"You are free to look at the letter to Mr. Blyth which I now entrust to you. Besides the expression of my shame, my sorrow, and my sincere repentance, it contains some questions, to which Mr. Blyth, in his Christian kindness, will, I doubt not, readily write answers. The questions only refer to the matter of the child's identity; and the address I have written down at the end, is that of the house of business of my lawyer and agent in London. He will forward the document to me, and will then arrange with Mr. Blyth the manner in which a fit provision from my property may be best secured to his adopted child. He has deserved her love, and to him I gratefully and humbly leave her. For myself, I am not worthy even to look upon her face.
"The second enclosure is meant for my son; and is to be delivered in the event of your having already disclosed to him the secret of his father's guilt. But, if you have not done this—if any mercy towards me has entered into your heart, and pleads with it for pardon and for silence—then destroy the letter, and tell him that he will find a communication waiting for him at the house of my agent. He wrote to ask my pardon—he has it freely. Freely, in my turn, I hope to have his forgiveness for severities exercised towards him, which were honestly meant to preserve him betimes from ever falling as his father fell, but which I now fear were persevered in too hardly and too long. I have suffered for this error, as for others, heavily—more heavily, when he abandoned his home, than I should ever wish him to know. You said he lived with you and that you were fond of him. Be gentle with him, now that he is ill, for his mother's sake.
"My hand grows weaker and weaker: I can write no more. Let me close this letter by entreating your pardon. If you ever grant it me, then I also ask your prayers."
With this the letter ended.
Matthew sat holding it open in his hand for a little while. He looked round once or twice at the enclosed letter from Mr. Thorpe to his son, which lay close by on the table—but did not destroy it; did not so much as touch it even.
Zack spoke to him before long from the inner room.
"I'm sure you must have done reading your letter by this time, Mat. I've been thinking, old fellow, of the talk we used to have, about going back to America together, and trying a little buffalo hunting and roaming about in the wilds. If my father takes me into favor again, and can be got to say Yes, I should so like to go with you, Mat. Not for too long, you know, because of my mother, and my friends over here. But a sea voyage, and a little scouring about in what you call the lonesome places, would do me such good! I don't feel as if I should ever settle properly to anything, till I've had my fling. I wonder whether my father would let me go?"
"I know he would, Zack."
"You! How?"
"I'll tell you how another time. You shall have your run, Zack,—you shall have your heart's content along with me." As he said this, he looked again at Mr. Thorpe's letter to his son, and took it up in his hand this time.
"Oh! how I wish I was strong enough to start! Come in here, Mat, and let's talk about it."
"Wait a bit, and I will." Pronouncing those words, he rose from his chair. "For your sake, Zack," he said, and dropped the letter into the fire.
"What can you be about all this time?" asked young Thorpe.
"Do you call to mind," said Mat, going into the bedroom, and sitting down by the lad's pillow—"Do you call to mind me saying, that I'd be brothers with you, when first us two come together? Well, Zack, I've only been trying to be as good as my word."
"Trying? What do you mean? I don't understand, old fellow."
"Never mind: you'll make it out better some day. Let's talk about getting aboard ship, and going a buffalo-hunting now."
They discussed the projected expedition, until Zack grew sleepy. As he fell off into a pleasant doze, Mat went back into the front-room; and, taking from the table Mr. Thorpe's letter to Mr. Blyth, left Kirk Street immediately for the painter's house.
It had occurred to Valentine to unlock his bureau twice since his return from the country, but on neither occasion had he found it necessary to open that long narrow drawer at the back, in which he had secreted the Hair Bracelet years ago. He was consequently still totally ignorant that it had been taken away from him, when Matthew Grice entered the painting-room, and quietly put it into his hand.
Consternation and amazement so thoroughly overpowered him, that he suffered his visitor to lock the door against all intruders, and then to lead him peremptorily to a chair, without uttering a single word of inquiry or expostulation. All though the narrative, on which Mat now entered, he sat totally speechless, until Mr. Thorpe's letter was placed in his hands, and he was informed that Madonna was still to be left entirely under his own care. Then, for the first time, his cheeks showed symptoms of returning to their natural color, and he exclaimed fervently, "Thank God! I shan't lose her after all! I only wish you had begun by telling me of that, the moment you came into the room!"
Saying this, he began to read Mr. Thorpe's letter. When he had finished it, and looked up at Mat, the tears were in his eyes.
"I can't help it," said the simple-hearted painter. "It would even affect you, Mr. Grice, to be addressed in such terms of humiliation as these. How can he doubt my forgiving him, when he has a right to my everlasting gratitude for not asking me to part with our darling child? They never met—he has never, never, seen her face," continued Valentine, in lower and fainter tones. "She always wore her veil down, by my wish, when we went out; and our walks were generally into the country, instead of town way. I only once remember seeing him coming towards us; and then I crossed the road with her, knowing we were not on terms. There's something shocking in father and daughter living so near each other, yet being—if one may say so—so far, so very far apart. It is dreadful to think of that. It is far more dreadful to think of its having been her hand which held up the hair for you to look at, and her little innocent action which led to the discovery of who her father really was!"
"Do you ever mean to let her know as much about it as we do?" asked Matthew.
The look of dismay began to appear again in Valentine's face. "Have you told Zack, yet?" he inquired, nervously and eagerly.
"No," said Mat; "and don't you! When Zack's on his legs again, he's going to take a voyage, and get a season's hunting along with me in the wild country over the water. I'm as fond of the lad as if he was a bit of my own flesh and blood. I cottoned to him when he hit out so hearty for me at the singing-shop—and we've been brothers together ever since. You mightn't think it, to look at me; but I've spared Zack's father for Zack's sake; and I don't ask no more reward for it than to take the lad a hunting for a season or two along with me. When he comes back home again, and we say Good-bye, I'll tell him all what's happened; but I won't risk bringing so much as a cross look into his eyes now, by dropping a word to him of what's passed betwixt his father and me."