Volume 4 — CHAPTER XIV. EXEUNT OMNES.

This story which I have then telling, acted now long years ago, was wearing to an end. The unfortunate housekeeper's confession cleared up almost entirely what had mystified and baffled our inquiries for so many months; and, standing beside his mothers bier—the mother who had loved him all too well for her peace—Lister Wilmot, in the depth of his humiliation and the grief which the tide of natural affection, so recently aroused within him, had wakened, added what little was wanting to throw complete light upon the dark mystery of the past.

On the day before the remains of his unhappy parent were consigned to the grave, as he took his last farewell of the corpse, he told me his own story, his temptation and his fall. Alas! for him the sins of his parents had returned with double vengeance upon his head; the evil in them had reproduced itself in him. Deluded with the belief that {241} he was the heir to immense wealth, he had given full swing to his besetting vice—gambling. The billiard-table, the gaming-house, and that curse to young man, secret betting clubs and societies, had been his familiar though unknown resort. There, too, he had met with and fallen into the meshes of a creature but too familiar to the frequenters of such places—a man (if such can claim pretence to manhood) mature in years, even to gray hair; one of those who gain the substance which supports their infamous lives by sponging upon the young, by in tangling in their web young men destined to be the pride and hope of high-born families with stainless lineage; or the scions of noble houses; or the youth of houses not less noble, though perhaps more in the sense of present deeds than departed worth; or sadder and more shameful still, the young man who is the only son of his mother, and she a widow, her sole stay and support. Into such hands did Wilmot fall when he met the man Sullivan or De Vos. Through him he became mixed up in some disgraceful gaming affair; and De Vos used it to get him more thoroughly into his power, and upon the strength of it to extort money from him. Then came his real but misplaced attachment to Ada Leslie, and consequent jealousy of Hugh Atherton. An affection requited might have been his salvation; unreturned and hopeless, it became his moral ruin. Deeper and deeper he plunged into vice, faster and faster he gambled. None save those who haunted the same scenes as himself knew how far he was involved, how far lost; none even suspected a tithe of it, save one. But the mother's eye, the mother's heart could not be deceived. She whom he had been taught to look upon only as his uncle's housekeeper, who had nursed and tended and petted him as a child—she saw the care and trouble of his mind; she sought and won his confidence to a great extent. He told her he was overwhelmed with debt and difficulty, and she urged him to apply to Mr. Thorneley for a sufficient sum to free him at least from danger. That application was to be made on the very evening of the murder. She hinted to him darkly that she had the means of forcing Thorneley to give what he required, and that she would risk everything and hesitate at nothing for his (Wilmot's) sake. The first suspicion which entered his mind that she had indeed not scrupled even at the worst, was on the morning after Old Thorneley was found dead. This had strengthened more and more; but the temptation of his opening prospects, of the princely fortune which he found he alone was inheriting, dazzled, blinded him, and stupefied his conscience. A yet greater inducement to evil lay in the alluring thought that if the murder of Old Thorneley were saddled upon Hugh Atherton, and his disgrace, his banishment, if not his death secured, there might be a chance of winning in time Ada Leslie's affections for himself. To this end he had labored, ostensibly endeavoring to establish belief in Hugh's innocence, and acting as his best friend, but in reality undermining Mrs. Leslie's faith in him by the most subtle diplomacy, and shaking, by the most specious representations, Hugh's trust in and friendship for me. With Ada alone he had met entire defeat. Steadfast and unwavering had been her solemn, unqualified declaration that her affianced husband was guiltless; steady and unwavering likewise—God bless her for it!—had been her childlike trust in her old guardian. And this maddened him.

Then came Hugh's acquittal, accompanied by public censure and public disgrace. Here was a loophole through which a ray of hope gleamed upon Wilmot's dark soul. Atherton writhed beneath the shame that had fallen upon him with all the anguish of a keenly sensitive nature; and Wilmot played his game with this. He lost no opportunity of making Hugh feel his position; constantly, though skillfully, {242} he brought before him the shadow that was over him, and would artfully represent to him the magnanimity of Miss Leslie's conduct in wishing to share his blighted name and fortune. Hugh's first proposition of emigrating he had opposed outwardly, working in the dark to bring about its realization; and when Hugh was actually gone, he felt at last that the field was clear for him. Wilmot described his rage at finding that I had outwitted him as ungovernable, his desire for revenge burning and deadly. Then came the discovery of the will. Of its existence he had in truth been ignorant; and though suspecting some complicity in the matter on the part of Mrs Haag, once possessed of Old Thorneley's money, he had buried his suspicions in his own breast. Three days after the will was found by Inspector Keene, he received a letter from the housekeeper. In it she told him of their relationship in brief words, with no further explanation; she said that the discovery of the missing document involved her in serious trouble, and that she was hastening to Liverpool to catch the first vessel for America. Then he felt for the first time that his heyday was over, that the worst might shortly come; and he too began hasty preparations for leaving England secretly. In the midst of these came the telegram from Liverpool, and the subsequent tragic events.

This was the epitome of what Lister Wilmot (I keep his assumed name) told me the day before his mother's funeral. I said to him, "You have not explained one thing. Why, when I went down to the Grange, did you send De Vos to follow me and drug the coffee?"

"I did not," he said. "I knew absolutely nothing of it." And at such a moment I felt he was speaking the truth. He continued: "I have not seen De Vos for months; and I believe he has left the country."

I found afterward that another person was to clear up this remaining item of the mystery.

Of Wilmot I have little more to tell. In the abyss of his humiliation and degradation the message of divine mercy reached his soul; in the depths of his heart, chastened and and purified, he listened and responded to its whisper. So far as Hugh Atherton was concerned he went scatheless; and through the generosity of the man whom he had so deeply injured, he was enabled eventually to emigrate to the same land whither his unfortunate mother was flying for refuge when she met her death. But before that he had a duty to perform, a stern, hard duty of pain; and he set his face to the work resolutely, unshrinkingly.

In the Liverpool prison late Robert Bradley the elder, biding his trial for the murder of his wife; and from his lips we were to learn yet more to complete the history of the past. Once, and once only, the father and son met. In the bitterness of his trouble and his newly wakened penitence, Lister had turned and clung to the one who had ministered to his dying mother, and in Father Maurice, after God, he found his best friend. At his request the old priest went with him to that single interview with his father.

"I never meant to kill your mother, Robert," the convict said to his son. "Heaven is my witness, I never had a thought of harm to her when I went after her in Cross street. I loved her, ay, I loved her, little as you may think it now. I loved her though she left me, though she hid my boy away, though she brought him up not know his father; though she branded me with a crime I never committed, and got me sent to prison and chains, and a life in comparison with which death will be sweet; though she spurned me and defied me, I loved her with all the might of my heart, all the passionateness with which I loved her when she came to me a fair young bride. Away in that penal settlement, amongst that hideous gang, beneath that burning sky, I had longed and thirsted more for one look at her face, for one touch of her hand, then {243} ever longed for a drop of water to slake my parching thirst or cool the fever of my lips. They tell me she has revealed the story of our lives—all is misery and shame. I have heard a few particulars. In one thing I believe I have wronged her; I thought her guilty of Mrs. Thornely's death; I thought she wished to usurp her place. I used the threat of what I suspected to induce her to make out with me; but she spurned me from her; she told me she would die on the gallows rather than live with me again; and then the madness seized me; I struck her—once—twice—and killed her."

Of all that passed in that single meeting between the two Robert Bradleys little was heard; it was not meet that much should be known. They met solemnly, in bitterness, in shame, with agony in either heart, with a world of anguish, of feelings surging over their souls to which they dared not give utterance. They parted solemnly, but in peace: the son who had never you known his father until now—and then in what a terrible manner! the father who had never looked on his child since the time when he had taken him on his knee and listened to his infant prattle. Parted, never more to meet on this side the grave.

I saw the convict once or twice before his trial came on, and I found from him that he had known Sullivan of De Vos all his life. That he was on his wife's track when she went down to the Grange, and De Vos was with him. That the latter, seeing I was bound thither likewise, and having reason to fear me both for his own and Bradley's sake, had given me the stupefying dose in my coffee at Peterborough Station, trusting to the results which did really happen. That it was his appearance which must have alarmed his wife and caused her to relinquish her visit to the Grange. Further than that he could give me no information. Strangely enough, the bad companion of the father had proved the bad companion of the son, though in totally different ways. There is nothing more to tell of Robert Bradley. He was tried, condemned, and sentenced to death; but the sentence was commuted to transportation for life by the exertions of his son. Father Maurice had the satisfaction of receiving from his lips the assurance before he left the Liverpool Docks bound for his final journey, that he accepted his sentence as the only expiation he could make for his long career of sin.

And what of those who were once so near and dear to me—dear still, though far away, Hugh Atherton and Ada, now for many years his wife— what of them! We never met again; humanly speaking, we never more shall meet upon this earth. There is a writer—to my mind the essayist par excellence of this age, with power to touch the finest chords and sound the most hidden depths in the heart of man—who says that he knows no word of equal pathos to the little word "gone." And it is the word which expresses the long blank, the great vacuum of all these latter years since they went away—since they have been among the "gone." And how is it, you will ask, my readers, that still they should be far away when all the storms and clouds which had shadowed their horizon passed away, and the sunshine and fair blue sky once again greeted them? Well, it was in this wise:

Tidings of all that took place in Liverpool were instantly forwarded to Hugh Atherton at Melbourne, and we thought we should welcome them all back to England ere long; but he did not come—he never will come now. He wrote that the thought of returning to England was insupportable to both himself and Ada; that they would remain where they were, and where he had received the greatest happiness of his life—his true and tender wife. They settled in Australia, some miles from Melbourne, doing much for the new colony in the way of usefulness; and Hugh devoted {244} himself to the interests of his adopted country. His name is well known there, and it is coupled with everything that is good and great. I hear sometimes from them, most often from Ada. Her mother died a few years ago, and she has lost two children. They have three living, two boys and a girl; the youngest boy is called John after me. She would have it so. No, the old friendship between me and Hugh has never been rekindled into the same warmth; we are friends, but not the friends of yore. I do not blame him; he was blind, blind; and so we drifted away from one another, or rather he from me. It was just one of those clouds which come between human hearts because they are human; and then we see through a glass darkly whilst earth clings so closely about us. By and by all will be clear. He thought I should have confided his uncle's secret to him or Merrivale under the circumstances. Perhaps I ought. If I was mistaken, if I kept my solemn promise to the dead too rigidly, God pardon me; I did it for the best. But we may make mistakes in our shortsightedness, in our finite views, in our imperfect comprehension of events over which we have no control, and in which we have very little hand. If he outlives me, he will perhaps know this; and the knowledge of it, the memory of our ancient friendship will bring back the tenderness of his heart for me; he will feel, I pray not too sadly, that he also was mistaken when he withdrew the trust and confidence that never before heaven had for one moment been betrayed.

Some years ago I buried Gilbert Thorneley's idiot son; he lived with me up to the time of his death, harmless, but irrational to the last. It was a satisfaction to his guardian that with me he would receive every kindness and attention; and the poor fellow died in my arms, repeating in his indistinct and childish manner the words I had taught him to address to his Father in heaven—he who had never known a father's love on earth.

I am alone in my old study, and I turn to write the last page of my story.

The stillness of evening is creeping on afast, and the fire burns low; before it lies old Dandie—he is blind now and stiff with age. Neither he nor I can ramble out far into the country lanes, or across Hempstead Heath, as once we used. Years have come and gone, and the little golden circlet on my finger has grown thin and worn, but it will last my days. Shadows of the past are around me, and voices of the past are busily whispering in my ear. What is this that has fallen upon my hand? O Ada! is this "worse than foolishness," the tears should rush to your old guardian's eyes when he thinks of you, and writes your name for the last time? Nay, that has passed—past with the bygone years that have rolled on into eternity. A little longer, and the dark strait that divides us from our beloved shall "narrowed to the thread-like mere;" a little longer spent in hope and patience, and then the hand will come. Not now, Hugh—not now, Ada: I shall see you by and by.

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