A Perilous Secret Part 2

Bartley took the hint, and asked Monckton to retire into the inner office.

As soon as he and Colonel Clifford were alone, that warrior, still standing straight as a dart, delivered himself of certain short sentences, each of which seemed to be propelled, or indeed jerked out of him, by some foreign power seated in his breast.

"My sister, your injured wife, is no more."

"Dead! This is very sudden. I am very, very sorry. I--"

Colonel Clifford looked the word "Humbug," and continued to expel short sentences.

"On her death-bed she made me promise to give you my hand. There it is."

His hand was propelled out, caught flying by Bartley, released, and drawn back again, all by machinery it seemed.

"She leaves you 20,000 in trust for the benefit of her child and yours--Mary Bartley."

"Poor, dear Eliza."

The Colonel looked as less high-bred people do when they say "Gammon,"

but proceeded civilly though brusquely.

"In dealing with the funds you have a large discretion. Should the girl die before you, or unmarried, the money lapses to your nephew, my son, Walter Clifford. He is a scapegrace, and has run away from me; but I must protect his just interests. So as a mere matter of form I will ask you whether Mary Bartley is alive."

Bartley bowed his head.

Colonel Clifford had not heard she was ill, so he continued: "In that case"--and then, interrupting himself for a moment, turned away to Bartley's private table, and there emptied his pockets of certain doc.u.ments, one of which he wanted to select.

His back was not turned more than half a minute, yet a most expressive pantomime took place in that short interval.

The nurse opened a door of communication, and stood with a rush at the threshold: indeed, she would have rushed in but for the stranger. She was very pale, and threw up her hands to Bartley. Her face and her gesture were more expressive than words.

Then Bartley, clinging by mere desperate instinct to money he could not hope to keep, flew to her, drove her out by a frenzied movement of both hands, though he did not touch her, and spread-eagled himself before the door, with his face and dilating eyes turned toward Colonel Clifford.

The Colonel turned and stepped toward him with the doc.u.ment he had selected at the table. Bartley went to meet him.

The Colonel gave it to him, and said it was a copy of the will.

Bartley took it, and Colonel Clifford expelled his last sentences.

"We have shaken hands. Let us forget our past quarrels, and respect the wishes of the dead."

With that he turned sharply on both heels, and faced the door of the little office before he moved; then marched out in about seven steps, as he had marched in, and never looked behind him for two hundred miles.

The moment he was out of sight, Bartley, with his wife's will in his hand and ice at his heart, went to his child's room. The nurse met him, crying, and said, "A change"--mild but fatal words that from a nurse's lips end hope.

He came to the bedside just in time to see the breath hovering on his child's lips, and then move them as the summer air stirs a leaf.

Soon all was still, and the rich man's child was clay.

The unhappy father burst into a pa.s.sion of grief, short but violent. Then he ordered the nurse to watch there, and let no one enter the room; then he staggered back to his office, and flung himself down at his table and buried his head. To do him justice, he was all parental grief at first, for his child was his idol.

The arms were stretched out across the table; the head rested on it; the man was utterly crushed.

Whilst he was so, the little office door opened softly, and a pale, worn, haggard face looked in. It was the father of the poor man's child in mortal danger from privation and hereditary consumption. That haggard face was come to ask the favor of employment, and bread for his girl, from the rich man whose child was clay.

CHAPTER III.

THE TWO FATHERS.

Hope looked wistfully at that crushed figure, and hesitated; it seemed neither kind nor politic to intrude business upon grief.

But if the child was Bartley's idol, money was his G.o.d, and soon in his strange mind defeated avarice began to vie with n.o.bler sorrow. His child dead! his poor little flower withered, and her death robbed him of 20,000, and indeed of ten times that sum, for he had now bought experience in trade and speculation, and had learned to make money out of money, a heap out of a handful. Stung by this vulgar torment in its turn, he started suddenly up, and dashed his wife's will down upon the floor in a fury, and paced the room excitedly. Hope still stood aghast, and hesitated to risk his application.

But presently Bartley caught sight of him, and stared at him, but said nothing.

Then the poor fellow saw it was no use waiting for a better opportunity, so he came forward and carried out Bolton's instructions; he put on a tolerably jaunty air, and said, cheerfully, "I beg your pardon, sir; can I claim your attention for a moment?"

"What do you want?" asked Bartley, but like a man whose mind was elsewhere.

"Only employment for my talent, sir. I hear you have a vacancy for a manager."

"Nothing of the sort. _I_ am manager."

Hope drew back despondent, and his haggard countenance fell at such prompt repulse. But he summoned courage, and, once more acting genial confidence, returned to the attack.

"But you don't know, sir, in how many ways I can be useful to you. A grand and complicated business like yours needs various acquirements in those who have the honor to serve you. For instance, I saw a small engine at work in your yard; now I am a mechanic, and I can double the power of that engine by merely introducing an extra band and a couple of cogs."

"It will do as it is," said Bartley, languidly, "and I can do without a manager."

Bartley's manner was not irritated but absorbed. He seemed in all his replies to Hope to be brus.h.i.+ng away a fly mechanically and languidly. The poor fly felt sick at heart, and crept away disconsolate. But at the very door he turned, and for his child's sake made another attempt.

"Have you an opening for a clerk? I can write business letters in French, German, and Dutch; and keep books by double entry."

"No vacancy for a clerk," was the weary reply.

"Well, then, a foreman in the yard. I have studied the economy of industry, and will undertake to get you the greatest amount of labor out of the smallest number of men."

"I have a foreman already," said Bartley, turning his back on him peevishly, for the first time, and pacing the room, absorbed in his own disappointment.

Hope was in despair, and put on his hat to go. But he turned at the window and said: "You have vans and carts. I understand horses thoroughly. I am a veterinary surgeon, and I can drive four-in-hand. I offer myself as carman, or even hostler."

"I do not want a hostler, and I have a carman."

Bartley, when he had said this, sat down like a man who had finally disposed of the application.

Hope went to the very door, and leaned against it. His jaw dropped. He looked ten years older. Then, with a piteous attempt at cheerfulness, he came nearer, and said: "A messenger, then. I'm young and very active, and never waste my employer's time."