“Left town!—where is my father? Don’t play with me, Gilbert. I’m not a fool, nor a child. Tell me the truth.”
“That’s the truth, sir, as sure as you live. Master has had a bad time; but he’s come out of it all with clean hands, that’s what I heard the gentlemen say. He might have begun again next morning, if he had liked. They made him a present of the house, and he’s left it to you.”
Gervase made an impatient gesture. “Do I care for the house?—where is my father?” he cried.
“If I was to swear upon the Bible, sir, I could say no more. He has left town. I can’t tell you where he is, for he has left no address. He said he didn’t want no letters forwarded. Mr Gervase, I am telling you the truth. There has nothing happened to him. He has left town. Some thought it was for the best; and some thought as it was a pity, master being still but a young man, so to speak. If you’d have been here, it’d have given him courage. But it so being as there was nobody belonging to him, and he a bit worn out with all that has happened—and no patience with Mr Wickham, as wanted him very bad to begin again——”
“Wickham! did that fellow dare——”
“Well, sir, even Mr Wickham, though he was rash, had no bad meaning. He’s been taken into Boyd Brothers, and they say he’s got everything in his hand already——”
Gervase turned with impatience from these details; except a feeling of fierce impatience with Wickham, who he could not forget was his own nominee, he had no further interest in him, and would rather have heard his name no more. He allowed Gilbert to bring him breakfast, and sat down perforce in that old accustomed place, every corner of which was familiar to him from his childhood, and which was now exactly as it had been for so many, many years; not a chair out of place, not a feature changed, the serious old clock going on steadily upon its habitual march, ticking off every deliberate moment, as when day by day its old master had compared his watch with it before leaving home. Gervase seemed to see his father on the hearth-rug with his watch in his hand—the emblem of punctuality and exactitude—making that daily comparison. Such revolutions in life tell doubly when the former tenor has been so exact and perfectly regulated. Where had he gone? He was not the man to take to wandering, to go abroad, to find refuge in those banal places where so many unfortunates hide their heads among the haunts of noisy gaiety and excitement. Gervase could not picture his father in any such scene. He could not imagine him poor, with anything but a lavish expenditure, and the power of doing as he pleased in respect to money and money’s worth. It was far more difficult to account for him when he disappeared than for most men. Amusement was a thing which had no existence for Mr Burton. Without his office, his business occupations, the Exchange, the semi-political, semi-commercial discussions which were his chief intellectual pleasure at his club and his dinner-parties, what could he be or do?
When Gervase had taken what refreshment he could, and made himself presentable, he took his way slowly down the street to see Madeline;—slowly, though he was a man in love and going to see his betrothed—almost reluctantly, though he loved her. He knew that the impression was a false one, yet it was difficult not to feel as if Madeline had deserted him, and in his present state of mind every interest except one seemed to have failed. A sense of having been beaten and humiliated, which was almost physical as well as mental,—a certain giddiness of mind and brain which affected, he thought, his very powers of walking as well as thinking, and which was only increased and aggravated by the familiar aspect of everything round—so unchanged, so undisturbed, so out of sympathy with his state—possessed him. He seemed to himself to knock against everything, to stumble over the crossings or any irregularity in the pavement; and that the few people whom he met in the morning street turned round after him, either to note his unsteadiness, or to say, “That’s Burton’s son.” He would have preferred to walk on past Madeline’s door, to keep moving mechanically, to go on and on along miles of dull street, where nobody would require him to speak or to take any notice. And it was with almost a painful sense of unwillingness that he stopped at Mr Thursley’s door. But it was opened almost before he could knock by Madeline herself, who must have been watching for him, and who rushed into his arms before he could draw breath. “Oh, Gervase, you have come at last!” she cried. “Thank God!”
“Is it anything to thank God for?” he said; “when all the mischief is done; when nothing can be mended? It is like my feebleness to come too late.”
“Don’t say so—don’t say so—it is everything to me,” she cried. “Oh, Gervase, I should have met you when you arrived, but we did not know if you would come by Queenstown. I have been looking out for you since break of day. Papa said you could not have heard, and that it was better not to startle you by any unusual fuss.”