Hard Cash

She shook her head. "No, no, it will not be a happy walk. Rooke, who hates you, is to follow us with that terrible mastiff, to pull you down if you try to escape. I could not get Dr. Wolf to consent on any other terms. Alfred, let us give up the idea. I fear your rashness."

"No, no, I won't try to escape--from you. I have not seen a blade of gra.s.s this six months."

The accomplished dissembler hesitated, yielded. They pa.s.sed through the yard and out at the back door, which Alfred had so often looked wistfully at; and by-and-by reached a delicious pasture. A light golden haze streamed across it. Nature never seemed so sweet, so divine, to Alfred before; the sun as bright as midsummer, though not the least hot, the air fresh, yet genial, and perfumed with Liberty and the smaller flowers of earth. Beauty glided rustling by his side, and dark eyes subdued their native fire into softness whenever they turned on him; and scarce fifty yards in the rear hung a bully and a mastiff ready to tear him down if he should break away from beauty's light hand, that rested so timidly on his. He was young, and stout-hearted, and relished his peep of liberty and nature, though blotted by Vulcan and Rooke. He chatted to Mrs. Archbold in good spirits. She answered briefly, and listlessly.

At last she stopped under a young chestnut-tree as if overcome with a sudden reflection, and turning half away from him leaned her head and hand upon a bough, and sighed. The att.i.tude was pensive and womanly. He asked her with innocent concern what was the matter; then faintly should he take her home. All her answer was to press his hand with hers that was disengaged, and, instead of sighing, to cry.

The novice in woman's wiles set himself to comfort her--in vain; to question her--in vain at first; but by degrees she allowed him to learn that it was for him she mourned; and so they proceeded on the old, old plan, the man extorting from the woman bit by bit just so much as she wanted all along to say, and would have poured in a stream if let quite alone.

He drew from his distressed friend that Dr. Wolf for reasons of his own had made special inquiries about the Dodds; that she had fortunately or unfortunately heard of this, and had questioned the person employed, hoping to hear something that might comfort Alfred. "Instead of that,"

said she, "I find Miss Dodd is like most girls; out of sight is out of mind with her."

"What do you mean?" said Alfred, trembling suddenly.

"Do not ask me. What a weak fool I was to let you see I was unhappy for you."

"The truth is the truth," gasped Alfred; "tell me at once."

"Must I? I am afraid you will hate me; for I should hate any one who told me your faults. Well, then--if I must--Miss Dodd has a beau."

"It is a lie!" cried Alfred furiously.

"I wish it was. But she has two in fact, both of them clergymen.

However, one seems the favourite; at least they are engaged to be married; it is Mr. Hurd, the curate of the parish she lives in. By what I hear she is one of the religious ones; so perhaps that has brought the pair to an understanding."

At these words a cold sickness rushed all over Alfred, beginning at his heart. He stood white and stupefied a moment; then, in the anguish of his heart, broke out into a great and terrible cry; it was like a young lion wounded with a poisoned shaft.

Then he was silent, and stood stock still, like petrified despair.

Mrs. Archbold was prepared for an outburst: but not of this kind. His anguish was so unlike a woman's that it staggered her. Her good and bad angels, to use an expressive though somewhat too poetical phrase, battled for her. She had an impulse to earn his grat.i.tude for life, to let him out of the asylum ere Julia should be Mrs. Hurd, and even liberty come too late for true love. She looked again at the statue of grief by her side; and burst

This was unfortunate. Shallow pity exuding in salt water leaves not enough behind to gush forth in good deeds.

She only tried to undo her own work in part; to comfort him a little with commonplaces. She told him in a soothing whisper there were other women in the world besides this inconstant girl, others who could love him as he deserved.

He made no answer to all she could say, but just waved his hand once impatiently. Petty consolation seemed to sting him.

She drew back discouraged; but only for a while. He was silent.

With one grand serpentine movement she came suddenly close to him, and, standing half behind him, laid her hand softly on his shoulder, and poured burning love in his ear. "Alfred," she murmured, "we are both unhappy; let us comfort one another. I had pity on you at Silverton House, I pity you now: pity _me_ a little in turn: take me out of this dreadful house, out of this revolting life, and let me be with you. Let me be your housekeeper, your servant, your slave. This news that has shocked you so has torn the veil from my eyes. I thought I had cooled my love down to friends.h.i.+p and tender esteem; but no, now I see you as unhappy as myself, now I can speak and wrong no one, I own I--oh Alfred my heart burns for you, bleeds for you, yearns for you, sickens for you, dies for you."

"Oh, hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ Mrs. Archbold. You are saying things you will blush for the next moment."

"I blush now, but cannot hush; I have gone too far. And your happiness as well as mine is at stake. No young girl can understand or value such a man as you are: but I, like you, have suffered; I, like you, am constant; I, like you, am warm and tender; at my age a woman's love is bliss to him who can gain it; and I love you with all my soul, Alfred.

I wors.h.i.+p the ground you walk on, my sweet, sweet boy. Say you the word, dearest, and I will bribe the servants, and get the keys, and sacrifice my profession for ever to give you liberty (see how sweet the open face of nature is, sweeter than anything on earth, but love); and all I ask is a little, little of your heart in return. Give me a chance to make you mine for ever; and, if I fail, treat me as I shall deserve; desert me at once; and then I'll never reproach you; I'll only die for you; as I have lived for you ever since I first saw your heavenly face."

The pa.s.sionate woman paused at last, but her hot cheek and heaving bosom and tender convulsive hand prolonged the pleading.

I am afraid few men of her own age would have resisted her; for voice and speech and all burning, melting, and winning; and then, so reasonable, lads; she did not stipulate for constancy.

But Alfred turned round to her blus.h.i.+ng and sorrowful. "For shame!" he said; "this is not love: you abuse that sacred word. Indeed, if you had ever really loved, you would have pitied me and Julia long ago, and respected our love; and saved us by giving me my freedom long ago. I am not a fool: do you think I don't know that you are my jailer, and the cunningest and most dangerous of them all?"

"You cruel, ungrateful!" she sobbed.

"No; I am not ungrateful either," said he more gently. "You have always come between me and that kind of torture which most terrifies vulgar souls: and I thank you for it. Only if you had also pitied the deeper anguish of my heart, I should thank you more still. As it is, I forgive you for the share you have had in blasting my happiness for life; and n.o.body shall ever know what you have been mad enough in an unguarded moment to say; but for pity's sake talk no more of love, to mock my misery."

Mrs. Archbold was white with ire long before he had done this sentence.

"You insolent creature," said she; "you spurn my love; you shall feel my hate."

"So I conclude," said he coldly: "such love as yours is hard by hate."

"It is," said she: "and I know how I'll combine the two. To-day I loved you, and you spurned me; ere long you shall love me and I'll despise you; and not spurn you."

"I don't understand you," said Alfred, feeling rather uneasy.

"What," said she, "don't you see how the superior mind can fascinate the inferior? Look at Frank Beverley--how he follows you about and fawns on you like a little dog."

"I prefer his sort of affection to yours."

"A gentleman and a man would have kept that to himself; but you are neither one nor the other; or you would have taken my offer, and then run away from me the next day, you fool. A man betrays a woman; he doesn't insult her. Ah, you admire Frank's affection; well, you shall imitate it. You couldn't love me like a man; you shall love me like a dog."

"How will you manage that, pray?" he inquired with a sneer.

"I'll drive you mad."

She hissed this fiendish threat out between her white teeth.

"Ay, sir," she said, "hitherto your reason has only encountered men. You shall see now what an insulted woman can do. A lunatic you shall be ere long, and then I'll make you love me, dote on me, follow me about for a smile: and then I'll leave off hating you, and love you once more, but not the way I did five minutes ago."

At this furious threat Alfred ground his teeth, and said, "Then I give you my honour that the moment I see my reason the least shaken, I'll kill you: and so save myself from the degradation of being your lover on any terms."

"Threaten your own s.e.x with that," said the Archbold contemptuously; "you may kill me whenever you like; and the sooner the better. Only, if you don't do it very quickly, you shall be my property, my brain-sick, love-sick slave."

CHAPTER XLI

AFTER a defiance so bitter and deadly, Alfred naturally drew away from his inamorata. But she, boiling with love and hate, said bitterly, "We need not take Mr. Rooke into our secrets. Come, sir, your arm!"

He stuck it out ungraciously, and averted his head; she took it, suppressed with difficulty a petty desire to pinch, and so walked by his side. He was as much at his ease as if promenading jungles with a panther. She felt him quiver with repugnance under her soft hand; and prolonged the irritating contact. She walked very slowly, and told him with much meaning she was waiting for a signal. "Till then," said she, "we will keep one another company;" biting the word with her teeth as it went out.

By-and-by a window was opened in the asylum, and a table-cloth hung out.

Mrs. Archbold pointed it out to Alfred; he stared at it; and after that she walked him rapidly home in silence. But, as soon as the door was double-locked on him, she whispered triumphantly in his ear--

"Your mother-in-law was expected to-day; that signal was to let me know she was gone."

"My mother-in-law!" cried the young man, and tried in vain to conceal his surprise and agitation.