Chapter IX: Part 9

"Dear Madam--No, beloved friend--mother, let me call you.... Oh kind, gentle mother, I am to die ... to be killed in a few hours by cruel men!--I, so young, so unprepared for death, and yet guiltless! Oh never doubt that I am guiltless of the offence for which they will have the heart to hang me.... Nobody, they say, can save me now; yet if I could see the lawyer.... I have been deceived, cruelly deceived, madam--buoyed up by lying hopes, till just now the thunder burst, and I--oh God!.... As they spoke, the fearful chapter in the Testament came bodily before me--the rending of the vail in twain, the terrible darkness, and the opened graves!.... I did not write for this, but my brain aches and dazzles.... It is too late--too late, they all tell me! ... Ah, if these dreadful laws were not so swift, I might yet--but no; _he_ clearly proved to me how useless.... I must not think of that.... It is of my nephew, of your Henry, child of my affections, that I would speak. Oh, would that I.... But hark!--they are coming.... The day has dawned ... to me the day of judgment!...."

This incoherent scrawl only confirmed my previous suspicions, but it was useless to dwell further on the melancholy subject. The great axe had fallen, and whether justly or unjustly, would, I feared, as in many, very many other cases, never be clearly ascertained in this world. I was mistaken. Another case of "uttering forged Bank-of-England notes, knowing them to be forged," which came under our cognizance a few months afterwards, revived the fading memory of Jane Eccles's early doom, and cleared up every obscurity connected with it.

The offender in this new case, was a tall, dark-complexioned, handsome man, of about thirty years of age, of the name of Justin Arnold. His lady mother, whose real name I shall conceal under that of Barton, retained us for her son's defence, and from her, and other sources, we learned the following particulars:--

Justin Arnold was the lady's son by a former marriage. Mrs. Barton, a still splendid woman, had, in second nuptials, espoused a very wealthy person, and from time to time had covertly supplied Justin Arnold's extravagance. This, however, from the wild course the young man pursued, could not be forever continued, and after many warnings the supplies were stopped. Incapable of reformation, Justin Arnold, in order to obtain the means of dissipation, connected himself with a cleverly-organized band of swindlers and forgers, who so adroitly managed their nefarious business, that, till his capture, they had contrived to keep themselves clear of the law--the inferior tools and dupes having been alone caught in its fatal meshes. The defence, under these circumstances necessarily a difficult, almost impossible one, was undertaken by Mr. Flint, and conducted by him with his accustomed skill and energy.

I took a very slight interest in the matter, and heard very little concerning it till its judicial conclusion by the conviction of the offender, and his condemnation to death. The decision on the recorder's report was this time communicated to the authorities of Newgate on a Saturday, so that the batch ordered for execution, amongst whom was Justin Arnold, would not be hanged till the Monday morning. Rather late in the evening a note once more reached me from the chaplain of the prison. Justin Arnold wished to see me--_me_, not Mr. Flint. He had something of importance to communicate, he said, relative to a person in whom I had once felt great interest. It flashed across me that this Justin might be the "brother" of Jane Eccles, and I determined to see him. I immediately sought out one of the sheriffs, and obtained an order empowering me to see the prisoner on the afternoon of the morrow, (Sunday).

I found that the convict had expressed great anxiety lest I should decline to see him. My hoped-for visit was the only matter which appeared to occupy the mind or excite the care of the mocking, desperate young man; even the early and shameful termination of his own life on the morrow, he seemed to be utterly reckless of. Thus prepared, I was the less surprised at the scene which awaited me in the prisoner's cell, where I found him in angry altercation with the pale and affrighted chaplain.

I had never seen Justin Arnold before, this I was convinced of the instant I saw him; but he knew and greeted me instantly by name. His swarthy, excited features were flushed and angry; and after briefly thanking me for complying with his wishes, he added in a violent rapid tone, "This good man has been teasing me. He says, and truly, that I have defied God by my life; and now he wishes me to mock that inscrutable Being, on the eve of death, by words without sense, meaning, or truth!"

"No, no, no!" ejaculated the reverend gentleman. "I exhorted you to true repentance, to peace, charity, to"--

"True repentance, peace, charity!" broke in the prisoner, with a scornful burst; "when my heart is full of rage, and bitterness, and despair! Give me _time_ for this repentance which you say is so needful--time to lure back long since banished hope, and peace, and faith! Poh!--you but flout me with words without meaning. I am unfit, you say, for the presence of men, but quite fit for that of God, before whom you are about to arrogantly cast me! Be it so--my deeds are upon my head! It is at least not my fault that I am hurled to judgment before the Eternal Judge himself commanded my presence there!"

"He may be unworthy to live," murmured the scared chaplain, "but oh, how utterly unfit to die!"

"That is true," rejoined Justin Arnold, with undiminished vehemence. "Those, if you will, are words of truth and sense--go you and preach them to the makers and executioners of English law. In the meantime I would speak privately with this gentleman."

The reverend pastor, with a mute gesture of compassion, sorrow, and regret, was about to leave the cell, when he was stayed by the prisoner, who exclaimed, "Now, I think of it, you had better, sir, remain. The statement I am about to make cannot, for the sake of the victim's reputation, and for her friends' sake, have too many witnesses. You both remember Jane Eccles?" A broken exclamation from both of us answered him, and he quickly added--"Ah, you already guess the truth, I see. Well, I do not wonder you should start and turn pale. It _was_ a cruel, shameless deed--a dastardly murder if there was ever one. In as few words as possible, so you interrupt me not, I will relate _my_ share in the atrocious business." He spoke rapidly, and once or twice during the brief recital, the moistened eye and husky voice betrayed emotions which his pride would have concealed.

"Jane and I were born in Hertfordshire, within a short distance of each other. I knew her from a child. She was better off then, I worse than we subsequently became--she by her father's bankruptcy, I by my mo--, by Mrs. Barton's wealthy marriage. She was about nineteen, I twenty-four, when I left the country for London. That she loved me with all the fervor of a trusting woman I well knew; and I had, too, for some time known that she must be either honorably wooed or not at all. That with me, was out of the question, and, as I told you, I came about that time to London. You can, I dare say, imagine the rest. We were--I and my friends, I mean--at a loss for agents to dispose of our wares, and at the same time pressed for money. I met Jane Eccles by accident. Genteel, of graceful address and winning manners, she was just fitted for our purpose. I feigned re-awakened love, proffered marriage, and a home across the Atlantic, as soon as certain trifling but troublesome affairs which momently harassed me were arranged. She believed me. I got her to change a considerable number of notes under various pretexts, but that they were forged she had not and could not have the remotest suspicion. You know the catastrophe. After her apprehension I visited this prison as her brother, and buoyed her up to the last with illusions of certain pardon and release, whatever the verdict, through the influence of my wealthy father-in-law, of our immediate union afterwards, and tranquil American home. It is needless to say more. She trusted me, and I sacrificed her; less flagrant instances of a like nature occur every day. And now, gentlemen, I would fain be alone."

"Remorseless villain!" I could not help exclaiming under my breath as he moved away.

He turned quickly back, and looking me in the face, without the slightest anger, said, "An execrable villain if you like--not a remorseless one! Her death alone sits near, and troubles my, to all else, hardened conscience. And let me tell you, reverend sir," he continued, resuming his former bitterness as he addressed the chaplain--"let me tell you that it was not the solemn words of the judge the other day, but her pale, reproachful image, standing suddenly beside me in the dock, just as she looked when I passed my last deception on her, that caused the tremor and affright, complacently attributed by that grave functionary to his own sepulchral eloquence. After all, her death cannot be exclusively laid to my charge. Those who tried her would not believe her story, and yet it was true as death. Had they not been so confident in their own unerring wisdom, they might have doomed her to some punishment short of the scaffold, and could now have retrieved their error. But I am weary, and would, I repeat, be alone. Farewell!" He threw himself on the rude pallet, and we silently withdrew.

A paper embodying Justin Arnold's declaration was forwarded to the secretary of state, and duly acknowledged, accompanied by an official expression of mild regret that it had not been made in time to save the life of Jane Eccles. No further notice was taken of the matter, and the record of the young woman's judicial sacrifice still doubtless encumbers the archives of the Home Office, forming, with numerous others of like character, the dark, sanguine background upon which the achievements of the great and good men who have so successfully purged the old Draco code that now a faint vestige only of the old barbarism remains, stands out in bright relief and changeless lustre.

"EVERY MAN HIS OWN LAWYER."

A smarter trader, a keener appreciator of the tendencies to a rise or fall in colonial produce--sugars more especially--than John Linden, of Mincing Lane, it would have been difficult to point out in the wide city of London. He was not so immensely rich as many others engaged in the same merchant-traffic as himself; nothing at all like it, indeed, for I doubt that he could at any time have been esteemed worth more than from eighty to ninety thousand pounds; but his transactions, although limited in extent when compared with those of the mammoth colonial houses, almost always returned more or less of profit; the result of his remarkable keenness and sagacity in scenting hurricanes, black insurrections, and emancipation bills, whilst yet inappreciable, or deemed afar off, by less sensitive organizations. At least to this wonderful prescience of future sugar-value did Mr. Linden himself attribute his rise in the world, and gradual increase in rotundity, riches, and respectability. This constant success engendered, as it is too apt to do, inordinate egotism, conceit, self-esteem, vanity. There was scarcely a social, governmental, or economical problem which he did not believe himself capable of solving as easily as he could eat his dinner when hungry. "Common-sense business-habits"--his favorite phrase--he believed to be quite sufficient for the elucidation of the most difficult question in law, physic, or divinity. The science of law, especially, he held to be an alphabet which any man--of common sense and business habits--could as easily master as he could count five on his fingers; and there was no end to his ridicule of the men with horse-hair head-dresses, and their quirks, quiddits, cases, tenures, and such-like devil's lingo. Lawyers, according to him, were a set of thorough humbugs and impostors, who gained their living by false pretence--that of affording advice and counsel, which every sane man could better render himself. He was unmistakably mad upon this subject, and he carried his insane theory into practice. He drew his own leases, examined the titles of some house-property he purchased, and set his hand and seal to the final deeds, guided only by his own common-sense spectacles. Once he bid, at the Auction Mart, as high as fifty-three thousand pounds for the Holmford estate, Herefordshire; and had he not been outbidden by young Palliser, son of the then recently-deceased eminent distiller, who was eager to obtain the property, with a view to a seat in parliament which its possession was said to almost insure--he would, I had not at the time the slightest doubt, have completed the purchase, without for a moment dreaming of submitting the vender's title to the scrutiny of a professional adviser. Mr. Linden, I should mention, had been for some time desirous of resigning his business in Mincing Lane to his son, Thomas Linden, the only child born to him by his long-since deceased wife, and of retiring, an estated squire-arch, to the _otium cum._, or _sine dignitate_, as the case might be, of a country life; and this disposition had of late been much quickened by daily-increasing apprehensions of negro emancipation and revolutionary interference with differential duties--changes which, in conjunction with others of similar character, would infallibly bring about that utter commercial ruin which Mr. Linden, like every other rich and about-to-retire merchant or tradesman whom I have ever known, constantly prophesied to be near at hand and inevitable.

With such a gentleman the firm of Flint & Sharp had only professional interviews, when procrastinating or doubtful debtors required that he should put on the screw--a process which, I have no doubt, he would himself have confidently performed, but for the waste of valuable time which doing so would necessarily involve. Both Flint and myself were, however, privately intimate with him--Flint more especially, who had known him from boyhood--and we frequently dined with him on a Sunday at his little box at Fulham. Latterly, we had on these occasions met there a Mrs. Arnold and her daughter Catherine--an apparently amiable, and certainly very pretty and interesting young person--to whom, Mr. Linden confidentially informed us, his son Tom had been for some time engaged.

"I don't know much about her family," observed Mr. Linden one day, in the course of a gossip at the office, "but she moves in very respectable society. Tom met her at the Slades'; but I _do_ know she has something like thirty-five thousand pounds in the funds. The instant I was informed how matters stood with the young folk, I, as a matter of common sense and business, asked the mother, Mrs. Arnold, for a reference to her banker or solicitor--there being no doubt that a woman and a minor would be in lawyers' leading-strings--and she referred me to Messrs. Dobson of Chancery Lane. You know the Dobsons?"

"Perfectly,--what was the reply?"

"That Catherine Arnold, when she came of age--it wants but a very short time of that now--would be entitled to the capital of thirty-four thousand seven hundred pounds, bequeathed by an uncle, and now lodged in the funds in the names of the trustees, Crowther & Jenkins, of Leadenhall Street, by whom the interest on that sum was regularly paid, half-yearly, through the Messrs. Dobson, for the maintenance and education of the heiress. A common-sense, business-like letter in every respect, and extremely satisfactory; and as soon as he pleases, after Catherine Arnold comes of age, and into actual possession of her fortune, Tom may have her, with my blessing over the bargain."

I dined at Laurel Villa, Fulham, about two months after this conversation, and Linden and I found ourselves alone over the dessert--the young people having gone out for a stroll, attracted doubtless by the gay aspect of the Thames, which flows past the miniature grounds attached to the villa. Never had I seen Mr. Linden in so gay, so mirthful a mood.

"Pass the decanter," he exclaimed, the instant the door had closed upon Tom and his _fiancée_. "Pass the decanter, Sharp; I have news for you, my boy, now they are gone."

"Indeed! and what may the news be?"

"Fill a bumper for yourself, and I'll give you a toast. Here's to the health and prosperity of the proprietor of the Holmford estate; and may he live a thousand years, and one over!--Hip--hip--hurra!"

He swallowed his glass of wine, and then, in his intensity of glee, laughed himself purple.

"You needn't stare so," he said, as soon as he had partially recovered breath; "I am the proprietor of the Holmford property--bought it for fifty-six thousand pounds of that young scant-grace and spendthrift, Palliser--fifteen thousand pounds less than what it cost him, with the outlay he has made upon it. Signed, sealed, delivered, paid for yesterday. Ha! ha! ho! Leave John Linden alone for a bargain! It's worth seventy thousand pounds if it's worth a shilling. I say," continued he, after a renewed spasm of exuberant mirth, "not a word about it to anybody--mind! I promised Palliser, who is quietly packing up to be off to Italy, or Australia, or Constantinople, or the devil--all of them, perhaps, in succession--not to mention a word about it till he was well off--you understand? Ha! ha!--ho! ho!" again burst out Mr. Linden. "I pity the poor creditors though! Bless you! I shouldn't have had it at anything like the price, only for his knowing that I was not likely to be running about exposing the affair, by asking lawyers whether an estate in a family's possession, as this was in Dursley's for three hundred years, had a good title or not. So be careful not to drop a word, even to Tom--for my honor's sake. A delicious bargain, and no mistake! Worth, if a penny, seventy thousand pounds. Ha! ha!--ho! ho!"

"Then you have really parted with that enormous sum of money without having had the title to the estate professionally examined?"

"Title! Fiddlestick! I looked over the deeds myself. Besides, haven't I told you the ancestors of Dursley, from whose executors Palliser purchased the estate, were in possession of it for centuries. What better title than prescription can there be?"

"That may be true enough; but still"--

"I ought, you think, to have risked losing the bargain by delay, and have squandered time and money upon fellows in horse-hair wigs, in order to ascertain what I sufficiently well knew already? Pooh! I am not in my second childhood yet!"

It was useless to argue with him; besides the mischief, if mischief there was, had been done, and the not long-delayed entrance of the young couple necessitating a change of topic, I innocently inquired what he thought of the Negro Emancipation Bill which Mr. Stanley, as the organ of the ministry, had introduced a few evenings previously? and was rewarded by a perfect deluge of loquacious indignation and invective--during a pause in which hurly-burly of angry words I contrived to effect my escape.

"Crowther & Jenkins!" exclaimed one morning, Mr. Flint, looking up from the "Times" newspaper he held in his hand. "Crowther & Jenkins!--what is it we know about Crowther & Jenkins?"

The question was addressed to me, and I, like my partner, could not at the moment precisely recall why those names sounded upon our ears with a certain degree of interest as well as familiarity. "Crowther & Jenkins!" I echoed. "True; what _do_ we know about Crowther & Jenkins? Oh, I have it!--they are the executors of a will under which young Linden's pretty bride, that is to be, inherits her fortune."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Flint, as he put down the paper, and looked me gravely in the face--"I remember now; their names are in the list of bankrupts. A failure in the gambling corn-trade too. I hope they have not been speculating with the young woman's money."

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Mr. Linden was announced, and presently in walked that gentleman in a state of considerable excitement.

"I told you," he began, "some time ago about Crowther & Jenkins being the persons in whose names Catherine Arnold's money stood in the funds?"

"Yes," replied Flint; "and I see by the 'Gazette' they are bankrupts, and, by your face, that they have speculated with your intended daughter-in-law's money, and lost it!"

"Positively so!" rejoined Mr. Linden, with great heat. "Drew it out many months ago! But they have exceedingly wealthy connections--at least Crowther has--who will, I suppose, arrange Miss Arnold's claim rather than their relative should be arraigned for felony."

"Felony!--you are mistaken, my good sir. There is no felony--no _legal_ felony, I mean--in the matter. Miss Arnold can only prove against the estate like any other creditor."

"The devil she can't! Tom, then, must look out for another wife, for I am credibly informed there won't be a shilling in the pound."

And so it turned out. The great corn-firm had been insolvent for years; and after speculating desperately, and to a frightful extent, with a view to recover themselves, had failed to an enormous amount--their assets, comparatively speaking, proving to be _nil_.

The ruin spread around, chiefly on account of the vast quantity of accommodation-paper they had afloat, was terrible; but upon no one did the blow fall with greater severity than on young Linden and his promised wife. His father ordered him to instantly break off all acquaintance with Miss Arnold; and on the son, who was deeply attached to her, peremptorily refusing to do so, Linden, senior, threatened to turn him out of doors, and ultimately disinherit him. Angry, indignant, and in love, Thomas Linden did a very rash and foolish thing; he persuaded Catherine Arnold to consent to a private marriage, arguing that if the indissoluble knot were once fairly tied, his father would, as a matter of course--he being an only child--become reconciled to what he could no longer hope to prevent or remedy.

The imprudent young man deceived both himself and her who trusted in his pleasing plausibilities. Ten minutes after he had disclosed the marriage to his father, he was turned, almost penniless, out of doors; and the exasperated and inexorable old man refused to listen to any representation in his favor, by whomsoever proffered, and finally, even to permit the mention of his name in his hearing.

"It's of no use," said Mr. Flint, on returning for the last time, from a mission undertaken to extort, if possible, some provision against absolute starvation for the newly-wedded couple. "He is as cold and hard as adamant, and I think, if possible, even more of a tiger than before. He will be here presently to give instructions for his will."

"His will! Surely he will draw that up himself after his own common-sense, business fashion?"

"He would unquestionably have done so a short time since; but some events that have lately occurred have considerably shaken his estimate of his own infallibility, and he is, moreover, determined, he says, that there shall be no mistake as to effectually disinheriting his son. He has made two or three heavy losses, and his mind is altogether in a very cankered, distempered state."

Mr. Linden called, as he had promised to do, and gave us the written heads of a will which he desired to have at once formally drawn up. By this instrument he devised the Holmford estate, and all other property, real and personal, of which he might die possessed, to certain charitable institutions, in varying proportions, payable as soon after his death as the property could be turned into money. "The statute of mortmain does not give me much uneasiness," remarked the vindictive old man with a bitter smile. "I shall last some time yet. I would have left it all to you, Flint," he added, "only that I knew you would defeat my purpose by giving it back to that disobedient, ungrateful, worthless boy."

"Do leave it to me," rejoined Mr. Flint, with grave emphasis, "and I promise you faithfully this--that the wish respecting it, whatever it may be, which trembles on your lip as you are about to leave this world for another, and when it may be too late to formally revoke the testament you now propose, shall be strictly carried out. That time cannot be a very distant one, John Linden, for a man whose hair is white as yours."

It was preaching to the winds. He was deaf, blind, mute, to every attempt at changing his resolve. The will was drawn in accordance with his peremptorily-iterated instructions, and duly signed, sealed, and attested. Not very long afterwards, Mr. Linden disposed of his business in Mincing Lane, and retired to Holmford, but with nothing like the money-fortune he had once calculated upon, the losses alluded to by Mr. Flint, and followed by others, having considerably diminished his wealth.

We ultimately obtained a respectable and remunerative situation for Thomas Linden in a mercantile house at Belfast, with which we were professionally acquainted, and after securing berths in the _Erin_ steamer, he, with his wife and mother-in-law, came, with a kind of hopeful sadness in their looks and voices, to bid us farewell--for a very long time, they and we also feared--

For an eternity, it seemed, on reading the account of the loss of the _Erin_, a few days afterwards, with every soul on board! Their names were published with those of the other passengers who had embarked, and we had of course concluded that they had perished, when a letter reached us from Belfast, stating that, through some delay on the part of Mrs. Arnold, they had happily lost their passage in the _Erin_, and embarked in the next steamer for Belfast, where they arrived in perfect safety. We forwarded this intelligence to Holmford, but it elicited no reply.

We heard nothing of Mr. Linden for about two months, except by occasional notices in the "Hereford Times", which he regularly forwarded to the office, relative to the improvements on the Holmford estate, either actually begun or contemplated by its new proprietor. He very suddenly reappeared. I was cooling my heels in the waiting-room of the chambers of the Barons of the Exchequer, Chancery Lane, awaiting my turn of admission, when one of our clerks came in, half-breathless with haste. "You are wanted, sir, immediately; Mr. Flint is out, and Mr. Linden is at the office raving like a mad-man." I instantly transferred the business I was in attendance at chambers upon, to the clerk, and with the help of a cab soon reached home.

Mr. Linden was not _raving_ when I arrived. The violence of the paroxysm of rage and terror by which he was possessed had passed away, and he looked, as I entered, the image of pale, rigid, iron, dumb despair. He held a letter and a strip of parchment in his hand; these he presented, and with white, stammering lips, bade me read. The letter was from an attorney of the name of Sawbridge, giving notice of an action of ejectment, to oust him from the possession of the Holmford estate, the property, according to Mr. Sawbridge, of one Edwin Majoribanks; and the strip of parchment was the writ by which the letter had been quickly followed. I was astounded; and my scared looks questioned Mr. Linden for further information.

"I do not quite understand it," he said in a hoarse, palpitating voice. "No possession or title in the venders; a niece not of age--executors no power to sell--Palliser discovered it, robbed me, absconded, and I, oh God! am a miserable beggar!"

The last words were uttered with a convulsive scream, and after a few frightful struggles he fell down in a fit. I had him conveyed to bed, and as soon as he was somewhat recovered, I hastened off to ascertain from Sawbridge, whom I knew very intimately, the nature of the claim intended to be set up for the plaintiff, Edwin Majoribanks.

I met Sawbridge just as he was leaving his office, and as he was in too great a hurry to turn back, I walked along with him, and he rapidly detailed the chief facts about to be embodied in the plaintiff's declaration. Archibald Dursley, once a London merchant, and who died a bachelor, had bequeathed his estate, real and personal, to his brother Charles, and a niece, his sister's child--two-thirds to the niece, and one-third to the brother. The Holmford property, the will directed, should be sold by public auction when the niece came of age, unless she, by marriage or otherwise, was enabled, within six months after attaining her majority, to pay over to Charles Dursley his third in money, according to a valuation made for the purpose by competent assessors. The brother, Charles Dursley, had urged upon the executors to anticipate the time directed by the will for the sale of the property; and having persuaded the niece to give a written authorization for the immediate sale, the executors, chiefly, Sawbridge supposed, prompted by their own necessities, sold the estate accordingly. But the niece not being of age when she signed the authority to sell, her consent was of no legal value; and she having since died intestate, Edwin Majoribanks, her cousin and undoubted heir-at-law--for the property could not have passed from her, even by marriage--now claimed the estate. Charles Dursley, the brother, was dead; "and," continued Mr. Sawbridge, "the worst of it is, Linden will never get a farthing of his purchase-money from the venders, for they are bankrupt, nor from Palliser, who has made permanent arrangements for continuing abroad, out of harm's reach. It is just as I tell you," he added, as we shook hands at parting; "but you will of course see the will, and satisfy yourself. Good-by."

Here was a precious result of amateur common-sense lawyership! Linden could only have examined the abstract of title furnished him by Palliser's attorney, and not the right of Dursley's executors to sell; or had not been aware that the niece could not during her minority, subscribe an effective legal consent.

I found Mr. Flint at the office, and quickly imparted the astounding news. He was as much taken aback as myself.

"The obstinate, pig-headed old ass!" he exclaimed; "it almost serves him right, if only for his Tom-fool nonsense of 'Every man his own lawyer.' What did you say was the niece's name?"

"Well, I don't remember that Sawbridge told me--he was in such a hurry; but suppose you go at once and look over the will?"

"True: I will do so;" and away he went.

"This is a very singular affair, Sharp," said Mr. Flint on his return from Doctors' Commons, at the same time composedly seating himself, hooking his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, crossing his legs, and tilting his chair back on its hind legs. "A very singular affair. Whom, in the name of the god of thieves--Mercury, wasn't he called?--do you suppose the bankrupt executors to be? No other," continued Mr. Flint with a sudden burst, "than Crowther & Jenkins!"

"The devil!--and the niece then is"--

"Catherine Arnold--Tom Linden's wife--supposed to have been drowned in the _Erin_! That's check-mate, I rather fancy--not only to Mr. Edwin Majoribanks, but some one else we know of. The old fellow up stairs won't refuse to acknowledge his daughter-in-law now, I fancy!"

This was indeed a happy change in the fortunes of the House of Linden; and we discussed, with much alacrity, the best mode of turning disclosures so momentous and surprising to the best account. As a first step, a letter with an inclosure, was dispatched to Belfast, requiring the return of Thomas Linden and family immediately; and the next was to plead in form to the action. This done, we awaited Catherine Linden's arrival in London, and Mr. Linden senior's convalescence--for his mental agitation had resulted in a sharp fit of illness--to effect a satisfactory and just arrangement.

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Linden and Mrs. Arnold arrived by the earliest steamer that left Belfast after the receipt of our letter; and much astonished were they by the intelligence that awaited them. Catherine Linden was for confirming the validity of the sale of the Holmford estate by her now authoritative consent at once, as a mere act of common justice and good faith; but this, looking at the total loss of fortune she had sustained by the knavery of the executors, and the obstinate, mulish temper of the father-in-law, from whom she had already received such harsh treatment, could not for a moment be permitted; and it was finally resolved to take advantage of the legal position in which she stood, to enforce a due present provision for herself and husband, and their ultimate succession to the estate.

John Linden gradually recovered; and as soon as it was deemed prudent to do so, we informed him that the niece was not dead, as the plaintiff in the action of ejectment had supposed, and that of course, if she could now be persuaded to ratify the imperative consent she had formerly subscribed, he might retain Holmford. At first he received the intelligence as a gleam of light and hope, but he soon relapsed into doubt and gloom. "What chance was there," he hopelessly argued, "that, holding the legal power, she would not exercise it?" It was not, he said, in human nature to do otherwise; and he commissioned us to make liberal offers for a compromise. Half--he would be content to lose half his purchase-money; even a greater sacrifice than that he would agree to--anything, indeed, that would not be utter ruin--that did not involve utter beggary and destitution in old age.

Three days after this conversation, I announced to him that the lady and her husband were below and desirous of seeing him.

"What do they say?" he eagerly demanded. "Will they accept of half--two-thirds? What do they say?"

"I cannot precisely tell you. They wish to see you alone, and you can urge your own views and offers." He trembled violently, and shrank nervously back as I placed my hand on the door-handle of the private office. He presently recovered in some degree his self-possession, passed in, and I withdrew from the humiliating, but salutary spectacle, of obdurate tyrant-power compelled to humble itself before those whom it had previously scorned and trampled upon.

The legal arrangements which Flint and I had suggested were effected, and Linden, senior, accompanied by his son, daughter-in-law, and Mrs. Arnold, set off in restored amity for Holmford House. Edwin Majoribanks abandoned his action, and Palliser, finding that matters were satisfactorily arranged, retired to England. We afterwards knew that he had discovered the defect of title, on applying to a well-known conveyancer, to raise a considerable sum by way of mortgage, and that his first step was to threaten legal proceedings against Crowther & Jenkins for the recovery of his money; but a hint he obtained of the futility of proceedings against them, determined him to offer the estate at a low figure to Linden, relying upon that gentleman's ostentatious contempt of lawyers that the blot in the title, subjected only to his own common-sense spectacles, would not be perceived.

THE CHEST OF DRAWERS.

I am about to relate a rather curious piece of domestic history, some of the incidents of which, revealed at the time of their occurrence in contemporary law reports, may be in the remembrance of many readers. It took place in one of the midland counties, and at a place which I shall call Watley; the names of the chief actors who figured in it must also, to spare their modesty of their blushes, as the case may be, be changed; and should one of those persons, spite of these precautions, apprehend unpleasant recognition, he will be able to console himself with the reflection, that all I state beyond that which may be gathered from the records of the law courts will be generally ascribed to the fancy or invention of the writer. And it is as well, perhaps, that it should be so.

Caleb Jennings, a shoemaker, cobler, snob--using the last word in its genuine classical sense, and by no means according to the modern interpretation by which it is held to signify a genteel sneak or pretender--he was anything but that--occupied, some twelve or thirteen years ago, a stall at Watley, which, according to the traditions of the place, had been hereditary in his family for several generations. He may also be said to have flourished there, after the manner of cobblers; for this, it must be remembered, was in the good old times, before the gutta-percha revolution had carried ruin and dismay into the stalls--those of cobblers--which in considerable numbers existed throughout the kingdom. Like all his fraternity whom I have ever fallen in with or heard of, Caleb was a sturdy radical of the Major Cartwright and Henry Hunt school; and being withal industrious, tolerably skillful, not inordinately prone to the observance of Saint Mondays, possessed, moreover, of a neatly-furnished sleeping and eating apartment in the house of which the projecting first floor, supported on stone pillars, over-shadowed his humble work-place, he vaunted himself to be as really rich as an estated squire, and far more independent.

There was some truth in this boast, as the case which procured us the honor of Mr. Jennings's acquaintance sufficiently proved. We were employed to bring an action against a wealthy gentleman of the vicinity of Watley for a brutal and unprovoked assault he had committed, when in a state of partial inebriety, upon a respectable London tradesman who had visited the place on business. On the day of trial our witnesses appeared to have become suddenly afflicted with an almost total loss of memory; and we were only saved from an adverse verdict by the plain, straight-forward evidence of Caleb, upon whose sturdy nature the various arts which soften or neutralize hostile evidence had been tried in vain. Mr. Flint, who personally superintended the case, took quite a liking to the man; and it thus happened that we were called upon sometime afterwards to aid the said Caleb in extricating himself from the extraordinary and perplexing difficulty in which he suddenly and unwittingly found himself involved.

The projecting first floor of the house beneath which the humble work-shop of Caleb Jennings modestly disclosed itself, had been occupied for many years by an ailing and somewhat aged gentleman of the name of Lisle. This Mr. Ambrose Lisle was a native of Watley, and had been a prosperous merchant of the city of London. Since his return, after about twenty years' absence, he had shut himself up in almost total seclusion, nourishing a cynical bitterness and acrimony of temper which gradually withered up the sources of health and life, till at length it became as visible to himself as it had for sometime been to others, that the oil of existence was expended, burnt up, and that but a few weak flickers more, and the ailing man's plaints and griefs would be hushed in the dark silence of the grave.

Mr. Lisle had no relatives at Watley, and the only individual with whom he was on terms of personal intimacy, was Mr. Peter Sowerby, an attorney of the place, who had for many years transacted all his business. This man visited Mr. Lisle most evenings, played at chess with him, and gradually acquired an influence over his client which that weak gentleman had once or twice feebly, but vainly endeavored to shake off. To this clever attorney, it was rumored, Mr. Lisle had bequeathed all his wealth.

This piece of information had been put in circulation by Caleb Jennings, who was a sort of humble favorite of Mr. Lisle's, or, at all events, was regarded by the misanthrope with less dislike than he manifested towards others. Caleb cultivated a few flowers in a little plot of ground at the back of the house, and Mr. Lisle would sometimes accept a rose or a bunch of violets from him. Other slight services--especially since the recent death of his old and garrulous woman-servant, Esther May, who had accompanied him from London, and with whom Mr. Jennings had always been upon terms of gossiping intimacy--had led to certain familiarities of intercourse; and it thus happened that the inquisitive shoemaker became partially acquainted with the history of the wrongs and griefs which preyed upon, and shortened the life of the prematurely-aged man.

The substance of this every-day, common-place story, as related to us by Jennings, and subsequently enlarged and colored from other sources, may be very briefly told.

Ambrose Lisle, in consequence of an accident which occurred in his infancy, was slightly deformed. His right shoulder--as I understood, for I never saw him--grew out, giving an ungraceful and somewhat comical twist to his figure, which, in female eyes--youthful ones at least--sadly marred the effect of his intelligent and handsome countenance. This personal defect rendered him shy and awkward in the presence of women of his own class of society; and he had attained the ripe age of thirty-seven years, and was a rich and prosperous man, before he gave the slightest token of an inclination towards matrimony. About a twelvemonth previous to that period of his life, the deaths--quickly following each other--of a Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, threw their eldest daughter, Lucy, upon Mr. Lisle's hands. Mr. Lisle had been left an orphan at a very early age, and Mrs. Stevens--his aunt, and then a maiden lady--had, in accordance with his father's will, taken charge of himself and brother till they severally attained their majority. Long, however, before that, she married Mr. Stevens, by whom she had two children--Lucy and Emily. Her husband, whom she survived but two months, died insolvent; and in obedience to the dying wishes of his aunt, for whom he appears to have felt the tenderest esteem, he took the eldest of her orphan children to his home, intending to regard and provide for her as his own adopted child and heiress. Emily, the other sister, found refuge in the house of a still more distant relative than himself.

The Stevenses had gone to live in a remote part of England--Yorkshire, I believe--and it thus fell out, that, till his cousin Lucy arrived at her new home, he had not seen her for more than ten years. The pale, and somewhat plain child, as he had esteemed her, he was startled to find had become a charming woman; and her naturally gay and joyous temperament, quick talents, and fresh young beauty, rapidly acquired an overwhelming influence over him. Strenuously, but vainly, he struggled against the growing infatuation--argued, reasoned with himself--passed in review the insurmountable objections to such a union, the difference of age--he, leading towards thirty-seven, she, barely twenty-one: he, crooked, deformed, of reserved, taciturn temper--she, full of young life, and grace, and beauty. It was useless; and nearly a year had passed in the bootless struggle, when Lucy Stevens, who had vainly striven to blind herself to the nature of the emotions by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily's invitation to pass two or three months with her. This brought the affair to a crisis. Buoying himself up with the illusions which people in such an unreasonable frame of mind create for themselves, he suddenly entered the sitting-room set apart for her private use, with the desperate purpose of making his beautiful cousin a formal offer of his hand. She was not in the apartment, but her opened writing-desk, and a partly-finished letter lying on it, showed that she had been recently there, and would probably soon return. Mr. Lisle took two or three agitated turns about the room, one of which brought him close to the writing-desk, and his glance involuntarily fell upon the unfinished letter. Had a deadly serpent leaped suddenly at his throat, the shock could not have been greater. At the head of the sheet of paper was a clever pen-and-ink sketch of Lucy Stevens and himself--he, kneeling to her in a lovelorn, ludicrous attitude, and she, laughing immoderately at his lachrymose and pitiful aspect and speech. The letter was addressed to her sister Emily; and the enraged lover saw not only that his supposed secret was fully known, but that he himself was mocked, laughed at, for his doting folly. At least this was his interpretation of the words which swam before his eyes. At the instant Lucy returned, and a torrent of imprecation burst from the furious man, in which wounded self-love, rageful pride, and long pent-up passion, found utterance in wild and bitter words. Half an hour afterwards Lucy Stevens had left the merchant's house--for ever, as it proved. She, indeed, on arriving at her sister's, sent a letter, supplicating forgiveness for the thoughtless, and, as he deemed it, insulting sketch, intended only for Emily's eye; but he replied merely by a note written by one of his clerks, informing Miss Stevens that Mr. Lisle declined any further correspondence with her.

The ire of the angered and vindictive man had, however, begun sensibly to abate, and old thoughts, memories, duties, suggested partly by the blank which Lucy's absence made in his house, partly by remembrance of the solemn promise he had made her mother, were strongly reviving in his mind, when he read the announcement of marriage in a provincial journal, directed to him, as he believed, in the bride's hand-writing; but this was an error, her sister having sent the newspaper. Mr. Lisle also construed this into a deliberate mockery and insult, and from that hour strove to banish all images and thoughts connected with his cousin, from his heart and memory.

He unfortunately adopted the very worst course possible for effecting this object. Had he remained amid the buzz and tumult of active life, a mere sentimental disappointment, such as thousands of us have sustained and afterwards forgotten, would, there can be little doubt, have soon ceased to afflict him. He chose to retire from business, visited Watley, and habits of miserliness growing rapidly upon his cankered mind, never afterwards removed from the lodgings he had hired on first arriving there. Thus madly hugging to himself sharp-pointed memories, which a sensible man would have speedily cast off and forgotten, the sour misanthrope passed a useless, cheerless, weary existence, to which death must have been a welcome relief.

Matters were in this state with the morose and aged man--aged mentally and corporeally, although his years were but fifty-eight--when Mr. Flint made Mr. Jennings's acquaintance. Another month or so had passed away when Caleb's attention was one day about noon claimed by a young man dressed in mourning, accompanied by a female similarly attired, and from their resemblance to each other he conjectured were brother and sister. The stranger wished to know if that was the house in which Mr. Ambrose Lisle resided. Jennings said it was; and with civil alacrity left his stall and rang the front-door bell. The summons was answered by the landlady's servant, who, since Esther May's death, had waited on the first-floor lodger; and the visitors were invited to go up stairs. Caleb, much wondering who they might be, returned to his stall, and from thence passed into his eating and sleeping-room just below Mr. Lisle's apartments. He was in the act of taking a pipe from the mantel-shelf, in order to the more deliberate and satisfactory cogitation on such an unusual event, when he was startled by a loud shout, or scream rather, from above. The quivering and excited voice was that of Mr. Lisle, and the outcry was immediately followed by an explosion of unintelligible exclamations from several persons. Caleb was up stairs in an instant, and found himself in the midst of a strangely-perplexing and distracted scene. Mr. Lisle, pale as his shirt, shaking in every limb, and his eyes on fire with passion, was hurling forth a torrent of vituperation and reproach at the young woman, whom he evidently mistook for some one else; whilst she, extremely terrified, and unable to stand but for the assistance of her companion, was tendering a letter in her outstretched hand, and uttering broken sentences, which her own agitation and the fury of Mr. Lisle's invectives rendered totally incomprehensible. At last the fierce old man struck the letter from her hand, and with frantic rage ordered both the strangers to leave the room. Caleb urged them to comply, and accompanied them down stairs. When they reached the street, he observed a woman on the other side of the way, dressed in mourning, and much older apparently, though he could not well see her face through the thick veil she wore, than she who had thrown Mr. Lisle into such an agony of rage, apparently waiting for them. To her the young people immediately hastened, and after a brief conference the three turned away up the street, and Mr. Jennings saw no more of them.

A quarter of an hour afterwards the house-servant informed Caleb that Mr. Lisle had retired to bed, and although still in great agitation, and, as she feared, seriously indisposed, would not permit Dr. Clarke to be sent for. So sudden and violent a hurricane in the usually dull and drowsy atmosphere in which Jennings lived, excited and disturbed him greatly; the hours, however, flew past without bringing any relief to his curiosity, and evening was falling, when a peculiar knocking on the floor over-head announced that Mr. Lisle desired his presence. That gentleman was sitting up in bed, and in the growing darkness his face could not be very distinctly seen; but Caleb instantly observed a vivid and unusual light in the old man's eyes. The letter so strangely delivered was lying open before him; and unless the shoe-mender was greatly mistaken, there were stains of recent tears upon Mr. Lisie's furrowed and hollow cheeks. The voice, too, it struck Caleb, though eager, was gentle and wavering. "It was a mistake, Jennings," he said; "I was mad for the moment. Are they gone?" he added in a yet more subdued and gentle tone. Caleb informed him of what he had seen; and as he did so, the strange light in the old man's eyes seemed to quiver and sparkle with a yet intenser emotion than before. Presently he shaded them with his hand, and remained several minutes silent. He then said with a firmer voice, "I shall be glad if you will step to Mr. Sowerby, and tell him I am too unwell to see him this evening. But be sure to say nothing else," he eagerly added, as Caleb turned away in compliance with his request; "and when you come back, let me see you again."

When Jennings returned, he found to his great surprise Mr. Lisle up and nearly dressed; and his astonishment increased a hundred-fold upon hearing that gentleman say, in a quick but perfectly collected and decided manner, that he should set off for London by the mail-train.

"For London--and by night!" exclaimed Caleb, scarcely sure that he heard aright.

"Yes--yes! I shall not be observed in the dark," sharply rejoined Mr. Lisle; "and you, Caleb, must keep my secret from every body, especially from Sowerby. I shall be here in time to see him to-morrow night, and he will be none the wiser." This was said with a slight chuckle; and as soon as his simple preparations were complete, Mr. Lisle, well wrapped up, and his face almost hidden by shawls, locked his door, and assisted by Jennings, stole furtively down stairs, and reached unrecognized the railway station just in time for the train.

It was quite dark the next evening when Mr. Lisle returned; and so well had he managed, that Mr. Sowerby, who paid his usual visit about half an hour afterwards, had evidently heard nothing of the suspicious absence of his esteemed client from Watley. The old man exulted over the success of his deception to Caleb, the next morning, but dropped no hint as to the object of his sudden journey.

Three days passed without the occurrence of any incident tending to the enlightenment of Mr. Jennings upon these mysterious events, which, however, he plainly saw had lamentably shaken the long-since failing man. On the afternoon of the fourth day, Mr. Lisle walked, or rather tottered, into Caleb's stall, and seated himself on the only vacant stool it contained. His manner was confused, and frequently purposeless, and there was an anxious, flurried expression in his face, which Jennings did not at all like. He remained silent for some time, with the exception of partially inaudible snatches of comment or questionings, apparently addressed to himself. At last he said, "I shall take a longer journey to-morrow, Caleb--much longer; let me see--where did I say? Ah, yes! to Glasgow; to be sure to Glasgow!"

"To Glasgow, and to-morrow!" exclaimed the astounded cobbler.

"No, no--not Glasgow; they have removed," feebly rejoined Mr. Lisle. "But Lucy has written it down for me. True--true; and to-morrow I shall set out."