the truth.
“The sad story of the past is now as well known to you as to me. I have had hard words to speak. God knows I have spoken them with true sympathy for the living, with true tenderness for the memory of the dead.”
He paused, turned his face a little away, and rested his head on his hand, in the quiet, undemonstrative manner which was natural to him. Thus far, Miss Garth had only interrupted his narrative by an occasional word or by a mute token of her attention. She made no effort to conceal her tears; they fell fast and silently over her wasted cheeks, as she looked up and spoke to him. “I have done you some injury, sir, in my thoughts,” she said, with a noble simplicity. “I know you better now. Let me ask your forgiveness; let me take your hand.”
Those words, and the action which accompanied them, touched him deeply. He took her hand in silence. She was the first to speak, the first to set the example of self-control. It is one of the noble instincts of women that nothing more powerfully rouses them to struggle with their own sorrow than the sight of a man’s distress. She quietly dried her tears; she quietly drew her chair round the table, so as to sit nearer to him when she spoke again.
“I have been sadly broken, Mr. Pendril, by what has happened in this house,” she said, “or I should have borne what you have told me better than I have borne it to-day. Will you let me ask one question before you go on? My heart aches for the children of my love — more than ever my children now. Is there no hope for their future? Are they left with no prospect but poverty before them?”
The lawyer hesitated before he answered the question.
“They are left dependent,” he said, at last, “on the justice and the mercy of a stranger.”
“Through the misfortune of their birth?”
“Through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of their parents.”
With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the floor, and restored it to its former position on the table between them.
“I can only place the truth before you,” he resumed, “in one plain form of words. The marriage has destroyed this will, and has left Mr. Vanstone’s daughters dependent on their uncle.”
As he spoke, the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the window.
“On their uncle?” repeated Miss Garth. She considered for a moment, and laid her hand suddenly on Mr. Pendril’s arm. “Not on Michael Vanstone!”
“Yes: on Michael Vanstone.”
Miss Garth’s hand still mechanically grasped the lawyer’s arm. Her whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the discovery which had now burst on her.
“Dependent on Michael Vanstone!” she said to herself. “Dependent on their father’s bitterest enemy? How can it be?”
“Give me your attention for a few minutes more,” said Mr. Pendril, “and you shall hear. The sooner we can bring this painful interview to a close, the sooner I can open communications with Mr. Michael Vanstone, and the sooner you will know what he decides on doing for his brother’s orphan daughters. I repeat to you that they are absolutely dependent on him. You will most readily understand how and why, if we take up the chain of events where we last left it — at the period of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone’s marriage.”
“One moment, sir,” said Miss Garth. “Were you in the secret of that marriage at the time when it took place?”
“Unhappily, I was not. I was away from London — away from England at the time. If Mr. Vanstone had been able to communicate with me when the letter from America announced the death of his wife, the fortunes of his daughters would not have been now at stake.”
He paused, and, before proceeding further, looked once more at the letters which he had consulted at an earlier period of the interview. He took one letter from the rest, and put it on the table by his side.
“At the beginning of the present year,” he resumed, “a very serious business necessity, in connection with some West Indian property possessed by an old client and friend of mine, required the presence either of myself, or of one of my two partners, in Jamaica. One of the two could not be spared; the other was not in health to undertake the voyage. There was no choice left but for me to go. I wrote to Mr. Vanstone, telling him that I should leave England at the end of February, and that the nature of the business which took me away afforded little hope of my getting back from the West Indies before June. My letter was not written with any special motive. I merely thought it right — seeing that my partners were not admitted to my knowledge of Mr. Vanstone’s private affairs — to warn him of my absence, as a measure of formal precaution which it was right to take. At the end of February I left England, without having heard from him. I was on the sea when the news of his wife’s death reached him, on the fourth of March: and I did not return until the middle of last June.”
“You warned him of your departure,” interposed Miss Garth. “Did you not warn him of your return?”
“Not personally. My head-clerk sent him one of the circulars which were dispatched from my office, in various directions, to announce my return. It was the first substitute I thought of for the personal letter which the pressure of innumerable occupations, all crowding on me together after my long absence, did not allow me leisure to write. Barely a month later, the first information of his marriage reached me in a letter from himself, written on the day of the fatal accident. The circumstances which induced him to write arose out of an event in which you must have taken some interest — I mean the attachment between Mr. Clare’s son and Mr. Vanstone’s youngest daughter.”
“I cannot say that I was favorably disposed toward that attachment at the time,” replied Miss Garth. “I was ignorant then of the family secret: I know better now.”
“Exactly. The motive which you can now appreciate is the motive that leads us to the point. The young lady herself (as I have heard from the elder Mr. Clare, to whom I am indebted for my knowledge of the circumstances in detail) confessed her attachment to her father, and innocently touched him to the quick by a chance reference to his own early life. He had a long conversation with Mrs. Vanstone, at which they both agreed that Mr. Clare must be privately informed of the truth, before the attachment between the two young people was allowed to proceed further. It was painful in the last degree, both to husband and wife, to be reduced to this alternative. But they were resolute, honourably resolute, in making the sacrifice of their own feelings; and Mr. Vanstone betook himself on the spot to Mr. Clare’s cottage. — You no doubt observed a remarkable change in Mr. Vanstone’s manner on that day; and you can now account for it?”
Miss Garth bowed her head, and Mr. Pendril went on.
“You are sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Clare’s contempt for all social prejudices,” he continued, “to anticipate his reception of the confession which his neighbour addressed to him. Five minutes after the interview had begun, the two old friends were as easy and unrestrained together as usual. In the course of conversation, Mr. Vanstone mentioned the pecuniary arrangement which he had made for the benefit of his daughter and of her future husband — and, in doing so, he naturally referred to his will here, on the table between us. Mr. Clare, remembering that his friend had been married in the March of that year, at once asked when the will had been executed: receiving the reply that it had been made five years since; and, thereupon, astounded Mr. Vanstone by telling him bluntly that the document was waste paper in the eye of the law. Up to that moment he, like many other persons, had been absolutely ignorant that a man’s marriage is, legally as well as socially, considered to be the most important event in his life; that it destroys the validity of any will which he may have made as a single man; and that it renders absolutely necessary the entire re-assertion of his testamentary intentions in the character of a husband. The statement of this plain fact appeared to overwhelm Mr. Vanstone. Declaring that his friend had laid him under an obligation which he should remember to his dying day, he at once left the cottage, at once returned home, and wrote me this letter.”
He handed the letter