Chapter 23 A Plucky Girl by L. T. Meade
ALBERT
I was so stunned I could not speak at all for a minute, then I said, after a brief pause —
"Do you know if Mr. Fanning is in?"
"No, why should he be in?" replied Miss Mullins in an almost irritable voice, "he has got his work to do if you have not. Men who are generous on the large scale on which he is generous, cannot afford to be idle – that is, if they are going on adding to their fortunes. He is out and probably in the city, he is a great publisher, you know, and extremely successful. For my part, I respect him; he may be a rough diamond, but he is a diamond all the same."
Still I did not speak, and I am sure my silence, and the stunned subdued heavy expression on my face, vexed Jane more than any amount of words I might have uttered.
"I will go and see if he has really gone," I said. "It is sometimes quite late before he starts for the city, I want to speak to him at once."
"Now, Westenra, if you in this crisis make mischief," began Miss Mullins.
"Oh, I won't make mischief," I said, "but I must speak to Mr. Fanning."
I had almost reached the door when she called me back.
"One moment," she said.
I turned, impatiently.
"Please don't keep me, Jane, I must see Mr. Fanning before he goes to the city – I will come back afterwards."
"If I wasn't almost sure what you are going to say to Mr. Fanning, I would let you go," said Jane, "but you ought to know – your mother was very ill, worse than I have ever seen her before, last night."
"Mother ill in the night, and you never told me!" The greater trouble seemed to swallow up the lesser, and for the time I forgot Mr. Fanning, the man in possession, and everything in the world except mother herself.
"She had a sharp attack," continued Jane, "rigors and extreme weakness. I happened most fortunately to go into her room about midnight, and found her in an alarming state. Dr. Anderson was summoned. She is better, much better, but not up yet."
"But, Jane, why, why did you not wake me?"
"I should, dear, if there had been real danger, but she quickly recovered. You looked so ill yourself last night, that I had not the heart to disturb your sleep. And there is no danger at present, no fresh danger, that is. Unless something happens to cause her a sudden shock, she is comparatively well, but it behoves you, Westenra, to be careful."
"And suppose I am not careful," I said, a sudden defiance coming into my voice.
"In that case – " said Miss Mullins. She did not finish her sentence. She looked full at me, raised her hands expressively, and let them fall to her sides.
Nothing could be more full of meaning than her broken sentence, her action, and the expression of her face.
"But you could not deliberately do it," she said slowly, "you could not expose a mother like yours to – "
"Of course I could do nothing to injure mother," I said, "I will try and be patient; but Jane, Jane, do you know really what this means? Can you not guess that there are things that even for a mother, a dying mother, a girl ought not to do?"
"I do not see that," answered Jane deliberately; "no, I do not, not from your point of view. You can do what is required, and you can bear it."
I knew quite well what she meant. She did not call me back this time when I left the room. I heard her mutter to herself – her words startled me – putting a new sort of sudden light on all our miserable affairs.
"My little home gone too," I heard her mutter, "ruin for me too, for me too."
I stood for a moment in the dark passage outside Jane's room. There was no one there, and I could think. I did not want to go into the big hall, nor to run up the staircase. I might meet some of those smiling, well satisfied, delighted and delightful paying guests, those paying guests who were ruining us all the time. Yes, I knew at last what Jane meant, what Mrs. Fanning meant, what Albert Fanning meant. We would be relieved from our embarrassments, mother would receive no shock if I promised to marry Albert Fanning. Albert Fanning would save the position, he would pay the necessary debts; he was rich, and for love of me he would not mind what he did. Yes, I supposed it was love for me. I did not know, of course. I could not fancy for a moment that a girl like myself could excite any feeling of worship in a man like Albert Fanning, but anyhow, for whatever reason, he wanted me (and he did want me), he was willing to pay this big price for me. My heart trembled, my spirit quaked. I stood in the luxury of the dark passage, clasped my hands to my brow, and then determined not to give way, to be brave to the very end.
I ran upstairs and entered the drawing-room. It was tidy, in perfect order. I was glad to find no one there. I went and stood under father's picture. I gazed full up at the resolute, brave, handsome face.
"You died to win your V.C.," I said to myself, and then I turned to leave the room. I met Mrs. Furlong coming in.
"Ah, dear child," she said, "I am so glad to see you. But what is the matter? You don't look well."
"I am anxious," I answered; "mother had a very serious attack last night."
"We are all full of concern about her," replied Mrs. Furlong. "Won't you sit down for a moment? I wish to talk to you. Ah, here comes my husband. Philip, we have bad news about dear Mrs. Wickham, she was very ill last night."
"Your mother, Miss Wickham, is very far from strong," said Captain Furlong. He came and stood near me; he looked full of sympathy. He was very nice and kind and gentlemanly. He had been kind and courteous, and unselfish, ever since he came to the house.
"You are very good, both of you," I said. "I am going to mother now; please, don't keep me."
"But is there anything we can do? Would change be of service to her?" said Mrs. Furlong. "I know it is a little early in the year, but the spring is coming on nicely, and she must weary so of London, particularly this part of London; she has been accustomed to such a different life."
"I do not think our present life has injured her," I said. "She has not had any of the roughing. Things have been made smooth and pleasant and bright for her."
"All the same, it has been a very, very great change for her," said Mrs. Furlong. "It has been good neither for her nor for you. Yes, Philip," she continued, noticing a warning expression on her husband's face, "I have got my opportunity, and I will speak out. I am quite certain the sooner Westenra Wickham, and her dear mother, leave this boarding-house the better it will be for both of them. What has a young, innocent girl, like Westenra, to do with paying guests? Oh, if they were all like you and me, dear, it would be different; but they are not all like us, and there's that" – she dropped her voice. Captain Furlong shook his head.
"Miss Wickham has accepted the position, and I do not see how she can desert her post," he said.
"Never fear, be sure I will not," I answered; "but please – please, kind friends, don't keep me now."
"There is just one thing I should like to say before you go, Miss Wickham," said Captain Furlong; "if you find yourself in trouble of any sort whatever, pray command both my wife and myself. I have seen a good deal of life in my day. My wife and I are much interested, both in you and your mother. Now, for instance," he added, dropping his voice, "I know about tight times; we all of us get more or less into a tight corner, now and then – if a fifty pound note would – "
"Oh no, it would not do anything," I cried. My face was crimson; my heart seemed cut in two.
"Oh! how can I thank you enough?" I added; and I ran up to the kind man and seized his hands. I could almost have kissed them in my pain and gratitude. "It would be useless, quite useless, but I shall never forget your kindness."
I saw the good-natured pair look at one another, and Mrs. Furlong shook her head wisely; and I am sure a dewy moisture came to her eyes, but I did not wait to say anything more, but ran off in the direction of mother's room. A softened light filled that chamber, where all that refinement and love could give surrounded the most treasured possession of my life. Mother was lying in bed propped up by pillows. She looked quite as well as usual, and almost sweeter than I had ever seen her look, and she smiled when I came in.
"Well, little girl," she said, "you are late in paying me your visit this morning?"
"It was very wrong of you, mother, not to send for me when you were so ill last night," I answered.
"Oh, that time," said mother, "it seems ages off already, and I am quite as well as usual. I have got a kind nurse to look after me now. Nurse Marion, come here."
I could not help giving a visible start. Were things so bad with mother that she required the services of a trained nurse? A comely, sweet-faced, young woman of about thirty years of age, now approached from her seat behind the curtain.
"The doctor sent me in, Miss Wickham; he thought your mother would be the better for constant care for two or three days."
"I am very glad you have come," I answered.
"Oh, it is so nice," said mother; "Nurse Marion has made me delightfully comfortable; and is not the room sweet with that delicious old-fashioned lavender she uses, and with all those spring flowers?"
"I have opened the window, too," said the nurse, "the more air the dear lady gets the better for her; but now, Miss Wickham, I cannot allow your mother to talk. Will you come back again; or, if you stay, will you be very quiet?"
"As you are here to look after mother I will come back again," I said. I bent down, kissed the lily white hand which lay on the counterpane, and rushed from the room. Stabs of agony were going through my heart, and yet I must not give way!
I ran upstairs, and knocked at Mrs. Fanning's door. As Albert Fanning was out, I was determined to see her. There was no reply to my summons, and after a moment I opened the door and looked in. The room was empty. I went to my own room, sat down for a moment, and tried to consider how things were tending with me, and what the end would be. Rather than mother should suffer another pang, I would marry Albert Fanning. But must it come to this!
I put on my outdoor things, and ran downstairs. The closeness and oppression of the day before had changed into a most balmy and delicious spring morning; a sort of foretaste day of early summer. I was reckless, my purse was very light, but what did that matter. I stopped a hansom, got into it, and gave the man Albert Fanning's address in Paternoster Row. Was I mad to go to him – to beard the lion in his den? I did not know; I only knew that sane or mad, I must do what I had made up my mind to do.
The hansom bowled smoothly along, and I sat back in the farthest corner, and tried to hope that no one saw me. A pale, very slender, very miserable girl was all that they would have seen; the grace gone from her, the beauty all departed; a sort of wreck of a girl, who had made a great failure of her life, and of the happiness of those belonging to her. Oh, if only the past six or eight months could be lived over again, how differently would I have spent them! The cottage in the country seemed now to be a sort of paradise. If only I could take mother to it, I would be content to be buried away from the eyes of the world for evermore. But mother was dying; there would be no need soon for any of us to trouble about her future, for God Himself was taking it into His own hands, and had prepared for her a mansion, and an unfading habitation.
I scarcely dared think of this. Be the end long, or be the end short, during the remaining days or weeks of her existence, she must not be worried, she must go happily, securely, confidently, down to the Valley. That was the thought, the only thought which stayed with me, as I drove as fast as I could in the direction of Mr. Fanning's place of business.
The cab was not allowed to go up the Row, so I paid my fare at the entrance, and then walked to my destination. I knew the number well, for Albert had mentioned it two or three times in my hearing, having indeed often urged me to go and see him. I stopped therefore at the right place, looked up, saw the name of Albert Fanning in huge letters across the window, opened the door and entered. I found myself in a big, book saloon, and going up to a man asked if Mr. Fanning were in. The man was one of those smart sort of clerks, who generally know everybody's business but their own. He looked me all over in a somewhat quizzical way, and then said —
"Have you an appointment, miss?"
"I have not," I replied.
"Our chief, Mr. Fanning, never sees ladies without appointments."
"I think he will see me," I answered, "he happens to know me. Please say that Miss Westenra Wickham has called to see him."
The clerk stared at me for a moment.
"Miss West! what Wickham Miss? Perhaps you wouldn't mind writing it down."
I did not want to write down my name, but I did so; I gave it to the clerk, who withdrew, smiling to a brother clerk as he did so. He came back in a minute or two, looking rather red about the face, and went back to his seat without approaching me, and at the same time I heard heavy, ungainly steps rushing downstairs, and Mr. Fanning, in his office coat, which was decidedly shabby, and almost as greasy as the one which belonged to the "Man in Possession" on the previous evening, entered the saloon. His hair stood wildly up on his head, and his blue eyes were full of excitement. He came straight up to me.
"I say, this is a pleasure," he exclaimed, "and quite unlooked for. Pray, come upstairs at once, Miss Wickham. I am delighted to see you – delighted. Understand, Parkins," he said, addressing the clerk who had brought my message, "that I am engaged for the present, absolutely engaged, and can see no one. Now, Miss Wickham, now."
He ushered me as if I were a queen through the saloon, past the wondering and almost tittering clerks, and up some winding stairs to his own sanctum on the first floor.
"Cosy, eh?" he said, as he opened the door, and showed me a big apartment crowded with books of every shape and size, and heavily, and at the same time, handsomely furnished. "Not bad for a city man's office, eh?" he continued, "all the books are amusing; you might like to dip into 'em by-and-by, nothing deep or dull, or stodgy here, all light, frothy, and merry. Nothing improving, all entertaining. That is how my father made his fortune; and that is how I, Albert the second, as the mater calls me, intend to go on adding to my fortune. It is on light, frothy, palatable morsels that I and my wife will live in the future, eh, eh? You're pleased with the look of the place, ain't you. Now then, sit right down here facing the light, so that I can have a good view of you. You're so young; you have not a wrinkle on you. It's the first sign of age coming on when a girl wishes to sit with her back to the light, but you are young, and you can stand the full glare. Here, you take the office chair. Isn't it comfortable? That's where I have sat for hours and hours, and days and days; and where my father sat before me. How well you'd look interviewing authors and artists when they come here with their manuscripts. But there! I expect you'd be a great deal too kind to them. A lot of rubbish you would buy for the firm of Fanning & Co., wouldn't you now, eh? Ah, it's you that has got a tender little heart, and Albert Fanning has been one of the first to find it out."
I could not interrupt this rapid flow of words, and sat in the chair indicated, feeling almost stunned. At last he stopped, and gazing at me, said —
"Well, and how is Miss Westenra Wickham, and what has brought her to visit her humble servant? Out with it now, the truth, please."
Still I could find no words. At last, however, I said almost shyly —
"You have been kind, more than kind, but I came here to tell you, you must not do it."
"Now that's a pretty sort of thing to bring you here," said Mr. Fanning. "Upon my soul, that's a queer errand. I have been kind, forsooth! and I am not to be kind in the future. And pray why should I turn into an evil, cruel sort of man at your suggestion, Miss Wickham? Why should I, eh? Am I to spoil my fine character because you, a little slip of a girl, wish it so?"
"You must listen to me," I said; "you do not take me seriously, but you must. This is no laughing matter."
"Oh, I am to talk sense, am I? What a little chit it is! but it is a dear little thing in its way, although saucy. It's trying to come round me and to teach me. Well, well, I don't mind owning that you can turn me with a twist of your little finger wherever you please. You have the most bewitching way with you I ever saw with any girl. It has bowled Albert Fanning over, that it has. Now, then, what have you really come for?"
"You paid the bill of Pattens the butcher either this morning or last night, why did you do it?"
Mr. Fanning had the grace to turn red when I said this. He gave me even for a moment an uncomfortable glance, then said loudly —
"But you didn't surely want that fellow Robert to stay on?"
"That is quite true," I replied, "but I still less want you, Mr. Fanning, to pay our debts. You did very wrong to take such a liberty without my permission, very, very wrong."
"To tell you the honest truth, I never wished you to know about it," said Mr. Fanning. "Who blurted it out?"
"Jane Mullins, of course, told me."
"Ah, I mentioned to the mater that it would be very silly to confide in that woman, and now the little mater has done no end of mischief. She has set your back up and – but there, you were bound to know of it sooner or later. Of course the butcher's is not the only bill I must pay, and you were bound to know, of course. I don't really mind that you do know. It's a great relief to you, ain't it now?"
"It is not a great relief, and what is more I cannot allow it."
"You cannot allow it?"
"No."
Mr. Fanning now pulled his chair up so close to mine that his knees nearly touched me. I drew back.
"You needn't be afraid that I'll come closer," he said almost sulkily, "you know quite well what I feel about you, Miss Wickham, for I have said it already. I may have a few more words to deliver on that point by-and-by, but now what I want to say is this, that I won't force any one to come to me except with a free heart. Nobody, not even you – not even you– although, God knows, you are like no one else on earth, shall come to me except willingly. I never met any one like you before, so dainty, so fair so pretty – oh, so very pretty, and such a sweet girl and, upon my word, you can make just anything of me. But there, the time for love-making has not yet come, and you have something ugly to say in the back of your head, I see the thought shining out of your eyes. Oh, however hard you may feel, and however much pain you mean to give me, you cannot make those eyes of yours look ugly and forbidding. Now I am prepared to listen."
He folded his arms across his chest and looked full at me. He was in such great and desperate earnest that he was not quite so repellant as usual. I could not but respect him, and I found it no longer difficult to speak freely to him.
"I come as a woman to appeal to a man," I said. "You are a man and I am a woman, we stand on equal ground. You would not like your sister, had you a sister, to do what you want me to do. I appeal to you on behalf of that sister who does not exist."
He tried to give a laugh, but it would not rise to his lips.
"As you justly remarked," he said, "I have not got a sister."
"But you know, you must know, Mr. Fanning, what you would feel if you had a sister, and she allowed a man who was no relation, no relation whatever, to take her debts and pay them. What would you think of your sister?"
"I'd say the sooner she and that chap married the better," was Mr. Fanning's blunt response; "they'd be relations then fast enough, eh, eh? I think I have about answered you, Miss Wickham."
"But suppose she did not want to marry that man; suppose she had told him that she never would marry him; suppose he knew perfectly well in his heart that she could not marry him, because she had not a spark of love to give him?"
"But I don't suppose anything of the sort," said Mr. Fanning, and now his face grew white, uncomfortably white, and I saw his lips trembling.
"There now," he said, "you have had your say, and it is my turn. I see perfectly well what you are driving at. You think I have taken an unfair advantage of you, but this was the position. I knew all about it, I had seen it coming for some time. Jane Mullins had dropped hints to mother, and mother had dropped hints to me, and, good gracious! I could tell for myself. I am a man of business; I knew exactly what each of the boarders paid. I knew exactly or nearly to a nicety, and if I didn't my mother did, what the dinners cost which we ate night after night in your dining-room, and what the furniture must have cost, and what the breakfast cost, and the hundred and one things which were necessary to keep up an establishment of that kind, and I said to the mater, 'Look you here, mater, the incomings are so and so, and the outgoings are so and so, and a smash is inevitable. It will come sooner or later, and it is my opinion it will come sooner, not later.' The mater agreed with me, for she is shrewd enough, and we both thought a great deal of you, and a great deal of your mother. We knew that although you were dainty in your ways, and belonged to a higher social class than we did (we are never going, either of us, to deny that), we knew that you were ignorant of these things, and had not our wisdom, and we thought Jane Mullins was a bit of a goose to have launched in such a hopeless undertaking. But, of course, as the mater said, she said it many, many times, 'There may be money at the back of this thing, Albert, and if there is they may pull through.' But when Mr. Randolph went off in that fine hurry last winter, we found out all too quickly that there was no money at the back, and then, of course, the result was inevitable.
"I expected Pattens to send a man in, for I had met him once or twice, and he told me that his bill was not paid, and that he did not mean to supply any more meat, and what Pattens said the baker and greengrocer said too, and so did Allthorp the grocer, and so did the fishmonger, Merriman, and so did all the other tradespeople, and if one spoke to me, so did they all. I have paid Pattens, but that is not enough. Pattens won't trouble you any more, his man has gone, but there is Merriman's man to come on, and there is Allthorp's man, and there are all the others, and then, above and beyond all, there's the landlord, Mr. Hardcastle. Why, the March quarter's rent has not been paid yet, and that is a pretty big sum. So, my dear young lady, things cannot go on, and what is to be done? Now there's the question – what is to be done?"
I stared at him with frightened eyes. It was perfectly true that I knew nothing whatever about business. I had imagined myself business-like, and full of common sense, but I found in this extreme moment that my business qualities were nowhere, and that this hard-headed and yet honest man of the world was facing the position for me, and seeing things as I ought to see them.
"What is to be done?" he repeated. "Are you going to have the bed on which your mother sleeps sold under her, and she dying, or are you not? I can help you, I have plenty of money, I have a lot of loose cash in the bank which may as well go in your direction as any other. Shall I spend it for you, or shall I not?"
"But if you do – if you do," I faltered, "what does it mean?"
"Mean!" he said, and now a queer light came into his eyes, and he drew nearer again, and bending forward tried to take my hand. I put it hastily behind me.
"I'll be frank," he said, "I'll be plain, it means you."
"I cannot, oh! I cannot," I said. I covered my face with both my hands; I was trembling all over.
"Give me your promise," he said, dropping his voice very low, "just give me your promise. I'll not hurry you a bit. Give me your promise that in the future, say in a year (I'll give you a whole year, yes I will, although it goes hard with me) – say in a year, you will be mine, you'll come to me as my little wife, and I won't bother you, upon my soul I won't, before the time. I'll go away from 17 Graham Square, I will, yes I will. The mater can stay, she likes looking after people, and she is downright fond of you, but I won't worry you. Say you'll be my little wife, and you need not have another care. The bills shall be paid, and we'll close the place gradually. The boarding-house, on its present terms, cannot go on, but we will close up gradually, and poor old Miss Mullins need not be a pauper for the rest of her days. She's a right down good sort, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll start her in a little boarding-house of a humble kind on my own hook. Yes, I will, and she shall make a tidy fortune out of it. I'll do all that, and for you, for you, and you have only got to promise."
"But I cannot," I said, and now I began to sob. "Oh, I cannot. You don't want a wife who doesn't love you at all."
"Not even a little bit?" he said, and there was a pathetic ring in his voice. "Aren't you sure that you love me just a very little bit? Well, well, you will some day; you will when you know me better. I am a very rough sort of diamond, Miss Wickham, but I am a diamond all the same, if being true and honourable and honest and straightforward means anything at all. I don't want to speak too well of myself, but I do know that in my entire life I have never done a real mean or shabby thing. I am an honest fellow out and out, Miss Wickham, and I offer you all I have, and I will get you out of this scrape in a twinkling, that I will. You thought, perhaps, your fine friend Mr. Randolph would do it, but when he guessed how things were going he cut off fast enough to the other side of the world."
"I won't let you speak of him like that," I cried, and my voice rose again with anger, and the pity I had felt for Mr. Fanning a moment ago vanished as if it had never existed. "Mr. Randolph has been our true, true friend, and he may be dead now. Oh, you are cruel to speak of him like that!"
"Very well, we won't talk of him. It is unkind to abuse the dead," said Mr. Fanning in a low, considerate sort of voice. "He sailed, poor chap, in the Star of Hope, and the Star of Hope has been wrecked. He will never come back to bother anybody again, so we won't talk of him."
I was silent. A cold, faint feeling was stealing over me.
"Well, now, you listen to me," continued Mr. Fanning. "You think that it is very hard on you that a man of my sort should want you to be his wife, but men of my sort, when they make fortunes, often do marry girls like you. I have a lot of money, Miss Wickham, plenty and plenty, thousands upon thousands, and it's piling up every day. It is the froth and the light literature that has done it – all those picture-books, coloured, most of 'em, and those children's books, and those nonsense rhymes, and all that sort of thing. We have huge sales all over the world, and the money rolls in for Albert Fanning, and Albert Fanning can marry about any girl he chooses. Why shouldn't he take a wife a peg above him? It's done every day, and why should not his wife be happy? What is there against that house at Highgate, for instance, and what is there against the old woman? Is there an honester or a better heart than hers?"
"That is quite true; I really love your mother," I said.
"Ah, that's a good girl, now." He laid his big hand on mine and gave it a little pat. "And you'll be all right when you come to me; you'll be as comfortable as possible. You'll soon get accustomed to me and my ways."
"But I can never, never come to you," I cried, shrinking away. "I cannot make you that promise."
"I won't take your answer now, and I have not done speaking yet. Do you know that I have cared for you for a long time? I'll tell you how it happened. I was in the Park one day, more than two years ago. I had been in Germany, learning book-binding. There was nothing I did not go into as far as my trade was concerned, and I had come back again, and I was in the Park watching the fine folks. My pockets were comfortably lined, and I had not a debt in the world, and I was feeling pretty spry, you may be sure, and thinking, 'Albert Fanning, the time has come for you to take a mate; the time has come for you and your sweetheart to meet, and to have a right good time, and a happy life afterwards.' And I was thinking which of the suburbs I'd live in, and what sort of girl I'd have. Oh, there were plenty ready to come to me for the asking, young girls, too, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes. There was one, I never saw blacker eyes than hers; they were as black as sloes, and I always admired black eyes, because I am fair, you know, and the mater is fair. You always like your opposite as a rule, and as these thoughts were coming to me, and I was thinking of Susan Martin and her black eyes, and the merry laugh she had, and her white teeth, who should come driving slowly by, in the midst of all the other grand folks, but your little self. You were bending forward, doing something for your mother, putting a shawl about her or something, and you just gave the tiniest bit of a smile, and I saw a gleam of your teeth, and I looked at your grey eyes; and, upon my word, it was all over with me. I never knew there were girls like you in existence before. I found myself turning at first white and then red, and at first hot and then cold, and I followed that carriage as fast as I could, and whenever I had a chance I took a glance at you. Oh, you were high above me, far away from me, with people that I could never have anything to do with; but I lost my heart to you, and Susan Martin hadn't a chance. I found out from the mater that you were Miss Wickham, and that your father had been a general officer in the army, and you lived in Mayfair, and went into society; and often and often I went into the Park to catch a glimpse of you, and I got the number of your house, and sometimes I passed it by and looked up at the windows, and once I saw you there; you were arranging some flowers. I just caught the bend of your head, and I saw the shape of your throat, and your straight profile, and the whole look of you, and my heart went pitter-pat. I wasn't myself after I had caught a glimpse of you. You filled all my world, and the old mater found out there was something wrong. I am reserved about some things, and I didn't let it out to her, but at last I did, and she said, 'Courage, Albert, courage. If you want her, why shouldn't you have her? You have plenty of money, and you're a right good sort.' And then all of a sudden one day the mater came to me with news, no less news than this, that you, you plucky little darling, were going to start a boarding-house on your own account. After that, it was plain sailing."
"She is poor," said the mother. "She and her mother have lost all their money; they are down in the world, down on their luck, and they are going to do this. So then we arranged that we'd come and live in the boarding-house, and I began my courting in hot earnest, and fortune has favoured me, Miss Wickham; fortune has favoured me, Westenra, and oh! I love you, God knows how much, and I'd be a good husband to you, and you should have your own way in everything. Won't you think of it, Miss Wickham? Won't you?"
I was silent. The tears were running down my cheeks, and I had no voice to speak. I got up at last slowly.
"Won't you think of it?" he said again.
I shook my head.
"Well, I tell you what," he said, turning very pale. "Don't give me your answer now. Wait until this evening or to-morrow. I won't worry you in the drawing-room to-night. I'll keep far away, and I'll try if I can to keep everybody at bay – all those wolves, I mean, that are surrounding you – and maybe you'll think better of it, for the position is a very serious one; maybe you'll think better of it. And remember, whatever happens, there ain't a fellow on earth would make you a better husband than I shall, if you'll let me."