Fenton's Quest - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

fishing village near Oxford."

"No, I was not in spirits for that. I have dined two or three times in Cavendish Square, and have been made much of, and have contrived to forget my troubles for a few hours."

"You talk of your troubles as if you were very heavily burdened; and yet, for the life of me, I cannot see what you have to complain of," Gilbert said wonderingly.

"Of course not. That is always the case with one's friends--even the best of them. It's only the man who wears the shoe that knows why it pinches and galls him. But what have you been doing since I saw you last?"

"I have been in Hampshire."

"Indeed!" said John Saltram, looking him full in the face. "And what took you into that quarter of the world?"

"I thought you took more interest in my affairs than to have to ask that question. I went to look for Marian Holbrook,--and I found her."

"Poor old fellow!" Mr. Saltram said gently. "And was there any satisfaction for you in the meeting?"

"Yes, and no. There was a kind of mournful pleasure in seeing the dear face once more."

"She must have been surprised to see you."

"She was, no doubt, surprised--unpleasantly, perhaps; but she received me very kindly, and was perfectly frank upon every subject except her husband. She would tell me nothing about him--neither his position in the world, nor his profession, if he has one, as I suppose he has. She owned he was not rich, and that is about all she said of him. Poor girl, I do not think she is happy!"

"What ground have you for such an idea?"

"Her face, which told me a great deal more than her words. Her beauty is very much faded since the summer evening when I first saw her in Lidford Church. She seems to lead a lonely life in the old farm-house to which her husband brought her immediately after their marriage--a life which few women would care to lead. And now, John, I want to know how it is you have kept back the truth from me in this matter; that you have treated me with a reserve which I had no right to expect from a friend."

"What have I kept from you"

"Your knowledge of this man Holbrook."

"What makes you suppose that I have any knowledge of him?"

"The fact that he is a friend of Sir David Forster's. The house in which I found Marian belongs to Sir David, and was lent by him to Mr. Holbrook."

"I do not know every friend of Forster's. He is a man who picks up his acquaintance in the highways and byways, and drops them when he is tired of them."

"Will you tell me, on your honour, that you know nothing of this Mr. Holbrook?"

"Certainly."

Gilbert Fenton gave a weary sigh, and then seated himself silently opposite Mr. Saltram. He could not afford to doubt this friend of his. The whole fabric of his life must have dropped to pieces if John Saltram had played him false. His single venture as a lover having ended in shipwreck, he seemed to have nothing left him but friendship; and that kind of hero-worship which had made his friend always appear to him something better than he really was, had grown stronger with him since Marian's desertion.

"O Jack," he said presently, "I could bear anything in this world better than the notion that you could betray me--that you could break faith with me for the sake of another man."

"I am not likely to do that. There is no man upon, this earth I care for very much except you. I am not a man prone to friendship. In fact, I am a selfish worthless fellow at the best, Gilbert, and hardly merit your serious consideration. It would be wiser of you to think of me as I really am, and to think very little of me."

"You did not show yourself remarkably selfish when you nursed me through that fever, at the hazard of your own life."

"Pshaw! that was nothing. I could not have done less in the position in which we two were. Such sacrifices as those count for very little. It is when a man's own happiness is in the scale that the black spot shows itself. I tell you, Gilbert, I am not worth your friendship. It would be better for you to go your own way, and have nothing more to do with me."

Mr. Saltram had said this kind of thing very often in the past, so that the words had no especial significance to Gilbert. He only thought that his friend was in one of those gloomy moods which were common to him at times.

"I could not do without your friendship, Jack," he said. "Remember how barren the world is to me now. I have nothing left but that."

"A poor substitute for better things, Gilbert. I am never likely to be much good to you or to myself. By the way, have you seen anything lately of that old man you told me about--Miss Nowell's grandfather?"

"I saw him the other night. He is very ill--dying, I believe. I have written to Marian to tell her that if she does not come very quickly to see him, there is a chance of her not finding him alive."

"And she will come of course."

"I suppose so. She talked of waiting for her husband's consent; but she will scarcely do that when she knows her grandfather's precarious state. I shall go to Queen Anne's Court after I leave you, to ascertain if there has been any letter from her to announce her coming. She is a complete stranger in London, and may be embarrassed if she arrives at the station alone. But I should imagine her husband would meet her there supposing him to be in town."

Mr. Fenton stayed with his friend about an hour after this; but John Saltram was not in a communicative mood to-night, and the talk lagged wearily. It was almost a relief to Gilbert when they had bidden each other good-night, and he was out in the noisy streets once more, making his way towards Queen Anne's Court.


CHAPTER XX.


DRIFTING AWAY.

Gilbert Fenton found Jacob Nowell worse; so much worse, that he had been obliged to take to his bed, and was lying in a dull shabby room upstairs, faintly lighted by one tallow candle on the mantelpiece. Marian was there when Gilbert went in. She had arrived a couple of hours before, and had taken her place at once by the sick-bed. Her bonnet and shawl were thrown carelessly upon a dilapidated couch by the window. Gilbert fancied she looked like a ministering angel as she sat by the bed, her soft brown hair falling loosely round the lovely face, her countenance almost divine in its expression of tenderness and pity.

"You came to town alone, Marian?" he asked in a low voice.

The old man was in a doze at this moment, lying with his pinched withered face turned towards his granddaughter, his feeble hand in hers.

"Yes, I came alone. My husband had not come back, and I would not delay any longer after receiving your letter. I am very glad I came. My poor grandfather seemed so pleased to see me. He was wandering a little when I first came in, but brightened wonderfully afterwards, and quite understood who I was."

The old man awoke presently. He was in a semi-delirious state, but seemed to know his granddaughter, and clung to her, calling her by name with senile fondness. His mind wandered back to the past, and he talked to his son as if he had been in the room, reproaching him for his extravagance, his college debts, which had been the ruin of his careful hard-working father. At another moment he fancied that his wife was still alive, and spoke to her, telling her that their grandchild had been christened after her, and that she was to love the girl. And then the delirium left him for a time, his mind grew clearer, and he talked quite rationally in his low feeble way.

"Is that Mr. Fenton?" he asked; "the room's so dark, I can't see very well. She has come to me, you see. She's a good girl. Her eyes are like my wife's. Yes, she's a good girl. It seems a hard thing that I should have lived all these years without knowing her; lived alone, with no one about me but those that were on the watch for my money, and eager to cheat me at every turn. My life might have been happier if I'd had a grandchild to keep me company, and I might have left this place and lived like a gentleman for her sake. But that's all past and gone. You'll be rich when I'm dead, Marian; yes, what most people would count rich. You won't squander the money, will you, my dear, as your father would, if it were left to him?"

"No, grandfather. But tell me about my father. Is he still living?" the girl asked eagerly.

"Never mind him, child," answered Jacob Nowell. "He hasn't troubled himself about you, and you can't do better than keep clear of him. No good ever came of anything he did yet, and no good ever will come. Don't you have anything to do with him, Marian. He'll try to get all your money away from you, if you give him a chance--depend upon that."

"He is living, then? O, my dear grandfather, do tell me something more about him. Remember that whatever his errors may have been, he is my father--the only relation I have in the world except yourself."

"His whole life has been one long error," answered Jacob Nowell. "I tell you, child, the less you know of him the better."

He was not to be moved from this, and would say no more about his son, in spite of Marian's earnest pleading. The doctor came in presently, for the second time that evening, and forbade his patient's talking any more. He told Gilbert, as he left the house, that the old man's life was now only a question of so many days or so many hours.

The old woman who did all the work of Jacob Nowell's establishment--a dilapidated-looking widow, whom nobody in that quarter ever remembered in any other condition than that of widowhood--had prepared a small bedroom at the back of the house for Marian; a room in which Percival had slept in his early boyhood, and where the daughter found faint traces of her father's life. Mr. Macready as Othello, in a spangled tunic, with vest of actual satin let into the picture, after the pre-Raphaelite or realistic tendency commonly found in such juvenile works of art, hung over the narrow painted mantelpiece. The fond mother had had this masterpiece framed and glazed in the days when her son was still a little lad, unspoiled by University life and those splendid aspirations which afterwards made his home hateful to him. There were some tattered books upon a shelf by the bed--school prizes, an old Virgil, a "Robinson Crusoe" shorn of its binding. The boy's name was written in them in a scrawling schoolboy hand; not once, but many times, after the fashion of juvenile bibliopoles, with primitive rhymes in Latin and English setting forth his proprietorship in the volumes. Caricatures were scribbled upon the fly-leaves and margins of the books, the date whereof looked