CHAPTER VIII.

NEWS FROM INDIA.

All men have their eventful days, it has been said; hence the day after Lord Campsie's visit proved one most eventful to Gillian, who had been--more especially since the dinner at Piershill--apparently somewhat listless and distrait, while in reality full of corroding thought, vague anxiety, and incertitude.

On that morning--Gideon Gainswood never forgot it--there was to be a special meeting of the Presbytery, among whom he was a prominent figure, a shining light and powerful hand at prayer; various kirk extension schemes, and "overtures" of different kinds were to be considered, yet he was absent.

Important cases before the Lords which were to be heard that day were utterly forgotten, or committed entirely to the care of McCodicil, his Parliament House clerk; for news had come concerning the expedition against the Hill Tribes, and that seemed to absorb every thought of Gideon Gainswood.

He was seated in his office betimes as usual, at the leather-covered writing table, whereon lay many doquets of ominous-looking papers and parchments, title-deeds, processes, leases, and so forth, tied up in legal red tape, while around the room were tin boxes whereon were painted the names of his _clientela_, while a book-case close by was packed with law books and quarto tomes of the "Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session," and on a side-table were somewhat ostentatiously displayed piles of religious tracts and books of prayer.

He was seated, full of thought, pulling his thin under-lip unconsciously, while those cunning eyes of his, which seemed to have the faculty of looking behind him, were idly wandering over the columns of the morning paper, when suddenly he started as if he had received a galvanic shock, and nearly crushed the journal up. Then tremblingly he spread it out upon his desk and turned again to the paragraph which had excited him.

"Unfortunate affair with the Bhoteas--defeat and death of Colonel Lachlan Lamond," so ran the quotation from the "Times" of India. "We have elsewhere stated that an expedition, consisting of 500 Assam Light Infantry, a party of Sowars, and two steel mountain-guns, under that old and distinguished officer, had started from Bengal to punish the marauding Bhoteas. He destroyed their village of Mora and released many of their prisoners, but was compelled to fall back before the hordes that attacked him on every side, who mercilessly slew every wounded man and straggler. Among the slain was Colonel Lamond, who was last seen unhorsed, and fighting bravely, sword in hand, against incredible odds, till he fell pierced by their lance wounds. Thus has the Indian army lost one of its most distinguished officers, for Colonel Lamond served in the Affghan campaigns, including the storming of Ghuznee, the battle of Tizeen, and Sale's defence of Jelalabad."

Thrice did Gideon Gainswood read this paragraph ere he seemed to realise the whole situation; and then his cold, shifty eyes wandered, travelled, unconsciously as it were, to the tin charter-box which bore the unfortunate Colonel's name; anon he cast them upward, as he lay back in his chair, and planted his clenched hands on the desk before him.

"Killed! dead--dead--_dead!_" he muttered; exultation, savage joy, relief and safety, too, all oddly mingled in his deep and husky tone, and in the expression of his then most repellant visage.

Many emotions passed in a moment through the mind of the lawyer, in the vibration of a pendulum; conclusions, doubts, certainties, and contradictions followed each other thick and fast, while drops of perspiration gathered on his forehead.

To say that he looked relieved, is to give the mildest expression to what his features indicated. The man whose return home might have revealed the secret of a system which he had been pursuing with regard to himself and to his son Gillian, whom he had kept utterly in the dark as to what his heritage really was, had fallen in that distant strife, and the secret of the power he held over him--his brother-in-law--had died within him. He summoned his nephew from the next room.

"Have you seen the morning paper?" he asked, abruptly.

"No, uncle. I was busy with the release in that case of----"

"It contains bad news for you, Gillian. Your poor father is gone--read for yourself. God's will be done! His ways are not as our ways; nor are His thoughts as our thoughts. He slayeth and He maketh to live."

Greatly excited, Gillian read the astounding tidings again and again, and his affectionate heart went back to the days of his own infancy, and to the face of that only surviving parent of whom he had but a shadowy and indistinct recollection, but little more; and yet he had loved him dearly, for all his letters had been full of tenderness and affection; but, as the Colonel, unfortunately, until quite lately seemed unable to realise the fact that Gillian was approaching manhood, and quite capable of understanding his own affairs, all matters that were monetary or of other business, he had confided to Gideon Gainswood alone. And while Gillian was reading, with a very scared and crushed expression of face the fatal news, the former was muttering,

"Gone! gone! poor old Lachlan! alas! there is no peace on this side of the grave. May he find it on the other, far distant though the land be where that grave lies. But take comfort, Gillian; whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and thus are you chastened."

"Oh give me faith in this!" said Gillian, to Heaven rather than the speaker.

"Show your faith by your works, nephew; and now go break this most woful calamity, this sore dispensation of an all-wise Providence, to poor Dove. It will make some sad alterations in our late arrangements for you and her, I fear me--I fear me!"

Gillian withdrew, leaving Mr. Gainswood with his face buried in his hands, as if to control or conceal his emotions; but scarcely had the footsteps of the young man died away, than the former started up, gave by force of habit a stealthy look around him, and lifted the charter-box from the iron frame to the writing-table. Carefully selecting the key from a small bunch, which he always carried with him, and entrusted to none, he unlocked and took forth several documents.

One of these was the last will and testament of Lachlan Lamond, then a captain, leaving everything of which he might die possessed in money or otherwise to his only son Gillian, whom failing to his niece Dove Gainswood, whom failing to her father, whom failing to an orphan institution for the children of soldiers who died in the service.

The poor colonel's property was all money, amounting to nearly £30,000, remitted for the purpose--or towards it--of recovering Avon-na-gillian.

Of the money thus remitted by the colonel he had kept no separate account; but, in the vague hope that it might all come one day to himself, he had banked it all in his own name; so, but for the existence of this will, the fortune that was in reality Gillian's, but, of the existence of which he had been kept in total ignorance, would go to enhance the dowry of Dove; so, with such a sum as he could then offer as a bribe, Campsie, and even the consent of Viscount Kilsythe, would be doubly secure.

Overcome by the temptation to error and avarice, with the prospect of perfect immunity in case of the colonel's death, he had continued this system, and held these views for years--years that had neither been of regret nor repentance; but only of the hope that he might not, like some others of his kind, be found out.

The colonel was gone; but what evidence was there of the existence of the moneys disposed in the will? The Calcutta attorney who wrote it he knew to be dead; and the names of the witnesses, two brother officers, had long since disappeared from the army list. The document had evidently not been recorded anywhere. Had any one seen it?

The lawyer pondered and paused.

He knew that a will, unlike many other legal instruments, may be revoked by destroying or cancelling it; but he also knew that there had been cases where a will when last seen in the possession of the testator, if it could not be found after his death, the presumption was that he had destroyed it, _animo revocandi_. He had also known, in such cases, draft copies produced, and given in secondary evidence of the contents of the original.

Since this paper came into his possession, no human eye had seen it.

"Bah! though only so much waste paper, it will be as well out of existence. What thine heart findeth to do, do it with all thy might!" muttered Gainswood, as he turned up the gas jet, at which he was wont to seal letters, and deliberately committed to the flame sheet after sheet of the document, the very ashes of which he scattered and trod over the turkey carpet.

"Now--now," thought he, "to get rid of this hulking fellow, who stands between my daughter's prosperity and honour. I have no longer the colonel to dread; and now my Dove shall be Lady Campsie, Viscountess of Kilsythe, mistress of Campsie Hall, in the Midlands, and a dozen other places. If she doesn't love this young lord now, she shall learn to do so in time; she shall marry him first, and let the love come after when it may!"

And he almost hissed out the words as he relocked the charter-box, shot it back into its place, and had just time to adjust his visage to its usual calm and suave expression, and to affect to be writing intently, with a pen that had no ink in it, when Mr. McCodicil approached him on business, and he listened to what he had to say with half-averted face; for, save when in a rage, or bullying those who were at his mercy, Gideon Gainswood never looked any human being directly in the face, if he could avoid it.

He received with admirable resignation the condolences of his friends and brother elders on the severe dispensation of Heaven that had fallen upon him and especially Gillian,--for whom, he said to all, it would prove a sad and ruinous calamity indeed, poor fellow. For a time, he secretly liked all this; it was a creditable thing to have his brother-in-law, a colonel--he wished he had been a general,--killed in India; but he was nervously anxious that all note-books, papers, and letters of the deceased should be sent to him from Bengal, and wrote, and even telegraphed, for that purpose, but without avail; either no one knew anything about them, or his missives were unanswered.

"Good!" thought the lawyer; "the colonel's papers have perished with him; and I hope the Bhoteas (whoever they may be) have lit their pipes with the last of them!"