The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney Part 10

"She has had time to tell you all then! But be a.s.sured, sir, that nothing she has heard or been told, however true it may be--_may_ be, remember, I say--can be legally substantiated except by myself."

What could the man mean? I was fairly puzzled: but, professionally accustomed to conceal emotions of surprise and bewilderment, I coldly replied--"I have left the lady who has sought the protection of her true 'home,' merely to ascertain the reason of this visit."

"The reason of my visit!" he exclaimed with renewed fury: "to reconvey her to South Audley Street. What else? If you refuse to give her up, I shall apply to the police."

I smiled, and approached the bell.

"You will not surrender her then?"

"To judicial process only: of that be a.s.sured. I have little doubt that, when I am placed in full possession of all the facts of the case, I shall be quite able to justify my conduct." He did not reply, and I continued: "If you choose to wait here till I have heard Edith's statement, I will at once frankly acquaint you with my final determination."

"Be it so: and please to recollect, sir, that you have to deal with a man not easily baffled or entrapped by legal subtlety or cunning."

I reascended to the drawing-room; and finding Edith--thanks to the ministrations, medicinal and oral, of my bustling and indignant lady--much calmer, and thoroughly satisfied that n.o.body could or should wrest her from us, begged her to relate unreservedly the cause or causes which had led to her present position. She falteringly complied; and I listened with throbbing pulse and burning cheeks to the sad story of her wedded wretchedness, dating from within two or three months of the marriage; and finally consummated by a disclosure that, if provable, might consign Harlowe to the hulks. The tears, the agony, the despair of the unhappy lady, excited in me a savageness of feeling, an eager thirst for vengeance, which I had believed foreign to my nature. Edith divined my thoughts, and taking my hand, said, "Never, sir, never will I appear against him: the father of my little Helen shall never be publicly accused by me."

"You err, Edith," I rejoined; "it is a positive duty to bring so consummate a villain to justice. He has evidently calculated on your gentleness of disposition, and must be disappointed."

I soon, however, found it was impossible to shake her resolution on this point; and I returned with a heart full of grief and bitterness to Mr. Harlowe.

"You will oblige me, sir," I exclaimed as I entered the room, "by leaving this house immediately: I would hold no further converse with so vile a person."

"How! Do you know to whom you presume to speak in this manner?"

"Perfectly. You are one Harlowe, who, after a few months' residence with a beautiful and amiable girl, had extinguished the pa.s.sion which induced him to offer her marriage, showered on her every species of insult and indignity of which a cowardly and malignant nature is capable; and who, finding that did not kill her, at length consummated, or revealed, I do not yet know which term is most applicable, his utter baseness by causing her to be informed that his first wife was still living."

"Upon my honor, sir, I believed, when I married Miss Willoughby, that I was a widower."

"Your _honor!_ But except to prove that I _do_ thoroughly know and appreciate the person I am addressing, I will not bandy words with you.

After that terrible disclosure--if, indeed, it be a disclosure, not an invention--Ah, you start at that"

"At your insolence, sir; not at your senseless surmises."

"Time and the law will show. After, I repeat, this terrible disclosure or invention, you, not content with obtaining from your victim's generosity a positive promise that she would not send you to the hulks"--

"Sir, have a care."

"Pooh! I say, not content with exacting this promise from your victim, you, with your wife, or accomplice, threatened not only to take her child from her, but to lock her up in a madhouse, unless she subscribed a paper, confessing that she knew, when you espoused her, that you were a married man. Now, sir, do I, or do I not, thoroughly know who and what the man is I am addressing?"

"Sir," returned Harlowe, recovering his audacity somewhat. "Spite of all your hectoring and abuse, I defy you to obtain proof--legal proof--whether what Edith has heard is true or false. The affair may perhaps be arranged; let her return with me."

"You know she would die first; but it is quite useless to prolong this conversation; and I again request you to leave this house."

"If Miss Willoughby would accept an allowance"--

The cool audacity of this proposal to make me an instrument in compromising a felony exasperated me beyond all bounds. I rang the bell violently, and desired the servant who answered it to show Mr. Harlowe out of the house. Finding further persistence useless, the baffled villain s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat, and with a look and gesture of rage and contempt, hurried out of the apartment.

The profession of a barrister necessarily begets habits of coolness and reflection under the most exciting circ.u.mstances; but, I confess, that in this instance my ordinary equanimity was so much disturbed, that it was some time before I could command sufficient composure to reason calmly upon the strange revelations made to me by Edith, and the nature of the measures necessary to adopt in order to clear up the mystery attaching to them. She persisted in her refusal to have recourse to legal measures with a view to the punishment of Harlowe; and I finally determined--after a conference with Mr. Ferret, who, having acted for the first Mrs.

Harlowe, I naturally conjectured must know something of her history and connections--to take for the present no ostensible steps in the matter.

Mr. Ferret, like myself, was persuaded that the sham resuscitation of his first wife was a mere trick, to enable Harlowe to rid himself of the presence of a woman he no longer cared for. "I will take an opportunity,"

said Mr. Ferret, "of quietly questioning Richards: he must have known the first wife; Eleanor Wickham, I remember, was her maiden name; and if not bought over by Harlowe--a by-no-means impossible purchase--can set us right at once. I did not understand that the said Eleanor was at all celebrated for beauty and accomplishments, such as you say Miss Willoughby--Mrs. Harlowe, I mean--describes. She was a native of Dorsetshire too, I remember; and the foreign Italian accent you mention, is rarely, I fancy, picked up in that charming county. Some flashy opera-dancer, depend upon it, whom he has contracted a pa.s.sing fancy for: a slippery gentleman certainly; but, with a little caution, we shall not fail to trip his heels up, clever as he may be."

A stronger wrestler than either of us was upon the track of the unhappy man. Edith had not been with us above three weeks, when one of Mr.

Harlowe's servants called at my chambers to say that his master, in consequence of a wound he had inflicted on his foot with an axe, whilst amusing himself with cutting or pruning some trees in the grounds at Fairdown, was seriously ill, and had expressed a wish to see me. I could not leave town; but as it was important Mr. Harlowe should be seen, I requested Mr. Ferret to proceed to Fairdown House. He did so, and late in the evening returned with the startling intelligence that Mr. Harlowe was dead!

"Dead!" I exclaimed, much shocked. "Are you serious?" "As a judge. He expired, about an hour after I reached the house, of teta.n.u.s, commonly called locked-jaw. His body, by the contraction of the muscles, was bent like a bow, and rested on his heels and the back part of his head. He was incapable of speech long before I saw him; but there was a world of agonized expression in his eyes!"

"Dreadful! Your journey was useless then?"

"Not precisely. I saw the pretended former wife: a splendid woman, and as much Eleanor Wickham of Dorsetshire as I am. They mean, however, to show fight, I think; for, as I left the place, I observed that delightful knave Richards enter the house. I took the liberty of placing seals upon the desks and cabinets, and directed the butler and other servants to see that nothing was disturbed or removed till Mrs. Harlowe's--the true Mrs.

Harlowe's--arrival."

The funeral was to take place on the following Wednesday; and it was finally arranged that both of us would accompany Edith to Fairdown on the day after it had taken place, and adopt such measures as circ.u.mstances might render necessary. Mr. Ferret wrote to this effect to all parties concerned.

On arriving at the house, I, Ferret, and Mrs. Harlowe, proceeded at once to the drawing-room, where we found the pretended wife seated in great state, supported on one side by Mr. Richards, and on the other by Mr.

Quillet the eminent proctor. Edith was dreadfully agitated, and clung frightened and trembling to my arm. I conducted her to a seat, and placed myself beside her, leaving Mr. Ferret--whom so tremendous an array of law and learning, evincing a determination to fight the matter out _a l'outrance_, filled with exuberant glee--to open the conference.

"Good-morning, madam," cried he, the moment he entered the room, and quite unaffected by the lady's scornful and haughty stare: "good-morning; I am delighted to see you in such excellent company. You do not, I hope, forget that I once had the honor of transacting business for you?"

"You had transactions of my business!" said the lady, "When, I pray you?"

"G.o.d bless me!" cried Ferret, addressing Richards, "what a charming Italian accent; and out of Dorsetshire too!"

"Dorsetshire, sir?" exclaimed the lady.

"Ay, Dorsetshire, to be sure. Why, Mr. Richards, our respected client appears to have forgotten her place of birth! How very extraordinary!"

Mr. Richards now interfered, to say that Mr. Ferret was apparently laboring under a strange misapprehension. "This lady," continued he, "is Madame Giulletta Corelli."

"Whe--e--e--w!" rejoined Ferret, thrown for an instant off his balance by the suddenness of the confession, and perhaps a little disappointed at so placable a termination of the dispute--"Giulletta Corelli! What is the meaning of this array then?"

"I am glad, madam," said I, interposing for the first time in the conversation, "for your own sake, that you have been advised not to persist in the senseless as well as iniquitous scheme devised by the late Mr. Harlowe; but this being the case, I am greatly at a loss to know why either you or these legal gentlemen are here?"

The brilliant eyes of the Italian flashed with triumphant scorn, and a smile of contemptuous irony curled her beautiful lip as she replied--"These legal gentlemen will not have much difficulty in explaining my right to remain in my own house."

"_Your_ house?"

"Precisely, sir," replied Mr. Quillet. "This mansion, together with all other property, real and personal, of which the deceased Henry Harlowe died possessed, is bequeathed by will--dated about a month since--to this lady, Giulletta Corelli."

"A will!" exclaimed Mr. Ferret with an explosive shout, and turning to me, whilst his sharp gray eyes danced with irrepressible mirth--"Did I not tell you so?"

"Your usual sagacity, Mr. Ferret, has not in this instance failed you.

Perhaps you will permit me to read the will? But before I do so,"

continued Mr. Quillet, as he drew his gold-rimmed spectacles from their morocco sheath--"you will allow me, if you please, to state that the legatee, delicately appreciating the position of the widow, will allow her any reasonable annuity--say five hundred pounds per annum for life."

"Will she really though?" cried Mr. Ferret, boiling over with ecstacy.

"Madam, let me beg of you to confirm this gracious promise."

"Certainly I do."