Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series. Mrs. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ I ran home fast,” said Selina.

      “Home from whence? Where have you been?”

      “I was—near the Torr,” replied Selina, with hesitation.

      “Near the Torr, child! That’s a long way for you to go strolling alone.”

      “The wild roses in the hedges there are so lovely,” pleaded Selina. “That’s why I took to go there at first.”

      “Took to go there!” repeated the old lady, thinking it an odd phrase. “Do you see anything of the Torr people? I hope you’ve not been making intimate with young Stephen Radcliffe,” she added, a thought darting into her mind.

      “Stephen? that’s the son. No, I never saw him. I think he is away from home.”

      “That’s well. He is by all accounts but a churlish lout of a fellow.”

      Selina Elliot bent her timid face over the hat, smoothing its ribbons with her restless fingers. She was evidently ill at ease. Glancing up presently, she saw the old lady was shutting her eyes for a doze: and that hastened her communication.

      “I—I want to tell you something, please, ma’am. But—I don’t like to begin.” And, with that, Selina burst into unexpected tears, and the alarmed old lady looked up.

      “Why, what ails you, child? Are you hurt? Has a wasp been at you?”

      “Oh no,” said Selina, brushing the tears away with fingers that trembled all over. “I—if you please—I think I am going to live at the Torr.”

      The old lady wondered whether Selina was dreaming. “At the Torr!” said she. “There are no children at the Torr. They don’t want a governess at the Torr.”

      “I am going there to be with Mr. Radcliffe,” spoke Selina, in her throat, as if she meant to choke.

      “To be with old Radcliffe! Why, the child’s gone cranky! Paul Radcliffe don’t need a governess.”

      “He wants to marry me.”

      “Mercy upon us!” cried the old lady, lifting both hands in her amazement. And Selina burst into tears again.

      Yes, it was true. Paul Radcliffe, who was fifty years of age, if a day, and had a son over twenty, had been proposing marriage to that bright young girl! They had met in the fields often, it turned out, and Mr. Radcliffe had been making his hay while the sun shone. Every one went on at her.

      “It would be better to go into a prison than into that gloomy Sandstone Torr—a young girl like you, Selina,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “It would be sheer madness.”

      “Why, you’d never go and sacrifice yourself to that old man!” cried the Squire, who was just as outspoken and impulsive and good-hearted then as in these latter years. “He ought to be ashamed of himself. It would be like June and December.”

      But all they said was of no use in the end. It was not that Selina, poor girl, was in love with Mr. Radcliffe—one could as well have fancied her in love with the grizzly old bear, just then exhibiting himself at Church Dykely in a travelling caravan. But it was her position. Without money, without a home, without a resource of any kind for the future, save that of teaching for her bread, the prospect of becoming mistress of Sandstone Torr was something fascinating.

      “I do so dislike the thought of spending my whole life in teaching!” she pleaded in apology, the bitter tears streaming down her face. “You cannot tell what it is to feel dependent.”

      “I’d rather sweep chimneys than marry Paul Radcliffe if I were a pretty young girl like you,” stormed the old lady.

      “Since papa died you don’t know what the feeling has been,” sobbed Selina. “Many a night have I lain awake with the misery of knowing that I had no claim to a place in the wide world.”

      “I am sure you are welcome to stay here,” said the Squire.

      “Yes; as long as I am here myself,” added his mother. “After that—well, I suppose it wouldn’t be proper for you to stay.”

      “You are all kindness; I shall never meet with such friends again; and I know that I am welcome to stay as long as I like,” she answered in the saddest of tones. “But the time of my departure must come sometime; and though the world lies before me, there is no refuge for me in it. It is very good of Mr. Radcliffe to offer to make me his wife and to give me a home at the Torr.”

      “Oh, is it, though!” retorted the Squire. “Trust him for knowing on which side his bread’s buttered.”

      “He is of good descent; he has a large income——”

      “Six hundred a-year,” interrupted the Squire, slightingly.

      “Yes, I am aware that it cannot appear much to you,” she meekly said; “but to me it seems unbounded. And that is apart from the house and land.”

      “The house and land must both go to Stephen.”

      “Mr. Radcliffe told me that.”

      “As to the land, it’s only a few acres; nothing to speak of,” went on the Squire. “I’d as soon boast of my gooseberry bushes. And he can leave all his money to Stephen if he likes. In my opinion, the chances are that he will.”

      “He says he shall always behave fairly by me,” spoke poor Selina.

      “Why, you’d have a step-son older than yourself, Selina!” put in the old lady. “And I don’t like him—that Stephen Radcliffe. He’s no better than he should be. I saw him one day whipping a poor calf almost to death.”

      Well, they said all they could against it; ten thousand times more than is written down here. Selina wavered: she was not an obstinate girl, but tractable as you please. Only—she had no homestead on the face of the earth, and Mr. Radcliffe offered her one. He did not possess youth, it is true; he had never been handsome: but he was of irreproachable descent—and Selina had a little corner of ambition in her heart; and, above all, he had a fairly good income.

      It was rather curious that the dread of this girl’s life, the one dread above all other dreads, was that of poverty. In the earlier days of her parents, when she was a little girl and her mother was alive, and the parson’s pay was just seventy pounds a-year, they had had such a terrible struggle with poverty that a horror of it was implanted in the child’s mind for ever. Her mother died of it. She had become weaker and weaker, and perished slowly away for the want of those comforts that money alone could have bought. Mr. Elliot’s stipend was increased later: but the fear of poverty never left Selina: and now, by his death, she was again brought face to face with it. That swayed her; and her choice was made.

      Old Mrs. Todhetley and the Squire protested that they washed their hands of the marriage. But they could only wash them gingerly, and, so to say, in private. For, after all, excepting that Paul Radcliffe was more than old enough to be Selina’s father, and had grizzly hair and a grown-up son, there was not so much to be said against it. She would be Mrs. Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr, and might take her standing in the county.

      Sandstone СКАЧАТЬ