A HEAVY FATHER
'Now, Jane, let me understand this about Muriel. You say she is at
present engaged in a grand love affair with some young hopeful or
other.'
'Yes, Henry. Frank Hay is a very good-looking, clever,
well-behaved young man. He has taken one of the big bursaries in
Glasgow University, and looks forward to a professorship
somewhere. These prospects are rather mediocre, especially in
connection with a Chartres; but neither William nor I would have
said a word against him were he not a foundling.'
'A foundling! How very interesting! An actual foundling.'
'O, there's nothing unusual about his case. I forget the exact
details, but they differ in no essential from what we are
accustomed to in stories.'
'That's rather unfortunate. I should have liked everything
connected with these events to have the same characteristic as the
main circumstance, distinct novelty.'
'What do you mean, Henry? Muriel is right in thinking you
curiously changed.'
'Does she think so? Well; I should have stuck by my original
determination, and gone to bed; but I felt so invigorated after
dinner, that I thought we might as well have a talk over matters
this evening.'
'Yes,' said Miss Jane, dryly, prodding Lee all over with her
piercing eyes.
'Do you think,' she queried, 'we did right in forbidding Muriel to
have any communication with Mr. Hay?'
'Well, my dear sister, you must see that the question of right
hardly enters here. It is purely a matter of adapting means to an
end. Should the course you have followed, as in the case of a pair
of high-spirited lovers, be calculated to lead to strained
relations, and produce, say, an elopement, I should be inclined to
support you; as, although shorn of much of its romance in these
days of railways and telegraphs, there is always a measure of
excitement to be got out of a runaway match.'
Miss Jane meditated for several seconds; and hopefully came to the
conclusion that her brother had developed a satirical tendency,
which he gratified in this recondite fashion. She made no reply.
Lee resumed.
'I think you had better send Muriel to me. I would like to have a
talk with her alone.'
'Very well,' said Miss Jane curtly, and left the room.
It was the library in which Lee sat. He had arrived with Briscoe
about six o'clock, just as the Snell household were sitting down
to dinner. Four was the usual dinner hour, but it had been put off
till five and then till six--to the anger and horror of the
cook--in the hope that Mr. Chartres would be there to preside.
Both Lee and Briscoe imagined that the dinner had gone off to
admiration. The latter, taking advantage of his rollicking
character, was now roving about the rooms, helping himself to many
little valuables. After securing all the money Lee was possessed
of, which he might manage to do that evening, he saw a fair chance
of getting away with his booty, out of immediate danger, and
before the arrival of Chartres, whom he half-expected to find in
every room he entered. He knew that Caroline would not wait for
his return if her charge recovered sufficiently to travel, but
would start with him at once; and while she might be able to make
terms for her crazy husband, some stout menservants and a
duck-pond suggested anything but a pleasant ending to his own
share in the adventure. After Miss Jane had left the library, Lee,
with a most placid expression, walked across the room once or
twice, and sat down to wait for Muriel. In a second or two the
door opened, and Mr. Dempster appeared. This gentleman had been
left to himself since dinner, and was searching for Miss Jane.
'I beg your pardon, sir,' he said, looking the very picture of a
square man in a round hole. 'I thought Miss Chartres was here.'
'Come in, come in, Mr. Dempster,' said Lee, blandly. 'Is it my
daughter or my sister you wish to see?'
'Your sister, sir.'
'I expect them both here in a few minutes. Take a seat.'
Dempster gathered his coat-tails on either side with as much
tenderness and delicacy as if they had been growing out of him and
were recovering from rheumatism, and sat down on the very edge of
a chair, crowding himself together as if he had consisted of
several people.
'I hope I don't intrude,' said Dempster, with the spiral motion of
his head. He was always more uncomfortable and serpentine than
usual in the presence of strangers.
'Not at all.'
Lee said to himself, 'This is a millionaire; and I am an
adventurer--Fortune is a mistress of irony.'
A smile peculiar to him, and childish in its unconcealed
expression of pleasure, passed over his face. Then he said
brusquely, but with perfect good humour, 'Do you think much, Mr.
Dempster?'
'Think!' exclaimed Mr. Dempster, throwing his head back in a
convolution which a burlesque actor would have paid highly to
learn the trick of.
'Yes, think,' repeated Lee, with his happy, innocent smile.
'I--I can't say I do,' said Dempster, perspiring profusely.
'I--I,' he continued making a wholly ineffectual effort to
laugh--'I--eh--ah--haven't given the subject much attention.
But----'
'Exactly, Mr. Dempster, I understand. I have often thought by the
way, that you unlucky fellows who inherit your money, can't enjoy
it so well as we who have wrought for it.'
Now, if there was one thing Dempster objected to more than
another, it was to be hurried about from subject to subject. He
had just got his mind focussed to the consideration of Lee's first
question, when a new distance intervened, and--he saw men as trees
walking. But he must make some reply.
'No--no,' he said. 'We can't. I--I think we can't. Eh--ah----'
'Eh--ah,' the favourite expletive of the orator, was frequently
employed by Dempster with a solemn pathos inexpressibly touching.
Lee almost relented at the overpowering sadness of its utterance
on this occasion: but the baiting of a millionaire was as novel as
any of his present manifold pleasures, and he continued it.
'I suppose now,' he said, 'you would like to work hard at
something or other. Most idle men would.'
Dempster rubbed his knees with vehemence, anxious, doubtless, to
get himself into an electric condition which would enable him to
overcome the insane disposition he felt to fall forward at Lee's
feet. He succeeded in producing so much of the positive fluid as
to fall back instead of forward; but all he could manage to say
was, 'I suppose I would.'
'I have often wondered,' said Lee, whose smile was beginning to be
warped by malice, 'why rich men don't commit burglaries and
homicides in order to obtain terms of hard labour. It would be
such an absolute change for them; _ennui_ would hide its head.'
It is impossible to say what ultimate effect this remarkable
suggestion would have had upon Dempster, for the paralysis which
it caused to begin with was suddenly cured by a tap--a shrinking,
single tap on the door, preceding the entrance of Muriel. Dempster
took the opportunity of escaping in a thoroughly graceless manner.
When the door had closed again, Lee said to Muriel, who remained
standing, 'Do you not find me exactly what you expected?'
She looked hard at him. It was on her lips to tell him that she
thought him very unlike his letters; but she merely said, 'You are
not like your photographs.'
'No; they were generally thought good in India.'
'O, anyone could tell for whom they were meant.'
'Of course. My appearance has changed since I last sat to a
photographer. Sit down, Muriel; I wish to have some serious
conversation with you.'
Muriel sat down on a couch. Her eyes were twinkling, and the blood
danced into her cheeks.
'I have learned from your aunt,' said Lee, who was just a little
too portentously grave, 'that there exists a romantic attachment
between a certain Mr. Frank Hay and you. I understand you are
firmly persuaded that you and this gentleman love each other with
an unchangeable love. I will grant that Mr. Hay is a handsome,
high-spirited young man. I do not remember to have seen him; but I
give my daughter credit for not falling in love with a booby. I
admit that first love is the most ecstatically delightful thing in
the world. I say, I subscribe to all that and as much more as you
like in the same strain; but--' and here he became very severe--'I
have to inform you that from this day you must cease to see, or
correspond with Mr. Frank Hay.'
'O father!'
Lee, enjoying his power, and as much a spectator of the scene as
an actor in it, continued coldly, 'It will be hard I know; but
your friends have acted very wisely in coming between you. Girls
should never be allowed to choose husbands, and never are in
well-regulated families. You may think me plain-spoken and harsh,
perhaps; but I have a habit of coming to the point; and, notice,
of never returning to it. The matter is settled.'
'But, sir----'
'What! have I not said it is settled? I do not mean, however, to
do you out of a husband.'
Muriel shivered, and her face became white.
'My friend, Mr. Briscoe, who saved my life is still a young man;
and I intend to have him for a son-in-law.'
Lee's eyes dilated with exultation. His novel was going to turn
out a masterpiece.
'Marry Mr. Briscoe!'
'It rests with him,' said Lee.
'What! Your daughter must marry this Mr. Briscoe if he wants her,
whether she likes or not?'
'I am glad,' said Lee in a truly regal style, 'that you apprehend
the matter so clearly.'
'I am bewildered,' said Muriel.
'You seem to be; but it is wise of you not to object. I hope to
find you always a dutiful daughter.'
Lee left the room. A time-piece on the mantelshelf rang eight. The
blood returned to Muriel's cheeks, and she ran out of the house to
the north wall.