Jasper Lyle Part 42

It was an extract from the minutes of a magistrate's court. A little boy, "apparently between ten and eleven years," had been brought before a magistrate, having been found among thieves and pickpockets in some disorderly meeting.

The evidence presented a sorry picture.

There stood the child in the dock.

The magistrate, a man esteemed for his benevolence, examined the little prisoner attentively ere he questioned him. At length the good man said,--"How old are you, my boy?" The child did not answer. The magistrate put the question again. No reply.

"Do you know," said Mr M--, "how old you are?"

"No," said the boy, his head bent down.

"Have you been brought here before?"

"No." Here a constable intimated that this was not true.

"It seems," said Mr M--, "that you _have_ been brought here before.

Why do you say no? Do you know that is a falsehood?"

"No:" still the same dogged look.

"Have you any parents?"

"No."

"Who do you belong to?"

"No one."

"Do you know what a lie is?"

"No."

"Do you know that it is wrong to steal?"

"No."

"Did you never hear of the Commandments?"

"No."

"Do you know the name of G.o.d?"

"No."

The kind-hearted magistrate stopped in these interrogatories, and laying down his pen, leaned forward; sorrow shaded his benevolent face as he said,--"My poor boy, what _do_ you know?" [This scene is taken from a record in the _Times_ newspaper of 1850.]

These were the first words of kindness which had ever been spoken to Jasper Lyle in his life, for he was the little prisoner; for though Mrs Watson had, as she expressed, "a liking for him," she was rough-spoken to her own children, whom she always _ordered_, never _asked_, to do her bidding.

The unfortunate child lifted his face to Mr M--, and looked half-wonderingly at it. The mode of speech was evidently beyond his comprehension: he looked round at his evil a.s.sociates, older by years in crime than he was, and laughed.

The magistrate had the young prisoner removed from the dock, and taken to his own house.

Lady Manvers ordered her carriage as soon as she had finished reading this paragraph. She drove, without delay, to Mrs Watson's at Lambeth, and then hastened to Mr M--'s.

She found him at home, and told her mission with her accustomed grace and tact. Mr M--rose from his chair, opened the door of his library, and led from an inner room a handsome boy, who, accustomed to resist, would have run back, and even now drew his curly locks against his large speaking eyes, and strove to shut out the sight of her who stood before him as an angel of compa.s.sion.

Mrs Watson was summoned, and as Jasper recognised her, he dropped the magistrate's hand, and went to the woman; but there was no demonstration of tenderness on the part of either, and Lady Manvers, agitated and dismayed, burst into tears.

When Sir John Manvers found that his wife had actually stood face to face with his first-born son, he felt the reality of the secret buried in the old Cornish church.

The departure for Scotland was delayed for some days. He spent many hours in his library, affecting to be engaged in business with his agent; but oh! the tortures he suffered! Now he would go to Nina, and confess all. He opened the door; a merry voice echoed from the stairs, his boy Gerard came bounding down, crying "Papa, papa." Sir John closed the door abruptly; the boy cast his whip upon the ground and sat down weeping on the mat. He had never been denied admittance before; but his father's countenance had frightened him; he dared not lift his hand to the lock, but he did not move; he sat there sobbing as if his little heart would break.

And the father sat within; he had no tears, but his youngest son's honest sobs struck to his heart.

He heard his wife come down the staircase; he heard her carry off the weeping Gerard. The child went sobbing up the stairs on its mother's shoulder, and Sir John felt that she would not intrude upon his privacy at a juncture when old a.s.sociations were so seriously revived.

Ah! how could that pure-minded, high-souled woman understand or believe in his remorse?

Remorse without repentance!

Sir John Manvers easily taught his amiable wife to believe that she having succeeded in persuading him to adopt his son and provide for him, her mission was over; still Lady Manvers entreated that she might continue to interest herself in the boy, till he became accustomed to his new sphere of existence. She sought out an excellent clergyman at Clapham, who took a limited number of pupils; she candidly admitted the chief points in Jasper's story, she antic.i.p.ated for the good man much trouble and discouragement, she prepared him for the worst. He tried his best with the child, but he had not strength either of mind or body to cope with young Jasper.

The boy pa.s.sed from one master to another, till a resolute man was found to take charge of him as a Westminster scholar, when he battled through life in Dean's Yard, Westminster, for twelve months; headed a conspiracy against the a.s.sistant-masters, and would have been expelled, but that his "uncle," as Sir John was reputed to be, had interest enough to withdraw him privately, and finally to get him a commission.

It was Jasper Lyle's luck to be ordered at once to join his regiment in India. He opened his military career before a fortress which surrendered to the British arms. The banner planted on the battlements was a rag dripping with gore. The young ensign was mentioned honourably in general orders, and for a time the laurel wreath of fame acted as a talisman in checking evil principles; but ill weeds are hard to eradicate, and he would have been disgraced for debt; _had debt in the army been disgraceful_. Sir John found himself answerable for bills which his son had chosen to draw on his father's bankers, and an angry correspondence took place, in which the baronet threatened to leave the young man to the consequences of his folly and dishonesty.

And at every fresh revival of error, Lady Manvers pleaded for the recreant, who each time promised fair; for his connection with the upper cla.s.ses of society had taught him to dread the ills of poverty.

Although he had been first made to believe that he was a distant relation of Sir John's, he soon ascertained, through Mrs Watson, the real position he held in Lady Manvers's eyes. Of his true condition he could not dream. He was specious enough to keep his ground with his father's gentle wife, and so, alternately in disgrace with the former, and in treaty with the latter as a mediator, he contrived to keep his commission and to satisfy his creditors.

An opportunity for an exchange to a regiment at the Cape occurred during the government of Sir Adrian Fairfax, and Sir John Manvers, anxious to rid himself even for a period of Jasper's presence, addressed a confidential letter to Sir Adrian, with whom of late years he had become more intimately acquainted, through the friendship existing between Lady Amabel and Lady Manvers, and introducing the reprobate to him as "the issue of an unfortunate connection," asked his Excellency's patronage.

Lyle had capital credentials as a soldier; his _domestic_ principles were but lightly touched upon. He had been "rather wild," was "careless in expenditure," etc. Sir John trusted that under Sir Adrian's kind patronage he would "become steady;" in a word, the kind Sir Adrian, on reading the letters of introduction forwarded to him by Lady Amabel, on Lyle's arrival at Cape Town was more inclined to pity than condemn the young man, and accordingly wrote, as we have seen, to his wife, requesting her to receive the new-comer with hospitality.

From the period of his arrival at Newlands to his departure from the colony, the reader has watched young Lyle's career. Afterwards ruined in fortune, overcome by his evil pa.s.sions, possessed, so to speak, by a devil, he abjured all allegiance to his country's laws. Branded as a swindler, he resolved on making a new road for himself in the great wilderness of life, where bad men think that the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong. The details of that career need not be enlarged upon. Lyle himself related to Gray how the disciples of his evil creed treated him: they abandoned him as recklessly as he would have abandoned them.

Tried and convicted of seditious leadership at a time when other nations were shaken to their centre by the thunders of republican eloquence, he was condemned to transportation for life, and Sir John Manvers, striving to suppress the whispers of conscience, reconciled himself to the issue of events by hoping that he had "done the State some service" in subst.i.tuting for this vicious heir to his t.i.tle and estate the docile yet manly Gerard.

Ah! he _would_ not, he dared not, look into first causes.

News came home of the loss of the _Trafalgar_; a list of survivors and of those drowned accompanied the official notification of the event.

Sir John Manvers was absent from his wife when informed of the dreadful tidings. He shut himself up for some days, and people looked at him when he emerged from his solitude, and whispers went about--"What a shock Sir John Manvers had sustained in the death of his nephew, or, as people believed him to be, his son, for whom he had formerly done so much, but who was so incorrigibly vicious."

Next Sir John took steps to ascertain, through Sir Adrian Fairfax, all the particulars of Jasper's marriage with Eleanor Daveney. He had heard of the birth of a son, and he received with breathless thankfulness of heart the tidings of poor little Francis Lyle's death.

He tried to wash his brain of these awful realities; he at times rejoiced in some of the pleasantest things that life could give--a lovely wife, with the sweetest temper and the firmest principles, graced his hearth; beautiful children made his lofty halls musical with laughter; many partings and meetings had endeared him more and more to that beloved wife, those n.o.ble-looking children. He was in the prime of life, and had won many laurels; but he was restless, eager for command, impatient of solitude, yet reserved and abstracted in society.