FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
Almost immediately after Gilbert's departure, another visitor appeared in
the dimly lighted shop, where Luke Tulliver was poring over a newspaper
at one end of the counter under a solitary gas-burner.
The new-comer was Percival Nowell, who had not been to the house since
his daughter's arrival.
"Well," said this gentleman, in his usual off-hand manner, "how's the
governor?"
"Very ill; going fast, the doctor says."
"Eh? As bad as that? Then there's been a change since I was here last."
"Yes; Mr. Nowell was taken much worse yesterday morning. He had a kind of
fit, I fancy, and couldn't get his speech for some time afterwards. But
he got over that, and has talked well enough since then," Mr. Tulliver
concluded ruefully, remembering his master's candid remarks that morning.
"I'll step upstairs and have a look at the old gentleman," said Percival.
"There's a young lady with him," Mr. Tulliver remarked, in a somewhat
mysterious tone.
"A young lady!" the other cried. "What young lady?"
"His granddaughter."
"Indeed!"
"Yes; she came up from the country yesterday evening, and she's been
sitting with him ever since. He seems to have taken to her very much.
You'd think she'd been about him all her life; and she's to have all his
money, he says. I wonder what his only son will say to that," added Mr.
Tulliver, looking very curiously at Percival Nowell, "supposing him to be
alive? Rather hard upon him, isn't it?"
"Uncommonly," the other answered coolly. He saw that the shopman
suspected his identity, though he had carefully avoided all reference to
the relationship between himself and the old man in Luke Tulliver's
presence, and had begged his father to say nothing about him.
"I should like to see this young lady before I go up to Mr. Nowell's
room," he said presently. "Will you step upstairs and ask her to come
down to me?"
"I can go if you wish, but I don't suppose she'll leave the old
gentleman."
"Never mind what you suppose. Tell her that I wish to say a few words to
her upon particular business."
Luke Tulliver departed upon his errand, while Percival Nowell went into
the parlour, and seated himself before the dull neglected fire in the
lumbering old arm-chair in which his father had sat through the long
lonely evenings for so many years. Mr. Nowell the younger was not
disturbed by any sentimental reflections upon this subject, however; he
was thinking of his father's will, and the wrong which was inflicted upon
him thereby.
"To be cheated out of every sixpence by my own flesh and blood!" he
muttered to himself. "That seems too much for any man to bear."
The door was opened by a gentle hand presently, and Marian came into the
room. Percival Nowell rose from his seat hastily and stood facing her,
surprised by her beauty and an indefinable likeness which she bore to her
mother--a likeness which brought his dead wife's face back to his mind
with a sudden pang. He had loved her after his own fashion once upon a
time, and had grown weary of her and neglected her after the death of
that short-lived selfish passion; but something, some faint touch of the
old feeling, stirred his heart as he looked at his daughter to-night. The
emotion was as brief as the breath of a passing wind. In the next moment
he was thinking of his father's money, and how this girl had emerged from
obscurity to rob him of it.
"You wish to speak to me on business, I am told," she said, in her clear
low voice, wondering at the stranger's silence and deliberate scrutiny of
her face.
"Yes, I have to speak to you on very serious business, Marian," he
answered gravely.
"You are an utter stranger to me, and yet call me by my Christian name."
"I am not an utter stranger to you. Look at me, Mrs. Holbrook. Have you
never seen my face before?"
"Never."
"Are you quite sure of that? Look a little longer before you answer
again."
"Yes!" she cried suddenly, after a long pause. "You are my father!"
There had come back upon her, in a rapid flash of memory, the picture of
a room in Brussels--a room lighted dimly by two wax-candles on the
chimney-piece, where there was a tall dark man who snatched her up in his
arms and kissed her before he went out. She remembered caring very little
for his kisses, and having a childish consciousness of the fact that it
was he who made her mamma cry so often in the quiet lonely evenings, when
the mother and child were together in that desolate continental lodging.
Yet at this moment she was scarcely disposed to think much about her
father's ill-conduct. She considered only that he was her father, and
that they had found each other after long years of separation. She
stretched out her arms, and would have fallen upon his breast; but
something in his manner repelled her, something downcast and nervous,
which had a chilling effect upon her, and gave her time to remember how
little cause she had to love him. He did not seem aware of the
affectionate impulse which had moved her towards him at first. He gave
her his hand presently. It was deadly cold, and lay loosely in her own.
"I was asking my grandfather about you this morning," she said, wondering
at his strange manner, "but he would not tell me where you were."
"Indeed! I am surprised to find you felt so much interest in me; I'm
aware that I don't deserve as much. Yet I could plead plenty of excuses
for my life, if I cared to trouble you with them; but I don't. It would
be a long story; and when it was told, you might not believe it. Most men
are, more or less, the slave of circumstances. I have suffered that kind
of bondage all my life. I have known, too, that you were in good
hands--better off in every way than you could have been in my care--or I
should have acted differently in relation to you."
"There is no occasion to speak of the past," Marian replied gravely.
"Providence was very good to me; but I know my poor mother's last days
were full of sorrow. I cannot tell how far it might have been in your
power to prevent that. It is not my place to blame, or even to question
your conduct."
"You are an uncommonly dutiful daughter," Mr. Nowell exclaimed with
rather a bitter laugh; "I thought that you would have repudiated me
altogether perhaps; would have taken your tone from my father, who has
grown pig-headed with old age, and cannot forgive me for having had the
aspirations of a gentleman."
"It is a pity there should not be union between my grandfather and you at
such a moment as this," Marian said.
"O, we are civil enough to each other. I bear no malice against the old
man, though many sons in my position might consider themselves hardly
used. And now I may as well go upstairs and pay my respects. Why is not
your husband with you, by the bye?"
"He is not wanted here; and I do not even know that he is in London."
"Humph! He seems rather a mysterious sort of person, this husband of
yours."
Marian took no notice of this remark, and the father and daughter went
upstairs to the sick-room together. The old silversmith received his son
with obvious coolness, and was evidently displeased at seeing Marian and
her father together.
Percival Nowell, however, on his part, appeared to be in an unusually
affectionate and dutiful mood this evening. He held his place by the
bedside resolutely, and insisted on sharing Marian's watch that night. So
all through the long night those two sat together, while the old man
passed from uneasy slumber to more uneasy wakefulness, and back to
troubled sleep again, his breathing growing heavier and more laboured
with every hour. They were very quiet, and could have found but little to
say to each other, had there been no reason for their silence. That first
brief impulsive feeling of affection past, Marian could only think of
this newly-found father as the man who had made her mother's life lonely
and wretched while he pursued his own selfish pleasures; and who had
allowed her to grow to womanhood without having been the object of one
thought or care upon his part. She could not forget these things, as she
sat opposite to him in the awful silence of the sick-room, stealing a
glance at his face now and then, and wondering at the strange turn of
fortune which had brought them thus together.
It was not a pleasant face by any means--not a countenance to inspire
love or confidence. Handsome still, but with a faded look, like a face
that had grown pallid and wrinkled in the feverish atmosphere of vicious
haunts--under the flaring gas that glares down upon the green cloth of a
rouge-et-noir table, in the tumult of crowded race-courses, the press and
confusion of the betting-ring--it was the face of a battered _roué_, who
had lived his life, and outlived the smiles of fortune; the face of a man
to whom honest thoughts and hopes had long been unknown. There was a
disappointed peevish look about the drooping corners of the mouth, an
angry glitter in the eyes.
He did not look at his daughter very often as they sat together through
that weary vigil, but kept his eyes for the greater part of the time upon
the wasted face on the pillow, which looked like a parchment mask in the
dim light. He seemed to be deep in thought, and several times in the
night Marian heard him breathe an impatient sigh, as if his thoughts were
not pleasant to him. More than once he rose from his chair and paced the
room softly for a little time, as if the restlessness of his mind had
made that forced quiet unendurable. The early morning light came at last,
faint and wan and gray, across a forest of blackened chimney-pots, and by
that light the watchers could see that Jacob Nowell had changed for the
worse.
He lingered till late that afternoon. It was growing dusk when he died,
making a very peaceful end of life at the last, with his head resting
upon Marian's shoulder, and his cold hand clasped in hers. His son stood
by the bed, looking down upon him at that final moment with a fixed
inscrutable face. Gilbert Fenton called that evening, and heard of the
old man's death from Luke Tulliver. He heard also that Mrs. Holbrook
intended to sleep in Queen Anne's Court that night, and did not therefore
intrude upon her, relying upon being able to see her next morning. He
left his card, with a few words of condolence written upon it in pencil.
Mr. Nowell was with his daughter in the little parlour behind the shop
when Luke Tulliver gave her this card. He asked who the visitor was.
"Mr. Fenton, a gentleman I knew at Lidford in my dear uncle's lifetime.
My grandfather liked him very much."
"Mr. Fenton! Yes, my father told me all about him. You were engaged to
him, and jilted him for this man you have married--very foolishly, as it
seems to me; for he could certainly have given you a better position than
that which you appear to occupy now."
"I chose for my own happiness," Marian answered quietly, "and I have only
one subject for regret; that is, that I was compelled to act with
ingratitude towards a good man. But Mr. Fenton has forgiven me; has
promised to be my friend, if ever I should have need of his friendship.
He has very kindly offered to take all trouble off my hands with respect
to--to the arrangements for the funeral."
"He is remarkably obliging," said Percival Nowell with a sneer; "but as
the only son of the deceased, I consider myself the proper person to
perform that final duty."
"I do not wish to interfere with your doing so. Of course I did not know
how near at hand you were when Mr. Fenton made that offer, or I should
have told him."
"You mean to remain until the funeral is over, I suppose?"
"I think not; I want to go back to Hampshire as soon as possible--by an
early train to-morrow morning, if I can. I do not see that there is any
reason for my remaining. I could not prove my respect or affection for my
grandfather any more by staying."
"Certainly not," her father answered promptly. "I think you will be quite
right in getting away from this dingy hole as quick as you can."
"It is not for that. But I have promised to return directly I was free to
do so."
"And you go back to Hampshire? To what part of Hampshire?"
Marian told him the name of the place where she was living. He wrote the
address in his pocket-book, and was especially careful that it should be
correctly written, as to the name of the nearest town, and in all other
particulars.
"I may have to write to you, or to come to you, perhaps," he said. "It's
as well to be prepared for the contingency."
After this Mr. Nowell sent out for a "Railway Guide," in order to give
his daughter all necessary information about the trains for Malsham.
There was a tolerably fast train that left Waterloo at seven in the
morning, and Marian decided upon going by that. She had to spend the
evening alone with her father while Mrs. Mitchin kept watch in the
dismal chamber upstairs. Mr. Nowell asked his daughter's permission to
light his cigar, and having obtained it, sat smoking moodily all the
evening, staring into the fire, and very rarely addressing his companion,
who had taken a Bible out of her travelling-bag, and was reading those
solemn, chapters which best harmonised with her feelings at this moment;
thinking as she read of the time when her guardian and benefactor lay in
his last calm rest, and she had vainly tried to find comfort in the same
words, and had found herself staring blankly at the sacred page, with
eyes that were dry and burning, and to which there came no merciful
relief from tears.
Her father glanced at her askance now and then from his arm-chair by the
fire, as she sat by the little round table looking down at her book, the
light of the candles shining full upon her pensive face. He looked at her
with no friendliness in his eyes, but with that angry sparkle which had
grown almost habitual to them of late, since the world had gone ill with
him. After one of those brief stolen looks, a strange smile crept over
his face. He was thinking of a little speech of Shakespeare's Richard
about his nephew, the youthful Prince of Wales:
So young, so wise, they say do ne'er live long.
"How pious she is!" he said to himself with a diabolical sneer. "Did the
half-pay Captain teach her that, I wonder? or does church-going, and
psalm-singing, and Bible-reading come natural to all women? I know my
mother was good at it, and my wife too. She used to fly to her Bible as a
man flies to dram-drinking, or his pipe, when things go wrong."
He got tired of his cigar at last, and went out into the shop, where he
began to question Mr. Tulliver as to the extent and value of the
stock-in-trade, and upon other details of the business; to all of which
inquiries the shopman replied in a suspicious and grudging spirit, giving
his questioner the smallest possible amount of information.
"You're an uncommonly cautious young man," Mr. Nowell exclaimed at last.
"You'll never stand in your own light by being too anxious to oblige
other people. I daresay, though, you could speak fast enough, if it was
made worth your while."
"I don't see what is to make it worth my while," Luke Tulliver answered
coolly. "My duty is to my dead master, and those that are to come after
him. I don't want strangers coming sniffing and prying into the stock.
Mr. Nowell's books were kept so that I couldn't cheat him out of a
sixpence, or the value of a sixpence; and I mean to hand 'em over to the
lawyer in a manner that will do me credit. My master has not been a
generous master to me, considering how I've served him, and I've got
nothing but my character to look to; but that I have got, and I don't
want it tampered with."
"Who is going to tamper with it?" said Mr. Nowell. "So you'll hand over
the stock-books to the lawyer, will you, without a leaf missing, or an
erasure, or an item marked off as sold that never was sold, or any little
dodges of that kind, eh, Mr. Tulliver?"
"Of course," answered the shopman, looking defiantly at the questioner,
who was leaning across the counter with folded arms, staring at Luke
Tulliver with an ironical grin upon his countenance.
"Then you are a very remarkable man. I should have thought such a chance
as a death as unexpected as my--as old Mr. Nowell's would have made the
fortune of a confidential clerk like you."
"I'm not a thief," answered Mr. Tulliver with an air of virtuous
indignation; "and you can't know much about old Jacob Nowell if you think
that anybody could cheat him, living or dead. There's not an entry in the
book that isn't signed with his initials, in his own hand. When a thing
was sold and crossed off the book, he put his initials to the entry of
the sale. He went through the books every night till a week ago, and he'd
as soon have cut his own head off as omit to do it, so long as he could
see the figures in the book or hold his pen."
Mr. Medler the lawyer came in while Percival Nowell and the shopman were
talking. He had been away from his office upon business that evening, and
had only just received the tidings of the silversmith's death.
Luke Tulliver handed him the books and keys of the cases in which the
tarnished plate was exhibited. He went into all the details of the
business carefully, setting his seal upon books and papers, and doing all
that he could to make matters secure without hindrance to the carrying on
of the trade.
He was surprised to hear that Mrs. Holbrook was in the house, and
proposed paying his respects to her that evening; but this Mr. Nowell
prevented. She was tired and out of spirits, he told the attorney; it
would be better for him to see her next day. It was convenient to Mr.
Nowell to forget Marian's intention of returning to Hampshire by an early
train on the following morning at this juncture.
When he went back to the parlour by-and-by, after Mr. Medler had finished
his business in the shop, and was trudging briskly towards his own
residence, Mr. Nowell told his daughter that the lawyer had been there,
but did not inform her of his desire to see her.
"I suppose you know all about your grandfather's will?" he said
by-and-by, when he had half-finished another cigar.
Marian had put away her book by this time, and was looking dreamily at
the fire, thinking of her husband, who need never know those weary sordid
cares about money again, now that she was to be rich.
Her father's question startled her out of that agreeable day-dream.
"Yes," she said; "my grandfather told me that he had left all his money
to me. I know that must seem unjust to you, papa; but I hope my husband
will allow me to do something towards repairing that injustice in some
measure."
"In some measure!" Mr. Nowell thought savagely. "That means a pittance
that would serve to keep life in a pauper, I suppose; and that is to be
contingent upon her husband's permission." He made no audible reply to
his daughter's speech, and seemed, indeed, so much absorbed in his own
thoughts, that Marian doubted if he had heard her; and so the rest of the
long evening wore itself out in dismal silence, whilst stealthy footsteps
sounded now and then upon the stairs. Later Mr. Nowell was summoned to a
conference with some mysterious person in the shop, whom Marian supposed
to be the undertaker; and returning from this interview with a gloomy
face, he resumed his seat by the fire.
It seemed very strange to Marian that they two, father and daughter,
should be together thus, so near and yet so wide apart; united by the
closest tie of kindred, brought together thus after years of severance,
yet with no bond of sympathy between them; no evidence of remorseful
tenderness on the side of him whose life had been one long neglect of a
father's duty.
"How could I expect that he would care for me in the smallest degree,
after his desertion of my mother?" Marian thought to herself, as she
meditated upon her father's coldness, which at first had seemed so
strange to her. She had fancied that, what ever his sins in the past had
been, his heart would have melted at the sight of his only child. She had
thought of him and dreamed of him so often in her girlhood, elevating him
in her romantic fancy into something much better and brighter than he
really was--a sinner at best, it is true, but a sinner of a lofty type, a
noble nature gone astray. She had imagined a reunion with him in the days
to come, when it should be her delight to minister to his declining
years--to be the consolation of his repentant soul. And now she had found
him she knew these things could never be--that there was not one feeling
of sympathy possible between her and that broken-down, dissipated-looking
man of the world.
The dismal evening came to an end at last, and Marian bade her father
good-night, and went upstairs to the little room where the traces of his
boyhood had interested her so keenly when first she looked upon them.
Mr. Nowell promised to come to Queen Anne's Court at a quarter past six
next morning, to escort his daughter to the station, an act of parental
solicitude she had not expected from him. He took his departure
immediately afterwards, being let out of the shop-door by Luke Tulliver,
who was in a very cantankerous humour, and took no pains to disguise the
state of his feelings. The lawyer Mr. Medler had pried into everything,
the shopman told Percival Nowell; had declared himself empowered to do
this, as the legal adviser of the deceased; and had seemed as suspicious
as if he, Luke Tulliver, meant to rob his dead master. Mr. Tulliver's
sensitive nature had been outraged by such a line of conduct.
"And what has he done with the books?" Mr. Nowell asked.
"They're all in the desk yonder, and that fellow Medler has taken away
the keys."
"Sharp practice," said Mr. Nowell; "but to a man with your purity of
intention it can't matter what precautions are taken to insure the safety
of the property."
"Of course it don't matter," the other answered peevishly; "but I like to
be treated as a gentleman."
"Humph! And you expect to retain your place here, I suppose, if the
business is carried on?"
"It's too good a business to be let drop," replied Mr. Tulliver; "but I
shouldn't think that young lady upstairs would be much of a hand at
trade. I wouldn't mind offering a fair price for the business,--I've got
a tidy little bit of money put away, though my salary has been small
enough, goodness knows; but I've lived with the old gentleman, and never
wasted a penny upon pleasure; none of your music-halls, or
dancing-saloons, or anything of that kind, for me,--or I wouldn't mind
paying an annual sum out of the profits of the trade for a reasonable
term. If you've any influence with the young lady, perhaps you could put
it to her, and get her to look at things in that light," Mr. Tulliver
added, becoming quite obsequious as it dawned upon him that this
interloping stranger might be able to do him a service.
"I'll do my best for you, Tulliver," Mr. Nowell replied, in a patronising
tone. "I daresay the young lady will be quite willing to entertain any
reasonable proposition you may make."
Faithful to his promise Mr. Nowell appeared at a quarter past six next
morning, at which hour he found his daughter quite ready for her journey.
She was very glad to get away from that dreary house, made a hundredfold
more dismal by the sense of what lay in the closed chamber, where the
candles were still burning in the yellow fog of the November morning, and
to which Marian had gone with hushed footsteps to kneel for the last time
beside the old man who was so near her by the ties of relationship, and
whom she had known for so brief a space. She was glad to leave that dingy
quarter of the town, which to one who had never lived in an English city
seemed unspeakably close and wretched; still more glad to think that she
was going back to the quiet home, where her husband would most likely
join her very soon. She might find him there when she arrived, perhaps;
for he knew nothing of this journey to London, or could only hear of it
at the Grange, where she had left a letter for him, enclosing that brief
note of Gilbert Fenton's which had informed her of her grandfather's
fatal illness. There were special reasons why she should not ask him to
meet her in Queen Anne's Court, however long she might have been
compelled to stay there.
Mr. Nowell was much more affectionate in his manner to his daughter this
morning, as they sat in the cab driving to the station, and walked side
by side upon the platform in the quarter of an hour's interval before the
departure of the train. He questioned her closely upon her life in the
present, and her plans for the future, expressing himself in a remarkably
generous manner upon the subject of her grandfather's will, and declaring
himself very well pleased that his own involuntary neglect was to be so
amply atoned for by the old man's liberality. He found his daughter
completely ignorant of the world, as gentle and confiding as he had found
her mother in the past. He sounded the depths of her innocent mind during
that brief promenade; and when the train bore her away at last, and the
platform was clear, he remained for some time walking up and down in
profound meditation, scarcely knowing where he was. He looked round him
in an absent way by-and-by, and then hurriedly left the station, and
drove straight to Mr. Medler's office, which was upon the ground floor of
a gloomy old house in one of the dingier streets in the Soho district,
and in the upper chambers whereof the attorney's wife and numerous
offspring had their abode. He came down to his client from his
unpretending breakfast-table in a faded dressing-gown, with smears of egg
and greasy traces of buttered toast about the region of his mouth, and
seemed not particularly pleased to see Mr. Nowell. But the conference
that followed was a long one; and it is to be presumed that it involved
some chance of future profit, since the lawyer forgot to return to his
unfinished breakfast, much to the vexation of Mrs. Medler, a faded lady
with everything about her in the extremest stage of limpness, who washed
the breakfast-things with her own fair hands, in consideration of the
multitudinous duties to be performed by that hapless solitary damsel who
in such modest households is usually denominated "the girl."