seven years, during which every knock at yonder door seems to have beaten a blow upon my heart—every footstep on yonder garden-walk seems to have trodden down a hope.”
“And you do not think him dead?”
“I hope and pray not. Not dead, impenitent; not dead, without my blessing; not gone away from me for ever, without one pressure of the hand, one prayer for my forgiveness, one whisper of regret for all he has made me suffer.”
“He was very wild, then, very dissipated?”
“He was a reprobate and a gambler. He squandered his money like water. He had bad companions, I know; but was not himself wicked at heart. The very night he ran away, the night I saw him for the last time, I’m sure he was sorry for his bad courses. He said something to that effect; said his road was a dark one, but that it had only one end, and he must go on to the end.”
“And you made no remonstrance?”
“I was tired of remonstrance, tired of prayer, and had wearied out my soul with hope deferred.”
“My dear Agnes! And this poor boy, this wretched misguided boy, Heaven have pity upon him and restore him! Heaven have pity upon every wanderer, this dismal and pitiless night!”
Heaven, indeed, have pity upon that wanderer, out on the bleak highroad to Slopperton; out on the shelterless Slopperton road, a mile away from the Black Mill! The wanderer is a young man, whose garments, of the shabby-genteel order, are worst of all fitted to keep out the cruel weather; a handsome young man, or a man who has once been handsome, but on whom riotous days and nights, drunkenness, recklessness, and folly, have had their dire effects. He is struggling to keep a bad cigar alight, and when it goes out, which is about twice in five minutes, he utters expressions which in Slopperton are thought very wicked, and consigns that good city, with its virtuous citizens, to a very bad neighbourhood.
He talks to himself between his struggles with the cigar. “Footsore and weary, hungry and thirsty, cold and ill; it is not a very hopeful way for the only son of a rich man to come back to his native place after seven years’ absence. I wonder what star presides over my vagabond existence; if I knew, I’d shake my fist at it,” he muttered, as he looked up at two or three feeble luminaries glimmering through the rain and fog. “Another mile to the Black Mill—and then what will she say to me? What can she say to me but to curse me? What have I earned by such a life as mine except a mother’s curse?” His cigar chose this very moment of all others to go out. If the bad three-halfpenny Havannah had been a sentient thing with reasoning powers, it might have known better. He threw it aside into a ditch with an oath. He slouched his hat over his eyes, thrust one hand into the breast of his coat—(he had a stick cut from some hedgerow in the other)—and walked with a determined though a weary air onward through slush and mire towards the Black Mill, from which already the lighted windows shone through the darkness like so many beacons.
On through slush and mire, with a weary and slouching step.
No matter. It is the step for which his mother has waited for seven long years; it is the step whose ghostly echo on the garden-walk has smitten so often on her heart and trodden out the light of hope. But surely the step comes on now—full surely, and for good or ill. Whether for good or ill comes this long-watched-for step, this bad November night, who shall say?
In a quarter of an hour the wanderer stands in the little garden of the Black Mill. He has not courage to knock at the door; it might be opened by a stranger; he might hear something he dare not whisper to his own heart—he might hear something which would strike him down dead upon the threshold.
He sees the light in the drawing-room windows. He approaches, and hears his mother’s voice.
It is a long time since he has uttered a prayer: but he falls on his knees by the long French window and breathes a thanksgiving.
That voice is not still!
What shall he do? What can he hope from his mother, so cruelly abandoned?
At this moment Mr. Harding opens the window to look out at the dismal night. As he does so, the young man falls fainting, exhausted, into the room.
Draw a curtain over the agitation and the bewilderment of that scene. The almost broken-hearted mother’s joy is too sacred for words. And the passionate tears of the prodigal son—who shall measure the remorseful agony of a man whose life has been one long career of recklessness, and who sees his sin written in his mother’s face?
The mother and son sit together, talking gravely, hand in hand, for two long hours. He tells her, not of all his follies, but of all his regrets—his punishment, his anguish, his penitence, and his resolutions for the future.
Surely it is for good, and good alone, that he has come over a long and dreary road, through toil and suffering, to kneel here at his mother’s feet and build up fair schemes for the future.
The old servant, who has known Richard from a baby, shares in his mother’s joy. After the slight supper which the weary wanderer is induced to eat, her brother and her son persuade Mrs. Marwood to retire to rest; and left tête-à-tête, the uncle and nephew sit down to discuss a bottle of old madeira by the sea-coal fire.
“My dear Richard”—the young man’s name is Richard—(“Daredevil Dick” he has been called by his wild companions)—“My dear Richard,” says Mr. Harding very gravely, “I am about to say something to you, which I trust you will take in good part.”
“I am not so used to kind words from good men that I am likely to take anything you can say amiss.”
“You will not, then, doubt the joy I feel in your return this night, if I ask you what are your plans for the future?”
The young man shook his head. Poor Richard! he had never in his life had any definite plan for the future, or he might not have been what he was that night.
“My poor boy, I believe you have a noble heart, but you have led a wasted life. This must be repaired.”
Richard shook his head again. He was very hopeless of himself.
“I am good for nothing,” he said; “I am a bad lot. I wonder they don’t hang such men as me.”
“I wonder they don’t hang such men.” He uttered this reckless speech in his own reckless way, as if it would be rather a good joke to be hung up out of the way and done for.
“My dear boy, thank Heaven you have returned to us. Now I have a plan to make a man of you yet.”
Richard looked up this time with a hopeful light in his dark eyes. He was hopeless at five minutes past ten; he was radiant when the minute hand had moved on to the next figure on the dial. He was one of those men whose bad and good angels have a sharp fight and a constant struggle, but whom we all hope to see saved at last.
“I have a plan which has occurred to me since your unexpected arrival this evening,” continued his uncle. “Now, if you stay here, your mother, who has a trick (as all loving mothers have) of fancying you are still a little boy in a pinafore and frock—your mother will be for having you loiter about from morning till night with nothing to do and nothing to care for; you will fall in again with all your old Slopperton companions, and all those companions’ bad habits. This isn’t the way to make a man of you, Richard.”
Richard, very radiant by this time, thinks not.
“My plan is, that you start off to-morrow morning before your mother is up, with a letter of introduction which I will give you to an old friend of mine, a merchant in the town of Gardenford, forty miles from here. At my request, he will give you a berth in his office, and will treat you as if you were his own son. You can come over here to see your mother as often as you like; and if you choose to work hard as a merchant’s clerk, so as to make your own fortune, I know an old fellow just returned from the East Indies, with not enough liver to keep him alive many years, who will leave you another fortune to add to it. What do you say, Richard? Is it a bargain?”
“My dear generous uncle!” Richard cries, shaking the old