TRUE NOBILITY
At the end of two hours Earle went back to his charge, with a letter in
his hand.
Tom had been much refreshed by his nice dinner, and had been asleep for
an hour.
But he now lay with a troubled, anxious expression on his face, which
Earle could not fail to notice, even though his lips relaxed into a
faint smile of welcome at his entrance.
He went up to the couch where he was reclining, and said, as he handed
him the letter:
“I would like, if you feel able, to have you direct this letter to your
mother, and after that you can read it, if you like. I have thought best
to write her something of your illness, knowing that she must be very
anxious at not hearing from you for so long. I would gladly have done so
before had you spoken of it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tom said, in a low voice, as, taking the envelope and
the pen filled with ink that Earle had brought him, he directed the
letter, in rather a trembling hand. Then he unfolded it and read the few
simple words that were written within.
“DEAR MADAM,” it said, “your son has been quite sick during the past
three months, and I write this that you may feel no further anxiety
regarding him. He is improving daily, and will, we hope, soon be well.
Should you feel able to come to him, you will come directly to
Wycliffe, where you will be cordially received. Inclosed you will find
a sum which your son would have sent you before now had he been able
to write. Very truly,
EARLE WAYNE.”
A five-pound note had been inclosed within the letter, at the sight of
which Tom Drake’s lips suddenly tightened into a firm line.
He read the letter through, and, when he had finished, it dropped from
his fingers upon the counterpane, and lay there while he turned his face
to the wall, and for some minutes did not speak.
“What did you do that for?” he at last demanded, almost fiercely, but
with lips that trembled in spite of himself.
“To comfort an aged, anxious mother, and give a sick fellow a chance to
see a familiar face. You would surely like to see your mother, Tom?”
“Yes; but it will be a little hard on the old lady when she finds we’ll
have to part again so soon,” he said, with a stony look in his eyes.
“Don’t think of that now,” Earle said, kindly. “Is there anything more
you would like me to add to the letter?”
Tom shook his head, and, picking up the letter and the note, tried to
replace them in the envelope, but his hand shook so that he could not do
it.
Earle gently took them from him, folded and sealed the letter, and went
out, leaving him alone.
A groan burst from the huge chest of the once hardened wretch as the
door closed after him, and burying his head in his pillow, he lay a long
time without moving.
The next morning he seemed very silent and much depressed. It was a fine
day, and Earle took him for a drive in the beautiful park around
Wycliffe.
He did not talk much, but appeared lost in thought, until the horses’
heads were turned toward home; then he astonished Earle by seizing his
hand and bursting out:
“Sir, can you believe a wretch like me has any heart left? I didn’t
think it myself, but you’ve got down to it at last. I’ll plead
guilty—though once I thought that ten thousand devils couldn’t drive me
to it; but you’ve broke me down completely; I can never hold up my head
again, and I deserve the very worst they can give me I’d like it over
with and settled as soon as possible after _she_ has been here. She’ll
not stay long, probably. I’m well enough not to be a burden here any
longer, and I’d feel easier in my mind to know just what is before me.”
The poor fellow was frightfully pale, and so excited that his sentences
were disjointed and broken, and spoken through teeth so tightly shut
that Earle could hear them grate.
The young marquis was deeply affected; he had uttered no fawning or
servile protestations of sorrow or shame, asked for no mercy, expected
none; but he could see that he was, as he said “completely broken down;”
his heart had been melted by kindness, and little shoots of the original
good that was in him had begun to spring up in the unusual atmosphere by
which he had recently been surrounded.
Earle believed that a great and radical change was begun in the man,
and, if rightly dealt with now, he might be saved.
Kindness had melted him; then why had he not a right to feel that
kindness would hold him and mold him anew? His was undoubtedly one of
those natures which grow reckless and harden itself against everything
like stern justice and punishment, and only grow more desperate at the
thought of penalty.
If tried and sentenced now for the attempt at robbery, even though he
might protest himself deserving of it, yet he would go to his doom in
dogged, sullen silence; nothing would ever reach his better nature
again, and he would die as miserable as he had lived.
“Tom,” Earle said, gravely, after a thoughtful silence, during which
these things had passed through his mind, “from what you say, I judge
that you regret your past life, and, if you were to live it over again,
you would spend it very differently.”
“Regrets won’t do me any good, and I don’t like to cry for quarter when
I’m only getting my just deserts,” he said, with a kind of reckless
bravery; then he added, with a heavy sigh that spoke volumes: “But I
think it would be sort of comforting to a chap if he could look back and
feel that he’d _tried_ to live like a—_man_.”
“Then why not try to live like a ‘man’ in the future?” Earle said,
earnestly, his fine face glowing with a noble purpose.
“Transportation for life isn’t likely to give a body much courage for
anything,” the man answered, moodily, his face hardening at the thought.
“No; and I hope no such evil will ever overtake you to discourage you,
if you really have a desire to mend your course. Tom, you expect that I
am going to arraign you before a tribunal, and have you punished for the
wrong you have done me; but—I am going to do no such thing.”
A gasp interrupted him at this, and Tom Drake sank back in the carriage
as if the intelligence had taken all his strength; but Earle went on:
“If you had appeared to have no regret for the past—if, as you gained in
strength, you had exhibited no sorrow, nor expressed any appreciation of
what had been done for you, or any desire to retrieve your errors, I
might have felt that it would be better for others that you should be
put where you could do no further mischief. But if you really want to
try to become a good man, I am willing to help you. I will be your
friend; I will give you employment as soon as you are able for it, and
as long as you show a disposition to live aright, I will keep the secret
of your past, and no harm shall ever come to you on account of it. Now
tell me, Tom, if you are willing to make the trial? Shall we start fair
and square from this moment, and see how much better we can make the
world for having lived in it?” and Earle turned to the astonished man
with a frank, kindly smile on his earnest, handsome face. The man was
speechless—dumb.
Such a proposal as this had never occurred to him. He had fully expected
that as soon as he should be able to bear it he would be transferred
from his present luxurious quarters to some vile prison, there to await
his trial, and then he had no expectation of anything better than to be
sentenced to banishment as a convict for a long term of years, or
perhaps for life.
Instead, here was hope, happiness, and the prospects of earning an
honest living held out to him, and by the hand of him whom he had so
terribly wronged.
No words came to his lips to express his astonishment, nor the strange
tumult of feelings that raged within his heart. His whole soul bowed
down before the grand nature that could rise above his own injuries and
do this noble thing.
Tamora, Queen of the Goth, when suing for the life of her first-born
son, prayed thus before Titus Andronicus:
“Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them, then, in being merciful;
Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.”
And thus Earle Wayne partook of the nature of the gods; his mercy, his
grand self-abnegation and forgiveness, with the helping hand held out so
kindly to one of earth’s lost and degraded ones, was indeed the surest
badge of his nobility. And Marion Vance, in her meekness, had prophesied
truly when she had told him, on her dying bed, that “good would come out
of her sorrow.” She had said:
“You may, perhaps, be a nobler man for having been reared in obscurity;
you will, at all events, realize that a noble character is more to be
desired than a mere noble-sounding name.”
He was now living out the pure precepts that she had so untiringly
taught him during those long, sorrowful years when she was so sadly and
uncomplainingly bearing her banishment and disgrace.
Tom Drake dropped his face upon his hands to hide the humility and
reverence he could not speak, and the tears he could not stay and was
ashamed to show.
Earle Wayne’s enemy was utterly routed at last; he had stormed a citadel
by a method of warfare hitherto untried, and it lay in ruins at his
feet.
“I—I’m afraid I do not quite understand. You will not have me arrested
or tried—I am to be a free man?” Tom Drake breathed, in low, suppressed
tones.
“No; if you are sentenced to drag out a weary term of years as a
convict, you would become discouraged, and be ready for almost any
desperate deed if you should live to return; and, Tom, I have come to
believe that you would really like to lead a different life from what
your past has been.”
“I would, sir, I would; but I never should have thought of it but for
you—but for that bullet. It was indeed, as you said, a ‘blessing in
disguise,’” he said, weakly but earnestly.
Earle smiled his rare, luminous smile, then said, gravely:
“Then I will help you all I can; but you must do your share also; it
cannot be done in a moment, and you must not get disheartened. It will
be something like this wound of yours; sin, like the bullet, has entered
deep—the disease lies deep, and only the most rigid and skilful
handling, with patient endurance, will work the cure.”
He did not preach him a long sermon on human depravity, original sin,
and the wrath of God.
This little warning was all he then gave, hoping by practical
illustration to draw him by and by nearer to the Divine Master whose
commands he was endeavoring to obey.
“And you—you make no account of anything? You forgive all those three
years—the harm to the girl? _How can you?_” and the man lifted his
earnest, wondering eyes to the grand face at his side.
“Yes, Tom, I can forgive it all,” Earle said; but his face grew pale and
a trifle pained at the remembrance of all that those words called up;
“and I shall feel that the experience was not in vain if _you_ do not
disappoint my expectations. If you will faithfully and honestly strive
to overcome whatever there is of evil within you, or whatever may tempt
you in the future, I shall feel that your character reclaimed is the
‘good’ that has come out of my ‘sorrow.’ Tom, will you strive to make an
honest man, God’s noblest work, of yourself? I want your promise.”
“Sir, from the bottom of my heart I’d _like_ to be an honest man,
but—I’m afraid I can’t stand it,” he said, huskily.
“Can’t stand what, Tom?” Earle asked, with a look of perplexity and
anxiety.
Were the temptations and habits of the old life so strong that he could
not relinquish or overcome them?
“I feel as if a millstone had crushed me; I’m afraid I can’t stand it to
face you day after day, with the memory of all I’ve done staring me in
the face.”
Earle’s face lighted—this was the best proof he had had of the man’s
sincerity.
“Tom, I want to tell you a little story; you will recognize it, perhaps,
as you say your mother is a Christian woman. There was once a Man who
was crushed beneath the sins of a world. He wore a crown of thorns, and
the purple robe of scorn and derision. His tender flesh was pierced,
bruised, and mangled by His enemies, and His only cry was, ‘Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ There came a time when I
realized that _my_ sins helped to do all this, and I felt something, as
you say, as if a ‘millstone had crushed me,’ and as if I could never
live in His presence with the memory of it ever in my mind. But I read
in His word, ‘Thy sins are remembered no more against thee _forever_;
they are _blotted out_.’ The same word tells me to ‘forgive as I am
forgiven.’ Of course we cannot actually forget all that we have
suffered, nor who was the immediate cause of it, but we can cherish no
evil—we can regard and treat as kindly those who have injured us as if
it had never been. That is the way I want to ‘blot out’ all the past
between you and me. Do you understand me, Tom?”
“Yes, sir,” Tom Drake said, in scarcely audible tones, but his face was
full of feeling and of an earnest purpose.
“May I feel then, that I can trust you _fully_ from this hour?”
“You may, sir,” very decidedly the reply came; and, after a moment’s
hesitation, he continued, in a resolute tone: “I’ll not waste my breath
nor weary you with promises; but, sir, I’ll begin to _live_ from this
moment.”
“That is right; and here is my hand to seal our compact;” and the young
Marquis of Wycliffe grasped the hand of poor degraded Tom Drake as
heartily as if he had been another peer of the realm.
He had won an enemy—he had conquered a reckless, defiant human heart,
with neither sword nor spear, but by the power of love and kindness.
Thrice blessed Marion Vance! Out of her sorrow had grown her
Christianity, out of her Christianity had grown the education of this
noble man, and out of his nobility the salvation of another.
Who can estimate the mighty influence of a pure example and faithful
precepts?
Did she, now looking down upon this scene, realize toward what all the
dark and winding path of her desolate life had tended?
She had learned to _trust_ while here, where the way was so dark that
she could not see; and may we not hope that faith had now ended in
sight, and that the joy she had missed on earth was increased a hundred
fold in the better world?
Neither Earle nor his companion spoke again during the remainder of
their drive.
Tom Drake went immediately to his rooms when they reached the house, and
no one but himself and his Maker knew how he passed that solitary hour
that followed his return.
Earle gave the reins to a groom, and went to the library to see if there
were any letters, but a servant met him on the way and handed him a
telegram that had just arrived. It was a cable dispatch from the United
States.