In Luck at Last | Page 4

after all, virtue may bring
with, it some reward.
The quiet and warmth of the afternoon, unbroken to his accustomed ear,
as it would be to a stranger, by the murmurous roll of London, made
him sleepy. In his hand he held a letter which he had been reading for
the hundredth time, and of which he knew by heart every word; and as
his eyes closed he went back in imagination to a passage in the past
which it recalled.
He stood, in imagination, upon the deck of a sailing-ship--an emigrant
ship. The year was eighteen hundred and sixty-four, a year when very
few were tempted to try their fortunes in a country torn by civil war.
With him were his daughter and his son-in-law, and they were come to
bid the latter farewell.
"My dear--my dear," cried the wife, in her husband's arms, "come what
may, I will join you in a year."
Her husband shook his head sadly.

"They do not want me here," he said; "the work goes into stronger and
rougher hands. Perhaps over there we may get on better, and besides, it
seems an opening."
If the kind of work which he wanted was given to stronger and rougher
hands than his in England, far more would it be the case in young and
rough America. It was journalistic work--writing work--that he wanted;
and he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a creature of retired and refined
tastes and manners. There are, perhaps, some still living who have
survived the tempestuous life of the ordinary Fleet Street "newspaper
man" of twenty or thirty years ago; perhaps one or two among these
remember Claude Aglen--but he was so short a time with them that it is
not likely; those who do remember him will understand that the way to
success, rough and thorny for all, for such as Aglen was impossible.
"But you will think every day of little Iris?" said his wife. "Oh, my dear,
if I were only going with you! And but for me you would be at home
with your father, well and happy."
Then in his dream, which was also a memory, the old man saw how the
young husband kissed and comforted his wife.
"My dear," said Claude, "if it were not for you, what happiness could I
have in the world? Courage, my wife, courage and hope. I shall think of
you and Iris all day and all night until we meet again."
And so they parted and the ship sailed away.
The old man opened his eyes and looked about him. It was a dream.
"It was twenty years ago," he said, "and Iris was a baby in arms.
Twenty years ago, and he never saw his wife again. Never again!
Because she died," he added after a pause; "my Alice died."
He shed no tears, being so old that the time of tears was well-nigh
past--at seventy-five the eyes are drier than at forty, and one is no
longer surprised or disappointed, and seldom even angry, whatever
happens.

But he opened the letter in his hand and read it again mechanically. It
was written on thin foreign paper, and the creases of the folds had
become gaping rents. It was dated September, 1866, just eighteen years
back.
"When you read these lines," the letter said, "I shall be in the silent land,
whither Alice, my wife, has gone before me. It would be a strange thing
only to think upon this journey which lies before me, and which I must
take alone, had I time left for thinking. But I have not. I may last a
week, or I may die in a few hours. Therefore, to the point.
"In one small thing we deceived you, Alice and I--my name is not
Aglen at all; we took that name for certain reasons. Perhaps we were
wrong, but we thought that as we were quite poor, and likely to remain
poor, it would be well to keep our secret to ourselves. Forgive us both
this suppression of the truth. We were made poor by our own voluntary
act and deed, and because I married the only woman I loved.
"I was engaged to a girl whom I did not love. We had been brought up
like brother and sister together, but I did not love her, though I was
engaged to her. In breaking this engagement I angered my father. In
marrying Alice I angered him still more.
"I now know that he has forgiven me; he forgave me on his death-bed;
he revoked his former will and made me his sole heir--just as if nothing
had happened to destroy his old affection--subject to one
condition--viz., that the girl to whom I was first engaged should receive
the whole