Fenton's Quest Part 10

"You don't mind my reading your father's letters, Marian?" he asked.

"Not at all. Only I think you will find them very uninteresting."

"I am interested in everything that concerns you."

He put the papers in his pocket, and sat up for an hour in his room that night reading Percival Nowell's love letters. They revealed very little to him, except the unmitigated selfishness of the writer. That quality exhibited itself in every page. The lovers had met for the first time at the house of some Mr. Crosby, in whose family Miss Geoffry seemed to be living; and there were clandestine meetings spoken of in the Regent's Park, for which reason Gilbert supposed Mr. Crosby's house must have been in that locality. There were broken appointments, for which Miss Geoffry was bitterly reproached by her lover, who abused the whole Crosby household in a venomous manner for having kept her at home at these times.

"If you loved me, as you pretend, Lucy," Mr. Nowell wrote on one occasion, "you would speedily exchange this degrading slavery for liberty and happiness with me, and would be content to leave the future _utterly_ in my hands, without question or fear. A really generous woman would do this."

There was a good deal more to the same effect, and it seemed as if the proposal of marriage came at last rather reluctantly; but it did come, and was repeated, and urged in a very pressing manner; while Lucy Geoffry to the last appeared to have hung back, as if dreading the result of that union.

The letters told little of the writer's circ.u.mstances or social status.

Whenever he alluded to his father, it was with anger and contempt, and in a manner that implied some quarrel between them; but there was nothing to indicate what kind of man the father was.

Gilbert Fenton took the packet back to the cottage next morning. He was to return to London that afternoon, and had only a few hours to spend with Marian. The day was dull and cold, but there was no rain; and they walked together in the garden, where the leaves were beginning to fall, and whence every appearance of summer seemed to have vanished since Gilbert's last visit.

For some time they were both rather silent, pacing thoughtfully up and down the sheltered walk that bounded the lawn. Gilbert found it impossible to put on an appearance of hopefulness on this last day. It was better wholly to give up the attempt, and resign himself to the gloom that brooded over him, shutting out the future. That airy castle of his--the villa on the banks of the Thames--seemed to have faded and vanished altogether. He could not look beyond the Australian journey to the happy time of his return. The hazards of time and distance bewildered him. He felt an unspeakable dread of the distance that was to divide him from Marian Nowell--a dread that grew stronger with every hour. He was destined to suffer a fresh pang before the moment of parting came. Marian turned to him by-and-by with an earnest anxious face, and said,--

"Gilbert, there is something which I think I ought to say to you before you go away."

"What is that, my darling?"

"It is rather hard to say. I fear it will give you pain. I have been thinking about it for a long time. The thought has been a constant reproach to me. Gilbert, it would be better if we were both free; better if you could leave England without any tie to weigh you down with anxieties when you are out yonder, and will have so much occasion for perfect freedom of mind."

"Marian!"

"O, pray, pray don't think me ungrateful or unmindful of your goodness to me. I am only anxious for your happiness. I am not steady enough, or fixed enough, in my mind. I am not worthy of all the thought and care you have given me."

"Marian, have I done anything to forfeit your love?"

"O no, no."

"Then why do you say these things to me? Do you want to break my heart?"

"Would it break your heart if I were to recall my promise, Gilbert?"

"Yes, Marian," he answered gravely, drawing her suddenly to him, and looking into her face with earnest scrutinising eyes; "but if you do not love me, if you cannot love me--and G.o.d knows how happy I have been in the belief that I had won your love long ago--let the word be spoken. I will bear it, my dear, I will bear it."

"O no, no," she cried, shocked by the dead whiteness of his face, and bursting into tears. "I will try to be worthy of you. I will try to love you as you deserve to be loved. It was only a fancy of mine that it would be better for you to be free from all thoughts of me. I think it would seem very hard to me to lose your love. I don't think I could bear that, Gilbert."

She looked up at him with an appealing expression through her tears--an innocent, half-childish look that went to his heart--and he clasped her to his breast, believing that this proposal to set him free had been indeed nothing more than a girlish caprice.

"My dearest, my life is bound up with your love," he said. "Nothing can part us except your ceasing to love me."

CHAPTER VII.

"GOOD-BYE."

The hour for the final parting came at last, and Gilbert Fenton turned his back upon the little gate by which he had watched Marian Nowell standing upon that first summer Sunday evening which sealed his destiny.

He left Lidford weary at heart, weighed down by a depression he had vainly struggled against, and he brooded over his troubles all the way back to town. It seemed as if all the hopes that had made life so sweet to him only a week ago had been swept away. He could not look beyond that dreary Australian exile; he could not bring his thoughts to bear upon the time that was to come afterwards, and which need be no less bright because of this delay.

"She may die while I am away," he thought. "O G.o.d, if that were to happen! If I were to come back and find her dead! Such things have been; and men and women have borne them, and gone on living."

He had one more duty to perform before he left England. He had to say good-bye to John Saltram, whom he had not seen since they parted that night at Lidford. He could not leave England without some kind of farewell to his old friend, and he had reserved this last evening for the duty.

He went to the Pnyx on the chance of finding Saltram there, and failing in that, ate his solitary dinner in the coffee-room. The waiters told him that Mr. Saltram had not been at the club for some weeks. Gilbert did not waste much time over his dinner, and went straight from the Pnyx to the Temple, where John Saltram had a second-floor in Figtree-court.

Mr. Saltram was at home. It was his own sonorous voice which answered Gilbert's knock, bidding him enter with a muttered curse upon the interruption by way of addendum. The room into which Mr. Fenton went upon receiving this unpromising invitation was in a state of chaotic confusion. An open portmanteau sprawled upon the floor, and a whole wardrobe of masculine garments seemed to have been shot at random on to the chairs near it; a dozen soda-water bottles, full and empty, were huddled in one corner; a tea-tray tottered on the extreme edge of a table heaped with dusty books and papers; and at a desk in the centre of the room, with a great paraffin lamp flaring upon his face as he wrote, sat John Saltram, surrounded by fallen slips of copy, writing as if to win a wager.

"Who is it? and what do you want?" he asked in a husky voice, without looking up from his paper or suspending the rapid progress of his pen.

"Why, Jack, I don't think I ever caught you so hard at work before."

John Saltram dropped his pen at the sound of his friend's voice and got up. He gave Gilbert his hand in a mechanical kind of way.

"No, I don't generally go at it quite so hard; but you know I have a knack of doing things against time. I have been giving myself a spell of hard work in order to pick up a little cash for the children of Israel."

He dropped back into his chair, and Gilbert took one opposite him. The lamp shone full upon John Saltram's face as he sat at his desk; and after looking at him for a moment by that vivid light, Gilbert Fenton gave a cry of surprise.

"What is the matter, Gil?"

"You are the matter. You are looking as worn and haggard as if you'd had a long illness since I saw you last. I never remember you looking so ill.

This kind of thing won't do, John. You'd soon kill yourself at this rate."

"Not to be done, my dear fellow. I am the toughest thing in creation. I have been sitting up all night for the last week or so, and that does rather impair the freshness of one's complexion; but I a.s.sure you there's nothing so good for a man as a week or two of unbroken work. I have been doing an exhaustive review of Roman literature for one of the quarterlies, and the subject involved a little more reading than I was quite prepared for."

"And you have really not been ill?"

"Not in the least. I am never ill."

He pushed aside his papers, and sat with his elbow on the desk and his head leaning on his hand, waiting for Gilbert to talk. He was evidently in one of those silent moods which were common to him at times.

Gilbert told him of his Melbourne troubles, and of his immediate departure. The announcement roused him from his absent humour. He dropped his arm from the table suddenly, and sat looking full at Gilbert with a very intent expression.

"This is strange news," he said, "and it will cause the postponement of your marriage, I suppose?"

"Unhappily, yes; that is unavoidable. Hard lines, isn't it, Jack?"

"Well, yes; I daresay the separation seems rather a hardship; but you are young enough to stand a few months' delay. When do you sail?"

"To-morrow."

"So soon?"