A DAUGHTER’S LOVE, AND A LOVER’S HOPE.
Lucius Davoren’s life had taken a new colour since that letter which
opened the doors of the dismal old house in the Shadrack-road. His
existence had now an object nearer to his human heart than even
professional success. Dearly as he loved his profession, it is just
possible that he loved himself a little better, and this new object,
this new hope, concerned himself alone. Yet it did not in any manner
distract him from his patient labours, from his indefatigable studies,
but rather gave him a new incentive to industry. How better could he
serve the interests of her whom he loved than by toiling steadily on
upon the road which he believed must ultimately lead him to success,
and even to fame—that far brighter reward than mere material prosperity?
Mr. Sivewright’s condition had in no wise improved. That gradual decay
had gone on a long time before the sturdy old man had cared to make his
pains and languors known to any human being, much less to a member
of that fraternity he affected to despise—the medical profession. All
Lucius Davoren’s care failed to bring back the vigour that had been
wasted. He kept the feeble lamp of life burning, somewhat faintly, and
that was all he could do yet awhile.
For some little time after the surgeon’s admission to the house,
Mr. Sivewright spent his evenings by the fireside in the parlour
down-stairs. At Lucius’s earnest request he had consented to the
purchase of a more luxurious chair than the straight-backed instrument
of torture in which he had been accustomed to sit. Here by the hearth,
where a better fire burned than of old—for Lucius insisted that
mistaken economy meant death—the bric-à-brac dealer sat and talked;
talked of his youth, his bargains, his petty triumph over rival
traders, but of that lost wanderer, his son, never.
‘There must be something hard in a man’s nature when even the approach
of death does not soften his heart towards his own flesh and blood,’
thought Lucius.
There came a time when the old man felt himself altogether too weak to
leave his room. The broad shallow steps of the solid old staircase—so
easy to the tread of youth and strength—became for him too painful a
journey. He only left his bed to sit by the little bit of fire in his
own room, or on warmer days by the open window.
This was some time after Lucius Davoren’s visit to Stillmington,
when spring had been succeeded by summer, which in the Shadrack-road
district was distinguishable from the other seasons chiefly by an
Egyptian plague of flies and an all-pervading atmosphere of dust;
also by the shrill cries of costermongers vending cheap lots of
gooseberries or periwinkles, and by an adoption of somewhat oriental or
_al-fresco_ habits among the population, who lounged at their doors,
and stood about the streets a good deal in the long warm evenings,
while respectable matrons did their domestic needlework seated on their
doorsteps, whence they might watch their young barbarians at play in
the adjacent gutter.
From this somewhat shabby and ragged out-of-door life on the king’s
highway, it was a relief for Lucius to enter the calm seclusion of the
shadowy old house, where the June sunshine was tempered at midday by
half-closed oaken shutters, and where it seemed to the surgeon there
was ever a peculiar coolness and freshness, and faint perfume of some
simple garden flower unknown elsewhere. In this sultry weather, when
the outer world was as one vast oven, that sparsely-furnished parlour
with its dark wainscot walls was a place to dream in; the dim old hall
with its chaotic treasures saved from the wreck of time, a delicious
retreat from the clamour and toil of life. Here Lucius loved to come,
and here he was sure of a sweet welcome from her whom he had loved at
first sight, and whom familiarity had made daily dearer to him.
Yes, he confessed now that the interest he had felt in Lucille
Sivewright from the very first had its root in a deeper feeling than
compassion. He was no longer ashamed to own that it was love, and love
only, that had made yonder rusty iron gate, by which he had so often
lingered, sad and longing, seem to him as the door of paradise.
One evening, after the old man had taken to his room up-stairs, and
Lucille had been sorrowful and anxious, and had seemed in peculiar need
of consolation, the old, old story was told once more under the pale
stars of evening, as these two wandered about that patch of dusty sward
above which the old cedar stretched his shrunken branches, and cast
grim shadows on the shadowy grass. The creek with its black barges lay
before them; beyond, a forest of roofs, and attic windows, and tall
factory chimneys, and distant spars of mighty merchantmen faintly
visible against the pale-gray sky. Not a romantic spot, or a scene
calculated to inspire the souls of lovers, by any means. Yet Lucius was
every whit as eloquent as he would have been had they wandered on the
shores of Leman, or watched the sun go down from the orange groves of
Cintra.
The girl heard him in profound silence. They had come to a pause
in their desultory wanderings by the decaying ruin of an ancient
summer-house, at an angle of the wall close to the creek—a spot which
to the simpler tastes of untravelled citizens in the last century may
have seemed eminently picturesque. Lucille sat on the broken bench
in a somewhat dejected attitude, her arms resting on a battered old
table, her face turned away from Lucius towards the dingy hulls that
lay moored upon those muddy waters, unbeautiful as that dark ferry-boat
which Dante saw advancing shadowy athwart the ‘woeful tide of Acheron.’
He had spoken earnestly, and had pleaded well, but had been unable
to read any answer in those truthful eyes, whose every expression he
fancied he knew. Those had been persistently averted from him.
‘Lucille, why do you turn from me? My dearest, why this discouraging
silence? Do my words pain you? I had dared to hope they would not be
unwelcome, that you must have expected to hear them. You must have
known that I loved you, ever so long ago, for I have loved you from the
very first.’
‘You have been very good to me,’ she said, in a low broken voice.
‘Good to you!’
‘So good that I have sometimes thought you—liked me a little.’ (A
woman’s periphrasis; feminine lips hardly dare utter that mighty word
‘love.’) ‘But if it is really so—which seems almost too much for me to
believe’ (if he could but have seen the proud happy look in her eyes
as she said that!) ‘I can only beg you never to say any more about
it—until—’
‘Until what, Lucille?’ exclaimed Lucius impatiently. He had not
expected to find hindrance or stumbling-block in the way of his
happiness here. From Homer Sivewright there would no doubt be
opposition, but surely not here. Had he so grossly deceived himself
when he believed his love returned?
‘Until my life is changed from what it is now, such a broken life, the
merest fragment of a life,’ answered Lucille quietly. ‘How can I think
of returning the affection you speak of—you so worthy to be loved—while
I am in this miserable state of uncertainty about my father—not
knowing if he is living or dead, fortunate or unhappy? I can never
give my heart to any one, however noble’—with a lingering tenderness
which might have told him that he was beloved—‘until all doubts are
cleared upon that one subject. Until then, I belong to my father. At
any moment he might appear to claim me; and I am his’—with a passionate
emphasis—‘his, by the memory of that childhood, when I loved him so
dearly. Let him order me to follow him to the other end of the world,
and I should go—without one fear, without one regret.’
Lucius was silent for some moments, stung to the quick. Was a mere
memory, the very shadow of her childhood’s affection, so much nearer
to her than his deep unselfish love—his love, which might brighten
her dull life in the present, and open a fair vista of future
happiness—that hopeful active love, which was to make a home for her,
and win fame for him in the days to come, always for her sake?
‘What, Lucille,’ he said reproachfully, ‘you hold my love so lightly
that it can count for nothing when weighed against the memory of a
father who deserted you—who has let all the years of your girlhood go
by without making the faintest attempt to claim you, or even to see
you?’
‘How do I know what may have prevented him?’ she asked—‘what barrier
may have stood between him and me? Death perhaps. He did not desert me.’
‘Was not his sudden departure from your grandfather’s house desertion
of you?’
‘No. He was driven away. I am very sure of that. My grandfather was
hard and cruel to him.’
‘Perhaps. But whatever quarrel may have parted those two, your claim on
your father remained. You had not been hard or cruel; yet he abandoned
you—tacitly renounced all claim upon you when he left his father’s
house. I don’t want to blame him, Lucille; I don’t want to spoil that
idealised image which you carry in your heart; but surely it is not
for you to sacrifice a very real affection in the present for a vague
memory of the past.’
‘It is not vague. My memory of those days is as vivid as my memory of
yesterday—more vivid even. I have but to close my eyes—now, at this
very moment while you are talking to me—and I can see my father’s face;
it is not your voice I hear, but his.’
‘Infatuation, Lucille,’ exclaimed the surgeon sadly. ‘Had you known
your father a few years longer, you might have discovered that he was
utterly unworthy of your love—that fond confiding love of a child’s
guileless heart, prone to make for itself an idol.’
‘If I had found him unworthy, I do not believe my love would have
altered; I should only have been so much the more sorry for him.
Remember, I am used to hear him badly spoken of. My grandfather’s
bitterest words have never lessened my love for him.’
‘Granted that your love for him is indestructible, why should it stand
between you and me—if I am not quite indifferent to you? Answer me that
question first, Lucille; I am too much in earnest to be satisfied with
half knowledge. Do you care for me, ever so little?’
She looked round at him for the first time, smiling, yet with tearful
eyes—an expression that was half mournful, half arch.
‘Ever so little,’ she repeated. ‘I might own to that. It does not
commit me to much.’
‘More than a little, then? O, be frank, Lucille! I have shown you all
the weakness—or the strength—of _my_ heart.’
‘I love you very dearly,’ she said shyly.
She was clasped to his breast before the words were half spoken, the
kiss of betrothal pressed upon her trembling lips. She withdrew
herself hastily from that first fond embrace.
‘You have not heard half that I have to say, Mr. Davoren.’
‘I will never consent to be Mr. Davoren again.’
‘I will call you Lucius, then; only you must hear what I have to say.
I do love you, very truly,’ with a warning gesture that stopped any
farther demonstration on his part; ‘I do think you good and brave and
noble. I am very proud to know that you care for me. But I can bind
myself by no new tie until the mystery of my father’s fate has been
solved, until I am very sure that he will never claim my love and my
obedience.’
‘If I were to solve that mystery, Lucille—or at least attempt to solve
it,’ said Lucius thoughtfully.
‘Ah, if! But you would never think of that! You could not spare time
and thought for that; you have your profession.’
‘Yes, and all my hopes of winning a position which might make you
proud of being my wife by and by. It would be a hard thing to forego
all those, Lucille—to devote my mind and my life to a perhaps hopeless
endeavour. Fondly as I love you, I am not chivalrous enough to say
I will shut up my surgery to-morrow and start on the first stage to
the Antipodes, or the Japan Islands, or Heaven knows where, in quest
of your father. Yet I might do something. If I had but the slightest
foundation to work upon I should hardly be afraid of success. I would
willingly do anything, anything less than the entire sacrifice of my
prospects—which must be your prospects too, Lucille—to prove how dear
you are to me.’
‘You really would? Ah! if you could find him—if you could reunite
us, I should love you so dearly—at least, no,’ with a little gush of
tenderness, ‘I could not love you better than I do now. But you would
make me so happy.’
‘Then I will try, dearest, try honestly. But if I fail—after earnest
endeavour, and at the end of a reasonable period—if I fail in bringing
your father to you living, or discovering when and how he died, you
will not punish me for my failure. You will be my wife two or three
years hence, come what may, Lucille. Give me that hope, sweet one. It
will make me strong enough to face all difficulties.’
‘I love you,’ she said in her low serious voice, putting her little
hand into his; and that simple admission he accepted as a promise.