Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/271

. 29, 1863.] to many ablutions before it had become even thus far presentable.

Tom laughed good-naturedly at the post-mistress’s explanation as he opened it. It was from the late Inspector of Police. It informed him that George Nugent was on board an Australian vessel, which would land its passengers either that evening or the following morning, and that full information of his further proceedings would be forwarded by the next day’s post. Was not this the news he had been wishing to be able to take Miss Letitia? If he went to her with the letter, he should see her face light up; he should hear her thank him over and over again for the tidings. He felt he did not rejoice at her happiness, and he hated himself for it; but unwilling to lose a moment more, he snatched up his hat and hastened across the garden. As he laid his hand upon the gate, it was opened from the outside, and a tall gaunt-looking man, the outline of whose features he saw in the dusky twilight, said:

“Perhaps you can tell me if Mr. Nugent is at home?”

“Mr. Nugent!” said Tom in some surprise. “He has been dead for more than a twelvemonth.”

“Dead!” exclaimed the new comer; “poor old fellow! Is he dead? Who are you?” he suddenly asked.

“His successor in the living,” replied Tom.

“And I am his son,” he said. “Let me go in and see the old place once more.”

Tom led the way in, feeling more as if he were moving in a dream than in actual life. He rang for lights while his guest looked round the room, into which darkness was falling fast, and his eye seemed to note some trifling changes.

“Don’t mention my name before your people,” he said, hurriedly, and for several minutes both men were too busy with their own thoughts to speak farther.

When the lights came, an irrepressible feeling of curiosity prompted Tom to look at George Nugent. He sat opposite to Tom at the table, moody and dejected-looking. He had a tanned, weather-beaten face, overgrown with a long bushy beard. There was something in the expression of his features which said, “Fate has done her worst with me, but she has not beaten me yet.” He looked like an Esau in modern clothes—clothes which seemed less his, than the dummy’s upon which they had hung at an outfitter’s a few hours previously. He wore a large, loose-fitting, light-coloured coat, a striped blue shirt, and a red-spotted silk-handkerchief round his throat. He had laid down his hat and a leathern bag on the table, but he rested a dark knotty stick of formidable dimensions between his knees. He was the first to speak.

“I got off by the express train after I landed this morning,” he said. “The nearer I came to shore, the more I thought I should like to see the old place and the poor old fellow again. He’s gone. He’ll never know that I have got over my difficulties after all, and have come back to England a rich man. I meant to have paid his debts, and to have set him on his feet again. Poor old father!”

“How was it he had no tidings of you for so many years?” asked Tom.

“Ay, how was it,” repeated Nugent, bitterly. “At first everything went wrong with me; I could not write then; I could not ask to be taken back like the Prodigal, knowing the name I had left behind me in Chanleigh. After a time I began to prosper, and what I had earned with so much hardship and difficulty was very dear to me. If I had written home I should have been pressed for money, and to give money to my father was like throwing it into the sea. I will wait, I used to say to myself, till I can go back with a provision for us both; and this is the end of it.”

There was a pause again, which was interrupted by his asking Tom’s name.

“I left England under a cloud, Mr. Morland,” he resumed; “it don’t much signify now that I can make restitution. Every farthing I have ever owed shall be paid; Wortleby’s debt first of all. Wortleby is living, I suppose? Those sort of men never die. Wortleby might have laid the finger of the law upon me, but he didn’t, and why? Because I was the grandson of a peer, and his aristocratic tendencies made him merciful. Poor Wortleby! he wouldn’t touch my bank-notes now if he knew all the trades I have driven to earn them.”

Tom sat listening with a sinking heart. To this man, who spoke as if he were making a hard bargain with a harder man than himself, Letitia Nevil had given up the best years of her life. How soon was he going to her? The delay was irritating.

“Is Reuben Bates in the village, now?” he asked presently. “He was going to the bad when I left, I am afraid.”

Tom gave some account of the poacher’s circumstances, to which Nugent listened attentively.

“I shall send him out to Sydney,” he said at length, “his wife and his children with him. A poor man’s family there are worth their weight in gold; here they are like lead hanging round his neck.”

“I do not know,” said Tom, speaking with an effort, “what Reuben would have done for many years past, if it had not been for Miss Letitia Nevil.”

“What!” said Nugent, “isn’t she married yet?”

Tom’s eyes were riveted on his face.

Nugent looked surprised for a moment, and then said, “I suppose you have heard some idle gossip about Letitia Nevil and myself. When she was a young girl and I was a boy, I used to think it would be a pleasant thing to have Letitia for my wife. She was a pretty-looking girl, affectionate and credulous. She used to believe every word I said to her. I wonder she was not married long ago.”

“I don’t think she will ever marry,” said Tom, gravely; “she may still consider herself bound to you.”

“She wrote to me several times after I left England,” said Nugent. “Long, tiresome letters, full of good advice; but a man who has roughed it as I have done, can’t sit down with a woman like Letitia Nevil in his house. Her voice would be like a church bell, saying come and be at peace