I do not ask you to humiliate yourself by delivering these letters personally. I would advise you to post them from Cairo, enclosing in each a note saying how I fell, and that you are fulfilling my instructions by sending the letter I wrote before leaving you. It may be that you will receive no reply. In that case, whatever happens to you and the child, you will have nothing to reproach yourself for. Possibly my father may have succeeded to the title, and if for no other reason, he may then be willing to grant you an allowance on condition that you do not return to England, as he would know that it would be nothing short of a scandal that the wife of one of his sons was trying to earn her bread in this country. Above all, dear, I ask you not to destroy these letters. You may at first scorn the idea of appealing for help, but the time might come, as it came to us in London, when you feel that fate is too strong for you, and that you can struggle no longer. Then you might regret, for the sake of the child, that you had not sent these letters.
It is a terrible responsibility that I am leaving you. I well know that you will do all, dear, that it is possible for you to do to avoid the necessity for sending these letters. That I quite approve, if you can struggle on. God strengthen you to do it! It is only if you fail that I say send them. My father may by this time regret that he drove me from home; he may be really anxious to find me, and at least it is right that he should have the opportunity of making what amends he can. From my sisters I knoiv that you can have little but sympathy, but that I feel sure they will give you, and even sympathy is a great deal to one who has no friends. I feel it sorely that I should have naught to leave you but my name and this counsel. Earnestly I hope and pray that it may never be needed.
Yours till death,
GREGORY HILLIARD HARTLEY.
Gregory then opened the letter to his grandfather.
Dear Father,
You will not receive this letter till after my death. I leave it behind me while I go up with General Hicks to the Soudan. It will not be sent to you unless I die there. I hope that long ere this you may have felt, as I have done, that we were both someiuhat in the wrong in the quarrel that separated us. You, I think, were hard; I, no doubt, was hasty. You, I think, assumed more than was your right in demanding that I shoidd break a promise that I had given to a lady against ivhom nothing coidd be said save that she was undowered. Had I, like Geoffrey, been drawing large sums of money from you, you would necessarily have felt yourself in a position to have a very strong voice in so important a matter. But the very moderate allowance I received while at the university was never increased. I do not think it is too much to say that for every penny I have got from you Geoffrey has received a guinea.
However, that is past and gone. I have been fighting my own battle, and was on my way to obtaining a good position. Until I did so I dropped our surname. I did not wish that it should be known that one of our family was working in an almost menial position in Egypt. I have now obtained the post of interpreter on the staff of General Hicks, and if he is successful in crushing the rebellion I shall be certain of good permanent employment, when I can resume my name. The fact that you receive this letter will be a proof that I have fallen in battle, or by disease. I now, as a dying prayer, beg you to receive my wife and boy, or if that cannot be, to grant her some small annuity to assist her in her struggle ivith the world.
Except for her sake I do not regret my marriage. She has borne the hardships through which we have passed nobly and without a murmur. She has been the best of wives to me, and has proved herself a noble woman in every respect. I leave the matter in your hands, Father, feeling assured that from your sense of justice alone, if not for the affection you once bore me, you will befriend my wife. As I know that the Earl ivas in feeble health when I left England, you may by this time have come into the title, in which case you will be able, without in any way inconveniencing yourself, to settle an annuity upon my wife sufficient to keep her in comfort. I can promise, in her name, that in that case you will never be troubled in any way by her, and she will probably take up her residence permanently in Egypt, as she is not strong and the warm climate is essential to her.
The letter to his brother was shorter:—
My dear Geoffrey,
I am going up with General Hicks to the Soudan. If you receive this letter, it will be because I have died there. I leave behind one my wife and a boy. I know that at present you are scarcely likely to be able to do much for them pecuniarily, but as you will some day — possibly not a very distant one — inherit the title and estate, you will then be able to do so without hurting yourself. We have never seen much of each other. You left school before I began it, and you left Oxford two years before I went up to Cambridge. You have never been at home much since, and I was two years in Egypt, and Imve now been about the same time here. I charge my wife to send you this, and I trust that for my sake you will help her. She does not think of returning to England. Life is not expensive in this country; even an allowance of a hundred a year would enable her to remain here. If you can afford double that, do so for my sake; but at any rate I feel that I can rely upon you to do at least that much when you come into the title. Had I lived I should never have troubled anyone at home, but as I shall be no longer able to earn a living for her and the boy, I trust that you will not think it out of the way for me to ask for what ivould have been a very small younger brother's allowance had I remained at home.
The letter to his sisters was in a different strain:— My dear Flossie and Janet,
I am quite sure that you, like myself, felt deeply grieved over our separation, and I can guess that you will have done what you could with our father to bring about a reconciliation. When you receive this, dears, I shall have gone. I am about to start on an expedition that is certain to be dangerous, and which may be fated, and I have left this with my wife to send you if she has sure news of my death. I have had hard times. I see my way now, and I hope that I shall ere long receive a good official appointment out here. Still, it is as well to prepare for the worst; and if you receive this letter the worst has come. As I have only just begun to rise again in the world, I have been able to make no provision for my wife. I know that you liked her, and that you ivould by no means have disapproved of the step I took. If our father has not come into the title when you receive this, your pocket-money will be only sufficient for your own wants; therefore I am not asking for help in that way, but only that you will write to her an affectionate letter. She is without friends, and will fight her battle as best she can. She is a woman in a thousand, and worthy of the affection and esteem of any man on earth. There is a boy, too — another Gregory Hilliard Hartley. She will be alone in the world with him, and a letter from you would be very precious to her. Probably by the same post as you receive this our father will also get one requesting more substantial assistance, but with that you have nothing to do. I am only asking that you will let her know there are at least two people in the world who take an interest in her and my boy.
Your affectionate Brother.
There was yet another envelope, with no address upon it. It contained two documents: one was a copy of the certificate of marriage between Gregory Hilliard Hartley and Anne Forsyth at St. Paul's Church, Plymouth, with the names of two witnesses and the signature of the officiating minister; the other was a copy of the register of the birth at Alexandria of Gregory Hilliard, son of Gregory Hilliard Hartley and Anne, his wife. A third was a copy of the register of baptism of Gregory Hilliard Hartley, the son of Gregory Hilliard and Anne Hartley, at the Protestant Church, Alexandria.