"I scarcely can separate the two in my mind," said Jack, doubtingly.

"Can't you, sir? Why, nature is your skin, temper only your great-coat."

And the old lawyer laughed heartily at his own conceit. "But here comes the postman."

The double knock had scarcely reverberated through the s.p.a.cious hall when the servant entered with a letter.

"Ah! Barry Martin's hand. What have we here?" said Repton, as he ran his eyes over it. "So-so; just as I was saying this minute, only that Barry has the good sense to see it himself. 'My nephew,' he writes, 'has his own ideas on all these subjects, which are not mine; and as it is no part of my plan to hamper my gift with conditions that might impair its value, I mean to leave this at once.

"'I have had my full share of calamity since I set foot in this land; and if this rugged old nature could be crushed by mere misfortune, the last two months might have done it. But no, Repton, the years by which we survive friends serve equally to make us survive affections, and we live on, untouched by time!

"'I mean to be with you this evening. Let us dine alone together, for I have much to say to you.

"' Yours ever,

"'Barry Martin.

"'I hope I may see Ma.s.singbred before I sail. I 'd like to shake hands with him once again. Say so to him, at all events.'"

"Come in to-morrow to breakfast," said Repton; "by that time we'll have finished all mere business affairs." And Ma.s.singbred having a.s.sented, they parted.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX. TOWARDS THE END

Repton was standing at his parlor window, anxiously awaiting his friend's arrival, when the chaise with four posters came to the door.

"What have we here?" said the old lawyer to himself, as Barry a.s.sisted a lady dressed in deep mourning to alight, and hurried out to receive them.

"I have not come alone, Repton," said the other. "I have brought my daughter with me." Before Repton could master his amazement at these words, she had thrown back her veil, revealing the well-known features of Kate Henderson.

"Is this possible?--is this really the case?" cried Repton, as he grasped her hand between both his own. "Do I, indeed, see one I have so long regarded and admired, as the child of my old friend?"

"Fate, that dealt me so many heavy blows of late, had a kindness in reserve for me, after all," said Barry. "I am not to be quite alone in this world!"

"If _you_ be grateful, what ought not to be _my_ thankfulness?" said Kate, tremulously.

"Leave us for a moment together, Kate," said Barry; and taking Repton's arm, he led him into an inner room.

"I have met with many a sore cut from fortune, Repton," said he, in the fierce tone that was most natural to him; "the nearest and dearest to me not the last to treat me harshly. I need not tell you how I have been requited in life; not, indeed, that I seek to acquit myself of my own share of ill. My whole career has been a fault; it could not bring other fruit than misery." He paused, and for a while seemed laboring in strong emotion. At last he went on:--

"When that girl was born--it was two years before I married--I intrusted the charge of her to Henderson, who placed her with a sister of his in Bruges. I made arrangements for her maintenance and education,--liberally for one as poor as I was. I made but one condition about her. It was that under no circ.u.mstances save actual want should she ever be reduced to earn her own bread; but if the sad hour did come, never--as had been her poor mothers fate--never as a governess! It was in that fearful struggle of condition I first knew her. I continued, year after year, to hear of her; remitting regularly the sums I promised,--doubling, tripling them, when fortune favored me with a chance prosperity. The letters spoke of her as well and happy, in humble but sufficient circ.u.mstances, equally remote from privation as from the seductions of a more exalted state. I insisted eagerly on my original condition, and hoped some day to hear of her being married to some honest but humble man. It was not often that I had time for self-reproach; but when such seasons would beset me, I thought of this girl, and her poor mother long dead and gone--But let me finish. While I struggled--and it was often a hard struggle--to maintain my side of the compact, selling at ruinous loss acquisitions it had cost me years of labor to obtain, this fellow, this Henderson, was basely betraying the trust I placed in him! The girl, for whose protection, whose safety I was toiling, was thrown by him into the very world for which I had distinctly excepted her; her talents, her accomplishments, her very graces, farmed out and hired for his own profit! Launched into the very sea where her own mother met shipwreck, she was a mere child, sent to thread her way through the perils of the most dissipated society. Hear her own account of it, Repton. Let _her_ tell you what is the tone of that high life to which foreign n.o.bility imparts its fascinations. Not that I want to make invidious comparisons; our own country sends its high tributaries to every vice of Europe! I know not what accident saved her amidst this pollution. Some fancied theory of popular wrongs, she thinks, gave her a kind of fact.i.tious heroism; elevating her, at least to her own mind, above the frivolous corruptions around her. She was a democrat, to rescue her from being worse.

"At last came a year of unusual pressure; my remittance was delayed, but when sent was never acknowledged. From that hour out I never heard of her. How she came into my brother's family, you yourself know. What was her life there, she has told me! Not in any spirit of complaint,--nay, she acknowledges to many kindnesses and much trust. Even my cold sister-in-law showed traits for which I had not given her credit. I have already forgotten her wrongs towards myself, in requital of her conduct to this poor girl."

"I'll spare you the scene with Henderson, Repton," said he, after a long pause. "When the fellow told me that the girl was the same I had seen watching by another's sickbed, that she it was whose never-ceasing cares had soothed the last hours of one dearer than herself, I never gave another thought to him. I rushed out in search of her, to tell her myself the tidings."

"How did she hear it?" asked Repton, eagerly.

"More calmly than I could tell it. Her first words were, 'Thank G.o.d for this, for I never could love that man I had called my father!'"

"She knows, then, every circ.u.mstance of her birth?"

"I told her everything. We know each other as well as though we had lived under the same roof for years. She is my own child in every sentiment and feeling. She is frank and fearless, Repton,--two qualities that will do well enough in the wild savannahs of the New World, but would be unmanageable gifts in the Old, and thither we are bound. I have written to Liverpool about a ship, and we shall sail on Sat.u.r.day."

"How warmly do I sympathize in this your good fortune, Martin!" said Repton. "She is a n.o.ble creature, and worthy of belonging to you."

"I ask for nothing more, Repton," said he, solemnly. "Fortune and station, such as they exist here, I have no mind for! I'm too old now to go to school about party tactics and politics; I'm too stubborn, besides, to yield up a single conviction for the sake of unity with a party,--so much for my unfitness for public life. As to private, I am rough and untrained; the forms of society so pleasant to others would be penalties to _me_. And then," said he, rising, and drawing up his figure to its full height, "I love the forest and the prairie; I glory in the vastness of a landscape where the earth seems boundless as the sky, and where, if I hunt down a buffalo-ox, after twenty miles of a chase, I have neither a game-law nor a gamekeeper nor a charge of trespa.s.s hanging over me."

"There's some one knocking at the door," said Repton, as he arose and opened it.

"A thousand pardons for this interruption," said Mas-singbred, in a low and eager voice, "but I cannot keep my promise to you; I cannot defer my journey to the West. I start to-night. Don't ask me the reasons. I 'll be free enough to give them if they justify me."

"But here is one who wishes to shake hands with you, Ma.s.singbred," said Repton, as he led him forward into the room.

"I hope you are going to keep your pledge with me, though," said Barry.

"Have you forgotten you have promised to be my guest over the sea?"

"Ah," said Jack, sighing, "I 've had many a day-dream of late!"

"The man's in love," said Repton. "Nay, prisoner, you are not called on to say what may criminate you. I 'll tell you what, Barry, you 'll do the boy good service by taking him along with you. There 's a healthful sincerity in the active life of the New World well fitted to dispel illusions that take their rise in the indolent voluptuousness of the Old. Carry him off then, I say; accept no excuses nor apologies. Send him away to buy powder and shot, leather gaiters, and the rest of it.

When I saw him first myself, it was in the character of a poacher, and he filled the part well. Ah! he is gone," added he, perceiving that Martin had just quitted the room. "Poor fellow, he is so full of his present happiness,--the first gleam of real sunshine on a long day of lowering gloom! He has just found a daughter,--an illegitimate one, but worthy to be the rightful-born child to the first man in the land. The discovery has carried him back twenty years of life, and freshened a heart whose wells of feeling were all but dried up forever. If I mistake not, you must have met her long ago at Cro' Martin."

"Possibly. I have no recollection of it," said Jack, musing.

"An ign.o.ble confession, sir," said Repton; "no less shocked should I be were she to tell me she was uncertain if she had ever met Mr.

Ma.s.singbred. As Burke once remarked to me, 'Active intelligences, like appropriate ingredients in chemistry, never meet without fresh combinations.' It is then a shame to ignore such products. I 'd swear that when you did meet you understood each other thoroughly; agreed well,--ay, and what is more to the purpose, differed in the right places too."

"I'm certain we did," said Jack, smiling, "though I'm ungrateful enough to forget all about it."

"Well," said Martin, entering, "I have sent for another advocate to plead my cause. My daughter will tell you, sir, that she, at least, is not afraid to encounter the uncivilized glens beside the Orinoco. Come in, Kate. You tell me that you and Mr. Ma.s.singbred are old friends."

Ma.s.singbred started as he heard the name, looked up, and there stood Kate before him, with her hand extended in welcome.

"Good heavens! what is this? Am I in a dream? Can this be real?" cried Jack, pressing his hands to his temples, and trembling from head to foot in the intensity of his anxiety.

"My father tells me of an invitation he has given you, Mr. Ma.s.singbred,"

said she, smiling faintly at his embarra.s.sment, "and asks me to repeat it; but I know far better than he does all that you would surrender by exile from the great world wherein you are destined to eminence. The great debater, the witty conversationalist, the smart reviewer, might prove but a sorry trapper, and even a bad shot! I have my scruples, then, about supporting a cause where my conscience does not go along with me."

"My head on't, but he 'll like the life well," said Barry, half impatiently.

"Am I to think that you will not ask me to be your guest?" said Jack, in a whisper, only audible by Kate.

"I have not said so," said she, in the same low tone. "Will you go further, Kate," muttered he, in tremulous eagerness, "and say, 'Come'?"

"Yes!" said she. "Come!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: 410]

"I accept!" cried Jack, rushing over, and grasping Martin's hands between his own. "I 'm ready,--this hour, this instant, if you like it."

"We find the prisoner guilty, my Lords," said Repton; "but we recommend him to mercy, as his manner on this occasion convinces us it is a first offence."