STILL WATERS RUN DEEP.
"This little maxim, for my sake,
I pray you be believing:
The truest pleasures that we take
Are those that we are giving."
DIBDIN.
For more than twenty years, dating back from the time our story
commenced, Richards had been a partner in the firm of Griffiths, Keane,
and Co.; yet although he was almost every day in the company of Mr.
Keane, he could neither love nor respect him. Perhaps had he been less
with him he might have respected him more. But he knew him too well;
knew him to be Keane by name and keen by nature--avaricious, grasping,
and miserly in the extreme, and for the sake of adding to his stores of
gold, very far indeed from scrupulous. His niggardly habits had
undoubtedly hurried his wife to her grave, when Gerty was little more
than a baby, and she was left to the tender mercies of a nurse and
governess. In the transaction of his business Richards was constantly at
his partner's home, and usually stayed to dine; but for the sake of the
child Gerty, he made many and many a visit to the house after her
mother's death, when he had no real business to transact. "Poor little
mite!" he thought; "she is so lonely, and she sees no one; has no one to
love save her father, to whom she is merely 'the child.'"
It used to vex poor great-hearted Richards to the core to hear Keane
snap out, "Take away that child; it's troublesome."
"Nay, nay," Richards would say, lifting the mite from the hearth-rug to
his knee, "let me have the darling a minute."
"Richards, you're a fool!" Keane would growl.
And with one arm round her protector's neck, her cheeks wet with tears,
the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural
father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories
he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered
heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a
boy in reality, as he was in his heart of hearts!
But the psychical mystery is how she could have come to love her father
so. Yes, as the reader already knows, she did love him, and love him to
that extent that she was willing to sacrifice her own happiness to his
ambition, and marry a man whom she loathed if she did actually not
detest.
A bachelor, with no expenses worth naming, Richards had saved quite a
small fortune in his time; and when he came to find out that Keane was
going positively to sell his daughter to the worn-out _roué_ Sir Digby,
that for his own advancement he might see her ere long a lord's wife,
Richards thumped his fist down on his desk--he was alone at the
time--till even the big ink-bottle leaped an inch up from the table.
"I'll save that darling child," he had said, "if I spend every penny I
have earned, and lose my life into the bargain."
He smiled to himself a moment after.
"Everything is fair in love and war," he said: "I'll play a game. The
cause is good. Yes, Jack Mackenzie, my open-hearted, frank, brave boy,
you shall marry Gerty. I have said it--you--_shall_."
He laughed aloud next minute at his own enthusiasm.
"What a capital actor I should have made!" he thought. "How beautifully
I could have done heavy fathers!"
Still waters run deep, and Richards was astute, though perhaps he did
not look it. So he began at once to shuffle his cards for the game he
was about to play--a game which he rightly judged was to be one of life
or death. For he shuddered to think of the living death to which the
selfishness of her miserly, ambitious father intended condemning Gerty.
"My baby, bless her sweet face," he added, "shall never marry that
bleach-eyed old Digby."
Then he shut his ledger with a bang, and went for a walk in the park,
where he could think. But the Mackenzies would lose the fine old house
and property called Grantley Hall. Keane would assuredly foreclose. Then
the place would be Keane's or Gerty's, it was much the same. Keane
really meant it to be Sir Digby's and Gerty's, while he, Keane, should
live and be honoured and respected there--his son-in-law a lord.
Richards thought he must try by hook or by crook to prevent his partner
from foreclosing, if only for the following reason: if Grantley Hall
once passed into Keane's hands, much though Gerty and Jack loved each
other, the latter, being a Mackenzie and a Scot, would be far too proud
to propose marriage, seeing that in doing so his desires might be
misconstrued, and people would naturally say he was simply marrying back
his own property.
The general had told his children that Keane was his only creditor. Yes,
because in order to make sure of the estate, the old lawyer had bought
up all the others. He could thus come down upon the brave but reckless
Scottish soldier, like an avalanche from a mountain's brow.
The day had almost arrived for Keane's foreclosing. The family had
already left Grantley Hall, taking little with them save the family
jewellery, pictures, and nick-nacks. Flora had gone to Torquay, Jack was
in town, and his father preparing to resume his sword, and once more
fight for his country. The eventful morning itself came round. Keane was
early at his office. He was in an unusually happy frame of mind. Yet
perhaps he had a few slight "stoun's" of conscience, for over and over
again he talked to Richards, bringing up the subject next his heart, and
excusing himself.
"I had to do it--I had to do it," he said. "Pity for the poor
Mackenzies. But the general was so improvident, and what could I do?"
"Most improvident," replied Richards, smiling quietly over his ledger
nevertheless.
As the day wore away, Keane fidgeted more and more, and often looked at
the clock. "Another hour," he said, half aloud, "only another hour."
Richards looked at the clock too, and he often glanced uneasily towards
the door.
What was going to happen?
"Only half-an-hour." This from Keane.
"You seem pleased," said Richards dryly.
Rat, tat--bang, bang, at the office door.
Both men looked up; Richards with a sigh of relief, Keane with gray face
and flashing eyes.
Enter a tall, good-looking clerk, hat in one hand, a bundle of papers in
the other. He was a stranger to Keane.
"_Re_ the mortgage on estate of General Grant Mackenzie, I've come to
pay it off."
Old Keane grew grayer and grayer in face, and foam appeared on his lips.
He could not speak.
Richards slipped out and away.
He went out, and went down the street, positively laughing aloud, so
that people turned smilingly round to look after him.
And to pay this mortgage off, the honest fellow had put down the bulk
of his fortune, and borrowed thousands besides. The property of Grantley
Hall was now virtually his; but _he_ would not foreclose, and the
Mackenzies should know nothing about it, for a time at all events.
Richards had played his first card, and it was a strong one.
He went straight off now to see "his baby," and to continue the fairy
story which he had commenced at Grantley Hall.
He saw some one else--he saw Mary. Mary was his first lieutenant. It was
she who summoned him that evening at the Hall when he entered the room
just as Sir Digby was about to propose.
A good girl, Mary, and devoted to her "missus." She could keep a secret,
too, and she could keep Richards posted, lest Sir Digby should steal a
march upon them.
But time had rolled on, as we know. There were wars and rumours of wars,
disaffection at home and threatened revolution, and last, but not least,
as far as our story goes, Sir Digby had been ill, and at the point of
death. Keane also had been abroad for his health, and with him his
daughter, so that the evil day was postponed.
Evil days have a disagreeable habit of coming, nevertheless, in spite of
all we can do.
* * * * *
Slowly and sadly, with rent rigging and battered hull, the _Tonneraire_
staggered home. She is in Plymouth Sound at last. Letters and papers
come off to the ship. Jack Mackenzie, sitting alone by his open port,
turns eagerly to a recent copy of the _Times_. Almost the first notice
that attracts his attention runs thus: "Marriage of Sir Digby Auld and
Miss Gertrude"--he sees no more. His head swims. The wind seizes the
paper, as if in pity, and carries it far astern of the ship.
He feels utterly crushed and broken, and head and hands droop helplessly
on the table before him.