P. S. Why did you let me cry over that man's tomb in the church?
Randolph looked again at the date, and then hurriedly consulted the
shipping list. She was due in ten days. Yet, delighted as he was with
that prospect, and touched as he had been with her courage and naive
determination, after his first joy he laid the letter down with a sigh.
For whatever was his ultimate ambition, he was still a mere salaried
clerk; whatever was her self-sacrificing purpose, she was still the rich
heiress. The seal of secrecy had been broken, yet the situation remained
unchanged; their association must still be dominated by it. And he
shrank from the thought of making her girlish appeal to him for help an
opportunity for revealing his real feelings.
This instinct was strengthened by the somewhat formal manner in which
Mr. Dingwall announced her approaching visit. “Miss Eversleigh will stay
with Mrs. Dingwall while she is here, on account of her--er--position,
and the fact that she is without a chaperon. Mrs. Dingwall will, of
course, be glad to receive any friends Miss Eversleigh would like to
see.”
Randolph frankly returned that Miss Eversleigh had written to him, and
that he would be glad to present himself. Nothing more was said, but as
the days passed he could not help noticing that, in proportion as Mr.
Dingwall's manner became more stiff and ceremonious, Mr. Revelstoke's
usually crisp, good-humored suggestions grew more deliberate, and
Randolph found himself once or twice the subject of the president's
penetrating but smiling scrutiny. And the day before Miss Eversleigh's
arrival his natural excitement was a little heightened by a summons to
Mr. Revelstoke's private office.
As he entered, the president laid aside his pen and closed the door.
“I have never made it my business, Trent,” he said, with good-humored
brusqueness, “to interfere in my employees' private affairs, unless they
affect their relations to the bank, and I haven't had the least occasion
to do so with you. Neither has Mr. Dingwall, although it is on HIS
behalf that I am now speaking.” As Randolph listened with a contracted
brow, he went on with a grim smile: “But he is an Englishman, you know,
and has certain ideas of the importance of 'position,' particularly
among his own people. He wishes me, therefore, to warn you of what
HE calls the 'disparity' of your position and that of a young English
lady--Miss Eversleigh--with whom you have some acquaintance, and in
whom,” he added with a still grimmer satisfaction, “he fears you are too
deeply interested.”
Randolph blazed. “If Mr. Dingwall had asked ME, sir,” he said hotly, “I
would have told him that I have never yet had to be reminded that Miss
Eversleigh is a rich heiress and I only a poor clerk, but as to his
using her name in such a connection, or dictating to me the manner of”--
“Hold hard,” said Revelstoke, lifting his hand deprecatingly, yet with
his unchanged smile. “I don't agree with Mr. Dingwall, and I have every
reason to know the value of YOUR services, yet I admit something is due
to HIS prejudices. And in this matter, Trent, the Bank of Eureka, while
I am its president, doesn't take a back seat. I have concluded to make
you manager of the branch bank at Marysville, an independent position
with its salary and commissions. And if that doesn't suit Dingwall,
why,” he added, rising from his desk with a short laugh, “he has a
bigger idea of the value of property than the bank has.”
“One moment, sir, I implore you,” burst out Randolph breathlessly, “if
your kind offer is based upon the mistaken belief that I have the least
claim upon Miss Eversleigh's consideration more than that of simple
friendship--if anybody has dared to give you the idea that I have
aspired by word or deed to more, or that the young lady has ever
countenanced or even suspected such aspirations, it is utterly false,
and grateful as I am for your kindness, I could not accept it.”
“Look here, Trent,” returned Revelstoke curtly, yet laying his hand on
the young man's shoulder not unkindly. “All that is YOUR private affair,
which, as I told you, I don't interfere with. The other is a question
between Mr. Dingwall and myself of your comparative value. It won't hurt
you with ANYBODY to know how high we've assessed it. Don't spoil a good
thing!”
Grateful even in his uncertainty, Randolph could only thank him and
withdraw. Yet this fateful forcing of his hand in a delicate question
gave him a new courage. It was with a certain confidence now in his
capacity as HER friend and qualified to advise HER that he called at Mr.
Dingwall's the evening she arrived. It struck him that in the Dingwalls'
reception of him there was mingled with their formality a certain
respect.
Thanks to this, perhaps, he found her alone. She seemed to him more
beautiful than his recollection had painted her, in the development that
maturity, freedom from restraint, and time had given her. For a moment
his new, fresh courage was staggered. But she had retained her youthful
simplicity, and came toward him with the same naive and innocent
yearning in her clear eyes that he remembered at their last meeting.
Their first words were, naturally, of their great secret, and Randolph
told her the whole story of his unexpected and startling meeting with
the captain, and the captain's strange narrative, of his undertaking the
journey with him to recover his claim, establish his identity, and, as
Randolph had hoped, restore to her that member of the family whom she
had most cared for. He recounted the captain's hesitation on arriving;
his own journey to the rectory; the news she had given him; the
reason of his singular behavior; his return to London; and the second
disappearance of the captain. He read to her the letter he had received
from him, and told her of his hopeless chase to the docks only to find
him gone. She listened to him breathlessly, with varying color, with
an occasional outburst of pity, or a strange shining of the eyes, that
sometimes became clouded and misty, and at the conclusion with a calm
and grave paleness.
“But,” she said, “you should have told me all.”
“It was not my secret,” he pleaded.
“You should have trusted me.”
“But the captain had trusted ME.”
She looked at him with grave wonder, and then said with her old
directness: “But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I
should have told you.” She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed on
her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color. “I mean,” she said
hesitatingly, “of course you have acted nobly, generously, kindly,
wisely--but I hate secrets! Oh, why cannot one be always frank?”
A wild idea seized Randolph. “But I have another secret--you have not
guessed--and I have not dared to tell you. Do you wish me to be frank
now?”
“Why not?” she said simply, but she did not look up.
Then he told her! But, strangest of all, in spite of his fears and
convictions, it flowed easily and naturally as a part of his other
secret, with an eloquence he had not dreamed of before. But when he told
her of his late position and his prospects, she raised her eyes to his
for the first time, yet without withdrawing her hand from his, and said
reproachfully,--
“Yet but for THAT you would never have told me.”
“How could I?” he returned eagerly. “For but for THAT how could I help
you to carry out YOUR trust? How could I devote myself to your plans,
and enable you to carry them out without touching a dollar of that
inheritance which you believe to be wrongfully yours?”
Then, with his old boyish enthusiasm, he sketched a glowing picture of
their future: how they would keep the Dornton property intact until the
captain was found and communicated with; and how they would cautiously
collect all the information accessible to find him until such time
as Randolph's fortunes would enable them both to go on a voyage of
discovery after him. And in the midst of this prophetic forecast, which
brought them so closely together that she was enabled to examine his
watch chain, she said,--
“I see you have kept Cousin Jack's ring. Did he ever see it?”
“He told me he had given it to you as his little sweetheart, and that
he”--
There was a singular pause here.
“He never did THAT--at least, not in that way!” said Sybil Eversleigh.
And, strangely enough, the optimistic Randolph's prophecies came true.
He was married a month later to Sibyl Eversleigh, Mr. Dingwall giving
away the bride. He and his wife were able to keep their trust in regard
to the property, for, without investing a dollar of it in the bank,
the mere reputation of his wife's wealth brought him a flood of other
investors and a confidence which at once secured his success. In two
years he was able to take his wife on a six months' holiday to Europe
via Australia, but of the details of that holiday no one knew. It is,
however, on record that ten or twelve years ago Dornton Hall, which had
been leased or unoccupied for a long time, was refitted for the heiress,
her husband, and their children during a brief occupancy, and that
in that period extensive repairs were made to the interior of the
old Norman church, and much attention given to the redecoration and
restoration of its ancient tombs.