A Perilous Secret Part 32

"Of course it is," said she. "But I know it is the time of day when you are kind to anybody that comes, and mend all their rubbish for them, and I could kill them for their impudence in wasting your time so. And I am as bad as the rest. For here I am wasting your time in my turn. Yes, dear Mr. Hope, you are so kind to everybody and mend their things, I want you to be kind to me and mend--my prospects for me."

Hope's impulse was to gather into his arms and devour with kisses this sweet specimen of womanly tenderness, frank inconsistency, navete, and archness.

As he could not do that, he made himself extra stiff.

"Your prospects. Miss Bartley! Why, they are brilliant. Heiress to all the growing wealth and power around you."

"Wealth and power!" said the girl. "What is the use of them, if our hearts are to be broken? Oh, Mr. Hope, papa is so unkind. He has forbidden me to speak to him." Then, gravely, "That command comes too late."

"I fear it does," said Hope. "I have long suspected something."

"Suspected?" said Mary, turning pale. "What?"

"That you and Walter Clifford--"

"Yes," said Mary, trembling inwardly, but commanding her face.

"Are--engaged."

Mary drew a long breath. "What makes you think so?" said she, looking down.

"Well, there is a certain familiarity--no, that is too strong a word; but there is more ease between you than there was. Ever since I came back from Belgium I have seen that the preliminaries of courtship were over, and you two looked on yourselves as one."

"Mr. Hope," said this good, arch girl, and left off panting, "you are a terrible man. Papa is eyes and no eyes. You frighten me; but not very much, for you would not watch me so closely if you did not love me--a little."

"Not a little, Miss Bartley."

"Mary, please."

"Mary. I have seen you a sickly child; I have been anxious--who would not? I have seen you grow in health and strength, and every virtue."

"And seen me tumble into the water and frighten you out of your senses, and there's nothing one loves like a downright pest, especially if she loves us; and I do love you, Mr. Hope, dearly, dearly, and I promise to be a pest to you all your days. Ah, here he comes at last." She made two eager steps to meet him, then she said, "Oh! I forgot," and came back again and looked prodigiously demure and innocent.

Walter came on with his usual rush, crying, "Mary, how good of you!"

Mary put her fingers in her ears. "No, no, no; we are forbidden to communicate." Then, imitating a stiff man of business--for she was a capital mimic when she chose--"any communication you may wish to honor me with must be addressed to this gentleman, Mr. Hope; he will convey it to me, and it shall meet with all the attention it deserves."

Walter laughed, and said, "That's ingenious."

"Of course it is ingenuous," said Mary, subtly. "That's my character to a fault."

"Well, young people," said Hope, "I am not sure that I have time to repeat verbal communications to keen ears that heard them. And I think I can make myself more useful to you. Walter, your father has set his lawyer on to Mr. Bartley, and what is the consequence? Mr. Bartley forbids Mary to speak to you, and the next thing will be a summons, lawsuit, and a great defeat, and loss to your father and you. Mr. Bartley sent me the lawyer's letter. He hopes to get out of a clear contract by pleading a surprise. Now you must go to the lawyer--it is no use arguing with your father in his present heat--and you must a.s.sure him there has been no surprise. Why, I called on Colonel Clifford years ago, and told him there was coal on that farm; and I almost went on my knees to him to profit by it."

"You don't say that, Mr. Hope?"

"I do say it, and I shall have to swear it. You may be sure Mr. Bartley will subpoena me, if this wretched squabble gets into court."

"But what did my father say to you?"

"He was kind and courteous to me. I was poor as a rat, and dusty with travel--on foot; and he was a fine gentleman, as he always is, when he is not in too great a pa.s.sion. He told me more than one land-owner had wasted money in this county groping for coal. He would not waste his money nor dirty his fingers. But he thanked me for my friendly zeal, and rewarded me with ten shillings."

"Oh!" cried Walter, and hid his face in his hands. As for Mary, she put her hand gently but quietly on Hope's shoulder, as if to protect him from such insults.

"Why, children," said Hope, pleased at their sympathy, but too manly to hunt for it, "it was more than he thought the information worth, and I a.s.sure you it was a blessed boon to me. I had spent my last shilling, and there I was trapesing across the island on a wild-goose chase with my reaping-hook and my fiddle; and my poor little Grace, that I--that I--"

Mary's hand went a moment to his other shoulder, and she murmured through her tears, "You have got _me_."

Then Hope was happy again, and indeed the simplest woman can find in a moment the very word that is balm of Gilead to a sorrowful man.

However, Hope turned it off and continued his theme. The jury, he said, would pounce on that ten shillings as the Colonel's true estimate of his coal, and he would figure in the case as a dog in the manger who grudged Bartley the profits of a risky investment he had merely sneered at and not opposed, until it turned out well; and also disregarded the interests of the little community to whom the mine was a boon. "No," said Hope; "tell your lawyer that I am Bartley's servant, but love equity. I have proposed to Bartley to follow a wonderful seam of coal under Colonel Clifford's park. We have no business there. So if the belligerents will hear reason I will make Bartley pay a royalty on every ton that comes to the surface from any part of the mine; and that will be 1200 a year to the Cliffords. Take this to the lawyer and tell him to unfix that hero's bayonet, or he will charge at the double and be the death of his own money--and yours."

Walter threw up his hands with amazement and admiration. "What a head!" said he.

"Fiddledee!" said Mary; "what a heart!"

"In a word, a phoenix," said Hope, dryly. "Praise is sweet, especially behind one's back. So pray go on, unless you have something better to say to each other;" and Hope retired briskly into his office. But when the lovers took him at his word, and began to strut up and down hand in hand, and murmur love's music into each other's ears, he could not take his eyes off them, and his thoughts were sad. She had only known that young fellow a few months, yet she loved him pa.s.sionately, and he would take her away from her father before she even knew all that father had done and suffered for her. When the revelation did come she would perhaps be a wife and a mother, and then even that revelation would fall comparatively flat.

Besides his exceptional grief, he felt the natural pang of a father at the prospect of resigning her to a husband. Hard is the lot of parents; and, above all, of a parent with one child whom he adores. Many other creatures love their young tenderly, and their young leave them. But then the infancy and youth of those creatures are so short. In a few months the young shift for themselves, forgetting and forgotten. But with our young the helpless periods of infancy and youth are so long. Parental anxiety goes through so many trials and so various, and they all strike roots into the parent's heart. Yet after twenty years of love and hope and fear comes a handsome young fellow, a charming highwayman to a parent's eye, and whisks her away after two months' courtship. Then, oh, ye young, curb for a moment your blind egotism, and feel a little for the parents who have felt so much for you! You rather like William Hope, so let him help you to pity your own parents. See his sad face as he looks at the love he is yet too unselfish to discourage. To save that tender root, a sickly child, he transplanted it from his own garden, and still tended it with loving care for many a year. Another gathers the flower.

He watched and tended and trembled over the tender nestling. The young bird is trying her wings before his eyes; soon she will spread them, and fly away to a newer nest and a younger bosom.

In this case, however, the young people had their troubles too, and their pretty courtship was soon interrupted by an unwelcome and unexpected visitor, who, as a rule, avoided that part, for the very reason that Colonel Clifford frequented it. However, he came there to-day to speak to Hope. Mr. Bartley, for he it was, would have caught the lovers if he had come silently; but he was talking to a pitman as he came, and Mary's quick ears heard his voice round the corner.

"Papa!" cried she. "Oh, don't let him see us! Hide!"

"Where?"

"Anywhere--in here--quick!" and she flew into Hope's workshop, which indeed offered great facilities for hiding. However, to make sure, they crouched behind the lathe and a huge plank of beautiful mahogany Hope was very proud of.

As soon as they were hidden, Mary began to complain in a whisper. "This comes of our clandestine m--. Our very life is a falsehood; concealment is torture--and degradation."

"I don't feel it. I call this good fun."

"Oh, Walter! Good fun! For shame! Hush!"

Bartley bustled on to the green, called Hope out, and sat down in Colonel Clifford's chair. Hope came to him, and Bartley, who had in his hand some drawings of the strata in the coal mine, handed the book to Hope, and said, "I quite agree with you. That is the seam to follow: there's a fortune in it."

"Then you are satisfied with me?"

"More than satisfied."

"I have something to ask in return."

"I am not likely to say no, my good friend," was the cordial reply.

"Thank you. Well, then, there is an attachment between Mary and young Clifford."

Bartley was on his guard directly.

"Her happiness is at stake. That gives me a right to interfere, and say, 'be kind to her.'"