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After a while his little boy was brought in to see the father of whom he dimly remembered to have heard. His presence moved the sick man to further exhibitions of tearful sensibility, but seemed, on the whole, to have a salutary effect. Long absence and a vagabond life had not quenched the paternal instinct, and the little fellow was caressed with a fervor too genuine to admit of the possibility of its being assumed. Master Reggie received these ebullitions of affection without much corresponding demonstrativeness. He could not be expected to feel any vehement adoration for one whom he had never seen since his earliest babyhood, and whose very name for some months past had been permitted to sink out of sight. His artless prattle, however, was grateful in the ears of his father, who looked and listened as if entranced by sweet strains of music. His wasted–worse than wasted–past seemed to rise before him, as the child’s accents fell softly upon his ear, and he seemed to realize more than ever how much he had thrown away.

In the course of the forenoon Mrs. Savareen’s stepmother took her place in the sick chamber, and she herself withdrew to another room to take the rest of which she was by this time sorely in need. The invalid would not assent to the proposal to call in a physician. He declared that he was only dead tired, and that rest and quiet would soon restore him without medicine, in so far as any restoration was possible. And so the day passed by.

In the evening the wife again took her place at the bedside, and she had not been there long ere her husband voluntarily began his chapter of explanations. His story was a strange one, but there was no room to doubt the truth of any portion of it.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BAD HALF CROWN.

He began by comparing himself to the bad half-crown, which always finds its way back, but which has no right to expect a warm welcome on its return. “Were it not,” said he, “that I feel myself to be pretty near the end of my earth’s journey, I could not have the face to tell you my story at all. But I feel that I am worn out, and don’t think it likely that I shall ever leave this room except for the grave. You shall know everything, even more fully than I have ever known it myself until within the last few hours. They say that when a man is nearing his end he sees more clearly than at any other time of his life. For my part I now see for the first time that I have never been anything but a worthless lout from my cradle. I have never been fit to walk alone, and if health and strength were to come back to me I should not be one whit better than I have hitherto been. I don’t know whether I ever told you that I have a streak of gipsy blood in my veins. My grandmother was a Romany, picked up by my grandfather on Wandsworth Common. I don’t offer this fact as any excuse for my conduct, but I have sometimes thought that it may have something to do with the pronounced vagabondism which has always been one of my most distinctive features. So long as I was at home in my father’s house he kept me from doing anything very outrageous, but I was always a creature of impulse, ready to enter into any hair-brained scheme without counting the cost. I never looked a week ahead in my life. It was sufficient for me if the present was endurable, and if the general outlook for the future promised something new. My coming to this country in the first place was a mere impulse, inspired by a senseless liking for adventure and a wish to see strange faces and scenes. My taking Squire Harrington’s farm was an impulse, very largely due to its proximity to Lapierre’s, who is a jolly landlord and knows how to make his guests comfortable. I had no special aptitude for farm life; no special desire to get on in the world; no special desire to do anything except pass the time as pleasantly as I could, without thought or care for the future. And as I have fully made up my mind to make a clean breast of it, I am going to tell you something which will make you despise me more than you ever despised me yet. When I married you I did so from impulse. Don’t mistake me. I liked you better than any other woman I had ever seen. I liked your pretty face, and your gentle, girlish ways. I knew that you were good, and would make an excellent wife. But I well knew that I had no such feeling towards you as a man should have towards the woman whom he intends to make the companion of his life–no such feeling, for instance, as I have for you at this moment. Well, I married you and we lived together as happily as most young couples do. I knew that I had a good wife, and you didn’t know, or even suspect, what a brainless, heartless clod you had for your husband. Our married life glided by without anything particular happening to disturb it. But the thing became monotonous to me, and I had the senseless vagabond’s desire for change. We did fairly well on the farm, but once or twice I was on the point of proposing to you that we should emigrate to the Western States. I began to drink more than was good for me, and two or three times when I came home half-sees over you reproached me, and looked at me in a way I didn’t like. This I inwardly resented, like the besotted fool I was. It seemed to me that you might have held your tongue. The feeling wasn’t a very strong one with me, and if it hadn’t been for that cursed four hundred pounds, things might have gone on for some time longer. Of course I kept all this to myself, for I was at least sensible enough to feel ashamed of my want of purpose, and knew that I deserved to be horsewhipped for not caring more for you and baby.