The solicitor received him with unimpaired graciousness, and was ready with offers of assistance in any plans of his client. All that had to be done about the inheritance was in progress; but as all processes of law are lengthy it would be some little time before Mr. Hillersdon would be in actual possession of his wealth.
“The succession duties will be very heavy,” said Crafton, shaking his head; and Hillersdon felt that in this respect his was a hard case.
“Have you communicated with your friend, Mr. Watson?” the lawyer asked presently.
“No, I forgot to do that.”
“It would be as well that you should look him up at once, and test his memory of the occurrence in the railway station,” suggested Crafton. “His evidence would be very useful in the — most unlikely — contingency of any attempt to upset the will.”
This remark had the effect of a douche of cold water upon Hillersdon.
“You don’t apprehend—” he faltered.
“No, I have not the slightest apprehension. Poor old Milford was an isolated being. If he had any relations I never heard of them. But, as a precautionary measure, I advise you to see your friend.”
“Yes, yes, I will go to him at once,” said Hillersdon feverishly, getting up and making for the door.
“There is no need for hurry. Is there nothing that I can do for you?”
“Nothing. I have been thinking of changing my lodgings — but that can stand over for a few days. I must see Watson — and then I must go down to the country to see my own people. It wouldn’t do for them to hear of my good luck from any one else. I may tell them, I suppose? I am not likely to find myself thrust out of this inheritance after a few weeks’ possession? I am not going to be a kind of Lady Jane Grey among legatees?”
“No, no; there is really no danger. The will is a splendid will. It would be very difficult for any one to attack it, even the nearest blood relation. I have not the slightest fear.”
“Give me your cheque for another five hundred, by way of backing your opinion,” said Hillersdon, still feverishly, and with a shade of fretfulness. He was irritated by the mere suggestion that a will is an instrument that may be impeached.
“With pleasure,” replied Mr. Crafton, ready with his cheque book; “shall I make it a thousand?”
“No, no, a monkey will do. I really don’t want the money, only I like to see you part with it freely. Thanks; good day.”
His hansom was waiting for him. He told the man to drive to the Albany, where he might utilise his call upon Watson by making inquiries about any eligible rooms.
It was early in the day, and Watson was lingering over his breakfast, which had been lengthened out by the skimming of half-a-dozen morning papers. He had not seen Hillersdon for some time, and welcomed him with frank cordiality.
“What have you been doing with yourself all this time?” he asked, as he rang for fresh coffee. “You’ve been moving in Mrs. Champion’s charmed circle, I suppose, and as her orbit ain’t mine we don’t often meet, and now we do meet I can’t compliment you on your appearance. You are looking uncommonly seedy.”
“I have been sleeping badly for the last few nights. That’s my only ailment. Do you remember that evening at Nice when you went to the station with me after the battle of flowers?”
“And when you picked a churlish old fellow from the front of an advancing engine, and to all intents and purposes saved his life? Of course I remember. A curious old man, that. I believe he means to leave you a legacy of some kind. Nineteen pounds nineteen, perhaps, to buy a mourning ring. He was monstrously particular in his inquiries about — your name and parentage, and usual place of abode. He walked half the length of the Avenue de la Gare with me, and he was very much troubled in mind about his umbrella.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“He gave me his card at parting, but I lost the card and forgot the name.”
“And you really believe that I saved his life?”
“I don’t think there’s the slightest doubt about it. The thing was as near as a toucher. I expected to see you killed in an unsuccessful attempt to save him.”
“And you would put as much as that in an affidavit, or say as much in the witness-box?”
“In a dozen affidavits, or in a dozen witness-boxes. But why these questions?”
Hillersdon told him the motive, and the fortune that was at stake.
“Then the legacy comes to two millions?” cried Watson. “By Jove, you are a lucky fellow, and upon my honour you deserve it! You hazarded your life, and what can any man do more than that, and for an unknown traveller. The good Samaritan goes down to posterity on the strength of a little kindly feeling and twopence. You did a great deal more than the Samaritan. Why cannot I pluck a shabby Croesus out of the iron way, or rescue a millionaire from drowning? Why should this one lucky chance come your way and not mine? You were only ten paces in advance of me when the crucial moment came. Well, I won’t grumble at your good fortune. After all, the accession of one’s bosom friend to millions makes one’s self no poorer. Yet there is always a feeling of being reduced to abject poverty when a friend tumbles into unexpected wealth. It will’ take me months to reconcile myself to the idea of you as a millionaire. And now what are you going to do with your life?”
“Enjoy it if I can, having the means of enjoyment given me.”
“All that money can do you can do,” said Watson, with a philosophic air. “You will now have the opportunity of testing the power of wealth, its limitations, its strictly finite nature.”
“I will not moan if I find there are some things gold cannot buy,” said Hillersdon. “There are so many things it can buy which I have been wanting all my life.”
“Well, you are a lucky fellow, and you deserve your luck, because you did a plucky thing without thought or fear of consequences. If you had paused to consider your own peril that old man would have been smashed.”
The servant came in with the coffee, a welcome interruption to Hillersdon, who was tired of being complimented on his pluck. His early breakfast had been only a cup of tea, and he was not sorry to begin again with Watson, who prided himself upon living well, and was a connoisseur of perigord pies and York hams, and took infinite pains to get the freshest eggs and best butter that London could supply.
“Well, you are going to enjoy your life; that is understood. Imprimis, I suppose you will marry?” said Watson, cheerily.
“I told you, I meant to enjoy my life,” answered Hillersdon. “The first element of happiness is liberty. And you suggest that I should start by surrendering it to a wife?”
“Oh, that’s all bosh. A man with a big income does not lose his freedom by taking a wife. In a millionaire’s household a wife is only an ornament. She has neither control nor ascendancy over his existence. You remember what Beckford said of the Venetian nobility at the close of the eighteenth century. Every great man in that enchanting city had his secret tabernacle — a snug little nest in the labyrinth of narrow streets, or in some shadowy bend of a rio, known only to himself and his intimates, where he might live his own life, while his ostensible existence as Grand Seigneur was conducted with regal pomp and publicity in his palace on the Grand Canal. Do you suppose the Venetian nobleman of that golden age was governed by his wife?” Pas si bête.”
“I shall never marry till I can marry the woman I love,” answered Hillersdon.
Watson shrugged his shoulders significantly, and went on with his breakfast. He knew all about Mrs. Champion, and that romantic attachment which had been going on for years, and which seemed as hopeless and almost as unprofitable upon Gerard Hillersdon’s side as Don Quixote’s worship of Dulcinea del Toboso. Watson, who was strictly practical, could not enter into the mind of a man who sacrificed his life for a virtuous woman. He could understand the other thing — life and honour, fortune and good name, flung at the feet of Venus Pandemos. He had seen too much of the influence of base women and ignoble love to doubt the power of evil ov
er the hearts of men. It was the namby-pamby devotion, this lap-dog love, the desire of the moth for the star, in which he could not believe.
Hillersdon left him in time to catch the Exeter express at Waterloo. He had made up his mind that he must no longer keep his own people in ignorance of the change in his fortunes. He had given the hard-worked father and the long-suffering mother too much trouble in the past, and now the hour of compensation mast be no longer delayed. Yes, his father’s church should be restored, and the dear old tumble-down Rectory renovated from garret to cellar without injury to its tumble-downness, which was of all things beautiful — a long, low house, with bow windows bellying out unexpectedly; a house so smothered with banksia roses, myrtle, flowering ash, and wistaria that it was not easy to discover whether its walls were brick or stone, rough-cast or cob.
It was a relief to Gerard Hillersdon to turn his back upon London, to feel that his face was set towards green pastures and summer wo6ds, to see the white fleeces of rural sheep instead of the darklings of the Park, and the frolics of joyous foals in the meadows instead of smart young women bucketting along the Row.
“God made the country and man made the town,” he said to himself, quoting a poet whom his father loved and often quoted.
It was still early in the afternoon when he went in at the open gate of the Rectory garden. The estuary of the Exe lay before him, with crisp wavelets dancing in the sun. His father’s parish was midway between Exeter and Exmouth, a place of quietness and fertile meadows, gardens brimming over with flowers, thatched cottages smothered with roses and honeysuckle, beehives, poultry-yards, and all rustic sights and sounds; a village in which a rector is a kind of king, exercising more influence than parliaments and potentates afar off.
Two girls were playing tennis on the lawn to the right of the long low verandah that screened the drawing-room windows, two glancing figures in white gowns that caught the sunlight. One he knew for his sister Lilian; the other was a stranger.
Lilian faced the carriage-drive by which he approached, recognised him, flung down her racquet with a joyful exclamation, and ran to meet him, heedless of her antagonist.
“I thought you were never coming near us again,” she said, when they had kissed. “Mother has been full of anxieties about you. It was time you came; yes, high time, for you are looking dreadfully ill.”
“Every one seems bent upon telling me that,” he said, with a vexed air.
“You have been ill, I believe, and you never let us know.”
“I am as well as I ever was in my life, and I have not been ill Two or three bad nights seem to have played havoc with my looks.”
“It is the horrid life you lead in London — parties every day and every night; no respite, no repose. I hear of your doings, you see, though you so seldom write to any of us. Miss Vere, who is staying with me, knows all about you.”
“Then Miss Vere possesses all knowledge worth having — from my point of view. I dare say she knows more about me than I know of myself. You shall introduce me to her, after I have seen my mother.”
“You shall see mother without one moment’s waste of time. Poor mother, she has so pined for you. Mother,” called Lilian, addressing her fresh young voice to the verandah, “Mother, come out and be startled and delighted in a breath.”
Gerard and his sister were moving towards the house as she called. A tall matronly figure emerged from the verandah, and a cry of gladness welcomed the prodigal son. In the next minute he was clasped to his mother’s heart.
“My clearest boy.”
“My ever dear mother.”
“I have been so anxious about you, Gerard.”
“Not without cause, dear mother. I was in very low spirits, altogether at odds with fortune a few days ago. But since then I have had a stroke of luck. I have come to tell you good news.”
“You have written another book,” she cried delightfully.
“Better than that.”
“Nothing could be better than that, to my mind.”
“What would you say if a good old man, whom I only saw once in my life, had left me a fortune?”
“I should say it was like a fairy tale.”
“It is like a fairy tale, but I believe it is reality. I believe, because a London solicitor has advanced me a thousand pounds with no better security than my expectations. I have not sold my shadow, and I have not accepted the Peau de chagrin. I am substantially and realistically rich, and I can do anything in the world that money can do to make you and father and Lilian happy for the rest of your lives.”
“You can give me a new racquet,” said his sister. “It is a misery to play with this, and Barbara has the very latest improvement in racquets.”
“‘My mother had a maid called Barbara,’” quoted Gerard, laughing. “Miss Vere is your Barbara, I suppose?”
He went into the drawing-room with his mother, while Lilian ran to apologise to Miss Vere for her sudden desertion. Mother and 6on sat side by side, hand clasped in hand, and Gerard told her the strange history of his altered fortunes. He told her of his debts and of his despair, his utter weariness of life; but he did not tell her that he had contemplated suicide; nor did he fling across her simple thoughts the cloudy mysticism which has become a factor in modem life. He did not tell her of the scene in Jermyn’s chambers, or of his vain endeavours to discover the whereabouts of those chambers; nor did he talk to her of Edith Champion, albeit she had some inkling of that romantic phase of his life.
She was enraptured at the thought of his good fortune, without one selfish consideration of the prosperity it would bring to her. In the midst of her rejoicing she began to talk to him about his health.
“You are not looking well, dearest,” she said earnestly. “To those who love you your health is of far more importance than your fortune.”
This harping on an unpleasant strain irritated him. This was the third time within the day that he had been told he looked ill.
“You women are all morbid,” he said. “You poison your lives with unrealised apprehensions. If any one gave you the Koh-i-noor you would make yourselves miserable by the suspicion that it was only a bit of glass. You would want to break it up in order to be sure of its value. Suppose I have a headache — suppose I have had two or three bad nights, and am looking haggard and pale, what is that against two millions?”
“Two millions! Oh, Gerard, is your fortune anything like that?” asked his mother, in an awe-stricken voice.
“I am told that it is very much like that.”
“It sounds like a dream. There is something awful in the idea of such wealth in the possession of one young man. And oh, Gerard, think of the thousands and tens of thousands who are almost starving.”
“I suppose everybody will tell me that,” exclaimed her son irritably. “Why should I think of the starving thousands? Why, just because I have the means of enjoying life, am I to make myself miserable by brooding upon the miseries of others? If it comes to that a man ought never to be happy while there is a single ill-used cab-horse in the world. Just think of all the horses in London and Paris that are underfed and overdriven, and have galled shoulders and cracked heels. There is madness in it. Think of the ill-treated children, the little children, the gutter-martyrs, whose lives are a burden. If we are to think of these things our choicest luxuries, our most exalted pleasures, must turn to gall and wormwood. For every pair of happy lovers there are women in degradation and despair, and men whose lightest touch is defilement. If we stop to consider how this world we live in — so full of exquisite beauty and eager, joyous life — is just as full of want and misery and crime, the sharp anguish of physical pain, and the dull agony of patient, joyless lives, there can be no such thing as pleasure. We must not give way to pity, mother. Since we cannot heal all these gaping wounds — since there is no possible panacea for the sufferings of a universe, we must narrow our thoughts and hopes to the limits of home and family, and say ‘Kismet, Allah is good.’ But for you, dearest, fo
r you and all whom you want to help, my wealth shall be as potent as the four-leaved shamrock. You shall be my almoner. You shall find out which among all the never-ending schemes for helping the helpless are really good, and sound, and honest, and I will aid them with open hand.”
“My dear son, I knew your heart was full of pity,” murmured his mother tenderly. —
“Oh, but I don’t want to pity any one. I want you, with your clear, calm mind, to think and act for me. Everybody tells me I am looking haggard and ill, now just when life is worth cherishing. I want to avoid overmuch agitation. Let us talk of happier things. How is the dear governor, or the Rector, as he prefers to be called?”
“He has not been very well of late. Last winter tried him severely.”
“He must spend next winter at San Remo or Sorrento. It will be only for you both to choose your locality.”
“And I may see Italy before I die,” gasped the Rector’s wife, whose peregrinations hitherto had rarely gone beyond Boscastle on the one side and Bath on the other, with a fortnight in London once in two years.
“Yes, you shall see all that is fairest in this world,” answered Gerard.
“Your father is spending the day in Exeter. What a delightful surprise for him when he comes home to dinner! But you must not wait for eight o’clock, Gerard. You must have something after your journey. Shall I order a chop, or a grilled chicken?”
“No, dear mother, I am too happy in your company to want such substantial food. I think I saw cups and saucers in the garden, under our favourite tree —
‘And thou in all thy breadth and height
Of foliage, towering sycamore.’”
“Oh, Gerard, it is a tulip-tree. Your father would be dreadfully offended to hear it called a sycamore. Yes, you shall have some tea, dearest.” She rang the bell, and ordered new-laid eggs, hot cakes, a regular Yorkshire tea, to be taken out to the garden. “What happiness to be sitting there with you once again. It is ages since you have been with us, except for just that hurried visit last Christmas.”
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