Chapter IV: The Road to Fortune

Months previously the baronet’s son had returned home, looking, as Sir Ernest kindly told him, like a “resuscitated corpse:” and, in truth, his long illness had produced anything rather than a beneficial change in his appearance. His pale face, haggard looks, and emaciated person, completely removed a suspicion his father had entertained, that Ernest, for some unknown purpose, “was shamming;” it was a vast deal clearer than a finger-post that the young man was just recovering from sickness,—long, severe, dangerous; and having satisfied his mind on this point by one keen scrutinising glance, the baronet’s thoughts, which constantly turned to gold—“true as the needle to the pole”—reverted to money, and he began to consider what a deal his son’s accident must have cost, and how the fees and medicines and etceteras were to be paid.

“So you have been very ill, you say,” was almost the first remark he vouchsafed.

“Yes, sir, nearly dead,” responded Ernest, laying an unconscious, but still most mournful, emphasis on the “nearly,” as if he regretted an answer could not have been given regarding him without the presence of that word.

The baronet mentally calculated the cost of having his body conveyed from London and buried at Lorton; debited and credited the accounts of life and death, so to speak, and finding the balance decidedly in favour of the former, the expenses of the latter being, at a moderate computation, more than double, he said, in a much more satisfied tone,

“Well, but you’re better now, are not you?”

“A great deal; I am, I may say, quite strong again.”

“And so your journey might have been saved; the opinion is——”

“What I wrote you,” supplied Ernest, as his father stopped, “that you have not an inch of ground to stand upon. Scott and Smeek took that view from the first; but as they did not like to go by their own judgment alone, they said it would be better to lay the affair before some eminent barrister, which we did. The very first legal opinion of the day has, therefore, been taken on the question, and the sum and substance of that opinion is, that if you wish to go to law you can, but it will be with a positive certainty of being beaten.”

“Humph! that would scarcely suit Sir Ernest Ivraine,” said the baronet reflectively.

“So I told Scott, and he said he knew that, and intimated to the barrister you were not accustomed to that sort of thing. The other said shortly, ‘He had heard of your having twenty law suits and never losing one; but that if you brought this into court you would get the worst of it.’”

“A straightforward honest speech,” remarked the baronet, who was pleased to find his fame, in respect of successful litigation, had spread even to the heart of England’s metropolis. “Lawyers are the only class of men I care to have any dealings with; they are up to every kind of villainy, and make no pretence about it; and when they say, ‘Don’t go to law,’ you may depend they are sincere, seeing it is their interest everybody should be at loggerheads with his neighbour. The first ‘case’ I have, I will retain that fellow, and my opponent shall pay him: ha, ha! Well, Ernest, anything else?”

“Nothing, excepting that, in return for the guineas he received from me, he sent back a ‘full opinion’ to you, which you can read at your leisure, I having now condensed the matter of it; and further, Mr. Scott called frequently upon me during my illness, or, rather, when I was getting better—not in the way of business, but as a friend—and, before I left, he advised me to urge you by no means to go to law, as it would certainly entail enormous expense and could serve no good purpose, except to give your opponents a triumph over you.”

“And he styles that a good purpose,” soliloquised the baronet; “well, so be it, only it’s one I won’t be the means of accomplishing just at present: and he went to see you without wanting to be paid for it, did he?”

“I presume, on account of certain former business transactions with you, he considered it only respectful to call on your son after I had been so unfortunate as to get my arm broken; besides which, Belerma Square is scarcely a stone’s throw from his office in Arras Street.”

“I wonder,” said Sir Ernest with his usual benevolence, “you could not have watched where you were going, and avoided such an accident; I never heard of anything so clumsy or provoking in my life,—stumbling for no other conceivable purpose than to make work for the doctors. Pshaw! I thought you had more sense; the expense of them alone must have been something frightful; set of leeches as they are, they never let a patient out of their hands till they have sucked his pockets dry: I would hang the half of them, and that might be a warning to the remainder of their brethren.” And the baronet, who loved lawyers, delivered this sentence with peculiar gusto, and chuckled, in his customary savage manner, at the idea of how summarily he would settle the bills of the numerous and much libelled class, who either prefix Dr. to their surnames or else stick M.D., as an appropriate and ornamental finish to the same.

“I beg to assure you,” said Ernest, when the old man, having thought better about suffocating himself, had stopped his detestable laugh before it fairly took away his breath for ever, “I beg to assure you, my expenses for medical attendance were so moderate as quite to surprise me, and you must remember I was at none other.”

“None other? ah, yes! I had forgotten: somebody picked you up and carried you home,—a philanthropist was it, or an undertaker anxious to get the job of burying a gentleman, or a lady desirous for a good matrimonial settlement, who thought if she could bring you round, you might ‘do,’ eh! Ernest, which was it?”

The blood mounted into the young man’s cheeks, and he bit his lip to find it doing so, particularly as the baronet’s cold, shrewd, searching eye was upon him; but he answered with an attempt at unconcern.

“I do not think the person who performed the very kind act of rescuing me from the tender mercies of a policeman and an hospital can lay any claim to the character of a philanthropist, or, indeed, would wish to do so; but that certainly is the only one of the three personages you have named he even faintly resembles.”

“Don’t like philanthropists,” remarked the baronet, determined to sift the matter to the very bottom; “glad to hear he does not set up for one, though I admit they are occasionally useful, as in a case of this kind, for instance; but who was your entertainer? open your mouth wide for once, Ernest, and tell me: I am desirous of knowing who saved the life of my son; naturally anxious—you understand,” and the wretched, ungrateful old man smiled like a fiend and fastened his glistening eyes on the thin worn face of him who grew alternately red and pale under a scrutiny which was becoming almost unbearable.

“My entertainer was a Mr. John Merapie, of the firm of Merapie and Westwood—rich I should think, kind I know, eccentric I believe—who resides at number 12, Belerma Square, and is reported to be a first-rate man of business and to stand high in the commercial world as a person of strict integrity, and so forth.”

“What family has he?” demanded Sir Ernest, as his son paused.

“None: he never was married and seems a confirmed bachelor,” was the reply.

“Humph!” This favourite ejaculation of the baronet’s was uttered after the fashion of a confidential soliloquy, and his son was just praying he had got to the end of his queries—in other words, he either had never smelt the game at all or else been lured off the scent of it, when suddenly out came the next question, and the one Ernest had been dreading from the commencement.

“What kind of a feminine creature keeps house for him? He does not live all alone in one of those Belerma Square mansions without some female relative, I suppose, eh?” and the miser finished off this interrogatory by stretching forth one hand, as if he would fain have shaken information full and accurate out of his son.

“His sister, or, rather, his half sister, manages the establishment,” Ernest responded.

“And what may she be like?” persisted his father; “is she young or old, handsome or plain, rich or poor, a dependant or what? Tell me at once, sir; I—I want to understand this business thoroughly. I always suspect these disinterested people: I am not going to have you inveigled into a vulgar pauper marriage, I——”

“For heaven’s sake, sir, don’t agitate yourself so unnecessarily!” interposed Ernest, in the calm sarcastic tone he had surely inherited from his parent, for it was one Sir Ernest could assume at pleasure; “the lady is neither young, handsome, nor peculiarly attractive; she may either be a dependant or not for aught I know about her: John Merapie never made the slightest effort to ‘catch’ her for me, and if you remain without a daughter-in-law till I ask you to receive that gentleman’s sister, greatly indebted as I feel myself to both of them, you will live to see the youngest oak on your property a giant tree. Pray set your mind at ease; nobody has spread the net matrimonial for me since I left here; great catch as I admit I would be for the relative of a man who is worth some quarter of a million at any rate.”

For about the first time in his life the baronet found himself at fault; there was a quiet scorn in his son’s manner that threw him off the trail: it was long before fresh occurrences set him on it again, and caused him to reflect that there might be other ladies living at number 12, Belerma Square, than John Merapie’s sister. Ernest’s tone satisfied him the young man was not in love with the merchant’s relative; and, as he had no particular fault to find with the pair who had saved him from the infliction of a long hotel bill, and no very good pretence for quarrelling with Ernest, and as, moreover, he wanted to inform him he had thought of a way of “doing” Sir Hugh Xifer and the rest, without going to law with them, he contented himself by saying,

“If he have a quarter of a million, he will hardly ask you to marry his sister, I am perfectly satisfied about that; only I like to see my way and not to be blinded: Henry has brought disgrace enough into our family, without your making us any worse; and for what he has done I have renounced him, cut him off from my heart and my home, blotted out his name as child of mine; remember that, sir, never forget it.”

“It strikes me you were a little premature with regard to my brother, just as, a few minutes since, you were too hasty in reference to myself,” remarked Ernest, still maintaining the withering tone which alone ever seemed to produce the slightest effect on his parent; “I told you years ago Henry would rise to name and fortune yet, and you then laughed my assertion to scorn; but the boy had the materials in him out of which heroes are moulded; he has risen, as I asserted he would; he has flung back the lie in the teeth of those who would have prejudiced you against him by tales of his rashness, his discontent, his waywardness; he has struggled, he has conquered, he has won; your son is no longer a ‘common private, a vagabond soldier.’ Without money, without influence, almost without a friend, he has raised himself from the ranks, and now stands in a position in which you will not blush to acknowledge him. To what station he may further attain it is impossible to say; perhaps his name may yet become one famous in history; if life be spared, he will certainly achieve some brilliant destiny for himself: meantime, you will learn from this letter what he has already accomplished; he enclosed it in one to me, and bade me be sure to give it, whether you were willing or not, into the hands of ‘his father.’”

These were the concluding words of the longest sentence Ernest had ever uttered in his life; but this time the miser did not inform him he was “becoming eloquent.” No; during the progress of the speech he turned pale, livid almost with excitement; his face assumed a totally different expression, his whole frame quivered and trembled, as though shaken by some violent emotion; and when, at last, his son held out the missive, he looked at him, first wildly for a moment, and then clutching it with convulsive eagerness, he bade Ernest, in a voice almost inaudible from emotion, leave him alone—leave him alone quickly.

And when Ernest obeyed, the old man tore open the letter, and devoured rather than read its contents. If Henry’s speeches had been of the longest, assuredly his epistle was of the shortest: but what did that signify; “good news,” like “good goods,” go in small bulk, and thus a few honest manly lines sufficed to tell the struggles, the disappointments, the success of the younger brother; he possessed nothing to give in exchange for a commission, he said, “but his blood,” and of that he had not been sparing: his upward course was marked by a deep broad track of crimson, but he had won, at length, name, fame, epaulettes, position; and standing—after years of toil and struggle, of weary climbing and of sickening disappointments, on the broad sure stone, Success—he wrote, for the first time since they parted, to his parent, and conveyed to him the story of his experiences, his long-deferred hopes and their final realization, in a score or so of concise decided words.

But oh! what volumes did those words not contain: the story of manhood’s toil; the exultation of youthful pride; the firm purpose of a noble soul; the unalterable steadiness of a truthful generous heart; the natural triumph of one who, having been misunderstood and traduced, was able to fling the undeniable fact of having carved out his own way to fortune, unassisted, unpatronised, unsullied, in the faces of his former calumniators: there was everything in that short letter, everything—even to a vague instinctive attachment for his miser parent—save love of home.

He desired not to revisit Paradise, that was self-evident; he loathed the very memory of that place, amid the fields and the trees and the swamps of which the old miser baronet sate him down to read and re-read, with a half-proud and a half-angry heart, the history of his disobedient son’s wild projects, and their just commenced fulfilment.

“It was in him, in him always, Henry, my brave rash son.”

So muttered Sir Ernest, and the letter shook in his hand, and something very like a film came for a moment over his restless grey eyes as the record of step after step—how longed for, how won—swam before him; no one could have believed it was actually the unfeeling old baronet who thus grasped, who thus perused, the letter of a soldier—his gallant boy; he seemed as different as night is from day, as the tempest from sunshine, as storm from calm, as good from evil; but still he was just the same, only the single good chord in his nature having been touched, a sort of harmony—not the less affecting because strange and wild and a little harsh and irregular—pervaded his whole being; he was thinking then, kindly, gently, of the only creature under heaven he loved, after his selfish sordid fashion, well and disinterestedly; and as the words and the looks and the tones of old came stealing into his soul, and with their magic fingers woke the music of that one solitary string which alone ever vibrated at the swell of gentle passions, the miser became, for a brief space, a man, the cynic a father, the sneerer a something capable of experiencing human emotions, and being melted for a moment by them.

There was a wild joy and a strange sorrow in the heart of Ernest Ivraine when he beheld how his parent received the news of Henry’s success, when he noted how, for a period after the receipt of that letter, the miser seemed softened, subdued, altered: a mingling of many feelings,—triumph, regret, impatience, anger, grief; boundless exultation at the leap his brother had so unexpectedly made from the dull dark shore, called poverty, to that other, its bright opposite comparative, prosperity. Henry’s pride was his pride; he could now, in his name, give back scorn for scorn to those who had dared to question the abilities and the sense of his brother, to measure the exact height at which he should always remain stationary, to point out with sarcastic finger a spot close to the base of the hill of fame where he was ever to stand still, gazing wistfully up to that summit, which it would never be his good fortune to reach; he could now keep them at bay better than formerly; he possessed a hold over the old miser, more potent than flattery, or subservience, or cleverness; the second chance was again restored, and its influence he found to be, not merely unimpaired by the lapse of time and change of circumstances, but strengthened fourfold; it had almost ceased to be a “chance,” for their hope of a goodly inheritance might now, Ernest saw, be called a certainty.

And if the hate he bore some of his kindred made him rejoice their assertions had been proved false, a far better and more Christian feeling, the love he felt for his brother, caused every pulse of his heart to beat quicker in fraternal sympathy with the triumphant expressions of the young officer.

The weight was at last lifted from his soul; he no longer lay awake at night, mourning for the generous youth whose spirit had been crushed by disappointments; who, having chosen his lot, was forced to drag out year after year in weary servitude, uncheered by congenial companionship, unillumined by a hope; who had no friend out there or anywhere to help him up; who loved no one and was loved by no one, save Ernest, his silent, melancholy, absent brother.

No; light had dawned in India at length: the night was passed, the morning come, and sometimes when sorrow pressed sorely upon him, when his own chains galled and his own thoughts oppressed him, the elder brother turned his mournful gaze away to the glorious east, to the land of splendid luxury, of pearls and perfumes, of gorgeous flowers and towering mountains, of cactus hedges and impenetrable forests, of palaces and magnificence; to the land where great destinies have been achieved and valour recognized and diplomacy rewarded; to the land which had become that of promise to the miser’s youngest born. From the dreary fens of Lincolnshire he turned his mournful gaze away to the east, and, forgetful of himself for a period, drew comfort and gratification from watching the proud confident strides that were being taken in rapid succession by him who so resembled the fairhaired, gentle woman they both had called, in childhood’s first faltering accents, “Mother.”

So much for the joy; so far all was as, perhaps, it ought to have been, as pure, as unselfish as human feelings ever are; but a craving, never-sleeping sorrow, which devoured his peace, intervened at this point and prevented his good thoughts obtaining entire mastery over him,—prevented, in one sentence, Ernest Ivraine from rejoicing so fully and completely with him who rejoiced as he would unquestionably have mourned had ill fortune fallen to the lot of the youth, who, having gone forth nobly to breast the stream of fate, had reached, with the help of Him in whom he had put his trust, a safe and happy port at last.

Oh! why in those far back years had Ernest not been strong in faith, brave in honest self-reliance, too? why had he not ventured out into the strife, that he might now have been free, unfettered, independent? why, when with a sickening heart, a vague repentance oppressing him, he asked himself these questions, did he not, earnest in purpose, hopeful in spirit, leave Paradise behind him, and casting from off his soul the shackles of that which Henry had called “accursed gold,” commence, even at the eleventh hour, the struggle of existence?

Because their dispositions, temperaments, and gifts were so different; because the one was rash and the other prudent; because the one was enthusiastic and the other calculating; because Ernest had more patience and Henry more energy; because the former saw no sin in lingering, watching, waiting for a parent’s death, while the latter felt, as he said, the guilt of even the idea oppress his soul; because the elder had inherited something of his father’s indomitable obstinacy and adhesive persistence; because a little of woman’s blind impulsiveness, of her foolish impetuosity, and absurd ideality, had been bequeathed by his dead mother to the younger.

Difference of character! in that brief sentence was contained the key to diversity of conduct; the bold fearlessness of the one had sent him out on a vague desperate errand into the world; the cold cautiousness of the other kept him hanging on for ever about Paradise, a man toiling and slaving for another’s benefit, enduring, hoping, waiting for a chance.

But now when, without his assistance, Henry had climbed so high as to be able to reach down a helping hand to aid him in his ascent, when each Indian letter, as it arrived, came laden with words of affection and promises of assistance if he only would join the writer, when he called all the money he had so long and uselessly hoarded for Henry’s benefit his own, and was thus possessed of enough to leave his father’s house and take his first step in life’s highway—a gentleman, with gold sufficient to buy civility and courtesy from the cringing throng,—when after years of anxious waiting, the end he had longed for seemed far off as ever, why did he hesitate?

Because, though circumstances might have altered he had not: the old temptation was strong as ever to retain, the new lure feeble as formerly to attract; he repented him, it is true, that he had not gone _then_, but he asserted it was too late for him to commence _now_; if his father bequeathed them wealth, he should be better off than any exertions of his own could possibly make him; and if, on the other hand, he left Paradise and failed—ay, there was the old doubt again—Henry could only give him assistance, not wealth; whilst, by lingering a little longer, taking a fresh stock of patience on board to serve him for a brief space, he should become a rich baronet without a care.

And what if Mina married in the interim? What if, before he was able to go and tell her, with unclouded brow, the history of his secret troubles, of his former reserve, of his affection for the sister of one who had saved his life? What if, before death’s kind hand left him at liberty to try whether a woman could be induced to love him as well as Henry had done, she—the only creature, save his mother and Henry, for whom he ever entertained a sincere attachment—should have made new ties for herself and become incapable of being ever aught unto him, save a sad memory and a gentle-hearted friend?

The thought flickered through his brain at intervals, and so surely as it struggled to light, Ernest smothered it with a sentence he tried to believe, but could not, “She is nothing to me, can never be;” and as rapidly as he smothered the reflection in one form, it sprang to life in another, and thus—a vague, indefinite, painful idea,—it remained with and constantly haunted him.

Thus the summer, passed in dim reveries under spreading trees, wore slowly away, and autumn came,—that autumn when Cecilia Warmond was married, and the baronet’s son read all about the ceremony in the aristocratic columns of the _Morning Post_.