Hard Cash. Charles Reade Reade

I choose—to make you happy. How I shall work on what you call Iron and I venture to call Clay must be guided by circumstances. I think of depositing three or four thousand pounds every month with Mr. Hardie; he is our banker, you know. He will most likely open his eyes, and make some move before the whole sum is in his hands. If he does not, I shall perhaps call at his bank, and draw a cheque for fourteen thousand pounds. The wealthiest provincial banker does not keep such a sum floating in his shop-tills. His commercial honour, the one semi-chivalrous sentiment in his soul, would be in peril. He would yield, and with grace: none the less readily that his house and his bank, which have been long heavily mortgaged to our trustees, were made virtually theirs by agreement yesterday (I set this on foot with twelve hours of Mr. Iron's impertinent letter), and he will say to himself, 'She can—post me, I think these people call it—this afternoon for not cashing her cheque, and she can turn me and my bank into the street to-morrow:' and then, of course, he shall see by my manner the velvet paw is offered as well as the claw. He is pretty sure to ask himself which will suit the ledger best—this cat's friendship and her fourteen thousand pounds, or—an insulted mother's enmity?” And Mrs. Placid's teeth made a little click just audible in the silent night.

      “Oh, mamma! my heart is sick. Am I to be bought and sold like this?”

      Mrs. Dodd sighed, but said calmly, “You must pay the penalty for loving a parvenu's son. Come, Julia, no peevishness, no more romance, no more vacillation. You have tried Pride and failed pitiably: now I insist on your trying Love! Child, it is the bane of our sex to carry nothing out: from that weakness I will preserve you. And, by-the-bye, we are not going to marry Mr. Richard Hardie, but Mr. Alfred. Now, Mr. Alfred, with all his faults and defects—”

      “Mamma! what faults? what defects?”

      “—Is a gentleman; thanks to Oxford, and Harrow, and nature. My darling, pray to Heaven night and day for your dear father's safe return; for on him, and him alone, your happiness depends: as mine does.”

      “Mamma!” cried Julia, embracing her, “what do poor girls do who have lost their mother?”

      “Look abroad and see,” was the grave reply.

      Mrs. Dodd then begged her to go to sleep, like a good child, for her health's sake; all would be well; and with this was about to return to her own room; but a white hand and arm darted out of the bed and caught her. “What! Hope has come to me by night in the form of an angel, and shall I let her go back to her own room? Never! never! never! never! never!” And she patted the bed expressively, and with the prettiest impatience.

      “Well, let Hope take off her earrings first,” suggested Mrs. Dodd.

      “No, no, come here directly, earrings and all.”

      “No, thank you; or I shall have them wounding you next.”

      Mrs. Hope quietly removed her earrings, and the tender pair passed the rest of the night in one another's arms. The young girl's tears were dried; and hope revived, and life bloomed again: only, henceforth her longing eyes looked out to sea for her father, homeward bound.

      Next day, as they were seated together in the drawing-room, Julia came from the window with a rush, and kneeled at Mrs. Dodd's knees, with bright imploring face upturned.

      “He is there; and—I am to speak to him? Is that it?”

      “Dear, dear, dear mamma!” was the somewhat oblique reply.

      “Well, then, bring me my things.”

      She was ten minutes putting them on: Julia tried to expedite her and retarded her. She had her pace, and could not go beyond it.

      Now by this time Alfred Hardie was thoroughly miserable. Unable to move his father, shunned by Julia, sickened by what he had heard, and indeed seen, of her gaiety and indifference to their separation, stung by jealousy and fretted by impatience, he was drinking nearly all the bitters of that sweet passion, Love. But as you are aware, he ascribed Julia's inconstancy, lightness, and cruelty all to Mrs. Dodd. He hated her cordially, and dreaded her into the bargain; he played the sentinel about her door all the more because she had asked him not to do it “Always do what your enemy particularly objects to,” said he, applying to his own case the wisdom of a Greek philosopher, one of his teachers.

      So, when the gate suddenly opened, and instead of Julia, this very Mrs. Dodd walked towards him, his feelings were anything but enviable. He wished himself away, heartily, but was too proud to retreat. He stood his ground. She came up to him; a charming smile broke out over her features. “Ah! Mr. Hardie,” said she, “if you have nothing better to do, will you give me a minute?” He assented with surprise and an ill grace.

      “May I take your arm?”

      He offered it with a worse.

      She laid her hand lightly on it, and it shuddered at her touch. He felt like walking with a velvet tigress.

      By some instinct she divined his sentiment, and found her task more difficult than she had thought; she took some steps in silence. At last, as he was no dissembler, he burst out passionately, “Why are you my enemy?”

      “I am not your enemy,” said she quietly.

      “Not openly, but all the more dangerous. You keep us apart, you bid her be gay and forget me; you are a cruel, hard-hearted lady.”

      “No, I am not, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd simply.

      “Oh! I believe you are good and kind to all the rest of the world; but you know you have a heart of iron for me.”

      “I am my daughter's friend, but not your enemy; it is you who are too inexperienced to know how delicate, how difficult, my duties are. It is only since last night I see my way clear; and, look, I come at once to you with friendly intentions. Suppose I were as impetuous as you are? I should, perhaps, be calling you ungrateful.”

      He retorted bitterly. “Give me something to be grateful for, and you shall see whether that baseness is in my nature.”

      “I have a great mind to put you to the proof,” said she archly. “Let us walk down this lane; then you can be as unjust to me as you think proper, without attracting public attention.”

      In the lane she told him quietly she knew the nature of his father's objections to the alliance he had so much at heart, and they were objections which her husband, on his return, would remove. On this he changed his tone a little, and implored her piteously not to deceive him.

      “I will not,” said she, “upon my honour. If you are as constant as my daughter is in her esteem for you—notwithstanding her threadbare gaiety worn over loyal regret, and to check a parcel of idle ladies' tongues—you have nothing to fear from me, and everything to expect. Come, Alfred—may I take that liberty with you?—let us understand one another. We only want that to be friends.”

      This was hard to resist and at his age. His lip trembled, he hesitated, but at last gave her his hand. She walked two hours with him, and laid herself out to enlighten, soothe, and comfort his sore heart His hopes and happiness revived under her magic, as Julia's had. In the midst of it all, the wise woman quietly made terms. He was not to come to the house but on her invitation, unless indeed he had news of the Agra to communicate; but he might write once a week to her, and enclose a few lines to Julia. On this concession he proceeded to mumble her white wrist, and call her his best, dearest, loveliest friend; his mother. “Oh, remember,” said he, with a relic of distrust, “you are the only mother I can ever hope to have.”

      That touched her. Hitherto, he had been to her but a thing her daughter loved.

      Her eyes filled. “My poor, warm-hearted, motherless boy,” she said, “pray for my husband's safe return. For on that your happiness depends, and hers, and mine.”

      So now two more bright eyes looked longingly seaward for the Agra homeward bound.

CHAPTER