The Firm of Girdlestone. Arthur Conan Doyle

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      "Yes," said the merchant, replacing the medicine bottle.

      "The lawyer made it this morning. Stoop your head and you will hear me better. I have less than fifty thousand. I should have done better had I retired years ago."

      "I told you so," the other broke in gruffly.

      "You did—you did. But I acted for the best. Forty thousand I leave to my dear daughter Kate."

      A look of interest came over Girdlestone's face. "And the balance?" he asked.

      "I leave that to be equally divided among the various London institutions for educating the poor. We were both poor boys ourselves, John, and we know the value of such schools."

      Girdlestone looked perhaps a trifle disappointed. The sick man went on very slowly and painfully—

      "My daughter will have forty thousand pounds. But it is so tied up that she can neither touch it herself nor enable any one else to do so until she is of age. She has no friends, John, and no relations, save only my cousin, Dr. George Dimsdale. Never was a girl left more lonely and unprotected. Take her, I beg of you, and bring her up under your own eye. Treat her as though she were your child. Guard her above all from those who would wreck her young life in order to share her fortune. Do this, old friend, and make me happy on my deathbed."

      The merchant made no answer. His heavy eyebrows were drawn down, and his forehead all puckered with thought.

      "You are the one man," continued the sufferer, "whom I know to be just and upright. Give me the water, for my mouth is dry. Should, which God forbid, my dear girl perish before she marries, then—" His breath failed him for a moment, and he paused to recover it.

      "Well, what then?"

      "Then, old friend, her fortune reverts to you, for there is none who will use it so well. Those are the terms of the will. But you will guard her and care for her, as I would myself. She is a tender plant, John, too weak to grow alone. Promise me that you will do right by her—promise it?"

      "I do promise it," John Girdlestone answered in a deep voice. He was standing up now, and leaning over to catch the words of the dying man.

      Harston was sinking rapidly. With a feeble motion he pointed to a brown-backed volume upon the table.

      "Take up the book," he said.

      The merchant picked it up.

      "Now, repeat after me, I swear and solemnly pledge myself—"

      "I swear and solemnly pledge myself—

      "To treasure and guard as if she were my own—" came the tremulous voice from the bed.

      "To treasure and guard as if she were my own—" in the deep bass of the merchant.

      "Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend—"

      "Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend—"

      "And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!"

      "And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!"

      The sick man's head fell back exhausted upon his pillow. "Thank God!" he muttered, "now I can die in peace."

      "Turn your mind away from the vanities and dross of this world," John Girdlestone said sternly, "and fix it upon that which is eternal, and can never die."

      "Are you going?" the invalid asked sadly, for he had taken up his hat and stick.

      "Yes, I must go; I have an appointment in the City at six, which I must not miss."

      "And I have an appointment which I must not miss," the dying man said with a feeble smile.

      "I shall send up the nurse as I go down," Girdlestone said. "Good-bye!"

      "Good-bye! God bless you, John!"

      The firm, strong hand of the hale man enclosed for a moment the feeble, burning one of the sufferer. Then John Girdlestone plodded heavily down the stair, and these friends of forty years' standing had said their last adieu.

      The African merchant kept his appointment in the City, but long before he reached it John Harston had gone also to keep that last terrible appointment of which the messenger is death.

CHAPTER II. — CHARITY A LA MODE.

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      It was a dull October morning in Fenchurch Street, some weeks after the events with which our story opened. The murky City air looked murkier still through the glazed office windows. Girdlestone, grim and grey, as though he were the very embodiment of the weather, stooped over his mahogany table. He had a long list in front of him, on which he was checking off, as a prelude to the day's work, the position in the market of the various speculations in which the capital of the firm was embarked. His son Ezra lounged in an easy chair opposite him, looking dishevelled and dark under the eyes, for he had been up half the night, and the Nemesis of reaction was upon him.

      "Faugh!" his father ejaculated, glancing round at him with disgust. "You have been drinking already this morning."

      "I took a brandy and seltzer on the way to the office," he answered carelessly. "I needed one to steady me."

      "A young fellow of your age should not want steadying. You have a strong constitution, but you must not play tricks with it. You must have been very late last night. It was nearly one before I went to bed."

      "I was playing cards with Major Clutterbuck and one or two others. We kept it up rather late."

      "With Major Clutterbuck?"

      "Yes."

      "I don't care about your consorting so much with that man. He drinks and gambles, and does you no good. What good has he ever done himself? Take care that he does not fleece you." The merchant felt instinctively, as he glanced at the shrewd, dark face of his son, that the warning was a superfluous one.

      "No fear, father," Ezra answered sulkily; "I am old enough to choose my own friends."

      "Why such a friend as that?"

      "I like to know men of that class. You are a successful man, father, but you—well, you can't be much help to me socially. You need some one to show you the ropes, and the major is my man. When I can stand alone, I'll soon let him know it."

      "Well, go your own way," said Girdlestone shortly. Hard to all the world, he was soft only in this one direction. From childhood every discussion between father and son had ended with the same words.

      "It is business time," he resumed. "Let us confine ourselves to business. I see that Illinois were at 112 yesterday."

      "They are at 113 this morning."

      "What! СКАЧАТЬ