Anonymous

London was under drizzle when the four-wheeler containing Mr. Graydon and Pamela drew up at Lady Jane Trevithick's house in Brook Street.

As the time came for saying good-bye to her father, Pamela's heart sank lower and lower. By the time the cab stopped it was a mere dead weight of foreboding and depression.

One minute she looked at her father with blank despair. It was in her heart to put her arms about his neck and cling to him and refuse to leave him, as she had done when a small child and insubordinate to nursery rule. But the minute's glance checked the impulse. He was not thinking of her: he was wholly preoccupied: as she watched him, his lips moved as if in conversation with someone.

"'Ere you are, sir. This is the 'ouse," said the old cabman, not offering to budge from his box.

Mr. Graydon jumped out and knocked at the door. While his hand yet held the knocker the door was flung open by a pompous servant.

"Here, my man, lend me a hand with this lady's luggage. The jarvey seems old and incapable," he said brightly to the functionary.

The man came out unwillingly into the rainy street. The sight of the four-wheeler with its poor little trunk brought a look of amazed contempt to his face. But Mr. Graydon was not thinking of him.

When the luggage had gone in, he took his daughter from the cab.

"No, thank you. You need not wait," he said to the cabman as he followed Pamela up the steps.

"Her ladyship is in the drawing-room, sir," said the servant, impressed, despite himself, by the shabby visitor's easy air of command.

"Ah, thank you, I am not coming in. Good-bye, Pam, darling. I'll get the night-mail back. Be sure and enjoy yourself, and give Lady Jane my kindest regards."

He kissed her hastily, unconscious of the supercilious eyes of the footman. Then he turned towards the wet street.

Pamela stood in the hall, looking after him with her miserable heart in her eyes. He went down the steps with his hands deep in his shabby overcoat pockets—for he carried no umbrella—and his soft hat pulled down over his eyes. Another minute and he would be out of sight. A wave of intolerable loneliness rushed over his daughter's heart as she saw him vanishing and leaving her alone among strangers.

"Papa, papa!" she cried.

The genial, kind face was turned back to her for an instant. Her father's hand waved a farewell. Then he was out of sight, and she became conscious that the weary footman, forcedly polite, was holding the door open for her.

"Her ladyship is in the drawing-room," he repeated, and there was rebuke in his voice. Pamela drew back, and he shut the door.

"Poor little Pam!" said her father as he walked along briskly. "She will be home-sick to-night; to-morrow she will be better content, and the day after she will begin to enjoy herself."

"And now, let me see," he said. "This turn is it, for Hill Street? I ought to know the way, though it is so many years since I took it. I hope I shall catch his lordship before dinner. If I'm obliged to disturb him, he'll be in a horrible rage, and things won't be propitious. Anyhow, at the worst, I'll have time to eat something at the station before I catch the mail. Perhaps his lordship will ask me to dinner if things go well."

He smiled so cheerfully, showing a row of even white teeth, that a wretched girl, carrying an infant, was moved to beg of him. He handed her a shilling, to her unbounded amazement.

"There goes part of my dinner," he said to himself. "Never mind: she needs it." And then to the astonished beggar: "Go home, my girl, with that poor little chap. It is no night for him—or you either—to be out."

Presently he came to a huge house, showing a dim light here and there in its black front. He knocked with a tremor of heart. When last he had knocked there he had stood at the threshold of new life and joy. The rain dripped from his soft hat and hung in beads of moisture on his grey moustache. It soaked unheeded into his thin overcoat.

The door was opened by an old man-servant. He peered in wonder at the shabby-looking stranger, who stepped so unquestioningly within those gloomy portals.

"Is his lordship in town?" asked the intruder. "Why, Thorndyke! It is surely Thorndyke?"

"Yes, I am Thorndyke," said the man. "But I don't think I know you, sir. Let me see."

He turned on the electric light into the front part of the hall, and brought his dim old eyes nearer to Mr. Graydon's face.

"Why, it is Master Archie!" he said quaveringly. "Master Archie after all those years! And how are you, sir? Are you well?"

"Quite well, Thorndyke. Can I see my uncle? I want very particularly to see him."

"He's none too pleasant," whispered the old man. "He has a touch of gout, and the little master's been ill. They've ordered him to Cannes."

"Indeed! I'm sorry for that. I thought he was a hearty little chap."

"So he was, so he was, till a few months gone. He's never recovered a heavy chill he took at the beginning of the winter. His lordship's bound up in him, and it do fret him to see Master Lance dwindle."

"Ah! I am very sorry," said Mr. Graydon, and a cloud came over his face. "I am sorry for the boy and for his lordship, too. Health is a great blessing, Thorndyke."

"It is, indeed, sir. I am glad you have yours. Come in here, sir, and I'll let his lordship know."

He opened the door of a room lined with books in heavy bindings, and motioned Mr. Graydon to enter. The atmosphere was close and warm, though the fire was low in the grate. But Mr. Graydon did not notice that his wet coat was steaming, and that he felt damply and uncomfortably warm. He had other things to think of.

Presently the door was sharply opened, and a red-faced, irascible-looking old man came in. He glared fiercely at his visitor as he hobbled to a chair.

"Well, Archibald," he said, using the name as if it were distasteful to him. "To what am I indebted for the honour of your visit after all those years?"

"I would have come before, sir, but for your own words."

"I'm not unsaying my words. They are as good now as they were then."

"Twenty-five years is a long time. Can't you forget and forgive?"

"I neither forget nor forgive. You did me an injury past forgiveness."

"It was no injury; Mary had chosen me."

"You chose your own lot in life. I have not interfered with it. Why do you come here?"

The old man grinned fiercely as if he had had a spasm of pain, and bit his under lip hard.

"I am sorry to have come when you are not well."

"Your visit would have been unpleasant at any time. Why do you come?"

Mr. Graydon took up his soft hat.

"I came partly out of hard necessity, partly because I hoped that after all the years you would have forgiven me. But there is no use in my staying, I see. I am sorry to have troubled you, sir."

"Say out what you have got to say, man. I don't know whether you know that I have an heir in your place? You have buried yourself so that you may well not know."

"I am glad you have a son, sir."

The old lord grunted.

"Your business, man, your business. I can't wait on you all night, and in five minutes the dinner-bell will ring."

"My business is very simple. I have three girls. One of them would marry after my own heart and hers; but poverty stands in the way. I was brought up as your heir. I thought perhaps that, remembering that fact, you would help my girl."

"You mean by giving her a dowry?"

"You are very rich."

"The time was, Archibald, when I would have given ten years of life to have heard you ask this and to have refused you. I refuse you now, but it is because everything is for the boy. I am old, and even my appetite for revenge has deserted me."

"You owe me no revenge, sir."

"We think differently. Why did you cross my path? Why didn't you marry that woman who wanted you—Dunallan's daughter?"

Mr. Graydon looked thunderstruck.

"You have forgotten, sir; Lady Jane married my friend Gerald Trevithick."

"Because she couldn't marry you. He was an idiot to marry her. Everyone saw her infatuation but he and—am I to believe?—you."

"Impossible," muttered Mr. Graydon; "I barely knew her. I never thought of her."

The old lord waved away his words contemptuously.

"She had no money, but she had connections, and she would have had ambitions if she had married you and not Trevithick. The woman was head over ears in love with you, man."

"I can't believe it, sir. But let it be. It is all five-and-twenty years ago."

"And Mary is dead, and you have three girls."

"Yes, sir."

"Are they strong—are they healthy?"

"Yes, thank God. They are all a father's heart could desire."

"Ah! you have scored again. You married the woman we both desired. You have strong children, and I—my boy is not strong."

His face twitched with more than the pain of his gout.

"I am very sorry, sir. I hoped he was strong."

"I didn't ask for your pity, Archibald."

"I can't help being sorry, all the same."

"But you've outwitted me. I married a peasant—almost a peasant—that my heir in your place might be strong. He is—not strong."

Again the bitter spasm crossed his face, and the sight of it wrung Mr. Graydon's kind heart.

"I pray that he may become strong," he said earnestly; "God is good."

"Anyhow," cried the old man with sudden fury, "I shall not break up his inheritance. If he lives to do that himself one day, let him. It is like enough he would. He does not take after me. But he is my only son."

The dinner-bell pealed loudly through the house.

"Go!" said the old lord. "You have upset me. I shall not be the better of your visit for a week. Go back to your girls, and come here no more. Be thankful they are strong. Money is not everything."

He shuffled out of the room, and Mr. Graydon followed him.

"Show this gentleman out, Thorndyke," he said, and went without a word of farewell.

"Let me get you a little refreshment, Mr. Archie," said the old servant. "Do, sir! Dear, dear! you are very wet, and to think you have to turn out again without your dinner!"

"No, thank you, Thorndyke. I shall do very well till I get to Euston. I shall have some dinner there before the train starts."

"You are going back to Ireland to-night, sir?"

"Yes, Thorndyke, I must."

"Dear, dear! and you are very wet. Can we do nothing for you, sir? My wife—I married Mrs. Ellis, the housekeeper; you remember, sir?—would be so fretted to see you going off like this. Do let me get you something, sir?"

"Nothing, thank you, Thorndyke, nothing. But it is very kind of you, all the same. I remember your wife very well. She was good to me in old days. Give her my love, Thorndyke, and good-bye."

"Good-bye, till happier times, sir," said the old servant, as Mr. Graydon went out in the streaming night.

The lights of a hansom blinked through the rain as he turned north-eastward. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a few coins, and looked at them.

"No," he said, "I can't afford it. I must walk part of the way, and 'bus the rest. I shall just have time to do it."

But by the time he got to Euston he could only snatch a few fragments of food. And so it was wet, chilled, and half-fed that he made his return journey.

His uncle's suggestion about Lady Jane disturbed him oddly, though he tried to thrust it from him as impossible; but it recurred again and again.

"After all," he thought at last, "it might explain why she sought us out, and why she wanted Pamela. If I unwittingly did her the injury that she should have cared for me, who had no love to give her, it would be like a woman's generosity to repay me in that way. Ah! but women are better nowadays. She must have been a happy woman with Gerald, happier than with a worthless fellow like me, who could bring her neither honour nor glory. Ah! if it is true, and she should repay my Pam with happiness, how wonderful it would be! And there is no goodness which is impossible to a woman, praise be to the Source!"

Despite the damp and discomfort, his thoughts made him fall asleep with a smile on his face.