The child was of course an unfamiliar idea to him, and except with an occasional pang he hardly realised its existence; when the thought was forced on him, he regarded it with aversion.
Three months had not, however, passed since his wife’s death, when he became acquainted with a Miss Cheriton, a young lady of good family and some fortune. She was not very pretty; but she was full of intelligence and refinement, and she was very good. Perhaps the force of contrast was half the attraction. When his father urged him to pay his addresses to Miss Cheriton, he felt how willingly he would have done so, but an awkward disclosure lay between them. With all his faults he could not be so dishonourable as to marry her, without telling her that his heir was already born.
But the friendship between them, so different from anything that he had ever known before, grew and strengthened, till at last one evening he told her all the story. He had married foolishly and secretly, as far as his relations were concerned; his wife was dead and had left a little son. That was the story. Must it be for ever a bar between them? Fanny Cheriton listened, though she was a merry, quick-tongued girl, in silence. Then she said that he must tell his father the whole truth, and must acknowledge the child; he ought to come home and be brought up as an Englishman.
“Who is to bring it up?” asked Gerald.
“I will,” said Fanny simply, amid fierce blushes, as she saw what her answer implied.
Thus supported, Gerald would indeed have been a coward had he shrunk from the communication; but it was a great blow to his father, who, however, was a stronger man than his son; and having been satisfied that all was fair and legal, and that Alvaro Guzman Lester was really his lawful heir, and next to Gerald in the entail, said shortly,—
“Fetch him home, and make an Englishman of him if you can. What’s done can’t be undone.”
But when Gerald arrived at Seville, where Don Guzman lived, and where little Alvar had been taken, he found that by a strange coincidence the child had at once become of importance to his relations on both sides. By the death of Don Guzman’s son, Alvar had become his heir, and when Gerald expressed a desire to take him home, he was met by great reluctance, and by a declaration that the child was so delicate that a removal to a northern climate would certainly kill him. Perhaps Gerald’s consciousness that he would not regard the poor little fellow’s death as a misfortune, made him afraid to insist in the face of this argument. At any rate he returned without the child. Don Guzman’s indifferentism in religion allowed him to consent that Alvar should, when he grew old enough, be taught the English language and the Anglican faith, and even showed how this might be managed by means of an English clergyman residing at Seville for his health; so that he was left with a sort of understanding that his mother’s family were to have the charge of him for the present.
Miss Cheriton was much disappointed.
“Every year will make it harder,” she said, and she resolved to use all her influence on Alvar’s behalf. But her father-in-law’s death soon after her marriage deprived her of his powerful aid, and, though his will carefully assured the succession to his son’s eldest son, she could not contend with her husband’s distaste and the Spanish relations’ determination not to give up the child. She had no other troubles. Her husband shared her views as to the duties and responsibilities of his station, and they did much for the good of those around them.