‘We will have to find out where he is, before we can do anything for him. He intended to go to Australia; but the day after he regained his freedom, he wrote to Philip saying that he had altered his mind, and was going to the United States.’
‘Why did not Philip keep him here?’
‘He tried to persuade him to remain, but could not. Poor Caleb, he does not know what a sorry heart he has left behind him.’ Here she checked herself, feeling that she was entering upon delicate ground. ‘He sent good wishes to you, and to all of us, and promised to write again to Philip, so that we may have an opportunity of serving him yet.’
‘He is a headstrong fellow,’ said Mr Hadleigh; ‘and I hope he may not ruin his own prospects by his too great eagerness to secure the independence of his neighbours. You see, Miss Heathcote, he is one of those unhappy people who have reached the stage of education in which they discover that they have certain rights, without having got education enough to recognise the responsibilities which these rights entail. Well, we must wait till we have news of him.... Has my safe been dug out of the ruins yet?’
That was a question he had been asking daily from the moment when he comprehended the disaster which had befallen him; and the answer had been hitherto always the same: ‘Not yet.’ At length came the information that the safe had been found, and was apparently little damaged by its ordeal of fire.
Then Mr Hadleigh bade Philip take his keys and bring him from the safe a little deed-box marked ‘L. H. Private.’ When Philip returned with the box, his father had been moved into the Oak Parlour, where he was reclining in a big armchair, supported by down cushions. A cheery fire with one of Madge’s oak-logs was blazing on the hearth, raising the temperature of the apartment to summer heat.
When the box was placed on the table beside him, he desired to be left alone until he should ring a hand-bell which was within his reach. He had caused Philip to place the key in the box, and for a space he remained motionless, staring at it, as if hesitating to touch again the spring of emotions which he had intended should be there shut up from him for ever. His eyelids drooped, and in spite of the bright glow of the fire, a shadow fell on his pale face.
‘Yes, I thank God that I am spared to do this thing,’ he muttered at length. ‘Let the secret die with me—it was a cruel as well as a selfish wish that prompted me to reveal it to them. What matter to me how they may hold me in their memory? They may think of me as that which circumstances made me appear, not as what I wished to be. What matter? The dead are beyond earthly pain and passion. I shall not stretch my hand from the grave to cast the least shade of regret over their lives.’
He slowly took from the box the two packets he had so carefully sealed and put away on the night of the fire. The one was addressed to Madge as Mrs Philip Hadleigh; the other, to his son Philip, with the injunction that he, after reading, was to decide whether or not to show it to his wife. The paper addressed to Madge, he took up and held in the long thin scarred hands as if it were a thing capable of feeling. He broke the seal and took the paper from the envelope, performing the operation mechanically, whilst the far-away look was in his eyes, and the Something he had sought but could not reach was fading from his vision altogether. His was the kind of expression with which one who knows he is doomed watches the last sunset displaying its brief, changing glories on the horizon. The broad streams of gleaming amber and opal are quietly transfused into the pensive gray of twilight, and the darkness follows.
‘They must never know.’