MR. FORD’S CLIENT.—THE HISTORY OF JAN’S FATHER—AMABEL AND BOGY THE
SECOND.
AMONG the many sounds blended into that one which roared for ever round
Mr. Ford’s offices in the city was the cry of the newsboys.
“Horful p’ticklers of the plague in a village in —shire!” they screamed
under the windows. Not that Mr. Ford heard them. But in five minutes
the noiseless door opened, and a clerk laid the morning paper on the
table, and withdrew in silence. Mr. Ford cut it leisurely with a large
ivory knife, and skimmed the news. His eye happened to fall upon the
Rector’s letter, which, after a short summary of the history of the
fever, pointed out the objects for which help was immediately required.
There was a postscript. To give some idea of the ravages of the
epidemic, and as a proof that the calamity was not exaggerated, a list of
some of the worst cases was given, with names and particulars. It was
gloomy enough. “Mary Smith, lost her husband (a laborer) and six
children between the second and the ninth of the month. George Harness,
a blacksmith, lost his wife and four children. Master Abel Lake,
windmiller of the Tower Mill, lost all his children, five in number,
between the fifth and the fifteenth of the month. His wife’s health is
completely broken up”—
At this point Mr. Ford dropped the paper, and, unlocking a drawer beside
him, referred to some memoranda, after which he cut out the Rector’s
letter with a large pair of office scissors, and enclosed it in one which
he wrote before proceeding to any other business. He had underlined one
name in the doleful list,—_Abel Lake_, _windmiller_.
Some hours later the silent clerk ushered in a visitor, one of Mr. Ford’s
clients. He was a gentleman of middle height and middle age,—the younger
half of middle age, though his dark hair was prematurely gray. His eyes
were black and restless, and his manner at once haughty and nervous.
“I am very glad to see you, my dear sir,” said Mr. Ford, suavely; “I had
just written you a note, the subject of which I can now speak about.”
And, as he spoke, Mr. Ford tore open the letter which lay beside him,
whilst his client was saying, “We are only passing through town on our
way to Scotland. I shall be here two nights.”
“You remember instructing me that it was your wish to economize as much
as possible during the minority of your son?” said Mr. Ford. His client
nodded.
“I think,” continued the man of business, “there is a quarterly payment
we have been in the habit of making on your account, which is now at an
end.” And, as he spoke, he pushed the Rector’s letter across the table,
with his fingers upon the name _Abel Lake_, _windmiller_. His client
always spoke stiffly, which made the effort with which he now spoke less
noticed by the lawyer. “I should like to be certain,” he said. “I mean,
that there is no exaggeration or mistake.”
“You have never communicated with the man, or given him any chance of
pestering you,” said Mr. Ford. “I should hardly do so now, I think.”
“I certainly kept the power of reopening communication in my own hands,
knowing nothing of the man; but I should be sorry to discontinue the
allowance under a—a mistake of any kind.”
Mr. Ford meditated. It may be said here that he by no means knew all
that the reader knows of Jan’s history; but he saw that his client was
anxious not to withhold the money if the child were alive.
“I think I have it, my dear sir,” he said suddenly. “Allow me to write,
in my own name, to this worthy clergyman. I must ask you to subscribe to
his fund, in my name, which will form an excuse for the letter, and I
will contrive to ask him if the list of cases has been printed
accurately, and has his sanction. If there has been any error, we shall
hear of it. The object of the subscription is—let me see—is—a monument
to those who have died of the fever and”—
But the dark gentleman had started up abruptly.
“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ford,” he said; “your plan is, as usual,
excellent. Pray oblige me by sending ten guineas in your own name, and
you will let me know if—if there _is_ any mistake. I will call in
to-morrow about other matters.”
And before Mr. Ford could reply his client was gone.
The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was
grateful to his present mood. To have been alone with his thoughts in
the country would have been intolerable. The fields smack of innocence,
and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple tints of right and
wrong in the memory. But in that seething mass, which represents ten
thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful shifts, and open sins, as bad
or worse than a man’s own, there is a silent sympathy and no reproach.
Mr. Ford’s client did not lean back, the tension of his mind was too
great. He sat stiffly, and gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and
half transforming into other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as
it wound its way through the streets. Now for a moment a four-wheeled
cab, loaded with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle
memories of his own boyhood flitted over it. Then, crawling behind a
dray, some strange associations built up the barrels into an old
weatherstained wooden house in Holland, and for a while an intense
realization of past scenes which love had made happy put present
anxieties to sleep. But they woke again with a horrible pang, as a grim,
hideous funeral car drove slowly past, nodding like a nightmare.
As the traffic became less dense, and the cab went faster, the man’s
thoughts went faster too. He strove to do what he had not often tried,
to review his life. He had unconsciously gained the will to do it,
because a reparation which conscience might hitherto have pressed on him
was now impossible, and because the plague that had desolated Abel Lake’s
home had swept the skeleton out of his own cupboard, and he could repent
of the past and do his duty in the future. His conscience was stronger
than his courage. He had long wished to repent, though he had not found
strength to repair.
On one point he did not delude himself as he looked back over his life.
He had no sentimental regrets for the careless happiness of youth. Is
any period of human life so tormented with cares as a self-indulgent
youth? He had been a slave to expensive habits, to social traditions, to
past follies, ever since he could remember. He had been in debt, in
pocket or in conscience, from his schoolboy days to this hour. His
tradesmen were paid long since, and, if death had cancelled what else he
owed, how easy virtue would henceforth be!
It had not been easy at the date of his first marriage. He was deeply in
debt, and out of favor with his father. It was on both accounts that he
went abroad for some months. In Holland he married. His wife was Jan’s
mother, and Jan was their only child.
Her people were of middle rank, leading quiet though cultivated lives.
Her mother was dead, and she was her old father’s only child. It would
be doing injustice to the kind of love with which she inspired her
husband to dwell much upon her beauty, though it was of that high type
which takes possession of the memory for ever. She was very intensely,
brilliantly fair, so that in a crowd her face shone out like a star.
Time never dimmed one golden thread in her hair; and Death, who had done
so much for Mr. Ford’s client, could not wash that face from his brain.
It blotted the traffic out of the streets, and in their place Dutch
pastures, whose rich green levels were unbroken by hedge or wall,
stretched flatly to the horizon. It bent over a drawing on his knee as
he and she sat sketching together in an old-world orchard, where the
trees bore more moss than fruit. The din of London was absolutely
unheard by Mr. Ford’s client, but he heard her voice, saying, “You must
learn to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery.
And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study the
sky. We have no mountains, but we have clouds.” It was in the orchard,
under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had plighted
their troth—ten years ago.
They were married. Had he ever denied himself a single gratification,
because it would add another knot to the tangle of his career? He had
pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and had evaded catastrophes
by involving himself in new complications all his life. His marriage was
accomplished at the expense of a train of falsehoods, but his
father-in-law was an unworldly old man, not difficult to deceive. He
spent most of the next ten months in Holland, and, apart from his
anxieties, it was the purest, happiest time he had ever known. Then his
father recalled him peremptorily to England.
When Mr. Ford’s client obeyed his father’s summons, the climax of his
difficulties seemed at hand. The old man was anxious for a
reconciliation, but resolved that his son should “settle in life;” and he
had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman, young,
handsome, and with a good fortune. He gave him a fortnight for
consideration. If he complied, the old man promised to pay his debts, to
make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way indulgent. If he
thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him nothing during his
lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could avoid bequeathing at his
death.
It was at this juncture that Jan’s mother followed her husband to
England. Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied her
father. The crisis could hardly have been worse. Mr. Ford’s client felt
that confession was now inevitable; and that he could confess more easily
by letter when he reached London. But before the letter was written, his
wife died.
Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to
their selfish fears. It is like the cruelty that comes of terror. He
had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there came a sense
of relief even with the bitterness of the knowledge that he was free. He
took the body to Holland, to be buried under the shadow of the little
wooden church where they were married; and to the desolate old father he
promised to bring his grandson—Jan. But just after the death of an old
nurse, in whose care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr.
Ford’s client. On the same day he got letters from his father and from
his father-in-law. From the first, to press his instant return home;
from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the old
man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him. Jan’s
father almost hated him. That the child should have lived when the
beloved mother died was in itself an offence. But that that freedom, and
peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly purchased by her death,
should be risked afresh by him, was irritating to a degree. He was
frantic. It was impossible to fail that very peremptory old gentleman,
his father. It was out of the question to allow his father-in-law to
come to England. He could not throw away all his prospects. And the
more he thought of it, the more certain it seemed that Jan’s existence
would for ever tie him to Holland; that for his grandson’s sake the old
man would investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out
sooner or later. The very devil suggested to him that if the child had
died with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with
Holland would have died away naturally. He wished to forget. To a
nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged to
enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively evaded
like any other unpleasant thing. He resolved, at last, to let nothing
stand between him and reconciliation with his father. Once more he must
desperately mortgage the future for present emergencies. He wrote to the
old father-in-law to say that the child was dead. He excused this to
himself on the ground of Jan’s welfare. If the truth became fully known,
and his father threw him off, he would be a poor embarrassed man, and
could do little for his child. But with his father’s fortune, and,
perhaps, the Scotch lady’s fortune, it would be in his power to give Jan
a brilliant future, _even if_ he never fully acknowledged him. As yet he
hardly recognized such an unnatural possibility. He said to himself,
that when he was free, all would be well, and the Dutch grandfather would
forgive the lie in the joy of discovering that Jan was alive, and would
be so well provided for.
Mr. Ford’s client was reconciled to his father. He married Lady
Adelaide, and announced the marriage to his father-in-law. After which,
his intercourse with Holland died out.
It was a curious result of a marriage so made that it was a very happy
one. Still more curious was the likeness, both physical and mental,
between the second wife and the first. Lady Adelaide was half Scotch and
half English, a blonde of the most brilliant type, and of an intellectual
order of beauty. But fair women are common enough. It was stranger
still that the best affections of two women of so high a moral and
intellectual standard should have been devoted to the same and to such a
husband. Not quite in vain. Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards
his eldest son, Mr. Ford’s client would probably have become an utterly
different man. But there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a
wilful, unrepented sin as a clog. It was a miserable result of the
weakness of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness
of Lady Adelaide’s should have encouraged him to confess to her what he
dared not trust to his father’s imperious, petulant affection. But he
was afraid of her. It had been the same with his first wife. He had
dreaded that she should discover his falsehoods far more than he had
feared his father-in-law. And years of happy companionship made it even
less tolerable to him to think of lowering himself in Lady Adelaide’s
regard.
But there was a far more overwhelming consideration which had been
gathering strength for eight years between him and the idea of
recognizing Jan as his eldest son, and his heir. He had another son,
Lady Adelaide’s only child. If he had hesitated when the boy was only a
baby to tell her that her darling was not his only son, it was less and
less easy to him to think of bringing Jan,—of whom he knew nothing—from
the rough life of the mill to supplant Lady Adelaide’s child, when the
boy grew more charming as every year went by. Clever, sweet-tempered, of
aristocratic appearance, idolized by the relatives of both his parents,
he seemed made by Providence to do credit to the position to which he was
believed to have been born.
Mr. Ford’s client had almost made the resolve against which that fair
face that was not Lady Adelaide’s for ever rose up in judgment: he was
just deciding to put Jan to school, and to give up all idea of taking him
home, when death seemed once more to have solved his difficulties. An
unwonted ease came into his heart. Surely Heaven, knowing how sincerely
he wished to be good, was making goodness easy to him,—was permitting him
to settle with his conscience on cheaper terms than those of repentance
and restitution. (And indeed, if amendment, of the weak as well as of
the strong, be GOD’S great purpose for us, who shall say that the
ruggedness of the narrow road is not often smoothed for stumbling feet?)
The fever seemed quite providential, and Mr. Ford’s client felt quite
pious about it. He was conscious of no mockery in dwelling to himself on
the thought that Jan was “better off” in Paradise with his mother. And
he himself was safe—for the first time since he could remember,—free at
last to become worthier, with no black shadow at his heels. Very
touching was his resolve that he would be a better father to his son than
his own father had been to him. If he could not train him in high
principles and self-restraint, he would at least be indulgent to the
consequences of his own indulgence, and never drive him to those fearful
straits. “But he’ll be a very different young man from what I was,” was
his final thought. “Thanks to his good mother.”
His mind was full of Lady Adelaide’s goodness as he entered his house,
and she met him in the hall.
“Ah, Edward!” she cried, “I am so glad you’ve come home. I want you to
see that quaint child I was telling you about.”
“I don’t remember, my dear,” said Mr. Ford’s client.
“You’re looking very tired,” said Lady Adelaide, gently; “but about the
child. It is Lady Louisa Ammaby’s little girl. You know I met her just
before we left Brighton. I only saw the child once, but it is the
quaintest, most original little being! So unlike its mother! She and
her mother are in town, and they were going out to luncheon to-day I
found, so I asked the child here to dine with D’Arcy. Her _bonne_ is
taking off her things, and I must go and bring her down.”
As Lady Adelaide went out, her son came in, and rushed up to his father.
If Mr. Ford’s client had failed in natural affection for one son, his
love for the other had a double intensity. He put his arm tenderly round
him, whilst the boy told some long childish story, which was not finished
when Lady Adelaide returned, leading Amabel by the hand. Amabel was a
good deal taller. Her large feet were adorned with ornamental thread
socks, and leathern shoes buttoned round the ankle. Her hair was
cropped, because Lady Craikshaw said this made it grow. She wore a big
pinafore by the same authority, in spite of which she carried herself
with an admirable dignity. The same candor, good sense, and resolution
shone from her clear eyes and fat cheeks as of old. Mr. Ford’s client
was alarming to children, but Amabel shook hands courageously with him.
She was accustomed to exercise courage in her behavior. From her
earliest days a standard of manners had been expected of her beyond her
age. It was a consequence of her growth. “You’re quite a big girl now,”
was a nursery reproach addressed to her at least two years before the
time, and she tried valiantly to live up to her inches.
But when Amabel saw D’Arcy, she started and stopped short. “Won’t you
shake hands with my boy, Amabel?” said Lady Adelaide. “Oh, you must make
friends with him, and he’ll give you a ride on the rocking-horse after
dinner. Surely such a big girl can’t be shy?”
Goaded by the old reproach, Amabel made an effort, and, advancing by
herself, held out her hand, and said, “How do you do, Bogy?”
D’Arcy’s black eyes twinkled with merriment. “How do you do, Mother
Bunch?” said he.
“My _dear_ D’Arcy!” said Lady Adelaide, reproachfully.
“Mamma, I am not rude. I am only joking. She calls me Bogy, so I call
her Mother Bunch.”
“But I’m _not_ Mother Bunch,” said Amabel.
“And I’m not Bogy,” retorted D’Arcy.
“Yes, you are,” said Amabel. “Only you had very old clothes on in the
wood.”
Lady Craikshaw had cruelly warned Lady Adelaide that Amabel sometimes
told stories, and, thinking that the child was romancing, Lady Adelaide
tried to change the subject. But D’Arcy cried, “Oh, do let her talk,
mamma. I do so like her. She is such fun!”
“You oughtn’t to laugh at me,” said poor Amabel, as D’Arcy took her into
the dining-room, “I gave you my paint-box.”
The boy’s stare of amazement awoke a doubt in Amabel’s mind of his
identity with the Bogy of the woods. Between constantly peeping at him,
and her anxiety to conduct herself conformably to her size in the
etiquette of the dinner-table, she did not eat much. When dinner was
over, and D’Arcy led her away to the rocking horse, he asked, “Do you
still think I’m Bogy?”
“N—no,” said Amabel, “I think perhaps you’re not. But you’re very like
him, though you talk differently. Do you make pictures?”
D’Arcy shook his head.
“Not even of leaves?” said Amabel.
When she was going away, D’Arcy asked, “Which do you like best, me or
Bogy?”
Amabel pondered. “I like you very much. You made the rocking-horse go
so fast; but I liked Bogy. He carried me all up the hill, and he picked
up my moss. I wasn’t afraid of him. I gave him a kiss.”
“Well, give me a kiss,” said D’Arcy. But there was a tone of raillery in
his voice which put Amabel on her dignity, and she shook her head, and
began to go down the steps of the house, one leg at a time.
“If I’m Bogy, you know, you _have_ kissed me _once_,” shouted D’Arcy.
But Amabel’s wits were as well developed as her feet.
“Once is enough for bogies,” said she, and went sturdily away.