FullReads

“Good Lord!” said Stephen, “everything I know how to do decently costs money.”

“I feel sure,” said Alice, her arm about Evelyn’s waist, “that our beauty and goodness would see us through.”

“I,” said Ellen, “would quietly curl up and die.”

“I,” said Dorothy, “would sell my earl to the highest bidder.”

“I shouldn’t bring tuppence,” said the earl.

“But you,” said Forrest to the earl, “what would you do if you were stone-broke?”

“I would marry Dorothy to-morrow,” said the earl, “instead of waiting until September. Fortunately, I have a certain amount of assets that the law won’t allow me to get rid of.”

“I wish you could,” said Forrest.

“Why?” The earl wrinkled his eyebrows.

“I would like to see what you would do.” He laid his hand lightly upon the young Englishman’s shoulder. “You don’t mind? I am an old man,” he said, “but I cannot tell you–what meeting you has meant to me. I want you to come with me now, for a few minutes, to Mr. Ballin. Will you?”

III

“Mr. Ballin,” said Forrest, his hand still on the earl’s shoulder, “I want you to tell this young man what only you and I know.”

Ballin looked up from his chair with the look of a sick man.

“It’s this, Charlie,” he said in a voice that came with difficulty. “It’s a mistake to suppose that I am a rich man. Everything in this world that I honestly thought belonged to me belongs to Mr. Forrest.”

The earl read truth in the ashen, careworn face of his love’s father.

“But surely,” he said anxiously, “Dorothy is still yours–to give.”

Forrest’s dark and brooding countenance became as if suddenly brightly lighted.

“My boy–my boy!” he cried, and he folded the wriggling and embarrassed Stuart in his long, gaunt arms.

I think an angel bringing glad tidings might have looked as Forrest did when, releasing the Earl of Moray, he turned upon the impulse and began to pour out words to Ballin.

“When I found out who I was,” he said, “and realized for how long–oh, my Lord! how long–others had been enjoying what was mine, and that I had rubbed myself bare and bleeding against all the rough places of life, will you understand what a rage and bitterness against you all possessed me? And I came–oh, on wings–to trample, and to dispossess, and to sneer, and to send you packing…. But first the peace of the woods and the meadows, and the beech wood and the gardens, and the quiet hills and the little brooks staggered me. And then you–the way you took it, cousin!–all pale and wretched as you were; you were so calm, and you admitted the claim at once–and bore up…. Then I began to repent of the bitterness in which I had come…. And I left the papers in your keeping…. I thought–for I have known mostly evil–that, perhaps, you would destroy them…. It never entered your head…. Your are clean white–and so are your girls and your boy…. I did not expect to find white people in possession. Why should I?… But I said, ‘Surely the Englishman isn’t white–he is after the money.’ But right away I began to have that feeling, too, smoothed out of me…. And now, when he finds that instead of Dorothy being an heiress she is a pauper, he says, ‘But surely, Dorothy is still yours to give!’

“I was a fool to come. Yet I am glad.”

Neither Ballin nor the earl spoke.

“Could I have this room to myself for a little while?” asked Forrest.

“Of course,” said Ballin; “it is yours.”

Forrest bowed; the corners of his mouth turned a little upward.

“Will you come back in an hour–you, alone, cousin?”

Ballin nodded quietly.

“Come along, Charlie,” he said, and together they left the room. But when Ballin returned alone, an hour later, the room was empty. Upon the Signer’s writing-desk was a package addressed collectively to “The Ballins,” and in one corner was written, “Blood will tell.”

The package, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more substantial than ashes. And by the donor thereof there was never given any further sign.