How It All Came Round

by L. T. Meade

"It is the story of a sin."

Home bent his head.

"It is the story of a successfully hidden sin—a sin hidden from all the world for three and twenty years."

"A crushing weight such a sin must have been," answered the clergyman. "But will you just tell me all from the beginning?"

"I will tell you all from the beginning. A hidden sin is, as you say, heavy enough to crush a man into hell. But I will make no more preface. Sir, I had the misfortune to lose a very noble mother when I was young. When I was ten years old, and my brother (I have one brother) was eight, our mother died! We were but children, you will say; but I don't, even now that I am a dying, sinful old man, forget my mother. She taught us to pray and to shun sin. She also surrounded us with such high and holy thoughts—she so gave us the perfection of all pure mother love, that we must have been less than human not to be good boys during her lifetime. I remember even now the look in her eyes when I refused on any childish occasion to follow the good, and then chose the evil. I have a daughter—one beloved daughter, something like my mother. I have seen the same high and honorable light in her eyes, but never since in any others. Well, my mother died, and Jasper and I had only her memory to keep us right. We used to talk about her often, and often fretted for her as, I suppose, few little boys before or since have fretted for a mother. After her death we were sent to school. Our father even then was a rich man: he was a self-made man; he started a business in a small way in the City, but small beginnings often make great endings, and the little business grew, and grew, and success and wealth came almost without effort. Jasper and I never knew what poverty meant. I loved learning better than my brother did, and at the age of eighteen, when Jasper went into our father's business, I was sent to Oxford. At twenty-two I had taken my degree, and done so, not perhaps brilliantly, but with some honor. Any profession was now open to me, and my father gave me full permission to choose any walk in life I chose; at the same time he made a proposal. He was no longer so young as he had been; he had made his fortune; he believed that Jasper's aptitude for business excelled his own. If we would become partners in the firm which he had made, and which was already rising into considerable eminence, he would retire altogether. We young men should work the business in our own way. He was confident we should rise to immense wealth. While making this proposal our father said that he would not give up his business to Jasper alone. If both his sons accepted it, then he would be willing to retire, taking with him a considerable sum of money, but still leaving affairs both unencumbered and flourishing. 'You are my heirs eventually.' he said to us both; 'and now I give you a week to decide.' At the end of the allotted time we accepted the offer. This was principally Jasper's doing, for at that time I knew nothing of business, and had thought of a profession. Afterwards I liked the counting-house, and became as absorbed as others in the all-engrossing accumulation of wealth. Our father had taken a very large sum of money out of the business, and it was impossible for us not to feel for a time a considerable strain; but Jasper's skill and talent were simply wonderful, and success attended all our efforts.

"Two years after I joined the business, I married my Charlotte's mother. I was a wealthy man even then. Though of no birth in particular, I was considered gentlemanly. I had acquired that outward polish which a university education gives; I was also good-looking. With my money, good looks, and education, I was considered a match for the proud and very poor daughter of an old Irish baronet. She had no money; she had nothing but her beautiful face, her high and honorable spirit, her blue blood. You will say, 'Enough!' Ay, it was more than enough. She made me the best, the truest of wives. I never loved another woman. She was a little bit extravagant. She had never known wealth until she became my wife, and wealth, in the most innocent way in the world, was delightful to her. While Jasper saved, I was tempted to live largely. I took an expensive house—there was no earthly good thing I would not have given to her. She loved me; but, as I said, she was proud. Pride in birth and position was perhaps her only fault. I was perfect in her eyes, but she took a dislike to Jasper. This I could have borne, but it pained me when I saw her turning away from my old father. I dearly loved and respected my father, and I wanted Constance to love him, but she never could be got to care for him. It was at that time, that that thing happened which was the beginning of all the after darkness and misery.

"My father, finding my proud young wife not exactly to his taste, came less and less to our house. Finally, he bought an old estate in Hertfordshire, and then one day the news reached us that he had engaged himself to a very young girl, and that he would marry at once. There was nothing wrong in this marriage, but Jasper and I chose to consider it a sin. We had never forgotten our mother, and we thought it a dishonor to her. We forgot our father's loneliness. In short, we were unreasonable and behaved as unreasonably as unreasonable men will on such occasions. Hot and angry words passed between our father and ourselves. We neither liked our father's marriage nor his choice. Of course, we were scarcely likely to turn the old man from his purpose, but we refused to have anything to do with his young wife. Under such circumstances we had an open quarrel. Our father married, and we did not see him for years. I was unhappy at this, for I loved my father. Before his second marriage, he always spent from Saturday to Monday at our house, and though my own wife not caring for him greatly marred our pleasure, yet now that the visits had absolutely ceased I missed them—I missed the gray head and the shrewd, old, kindly face; and often, very often, I almost resolved to run down into Hertfordshire and make up my quarrel. I did not do so, however; and as the years went on, I grew afraid to mention my father's name to either my wife or brother. Jasper and I were at this time deeply absorbed in speculation; our business was growing and growing; each thing we embarked in turned out well; we were beginning quite to recover from the strain which our father's removal of so large a sum of money had caused. Jasper was a better man of business than I was. Jasper, though the junior partner, took the lead in all plans. He proposed that an Australian branch of our business should be opened. It was done, and succeeded well.

"About this time we heard that a little son had arrived at the Hermitage in Hertfordshire. He did not live long. We saw his birth announced in The Times. It may have been some months later, though, looking back on it, it seems but a few days, that the birth was followed by the death. A year or two passed away, and my wife and I were made happy by the arrival of our first child. The child was a daughter. We called her Charlotte, after my much-loved mother. Time went on, until one day a telegram was put into my hand summoning my brother and myself to our father's deathbed. The telegram was sent by the young wife. I rushed off at once; Jasper followed by the next train.

"The hale old man had broken up very suddenly at last, and the doctor said he had but a few days to live. During those few days, Jasper and I scarcely left his bedside; we were reconciled fully and completely, and he died at last murmuring my own mother's name and holding our hands.

"It was during this visit that I saw the little wife for the first time. She was a commonplace little thing, but pretty and very young; it was impossible to dislike the gentle creature. She was overpowered with grief at her husband's death. It was impossible not to be kind to her, not to comfort her. There was one child, a girl of about the age of my own little Charlotte. This child had also been named Charlotte. She was a pale, dark-eyed child, with a certain strange look of my mother about her. She was not a particle like her own. My father loved this little creature, and several times during those last days of his he spoke of her to me.