seldom lifted from the ground. He knew he could not help the deplorable mistake that had been made, but he knew he could not mend it; for the days and weeks went by, and no one claimed his name or his possessions. And now there began to creep over him a cloudy consciousness of often-recurring confusion in his head. He would unaccountably lose, sometimes whole hours, sometimes a whole day and night. Once, his remembrance stopped as he sat at the head of the dinner-table, and was blank until daybreak. Another time, it stopped as he was beating time to their singing, and went on again when he and his partner were walking in the court-yard by the light of the moon, half the night later. He asked Vendale (always full of consideration, work, and help) how this was? Vendale only replied, “You have not been quite well; that’s all.” He looked for explanation into the faces of his people. But they would put it off with “Glad to see you looking so much better, sir;” or “Hope you’re doing nicely now, sir;” in which was no information at all.
At length, when the partnership was but five months old, Walter Wilding took to his bed, and his housekeeper became his nurse.
“Lying here, perhaps you will not mind my calling you Sally, Mrs. Goldstraw?” said the poor wine- merchant.
“It sounds more natural to me, sir, than any other name, and I like it better.”
“Thank you, Sally. I think, Sally, I must of late have been subject to fits. Is that so, Sally? Don’t mind telling me now.”
“It has happened, sir.”
“Ah! That is the explanation!” he quietly remarked. “Mr. Obenreizer, Sally, talks of the world being so small that it is not strange how often the same people come together, and come together at various places, and in various stages of life. But it does seem strange, Sally, that I should, as I may say, come round to the Foundling to die.”
He extended his hand to her, and she gently took it.
“You are not going to die, dear Mr. Wilding.”
“So Mr. Bintrey said, but I think he was wrong. The old child-feeling is coming back upon me, Sally. The old hush and rest, as I used to fall asleep.”
After an interval he said, in a placid voice, “Please kiss me, Nurse,” and, it was evident, believed himself to be lying in the old Dormitory.
As she had been used to bend over the fatherless and motherless children, Sally bent over the fatherless and motherless man, and put her lips to his forehead, murmuring:
“God bless you!”
“God bless you!” he replied, in the same tone.
After another interval, he opened his eyes in his own character, and said: “Don’t move me, Sally, because of what I am going to say; I lie quite easily. I think my time is come, I don’t know how it may appear to you, Sally, but—”
Insensibility fell upon him for a few minutes; he emerged from it once more.
“—I don’t know how it may appear to you, Sally, but so it appears to me.”
When he had thus conscientiously finished his favourite sentence, his time came, and he died.
ACT II.
VENDALE MAKES LOVE
The summer and the autumn passed. Christmas and the New Year were at hand.
As executors honestly bent on performing their duty towards the dead, Vendale and Bintrey had held more than one anxious consultation on the subject of Wilding’s will. The lawyer had declared, from the first, that it was simply impossible to take any useful action in the matter at all. The only obvious inquiries to make, in relation to the lost man, had been made already by Wilding himself; with this result, that time and death together had not left a trace of him discoverable. To advertise for the claimant to the property, it would be necessary to mention particulars—a course of proceeding which would invite half the impostors in England to present themselves in the character of the true Walter Wilding. “If we find a chance of tracing the lost man, we will take it. If we don’t, let us meet for another consultation on the first anniversary of Wilding’s death.” So Bintrey advised. And so, with the most earnest desire to fulfil his dead friend’s wishes, Vendale was fain to let the matter rest for the present.
Turning from his interest in the past to his interest in the future, Vendale still found himself confronting a doubtful prospect. Months on months had passed since his first visit to Soho Square—and through all that time, the one language in which he had told Marguerite that he loved her was the language of the eyes, assisted, at convenient opportunities, by the language of the hand.
What was the obstacle in his way? The one immovable obstacle which had been in his way from the first. No matter how fairly the opportunities looked, Vendale’s efforts to speak with Marguerite alone ended invariably in one and the same result. Under the most accidental circumstances, in the most innocent manner possible, Obenreizer was always in the way.
With the last days of the old year came an unexpected chance of spending an evening with Marguerite, which Vendale resolved should be a chance of speaking privately to her as well. A cordial note from Obenreizer invited him, on New Year’s Day, to a little family dinner in Soho Square. “We shall be only four,” the note said. “We shall be only two,” Vendale determined, “before the evening is out!”
New Year’s Day, among the English, is associated with the giving and receiving of dinners, and with nothing more. New Year’s Day, among the foreigners, is the grand opportunity of the year for the giving and receiving of presents. It is occasionally possible to acclimatise a foreign custom. In this instance Vendale felt no hesitation about making the attempt. His one difficulty was to decide what his New Year’s gift to Marguerite should be. The defensive pride of the peasant’s daughter—morbidly sensitive to the inequality between her social position and his —would be secretly roused against him if he ventured on a rich offering. A gift, which a poor man’s purse might purchase, was the one gift that could be trusted to find its way to her heart, for the giver’s sake. Stoutly resisting temptation, in the form of diamonds and rubies, Vendale bought a brooch of the filagree-work of Genoa—the simplest and most unpretending ornament that he could find in the jeweller’s shop.
He slipped his gift into Marguerite’s hand as she held it out to welcome him on the day of the dinner.
“This is your first New Year’s Day in England,” he said. “Will you let me help to make it like a New Year’s Day at home?”
She thanked him, a little constrainedly, as she looked at the jeweller’s box, uncertain what it might contain.
