‘I HAD A SON, NOW OUTLAW’D FROM MY BLOOD.’
Ten o’clock the next morning beheld Lucius again at the tall gate. He
was admitted without question, and the open door of the parlour showed
him Lucille—in a gray stuff gown, a large linen apron, and a white
muslin cap, like a French grisette’s—rubbing the oaken wainscot with a
beeswaxed cloth; while a small tub of water on the table and some china
cups and saucers set out to drain, showed that she had been washing the
breakfast things. This circumstance explained the spotless neatness of
all he had seen—the shining wainscot, the absence of a grain of dust
upon any object in the room. She came out to wish him good-morning,
nowise abashed.
‘I daresay your English young ladies would think this very shocking,’
she said. ‘I ought to be practising Czerny’s _Exercises de Facilité_,
ought I not, at this time in the morning?’
‘Our English girls are very stupid when they devote all their time
to Czerny,’ he answered, ‘to the utter disregard of their domestic
surroundings. I’m not going to talk that hackneyed trash which Cobbett
brought into fashion, about preferring the art of making puddings to
music and literature; but I think it simply natural to a woman of
refinement to superintend the arrangements of her home—yes, and to use
brooms and dusters, rather than allow resting-place for so much as a
drachm of flue or dust. But you talk of our English ladies as a race
apart. Are you not English, Miss Sivewright?’
‘Only on my father’s side, and his mother was a Spanish-American. My
mother’ (with a sigh) ‘was a Frenchwoman.’
‘Ah,’ thought Lucius, ‘it is in such mixed races one finds beauty and
genius.’
How pretty she looked in her little muslin cap, adorning but not
concealing the rich dark hair! How well the neutral-tinted gown, with
its antique simplicity, became her graceful form!
‘Talking of music,’ he said, ‘have you no piano?’
‘No, I am sorry to say. My grandfather has a prejudice against music.’
‘Indeed! There are few who care to confess such a singular prejudice.’
‘Perhaps it is because’—falteringly and trifling nervously with the
linen band of her apron—’ because a person with whom he quarrelled
long ago was fond of music.’
‘A somewhat unreasonable reason. And you are thus deprived of even such
companionship as you might find in a piano! That seems hard.’
‘Pray do not blame my grandfather: he is very good to me. I have an old
guitar—my mother’s—with which I amuse myself sometimes in my own room,
where he can’t hear me. Shall I show you the way to my grandfather’s
bedroom? He seldom comes down-stairs till after twelve o’clock.’
Lucius followed her up the broad oak staircase, which at each spacious
landing was encumbered with specimens of those ponderous Flemish
cabinets and buffets, which would seem to have sprung into being
spontaneous as toadstools from the fertile soil of the Low Countries.
Then along a dusky corridor, where ancient tapestry and dingy pictures
covered the walls, to a door at the extreme end, which she opened.
‘This is grandpapa’s room,’ she said, upon the threshold, and there
left him.
He knocked at the half-open door, not caring to enter the lion’s den
unauthorised. A stern voice bade him ‘Come in.’
The room was large and lofty, but so crowded with the same species of
lumber as that which he had seen below that there was little more
than a passage, or strait, whereby he could approach his patient.
Here, too, were cabinets of ebony inlaid with _pietra dura_; in one
corner stood an Egyptian mummy—perchance a departed Pharaoh, whose
guilt-burdened soul had shivered at the bar of Osiris six thousand
years ago; while on the wall above him hung a grim picture—of the
early German school—representing the flaying of a saint and martyr,
hideously faithful to anatomy. The opposite wall was entirely covered
by moth-eaten tapestry, upon which the fair fingers of mediæval
chatelaines had depicted the Dance of Death. Gazing with wondering eyes
round the room, Lucius beheld elaborately-carved arm-chairs in Bombay
black wood, peacock mosquito-fans, sandal-wood caskets, poonah work,
and ivory chessmen; lamps that had lighted Roman catacombs or burned on
Pagan altars; Highland quaichs from which Charles Edward may have drunk
the native usquebaugh; a Greek shield, of the time of Alexander, shaped
like the back of a tortoise; a Chinese idol; a South Sea islander’s
canoe. A hundred memories of lands remote, of ages lost in the midst of
time, were suggested by this heterogeneous mass of property, which to
the inexperienced eye of Lucius seemed more interesting than valuable.
The old man’s bed stood in a corner near the fireplace—a small
four-poster, with clumsily-carved columns, somewhat resembling that
bedstead which the student of history gazes upon with awe in Mary
Stuart’s bedchamber at Holyrood, thinking how often that fair head
must have laid itself down there, weary of cark and care, and crown
and royal robes, and false friends and falser lovers—a shabby antique
bedstead, with ragged hangings of faded red silk.
There was a fire in the grate, pinched like the grate below; a
three-cornered chair of massive carved ebony, covered with stamped and
gilded leather, stood beside it. Here sat the master of these various
treasures, his long gray hair crowned with a black-velvet skullcap;
his gaunt figure wrapped in a ragged damask dressing-grown, edged with
well-worn fur; a garment which may have been coeval with the bedstead.
‘Good-morning,’ said Mr. Sivewright, looking up from his newspaper.
‘You look surprised at the furniture of my bedroom; not room enough to
swing a cat, is there? But you see I don’t want to swing cats. When I
get a bargain I bring it in here, and have it about me till I get tired
of looking at it, and then Wincher and I carry it down-stairs to the
general collection.’
‘Wincher?’
‘Yes, Jacob Wincher, my old Jack-of-all-trades; you haven’t seen
him yet? He burrows somewhere in the back premises—sleeps in the
coal-cellar, I believe—and is about as fond of daylight and fresh
air as a mole. A faithful fellow enough. He was my clerk and general
assistant in Bond-street; here he amuses himself pottering about among
my purchases; catalogues them after his own fashion, and could give a
better statement of my affairs than any City accountant.’
‘A valuable servant,’ said Lucius.
‘Do you think so? I haven’t paid him anything for the last seven years.
He stays with me, partly because he likes me in his slavish canine way,
partly because he has nowhere else to go. His wife keeps my house, and
takes care of Lucille. And now for our consultation; the pain in my
side has been a trifle worse this morning.’
Lucius began his interrogatory. Gently, and with that friendly
persuasiveness which had made him beloved by his parish patients, he
drew from the old man a full confession of his symptoms. The case was
grave. An existence joyless, hard, laborious, monotonous to weariness,
will sometimes exhaust the forces of the body, sap the vital power, as
perniciously as the wear and tear of riotous living. High pressure
has pretty much the same effect, let the motive power be love of gain
or love of pleasure. In a word, Homer Sivewright had worn himself
out. There was chronic disease of long standing; there was general
derangement which might end fatally sooner or later. He was over sixty
years of age. He might die within the year; he might live two, three,
four, five years longer.
‘You have not spared yourself, I fear,’ said Lucius, as he put his
stethoscope into his pocket.
‘No; I have always had one great object in life. A man who has that
rarely spares himself.’
‘Yet a man who wears himself out before his time by reckless labour is
hardly wiser than those foolish virgins who left their lamps without
oil.’
‘Perhaps. It is not always easy to be wise. A man whose domestic life
is a disappointment is apt to concentrate his labour and his thoughts
upon some object outside his home. My youth was a hard one from
necessity, my middle age was hard from habit. I had not acquired the
habit of luxury. My trade grew daily more interesting to me, ten times
more so than anything the world calls pleasure. I spent my days in
sale-rooms, or wandering in those strange nooks and corners to which
art treasures sometimes drift—the mere jetsam and flotsam of life’s
troubled sea, the unconsidered spoil of ruined homes. My nights were
devoted to the study of my ledger, or the text-books of my trade. I had
no desire for any other form of life. If I could have afforded all the
comforts and pleasures of modern civilisation—which of course I could
not—my choice would have kept me exactly where I was.’
‘In future,’ said Lucius in his cheery tone—he never discouraged a
patient—‘it will be well for you, to live more luxuriously. Stint
yourself in nothing, and let the money you have hitherto spent in
adding to your collection be henceforth devoted to good old port and a
liberal dietary.’
‘I have spent nothing lately,’ said Sivewright sharply; ‘I have had
nothing to spend.’
‘I don’t want to doubt your word,’ replied Lucius; ‘but I tell you
frankly you must live better than you have done, if you wish to live
much longer.’
‘I do,’ cried the old man with sudden energy; ‘I have prayed for long
life—I who pray so little. Yes, I have sent up that one supplication to
the blind blank sky. I want to live for long years to come. If I had
been born three hundred years ago, I should have sought for the sublime
secret—the elixir of life. But I live in an age when men believe in
nothing,’ with a profound sigh.
‘Say rather in an age when men reserve their faith for the God who made
them, instead of exhausting their powers of belief upon crucibles and
alembics,’ answered Lucius in his most practical tone.
Then followed his _régime_, simple and sagacious, but to be followed
strictly.
‘I should like to say a few words to your granddaughter,’ he said; ‘so
much in these cases depends upon good nursing.’
‘Say what you please,’ replied Mr. Sivewright, ringing his bell, ‘but
let it be said in my hearing. I don’t relish the notion of being
treated like a child; of having powders given me unawares in jam,
or senna in my tea. If you have a sentence of death to pronounce,
pronounce it fearlessly. I am stoic enough to hear my death-warrant
unmoved.’
‘I shall make no such demand upon your stoicism. The duration of your
life will depend very much on your own prudence. Of course at sixty
the avenue at the end of which a man sees his grave is not an endless
perspective. But you have a comfortable time before you yet, Mr.
Sivewright, if you will live wisely and make the most of it.’
Lucille came in response to the bell, and to her Lucius repeated his
directions as to diet and general treatment.
‘I am not going to dose your grandfather with drugs,’ he said; ‘a mild
tonic, to promote appetite, is all I shall give him. He complains of
sleeplessness, a natural effect of thinking much, and monotonously
brooding on some one theme, and that not a pleasant one.’
The old man looked at him sharply, angrily even.
‘I don’t want any fortune-telling,’ he said; ‘stick to your text. You
profess to cure the body, and not the mind.’
‘Unless the mind will consent to assist the cure, my art is hopeless,’
answered Lucius.
He finished his advice, dwelling much on that essential point, a
generous diet. The girl looked at her grandfather doubtfully. He seemed
to answer the look.
‘The money must be found, child,’ he said, in a fretful tone, ‘if I
part with the gems of my collection. After all, life is the great
necessity; all ends with that.’
‘You will find your spare cash better bestowed upon your own
requirements than on Egyptian mummies,’ said Lucius, with a disparaging
glance at the defunct Pharaoh.
Mr. Sivewright promised to be guided by his counsel, and civilly
dismissed him.
‘Come to me as often as you like,’ he said, ‘since you come as a
friend; and let it be in the evening if that is pleasantest to you. I
suppose there will be no necessity for any more serious examinations
like this morning’s,’ with a faint smile, and a disagreeable
recollection of the stethoscope, which instrument seemed to him as much
an emblem of death as the skull and crossbones on an old tombstone.
Lucius and Lucille went down-stairs together, and he lingered a little
in the oak-panelled parlour, from which all tokens of her housewifery
cares had now vanished. A bunch of violets and snowdrops in a tall
Venetian beaker stood in the centre of the table; a few books, an open
workbasket, indicated the damsel’s morning occupation. She had taken
off her linen apron, but not the cap, which gave the faintest spice
of coquetry to her appearance, and which Lucius thought the prettiest
headgear he had ever seen.
They talked a little of the old man up-stairs; but the surgeon was
careful not to alarm Mr. Sivewright’s granddaughter. Alas, poor child,
coldly and grudgingly as he acknowledged her claim upon him, he was her
only guardian, the sole barrier between her and the still colder world
outside her gloomy home.
‘You do not think him _very_ ill?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I do not think there is any reason for you to be anxious. Careful I am
sure you will be; and care may do much to prolong his life. He has used
himself hardly.’
‘Yes,’ she answered in a mournful tone. ‘He has had troubles, heavy
troubles, and he broods upon them.’
‘Change of air and scene might be advantageous. There is an oppressive
atmosphere in such a house as this, in such a quarter of the town.’
‘I have sometimes found it so.’
‘When the spring comes, say about the middle of April, I should
strongly recommend a change for you both. To Hastings, for instance.’
The girl shook her head despondently.
‘He would never consent to spend so much money,’ she said. ‘We are very
poor.’
‘Yet Mr. Sivewright can find money for his purchases.’
‘They cost so little; a few shillings at a time. The things he buys are
bargains, which he discovers in strange out-of-the-way places.’
‘Is he often out of doors?’
‘Yes, and for long hours together. But lately he has been more fatigued
after those long rambles than he used to be.’
‘He must abandon them altogether. And you have spent some years alone
in this old house?’
‘Yes. I am accustomed to solitude. It is rather dull sometimes. But I
have my books, and the house to take care of, for old Mrs. Wincher does
only the rougher part of the work, and some pleasant memories of the
past to amuse me when I sit and think.’
‘Is your past a very bright one?’
‘Only the quiet life of a school in Yorkshire, where I was sent when I
was very young, and where I stayed till I was seventeen. But the life
seemed bright to me. I had governesses and schoolfellows whom I loved,
and green hills and woods that were only less dear than my living
friends.’
This paved the way for farther confidences. She spoke of her youth, he
of his; of his father and mother, of his sister, the little one buried
in the family grave, not that other whose fate he knew not; his college
days; things he had spoken of the night before. She stopped him in the
middle.
‘Tell me about America,’ she said; ‘I want to know all about America.
Some one I loved very much went to America.’
‘I should have hardly thought your life had been eventful enough for
much love,’ said Lucius somewhat coldly.
‘I have not seen the person I speak of since I was seven years old,’
she answered, with a sigh. ‘I think I may trust you; we are friends,
are we not?’
‘Did not your grandfather authorise me to consider myself almost your
adopted brother?’
‘The person I spoke of just now is one whose very name is forbidden
here. But that cruelty cannot make me forget him. It only strengthens
my memory. He is my father.’
‘Your father? Yes, I understand; the son whom your grandfather cast
off. But not without cause, I suppose?’
‘Perhaps not,’ answered Lucille, the dark deep eyes filling with
tears that were quickly brushed away. ‘He may have been to blame. My
grandfather has never told me why they quarrelled. He has only told me
in hard cruel words that they learned to hate each other before they
learned to forget each other. I was not old enough to know anything
except that my father was always kind to me, and always dear to me.
I did not see him very much. He was out a great deal, out late at
night, and I was alone with an old servant in my grandfather’s house
in Bond-street, where we had lived ever since I could remember, though
I was not born there. We had a dark little parlour behind the shop,
which went back a long way, and was crowded like the room on the other
side of the hall. The days used to seem very long and dull, so little
sunshine, so little air. But everything grew bright when papa came in
for an hour, and took me on his knee, and told me long wild stories,
German stories, I believe, yet half his own invention; stories of
kelpies and lurleys and haunted castles, of a world that was peopled
with fairies, where every leaf and every flower had its sprite. But
I shall tire you with all this talk,’ she said, checking herself
suddenly; ‘and perhaps your patients are waiting for you.’
‘They must wait a few minutes longer. Tire me? no, I am deeply
interested in all you tell me. Pray go on. Those were your happy hours
which your father spent at home.’
‘Happy beyond all measure. Sometimes, of a winter’s evening—winter was
the pleasantest time in that dark little parlour—he would sit idly by
the fire in a great arm-chair; sometimes he would take his violin from
a shelf in the corner by the chimney-piece, and play to me. I used
to climb upon his knee, and sit half buried in the big chair while
he played; such sweet music, low and solemn, like the music of one’s
dreams. I have heard nothing like it since. Those were happy nights
when he stayed at home till I went to bed, happy hours beside the
fire. We used to have no light in the room but the fire-light, and I
fancied the shadowy corners were full of fairies.’
‘Did you hear nothing of the quarrel between your father and your
grandfather? Children, even at seven years old, are quick to observe.’
‘No. If they quarrelled it was not in my hearing. My grandfather lived
entirely in his business. He seldom came into the parlour except for
his meals, or until late at night, when I had gone to bed. I only know
that one morning he was very ill, and when he came down-stairs he had
an awful look in his face, like the face of a man risen from the grave,
and he beckoned me to him, and told me my father had gone away, for
ever. I cannot tell you my grief, it was almost desperate. I wanted to
run away, to follow my father. And one night, which I remember, O so
well, a wet winter night, I got up and put on my clothes somehow, after
Mrs. Wincher had put me to bed, and crept down the dark staircase,
and opened the door in the passage at the side of the shop, which was
rarely used, and went out into the wet streets. I can see the lamps
reflected on the shining pavement to this day, if I shut my eyes, and
feel the cold wet wind blowing upon my face.’
‘Poor child!’
‘Yes, I was a very miserable child that night. I wandered about for a
long time, looking for my father in the crowd; sometimes following a
figure that looked like his ever so far, only to find I had followed a
stranger. I remember the shop-windows being shut one by one, and the
streets growing dark and empty, and how at last I grew frightened, and
sat down on a doorstep and began to cry. A policeman came across the
street and looked at me, and shook me roughly by the arm, and then
began to question me. I was quite disheartened by this time, and had
given up all hope of finding my father: so I told him my name and where
I lived, and he took me home, through a great many narrow streets and
turnings and windings. I must have walked a long way, for I know I had
crossed one of the bridges over the river. Everybody had gone to bed
when the policeman knocked at the door in Bond-street. My flight had
not been found out. My grandfather came down to open the door in his
dressing-gown and slippers. He didn’t even scold me, he seemed too much
surprised for that, when he saw me wet and muddy and footsore. He gave
the man money, and carried me up to my little bedroom at the top of
the house, and lighted a fire with his own hands, and did all he could
to make me warm and comfortable. He asked me why I had gone out, and
I told him. Then for the first time that I can remember, he took me
in his arms and kissed me. “Poor Luce,” he said, “poor little orphan
girl!” He was very kind to me for the next three days, and then took me
down to Yorkshire to the school, where I stayed nearly ten years.’
‘A strange sad story,’ said Lucius, deeply interested. ‘And have you
never been told your father’s fate?’
‘Only that he went to America, and that my grandfather has never heard
of him from the hour in which they parted until now.’
‘May he not have had some tidings, and kept the truth from you?’
‘I don’t think he would tell me a direct falsehood; and he has most
positively declared that he has received no letter from my father, and
has heard nothing of him from any other source. He is dead, no doubt. I
cannot think that he would quite forget the little girl who used to sit
upon his knee.’
‘You believe him to have been a good father then, in spite of your
grandfather’s condemnation of him?’
‘I believed that he loved me.’
‘Have you no recollection of your mother?’
‘No. She must have died when I was very young. I have seen her
portrait. My grandfather keeps it hidden away in his desk, with old
letters, and other relics of the past. I begged him once to give it
to me, but he refused. “Better forget that you ever had a father or a
mother,” he said, in his bitterest tone. But I have not forgotten my
mother’s face, and its sweet thoughtful beauty.’
‘I am ready to believe that she was beautiful,’ said Lucius, with a
tender smile. Lucille’s story had brought them ever so much nearer
together. Now, indeed, he might allow himself to be interested in
her—might freely surrender himself captive to the charm of her gentle
beauty—the magic of her sympathetic voice. That little pathetic picture
of her sorrowful childhood—a tender heart overflowing with love that
none cared to garner—_that_ made him her slave for ever. Was this love
at first sight, that foolish unreasoning passion, which in Geoffrey
Hossack he deemed akin to lunacy? No, rather an intuitive recognition
of the one woman in all the world created to be the sharer of his
brightest hopes, the object of his sweetest solicitude, the recompense
and crown of his life. He had to tear himself away after only a few
friendly words, for Duty, speaking with the voice of his parish
patients, seemed to call him from this enchanted scene.
‘I shall look in once or twice a week, in the evening,’ he said, ‘and
keep a watchful eye upon my patient. Good-bye.’
Towards the end of that week he spent another evening at Cedar House,
and in the following week two more evenings and so on, through windy
March, and in the lengthening days of April, until he looked back and
wondered how he had managed to live before his commonplace existence
had been brightened by these glimpses of a fairer world. The old man
grew still more familiar—friendly even—and allowed the two young people
to talk at their ease; nor did he seem to have any objection to their
growing intimacy. As the days grew longer, he suffered them to wander
about the old house in the spring twilight, and out into a desert in
the rear, which had once been a garden, where there still remained an
ancient cedar, with skeleton limbs that took grim shapes in the dusk.
Not a second Eden, by any means, for this blossomless garden ended in
a creek, where grimy barges, laden with rubble or sand, or rags, or
bones, or coal, or old iron, lay lopsided in the inky mud, against the
mouldering woodwork of a dilapidated wharf, waiting to be disburdened
of their freight.
Yet to one at least these wanderings, these lingering _tête-à-têtes_ by
the creek, looking down dreamily at the Betsy Jane of Wapping, or the
Ann Smith of Bermondsey, were all-sufficient for happiness.
Seeing the old man thus indulgent, Lucius assured himself that he could
have formed no other views about his granddaughter; since, as Lucius
himself thought, it would naturally occur to him that he, Lucius,
must needs fall madly in love with her. He felt all the more secure
upon this point since he had so long been a constant visitor at Cedar
House, and had met no one there who could pretend to Miss Sivewright’s
favour. A snuffy old dealer had been once or twice closeted with Mr.
Sivewright, but that was all. And however base a tyrant Lucille’s
grandfather might be, he could scarcely contemplate bestowing his
lovely grandchild upon an old man in a shabby coat, who presented
himself on the threshold of the parlour with an abject air, and brought
some object of art or virtu wrapped in a blue-cotton handkerchief for
the connoisseur’s inspection.
So the year grew older, and Lucius Davoren looked out upon a new
existence, cheered by new hopes, and happy thoughts which went with him
through the long days of toil, and whispered to his soul in the pauses
of his studious nights.
Even the hideous memory of what went before his illness in America—that
night in the pine-forest, that winter dusk when the wicked face looked
in at his window, when the wolfish eyes glared at him for the last
time, save in his dreams—even that dread picture faded somewhat, and he
could venture to meditate calmly upon the details of that tragedy, and
say to himself, ‘The blood I shed yonder was justly shed.’