"Thank you," Gervase said. "Well! in going through this book-the one of 1854-I have come upon a name so familiar to me, the name of Gervase Occleve, that-"
But before he could finish his sentence the landlord had jumped up from his chair, and was speaking rapidly while he gesticulated in a thorough French fashion.
"C'est ça, mon Dieu, mais oui!" he began. "Occleve-of course! That is the face. Sir, Milor! I salute you! When you entered my house yesterday, I said to myself, 'But where, mon Dieu, but where have I seen him? Or is it but the spirit of some dead one looking at me out of his eyes?' And now that you mention to me the name of Occleve, then in a moment he comes back to me and I see him once again. Ah! ma foi, Milor! but when I regard you, then in verity he returns to me, and I recall him as he used to sit in this very room-parbleu! in that very chair in which you now sit."
The young men had both stared at him with some amazement as he spoke hurriedly and excitedly, repeating himself in his earnestness, and now as he ceased, Gervase said:
"Do I understand you to say, then, that I bear such a likeness to this man, whose name is inscribed here, as to recall him vividly to you?" "Mais, sans doute! you are his son! It must be so. There is only one thing that I do not comprehend. You bear a different name."
"He became Lord Penlyn later in life, and at his death that title came to me."
"Bien compris! And so he is dead! He can scarcely have lived the full space of man's years. And Madame your mother? She is well?"
For a moment the young man hesitated. Then he said: "She is dead too."
"Pauvre dame," the landlord said, and as he spoke it seemed as though he was talking to himself. "She was bright and happy in those days so far off, bright and happy once; and she, too, is gone. And I, who was older than either of them, am left! But, Lord Penlyn," he said, readdressing himself to his guest, "you look younger than your years. It is thirty years since you used to run about those sands outside and play; I have carried you to them often-"
"You carried me to those sands thirty years ago! Why, I was not-"
"Stop!" Philip Smerdon said to him in English, and speaking in a low tone. "Do you not see it all? Say no more."
"Yes," Gervase answered. "Yes, I see it all."
Later on, when the landlord had left the room after insisting upon shaking the hand of "the child he had known thirty years ago," Gervase said:
"So he who was so stern and self-contained, who seemed to be above the ordinary weaknesses of other men, was, after all, worse than the majority of them. I suppose he flung this poor woman off when he married my mother, I suppose he left the boy, for whom this man takes me-to starve or to become a thief preying on his fellow men. It is not pleasant to think that I have an elder brother who may be an outcast, perhaps a felon!"
"I should not take quite such a pessimist view of things as that," Philip said. "For aught you know, the lady he had with him here may have died between 1854 and 1858, and, for the matter of that, so may the boy; or he may have made a good allowance to both when he parted with them. For anything you know to the contrary he might have seen the boy frequently until his death, and have taken care to place him comfortably in the world."
"In such a case I must have known it. I must have met him somewhere."
"Nothing more unlikely! The world is large enough-in spite of the numerous jokes about its smallness-for two peculiarly situated individuals not to meet. If I were you, Jerry, I should think no more about the matter."
"It is not a thing one can easily forget!" the other answered.
The landlord had given them a description of what he remembered of the Gervase Occleve whom he had known thirty years ago, but what he had told them had not thrown much light upon the subject. He described how Gervase Occleve had first come there in the summer of '54 accompanied by his wife (he evidently had never doubted that they were married) and by his son, "the Monsieur now before him," as he said innocently. They had lived very quietly, occupying the very rooms in which they were now sitting, he told the young men; roaming about the sands in the day, or driving over to the adjacent towns and villages, or sailing in a boat that Mr. Occleve hired by the month. They seemed contented and happy enough, he said, and stayed on and on until the autumn's damp and rain, peculiar to that part of the coast, drove them away. It was strange, he thought, that Milor did not remember anything about that period; but it was true, he was but a little child!
Then, he continued, in the following summer they returned again, and again spent some months there-and then, he never saw nor heard of them more. But, so well did he remember Mr. Occleve's face, even after all these years, that, ever since Lord Penlyn had been in the house, he had been puzzling his brains to think where he had seen him before. He certainly should not, he said, have remembered the child he had played with so often, but that his likeness to his father was more than striking. To Madame, his mother, he saw no resemblance at all.
"But I did not tell him," he said to himself afterwards, as he sat in his parlour below and sipped a little red wine meditatively, "I did not tell him that on the second summer a gloom had fallen over them, and that I often saw her in tears, and heard him speak harshly to her. Why should I? À quoi bon to disturb the poor young man's meditations on his dead father and mother!"
And the good landlord went out and served a chopine of petit bleu to one customer, and a tasse of absinthe gommée to another, and entertained them with an account of how there was, upstairs, an English Milor who had been there thirty years ago with his father; the Milor who was the owner of the yacht now in port.
On the next day the storm was over, there was almost a due south wind, and the Electra was skimming over the waves and leaving the dreary French coast far behind it.
"It hasn't been a pleasant visit," Lord Penlyn said to Philip, as they leant over the bows smoking their pipes and watching Le Vocq fade gradually into a speck. "I would give something never to have heard that story!"
"It is the story of thirty years ago," his friend answered. "And it is not you who did the wrong. Why let it worry you?"
"I cannot help it! And-I daresay you will think me a fool! – but I cannot also help wondering on which of my father's children-upon that other nameless and unknown one, or upon me-his sins will be visited!"
CHAPTER I
Ida Raughton sat, on a bright June day of that year, in her pretty boudoir looking out on the well-kept gardens of a West End square, and thinking of an important event in her life that was now not very far off-her marriage. Within the last month she had become engaged, not without some earlier doubts on her part as to whether she was altogether certain of her feelings-though, afterwards, she told herself over and over again that the man to whom she was now promised was the only one she could ever love: and the wedding-day was fixed for the 1st of September. Her future husband was Gervase Occleve, Viscount Penlyn.
She was the only daughter of Sir Paul Raughton, a wealthy Surrey baronet, and had been to him, since her mother's death, as the apple of his eye-the only thing that to him seemed to make life worth living. It was true that he had distractions that are not uncommon to elderly gentlemen of means, and possessed of worldly tastes; perfectly true that Paris and Nice, and Ascot and Newmarket, as well as his clubs and his friends-not always male ones-had charms for him that were still very seductive; but, after all, they were nothing in comparison to his daughter's love and his love for her. Never during his long widowerhood, a widowerhood dating from her infancy, had he failed to make her life and happiness the central object of his existence; never had he allowed his pleasures to stand in the way of the study of her comfort. The best schools and masters when she was a child, the best friends and chaperons for her when womanhood was approaching, and when it had arrived, the greatest liberality as regards cheques for dressmakers, milliners, upholsterers, horses, etc., had been but a small part of his way of showing his devotion to her. And she had returned his affection, had been to him a daughter giving back love for love, and endeavouring in every way in her power to make him an ample return for all the thought and care he had showered on her. Of course he had foreseen that the inevitable day