Mr. Scarborough's Family Part 78

"And he has defamed his own wife."

"That was done many years ago."

"For a fixed purpose, and not from pa.s.sion," Dolly continued. "He is a thoroughly bad man. You have made his will for him, and now I would leave him." After that Mr. Grey declined for a second time to go. But at last he was persuaded.

On the evening of his arrival he dined with Mountjoy and Merton, and on that occasion Miss Scarborough joined them. Of course there was much surmise as to the cause of this farther visit. Merton declared that, as he had acted as the sick man's private secretary, he was bound to keep his secret as far as he knew it. He only surmised what he believed to be the truth, but of that he could say nothing. Miss Scarborough was altogether in the dark. She, and she alone, spoke of her brother with respect, but in that she knew nothing.

"I cannot tell what it is," said Mountjoy; "but I suspect it to be something intended for my benefit and for the utter ruin of Augustus."

Miss Scarborough had now retired. "If it could be possible, I should think that he intended to declare that all he had said before was false." To this, however, Mr. Grey would not listen. He was very stout in denying the possibility of any reversion of the decision to which they had all come. Augustus was, undoubtedly, by law his father's eldest son. He had seen with his own eyes copies of the registry of the marriage, which Mr. Barry had gone across the Continent to make. And in that book his wife had signed her maiden name, according to the custom of the country. This had been done in the presence of the clergyman and of a gentleman,--a German, then residing on the spot, who had himself been examined, and had stated that the wedding, as a wedding, had been regular in all respects. He was since dead, but the clergyman who had married them was still alive. Within twelve months of that time Mr.

Scarborough and his bride had arrived in England, and Augustus had been born. "Nothing but the most indisputable evidence would have sufficed to prove a fact by which you were so cruelly wronged," he said, addressing himself to Mountjoy. "And when your father told me that no wrong could be done to you, as the property was hopelessly in the hands of the Jews, I told him that, for all purposes of the law, the Jews were as dear to me as you were. I do say that nothing but the most certain facts would have convinced me. Such facts, when made certain, are immovable. If your father has any plot for robbing Augustus, he will find me as staunch a friend to Augustus as ever I have been to you." When he had so spoken they separated for the night, and his words had been so strong that they had altogether affected Mountjoy. If such were his father's intentions, it must be by some farther plot that he endeavored to carry it out: and in his father's plots he would put no trust whatever.

And yet he declared his own purpose as he discussed the matter, late into the night, with Merton. "I cannot trust Grey at all, nor my father either, because I do not believe, as Grey believes, this story of the marriage. My father is so clever, and so resolute in his purpose to set aside all control over the property as arranged by law, that to my mind it has all been contrived by himself. Either Mr. Barry has been squared, or the German parson, or the foreign gentleman, or more probably all of them. Mr. Grey himself may have been squared, for all I know, though he is the kindest-hearted gentleman I ever came across. Anything shall be more probable to me than that I am not my father's eldest son." To all this Mr. Merton said very little, though no doubt he had his own ideas.

The next morning the three gentlemen, with Mr. Grey's clerk, sat down to breakfast, solemn and silent. The clerk had been especially entreated to say nothing of what he had learned, and was therefore not questioned by his master. But in truth he had learned but little, having spent his time in the sorting and copying of letters which, though they all bore upon the subject in hand, told nothing of the real tale. Farther surmises were useless now, as at eleven o'clock Mr. Grey and Mr. Merton were to go up together to the squire's room. The clerk was to remain within call, but there would be no need of Mountjoy. "I suppose I may as well go to bed," said he, "or up to London, or anywhere." Mr. Grey very sententiously advised him at any rate not to go up to London.

The hour came, and Mr. Grey, with Merton and the clerk, disappeared up-stairs. They were summoned by Miss Scarborough, who seemed to feel heavily the awful solemnity of the occasion. "I am sure he is going to do something very dreadful this time," she whispered to Mr. Grey, who seemed himself to be a little awe-struck, and did not answer her.

At two o'clock they all met again at lunch and Mr. Grey was silent, and in truth very unhappy. Merton and the clerk were also silent, as was Miss Scarborough,--silent as death. She, indeed, knew nothing, but the other three knew as much as Mr. Scarborough could or would tell them.

Mountjoy was there also, and in the middle of the meal broke out violently: "Why the mischief don't you tell me what it is that my father has said to you?"

"Because I do not believe a word of his story," said Mr. Grey.

"Oh, Mr Grey!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Scarborough.

"I do not believe a word of his story," repeated Mr. Grey. "Your father's intelligence is so high, and his principles so low, that there is no scheme which he does not think that he cannot carry out against the established laws of his country. His present tale is a made-up fable."

"What do you say, Merton?" asked Mountjoy.

"It looks to me to be true," said Merton. "But I am no lawyer."

"Why don't you tell me what it is?" said Mountjoy.

"I cannot tell you," said Grey, "though he commissioned me to do so.

Greenwood there will tell you." Greenwood was the name of the clerk.

"But I advise you to take him with you to your own room. And Mr. Merton would, I am sure, go with you. As for me, it would be impossible that I should do credit in the telling of it to a story of which I do not believe a single word."

"Am I not to know?" asked Miss Scarborough, plaintively.

"Your nephew will tell you," said Mr. Grey,--"or Mr. Merton; or Mr.

Greenwood can do so, if he has permission from Mr. Scarborough. I would rather tell no one. It is to me incredible." With that he got up and walked away.

"Now then, Merton," said Mountjoy, rising from his chair.

"Upon my word I hardly know what to do," said Merton.

"You must come and tell me this wonderful tale. I suppose that in some way it does affect my interests?"

"It affects your interests very much."

"Then I think I may say that I certainly shall believe it. My father at present would not wish to do me an injury. It must be told, so come along. Mr. Greenwood had better come also." Then he left the room, and the two men followed him. They went away to the smoking-room, leaving Mr. Grey with Miss Scarborough. "Am I to know nothing about it?" said Miss Scarborough.

"Not from me, Miss Scarborough. You can understand, that I cannot tell you a story which will require at every word that I should explain my thorough disbelief in your brother. I have been very angry with him, and he has been more energetic than can have been good for him."

"Ah me! you will have killed him among you!"

"It has been his own doing. You, however, had better go to him. I must return to town this evening."

"You will stay for dinner?"

"No. I cannot stay for dinner. I cannot sit down with Mountjoy,--who has done nothing in the least wrong,--because I feel myself to be altogether opposed to his interests. I would rather be out of the house." So saying he did leave the house, and went back to London by train that afternoon.

The meeting that morning, which had been very stormy, cannot be given word by word. From the moment in which the squire had declared his purpose, the lawyer had expressed his disbelief in all that was said to him. This Mr. Scarborough had at first taken very kindly; but Mr. Grey clung to his purpose with a pertinacity which had at last beaten down the squire's good-humor, and had called for the interference of Mr.

Merton. "How can I be quiet?" the squire had said, "when he tells me everything I say is a lie?"

"It is a lie!" said Mr. Grey, who had lost all control of himself.

"You should not say that, Mr. Grey," said Merton.

"He should spare a man on his death-bed, who is endeavoring to do his duty by his children," said the man who thus declared himself to be dying.

"I will go away," said Mr. Grey, rising. "He has forced me to come here against my will, and has known,--must have known,--that I should tell him what I thought. Even though a man be dying, a man cannot accept what he says on a matter of business such as this unless he believe him. I must tell him that I believe him or that I do not. I disbelieve the whole story, and will not act upon it as though I believed it." But even after this the meeting was continued, Mr. Grey consenting to sit there and to hear what was said to the end.

The purport of Mr. Scarborough's story will probably have been understood by our readers. It was Mr. Scarborough's present intention to make it understood that the scheme intended for the disinheritance of Mountjoy had been false from the beginning to the end, and had been arranged, not for the injury of Mountjoy, but for the salvation of the estate from the hands of the Jews. Mountjoy would have lost nothing, as the property would have gone entirely to the Jews had Mr. Scarborough then died, and Mountjoy been taken as his legitimate heir. He was not anxious, he had declared, to say anything on the present occasion in defence of his conduct in that respect. He would soon be gone, and he would leave men to judge him who might do so the more honestly when they should have found that he had succeeded in paying even the Jews in full the moneys which they had actually advanced. But now things were again changed, and he was bound to go back to the correct order of things.

"No!" shouted Mr. Grey.

"To the correct order of things," he went on. Mountjoy Scarborough was, he declared, undoubtedly legitimate. And then he made Merton and the clerk bring forth all the papers, as though he had never brought forth any papers to prove the other statement to Mr. Grey. And he did expect Mr. Grey to believe them. Mr. Grey simply put them all back, metaphorically, with his hand. There had been two marriages, absolutely prepared with the intent of enabling him at some future time to upset the law altogether, if it should seem good to him to do so.

"And your wife?" shouted Mr. Grey.

"Dear woman! She would have done anything that I told her,--unless I had told her to do what was absolutely wrong."

"Not wrong!"

"Well, you know what I mean. She was the purest and best of women." Then he went on with his tale. There had been two marriages, and he now brought forth all the evidence of the former marriage. It had taken place in a remote town, a village in the northern part of Prussia, whither she had been taken by her mother to join him. The two ladies had both been since long dead. He had been laid up at the little Prussian town under the plea of a bad leg. He did not scruple to say now that the bad leg had been pretence, and a portion of his scheme. The law, he thought, in endeavoring to make arrangements for his property,--the property which should have been his own,--had sinned so greatly as to drive a wise man to much scheming. He had begun scheming early in the business. But for his bad leg the old lady would not have brought her daughter to be married at so out-of-the-way a place as Rummelsburg, in Pomerania. He had travelled about and found Rummelsburg peculiarly fitted for his enterprise. There was a most civil old Lutheran clergyman there, to whom he had made himself peculiarly acceptable. He had now certified copies of the registry at Rummelsburg, which left no loop-hole for doubt. But he had felt that probably no inquiry would have been made about what had been done thirty years ago at Rummelsburg, had he himself desired to be silent on the subject. "There will be no difficulty," he said, "in making the Rummelsburg marriage known to all the world."

"I think there will;--very great difficulty," Mr. Grey had said.

"Not the least. But when I had to be married in the light of day, after Mountjoy's birth, at Nice, in Italy, then there was the difficulty. It had to be done in the light of day; and that little traveller with his nurse were with us. Nice was in Italy then, and some contrivance was, I a.s.sure you, necessary. But it was done, and I have always had with me the double sets of certificates. As things have turned up, I have had to keep Mr. Grey altogether in the dark as regards Rummelsburg. It was very difficult; but I have succeeded."

That Mr. Grey should have been almost driven to madness by such an outrage as this was a matter of course. But he preferred to believe that Rummelsburg, and not Nice, was the myth. "How did your wife travel with you during the whole of that year?" he had asked.

"As Mrs. Scarborough, no doubt. But we had been very little in society, and the world at large seemed willing to believe almost anything of me that was wrong. However, there's the Rummelsburg marriage, and if you send to Rummelsburg you'll find that it's all right,--a little white church up a corner, with a crooked spire. The old clergyman is, no doubt, dead, but I should imagine that they would keep their registers."

Then he explained how he had travelled about the world with the two sets of certificates, and had made the second public when his object had been to convert Augustus into his eldest son. Many people then had been found who had remembered something of the marriage at Nice, and remembered to have remembered something at the time of having been in possession of some secret as to the lady. But Rummelsburg had been kept quite in the dark. Now it was necessary that a strong light should be thrown on the absolute legality of the Rummelsburg marriage.

He declared that he had more than once made up his mind to destroy those Rummelsburg doc.u.ments, but had always been deterred by the reflection that, when they were once gone, they could not be brought back again. "I had always intended," he had said, "to burn the papers the last thing before my death. But as I learned Augustus's character, I made quite certain by causing them to be sealed up in a parcel addressed to him, so that if I had died by accident they might have fallen into proper hands.

But I see now the wickedness of my project, and, therefore, I give them over to Mr. Grey." So saying he tendered the parcel to the attorney.