The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney Part 18

About the expiration of that time, Mr. Jesse Andrews unexpectedly revisited the office, and as soon as I was disengaged, was ushered into my private room. He was habited in the deepest mourning, and it naturally struck me that either his wife or son was dead--an impression, however, which a closer examination of his countenance did not confirm, knowing as I did, how affectionate a husband and father he was, with all his faults and follies, reputed to be. He looked flurried, nervous, certainly; but there was no grief, no sorrow in the restless, disturbed glances which he directed to the floor, the ceiling, the window, the fire-place, the chairs, the table--everywhere, in fact, except towards my face.

"What is the matter, Mr. Andrews?" I gravely inquired, seeing that he did not appear disposed to open the conversation.

"A great calamity, sir--a great calamity," he hurriedly and confusedly answered, his face still persistently averted from me--"has happened!

Archy is dead!"

"Dead!" I exclaimed, considerably shocked. "G.o.d bless me! when did this happen?"

"Three weeks ago," was the reply. "He died of cholera."

"Of cholera!" This occurred, I should state, in 1830.

"Yes: he was very a.s.siduously attended throughout his sufferings, which were protracted and severe, by the eminent Dr. Parkinson, a highly-respectable and skilled pract.i.tioner, as you doubtless, sir, are aware."

I could not comprehend the man. This dry, unconcerned, business-sort of gabble was not the language of a suddenly-bereaved parent, and one, too, who had lost a considerable annuity by his son's death. What could it mean? I was in truth fairly puzzled.

After a considerable interval of silence, which Mr. Andrews, whose eyes continued to wander in every direction except that of mine, showed no inclination to break, I said--"It will be necessary for me to write immediately to your cousin, Mr. Archibald Andrews. I trust, for your sake, the annuity will be continued; but of course, till I hear from him, the half-yearly payments must be suspended."

"Certainly, certainly: I naturally expected that would be the case," said Andrews, still in the same quick, hurried tone. "Quite so."

"You have nothing further to say, I suppose?" I remarked, after another dead pause, during which it was very apparent that he was laboring with something to which he nervously hesitated to give utterance.

"No--yes--that is, I wished to consult you upon a matter of business--connected with--with a life-a.s.surance office."

"A life-a.s.surance office?"

"Yes." The man's pale face flushed crimson, and his speech became more and more hurried as he went on. "Yes; fearing, Mr. Sharp, that should Archy die, we might be left without resource, I resolved, after mature deliberation, to effect an insurance on his life for four thousand pounds."

"Four thousand pounds!"

"Yes. All necessary preliminaries were gone through. The medical gentleman--since dead of the cholera, by the way--examined the boy of course, and the insurance was legally effected for four thousand pounds, payable at his death."

I did not speak; a suspicion too horrible to be hinted at held me dumb.

"Unfortunately," Andrews continued, "this insurance was only effected about a fortnight before poor Archy's death, and the office refuses payment, although, as I have told you, the lad was attended to the very hour of his death by Dr. Parkinson, a highly-respectable, most unexceptionable gentleman. Very much so indeed."

"I quite agree in that," I answered after a while. "Dr. Parkinson is a highly-respectable and eminent man. What reason," I added, "do the company a.s.sign for non-payment?"

"The very recent completion of the policy."

"Nonsense! How can that fact, standing alone, affect your claim?"

"I do not know," Andrews replied; and all this time I had not been able to look fairly in his face; "but they do refuse; and I am anxious that your firm should take the matter in hand, and sue them for the amount."

"I must first see Dr. Parkinson," I answered, "and convince myself that there is no legitimate reason for repudiating the policy."

"Certainly, certainly," he replied.

"I will write to you to-morrow," I said, rising to terminate the conference, "after I have seen Dr. Parkinson, and state whether we will or not take proceedings against the insurance company on your behalf."

He thanked me, and hurried off.

Dr. Parkinson confirmed Mr. Jesse Andrews in every particular. He had attended the boy, a fine, light-haired lad of eleven or twelve years of age, from not long after his seizure till his death. He suffered dreadfully, and died unmistakably of Asiatic cholera, and of nothing else; of which same disease a servant and a female lodger in the same house had died just previously. "It is of course," Dr. Parkinson remarked in conclusion, "as unfortunate for the company as it is strangely lucky for Andrews; but there is no valid reason for refusing payment."

Upon this representation we wrote the next day to the a.s.surance people, threatening proceedings on behalf of Mr. Jesse Andrews.

Early on the morrow one of the managing-directors called on us, to state the reasons which induced the company to hesitate at recognizing the plaintiff's claim. In addition to the doubts suggested by the brief time which had elapsed from the date of the policy to the death of the child, there were several other slight circ.u.mstances of corroborative suspicion.

The chief of these was, that a neighbor had declared he heard the father indulging in obstreperous mirth in a room adjoining that in which the corpse lay only about two hours after his son had expired. This unseemly, scandalous hilarity of her husband, the wife appeared to faintly remonstrate against. The directors had consequently resolved _non obstante_ Dr. Parkinson's declaration, who might, they argued, have been deceived, to have the body exhumed in order to a post-mortem examination as to the true cause of death. If the parents voluntarily agreed to this course, a judicial application to enforce it would be unnecessary, and all doubts on the matter could be quietly set at rest. I thought the proposal, under the circ.u.mstances, reasonable, and called on Mr. and Mrs.

Andrews to obtain their concurrence. Mrs. Andrews was, I found, absent in the country, but her husband was at home; and he, on hearing the proposal, was, I thought, a good deal startled--shocked rather--a natural emotion perhaps.

"Who--who," he said, after a few moments' silent reflection--"who is to conduct this painful, revolting inquiry?"

"Dr. Parkinson will be present, with Mr. Humphrey the surgeon, and Dr.

Curtis the newly-appointed physician to the a.s.surance office, in place of Dr. Morgan who died, as you are aware, a short time since of cholera."

"True. Ah, well, then," he answered almost with alacrity, "be it as they wish. Dr. Parkinson will see fair-play."

The examination was effected, and the result was a confirmation, beyond doubt or quibble, that death, as Dr. Parkinson had declared, had been solely occasioned by cholera. The a.s.surance company still hesitated; but as this conduct could now only be looked upon as perverse obstinacy, we served them with a writ at once. They gave in; and the money was handed over to Mr. Jesse Andrews, whose joy at his sudden riches did not, I was forced to admit, appear to be in the slightest degree damped by any feeling of sadness for the loss of an only child.

We wrote to inform Mr. Archibald Andrews of these occurrences, and to request further instructions with regard to the annuity hitherto paid to his cousin. A considerable time would necessarily elapse before an answer could be received, and in the meantime Mr. Jesse Andrews plunged headlong into the speculation he had been long hankering to engage in, and was as he informed me a few weeks afterwards, on the royal road to a magnificent fortune.

Clouds soon gathered over this brilliant prospect. The partner, whose persuasive tongue and brilliant imagination had induced Mr. Andrews to join him with his four thousand pounds, proved to be an arrant cheat and swindler; and Mr. Andrews's application to us for legal help and redress was just too late to prevent the accomplished dealer in moonshine and delusion from embarking at Liverpool for America, with every penny of the partnership funds in his pockets!

A favorable reply from Mr. Archibald Andrews had now become a question of vital importance to his cousin, who very impatiently awaited its arrival.

It came at last. Mr. Andrews had died rather suddenly at Bombay a short time before my letter arrived there, after executing in triplicate a will, of which one of the copies was forwarded to me. By this instrument his property--about thirty-five thousand pounds, the greatest portion of which had been remitted from time to time for investment in the British funds--was disposed of as follows:--Five thousand pounds to his cousin Jesse Andrews, for the purpose of educating and maintaining Archibald Andrews, the testator's G.o.dson, till he should have attained the age of twentyone, and the whole of the remaining thirty thousand pounds to be then paid over to Archibald with acc.u.mulated interest. In the event, however, of the death of his G.o.dson, the entire property was devised to another more distant and wealthier cousin, Mr. Newton, and his son Charles, on precisely similar conditions, with the exception that an annuity of seventy pounds, payable to Jesse Andrews and his wife during their lives, was charged upon it.

Two letters were dispatched the same evening--one to the fortunate cousin, Mr. Newton, who lived within what was then known as the twopenny post delivery, and another to Mr. Jesse Andrews, who had taken up his temporary abode in a cottage near St. Alban's, Hertfordshire. These missives informed both gentlemen of the arrival of the Indian mail, and the, to them, important dispatches it contained.

Mr. Newton was early at the office on the following morning, and perused the will with huge content. He was really quite sorry, though, for poor Cousin Jesse: the loss of his son was a sad stroke, much worse than this of a fortune which he might have expected to follow as a matter of course. And the annuity, Mr. Newton thoughtfully observed, was, after all, no contemptible provision for two persons, without family, and of modest requirements.

A very different scene was enacted when, late in the evening, and just as I was about to leave the office, Mr. Jesse Andrews rushed in, white as a sheet, haggard, and wild with pa.s.sion. "What devil's fables are these you write me?" he, burst forth the instant he had gained the threshold of the room. "How dare you," he went on, almost shrieking with fury--"how dare you attempt to palm off these accursed lies on me? Archy rich--rich--and I--. But it is a lie!--an infernal device got up to torture me--to drive me wild, distracted--mad!" The excited man literally foamed with rage, and so astonished was I, that it was a minute or two before I could speak or move.

At last I rose, closed the door, (for the clerks in the outer office were hearers and witnesses of this outbreak,) and led the way to an inner and more private apartment. "Come with me, Mr. Andrews," I said, "and let us talk this matter calmly over."

He mechanically followed, threw himself into a chair, and listened with frenzied impatience to the reading of the will.

"A curse is upon me," he shouted, jumping up as I concluded, "the curse of G.o.d--a judgment upon the crime I but the other day committed--a crime as I thought--dolt, idiot that I was--so cunningly contrived, so cleverly executed! Fool, villain, madman that I have been; for now, when fortune is tendered for my acceptance, I dare not put forth my hand to grasp it; fortune, too, not only for me, but--. O G.o.d, it will kill us both, Martha as well as me, though I alone am to blame for this infernal chance!"

This outburst appeared to relieve him, and he sank back into his chair somewhat calmer. I could understand nothing of all that rhapsody, knowing, as I did, that his son Archibald had died from natural causes.

"It _is_ a severe blow," I said, in as soothing a tone as I could a.s.sume--"a very great disappointment; still, you are secured from extreme poverty--from anything like absolute want"--

"It is not that--it is not that!" he broke in, though not quite so wildly as before. "Look you, Mr. Sharp, I will tell you all! There may be some mode of extrication from this terrible predicament, and I must have your advice professionally upon it."

"Go on; I will advise you to the best of my ability."

"Here it is, then: Archy, my son Archy, is alive!--alive! and well in health as either you or I!"

I was thunderstruck. Here was indeed a revelation.