“Of course,” he said, “you have known it, dear Mrs. Harwood, for long, and, though there has been nothing absolutely said between us, I think that Gussy and I have understood each other for a long time. You will give her to me, won’t you? I will try to be worthy of her.”
Mrs. Harwood’s eyes were filled with tears. There was no hypocrisy in this, nothing but nature.
“That I will, with all my heart, Charley!” she cried, and held out her arms to her daughter, who in the moment of emotion forgot everything, and forgave her mother who had done so much—had she done so much?—for her children. Gussy did not know all that the mother had done, nor at what cost she herself was to be “done justice to.” She only knew that there had been clouds upon the domestic firmament, and that they were now all blown away by delicious breezes of happiness and sweet content.
Everything was arranged afterwards with the authorities, and Adolphus Harwood, proved to be a harmless though hopeless lunatic, was left in the custody of his wife. When the story stole out, it was as the story of a wife’s devotion, which indeed it was, in some sort. It was said that he had wandered back to England, scarcely recognizable in his madness after he was supposed to be dead, and that she had then and there taken the tremendous task upon her of concealing him, caring for him, watching and providing for his safety and comfort. It was a tremendous task: nobody could exaggerate the weight of the burden that had been upon her shoulders. And those of the victims who heard of it in faint rumors after a time, were more disposed to shed tears over Mrs. Harwood’s martyr life and her wonderful devotion then to take any steps—if any had been possible—to interfere with her custody of the madman.
The vengeance of Heaven had overtaken that criminal who had been the ruin of so many. And, as for his poor wife, what was she but the first of the victims, the one who had suffered most? The story of the pocket-book with which he was going to pay up every claim touched still more the hearts of those who heard it. They thought it proved that, underneath all the misdoings which had overwhelmed his brain, there had still been an honest instinct, and that perhaps he had never intended but to give the money back. If Dr. Harding felt sometimes, when he looked back upon that strange scene, that there was something beneath, he was the only one to whom that idea came. And nobody suspected even, what there had been in the pocket-book the first time Adolphus Harwood’s wife got it into her hands!
Dolff threw up the university, which did him but little good, and the music-halls, which did him less, and went down to the little property in Wales which had come to him from his grandfather. Notwithstanding that scene with Dr. Harding, he never understood clearly what his father had done. He married there, and was in a small way a gentleman farmer, and got perhaps as much good out of his life as if he had pursued the course his mother intended. Perhaps on the whole, even she admitted, it was as well that the name of Adolphus Harwood, which is a conspicuous name, should not flourish at the Bar, which was a thankless profession; and where even Charley Meredith, who had been always thought so clever, did not flourish as people had hoped, though fortunately he and his wife were sufficiently well off not to care.
As for Janet, the little governess, the wife of the great Liverpool doctor, who acquired such fame in that northern capital, and was knighted, and as great a man as any in the place, her career is too brilliant for these simple pages. And yet when I say that she was beyond question the best-dressed woman in the north of Lancashire, which is saying a great deal, where could there be found a sign more eloquent of the apotheosis and grand culmination of a favorable fate?
THE END.