Towards the afternoon of the following day, an elderly gentleman was
seated in the coffee-room of an hotel at Southampton, engaged in writing
a letter, while the waiter in attendance was employed on the wires
that fettered the petulant spirit contained in a bottle of Schweppe’s
soda-water. There was something in the aspect of the old gentleman, and
in the very tone of his voice, that inspired respect, and the waiter had
cleared the other tables of their latest newspapers to place before
him. He had only just arrived by the packet from Havre, and even the
newspapers had not been to him that primary attraction they generally
constitute to the Englishman returning to his bustling native land,
which, somewhat to his surprise, has contrived to go on tolerably well
during his absence.
We use our privilege of looking over his shoulder while he writes:--
Here I am, then, dear Lady Mary, at Southampton, and within an easy
drive of the old Hall. A file of Galignani’s journals, which I found on
the road between Marseilles and Paris, informed me, under the head of
“fashionable movements,” that Percival St. John, Esquire, was gone to
his seat at Laughton. According to my customary tactics of marching at
once to the seat of action, I therefore made direct for Havre, instead
of crossing from Calais, and I suppose I shall find our young gentleman
engaged in the slaughter of hares and partridges. You see it is a good
sign that he can leave London. Keep up your spirits, my dear friend. If
Perce has been really duped and taken in,--as all you mothers are so apt
to fancy,--rely upon an old soldier to defeat the enemy and expose
the ruse. But if, after all, the girl is such as he describes and
believes,--innocent, artless, and worthy his affection,--oh, then I
range myself, with your own good heart, upon his side. Never will I
run the risk of unsettling a man’s whole character for life by wantonly
interfering with his affections. But there we are agreed.
In a few hours I shall be with our dear boy, and his whole heart
will come out clear and candid as when it beat under his midshipman’s
true-blue. In a day or two I shall make him take me to town, to
introduce me to the whole nest of them. Then I shall report progress.
Adieu, till then! Kind regards to your poor sister. I think we shall
have a mild winter. Not one warning twinge as yet of the old rheumatism.
Ever your devoted old friend and preux chevalier,
H. GREVILLE.
The captain had completed his letter, sipped his soda-water, and was
affixing to his communication his seal, when he heard the rattle of a
post-chaise without. Fancying it was the one he had ordered, he went
to the open window which looked on the street; but the chaise contained
travellers, only halting to change horses. Somewhat to his surprise,
and a little to his chagrin,--for the captain did not count on finding
company at the Hall,--he heard one of the travellers in the chaise ask
the distance to Laughton. The countenance of the questioner was
not familiar to him. But leaving the worthy captain to question the
landlord, without any satisfactory information, and to hasten the chaise
for himself, we accompany the travellers on their way to Laughton. There
were but two,--the proper complement of a post-chaise,--and they were
both of the ruder sex. The elder of the two was a man of middle age, but
whom the wear and tear of active life had evidently advanced towards the
state called elderly. But there was still abundant life in his quick,
dark eye; and that mercurial youthfulness of character which in some
happy constitutions seems to defy years and sorrow, evinced itself in
a rapid play of countenance and as much gesticulation as the narrow
confines of the vehicle and the position of a traveller will permit. The
younger man, far more grave in aspect and quiet in manner, leaned back
in the corner with folded arms, and listened with respectful attention
to his companion.
“Certainly, Dr. Johnson is right,--great happiness in an English
post-chaise properly driven; more exhilarating than a palanquin. ‘Post
equitem sedet atra cura,’--true only of such scrubby hacks as old Horace
could have known. Black Care does not sit behind English posters, eh,
my boy?” As he spoke this, the gentleman had twice let down the glass of
the vehicle, and twice put it up again.
“Yet,” he resumed, without noticing the brief, good-humoured reply of
his companion,--“yet this is an anxious business enough that we are
about. I don’t feel quite easy in my conscience. Poor Braddell’s
injunctions were very strict, and I disobey them. It is on your
responsibility, John!”
“I take it without hesitation. All the motives for so stern a severance
must have ceased, and is it not a sufficient punishment to find in that
hoped-for son a--”
“Poor woman!” interrupted the elder gentleman, in whom we begin to
recognize the soi-disant Mr. Tomkins; “true, indeed, too true. How well
I remember the impression Lucretia Clavering first produced on me; and
to think of her now as a miserable cripple! By Jove, you are right, sir!
Drive on, post-boy, quick, quick!”
There was a short silence.
The elder gentleman abruptly put his hand upon his companion’s arm.
“What consummate acuteness; what patient research you have shown! What
could I have done in this business without you? How often had that
garrulous Mrs. Mivers bored me with Becky Carruthers, and the coral, and
St. Paul’s, and not a suspicion came across me,--a word was sufficient
for you. And then to track this unfeeling old Joplin from place to
place till you find her absolutely a servant under the very roof of Mrs.
Braddell herself! Wonderful! Ah, boy, you will be an honour to the law
and to your country. And what a hard-hearted rascal you must think me to
have deserted you so long.”
“My dear father,” said John Ardworth, tenderly, “your love now
recompenses me for all. And ought I not rather to rejoice not to have
known the tale of a mother’s shame until I could half forget it on a
father’s breast?”
“John,” said the elder Ardworth, with a choking voice, “I ought to wear
sackcloth all my life for having given you such a mother. When I think
what I have suffered from the habit of carelessness in those confounded
money-matters [‘irritamenta malorum,’ indeed!), I have only one
consolation,--that my patient, noble son is free from my vice. You would
not believe what a well-principled, honourable fellow I was at your age;
and yet, how truly I said to my poor friend William Mainwaring one
day at Laughton (I remember it now) ‘Trust me with anything else but
half-a-guinea!’ Why, sir, it was that fault that threw me into low
company,--that brought me in contact with my innkeeper’s daughter at
Limerick. I fell in love, and I married (for, with all my faults, I was
never a seducer, John). I did not own my marriage; why should I?--my
relatives had cut me already. You were born, and, hunted poor devil as
I was, I forgot all by your cradle. Then, in the midst of my troubles,
that ungrateful woman deserted me; then I was led to believe that it was
not my own son whom I had kissed and blessed. Ah, but for that thought
should I have left you as I did? And even in infancy, you had the
features only of your mother. Then, when the death of the adulteress
set me free, and years afterwards, in India, I married again and had
new ties, my heart grew still harder to you. I excused myself by knowing
that at least you were cared for, and trained to good by a better
guide than I. But when, by so strange a hazard, the very priest who
had confessed your mother on her deathbed (she was a Catholic) came
to India, and (for he had known me at Limerick) recognized my altered
person, and obeying his penitent’s last injunctions, assured me that you
were my son,--oh, John, then, believe me, I hastened back to England
on the wings of remorse! Love you, boy! I have left at Madras three
children, young and fair, by a woman now in heaven, who never wronged
me, and, by my soul, John Ardworth, you are dearer to me than all!”
The father’s head drooped on his son’s breast as he spoke; then, dashing
away his tears, he resumed,--
“Ah, why would not Braddell permit me, as I proposed, to find for his
son the same guardianship as that to which I intrusted my own? But his
bigotry besotted him; a clergyman of the High Church,--that was worse
than an atheist. I had no choice left to me but the roof of that
she-hypocrite. Yet I ought to have come to England when I heard of
the child’s loss, braved duns and all; but I was money-making,
money-making,--retribution for money-wasting; and--well, it’s no use
repenting! And--and there is the lodge, the park, the old trees! Poor
Sir Miles!”