For Woman's Love Part 68

"Father, father--" and

"With a sigh of a great deliverance,"

she fell asleep.

They stood in silence over the dead for a few moments, and then Mr.

Rockharrt drew the white coverlet up over the ashen face, and then leaning on the arm of his servant went out of the room.

Three days later the mortal remains of Rose Rockharrt were laid in the cemetery at North End.

It was on the first of November, a week after the funeral, that Mr.

Rockharrt, for the first time in three months, went to the works.

On that day, while Cora sat alone in the parlor, a card was brought to her--

"The Duke of c.u.mbervale."

The Duke of c.u.mbervale entered the parlor.

Cora rose to receive him; the blood rus.h.i.+ng to her head and suffusing her face with blushes, merely from the vivid memory of the painful past called up by the sudden sight of the man who had been the unconscious cause of all her unhappiness. Most likely the old lover mistook the meaning of the lady's agitation in his presence, and ascribed it to a self-flattering origin.

However that might have been, he advanced with easy grace, and bowing slightly, said:

"My dear Mrs. Rothsay, I am very happy to see you again! I hope I find you quite well?"

"Quite well, thank you," she replied, recovering her self-control.

In the ensuing conversation, Cora made known her grandfather's accident and the death of Rose.

"I am truly grieved to have intruded at so inopportune a time," a.s.serted the visitor, and arose to take leave.

Then Cora's conscience smote her for her inhospitable rudeness. Here was a man who had crossed the sea at her grandfather's invitation, who had reached the country in ignorance of the family trouble; who had come directly from the seaport to North End, and ridden from North End to Rockhold--a distance of six or seven miles; and she had scarcely given him a civil reception. And now should she let him go all the way back to North End without even offering him some refreshment?

Such a course, under such circ.u.mstances, even toward an utter stranger, would have been unprecedented in her neighborhood, which had always been noted for its hospitality.

Yet still she was afraid to offer him any polite attention, lest she should in so doing give him encouragement to urge his suit, that she dreaded to hear, and was determined to reject.

It was not until the visitor had taken his hat in his left hand, and held out the right to bid her good morning, that she forced herself to do her hostess' duty, and say:

"This is a very dull house, duke, but if you can endure its dullness, I beg you will stay to lunch with me."

A smile suddenly lighted up the visitor's cold blue eyes.

"'Dull,' madam? No house can be dull--even though darkened by a recent bereavement--which is blessed by your presence. I thank you. I shall stay with much pleasure."

And now I have done it! thought Cora, with vexation.

At length the clock struck two, the luncheon bell rang, and Cora arose with a smile of invitation. The duke gave her his arm, they went into the dining room. The gray-haired butler was in waiting. They took their places at the table. Old John had just set a plate of lobster salad before the guest when the sound of carriage wheels was heard approaching the house. In a few minutes more there came heavy steps along the hall, the door opened, and old Aaron Rockharrt entered the room. Cora and her visitor both arose.

"Ah, duke! how do you do? I got your telegram on reaching North End; went to the hotel to meet you, and found that you had started for Rockhold. Had your dispatch arrived an hour earlier I should have gone in my carriage to meet you," said the Iron King with pompous politeness.

Now it seemed in order for the visitor to offer some condolence to this bereaved husband. But how could he, where the widower himself so decidedly ignored the subject of his own sorrow? To have said one word about his recent loss would have been, in the world's opinion and vocabulary, "bad form."

"You are very kind, Mr. Rockharrt; and I thank you. I came on quite comfortably in the hotel hack, which waits to take me back," was all that he said.

"No, sir! that hack does not wait to take you back. I have sent it away.

Moreover, I settled your bill at the hotel, gave up your rooms, saw your valet, and ordered your luggage to be brought here. It will arrive in an hour," said the Iron King, as he threw himself into the great leathern chair that the old butler pushed to the table for his master's accommodation.

The duke looked at the old man in a state of stupefaction. How on earth should he deal with this purse-proud egotist, who took the liberty of paying his hotel bill, giving up his apartments and ordering his servants? and doing all this without the faintest idea that he was committing an unpardonable impertinence.

"You are to know, duke, that from the time you entered upon my domain at North End, you became my guest--mine, sir! John, that Johannisberg. Fill the duke's gla.s.s. My own importation, sir; twelve years in my cellar.

You will scarcely find its equal anywhere. Your health, sir."

The duke bowed and sipped his wine.

His future bearing to this old barbarian required mature reflection.

Only for the duke's infatuation with Cora, it would have not have needed a minute's thought to make up his mind to flee from Rockhold forthwith.

When luncheon was over Mr. Rockharrt invited the duke into his study to smoke. Before they had finished their first cigar the Iron King, withdrawing his "lotus," and sending a curling cloud of vapor into the air, said:

"You have something on your mind that you wish to get off it, sir. Out with it! Nothing like frankness and promptness."

"You are right, Mr. Rockharrt. I do wish to speak to you on a point on which my life's happiness hangs. Your beautiful granddaughter--"

"Yes, yes! Of course I knew it concerned her."

"Then I hope you do not disapprove my suit."

"I don't now, or I never should have invited you to come over to this country and speak for yourself. The circ.u.mstances are different. When I refused my granddaughter's hand to you in London, it was because I had already promised it to another man--a fine fellow, worthy to become one of my family, if ever a man was--and I never break a promise. So I refused your offer, and brought the young woman home, and married her to Rothsay, who disappeared in a strange and mysterious manner, as you may have heard, and was never heard of again until the ma.s.sacre of Terrepeur by the Comanche Indians--among whom, it seems, he was a missionary--when the news came that he had been murdered by the savages and his body burned in the fire of his own hut. But the horror is two years old now, and I am at liberty to bestow the hand of my widowed granddaughter on whomsoever I please. You'll do as well as another man, and Heaven knows that I shall be glad to have any honest white man take her off my hands, for she is giving me a deal of trouble."

"Trouble, sir? I thought your lovely granddaughter was the comfort and staff of your age, and, therefore, almost feared to ask her hand in marriage. But what is the nature of the trouble, if I may ask?"

"Didn't I tell you? Well, she has got a missionary maggot in her head.

It's feeding on all the little brains she ever had. She wants to go out as a teacher and preacher to the red heathen, and spend her life and her fortune among them. She wants to do as Rule did, and, I suppose, die as Rule died. Oh, of course--

"Twas so for me young Edwin did, And so for him will I!'

"And all that rot. I cannot break her will without breaking her neck. If you can do anything with her, take her, in the Lord's name. And joy go with her."

The young suitor felt very uncomfortable. He was not at all used to such an old ruffian as this. He did not know how to talk with him--what to reply to his rude consent to the proposal of marriage. At length his compa.s.sion, no less than his love for Cora, inspired him to say:

"Thank you, Mr. Rockharrt. I will take the lady, if she will do me the honor to trust her happiness to my keeping."

"More fool you! But that is your look-out," grunted the old man.

The next morning when they met at breakfast Mr. Rockharrt invited his guest to accompany him to North End to inspect the iron mines and foundries, the locomotive works and all the rest of it.

The duke had no choice but to accept the invitation.