CHAPTER IX.

THE MYSTERY OF LUCILLE’S PARENTAGE.

Lucius paused in the gray old hall, where twilight came sooner than in any other part of the house. He longed to see Lucille, to clasp the dear hand, to hear the low gentle voice; for the excitement of those few busy hours seemed to have lengthened the interval since he had last seen her. Yet he shrank with a strange nervous terror from the idea of meeting her just yet, while his mind was still agitated, still perplexed, by the mystery of last night. It was a relief to him when Mrs. Wincher told him that ‘Missy’ was still lying down in the parlour.

‘She’s been up and down stairs to give her grandpa his beef-tea, and such-like, but has laid down betwigst and betweens,’ said Mrs. Wincher. ‘She don’t seem to have strength to keep up, poor child. I should think some steel-wine, now, or as much quinine-powder as would lie on a sixpence, would do her a world of good.’

‘We won’t dose her with nauseous medicines, Mrs. Wincher,’ answered Lucius; ‘she wants rest, and change of air and scene. If we could get her away from this melancholy old house, now!’

He was thinking what a relief it would be to him to withdraw her from that abode of perplexity, where danger, in some as-yet-intangible form, seemed to lurk in every shadow. If he could send her down to his sister at Stillmington! He was sure that Janet would be kind to her, and that those two would love each other. If he could but induce Lucille to go down there for a little while!

‘Well, Dr. Davory, the house is melancholic, I will not deny,’ said Mrs. Wincher, with a philosophical air. ‘My sperits are not what they was when I came here. Bond-street was so gay; and if it was but a back-kitchen I lived in, I could hear the rumbling of carriage-wheels going all day very lively. Of course this house is dull for a young person like Missy; but as to gettin’ her away while her grandpa’s ill, it’s more nor you, nor all the king’s hosses and all the king’s men, would do, Dr. Davory.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ replied Lucius, with a sigh.

He went up to Mr. Sivewright’s room, and found his patient waiting for him, and in a somewhat restless and anxious condition. The blinds were drawn, and the heavy old-fashioned shutters half-closed, excluding every ray of the afternoon sunlight. This had been Lucille’s careful work, while the old man slept.

‘Open those shutters and draw up the blinds!’ exclaimed Mr. Sivewright impatiently. ‘I don’t want the darkness of the grave before my time.’

‘I thought you were never coming!’ he added presently, with an aggrieved air, as Lucius admitted the sunshine.

‘And yet I am an hour earlier than I was yesterday.’

‘The day has seemed longer than yesterday. Every day is longer than the last,’ complained the old man; ‘my snatches of sleep are shorter, my limbs more weary; the burden of life grows heavier as I near the end of my journey.’

‘Nay, sir,’ remonstrated Lucius, in a cheery tone, ‘there is no need for such despondent talk as that. You are ill, and suffer the weariness of a prolonged illness, but you are in no immediate danger.’

‘No immediate danger!’ repeated the patient contemptuously. ‘You will not admit that I am in immediate danger till you hear the death-rattle in my throat. I feel that I am on my death-bed, and desire to do all that a dying man should do to square his account with the world he is about to leave.’

‘And I hope, sir, you have some thought about that better world to which you are going,’ answered Lucius seriously.

Homer Sivewright sighed, and was silent for some moments ere he replied to this remark.

‘Let me settle my affairs in this world first,’ he said, ‘and then you may try to enlighten me about the next if you can. I have found this life so hard that it is scarcely strange if I have little hope in the life that is to come after it. But you can preach to me about that by and by. I want to talk to you about the girl who is to be your wife.’

‘There is no subject so near to my heart.’

‘I suppose not,’ answered Mr. Sivewright, groping with a slow feeble hand under his pillow, from beneath which he presently produced a key. ‘Take this key and open yonder desk, the _bonheur du jour_, and look in the third drawer on the left side.’

Lucius obeyed.

‘What do you see there?’

‘A packet of letters tied with green ferret, and a miniature in a morocco-case,’ answered Lucius.

‘Good! Now, those letters and that miniature contain the whole mystery of Lucille’s birth. I have tried many times to read the riddle, but in vain. Your sharper wits may perchance find the solution of the problem.’

‘You mean as regards the identity of Lucille’s mother?’ asked Lucius.

‘I mean as regards the identity of her father and her mother,’ answered the old man. ‘There have been times when I have doubted whether Lucille is a Sivewright at all—whether the girl I have called my grandchild is the daughter of my son Ferdinand.’

Lucius Davoren’s heart gave a great leap. Good heavens, what a relief if it were thus—if this girl whom he so fondly loved were free from the taint of that villain’s blood! For some moments he was dumb. The thought of this possible release overcame him utterly. God grant that this were but true—that the man he had slain bore no kindred to the woman who was to be his wife!

He opened the morocco-case, and looked at it with eager eyes, as if in the lifeless images it contained he might find the clue to the mystery.

The case was double, and contained two miniatures: one of a man with a weak but patrician face, the nose an elongated aquiline, the lips thin, the chin feeble, the forehead high and pale, the eyes a light blue; the countenance of some last scion of a worn-out race; not without an expression of nobility, but utterly without force of character. The second miniature was a woman’s face—pensive, tender, lovable; a face with soft black eyes, a thoughtful mouth, a low broad forehead, in which there were ample indications of intellect. The olive complexion, the darkness of the lustrous eyes, gave a foreign look to this countenance. The original might have been either French or Italian, Lucius thought, but she could hardly have been an Englishwoman.

‘What reason have you to doubt Lucille’s parentage?’ he asked the old man, after a prolonged examination of those two miniatures.

‘My only reasons are contained in that packet of letters,’ answered Mr. Sivewright. ‘Those letters are the broken links in a chain which you may be able to piece together. I have puzzled over them many a time, as I told you just now, but have been able to make nothing of them.’

‘Am I to read them?’

‘Yes, read them aloud to me; I may be able to furnish you with an occasional commentary on the text.’

‘First, tell me how they came into your possession.’

‘That is easily done. When my son left Bond-street for the last time, after plundering my iron safe, he did not burden himself with luggage. He left all his worldly goods behind him, in the shape of a dilapidated leathern portmanteau full of old clothes. Amongst these I found that packet of letters and that miniature case, both of which he had doubtless forgotten. Now you know just as much about them as I do.’

Lucius untied the string. There were about a dozen letters; some in a woman’s hand, fine, delicate, and essentially un-English; the others in a masculine caligraphy, by no means too legible. The first was directed to Ferdinand Sivewright, at a post-office in Oxford-street, but bore neither the date nor the address of the writer. This was in the man’s hand, written upon the paper of a fashionable club, and ran thus:

‘Thanks, my dear Sivewright, for your last. You are indeed a friend, and worth all my aristocratic acquaintance, who pretend the warmest friendship, but would not go half-a-dozen paces out of their way to save me from hanging. You, by your prompt assistance, have rescued me from the greatest difficulty in which my imprudence—and I have always been the most imprudent of men—ever involved me. Thank Heaven and your tact, the danger is over, and I think I now stand secure of the old gentleman’s favour. Did he know the truth, or but a scintillation of the truth, I should inevitably lose all chance of that future prosperity which will, I trust, enable me a few years hence to give you some substantial proof of my gratitude.

‘By the way, you talk of being hard up in the present. I regret to say, my dear fellow, that at this moment it is out of my power to help you with a stiver. Not that I for an instant ignore the obligation to provide for your small charge, but because just now I am entirely cleaned out. A few weeks hence I shall be no doubt able to send you a cheque. In the mean time your household is a prosperous one, and the cost your kindness to me may occasion is one that can scarcely be felt. You understand. How fares your little girl? I shall always be glad to hear. Madame D—— writes to me for news; so pray keep me _au courant_, that I may set her anxious mind at rest. O, Sivewright, how I languish for an end of all my secrets and perplexities, and for a happy union with her I love! This waiting for dead men’s shoes is a weary business, and makes me feel the most despicable of mankind.—Yours ever,

H. G.’

‘What do you make of that letter?’ asked Mr. Sivewright.

‘I can hardly tell what to make of it at present. Your son must have been of some vital service to the writer, but what the nature of that friendly act is more than I can guess.’

‘You will understand it better when you have read the rest of the letters. Now, I have sometimes thought that the writer of those lines was the father of Lucille.’

‘On what ground?’ asked Lucius. ‘He distinctly says, “How fares _your_ little girl?”’

‘That might be inspired by caution. Do you observe what he says about Madame D—— and her anxiety to hear of the child’s welfare? Rely upon it that Madame D—— was the mother. Then there is the mention of a happy union with the woman he loves, deferred until the death of some wealthy relation. Then what do you make of the lines in which he avows his obligation to provide for “your small charge”? That small charge was the child, and on whom would there be such an obligation except upon the father? This is how I have sometimes been inclined to read the riddle.’

‘You think, then, that Lucille was the child of some secret marriage?’ said Lucius; ‘or of an intrigue?’ he added reluctantly.

‘Of a secret marriage most likely,’ answered the old man. ‘Had it been only an intrigue, there would hardly have been need for such excessive caution. You will see in one of the later letters how this man who signs himself “H. G.” speaks of his total ruin should his secret be discovered. But go on, the letters are numbered. I arranged and numbered them with a good deal of care. Go on to number 2.’

Lucius obeyed. The second epistle was in the same hand as the first, but the formation of the characters showed that it had been written in haste and profound agitation:

‘Dear Sivewright,—I enclose a cheque for 50_l._ It leaves me a beggar; but anything is better than the alternative. Your threat to trade upon my secret has thrown me into an agony of apprehension. O, Sivewright, you could surely never be such a villain! You who pretended to be my bosom friend—you who have so often enriched yourself at my expense, when fortune and your superior skill favoured your chances at the card-table—could never be so base as to betray me! When you took upon yourself the charge which you now assert perpetually as a claim, pressing and harassing me to death with your demands for money, I deemed that friendship alone actuated you. Is it possible that you looked at the matter from the first with a trader’s spirit, and only considered how much you might be able to make out of me?

‘As you claim to be a gentleman, I conjure you to write and assure me that your threat of communicating with my uncle was only an idle menace; that you will keep my secret, as a gentleman should keep the secret of his friend.

‘Bear in mind that to betray me would be to ruin me most completely, and to destroy your own chance of future benefit from my fortune.

‘How is the little girl? Why do you not write to me at length about her? Why do your letters contain only demands for money? Madame D—— is full of anxiety, and I can say so little to satisfy her. How is the little thing? Is she well—is she happy? Does she pine for her last home, and the people who nursed her? For heaven’s sake reply, and fully.—Yours,

H. G.’

‘Are those like a man’s inquiries about another man’s child?’ asked Mr. Sivewright.

‘Scarcely,’ replied Lucius. ‘I believe you are right, and that Lucille is of no kin to your son.’

‘And of no kin to me. You are glad of that, I suppose,’ said the old man with a touch of bitterness.

‘Forgive me if I confess that I shall be glad if I find she is not the child of your son.’

‘You are right. Can an evil tree bear good fruit? That seems a hard saying, but I can’t wonder you shrink from the idea of owning Ferdinand Sivewright for your children’s grandfather. Yet this H. G. may have been no better man.’

‘I can hardly think that. There is some indication of good feeling in his letters. He was most likely the dupe and victim—’

‘Of my son? Yes, I can believe that. Go on, Lucius. The third letter is from the lady, who, you will see, signs herself by her Christian name only, but gives her full address.’

‘That must afford some clue to the mystery,’ said Lucius.

‘Yes, for any one who will take the trouble to follow so slight a clue. I have never attempted the task. To accomplish it might have been to lose the only creature that loved me. You will call this selfish policy, no doubt. Lucille’s interests ought to have weighed with me more than my own. I can only answer, that old age is selfish. When a man has but a few years between him and the grave, he may well shrink from the idea of making those years desolate.’

‘I do not wonder that you feared to lose her,’ said Lucius.

He opened the letter numbered 3. It was in that delicate foreign hand, on thin paper.

‘Rue Jeanne d’Arques, numéro 17, Rouen.

‘Dear Sir,—Not having received a satisfactory response from Mr. G., I venture to address you, believing that you will compassionate my anxieties. I wish to hear more of your charge. Is she well? is she happy? O, sir, have pity upon the heart which pines for her—to which this enforced separation is a living death! Does she grow? does she remember me, and ask for me? Yet, considering her tender age at the time of our parting, that is hardly possible. I ought to be thankful that it is so—that she will not suffer any of the pangs which rend my sorrowful heart. But in spite of that thought, it grieves me to know that she will lose all memory of my face, all love for me. It is a hard trial; and it may last for years. Heaven knows if I shall live to see the end of it.

‘I entreat you, sir, to pity one who is most grateful for your friendly help at a time when it was needed, and to let me have a full account of the little girl.

‘I am quite content to submit to Mr. G.’s desire that, for the next few years of her life, she shall have no friends but those she has in your house; yet I can but think that, at her age, residence in a London house, and above all a house of business, must be harmful. I should be very glad could you make some arrangement for her to live, at least part of the year, a little way out of town, with people you could fully trust.

‘Do not doubt that, should God spare me to enjoy the fortune to which Mr. G. looks forward, I shall most liberally reward your goodness to one born under an evil star.

‘I have the honour to remain, yours, ‘FELICIE G.

‘P.S. My name here is Madame Dumarques.’

‘That,’ exclaimed Lucius, ‘must surely be the letter of a mother!’

‘Yes; and not a letter from a wife to her husband. The Mr. G. spoken of in the letter is evidently the husband of the writer.’

‘Strange that the care of a beloved child should have been intrusted to such a man as your son.’

‘Men of pleasure have few friends,’ answered Mr. Sivewright. ‘I daresay this Mr. G. had no one save the companion of the gaming-table to whom he could appeal in his difficulty.’

‘Do you consider there is sufficient evidence here to show that Lucille was the child alluded to?’

‘No other child ever came to Bond-street.’

‘True. Then the case seems clear enough. She was not your son’s daughter, but the child of these people, and committed to his care.’

‘Read on, and you will discover farther details of the affair.’

The fourth letter was from ‘H. G.’ It was evidently written in answer to a letter of complaint or remonstrance from Ferdinand Sivewright. It ran thus:

‘My dear Fellow,—Your reproaches are most unjust. I always send money when I have it; but I have not acquired the art of coiner, nor am I clever enough to accomplish a successful forgery. In a word, you can’t get blood out of a stone. You have had some hundreds since you first took charge of the little one; and in any other home I had found for her, she would not have cost me a third of the money. I do not forget that you helped me out of a diabolical difficulty, and that if you had not happened to be our visitor when the old gentleman surprised me in our Devonian cottage, and if you had not with sublime tact assumed _my_ responsibilities, I should have been irretrievably ruined. Never shall I forget that midsummer morning when I had to leave all I loved in your care, and to turn my back upon that dear little home, to accompany my uncle to London, assuming the careless gaiety of a bachelor, while my heart was racked with anguish for those I left behind. However, we played the comedy well, and, please God, the future will compensate Felicie and me for all we have suffered in the past and suffer in the present. Be as reasonable, dear old fellow, as you have been useful, and rely upon it I shall by and by amply reward your fidelity.—Yours,

H. G.’

‘We get a clearer glimpse of the story in this,’ said Lucius, as he finished the fourth letter. ‘It seems easy enough now to read the riddle. A young man, with large expectations from an uncle who, at any moment, may disinherit him, has secretly married; perhaps a woman beneath him in station. At any rate, his choice is one which his uncle would inevitably disapprove. He hides his young wife in some quiet Devonshire village, where his friend, your son, visits him. There, during your son’s visit, the old man appears. By some means or other he has tracked his nephew to this retreat. One mode of escape only suggests itself. Ferdinand Sivewright assumes the character of the husband and father, while the delinquent leaves the place at his uncle’s desire, and accompanies him back to London. Out of this incident arises the rest. Ferdinand Sivewright takes charge of the child, the wife retires to her native country, where she has, no doubt, friends who can give her a home. The whole business is thus, as it were, dissolved. The husband is free to play the part of a bachelor till his kinsman’s death. That is my reading of the story.’

‘I do not think you can be far out,’ answered Mr. Sivewright. ‘You can look over the rest of the letters at your leisure. They are less important than those you have read, but may contain some stray scraps of information which you can piece together. There is one letter in which Madame Dumarques speaks of the miniature. She sends it in order that the little girl may learn to know her mother’s features; and in this, as in other letters from this lady, there appears a foreboding of early death. “We may never meet on earth,” she writes. “I like to think that she will know my face if ever I am so blest as to meet her in heaven.”’

‘You think, then, that this poor mother died young?’ inquired Lucius.

‘That is my idea. The husband speaks of her failing health in one of his letters. He has been to Rouen to see her, and has found her sadly changed. “You would hardly know that lovely face, Sivewright, could you see it now,” he writes.’

Lucius folded and tied up the letters with a careful hand.

‘May I have these to keep?’ he asked.

‘You may. They are the only dower which your wife will receive from her parents.’

‘I don’t know that,’ answered Lucius; ‘her father may still live, and if he does, he shall at least give her his name.’

‘What, you mean to seek out this nameless father?’

‘I do. The task may be long and difficult, but I am determined to unravel this tangled skein.’

‘Do what you like, so long as you and Lucille do not leave me to die alone,’ said the old man sadly.

‘Have no fear of that,’ replied Lucius. ‘This investigation can wait. I will not desert my post in your sick room, until you are on the highroad to recovery.’

‘You are a good fellow!’ exclaimed Mr. Sivewright, with unusual warmth; ‘and I do not regret having trusted you.’