George Henty - The Lost Heir

"Dear me! Dear me!" she gasped, as he put her on her feet again, "can it be that you are my nephew John?"

"Why, don't you know me, aunt? Twenty years of knocking about have changed me sadly, I am afraid, but surely you must remember me."

"Ye – es," she said doubtfully, "yes, I think that I remember you. But, you see, we all thought that you were dead; and I have only got that likeness of you that was cut out in black paper by a man who came round when you were only eighteen, and somehow I have always thought of you as like that."

"Yes, I remember," he laughed. "Well, aunt, I have changed since then, there is no doubt. So you see I was not drowned, after all. I was picked up by a passing ship, clinging to a spar, but I lost all my money in the wreck of the Nepaul . I shipped before the mast. We traded among the islands for some months, then I had a row with the captain and ran away, and threw in my lot with the natives, and I have been knocking about in the East ever since, and have come back with enough to live on comfortably, and to help you, if you need it."

"Poor Maria died four years ago," she said tearfully. "It would have been a happiness to her indeed, poor creature, if you had come back before."

"I am sorry indeed to hear that," he replied. "Then you are living here all alone, aunt?"

"Yes, except for my little maid. You see, John, Maria and I laid out the money our father left us in life annuities, and as long as we lived together we did very comfortably. Since then, of course, I have had to draw in a little, but I manage very nicely."

"Well, well, aunt, there will be no occasion for you to stint yourself any more. As I said, I have come home with my purse warmly lined, and I shall make you an allowance of fifty pounds a year. You were always very kind to me as a boy, and I can very well afford it, and I dare say it will make all the difference to you."

"My dear John, I could not think of taking such a sum from you."

"Pooh, pooh, aunt! What is the use of money if one cannot use it to make one's friends comfortable? So that is settled, and I won't have anything more said about it."

The old lady wiped her eyes. "It is good of you, John, and it will indeed make all the difference to me. It will almost double my income, and I shan't have to look at every halfpenny before I spend it."

"That is all right, aunt; now let us sit down comfortably to chat about old times. You don't mind my smoking, I hope?"

Miss Simcoe, for almost the first time in her life, told a lie. "Not at all, John; not at all. Now, how was it that you did not come down yourself instead of putting in an advertisement, which I should never have seen if my friend Mrs. Maberley had not happened to notice it in the paper which she takes in regularly, and brought it in to show me?"

"Well, I could not bring myself to come down, aunt. Twenty years make great changes, and it would have been horrible to have come down here and found that you had all gone, and that I was friendless in the place where I had been brought up as a boy. I thought that, by my putting it into a local paper, someone who had known me would be sure to see it. Now let me hear about all the people that I knew."

John Simcoe stayed for three days quietly at the cottage. The news of his return spread rapidly, and soon many of the friends that had known him came to welcome him. His aunt had told her own circle of her nephew's wealth and liberality, and through them the news that John Simcoe had returned home a wealthy man was imparted to all their acquaintances. Some of his old friends declared that they should have known him anywhere; others said frankly that now they knew who he was they saw the likeness, but that if they had met him anywhere else they did not think they should have recognized him.

John Simcoe's memory had been greatly refreshed by his aunt's incessant talk about his early days and doings, and as his visitors were more anxious to hear of his adventures abroad than to talk of the days long past, he had no difficulty whatever in satisfying all as to his identity, even had not the question been settled by his liberality to his aunt, from whom no return whatever could possibly be expected. When he left he handed her fifty pounds in gold.

"I may as well give you a year's money at once," he said; "I am a careless man, and might forget to send it quarterly."

"Where can I write to you, John?" she asked.

"I cannot give you an address at present," he said; "I have only been stopping at a hotel until I could find chambers to suit me. Directly I do so I will drop you a line. I shall always be glad to hear of you, and will run down occasionally to see you and have a chat again with some of my old friends."

The return of John Simcoe served Stowmarket as a subject for conversation for some time. He had spent his money generously while there, and had given a dinner at the principal hotel to a score of those with whom he had been most intimate when a boy. Champagne had flowed in unstinted abundance, and it was generally voted that he was a capital fellow, and well deserved the good fortune that had attended him. In the quiet Suffolk town the tales of the adventures that he had gone through created quite a sensation, and when repeated by their fathers set half the boys of the place wild with a desire to imitate his example, and to embark in a life which was at once delightful, and ended in acquiring untold wealth. On leaving he pressed several of them, especially one who had been a fellow-clerk with him at the bank, and was now its manager, to pay him a visit whenever they came to town.

"I expect to be in diggings of my own in a week or two," he said, "and shall make a point of having a spare bed, to put up a friend at any time."

General Mathieson was on the point of going out for a drive with his niece, who was buttoning her glove, when a servant entered the drawing room and said that a gentleman wished to speak to him.

"Who is he? Did he give you his name or say what was his business?"

"No, sir. I have not seen him before. He merely asked me to give you his message."

"I suppose I had better see him, Hilda."

"Well, uncle, I will get out of the way and go downstairs when he has come in. Don't let him keep you, for you know that when I have put you down at your club I have an engagement to take Lina Crossley to do some shopping first, and then for a drive in the park."

"I don't suppose that he will be five minutes, whoever he is."

Hilda slipped away just in time to avoid the visitor. As the manservant opened the door the General looked with some interest at the stranger, for such it seemed to him his visitor was. He was a tall man, well dressed, and yet without the precision that would mark him as being a member of a good club or an habitué of the Row.

"You don't remember me, General?" he said, with a slight smile.

"I cannot say that I do," the General replied. "Your face does not seem unfamiliar to me, though I cannot at the present moment place it."

"It is rather an uncommon name," the visitor said; "but I am not surprised that you do not remember it or me, for it is some twenty years since we met. My name is Simcoe."

"Twenty years!" the General repeated. "Then it must have been in India, for twenty years ago I was in command of the Benares district. Simcoe!" he broke off excitedly. "Of course I knew a gentleman of that name who did me an inestimable service; in fact, he saved my life."

"I don't know that it was as much as that, but at least I saved you from being mauled by a tiger."

"Bless me!" the General exclaimed, taking a step forward, "and you are the man. I recognize you now, and had I not believed that you had been lost at sea within a month after you had saved my life I should have known you at once, though, of course, twenty years have changed you a good deal. My dear sir, I am happy indeed to know that the report was a false one, and to meet you again." And he shook hands with his visitor with the greatest warmth.