Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 50

The two mourners walked back sadly from the churchyard. "I shall put a stone over him, Tom. He ought to rest quietly now; for he had little rest enough in this life....

"Now, I want to talk to you about something; when I've taken off my hatband, that is; for it would be hardly lucky to mention such matters with a hatband on."

Tom looked up, wondering.

"Tell me about his wife, meanwhile. What made him marry her? Was she a pretty woman?"

"Pretty enough, I believe, before she married: but I hardly think he married her for her face."

"Of course not!" said the old man with emphasis; "of course not!

Whatever faults he had, he'd be too sensible for that. Don't you marry for a face, Tom! I didn't."

Tom opened his eyes at this last a.s.sertion; but humbly expressed his intention of not falling into that snare.

"Ah? you don't believe me: well, she was a beautiful woman.--I'd like to see her fellow now in the county!--and I won't deny I was proud of her.

But she had ten thousand pounds, Tom. And as for her looks, why, if you'll believe me, after we'd been married three months, I didn't know whether she had any looks or not. What are you smiling at, you young rogue?"

"Report did say that one look of Mrs. Armsworth's, to the last, would do more to manage Mr. Armsworth than the opinions of the whole bench of bishops."

"Report's a liar, and you're a puppy! You don't know yet whether it was a pleasant look, or a cross one, lad. But still--well, she was an angel, and kept old Mark straighter than he's ever been since: not that he's so very bad, now. Though I sometimes think Mary's better even than her mother. That girl's a good girl, Tom."

"Report agrees with you in that, at least."

"Fool if it didn't. And as for looks--I can speak to you as to my own son--Why, handsome is that handsome does."

"And that handsome has; for you must honestly put that into the account."

"You think so? So do I! Well, then, Tom,"--and here Mark was seized with a tendency to St. Vitus's dance, and began overhauling every b.u.t.ton on his coat, twitching up his black gloves, till (as undertakers' gloves are generally meant to do) they burst in half-a-dozen places; taking off his hat, wiping his head fiercely, and putting the hat on again behind before; till at last he s.n.a.t.c.hed his arm from Tom's, and gripping him by the shoulder, recommenced--

"You think so, eh? Well, I must say it, so I'd better have it out now, hatband or none! What do you think of the man who married my daughter, face and all?"

"I should think," quoth Tom, wondering who the happy man could be, "that he would be so lucky in possessing such a heart, that he would be a fool to care about the face."

"Then be as good as your word, and take her yourself. I've watched you this last week, and you'll make her a good husband. There, I have spoken; let me hear no more about it."

And Mark half pushed Tom from him, and puffed on by his side, highly excited.

If Mark had knocked the young Doctor down, he would have been far less astonished and far less puzzled too. "Well," thought he, "I fancied nothing could throw my steady old engine off the rails; but I am off them now, with a vengeance." What to say he knew not; at last--

"It is just like your generosity, sir; you have been a brother to my father; and now--"

"And now I'll be a father to you! Old Mark does nothing by halves."

"But, sir, however lucky I should be in possessing Miss Armsworth's heart, what reason have I to suppose that I do so? I never spoke a word to her. I needn't say that she never did to me--which--"

"Of course she didn't, and of course you didn't. Should like to have seen you making love to my daughter, indeed! No, sir; it's my will and pleasure. I've settled it, and done it shall be! I shall go home and tell Mary, and she'll obey me--I should like to see her do anything else! Hoity, toity, fathers must be masters, sir! even in these fly-away new times, when young ones choose their own husbands, and their own politics, and their own hounds, and their own religion too, and be hanged to them!"

What did this unaccustomed bit of bl.u.s.ter mean? for unaccustomed it was; and Tom knew well that Mary Armsworth had her own way, and managed her father as completely as he managed Whitbury.

"Humph! It is impossible; and yet it must be. This explains his being so anxious that Lord Minchampstead should approve of me. I have found favour in the poor dear thing's eyes, I suppose: and the good old fellow knows it, and won't betray her, and so shams tyrant. Just like him!"

But--that Mary Armsworth should care for him! Vain fellow that he was to fancy it! And yet, when he began to put things together, little silences, little looks, little nothings, which all together might make something. He would not slander her to himself by supposing that her attentions to his father were paid for his sake: but he could not forget that it was she, always, who read his letters aloud to the old man: or that she had taken home and copied out the story of his s.h.i.+pwreck.

Beside, it was the only method of explaining Mark's conduct, save on the supposition that he had suddenly been "changed by the fairies" in his old age, instead of in the cradle, as usual.

It was a terrible temptation; and to no man more than to Thomas Thurnall. He was no boy, to hanker after mere animal beauty; he had no delicate visions or lofty aspirations; and he knew (no man better) the plain English of fifty thousand pounds, and Mark Armsworth's daughter--a good house, a good consulting practice (for he would take his M.D. of course), a good station in the county, a good clarence with a good pair of horses, good plate, a good dinner with good company thereat; and, over and above all, his father to live with him; and with Mary, whom he loved as a daughter, in luxury and peace to his life's end.--Why, it was all that he had ever dreamed of, three times more than he ever hoped to gain!--Not to mention (for how oddly little dreams of selfish pleasure slip in at such moments!)--that he would buy such a Ross's microscope!

and keep such a horse for a sly by-day with the Whitford Priors! Oh, to see once again a fox break from Coldharbour gorse!

And then rose up before his imagination those drooping steadfast eyes; and Grace Harvey, the suspected, the despised, seemed to look through and through his inmost soul, as through a home which belonged of right to her, and where no other woman must dwell, or could dwell; for she was there; and he knew it; and knew that, even if he never married till his dying day, he should sell his soul by marrying any one but her. "And why should I not sell my soul?" asked he, almost fiercely. "I sell my talents, my time, my strength; I'd sell my life to-morrow, and go to be shot for a s.h.i.+lling a day, if it would make the old man comfortable for life; and why not my soul too? Don't that belong to me as much as any other part of me? Why am I to be condemned to sacrifice my prospects in life to a girl of whose honesty I am not even sure? What is this intolerable fascination? Witch! I almost believe in mesmerism now!-- Again, I say, why should I not sell my soul, as I'd sell my coat, if the bargain's but a good one?"

And if he did, who would ever know?--Not even Grace herself. The secret was his, and no one else's.

Or if they did know, what matter? Dozens of men sell their souls every year, and thrive thereon; tradesmen, lawyers, squires, popular preachers, great n.o.blemen, kings and princes. He would be in good company, at all events: and while so many live in gla.s.s houses, who dare throw stones?

But then, curiously enough, there came over him a vague dread of possible evil, such as he had never felt before. He had been trying for years to raise himself above the power of fortune; and he had succeeded ill enough: but he had never lost heart. Robbed, s.h.i.+pwrecked, lost in deserts, cheated at cards, shot in revolutions, begging his bread, he had always been the same unconquerable light-hearted Tom, whose motto was, "Fall light, and don't whimper: better luck next round." But now, what if he played his last court-card, and Fortune, out of her close-hidden hand, laid down a trump thereon with quiet sneering smile?

And she would! He knew, somehow, that he should not thrive. His children would die of the measles, his horses break their knees, his plate be stolen, his house catch fire, and Mark Armsworth die insolvent. What a fool he was, to fancy such nonsense! Here he had been slaving all his life to keep his father: and now he could keep him; why, he would be justified, right, a good son, in doing the thing. How hard, how unjust of those upper Powers in which he believed so vaguely, to forbid his doing it!

And how did he know that they forbid him? That is too deep a question to be a.n.a.lysed here: but this thing is noteworthy, that there came next over Tom's mind a stranger feeling still--a fancy that if he did this thing, and sold his soul, he could not answer for himself thenceforth on the score of merest respectability; could not answer for himself not to drink, gamble, squander his money, neglect his father, prove unfaithful to his wife; that the innate capacity for blackguardism, which was as strong in him as in any man, might, and probably would, run utterly riot thenceforth. He felt as if he should cast away his last anchor, and drift helplessly down into utter shame and ruin. It may have been very fanciful: but so he felt; and felt it so strongly too, that in less time than I have taken to write this he had turned to Mark Armsworth:--

"Sir, you are what I have always found you. Do you wish me to be what you have always found me?"

"I'd be sorry to see you anything else, boy."

"Then, sir, I can't do this. In honour, I can't."

"Are you married already?" thundered Mark.

"Not quite as bad as that;" and in spite of his agitation Tom laughed, but hysterically, at the notion. "But fool I am; for I am in love with another woman. I am, sir," went he on hurriedly. "Boy that I am! and she don't even know it: but if you be the man I take you for, you may be angry with me, but you'll understand me. Anything but be a rogue to you and to Mary, and to my own self too. Fool I'll be, but rogue I won't!"

Mark strode on in silence, frightfully red in the face for full five minutes. Then he turned sharply on Tom, and catching him by the shoulder, thrust him from him.

"There,--go! and don't let me see or hear of you; that is, till I tell you! Go along, I say! Hum-hum!" (in a tone half of wrath, and half of triumph), "his father's child! If you will ruin yourself, I can't help it."

"Nor I, sir," said Tom, in a really piteous tone, bemoaning the day he ever saw Aberalva, as he watched Mark stride into his own gate. "If I had but had common luck! If I had but brought my 1500 safe home here, and never seen Grace, and married this girl out of hand! Common luck is all I ask, and I never get it!"

And Tom went home sulkier than a bear: but he did not let his father find out his trouble. It was his last evening with the old man.

To-morrow he must go to London, and then--to scramble and twist about the world again till he died! "Well, why not? A man must die somehow: but it's hard on the poor old father," said Tom.

As Tom was packing his scanty carpet-bag next morning, there was a knock at the door. He looked out, and saw Armsworth's clerk. What could that mean? Had the old man determined to avenge the slight, and to do so on his father, by claiming some old debt? There might be many between him and the doctor. And Tom's heart beat fast, as Jane put a letter into his hand.

"No answer, sir, the clerk says."

Tom opened it, and turned over the contents more than once ere he could believe his own eyes.

It was neither more nor less than a cheque on Mark's London banker for just five hundred pounds.

A half-sheet was wrapped round it, on which were written these words:--

"To Thomas Thurnall, Esq., for behaving like a gentleman. The cheque will be duly honoured at Messrs. Smith, Brown, and Jones, Lombard Street. No acknowledgment is to be sent. Don't tell your father. MARK ARMSWORTH."

"Queer old world it is!" said Tom, when the first burst of childish delight was over. "And jolly old flirt, Dame Fortune, after all! If I had written this in a book now, who'd have believed it?"