Without waiting for the lawyer"s answer, without leaving the sisters time to realize their own terrible situation, she moved at once toward the door. It was her wise resolution to meet the coming trial by doing much and saying little. Before she could leave the room, Mr. Clare followed, and stopped her on the threshold.
"I never envied a woman"s feelings before," said the old man. "It may surprise you to hear it; but I envy yours. Wait! I have something more to say. There is an obstacle still left--the everlasting obstacle of Frank. Help me to sweep him off. Take the elder sister along with you and the lawyer, and leave me here to have it out with the younger. I want to see what metal she"s really made of."
While Mr. Clare was addressing these words to Miss Garth, Mr. Pendril had taken the opportunity of speaking to Norah. "Before I go back to town," he said, "I should like to have a word with you in private. From what has pa.s.sed today, Miss Vanstone, I have formed a very high opinion of your discretion; and, as an old friend of your father"s, I want to take the freedom of speaking to you about your sister."
Before Norah could answer, she was summoned, in compliance with Mr.
Clare"s request, to the conference with the servants. Mr. Pendril followed Miss Garth, as a matter of course. When the three were out in the hall, Mr. Clare re-entered the room, closed the door, and signed peremptorily to Magdalen to take a chair.
She obeyed him in silence. He took a turn up and down the room, with his hands in the side-pockets of the long, loose, shapeless coat which he habitually wore.
"How old are you?" he said, stopping suddenly, and speaking to her with the whole breadth of the room between them.
"I was eighteen last birthday," she answered, humbly, without looking up at him.
"You have shown extraordinary courage for a girl of eighteen. Have you got any of that courage left?"
She clasped her hands together, and wrung them hard. A few tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks.
"I can"t give Frank up," she said, faintly. "You don"t care for me, I know; but you used to care for my father. Will you try to be kind to me for my father"s sake?"
The last words died away in a whisper; she could say no more. Never had she felt the illimitable power which a woman"s love possesses of absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or sorrow of her life, as she felt it then. Never had she so tenderly a.s.sociated Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that moment. Never had the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion through which women behold the man of their choice--the atmosphere which had blinded her to all that was weak, selfish, and mean in Frank"s nature--surrounded him with a brighter halo than now, when she was pleading with the father for the possession of the son. "Oh, don"t ask me to give him up!" she said, trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot. In the next instant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning. "I won"t give him up!" she burst out violently. "No!
not if a thousand fathers ask me!"
"I am one father," said Mr. Clare. "And I don"t ask you."
In the first astonishment and delight of hearing those unexpected words, she started to her feet, crossed the room, and tried to throw her arms round his neck. She might as well have attempted to move the house from its foundations. He took her by the shoulders and put her back in her chair. His inexorable eyes looked her into submission; and his lean forefinger shook at her warningly, as if he was quieting a fractious child.
"Hug Frank," he said; "don"t hug me. I haven"t done with you yet; when I have, you may shake hands with me, if you like. Wait, and compose yourself."
He left her. His hands went back into his pockets, and his monotonous march up and down the room began again.
"Ready?" he asked, stopping short after a while. She tried to answer.
"Take two minutes more," he said, and resumed his walk with the regularity of clock-work. "These are the creatures," he thought to himself, "into whose keeping men otherwise sensible give the happiness of their lives. Is there any other object in creation, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman does?"
He stopped before her once more. Her breathing was easier; the dark flush on her face was dying out again.
"Ready?" he repeated. "Yes; ready at last. Listen to me; and let"s get it over. I don"t ask you to give Frank up. I ask you to wait."
"I will wait," she said. "Patiently, willingly."
"Will you make Frank wait?"
"Yes."
"Will you send him to China?"
Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands again, in silence. Mr. Clare saw where the difficulty lay, and marched straight up to it on the spot.
"I don"t pretend to enter into your feelings for Frank, or Frank"s for you," he said. "The subject doesn"t interest me. But I _do_ pretend to state two plain truths. It is one plain truth that you can"t be married till you have money enough to pay for the roof that shelters you, the clothes that cover you, and the victuals you eat. It is another plain truth that you can"t find the money; that I can"t find the money; and that Frank"s only chance of finding it, is going to China. If I tell him to go, he"ll sit in a corner and cry. If I insist, he"ll say Yes, and deceive me. If I go a step further, and see him on board ship with my own eyes, he"ll slip off in the pilot"s boat, and sneak back secretly to you. That"s his disposition."
"No!" said Magdalen. "It"s not his disposition; it"s his love for Me."
"Call it what you like," retorted Mr. Clare. "Sneak or Sweetheart --he"s too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold him.
My shutting the door won"t keep him from coming back. Your shutting the door will. Have you the courage to shut it? Are you fond enough of him not to stand in his light?"
"Fond! I would die for him!"
"Will you send him to China?"
She sighed bitterly.
"Have a little pity for me," she said. "I have lost my father; I have lost my mother; I have lost my fortune--and now I am to lose Frank. You don"t like women, I know; but try to help me with a little pity. I don"t say it"s not for his own interests to send him to China; I only say it"s hard--very, very hard on _me_."
Mr. Clare had been deaf to her violence, insensible to her caresses, blind to her tears; but under the tough integument of his philosophy he had a heart--and it answered that hopeless appeal; it felt those touching words.
"I don"t deny that your case is a hard one," he said. "I don"t want to make it harder. I only ask you to do in Frank"s interests what Frank is too weak to do for himself. It"s no fault of yours; it"s no fault of mine--but it"s not the less true that the fortune you were to have brought him has changed owners."
She suddenly looked up, with a furtive light in her eyes, with a threatening smile on her lips.
"It may change owners again," she said.
Mr. Clare saw the alteration in her expression, and heard the tones of her voice. But the words were spoken low; spoken as if to herself--they failed to reach him across the breadth of the room. He stopped instantly in his walk and asked what she had said.
"Nothing," she answered, turning her head away toward the window, and looking out mechanically at the falling rain. "Only my own thoughts."
Mr. Clare resumed his walk, and returned to his subject.
"It"s your interest," he went on, "as well as Frank"s interest, that he should go. He may make money enough to marry you in China; he can"t make it here. If he stops at home, he"ll be the ruin of both of you. He"ll shut his eyes to every consideration of prudence, and pester you to marry him; and when he has carried his point, he will be the first to turn round afterward and complain that you"re a burden on him. Hear me out! You"re in love with Frank--I"m not, and I know him. Put you two together often enough; give him time enough to hug, cry, pester, and plead; and I"ll tell you what the end will be--you"ll marry him."
He had touched the right string at last. It rung back in answer before he could add another word.
"You don"t know me," she said, firmly. "You don"t know what I can suffer for Frank"s sake. He shall never marry me till I can be what my father said I should be--the making of his fortune. He shall take no burden, when he takes me; I promise you that! I"ll be the good angel of Frank"s life; I"ll not go a penniless girl to him, and drag him down." She abruptly left her seat, advanced a few steps toward Mr. Clare, and stopped in the middle of the room. Her arms fell helpless on either side of her, and she burst into tears. "He shall go," she said. "If my heart breaks in doing it, I"ll tell him to-morrow that we must say Good-by!"
Mr. Clare at once advanced to meet her, and held out his hand.
"I"ll help you," he said. "Frank shall hear every word that has pa.s.sed between us. When he comes to-morrow he shall know, beforehand, that he comes to say Good-by."
She took his hand in both her own--hesitated--looked at him--and pressed it to her bosom. "May I ask a favor of you, before you go?"
she said, timidly. He tried to take his hand from her; but she knew her advantage, and held it fast. "Suppose there should be some change for the better?" she went on. "Sup pose I could come to Frank, as my fat her said I should come to him--?"
Before she could complete the question, Mr. Clare made a second effort and withdrew his hand. "As your father said you should come to him?" he repeated, looking at her attentively.
"Yes," she replied. "Strange things happen sometimes. If strange things happen to me will you let Frank come back before the five years are out?"
What did she mean? Was she clinging desperately to the hope of melting Michael Vanstone"s heart? Mr. Clare could draw no other conclusion from what she had just said to him. At the beginning of the interview he would have roughly dispelled her delusion. At the end of the interview he left her compa.s.sionately in possession of it.
"You are hoping against all hope," he said; "but if it gives you courage, hope on. If this impossible good fortune of yours ever happens, tell me, and Frank shall come back. In the meantime--"