Ned Garth Part 14

"Go then, Mary, go!" said the old man. "Don't allow any one to stop you; and if Mr Thorpe is out, write a message requesting him to come on here immediately."

Mary, promising Mr Shank that she would obey his wishes, hastened away.

She observed that he did not close the door behind her as usual. She found Mr Thorpe at home and gave her message.

"What! old Shank the miser? I suspect that he has something worth leaving behind," observed the lawyer. "I'll be with him immediately, depend on that. But how are you going to get back, young lady?"

"Oh, I can walk perfectly well," said Mary.

"No; let me drive you as far as old Shank's, and if you like to remain I will take you on to Triton Cottage. Miss Sally will not know what has become of you."

Mary was glad to accept this offer, and the lawyer's gig being brought round, she took her seat between him and his clerk.

"I will wait outside," she said when they reached Mr Shank's door. "I can look after your horse and see it doesn't run away, for Mr Shank may have something particular to tell you which he might not wish me to hear."

The lawyer, appreciating Mary's delicacy, agreed, though he did not give her the charge of his horse, as the animal was well accustomed to stand with its head fastened to a paling while he visited his clients. Mary waited and waited, sometimes walking about, at others standing beside the gig, or sitting on the hillside, on the very spot which had often been occupied by Ned. Her thoughts naturally flew away to him. Where could he be all this time? Would Mr Hanson and Charley discover him, or would they return without tidings of his fate?

The lawyer at last appeared, and, directing his clerk to return home with some papers he held in his hand, he begged Mary to get into the gig.

"I must run in to see old Mr Shank first," she said, "and learn if there is anything aunt or I can do for him."

"You will find him more easy in his mind than he was when I arrived; but in regard to a.s.sistance, he doesn't require it as much as you suppose.

He has consented to let me send a doctor, and a respectable woman to attend on him. He is not in a fit state to be left by himself."

Mary was surprised at these remarks. Not wishing to delay the lawyer she hurried in. Mr Shank, who was still seated in his arm-chair, put out his shrivelled hand and clasped hers.

"Thank you, Mary, thank you!" he said. "You deserve to be happy, and Heaven will bless your kindness to a forlorn old man. I may live to see you again, but my days are numbered, whatever the lawyer may say to the contrary."

Mary explained that Mr Thorpe was waiting for her, and saying that she was glad to hear he was to have some one to attend on him, bade him good-bye.

During the drive to Triton Cottage the lawyer did not further allude to Mr Shank, and Mary very naturally forbore to question him.

Aunt Sally, who had become somewhat anxious at her long absence, was greatly surprised at seeing Mr Thorpe, and not being influenced by the same motive as Mary, inquired what the old man could possibly have desired to see him about.

"To make his will, Miss Sally," answered the lawyer; "it has been signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of myself and John Brown, my clerk, and its contents are to remain locked in our respective b.r.e.a.s.t.s and my strong box until the due time arrives for its administration. That he has made a will argues that he has, as you may suppose, some property to leave, and that the people in our neighbourhood were not so far wrong in calling him a miser; but he has h.o.a.rded to some purpose, and I wish that all misers would leave their gold in as satisfactory a manner as he has done."

In vain Miss Sally endeavoured to elicit further information; the lawyer laughed and rubbed his hands, but not a word more could she get out of him than he chose to say. Then turning the subject, he steadily declined again entering on it, though he made himself agreeable by conversing in a cheerful tone on various others.

Mary's anxiety prompted her to visit Mr Shank the next day, and her aunt not objecting she set off by herself. A respectable-looking woman opened the door, and courtesied to her as she did so.

"How is Mr Shank?" asked Mary.

"He is not worse than he was yesterday; he has been asking for you ever so many times, miss, and has made me go to the door to see if you were coming. He'll be main glad to see you. I have been working hard to make the house look a little tidy, but it is in a sad mess; it is a wonder the whole of it didn't come down and crush the old man before this--"

The woman would have continued to run on in the same strain had not Mary begged to be allowed to enter. She found Mr Shank seated in his arm-chair, looking, as she thought, very pale and weak. He thanked her, much in his usual way, for again coming to see him, and for bringing him another of Miss Sally's puddings, but Mary remarked that he no longer spoke of his poverty.

"I wanted very much to see you, my dear," he said, in a gentle tone, which contrasted greatly with that in which he used formally to speak; "but I don't want listeners, Mrs Mason, I will request you to retire and busy yourself at the further end of the house, or out of doors."

The old woman looked somewhat astonished, but obeyed without replying.

Mary could not fail to be surprised at the tone of authority in which he spoke, as if he had been accustomed all his life to give directions to an attendant.

"Mary," he said, as he sat with his hands clasped, leaning back in his chair, and glancing half aside at her fair countenance, as if a feeling of shame oppressed him, "you have been my good angel. I owe you much, more than I can ever repay. Had it not been for you, I should have gone down to my grave a miserable, wretched being, with no one to care for me; but you awoke me to a sense of better things. I have not always been as I am now, but care and disappointment came upon me, and those I loved were lost through my fault, by my hard treatment. I see it now, but I thought then they were alone to blame. I once had wealth, but it was dissipated almost, not all, and I feared lest the remainder would be lost; then I became what you have known me, a wretched, grovelling miser. I had a daughter, she was young and fair, and as bright as you are, but she desired to live as she had been accustomed to, not aware of my losses, and I stinted her of everything except the bare necessaries of life. She had many admirers: one of them was wealthy, but f.a.n.n.y regarded him with dislike; the other, a fine youth, was, I thought, penniless. She returned his affection, and I ordered him never again to enter my doors. My child bore my treatment meekly, but one day she came into my presence, and in a calm but firm voice said she would no longer be a burden to me; that she was ready to toil for my support were it requisite, but that she was well aware that I was possessed of ample means to obtain the comforts as well as the necessaries of life.

Enraged, I ordered her, with a curse, to quit my house, declaring that I would never see her again. She obeyed me too faithfully, and became the young man's wife, and she and her husband left England. I heard shortly afterwards that the ship in which they sailed had been wrecked. That such was the case I had every reason to believe as from that day I lost all trace of them. Hardhearted as I was, I believed that my child had met her just doom for the disobedience into which I myself had driven her, and having no one to care for, I sank into the wretched object you found me. You will think of me, Mary, with pity rather than scorn when I am gone?"

"Do not speak so, Mr Shank; I have long, long pitied you," said Mary, soothingly. "You are not what you were; you mourn your past life, and you know the way by which you can be reconciled to a merciful G.o.d."

The old man gazed at her fair countenance. "No other human being could have moved me but you," he said; "you reminded me from the first of my lost child, and I listened to you as I would have listened to no one else. Bless you! bless you!"

Mary had already spent a longer time than she had intended listening to the old man's history. She rose to go away. He kept her small hand in his shrivelled palms.

"I should wish my last gaze on earth to be on your face, Mary; I should die more easily, and yet I do not fear death as I once did when I strove to put away all thoughts of it. I know it must come before long; it may be days, or weeks, and you will then know how my poor wretched heart has loved you."

Mary, not understanding him, answered--

"You have shown me that already, Mr Shank, and I hope you may be spared to find something worth living for."

"Yes, if I had health and strength I should wish to a.s.sist in benefiting those poor Africans of whom you have so often told me, and putting an end to the fearful slave trade; but I cannot recall my wasted days, and I must leave it to you, Mary. If you have the means to try and help them, you will do so, I know, far better than I can."

"I shall be thankful if I can ever benefit the poor Africans," said Mary, smiling at what appeared to her so very unlikely. "But I must stop no longer, or Aunt Sally will fancy that some harm has befallen me."

Mary wished him good-bye, summoning Mrs Mason as she went out.

On Mary's return to Triton Cottage she found Lieutenant Meadows, who had come to wish her and her aunt good-bye, his turn of service on the coast-guard having expired.

He inquired whether they had received any news of the "Hope."

"She must have been round the Cape long ago. Hanson and his people should by this time have landed, so that you would get letters from the Cape, or perhaps even from Zanzibar, in the course of a week or two.

You will write to me and say what news you receive in case Charley's letters should miscarry." Miss Sally promised, without fail, to write as Mr Meadows requested, and he gave her his address. When he was gone, Miss Sally and Mary had no one to talk to on the subject nearest their hearts. They discussed it over and over again by themselves, in spite of Aunt Sally's declaration that it was of no use, and that they had better not speak about the matter; yet she was generally the first to begin, and Mary would bring out the map, and they both would pore over it, the elder lady through her spectacles, as if they could there discover by some magical power where Ned was, and the point the "Hope"

had reached. They were cheerful and happy, though nothing occurred to vary the monotony of their everyday life, until the post one morning brought a letter addressed to Miss Sarah Pack.

"Whom can it be from?" she exclaimed, adjusting her spectacles. "It is not from my brother; it bears only the English post mark. Give me my scissors, Mary." And she deliberately cut it open, though not the less eager to know its contents.

Mary watched her as she read, holding the letter up to the light, and murmuring, "Astonishing!"

"Very strange!"

"I cannot understand it!"

"And yet not impossible!"

"I don't know whether I ought to tell you the contents of this," she said, after she had read it twice over; "it may agitate you, my dear Mary, and raise expectations only to be disappointed. It is from Mr Farrance, and a very singular story he gives me."

These remarks could not fail to arouse Mary's curiosity.

"Is it about Ned? Has he been found? Is he coming back?" she exclaimed, her hand trembling in an unusual manner as she was about to pour out a cup of tea for her aunt.

"No, he does not give us any news of Ned. The letter has reference to you. I ought not to wish that anything to your advantage should not happen, but yet I almost dread lest Mr Farrance's expectations should be realised."

"Oh, do tell me, aunt, what Mr Farrance says!" exclaimed Mary. "I will nerve myself for whatever it may be; but I cannot even guess."