Hard Cash

He himself strolled in the opposite direction, not to seem to be watching her.

He was in good spirits: felt like a general, who, after repulsing many desperate attacks successfully, orders an advance, and sees the tide of battle roll away from his bayonets. His very body seemed elastic, indomitable; he walked l.u.s.tily out into the country, sniffed the perfumed hedges, and relished life. To be sure he could not walk away from all traces of his misdeeds; he fell in with objects that to an ordinary sinner might have spoiled the walk, and even marred the spring-time. He found his creditor Maxley with grizzly beard and bloodshot eyes, belabouring a milestone; and two small boys quizzing him, and pelting him with mud: and soon after he met his creditor, old Dr. Phillips, in a cart, coming back to Barkington to end his days there, at the almshouse. But to our triumphant Bankrupt and Machiavel these things were literally nothing: he paced complacently on, and cared no more for either of those his wrecks than the smiling sea itself seems to care for the dead s.h.i.+ps and men it washed ash.o.r.e a week ago.

He came home before luncheon for his gossip with Jane; but she had not returned. All the better; her budget would be the larger.

To while the time he got his file of the _Times,_ and amused himself noting down the fluctuations in Peruvian bonds.

While thus employed he heard a loud knock at his door, and soon after Peggy's voice and a man's in swift collision. Hasty feet came along the pa.s.sage, the parlour door opened, and a young man rushed in pale as ashes, and stared at him; he was breathless, and his lips moved, but no sound came.

It was Edward Dodd.

Mr. Hardie rose like a tower and manned himself to repulse this fresh a.s.sault.

The strange visitor gasped out, "You are wanted at our house."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

JANE HARDIE had found Albion Villa in the miserable state that precedes an auction: the house raw, its contents higgledy-piggledy. The stair carpets, and drawing-room carpets, were up, and in rolls in the dining-room; the bulk of the furniture was there too; the auction was to be in that room. The hall was clogged with great packages, and littered with small, all awaiting the railway carts; and Edward, dusty and deliquescent, was cording, strapping, and nailing them at the gallop, in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves.

Jane's heart sank at the visible signs of his departure. She sighed; and then, partly to divert his attention, told him hastily there was a letter from Alfred. On this he ran upstairs and told Mrs. Dodd; and she came downstairs, and after a conversation took Jane up softly to her friend's room.

They opened the door gently, and Jane saw the grief she was come to console--or to embitter.

Such a change! instead of the bright, elastic, impetuous young beauty, there sat a pale, languid girl, with "weary of the world" written on every part of her eloquent body; her right hand dangled by her side, and on the ground beneath it lay a piece of work she had been attempting; but it had escaped from those listless fingers: her left arm was stretched at full length on the table with an unspeakable abandon, and her brow laid wearily on it above the elbow. So lies the wounded bird, so droops the broken lily.

She did not move for Jane's light foot. She often sat thus, a drooping statue, and let the people come and go unheeded.

Jane's heart yearned for her. She came softly and laid a little hand lightly on her shoulder, and true to her creed that we must look upward for consolation, said in

Julia turned at this and flung her arms round Jane's neck, and panted heavily.

Jane kissed her, and with tears in her eyes, proceeded to pour out, from a memory richly stored with Scripture, those blessed words it is full of, words that in our hours of ease or biblical criticism pa.s.s over the mind like some drowsy chime but in the bitter day of anguish and bereavement, when the body is racked, the soul darkened, s.h.i.+ne out like stars to the mariner; seem then first to swell to their real size and meaning, and come to writhing mortals like pitying seraphim, divinity on their faces and healing on their wings.

Julia sighed heavily: "Ah," she said, "these are sweet words. But I am not ripe for them. You show me the true path of happiness: but I don't _want_ to be happy; it's _him_ I want to be happy. If the angels came for me and took me to heaven this moment, I should be miserable there, if I thought _he_ was in eternal torment. Ay, I should be as miserable there as I am here. Oh, Jane, when G.o.d means to comfort me, He will show me _he_ is alive; till then words are wasted on me, even Bible words."

"Tell her your news, my dear," said Mrs. Dodd quietly. She was one of those who take human nature as it is, and make the best of it.

"Julia dear," said Jane, "your fears are extravagant; indeed: Alfred is alive, we know."

Julia trembled, but said nothing.

"He has written to-day."

"Ah! To you?"

"No, to papa."

"I don't believe it. Why to him?"

"But I saw the letter, dear; I had it my hand."

"Did you read it?" asked Julia, trembling now like an aspen, and fluttering like a bird.

"No, but I read the address, and the date inside, and I saw the handwriting; and I was offered the letter, but papa told me it was full of abuse of him, so I declined* to read it; however, I will get it for _you._"

* This was one of those involuntary inaccuracies which creep into mortal statements.

Mrs. Dodd thanked her warmly; but asked her if she could not in the meantime give some idea of the contents.

"Oh yes, Mrs. Dodd: papa read me out a great deal of it. He was in Paris, but just starting for London: and he demanded his money and his accounts. You know papa is one of his trustees."

"Well, but," said Mrs. Dodd, "there was nothing--nothing about----?"

"Oh yes, there was," said Jane, "only I--well then, for dear Julia's sake--the letter said, 'What wonder the son of a sharper should prove a traitor? _You_ have stolen her money and _I_ her affections, and'--oh, I can't, I can't." And Jane Hardie began to cry.

Mrs. Dodd embraced her like a mother, and entered into her filial feelings: Mrs. Dodd had never seen her so weak, and, therefore, never thought her so amiable. Thus occupied they did not at first observe how these tidings were changing Julia.

But presently looking up, they saw her standing at her full height on fire with wrath and insulted pride.

"Ah, you have brought me comfort," she cried. "Mamma, I shall hate and scorn this man some day, as much as I hate and scorn myself now for every tear I have shed for him."

They tried to calm her, but in vain; a new gust of pa.s.sion possessed the ardent young creature and would have vent. She reddened from bosom to brow, and the scalding tears ran down her flaming cheeks, and she repeated between her clenched teeth, "My veins are not filled with skim-milk, I can tell you: you have seen how I can love, you shall see how I can hate." And with this she went haughtily out of the room, not to expose the pa.s.sion which overpowered her.

Mrs. Dodd took advantage of her absence to thank Jane for her kindness, and told her she had also received some letters by this morning's post, and thought it would be neither kind on her part nor just to conceal their purport from her. She then read her a letter from Mrs. Beresford, and another from Mr. Grey, in answer to queries about the L. 14,000.

Sharpe, I may as well observe, was at sea; Bayliss drowned.

Mrs. Beresford knew nothing about the matter.

Mr. Grey was positive Captain Dodd, when in command, had several thousand pounds in his cabin; Mrs. Beresford's Indian servant had been detected trying to steal it, and put in irons: believed the lady had not been told the cause--out of delicacy! and Captain Roberts had liberated him. As to whether the money had escaped the wreck--if on Captain Dodd's person, it might have been saved; but if not, it was certainly lost: for Captain Dodd to his knowledge had run on deck from the pa.s.senger's cabin the moment the s.h.i.+p struck, and had remained there till she went to pieces; and everything was washed out of her.

"Our own opinion," said Mrs. Dodd, "I mean Edward's and mine, is now, that the money was lost in the s.h.i.+p; and you can tell your papa so if you like."

Jane thanked her, and said she thought so too: and what a sad thing it was.

Soon after this Julia returned, pale and calm as a statue, and sat down humbly beside Jane. "Oh, pray with me," she said: "pray that I may not hate, for to hate is to be wicked; and pray that I may not love, for to love is to be miserable."

Mrs. Dodd retired, with her usual tact and self-denial.

Then Jane Hardie, being alone with her friend, and full of sorrow, sympathy, and faith, found words of eloquence almost divine to raise her.

With these pious consolations Julia's pride and self-respect now co-operated. Relieved of her great terror, she felt her insult to her fingers' ends: "I'll never degrade myself so far as to pine for another lady's lover," she said. "I'll resume my duties in another sphere, and try to face the world by degrees. I am not quite alone in it; I have my mother still--and my Redeemer."

Some tears forced their way at these brave, gentle words. Jane gave her time.