"In a few years he will be worth a quarter of a million," he said.
The figure flustered her. "Why, that's----"
"A quarter of a million," he repeated impressively. "And that's why I consider this the chance of my life, mother. It is such an opportunity as I shall never have again. It is within my reach now, and surely, surely," his voice shook with the fervor of his pleading, "you will not be the one to dash it from my lips?" He laid his hand upon her wrist. "And ruin your son's life, mother?"
She was shaken. "You know, if I thought it was for your good!"
"It is! It is, mother!"
"I'd do anything to make you happy, Arthur! But I don't believe," with a sigh, "that whatever I did your uncle would pay the money."
"Is it his money or yours?"
"Why, of course, Arthur, I thought that you knew that it was your father's." She was very simple, and her pride was touched.
"And now it is yours. And I suppose that some day--I hope it will be a long day, mother--it will be mine. Believe me, you've only to write to my uncle and tell him that you have decided to call it up, and he will pay it as a matter of course. Shall I write the letter for you to sign?"
Mrs. Bourdillon looked piteously at him. She was very, very unwilling to comply, but what was she to do? Between love of him and fear of the Squire, what was she to do? Poor woman, she did not know. But he was with her, the Squire was absent, and she was about to acquiesce when a last argument occurred to her. "But you are forgetting," she said, "if your uncle takes offence, and I'm sure he will, he'll come between you and Josina."
"Well, that is his look-out."
"Arthur! You don't mean that you've changed your mind, and you so fond of her? And the girl heir to Garth and all her father's money!"
"I say nothing about it," Arthur declared. "If he chooses to come between us that will be his doing, not mine."
"But Garth!" Mrs. Bourdillon was altogether at sea. "My dear boy, you are not thinking! Why, Lord ha' mercy on us, where would you find such another, young and pretty and all, and Garth in her pocket? Why, if it were only on Jos's account you'd be mad to quarrel with him."
"I'm not going to quarrel with him," Arthur replied sullenly. "If he chooses to quarrel with me, well, she's not the only heiress in the world."
His mother held up her hands. "Oh dear me," she said wearily. "I give it up, I don't understand you. But I'm only a woman and I suppose I don't understand anything."
He was accustomed to command and she to be guided. He saw that she was wavering, and he plied her afresh, and in the end, though not without another outburst of tears, he succeeded. He fetched the pen, he smoothed the paper, and before he handed his mother her bed-candle he had got the fateful letter written, and had even by lavishing on her unusual signs of affection brought a smile to her face. "It will be all right, mother, you'll see," he urged as he watched her mount the stairs. "It will be all right! You'll see me a millionaire yet."
And then he made a mistake which was to cost him dearly. He left the letter on the mantel-shelf. An hour later, when he had been some time in bed, he heard a door open and he sat up and listened. Even then, had he acted on the instant, it might have availed. But he hesitated, arguing down his misgivings, and it was only when he caught the sound of footsteps stealthily re-ascending that he jumped out of bed and lit a candle. He slipped downstairs, but he was too late. The letter was gone.
He went up to bed again, and though he wondered at the queer ways of women he did not as yet doubt the issue. He would recover the letter in the morning and send it. The end would be the same.
There, however, he was wrong. Mrs. Bourdillon was a weak woman, but weakness has its own obstinacy, and by the morning she had reflected. The sum charged on Garth was her whole fortune, her sole support, and were it lost she would be penniless, with no one to look to except the Squire, whom she would have offended beyond forgiveness. True, Arthur laughed at the idea of loss, and he was clever. But he was young and sanguine, and before now she had heard of mothers beggared through the ill-fortune or the errors of their children. What if that should be her lot!
Nor was this the only thought which pressed upon her mind. That Arthur should marry Josina and succeed to Garth had been for years her darling scheme, and she could not, in spite of the hopes with which he had for the moment dazzled her, imagine any future for him comparable to that. But if he would marry Josina and succeed to Garth he must not offend his uncle.
So, when Arthur came down in the morning, and with assumed carelessness asked for the letter she put him off. It was Sunday. She would not discuss business on Sunday, it would not be lucky. On Monday, when, determined to stand no more nonsense, he returned to the subject, she took refuge in tears. It was cruel of him to press her so, when--when she was not well! She had not made up her mind. She did not know what she should do. To tears there is no answer, and, angry as he was, he had to start for Aldersbury, leaving the matter unsettled, much to his disgust and alarm, for the time was running on.
And that was the beginning of a tragedy in the little house under Garthmyle. It was a struggle between strength and weakness, and weakness, as usual, sought shelter in subterfuge. When Arthur came home at the end of the week his mother took care to have company, and he could not get a word with her. She had no time for business--it must wait. On the next Saturday she was not well, and kept her bed, and on the Sunday met him with the same fretful plea--she would do no business on Sunday! Then, convinced at last that she had made up her mind to thwart him, he hardened his heart. He loved his mother, and to go beyond a certain point did not consort with his easy nature, but he had no option; the thing must be done if his prospects were not to be wrecked. He became hard, cruel, almost brutal; threatening to leave her, threatening to take himself off altogether, harassing her week after week, in what should have been her happiest hours, with pictures of the poverty, the obscurity, the hopelessness to which she was condemning him! And, worst of all, torturing her with doubts that after all he might be right.
And still she resisted, and weak, foolish woman as she was, resisted with an obstinacy that was infinitely provoking. Meanwhile only two things supported her: her love for him, and the belief that she was defending his best interests and that some day he would thank her. She was saving him from himself. The odds were great, she was unaccustomed to oppose him, and still she withstood him. She would not sign the letter. But she suffered, and suffered terribly.
She took to bringing in guests as buffers between them, and once or twice she brought in Josina. The girl, who knew them both so well, could not fail to see that there was something wrong, that something marred the relations between mother and son. Arthur's moody brow, his silence, or his snappish answers, no less than Mrs. Bourdillon's scared manner, left her in no doubt of that. But she fancied that this was only another instance of the law of man's temper and woman's endurance--that law to which she knew but one exception. And if the girl hugged that exception, trembling and hoping, to her breast, if Arthur's coldness was a relief to her, if she cared little for any secret but her own, she was no more of a mystery to them than they were to her. When the door closed behind her, and, accompanied by a maid, she crossed the dark fields, she thought no more about them. The two ceased--such is the selfishness of love--to exist for her. Her thoughts were engrossed by another, by one who until lately had been a stranger, but whose figure now excluded the world from her view. Her secret monopolized her, closed her heart, blinded her eyes. Such is the law of love--at a certain stage in its growth.
Meanwhile life at the Cottage went on in this miserable fashion until April had come in and the daffodils were in full bloom in the meadows beside the river. And still Arthur could not succeed in his object, and wondering what the banker thought of the delay and his silence, was almost beside himself with chagrin. Then there came a welcome breathing