With this encouragement the elder stranger proceeded: “This most excellent man, of whose death I have been speaking, was a clergyman, whose unfortunate sister I married more than twenty years ago. I respected and honored him when I first knew him for the purity and simplicity of his manners. He was of a respectable family, but not wealthy: his living was nearly his whole maintenance. I could never induce him to spend a week with us in town. He always pleaded his parochial duties as demanding his whole attention. It was in vain for me, or for any one else, to suggest any hint respecting preferment or bettering his circumstances by the ordinary means of professional advancement. During the whole of the time I resided in England after my marriage, I saw nothing of my respected brother-in-law. We had, it is true, several letters from him, and letters of a most interesting description. Well would it have been for me, and well for my dear child, and well for my beloved companion, had I regarded these letters as something more than models of epistolary correspondence; had I attended to those kind paternal hints which they contained. They gave me admonition without assuming airs of superiority or the affectations of a would-be hermit. He wrote to me in the world, and as from the world, making allowances for all the temptations with which I was surrounded, and speaking of them as if he had not learned their existence or ascertained their nature merely by the means of books or talk. I was content with admiring the good man’s virtues. I did not seek to imitate them. I suffered one scoundrel after another to creep into an intimacy with me, and in a very few years my patrimony was wasted, and all my inheritance was melted away at the gaming-table.”
There was again, at these words, a pause of passionate and deep feeling, but it passed away, and the emotion subsided, and the narrator went on to say:
“Then, sir, I became a widower. My beloved partner left me an only child, a daughter, for whom I resolved to live, or, more properly speaking, for whose sake I endeavoured to preserve and support life, which without this stimulus would have been a burden too heavy to be borne. I took my poor little innocent child to this venerable and amiable clergyman. I found even then nothing like reproach. The good man pitied me, and he pitied my child. His pity touched me more sorely and more deeply than any reproaches which human language could have uttered. I felt my heart melt within me. I dared not say a word of exculpation. I stood self-condemned. I proposed to leave my native land, and to seek elsewhere the means of maintenance for myself and my child. He offered to take my little girl and be a father to her: and he has been so.
She, poor innocent, hardly knows that she has any other father. I am to her but as a name; but I do long most ardently once more to see her. I think years have not so altered her that I shall not recognize her. I have pleased myself during my long exile of sixteen years with forming to myself an image of my dear child growing up to woman’s estate; and the miniature likeness of her dear mother assists my imagination now in forming an idea of my daughter. She is now expecting my return; and the last letter which I received of my most excellent brother-in-law, informed me that the poor girl had bestowed her affections, and would with my approbation bestow her hand, on a worthy and respectable man. I left all these matters to my relative in England. I was sure that he would act towards my child as a parent, and as a wiser and more truly kind parent than I have been. I was happy till this hour in the thought that I was hastening home to England to return my thanks to my benefactor, to see my dear child, and receive her at his hands—and now alas this happy, this blessed, prospect is blighted by the melancholy intelligence of this good man’s death, and would to heaven that this were the worst—but the most painful intelligence is yet to be added. I am informed from the best authority that my poor dear child has been simple enough to be captivated by a young man of high rank, who is too vain to love any one but himself, and too proud to marry beneath his own rank. I am, therefore, likely to be greeted with sorrows and perplexities on my very return to England.”
The elder stranger sighed calmly; and as it were resignedly, when he had finished speaking. The younger one looked thoughtful and sighed also. A pause of some minutes’ silence followed, and the young man said:
“You must hope better things, sir; a long absence from home should indeed always prepare us for something of change and calamity; we must look for those fluctuations of humanity: but still we may be permitted to hope, and to enjoy pleasing thoughts as long as possible.”
“Yes, sir, your remarks are very true, but they are not so easily applied. Hope does not come and go at the command of reason, and the spirits do not rise and fall according to the dictates of the understanding, or by any force of ratiocination. I ought to apologise for troubling you, a stranger, with my sorrows; they cannot be interesting to you; but it is not easy when the heart is full to prevent it from overflowing.”
“No apology, sir, is necessary: or, if it were, I might adopt the language of your apology, and use it as a preface to my tale of sorrow and disappointment awaiting me also at my return to my native land. I have also cause for grief.”
“Indeed, one so young as you appear to be! But yours, young man, are the sorrows, perhaps, of a youthful lover. Yours are not so deeply rooted as mine.”
These words led to an explanation which told the two strangers that their concerns were more nearly allied than they had been aware. Our readers of course need not be informed that the elder of the two was Mr Primrose, and the younger Mr Robert Darnley. They were happy, however, in the midst of their sorrows, to have become thus acquainted at a distance from home. They only regretted that the distance between their respective situations in India had formed an insuperable barrier against an acquaintance and intimacy there. The fact is that, so long as Dr Greendale considered the return of Mr Primrose as a matter of uncertainty, he had been very cautious of exciting his daughter’s expectations. He had ventured to consider his own approbation quite sufficient to allow of the correspondence between his niece and Mr Robert Darnley, and had in his letters to Mr Primrose simply mentioned the fact without stating particulars, thinking that it would be time enough hereafter, should the mutual affection of the young persons for each other continue and strengthen. Mr Primrose had, in reply to that information, left Dr Greendale quite at liberty to make such disposal of Penelope as he might think proper; for the father was well aware that the uncle was, both by discretion and affection, well qualified for the guardianship of his child.