Sons and Daughters by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER X.

THE marriage followed with little delay, and Mr Thursley’s settlements on his daughter were not illiberal. Gervase paid but little attention to these business preliminaries, except to settle the ten thousand pounds so opportunely but so unsatisfactorily bestowed upon him, upon Madeline; it seemed to him that he had nothing to do with the matter. The house sold well, and brought him enough for his merely personal needs, and it was a kind of relief to his mind that the equivocal ten thousand did not, so to speak, soil his own fingers at all, but went at once to Madeline—which was a fantastical consolation, since, of course, their produce formed a large part of the income upon which the young pair had to live. They set themselves up in a pretty old-fashioned house, happily discovered in a ramble, and bearing a dilapidated aspect which delighted both. They made of it a paradise, according to their enlightened notions, too enlightened to be altogether in bondage to Liberty and Burnet, yet using these pioneers of art judiciously, and finding a great deal of entertainment in the old furniture shops through which they made many raids, scorning the recognised artists in that particular, the Gillows, and the Jacksons and Grahams, as is the manner of their kind. Even Gervase, it must be allowed, got a great deal of entertainment out of the furnishing, notwithstanding the various cares which lay upon his heart.

He had made all possible inquiries, it need scarcely be said, at once at the bank to endeavour to trace the money—but in vain; and he had set on foot all the researches that were practicable to find some trace of his father. But it would seem, though it is a theory rather against modern notions, that it is more easy for a man to disappear than for the most experienced pursuers to find him. He was asked for over half America, which is a big word; he was sought in Australia; the foreign baths and watering-places, where it was so very unlikely such a man should go, were ransacked for him: but no trace, not so much as a footprint, anywhere could be found. He had disappeared as criminals often do, and innocent people sometimes, and after a long period of ineffectual exertions, the pursuit was given up. Whether Gilbert, the man left in charge of the house, knew anything, Gervase never could find out; but if he did, he was proof against all inducements to speak, and never betrayed his old master.

And the young people settled down, far from the excitements and cares of that business life which Gervase had evaded so successfully, in what is perhaps the most enjoyable of all the ordinary paths of modern existence. All paths of existence are tolerable when people are young and happy and not badly off, though it is not always that these favourites of fortune recognise the fact. Gervase had been one of the most obstinate in his struggle against it, and the most determined to have his own way. Perhaps he considered now that his happiness was owing to the persistence with which he had struggled for his own way. At all events, he had the grace to be very happy, and grumbled no more. He was not indeed a person of literary genius, but he was a man with a subject, which in many cases answers better, as a means of acquiring reputation at least. He had studied very closely, during his forced residence there, the conditions of the West Indian islands. It is a subject of which there are but few qualified exponents. He had seen a great deal of all classes, from the impracticable negro to the demoralised Englishman. Agents, lawyers, all the curious insular community had revealed themselves to him. His experience and his observations were both to be respected, and gave him authority. And he thus acquired rapidly—much more rapidly than had he been a man of genius—a certain recognised position and reputation. He had his subject, in which he was competent to criticise the very first of fine writers, and even with the aid of facts to put him down.

It was some years after these events, and when the young pair had already provided themselves with a sort of a curb upon their wanderings in the shape of a nursery, that they made an expedition in the summer to the Lake country. It was comparatively early in the year, before the time of the tourists had begun, and they had the lakes and dales comparatively to themselves. They were wandering along the side of one of the lesser lakes one evening, when it lay in the ecstasy of sunset and silence, commemorated by the poet of those northern wilds. “Silent as a nun, breathless with adoration.” The hills that clustered round in every imaginable peak and slope, like a hundred fantastic yet sympathetic spectators, were appearing over each other’s shoulders, each in its turn catching the last gleam of the light. Our travellers had been wandering along, lingering over every new combination, pointing out to each other new wonders, over and over again repeated. Finally, as the light began to forsake them, Madeline had gone on a little in advance, while Gervase paused to gather, in a marshy corner close to the lake, a flower which was characteristic of that country and rare in other places. He followed her in about ten minutes, with wet feet, but carrying his flower in triumph. They had passed in the morning a pretty house, half cottage, half villa, near the water, and had remarked its cheerful little lawn, the small protecting shrubbery round, its sheltered position under the lea of a great cliff which protected it from the east and north, and the abundance of flowers everywhere. As Gervase came along the road now, hurrying to overtake Madeline, he saw a burly figure approaching the gate. There was too little light to make the features distinguishable at such a distance, but something in the man’s walk and the outline of his figure made the young man’s heart stop beating. What a strange familiar aspect the passing figure bore! the shape and outline, the way in which he planted his feet, the measure of his step, the coat thrown back a little from his chest. Gervase stood still, and his breath came quick. The man at whom he was gazing ascended soberly to the sloping path round the lawn. The door opened, and two or three children burst out, receiving him with cries of welcome. He took up one, an infant, in his arms, and disappeared within the door.

Gervase had dropped his flower in the shock of this apparition. He found himself standing breathless in the middle of the road, staring blankly at the house within which this stranger had disappeared. He was bewildered, stupefied, and yet excited, he could scarcely tell how. By what?—by nothing that he could put into words: by an impression of something well known, familiar as his own voice, and yet so strange, unexpected, impossible. While he stood thus astonished, undecided, not knowing what to think, the sound of hurrying footsteps filled the silence, and Madeline suddenly appeared running towards him. She put out her hands and grasped his arm. “Gervase, Gervase! did you see him?” she cried.

“Whom? I saw—a man going up to that house.”

“A man! Then you did not see—you did not recognise——” She leant against him, out of breath with haste and agitation.

“Madeline, you don’t think——? There was something in his walk—and his figure.”

“I think nothing—I saw him—he passed me quite close. I saw him as plainly as I see you.”

“Could it be—a mere chance resemblance? Such things are.”

“No—I could not be mistaken. It was your father. I don’t think he noticed me at all. He was looking at the house with the air of a man going home.”

“There were children,” said Gervase.

“He can only be—a visitor.”

At that moment some one above them among the shrubberies came out, and calling apparently from the back of the house towards the stables, bade some one else come in—come in directly; for the master had just come home.

The two on the road looked at each other with wondering eyes. They were both very much excited—a discovery so strange, so unlikely and unlooked for, and surrounded with circumstances so bewildering, confused every sense. They stood for some minutes consulting what they should do. Gervase was so much astounded, so taken aback by what he had seen, that he inclined to the supposition of a resemblance. “There were children,” he repeated, blankly. But Madeline had no sort of doubt. After a while they went back to their inn, which was a small and homely one in the bosom of a valley, little frequented by visitors, where the landlady herself cooked their dinners, and came and looked on, kindly urging them to eat, while they consumed it. They asked her who lived in the house close by, and received at once the fullest explanations. “Very quiet folks, but most respectable—the gentleman a deal older than his good lady. No, they’ve not been very long here—four or five years, not more. Very particular about their newspapers and things coming; but just very quiet folks, staying in their own house summer and winter, and seeing no company. She’s just an uncommon nice lady, and very friendly—and will stop for a chat without a bit of pride; but he keeps himself to himself, being a kind of an elderly gentleman.”

“Do you know his name?” Madeline asked; for Gervase in his bewilderment was scarcely capable of speech.

“Do I know his name?—bless me! you must think us queer folks—as well as I know my own. He’s Mr Burton, and the house is Hillhead. You’ll maybe know the gentleman?”

“I think—my husband knows him,” Madeline said.

To find that there was no concealment,—that the man who had disappeared so strangely was living here in perfect unblemished respectability and security, with no mystery about him, increased in the most curious way the excitement of the discovery. But there arose, at this point, a remarkable difference between the young pair. For Madeline, bewildered by the thought of the unsuspected domestic establishment, did all she could to convince her husband that to go away and take no notice was the kindest and best thing to do. “You can write,” she said. “It would embarrass him to see you. He would have to explain. Gervase, don’t disturb the seclusion he has chosen.” She grew quite warm upon this subject, with an uneasy look in her eyes.

“There is no reason why he should be embarrassed. I am not his judge. But I must see him,” Gervase said. They spent a disturbed and anxious night, so disturbed by the strange discovery, so startled by the circumstances, that neither slept much. And in the morning, notwithstanding Madeline’s opposition, Gervase set out to see the lost father, who had thus reversed all natural circumstances. Hillhead looked brighter than ever in the morning sunshine. The lake lay at the foot of the knoll, like a sheet of silver. Two or three tiny children were playing upon the lawn. As Gervase approached the door, the master of the house came out with a newspaper in his hand and a cigar. He sat down in a wicker chair upon the lawn. He cast a glance upon the lovely landscape and the playing children. The air of a man entirely at his ease, under his own vine and his own fig-tree, was in every movement. Gervase’s step, in his agitation, was very quick and light. Apparently it was not till he was quite near that it was heard by the comfortable paterfamilias with his newspaper. Then one of the children, a little girl of four or five, startled by the sight of the stranger, ran and stood by her father’s knee. “What is it?” Gervase heard him say. And then he looked up from behind the newspaper, and the father and son met. Mr Burton was evidently much startled. He rose hastily from his chair, dropping his paper. A curious tremor seemed to come over his solid well-set-up figure, that of a vigorous man of sixty or so. Men do not blush easily at that age; but there came a wave of hot colour over his face. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then—“Why, Gervase, how have you managed to find me out at the end of the world?” he said, with a nervous attempt at a laugh. Gervase saw, agitated as he himself was, the hurried glance at the children, which made his father look like a prodigal discovered.

He explained hurriedly that it was mere chance which had brought him here, and with great embarrassment, that he had tried every means of discovering his father’s whereabouts for years, but in vain.

“That is strange,” Mr Burton said. He had, in the meantime, reassured himself by seeing that the embarrassment was fully more great on the part of Gervase than on his own. “That is strange: for I have attempted no concealment. I have been living here, as you may have discovered, ever since I—left London.”

“Yes,” said Gervase, “we have heard. I saw you last night, sir, coming home—though too far off to be more than startled by your walk and figure, which I felt I recognised—but Madeline met you in the road.”

“Madeline! To be sure, you are married! I have to congratulate you, Gervase.”

“And I,” said the young man, “have to thank you, father. But for the money you sent me so generously—so opportunely——”

“The money I sent you!”

“That ten thousand pounds——”

“Ten thousand pounds! You must be dreaming. I have not ten thousand pence—more than I require for myself.”

“Then it was not from you?”

“Certainly it was not from me. I thought you provided for with the money you brought from the West Indies—which, as I saw by the papers, you threw away. Certainly after that exploit, if I had been able to spare ten thousand pounds, I should not have sent it to you to make ducks and drakes of.” Mr Burton was too glad of the opportunity to regain a position more befitting their relationship, and Gervase was too much lost in the confusion of his thoughts to say a word; but the prodigal father was suddenly brought down from this brief superiority by the sudden appearance at the door of a pretty young woman, half lady, half housekeeper, who, calling to him as Mr Burton, begged to know whether the meat was coming by the coach, or if the butcher——. She paused when she saw the stranger, and said, “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t see as any one was with you,”—retreating again, though not without a lingering look of curiosity. Again the flush of an unbecoming embarrassment passed over Mr Burton’s face.

“Come here, Mary,” he said. “Gervase, this is my wife. We—we—were married some years before I—left.”

She rubbed her hand surreptitiously with her apron before she held it out. “Will—the gentleman stay to dinner, Mr Burton?” she said.

The eyes of the father and son met. In the one there was an appeal for forbearance, an apology, an entreaty. Do not disturb my peace, they seemed to say. In the other nothing but confusion and bewilderment. Gervase said hastily, “We are going away this morning.” He saw the look of relief in Mr Burton’s eyes with a sympathetic sensation. He, himself, wanted nothing so much as to get away.

Young Mrs Burton lingered a little. She called her children about her—a pretty group—evidently with the intention of showing her husband’s friend, with natural pride, what there was to be said on her side. Mr Burton looked at them with a less justifiable but not less natural pride, not untouched with shame, in his elderly eyes. “That will do, that will do, Mary; take them away,” he cried. Then he said, turning to his son, “I see you agree with me, Gervase, that it’s better not to disturb her mind. She’s a very good wife to me, and takes great care of me—and the children.”

“They are beautiful children,” said Gervase.

“Are they not?” cried the old gentleman, exultant. But he checked himself, and put a few formal questions about his son’s affairs, walking with him towards the gate. “I am very glad to have seen you,” he said—“sincerely glad. You can let me know when anything particular happens. Otherwise don’t trouble about correspondence. And I need not ask you to say nothing about your discovery, nor my present address, nor——”

“You may rely upon me, father.”

“That’s quite enough—that’s quite enough. God bless you, my boy! I am sincerely glad to have seen you—good-bye, good-bye!” Mr Burton said.

Gervase walked back along the lake-side, with a clouded brow and a bewildered mind. He could not think of his father’s strange new position, for thinking of the mystery rediscovered in his own life. If it did not come from Mr Burton, from whom did it come, that ten thousand pounds? He met Madeline about half-way to the inn. She told him she had been too much excited to rest; that she had come to meet him out of pure nervousness. “Tell me all about it,” she said, looking in his face with very bright, feverish, uneasy eyes.

“Madeline,” he said, “my father did not send me that ten thousand pounds.”

“Dear Gervase, is that all you have to tell me? Tell me about him, about her, about those children.”

“If my father did not send it, who did? There is no other question in the world for me till I know this. I must find out. I am going home at once.”

“Let us go by all means; but that is an old affair. Surely now you may let it rest.”

He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her face. “You would not answer so lightly if it were as much a mystery to you as to me. Madeline, at least tell me the truth.”

She freed herself from his hold and from his gaze, with a burst of nervous laughter; then clinging to his arm, and pressing her head against his shoulder, made her confession. “It was the ten thousand pounds my old aunt left me to be at my own disposal—nobody knew but old Mr Mentore, who did not disapprove. You wanted it only to settle it upon me. Gervase, what was the harm?”

“Only that you played a trick upon me, Madeline, when I trusted you so entirely—only that you have deceived me into owing you everything, when I thought——”

“And are you so ungenerous,” she cried, “so formal, so conventional, Gervase—oh, forgive me for saying it—as to mind? Would you rather we had not married, had not loved perhaps, had not been happy—to save your pride?”

It is a fine thing to assume indignation and a high superiority to sublunary motives. Gervase was beaten down by this appeal and reproach. He was in fact a very happy man; and he knew, which was a great solace to that pride which he could not have met otherwise, that he was a very creditable husband. And it was indeed all past, and could not be changed. He did not maintain a grudge for such a cause against his wife.

But it cannot be denied that it gave him many thoughts. This anxious mysterious world in which even the nearest and dearest can thus deceive each other; where thoughts unknown to us go on within the heads that share our very pillow, and secret stories exist in the soberest and most well regulated of lives. What a strange world it is! and how little we know!

THE END.