But still the letter haunted him. “And if,” he said almost audibly,—“if I were the heir to some higher station, why then I might have a heart like idle men; and Helen, beloved Helen—” He paused, sighed, shook his rough head, shaggy with neglected curls, and added: “As if even then I could steal myself into a girl’s good graces! Man’s esteem I may command, though poor; woman’s love could I win, though rich? Pooh! pooh! every wood does not make a Mercury; and faith, the wood I am made of will scarcely cut up into a lover.”
Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechanically bent his way towards Brompton, and halted, half-ashamed of himself, at the house where Helen lodged with her aunt. It was a building that stood apart from all the cottages and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down a narrow lane, and enclosed by high, melancholy walls, deep set in which a small door, with the paint blistered and weather-stained, gave unfrequented entrance to the demesne. A woman servant of middle age and starched, puritanical appearance answered the loud ring of the bell, and Ardworth seemed a privileged visitor, for she asked him no question as, with a slight nod and a smileless, stupid expression in a face otherwise comely, she led the way across a paved path, much weed-grown, to the house. That house itself had somewhat of a stern and sad exterior. It was not ancient, yet it looked old from shabbiness and neglect. The vine, loosened from the rusty nails, trailed rankly against the wall, and fell in crawling branches over the ground. The house had once been whitewashed; but the colour, worn off in great patches, distained with damp, struggled here and there with the dingy, chipped bricks beneath. There was no peculiar want of what is called “tenantable repair;” the windows were whole, and doubtless the roof sheltered from the rain. But the woodwork that encased the panes was decayed, and houseleek covered the tiles. Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about the place which chills the visitor, he defines not why. And Ardworth steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up the creaking stairs.
On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted; but the eye, searching round, perceived something stir in the recess of a huge chair set by the fireless hearth. And from amidst a mass of coverings a pale face emerged, and a thin hand waved its welcome to the visitor.
Ardworth approached, pressed the hand, and drew a seat near to the sufferer’s.
“You are better, I hope?” he said cordially, and yet in a tone of more respect than was often perceptible in his deep, blunt voice.
“I am always the same,” was the quiet answer; “come nearer still. Your visits cheer me.”
And as these last words were said, Madame Dalibard raised herself from her recumbent posture and gazed long upon Ardworth’s face of power and front of thought. “You overfatigue yourself, my poor kinsman,” she said, with a certain tenderness; “you look already too old for your young years.”
“That’s no disadvantage at the Bar.”
“Is the Bar your means, or your end?”
“My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession.”
“No, your profession is to rise. John Ardworth,” and the low voice swelled in its volume, “you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this, I love you,—love you almost—almost as a mother. Your fate,” she continued hurriedly, “interests me; your energies inspire me with admiration. Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be, so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live.”
Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment he began, hesitatingly: “I should think too highly of myself if I could really believe that you—”
“Tell me,” interrupted Madame Dalibard,—“we have had many conversations upon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteries of the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outward life and the mechanism of the social world,—tell me, then, and frankly, what do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt to regard the woman who aspires to equal men,—a thing of borrowed phrases and unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do you recognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours, ruled by an experience larger than your own?”
“I think of you,” answered Ardworth, frankly, “as the most remarkable woman I have ever met. Yet—do not be angry—I do not like to yield to the influence which you gain over me when we meet. It disturbs my convictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life so easily after your breath has passed over it.”
“And yet,” said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, “that influence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises on ardent youth. It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets your happy calm. It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which you name ‘convictions.’ Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, because I wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which I possess. In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject my counsels.”
“I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you advised me to assume that gave me an importance I had not before with that old formalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is to your criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, and the greater hold they have taken on the public.”
“Trifles indeed, these,” said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile. “Let them at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your path more pleasant, yet your ascent more rapid.”
Ardworth knit his brows, and his countenance assumed an expression of doubt and curiosity. However, he only replied, with a blunt laugh,—
“You must be wise indeed if you have discovered a royal road to distinction.
‘Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where
Fame’s proud temple shines afar!’
A more sensible exclamation than poets usually preface with their whining ‘Ahs’ and ‘Ohs!’”
“What we are is nothing,” pursued Madame Dalibard; “what we seem is much.”
Ardworth thrust his hands into his pockets and shook his head. The wise woman continued, unheeding his dissent from her premises,—
“Everything you are taught to value has a likeness, and it is that likeness which the world values. Take a man out of the streets, poor and ragged, what will the world do with him? Send him to the workhouse, if not to the jail. Ask a great painter to take that man’s portrait,—rags, squalor, and all,—and kings will bid for the picture. You would thrust the man from your doors, you would place the portrait in your palaces. It is the same with qualities; the portrait is worth more than the truth. What is virtue without character? But a man without virtue may thrive on a character! What is genius without success? But how often you bow to success without genius! John Ardworth, possess yourself of the portraits,—win the character; seize the success.”
“Madame,” exclaimed Ardworth, rudely, “this is horrible!”
“Horrible it may be,” said Madame Dalibard, gently, and feeling, perhaps, that she had gone too far; “but it is the world’s judgment. Seem, then, as well as be. You have virtue, as I believe. Well, wrap yourself in it—in your closet. Go into the world, and earn character. If you have genius, let it comfort you. Rush into the crowd, and get success.”
“Stop!” cried Ardworth; “I recognize you. How could I be so blind? It is you who have written to me, and in the same strain; you have robbed yourself,—you, poor sufferer,—to throw extravagance into these strong hands. And why? What am I to you?” An expression of actual fondness softened Lucretia’s face as she looked up at him and replied: “I will tell you hereafter what you are to me. First, I confess that it is I whose letters have perplexed, perhaps offended you. The sum that I sent I do not miss. I have more,—will ever have more at your command; never fear. Yes, I wish you to go into the world, not as a dependant, but as an equal to the world’s favourites. I wish you to know more of men than mere law-books teach you. I wish you to be in men’s mouths, create a circle that shall talk of young Ardworth; that talk would travel to those who can advance your career. The very possession of money in certain stages of life gives assurance to the manner, gives attraction to the address.”
“But,” said Ardworth, “all this is very well for some favourite of birth and fortune; but for me—Yet speak, and plainly. You throw out hints that I am what I know not, but something less dependent on his nerves and his brain than is plain John Ardworth. What is it you mean?”
Madame Dalibard bent her face over her breast, and rocking herself in her chair, seemed to muse for some moments before she answered.
“When I first came to England, some months ago, I desired naturally to learn all the particulars of my family and kindred, from which my long residence abroad had estranged me. John Walter Ardworth was related to my half-sister; to me he was but a mere connection. However, I knew something of his history, yet I did not know that he had a son. Shortly before I came to England, I learned that one who passed for his son had been brought up by Mr. Fielden, and from Mr. Fielden I have since learned all the grounds for that belief from which you take the name of Ardworth.”
Lucretia paused a moment; and after a glance at the impatient, wondering, and eager countenance that bent intent upon her, she resumed:
“Your reputed father was, you are doubtless aware, of reckless and extravagant habits. He had been put into the army by my uncle, and he entered the profession with the careless buoyancy of his sanguine nature. I remember those days,—that day! Well, to return—where was I?—Walter Ardworth had the folly to entertain strong notions of politics. He dreamed of being a soldier, and yet persuaded himself to be a republican. His notions, so hateful in his profession, got wind; he disguised nothing, he neglected the portraits of things,—appearances. He excited the rancour of his commanding officer; for politics then, more even than now, were implacable ministrants to hate. Occasion presented itself. During the short Peace of Amiens he had been recalled. He had to head a detachment of soldiers against some mob,—in Ireland, I believe; he did not fire on the mob, according to orders,—so, at least, it was said. John Walter Ardworth was tried by a court-martial, and broke! But you know all this, perhaps?”
“My poor father! Only in part; I knew that he had been dismissed the army,—I believed unjustly. He was a soldier, and yet he dared to think for himself and be humane!”
“But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no blessing,—none of that old man’s gold did. Where are they all now,—Dalibard, Susan, and her fair-faced husband,—where? Vernon is in his grave,—but one son of many left! Gabriel Varney lives, it is true, and I! But that gold,—yea, in our hands there was a curse on it! Walter Ardworth had his legacy. His nature was gay; if disgraced in his profession, he found men to pity and praise him,—Fools of Party like himself. He lived joyously, drank or gamed, or lent or borrowed,—what matters the wherefore? He was in debt; he lived at last a wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatching bread where he could, with the bailiffs at his heels. Then, for a short time, we met again.”
Lucretia’s brow grew black as night as her voice dropped at that last sentence, and it was with a start that she continued,—
“In the midst of this hunted existence, Walter Ardworth appeared, late one night, at Mr. Fielden’s with an infant. He seemed—so says Mr. Fielden—ill, worn, and haggard. He entered into no explanations with respect to the child that accompanied him, and retired at once to rest. What follows, Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down. Read, and see what claim you have to the honourable parentage so vaguely ascribed to you.”
As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, drew forth a paper in Fielden’s writing, and placed it in Ardworth’s hand. After some preliminary statement of the writer’s intimacy with the elder Ardworth, and the appearance of the latter at his house, as related by Madame Dalibard, etc., the document went on thus:—
The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my servant Hannah came to advise me that two persons were without, waiting to see me. As is my wont, I bade them be shown in. On their entrance (two rough, farmer-looking men they were, who I thought might be coming to hire my little pasture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman was just overhead. Whereupon, and without saying a word further, the two strangers made a rush from the room, leaving me dumb with amazement; in a few moments I heard voices and a scuffle above. I recovered myself, and thinking robbers had entered my peaceful house, I called out lustily, when Hannah came in, and we both, taking courage, went upstairs, and found that poor Walter was in the hands of these supposed robbers, who in truth were but bailiffs. They would not trust him out of their sight for a moment. However, he took it more pleasantly than I could have supposed possible; prayed me in a whisper to take care of the child, and I should soon hear from him again. In less than an hour he was gone. Two days afterwards I received from him a hurried letter, without address, of which this is a copy:—
DEAR FRIEND,—I slipped from the bailiffs, and here I am in a safe little tavern in sight of the sea! Mother Country is a very bad parent to me! Mother Brownrigg herself could scarcely be worse. I shall work out my passage to some foreign land, and if I can recover my health (sea-air is bracing), I don’t despair of getting my bread honestly, somehow. If ever I can pay my debts, I may return. But, meanwhile, my good old tutor, what will you think of me? You to whom my sole return for so much pains, taken in vain, is another mouth to feed! And no money to pay for the board! Yet you’ll not grudge the child a place at your table, will you? No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden either,—God bless her tender, economical soul! You know quite enough of me to be sure that I shall very soon either free you of the boy, or send you something to prevent its being an encumbrance. I would say, love and pity the child for my sake. But I own I feel—-By Jove, I must be off; I hear the first signal from the vessel that—
Yours in haste, J. W. A.
Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily. There seemed to him in this letter worse than a mock gayety,—a certain levity and recklessness which jarred on his own high principles. And the want of affection for the child thus abandoned was evident,—not one fond word. He resumed the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention.
This was all I heard from my poor, erring Walter for more than three years; but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his heart was sound at bottom (the son’s eyes brightened here, and he kissed the paper), and the child was no burden to us; we loved it, not only for Ardworth’s sake, but for its own, and for charity’s and Christ’s. Ardworth’s second letter was as follows:—
En iterum Crispinus! I am still alive, and getting on in the world,—ay, and honestly too; I am no longer spending heedlessly; I am saving for my debts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing. First, for my debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally valid, on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds. Repay yourself what the boy has cost. Let him be educated to get his own living,—if clever, as a scholar or a lawyer; if dull, as a tradesman. Whatever I may gain, he will have his own way to make. I ought to tell you the story connected with his birth; but it is one of pain and shame, and, on reflection, I feel that I have no right to injure him by affixing to his early birth an opprobrium of which he himself is guiltless. If ever I return to England, you shall know all, and by your counsels I will abide. Love to all your happy family. Your grateful FRIEND AND PUPIL. From this letter I began to suspect that the poor boy was probably not born in wedlock, and that Ardworth’s silence arose from his compunction. I conceived it best never to mention this suspicion to John himself as he grew up. Why should I afflict him by a doubt from which his own father shrank, and which might only exist in my own inexperienced and uncharitable interpretation of some vague words? When John was fourteen, I received from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500 pounds, but without any line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that Messrs. Drummond were directed by a correspondent in Calcutta to pay me the said sum on behalf of expenses incurred for the maintenance of the child left to my charge by John Walter Ardworth. My young pupil had been two years at the University when I received the letter of which this is a copy:—
“How are you? Still well, still happy? Let me hope so! I have not written to you, dear old friend, but I have not been forgetful of you; I have inquired of you through my correspondents, and have learned, from time to time, such accounts as satisfied my grateful affection for you. I find that you have given the boy my name. Well, let him bear it,—it is nothing to boast of such as it became in my person; but, mind, I do not, therefore, acknowledge him as my son. I wish him to think himself without parents, without other aid in the career of life than his own industry and talent—if talent he has. Let him go through the healthful probation of toil; let him search for and find independence. Till he is of age, 150 pounds per annum will be paid quarterly to your account for him at Messrs. Drummond’s. If then, to set him up in any business or profession, a sum of money be necessary, name the amount by a line, signed A. B., Calcutta, to the care of Messrs. Drummond, and it will reach and find me disposed to follow your instructions. But after that time all further supply from me will cease. Do not suppose, because I send this from India, that I am laden with rupees; all I can hope to attain is a competence. That boy is not the only one who has claims to share it. Even, therefore, if I had the wish to rear him to the extravagant habits that ruined myself, I have not the power. Yes, let him lean on his own strength. In the letter you send me, write fully of your family, your sons, and write as to a man who can perhaps help them in the world, and will be too happy thus in some slight degree to repay all he owes you. You would smile approvingly if you saw me now,—a steady, money-getting man, but still yours as ever.”
“P.S.—Do not let the boy write to me, nor give him this clew to my address.”
On the receipt of this letter, I wrote fully to Ardworth about the excellent promise and conduct of his poor neglected son. I told him truly he was a son any father might be proud of, and rebuked, even to harshness, Walter’s unseemly tone respecting him. One’s child is one’s child, however the father may have wronged the mother. To this letter I never received any answer. When John was of age, and had made himself independent of want by obtaining a college fellowship, I spoke to him about his prospects. I told him that his father, though residing abroad and for some reason keeping himself concealed, had munificently paid hitherto for his maintenance, and would lay down what might be necessary to start him in business, or perhaps place him in the army, but that his father might be better pleased if he could show a love of independence, and henceforth maintain himself. I knew the boy I spoke to! John thought as I did, and I never applied for another donation to the elder Ardworth. The allowance ceased; John since then has maintained himself. I have heard no more from his father, though I have written often to the address he gave me. I begin to fear that he is dead. I once went up to town and saw one of the heads of Messrs. Drummond’s firm, a very polite gentleman, but he could give me no information, except that he obeyed instructions from a correspondent at Calcutta,—one Mr. Macfarren. Whereon I wrote to Mr. Macfarren, and asked him, as I thought very pressingly, to tell me all he knew of poor Ardworth the elder. He answered shortly that he knew of no such person at all, and that A. B. was a French merchant, settled in Calcutta, who had been dead for above two years. I now gave up all hopes of any further intelligence, and was more convinced than ever that I had acted rightly in withholding from poor John my correspondence with his father. The lad had been curious and inquisitive naturally; but when I told him that I thought it my duty to his father to be so reserved, he forebore to press me. I have only to add, first, that by all the inquiries I could make of the surviving members of Walter Ardworth’s family, it seemed their full belief that he had never been married, and therefore I fear we must conclude that he had no legitimate children,—which may account for, though it cannot excuse, his neglect; and secondly, with respect to the sums received on dear John’s account, I put them all by, capital and interest, deducting only the expense of his first year at Cambridge (the which I could not defray without injuring my own children), and it all stands in his name at Messrs. Drummond’s, vested in the Three per Cents. That I have not told him of this was by my poor dear wife’s advice; for she said, very sensibly,—and she was a shrewd woman on money matters,—“If he knows he has such a large sum all in the lump, who knows but he may grow idle and extravagant, and spend it at once, like his father before him? Whereas, some time or other he will want to marry, or need money for some particular purpose,—then what a blessing it will be!”
However, my dear madam, as you know the world better than I do, you can now do as you please, both as to communicating to John all the information herein contained as to his parentage, and as to apprising him of the large sum of which he is lawfully possessed.
MATTHEW FIELDEN.
P.S.—In justice to poor John Ardworth, and to show that whatever whim he may have conceived about his own child, he had still a heart kind enough to remember mine, though Heaven knows I said nothing about them in my letters, my eldest boy received an offer of an excellent place in a West India merchant’s house, and has got on to be chief clerk; and my second son was presented to a living of 117 pounds a year by a gentleman he never heard of. Though I never traced these good acts to Ardworth, from whom else could they come?
Ardworth put down the paper without a word; and Lucretia, who had watched him while he read, was struck with the self-control he evinced when he came to the end of the disclosure. She laid her hand on his and said,—
“Courage! you have lost nothing!”
“Nothing!” said Ardworth, with a bitter smile. “A father’s love and a father’s name,—nothing!”
“But,” exclaimed Lucretia, “is this man your father? Does a father’s heart beat in one line of those hard sentences? No, no; it seems to me probable,—it seems to me almost certain, that you are—” She stopped, and continued, with a calmer accent, “near to my own blood. I am now in England, in London, to prosecute the inquiry built upon that hope. If so, if so, you shall—” Madame Dalibard again stopped abruptly, and there was something terrible in the very exultation of her countenance. She drew a long breath, and resumed, with an evident effort at self-command, “If so, I have a right to the interest I feel for you. Suffer me yet to be silent as to the grounds of my belief, and—and—love me a little in the mean while!”
Her voice trembled, as if with rushing tears, at these last words, and there was almost an agony in the tone in which they were said, and in the gesture of the clasped hands she held out to him.
Much moved (amidst all his mingled emotions at the tale thus made known to him) by the manner and voice of the narrator, Ardworth bent down and kissed the extended hands. Then he rose abruptly, walked to and fro the room, muttering to himself, paused opposite the window, threw it open, as for air, and, indeed, fairly gasped for breath. When he turned round, however, his face was composed, and folding his arms on his large breast with a sudden action, he said aloud, and yet rather to himself than to his listener,—
“What matter, after all, by what name men call our fathers? We ourselves make our own fate! Bastard or noble, not a jot care I. Give me ancestors, I will not disgrace them; raze from my lot even the very name of father, and my sons shall have an ancestor in me!”
As he thus spoke, there was a rough grandeur in his hard face and the strong ease of his powerful form. And while thus standing and thus looking, the door opened, and Varney walked in abruptly.
These two men had met occasionally at Madame Dalibard’s, but no intimacy had been established between them. Varney was formal and distant to Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney. With the instinct of sound, sterling, weighty natures, he detected at once, and disliked heartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow which pervaded Gabriel Varney’s talk and manner,—even the trick of his walk and the cut of his dress. And Ardworth wanted that boyish and beautiful luxuriance of character which belonged to Percival St. John, easy to please and to be pleased, and expanding into the warmth of admiration for all talent and all distinction. For art, if not the highest, Ardworth cared not a straw; it was nothing to him that Varney painted and composed, and ran showily through the jargon of literary babble, or toyed with the puzzles of unsatisfying metaphysics. He saw but a charlatan, and he had not yet learned from experience what strength and what danger lie hid in the boa parading its colours in the sun, and shifting, in the sensual sportiveness of its being, from bough to bough.
Varney halted in the middle of the room as his eye rested first on Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. But Ardworth, jarred from his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his ear at all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him, scarcely returned Varney’s salutation, buttoned his coat over his chest, seized his hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably disturbing the gravity of a round table, forced his way to Madame Dalibard, pressed her hand, and said in a whisper, “I shall see you again soon,” and vanished.
Varney, smoothing his hair with fingers that shone with rings, slid into the seat next Madame Dalibard, which Ardworth had lately occupied, and said: “If I were a Clytemnestra, I should dread an Orestes in such a son!”
Madame Dalibard shot towards the speaker one of the sidelong, suspicious glances which of old had characterized Lucretia, and said,—
“Clytemnestra was happy! The Furies slept to her crime, and haunted but the avenger.”
“Hist!” said Varney.
The door opened, and Ardworth reappeared.
“I quite forgot what I half came to know. How is Helen? Did she return home safe?”
“Safe—yes!”
“Dear girl, I am glad to hear it! Where is she? Not gone to those Miverses again? I am no aristocrat, but why should one couple together refinement and vulgarity?”
“Mr. Ardworth,” said Madame Dalibard, with haughty coldness, “my niece is under my care, and you will permit me to judge for myself how to discharge the trust. Mr. Mivers is her own relation,—a nearer one than you are.”
Not at all abashed by the rebuke, Ardworth said carelessly: “Well, I shall talk to you again on that subject. Meanwhile, pray give my love to her,—Helen, I mean.”
Madame Dalibard half rose in her chair, then sank back again, motioning with her hand to Ardworth to approach. Varney rose and walked to the window, as if sensible that something was about to be said not meant for his ear.
When Ardworth was close to her chair, Madame Dalibard grasped his hand with a vigour that surprised him, and drawing him nearer still, whispered as he bent down,—
“I will give Helen your love, if it is a cousin’s, or, if you will, a brother’s love. Do you intend—do you feel—an other, a warmer love? Speak, sir!” and drawing suddenly back, she gazed on his face with a stern and menacing expression, her teeth set, and the lips firmly pressed together.
Ardworth, though a little startled, and half angry, answered with the low, ironical laugh not uncommon to him, “Pish! you ladies are apt to think us men much greater fools than we are. A briefless lawyer is not very inflammable tinder. Yes, a cousin’s love,—quite enough. Poor little Helen! time enough to put other notions into her head; and then—she will have a sweetheart, gay and handsome like herself!”
“Ay,” said Madame Dalibard, with a slight smile, “ay, I am satisfied. Come soon.”
Ardworth nodded, and hurried down the stairs. As he gained the door, he caught sight of Helen at a distance, bending over a flower-bed in the neglected garden. He paused, irresolute, a moment. “No,” he muttered to himself, “no; I am fit company only for myself! A long walk into the fields, and then away with these mists round the Past and Future; the Present at least is mine!”