“Give it tongue, my son. What do I seem to think?”
“You think I’m forgetting Regina. You don’t believe I’m just as fond of her as ever. The fact is, you’re an old bachelor.”
“That is so. Where’s the harm, Amelius?”
“I don’t understand—”
“You’re out there, my bright boy. I reckon I understand more than you think for. The wisest thing you ever did in your life is what you did this evening, when you committed Sally to the care of those ladies at the Home.”
“Good night, Rufus. We shall quarrel if I stay here any longer.”
“Good night, Amelius. We shan’t quarrel, stay here as long as you like.”
The good deed had been done; the sacrifice—already a painful sacrifice—had been made. Mrs. Payson was old enough to speak plainly, as well as seriously, to Amelius of the absolute necessity of separating himself from Simple Sally, without any needless delay. “You have seen for yourself,” she said, “that the plan on which this little household is ruled is the unvarying plan of patience and kindness. So far as Sally is concerned, you can be quite sure that she will never hear a harsh word, never meet with a hard look, while she is under our care. The lamentable neglect under which the poor creature has suffered, will be tenderly remembered and atoned for, here. If we can’t make her happy among us, I promise that she shall leave the Home, if she wishes it, in six weeks’ time. As to yourself, consider your position if you persist in taking her back with you. Our good friend Rufus has told me that you are engaged to be married. Think of the misinterpretations, to say the least of it, to which you would subject yourself—think of the reports which would sooner or later find their way to the young lady’s ears, and of the deplorable consequences that would follow. I believe implicitly in the purity of your motives. But remember Who taught us to pray that we may not be led into temptation—and complete the good work that you have begun, by leaving Sally among friends and sisters in this house.”
To any honourable man, these were unanswerable words. Coming after what Rufus and the surgeon had already said to him, they left Amelius no alternative but to yield. He pleaded for leave to write to Sally, and to see her, at a later interval, when she might be reconciled to her new life. Mrs. Payson had just consented to both requests, Rufus had just heartily congratulated him on his decision—when the door was thrown violently open. Simple Sally ran into the room, followed by one of the women-attendants in a state of breathless surprise.
“She showed me a bedroom,” cried Sally, pointing indignantly to the woman; “and she asked if I should like to sleep there.” She turned to Amelius, and caught him by the hand to lead him away. The ineradicable instinct of distrust had been once more roused in her by the too zealous attendant. “I’m not going to stay here,” she said; “I’m going away with You!”
Amelius glanced at Mrs. Payson. Sally tried to drag him to the door. He did his best to reassure her by a smile; he spoke confusedly some composing words. But his honest face, always accustomed to tell the truth, told the truth now. The poor lost creature, whose feeble intelligence was so slow to discern, so inapt to reflect, looked at him with the heart’s instantaneous perception, and saw her doom. She let go of his hand. Her head sank. Without word or cry, she dropped on the floor at his feet.
The attendant instantly raised her, and placed her on a sofa. Mrs. Payson saw how resolutely Amelius struggled to control himself, and felt for him with all her heart. Turning aside for a moment, she hastily wrote a few lines, and returned to him. “Go, before we revive her,” she whispered; “and give what I have written to the coachman. You shall suffer no anxiety that I can spare you,” said the excellent woman; “I will stay here myself to-night, and reconcile her to the new life.”
She held out her hand; Amelius kissed it in silence. Rufus led him out. Not a word dropped from his lips on the long drive back to London.
His mind was disturbed by other subjects besides the subject of Sally. He thought of his future, darkened by the doubtful marriage-engagement that was before him. Alone with Rufus, for the rest of the evening, he petulantly misunderstood the sympathy with which the kindly American regarded him. Their bedrooms were next to each other. Rufus heard him walking restlessly to and fro, and now and then talking to himself. After a while, these sounds ceased. He was evidently worn out, and was getting the rest that he needed, at last.
The next morning he received a few lines from Mrs. Payson, giving a favourable account of Sally, and promising further particulars in a day or two.
Encouraged by this good news, revived by a long night’s sleep, he went towards noon to pay his postponed visit to Regina. At that early hour, he could feel sure that his interview with her would not be interrupted by visitors. She received him quietly and seriously, pressing his hand with a warmer fondness than usual. He had anticipated some complaint of his absence on the previous day, and some severe allusion to his appearance in the capacity of a Socialist lecturer. Regina’s indulgence, or Regina’s interest in circumstances of more pressing importance, preserved a merciful silence on both subjects.
“It is a comfort to me to see you, Amelius,” she said; “I am in trouble about my uncle, and I am weary of my own anxious thoughts. Something unpleasant has happened in Mr. Farnaby’s business. He goes to the City earlier, and he returns much later, than usual. When he does come back, he doesn’t speak to me—he locks himself into his room; and he looks worn and haggard when I make his breakfast for him in the morning. You know that he is one of the directors of the new bank? There was something about the bank in the newspaper yesterday which upset him dreadfully; he put down his cup of coffee—and went away to the City, without eating his breakfast. I don’t like to worry you about it, Amelius. But my aunt seems to take no interest in her husband’s affairs—and it is really a relief to me to talk of my troubles to you. I have kept the newspaper; do look at what it says about the bank, and tell me if you understand it!”
Amelius read the passage pointed out to him. He knew as little of banking business as Regina. “So far as I can make it out,” he said, “they’re paying away money to their shareholders which they haven’t earned. How do they do that, I wonder?”
Regina changed the subject in despair. She asked Amelius if he had found new lodgings. Hearing that he had not yet succeeded in the search for a residence, she opened a drawer of her work-table, and took out a card.
“The brother of one of my schoolfellows is going to be married,” she said. “He has a pretty bachelor cottage in the neighbourhood of the Regent’s Park—and he wants to sell it, with the furniture, just as it is. I don’t know whether you care to encumber yourself with a little house of your own. His sister has asked me to distribute some of his cards, with the address and the particulars. It might be worth your while, perhaps, to look at the cottage when you pass that way.”
Amelius took the card. The small feminine restraints and gentlenesses of Regina, her quiet even voice, her serene grace of movement, had a pleasantly soothing effect on his mind after the anxieties of the last four and twenty hours. He looked at her bending over her embroidery, deftly and gracefully industrious—and drew his chair closer to her. She smiled softly over her work, conscious that he was admiring her, and placidly pleased to receive the tribute.
“I would buy the cottage at once,” said Amelius, “if I thought you would come and live in it with me.”
She looked up gravely, with her needle suspended in her hand.
“Don’t let us return to that,” she answered, and went on again with her embroidery.
“Why not?” Amelius asked.
She persisted in working, as industriously as if she had been a poor needlewoman, with serious reasons for being eager to get her money. “It is useless,” she replied, “to speak of what cannot be for some time to come.”
Amelius stopped the progress of the embroidery by taking her hand. Her devotion to her work irritated him.
“Look at me, Regina,” he said, steadily controlling himself. “I want to propose that we shall give way a little on both sides. I won’t hurry you; I will wait a reasonable time. If I promise that, surely you may yield a little in return. Money seems to be a hard taskmaster, my darling, after what you have told me about your uncle. See how he suffers because he is bent on being rich; and ask yourself if it isn’t a warning to us not to follow his example! Would you like to seemetoo wretched to speak to you, or to eat my breakfast—and all for the sake of a little outward show? Come, come! let us think of ourselves. Why should we waste the best days of our life apart, when we are both free to be happy together? I have another good friend besides Rufus—the good friend of my father before me. He knows all sorts of great people, and he will help me to some employment. In six months’ time I might have a little salary to add to my income. Say the sweetest words, my darling, that ever fell from your lips—say you will marry me in six months!”
It was not in a woman’s nature to be insensible to such pleading as this. She all but yielded. “I should like to say it, dear!” she answered, with a little fluttering sigh.
“Say it, then!” Amelius suggested tenderly.
She took refuge again in her embroidery. “If you would only give me a little time,” she suggested, “I might say it.”
“Time for what, my own love?”
“Time to wait, dear, till my uncle is not quite so anxious as he is now.”
“Don’t talk of your uncle, Regina! You know as well as I do what he would say. Good heavens! why can’t you decide for yourself? No! I don’t want to hear over again about what you owe to Mr. Farnaby—I heard enough of it on that day in the shrubbery. Oh, my dear girl, do have some feeling for me! do for once have a will of your own!”
Those last words were an offence to her self-esteem. “I think it’s very rude to tell me I have no will of my own,” she said, “and very hard to press in this way when you know I am in trouble.” The inevitable handkerchief appeared, adding emphasis to the protest—and the becoming tears showed themselves modestly in Regina’s magnificent eyes.
Amelius started out of his chair, and walked away to the window. That last reference to Mr. Farnaby’s pecuniary cares was more than he had patience to endure. “She can’t even forget her uncle and his bank,” he thought, “when I am speaking to her of our marriage!”
He kept his face hidden from her, at the window. By some subtle process of association which he was unable to trace, the image of Simple Sally rose in his mind. An irresistible influence forced him to think of her—not as the poor, starved, degraded, half-witted creature of the streets, but as the grateful girl who had asked for no happier future than to be his servant, who had dropped senseless at his feet at the bare prospect of parting with him. His sense of self-respect, his loyalty to his betrothed wife, resolutely resisted the unworthy conclusion to which his own thoughts were leading him. He turned back again to Regina; he spoke so loudly and so vehemently that the gathering flow of her tears was suspended in surprise. “You’re right, you’re quite right, my dear! I ought to give you time, of course. I try to control my hasty temper, but I don’t always succeed—just at first. Pray forgive me; it shall be exactly as you wish.”
Regina forgave him, with a gentle and ladylike astonishment at the excitable manner in which he made his excuses. She even neglected her embroidery, and put her face up to him to be kissed. “You are so nice, dear,” she said, “when you are not violent and unreasonable. It is such a pity you were brought up in America. Won’t you stay to lunch?”
Happily for Amelius, the footman appeared at this critical moment with a message: “My mistress wishes particularly to see you, sir, before you go.”
This was the first occasion, in the experience of the lovers, on which Mrs. Farnaby had expressed her wishes through the medium of a servant, instead of appearing personally. The curiosity of Regina was mildly excited. “What a very odd message!” she said; “what does it mean? My aunt went out earlier than usual this morning, and I have not seen her since. I wonder whether she is going to consult you about my uncle’s affairs?”
“I’ll go and see,” said Amelius.
“And stay to lunch?” Regina reiterated.
“Not to-day, my dear.”
“To-morrow, then?”
“Yes, to-morrow.” So he escaped. As he opened the door, he looked back, and kissed his hand. Regina raised her head for a moment, and smiled charmingly. She was hard at work again over her embroidery.
The door of Mrs. Farnaby’s ground-floor room, at the back of the house, was partially open. She was on the watch for Amelius.
“Come in!” she cried, the moment he appeared in the hall. She pulled him into the room, and shut the door with a bang. Her face was flushed, her eyes were wild. “I have something to tell you, you dear good fellow,” she burst out excitedly—“Something in confidence, between you and me!” She paused, and looked at him with sudden anxiety and alarm. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
The sight of the room, the reference to a secret, the prospect of another private conference, forced back the mind of Amelius, in one breathless instant, to his first memorable interview with Mrs. Farnaby. The mother’s piteously hopeful words, in speaking of her lost daughter, rang in his ears again as if they had just fallen from her lips. “She may be lost in the labyrinth of London.... To-morrow, or ten years hence, youmightmeet with her.” There were a hundred chances against it—a thousand, ten thousand chances against it. The startling possibility flashed across his brain, nevertheless, like a sudden flow of daylight across the dark.“HaveI met with her, at the first chance?”
“Wait,” he cried; “I have something to say before you speak to me. Don’t deceive yourself with vain hopes. Promise me that, before I begin.”
She waved her hand derisively. “Hopes?” she repeated; “I have done with hopes, I have done with fears—I have got to certainties, at last!”
He was too eager to heed anything that she said to him; his whole soul was absorbed in the coming disclosure. “Two nights since,” he went on, “I was wandering about London, and I met—”
She burst out laughing. “Go on!” she cried, with a wild derisive gaiety.
Amelius stopped, perplexed and startled. “What are you laughing at?” he asked.
“Go on!” she repeated. “I defy you to surprise me. Out with it! Whom did you meet?”
Amelius proceeded doubtfully, by a word at a time. “I met a poor girl in the streets,” he said, steadily watching her.
She changed completely at those words; she looked at him with an aspect of stern reproach. “No more of it,” she interposed; “I have not waited all these miserable years for such a horrible end as that.” Her face suddenly brightened; a radiant effusion of tenderness and triumph flowed over it, and made it young and happy again. “Amelius!” she said, “listen to this. My dream has come true—my girl is found! Thanks to you, though you don’t know it.”
Amelius looked at her. Was she speaking of something that had really happened? or had she been dreaming again?
Absorbed in her own happiness, she made no remark on his silence. “I have seen the woman,” she went on. “This bright blessed morning I have seen the woman who took her away in the first days of her poor little life. The wretch swears she was not to blame. I tried to forgive her. Perhaps I almost did forgive her, in the joy of hearing what she had to tell me. I should never have heard it, Amelius, if you had not given that glorious lecture. The woman was one of your audience. She would never have spoken of those past days; she would never have thought of me—”
At those words, Mrs. Farnaby abruptly stopped, and turned her face away from Amelius. After waiting a little, finding her still silent, still immovable, he ventured on putting a question.
“Are you sure you are not deceived?” he asked. “I remember you told me that rogues had tried to impose on you, in past times when you employed people to find her.”
“I have proof that I am not being imposed upon,” Mrs. Farnaby answered, still keeping her face hidden from him. “One of them knows of the fault in her foot.”
“One of them?” Amelius repeated. “How many of them are there?”
“Two. The old woman, and a young man.”
“What are their names?”
“They won’t tell me their names yet.”
“Isn’t that a little suspicious?”
“One of them knows,” Mrs. Farnaby reiterated, “of the fault in her foot.”
“May I ask which of them knows? The old woman, I suppose?”
“No, the young man.”
“That’s strange, isn’t it? Have you seen the young man?”
“I know nothing of him, except the little that the woman told me. He has written me a letter.”
“May I look at it?”
“I daren’t let you look at it!”
Amelius said no more. If he had felt the smallest suspicion that the disclosure volunteered by Mrs. Farnaby, at their first interview, had been overheard by the unknown person who had opened the swinging window in the kitchen, he might have recalled Phoebe’s vindictive language at his lodgings, and the doubts suggested to him by his discovery of the vagabond waiting for her in the street. As it was, he was simply puzzled. The one plain conclusion to his mind was, unhappily, the natural conclusion after what he had heard—that Mrs. Farnaby had no sort of interest in the discovery of Simple Sally, and that he need trouble himself with no further anxiety in that matter. Strange as Mrs. Farnaby’s mysterious revelation seemed, her correspondent’s knowledge of the fault in the foot was circumstance in his favour, beyond dispute. Amelius still wondered inwardly how it was that the woman who had taken charge of the child had failed to discover what appeared to be known to another person. If he had been aware that Mrs. Sowler’s occupation at the time was the occupation of a “baby-farmer,” and that she had many other deserted children pining under her charge, he might have easily understood that she was the last person in the world to trouble herself with a minute examination of any one of the unfortunate little creatures abandoned to her drunken and merciless neglect. Jervy had satisfied himself, before he trusted her with his instructions, that she knew no more than the veriest stranger of any peculiarity in one or the other of the child’s feet.
Interpreting Mrs. Farnaby’s last reply to him as an intimation that their interview was at an end, Amelius took up his hat to go.
“I hope with all my heart,” he said, “that what has begun so well will end well. If there is any service that I can do for you—”
She drew nearer to him, and put her hand gently on his shoulder. “Don’t think that I distrust you,” she said very earnestly; “I am unwilling to shock you—that is all. Even this great joy has a dark side to it; my miserable married life casts its shadow on everything that happens to me. Keep secret from everybody the little that I have told you—you will ruin me if you say one word of it to any living creature. I ought not to have opened my heart to you—but how could I help it, when the happiness that is coming to me has come through you? When you say good-bye to me to-day, Amelius, you say good-bye to me for the last time in this house. I am going away. Don’t ask me why—that is one more among the things which I daren’t tell you! You shall hear from me, or see me—I promise that. Give me some safe address to write to; some place where there are no inquisitive women who may open my letter in your absence.”
She handed him her pocket-book. Amelius wrote down in it the address of his club.
She took his hand. “Think of me kindly,” she said. “And, once more, don’t be afraid of my being deceived. There is a hard part of me still left which keeps me on my guard. The old woman tried, this morning, to make me talk to her about that little fault we know of in my child’s foot. But I thought to myself, ‘If you had taken a proper interest in my poor baby while she was with you, you must sooner or later have found it out.’ Not a word passed my lips. No, no, don’t be anxious when you think of me. I am as sharp as they are; I mean to find out how the man who wrote to me discovered what he knows; he shall satisfy me, I promise you, when I see him or hear from him next. All this is between ourselves strictly, sacredly between ourselves. Say nothing—I know I can trust you. Good-bye, and forgive me for having been so often in your way with Regina. I shall never be in your way again. Marry her, if you think she is good enough for you; I have no more interest now in your being a roving bachelor, meeting with girls here, there, and everywhere. You shall know how it goes on. Oh, I am so happy!”
She burst into tears, and signed to Amelius with a wild gesture of treaty to leave her.
He pressed her hand in silence, and went out.
Almost as the door closed on him, the variable woman changed again. For a while she walked rapidly to and fro, talking to herself. The course of her tears ceased. Her lips closed firmly; her eyes assumed an expression of savage resolve. She sat down at the table and opened her desk. “I’ll read it once more,” she said to herself, “before I seal it up.”
She took from her desk a letter of her own writing, and spread it out before her. With her elbows on the table, and her hands clasped fiercely in her hair, she read these lines addressed to her husband:—
JOHN FARNABY,—I have always suspected that you had something to do with the disappearance of our child. I know for certain now that you deliberately cast your infant daughter on the mercy of the world, and condemned your wife to a life of wretchedness.
“Don’t suppose that I have been deceived! I have spoken with the woman who waited by the garden-paling at Ramsgate, and who took the child from your hands. She saw you with me at the lecture; and she is absolutely sure that you are the man.
“Thanks to the meeting at the lecture-hall, I am at last on the trace of my lost daughter. This morning I heard the woman’s story. She kept the child, on the chance of its being reclaimed, until she could afford to keep it no longer. She met with a person who was willing to adopt it, and who took it away with her to a foreign country, not mentioned to me yet. In that country my daughter is still living, and will be restored to me on conditions which will be communicated in a few days’ time.
“Some of this story may be true, and some of it may be false; the woman may be lying to serve her own interests with me. Of one thing I am sure—my girl is identified, by means known to me of which there can be no doubt. And she must be still living, because the interest of the persons treating with me is an interest in her life.
“When you receive this letter, on your return from business to-night, I shall have left you, and left you for ever. The bare thought of even looking at you again fills me with horror. I have my own income, and I mean to take my own way. In your best interests I warn you, make no attempt to trace me. I declare solemnly that, rather than let your deserted daughter be polluted by the sight of you, I would kill you with my own hand, and die for it on the scaffold. If she ever asks for her father, I will do you one service. For the honour of human nature, I will tell her that her father is dead. It will not be all a falsehood. I repudiate you and your name—you are dead to me from this time forth.
“I sign myself by my father’s name—
“EMMA RONALD.”
She had said herself that she was unwilling to shock Amelius. This was the reason.
After thinking a little, she sealed and directed the letter. This done, she unlocked the wooden press which had once contained the baby’s frock and cap, and those other memorials of the past which she called her “dead consolations.” After satisfying herself that the press was empty, she wrote on a card, “To be called for by a messenger from my bankers”—and tied the card to a tin box in a corner, secured by a padlock. She lifted the box, and placed it in front of the press, so that it might be easily visible to any one entering the room. The safe keeping of her treasures provided for, she took the sealed letter, and, ascending the stairs, placed it on the table in her husband’s dressing-room. She hurried out again, the instant after, as if the sight of the place were intolerable to her.
Passing to the other end of the corridor, she entered her own bedchamber, and put on her bonnet and cloak. A leather handbag was on the bed. She took it up, and looked round the large luxurious room with a shudder of disgust. What she had suffered, within those four walls, no human creature knew but herself. She hurried out, as she had hurried out of her husband’s dressing-room.
Her niece was still in the drawing-room. As she reached the door, she hesitated, and stopped. The girl was a good girl, in her own dull placid way—and her sister’s daughter, too. A last little act of kindness would perhaps be a welcome act to remember. She opened the door so suddenly that Regina started, with a small cry of alarm. “Oh, aunt, how you frighten one! Are you going out?” “Yes; I’m going out,” was the short answer. “Come here. Give me a kiss.” Regina looked up in wide-eyed astonishment. Mrs. Farnaby stamped impatiently on the floor. Regina rose, gracefully bewildered. “My dear aunt, how very odd!” she said—and gave the kiss demanded, with a serenely surprised elevation of her finely shaped eyebrows. “Yes,” said Mrs. Farnaby; “that’s it—one of my oddities. Go back to your work. Good-bye.”
She left the room, as abruptly as she had entered it. With her firm heavy step she descended to the hall, passed out at the house door, and closed it behind her—never to return to it again.
Amelius left Mrs. Farnaby, troubled by emotions of confusion and alarm, which he was the last man living to endure patiently. Her extraordinary story of the discovered daughter, the still more startling assertion of her solution to leave the house, the absence of any plain explanation, the burden of secrecy imposed on him—all combined together to irritate his sensitive nerves. “I hate mysteries,” he thought; “and ever since I landed in England, I seem fated to be mixed up in them. Does she really mean to leave her husband and her niece? What will Farnaby do? What will become of Regina?”
To think of Regina was to think of the new repulse of which he had been made the subject. Again he had appealed to her love for him, and again she had refused to marry him at his own time.
He was especially perplexed and angry, when he reflected on the unassailably strong influence which her uncle appeared to have over her. All Regina’s sympathy was with Mr. Farnaby and his troubles. Amelius might have understood her a little better, if she had told him what had passed between her uncle and herself on the night of Mr. Farnaby’s return, in a state of indignation, from the lecture. In terror of the engagement being broken off, she had been forced to confess that she was too fond of Amelius to prevail on herself to part with him. If he attempted a second exposition of his Socialist principles on the platform, she owned that it might be impossible to receive him again as a suitor. But she pleaded hard for the granting of a pardon to the first offence, in the interests of her own tranquillity, if not in mercy to Amelius. Mr. Farnaby, already troubled by his commercial anxieties, had listened more amiably, and also more absently, than usual; and had granted her petition with the ready indulgence of a preoccupied man. It had been decided between them that the offence of the lecture should be passed over in discreet silence. Regina’s gratitude for this concession inspired her sympathy with her uncle in his present state of suspense. She had been sorely tempted to tell Amelius what had happened. But the natural reserve of her character—fortified, in this instance, by the defensive pride which makes a woman unwilling, before marriage, to confess her weakness unreservedly to the man who has caused it—had sealed her lips. “When he is a little less violent and a little more humble,” she thought, “perhaps I may tell him.”
So it fell out that Amelius took his way through the streets, a mystified and an angry man.
Arrived in sight of the hotel, he stopped, and looked about him.
It was impossible to disguise from himself that a lurking sense of regret was making itself felt, in his present frame of mind, when he thought of Simple Sally. In all probability, he would have quarrelled with any man who had accused him of actually lamenting the girl’s absence, and wanting her back again. He happened to recollect her artless blue eyes, with their vague patient look, and her quaint childish questions put so openly in so sweet a voice—and that was all. Was there anything reprehensible, if you please, in an act of remembrance? Comforting himself with these considerations, he moved on again a step or two—and stopped once more. In his present humour, he shrank from facing Rufus. The American read him like a book; the American would ask irritating questions. He turned his back on the hotel, and looked at his watch. As he took it out, his finger and thumb touched something else in his waistcoat-pocket. It was the card that Regina had given to him—the card of the cottage to let. He had nothing to do, and nowhere to go. Why not look at the cottage? If it proved to be not worth seeing, the Zoological Gardens were in the neighbourhood—and there are periods in a man’s life when he finds the society that walks on four feet a welcome relief from the society that walks on two.
It was a fairly fine day. He turned northward towards the Regent’s Park.
The cottage was in a by-road, just outside the park: a cottage in the strictest sense of the word. A sitting-room, a library, and a bedroom—all of small proportions—and, under them a kitchen and two more rooms, represented the whole of the little dwelling from top to bottom. It was simply and prettily furnished; and it was completely surrounded by its own tiny plot of garden-ground. The library especially was a perfect little retreat, looking out on the back garden; peaceful and shady, and adorned with bookcases of old carved oak.
Amelius had hardly looked round the room, before his inflammable brain was on fire with a new idea. Other idle men in trouble had found the solace and the occupation of their lives in books. Why should he not be one of them? Why not plunge into study in this delightful retirement—and perhaps, one day, astonish Regina and Mr. Farnaby by bursting on the world as the writer of a famous book? Exactly as Amelius, two days since, had seen himself in the future, a public lecturer in receipt of glorious fees—so he now saw himself the celebrated scholar and writer of a new era to come. The woman who showed the cottage happened to mention that a gentleman had already looked over it that morning, and had seemed to like it. Amelius instantly gave her a shilling, and said, “I take it on the spot.” The wondering woman referred him to the house-agent’s address, and kept at a safe distance from the excitable stranger as she let him out. In less than another hour, Amelius had taken the cottage, and had returned to the hotel with a new interest in life and a new surprise for Rufus.
As usual, in cases of emergency, the American wasted no time in talking. He went out at once to see the cottage, and to make his own inquiries of the agent. The result amply proved that Amelius had not been imposed upon. If he repented of his bargain, the gentleman who had first seen the cottage was ready to take it off his hands, at a moment’s notice.
Going back to the Hotel, Rufus found Amelius resolute to move into his new abode, and eager for the coming life of study and retirement. Knowing perfectly well before-hand how this latter project would end, the American tried the efficacy of a little worldly temptation. He had arranged, he said, “to have a good time of it in Paris”; and he proposed that Amelius should be his companion. The suggestion produced not the slightest effect; Amelius talked as if he was a confirmed recluse, in the decline of life. “Thank you,” he said, with the most amazing gravity; “I prefer the company of my books, and the seclusion of my study.” This declaration was followed by more selling-out of money in the Funds, and by a visit to a bookseller, which left a handsome pecuniary result inscribed on the right side of the ledger.
On the next day, Amelius presented himself towards two o’clock at Mr. Farnaby’s house. He was not so selfishly absorbed in his own projects as to forget Mrs. Farnaby. On the contrary, he was honestly anxious for news of her.
A certain middle-aged man of business has been briefly referred to, in these pages, as one of Regina’s faithful admirers, patiently submitting to the triumph of his favoured young rival. This gentleman, issuing from his carriage with his card-case ready in his hand, met Amelius at the door, with a face which announced plainly that a catastrophe had happened. “You have heard the sad news, no doubt?” he said, in a rich bass voice attuned to sadly courteous tones. The servant opened the door before Amelius could answer. After a contest of politeness, the middle-aged gentleman consented to make his inquiries first. “How is Mr. Farnaby? No better? And Miss Regina? Very poorly, oh? Dear, dear me! Say I called, if you please.” He handed in two cards, with a severe enjoyment of the melancholy occasion and the rich bass sounds of his own voice. “Very sad, is it not?” he said, addressing his youthful rival with an air of paternal indulgence. “Good morning.” He bowed with melancholy grace, and got into his carriage.
Amelius looked after the prosperous merchant, as the prancing horses drew him away. “After all,” he thought bitterly, “she might be happier with that rich prig than she could be with me.” He stepped into the hall, and spoke to the servant. The man had his message ready. Miss Regina would see Mr. Goldenheart, if he would be so good as to wait in the dinning-room.
Regina appeared, pale and scared; her eyes inflamed with weeping. “Oh, Amelius, can you tell me what this dreadful misfortune means? Why has she left us? When she sent for you yesterday, what did she say?”
In his position, Amelius could make but one answer. “Your aunt said she thought of going away. But,” he added, with perfect truth, “she refused to tell me why, or where she was going. I am quite as much at a loss to understand her as you are. What does your uncle propose to do?”
Mr. Farnaby’s conduct, as described by Regina, thickened the mystery—he proposed to do nothing.
He had been found on the hearth-rug in his dressing-room; having apparently been seized with a fit, in the act of burning some paper. The ashes were discovered close by him, just inside the fender. On his recovery, his first anxiety was to know if a letter had been burnt. Satisfied on this point, he had ordered the servants to assemble round his bed, and had peremptorily forbidden them to open the door to their mistress, if she ever returned at any future time to the house. Regina’s questions and remonstrances, when she was left alone with him, were answered, once for all, in these pitiless terms:—“If you wish to deserve the fatherly interest that I take in you, do as I do: forget that such a person as your aunt ever existed. We shall quarrel, if you ever mention her name in my hearing again.” This said, he had instantly changed the subject; instructing Regina to write an excuse to “Mr. Melton” (otherwise, the middle-aged rival), with whom he had been engaged to dine that evening. Relating this latter event, Regina’s ever-ready gratitude overflowed in the direction of Mr. Melton. “He was so kind! he left his guests in the evening, and came and sat with my uncle for nearly an hour.” Amelius made no remark on this; he led the conversation back to the subject of Mrs. Farnaby. “She once spoke to me of her lawyers,” he said. “Dotheyknow nothing about her?”
The answer to this question showed that the sternly final decision of Mr. Farnaby was matched by equal resolution on the part of his wife.
One of the partners in the legal firm had called that morning, to see Regina on a matter of business. Mrs. Farnaby had appeared at the office on the previous day, and had briefly expressed her wish to make a small annual provision for her niece, in case of future need. Declining to enter into any explanation, she had waited until the necessary document had been drawn out; had requested that Regina might be informed of the circumstance; and had then taken her departure in absolute silence. Hearing that she had left her husband, the lawyer, like every one else, was completely at a loss to understand what it meant.
“And what does the doctor say?” Amelius asked next.
“My uncle is to be kept perfectly quiet,” Regina answered; “and is not to return to business for some time to come. Mr. Melton, with his usual kindness, has undertaken to look after his affairs for him. Otherwise, my uncle, in his present state of anxiety about the bank, would never have consented to obey the doctor’s orders. When he can safely travel, he is recommended to go abroad for the winter, and get well again in some warmer climate. He refuses to leave his business—and the doctor refuses to take the responsibility. There is to be a consultation of physicians tomorrow. Oh, Amelius, I was really fond of my aunt—I am heart-broken at this dreadful change!”
There was a momentary silence. If Mr. Melton had been present, he would have said a few neatly sympathetic words. Amelius knew no more than a savage of the art of conventional consolation. Tadmor had made him familiar with the social and political questions of the time, and had taught him to speak in public. But Tadmor, rich in books and newspapers, was a powerless training institution in the matter of small talk.
“Suppose Mr. Farnaby is obliged to go abroad,” he suggested, after waiting a little, “what will you do?”
Regina looked at him, with an air of melancholy surprise. “I shall do my duty, of course,” she answered gravely. “I shall accompany my dear uncle, if he wishes it.” She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “It is time he took his medicine,” she resumed; “you will excuse me, I am sure.” She shook hands, not very warmly—and hastened out of the room.
Amelius left the house, with a conviction which disheartened him—the conviction that he had never understood Regina, and that he was not likely to understand her in the future. He turned for relief to the consideration of Mr. Farnaby’s strange conduct, under the domestic disaster which had befallen him.
Recalling what he had observed for himself, and what he had heard from Mrs. Farnaby when she had first taken him into her confidence, he inferred that the subject of the lost child had not only been a subject of estrangement between the husband and wife, but that the husband was, in some way, the person blamable for it. Assuming this theory to be the right one, there would be serious obstacles to the meeting of the mother and child, in the mother’s home. The departure of Mrs. Farnaby was, in that case, no longer unintelligible—and Mr. Farnaby’s otherwise inexplicable conduct had the light of a motive thrown on it, which might not unnaturally influence a hard-hearted man weary alike of his wife and his wife’s troubles. Arriving at this conclusion by a far shorter process than is here indicated, Amelius pursued the subject no further. At the time when he had first visited the Farnabys, Rufus had advised him to withdraw from closer intercourse with them, while he had the chance. In his present mood, he was almost in danger of acknowledging to himself that Rufus had proved to be right.
He lunched with his American friend at the hotel. Before the meal was over Mrs. Payson called, to say a few cheering words about Sally.
It was not to be denied that the girl remained persistently silent and reserved. In other respects the report was highly favourable. She was obedient to the rules of the house; she was always ready with any little services that she could render to her companions; and she was so eager to improve herself, by means of her reading-lessons and writing-lessons, that it was not easy to induce her to lay aside her book and her slate. When the teacher offered her some small reward for her good conduct, and asked what she would like, the sad little face brightened, and the faithful creature’s answer was always the same—“I should like to know what he is doing now.” (Alas for Sally!—“he” meant Amelius.)
“You must wait a little longer before you write to her,” Mrs. Payson concluded, “and you must not think of seeing her for some time to come. I know you will help us by consenting to this—for Sally’s sake.”
Amelius bowed in silence. He would not have confessed what he felt, at that moment, to any living soul—it is doubtful if he even confessed it to himself. Mrs. Payson, observing him with a woman’s keen sympathy, relented a little. “I might give her a message,” the good lady suggested—“just to say you are glad to hear she is behaving so well.”
“Will you give her this?” Amelius asked.
He took from his pocket a little photograph of the cottage, which he had noticed on the house-agent’s desk, and had taken away with him. “It ismycottage now,” he explained, in tones that faltered a little; “I am going to live there; Sally might like to see it.”
“Sallyshallsee it,” Mrs. Payson agreed—“if you will only let me take this away first.” She pointed to the address of the cottage, printed under the photograph. Past experience in the Home made her reluctant to trust Sally with the address in London at which Amelius was to be found.
Rufus produced a huge complex knife, out of the depths of which a pair of scissors burst on touching a spring. Mrs. Payson cut off the address, and placed the photograph in her pocket-book. “Now,” she said, “Sally will be happy, and no harm can come of it.”
“I’ve known you, ma’am, nigh on twenty years,” Rufus remarked. “I do assure you that’s the first rash observation I ever heard from your lips.”