“Never mind: you’ll make it out better some day. Let’s talk about getting aboard ship, and going a buffalo-hunting now.”
They discussed the projected expedition, until Zack grew sleepy. As he fell off into a pleasant doze, Mat went back into the front-room; and, taking from the table Mr. Thorpe’s letter to Mr. Blyth, left Kirk Street immediately for the painter’s house.
It had occurred to Valentine to unlock his bureau twice since his return from the country, but on neither occasion had he found it necessary to open that long narrow drawer at the back, in which he had secreted the Hair Bracelet years ago. He was consequently still totally ignorant that it had been taken away from him, when Matthew Grice entered the painting-room, and quietly put it into his hand.
Consternation and amazement so thoroughly overpowered him, that he suffered his visitor to lock the door against all intruders, and then to lead him peremptorily to a chair, without uttering a single word of inquiry or expostulation. All though the narrative, on which Mat now entered, he sat totally speechless, until Mr. Thorpe’s letter was placed in his hands, and he was informed that Madonna was still to be left entirely under his own care. Then, for the first time, his cheeks showed symptoms of returning to their natural color, and he exclaimed fervently, “Thank God! I shan’t lose her after all! I only wish you had begun by telling me of that, the moment you came into the room!”
Saying this, he began to read Mr. Thorpe’s letter. When he had finished it, and looked up at Mat, the tears were in his eyes.
“I can’t help it,” said the simple-hearted painter. “It would even affect you, Mr. Grice, to be addressed in such terms of humiliation as these. How can he doubt my forgiving him, when he has a right to my everlasting gratitude for not asking me to part with our darling child? They never met—he has never, never, seen her face,” continued Valentine, in lower and fainter tones. “She always wore her veil down, by my wish, when we went out; and our walks were generally into the country, instead of town way. I only once remember seeing him coming towards us; and then I crossed the road with her, knowing we were not on terms. There’s something shocking in father and daughter living so near each other, yet being—if one may say so—so far, so very far apart. It is dreadful to think of that. It is far more dreadful to think of its having been her hand which held up the hair for you to look at, and her little innocent action which led to the discovery of who her father really was!”
“Do you ever mean to let her know as much about it as we do?” asked Matthew.
The look of dismay began to appear again in Valentine’s face. “Have you told Zack, yet?” he inquired, nervously and eagerly.
“No,” said Mat; “and don’t you! When Zack’s on his legs again, he’s going to take a voyage, and get a season’s hunting along with me in the wild country over the water. I’m as fond of the lad as if he was a bit of my own flesh and blood. I cottoned to him when he hit out so hearty for me at the singing-shop—and we’ve been brothers together ever since. You mightn’t think it, to look at me; but I’ve spared Zack’s father for Zack’s sake; and I don’t ask no more reward for it than to take the lad a hunting for a season or two along with me. When he comes back home again, and we say Good-bye, I’ll tell him all what’s happened; but I won’t risk bringing so much as a cross look into his eyes now, by dropping a word to him of what’s passed betwixt his father and me.”
Although this speech excited no little surprise and interest in Valentine’s mind, it did not succeed in suspending the anxieties which had been awakened in him by Matthew’s preceding question, and which he now began to feel the necessity of confiding to Mrs. Blyth—his grand counselor in all difficulties, and unfailing comforter in all troubles.