Hearts Afire (3 page)

“Sir Edward is to my mind a fine choice, when the time comes. But yet the
child is still a child. And there is more: she must learn to help her mother
about the house before she can manage a house of her own. So in time, I say, it
would be a good thing. We have been long good friends.”

“We have been friends for four generations, and we may safely tie the knot
tighter now.

“Surely. Well, well, it was about wedding and housekeeping I came to speak,
and we'll have it out. The land between this place and my place, on the
river-side, is your land,
Joris
. Give it to
Charlotte, and I will build the young things a house; and the furnishing and
plenishing
we'll share between us.”

“There is more to a wedding than house and land, Elder” Said
Lysbet
Morgan.

“Vera true, madam. There's the income to meet the outgoing bills. Sir Edward
will have a good practice in law, and is like to have better
then
I did. They'll be comfortable and respectable, madam;
but I think well of you for speaking after the daily bread.”

“Well, look now, it was not the bread-making I was thinking about. It was
the love-making. A young girl should be wooed before she is married. You know
how it is; and Charlotte, the little one, she thinks not of such a thing as
love and marriage.”

“Who knows what thoughts are under brown locks? You'll have noticed madam
that Charlotte has come more often than ordinary to
Semple
House lately?”

“That is so. It was because of Colonel Gordon's wife, who likes Charlotte.
She is teaching her a new stitch in her crewel-work.”

“Hum-m-m! Mistress Gordon has likewise a new student, a very handsome lad. I
have seen that he takes a deal of interest in the crewel-stitch likewise. And
Sir Edward has seen it too,—for Sir Edward has set his heart on Charlotte,—and
this afternoon there was a look passed between the young men I did not like.
We'll be having a challenge, and two fools playing the fools for love.”

“I am glad you spoke, Elder. Thank you. I'll turn your words over in my
heart.”

“As for Sir Edward, he's our little baron; and his mother and I would
fain
to keep him near us. Charlotte would be a welcome
daughter to our old age, and well loved.”

Elder Van
Heemskirk
, in speaking of her as already
marriageable, had given
Joris
Morgan a shock. It
seemed such a few years since he had walked her to sleep at nights, cradled in
his strong arms, close to his breast; such a little while ago when she toddled
about the garden at his side, her plump white hands holding his big forefinger;
only yesterday that she had been going to the school, with her spelling-book
and Heidelberg in her hand. When his wife had spoken of Mistress Gordon, who
was teaching Charlotte the new crewel-stitch, it had appeared to him quite
proper that such a child should be busy learning something in the way of
needlework. “Needlework” had been given as the reason of those visits, which he
now remembered had been very frequent; and he was so absolutely truthful, that
he never imagined the word to be in any measure a false definition.

Elder Van
Heemskirk's
implication had stunned
Joris
Morgan like a buffet. In his own room, he sat down on
a big oak chest; and, as he thought, his mind slowly gathered.
Joris
knew that gay young suitors were coming and going
about the
Semple
House, and he feared they would
interfere with his own plans for keeping Charlotte near to him. The beautiful
little young maiden had been an attraction which he was proud to exhibit, just
as he was proud of his imported furniture, his pictures, and his library. He
remembered that Elder Van
Heemskirk
had spoken with
touching emphasis of his longing to keep his last son near home; but must he
give up his darling Charlotte to further this plan?

“I like not it,” he muttered. “Good breeding for good breeding. That is the
right way; but I will not make angry myself for so much of passion, so much of
nothing at all to the purpose. That is the truth. Always I have found it so.”

Then
Lysbet
Morgan, having finished her second
locking up, entered the room. She came in as one wearied and troubled, and said
with a sigh, as she untied her apron, “By the girls' bedside I stopped one
minute. Dear me! When one is young, the sleep is sound.”

“Well, then, they were awake when I passed,—that is not so much as one
quarter of the hour,—talking and laughing; I heard them.”

“And now they are fast in sleep; their heads are on one pillow, and
Charlotte's hand is fast clasped in Joanna's hand. The dear ones!
Joris
, the elder's words have made trouble in my heart.
What did the man mean?”

“Who can tell? What a man says, we know; but only God understands what he
means. But I will say this,
Lysbet
, and it is what I
mean: if Elder Van
Heemskirk
will led my daughter
into the way of temptation, then, for all that is past and gone, we shall be
unfriends.”

“Give yourself no
kommer
on that matter,
Joris
. Why should not our Charlotte
see what kind of people the world is made of? Have not some of our best maidens
married into the Scottish set? And none of them were as beautiful as Charlotte.
There is no harm, I think, in a girl taking a few steps up when she puts on the
wedding ring. There, let us sleep. Tonight I will speak no more.”

It was a very hot afternoon; and
Joris
Morgan's
machine shop, though open to the morning-breezes, was not by any means a cool
or pleasant place.
Harleigh
was just within the
doors, upon entrance he received a cool silence from
Joris
Morgan; but whether the coolness was of intention or preoccupation,
Harleigh
did not perceive it. Once unwrapped and settled he
trod to the office of
Joris
Morgan, a small room,
intensely warm and sunny at that hour of the day.

“Your servant,
Mr
Morgan.”

“Yours, most sincerely,
Mr
Morgan. It is a hot
day.”

“That is so. We come near to spring time. Is there anything I can oblige you
in,
Harleigh
?”

Joris
asked the question because the manner of the
young man struck him as uneasy and constrained; and he thought, “Perhaps he has
come to borrow money.” It was notorious that his employees gambled, and were
often in very great need of it; and, although
Joris
had not any intention of risking his gold, he thought it as well to bring out
the question, and have the refusal understood before unnecessary politeness
made it more difficult. He was not, therefore, astonished when
Harleigh
Daly answered,—

“Sir, you can indeed oblige me, and that in a matter of the greatest
moment.”

“If money it be,
Harleigh
, at once I may tell you,
that I borrow not, and I lend not.”

“Sir, it is not money—in particular.”

“So?”

“It is your daughter Charlotte.”

Then
Joris
stood up, and looked steadily at the
suitor. His large, amiable face had become in a moment hard and stern; and the
light in his eyes was like the cold, sharp light that falls from drawn steel.

“My daughter is not for you.
Harleigh
, it is a
wrong to her, if you speak her name.”

“By my honor, it is not! Though I come
of
as good
family as any, and
may
not unreasonably hope to work
my way up, I do assure you, sir, I humbly ask for your daughter's hand as if
she were a princess.”

“Your family! Talk not of it.”

“I protest that I love your daughter. I wish above all things to make her my
wife.”

“Many things men desire, that they come not near to. My daughter is to
another man promised.”

“Look Sir that would be monstrous. Your daughter loves me.”

Joris
turned white to the lips. “It is not the
truth,” he answered in a slow, husky voice.

“By the sun in heaven, it is the truth! Ask her.”

“Then a great scoundrel are you, unfit with honest men to talk. Ho! Yes,
your sword pull from its scabbard. Strike. To the heart strike me. Less wicked
would be the deed than the thing you have done.”

“In faith, sir, tis no crime to win a woman's love.”

“No crime it would be to take the money from my purse, if my consent was to
it. But into my house to come, and while warm was yet my welcome, with my bread
and wine in your lips, to take my gold, a shame and a crime would be. My
daughter than gold is far more precious.”

There was something very impressive in the angry sorrow of
Joris
. It partook of his own magnitude. Standing in front
of him, it was impossible for
Harleigh
not to be
sensible of the difference between his own slight, nervous frame, and the fair,
strong massiveness of Mr. Morgan; and, in a dim way, he comprehended that this
physical difference was only the outward and visible sign of a mental and moral
one quite as positive and unchangeable.

Yet he persevered in his solicitation. With a slight impatience of manner he
said, “Do but hear me, sir. I have done nothing contrary to the custom of
people in my condition, and I assure you that with all my soul I love your
daughter.”

“Love! So talk you. You see a girl beautiful, sweet, and innocent. Your
heart, greedy and covetous, wants her as it has wanted, doubtless, many others.
For yourself only you seek her. And what is it you ask then! That
she
should give up for you her father, mother, home, her own faith, her own people,
her own country,—the poor little one!—for a cold, cheerless house among
strangers, alone in the sorrows and pains that to all women come. Love! In
God's name, what know you of love?”

“No man can love her better.”

“What say you? How, then, do I love her? I who carried her—in these arms
before yet she could say to me, “Father!” His wrath had been steadily growing,
in spite of the mist in his eyes and the tenderness in his voice; and suddenly
striking the desk a ponderous blow with his closed hand, he said with an
unmistakable passion, “My daughter you shall not have!”

“Sir, you are very uncivil; but I am thankful to know so much of your mind.
And, to be plain with you, I am determined to marry your daughter if I can
compass the matter in any way. It is now, then, open war between us.”

“Stay. To me listen. Not one penny will I give to my daughter, if”—

“To the pit with your money! Dirty money made in dirty business”—

“You bastard!”

“Sir, you have not a good leg which to stand.”

You know, that, being Charlotte's father, I will challenge you.”

“Sir, I will challenge you also a hundred times.”

“
Christus
!
!” roared
Joris
, “challenge me one hundred times. A fool I would be
to answer you. See you these arms and hands? In them you will be as the child
of one year. Ere beyond my reason you move me,
go
!” and he strode to the
door and flung it open with a passion that made everyone in the shop straighten
themselves, and look curiously toward the two men.

White with rage, and with his hand fashioned in to a
fist,
Harleigh
stamped his way through the shop to
the dusty street. Then it struck him that he had not asked the name of the man
to whom Charlotte was promised. He swore at himself for the omission. Whether
he knew him or not, he was determined to fight him. In the meantime, the most
practical revenge was to try and see Charlotte before her father had the opportunity
to give her any orders regarding him. Just then he met Sir Edward, and he
stopped and asked him the time.

“It will be the half hour after nine,
Harleigh
. I
am going home; shall I have your company, sir?”

“I have not much leisure this morning. I beg a thousand regrets.”

Sir Edward's calm, complacent gravity was unendurable. He turned from him
abruptly, and, muttering passionate exclamations, went toward the
Semple
House. Often he had seen Charlotte between nine and
ten o'clock at the foot of the
Semple
House garden;
for it was then possible for her to slip away while Mistress Gordon was busy
about her house. And this morning he felt that the very intensity of his desire
must surely bring her to their trysting-place behind the lilac hedge.

Whether he was right or wrong, he did not consider;
for he was not one of those potent men who have themselves in their own power.
Nor had it ever entered his mind that “love's strength
standeth
in love's sacrifice,” or that the only love worthy of the name refuses to blend
with anything that is low or vindictive or clandestine. And, even if he had not
loved Charlotte, he would now have been determined to marry her. Never before
in all his life had he found an object so engrossing. Pride and revenge were
added to love, as motives; but who will say that love was purer or stronger or
sweeter for them?

In the meantime
Joris
was suffering as only such
deep natures can suffer. There are domestic fatalities which the wisest and
tenderest
of parents seem impotent to contend with.
Joris
had certainly been alarmed by
Harleigh's
proposal, and his positive assertion that Charlotte loved him, had fallen upon
the father's heart with the force of a blow, and the terror of a shock. And the
sting of the sorrow was this,—that his child had deceived him. Certainly she
had not spoken false words, but truth can be outraged by silence quite as
cruelly as by speech.