Nextday Gervase received a communication from his bankers which filled him with the wildest amazement. This letter alarmed him when he saw it first. He thought that something had gone wrong—something new and unforeseen. When troubles come unexpectedly, overwhelming a man, his imagination gets demoralised, and expects nothing but further trouble—every footstep heard on the road seems to be that of a bearer of ill news. And when Gervase saw the well-known initials of this firm uponthe envelope, his heart failed him. There must be some new call, he thought—some unthought-of creditor must have turned up. Or he must have miscalculated his little balance. Something must be wrong. He opened the letter slowly, with fear and trembling. And the first reading of it conveyed no meaning to his confused mind. Ten thousand pounds! What was this about ten thousand pounds? A faint but incredible ray of light came into his mind at the second reading. He did not believe it. It was some trick of fancy, some delusion of his perturbed spirit, some practical joke at the best. Again: he rubbed his eyes, which smarted with want of sleep. Ten thousand pounds! It had got upon his brain, he thought; it was the scornful alternative Mr Thursley had flung at him,the concession that was an impossibility. Ten thousand pounds to settle upon Madeline. Ten thousand—angels to deliver him from a life he hated. Was he going mad? Had it all at last been too much for his brain?
He took up Messrs Liphook, Liss, & Co.’s letter, and read it over aloud:—
“Dear Sir,—We have the pleasure to inform you that a sum of ten thousand pounds has this day been paid into your account.”
“Dear Sir,—We have the pleasure to inform you that a sum of ten thousand pounds has this day been paid into your account.”
The words spoken audibly, though it was only by his own voice, aroused Gervase at last from his dazed and stupefied state. Was it true? It must be true! He rose up to his feet, to his full height, stretchinghis throat, throwing back his head to get breath, stifled by the wonder, the almost terror, the shock of this new thing. The very sum that had been named—the money that was to deliver him, to give him the desire of his eyes, to free him, to be his salvation. He had been sitting in the library in the deserted house, very gloomy, looking about the bookcases, thinking of the advertisements that would describe this “library of a gentleman,” about to be given to the auctioneer’s hammer. Some of the books were dear to him; the whole place had upon him that strong hold of the familiar, the always known, which it is so difficult to divest of its power. There was not much to admire in the heavy bookcases, the solid furniture, nor even in the bulk of the somewhat commonplace collection of booksno gentleman’s library could be without. But he had known it all his life; and the thought of the auctioneer, and all the vulgar tumult of the sale, was painful to him. He had been wondering if the money it would bring would be worth thinking of in the collapse of everything. But these thoughts all disappeared from his mind in a moment. For a little while after the extraordinary truth was fully apprehended he felt capable of thinking of nothing else. Ten thousand pounds! It is a sensation which comes to but few people in the world to receive such a sum unexpectedly, and at a moment when it is like life to the dead. Most people who get those windfalls have plenty of money already, and know all about them and are not excited. Ten thousand is not much when you havehundreds of thousands, and are (naturally, having so much to begin with) in the way of legacies and happy accidents of all kinds. But when you have nothing, that which in other circumstances would be but a pleasing surprise is apt to shake you to the depths of your being, and feel like a visible interposition from above. Gervase was so stunned, so overwhelmed, so uplifted, that for a time the mere fact was as much as he could grasp. And he had seized his hat and rushed out to tell Madeline of his wonderful miraculous good fortune, before it occurred to him to ask himself from whom could this windfall come?
The thought came upon him when he was half-way down the street on his way to his love. Who in all the world could have sent him ten thousand pounds? Fewpeople are able to bestow such a present, still fewer have the least inclination to do so. The wonder in Gervase’s mind was but momentary. It was answered as by a flash of lightning, by an instinctive unquestioning certainty of reply. And suddenly, instead of walking on as he had been doing, his rapid steps grew slow, his countenance flushed with sudden enlightenment, and then grew pale. “My father!”—he almost stopped short altogether, almost turned back. Who but his father could send him such a present? Who but he had interest enough in Gervase to come to his aid anonymously, silently? “My father:” he repeated it to himself. The first time it had been the cry of a sudden discovery, full of pleasure, an impulse too quick for thought. But the second had a tone in itof despair. A discovery of another kind came with the second thought. Nothing kept back! that had been his father’s glory and distinction. Was it thus for ever proved to be untrue?
He went into Madeline’s presence with almost reluctant steps, his joy over. He did not perceive what eyes less preoccupied must have done, that she was full of expectation, waiting for him with a visible anxiety and suspense, eager to hear something. He never even remarked this curious expectation in her, he was altogether absorbed in his own sensations. “What is it, Gervase?” she said, her breath coming quick, two spots of red upon her cheeks; but why she should show any excitement he did not even ask himself. “The most extraordinary thing has happened,” he said.
“What has happened? I saw at once in your face there was something. What is it? your father——”
“I suppose it must be my father,” he said, with a heavy long breath. “Madeline, ten thousand pounds—the very sum your father said—has been paid into the bank for me. I was wild with delight for a moment.”
“Ten thousand pounds, Gervase! Then you are freed!—it is not a question any longer between me and the life you hate. Thank heaven, you are free!”
“Yes,” he said, “I am free. I am no longer called upon to make any sacrifice—if I can make up my mind to accept.”
“To accept—Gervase!”
“Madeline,” said the young man, “nothing is so simple as it appears. There’s complications in everything. At first, I confess, I was overjoyed. It is miserable of me to grudge any sacrifice for you. You are worth far more than the giving up of my wretched instincts. Still, dear, I was glad, I must say. But then comes the thought—So far as I can see, this could come only from my father.”
“Well, Gervase?”
“And my father was honoured and praised for keeping back nothing. They gave him his house—the house my only property—to show their sense of the fact that he had kept back nothing. Don’t you see the irony of it? He must have kept back—who can tell what?—when he has enough to send me this. Oh, Madeline, it makes my heart sick!”
Madeline’s countenance was a wonderfulsight, had he had eyes to see it. She grew very red, her eyes filled: an air of impatient vexation, almost beyond her control, came into her face. But Gervase noted nothing, being fully occupied with his own thoughts.
“I ask myself, can I use this money which has been subtracted from cooked accounts—which has been withdrawn from its first honest purpose of paying his creditors—which is false money, dishonest money? Good heavens! Madeline, my darling, have pity on me—don’t think me a fool. My father, whom I always trusted—whom I thought an honourable man——”
“You have no right,” said Madeline, in a voice which was low and trembling, “to say that he is not an honourable man.”
“If he has sent me this—and who elsecould have sent it?—how can I ever believe in him more? He paid his creditors only 15s. in the pound, and got credit for having kept back nothing—while all the while—— How,” cried Gervase, walking about the room with hasty steps, “how can I use money—that has been so procured?”
Two hasty tears fell from Madeline’s eyes. “Oh, this is too much,” she said to herself quickly—but Gervase was too much taken up with his own emotions to observe hers, and she dried the tears with a hurried hand.
“Gervase,” she said, in a tone which was not without slight traces of exasperation, “you have at least paid all your father’s debts—in full.”
“Thank heaven!” he said.
“Well, how do you know he has notheard of that, and—and pays you back like this? Much more likely than that he knew you had special occasion for the money. How should he know? But he would hear you had paid his debts, and he gives it you back.”
Gervase shook his head. “I would give it all,” he cried, “ten times told, to make sure that he did not wilfully, consciously, to the detriment of his creditors, keep this back.”
“At the worst,” she said, evidently compelling herself to patience, “they are all paid; there is nobody to whom it is due.”
“No one that I know of; but, Madeline——”
“Oh,” she cried, almost wildly, “don’t bring up any more objections, Gervase! If it is your father’s, it is only right thathe should provide for you. You have paid everything for him. You have no right to refuse him, or to make a fuss about the money. Don’t say any more! or it is I who will go out of my senses,” she cried, suddenly bursting into an almost hysterical flood of tears, which she had no power to restrain.
This brought Gervase to his senses. He was—oh, so tender of her weakness, of the excited nerves of which she had lost control, and the evident long tension of her feelings, which had broken at last. He took her into his arms and soothed her, calling her by every tender name he could think of. “What a brute I am—to torment you with all my whims and scruples! All you say is like gospel, Madeline. I know, I know it is all true. I don’t knowwhat I deserve for troubling you with these idiotic fancies of mine. I know I ought to be too thankful that everything is thus made possible for us. And so I shall be when I have time to think. It is only the first shock, the conviction that my father——”
“Gervase,” she said, “don’t let any one but me hear you speak of him as you have done. He is your father. And how can you tell whether he is to blame? By you at least he should never be made to appear so. I feel sure—that he is not to blame.”
“If you think so, I will think so too,” he cried fervently. And he did his best to keep his word. He kept it at least in her presence, while her faith influenced him. If his heart sank when he was alone, nobody was the wiser. And, indeed, from this moment the pace of events was so much accelerated that Gervase had much less time to think. Mr Thursley received the news of his sudden accession of wealth with a long whistle, in which was surprise, yet something else besides surprise. “I thought as much,” he said, nodding his head; but what he thought he did not explain. He went chuckling about the house for the remainder of the day, uttering now and then a broken exclamation in which there was something about an old fox. Gervase was wise enough to ask no explanations. He felt in his heart that Mr Thursley thought as he did, but was not wounded as he was by the thought: and the young man breathed a sigh of relief, and thanked heaven that he was freed for ever fromthose methods and tenets, which made it not entirely blamable in a man to hold back something that was not his, and make meet provision for his own necessities, while preserving the semblance of perfect honour to others. He himself had to keep silence, or to consent to be considered ultra-fantastical even by the woman he loved. He yielded to fate, not willingly, with a sense of repugnance, and resistance which would have seemed extraordinary, unjustifiable almost to all reasonable people. Perhaps it was no great shadow among all the brightness that now surrounded him, but still he felt it to the bottom of his heart.
Themarriage followed with little delay, and Mr Thursley’s settlements on his daughter were not illiberal. Gervase paid but little attention to these business preliminaries, except to settle the ten thousand pounds so opportunely but so unsatisfactorily bestowed upon him, upon Madeline; it seemed to him that he had nothing to do with the matter. The house sold well, and brought him enough for his merely personal needs, and it was a kind of relief to his mind thatthe equivocal ten thousand did not, so to speak, soil his own fingers at all, but went at once to Madeline—which was a fantastical consolation, since, of course, their produce formed a large part of the income upon which the young pair had to live. They set themselves up in a pretty old-fashioned house, happily discovered in a ramble, and bearing a dilapidated aspect which delighted both. They made of it a paradise, according to their enlightened notions, too enlightened to be altogether in bondage to Liberty and Burnet, yet using these pioneers of art judiciously, and finding a great deal of entertainment in the old furniture shops through which they made many raids, scorning the recognised artists in that particular, the Gillows,and the Jacksons and Grahams, as is the manner of their kind. Even Gervase, it must be allowed, got a great deal of entertainment out of the furnishing, notwithstanding the various cares which lay upon his heart.
He had made all possible inquiries, it need scarcely be said, at once at the bank to endeavour to trace the money—but in vain; and he had set on foot all the researches that were practicable to find some trace of his father. But it would seem, though it is a theory rather against modern notions, that it is more easy for a man to disappear than for the most experienced pursuers to find him. He was asked for over half America, which is a big word; he was sought in Australia; the foreign baths and watering-places, where it was so very unlikely such a man should go, were ransacked for him: but no trace, not so much as a footprint, anywhere could be found. He had disappeared as criminals often do, and innocent people sometimes, and after a long period of ineffectual exertions, the pursuit was given up. Whether Gilbert, the man left in charge of the house, knew anything, Gervase never could find out; but if he did, he was proof against all inducements to speak, and never betrayed his old master.
And the young people settled down, far from the excitements and cares of that business life which Gervase had evaded so successfully, in what is perhaps the most enjoyable of all the ordinary paths of modern existence. All paths of existenceare tolerable when people are young and happy and not badly off, though it is not always that these favourites of fortune recognise the fact. Gervase had been one of the most obstinate in his struggle against it, and the most determined to have his own way. Perhaps he considered now that his happiness was owing to the persistence with which he had struggled for his own way. At all events, he had the grace to be very happy, and grumbled no more. He was not indeed a person of literary genius, but he was a man with a subject, which in many cases answers better, as a means of acquiring reputation at least. He had studied very closely, during his forced residence there, the conditions of the West Indian islands. It is a subject of which there are butfew qualified exponents. He had seen a great deal of all classes, from the impracticable negro to the demoralised Englishman. Agents, lawyers, all the curious insular community had revealed themselves to him. His experience and his observations were both to be respected, and gave him authority. And he thus acquired rapidly—much more rapidly than had he been a man of genius—a certain recognised position and reputation. He had his subject, in which he was competent to criticise the very first of fine writers, and even with the aid of facts to put him down.
It was some years after these events, and when the young pair had already provided themselves with a sort of a curb upon their wanderings in the shapeof a nursery, that they made an expedition in the summer to the Lake country. It was comparatively early in the year, before the time of the tourists had begun, and they had the lakes and dales comparatively to themselves. They were wandering along the side of one of the lesser lakes one evening, when it lay in the ecstasy of sunset and silence, commemorated by the poet of those northern wilds. “Silent as a nun, breathless with adoration.” The hills that clustered round in every imaginable peak and slope, like a hundred fantastic yet sympathetic spectators, were appearing over each other’s shoulders, each in its turn catching the last gleam of the light. Our travellers had been wandering along, lingering over every new combination, pointing out toeach other new wonders, over and over again repeated. Finally, as the light began to forsake them, Madeline had gone on a little in advance, while Gervase paused to gather, in a marshy corner close to the lake, a flower which was characteristic of that country and rare in other places. He followed her in about ten minutes, with wet feet, but carrying his flower in triumph. They had passed in the morning a pretty house, half cottage, half villa, near the water, and had remarked its cheerful little lawn, the small protecting shrubbery round, its sheltered position under the lea of a great cliff which protected it from the east and north, and the abundance of flowers everywhere. As Gervase came along the road now, hurrying to overtake Madeline, he saw aburly figure approaching the gate. There was too little light to make the features distinguishable at such a distance, but something in the man’s walk and the outline of his figure made the young man’s heart stop beating. What a strange familiar aspect the passing figure bore! the shape and outline, the way in which he planted his feet, the measure of his step, the coat thrown back a little from his chest. Gervase stood still, and his breath came quick. The man at whom he was gazing ascended soberly to the sloping path round the lawn. The door opened, and two or three children burst out, receiving him with cries of welcome. He took up one, an infant, in his arms, and disappeared within the door.
Gervase had dropped his flower in the shock of this apparition. He found himself standing breathless in the middle of the road, staring blankly at the house within which this stranger had disappeared. He was bewildered, stupefied, and yet excited, he could scarcely tell how. By what?—by nothing that he could put into words: by an impression of something well known, familiar as his own voice, and yet so strange, unexpected, impossible. While he stood thus astonished, undecided, not knowing what to think, the sound of hurrying footsteps filled the silence, and Madeline suddenly appeared running towards him. She put out her hands and grasped his arm. “Gervase, Gervase! did you see him?” she cried.
“Whom? I saw—a man going up to that house.”
“A man! Then you did not see—you did not recognise——” She leant against him, out of breath with haste and agitation.
“Madeline, you don’t think——? There was something in his walk—and his figure.”
“I think nothing—I saw him—he passed me quite close. I saw him as plainly as I see you.”
“Could it be—a mere chance resemblance? Such things are.”
“No—I could not be mistaken. It was your father. I don’t think he noticed me at all. He was looking at the house with the air of a man going home.”
“There were children,” said Gervase.
“He can only be—a visitor.”
At that moment some one above them among the shrubberies came out, and calling apparently from the back of the house towards the stables, bade some one else come in—come in directly; for the master had just come home.
The two on the road looked at each other with wondering eyes. They were both very much excited—a discovery so strange, so unlikely and unlooked for, and surrounded with circumstances so bewildering, confused every sense. They stood for some minutes consulting what they should do. Gervase was so much astounded, so taken aback by what he had seen, that he inclined to the supposition of a resemblance. “There were children,” he repeated, blankly. But Madeline had no sort of doubt.After a while they went back to their inn, which was a small and homely one in the bosom of a valley, little frequented by visitors, where the landlady herself cooked their dinners, and came and looked on, kindly urging them to eat, while they consumed it. They asked her who lived in the house close by, and received at once the fullest explanations. “Very quiet folks, but most respectable—the gentleman a deal older than his good lady. No, they’ve not been very long here—four or five years, not more. Very particular about their newspapers and things coming; but just very quiet folks, staying in their own house summer and winter, and seeing no company. She’s just an uncommon nice lady, and very friendly—and will stop for a chat without a bit of pride; but he keepshimself to himself, being a kind of an elderly gentleman.”
“Do you know his name?” Madeline asked; for Gervase in his bewilderment was scarcely capable of speech.
“Do I know his name?—bless me! you must think us queer folks—as well as I know my own. He’s Mr Burton, and the house is Hillhead. You’ll maybe know the gentleman?”
“I think—my husband knows him,” Madeline said.
To find that there was no concealment,—that the man who had disappeared so strangely was living here in perfect unblemished respectability and security, with no mystery about him, increased in the most curious way the excitement of the discovery. But there arose, at this point,a remarkable difference between the young pair. For Madeline, bewildered by the thought of the unsuspected domestic establishment, did all she could to convince her husband that to go away and take no notice was the kindest and best thing to do. “You can write,” she said. “It would embarrass him to see you. He would have to explain. Gervase, don’t disturb the seclusion he has chosen.” She grew quite warm upon this subject, with an uneasy look in her eyes.
“There is no reason why he should be embarrassed. I am not his judge. But I must see him,” Gervase said. They spent a disturbed and anxious night, so disturbed by the strange discovery, so startled by the circumstances, that neither slept much. And in the morning, notwithstandingMadeline’s opposition, Gervase set out to see the lost father, who had thus reversed all natural circumstances. Hillhead looked brighter than ever in the morning sunshine. The lake lay at the foot of the knoll, like a sheet of silver. Two or three tiny children were playing upon the lawn. As Gervase approached the door, the master of the house came out with a newspaper in his hand and a cigar. He sat down in a wicker chair upon the lawn. He cast a glance upon the lovely landscape and the playing children. The air of a man entirely at his ease, under his own vine and his own fig-tree, was in every movement. Gervase’s step, in his agitation, was very quick and light. Apparently it was not till he was quite near that it was heard by the comfortable paterfamilias with his newspaper.Then one of the children, a little girl of four or five, startled by the sight of the stranger, ran and stood by her father’s knee. “What is it?” Gervase heard him say. And then he looked up from behind the newspaper, and the father and son met. Mr Burton was evidently much startled. He rose hastily from his chair, dropping his paper. A curious tremor seemed to come over his solid well-set-up figure, that of a vigorous man of sixty or so. Men do not blush easily at that age; but there came a wave of hot colour over his face. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then—“Why, Gervase, how have you managed to find me out at the end of the world?” he said, with a nervous attempt at a laugh. Gervase saw, agitated as he himself was, the hurried glance at the children, whichmade his father look like a prodigal discovered.
He explained hurriedly that it was mere chance which had brought him here, and with great embarrassment, that he had tried every means of discovering his father’s whereabouts for years, but in vain.
“That is strange,” Mr Burton said. He had, in the meantime, reassured himself by seeing that the embarrassment was fully more great on the part of Gervase than on his own. “That is strange: for I have attempted no concealment. I have been living here, as you may have discovered, ever since I—left London.”
“Yes,” said Gervase, “we have heard. I saw you last night, sir, coming home—though too far off to be more than startled by your walk and figure, which I felt Irecognised—but Madeline met you in the road.”
“Madeline! To be sure, you are married! I have to congratulate you, Gervase.”
“And I,” said the young man, “have to thank you, father. But for the money you sent me so generously—so opportunely——”
“The money I sent you!”
“That ten thousand pounds——”
“Ten thousand pounds! You must be dreaming. I have not ten thousand pence—more than I require for myself.”
“Then it was not from you?”
“Certainly it was not from me. I thought you provided for with the money you brought from the West Indies—which, as I saw by the papers, you threw away.Certainly after that exploit, if I had been able to spare ten thousand pounds, I should not have sent it to you to make ducks and drakes of.” Mr Burton was too glad of the opportunity to regain a position more befitting their relationship, and Gervase was too much lost in the confusion of his thoughts to say a word; but the prodigal father was suddenly brought down from this brief superiority by the sudden appearance at the door of a pretty young woman, half lady, half housekeeper, who, calling to him as Mr Burton, begged to know whether the meat was coming by the coach, or if the butcher——. She paused when she saw the stranger, and said, “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t see as any one was with you,”—retreating again, though not without a lingering lookof curiosity. Again the flush of an unbecoming embarrassment passed over Mr Burton’s face.
“Come here, Mary,” he said. “Gervase, this is my wife. We—we—were married some years before I—left.”
She rubbed her hand surreptitiously with her apron before she held it out. “Will—the gentleman stay to dinner, Mr Burton?” she said.
The eyes of the father and son met. In the one there was an appeal for forbearance, an apology, an entreaty. Do not disturb my peace, they seemed to say. In the other nothing but confusion and bewilderment. Gervase said hastily, “We are going away this morning.” He saw the look of relief in Mr Burton’s eyes with a sympathetic sensation. He, himself, wanted nothing so much as to get away.
Young Mrs Burton lingered a little. She called her children about her—a pretty group—evidently with the intention of showing her husband’s friend, with natural pride, what there was to be said on her side. Mr Burton looked at them with a less justifiable but not less natural pride, not untouched with shame, in his elderly eyes. “That will do, that will do, Mary; take them away,” he cried. Then he said, turning to his son, “I see you agree with me, Gervase, that it’s better not to disturb her mind. She’s a very good wife to me, and takes great care of me—and the children.”
“They are beautiful children,” said Gervase.
“Are they not?” cried the old gentleman, exultant. But he checked himself, and put a few formal questions about his son’s affairs, walking with him towards the gate. “I am very glad to have seen you,” he said—“sincerely glad. You can let me know when anything particular happens. Otherwise don’t trouble about correspondence. And I need not ask you to say nothing about your discovery, nor my present address, nor——”
“You may rely upon me, father.”
“That’s quite enough—that’s quite enough. God bless you, my boy! I am sincerely glad to have seen you—good-bye, good-bye!” Mr Burton said.
Gervase walked back along the lake-side, with a clouded brow and a bewildered mind. He could not think of his father’s strangenew position, for thinking of the mystery rediscovered in his own life. If it did not come from Mr Burton, from whom did it come, that ten thousand pounds? He met Madeline about half-way to the inn. She told him she had been too much excited to rest; that she had come to meet him out of pure nervousness. “Tell me all about it,” she said, looking in his face with very bright, feverish, uneasy eyes.
“Madeline,” he said, “my father did not send me that ten thousand pounds.”
“Dear Gervase, is that all you have to tell me? Tell me about him, abouther, about those children.”
“If my father did not send it, who did? There is no other question in the world for me till I know this. I must find out. I am going home at once.”
“Let us go by all means; but that is an old affair. Surely now you may let it rest.”
He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her face. “You would not answer so lightly if it were as much a mystery to you as to me. Madeline, at least tell me the truth.”
She freed herself from his hold and from his gaze, with a burst of nervous laughter; then clinging to his arm, and pressing her head against his shoulder, made her confession. “It was the ten thousand pounds my old aunt left me to be at my own disposal—nobody knew but old Mr Mentore, who did not disapprove. You wanted it only to settle it upon me. Gervase, what was the harm?”
“Only that you played a trick upon me, Madeline, when I trusted you so entirely—only that you have deceived me into owing you everything, when I thought——”
“And are you so ungenerous,” she cried, “so formal, so conventional, Gervase—oh, forgive me for saying it—as to mind? Would you rather we had not married, had not loved perhaps, had not been happy—to save your pride?”
It is a fine thing to assume indignation and a high superiority to sublunary motives. Gervase was beaten down by this appeal and reproach. He was in fact a very happy man; and he knew, which was a great solace to that pride which he could not have met otherwise, that he was a very creditable husband. And it was indeed all past, and could not be changed. He didnot maintain a grudge for such a cause against his wife.
But it cannot be denied that it gave him many thoughts. This anxious mysterious world in which even the nearest and dearest can thus deceive each other; where thoughts unknown to us go on within the heads that share our very pillow, and secret stories exist in the soberest and most well regulated of lives. What a strange world it is! and how little we know!
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.