BOUGHT WITH A PRICE.
Ellen Carley was not allowed any time to take back the promise given to
her father, had she been inclined to do so. Mr. Whitelaw made his
appearance at the Grange early in the evening of the 2nd of January, with
a triumphant simper upon his insipid countenance, which was inexpressibly
provoking to the unhappy girl. It was clear to her, at first sight of
him, that her father had been at Wyncomb that afternoon, and her hateful
suitor came secure of success. His wooing was not a very romantic episode
in his commonplace existence. He did not even attempt to see Ellen alone;
but after he had been seated for about half-an-hour in the
chimney-corner, nestling close to the fire in a manner he much affected,
being of a particularly chilly temperament, given to shiver and turn blue
on the smallest provocation, he delivered himself solemnly of the
following address:--
"I make no doubt, Miss Carley, that you have taken notice for some time
past of my sentiments towards yourself. I have never made any secret of
those sentiments, neither have I talked much about them, not being a man
of many words. I used to fancy myself the very reverse of a marrying man,
and I don't say but what at this moment I think the man who lives and
dies a bachelor does the wisest for his own comfort and his own
prosperity. But we are not the masters of our feelings, Miss Carley. You
have growed upon me lately somehow, so that I've got not to care for my
life without you. Ask Mrs. Tadman if my appetite hasn't fell off within
this last six months to a degree that has frightened her; and a man of my
regular habits must be very far gone in love, Miss Carley, when his
appetite forsakes him. From the time I came to know you as a young woman,
in the bloom of a young woman's beauty, I said to myself, 'That's the
girl I'll marry, and no other.' Your father can bear me out in that, for
I said the same to him. And finding that I had his approval, I was
satisfied to bide my time, and wait till you came round to the same way
of thinking. Your father tells me yesterday afternoon, and again this
afternoon, that you have come round to that way of feeling. I hope he
hasn't deceived me, Miss Carley."
This was a very long speech for Stephen Whitelaw. It was uttered in
little gasps or snatches of speech, the speaker stopping at the end of
every sentence to take breath.
Ellen Carley sat on that side of the comfortable round table most remote
from Mr. Whitelaw, deadly pale, with her hands clasped before her. Once
she lifted her eyes with a piteous look to her father's face; but he was
smoking his pipe solemnly, with his gaze fixed upon the blazing logs in
the grate, and contrived not to see that mute despairing appeal. He had
not looked at his daughter once since Stephen Whitelaw's arrival, nor had
he made any attempt to prepare her for this visit, this rapid
consummation of the sacrifice.
"Come, Miss Carley," said the former rather impatiently, after there had
been a dead silence of some minutes, "I want to get an answer direct from
your own lips. Your father hasn't been deceiving me, has he?"
"No," Ellen said in a low voice, almost as if the reply were dragged from
her by some physical torture. "If my father has given you a promise for
me, I will keep it. But I don't want to deceive you, on my part, Mr.
Whitelaw," she went on in a somewhat firmer tone. "I will be your wife,
since you and my father have settled that it must be so; but I can
promise no more than that. I will be dutiful and submissive to you as a
wife, you may be sure--only----"
Mr. Whitelaw smiled a very significant smile, which implied that it would
be his care to insure his wife's obedience, and that he was troubled by
no doubts upon that head.
The bailiff broke-in abruptly at this juncture.
"Lord bless the girl, what need is there of all this talk about what she
will be and what she won't be? She'll be as good a wife as any woman in
England, I'll stake my life upon that. She's been a good daughter, as all
the world knows, and a good daughter is bound to make a good wife. Say no
more about it, Nell. Stephen Whitelaw knows he'll make no bad bargain in
marrying you."
The farmer received this remark with a loud sniff, expressive of offended
dignity.
"Very likely not, William Carley," he said; "but it isn't every man that
can make your daughter mistress of such a place as Wyncomb; and such men
as could do it would look for money with a wife, however young and pretty
she might be. There's two sides to a bargain, you see, William, and I
should like things to be looked at in that light between you and me."
"You've no call to take offence, Steph," answered the bailiff with a
conciliating grin. "I never said you wasn't a good match for my girl; but
a pretty girl and a prudent clever housekeeper like Nell is a fortune in
herself to any man."
"Then the matter's settled, I suppose," said Mr. Whitelaw; "and the
sooner the wedding comes off the better, to my mind. If my wife that is
to be wants anything in the way of new clothes, I shall be happy to put
down a twenty-pound note--or I'd go as far as thirty--towards 'em."
Ellen shook her head impatiently.
"I want nothing new," she said; "I have as many things as I care to
have."
"Nonsense, Nell," cried her father, frowning at her in a significant
manner to express his disapproval of this folly, and in so doing looking
at her for the first time since her suitor's advent. "Every young woman
likes new gowns, and of course you'll take Steph's friendly offer, and
thank him kindly for it. He knows that I'm pretty hard-up just now, and
won't be able to do much for you; and it wouldn't do for Mrs. Whitelaw of
Wyncomb to begin the world with a shabby turn-out."
"Of course not," replied the farmer; "I'll bring you the cash to-morrow
evening, Nell; and the sooner you buy your wedding-gown the better.
There's nothing to wait for, you see. I've got a good home to take you
to. Mother Tadman will march, of course, between this and my wedding-day.
I sha'n't want her when I've a wife to keep house for me."
"Of course not," said the bailiff. "Relations are always dangerous about
a place--ready to make mischief at every hand's turn."
"O, Mr. Whitelaw, you won't turn her out, surely--your own flesh and
blood, and after so many years of service. She told me how hard she had
worked for you."
"Ah, that's just like her," growled the farmer. "I give her a comfortable
home for all these years, and then she grumbles about the work."
"She didn't grumble," said Ellen hastily. "She only told me how
faithfully she had served you."
"Yes; that comes to the same thing. I should have thought you would have
liked to be mistress of your house, Nell, without any one to interfere
with you."
"Mrs. Tadman is nothing to me," answered Ellen, who had been by no means
prepossessed by that worthy matron; "but I shouldn't like her to be
unfairly treated on my account."
"Well, we'll think about it, Nell; there's no hurry. She's worth her
salt, I daresay."
Mr. Whitelaw seemed to derive a kind of satisfaction from the utterance
of his newly-betrothed's Christian name, which came as near the rapture
of a lover as such a sluggish nature might be supposed capable of. To
Ellen there was something hideous in the sound of her own name spoken by
those hateful lips; but he had a sovereign right so to address her, now
and for evermore. Was she not his goods, his chattels, bought with a
price, as much as a horse at a fair?
That nothing might be wanting to remind her of the sordid bargain, Mr.
Whitelaw drew a small canvas bag from his pocket presently--a bag which
gave forth that pleasant chinking sound that is sweet to the ears of so
many as the music of gold--and handed it across the hearth to William
Carley.
"I'm as good as my word, you see," he said with a complacent air of
patronage. "There's the favour you asked me for; I'll take your IOU for
it presently, if it's all the same to you--as a matter of form--and to be
given back to you upon my wedding-day."
The bailiff nodded assent, and dropped the bag into his pocket with a
sigh of relief. And then the two men went on smoking their pipes in the
usual stolid way, dropping out a few words now and then by way of social
converse; and there was nothing in Mr. Whitelaw's manner to remind Ellen
that she had bound herself to the awful apprenticeship of marriage
without love. But when he took his leave that night he approached her
with such an evident intention of kissing her as could not be mistaken by
the most inexperienced of maidens. Poor Ellen indulged in no girlish
resistance, no pretty little comedy of alarm and surprise, but
surrendered her pale lips to the hateful salute with the resignation of a
martyr. It was better that she should suffer this than that her father
should go to gaol. That thought was never absent from her mind. Nor was
this sacrifice to filial duty quite free from the leaven of selfishness.
For her own sake, as much as for her father's, Ellen Carley would have
submitted to any penalty rather than disgrace. To have him branded as a
thief must needs be worse suffering than any life-long penance she might
endure in matrimony. To lose Frank Randall's love was less than to let
him learn her father's guilt.
"The daughter of a thief!" she said to herself. "How he would despise
himself for having ever loved me, if he knew me to be that!"