of which your own family can give you the best advice. If they conduct themselves properly, they may always depend on my protection. I do not wish to hurry your movements; but it will probably be painful to you to remain longer than you can help in a place crowded with unpleasant recollections; and as the cottage is to be sold—indeed, my brother-in-law, Lord Lilburne, thinks it would suit him—you will be liable to the interruption of strangers to see it; and your prolonged residence at Fernside, you must be sensible, is rather an obstacle to the sale. I beg to inclose you a draft for L100. to pay any present expenses; and to request, when you are settled, to know where the first quarter shall be paid.
“I shall write to Mr. Jackson (who, I think, is the bailiff) to detail my instructions as to selling the crops, &c., and discharging the servants; so that you may have no further trouble.
“I am, Madam,
“Berkeley Square, September 12th, 18—.”
The letter fell from Catherine’s hands. Her grief was changed to indignation and scorn.
“The insolent!” she exclaimed, with flashing eyes. “This to me!—to me—the wife, the lawful wife of his brother! the wedded mother of his brother’s children!”
“Say that again, mother! again—again!” cried Philip, in a loud voice. “His wife—wedded!”
“I swear it,” said Catherine, solemnly. “I kept the secret for your father’s sake. Now for yours, the truth must be proclaimed.”
“Thank God! thank God!” murmured Philip, in a quivering voice, throwing his arms round his brother, “We have no brand on our names, Sidney.”
At those accents, so full of suppressed joy and pride, the mother felt at once all that her son had suspected and concealed. She felt that beneath his haughty and wayward character there had lurked delicate and generous forbearance for her; that from his equivocal position his very faults might have arisen; and a pang of remorse for her long sacrifice of the children to the father shot through her heart. It was followed by a fear, an appalling fear, more painful than the remorse. The proofs that were to clear herself and them! The words of her husband, that last awful morning, rang in her ear. The minister dead; the witness absent; the register lost! But the copy of that register!—the copy! might not that suffice? She groaned, and closed her eyes as if to shut out the future: then starting up, she hurried from the room, and went straight to Beaufort’s study. As she laid her hand on the latch of the door, she trembled and drew back. But care for the living was stronger at that moment than even anguish for the dead: she entered the apartment; she passed with a firm step to the bureau. It was locked; Robert Beaufort’s seal upon the lock:—on every cupboard, every box, every drawer, the same seal that spoke of rights more valued than her own. But Catherine was not daunted: she turned and saw Philip by her side; she pointed to the bureau in silence; the boy understood the appeal. He left the room, and returned in a few moments with a chisel. The lock was broken: tremblingly and eagerly Catherine ransacked the contents; opened paper after paper, letter after letter, in vain: no certificate, no will, no memorial. Could the brother have abstracted the fatal proof? A word sufficed to explain to Philip what she sought for; and his search was more minute than hers. Every possible receptacle for papers in that room, in the whole house, was explored, and still the search was fruitless.
Three hours afterwards they were in the same room in which Philip had brought Robert Beaufort’s letter to his mother. Catherine was seated, tearless, but deadly pale with heart-sickness and dismay.
“Mother,” said Philip, “may I now read the letter?” Yes, boy; and decide for us all. She paused, and examined his face as he read. He felt her eye was upon him, and restrained his emotions as he proceeded. When he had done, he lifted his dark gaze upon Catherine’s watchful countenance.
“Mother, whether or not we obtain our rights, you will still refuse this man’s charity? I am young—a boy; but I am strong and active. I will work for you day and night. I have it in me—I feel it; anything rather than eating his bread.”
“Philip! Philip! you are indeed my son; your father’s son! And have you no reproach for your mother, who so weakly, so criminally, concealed your birthright, till, alas! discovery may be too late? Oh! reproach me, reproach me! it will be kindness. No! do not kiss me! I cannot bear it. Boy! boy! if as my heart tells me, we fail in proof, do you understand what, in the world’s eye, I am; what you are?”
“I do!” said Philip, firmly; and he fell on his knees at her feet.” Whatever others call you, you are a mother, and I your son. You are, in the judgment of Heaven, my father’s Wife, and I his Heir.”
Catherine bowed her head, and with a gush of tears fell into his arms. Sidney crept up to her, and forced his lips to her cold cheek. “Mamma! what vexes you? Mamma, mamma!”
“Oh, Sidney! Sidney! How like his father! Look at him, Philip! Shall we do right to refuse him even this pittance? Must he be a beggar too?”
“Never beggar,” said Philip, with a pride that showed what hard lessons he had yet to learn. “The lawful sons of a Beaufort were not born to beg their bread!”
CHAPTER VI
“The storm above, and frozen world below. The olive bough Faded and cast upon the common wind, And earth a doveless ark.”
Mr. Robert Beaufort was generally considered by the world a very worthy man. He had never committed any excess—never gambled nor incurred debt—nor fallen into the warm errors most common with his sex. He was a good husband—a careful father—an agreeable neighbour—rather charitable than otherwise, to the poor. He was honest and methodical in his dealings, and had been known to behave handsomely in different relations of life. Mr. Robert Beaufort, indeed, always meant to do what was right—in the eyes of the world! He had no other rule of action but that which the world supplied; his religion was decorum—his sense of honour was regard to opinion. His heart was a dial to which the world was the sun: when the great eye of the public fell on it, it answered every purpose that a heart could answer; but when that eye was invisible, the dial was mute—a piece of brass and nothing more.
It is just to Robert Beaufort to assure the reader that he wholly disbelieved his brother’s story of a private marriage. He considered that tale, when heard for the first time, as the mere invention (and a shallow one) of a man wishing to make the imprudent step he was about to take as respectable as he could. The careless tone of his brother when speaking upon the subject—his confession that of such a marriage there were no distinct proofs, except a copy of a register (which copy Robert had not found)—made his incredulity natural. He therefore deemed himself under no obligation of delicacy or respect, to a woman through whose means he had very nearly lost a noble succession—a woman who had not even borne his brother’s name—a woman whom nobody knew. Had Mrs. Morton been Mrs. Beaufort, and the natural sons legitimate children, Robert Beaufort, supposing their situation of relative power and dependence to have been the same, would have behaved with careful and scrupulous generosity. The world would have said, “Nothing can be handsomer than Mr. Robert Beaufort’s conduct!” Nay, if Mrs. Morton had been some divorced wife of birth and connections, he would have made very different dispositions in her favour: he would not have allowed the connections to call him shabby. But here he felt that, all circumstances considered, the world, if it spoke at all (which it would scarce think it worth while to do), would be on his side. An artful woman—low-born, and, of course, low-bred—who wanted to inveigle her rich and careless paramour into marriage; what could be expected from the man she had sought to injure—the
