Hard Cash. Charles Reade Reade

point-blank question Julia put her head over Mrs. Dodd's shoulder, not to be seen; and, clasping her tight, murmured scarce above a whisper, “I don't know how much I love him. When he came in at that party I felt his slave—his unfaithful adoring slave; if he had ordered me to sing Aileen Aroon, I should have obeyed; if he had commanded me to take his hand and leave the room, I think I should have obeyed. His face is always before me as plain as life; it used to come to me bright and loving; now it is pale, and stern, and sad. I was not so wretched till I saw he was pining for me, and thinks me inconstant—oh, mamma, so pale! so shrunk I so reckless! He was sorry for misbehaving that night: he changed clothes with a beggar to kiss my dress, poor thing! poor thing! Who ever loved as he does me! I am dying for him; I am dying.”

      “There! there!” said Mrs. Dodd soothingly. “You have said enough. This must be love. I am on your Alfred's side from this hour.”

      Julia opened her eyes, and was a good deal agitated as well as surprised. “Pray do not raise my hopes,” she gasped. “We are parted for ever. His father refuses. Even you seemed averse; or have I been dreaming?”

      “Me, dearest? How can I be averse to anything lawful on which I find your heart is really set, and your happiness at stake? Of course I have stopped the actual intercourse, under existing circumstances; but these circumstances are not unalterable: your only obstacle is Mr. Richard Hardie.”

      “But what an obstacle!” sighed Julia. “His father! a man of iron! so everybody says; for I have made inquiries—oh!” And she was abashed. She resumed hastily, “And that letter, so cold, so cruel! I feel it was written by one not open to gentle influences. He does not think me worthy of his son so accomplished, so distinguished at the very university where our poor Edward—has—you know——”

      “Little simpleton!” said Mrs. Dodd, and kissed her tenderly; “your iron man is the commonest clay, sordid, pliable; and your stern heroic Brutus is a shopkeeper: he is open to the gentle influences which sway the kindred souls of the men you and I buy our shoes, our tea, our gloves, our fish-kettles of: and these influences I think I command, and am prepared to use them to the utmost.”

      Julia lay silent, and wondering what she could mean.

      But Mrs. Dodd hesitated now: it pained and revolted her to show her enthusiastic girl the world as it is. She said as much, and added—“I seem to be going to aid all these people to take the bloom from my own child's innocence. Heaven help me!”

      “Oh, never mind that,” cried Julia in her ardent way; “give me Truth before Error, however pleasing.”

      Mrs. Dodd replied only by a sigh: grand general sentiments like that never penetrated her mind: they glided off like water from a duck's back. “We will begin with this mercantile Brutus, then,” said she, with such a curl of the lip. Brutus had rejected her daughter.

      “Mr. Richard Hardie was born and bred in a bank; one where no wild thyme blows, my poor enthusiast, nor cowslips nor the nodding violet grows; but gold and silver chink, and Things are discounted, and men grow rich, slowly but surely, by lawful use of other people's money. Breathed upon by these 'gentle influences,' he was, from his youth, a remarkable man—measured by Trade's standard. At five-and-twenty divine what he did! He saved the bank. You have read of bubbles: the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble. Well, in the year 1825, it was not one bubble but a thousand; mines by the score, and in distant lands; companies by the hundred; loans to every nation or tribe; down to Guatemala, Patagonia, and Greece; two hundred new ships were laid on the stocks in one year, for your dear papa told me; in short, a fever of speculation, and the whole nation raging with it: my dear, Princes, Dukes, Duchesses, Bishops, Poets, Lawyers, Physicians, were seen struggling with their own footmen for a place in the Exchange: and, at last, good, steady, old Mr. Hardie, Alfred's grandfather, was drawn into the vortex. Now, to excuse him and appreciate the precocious Richard, you must try and realise that these bubbles, when they rise, are as alluring and reasonable as they are ridiculous and incredible when one looks back on them; even soap bubbles, you know, have rainbow hues till they burst: and, indeed, the blind avarice of men does but resemble the blind vanity of women: look at our grandmothers' hoops, and our mothers' short waists and monstrous heads! Yet in their day what woman did not glory in these insanities? Well then, Mr. Richard Hardie, at twenty-five, was the one to foresee the end of all these bubbles; he came down from London and brought his people to their senses by sober reason and 'sound commercial principles'—that means, I believe, 'get other people's money, but do not risk your own.' His superiority was so clear, that his father resigned the helm to him, and, thanks to his ability, the bank weathered the storm, while all the other ones in the town broke or suspended their trade. Now, you know, youth is naturally ardent and speculative; but Richard Hardie's was colder and wiser than other people's old age: and that is one trait. Some years later, in the height of his prosperity—I reveal this only for your comfort, and on your sacred promise as a person of delicacy, never to repeat it to a soul—Richard Hardie was a suitor for my hand.”

      “Mamma!”

      “Do not ejaculate, sweetest. It discomposes me. 'Nothing is extraordinary,' as that good creature Dr. Sampson says. He must have thought it would answer, in one way or another, to have a gentlewoman at the head of his table; and I was not penniless, bien entendu. Failing in this, he found a plain little Thing, with a gloomy temper, and no accomplishments nor graces; but her father could settle twenty thousand pounds. He married her directly: and that is a trait. He sold his father's and grandfather's house and place of business, in spite of all their associations, and obtained a lease of his present place from my uncle Fountain: it seemed a more money-making situation. A trait. He gives me no reason for rejecting my daughter. Why? because he is not proud of his reasons: this walking Avarice has intelligence: a trait. Now put all this together, and who more transparent than the profound Mr. Hardie? He has declined our alliance because he takes for granted we are poor. When I undeceive him on that head he will reopen negotiations in a letter—No. 2 of the correspondence; copied by one of his clerks—it will be calm, plausible, flattering: in short, it will be done like a gentleman: though he is nothing of the kind. And this brings me to what I ought to have begun with: your dear father and I have always lived within our income for our children's sake; he is bringing home the bulk of our savings this very voyage, and it amounts to fourteen thousand pounds.”

      “Oh, what an enormous sum!”

      “No, dearest, it is not a fortune in itself. But it is a considerable sum to possess, independent of one's settlement and one's income. It is loose cash, to speak a la Hardie; that means I can do what I choose with it and of course 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.