And then the quiet days closed down upon this family, upon which so mysterious a loss had fallen. It need not be said that there was great discussion as to the cause of Mr Lycett-Landon's disappearance, both among the merchants in Liverpool and among their wives and daughters on the other side of the water. The explanations that were given at first were many and conflicting; and for a long time people continued to ask, "When do you expect your husband?" or "your father?" And then there came the time, not less painful, when people pointedly refrained from asking any questions, and changed the subject when his name was mentioned, which was, perhaps, almost less tolerable. Then, gradually, by degrees it became an old story, and people remembered it no more. Ah, yes! they remembered it whenever any incident happened in the family—when Horace took his place as one of the partners in the office, when Milly married—then it all cropped up again, with supposititious details; but when nothing was happening to them the family escaped into obscurity, and their circumstances were discussed no longer. Old Mr Fareham had a very bad cold after he returned from London, and was for some time confined to the house, and would see nobody. And then other things happened, as they are continually happening in a mercantile community. A great bankruptcy, with many exciting and disgraceful circumstances, followed soon after, and the attention of the community was distracted. The Lycett-Landon business remained a mystery, and after a while the waters closed tranquilly over the spot where this strange shipwreck had been.
Milly never heard till after her marriage what it was that had happened, and at no time did Horace ask any questions: how much he divined, how much he had been told, his mother never knew. And she herself never was aware how the other story ended: if the poor Rose, her husband's unfortunate young wife, died of it, or if she abandoned him; or if the poor mother lacked the courage to tell her; or if between them the young woman was kept in her poor little suburban paradise deceived. Mrs Lycett-Landon made many a furtive effort to ascertain how it had ended; but she was too proud to inquire openly, and though she wondered and pondered she never knew.
Years, however, after these events, when Horace had begun to be what he had determined upon being, a merchant prince, and the house of Lycett-Landon & Co. (old Mr Fareham being dead, and young Mr Fareham at the head of the American branch, Landon, Fareham, & Co.) was greater than ever, Mr Lycett-Landon suddenly appeared at the Grove. He came to make a call in the morning, sending in his name; for the old butler was dead, and the new one did not know him, and he was admitted like any other stranger. His wife even did not know who he was—for she had come down expecting a distant relation—until she had looked a second or third time at the stout, embarrassed old gentleman, looking very awkward and deprecating, who stood up when she came into the room, and shrank with a certain confusion from her inspection. After the first shock of the recognition they sat down and conversed calmly enough. He inquired about the children with a little affectation of ease.
"I know about Horace, of course," he said, "and I saw Milly's marriage in the papers. But I should like to hear a little about the others."
She accepted his curiosity as very natural, and gave him all the particulars very openly and sedately. He sat for nearly an hour, sometimes asking questions, sometimes listening, with a curious air of politeness, like a man on his best behaviour, in the society of a lady a little above him in station, and with whom his acquaintance was far from intimate, and then took his leave.
With what thoughts their minds were full as they sat there, in the old home equally familiar to both, where every article of furniture, every picture on the walls, had the same associations to both! But nothing was said to betray the poignant sensation with which the woman, compunctious, though she had never been revengeful, or the man, so strangely separated and fallen from all that had been habitual to him, beheld each other, sat by each other, after these years. He smiled, but she had not the strength to smile. After this, however, he came again at intervals, always asking with interest about his children, but not caring to see them.
"I suppose they don't remember anything about me," he said.
His visits were not frequent, but he became, in the end, acquainted with all the family, and even resumed a certain intercourse with Horace and Milly, his first meeting with whom was accidental and very painful. To see him elderly, stout, and (but perhaps this was one effect of some refinement of jealous and wounded feeling on the part of Mrs Lycett-Landon) oh so commonplace! and fallen from his natural level, shuffling his feet, reddening, smiling that confused and foolish smile, conciliating his children, gave to his wife almost the keenest pangs she had yet suffered. She could not bear to see him so lowered from his natural place. Tragedy is terrible, but when it drops into tragi-comedy, tragi-farce at the end, that is the most terrible of all. Pity, shame, something that was like remorse, though she was blameless, was in his wife's heart. The impulse in her mind was to go away out of the house that was his, and leave him in possession. But, to do him justice, he never, by look or word, reminded her that the house had been his, or that he was anything but a visitor.
And what was the explanation of the strange passion which made him, at fifty, depart from all the traditions of his virtuous life—whether it was a passion at all, or only some wonderful, terrible gust of impatience, which made duty and the rule of circumstances, and all that he was pledged and bound to, insupportable—she never knew; nor whether he found that this poor game was even for a moment worth the blazing flambeau of revolution which it cost; or whether it cost him still more than that candle—the young life which he had blighted; whether Rose lived or died; or where he came from when he paid these visits to his old home, and disappeared into when they were over: all this Mrs Lycett-Landon lived in ignorance of, and so, in all probability, will die.