One Of Them. Lever Charles James
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Название: One Of Them
Автор: Lever Charles James
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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“No.”
“Did she ever hint as much?”
“No.”
“Do you believe that any one ever dared to say it?”
“As to that, I can’t say; the world is very daring, and says a great many naughty things without much troubling itself about their correctness.”
“It may spare its censure on the present occasion, then.”
“Is it that you will not exact her compliance?”
“I will not.”
“How well I read you,” cried she, catching up his cold and still reluctant hand between both her own; “how truly I understood your noble, generous nature! It was but yesterday I was writing about you to a very dear friend, who had asked me when the marriage was to take place, and I said: ‘If I have any skill in deciphering character, I should say, Never. Charles Heathcote is not the man to live a pensioner on a wife’s rental; he is far more likely to take service again as a soldier, and win a glorious name amongst those who are now reconquering India. His daring spirit chafes against the inglorious idleness of his present life, and I ‘d not wonder any morning to see his place vacant at the breakfast-table, and to hear he had sailed for Alexandria.’”
“You do me a fuller justice than many who have known me longer,” said he, pensively.
“Because I read you more carefully, – because I considered you without any disturbing element of self-interest; and if I was now and then angry at the lethargic indolence of your daily life, I used to correct myself and say, ‘Be patient; his time is coming; and when the hour has once struck for him, he ‘ll dally no longer!’”
“And my poor father – ”
“Say, rather, your proud father, for he is the man to appreciate your noble resolution, and feel proud of his son.”
“But to leave him – to desert him – ”
“It is no eternal separation. In a year or two you will rejoin him, never to part again. Take my word for it, the consciousness that his son is accomplishing a high duty will be a strong fund of consolation for absence. It is to mistake him to suppose that he could look on your present life without deep regret.”
“Ah! is that so?” cried he, with an expression of pain.
“He has never owned as much to me; but I have read it in him, just as I have read in you that you are not the man to stoop to an ignominious position to purchase a life of ease and luxury.”
“You were right there!” said he, warmly.
“Of course I was. I could not be mistaken.”
“You shall not be, at all events,” said he, hurriedly. “How cold your hand is! Let us return to the house.” And they walked back in silence to the door.
CHAPTER XV. MRS. PENTHONY MORRIS AT HER WRITING-TABLE
It was late on that same night, – very late. The villa was all quiet and noiseless as Mrs. Morris sat at her writing-table, engaged in a very long letter. The epistle does not in any way enter into our story. It was to her father, in reply to one she had just received from him, and solely referred to little family details with which our reader can have no interest, save in a passing reference to a character already before him, and of whom she thus wrote: —
“And so your alchemist turns out to be the father of my admirer, Mr. Alfred Layton. I can sincerely say your part of the family is the more profitable, for I should find it a very difficult problem to make five hundred pounds out of mine! Nor can I sufficiently admire the tact with which you rescued even so much from such a wreck! I esteem your cleverness the more, since – shall I confess it, dear papa? – I thought that the man of acids and alkalies would turn out to be the rogue and you the dupe! Let me hasten, therefore, to make the amende honorable, and compliment you on your new character of chemist.
“In your choice, too, of the mode of disembarrassing yourself of his company, you showed an admirable wisdom; and you very justly observe, these are not times when giving a dog a bad name will save the trouble of hanging him, otherwise an exposure of his treasonable principles might have sufficed. Far better was the method you selected, while, by making him out to be mad, you make yourself out to be benevolent. You have caught, besides, a very popular turn of the public mind at a lucky conjuncture. There is quite a vogue just now for shutting up one’s mother-in-law, or one’s wife, or any other disagreeable domestic ingredient, on the plea of insanity; and a very clever physician, with what is called ‘an ingenious turn of mind,’ will find either madness or arsenic in any given substance. You will, however, do wisely to come abroad, for the day will come of a reaction, and ‘the lock-up’ system will be converted into the ‘let-loose,’ and a sort of doomsday arrive when one will be confronted with very unwelcome acquaintances.”
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