This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By Gilbert Parker
The next morning he went down to the family solicitor's office. He haddone so, off and on, for weeks. He spent the time in looking through oldfamily papers, fishing out ancient documents, partly out of curiosity,partly from an unaccountable presentiment. He had been there about anhour this morning when a clerk brought him a small box, which, he said,had been found inside another box belonging to the Belward-Staplings, adistant branch of the family. These had asked for certain ancient paperslately, and a search had been made, with this result. The little box wasnot locked, and the key was in it. How the accident occurred was notdifficult to imagine. Generations ago there had probably been aconference of the two branches of the family, and the clerk hadinadvertently locked the one box within the other. This particular boxof the Belward-Staplings was not needed again. Gaston felt that here wassomething. These hours spent among old papers had given him strangesensations, had, on the one hand, shown him his heritage; but had alsofilled him with the spirit of that by-gone time. He had grown furtheraway from the present. He had played his part as in a drama: his reallife was in the distant past and out in the land of the heathen.
Now he took out a bundle of papers with broken seals, and wound with afaded tape. He turned the rich important parchments over in his hands.He saw his own name on the outside of one: "Sir Gaston Robert Belward."And there was added: "Bart." He laughed. Well, why not complete thereproduction? He was an M. P.—why not a, Baronet? He knew how it wasdone. There were a hundred ways. Throw himself into the arbitrationquestion between Canada and the United States: spend ten thousand poundsof—his grandfather's—money on the Party? His reply to himself wascynical: the game was not worth the candle. What had he got out of itall? Money? Yes: and he enjoyed that—the power that it gave—thoroughly. The rest? He knew that it did not strike as deep as itought: the family tradition, the social scheme—the girl.
"What a brute I am!" he said. "I'm never wholly of it. I either wantto do as they did when George Villiers had his innings, or play the gipsyas I did so many years."
The gipsy! As he held the papers in his hand he thought as he had donelast night, of the gipsy-van on Ridley Common, and of—how well heremembered her name!—of Andree.
He suddenly threw his head back, and laughed. "Well, well, but it isdroll! Last night, an English gentleman, an honourable member with theTreasury Bench in view; this morning an adventurer, a Romany. I itch forchange. And why? Why? I have it all, yet I could pitch it away thismoment for a wild night on the slope, or a nigger hunt on the Rivas.Chateau-Leoville, Goulet, and Havanas at a bob?—Jove, I thirst for aswig of raw Bourbon and the bite of a penny Mexican! Games, Gaston,