"Richard," she said with a faint smile, and holding out her hand, "is it you?"
"I come as the bearer of a written message," I replied; "but if I can ever do you real service you know well enough that I should gladly aid you."
"Thank you, Richard," she said gently, "I know it; but my father, he is well? His writing has changed though, it trembles so," and she burst into tears as she went to the landing window to read the letter. She had but just finished, and was slipping it into the bosom of her dress, when, with a sudden gesture, she said, "I dare not stay. I hear him coming up the street. Good-bye, good-bye, and take my love to papa, my dear, dear love. Say I'll write again or see him; but now go, and take no notice."
I went down, and should have passed quietly from the house, but a latch-key turned in the street door, and, as I tried to go out, the "Captain" stood in the way. I knew him, bloated, shabby, and broken down as he looked, but should have said nothing had he not also recognized me, and turned upon me with an oath, wanting to know what I did there.
I had heard of their address, I said, and that misfortune had overtaken his father, and had come to see whether I could do anything to help them.
Could I lend him a ten-pound note there and then? he asked, with an ugly laugh; and when I said, I had no such sum, he broke out again in a torrent of abuse.
I would have pushed past him, but he seized me by the arm, and swung me round facing him. I still strove to get away, when I heard his wife's imploring voice upon the stairs; and he spoke words that made the little blood that was in me surge swift and hot to my face. In a moment I had wrenched myself free, and struck him full on the mouth with my clenched hand. He was cowed for a moment, and turned white, but there were two or three people looking on by that time.
"You miserable old pantaloon," he screamed, as he made a rush at me.
But I had one hand on the knob of the door, and, swinging round as though I worked on a pivot, I caught him full between the eyes, and sent him sprawling among the hats and umbrellas that he had knocked down in his fall. Then I closed the door, and walked away. The page is turned for ever now, I muttered to myself. I cannot even meet her father again. Poor old gentleman!—he died—he died too soon; but not before I'd seen him and held his hand in mine. But she had never been to the old home; and on inquiring at the place where they had lodged, it was believed that they had gone abroad after the death of their two children.
So that was the bitter ending, I thought. And all that dead past was to be closed like a page in a book that is read and clasped.