiling—understanding the lad's scruples well enough, perhaps. As he opened the door, Mr. Gumbo entered it; almost forgetting to bow to the gentleman, profusely courteous as he was on ordinary occasions,—his eyes glaring round, his great mouth grinning—himself in a state of such high excitement and delight that his master remarked his condition.
“What, Gum? What has happened to thee? Hast thou got a new sweetheart?”
No, Gum had not got no new sweetheart, master.
“Give me my coat. What has brought thee back?”
Gum grinned prodigiously. “I have seen a ghost, mas'r!” he said.
“A ghost! and whose, and where?”
“Whar? Saw him at Madame Bernstein's house. Come with him here in the coach! He downstairs now with Colonel Lambert!” Whilst Gumbo is speaking, as he is putting on his master's coat, his eyes are rolling, his head is wagging, his hands are trembling, his lips are grinning.
“Ghost—what ghost?” says Harry, in a strange agitation. “Is anybody—is—my mother come?”
“No, sir; no, Master Harry!” Gumbo's head rolls nearly off its violent convolutions, and his master, looking oddly at him, flings the door open, and goes rapidly down the stair.
He is at the foot of it, just as a voice within the little office, of which the door is open, is saying, “and for doing so, I say thank you, and God bless you, in my mother's name and mine.”
“Whose voice is that?” calls out Harry Warrington, with a strange cry in his own voice.
“It's the ghost's, mas'r!” says Gumbo, from behind; and Harry runs forward to the room,—where, if you please, we will pause a little minute before we enter. The two gentlemen who were there, turned their heads away. The lost was found again. The dead was alive. The prodigal was on his brother's heart,—his own full of love, gratitude, repentance.
“Come away, James! I think we are not wanted any more here,” says the Colonel. “Good-night, boys. Some ladies in Hill Street won't be able to sleep for this strange news. Or will you go home and sup with 'em, and tell them the story?”
No, with many thanks, the boys would not go and sup to-night. They had stories of their own to tell. “Quick, Gumbo, with the trunks! Good-bye, Mr. Amos!” Harry felt almost unhappy when he went away.