At noon the next day Beck, restored to his grandeur, was at the helm of
his state; Percival was vainly trying to be amused by the talk of two or
three loungers who did him the honour to smoke a cigar in his rooms; and
John Ardworth sat in his dingy cell in Gray’s Inn, with a pile of law
books on the table, and the daily newspapers carpeting a footstool of
Hansard’s Debates upon the floor,--no unusual combination of studies
amongst the poorer and more ardent students of the law, who often owe
their earliest, nor perhaps their least noble, earnings to employment
in the empire of the Press. By the power of a mind habituated to labour,
and backed by a frame of remarkable strength and endurance, Ardworth
grappled with his arid studies not the less manfully for a night mainly
spent in a printer’s office, and stinted to less than four hours’ actual
sleep. But that sleep was profound and refreshing as a peasant’s. The
nights thus devoted to the Press (he was employed in the sub-editing
of a daily journal), the mornings to the law, he kept distinct the two
separate callings with a stern subdivision of labour which in itself
proved the vigour of his energy and the resolution of his will. Early
compelled to shift for himself and carve out his own way, he had
obtained a small fellowship at the small college in which he had passed
his academic career. Previous to his arrival in London, by contributions
to political periodicals and a high reputation at that noble debating
society in Cambridge which has trained some of the most eminent
of living public men [Amongst those whom the “Union” almost
contemporaneously prepared for public life, and whose distinction has
kept the promise of their youth, we may mention the eminent barristers,
Messrs. Austin and Cockburn; and amongst statesmen, Lord Grey, Mr. C.
Buller, Mr. Charles Villiers, and Mr. Macaulay. Nor ought we to forget
those brilliant competitors for the prizes of the University, Dr.
Kennedy (now head-master of Shrewsbury School) and the late Winthrop M.
Praed.], he had established a name which was immediately useful to him
in obtaining employment on the Press. Like most young men of practical
ability, he was an eager politician. The popular passion of the
day kindled his enthusiasm and stirred the depths of his soul with
magnificent, though exaggerated, hopes in the destiny of his race. He
identified himself with the people; his stout heart beat loud in their
stormy cause. His compositions, if they wanted that knowledge of men,
that subtle comprehension of the true state of parties, that
happy temperance in which the crowning wisdom of statesmen must
consist,--qualities which experience alone can give,--excited
considerable attention by their bold eloquence and hardy logic.
They were suited to the time. But John Ardworth had that solidity of
understanding which betokens more than talent, and which is the usual
substratum of genius. He would not depend alone on the precarious and
often unhonoured toils of polemical literature for that distinction on
which he had fixed his steadfast heart. Patiently he plodded on through
the formal drudgeries of his new profession, lighting up dulness by his
own acute comprehension, weaving complexities into simple system by the
grasp of an intellect inured to generalize, and learning to love even
what was most distasteful, by the sense of difficulty overcome, and the
clearer vision which every step through the mists and up the hill gave
of the land beyond. Of what the superficial are apt to consider genius,
John Ardworth had but little. He had some imagination (for a true
thinker is never without that), but he had a very slight share of fancy.
He did not flirt with the Muses; on the granite of his mind few flowers
could spring. His style, rushing and earnest, admitted at times of a
humour not without delicacy,--though less delicate than forcible and
deep,--but it was little adorned with wit, and still less with poetry.
Yet Ardworth had genius, and genius ample and magnificent. There was
genius in that industrious energy so patient in the conquest of detail,
so triumphant in the perception of results. There was genius in that
kindly sympathy with mankind; genius in that stubborn determination to
succeed; genius in that vivid comprehension of affairs, and the large
interests of the world; genius fed in the labours of the closet, and
evinced the instant he was brought into contact with men,--evinced
in readiness of thought, grasp of memory, even in a rough, imperious
nature, which showed him born to speak strong truths, and in their name
to struggle and command.
Rough was this man often in his exterior, though really gentle and
kind-hearted. John Ardworth had sacrificed to no Graces; he would have
thrown Lord Chesterfield into a fever. Not that he was ever vulgar,
for vulgarity implies affectation of refinement; but he talked loud and
laughed loud if the whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with a
boyish heartiness of glee if he discomfited an adversary in argument.
Or, sometimes, he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer briefly
and boorishly those who interrupted him. Young men were mostly afraid of
him, though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples. Old
men censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas.
Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into
character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strange
failings, too, had John Ardworth,--some of the usual vagaries and
contradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious.
For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but
bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up
some allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a
self-saturnalia,--would stride off with old college friends to an inn
in one of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, “a day of
blessed debauch!” Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was,
consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps,
and an extra bottle or two of fiery port. Sometimes this jollity,
which was always loud and uproarious, found its scene in one of the
cider-cellars or midnight taverns; but Ardworth’s labours on the Press
made that latter dissipation extremely rare. These relaxations were
always succeeded by a mien more than usually grave, a manner more than
usually curt and ungracious, an application more than ever rigorous
and intense. John Ardworth was not a good-tempered man, but he was the
best-natured man that ever breathed. He was, like all ambitious persons,
very much occupied with self; and yet it would have been a ludicrous
misapplication of words to call him selfish. Even the desire of fame
which absorbed him was but a part of benevolence,--a desire to promote
justice and to serve his kind.
John Ardworth’s shaggy brows were bent over his open volumes when his
clerk entered noiselessly and placed on his table a letter which the
twopenny-postman had just delivered. With an impatient shrug of the
shoulders, Ardworth glanced towards the superscription; but his eye
became earnest and his interest aroused as he recognized the hand.
“Again!” he muttered. “What mystery is this? Who can feel such interest
in my fate?” He broke the seal and read as follows:--
Do you neglect my advice, or have you begun to act upon it? Are you
contented only with the slow process of mechanical application, or will
you make a triumphant effort to abridge your apprenticeship and emerge
at once into fame and power? I repeat that you fritter away your talents
and your opportunities upon this miserable task-work on a journal. I
am impatient for you. Come forward yourself, put your force and your
knowledge into some work of which the world may know the author. Day
after day I am examining into your destiny, and day after day I believe
more and more that you are not fated for the tedious drudgery to which
you doom your youth. I would have you great, but in the senate, not
a wretched casuist at the Bar. Appear in public as an individual
authority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows contemned while
dreaded as the Press. Write for renown. Go into the world, and make
friends. Soften your rugged bearing. Lift yourself above that herd whom
you call “the people.” What if you are born of the noble class! What if
your career is as gentleman, not plebeian Want not for money. Use what
I send you as the young and the well-born should use it; or let it at
least gain you a respite from toils for bread, and support you in your
struggle to emancipate yourself from obscurity into fame.
YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND
A bank-note for 100 pounds dropped from the envelope as Ardworth
silently replaced the letter on the table.
Thrice before had he received communications in the same handwriting,
and much to the same effect. Certainly, to a mind of less strength there
would have been something very unsettling in those vague hints of a
station higher than he owned, of a future at variance with the toilsome
lot he had drawn from the urn; but after a single glance over his lone
position in all its bearings and probable expectations, Ardworth’s
steady sense shook off the slight disturbance such misty vaticinations
had effected. His mother’s family was indeed unknown to him, he was even
ignorant of her maiden name. But that very obscurity seemed unfavourable
to much hope from such a quarter. The connections with the rich and
well-born are seldom left obscure. From his father’s family he had not
one expectation. More had he been moved by exhortation now generally
repeated, but in a previous letter more precisely detailed; namely, to
appeal to the reading public in his acknowledged person, and by some
striking and original work. This idea he had often contemplated and
revolved; but partly the necessity of keeping pace with the many
exigencies of the hour had deterred him, and partly also the conviction
of his sober judgment that a man does himself no good at the Bar even by
the most brilliant distinction gained in discursive fields. He had the
natural yearning of the Restless Genius; and the Patient Genius (higher
power of the two) had suppressed the longing. Still, so far, the
whispers of his correspondent tempted and aroused. But hitherto he had
sought to persuade himself that the communications thus strangely forced
on him arose perhaps from idle motives,--a jest, it might be, of one
of his old college friends, or at best the vain enthusiasm of some more
credulous admirer. But the enclosure now sent to him forbade either of
these suppositions. Who that he knew could afford so costly a jest or
so extravagant a tribute? He was perplexed, and with his perplexity
was mixed a kind of fear. Plain, earnest, unromantic in the common
acceptation of the word, the mystery of this intermeddling with his
fate, this arrogation of the license to spy, the right to counsel, and
the privilege to bestow, gave him the uneasiness the bravest men may
feel at noises in the dark. That day he could apply no more, he could
not settle back to his Law Reports. He took two or three unquiet
turns up and down his smoke-dried cell, then locked up the letter and
enclosure, seized his hat, and strode, with his usual lusty, swinging
strides, into the open air.
But still the letter haunted him. “And if,” he said almost audibly,--“if
I were the heir to some higher station, why then I might have a heart
like idle men; and Helen, beloved Helen--” He paused, sighed, shook his
rough head, shaggy with neglected curls, and added: “As if even then
I could steal myself into a girl’s good graces! Man’s esteem I may
command, though poor; woman’s love could I win, though rich? Pooh! pooh!
every wood does not make a Mercury; and faith, the wood I am made of
will scarcely cut up into a lover.”
Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechanically bent his
way towards Brompton, and halted, half-ashamed of himself, at the house
where Helen lodged with her aunt. It was a building that stood apart
from all the cottages and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down
a narrow lane, and enclosed by high, melancholy walls, deep set in
which a small door, with the paint blistered and weather-stained, gave
unfrequented entrance to the demesne. A woman servant of middle age and
starched, puritanical appearance answered the loud ring of the bell, and
Ardworth seemed a privileged visitor, for she asked him no question as,
with a slight nod and a smileless, stupid expression in a face otherwise
comely, she led the way across a paved path, much weed-grown, to the
house. That house itself had somewhat of a stern and sad exterior. It
was not ancient, yet it looked old from shabbiness and neglect. The
vine, loosened from the rusty nails, trailed rankly against the wall,
and fell in crawling branches over the ground. The house had once been
whitewashed; but the colour, worn off in great patches, distained with
damp, struggled here and there with the dingy, chipped bricks beneath.
There was no peculiar want of what is called “tenantable repair;” the
windows were whole, and doubtless the roof sheltered from the rain. But
the woodwork that encased the panes was decayed, and houseleek covered
the tiles. Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about
the place which chills the visitor, he defines not why. And Ardworth
steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up the
creaking stairs.
On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted; but the eye,
searching round, perceived something stir in the recess of a huge chair
set by the fireless hearth. And from amidst a mass of coverings a pale
face emerged, and a thin hand waved its welcome to the visitor.
Ardworth approached, pressed the hand, and drew a seat near to the
sufferer’s.
“You are better, I hope?” he said cordially, and yet in a tone of more
respect than was often perceptible in his deep, blunt voice.
“I am always the same,” was the quiet answer; “come nearer still. Your
visits cheer me.”
And as these last words were said, Madame Dalibard raised herself from
her recumbent posture and gazed long upon Ardworth’s face of power and
front of thought. “You overfatigue yourself, my poor kinsman,” she said,
with a certain tenderness; “you look already too old for your young
years.”
“That’s no disadvantage at the Bar.”
“Is the Bar your means, or your end?”
“My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession.”
“No, your profession is to rise. John Ardworth,” and the low voice
swelled in its volume, “you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this,
I love you,--love you almost--almost as a mother. Your fate,” she
continued hurriedly, “interests me; your energies inspire me with
admiration. Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be,
so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live.”
Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment
he began, hesitatingly: “I should think too highly of myself if I could
really believe that you--”
“Tell me,” interrupted Madame Dalibard,--“we have had many conversations
upon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteries
of the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outward
life and the mechanism of the social world,--tell me, then, and frankly,
what do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt to
regard the woman who aspires to equal men,--a thing of borrowed phrases
and unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do you
recognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours,
ruled by an experience larger than your own?”
“I think of you,” answered Ardworth, frankly, “as the most remarkable
woman I have ever met. Yet--do not be angry--I do not like to yield
to the influence which you gain over me when we meet. It disturbs my
convictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life so
easily after your breath has passed over it.”
“And yet,” said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, “that
influence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises on
ardent youth. It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets your
happy calm. It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which you
name ‘convictions.’ Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, because
I wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which I
possess. In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject my
counsels.”
“I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you advised me
to assume that gave me an importance I had not before with that old
formalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is to
your criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, and
the greater hold they have taken on the public.”
“Trifles indeed, these,” said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile. “Let
them at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your path
more pleasant, yet your ascent more rapid.”
Ardworth knit his brows, and his countenance assumed an expression of
doubt and curiosity. However, he only replied, with a blunt laugh,--
“You must be wise indeed if you have discovered a royal road to
distinction.
‘Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame’s proud
temple shines afar!’
A more sensible exclamation than poets usually preface with their
whining ‘Ahs’ and ‘Ohs!’”
“What we are is nothing,” pursued Madame Dalibard; “what we seem is
much.”
Ardworth thrust his hands into his pockets and shook his head. The wise
woman continued, unheeding his dissent from her premises,--
“Everything you are taught to value has a likeness, and it is that
likeness which the world values. Take a man out of the streets, poor and
ragged, what will the world do with him? Send him to the workhouse, if
not to the jail. Ask a great painter to take that man’s portrait,--rags,
squalor, and all,--and kings will bid for the picture. You would thrust
the man from your doors, you would place the portrait in your palaces.
It is the same with qualities; the portrait is worth more than the
truth. What is virtue without character? But a man without virtue may
thrive on a character! What is genius without success? But how often you
bow to success without genius! John Ardworth, possess yourself of the
portraits,--win the character; seize the success.”
“Madame,” exclaimed Ardworth, rudely, “this is horrible!”
“Horrible it may be,” said Madame Dalibard, gently, and feeling,
perhaps, that she had gone too far; “but it is the world’s judgment.
Seem, then, as well as be. You have virtue, as I believe. Well, wrap
yourself in it--in your closet. Go into the world, and earn character.
If you have genius, let it comfort you. Rush into the crowd, and get
success.”
“Stop!” cried Ardworth; “I recognize you. How could I be so blind? It
is you who have written to me, and in the same strain; you have robbed
yourself,--you, poor sufferer,--to throw extravagance into these strong
hands. And why? What am I to you?” An expression of actual fondness
softened Lucretia’s face as she looked up at him and replied: “I will
tell you hereafter what you are to me. First, I confess that it is I
whose letters have perplexed, perhaps offended you. The sum that I sent
I do not miss. I have more,--will ever have more at your command; never
fear. Yes, I wish you to go into the world, not as a dependant, but as
an equal to the world’s favourites. I wish you to know more of men than
mere law-books teach you. I wish you to be in men’s mouths, create a
circle that shall talk of young Ardworth; that talk would travel to
those who can advance your career. The very possession of money in
certain stages of life gives assurance to the manner, gives attraction
to the address.”
“But,” said Ardworth, “all this is very well for some favourite of birth
and fortune; but for me--Yet speak, and plainly. You throw out hints
that I am what I know not, but something less dependent on his nerves
and his brain than is plain John Ardworth. What is it you mean?”
Madame Dalibard bent her face over her breast, and rocking herself in
her chair, seemed to muse for some moments before she answered.
“When I first came to England, some months ago, I desired naturally to
learn all the particulars of my family and kindred, from which my long
residence abroad had estranged me. John Walter Ardworth was related
to my half-sister; to me he was but a mere connection. However, I knew
something of his history, yet I did not know that he had a son. Shortly
before I came to England, I learned that one who passed for his son
had been brought up by Mr. Fielden, and from Mr. Fielden I have since
learned all the grounds for that belief from which you take the name of
Ardworth.”
Lucretia paused a moment; and after a glance at the impatient,
wondering, and eager countenance that bent intent upon her, she resumed:
“Your reputed father was, you are doubtless aware, of reckless and
extravagant habits. He had been put into the army by my uncle, and
he entered the profession with the careless buoyancy of his sanguine
nature. I remember those days,--that day! Well, to return--where
was I?--Walter Ardworth had the folly to entertain strong notions of
politics. He dreamed of being a soldier, and yet persuaded himself to
be a republican. His notions, so hateful in his profession, got wind; he
disguised nothing, he neglected the portraits of things,--appearances.
He excited the rancour of his commanding officer; for politics then,
more even than now, were implacable ministrants to hate. Occasion
presented itself. During the short Peace of Amiens he had been recalled.
He had to head a detachment of soldiers against some mob,--in Ireland, I
believe; he did not fire on the mob, according to orders,--so, at least,
it was said. John Walter Ardworth was tried by a court-martial, and
broke! But you know all this, perhaps?”
“My poor father! Only in part; I knew that he had been dismissed the
army,--I believed unjustly. He was a soldier, and yet he dared to think
for himself and be humane!”
“But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no blessing,--none of
that old man’s gold did. Where are they all now,--Dalibard, Susan, and
her fair-faced husband,--where? Vernon is in his grave,--but one son of
many left! Gabriel Varney lives, it is true, and I! But that gold,--yea,
in our hands there was a curse on it! Walter Ardworth had his legacy.
His nature was gay; if disgraced in his profession, he found men to pity
and praise him,--Fools of Party like himself. He lived joyously, drank
or gamed, or lent or borrowed,--what matters the wherefore? He was in
debt; he lived at last a wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatching
bread where he could, with the bailiffs at his heels. Then, for a short
time, we met again.”
Lucretia’s brow grew black as night as her voice dropped at that last
sentence, and it was with a start that she continued,--
“In the midst of this hunted existence, Walter Ardworth appeared, late
one night, at Mr. Fielden’s with an infant. He seemed--so says Mr.
Fielden--ill, worn, and haggard. He entered into no explanations with
respect to the child that accompanied him, and retired at once to rest.
What follows, Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down. Read, and see
what claim you have to the honourable parentage so vaguely ascribed to
you.”
As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, drew forth a
paper in Fielden’s writing, and placed it in Ardworth’s hand. After some
preliminary statement of the writer’s intimacy with the elder Ardworth,
and the appearance of the latter at his house, as related by Madame
Dalibard, etc., the document went on thus:--
The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my servant Hannah
came to advise me that two persons were without, waiting to see me.
As is my wont, I bade them be shown in. On their entrance (two rough,
farmer-looking men they were, who I thought might be coming to hire my
little pasture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman
was just overhead. Whereupon, and without saying a word further, the two
strangers made a rush from the room, leaving me dumb with amazement; in
a few moments I heard voices and a scuffle above. I recovered myself,
and thinking robbers had entered my peaceful house, I called out
lustily, when Hannah came in, and we both, taking courage, went
upstairs, and found that poor Walter was in the hands of these supposed
robbers, who in truth were but bailiffs. They would not trust him out
of their sight for a moment. However, he took it more pleasantly than I
could have supposed possible; prayed me in a whisper to take care of the
child, and I should soon hear from him again. In less than an hour he
was gone. Two days afterwards I received from him a hurried letter,
without address, of which this is a copy:--
DEAR FRIEND,--I slipped from the bailiffs, and here I am in a safe
little tavern in sight of the sea! Mother Country is a very bad parent
to me! Mother Brownrigg herself could scarcely be worse. I shall work
out my passage to some foreign land, and if I can recover my health
(sea-air is bracing), I don’t despair of getting my bread honestly,
somehow. If ever I can pay my debts, I may return. But, meanwhile, my
good old tutor, what will you think of me? You to whom my sole return
for so much pains, taken in vain, is another mouth to feed! And no money
to pay for the board! Yet you’ll not grudge the child a place at your
table, will you? No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden either,--God bless
her tender, economical soul! You know quite enough of me to be sure that
I shall very soon either free you of the boy, or send you something to
prevent its being an encumbrance. I would say, love and pity the child
for my sake. But I own I feel---By Jove, I must be off; I hear the first
signal from the vessel that--
Yours in haste, J. W. A.
Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily. There
seemed to him in this letter worse than a mock gayety,--a certain levity
and recklessness which jarred on his own high principles. And the want
of affection for the child thus abandoned was evident,--not one fond
word. He resumed the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention.
This was all I heard from my poor, erring Walter for more than three
years; but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his heart was sound at
bottom (the son’s eyes brightened here, and he kissed the paper), and
the child was no burden to us; we loved it, not only for Ardworth’s
sake, but for its own, and for charity’s and Christ’s. Ardworth’s second
letter was as follows:--
En iterum Crispinus! I am still alive, and getting on in the world,--ay,
and honestly too; I am no longer spending heedlessly; I am saving for my
debts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing. First,
for my debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally
valid, on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds. Repay yourself what the boy
has cost. Let him be educated to get his own living,--if clever, as a
scholar or a lawyer; if dull, as a tradesman. Whatever I may gain, he
will have his own way to make. I ought to tell you the story connected
with his birth; but it is one of pain and shame, and, on reflection, I
feel that I have no right to injure him by affixing to his early birth
an opprobrium of which he himself is guiltless. If ever I return to
England, you shall know all, and by your counsels I will abide. Love to
all your happy family. Your grateful FRIEND AND PUPIL. From this letter
I began to suspect that the poor boy was probably not born in wedlock,
and that Ardworth’s silence arose from his compunction. I conceived it
best never to mention this suspicion to John himself as he grew up. Why
should I afflict him by a doubt from which his own father shrank,
and which might only exist in my own inexperienced and uncharitable
interpretation of some vague words? When John was fourteen, I received
from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500 pounds, but without any
line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that Messrs. Drummond were
directed by a correspondent in Calcutta to pay me the said sum on behalf
of expenses incurred for the maintenance of the child left to my charge
by John Walter Ardworth. My young pupil had been two years at the
University when I received the letter of which this is a copy:--
“How are you? Still well, still happy? Let me hope so! I have not
written to you, dear old friend, but I have not been forgetful of you;
I have inquired of you through my correspondents, and have learned, from
time to time, such accounts as satisfied my grateful affection for you.
I find that you have given the boy my name. Well, let him bear it,--it
is nothing to boast of such as it became in my person; but, mind, I do
not, therefore, acknowledge him as my son. I wish him to think himself
without parents, without other aid in the career of life than his own
industry and talent--if talent he has. Let him go through the healthful
probation of toil; let him search for and find independence. Till he is
of age, 150 pounds per annum will be paid quarterly to your account for
him at Messrs. Drummond’s. If then, to set him up in any business or
profession, a sum of money be necessary, name the amount by a line,
signed A. B., Calcutta, to the care of Messrs. Drummond, and it will
reach and find me disposed to follow your instructions. But after that
time all further supply from me will cease. Do not suppose, because I
send this from India, that I am laden with rupees; all I can hope to
attain is a competence. That boy is not the only one who has claims
to share it. Even, therefore, if I had the wish to rear him to the
extravagant habits that ruined myself, I have not the power. Yes, let
him lean on his own strength. In the letter you send me, write fully of
your family, your sons, and write as to a man who can perhaps help them
in the world, and will be too happy thus in some slight degree to repay
all he owes you. You would smile approvingly if you saw me now,--a
steady, money-getting man, but still yours as ever.”
“P.S.--Do not let the boy write to me, nor give him this clew to my
address.”
On the receipt of this letter, I wrote fully to Ardworth about the
excellent promise and conduct of his poor neglected son. I told him
truly he was a son any father might be proud of, and rebuked, even to
harshness, Walter’s unseemly tone respecting him. One’s child is one’s
child, however the father may have wronged the mother. To this letter
I never received any answer. When John was of age, and had made himself
independent of want by obtaining a college fellowship, I spoke to him
about his prospects. I told him that his father, though residing abroad
and for some reason keeping himself concealed, had munificently paid
hitherto for his maintenance, and would lay down what might be necessary
to start him in business, or perhaps place him in the army, but that his
father might be better pleased if he could show a love of independence,
and henceforth maintain himself. I knew the boy I spoke to! John
thought as I did, and I never applied for another donation to the elder
Ardworth. The allowance ceased; John since then has maintained himself.
I have heard no more from his father, though I have written often to the
address he gave me. I begin to fear that he is dead. I once went up to
town and saw one of the heads of Messrs. Drummond’s firm, a very polite
gentleman, but he could give me no information, except that he obeyed
instructions from a correspondent at Calcutta,--one Mr. Macfarren.
Whereon I wrote to Mr. Macfarren, and asked him, as I thought very
pressingly, to tell me all he knew of poor Ardworth the elder. He
answered shortly that he knew of no such person at all, and that A. B.
was a French merchant, settled in Calcutta, who had been dead for above
two years. I now gave up all hopes of any further intelligence, and was
more convinced than ever that I had acted rightly in withholding from
poor John my correspondence with his father. The lad had been curious
and inquisitive naturally; but when I told him that I thought it my duty
to his father to be so reserved, he forebore to press me. I have only
to add, first, that by all the inquiries I could make of the surviving
members of Walter Ardworth’s family, it seemed their full belief that
he had never been married, and therefore I fear we must conclude that
he had no legitimate children,--which may account for, though it cannot
excuse, his neglect; and secondly, with respect to the sums received on
dear John’s account, I put them all by, capital and interest, deducting
only the expense of his first year at Cambridge (the which I could not
defray without injuring my own children), and it all stands in his name
at Messrs. Drummond’s, vested in the Three per Cents. That I have not
told him of this was by my poor dear wife’s advice; for she said, very
sensibly,--and she was a shrewd woman on money matters,--“If he knows he
has such a large sum all in the lump, who knows but he may grow idle and
extravagant, and spend it at once, like his father before him? Whereas,
some time or other he will want to marry, or need money for some
particular purpose,--then what a blessing it will be!”
However, my dear madam, as you know the world better than I do, you
can now do as you please, both as to communicating to John all the
information herein contained as to his parentage, and as to apprising
him of the large sum of which he is lawfully possessed.
MATTHEW FIELDEN.
P.S.--In justice to poor John Ardworth, and to show that whatever whim
he may have conceived about his own child, he had still a heart kind
enough to remember mine, though Heaven knows I said nothing about them
in my letters, my eldest boy received an offer of an excellent place in
a West India merchant’s house, and has got on to be chief clerk; and my
second son was presented to a living of 117 pounds a year by a gentleman
he never heard of. Though I never traced these good acts to Ardworth,
from whom else could they come?
Ardworth put down the paper without a word; and Lucretia, who had
watched him while he read, was struck with the self-control he evinced
when he came to the end of the disclosure. She laid her hand on his and
said,--
“Courage! you have lost nothing!”
“Nothing!” said Ardworth, with a bitter smile. “A father’s love and a
father’s name,--nothing!”
“But,” exclaimed Lucretia, “is this man your father? Does a father’s
heart beat in one line of those hard sentences? No, no; it seems to me
probable,--it seems to me almost certain, that you are--” She stopped,
and continued, with a calmer accent, “near to my own blood. I am now in
England, in London, to prosecute the inquiry built upon that hope. If
so, if so, you shall--” Madame Dalibard again stopped abruptly, and
there was something terrible in the very exultation of her countenance.
She drew a long breath, and resumed, with an evident effort at
self-command, “If so, I have a right to the interest I feel for
you. Suffer me yet to be silent as to the grounds of my belief,
and--and--love me a little in the mean while!”
Her voice trembled, as if with rushing tears, at these last words, and
there was almost an agony in the tone in which they were said, and in
the gesture of the clasped hands she held out to him.
Much moved (amidst all his mingled emotions at the tale thus made known
to him) by the manner and voice of the narrator, Ardworth bent down and
kissed the extended hands. Then he rose abruptly, walked to and fro the
room, muttering to himself, paused opposite the window, threw it open,
as for air, and, indeed, fairly gasped for breath. When he turned round,
however, his face was composed, and folding his arms on his large breast
with a sudden action, he said aloud, and yet rather to himself than to
his listener,--
“What matter, after all, by what name men call our fathers? We
ourselves make our own fate! Bastard or noble, not a jot care I. Give me
ancestors, I will not disgrace them; raze from my lot even the very name
of father, and my sons shall have an ancestor in me!”
As he thus spoke, there was a rough grandeur in his hard face and the
strong ease of his powerful form. And while thus standing and thus
looking, the door opened, and Varney walked in abruptly.
These two men had met occasionally at Madame Dalibard’s, but no intimacy
had been established between them. Varney was formal and distant to
Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney. With the instinct
of sound, sterling, weighty natures, he detected at once, and disliked
heartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow which
pervaded Gabriel Varney’s talk and manner,--even the trick of his walk
and the cut of his dress. And Ardworth wanted that boyish and beautiful
luxuriance of character which belonged to Percival St. John, easy to
please and to be pleased, and expanding into the warmth of admiration
for all talent and all distinction. For art, if not the highest,
Ardworth cared not a straw; it was nothing to him that Varney painted
and composed, and ran showily through the jargon of literary babble,
or toyed with the puzzles of unsatisfying metaphysics. He saw but a
charlatan, and he had not yet learned from experience what strength
and what danger lie hid in the boa parading its colours in the sun, and
shifting, in the sensual sportiveness of its being, from bough to bough.
Varney halted in the middle of the room as his eye rested first on
Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. But Ardworth, jarred
from his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his
ear at all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him,
scarcely returned Varney’s salutation, buttoned his coat over his
chest, seized his hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably
disturbing the gravity of a round table, forced his way to Madame
Dalibard, pressed her hand, and said in a whisper, “I shall see you
again soon,” and vanished.
Varney, smoothing his hair with fingers that shone with rings, slid into
the seat next Madame Dalibard, which Ardworth had lately occupied, and
said: “If I were a Clytemnestra, I should dread an Orestes in such a
son!”
Madame Dalibard shot towards the speaker one of the sidelong, suspicious
glances which of old had characterized Lucretia, and said,--
“Clytemnestra was happy! The Furies slept to her crime, and haunted but
the avenger.”
“Hist!” said Varney.
The door opened, and Ardworth reappeared.
“I quite forgot what I half came to know. How is Helen? Did she return
home safe?”
“Safe--yes!”
“Dear girl, I am glad to hear it! Where is she? Not gone to those
Miverses again? I am no aristocrat, but why should one couple together
refinement and vulgarity?”
“Mr. Ardworth,” said Madame Dalibard, with haughty coldness, “my niece
is under my care, and you will permit me to judge for myself how to
discharge the trust. Mr. Mivers is her own relation,--a nearer one than
you are.”
Not at all abashed by the rebuke, Ardworth said carelessly: “Well, I
shall talk to you again on that subject. Meanwhile, pray give my love to
her,--Helen, I mean.”
Madame Dalibard half rose in her chair, then sank back again, motioning
with her hand to Ardworth to approach. Varney rose and walked to the
window, as if sensible that something was about to be said not meant for
his ear.
When Ardworth was close to her chair, Madame Dalibard grasped his
hand with a vigour that surprised him, and drawing him nearer still,
whispered as he bent down,--
“I will give Helen your love, if it is a cousin’s, or, if you will, a
brother’s love. Do you intend--do you feel--an other, a warmer love?
Speak, sir!” and drawing suddenly back, she gazed on his face with
a stern and menacing expression, her teeth set, and the lips firmly
pressed together.
Ardworth, though a little startled, and half angry, answered with the
low, ironical laugh not uncommon to him, “Pish! you ladies are apt to
think us men much greater fools than we are. A briefless lawyer is
not very inflammable tinder. Yes, a cousin’s love,--quite enough.
Poor little Helen! time enough to put other notions into her head; and
then--she will have a sweetheart, gay and handsome like herself!”
“Ay,” said Madame Dalibard, with a slight smile, “ay, I am satisfied.
Come soon.”
Ardworth nodded, and hurried down the stairs. As he gained the door, he
caught sight of Helen at a distance, bending over a flower-bed in the
neglected garden. He paused, irresolute, a moment. “No,” he muttered
to himself, “no; I am fit company only for myself! A long walk into the
fields, and then away with these mists round the Past and Future; the
Present at least is mine!”