George Balcombe :: :: University of Virginia Library

As soon as he had sealed his last letter, he tossed
it from him and turned towards me. I closed my
book, and, looking up, saw his eye fixed on mine
with an expression, which, together with a half
smile on his lips, showed that he was about to
speak. I, of course, waited for him.

“I see so much,” said he, “of what other people
are about, (by what faculty I know not,) that I
should feel like a spy, if I did not lay myself as
open to them as they are to me. I flatter myself
this is the reason why I talk so much, and say
whatever comes into my head. We cannot play
the game fairly, if I don't show my hand, when I
know the backs of your cards. The object of your
present journey is to find Edward Montague, and
obtain from him information he will be careful not
to give you. Your emotion, at my mention of his
name this morning, leaves no doubt of this; and
you are now burning with impatience to learn the
drift of what I then said. Is it not so?”

“You are indeed bound, in honour, to be as

frank as I find you,” said I. “You are exactly
right; and if you are as successful in unriddling
other people and their affairs, as you have been
with me and mine, I shall have little cause to care
whether Mr. Edward Montague makes a clean
breast or no.”

“But he has more occasion for concealment than
you, and is rather more wary. It would be long
before he would make the acknowledgment you
did, last night, about my dog's name. That acknowledgment
let me into your character; that
brought you here; that interested me in you, and
first disposed me to serve you. As far as I can I
will. But I do but suspect Mr. Montague; and
that I do suspect him he knows; and his alternate
defiance of my suspicions, and attempts to lull
them, do but confirm them. Sometimes he is distant
and reserved, and affects dignity; then he is
gracious and conciliatory, and tries to come over
me.

“It is pleasant to amuse myself with a fellow
who is thus ever acting a part. He always finds
me as inaccessible to his approaches as a hedgehog;
and when he draws himself up in his terrapin
shell of dignity and reserve, I delight to put fire
on his back, and make him show sport for the children.
He hates me, and fears me accordingly,
and would gladly keep out of my way; but we
sometimes meet.”

“I am sorry,” said I, “that you have him so
much on the qui vive with you.”

“I would have him so. There is no other way
to find him out. A man habitually cautious is
most apt to betray himself when alarmed. In his
eagerness to draw his blanket over his head, he
uncovers his feet. Do you know him?”

“I never saw him; and had a mind to see him,
without letting him know me.”

“There you are wrong. Let him hear your
name and who you are at once, and unexpectedly.
Yes; he shall hear it, for the first time, with my
eye upon him, and we will see how the compound
works. In the mean time, as you know much that
I do not, you shall tell me your whole story exactly
as you understand it; and when we have put
together all that I already know, and all that you
can tell me, it shall go hard but we find out the
rest. Business should bring him to this neighbourhood
about this time. I can learn to-day if he is
expected; and though the fellow shall never darken
the door of a dog kennel, that calls me master, we
shall meet with him in some of our visits. Come!
tell me all about it.”

I did not answer immediately, and he continued—

“You hesitate, and perhaps you are right. I
dare say, my claim on your confidence is so abrupt
as to alarm suspicion. I shall make no profession
for the purpose of quieting it. I will only suppose
you to ask, as you would do, but for delicacy, what
there can be to excite, in my mind, so earnest an
interest in your affairs. For the present I will

give no answer but this. We are both anastomozing
branches of the same rich stream, flowing
direct from the heart of honour, which has not yet
lost its vital energy and warmth. But tell me, is
this distrust a first impression, or a thought just
now suggested by prudence?”

“I can assure you,” said I, “that I have never
distrusted you, since the first five minutes of our
acquaintance. But I have charge of the interests
of others, as well as my own, and I felt a doubt,
whether I had a right to peril them on the sudden
confidence of a raw boy in an acquaintance of
twelve hours.”

“Then your first impressions led you to confide
in me?”

“Entirely.”

“Trust them, then. They are nature's testimony.
Were you not ingenuous, my frankness
would alarm you; for instinct would show you,
that there was something about me uncongenial to
you; and men, the world calls prudent, would
condemn your disposition to confide in me, because,
in your place, they would not do so. Much
good may their prudence do them. But our instincts
are as safe guides as theirs. They get no
advantage of me, for nature makes me shun them;
and I obey her impulses, confident in her guidance.
Your friend Montague would as soon trust Jonathan
Wilde as me. Why? Does he doubt my
honour? Not in the least. He does but feel that
he and I have nothing in common.”

“I cannot say,” replied I, “that I exactly understand
your metaphysics. But I am, at least, determined
to act on as much of it as I understand,
for this once, and give you the history of my unfortunate
family.

“You are aware, then, that my mother was one
of two daughters, the only children of a man of
vast wealth. You probably know, too, that, with
a large inheritance of that honour you prize so
highly, my father received from his but a small
remnant of an estate sacrificed in the public service.
You perhaps do not know that the wealth
of my mother's father consisted, mainly, of property
entailed on his male descendants, with remainder
to a distant relative, who, though a native
Virginian, resided, and still lives in England. His
wife died in the year 1770, in giving birth to my
mother, her second daughter.

“In the interval which preceded the revolution,
my grandfather, who disclaimed all thought of
ever marrying again, was strongly urged to take
measures for docking the entail. This he always
refused to think of, not from indifference to his
children, for he devoted his life and all he deemed
his own to them, but because he could not be made
to see the fairness of such a proceeding. Even
when the revolution put an end to entails, he declared
that his children should not profit by, what
he called, a dishonest measure. He accordingly
executed a will, by which he devised the entailed
property to the remainder-man; and this will,

properly attested, he transmitted to him in England.

“So matters stood, until his two daughters married
my father and uncle. He was then seen to
take so great an interest in them and their families,
that people began to think that he might be induced
to change his will in favour of a grandson. But
his daughters bore none but daughters for many
years. At last, in 1799, I was born. Then the
delight of the old man's heart, at the prospect of a
male heir, displayed itself. He claimed me from
my mother, as soon as I could walk, and made me
his pet and plaything. About this time, too, he
cold my father that he had made a new will, devising
his whole property to be divided into two
equal parts, of which one half should go to the first
of his grandsons that should attain the age of
twenty-one; and that the other half should be
again divided between his daughters. He added,
that this will was in the hands of a confidential
friend. My father's extreme delicacy made him a
silent listener to this communication; and he did
not even ask the name of this depositary of my
grandfather's confidence and will.

“Up to this time, the old gentleman, having little
that he thought he could honestly give away, besides
his income, had given no fortune with either
daughter; but he paid faithfully and punctually to
the husband of each a handsome annuity. There
was no deed of any sort for this. He had merely
promised it, and it was regularly paid.”