LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2363, 29 October 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

TOUCH-AND-GO WITH A GREAT ESTATE. (“ London Society.”) (Continued.) Wilfred /ones was not sharp in the sense that his father had been. He was a splendid fellow ; not grasping, not pushing, but a man of tremendous perseverance and energy. He was the king of Burgham when I was young, and he deserved to be. Instead of the Brambles bring a fringe of Burgham, Burgham became a suburb of the Brambles. I must deso'iba no farther, lost I should point too distinctly to real names. The Brambles became a great estate in next to no time ; and it brought the railway to Bargham, and the railway helped it on at ita own speed. The old farmhouse in the corner grew into a park and mansion, I can rememb r, better than yesterday, how the vrhoio town was thrown into a kind of collapse when Wilired Jones of the Brambles—he would stick to the old local name—died at tho earlv ags of seven and-forty—no more. Every man, woman, and child in the place had lost a private as well as a public friend. My father drew his will, which left everything ho had (exjept certain large legacies which the estate could well afford) to his only child, Mias Margaret Jones, now—at too time of which I write—a charmingly pretty and amiable girl of three and-twenty. She was the greatest heiresi in the county, bar none ; and the county peop’o thought as much cf her as if she had coma in with King William the Conqueror, imtead of, as my father used to say, with old King Coal. Somehow, I never now seem to see girls as pretty or as nice as Miss Margaret. Every man in the town was—at a humble and respectful distance—in love with her; and, what ia really the strangest thing in my whole story, so were all the women too. She was wonderfully like her father (her mother had died at her birth) in a feminine way. There was a sort of public anxiety as to if, when, and whom, she would marry—not that there was so much question abont the ‘if’ as the ‘whom.’ It would be a misfortune for all Burgham if, as clever and charming girls who are their own mistresses have a particular knack of doing, she married wrong. Well, for a wonder she had taken it into her head and her heart to choose as her own motht-r had chosen before her. Mr Evelyn Yiner was only a younger son of one of tho best—but not the best-off —families in the county; and no doubt Miss Margaret’s hand would bo an excellent thing for him. But nobody, somehow, ever looked upon him in the light of a fortune-hunter ; aid you may be sure there were plenty of people who would ba ready enough to do it if he were. In fact, he was the most popular man in the county, and tho most deservedly so ; and that he and she should make a match of it was as natural as that ho should represent Burgham in Parliament cn the first opportunity. I should have mentioned—the matter Is of some importance for critical readers, though the general reader may skip ot er this paragraph without any risk to ths thread of tho story—that, until tho timo of Mr Wilfred Jones, nobody had lived on the Brambles but two or three cottagers, who were tenants from year to year, at a rent cf about forty shillings per annum, and that it was rated and so forth to the parish of Bt. Botolph’a in Turn—tho very singular name of a parish which, like seme others in England, had no parish church, tho people mostly making use of that at the village of Welwood, where the priory had been in old times. Mies Margaret herself used to go to Welwood church, like her father heft re her. Don’t let anybody, however, who has no special local knowledge try to make use cf ‘ St. Botolph’a in Turn’ for a key ; for I have taken infinite pains to manufacture a name which will suit my purpose just as well as the real one, while it does not resemble it in a single leading letter. What it meant, nobody in Burgham know—or, for that matter, cared to know.

So, striking out all my digressions, Miss Margaret’s title to that great mine of wealth called the 'Bramble was this, and it was as c'ear as day. She took it both under her father’s will and as his heir-at law; her father had taken it from his father as heirat law ; ha, John Jones, had bought it from an Oxford college that had held it for more than two hundred years. What could my visitor mean—unless drunk, or mad, or both in one ? .

* No,’ said I, ' I do not twig now.’ ‘And that’s Fame!’ said he. ‘Well. I’m not going to be long-winded; for I’m dry. I’ve come to you because, in tho first plaoo, your firm’s got a good name about here, and a good name’s tho thing I want more than anything; and because, as our family lawyers, you’ll see things without bother. Here you are, then. I’m the son of old John Jones—’

‘ I see. You died throe yetrs ago, and now you’ve come to Ufa again with a new Christian name; and I can’t say you’re much tho better for the company you’ve been keeping in the other world. Well ?’ ‘ You moan my travels have made me rough and ready, eh ? So they have — ready for everything I can get, too. Pocket as dry as my throat; and no wonder. But, hang it, young man, I’m not used to being told so ; and I wouldn’t risk losing a good job, if I were you. I’m Horace Jones, eldest son of old John Jones of tho Brambles. Well, yon see, the old boy and I didn’t hit it off together very well. He was a slow old coach, and I wasn’t a slow young un. He was a skinflint, too ; and, you wouldn’t believe it, but tho unnatural old villain put me to such shifts that I actually had to take the King’s shilling ; and I took means to let him think I’d died of yellow fever in Barbadoes, just to prevent him making a new will and catling me off with another. I’ve knocked about since then, hero and there ; but I’ve been a confounded unlucky sort of a devil, I must say. I’m a married man, too, and a family man ; four of ’em, Mr Key, with a mother I wouldn’t live with another hour if it wasn’t that she keep things going while I’m waiting for things to mend, Now tho question, what is, what do I come it for, eh ?’ I’m thinking of taking a public down Deptford way. Mrs Jones was in that lino when I first knew her; and I want capital, and the more ♦ho merrier. What’s tho figure ? Three figures ? Maybe four ?’

What w&a Ito say ? If this fellow wera telling the truth, it was not a capital of three figures or four figures, but an estate bringing la an annual income of five figures, to which he, a brok-n-down shameless drunkard, with a ba’ maid for a wife, was heir-at-law. For J haJonoi having only his son Wilfred to follow him, and little bub the then undo* \ eloped Brambles to leave, had not made a will. Yes and if there were a grain of truth at the bottom of the man’s story, if he were nob an imposter from first to last, the the great estate would no more bo a bleasing to the country ; it would no longer give a fit career to a man like Kvelyn Yiner ; it would no longer be a fountain of charity and honor; it would no longer be—But why say what it would not bo ? It would, it must, in this man’s hands, become a curse and a ruin, The worst of it was, that the story was only too likely to be true. If Wilfred Jones had ever had an e'dcr brother—of whom It was lib ely enough that I myself should never have heard—it would be notorious in an elder generation, and nobody would dare to invent the existence of a non existent man. Again, this Mr Horace Jones had evidently no idea of the extent and value of the property to which he was laying claim. He would not, unless preternaturally cunning, talk so simply about it, as if at most it could only bo a few thousand pounds. I did what I still think was the most prudent thing. I sent out for a bottle of whisky, and told him to wait until I returned from some business that h»i to be attended to immediately. 11l as my father was, this was a matter that I must consult him upon, and that instantly, I did not ve ture to mention the matter even to our old managing clerk, for fear lost even our rfiioe walls should have ear?, or a little bird should be sitting on tho wiudow sill to carry the matter. * Good God!’ exclaimed ray father, starting up in bed; * you don’t tell me that Horaco Jones ia alive, after all ? Yes, Tom, there was such a man. And he did break his father’s heart when he enlisted —though going for a soldier was the most decent thing I ever heard of his doing. And he did die—at least, so the poor old gentleman believed ; and old John Jones did not makeawll. And—and. Tom-if this is the man, the Brambles is his, as sure as it’s law that when a man dies i testate his real property goes to his heir. Poor girl ! But it can’t, Tom : I say it shaVt be true ! I I*ll get up this minute —I’ll—’ ‘I must go back to him, What shall I eay to him ?* * Yea, Tom ; lam too ill. I don’t know. He prove his identity up to the hilt, that’s clear, 'lf he does, perhaps he’ll accept a compromise. But then he says he’s married. Tom, this case must bo fought, tooth and nail, I hate tricks ; but, hang It, Tom, there’s nothing I would’nt do to keep the Brambles for little Peggy, Mrs Yiner that Is to bo. Well, you go to him, say nothing about the value of the estate, and tell him to prove every word he has said to you And get his address, and put the detectives on him up in town. Don’t let him think you’re nervous, Tom, Be cool, and don’t admit that two and two are four.* When I went baos to the office, I found half tho whisky gone; but the man still there. I hope I acted coolly ;at any rate, I committed myself to nothing, gave no information, and told Mr Horace Jones that I should require clear proof of his identity before taking any further steps in the matter. I lent him a guinea, for the sake of keeping my eye on him till I eaw him off by the next train.

The story worried my father dreadfnlly ; though I don’t know how I, in my own ignorance of all the circumstances, could possibly have kept it from him. As for myse’f, I instantly wrote up to a friend of my own in London—a young solicitor with nothing to do, but as sharp as a needle, and with a passion for investigation—to go to work in a private capacity, and to lot mo know all he could find out about the man who called hlmaeif Horace Jones, and who said he lived at —let me say, 36 Belvidera gardens, Olerkenwell. 1 had not heard again from the man himself. But I had best give my friend’s report of him in his words.

‘Dear Key,—Belsidere gardens is a back s’um, a sort of mew;. No, 36 is a small barber’s. I have been shaved there ; and Mr Potts is not only a very small but a very clumsy barber, I should say a good deal of drink went on at 36 Belvldere gardens. Mr Horace Jones lodges there. I had some conversation with him. He says he is a gentleman kept out of an immense property by an ungrateful niece and some swindling pettifoggers ; but that he is in right hands, and means to have the law of them all. I 1 lent’ him half a crown, for new acquaintance’ sake. I judge him to he a man who is always half drunk, and could never, under any circumstance, be otherwise. His wife—if he be more than half married as well as less than half sober—is a lady of colour, who, I believe, has followed a regiment in her time. I believe that sometimes she beats him, and sometimes ho her. hhe has bean the breadwinner hitherto in some capacity—in what I can’t precisely learn —ho doing little but lounge about at bars. Bat for the last wesk or so they have been flush of money, and done nothing but quarrel. They have paid Mr Potts some arrears of beard and lodging. The less I say of their four children—two boys and two girls—the better. It is bad to think of them. They are Horace John, aged twelve ; Margaret, eleven ; Amelia, nine ; and Adolphus, seven. Your friend goes by the name, in the Gardens, of ‘Gentleman’ Jones ; lam absolutely unab’e to imagine why. I hope you are satisfied. I am so much so that I don’t want to go to Bslvidere Gardens again. The man is not mad, unless you spell ‘ Mad ’ with a B, But he is, lam convinced, as incapable of anything bad on a large scale as he is of anything good on any scale at all. He is the very type of a half crown rogue.’

Tho time went by, until at last I began to flatter myself that nothing more was going to happen, and that Mr Horace Jones had been nothing but a scarecrow, whose only object had been to bewilder a lawyer out of a guinea. Bat after a calm comes—what we know.

It was Mr Evelyn Viner himself who came one day into my office with a latter. ‘ What, in the name of impudence is the moaning of this ?’ asked he Tho storm had broken at last. It was a letter from a highly respectable legal firm in London to Miss Jones herself, asking her to name an attorney who would receive for her notice of a declaration in ejectment, according to the old procedure. What did it mean ? Simply that Mr Horace Jones had persuaded a respectable firm of his identity and of his right—no doubt backed by counsel's opinion—of his right to the Brambles as heir-at-law to John Jones; that he had found out for himself the value of the estate ; and that he meant to take no compromise and give no quarter Indeed there was no earthly reason why he should, if bis story were true. And this was what I had to explain to Mr Evelyn Viner, and to Miss Margaret, through him.

Chapter 11, I could scarcely summon up counge to face my father, though I had no reason for feeling that I lad committed any blunder. Everything was perfectly straightforward and fair, fc’o busy was I with reviewing the whole situation —surely the most important, short of life and death, that ever fell into a lawyer’s ha-, ds—that T took no heed of the usual hour for closing. It was a terrible responsibility, this case of the Brambles ; and, unless we could carry it into Court, and cross-examine Horace Jones into his grave in Barbadoes, the Brambles must pass out of the worthiest hands into those of these vermin. I believe that law and justice almost invariably agree, or at least that they used to before law became the chaos cf bungled statutes that it is now ; but I could not feel so then. It only old John Jones had not, out of some imbecile faith in the return of a prodigal, I suppose, been such a confounded ass as to have made no will! It was dark when I remembered that I had not dined. And that made me notice, as I went out into the passage, that there was a light shining from under the room where we kept our articled clerk and other lumber. I went in ; and Dick Musty must have been as surprised to see me there at that hour as I was to sob him, for ho started and flashed up just as he had done once before. * What on earth are you doing here ?’ I asked. * I’m going to look up —of course you can sleep here if you please which, of course, I did not moan. • J—l had been getting interested in Blaokatone,’said he 'I didn’t notice the time.’ (To he continued )