Fenton's Quest Part 29

"Well," said this gentleman, in his usual off-hand manner, "how's the governor?"

"Very ill; going fast, the doctor says."

"Eh? As bad as that? Then there's been a change since I was here last."

"Yes; Mr. Nowell was taken much worse yesterday morning. He had a kind of fit, I fancy, and couldn't get his speech for some time afterwards. But he got over that, and has talked well enough since then," Mr. Tulliver concluded ruefully, remembering his master's candid remarks that morning.

"I'll step upstairs and have a look at the old gentleman," said Percival.

"There's a young lady with him," Mr. Tulliver remarked, in a somewhat mysterious tone.

"A young lady!" the other cried. "What young lady?"

"His granddaughter."

"Indeed!"

"Yes; she came up from the country yesterday evening, and she's been sitting with him ever since. He seems to have taken to her very much.

You'd think she'd been about him all her life; and she's to have all his money, he says. I wonder what his only son will say to that," added Mr.

Tulliver, looking very curiously at Percival Nowell, "supposing him to be alive? Rather hard upon him, isn't it?"

"Uncommonly," the other answered coolly. He saw that the shopman suspected his ident.i.ty, though he had carefully avoided all reference to the relations.h.i.+p between himself and the old man in Luke Tulliver's presence, and had begged his father to say nothing about him.

"I should like to see this young lady before I go up to Mr. Nowell's room," he said presently. "Will you step upstairs and ask her to come down to me?"

"I can go if you wish, but I don't suppose she'll leave the old gentleman."

"Never mind what you suppose. Tell her that I wish to say a few words to her upon particular business."

Luke Tulliver departed upon his errand, while Percival Nowell went into the parlour, and seated himself before the dull neglected fire in the lumbering old arm-chair in which his father had sat through the long lonely evenings for so many years. Mr. Nowell the younger was not disturbed by any sentimental reflections upon this subject, however; he was thinking of his father's will, and the wrong which was inflicted upon him thereby.

"To be cheated out of every sixpence by my own flesh and blood!" he muttered to himself. "That seems too much for any man to bear."

The door was opened by a gentle hand presently, and Marian came into the room. Percival Nowell rose from his seat hastily and stood facing her, surprised by her beauty and an indefinable likeness which she bore to her mother--a likeness which brought his dead wife's face back to his mind with a sudden pang. He had loved her after his own fas.h.i.+on once upon a time, and had grown weary of her and neglected her after the death of that short-lived selfish pa.s.sion; but something, some faint touch of the old feeling, stirred his heart as he looked at his daughter to-night. The emotion was as brief as the breath of a pa.s.sing wind. In the next moment he was thinking of his father's money, and how this girl had emerged from obscurity to rob him of it.

"You wish to speak to me on business, I am told," she said, in her clear low voice, wondering at the stranger's silence and deliberate scrutiny of her face.

"Yes, I have to speak to you on very serious business, Marian," he answered gravely.

"You are an utter stranger to me, and yet call me by my Christian name."

"I am not an utter stranger to you. Look at me, Mrs. Holbrook. Have you never seen my face before?"

"Never."

"Are you quite sure of that? Look a little longer before you answer again."

"Yes!" she cried suddenly, after a long pause. "You are my father!"

There had come back upon her, in a rapid flash of memory, the picture of a room in Brussels--a room lighted dimly by two wax-candles on the chimney-piece, where there was a tall dark man who s.n.a.t.c.hed her up in his arms and kissed her before he went out. She remembered caring very little for his kisses, and having a childish consciousness of the fact that it was he who made her mamma cry so often in the quiet lonely evenings, when the mother and child were together in that desolate continental lodging.

Yet at this moment she was scarcely disposed to think much about her father's ill-conduct. She considered only that he was her father, and that they had found each other after long years of separation. She stretched out her arms, and would have fallen upon his breast; but something in his manner repelled her, something downcast and nervous, which had a chilling effect upon her, and gave her time to remember how little cause she had to love him. He did not seem aware of the affectionate impulse which had moved her towards him at first. He gave her his hand presently. It was deadly cold, and lay loosely in her own.

"I was asking my grandfather about you this morning," she said, wondering at his strange manner, "but he would not tell me where you were."

"Indeed! I am surprised to find you felt so much interest in me; I'm aware that I don't deserve as much. Yet I could plead plenty of excuses for my life, if I cared to trouble you with them; but I don't. It would be a long story; and when it was told, you might not believe it. Most men are, more or less, the slave of circ.u.mstances. I have suffered that kind of bondage all my life. I have known, too, that you were in good hands--better off in every way than you could have been in my care--or I should have acted differently in relation to you."

"There is no occasion to speak of the past," Marian replied gravely.

"Providence was very good to me; but I know my poor mother's last days were full of sorrow. I cannot tell how far it might have been in your power to prevent that. It is not my place to blame, or even to question your conduct."

"You are an uncommonly dutiful daughter," Mr. Nowell exclaimed with rather a bitter laugh; "I thought that you would have repudiated me altogether perhaps; would have taken your tone from my father, who has grown pig-headed with old age, and cannot forgive me for having had the aspirations of a gentleman."

"It is a pity there should not be union between my grandfather and you at such a moment as this," Marian said.

"O, we are civil enough to each other. I bear no malice against the old man, though many sons in my position might consider themselves hardly used. And now I may as well go upstairs and pay my respects. Why is not your husband with you, by the bye?"

"He is not wanted here; and I do not even know that he is in London."

"Humph! He seems rather a mysterious sort of person, this husband of yours."

Marian took no notice of this remark, and the father and daughter went upstairs to the sick-room together. The old silversmith received his son with obvious coolness, and was evidently displeased at seeing Marian and her father together.

Percival Nowell, however, on his part, appeared to be in an unusually affectionate and dutiful mood this evening. He held his place by the bedside resolutely, and insisted on sharing Marian's watch that night. So all through the long night those two sat together, while the old man pa.s.sed from uneasy slumber to more uneasy wakefulness, and back to troubled sleep again, his breathing growing heavier and more laboured with every hour. They were very quiet, and could have found but little to say to each other, had there been no reason for their silence. That first brief impulsive feeling of affection past, Marian could only think of this newly-found father as the man who had made her mother's life lonely and wretched while he pursued his own selfish pleasures; and who had allowed her to grow to womanhood without having been the object of one thought or care upon his part. She could not forget these things, as she sat opposite to him in the awful silence of the sick-room, stealing a glance at his face now and then, and wondering at the strange turn of fortune which had brought them thus together.

It was not a pleasant face by any means--not a countenance to inspire love or confidence. Handsome still, but with a faded look, like a face that had grown pallid and wrinkled in the feverish atmosphere of vicious haunts--under the flaring gas that glares down upon the green cloth of a rouge-et-noir table, in the tumult of crowded race-courses, the press and confusion of the betting-ring--it was the face of a battered _roue_, who had lived his life, and outlived the smiles of fortune; the face of a man to whom honest thoughts and hopes had long been unknown. There was a disappointed peevish look about the drooping corners of the mouth, an angry glitter in the eyes.

He did not look at his daughter very often as they sat together through that weary vigil, but kept his eyes for the greater part of the time upon the wasted face on the pillow, which looked like a parchment mask in the dim light. He seemed to be deep in thought, and several times in the night Marian heard him breathe an impatient sigh, as if his thoughts were not pleasant to him. More than once he rose from his chair and paced the room softly for a little time, as if the restlessness of his mind had made that forced quiet unendurable. The early morning light came at last, faint and wan and gray, across a forest of blackened chimney-pots, and by that light the watchers could see that Jacob Nowell had changed for the worse.

He lingered till late that afternoon. It was growing dusk when he died, making a very peaceful end of life at the last, with his head resting upon Marian's shoulder, and his cold hand clasped in hers. His son stood by the bed, looking down upon him at that final moment with a fixed inscrutable face. Gilbert Fenton called that evening, and heard of the old man's death from Luke Tulliver. He heard also that Mrs. Holbrook intended to sleep in Queen Anne's Court that night, and did not therefore intrude upon her, relying upon being able to see her next morning. He left his card, with a few words of condolence written upon it in pencil.

Mr. Nowell was with his daughter in the little parlour behind the shop when Luke Tulliver gave her this card. He asked who the visitor was.

"Mr. Fenton, a gentleman I knew at Lidford in my dear uncle's lifetime.

My grandfather liked him very much."

"Mr. Fenton! Yes, my father told me all about him. You were engaged to him, and jilted him for this man you have married--very foolishly, as it seems to me; for he could certainly have given you a better position than that which you appear to occupy now."

"I chose for my own happiness," Marian answered quietly, "and I have only one subject for regret; that is, that I was compelled to act with ingrat.i.tude towards a good man. But Mr. Fenton has forgiven me; has promised to be my friend, if ever I should have need of his friends.h.i.+p.

He has very kindly offered to take all trouble off my hands with respect to--to the arrangements for the funeral."

"He is remarkably obliging," said Percival Nowell with a sneer; "but as the only son of the deceased, I consider myself the proper person to perform that final duty."

"I do not wish to interfere with your doing so. Of course I did not know how near at hand you were when Mr. Fenton made that offer, or I should have told him."

"You mean to remain until the funeral is over, I suppose?"

"I think not; I want to go back to Hamps.h.i.+re as soon as possible--by an early train to-morrow morning, if I can. I do not see that there is any reason for my remaining. I could not prove my respect or affection for my grandfather any more by staying."

"Certainly not," her father answered promptly. "I think you will be quite right in getting away from this dingy hole as quick as you can."