A Rent In A Cloud Part 17

"That is exactly the point on which I want your advice; for though I know well you are no friend to young Loyd, I believe you to be our sincere well-wisher, and that your judgment will be guided by the honest feelings of regard for us."

Without deigning to notice this speech, he arose and walked up and down the room apparently deep in thought He stopped at last, and said, abruptly, "I don't presume to dictate to you in this business; but if I were the young lady's guardian, and got such a letter as this, my reply would be a very brief one."

"You'd refuse your consent?"

"Of course I would! Must your niece turn adventuress, and go off to Heaven knows where, with G.o.d knows whom? Must she link her fortunes to a man who confessedly cannot face the world at home, but must go to the end of the earth for a bare subsistence? What is there in this man himself, in his character, station, abilities, and promise, that are to recompense such devotion as this? And what will your own conscience say to the first letter from India, full of depression and sorrow, regrets shadowed forth, if not avowed openly, for the happy days when you were all together, and contrasts of that time, with the dreary dulness of an uncheered existence? _I_ know something of India, and I can tell you it is a country where life is only endurable by splendour. Poverty in such a land is not merely privation, it is to live in derision and contempt.

Everyone knows how many rupees you have per month, and you are measured by your means in everything. That seven hundred a year, which sounds plausibly enough, is something like two hundred at home, if so much.

Of course you can override all these considerations, and, as the vicar says, 'Let the heart take precedence of the head.' _My_ cold and worldly counsels will not stand comparison with _his_ fine and generous sentiments, no more than I could make as good a figure in the pulpit as he could. But, perhaps, as a mere man of the world, I am his equal; though there are little significant hints in that very letter that show the old parson is very wide awake."

"I never detected them," said she, curtly.

"Perhaps not, but rely upon one thing. It was not such a letter as he would have addressed to a man. If _I_, for instance, had been the guardian instead of you, the whole tone of the epistle would have been very different."

"Do you think so?"

"Think so! I know it I had not read ten lines till I said to myself, 'This was meant for very different eyes from mine.'"

"If I thought that--"

"Go on," said he; "finish, and let me hear what you would say or do, when arrived at the conclusion I have come to."

So far, however, from having come to any decision, she really did not see in the remotest distance anything to guide her to one.

"What would you advise me to do, Mr. Calvert?" said she, at last, and after a pause of some time.

"Refer him to me; say the point is too difficult for you; that while your feelings for your niece might overbear all other considerations, those very feelings might be the sources of error to you. You might, for instance, concede too much to the claim of affection; or, on the other hand, be too regardful of the mere worldly consideration. Not that, on second thoughts, I'd enter upon this to him, I'd simply say a friend in whom I repose the fullest confidence, has consented to represent me in this difficult matter. Not swayed as I am by the claims of affection, he will be able to give a calmer and more dispa.s.sionate judgment than I could. Write to Mr. Calvert, therefore, who is now here, and say what the mere business aspect of the matter suggests to you to urge. Write to him frankly, as to one who already is known to your son, and has lived on terms of intimacy with him. His reply will be mine."

"Is not that a very cold and repelling answer to the good vicar's letter?"

"I think not, and I suspect it will have one good effect The parson's style will become natural at once, and you'll see what a very different fas.h.i.+on he'll write when the letter is addressed to me."

"What will Florence say?"

"Nothing, if she knows nothing. And, of course, if you intend to take her into your counsels, you must please to omit _me_. I'm not going to legislate for a young lady's future with herself to vote in the division!"

"But what's to become of me, if you go away in the middle of the negotiation, and leave me to finish it?"

"I'll not do so. I'll pledge my word to see you through it. It will be far shorter than you suspect. The vicar will not play out his hand when he sees his adversary. You have nothing to do but write as I have told you; leave the rest to me."

"Florence is sure to ask me what the vicar has written; she knows that I have had his letter."

"Tell her it is a purely business letter; that his son having been offered a colonial appointment, he wishes to ascertain what your fortune his, and how circ.u.mstanced, before pledging himself further. Shock her a little about their worldliness, and leave the remainder to time."

"But Joseph will write to her in the meanwhile and disabuse her of this."

"Not completely. She'll be annoyed that the news of the colonial place did not come first from himself; she'll be piqued into something not very far from distrust; she'll show some vexation when she writes; but don't play the game before the cards are dealt. Wait, as I say--wait and see. Meanwhile, give me the vicar's note, for I dread your showing it to Florry, and if she asks for it, say you sent it to Henderson--isn't that your lawyer's name?--in London, and told him to supply you with the means of replying to it."

Like a fly in a cobweb, Miss Grainger saw herself entangled wherever she turned, and though perhaps in her secret heart she regretted having ever called Calvert to her counsels, the thing was now done and could not be undone.

CHAPTER XII. DARKER AND DARKER.

THERE was an unusual depression at the villa each had his or her own load of anxiety, and each felt that an atmosphere of gloom was thickening around, and, without being able to say why or wherefore, that dark days were coming.

"Among your letters this morning was there none from the vicar, Mr.

Calvert?" asked Miss Grainger, as he sat smoking his morning cigar under the porch of the cottage.

"No," said he, carelessly. "The post brought me nothing of any interest A few reproaches from my friends about not writing, and relieving their anxieties about this unhappy business. They had it that I was killed--beyond that, nothing."

"But we ought to have heard from old Mr. Loyd before this. Strange, too, Joseph has not written."

"Stranger if he had! The very mention of my name as a referee in his affairs will make him very cautious with his pen."

"She is so fretted," sighed the old lady.

"I see she is, and I see she suspects, also, that you have taken me in your counsels. We are not as good friends as we were some time back."

"She really likes you, though--I a.s.sure you she does, Mr. Calvert. It was but t'other day she said, 'What would have become of us all this time back if Mad Harry--you know your nickname--if Mad Harry had not been here?'"

"That's not liking! That is merely the expression of a weak grat.i.tude towards the person who helps to tide over a dreary interval. You might feel it for the old priest who played piquet with you, or the Spitz terrier that accompanied you in your walks.

"Oh, it's far more than that. She is constantly talking of your great abilities--how you might be this, that and t'other. That, with scarcely an effort, you can master any subject, and without any effort at all always make yourself more agreeable than anyone else."

"Joseph excepted?"

"No, she didn't even except him; on the contrary, she said, 'It was unfortunate for him to be exposed to such a dazzling rivalry--that your animal spirits alone would always beat him out of the field.'"

"Stuff and nonsense! If I wasn't as much his superior in talent as in temperament, I'd fling myself over that rock yonder, and make an end of it!" After a few seconds' pause he went on: "She may think what she likes of _me_, but one thing is plain enough--she does not love _him_.

It is the sort of compa.s.sionating, commiserating estimate imaginative girls occasionally get up for dreary depressed fellows, const.i.tuting themselves discoverers of intellect that no one ever suspected--revealers of wealth that none had ever dreamed of. Don't I know scores of such who have poetised the most commonplace of men into heroes, and never found out their mistake till they married them!"

"You always terrify me when you take to predicting, Mr. Calvert"

"Heaven knows, it's not my ordinary mood. One who looks so little into the future for himself has few temptations to do so for his friends."

"Why do you feel so depressed?"

"I'm not sure that I do feel depressed. I'm irritable, out of sorts, annoyed if you will; but not low or melancholy. Is it not enough to make one angry to see such a girl as Florry bestow her affections on that--Well, I'll not abuse him, but you _know_ he is a 'cad'--that's exactly the word that fits him."

"It was no choice of mine," she sighed.

"That may be; but you ought to have been more than pa.s.sive in the matter. Your fears would have prevented you letting your niece stop for a night in an unhealthy locality. You'd not have suffered her to halt in the Pontine Marshes; but you can see no danger in linking her whole future life to influences five thousand times more depressing. I tell you, and I tell you deliberately, that she'd have a far better chance of happiness with a scamp like myself."

"Ah, I need not tell you my own sentiments on that point," said she, with a deep sigh.

Calvert apparently set little store by such sympathy, for he rose, and throwing away the end of his cigar, stood looking out over the lake.

"Here comes Onofrio, flouris.h.i.+ng some letters in his hand. The idiot fancies the post never brings any but pleasant tidings."