Gervase Burtonsoon discovered that to get home in three months was quite beyond his powers. He had calculated without his West Indies. He did not know the ways of that much-delaying,far niente, tropical place. Half-a-dozen times, when he thought that he had completed all his arrangements, he discovered that he had to begin from the very beginning again. The three months grew into six. The height of the tropical summer was reached, but still he didnot get away. At the last moment he had to put off his departure for two different mails. At last he really did conclude all his business, and in a moderately successful way. The Burton plantation had continued to be one of the few successful ones; and its affairs were pulled out of confusion and established on a better footing, and everything wound up, before the young man could complete the sale which was the crown of his efforts. He did so successfully at last in the beginning of May, and, with the values which he had received in payment of the estate safely disposed of, part of them to be remitted to London, part carried with him, had the satisfaction of taking his place in the mail-steamer. His correspondence had been interrupted for some weeks previous to this,successive delays having made it impossible for him to receive his letters regularly as at first; and it was accordingly with a double eagerness for home, as knowing very imperfectly what might be going on there, that he set out at last.
His chief correspondent during this period of exile, it is needless to say, had been Madeline. His father had written from time to time; but Mr Burton did not pretend to keep up anything beyond a business correspondence. His first communication had informed Gervase that he had taken his advice and made young Wickham a partner in the house, an intimation which had a curious effect upon the young man. By some extraordinary inconsistency he did not like it! It made his heart beat in his breast uneasily, witha sensation almost of pain. He thought instinctively of what Madeline had said that the vacant place was not for the first comer, it was for himself and no other. He had rejected it, and he had advised that Wickham should have it; but when it was done according to his advice, he was not pleased. These contradictions of nature are ridiculous, but still they happen from time to time. After that he heard little from his father, and, with unfounded acrimony, set this down to Wickham’s influence,—Wickham, who had always been almost servile in devotion to him, and who, no doubt, was quite aware to whom he owed his elevation.
Madeline’s letters were always regular by every mail—always long, always sweet, full of tenderness and consolation and news,and all the comforting details which a woman’s letters, but seldom a man’s, supply. He did not really require any other correspondent so long as he had Madeline to set everything before him. But for two or three mails even her letters had failed. She had thought him on his way to England while he was still delayed in Jamaica; and though he had let them know by telegraph of his detention, he could not get the letters which had not been written. He started, therefore, at least three weeks behind the current news of home.
Everything went well on the homeward voyage until after the steamer had made its last stop among the island ports, and had at last set out on the full Atlantic, with nothing between it and England savethe wastes of the ocean. The passengers had all provided themselves with the latest papers—chief among them those just arrived by the mail-steamer from home—when they made this last call on their homeward-bound voyage. Gervase had his handful of papers like all the rest, and was reading them with devotion—the politics, the discussions, the literature, the books, amid which he hoped to be in a few days more. There were other portions of the news upon which, perhaps, he did not look with so much interest, or hurried over with a glance.
“I say, Burton,” said a fellow-passenger, “is this any relation of yours?” looking up from the paper he was reading.
“Eh? What is it?” Gervase asked, half-hearing. The passenger cast a hurried glance down the page and then said hastily——
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I see it can’t be;” and presently hurried away, carrying his paper with him.
Gervase did not give much importance to this quickly stifled query; but when another gentleman on board whom he knew approached him a little later on, and asked, with an exceedingly grave face, when he had last heard from his father, a sudden alarm sprang up in his mind.
“I have heard nothing for some weeks,” he said. “I have had to put off sailing for mail after mail before I could get my business done.”
“Oh,” said the other, “then you have had no news?”
“What is wrong with my father?” criedGervase. “I see you know something. Is he ill?”
“I hope not; I hope not indeed. But I know absolutely nothing,” his old friend said.
These words made Gervase perfectly sure that something was known, something which he did not know; and it was then he remembered the careless exclamation of the other, “Can this be any relation of yours?” There must evidently be some record of trouble in the papers which nobody would venture to tell him. He hurried to the cabin and found a group there gathered round one who seemed expounding the matter to them. “I believe his son would not enter the office, so he was forced to take another partner—who seems to have brought him to ruin.”
“Is it the languid young man who is here?” asked another.
“Hush! don’t let everybody hear,” said the first speaker. “I don’t believe he knows.”
Gervase did not ask any questions, but he possessed himself of the papers in silence. It was certain that there must be something there which concerned him deeply. He carried them off to his own cabin, where he could be alone; but it was some time before he could find the particulars he sought. At last he found them. “Great Panic in the City—Failure of the old-established firm of Burton, Baber, & Company.” Something suddenly lighted up in Gervase’s veins which he had never felt before—the fire of the commercial blood. The word “failure” seemed to strike him like a blow. He devouredevery word. All his old affectation of taking no interest in the business news, of avoiding the money article—what dismal affectation he felt it in this sudden blaze of enlightenment! Failure!—bankruptcy! Heaven above! what idiocy! what childish folly! And now what horror and shame! He turned from one paper to another, reading everything. Recent speculations, for which a new partner was supposed to be chiefly responsible, changing the character of the business, and the downfall of certain firms with which Messrs Burton, Baber, & Co. were connected, were given as the causes of the bankruptcy, which had taken everybody by surprise, and filled the City with dismay. So respectable a firm; a name so well known and honoured. The catastrophehad sent a thrill through the whole mercantile community. And then there were calculations as to the firm’s power of meeting its engagements. Putting one thing with another, Mr Burton’s well-known wealth and the fact that the embarrassments were of very recent origin, one paper ventured to believe that the creditors would lose but little; while another stated even the possible amount of the composition—15s. in the pound at the least, for Mr Burton had declared his determination to give up everything. All this Gervase read like a man in a dream. To think that it should be his father, his house, his honour, which were thus being discussed, and he to know nothing! To think that such trouble should overcome his family and he be far away, unable to give any help!And the horror of knowing nothing, of having received no warning, of being, as it were, left out altogether, affected Gervase as perhaps nothing else could have done. Those mails which he had been obliged to miss, one after another; the long interval which now separated him from all knowledge of his home; the apparent blank of silence which had fallen even between him and Madeline, and which it was almost impossible not to connect in some way with the misfortune that had befallen his family, seemed at once to paralyse and to madden. And he could not quicken the pace of the ship, which was exposed to all the exasperating delays of wind and tide; nor lessen the breadth of the pathless sea, which lay blank between him and those who needed him. In one only of thenewspapers was there any reference made to Mr Burton’s son, who was believed to be in the West Indies on the business of the firm, but who was not spoken of as likely to affect its fortunes, one way or other. He was left out of all the calculations—an individual of no practical importance. And Wickham, the man whom his father had taken in at his suggestion, the interloper put in his place, supplanting the son of the house (Gervase did not reflect by what astonishing breaches of all logic and unconscious perversions of fact he thus brought himself to describe Wickham)—it was he who had ruined and dishonoured the house that had bred him, sheltered him, raised him to the highest trust. And whose fault was it? that of Gervase, and no other; in all things it was he who was to blame.
How to endure the long hours, the long days at sea, the succession of meals and promenades about the deck, and talks and foolish jestings and laughter! He could not shut himself up entirely from the intercourse which on shipboard it is so difficult to escape; but the crackling of thorns under the pot would not have been half so vain, as the foolish, vague conversation about nothing, the feeble pleasantries at which everybody laughed, seemed to Gervase. The flirtations and the love-making, in which he had taken a certain amused interest, seemed now to carry personal offence to him. He was interested in nothing but the record of the sailing—how many knots had been done each day, how many more days must elapse before their arrival. The progress over those blankillimitable wastes is so difficult to realise, every day seeming like yesterday; no difference in the weltering waters, no new feature to show that there is any real advance, the turn of a wheel nearer home. To do him justice, it was of his father alone Gervase thought at first, with an aching anxiety to be with him, and a fever of alarm as to the effect that downfall, so unexpected, and, as his son was sure, undeserved, would have upon him. Would it kill him, either body or mind? break his heart, shatter his health, move him with some wild, horrible impulse of despair? Or would it undermine and break down the mind, and turn the clear-headed man of business into imbecility and mental ruin? It might have killed him, it might have driven him mad. Oh for the lengthof the days and the slowness of any mortal voyage, whether by land or sea!
Afterwards, however, Gervase had some thoughts of himself and his loss breaking in. He thought of Madeline, who was silent, who in this moment of trouble could not stand by him, with at first an unreasonable sense of desertion, though he knew very well all the time that she had not deserted him; and then he thought of the consolation it would be only to get a sight of her, only to hear her voice, and that she would never forsake him; and then finally, with a leap of his heart, to meet a great exciting danger, of her father. What would his attitude be? Could he be expected for a moment to receive a man who was really penniless? No question now of an allowance, of comparativepoverty, but really poor, without a righteous sixpence in the world; and the son of a bankrupt! “No, no,” Gervase said to himself, “not that.” A man who was Madeline’s father could not descend so far as to say or to think that. Poor father, betrayed by his son! Unhappy son, who had abandoned his father! Thus the ring of thought went round again to its beginning, and once more the knell of his family reputation rang in Gervase’s ears. A bankrupt, his father! his father, who held commercial soundness so high, a bankrupt! And then the young man would spring to his feet, and rush up to the bridge, and face the wind blowing strong against the ship, and the weltering world of sea, and the monotonous lines of cloud. The vast space seemed never to lessen. One morning broke after another, with the same hopeless breadth of unmeasured distance; and though the steamer throbbed on and on, and panted and struggled like his own heart, yet the wind was always in the face of the ship, always against him, in a conspiracy to keep him from home.
Poor father! poor father! that was the most persistent thought of all. Would any one be kind to him in his downfall? Would it be understood that it was his son’s fault, his only son, who, wretched coxcomb and fool, would not go into the business, would not lend his help to keep the vessel of their fortunes straight, but must needs recommend a false pilot, a traitor, for that post? He could not do justice to Wickham at this stage of his thoughts. He could only think of him asa traitor, a man who had betrayed his benefactor, and turned all that he ought to have been into all that a man should not be.
And with these seas and billows of thought, now flinging him up, now flinging him down, the monotonous screw went on rumbling and working, and the engines throbbing, against a head wind; and the long horizon spread out, and the distance spread unmeasured, and day followed day, bringing him perceptibly no nearer home.
Needlessto say, however, that monotonous as the days were, and blank the distance, time and the hour, and that unmelodious screw got through them. Gervase landed at Queenstown, taking with him every newspaper he could collect as he hurried to the railway. But to be sure, all that he could get was the issue of that day, not the now far back numbers which would have carried on the story for which he thirsted. That story was now over; it had ended, and there was no more of it. Burton,Baber, & Co. had gone down like a stone in that sea of mishaps and misadventure; the public interest had deserted it, and no man spoke of it any more. Gervase, when he came to think, saw very quickly how it was, and called himself a fool to expect anything different; but yet the shock of the disappointment was great. He sat ruminating it as the train dashed along through the silence of the night. It went quickly, making more visible progress than the steamboat, yet was ever slow to the galloping thoughts which were there and back again, impatient of their incompetence to attain any knowledge, a hundred times in an hour. At last he reached London on a mild and misty morning of May. The air was full of a quiet drizzle, the pavements wet with the mild innocent rain.There was nobody to meet him, naturally enough, for nobody knew that this was the day of his arrival. He could not help thinking that had Madeline been arriving, miserable and full of trouble, he would have divined it. He did not even know where to go, in the sudden ignorance which had come upon him of all his own most intimate affairs. He could scarcely expect to find his father still at Harley Street, but this was the only place to which he could go, where he must, at least, find an address, something to guide him. It was miserable to put his portmanteaux into a cab, not knowing where he was to find a shelter; for though he gave Harley Street as his destination, he felt as if he were about to drive vaguely through the cold streets, he knew not whither, in search of some spotin which he could take refuge. It seemed another day of feverish suspense before he got to the well-known street, where everything looked so terribly the same as usual, as if no change had happened. When he reached the door, and dashing out before the cab had stopped, knocked loudly with a summons that seemed to wake echoes all round, and to go through and through his own aching brain, Gervase had come to the extreme limit of his strength. He felt helplessly that he had no voice left with which to ask the question, “Where has my father gone?”
To his utter astonishment—an astonishment which was at the same time collapse—he found himself gazing speechless into the face of his father’s old servant. Gilbert opened to him as he had done a thousandtimes, and stood with a faint smile of welcome on his face, holding it wide for him to enter. Gervase could only stand and stare and gasp. The sight of the familiar face, the unchanged aspect of everything, overwhelmed him more completely than the strange and stern novelty which he expected, would have done. A mist came over his eyes. He stumbled in within the shelter of his father’s door. “Gilbert—my father?” he said huskily, incapable of more.
“Come in, sir. Come in, sir. I’ll tell you—everything. Lord! Mr Gervase, don’t faint—that would be worst of all.”
“My father?” he said.
“Come in, sir; and let me send away your cab, and get your things; and thenI’ll tell you—everything; only go in, for God’s sake, and sit down!”
He went in: the house was unchanged, but there was a great silence in it, or so he thought, a sense of vacancy—suspense almost as awful as ever, but his senses coming back to him, and the familiar scene round him restoring his self-control and his strength. He stood leaning upon the mantelpiece, listening to the sound of the portmanteaux placed in the hall, and the cab turning from the door. “Gilbert, where is my father?”—these were the only words he could say.
“You must want some breakfast, Mr Gervase,—something to keep up your strength. My wife’s in the house, sir; she’ll get you a cup of tea in a minute.”
“My father, Gilbert?”
“For anything as I know to the contrary, he’s quite well, Mr Gervase—as well as you or me.”
“Where is he?” cried the young man. “Is it all true?—and why are you here?”
“There is a great deal as is true, sir. I don’t know how much you’ve heard. Master left me here to wait for you. Everything is settled honourable and straightforward, and no dispersions on character. I was to tell you that the first thing. And the house is yours, sir. Them was master’s last words. ‘Tell him there’s no stain upon his name, and the house is his. Tell my boy that the first thing,’ was the last words he said.”
“What do you mean by last words? My father is not—he is not—— O God! is this what I have come home to?” the young man cried.
“He’s not dead, sir, if that’s what you mean. There’s nothing happened to him, so far as I know. He’s—he’s left town, Mr Gervase; but that’s all, sir,—that’s all, I give you my word.”
“Left town!—whereismy father? Don’t play with me, Gilbert. I’m not a fool, nor a child. Tell me the truth.”
“That’s the truth, sir, as sure as you live. Master has had a bad time; but he’s come out of it all with clean hands, that’s what I heard the gentlemen say. He might have begun again next morning, if he had liked. They made him a present of the house, and he’s left it to you.”
Gervase made an impatient gesture.“Do I care for the house?—where is my father?” he cried.
“If I was to swear upon the Bible, sir, I could say no more. He has left town. I can’t tell you where he is, for he has left no address. He said he didn’t want no letters forwarded. Mr Gervase, I am telling you the truth. There has nothing happened to him. He has left town. Some thought it was for the best; and some thought as it was a pity, master being still but a young man, so to speak. If you’d have been here, it’d have given him courage. But it so being as there was nobody belonging to him, and he a bit worn out with all that has happened—and no patience with Mr Wickham, as wanted him very bad to begin again——”
“Wickham! did that fellow dare——”
“Well, sir, even Mr Wickham, though he was rash, had no bad meaning. He’s been taken into Boyd Brothers, and they say he’s got everything in his hand already——”
Gervase turned with impatience from these details; except a feeling of fierce impatience with Wickham, who he could not forget was his own nominee, he had no further interest in him, and would rather have heard his name no more. He allowed Gilbert to bring him breakfast, and sat down perforce in that old accustomed place, every corner of which was familiar to him from his childhood, and which was now exactly as it had been for so many, many years; not a chair out of place, not a feature changed, the serious old clock going on steadily upon its habitual march, ticking off every deliberate moment, as when day by day its old master had compared his watch with it before leaving home. Gervase seemed to see his father on the hearth-rug with his watch in his hand—the emblem of punctuality and exactitude—making that daily comparison. Such revolutions in life tell doubly when the former tenor has been so exact and perfectly regulated. Where had he gone? He was not the man to take to wandering, to go abroad, to find refuge in thosebanalplaces where so many unfortunates hide their heads among the haunts of noisy gaiety and excitement. Gervase could not picture his father in any such scene. He could not imagine him poor, with anything but a lavish expenditure, and the power of doing as he pleased in respect to moneyand money’s worth. It was far more difficult to account for him when he disappeared than for most men. Amusement was a thing which had no existence for Mr Burton. Without his office, his business occupations, the Exchange, the semi-political, semi-commercial discussions which were his chief intellectual pleasure at his club and his dinner-parties, what could he be or do?
When Gervase had taken what refreshment he could, and made himself presentable, he took his way slowly down the street to see Madeline;—slowly, though he was a man in love and going to see his betrothed—almost reluctantly, though he loved her. He knew that the impression was a false one, yet it was difficult not to feel as if Madeline had deserted him, andin his present state of mind every interest except one seemed to have failed. A sense of having been beaten and humiliated, which was almost physical as well as mental,—a certain giddiness of mind and brain which affected, he thought, his very powers of walking as well as thinking, and which was only increased and aggravated by the familiar aspect of everything round—so unchanged, so undisturbed, so out of sympathy with his state—possessed him. He seemed to himself to knock against everything, to stumble over the crossings or any irregularity in the pavement; and that the few people whom he met in the morning street turned round after him, either to note his unsteadiness, or to say, “That’s Burton’s son.” He would have preferred to walk on past Madeline’s door,to keep moving mechanically, to go on and on along miles of dull street, where nobody would require him to speak or to take any notice. And it was with almost a painful sense of unwillingness that he stopped at Mr Thursley’s door. But it was opened almost before he could knock by Madeline herself, who must have been watching for him, and who rushed into his arms before he could draw breath. “Oh, Gervase, you have come at last!” she cried. “Thank God!”
“Is it anything to thank God for?” he said; “when all the mischief is done; when nothing can be mended? It is like my feebleness to come too late.”
“Don’t say so—don’t say so—it is everything to me,” she cried. “Oh, Gervase, I should have met you when you arrived,but we did not know if you would come by Queenstown. I have been looking out for you since break of day. Papa said you could not have heard, and that it was better not to startle you by any unusual fuss.”
“Was he so simple as to think ill news would not travel?” Gervase said, with a faint smile. “Tell me, Madeline, where is my father? Perhaps you know.”
“Nobody knows,” she said, shaking her head; “but there is no reason why that should be bad news, Gervase. Papa says he quite understands it; he thinks Mr Burton will come back—after a while. He thinks he wants to put a little interval between him and all these events. He says he quite understands his feelings. Gervase——”
“Yes, dear. I can’t feel anything, I can’t say anything. I am half paralysed, and half mad. Think how things were when I went away: and to come back and find everything gone—disappeared as if it had never been: the dreadful empty mockery of a house which they say is mine, and my father, and all that he cared for, gone, gone like a dream. Sometimes I think I will go crazy,—everything seems to be whirling and unsteady. I am giddy with pain and confusion and ignorance, and the blank all around.”
He held her hand, but loosely, languidly, in a feeble clasp. She grasped his tightly, closely, as if to bring him back to himself.
“All that he cared for is not gone. Let my father tell you. He knows the right thing to say. Oh, Gervase, because youare in great trouble, don’t turn all love and tenderness away!”
“Madeline!”
“Oh, Gervase, if you only knew how I have thought of you night and day! I think I should have gone to you had there been any certainty where you were. I should not have let anything stand in the way, when you were in trouble. Don’t turn from me now. Papa is coming back from the office to lunch, on the chance of your arrival. He wants to do everything that is kind. Don’t, don’t turn from us, Gervase, because you are in trouble, which is only a reason for clinging together. Is it not a reason for clinging together?” she cried, with tears in her eyes.
And poor Gervase felt that he ought to feel above every other sentiment the sweetness of this consolation, for which he had so thirsted and hungered in his long misery at sea; thinking that just like this his Madeline would speak and look. But now that she was there before him, in his arms, speaking like Love itself, looking with eyes full of the tenderest sympathy, he was no longer able to feel anything. He caressed her clinging hand, but his natural impulse would have been to relax his hold, to put it away; not that he loved her less, but that the confusion in his mind, the fevered condition of his whole being, was incapable of any natural or happy sentiment. The miserable change that had come over all his private concerns, the ruin of his family, his father’s disappearance, even that curious maddening contradiction, in the midst of all the ruin, of the unchanged house, whichhe was told was his, filled up his thoughts, his heart, his very veins, so that there was room in him for nothing else.
Mr Thursley appeared soon after for luncheon, and his coming was a relief. He gave Gervase a coherent account of everything that had happened. Mr Thursley was evidently not without an impression that Burton, Baber, & Co. had been in a doubtful condition for some time; but he described with considerable vehemence the action of young Wickham, the risky transactions into which his impetuosity had drawn his partner, and the extravagance he had committed, his head turned by the greatness of the position which he thought he had attained—evidently with the intention of diverting the mind of Gervase from any unfilial thoughts. When the crashcame eventually, he described how entirely honourable anddignethe attitude of Mr Burton had been. The ultimate catastrophe had been brought about by the failure of one or two companies with which the house had become connected. Mr Burton had at once placed everything he had at the disposal of his creditors. His books, his private affairs, his property to the last penny, had been made available; and his honourable conduct had been fully acknowledged and warmly applauded. Offers had been made to him, on all sides, of help to begin anew his commercial career; but these offers had been gratefully declined. He had said that he was himself too old for a fresh start, and that his son was not disposed, or perhaps adapted, for a business life. Finally, all had been settled, and asa proof of their admiration for Mr Burton’s conduct and character, the creditors had requested his acceptance of the house and all its contents, upon which no profane hand had ever been laid.
“And the West India money?” Gervase said.
“You had come to no conclusion at the time of the settlement,” said Mr Thursley. “The West India estate was personal property. It is a thing that has ceased to count for much in anybody’s calculations. Nothing but your sense and true business spirit—let me say so, my boy, whether you take it as a compliment or not—could have made so much of it. Thank heaven, Gervase, it is a nest-egg with which nobody has anything to do.”
“Was there no mention made of it, then,at all? Did nobody know? Was he unaware that he had so much to fall back upon?”
“He was not unaware,” said Mr Thursley, uneasily. “He did get your last letter—but not till after the arrangement was made and all settled. He was too glad to think that you—would still have something to depend upon.”
“I don’t understand,” Gervase said, almost rudely; “the arrangement—what does that mean?—was everything paid?”
“Yes; everything was paid—that was demanded. It was all settled—in the most honourable way.”
“There is something behind that I don’t understand:—settled in an honourable way—all paid that was demanded. What does that mean, Mr Thursley? It sounds likesomething equivocal, something not so honest as the words. Tell me, without the commercial slang. I’m too dull to understand.”
“That’s not very respectful, my young friend.”
“Papa, Gervase doesn’t mean to be disrespectful. Don’t you see that he isdone, that there is no strength left in him?”
“I mean no harm,” Gervase said. “For God’s sake, tell me in plain words—was everything paid?”
“I wish you knew a little more of the commercial slang you despise. You will misunderstand what I am about to say. Everything was paid—which it was possible to pay. An arrangement was made which everybody accepted—fifteen shillings in the pound—the next thing to payment in full.It was all settled and accepted by universal consent.”
Gervase got up stupidly from his chair. “I thought there must be some quibble in it,” he said, the heavy cloud so lowering over his face that for the moment he was almost, even to Madeline’s eyes, unrecognisable. “Will the West India money make it up?”
“Don’t be a fool, Gervase,” said Mr Thursley, sharply. “Everything, I tell you, is settled. You have no right to interfere.”
Gervase stood regarding him blankly: his food was untasted on his plate, the meal not half over. He stood up, unconscious of all the circumstances—unconscious even of Madeline’s anxious look dwelling on him. “Will the West India money do it?” he said.
Mr Thursleywould have nothing to do with the further steps which Gervase took. He would take no further interest in such a madman. Had he even employed this money, which had been providentially kept out of sight till Mr Burton’s arrangement was made, and of which nobody knew anything—had he embarked in business with it—for there was no doubt now that he had a capacity for business—and made his own of it, and laid the foundations of fortune, and then stepped forward when he was ableto afford it, and paid the balance of his father’s debts, the thing might have been permissible enough, and would no doubt have had a very good effect. But to do it now—when instead of having a good effect it would have a bad one, as if Mr Burton had kept back something: whereas it had been the very source of that high appreciation which had made all his creditors his friends, that he had kept back nothing—this was more grievous than words could say. It was Gervase’s money, not his father’s. He had been sent away to make anything he could of that almost lapsed property, with the understanding that anything he recovered should be his own. And it was all settled, as Mr Thursley repeated over and over again—alldone—the acquittance signed, the whole matterlaid at rest. Why should he interfere, after his father had completed everything? These arguments were repeated over and over—argumentatively, entreatingly, angrily—but without effect. Gervase was not even intelligent at this crisis of his being. He did not seem to understand. He was like a man dazed and stupefied, unable to comprehend anything but one thing, and with his entire mind concentrated on that, whatever any one might say. No argument or reason had any weight with him, not even the tremulous question of Madeline, who made no attempt to hold him back, except by asking—“Do you think, perhaps, my father is right, and that they might think something has been held back?” “What is that to me?” he had replied; “I must do whatis honest, whatever they think.” “Oh,Honest!” Mr Thursley cried, with a fierce little laugh of indignation and contempt. As a matter of fact, Gervase did produce an effect which was not good so far as public opinion was concerned. Mr Burton had been almost canonised for his honourable dealing, his openness and frankness, the “every assistance” which he had given to the liquidators, and that certainty, which everybody had, that nothing had been kept back. But it came to pass exactly as Mr Thursley had predicted, when the matter was re-opened. The creditors who had got three-fourths of their debts indeed got the whole, and were so much the better off, and had their mouths closed for evermore. But the world in which Mr Burton and histransactions were known, and which had given him so much credit for keeping nothing back, now discovered to its amazement that something had been kept back, and had all its usual suspicions awakened. And even the creditors scarcely thanked Gervase. He put them in the wrong, making them feel that they had been premature in their applauses. They looked back upon their accounts suspiciously, to see whether old Burton, after all, had not in some way got the better of them.
As for Gervase himself, he was entirely absorbed by this business. He went, indeed, to Madeline for sympathy, and told her all that was happening, and how he was tormented and kept in pain by the innumerable delays and all the vexatious fuss and formality through which he wasdragged before his business could be accomplished. The renunciation of all the money, which had indeed been gained by his own exertions, cost him nothing. He did not think of it; but the waiting, the confabulations, the meetings that had to be called, the papers that had to be signed, the special consent on all hands to make the transaction as odious and as tiresome as possible, did affect him, and that most painfully. He was harassed to death during those early summer days, in which London looks its best, and all the crowd of fashion pours in. Madeline, though her society was not that of fashion, yet had, as everybody has, a greater amount of engagements, a quickened current of life during the season, that high tide of English hurry. And though herheart was with the lover, who was no longer a lover, who seemed to have forgotten everything, both in the present and the future, except this one dogged resolve to get rid of his money, and silence at once and for ever all criticism or censure,—yet she was compelled to carry on the routine of her usual life, to go out, to lose herself more or less in the bustle and commotion of the period, and could not be entirely at his command, as he seemed to expect. In short, there fell between them, if not a cloud, yet a mist which veiled each from the other, making Gervase believe that her sympathy had failed, and tormenting Madeline with the thought that his love was no longer what it was, and that she had lost her place in his life. He came to her, but he talkedof nothing but his business, of the stage at which he had now arrived, of the prospect there was of coming to a conclusion. And she had so often to hurry on these long explanations, to say “Gervase, I must go. Don’t think me unkind,—I would rather stay with you a thousand times, but Imustgo.” He would give her a look which she scarcely understood, whether it was reproach or consent. “I know, I know,” he would say, and go off heavily, never looking behind him. This lasted like a fever for weeks: he always absorbed in the business which it was so difficult to get done with; she full of wretched thoughts, thinking she had lost him, not without a feeling that he had lost himself, going on with her gaieties, which was worse. If it had but happened at another time of the year, it would not have been quite so bad; and oh, if Gervase had but stayed at home, if he had but gone into the business, if he had kept everything straight, if it had never happened at all!
There came a time, however, in the middle of June, when all the entertainments were at their height, and Madeline, with a distracted mind, going “everywhere,” so far as her circle extended, doing all her father’s society duties and her own, keeping “in the swim,” as he insisted she should do, was more occupied than ever—when Gervase at last got his business completed. She heard that he had come several times when she could not see him, retreating from the door when she had visitors, or turned awaywhen she was out. To her horror and dismay, several days elapsed thus without a meeting. She felt that at any moment she might receive a letter saying that Gervase had gone away, that he had left England, that she should see him no more. She went and came to her parties, to her engagements, at the highest tension, terrified to see upon the hall-table every time she came in the note which would pronounce this doom. Her little notes to him remained unanswered. She was told by the servants that he had called, but had not remained or left any message. Madeline’s anxiety and trouble had risen to fever-heat. He came on Sunday afternoon at last, but he was scarcely seated when some wretched partner of the night before drifted in to talkabout Lady C.’s ball and the great garden-party at Valley House, and the Lord Mayor’sfêteat the Mansion House, while Gervase sat silent, taking no share in the vain, exceptionally vain, talk. He departed, with a hasty touch of her hand, and a murmur of “I’ll come again,” when another and another stranger arrived to discourse on the same enthralling subjects. “To-night,” she whispered desperately, not able to contain herself; “to-night—I shall be alone to-night.” What did it matter who heard her? He nodded, she thought, though he did not look at her, and went away, leaving her to the exhilarating task of that talk about society, which is much the same whether your horizon is bounded by the Foreign Office or by the Mansion House. Theinterval was terrible to her till all those Sunday triflers had departed. She told her father at dinner, fearing lest he might think it his duty to give her his company on the Sunday evening, as he often did, that she expected Gervase. “Oh,” said Mr Thursley, elevating his eyebrows. “I have scarcely seen him,” Madeline said, unable to contain the turmoil of her feelings, “for a week.”
“Oh,” said Mr Thursley again, “the less you see of that madman the better, it appears to me.”
“I hope you don’t believe, papa,” cried Madeline, “that anything that has happened has changed my feelings.”
“I am very sorry to hear,” said Mr Thursley; “it has changed his, I am pretty sure. And if he thinks heis to hook on to you now for a living——”
“You don’t seem to see that you are insulting me as well as Gervase,” she said hastily; then added, in a subdued tone, “I beg your pardon.”
“It’s time, I think; but never mind,” said her father. “I can allow for your feelings, Maddie—distracted by that fellow and his fancies; but mind, I’ll not stand that, whatever he may say now.”
Madeline made no reply. Fathers perhaps will never learn to relinquish that kind of remark. Mr Thursley was as well aware as any one that it was a futile kind of thing to say; but he had been watching his daughter closely, and he thought he saw that Gervase’s conduct had shaken her trust in him. It was as well, perhaps, to throw ina word to help the adverse impression; but he did not attempt to hinder the meeting. He went out himself to one of the houses where there was music or conversation going on on Sunday evening, and left the coast free.
Madeline went up-stairs to the drawing-room with a beating heart. She thought, like her father, that Gervase had thrown off all softer feelings in the shock of family downfall and overthrow. What so likely to stun and paralyse a young man with a strong sense of honour, and with that innate conviction of personal superiority to all rebuffs and slights of fortune which an English youth’s education gives! Poverty would not have hurt him; but this mingling of doubt and mystery and intricate confusing business, the perhaps undeservedapplauses of which his father had been the object for his partial just dealing, the certainly undeserved suspicion and blame of which he had himself been the object for completing that justice, the sense of the foundations of the earth shaken, and the ground failing under his feet, which such revelations are apt to bring,—all these things were enough, and more than enough, to upset the fine balance of a mind more delicate than strong. It had never appeared that Gervase was strong. His fastidiousness, and what had appeared, even to Madeline, over-delicacy in respect to the business, augured but little fortitude to resist actual calamity. She had in her own heart, with a pang which there was no possibility of ignoring, come to much the same conclusion as her father, that Gervase’s love had not been robust enough to withstand the change of all his other conditions. She did not, indeed, believe, nor did Mr Thursley believe, that any interested motive would induce Gervase to pretend a sentiment which no longer existed. But she waited with little doubt as to what he would say to her when he came, with a faint hope indeed still flickering at the bottom of her heart, but no expectation that she could feel to be reasonable. He would tell her, she had little doubt, that he was going away to the ends of the earth, perhaps back to the West Indies, perhaps to America, where he had made so many friends.
It was a warm evening, only half dark: the windows were all open, the spacious room scarcely lighted, in a soft twilight fitfor the talk of lovers, not very fit, Madeline felt, for the sterner communication which she looked for. She flitted about like a ghost in her white dress, hesitating whether she should not light candles or ring for additional lamps. She was still doubting when Gervase came up-stairs. She could hear him coming up, unaccompanied by any servant, and with a quickened step, which made her heart beat still more quickly. The stillness of the room, the faint light, and her evident solitude, which made her afraid, gave Gervase courage.
“Madeline, you are waiting for me?” he said.
“Surely, Gervase—I hoped—that you were sure to come.”
“You might have known I would come.” He made her sit in the chair where hehad throned her so often, and drew a lower one to her feet. “Thank heaven that at last I have you to myself! And thank heaven it is all over and done with, this horrible business that has stood between us!”
“It has stood between us, Gervase.”
“Horribly! but now I feel again my own man,—every penny is paid.”
“And you have nothing, Gervase.”
“I have the house—which of course I must sell, and all that is in it. That will leave me a few thousands better than nothing. Madeline, what will your father say? I do not ask—perhaps I ought—what do you say?”
“Gervase—I thought you had ceased to mind what I thought.”
“Ceased to mind! I never minded somuch. If I wanted you before, Maddie, I want you ten thousand times more now. Don’t you understand, how the worst of it all was, that this abominable business absorbed me, enthralled me, so that I could think of nothing else. Now it is over, for ever and ever, thank God. Cease to mind!Younever thought that.”
She gave his hand a little pressure, a mute apology, and all the heavy clouds that had been veiling her horizon flew away like mists before the winds.
“But,” he said, pillowing his cheek upon that soft hand, leaning upon her with a sense of indescribable rest and consolation,”—your father? What are we to do? how are we to manage? I see all the difficulties. I grudge you to a poor man as muchas he does—but I cannot give you up, Madeline.”
“Nobody asked you,” she said, with a smile. Madeline felt that she would break down altogether if she did not keep up the lighter tone.
“And what will he say to a man who has nothing in the world but a house in Harley Street?” Gervase said. “What am I to say to him? What am I to do?”
“That is the first question,” she said. “What are you to do? The house in Harley Street means—something.”
“I can’t let it out in lodgings, can I, Madeline?—or take boarders: or set up a school—though many men do that.”
“Do you ever think—they say you proved yourself so good a man of business,” said Madeline, with hesitation,—“do youever think, Gervase, of putting the money—into——”
“Business! I loathe it more than ever,” he cried. “I hate the very name!”
Madeline gave vent to a gentle sigh. “My father would be more pleased with that than anything,” she said. “Everything, I think, might have been smoothed away. He thinks you did so well—in the West Indies, Gervase.”
“Did I do well? fighting against chicanery, dishonesty, fraudulent delays, fictitious excuses, everything that is most abhorrent to an honest man: they think it all fair, that is the worst of it. If they can disgust and sicken you, and make you think that no rights are worth that struggle, then they rejoice. That is their object all the time. A hundred times I was on theeve of throwing up the whole business, crying, Perish your filthy money! and flying to you to save me from cynicism and misanthropy and scorn of every kind.”
“But you did not fly. You stood fast and conquered, Gervase.”
“A poor victory,” he said, shaking his head, “and one only because they roused the worst part of my nature. I don’t know what I might develop into were I to carry on that cursed battle.”
“Gervase!”
“I beg your pardon, my dearest. It isn’t a blessed battle, anyhow. It enlists all one’s worst passions. I began to feel almost that it was a distinction to tell a bigger lie, and cheat worse than my opponent, so long as I got the better of him.If you were not a rich man’s daughter, I think I know what I should do.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“The house would give us so much income, enough for a backbone, something to fall back upon, pay our little rent, and leave something over for you to pay your milliner’s bill, Maddie. Fancy the pleasure of paying for your bonnets! and then—you don’t mean to tell me I could not get something to do—writing, keeping accounts, nay, teaching, if necessary. I should not be in the least afraid. But, my love, you are a rich man’s daughter, and there is an end of it. I have to satisfy your father—and heaven knows how I am to do it.”
“To satisfy him—to a certain point, Gervase. He must not be unreasonable.He has not absolute power, any more than any other authority. I will speak to him.”
“Yes, you must speak to him; but in the first place I must speak. I can’t put it all on you. He must hear what I have to say. He will think, and think rightly, that a man who can’t speak for himself is not worth much. And I know that he will scoff at what I say. He will tell me to go about my business. What can I do to your father, Madeline, to bring him over to our side?”
She shook her head. “There is only one thing I know, Gervase; if you were to go with your little money into business—it does not matter what——”
He made a gesture of despair. “Can a man ever do well what he hates? But I will not say that. I would rather sweepthe streets. But if there is nothing else for it, foryou, Madeline——”
They were interrupted by the heavy foot of Mr Thursley coming up-stairs.
Mr Thursleycame heavily up the stair, with intention, not simply to warn the lovers of his coming, but to send before him a certain intimation of the temper of mind, not soft or yielding, in which he was approaching. It was time that this matter should be settled one way or another. He was not thinking sentimentally of what people might call the happiness of his daughter—that is, of letting her have her own way whatever might happen—but, as he thought, wisely, judiciously, ofwhat was best for her,—of her proper establishment in life. He gave them warning, by his heavy deliberate approach, that he had assumed this judicial position, and both of them understood by instinct that it was so. They drew a little apart to prepare for him, and felt that the crisis had come. It must be added, however, that underlying all the bitter excitement of this meeting, and of the father’s judgment, there lay a consciousness in all their minds that no judgment could settle the matter; and that after the most serious decision that could be made by the natural authority, there was yet another veto more important, in the will of the person chiefly concerned.
Mr Thursley, however, did everything that was most adapted to impress theminds of the young people with the idea of a supreme and decisive judgment. He put himself into a great chair, which he drew into the centre of the room, facing them. He rung for another lamp, which changed the twilight of the large room into a circle of full light round the group: and having made these preparations, he bade Gervase speak. “We have all been going on in a sort of happy-go-lucky way,” he said; “but this can’t last any longer. It will be better for you to tell me what you intend, and where this is to lead to. For Madeline’s sake, I feel that it is my duty to interfere.”
“I am very glad, sir, of the opportunity,” Gervase said; and he made his statement, as he had already made it to Madeline, Mr Thursley listening withoutinterrupting by a word the concise report. When the young man had ended, there was a brief pause.
“What you have to tell me,” said Mr Thursley at length, “is that you want to marry my daughter, a girl accustomed to every luxury; but that having wasted every penny you had, against my advice, in a quixotic and quite unnecessary act, you have now nothing, absolutely nothing——”
“Except the house and its contents, which means——”
“Three or four thousand pounds at the outside—perhaps not so much, making a forced sale, as you will have to do. Is Madeline to live and have a proper maintenance provided for her on the interest, say, of four thousand pounds?”
“I am in your hands, sir,” said Gervase.“No such danger as this seemed possible at the time when we first loved each other. Had I been a poor man then, I should not have presumed to ask Madeline to share my fate. Things have gone against me, without any fault of mine, and now——” He made a momentary pause. Madeline, leaning forward, put her hand upon his. He clasped it tight, and continued, in a more vigorous voice: “The only thing that has not changed is our love for each other,—and nothing can change that.”
There are few things more irritating than those signs of mutual agreement between two who are on the other side from that occupied by the judicial authority. Mr Thursley was warmly moved by this irritation and annoyance. He wasleft alone in his dignity, while these two conspired against him. He said, with an accent of contempt, made acrid by his daughter’s mute adhesion to the foe, “Without any fault of yours!—entirely by your fault, I should say; because, in the first place, you deserted your father; and in the second, because you refused to take my advice,—because your sense of honour, forsooth—and honesty I think you called it—was more keen than mine. Honour, to my thinking,” said Mr Thursley, with lowering brows, “should keep a man even from contemplating the idea of living on his wife’s money, having none of his own.”
Hot words were on Gervase’s lips, but Madeline gave a hasty pressure to his hand, and he made no reply.
“Papa,” she said, “I appeal to yourgood feeling. Are these words to be said to us, in the position we are in?”
“Whom do you mean by ‘us’? I am speaking to Gervase Burton, who wants to marry you, a girl with a large fortune, having nothing.”
Once more Madeline kept him silent by the pressure of her hand. “We both recognise,” she said, “that the position is a difficult one. I can speak better than Gervase, for what can he be but angry when you taunt him in that ungenerous way? Papa, whatever you say, you are our best friend. We are not such fools as to think you are really against us. It is you we must turn to for advice. He has nothing; and I have, thanks to you, a large fortune. We see all the difficulties—what are we to do?”
Her father stared at her for a moment blankly, then he burst into a laugh. “This is turning the tables with a vengeance,” he said. “Iadvise you! When it is I that am the offended party.”
“Surely Madeline is right, sir,” said Gervase; “you are her father, and my friend, since ever I remember anything. If I were in any difficulty, unconnected with her, to whom should I go for advice but to you?”
“By—George!” cried the bewildered father, “you came to me for advice once, or at least I thrust my advice upon you, and a great deal of attention you paid to it! Had you taken my advice then, you would have been in a better position now.”
“Papa, you know the trouble he wasin then, half mad with all the strangeness of misfortune. Gervase, let me speak! There is advice that is impossible; if you tell us to separate, to give each other up—I speak for myself—that is impossible. Advise us how we are to live, how it is to be done. I will never believe,” cried Madeline, with tears in her eyes, keeping back her lover with the pressure of her imperative hand, “that you are not our best and only friend. Tell us how to do it, and not merely that we are not to do it; any stranger could do that. But you are our best and only friend——”
This is not the usual kind of appeal to an obdurate father; but obdurate fathers are not consistent perhaps with daughters who have counted all the costs, and inthe last resort are aware that they themselves are free agents, not bound more than reason and affection dictate. Mr Thursley made still a faint attempt to brave it out, to adopt the tone of centuries past, to denounce the youth and threaten the girl; but it was only a faint attempt. The look which Madeline fixed upon him, regretful not for herself but for him, grieved by the violence which, her serious eyes said, diminished her respect for her father, without disturbing her resolution, was too much for Mr Thursley. And he knew very well, to begin with, that some mode of arranging matters must be found; that no violence on his part could induce his daughter to abandon her purpose, which takes the heart out of resistance. He came at last to theterms, which he had vaguely settled in his own mind from the beginning, which were that Gervase should enter his own office, and work there, abandoning all his follies, and betaking himself to a business life. This was his ultimatum. “It is of no use telling me,” he said, “that you have no turn for business, for nobody could have managed better with that West Indian affair; and let me tell you, my boy, there is no character in the world more honourable than that of an English merchant—whatever false ideas you may have got into your head.”
“I think so too, Gervase,” said Madeline in a whisper, with once more a pressure of his hand.
“I will make one concession,” said the triumphant father, now feeling that thepositions were reversed, and that he had attained his fit supremacy. “If you should find yourself in a position to settle £10,000 on Madeline, I will withdraw my opposition; if not, the office and a wife, or your freedom without her. That’s my last word—and I don’t think one father in a hundred would say as much. It is to take or to leave.”
Gervase went home to his empty echoing house with the subdued sensations of a struggle past. It was past, and his fate decided—a thing in which there is always a certain solace after a conflict. No need to enter into all the vicissitudes of argument again; no need for any moreprosandcons. To take or to leave. To have Madeline with her father’s consent, and without any painful breach of the enthralling customs and traditions of life, or to drag her through all the harassing contradictions and trials of rebellion—to fret her mind with opposition to all the rules of established life. Gervase concluded with himself that it was now his certain duty to give up all those, perhaps fantastical, objections—that reluctance and rebellion which had already cost him so much. It was no longer even possible to fight. He had renounced that tenor of life which ought to have been second nature to a merchant’s son—almost arrogantly, imperatively, hearing no reason when his father had suggested it; now he could not even struggle against a necessity which involved Madeline as well as himself. The house sounded very empty as he came into it. There was an echo through and throughit of the clanging of the door. He went into the library, in which he had held that last conference with his father, and sat down, sadly thinking of all that had come and gone. Had he yielded then, how different all might have been!—the house of Burton still intact; the old traditions unbroken; his father a man prosperous and respected; himself independent of all such remark as that which would now, he was painfully aware, be made everywhere. A man with nothing marrying a girl with a large fortune. When the wealth is on the other side there are no such remarks. But the moment that the woman has wealth, interest and not love is supposed to be the motive on the man’s side. How unjust, how miserable, how horrible! Buthowever his heart might rebel against this cruel judgment, it would be made, he knew, and he would have to bear it.
If he had only done this thing which he must now do—from which there was no escape—a year ago!—if he had but consented, and pleased his father and satisfied those calls of nature and birth which, after all, it would appear no man could escape! His own father was more to him than Madeline’s, though Madeline was more than all the world. Had he but insisted more strongly, been more urgent, commanded even! Gervase sat with his head in his hands, and thought. But he knew, at the same time, that however much his father had commanded, he would not have obeyed. He would have had no faith inthese paternal commands. He would have been sure, as Madeline had been, that in the end his own will would carry the day. As Madeline had been: yet Madeline had not stood out against this compromise; even her sympathy had deserted him at the last. It was by her ordinance, as well as her father’s, that his will was to be subjugated—at the last.
Gervase had many renewed impulses of rebellion as he waked and watched during that long night. He was tempted to go away to the end of the world, to disappear into the darkness, and leave them—to repent, perhaps, of their attempted coercion. He had moments of resolution to withstand all compromise, to refuse the expedient held out to him, to maintain his own way—followed by sinkings of heart and courage,by questionings with himself who was he that self-sacrifice should be demanded from every one but him? Self-sacrifice for Madeline—that was a very different thing, after all, from yielding up his own enlightened will to the obstinate insistence of his father—or of her father. A man may stand against every other claim upon him, but to prefer his own will to the woman he loves—to sacrificeherrather than do something he did not like—was very different. For her he had vowed to do everything that man could do—to die for her, to live for her, to think of nothing in comparison with her happiness. And this that was required of him was clearly for her happiness. If to release her from himself would make her happy, then it would be time for him to disappear, to go away, and leave notrace, as his father had done; but that would make her miserable. It was Madeline that had to be considered, not himself or his pride, or his preference of one kind of work to another. The young man walked about the lonely library half the night fighting with himself. He had refused his father there—the father of whom he scarcely knew how to think, whether to pity or to blame, whether to approve or censure; but who had now passed away from his horizon, leaving nothing but Madeline,—no other influence, no other hope. Madeline was all he had in the world—no family, no sympathy, no home but her. What could the answer be when the question was to sacrifice her—or himself?
Next morning he saw her, very sweetand anxious, wistfully interrogating his looks. “Nothing will make you like it, Gervase?” “No,” he said, “nothing. It is hateful always. I cannot change in my conviction; but I will do it, and make the best of it—for you, Madeline.” She asked him again before he left her, after they had talked and talked for hours. “Don’t you think, as you get used to it, you will like it better, Gervase?” “I don’t think I shall ever do anything but hate it; but never mind. I shall grumble at nothing when I have you.” She looked after him with a curious light in her eyes as he went away. She was thinking very likely what she would do were she in his place. How little she would mind! how she would conquer any antipathy she had and put it under her feet, and scorn to confess it! Womenhave such sentiments often, thinking how differently they would conduct themselves were they men. But then the things that are required of men are not often required of women. And Madeline reminded herself that she had no antipathy to overcome. She watched him, herself hidden among the curtains, as he went along the street, without any of the old spring and elasticity in his step. Poor Gervase! he had never known any trouble till now; but now it had come in a flood, and it was no wonder he was broken down. He was not perhaps the strongest of men by nature; but he was Gervase, which said all—and there was no other in the world.