William Brook could have told them, had he dared, that it was not lack of ambition chaining him to his post, but stress of love. He and Ellin Delorane had entered a long while past into the mazes of that charming dream, than which, as Tom Moore tells us, there’s nothing half so sweet in life, and the world was to them as the Garden of Eden.
It was close upon the end of the second year before Mr. Delorane found it out. He went into a storm of rage and reproaches—chiefly showered upon William Brook, partly upon Ellin, a little upon himself.
“I have been an old fool,” he spluttered to his confidential clerk. “Because the young people had been intimate in the days when the Brooks were prosperous, I must needs let it go on still, and never suspect danger! Why, the fellow has had his tea here twice a-week upon an average!—and brought Ellin home at night when she has been at his mother’s!—and I—I—thought no more than if it had been her brother! I could thrash myself! And where have her aunt Hester’s eyes been, I should like to know!”
“Very dishonourable of Brook,” assented St. George, knitting his brow. “Perhaps less harm is done than you fear, sir. They are both young, can hardly know their own minds; they will grow out of it. Shall you part them?”
“Do you suppose I shouldn’t?” retorted the lawyer.
William Brook was discharged from the office: Ellin received orders to give up his acquaintanceship; she was not to think of him in private or speak to him in public. Thus a little time went on. Ellin’s bright face began to fade; Aunt Hester looked sick and sorry; the lawyer had never felt so uncomfortable in his life.
Do what he would, he could not get out of his liking for William Brook, and Ellin was dear to him as the apple of his eye. He had been in love himself once, and knew what it meant; little as you would believe it of a stout old red-faced lawyer; knew that both must be miserable. So much the better for Brook—but what of Ellin?
“One would think it was you who had had your lover sent to the right-about!” he wrathfully began to Aunt Hester, one morning when he came upon her in tears as she sat at her sewing. “I’d hide my face if I were you, unless I could show a better.”
“It is that I am so sorry for Ellin, John,” replied Aunt Hester, meekly wiping her tears. “I—I am afraid that some people bear sorrow worse than others.”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, not much,” sighed Aunt Hester, not daring to allude to the dread lying latent in her own mind—that Ellin might fade away like her mother. “I can see what a sharp blow it has been to the child, John, and so—and so I can but feel it myself.”
“Sharp blow! Deuce take it all! What business had young Brook to get talking to her about such rubbish as love?”
“Yes indeed, it is very unfortunate,” said Aunt Hester. “But I do not think he has talked to her, John; I imagine he is too honourable to have said a single word. They have just gone on loving one another in secret and in silence, content to live in the unspoken happiness that has flooded their two hearts.”
“Unspoken fiddlestick? What a simpleton you are, Hester!”
Mr. Delorane turned off in a temper. He knew it must have been a “sharp blow” to Ellin, but he did not like to hear it so stated to his face. Banging the door behind him, he was crossing the hall to the office—which made a sort of wing to the house—when he met William Brook.
“Will you allow me to speak to you, sir?” asked the young man in a tone of deprecation. And, though the lawyer had the greatest mind in the world to tell him NO and send him head-foremost out again, he thought of Ellin, he thought of his dead friend, Roger Brook; so he gave a growl, and led the way into the dining-room.
In his modest winning way, William Brook spoke a little of the trouble that had come upon their family—how deeply sorry he was that Ellin and he should have learnt to care for one another for all time, as it was displeasing to Mr. Delorane–
“Hang it, man,” interrupted the lawyer irascibly, too impatient to listen further—“what on earth do you propose to yourself? Suppose I did not look upon it with displeasure?—are you in a position to marry her?”
“You would not have objected to me had we been as we once were—prosperous, and–”
“What the dickens has that to do with it!” roared the lawyer. “Our business lies with the present, not the past.”
“I came here to tell you, sir, that I am to leave for New York to-night. My brother Charles has been writing to me about it for some time past. He says I cannot fail to get on well in my uncle’s house, and attain to a good position. Uncle Matthew has no sons: he will do his best to advance his nephews. What I wish to ask you, sir, is this—if, when my means shall be good and my position assured, you will allow me to think of Ellin?”
“The man’s mad?” broke forth Mr. Delorane, more put about than he had been at all. “Do you suppose I should let my only child go to live in a country over the seas?”
“No, sir, I have thought of that. Charles thinks, if I show an aptitude for business, they may make me their agent over here. Oh, Mr. Delorane, be kind, be merciful: for Ellin’s sake and for mine! Do not send me away without hope!”
“Don’t you think you possess a ready-made stock of impudence, William Brook?”
The young man threw his earnest, dark-blue eyes into the lawyer’s. “I feared you would deem so, sir. But I am pleading for what is dearer to me and to her than life: our lives will be of little value to us if we must spend them apart. Only just one ray of possible hope, Mr. Delorane! It is all I ask.”
“Look here; we’ll drop this,” cried the lawyer, his hands in his pockets, rattling away violently at the silver in them, his habit when put out, but nevertheless calming down in temper, for in spite of prejudice he did like the young man greatly, and he was not easy as to Ellin. “The best thing you can do is to go where you are going—over the Atlantic: and we’ll leave the future to take care of itself. The money you think to make may turn out all moonshine, you know. There; that’s every word I’ll say and every hope I’ll give, though you stop all day bothering me, William Brook.”
And perhaps it was as much as William Brook had expected: any way, it did not absolutely forbid him to hope. He held out his hand timidly.
“Will you not shake hands with me, sir—I start to-night—and wish me God speed.”
“I’ll wish you better sense; and—and I hope you’ll get over safely,” retorted Mr. Delorane: but he did not withhold his hand. “No correspondence with Ellin, you understand, young man; no underhand love-making.”
“Yes, sir, I understand; and you may rely upon me.”
He quitted the room as he spoke, to make his way out as he came—through the office. The lawyer stood in the passage and looked after him: and a thought, that had forced itself into his mind several times since this trouble set in, crossed it again. Should he make the best of a bad bargain: give Brook a chief place in his own office and let them set up in some pleasant little home near at hand? Ellin had her mother’s money: and she would have a great deal more at his own death; quite enough to allow her husband to live the idle life of a gentleman—and William was a gentleman, and the nicest young fellow he knew. Should he? For a full minute Mr. Delorane stood deliberating—yes, or no; then he took a hasty step forward to call the young man back. Then, wavering and uncertain, he stepped back again, and let the idea pass.
“Well, how have you sped?” asked Mr. St. George, as William Brook reappeared in the office. “Any hope?”
“Yes, I think so,” answered William. “At least, it is not absolutely forbidden. There’s a line in a poem my mother would repeat to us when we were boys—‘God and an honest heart will bear us through the roughest day.’ I trust He, and it,