“You didn’t make much, I fear, of what I sent you about heirlooms,” said Mr. Dove, divining the purport of Mr. Camperdown’s visit.
“A great deal more than I wanted, I can assure you, Mr. Dove.”
“There is a common error about heirlooms.”
“Very common, indeed, I should say. God bless my soul! when one knows how often the word occurs in family deeds, it does startle one to be told that there isn’t any such thing.”
“I don’t think I said quite so much as that. Indeed, I was careful to point out that the law does acknowledge heirlooms.”
“But not diamonds,” said the attorney.
“I doubt whether I went quite so far as that.”
“Only the Crown diamonds.”
“I don’t think I ever debarred all other diamonds. A diamond in a star of honour might form a part of an heirloom; but I do not think that a diamond itself could be an heirloom.”
“If in a star of honour, why not in a necklace?” argued Mr. Camperdown almost triumphantly.
“Because a star of honour, unless tampered with by fraud, would naturally be maintained in its original form. The setting of a necklace will probably be altered from generation to generation. The one, like a picture or a precious piece of furniture—”
“Or a pot or a pan,” said Mr. Camperdown, with sarcasm.
“Pots and pans may be precious, too,” replied Mr. Dove. “Such things can be traced, and can be held as heirlooms without imposing too great difficulties on their guardians. The Law is generally very wise and prudent, Mr. Camperdown;—much more so often than are they who attempt to improve it.”
“I quite agree with you there, Mr. Dove.”
“Would the Law do a service, do you think, if it lent its authority to the special preservation in special hands of trinkets only to be used for vanity and ornament? Is that a kind of property over which an owner should have a power of disposition more lasting, more autocratic, than is given him even in regard to land? The land, at any rate, can be traced. It is a thing fixed and known. A string of pearls is not only alterable, but constantly altered, and cannot easily be traced.”
“Property of such enormous value should, at any rate, be protected,” said Mr. Camperdown indignantly.
“All property is protected, Mr. Camperdown;—although, as we know too well, such protection can never be perfect. But the system of heirlooms, if there can be said to be such a system, was not devised for what you and I mean when we talk of protection of property.”
“I should have said that that was just what it was devised for.”
“I think not. It was devised with the more picturesque idea of maintaining chivalric associations. Heirlooms have become so, not that the future owners of them may be assured of so much wealth, whatever the value of the thing so settled may be—but that the son or grandson or descendant may enjoy the satisfaction which is derived from saying, my father or my grandfather or my ancestor sat in that chair, or looked as he now looks in that picture, or was graced by wearing on his breast that very ornament which you now see lying beneath the glass. Crown jewels are heirlooms in the same way, as representing not the possession of the sovereign, but the time-honoured dignity of the Crown. The Law, which, in general, concerns itself with our property or lives and our liberties, has in this matter bowed gracefully to the spirit of chivalry and has lent its aid to romance;—but it certainly did not do so to enable the discordant heirs of a rich man to settle a simple dirty question of money, which, with ordinary prudence, the rich man should himself have settled before he died.”
The Turtle Dove had spoken with emphasis and had spoken well, and Mr. Camperdown had not ventured to interrupt him while he was speaking. He was sitting far back on his chair, but with his neck bent and with his head forward, rubbing his long thin hands slowly over each other, and with his deep bright eyes firmly fixed on his companion’s face. Mr. Camperdown had not unfrequently heard him speak in the same fashion before, and was accustomed to his manner of unravelling the mysteries and searching into the causes of Law with a spirit which almost lent poetry to the subject. When Mr. Dove would do so, Mr. Camperdown would not quite understand the words spoken, but he would listen to them with an undoubting reverence. And he did understand them in part, and was conscious of an infusion of a certain amount of poetic spirit into his own bosom. He would think of these speeches afterwards, and would entertain high but somewhat cloudy ideas of the beauty and the majesty of Law. Mr. Dove’s speeches did Mr. Camperdown good, and helped to preserve him from that worst of all diseases—a low idea of humanity.
“You think, then, we had better not claim them as heirlooms?” he asked.
“I think you had better not.”
“And you think that she could claim them—as paraphernalia?”
“That question has hardly been put to me—though I allowed myself to wander into it. But for my intimacy with
