Lucius Davoren 18Book the Last · Lucius Surrenders a Doubtful Chance
18
Literature · Romance
Lucius Davoren 18
Book the Last · Lucius Surrenders a Doubtful Chance
BraddonEnglish
Lucius saw Mr. Pullman next day, and told him of the impression Lucille had made on her great-aunt.
‘Upon my word, sir, she’s a very lucky young woman,’ said the lawyer; ‘for Miss Glenlyne has a snug little fortune to dispose of, and has not a near relative to leave it to; for the Spalding Glenlynes are only third or fourth cousins, and she detests them. Now, Mr. Davoren, do you mean to put forward Miss Lucille Glenlyne’s claim to the estate now in the possession of Mr. Spalding Glenlyne?’
‘That will depend on various circumstances, Mr. Pullman,’ answered Lucius. ‘First and foremost, you think the case a weak one.’
‘Lamentably weak. You are able to prove the marriage;—granted. You may be able to prove the birth of a child; but how are you to identify the young lady you put forward with the child born at Sidmouth? How are you to supply the link which will unite the two ends of the chain?’
‘Miss Glenlyne has acknowledged her niece.’
‘Yes; but let Miss Glenlyne come forward to bear witness to her niece’s identity, and she will be laughed at as a weak old woman—almost an idiot. The only person who could have sworn to the girl’s identity was Ferdinand Sivewright. He is dead, and you did not even take his deposition to the facts within his knowledge. Even had you done so, such a document might have been useless; the man’s notoriously bad character would have vitiated his testimony. Mr. Davoren, I regret to say your case is as weak as it well can be. It is a case which a speculative attorney might take up perhaps, hazarding his not too valuable time and trouble against the remote contingency of success; but no respectable firm would be troubled with such a business, unless you could guarantee their costs at the outset.’
‘I am not greedy for money, Mr. Pullman,’ replied Lucius, in no manner crestfallen at this disheartening opinion. ‘Were my case, or rather Lucille’s case, the strongest, it would still be doubtful with me how far I should do battle for her interests. She has been acknowledged by her great-aunt as a Glenlyne—that is the chief point in my mind. The name so long lost to her has been restored, and she has found a relative whose kindness may in some measure atone for her father’s cruelty. This Mr. Spalding Glenlyne acquired the estate by no wrongdoing of his own. It would be rather hard to oust him from it.’
‘If you had a leg to stand on, sir, I should be the last to let any consideration of Mr. Spalding Glenlyne’s feelings restrain us from taking action in this matter.’
‘You don’t like Mr. Glenlyne?’
‘Frankly, I detest him.’
‘Is he a bad man?’
‘No, Mr. Davoren; therein lies his most objectionable quality. He is a man who at once enforces respect and provokes detestation.’
‘Paradoxical, rather.’
‘I suppose so; but it is strictly true, nevertheless. Mr. Spalding Glenlyne is a man whom everybody acknowledges to be a useful member of society. He has improved the Glenlyne estate to an almost unprecedented extent. His turnips swell like nobody else’s turnips; his mangolds would have been big enough for the stables of Gargantua. One can only comfort oneself with the reflection that those big turnips are often watery. His cattle thrive as no one else’s cattle thrive. He is like the wicked man in the Psalms, everything flourishes with him. And when he dies there will be a splendid monument erected in his honour by public subscription. Yes, sir, people who abhorred him living will come down handsomely to pay him posthumous homage.’
‘But a man like that must do some good in his generation,’ said Lucius; ‘he distributes money—he employs labour.’
‘Yes, he is no doubt useful. He builds model cottages. His farm labourers are as sleek as his other cattle. Churches and schools spring up upon his estate. He brags and hectors intolerably, but I daresay he does good.’
‘Let him retain his opportunities of usefulness then, Mr. Pullman. Were my case so strong as to make success almost a certainty, I think I would forego all chance of gaining it as willingly as I forego an attempt which you assure me would be futile. Let Mr. Spalding Glenlyne keep the estate which he is so well able to administer for the advantage of himself and other people. I will not seek to banish him and his children from the roof-tree that has sheltered them for ten prosperous years. The Glenlyne property would be but a white elephant for Lucille and me. My heart is in my profession, and I would infinitely rather succeed in that—even though success fell far short of hopes which may be somewhat too high—than grow the biggest turnips that ever sprouted from the soil of Norfolk. My dear girl has been acknowledged by her nearest surviving relation. That is enough for me.’
‘Upon my word, Mr. Davoren, you’re a noble fellow,’ exclaimed the lawyer, melted by Lucius’s earnestness, by tones whose absolute truthfulness even an attorney could not doubt; ‘and I only wish your case were a trifle stronger, for it would give me pleasure to protect your interests. However, the case is weak, and I think your decision is as worldly wise as it is generous in spirit, and I can only say, stick to Miss Glenlyne. She’s a very old lady. She began life with seven hundred a year of her own, and has been saving money ever since she was twenty-one.’
‘Neither Lucille nor I belong to the race of toadies,’ said Lucius; ‘but I am grateful to Providence for Miss Glenlyne’s ready acknowledgment of her niece.’
‘I have very little doubt the old lady will act handsomely towards you both,’ replied the lawyer, solacing himself with a comfortable pinch of snuff. He seemed to have taken a wonderful liking to Lucius, and even asked him to dine, an invitation which Lucius was unable to accept.
‘I shall not have a leisure hour this week,’ he said; ‘and on Sunday I am going down to Brighton to spend the day with Miss Glenlyne.’
From Lincoln’s-inn Lucius went to Cedar House. He was especially anxious that Mr. Sivewright should not think himself neglected during Lucille’s absence. He found the old man friendly, but depressed. His son’s sudden reappearance and awful death had shaken him severely, and, despite his outward stoicism, and that asperity of manner which it was his pride to maintain, the hidden heart of the man bled inwardly.
The wise physician reads the hearts of his patients almost as easily as he divines their physical ailments. Lucius saw that an unspoken grief weighed heavily on the old man’s mind. His first thought was of the simplest remedies—change of scene—occupation. That house was full of bitter associations.
‘You are an annual tenant here, I think,’ he said, when Mr. Sivewright had told him, complainingly, how a jobbing builder was patching the broken panelling of his bedroom, by order of the agent, Mr. Agar.
‘Yes, I only took the place for a year certain, and then from quarter to quarter. I might have had it for ten pounds a year less had I been willing to take a lease. But I was too wise to saddle myself with the repairs of such a dilapidated barrack.’
‘Then you can leave at any time by the sacrifice of a quarter’s rent, or by giving a quarter’s notice.’
‘Of course I can, but I am not going to leave. The house suits my collection, and it suits me.’
‘I fear that you subordinate yourself to your collection. This house must keep alive painful memories.’
‘Do you think that fire needs any breath to fan it?’ asked Homer Sivewright bitterly. ‘Keep alive! Memory never dies, nor grows weaker in the mind of age. It strengthens with advancing years, until the shadows of things gone by seem to the old more real than reality. The old live in the past as the young live in the future. I have come to the age of backward-going thoughts. And it matters nothing what scenes are round me—what walls shut-in my declining days. Memory makes its own habitation.’
Finding it vain to press the point just now, and trusting to the great healer Time, Lucius began to talk cheerily about Lucille. Mr. Sivewright seemed heartily glad to hear of Miss Glenlyne’s kindness, and the probability of fortune following from that kindness by and by, as the lawyer had suggested. There was no touch of jealousy in the old man’s half regretful tone when he said:
‘She will not quite forget me, I hope, now that she has this new and wealthy friend. I think I cling more tenderly to the thought of her now that I know there is no bond of kindred between us.’
‘Believe me she loves you, and has loved you always, although you have often wounded her affectionate heart by your coldness.’
‘That heart shall be wounded no more. She has never been ungrateful. She has never striven to trade upon my affection. She has never robbed me, or lied to me. She is worthy of trust as well as of love, and she shall have both, if she does not desert me now that fortune seems to smile upon her.’
‘I will answer for her there. In a very few days she shall be with you again—your nurse and comforter and companion.’
‘Yes, she has been all those, and I have tried to shut my heart against her. I will do so no longer.’
When Lucius paid his next visit upon the following evening he found the old man in a still softer mood. Tender thoughts had visited him in the deep night silence—so long for the sleeplessness of age.
‘I have been thinking a great deal about you both, you and my granddaughter,’ he said to Lucius, and have come to a determination, which is somewhat foreign to my most cherished ideas, yet which I believe to be wise.’
‘What is that, my dear sir?’
‘I mean to sell the greater part of my collection.’
‘Indeed, that is quite a new idea!’
‘Yes, but it is a resolution deliberately arrived at. True that every year will increase the value of those things, but in the mean time you and Lucille are deprived of all use of the money they would now realise. That money would procure you a West-end practice—would make a fitting home for Lucille. It would open the turnpike-gates on the great high-road to success; a road which is cruelly long for the traveller who has to push his way across ploughed fields and through thorny hedges, and over almost impassable dykes, for want of money to pay the turnpikes. Yes, Lucius, I mean to send two-thirds of my collection to Christie and Hanson’s as soon as I can revise and modify my catalogue. You might give me an hour or so every evening to help me with the task.’
‘I will do anything you wish. But pray do not make this sacrifice on my account.’
‘It is no sacrifice. I bought these things to sell again, only I have clung to them with a weak and foolish affection. The result of that folly has been that I have lost some of the gems of my collection, I shall set to work upon a new catalogue this evening. The task will amuse me. You need not shake your head so gravely. I promise not to overwork myself. I will take my time, and have the catalogue finished when the winter sales begin at Christie’s. I know the public humour about these things, and the things which will sell best. The residue I shall arrange in a kind of museum; and perhaps, some day, when I am in a particularly good humour, I may be induced to present this remainder to some Mechanics’ Institution at this end of London.’
‘You could not make a better use of it.’
‘I suppose not. After all, the masses, ignorant of art as they must needs be, must still be capable of some interest in relics which are associated with the past. There is an innate sentiment of beauty in the mind of man—an innate passion for the romantic and the ancient which not the most sordid surroundings can extinguish. I have seen dirty bare-footed children—wanderers from the purlieus of Oxford-market or Cleveland-road—flatten their noses against my window in Bond-street, and gloat over the beauty of Sèvres and Dresden, as if they had the appreciation of the connoisseur.’
Lucius encouraged this idea of the East-end museum. He saw that this fancy, and the determination to dispose of the more saleable portion of his collection, had already lightened the old man’s spirits. He agreed in the wisdom of turning these hoarded and hidden treasures into the sinews of life’s warfare. He declared himself quite willing to owe advancement to Mr. Sivewright’s generosity.
The catalogue was begun that very evening; for Homer Sivewright, once having taken up this idea, pursued it with extraordinary eagerness. He dictated a new list of his treasures from the old one, and Lucius did all the penmanship; and at this employment they both worked sedulously for two hours, at the end of which time Lucius ordered his patient off to bed, and took leave for the night. This went on for three nights, and on the third, which was Saturday, the catalogue had made considerable progress. All those objects which addressed themselves to the antiquarian rather than to the connoisseur, and all articles of doubtful or secondary value, Mr. Sivewright kept back for his East-end Museum. He knew that the public appreciation of his collection depended upon its being scrupulously weeded of all inferior objects. He had been known to amateurs as an infallible judge; and in this, his final appearance before the public, he wished to maintain his reputation.
Lucius left him on Saturday night wonderfully improved in spirits. That occupation of catalogue-making had been the best possible distraction. Early on Sunday morning Lucius started for Brighton, so early that the hills and downs of Sussex were still wrapped in morning mists as he approached that pleasant watering-place. He was in time to take Lucille to the eleven-o’clock service at the famous St. Paul’s. It was the first time they had ever gone to church together, and to kneel thus side by side in the temple seemed as blissful as it was new to both.
After church they took a stroll by the seaside, walking towards Cliftonville, and avoiding as much as possible the Brightonian throng of well-dressed church-goers, airing their finery on the Parade. They had plenty to say to each other, that fond lover’s talk which wells exhaustless from youthful hearts. Miss Glenlyne rarely left her bedroom—where she muddled through the morning attended by Spilling—until the day was half over, so Lucille felt herself at liberty till two o’clock. As the clock struck two, the lovers reëntered the shades of Selbrook-place.
Miss Glenlyne was in her favourite chair by the drawing-room fire, looking much smarter, and sooth to say even fresher and cleaner, than when Lucius had last beheld her. This improvement was Lucille’s work. She had found handsome garments in her aunt’s roomy wardrobe,—garments left to the despoiling moth, or discolouring mildew, and had suggested emendations of all kinds in Miss Glenlyne’s toilet. Dressed in a pearl-gray watered silk, and draped with a white china-crape shawl, the old lady looked far more agreeable than in her dingy black silk gown and dirty olive-green cashmere. Spilling had contrived to keep these things out of their owner’s sight and memory, in the pious hope of possessing them herself by and by, very little the worse for wear.
The old lady received Lucius with extreme graciousness. Spilling was invisible, having been relegated to her original position of maid, and banished to the housekeeper’s-room. A nice little luncheon was served in the back drawing-room, at which Miss Glenlyne again produced a bottle of champagne, an unaccustomed libation to the genius of hospitality. The meal was cheerful almost to merriment, and the old lady appeared thoroughly to enjoy the novel pleasure of youthful society. She encouraged the lovers to talk of themselves, their plans and prospects, cordially entered into the discussion of their future, and Lucius perceived, by many a trifling indication, how firm a hold Lucille had already won upon her aunt’s heart. After luncheon Miss Glenlyne would have dismissed them to walk on the Parade, but Lucille insisted on staying at home to read to her aunt. She read a good deal of the Observer, through which medium Miss Glenlyne took the news of the week, in a dry and compressed form, like Liebig’s Extract. After the Observer the conversation became literary, and Miss Glenlyne gave them her opinion of the Lake poets, Sir Walter Scott, Monk Lewis, Byron, Mrs. Radcliffe, and the minor lights who had illumined the world of letters in her youth. She clung fondly to the belief that ‘Thalaba’ was better than anything that had been done or ever could be done by that young man called Tennyson, with whose name rumour had acquainted her some years back, but whose works she had not yet looked into. And finally, for the gratification of the young folks, she recited, in a quavering voice, Southey’s famous verses upon ‘Lodore.’
Then came afternoon tea, and it was a pretty sight for Lucius to behold his dear one officiating at Miss Glenlyne’s tea-table, whose massive silver equipage glittered in the ruddy firelight; pretty to see her so much at her ease in her kinswoman’s home, and to know that if he had not been able to regain her birthright for her, he had at least given her back her father’s name. Altogether that quiet Sunday afternoon in Selbrook-place was as pleasant as it was curious. After the early tea Lucius and Lucille went out, at Miss Glenlyne’s special request, for half-an-hour’s walk in the autumn gloaming. Perhaps autumnal evenings at Brighton are better than they are anywhere else. At any rate, this one seemed so to these lovers. There was no sea fog, the newly lighted lamps glimmered with a pale brightness in the clear gray atmosphere, the crimson of the setting sun glowed redly yonder, where the dim outlines of distant headlands showed like vague purple shadows against the western sky.
Never had these two been able to talk so hopefully of the future as they could talk to-night. They arranged everything during that happy half-hour, which, brief as it seemed, did in actual time, as computed by vulgar clocks, stretch itself to nearly an hour-and-a-half. If Mr. Sivewright carried out his plan of selling the bric-à-brac, and did verily endow Lucius with some of the proceeds thereof, he Lucius would assuredly establish himself in some pleasanter quarter of London, where his patients would be more lucrative, yet where he might still be a help and comfort to the poor, whom this hard-working young doctor loved with something of that divine affection which made Francis of Assisi one of the greatest among saints. He would set up afresh in a more airy and cheerful quarter of the great city, and make a worthy home for his fair young bride.
The girl’s little hand stole gently into his.
‘As if I cared what part of town I am to live in with you,’ she said fondly. ‘I should be just as happy in the Shadrack-road as in Cavendish-square, just as proud of my husband as a parish doctor as I should be if he were a famous physician. Think of yourself only, dear Lucius, and of your own power to do good—not of me.’
‘My darling, the more prominent a man’s position is the more good he can do, provided it be in him to do good at all. But depend upon it, Lucille, if I go to the West-end, I shall not turn my back upon the sufferings of the East.’
