Chapter 93

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 93
Chapter Title: Destiny
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“No.”

“Then? Then why did you suddenly collapse?”

At his question, Laura recalled the startling truth she had realized just before she fainted. She thought for a moment, then turned her gaze to Mrs. Starr, who stood behind him.

“Ma’am, would you permit me a moment to speak with Mr. Dalton?”

Understanding the implication, Mrs. Starr left the room, glancing back at the two of them with a puzzled expression.

Only the two of them remained in the room.

“Mr. Dalton’s childhood art teacher, was it a Mr. Louis Sheldon?”

“It was.”

“An American? With blond hair and gray eyes?”

“That’s correct. How do you know that, Miss Pendleton? Ah, now that I think of it, you collapsed in front of his gravestone. Did you ever meet him?”

Laura said nothing. His answer provided a solid foundation for the truth she had just uncovered.

Mr. Dalton’s curious expression soon gave way to one of realization. He looked at Laura with eyes full of disbelief.

“He was my father.”

“…”

“My real name is Laura Sheldon. I have lived under my mother Dolores Pendleton’s name, but that was what I was originally called.”

His face froze in shock. His tongue, likely, as well.

In the silence, Laura mulled over the truth she had just learned.

She recalled the year of death inscribed on the headstone. It was two years after he had left her in the care of the Pendletons. It seemed he had been looking for work and found a position here as an art teacher.

Laura felt a profound sense of confusion at this fact. She had always believed her father had returned to America immediately after leaving her. With not a single letter or telegram after their separation, what else could she have thought?

She had been abandoned by her father, but it had been a long time since she’d felt any bitterness over it. It is a difficult thing for a poor, unknown artist to raise a child on his own.

Besides, her father was still young. She recalled his dazzlingly beautiful face and had surmised that he had returned to his home country and started a new family with a new woman. If he had failed to succeed as an artist in England and was in no position to bring his child to live with him, that was the most sensible choice.

And she had respected her father’s choice.

From her parents’ failure, Laura had learned the importance of reason and had long trained herself to control her emotions. As a result, she had become an independent person, far removed from childish, self-centered sentiments. She viewed her parents through the eyes of a third party and understood that their actions had been inevitable.

But now, in the most unexpected of places, she had found her father’s grave. She had stumbled upon evidence that perhaps her father had not abandoned her after all.

It felt as if the heavens and the earth had been turned upside down. The realization did not travel from her head to her heart. Laura could not grasp the reality of any of it.

“How can this be.”

Mr. Dalton’s cracked voice echoed in the quiet room.

“To think that Mr. Sheldon’s daughter is you…”

He looked bewildered. He was sharing the same emotion as Laura, though their contexts were different.

“How is it that you are only now learning that Mr. Sheldon is buried here? Ah, of course, you were young then, I know, perhaps of an age to be at boarding school. But he was always writing letters to his daughter. The return address was always Whitefield.”

“My father wrote letters?”

“He did. In between teaching me and working on his own art, he would make bookmarks to send to you and copy poems onto letter paper. He always sealed those letters with a kiss. A very long kiss, one tinged with longing and sorrow.”

Laura was at a loss for words. Still, she could only process the fact intellectually. She murmured in a voice devoid of emotional highs or lows.

“I never received a single one. I didn’t even know he had passed away.”

“A man as brilliant as he was would not have written the wrong address. It seems the letters must have been intercepted along the way.”

Laura had a suspicion. Her uncle, Gerald Pendleton, the Earl. He was a Justice of the Peace for the Cornwall region—an honorary position held by the head of a reputable local family. Intercepting a few letters from the post office would have been a simple matter for him.

The thought that the Earl of Pendleton might be involved in the missing letters also occurred to Mr. Dalton. The grudge he already held against the Earl flared even more fiercely.

But he did not let it show.

“Had I known that his daughter had been entrusted to the Pendleton family, none of this would have happened. But Mr. Sheldon was thoroughly tight-lipped about which family was raising his daughter. Even my father didn’t know. Thinking back on it now, I suppose he kept silent to avoid creating any more rumors, given the Pendleton family’s reputation.”

“I think so, too.”

Laura nodded.

Her face remained serene, even though a truth that should have brought a torrent of tears had been revealed. Mr. Dalton found this quite unsettling.

“It must be a great shock.”

“A little.”

“And sad, too, I imagine. To learn that the father you thought was alive somewhere had passed away without your knowledge.”

Laura shook her head.

“If I had found out in my teens, I would have been devastated. I might have done nothing but cry for days. But I forgot my father long ago. I loved him dearly as a child, but it has been quite some time since I let him go from my heart.”

“How… how is that possible? Is it really possible to let go of someone you love from your heart?”

His voice held no reproach. It was a question born of pure curiosity.

This was a man who brought hand-picked flowers to his art teacher’s grave every month, twenty years after his death. Laura thought it only natural that he could not understand her.

“My father promised we would meet again when he left, but he never sent a single letter. You say he wrote them, but I never received them. For a long time, I missed him and resented him. But as I matured, I learned to understand others’ perspectives, and I came to believe that it was a wise choice for him to abandon me, return to his home country, and start a new family.”

“Your father was not that kind of man.”

“Even if he were, it wouldn’t have mattered much. It would have been the most rational decision he could make. A far more realistic choice than running away with a nobleman’s daughter. I thought my father had learned a lesson from his failure.”

His puzzled expression gradually darkened. He even looked a little angry.

“If you knew how much he loved you, you would never say such things. He never mentioned your name, but he always spoke of his daughter. He painted day and night, saying he had to bring you to him soon. The reason he passed away at such a young age was because of the tuberculosis he contracted from spending too much time outside painting landscapes in the dead of winter. All so he could sell his paintings, earn money, and bring you to live with him.”

Laura was stunned into silence.

“To think that such a precious daughter is living her life thinking of herself as a byproduct of a failed marriage… Every time you think such a thought, Mr. Sheldon must be shedding tears of blood in heaven!”

Mr. Dalton cried out in an agitated voice, as if he were a spokesman for the deceased Louis Sheldon.

“Mr. Dalton, please, calm yourself.”

“Calm… I cannot. Since when have you thought such things? Why on earth would you think that? He was a noble man. He was blessed with a great talent from God, and yet he was as kind as an angel, without a speck of the eccentricity that a genius artist might have. You were not the daughter of an irresponsible idler, but of a brilliant artist.”

“…”

“Even lying on his deathbed, he could not stop writing letters to you. According to the servant who nursed him, his very last words before he passed were ‘I’m sorry’… ‘I’m sorry’… They were meant for you.”

‘I’m sorry.’ Her father had said that to her. For leaving her, for not being able to bring her back, for dying like this.

Laura’s heart stirred. Had the confusion in her head finally descended to her heart? Or was it the wine? Or perhaps, it was Mr. Dalton’s face, contorted as if he were about to cry, as he passionately described how much her father had missed his daughter.

Laura raised a hand and pressed it against her aching chest. A familiar pain, last felt in a distant time. Longing and love for her father, a sense of betrayal—it all threatened to surge up again. She tried to clamp the lid back down on her emotions. Emotions were dangerous. Emotions led to careless mistakes and created wounds.

It was a long-held belief, one learned from the failure of her mother and father, and the resulting unhappiness of her own life. But the sudden appearance of her father’s gravestone was shaking that belief.

“Mr. Dalton. Please, calm yourself. I also need time to sort through my feelings.”

At Laura’s composed voice, Mr. Dalton’s demeanor softened.

“I apologize. You must be the one who is most confused, and yet I became overly agitated in front of you.”

She shook her head.

“There are some of Mr. Sheldon’s belongings at Whitefield Hall. My father personally packed them away, intending to give them to his family should they ever come looking. It seems they have finally found their owner.”

He looked at Laura, his eyes revealing his complex emotions.

“After he passed away, I prayed every night at my bedside that word would reach his family. And to think that family is you, Miss Pendleton. I wonder if this is a trick of God’s, or… if it was our destiny, predetermined.”