Part 13 (1/2)
Hitherto he had been only vaguely accused of crime, which his absence chiefly had tended to fasten upon him; but as there had been no opportunity of bringing him to public trial, it would soon be believed that there was no evidence against him. Many persons thought already that the junior partner was away either on pleasure or business, because the senior had taken his place. Only a few, himself and the three or four obscure people who actually suffered from his defalcations, would recollect them. By and by Roland Sefton would be remembered as the kind, benevolent, even Christian man, whose life, so soon cut short, had been full of promise for his native town.
Mr. Clifford himself felt a pang of regret and sorrow when he heard the news. Years ago he had loved the frank, warm-hearted boy, his friend's only child, with a very true affection. He had an only boy, too, older than Roland by a few years, and these two were to succeed their fathers in the long-established firm. Then came the bitter disappointment in his own son. But since he had suffered his son to die in his sins, reaping the full harvest of his transgressions, he had felt that any forgiveness shown to other offenders would be a cruel injustice to him. Yet as Roland's pa.s.sport and the children's photographs lay before him on his office desk--the same desk at which Roland was sitting but a few months ago, a man in the full vigor of life, with an apparently prosperous and happy future lying before him--Mr. Clifford for a moment or two yielded to the vain wish that Roland had thrown himself on his mercy. Yet his conscience told him that he would have refused to show him mercy, and his regret was mingled with a tinge of remorse.
His first care was to prevent the intelligence reaching Felicita by means of the newspapers, and he sent immediately for Phebe Marlowe to accompany him to the sea-side, in order to break the news to her.
Phebe's excessive grief astonished him, though she had so much natural control over herself, in her sympathy for others, as to relieve him of all anxiety on her account, and to keep Felicita's secret journey from being suspected. But to Phebe, Roland's death was fraught with more tragic circ.u.mstances than any one else could conceive. He was hastening to meet his wife, possibly with some scheme for their future, which might have hope and deliverance in it, when this calamity hurried him away into the awful, unknown world, on whose threshold we are ever standing. But for her ardent sympathy for Felicita, Phebe would have been herself overwhelmed. It was the thought of her, with this terrible and secret addition to her sorrow, which bore her through the long journey and helped her to meet Felicita with something like calmness.
From the bay-window of the lodging-house Mr. Clifford watched Felicita coming slowly and feebly toward the house. So fragile she looked, so unutterably sorrow-stricken, that a rush of compa.s.sion and pity opened the floodgates of his heart, and suffused his stern eyes with tears.
Doubtless Phebe had told her all. Yet she was coming alone to meet him, her husband's enemy and persecutor, as if he was a friend. He would be a friend such as she had never known before. There would be no vain weeping, no womanish wailing in her; her grief was too deep for that.
And he would respect it; he would spare her all the pain he could. At this moment, if Roland could have risen from the dead, he would have clasped him in his arms, and wept upon his neck, as the father welcomed his prodigal son.
Felicita did not speak when she entered the room, but looked at him with a steadfastness in her dark sad eyes which again dimmed his with tears.
Almost fondly he pressed her hands in his, and led her to a chair, and placed another near enough for him to speak to her in a low and quiet voice, altogether unlike the awful tones he used in the bank, which made the clerks quail before him. His hand trembled as he took the little photographs out of their envelope, so worn and stained, and laid them before her. She looked at them with tearless eyes, and let them fall upon her lap as things of little interest.
”Phebe has told you?” he said pitifully.
”Yes,” she whispered.
”You did not know before?” he said.
She shook her head mutely. A long, intricate path of falsehood stretched before her, from which she could not turn aside, a maze in which she was already entangled and lost; but her lips were reluctant to utter the first words of untruth.
”These were found on him,” he continued, pointing to the children's portraits. ”I am afraid we cannot doubt the facts. The description is like him, and his papers and pa.s.sport place the ident.i.ty beyond a question. But I have dispatched a trusty messenger to Switzerland to make further inquiries, and ascertain every particular.”
”Will he see him?” asked Felicita with a start of terror.
”No, my poor girl,” said the old banker; ”it happened ten days ago, and he was buried, so they say, almost immediately. But I wish to have a memorial stone put over his grave, that if any of us, I or you, or the children, should wish to visit it at some future time, it should not be past finding.”
He spoke tenderly and sorrowfully, as if he imagined himself standing beside the grave of his old friend's son, recalling the past and grieving over it. His own boy was buried in some unknown common _fosse_ in Paris. Felicita looked up at him with her strange, steady, searching gaze.
”You have forgiven him?” she said.
”Yes,” he answered; ”men always forgive the dead.”
”Oh, Roland! Roland!” she cried, wringing her hands for an instant.
Then, resuming her composure, she gazed quietly into his pitiful face again.
”It is kind of you to think of his grave,” she said; ”but I shall never go there, nor shall the children go, if I can help it.”
”Hus.h.!.+” he answered imperatively. ”You, then, have not forgiven him? Yet I forgive him, who have lost most.”
”You!” she exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of pa.s.sion. ”You have lost a few thousand pounds; but what have I lost? My faith and trust in goodness; my husband's love and care. I have lost him, the father of my children, my home--nay, even myself. I am no longer what I thought I was. That is what Roland robs me of; and you say it is more for you to forgive than for me!”
He had never seen her thus moved and vehement, and he shrank a little from it, as most men shrink from any unusual exhibition of emotion.
Though she had not wept, he was afraid now of a scene, and hastened to speak of another subject.
”Well, well,” he said soothingly, ”that is all true, no doubt. Poor Roland! But I am your husband's executor and the children's guardian, conjointly with yourself. It will be proved immediately, and I shall take charge of your affairs.”