On the following Monday, Dr. Morgan's shabby man-servant opened the door
to a young man, in whom he did not at first remember a former visitor. A
few days before, embrowned with healthful travel--serene light in his
eye, simple trust in his careless lip--Leonard Fairfield had stood at
that threshold. Now again he stood there, pale and haggard, with a cheek
already hollowed into those deep anxious lines that speak of working
thoughts and sleepless nights: and a settled, sullen gloom resting
heavily on his whole aspect.
"I call by appointment," said the boy testily, as the servant stood
irresolute. The man gave way. "Master is just called out to a patient;
please to wait, sir;" and he showed him into the little parlor. In a few
moments two other patients were admitted. These were women, and they
began talking very loud. They disturbed Leonard's unsocial thoughts. He
saw that the door into the Doctor's receiving-room was half open, and,
ignorant of the etiquette which holds such _penetralia_ as sacred, he
walked in to escape from the gossips. He threw himself into the Doctor's
own well-worn chair, and muttered to himself, "Why did he tell me to
come?--What new can he think of for me? And if a favor, should I take
it? He has given me the means of bread by work; that is all I have a
right to ask from him, from any man--all I should accept."
While thus soliloquizing, his eye fell on a letter lying open on the
table. He started. He recognized the handwriting--the same as the letter
which had inclosed L50 to his mother--the letter of his grand-parents.
He saw his own name: he saw something more--words that made his heart
stand still, and his blood seem like ice in his veins. As he thus stood
aghast, a hand was laid on the letter, and a voice, in an angry growl,
muttered, "How dare you come into my room, and be reading my letters?
Er--r--r!"
Leonard placed his own hand on the Doctor's firmly, and said in a fierce
tone, "This letter relates to me--belongs to me--crushes me. I have seen
enough to know that. I demand to read all--learn all."
The Doctor looked round, and seeing the door into the waiting-room still
open, kicked it to with his foot, and then said, under his breath, "What
have you read? Tell me the truth."
"Two lines only, and I am called--I am called,"--Leonard's frame shook
from head to foot, and the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. He
could not complete the sentence. It seemed as if an ocean was rolling up
through his brain, and roaring in his ears. The Doctor saw, at a glance,
that there was physical danger in his state, and hastily and soothingly
answered, "Sit down, sit down--calm yourself--you shall know all--read
all--drink this water;" and he poured into a tumbler of the pure liquid
a drop or two from a tiny phial.
Leonard obeyed mechanically, for indeed he was no longer able to stand.
He closed his eyes, and for a minute or two life seemed to pass from
him; then he recovered, and saw the good Doctor's gaze fixed on him with
great compassion. He silently stretched forth his hand toward the
letter. "Wait a few moments," said the physician judiciously, "and hear
me meanwhile. It is very unfortunate you should have seen a letter never
meant for your eye, and containing allusions to a secret you were never
to have known. But, if I tell you more, will you promise me, on your
word of honor, that you will hold the confidence sacred from Mrs.
Fairfield, the Avenels--from all? I myself am pledged to conceal a
secret, which I can only share with you on the same condition."
"There is nothing," announced Leonard indistinctly, and with a bitter
smile on his lip--"nothing, it seems, that I should be proud to boast
of. Yes, I promise--the letter, the letter!"
The Doctor placed it in Leonard's right hand, and quietly slipped to the
wrist of the left his forefinger and thumb, as physicians are said to do
when a victim is stretched on the rack. "Pulse decreasing," he muttered;
"wonderful thing, _aconite_!" Meanwhile Leonard read as follows, faults
in spelling and all:
"DR. MORGAN.
"Sir--I received your favur duly, and am glad to hear that the pore boy
is safe and Well. But he has been behaving ill, and ungrateful to my
good son Richard, who is a credit to the whole Famuly, and has made
himself a Gentleman, and Was very kind and good to the boy, not knowing
who and What he is--God forbid! I don't want never to see him again--the
boy. Pore John was ill and Restless for days afterwards. John is a pore
cretur now, and has had paralytiks. And he Talked of nothing but
Nora--the boy's eyes were so like his Mother's. I cannot, cannot see the
Child of Shame. He can't cum here--for our Lord's sake, sir, don't ask
it--he can't--so Respectable as we've always been!--and such disgrace!
Base born--base born. Keep him where he is, bind him prentis, I'll pay
any thing for That. You says, sir, he's clever, and quick at learning;
so did Parson Dale, and wanted him to go to Collidge and make a
Figur--then all would cum out It would be my death, sir; I could not
sleep in my grave, sir. Nora that we were all so proud of. Sinful
creturs that we are! Nora's good name that we've saved now, gone, gone.
And Richard, who is so grand, and who was so fond of pore, pore Nora! He
would not hold up his Head again. Don't let him make a Figur in the
world--let him be a tradesman, as we were afore him--any trade he Takes
to--and not cross us no more while he lives. Then I shall pray for him,
and wish him happy. And have not we had enuff of bringing up children to
be above their birth? Nora, that I used to say was like the first lady
o' the land--oh, but we were rightly punished! So now, sir, I leave all
to you, and will Pay all you want for the boy. And be Sure that the
secret's kep. For we have never heard from the father, and, at leest, no
one knows that Nora has a living son but I and my daughter Jane, and
Parson Dale and you--and you Two are good Gentlemen--and Jane will keep
her word, and I am old, and shall be in my grave Soon, but I hope it
won't be while poor John needs me. What could he do without me? And if
_that_ got wind, it would kill me straight, sir. Pore John is a helpless
cretur, God bliss him. So no more from your servant in all dooty,
"M. AVENEL."
Leonard laid down this letter very calmly, and, except by a slight
heaving at his breast, and a deathlike whiteness of his lips, the
emotions he felt were undetected. And it is a proof how much exquisite
goodness there was in his heart that the first words he spoke were,
"Thank Heaven!"
The Doctor did not expect that thanksgiving, and he was so startled that
he exclaimed, "For what?"
"I have nothing to pity or excuse in the woman I knew and honored as a
mother. I am not her son--her--"
He stopped short.
"No; but don't be hard on your true mother--poor Nora!"
Leonard staggered, and then burst into a sudden paroxysm of tears.
"Oh, my own mother!--my dead mother! Thou for whom I felt so mysterious
a love--thou, from whom I took this poet soul--pardon me, pardon me!
Hard on thee! Would that thou wert living yet, that I might comfort
thee! What thou must have suffered!"
These words were sobbed forth in broken gasps from the depth of his
heart. Then he caught up the letter again, and his thoughts were changed
as his eyes fell upon the writer's shame and fear, as it were, of his
very existence. All his native haughtiness returned to him. His crest
rose, his tears dried. "Tell her," he said, with a stern unfaltering
voice--"tell Mrs. Avenel that she is obeyed--that I will never seek her
roof, never cross her path, never disgrace her wealthy son. But tell her
also, that I will choose my own way in life--that I will not take from
her a bribe for concealment. Tell her that I am nameless, and will yet
make a name."
A name! Was this but an idle boast, or was it one of those flashes of
conviction which are never belied, lighting up our future for one lurid
instant, and then fading into darkness?
"I do not doubt it, my prave poy," said Dr. Morgan, growing exceedingly
Welsh in his excitement; "and perhaps you may find a father, who--"
"Father--who is he--what is he? He lives then! But he has deserted
me--he must have betrayed her! I need him not. The law gives me no
father."
The last words were said with a return of bitter anguish; then, in a
calmer tone, he resumed, "But I should know who he is--as another one
whose path I may not cross."
Dr. Morgan looked embarrassed, and paused in deliberation. "Nay," said
he at length, "as you know so much, it is surely best that you should
know all."
The doctor then proceeded to detail, with some circumlocution, what we
will here repeat from his account more succinctly.
Nora Avenel, while yet very young, left her native village, or rather
the house of Lady Lansmere, by whom she had been educated and brought
up, in order to accept the place of governess or companion in London.
One evening she suddenly presented herself at her father's house, and at
the first sight of her mother's face she fell down insensible. She was
carried to bed. Dr. Morgan (then the chief medical practitioner of the
town) was sent for. That night Leonard came into the world, and his
mother died. She never recovered her senses, never spoke intelligibly
from the time she entered the house. "And never, therefore, named your
father," said Dr. Morgan. "We knew not who he was."
"And how," cried Leonard, fiercely, "how have they dared to slander this
dead mother? How knew they that I--was--was--was not the child of
wedlock?"
"There was no wedding-ring on Nora's finger--never any rumor of her
marriage--her strange and sudden appearance at her father's house--her
emotions on entrance, so unlike those natural to a wife returning to a
parent's home: these are all the evidence against her. But Mr. Avenel
deemed them strong, and so did I. You have a right to think we judged
too harshly--perhaps we did."
"And no inquiries were ever made?" said Leonard, mournfully, and after a
long silence--"no inquiries to learn who was the father of the
motherless child?"
"Inquiries!--Mrs. Avenel would have died first. Your grandmother's
nature is very rigid. Had she come from princes, from Cadwallader
himself," said the Welshman, "she could not more have shrunk from the
thought of dishonor. Even over her dead child, the child she had loved
the best, she thought but how to save that child's name and memory from
suspicion. There was luckily no servant in the house, only Mark
Fairfield and his wife (Nora's sister): they had arrived that same day
on a visit.
"Mrs. Fairfield was nursing her own infant, two or three months old; she
took charge of you; Nora was buried, and the secret kept. None out of
the family knew of it, but myself and the curate of the town, Mr. Dale.
The day after your birth, Mrs. Fairfield, to prevent discovery, moved to
a village at some distance. There her child died; and when she returned
to Hazeldean, where her husband was settled, you passed for the son she
had lost. Mark, I know, was as a father to you, for he had loved Nora:
they had been children together."
"And she came to London--London is strong and cruel," muttered Leonard.
"She was friendless and deceived. I see all--I desire to know no more.
This father, he must indeed have been like those whom I have read of in
books. To love, to wrong her--_that_ I can conceive; but then to leave,
to abandon; no visit to her grave--no remorse--no search for his own
child. Well, well; Mrs. Avenel was right. Let us think of _him_ no
more."
The man-servant knocked at the door, and then put in his head. "Sir, the
ladies are getting very impatient, and say they'll go."
"Sir," said Leonard, with a strange calm return to the things about him,
"I ask your pardon for taking up your time so long. I go now. I will
never mention to my moth--I mean to Mrs. Fairfield--what I have learned,
nor to any one. I will work my way somehow. If Mr. Prickett will keep
me, I will stay with him at present; but I repeat, I can not take Mrs.
Avenel's money and be bound apprentice. Sir, you have been good and
patient with me--Heaven reward you."
The doctor was too moved to answer. He wrung Leonard's hand, and in
another minute the door closed upon the nameless boy. He stood alone in
the streets of London; and the sun flashed on him, red and menacing,
like the eye of a foe!