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(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
A SECRET INHERITANCE
A
SECRET INHERITANCE
BY
B. L. FARJEON,
AUTHOR OF "GREAT PORTER SQUARE," "IN A SILVER SEA,"
"THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS," ETC.
_IN THREE VOLUMES_
VOL. I
LONDON
WARD AND DOWNEY
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1887
Richard Clay and Sons,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
A SECRET INHERITANCE.
* * * * * *
BOOK THE FIRST.
THE RECORD OF GABRIEL CAREW.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
My earliest distinct remembrances are of a mean and common home in
London, in which I lived with my parents and a servant named Fortress.
She was a young woman, her age being twenty-four or five, but her
manners were as sedate as those of a matron who had a distaste for
frivolity and tittle-tattle. She performed her duties quietly and in
silence, and seldom spoke unless she were first addressed. She did not
take the trouble to render herself agreeable to me, or to win my
affection. This was entirely to my liking, as I was of a retired habit
of mind and disposition. It was not unusual for weeks to pass without
our exchanging a word.
We were surrounded by squalid thoroughfares, the residents in which
were persons occupying the lowest stations of life, human bees whose
hives were not over stocked with honey, being indeed, I have no doubt,
frequently bare of it. This was not the result of indolence, for they
toiled early and late. I saw, and observed. Sometimes I wondered,
sometimes I despised, and I always shrank from close contact with
these sordid conditions of existence. If I had possessed a store of
pocket-money it is not unlikely that a portion of it would have been
expended in charity, but I will not affirm that I should have been
impelled to liberality by motives of benevolence. We were, however,
very poor, and my father seldom gave me a penny. I did not complain; I
had no wants which money could gratify. I did not consort with other
children; I did not play or associate with them; when they made
advances towards me I declined to receive them, and I held myself
entirely aloof from their pleasures and occupations. In this respect I
instinctively followed the fashion of our home and the example of my
parents. They had no friends or intimate acquaintances. During the
years we lived thus poorly and meanly, not a man, woman, or child ever
entered our doors to partake of our hospitality, or to impart what
would possibly have been a healthy variety to our days.
Our dwelling consisted of two rooms at the top of a small house. They
were attics; in one my mother and Mrs. Fortress slept; in the other my
father and I. The bed he and I occupied was shut up during the day,
and made an impotent pretence of being a chest of drawers. This room
was our living room, and we took our meals in it.
In speaking of our servant as Mrs. Fortress I do not intend to convey
that she was a married woman. My impression was that she was single,
and I should have scouted the idea of her having a sweetheart; but my
parents always spoke of and to her as Mrs. Fortress.
From the window of our living-room I could see, at an angle, a bit of
the River Thames. The prospect was gloomy and miserable. There was no
touch of gaiety in the sluggish panorama of the life on the water. The
men on the barges, working with machine-like movement against the
tide, were begrimed and joyless; the people on the penny steamers
seemed bent on anything but pleasure; the boys who played about the
stranded boats when the tide was low were elfish and mischievous. The
land life was in keeping. The backs of other poor houses were scarcely
a handshake off. On a sill here and there were a few drooping flowers,
typical of the residents in the poverty-stricken neighbourhood.
Sometimes as I gazed upon these signs an odd impression stole upon me
that we had not always lived in this mean condition. I saw dimly the
outlines of a beautiful house, with gardens round it, of horses my
parents used to ride, of carriages in which we drove, of many servants
to wait upon us. But it was more like a dream than reality, and I made
no reference to it in my parents' hearing, and did not ask them
whether my fancies had any substantial foundation.
When I say that a cloud rested upon us, I mean the figure of speech to
bear no partial application. It was dark and palpable; it entered into
our lives; it shadowed all our days. On more than one occasion I
noticed my parents gazing apprehensively at me, and then piteously at
each other; and upon their discovering that I was observing them they
would force a smile to their lips, and assume a gaiety in which, young
as I was, I detected a false ring. My mother did not always take her
meals with us; my father and I frequently sat at the table alone.
"Your mother is not well enough to join us," he would sometimes say to
me. If he saw me gazing on the vacant chair.
There were occasions when he and I would go into the country, and I do
not remember that my mother ever accompanied us. There would be no
preliminary preparation for these trips, nor was it customary for my
father to say to me on the morning or the evening before these
departures, "We are going into the country to-morrow, Gabriel." We
always seemed to be suddenly called away, and our return was also
sudden and, to me, unexpected. These holidays would, in the ordinary
course of things, have been joyfully hailed by most poor lads. Not so
by me. They were most melancholy affairs, and I was glad to get back
from them. My father appeared to be suffering from greater anxiety in
the country than in London. The excuse for these sudden departures was
that my mother was ill, and needed quiet. We stopped at poor inns, and
had no money to spend in junketings.
"I would like to take you to such or such a place," my father would
say, "but I cannot afford it."
"It does not matter, father," I would answer. "I should be happy if I
only had my books about me."
It was the being separated from my little library that made the
country so irksome to me. I was passionately fond of reading, and my
store of literature consisted of books which had belonged to my
father, and had been well thumbed by him. They were mine; he had given
them to me on my birthday. Of their nature it is sufficient to say
here that they were mostly classics, and that among them were very few
of a light character.
One morning a ray of light shone through the dark spaces of our lives.
We were sitting at breakfast in our lodgings in London when Mrs.
Fortress brought in a letter for my father. It was an unusual event,
and my father turned it over leisurely in his hand, and examined the
writing on the envelope before he opened it. But his manner changed
when he read the letter; he was greatly agitated, and my mother asked
anxiously:
"Have you bad news?"
"No," he replied, "good."
He was silent for a few moments, and his next words were:
"Mildred, can you bear a shock?"
"Yes," said my mother, "as the news is good."
"We are rich once more," my father said, and then exclaimed, as he
gazed around upon the mean walls of our apartment, "Thank God!"
A relative of ours had died in a distant land, and had left his
fortune to my father. My father had had no expectations from him, and
had, indeed, almost forgotten his existence. The greater was our
surprise at this sudden change in our circumstances.
Although there were formalities to be gone through before my father
came into possession of the large legacy, and although seven or eight
weeks elapsed before we removed from our poor lodgings, the change
from poverty to riches was almost immediately apparent. My father
presented me with a purse containing money. I do not remember how
much, but there were sovereigns in it.
I was not proud; I was not elated. The prospect of living in a better
place, with better surroundings, was agreeable to me, but it did not
excite me. With my purse in my pocket I went to a shop in which
second-hand books were sold, and among them some I desired to possess.
I bought what I wished, and carried them away with me. On my way home
I noticed a little girl sitting on a doorstep, and there was a wan
look in her pale face which attracted me. By her side was a crutch. As
I stood looking at her for a moment, the string with which my books
were tied became undone, the paper in which they were wrapped burst,
and the books fell to the ground. I stooped to pick them up, but the
books, being loose and of different sizes, were cumbersome to hold,
and I called to the girl that I would give her a shilling if she
helped me.
"A shilling!" she exclaimed, and rose upon her feet, but immediately
sank to the ground, with a cry of pain.
"What is the matter with you?" I asked. "I haven't hurt you, have I?"
She pointed to her crutch. Thinking that she wished me to hand it to
her, I lifted it from the ground, and found that it was broken.
"You are lame," I said.
"Yes," she said, looking at me admiringly from her crouching position;
the twitch in her leg had caused her but momentary suffering, "I can't
stand without my crutch, and it's broke."
"But you tried to stand when I called to you."
"Oh, yes; you said you'd give me a shilling, and I didn't think of my
leg."
Much virtue in a shilling, thought I, to cause one to forget such an
affliction.
"I wouldn't mind buying you a crutch," I said, "if I knew where they
were sold."
"There's a shop in the next street," said the girl, "where the
master's got the feller one to this. It's a rag and bone shop, and
he'll sell it cheap."
"I'll show you the shop, young sir, if you like," said a voice at my
elbow.
The tone and the manner of speech were refined, and it surprised me,
therefore, when I turned, to behold a figure strangely at variance
with this refinement. The man was in rags, and the drunkard's stamp
was on his features, but in his kind eyes shone a sadly humorous
light. Moreover, he spoke as a gentleman would have spoken.
I accepted his offer to show me the rag and bone shop, and we walked
side by side, conversing. To be exact, I should say that he talked and
I listened, for he used twenty words to one of mine. This kind of
social intercourse was rare in my experiences, and it proved
interesting, by reason of my chance companion being an exception to
the people who lived in the neighbourhood. Few as were the words I
uttered, they, and the books I carried under my arm, served to unlock
his tongue, and he regaled me with snatches of personal history. He
was familiar with the books I had purchased, and expressed approval of
my selection. He had, indeed, been born a gentleman, and had received
a liberal education.
"Which has served to convince me," he observed, "that if it is in the
nature of a man to swim with the current into which he has drifted or
been driven, swim with it he must, wheresoever it may lead him."
"There is the power of resistance," I said.
"There is nothing of the sort," was his comment, "unless it is
agreeable to the man to exercise it. We are but straws. It is
fortunate that life is short, and that happiness does not consist in
wearing a jewelled crown. Young sir, how came you to live in these
parts?"
"I do not know," I replied. "My parents live here."
"But you are not poor."
By this time I had bought the odd crutch, and my companion had seen
the gold in my purse when I paid for it.
"We have been," I said, "but are so no longer."
"Shade of Pluto!" he cried. "If I could but say as much! So, being
suddenly made rich, you open your heart to pity's call?" I shook my
head in doubt, and he touched the crutch. "Don't you think this a fine
thing to do?"
"I am not sure," I said.
"Excellent!" he exclaimed. "Praise me not for my virtues; blame me not
for my vices. That morality, in respect to the average man, is a knife
that cuts both ways. To sinners like myself it is more comforting than
otherwise."
He puzzled me, and I told him so, but he made a pretence of
disbelieving me, and said,
"There are depths in you, young sir. You may live to discover that you
are in the wrong century."
That I did not clearly understand him did not render his conversation
less interesting. I gave the girl the crutch and a shilling, and left
her and the man together.
I record this incident because it is the only one I remember during
the time we lived in that poor neighbourhood in which strangers played
a part. So far as my outer life was concerned, it was utterly devoid
of colour.