“By the way, Mr.—Mansfield;” he began, after that thoughtful silence, “when, after a lapse of so many years, you presented yourself to your daughter, what credentials did you bring with you?”
“Credentials?”
“Yes. In other words, how did you prove your identity? You had parted with her when she was a child of six years old. Did her memory recall your features when she met you as a girl of seventeen, or did she take your word for the fact that you were the father she had believed to be in his grave?”
“She remembered me when I recalled myself to her. At first her memory was naturally vague. She had a dim recollection of my face, but no certainty as to when and where she had last seen it; until I recalled to her the circumstances of her childhood, the last days we spent together before my serious illness, her mother, the baby brother that died when she was three years old. John Treverton, you libel nature if you suppose that a daughter’s instinct can fail her when a father appeals to it. Had material proofs been wanted to convince my child that her father stood before her, I had those proofs, and I showed them to her—old letters, the certificate of her birth, her mother’s picture. The portrait I gave to Laura. I have the documents about me tonight. I have never parted with them.”
He produced a bloated pocketbook, the leather worn greasy with long usage, the silk lining frayed and ragged, and from this receptacle brought forth half-a-dozen papers, yellow with age.
One was the certificate of Laura Malcolm’s birth. The other five were letters addressed to Stephen Malcolm, Esq., Ivy Cottage, Chiswick. One of these, the latest in date, was from Jasper Treverton.
“I am deeply grieved to hear of your serious illness, my poor friend,” he wrote; “your letter followed me to Germany, where I have been spending the autumn at one of the famous mineral baths. I started for England immediately, and landed here half an hour ago. I shall come on as fast as rail and cabs can bring me, and indeed hope to be with you before you get this letter.
The other letters were from friends of the past, like Jasper. One had enclosed aid in the shape of a post office order. The rest were sympathetic and regretful refusals to assist a broken-down acquaintance. The writers offered their impecunious friend every good wish, and benevolently commended him to Providence. In every case the respectability and the respectful tone of Stephen Malcolm’s correspondents went far to testify to the fact that he had once been a gentleman. There was a deep descent from the position of the man to whom these letters were written to the status of Mr. Desrolles, the second-floor lodger in Cibber Street.
So far as they went his credentials were undeniable. Laura had recognised him as her father. What justification could John Treverton find for repudiating his claim? For the money the man demanded he cared not a jot; but it pained him unspeakably to accept this dissipated waif, soaked in alcohol, as the father of the woman he loved.
“There is your hundred pounds, Mr. Mansfield,” he said, “and since you have taught the little world of Hazlehurst to consider my wife an orphan, the less you show yourself here the better for all of us. Villages are given to scandal. If you were to be seen at this house, people would want to know who you are and all about you.”
“I told you I should start for Paris tomorrow night,” answered Desrolles, strapping his pocketbook, which was now distended to its uttermost with notes and gold. “I shan’t change my mind. I’m fond of Paris and Parisian ways, and know my way about that glorious city almost as well as you, though I never married a French wife.”
John Treverton sat silent, with his thoughtful gaze bent on the fire, apparently unconscious of the other man’s sneer.
“Ta ta, Jack. Any message for your old friends in the Quartier Latin? No? Ah, I suppose the Squire of Hazlehurst has turned his back on the companions of Jack Chicot; just as King Harry the Fifth threw off the joyous comrades of the Prince of Wales. The desertion broke poor old Falstaff’s heart; but that’s a detail. Good night, Jack.”
Laura re-entered the room at this moment, and drew back startled at hearing her father address her husband with such friendly familiarity.
“I have told Mr. Treverton everything, my dear,” said Desrolles.
“I am so glad of that,” answered Laura, and then she laid her hand upon the old man’s shoulder, with more affection than she had ever yet shown him, and said, with grave gentleness, “Try to lead a good life, my dear father, and let us hear from you sometimes, and let us think of each other kindly, though Fate has separated us.”
“A good life,” he muttered, turning his bloodshot eyes upon her for a moment with a look that thrilled her with a sudden horror. “The money should have come sooner, my girl. I’ve travelled too far on the wrong road. There, goodbye, my dear. Don’t trouble yourself about an old scapegrace like me. Jack, send me my money quarterly to that address,”—he threw down a dingy looking card, “and I’ll never worry you again. You can blot me out of your mind, if you like; and you need never fear that my tongue will say an evil word of you, go where I may.”
“I
