A DISINTERESTED PARENT.
‘A person has called to see you, ma’am. He begs to apologise for coming
so late, but he has travelled a long way, and will be very thankful if
you can see him.’
This is what the butler had whispered in Mrs. Treverton’s ear, handing
her at the same time a card on which there was a name written--
‘Colonel Mansfield.’
At sight of this name Laura rose, whispered her excuse to Mrs. Clare,
and glided quietly from the room.
‘Where have you left this gentleman?’ she asked the butler.
‘I left him in the hall, ma’am. I did not feel sure you would see him.’
‘He is related to my family,’ said Laura, faltering a little; ‘I cannot
refuse to see him.’
This brief conversation occurred in the corridor leading from the
servants’ hall to the front of the house. A tall man, wrapped in a
loose, rough great-coat, was standing just inside the hall door, while
Trimmer’s subordinate, a rustic youth in a dark-brown livery, stood at
ease near the fireplace, evidently placed there to protect the mansion
from any evil designs on the part of the unknown intruder.
Laura went to the stranger and gave him her hand, without a word. She
was very pale, and it was evident the visitor was as unwelcome as he
was unexpected.
‘You had better come to my study,’ she said. ‘There is a good fire
there. Trimmer, take candles to the study and some wine.’
‘I’d rather have brandy,’ said the stranger. ‘I am chilled to the bone.
An eight hours’ journey in a cattle truck is enough to freeze the
youngest blood. For a man of my age, and with chronic neuralgia, it
means martyrdom.’
‘I am very sorry,’ murmured Laura, with a look in which compassion
struggled against disgust. ‘Come this way. We can talk quietly in my
room.’
She went upstairs, the stranger following close at her heels, to the
gallery out of which John Treverton’s study, which was also her own
favourite sitting-room, opened. It was the room where she and her
husband had met for the first time, two years ago, on just such a
night as this. It adjoined the bedroom where John Treverton was now
lying. She had no desire that he should be a witness to her interview
with this visitor of to-night; but she had a sense of protection in
the knowledge that her husband would be within call. Hitherto, on the
rare occasions when she had been constrained to meet this man, she
had confronted him alone, defenceless; and she had never felt her
loneliness so keenly as at those times.
‘I ought to have told John the whole truth,’ she said to herself; ‘but
how could I--how could I bear to acknowledge----’
She glanced backward, with a suppressed shudder, at the man following
her. They were at the door of the study by this time. She opened it,
and he went in after her and shut the door behind him.
A fire was burning cheerily on the pretty, bright-looking hearth,
antique in its quaint ornamentation, modern in the artistic beauty
of its painted tiles and low brass fender. There were candles on the
mantelpiece and on the table, where an old-fashioned spirit bottle on
a silver tray cheered the soul of the wayfarer. He filled a glass of
brandy and drained it without a word.
He gave a deep sigh of contentment or relief as he set down the glass.
‘That’s a little bit better,’ he said, and then he threw off his
overcoat and scarf, and planted himself with his back to the fire, and
the face which he turned to the light was the face of Mr. Desrolles.
The man had aged within the last six months. Every line in his face had
deepened. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes haggard and bloodshot. The
sands of life run fast for a man whose chief nourishment is brandy.
‘Well,’ he exclaimed, in a hard, husky voice. ‘You do not welcome me
very warmly, my child.’
‘I did not expect you.’
‘The surprise should be all the pleasanter. Picture to yourself, now,
our meeting as it would be represented in a novel or a stage play. You
would throw your arms wide apart, shriek, and rush to my breast. Do
you remember Julia in the “Hunchback”? With what a yell of rapture she
flings herself into Master Walter’s arms!’
‘Do you remember what Master Walter had been to Julia?’ asked Laura,
looking steadily into the haggard eyes, which shifted their gaze as she
looked.
‘Real life is flat and tame compared with a stage play,’ said
Desrolles. ‘For my part I am heartily sick of it.’
‘I am sorry to see you looking so ill.’
‘I am a perambulating bundle of aches. There is not a muscle in my body
that has not its particular pain.’
‘Can you find no relief for this complaint? Are there not baths in
Germany that might cure you?’
‘I understand,’ interrupted Desrolles. ‘You would be glad to get me out
of the way.’
‘I should be glad to lessen your suffering. When I last wrote to you
I sent you a much larger remittance than I had ever done before, and
I told you that I should allow you six hundred a year, to be paid
quarterly. I thought that would be enough for all your requirements. I
am grieved to hear that you have been obliged to ride in a third-class
carriage in cold weather.’
‘I have been unlucky,’ answered Desrolles. ‘I have been at Boulogne; a
pleasant place, but peopled with knaves. I fell among thieves, and got
cleaned out. You must give me fifty or a hundred to-night, and you must
not deduct it from your next quarterly payment. You are now a lady of
fortune, and could afford to do three times as much as you are doing
for me. Why did you not tell me you were married? Pretty treatment that
from a daughter!’
‘Father,’ exclaimed Laura, looking at him with the same calm gaze which
his shifting eyes had refused to meet just now, ‘do you want me to tell
you the truth?’
‘Of course. Whatever else do you suppose I want?’
‘Even if it seems hard and cruel, as the truth often is?’
‘Speak away, girl. My poor old bones have been too long battered about
in this world for hard words to break them.’
‘How can you ask me for a daughter’s dutiful love?’ asked Laura, in
low, earnest tones. ‘How can you expect it from me? What of a father’s
affection or a father’s care have you ever given to me? What do I know
of your life except fraud and mystery? Have you ever approached me
except in secret, and as an applicant for money?’
‘It’s a true bill,’ ejaculated Desrolles, with a laugh that ended in a
groan.
‘When I was a little motherless child you gave me to the one true
friend of your youth. He took me as his adopted daughter, leaving you
dying, as he supposed. Years passed, and you let him believe you dead.
For ten years you made no sign. Your daughter, your only child, was
being reared in a stranger’s house, and you did not trouble yourself to
make one inquiry about her welfare.’
‘Not directly. How do you know what measures I may have taken to get
information indirectly, without compromising your future? It was for
your advantage that I kept myself dark, Laura; it was for your sake
that I let my old friend believe me dead. As his adopted daughter your
prosperity was assured. What would your life have been with me? To save
you I lent myself to a lie.’
‘I am sorry for it,’ said Laura coldly. ‘In my mind all lies are
hateful. I cannot conceive that good can ever come of them.’
‘In this case good has come of my innocent deception. You are mistress
of a fine estate, wife of a husband whom, as I hear, you love.’
‘With all my heart and soul.’
‘Is it too much to ask for a ray of your sunshine--a little benefit
from your large wealth?’
‘I will do anything in reason,’ answered Laura, ‘but not even for
my own father--had you been all that a father should be to his
child--would I suffer Jasper Treverton’s wealth to be turned to evil
uses. You told me that you stood alone in the world, with no one
dependent on you. Surely six hundred a year is an income that should
enable you to live in comfort and respectability?’
‘It will, when I have got myself clear of past liabilities. Remember
that until six months ago the help you gave me amounted only to a
hundred a year, except when I appealed to you, under the pressure of
circumstances, for an extra trifle. A hundred a year in London, to a
man in bad health, hardly served to keep the wolf from the door. I had
debts to pay. I have been unfortunate in a speculation that promised
well.’
‘In future you will have no occasion to speculate.’
‘True,’ said Desrolles, with a sigh, as he filled himself another glass
of brandy.
Laura watched him with a face full of pain. Was this a father she could
acknowledge to the husband she loved? Only with deepest shame could she
confess her close kindred with a creature so sunk in degradation.
Desrolles drank the brandy at a gulp, and then flung himself into the
chair by the hearth.
‘And pray how long have you been married?’ he asked.
Laura’s face crimsoned at the question. It was just the one inquiry
calculated to give her acutest pain; for it recalled all that was
painful in the circumstances of her marriage.
‘We were married on the last day of last year,’ she said.
‘You have been a year married, and I only learn the fact to-night from
the village gossips at the inn where I stopped to eat a crust of bread
and cheese on my way here!’
‘You might have seen the announcement in the _Times_.’
‘I might, but did not. Well, I suppose I surrendered a father’s rights
when I gave my child to another man’s keeping; but it seems hard.’
‘Why pain yourself and me with useless reproaches? I am prepared to do
all that duty can dictate. I am deeply anxious that your future life
should be comfortable and respected. Tell me where you intend to live,
and how I can best assure your happiness.’
‘Happiness!’ cried Desrolles, with a derisive shrug. ‘I have never
known that since I was five-and-twenty. Where am I going to live,
do you ask? Who knows? Not I, you may be sure. I am a wanderer by
habit and inclination. Do you think I am going to shut myself in a
speculative builder’s brick and mortar box--a semi-detached villa in
Camden Town or Islington--and live the monotonous life of a respectable
annuitant? That kind of vegetation may suit a retired tradesman, who
has spent three-fourths of his life behind the same counter. It would
be living death to a man with a mind--a man who has travelled and lived
among his fellow-men. No, my dear; you must not attempt to limit my
movements by the inch-measure of middle-class respectability. Give me
my pittance unfettered by conditions of any kind. Let me receive it
quarterly from your London agent, and, since you repudiate my claim
to your affection, I pledge myself never again to trouble you with my
presence after to-night.’
‘I do not ask that,’ said Laura thoughtfully. ‘It is only right that we
should see each other sometimes. By the deception which you practised
upon my benefactor, you have made it impossible that I should ever own
you as my father before the world. Everybody in Hazlehurst believes
that my father died when Jasper Treverton adopted me. But to my
husband, at least, I can own the truth: I have shrunk from doing so
hitherto, but to-night, while we have been sitting here, I have been
thinking that I have acted weakly and foolishly. John Treverton will
respect your secret for my sake, and he ought to know it.’
‘Stop,’ cried Desrolles, starting to his feet, and speaking in a
louder tone than he had used hitherto. ‘I forbid you to breathe a word
of me or my business to your husband. When I revealed myself to you I
pledged you to secrecy. I insist----’
He stopped and stood facing the doorway between the two rooms, staring
aghast, horror-stricken, as if he had seen a ghost.
‘Great heaven!’ he exclaimed, ‘what brings you here?’
John Treverton stood in the open doorway, a tall, dark figure, in a
long velvet dressing-gown. Laura flew to his side.
‘Dearest, why did you get up?’ she cried. ‘How imprudent of you!’
‘I heard a voice raised as if threateningly. What has brought this man
here--with you?’
‘He is the relation about whom you once questioned me, John,’ Laura
answered, falteringly. ‘You have not forgotten?’
‘This man related to you?’ cried Treverton. ‘This man?’
‘Yes. You know each other?’
‘We have met before,’ answered Treverton, who had never taken his
eyes from the other man’s face. ‘We last met under very painful
circumstances. It is a surprise to find a relation of yours in Mr.----’
‘Mansfield,’ interrupted Desrolles. ‘I have changed the name of Malcolm
for Mansfield--a name in my mother’s family--for Laura’s sake. It might
be disadvantageous for her to own kindred with a man whom the world has
played football with for the last ten years.’
Desrolles had grown ashy pale since the entrance of Laura’s husband,
and the hand with which he poured out his third glass of brandy shook
like a leaf.
‘Highly considerate on your part, Mr. Mansfield,’ replied John
Treverton. ‘May I ask for what reason you have favoured my wife with
this late visit?’
‘The usual motive that brings a poor relation to a rich man’s house. I
want money, and Laura can afford to give it. Why beat about the bush?’
‘Why indeed! Plain dealing will be best in this case. I think, as it is
a simple matter of business, you had better let me arrange it with you.
Laura, will you leave your kinsman’s claims for me to settle? You may
trust me to take a liberal view of his position.’
‘I will trust you, dearest, now and always,’ answered his wife, giving
him her hand, and then she went to Desrolles, and offered him the same
frank hand, looking at him with tender earnestness. ‘Good night,’ she
said, ‘and good-bye. I beg you to trust my husband, as I trust him.
Believe me, it will be the best for all of us. He will be as ready to
recognise your claim as I am, if you will only confide in him. If I
have trusted him with my life, cannot you trust him with your secret?’
‘Good night,’ said Desrolles curtly. ‘I haven’t got over my
astonishment yet.’
‘At what?’
‘At finding you married.’
‘Good night,’ she said again, on the threshold of the door, and then
she came back to tell her husband not to fatigue or excite himself. ‘I
can only give you a quarter of an hour,’ she said to Desrolles. ‘Pray
remember that my husband is an invalid, and ought to be in bed.’
‘Go to your school children, dearest,’ said Treverton, smiling at her
anxiety. ‘I shall be careful.’
The door closed behind Laura, and the two men--fellow-lodgers a year
ago in Cibber Street--stood face to face with each other.
‘So you are John Treverton?’ said Desrolles, wiping his lips with that
tremulous hand of his, and looking with a hungry eye at the half-empty
decanter, looking anywhere rather than straight into the eyes of his
fellow-man.
‘And you claim relationship with my wife?’
‘Nearer, perhaps, than you would care to hear; so near that I have
some right to know how you, Jack Chicot, came to be her husband--how
it was that you married her a year ago, at which period the lovely and
accomplished Madame Chicot, whom I had the honour to know, was still
living? Either that charming woman was not your wife, or your marriage
with Laura Malcolm is invalid.’
‘Laura is my wife, and her marriage as valid as law can make it,’
answered John Treverton. ‘That is enough for you to know. And now be
good enough to explain your degree of kindred with Mrs. Treverton. You
say your real name is Malcolm. What was your relationship with Laura’s
father?’
‘Laura urged me to trust you with my secret,’ muttered Desrolles,
throwing himself into his former seat by the fire, and speaking like a
man who is calculating the chances of a certain line of policy. ‘Why
should I not be frank with you, Jack--Treverton? How much handier the
old name comes! Had you been the punctilious piece of respectability
I expected to meet in the heir of my old friend Jasper Treverton, I
might have shrank from telling you a secret that hardly redounds to
my credit, from the churchgoer and ratepayer’s point of view. But to
you--Jack--the artist and Bohemian, the man who has tumbled on every
platform and acted in every show at the world’s fair--to you I may
confide my secret without a blush. Come, fill me another glass, like a
good fellow; my hand shakes as if I had the scrivener’s palsy. You know
the history of Jasper Treverton’s adopted daughter?’
‘I have heard it, naturally.’
‘You have heard how Treverton, who had quarrelled with his friend
Stephen Malcolm about a foolish love affair, was summoned many years
after to that friend’s sick bed--found him dying, as every one
supposed--then and there adopted Malcolm’s only child, and carried her
off with him, leaving a fifty-pound note to comfort his old friend’s
last moments and pay the undertaker?’
‘Yes, I have heard all this.’
‘But not what follows. When a doctor gives a patient up for dead, he
is sometimes on the high road to recovery. Stephen Malcolm contrived
to cheat the doctor. Perhaps it was the comfort provided by that
fifty-pound note, perhaps it was the knowledge that his only child’s
future was provided for,--anyhow, it seemed as if a burden had been
lifted from the sick man’s shoulders, for from the time Jasper
Treverton left him he mended, got a new lease of life, and went out
into the world again--a lonely wayfarer, happy in the knowledge that
his daughter’s fate was no longer allied with his, that whatever evil
might befall him her lines were set in pleasant places.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that Stephen Malcolm recovered--lived for
years--and allowed his daughter to suppose herself an orphan, and his
friend to believe him dead?’
‘To tell the truth would have been to hazard his daughter’s good
fortune. As an orphan, and the adopted child of a rich bachelor, her
lot was secure. What would it have been if she had been flung back upon
her actual father, to share his precarious existence? I considered
this, and took the unselfish view of the question. I might have claimed
my daughter back; I might have sponged on Jasper. I did neither--I went
my solitary way, along the stony highway of life, uncheered, unloved.’
‘You!’ cried John Treverton. ‘You!’
‘Yes. In me you behold the wreck of Stephen Malcolm.’
‘You Laura’s father! Great heaven! Why, you have not a feature, not a
look in common with her! Her father! This is indeed a revelation.’
‘Your astonishment is not flattering to me. My child resembles her
mother, who was one of the loveliest women I ever saw. Yet I can
assure you, Mr. Treverton, that at your age, Stephen Malcolm had some
pretension to good looks.’
‘I am not disputing that, man. You may have been as handsome as Adonis;
but my Laura’s father should have at least something of her look and
air; a smile, a glance, a turn of the head, a something that would
reveal the mystic link between parent and child. Does she know this?
Does she recognise you as her father?’
‘She does, poor child. It is at her wish I have revealed myself to you.’
‘How long has she known?’
‘It is a little more than five years since I told her. I had just
returned from the Continent, where I had spent seven years of my
life in self-imposed exile. Suddenly I was seized with the outcast’s
yearning to tread his native soil again, and look upon the scenes
of youth once more before death closes his eyes for ever. I came
back--could not resist the impulse that drew me to my daughter--put
myself one day in her pathway, and told her my story. From that time I
have seen her at intervals.’
‘And have received money from her,’ put in John Treverton.
‘She is rich and I am poor. She has helped me to live.’
‘You might have lived upon the money she gave you a little more
reputably than you were living in Cibber Street, when we were
fellow-lodgers.’
‘What were my vices in Cibber Street? My life was inoffensive.’
‘Late hours and the brandy bottle--the ruin of body and soul.’
‘I have a chronic malady which makes brandy a necessity for me.’
‘Would it not be more exact to say that brandy is your chronic malady?
Well, Mr. Mansfield, I shall make a proposition to you in the character
of your son-in-law.’
‘I have a few words to say to you before you make it. I have told you
my secret, which all the world may know, and welcome. I have committed
no crime in allowing my old friend to suppose me dead. I have only
sacrificed my own interests to the advantage of my daughter; but you,
Mr. Treverton, have your secret, and one which I think you would hardly
like to lay bare to the world in which you are now such an important
personage. The master of Hazlehurst Manor would scarcely care to be
identified with Jack Chicot, the caricaturist, and husband--at least by
common repute--of the dancer whose name used to adorn all the walls of
London.’
‘No,’ said Treverton, ‘that is a dark page in my life which I would
willingly tear out of the book; but I have always known the probability
of my finding myself identified with the past, sooner or later. This
world of ours is monstrous big when a man tries to make a figure in it;
but it’s very small when he wants to hide himself from his fellow-men.
I have told my wife all I can tell her without stripping the veil from
that past life of mine. To reveal more would be to make her unhappy.
You can have no motive for telling her more than I have told her. I can
rely on your honour in this matter?’
‘You can,’ answered Desrolles, looking at him curiously; ‘but I shall
expect you to treat me handsomely--as a son-in-law, whose wealth has
come to him through his marriage, should treat his wife’s father.’
‘What would you call handsome treatment?’ asked Treverton.
‘I’ll tell you. My daughter, who has a woman’s petty notions about
money, has offered me six hundred a year. I want a thousand.’
‘Do you?’ asked Treverton, with half-concealed contempt. ‘Well, live
a respectable life, and neither your daughter nor I will grudge you a
thousand a year.’
‘I shall live the life of a gentleman. Not in England. My daughter
wants to get me out of the country. She said as much just now; or, at
any rate, what she did say implied as much. A continental life would
suit my humour, and perhaps mend my health. Annuitants are long-lived.’
‘Not when they drink a bottle of brandy a day.’
‘In a milder climate I may diminish the quantity. Give me a hundred
in ready money to begin with, and I’ll go back to London by the first
train to-morrow morning, and start for Paris at night. I ask for no
father’s place at your Christmas table. I don’t want you to kill the
fatted calf for me.’
‘I understand,’ said Treverton, with an involuntary sneer, ‘you only
want money. You shall have it.’
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked a despatch box,
in which he was in the habit of keeping money received from his steward
before he sent it off to the bank. There was a little over a hundred
pounds in the box, in notes and gold. John Treverton counted a hundred;
the crisp notes, the bright gold, lay in a tempting heap on the table
before him, but he kept his hand upon the money for a minute or two,
while he sat looking at it with a meditative countenance.
‘By the way, Mr. ---- Mansfield,’ he began after that thoughtful
silence, ‘when, after a lapse of so many years, you presented yourself
to your daughter, what credentials did you bring with you?’
‘Credentials?’
‘Yes. In other words, how did you prove your identity? You had parted
with her when she was a child of six years old. Did her memory recall
your features when she met you as a girl of seventeen, or did she take
your word for the fact that you were the father she had believed to be
in his grave?’
‘She remembered me when I recalled myself to her. At first her memory
was naturally vague. She had a dim recollection of my face, but no
certainty as to when and where she had last seen it, until I recalled
to her the circumstances of her childhood, the last days we spent
together before my serious illness, her mother, the baby brother that
died when she was three years old. John Treverton, you libel nature
if you suppose that a daughter’s instinct can fail her when a father
appeals to it. Had material proofs been wanted to convince my child
that her father stood before her, I had those proofs, and I showed
them to her--old letters, the certificate of her birth, her mother’s
picture. The portrait I gave to Laura. I have the documents about me
to-night. I have never parted with them.’
He produced a bloated pocket-book, the leather worn greasy with long
usage, the silk lining frayed and ragged, and from this receptacle
brought forth half-a-dozen papers, yellow with age.
One was the certificate of Laura Malcolm’s birth. The other five were
letters addressed to Stephen Malcolm, Esq., Ivy Cottage, Chiswick. One
of these, the latest in date, was from Jasper Treverton.
‘I am deeply grieved to hear of your serious illness, my poor friend,’
he wrote; ‘your letter followed me to Germany, where I have been
spending the autumn at one of the famous mineral baths. I started for
England immediately, and landed here half-an-hour ago. I shall come on
as fast as rail and cabs can bring me, and indeed hope to be with you
before you get this letter.
‘Yours in all friendship,
‘JASPER TREVERTON.
‘The Ship Hotel, Dover,
‘October 15th, 185--.’
The other letters were from friends of the past, like Jasper. One
had enclosed aid in the shape of a post-office order. The rest
were sympathetic and regretful refusals to assist a broken-down
acquaintance. The writers offered their impecunious friend every
good wish, and benevolently commended him to Providence. In every
case the respectability and the respectful tone of Stephen Malcolm’s
correspondents went far to testify to the fact that he had once been
a gentleman. There was a deep descent from the position of the man to
whom these letters were written to the status of Mr. Desrolles, the
second-floor lodger in Cibber Street.
So far as they went his credentials were undeniable. Laura had
recognised him as her father. What justification could John Treverton
find for repudiating his claim? For the money the man demanded he cared
not a jot; but it pained him unspeakably to accept this dissipated
waif, soaked in alcohol, as the father of the woman he loved.
‘There is your hundred pounds, Mr. Mansfield,’ he said, ‘and since
you have taught the little world of Hazlehurst to consider my wife
an orphan, the less you show yourself here the better for all of us.
Villages are given to scandal. If you were to be seen at this house,
people would want to know who you are and all about you.’
‘I told you I should start for Paris to-morrow night,’ answered
Desrolles, strapping his pocket-book, which was now distended to its
uttermost with notes and gold. ‘I shan’t change my mind. I’m fond
of Paris and Parisian ways, and know my way about that glorious city
almost as well as you, though I never married a French wife.’
John Treverton sat silent, with his thoughtful gaze bent on the fire,
apparently unconscious of the other man’s sneer.
‘Ta ta, Jack. Any message for your old friends in the Quartier Latin?
No? Ah, I suppose the Squire of Hazlehurst has turned his back on the
companions of Jack Chicot; just as King Harry the Fifth threw off the
joyous comrades of the Prince of Wales. The desertion broke poor old
Falstaff’s heart; but that’s a detail. Good night, Jack.’
Laura re-entered the room at this moment, and drew back startled at
hearing her father address her husband with such friendly familiarity.
‘I have told Mr. Treverton everything, my dear,’ said Desrolles.
‘I am so glad of that,’ answered Laura, and then she laid her hand upon
the old man’s shoulder, with more affection than she had ever yet shown
him, and said, with grave gentleness, ‘Try to lead a good life, my dear
father, and let us hear from you sometimes, and let us think of each
other kindly, though Fate has separated us.’
‘A good life,’ he muttered, turning his bloodshot eyes upon her for
a moment with a look that thrilled her with a sudden horror. ‘The
money should have come sooner, my girl. I’ve travelled too far on the
wrong road. There, good-bye, my dear. Don’t trouble yourself about
an old scapegrace like me. Jack, send me my money quarterly to that
address,’--he threw down a dingy-looking card--‘and I’ll never worry
you again. You can blot me out of your mind, if you like; and you need
never fear that my tongue will say an evil word of you, go where I may.’
‘I will trust you for that,’ answered John Treverton, holding out his
hand.
Desrolles either did not see the gesture, or did not care to take the
hand. He snatched up his greasy-looking hat and hurried from the room.
‘Dearest, do you think any worse of me now you know that man is my
father?’ asked Laura, when the door had closed upon Desrolles, and the
bell had been rung to warn Trimmer of the guest’s departure.
‘Do I think any worse of a pearl because it comes out of an oyster?’
said her husband, smiling at her. ‘Dear love, if the parish workhouse
were peopled with your relations, not one of them more reputable than
Mr. Mansfield, my love and reverence for you would not be lessened by a
tittle.’
‘You don’t believe in hereditary genius, then. You don’t think that we
derive our characters mainly from our fathers and mothers?’
‘If I did I should believe that your mother was an angel, and that you
inherited her disposition.’
‘My poor father,’ said Laura, with something between a sigh and a
shudder. ‘He was once a gentleman.’
‘No doubt, love. There is no saying how low a man may descend when he
once takes to travelling down-hill.’
‘If he had not been a gentleman my adopted father could never have been
his friend,’ mused Laura. ‘It would not have been possible for Jasper
Treverton to associate with anything base.’
‘No, love. And now tell me, when first your father presented himself to
you, was not his revelation a great surprise, a shock to your feelings?’
‘It was indeed.’
‘Tell me, dear, how it happened. Tell me all the circumstances, if it
does not pain you.’
‘No, dear. It pained me for you to know that my father had fallen so
low, but now that you know the worst, I feel easier in my mind. It is
a relief to me to be able to speak of him freely. Remember, Jack, he
had bound me solemnly to secrecy. I would not break my promise, even to
you.’
‘I understand all, dear.’
‘The first time I saw my father,’ Laura began falteringly, as if even
to speak of him by that sacred name were painful to her, ‘it was summer
time, a lovely August evening, and I had strolled out after dinner into
the orchard. You know the gate that opens from the orchard into the
field. I saw a man standing outside it smoking, with his arms resting
on the top of the gate. Seeing a stranger there, I turned away to avoid
him, but before I had gone three steps he stopped me. “Miss Malcolm,
for God’s sake let me speak to you,” he said. “I am an old friend whom
you must remember.” I went up to him and looked him full in the face;
for there was such earnestness in his manner that it never occurred to
me that he might be an impostor. “Indeed, I do not remember you,” I
said. “When have I ever seen you?” Then he called me by my Christian
name. “Laura,” he said, “you were six years old when Mr. Treverton
brought you here. Have you quite forgotten the life that went before
that time?”’
She paused, and her husband drew her to the low chair by the fire, and
seated himself beside her, letting her head rest on his shoulder.
‘Go on, love,’ he said gently, ‘but not if these memories agitate you.’
‘No, dear. It is a relief to confide in you. I told him that I did
remember the time before I came to the Manor House. Some events I
could remember distinctly, others faintly, like the shadows in a
dream. I remembered being in France, by the sea, in a place where
the fisherwomen wore bright-coloured petticoats and high caps, where
I had children of my own age to play with, and where the sun seemed
always shining. And then that life had changed to dull gray days in a
place near a river, a place where there were narrow lanes, and country
roads and fields; and yet there was a town close by with tall chimneys
and busy streets. I remembered that here my mother was ill, lying in
a darkened room for many weeks; and then one day my father took me to
London in the omnibus, and left me in a large, cold-looking house in a
great square--a house where all the rooms were big and lofty, and had
an awful look after our little parlour at home, and where I used to
sit in a drawing-room all day with an old lady in black satin, who let
me amuse myself as best I could. My father had told me that the old
lady was his aunt, and that I was to call her aunt, but I was too much
afraid of her to call her anything. I think I must have stayed there
about a week, but it seemed ages, for I was very unhappy, and used to
cry myself to sleep every night, when the maid had put me to bed in a
large, bleak room at the top of the house; and then my father came and
took me home again in the red omnibus. I could see that he was very
unhappy, and while we were walking in the lane that led to our house he
told me that my dear mamma had gone away, and that I should never see
her again in this world. I had loved her passionately, Jack, and the
loss almost broke my heart. I am telling you much more than I told the
stranger. I only said enough to him to prove that I remembered my old
life.’
‘And how did he reply?’
‘He took a morocco case from his pocket and gave it into my hand,
telling me to look at the portrait inside it. Oh, how well I remembered
that sweet face! The memory of it flashed upon me like a dream one has
forgotten and tried vainly to recall, till it comes back suddenly in a
breath. Yes, it was my mother’s face. I could remember her looking just
like that as she sat at work on the rocks by the sands where I played
with the other children, at that happy place in France. I remembered
her sitting by my cot every night before I fell asleep. I asked the
stranger how he came to possess this picture. “I would give all the
money I have in the world for it,” I said. “You shall do nothing of the
kind,” he answered. “I give it you as a free gift, but I should not
have done that if you had not remembered your mother’s face. And now,
Laura, look at me and tell me if you have ever seen me before?”’
‘You looked and could not remember him,’ said John Treverton.
‘No. Yet there was something in the face that seemed familiar to me.
When he spoke I knew that I had heard the voice before. It seemed
kind and friendly, like the voice of some one I had known long ago. He
told me to try and realize what change ten years of evil fortune would
make in a man’s looks. It was not time only which had altered him, he
told me, but the world’s ill-usage, bad health, hard work, corroding
sorrow. “Make allowance for all this,” he said, “and look at me with
indulgent eyes, and then try to send your thoughts back to that old
life at Chiswick, and say what part I had in it.” I did look at him
very earnestly, and the more I looked the more familiar the face grew.
“I think you must be a friend of my father’s,” I said at last. “Poverty
has no friends,” he answered; “at the time you remember your father was
friendless. Oh, child, child, can ten years blot out a father’s image?
I am your father.”’
Laura paused, with quickened breathing, recalling the agitation of that
moment.
‘I cannot tell you how I felt when he said this,’ she continued,
presently. ‘I thought I was going to fall fainting at his feet. My
brain clouded over; I could understand nothing; and then, when my
senses came slowly back, I asked him how this could be true? Did not my
father die a few hours after I was taken away by Jasper Treverton? My
benefactor had told me that it was so. Then he--my father--said that he
had allowed Jasper Treverton to suppose him dead, for my sake; in order
that I might be the adopted child of a rich man, and well placed in
life, while he--my real father--was a waif and stray, and a pauper. Mr.
Treverton had received a letter announcing his old friend’s death--a
letter written in a feigned hand by my father himself and had never
taken the trouble to inquire into the particulars of the death and
burial. He felt that he had done enough in leaving money for the sick
man’s use, and in relieving him of all care about his daughter. This is
what my father told me. How could I reproach him, Jack, or despise him
for this deception, for a falsehood which so degraded him? It was for
my sake he had sinned.’
‘And you had no doubt as to his identity? You were fully assured that
he was that very father whom you had supposed dead and buried ten years
before?’
‘How could I doubt? He showed me papers--letters--that could have
belonged to no one but my father. He gave me my mother’s portrait; and
then, through the mist of years, his face came back to me as a face
that had been very familiar; his voice had the sound of long ago.’
‘Did you give him money on this first meeting?’
‘He told me that he was poor, a broken-down gentleman, without a
profession, with bad health, and no means of earning his living.
Could I, his daughter, living in luxury, refrain from offering him
all the help in my power? I begged him to reveal himself to Mr.
Treverton--papa, as you know I always called him--but he shrank, not
unnaturally, from acknowledging a deception that placed him in such
a false position. “No,” he said, “I told a lie for your sake, I must
stick to it for my own.” I could not urge him to alter his resolution
upon this point, for I felt how hard it would be for him to stand face
to face with his old friend under such degrading circumstances. I
promised to keep his secret, and I told him that I would send him all
the money I could possibly spare out of my income, if he would give me
an address to which I might send it.’
‘How often did you see him after this?’ asked John Treverton.
‘Before to-night, only three times. One of those occasions was the
night on which you saw me admit him at the garden-door.’
‘True,’ said Treverton, blushing as he remembered the cruel suspicions
that had been awakened in his mind by that secret interview. ‘And you
never told my cousin anything about your father?’
‘Never. He made me promise to keep his existence a secret from all the
world; and even if I had not been so bound I should have shrunk from
telling Mr. Treverton the cheat that had been practised upon him; for
I felt that it was a cheat, however disinterested and generous the
motive.’
‘A purposeless cheat, I should imagine,’ said John musingly, ‘for once
having promised to take care of you, I should hardly think that my
cousin Jasper would have flung you back upon poverty and gloomy days.
No, love, once knowing your sweetness, your truthful, loving nature, it
would not have been human to give you up.’
‘My poor father thought otherwise, unhappily.’
‘Dearest love, do not let this error of your father’s cast a shadow
upon your life. I, who have known the shifts and straits to which
poverty may bring a man, can pity and in some measure understand him.
We will do all that liberality can do to make the remnant of his days
respectable and happy.’