"She would indeed have been one had she listened to you."
"Thanks, old tape-and-parchment; I did not come here for a character, but to show you the state of my cash-book."
Again the lawyer groaned, and Guilfoyle laughed louder than ever. Delight to have a lawyer under his heel rendered him merciless; but even a worm will turn, so Sharpus said sternly, "How have you lived since the last remittance--extortion?"
"Call it as you will," replied the other, putting his glass in his eye, and smilingly switching his leg with his cane; "I have lived as most men do who live by their wits, and the follies, or it may be the _crimes_--O, you wince!--of others; meeting debts and emergencies as they come, content with the peace or action of the present, and never regretting the past, or fearing the future! With the help of an ace, king, and queen, when my betting-book or a stroke of billiards failed me, and with your great kindness, my dear old Sharpus, I have, till now, always kept my funds far above zero."
"Your life is a great sham--a very labyrinth of deceit!" exclaimed the lawyer, furiously.
"And yours, friend Sharpus?"
"Is spent in slaving for my family, and endeavouring to atone for, or to buy the concealment of, one great error--the error that made you--ay, men such as you--my master!"
Guilfoyle laughed heartily, and said,
"I require 600_l_. instantly!"
"Not a penny--not another penny!"
"We shall see. Sharpus, though a bad lot, I know that you are not the utter rogue that most of your profession are--"
"Leave my office, scoundrel, or I shall kill you!" said Sharpus, in a low voice of concentrated passion, as he became deadly pale, and a dangerous white gleam came into his stealthy restless eyes, which seemed to search in vain for a weapon.
"If I leave your office it will be for the purpose of laying before the nearest police-magistrate a certain document you may remember to have written; and I am so loth to kill the goose that lays my golden eggs," continued the other, in his quiet mocking tone. "But remember, Mr. Sharpus," he added, in a lofty and bullying manner, as he grasped the shoulder of the listener, "that the forgery of a document is not deemed an error in legal practice here, as in Spain or Scotland, but a _crime_ meriting penal servitude; and shall I tell you what that means--you, who have now wealth, ease, position, a handsome wife, and several children? You will be torn from all these for ever, as a felon!"
Drops of perspiration poured over the poor wretch's temples as his tormentor continued: "Think of being in Millbank, beside the muggy Thames, and the years that would find you there, a bondsman and a slave, who for the least misconduct would be lashed like a faulty hound, and ironed in a blackhole. Hard work, aggravated by the consciousness of infamy; clad in the gray livery of disgrace; your name effaced from the Law List, and for it substituted the letter or number on your prison garb!"
"For God's sake, hush!" implored the wretched lawyer, in terror, lest the speaker's voice might reach the room of Juggles, or the ears of the clerks below; "hush, and I shall do all you wish."
"Come--that is acting like a reasonable being."
"Will 200_l_. do you--this time?"
"Two hundred devils! I want 600_l_. at least."
"I shall be ruined with my partner; he must know ere long where all these moneys have gone."
"That is nothing to me; tell him if you dare."
Sharpus burst into tears, and said, piteously,
"At present I can give but 200_l_.--the rest shall follow."
"Well, you can do something else for me, and I may trouble you no more."
"How?" asked Sharpus, eagerly and incredulously, with a dreary and bewildered air.
"Get me some employment, where there is little to do; I hate brain-work."
"Employment!--where? with whom?"
"Civil or military, I care not which."
"Military! impossible--too old. Stay, I have it!" exclaimed the lawyer; "you have been in the Militia, I know."
"Three months in the Royal Diddlesex."
"What say you to an appointment in Lord Aberdeen's new Land Transport Corps? It will be easily got--a handsome uniform and great _éclat_, though the officers are nearly all taken from the ranks. The duties are simple enough--conveyance of baggage, and carrying off the wounded _after_ an action."
"Not to bury the dead?--ugly work that."
"No, no."
"By Jove, I'll go!" he exclaimed, as Sharpus filled up the cheque.
Sharpus strove in vain to conceal his delight.
"I have of course done a few things which would hardly bear the 'light of the world's bull's-eye' turned upon them, but the Horse Guards know nothing of them. You have noble and powerful clients, and can do this easily for me. Bravo!" And they actually shook hands over the matter, as if over a bargain.
Sharpus lost no time in using the necessary influence, and--though not exactly a cadet after Mr. Cardwell's heart--this commission was decidedly one without purchase; and on the strength of having been once in the boasted constitutional force, "Henry Hawkesby Guilfoyle, gent., _late_ Lieutenant, Diddlesex Militia," appeared in the _Gazette_ ere long, as one of twenty-four comets of the long-since disbanded Land Transport Corps, for service in the Crimea.
CHAPTER XXVII.--RECONCILIATION.
As Sir Madoc and I proceeded along the to me well-known Whitchurch road, I asked myself mentally, could it really be that I was again looking with farewell eyes on all this fair English scenery, and perhaps for the last time; for our departure to the seat of war, where we were to be face to face and foot to foot with an enemy, was very different from other voyages to a peaceful British colony? Now, varied by autumnal tints, brown, golden, or orange, I saw the long and shady lane where Estelle had last seen me, and near it the low churchyard wall, where our evil genius had rent away the locket from his wife. Sir Madoc's eyes were turned chiefly to the tawny stubble-fields, and he sighed with regret, as he saw the brown coveys of partridges whirring up, that he had not his patent breech-loader in lieu of a hunting-whip.
"Estelle--Estelle!" thought I. "How many temptations in mighty London, and in the country, too--in Brighton, that other London by the sea, and wherever she may go--will beset one so noble and so beautiful--allurements that may teach her to forget and banish from her memory the poor Fusileer subaltern, to whom she seems as the centre of the universe!"
The evening was a lovely one, and the scenery was beautiful. Chestnuts and oaks were, at every turn of the way we rode, forming natural arches and avenues, beyond which were pleasant glimpses of quaint cottages, whose walls and roofs were nearly hidden by masses of roses and honeysuckle; short square village spires and ivy-covered parsonages; widespreading pastures, where the sleepy cattle browsed amid purple clover and golden cowslips, with the glory of the ruddy sunset falling aslant upon them, while the ambient air was full of earthy and leafy fragrance; for many fallen leaves, the earliest spoil of autumn, lay with bursting cones in cool and sunless dells, or by the wayside, where the fern and foxglove mingled under the old thick hedgerows. And so I was looking, as I have said, on all this peaceful scene, perhaps for the _last_ time; yet there was no sadness in my heart, for the revulsion or change of feeling, from the gloom and tumultuous anxiety of many, many days past, and even of that morning, was great indeed to me, especially when we cantered through the handsome iron gates of Walcot Park, the once suspicious keeper of which gave me an unmistakable glance of recognition. I felt like one in a dream as I threw my reins to a servant, and was led upstairs by Sir Madoc.
"Where is Lady Estelle?" he asked of another valet, to whom I gave my sword in the hall.
"In the front drawing-room."
"Alone?"
"I think so, sir."
"All right, Harry!"
But he suddenly affected to remember that he had something to say to his own groom, and as he turned back, I was ushered into the long and stately apartment. I had a dreamy sense of being amid many buhl tables and glass shades, much drapery, and several mirrors that reproduced everything, amid which I saw Estelle advancing cordially to meet me. She had a bright smile in her face, and held out both her hands; but I could scarcely speak.
"Estelle," I whispered, "joy--joy! It is indeed joy, to see you once again!"
"Then you quite forgive me, dearest Harry?"
"Forgive you? O Estelle!" I exclaimed, in a low and passionate voice, as she turned up her adorable face to meet mine half-way.
I knew from past experience that caresses from her meant much more than they did from most women; for Estelle, though proud and reticent, and apparently cold and calm, was reluctant to give and to accept them; so now I felt all the truth and sincerity of this reunion. "A lovers' quarrel is but love renewed;" we, however, had not quarrelled, but been cruelly wrenched asunder by the art and cunning of another.
"Are you on duty, Mr. Hardinge?" said a voice; and from a window where she had been sitting, quite unseen and unnoticed by me, Winny Lloyd came forth, looking, as I thought, a little paler and sadder than when I had seen her last at Craigaderyn Court.