St. Ronan's Well

“I will not,” she said, almost breathlessly, terrified lest he was about to start once more into the fit of unbridled fury which had before seized on him.

“Do not even whisper or hint an objection, but submit to your fate, for it is inevitable.”

“I will – submit” – answered Clara, in the same trembling accent.

“And I,” he said, “will spare you – at least at present – and it may be for ever – all enquiry into the guilt which you have confessed. Rumours there were of misconduct, which reached my ears even in England; but who could have believed them that looked on you daily, and witnessed your late course of life? – On this subject I will be at present silent – perhaps may not again touch on it – that is, if you do nothing to thwart my pleasure, or to avoid the fate which circumstances render unavoidable. – And now it is late – retire, Clara, to your bed – think on what I have said as what necessity has determined, and not my selfish pleasure.”

He held out his hand, and she placed, but not without reluctant terror, her trembling palm in his. In this manner, and with a sort of mournful solemnity, as if they had been in attendance upon a funeral, he handed his sister through a gallery hung with old family pictures, at the end of which was Clara's bedchamber. The moon, which at this moment looked out through a huge volume of mustering clouds that had long been boding storm, fell on the two last descendants of that ancient family, as they glided hand in hand, more like the ghosts of the deceased than like living persons, through the hall and amongst the portraits of their forefathers. The same thoughts were in the breast of both, but neither attempted to say, while they cast a flitting glance on the pallid and decayed representations, “How little did these anticipate this catastrophe of their house!” At the door of the bedroom Mowbray quitted his sister's hand, and said, “Clara, you should to-night thank God, that saved you from a great danger, and me from a deadly sin.”

“I will,” she answered – “I will.” And, as if her terror had been anew excited by this allusion to what had passed, she bid her brother hastily good-night, and was no sooner within her apartment, than he heard her turn the key in the lock, and draw two bolts besides.

“I understand you, Clara,” muttered Mowbray between his teeth, as he heard one bar drawn after another. “But if you could earth yourself under Ben Nevis, you could not escape what fate has destined for you. – Yes!” he said to himself, as he walked with slow and moody pace through the moonlight gallery, uncertain whether to return to the parlour, or to retire to his solitary chamber, when his attention was roused by a noise in the court-yard.

The night was not indeed very far advanced, but it had been so long since Shaws-Castle received a guest, that had Mowbray not heard the rolling of wheels in the court-yard, he might have thought rather of housebreakers than of visitors. But, as the sound of a carriage and horses was distinctly heard, it instantly occurred to him, that the guest must be Lord Etherington, come, even at this late hour, to speak with him on the reports which were current to his sister's prejudice, and perhaps to declare his addresses to her were at an end. Eager to know the worst, and to bring matters to a decision, he re-entered the apartment he had just left, where the lights were still burning, and, calling loudly to Patrick, whom he heard in communing with the postilion, commanded him to show the visitor to Miss Mowbray's parlour. It was not the light step of the young nobleman which came tramping, or rather stamping, through the long passage, and up the two or three steps at the end of it. Neither was it Lord Etherington's graceful figure which was seen when the door opened, but the stout square substance of Mr. Peregrine Touchwood.

CHAPTER XVII.

A RELATIVE

Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd.

    Deserted Village.

Starting at the unexpected and undesired apparition which presented itself, in the manner described at the end of the last chapter, Mowbray yet felt, at the same time, a kind of relief, that his meeting with Lord Etherington, painfully decisive as that meeting must be, was for a time suspended. So it was with a mixture of peevishness and internal satisfaction, that he demanded what had procured him the honour of a visit from Mr. Touchwood at this late hour.

“Necessity, that makes the old wife trot,” replied Touchwood; “no choice of mine, I assure you – Gad, Mr. Mowbray, I would rather have crossed Saint Gothard, than run the risk I have done to-night, rumbling through your breakneck roads in that d – d old wheelbarrow. – On my word, I believe I must be troublesome to your butler for a draught of something – I am as thirsty as a coal-heaver that is working by the piece. You have porter, I suppose, or good old Scotch two-penny?”

With a secret execration on his visitor's effrontery, Mr. Mowbray ordered the servant to put down wine and water, of which Touchwood mixed a gobletful, and drank it off.

“We are a small family,” said his entertainer; “and I am seldom at home – still more seldom receive guests, when I chance to be here – I am sorry I have no malt liquor, if you prefer it.”

“Prefer it?” said Touchwood, compounding, however, another glass of sherry and water, and adding a large piece of sugar, to correct the hoarseness which, he observed, his night journey might bring on, – “to be sure I prefer it, and so does every body, except Frenchmen and dandies. – No offence, Mr. Mowbray, but you should order a hogshead from Meux – the brown-stout, wired down for exportation to the colonies, keeps for any length of time, and in every climate – I have drank it where it must have cost a guinea a quart, if interest had been counted.”

“When I expect the honour of a visit from you, Mr. Touchwood, I will endeavour to be better provided,” answered Mowbray; “at present your arrival has been without notice, and I would be glad to know if it has any particular object.”

“This is what I call coming to the point,” said Mr. Touchwood, thrusting out his stout legs, accoutred as they were with the ancient defences, called boot-hose, so as to rest his heels upon the fender. “Upon my life, the fire turns the best flower in the garden at this season of the year – I'll take the freedom to throw on a log. – Is it not a strange thing, by the by, that one never sees a fagot in Scotland? You have much small wood, Mr. Mowbray, I wonder you do not get some fellow from the midland counties, to teach your people how to make a fagot.”

“Did you come all the way to Shaws-Castle,” asked Mowbray, rather testily, “to instruct me in the mystery of fagot-making?”

“Not exactly – not exactly,” answered the undaunted Touchwood; “but there is a right and a wrong way in every thing – a word by the way, on any useful subject, can never fall amiss. – As for my immediate and more pressing business, I can assure you, that it is of a nature sufficiently urgent, since it brings me to a house in which I am much surprised to find myself.”

“The surprise is mutual, sir,” said Mowbray, gravely, observing that his guest made a pause; “it is full time you should explain it.”

“Well, then,” replied Touchwood; “I must first ask you whether you have never heard of a certain old gentleman, called Scrogie, who took it into what he called his head, poor man, to be ashamed of the name he bore, though owned by many honest and respectable men, and chose to join it to your surname of Mowbray, as having a more chivalrous Norman sounding, and, in a word, a gentlemanlike twang with it?”

“I have heard of such a person, though only lately,” said Mowbray. “Reginald Scrogie Mowbray was his name. I have reason to consider his alliance with my family as undoubted, though you seem to mention it with a sneer, sir. I believe Mr. S. Mowbray regulated his family settlements very much upon the idea that his heir was to intermarry with our house.”

“True, true, Mr. Mowbray,” answered Touchwood; “and certainly it is not your business to lay the axe to the root of the genealogical tree, that is like to bear golden apples for you – Ha!”

“Well, well, sir – proceed – proceed,” answered Mowbray.

“You may also have heard that this old gentleman had a son, who would willingly have cut up the said family-tree into fagots; who thought Scrogie sounded as well as Mowbray, and had no fancy for an imaginary gentility, which was to be attained by the change of one's natural name, and the disowning, as it were, of one's actual relations.”

“I think I have heard from Lord Etherington,” answered Mowbray, “to whose communications I owe most of my knowledge about these Scrogie people, that old Mr. Scrogie Mowbray was unfortunate in a son, who thwarted his father on every occasion, – would embrace no opportunity which fortunate chances held out, of raising and distinguishing the family, – had imbibed low tastes, wandering habits, and singular objects of pursuit, – on account of which his father disinherited him.”

“It is very true, Mr. Mowbray,” proceeded Touchwood, “that this person did happen to fall under his father's displeasure, because he scorned forms and flummery, – loved better to make money as an honest merchant, than to throw it away as an idle gentleman, – never called a coach when walking on foot would serve the turn, – and liked the Royal Exchange better than St. James's Park. In short, his father disinherited him, because he had the qualities for doubling the estate, rather than those for squandering it.”

“All this may be quite correct, Mr. Touchwood,” replied Mowbray; “but pray, what has this Mr. Scrogie, junior, to do with you or me?”

“Do with you or me!” said Touchwood, as if surprised at the question; “he has a great deal to do with me at least, since I am the very man myself.”

“The devil you are!” said Mowbray, opening wide his eyes in turn; “Why, Mr. A – a – your name is Touchwood – P. Touchwood – Paul, I suppose, or Peter – I read it so in the subscription book at the Well.”

“Peregrine, sir, Peregrine – my mother would have me so christened, because Peregrine Pickle came out during her confinement; and my poor foolish father acquiesced, because he thought it genteel, and derived from the Willoughbies. I don't like it, and I always write P. short, and you might have remarked an S. also before the surname – I use at present P. S. Touchwood. I had an old acquaintance in the city, who loved his jest – He always called me Postscript Touchwood.”

“Then, sir,” said Mowbray, “if you are really Mr. Scrogie, tout court, I must suppose the name of Touchwood is assumed?”

“What the devil!” replied Mr. P. S. Touchwood, “do you suppose there is no name in the English nation will couple up legitimately with my paternal name of Scrogie, except your own, Mr. Mowbray? – I assure you I got the name of Touchwood, and a pretty spell of money along with it, from an old godfather, who admired my spirit in sticking by commerce.”

“Well, sir, every one has his taste – Many would have thought it better to enjoy a hereditary estate, by keeping your father's name of Mowbray, than to have gained another by assuming a stranger's name of Touchwood.”

“Who told you Mr. Touchwood was a stranger to me?” said the traveller; “for aught I know, he had a better title to the duties of a son from me, than the poor old man who made such a fool of himself, by trying to turn gentleman in his old age. He was my grandfather's partner in the great firm of Touchwood, Scrogie, and Co. – Let me tell you, there is as good inheritance in house as in field – a man's partners are his fathers and brothers, and a head clerk may be likened to a kind of first cousin.”

“I meant no offence whatever, Mr. Touchwood Scrogie.”

“Scrogie Touchwood, if you please,” said the senior; “the scrog branch first, for it must become rotten ere it become touchwood – ha, ha, ha! – you take me.”

“A singular old fellow this,” said Mowbray to himself, “and speaks in all the dignity of dollars; but I will be civil to him, till I can see what he is driving at. – You are facetious, Mr. Touchwood,” he proceeded aloud. “I was only going to say, that although you set no value upon your connexion with my family, yet I cannot forget that such a circumstance exists; and therefore I bid you heartily welcome to Shaws-Castle.”

“Thank ye, thank ye, Mr. Mowbray – I knew you would see the thing right. To tell you the truth, I should not have cared much to come a-begging for your acquaintance and cousinship, and so forth; but that I thought you would be more tractable in your adversity, than was your father in his prosperity.”

“Did you know my father, sir?” said Mowbray.

“Ay, ay – I came once down here, and was introduced to him – saw your sister and you when you were children – had thoughts of making my will then, and should have clapped you both in before I set out to double Cape Horn. But, gad, I wish my poor father had seen the reception I got! I did not let the old gentleman, Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's that was then, smoke my money-bags – that might have made him more tractable – not but that we went on indifferent well for a day or two, till I got a hint that my room was wanted, for that the Duke of Devil-knows-what was expected, and my bed was to serve his valet-de-chambre. – ‘Oh, damn all gentle cousins!’ said I, and off I set on the pad round the world again, and thought no more of the Mowbrays till a year or so ago.”

“And, pray, what recalled us to your recollection?”

“Why,” said Touchwood, “I was settled for some time at Smyrna, (for I turn the penny go where I will – I have done a little business even since I came here;) – but being at Smyrna as I said, I became acquainted with Francis Tyrrel.”

“The natural brother of Lord Etherington,” said Mowbray.

“Ay, so called,” answered Touchwood; “but by and by he is more likely to prove the Earl of Etherington himself, and t'other fine fellow the bastard.”

“The devil he is! – You surprise me, Mr. Touchwood.”

“I thought I should – I thought I should – Faith, I am sometimes surprised myself at the turn things take in this world. But the thing is not the less certain – the proofs are lying in the strong chest of our house at London, deposited there by the old Earl, who repented of his roguery to Miss Martigny long before he died, but had not courage enough to do his legitimate son justice till the sexton had housed him.”

“Good Heaven, sir!” said Mowbray; “and did you know all this while, that I was about to bestow the only sister of my house upon an impostor?”