The White Virgin Part 19

Great heavens, what a sum!"

"Yes, and in her husband's trust," said the old lawyer, with a tender, paternal smile, as he advanced to Janet, held out his hands, and she nestled with a sob to him, the old family friend, upon whose knee she had sat as a child scores of times. "Hah!" sighed the old man, patting her shoulder gently, "a woman grown, Janet, but still only the little girl to me. Bless you, my dear! May you be very happy!"

"Happy!" she moaned, as Jessop engaged fiercely in conversation with some of the old family friends, and Clive stood silent and watchful, fighting against the horrible despair in his breast.

"Yes, happy, my dear--eh, Doctor? We old fellows grow to think that death when it comes is not a horror, but a restful ending to a busy life, if we go down to the quiet grave loving and beloved, honoured, too, by all our friends."

There was a subdued murmur of approval here, for the old lawyer had looked round as he spoke.

"Come, come, wipe those pretty eyes."

"I tell you I will," cried Jessop fiercely; and he wrenched himself away from an elderly man who tried to restrain him.

"Oh, Jessop, Jessop," sighed Janet, as she shrank from the lawyer's arms, and then hurriedly turned her head away as she met Clive's searching eyes.

"But I tell you, you haven't a leg to stand on, man."

"Then, curse it!" cried Jessop, "I'll fight on crutches. It's a false will, got out of the old man when he was imbecile. He would never have invented it himself."

"What!" cried the Doctor warmly; and Janet burst into tears.

"I say it's all a made-up, blackguardly concoction, schemed by my smug, smooth brother, who has always been fighting against me. Miner-- underminer he ought to be called. But it shan't stand. I'll throw the whole thing into Chancery, and fight it year after year till there isn't a penny left."

"And you have been shut up in a lunatic asylum, and the best place for you," said the Doctor angrily.

"Oh, now you've begun," cried Jessop, with quite a snarl. "You think your child's going to have a hundred thousand, do you, and that you will be able to have your coin all to yourself."

"Jessop," began Clive excitedly.

"No, no, my dear boy," said the lawyer, "there must be no brotherly quarrel. It is so unseemly at a time like this. Let me try and settle it."

"What, make terms?" cried Jessop. "No; those are for me to make, for I've got the whip hand of you, and you shall beg to me if all the old man's cursed money is not to go to the lawyers. Now, then, what have you to say?"

"Oh, Jessop, Jessop," whispered Janet, laying her hand upon his arm.

"Will you be silent, fool!" cried Jessop, seizing her by the wrist, and giving her a rough shake.

He had gone too far. Clive uttered a cry of rage, and flew to save the woman he loved from this indignity, but, as he dashed forward, his brother, with a mocking laugh, full of triumphant pride, s.n.a.t.c.hed the yielding girl to his breast, and held her there.

"No, you don't," he said coolly: "not you, my clever schemer. You can't hit a man through his wife."

"What!" cried Clive wildly.

"Yes, father-in-law," said Jessop, turning to the Doctor. "I am fighting for our legacy. Janet and I were married three days ago, and this is part of our honeymoon."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

AT DINNER.

"Hold your tongue, boy! Don't contradict me. You're not to think because your father is dead that you are going to do just as you like.

Try some more of that claret; it's very good. There were only fifty dozen of it, and your father and I shared the lot. I suppose you've got some of it left in the cellar--your cellar. Dear, dear! poor old Grantham, what a change! There, fill up your gla.s.s. That won't hurt you. I say it as a medical man. That's wine that maketh glad the heart of man; and one needs it now, for homes desolate enough. The miserable jade!"

"It was not her fault," said Clive sadly.

"What! I say it was her fault, so don't you defend her. Confound you, sir, I know you've grown into a big, ugly, consequential fellow; but recollect this, sir, I consider I take your father's place now he's gone. I'm the first man who ever held you in his hands. Didn't I vaccinate you, and bring you through half-a-dozen miserable little baby disorders? You are Clive Reed, mine-owner and rich man to the world; but you are only the squalling brat and scrubby boy, sir, to me."

The Doctor tossed off a gla.s.s of his rich claret, and then swung himself round in his chair.

"Don't take any notice of what I say, boy. I'm not myself."

Clive rose from his chair and went and laid his hand upon the Doctor's shoulder, to have it seized and held.

"My dear old friend!" he said, in a low voice.

"Thank you, my boy, thank you. G.o.d bless you! I seem to have no one but you--now she's gone. Clive, my lad, I'll tell you. I came back here after the funeral and went into the drawing-room, and I turned her picture with its face to the wall, after I'd cursed her like old fathers used to do in the plays when I was a boy. I said I cast her off for ever; and then I sat down in my chair, and did what I hadn't done since her mother, my poor dear wife, died. I cried, boy, like a little child.

For it seemed as if she was dead too--dead and gone--and I had suddenly turned into a disappointed, lonely old man."

"And then you turned the picture back, and owned to yourself that you loved her very dearly still, as I do, sir. For we cannot tear our affections up by the roots like that."

"I did, Clive, my boy, I did; for you are right. I know too now that it's my own fault, for I spoiled and indulged her. She was left to me almost a child, motherless, and I began to treat her at once as a woman.

I let her have her own way in everything, and she grew up pettish and jealous, and ready to resent every check. Times and times, when I've offended her, has she gone right off on a visit, just to annoy me, and show how independent she was. But there! it's all over now."

"Yes," said Clive softly, "it's all over now."

"And how I used to reckon upon it all!" continued the Doctor. "You two married, and the little children springing up--hers and yours, boy, to make my old life young again. But it's all over. I won't say I'll never see her again, but I've done with her; and as for that miserable, cunning, unprincipled scoundrel, how long will it be before he's laid up with D.T., or something worse--if there is anything worse? I'll go and attend him gratis, and pay for his funeral afterwards with pleasure."

"No, no, not you," said Clive quietly.

"I will, sir; I shall consider it a duty to that poor girl to make her a widow as soon as possible, so that she may live in peace and repent."

Clive shook his head.

"The man she loves," he said softly.

"She doesn't; she can't love such a scoundrel. The brainless, little, thoughtless idiot! She believed all that of you directly, and ran off to marry the blackguard who has been trying for weeks to undermine you, so as to get my money. Why, I find he has been constantly coming here to see her, and she in her vanity played with him--a little coquette-- played with the confounded serpent, till he wound round and stung her."

Clive hung his head.

"And all the time you and I would have been ready to knock the man down who had dared to suggest that she was trifling with you. Bah! they're a poor, weak, pitiful lot, the women, Clive. I've doctored enough of them to know all their little weaknesses, my lad. A poor, pitiful lot!"

"Do you think so?" said Clive quietly.

"Well, some of them. But, by jingo, boy, what a punishment for the designing scoundrel. He had heard poor old Grantham let drop that he had put Janet--I mean that girl--down for a big sum, and he played for it--gambled. He meant that. By jingo! his face when he found he had lost! I'm going to let you know, too, what I have done."

"What have you done?" said Clive, rather anxiously.

"Made a new will, sir, and had the old one burned before my eyes. I've gone on saving for that girl, and the money's hers, and she shall have it when I die; but he shan't. I went to old Belton, told him what I wanted, and he went into it _con amore_, for he dislikes Master Jessop consumedly. He says it's a natural reversion--the harking back to a bad strain that once got into the Reed blood."

"But what did you do?" said Clive.