CHAPTER XXII.
STILL WATERS RUN DEEP.
"This little maxim, for my sake, I pray you be believing: The truest pleasures that we take Are those that we are giving."
DIBDIN.
For more than twenty years, dating back from the time our story commenced, Richards had been a partner in the firm of Griffiths, Keane, and Co.; yet although he was almost every day in the company of Mr.
Keane, he could neither love nor respect him. Perhaps had he been less with him he might have respected him more. But he knew him too well; knew him to be Keane by name and keen by nature--avaricious, grasping, and miserly in the extreme, and for the sake of adding to his stores of gold, very far indeed from scrupulous. His n.i.g.g.ardly habits had undoubtedly hurried his wife to her grave, when Gerty was little more than a baby, and she was left to the tender mercies of a nurse and governess. In the transaction of his business Richards was constantly at his partner"s home, and usually stayed to dine; but for the sake of the child Gerty, he made many and many a visit to the house after her mother"s death, when he had no real business to transact. "Poor little mite!" he thought; "she is so lonely, and she sees no one; has no one to love save her father, to whom she is merely "the child.""
It used to vex poor great-hearted Richards to the core to hear Keane snap out, "Take away that child; it"s troublesome."
"Nay, nay," Richards would say, lifting the mite from the hearth-rug to his knee, "let me have the darling a minute."
"Richards, you"re a fool!" Keane would growl.
And with one arm round her protector"s neck, her cheeks wet with tears, the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a boy in reality, as he was in his heart of hearts!
But the psychical mystery is how she could have come to love her father so. Yes, as the reader already knows, she did love him, and love him to that extent that she was willing to sacrifice her own happiness to his ambition, and marry a man whom she loathed if she did actually not detest.
A bachelor, with no expenses worth naming, Richards had saved quite a small fortune in his time; and when he came to find out that Keane was going positively to sell his daughter to the worn-out _roue_ Sir Digby, that for his own advancement he might see her ere long a lord"s wife, Richards thumped his fist down on his desk--he was alone at the time--till even the big ink-bottle leaped an inch up from the table.
"I"ll save that darling child," he had said, "if I spend every penny I have earned, and lose my life into the bargain."
He smiled to himself a moment after.
"Everything is fair in love and war," he said: "I"ll play a game. The cause is good. Yes, Jack Mackenzie, my open-hearted, frank, brave boy, you shall marry Gerty. I have said it--you--_shall_."
He laughed aloud next minute at his own enthusiasm.
"What a capital actor I should have made!" he thought. "How beautifully I could have done heavy fathers!"
Still waters run deep, and Richards was astute, though perhaps he did not look it. So he began at once to shuffle his cards for the game he was about to play--a game which he rightly judged was to be one of life or death. For he shuddered to think of the living death to which the selfishness of her miserly, ambitious father intended condemning Gerty.
"My baby, bless her sweet face," he added, "shall never marry that bleach-eyed old Digby."
Then he shut his ledger with a bang, and went for a walk in the park, where he could think. But the Mackenzies would lose the fine old house and property called Grantley Hall. Keane would a.s.suredly foreclose. Then the place would be Keane"s or Gerty"s, it was much the same. Keane really meant it to be Sir Digby"s and Gerty"s, while he, Keane, should live and be honoured and respected there--his son-in-law a lord.
Richards thought he must try by hook or by crook to prevent his partner from foreclosing, if only for the following reason: if Grantley Hall once pa.s.sed into Keane"s hands, much though Gerty and Jack loved each other, the latter, being a Mackenzie and a Scot, would be far too proud to propose marriage, seeing that in doing so his desires might be misconstrued, and people would naturally say he was simply marrying back his own property.
The general had told his children that Keane was his only creditor. Yes, because in order to make sure of the estate, the old lawyer had bought up all the others. He could thus come down upon the brave but reckless Scottish soldier, like an avalanche from a mountain"s brow.
The day had almost arrived for Keane"s foreclosing. The family had already left Grantley Hall, taking little with them save the family jewellery, pictures, and nick-nacks. Flora had gone to Torquay, Jack was in town, and his father preparing to resume his sword, and once more fight for his country. The eventful morning itself came round. Keane was early at his office. He was in an unusually happy frame of mind. Yet perhaps he had a few slight "stoun"s" of conscience, for over and over again he talked to Richards, bringing up the subject next his heart, and excusing himself.
"I had to do it--I had to do it," he said. "Pity for the poor Mackenzies. But the general was so improvident, and what could I do?"
"Most improvident," replied Richards, smiling quietly over his ledger nevertheless.
As the day wore away, Keane fidgeted more and more, and often looked at the clock. "Another hour," he said, half aloud, "only another hour."
Richards looked at the clock too, and he often glanced uneasily towards the door.
What was going to happen?
"Only half-an-hour." This from Keane.
"You seem pleased," said Richards dryly.
Rat, tat--bang, bang, at the office door.
Both men looked up; Richards with a sigh of relief, Keane with gray face and flashing eyes.
Enter a tall, good-looking clerk, hat in one hand, a bundle of papers in the other. He was a stranger to Keane.
"_Re_ the mortgage on estate of General Grant Mackenzie, I"ve come to pay it off."
Old Keane grew grayer and grayer in face, and foam appeared on his lips.
He could not speak.
Richards slipped out and away.
He went out, and went down the street, positively laughing aloud, so that people turned smilingly round to look after him.
And to pay this mortgage off, the honest fellow had put down the bulk of his fortune, and borrowed thousands besides. The property of Grantley Hall was now virtually his; but _he_ would not foreclose, and the Mackenzies should know nothing about it, for a time at all events.
Richards had played his first card, and it was a strong one.
He went straight off now to see "his baby," and to continue the fairy story which he had commenced at Grantley Hall.
He saw some one else--he saw Mary. Mary was his first lieutenant. It was she who summoned him that evening at the Hall when he entered the room just as Sir Digby was about to propose.
A good girl, Mary, and devoted to her "missus." She could keep a secret, too, and she could keep Richards posted, lest Sir Digby should steal a march upon them.
But time had rolled on, as we know. There were wars and rumours of wars, disaffection at home and threatened revolution, and last, but not least, as far as our story goes, Sir Digby had been ill, and at the point of death. Keane also had been abroad for his health, and with him his daughter, so that the evil day was postponed.
Evil days have a disagreeable habit of coming, nevertheless, in spite of all we can do.
Slowly and sadly, with rent rigging and battered hull, the _Tonneraire_ staggered home. She is in Plymouth Sound at last. Letters and papers come off to the ship. Jack Mackenzie, sitting alone by his open port, turns eagerly to a recent copy of the _Times_. Almost the first notice that attracts his attention runs thus: "Marriage of Sir Digby Auld and Miss Gertrude"--he sees no more. His head swims. The wind seizes the paper, as if in pity, and carries it far astern of the ship.
He feels utterly crushed and broken, and head and hands droop helplessly on the table before him.