The Squire's Daughter

by Silas K. Hocking

Mrs. Penlogan began to cry. It seemed almost as if God had forsaken them, and her faith in Providence was in danger of going from her. She and Ruth had been bewailing the hardness of their lot that afternoon while Ralph was out with his gun. The few pounds saved from the general wreck were nearly exhausted. When the funeral expenses had been paid, and the removal accounts had been squared, there was very little left. To make matters worse, Ralph's accident had to be added to their calamities. He was only just beginning to get about again, and when the doctor's bill came in they would be worse than penniless, they would be in debt.

And now suddenly, and without warning, this new trouble threatened them. A trouble that was worse than poverty—worse even than death. Their good name, they imagined, was unassailable, and if that went by the board, everything would be lost.

Ralph sat silent, and stared into the fire. In the main his thoughts were very bitter, but one sweet reflection came and went in the most unaccountable fashion. One pure and almost perfect face peeped at him from between the bars of the grate and vanished, but always came back again after a few minutes and smiled all the more sweetly, as if to atone for its absence.

Why had Dorothy Hamblyn taken the trouble to interview him? Why was she so interested in his fate? How was it that she was so ready to accept his word? To give any rational answer to these questions seemed impossible. If she felt what he felt, the explanation would be simple enough; but since by no exercise of his fancy or imagination could he bring himself to that view of the case, her conduct—her apparent solicitude—remained inexplicable.

Nevertheless, the thought of Dorothy was the one sweet drop in his bitter cup. The why and wherefore of her interest might remain a mystery, yet the fact remained that of her own free will she had come to see him that she might get the truth from his own lips, and without any hesitation she had told him that she believed his word. Sir John might hunt him down with all the venom of a sleuth hound, but he would always have this crumb of consolation, that the Squire's daughter believed in him still.

He had given up trying to hate her. Nay, he accepted it as part of the irony of fate that he should do the other thing. He could not understand why destiny should be so relentlessly cruel to him, why every circumstance and every combination of circumstances should unite to crush him. But he had to accept life as he found it. The world seemed to be ruled by might, not by justice. The strong worked their will upon the weak. It was the fate of the feeble to go under; the helpless cried in vain for deliverance, the poor were daily oppressed.

He found his youthful optimism a steadily diminishing quantity. His father's fate seemed to mock the idea of an over-ruling Providence. If there was ever a good man in the parish, his father was that man. No breath of slander had ever touched his name. Honest, industrious, pure-minded, God-fearing, he lived and wrought with all his might, doing to others as he would they should do to him. And yet he died of a broken heart, defeated and routed in the unequal contest, victimised by the uncertain chances of life, ground to powder by laws he did not make, and had no chance of escaping. And in that hour of overwhelming disaster there was no hand to deliver him save the kindly hand of death.

"And what is there before me?" he asked himself bitterly. "What have I to live for, or hope for? The very springs of my youth seem poisoned. My love is a cruel mockery, my ambitions are frost-nipped in the bud."

For the rest of the evening very little was said. Supper was a sadly frugal meal, and they ate it in silence. Ruth and her mother could not help wondering how long it would be ere they would have no food to eat.

Ralph kept listening with keen apprehension for the sound of a measured footstep outside the door. At any moment he might be arrested. Sir John was one of the most important men in St. Goram, hence the law would be swift to take its course. The policemen would be falling over each other in their eagerness to do their duty.