Delaware; or, The Ruined Family. Vol. 3

Title: Delaware; or, The Ruined Family. Vol. 3

Author: G. P. R. James

Release date: April 2, 2016 [eBook #51630] Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51630

Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the Web Archive (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scans provided by the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/delawareorruined03jame (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

DELAWARE;

OR

THE RUINED FAMILY.

EDINBURGH

PRINTED BY M. AITKEN, 1, ST JAMES'S SQUARE.

DELAWARE;

OR

THE RUINED FAMILY.

A TALE.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

EDINBURGH:

PRINTED FOR ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH; AND WHITTAKER & CO., LONDON. MDCCCXXXIII.

DELAWARE;

OR,

THE RUINED FAMILY.

>CHAPTER I.

I do most sincerely believe, that the very best way to get all the characters of this book out of their manifold difficulties, would be, to end the work at the close of the second volume, and leave the world to settle it, as it liked. However, as the great object is, to make known the truth, and as the chances are infinite, that no single individual of the millions who intend to read this book, would, by the utmost exertion of their imagination, discover what the truth is, it may be necessary to go on, and explain what has become of some at least of the characters which have slipped off the stage Heaven knows where—especially as they have each much to do, and to suffer, before they "sleep the sleep that knows no waking."

The great advantage of autobiography is, that a man never troubles his head about other people's affairs, but goes on with his own tale till he has done with it; whereas the unfortunate wretch who undertakes to tell the history of a number of other people, has no better a life of it than a whipper-in, and is obliged to be continually trotting up and down, flogging up his straggling characters to a pace with the rest. The reader, too, may get his brains most tremendously puzzled in the mean time. But what can be done? If people will not write their own stories, other people must write them for them, and the work must go on as best it may. Under these circumstances, we must request the gentle reader to bring back his mind, or his eyes, to the end of the fourth chapter of the last volume, since which precise point we have neglected entirely the history of Henry Beauchamp. However, amends shall immediately be made to that gentleman, and he shall have the whole of this volume to himself.

Let it be remembered, then, that he set out from the dwelling of the miser at Ryebury, promising that punctilious person to return, and sign at once the more formal and regular documents, for which the necessary stamps were still to be procured from Emberton—that he passed William Delaware on his road, concealing himself from him as he did so; and the reader, if he be so pleased, may dip his hand into the wallet of imagination, and take out his own particular little scheme, for leaving the money with which Beauchamp was burdened, in the chamber of—Blanche Delaware's brother.

Those three last words may seem periphrastic; but if the reader thinks they are so, he makes a mistake; for at that moment, it was not in the least as Captain William Delaware, a Master and Commander in his Majesty's Navy, nor as the son of Sir Sidney Delaware of Emberton, Baronet, nor in any other quality, shape, or capacity of any kind whatsoever, that Henry Beauchamp regarded him; but solely and wholly in relation to Blanche Delaware—or, in short, as the brother of her he loved. When he avoided him, it was because she had rejected his—Beauchamp's offered hand; when he placed the money on the table at Emberton, it was, that the clouds which had so long obscured the sunshine of her days, might be scattered for ever; and Henry Beauchamp could no more think of William Delaware, without the connecting link that bound him to his sister, than one can think of the planetary system without the sun.

When it was all done, however; and, having regained the shade of the park trees, Henry Beauchamp was strolling on, slow and sad, towards Ryebury, he bethought him of what was next to be done, as a consequence of the very things that were just accomplished. Let it be remarked that this was the first time he had thought of what was to follow; for the hurry and confusion of the whole day, which had just passed over his head, had left him no time for reflection, even had he been inclined to indulge in it; and the bitter disappointment he had suffered, had given him no great taste for thought of any kind. All he had calculated, was the best means of arriving at his immediate object; and farther than that, he had satisfied himself with the grand conscience-salve for all mad enterprises—"He dared to say, all would go right!"

Now, however, when he began to consider the matter, it presented more difficulties than he had before perceived. He was quite romantic enough and wealthy enough to have given the money to his cousins, with pleasure in the gift, and without inconvenience from the consequences; but, from the delicacy of feeling natural to his own heart, he perfectly understood that neither Sir Sidney Delaware, nor any of his family, would be willing to receive such a sum from any one as a donation—especially from him, circumstanced as he was in regard to Miss Delaware. Disgusted and wearied with the delays and shuffling of the miser, and suspecting that his worthy uncle, Lord Ashborough, might have some share in producing the impediments, he had determined to put it out of the power of any one to prevent the payment, and consequently had acted as we have seen; but, now that he had done so, he found that it would be in no degree easy to give the matter the air of an ordinary transaction.

People who have met with few difficulties in their undertakings, soon teach themselves to trust the execution of anything they themselves find troublesome, to others, and look upon their carrying it through easily as a matter of course; and as Beauchamp, though not in general given to insouciance, was just then in a state of mental irritation and impatience, which rendered long reflection of any kind irksome to him, he determined to throw the burden of the business upon the shoulders of the miser. "I will tell him," he thought, "to write a note to William Delaware, the first thing to-morrow, informing him that he has sent the money by a friend to-night, and is ready to execute the legal documents in regard to the whole transaction." Having so far made his arrangements in his own mind, he walked on slowly, beginning to feel somewhat weary with his day's exertion; and, as he did so—every other subject which could force his thoughts from the most painful object they could choose, being lost for the time—memory naturally led him back to dream of Blanche Delaware, and

her strange and unaccountable conduct towards himself. That he loved her as deeply and as sincerely as man could love woman, he now felt but too painfully; but, notwithstanding good Mrs. Wilson's sentimental anticipations of his antique Roman impatience of existence, Beauchamp was the last man on earth to drown himself under any circumstances whatever. Not that he did not feel that the gloss and splendour was, to him, gone from the earth for ever—not that he did not feel that his love would endure to his last hour, mingling the poison drop of disappointment through all the cup of life—not that wounded pride, and broken hopes, and rebuked self-confidence, and all that can embitter man's feelings, were not poured like gall and wormwood into his heart—but, somehow, he had acquired a strange notion, that to lay hands upon one's own life was not only immoral and unchristian, but was also cowardly and stupid—the act of a madman, a lout, or a barbarian. He had never been one of those men that particularly value life; and certainly he felt that, at the present moment, if any one

had been inclined to take it from him, it was a sort of commodity he could part with without great regret. Yet, at the same time, even in that case, he would probably have defended it as a matter of course; and, as to throwing it away by his voluntary act, such a thing never entered his mind.

His thoughts, however, in regard to Blanche Delaware were, as we have said, bitter enough. He loved her deeply—with a first, pure, steadfast, and yet passionate affection. His heart—so long guarded—had poured out upon her all its stored enthusiasm and repressed tenderness; and in the full and confident belief that his attachment was returned, hope had seduced him into every one of those waking visions which are so bright to dream and so agonizing to lose. He had certainly believed that he was loved in return; and the dissolution of that belief was the most painful part of all. Yet Beauchamp was both too proud and too just to suppose that he had been trifled with; or to imagine that a woman, on whom he could have so fixed his heart, would have been guilty of such petty coquetry. He rather chose to blame his own vanity; to admit that Blanche Delaware had been perhaps a little thoughtless; but that he had been far too confident.

Thus thinking, he walked on towards Ryebury, deviating slightly from the way, in order that he might not meet William Delaware on his return, and mingling vague, wild schemes for the future, with the bitter memories and regrets of the past. He would visit Greece he thought—perhaps cross over the narrow strait, and wander through Syria and Judea, or penetrate into Armenia, and pause for a while amongst the tribes, whose patriarchal habits have been so beautifully depicted by Morier's entertaining pen, or even travel forward into India itself, and watch the slow customs of Europe forcing their way amidst the immemorial habits of the Hindoo. He would do anything, in short, for amusement—and forgetfulness.

When he at length approached the door of Mr. Tims's house, the moon had sunk considerably, though she had still some hours to shine; and, pouring her beams from the side, with the slightest possible angle of declination towards the back of the house, her light fell full upon the two steps that led up to the door, without lighting the door itself. Beauchamp thought he heard a noise in the passage as he approached; but with his usual indifference, certainly not decreased either by fatigue or grief, he walked on with the same slow pace in which he had before been proceeding, and was just in the act of laying his hand upon the bell, when the door was suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly thrown open. The faint outline of three men standing in the dim darkness of the passage, was all that Beauchamp could perceive; but the moonlight poured full upon his own figure as he stood alone upon the steps. So unlooked-for a sight in the house of Mr. Tims caused him to pause in some surprise; and he had no time to recover from it; for before he could ask any question, or form any

conjecture, he received a violent blow from some heavy instrument on the head, which instantly felled him to the ground, completely stunned and motionless.

How long he continued in that state, Beauchamp could hardly tell; but when he again recovered his consciousness, he found himself lying extended upon some planks, with a stiff and numb sensation over all his limbs, a violent headach, and extreme pain in his ancle, while a rippling sound and buoyant undulating motion seemed to show that he was in a boat upon the water. For the first moment he could not verify this supposition by sight, as he seemed to have been cast carelessly into the boat, and his hat was driven so far over his brows as to prevent him from seeing anything around.

Before he was well aware of what he was doing, he started up, pushing back the covering from his eyes; but, as he did so, his unsteady footing in the boat, together with the violent pain in his ancle, made him lose his balance, and very nearly fall over into the sea, which received his hat as he fell, and bore it far away in a moment.

With an involuntary groan from the pain he suffered, Beauchamp relapsed into his former position; but the single instant he had been able to stand up, had shown him sufficient to make him comprehend in a great degree his immediate situation. The moon, he had remarked, just about to dip below the horizon, was pouring a long, long line of yellow light over the waves that, rippling away in the far perspective, seemed like living things of gold, dancing joyfully in the beams, while over all the rest of the expanse, was to be seen nothing else but the dark mass of agitated waters heaving up and down with a dull but solemn sound. He had just caught a glimpse, too, of a faint line of high coast stretching away to the north-west, and consequently catching upon its most prominent points the beams of the setting moon, while all the rest remained in dim gray shadow. Such had been the more distant objects that Beauchamp had beheld. Those more immediately around him, were the small open boat in which he was borne along, and four figures that it contained. Of these—one of which was

that of a woman—two appeared to be death sick, and the other two sat close beside each other in silence at the stern of the boat. One was steering, the other gazing fixedly over the side upon the flashing waters; but the movement of Beauchamp instantly called the eyes of both, though neither made any observation even when he fell back again upon the planks. After he had lain there for a moment or two more, however, the one who was unoccupied whispered something to the steersman. The other made no reply, and the whisper was repeated. The steersman then broke forth with a fearful oath, adding, "If you offer to touch a hair of his head, I will heave you overboard, and send you to hell an hour before your time!"

His companion muttered something which Beauchamp did not hear, and the sailor again replied in the same angry tone, "Come, come, rouse out none of your slack-jaw at me, or blast me if I do not show you who commands here. You have got your way with me once to-night to my own damnation, but you shall not do it again!"

Here the matter dropped, and all was silent but the ripple of the waters. Half an hour more elapsed without a word being spoken; and though Beauchamp felt very giddy and confused, he endeavoured to think over the circumstances in which he was placed, and form some plan for his demeanour towards those by whom he was surrounded.

Although he had very few facts to lead him to such a conclusion, yet something more than a suspicion of the truth crossed his mind. The peculiar whistling he had heard, both in going to and coming from Ryebury, joined with the appearance of the three men in the passage of the miser's house at that time of night—the assault upon himself, and his situation at the very moment, all made him conclude that a bold and extensive robbery had been committed, and that he had been carried away from an apprehension that he might give the alarm, and lead to the detection of the robbers.

He suspected also that it might be a matter of doubt in the bosom of the man who sat by the steersman, whether it would not be best to dispose of such an evidence against them, as he himself might prove, by throwing him into the sea; and the answer of the other showed him that, at all events, there was one of the party averse to such a mode of proceeding.

From all this he concluded, that as he himself could offer little or no resistance to whatever his companions chose to do with him, it would be much better to keep himself as quiet as possible, and to take no apparent notice of anything that was passing around him. Whether such might have been his determination, had he felt well, and in the full use of all his limbs, may be doubtful; but the aching of his head was intense and stupifying, and from the sensation which he experienced in his ancle, he felt sure that one at least of the bones had been dislocated in throwing him into the boat. These sort of little corporalities are apt to make a man excessively quiescent; and Beauchamp, though in general not liking particularly to be treated as a portmanteau, at least without asking the reason why; being now convinced, that however much he might express his volition, he could do no more towards executing it than a trunk itself, determined wisely to keep silence also, and not even to move, any more than the pain he suffered impelled him to do, for the mere sake of changing his position.

His companions remained silent for near an hour, and the only words which then broke the stillness, were spoken by the steersman, who seemed to be the only seaman of the party. "If she be not under the lee of Jerry's Knocker, we must run for old Willy Small's, that's all. We are sure enough with him, and to-morrow we can get another boat, and so across."

The other made no reply, and very likely did not understand clearly what his companion meant. Beauchamp, however, who had in his youth frequented that part of the country; and, as the reader may have perceived, had forgotten but little of the localities, instantly remembered that a long promontory, jutting out from the rest of the coast, and having a calm sheltered bay to the eastward, bore throughout the country the name of Jerry's Knocker; and he was led to conclude, from the rest of the sentence, that the respectable people into whose hands he had fallen, were looking out for some smuggling vessel to carry them to France.

It very speedily became evident, that whatever they were seeking was not to be found. The sea began soon to run high off the headland, and shortly after grew far calmer than before, leading Beauchamp to imagine—though he could see nothing around—that they had doubled the point; but the words, "She's weighed, by —," at once showed that the vessel was gone; and the steersman, who had been anxiously looking out, resumed his seat, and brought his boat a point nearer to the wind.

In about half an hour afterwards, the pitching of the boat ceased almost entirely, and it was clear she was entering smooth water; while a warning to be quiet, given somewhat sharply by the steersman to one of the sea-sick personages, who was now inclined to speak, showed that they were approaching some spot where other ears might be on the watch. The thought passed through Beauchamp's mind to try the strength of his lungs; and, had he been sure that there was any one within hearing, it is more than probable he would have done so, as he felt not a little cramped and uncomfortable on the planks of the boat. However, not being sure that any one would or could come to his aid if he were to hollow till he grew hoarse, and that the attempt might only procure him a speedy passage into the sea, he adhered to his former plan, and, in a moment after, with a gentle rush and a slight shock, the boat touched the land.

"Run up to yonder light," said the steersman, in a low voice, "tell the old man that I am here, and bid him come down and lend a hand."

"Why don't you go yourself?" asked the other, in the same whispered tone. "He doesn't know any of us."

"Because I do not choose," answered the other; and the person to whom he spoke at once obeyed. Ere two minutes had elapsed, a considerable addition was made to their party, and the steersman himself, now springing ashore, held a low consultation with those who joined them. The other man and the woman, whom Beauchamp had observed, were next taken out of the boat, and in a moment after a stout old man jumped in, and stirred him by the shoulder. "Come, master!" he said, "you must get out, and come along with us—though you seem to take things vastly quietly."

"I suppose it is the best thing I can do," replied Beauchamp. "But if you want me out, you must carry me out, my good fellow, for they have lamed me, and I cannot stand."