Kitabı oku: «King of the Castle», sayfa 5
Volume One – Chapter Nine.
The Beggar
Christopher Lisle sat in his snug, bachelor room at Danmouth, tying a fly with a proper amount of dubbing, hackle, and tinsel, for the deluding of some unfortunate salmon. The breakfast things were still on the table, and there was a cloud over his head, and another cloud in his brain.
The room was bright and pleasant, overlooked the sea, and was just such a place as a bachelor in comfortable circumstances, with a love for outdoor sports, would have called a snuggery. For it was just so tidy as not to be very untidy, with fishing and shooting gear in all directions; pipes in a rack, tobacco jars and cigar boxes on shelves; natural history specimens in trays and cabinets, from pinned beetles up to minerals and fossils; and under a table, in a case, lay Chris Lisle’s largest salmon, carefully cast and painted to fairly resemble life.
The tying of that fly did not progress, and after a good many stoppages it was thrown down impatiently.
“Confound the hook,” cried Chris. “That’s four times I’ve pricked my finger. Everything seems to go wrong. Now, what had I better do? He ought to be well enough to see me now, and so better get it over. I’d no business to go on as I did; but who could help it, bless her, holding her in my arms like that, and loving her as I do? Wrong. Oh, it was honest human nature; and any other fellow would have done the same.
“I suppose I ought to have spoken to the old man first. Though who in the world could think of him at a time like that. But how black he looked; and then there was that confounded good-looking yachtsman there.”
This was a point in the business which required thinking out; and to do this thoroughly Chris Lisle took up a black pipe, filled it, and after lighting it daintily with a good deal of toying with the flame, he threw himself back in his chair, and began to frown and smoke.
“No,” he said aloud, after a long pause. “Nonsense; the old fellow might think something of it, but my darling little Claude – never. And she’s not the girl to flirt and play with any one. No; I know her too well for that – far too well. I frightened her, I was so sudden. A woman is so different to a man, and that wasn’t put on; it was sheer timidity – poor little darling! How I do long to apologise, and ask her to forgive me. I must have seemed terribly awkward and boorish in her eyes, for I pulled up quite sulkily after that facer I got from Mary Dillon. The nasty, spiteful little minx. It was too bad. Fortune-hunter! Why, I’d marry Claudie without a penny, and be glad of the chance. Hang the old man’s money. What do two young people, who love each other dearly, want with money?”
The idea seemed to be absurd, and he sat smoking dreamily for some minutes.
“I’ll serve the spiteful, sharp-tongued little thing out for this,” he said at last. “No, I will not. Rubbish! She didn’t mean it. But I’ll go up and hear how the old man is. He ought to be able to see me this morning, and I’ll speak out plainly this time, and get it over.”
Chris Lisle was not the man to hesitate. He threw aside his pipe, rang for the breakfast things to be cleared away, glanced at the looking-glass to see if he appeared decent, and stuck a straw hat on his crisp, curly hair.
“Not half such a good-looking chap as the yachtsman,” he said, with a half laugh. “Glad of it. Wouldn’t be such a smooth-looking dandy for the world. Why, hang it!” he said with a laugh, as he strode along by the rocky beach in the full tide of his manly vigour, “I could eat a fellow like that. I never thought of it before,” he continued to himself, as he walked on. “Fortune-hunter! I can’t be called a poor man. Two hundred and fifty a year. Why, I never felt short of money in my life. Always seemed to be enough for everything I wanted. Bah! nobody but little midges up there could ever say such a thing as that.”
A peculiar change seemed just then to be taking place in Chris Lisle. The moment before he was swinging easily along, giving a friendly nod here and there to fishermen and loungers, who saluted him with a smile and a “Morn, Mr Chris, sir,” the next he had grown stiff and rigid, as he saw a dingy pulled in to the landing-place some distance ahead, and Glyddyr leap out, the distance fitting so that the young men had to pass each other, which they did with a short nod of recognition.
“Swell!” muttered Chris contemptuous, as he strode on.
“Bumpkin!” thought Glyddyr, as he went in the other direction, and he laughed softly to himself.
A short distance farther along the cliff road Chris came suddenly upon a figure in deep mourning, and he stopped short, with his whole manner changing once more.
“Ah, Mrs Woodham,” he said, in a low voice full of commiseration, “I have not been up to the quarry, but I had not forgotten an old friend. Can I be of any service to you?”
The woman shook her head.
“Don’t do that,” he said kindly. “They will not keep you, but recollect, Sarah, that we are very old friends, and I shall be hurt if you want money and don’t come to me.”
“God bless you, Master Chris,” said the woman hoarsely; “but don’t keep me now.”
She hurried away, and he stood looking after her for a few moments.
“Poor thing!” he said, as he went on. “What trouble to have to bear. Hang it all, I wouldn’t change places with Gartram if I could.”
He went on, thinking deeply about Glyddyr.
“The old man seems to have quite taken to that fellow, and did from the first time he came here with his yacht. Regular sporting chap. Wins heavily on the turf. Bound to say he loses, too. Three hundred thousand pounds, they say, he had when his father died. Well, good luck to him! I hadn’t when mine passed away.”
Chris began to whistle softly as he went on, stopping once to pick a flower from out of a niche where the water trickled down from a crack in the granite, and, farther on, taking out a tiny lens to inspect a fly. Then another botanical specimen took his attention, and was transferred to a pocket-book, and by that time he was up at the castellated gateway and bridge over the well-filled moat of the Fort.
He went up to the entrance, with its nail-studded oaken door, just as he had been hundreds of times before since boyhood, rang, and walked into the hall before the servant had time to answer the bell.
“Anybody at home?” he said carelessly.
“Yes, sir; master’s in the study, and the ladies are in the drawing-room.”
“Mr Gartram well enough to see me, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Doctor Asher was here to breakfast, and master’s going out.”
“All right; I’ll go in.”
There was no announcing. Chris Lisle felt quite at home there, and he crossed the stone-paved hall, gave a sharp tap at the study door, and walked in.
“Morning, sir,” he cried cheerily. “Very glad to hear you are so much better.”
“Thankye,” said Gartram sourly; “but I’m not so much better.”
“Get out,” said Chris.
“What?”
“I mean in the open air.”
“Oh. Well, Mr Lisle, what do you want – money?”
“I? No, sir. Well, yes, I do.”
“Then you had better go to a lawyer. I have done all I could with your father’s estate as your trustee, and if you want to raise money don’t come to me.”
“Well,” said Chris, laughing, “I don’t want to raise money, and I do come to you.”
“What for, sir?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Chris, speaking on the spur of the moment, for an idea had occurred to him. “But suppose we drop the ‘sir’-ing. It doesn’t seem to fit after having known me all these years.”
“Go on. I’m not well. Say what you want briefly. I’m going out.”
“I won’t keep you long, but it may be for your benefit. Look here, guardian, you know what I have a year?”
“Perfectly – two hundred and fifty, if you haven’t been mortgaging.”
“Well, I haven’t been mortgaging. It is not one of my pastimes. But it has occurred to me that I lead a very idle life.”
“Bless my soul!” cried Gartram sarcastically. “When did you discover that?”
“And,” continued Chris, “it seems to me that, as you are growing older – ”
Gartram’s face twitched.
“Your health is not anything like what it should be.”
Gartram ground his teeth, but Chris was so intent upon his new idea that he noticed nothing, and went on in a frank, blundering, earnest way.
“Worse still, you have just lost, by that terrible accident, poor Woodham, who was your right-hand man. It would not be a bad thing for you, and it would be a capital thing for me, if you would take me on to be a sort of foreman or superintendent at the quarries. Of course, I don’t mean to go tamping and blasting, but to see that the men did their work properly, that the stones were taken to the wharf, and generally to see to things when you were not there or wanted a rest.”
“At a salary?”
“Salary? Well, I hadn’t thought of that – But yes: at a salary. A labourer’s worthy of his hire. It would make you more independent, and me too. Of course, I am not clever in your business, but I’ve watched the men from a boy, and I know pretty well how things ought to be done; and of course you could trust me as you could yourself.”
Gartram’s face was a study. His illness had exacerbated his temper, and over and over again, as the young man went on in his frank, blundering, honest fashion, he seemed on the point of breaking out. But Chris realised nothing of this. He only grew more sanguine as his new idea seemed to be brighter and more feasible the more he developed it, feeling the while that he was untying an awkward knot, and that his proposals would benefit all.
There was not a gleam of selfishness in his mind, and if Gartram had said: “I like your proposal, and I’ll give you fourteen shillings a week to begin with,” he would have accepted the paltry sum, and felt pleased.
“You see,” he continued, “it would be the very thing; you want a superintendent who would take all the petty worries off your mind.”
“And by-and-by,” said Gartram, suffocating with wrath, “you would like me to offer you a partnership?”
Chris’s eyes flashed.
“Yes, Mr Gartram, I should like that dearly. I never felt till just now that I was a poor man; my wants have been so simple. Yes, by-and-by, you might offer me a partnership if you found me worthy, and you should, sir; I swear you should.”
“And with it my daughter’s hand?”
“I was coming to that, Mr Gartram,” said Chris flushing, and with a proud, happy look in his eyes, as he sat gazing straight out of the window to sea. “I felt, naturally, a shrinking about speaking of that, but Claude and I were boy and girl together. I always liked her, and that liking has grown into a man’s honest, true love. I should have come to you before to explain about what you saw in the glen, but of course, I felt how out of place anything would be from me at a time when you were in trouble and ill, and so I waited till this morning.”
“Yes,” said Gartram hoarsely; “go on.”
“I know I ought not to have spoken to Claude as I did without first speaking to you, but it slipped out without thought, and I ought to say I am sorry, sir; but, feeling as I do, I can only say that I am glad.”
“One moment,” said Gartram, speaking perfectly calmly, but with a voice that sounded as if it were iced; “let us perfectly understand one another – you propose that I should engage you as my foreman?”
“Yes, Mr Gartram,” said Chris quietly. “I have had the education of a gentleman – well, I may say it – my father was a gentleman. I am a gentleman, but I am not proud. I quite agree with you that a man should lead a useful life. I wish to lead a useful life.”
“Exactly,” continued Gartram; “to be my foreman at a salary, with a view to future partnership and my daughter’s hand?”
“Yes, Mr Gartram; and I will make your interests my study. What do you say?”
“Say?” cried Gartram, in a voice of thunder. “Damn your impudence!”
“What!”
“You miserable, insolent, conceited young hound! You come here with such a proposition, after daring, on the strength of the freedom I gave you of my house – for your father’s sake – to insult my daughter as you did up that glen.”
“Miss Gartram has not said I insulted her?” cried Chris.
“I say insulted her with your silly, impudent talk about your love. Why, confound it, sir, what are you – a fool, an idiot, or a conceited, presumptuous, artful beggar?”
“Mr Gartram! – No, I will not be angry,” said Chris, subduing the indignant rage which was in him. “You have been ill and are irritable. I have badly chosen my time. Don’t speak to me like that, sir. I have always looked up to you as a guardian ever since I was left alone in the world. You don’t mean those words, sir. Say you don’t mean them, for Claude’s sake.”
“Silence, sir! For Claude’s sake, indeed. Confound you! How dare you! You must be mad to raise your eyes to her. You contemptible, artful, fortune-hunting scoundrel!”
“Mr Gartram!” cried Chris, flushing with anger now. “How dare you speak to me like this?”
“Because I am in my own house, sir. Because a miserable, mad-brained jackanapes has dared to make an attack upon me and upon my child. Silence – ”
“Silence, sir, yourself!” raged Chris.
“What? You insolent dog, I’ll have you turned out of the house. I’ll have you horse-whipped. Dare so much as to speak to my child again. Dare so much as to look at her. Dare to come upon my premises again, and damme, sir, I’ll – I’ll shoot you!”
“You don’t mean it. You shall not mean it,” cried Chris hotly.
“Out of my house, sir!”
“Mr Gartram,” cried Chris, as the old man, half mad with rage and excitement consequent upon the reaction from his fit, strode close up to where his visitor stood.
“I say out of my house, sir, before I have you horse-whipped as I would a dog.”
As he spoke, he gave the young man a thrust, half blow, across the chest, just as the door opened, and the servant announced Mr Glyddyr, stood with open mouth, staring for a moment at the scene, and then, as the new visitor entered, ran back, without stopping to close the door, to announce to Claude and Mary that master was going to have another fit.
“Hah!” cried Gartram, as his eyes lit upon Glyddyr; “you, is it? Look here,” he roared, in a voice choked with passion, “this beggarly, insolent upstart – this puppy that I have helped to rear – has had the audacity to propose for my daughter’s hand.”
“What?” cried Glyddyr, taking his tone from Gartram; and, turning upon Chris, he darted a look mingled of incredulity, threatening and contempt.
“Yes; I am weak from illness, or I’d ask no man’s help. You are young and strong. Take him by the collar, and bundle the insolent scoundrel neck and crop out of the place. That’s right: quick!”
Glyddyr advanced straight to where Chris stood, with a blank look of rage and despair upon his countenance, crushed, drooping, half broken-hearted, as he felt how ingenuous he had been to speak as he had to the hard, grasping man of the world before him; but as Glyddyr laid his hand upon his collar, he uttered a low, hoarse sound, like the growl of an angry beast.
“Now, sir, out you go,” cried Glyddyr, with a mocking, sneering look in his countenance, full of triumph. “Out with you before you are kicked out.”
“Take away your hand,” said Chris, in a low, husky whisper.
“What! No insolence. Out with you!”
“Take away your hand.”
“Do you hear me? Now then, out.”
“Curse you, you will have it, then,” cried Chris, shaking himself free; and then, as Glyddyr recovered himself, and tried to seize him again, Chris’s left fist darted out from his shoulder, there was a low, dull sound, and Glyddyr staggered back for a couple of yards, to fall with a heavy crash, just as, with a shriek of horror, Claude, closely followed by Mary, rushed into the room.
“Chris Lisle, what have you done?” cried Claude, while Mary, whom fate had made the busy help of the family, hurried to Glyddyr’s side, and helped him to rise to a sitting position. He did not attempt to get upon his feet.
“Lost my temper, I suppose,” said Chris, who began to calm down as he saw the effect of his blow. “But it was his own doing. I warned him to keep his hands off.”
“Leave my house, ruffian, before I send for the police.”
“You’ll be sorry for all this, Mr Gartram,” said Chris. “Claude – ”
“Silence!” shouted Gartram. “Recollect, my girl, that henceforth this man and we are strangers. Everything between us is at an end. Once more, sir, will you leave my house?”
“Yes, I’ll go,” replied Chris slowly, as his eyes rested on Claude’s. “Don’t think ill of me,” he said to her huskily. “I have done nothing wrong.”
Gartram came between them, and, feeling that time alone could heal the terrible breach, Chris made a gesticulation and walked slowly to the door, where he turned.
“Mr Gartram,” he said, “you’ll bitterly repent this. But don’t think that I shall give up. I’ll go now. One of these days, when you have thought all over, you will ask me to come back, and we shall be friends again. Claude – Mary, all this was not my seeking. Good-bye.”
“Not his seeking!” cried Gartram, sinking into a chair and dabbing his face with his handkerchief. “He wants to kill me: that’s what he’s trying to do. How are you now, Glyddyr? Pray forgive me for bringing this upon you. The scoundrel must be mad.”
“Getting better now, sir,” said Glyddyr; and, as his enemy had gone, beginning with a great show of suffering and effort to suppress it, as his eyes sought sympathy from Claude. He found none, so directed his eyes at Mary, who offered him her hand as he made slowly for the nearest easy chair. “I suppose I was a bit stunned. Not hurt much, I think.”
“I don’t know how to apologise enough,” cried Gartram; “and you two girls, have you nothing to say? An outrageous assault on my guest! But he shall smart for it. I’ll have him summoned.”
“No, no, Mr Gartram, I’m getting all right fast,” said Glyddyr, quickly seizing the opportunity to be magnanimous in Claudes eyes. “Mr Lisle was excited, and he struck me. A blow like that is nothing.”
“Mr Christopher Lisle will find out that a blow such as you’ve received means a great deal more than he thinks, sir. Claude, ring the bell. Have the spirit stand and soda-water brought in. Are you sure you are not seriously hurt, Glyddyr?”
“Quite, sir: a mere nothing. Great pity it happened. Why, ladies, it must have regularly startled you. Miss Gartram, I am very sorry. You look pale.”
“Enough to startle any woman, Glyddyr. But there, it’s all over for the present. You had better leave us now, girls.”
“No, no,” cried Glyddyr, “don’t let me drive them away, sir.”
“It is not driving them away, Mr Glyddyr,” said Gartram shortly. “I wish them to go.”
“I beg pardon, I am sure.”
“Granted, sir; but I like to be master in my own house.”
“Papa, dear, pray, pray be calm,” whispered Claude, who had crept to his side.
“Calm! Of course. I am calm. There, there, there; don’t talk to me, but go, and I said ring for the spirit stand.”
“Yes, papa, I did. I’ll go and send it in.”
“Yes, quickly. You are sure you would not like the doctor fetched, Glyddyr?”
“Oh, certain, sir. There, let it pass now. A mere nothing.”
“Oh, my poor darling Claude,” whispered Mary, taking her cousin’s hand as they went out, and kissing her pale face as the large dark eyes gazed pitifully down in hers.
“Do you understand what it all means, Mary?”
“Only too well, coz: poor Chris has been telling uncle he loved you, and that put our dear tyrant in a passion. Then Mr Glyddyr came, and poor Chris got in a passion too, and knocked him down.”
“Yes,” sighed Claude; “I’m afraid that must be it.”
“Yes, my dear, it’s all cut and dried. You are to be Mrs Glyddyr as soon as they have settled it all.”
“Never,” said Claude, frowning and looking like a softened edition of her father.
“And as that sets poor Chris at liberty,” continued Mary, with one of her mischievous looks, “and you don’t want him, there may be a bit of a chance for poor little me.”
“Mary, dear!” said Claude, in a voice full of remonstrance.
“It’s rather bad taste of you, for though Mr Glyddyr is very handsome, I think Chris is the better man. Mr Glyddyr seems to me quite a coward making all that fuss, so that we might sympathise with him. Better have had poor Chris.”
“Mary, dear, how can you make fun of everything when I am in such terrible trouble?”
“It’s because I can’t help it, Claude, I suppose. But oh, I am sorry for you if uncle makes you marry handsome Mr Glyddyr.”
“Mary!”
“I cannot help it, dear; I must say it. He’s a coward. He was hurt, of course, but not so much as he pretended. Chris Lisle knocked him right down, and he wouldn’t get up for fear he should get knocked down again. Didn’t Chris look like a lion?”
“It is all very, very terrible, Mary, and I want your help and sympathy so badly.”
“I can’t help you, coz; I’m too bad. And all this was my fault.”
“No; not all,” said Claude sadly. “Papa has been thinking about Mr Glyddyr for a long time, and dropping hints to me about him.”
“Yes; and you’ll have to take him.”
“No,” said Claude, with quiet firmness; and her father’s stern, determined look came into her eyes. “No, I will never be Mr Glyddyr’s wife.”
“But uncle will never forgive poor Mr Lisle.”
“Don’t say that, Mary. Never is a terrible word. Papa loves me, and he would like to see me happy.”
“And shall you tell him you love Chris?”
“No,” said Claude sternly.
“If you please, ma’am, Mrs Woodham is here,” said one of the servants; and Claude’s face grew more troubled as she asked herself what her father would say to the step she had taken, in bidding the unhappy woman come and resume her old position in the house.
She had not long to wait.
As she rose to cross the room she caught sight of Glyddyr looking back at the windows on leaving the house, and heard the study bell ring furiously.
“Quick, Mary!” she cried, as she rushed through the door, being under the impression that her father had had another seizure.
The relief was so great as she entered the study and found him standing in the middle of the room, that she threw herself in his arms.
“I thought you were taken ill again,” she gasped, as she clung, to him, trembling.
He was evidently in a fury, but his child’s words were like oil upon the tempestuous waves.
“You – you thought that?” he said, holding her to his breast and patting her cheek tenderly. “You thought that, eh? And they say in Danmouth that everybody hates me. That there isn’t a soul here who wouldn’t like to dance upon my grave.”
“Papa, dear, don’t talk like that.”
“Why not? the ungrateful wretches! I’ve made Danmouth a prosperous place. I spend thousands a year in wages, and the dogs all turn upon me and are ready to rend the hand that feeds them. If they are not satisfied with their wages, they wait till I have some important contract on the way, and then they strike. I haven’t patience with them.”
“Father!” cried Claude firmly, “Doctor Asher said you were not to excite yourself in any way, or you would be ill.”
“And a good thing, too. Better be ill, and die, and get out of the way. Hated – cursed by every living soul.”
Claude clung more tightly to him, laid her head upon his breast, and placed her hand across his lips as if to keep him from speaking.
A smile came across the grim face, but there was no smile in his words as he went on fiercely, after removing the hand and seeming about to kiss it, but keeping it in his hand without.
“Everything seems to go against me,” he cried. “Mr Glyddyr – just going – I was seeing him to the door, when, like a black ghost, up starts that woman Sarah Woodham. What does she want?”
“I’ll tell you, dear, if you will sit down and be calm.”
“How the devil can I be calm,” he raved, “when I am regularly persecuted by folk like this?”
But he let Claude press him back into an easy chair, while, feeling that she was better away, Mary Dillon crept softly out of the room.
“Well, then,” he said, as if his child’s touch was talismanic, and he lay back and closed his eyes, “I’ll be calm. But you don’t know, Claude, you can’t tell how I’m persecuted. I’m robbed right and left.”
“Papa, my dear father, you are as rich as ever you can be, so what does it matter?”
“Who says I’m rich? Nonsense! Absurd! And then look at the worries I have. All the trouble and inquest over that man’s death, and through his sheer crass obstinacy.”
“Why bring that up again, father, dear?”
“Don’t say father. Call me papa. Whenever you begin fathering me, it means that you are going to preach at me and bully me, and have your own way.”
“Then, papa, dear, why bring that up again?”
“I didn’t. It’s brought up and thrust under my very nose. Why is that woman here?”
“Papa – ”
“Now, it’s of no use. Claude: that man regularly committed suicide out of opposition to me. He destroyed a stone worth at least a hundred pounds by using that tearing dynamite, which smashes everything to pieces; and then, forsooth, he charges me in his dying moments with murdering him, and the wretched pack under him take up the cry and bark as he did. Could anything be more unreasonable?”
“No, dear, of course not. But the poor fellow was mad with agony and despair. It was so horrible for him, a hale, strong man, to be cut down in a moment.”
“He cut himself down. It would not have happened if he had done as I ordered.”
“You must forgive all that now. He knew no better; and as for the workmen, you know how easily they are influenced one way or the other.”
“Oh, yes, I know them. And now this woman’s here begging.”
“No, papa, dear.”
“I say she is. I could see it in her servile, shivering way, as soon as she caught my eye; now, look here, Claude, I shan’t give her a shilling.”
Claude held his hand to her cheek in silence.
“I won’t pay for the man’s funeral. I’m obliged to pay the doctor, because I contracted for him to attend the ungrateful hounds; but I will not help her in the least, and I’ll have no more of your wretched tricks. I’m always finding out that you are helping the people and letting them think it is my doing. Now, then, I’ve done, and I want to be at peace, so go and send that woman away, or I shall be ill.”
Claude clung a little more closely to her father, nestling, as it were, in his breast.
“Well,” he said testily, “why don’t you go?”
“My father is the leading man in this neighbourhood,” said Claude, in a soft, soothing tone, “and the people don’t know the goodness of his heart as I do.”
“Now, Claudie, I won’t have it. You are beginning to preach at me, and give me a dose of morals. My heart has grown as hard as granite.”
“No, it has not,” said Claude, kissing his veined hand. “It is as soft and good as ever, only you try to make it hard, and you say things you do not mean.”
“Ah, now!” he shouted, “you are going to talk about that Lisle, and I will not have his cursed name mentioned in the – ”
“I was not going to talk about Christopher Lisle,” said Claude, in the same gentle, murmuring voice, whose tones seemed to soothe and quiet him down; “I was going on to say that I want the people – the weak, ignorant, easily-led people – about here to love and venerate my dear father’s name.”
“And they will not, do what you will. The more you do for them, the less self-helpful they are, and the more they revile and curse. Why, if I was ruined to-morrow, after they’ve eaten my bread for years, I believe they’d light a bonfire and have a dance.”
“No, no; no, no,” murmured Claude. “You have done too much good for them.”
“I haven’t. You did it all, you hussy, and pretended it was I,” he said grimly, as he played with her glossy hair.
“I did it with your money, dear, and I am your child. I acted as I felt you would act if you thoroughly knew the circumstances, but you had no time. What is the use of having so much money if no good is done?”
“For ungrateful people.”
“We are taught to do good for evil, dear.”
“What! for a race of thieves who are always cursing and reviling us? There, I’m busy and tired, Claudie. I’ve listened to your moral lesson very patiently, and now I want to be at rest. But I forbid you to help that wretched woman. She and her husband always hated me. Confound ’em, they were always insulting me. How dare they – actually publicly insult me – in that miserable little chapel.”
“Insulted you? What do you mean?”
“Why, they prayed for my heart to be softened, hang ’em!”
“Oh, father, dear!”
“There you go again. Papa – papa – papa. Don’t forget that we do belong to the aristocracy after all. Now, go and send that dreadful woman away.”
“I cannot, dear.”
“Cannot?”
“No, papa. She has come to stay.”
“Sarah Woodham? To stay? Here?”
“Yes, dear. Poor thing: she is left penniless, almost, for Woodham did not save.”
“No, of course not. They none of them do.”
“He spent all he had to spare,” continued Claude, in the same gentle, murmuring tone, as she pressed her father’s hand to her cheek. “Everything he could scrape together he gave to the poorer chapel people.”
“Yes, I know; in his bigoted way to teach me what to do. And don’t keep on rubbing your cheek against my hand. Any one who saw you would think you were a cat.”
“So, papa dear, as we want a good, trustworthy woman in the house, and Sarah was with us so long, and knew our ways so well, I arranged for her to come back.”
“Claude!”
“Yes, dear; and these years of her married life, and the sad end, will be to her like a mournful dream.”
“I – ”
Norman Gartram made an angry gesture, but Claude’s arms stole round his neck, her lips pressed his as she half lay upon his breast, and with the tears gently falling and hanging like pearls in his grisly beard, she said in a low, sweet voice, —
“And some day, father dear, at the last, as she thinks of what an asylum this has been to her, she will go down to her grave blessing your name for all the good that you have done, and this will make me very happy, dear, and so it will you.”
There was a long silence in the room, and Norman Gartram’s face began to grow less rugged. It was as if there was something of the same look as that in his child’s, when, with a tender kiss upon his brow, she left his arms and half playfully whispered, —
“Am I to go and send Sarah Woodham away?”
“No,” he said hastily, as his old look returned; “you are as bad as your poor, dear mother, every bit. No,” he cried, with an angry flush. “I won’t do that, though. Not a farthing of my money shall go towards paying for that man’s funeral.”
