Put Yourself in His Place Part 89

"Dispense with his consent."

"Oh, Henry; and marry under my father's curse!"

"He could not curse you, if he love you half as well as I do; and if he does not, why sacrifice me, and perhaps my life, to him?"

"Henry, for pity's sake, think of some other way. Why this violent haste to get rich? Have a little patience. Mr. Raby will not always be abroad. Oh, pray give up Mr. Bolt, and go quietly on at peace with these dreadful Trades. You know I'll wait all my life for you. I will implore papa to let you visit me oftener. I will do all a faithful, loving girl can do to comfort you."

"Ay," said Henry, bitterly, "you will do anything but the one thing I ask."

"Yes, anything but defy my father. He is father and mother both to me.

How unfortunate we both are! If you knew what it costs me to deny you anything, if you knew how I long to follow you round the world--"

She choked with emotion, and seemed on the point of yielding, after all.

But he said, bitterly, "You long to follow me round the world, and you won't go a twelve-days' voyage with me to save my life. Ah, it is always so. You don't love me as poor Jael Dence loves me. She saved my life without my asking her; but you won't do it when I implore you."

"Henry, my own darling, if any woman on earth loves you better than I do, for G.o.d's sake marry her, and let me die to prove I loved you a little."

"Very well," said he, grinding his teeth. "Next week I leave this place with a wife. I give you the first offer, because I love you. I shall give Jael the second, because she loves me."

So then he flung out of the room, and left Grace Carden half fainting on the sofa, and drowned in tears.

But before he got back to the works he repented his violence, and his heart yearned for her more than ever.

With that fine sense of justice which belongs to love, he spoke roughly to Jael Dence.

She stared, and said nothing, but watched him furtively, and saw his eyes fill with tears at the picture memory recalled of Grace's pale face and streaming eyes.

She put a few shrewd questions, and his heart was so full he could not conceal the main facts, though he suppressed all that bore reference to Jael herself. She took Grace's part, and told him he was all in the wrong; why could not he go to America alone, and sell his patents, and then come back and marry Grace with the money? "Why drag her across the water, to make her quarrel with her father?"

"Why, indeed?" said Henry: "because I'm not the man I was. I have no manhood left. I have not the courage to fight the Trades, nor yet the courage to leave the girl I love so dearly."

"Eh, poor lad," said Jael, "thou hast courage enough; but it has been too sore tried, first and last. You have gone through enough to break a man of steel."

She advised him to go and make his submission at once.

He told her she was his guardian angel, and kissed her, in the warmth of his grat.i.tude; and he went back to Woodbine Villa, and asked Grace's forgiveness, and said he would go alone to the States and come back with plenty of money to satisfy Mr. Carden's prudence, and--

Grace clutched him gently with both hands, as if to hinder from leaving her. She turned very pale, and said, "Oh my heart!"

Then she laid her head on his shoulder, and wept piteously.

He comforted her, and said, "What is it? a voyage of twelve days! And yet I shall never have the courage to bid you good-by."

"Nor I you, my own darling."

Having come to this resolution, he was now seized with a fear that he would be a.s.sa.s.sinated before he could carry it out; to diminish the chances, he took up his quarters at the factory, and never went out at night. Attached to the works was a small building near the water-side.

Jael Dence occupied the second floor of it. He had a camp-bed set up on the first floor, and established a wire communication with the police office. At the slightest alarm he could ring a bell in Ransome's ear. He also clandestinely unscrewed a little postern door that his predecessors had closed, and made a key to the lock, so that if he should ever be compelled to go out at night he might baffle his foes, who would naturally watch the great gate for his exit.

With all this he became very depressed and moody, and alarmed Doctor Amboyne, who remembered his father's end.

The doctor advised him to go and see his mother for a day or two; but he shook his head, and declined.

A prisoner detained for want of bail is allowed to communicate with his friends, and Grotait soon let Hill know he was very angry with him for undertaking to do Little without orders. Hill said that the job was given him by Cole, who was Grotait's right-hand man, and Grotait had better bail him, otherwise he might be induced to tell tales.

Grotait let him stay in prison three days, and then sent two householders with the bail.

Hill was discharged, and went home. At dusk he turned out to find Cole, and tracing him from one public-house to another, at last lighted on him in company with Mr. Coventry.

This set him thinking; however, he held aloof till they parted; and then following Cole, dunned him for his twenty pounds.

Cole gave him five pounds on account. Hill grumbled, and threatened.

Grotait sent for both men, and went into a pa.s.sion, and threatened to hang them both if they presumed to attack Little's person again in any way. "It is the place I mean to destroy," said Grotait, "not the man."

Cole conveyed this to Coventry, and it discouraged him mightily, and he told Cole he should give it up and go abroad.

But soon after this some pressure or other was brought to bear on Grotait, and Cole, knowing this, went to him, and asked him whether Bolt and Little were to be done or not.

"It is a painful subject," said Grotait.

"It is a matter of life and death to us," said Cole.

"That is true. But mind--the place, and not the man." Cole a.s.sented, and then Grotait took him on to a certain bridge, and pointed out the one weak side of Bob and Little's fortress, and showed him how the engine-chimney could be got at and blown down, and so the works stopped entirely: "And I'll tell you something," said he; "that chimney is built on a bad foundation, and was never very safe; so you have every chance."

Then they chaffered about the price, and at last Grotait agreed to give him L20.

Cole went to Coventry, and told how far Grotait would allow him to go: "But," said he, "L20 is not enough. I run an even chance of being hung or lagged."

"Go a step beyond your instructions, and I'll give you a hundred pounds."

"I daren't," said Cole: "unless there was a chance to blow up the place with the man in it." Then, after a moment's reflection, he said: "I hear he sleeps in the works. I must find out where."

Accordingly, he talked over one of the women in the factory, and gained the following information, which he imparted to Mr. Coventry:

Little lived and slept in a detached building recently erected, and the young woman who had overpowered Hill slept in a room above him. She pa.s.sed in the works for his sweetheart, and the pair were often locked up together for hours at a time in a room called the "Experiment Room."

This information took Coventry quite by surprise, and imbittered his hatred of Little. While Cole was felicitating him on the situation of the building, he was meditating how to deal his hated rival a stab of another kind.

Cole, however, was single-minded in the matter; and the next day he took a boat and drifted slowly down the river, and scanned the place very carefully.

He came at night to Coventry, and told him he thought he might perhaps be able to do the trick without seeming to defy Grotait's instructions.

"But," said he, "it is a very dangerous job. Premises are watched: and, what do you think? they have got wires up now that run over the street to the police office, and Little can ring a bell in Ransome's room, and bring the bobbies across with a rush in a moment. It isn't as it was under the old chief constable; this one's not to be bought nor blinded.

I must risk a halter."

"You shall have fifty pounds more."