Needless to say, however, that monotonous as the days were, and blank
the distance, time and the hour, and that unmelodious screw got through
them. Gervase landed at Queenstown, taking with him every newspaper he
could collect as he hurried to the railway. But to be sure, all that he
could get was the issue of that day, not the now far back numbers which
would have carried on the story for which he thirsted. That story was
now over; it had ended, and there was no more of it. Burton, Baber, &
Co. had gone down like a stone in that sea of mishaps and misadventure;
the public interest had deserted it, and no man spoke of it any more.
Gervase, when he came to think, saw very quickly how it was, and called
himself a fool to expect anything different; but yet the shock of the
disappointment was great. He sat ruminating it as the train dashed along
through the silence of the night. It went quickly, making more visible
progress than the steamboat, yet was ever slow to the galloping thoughts
which were there and back again, impatient of their incompetence to
attain any knowledge, a hundred times in an hour. At last he reached
London on a mild and misty morning of May. The air was full of a quiet
drizzle, the pavements wet with the mild innocent rain. There was
nobody to meet him, naturally enough, for nobody knew that this was the
day of his arrival. He could not help thinking that had Madeline been
arriving, miserable and full of trouble, he would have divined it. He
did not even know where to go, in the sudden ignorance which had come
upon him of all his own most intimate affairs. He could scarcely expect
to find his father still at Harley Street, but this was the only place
to which he could go, where he must, at least, find an address,
something to guide him. It was miserable to put his portmanteaux into a
cab, not knowing where he was to find a shelter; for though he gave
Harley Street as his destination, he felt as if he were about to drive
vaguely through the cold streets, he knew not whither, in search of some
spot in which he could take refuge. It seemed another day of feverish
suspense before he got to the well-known street, where everything looked
so terribly the same as usual, as if no change had happened. When he
reached the door, and dashing out before the cab had stopped, knocked
loudly with a summons that seemed to wake echoes all round, and to go
through and through his own aching brain, Gervase had come to the
extreme limit of his strength. He felt helplessly that he had no voice
left with which to ask the question, “Where has my father gone?”
To his utter astonishment--an astonishment which was at the same time
collapse--he found himself gazing speechless into the face of his
father’s old servant. Gilbert opened to him as he had done a thousand
times, and stood with a faint smile of welcome on his face, holding it
wide for him to enter. Gervase could only stand and stare and gasp. The
sight of the familiar face, the unchanged aspect of everything,
overwhelmed him more completely than the strange and stern novelty which
he expected, would have done. A mist came over his eyes. He stumbled in
within the shelter of his father’s door. “Gilbert--my father?” he said
huskily, incapable of more.
“Come in, sir. Come in, sir. I’ll tell you--everything. Lord! Mr
Gervase, don’t faint--that would be worst of all.”
“My father?” he said.
“Come in, sir; and let me send away your cab, and get your things; and
then I’ll tell you--everything; only go in, for God’s sake, and sit
down!”
He went in: the house was unchanged, but there was a great silence in
it, or so he thought, a sense of vacancy--suspense almost as awful as
ever, but his senses coming back to him, and the familiar scene round
him restoring his self-control and his strength. He stood leaning upon
the mantelpiece, listening to the sound of the portmanteaux placed in
the hall, and the cab turning from the door. “Gilbert, where is my
father?”--these were the only words he could say.
“You must want some breakfast, Mr Gervase,--something to keep up your
strength. My wife’s in the house, sir; she’ll get you a cup of tea in a
minute.”
“My father, Gilbert?”
“For anything as I know to the contrary, he’s quite well, Mr Gervase--as
well as you or me.”
“Where is he?” cried the young man. “Is it all true?--and why are you
here?”
“There is a great deal as is true, sir. I don’t know how much you’ve
heard. Master left me here to wait for you. Everything is settled
honourable and straightforward, and no dispersions on character. I was
to tell you that the first thing. And the house is yours, sir. Them was
master’s last words. ‘Tell him there’s no stain upon his name, and the
house is his. Tell my boy that the first thing,’ was the last words he
said.”
“What do you mean by last words? My father is not--he is not---- O God!
is this what I have come home to?” the young man cried.
“He’s not dead, sir, if that’s what you mean. There’s nothing happened
to him, so far as I know. He’s--he’s left town, Mr Gervase; but that’s
all, sir,--that’s all, I give you my word.”
“Left town!--where _is_ my father? Don’t play with me, Gilbert. I’m not
a fool, nor a child. Tell me the truth.”
“That’s the truth, sir, as sure as you live. Master has had a bad time;
but he’s come out of it all with clean hands, that’s what I heard the
gentlemen say. He might have begun again next morning, if he had liked.
They made him a present of the house, and he’s left it to you.”
Gervase made an impatient gesture. “Do I care for the house?--where is
my father?” he cried.
“If I was to swear upon the Bible, sir, I could say no more. He has left
town. I can’t tell you where he is, for he has left no address. He said
he didn’t want no letters forwarded. Mr Gervase, I am telling you the
truth. There has nothing happened to him. He has left town. Some thought
it was for the best; and some thought as it was a pity, master being
still but a young man, so to speak. If you’d have been here, it’d have
given him courage. But it so being as there was nobody belonging to him,
and he a bit worn out with all that has happened--and no patience with
Mr Wickham, as wanted him very bad to begin again----”
“Wickham! did that fellow dare----”
“Well, sir, even Mr Wickham, though he was rash, had no bad meaning.
He’s been taken into Boyd Brothers, and they say he’s got everything in
his hand already----”
Gervase turned with impatience from these details; except a feeling of
fierce impatience with Wickham, who he could not forget was his own
nominee, he had no further interest in him, and would rather have heard
his name no more. He allowed Gilbert to bring him breakfast, and sat
down perforce in that old accustomed place, every corner of which was
familiar to him from his childhood, and which was now exactly as it had
been for so many, many years; not a chair out of place, not a feature
changed, the serious old clock going on steadily upon its habitual
march, ticking off every deliberate moment, as when day by day its old
master had compared his watch with it before leaving home. Gervase
seemed to see his father on the hearth-rug with his watch in his
hand--the emblem of punctuality and exactitude--making that daily
comparison. Such revolutions in life tell doubly when the former tenor
has been so exact and perfectly regulated. Where had he gone? He was not
the man to take to wandering, to go abroad, to find refuge in those
_banal_ places where so many unfortunates hide their heads among the
haunts of noisy gaiety and excitement. Gervase could not picture his
father in any such scene. He could not imagine him poor, with anything
but a lavish expenditure, and the power of doing as he pleased in
respect to money and money’s worth. It was far more difficult to
account for him when he disappeared than for most men. Amusement was a
thing which had no existence for Mr Burton. Without his office, his
business occupations, the Exchange, the semi-political, semi-commercial
discussions which were his chief intellectual pleasure at his club and
his dinner-parties, what could he be or do?
When Gervase had taken what refreshment he could, and made himself
presentable, he took his way slowly down the street to see
Madeline;--slowly, though he was a man in love and going to see his
betrothed--almost reluctantly, though he loved her. He knew that the
impression was a false one, yet it was difficult not to feel as if
Madeline had deserted him, and in his present state of mind every
interest except one seemed to have failed. A sense of having been beaten
and humiliated, which was almost physical as well as mental,--a certain
giddiness of mind and brain which affected, he thought, his very powers
of walking as well as thinking, and which was only increased and
aggravated by the familiar aspect of everything round--so unchanged, so
undisturbed, so out of sympathy with his state--possessed him. He seemed
to himself to knock against everything, to stumble over the crossings or
any irregularity in the pavement; and that the few people whom he met in
the morning street turned round after him, either to note his
unsteadiness, or to say, “That’s Burton’s son.” He would have preferred
to walk on past Madeline’s door, to keep moving mechanically, to go on
and on along miles of dull street, where nobody would require him to
speak or to take any notice. And it was with almost a painful sense of
unwillingness that he stopped at Mr Thursley’s door. But it was opened
almost before he could knock by Madeline herself, who must have been
watching for him, and who rushed into his arms before he could draw
breath. “Oh, Gervase, you have come at last!” she cried. “Thank God!”
“Is it anything to thank God for?” he said; “when all the mischief is
done; when nothing can be mended? It is like my feebleness to come too
late.”
“Don’t say so--don’t say so--it is everything to me,” she cried. “Oh,
Gervase, I should have met you when you arrived, but we did not know if
you would come by Queenstown. I have been looking out for you since
break of day. Papa said you could not have heard, and that it was better
not to startle you by any unusual fuss.”
“Was he so simple as to think ill news would not travel?” Gervase said,
with a faint smile. “Tell me, Madeline, where is my father? Perhaps you
know.”
“Nobody knows,” she said, shaking her head; “but there is no reason why
that should be bad news, Gervase. Papa says he quite understands it; he
thinks Mr Burton will come back--after a while. He thinks he wants to
put a little interval between him and all these events. He says he quite
understands his feelings. Gervase----”
“Yes, dear. I can’t feel anything, I can’t say anything. I am half
paralysed, and half mad. Think how things were when I went away: and to
come back and find everything gone--disappeared as if it had never been:
the dreadful empty mockery of a house which they say is mine, and my
father, and all that he cared for, gone, gone like a dream. Sometimes I
think I will go crazy,--everything seems to be whirling and unsteady. I
am giddy with pain and confusion and ignorance, and the blank all
around.”
He held her hand, but loosely, languidly, in a feeble clasp. She grasped
his tightly, closely, as if to bring him back to himself.
“All that he cared for is not gone. Let my father tell you. He knows the
right thing to say. Oh, Gervase, because you are in great trouble,
don’t turn all love and tenderness away!”
“Madeline!”
“Oh, Gervase, if you only knew how I have thought of you night and day!
I think I should have gone to you had there been any certainty where you
were. I should not have let anything stand in the way, when you were in
trouble. Don’t turn from me now. Papa is coming back from the office to
lunch, on the chance of your arrival. He wants to do everything that is
kind. Don’t, don’t turn from us, Gervase, because you are in trouble,
which is only a reason for clinging together. Is it not a reason for
clinging together?” she cried, with tears in her eyes.
And poor Gervase felt that he ought to feel above every other sentiment
the sweetness of this consolation, for which he had so thirsted and
hungered in his long misery at sea; thinking that just like this his
Madeline would speak and look. But now that she was there before him, in
his arms, speaking like Love itself, looking with eyes full of the
tenderest sympathy, he was no longer able to feel anything. He caressed
her clinging hand, but his natural impulse would have been to relax his
hold, to put it away; not that he loved her less, but that the confusion
in his mind, the fevered condition of his whole being, was incapable of
any natural or happy sentiment. The miserable change that had come over
all his private concerns, the ruin of his family, his father’s
disappearance, even that curious maddening contradiction, in the midst
of all the ruin, of the unchanged house, which he was told was his,
filled up his thoughts, his heart, his very veins, so that there was
room in him for nothing else.
Mr Thursley appeared soon after for luncheon, and his coming was a
relief. He gave Gervase a coherent account of everything that had
happened. Mr Thursley was evidently not without an impression that
Burton, Baber, & Co. had been in a doubtful condition for some time; but
he described with considerable vehemence the action of young Wickham,
the risky transactions into which his impetuosity had drawn his partner,
and the extravagance he had committed, his head turned by the greatness
of the position which he thought he had attained--evidently with the
intention of diverting the mind of Gervase from any unfilial thoughts.
When the crash came eventually, he described how entirely honourable
and _digne_ the attitude of Mr Burton had been. The ultimate catastrophe
had been brought about by the failure of one or two companies with which
the house had become connected. Mr Burton had at once placed everything
he had at the disposal of his creditors. His books, his private affairs,
his property to the last penny, had been made available; and his
honourable conduct had been fully acknowledged and warmly applauded.
Offers had been made to him, on all sides, of help to begin anew his
commercial career; but these offers had been gratefully declined. He had
said that he was himself too old for a fresh start, and that his son was
not disposed, or perhaps adapted, for a business life. Finally, all had
been settled, and as a proof of their admiration for Mr Burton’s
conduct and character, the creditors had requested his acceptance of the
house and all its contents, upon which no profane hand had ever been
laid.
“And the West India money?” Gervase said.
“You had come to no conclusion at the time of the settlement,” said Mr
Thursley. “The West India estate was personal property. It is a thing
that has ceased to count for much in anybody’s calculations. Nothing but
your sense and true business spirit--let me say so, my boy, whether you
take it as a compliment or not--could have made so much of it. Thank
heaven, Gervase, it is a nest-egg with which nobody has anything to do.”
“Was there no mention made of it, then, at all? Did nobody know? Was he
unaware that he had so much to fall back upon?”
“He was not unaware,” said Mr Thursley, uneasily. “He did get your last
letter--but not till after the arrangement was made and all settled. He
was too glad to think that you--would still have something to depend
upon.”
“I don’t understand,” Gervase said, almost rudely; “the
arrangement--what does that mean?--was everything paid?”
“Yes; everything was paid--that was demanded. It was all settled--in the
most honourable way.”
“There is something behind that I don’t understand:--settled in an
honourable way--all paid that was demanded. What does that mean, Mr
Thursley? It sounds like something equivocal, something not so honest
as the words. Tell me, without the commercial slang. I’m too dull to
understand.”
“That’s not very respectful, my young friend.”
“Papa, Gervase doesn’t mean to be disrespectful. Don’t you see that he
is _done_, that there is no strength left in him?”
“I mean no harm,” Gervase said. “For God’s sake, tell me in plain
words--was everything paid?”
“I wish you knew a little more of the commercial slang you despise. You
will misunderstand what I am about to say. Everything was paid--which it
was possible to pay. An arrangement was made which everybody
accepted--fifteen shillings in the pound--the next thing to payment in
full. It was all settled and accepted by universal consent.”
Gervase got up stupidly from his chair. “I thought there must be some
quibble in it,” he said, the heavy cloud so lowering over his face that
for the moment he was almost, even to Madeline’s eyes, unrecognisable.
“Will the West India money make it up?”
“Don’t be a fool, Gervase,” said Mr Thursley, sharply. “Everything, I
tell you, is settled. You have no right to interfere.”
Gervase stood regarding him blankly: his food was untasted on his plate,
the meal not half over. He stood up, unconscious of all the
circumstances--unconscious even of Madeline’s anxious look dwelling on
him. “Will the West India money do it?” he said.