[CHAPTER XVII]

A STRANGE LETTER

THE letter which Marjorie held in her hand was badly written and spelt, but she was able to decipher most of it. And this is what she read—

"MY DEAR KEN,
"I feel as if I might not live for many years longer, so I am writing this, that you may be able to read it when I am dead and gone. I feel as if I ought to let you know; and yet I promised him to keep his secret as long as I lived, all the days of my life, them was the words as he made me say. But I didn't promise not to tell when the days of my life was over, Ken, and they will be over when you get this 'ere letter.
"Well, Ken, I'm a-going to tell you something that happened to me about twenty-five years ago. I heard as there was good luck to be had out in South Africa; so me and your ma talked it over, and we settled we would go out there and make our fortunes. We had saved a bit of money, and we paid our passage, and we went out, and we got on pretty fair. The work was good, and so was the pay, but things was a lot dearer out there than at home.
"I worked on, Ken, first in one place and then in another, and at last we settled down near some mines not far from Kimberley. There were a lot of miners there, a rough set most of them, and the life was a pretty hard one. I made good money there, though I spent it pretty nigh as fast as I made it. We got a decent sort of a house, and your ma took a pride in it, and I bought some furniture of a man who was going to England, and we fed on the fat of the land. It was when we was there that I got a man, who had been a painter afore he left England, to paint a big picture of my missus, and I paid him well for doing it. That's it as hangs in the library, Ken. Well, it was while we was living there in a ramshackle sort of town, that one night, after dark, Jack McDougall, him as kept the Inn there, came to our house.
"'Joe,' he says, 'here's a nice job we're in for at our house. Here's a gent, as is travelling on to Kimberley, and he came to our house with a lady last night, and now there's the lady ill in bed, and a little baby born in the night. And doctor, him from over yonder, has just been here, and he says she's very bad and going to die.'
"'That's a bad job, Jack!' I says.
"'Yes, Joe,' he says, 'and my missus is that scared she don't know what to do, and there's nobody else about but old Nurse Grindle, and she's half drunk. So I came across to see if your missus would come over and help us a bit.'
"Well, your ma went; she were that handy when folks were ill, and she did what she could for the poor lady; but it weren't of no use, and the next day she died. My missus was fair cut up when she had passed away; she said she had the prettiest face and the loveliest hair she had ever seen, and she looked so young too! Your ma brought the baby over to our house, such a poor little thing it was! Doctor said he didn't think it had a chance to live. Well, we said we would keep it till after the funeral, but that night, when I was just a-going to bed, I heard some one at the door.
"I went down, and there was a fine-looking gentleman, the handsomest man I've ever seen excepting one, and that's yourself, Ken! I guessed it was the baby's father, and I asked him if he would come in. I thought he had come to fetch his child, and I told him my missus had taken it up to bed, but I would tell her he had come for it. He said, 'No, he hadn't come for the baby; but he had come to talk to me.' So I asked him in, and we sat over the fire together.
"He did not speak at first, and then he said, 'How would I like to be a very rich man?' I said as how I would like it very much, nothing better. And then he said he could put me in the way of being one if I liked; he could make a gentleman of me, and I would never have to work any more. You can think I opened my ears then, Ken, and I asked him how he was going to manage it, and what he wanted me to do. He didn't answer for a bit, and then he said he would tell me. He wanted me and my missus to take charge of the baby.
"'For how long?' I asked.
"'For always,' he said. 'I want it to stop with you altogether, if so be that it lives, which it won't do; the doctor gives it three months at most. Still, there's just the chance it may! So I want you to adopt it, in fact,' he says.
"I thought it was awfully queer of him, Ken, to want to get rid of his own child; it seemed to me unnatural-like, so I asked him why he did it. He told me he was in a bit of a difficulty, and this would help him out of it. I said I wouldn't do it unless he told me what the bother was. So then he went so far as to say his father had written him a letter, and that letter obliged him to do it. But I wasn't satisfied, Ken; I said I must know what the letter was about, and then it all came out.
"'His father, he said, was a very wealthy man in England, who had married an American lady with a big fortune of her own. His father had a grand estate somewhere, and of course he was the heir to it; his mother was dead, and all her money, having been settled on herself, had come to him; but of course it was nothing to what he would get when his father died. However, his father had married again about a year ago, and this second wife had a child, also a boy.
"Then he went on to tell me that his father had for a long time set his heart on his marrying a lady who owned the next estate. She had one of the biggest rent-rolls in England, and if he married her, they would own the whole county between them. She was older than he was, but he had no objection to marrying her now, in fact, he thought it was the best thing he could do; but of course she would never dream of having him, if she had any idea that he had been married before, or had a child living who would be heir to his title and estates. I asked him why he had objected to marrying this lady before, and he said it was because he liked some one else better,—this wife of his who had just died.
"He had been married abroad, and his father knew nothing about her. She was the daughter of a Chaplain at one of the places he had stopped at. I told him if he was so fond of his wife, he ought to be fond of her child; but he said the child had cost her her life, and how could he bear to look at it? He felt as if he never wanted to see it again. Besides, it was no use talking about the child. If he was to take it back to England (and how could he possibly travel with so young a baby?) what would his father say? He had had a letter from his father, in which he told him that, if he didn't do as he wanted him about marrying this girl (or this woman, whatever she was) that lived near them, he would leave all his money to the little boy—the child of his second wife. He couldn't leave him the title or the estate; they had to go to the eldest son; but he could leave his money to whoever he liked.
"Well, Ken, he talked and he argued half the night, and at last I called my missus, and told her to get up and come downstairs. She didn't like the thought of it at first; it seemed like cheating the poor child, she said, and keeping him out of his rights. But he offered us a big sum of money, a fortune, Ken, half of what he'd got from his mother, that rich American lady, if I would only say I would keep the child, and at last me and my missus came round. She told him he was a heartless man, and she didn't like doing it; but you see the money was a big temptation, Ken. Never to have to work any more and to live like grand folks, seemed almost more than we could put aside. And then we had no children of our own, and the missus had always wanted one, and she were kind of wrapped up in this little baby.
"Well, the end of the matter was, that we said we would consent, and then he made me take a solemn promise that I wouldn't ever tell anybody that it wasn't my own child, but that I would keep his secret all the days of my life.
"He asked me then what my name was, and I said Tomkins, and he laughed and said, 'Give the poor little beggar a better-sounding name than that. Change your name, Tomkins,' he says, 'to something that sounds a bit more aristocratic than that.'
"'What shall it be, sir?' I says. 'I'm not going to tell you, Tomkins, nor do I want to know,' he says. 'Get a pen and I'll write you out a cheque; but no, that won't do!' he says. Then he sits and thinks a bit. You see, Ken, he didn't want me to know his name nor who he was, and the cheque would have told me. 'I know,' he says at last, 'I'll cash the cheque myself, and bring you the money; they can easily wire to my English bankers from the Kimberley Bank, and they'll find it's all right.'
"So a day or two after that he brings the money, Ken,—a great roll of notes it was, and each note was for £100. He counted it all out, what he'd agreed to give me; and then he said he was going to give me £5000 extra, for the poor little beggar, in case he lived. He would like him to be educated as a gentleman, he said. I think his conscience had smote him, Ken.
"Well, I promised that I would do the best I could for the baby, and then my missus said should she fetch it, that he might give it a kiss, but he said No, he thought he had rather not see it. He was a heartless man,—very.
"Then I asked him, Ken, if I might know his name and address, in case I had anything to tell him about the baby. How could I let him know if it died or anything happened to it? But he said there was no need to let him know, and he did not intend to tell me his name. I had got my money, and what more did I want?
"Well, he got up to go, and I helped him to put on his coat, for it was raining when he came, and then I noticed for the first time that he had something the matter with his hand; the last joint of the little finger of the right hand was gone. After that he went away, and I've never seen him, Ken, from that day to this. I went to the Inn, and I found that there he had given the name of Vavasour, but I feel sure that was not his right name; he was far too clever for that.
"However, some time after, I came across a man who had travelled out with him from England—at least I think it must have been the same, from this man's description of him and his wife. He told me that these people he had met were going out to South Africa, and he wondered whether they had ever come to Kimberley. He told me that the man was a lord, and that some one on board ship, who had seen him before, said that he was the son of—"

Here came the word or words which had been so carefully blotted out.

"Now, Ken, what I've got to tell you is this. That man was your father, and you are that poor little deserted boy. I've done my best for you, Ken; you know as I have. I had a hard time with you at first, for we started off for England when you was about two months old, and before we got halfway home, my poor missus died, your ma as you have always called her; and there was I on board ship, left with a tiny weakly baby.
"But I reared you, Ken, and you lived and grew strong, in spite of yon old doctor at Kimberley, and now you're a fine handsome young man, and I love you as if you was my own son. But I would like for you to have your rights, Ken. Find that man if you can, and tell him he's your father. If he has any conscience, (he hasn't much, I'm afraid), he'll be obliged to own you, when you show him this letter, and tell him how you got it. And mark this, Ken, you're as like your father as two peas are like. I mean to say you're like what your father was when I saw him. Now he will be a man over fifty, I should say.
"Follow this up, Ken, and don't rest till you're got your rights.
"Your loving father,
"JOSEPH FORTESCUE.
"P.S.—I chose Fortescue because I thought as it sounded like the name of a gentleman."

[CHAPTER XVIII]

WORDS TO BE REMEMBERED

MARJORIE did not speak whilst she was reading the whole of that long letter, and Kenneth Fortescue sat and watched her, just as before she had sat and watched him. He saw her face flush as she read on, and once he felt sure that he saw a tear drop on the page. When at last she handed him the letter, she said—

"How could he be so cruel? It was awfully heartless, wasn't it?"