“I am going to set to work at once to discover my family. I have not been to my lawyer yet, so I don’t know how much he has done, but I certainly mean to go into the business in earnest.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to you much now, Will, whether your family are dukes or beggars. You can stand on your own feet as a captain in the royal navy with a magnificent record of services.”
“Yes, I see that, sir; but still I certainly do wish to be able to prove that I come of at least a respectable family. I have not the least desire to obtain any rank or anything of that kind, only to know that I have people of my own.”
“I do not say that it is not a laudable ambition, but I don’t believe that anyone would think one scrap better or worse of you were you to find that you were heir to a dukedom.”
Will slept there that night, and the next morning drove into the city to his lawyer’s office. “Well, Captain Gilmore?” said that gentleman as Will entered his private room. “I am glad to see you. I have been quietly at work making [pg 365]enquiries since you were last here. I sent a man down to Scarcombe some months ago. He learned as much as he could there, and since then has been going from village to village and has traced your father’s journeyings for some months. Now that you are home I should suggest employing two or three men to continue the search and to find out if possible the point from which your father started his wanderings. Assuming, as I do, that he was the son of Sir Ralph Gilmore, I imagine that he must have quarrelled with his father at or about the time of his marriage. In that case he would probably come up to London. I have observed that most men who quarrel with their parents take that step first. There, perhaps, he endeavoured to obtain employment. The struggle would probably last two, or three, or four years. I take the last to be the most likely period, for by that time you would be about three years old. I say that because he could hardly have taken you with him had you been younger.
“It is evident that he had either no hope of being reconciled to his father or that he was himself too angry to make advances. I therefore propose to send men north from London to enquire upon all the principal roads. A man with a violin and a little child cannot have been altogether forgotten in the villages in which he stopped, and I hope to be able to trace his way up to Yorkshire. Again, I should employ one of the Bow Street runners to make enquiries in London for a man with his wife and child who lived here so many years ago, and whose name was Gilmore. I am supposing, you see, that that was his real name, and not one that he had assumed. I confess I have my doubts about it. A man who quits his home for ever after a desperate quarrel is as likely [pg 366]as not to change his name. That of course we must risk. While these enquiries are being made I should like you to go back to your old home; it is possible that other mementoes of his stay there may have escaped the memory of the old people with whom you lived. Anything of that kind would be of inestimable value.”
“I will go down,” Will said. “I am afraid there is little chance of my finding them both alive now. I fancy they were about fifty-five when I went to live with them, which would make them near eighty now. One or other of them, however, may be alive. I have not been to my agent yet, and therefore do not know whether he still sends them the allowance I made them.”
After leaving the lawyer he went to his agent and found that the allowance was still paid, and regularly acknowledged by a receipt from the clergyman. He supposed, therefore, that certainly one, if not both, of the old people were still alive. He went back to Dulwich and said that he had taken a seat on the north coach for that day week. “I could not bring myself to leave before,” he said, “and I knew you would keep me.”
“Certainly, my boy. I don’t think either Alice or myself would forgive you were you to run away the moment you returned.”
When the time came Will started for the north, though he felt much reluctance to leave Alice. He acknowledged now to himself that he was deeply in love with her. Though from her father’s manner he felt that when he asked for her hand he would not be refused, about Alice herself he felt far less confident. She was so perfectly open and natural with him [pg 367]that he feared lest she might regard him rather as a brother than as a lover, and yet the blush which he had noticed when he first met her on his return gave him considerable hope.