The Clever Woman of the Family [192]
of former habits was a trial to her shattered nerves, and brought back the dreadful haunted nights. The first sight of Conrade, still looking thin and delicate, quite overset her; a drive on the Avoncester road renewed all she had felt on the way thither; three or four morning visitors coming in on her unexpectedly, made the whole morbid sense of eyes staring at her recur all night, and when the London solicitor came down about the settlements, she shrank in such a painful though still submissive way, from the sight of a stranger, far more from the semblance of a dinner party, that the mother yielded, and let her remain in her sitting-room. "May I come in?" said Alick, knocking at the door. I have something to tell you." "What, Alick! Not Mr. Williams come?" "Nothing so good. In fact I doubt if you will think it good at all. I have been consulting this same solicitor about the title-deeds; that cheese you let fall, you know," he added, stroking her hand, and speaking so gently that the very irony was rather pleasant. "Oh, it is very bad." "Now wouldn't you like to hear it was so bad that I should have to sell out, and go to the diggings to make it up?" "Now, Alick, if it were not for your sake, you know I should like--" "I know you would; but you see, unfortunately, it was not a cheese at all, only a wooden block that the fox ran away with. Lawyers don't put people's title-deeds into such dangerous keeping, the true cheese is safe locked up in a tin-box in Mr. Martin's chambers in London." "Then what did I give Mauleverer?" "A copy kept for reference down here." Rachel hid her face. "There, I knew you would think it no good news, and it is just a thunder-clap to me. All you wanted me for was to defend the mother and make up to the charity, and now there's no use in me," he said in a disconsolate tone. "Oh, Alick, Alick, why am I so foolish?" "Never mind; I took care Martin should not know it. Nobody is aware of the little affair but our two selves; and I will take care the fox learns the worth of his prize. Only now, Rachel, answer me, is there any use left for me still?" "You should not ask me such things, Alick, you know it all too well." "Not so well that I don't want to hear it. But I had more to say. This Martin is a man of very different calibre from old Cox, with a head and heart in London charities and churches, and it had struck him as it did you, that the Homestead had an easier bargain of it than that good namesake of yours had ever contemplated. If it paid treble or quadruple rent, the dear mother would never find it out, nor grow a geranium the less." "No, she would not! But after all, the lace apprenticeships are poor work." "So they are, but Martin says there would be very little difficulty in getting a private bill to enable the trustees to apply the sum otherwise for the benefit of the Avonmouth girls." "Then if I had written to him, it would have been all right! Oh, my perverseness!" "And, Rachel, now that money has been once so intended; suppose it kept its destination. About ?00 would put up a tidy little industrial school, and you might not object to have a scholarship or two for some of our little -th Highlander lassies whose fathers won't make orphans of them for the regular military charities. What, crying, Rachel! Don't you like it?" "It is my dream. The very thing I wished and managed so vilely. If Lovedy were alive! Though perhaps that is not the thing to wish. But I can't bear taking your--" "Hush! You can't do worse than separate your own from mine. This is no part of the means I laid before Mr. Martin by way of proving myself a responsible individual. I took care of that. Part of this is prize-money, and the rest was a legacy that a rich old merchant put me down for in a transport of gratitude because his son was one of the sick in the bungalow where the shell came. I have had it these three or four months, and wondered what to do with it." "This will be very beautiful, very excellent. And we can give the ground."