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Transcriber's Notes:
     1. Page scan source:
        http://archive.org/details/secretinheritanc01farj
        (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)






                         A SECRET INHERITANCE






                                  A
                          SECRET INHERITANCE




                                  BY

                            B. L. FARJEON,

         AUTHOR OF "GREAT PORTER SQUARE," "IN A SILVER SEA,"
                  "THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS," ETC.




                          _IN THREE VOLUMES_
                                VOL. I




                                LONDON
                           WARD AND DOWNEY
                 12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
                                 1887






                        Richard Clay and Sons,
                          LONDON AND BUNGAY.






                        A SECRET INHERITANCE.

                             * * * * * *

                           BOOK THE FIRST.

                     THE RECORD OF GABRIEL CAREW.





VOL. I.




                              CHAPTER I.


My earliest distinct remembrances are of a mean and common home in
London, in which I lived with my parents and a servant named Fortress.
She was a young woman, her age being twenty-four or five, but her
manners were as sedate as those of a matron who had a distaste for
frivolity and tittle-tattle. She performed her duties quietly and in
silence, and seldom spoke unless she were first addressed. She did not
take the trouble to render herself agreeable to me, or to win my
affection. This was entirely to my liking, as I was of a retired habit
of mind and disposition. It was not unusual for weeks to pass without
our exchanging a word.

We were surrounded by squalid thoroughfares, the residents in which
were persons occupying the lowest stations of life, human bees whose
hives were not over stocked with honey, being indeed, I have no doubt,
frequently bare of it. This was not the result of indolence, for they
toiled early and late. I saw, and observed. Sometimes I wondered,
sometimes I despised, and I always shrank from close contact with
these sordid conditions of existence. If I had possessed a store of
pocket-money it is not unlikely that a portion of it would have been
expended in charity, but I will not affirm that I should have been
impelled to liberality by motives of benevolence. We were, however,
very poor, and my father seldom gave me a penny. I did not complain; I
had no wants which money could gratify. I did not consort with other
children; I did not play or associate with them; when they made
advances towards me I declined to receive them, and I held myself
entirely aloof from their pleasures and occupations. In this respect I
instinctively followed the fashion of our home and the example of my
parents. They had no friends or intimate acquaintances. During the
years we lived thus poorly and meanly, not a man, woman, or child ever
entered our doors to partake of our hospitality, or to impart what
would possibly have been a healthy variety to our days.

Our dwelling consisted of two rooms at the top of a small house. They
were attics; in one my mother and Mrs. Fortress slept; in the other my
father and I. The bed he and I occupied was shut up during the day,
and made an impotent pretence of being a chest of drawers. This room
was our living room, and we took our meals in it.

In speaking of our servant as Mrs. Fortress I do not intend to convey
that she was a married woman. My impression was that she was single,
and I should have scouted the idea of her having a sweetheart; but my
parents always spoke of and to her as Mrs. Fortress.

From the window of our living-room I could see, at an angle, a bit of
the River Thames. The prospect was gloomy and miserable. There was no
touch of gaiety in the sluggish panorama of the life on the water. The
men on the barges, working with machine-like movement against the
tide, were begrimed and joyless; the people on the penny steamers
seemed bent on anything but pleasure; the boys who played about the
stranded boats when the tide was low were elfish and mischievous. The
land life was in keeping. The backs of other poor houses were scarcely
a handshake off. On a sill here and there were a few drooping flowers,
typical of the residents in the poverty-stricken neighbourhood.
Sometimes as I gazed upon these signs an odd impression stole upon me
that we had not always lived in this mean condition. I saw dimly the
outlines of a beautiful house, with gardens round it, of horses my
parents used to ride, of carriages in which we drove, of many servants
to wait upon us. But it was more like a dream than reality, and I made
no reference to it