"He is my new partner, my associate in business," said the politicBartley. Then deferentially to Hope, "What do you advise?"
"You have two clerks. I would examine them both."
"Examine me?" cried Monckton. "Mr. Bartley, will you allow such an affront to be put on your old and faithful servant?"
"If you are innocent, why object?" said young Clifford, spitefully, before Bartley could answer.
The remark struck Bartley, and he acted on it.
"Well, it is only fair to Mr. Bolton," said he. "Come, come, Monckton, it is only a form."
Then he gave the detective a signal, and he stepped up to Monckton, and emptied his waistcoat pockets of eighty-five sovereigns.
"There!" cried Walter Clifford, "There! there!"
"My own money, won at the Derby," said Monckton, coolly; "and only a part of it, I am happy to say. You will find the remainder in banknotes."
The detective found several notes.
Bartley examined the book and the notes. The Derby! He was beginning to doubt this clerk, who attended that meeting on the sly. However, he was just, though no longer confiding.
"I am bound to say that not one of the numbered notes is here."
The detective was now examining Monckton's overcoat. He produced a small bunch of keys.
"How did they come there?" cried Monckton, in amazement.
It was an incautious remark. Bartley took it up directly, and pounced on the keys. He tried them on the safe. One opened the safe, another opened the cash-box.
Meantime the detective found some notes in the pocket of the overcoat, and produced them.
"Great heavens!" cried Monckton, "how did they come there?"
"Oh, I dare say you know," said the detective.
Bartley examined them eagerly. They were the numbered notes.
"You scoundrel," he roared, "these show me where your gold and your other notes came from. The whole contents of my safe—in that villain's pockets!"
"No, no," cried Monckton, in agony. "It's all a delusion. Some rogue has planted them there to ruin me."
"Keep that for the beak," said the policeman; "he is sure to believe it. Come, my bloke. I knew who was my bird the moment I clapped eyes on the two. 'Tain't his first job, gents, you take my word. We shall find his photo in some jail or other in time for the assizes."
"Away with him!" cried Bartley, furiously.
As the policeman took him off, the baffled villain's eye fell on Hope, who stood with folded arms, and looked down on him with lowering brow and the deep indignation of the just, and yet with haughty triumph.
That eloquent look was a revelation to Monckton.
"Ah," he cried, "it wasyou."
Hope's only reply was this: "You double felon, false accuser and thief, you are caught in your own trap."
And this he thundered at him with such sudden power that the thief went cringing out, and even those who remained were awed. But Hope never told anybody except Walter Clifford that he had undone Monckton's work in the lobby; and then the poor boy fell upon his neck, and kissed his hand.
To run forward a little: Monckton was tried, and made no defense. He dared not call Hope as his witness, for it was clear Hope must have seen him commit the theft and attempt the other villainy. But the false accusation leaked out as well as the theft. A previous conviction was proved, and the indignant judge gave him fourteen years.
Thus was Bartley's fatal secret in mortal peril on the day it first existed; yet on that very day it was saved from exposure, and buried deep in a jail.
Bartley set Hope over his business, and was never heard of for months. Then he turned up in Sussex with a little girl, who had been saved from diphtheria by tracheotomy, and some unknown quack.
There was a scar to prove it. The tender parent pointed it out triumphantly, and railed at the regular practitioners of medicine.
Walter Clifford returned home pretty well weaned from trade, and anxious to propitiate his father, but well aware that on his way to reconciliation he must pass through jobation.
He slipped into Clifford Hall at night, and commenced his approaches by going to the butler's pantry. Here he was safe, and knew it; a faithful old butler of the antique and provincial breed is apt to be more unreasonably paternal than Pater himself.
To this worthy, then, Walter owed a good bed, a good supper, and good advice: "Better not tackle him till I have had a word with him first."
Next morning this worthy butler, who for seven years had been a very good servant, and for the next seven years rather a bad one, and would now have been a hard master if the Colonel had not been too great a Tartar to stand it, appeared before his superior with an air slightly respectful, slightly aggressive, and very dogged.
"There is a young gentleman would be glad to speak to you, if you will let him."
"Who is he?" asked the Colonel, though by old John's manner he divined.
"Can't ye guess?"
"Don't know why I should. It is your business to announce my visitors."
"Oh, I'll announce him, when I am made safe that he will be welcome."
"What! isn't he sure of a welcome—good, dutiful son like him?"
"Well, sir, he deserves a welcome. Why, he is the returning prodigal."
"We are not told thathedeserved a welcome."
"What signifies?—he got one, and Scripture is the rule of life for men of our age,now we are out of the army."
"I think you had better let him plead his own cause, John; and if he takes the tone you do, he will get turned out of the house pretty quick; as you will some of these days, Mr. Baker."
"We sha'n't go, neither of us," said Mr. Baker, but with a sudden tone of affectionate respect, which disarmed the words of their true meaning. He added, hanging his head for the first time, "Poor young gentleman! afraid to face his own father!"
"What's he afraid of?" asked the Colonel, roughly.
"Of you cursing and swearing at him," said John.
"Cursing and swearing!" cried the Colonel—"a thing I never do now.Cursing and swearing, indeed! You be ——!"
"There you go," said old John. "Come, Colonel, be a father. What has the poor boy done?"
"He has deserted—a thing I have seen a fellow shot for, and he has left me a prey to parental anxieties."
"And so he has me, for that matter. But I forgive him. Anyway, I should like to hear his story before I condemn him. Why, he's only nineteen and four months, come Martinmas. Besides, how do we know?—he may have had some very good reason for going."
"His age makes that probable, doesn't it?"
"I dare say it was after some girl, sir."
"Call that a good reason?"
"I call it a strong one. Haven't you never found it?" (the Colonel was betrayed into winking). "From sixteen to sixty a woman will draw a man where a horse can't."
"Since that isso," said the Colonel, dryly, "you can tell him to come to breakfast."
"Am I to say that from you?"
"No; you can take that much upon yourself. I have known you presume a good deal more than that, John."
"Well, sir," said John, hanging his head for a moment, "old servants are like old friends—they do presume a bit; but then" (raising his head proudly) "they care for their masters, young and old. New servants, sir—why, this lot that we've got now, they would not shed a tear for you if you was to be hanged."
"Why should they?" said the Colonel. "A man is not hanged for building churches. Come, beat a retreat. I've had enough of you. See there's a good breakfast."
"Oh," said John, "I've took care of that."
When the Colonel came down he found his son leaning against the mantel-piece; but he left it directly and stood erect, for the Colonel had drilled him with his own hands.
"Ugh!" said the Colonel, giving a snort peculiar to himself, but he thought, "How handsome the dog is!" and was proud of him secretly, only he would not show it. "Good-morning, sir," said the young man, with civil respect.
"Your most obedient, sir," said the old man, stiffly.
After that neither spoke for some time, and the old butler glided about like a cat, helping both of them, especially the young one, to various delicacies from the side table. When he had stuffed them pretty well, he retired softly and listened at the door. Neither of the gentlemen was in a hurry to break the ice; each waited for the other.
Walter made the first remark—"What delicious tea!"
"As good as where you come from?" inquired Colonel Clifford, insidiously.
"A deal better," said Walter.
"By-the-bye," said the Colonel, "wheredoyou come from?"
Walter mentioned the town.
"You astonish me," said the Colonel. "I made sure you had been enjoying the pleasures of the capital."
"My purse wouldn't have stood that, sir."
"Very few purses can," said Colonel Clifford. Then, in an off-hand way,"Have you brought her along with you?"
"Certainly not," said Walter, off his guard. "Her? Who?"
"Why, the girl that decoyed you from your father's roof."
"No girl decoyed me from here, sir, upon my honor."
"Whom are we talking about, then? Who isher?"
"Her? Why, Lucy Monckton."
"And who is Lucy Monckton?"
"Why, the girl I fell in love with, and she deceived me nicely; but I found her out in time."
"And so you came home to snivel?"
"No, sir, I didn't; I'm not such a muff. I'm too much your son to love any woman long when I have learned to despise her. I came home to apologize, and to place myself under your orders, if you will forgive me, and find something useful for me to do."
"So I will, my boy; there's my hand. Now out with it. What did you go away for, since it wasn't a petticoat?"
"Well, sir, I am afraid I shall offend you."
"Not a bit of it, after I've given you my hand. Come, now, what was it?"
Walter pondered and hesitated, but at last hit upon a way to explain.
"Sir," said he, "until I was six years old they used to give me peaches from Oddington House; but one fine day the supply stopped, and I uttered a small howl to my nurse. Old John heard me, and told me Oddington was sold, house, garden, estate, and all."
Colonel Clifford snorted.
Walter resumed, modestly but firmly:
"I was thirteen; I used to fish in a brook that ran near Drayton Park. One day I was fishing there, when a brown velveteen chap stopped me, and told me I was trespassing. 'Trespassing?' said I. 'I have fished here all my life; I am Walter Clifford, and this belongs to my father.' 'Well,' said the man, 'I've heerd it did belong to Colonel Clifford onst, but now it belongs to Muster Mills; so you must fish in your own water, young gentleman, and leave ourn to us as owns it.' Till I was eighteen I used to shoot snipes in a rushy bottom near Calverley Church. One day a fellow in black velveteen, and gaiters up to his middle, warned me out of that in the name of Muster Cannon."
Colonel Clifford, who had been drumming on the table all this time, looked uneasy, and muttered, with some little air of compunction: "They have plucked my feathers deucedly, that's a fact. Hang that fellow Stevens, persuading me to keep race-horses; it's all his fault. Well, sir, proceed with your observations."
"Well, I inquired who could afford to buy what we were too poor to keep, and I found these wealthy purchasers were all intrade, not one of them a gentleman."
"You might have guessed that," said Colonel Clifford: "it is as much as a gentleman can do to live out of jail nowadays."
"Yes, sir," said Walter. "Cotton had bought one of these estates, tallow another, and lucifer-matches the other."
"Plague take them all three!" roared the Colonel.
"Well, then, sir," said Walter, "I could not help thinking there must be some magic in trade, and I had better go into it. I didn't think you would consent to that. I wasn't game to defy you; so I did a meanish thing, and slipped away into a merchant's office."
"And made your fortune in three months?" inquired the Colonel.
"No, I didn't; and don't think trade is the thing forme. I saw a deal of avarice and meanness, and a thief of a clerk got his master to suspect me of dishonesty; so I snapped my fingers at them all, and here I am. But," said the poor young fellow, "I do wish, father, you would put me into something where I can make a little money, so that whenthisestate comes to be sold, I may be the purchaser."
Colonel Clifford started up in great emotion.
"Sell Clifford Hall, where I was born, and you were born, and everybody was born! Those estates I sold were only outlying properties."
"They were beautiful ones," said Walter. "I never see such peaches now."
"As you did when you were six years old," suggested the Colonel. "No, nor you never will. I've been six myself. Lord knows when it was, though!"
"But, sir, I don't see any such trout, and no such haunts for snipe."
"Do you mean to insult me?" cried the Colonel, rather suddenly. "This is what we are come to now. Here's a brat of six begins taking notes against his own father; and he improves on the Scotch poet—he doesn't print 'em. No, he accumulates them cannily until he is twenty, but never says a word. He loads his gun up to the muzzle, and waits, as the years roll on, with his linstock in his hand, and one fine dayat breakfasthe fires his treble charge of grape-shot at his own father."
This was delivered so loudly that John feared a quarrel, and to interrupt it, put in his head, and said, mighty innocently:
"Did you call, sir? Can I do anything for you, sir?"
"Yes: go to the devil!"
John went, but not down-stairs, as suggested—a mere lateral movement that ended at the keyhole.
"Well, but, sir," said Walter, half-reproachfully, "it was you elicited my views."
"Confound your views, sir, and—your impudence! You're in the right, and I am in the wrong" (this admission with a more ill-used tone than ever). "It's the race-horses. Ring the bell. What sawneys you young fellows are! it used not to take six minutes to ring a bell when I was your age."
Walter, thus stimulated, sprang to the bell-rope, and pulled it all down to the ground with a single gesture.
The Colonel burst out laughing, and that did him good; and Mr. Baker answered the bell like lightning; he quite forgot that the bell must have rung fifty yards from the spot where he was enjoying the dialogue.
"Send me the steward, John; I saw him pass the window."
Meantime the Colonel marched up and down with considerable agitation. Walter, who had a filial heart, felt very uneasy, and said, timidly, "I am truly sorry, father, that I answered your questions so bluntly."
"I'm not, then," said the Colonel. "I hold him to be less than a man who flies from the truth, whether it comes from young lips or old. I have faced cavalry, sir, and I can face the truth."
At this moment the steward entered. "Jackson," said the Colonel, in the very same tone he was speaking in, "put up my race-horses to auction by public advertisement."
"But, sir, Jenny has got to run at Derby, and the brown colt at Nottingham, and the six-year-old gelding at a handicap at Chester, and the chestnut is entered for the Syllinger next year."
"Sell them with their engagements."
"And the trainer, sir?"
"Give him his warning."
"And the jockey?"
"Discharge him on the spot, and take him by the ear out of the premises before he poisons the lot. Keep one of the stable-boys, and let my groom do the rest."
"But who is to take them to the place of auction, sir?"
"Nobody. I'll have the auction here, and sell them where they stand.Submit all your books of account to this young gentleman."
The steward looked a little blue, and Walter remonstrated gently. "To me, father?"
"Why, you can cipher, can't ye?"
"Rather; it is the best thing I do."
"And you have been in trade, haven't ye?"
"Why, yes."
"Then you will detect plenty of swindles, if you find out one in ten. Above all, cut down my expenditure to my income. A gentleman of the nineteenth century, sharpened by trade, can easily do that. Sell Clifford Hall? I'd rather live on the rabbits and the pigeons and the blackbirds, and the carp in the pond, and drive to church in the wheelbarrow."
So for a time Walter administered his father's estate, and it was very instructive. Oh! the petty frauds—the swindles of agency—a term which, to be sure, is derived from the Latin word "agere,"to do—the cobweb of petty commissions—the flat bribes—the smooth hush-money!
Walter soon cut the expenses down to the income, which was ample, and even paid off the one mortgage that encumbered this noble estate at five per cent., only four per cent. of which was really fingered by the mortgagee; the balance went to a go-between, though no go-between was ever wanted, for any solicitor in the country would have found the money in a week at four per cent.
The old gentleman was delighted, and engaged his own son as steward at a liberal salary; and so Walter Clifford found employment and a fair income without going away from home again.
Whilst Mr. Bartley's business was improving under Hope's management, Hope himself was groaning under his entire separation from his daughter. Bartley had promised him this should not be; but among Hope's good qualities was a singular fidelity to his employers, and he was also a man who never broke his word. So when Bartley showed him that the true parentage of Grace Hope—now called Mary Bartley—could never be disguised unless her memory of him was interrupted and puzzled before she grew older, and that she as well as the world must be made to believe Bartley was her father, he assented, and it was two years before he ventured to come near his own daughter.
But he demanded to see her at a distance, himself unseen, and this was arranged. He provided himself with a powerful binocular of the kind that is now used at sea, instead of the unwieldy old telescope, and the little girl was paraded by the nurse, who was in the secret. She played about in the sight of this strange spy. She was plump, she was rosy, she was full of life and spirit. Joy filled the father's heart; but then came a bitter pang to think that he had faded out of her joyous life; by-and-by he could see her no longer, for a mist came from his heart to his eyes; he bowed his head and went back to his business, his prosperity, and his solitude. These experiments were repeated at times. Moreover, Bartley had the tact never to write to him on business without telling him something about his girl, her clever sayings, her pretty ways, her quickness at learning from all her teachers, and so on. When she was eight years old a foreign agent was required in Bartley's business, and Hope agreed to start this agency and keep it going till some more ordinary person could be intrusted to work it.
But he refused to leave England without seeing his daughter with his own eyes and hearing her voice. However, still faithful to his pledge, he prepared a disguise; he actually grew a mustache and beard for this tender motive only, and changed his whole style of dress; he wore a crimson neck-tie and dark green gloves with a plaid suit, which combination he abhorred as a painter, and our respected readers abominate, for surely it was some such perverse combination that made a French dressmaker lift her hands to heaven and say, "Quelle immoralité!" So then Bartley himself took his little girl for a walk, and met Mr. Hope in an appointed spot not far from his own house. Poor Hope saw them coming, and his heart beat high. "Ah!" said Bartley, feigning surprise; "why, it's Mr. Hope. How do you do, Hope? This is my little girl. Mary, my dear, this is an old friend of mine. Give him your hand."
The girl looked in Hope's face, and gave him her hand, and did not recognize him.
"Fine girl for her years, isn't she?" said Bartley. "Healthy and strong, and quick at her lessons; and, what's better still, she is a good girl, a very good girl."
"Papa!" said the child, blushing, and hid her face behind Bartley's elbow, all but one eye, with which she watched the effect of these eulogies upon the strange gentleman.
"She is all a father could wish," said Hope, tenderly.
Instantly the girl started from her position, and stood wrapt in thought; her beautiful eyes wore a strange look of dreamy intelligence, and both men could see she was searching the past for that voice.
Bartley drew back, that the girl might not see him, and held up his finger. Hope gave a slight nod of acquiescence, and spoke no more. Bartley invited him to take an early dinner, and talk business. Before he left he saw his child more than once; indeed, Bartley paraded her accomplishments. She played the piano to Hope; she rode her little Shetland pony for Hope; she danced a minuet with singular grace for so young a girl; she conversed with her governess in French, or something very like it, and she worked a little sewing-machine, all to please the strange gentleman; and whatever she was asked to do she did with a winning smile, and without a particle of false modesty, or the real egotism which is at the bottom of false modesty.
Anybody who knew William Hope intimately might almost recognize his daughter in this versatile little mind with its faculty of learning so many dissimilar things.
Hope left for the Continent with a proud heart, a joyful heart, and a sore heart. She was lovely, she was healthy, she was happy, she was accomplished, but she was his no longer, not even in name; her love was being gained by a stranger, and there was a barrier of iron, as well as the English Channel, between William Hope and his own Mary Bartley.
It would weary the reader were we to detail the small events bearing on the part of the story which took place during the next five years. They might be summed up thus: That William Hope got a peep at his daughter now and then; and, making a series of subtle experiments by varying his voice as much as possible, confused and nullified her memory of that voice to all appearance. In due course, however, father and daughter were brought into natural contact by the last thing that seemed likely to do it, viz., by Bartley's avarice. Bartley's legitimate business at home and abroad could now run alone. So he invited Hope to England to guide him in what he loved better than steady business, viz., speculation. The truth is, Bartley could execute, but had few original ideas. Hope had plenty, and sound ones, though not common ones. Hope directed the purchase of convertible securities on this principle: Select good ones; avoid time bargains, which introduce a distinct element of risk; and buy largely at every panic not founded on a permanent reason or out of proportion. Example: A great district bank broke. The shares of a great district railway went down thirty per cent. Hope bade his employer and pupil observe that this was rank delusion, the dividends of the railway were not lowered one per cent. by the failure of that bank, nor could they be: the shareholders of the bank had shares in the railway, and were compelled to force them on the market; hence the fall in the shares. "But," said Hope, "those depreciated shares are now in the hands of men who can hold them, and will, too, until they return from this ridiculous 85 to their normal value, which is from 105 to 115. Invest every shilling you have got; I shall." Bartley invested £30,000, and cleared twenty per cent. in three months.
Example 2: There was a terrible accident on another railway, and part of the line broken up. Vast repairs needed. Shares fell twenty per cent.
"Out of proportion," said Hope. "The sum for repairs will not deduct from the dividends one-tenth of the annual sum represented by the fall, and, in three months, fear of another such disaster will not keep a single man, woman, child, bullock, pig, or coal truck off that line. Put the pot on."
Bartley put the pot on, and made fifteen per cent.
Hope said to Bartley:
"When an English speculator sends his money abroad at all, he goes wild altogether. He rushes at obscure transactions, and lends to Peru, or Guatemala, or Tierra del Fuego, or some shaky place he knows nothing about. The insular maniac overlooks the continent of Europe, instead of studying it, and seeking what countries there are safe and others risky. Now, why overlook Prussia? It is a country much better governed than England, especially as regards great public enterprises and monopolies. For instance, the directors of a Prussian railway can not swindle the shareholders by false accounts, and passing off loans for dividends. Against the frauds of directors, the English shareholder has only a sham security. He is invited to leave his home, and come two hundred miles to the directors' home, and vote in person. He doesn't do it. Why should he? In Prussia the Government protects the shareholder, and inspects the accounts severely. So much for the superior system of that country. Now, take a map. Here is Hamburg, the great port of the Continent, and Berlin, the great Continental centre; and there is one railway only between the two. What English railway can compare with this? The shares are at 150. But they must go to 300 in time unless the Prussian Government allows another railway, and that is not likely, and, if so, you will have two years to back out. This is the best permanent investment of its class that offers on the face of the globe."
Bartley invested timidly, but held for years, and the shares went up over 300 before he sold.
"Do not let your mind live in an island if your body does," was a favorite saying of William Hope; and we recommend it impartially to Britons and Bornese.
On one of Hope's visits Bartley complained he had nothing to do. "I can sit here and speculate. I want to be in something myself; I think I will take a farm just to occupy me and amuse me."
"It will not amuse you unless you make money by it," suggested Hope.
"And nobody can do that nowadays. Farms don't pay."
"Ploughing and sowing don't pay, but brains and money pay wherever found together."
"What, on a farm?"
"Why not, sir? You have only to go with the times. Observe the condition of produce: grain too cheap for a farmer because continents can export grain with little loss; fruit dear; meat dear, because cattle can not be driven and sailed without risk of life and loss of weight; agricultural labor rising, and in winter unproductive, because to farm means to plough and sow, and reap and mow, and lose money. But meet those conditions. Breed cattle, sheep, and horses, and make the farm their feeding-ground. Give fifty acres to fruit; have a little factory on the land for winter use, and so utilize all your farm hands and the village women, who are cheaper laborers than town brats, and I think you will make a little money in the form of money, besides what you make in gratuitous eggs, poultry, fruit, horses to ride, and cart things for the house—items which seldom figure in a farmer's books as money, but we stricter accountants know they are."
"I'll do it," said Bartley, "if you'll be my neighbor, and work it with me, and watch the share market at home and abroad."
Hope acquiesced joyfully to be near his daughter; and they found a farm in Sussex, with hills for the sheep, short grass for colts, plenty of water, enough arable land and artificial grasses for their purpose, and a grand sunny slope for their fruit trees, fruit bushes, and strawberries, with which last alone they paid the rent.
"Then," said Hope, "farm laborers drink an ocean of beer. Now look at the retail price of beer: eighty per cent. over its cost, and yet deleterious, which tells against your labor. As an employer of labor, the main expense of a farm, you want beer to be slightly nourishing, and very inspiriting, not somniferous."
So they set up a malt-house and a brew-house, and supplied all their own hands with genuine liquor on the truck system at a moderate but remunerative price, and the grains helped to feed their pigs. Hope's principle was this: Sell no produce in its primitive form; if you change its form you make two profits. Do you grow barley? Malt it, and infuse it, and sell the liquor for two small profits, one on the grain, and one on the infusion. Do you grow grass? Turn it into flesh, and sell for two small profits, one on the herb, and one on the animal.
And really, when backed by money, the results seemed to justify his principle.
Hope lived by himself, but not far from his child, and often, when she went abroad, his loving eyes watched her every movement through his binocular, which might be described as an opera-glass ten inches long, with a small field, but telescopic power.
Grace Hope, whom we will now call Mary Bartley, since everybody but her father, who generally avoidedher name, called her so, was a well-grown girl of thirteen, healthy, happy, beautiful, and accomplished. She was the germ of a woman, and could detect who loved her. She saw in Hope an affection she thought extraordinary, but instinct told her it was not like a young man's love, and she accepted it with complacency, and returned it quietly, with now and then a gush, for she could gush, and why not? "Far from us and from our friends be the frigid philosophy"—of a girl who can't gush.
Hope himself was loyal and guarded, and kept his affection within bounds; and a sore struggle it was. He never allowed himself to kiss her, though he was sore tempted one day, when he bought her a cream-colored pony, and she flung her arms round his neck before Mr. Bartley and kissed him eagerly; but he was so bashful that the girl laughed at him, and said, half pertly, "Excuse the liberty, but if you will be such a duck, why, you must take the consequences."
Said Bartley, pompously, "You must not expect middle-aged men to be as demonstrative as very young ladies; but he has as much real affection for you as you have for him."
"Then he has a good deal, papa," said she, sweetly. Both the men were silent, and Mary looked to one and the other, and seemed a little puzzled.
The great analysts that have dealt microscopically with commonplace situations would revel in this one, and give you a curious volume of small incidents like the above, and vivisect the father's heart with patient skill. But we poor dramatists, taught by impatient audiences to move on, and taught by those great professors of verbosity, our female novelists and nine-tenths of our male, that it is just possible for "masterly inactivity,"aliassluggish narrative, creeping through sorry flags and rushes with one lily in ten pages, to become a bore, are driven on to salient facts, and must trust a little to our reader's intelligence to ponder on the singular situation of Mary Bartley and her two fathers.
One morning Mary Bartley and her governess walked to a neighboring town and enjoyed the sacred delight of shopping. They came back by a short-cut, which made it necessary to cross a certain brook, or rivulet, called the Lyn. This was a rapid stream, and in places pretty deep; but in one particular part it was shallow, and crossed by large stepping-stones, two-thirds of which were generally above-water. The village girls, including Mary Bartley, used all to trip over these stones, and think nothing of it, though the brook went past at a fine rate, and gradually widened and deepened as it flowed, till it reached a downright fall; after that, running no longer down a decline, it became rather a languid stream.
Mary and her governess came to this ford and found it swollen by recent rains, and foaming and curling round the stepping-stones, and their tops only were out of the water now.
The governess objected to pass this current.
"Well, but," said Mary, "the other way is a mile round, and papa expects us to be punctual at meals, and I am, oh, so hungry! Dear Miss Everett, I have crossed it a hundred times."
"But the water is so deep."
"It is deeper than usual; but see, it is only up to my knee. I could cross it without the stones. You go round, dear, and I'll explain against you come home."
"Not until I've seen you safe over."
"That you will soon see," said the girl, and, fearing a more authoritative interference, she gathered up her skirts and planted one dainty foot on the first stepping-stone, another on the next, and so on to the fourth; and if she had been a boy she would have cleared them all. But holding her skirts instead of keeping her arms to balance herself, and wearing idiotic shoes, her heels slipped on the fifth stone, which was rather slimy, and she fell into the middle of the current with a little scream.
To her amazement she found that the stream, though shallow, carried her off her feet, and though she recovered them, she could not keep them, but was alternately up and down, and driven along, all the time floundering. Oh, then she screamed with terror, and the poor governess ran screaming too, and making idle clutches from the bank, but powerless to aid.
Then, as the current deepened, the poor girl lost her feet altogether, and was carried on toward the deep water, flinging her arms high and screaming, but powerless. At first she was buoyed up by her clothes, and particularly by a petticoat of some material that did not drink water. But as her other clothes became soaked and heavy, she sank to her chin, and death stared her in the face.
She lost hope, and being no common spirit, she gained resignation; she left screaming, and said to Everett, "Pray for me."
But the next moment hope revived, and fear with it—this is a law of nature—for a man, bare-headed and his hair flying, came galloping on a bare-backed pony, shouting and screaming with terror louder than both the women. He urged the pony furiously to the stream; then the beast planted his feet together, and with the impulse thus given Hope threw himself over the pony's head into the water, and had his arm round his child in a moment. He lashed out with the other hand across the stream. But it was so powerful now as it neared the lasher that they made far more way onward to destruction than they did across the stream; still they did near the bank a little. But the lasher roared nearer and nearer, and the stream pulled them to it with iron force. They were close to it now. Then a willow bough gave them one chance. Hope grasped it, and pulled with iron strength. From the bough he got to a branch, and finally clutched the stem of the tree, just as his feet were lifted up by the rushing water, and both lives hung upon that willow-tree. The girl was on his left arm, and his right arm round the willow.
"Grace," said he, feigning calmness. "Put your arm around my neck, Mary."
"Yes, dear," said she, firmly.
"Now don't hurry yourself—there's no danger; move slowly across me, and hold my right arm very tight."
She did so.
"Now take hold of the bank with your left hand; but don't let go of me."
"Yes, dear," said the little heroine, whose fear was gone now she hadHope to take care of her.
Then Hope clutched the tree with his left hand, pushed Mary on shore with his right, and very soon had her in his arms onterra firma.
But now came a change that confounded Mary Bartley, to whom a man was a very superior being; only not always intelligible.
The brave man fell to shaking like an aspen leaf; the strong man to sobbing and gasping, and kissing the girl wildly. "Oh, my child! my child!"
Then Mary, of course, must gulp and cry a little for sympathy; but her quick-changing spirit soon shook it off, and she patted his cheek and kissed him, and then began to comfort him, if you please. "Good, dear, kind Mr. Hope," said she. "La! don't go on like that. You were so brave in the water, and now the danger is over. I've had a ducking, that is all. Ha! ha! ha!" and the little wretch began to laugh.
Hope looked amazed; neither his heart nor his sex would let him change his mood so swiftly.
"Oh, my child," said he, "how can you laugh? You have been near eternity, and if you had been lost, what should I—O God!"
Mary turned very grave. "Yes," said she, "I have been near eternity. It would not have mattered to you—you are such a good man—but I should have caught it for disobedience. But, dear Mr. Hope, let me tell you that the moment you put your arm round me I felt just as safe in the water as on dry land; so you see I have had longer to get over it than you have; that accounts for my laughing. No, it doesn't; I am a giddy, giggling girl, withno depth of character, and not worthy of all this affection. Why does everybody loveme? They ought to be ashamed of themselves."
Hope told her she was a little angel, and everybody was right to love her; indeed, they deserved to be hanged if they did not.
Mary fixed on the word angel. "If I was an angel," she said, "I shouldn't be hungry, and I am, awfully. Oh, please come home; papa is so punctual. Mr. Hope, are you going to tell papa? Because if youare, just you take me and throw me in again. I'd rather be drowned than scolded." (This with a defiant attitude and flashing eyes.)
"No, no," said Hope. "I will not tell him, to vex him, and get you scolded."
"Then let us run home."
She took his hand, and he ran with her like a playmate, and oh! the father's heart leaped and glowed at this sweet companionship after danger and terror.
When they got near the house Mary Bartley began to walk and think. She had a very thinking countenance at times, and Hope watched her, and wondered what were her thoughts. She was very grave, so probably she was thinking how very near she had been to the other world.
Standing on the door-step, whilst he stood on the gravel, she let him know her thoughts. All her life, and even at this tender age, she had very searching eyes; they were gray now, though they had been blue. She put her hands to her waist, and bent those searching eyes on William Hope.
"Mr. Hope," said she, in a resolute sort of way.
"My dear," said he, eagerly.
And having administered this information as a dry fact that might be worth looking into at leisure, she passed thoughtfully into the house.
Hope paid a visit to his native place in Derbyshire, and his poor relations shared his prosperity, and blessed him, and Mr. Bartley upon his report; for Hope was one of those choice spirits who praise the bridge that carries them safe over the stream of adversity.
He returned to Sussex with all the news, and, amongst the rest, that Colonel Clifford had a farm coming vacant. Walter Clifford had insisted on a higher rent at the conclusion of the term, but the tenant had demurred.
Bartley paid little attention at the time; but by-and-by he said, "Did you not see signs of coal on Colonel Clifford's property?"
"That I did, and on this very farm, and told him so. But he is behind the age. I have no patience with him. Take one of those old iron ramrods that used to load the old musket, and cover that ramrod with prejudices a foot and a half deep, and there you have Colonel Clifford."
"Well, but a tenant would not be bound by his prejudices."
"A tenant! A tenant takes no right to mine, under a farm lease; he would have to propose a special contract, or to ask leave, and Colonel Clifford would never grant it."
There the conversation dropped. But the matter rankled in Bartley's mind.Without saying any more to Hope, he consulted a sharp attorney.
The result was that he took Mary Bartley with him into Derbyshire.
He put up at a little inn, and called at Clifford Hall.
He found Colonel Clifford at home, and was received stiffly, but graciously. He gave Colonel Clifford to understand that he had left business.
"All the better," said Colonel Clifford, sharply.
"And taken to farming."
"Ugh!" said the other, with his favorite snort.
At this moment, who should walk into the room but Walter Clifford.
Bartley started and stared. Walter started and stared.
"Mr. Bolton," said Bartley, scarcely above a whisper.
But Colonel Clifford heard it, and said, brusquely: "Bolton! No. Why, this is Walter Clifford, my son, and my man of business.—Walter, this is Mr. Bartley."
"Proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said the astute Bartley, ignoring the past.
Walter was glad he took this line before Colonel Clifford: not that he forgave Mr. Bartley that old affront the reader knows of.
The judicious Bartley read his face, and, as a first step toward propitiation, introduced him to his daughter. Walter was amazed at her beauty and grace, coming from such a stock. He welcomed her courteously, but shyly. She replied with rare affability, and that entire absence of mock-modesty which was already a feature in her character. To be sure, she was little more than fifteen, though she was full grown, and looked nearer twenty.
Bartley began to feel his way with Colonel Clifford about the farm. He told him he was pretty successful in agriculture, thanks to the assistance of an experienced friend, and then he said, half carelessly, "By-the-bye, they tell me you have one to let. Is that so?"
"Walter," said Colonel Clifford, "have you a farm to let?"
"Not at present, sir; but one will be vacant in a month, unless the present tenant consents to pay thirty per cent. more than he has done."
"Might I see that farm, Mr. Walter?" asked Bartley.
"Certainly," said Walter; "I shall be happy to show you over it." Then he turned to Mary. "I am afraid it would be no compliment to you. Ladies are not interested in farms."
"Oh, butIam, since papa is, and Mr. Hope: and then onourfarm there are so many dear little young things: little calves, little lambs, and little pigs. Little pigs are ducks—verylittle ones, I mean; and there is nearly always a young colt about, that eats out of my hand. Not like a farm? The idea!"
"Then I will show you all over ours, you and your papa," said Walter, warmly. He then asked Mr. Bartley where he was to be found; and when Bartley told him at the "Dun Cow," he looked at Mary and said, "Oh!"
Mary understood in a moment, and laughed and said: "We are very comfortable, I assure you. We have the parlor all to ourselves, and there are samplers hung up, and oh! such funny pictures, and the landlady is beginning to spoil me already."
"Nobody can spoil you, Mary," said Mr. Bartley.
"You ought to know, papa, for you have been trying a good many years."
"Not very many, Miss Bartley," said Colonel Clifford, graciously. Then he gave half a start and said: "Here am I calling her miss when she is my own niece, and, now I think of it, she can't be half as old as she looks. I remember the very day she was born. My dear, you are an impostor."
Bartley changed color at this chance shaft. But Colonel Clifford explained:
"You pass for twenty, and you can't be more than—Let me see."
"I am fifteen and four months," said Mary, "and I do take people in—cruelly."
"Well," said Colonel Clifford, "you see you can't take me in. I know your date. So come and give your old ruffian of an uncle a kiss."
"That I will," cried Mary, and flew at Colonel Clifford, and flung both arms round his neck and kissed him. "Oh, papa," said she, "I have got an uncle now. A hero, too; and me that is so fond of heroes! Only this is my first—out of books."
"Mary, my dear," said Bartley, "you are too impetuous. Please excuse her, Colonel Clifford. Now, my dear, shake hands with your cousin, for we must be going."
Mary complied; but not at all impetuously. She lowered her long lashes, and put out her hand timidly, and said, "Good-by, Cousin Walter."
He held her hand a moment, and that made her color directly. "You will come over the farm. Can you ride? Have you your habit?"
"No, cousin; but never mind that. I can put on a long skirt."
"A skirt! But, after all, it does not matter a straw whatyouwear."
Mary was such a novice that she did not catch the meaning of this on the spot, but half-way to the inn, and in the middle of a conversation, her cheeks were suddenly suffused with blushes. A young man had admired her andsaidso. Very likely that was the way with young men.Nodoubt they were bolder than young women; but somehow it was not so very objectionablein them.
That short interview was a little era in Mary's young life. Walter had fixed his eyes on her with delight, had held her hand some seconds, and admired her to her face. She began to wonder a little, and flutter a little, and to put off childhood.
Next day, punctual to the minute, Walter drove up to the door in an open carriage drawn by two fast steppers. He found Mr. Bartley alone, and why? because, at sight of Walter, Mary, for the first time in her life, had flown upstairs to look at herself in the glass before facing the visitor, and to smooth her hair, and retouch a bow, etc., underrating, as usual, the power of beauty, and overrating nullities. Bartley took this opportunity, and said to young Clifford:
"I owe you an apology, and a most earnest one. Can you ever forgive me?"
Walter changed color. Even this humble allusion to so great an insult was wormwood to him. He bit his lip, and said:
"No man can do more than say he is sorry. I will try to forget it, sir."
"That is as much as I can expect," said Bartley, humbly. "But if you only knew the art, the cunning, the apparent evidence, with which that villain Monckton deluded me—"
"That I can believe."
"And permit me one observation before we drop this unhappy subject forever. If you had done me the honor to come to me as Walter Clifford, why, then, strong and misleading as the evidence was, I should have said, 'Appearances are deceitful, but no Clifford was ever disloyal.'"
This artful speech conquered Walter Clifford. He blushed, and bowed a little haughtily at the compliment to the Cliffords. But his sense of justice was aroused.
"You are right," said he. "I must try and see both sides. If a man sails under false colors, he mustn't howl if he is mistaken for a pirate. Let us dismiss the subject forever. I am Walter Clifford now—at your service."
At that moment Mary Bartley came in, beaming with youth and beauty, and illumined the room. The cousins shook hands, and Walter's eyes glowed with admiration.
After a few words of greeting he handed Mary into the drag. Her father followed, and he was about to drive off, when Mary cried out, "Oh, I forgot my skirt, if I am to ride."
The skirt was brought down, and the horses, that were beginning to fret, dashed off. A smart little groom rode behind, and on reaching the farm they found another with two saddle-horses, one of them, a small, gentle Arab gelding, had a side-saddle. They rode all over the farm, and inspected the buildings, which were in excellent repair, thanks to Walter's supervision. Bartley inquired the number of acres and the rent demanded. Walter told him. Bartley said it seemed to him a fair rent; still, he should like to know why the present tenant declined.
"Perhaps you had better ask him," said Walter. "I should wish you to hear both sides."
"That is like you," said Bartley; "but where does the shoe pinch, in your opinion?"
"Well, he tells me, in sober earnest, that he loses money by it as it is; but when he is drunk he tells his boon companions he has made seven thousand pounds here. He has one or two grass fields that want draining, but I offer him the pipes; he has only got to lay them and cut the drains. My opinion is that he is the slave of habit; he is so used to make an unfair profit out of these acres that he can not break himself of it and be content with a fair one."
"I dare say you have hit it," said Bartley. "Well, I am fond of farming; but I don't live by it, and a moderate profit would content me."
Walter said nothing. The truth is, he did not want to let the farm to Bartley.
Bartley saw this, and drew Mary aside.
"Should not you like to come here, my child?"
"Yes, papa, if you wish it; and you know it's dear Mr. Hope's birth-place."
"Well, then, tell this young fellow so. I will give you an opportunity."
That was easily managed, and then Mary said, timidly, "Cousin Walter, we should all three be so glad if we might have the farm."
"Three?" said he. "Who is the third?"
"Oh, somebody that everybody likes and I love. It is Mr. Hope. Such a duck! I am sure you would like him."
"Hope! Is his name William?"
"Yes, it is. Do you know him?" asked Mary, eagerly.
"I have reason to know him: he did me a good turn once, and I shall never forget it."
"Just like him!" cried Mary. "He is always doing people good turns. He is the best, the truest, the cleverest, the dearest darling dear that ever stepped, and a second father to me; and, cousin, this village is his birth-place, and he didn't say much, but it was he who told us of this farm, and he would be so pleased if I could write and say, 'We are to have the farm—Cousin Walter says so.'"
She turned her lovely eyes, brimming with tenderness, toward her cousinWalter, and he was done for.
"Of course you shall have it," he said, warmly. "Only you will not be angry with me if I insist on the increased rent. You know, cousin, I have a father, too, and I must be just to him."
"To be sure, you must, dear," said Mary, incautiously; and the word penetrated Walter's heart as if a woman of twenty-five had said it all of a sudden and for the first time.
When they got home, Mary told Mr. Bartley he was to have the farm if he would pay the increased rent.
"That is all right," said Bartley. "Then to-morrow we can go home."
"So soon!" said Mary, sorrowfully.
"Yes," said Bartley, firmly; "the rest had better be done in writing. Why, Mary, what is the use of staying on now? We are going to live here in a month or two."
"I forgot that," said Mary, with a little sigh. It seemed so ungracious to get what they wanted, and then turn their backs directly. She hinted as much, very timidly.
But Bartley was inexorable, and they reached home next day.
Mary would have liked to write to Walter, and announce their safe arrival, but nature withheld her. She was a child no longer.
Bartley went to the sharp solicitor, and had a long interview with him. The result was that in about ten days he sent Walter Clifford a letter and the draft of a lease, very favorable to the landlord on the whole, but cannily inserting one unusual clause that looked inoffensive.
It came by post, and Walter read the letter, and told his father whom it was from.
"What does the fellow say?" grunted Colonel Clifford.
"He says: 'We are doing very well here, but Hope says a bailiff can now carry out our system; and he is evidently sweet on his native place, and thinks the proposed rent is fair, and even moderate. As for me, my life used to be so bustling that I require a change now and then; so I will be your tenant. Hope says I am to pay the expense of the lease, so I have requested Arrowsmith & Cox to draw it. I have no experience in leases. They have drawn hundreds. I told them to make it fair. If they have not, send it back with objections.'"
"Oh! oh!" said Colonel Clifford. "He draws the lease, does he? Then look at it with a microscope."
Walter laughed.
"I should not like to encounter him on his own ground. But here he is a fish out of water; he must be. However, I will pass my eye over it. Where the farmer generally over-reaches us, if he draws the lease, is in the clauses that protect him on leaving. He gets part possession for months without paying rent, and he hampers and fleeces the incoming tenant, so that you lose a year's rent or have to buy him out. Now, let me see, that will be at the end of the document—No; it is exceedingly fair, this one."
"Show it to our man of business, and let him study every line. Set an attorney to catch an attorney."
"Of course I shall submit it to our solicitor," said Walter.
This was done, and the experienced practitioner read it very carefully.He pronounced it unusually equitable for a farmer's lease.
"However," said he, "we might suggest that he doesallthe repairs and draining, and that you find the materials; and also that he insures all the farm buildings. But you can hardly stand out for the insurance if he objects. There's no harm trying. Stay! here is one clause that is unusual: the tenant is to have the right to bore for water, or to penetrate the surface of the soil, and take out gravel or chalk or minerals, if any. I don't like that clause. He might quarry, and cut the farm in pieces. Ah, there's a proviso, that any damage to the surface or the agricultural value shall be fully compensated, the amount of such injury to be settled by the landlord's valuer or surveyor. Oh, come, if you can charge your own price, that can't kill you."
In short, the draft was approved, subject to certain corrections. These were accepted. The lease was engrossed in duplicate, and in due course signed and delivered. The old tenant left, abusing the Cliffords, and saying it was unfair to bring in a stranger, forhewould have given all the money.
Bartley took possession.
Walter welcomed Hope very warmly, and often came to see him. He took a great interest in Hope's theories of farming, and often came to the farm for lessons. But that interest was very much increased by the opportunities it gave him of seeing and talking to sweet Mary Bartley. Not that he was forward or indiscreet. She was not yet sixteen, and he tried to remember she was a child.
Unfortunately for that theory she looked a ripe woman, and this very Walter made her more and more womanly. Whenever Walter was near she had new timidity, new blushes, fewer gushes, less impetuosity, more reserve. Sweet innocent! She was set by Nature to catch the man by the surest way, though she had no such design.
Oh, it was a pretty, subtle piece of nature, and each sex played its part. Bold advances of the man, with internal fear to offend, mock retreats of the girl, with internal throbs of complacency, and life invested with a new and growing charm to both. Leaving this pretty little pastime to glide along the flowery path that beautifies young lives to its inevitable climax, we go to a matter more prosaic, yet one that proved a source of strange and stormy events.
Hope had hardly started the farm when Bartley sent him off to Belgium—TOSTUDY COAL MINES.