On the following Monday Dr. Morgan’s shabby man-servant opened the door to a young man in whom he did not at first remember a former visitor. A few days before, embrowned with healthful travel, serene light in his eye, simple trust on his careless lip, Leonard Fairfield had stood at that threshold. Now again he stood there, pale and haggard, with a cheek already hollowed into those deep anxious lines that speak of working thoughts and sleepless nights; and a settled sullen gloom resting heavily on his whole aspect.
“I call by appointment,” said the boy, testily, as the servant stood irresolute. The man gave way. “Master is just gone out to a patient: please to wait, sir;” and he showed him into the little parlour. In a few moments, two other patients were admitted. These were women, and they began talking very loud. They disturbed Leonard’s unsocial thoughts. He saw that the door into the doctor’s receiving-room was half open, and, ignorant of the etiquette which holds such penetralia as sacred, he walked in to escape from the gossips. He threw himself into the doctor’s own wellworn chair, and muttered to himself, “Why did he tell me to come? What new can he think of for me? And if a favour, should I take it? He has given me the means of bread by work: that is all I have a right to ask from him, from any man,—all I should accept.”
While thus soliloquizing, his eye fell on a letter lying open on the table. He started. He recognized the handwriting,—the same as that of the letter which had inclosed. L50 to his mother,—the letter of his grandparents. He saw his own name: he saw something more,—words that made his heart stand still, and his blood seem like ice in his veins. As he thus stood aghast, a hand was laid on the letter, and a voice, in an angry growl, muttered, “How dare you come into my room, and pe reading my letters? Er-r-r!”
Leonard placed his own hand on the doctor’s firmly, and said, in a fierce tone, “This letter relates to me, belongs to me, crushes me. I have seen enough to know that. I demand to read all,—learn all.”
The doctor looked round, and seeing the door into the waiting-room still open, kicked it to with his foot, and then said, under his breath, “What have you read? Tell me the truth.”
“Two lines only, and I am called—I am called—” Leonard’s frame shook from head to foot, and the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. He could not complete the sentence. It seemed as if an ocean was rolling up through his brain, and roaring in his ears. The doctor saw at a glance that there was physical danger in his state, and hastily and soothingly answered, “Sit down, sit down; calm yourself; you shall know all,—read all; drink this water;” and he poured into a tumbler of the pure liquid a drop or two from a tiny phial.
Leonard obeyed mechanically, for he was no longer able to stand. He closed his eyes, and for a minute or two life seemed to pass from him; then he recovered, and saw the good doctor’s gaze fixed on him with great compassion. He silently stretched forth his hand towards the letter. “Wait a few moments,” said the physician, judiciously, “and hear me meanwhile. It is very unfortunate you should have seen a letter never meant for your eye, and containing allusions to a secret you were never to have known. But if I tell you more, will you promise me, on your word of honour, that you will hold the confidence sacred from Mrs. Fairfield, the Avenels,—from all? I myself am pledged to conceal a secret, which I can only share with you on the same condition.”
“There is nothing,” announced Leonard, indistinctly, and with a bitter smile on his lip,—“nothing, it seems, that I should be proud to boast of. Yes, I promise; the letter, the letter!”
The doctor placed it in Leonard’s right hand, and quietly slipped to the wrist of the left his forefinger and thumb, as physicians are said to do when a victim is stretched on the rack. “Pulse decreasing,” he muttered; “wonderful thing, aconite!” Meanwhile Leonard read as follows, faults in spelling and all:—
DR. MORGAN
SIR,—I received your favur duly, and am glad to hear that the pore
boy is safe and Well. But he has been behaving ill, and ungrateful
to my good son Richard, who is a credit to the whole Famuly and has
made himself a Gentleman and Was very kind and good to the boy, not
knowing who and What he is—God forbid! I don’t want never to see
him again—the boy. Pore John was ill and Restless for days
afterwards. John is a pore cretur now, and has had paralyticks.
And he Talked of nothing but Nora—the boy’s eyes were so like his
Mother’s. I cannot, cannot see the Child of Shame. He can’t cum
here—for our Lord’s sake, sir, don’t ask it—he can’t, so
Respectable as we’ve always been!—and such disgrace! Base
born! base born! Keep him where he is, bind him prentis, I’ll pay
anything for That. You says, sir, he’s clever, and quick at
learning; so did Parson Dale, and wanted him to go to Collidge and
make a Figur,—then all would cum out. It would be my death, sir; I
could not sleep in my grave, sir. Nora, that we were all so proud
of. Sinful creturs that we are! Nora’s good name that we’ve saved,
now gone, gone. And Richard, who is so grand, and who was so fond
of pore, pore Nora! He would not hold up his Head again. Don’t let
him make a Figur in the world; let him be a tradesman, as we were
afore him,—any trade he takes to,—and not cross us no more while
he lives. Then I shall pray for him, and wish him happy. And have
not we had enuff of bringing up children to be above their birth?
Nora, that I used to say was like the first lady o’ the land-oh, but
we were rightly punished! So now, sir, I leave all to you, and will
Pay all you want for the boy. And be sure that the secret’s kept.
For we have never heard from the father, and, at leest, no one knows
that Nora has a living son but I and my daughter Jane, and Parson
Dale and you—and you Two are good Gentlemen—and Jane will keep her
word, and I am old, and shall be in my grave Soon, but I hope it
won’t be while pore John needs me. What could he do without me?
And if that got wind, it would kill me straght, sir. Pore John is a
helpless cretur, God bless him. So no more from your servant in all
dooty,
M. AVENEL.
Leonard laid down this letter very calmly, and, except by a slight heaving at his breast, and a deathlike whiteness of his lips, the emotions he felt were undetected. And it is a proof how much exquisite goodness there was in his heart that the first words he spoke were, “Thank Heaven!”
The doctor did not expect that thanksgiving, and he was so startled that he exclaimed, “For what?”
“I have nothing to pity or excuse in the woman I knew and honoured as a mother. I am not her son—her-” He stopped short.
“No: but don’t be hard on your true mother,—poor Nora!”
Leonard staggered, and then burst into a sudden paroxysm of tears.
“Oh, my own mother! my dead mother! Thou for whom I felt so mysterious a love,—thou from whom I took this poet soul! pardon me, pardon me! Hard on thee! Would that thou wert living yet, that I might comfort thee! What thou must have suffered!”
These words were sobbed forth in broken gasps from the depth of his heart. Then he caught up the letter again, and his thoughts were changed as his eyes fell upon the writer’s shame and fear, as it were, of his very existence. All his native haughtiness returned to him. His crest rose, his tears dried. “Tell her,” he said, with astern, unfaltering voice, “tell Mrs. Avenel that she is obeyed; that I will never seek her roof, never cross her path, never disgrace her wealthy son. But tell her, also, that I will choose my own way in life,—that I will not take from her a bribe for concealment. Tell her that I am nameless, and will yet make a name.”
A name! Was this but an idle boast, or was it one of those flashes of conviction which are never belied, lighting up our future for one lurid instant, and then fading into darkness?
“I do not doubt it, my prave poy,” said Dr. Morgan, growing exceedingly Welsh in his excitement; “and perhaps you may find a father, who—”
“Father! who is he, what is he? He lives, then! But he has deserted me,—he must have betrayed her! I need him not. The law gives me no father.”
The last words were said with a return of bitter anguish: then, in a calmer tone, he resumed, “But I should know who he is—as another one whose path I may not cross.”
Dr. Morgan looked embarrassed, and paused in deliberation. “Nay,” said he, at length, “as you know so much, it is surely best that you should know all.”
The doctor then proceeded to detail, with some circumlocution, what we will here repeat from his account more succinctly.
Nora Avenel, while yet very young, left her native village, or rather the house of Lady Lansinere, by whom she had been educated and brought up, in order to accept the place of companion to a lady in London. One evening she suddenly presented herself at her father’s house, and at the first sight of her mother’s face she fell down insensible. She was carried to bed. Dr. Morgan (then the chief medical practitioner of the town) was sent for. That night Leonard came into the world, and his mother died. She never recovered her senses, never spoke intelligibly from the time she entered the house. “And never, therefore, named your father,” said Dr. Morgan. “We knew not who he was.”
“And how,” cried Leonard, fiercely,—“how have they dared to slander this dead mother? How knew they that I—was—was—was not the child of wedlock?”
“There was no wedding-ring on Nora’s finger, never any rumour of her marriage; her strange and sudden appearance at her father’s house; her emotions on entrance, so unlike those natural to a wife returning to a parent’s home,—these are all the evidence against her. But Mrs. Avenel deemed them strong, and so did I. You have a right to think we judged too harshly,—perhaps we did.”
“And no inquiries were ever made?” said Leonard, mournfully, and after a long silence,—“no inquiries to learn who was the father of the motherless child?”
“Inquiries! Mrs. Avenel would have died first. Your grandmother’s nature is very rigid. Had she come from princes, from Cadwallader himself,” said the Welshman, “she could not more have shrunk from the thought of dishonour. Even over her dead child, the child she had loved the best, she thought but how to save that child’s name and memory from suspicion. There was luckily no servant in the house, only Mark Fairfield and his wife (Nora’s sister): they had arrived the same day on a visit.
“Mrs. Fairfield was nursing her own infant two or three months old; she took charge of you; Nora was buried and the secret kept. None out of the family knew of it but myself and the curate of the town,—Mr. Dale. The day after your birth, Mrs. Fairfield, to prevent discovery, moved to a village at some distance. There her child died; and when she returned to Hazeldean, where her husband was settled, you passed as the son she had lost. Mark, I know, was as a father to you, for he had loved Nora: they had been children together.”
“And she came to London,—London is strong and cruel,” muttered Leonard. “She was friendless and deceived. I see all,—I desire to know no more. This father—he must in deed have been like those whom I have read of in books. To love, to wrong her,—that I can conceive; but then to leave, to abandon; no visit to her grave, no remorse, no search for his own child. Well, well; Mrs. Avenel was right. Let us think of him no more.”
The man-servant knocked at the door, and then put in his head. “Sir, the ladies are getting very impatient, and say they’ll go.”
“Sir,” said Leonard, with a strange calm return to the things about him, “I ask your pardon for taking up your time so long. I go now. I will never mention to my moth—I mean to Mrs. Fairfield—what I have learned, nor to any one. I will work my way somehow. If Mr. Prickett will keep me, I will stay with him at present; but I repeat, I cannot take Mrs. Avenel’s money and be bound apprentice. Sir, you have been good and patient with me,—Heaven reward you.”
The doctor was too moved to answer. He wrung Leonard’s hand, and in another minute the door closed upon the nameless boy. He stood alone in the streets of London; and the sun flashed on him, red and menacing, like the eye of a foe!
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