Chapter IV: Book I: The Will of Roger Melton (3)

Remember, again, I say, that I never interfered in the slightest way
in any of your adventures. I wanted you to "dree your own weird," as
the Scotch say; and I wanted to know of it--that was all. Now, as I
hold you fully equipped for greater enterprise, I want to set your
feet on the road and to provide you with the most potent
weapon--beyond personal qualities--for the winning of great honour--a
gain, my dear nephew, which, I am right sure, does and will appeal to
you as it has ever done to me. I have worked for it for more than
fifty years; but now that the time has come when the torch is
slipping from my old hands, I look to you, my dearest kinsman, to
lift it and carry it on.

The little nation of the Blue Mountains has from the first appealed
to me. It is poor and proud and brave. Its people are well worth
winning, and I would advise you to throw in your lot with them. You
may find them hard to win, for when peoples, like individuals, are
poor and proud, these qualities are apt to react on each other to an
endless degree. These men are untamable, and no one can ever succeed
with them unless he is with them in all-in-all, and is a leader
recognized. But if you can win them they are loyal to death. If you
are ambitious--and I know you are--there may be a field for you in
such a country. With your qualifications, fortified by the fortune
which I am happy enough to be able to leave you, you may dare much
and go far. Should I be alive when you return from your exploration
in Northern South America, I may have the happiness of helping you to
this or any other ambition, and I shall deem it a privilege to share
it with you; but time is going on. I am in my seventy-second year .
. . the years of man are three-score and ten--I suppose you
understand; I do . . . Let me point out this: For ambitious projects
the great nationalities are impossible to a stranger--and in our own
we are limited by loyalty (and common-sense). It is only in a small
nation that great ambitions can be achieved. If you share my own
views and wishes, the Blue Mountains is your ground. I hoped at one
time that I might yet become a Voivode--even a great one. But age
has dulled my personal ambitions as it has cramped my powers. I no
longer dream of such honour for myself, though I do look on it as a
possibility for you if you care for it. Through my Will you will
have a great position and a great estate, and though you may have to
yield up the latter in accordance with my wish, as already expressed
in this letter, the very doing so will give you an even greater hold
than this possession in the hearts of the mountaineers, should they
ever come to know it. Should it be that at the time you inherit from
me the Voivode Vissarion should not be alive, it may serve or aid you
to know that in such case you would be absolved from any conditions
of mine, though I trust you would in that, as in all other matters,
hold obligation enforced by your own honour as to my wishes.
Therefore the matter stands thus: If Vissarion lives, you will
relinquish the estates. Should such not be the case, you will act as
you believe that I would wish you to. In either case the
mountaineers should not know from you in any way of the secret
contracts between Vissarion and myself. Enlightenment of the many
should (if ever) come from others than yourself. And unless such
take place, you would leave the estates without any _quid pro quo_
whatever. This you need not mind, for the fortune you will inherit
will leave you free and able to purchase other estates in the Blue
Mountains or elsewhere that you may select in the world.

If others attack, attack them, and quicker and harder than they can,
if such be a possibility. Should it ever be that you inherit the
Castle of Vissarion on the Spear of Ivan, remember that I had it
secretly fortified and armed against attack. There are not only
massive grilles, but doors of chilled bronze where such be needed.
My adherent Rooke, who has faithfully served me for nearly forty
years, and has gone on my behalf on many perilous expeditions, will,
I trust, serve you in the same way. Treat him well for my sake, if
not for your own. I have left him provision for a life of ease; but
he would rather take a part in dangerous enterprises. He is silent
as the grave and as bold as a lion. He knows every detail of the
fortification and of the secret means of defence. A word in your
ear--he was once a pirate. He was then in his extreme youth, and
long since changed his ways in this respect; but from this fact you
can understand his nature. You will find him useful should occasion
ever arise. Should you accept the conditions of my letter, you are
to make the Blue Mountains--in part, at least--your home, living
there a part of the year, if only for a week, as in England men of
many estates share the time amongst them. To this you are not bound,
and no one shall have power to compel you or interfere with you. I
only express a hope. But one thing I do more than hope--I desire, if
you will honour my wishes, that, come what may, you are to keep your
British nationality, unless by special arrangement with and consent
of the Privy Council. Such arrangement to be formally made by my
friend, Edward Bingham Trent, or whomsoever he may appoint by deed or
will to act in the matter, and made in such a way that no act save
that alone of Parliament in all its estates, and endorsed by the
King, may or can prevail against it.

My last word to you is, Be bold and honest, and fear not. Most
things--even kingship--_somewhere_ may now and again be won by the
sword. A brave heart and a strong arm may go far. But whatever is
so won cannot be held merely by the sword. Justice alone can hold in
the long run. Where men trust they will follow, and the rank and
file of people want to follow, not to lead. If it be your fortune to
lead, be bold. Be wary, if you will; exercise any other faculties
that may aid or guard. Shrink from nothing. Avoid nothing that is
honourable in itself. Take responsibility when such presents itself.
What others shrink from, accept. That is to be great in what world,
little or big, you move. Fear nothing, no matter of what kind danger
may be or whence it come. The only real way to meet danger is to
despise it--except with your brains. Meet it in the gate, not the
hall.

My kinsman, the name of my race and your own, worthily mingled in
your own person, now rests with you!

_Letter from Rupert Sent Leger_, 32 _Bodmin Street_, _Victoria_, _S.W._, _to Miss Janet MacKelpie_, _Croom_, _Ross-shire_.

_January_ 3, 1907.

MY DEAREST AUNT JANET,

You will, I know, be rejoiced to hear of the great good-fortune which
has come to me through the Will of Uncle Roger. Perhaps Sir Colin
will have written to you, as he is one of the executors, and there is
a bequest to you, so I must not spoil his pleasure of telling you of
that part himself. Unfortunately, I am not free to speak fully of my
own legacy yet, but I want you to know that at worst I am to receive
an amount many times more than I ever dreamt of possessing through
any possible stroke of fortune. So soon as I can leave
London--where, of course, I must remain until things are settled--I
am coming up to Croom to see you, and I hope I shall by then be able
to let you know so much that you will be able to guess at the
extraordinary change that has come to my circumstances. It is all
like an impossible dream: there is nothing like it in the "Arabian
Nights." However, the details must wait, I am pledged to secrecy for
the present. And you must be pledged too. You won't mind, dear,
will you? What I want to do at present is merely to tell you of my
own good-fortune, and that I shall be going presently to live for a
while at Vissarion. Won't you come with me, Aunt Janet? We shall
talk more of this when I come to Croom; but I want you to keep the
subject in your mind.

Your loving
RUPERT.

_From Rupert Sent Leger's Journal_.

_January_ 4, 1907.

Things have been humming about me so fast that I have had hardly time
to think. But some of the things have been so important, and have so
changed my entire outlook on life, that it may be well to keep some
personal record of them. I may some day want to remember some
detail--perhaps the sequence of events, or something like that--and
it may be useful. It ought to be, if there is any justice in things,
for it will be an awful swot to write it when I have so many things
to think of now. Aunt Janet, I suppose, will like to keep it locked
up for me, as she does with all my journals and papers. That is one
good thing about Aunt Janet amongst many: she has no curiosity, or
else she has some other quality which keeps her from prying as other
women would. It would seem that she has not so much as opened the
cover of one of my journals ever in her life, and that she would not
without my permission. So this can in time go to her also.

I dined last night with Mr. Trent, by his special desire. The dinner
was in his own rooms. Dinner sent in from the hotel. He would not
have any waiters at all, but made them send in the dinner all at
once, and we helped ourselves. As we were quite alone, we could talk
freely, and we got over a lot of ground while we were dining. He
began to tell me about Uncle Roger. I was glad of that, for, of
course, I wanted to know all I could of him, and the fact was I had
seen very little of him. Of course, when I was a small kid he was
often in our house, for he was very fond of mother, and she of him.
But I fancy that a small boy was rather a nuisance to him. And then
I was at school, and he was away in the East. And then poor mother
died while he was living in the Blue Mountains, and I never saw him
again. When I wrote to him about Aunt Janet he answered me very
kindly but he was so very just in the matter that I got afraid of
him. And after that I ran away, and have been roaming ever since; so
there was never a chance of our meeting. But that letter of his has
opened my eyes. To think of him following me that way all over the
world, waiting to hold out a helping hand if I should want it, I only
wish I had known, or even suspected, the sort of man he was, and how
he cared for me, and I would sometimes have come back to see him, if
I had to come half round the world. Well, all I can do now is to
carry out his wishes; that will be my expiation for my neglect. He
knew what he wanted exactly, and I suppose I shall come in time to
know it all and understand it, too.

I was thinking something like this when Mr. Trent began to talk, so
that all he said fitted exactly into my own thought. The two men
were evidently great friends--I should have gathered that, anyhow,
from the Will--and the letters--so I was not surprised when Mr. Trent
told me that they had been to school together, Uncle Roger being a
senior when he was a junior; and had then and ever after shared each
other's confidence. Mr. Trent, I gathered, had from the very first
been in love with my mother, even when she was a little girl; but he
was poor and shy, and did not like to speak. When he had made up his
mind to do so, he found that she had by then met my father, and could
not help seeing that they loved each other. So he was silent. He
told me he had never said a word about it to anyone--not even to my
Uncle Roger, though he knew from one thing and another, though he
never spoke of it, that he would like it. I could not help seeing
that the dear old man regarded me in a sort of parental way--I have
heard of such romantic attachments being transferred to the later
generation. I was not displeased with it; on the contrary, I liked
him better for it. I love my mother so much--I always think of her
in the present--that I cannot think of her as dead. There is a tie
between anyone else who loved her and myself. I tried to let Mr.
Trent see that I liked him, and it pleased him so much that I could
see his liking for me growing greater. Before we parted he told me
that he was going to give up business. He must have understood how
disappointed I was--for how could I ever get along at all without
him?--for he said, as he laid a hand quite affectionately, I
thought--on my shoulder:

"I shall have one client, though, whose business I always hope to
keep, and for whom I shall be always whilst I live glad to act--if he
will have me." I did not care to speak as I took his hand. He
squeezed mine, too, and said very earnestly:

"I served your uncle's interests to the very best of my ability for
nearly fifty years. He had full confidence in me, and I was proud of
his trust. I can honestly say, Rupert--you won't mind me using that
familiarity, will you?--that, though the interests which I guarded
were so vast that without abusing my trust I could often have used my
knowledge to my personal advantage, I never once, in little matters
or big, abused that trust--no, not even rubbed the bloom off it. And
now that he has remembered me in his Will so generously that I need
work no more, it will be a very genuine pleasure and pride to me to
carry out as well as I can the wishes that I partly knew, and now
realize more fully towards you, his nephew."

In the long chat which we had, and which lasted till midnight, he
told me many very interesting things about Uncle Roger. When, in the
course of conversation, he mentioned that the fortune Uncle Roger
left must be well over a hundred millions, I was so surprised that I
said out loud--I did not mean to ask a question:

"How on earth could a man beginning with nothing realize such a
gigantic fortune?"

"By all honest ways," he answered, "and his clever human insight. He
knew one half of the world, and so kept abreast of all public and
national movements that he knew the critical moment to advance money
required. He was always generous, and always on the side of freedom.
There are nations at this moment only now entering on the
consolidation of their liberty, who owe all to him, who knew when and
how to help. No wonder that in some lands they will drink to his
memory on great occasions as they used to drink his health."

"As you and I shall do now, sir!" I said, as I filled my glass and
stood up. We drank it in bumpers. We did not say a word, either of
us; but the old gentleman held out his hand, and I took it. And so,
holding hands, we drank in silence. It made me feel quite choky; and
I could see that he, too, was moved.

_From E. B. Trent's Memoranda_.

_January_ 4, 1907.

I asked Mr. Rupert Sent Leger to dine with me at my office alone, as
I wished to have a chat with him. To-morrow Sir Colin and I will
have a formal meeting with him for the settlement of affairs, but I
thought it best to have an informal talk with him alone first, as I
wished to tell him certain matters which will make our meeting
to-morrow more productive of utility, as he can now have more full
understanding of the subjects which we have to discuss. Sir Colin is
all that can be in manhood, and I could wish no better colleague in
the executorship of this phenomenal Will; but he has not had the
privilege of a lifelong friendship with the testator as I have had.
And as Rupert Sent Leger had to learn intimate details regarding his
uncle, I could best make my confidences alone. To-morrow we shall
have plenty of formality. I was delighted with Rupert. He is just
what I could have wished his mother's boy to be--or a son of my own
to be, had I had the good-fortune to have been a father. But this is
not for me. I remember long, long ago reading a passage in Lamb's
Essays which hangs in my mind: "The children of Alice call Bartrum
father." Some of my old friends would laugh to see _me_ write this,
but these memoranda are for my eyes alone, and no one shall see them
till after my death, unless by my own permission. The boy takes some
qualities after his father; he has a daring that is disturbing to an
old dryasdust lawyer like me. But somehow I like him more than I
ever liked anyone--any man--in my life--more even than his uncle, my
old friend, Roger Melton; and Lord knows I had much cause to like
him. I have more than ever now. It was quite delightful to see the
way the young adventurer was touched by his uncle's thought of him.
He is a truly gallant fellow, but venturesome exploits have not
affected the goodness of heart. It is a pleasure to me to think that
Roger and Colin came together apropos of the boy's thoughtful
generosity towards Miss MacKelpie. The old soldier will be a good
friend to him, or I am much mistaken. With an old lawyer like me,
and an old soldier like him, and a real old gentlewoman like Miss
MacKelpie, who loves the very ground he walks on, to look after him,
together with all his own fine qualities and his marvellous
experience of the world, and the gigantic wealth that will surely be
his, that young man will go far.

_Letter from Rupert Sent Leger to Miss Janet MacKelpie_, _Croom_.

_January_ 5, 1907.

MY DEAREST AUNT JANET,

It is all over--the first stage of it; and that is as far as I can
get at present. I shall have to wait for a few days--or it may be
weeks--in London for the doing of certain things now necessitated by
my acceptance of Uncle Roger's bequest. But as soon as I can, dear,
I shall come down to Croom and spend with you as many days as
possible. I shall then tell you all I am at liberty to tell, and I
shall thank you personally for your consent to come with me to
Vissarion. Oh, how I wish my dear mother had lived to be with us!
It would have made her happy, I know, to have come; and then we three
who shared together the old dear, hard days would have shared in the
same way the new splendour. I would try to show all my love and
gratitude to you both . . . You must take the whole burden of it now,
dear, for you and I are alone. No, not alone, as we used to be, for
I have now two old friends who are already dear to me. One is so to
you already. Sir Colin is simply splendid, and so, in his own way,
is Mr. Trent. I am lucky, Aunt Janet, to have two such men to think
of affairs for me. Am I not? I shall send you a wire as soon as
ever I can see my way to get through my work; and I want you to think
over all the things you ever wished for in your life, so that I
may--if there is any mortal way of doing so--get them for you. You
will not stand in the way of my having this great pleasure, will you,
dear? Good-bye.

Your loving
RUPERT.

_E. B. Trent's Memoranda_.

_January_ 6, 1907.

The formal meeting of Sir Colin and myself with Rupert Sent Leger
went off quite satisfactorily. From what he had said yesterday, and
again last night, I had almost come to expect an unreserved
acceptance of everything stated or implied in Roger Melton's Will;
but when we had sat round the table--this appeared, by the way, to be
a formality for which we were all prepared, for we sat down as if by
instinct--the very first words he said were:

"As I suppose I must go through this formality, I may as well say at
once that I accept every possible condition which was in the mind of
Uncle Roger; and to this end I am prepared to sign, seal, and
deliver--or whatever is the ritual--whatever document you,
sir"--turning to me--"may think necessary or advisable, and of which
you both approve." He stood up and walked about the room for a few
moments, Sir Colin and I sitting quite still, silent. He came back
to his seat, and after a few seconds of nervousness--a rare thing
with him, I fancy--said: "I hope you both understand--of course, I
know you do; I only speak because this is an occasion for
formality--that I am willing to accept, and at once! I do so,
believe me, not to get possession of this vast fortune, but because
of him who has given it. The man who was fond of me, and who trusted
me, and yet had strength to keep his own feelings in check--who
followed me in spirit to far lands and desperate adventures, and who,
though he might be across the world from me, was ready to put out a
hand to save or help me, was no common man; and his care of my
mother's son meant no common love for my dear mother. And so she and
I together accept his trust, come of it what may. I have been
thinking it over all night, and all the time I could not get out of
the idea that mother was somewhere near me. The only thought that
could debar me from doing as I wished to do--and intend to do--would
be that she would not approve. Now that I am satisfied she would
approve, I accept. Whatever may result or happen, I shall go on
following the course that he has set for me. So help me, God!" Sir
Colin stood up, and I must say a more martial figure I never saw. He
was in full uniform, for he was going on to the King's levee after
our business. He drew his sword from the scabbard and laid it naked
on the table before Rupert, and said:

"You are going, sir, into a strange and danger country--I have been
reading about it since we met--and you will be largely alone amongst
fierce mountaineers who resent the very presence of a stranger, and
to whom you are, and must be, one. If you should ever be in any
trouble and want a man to stand back to back with you, I hope you
will give me the honour!" As he said this pointed to his sword.
Rupert and I were also standing now--one cannot sit down in the
presence of such an act as that. "You are, I am proud to say, allied
with my family: and I only wish to God it was closer to myself."
Rupert took him by the hand and bent his head before him as answered:

"The honour is mine, Sir Colin; and no greater can come to any man
than that which you have just done me. The best way I can show how I
value it will be to call on you if I am ever in such a tight place.
By Jove, sir, this is history repeating itself. Aunt Janet used to
tell me when I was a youngster how MacKelpie of Croom laid his sword
before Prince Charlie. I hope I may tell her of this; it would make
her so proud and happy. Don't imagine, sir, that I am thinking
myself a Charles Edward. It is only that Aunt Janet is so good to me
that I might well think I was."

Sir Colin bowed grandly:

"Rupert Sent Leger, my dear niece is a woman of great discretion and
discernment. And, moreover, I am thinking she has in her some of the
gift of Second Sight that has been a heritage of our blood. And I am
one with my niece--in everything!" The whole thing was quite regal
in manner; it seemed to take me back to the days of the Pretender.

It was not, however, a time for sentiment, but for action--we had met
regarding the future, not the past; so I produced the short document
I had already prepared. On the strength of his steadfast declaration
that he would accept the terms of the Will and the secret letters, I
had got ready a formal acceptance. When I had once again formally
asked Mr. Sent Leger's wishes, and he had declared his wish to
accept, I got in a couple of my clerks as witnesses.

Then, having again asked him in their presence if it was his wish to
declare acceptance of the conditions, the document was signed and
witnessed, Sir Colin and I both appending our signatures to the
Attestation.

And so the first stage of Rupert Sent Leger's inheritance is
completed. The next step will not have to be undertaken on my part
until the expiration of six months from his entry on his estate at
Vissarion. As he announces his intention of going within a
fortnight, this will mean practically a little over six months from
now.