MR. FORD’S CLIENT.—THE HISTORY OF JAN’S FATHER—AMABEL AND BOGY THE SECOND.
Among the many sounds blended into that one which roared for ever round Mr. Ford’s offices in the city was the cry of the newsboys.
“Horful p’ticklers of the plague in a village in —shire!” they screamed under the windows. Not that Mr. Ford heard them. But in five minutes the noiseless door opened, and a clerk laid the morning paper on the table, and withdrew in silence. Mr. Ford cut it leisurely with a large ivory knife, and skimmed the news. His eye happened to fall upon the Rector’s letter, which, after a short summary of the history of the fever, pointed out the objects for which help was immediately required. There was a postscript. To give some idea of the ravages of the epidemic, and as a proof that the calamity was not exaggerated, a list of some of the worst cases was given, with names and particulars. It was gloomy enough. “Mary Smith, lost her husband (a laborer) and six children between the second and the ninth of the month. George Harness, a blacksmith, lost his wife and four children. Master Abel Lake, windmiller of the Tower Mill, lost all his children, five in number, between the fifth and the fifteenth of the month. His wife’s health is completely broken up”—
At this point Mr. Ford dropped the paper, and, unlocking a drawer beside him, referred to some memoranda, after which he cut out the Rector’s letter with a large pair of office scissors, and enclosed it in one which he wrote before proceeding to any other business. He had underlined one name in the doleful list,—Abel Lake, windmiller.
Some hours later the silent clerk ushered in a visitor, one of Mr. Ford’s clients. He was a gentleman of middle height and middle age,—the younger half of middle age, though his dark hair was prematurely gray. His eyes were black and restless, and his manner at once haughty and nervous.
“I am very glad to see you, my dear sir,” said Mr. Ford, suavely; “I had just written you a note, the subject of which I can now speak about.” And, as he spoke, Mr. Ford tore open the letter which lay beside him, whilst his client was saying, “We are only passing through town on our way to Scotland. I shall be here two nights.”
“You remember instructing me that it was your wish to economize as much as possible during the minority of your son?” said Mr. Ford. His client nodded.
“I think,” continued the man of business, “there is a quarterly payment we have been in the habit of making on your account, which is now at an end.” And, as he spoke, he pushed the Rector’s letter across the table, with his fingers upon the name Abel Lake, windmiller. His client always spoke stiffly, which made the effort with which he now spoke less noticed by the lawyer. “I should like to be certain,” he said. “I mean, that there is no exaggeration or mistake.”
“You have never communicated with the man, or given him any chance of pestering you,” said Mr. Ford. “I should hardly do so now, I think.”
“I certainly kept the power of reopening communication in my own hands, knowing nothing of the man; but I should be sorry to discontinue the allowance under a—a mistake of any kind.”
Mr. Ford meditated. It may be said here that he by no means knew all that the reader knows of Jan’s history; but he saw that his client was anxious not to withhold the money if the child were alive.
“I think I have it, my dear sir,” he said suddenly. “Allow me to write, in my own name, to this worthy clergyman. I must ask you to subscribe to his fund, in my name, which will form an excuse for the letter, and I will contrive to ask him if the list of cases has been printed accurately, and has his sanction. If there has been any error, we shall hear of it. The object of the subscription is—let me see—is—a monument to those who have died of the fever and”—
But the dark gentleman had started up abruptly.
“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ford,” he said; “your plan is, as usual, excellent. Pray oblige me by sending ten guineas in your own name, and you will let me know if—if there is any mistake. I will call in to-morrow about other matters.”
And before Mr. Ford could reply his client was gone.
The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was grateful to his present mood. To have been alone with his thoughts in the country would have been intolerable. The fields smack of innocence, and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple tints of right and wrong in the memory. But in that seething mass, which represents ten thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful shifts, and open sins, as bad or worse than a man’s own, there is a silent sympathy and no reproach. Mr. Ford’s client did not lean back, the tension of his mind was too great. He sat stiffly, and gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and half transforming into other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as it wound its way through the streets. Now for a moment a four-wheeled cab, loaded with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle memories of his own boyhood flitted over it. Then, crawling behind a dray, some strange associations built up the barrels into an old weatherstained wooden house in Holland, and for a while an intense realization of past scenes which love had made happy put present anxieties to sleep. But they woke again with a horrible pang, as a grim, hideous funeral car drove slowly past, nodding like a nightmare.
As the traffic became less dense, and the cab went faster, the man’s thoughts went faster too. He strove to do what he had not often tried, to review his life. He had unconsciously gained the will to do it, because a reparation which conscience might hitherto have pressed on him was now impossible, and because the plague that had desolated Abel Lake’s home had swept the skeleton out of his own cupboard, and he could repent of the past and do his duty in the future. His conscience was stronger than his courage. He had long wished to repent, though he had not found strength to repair.
On one point he did not delude himself as he looked back over his life. He had no sentimental regrets for the careless happiness of youth. Is any period of human life so tormented with cares as a self-indulgent youth? He had been a slave to expensive habits, to social traditions, to past follies, ever since he could remember. He had been in debt, in pocket or in conscience, from his schoolboy days to this hour. His tradesmen were paid long since, and, if death had cancelled what else he owed, how easy virtue would henceforth be!
It had not been easy at the date of his first marriage. He was deeply in debt, and out of favor with his father. It was on both accounts that he went abroad for some months. In Holland he married. His wife was Jan’s mother, and Jan was their only child.
Her people were of middle rank, leading quiet though cultivated lives. Her mother was dead, and she was her old father’s only child. It would be doing injustice to the kind of love with which she inspired her husband to dwell much upon her beauty, though it was of that high type which takes possession of the memory for ever. She was very intensely, brilliantly fair, so that in a crowd her face shone out like a star. Time never dimmed one golden thread in her hair; and Death, who had done so much for Mr. Ford’s client, could not wash that face from his brain. It blotted the traffic out of the streets, and in their place Dutch pastures, whose rich green levels were unbroken by hedge or wall, stretched flatly to the horizon. It bent over a drawing on his knee as he and she sat sketching together in an old-world orchard, where the trees bore more moss than fruit. The din of London was absolutely unheard by Mr. Ford’s client, but he heard her voice, saying, “You must learn to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery. And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study the sky. We have no mountains, but we have clouds.” It was in the orchard, under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had plighted their troth—ten years ago.
They were married. Had he ever denied himself a single gratification, because it would add another knot to the tangle of his career? He had pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and had evaded catastrophes by involving himself in new complications all his life. His marriage was accomplished at the expense of a train of falsehoods, but his father-in-law was an unworldly old man, not difficult to deceive. He spent most of the next ten months in Holland, and, apart from his anxieties, it was the purest, happiest time he had ever known. Then his father recalled him peremptorily to England.
When Mr. Ford’s client obeyed his father’s summons, the climax of his difficulties seemed at hand. The old man was anxious for a reconciliation, but resolved that his son should “settle in life;” and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman, young, handsome, and with a good fortune. He gave him a fortnight for consideration. If he complied, the old man promised to pay his debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way indulgent. If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could avoid bequeathing at his death.
It was at this juncture that Jan’s mother followed her husband to England. Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied her father. The crisis could hardly have been worse. Mr. Ford’s client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could confess more easily by letter when he reached London. But before the letter was written, his wife died.
Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to their selfish fears. It is like the cruelty that comes of terror. He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the knowledge that he was free. He took the body to Holland, to be buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his grandson—Jan. But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford’s client. On the same day he got letters from his father and from his father-in-law. From the first, to press his instant return home; from the second,............