“I am afraid I have talked too much, I am not very strong, yet with your permission we will adjourn this discussion to another day—in the meantime I will write to my uncle.”
Mr. Brookes did not offer the assistance of his arm, and had he, Frank would certainly not have accepted it. Holding the door, the old man waited for his visitor to pass out. “Southdown Road or the heir to a peerage: it is all the same, my money is what is wanted—the money I had made myself,” thought Mr. Brookes. “Dreadful old man, he would sell his daughter for a settlement of a few hundred pounds a year. I never knew he was so bad, my eyes are opened,” thought Frank. Both were equally angry, and without secrecy or subterfuge they sought consolation in different parts of the garden. Mr. Brookes resumed his walk on the tennis ground with Berkins, and stopping frequently to point to his glass-houses, he described his misfortunes with profuse waves of his stick. Frank had found Maggie, and they now walked together in the shade and silence of the sycamores—he, vehement and despairing of the future; she, subtle and strangely confident that things would happen as she wished them.
Having once yielded and felt the pang of possession she was wholly his, in all ramifications of spirit and flesh, both in her brain and blood, and the utmost ends of her sense mingled with him. But to him, she was the symbol of the desire of which he was enamoured, the desire which held together his nature and gave it individuality—love of the young girl.
“Oh! my darling, if he should speak so to Mount Rorke, we should be parted for ever—no, that could never be—nothing in heaven or earth would induce me to give you up, be true to me and I will be true to you; but our happiness—no, not our happiness, that is in ourselves—but all our prospects in life will be wrecked if he will not give way. Should he and Mount Rorke meet—”
“But they won't meet; have patience—I know how to manage father. He doesn't like to part with his money, and I can understand it, he made it all himself; but he will get used to the idea in time, leave him to me; put your trust in me.”
She extended her hand, he took it, pressed it to his lips; he took her in his arms and kissed her, and the leaves of the sycamores were filled with the sunset.
“DEAR SIR,—I received a letter this morning from my nephew, apprising me of his engagement to your daughter. He has apparently obtained your consent, and he asks for mine, and he also asks from me not only an increase of income to meet the requirements of altered circumstances, but he tells me that you will expect me to settle some seven, eight, or ten thousand pounds upon your daughter.
“I do not propose to discuss the reasonableness of his or your demands, but it seems that a statement of his prospects is owing to you.
“Having never married when I was a young man, many have assumed—I among the number—that I never would marry; and I admit that I have allowed my nephew to grow up in the belief that he is my heir and the successor to the title of Mount Rorke; but beyond a general assumption existing in my mind, his mind, and the minds of those who know us, there is no reason to suppose that I shall not marry, or that I shall leave him a single sixpence, and I willingly make use of this opportunity to say that I have no faintest intention of entering intoany engagement either verbal or written with him upon this matter.—Yours very truly, MOUNT RORKE.”
“MY DEAR FRANK,—The enclosed is a copy of the letter which I send by this post to Mr. Brookes. And I make no disguise of the fact that it was written with the full intention of rendering your marriage an impossibility. It will no doubt appear to you a harsh and cruel letter; it will no doubt grieve you, madden you—in your rage you may call me a brute. The epithet will be unjust; but knowing very well indeed what love is at twenty-five, I will forgive it. And now to the point. I know something about old Brookes, and I remember the lean boy you used to bring here, and judging from some slight traces that Eton had not succeeded in effacing, I think I can guess what the rest of the family is like; indeed, the old gentleman's preposterous demand that I should settle ten thousand pounds on his daughter throws a sufficient light on his character, and in some measure reveals what sort of manner of man he is. But let all this be waived. I admit that with some show of reason, you may say it is unjust, nay more, it is ridiculous, to pronounce judgment on people I have never seen, and it is cruelty worthy of a Roman Emperor to wreck the lifelong happiness of two young people for the sake of a prejudice that the trouble of a journey to Brighton will most certainly extinguish. I will not irritate you by assuring you that the world is full of desirable women-women that will appeal to you two years hence precisely as Miss Brookes appeals to you now. Were I to whisper that it is unwise to give up all women for one woman, you could not fail, in your present mood, to see in my philosophy only the nasty wisdom of a cynical old reprobate. Therefore I will not weary you with advice—what I have said must be considered not as advice, but rather as an expression of personal experience in the love passion, serving as illustration of the attitude of my mind towards you. I will limit myself to merely asking you—no, not to think again of Miss Brookes—that would be impossible, but to leave Southwick for London or Paris, the latter for preference. I will give you a letter of introduction to a charming lady (ah! were I thirty years younger). Put yourself in her hands, and I have no doubt in the world but that she will send you back cured in six months, as my bank-book will abundantly prove.