Piccadilly Part 19

The temptation was too strong, and Grandon yielded; but it was with a reluctant, doubtful step that he approached the door he had not this year ventured to enter. It was opened by Drippings, and I took the opportunity of having a little private conversation with him in the hall, in the course of which it was arranged that he should exchange her ladyship's service for mine, and accompany me to America: the truth is, I proposed settling him there, and making him send for his wife and family. He knew too much of Lady Broadhem's affairs to be at all a desirable domestic either to herself or to her friends in this country.

"Lady Broadhem is in her own sitting-room, my lord," said Drippings; "shall I show your lordship up to her?"

"No; if there is n.o.body in the drawing-room, take us there first. Now, Grandon, I will send for you when you are wanted; keep quiet, and don't get impatient;" and I left him and knocked at Lady Broadhem's door.

The events of the last twenty-four hours had told upon her, and the old wrinkles had come back, with several new ones. She was at that critical age when a great grief or anxiety can make an elderly person antiquated in a night--just as hair will turn grey in a few hours. She put out her hand without speaking, but with an expression of resignation which seemed to say, "I acknowledge myself beaten; be a brute or anything else you like; trample upon me, pray--I am down without the possibility of retaliating, but you will get very little sport out of me; badger me if you like, I don't mean to show fight." All this I read in her face as plainly as if she had said it; and I thought this a moment when generosity on the part of the victor will prove one to be a true strategist; and no one will appreciate it more than Lady Broadhem. With great gentleness, and without allowing a shade of self-satisfaction to cross my face or to penetrate my tones, I told her how I had propitiated Bodwinkle, banished Chundango, provided for Drippings, and succeeded at last in placing her affairs generally on a sound footing.

"Your genius will never be appreciated by the world, Frank," she said, smiling half ironically, half sadly.

"I am quite aware of that," I replied; "nor will this record of my experiences in it--except by you and one or two others who know how true it is. And now, Lady Broadhem, you know the wish which is nearest my heart, but which I don't venture to put in words,"--and I held out my hand.

"Yes," she said--and I saw the slender nostril dilate with the effort it cost her to yield the point upon which she had been so long inflexible--"you want my consent to Ursula's marriage with Grandon. I give it."

"Wait a minute; I should like Lady Ursula to be present," I said; for even now I did not feel that I could trust the old lady thoroughly, and I rang the bell. It was delightful to see how submissively Lady Broadhem sent for Lady Ursula, and how kindly she greeted both son and daughter as they entered, for Broadhem accompanied his sister.

"I have sent for you, my dear," she said, "to tell you how much we owe to our kind friend here, who has completely relieved my mind from all those anxieties which have been weighing upon it for the last few years, by his n.o.ble and generous conduct. Ursula, dear, you will never know really how much you owe him, for he has shown me that I have not done my duty to you as a mother;" and Lady Broadhem's voice trembled. "Upon my word," I thought, "I do believe the old woman is sincere;" and I looked at her fixedly. The tears were filling her eyes. Now pray heaven that we have got to heart at last--it is like sinking a well in a thirsty desert, and coming on water. Yes, there they are welling out, honest large drops, chasing each other to the point of her nose. Oh, my dear Lady Broadhem, I am beginning to love you, and my eyes are beginning to swim too; and before she knew where she was, I threw my arms round her neck and kissed her--an example which was rapidly followed both by Ursula and Broadhem, and which so overcame their mother that she buried her face in a pillow and sobbed out--in tears that might at first have been bitter, but were a.s.suredly sweet and refreshing at last--her repentance. I don't think Broadhem had any very definite idea why he wept, beyond a feeling of sympathy with his mother, and the fact, which I afterwards heard, that Wild Harrie had taken Spiffy's advice, and refused him; so he mingled his tears with hers, but Lady Ursula's eyes were dry and supernaturally brilliant. As I gazed on the group, my own heart seemed to swell to bursting. I do really believe and trust that Lady Broadhem will give up the worldly-holies, and become a pious good woman; and that those talents and that force of character which she possesses may be dedicated to a higher service than they have heretofore been. If I have been the humble instrument of working the change, the sooner I send Grandon here and vanish myself from the scene, the better, or I shall become vain and conceited, I thought; and I rose from my seat.

"Good-bye, Lady Broadhem," I said, "you will not see me again. I am going to America in three days, and must go to Flityville to-morrow; but I never thought I could have bid you all farewell and felt so happy at the prospect of parting;" and I threw one yearning glance on Ursula in spite of myself. "Your happiness is secured, I do most firmly believe,"

I said to her; "and as for you," and I laid my hand on Broadhem's shoulder, "remember the experiment I proposed to you the other night, and try it;" and I was moving off when Ursula seized my hand, and almost dragged me back to her mother's side. She lifted up her eyes like one inspired, and the radiancy of her expression seemed to dazzle and blind me. Then she knelt down, and I knelt by her side, while her mother lay before us, her whole frame heaving with convulsive sobs, and Broadhem stood by wondering and awestruck. I can't repeat that prayer here, but there was a power in those gentle accents which stilled the stormy elements, as the waves of the sea were once stilled before; and when the thrilling voice ceased there was a great calm, and we knew that a change had been affected in that place. Then the floodgates were opened which had been to that moment barred, and Lady Ursula threw herself on her mother's bosom, and wept tears of grat.i.tude, and I stole silently away to the drawing-room, and led Grandon by the hand, without uttering a word, to that room into which a new atmosphere had descended, and a new breath had called into existence a new nature. He started back on the threshold at the picture before him. Lady Broadhem, apparently scarcely conscious, clasped in the arms of her weeping daughter; and Broadhem--poor Broadhem--bewildered at the sight of the strong woman he had dreaded and worshipped thus suddenly breaking down, was sitting on a footstool at his mother's side, holding one of her hands, helplessly.

"Good G.o.d! Frank," said Grandon, in a whisper, for neither Lady Broadhem nor her daughter saw us, "what have you been doing?"

"Beginning the work which is left for you to finish;" and I gently disengaged one of Lady Ursula's hands, and drew it towards me. "On you,"

I said to her solemnly, "has been bestowed a great gift; use it as you have done, and may he share it with you, and support you in the lifelong trial it must involve, and in the ridicule to which you will both be exposed. For myself, I go to seek it where I am told I shall alone find it." I placed her hand in Grandon's, kissed her mother on the forehead, and hurried from the room. Then the strain on my nervous system suddenly relaxed. I am conscious of Drippings helping me into a cab, and going with me to Piccadilly, and of one coming in and finding me stretched on my bed, and of his lifting me from it by a single touch, just as Drippings was going off in quest of the doctor. It was he who had met me that night when I was walking with Broadhem, but his name I am unable to divulge. "Stay here, my friend," he said to Drippings, "and pack your master's things: there is no need for the doctor; I will take him to America." And my heart leaped within me, for its predictions were verified, and the path lay clear before me.

And now, on this last night in England, as I pen the last lines of this record of my life during the six months that are past, and look back to the spirit in which it was begun, and examine the influences which impelled me to write as I have, I see that I too have undergone a change, and that the time has come when, if I wished, I can no more descant as heretofore on the faults and foibles of the day. Among those who have read me there may be some who have so well understood, that they will see why this is so. If in what I have said I have hurt the feelings of any man or woman in my desire to expose the vices of society at large, they will be of those who have failed to detect why I have said thus much, and needs must stop here; but none the less earnestly would I a.s.sure them that it has been against my will and intention to wound any one. As I began because I could not help it, so I end because I am obliged. My task is done. The seed which I found in my hand, such as it was, I have sown. Whether it rots and dies in the ground, or springs up and brings forth fruit, is a matter in which I cannot, and ought not, to have the smallest personal interest.

THE END.