A Son of Hagar Part 44

Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They parted without more words.

Parson Christian got home toward evening, dead beaten with fatigue. He found the lawyer waiting for him. The marriage had been big in his eyes all day, and other affairs very little.

"So you shall give her away, Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, without superfluous preface of any kind.

"I--I?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, with elevated brows.

"Who has more right?" said the parson.

"Well, you know, you--you--"

"Me! Nay, I must marry them. It is you for the other duty."

"You see, Mr. Christian, if you think of it, I am--I am--"

"You are her father's old friend. There, let us look on it as settled."

Mr. Bonnithorne looked on it as awkward. "Well, to say the truth, Mr.

Christian, I'd--I'd rather not."

The old parson lifted two astonished eyes, and gazed at Mr. Bonnithorne over the rims of his spectacles. The lawyer's uneasiness increased. Then Parson Christian remembered that only a little while ago Mr. Bonnithorne had offered reasons why Paul should not marry Greta. They were rather too secular, those same reasons, but no doubt they had appealed honestly to his mind as a friend of Greta's family.

"Paul and Greta are going away," said the parson.

"So I judged."

"They go to Victoria to farm there," continued the parson.

"On Greta's money," added the lawyer.

Parson Christian looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which the honest labor?"

Mr. Bonnithorne winced. The simple old pate could, on occasion, be more than a match for his own wise head.

"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection--"

"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my feeling is so serious as that."

"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said Parson Christian.

So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to Hugh Ritson in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."

Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues.

Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.

Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal--what hitherto she had partly hidden--the importunity and unbrotherly disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother.

Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained.

Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a distempered spirit--the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself.

Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide which turn to take.

Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too, his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:

"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing within him.

If it was not the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in ignorance of his birth, there was only one escape from the dishonor--not to let her marry him at all. If they married, the oath must be kept. If the oath were kept, the marriage might be dishonored--it could not be the unreserved and complete union of soul with soul, heart with heart, mind with mind, which true marriage meant. It would be laying the treasure at the altar and keeping back part of the price.

Paul was not a man of subtle intellect, or perhaps such reflections would have troubled him too deeply. Love was above everything, and to give up Greta was impossible. If Circ.u.mstance was the evil genius of a man's life, should it be made the G.o.d of it also?

At all hazards Paul meant to marry Greta. And after all, what did this question of honor amount to? It was a mere phantasm. What did it matter to Greta whether he were high or basely born? Should he love her less or more? Would he be less or more worthy of her love? And how was his birth base? Not in G.o.d's eyes, for G.o.d had heard the voice of Hagar's son. Only in the eyes of the world. And what did that mean? It meant that whether birth was high or base depended one part on virtue and nine hundred and ninety-nine parts on money. Where had half the world's t.i.tled great ones sprung from? Not--like him--from their father and their father's fathers, but from a monarch's favorite.

Thus Paul reasoned with himself at this juncture. Whether he was wholly right or wholly wrong, or partly right and partly wrong, concerns us not at all. It was natural that such a man, in such a place, at such an hour, should decide once for all to say not a word to Greta. It was just as natural that his reticence should produce the long series of incidents still to be recorded.

Thus it was not a word was said between them of what lay nearest to the hearts of both.

CHAPTER XVI.

The morning was brilliant--a vigorous, l.u.s.ty young day, such as can awake from the sleep of the night only in winter and in the north. The sun shone on the white frost; the air was hazy enough to make the perspective of the fells more sharp, and leave a halo of mystery to hang over every distant peak and play about every tree.

The Ghyll was early astir, and in every nook and corner full of the buzz of gossip.

"Well, things is at a pa.s.s, for sure!" "And never no axings nowther."

"And all c.o.c.k-a-hoop, and no waiting for the mistress to come back."

"Shaf, what matter about the mistress--she's no' but a kill-joy. There'd be no merry neet an' she were at home." "Well, I is fair maizelt 'at he won't wait for Master Hugh--his awn brother, thoo knows." "What, la.s.s, dusta think as he wad do owt at the durdum to-neet? Maybe tha's reckoning on takin' a step wi' him, eh?" "And if I is, it's nowt sa strange." "Weel, I wadna be for saying tha's aiming too high, for I mind me of a laal la.s.s once as they called Mercy Fisher, and folks did say as somebody were partial to her." "Hod thy tongue about the bit thing; don't thoo misliken me to sec a stromp!"

Resplendent in a blue cloth coat, light check trousers, a flowered yellow silk waistcoat, and a white felt hat, Natt was flying up and down the stairs to and from Paul's room. Paul himself had not yet been seen.

Rumor in the kitchen whispered that he had hardly taken the trouble to dress, and had not even been at the pains to wash. Natt had more than once protested his belief that his master meant to be married in his shirt-sleeves. Nothing but "papers and pens and sealing-wax and things"

had he asked for.

Outside the vicarage a motley group had gathered. There was John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, uncommonly awkward in a frock coat and a pair of kid gloves that sat on his great hands like a clout on a pitchfork.

d.i.c.k, the miller, was there, too, with Giles Raisley, the miner; and Job Sheepshanks (by the way of treaty of peace) stood stroking the tangled mane of Gubblum Oglethorpe's pony. Children hung on the fence, women gathered about the gate, dogs capered on the path. Gubblum himself had been in the house, and now came out accompanied by Brother Peter Ward and a huge black jug. The jug was pa.s.sed round with distinct satisfaction.

"Is the laal man ever coming?" said Gubblum, smacking his lips and taking a swift survey of the road.

"Why, here he is at sec a skufter as'll brak' his shins!"

At the top of his speed, and breathless, clad in a long coat whose tails almost swept the ground, grasping a fiddle in one hand and a paper in the other, Tom o' Dint came hurrying up.

"Tha's here at last, Tom, ma man. Teem a gla.s.s into him, Peter, and let's mak' a start."

"Ye see, I's two men, I is," said the small man, apologetically. "I had my rounds with my letters to do first, and business afore pleasure, you knows."

"Pleasure afore business, say I," cried Gubblum. "Never let yer wark get the upper hand o' yer wages--them's my maxims."

Two coaches came up at the moment, having driven four miles for the purpose of driving four furlongs.