One of the figures that flitted vaguely before him stopped and appeared to draw back a pace and then to advance. Comethup opened his eyes fully and stared up at the figure. A familiar voice greeted him.
“My dear, dear nephew! How I have longed and hoped to see you! What has my cry been these past days, since I learned that you were in Paris? ‘Comethup,’ and yet again ‘Comethup.—Show me Comethup,’ I said, ‘and let me look into his eyes, and I am a happy man!’ And now my wish is granted; more than all, I find you alone. My dear boy!” He grasped Comethup fervently by the hand and sank upon the bench beside him.
“I heard you were in Paris,” said Comethup; “Brian told me.”
“Ah, that misguided boy! But still I love him. Who could help loving him? We have had our differences; we have even used harsh words to each other. But all that, I trust, is forgotten and forgiven. When I heard that he was coming to Paris, and coming, above all things, to see you, I said at once that I would go with him; my place was by his side, and, as I have told you, I longed to see my nephew. Boy”—he looked with affectionate sternness at Comethup—“you’re not looking well.”
“I—I’m very well, thank you; only a little tired.”
Mr. Robert Carlaw shook his head plaintively. “Ah, the weight of wealth, the responsibility of it! I am sometimes glad in my heart that Providence saw fit to make me poor; I have known my sorrows, but I have known my joys also. Wealth is a great responsibility. My dear sister is well, I trust?”
“Oh, yes, she’s quite well,” said Comethup.
There was an awkward pause for some moments, and then Mr. Carlaw, with something of an effort, turned toward his nephew. “My dear Comethup,” he said, prefacing his speech with a hastily suppressed sigh, “Fortune has been very good to you and has made you, if one may say so, her favourite child; has taken you from an obscurity (which I am sure was quite unmerited) and has placed you in affluence. If I did not think you were wise beyond your years I should not speak to you as I do now; but I know that Fortune has not blunted your sympathies, and that you are still the generous-hearted boy I knew in years gone by. Comethup, look well upon me”—he stuck his hands in the breast of his frock coat and looked gloomily at the boy—“and tell me what I am.”
Comethup looked at him in some amazement. “You—you’re my Uncle Robert, of course,” he said.
“Call me Bob,” said Mr. Carlaw, with some emotion. “My friends have always called me Bob; had they called me by any other name it might have been better for me. But Bob was a good fellow; Bob had his hand in his pocket for a friend; Bob hadn’t the slightest notion of that simple word ‘no’; in short, Bob, in the world’s eyes, has been going straight to the devil since he was breeched. Boy”—he laid his hand on Comethup’s arm, and Comethup felt that he trembled with agitation—“boy, your Uncle Bob has finished his course; your Uncle Bob is a bankrupt and an outlaw.”