Chapter 60

HOME AGAIN.

Great were the rejoicings both in Boston and Allington over the return of the travelers, and great the surprise of all, when it was known that Bessie had come back an heiress to no mean fortune. But just who the great uncle was from whom her money had come to her, none, except Grey's father and Mr. Sanford ever knew, and if they had, few would have remembered the peddler of more than forty years ago whose disappearance had caused no remark, and awakened no suspicion. Could Bessie have had her way she would have told the story fearlessly and moved the bones of her kinsman to another resting-place, but Grey and Mr. Sanford overruled her, both for Hannah's sake and for the sake of Grey's father, who could not have borne the talk it would have created.

Mr. Jerrold had never been the same since that night when he heard his father's confession, and he was fast growing into a morbid, misanthropic man, whom his wife, not without reason, feared would one day be crazy.

Every year he shrank more and more from meeting his fellowmen, and at last he abandoned business altogether, and remained mostly at home in a room which he called his office, and where he saw only those he was obliged to see. The money lying in his bank in Hannah's name, but which he knew was intended for some one else, and the shares in the mines and quarries of Wales, troubled him greatly, for somewhere in the world there were people to whom they belonged, and he sometimes felt that if he and his sister were guiltless of their father's crime, they were, at least, thieves and robbers, because of the silence upon which he himself had insisted. More than once recently he had resolved to tell Grey, and let him decide the matter, and it was upon this very thing he was brooding, on the morning when his son was announced. Grey had reached Allington the previous day, and found his mother there waiting to receive him.

"I wanted your father to come with me, but he would not. He dislikes Allington worse than I do, and mopes all day in his room just as his father did. I wonder if there is any insanity in the family," she said to Grey, who answered, cheerily:

"Not a bit of it, mother; and if there is Bessie's advent among us will exorcise the demon. I am going to Boston to-morrow to see father, and shall bring him back with me a different man entirely."

He found his father in his room, moping, as his mother had said, and was struck with the change in him, even during the few months he had been away. He stooped more than ever, and there was in his whole appearance an air of weakness and brokenness of spirit pitiable to see in a man who had once been so proud and strong.

"Grey, my boy, how are you? I am glad to see you, very glad," he said, as his son entered the room; and when Grey sat down by him, and taking his thin, white hand, pressed it gently and said, "Poor father, you are not well, are you?" he did a most astonishing thing. He laid his head on his son's arm and sobbed aloud:

"No, Grey, I am sick--in mind, not in body--and I have been sick these--how old are you, Grey?"

"Twenty-six, my next birthday," Grey replied, and he continued:

"Yes, you were fourteen when your grandfather died. Twelve years ago, and for twelve years I have been sick--very sick. Oh, Grey, if I dared to tell you, and ask you what to do!"

"You need not tell me," Grey said to him. "I know what you mean, and have known it ever since grandpa died, for I was there that night, unknown to you or any one; was in the kitchen by the stove, and heard what grandpa told you. Don't you remember how sick I was after it? Well, that was what ailed me. Aunt Hannah knows. I told her, and together we have tried to find his heirs, and, father, we _have_ found them, or _her_, for there is but one direct heir of his sister Elizabeth, and that--and that--is Bessie, my wife. Oh, father, look up, bear up; you must not faint," Grey continued in alarm, as he felt his father press heavily against him, and saw the ghastly pallor on his face.

"Bessie--your wife--the heir! And does she know what we do?" Mr. Jerrold gasped, and Grey replied:

"Yes, everything--and knew it before I married her. Listen, and I will tell you all."

Ringing the bell, Grey bade the servant who appeared bring a glass of wine, which he made his father swallow, and then, supporting him with his arm, he told him everything, from the night when he had knelt upon the snow in the woods and asked to be forgiven for his grandfather's sin, down to the present time.

"And you knew it all these years when I was trying to hide it from you," Mr. Jerrold said; "and you have worked while I have only sat still and brooded; and you have found the heir in Bessie. Are you sure it is Bessie? Oh, Grey! God bless you, my boy! You do not know what a load of care you have taken from me, for, though my father's sin is none the less, it does not hurt me as much, and I feel as if I could forgive him all. I do not believe he was so much in fault. The peddler struck him first, you know. I must see Hannah, and hear the story again. What time do you return to Allington?"

Grey told him, and he continued:

"I shall go with you--first to see Hannah, and then to Grey's Park in the evening. Poor Hannah! she has had such a lonely life!"

Three hours later and Mr. Jerrold was driven to the house in the pasture-land, in the phaeton which Lucy had sent to the station to meet Grey, who walked to Grey's Park, where Bessie greeted him as rapturously as if weeks instead of hours had passed since she saw him.

Mr. Jerrold had expected to find his sister alone, and was a little disappointed to see the Rev. Mr. Sanford there, cozily taking tea in the pleasant south room, where the morning-glories were trained across the windows, and the early June roses were looking in.

"Oh, Burton, how glad I am to see you! and how well you are looking!" Hannah cried, as she went forward to meet her brother, in whom she saw a change, as if he had suddenly grown young.

And he did feel younger and happier than he had in years; and as soon as Mr. Sanford took his leave, which he did immediately after tea, Burton plunged at once into the principal object of his visit.

"I have come," he said, "to open the doors and windows of that ghostly room, and let in the light and air of Heaven. Grey has told me everything, and I feel like a new man. Even the--the--the thing father did, does not seem to me quite as it did. Would you mind telling me again the particulars of the quarrel?--how it commenced, I mean--nothing more."

He had risen as he was talking, and going into the bedroom, threw back the heavy curtains, and opening the windows and blinds, sat down in his father's chair, while Hannah stood beside him and told him how both men had drank until their reason was clouded, and how the peddler had called her father a cheat and a liar, and struck him first, and how--But here her brother stopped her, and said:

"That will do. I am satisfied that what father did was done in self-defense, and so the world would have said, and acquitted him, too, I am sure. I almost wish you had told at the time. We should have lived it down, though I might never have married Geraldine and never have had Grey. No, sister, you did right, and having kept it so long, we must keep it still. No use to unearth it now, though I would give half my life and every dollar I own--yes, I'd give everything except my boy Grey, to know it had never been there," and he pointed to the corner of the room, where the bed was still standing, and under which was the hidden grave.

"Bessie is willing we should tell, and if I thought we ought, I should be willing, too," Hannah said, but her brother shook his head.

"It can do no good to any one, so let the poor man rest in peace. You have found his heirs and restitution can be made; the money is safe in the bank."

"And now I must go, for Geraldine is waiting for me," Burton said, adding, as be stood a moment by the door: "I feel twenty years younger than I did, and you, Hannah--why, you look thirty years younger, and are really a handsome woman for your age. By the way, shall you live here, or with Grey?"

"I don't know yet where I shall live," Hannah replied, and her cheeks were scarlet as she said good-by and watched him as he drove away.