Contributed by FRANKLIN BLAKE
This change made it necessary for me to send one of my servants to
obtain my letters and remittances from the English consul in a certain
city, which was no longer included as one of my resting-places in my new
travelling scheme. The man was to join me again at an appointed place
and time. An accident, for which he was not responsible, delayed him on
his errand. For a week I and my people waited, encamped on the
borders of a desert. At the end of that time the missing man made his
appearance, with the money and the letters, at the entrance of my tent.
"I am afraid I bring you bad news, sir," he said, and pointed to one of
the letters, which had a mourning border round it, and the address on
which was in the handwriting of Mr. Bruff.
I know nothing, in a case of this kind, so unendurable as suspense. The
letter with the mourning border was the letter that I opened first.
It informed me that my father was dead, and that I was heir to his great
fortune. The wealth which had thus fallen into my hands brought its
responsibilities with it, and Mr. Bruff entreated me to lose no time in
returning to England.
By daybreak the next morning, I was on my way back to my own country.
The picture presented of me, by my old friend Betteredge, at the time of
my departure from England, is (as I think) a little overdrawn. He has,
in his own quaint way, interpreted seriously one of his young mistress's
many satirical references to my foreign education; and has persuaded
himself that he actually saw those French, German, and Italian sides to
my character, which my lively cousin only professed to discover in jest,
and which never had any real existence, except in our good Betteredge's
own brain. But, barring this drawback, I am bound to own that he has
stated no more than the truth in representing me as wounded to the heart
by Rachel's treatment, and as leaving England in the first keenness of
suffering caused by the bitterest disappointment of my life.
I went abroad, resolved--if change and absence could help me--to forget
her. It is, I am persuaded, no true view of human nature which denies
that change and absence DO help a man under these circumstances; they
force his attention away from the exclusive contemplation of his own
sorrow. I never forgot her; but the pang of remembrance lost its worst
bitterness, little by little, as time, distance, and novelty interposed
themselves more and more effectually between Rachel and me.