Chapter XVI: Conclusion: The Father’s Share

“You have heard nothing, I suppose?” said Mr. Tremenheere, huskily. He grasped his son’s arm with a hand that trembled as they met in the middle of the road.

“Nothing, sir, but my mother has stayed behind to be on the spot. She seems to be full of hope,” said Eddy; and then he entered into the details of all they had done. “I should have stayed too, but mamma likes to do things herself;” said the lad. “I dare say she is quite right, for she does them best; and she sent me down to make your mind easy.”

“Uneasy, you mean,” said his father with a forced smile; “till she is found, there is no peace of mind for me.”

“At least you know that she is on the spot,” said Edward, unconsciously copying his mother’s emphasis; and then they walked down the dark road together,--scarcely seeing each other, still less knowing each other. Mr. Tremenheere kept hold of his son’s arm.

“I did not think I had any nerves left,” he said; “I never could have supposed twenty hours’ journey and two days’ anxiety would have taken so much out of me. I got Miss Campbell’s telegram at ten o’clock on Monday, and since then--but I have had a sleep this afternoon,--I must not count this afternoon. Your mother has a great deal of energy, Ned; she is a very clever woman. What a pity we did not get on! It would have been better for us all,--better for Vera, poor child, and even for you,--though nothing has happened to you,--if we had all been, as we ought to have been, in our own home.”

Edward’s heart trembled at this address. His mother might have been got to yield about Africa; but this father, this man of the world,--would he yield? The young fellow had a moment of sharp conflict with himself; and then he resolved to make a plunge into it, and know his fate.

“My mother was just going to consult you about me, when you came, sir. There is a thing I have set my heart upon which she does not approve of. My mother is very kind. Though she does not approve of it she could not bear to see me cast down; and as a last chance for me she said she would consult you. I wonder if you will be on my side! Oh, sir!” said Edward throwing all the expression which the darkness denied to his countenance into his voice, “you can’t think of what importance it is to me. I told you before I should never be a great scholar. I am an out-of-door fellow,--good at walking, and that sort of thing, not at book-work. I never knew what I could do with myself that would be any good till I heard of this!”

“Well, what is it? Let me hear,” said his father, “I am very much afraid it must be something nonsensical, as you are so much in earnest about it; and my advice is of little good just now,--my mind is all taken up about the other affair. Nevertheless, let me hear what you have got to say.”

There was a pause. It was strange how much more difficult Edward felt it to state his case to his father than to his mother. Immediately, all that might appear absurd in his fanaticism,--his own ignorance of the subject, and his very faith in the traveller,--appeared to him as Mr. Tremenheere might see them. He had been angry when his mother took this view of the case; but the moment he saw it with his father’s eyes, everything seemed to change. The meaning stole out of his own wishes, the force out of his reasons. He faltered and hesitated, in spite of himself.

“Well, sir,” he said, with a dogged determination to have it out, “Mr. Bass was down here one day talking about his African Mission. Nobody ever had such an effect upon me. I made up my mind at once that to go with him was the thing I could do best; and I had a letter from him the other day, saying there was one place still open for me. A woman, though the best mother in the world, sees these things in a different light,” said poor Eddy, encouraged by his father’s silence. “She thinks of the distance, and the hardships; and my last chance is that perhaps you might see it as I see it.” Here Eddy came to a breathless pause, and waited for his answer, with a beating heart.

Had Mr. Tremenheere been in better spirits he would have laughed; but, fortunately for Eddy, he was not in good spirits. He was worn out and depressed, and amiable as perhaps he had never been before in his life. “My dear Ned,” he said gently, in the darkness, rousing all the lad’s hopes by the softness of his tone, “whether I might have agreed or disagreed with your mother, scarcely matters in this instance. I am afraid it will be a disappointment to you if you have so set your heart upon it; but the fact is, there is to be no expedition to Africa under the charge of Mr. Buckram Bass. That very clever man is supposed by some people to be too clever. The Geographical Society will not give him a groat, neither will Government; and his expedition has melted into thin air. No one will go with him to Africa for many a day.”

“But I heard from him on Monday, about the vacancy,” cried Edward with a gasp.

“Then he must have had some plan in his head for equipment, by which he could make something,” said Mr. Tremenheere. “I cannot be mistaken, you know, in my position; and so you may make it up with your mother, and relieve her mind as soon as you choose.” Then moved by an amiable impulse,--for the boy pleased him--he added, “I am very sorry for your disappointment, Ned.”

“Oh, it does not matter,” cried the lad, with a great gulp of self-control. Dark waters of bitterness surged up into Edward’s eyes, but fortunately the darkness concealed them. And acting on an English boy’s savage code of honor, he made a brave effort at once to talk of other things, and covered the stab he had got. No word should any one hear more on the subject from his lips with his will. The pain stung him like that Spartan fox; but, like the boy whom it devoured, he would rather die than complain.

And here Mr. Tremenheere was of more use to his son than the boy’s mother would have been. She would have felt the sting for Edward as sharply as he felt it for himself. She would have lavished a thousand sympathetic tendernesses upon him to make up for his suffering. His father did nothing of the sort. For one thing he did not truly realize how great the blow was; but he was sorry for the disappointment--said so once, and was done with it; and talked about other things, forcing Eddy to answer him, and helping him to keep down the pain. But, poor fellow, he had a bad night of it when it was too late to sit up any longer. It obliterated Vera from his mind, and all his anxiety about her. Vera was but a stranger to him after all; and this was so close a misery, and so near!

The father and son made but a miserable breakfast next morning. “I must get off to town, I cannot delay longer,” said Mr. Tremenheere. “When you consider where that unhappy child may be--what may be happening to her,--perhaps at that fellow’s mercy, confound him! No, no, I can’t stay,--don’t ask me. Your mother must have no news, or she would have telegraphed before now.”

“I am quite ready, sir,” said Edward. They were both of them pale and miserable; and Mr. Tremenheere, forgetting already Edward’s own share of trouble, was touched by this supposed sympathy. “You don’t know much of your sister,” he said. “I will not forget, my boy, how you’ve thrown yourself into it. Please God, when we find her we’ll be a more united family. Ned, she and you will have to help me with your mother. She is a proud woman, but for my part I am not proud; and I don’t mind making a sacrifice if only--God help us!--we could find the child.”

“We shall find her!” cried Edward, this time with a rush of real sympathy which came to his eyes, and made them shine; and though Mr. Tremenheere knew that Edward’s confidence was without foundation, it cheered him as the foolishest consolation sometimes does. He grasped his son’s hand with a tremulous yet strenuous grasp.

“Come along,” he said; “I know it is too early for the train, but somehow it is easier to endure one’s self when one is in motion. It feels like doing something. Your mother has the best of it staying in town. What a pretty place she has made of this! What a fool I was--good heavens! what an ass! when she asked it, not to let her have the child here!”

“Don’t think of that now, sir,” said Eddy, with feeling. “Come out into the garden in the meantime,--the air will do you good.” He was very sorry for his father. He led him through the little space which had been planted so cleverly, and showed him the points of view, upon which they both looked with pre-occupied eyes. It wanted half an hour yet to the time for the train, and the station was not ten minutes’ walk. Then Mr. Tremenheere remembered a note he had to write, and they went back into the house that he might do it. He sat down at his wife’s writing-table, and used the paper with her monogram. How strange that the recollection should dart on him then of another time when he had done this,--when he had taken a pretty sheet with “Ada” emblazoned on it, to write to his sister of the engagement between Ada Langdale and himself! Curious moment for such a reminiscence; but the man was weakened with much unusual feeling, and he stopped to recollect it. “I think it must be a good sign,” he said half to himself; “once I took her paper before----”

He was interrupted by a touch on his shoulder, and jumped up, nearly upsetting the paraphernalia of the writing-table. “Charles,” said his wife, taking him by both hands, “I went to our house last night, where you took me when we were married; and there, at home, where she ought to be, and where I ought to have been all the time taking care of her--I found the child!”

“God bless you, Ada!” he cried, with a sudden great sob, forced from him by the surprise and the joy. And then he made a blind clutch at her, his eyes being full, and got her into his arms. “You have found her,--and I have found you!”

And it was thus that these foolish people ended their matrimonial quarrel. They had had ten years of it, which was certainly enough, and it had not answered. But the reader must not imagine that all the consequences dispersed into thin air when the principals took each other’s hands, as Mr. Bass’s African Expedition had done. Edward’s heart mended after a while, though it was very sore; but it would not have mended so easily had Government and the Geographical Society encouraged instead of making an end of the expedition of Mr. Buckram Bass. And Providence, though it interfered on one side in this way, did not interfere on the other to make an end of Oswald Fane. He stood in solid flesh and blood in the path of the united family, refusing to let all be as it ought to have been. Poor Oswald! it was wholesome punishment for him to find his bird flown on the very day when he intended to fly with her,--carrying her beyond pursuit or power of any one to touch her. But a thing which has been carried so far can rarely stop there. As soon as she was parted from him, and the terrible spectre of marriage removed out of her way, Vera began to pine for her lover; and her lover began to besiege the heart, soft with penitence and reconciliation, of Mrs. Tremenheere. Between the two they worked so effectually that Mr. Tremenheere, no longer absolute sovereign in Hyde Park Square, but reduced to the safer limits of a constitutional monarchy and a joint throne, had to give in at last; and much less alarmed by the word than she had been a year before, Vera Tremenheere, at seventeen, with all the pomp befitting a lawful ceremonial, permitted by all the authorities, married Oswald Fane. I wish it was permitted me to kill the uninteresting elder brother and his little son, and make the young pair master and mistress of the paternal halls at Weathernook; but, partly by her father’s influence, partly by that of Lord Fanebury, who came to the marriage and good-humoredly declared the bridegroom to be his very cousin, Oswald got a valuable appointment, and the young pair went to Italy after all; and coming home, settled down very comfortably, and were much happier than the improper and reprehensible beginning of their story deserved; which is a bad moral, but to change it is beyond my power.

Edward Tremenheere went into his father’s office, and became private secretary to his father’s chief--an admirable appointment. In the meantime, however, he was left free for a great deal of travel, and took to climbing mountains, by special grace of Providence, and became a member of the Alpine Club, atoning to himself in his holidays for the responsibility and regularity of his everyday life. Miss Campbell, I am glad to say, had saved enough money to retire upon an annuity, and tortures young girls no more; but she still thinks Mr. Tremenheere’s family monsters of ingratitude for not requiting her exertions in saving their child. Mary was dismissed, as she deserved; but I fear surreptitious means were used whereby she was enabled to marry her Guardsman. Everybody had done wrong all round, and which was the one that was to throw a stone? The only person who had a right to do so was Elinor Meadows, who made a speech to the re-united family on the evening of the day on which Oswald was first received among them, and Vera’s happiness sanctioned by her parents. Miss Meadows pushed back the vigorous rings of gray hair from her broad forehead and held out her oratorical right hand. “You two old fools,” she said, “and you two young ones, I don’t know which of you have made yourselves the most ridiculous. I protest against this absurd happiness, which you have no right to. All of you, in your turn, have come to me in the depths of despair, and employed me to intercede for you. I never did the least good by my attempts. How dare you, without either rhyme or reason, and every law of justice against it, be so happy now?”

THE END.