The Bertrams Part 91

"Tell me honestly, then, if you can be honest in the matter, who is to have his money?"

"I can be very honest, for I know nothing. My belief is that neither you nor I will have a s.h.i.+lling of it."

"Well, then; I'll tell you what. Of course you know that Lady Harcourt is down there?"

"Yes; I know that she is at Hadley."

"I'll not submit to be treated in this way. I have been a deuced sight too quiet, because I have not chosen to disturb him in his illness. Now I will have an answer from him. I will know what he means to do; and if I do not know by to-morrow night, I will go down, and will, at any rate, bring my wife away with me. I wish you to tell him that I want to know what his intentions are. I have a right to demand as much."

"Be that as it may, you have no right to demand anything through me."

"I have ruined myself--or nearly so, for that woman."

"I wonder, Harcourt, that you do not see that I am not the man you should select to speak to on such a subject."

"You are the man, because you are her cousin. I went to enormous expense to give her a splendid home, knowing, of course, that his wealth would ent.i.tle her to it. I bought a house for her, and furnished it as though she were a d.u.c.h.ess--"

"Good heavens, Harcourt! Is this anything to me? Did I bid you buy the house? If you had not given her a chair to sit on, should I have complained? I tell you fairly, I will have nothing to do with it."

"Then it will be the worse for her--that's all."

"May G.o.d help her! She must bear her lot, as must I mine, and you yours."

"And you refuse to take my message to your uncle?"

"Certainly. Whether I shall see him or not I do not yet know. If I do, I certainly shall not speak to him about money unless he begins.

Nor shall I speak about you, unless he shall seem to wish it. If he asks about you, I will tell him that you have been with me."

After some further discussion, Harcourt left him. George Bertram found it difficult to understand what motive could have brought him there. But drowning men catch at straws. Sir Henry was painfully alive to the consideration, that if anything was to be done about the rich man's money, if any useful step could be taken, it must be done at once; the step must be taken now. In another week, perhaps in another day, Mr. Bertram would be beyond the power of will-making.

No bargain could then be driven in which it should be stipulated that after his death his grandchild should be left unmolested--for a consideration. The bargain, if made at all, must be made now--now at once.

It will be thought that Sir Henry would have played his game better by remaining quiet; that his chance of being remembered in that will would be greater if he did not now make himself disagreeable.

Probably so. But men running hither and thither in distress do not well calculate their chances. They are too nervous, too excited to play their game with judgment. Sir Henry Harcourt had now great trouble on his shoulders: he was in debt, was pressed for money on every side, had brought his professional bark into great disasters--nearly to utter s.h.i.+pwreck--and was known to have been abandoned by his wife. The world was not smiling on him. His great hope, his once strong hope, was now buried in those Hadley coffers; and it was not surprising that he did not take the safest way in his endeavours to reach those treasures which he so coveted.

On the following morning, George received Miss Baker's letter, and very shortly afterwards he started for Hadley. Of course he could not but remember that Lady Harcourt was staying there; that she would naturally be attending upon her grandfather, and that it was all but impossible that he should not see her. How were they to meet now?

When last they had been together, he had held her in his arms, had kissed her forehead, had heard the a.s.surance of her undying love. How were they to meet now?

George was informed by the servant who came to the door that his uncle was very ill. "Weaker to-day," the girl said, "than ever he had been." "Where was Miss Baker?" George asked. The girl said that Miss Baker was in the dining-room. He did not dare to ask any further question. "And her ladys.h.i.+p is with her grandfather," the girl added; upon hearing which George walked with quicker steps to the parlour door.

Miss Baker met him as though there had been no breach in their former intimacy. With her, for the moment, Lady Harcourt and her troubles were forgotten, and she thought only of the dying man upstairs.

"I am so glad you have come!" she said. "He does not say much about it. You remember he never did talk about such things. But I know that he will be delighted to see you. Sometimes he has said that he thought you had been in Egypt quite long enough."

"Is he so very ill, then?"

"Indeed he is; very ill. You'll be shocked when you see him: you'll find him so much altered. He knows that it cannot last long, and he is quite reconciled."

"Will you send up to let him know that I am here?"

"Yes, now--immediately. Caroline is with him;" and then Miss Baker left the room.

Caroline is with him! It was so singular to hear her mentioned as one of the same family with himself; to have to meet her as one sharing the same interests with him, bound by the same bonds, anxious to relieve the same suffering. She had said that they ought to be as far as the poles asunder; and yet fortune, unkind fortune, would bring them together! As he was thinking of this, the door opened gently, and she was in the room with him.

She, too, was greatly altered. Not that her beauty had faded, or that the lines of her face were changed; but her gait and manners were more composed; her dress was so much more simple, that, though not less lovely, she certainly looked older than when he had last seen her. She was thinner too, and, in the light-gray silk which she wore, seemed to be taller, and to be paler too.

She walked up to him, and putting out her hand, said some word or two which he did not hear; and he uttered something which was quite as much lost on her, and so their greeting was over. Thus pa.s.sed their first interview, of which he had thought so much in looking forward to it for the last few hours, that his mind had been estranged from his uncle.

"Does he know I am here?"

"Yes. You are to go up to him. You know the room?"

"The same he always had?"

"Oh, yes; the same." And then, creeping on tiptoe, as men do in such houses, to the infinite annoyance of the invalids whom they wish to spare, he went upstairs, and stood by his uncle's bed.

Miss Baker was on the other side, and the sick man's face was turned towards her. "You had better come round here, George," said she. "It would trouble Mr. Bertram to move."

"She means that I can't stir," said the old man, whose voice was still sharp, though no longer loud. "I can't turn round that way.

Come here." And so George walked round the bed.

He literally would not have known his uncle, so completely changed was the face. It was not only that it was haggard, thin, unshorn, and gray with coming death; but the very position of the features had altered. His cheeks had fallen away; his nose was contracted; his mouth, which he could hardly close, was on one side. Miss Baker told George afterwards that the left side was altogether motionless.

George certainly would not have known his uncle--not at the first glance. But yet there was a spark left in those eyes, of the old fire; such a spark as had never gleamed upon him from any other human head. That look of sharpness, which nothing could quench, was still there. It was not the love of lucre which was to be read in those eyes, so much as the possessor's power of acquiring it. It was as though they said, "Look well to all you have; put lock and bar to your stores; set dragons to watch your choice gardens; fix what man-traps you will for your own protection. In spite of everything, I will have it all! When I go forth to rob, no one can stay me!" So had he looked upon men through all his long life, and so now did he look upon his nephew and his niece as they stood by to comfort him in his extremity.

"I am sorry to see you in this state," said George, putting his hand on to that of his uncle's, which was resting on the bed.

"Thank'ee, George, thank'ee. When men get to be as old as I am, they have nothing for it but to die. So you've been to Egypt, have you?

What do you think about Egypt?"

"It is not a country I should like to live in, sir."

"Nor I to die in, from all that I hear of it. Well, you're just in time to be in at the last gasp--that's all, my boy."

"I hope it has not come to that yet, sir."

"Ah, but it has. How long a time did that man give me, Mary--he that got the twenty pounds? They gave a fellow twenty pounds to come and tell me that I was dying! as if I didn't know that without him."

"We thought it right to get the best advice we could, George," said poor Miss Baker.

"Nonsense!" said the old man, almost in his olden voice. "You'll find by-and-by that twenty pounds are not so easy to come by. George, as you are here, I might as well tell you about my money."

George begged him not to trouble himself about such a matter at present; but this was by no means the way in which to propitiate his uncle.

"And if I don't talk of it now, when am I to do it? Go away, Mary--and look here--come up again in about twenty minutes. What I have got to say won't take me long." And so Miss Baker left the room.

"George," said his uncle, "I wonder whether you really care about money? sometimes I have almost thought that you don't."

"I don't think I do very much, sir."

"Then you must be a great fool."