That same evening, while Alwyn Cunningham at his hotel in London was
writing the story of his life to his brother, hardly able to fix his
thoughts on anything but the interview of the afternoon, Harry Whittaker
was walking through the streets of Rapley. Nobody noticed him there, or
wondered to see a stout, good-looking man, with a long beard, and rather
a rough coat, among the passers-by. Certainly no one identified him
with the saucy errand-boy who had idled at street corners and engaged in
a free fight, with parcels and bandboxes for missiles and weapons, eight
years or so before. He walked on till he came to the small but
respectable-looking ironmonger's shop, over the door of which was
painted the name of Stroud. He walked in, glanced round, and a
well-dressed woman came forward.
"What can I show you, sir?"
Harry asked for a clasp knife, looked at her keenly for a moment, then
said:
"That's an American mowing machine, I think, ma'am?"
"Yes, sir, the newest patent, very light and handy. Anything in the way
of garden tools, sir?"
Harry Whittaker was Harry Whittaker still; he appreciated the exquisite
joke of being ceremoniously treated by his Aunt Stroud. But he could
not afford to indulge it. He looked at her, smiled a little, and said:
"No, thank you, my farm's across the water in State. It'd hardly pay to
take over machinery from the old country."
Mrs Stroud gave a start, and, as she afterwards expressed it, "nearly
sunk down upon the rakes."
"Could I have a word in private?" said Harry.
"Step this way--sir," she said, still in a state of doubt, and leading
him into the comfortable parlour behind the shop.
"Aunt Eliza," said Harry, as the door closed behind them, "I felt sure
that _you_ would know me at once."
Mrs Stroud did sink down into an arm-chair exclaiming:
"Bless us and save us, it's Harry!"
"Yes, aunt," said Harry, "it is; and I've come first to you, knowing
your influence with father, and that you could be trusted with an
important secret; to ask you to give me a welcome, and to overlook my
past undutiful behaviour."
"Oh, my! And I'd imagined you a convict, or drowned dead!"
"Not at all," said Harry, "I never was drowned, and I haven't yet been
hanged. On the contrary, finding myself well-to-do in the world, and
happily settled in life, I felt that it was time to endeavour to undo
the past."
Harry spoke quite earnestly, but with a boldness of manner, and
confidence of look, that established his identity at once. He put out
his hand; but Mrs Stroud, bursting into tears, launched herself on his
neck.
"You were always my favourite, Harry, and if you've done well for
yourself I'm most glad to see you."
"Thank you, Aunt Eliza, you're very good, I'm sure; it's more than I
deserve. My father, my sisters and brothers?"
"Your father's very hearty, and your brothers and sisters doing well,
except Florrie, who gives a deal of trouble, as you did yourself. But
what'll you take, Henry? Sit down and tell me where you've been living.
What will you have?"
"A cup of tea, aunt, if it's your tea-time; I'm a teetotaller," said
Harry, unable to help a twinkle of fun at his aunt's astonished rapture
at this evidence of virtue.
As she got the tea he began to tell his story much as Alwyn had already
related it to Edgar; but at greater length, and with many interruptions
from his aunt.
"Mr Alwyn," he went on, after some preliminaries about the buying of
the land, and the discovery of the coal upon it, "never played the fool
any more after he was on his own hands as it were. He seemed to want to
justify himself, and prove those mistaken that thought we should both go
to the bad. He never let on that he felt parting from home and being
cut off from his expectations, nor did I. But, when there's no longer
anyone to pull a young fellow up, it's one of two things: either he goes
down altogether, or he has to pull up himself. And I can tell you,
aunt, if all the graceless young chaps knew what a much easier sort of
thing it is to get a good blowing up at the time, and the consequences
saved you afterwards, than to go scot-free and find out for yourself
what you've brought about, they'd not be in such a hurry to kick over
the traces. But Mr Alwyn said that he'd brought suspicion and trouble
on me, and he wouldn't be the ruin of me further. So we kept straight
and got on, and thought a deal of ourselves for doing it."
"It's what no one never expected!" ejaculated Mrs Stroud.
"No," said Harry. "Well, I got married, as I'll tell more about
by-and-by, and I thought I'd done with the old country altogether, and
went on as comfortable as could be till my little boy came. Then, Aunt
Eliza, somehow it came over me more and more what it would be to have
that little chap hear that there were those over here that thought I was
a thief, and have him know that I was an undutiful son that left my
father in his old age. If that there baby was for eight years without
so much as thinking of me, or caring what I thought of him, why, it'd go
near to break my heart, and I'd sooner follow him to his grave now, and
never see him again. God forgive me! I'd been a bad son, but `don't
care' was a word I couldn't say before the little chap, nor have him say
after me.
"Well, when all this was waking in me, Mr Alwyn was away in Boston, and
I'd reason to guess what kept him there, and how there was a young lady
in the case. He came back sudden, and while I was thinking how to tell
him what was in my mind he turned round upon me and said, says he
`Harry, I'm going home to beg pardon.'
"`If you do,' says I, `I'll go with you.'
"And then he told me how he couldn't ask Miss Dallas to marry him till
he had told about his quarrel with his father; but his pride had held
him back from trying to make it up, and going to seek for what he'd
thrown away. He'd had a very hard time, he told me, what with the oath
he'd made, and all that lay behind him. And he did look pale and
changed, I can tell you, and seemed as if he couldn't speak what was in
his mind. But he should go, he said, whether the jewels were found or
not, and even if the opening up of all the old scandal put him further
off the young lady. And then I told him the thoughts I'd had on the
subject, and he said: `There's more than that, Harry, for through all
this I've come to see that I sinned against God.'"
"Well," said Mrs Stroud, "I never did think to hear as Mr Alwyn was a
converted man! It's a miracle!"
"Well," said Harry gravely, "as you may say it was; but 'twas that
conviction that conquered his pride and made him resolve to go home
again. Just as we'd settled on this conclusion, and were wondering what
to do next, there was an accident with some paraffin, and a young fellow
working for us was near burnt to death, and would have been killed on
the spot but for Mr Alwyn. Now we knew that this young man Lennox had
been footman at Ravenshurst, and had left the place about a week before
we did, to go abroad with a gentleman. He told us he came to seek work
because he had known us formerly.
"To make a long story short, Mr Alwyn, worse luck, sent the only other
man about for the doctor, and he and I stayed with Lennox. Then, says
he, he'd been a great sinner, and he'd like to own it before he died.
And he told Mr Alwyn a number of dishonest actions, small and great,
and at last he said he'd taken the Ravenshurst jewels. He'd come back
on the sly to see his sweetheart after he left the place, and saw the
young lady come down and slip the jewels under the ferns on the rockery,
and he took them on the spur of the moment. Well, he was just off with
his new master on a trip to India; but he contrived to hear how I was
suspected before he started."
"And took the jewels with him?"
"Well--it's all in the confession Mr Alwyn wrote down. But one of the
jewels he had still, and that he gave us, and Mr Alwyn has it row. But
he said it had been on his conscience all the time he was knocking about
the world, and that when he heard our names he came and got work with us
on purpose, though he put off owning his guilt from day to day. He'd
near put it off too late, for before he'd told us all we wanted to know
the death struggle came on him and he could tell us no more. And 'twas
then, Aunt Eliza, by the words Mr Alwyn said, and the prayers he made
that I knew of the change that had come on him and first thought of my
sin against God, as well as against the little one.
"Well, the doctor came as Lennox died, and Mr Alwyn made him stay with
us and keep us in sight while, without a word to one another, we each
wrote down what the dying man had said to us; and the doctor witnessed
that we had written it without speech with one another since Lennox's
death. Then we took the papers before the nearest judge, and made our
affidavits that they contained a true confession. But it's all on our
words after all; howsoever, on that confession we came back."
"Well, Harry," said Mrs Stroud, "I'd take my dying oath you was
innocent. But whatever made you decamp just at that moment?"
"My father knew where I was," said Harry. "He knew I joined Mr Alwyn.
But he declared that after the jewels had been named in connection with
us he'd never go home, if they were found twenty times over, without the
squire made him an apology."
Mrs Stroud sat and looked at her recovered nephew, at his good clothes,
his watch chain, his air of undoubted respectability, and also at the
unembarrassed and cheerful air with which he faced her.
"What are you going to do now?" she said.
"That must depend on Mr Alwyn. He thought Mr Edgar would perhaps have
helped him search, or told him how the land lay, anyhow; so he wrote him
a note appointing a meeting, which I gave to little Wyn Warren in the
wood. It seems he lost it; and, though the meeting came about, Mr
Alwyn was so distracted at the state in which he found his poor brother
that he never laid any plans at all. When I joined him he couldn't
hardly speak of him. 'Twas the heaviest punishment of all, he said."
"Ah, poor young gentleman," said Mrs Stroud; "it's a sad business, and
I doubt he's not long for this world. But do I take you to say, Harry,
that you're a family man?"
Harry nodded, and produced a photograph of his wife and baby, and
another of the substantial house in which he lived; and over the tea a
great many more questions and answers were interchanged. Harry heard
all about his sisters, and where Florence was, and what his brother
George was doing. He couldn't help enjoying the joke of appearing to
his aunt in so new a light--even while he asked with real affection
after Mattie, and studied the photographs of his family in his aunt's
book. He could not make himself known to his father, he said, until Mr
Alwyn had taken some action, and, of course, he could not but hope that
the explanation of the lost jewels would be accepted at Ashcroft.
His coming to see his aunt had been, he said, a sudden thought, prompted
by Mr Alwyn's shock and distress at his brother's illness.
"I didn't know then what I might find at the old place," he said. "But
if you could keep my coming quiet for a few days, aunt, it would be all
for the better."
"Well, Henry," said Mrs Stroud, "there's nothing declares to me that
you're a reformed character so much as your coming and consulting _me_,
as was your true friend in the past always. It's a lucky thing that
Stroud has gone down the line to-day to his cousin's funeral. I'll keep
your secret, Harry, though the thought of _you_, sitting there so
broad-shouldered, and so well-to-do looking, is so amazing that I feel
as if it would ooze out of me at the seams of my gown!"
"Well, aunt," said Harry, "you're very good, and I hope in a couple of
days the concealment will be over."
"It's well," said Mrs Stroud, "that that unlucky Florrie knows nothing
of it, or she'd have controverted your intentions to a dead certainty."