Wayfaring Men. Lyall Edna

advice. His late master at Winchester was away in Switzerland; the Professor and Frau Rosenwald were in Dresden and were little likely to be able to help him, while of friends of his own age he had scarcely any, owing to Lady Mactavish’s dislike to his accepting invitations for the holidays which would have made return invitations necessary.

      On reaching Charing Cross he went straight to Sir Matthew’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate, left his luggage there, arranged to come the next day and pack the few things he had in his room, and then walked to Ebury Street to inquire whether Mr. Marriott were at home. London had such a deserted air that he began to fear that the solicitor would have joined in the general exodus. But fortune favoured him, Mr. Marriott was in town still and had just returned from the City. He was ushered into a comfortable library, where, in a few moments, the old lawyer joined him, receiving him in such a kindly and courteous way that the friendless feeling which had taken possession of him on his arrival in London quite left him.

      “I hope you will excuse my coming at such an hour and to your private house, but I half feared you might be away and I was very anxious for your advice,” he said, when the old man’s greetings were ended.

      “I’m heartily glad you did come to-night,” said Mr. Marriott. “For to-morrow I go to Switzerland with my sister and my daughter. Is Sir Matthew still in town? Are you staying with him?”

      “He has this very day turned me out of his house,” said Ralph, and he briefly told the lawyer what had passed.

      “This seems a serious matter,” said Mr. Marriott. “We must talk it over together, but in the meantime, I will send round for your things, and you will, I hope, spend the night here. After dinner, we will put our heads together, and see what can be done.”

      Ralph could only gratefully accept the hospitality, and it proved to be just the genuine old-fashioned hospitality that does the heart good, and is as unlike its forced counterfeit as real fruit is unlike its waxen imitation.

      Old Mr. Marriott’s sister proved to be one of those eternally young people who at seventy have more capacity for enjoying life than many girls of eighteen. Her vivacious face, with its ever varying expression, her kindly human interest in all things and all people, did more to drive bitter recollections from Ralph’s mind than anything else could have done. Moreover, he lost his heart to pretty Katharine Marriott, though she was many years his senior. Her large, serious, brown eyes, and her air of gentle dignity seemed to him perfection; he could have imagined her to be some stately Spanish lady in her black, lace dress, and though she said little to him, her whole manner was full of sympathetic charm. When the ladies had left the table, Mr. Marriott began to make further inquiries as to what had passed that afternoon.

      “Is it not possible,” he suggested, “that you too readily took Sir Matthew at his word? He has been kind to you all these years, has he not?”

      “He has carried out what he undertook,” said Ralph, “and twice, no—three times—I remember that he really spoke kindly to me. For the rest of the six years he has never noticed me at all except to find fault.”

      “Do you mean that you got into trouble? That your school reports were bad or anything of that sort?”

      “No, they were decent enough, and I was never exactly in any scrape, but somehow, in little ways I always managed to displease him; spoke too much, or too little, or too loud, or not distinctly. If one made the least noise in coming into a room or closing a door he couldn’t endure it, or if one stole in with elaborate care and quietness, he would start and say a stealthy step was intolerable to him. As to breakfast, the only meal we ever had with him as children, it used to be a time of torture, for if you held your knife or fork in a way which did not exactly meet his ideal way of holding a knife and fork, he made you feel that you had committed a crime.”

      “So there was never much love lost between you,” said Mr. Marriott, with a smile. “Well it is what I feared would happen when I last saw you. Did he often mention your father’s name?”

      “Hardly ever, except when some guest was there who was likely to be impressed with his kindness in having adopted a poor clergyman’s son,” said Ralph, flushing hotly at certain galling recollections. “It was never until this afternoon, though, that he dared to speak of my father as an unpractical fool who had left me a beggar, and to taunt me with the high ideals which would never have kept me from starving.”

      “And did this lead to your quarrel?” said the lawyer, his brows contracting a little.

      “Yes,” said Ralph, “I replied that my father was at least an honest man, and he seemed to take that as a sort of personal affront—I’m sure I don’t know why. He went into a towering rage and ordered me out of his sight.”

      “He is morbidly sensitive as to his reputation,” said Mr. Marriott, “and no doubt he thought you knew something to his disadvantage. Did it ever occur to you as strange that he should have adopted you?”

      “At first I thought it was because he had really cared for my father and because he was my godfather, but before long I began to think it was chiefly as a sort of telling advertisement,” said Ralph, with a touch of bitterness in his tone.

      “All three notions were probably right,” said the lawyer, “but there was yet another reason of which I can tell you something. On the day we reached Whinhaven and began to look through your father’s papers, one of the very first things I came across in his blotting-book was the rough draft of a letter with a blank for the name in the first line. Seeing that it bore reference to the unlucky investment he had made, I glanced through it. It bitterly reproached the man he was writing to, for having recommended him to place his money in the company which had just gone into liquidation, and alluded to assurances that had been given him of this friend’s close knowledge of all the details, and complete confidence in the safety of the company. I recollect that one sentence referred to you, and your father said, ‘Should this illness of mine prove fatal, I look to you, as Ralph’s godfather, to do what you can for him, for it was in consequence of your advice that I made this unfortunate speculation.’”

      Ralph started to his feet. “It was Sir Matthew then who ruined him!”

      “Well,” said the lawyer, “on reading that I looked up and casually asked him if he knew who your godfathers were, he replied that he was one, and that to the best of his recollection, the other had been a distant kinsman of your father’s, a certain Sir Richard Denmead, who had died a few years before. Then, without further comment, I handed him the letter, remarking that of course, I had no idea on reading it that it bore reference to himself. He was naturally annoyed and upset, but was obliged to own that it was the draft of the letter he had received. He was doing what he could to justify himself when you came into the room, and what passed after that you no doubt remember.”

      “I remember,” said Ralph, “that he patronised me—he—my father’s murderer. The word is not a bit too strong for him. He murdered my father just as truly as if he had stabbed him to the heart. It was not the cold that killed him, it was the misery and the depression and the anxiety for the future. And this false friend of his is the man that goes about opening bazaars, and posing as a profoundly religious man! Faugh! It’s revolting!”

      “I have never liked Sir Matthew Mactavish,” said Mr. Marriott, quietly. “It is wonderful to me how he impresses people; there must be some germ of greatness in him or he couldn’t do it. I am quite aware that the discovery of the truth must make you feel very bitterly towards him, but if you will take an old man’s advice you will dwell upon the past as little as possible. You can do no good by thinking of the injury he has done you, and you will have to be very careful how you speak of him, or in an angry moment you may make yourself liable to an action for slander; legally you know a thing may be perfectly true, but if maliciously uttered and in a way that injures another in his calling it may be nevertheless slander. So you must not proclaim your wrongs from the housetops. Now the question is what are you to do to support yourself?”

      “I want to try my luck on the stage,” said Ralph. “It was my wish long ago, and I believe that I might make something of it.