THE SERPENT.
Monckton slipped away at the dawn, and was off to Derby to prepare
first-rate disguises.
At Derby, going through the local papers, he found lodgings offered at a
farm-house to invalids, fresh milk and eggs, home-made bread, etc. The
place was within a few miles of Clifford Hall. Monckton thought this
would suit him much better than being too near. When his disguises were
ready, he hired a horse and dog-cart by the month, and paid a deposit,
and drove to the place in question. He put some shadow under his eyes to
look more like an invalid. He had got used to his own cadaverous tint, so
that seemed insufficient.
The farmer's wife looked at him, and hesitated.
"Well, sir," said she, with a blush, "we takes 'em in to cure, not to--"
"Not to bury," said Monckton. "Don't you be alarmed. I have got no time
to die; I'm too busy. Why, I have been much worse than this. I am
convalescent now."
"Ye don't say so, sir!" said she. "Well, I see your heart is good" (the
first time he had ever been told that), "and so I've a mind to risk it."
Then she quickly clapped on ten shillings a week more for color, and he
was installed. He washed his face, and then the woman conceived hopes of
him, and expressed them in rustic fashion. "Well," said she, "dirt is a
disguise. Now I look at you, you have got more mischief to do in the
world yet, I do believe."
"A deal more, I hope," said he.
It now occurred to him, all of a sudden, that really he was not in good
health, and that he had difficulties before him which required calm
nerves, and that nerves are affected by the stomach. So, not to throw a
chance away, he had the sense and the resolution to devote a few days to
health and unwholesome meditation.
This is a discordant world: even vices will not always pull the same
way. Here was a sinister villain distracted between avarice and revenge,
and sore puzzled which way to turn. Of course he could expose the real
parentage of Mary Bartley, and put both Bartley and Hope to shame, and
then the Cliffords would make Bartley disgorge the £20,000. But he,
Monckton, would not make a shilling by that, and it would be a weak
revenge on Bartley, who could now spare £20,000, and no revenge at all on
Hope, for Hope was now well-to-do, and would most likely be glad to get
his daughter back. Then, on the other hand, he could easily frighten
Bartley into giving him £5000 to keep dark, but in that case he must
forego his vengeance on Hope.
This difficulty had tormented Monckton all along; but now Mrs. Dawson had
revealed another obstacle. Young Clifford and Mary in love with each
other. What Mrs. Easton saw as a friend, with her good mother-wit, this
man saw in a moment as an enemy, viz., that this new combination dwarfed
the £20,000 altogether. Monckton had no idea that his unknown antagonist
Nurse Easton had married the pair, but the very attachment, as the
chatter-box of the Dun Cow described it, was a bitter pill to him. "Who
could have foreseen this?" said he. "It's devilish." We did not ourselves
intend our readers to feel it so, or we would not have spent so much time
over it. But as regards that one adjective, Mr. Monckton is a better
authority than we are. He had a document with him that, skillfully used,
might make mischief for a time between these lovers. But he foresaw there
could be no permanent result without the personal assistance of Mrs.
Braham. That he could have commanded fourteen years ago, but now he felt
how difficult it would be. He would have to threaten and torment her
almost to madness before she would come down to Derbyshire and declare
that this Walter Clifford was the Walter Clifford of the certificate, and
that she was his discarded wife. But Monckton was none the less resolved
she should come if necessary. Leaving him _varius distractum vitiis_, and
weighing every scheme, with its pros and cons, and, like a panther
crouching and watching before he would make his first spring, we will now
bring our other characters up to the same point, and that will not take
us long, for during the months we have skipped there were not many
events, and Mrs. Dawson has told the readers some of them, and the rest
were only detached incidents.
The most important in our opinion were:
1. That Colonel Clifford resumed his determination to marry Julia
Clifford to Walter, and pooh-poohed Fitzroy entirely, declaring him to be
five feet nothing, and therefore far below the military standard.
2. That Hope rented a cottage of Walter about three hundred yards
from the mine, and not upon the land that was leased to Bartley; that
there was a long detached building hard by, which Walter divided for
him, and turned into an office with a large window close to the
ground, and a workshop with a doorway and an aperture for a window,
but no window nor door.
3. That Hope got more and more uneasy about the £20,000, and observed to
Bartley that they must be robbing _somebody_ of it without the excuse
they once had. He, for his part, would work to disgorge his share.
Bartley replied that the money would have gone to a convent if he had not
saved it from so vile a fate. This said the astute Bartley because one
day Hope, who had his opinions on everything, inveighed against a
convent, and said no private prisons ought to exist in a free country. So
Bartley's ingenious statement stunned Hope for a minute, but did not
satisfy his conscience.
4. Hope went to London for a week, and Mary spent four days with her
husband at a hotel near the lake; but not the one held by Mrs. Easton's
sister. This change was by advice of Mrs. Easton. On this occasion Mary
played the woman. She requested Walter to get her some orange blossoms,
and she borrowed a diamond bracelet of Julia, and sat down to dinner with
her husband in evening dress, and dazzled him with her lovely arms and
bust, and her diamond bracelet and eyes that outshone it. She seemed ever
so much larger as well as lovelier, and Walter gazed at her with a sort
of loving awe, and she smiled archly at him, and it was the first time
she had really enjoyed her own beauty, or even troubled her head much
about it. They condensed a honey-moon into these four days, and came home
compensated for their patience, and more devoted than ever. But whilst
they were away Colonel Clifford fired his attorney at Mr. Bartley, and
when Mary came home, Bartley, who had lately connived at the love affair,
told Mary this, and forbade her strictly to hold any more intercourse
with Walter Clifford.
This was the state of things when "the hare with many friends," and only
one enemy, returned to his cottage late in the afternoon. But before
night everybody knew he had come home, and next morning they were all at
him in due order. No sooner was he seated in his workshop, studying the
lines of a new machine he was trying to invent, than he was startled from
intense thought into the attitude of Hogarth's enraged musician by cries
of "Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope!" and there was a little lot of eager
applicants. First a gypsy boy with long black curls and continuous
genuflections, and a fiddle, and doleful complaints that he could not
play it, and that it was the fiddle's fault.
"Well, it is for once," said Hope. "Why, you little duffer, don't you see
the bridge is too low?"
He slackened the string, removed the bridge, fitted on a higher one,
tuned it, and handed it over.
"There," said he, "play us one of the tunes of Egypt. 'The Rogue's
March,' eh? and mizzle."
The supple Oriental grinned and made obeisances, pretended not to know
"The Rogue's March" (to the hen-house), and went off playing "Johnny
Comes Marching Home." (Bridewell to wit.)
Then did Miss Clifford's French maid trip forward smirking with a parasol
to mend: _Désolée de vous déranger, Monsieur Hope, mais notre demoiselle
est au désespoir: oh, ces parasols Anglais_!
"_Connu_," said Hope, "_voyons çà_;" and in a minute repaired the
article, and the girl spread it, and went off wriggling and mincing with
it, so that there was a pronounced horse-laugh at her minauderies.
Then advanced a rough young English nurse out of a farm-house with a
child that could just toddle. She had left an enormous doll with Hope for
repairs, and the child had given her no peace for the last week. Luckily
the doll was repaired, and handed over. The mite, in whose little bosom
maternal feelings had been excited, insisted on carrying her child. The
consequence was that at about the third step they rolled over one
another, and to spectators at a little distance it was hard to say which
was the parent and which the offspring. Them the strapping lass in charge
seized roughly, and at the risk of dislocating their little limbs, tossed
into the air and caught, one on each of her own robust arms, and carried
them off stupidly irritated--for want of a grain of humor--at the
good-natured laugh this caused, and looking as if she would like to knock
their little heads together.
Under cover of this an old man in a broad hat, and seemingly infirm,
crept slowly by and looked keenly at Hope, but made no application. Only
while taking stock of Hope his eyes flashed wickedly, and much too
brightly for so old a man as he appeared. He did not go far; he got
behind a tree, and watched the premises. Then a genuine old man and
feeble came and brought Hope his clock to mend. Hope wound it up, and it
went to perfection. The old man had been a stout fellow when Hope was a
boy, but now he was weak, especially in the upper story. Hope saw at
once that the young folk had sent him there for a joke, and he did not
approve it.
"Gaffer," said he, "this will want repairing every eight days; but don't
you come here any more; I'll call on you every week, and repair it for
auld lang syne."
Whilst he toddled away, and Hope retired behind his lathe to study his
model in peace, Monckton raged at the sight of him and his popularity.
"Ay," said he, "you are a genius. You can model a steam-engine or mend a
doll, and you outwitted me, and gave me fourteen years. But you will find
me as ingenious as you at one thing, and that's revenge."
And now a higher class of visitors began to find their way to the general
favorite. The first was a fair young lady of surpassing beauty. She
strolled pensively down the green turf, cast a hasty glance in at the
workshop, and not seeing Hope, concluded he was a little tired after his
journey, and had not yet arrived. She strolled slowly down then, and
seated herself in a large garden chair, stuffed, that Hope had made, and
placed there for Colonel Clifford. That worthy frequented the spot
because he had done so for years, and because it was a sweet turfy slope;
and there was a wonderful beech-tree his father had made him plant when
he was five years old. It had a gigantic silvery stem, and those giant
branches which die crippled in a beech wood but really belong to the
isolated tree, as one Virgil discovered before we were born. Mary Bartley
then lowered her parasol, and settled into the Colonel's chair under the
shade _patulae fagi_--of the wide-spreading beech-tree.
She sat down and sighed. Monckton eyed her from his lurking-place, and
made a shrewd guess who she was, but resolved to know.
Presently Hope caught a glimpse of her, and came forward and leaned out
of the window to enjoy the sight of her. He could do that unobserved, for
he was a long way behind her at a sharp angle.
He was still a widower and this his only child, and lovely as an angel;
and he had seen her grow into ripe loveliness from a sick girl. He had
sinned for her and saved her; he had saved her again from a more terrible
death. He doted on her, and it was always a special joy to him when he
could gloat on her unseen. Then he had no need to make up an artificial
face and hide his adoration from her.
But soon a cloud came over his face and his paternal heart. He knew she
had a lover; and she looked like a girl who was waiting pensively for
him. She had not come there for him whom she knew only as her devoted
friend. At this thought the poor father sighed.
Mary's quick senses caught that, and she turned her head, and her sweet
face beamed.
"You _are_ there, after all, Mr. Hope."
Hope was delighted. Why, it was him she had come to see, after all. He
came down to her directly, radiant, and then put on a stiff manner he
often had to wear, out of fidelity to Bartley, who did not deserve it.
"This is early for you to be out, Miss Bartley."
"Of course it is," said she. "But I know it is the time of day when you
are kind to anybody that comes, and mend all their rubbish for them, and
I could kill them for their impudence in wasting your time so. And I am
as bad as the rest. For here I am wasting your time in my turn. Yes, dear
Mr. Hope, you are so kind to everybody and mend their things, I want you
to be kind to me and mend--my prospects for me."
Hope's impulse was to gather into his arms and devour with kisses this
sweet specimen of womanly tenderness, frank inconsistency, naïveté,
and archness.
As he could not do that, he made himself extra stiff.
"Your prospects. Miss Bartley! Why, they are brilliant. Heiress to all
the growing wealth and power around you."
"Wealth and power!" said the girl. "What is the use of them, if our
hearts are to be broken? Oh, Mr. Hope, papa is so unkind. He has
forbidden me to speak to him." Then, gravely, "That command comes
too late."
"I fear it does," said Hope. "I have long suspected something."
"Suspected?" said Mary, turning pale. "What?"
"That you and Walter Clifford--"
"Yes," said Mary, trembling inwardly, but commanding her face.
"Are--engaged."
Mary drew a long breath. "What makes you think so?" said she,
looking down.
"Well, there is a certain familiarity--no, that is too strong a word; but
there is more ease between you than there was. Ever since I came back
from Belgium I have seen that the preliminaries of courtship were over,
and you two looked on yourselves as one."
"Mr. Hope," said this good, arch girl, and left off panting, "you are
a terrible man. Papa is eyes and no eyes. You frighten me; but not
very much, for you would not watch me so closely if you did not love
me--a little."
"Not a little, Miss Bartley."
"Mary, please."
"Mary. I have seen you a sickly child; I have been anxious--who would
not? I have seen you grow in health and strength, and every virtue."
"And seen me tumble into the water and frighten you out of your senses,
and there's nothing one loves like a downright pest, especially if she
loves us; and I do love you, Mr. Hope, dearly, dearly, and I promise to
be a pest to you all your days. Ah, here he comes at last." She made two
eager steps to meet him, then she said, "Oh! I forgot," and came back
again and looked prodigiously demure and innocent.
Walter came on with his usual rush, crying, "Mary, how good of you!"
Mary put her fingers in her ears. "No, no, no; we are forbidden to
communicate." Then, imitating a stiff man of business--for she was a
capital mimic when she chose--"any communication you may wish to honor me
with must be addressed to this gentleman, Mr. Hope; he will convey it to
me, and it shall meet with all the attention it deserves."
Walter laughed, and said, "That's ingenious."
"Of course it is ingenuous," said Mary, subtly. "That's my character
to a fault."
"Well, young people," said Hope, "I am not sure that I have time to
repeat verbal communications to keen ears that heard them. And I think I
can make myself more useful to you. Walter, your father has set his
lawyer on to Mr. Bartley, and what is the consequence? Mr. Bartley
forbids Mary to speak to you, and the next thing will be a summons,
lawsuit, and a great defeat, and loss to your father and you. Mr. Bartley
sent me the lawyer's letter. He hopes to get out of a clear contract by
pleading a surprise. Now you must go to the lawyer--it is no use arguing
with your father in his present heat--and you must assure him there has
been no surprise. Why, I called on Colonel Clifford years ago, and told
him there was coal on that farm; and I almost went on my knees to him to
profit by it."
"You don't say that, Mr. Hope?"
"I do say it, and I shall have to swear it. You may be sure Mr. Bartley
will subpoena me, if this wretched squabble gets into court."
"But what did my father say to you?"
"He was kind and courteous to me. I was poor as a rat, and dusty with
travel--on foot; and he was a fine gentleman, as he always is, when he is
not in too great a passion. He told me more than one land-owner had
wasted money in this county groping for coal. He would not waste his
money nor dirty his fingers. But he thanked me for my friendly zeal, and
rewarded me with ten shillings."
"Oh!" cried Walter, and hid his face in his hands. As for Mary, she put
her hand gently but quietly on Hope's shoulder, as if to protect him from
such insults.
"Why, children," said Hope, pleased at their sympathy, but too manly to
hunt for it, "it was more than he thought the information worth, and I
assure you it was a blessed boon to me. I had spent my last shilling, and
there I was trapesing across the island on a wild-goose chase with my
reaping-hook and my fiddle; and my poor little Grace, that I--that I--"
Mary's hand went a moment to his other shoulder, and she murmured through
her tears, "You have got _me_."
Then Hope was happy again, and indeed the simplest woman can find in a
moment the very word that is balm of Gilead to a sorrowful man.
However, Hope turned it off and continued his theme. The jury, he said,
would pounce on that ten shillings as the Colonel's true estimate of his
coal, and he would figure in the case as a dog in the manger who grudged
Bartley the profits of a risky investment he had merely sneered at and
not opposed, until it turned out well; and also disregarded the interests
of the little community to whom the mine was a boon. "No," said Hope;
"tell your lawyer that I am Bartley's servant, but love equity. I have
proposed to Bartley to follow a wonderful seam of coal under Colonel
Clifford's park. We have no business there. So if the belligerents will
hear reason I will make Bartley pay a royalty on every ton that comes to
the surface from any part of the mine; and that will be £1200 a year to
the Cliffords. Take this to the lawyer and tell him to unfix that hero's
bayonet, or he will charge at the double and be the death of his own
money--and yours."
Walter threw up his hands with amazement and admiration. "What a
head!" said he.
"Fiddledee!" said Mary; "what a heart!"
"In a word, a phoenix," said Hope, dryly. "Praise is sweet, especially
behind one's back. So pray go on, unless you have something better to
say to each other;" and Hope retired briskly into his office. But when
the lovers took him at his word, and began to strut up and down hand in
hand, and murmur love's music into each other's ears, he could not take
his eyes off them, and his thoughts were sad. She had only known that
young fellow a few months, yet she loved him passionately, and he would
take her away from her father before she even knew all that father had
done and suffered for her. When the revelation did come she would
perhaps be a wife and a mother, and then even that revelation would fall
comparatively flat.
Besides his exceptional grief, he felt the natural pang of a father at
the prospect of resigning her to a husband. Hard is the lot of parents;
and, above all, of a parent with one child whom he adores. Many other
creatures love their young tenderly, and their young leave them. But then
the infancy and youth of those creatures are so short. In a few months
the young shift for themselves, forgetting and forgotten. But with our
young the helpless periods of infancy and youth are so long. Parental
anxiety goes through so many trials and so various, and they all strike
roots into the parent's heart. Yet after twenty years of love and hope
and fear comes a handsome young fellow, a charming highwayman to a
parent's eye, and whisks her away after two months' courtship. Then, oh,
ye young, curb for a moment your blind egotism, and feel a little for the
parents who have felt so much for you! You rather like William Hope, so
let him help you to pity your own parents. See his sad face as he looks
at the love he is yet too unselfish to discourage. To save that tender
root, a sickly child, he transplanted it from his own garden, and still
tended it with loving care for many a year. Another gathers the flower.
He watched and tended and trembled over the tender nestling. The young
bird is trying her wings before his eyes; soon she will spread them, and
fly away to a newer nest and a younger bosom.
In this case, however, the young people had their troubles too, and their
pretty courtship was soon interrupted by an unwelcome and unexpected
visitor, who, as a rule, avoided that part, for the very reason that
Colonel Clifford frequented it. However, he came there to-day to speak to
Hope. Mr. Bartley, for he it was, would have caught the lovers if he had
come silently; but he was talking to a pitman as he came, and Mary's
quick ears heard his voice round the corner.
"Papa!" cried she. "Oh, don't let him see us! Hide!"
"Where?"
"Anywhere--in here--quick!" and she flew into Hope's workshop, which
indeed offered great facilities for hiding. However, to make sure, they
crouched behind the lathe and a huge plank of beautiful mahogany Hope was
very proud of.
As soon as they were hidden, Mary began to complain in a whisper. "This
comes of our clandestine m--. Our very life is a falsehood; concealment
is torture--and degradation."
"I don't feel it. I call this good fun."
"Oh, Walter! Good fun! For shame! Hush!"
Bartley bustled on to the green, called Hope out, and sat down in Colonel
Clifford's chair. Hope came to him, and Bartley, who had in his hand some
drawings of the strata in the coal mine, handed the book to Hope, and
said, "I quite agree with you. That is the seam to follow: there's a
fortune in it."
"Then you are satisfied with me?"
"More than satisfied."
"I have something to ask in return."
"I am not likely to say no, my good friend," was the cordial reply.
"Thank you. Well, then, there is an attachment between Mary and young
Clifford."
Bartley was on his guard directly.
"Her happiness is at stake. That gives me a right to interfere, and say,
'be kind to her.'"
"Am I not kind to her? Was any parent ever kinder? But I must be wise as
well as kind. Colonel Clifford can disinherit his son."
At this point the young people ventured to peep and listen, taking
advantage of the circumstance that both Hope and Bartley were at some
distance, with their backs turned to the workshop.
So they both heard Hope say,
"Withdraw your personal opposition to the match, and the other difficulty
can be got over. If you want to be kind to a young woman, it is no use
feeding her ambition and her avarice, for these are a man's idols. A
woman's is love."
Mary wafted the speaker a furtive kiss.
"To enrich that dear child after your death, thirty years hence, and
break her heart in the flower of her youth, is to be unkind to her; and
if you are unkind to her, our compact is broken."
"Unkind to her," said Bartley. "What male parent has ever been more kind,
more vigilant? Sentimental weakness is another matter. My affection is
more solid. Can I oblige you in anything that is business?"
"Mr. Bartley," said Hope, "you can not divert me from the more important
question: business is secondary to that dear girl's happiness. However, I
have more than once asked you to tell me who is the loser of that large
sum, which, as you and I have dealt with it, has enriched you and given
me a competence."
"That's my business," said Bartley, sharply, "for you never fingered a
shilling of it. So if the pittance I pay you for conducting my business
burns your pocket, why, send it to Rothschild."
And having made this little point, Bartley walked away to escape further
comment, and Hope turned on his heel and walked into his office, and out
at the back door directly, and proceeded to his duties in the mine; but
he was much displeased with Bartley, and his looks showed it.
The coast lay clear. The lovers came cautiously out, and silently too,
for what they had heard puzzled them not a little.
Mary came out first, and wore a very meditative look. She did not say a
word till they got to some little distance from the workshop. Then she
half turned her head toward Walter, who was behind her, and said, "I
suppose you know we have done a contemptible thing--listening?"
"Well," said Walter, "it wasn't good form; but," added he, "we could
hardly help it."
"Of course not," said Mary. "We have been guilty of a concealment that
drives us into holes and corners, and all manner of meannesses must be
expected to follow. Well, we _have_ listened, and I am very glad of it;
for it is plain we are not the only people who have got secrets. Now
tell me, please, what does it all mean?"
"Well, Mary," said Walter, "to tell the truth, it is all Greek to
me, except about the money. I think I could give a guess where that
came from."
"There, now!" cried Mary; "that is so like you gentlemen.
Money--money--money! Never mind the money part; leave that to take care
of itself. Can you explain what Mr. Hope said to papa about _me_? Mr.
Hope is a very superior man, and papa's adviser _in business_. But, after
all, he is in papa's employment. Papa _pays_ him. Then how comes he to
care more about my happiness than papa does--and say so?"
"Why, you begged him to intercede."
"Yes," said Mary, "but not to threaten papa; not to say, 'If you are
unkind to Mary, our compact is broken.'"
Then she pondered awhile; then she turned to Walter, and said:
"What sort of compact is that? A compact between a father and another
gentleman that a father shall not be unkind to his own daughter? Did you
ever hear of such a thing?"
"I can't say I ever did."
"Did you ever hear tell of such a thing?"
"Well, now you put it to me, I don't think I ever did."
"And yet you could run off about money. What's money! This compact is a
great mystery. It's my business from this hour to fathom that mystery.
Please let me think."
Mary's face now began to show great power and intensity; her eyes seemed
to veil themselves, and to turn down their glances inward.
Walter was struck with the intensity of that fair brow, those remarkable
eyes, and that beautiful face; they seemed now to be all strung up to
concert pitch. He kept silent and looked at his wife with a certain
reverence, for to tell the truth she had something of the Pythian
priestess about her, when she concentrated her whole mind on any one
thing in this remarkable manner. At last the oracle spoke:
"Mr. Hope has been deceiving me with some good intention. He pretends to
be subservient to papa, but he is the master. How he comes to be master I
don't know, but so it is, Walter. If it came to a battle royal, Mr. Hope
would side, not with papa, but with me."
"That's important, if true," said Walter, dryly.
"It's true," said Mary, "and it's important." Then she turned suddenly
round on him. "How did you feel when you ran into that workshop, and we
both crouched, and hid like criminals or slaves?"
"Well," said Walter, hanging his head, "to tell the truth, I took a comic
view of the business."
"I can't do that," said Mary. "I respect my husband, and can't bear him
to hide from the face of any mortal man; and I am proud of my own love,
and indignant to think that I have condescended to hide it."
"It is a shame," said Walter, "and I hope we sha'n't have to hide it
much longer. Oh, bother, how unfortunate! here's my father. What are
we to do?"
"I'll tell you," said Mary, resolutely. "You must speak to him at once,
and win him over to our side. Tell him Julia is going to marry Percy
Fitzroy on the first of next month, then tell him all that Mr. Hope said
you were to tell the lawyer, and then tell him what you have made me
believe, that you love me better than your life, and that I love you
better still; and that no power _can_ part us. If you can soften him, Mr.
Hope shall soften papa."
"But if he is too headstrong to be softened?" faltered Walter.
"Then," said Mary, "you must defy my papa, and I shall defy yours."
After a moment's thought she said: "Walter, I shall stay here till he
sees me and you together; then he won't be able to run off about his
mines, and his lawsuits, and such rubbishy things. His attention will be
attracted to our love, and so you will have it out with him, whilst I
retire a little way--not far--and meditate upon Mr. Hope's strange words,
and ponder over many things that have happened within my recollection."
True to this policy, the spirited girl waited till Colonel Clifford came
on the green, and then made Walter as perfect a courtesy as ever graced a
minuet at the court of Louis le Grand.
Walter took off his hat to her with chivalric grace and respect. Colonel
Clifford drew up in a stiff military attitude, which flavored rather of
the parade or the field of battle than the court either of the great
monarch or of little Cupid.