Love's Legacy. A novel

Front matter

iloucl BY RICHARD ASHE KING (BASIL), AUTHOR OF •LOVE THE DEBT." "A DRAWN GAME," "THE WEARING OF THE GREEN," "A COQUETTE'S CONQUEST," "A LEAL LASS," ■A SHADOWED LIFE," "PASSION'S SLAVE," &C, IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL III. WARD & DOWNEY, 12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON. 1890. PRINTED BY KELLY AND CO., MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES ; AND GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, W.C. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. — Nellie's unfortunate Intervention . . 1 II. — Nellie's Success ..... 25 III.— Flight ...... 47 IV.-- Wanted dy the Police . 68 V. — Denny gives himself away . . .86 VI. A DESPERATE STEP .... 108 VII. — Denny retrieves himself .... 131 VIII. -Mr. Eugene Gabbett again . . . 148 IX- In the Box . . . . • .168 X. — Eollo's Appeal ..... 18b XI — An audacious Intervention . . • 207 XII. • • • J^a XIII. — "Lovb's not Time's Fool" . TO MY SISTEIt-IN-LAW, MRS. LUCAS B. B. KING, t|I)io 38oofe is J)e6icate6, WITH THE AUTHOR'S LOVE.

Chapter I

Nellie's unfortunate interatention. When Michael Morris be°'°;ed to retract his refusal of Miss Massey's invitation to Nelhe on the ground that he was going from home on business, he was merely putting forward the first plausible explanation of his change of mind which occurred to him. Mr. Brasil, who was not put into the best of tempers by Rollo's quixotic insistence upon shielding Nelhe from the death-blow the knowledge of her father's crime would have dealt her, was short and sharp to brutality in his negotiation with Michael Morris. " Look here," he said, almost the moment the door of the waiting-room had closed behind them, " Massey knows it was you did what VOL. III. he's iii for ; and he can prove it, mind you — prove it up to the hilt. But he's an ass ! " he cried with sudden exasperation.

" He's in love with your daughter, and insists on shielding you for her sake. It's the most Well, it's not my business," he pulled himself up to say. " If it was, you'd be in his shoes, in place of him being in yours, within twenty - four hours." " You'll have to prove what you say," Morris stuttered, with a feeble attempt to simulate indignation and dissimulate terror. " I only wish I had," retorted the lawyer. " And I shall have, if you take that tone. Just decline to return to that room with me to tell your daughter she may stay on here in Dublin, and I shall proAre what I say before you're a clay older." The hiAvyer kept his hand outstretched, pointing to the door of the waiting-room with a kind of peremptory impatience for Morris' decision, which had its full effect upon the man. Nevertheless, he could not help hesitating, since acquiescence would mean virtual confession of the murder.

" You decline ? " cried Mr. Brasil, letting his outstretched arm drop suddenly and dramatically to his side. " Then I've my client's consent to proceed." And he turned decisively away. " I — I haA-e already told my daughter that she can stay if she chooses," stammered Morris with blanched lips. - " But you'll haA-e to tell her now, again, in my hearing." Without a word Morris walked back to the waiting-room, followed by the lawyer, and on entering said to Miss Massey the words I have recorded : " If you will allow me, I shall be glad to accept your invitation for Nellie, as I have to go away from home on business." It was the first plausible excuse for his sudden change of mind which occurred to him ; but, upon quitting the gaol, horror haunted with the vision of returning to it committed or comdctedon a charge of murder, 34—2 this idea of flight from home took possession of him.

His life hung here by the slender thread of this fool's fancy for Nellie, now in its first frenzy. How long would such frenzy last at its present mad heat ? Or, even allowing that it might last at such heat up to his trial, would it be proof against his conviction ? It was idiotic to suppose such idiocy possible. The very utmost to be expected was that it should last long enough to allow him — Michael Morris — to go under in some foreign country, and also to allow every trace and ripple, which might show where he had gone under, to disappear. For this a fortnight or three weeks' respite would suffice, and he might, perhaps, reckon upon so much. On the other hand, there was nothing to keep him in this accursed country, where he had had an unbroken run of the most infernal ill-luck. He was not merely in hope less debt, but in daily danger of the law on more serious counts — of embezzlement, etc.

From these dangers alone he would be but too glad to fly, and these, besides, would adequately account for his flight. No one would think it necessary to look behind them for some blacker crime to explain his absconding. As for his desertion of Nellie, it weighed nothing with him. The little thought he gave to her amounted to this, that, as he was beggared, she could not be worse off if he left her to shift for herself than if he stayed to drag; her down with him. Thus every consideration urged immediate flight upon him, and against it Avas set only lack of money. He must return home, sell off quietly in different markets and towns his cattle and household goods, and so realize enough to make a fair fresh start in some new world. Within a week he ought to be able to dispose of here and there, to different people in places far apart, the bulk of his stock and furniture, without exciting a suspicion of his absconding.

The more he considered this scheme the more feasible and the more promising it appeared, till he came almost to think that Mr. Brasil had done him a kindness by driving him to flight. He hurried to the Midland Station, though he knew he would have a long time to wait there for his train, and in place of hiding away terror-stricken in some dark corner of a waiting-room, as he would certainly have done an hour since, he paced the platform to and fro, bold and buoyant, impatient for the train to bear him, not so much from a black past and a frightful peril as towards a secure and fortunate future. In this mood of mind he remained until, towards the close of his journey, a kind of re action set in, and a fear, which grew into a sort of presentiment, seized him that the Royal Irish, to be found at every station hi Ireland in wait for the trains, would arrest him to a certainty as he stepped from his carriage.

This dread so grew and gained upon him that he would absolutely have allowed himself to be taken past his station, and on, perhaps, to Galway, if the guard, who knew him, having put his luggage out upon the platform, had not come to his carriage to remind him that he had arrived at his destination. "This is Killtiernan, sir," he said, opening the door and touching his cap. " Thank you. I forgot, to be sure," Morris answered confusedly, as he started up from the far end of the carriage, Avhere he had been lying back, as though asleep. As he stepped out of the carriage he was confronted by the two inevitable Royal Irish, both of whom saluted him deferentially, to his overwhelming relief. Having handed the guard half-a-crown, he asked the policemen (for the mere pleasure of reassuring himself as to his security) if there were a car outside, and was answered by both together, with eager civility : " Yes, sir ; Tony Nolan's." Then his spirits and hopes returned in full tide, and he questioned Tony Nolan about the dates and places of the nearest fairs, etc.

Having reached home and dismissed Tony rejoicing in a liberal fare, he sent at once for his steward and farm factotum, Johnny Meares, whom he informed that he had just LOA'E'S LEGACY. purchased a herd of thoroughbred cattle. He gaAre the number and price of the beasts — astonishing the man by their cheapness — and issued orders for the immediate sale of his own cattle, at once to make room for their successors and to make the money for their purchase. Next day he drove into Galway and disposed there of the horses and carriage upon the same pretence — i.e., that he had just purchased finer in Dublin ; and upon this pretence also he arranged with a large furniture broker to come to his house and take the old furniture off his hands for what it was worth. He gaATe all to understand that his in heritance of his nephew's property was an absolute certainty, now that there was no doubt about George's will having been as much the work of foul play as his death.

Meanwhile, the well-intentioned and genial Dr. Deasy was gratified to find his friends, fellow doctors, and patients much interested in his explanation of the Sarah Cullen mystery. For some days after the pohce had interviewed him on the subject he had talked everywhere and to every one of the strangeness of the occurrence ; and now he could talk — and did — with equal freedom and fulness of the strangeness of its explanation. " The odd thing is," he said again and again, " that the same man on the same night should have been in a sort of way connected accidentally with both poisonings — eh ? For this man Morris, you know, was the uncle of the young fellow who Avas poisoned in the Gordon ; and was so upset to find him dying that he took a little too much on his way home, and gaA-e the phial to Cullen without knowing what he did.

Lucky for him he was drunk, all the same, or he would have been suspected of poisoning both, as O'Meara suggests. By the way I hope O'Meara hasn't been talking like that all OATer the place. It might do no end of mischief — no end of mischief, by George ! " Though O'Meara was only a sleeping part ner in the scandal, it did spread all over the place, to Dr. Deasy's sincere surprise and alarm. Among the first to hear of it were, of course, the doctors and students of the Gordon ; and Beamish, when he visited Rollo on the day after Morris' return home, was bursting with the news of the discovery of the real man. " Did you hear ? " he asked eagerly, even before he had shaken hands with Rollo. " What ? " Rollo asked with a sudden misgivhig of what was coming. " We have him ! Do you remember that woman Sarah Cullen being nearly poisoned on the same night by some man ?

Well, that man has been identified by both doctor and chemist, and he is — Gwynn's uncle ! He was with Gwynn alone for an hour that night ; and on his way home he met the woman, to whom he gave the remainder of the laudanum. He pretends he was so drunk that he didn't know what he was doing, but he was sober as a judge when he quitted the Gordon five minutes before, and you couldn't get drunk in five minutes, eATen if you'd a brain hke a sponge. He's the man, as sure as you are not ! " " How did you hear this ? " Rollo asked with so little surprise that Beamish at once perceived it was no news to him. " You knew it already!" he cried. " I don't know it now," Rollo answered — " that he's the man, I mean. But how did you hear it ? " he asked again with clouded brow. " EATery one was talking of it this morning.

Deasy -" " Chattering idiot ! " Rollo interrupted him to cry with extreme exasperation. " But why ? Why shouldn't he set it right ? " gasped Beamish. Rollo glanced significantly at the warder and then said : " It's a mare's nest. Look here, Beamish ; just go at once to Brasil, like a good fellow, and tell him about it. It must be stopped at once," he added, rather to himself than to Beamish. " But why ? " again asked the bewildered Beamish. " Brasil will explain," and then, after a pause, he said in a low tone : " He's her father." "Whose? Oh?" he exclaimed; for not till this moment did it occur to him that Gwynn's uncle was Nellie's father. " I mean this — this foolish story will shock her terribly, if she hears of it," Rollo hastened to say. " But if it's true, as I've no doubt it is, it Avould be a greater relief to her than that you should suffer for it innocently," Beamish said after a brief interval of reflection.

" If it was true, it would kill her," Rollo cried vehemently. " She worshipped Gwynn, and if she came to belieATe that her father did what you say, it would really go near to kill her." " But," objected Beamish, " it would be the lesser of two evils." " Not when she knows me to be innocent," Rollo rejoined, forgetting that he was thereby inferentially admitting what he had a moment ago denied — her father's guilt. " Well, she's in for it now, anyway," Beamish said, with a flippant coolness, since he certainly sympathized neither with Rollo's quixotic self-sacrifice nor with Nellie's supposed preference of her father to her sweet heart. " What do you mean ? " Rollo asked sharply. " I mean that you can no more stop such a story as that than you can stop the savoury Liffey from running through the town.

It will probably be a mysterious par. in to morrow's papers." ■n This suggestion set Rollo pacing his cell distractedly. Presently he stopped and asked Beamish, who was watching him wonderingly : " Would you mind sending Brasil to me as soon as you can, like a good fellow ? " " I'm there," Beamish replied, nodding a farewell. " I don't like these angels," he said to himself as he walked away, thinking of Nelhe as she appeared to him. " I don't like these angels who sit in a cloud and blow a trumpet — mostly their own ; they're too high up, and watery, and self-righteous for poor devils like me. Fancy her preferring a father like that to a lover like Massey, and letting her innocent lover hang for her father's crime. By George ! these saints bleach the blood out of their A^eins to look white."

For Rollo also he had thoughts not of admiration alto gether. " He's an ass," he said ; " but he's just drunk with love, and is not responsible for his actions." Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur. It was refreshing to him to find Mr. Brasil in cordial agreement with his A'iew of the matter. " Suppose he's hanged, where'll he be then ? " asked the lawyer testily. " I've no idea," retorted Beamish. Mr. Brasil laughed, but checked himself to say : " It's no laughing matter, though ; there's evidence enough to hang him." " And enough to hang the other also ; but which is it to be ? You can't hano both, unless each side packs half the jury and they come to that compromise." " What does he want me to do ? " asked the lawyer, who had not listened to Beamish's last facetious suggestion. " To threaten Deasy with an action for defamation of Morris' character, I fancy ; or, perhaps, to take an action against Morris for trespass," added the incorrigible Cork man.

" Well, I'll go and see him," Brasil growled, in the sullen tone of the sailor summoned to church service, who said : " I'll go ; but d me if I'll pray." " Humour him — humour him," Beamish sagely counselled as they parted. " You can safely promise him anything, as Deasy by this has told all the other old women in Dublin, so that even the police are likely to hear of it at last." This cut at the police (in Ireland the most inefficient, perhaps, of any pohce in the world for their ostensible work — the detection of crime) proATed not undesen^ed. For some days they would hear nothing of what every one was talking, for the simple reason that the talk was, on the face of it, preposterous ? Had not they discoA~ered and secured the real criminal, Rollo Massey ? To suppose, then, this other man Michael Morris to be the criminal was to suppose the police to have been mistaken, which was absurd.

Therefore, it was not until after the following paragraph had appeared in one of the papers that the police set about making official inquiries into the matter. " The Sarah Cullen Mystery, and the Mysterious Murder in the Gordon. " The case of the woman Cullen, who, by her own account, had had poison administered to her by a man in the street, and that of the distinguished T.C.D. student, Mr. George Gwynn, who was poisoned in the Gordon, must be fresh in the recollection of our readers ; but none of them probably suspected that the occurrence of the tAvo cases within a few hours and within a few streets of each other was anything more than a casual coincidence. Within the last few days, however, rumours have reached the ears of every one in the city — except, apparently, the pohce— that the man who procured the poison taken by the woman Cullen has been identified with a man who had quitted the Gordon a few minutes preA-iously.

Other circumstances, which we cannot at present mention, suggest still more strongly a connection between the two cases, which, if it should be conclusively established, would prove to demonstration that the committal of Mr. Rollo Massey on a capital charge was a most gross miscarriage of justice. Does this explain the apathy of the police, who naturally, perhaps, hesitate to stultify themselves ? " No one read this paragraph with such intense interest as Nellie. " Oh, Miss Massey ! " she exclaimed, her face flushed with delight. " Look ! listen ! " And she read out the paragraph in a voice trembling with excitement and exultation. But Miss Massey shook her head with emphatic decision and dissent. She, no more VOL. UL than the police, liked to have her infallible intuitions contradicted by facts ; and, as she had made up her mind that George had been poisoned by misadventure through the criminal carelessness of some official of the Gordon, she could not entertain this news paper suggestion.

" My dear Nellie, there's nothing in it. It's put in to sell the paper," she said, with a certainty which dashed Nellie's high hopes to the ground. " But why ? Why do you think so, Miss Massey ? It was very " " Because he was poisoned by the hospital people," Miss Massey interrupted her to say dogmatically. " I have no doubt about it at all. Look at the evidence they gave ; and, besides, I remember that when I was a girl a young man bled to death in the Limerick Infirmary through the carelessness of a nurse, and they tried to make out that he loosened the bandages himself, because he was engaged to be married to a girl who went to Australia, though it turned out it was his brother, and the girl was in a place in Bantry at the time. However, it was brought home to the nurse, and so it will be yet in this case, depend upon it," she said with a sagacious nod.

Nellie's hopes revived so much on hearing the reasons which were to demolish them, that she ventured presently to make the timid suggestion : " Do you think it would be worth while to go and see Mr. Brasil, Miss Massey ? " " For what, dear ? " " To find out the meaning of this," pointing to the paragraph which she had just read for the third time. " Well, my dear, if you like we can see him," she answered, with a suspicion of mingled offence and contempt in her tone. Being, however, herself anxious at heart to hear what rumours, if any, the paper referred to, she hurried off to get ready. Upon reaching Mr. Brasil's office they were ushered at once into the lawyer's priArate room, where he received them with obvious embarrassment. He set chairs for them, and 35—2 chatted uneasily about the weather, present, past, and prospective, with a careful avoidance of all inquiry or appearance of astonishment or of curiosity as to the object of their visit.

To this, however, Miss Massey came with business-like promptitude. " We came about that paragraph in to-day's paper, Mr. Brasil." " Paragraph ? H'm ! " he said, with the air of ransacking eA-ery corner of his memory in vam. " Haven't you seen it ? You've got it, dear — haven't you ? " Nelhe produced the paper, found the para graph, and offered it to the lawyer with a tremulous hand. While affecting to read and re-read it, he considered what he was to say. " Miss Morris insists there's something in it. but I tell her it's a mere canard, coined to sell the paper," Miss Massey said, to give the lawyer an idea of her sagacity. He, however, imagined it was to give him a hint of what he was to say to allay Nellie's anxiety about her father, to whom she had somehow come to know that the report referred.

Accordingly, he addressed his assurance that there was nothing at all in it to Nellie. " It's just as Miss Massey says — a mere catch-penny canard." " And you think there was no such man at all identified by the doctor ? " Nellie asked, in a tone of such profound disappointment as confounded the lawyer. " I — I think not," he stammered, in a confusion that struck Nelhe as extraordinary. " We might find out from the doctor," [she suggested after a pause. " Yes, to be sure ; a very good idea. I shall make it my business to see him," mur mured the lawyer disjointedly. Hereupon he took up some papers, glancing the while at the timepiece on the mantelshelf — a hint to them to go too unmistakable to be missed or disregarded. In truth, he was so much disconcerted that he feared to commit himself if he were further ques tioned.

" You see it was nothing, dear," Miss Massey said quite triumphantly as they issued from the office. It really was extraordinary that, with all her affection for Rollo, she forgot for the moment how deep his concern was in this thing that she puffed aside so hghtly and exultantly. " I don't know at all that it's nothing," Nelhe retorted warmly. " At least there was something underneath Mr. BrasU's manner. I never saw any one so confused." And then after a pause she added : " It really seemed to me that he wanted to shield that other n man. " But he's Rollo's lawyer ! " exclaimed Miss Massey, amazed by her perversity. " I think he's that other man's lawyer," Nelhe rejoined stoutly. " If he wasn't, he would at least have gone at once and seen that doctor instead of sitting1 down doino nothing !

" Now this idea, gathered naturally and almost hievitably from Mr. Brasil's embarrassment, took such possession of Nellie that when Tom Massey called half an hour later she thoroughly indoctrinated him with it. Tom simply worshipped her because she Avas so pretty and so soothing in her soft, gentle ways — almost as tranquillizing as a pipe to him. When, then, she put the case against Mr. Brasil to him with unusual vehemence, he was quite convmced there was something in it. " A lawyer 'ud sell his mother to his mother-in-law for sixpence," he observed sententiously. " But if you saw his face ! " Nellie cried. " You never saw any one look so guilty ; and when I suggested that we ought to see the doctor, he hemmed and hahed, and said it was a good idea and he'd think about it, and then sat down to his papers !

" " I tell you what, Miss Morris," Tom said, with sudden, heroic resolution, " I'll set Gabbett on the scent. He's my attorney, and as wide awake as a weasel. I'll send him to see the doctor and the apothecary, and if he finds they've identified the fellow, as the paper says, he'll make the pohce stir themselves pretty sharp, I can tell you. Lf the fellow isn't in custody before night it won't be Bob Gabbett's fault." " I wish you would ! " Nellie cried excitedly. " And I will," he answered resolutely, but he sat on lazily all the same. " I'm going into town, perhaps you'd come with me ? " Nellie said, to decoy him into immediate action, and, of course, he had to accompany her. They drove at once to Gabbett's office and put the business into his hands, Tom taking care to make no men tion of Brasil's name. Thus it was owing to poor Nelhe that her father was arrested that evening in Queenstown as he stepped on board the American mail boat.

Chapter II

Nellie's success. On ATisiting Rollo that afternoon as usual, Nellie, almost before they had shaken hands, showed him excitedly the paragraph in the paper and watched his face eagerly while he read it. She was bewildered by the ex pression of poignant anxiety and distress which crossed it as he read. " Oh, it's only the newspapers," he said, with impatient contempt, as he handed her back the paper. " I told you so ! " cried Miss Massey ex ultantly. " But Mr. Gabbett was quite sure there was something in it," said the crestfallen Nellie. " Mr. Gabbett ? " he asked " Your father's lawyer. We showed him L0ArE'S LEGACY. the paragraph, and asked him to see that doctor and chemist, and to make the police arrest the man if they really had identified him." " Has he gone ? " Rollo asked in consternation.

" Yes, two hours ago. Why ? Was it wrong ? " Nelhe said nervously. " No ; only it would have been better — I mean Brasil might be offended." " Oh, but we saw him, and he would do nothing, and was so strange about it alto gether, that I really thought he wanted to shield the other man," Nellie said eagerly. Rollo remained silent for a little, hardly knowing what to say or do. " I don't see how he could be offended with your father seeing his own lawyer about it," Nellie said presently, thinking all this disproportionate trouble of Rollo's was about the offence to Mr. Brasil's professional feelings. " No," Rollo answered absently, looking at her with a yearning and inexpressible tender ness. " And, after all, if it's a mere newspaper story there's no harm done," Nellie continued defensively.

" No, of course not." " And if it's true, there wasn't any time to lose, for the man would probably see the paper and make his escape." " Yes." " Who could it be ? I cannot think of any one," Nellie said perplexedly. " There isn't any one. It's a mere news paper story ! " Rollo cried in desperation. " Did my father say he was coming ? " he asked eagerly. " Yes, he said he would be here as soon n as we. Rollo knew too well that this meant an hour or more hence, but, as there was no means of hurrying him, he had to wait with what patience he could. Meanwhile he was mostly silent and distrait, speaking to Nellie chiefly through troubled, wistful, and pitiful eyes, whose depth and meaning recurred to her afterwards to give her all the comfort she was then capable of receiving. When she and Miss Massey were taking leave, Rollo, holding her hand hngeringly, asked, with the earnestness of an adjuration : " You will come to-morrow ?

" " Of course ! " she cried in surprise, for to her the request seemed as unnecessary as a doubt of to-morrow's sunrise. " Rollo, what is it ? What's going to happen ? " she asked breathlessly. " Nothing, nothing ; only one gets de pressed in a place like this, and fancies all kinds of things," he answered in confusion. " I'll come whatever happens, unless it happens to me — unless I'm ill and unable to come," she said earnestly, being infected Avith his forebodings. He was disgusted with himself for his failure to put a cheerful face on his forebodings ; but there was much in what he said about the depressing effects of prison confinement on a man so much used as he had been to an energetic outdoor life. Besides, though he was prepared, from what Beamish had told him, to hear that the police were on the track of Michael Morris, it was an upsetting shock to learn from Nellie herself that they had been set upon his track by his own daughter.