Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ manners. But while Mr. Radcliffe’s face was not an unpleasing one, Stephen’s had a most sullen—some might have said evil—expression. In his eyes there was a slight cast, and his dull brown hair was never tidy. Some time before this, when the father and son had a quarrel, Stephen had gone off into Cornwall to stay with his mother’s relations. This was his first appearance back again.

      “Is it you, Stephen!” cried Mr. Radcliffe, without offering to shake hands: for the house was never given to ceremony.

      “Yes, it’s me,” replied Stephen, who generally talked more like a boor than a gentleman, particularly in his angry moods. “It’s about time I came home, I think, when such a notice as this appears in the public papers.”

      He took a newspaper from his pocket, and laid it before his father, pointing with his fore-finger to an announcement. It was that of Mr. Radcliffe’s marriage.

      “Well?” said Mr. Radcliffe.

      “Is that true or a hoax?”

      “True.”

      Stephen caught the paper up again, tore it in two, and flung it across the room.

      “What the devil made you go and do such a thing as that?”

      “Softly, Ste. Keep a civil tongue in your head. I am my own master.”

      “At your age!” growled Stephen. “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

      “If you don’t like it, you can go back to where you came from,” said Mr. Radcliffe quietly, turning the wheat from one of the sample-bags out on the table.

      Stephen went to the window, and stood there looking at that agreeable prospect beyond—the trees—his hands in his pockets, his back to his father, and swearing to himself awfully. It would not do to quarrel implacably with the old man, for his money was at his own disposal: and, if incensed too greatly, he might possibly take the extreme step of leaving it away from him. But Stephen Radcliffe’s heart was good to turn his father out of doors there and then, and appropriate the money to himself at once, if he only had the power. “No fool like an old fool!” he again muttered. “Where is the cat?”

      “Where’s who?” cried Mr. Radcliffe, looking up from his wheat.

      “The woman you’ve gone and made yourself a world’s spectacle with.”

      “Ste, my lad, this won’t do. Keep a fair tongue in your head, as I bid you; or go where you may make it a foul one. For by Heaven!”—and Mr. Radcliffe’s passion broke out and he rose from his seat menacingly—“I’ll not tolerate this.”

      Stephen hardly ever remembered his father to have shown passion before. He did not like it. They had gone on so very quietly together, until that quarrel just spoken of, and Stephen had had his own way, and ruled, so to say, in all things, for his father was easy, that this outbreak was something new. It might not do to give further provocation then.

      He was standing as before in sullen silence, his hands in his trousers’ pockets and the skirts of his short brown velveteen coat thrown back, and Mr. Radcliffe had sat down to the bags again, when the door opened, and some one came in. Stephen turned. He saw a pretty young girl in black, with some books in her delicate hands. Just for an instant he wondered who the young girl could be: and then the thought flashed over him that “the woman” his father had married might have a grown-up daughter. Selina had been unpacking her trunks upstairs, and arranging her things in the drawers and closets. She hesitated on her way to the book-case when she saw the stranger.

      “My son Stephen, Selina. Ste, Mrs. Radcliffe.”

      Stephen Radcliffe for a moment forgot his sullenness and his temper. He did nothing but stare. Was his father playing a joke on him? He had pictured the new wife (though he knew not why) as a woman of mature age: this was a child. As she timidly held out the only hand she could extricate from the load of books, he saw the wedding-ring on her finger. Meeting her hand ungraciously and speaking never a word, he turned to the window again. Selina put the books down, to be disposed in their shelves later, and quitted the room.

      “This is even worse folly than I dreamed of,” began Stephen, facing his father. “She’s nothing but a child.”

      “She is close upon twenty.”

      “Why, there may be children!” broadly roared out Stephen. “You must have been mad when you did such a deed as this.”

      “Mad or sane, it’s done, Stephen. And I should do it again to-morrow without asking your leave. Understand that.”

      Yes, it was done. Rattling the silver in his pockets, Stephen Radcliffe felt that, and that there was no undoing it. Here was this young step-mother planted down at the Torr; and if he and she could not hit it off together, it was he who would have to walk out of the house. For full five minutes Stephen mentally rehearsed all the oaths he remembered. Presently he spoke.

      “It was a fair trick, wasn’t it, that you should forbid my marrying, and go and do the same thing yourself!”

      “I did not object to your marrying, Ste: I objected to the girl. Gibbon’s daughter is not one to match with you. You are a Radcliffe.”

      Stephen scoffed. Nobody had ever been able to beat into him any sense of self-importance. Pride of birth, pride in his family were elements unknown to Stephen’s nature. He had a great love of money to make up for it.

      “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” he retorted, plunging into a communication he had resolved to make. “You have been taking a wife on your score, and I have taken one on mine.”

      Mr. Radcliffe looked keenly at Stephen. “You have married Gibbon’s girl?”

      “I have.”

      “When? Where?”

      “In Cornwall. She followed me there.”

      The elder man felt himself in a dilemma. He did care for his son, and he resented this alliance bitterly for Stephen’s sake. Gibbon was gamekeeper to Sir Peter Chanasse, and had formerly been outdoor servant at the Torr; and this daughter of his, Rebecca—or Becca, as she was commonly called—was a girl quite beneath Stephen. Neither was she a lovable young woman in herself; but hard, and sly, and bony. How it was that Stephen had fancied her, Mr. Radcliffe could not understand. But having stolen a march on Stephen himself, in regard to his own marriage, he did not feel much at liberty to resent Stephen’s. It was done, too—as he had just observed of his own—and it could not be undone.

      “Well, Stephen, I am more vexed for your sake than I care to say. It strikes me you will live to repent it.”

      “That’s my look out,” replied Stephen. “I am going to bring her home.”

      “Home! Where?”

      “Here.”

      Mr. Radcliffe was silent; perhaps the assertion startled him.

      “I don’t want Gibbon’s daughter here, Stephen. There’s no room for her.”

      “Plenty of room, and to spare.”

      So there was; for the old house was large. But Mr. Radcliffe had not been thinking of space.

      “I can’t have her. There! You may make your home where you like.”

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