Ralph the Heir Part 27

"When I've got it, I'll think about Parliament, Miss Bonner."

"Perhaps it will be too late then. Don't you know that song of 'Excelsior,' Mr. Newton? You ought to learn to sing it."

Yes;--he was learning to sing it after a fine fashion;--borrowing his tradesman's money, and promising to marry his tradesman's daughter!

He was half inclined to be angry with this interference from Mary Bonner;--and yet he liked her for it. Could it be that she herself felt an interest in what concerned him? "Ah me,"--he said to himself,--"how much better would it have been to have learned something, to have fitted myself for some high work; and to have been able to choose some such woman as this for my wife!" And all that had been sacrificed to horses at the Moonbeam, and little dinners with Captain f.o.o.ks and Lieutenant c.o.x! Every now and again during his life Phoebus had touched his trembling ears, and had given him to know that to sport with the tangles of Naaera's hair was not satisfactory as the work of a man's life. But, alas, the G.o.d had intervened but to little purpose. The horses at the Moonbeam, which had been two, became four, and then six; and now he was pledged to marry Polly Neefit,--if only he could induce Polly Neefit to have him. It was too late in the day for him to think now of Parliament and Mary Bonner.

And then, before he left them, poor Clary whispered a word into his ear,--a cousinly, brotherly word, such as their circ.u.mstances authorised her to make. "Is it settled about the property, Ralph?"

For she, too, had heard that this question of a sale was going forward.

"Not quite, Clary."

"You won't sell it; will you?"

"I don't think I shall."

"Oh, don't;--pray don't. Anything will be better than that. It is so good to wait." She was thinking only of Ralph, and of his interests, but she could not forget the lesson which she was daily teaching to herself.

"If I can help it, I shall not sell it."

"Papa will help you;--will he not? If I were you they should drag me in pieces before I would part with my birthright;--and such a birthright!" It had occurred to her once that Ralph might feel that, after what had pa.s.sed between them one night on the lawn, he was bound not to wait, that it was his duty so to settle his affairs that he might at once go to her father and say,--"Though I shall never be Mr. Newton of Newton, I have still such and such means of supporting your daughter." Ah! if he would only be open with her, and tell her everything, he would soon know how unnecessary it was to make a sacrifice for her. He pressed her hand as he left her, and said a word that was a word of comfort. "Clary, I cannot speak with certainty, but I do not think that it will be sold."

"I am so glad!" she said. "Oh, Ralph, never, never part with it." And then she blushed, as she thought of what she had said. Could it be that he would think that she was speaking for her own sake;--because she looked forward to reigning some day as mistress of Newton Priory?

Ah, no, Ralph would never misinterpret her thoughts in a manner so unmanly as that!

The day came, and it was absolutely necessary that the answer should be given. Neefit came to prompt him again, and seemed to sit on the sofa with more feeling of being at home than he had displayed before. He brought his cheque-book with him, and laid it rather ostentatiously upon the table. He had good news, too, from Polly. "If Mr. Newton would come down to Margate, she would be ever so glad."

That was the message as given by Mr. Neefit, but the reader will probably doubt that it came exactly in those words from Polly's lips.

Ralph was angry, and shook his head in wrath. "Well, Captain, how's it to be?" asked Mr. Neefit.

"I shall let my uncle know that I intend to keep my property," said Ralph, with as much dignity as he knew how to a.s.sume.

The breeches-maker jumped up and crowed,--actually crowed, as might have crowed a c.o.c.k. It was an art that he had learned in his youth.

"That's my lad of wax," he said, slapping Ralph on the shoulder. "And now tell us how much it's to be," said he, opening the cheque-book.

But Ralph declined to take money at the present moment, endeavouring to awe the breeches-maker back into sobriety by his manner. Neefit did put up his cheque-book, but was not awed back into perfect sobriety. "Come to me, when you want it, and you shall have it, Captain. Don't let that chap as 'as the 'orses be any way disagreeable. You tell him he can have it all when he wants it. And he can;--be blowed if he can't. We'll see it through, Captain. And now, Captain, when'll you come out and see Polly?" Ralph would give no definite answer to this,--on account of business, but was induced at last to send his love to Miss Neefit. "That man will drive me into a lunatic asylum at last," he said to himself, as he threw himself into his arm-chair when Neefit had departed.

Nevertheless, he wrote his letter to his uncle's lawyer, Mr. Carey, as follows:--

---- Club, 20 Sept., 186--.

DEAR SIR,--

After mature consideration I have resolved upon declining the offer made to me by my uncle respecting the Newton property.

Faithfully yours,

RALPH NEWTON.

Richard Carey, Esq.

It was very short, but it seemed to him to contain all that there was to be said. He might, indeed, have expressed regret that so much trouble had been occasioned;--but the trouble had been taken not for his sake, and he was not bound to denude himself of his property because his uncle had taken trouble.

When the letter was put into the Squire's hands in Mr. Carey's private room, the Squire was nearly mad with rage. In spite of all that his son had told him, in disregard of all his own solicitor's cautions, in the teeth of his nephew Gregory's certainty, he had felt sure that the thing would be done. The young man was penniless, and must sell; and he could sell nowhere else with circ.u.mstances so favourable. And now the young man wrote a letter as though he were declining to deal about a horse! "It's some sham, some falsehood,"

said the Squire. "Some low attorney is putting him up to thinking that he can get more out of me."

"It's possible," said Mr. Carey; "but there's nothing more to be done." The Squire when last in London had a.s.serted most positively that he would not increase his bid.

"But he's penniless," said the Squire.

"There are those about him that will put him in the way of raising money," said the lawyer.

"And so the property will go to the hammer,--and I can do nothing to help it!" Mr. Carey did not tell his client that a gentleman had no right to complain because he could not deal with effects which were not his own; but that was the line which his thoughts took. The Squire walked about the room, lashing himself in his rage. He could not bear to be beaten. "How much more would do it?" he said at last.

It would be terribly bitter to him to be made to give way, to be driven to increase the price; but even that would be less bitter than failure.

"I should say nothing,--just at present, if I were you," said Mr.

Carey. The Squire still walked about the room. "If he raises money on the estate we shall hear of it. And so much of his rights as pa.s.s from him we can purchase. It will be more prudent for us to wait."

"Would another 5,000 do it at once?" said the Squire.

"At any rate I would not offer it," said Mr. Carey.

"Ah;--you don't understand. You don't feel what it is that I want.

What would you say if a man told you to wait while your hand was in the fire?"

"But you are in possession, Mr. Newton."

"No;--I'm not. I'm not in possession. I'm only a lodger in the place.

I can do nothing. I cannot even build a farm-house for a tenant."

"Surely you can, Mr. Gregory."

"What;--for him! You think that would be one of the delights of possession? Put my money into the ground like seed, in order that the fruit may be gathered by him! I'm not a good enough Christian, Mr.

Carey, to take much delight in that. I'll tell you what it is, Mr.

Carey. The place is a h.e.l.l upon earth to me, till I can call it my own." At last he left his lawyer, and went back to Newton Priory, having given instructions that the transaction should be re-opened between the two lawyers, and that additional money, to the extent of 5,000, should by degrees be offered.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"I'LL BE A HYPOCRITE IF YOU CHOOSE."

There could hardly be a more unhappy man than was the Squire on his journey home. He had buoyed himself up with hope till he had felt certain that he would return to Newton Priory its real and permanent owner, no longer a lodger in the place, as he had called himself to the lawyer, but able to look upon every tree as his own, with power to cut down every oak upon the property; though, as he knew very well, he would rather spill blood from his veins than cut down one of them. But in that case he would preserve the oaks,--preserve them by his own decision,--because they were his own, and because he could give them to his own son. His son should cut them down if he pleased.

And then the power of putting up would be quite as sweet to him as the power of pulling down. What pleasure would he have in making every deficient house upon the estate efficient, when he knew that the stones as he laid them would not become the property of his enemy. He was a man who had never spent his full income. The property had been in his hands now for some fifteen years, and he had already ama.s.sed a considerable sum of money,--a sum which would have enabled him to buy out his nephew altogether, without selling an acre,--presuming the price already fixed to have been sufficient. He had determined to sell something, knowing that he could not do as he would do with the remainder if his hands were empty. He had settled it all in his mind;--how Ralph, his Ralph, must marry, and have a separate income. There would be no doubt about his Ralph's marriage when once it should be known that his Ralph was the heir to Newton.

The bar sinister would matter but little then;--would be clean forgotten. His mind had been full of all this as he had come up to London. It had all been settled. He had decided upon ignoring altogether those cautions which his son and nephew and lawyer had croaked into his ears. This legitimate heir was a ruined spendthrift, who had no alternative but to raise money, no ambition but to spend money, no pursuit but to waste money. His temperament was so sanguine that when he entered Mr. Carey's office he had hardly doubted. Now everything had been upset, and he was cast down from triumph into an abyss of despondency by two lines from this wretched, meaningless, poor-spirited spendthrift! "I believe he'd take a pleasure in seeing the property going to the dogs, merely to spite me," said the Squire to his son, as soon as he reached home,--having probably forgotten his former idea, that his nephew was determined, with the pertinacity of a patient, far-sighted Jew money-lender, to wring from him the last possible shilling.

Ralph, who was not the heir, was of his nature so just, that he could not hear an accusation which he did not believe to be true, without protesting against it. The Squire had called the heir a spiritless spendthrift, and a malicious evil-doer, intent upon ruining the estate, and a grasping Jew, all in the same breath.