"A--true--a," said Jermyn, not showing any offence; "if you decline. But I think, if you will do me the favor to step round to my residence on your way back, and learn the business, you will prefer carrying it yourself. At my residence, if you please--not my office."

"Oh, very well," said Christian. "I shall be very happy." Christian never allowed himself to be treated as a servant by anyone but his master, and his master treated a servant more deferentially than an equal.

"Will it be five o'clock? what hour shall we say?" said Jermyn.

Christian looked at his watch and said, "About five I can be there."

"Very good," said Jermyn, finishing his sherry.

"Well--a--Wace--a--so you will hear nothing about Pod's End?"

"Not I."

"A mere pocket-handkerchief, not enough to swear by-a--" here Jermyn's face broke into a smile--"without a magnifying-gla.s.s."

"Never mind. It's mine into the bowels of the earth and up to the sky. I can build the Tower of Babel on it if I like--eh, Mr. Nolan?"

"A bad investment, my good sir," said Mr. Nolan, who enjoyed a certain flavor of infidelity in this smart reply, and laughed much at it in his inward way.

"See now, how blind you Tories are," said Jermyn, rising; "if I had been your lawyer, I'd have had you make another forty-shilling freeholder with that land, and all in time for this election. But--a--the verb.u.m sapientibus comes a little too late now."

Jermyn was moving away as he finished speaking, but Mr. Wace called out after him, "We're not so badly off for votes as you are--good sound votes, that'll stand the Revising Barrister. Debarry at the top of the poll!"

The lawyer was already out of the doorway.

CHAPTER XXI.

'Tis grievous that with all amplification of travel both by sea and land, a man can never separate himself from his past history.

Mr. Jermyn's handsome house stood a little way out of the town, surrounded by garden and lawn and plantations of hopeful trees. As Christian approached it he was in a perfectly easy state of mind: the business he was going on was none of his, otherwise than as he was well satisfied with any opportunity of making himself valuable to Mr. Philip Debarry. As he looked at Jermyn's length of wall and iron railing, he said to himself, "These lawyers are the fellows for getting on in the world with the least expense of civility. With this cursed conjuring secret of theirs called Law, they think everybody is frightened at them.

My Lord Jermyn seems to have his insolence as ready as his soft sawder.

He's as sleek as a rat, and has as vicious a tooth. I know the sort of vermin well enough. I've helped to fatten one or two."

In this mood of conscious, contemptuous penetration, Christian was shown by the footman into Jermyn's private room, where the attorney sat surrounded with ma.s.sive oaken bookcases, and other furniture to correspond, from the thickest-legged library-table to the calendar frame and card-rack. It was the sort of a room a man prepares for himself when he feels sure of a long and respectable future. He was leaning back in his leather chair, against the broad window opening on the lawn, and had just taken off his spectacles and let the newspaper fall on his knees, in despair of reading by the fading light.

When the footman opened the door and said, "Mr. Christian," Jermyn said, "Good evening, Mr. Christian. Be seated," pointing to a chair opposite himself and the window. "Light the candles on the shelf, John, but leave the blinds alone."

He did not speak again till the man was gone out, but appeared to be referring to a doc.u.ment which lay on the bureau before him. When the door was closed he drew himself up again, began to rub his hands, and turned toward his visitor, who seemed perfectly indifferent to the fact that the attorney was in shadow, and that the light fell on himself.

"A--your name--a--is Henry Scaddon."

There was a start through Christian's frame which he was quick enough, almost simultaneously, to try and disguise as a change of position. He uncrossed his legs and unb.u.t.toned his coat. But before he had time to say anything, Jermyn went on with slow emphasis.

"You were born on the sixteenth of December, 1782, at Blackheath. Your father was a cloth-merchant in London: he died when you were barely of age, leaving an extensive business: before you were five-and-twenty you had run through the greater part of the property, and had compromised your safety by an attempt to defraud your creditors. Subsequently you forged a check on your father's elder brother, who had intended to make you his heir."

Here Jermyn paused a moment and referred to the doc.u.ment. Christian was silent.

"In 1808 you found it expedient to leave this country in a military disguise, and were taken prisoner by the French. On the occasion of an exchange of prisoners you had the opportunity of returning to your own country, and to the bosom of your own family. You were generous enough to sacrifice that prospect in favor of a fellow-prisoner, of about your own age and figure, who had more pressing reasons than yourself for wishing to be on this side of the water. You exchanged dress, luggage, and names with him, and he pa.s.sed to England instead of you as Henry Scaddon. Almost immediately afterward you escaped from your imprisonment, after feigning an illness which prevented your exchange of names from being discovered; and it was reported that you--that is, you under the name of your fellow-prisoner--were drowned in an open boat, trying to reach a Neapolitan vessel bound for Malta. Nevertheless I have to congratulate you on the falsehood of that report, and on the certainty that you are now, after the lapse of more than twenty years, seated here in perfect safety."

Jermyn paused so long that he was evidently awaiting some answer. At last Christian replied in a dogged tone--

"Well, sir, I've heard much longer stories than that told quite as solemnly, when there was not a word of truth in them. Suppose I deny the very peg you hang your statement on. Suppose I say I am not Henry Scaddon."

"A--in that case--a," said Jermyn, with wooden indifference, "you would lose the advantage which--a--may attach to your possession of Henry Scaddon's knowledge. And at the same time, if it were in the least--a--inconvenient to you that you should be recognized as Henry Scaddon, your denial would not prevent me from holding the knowledge and evidence which I possess on that point; it would only prevent us from pursuing the present conversation."

"Well, sir, suppose we admit, for the sake of the conversation, that your account of the matter is the true one: what advantage have you to offer the man named Henry Scaddon?"

"The advantage--a--is problematical; but it may be considerable. It might, in fact, release you from the necessity of acting as courier, or--a--valet, or whatever other office you may occupy which prevents you from being your own master. On the other hand, my acquaintance with your secret is not necessarily a disadvantage to you. To put the matter in a nutsh.e.l.l, I am not inclined--a--gratuitously--to do you any harm, and I may be able to do you a considerable service."

"Which you want me to earn somehow?" said Christian. "You offer me a turn in a lottery?"

"Precisely. The matter in question is of no earthly interest to you, except--a--as it may yield you a prize. We lawyers have to do with complicated questions, and--a--legal subtleties, which are never--a--fully known even to the parties immediately interested, still less to the witnesses. Shall we agree, then, that you continue to retain two-thirds of the name which you gained by exchange, and that you oblige me by answering certain questions as to the experience of Henry Scaddon?"

"Very good. Go on."

"What articles of property once belonging to your fellow-prisoner, Maurice Christian Bycliffe, do you still retain?"

"This ring," said Christian, twirling round the fine seal-ring on his finger, "his watch, and the little matters that hung with it, and a case of papers. I got rid of a gold snuff-box once when I was hard up. The clothes are all gone, of course. We exchanged everything; it was all done in a hurry. Bycliffe thought we should meet again in England before long, and he was mad to get there. But that was impossible--I mean that we should meet soon after. I don't know what's become of him, else I would give him up his papers and the watch, and so on--though, you know, it was I who did _him_ the service, and he felt that."

"You were at Vesoul together before being moved to Verdun?"

"Yes."

"What else do you know about Bycliffe?"

"Oh, nothing very particular," said Christian pausing, and rapping his boot with his cane. "He'd been in the Hanoverian army--a high-spirited fellow, took nothing easily; not over-strong in health. He made a fool of himself with marrying at Vesoul; and there was the devil to pay with the girl's relations; and then, when the prisoners were ordered off, they had to part. Whether they ever got together again I don't know."

"Was the marriage all right then?"

"Oh, all on the square--civil marriage, church--everything. Bycliffe was a fool--a good-natured, proud, headstrong fellow."

"How long did the marriage take place before you left Vesoul?"

"About three months. I was witness to the marriage."

"And you know no more about the wife?"

"Not afterward. I knew her very well before--pretty Annette--Annette Ledru was her name. She was of a good family, and they had made up a fine match for her. But she was one of your meek little diablesses, who have a will of their own once in their lives--the will to choose their own master."

"Bycliffe was not open to you about his other affairs?"

"Oh, no--a fellow you wouldn't dare to ask a question of. People told him everything, but he told nothing in return. If Madame Annette ever found him again, she found her lord and master with a vengeance; but she was a regular lapdog. However, her family shut her up--made a prisoner of her--to prevent her running away."

"Ah--good. Much of what you have been so obliging as to say is irrelevant to any possible purpose of mine, which, in fact, has only to do with a mouldy law-case that might be aired some day. You will doubtless, on your own account, maintain perfect silence on what has pa.s.sed between us, and with that condition duly preserved--a--it is possible that--a--the lottery you have put into--as you observe--may turn up a prize."