II
THE YEARS ROLL BY
As might be expected, poor Vincey's sudden death created a great stirin the College; but, as he was known to be very ill, and a satisfactorydoctor's certificate was forthcoming, there was no inquest. They werenot so particular about inquests in those days as they are now; indeed,they were generally disliked, because of the scandal. Under all thesecircumstances, being asked no questions, I did not feel called upon tovolunteer any information about our interview on the night of Vincey'sdecease, beyond saying that he had come into my rooms to see me, as heoften did. On the day of the funeral a lawyer came down from London andfollowed my poor friend's remains to the grave, and then went back withhis papers and effects, except, of course, the iron chest which had beenleft in my keeping. For a week after this I heard no more of the matter,and, indeed, my attention was amply occupied in other ways, for I wasup for my Fellowship, a fact that had prevented me from attending thefuneral or seeing the lawyer. At last, however, the examination wasover, and I came back to my rooms and sank into an easy chair with ahappy consciousness that I had got through it very fairly.
Soon, however, my thoughts, relieved of the pressure that had crushedthem into a single groove during the last few days, turned to the eventsof the night of poor Vincey's death, and again I asked myself what itall meant, and wondered if I should hear anything more of the matter,and if I did not, what it would be my duty to do with the curious ironchest. I sat there and thought and thought till I began to grow quitedisturbed over the whole occurrence: the mysterious midnight visit, theprophecy of death so shortly to be fulfilled, the solemn oath that I hadtaken, and which Vincey had called on me to answer to in another worldthan this. Had the man committed suicide? It looked like it. And whatwas the quest of which he spoke? The circumstances were uncanny, somuch so that, though I am by no means nervous, or apt to be alarmedat anything that may seem to cross the bounds of the natural, I grewafraid, and began to wish I had nothing to do with them. How much moredo I wish it now, over twenty years afterwards!
As I sat and thought, there came a knock at the door, and a letter, in abig blue envelope, was brought in to me. I saw at a glance that it wasa lawyer's letter, and an instinct told me that it was connected with mytrust. The letter, which I still have, runs thus:--
”Sir,--Our client, the late M. L. Vincey, Esq., who died on the 9thinstant in ---- College, Cambridge, has left behind him a Will, of whichyou will please find copy enclosed and of which we are the executors.Under this Will you will perceive that you take a life-interest in abouthalf of the late Mr. Vincey's property, now invested in Consols, subjectto your acceptance of the guardianship of his only son, Leo Vincey, atpresent an infant, aged five. Had we not ourselves drawn up the documentin question in obedience to Mr. Vincey's clear and precise instructions,both personal and written, and had he not then assured us that he hadvery good reasons for what he was doing, we are bound to tell you thatits provisions seem to us of so unusual a nature, that we should havebound to call the attention of the Court of Chancery to them, in orderthat such steps might be taken as seemed desirable to it, either bycontesting the capacity of the testator or otherwise, to safeguardthe interests of the infant. As it is, knowing that the testator wasa gentleman of the highest intelligence and acumen, and that he hasabsolutely no relations living to whom he could have confided theguardianship of the child, we do not feel justified in taking thiscourse.
”Awaiting such instructions as you please to send us as regardsthe delivery of the infant and the payment of the proportion of thedividends due to you,
”We remain, Sir, faithfully yours,
”Geoffrey and Jordan.
”Horace L. Holly, Esq.”
I put down the letter, and ran my eye through the Will, which appeared,from its utter unintelligibility, to have been drawn on the strictestlegal principles. So far as I could discover, however, it exactly boreout what my friend Vincey had told me on the night of his death. Soit was true after all. I must take the boy. Suddenly I remembered theletter which Vincey had left with the chest. I fetched and opened it.It only contained such directions as he had already given to me as toopening the chest on Leo's twenty-fifth birthday, and laid down theoutlines of the boy's education, which was to include Greek, the higherMathematics, and _Arabic_. At the end there was a postscript to theeffect that if the boy died under the age of twenty-five, which,however, he did not believe would be the case, I was to open the chest,and act on the information I obtained if I saw fit. If I did not seefit, I was to destroy all the contents. On no account was I to pass themon to a stranger.
As this letter added nothing material to my knowledge, and certainlyraised no further objection in my mind to entering on the task I hadpromised my dead friend to undertake, there was only one course opento me--namely, to write to Messrs. Geoffrey and Jordan, and express myacceptance of the trust, stating that I should be willing to commencemy guardianship of Leo in ten days' time. This done I went to theauthorities of my college, and, having told them as much of the storyas I considered desirable, which was not very much, after considerabledifficulty succeeded in persuading them to stretch a point, and, in theevent of my having obtained a fellowship, which I was pretty certainI had done, allow me to have the child to live with me. Their consent,however, was only granted on the condition that I vacated my roomsin college and took lodgings. This I did, and with some difficultysucceeded in obtaining very good apartments quite close to the collegegates. The next thing was to find a nurse. And on this point I came to adetermination. I would have no woman to lord it over me about the child,and steal his affections from me. The boy was old enough to dowithout female assistance, so I set to work to hunt up a suitable maleattendant. With some difficulty I succeeded in hiring a most respectableround-faced young man, who had been a helper in a hunting-stable, butwho said that he was one of a family of seventeen and well-accustomed tothe ways of children, and professed himself quite willing to undertakethe charge of Master Leo when he arrived. Then, having taken the ironbox to town, and with my own hands deposited it at my banker's, I boughtsome books upon the health and management of children and read them,first to myself, and then aloud to Job--that was the young man'sname--and waited.
At length the child arrived in the charge of an elderly person, who weptbitterly at parting with him, and a beautiful boy he was. Indeed, I donot think that I ever saw such a perfect child before or since. His eyeswere grey, his forehead was broad, and his face, even at that early age,clean cut as a cameo, without being pinched or thin. But perhaps hismost attractive point was his hair, which was pure gold in colour andtightly curled over his shapely head. He cried a little when his nursefinally tore herself away and left him with us. Never shall I forget thescene. There he stood, with the sunlight from the window playing uponhis golden curls, his fist screwed over one eye, whilst he took us inwith the other. I was seated in a chair, and stretched out my hand tohim to induce him to come to me, while Job, in the corner, was making asort of clucking noise, which, arguing from his previous experience, orfrom the analogy of the hen, he judged would have a soothing effect, andinspire confidence in the youthful mind, and running a wooden horse ofpeculiar hideousness backwards and forwards in a way that was littleshort of inane. This went on for some minutes, and then all of a suddenthe lad stretched out both his little arms and ran to me.
”I like you,” he said: ”you is ugly, but you is good.”
Ten minutes afterwards he was eating large slices of bread and butter,with every sign of satisfaction; Job wanted to put jam on to them, butI sternly reminded him of the excellent works that we had read, andforbade it.
In a very little while (for, as I expected, I got my fellowship) theboy became the favourite of the whole College--where, all orders andregulations to the contrary notwithstanding, he was continually inand out--a sort of chartered libertine, in whose favour all rules wererelaxed. The offerings made at his shrine were simply without number,and I had serious difference of opinion with one old resident Fellow,now long dead, who was usually supposed to be the crustiest man in theUniversity, and to abhor the sight of a child. And yet I discovered,when a frequently recurring fit of sickness had forced Job to keep astrict look-out, that this unprincipled old man was in the habit ofenticing the boy to his rooms and there feeding him upon unlimitedquantities of brandy-balls, and making him promise to say nothing aboutit. Job told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, ”at his age,too, when he might have been a grandfather if he had done what wasright,” by which Job understood had got married, and thence arose therow.
But I have no space to dwell upon those delightful years, around whichmemory still fondly hovers. One by one they went by, and as they passedwe two grew dearer and yet more dear to each other. Few sons havebeen loved as I love Leo, and few fathers know the deep and continuousaffection that Leo bears to me.
The child grew into the boy, and the boy into the young man, while oneby one the remorseless years flew by, and as he grew and increased sodid his beauty and the beauty of his mind grow with him. When he wasabout fifteen they used to call him Beauty about the College, and methey nicknamed the Beast. Beauty and the Beast was what they called uswhen we went out walking together, as we used to do every day. Once Leoattacked a great strapping butcher's man, twice his size, because hesang it out after us, and thrashed him, too--thrashed him fairly. Iwalked on and pretended not to see, till the combat got too exciting,when I turned round and cheered him on to victory. It was the chaff ofthe College at the time, but I could not help it. Then when he was alittle older the undergraduates found fresh names for us. They called meCharon, and Leo the Greek god! I will pass over my own appellation withthe humble remark that I was never handsome, and did not grow more so asI grew older. As for his, there was no doubt about its fitness. Leo attwenty-one might have stood for a statue of the youthful Apollo. I neversaw anybody to touch him in looks, or anybody so absolutely unconsciousof them. As for his mind, he was brilliant and keen-witted, but not ascholar. He had not the dulness necessary for that result. We followedout his father's instructions as regards his education strictly enough,and on the whole the results, especially in the matters of Greek andArabic, were satisfactory. I learnt the latter language in order to helpto teach it to him, but after five years of it he knew it as well as Idid--almost as well as the professor who instructed us both. I alwayswas a great sportsman--it is my one passion--and every autumn we wentaway somewhere shooting or fishing, sometimes to Scotland, sometimesto Norway, once even to Russia. I am a good shot, but even in this helearnt to excel me.
When Leo was eighteen I moved back into my rooms, and entered him at myown College, and at twenty-one he took his degree--a respectable degree,but not a very high one. Then it was that I, for the first time, toldhim something of his own story, and of the mystery that loomed ahead.Of course he was very curious about it, and of course I explained tohim that his curiosity could not be gratified at present. After that, topass the time away, I suggested that he should get himself called to theBar; and this he did, reading at Cambridge, and only going up to Londonto eat his dinners.
I had only one trouble about him, and that was that every young womanwho came across him, or, if not every one, nearly so, would insist onfalling in love with him. Hence arose difficulties which I need notenter into here, though they were troublesome enough at the time. On thewhole, he behaved fairly well; I cannot say more than that.
And so the time went by till at last he reached his twenty-fifthbirthday, at which date this strange and, in some ways, awful historyreally begins.