BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.
"Per ambages et ministeria deorum."--PETRONTUS.
[Through the mysteries and ministerings of the gods.]
Mr. Roger Morton was behind his counter one drizzling, melancholy day.
Mr. Roger Morton, alderman, and twice mayor of his native town, was a
thriving man. He had grown portly and corpulent. The nightly potations
of brandy and water, continued year after year with mechanical
perseverance, had deepened the roses on his cheek. Mr. Roger Morton was
never intoxicated--he "only made himself comfortable." His constitution
was strong; but, somehow or other, his digestion was not as good as it
might be. He was certain that something or other disagreed with him. He
left off the joint one day--the pudding another. Now he avoided
vegetables as poison--and now he submitted with a sigh to the doctor's
interdict of his cigar. Mr. Roger Morton never thought of leaving off
the brandy and water: and he would have resented as the height of
impertinent insinuation any hint upon that score to a man of so sober
and respectable a character.
Mr. Roger Morton was seated--for the last four years, ever since his
second mayoralty, he had arrogated to himself the dignity of a chair. He
received rather than served his customers. The latter task was left to
two of his sons. For Tom, after much cogitation, the profession of an
apothecary had been selected. Mrs. Morton observed, that it was a
genteel business, and Tom had always been a likely lad. And Mr. Roger
considered that it would be a great comfort and a great saving to have
his medical adviser in his own son.
The other two sons and the various attendants of the shop were plying the
profitable trade, as customer after customer, with umbrellas and in
pattens, dropped into the tempting shelter--when a man, meanly dressed,
and who was somewhat past middle age, with a careworn, hungry face,
entered timidly. He waited in patience by the crowded counter, elbowed
by sharp-boned and eager spinsters--and how sharp the elbows of spinsters
are, no man can tell who has not forced his unwelcome way through the
agitated groups in a linendraper's shop!--the man, I say, waited
patiently and sadly, till the smallest of the shopboys turned from a
lady, who, after much sorting and shading, had finally decided on two
yards of lilac-coloured penny riband, and asked, in an insinuating
professional tone,--
"What shall I show you, sir?"
"I wish to speak to Mr. Morton. Which is he?"
"Mr. Morton is engaged, sir. I can give you what you want."
"No--it is a matter of business--important business." The boy eyed the
napless and dripping hat, the gloveless hands, and the rusty neckcloth of
the speaker; and said, as he passed his fingers through a profusion of
light curls "Mr. Morton don't attend much to business himself now; but
that's he. Any cravats, sir?"
The man made no answer, but moved where, near the window, and chatting
with the banker of the town (as the banker tried on a pair of beaver
gloves), sat still--after due apology for sitting--Mr. Roger Morton.
The alderman lowered his spectacles as he glanced grimly at the lean
apparition that shaded the spruce banker, and said,--
"Do you want me, friend?"
"Yes, sir, if you please;" and the man took off his shabby hat, and bowed
low.
"Well, speak out. No begging petition, I hope?"
"No, sir! Your nephews--"
The banker turned round, and in his turn eyed the newcomer. The
linendraper started back.
"Nephews!" he repeated, with a bewildered look. "What does the man mean?
Wait a bit."
"Oh, I've done!" said the banker, smiling. "I am glad to find we agree
so well upon this question: I knew we should. Our member will never suit
us if he goes on in this way. Trade must take care of itself. Good day
to You!"
"Nephews!" repeated Mr. Morton, rising, and beckoning to the man to
follow him into the back parlour, where Mrs. Morton sat casting up the
washing bills.
"Now," said the husband, closing the door, "what do you mean, my good
fellow?"
"Sir, what I wish to ask you is-if you can tell me what has become of--of
the young Beau--, that is, of your sister's sons. I understand there
were two--and I am told that--that they are both dead. Is it so?"
"What is that to you, friend?"
"An please you, sir, it is a great deal to them!"
"Yes--ha! ha! it is a great deal to everybody whether they are alive or
dead!" Mr. Morton, since he had been mayor, now and then had his joke.
"But really--"
"Roger!" said Mrs. Morton, under her breath--"Roger!"
"Yes, my dear."
"Come this way--I want to speak to you about this bill." The husband
approached, and bent over his wife. "Who's this man?"
"I don't know."
"Depend on it, he has some claim to make-some bills or something. Don't
commit yourself--the boys are dead for what we know!"
Mr. Morton hemmed and returned to his visitor.
"To tell you the truth, I am not aware of what has become of the young
men."
"Then they are not dead--I thought not!" exclaimed the man, joyously.
"That's more than I can say. It's many years since I lost sight of the
only one I ever saw; and they may be both dead for what I know."
"Indeed!" said the man. "Then you can give me no kind of--of--hint like,
to find them out?"
"No. Do they owe you anything?"
"It does not signify talking now, sir. I beg your pardon."
"Stay--who are you?"
"I am a very poor man, sir."
Mr. Morton recoiled.
"Poor! Oh, very well--very well. You have done with me now. Good day--
good day. I'm busy."
The stranger pecked for a moment at his hat--turned the handle of the
door-peered under his grey eyebrows at the portly trader, who, with both
hands buried in his pockets, his mouth pursed up, like a man about to say
"No" fidgeted uneasily behind Mrs. Morton's chair. He sighed, shook his
head, and vanished.
Mrs. Morton rang the bell-the maid-servant entered. "Wipe the carpet,
Jenny;--dirty feet! Mr. Morton, it's a Brussels!"
"It was not my fault, my dear. I could not talk about family matters
before the whole shop. Do you know, I'd quite forgot those poor boys.
This unsettles me. Poor Catherine! she was so fond of them. A pretty
boy that Sidney, too. What can have become of them? My heart rebukes
me. I wish I had asked the man more."
"More!--why he was just going to beg."
"Beg--yes--very true!" said Mr. Morton, pausing irresolutely; and then,
with a hearty tone, he cried out, "And, damme, if he had begged, I could
afford him a shilling! I'll go after him." So saying, he hastened back
through the shop, but the man was gone--the rain was falling, Mr. Morton
had his thin shoes on--he blew his nose, and went back to the counter.
But, there, still rose to his memory the pale face of his dead sister;
and a voice murmured in his ear, "Brother, where is my child?"
"Pshaw! it is not my fault if he ran away. Bob, go and get me the county
paper."
Mr. Morton had again settled himself, and was deep in a trial for murder,
when another stranger strode haughtily into the shop. The new-comer,
wrapped in a pelisse of furs, with a thick moustache, and an eye that
took in the whole shop, from master to boy, from ceiling to floor, in a
glance, had the air at once of a foreigner and a soldier. Every look
fastened on him, as he paused an instant, and then walking up to the
alderman, said,--
"Sir, you are doubtless Mr. Morton?"
"At your commands, sir," said Roger, rising involuntarily.
"A word with you, then, on business."
"Business!" echoed Mr. Morton, turning rather pale, for he began to
think himself haunted; "anything in my line, sir? I should be--"
The stranger bent down his tall stature, and hissed into Mr. Morton's
foreboding ear:
"Your nephews!"
Mr. Morton was literally dumb-stricken. Yes, he certainly was haunted!
He stared at this second questioner, and fancied that there was something
very supernatural and unearthly about him. He was so tall, and so dark,
and so stern, and so strange. Was it the Unspeakable himself come for
the linendraper? Nephews again! The uncle of the babes in the wood
could hardly have been more startled by the demand!
"Sir," said Mr. Morton at last, recovering his dignity and somewhat
peevishly,--"sir, I don't know why people should meddle with my family
affairs. I don't ask other folks about their nephews. I have no nephew
that I know of."
"Permit me to speak to you, alone, for one instant." Mr. Morton sighed,
hitched up his trousers, and led the way to the parlour, where Mrs.
Morton, having finished the washing bills, was now engaged in tying
certain pieces of bladder round certain pots of preserves. The eldest
Miss Morton, a young woman of five or six-and-twenty, who was about to be
very advantageously married to a young gentleman who dealt in coals and
played the violin (for N----- was a very musical town), had just joined
her for the purpose of extorting "The Swiss Boy, with variations," out of
a sleepy little piano, that emitted a very painful cry under the
awakening fingers of Miss Margaret Morton.
Mr. Morton threw open the door with a grunt, and the stranger pausing at
the threshold, the full flood of sound (key C) upon which "the Swiss Boy"
was swimming along, "kine" and all, for life and death, came splash upon
him.
"Silence! can't you?" cried the father, putting one hand to his ear,
while with the other he pointed to a chair; and as Mrs. Morton looked up
from the preserves with that air of indignant suffering with which female
meekness upbraids a husband's wanton outrage, Mr. Roger added, shrugging
his shoulders,--
"My nephews again, Mrs. K!"
Miss Margaret turned round, and dropped a courtesy. Mrs. Morton gently
let fall a napkin over the preserves, and muttered a sort of salutation,
as the stranger, taking off his hat, turned to mother and daughter one of
those noble faces in which Nature has written her grant and warranty of
the lordship of creation.
"Pardon me," he said, "if I disturb you. But my business will be short.
I have come to ask you, sir, frankly, and as one who has a right to ask
it, what tidings you can give me of Sidney Morton?"
"Sir, I know nothing whatever about him. He was taken from my house,
about twelve years since, by his brother. Myself, and the two Mr.
Beauforts, and another friend of the family, went in search of them both.
My search failed."
"And theirs?"
"I understood from Mr. Beaufort that they had not been more successful.
I have had no communication with those gentlemen since. But that's
neither here nor there. In all probability, the elder of the boys--who,
I fear, was a sad character--corrupted and ruined his brother; and, by
this time, Heaven knows what and where they are."
"And no one has inquired of you since--no one has asked the brother of
Catherine Morton, nay, rather of Catherine Beaufort--where is the child
intrusted to your care?"
This question, so exactly similar to that which his superstition had rung
on his own ears, perfectly appalled the worthy alderman. He staggered
back-stared at the marked and stern face that lowered upon him--and at
last cried,--
"For pity's sake, sir, be just! What could I do for one who left me of
his own accord?--"
"The day you had beaten him like a dog. You see, Mr. Morton, I know
all."
"And what are you?" said Mr. Morton, recovering his English courage, and
feeling himself strangely browbeaten in his own house;--"What and who are
you, that you thus take the liberty to catechise a man of my character
and respectability?"
"Twice mayor--" began Mrs. Morton.
"Hush, mother!" whispered Miss Margaret,--"don't work him up."
"I repeat, sir, what are you?"
"What am I?--your nephew! Who am I? Before men, I bear a name that I
have assumed, and not dishonoured--before Heaven I am Philip Beaufort!"
Mrs. Morton dropped down upon her stool. Margaret murmured "My cousin!"
in a tone that the ear of the musical coal-merchant might not have
greatly relished. And Mr. Morton, after a long pause, came up with a
frank and manly expression of joy, and said:--
"Then, sir, I thank Heaven, from my heart, that one of my sister's
children stands alive before me!"
"And now, again, I--I whom you accuse of having corrupted and ruined him
--him for whom I toiled and worked--him, who was to me, then, as a last
surviving son to some anxious father--I, from whom he was reft and robbed
--I ask you again for Sidney--for my brother!"
"And again, I say, that I have no information to give you--that--Stay a
moment-stay. You must pardon what I have said of you before you made
yourself known. I went but by the accounts I had received from Mr.
Beaufort. Let, me speak plainly; that gentleman thought, right or wrong,
that it would be a great thing to separate your brother from you. He may
have found him--it must be so--and kept his name and condition concealed
from us all, lest you should detect it. Mrs. M., don't you think so?"
"I'm sure I'm so terrified I don't know what to think," said Mrs. Morton,
putting her hand to her forehead, and see-sawing herself to and fro upon
her stool.
"But since they wronged you--since you--you seem so very--very--"
"Very much the gentleman," suggested Miss Margaret. "Yes, so much the
gentleman;--well off, too, I should hope, sir,"--and the experienced eye
of Mr. Morton glanced at the costly sables that lined the pelisse,--
"there can be no difficulty in your learning from Mr. Beaufort all that
you wish to know. And pray, sir, may I ask, did you send any one here
to-day to make the very inquiry you have made?"
"I?--No. What do you mean?"
"Well, well--sit down--there may be something in all this that you may
make out better than I can."
And as Philip obeyed, Mr. Morton, who was really and honestly rejoiced to
see his sister's son alive and apparently thriving, proceeded to relate
pretty exactly the conversation he had held with the previous visitor.
Philip listened earnestly and with attention. Who could this questioner
be? Some one who knew his birth--some one who sought him out?--some one,
who--Good Heavens! could it be the long-lost witness of the marriage?
As soon as that idea struck him, be started from his seat and entreated
Morton to accompany him in search of the stranger. "You know not," he
said, in a tone impressed with that energy of will in which lay the
talent of his mind,--"you know not of what importance this may be to my
prospects--to your sister's fair name. If it should be the witness
returned at last! Who else, of the rank you describe, would be
interested in such inquiries? Come!"
"What witness?" said Mrs. Morton, fretfully. "You don't mean to come
over us with the old story of the marriage?"
"Shall your wife slander your own sister, sir? A marriage there was--God
yet will proclaim the right--and the name of Beaufort shall be yet placed
on my mother's gravestone. Come!"
"Here are your shoes and umbrella, pa," cried Miss Margaret, inspired by
Philip's earnestness.
"My fair cousin, I guess," and as the soldier took her hand, he kissed
the unreluctant cheek--turned to the door--Mr. Morton placed his arm in
his, and the next moment they were in the street.
When Catherine, in her meek tones, had said, "Philip Beaufort was my
husband," Roger Morton had disbelieved her. And now one word from the
son, who could, in comparison, know so little of the matter, had almost
sufficed to convert and to convince the sceptic. Why was this?
Because--Man believes the Strong!
