“Then I will wait,” said Mr. Gilmore. “I will go home, and wait again. If there be a chance, I can live and hope.”
“God grant that you may not hope in vain!”
“I would do my best to make her happy. I will leave you now, and am very thankful for your kindness. There would be no good in my seeing Mary?”
“I think not, Mr. Gilmore.”
“I suppose not. She would only feel that I was teasing her. You will not tell her of my being here, I suppose?”
“It would do no good, I think.”
“None in the least. I’ll just go home and wait. If there should be anything to tell me—”
“If the match be broken off, I will take care that you shall hear it. I will write to Janet Fenwick. I know that she is your friend.”
Then Mr. Gilmore left the house, descended the hill without seeing Mary, packed up his things, and returned by the night train to Westbury. At seven o’clock in the morning he reached home in a Westbury gig, very cold, but upon the whole, a much more comfortable man than when he had left it. He had almost brought himself to think that even yet he would succeed at last.
XXXIII
Farewell
Christmas came, and a month beyond Christmas, and by the end of January Captain Marrable and Miss Lowther had agreed to regard all their autumn work as null and void—to look back upon the lovemaking as a thing that had not been, and to part as friends. Both of them suffered much in this arrangement—the man being the louder in the objurgations which he made against his ill-fortune, and in his assurances to himself and others that he was ruined for life. And, indeed, no man could have been much more unhappy than was Walter Marrable in these days. To him was added the trouble, which he did not endeavour to hide from himself or Mary, that all this misery came to him from his own father. Before the end of November, sundry renewed efforts were made to save a portion of the money, and the lawyers descended so low as to make an offer to take £2,000. They might have saved themselves the humiliation, for neither £2,000 nor £200 could have been made to be forthcoming. Walter Marrable, when the time came, was painfully anxious to fight somebody; but he was told very clearly by Messrs. Block and Curling, that there was nobody whom he could fight but his father, and that even by fighting his father, he would never obtain a penny. “My belief,” said Mr. Curling, “is, that you could put your father in prison, but that probably is not your object.” Marrable was forced to own that that was not his object; but he did so in a tone which seemed to imply that a prison, were it even for life, would be the best place for his father. Block and Curling had been solicitors to the Marrables for ever so many years; and though they did not personally love the Colonel, they had a professional feeling that the blackness of a black sheep of a family should not be made public, at any rate by the family itself or by the family solicitors. Almost every family has a black sheep, and it is the especial duty of a family solicitor to keep the family black sheep from being dragged into the front and visible ranks of the family. The Captain had been fatally wrong in signing the paper which he had signed, and must take the consequences. “I don’t think, Captain Marrable, that you would save yourself in any way by proceeding against the Colonel,” said Mr. Curling. “I have not the slightest intention of proceeding against him,” said the Captain, in great dudgeon—and then he left the office and shook the dust off his feet, as against Block and Curling as well as against his father.
After this—immediately after it—he had one other interview with his father. As he told his uncle, the devil prompted him to go down to Portsmouth to see the man to whom his interests should have been dearer than to all the world beside, and who had robbed him so ruthlessly. There was nothing to be gained by such a visit. Neither money nor counsel, nor even consolation would be forthcoming from Colonel Marrable. Probably Walter Marrable felt in his anger that it would be unjust that his father should escape without a word to remind him from his son’s mouth of all that he had done for his son. The Colonel held some staff office at Portsmouth, and his son came upon him in his lodgings one evening as he was dressing to go out to dinner. “Is that you, Walter?” said the battered old reprobate, appearing at the door of his bedroom; “I am very glad to see you.”
“I don’t believe it,” said the son.
“Well;—what would you have me say? If you’ll only behave decently, I shall be glad to see you.”
“You’ve given me an example in that way, sir; have you not? Decency indeed!”
“Now, Walter, if you’re going to talk about that horrid money, I tell you at once, that I won’t listen to you.”
“That’s kind of you, sir.”
“I’ve been unfortunate. As soon as I can repay it, or a part of it, I will. Since
