The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 21. Robert Louis Stevenson
to tell you, then. I come here as a father” – down came the riding-whip upon the table – “I have right and justice upon my side. I understand your calculations, but you calculated without me. I am a man of the world, and I see through you and your manœuvres. I am dealing now with a conspiracy – I stigmatise it as such, and I will expose it and crush it. And now I order you to tell me how far things have gone, and whither you have smuggled my unhappy son.”
“My God, sir!” Van Tromp broke out, “I have had about enough of this. Your son? God knows where he is for me! What the devil have I to do with your son? My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask you where she is, and what would you say to that? But this is all midsummer madness. Name your business distinctly, and be off.”
“How often am I to tell you?” cried the Squire. “Where did your daughter take my son to-day in that cursed pony carriage?”
“In a pony carriage?” repeated Van Tromp.
“Yes, sir – with luggage.”
“Luggage?” – Van Tromp had turned a little pale.
“Luggage, I said – luggage!” shouted Naseby. “You may spare me this dissimulation. Where’s my son? You are speaking to a father, sir, a father.”
“But, sir, if this be true,” out came Van Tromp in a new key, “it is I who have an explanation to demand.”
“Precisely. There is the conspiracy,” retorted Naseby. “Oh!” he added, “I am a man of the world. I can see through and through you.”
Van Tromp began to understand.
“You speak a great deal about being a father, Mr. Naseby,” said he; “I believe you forget that the appellation is common to both of us. I am at a loss to figure to myself, however dimly, how any man – I have not said any gentleman – could so brazenly insult another as you have been insulting me since you entered this house. For the first time I appreciate your base insinuations, and I despise them and you. You were, I am told, a manufacturer; I am an artist; I have seen better days; I have moved in societies where you would not be received, and dined where you would be glad to pay a pound to see me dining. The so-called aristocracy of wealth, sir, I despise. I refuse to help you; I refuse to be helped by you. There lies the door.”
And the Admiral stood forth in a halo.
It was then that Dick entered. He had been waiting in the porch for some time back, and Esther had been listlessly standing by his side. He had put out his hand to bar her entrance, and she had submitted without surprise; and though she seemed to listen, she scarcely appeared to comprehend. Dick, on his part, was as white as a sheet; his eyes burned and his lips trembled with anger as he thrust the door suddenly open, introduced Esther with ceremonious gallantry, and stood forward and knocked his hat firmer on his head like a man about to leap.
“What is all this?” he demanded.
“Is this your father, Mr. Naseby?” inquired the Admiral.
“It is,” said the young man.
“I make you my compliments,” returned Van Tromp.
“Dick!” cried his father, suddenly breaking forth, “It is not too late, is it? I have come here in time to save you. Come, come away with me – come away from this place.”
And he fawned upon Dick with his hands.
“Keep your hands off me,” cried Dick, not meaning unkindness, but because his nerves were shattered by so many successive miseries.
“No, no,” said the old man. “Don’t repulse your father, Dick, when he has come here to save you. Don’t repulse me, my boy. Perhaps I have not been kind to you, not quite considerate, too harsh; my boy, it was not for want of love. Think of old times. I was kind to you then, was I not? When you were a child, and your mother was with us.” Mr. Naseby was interrupted by a sort of sob. Dick stood looking at him in a maze. “Come away,” pursued the father in a whisper; “you need not be afraid of any consequences. I am a man of the world, Dick; and she can have no claim on you – no claim, I tell you; and we’ll be handsome too, Dick – we’ll give them a good round figure, father and daughter, and there’s an end.”
He had been trying to get Dick towards the door, but the latter stood off.
“You had better take care, sir, how you insult that lady,” said the son, as black as night.
“You would not choose between your father and your mistress?” said the father.
“What do you call her, sir?” cried Dick, high and clear.
Forbearance and patience were not among Mr. Naseby’s qualities.
“I called her your mistress,” he shouted, “and I might have called her a – ”
“That is an unmanly lie,” replied Dick slowly.
“Dick!” cried the father, “Dick!”
“I do not care,” said the son, strengthening himself against his own heart; “I – I have said it, and it’s the truth.”
There was a pause.
“Dick,” said the old man at last, in a voice that was shaken as by a gale of wind, “I am going. I leave you with your friends, sir – with your friends. I came to serve you, and now I go away a broken man. For years I have seen this coming, and now it has come. You never loved me. Now you have been the death of me. You may boast of that. Now I leave you. God pardon you.”
With that he was gone; and the three who remained together heard his horse’s hoofs descend the lane. Esther had not made a sign throughout the interview, and still kept silence now that it was over; but the Admiral, who had once or twice moved forward and drawn back again, now advanced for good.
“You are a man of spirit, sir,” said he to Dick; “but though I am no friend to parental interference, I will say that you were heavy on the governor.” Then he added with a chuckle: “You began, Richard, with a silver spoon, and here you are in the water, like the rest. Work, work, nothing like work. You have parts, you have manners; why, with application, you may die a millionaire!”
Dick shook himself. He took Esther by the hand, looking at her mournfully.
“Then this is farewell?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered. There was no tone in her voice, and she did not return his gaze.
“For ever,” added Dick.
“For ever,” she repeated mechanically.
“I have had hard measure,” he continued. “In time, I believe I could have shown you I was worthy, and there was no time long enough to show how much I loved you. But it was not to be. I have lost all.”
He relinquished her hand, still looking at her, and she turned to leave the room.
“Why, what in fortune’s name is the meaning of all this?” cried Van Tromp. “Esther, come back!”
“Let her go,” said Dick, and he watched her disappear with strangely mingled feelings. For he had fallen into that stage when men have the vertigo of misfortune, court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards anything decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms of suicide.
“She did not love me,” he said, turning to her father.
“I feared as much,” said he, “when I sounded her. Poor Dick, poor Dick! And yet I believe I am as much cut up as you are. I was born to see others happy.”
“You forget,” returned Dick, with something like a sneer, “that I am now a pauper.”
Van Tromp snapped his fingers.
“Tut!” said he; “Esther has plenty for us all.”
Dick looked at him with some wonder. It had never dawned upon him that this shiftless, thriftless, worthless, sponging parasite was yet, after all and in spite of all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet so it was.
“Now,”