For the Term of His Natural Life | Page 6

duty," he said. "You have always hated and reviled me.
When by your violence you drove me from your house, you set spies to
watch me in the life I had chosen. I have nothing in common with you.
I have long felt it. Now when I learn for the first time whose son I
really am, I rejoice to think that I have less to thank you for than I once
believed. I accept the terms you offer. I will go. Nay, mother, think of
your good name."
Sir Richard Devine laughed again. "I am glad to see you are so well
disposed. Listen now. To-night I send for Quaid to alter my will. My
sister's son, Maurice Frere, shall be my heir in your stead. I give you
nothing. You leave this house in an hour. You change your name; you
never by word or deed make claim on me or mine. No matter what
strait or poverty you plead--if even your life should hang upon the
issue--the instant I hear that there exists on earth one who calls himself
Richard Devine, that instant shall your mother's shame become a public
scandal. You know me. I keep my word. I return in an hour, madam; let
me find him gone."
He passed them, upright, as if upborne by passion, strode down the
garden with the vigour that anger lends, and took the road to London.
"Richard!" cried the poor mother. "Forgive me, my son! I have ruined
you."
Richard Devine tossed his black hair from his brow in sudden passion
of love and grief.
"Mother, dear mother, do not weep," he said. "I am not worthy of your
tears. Forgive! It is I--impetuous and ungrateful during all your years of
sorrow--who most need forgiveness. Let me share your burden that I
may lighten it. He is just. It is fitting that I go. I can earn a name--a
name that I need not blush to bear nor you to hear. I am strong. I can
work. The world is wide. Farewell! my own mother!"

"Not yet, not yet! Ah! see he has taken the Belsize Road. Oh, Richard,
pray Heaven they may not meet."
"Tush! They will not meet! You are pale, you faint!"
"A terror of I know not what coming evil overpowers me. I tremble for
the future. Oh, Richard, Richard! Forgive me! Pray for me."
"Hush, dearest! Come, let me lead you in. I will write. I will send you
news of me once at least, ere I depart. So--you are calmer, mother!"
* * * * * *
Sir Richard Devine, knight, shipbuilder, naval contractor, and
millionaire, was the son of a Harwich boat carpenter. Early left an
orphan with a sister to support, he soon reduced his sole aim in life to
the accumulation of money. In the Harwich boat-shed, nearly fifty
years before, he had contracted--in defiance of prophesied failure--to
build the Hastings sloop of war for His Majesty King George the
Third's Lords of the Admiralty. This contract was the thin end of that
wedge which eventually split the mighty oak block of Government
patronage into three-deckers and ships of the line; which did good
service under Pellew, Parker, Nelson, Hood; which exfoliated and
ramified into huge dockyards at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Sheerness,
and bore, as its buds and flowers, countless barrels of measly pork and
maggoty biscuit. The sole aim of the coarse, pushing and hard-headed
son of Dick Devine was to make money. He had cringed and crawled
and fluttered and blustered, had licked the dust off great men's shoes,
and danced attendance in great men's ante-chambers. Nothing was too
low, nothing too high for him. A shrewd man of business, a thorough
master of his trade, troubled with no scruples of honour or of delicacy,
he made money rapidly, and saved it when made. The first hint that the
public received of his wealth was in 1796, when Mr. Devine, one of the
shipwrights to the Government, and a comparatively young man of
forty-four or thereabouts, subscribed five thousand pounds to the
Loyalty Loan raised to prosecute the French war. In 1805, after doing
good, and it was hinted not unprofitable, service in the trial of Lord
Melville, the Treasurer of the Navy, he married his sister to a wealthy

Bristol merchant, one Anthony Frere, and married himself to Ellinor
Wade, the eldest daughter of Colonel Wotton Wade, a boon companion
of the Regent, and uncle by marriage of a remarkable scamp and dandy,
Lord Bellasis. At that time, what with lucky speculations in the
Funds--assisted, it was whispered, by secret intelligence from France
during the stormy years of '13, '14, and '15--and the legitimate profit on
his Government contracts, he had accumulated a princely fortune, and
could afford to