CHAPTER VII.

THE END OF ALL DELUSIONS.

Mr. Sivewright received the news of his son’s death like a Roman; yet Lucius felt that beneath this semblance of stoicism there lurked keenest pain. With weak human nature’s inconsistency the old man’s memory now slid back to days long gone, before his son had become a scorpion—when the clever bright-faced child had seemed the one star of hope upon a joyless horizon.

‘He was such a promising child,’ Homer Sivewright said to himself, as he sat by the hearth in the panelled parlour, absorbed in gloomy meditation, ‘and I hoped so much from him. How was it that he went astray? Was it innate wickedness, or his mother’s evil teaching?’

One pang was spared him. He did not know that the son he had once so fondly loved had tried to sap the last dregs of his failing life by slow poison. He knew that Ferdinand was a baffled murderer, for he had seen the knife pointed at his own breast by that relentless hand. But he might extenuate even this deadly assault by supposing it to be unpremeditated—a sudden access of ungovernable rage. So he sat by his hearth, and brooded upon days so long vanished that it seemed almost as if they belonged to another life; as if the chief figure in those departed scenes—himself—had been a different person, and had died long ago, so utterly had he outgrown and passed away from the Homer Sivewright of that time. He thought with a new and keen regret of a period that had been sorely troubled, yet not without hope. His busy brain had been full of schemes of self-aggrandisement—the dulness of the present brightened by one perpetual day-dream, the vision of accumulated wealth, which he and his only son were to share. The boy’s good looks and talent had promised success. He seemed born to conquer—to trample on the necks of less-gifted mankind. Delusive dreams—baseless calculations! Between that time and this lay the dark world of memory, peopled with the phantoms of dead hopes.

The old man sighed at the thought that he had outlived the possibility of hope. He was too old to look forward, except beyond the grave; and his eyes, so keen for the business of this world, were yet too dull to pierce the mists that veil Death’s fatal river, and reach the shore that lies upon the other side. What hold had he now upon the things of this earth—toil and profit, and the strong wine of success? He, who had once been whole owner of the good ship Life, was now reduced to a sixty-fourth share in that gallant vessel. What recked it to him where she drifted or against what rock she perished, now his interest in her was so small? To think of the future—that earthly future which alone presented itself to his too mundane mind—was to think of a time in which he must cease to be. He could not easily transfer his hopes to those who were to succeed him; those who might perchance reap the fruit of his unwearying toil. He thought of all the miles—the stony London miles—that he had walked in pursuit of his trade—often with tired feet. He thought of that stern system of deprivation he had imposed on himself, till he had schooled his appetite to habitual self-denial, brought the demon sense into subjection so complete that it was as if he had been created without the longings of other men. How many a time had he passed through the savoury steam of some popular dining-place, while hunger gnawed his entrails! On how many a bitter day he had refused himself the modest portion of strong drink which might have comforted him after his weary wanderings! He had denied himself all the things that other men deem necessities—had denied himself with money in his pockets—and had amassed his collection. To-day he was unusually disposed to gloomy thought, and began even to doubt whether the collection was worth the life of deprivation it had cost him. He had been gradually recovering health and strength for some time, but with convalescence came a curiously depressed state of mind. He was not strong enough to go about his business—to potter about as of old amidst the chaos of his various treasures, to resume the compilation of an elaborate descriptive catalogue, at which he had been slowly working since his removal to Cedar House. Nor could he think of reinspecting his miscellaneous possessions without a pang, lest, in doing so, he should find even greater loss than he was now aware of. So, powerless to seek consolation from a return to business and activity, he sat by his fireside in the gloomy October weather, and brooded over the past.

Lucille tended him as of old, with the same unvarying patience and affection.

‘It is such a happiness to see you looking so much better, dear grandfather,’ she said, as she stood beside him while he ate his noontide mutton-chop, a simple fare which seemed particularly savoury after that diet of broths and jellies to which he had been kept so long.

‘Looking better am I?’ muttered Mr. Sivewright testily. ‘Then I wonder what kind of a spectre I looked when I was worse—Ugolino in a black-velvet skull-cap, I suppose. I tried to shave myself this morning, and the face I saw in the glass was ghostly enough in all conscience. However, Lucius says I’m better, and you say I’m better; so I suppose I am better.’

‘Lucius thinks we might all go to the country for a little while for change of air,’ said Lucille, ‘that is to say, you and I, and Lucius would be with us part of the time—just for a day or two—it’s so difficult for him to leave his patients. He says change of air would do you so much good.’

‘Does he indeed!’ exclaimed Mr. Sivewright, with an ironical air; ‘and pray who is to take care of my collection if I leave it? It has been robbed enough as it is.’

‘But, dear grandfather,’ remonstrated Lucille, ‘is not your health of more consequence than those things, however valuable they may be?’

‘No, child; for to gather those things together I sacrificed all that other men call ease. Am I to lose the fruit of a lifetime? It is hard enough to be robbed of any portion of it. Let me keep what remains. I shall have no more rest till I am able to go through my catalogue, and see how much I have lost.’

‘Could not I do that?’

‘No, Lucille; no one knows the things properly except myself. Wincher knew a good deal, for I was weak enough to trust him fully. He knew what I paid for everything, and the value I set upon it. He was the only man I ever trusted after my son deceived me; and you see my reward. He took advantage of my helplessness to betray me.’

Lucille gave a little choking sigh. She felt that the time had come for her to speak. That poor faithful old servant must no longer appear despicable in the eyes of the master he had served so well. She must make her confession to her grandfather as she had made it to Lucius.

‘I wish Lucius were here to speak for me,’ she thought; and then, ashamed of this moral cowardice, she knelt down beside Homer Sivewright’s chair, and took his hand in hers timidly, hardly knowing how to begin.

‘I’m not angry with you, child,’ he said gently, interpreting that timid clinging touch as a remonstrance. ‘You have been true and faithful. But women are like dogs in the fidelity of their attachments. One hardly counts them when one considers the baseness of mankind.’

‘O grandfather, I have not been quite faithful. I meant to do what was right—only—only I obeyed my heart, and wavered from the strict line of duty. It was my fault that you were robbed.’

‘Your fault? Nonsense, child! That poor little head of yours isn’t right yet, or you would not talk so.’

‘It is the truth, grandpapa,’ said Lucille, and then told her story—told how the wanderer had pleaded, and how, touched by his houselessness and seeming destitution, she had admitted him in secret to the shelter of his father’s roof.

The old man listened with sublime patience. Another evidence of how vile a thing was this dead son, whom he had mourned with that strange unreasoning tenderness which death will awaken in the coldest hearts.

‘Say no more, child,’ he said gently, when Lucille had pleaded for pardon almost as if the wrong done by Ferdinand Sivewright had been wholly hers. ‘You were foolish and loving, and pitied him and trusted him, although I had often warned you that he was of all men most unworthy of pity or trust. Don’t cry, Lucille; I’m not angry with you. Perhaps I might have been persuaded to believe in him myself if he had pleaded long enough. That tongue of his was subtle as the serpent’s. And so it was my son who robbed me! He crept into my house in secret, and used his first opportunity to plunder. He is dead; let us forget him. The tenderest mercy God and man could show him would be oblivion.’

And from this hour Homer Sivewright spoke of his son no more.