Archibald Malmaison Read online

  XI.

  Meanwhile the lawyers were keeping at work with commendable diligence, andMr. Pennroyal was counting his chickens as hatched, and was as far aspossible from suspecting the underplot which was going on around him. Onthe contrary, it seemed to him that he was becoming at last the assuredfavorite of fortune. For this gentleman's life had not been, in allrespects, so prosperous as it appeared. To begin with, he had had adeplorable weakness for dicing and card-playing, which had frequentlybrought him in large sums, but which had ended by costing twenty times asmuch as they had won for him. He gave up these forms of diversion,therefore, and resolved to amass a fortune in a more regular manner. Hestudied the stock-market profoundly, until he felt himself sufficientlymaster of the situation, and when he entered the lists as a financier. Hebought and sold, and did his very best to buy cheap and to sell dear. Hemade several lucky hits; but in the long run he found that the balance wassetting steadily against him. All his ready money was gone, and mortgagesbegan to settle down like birds of ill-omen upon his house and lands. Itwas at this period that he married Kate Battledown; and with the moneythat she brought him he began to retrieve his losses, and again thehorizon brightened. Alas! the improvement was only temporary. Ill-luck setin once more, and more inveterately than ever. Kate's good money wentafter his bad money, and neither returned. A good deal of it is said tohave found its way into the pockets of Major Bolingbroke, his second inthe duel. The ill-omened birds settled down once more, until they coveredthe roof and disfigured all the landscape.

  To add to his troubles, he did not find that comfort and consolation in hismatrimonial relations which he would fain have had. It is true that hemarried his wife first of all for her money; but he was far frominsensible to her other attractions, and, so far from wearying of them,they took a stronger and stronger hold upon him, until this cold,sarcastic, and unsocial man grew to be nothing less than uxorious. But hiswife recompensed his devotion but shabbily; her position had not fulfilledher anticipations, she was angry at the loss of her money, and upon thewhole she repented having taken an irrevocable step too hastily. She feltherself to be the intellectual equal of her husband, and she was not longin improving the advantage she possessed of not caring anything about him.In a word, she bullied the unfortunate gentleman unmercifully, and hekissed the rod with infatuation.

  This state of things was in force up to the time of Mrs. Pennroyal'smeeting with Archibald, as above described. After that there was a markedand most enchanting alteration in Mrs. Pennroyal's demeanor toward herhusband. She became all at once affectionate and sympathetic. Sheflattered him, she deferred to him, she consulted him, and drew him onwith delicate encouragements to consult her, to confide in her all theprivate details of his affairs, which he had never done before, and tointrust to her safekeeping every inmost fear and aspiration of his mind.At every point she met him with soothing agreement and ingenuoussuggestion; and in particular did she echo and foster his enmity againstSir Archibald Malmaison, and urged him forward in his suit, bidding himspare no expense, since success was assured, and affirming her readinessto mortgage her very jewels, if need were, to pay the eminent legalgentlemen who were to conduct the case.

  This behavior of hers afforded her husband especial gratification, for hehad always been a little jealous of Sir Archibald, and indeed one of theimpelling motives to the present action had been a desire to pay hisgrudge in this respect. But the discovery that Mrs. Pennroyal hated theyoung baronet quite as much as he did, filled his soul with balm; so thatit only needed the successful termination of the lawsuit to render hisbliss complete and overflowing.

  Well, the great case came on; and all the nobility and gentry of the threecounties, and others besides, were there to see and hear. There were betsthat the trial would not be over in seven days, and odds were takenagainst its lasting seven weeks. Society forgot its ennui and settleditself complacently to listen to a piquant story of scandal, intrigue,imposition, and robbery in high life.

  The reader knows the sequel. Never was there such a disappointment. Thelearned brethren of the law opened their mouths only to shut them again.

  For after the famous Mr. Adolphus, counsel for the plaintiff, hadeloquently and ingeniously stated his case and given a picturesque andappetizing outline of the evidence that he was going to call, and thefacts that he was going to prove; after this preliminary flourish wasover, behold, up got Mr. Sergeant Runnington, who appeared on behalf ofthe defendant, and let fall some remarks which, though given in asufficiently matter-of-fact and every-day tone, fell like a thunder-clapupon the ears of all present, save two persons; and produced upon theHonorable Richard Pennroyal an effect as if a hand-grenade had been letoff within his head, and his spine drawn neatly out through the back ofhis neck.

  I cannot give the learned Sergeant's speech here, but the upshot of it wasthat the plaintiff had no case; inasmuch as he relied, to make good hisclaim, on the absence of any direct evidence establishing the identity ofthe late Sir Clarence Butt Malmaison, and the decease of that illegitimatepersonage whom the plaintiffs sought to confound with him.

  What could have induced the plaintiff to imagine that such direct evidencewas not forthcoming, Sergeant Runnington confessed himself at a loss tounderstand. He had cherished hopes, for the sake of common decency, forthe sake of the respect due to the Bench, for the sake of human nature,that his learned brother on the other side would have been able to holdforth a challenge which it would be, in some degree, worth his while toanswer; he regretted sincerely to say that those hopes had not been by anymeans fulfilled.

  Had he been previously made aware of the course of attack which theplaintiff had had the audacity to adopt, he could have saved him and otherpersons much trouble, and the Court some hours of its valuable time, bythe utterance of a single word, or, indeed, without the necessity for anywords at all. Really, this affair, about which so much noise had beenmade, was so ridiculously simple and empty that he almost felt inclined toapologize to the Court and to the gentlemen of the jury for showing themhow empty and simple it was. But, indeed, he feared that the apology, ifthere was to be one, was not due from his side.

  It was not for him to decide upon the motives which had prompted theplaintiff to bring this action. He should be sorry to charge any one withmalice, with unconscionable greed, with treacherous and impudent rapacity.It belonged to the plaintiff to explain why he had carried this case intocourt, and what were his grounds for supposing that it could be made toissue to his credit and advantage.

  For his own part, he should content himself with producing the documentswhich the learned counsel on the other side had professed himself soanxious to get a sight of, and to humbly request that the plaintiff benonsuited with costs.

  Thus ended the great trial. People could hardly, at first, believe theirown ears and eyes; but when the documents were acknowledged to beperfectly genuine and correct, when the learned Mr. Adolphus relinquishedthe case, not without disgust, and when the Court, after some very severeremarks upon the conduct of the plaintiff, had concluded a short addressby adopting the learned Sergeant Runnington's suggestion as to thecosts--when all was settled, in short, in the utterly absurd space of twohours and three quarters, then at last did society awake to a perceptionof the fact that it had been most egregiously and outrageously swindled,and that the Honorable Richard Pennroyal was the swindler.

  Nobody was at the pains to conceal these sentiments from the honorablegentleman, and he left the court with as little sympathy as everdisappointed suitor had.

  Poor man! he suffered enough, in more ways than one, on that disastrousday, yet one shame and agony, the sharpest of all, was spared him--he didnot see the look and the smile that were exchanged between his wife andSir Archibald Malmaison, when the decision of the Court was made known.