"I WILL NOT SELL THE FIRS."
On the morning after Arnold's arrival the squire called his daughter
into the south parlor.
"My love," he said, "I want a word with you."
As a rule Frances was very willing to have words with her father. She
was always patient and gentle and sweet with him; but she would have
been more than human if she had not cast some wistful glances into the
garden, where Philip was waiting for her. He and she also had something
to talk about that morning, and why did Fluff go out, and play those
bewitching airs softly to herself on the guitar? And why did she sing in
that wild-bird voice of hers? and why did Philip pause now and then in
his walk, as though he was listening--which indeed he was, for it would
be difficult for any one to shut their ears to such light and
harmonious sounds. Frances hated herself for feeling jealous. No--of
course she was not jealous; she could not stoop to anything so mean.
Poor darling little Fluff! and Philip, her true lover, who had remained
constant to her for ten long years.
With a smile on her lips, and the old look of patience in her steady
eyes, she turned her back to the window and prepared to listen to what
the squire had to say.
"The fact is, Frances--" he began. "Sit down, my dear, sit down; I hate
to have people standing, it fidgets me so. Oh! you want to be out with
that young man; well, Fluff will amuse him--dear little thing,
Fluff--most entertaining. Has a way of soothing a man's nerves, which
few women possess. You, my dear, have often a most irritating way with
you; not that I complain--we all have our faults. You inherit this
intense overwrought sort of manner from your mother, Frances."
Frances, who was standing absolutely quiet and still again, smiled
slightly.
"You had something to talk to me about," she said, in her gentlest of
voice.
"To be sure I had. I can tell you I have my worries--wonder I'm
alive--and since your mother died never a bit of sympathy do I get from
mortal. There, read that letter from Spens, and see what you make of it.
Impudent? uncalled for? I should think so; but I really do wonder what
these lawyers are coming to. Soon there'll be no distinctions between
man and man anywhere, when a beggarly country lawyer dares to write to a
gentleman like myself in that strain. But read the letter, Frances;
you'll have to see Spens this afternoon. _I'm_ not equal to it."
"Let me see what Mr. Spens says," answered Frances.
She took the lawyer's letter from the squire's shaking old fingers, and
opened it. Then her face became very pale, and as her eyes glanced
rapidly over the contents, she could not help uttering a stifled
exclamation.
"Yes, no wonder you're in a rage," said the squire. "The impudence of
that letter beats everything."
"But what does Mr. Spens mean?" said Frances. "He says here--unless you
can pay the six thousand pounds owing within three months, his client
has given him instructions to sell the Firs. What does he mean, father?
I never knew that we owed a penny. Oh, this is awful!"
"And how do you suppose we have lived?" said the squire, who was feeling
all that undue sense of irritation which guilty people know so well.
"How have we had our bread and butter? How has the house been kept up?
How have the wages been met? I suppose you thought that that garden of
yours--those vegetables and fruit--have kept everything going? That's
all a woman knows. Besides, I've been unlucky--two speculations have
failed--every penny I put in lost in them. Now, what's the matter,
Frances? You have a very unpleasant manner of staring."
"There was my mother's money," said Frances, who was struggling hard to
keep herself calm. "That was always supposed to bring in something over
two hundred pounds a year. I thought--I imagined--that with the help I
was able to give from the garden and the poultry yard that we--we lived
within our means."
Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. Fluff was playing "Sweethearts"
on her guitar, and Arnold was leaning with his arms folded against the
trunk of a wide-spreading oak-tree. Was he listening to Fluff, or
waiting for Frances? She felt like a person struggling through a
horrible nightmare.
"I thought we lived within our means," she said, faintly.
"Just like you--women are always imagining things. We have no means to
live on; your mother's money has long vanished--it was lost in that
silver mine in Peru. And the greater part of the six thousand pounds
lent by Spens has one way or another pretty nearly shared the same fate.
I've been a very unlucky man, Frances, and if your mother were here,
she'd pity me. I've had no one to sympathize with me since her death."
"I do, father," said his daughter. She went up and put her arms round
his old neck. "It was a shock, and I felt half stunned. But I fully
sympathize."
"Not that I am going to sell the Firs," said the squire, not returning
Frances's embrace, but allowing her to take his limp hand within her
own. "No, no; I've no idea of that. Spens and his client, whoever he is,
must wait for their money, and that's what you have got to see him
about, Frances. Come, now, you must make the best terms you can with
Spens--a woman can do what she likes with a man when she knows how to
manage."
"But what am I to say, father?"
"Say? Why, that's your lookout. Never heard of a woman yet who couldn't
find words. Say? Anything in the world you please, provided you give him
to clearly to understand that come what may I will not sell the Firs."
Frances stood still for two whole minutes. During this time she was
thinking deeply--so deeply that she forgot the man who was waiting
outside--she forgot everything but the great and terrible fact that,
notwithstanding all her care and all her toil, beggary was staring them
in the face.
"I will see Mr. Spens," she said at last, slowly: "it is not likely that
I shall be able to do much. If you have mortgaged the Firs to this
client of Mr. Spens, he will most probably require you to sell, in order
to realize his money; but I will see him, and let you know the result."
"You had better order the gig, then, and go now; he is sure to be in at
this hour. Oh, you want to talk to the man that you fancy is in love
with you; but lovers can wait, and business can't. Understand clearly,
once for all, Frances, that if the Firs is sold, I die."
"Dear father," said Frances--again she took his unwilling hand in
hers--"do you suppose I want the Firs to be sold? Don't I love every
stone of the old place, and every flower that grows here? If words can
save it, they won't be wanting on my part. But you know better than I do
that I am absolutely powerless in the matter."
She went out of the room, and the squire sat with the sun shining full
on him, and grumbled. What was a blow to Frances, a blow which half
stunned her in its suddenness and unexpectedness, had come gradually to
the squire. For years past he knew that while his daughter was doing her
utmost to make two ends meet--was toiling early and late to bring in a
little money to help the slender household purse--she was only
postponing an evil day which could never be averted. From the first,
Squire Kane in his own small way had been a speculator--never at any
time had he been a lucky one, and now he reaped the results.
After a time he pottered to his feet, and strolled out into the garden.
Frances was nowhere visible, but Arnold and Ellen were standing under a
shady tree, holding an animated conversation together.
"Here comes the squire," said Fluff, in a tone of delight. She flew to
his side, put her hand through his arm, and looked coaxingly and
lovingly into his face.
"I am so glad you are not asleep," she said. "I don't like you when you
fall asleep and get so red in the face; you frightened me last night--I
was terrified--I cried. Didn't I, Mr. Arnold?"
"Yes," replied Arnold, "you seemed a good deal alarmed. Do you happen to
know where your daughter is, Mr. Kane?"
"Yes; she is going into Martinstown on business for me. Ah, yes, Fluff,
you always were a sympathizing little woman." Here the squire patted the
dimpled hand; he was not interested in Philip Arnold's inquiries.
"If Frances is going to Martinstown, perhaps she will let me accompany
her," said Arnold. "I will go and look for her."
He did not wait for the squire's mumbling reply, but started off quickly
on his quest.
"Frances does want the gift of sympathy," said the squire, once more
addressing himself with affection to Ellen. "Do you know, Fluff, that I
am in considerable difficulty; in short, that I am going through just
now a terrible trouble--oh, nothing that you can assist me in, dear.
Still, one does want a little sympathy, and poor dear Frances, in that
particular, is sadly, painfully deficient."
"Are you really in great trouble?" said Fluff. She raised her eyes with
a look of alarm.
"Oh, I am dreadfully sorry! Shall I play for you, shall I sing
something? Let me bring this arm-chair out here by this pear-tree; I'll
get my guitar; I'll sing you anything you like--'Robin Adair,' or 'Auld
Robin Gray,' or 'A Man's a Man;' you know how very fond you are of
Burns."
"You are a good little girl," said the squire. "Place the arm-chair just
at that angle, my love. Ah, that's good! I get the full power of the sun
here. Somehow it seems to me, Fluff, that the summers are not half as
warm as they used to be. Now play 'Bonnie Dundee'--it will be a treat to
hear you."
Fluff fingered her guitar lovingly. Then she looked up into the wizened,
discontented face of the old man opposite to her.
"Play," said the squire. "Why don't you begin?"
"Only that I'm thinking," said the spoiled child, tapping her foot
petulantly. "Squire, I can't help saying it--I don't think you are quite
fair to Frances."
"Eh, what?" said Squire Kane, in a voice of astonishment.
"Highty-tighty, what next! Go on with your playing, miss."
"No, I won't! It isn't right of you to say she's not sympathetic."
"Not right of me! What next, I wonder! Let me tell you, Fluff, that
although you're a charming little chit, you are a very saucy one."
"I don't care whether I'm saucy or not. You ought not to be unfair to
Frances."
These rebellious speeches absolutely made the squire sit upright in his
chair.
"What do you know about it?" he queried.
"Because she is sympathetic; she has the dearest, tenderest, most
unselfish heart in the world. Oh, she's a darling! I love her!"
"Go on with your playing, Fluff," said the squire.
Two bright spots of surprise and anger burned on his cheeks, but there
was also a reflective look on his face.
Fluff's eyes blazed. Her fair cheeks crimsoned, and she tried to thunder
out a spirited battle march on her poor little guitar.