FAREWELL.

Not a single night did Margaret sleep away from her uncle’s roof. He went in person to Mr. Wallis’s house and claimed her. The apology he had schooled himself to make to that gentleman was stayed upon the threshold of his lips.

‘Your face, Mr. Erin, tells me all that I need and more than I wish to hear,’ said the kindly lawyer. ‘Pray spare yourself and me.’

One unfortunate remark, however, Mr. Wallis made, for which he bitterly blamed himself, though as it turned out, unnecessarily.

The antiquary paid him over that portion of money received from the Theatre which was due to William Henry, and requested him to place it in his hands.

‘I will do so,’ said the lawyer, ‘though, were I in his place, I had rather starve than take it.’

Directly the words were uttered, he perceived their application to the antiquary himself, who was quietly pocketing his own share of the wages of iniquity.

But though we have the same skin, it is of various degrees of thickness.

‘He will take it,’ said the other drily, ‘and starve afterwards.’

Notwithstanding this deviation of Mr. Erin’s from the straight path, it is well to state here that Mr. Albany Wallis never consented—although they were his friends and allies—with those who laid the sins of William Henry upon his father’s shoulders. When Bishop Percy, on the authority of the commentator Steevens, observed that the whole house in Norfolk Street was ‘an elaborate workshop,’ Mr. Wallis contradicted the statement point-blank; and when another traducer went the length of including Margaret in the indictment by the assertion that a female relative of Mr. Erin’s performed the more delicate work of the (forged) autographs, he gave him the lie direct.

The storm, indeed, that burst upon the heads of the antiquary and his belongings was terrible, and fortunate it was for them that they had found an asylum afar off. Most of the ‘hailstones and coals of fire’ fell short of it; and those that reached them, through the malice of enemies or the officiousness of good-natured friends, were fended off from the old man by Margaret’s watchful care. Upon the whole, indeed, it is doubtful whether those seemingly evil days were not good for her. Her solicitude upon her uncle’s account prevented her from dwelling over much upon her private grief, just as the heartbreak of the widower is sometimes stayed by the cry of the children.

It was many a day, however, before she could look her own misfortune in the face, and scrutinise its lineaments, for when we come to gauge our sorrows it is a sign that the deep waters that have gone over our soul have begun to shallow. Notwithstanding her horror of her Willie’s crime, she could not forget what he had once been to her, even though she was well aware, from a sure source, that matters were not so with him. Mrs. Jordan had written to her, out of the fulness of one of the kindest hearts that ever beat in woman’s breast, to allay her apprehensions about him on material grounds. Though poor enough, he was not in want, nor likely to be so. Without a word of ill-nature, she had also contrived to make her understand that the boy was not inconsolable; he was busy with his pen, and if his genius did not soar, his conceit was upborne on lusty pinions. ‘All is Vanity,’ said the preacher in disparagement of that attribute; yet he was an author himself, and ought to have known the consolation of such a gift.

One of Mrs. Jordan’s letters enclosed a little note from William Henry, which for months Margaret could not bring herself to read. She knew that it required no reply, and must needs bruise the wound that had not yet healed within her; so it lay in her desk like some mystic jewel which its possessor keeps in her case because it brings ill-luck to the wearer. But when, after long waiting, and without importunity, Frank Dennis obtained permission to visit his own house, she felt it to be her duty to read or burn that note. It was not a case of being off with the old love before she was on with the new, so far as William Henry was concerned, for she had long done with him; but she was conscious of a certain tender curiosity, which, as circumstances were now turning out, might become disloyalty to another, and therefore she resolved to allay it.

She took the folded paper in her trembling hand, like one who takes up earth to scatter on the coffin lid; it was the very last sight she would ever have of aught belonging to him. There was a certain solemnity about those farewell words of his, even though they could not matter much. Perhaps they were not words of farewell; perhaps, in his wild, boyish fashion, they were about to tell her that in spite of his ruin and disgrace, he still loved her, and how, knowing that her heart had once been his, he defied her to cast him out of it. That would be cruel indeed, though it would not alter the course she had marked out for herself. Would it not be better after all to burn the letter?

The next moment she had torn it open and read it. It was dated months ago, within a week, indeed, of the discovery of his shame. ‘I have done you a grievous wrong, Margaret; let me now do you one good service. It is but a little word of advice, yet if you knew what it cost me to give it, you would hold it of some value. Frank Dennis is worth a thousand of me and loves you—I cannot bring myself to write with a truer love than mine, for that is impossible—but with a love more worthy of you. Marry him, Margaret, and forget me!’

It could not have mattered much, as has been said. The man was a bankrupt; but still he had given her all he had to give, a quittance.

With Aunt Margaret’s fortunes, as apart from the misguided youth who in so strange a manner had almost linked her lot with his, our story has little to do. My own impression is that she was a happy wife; and it is quite certain that Frank Dennis was the best of husbands. Mr. Erin did not long survive his day of humiliation, though it was not, I think, distress of mind that hastened his end so much (as often happens) as the relinquishment of his old pursuits and favourite studies. When we have ridden a hobby-horse all our lives, it is no wonder that when it is suddenly taken from us we find that we have lost the use of our legs.

Some embers of his old taste for antiquities must still, indeed, have glowed within him, for in those last days he wrote a ‘History of the Inns of Court,’ with New Inn among them; but it is plain his heart was not in it. Henceforth his favourite volume was a sealed book to him; there were two names—once so frequent on his tongue—to which he never alluded, William Henry Erin and William Shakespeare.

With respect to the former, Frank Dennis maintained a similar reticence for no less than five-and-twenty years. At the expiration of that time, Aunt Margaret received a certain letter, which she placed in her husband’s hands without a word.

‘Poor fellow!’ was his remark when he had read it. ‘Well! we must, of course, go up to town.’

William Henry had written from his sick bed to ask to see Margaret once more before he died.

They had lived in the country ever since their marriage, but they set out for London at once.

It was summer-time, the very month in which they had journeyed to Stratford-on-Avon more than a quarter of a century ago, and they talked of that time together without any reserve.

‘I think if it had not been for that visit to Bristol,’ said Frank thoughtfully, ‘that none of this sad business would have happened; it was Chatterton’s story that put it into his head.’ Margaret nodded sorrowful assent. She remembered well how the unhappy lad had defended his prototype’s conduct.

‘It was a miserable crime,’ she said, ‘and miserably has he suffered for it.’

‘That is all we need think of now, Margaret; of that, and of his temptation,’ he added tenderly, ‘which, as I can witness, was excessive.’

Here was, indeed, a husband to thank heaven for, and she knew it. And yet—and yet—the tears were in her eyes upon another’s account. How bright and handsome had her Willie looked as he took his seat by her side at the inn table, on that other journey. How eager had been his face when he had first pressed his suit in Anne Hathaway’s garden. In the mist of memory the will-of-the-wisp looms large and twinkles like a very star.

When they reached London, Margaret went alone to the lodging he had indicated; a poor place enough, but with no signs of want about it as she had feared, nor did the sick man lack due tendance. He was very near his end; but his eyes—all that was left of him that she recognised—flashed grateful recognition.

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‘So good of you, so like you, Margaret,’ he murmured.

She sat by him a long time, overwhelmed with pity, but not seldom distressed by his worldly talk. The ruling passion was strong in death. He spoke of his works—of which he had written many in his own name, and of the recognition which he felt assured they would one day meet with; he even told her, with a smile of triumph, that Malone himself had bidden one hundred and thirty guineas for the forged Shakespeare documents. He seemed unable to take a just view of his own behaviour in that transaction, though as to others, he was not only just but generous.

‘Dear Margaret,’ were his last failing words to her: ‘I once gave you a piece of advice, the only thing I had to give—which you did well to follow. I have nothing but the thanks of a dying man to offer you for your having come to bid me farewell, save what I have now to say—which I well know will be news to you. I have been an unfortunate, as well as a misguided, man; my talents have never been acknowledged, and if I had had to live by my wits alone, I should have starved—yes, starved!’ His sharp face darkened, and he raised his feeble hands as if in protest against the judgment of the world. ‘There was one man, Margaret, one among all these millions, and he the very last to whom I should have looked for aid, who caused me to be sought out and gave me help. I have lived more or less upon his bounty ever since. He has never told you of it, Margaret; and now there is no need to tell you; you who know him can guess who it is.’

Margaret’s tears fell fast; it was touching indeed to hear of her husband’s goodness from the lips of his dying rival.

‘Frank is very good to me, dear Willie,’ she sobbed.

‘Yes, yes, I knew it would be so,’ he murmured; ‘honest and true. What is the breath of the world to him who will not even let it know of his good deeds. Yes, yes—kiss me, kiss me for the last time—worth a thousand of me, Margaret, though he was never the Talk of the Town.’

THE END.

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