"I can"t say," I replied, as shortly as possible, and rising at the same time to leave the room.
He prevented me by a quick gesture, which almost ordered me not to go, and I resumed my seat.
"You wonder why I ask the question?" said he, slowly.
"I think," said I, "it would be best to ask it of Jack himself."
Mr Smith said nothing, but sat brooding silently for a minute. Then he said, in a tone which sounded as if he was asking the question of himself rather than me, "Who is the Mrs Shield he writes to?"
He spoke so queerly and looked so strangely that I half wondered whether he was not wandering in his mind.
"Please," said I, "do not ask me these questions. What is the matter with you, Mr Smith?"
"Matter, my boy!" said he, with a bitter laugh; "it"s a big question you ask. But I"ll tell you if you"ll listen."
I repented of having asked the question, he looked so haggard and excited. However, there was nothing for it but to sit still while he, pacing to and fro in the room, told me his story in his own way.
"This is not the first time you have been curious about me, Batchelor.
You have suspected I was or had been something different from the poor literary hack you see me, and you have been right, my boy."
He stopped short in his walk as he said this, and his eyes flashed, just as I had sometimes seen Jack"s eyes flash in the old days.
"Sixteen--no, seventeen--years ago I was the happiest man alive. I can see the little cottage where we lived, my wife and child and I, with its ivy-covered porch and tiny balcony, and the garden which she so prided in behind. It seemed as if nothing could come and disturb our little paradise. I was not rich, but I had all I wanted, and some to spare. I used to walk daily across the field to--where the bank of which I was manager was situated, and they--she and the boy--came to meet me every evening on my return. I felt as if my life was set fair. I could picture no happiness greater than our quiet evenings, and no hope brighter than a future like the present."
Here Mr Smith paused. This picture of a happy home he had drawn with a dreamy voice, as one would describe a fancy rather than a reality.
After a pause he went on:
"The thing I thought impossible happened suddenly, fearfully, while I was even hugging myself in my prosperity and happiness. She died. A week before she had given me a sister for my boy. Our cup of joy seemed full to overflowing. The mother and child throve as well as any one could expect. She was to get up next day, and I was to carry her down stairs, and set her for a little amongst her flowers in the little drawing-room. I wished her good-bye gaily that morning as I went off to my work, and bade her be ready for me when I returned.
"Ah! what a return that was! At mid-day a messenger rushed into the bank and called to me to come at once to my wife. I flew to her on the wings of terror, and found her--dead!"
Here the speaker paused again. His voice had trembled at the last word, but his face was almost fierce as he turned his eyes to me.
I said nothing, but my heart bled for him. "The hope had gone from my life. I had no ballast, nothing to steady me in the tempest. My hope had been all in the present, and it perished with her. I cared for nothing, my little children were a misery to me, the old home was unendurable. I got leave of absence from my employers, and came up here--desperate. I dashed into every sort of dissipation and extravagance; I tried one excitement after another, if only I could drown every memory I had. I abandoned myself to so-called `friends" of the worst sort, who degraded me to their own level, then forsook me.
Still I plunged deeper--I was mad. My one dread was to have a moment to myself--a moment to think of my home, my children, my wife. How I lived through it all I cannot think--and I did not care.
"At last a letter reached me from my employers, requiring my presence at business. My money had long gone, my creditors pressed me on every hand, my friends one and all mocked at my dest.i.tution. I returned to ---, hiding before my employers the traces of my madness, and letting them wonder how grief had changed me. My home I could not go near--the sight of it and of the children would have driven me utterly mad. I lived in the town. For a week or so I tried hard to keep up appearances--but the evil spirit was on me, and I could not withstand him. I had not then learnt to look to a Greater for strength. I must fly once more from one misery to another tenfold worse.
"But I had no money. My savings were exhausted. My salary was not due.
I dared not beg it in advance. I was manager of the bank, and had control over all that was in it. The devil within me tempted me, and I yielded. I falsified the accounts, and tampered with the books of the bank. My very desperation made me ingenious, and it was not till I had been away a month with my ill-gotten booty that the frauds were discovered."
Again he stopped, and I waited with strangely perturbed feelings till he resumed.
"At first I tried to hide myself, and spent some weeks abroad. But though I escaped justice, my misery followed me. During those weeks, I, who till then had been upright and honest, knew not a moment"s peace.
At night I never slept an hour together, by day I trembled at every face I met. The new torture was worse than the old, and at last in sheer despair I returned to London and courted detection. It seemed as if they would never find me. The less I hid myself, the more secure I seemed. At last, however, they found me--it was a relief when they did.
"I acknowledged all, and was sentenced to penal servitude for fourteen years."
"What!" I exclaimed, springing from my seat. "You are--"
"Hush!" said Mr Smith, pointing up to the ceiling, "you"ll wake him.
Yes, I am, or I was, a convict. Listen to the little more I have to say."
I restrained myself with a mighty effort and resumed my seat.
"I was transported, and for ten years lived the life of a convicted felon. It was a rough school, my boy, but in it I learned lessons an eternity of happiness might never have taught me. Christ is very pitiful. They brought me out of madness into sense, and out of storm into calm. As I sat at night in my cell I could bear once more to think of the little ivy-covered cottage, of the green grave in the churchyard, and of the two helpless children who might still live to call me father.
What had become of them? They were perhaps growing up into boyhood and girlhood, beginning to discover for themselves the snares and sorrows of the world which had overcome me. Need I tell you I prayed for those two night and day? A convict"s prayer it was--a forger"s prayer, a thief"s prayer; but a father"s prayer to a pitiful Father for his children.
"After ten years I received a `ticket-of-leave," and was free to return home. But I could not do it yet. I preferred to remain where I was, in Australia, till the full term of my disgrace was ended, and I was at liberty as a free and unfettered man to show my face once more in England. It is not two years since I returned. No one knew me. Even in--my name had been forgotten. The ivy-covered cottage belonged to a stranger, and no one could tell me what had become of the forger"s children who once lived there. It was part of my punishment, and it may be my long waiting is not yet over."
Here once more he paused, looking hard at me with his frightened eyes.
I was going to speak, but he stopped me.
"No; let me finish. I came here, sought work, and found it; and found more than work--I found your friend. When I first met him he was unhappy and friendless. You know why better than I do. I watched him, and saw his gallant struggle against poverty and discouragement and perhaps unkindness. I found in him the first congenial companion I had met since she died. I shared his studies, and--and the rest you know.
But now," said he, as once more I was about to speak, "you will wonder what all this has to do with the questions I asked you just now. You may guess or you may not; I don"t know. This is why. When she died, and I madly deserted all the scenes of my old happiness, my two orphan children were left in the charge of a nurse, a young married woman then, whose name was Shield. Now do you wonder at my questions?"
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
HOW I CAME TO HAVE SEVERAL IMPORTANT CARES UPON ME.
I scarcely knew whether I was awake or dreaming as Mr Smith closed his strange story with the inquiry--
"Now do you wonder at my questions?"
Little had I thought when that evening I knocked at his door and entered, that before I left the room I should have found Jack"s father.
It was some time before I could talk coherently or rationally, I was so excited, so wild at the discovery. My impulse was to rush to Jack at once, and tell him what I had found, to run for Mr Hawkesbury, to telegraph to Mrs Shield--to _do_ something.
"Don"t be foolish," said he, who was now as composed as he had lately been wild and excited. "We may be wrong after all."
"But there can be no doubt," I said. "This Mrs Shield is his old nurse and his sister"s--he has told me so himself--who took care of them when their father--went away."
Mr Smith sighed.
"Surely," I cried, "you will come and tell Jack all about it?"
"Not yet," said he, quietly. "I have waited all these years; I can wait two days more--till his examinations are over--and then you must do it for me, my boy."
It was late before I left him and went up to my bed in Jack"s room.
There he lay sound asleep, with pale, untroubled face, dreaming perhaps of his examination to-morrow, but little dreaming of what was in store when that was over.
It was little enough I could sleep during the night. As I lay and tossed and thought over the events of the evening, I did not know whether to be happy or afraid. Supposing Jack should refuse to own his father! Suppose, when he heard that story of sin and shame, he should turn and repudiate the father who had so cruelly wronged him and his sister!
What a story it was! And yet, as I went over its details and pictured to myself the tragedy of that ruined life, I trembled to think how nearly a similar story might have been mine, had I not by G.o.d"s grace been mercifully arrested in time.
Who was I, to think ill of him? He had been driven to his ruin by a shock which had nearly robbed him of reason. I had fallen through sheer vanity and folly, and who was to say I might not have fallen as low as he, had there been no hand to save me, no friend to recall me, by G.o.d"s mercy, to myself?