SENTENCE OF EXILE.
After the dinner at Heatherly, John Saltram came very often to the
cottage. He did not care much for the fellows who were staying with Sir
David this year, he told Gilbert. He knew all Major Foljambe's tiger
stories by heart, and had convicted him of glaring discrepancies in his
description of the havoc he and his brother officers had made among the
big game. Windus Carr was a conceited presuming cad, who was always
boring them with impossible accounts of his conquests among the fair sex;
and that poor Harker was an unmitigated fool, whose brains had run into
his billiard-cue. This was the report which John Saltram gave of his
fellow-guests; and he left the shooting-party morning after morning to go
out boating with Gilbert and Marian, or to idle away the sunny hours on
the lawn listening to the talk of the two others, and dropping in a word
now and then in a sleepy way as he lay stretched on the grass near them,
looking up to the sky, with his arms crossed above his head.
He called at Lidford House one day when Gilbert had told him he should
stay at home to write letters, and was duly presented to the Listers, who
made a little dinner-party in his honour a few days afterwards, to which
Captain Sedgewick and Marian were invited--a party which went off with
more brightness and gaiety than was wont to distinguish the Lidford House
entertainments. After this there was more boating--long afternoons spent
on the winding river, with occasional landings upon picturesque little
islands or wooded banks, where there were the wild-flowers Marian Nowell
loved and understood so well; more idle mornings in the cottage garden--a
happy innocent break in the common course of life, which seemed almost as
pleasant to John Saltram as to his friend. He had contrived to make
himself popular with every one at Lidford, and was an especial favourite
with Captain Sedgewick.
He seemed so thoroughly happy amongst them, and displayed such a perfect
sympathy with them in all things, that Gilbert Fenton was taken utterly
by surprise by his abrupt departure, which happened one day without a
word of warning. He had dined at the cottage on the previous evening, and
had been in his wildest, most reckless spirits--that mood to which he was
subject at rare intervals, and in which he exercised a potent fascination
over his companions. He had beguiled the little party at the cottage
into complete forgetfulness of the hour by his unwonted eloquence upon
subjects of a deeper, higher kind than it was his habit to speak about;
and then at the last moment, when the clock on the mantelpiece had struck
twelve, he had suddenly seated himself at the piano, and sung them
Moore's "Farewell, but whenever you welcome the hour," in tones that went
straight to the hearts of the listeners. He had one of those rare
sympathetic voices which move people to tears unawares, and before the
song was ended Marian was fairly overcome, and had made a hasty escape
from the room ashamed of her emotion.
Late as it was, Gilbert accompanied his friend for a mile of his homeward
route. He had secured a latch-key during his last visit to Lidford House,
and could let himself in quietly of a night without entrenching upon the
regular habits of Mrs. Lister's household.
Once clear of the cottage, John Saltram's gaiety vanished all in a
moment, and gave place to a moody silence which Gilbert was powerless to
dissipate.
"Is there anything amiss, Jack?" he asked. "I know high spirits are not
always a sign of inward contentment with you. Is there anything wrong
to-night?"
"No."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Quite sure. I may be a little knocked up perhaps; that's all."
No hint of his intended departure fell from him when they shook hands and
wished each other good-night; but early next morning a brief note was
delivered to Mr. Fenton at his sister's house to the following effect:--
"MY DEAR GILBERT,--I find myself obliged to leave this place for
London at once, and have not time to thank anyone for the kindness
I have received during my stay. Will you do the best to repair
this omission on my part, and offer my warmest expressions of
gratitude to Captain Sedgewick and Miss Nowell for their goodness
to me? Pray apologise for me also to Mr. and Mrs. Lister for my
inability to make my adieux in a more formal manner than this, a
shortcoming which I hope to atone for on some future visit. Tell
Lister I shall be very pleased to see him if he will look me up at
the Pnyx when he is next in town.
"Ever yours,--JOHN SALTRAM."
This was all. There was no explanation of the reason for this hurried
journey,--a strange omission between men who were on terms of such perfect
confidence as obtained with these two. Gilbert Fenton was not a little
disturbed by this unlooked-for event, fearing that some kind of evil had
befallen his friend.
"His money matters may have fallen into a desperate condition," he
thought; "or perhaps that woman--that Mrs. Branston, is at the bottom of
the business."
He went to the cottage that morning as usual, but not with his accustomed
feeling of unalloyed happiness. The serene heaven of his tranquil life
was clouded a little by this strange conduct of John Saltram's. It
wounded him to think that his old companion was keeping a secret from
him.
"I suppose it is because I lectured him a little about Mrs. Branston the
other day," he said to himself. "The business is connected with her in
some way, I daresay, and poor Jack does not care to arouse my virtuous
indignation. That comes of taking a high moral tone with one's friend. He
swallows the pill with a decent grace at the time, and shuts one out of
his confidence ever afterwards."
Captain Sedgewick expressed himself much surprised and disappointed by
Mr. Saltram's departure. Marian said very little upon the subject. There
seemed nothing extraordinary to her in the fact that a gentleman should
be summoned to London by the claims of business.
Gilbert might have brooded longer upon the mystery involved in his
friend's conduct, but that evening's post brought him trouble in the
shape of bad news from Melbourne. His confidential clerk--an old man who
had been with his father for many years, and who knew every intricacy of
the business--wrote him a very long letter, dwelling upon the evil
fortune which attended all their Australian transactions of late, and
hinting at dishonesty and double-dealing on the part of Gilbert's cousin,
Astley Fenton, the local manager.
The letter was a very sensible one, calculated to arouse a careless man
from a false sense of security. Gilbert was so much disturbed by it, that
he determined upon going back to London by the earliest fast train next
morning. It was cutting short his holiday only by a few days. He had
meant to return at the beginning of the following week, and he felt that
he had already some reason to reproach himself for his neglect of
business.
He left Lidford happy in the thought that Captain Sedgewick and Marian
were to come to London in October. The period of separation would be
something less than a month. And after that? Well, he would of course
spend Christmas at Lidford; and he fancied how the holly and mistletoe,
the church-decorations and carol-singing, and all the stereotyped
genialities of the season,--things that had seemed trite and dreary to
him since the days of his boyhood,--would have a new significance and
beauty for him when he and Marian kept the sacred festival together. And
then how quickly would begin the new year, the year whose spring-tide
would see them man and wife! Perhaps there is no period of this mortal
life so truly happy as that in which all our thoughts are occupied in
looking forward to some great joy to come. Whether the joy, when it does
come, is ever so unqualified a delight as it seemed in the distance, or
whether it ever comes at all, are questions which we have all solved for
ourselves somehow or other. To Gilbert Fenton these day-dreams were
bright and new, and he was troubled by no fear of their not being
realized.
He went at his business with considerable ardour, and made a careful and
detailed investigation of all affairs connected with their Melbourne
trading, assisted throughout by Samuel Dwyer, the old clerk. The result
of his examination convinced him that his cousin had been playing him
false; that the men with whom his pretended losses had been made were men
of straw, and the transactions were shadows invented to cover his own
embezzlements. It was a complicated business altogether; and it was not
until Gilbert Fenton had been engaged upon it for more than a week, and
had made searching inquiries as to the status of the firms with which the
supposed dealings had taken place, that he was able to arrive at this
conclusion. Having at last made himself master of the real state of
things, as far as it was in any way possible to do so at that distance
from the scene of action, Gilbert saw that there was only one line of
conduct open to him as a man of business. That was to go at once to
Melbourne, investigate his cousin's transactions on the spot, and take
the management of the colonial house into his own hands. To do this would
be a sore trial to him, for it would involve the postponement of his
marriage. He could scarcely hope to do what he had to do in Melbourne and
to get back to England before a later date than that which he had hoped
would be his wedding-day. Yet to do anything less than this would be
futile and foolish; and it was possible that the future stability of his
position was dependent upon his arrangement of these Melbourne
difficulties. It was his home, the prosperity of his coming life that he
had to fight for; and he told himself that he must put aside all
weakness, as he had done once before, when he turned away from the
easy-going studies and pleasures of young Oxford life to undertake a
hand-to-hand fight with evil fortune.
He had conquered then, as he hoped to conquer now, having an energetic
nature, and a strong faith in man's power to master fortune by honest
work and patience.
There was no time lost after once his decision was arrived at. He began
to put his affairs in order for departure immediately, and wrote to
Marian within a few hours of making up his mind as to the necessity of
this voyage. He told her frankly all that had happened, that their
fortune was at stake, and that it was his bounden duty to take this step,
hard as it might seem to him. He could not leave England without seeing
her once more, he said, recently as they had parted, and brief as his
leisure must needs be. There were so many things he would have to say to
her on the eve of this cruel separation.
He went down to Lidford one evening when all the arrangements for his
voyage were complete, and he had two clear days at his disposal before
the vessel he was to go in left Liverpool. The Listers were very much
surprised and shocked when he told them what he was going to do; Mrs.
Lister bitterly bewailing the insecurity of all commercial positions, and
appearing to consider her brother on the verge of bankruptcy.
He found a warm welcome at the cottage from the Captain, who heartily
approved of the course he was taking, and was full of hopefulness about
the future.
"A few months more or less can make little difference," he said, when
Gilbert was lamenting the postponement of his wedding. "Marian will be
quite safe in her old uncle's care; and I do not suppose either of you
will love each other any the less for the delay. I have such perfect
confidence in you, Gilbert, you see; and it is such a happiness to me to
know that my darling's future is in the hands of a man I can so
thoroughly trust. Were you reduced to absolute poverty, with the battle
of life to fight all over again, I would give you my dear girl without
fear of the issue. I know you are of the stuff that is not to be beaten;
and I believe that neither time nor circumstance could ever change your
love for her."
"You may believe that. Every day makes her dearer to me. I should be
ashamed to tell you how bitterly I feel this parting, and what a
desperate mental struggle I went through before I could make up my mind
to go."
Marian came into the room in the midst of this conversation. She was very
pale, and her eyes had a dull, heavy look. The bad news in Gilbert's
letter had distressed her even more than he had anticipated.
"My darling," he said tenderly, looking down at the changed face, with
her cold hand clasped in his own, "how ill you are looking! I fear I made
my letter too dismal, and that it frightened you."
"Oh no, no. I am very sorry you should have this bad fortune, Gilbert,
that is all."
"There is nothing which I do not hope to repair, dear. The losses are not
more than I can stand. All that I take to heart is the separation from
you, Marian."
"I am not worth so much regret," she said, with her eyes fixed upon the
ground, and her hands clasping and unclasping each other nervously.
"Not worth so much regret, Marian!" he exclaimed. "You are all the world
to me; the beginning and end of my universe."
She looked a little brighter by-and-by, when her lover had done his best
to cheer her with hopeful talk, which cost him no small effort in the
depressed state of his mind. The day went by very slowly, although it was
the last which those two were to spend together until Gilbert Fenton's
return. It was a hopelessly wet day, with a perpetual drizzling rain and
a leaden-gray sky; weather which seemed to harmonise well enough with the
pervading gloom of Gilbert's thoughts as he stood by the fire, leaning
against an angle of the mantelpiece, and watching Marian's needle moving
monotonously in and out of the canvas.
The Captain, who led an easy comfortable kind of life at all times, was
apt to dispose of a good deal of his leisure in slumber upon such a day
as this. He sat down in his own particular easy-chair, dozing behind the
shelter of a newspaper, and lulled agreeably by the low sound of Gilbert
and Marian's conversation.
So the quiet hours went by, overshadowed by the gloom of that approaching
separation. After dinner, when they had returned to the drawing-room, and
Captain Sedgewick had refreshed his intellectual powers with copious
draughts of strong tea, he began to talk of Marian's childhood, and the
circumstances which had thrown her into his hand.
"I don't suppose my little girl ever showed you her mother's jewel-case,
did she, Gilbert?" he asked.
"Never."
"I thought as much. It contains that old-fashioned jewelry I spoke
of--family relics, which I have sometimes fancied might be of use to her,
if ever her birthright were worth claiming. But I doubt if that will ever
happen now that so many years have gone by, and there has been no
endeavour to trace her. Run and fetch the case, Marian. There are some of
its contents which Gilbert ought to see before he leaves England--papers
which I intended to show him when I first told him your mother's story."
Marian left them, and came back in a few minutes carrying an
old-fashioned ebony jewel-case, inlaid with brass. She unlocked it with a
little key hanging to her watch-chain, and exhibited its contents to
Gilbert Fenton. There were some curious old rings, of no great value; a
seal-ring with a crest cut on a bloodstone--a crest of that common kind
of device which does not imply noble or ancient lineage on the part of
the bearer thereof; a necklace and earrings of amethyst; a gold bracelet
with a miniature of a young man, whose handsome face had a hard
disagreeable expression; a locket containing grey hair, and having a
date and the initials "M.G." engraved on the massive plain gold case.
These were all the trinkets. In a secret drawer there was a certificate
of marriage between Percival Nowell, bachelor, gentleman, and Lucy
Geoffry, spinster, at St. Pancras Church, London. The most interesting
contents of the jewel-case consisted of a small packet of letters written
by Percival Nowell to Lucy Geoffry before their marriage.
"I have read them carefully ever so many times, with the notion that they
might throw some light upon Mr. and Mrs. Nowell's antecedents," said the
Captain, as Gilbert held these in his hands, disinclined to look at
documents of so private and sacred a character; "but they tell very
little. I fancy that Miss Geoffry was a governess in some family in
London--the envelopes are missing, you see, so there is no evidence as to
where she was living, except that it _was_ in London--and that she left
her employment to marry this Percival Nowell. You'd like to read the
letters yourself, I daresay, Gilbert. Put them in your pocket, and look
them over at your leisure when you get home. You can bring them back
before you leave Lidford."
Mr. Fenton glanced at Marian to see if she had any objection to his
reading the letters. She was quite silent, looking absently at the
trinkets lying in the tray before her.
"You don't mind my reading your father's letters, Marian?" he asked.
"Not at all. Only I think you will find them very uninteresting."
"I am interested in everything that concerns you."
He put the papers in his pocket, and sat up for an hour in his room that
night reading Percival Nowell's love letters. They revealed very little
to him, except the unmitigated selfishness of the writer. That quality
exhibited itself in every page. The lovers had met for the first time at
the house of some Mr. Crosby, in whose family Miss Geoffry seemed to be
living; and there were clandestine meetings spoken of in the Regent's
Park, for which reason Gilbert supposed Mr. Crosby's house must have been
in that locality. There were broken appointments, for which Miss Geoffry
was bitterly reproached by her lover, who abused the whole Crosby
household in a venomous manner for having kept her at home at these
times.
"If you loved me, as you pretend, Lucy," Mr. Nowell wrote on one
occasion, "you would speedily exchange this degrading slavery for liberty
and happiness with me, and would be content to leave the future _utterly_
in my hands, without question or fear. A really generous woman would do
this."
There was a good deal more to the same effect, and it seemed as if the
proposal of marriage came at last rather reluctantly; but it did come,
and was repeated, and urged in a very pressing manner; while Lucy Geoffry
to the last appeared to have hung back, as if dreading the result of that
union.
The letters told little of the writer's circumstances or social status.
Whenever he alluded to his father, it was with anger and contempt, and in
a manner that implied some quarrel between them; but there was nothing to
indicate what kind of man the father was.
Gilbert Fenton took the packet back to the cottage next morning. He was
to return to London that afternoon, and had only a few hours to spend
with Marian. The day was dull and cold, but there was no rain; and they
walked together in the garden, where the leaves were beginning to fall,
and whence every appearance of summer seemed to have vanished since
Gilbert's last visit.
For some time they were both rather silent, pacing thoughtfully up and
down the sheltered walk that bounded the lawn. Gilbert found it
impossible to put on an appearance of hopefulness on this last day. It
was better wholly to give up the attempt, and resign himself to the gloom
that brooded over him, shutting out the future. That airy castle of
his--the villa on the banks of the Thames--seemed to have faded and
vanished altogether. He could not look beyond the Australian journey to
the happy time of his return. The hazards of time and distance bewildered
him. He felt an unspeakable dread of the distance that was to divide him
from Marian Nowell--a dread that grew stronger with every hour. He was
destined to suffer a fresh pang before the moment of parting came. Marian
turned to him by-and-by with an earnest anxious face, and said,--
"Gilbert, there is something which I think I ought to say to you before
you go away."
"What is that, my darling?"
"It is rather hard to say. I fear it will give you pain. I have been
thinking about it for a long time. The thought has been a constant
reproach to me. Gilbert, it would be better if we were both free; better
if you could leave England without any tie to weigh you down with
anxieties when you are out yonder, and will have so much occasion for
perfect freedom of mind."
"Marian!"
"O, pray, pray don't think me ungrateful or unmindful of your goodness to
me. I am only anxious for your happiness. I am not steady enough, or
fixed enough, in my mind. I am not worthy of all the thought and care you
have given me."
"Marian, have I done anything to forfeit your love?"
"O no, no."
"Then why do you say these things to me? Do you want to break my heart?"
"Would it break your heart if I were to recall my promise, Gilbert?"
"Yes, Marian," he answered gravely, drawing her suddenly to him, and
looking into her face with earnest scrutinising eyes; "but if you do not
love me, if you cannot love me--and God knows how happy I have been in
the belief that I had won your love long ago--let the word be spoken. I
will bear it, my dear, I will bear it."
"O no, no," she cried, shocked by the dead whiteness of his face, and
bursting into tears. "I will try to be worthy of you. I will try to love
you as you deserve to be loved. It was only a fancy of mine that it would
be better for you to be free from all thoughts of me. I think it would
seem very hard to me to lose your love. I don't think I could bear that,
Gilbert."
She looked up at him with an appealing expression through her tears--an
innocent, half-childish look that went to his heart--and he clasped her
to his breast, believing that this proposal to set him free had been
indeed nothing more than a girlish caprice.
"My dearest, my life is bound up with your love," he said. "Nothing can
part us except your ceasing to love me."