‘Here is the key, Sir,’ he said.
‘It’s the last time I shall use it,’ said the Colonel, holding up the key with a smile. ‘It’s strange, strange to think of.’ A horrible gust howled in the chimney, and the house quaked. ‘I wish I could be spared this wind; nevertheless, not my will, but Thine! I’m as full of fancies as a girl,’ he added, opening the box. ‘It’s a poor account of an old soldier, Malcolm; but we all show the white feather towards the end; the lamp burns low, you see, and the blood runs cold. I’ve been in sharp affairs in my day, both on sea and land, and many a time I thought I had come to my last hour; but I never knew our need of a Divine Helper until now. I don’t mind a stand-up fight; but this lying here in the dark brings a man to his marrow-bones.’ He had been turning over the papers during these last words, and now produced a sealed envelope. ‘Aye, here it is,’ he went on. ‘And now, Malcolm, mark what I say. I don’t wish to open up old sores. I once thought of telling you the story; but it would do no good, and things are best as they are. So I take this way. What is in this envelope refers to — to one whom I have not mentioned for some years. I wish you to know that I loved that person as if he had been my own son, born out of my loins. Yet I was hard on him — very hard, and I pray God’s forgiveness.’
Malcolm’s face was streaming with tears. All the time he had known the Colonel stem and gloomy, merely set off his present mood, and rendered it more touching. The bystander, besides confessing present sympathy, accused himself of injustice in the past.
‘No, uncle,’ he cried, ‘you never were hard; you were only too good.’
‘Hush!’ said the old man. ‘This is no time for flattery. I am going where I shall hear the truth plump and plain. I was a hard, proud man; I was hard on my father, I was hard on you, and I was very hard on him. If ever a man needed the merits of Another, here he lies, Malcolm — here he lies. And now, when you see John, you’re to tell him that I forgave him, and asked his forgiveness. Don’t forget the last. And if ever you should be tempted to quarrel with him, or if ever you have it in your power to do him a service and hesitate to do it, or if ever he does you an injury that you can’t forgive, open this envelope, read the letter twice over — twice, mark you — and then down on your knees before your Maker for His guiding Spirit. And remember this, I’ve tried being a hard man, and you see the kind of death-bed it has brought me to; be you easy, Malcolm — mind and be you easy!’
He stopped exhausted, for he had been speaking with some vehemence.
‘But how should I quarrel with John?’ asked Malcolm; ‘or why should he do me an injury?’
‘I don’t very well know; but circumstances are a great thing,’ answered the Colonel, philosophically.
‘Uncle,’ objected Malcolm, ‘you are putting a secret into my life. Let me open the envelope at once, or as soon as — I mean—’
‘As soon as I am dead!’ the Colonel continued for him. ‘I have told you already when you may open it, and I don’t go back from my word. These are my orders, Sir. I always was a peremptory man; of course I know little or nothing about a future state, and speak under correction; but I rather suspect I shall be a very peremptory spirit.’ This with a grim smile. ‘Now you understand. Take away the box, and leave me alone for awhile, like a good fellow.’
In the course of the week the old man’s mind began to wander. He commanded Sepoy regiments with great pluck, and addressed meetings in the school-room on religious topics. He talked much about John; and sometimes returned on the escapades of his own wild youth in a manner that profoundly afflicted and humiliated Malcolm as he watched alone by the bed. Towards the end he was clearer and very composed, said goodbye to everyone about the house, warning them against hardness and pride; and finally surrendered his sword between six and seven o’clock of a black, tempestuous evening, amidst the genuine grief of many who had only feared him while alive.
Malcolm stood over the fire that same night with the sealed envelope in his hand; now he was in a mind to burn it, and be done with all uncertainty; now he had his finger under the flap to tear it open. But it was an act of disloyalty to the dead, from which his sense of honour recoiled. Nor was this sentiment unhelped by circumstances. The candles winked and flickered in the draughts, and peopled the room with moving shadows, which seemed to spy upon him from behind; and the noise of the winds raving round the house in the darkness, chilled his blood and inclined him to superstitious terrors. He did not really imagine that the spirit of the dead Colonel on his Indian war-horse came charging up the approach with every gust; but somehow it struck him as not being a nice sort of evening for the business. And so he put the envelope into a casket by itself, locked it, and, venturing forth in all this uproar of the elements, threw the key into the draw-well in the shrubbery.
He felt relieved that very moment. The truth is, he had a shrewd guess of what the secret was, and dreaded nervously to learn that he was right. For some days longer the uncertainty haunted him; but by the end of a month he had practically lived it down, and before he had made all ready for the reception of his wife, the idea only recurred to him as a passing curiosity when he had nothing else to think about.
Chapter VIII first John had to swim very hard for existence; indeed, I scarcely understand how he kept his head above water at all.
But he made friends, and the friends got him on to a newspaper in some subaltern capacity. When that newspaper failed, he found another more readily; and thus, like a man walking on a hillside where every foothold breaks away as he quits it, he went on from journal to journal, as one after another silently expired. I don’t think he ever was connected with one that kept alive above a year.
He had written a large volume of poetry about himself and Mary Rolland and Malcolm, in delicately veiled allusion. I am told it scanned very well, and contained quite a surprising number of invocations to the Deity, and, comparatively speaking, no punctuation. And yet somehow it went against the heart of the publishing interest, and remained in manuscript. John took to being rather cynical and worldly, sneered at poetry, and daresay’d, over public-house tables, that he would turn his attention to politics one of these days, and change the face of Europe.
He lived from hand to mouth; and the hand was not always spotless, which fostered his cynicism. To a man in an abject situation, a good twanging snarl is a sort of moral pinch of snuff, and pulls his nerves together. From quite an early period he looked back with some contempt upon the episode of his departure. The hollow parts of it, the swollen vanity, were apparent at a glance; and he used to laugh at himself, not quite heartily perhaps, when he fell thinking of old days. I don’t think the laugh was quite genuine, because he very often had a glass of something after one of these attacks of solitary merriment. But then, of course, wine and laughter go together by rights.
He heard with sincere affliction of his uncle’s death. A little while after, and the news of Malcolm’s marriage followed. He was in great form that evening, and made some capital hits — above all, when he ‘stood’ the company all round, and in a little humorous speech explained this unusual prodigality. His aunt had died, and in spite of the machinations of his wicked cousin, he was about to lead to the altar a young lady of remarkable attractions and great wealth. He made everybody die with laughing as he described this heroine, and expatiated on his own transports; and when it was done he laughed a very great deal over it himself, although he had preserved his gravity inimitably throughout. So you see John was quite a gay young fellow when he was twenty-one.
When he was well on in his thirties, another newspaper foundered under his feet. He was a confirmed prodigal, and when the pay stopped had not a halfpenny to call his own. He walked home through the Park, with his hands in his pockets, very glad to think that he had no longer any obligation to produce copy, and not much concerned about his empty purse, for he had the true Bohemian feeling — I don’t know whether to call it an incredulity or a faith — about money. He got into conversation with some children (he was always
fond of the young); through them he scraped acquaintance with the nurserymaid; then he fell in tow with an old man covered with sham jewellery, who whiled away some time in a very humorous manner; and finally night began to overtake him without much prospect of dinner. Like the prodigal son, he began to reflect upon his circumstances; and suddenly a thought occurred to him, and he explained, with a laugh, ‘Egad, I’ll go visit my cousins in the country.’
He made up his kit in the course of the next day, and borrowed some money among his penniless acquaintance. It was not enough to carry him to his journey’s end, and he accomplished the last score of miles on foot. He was weary, and it was already dark when he reached the iron gate and the approach of lilacs. He drew near the house with more emotion than he had anticipated; his heart beat painfully; and after he had pulled the bell he felt inclined to run away.
Malcolm and his wife were sitting over the fire. She was about some needlework, and he had just given vent to a portentous yawn, when the servant brought in a soiled visiting card.
‘Mr John Falconer,’ read Malcolm. ‘God bless me!’
‘Of all places in the world,’ cried Mary, ‘what should bring him here?’
‘We must see him, of course,’ observed the husband.
‘It is most annoying — after so many years!’ said the wife.
‘Show Mr Falconer in.’
He was not going to be welcomed with much warmth, it would appear. The fact is, both Malcolm and Mary had reasons of their own. On his part, John was recuperating his cynicism on the doorstep; and when he was asked to follow the servant, instead of seeing his cousin come towards him with open arms, he felt as if a leading article were too good for mankind.
When he came to the door of the room, he stopped with a painful impression. The room and the two people seemed unchanged. A gush of regret and love came over him in a moment, and all his hard thoughts melted and disappeared. Nor was he more struck with their unchanged looks than they with the pitiful alteration that had overtaken him in his knotless and arduous existence. They had been preserved in a bottle of Domestic Spirits; he had been blown about with all winds. He was bald, haggard, and lean. And when he dashed forward and caught each of them by a hand, and cried, ‘Malcolm! — Mary! — Malcolm!’ their hearts thawed towards him, and they wrung him by the hand, and made as much of him as if they had been longing for his return.
‘My uncle’s dead?’ he asked, suddenly, as if he had heard some rumour, but desired corroboration.
‘Eighteen years ago last winter,’ answered Malcolm. ‘He died asking your forgiveness.’
‘Eighteen — eighteen years ago!’ John repeated. ‘And my forgiveness! Why, God help us all, is that not strange?’
He looked so dazed and half-crazy that Malcolm tried to alter the tenor of his thoughts; but he stuck to his point.
‘He must have been changed,’ he said; ‘greatly changed. I would give my hand off, now, to have seen him before he died. He was a grand old man, our uncle, Colonel Falconer; God rest his soul, he was a grand old man! And yourselves,’ he added, with a sudden and most engaging change of manner; ‘tell me how happy you are, and exaggerate if you can. You know you’re the only two old friends that I possess in this big world. Tell me about the children, Mary!’
It was long past twelve before Mary retired, and nearer four than three when her lord followed her. And the next day John was domesticated at Grangehead; no one would listen to any talk of limitation; here was a family which had been scattered by an unkind fate, and was now happily reunited.
Chapter IX
There was plenty for John to do. Among these quite idle people another idler seemed rather a busy personage. He addicted himself, from constitutional considerations, to gardening — gardening being taken in its usual amateur sense of digging potatoes for ten minutes in the forenoon, and hanging round all the evening with a straw hat and a watering-pot. He recommended a course of reading for the oldest boy, comprising some slashing Radical works which took Malcolm’s breath away. And with the young children he was always charming. He would sit on a garden seat the whole summer day, smoking a clay pipe and telling them stories; every now and then it would be, ‘Run away and give Jane my very respectful compliments, and ask her to be so very polite as send me out a glass of beer.’
He had many perplexing ways. It was impossible to guess when he might go to bed or when he might rise. He could not be trusted with the slightest message; he would sometimes insult visitors on controversial topics; and he firmly refused to go to church, which made a great scandal throughout the parish. The most charitable verdict was one by an emphatic middle-aged maiden lady, who had read all sorts of books, from ‘Erechtheus’ to ‘Lothair’, and so acquired a second-hand acquaintance with life. ‘He is quite a literary man, my dear,’ she explained. ‘They are generally rather French in their habits.’
In the meanwhile a great revolution was happening in John’s mind. He no longer looked back with a sneer upon his own heroics: he took them in deadly earnest; he shunned the parapet wall where he had sat with Mary; he had dark, fitful humours, and affected long and solitary walks. Malcolm was sorry to remark these symptoms; poor John was so eccentric!
One day a careless servant let the rope fall into the draw-well. John had always liked clambering and start fits of exercise; he descended the well, and came up with the rope sure enough, but also with a little key sorely rusted. By the look of it, it must have lain for many years on the ledge where his hand had encountered it. Malcolm and he were alone in that cool, damp corner under the laurels and the yew; at the end of a path some way off they could see the sun lying bright and solid on the open; and this increased their grateful sense of shadow.
Malcolm was upset when John showed him the key. ‘This is a very extraordinary providence,’ he said, with some solemnity; ‘this key has not reappeared for nothing. I threw it down on purpose.’
‘Let us throw it in again,’ answered John; and he was preparing to suit the action to the words, when Malcolm caught his arm.
‘No, no; give it me!’ he said. ‘Since it has come back, God’s will be done.’
‘I say,’ said John, sitting down on the edge of the well and folding his arms, ‘this won’t do. It’s true you have a tendency to pious ejaculation, a substitute for a trick you used to have in old days. But that particular form means business. It means “here’s something I don’t like at any possible price, and I decline dealing.” It means “God’s will be done, and in the meantime I’ll do all I can to see that it isn’t.” It means as near as may be “damn it!” Explain yourself.’
‘John, John! I’m afraid you’ve lost all your religion.’
‘Why, as to that, I’m rather afraid I have. But I’m after the key just now. Is it the key of Bluebeard’s cellar, or of the subterranean passage which connects this ruinous pile with the seacoast? You’re looking down in the mouth, man. Throw it into the well, and defy augury.’
‘I feel down in the mouth,’ answered Malcolm. ‘John,’ he added, lowering his voice, ‘do you believe in special providences?’
‘Certainly not,’ answered John.
‘Well, I sometimes do, and this — mark my words — this is one.’
‘This? Which?’ demanded John; ‘the key, or the well? or — or me, perhaps? Am I a special providence? I’ve been a special correspondent often enough.’
‘The whole occurrence,’ answered Malcolm; ‘the — the circumstance. It is providential, John, and it means mischief.’
‘As far as I can find out,’ replied the other, ‘providence generally does.’
‘That is the kind of talk that a man repents when he comes to die,’ observed Malcolm, sententiously.
‘I didn’t mean to shock you. It was merely a criticism of how people use their words. As for the subject itself, I decline jurisdiction. I know nothing of it, and care about as much.’
‘You don’t believe in a providence at all, I fancy.’
‘My God! how
can I — with my life?’ asked John.
‘I can — with mine,’ returned Malcolm, rosily.
John sneered.
‘I have no doubt I could do so too,’ said he, ‘if I had plenty of money and a wife and a litter of children. But then, you see, I haven’t.’
‘I suppose you might have had them if you’d chosen,’ answered Malcolm, pettishly.
‘Well, do you know, I rather suppose I might,’ said John; and he stared the other strangely between the eyes.
‘I shall never understand you, John.’
‘I don’t suppose you ever will.’
And the pair separated; Malcolm went into the house with the key, and it was John’s hour for gardening.
Chapter X
Mary was an admirable Woman, and all that. At the same time she was not altogether a fool. She used to make poetry with John in the days of their engagement; since then she had read the History of England (which is more than the reader can say), a cookery book, a work on crochet, a vast quantity of novels and newspapers, and ‘How! Found Livingstone’, by Mr Stanley. In fact, she was quite literary in her tastes. She had a strong, good head, a quiet and perfectly inflexible character, and no knowledge of the world. She was almost entirely engrossed by maternity; her husband had become the father of her children.
John she regarded somewhat in the light of an under-nursery-maid, who was also a pleasant companion for herself. She unmercifully abused his good-will, and never imagined that she was not conferring favours.
One day she and John were taking care of the two youngest at that seat beside the parapet which John was so careful to avoid when he was alone. Mary settled herself luxuriously in one corner and got her work ready.
‘Now, if we had a book, you might read to me; that would be nice,’ she said.
‘Shall I fetch one?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no; never mind. We can talk, and that’ll do just as well. Charlie, come back; do you hear me? There’s that wretched child on the parapet, John; do take him away.’
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