Next day Gervase received a communication from his bankers which filled
him with the wildest amazement. This letter alarmed him when he saw it
first. He thought that something had gone wrong--something new and
unforeseen. When troubles come unexpectedly, overwhelming a man, his
imagination gets demoralised, and expects nothing but further
trouble--every footstep heard on the road seems to be that of a bearer
of ill news. And when Gervase saw the well-known initials of this firm
upon the envelope, his heart failed him. There must be some new call,
he thought--some unthought-of creditor must have turned up. Or he must
have miscalculated his little balance. Something must be wrong. He
opened the letter slowly, with fear and trembling. And the first reading
of it conveyed no meaning to his confused mind. Ten thousand pounds!
What was this about ten thousand pounds? A faint but incredible ray of
light came into his mind at the second reading. He did not believe it.
It was some trick of fancy, some delusion of his perturbed spirit, some
practical joke at the best. Again: he rubbed his eyes, which smarted
with want of sleep. Ten thousand pounds! It had got upon his brain, he
thought; it was the scornful alternative Mr Thursley had flung at him,
the concession that was an impossibility. Ten thousand pounds to settle
upon Madeline. Ten thousand--angels to deliver him from a life he hated.
Was he going mad? Had it all at last been too much for his brain?
He took up Messrs Liphook, Liss, & Co.’s letter, and read it over
aloud:--
“DEAR SIR,--We have the pleasure to inform you that a sum of ten
thousand pounds has this day been paid into your account.”
The words spoken audibly, though it was only by his own voice, aroused
Gervase at last from his dazed and stupefied state. Was it true? It must
be true! He rose up to his feet, to his full height, stretching his
throat, throwing back his head to get breath, stifled by the wonder, the
almost terror, the shock of this new thing. The very sum that had been
named--the money that was to deliver him, to give him the desire of his
eyes, to free him, to be his salvation. He had been sitting in the
library in the deserted house, very gloomy, looking about the bookcases,
thinking of the advertisements that would describe this “library of a
gentleman,” about to be given to the auctioneer’s hammer. Some of the
books were dear to him; the whole place had upon him that strong hold of
the familiar, the always known, which it is so difficult to divest of
its power. There was not much to admire in the heavy bookcases, the
solid furniture, nor even in the bulk of the somewhat commonplace
collection of books no gentleman’s library could be without. But he had
known it all his life; and the thought of the auctioneer, and all the
vulgar tumult of the sale, was painful to him. He had been wondering if
the money it would bring would be worth thinking of in the collapse of
everything. But these thoughts all disappeared from his mind in a
moment. For a little while after the extraordinary truth was fully
apprehended he felt capable of thinking of nothing else. Ten thousand
pounds! It is a sensation which comes to but few people in the world to
receive such a sum unexpectedly, and at a moment when it is like life to
the dead. Most people who get those windfalls have plenty of money
already, and know all about them and are not excited. Ten thousand is
not much when you have hundreds of thousands, and are (naturally,
having so much to begin with) in the way of legacies and happy accidents
of all kinds. But when you have nothing, that which in other
circumstances would be but a pleasing surprise is apt to shake you to
the depths of your being, and feel like a visible interposition from
above. Gervase was so stunned, so overwhelmed, so uplifted, that for a
time the mere fact was as much as he could grasp. And he had seized his
hat and rushed out to tell Madeline of his wonderful miraculous good
fortune, before it occurred to him to ask himself from whom could this
windfall come?
The thought came upon him when he was half-way down the street on his
way to his love. Who in all the world could have sent him ten thousand
pounds? Few people are able to bestow such a present, still fewer have
the least inclination to do so. The wonder in Gervase’s mind was but
momentary. It was answered as by a flash of lightning, by an instinctive
unquestioning certainty of reply. And suddenly, instead of walking on as
he had been doing, his rapid steps grew slow, his countenance flushed
with sudden enlightenment, and then grew pale. “My father!”--he almost
stopped short altogether, almost turned back. Who but his father could
send him such a present? Who but he had interest enough in Gervase to
come to his aid anonymously, silently? “My father:” he repeated it to
himself. The first time it had been the cry of a sudden discovery, full
of pleasure, an impulse too quick for thought. But the second had a tone
in it of despair. A discovery of another kind came with the second
thought. Nothing kept back! that had been his father’s glory and
distinction. Was it thus for ever proved to be untrue?
He went into Madeline’s presence with almost reluctant steps, his joy
over. He did not perceive what eyes less preoccupied must have done,
that she was full of expectation, waiting for him with a visible anxiety
and suspense, eager to hear something. He never even remarked this
curious expectation in her, he was altogether absorbed in his own
sensations. “What is it, Gervase?” she said, her breath coming quick,
two spots of red upon her cheeks; but why she should show any excitement
he did not even ask himself. “The most extraordinary thing has
happened,” he said.
“What has happened? I saw at once in your face there was something. What
is it? your father----”
“I suppose it must be my father,” he said, with a heavy long breath.
“Madeline, ten thousand pounds--the very sum your father said--has been
paid into the bank for me. I was wild with delight for a moment.”
“Ten thousand pounds, Gervase! Then you are freed!--it is not a question
any longer between me and the life you hate. Thank heaven, you are
free!”
“Yes,” he said, “I am free. I am no longer called upon to make any
sacrifice--if I can make up my mind to accept.”
“To accept--Gervase!”
“Madeline,” said the young man, “nothing is so simple as it appears.
There’s complications in everything. At first, I confess, I was
overjoyed. It is miserable of me to grudge any sacrifice for you. You
are worth far more than the giving up of my wretched instincts. Still,
dear, I was glad, I must say. But then comes the thought--So far as I
can see, this could come only from my father.”
“Well, Gervase?”
“And my father was honoured and praised for keeping back nothing. They
gave him his house--the house my only property--to show their sense of
the fact that he had kept back nothing. Don’t you see the irony of it?
He must have kept back--who can tell what?--when he has enough to send
me this. Oh, Madeline, it makes my heart sick!”
Madeline’s countenance was a wonderful sight, had he had eyes to see
it. She grew very red, her eyes filled: an air of impatient vexation,
almost beyond her control, came into her face. But Gervase noted
nothing, being fully occupied with his own thoughts.
“I ask myself, can I use this money which has been subtracted from
cooked accounts--which has been withdrawn from its first honest purpose
of paying his creditors--which is false money, dishonest money? Good
heavens! Madeline, my darling, have pity on me--don’t think me a fool.
My father, whom I always trusted--whom I thought an honourable man----”
“You have no right,” said Madeline, in a voice which was low and
trembling, “to say that he is not an honourable man.”
“If he has sent me this--and who else could have sent it?--how can I
ever believe in him more? He paid his creditors only 15s. in the pound,
and got credit for having kept back nothing--while all the while----
How,” cried Gervase, walking about the room with hasty steps, “how can I
use money--that has been so procured?”
Two hasty tears fell from Madeline’s eyes. “Oh, this is too much,” she
said to herself quickly--but Gervase was too much taken up with his own
emotions to observe hers, and she dried the tears with a hurried hand.
“Gervase,” she said, in a tone which was not without slight traces of
exasperation, “you have at least paid all your father’s debts--in full.”
“Thank heaven!” he said.
“Well, how do you know he has not heard of that, and--and pays you back
like this? Much more likely than that he knew you had special occasion
for the money. How should he know? But he would hear you had paid his
debts, and he gives it you back.”
Gervase shook his head. “I would give it all,” he cried, “ten times
told, to make sure that he did not wilfully, consciously, to the
detriment of his creditors, keep this back.”
“At the worst,” she said, evidently compelling herself to patience,
“they are all paid; there is nobody to whom it is due.”
“No one that I know of; but, Madeline----”
“Oh,” she cried, almost wildly, “don’t bring up any more objections,
Gervase! If it is your father’s, it is only right that he should
provide for you. You have paid everything for him. You have no right to
refuse him, or to make a fuss about the money. Don’t say any more! or it
is I who will go out of my senses,” she cried, suddenly bursting into an
almost hysterical flood of tears, which she had no power to restrain.
This brought Gervase to his senses. He was--oh, so tender of her
weakness, of the excited nerves of which she had lost control, and the
evident long tension of her feelings, which had broken at last. He took
her into his arms and soothed her, calling her by every tender name he
could think of. “What a brute I am--to torment you with all my whims and
scruples! All you say is like gospel, Madeline. I know, I know it is all
true. I don’t know what I deserve for troubling you with these idiotic
fancies of mine. I know I ought to be too thankful that everything is
thus made possible for us. And so I shall be when I have time to think.
It is only the first shock, the conviction that my father----”
“Gervase,” she said, “don’t let any one but me hear you speak of him as
you have done. He is your father. And how can you tell whether he is to
blame? By you at least he should never be made to appear so. I feel
sure--that he is not to blame.”
“If you think so, I will think so too,” he cried fervently. And he did
his best to keep his word. He kept it at least in her presence, while
her faith influenced him. If his heart sank when he was alone, nobody
was the wiser. And, indeed, from this moment the pace of events was so
much accelerated that Gervase had much less time to think. Mr Thursley
received the news of his sudden accession of wealth with a long whistle,
in which was surprise, yet something else besides surprise. “I thought
as much,” he said, nodding his head; but what he thought he did not
explain. He went chuckling about the house for the remainder of the day,
uttering now and then a broken exclamation in which there was something
about an old fox. Gervase was wise enough to ask no explanations. He
felt in his heart that Mr Thursley thought as he did, but was not
wounded as he was by the thought: and the young man breathed a sigh of
relief, and thanked heaven that he was freed for ever from those
methods and tenets, which made it not entirely blamable in a man to hold
back something that was not his, and make meet provision for his own
necessities, while preserving the semblance of perfect honour to others.
He himself had to keep silence, or to consent to be considered
ultra-fantastical even by the woman he loved. He yielded to fate, not
willingly, with a sense of repugnance, and resistance which would have
seemed extraordinary, unjustifiable almost to all reasonable people.
Perhaps it was no great shadow among all the brightness that now
surrounded him, but still he felt it to the bottom of his heart.