Contraband Part 32

Picard hesitated. There was something embarra.s.sing in the other's att.i.tude. It combined civility, defiance, vigilance, all the ingredients, indeed, of an armed neutrality. At last he got out the words, "Your daughter, Sir Henry--Miss Hallaton."

"Stop a moment," interrupted the baronet, still in those guarded, courteous tones; "how _can_ my daughter be concerned in our present business?"

"Simply," answered the other, fairly driven into a corner, "that I had meant--that I had intended--in short, that I had hoped you might be induced to entertain--I mean, to listen favourably. Hang it! Sir Henry, I am devotedly attached to your daughter--there!"

Sir Henry drew himself up. "You do Miss Hallaton a great honour," said he, very stiffly, "and one I beg to decline most distinctly on her behalf. This is a subject which admits of no further discussion between you and me."

"Are you in earnest?" exclaimed Picard fiercely. "Do you know what you are doing? Have you counted the cost of making me your enemy? Sir Henry, you must surely have lost your head or your temper?"

"Neither, I a.s.sure you," answered the other, with provoking calmness; adding, while he laid his hand on the bell-pull--"May I offer you a gla.s.s of sherry, and--and--_bitters_, before you go?"

For the life of him, he could not resist a sarcastic emphasis, while he named that wholesome tonic, nor could he help smiling, as Picard, losing all self-control, flung out of the room, with no more courteous leave-taking than a consignment of the proffered refreshment to a temperature where it would have proved acceptable in the highest degree.

But no sooner had the street-door closed on his visitor, than Sir Henry shook himself, as it were, out of a life's lethargy, and seemed to become a new man. It was his nature to rise against a difficulty; and, although he had never before had such a souse in the cold waters of adversity, he felt braced and strengthened by the plunge. He sat down at once to his writing-table, and immersed himself in calculations as to liabilities, and means of meeting them. Ruin stared him in the face. He was convinced he had nothing to hope from Picard's forbearance, with whom he was inextricably mixed up in money matters. He saw clearly that the latter would use every legal engine in his power to further his revenge; yet Sir Henry's courage failed him not a jot, and he only cursed the scoundrel's impudence in thinking himself good enough for Helen, vowing the while he would be a match for them all, and fight through yet.

Then he wrote many letters to solicitors, money-lenders, and private friends; amongst others, one to Helen, and one to Mrs. Lascelles. It is with this last alone we have to do.

That lady is sitting, somewhat disconsolate and lonely, in the pretty boudoir at No. 40. The bullfinch is moulting, and sulky in the extreme; the pug has been dismissed for the only misdemeanour of which he is ever guilty--indigestion, followed by sickness; the post has just brought Sir Henry Hallaton's letter; Mrs. Lascelles is dissolved in tears; and Goldthred, who has not been near her for a fortnight, is suddenly announced.

All the morning, all the drive hither in a Hansom cab, all the way up-stairs, he has been revolving how he can best carry out Kate Cremorne's precept--"Il faut se faire valoir;" but at the top step the loyalty of a true, disinterested love a.s.serts itself, and he would fain fall p.r.o.ne at the feet of his mistress, bidding her trample him in the dust if she had a mind.

Seeing her in tears, he turned hot and cold, dropped his hat, knocked down a spidery table in trying to recover it, and finally shook hands with the woman he loved stiffly and pompously, as if she had been his bitterest enemy.

The grasp of her hand too seemed less cordial, her manner less kindly than usual. Goldthred, who had yet to learn that the fortress never mans its walls with so much menace as on the eve of surrender, felt chilled, dispirited, even hurt; but, because of her distress, staunch and unwavering to the backbone.

"You find me very unhappy," said she, drying her eyes (gently, so as not to make them unbecomingly red). "Why have you never been to see me?"

This, turning on him abruptly, and with a degree of displeasure that ought to have raised his highest hopes.

"I've been away," he stammered, "in the North on business. I--I didn't know you wanted me."

"Oh, it's not _that_!" she answered pettishly. "Of course, one can't expect people to put off business, or pleasure, or anything else for the sake of their friends. What's the _use_ of friends? What's the use of caring for anything or anybody? I wish I didn't. I shouldn't be so upset now!"

In his entire partic.i.p.ation of her sorrow, he quite lost his own embarra.s.sment.

"Can I do anything?" he exclaimed. "There's the _will_, you know, even if there isn't the power."

"Nothing, that I can see," she answered drearily. "Here's a letter from Sir Henry Hallaton. They're completely ruined, he tells me; a regular smas.h.!.+ What is to become of them? I'm so wretched, particularly about Helen."

She put her handkerchief to her face once more, but watched her listener narrowly, nevertheless. It did not escape her that his countenance changed and fell, as if he had been stung.

He recovered himself bravely, though.

"That is distressing enough," said he, "and sounds a bad business, no doubt. Still, it is only a question of money, I suppose. It might have been worse."

"Worse!" she repeated, with impatience. "I don't see how. From what he says, it seems they won't have a roof to cover them--hardly bread to eat! And what can I do for him? I can't pay off his mortgages, and buy him back Blackgrove, as if it was a baby-house. It _does_ seem so hard!

It makes me hate everything and everybody!"

Goldthred's only reply to this rational sentiment was to rise from his chair, b.u.t.ton his coat, and place himself in a determined att.i.tude on the hearth-rug.

"You seem very miserable," said he; and the man's voice was so changed that she started as if a stranger had come into the room. "I think I can understand why--no, don't explain anything, Mrs. Lascelles, but listen to me--you are unhappy. To the best of my power I will help you.

Somebody that you--well--that you like very much is in difficulties. If I can extricate him, I will. You needn't hate everything or everybody any longer," he added, with rather a sad smile; "and you may believe that, though people do not put off their business nor their pleasure for them, they can sometimes sacrifice their interests to their friends."

How n.o.ble he seemed standing there--so kind, so good, so utterly unselfish and true! How she loved him! She had long guessed it. She knew it too surely now. Yet she could not forbear taking the last arrow from her quiver, and sending it home to his honest, unsuspecting heart.

"It is very kind of you, Mr. Goldthred," said she, "to speak as you do, particularly as you always mean what you say; but, though I often fancied you liked her, I had no idea your attachment to Miss Hallaton was so strong as all that!"

He turned very pale, and stooped over the moulting bullfinch, without speaking; then raised his head, looking--as she had never seen him look before--resolved, even stern, thoughtful, saddened, yet not the least unkind; and the voice, that had trembled awhile ago, was firm and decided now.

"If you are joking, Mrs. Lascelles," said he, "the jest is unworthy of _you_, and unfair on _me_. If you really think what you say, it is time you were undeceived. Miss Hallaton is no more to me than a young lady in whom you take an interest. For her father I am prepared to make any sacrifice, because I think you--Mrs. Lascelles, will you forgive what I am going to say?"

"I don't know," she answered, smiling very brightly, considering that the tears still glittered in her eyes. "I might be more deeply offended than you suppose. What if you were going to say you think I am in love with Sir Henry Hallaton?"

"I think you _are_ in love with Sir Henry Hallaton," he repeated very gravely. "I think your happiness has long been dependent on his society.

I think you would marry him to-morrow if he asked you. I think he would ask you to-day if his position admitted of it. I do not live a great deal in the world, Mrs. Lascelles, and I dare say I am rather dull in a general way; but the stupidest people can see things that affect their interests or their happiness; and I have often watched every word and look of yours, when you thought perhaps I had no more perception, no more feeling, than that marble chimney-piece. Sometimes with a sore heart enough; but that is all over now! Ought I to have told you long ago, or ought I to have held my tongue for ever? I don't know; but I need not tell you now, that from the day Mr. Groves introduced me to you, at the Thames Regatta--I dare say you've forgotten all about it--I have admired you, and--and--cared for you more than anything in the world. You're too bright and too beautiful and too good for me, I know; but that don't prevent my wanting to see you happy, and happy you _shall_ be, Mrs. Lascelles, if everything I can do has the power to make you so!"

His voice may have failed him somewhat during this simple little declaration, but seemed steady enough when he finished; and it could not, therefore, have been from sympathy with his emotion that the tears were again rising fast to his listener's blue eyes.

"I remember it perfectly," she sobbed. "You were talking to a fat woman in a hideous yellow gown. Why do you say I don't?"

"Remember what?" he asked innocently, not being quite conversant with a manoeuvre much practised by ladies in difficulties, and similar to that resource which is termed in the prize-ring "sparring for wind."

"Why, the first time I met you," she answered. "You're not the only person who has a memory and feelings and all that. I know you must think me a brute, and so I am; but still, I'm not quite a woman of stone!"

"I have told you what I think of you," said he very quietly. "Now tell me what I can do for you, and _him_."

"Do you mean," she asked, peeping slyly out of her little useless handkerchief, "that you would actually give me up to somebody else, and part with your _money_, which is always a criterion of sincerity, for such an object? Mr. Goldthred, is _that_ what you call love?"

"I only want you to be happy," said he. "I don't understand much about love and flirtation; and these things people make such a talk about. I want to see you happy. No, not that; for I should avoid seeing you, at least just at first; but I should like to _know_ you were happy, and that it was my doing."

He turned, and leaned his elbows on the chimney-piece, not to look in the gla.s.s; for his face was buried in his hands, so that she had some difficulty in attracting his attention. It was not a romantic action; but she gave a gentle pull at his coat-tails.

"You _can_ make me happy," she whispered, with a deep and very becoming blush. "I don't think it will be at all inconvenient or unpleasant to you, only--only--you know I can't exactly suggest it first."

He turned as if he was shot. With white face and parted lips, never man looked more astonished, while he gasped out,

"And you wouldn't marry Sir Henry Hallaton?"

She shook her head with a very bewitching smile.

"And you _would_ marry me?" he continued, hardly daring to believe it was not all a dream.

"You've never asked me," was the reply; but he was on the sofa at her side by this time, whispering his answer so closely in her ear, that I doubt if either heard it, while both knew pretty well what it meant; and though their subsequent conversation was carried on in a strange mixture of broken sentences, irrational expressions, and idiotic dumb show, it took less than ten minutes to arrive at a definite conclusion, entailing on Goldthred the necessity of immediate correspondence with his nearest relatives, and a visit to Doctors' Commons at no far distant date.

But, happy as he felt, breathing elixir, treading upon air, while walking home to dress for dinner, he found time for the purchase of such a beautiful fan as can hardly be got for money, and sent it forthwith to Kate Cremorne, with the following line written in pencil on his card--_Il faut se faire valoir_.