THE LODGER LEAVES.
EVENING wore into night, but Gus' father still sat absorbed in
melancholy thought. Once more the past was living before him. He was
back in the days of his childhood, a happy boy, idolised by his proud
father and petted by the sister a few years older than himself, who,
his mother having died when he was too young to know her, was his
tender guardian.
Then passed in review his school days at Eton; then his college days,
when he had won a name for himself, and been lauded by the men of
his college; but in which—alas!—he had taken the first steps along
the path which had proved such a swift descent, taken them gaily and
triumphantly, with the belief that he was showing himself a man of
spirit and superior sagacity.
Then followed the years in which he was engaged in reading for the Bar,
and making his first successful essays in the field of literature.
Then came his meeting with the sweet gentle woman whom, in defiance
of his father's wishes, he married. Alienation from his home was the
consequence. In less than two years, death closed the eyes of his wife,
and he was left to rear their infant boy alone.
But sorrow had not made him wise; it had hardened him into
recklessness. Then it was that Philip Darnell, clever, subtle, suave,
crossed his path. Acquaintance with him had quickly ripened into a
specious friendship. Through him had come the introduction to gaming
clubs, and the inevitable embarrassment and misery which ensued; and
when ruin stared the unfortunate victim in the face, Darnell had drawn
near with base, insidious whisper, to suggest the forgery of his
father's name.
He had yielded to the temptation; in an excited hour he had done a deed
which darkened every coming hour with keenest remorse. Discovery had
followed. The forgery had been traced to him; he was arrested, and only
set at liberty because his father had refused to prosecute him.
But disgrace clung to him. His friends forsook him. Philip Darnell,
repudiating the idea that he had ever suggested such a crime save as
the merest jest, was the first to lift the finger of scorn at him. A
terrible sense of degradation drove him into excesses from which he
would formerly have shrunk. He drank to drown thought, and as the habit
of drinking grew upon him, he sank into deeper and deeper depths of
misery, dragging with him his young son.
Augustus Carruthers "went under," and was seen no more by the circle
in which he had formerly moved. Yet, though he kept away from them, he
was never far from his former haunts. But none of his old companions,
passing him in the street, would have recognised in the shabby, bent
man, prematurely aged, the man whose brilliant intellect had excited
their admiration in other days.
Bitter in retrospect were those bygone days now to the forlorn man,
seated in his miserable lodging. Miserable as it was, it was one he
could no longer afford. He must wander forth on the morrow—whither? He
was sorry for poor little Gus, but for himself, it hardly seemed to
matter what followed. A strange lethargy fell upon him as he sat there.
He grew cold, his limbs grew numb; but he never thought of going to bed.
Gus, rousing from his slumbers long past midnight, saw the candle
flickering in the socket, and his father still seated at the table,
leaning forward upon his elbows, his face half-hidden by his hands. He
seemed to be murmuring something; but Gus could not catch the words. He
thought his father must be praying.
"Father," Gus said presently; but there was no reply, and the child
turned round and slept again.
The candle flickered and flickered, and at last went out. The first
grey light of morning, stealing through the dingy pane, fell on a face
of ashen hue, with sad, fixed eyes. The spirit that had looked out of
those eyes had returned to the Father of spirits. The wasted, misspent
life of the man was at an end. Gus awoke to find himself fatherless.