It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 84

"Here, sir." Levi read it. "This action was taken on a bill of exchange.

I must have that too."

"Here it is, sir. Would you like an acknowledgment, Mr. Levi," said Crawley obsequiously.

"No! foolish man. Are not these sufficient vouchers? You are free, sir,"

said Crawley to William with an air of cheerful congratulation.

"Am I? Then I advise you to get out of my way, for my fingers do itch to fling you headforemost down the stairs."

On this hint out wriggled Mr. Crawley with a semicircle of bows to the company. Constable touched his frontlock and went straight away as if he was going through the opposite wall of the house. Meadows pointed after him with his finger and said to Levi, "You see the road--get out of my house."

The old man never moved from his chair, to which he had returned after paying William's debts. "It is not your house," said he coolly.

The other stared. "No matter," replied Meadows sharply, "it is mine till my mortgage is paid off."

"I am here to pay it."

"Ah!"

"Princ.i.p.al and interest calculated up to twelve o'clock this eleventh day of March. It wants five minutes to twelve. I offer you princ.i.p.al and interest--eight hundred and twenty-two pounds fourteen shillings and fivepence three farthings before these witnesses--and demand the t.i.tle deeds."

Meadows hung his head, but he was not a man to waste words in mere scolding. He took the blow with forced calmness as who should say, "This is your turn--the next is mine."

"Miss Merton," said he, almost in a whisper, "I never had the honor to receive you here before and I never shall again. How long do you give me to move my things?"

"Can you not guess?" inquired the other with a shade of curiosity.

"Why, of course you will put me to all the inconvenience you can. Come, now, am I to move all my furniture and effects out of this great house in twenty-four hours?"

"I give you more than that."

"How kind! What, you give me a week perhaps?" asked Meadows incredulously.

"More than that, you fool! Don't you see that it is on next Lady-day you will be turned into the street. Aha! woman-worshiper, on Lady-day!

A tooth for a tooth!" And the old man ground his teeth, which were white as ivory, and his fist clinched itself, while his eye glittered, and he swelled out from the chair, and literally bristled with hate--"A tooth for a tooth!"

"Oh, Mr. Levi," said Susan sorrowfully, "how soon you have forgotten my last lesson!"

Meadows for a moment felt a chill of fear at the punctiliousness of revenge in this Oriental whom he had made his enemy. To this succeeded the old hate multiplied by ten; but he made a monstrous effort and drove it from his face down into the recesses of his heart. "Well," said he, "may you enjoy this house as I have done this last twelvemonth!"

"That does you credit, good Mr. Meadows," cried simple Susan, missing his meaning. Meadows continued in the same tone, "And I must make shift with the one you vacate on Lady-day."

"Solomon teach me to outwit this dog."

"Come, Mr. Levi, I have visited Mr. Meadows and now I am going to your house."

"You shall be welcome, kindly welcome," said the old man with large and flowing courtesy.

"And will you show me," said Susan very tenderly, "where Leah used to sit?"

"Ah!"

"And where Rachel and Sarah loved to play?"

"Ah me! Ah me! Ah me! Yes! I could not show another these holy places, but I will show you."

"And will you forget awhile this unhappy quarrel and listen to my words?"

"Surely I shall listen to you; for even now your voice is to my ear like the wind sighing among the cedars of Lebanon, and the wave that plays at night upon the sands of Galilee."

"'Tis but the frail voice of a foolish woman, who loves and respects you, and yet," said Susan, her color mantling with enthusiasm, "with it I can speak you words more beautiful than Lebanon's cedars or Galilee's sh.o.r.e. Ay, old man, words that make the stars brighter and the sons of the morning rejoice. I will not tell you whence I had them, but you shall say surely they never came from earth, selfish, cruel, revengeful earth, these words that drop on our hot pa.s.sions like the dew, and speak of trespa.s.ses forgiven, and peace and goodwill among men."

Oh! magic of a lovely voice speaking the truths of Heaven! How still the room was as these goodly words rang in it from a pure heart. Three men there had all been raging with anger and hate; now a calming music fell like oil upon these human waves, and stilled them.

The men drooped their heads, and held their breath to make sure the balmy sounds had ceased. Then Levi answered in a tone gentle, firm, and low (very different from his last), "Susanna, bitterness fades from my heart as you speak; but experience remains." He turned to Meadows, "When I wander forth at Lady-day she shall still be watched over though I be far away. My eye shall be here, and my hand shall still be so over you all," and raising his thin hand, he held it high up, the nails pointing downward. It looked just like a hawk hovering over its prey. "I will say no bitterer word than that to-day;" and in fact he delivered this without apparent heat or malice.

"Come, then, with me, Susanna--a goodly name, it comes to you from the despised people. Come like peace to my dwelling, Susanna--you know not this world's wiles as I do, but you can teach me the higher wisdom that controls the folly of pa.s.sion and purifies the soul."

The pair were gone, and William and Meadows were left alone. The latter looked sadly and gloomily at the door by which Susan had gone out. He was in a sort of torpor. He was not conscious of William's presence.

Now the said William had a misgiving; in the country a man's roof is sacred; he had affronted Meadows under his own roof, and then Mr. Levi had come and affronted him there, too. William began to doubt whether this was not a little hard, moreover he thought he had seen Meadows brush his eye hastily with the back of his hand as Susan retired. He came toward Meadows with his old sulky, honest, hang-the-head manner, and said, "Mr. Meadows, seems to me we have been a little hard upon you in your own house, and I am not quite easy about my share on't." Meadows shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly.

"Well, sir--I am not the Almighty to read folk's hearts--least of all such a one as yours--but if I have done you wrong I ask your pardon.

Come, sir, if you don't mean to undermine my brother with the girl you can give me your hand, and I can give you mine--and there 'tis."

Meadows wished this young man away, and seeing that the best way to get rid of him was to give him his hand, he turned round, and, scarcely looking toward him, gave him his hand. William shook it and went away with something that sounded like a sigh. Meadows saw him out, and locked the door impatiently; then he flung himself into a chair and laid his beating temples on the cold table; then he started up and walked wildly to and fro the room. The man was torn this way and that with rage, love and remorse.

"What shall I do?" thus ran his thoughts. "That angel is my only refuge, and yet to win her I shall have to walk through dirt and shame and every sin that is. I see crimes ahead; such a heap of crimes, my flesh creeps at the number of them. Why not be like her, why not be the greatest saint that ever lived, instead of one more villain added to so many?

Let me tear this terrible love out of my heart and die. Oh! if some one would but take me by the scurf of the neck and drag me to some other country a million miles away, where I might never see my tempter again till this madness is out of me. Susan, you are an angel, but you will plunge me to h.e.l.l."

Now it happened while he was thus raving and suffering the preliminary pangs of wrong-doing that his old servant knocked at the outside of the door and thrust a letter through the trap; the letter was from a country gentleman, one Mr. Chester, for whom he had done business. Mr. Chester wrote from Lancashire. He informed Meadows he had succeeded to a very large property in that county--it had been shockingly mismanaged by his predecessor; he wanted a capable man's advice, and moreover all the estates thereabouts were compelled to be surveyed and valued this year, which he deplored, but since so it was he would be surveyed and valued by none but John Meadows.

"Come by return of post," added this hasty squire, "and I'll introduce you to half the landed proprietors in this county."

Meadows read this and seizing a pen wrote thus:

"DEAR SIR--Yours received this day at 1 p.m., and will start for your house at 6 P.M."

He threw himself on his horse and rode to his mother's house. "Mother, I am turned out of my house."

"Why, John, you don't say so?"

"I must go into the new house I have built outside the town."

"What, the one you thought to let to Mr. James?"