Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘What can that man — if it is that man who rang the bell — want with her,’ wondered Edward, so deeply moved that he could scarcely go on reading. ‘Is the secret going to be told to-night? Are the cards going to be taken out of my hands?’

  CHAPTER XII. A DISINTERESTED PARENT.

  ‘A PERSON has called to see you, ma’am. He begs to apologise for coming so late, but he has travelled a long way, and will be very thankful if you can see him.’

  This is what the butler had whispered in Mrs. Treverton’s ear, handing her at the same time a card on which there was a name written —

  ‘Colonel Mansfield.’

  At sight of this name Laura rose, whispered her excuse to Mrs. Clare, and glided quietly from the room.

  ‘Where have you left this gentleman?’ she asked the butler.

  ‘I left him in the hall, ma’am. I did not feel sure you would see him.’

  ‘He is related to my family,’ said Laura, faltering a little; ‘I cannot refuse to see him.’

  This brief conversation occurred in the corridor leading from the servants’ hall to the front of the house. A tall man, wrapped in a loose, rough great coat was standing just inside the hall door, while Trimmer’s subordinate, a rustic youth in a dark brown livery, stood at ease near the fireplace, evidently placed there to protect the mansion from any evil designs on the part of the unknown intruder.

  Laura went to the stranger and gave him her hand, without a word. She was very pale, and it was evident the visitor was as unwelcome as he was unexpected.

  ‘You had better come to my study,’ she said. ‘There is a good fire there. Trimmer, take candles to the study, and some wine.’

  ‘I’d rather have brandy,’ said the stranger. ‘I am chilled to the bone. An eight hours’ journey in a cattle truck is enough to freeze the youngest blood. For a man of my age, and with chronic neuralgia, it means martyrdom.’

  ‘I am very sorry,’ murmured Laura, with a look in which compassion struggled against disgust. ‘Come this way. We can talk quietly in my room.’

  She went upstairs, the stranger following close at her heels, to the gallery out of which John Treverton’s study, which was also her own favourite sitting-room, opened. It was the room where she and her husband had met for the first time, two years ago, on just such a night as this. It adjoined the bedroom where John Treverton was now lying. She had no desire that he should be a witness to her interview with this visitor of to-night; but she had a sense of protection in the knowledge that her husband would be within call. Hitherto, on the rare occasions when she had been constrained to meet this man, she had confronted him alone, defenceless; and she had never felt her loneliness so keenly as at those times.

  ‘I ought to have told John the whole truth,’ she said to herself; ‘but how could I — how could I bear to acknowledge — —’

  She glanced backward, with a suppressed shudder, at the man following her. They were at the door of the study by this time. She opened it, and he went in after her and shut the door behind him.

  A fire was burning cheerily on the pretty, bright-looking hearth, antique in its quaint ornamentation, modern in the artistic beauty of its painted tiles and low brass fender. There were candles on the mantelpiece and on the table, where an old-fashioned spirit bottle on a silver tray cheered the soul of the wayfarer. He filled a glass of brandy and drained it without a word.

  He gave a deep sigh of contentment or relief as he set down the glass.

  ‘That’s a little bit better,’ he said, and then he threw off his overcoat and scarf, and planted himself with his back to the fire, and the face which he turned to the light was the face of Mr. Desrolles.

  The man had aged within the last six months. Every line in his face had deepened. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes haggard and bloodshot. The sands of life run fast for a man whose chief nourishment is brandy.

  ‘Well,’ he exclaimed, in a hard, husky voice. ‘You do not welcome me very warmly, my child.’

  ‘I did not expect you.’

  ‘The surprise should be all the pleasanter. Picture to yourself now our meeting, as it would be represented in a novel or a stage play. You would throw your arms wide apart, shriek, and rush to my breast. Do you remember Julia in the “Hunchback”? With what a yell of rapture she flings herself into Master Walter’s arms.’

  ‘Do you remember what Master Walter had been to Julia?’ asked Laura, looking steadily into the haggard eyes, which shifted their gaze as she looked.

  ‘Real life is flat and tame compared with a stage play,’ said Desrolles. ‘For my part I am heartily sick of it.’

  ‘I am sorry to see you looking so ill.’

  ‘I am a perambulating bundle of aches. There is not a muscle in my body that has not its particular pain.’

  ‘Can you find no relief for this complaint? Are there not baths in Germany that might cure you?’

  ‘I understand,’ interrupted Desrolles. ‘You would be glad to bet me out of the way.’

  ‘I should be glad to lessen your suffering. When I last wrote to you I sent you a much larger remittance than I had ever done before, and I told you that I should allow you six hundred a year, to be paid quarterly. I thought that would be enough for all your requirements. I am grieved to hear that you have been obliged to ride in a third-class carriage in cold weather.’

  ‘I have been unlucky,’ answered Desrolles. ‘I have been at Boulogne; a pleasant place, but peopled with knaves. I fell among thieves, and got cleaned out. You must give me fifty or a hundred to-night, and you must not deduct it from your next quarterly payment. You are now a lady of fortune, and could afford to do three times as much as you are doing for me. Why did you not tell me you were married? Pretty treatment that from a daughter.’

  ‘Father,’ exclaimed Laura, looking at him with the same calm gaze, which his shifting eyes had refused to meet just now, ‘do you want me to tell you the truth?’

  ‘Of course. Whatever else do you suppose I want?’

  ‘Even if it seems hard and cruel, as the truth often is?’

  ‘Speak away, girl. My poor old bones have been too long battered about in this world for hard words to break them.’

  ‘How can you ask me for a daughter’s dutiful love?’ asked Laura, in low earnest tones. ‘How can you expect it from me? What of a father’s affection or a father’s care have you ever given to me? What do I know of your life except fraud and mystery? Have you ever approached me except in secret, and as an applicant for money.’

  ‘It’s a true bill,’ ejaculated Desrolles, with a laugh that ended in a groan.

  ‘When I was a little motherless child you gave me to the one true friend of your youth. He took me as his adopted daughter, leaving you dying; as he supposed. Years passed, and you let him believe you dead. For ten years you made no sign. Your daughter, your only child, was being reared in a stranger’s house, and you did not trouble yourself to make one inquiry about her welfare.’

  ‘Not directly. How do you know what measures I may have taken to get information indirectly, without compromising your future. It was for your advantage that I kept myself dark, Laura; it was for your sake that I let my old friend believe me dead. As his adopted daughter your prosperity was assured. What would your life have been with me? To save you I lent myself to a lie.’

  ‘I am sorry for it,’ said Laura, coldly. ‘In my mind all lies are hateful. I cannot conceive that good can ever come of them.’

  ‘In this case good has come of my innocent deception. You are mistress of a fine estate, wife of a husband whom, as I hear, you love.’

  ‘With all my heart and soul.’

  ‘Is it too much to ask for a ray of your sunshine — a little benefit from your large wealth?’

  ‘I will do anything in reason,’ answered Laura, ‘but not even for my own father — had you been all that a father should be to his child — would I stiffer Jasper Treverton’s wealth to be turned to evil uses. You told me that you stood alone in
the world, with no one dependent on you. Surely six hundred a year is an income that should enable you to live in comfort and respectability.

  ‘It will, when I have got myself clear of past liabilities. Remember that until six months ago the help you gave me amounted only to a hundred a year, except when I appealed to you, under the pressure of circumstances, for an extra trifle. A hundred a year in London, to a man in bad health, hardly served to keep the wolf from the door. I had debts to pay. I have been unfortunate in a speculation that promised well.’

  ‘In future you will have no occasion to speculate.

  ‘True,’ said Desrolles, with a sigh, as he filled himself another glass of brandy.

  Laura watched him with a face full of pain. Was this a father she could acknowledge to the husband she loved? Only with deepest shame could she confess leer close kindred with a creature so sunk in degradation.

  Desrolles drank the brandy at a gulp, and then flung himself into the chair by the hearth.

  ‘And pray how long have you been married? he asked.

  Laura’s face crimsoned at the question. It was just the one inquiry calculated to give her acutest pain; for it recalled all that was painful in the circumstances of her marriage.

  ‘We were married on the last day of last year,’ she said.

  ‘You have been a year married, and I only learn the fact to-night from the village gossips, at the inn where I stopped to eat a crust of bread and cheese on my way here.’

  ‘You might have seen the announcement in the Times.’

  ‘I might, but did not. Well, I suppose I surrendered a father’s rights when I gave my child to another man’s keeping; but it seems hard.’

  ‘Why pain yourself and me with useless reproaches. I am prepared to do all that duty can dictate. I am deeply anxious that your future life should be comfortable and respected. Tell me where you intend to live, and how I can best assure your happiness.’

  ‘Happiness!’ cried Desrolles, with a derisive shrug. ‘I have never known that since I was five-and-twenty. Where am I going to live, do you ask? Who knows? Not I, you may be sure. I am a wanderer by habit and inclination. Do you think I am going to shut myself in a speculative builder’s brick and mortar box — a semi-detached villa in Camden Town, or Islington — and live the monotonous life of a respectable annuitant. That kind of vegetation may suit a retired tradesman, who has spent three-fourths of his life behind the same counter. It would be living death to a man with a mind — a man who has travelled and lived among his fellow-men. No, my dear; you must not attempt to limit my movements by the inch-measure of middle-class respectability. Give me my pittance unfettered by conditions of any kind. Let me receive it quarterly from your London agent, and, since you repudiate my claim to your affection, I pledge myself never again to trouble you with my presence after to-night.’

  ‘I do not ask that,’ said Laura, thoughtfully. ‘It is only right that we should see each other sometimes. By the deception which you practised upon my benefactor, you have made it impossible that I should ever own you as my father before the world. Everybody in Hazlehurst believes that my father died when Jasper Treverton adopted me. But, to my husband, at least, I can own the truth: I have shrunk from doing so hitherto, but to-night, while we have been sitting here, I have been thinking that I have acted weakly and foolishly. John Treverton will respect your secret for my sake, and he ought to know it.’

  ‘Stop,’ cried Desrolles, starting to his feet, and speaking in a louder tone than he had used hitherto. ‘I forbid you to breathe a word of me or my business to your husband. When I revealed myself to you I pledged you to secrecy. I insist — —’

  He stopped and stood facing the door-way between the two rooms, staring aghast, horror-stricken, as if he had seen a ghost.

  ‘Great heaven!’ he exclaimed, ‘what brings you here?’

  John Treverton stood in the open doorway, a tall, dark figure, in a long velvet dressing gown. Laura flew to his side.

  ‘Dearest, why did you get up?” she cried.

  ‘How imprudent of you.’

  ‘I heard a voice raised as if threateningly. What has brought this man here — with you.’

  ‘He is the relation about whom you once questioned me, John,’ Laura answered, falteringly. ‘You have not forgotten.’

  ‘This man related to you?’ cried Treverton. ‘This man?’

  ‘Yes. You know each other.’

  ‘We have met before,’ answered Treverton, who had never taken his eyes from the other man’s face. ‘We last met under very painful circumstances. It is a surprise to find a relation of yours in Mr. — —’

  ‘Mansfield,’ interrupted Desrolles. ‘I have chanted the name of Malcolm for Mansfield — a name in my mother’s family — for Laura’s salve. It might be disadvantageous for her to own kindred with a man whom the world has played football with for the last ten years.’

  Desrolles had grown ashy pale since the entrance of Laura’s husband, and the hand with which he poured out his third glass of brandy shook like a leaf.

  ‘Highly considerate on your part, Mr. Mansfield,’ replied John Treverton. ‘May I ask for what reason you have favoured my wife with this late visit?’

  ‘The usual motive that brings a poor relation to a rich man’s house. I want money, and Laura can afford to give it. Why beat about the bush?’

  ‘Why, indeed. Plain dealing will be best in this case. I think, as it is a simple matter of business, you had better let me arrange it with you. Laura, will you leave your kinsman’s claims for me to settle? You may trust me to take a liberal view of his position.’

  ‘I will trust you, dearest, now and always,’ answered his wife, giving him her hand, and then she went to Desrolles, and offered him the same frank hand, looking at him with tender earnestness. ‘Good night,’ she said, ‘and good-bye. I beg you to trust my husband, as I trust him. Believe me, it will be the best for all of us. He will be as ready to recognise your claim as I am, if you will only confide in him. If I have trusted him with my life, cannot you trust him with your secret?’

  ‘Good night,’ said Desrolles, curtly. ‘I haven’t got over my astonishment yet.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘At finding you married.’

  ‘Good night,’ she said again, on the threshold of the door, and then she came back to tell her husband not to fatigue or excite himself. ‘I can only give you a quarter of an hour,’ she said to Desrolles. ‘Pray remember that my husband is an invalid, and ought to be in bed.’

  ‘Go to your school children, dearest,’ said Treverton, smiling at her anxiety. ‘I shall be careful.’

  The door closed behind Laura, and the two men — fellow-lodgers a year ago in Cibber Street — stood face to face with each other.

  ‘So you are John Treverton?’ said Desrolles, wiping his lips with that tremulous hand of his, and looking with a hungry eye at the half empty decanter, looking anywhere rather than straight into the eyes of his fellow-man.

  ‘And you claim relationship with my wife?’

  ‘Nearer, perhaps, than you would care to hear; so near that I have some right to know how you, Jack Chicot, came to be her husband — how it was that you married her a year ago, at which period the lovely and accomplished Madame Chicot, whom I had the honour to know, was still living? Either that charming woman was not your wife, or your marriage with Laura Malcolm is invalid.’

  ‘Laura is my wife, and her marriage as valid as law can make it,’ answered John Treverton. ‘That is enough for you to know. And now be good enough to explain your degree of kindred with Mrs. Treverton. You say your real name is Malcolm. What was your relationship with Laura’s father?’

  ‘Laura urged me to trust you with my secret,’ muttered Desrolles, throwing himself into his former seat by the fire, and speaking like a man who is calculating the chances of a certain line of policy. ‘Why should I not be frank with you, Jack — Treverton? How much handier the old name comes! Had you been the punctilious p
iece of respectability I expected to meet in the heir of my old friend Jasper Treverton, I might have shrunk from telling you a secret that hardly redounds to my credit, from the churchgoer and ratepayer’s point of view. But to you — Jack — the artist and Bohemian, the man who has tumbled on every platform and acted in every show at the world’s fair — to you I may confide my secret without a blush. Come, fill me another glass, like a good fellow; my hand shakes as if I had the scrivener’s palsy. You know the history of Jasper Treverton’s adopted daughter?’

  ‘I have heard it, naturally,’

  ‘You have heard how Treverton, who had quarrelled with his friend Stephen Malcolm, about a foolish love affair, was summoned many years after to that friend’s sick bed — found him dying, as every one supposed — then and there adopted Malcolm’s only child, and carried her off with him, leaving a fifty pound note to comfort his old friend’s last moments and pay the undertaker?’

  ‘Yes, I have heard all this.’

  ‘But not what follows. When a doctor gives a patient up for dead, he is sometimes on the high road to recovery. Stephen Malcolm contrived to cheat the doctor. Perhaps it was the comfort provided by that fifty pound note, perhaps it was the knowledge that his only child’s future was provided for, — anyhow, it seemed as if a burden had been lifted from the sick man’s shoulders, for, from the time Jasper Treverton left him, he mended, got a new lease of life, and went out into the world again — a lonely wayfarer, happy in the knowledge that his daughter’s fate was no longer allied with his, that whatever evil might befall him her lines were set in pleasant places.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that Stephen Malcolm recovered — lived for years — and allowed his daughter to suppose herself an orphan, and his friend to believe him dead?’

  ‘To tell the truth would have been to hazard his daughter’s good fortune. As an orphan, and the adopted child of a rich bachelor, her lot was secure. What would it have been if she had been flung back upon her actual father, to share his precarious existence. I considered this, and took the unselfish view of the question. I might have claimed my daughter back; I might have sponged on Jasper. I did neither — I went my solitary way, along the stony highway of life, uncheered, unloved.’