The Story of Antony Grace Part 74

"Dared not?"

"I felt that it would be so cowardly and mean to tell tales of Mr Lister, and I hoped that you might find out yourself that he was not so good a man as you thought."

She drew a long, deep breath.

"But you might have caused me the deepest misery, Antony," she said.

"But what could I do?" I cried pa.s.sionately. "I wanted to tell you, and then I felt that I could not; and I talked to Mr Hallett about it, and he said, too, that I could not speak."

"You must tell me now, Antony," she said, as she turned away her face.

"Tell me all."

I drew a breath full of relief, and proceeded to tell her all, referring to Linny's first adventure and Revitts' injuries, and going on to all I knew of Linny's elopement, to the end.

"But, Antony," she exclaimed, as I finished, and she now turned her face towards mine, "can this be true? Is it certain that it was Mr Lister?"

"Yes," I said; "certain. His letters to poor Linny show all that; and she talks about him in her delirium, poor girl!"

"I cannot believe it of him," she said; "and yet--How long is it since your friend was hurt?"

I told her the very night, from my pocket-book.

"His hands were injured from a struggle, he told me, with some drunken man," she said half to herself. Then aloud, "Antony, did you see either of these letters?"

"Yes; Mr Hallett asked me to look at them, to see if I knew the handwriting as well as he; and, besides, in one of her intervals of reason, poor Linny clung to her brother, and begged him never to let Mr Lister see her again."

"Did she say why?" asked Miss Carr hoa.r.s.ely.

"Yes; she said he had such power over her that she was afraid of him."

A half-hysterical sob seemed to rise to Miss Carr's lips, but her face was very stern and unchanged.

Then, rising quickly, as if a sudden thought occurred to her, she crossed the room to a little j.a.panese cabinet, and took out a short, thick cord, as it seemed to me; but, as she placed it in my hands, I saw that it was a short hair watch-guard, finished with gilded swivel and cross.

She placed it in my hands without a word, looking at me intently the while, as if questioning me with her eyes.

"That is Linny Hallett's chain," I said. "She made that guard herself, of her own hair. How did it come here?"

"Mr Lister dropped it, I suppose," she said, with a look of scorn flas.h.i.+ng from her eyes. "It was found by one of my servants in the hall after he was gone, and brought to me. I had forgotten it, Antony, until now."

There was again a deep silence in the room, but at last she broke it with an eager question.

"Tell me about this Linny Hallett," she said. "You have often told me that she is pretty. Is she good?"

"Oh yes, I am sure she is," I said; "but she is weak and wilful, and she must have loved Mr Lister very much to turn as she has from so true a brother as Mr Hallett."

"And--Mr Hallett--is he a good brother to her?"

"Good brother!" I exclaimed, my admiration for my friend carrying me away; "he is all that is n.o.ble and patient and good. Poor Hallett! he is more like a father to Linny than a brother, and then his patience with his poor mother! Oh, Miss Carr, I wish you knew him, too!"

She darted an inquiring look at me and then turned away her head, speaking no more, but listening intently as I told her of poor Hallett's patience under misfortune, relating the story again of his n.o.ble sacrifice of self to keep those who were dear to him; of the anxiety Linny caused him, and of his tenderness of the unreasonable invalid he made his care.

Then, being thus set a-going, I talked, too, of the model, and our labours, and again of my ambition to get to be an engineer in order to help him, little thinking how I had turned myself into a special pleader to the advancement of my poor friend's cause.

At last, half-ashamed of my earnestness, I looked inquiringly in my companion's face, to find that she was listening intently, and she looked up at me as I ceased.

"And this Mr--Mr Hallett," she said softly, "is still a workman in Messrs. Ruddle and Lister's employ?"

"Oh _no_! Miss Carr," I exclaimed; "he told me he could never enter the place again, and that he dared not trust himself to meet Mr Lister face to face. He has not been there since, and he never will go there now."

Miss Carr seemed to breathe more freely as I said these words, and then there was another interval of silence.

"Is Mr Hallett poor?" she asked then.

"Oh yes, very poor," I said. "He has been obliged to stop his work over his invention sometimes, because the money has to go to buy wine and little choice things for poor Mrs Hallett. She is always repining and talking of the days when she had her conservatory and carriage, and, worst of all, she blames poor Hallett so for his want of ambition. Yes, Miss Carr," I said, repeating myself to willing ears, "and he is one of the truest and best of men. He was not always a workman, you know."

"Indeed!" she said; and I saw that she bent her head lower as she listened.

"No," I said enthusiastically, as I, in my heart, set up Stephen Hallett as the model I meant to imitate. "His father was a surgeon in Warwicks.h.i.+re, and Mr Hallett was at college--at Oxford, where he was working to take honours."

Miss Carr's lips parted as she still sat with her head bent.

"He told me all about it one evening. He was sent for home one day to find his father dying; and, a week later, poor Mr Hallett found himself with all his father's affairs upon his hands, and that he had died heavily in debt."

Miss Carr's head was slowly raised, and I felt proud then to see how I had interested her.

"Then," I continued, "he had to try what he could do. He could not go back to college; for it took everything, even the furniture, to pay off his father's debts, and then, one day, Miss Carr, he had to sit down and think how he was to keep his widowed mother, and his sister, and himself."

Miss Carr was now sitting with her head resting upon her hand, her elbow upon her knee, listening intently to all I said.

"Mr Hallett and his father had some type and a little press in one of the rooms, with which they used to print poems and little pamphlets, and Mr Hallett had learnt enough about printing to make him, when he had taken his mother and sister up to London, try and get employment in an office. And he did; and he says he used to be horribly afraid of being found out and treated as an impostor; but by working with all his might he used to manage to keep up with the slow, lazy ones, and then, by degrees, he pa.s.sed them; and now--oh, you should see him!--he can set up type much faster than the quickest man who ever came into the office."

"And does he keep his mother and sister now?" she said dreamily.

"Oh yes," I said; "Mrs Hallett has been an invalid ever since Mr Stephen Hallett's father died."

Miss Carr had sunk back in the corner of the couch, closing her eyelids, and I thought I saw a couple of tears stealing down her cheeks; but directly after she covered her face with her hands, remaining silent like that for quite half-an-hour--a silence that I respected to the end.

At last she rose quietly, and held out her hand.

"Antony," she said softly, "I am not well to-night. Forgive me if I have disappointed you. Another time we must make up for this."

"Oh, Miss Carr," I said, "you have been so grieved."

"Yes, greatly grieved, Antony, in many ways--not least that I spoke to you so harshly as I did."

"But you are not angry with me?" I said. "You forgive me for not speaking out."

"Forgive you?" she said softly--"forgive you, my boy?--yes. But go now; I do not feel myself. Good-night, Antony, my dear boy; go."