The Bertrams Part 92

"I have often thought I am, lately."

"A very great fool. People preach against it, and talk against it, and write against it, and tell lies against it; but don't you see that everybody is fighting for it? The parsons all abuse it; but did you ever know one who wouldn't go to law for his t.i.thes? Did you ever hear of a bishop who didn't take his dues?"

"I am quite fond enough of it, sir, to take all that I can earn."

"That does not seem to be much, George. You haven't played your cards well--have you, my boy?"

"No, uncle; not very well. I might have done better."

"No man is respected without money--no man. A poor man is always thrust to the wall--always. Now you will be a poor man, I fear, all your life."

"Then I must put up with the wall, sir."

"But why were you so harsh with me when I wanted you to marry her? Do you see now what you have done? Look at her, and what she might have been. Look at yourself, and what you might have been. Had you done that, you might have been my heir in everything."

"Well, sir, I have made my bed, and I must lie upon it. I have cause enough for regret--though, to tell the truth, it is not about your money."

"Ah, I knew you would be stiff to the last," said Mr. Bertram, angry that he could not move his nephew to express some sorrow about the half-million.

"Am I stiff, sir? Indeed, I do not mean it."

"No, it's your nature. But we will not quarrel at the last; will we, George?"

"I hope not, sir. I am not aware that we have ever quarrelled. You once asked me to do a thing which, had I done it, would have made me a happy man--"

"And a rich man also."

"And I fairly tell you now, that I would I had done as you would have had me. That is not being stiff, sir."

"It is too late now, George."

"Oh, yes, it is too late now; indeed it is."

"Not but that I could put a codicil."

"Ah, sir, you can put no codicil that can do me a service. No codicil can make her a free woman. There are sorrows, sir, which no codicil can cure."

"Psha!" said his uncle, trying in his anger to turn himself on his bed, but failing utterly. "Psha! Then you may live a pauper."

George remained standing at the bedside; but he knew not what to do, or what answer to make to this ebullition of anger.

"I have nothing further to say," continued his uncle.

"But we shall part in friends.h.i.+p, shall we not?" said George. "I have so much to thank you for, that I cannot bear that you should be angry with me now."

"You are an a.s.s--a fool!"

"You should look on that as my misfortune, sir." And then he paused a moment. "I will leave you now, shall I?"

"Yes, and send Mary up."

"But I may come down again to-morrow?"

"What! haven't they a bed for you in the house?"

Bertram hummed and hawed, and said he did not know. But the conference ended in his promising to stay there. So he went up to town, and returned again bringing down his carpet bag, and preparing to remain till all should be over.

That was a strange household which was now collected together in the house at Hadley. The old man was lying upstairs, daily expecting his death; and he was attended, as it was seemly that he should be, by his nearest relatives. His brother's presence he would not have admitted; but his grandchild was there, and his nephew, and her whom he had always regarded as his niece. Nothing could be more fitting than this. But not the less did Caroline and George feel that it was not fitting that they should be together.

And yet the absolute awkwardness of the meeting was soon over. They soon found themselves able to sit in the same room, conversing on the one subject of interest which the circ.u.mstances of the moment gave, without any allusion to past times. They spoke only of the dying man, and asked each other questions only about him. Though they were frequently alone together while Miss Baker was with Mr. Bertram, they never repeated the maddening folly of that last scene in Eaton Square.

"She has got over it now," said Bertram to himself; and he thought that he rejoiced that it was so. But yet it made his heart sad.

It has pa.s.sed away like a dream, thought Lady Harcourt; and now he will be happy again. And she, too, strove to comfort herself in thinking so; but the comfort was very cold.

And now George was constantly with his uncle. For the first two days nothing further was said about money. Mr. Bertram seemed to be content that matters should rest as they were then settled, and his nephew certainly had no intention of recurring to the subject on his own behalf. The old man, however, had become much kinder in his manner to him--kinder to him than to any one else in the house; and exacted from him various little promises of things to be done--of last wishes to be fulfilled.

"Perhaps it is better as it is, George," he said, as Bertram was sitting by his bedside late one night.

"I am sure it is, sir," said George, not at all, however, knowing what was the state of things which his uncle described as being better.

"All men can't be made alike," continued the uncle.

"No, uncle; there must be rich men, and there must be poor men."

"And you prefer the latter."

Now George had never said this; and the a.s.sertion coming from his uncle at such a moment, when he could not contradict it, was rather hard on him. He had tried to prove to Mr. Bertram, not so much then, as in their former intercourse, that he would in no way subject his feelings to the money-bags of any man; that he would make no sacrifice of his aspirations for the sake of wealth; that he would not, in fact, sell himself for gold. But he had never said, or intended to say, that money was indifferent to him. Much as his uncle understood, he had failed to understand his nephew's mind. But George could not explain it to him now;--so he merely smiled, and let the a.s.sertion pa.s.s.

"Well; be it so," said Mr. Bertram. "But you will see, at any rate, that I have trusted you. Why father and son should be so much unlike, G.o.d only can understand." And from that time he said little or nothing more about his will.

But Sir Omicron had been wrong. Mr. Bertram overlived the week, and overlived the fortnight. We must now leave him and his relatives in the house of sickness, and return to Arthur Wilkinson.

CHAPTER XII.

MRS. WILKINSON'S TROUBLES.

Arthur Wilkinson was received at home with open arms and warm embraces. He was an only son, an only brother, the head and stay of his family; and of course he was beloved. His mother wept for joy as she saw the renewed plumpness of his cheeks, and declared that Egypt must indeed be a land of fatness; and his sisters surrounded him, smiling and kissing him, and asking questions, as though he were another Livingstone. This was very delightful; but a cloud was soon to come across all this suns.h.i.+ne.

Mrs. Wilkinson, always excepting what care she may have had for her son's ill health, had not been unhappy during his absence. She had reigned the female vicaress, without a drawback, praying daily, and in her heart almost hourly, for the continuance in the land of such excellent n.o.blemen as Lord Stapledean. The curate who had taken Arthur's duty had been a very mild young man, and had been quite contented that Mrs. Wilkinson should leave to him the pulpit and the reading-desk. In all other matters he had been satisfied not to interfere with her power, or to contradict her edicts.

"Mr. Gilliflower has behaved excellently," she said to her son, soon after his return; "and has quite understood my position here. I only wish we could keep him in the parish; but that, of course, is impossible."

"I shouldn't want him at all, mother," Arthur had replied. "I am as strong as a horse now."