CHAPTER XVI.

RECONCILED.

THE Aberdeen surgeon arrived late at night, but the setting of the broken arm was deferred till the next day. The patient was now delirious, and Mr. Ramsay, the great man from Aberdeen, having heard the story of St. Kentigern’s Cave, pronounced that rheumatic fever had been induced by cold and exposure in that dismal hermitage.

After this came many dreary days and nights, during which the patient hovered between the realms of life and death, tenderly watched by his uncle and Mr. Jerningham, who relieved each other’s guard at his bed-side.

Then came a blessed change, and he was pronounced out of danger. The delirium gave place to a languid apathy, in which he seemed faintly to recognize the watchers by his bed, but to be too feeble to interest himself in the affairs of this life.

While the patient was still in this stage, Mr. Jerningham persuaded Daniel to return to London, where the ravening editors were clamorous for his presence, and he, yielding to these arguments, left Mr. Jerningham master of the field.

This was what the father wanted, to have his son in his own keeping, to see those dim eyes brighten as they looked at him. To be nurse, valet, companion, friend, and some day, when he had won his son’s regard, to say to him suddenly:

“Eustace, forgive me! I am your father!”

While the patient had lain helpless and unconscious, Mr. Jerningham had found the MS. of the great poem, and had read, in those carefully-written pages, the secrets of his son’s mind. The perusal of this poem had filled him with pride. He, too, had written verse; but not such verse as this. The grace, the purity of a mind uncontaminated by vice, were visible here, and touched the heart of the weary worldling.

“The romance of his own life is written here,” he said. “It is almost a confession. But how unlike that hateful confession which I published at his age! I, whose ambition was to emulate Rousseau--that pinchbeck philosopher who never ceased to be at heart a lackey.”

M. de Bergerac and his daughter left Killalochie for Pendarvoch directly the invalid was pronounced out of danger.

When he was well enough to be moved Mr. Jerningham conveyed him to Pendarvoch; whither he consented to go; but not without some show of wonderment.

“Your friends, M. de Bergerac and his daughter are there,” said Mr. Jerningham.

“You are very kind to wish to take me there,” replied the invalid; “but I really think it would be better for me to go back to London, to my Uncle Dan. I am quite strong enough for the journey.”

“Indeed you are not! Besides, I have set my heart upon your coming to Pendarvoch.”

“You are very good. How long is it since my uncle left this place?”

“About five weeks.”

“And in that time who has watched and nursed me? For the last week, you, I know. But before that time? I have a vague recollection of seeing you always there--in that chair by the bed. Yes, I had a faint consciousness of your tender nursing. I do not know how to thank you. At Greenlands I used to think you by no means my friend; and yet you have devoted yourself to me for all these weeks! How can I be sufficiently grateful for so much kindness?”

“My presence has not been disagreeable to you?” faltered the guilty watcher.

“Disagreeable! I should be a wretch indeed if I were not grateful--if I were not deeply touched by so much kindness. Your presence has been an unspeakable comfort to me; your face has grown as familiar, and almost as dear to me, as Uncle Dan’s. Forgive me for having ever thought differently--for having misunderstood you so at Greenlands.”

“Forgive me, Eustace,” said Mr. Jerningham, earnestly.

“Forgive you! For what offence?”

“Do not ask that question. Clasp my hand in yours, so, and say, ‘With all my heart, I forgive you.’”

The invalid stared in feeble wonder, but did not repulse the hand that grasped his.

“With all my heart, I forgive whatever wrong your prejudice may have done me.”

“It has been a deeper wrong than prejudice. Look at these two hands, Eustace; none can deny the likeness there.”

Again the invalid stared wonderingly at the speaker.

“Look!” cried Mr. Jerningham, “look at these clasped hands.”

Eustace looked at the two hands linked together. In every detail of form and colour, the likeness between them was perfect.

“Do you remember what De Bergerac said of us the first time we met at his dinner-table?” asked Mr. Jerningham.

“I remember his saying something about a resemblance between you and me.”

“A notion which you repudiated.”

“I think it was you who first repudiated the idea,” said Eustace, with a faint smile.

“It is quite possible. I have been insanely jealous of you. But that is over now. Do you know by what right I have watched by this bed? Do you know why I persuaded your uncle to leave you, that I might watch alone?”

“I can imagine no reason.”

“The right which I claimed was the right of a father. Yes, Eustace, it was on your father’s knees your head rested as we brought you home from death. It is your father who has watched you day and night through this weary illness.”

“Oh, God!” cried Eustace, with a stifled groan. “Is this true?”

“As true as that you and I are here, face to face.”

“Do you know that I have sworn to hate you? For the man who broke my mother’s heart I can never have any feeling but abhorrence. Your kindness to me I reject and repudiate. We are natural enemies, and have been from the hour in which I first learned the meaning of shame.”

“I have heard you plead the cause of Christianity. Is this Christianlike, Eustace?”

“It is natural.”

“And you say that Christianity is something higher than nature. Prove it now to me, who have been something of a Pagan. Let me discover the superiority of your creed to my vague Pantheism. Look at me! I, your father, who have never knelt to mortal man, and but too seldom to God, I kneel by your bed, and ask, in abject humility, to be forgiven. I know that I cannot bring back the injured dead. I know that I cannot atone for the past. But if that gentle spirit has found a quiet haven whence she can look back to those she loved on earth, I _know_ it would console her to see me forgiven. Judge me as if your mother stood by your side.”

“She would forgive you,” murmured Eustace; “God created her to suffer and pardon.”

“And will you refuse the pardon she would have granted? You forgave me just now, when our hands were clasped in friendship. Do you think you can recall that forgiveness? The words have been spoken. I have the ancient belief in the power of spoken words. Eustace, am I to kneel in vain to my only son?”

The young man covered his face with his hands. He had sworn to hate this man, his arch-enemy, and the enemy had taken base advantage of his weakness, and had stolen his affection. This pale, worn face, worn with the weary night-watches of the past six weeks, was not the face of a foe. His mother--yes, she would have forgiven, and her wrongs were greater than his. And if, from the Heaven her penitence had won, she looked back to earth, it would grieve that gentle spirit to see disunion here.

There was a long pause, and then the son extended his hand to his father.

“For my mother’s wrongs I have hated you,” he said: “for her sake I forgive you.”

This was all. On the same day they travelled to Pendarvoch, and on that night Eustace slept in the picturesque castle that sheltered Helen and her father. All was harmony and affection. The invalid gained strength rapidly, and spent his evenings in a long, panelled saloon, with his father and his two friends.

He told them now, for the first time, the story of that walk which had so nearly cost him his life: how, finding the tide gaining upon him as he neared the inlet of the cliffs, he had sought there some means of reaching the heights above, and, finding none, had essayed to clamber to the Saint’s Cave. This feat he had achieved, thanks to his experience as a gymnast; but in the last desperate scramble into the mouth of the cave he had broken his arm, and from the pain of this injury he had fainted. Of the two nights and days which he had spent in that narrow retreat, he remembered nothing distinctly. He had only a vague sense of having suffered cold and hunger, and of being tormented, almost to madness, by the perpetual roar of the waves, which had seemed to thunder at the very mouth of the cavern, and to be for ever threatening his destruction.

For a month Eustace stayed at Pendarvoch, and during this time the great poem appeared, and won from the press such speedy recognition and kindly appreciation as would scarcely have been accorded to the work of an unknown poet, if Daniel Mayfield and Mr. Jerningham had not both exerted their utmost influence in its behalf. Daniel did, indeed, with his own hand, write more than one of the notices which elevated his nephew to a high rank among the younger poets.

There remained now only the grand question of the new-found son’s legitimation; but here Mr. Jerningham found himself obstinately opposed.

“I will accept your affection with all filial gratitude,” said Eustace; “but I will take no pecuniary benefit from your hands, neither will I accept a name which you refused to my mother.”

“That is to make your wrongs irreparable.”

“All such wrongs are irreparable.”

Long, and often repeated, were the arguments held between the father and son upon this subject. But Eustace was not to be moved by argument. From this new-found father, he would receive nothing. For the rest, his literary career had opened brightly, and the fruits of his poem enabled him to enter himself at the Temple as a student of law.

One day in June, Eustace came to Greenlands to renew his suit with M. de Bergerac, by Mr. Jerningham’s advice, and this time found his suit prosper.

“Jerningham advises me to consult only my daughter’s heart,” said the exile, “and that is yours.”

Within a month of this interview there was a quiet wedding at the little Berkshire church, in whose gloomy vault poor Emily Jerningham slumbered--a ceremonial at which Daniel Mayfield shone radiant in an expansive white waist-coat, and with moustache of freshest Tyrian dye. Theodore de Bergerac gave his daughter to her husband; while Harold Jerningham stood by, satisfied with his new _rôle_ of spectator.

The bride and bridegroom began their honeymoon in a very unpretentious manner in pleasant lodgings in Folkestone; but one day the bride ventured to suggest that Folkestone was a place of which it was possible for the human mind to grow weary.

“If you would only take me to Switzerland?” Helen pleaded, with her sweetest smile.

“My dear love, you forget that, although the most fortunate of created beings, we are, from the Continental innkeeper’s point of view, actual paupers.”

“Not quite, dear! There was one little circumstance that no one thought it worth while to mention before our marriage; but perhaps it would be as well for you to be informed of it now.”

She handed to him a paper, of a legal and alarming appearance.

It was a deed of gift, whereby Harold Jerningham, on the one part, bestowed upon Helen de Bergerac, the daughter of his very dear friend, Theodore de Bergerac, for the other part, funded property producing something over three thousand a year.

“Good heavens! he has cheated me after all!” cried Eustace.

“He told us the story of your birth, dear; his own remorse, and your noble repudiation of all gifts from him. And then he entreated me to let some benefit from his wealth come to you indirectly through me.”

Another wedding, as quiet as the simple ceremony in Berkshire, took place just twelve months after Mrs. Jerningham’s death. For a year Lucy Alford had lived very quietly among her new friends at Harrow, receiving sometimes a package of new books, and a brief, friendly note, from the editor of the _Areopagus_, for the sole token that she was not utterly forgotten by him. But one day he paid an unexpected visit to the Harrow Parsonage, and finding Miss Alford alone in the pretty garden, asked her to be his wife. Few words were needed for his prayer. The sweet face, with its maiden blushes and downcast eyelids, told him that he was still beloved, still the dearest, and wisest, and greatest of earthly creatures in the sight of Lucy Alford.

While Eustace and his young wife wander, happy as children, amidst Alpine mountains and by the margin of Alpine lakes, Harold Jerningham schemes for his son’s future.

“He shall have the Park Lane house, and go into Parliament,” resolves the father. “All my old ambitions shall revive in him.”

But scheme as he may, there is always the bitter taste of the ashes which remain for the man who has plucked the Dead-Sea apples that hang ripe and red above the path of life.

THE END.

J. Ogden and Co., Printers, 172, St. John Street, E.C.

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.