CHAPTER II.
“A gentleman, sir, to see you,” said a servant to Jacob Ford, as he ushered in his old friend, Mr. Trask.
“Ah, Trask, how are you? Glad to see you,” said Jacob, with one of his vice-like shakes of the hand. “Come for a rubber at whist? That’s right. I was thinking to-day, how long it was since you and I had a quiet hour together. How’s trade, Trask? You ought to be making money. Why, what’s the matter, man?” clapping him on the shoulder; “never saw you this way before; hang me if you don’t look as solemn as old Parson Glebe. Why don’t you speak? Why do you stare at me so?”
“Jacob,” replied Mr. Trask, and there he stopped.
“Well—that’s my name; Jacob Ford: as good a name as you’ll find on ’change. I never have done any thing to make me ashamed of it.”
“I wish every body could say as much,” said Trask, gravely.
“What are you driving at?” asked Jacob Ford; “don’t talk riddles to me—they get me out of temper. If you have any thing to tell, out with it. I’ve seen fifty years’ wear and tear; I’m not frightened by trifles.”
“But this is no trifle, Ford. I can’t do it,” said the soft-hearted Mr. Trask. “Jacob, my old friend—I—can’t do it,” and he sat down and covered his face with his hands.
“Come—come,” said Jacob; “take heart, man. If you have got into a scrape, Jacob Ford is not the man to desert an old friend; if a few hundreds or more will set it all right, you shall have it.”
“For God’s sake, stop,” said Trask; “the shadow has fallen on your threshold, not on mine.”
“Mine?” replied Jacob, with a bewildered look. “Mine? defalcations? banks broke? hey? Jacob Ford a beggar, after fifty years’ toil?”
“Worse—worse,” said Trask, making a violent effort to speak. “Percy Lee is arrested for embezzlement, and I have proofs of his guilt. There—now I’ve said it.”
“Man! do you know this?” said Jacob, in a hoarse whisper, putting his white lips close to his friend’s ear, as if he feared the very walls would tell the secret.
“Before God, ’tis true,” said Trask, solemnly.
“Then God’s curse light on the villain,” said Jacob Ford. “My Mary—my bright, beautiful Mary! Oh! who will tell her? Listen, Trask, that’s her voice—singing. Oh, God—oh God, this is too dreadful”—and the old man bowed his head upon his breast, and wept like a child.
“What does all this mean?” asked Lucy Ford, opening the door. “Jacob—husband—Trask—what is it?” and she looked from one to the other, in bewildered wonder.
“Tell her, Trask,” whispered Jacob.
“Don’t weep so, dear Jacob,” said Lucy; “if money has gone, we can both go to work again; we both know how. Mary will soon have a home of her own.”
Jacob sprang to his feet, and seizing Lucy by the arm, hissed in her ear, “Woman, don’t you name him. May God’s curse blight him. May he die alone. May his bones bleach in the winds of heaven, and his soul be forever damned. Lucy—Percy Lee is a—a—swindler! There—now go break her heart, if you can. Lucy?—Trask?”—and Jacob, overcome with the violence of his feelings, wept again like a child; while poor Lucy, good Lucy, hid her face on her husband’s breast, repressing her own anguish that she might not add to his.
“Who’s going to tell her, I say?” said Jacob. “May my tongue wither before I do it. My darling—my loving, beautiful darling—who will tell her?”
“I,” said the mother, with ashen lips, as she raised herself slowly from her husband’s breast, and moved toward the door.
Clutching at the balustrade for support, Lucy dragged herself slowly up stairs. Ah! well might she reel to and fro as she heard Mary’s voice:
“Bring flowers, bring flowers for the bride to wear,
They were born to blush in her shining hair;
She is leaving the home of her childhood’s mirth,
She hath bid farewell to her father’s hearth,
Her place is now by another’s side;
Bring flowers for the locks of the fair young bride.”
A trembling hand was laid upon Mary’s shoulder. She shook back her long bright hair, and looked smilingly up into her mother’s face.
“Mary,” said Lucy, solemnly, “you will never marry Percy Lee.”
“Dead? Percy dead? Oh—no—no,” gasped the poor girl. “My Percy!—no—no!”
“Worse—worse,” said Lucy, throwing her protecting arms around her child. “Mary, Percy Lee is a swindler; he is unworthy of you; you must forget him.”
“Never,” said Mary—“never! Who dare say that? Where is he?—take me to him;” and she sunk fainting to the floor.
“I have killed her,” said the weeping mother, as she chafed her cold temples, and kissed her colorless lips. “I have killed her,” she murmured, bending over her, as Mary passed from one convulsive fit to another.
“Will she die, Jacob?” asked Lucy, looking mournfully up into her husband’s pallid face. “Will she die, Jacob?”
“Better so,” groaned the old man. “God’s curse on him who has done this. She was my all. What’s my gold good for, if it can not bring back the light to her eye, the peace to her heart? My gold that I have toiled for, and piled up in shining heaps: what is it good for?”
“The curse was on it, Jacob,” groaned Lucy. “Oh, Jacob, I told you so. God forgive us; it was cankered gold.”
“Why did the villain blast my home?” asked Jacob, apparently unconscious of what Lucy had said; “kill my one ewe lamb; all Jacob had to love—all that made him human? Lucy, I never prayed, but perhaps He would hear me for her;” and he knelt by his child. “Oh God, make my soul miserable forever, if thou wilt, but spare her—take the misery out of her heart.”
“If it be Thy will,” responded Lucy.
“Don’t say that, Lucy,” said Jacob. “I must have it so;—what has she done, poor lamb?”