"I have to hit my memory, I am shattered, sir. I say, you would be justified, amply justified--"
"How long?" was reiterated.
"I can at least date it from the period of my marriage."
"From the date when your scoundrelism first touches my family, that"s to say! So "Government" agreed to give you a stipend to support your wife!"
"Mr. Beltham, I breathe with difficulty. It was at that period, on the death of a n.o.bleman interested in restraining me--I was his debtor for kindnesses... my head is whirling! I say, at that period, upon the recommendation of friends of high standing, I began to agitate for the rest.i.tution of my rights. From infancy----"
"To the deuce, your infancy! I know too much about your age. Just hark, you Richmond! none of your "I was a child" to provoke compa.s.sion from women. I mean to knock you down and make you incapable of hurting these poor foreign people you trapped. They defy you, and I"ll do my best to draw your teeth. Now for the annuity. You want one to believe "you thought you frightened "Government," eh?"
"Annual proof was afforded me, sir."
"Oh! annual! through Mr. Charles Adolphus Bannerbridge, deceased!"
Janet stepped up to my aunt Dorothy to persuade her to leave the room, but she declined, and hung by me, to keep me out of danger, as she hoped, and she prompted me with a guarding nervous squeeze of her hand on my arm to answer temperately when I was questioned:
"Harry, do you suspect Government paid that annuity?"
"Not now, certainly."
"Tell the man who "tis you suspect."
My aunt Dorothy said: "Harry is not bound to mention his suspicions."
"Tell him yourself, then."
"Does it matter--?"
"Yes, it matters. I"ll break every plank he walks on, and strip him stark till he flops down shivering into his slough--a convicted common swindler, with his dinners and b.a.l.l.s and his private bands! Richmond, you killed one of my daughters; t" other fed you, through her agent, this Mr. Charles Adolphus Bannerbridge, from about the date of your snaring my poor girl and carrying her off behind your postillions--your trotting undertakers! and the hours of her life reckoned in milestones.
She"s here to contradict me, if she can. Dorothy Beltham was your "Government" that paid the annuity."
I took Dorothy Beltham into my arms. She was trembling excessively, yet found time to say, "Bear up, dearest; keep still." All I thought and felt foundered in tears.
For a while I heard little distinctly of the tremendous tirade which the vindictive old man, rendered thrice venomous by the immobility of the petrified large figure opposed to him, poured forth. My poor father did not speak because he could not; his arms dropped; and such was the torrent of attack, with its free play of thunder and lightning in the form of oaths, epithets, short and sharp comparisons, bitter home thrusts and most vehement imprecatory denunciations, that our protesting voices quailed. Janet plucked at my aunt Dorothy"s dress to bear her away.
"I can"t leave my father," I said.
"Nor I you, dear," said the tender woman; and so we remained to be scourged by this tongue of incarnate rage.
"You pensioner of a silly country spinster!" sounded like a return to mildness. My father"s chest heaved up.
I took advantage of the lull to make myself heard: I did but heap fuel on fire, though the old man"s splenetic impetus had partly abated.
"You Richmond! do you hear him? he swears he"s your son, and asks to be tied to the stake beside you. Disown him, and I"ll pay you money and thank you. I"ll thank my G.o.d for anything short of your foul blood in the family. You married the boy"s mother to craze and kill her, and guttle her property. You waited for the boy to come of age to swallow what was settled on him. You wait for me to lie in my coffin to pounce on the strongbox you think me the fool to toss to a young donkey ready to ruin all his belongings for you! For nine-and-twenty years you"ve sucked the veins of my family, and struck through my house like a rotting-disease. Nine-and-twenty years ago you gave a singing-lesson in my house: the pest has been in it ever since! You breed vermin in the brain to think of you! Your wife, your son, your dupes, every soul that touches you, mildews from a blight! You were born of ropery, and you go at it straight, like a webfoot to water. What"s your boast?--your mother"s disgrace! You shame your mother. Your whole life"s a ballad o"
b.a.s.t.a.r.dy. You cry up the woman"s infamy to hook at a father. You swell and strut on her pickings. You"re a c.o.c.k forced from the smoke of the dunghill! You shame your mother, d.a.m.ned adventurer! You train your boy for a swindler after your own pattern; you twirl him in your curst harlequinade to a d.a.m.nation as sure as your own. The day you crossed my threshold the devils danced on their flooring. I"ve never seen the sun shine fair on me after it. With your guitar under the windows, of moonlight nights! your Spanish fopperies and trickeries! your French phrases and toeings! I was touched by a leper. You set your traps for both my girls: you caught the brown one first, did you, and flung her second for t" other, and drove a tandem of "em to live the spangled hog you are; and down went the mother of the boy to the place she liked better, and my other girl here--the one you cheated for her salvation--you tried to cajole her from home and me, to send her the same way down. She stuck to decency. Good Lord! you threatened to hang yourself, guitar and all. But her purse served your turn. For why? You "re a leech. I speak before ladies or I"d rip your town-life to shreds.
Your cause! your romantic history! your fine figure! every inch of you "s notched with villany! You fasten on every moneyed woman that comes in your way. You"ve outdone Herod in murdering the innocents, for he didn"t feed on "em, and they"ve made you fat. One thing I"ll say of you: you look the beastly thing you set yourself up for. The kindest blow to you "s to call you impostor."
He paused, but his inordinate pa.s.sion of speech was unsated: his white lips hung loose for another eruption.
I broke from my aunt Dorothy to cross over to my father, saying on the way: "We "ve heard enough, sir. You forget the cardinal point of invective, which is, not to create sympathy for the person you a.s.sail."
"Oh! you come in with your infernal fine language, do you!" the old man thundered at me. "I "ll just tell you at once, young fellow--"
My aunt Dorothy supplicated his attention. "One error I must correct."
Her voice issued from a contracted throat, and was painfully thin and straining, as though the will to speak did violence to her weaker nature. "My sister loved Mr. Richmond. It was to save her life, because I believed she loved him much and would have died, that Mr. Richmond--in pity--offered her his hand, at my wish": she bent her head: "at my cost.
It was done for me. I wished it; he obeyed me. No blame--" her dear mouth faltered. "I am to be accused, if anybody."
She added more firmly: "My money would have been his. I hoped to spare his feelings, I beg his forgiveness now, by devoting some of it, unknown to him, to a.s.sist him. That was chiefly to please myself, I see, and I am punished."
"Well, ma"am," said the squire, calm at white heat; "a fool"s confession ought to be heard out to the end. What about the twenty-five thousand?"
"I hoped to help my Harry."
"Why didn"t you do it openly?"
She breathed audible long breaths before she could summon courage to say: "His father was going to make an irreparable sacrifice. I feared that if he knew this money came from me he would reject it, and persist."
Had she disliked the idea of my father"s marrying?
The old man pounced on the word sacrifice. "What sacrifice, ma"am?
What"s the sacrifice?"
I perceived that she could not without anguish, and perhaps peril of a further exposure, bring herself to speak, and explained: "It relates to my having tried to persuade my father to marry a very wealthy lady, so that he might produce the money on the day appointed. Rail at me, sir, as much as you like. If you can"t understand the circ.u.mstances without a chapter of statements, I"m sorry for you. A great deal is due to you, I know; but I can"t pay a jot of it while you go on rating my father like a madman."
"Harry!" either my aunt or Janet breathed a warning.
I replied that I was past mincing phrases. The folly of giving the tongue an airing was upon me: I was in fact invited to continue, and animated to do it thoroughly, by the old man"s expression of face, which was that of one who says, "I give you rope," and I dealt him a liberal amount of stock irony not worth repeating; things that any cultivated man in anger can drill and sting the Boeotian with, under the delusion that he has not lost a particle of his self-command because of his coolness. I spoke very deliberately, and therefore supposed that the words of composure were those of prudent sense. The error was manifest.
The women saw it. One who has indulged his soul in invective will not, if he has power in his hand, be robbed of his climax with impunity by a cool response that seems to trifle, and scourges.
I wound up by thanking my father for his devotion to me: I deemed it, I said, excessive and mistaken in the recent instance, but it was for me.
Upon this he awoke from his dreamy-looking stupefaction.
"Richie does me justice. He is my dear boy. He loves me: I love him.
None can cheat us of that. He loves his wreck of a father. You have struck me to your feet, Mr. Beltham."
"I don"t want to see you there, sir; I want to see you go, and not stand rapping your breast-bone, sounding like a burst drum, as you are,"
retorted the unappeasable old man.
I begged him in exasperation to keep his similes to himself.
Janet and my aunt Dorothy raised their voices.
My father said: "I am broken."
He put out a swimming hand that trembled when it rested, like that of an aged man grasping a staff. I feared for a moment he was acting, he spoke so like himself, miserable though he appeared: but it was his well-known native old style in a state of decrepitude.