“The fortune which Mr. Vanstone possessed when you knew him” (the
lawyer began) “was part, and part only, of the inheritance which fell
to him on his father’s death. Mr. Vanstone the elder was a manufacturer
in the North of England. He married early in life; and the children of
the marriage were either six or seven in number—I am not certain which.
First, Michael, the eldest son, still living, and now an old man turned
seventy. Secondly, Selina, the eldest daughter, who married in
after-life, and who died ten or eleven years ago. After those two came
other sons and daughters, whose early deaths make it unnecessary to
mention them particularly. The last and by many years the youngest of
the children was Andrew, whom I first knew, as I told you, at the age
of nineteen. My father was then on the point of retiring from the
active pursuit of his profession; and in succeeding to his business, I
also succeeded to his connection with the Vanstones as the family
solicitor.
“At that time, Andrew had just started in life by entering the army.
After little more than a year of home-service, he was ordered out with
his regiment to Canada. When he quitted England, he left his father and
his elder brother Michael seriously at variance. I need not detain you
by entering into the cause of the quarrel. I need only tell you that
the elder Mr. Vanstone, with many excellent qualities, was a man of
fierce and intractable temper. His eldest son had set him at defiance,
under circumstances which might have justly irritated a father of far
milder character; and he declared, in the most positive terms, that he
would never see Michael’s face again. In defiance of my entreaties, and
of the entreaties of his wife, he tore up, in our presence, the will
which provided for Michael’s share in the paternal inheritance. Such
was the family position, when the younger son left home for Canada.
“Some months after Andrew’s arrival with his regiment at Quebec, he
became acquainted with a woman of great personal attractions, who came,
or said she came, from one of the Southern States of America. She
obtained an immediate influence over him; and she used it to the basest
purpose. You knew the easy, affectionate, trusting nature of the man in
later life—you can imagine how thoughtlessly he acted on the impulse of
his youth. It is useless to dwell on this lamentable part of the story.
He was just twenty-one: he was blindly devoted to a worthless woman;
and she led him on, with merciless cunning, till it was too late to
draw back. In one word, he committed the fatal error of his life: he
married her.
“She had been wise enough in her own interests to dread the influence
of his brother-officers, and to persuade him, up to the period of the
marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union between them a secret.
She could do this; but she could not provide against the results of
accident. Hardly three months had passed, when a chance disclosure
exposed the life she had led before her marriage. But one alternative
was left to her husband—the alternative of instantly separating from
her.
“The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boy—for a boy in
disposition he still was—may be judged by the event which followed the
exposure. One of Andrew’s superior officers—a certain Major Kirke, if I
remember right—found him in his quarters, writing to his father a
confession of the disgraceful truth, with a loaded pistol by his side.
That officer saved the lad’s life from his own hand, and hushed up the
scandalous affair by a compromise. The marriage being a perfectly legal
one, and the wife’s misconduct prior to the ceremony giving her husband
no claim to his release from her by divorce, it was only possible to
appeal to her sense of her own interests. A handsome annual allowance
was secured to her, on condition that she returned to the place from
which she had come; that she never appeared in England; and that she
ceased to use her husband’s name. Other stipulations were added to
these. She accepted them all; and measures were privately taken to have
her well looked after in the place of her retreat. What life she led
there, and whether she performed all the conditions imposed on her, I
cannot say. I can only tell you that she never, to my knowledge, came
to England; that she never annoyed Mr. Vanstone; and that the annual
allowance was paid her, through a local agent in America, to the day of
her death. All that she wanted in marrying him was money; and money she
got.
“In the meantime, Andrew had left the regiment. Nothing would induce
him to face his brother-officers after what had happened. He sold out
and returned to England. The first intelligence which reached him on
his return was the intelligence of his father’s death. He came to my
office in London, before going home, and there learned from my lips how
the family quarrel had ended.
“The will which Mr. Vanstone the elder had destroyed in my presence had
not been, so far as I know, replaced by another. When I was sent for,
in the usual course, on his death, I fully expected that the law would
be left to make the customary division among his widow and his
children. To my surprise, a will appeared among his papers, correctly
drawn and executed, and dated about a week after the period when the
first will had been destroyed. He had maintained his vindictive purpose
against his eldest son, and had applied to a stranger for the
professional assistance which I honestly believe he was ashamed to ask
for at my hands.
“It is needless to trouble you with the provisions of the will in
detail. There were the widow and three surviving children to be
provided for. The widow received a life-interest only in a portion of
the testator’s property. The remaining portion was divided between
Andrew and Selina—two-thirds to the brother; one-third to the sister.
On the mother’s death, the money from which her income had been derived
was to go to Andrew and Selina, in the same relative proportions as
before—five thousand pounds having been first deducted from the sum and
paid to Michael, as the sole legacy left by the implacable father to
his eldest son.
“Speaking in round numbers, the division of property, as settled by the
will, stood thus. Before the mother’s death, Andrew had seventy
thousand pounds; Selina had thirty-five thousand pounds; Michael—had
nothing. After the mother’s death, Michael had five thousand pounds, to
set against Andrew’s inheritance augmented to one hundred thousand, and
Selina’s inheritance increased to fifty thousand.—Do not suppose that I
am dwelling unnecessarily on this part of the subject. Every word I now
speak bears on interests still in suspense, which vitally concern Mr.
Vanstone’s daughters. As we get on from past to present, keep in mind
the terrible inequality of Michael’s inheritance and Andrew’s
inheritance. The harm done by that vindictive will is, I greatly fear,
not over yet.
“Andrew’s first impulse, when he heard the news which I had to tell
him, was worthy of the open, generous nature of the man. He at once
proposed to divide his inheritance with his elder brother. But there
was one serious obstacle in the way. A letter from Michael was waiting
for him at my office when he came there, and that letter charged him
with being the original cause of estrangement between his father and
his elder brother. The efforts which he had made—bluntly and
incautiously, I own, but with the purest and kindest intentions, as I
know—to compose the quarrel before leaving home, were perverted, by the
vilest misconstruction, to support an accusation of treachery and
falsehood which would have stung any man to the quick. Andrew felt,
what I felt, that if these imputations were not withdrawn before his
generous intentions toward his brother took effect, the mere fact of
their execution would amount to a practical acknowledgment of the
justice of Michael’s charge against him. He wrote to his brother in the
most forbearing terms. The answer received was as offensive as words
could make it. Michael had inherited his father’s temper, unredeemed by
his father’s better qualities: his second letter reiterated the charges
contained in the first, and declared that he would only accept the
offered division as an act of atonement and restitution on Andrew’s
part. I next wrote to the mother to use her influence. She was herself
aggrieved at being left with nothing more than a life interest in her
husband’s property; she sided resolutely with Michael; and she
stigmatized Andrew’s proposal as an attempt to bribe her eldest son
into withdrawing a charge against his brother which that brother knew
to be true. After this last repulse, nothing more could be done.
Michael withdrew to the Continent; and his mother followed him there.
She lived long enough, and saved money enough out of her income, to add
considerably, at her death, to her elder son’s five thousand pounds. He
had previously still further improved his pecuniary position by an
advantageous marriage; and he is now passing the close of his days
either in France or Switzerland—a widower, with one son. We shall
return to him shortly. In the meantime, I need only tell you that
Andrew and Michael never again met—never again communicated, even by
writing. To all intents and purposes they were dead to each other, from
those early days to the present time.
“You can now estimate what Andrew’s position was when he left his
profession and returned to England. Possessed of a fortune, he was
alone in the world; his future destroyed at the fair outset of life;
his mother and brother estranged from him; his sister lately married,
with interests and hopes in which he had no share. Men of firmer mental
caliber might have found refuge from such a situation as this in an
absorbing intellectual pursuit. He was not capable of the effort; all
the strength of his character lay in the affections he had wasted. His
place in the world was that quiet place at home, with wife and children
to make his life happy, which he had lost forever. To look back was
more than he dare. To look forward was more than he could. In sheer
despair, he let his own impetuous youth drive him on; and cast himself
into the lowest dissipations of a London life.
“A woman’s falsehood had driven him to his ruin. A woman’s love saved
him at the outset of his downward career. Let us not speak of her
harshly—for we laid her with him yesterday in the grave.
“You, who only knew Mrs. Vanstone in later life, when illness and
sorrow and secret care had altered and saddened her, can form no
adequate idea of her attractions of person and character when she was a
girl of seventeen. I was with Andrew when he first met her. I had tried
to rescue him, for one night at least, from degrading associates and
degrading pleasures, by persuading him to go with me to a ball given by
one of the great City Companies. There they met. She produced a strong
impression on him the moment he saw her. To me, as to him, she was a
total stranger. An introduction to her, obtained in the customary
manner, informed him that she was the daughter of one Mr. Blake. The
rest he discovered from herself. They were partners in the dance
(unobserved in that crowded ball-room) all through the evening.
“Circumstances were against her from the first. She was unhappy at
home. Her family and friends occupied no recognized station in life:
they were mean, underhand people, in every way unworthy of her. It was
her first ball—it was the first time she had ever met with a man who
had the breeding, the manners and the conversation of a gentleman. Are
these excuses for her, which I have no right to make? If we have any
human feeling for human weakness, surely not!
“The meeting of that night decided their future. When other meetings
had followed, when the confession of her love had escaped her, he took
the one course of all others (took it innocently and unconsciously),
which was most dangerous to them both. His frankness and his sense of
honor forbade him to deceive her: he opened his heart and told her the
truth. She was a generous, impulsive girl; she had no home ties strong
enough to plead with her; she was passionately fond of him—and he had
made that appeal to her pity which, to the eternal honor of women, is
the hardest of all appeals for them to resist. She saw, and saw truly,
that she alone stood between him and his ruin. The last chance of his
rescue hung on her decision. She decided; and saved him.
“Let me not be misunderstood; let me not be accused of trifling with
the serious social question on which my narrative forces me to touch. I
will defend her memory by no false reasoning—I will only speak the
truth. It is the truth that she snatched him from mad excesses which
must have ended in his early death. It is the truth that she restored
him to that happy home existence which you remember so tenderly—which
_he_ remembered so gratefully that, on the day when he was free, he
made her his wife. Let strict morality claim its right, and condemn her
early fault. I have read my New Testament to little purpose, indeed, if
Christian mercy may not soften the hard sentence against her—if
Christian charity may not find a plea for her memory in the love and
fidelity, the suffering and the sacrifice, of her whole life.
“A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events which
have happened within your own experience.
“I need not remind you that the position in which Mr. Vanstone was now
placed could lead in the end to but one result—to a disclosure, more or
less inevitable, of the truth. Attempts were made to keep the hopeless
misfortune of his life a secret from Miss Blake’s family; and, as a
matter of course, those attempts failed before the relentless scrutiny
of her father and her friends. What might have happened if her
relatives had been what is termed ‘respectable’ I cannot pretend to
say. As it was, they were people who could (in the common phrase) be
conveniently treated with. The only survivor of the family at the
present time is a scoundrel calling himself Captain Wragge. When I tell
you that he privately extorted the price of his silence from Mrs.
Vanstone to the last; and when I add that his conduct presents no
extraordinary exception to the conduct, in their lifetime, of the other
relatives—you will understand what sort of people I had to deal with in
my client’s interests, and how their assumed indignation was appeased.
“Having, in the first instance, left England for Ireland, Mr. Vanstone
and Miss Blake remained there afterward for some years. Girl as she
was, she faced her position and its necessities without flinching.
Having once resolved to sacrifice her life to the man she loved; having
quieted her conscience by persuading herself that his marriage was a
legal mockery, and that she was ‘his wife in the sight of Heaven,’ she
set herself from the first to accomplish the one foremost purpose of so
living with him, in the world’s eye, as never to raise the suspicion
that she was not his lawful wife. The women are few, indeed, who cannot
resolve firmly, scheme patiently, and act promptly where the dearest
interests of their lives are concerned. Mrs. Vanstone—she has a right
now, remember, to that name—Mrs. Vanstone had more than the average
share of a woman’s tenacity and a woman’s tact; and she took all the
needful precautions, in those early days, which her husband’s less
ready capacity had not the art to devise—precautions to which they were
largely indebted for the preservation of their secret in later times.
“Thanks to these safeguards, not a shadow of suspicion followed them
when they returned to England. They first settled in Devonshire, merely
because they were far removed there from that northern county in which
Mr. Vanstone’s family and connections had been known. On the part of
his surviving relatives, they had no curious investigations to dread.
He was totally estranged from his mother and his elder brother. His
married sister had been forbidden by her husband (who was a clergyman)
to hold any communication with him, from the period when he had fallen
into the deplorable way of life which I have described as following his
return from Canada. Other relations he had none. When he and Miss Blake
left Devonshire, their next change of residence was to this house.
Neither courting nor avoiding notice; simply happy in themselves, in
their children, and in their quiet rural life; unsuspected by the few
neighbors who formed their modest circle of acquaintance to be other
than what they seemed—the truth in their case, as in the cases of many
others, remained undiscovered until accident forced it into the light
of day.
“If, in your close intimacy with them, it seems strange that they
should never have betrayed themselves, let me ask you to consider the
circumstances and you will understand the apparent anomaly. Remember
that they had been living as husband and wife, to all intents and
purposes (except that the marriage-service had not been read over
them), for fifteen years before you came into the house; and bear in
mind, at the same time, that no event occurred to disturb Mr.
Vanstone’s happiness in the present, to remind him of the past, or to
warn him of the future, until the announcement of his wife’s death
reached him, in that letter from America which you saw placed in his
hand. From that day forth—when a past which _he_ abhorred was forced
back to his memory; when a future which _she_ had never dared to
anticipate was placed within her reach—you will soon perceive, if you
have not perceived already, that they both betrayed themselves, time
after time; and that your innocence of all suspicion, and their
children’s innocence of all suspicion, alone prevented you from
discovering the truth.
“The sad story of the past is now as well known to you as to me. I have
had hard words to speak. God knows I have spoken them with true
sympathy for the living, with true tenderness for the memory of the
dead.”
He paused, turned his face a little away, and rested his head on his
hand, in the quiet, undemonstrative manner which was natural to him.
Thus far, Miss Garth had only interrupted his narrative by an
occasional word or by a mute token of her attention. She made no effort
to conceal her tears; they fell fast and silently over her wasted
cheeks, as she looked up and spoke to him. “I have done you some
injury, sir, in my thoughts,” she said, with a noble simplicity. “I
know you better now. Let me ask your forgiveness; let me take your
hand.”
Those words, and the action which accompanied them, touched him deeply.
He took her hand in silence. She was the first to speak, the first to
set the example of self-control. It is one of the noble instincts of
women that nothing more powerfully rouses them to struggle with their
own sorrow than the sight of a man’s distress. She quietly dried her
tears; she quietly drew her chair round the table, so as to sit nearer
to him when she spoke again.
“I have been sadly broken, Mr. Pendril, by what has happened in this
house,” she said, “or I should have borne what you have told me better
than I have borne it to-day. Will you let me ask one question before
you go on? My heart aches for the children of my love—more than ever my
children now. Is there no hope for their future? Are they left with no
prospect but poverty before them?”
The lawyer hesitated before he answered the question.
“They are left dependent,” he said, at last, “on the justice and the
mercy of a stranger.”
“Through the misfortune of their birth?”
“Through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of their
parents.”
With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the floor,
and restored it to its former position on the table between them.
“I can only place the truth before you,” he resumed, “in one plain form
of words. The marriage has destroyed this will, and has left Mr.
Vanstone’s daughters dependent on their uncle.”
As he spoke, the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the
window.
“On their uncle?” repeated Miss Garth. She considered for a moment, and
laid her hand suddenly on Mr. Pendril’s arm. “Not on Michael Vanstone!”
“Yes: on Michael Vanstone.”
Miss Garth’s hand still mechanically grasped the lawyer’s arm. Her
whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the discovery which
had now burst on her.
“Dependent on Michael Vanstone!” she said to herself. “Dependent on
their father’s bitterest enemy? How can it be?”
“Give me your attention for a few minutes more,” said Mr. Pendril, “and
you shall hear. The sooner we can bring this painful interview to a
close, the sooner I can open communications with Mr. Michael Vanstone,
and the sooner you will know what he decides on doing for his brother’s
orphan daughters. I repeat to you that they are absolutely dependent on
him. You will most readily understand how and why, if we take up the
chain of events where we last left it—at the period of Mr. and Mrs.
Vanstone’s marriage.”
“One moment, sir,” said Miss Garth. “Were you in the secret of that
marriage at the time when it took place?”
“Unhappily, I was not. I was away from London—away from England at the
time. If Mr. Vanstone had been able to communicate with me when the
letter from America announced the death of his wife, the fortunes of
his daughters would not have been now at stake.”
He paused, and, before proceeding further, looked once more at the
letters which he had consulted at an earlier period of the interview.
He took one letter from the rest, and put it on the table by his side.
“At the beginning of the present year,” he resumed, “a very serious
business necessity, in connection with some West Indian property
possessed by an old client and friend of mine, required the presence
either of myself, or of one of my two partners, in Jamaica. One of the
two could not be spared; the other was not in health to undertake the
voyage. There was no choice left but for me to go. I wrote to Mr.
Vanstone, telling him that I should leave England at the end of
February, and that the nature of the business which took me away
afforded little hope of my getting back from the West Indies before
June. My letter was not written with any special motive. I merely
thought it right—seeing that my partners were not admitted to my
knowledge of Mr. Vanstone’s private affairs—to warn him of my absence,
as a measure of formal precaution which it was right to take. At the
end of February I left England, without having heard from him. I was on
the sea when the news of his wife’s death reached him, on the fourth of
March: and I did not return until the middle of last June.”
“You warned him of your departure,” interposed Miss Garth. “Did you not
warn him of your return?”
“Not personally. My head-clerk sent him one of the circulars which were
dispatched from my office, in various directions, to announce my
return. It was the first substitute I thought of for the personal
letter which the pressure of innumerable occupations, all crowding on
me together after my long absence, did not allow me leisure to write.
Barely a month later, the first information of his marriage reached me
in a letter from himself, written on the day of the fatal accident. The
circumstances which induced him to write arose out of an event in which
you must have taken some interest—I mean the attachment between Mr.
Clare’s son and Mr. Vanstone’s youngest daughter.”
“I cannot say that I was favorably disposed toward that attachment at
the time,” replied Miss Garth. “I was ignorant then of the family
secret: I know better now.”
“Exactly. The motive which you can now appreciate is the motive that
leads us to the point. The young lady herself (as I have heard from the
elder Mr. Clare, to whom I am indebted for my knowledge of the
circumstances in detail) confessed her attachment to her father, and
innocently touched him to the quick by a chance reference to his own
early life. He had a long conversation with Mrs. Vanstone, at which
they both agreed that Mr. Clare must be privately informed of the
truth, before the attachment between the two young people was allowed
to proceed further. It was painful in the last degree, both to husband
and wife, to be reduced to this alternative. But they were resolute,
honorably resolute, in making the sacrifice of their own feelings; and
Mr. Vanstone betook himself on the spot to Mr. Clare’s cottage.—You no
doubt observed a remarkable change in Mr. Vanstone’s manner on that
day; and you can now account for it?”
Miss Garth bowed her head, and Mr. Pendril went on.
“You are sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Clare’s contempt for all
social prejudices,” he continued, “to anticipate his reception of the
confession which his neighbor addressed to him. Five minutes after the
interview had begun, the two old friends were as easy and unrestrained
together as usual. In the course of conversation, Mr. Vanstone
mentioned the pecuniary arrangement which he had made for the benefit
of his daughter and of her future husband—and, in doing so, he
naturally referred to his will here, on the table between us. Mr.
Clare, remembering that his friend had been married in the March of
that year, at once asked when the will had been executed: receiving the
reply that it had been made five years since; and, thereupon, astounded
Mr. Vanstone by telling him bluntly that the document was waste paper
in the eye of the law. Up to that moment he, like many other persons,
had been absolutely ignorant that a man’s marriage is, legally as well
as socially, considered to be the most important event in his life;
that it destroys the validity of any will which he may have made as a
single man; and that it renders absolutely necessary the entire
re-assertion of his testamentary intentions in the character of a
husband. The statement of this plain fact appeared to overwhelm Mr.
Vanstone. Declaring that his friend had laid him under an obligation
which he should remember to his dying day, he at once left the cottage,
at once returned home, and wrote me this letter.”
He handed the letter open to Miss Garth. In tearless, speechless grief,
she read these words:
“MY DEAR PENDRIL—Since we last wrote to each other an extraordinary
change has taken place in my life. About a week after you went away, I
received news from America which told me that I was free. Need I say
what use I made of that freedom? Need I say that the mother of my
children is now my Wife?
“If you are surprised at not having heard from me the moment you
got back, attribute my silence, in great part—if not altogether—to
my own total ignorance of the legal necessity for making another
will. Not half an hour since, I was enlightened for the first time
(under circumstances which I will mention when me meet) by my old
friend, Mr. Clare. Family anxieties have had something to do with
my silence as well. My wife’s confinement is close at hand; and,
besides this serious anxiety, my second daughter is just engaged to
be married. Until I saw Mr. Clare to-day, these matters so filled
my mind that I never thought of writing to you during the one short
month which is all that has passed since I got news of your return.
Now I know that my will must be made again, I write instantly. For
God’s sake, come on the day when you receive this—come and relieve
me from the dreadful thought that my two darling girls are at this
moment unprovided for. If anything happened to me, and if my desire
to do their mother justice, ended (through my miserable ignorance
of the law) in leaving Norah and Magdalen disinherited, I should
not rest in my grave! Come at any cost, to yours ever,
“A. V.”
“On the Saturday morning,” Mr. Pendril resumed, “those lines reached
me. I instantly set aside all other business, and drove to the railway.
At the London terminus, I heard the first news of the Friday’s
accident; heard it, with conflicting accounts of the numbers and names
of the passengers killed. At Bristol, they were better informed; and
the dreadful truth about Mr. Vanstone was confirmed. I had time to
recover myself before I reached your station here, and found Mr.
Clare’s son waiting for me. He took me to his father’s cottage; and
there, without losing a moment, I drew out Mrs. Vanstone’s will. My
object was to secure the only provision for her daughters which it was
now possible to make. Mr. Vanstone having died intestate, a third of
his fortune would go to his widow; and the rest would be divided among
his next of kin. As children born out of wedlock, Mr. Vanstone’s
daughters, under the circumstances of their father’s death, had no more
claim to a share in his property than the daughters of one of his
laborers in the village. The one chance left was that their mother
might sufficiently recover to leave her third share to them, by will,
in the event of her decease. Now you know why I wrote to you to ask for
that interview—why I waited day and night, in the hope of receiving a
summons to the house. I was sincerely sorry to send back such an answer
to your note of inquiry as I was compelled to write. But while there
was a chance of the preservation of Mrs. Vanstone’s life, the secret of
the marriage was hers, not mine; and every consideration of delicacy
forbade me to disclose it.”
“You did right, sir,” said Miss Garth; “I understand your motives, and
respect them.”
“My last attempt to provide for the daughters,” continued Mr. Pendril,
“was, as you know, rendered unavailing by the dangerous nature of Mrs.
Vanstone’s illness. Her death left the infant who survived her by a few
hours (the infant born, you will remember, in lawful wedlock)
possessed, in due legal course, of the whole of Mr. Vanstone’s fortune.
On the child’s death—if it had only outlived the mother by a few
seconds, instead of a few hours, the result would have been the
same—the next of kin to the legitimate offspring took the money; and
that next of kin is the infant’s paternal uncle, Michael Vanstone. The
whole fortune of eighty thousand pounds has virtually passed into his
possession already.”
“Are there no other relations?” asked Miss Garth. “Is there no hope
from any one else?”
“There are no other relations with Michael Vanstone’s claim,” said the
lawyer. “There are no grandfathers or grandmothers of the dead child
(on the side of either of the parents) now alive. It was not likely
there should be, considering the ages of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone when
they died. But it is a misfortune to be reasonably lamented that no
other uncles or aunts survive. There are cousins alive; a son and two
daughters of that elder sister of Mr. Vanstone’s, who married
Archdeacon Bartram, and who died, as I told you, some years since. But
their interest is superseded by the interest of the nearer blood. No,
Miss Garth, we must look facts as they are resolutely in the face. Mr.
Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s Children; and the law leaves them
helpless at their uncle’s mercy.”
“A cruel law, Mr. Pendril—a cruel law in a Christian country.”
“Cruel as it is, Miss Garth, it stands excused by a shocking
peculiarity in this case. I am far from defending the law of England as
it affects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I think it a
disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the parents on the
children; it encourages vice by depriving fathers and mothers of the
strongest of all motives for making the atonement of marriage; and it
claims to produce these two abominable results in the names of morality
and religion. But it has no extraordinary oppression to answer for in
the case of these unhappy girls. The more merciful and Christian law of
other countries, which allows the marriage of the parents to make the
children legitimate, has no mercy on _these_ children. The accident of
their father having been married, when he first met with their mother,
has made them the outcasts of the whole social community; it has placed
them out of the pale of the Civil Law of Europe. I tell you the hard
truth—it is useless to disguise it. There is no hope, if we look back
at the past: there may be hope, if we look on to the future. The best
service which I can now render you is to shorten the period of your
suspense. In less than an hour I shall be on my way back to London.
Immediately on my arrival, I will ascertain the speediest means of
communicating with Mr. Michael Vanstone; and will let you know the
result. Sad as the position of the two sisters now is, we must look at
it on its best side; we must not lose hope.”
“Hope?” repeated Miss Garth. “Hope from Michael Vanstone!”
“Yes; hope from the influence on him of time, if not from the influence
of mercy. As I have already told you, he is now an old man; he cannot,
in the course of nature, expect to live much longer. If he looks back
to the period when he and his brother were first at variance, he must
look back through thirty years. Surely, these are softening influences
which must affect any man? Surely, his own knowledge of the shocking
circumstances under which he has become possessed of this money will
plead with him, if nothing else does?”
“I will try to think as you do, Mr. Pendril—I will try to hope for the
best. Shall we be left long in suspense before the decision reaches
us?”
“I trust not. The only delay on my side will be caused by the necessity
of discovering the place of Michael Vanstone’s residence on the
Continent. I think I have the means of meeting this difficulty
successfully; and the moment I reach London, those means shall be
tried.”
He took up his hat; and then returned to the table on which the
father’s last letter, and the father’s useless will, were lying side by
side. After a moment’s consideration, he placed them both in Miss
Garth’s hands.
“It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan sisters,” he
said, in his quiet, self-repressed way, “if they can see how their
father refers to them in his will—if they can read his letter to me,
the last he ever wrote. Let these tokens tell them that the one idea of
their father’s life was the idea of making atonement to his children.
‘They may think bitterly of their birth,’ he said to me, at the time
when I drew this useless will; ‘but they shall never think bitterly of
me. I will cross them in nothing: they shall never know a sorrow that I
can spare them, or a want which I will not satisfy.’ He made me put
those words in his will, to plead for him when the truth which he had
concealed from his children in his lifetime was revealed to them after
his death. No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy of his
repentance and his love. I leave the will and the letter to help you: I
give them both into your care.”
He saw how his parting kindness touched her and thoughtfully hastened
the farewell. She took his hand in both her own and murmured a few
broken words of gratitude. “Trust me to do my best,” he said—and,
turning away with a merciful abruptness, left her. In the broad,
cheerful sunshine he had come in to reveal the fatal truth. In the
broad, cheerful sunshine—that truth disclosed—he went out.