For George Sheldon the passing years had brought very little improvement of fortune. He occupied his old dingy1 chambers2 in Gray’s Inn, which had grown more dingy under the hand of Time; and he was wont3 to sit in his second-floor window on sultry summer Sundays, smoking his solitary5 cigar, and listening to the cawing of the rooks in the gardens beneath him, mingled6 with the voices of rebellious7 children, and shrill8 mothers threatening to “do for them,” or to “flay them alive,” in Somebody’s Rents below. The lawyer used to be quite meditative9 on those Sunday afternoons, and would wonder what sort of a fellow Lord Bacon was, and how he contrived10 to get into a mess about taking bribes11, when so many other fellows had done it quietly enough before the Lord of Verulam’s day, and even yet more quietly since — agreeably instigated12 thereto by the casuistry of Escobar.
Mr. Sheldon’s prospects13 were by no means promising14. From afar off he beheld15 his brother’s star shining steadily16 in the commercial firmament17; but, except for an occasional dinner, he was very little the better for the stockbroker18’s existence. He had reminded his brother very often, and very persistently19, of that vague promise which the dentist had made in the hour of his adversity — the promise to help his brother if ever he did “drop into a good thing.” But as it is difficult to prevent a man who is disposed to shuffle21 from shuffling22 out of the closest agreement that was ever made between Jones of the one part, and Smith of the other part, duly signed, and witnessed, and stamped with the sixpenny seal of infallibility, so is it still more difficult to obtain the performance of loosely-worded promises, uttered in the confidential23 intercourse24 of kinsmen25.
In the first year of his married life Philip Sheldon gave his brother a hundred pounds for the carrying out of some grand scheme which the lawyer was then engaged in, and which, if successful, would secure for him a much larger fortune than Georgy’s thousands. Unhappily the grand scheme was a failure; and the hundred pounds being gone, George applied26 again to his brother, reminding him once more of that promise made in Bloomsbury. But on this occasion Mr. Sheldon plainly told his kinsman27 that he could do no more for him.
“You must fight your own battle, George,” he said, “as I have fought mine.”
“Thank you, Philip,” said the younger brother; “I would rather fight it any other way.”
And then the two men looked at each other, as they were in the habit of doing sometimes, with a singularly intent gaze.
“You’re very close-fisted with Tom Halliday’s money,” George said presently. “If I’d asked poor old Tom himself, I’m sure he wouldn’t have refused to lend me two or three hundred.”
“Then it’s a pity you didn’t ask him,” Mr. Sheldon answered, with supreme28 coolness.
“I should have done so fast enough, if I had thought he was going to die so suddenly. It was a bad day for me, and for him too, when he came to Fitzgeorge-street.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Mr. Sheldon sharply.
“You can pretty well guess my meaning, I should think,” George answered in a sulky tone.
“No, I can’t; and what’s more, I don’t mean to try. I’ll tell you what it is, Master George; you’ve been treating me to a good many hints and innuendoes29 lately; and you must know very little of me if you don’t know that I’m the last kind of man to stand that sort of thing from you, or from any one else. You have tried to take the tone of a man who has some kind of hold upon another. You had better understand at once that such a tone won’t answer with me. If you had any hold upon me, or any power over me, you’d be quick enough to use it; and you ought to be aware that I know that, and can see to the bottom of such a shallow little game as yours.”
Mr. Sheldon the younger looked at his brother with an expression of surprise that was not entirely30 unmingled with admiration31.
“Well, you are a cool hand, Phil!” he said.
Here the conversation ended. The two brothers were very good friends after this, and George presented himself at the gothic villa32 whenever he received an invitation to dine there. The dinners were good, and the men who ate them were men of solidity and standing33 in the commercial world; and George was very glad to eat good dinners, and to meet eligible34 men; but he never again asked his brother for the loan of odd hundreds.
He grubbed on, as best he might, in the dingy Gray’s-Inn chambers. Be had a little business — business which lay chiefly amongst men who wanted to borrow money, or whose halting footsteps required guidance through the quagmire35 of the Bankruptcy36 Court. He just contrived to keep his head above water, and his name in the Law-list, by means of such business; but the great scheme of his life remained as yet unripened, an undeveloped shadow to which he had in vain attempted to give a substance.
The leading idea of George Sheldon’s life was the idea that there were great fortunes in the world waiting for claimants; and that a share of some such fortune was to be obtained by any man who had the talent to dig it out of the obscurity in which it was hidden. He was a student of old county histories, and a searcher of old newspapers; and his studies in that line had made him familiar with many strange stories — stories of field-labourers called away from the plough to be told they were the rightful owners of forty thousand a year; stories of old white-haired men starving to death in miserable37 garrets about Bethnal-green or Spitalfields, who could have claimed lands and riches immeasurable, had they known how to claim them; stories of half-crazy old women, who had wandered about the world with reticules of discoloured papers clamorously asserting their rights and wrongs unheeded and unbelieved, until they encountered sharp-witted lawyers who took up their claims, and carried them triumphantly38 into the ownership of illimitable wealth.
George Sheldon had read of these things until it had seemed to him that there must be some such chance for any man who would have patience to watch and wait for it. He had taken up several cases, and had fitted link after link together with extreme labour, and had hunted in parish registers until the cold mouldy atmosphere of vestries was as familiar to him as the air of Gray’s Inn. But the cases had all broken down at more or less advanced stages; and after infinite patience and trouble, a good deal of money spent upon travelling and small fees to all manner of small people, and an incalculable number of hours wasted in listening to the rambling39 discourse40 of parish-clerks and oldest inhabitants, Mr. Sheldon had been compelled to abandon his hopes time after time, until a man with less firmly rooted ideas would have given up the hunting of registers and grubbing up of genealogies41 as a delusion42 and a snare43.
George Sheldon’s ideas were very firmly rooted, and he stuck to them with that dogged persistency44 which so often achieves great ends, that it seems a kind of genius. He saw his brother’s success, and contemplated45 the grandeurs of the gothic villa in a cynical46 rather than an envious47 spirit. How long would it all last? How long would the stockbroker float triumphantly onward48 upon that wonderful tide which is constituted by the rise and fall of the money-market?
“That sort of thing is all very well while a man keeps his head cool and clear,” thought George; “but somehow or other men always seem to lose their heads on the Stock Exchange before they have done with it, and I daresay my wise brother will drop into a nice mess sooner or later. Setting aside all other considerations, I think I would rather have my chances than his; for I speculate very little more than my time and trouble, and I stand in to win a bigger sum than he will ever get in his line, let stocks rise and fall as they may.”
During that summer in which Miss Halliday bade farewell to Hyde Lodge49 and her school-days, George Sheldon was occupied with the early steps in a search which he hoped would end in the discovery of a prize rich enough to reward him for all his wasted time and labour.
Very early in the previous year there had appeared the following brief notice in the Observer:—
“The Rev20. John Haygarth, late vicar of Tilford Haven50, Kent, died lately, without a will, or relation to claim his property, 100,000 pounds. The Crown therefore claimed it. And last court-day the Prerogative51 Court of Canterbury decreed letters of Administration to Mr. Paul, the nominee52 of the Crown.”
Some months after this an advertisement had been inserted in the Times newspaper to the following effect:—
“NEXT OF KIN4. — If the relatives or next of kin of the Rev. John Haygarth, late vicar of Tilford Haven, in the county of Kent, clerk, deceased, who has left property of the value of one hundred thousand pounds, will apply, either personally or by letter, to Stephen Paul, Esq., solicitor53 for the affairs of Her Majesty’s Treasury54, at the Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, London, they may hear of something to their advantage. The late Rev. John Haygarth is supposed to have been the son of Matthew Haygarth, late of the parish of St. Judith, Ullerton, and Rebecca his wife, formerly55 Rebecca Caulfield, spinster, late of the same parish; both long since deceased.”
Upon the strength of this advertisement George Sheldon began his search. His theory was that there always existed an heir-at-law somewhere, if people would only have the patience to hunt him or her out; and he attributed his past failures rather to a want of endurance on his own part than to the breaking down of his pet theory.
On this occasion he began his work with more than usual determination.
“This is the biggest chance I’ve ever had,” he said to himself, “and I should be something worse than a fool if I let it slip through my fingers.”
The work was very dry and dreary56, involving interminable hunting of registers, and questioning of oldest inhabitants. And the oldest inhabitants were so stupid, and the records of the registers so bewildering. One after another Mr. Sheldon set himself to examine the lines of the intestate’s kindred and ancestors; his father’s only sister, his grandfather’s brothers and sisters, and even to the brothers and sisters of his great-grandfather. At that point the Haygarth family melted away into the impenetrable darkness of the past. They were no high and haughty57 race of soldiers and scholars, churchmen and lawyers, or the tracing of them would have been a much easier matter. Burke would have told of them. There would have been old country houses filled with portraits, and garrulous58 old housekeepers59 learned in the traditions of the past. There would have been mouldering60 tombs and tarnished61 brasses62 in quiet country churches, with descriptive epitaphs, and many escutcheons. There would have been crumbling63 parchments recording64 the prowess of Sir Reginald, knight65, or the learning of Sir Rupert, counsellor and judge. The Haygarths were a race of provincial66 tradesmen, and had left no better record of their jog-trot journey through this world than the registry of births, marriages, and deaths in obscure churches, or an occasional entry in the fly-leaf of a family Bible.
At present Mr. Sheldon was only at the beginning of his work. The father and grandfather and uncle and great-uncles, the great-grandfather and great-great-uncles, with all their progenies, lay before him in a maze67 of entanglement68 which it would be his business to unravel69. And as he was obliged to keep his limited legal connection together while he devoted70 himself to this task, the work promised to extend over months, or indeed years; and in the meanwhile there was always the fear that some one else, as quick-witted and indefatigable71 as himself, would take up the same tangled72 skein and succeed in the unravelment of it. Looking this fact full in the face, Mr. Sheldon decided73 that he must have an able and reliable coadjutor; but to find such a coadjutor, to find a man who would help him, on the chance of success, and not claim too large a share of the prize if success came, was more than the speculative74 attorney could hope. In the meantime his work progressed very slowly; and he was tormented75 by perpetual terror of that other sharp practitioner76 who might be following up the same clue, and whose agents might watch him in and out of parish churches, and listen at street-corners when he was hunting an oldest inhabitant.
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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bribes
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| n.贿赂( bribe的名词复数 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂v.贿赂( bribe的第三人称单数 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂 | |
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instigated
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| v.使（某事物）开始或发生，鼓动( instigate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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firmament
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| n.苍穹；最高层 | |
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stockbroker
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| n.股票（或证券），经纪人（或机构） | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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kinsmen
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| n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 ) | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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innuendoes
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| n.影射的话( innuendo的名词复数 )；讽刺的话；含沙射影；暗讽 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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eligible
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| adj.有条件被选中的；(尤指婚姻等)合适(意)的 | |
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quagmire
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| n.沼地 | |
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bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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genealogies
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| n.系谱，家系，宗谱( genealogy的名词复数 ) | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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snare
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| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
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persistency
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| n. 坚持(余辉, 时间常数) | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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50
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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prerogative
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| n.特权 | |
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52
nominee
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| n.被提名者；被任命者；被推荐者 | |
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53
solicitor
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| n.初级律师，事务律师 | |
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54
treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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garrulous
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| adj.唠叨的，多话的 | |
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housekeepers
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| n.（女）管家( housekeeper的名词复数 ) | |
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mouldering
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| v.腐朽( moulder的现在分词 )；腐烂，崩塌 | |
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61
tarnished
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| （通常指金属）（使）失去光泽，（使）变灰暗( tarnish的过去式和过去分词 )； 玷污，败坏 | |
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62
brasses
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| n.黄铜( brass的名词复数 )；铜管乐器；钱；黄铜饰品（尤指马挽具上的黄铜圆片） | |
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crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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66
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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entanglement
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| n.纠缠，牵累 | |
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unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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indefatigable
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| adj.不知疲倦的，不屈不挠的 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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practitioner
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| n.实践者，从事者；(医生或律师等)开业者 | |
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