"And I," he said.
The dapper, contented little man had done Rothwell no harm, but the young fellow cherished a black hatred, born of the dulness of his vacant life. Hayes, without being rich, was very comfortably off, and he was apt to betray the fact with innocent ostentation. A sovereign was less to him than a shilling to John Rothwell, and it seemed to the latter that he could always hear the gold chinking when Hayes talked. One could do so much with a sovereign, and so little with a shilling. Rothwell was hungry, with a hunger which only just fell short of being a literal fact, and he had to stand by, with his hands in his empty pockets, while Hayes could have good dinners, good wine, good clothes, good horses, whatever he liked in the way of pleasure—and was "such a contemptible little cad with it all," the young man snarled. His own poverty would have been more bearable had it not been for his neighbour's ease and security. And now, heaven be praised!—heaven?—the prosperous man had set his heart on this whitefaced, fair-haired, foolish girl who was under the roof of Mitchelhurst Place, and for once he should be baffled.
Rothwell set to work with evil ingenuity—it seemed almost fiendish, but, really, he had nothing else to do—to ruin Hayes's chance of success. But for him it must have been almost a certainty. Kate was inclined to favour the suitor. The old squire disliked him, perhaps with a little of his son's feeling, but would have been very well satisfied to see the girl provided for. And Minnie Newton was there for any man, who had a will of his own, and was not absolutely repulsive, to take if he pleased. The course of true love seemed about to run with perfect smoothness till young Rothwell stepped in and troubled it.
Mockery, not slander, was his weapon. As Miss Newton idled over her embroidery he would lounge near her and make little jests about Hayes's age, size, and manners. She listened with a troubled face. Of course Mr. Rothwell was talking very cleverly, and she tried not to remember that she had found Mr. Hayes very kind and pleasant when he called the day before. Of course it was absurd that a man of that age should want to be taken for five-and-twenty—yes, and he had a very ridiculous way of putting his head on one side like a bird—when Mr. Rothwell had insisted on having her opinion, she had said, "Yes, it was very ridiculous"—and a gentleman, a real gentleman, would not talk so much about his money, and what he could do with it—Mr. Rothwell said so, and he certainly knew. And as she had agreed to it she supposed it was quite right that he should repeat this at dinner-time, as if it were her own remark, though she wished he wouldn't, because his father turned sharply and looked at her. But, no doubt, Mr. Hayes did look absurdly small by the side of John Rothwell, and there was something common in his manners. Many people might think they were all very well, but a lady would feel that there was something wanting. And so on, and so on, till she began to ask herself what John Rothwell would say of her if, after all this, she showed more than the coldest civility to Mr. Hayes.
Kate perfectly understood the position of affairs, but did not choose openly to oppose her brother. If Hayes would have come and carried Minnie off, young Lochinvar fashion, she would have been secretly pleased. As it was, she was contemptuously kind to the girl, and if the little suitor met the two young women in the village, Miss Rothwell shook hands and looked away. Once she found herself some business to do at the Mitchelhurst shop, and sent Minnie home, lest she should be out too long in the December cold. She had spied Herbert Hayes coming along the street, and had rightly guessed that he would see and pursue the slim, black-clothed figure. And, indeed, he used his walk with Miss Newton to such good purpose that he might have won her promise then and there if a tall young man had not suddenly sprung over a stile and confronted them. Minnie fairly cowered in embarrassment as she met Rothwell's meaning glance, which assumed that she would be delighted to be rid of a bore, and she suffered him to give her his arm and to take her home, leaving poor Hayes to feel very small indeed as he stood in the middle of the road. He tried a letter, but it only called forth a little feebly-penned word of refusal as faint as an echo.
Hayes never suspected the young man's deliberate malice. He fancied the old squire, if anybody, was his enemy; but he was more inclined to set the difficulty down to the Rothwells' notorious pride than to any special ill-will to himself.
"No one is good enough for them, curse them!" he said over the little note. "They won't give me a chance of winning her. I'm not beaten yet though!"
But he was. Early in January Minnie Newton took cold, drooped in the chilly dreariness of the old house, and died before the spring came in.
One day Kate Rothwell came upon Hayes as he lingered, a melancholy little figure, by the girl's grave.