Volume 74 / Part 9 — CHAPTER XLVI.

Fane had spent some time in diligent pursuit of Onslow; at first with no great promise of success, but latterly with some certainty of being upon his track. Just, however, as his hopes of securing him were strongest, he had received a letter which had been following him for some time from town to town, summoning him to attend the sick-bed of his uncle, who had been attacked with sudden and dangerous illness.

Of course he set off at once, as in duty bound; but he was surprised and ashamed, knowing the obligations he lay under to his relative, to notice how little anxiety and pain the news occasioned him. Fane was very honest in analysing his own emotions, and on the present occasion laid more blame to the account of his own nature, which he accused of unsympathising callousness, than it by any means deserved. He would have done as much to serve a friend, and was capable of as warm attachment, as most people, but his feelings required a congenial nature to call them forth. He was not one of those who wear their hearts on their sleeve for any daw to peck at, and had none of that incontinence of affability which insures a man so many acquaintances and so few friends. Had he been Lear’s eldest son, he would, to a certainty, have been disinherited, along with Cordelia, in favour of those gay deceivers, Goneril and Regan.

Now, Mr Levitt his uncle, though naturally amiable, was an undemonstrative character, full of good impulses which terribly embarrassed him. He would read a poem or romance with the keenest enjoyment, yet with affected contempt, turning up his nose and screwing down the corners of his mouth, while his eyes were watering and his heart beating. He would offer two fingers to a parting friend, nod good-by to him slightly, and turn away, feeling as if a shadow had come upon his world. He had been used to write to his nephews in the spirit of a Roman or Spartan uncle, giving them stern advice, and sending them the most liberal remittances, in the most ungracious manner—throwing checks at their heads, as it were—while all the time he was yearning for their presence. In fact, he was so ashamed of his best points, and so anxious to conceal them, that the rigid mask wherewith he hid his virtues had become habitual, and he was a very sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Those, however, who had known him long, rated him at his true value. Fane found the household in great grief. Miss Betsey, an ancient housekeeper, distinguished principally by strong fidelity to the family interests, a passion for gin-and-water, and a most extraordinary cap, wrung her hands with great decorum; and Mr Payne the banker, Orelia’s father, at the first news of his old friend’s illness, had left a great money transaction unfinished to rush to his bedside, where Fane found him on his arrival. Indeed, it was from him he had received intelligence of his uncle’s illness.

Mr Payne’s temperament had suffered foul wrong when they made him a banker. He had naturally an intense dislike to matters of calculation, his bent being towards belles lettres, foreign travel, and the like pleasant paths. Somehow or other he had got rich, and flourished in spite of his want of talent for money-making. His worldly pursuits, perhaps, made his tastes keener, for he fell upon all manner of light reading with wonderful zest after a busy day at the bank. As for his taste for travelling, it was whispered among his acquaintances that its development was not so much owing to an erratic and inquiring spirit, as to the fact that in the second Mrs Payne he had caught a Tartar, and availed himself of any plausible excuse to escape from her domestic tyranny. Orelia, coming home from school one vacation, and finding her stepmother in full exercise of authority, not only, as a matter of course, rebelled herself, but tried to stir up her father to join in the mutiny. Finding him averse to open war, she proclaimed her intention forthwith of quitting the paternal mansion, and living in the house which had become hers by the death of her godmother, as before related; and Mr Payne, coming down on Saturdays after the bank was closed, would spend one-half of his weekly visit in lamenting the ill-temper of his spouse, and the other in his favourite studies.

Fane found his uncle slowly recovering from the effects of the attack which had prostrated him, and by no means secure from a relapse. Mr Levitt caught the sound of his step on the stair, and recognised it; and Mr Payne, seated by the bedside, saw the invalid glance eagerly at the door. Nevertheless, he received his nephew almost coldly, though the latter testified warm interest in his state.

“You’ve been some time finding me out, Durham,” said his uncle, after shortly answering his inquiries. “I’m afraid you’ve been summoned to this uninteresting scene from some more agreeable pursuit.”

“It was an important one, at any rate, sir,” returned Fane; “yet even that did not prevent me hastening hither the moment Mr Payne’s letter reached me. I only got it this morning.”

“An important one, hey, Durham!” said Mr Levitt, with the cynical air under which he was accustomed to veil his interest in his nephew’s proceedings. “We may judge of its importance, Payne, by his hurrying away from it to look after the ailments of a stupid old fellow like me. Some nonsense, I’ll be bound.”

Mr Payne, a bald benevolent man of fifty, in spectacles, came round the bed to shake Fane’s hand.

“Without the pleasure of knowing the Captain, I’ll answer for his holding you in due consideration,” said Mr Payne. “And your uncle knows that, too; he’s only joking,” he said to Fane.

“Well, but the important business, Durham?” said the invalid, as Fane seated himself beside his pillow.

Fane, remembering that his cousin’s was a prohibited name, and fearing the effect it might produce, attempted to laugh off the inquiry.

“Love!” said Mr Levitt, with another cynical glance at Mr Payne, who had resumed his station at the other side of the bed. “A charmer for fifty pounds; why, I grow quite curious—don’t you, Payne? It’s exactly what you suggested as the cause of his delay. Come, let’s hear about her—begin with the eyes—that’s the rule, isn’t it?”

“Wrong, sir, quite wrong,” said Fane, with another disclaiming laugh.

“Poor, bashful fellow!” persisted his uncle. “But we won’t spare his blushes, Payne. And how far did you pursue the nymph, Durham?—and why did she fly you? Is she at length propitious? I hope so!—you know my wishes.”

“There’s no lady in the case, sir, I assure you,” said Fane earnestly.

“Ah! it’s always the way with your sensitive lovers,” pursued his questioner, addressing Mr Payne. “They’re as shy of the subject which occupies their thoughts as if they didn’t like it. Come, if you’re afraid to speak out before my friend Payne (though I’m sure you needn’t be—he’s discretion itself), he’ll go away, I daresay. What is she like? and when is it to be?”

“When is what to be, sir?” asked Fane, trying to humour the old gentleman, but getting impatient, nevertheless.

“Why, the wedding, of course. Seriously, Durham, I’m all impatience. Your last letter seemed to point at something of the kind; and it was written long enough ago to have settled half-a-dozen love affairs since. I’m more earnest than ever on the subject, now that my admonitions seem likely to be cut short; and this matrimony question may affect the dispositions of my will, Durham.”

“Consider it settled, then, I beg, sir,” said Fane seriously. “I shall never marry.”

“I shall be sorry to find you serious, Durham. A bachelor’s life is but a dreary one. Just look at the difference between me and my friend Payne—he is rosy and happy, and, if he were lying here, he would have quite a family meeting assembled round him—while I should be alone, but for a nephew who has no great reason to care about me, and a friend whose good-nature brings him to see what may, perhaps, be the last of an old acquaintance. My opinions on the subject I’ve so often spoken to you of, haven’t changed, you see, in the least—and perhaps I shall act upon them.”

“As you please, sir,” said Fane. “I speak my deliberate thought when I say I don’t intend to marry.”

Here Miss Betsey tapt at the door, to say that Mr Durham’s supper was ready.

“Go down with him, Payne,” said Mr Levitt. “I’ll go on with this story here—a silly thing; but sick people mustn’t be too critical.”

“An excellent novel!” exclaimed Mr Payne—“full of feeling.”

“Ay, ay, well enough for that kind of trumpery,” said the invalid, who was secretly burning to know how the hero and heroine were to be brought together through such a sea of difficulties; and his friend and his nephew, after making a few arrangements for his comfort, went down stairs together.

Fane dismissed the servant who waited at table. He wished to open what he intended to be, and what proved, a very interesting conversation.

“You’re a very old friend of my uncle’s, Mr Payne,” he said. “I’ve so often heard him speak of you, that I seem almost familiar with you, though this is our first meeting.”

“A school friendship,” said Mr Payne; “and it has continued unbroken ever since.”

“I will tell you,” said Fane, “what the pursuit was I was really engaged in, and you will perceive I could not mention it to my uncle. The fact is, I believe I was on the point of discovering my cousin Langley.”

Mr Payne dropt his knife and fork, and leant back in his chair. “You don’t say so!” cried he. “Poor Langley—poor, poor Langley!”

Fane told the grounds he had for suspecting Langley and the ex-dragoon Onslow to be one and the same person.

“Following some faint traces,” said Fane, “I reached a town where, exposed for sale in a shop window, I saw some drawings which I recognised for his. You know his gift that way.”

“Ay, a first-rate draughtsman, poor fellow,” said Mr Payne.

“He had sold these for a trifle far below their value, and, as I found, had left the town only the day before. I therefore felt secure of him when your letter diverted me from the pursuit.”

“Poor Langley!” repeated the sympathetic Mr Payne. “Such a clever fellow! Draw, sir! he had the making of half-a-dozen academicians in him—and ride!—but you’ve seen him ride, of course. And such an actor!—nothing like him off the London boards, and not many on them equal to him, in my opinion. And to end that way, I don’t know if I should like to see him again.”

“You can perhaps enlighten me on a point I’ve long been curious about,” said Fane. “I mean the real cause of my uncle’s displeasure towards him—the extravagance attributed to Langley doesn’t sufficiently account for it.”

“No,” said Mr Payne, “your uncle would have forgiven that readily enough. He pretended, as his way is, to be angrier at it than he was. But the real cause of estrangement was more serious.

“Your uncle finding, by his frequent applications for money, that accounts which had reached him of Langley’s gambling were but too true, at length replied to a request for a hundred pounds by enclosing a check to that amount, at the same time saying it was the last he must expect, and expressing his displeasure very harshly. The check was brought to our bank the next day, and it was not till after it had been cashed that it was suspected that the original amount, both in words and figures, had been altered. Four hundred pounds it now stood, and that sum had been paid on it. The 1 had easily been made into a 4, and the words altered to correspond—neatly enough, but not so like your uncle’s as to pass with a close scrutiny. While we were examining it, your uncle came in, his anxiety on Langley’s account having brought him to town. He took the check, looked at it, and then drew me aside. ‘’Tis forged,’ said he; ‘mine was for a hundred: but not a word of this, Payne—let it pass as regular—tell the clerks ’tis all right.’ This was a terrible blow to him. From that day to this we have heard nothing of Langley, nor does your uncle ever mention his name; and no one but an intimate friend like me would guess how much he felt the dishonour.”

“But Langley must have known ’twould be discovered immediately,” said Fane, who listened with deep attention.

“Ay—but meantime his end was answered. The money was paid, and he doubtless calculated that your uncle would rather lose the sum than suffer the disgrace of exposure—and he was right.”

“I can’t believe him guilty,” said Fane.

“He must have been severely tempted, poor boy,” said Mr Payne—“always so open and upright; but there can, I’m afraid, be no doubt of his guilt. Consider, he has never showed his face since.”

Fane thought for a minute or two. “No,” he said—“no, not guilty, I hope and believe. No guilty man could have borne himself as he has done since. But there is now more reason than ever for resuming my search for him. Yes, yes—I must see and question him myself.”

“Where do you believe him to be?” asked Mr Payne.

“I traced him to Frewenham, in ——shire,” answered Fane.

“Frewenham! God bless me! Why, my daughter’s place, Larches, is close to that. I’m going down there in a day or two to see Orelia.”

“Orelia!” exclaimed Fane; “then Miss Payne is your daughter.”

“Oh, you have met, then, perhaps?” said Mr Payne, with interest; “where and when?”

“At the Heronry,” said Fane. “My troop is at Doddington, the town nearest to where Miss Payne was staying.”

“Oh, ho! this is fortunate,” said Mr Payne. “As soon as your uncle gets better, we will go down together to Frewenham. My friend Levitt,” he resumed presently, “is, I see, much disappointed to find his surmises as to your matrimonial prospects incorrect. He had set his heart on their fulfilment; and some expressions of admiration for some lady, in a late letter of yours, prepared him to expect something of the kind.”

Fane coloured deeply. He remembered, indeed, that, writing to his uncle one evening, after a delightful afternoon passed with Lady Lee, he had suffered his admiration to overflow in expressions which, though they seemed to him slight compared with the merits of the subject, were yet, perhaps, sufficiently warm to warrant his uncle’s inferences. It was some comfort to remember that he had not mentioned her name in this premature effusion.

“My uncle seems to have quite a monomania on the subject of my becoming a Benedict,” he said presently, by way of breaking an awkward silence. “His doctrine would have seemed more consistent had he inculcated it by example as well as by precept. One doesn’t often see a more determined bachelor.”

“A love affair was the turning-point of your uncle’s life,” said Mr Payne. “He knows and feels that a different, and how much happier man he might have been, but for an early disappointment, and that makes him so desirous to see you comfortably established.”

“Now, do you know,” said Fane, “I can’t, by any effort of imagination, fancy my uncle in love. His proposals, if he ever reached that point, must have been conveyed in an epigram.”

“Your uncle is a good deal changed, in every respect, within the last few years, especially since that sad business of poor Langley,” said Mr Payne; “but I scarcely recognise in him now my old (or rather, I should say, my young) friend Levitt. However, you may take my word for it, Captain Durham, that your uncle knew what it was, some five-and-twenty years ago, to be desperately in love. He seemed, too, to be progressing favourably with the object of his affections, till a gay young captain in the Guards turned her head with his attentions—Captain, afterwards Colonel Lee.”

“What! Bagot!” said Fane.

“Ah, you know him, then,” said Mr Payne; “then you also know it was no great alleviation to your uncle’s disappointment to find a man like Colonel Lee preferred to him. Lee, it seems, had no serious intentions, and jilted her—and your uncle disdained to renew his suit.”

This account seemed to Fane to throw a good deal of light upon parts of his uncle’s character which he had hitherto been unable to fathom.

“Yes,” resumed Mr Payne, “yes; your uncle is a great advocate for marriage, and certainly ’tis all very well in its way, though, perhaps,” he added dubiously, in an under tone, to himself—“perhaps it may be done once too often.”

Here Mr Payne left Durham while he went up-stairs to visit his sick friend, and presently returned to say he had found him asleep, and thought he had better not be disturbed again. Shortly afterwards, finding Durham more disposed to ruminate over what he had heard than to converse, he bid him good night, and went to bed.

Fane’s meditations were interrupted by Miss Betsey, who came in, not altogether free from an odour of gin-and-water, to express her gratification at seeing him well. Miss Betsey was a thin old lady, with an unsteady eye, and a nose streaked with little veins, like a schoolboy’s marble. She wore on her head the most wonderful structure, in the shape of a cap, ever seen. It was a kind of tower of muslin, consisting of several stories ornamented with ribbons, and was fastened under her chin with a broad band like a helmet. Her aged arms protruded through her sleeves, which were tight as far as the elbow, and sloped out wider till they terminated half-way to her wrist, where a pair of black mittens commenced.

“Your dear uncle’s been bad, indeed,” said Miss Betsey, taking a pinch of snuff. “I a’most thought we should have lost him, Mr Durham; but he’s better now, poor dear. But there’s no knowing what might happen yet,” said Miss Betsey, shaking her head; “and I’ve had a thought concerning you, and him, and another, Mr Durham.” Here Miss Betsey closed her snuff-box—which was round, black, and shining, and held about a quarter of a pound of princes’ mixture—and, putting it in her ample pocket, laid the hand not occupied with snuff on Fane’s shoulder with amiable frankness, which gin-and-water generates in old ladies. “Mr Durham, your dear uncle’s never forgot your cousin, Master Langley—and ’twould be a grievious thing if he was to leave us” (a mild form of hinting at Mr Levitt’s decease) “without forgiving him. Couldn’t you put in a word, Mr Durham, for your dear cousin?”

“The very thing I intend, Miss Betsey,” returned Fane, “as soon as it can be done effectually.”

“Ah, Mr Durham,” the old lady went on, waxing more confidential, “your dear uncle’s fond of you, and well he may be, but you’re not to him what Master Langley was;—no,” repeated the old lady, shaking her forefinger, and looking sideways at him, “not what Master Langley was; and your dear uncle’s never been like the same man since that poor dear boy left us.”

“You seem to be quite as fond of him as my uncle ever could have been, Miss Betsey,” Fane remarked.

“Fond!” said Miss Betsey, “who wasn’t? He had that coaxing way with him that he could”—she completed the sentence by flourishing her forefinger in the air, as if turning an imaginary person round it. “Everybody was fond of him;—the maids (the pretty ones in particular) was a’most too fond of him—so much so, that it rather interfered with their work.”

Fane’s smile at this proof of his cousin’s irresistibility called forth a playful tap on the shoulder from the old virgin, who presently afterwards dived down into her pocket for her snuff-box, and, screwing off the lid, which creaked like the axle of a stage waggon, stimulated her reminiscences with a pinch.

“Well-a-day! your uncle’s never been the same man since. You don’t know, perhaps” (whispering in a tone that fanned Fane’s cheek with a zephyr combined of gin-and-water and princes’ mixture), “that he keeps Master Langley’s room locked up the same as the poor boy last left it, do you? There now, I said so,” giving him a gentle slap on the back, and retreating a pace, as he answered in the negative; “for all you lived here weeks together, on and off, you never knew that. Come with me,” added the old lady; “I’ve got the key, and we’ll go in there together.”

Fane willingly followed her, taking deep interest in all fragments of his cousin’s history. Arriving at the door of a room looking out on the lawn, Miss Betsey stopped, and, after some protracted fumbling at the keyhole, opened it. “Once or twice, when he thought nobody was watching him, I’ve seen your uncle coming out of this door with tears in his blessed eyes,” said she, as she entered, preceding him with the candle.

The rooms were, as Miss Betsey had said, just as their former occupant had left them. The pieces of a fishing-rod, with their bag lying beside them, were scattered on the table, together with hackles, coloured worsteds, peacocks’ herls, and other materials for fly-making. An open book was on the window-seat, and an unfinished sketch in oils stood on an easel.

“There,” said Miss Betsey, holding the candle up to a painting over the mantelpiece, “there you see the dear fellow taking a leap that none of the others would face. Your uncle was so proud of that deed that he got it painted, as you see—and a pretty penny it cost him. There were other likenesses of him here, but your uncle put ’em all away before you came from Indy.”

Fane approached to look at the picture, which set at rest any uncertainty that might remain as to his cousin’s identity with the rough-riding corporal. There was the same handsome face, only younger, and without the mustache. The same gay air and easy seat that distinguished the dragoon Onslow on horseback appeared in the sportsman there represented, who rode a gallant bay at a formidable brook, with a rail on the farther side. The work was highly artistic, being the production of a famous animal-painter.

At this stage of the proceedings Miss Betsey’s feelings seemed to overpower her. She wept copiously, and even hiccupped with emotion; and, setting the candle on the table, abruptly retired.

Fane lingered round the room, looking at the backs of the books, and turning over portfolios of drawings, which would, of themselves, have identified the hand that produced them with Onslow’s, as exhibited in the sketch-book of Orelia. Among these was a coloured drawing of his uncle—a good likeness—and another of the artist himself. Fane, looking at the bold frank lineaments, internally pronounced it impossible that their possessor could have been guilty of the mean and criminal action imputed to him. He pictured to himself, and contrasted his cousin’s condition before he lost his uncle’s favour, with his life as a soldier, and decided it to be contrary to experience that any one could, under such a startling change of circumstances, have behaved so well, had he been conscious of guilt.

After some time spent in these and similar meditations, suggested by the objects around him, he went out and locked the door. Passing the housekeeper’s room, he went in to leave the key. Miss Betsey appeared to have been soothing her emotions with more gin-and-water, for she sat still in her elbow-chair, with her wonderful structure of cap fallen over one eye, in a manner that rather impaired her dignity, while she winked the remaining one at him with a somewhat imbecile smile.

“Come, Miss Betsey,” said Fane, “let me see you to bed.”

Miss Betsey rose, and, taking his offered arm, they proceeded slowly along the passage together. “By Jove,” thought Fane, “if those youngsters, Bruce and Oates, could see me now, what a story they’d make of it!”

“You must make haste and get a wife, Mr Durham,” said Miss Betsey, whose thoughts seemed to be taking a tender hue—“though, to be sure, you’re not such a one for the ladies as Mr Langley was”—and here the old lady commenced the relation of an anecdote, in which a certain housemaid, whom she stigmatised as a hussy, bore a prominent part, but which we will not rescue from the obscurity in which her somewhat indistinct utterance veiled it.

Fane opened the old lady’s bedroom door, and, putting the candle on the table, left her, not without a misgiving that she might possibly set fire to her cap, and consequently to the ceiling. This fear impressed him so much that he went back and removed it from her head, and with it a row of magnificent brown curls, which formed its basis, and, depositing the edifice, not without wonder, on the drawers, he wished her good night, and retreated; but, hearing her door open when he had got half-way along the passage, he looked back, and saw Miss Betsey’s head, deprived of the meretricious advantages of hair, gauze, and ribbon, protruded shiningly into the passage, as she smiled, with the utmost blandness, a supplementary good night.

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