MR THURSLEY would have nothing to do with the further steps which Gervase took. He would take no further interest in such a madman. Had he even employed this money, which had been providentially kept out of sight till Mr Burton’s arrangement was made, and of which nobody knew anything—had he embarked in business with it—for there was no doubt now that he had a capacity for business—and made his own of it, and laid the foundations of fortune, and then stepped forward when he was able to afford it, and paid the balance of his father’s debts, the thing might have been permissible enough, and would no doubt have had a very good effect. But to do it now—when instead of having a good effect it would have a bad one, as if Mr Burton had kept back something: whereas it had been the very source of that high appreciation which had made all his creditors his friends, that he had kept back nothing—this was more grievous than words could say. It was Gervase’s money, not his father’s. He had been sent away to make anything he could of that almost lapsed property, with the understanding that anything he recovered should be his own. And it was all settled, as Mr Thursley repeated over and over again—all done—the acquittance signed, the whole matter laid at rest. Why should he interfere, after his father had completed everything? These arguments were repeated over and over—argumentatively, entreatingly, angrily—but without effect. Gervase was not even intelligent at this crisis of his being. He did not seem to understand. He was like a man dazed and stupefied, unable to comprehend anything but one thing, and with his entire mind concentrated on that, whatever any one might say. No argument or reason had any weight with him, not even the tremulous question of Madeline, who made no attempt to hold him back, except by asking—“Do you think, perhaps, my father is right, and that they might think something has been held back?” “What is that to me?” he had replied; “I must do what is honest, whatever they think.” “Oh, Honest!” Mr Thursley cried, with a fierce little laugh of indignation and contempt. As a matter of fact, Gervase did produce an effect which was not good so far as public opinion was concerned. Mr Burton had been almost canonised for his honourable dealing, his openness and frankness, the “every assistance” which he had given to the liquidators, and that certainty, which everybody had, that nothing had been kept back. But it came to pass exactly as Mr Thursley had predicted, when the matter was re-opened. The creditors who had got three-fourths of their debts indeed got the whole, and were so much the better off, and had their mouths closed for evermore. But the world in which Mr Burton and his transactions were known, and which had given him so much credit for keeping nothing back, now discovered to its amazement that something had been kept back, and had all its usual suspicions awakened. And even the creditors scarcely thanked Gervase. He put them in the wrong, making them feel that they had been premature in their applauses. They looked back upon their accounts suspiciously, to see whether old Burton, after all, had not in some way got the better of them.
As for Gervase himself, he was entirely absorbed by this business. He went, indeed, to Madeline for sympathy, and told her all that was happening, and how he was tormented and kept in pain by the innumerable delays and all the vexatious fuss and formality through which he was dragged before his business could be accomplished. The renunciation of all the money, which had indeed been gained by his own exertions, cost him nothing. He did not think of it; but the waiting, the confabulations, the meetings that had to be called, the papers that had to be signed, the special consent on all hands to make the transaction as odious and as tiresome as possible, did affect him, and that most painfully. He was harassed to death during those early summer days, in which London looks its best, and all the crowd of fashion pours in. Madeline, though her society was not that of fashion, yet had, as everybody has, a greater amount of engagements, a quickened current of life during the season, that high tide of English hurry. And though her heart was with the lover, who was no longer a lover, who seemed to have forgotten everything, both in the present and the future, except this one dogged resolve to get rid of his money, and silence at once and for ever all criticism or censure,—yet she was compelled to carry on the routine of her usual life, to go out, to lose herself more or less in the bustle and commotion of the period, and could not be entirely at his command, as he seemed to expect. In short, there fell between them, if not a cloud, yet a mist which veiled each from the other, making Gervase believe that her sympathy had failed, and tormenting Madeline with the thought that his love was no longer what it was, and that she had lost her place in his life. He came to her, but he talked of nothing but his business, of the stage at which he had now arrived, of the prospect there was of coming to a conclusion. And she had so often to hurry on these long explanations, to say “Gervase, I must go. Don’t think me unkind,—I would rather stay with you a thousand times, but I must go.” He would give her a look which she scarcely understood, whether it was reproach or consent. “I know, I know,” he would say, and go off heavily, never looking behind him. This lasted like a fever for weeks: he always absorbed in the business which it was so difficult to get done with; she full of wretched thoughts, thinking she had lost him, not without a feeling that he had lost himself, going on with her gaieties, which was worse. If it had but happened at another time of the year, it would not have been quite so bad; and oh, if Gervase had but stayed at home, if he had but gone into the business, if he had kept everything straight, if it had never happened at all!
There came a time, however, in the middle of June, when all the entertainments were at their height, and Madeline, with a distracted mind, going “everywhere,” so far as her circle extended, doing all her father’s society duties and her own, keeping “in the swim,” as he insisted she should do, was more occupied than ever—when Gervase at last got his business completed. She heard that he had come several times when she could not see him, retreating from the door when she had visitors, or turned away when she was out. To her horror and dismay, several days elapsed thus without a meeting. She felt that at any moment she might receive a letter saying that Gervase had gone away, that he had left England, that she should see him no more. She went and came to her parties, to her engagements, at the highest tension, terrified to see upon the hall-table every time she came in the note which would pronounce this doom. Her little notes to him remained unanswered. She was told by the servants that he had called, but had not remained or left any message. Madeline’s anxiety and trouble had risen to fever-heat. He came on Sunday afternoon at last, but he was scarcely seated when some wretched partner of the night before drifted in to talk about Lady C.’s ball and the great garden-party at Valley House, and the Lord Mayor’s fête at the Mansion House, while Gervase sat silent, taking no share in the vain, exceptionally vain, talk. He departed, with a hasty touch of her hand, and a murmur of “I’ll come again,” when another and another stranger arrived to discourse on the same enthralling subjects. “To-night,” she whispered desperately, not able to contain herself; “to-night—I shall be alone to-night.” What did it matter who heard her? He nodded, she thought, though he did not look at her, and went away, leaving her to the exhilarating task of that talk about society, which is much the same whether your horizon is bounded by the Foreign Office or by the Mansion House. The interval was terrible to her till all those Sunday triflers had departed. She told her father at dinner, fearing lest he might think it his duty to give her his company on the Sunday evening, as he often did, that she expected Gervase. “Oh,” said Mr Thursley, elevating his eyebrows. “I have scarcely seen him,” Madeline said, unable to contain the turmoil of her feelings, “for a week.”
“Oh,” said Mr Thursley again, “the less you see of that madman the better, it appears to me.”
“I hope you don’t believe, papa,” cried Madeline, “that anything that has happened has changed my feelings.”
“I am very sorry to hear,” said Mr Thursley; “it has changed his, I am pretty sure. And if he thinks he is to hook on to you now for a living——”
“You don’t seem to see that you are insulting me as well as Gervase,” she said hastily; then added, in a subdued tone, “I beg your pardon.”
“It’s time, I think; but never mind,” said her father. “I can allow for your feelings, Maddie—distracted by that fellow and his fancies; but mind, I’ll not stand that, whatever he may say now.”
Madeline made no reply. Fathers perhaps will never learn to relinquish that kind of remark. Mr Thursley was as well aware as any one that it was a futile kind of thing to say; but he had been watching his daughter closely, and he thought he saw that Gervase’s conduct had shaken her trust in him. It was as well, perhaps, to throw in a word to help the adverse impression; but he did not attempt to hinder the meeting. He went out himself to one of the houses where there was music or conversation going on on Sunday evening, and left the coast free.
Madeline went up-stairs to the drawing-room with a beating heart. She thought, like her father, that Gervase had thrown off all softer feelings in the shock of family downfall and overthrow. What so likely to stun and paralyse a young man with a strong sense of honour, and with that innate conviction of personal superiority to all rebuffs and slights of fortune which an English youth’s education gives! Poverty would not have hurt him; but this mingling of doubt and mystery and intricate confusing business, the perhaps undeserved applauses of which his father had been the object for his partial just dealing, the certainly undeserved suspicion and blame of which he had himself been the object for completing that justice, the sense of the foundations of the earth shaken, and the ground failing under his feet, which such revelations are apt to bring,—all these things were enough, and more than enough, to upset the fine balance of a mind more delicate than strong. It had never appeared that Gervase was strong. His fastidiousness, and what had appeared, even to Madeline, over-delicacy in respect to the business, augured but little fortitude to resist actual calamity. She had in her own heart, with a pang which there was no possibility of ignoring, come to much the same conclusion as her father, that Gervase’s love had not been robust enough to withstand the change of all his other conditions. She did not, indeed, believe, nor did Mr Thursley believe, that any interested motive would induce Gervase to pretend a sentiment which no longer existed. But she waited with little doubt as to what he would say to her when he came, with a faint hope indeed still flickering at the bottom of her heart, but no expectation that she could feel to be reasonable. He would tell her, she had little doubt, that he was going away to the ends of the earth, perhaps back to the West Indies, perhaps to America, where he had made so many friends.
It was a warm evening, only half dark: the windows were all open, the spacious room scarcely lighted, in a soft twilight fit for the talk of lovers, not very fit, Madeline felt, for the sterner communication which she looked for. She flitted about like a ghost in her white dress, hesitating whether she should not light candles or ring for additional lamps. She was still doubting when Gervase came up-stairs. She could hear him coming up, unaccompanied by any servant, and with a quickened step, which made her heart beat still more quickly. The stillness of the room, the faint light, and her evident solitude, which made her afraid, gave Gervase courage.
“Madeline, you are waiting for me?” he said.
“Surely, Gervase—I hoped—that you were sure to come.”
“You might have known I would come.” He made her sit in the chair where he had throned her so often, and drew a lower one to her feet. “Thank heaven that at last I have you to myself! And thank heaven it is all over and done with, this horrible business that has stood between us!”
“It has stood between us, Gervase.”
“Horribly! but now I feel again my own man,—every penny is paid.”
“And you have nothing, Gervase.”
“I have the house—which of course I must sell, and all that is in it. That will leave me a few thousands better than nothing. Madeline, what will your father say? I do not ask—perhaps I ought—what do you say?”
“Gervase—I thought you had ceased to mind what I thought.”
“Ceased to mind! I never minded so much. If I wanted you before, Maddie, I want you ten thousand times more now. Don’t you understand, how the worst of it all was, that this abominable business absorbed me, enthralled me, so that I could think of nothing else. Now it is over, for ever and ever, thank God. Cease to mind! You never thought that.”
She gave his hand a little pressure, a mute apology, and all the heavy clouds that had been veiling her horizon flew away like mists before the winds.
“But,” he said, pillowing his cheek upon that soft hand, leaning upon her with a sense of indescribable rest and consolation,”—your father? What are we to do? how are we to manage? I see all the difficulties. I grudge you to a poor man as much as he does—but I cannot give you up, Madeline.”
“Nobody asked you,” she said, with a smile. Madeline felt that she would break down altogether if she did not keep up the lighter tone.
“And what will he say to a man who has nothing in the world but a house in Harley Street?” Gervase said. “What am I to say to him? What am I to do?”
“That is the first question,” she said. “What are you to do? The house in Harley Street means—something.”
“I can’t let it out in lodgings, can I, Madeline?—or take boarders: or set up a school—though many men do that.”
“Do you ever think—they say you proved yourself so good a man of business,” said Madeline, with hesitation,—“do you ever think, Gervase, of putting the money—into——”
“Business! I loathe it more than ever,” he cried. “I hate the very name!”
Madeline gave vent to a gentle sigh. “My father would be more pleased with that than anything,” she said. “Everything, I think, might have been smoothed away. He thinks you did so well—in the West Indies, Gervase.”
“Did I do well? fighting against chicanery, dishonesty, fraudulent delays, fictitious excuses, everything that is most abhorrent to an honest man: they think it all fair, that is the worst of it. If they can disgust and sicken you, and make you think that no rights are worth that struggle, then they rejoice. That is their object all the time. A hundred times I was on the eve of throwing up the whole business, crying, Perish your filthy money! and flying to you to save me from cynicism and misanthropy and scorn of every kind.”
“But you did not fly. You stood fast and conquered, Gervase.”
“A poor victory,” he said, shaking his head, “and one only because they roused the worst part of my nature. I don’t know what I might develop into were I to carry on that cursed battle.”
“Gervase!”
“I beg your pardon, my dearest. It isn’t a blessed battle, anyhow. It enlists all one’s worst passions. I began to feel almost that it was a distinction to tell a bigger lie, and cheat worse than my opponent, so long as I got the better of him. If you were not a rich man’s daughter, I think I know what I should do.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“The house would give us so much income, enough for a backbone, something to fall back upon, pay our little rent, and leave something over for you to pay your milliner’s bill, Maddie. Fancy the pleasure of paying for your bonnets! and then—you don’t mean to tell me I could not get something to do—writing, keeping accounts, nay, teaching, if necessary. I should not be in the least afraid. But, my love, you are a rich man’s daughter, and there is an end of it. I have to satisfy your father—and heaven knows how I am to do it.”
“To satisfy him—to a certain point, Gervase. He must not be unreasonable. He has not absolute power, any more than any other authority. I will speak to him.”
“Yes, you must speak to him; but in the first place I must speak. I can’t put it all on you. He must hear what I have to say. He will think, and think rightly, that a man who can’t speak for himself is not worth much. And I know that he will scoff at what I say. He will tell me to go about my business. What can I do to your father, Madeline, to bring him over to our side?”
She shook her head. “There is only one thing I know, Gervase; if you were to go with your little money into business—it does not matter what——”
He made a gesture of despair. “Can a man ever do well what he hates? But I will not say that. I would rather sweep the streets. But if there is nothing else for it, for you, Madeline——”
They were interrupted by the heavy foot of Mr Thursley coming up-stairs.