Sons and Daughters

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Hush! don’t let everybody hear,” said the first speaker. “I don’t believe he knows.”

Gervase did not ask any questions, but he possessed himself of the papers in silence. It was certain that there must be something there which concerned him deeply. He carried them off to his own cabin, where he could be alone; but it was some time before he could find the particulars he sought. At last he found them. “Great Panic in the City—Failure of the old-established firm of Burton, Baber, & Company.” Something suddenly lighted up in Gervase’s veins which he had never felt before—the fire of the commercial blood. The word “failure” seemed to strike him like a blow. He devoured every word. All his old affectation of taking no interest in the business news, of avoiding the money article—what dismal affectation he felt it in this sudden blaze of enlightenment! Failure!—bankruptcy! Heaven above! what idiocy! what childish folly! And now what horror and shame! He turned from one paper to another, reading everything. Recent speculations, for which a new partner was supposed to be chiefly responsible, changing the character of the business, and the downfall of certain firms with which Messrs Burton, Baber, & Co. were connected, were given as the causes of the bankruptcy, which had taken everybody by surprise, and filled the City with dismay. So respectable a firm; a name so well known and honoured. The catastrophe had sent a thrill through the whole mercantile community. And then there were calculations as to the firm’s power of meeting its engagements. Putting one thing with another, Mr Burton’s well-known wealth and the fact that the embarrassments were of very recent origin, one paper ventured to believe that the creditors would lose but little; while another stated even the possible amount of the composition—15s. in the pound at the least, for Mr Burton had declared his determination to give up everything. All this Gervase read like a man in a dream. To think that it should be his father, his house, his honour, which were thus being discussed, and he to know nothing! To think that such trouble should overcome his family and he be far away, unable to give any help! And the horror of knowing nothing, of having received no warning, of being, as it were, left out altogether, affected Gervase as perhaps nothing else could have done. Those mails which he had been obliged to miss, one after another; the long interval which now separated him from all knowledge of his home; the apparent blank of silence which had fallen even between him and Madeline, and which it was almost impossible not to connect in some way with the misfortune that had befallen his family, seemed at once to paralyse and to madden. And he could not quicken the pace of the ship, which was exposed to all the exasperating delays of wind and tide; nor lessen the breadth of the pathless sea, which lay blank between him and those who needed him. In one only of the newspapers was there any reference made to Mr Burton’s son, who was believed to be in the West Indies on the business of the firm, but who was not spoken of as likely to affect its fortunes, one way or other. He was left out of all the calculations—an individual of no practical importance. And Wickham, the man whom his father had taken in at his suggestion, the interloper put in his place, supplanting the son of the house (Gervase did not reflect by what astonishing breaches of all logic and unconscious perversions of fact he thus brought himself to describe Wickham)—it was he who had ruined and dishonoured the house that had bred him, sheltered him, raised him to the highest trust. And whose fault was it? that of Gervase, and no other; in all things it was he who was to blame.

How to endure the long hours, the long days at sea, the succession of meals and promenades about the deck, and talks and foolish jestings and laughter! He could not shut himself up entirely from the intercourse which on shipboard it is so difficult to escape; but the crackling of thorns under the pot would not have been half so vain, as the foolish, vague conversation about nothing, the feeble pleasantries at which everybody laughed, seemed to Gervase. The flirtations and the love-making, in which he had taken a certain amused interest, seemed now to carry personal offence to him. He was interested in nothing but the record of the sailing—how many knots had been done each day, how many more days must elapse before their arrival. The progress over those blank illimitable wastes is so difficult to realise, every day seeming like yesterday; no difference in the weltering waters, no new feature to show that there is any real advance, the turn of a wheel nearer home. To do him justice, it was of his father alone Gervase thought at first, with an aching anxiety to be with him, and a fever of alarm as to the effect that downfall, so unexpected, and, as his son was sure, undeserved, would have upon him. Would it kill him, either body or mind? break his heart, shatter his health, move him with some wild, horrible impulse of despair? Or would it undermine and break down the mind, and turn the clear-headed man of business into imbecility and mental ruin? It might have killed him, it might have driven him mad. Oh for the length of the days and the slowness of any mortal voyage, whether by land or sea!

Afterwards, however, Gervase had some thoughts of himself and his loss breaking in. He thought of Madeline, who was silent, who in this moment of trouble could not stand by him, with at first an unreasonable sense of desertion, though he knew very well all the time that she had not deserted him; and then he thought of the consolation it would be only to get a sight of her, only to hear her voice, and that she would never forsake him; and then finally, with a leap of his heart, to meet a great exciting danger, of her father. What would his attitude be? Could he be expected for a moment to receive a man who was really penniless? No question now of an allowance, of comparative poverty, but really poor, without a righteous sixpence in the world; and the son of a bankrupt! “No, no,” Gervase said to himself, “not that.” A man who was Madeline’s father could not descend so far as to say or to think that. Poor father, betrayed by his son! Unhappy son, who had abandoned his father! Thus the ring of thought went round again to its beginning, and once more the knell of his family reputation rang in Gervase’s ears. A bankrupt, his father! his father, who held commercial soundness so high, a bankrupt! And then the young man would spring to his feet, and rush up to the bridge, and face the wind blowing strong against the ship, and the weltering world of sea, and the monotonous lines of cloud. The vast space seemed never to lessen. One morning broke after another, with the same hopeless breadth of unmeasured distance; and though the steamer throbbed on and on, and panted and struggled like his own heart, yet the wind was always in the face of the ship, always against him, in a conspiracy to keep him from home.

Poor father! poor father! that was the most persistent thought of all. Would any one be kind to him in his downfall? Would it be understood that it was his son’s fault, his only son, who, wretched coxcomb and fool, would not go into the business, would not lend his help to keep the vessel of their fortunes straight, but must needs recommend a false pilot, a traitor, for that post? He could not do justice to Wickham at this stage of his thoughts. He could only think of him as a traitor, a man who had betrayed his benefactor, and turned all that he ought to have been into all that a man should not be.

And with these seas and billows of thought, now flinging him up, now flinging him down, the monotonous screw went on rumbling and working, and the engines throbbing, against a head wind; and the long horizon spread out, and the distance spread unmeasured, and day followed day, bringing him perceptibly no nearer home.

CHAPTER VI.

Needless to say, however, that monotonous as the days were, and blank the distance, time and the hour, and that unmelodious screw got through them. Gervase landed at Queenstown, taking with him every newspaper he could collect as he hurried to the railway. But to be sure, all that he could get was the issue of that day, not the now far back numbers which would have carried on the story for which he thirsted. That story was now over; it had ended, and there was no more of it. Burton, Baber, & Co. had gone down like a stone in that sea of mishaps and misadventure; the public interest had deserted it, and no man spoke of it any more. Gervase, when he came to think, saw very quickly how it was, and called himself a fool to expect anything different; but yet the shock of the disappointment was great. He sat ruminating it as the train dashed along through the silence of the night. It went quickly, making more visible progress than the steamboat, yet was ever slow to the galloping thoughts which were there and back again, impatient of their incompetence to attain any knowledge, a hundred times in an hour. At last he reached London on a mild and misty morning of May. The air was full of a quiet drizzle, the pavements wet with the mild innocent rain. There was nobody to meet him, naturally enough, for nobody knew that this was the day of his arrival. He could not help thinking that had Madeline been arriving, miserable and full of trouble, he would have divined it. He did not even know where to go, in the sudden ignorance which had come upon him of all his own most intimate affairs. He could scarcely expect to find his father still at Harley Street, but this was the only place to which he could go, where he must, at least, find an address, something to guide him. It was miserable to put his portmanteaux into a cab, not knowing where he was to find a shelter; for though he gave Harley Street as his destination, he felt as if he were about to drive vaguely through the cold streets, he knew not whither, in search of some spot in which he could take refuge. It seemed another day of feverish suspense before he got to the well-known street, where everything looked so terribly the same as usual, as if no change had happened. When he reached the door, and dashing out before the cab had stopped, knocked loudly with a summons that seemed to wake echoes all round, and to go through and through his own aching brain, Gervase had come to the extreme limit of his strength. He felt helplessly that he had no voice left with which to ask the question, “Where has my father gone?”

To his utter astonishment—an astonishment which was at the same time collapse—he found himself gazing speechless into the face of his father’s old servant. Gilbert opened to him as he had done a thousand times, and stood with a faint smile of welcome on his face, holding it wide for him to enter. Gervase could only stand and stare and gasp. The sight of the familiar face, the unchanged aspect of everything, overwhelmed him more completely than the strange and stern novelty which he expected, would have done. A mist came over his eyes. He stumbled in within the shelter of his father’s door. “Gilbert—my father?” he said huskily, incapable of more.

“Come in, sir. Come in, sir. I’ll tell you—everything. Lord! Mr Gervase, don’t faint—that would be worst of all.”