The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 65

I was ushered at once into Mr. Thorneley's study--a comfortably-furnished room, lined with well-stocked bookcases, and hung with neatly-framed engravings of first-rate excellence. He was sitting reading beside a cheery fire when I entered, and on a table near him stood fruit, biscuits, and wine. I had not seen him for many months; and as he rose to receive me, the light of the shaded gas lamp falling upon his head and face revealed to me how aged and broken his appearance had become in that period of time. Then I remembered him as a hale, hearty old man, strong of limb, straight and square about the shoulders, carrying himself with the air of an old soldier, gaunt, upright, stern, unbending and unbent. Now, before me stood a bowed infirm figure, with trembling hands and tottering feet, with thin pinched features and sunken eyes. Little as I knew the man, and little as I liked what I knew or had heard of him, I was touched to see what a wreck he looked of his former outward self. Involuntarily I stretched out my hand to him, and expressed my regret at seeing him look so ill. He bowed, and touched my hand with the tips of his fingers, which were clammy and cold. Then he motioned me in silence to a chair on the opposite side of the fire to where he sat, and resumed his own seat.

"You are somewhat late, sir," he said querulously, glancing at me from beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows; the same keen searching glance I remembered of old--the glance of a man who has made money.

"But five minutes, Mr. Thorneley," I replied; "and that I think you will excuse when I tell you I have crossed the Channel to-day, and only arrived home about an hour ago."

"Have you dined? Allow the to order you something."

{406}

"Nothing, thanks. I took my usual meal after a journey--a meat tea; and, though despatched in haste, it sufficed for mine requirements."

"At least," he said more courteously, "you will take a gla.s.s of wine!"

"With pleasure, sir, after we have finished the business in which I understand you require my a.s.sistance."

He saw that I wished to come to the point at once; and drawing his chair near to mine, he fixed his piercing gray eyes upon my countenance. I returned his gaze steadily enough; and he then shifted uneasily, so that his countenance was turned sideways to me.

"You are aware, Mr. Kavanagh, that my family solicitors have been, and still are, Messrs. Smith and Walker, and no doubt you are surprised why I should now require other professional aid than theirs. Your curiosity and speculative faculties, if you possess such, must have been on the _qui vive_ since you got my note. Eh, sir?"

There was a covert sarcasm in the old man's voice which vexed me.

"Every movement of Mr Thorneley's must be a matter of general interest," I said, with equal satire.

"Ha, ha, ha! Very good--given me back in my own kind,--t.i.t for tat.

Like you all the better for it, Mr. Kavanagh,--a sharp lawyer is a good thing in its way. Well, you've not repudiated the curiosity, so I'll satisfy it. I sent for you to make _my Will_;" and again he turned on me those shrewd glittering eyes, as if enjoying the amazement I could not entirely suppress.

"But I thought--" I stammered; "surely, sir, your own lawyers are the fittest persons; it is against etiquette. Indeed, sir, I'd rather not have any thing to do with it."

"You will be _paid_ sir," he said rudely.

"It is not a question of _payment_, Mr. Thorneley; simply, you place me, I foresee, in an awkward position with regard to a firm with whom I am on the most friendly terms. But of course they are acquainted with your desire of having my services?"

"Of course they are nothing of the sort. If you are squeamish in the matter, I can get another man to do my business, and they'll not be a bit more enlightened on the subject. Whomsoever I employ must be bound to inviolable secrecy during my lifetime. Let us understand each other, Mr. Kavanagh: I sent for you because I knew you to be a discreet man, on whose prudence after my death I could rely. But I do not choose that Smith and Walker should know any thing of this transaction. You can do as you please in the matter, but you must make your decision now."

I gave a rapid glance at my position with all the care time would allow; and one consideration outweighed every thing else,--I take heaven to witness it!--the thought that Hugh Atherton's interests, which I felt to be now involved, would be safer in my hands than in those of any other man; and I replied, "So be it, Mr. Thorneley; you may command my services." If I had known what was coming; if in mercy one shadowy vision of that miserable future had been vouchsafed to me; if but a ray of light had illumined my darkened sight, I had shaken the dust off my feet, and left that doomed house never again to cross its threshold.

Thorneley rose and pushed a small writing-table towards me, on which was placed the printed form of a will to be filled in.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"I am."

He bent forward, with his hand shading his rugged brow, his eyes fixed intently on the fire and spoke in low distinct tones. I listened almost breathlessly; and as I listened, I felt the cold sweat breaking out upon my forehead. And then I made the will. Yes, G.o.d help me! I made the will, for I saw it was inevitable.

{407}

"We must have witnesses," I said when it was finished.

Mr. Thorneley rang the bell. "Tell Thomas I want him here, and come back yourself." The two men returned in a few moments,--coachman and footman; and before those two, with unshaken hand, with a face of rigid firmness, Gilbert Thorneley wrote his name; the servants affixed their signatures, and the deed was done.

When we were alone I rose to depart, and bade him good-night. As I left the room I looked back at the old man. He had sunk in his chair, and his face was buried in his hands, bowed and bent beside the fire, with his thin gray locks straying over his forehead, as if some bitter blast had swept over him and left him desolate;--thus I saw him for the last time on earth.

I left that house with a heavy secret locked in my breast, with a weight on heart and brain, and heeded not the blinding, drizzling rain as I bent my footsteps rapidly homeward, longing only to reach my quiet chamber, where I might commune with myself and be still. I am not an inveterate smoker; but when I want to think out a knotty point, when I wish to obtain a clear view of any difficult question, I can quite appreciate the aid which a good cigar affords one. This night I was dazed, bewildered, and mechanically I sought my old friend in my breast-pocket. I stopped beside the window of a large chemist's shop at the comer of Vere street and Oxford street to strike a light, when some one hastily pa.s.sed out of the shop and ran full against me.

"Kavanagh!" "Atherton!" The man of all men in the world to meet _that_ night! What fatality was it that was hedging me in and fencing me round, without any agency of my own?

"Who would have thought of seeing you here?" he exclaimed as he grasped my hand. "I had no idea you had returned even."

"I came back this very evening."

"Only this evening! and whither away so soon, old fellow?"

I muttered something about business.

"Business! Come, I like that. You have changed your nature, John, if you go after business the first evening of your return from Switzerland. Why, I didn't suppose you would have stirred if my old uncle yonder had sent for you to make his will, leaving me his sole heir." And he laughed his old hearty joyous laugh, which had been music to me from the time when I fought his first battle for him at Rugby. Now it filled me with an unaccountable dread; now it fell on my ear as the knell of times which were never more to come back. So near the truth too as he had been, talking in his own thoughtless, light-hearted way. What spell was over us all that fatal evening?

Perhaps--I think it must have been so--all the dark shadows which were gathering over my soul revealed themselves in my countenance, for I saw him look at me with the kind solicitous look that never became a manly face better than his.

"I'll tell you what it is, dear old John," he said, putting his arm within mine; "you are looking terribly hipped about something or another, and any thing but the man you ought to look, after such a jolly outing as you've just had. Come, I'll go home with you, and we'll have a prime Manilla, a steaming tumbler, and a cosy chat together; and if that doesn't send the blues back to the venerable old party from which they are generally supposed by all good Christians to come, why, as Mr. Peggotty hath it, 'I'm gormed!' "And again that fatal influence stepped in, making me its agent to bring upon us the inevitable _To be_; and putting his friendly hand from off my arm, I said, '"No, Hugh, not to-night; I have need to be alone. Indeed I am too tired to be good company even to you."

"Well, good-night then, my friend; I'll betake me to mine uncle, and see {408} how the old man is getting along this damp weather. Lister said he should look in, so we can tramp home together. But I won't be shirked by you to-morrow, Master Jack,--don't think it; and I shall bring somebody to fetch the Swiss toy I know you have got packed away for her somewhere in your knapsack. Good-night, good-night."

We shook hands, and he turned down Vere street. An impulse,--blind, unreasoning,--seized me a minute afterwards to call him back and ask him to come home with me; and I followed quickly upon his footsteps.

The evening was very dark, and the rain beat blindingly in one's face, so that it was difficult, with my near sight, to distinguish his figure ahead amidst the numerous other foot-pa.s.sengers. After a few moments I gave up the chase, half angry with myself for haying been the sport of a sudden fancy. As once more I turned round to retrace my steps, a woman pa.s.sed me at a hurried pace, and as she pa.s.sed she almost stopped and gazed intently at me. A thick veil prevented my seeing her face, and in no way was her figure familiar to me; but the gesture with which she stared at me was remarkable, and for a moment a matter of wonder; then I forgot the circ.u.mstance, and rapidly made my way home, thinking of the strange revelations I had just heard; thinking of Hugh Atherton and our chance meeting; thinking of the days past and the days to come,--of much and many things which belong to the story I am telling,--of the time when I was a boy again at school, senior in my form and umpire in all pitched battles and the petty warfare boys wage with one another, when that little curly-headed, blue-eyed fellow, with his cheeks all aglow and his nostrils big with indignant wrath, had come to me, a great burly clumsy lad of sixteen, and laid his plaint before me:

"Please, Kavanagh, the fellows say I'm a coward because I won't lick Tom Overbury. Will you tell them to leave me in peace?--because I _won't_ lick him."

"Why not, spooney?"

"Because I don't wish to."

"That won't go down here, you know, Atherton; you must give your reasons."

"He's got something the matter with his right arm, and he can't hit out. He'd have no chance against me. I know all about it, but the other fellows don't, and they think he can't fight; he bade me not tell any one. That's why they are always at him to make him pick quarrels. They set him on at me; but I won't fight him, not for the whole school, masters and all."

Such was Hugh Atherton as a boy; such was he as a man,--ever generous and n.o.ble-hearted. I thought of him as then, I thought of him as now, remembering all our long friendship, our close intimacy, with the weight of that dread secret upon me, and with the indescribable sense of coming evil clinging to me. I wished I had yielded to his request, and allowed him to accompany me home; I wished I had persevered in going after him; in short, I wished anything but what then was. Were those desires troubling me a taste of the vain, futile, heart-bitter wishes which the morrow was to bring forth? So, with the cold wind whistling round me, and scattering the dead leaves across the desolate square, where stood the house wherein I dwelt, the rain beating against my face, and the sky above black and lowering, I reached my home, wet and weary.

Methodical habits to a man brought up to the law, who has any pretence of doing well in his profession, become like second nature; and when I had divested myself of my wet garments, I took out my journal and made an entry as usual of the date, object, etc., of my visit to Mr.

Thorneley; and then I wrote out a brief memorandum of the same, which I addressed to Hugh Atherton in case of my death, and carefully locked it up with some {409} very private papers of my own, about which he already had my instructions. This done, I smoked a cigar, drank a tumbler of hot brandy-and-water, and went to bed, thoroughly tired out. But I could not sleep. For hours I tossed restlessly from side to side; now and then catching a few moments' repose, which was disturbed by the most horrible and distressing dreams. Toward morning, I suppose, I must at last have fallen into a deep slumber--so profound that I never heard the old laundress's hammering at the door, nor the arrival of my clerk, nor the postman's knock.

At last I awoke, or rather was awakened. The day had advanced some hours; all traces of last night's rain seemed to have vanished, and the sun shown full and bright in at the windows. Beside my bed stood Hardy, my old clerk.

"G.o.d bless you, sir, I thought you'd never wake!"

"I wish I never had, for I am awfully tired. How are you. Hardy? and how is all going on?"

"Quite well, sir, thank you; and I hope you're the same. We've wanted you badly enough. There's that Williams, he's been here almost every day, teasing and tormenting about having his mortgage called in; and Lady Ormskirk, she called twice, and seemed in some trouble. Then there was a queer young chap from the country with a long case about some inheritance; in short, sir, if you had been at home we might have been no end busy--what with the old ones and what with the new;" and Hardy cast a sigh after the possible tips and fees of which my absence had deprived him.

"Well, I'll see to it all as soon as I have dressed and had some breakfast. I suppose they've brought it up, and also the hot water?"