Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 49

He departed; and Mr. Dare touched Cyril on the arm. "Come with me."

He took him into the room, and there ensued an angry lecture. Cyril thought George had confessed, and stood silent before his father. "What a sneak he must have been!" thought Cyril. "Won't I serve him out!"

"If you have acquired the habit of speaking falsely, you had better relinquish it," resumed Mr. Dare. "It will not be a recommendation in the eyes of Mr. Ashley."

"I am not going to Ashley's," burst forth Cyril; for the mention of the subject was sure to anger him. "Turn manufacturer, indeed! I'd rather----"

"You'd rather be a gentleman at large," interrupted Mr. Dare. "But," he sarcastically added, "gentlemen require something to live upon. Listen, Cyril. One of the finest openings that I know of in this city, for a young man, is in Ashley's manufactory. _You_ may despise Mr. Ashley as a manufacturer; but others respect him. He was reared a gentleman--he is regarded as one; he is wealthy, and his business is large and flourishing. Suppose you could drop into this, after him?--succeed to this fine business, its sole proprietor? I can tell you that you would occupy a better position, and be in receipt of a far larger income than either Anthony or Herbert will be."

"But there's no such chance as that, for me," debated Cyril.

"There is the chance: and that's why you are to be placed there. Henry, from his infirmity, is not to be brought up to business, and there is no other son. You will be apprenticed to Mr. Ashley, with a view to succeeding, as a son would, first of all to a partnership with him, eventually to the whole. Now, this is the prospect before you, Cyril; and prejudiced though you are, you must see that it is a fine one."

"Well," acknowledged Cyril, "I wouldn't object to drop into a good thing like that. Has Mr. Ashley proposed it?"

"No, he has not distinctly proposed it. But he did admit, when your apprenticeship was being spoken of, that he might be wanting somebody to succeed him. He more than hinted that whoever might be chosen to succeed him, or to be a.s.sociated with him, must be rendered fit for the connection by being an estimable and a good man; one held in honour by his fellow citizens. No other could be linked with the name of Ashley.

And now, sir, what do you think he, Mr. Ashley, would say to your behaviour to-night?"

Cyril looked rather shame-faced.

"You will go to Mr. Ashley's, Cyril. But I wish you to remember, to remember always, that the ultimate advantages will depend upon yourself and your conduct. Become a good man, and there's little doubt they will be yours; turn out indifferently, and there's not the slightest chance for you."

"I shan't succeed to any of Ashley's money, I suppose?" complacently questioned Cyril, who somewhat ignored the conditions, and saw himself in prospective Mr. Ashley's successor.

"It is impossible to say what you may succeed to," replied Mr. Dare, in so significant a tone as to surprise Cyril. "Henry Ashley's I should imagine to be a doubtful life; should anything happen to him, Mary Ashley will, of course, inherit all. And he will be a fortunate man who shall get into her good graces and marry her."

It was a broad hint to a boy like Cyril. "She's such a proud thing, that Mary Ashley!" grumbled he.

"She is a very sweet child," was the warm rejoinder of Mr. Dare. And Cyril went upstairs again to his jam and his interrupted tea.

Meanwhile the evening went on, and the drawing-room was waiting for Lord Hawkesley. Mrs. Dare and Adelaide were waiting for him--waiting anxiously in elegant attire. Mr. Dare did not seem to care whether he came or not; and Julia, who was buried in an easy chair with her book, would have preferred, of the two, that he stayed away. Between eight and nine he arrived. A little man; young, fair, with light eyes and sharp features, a somewhat cynical expression habitually on his lips.

Helstonleigh, in its gossip, conjectured that he must be making young Anthony Dare useful to him in some way or other, or he would not have condescended to the intimacy. For Lord Hawkesley, a proud man by nature, had been reared as an earl's son and heir; which meant an exclusiveness far greater in those days than it is in these. This was the third evening visit he had paid to Mrs. Dare. Had Adelaide's good looks any attraction for him? _She_ was beginning to think so, and to weave visions upon the strength of it. Entrenched as the Dares were in their folly and a.s.sumption, Adelaide was blind to the wide social gulf that lay between herself and Viscount Hawkesley.

She sat down at the piano at his request and sang an Italian song. She had a good voice, and her singing was better than her Italian accent.

Lord Hawkesley stood by her and looked over the music.

"I like your style of singing very much," he remarked to her when the song was over. "You must have learnt of a good master."

"_Comme ca_," carelessly rejoined Adelaide. As is the case with many more young ladies who possess a superficial knowledge of French, she thought it the perfection of good taste to display as much of it as she did know. "I had the best professor that Helstonleigh can give; but what are Helstonleigh professors compared with those of London? We cannot expect first-rate talent here."

"Do you like London?" asked Lord Hawkesley.

"I was never there," replied Adelaide, feeling the confession, when made to Lord Hawkesley, to be nothing but a humiliation.

"Indeed! You would enjoy a London season."

"Oh, so much! I know nothing of the London season, except from books. A contrast to your lordship, you will say," she added, with a laugh. "You must be almost tired of it; _desillusionne_."

"What's that in English?" inquired Lord Hawkesley, whose French studies, as far as they had extended, had been utterly thrown away upon him.

Labouring under the deficiency, he had to make the best of it, and did it with a boast. "Used up, I suppose you mean?"

Adelaide coloured excessively. She wondered if he was laughing at her, and made a mental vow never to speak French to a lord again.

"Will you think me exacting, Miss Dare, if I trespa.s.s upon you for another song?"

Adelaide did not think him exacting in the least. She was ready to sing as long as he pleased.

CHAPTER V.

CHARLOTTE EAST'S PRESENT.

Towards dusk, that same evening, Charlotte East went over to Mrs.

Buffle's for some b.u.t.ter. After she was served, Mrs. Buffle--who was a little shrimp of a woman, with a red nose--crossed her arms upon the counter and bent her face towards Charlotte's. "Have you heered the news?" asked she. "Mary Ann Cross is going to make a match of it with Ben Tyrrett."

"Is she?" said Charlotte. "They had better wait a few years, both of them, until they shall have put by something."

"They're neither of them of the putting-by sort," returned Mrs. Buffle.

"Them Crosses is the worst girls to spend in all the Fair: unless it's Carry Mason. She don't spare her back, she don't. The wonder is, how she gets it."

"Young girls will dress," observed Charlotte, carelessly.

Mrs. Buffle laughed. "You speak as if you were an old one."

"I feel like one sometimes, Mrs. Buffle. When children are left, as I and Robert were, with a baby brother to bring up, and hardly any means to do it upon, it helps to steady them. Tom----"

Eliza Tyrrett burst in at the door, with a violence that made its bell tw.a.n.g and tinkle. "Half-a-pound o' dips, long-tens, Dame Buffle, and be quick about it," was her order. "There's such a flare-up, in at Mason's."

"A flare-up!" repeated Mrs. Buffle, who was always ripe and ready for a dish of scandal, whether it touched on domestic differences, or on young girls' improvidence in the shape of dress. "Is Mason and her having a noise?"

"It's not him and her. It's about Carry. Hetty Mason locked Carry up this afternoon, and Mason never came home at all to tea; he went and had some beer instead, and a turn at skittles, and she wouldn't let Carry out. He came in just now, and his wife told him a whole heap about Carry, and Mason went up to the c.o.c.k-loft, undid the door, and threatened to kick Carry down. They're having it out in the kitchen, all three."

"What has Carry done?" asked Mrs. Buffle eagerly.

"Perhaps Charlotte East can tell," said Eliza Tyrrett, slyly. "She has been thick with Carry lately. _I_ am not a-going to spoil sport."

Charlotte took up her b.u.t.ter, and bending a severe look of caution on the Tyrrett girl, left the shop. Anthony Dare's reputation was not a brilliant one, and the bare fact of Caroline Mason's allowing herself to walk with him would have damaged her in the eyes of Honey Fair. As well keep it, if possible, from Mrs. Buffle and other gossips.

As Charlotte crossed to her own door, she became conscious that some one was flying towards her in the dusk of the evening: a woman with a fleet foot and panting breath. Charlotte caught hold of her. "Caroline, where are you going?"

"Let me alone, Charlotte East"--and Caroline's nostrils were working, her eyes flashing. "I have left their house for ever, and am going to one who will give me a better."

Charlotte held her tight. "You must not go, Caroline."

"I will," she defiantly answered. "I have chosen my lot this night for better or for worse. Will I stay to be taunted without a cause? To be told I am what I am not? No! If anything should happen to me, let them reproach themselves, for they have driven me on to it."