Bashwood. "I should like to take his hand, and tell him so.""He wouldn't thank you, if you did," remarked Bashwood the younger. "He is under a comfortable impression that nobody knows how he saved Mrs. Waldron's legacy for her but himself.""I beg your pardon, Jemmy," interposed his father. "But don't call her Mrs. Waldron. Speak of her, please, by her name when she was innocent, and young, and a girl at school. Would you mind, for my sake, calling her Miss Gwilt?""Not I! It makes no difference to me what name I give her. Bother your sentiment! let's go on with the facts. This is what the lawyer did before the second trial came off. He told her she would be found guilty _again,_ to a dead certainty. 'And this time,' he said, 'the public will let the law take its course.
Have you got an old friend whom you can trust?' She hadn't such a thing as an old friend in the world. 'Very well, then,' says the lawyer, you must trust me. Sign this paper; and you will have executed a fictitious sale of all your property to myself. When the right time comes, I shall first carefully settle with your husband's executors; and I shall then reconvey the money to you, securing it properly (in case you ever marry again) in your own possession. The Crown, in other transactions of this kind, frequently waives its right of disputing the validity of the sale; and, if the Crown is no harder on you than on other people, when you come out of prison you will have your five thousand pounds to begin the world with again.' Neat of the lawyer, when she was going to be tried for robbing the executors, to put her up to a way of robbing the Crown, wasn't it? Ha! ha! what a world it is!"The last effort of the son's sarcasm passed unheeded by the father. "In prison!" he said to himself. "Oh me, after all that misery, in prison again!""Yes," said Bashwood the younger, rising and stretching himself, "that's how it ended. The verdict was Guilty; and the sentence was imprisonment for two years. She served her time; and came out, as well as I can reckon it, about three years since. If you want to know what she did when she recovered her liberty, and how she went on afterward, I may be able to tell you something about it--say, on another occasion, when you have got an extra note or two in your pocket-book. For the present, all you need know, you do know. There isn't the shadow of a doubt that this fascinating lady has the double slur on her of having been found guilty of murder, and of having served her term of imprisonment for theft.
There's your money's worth for your money--with the whole of my wonderful knack at stating a case clearly, thrown in for nothing.
If you have any gratitude in you, you ought to do something handsome, one of these days, for your son. But for me, I'll tell you what you would have done, old gentleman. If you could have had your own way, you would have married Miss Gwilt."Mr. Bashwood rose to his feet, and looked his son steadily in the face.
"If I could have my own way," he said, "I would marry her now."Bashwood the younger started back a step. "After all I have told you?" he asked, in the blankest astonishment.
"After all you have told me."
"With the chance of being poisoned, the first time you happened to offend her?""With the chance of being poisoned," answered Mr. Bashwood, "in four-and-twenty hours."The Spy of the Private Inquiry Office dropped back into his chair, cowed by his father's words and his father's looks.
"Mad!" he said to himself. "Stark mad, by jingo!"Mr. Bashwood looked at his watch, and hurriedly took his hat from a side-table.
"I should like to hear the rest of it," he said. "I should like to hear every word you have to tell me about her, to the very last. But the time, the dreadful, galloping time, is getting on.
For all I know, they may be on their way to be married at this very moment.""What are you going to do?" asked Bashwood the younger, getting between his father and the door.
"I am going to the hotel," said the old man, trying to pass him.
"I am going to see Mr. Armadale."
"What for?"
"To tell him everything you have told me." He paused after making that reply. The terrible smile of triumph which had once already appeared on his face overspre ad it again. "Mr. Armadale is young; Mr. Armadale has all his life before him," he whispered, cunningly, with his trembling fingers clutching his son's arm.
"What doesn't frighten _me_ will frighten _him!_""Wait a minute," said Bashwood the younger. "Are you as certain as ever that Mr. Armadale is the man?""What man?"
"The man who is going to marry her."
"Yes! yes! yes! Let me go, Jemmy--let me go."The spy set his back against the door, and considered for a moment. Mr. Armadale was rich--Mr. Armadale (if _he_ was not stark mad too) might be made to put the right money-value on information that saved him from the disgrace of marrying Miss Gwilt. "It may be a hundred pounds in my pocket if I work it myself," thought Bashwood the younger. "And it won't be a half-penny if I leave it to my father." He took up his hat and his leather bag. "Can you carry it all in your own addled old head, daddy?" he asked, with his easiest impudence of manner.
"Not you! I'll go with you and help you. What do you think of that?"The father threw his arms in an ecstasy round the son's neck. "Ican't help it, Jemmy," he said, in broken tones. "You are so good to me. Take the other note, my dear--I'll manage without it--take the other note."The son threw open the door with a flourish; and magnanimously turned his back on the father's offered pocket-book. "Hang it, old gentleman, I'm not quite so mercenary as _that!_" he said, with an appearance of the deepest feeling. "Put up your pocket-book, and let's be off.--If I took my respected parent's last five-pound note," he thought to himself, as he led the way downstairs, "how do I know he mightn't cry halves when he sees the color of Mr. Armadale's money?--Come along, dad!" he resumed.