Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER X.

THE END.

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The Lycett-Landons went home to the Grove that night. Horace asked his mother no questions. He helped her to lift up and place upon a sofa the visitor whose strength had failed her so strangely; but how much he heard from Mr Fareham, or how much he guessed, she never knew. He was anxious to go home at once, and, instead of making any objections as she had feared, facilitated everything. He was very kind and tender to her on the journey, taking care of her and of her comfort, saving her from every trouble. This had not heretofore been Horace's way. He was still so young that the habit of being taken care of was more natural to him than that of taking care of others; but he had learned a new version apparently of his duty on that strange and agitating day. It was late when they reached the Mersey again, and the great river was full of shooting fireflies, little steamers with their sparks of glowing colour flitting and rustling to and fro among the steady lights of the moored ships. The sky was pale with the rising moon, the stars appearing languidly out of the clouds. As they crossed the river to their home, sitting close together on the deck, saying nothing to each other, avoiding in the darkness all contact with the other passengers, two or three little steam-boats rustled past, full of music and a crowd of merrymakers going home noisy and happy after a day's pleasure. The sky was stained all round the horizon behind them by the smoke of the great town, but before them was soft and clear with fringes of dark foliage and outlines of peaceful houses rising against it. Everything was full of quiet and peace, no false or discordant note anywhere; even the fiddles and flutes of the bands harmonised by the air and water and magical space about, and the dew dropping, and the moon rising. It was only forty-eight hours since they had left their home almost under the same conditions, but what a change there was!

Milly was full of questions and surmises. How was papa? Why did they leave him? When was he coming home? Why did they return so soon? She supposed the season was over, and nothing going on, not even the theatres. She never thought it possible they would come back directly. She poured a flood of remarks upon them as they walked from the boat to the house. Fortunately it was dark, and their faces gave her no information; but their brief replies, and a something indefinable, a restraint in the atmosphere about them, a something new which she did not understand, began to affect the girl after the first abandon of her surprise and her interrogations. As soon as Mrs Lycett-Landon entered the house she announced that she was very tired and going to bed. "I am growing old; travelling affects me as it never used to do, and I have got a headache. I shall go to bed at once, Milly. No, I don't want anything to eat; quiet and rest—that is all I want. Give Horace his supper, dear; and you need not come into my room to-night. I shall put out my light and get to sleep."

"Not even a cup of tea, mamma? Mayn't I come and help you to take off your things? Let me send White away, and undress you myself."

"I want no one, my darling, neither you nor White. My head aches. I want darkness and quiet. Good night. To-morrow morning I shall be all right."

She kissed them, her veil still hanging over her face, and hurried up-stairs. Milly watched her till she had disappeared, and then turned upon her brother. "What does this mean?" said the girl; "what has happened to mamma, and where's papa, Horry? Tell me this very moment, before you have your supper or anything. I know something must be wrong."

"Something is wrong," said Horace, "but I can't tell you what it is. I don't know what it is. Now, Milly, that is all I am going to say. You need not go on asking and asking, for you will only make me miserable. I can't tell you anything more."

"You can't tell me anything more?" She was struck, not dumb indeed with amazement, but into such a quiver and agitation that she could scarcely speak. Then she regained her courage a little. "Where's papa? He can't be ill, or you would not have come home."

"I have not seen him," said Horace, doggedly.

"You have not seen him?"

"Mother did, and then old Fareham. I can tell you this: it isn't speculation, or anything of that sort. The firm is all right. It's nothing about that."

"The firm—speculation!" cried Milly, with wild contempt; "who cares for business? What is the matter? and why doesn't he come home?"

"Who cares for it? I care for it. I thought at first that was what had happened; but we may make our minds quite easy—it's not that." Horace was really comforted by this certainty, though not perhaps so much as he pretended to be. "I was very much frightened at first," he said. "It was a great relief to find that, whatever it is, it is not that."

Milly stood looking at him with scared eyes. "Do you mean to say that papa is not coming home? Oh, Horry, for goodness' sake tell me something more. Has he done anything? What has he done? Papa! It is impossible, impossible!" the girl cried.

"So I should have said too," said Horace, who had now had a long time in which to accustom himself to the idea. "Perhaps the mother will tell you something; she has not said a word to me. I don't know, and therefore I can't tell you. It has been a horrid sort of day," said the lad, "and perhaps you'll think it unfeeling, Milly, but I'm hungry. I'd like to have something to eat, and then I'd like to go to bed. I'm horribly tired, too; wandering about, and always waiting to hear something and never hearing, and imagining all sorts of things, is very fatiguing, and I don't think I've eaten anything to-day."

Milly despised her brother for thinking of eating, but yet it was a relief to superintend his supper and get him all he wanted. They had a great deal of talk over this strange meal, and though Horace gave his sister no information, they yet managed to assure themselves somehow that a terrible catastrophe had happened, and that their father had gone out of their lives. Milly wept bitterly over it, and even Horace could not keep the tears from his eyes; but somehow they recognised the fact between them, far more easily than their mother above stairs or any bystander could have imagined possible. Two days ago what could have been more impossible to them? And Milly did not know even so much as Horace knew, nor had any insight at all into how it was; and yet she, too, in the course of an hour or so, had accepted the fact. To youth there is something convincing in certainty, an obedience to what is, which is one of the most remarkable thinks in life. They acknowledged the mystery with wonder and pain, but they did not rebel or doubt. Their mother thought nothing less than that they would struggle, would be incredulous, would rebel even against her for their father's sake. But there was nothing of all this. They submitted almost without a struggle, though they did not understand.

And then the quiet days closed down upon this family, upon which so mysterious a loss had fallen. It need not be said that there was great discussion as to the cause of Mr Lycett-Landon's disappearance, both among the merchants in Liverpool and among their wives and daughters on the other side of the water. The explanations that were given at first were many and conflicting; and for a long time people continued to ask, "When do you expect your husband?" or "your father?" And then there came the time, not less painful, when people pointedly refrained from asking any questions, and changed the subject when his name was mentioned, which was, perhaps, almost less tolerable. Then, gradually, by degrees it became an old story, and people remembered it no more. Ah, yes! they remembered it whenever any incident happened in the family—when Horace took his place as one of the partners in the office, when Milly married—then it all cropped up again, with supposititious details; but when nothing was happening to them the family escaped into obscurity, and their circumstances were discussed no longer. Old Mr Fareham had a very bad cold after he returned from London, and was for some time confined to the house, and would see nobody. And then other things happened, as they are continually happening in a mercantile community. A great bankruptcy, with many exciting and disgraceful circumstances, followed soon after, and the attention of the community was distracted. The Lycett-Landon business remained a mystery, and after a while the waters closed tranquilly over the spot where this strange shipwreck had been.

Milly never heard till after her marriage what it was that had happened, and at no time did Horace ask any questions: how much he divined, how much he had been told, his mother never knew. And she herself never was aware how the other story ended: if the poor Rose, her husband's unfortunate young wife, died of it, or if she abandoned him; or if the poor mother lacked the courage to tell her; or if between them the young woman was kept in her poor little suburban paradise deceived. Mrs Lycett-Landon made many a furtive effort to ascertain how it had ended; but she was too proud to inquire openly, and though she wondered and pondered she never knew.

Years, however, after these events, when Horace had begun to be what he had determined upon being, a merchant prince, and the house of Lycett-Landon & Co. (old Mr Fareham being dead, and young Mr Fareham at the head of the American branch, Landon, Fareham, & Co.) was greater than ever, Mr Lycett-Landon suddenly appeared at the Grove. He came to make a call in the morning, sending in his name; for the old butler was dead, and the new one did not know him, and he was admitted like any other stranger. His wife even did not know who he was—for she had come down expecting a distant relation—until she had looked a second or third time at the stout, embarrassed old gentleman, looking very awkward and deprecating, who stood up when she came into the room, and shrank with a certain confusion from her inspection. After the first shock of the recognition they sat down and conversed calmly enough. He inquired about the children with a little affectation of ease.

"I know about Horace, of course," he said, "and I saw Milly's marriage in the papers. But I should like to hear a little about the others."

She accepted his curiosity as very natural, and gave him all the particulars very openly and sedately. He sat for nearly an hour, sometimes asking questions, sometimes listening, with a curious air of politeness, like a man on his best behaviour, in the society of a lady a little above him in station, and with whom his acquaintance was far from intimate, and then took his leave.

With what thoughts their minds were full as they sat there, in the old home equally familiar to both, where every article of furniture, every picture on the walls, had the same associations to both! But nothing was said to betray the poignant sensation with which the woman, compunctious, though she had never been revengeful, or the man, so strangely separated and fallen from all that had been habitual to him, beheld each other, sat by each other, after these years. He smiled, but she had not the strength to smile. After this, however, he came again at intervals, always asking with interest about his children, but not caring to see them.

"I suppose they don't remember anything about me," he said.

His visits were not frequent, but he became, in the end, acquainted with all the family, and even resumed a certain i*********e with Horace and Milly, his first meeting with whom was accidental and very painful. To see him elderly, stout, and (but perhaps this was one effect of some refinement of jealous and wounded feeling on the part of Mrs Lycett-Landon) oh so commonplace! and fallen from his natural level, shuffling his feet, reddening, smiling that confused and foolish smile, conciliating his children, gave to his wife almost the keenest pangs she had yet suffered. She could not bear to see him so lowered from his natural place. Tragedy is terrible, but when it drops into tragi-comedy, tragi-farce at the end, that is the most terrible of all. Pity, shame, something that was like remorse, though she was blameless, was in his wife's heart. The impulse in her mind was to go away out of the house that was his, and leave him in possession. But, to do him justice, he never, by look or word, reminded her that the house had been his, or that he was anything but a visitor.

And what was the explanation of the strange passion which made him, at fifty, depart from all the traditions of his virtuous life—whether it was a passion at all, or only some wonderful, terrible gust of impatience, which made duty and the rule of circumstances, and all that he was pledged and bound to, insupportable—she never knew; nor whether he found that this poor game was even for a moment worth the blazing flambeau of revolution which it cost; or whether it cost him still more than that candle—the young life which he had blighted; whether Rose lived or died; or where he came from when he paid these visits to his old home, and disappeared into when they were over: all this Mrs Lycett-Landon lived in ignorance of, and so, in all probability, will die.MADEMOISELLE.

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