Читать книгу Force and Fraud - Ellen Davitt - Страница 6

Supper was scarcely concluded, when a gentleman, who was also well known in the neighbourhood, entered the room, and advanced towards the traveller with apparent pleasure.

“Pierce Silverton, my dear fellow, how are you?” exclaimed Lindsey, taking the offered hand.

“Quite well, and you? It must be nearly a year since you were in this district,” returned the new comer.

“Nearly an age!” replied Lindsey impetuously; then suddenly changing his tone, he asked, almost in a nervous manner: “And Flora, how is she?”

“Very well; do you intend to see her?”

“Do I not? What else should bring me here?” cried Lindsey more impetuously than before.

“Take care what you are about. McAlpin is more irritated against you than ever.”

“Pshaw! The obstinate old fellow! What crotchet has he taken into his head now?”

“Nothing fresh that I hear of, but as his daughter will soon be of age. He is, perhaps, afraid that she may follow her own inclination.”

“She loves me still! Her father’s threats have had no effect on her? Tell me at once, Silverton.”

“At all events she has refused half a dozen offers; a circumstance that seems greatly to annoy McAlpin, for he swears she shall not have a farthing till his death. And you may be very certain he would not let her have any then if he could help it; though he cannot interfere with her mother’s property.”

“No, he can’t interfere with that, and he can’t live for ever,” said Lindsey quickly. Again changing his tone, he added, “not that I wish his death or her money; Flora would be a fortune in herself.”

“A fortune in a wife is better than a fortune with a wife. Eh?”

“Come Pierce, don’t give us any wise saws,” said Lindsey, interrupting his friend.

“Very well; then I suppose you find the arts a paying speculation?”

“No, faith; the time has not come for that. I’ll be bound to say that you make ten times more money as McAlpin’s agent, than I do as an artist, aye? Or than even Titian himself would do, could he be resuscitated and start on a fresh career in this part of the world. But I envy you your privilege of seeing Flora, far more than all your percentage on wool, your mining shares, or any other species of good luck.”

“You know I shall always be rejoiced to serve you, Lindsey; but come, these gentlemen will think that I am monopolising your company.”

The above conversation had taken place on the verandah, and the two friends now re-entered the supper-room where the remainder of the evening was passed amidst songs and jokes and general hilarity.

Certain individuals who pretended to be great physiognomists had occasionally remarked that Herbert Lindsey and his friend, Pierce Silverton, formed an admirable contrast to each other. As the former has already been described, we will briefly notice the general appearance of the latter, considered by some to be the handsomer man – and so he was, with regard to regularity of features, each of which bore a just proportion to the other. With some trifling exceptions those features might have been cast in the Greek mould; but a few trifling exceptions sometimes combine in making a great difference. The Greek forehead is certainly not high, but that of Pierce Silverton was, just a very little lower. His blue eyes were well shaped, but he had a habit of looking under his brows; a habit more frequent in women than in men – though not proud women, but those who affect to excite sympathy. His lips, the colour of pink coral, were rather contracted; and his teeth a bluish white, like those substituted by dentists who sometimes outdo nature. Altogether there was a consumptive look about the mouth, and the expression was imparted to the other features by a delicate complexion as well as by the habitual drooping attitude of the head.

All very different to that of Herbert Lindsey who, in this respect at least, had more of the ancient Greek, because – especially when he walked – his head was thrown proudly back.

Silverton’s hair was particularly beautiful – of a light brown, gently waving, and worn rather long. His nose was perfect, and his profile nearly so. What then prevented him from being a handsome man? There was a deficiency somewhere; and what it was we shall, perhaps, discover by and bye. His voice was gentle and low – not an excellent thing in man; whatever it may be in woman.

Pierce Silverton was not a great favourite. It is true that women are apt to take likes and dislikes; a habit that cannot be justified, as nobody ought to be liked or disliked till well known. So it may be inferred that women act without judgment, as animals do. A strange thing that women and animals should sometimes be right in their impulses, whilst men are wrong in their judgment!

Let it not be supposed, however, that Pierce Silverton was entirely discarded by the fair sex. On the contrary, several young ladies thought him a very interesting man; though upon the whole he was more appreciated by matrons who had daughters to marry – and in this he had decidedly the advantage of his friend. Pierce Silverton had, in a few years, amassed a competency, never got himself into a scrape and was generally patronised by the mammas.

Herbert Lindsey, meanwhile, had squandered a fortune in eighteen months, entangled himself in more than one political outbreak, had thrown away the chance of advancing his interests in a lucrative profession, and was not likely to be regarded with views matrimonial.

But as there is no rule without an exception, Herbert Lindsey had, in one instance, been accepted by a very charming matron as her daughter’s future husband, merely because that matron considered him to be an honourable, talented, energetic young man, who could make her child happy. Nearly four years had passed since that consent was given, and the gentle matron was now in her cold grave, but the compact, formed by her death-bed, was still unbroken, notwithstanding the reproaches and menaces of the surviving parent.

It was in reference to this engagement that Herbert Lindsey was now conversing with his friend, Pierce Silverton – the privileged companion of Flora McAlpin, and the trusted agent of her father. They sat on the verandah of The Southern Cross a full hour after the other guests had dispersed. At length Silverton, in his turn, prepared to go, saying, “Well, Lindsey, as you will have another long walk tomorrow morning, I ought not to detain you. It would not be proper for Flora to go far into the forest to meet you.”

“I will take care of that. I shall be at the boundary of her father’s station by eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Can you manage that? You will have a walk of a dozen miles.”

“I shall rise at daybreak, take a cup of coffee, which will be ready for the coach-passengers, and that same coach will give me a lift, thus saving me three or four miles.”

“It will set you down at the entrance of the forest; but take care you don’t get entangled amongst the branches.”

“Not I, indeed. The forest that I passed through this morning is more dense, but I chopped away the branches like a thorough bushman, I can tell you. I have a first-rate bowie knife; look here.”

Lindsey felt in his pocket for the article, and suddenly exclaimed, “Why, where the deuce has it got to? O, upstairs in my other coat I suppose. But I was going to ask, is there any likelihood of McAlpin returning tonight? Not that I care for the old fellow; but I don’t want to give him a pretext for tyrannising over my darling Flora.”

“No; he only started yesterday. I almost wonder you did not meet him.”

“There is no horse-track through the part of the forest I travelled. I purposely kept out of his way; the obstinate old fellow – to turn against the son of his best friend for such a trifle!”

“Men of McAlpin’s stamp do not regard the squandering of three thousand pounds in less than two years as a trifle.”

“Especially in the manner I spent it. Men of his sort are more ready to find an excuse for swindling and speculation than for the follies of a youth who is led astray by the fascinations of the Continent. I do not mean to vindicate myself; I did spend my fortune and now–”

“True – you spent your money like an ass; and now you have to earn it like a horse.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk proverbs, Pierce. I hate that sort of humbug; besides, they are generally nonsensical. Asses don’t spend money though they earn it sometimes for their masters. I never had a master; and, by Jove, I never will.”

Lindsey spoke with more temper than he had hitherto done, and Silverton added, “It is not only having spent your money that irritates McAlpin, but he thinks you will never settle to anything.”

“Tell him to give me a station and his daughter, and I will be the steadiest fellow in the colony. I should like to know how a man is to settle when he is obliged to tramp about the country looking out for chances as I do.”

“He thinks you might have followed the profession of medicine. You walked the hospitals for a year, did you not?”

“Yes, and got sickened with horrors; I can’t bear the sight of blood, Pierce.” Herbert Lindsey turned pale, and entering the room through the window of the verandah, drew from the filter a glass of water, which he drank eagerly.

“I have often wondered to hear you say so, a brave fellow like you, Lindsey!” said his friend.

“Pshaw! A mere physical defect that I inherit from my mother, who was frightened a short time before my birth. But I do not permit this disgust to take a morbid possession of my faculties. I would not turn away from a sight of pain if I could do any good, and thus nerving – but no matter. I did not choose to become a surgeon, and, perhaps if I had never got amongst those students I might have been a rich man to day.”

“Another of McAlpin’s objections; he says you suffer yourself to be led away by any wild fellow.”

“Six years since probably I did, but I am another man now. Can’t he allow a poor devil a chance to reform? I never was vicious and I never did anything to leave a stain on my name, and that’s more than some people can say. I tell you. Pierce, that McAlpin is an obstinate, pig-headed old Highlander, and I’ll marry his daughter in spite of him.”