Читать книгу The rainproof invention: or, Some tangled threads - Emily Poynton Weaver - Страница 8

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FOR BESSIE’S SAKE—AND HIS OWN.

A fortnight passed and Mr. Norbury was still confined to his bed, fretting and fuming over his misfortune, and spending the greater part of his weary, restless days in the unprofitable labor of counting the probable magnitude of his losses.

“Elsie,” he said, one morning after the physician’s visit, “I think that Dr. Thay knows nothing about his business. Here he says this morning that I am worse, have more fever, or some such nonsense, and that I must not see any one on business. Much he knows about it! I shall not try him any longer, and I want you to write to Dr. Morton to come down at once.”

“Who, the London doctor?”

“Yes, it will be very expensive, but I am losing hundreds, perhaps thousands, while I lie here. Milwood was up yesterday, and from his own account he seems to be muddling things fearfully, and the rest of them are worse. There is not one with a decent head on his shoulders in the whole set of them.”

“How can I get Dr. Morton’s address?”

“Thay will give it to you. I told him I was tired of his shilly-shally work and intended to try some one really first-rate. I never heard such nonsense; he insists that it is my own fault, and that I should be well in less than a month, if I could only let things go at the factory without worrying over them. Less than a month indeed! why, the business will be ruined in half that time!”

The London specialist could not arrange to journey up to Wharton for several days after Elsie’s letter reached him, and when he did at length arrive the invalid had worked himself up to such a state of anxiety and impatience that he was on the very verge of delirium again.

Alas! his hopes of a speedy and complete recovery were ruthlessly crushed. So far from being less rigorous in his treatment than his former physician, Dr. Morton seemed to poor Mr. Norbury to forbid everything that mitigated his sufferings in the least. But he talked so learnedly of all the ills that would inevitably be the result of disobedience, and he drew such a picture of the decrepitude to which his patient might be reduced that he was frightened into submission. The great man gave unqualified approval to his predecessor’s management of the case, so the refractory invalid sullenly reinstated Dr. Thay as his adviser, and at last consented to lie for days together in a room from which the light and sound and bustle of the world were carefully excluded. Nay, he did more. Always thorough in what he undertook, he was now so bent on getting well, that he resolved to follow his doctor’s directions to the bitter end. He gave orders that, come what might, the factory must be managed without him for a time, though he darkly hinted that future promotions would depend upon the behavior of his subordinates at this crisis. Having thus provided to the best of his ability for the object nearest his heart, he resigned himself to the strange hibernating existence prescribed by his medical men. A curious reward followed this exercise of resolution. Skeptical as he had been as to its possibility, a restful calm took possession of him, when he had finally cut himself off from the pains and pleasures of business. He slept and ate well, and his shaken nerves began to recover their tone. Then Dr. Thay recommended change of air and scene, and for the first time in his life Mr. Norbury allowed himself something worthy of the name of a holiday.

It was odd how much more he thought of Dr. Thay’s advice since it had chanced to coincide so exactly with that of the expensive London physician. He had now some of the old satisfaction in making a good bargain when he received a professional visit from the young man, and he endured his tyranny with a better grace for the soothing thought that at least he was getting good value for his money.

Elsie managed everything in these days of invalidism. She opened her father’s letters and answered them as well as she could, except those that were addressed directly to the office. She arranged for lodgings at Southport, and carried her father and mother off there as soon as Mr. Norbury could be moved. To do her justice, though she found the place rather dull and stupid, she exerted herself to keep her parents amused and happy, and her success was really marvelous, considering the material she had to work upon.

But that fortnight by the sea, with its unique experience of rest and leisure to the hard-working manufacturer, came to an end at last. One evening, as Elsie and he wandered on the beach, Mr. Norbury broke the silence he had maintained on the affairs of the factory. “Elsie,” he said, “I have asked Dr. Thay to come down to-morrow, and all being well, we will go home on Monday.”

“Well, papa, I am quite ready to go home whenever you like,” she replied.

“I am more than ready. I would give a good deal to know what those fellows have been doing in my absence. I think Milwood is to be trusted, and perhaps Warrington; but neither of them has a clear enough head for business, except when he can be looked after the whole time. I wish you had been a boy, Elsie.”

“O papa, that is too bad of you! I do believe you would think twice as much of me if you could make me useful at the factory.”

Mr. Norbury’s laugh had a touch of grimness in it. “Perhaps I should; who knows? However, you are not, and that’s all about it! I’ve been wishing that we hadn’t lost sight of that nephew of mine in the way we did.”

“Why, father?”

“In the first place, I really need some one to take an interest in the business besides myself. I shall never be the man I was before this accident; both Thay and Morton said so”—

“I think you are mistaken, father. They told me again and again that if you would only spare yourself, you would be all right—as well as ever, in fact!”

“Stuff and nonsense, Elsie! They didn’t wish to alarm you, that was all. But about Arthur Lester—how old is he? I don’t remember.”

“Three or four and twenty, I think.”

“He was a bright, smart fellow enough when he stayed with us that time for his holidays; and if only he isn’t too fine a gentleman, something might be made of him, I should say. I have half a mind to write and ask him to come down; and then, if he suits me, I dare say I could make it well worth his while to stay.”

“Do you mean that you would take him into the business?”

“I shall do nothing in a hurry, Elsie; you may be sure of that. It is not my custom to act without mature deliberation,” said Mr. Norbury reprovingly. “But if he shows any capacity for business, and is willing to do his best and make himself useful, I shall certainly make it worth his while.”

“I hope he’ll come. He used to be a very nice boy,” said Elsie. “What put him into your head now, papa?”

“I don’t know—unless it is that I have been thinking a good deal of poor Bessie during these weeks. Perhaps I was hard on her, and I might have done more for this boy of hers. I should like to give him a chance. I always meant to look after him a bit, but I have been so busy and—that meddlesome Armstrong annoyed me so much about the lad that I finally washed my hands of him. Perhaps it was not quite just; but the thing is done, and there’s nothing for it but to make the best of it!”

“Suppose Arthur won’t come!”

“If he won’t, it will be more his loss than mine. It will be easier for me to get some one to look after the business than for him to get such another chance as I shall give him. Well, for Bessie’s sake, I hope he’ll be reasonable.”

“It all sounds like a story,” said Elsie. “I never heard anything more romantic.”

“Romantic, Elsie? I thought you had more sense! Poor Bessie made a regular fool of herself, and had to suffer for it, too; more’s the pity.”

Throughout his illness Mr. Norbury had thought of no one so often as the sister whom he had not seen for twenty-five years; who had, indeed, been in her grave for more than twenty. Other people besides Elsie had thought her story romantic; but, short as her life had been, the poor little heroine had lived to regret that it had not ended in the same ordinary fashion in which it had begun.

She had been brought up in a tiny cottage near the mills at Inglefield, and till she was eighteen she had been contented and happy in her home. But, though he never knew it, her brother’s ambitious dreams found an echo in her own heart, and when he talked, as he occasionally did, of his grand hopes of fame and fortune, the girl grew tired of her humble working life, and longed to see something of the great world and to try what it was “to be a lady.”

Not far from Inglefield was the larger town of Beresford, where a considerable number of soldiers were often quartered, and there Arthur’s father, then only a lieutenant and a very young man, had been stationed for some months. Unhappily some accident, or course of accidents, threw pretty Bessie Norbury continually in his way, and she was so very pretty and her ways were so winning that the gay young soldier lost his heart to her. His love was returned, and more than returned. Her brightest dreams seemed to be coming true, and when Lester’s regiment was ordered suddenly to India, she yielded at once to his wish that they should be married before he sailed, and that she should accompany him. There was no time to ask the leave of Lester’s father, and they hoped that when the thing was done he would not refuse his forgiveness, at least.

But the proud old man did not forgive them so readily. He came of a good old-country family, and was the owner of a considerable estate, and he was horrified that his eldest son should so far forget his position as to marry a stone mason’s daughter—a girl without birth, breeding, or education—all for the sake of her pretty face! The thing was done, and could not be undone; but from that day he had acted as if the young man were dead. His anger never softened. Lester went out to India with ruined prospects, and his younger brother, who, as time went on, showed the same implacable, unyielding disposition as his father, took his place and enjoyed all that would have been his.

The saddest part of the story is yet to come. Captain Lester and his wife kept their trouble loyally to themselves, but in their case the old proverb came true painfully early—married in haste, they repented at leisure. Bessie Norbury’s pretty face had been her chief charm in the eyes of her husband,—though she had nobler qualities which he never recognized,—but they soon found that there was no possibility of companionship between them. Lester’s tastes were cultivated and his manners refined, while his wife’s were little above those common to her class. Lester admitted to himself that he ought not to have expected more of her, but he had done so, and the disappointment was bitter. Every day brought fresh annoyance to him, and he became unreasonably impatient with very natural mistakes, while Bessie made matters worse with her nervous apprehensions of offending him, which she showed plainly enough to all the world. She had an exaggerated idea of his position, and in her efforts to do justice to it she offended his taste and wasted his money, while she made herself and him ridiculous with well-meant attempts to imitate the customs and conversation of a society in which she was not at home.

As the glamour and illusion of his love passed away, he saw only too clearly all that his marriage had cost him. He rightly blamed himself for it more than Bessie, and he tried his utmost to be kind and just to her, but if only his blindness had lasted, how much better it would have been for both! At the best, justice was a poor substitute for the love which he had vowed should be hers till death; and, in spite of himself, he sometimes gave her less than justice. Poor Bessie, slow as she was in some things, soon perceived that she had lost her husband’s love beyond recovery, and grew paler and sadder every week. To both the burden seemed too heavy to be borne, and they looked forward despairingly to the long roll of the coming years, clouded already with disappointment and misery.

Yet the end was close at hand. Bessie was struck down by one of the terrible diseases of that hot climate, just as her baby was beginning to give her a new joy and hope in life. A few hours of delirium, and then all was over; but those few hours had shown Lester what he ought never to have doubted. With all her faults, his wife had loved him with unfaltering truth and patience. His neglect had not killed her love, though it had made death welcome. It was with bitter remorse that he laid his unhappy wife, still so young and pretty, in her grave. Oh, he had been blind! twice-over blind! He had been foolish to marry her, and wicked to make her suffer so for what was not her fault.

Bessie’s death grieved him more than he would have believed possible. Henceforward he devoted himself entirely to his son and to his profession; and in the child’s admiration and affection he found comfort. In after years Captain Lester lived in his son’s memory as a saint and a hero, for, from the dark hour when he sat beside Bessie’s deathbed, he had set self aside and had lived for God and his fellow men. His little lad looked up to him with loving reverence, for by his own high example he taught him to be true and manly and unselfish; and when Arthur had his own way to make in the world the beautiful and noble memories of his earliest days served as a witness in his heart against evil, and called him to make choice of what was pure and good. His loving admiration knew no check, even when he heard from his father’s own lips the story of his sin; but, strange to say, at first it had grieved him sorely to learn how humble his mother’s birth had been. He was but half reconciled to the fact when his father pointed out that still he might be a gentleman if he would, and quoted with his grave, quiet smile the famous words of the ploughman poet:—

“The rank is but the guinea-stamp,

The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”

Like most children, Arthur set an undue value on worldly position. He was well read in Scott’s romances, and believed with all his heart in certain unmistakable signs of high birth, so that he never regarded “the gray-haired seneschal” as showing any remarkable keenness of insight when he graded his lord’s guests at a glance in the order of their rank. On the contrary, he would in those days have dared to attempt some such feat himself. But that early revelation of his true position had its effect, nevertheless, for, in spite of himself, he had to own his real kinship with “the horny-handed sons of toil,” though the graces and refinements of those whose lot was cast in the higher ranks of society pleased him infinitely better.

Captain Lester was able to keep his boy in India longer than most parents, as he was stationed for some time in the comparatively cool hill country; indeed, Arthur and his father had never been parted for more than a few days at a time, till the regiment was ordered to the seat of war in Afghanistan. Before he left, Captain Lester made all arrangements to send his son to England, but he had not started on his long journey when the regiment marched away to join the rest of the army. Arthur never felt prouder of his handsome, soldierly father than on that last sad morning when he bade him farewell, for a longer time than he knew, for Captain Lester died bravely and gloriously, men said, at the head of his company.

Strange to say, much as he thought of his father, Arthur never felt inclined towards a soldier’s life. He would have much preferred to enter one of the learned professions, but his inheritance was so small that it barely sufficed to give him an ordinary education at a middle-class school. His guardian, Mr. Armstrong, made great efforts to induce either his father’s or his mother’s family to take charge of him. Mr. Norbury made vague promises and invited him once to spend his Christmas holidays at Wharton, but Mr. Lester did nothing; he did not even answer Mr. Armstrong’s letters. Then that gentleman lost patience, and wrote so sharply to both of Arthur’s relations that, though his grandfather still refused to be provoked into a reply, Mr. Norbury was mortally offended, and from that day to the time of his illness apparently succeeded in dismissing all thoughts of his nephew from his mind.

Arthur nearly ruined his health by studying for a scholarship at Cambridge, but he lost it by a few marks; and having by that time exhausted the small sum which his father had contrived to save for him, he was obliged, much against his will, to take his guardian’s advice and apply for a clerkship in a great London warehouse. It was fortunate for him that Mr. Armstrong’s influence was sufficient to get this position for him; but Arthur never could persuade himself that he was happy in his fate. He hated both his office life and the smoky, noisy city from which there was no escape for him from one week’s end to another. He was still employed in the office in which Mr. Armstrong had placed him when he left school, but promotion was slow and his salary was still so small that he had to practice the greatest economy. His work was monotonous but not overtaxing to brain or strength, and in his leisure hours Arthur studied a good deal. Latterly, indeed, he had been trying his hand at writing, as well as reading, and he was beginning to hope that the way of escape might yet open from his distasteful London life. He looked back to the years with his father as by far the happiest he had ever spent, but he liked to dream of some time, far in the future, when he should again have a home. His dreams were as vague yet as they were pleasant, but they were all bound up with the great things he hoped to do with his pen, though he had not yet succeeded in inducing any publisher or editor to make the venture of printing his productions.

If Mr. Norbury had known in what direction his nephew’s ambition lay, he might have reconsidered the advisability of inviting him to Wharton, but he had no means of knowing; so before he left Southport he dictated to Elsie a letter, desiring Arthur Lester to come down to Wharton without delay; and after a little hesitation the young man accepted both the invitation and the apology for past neglect with which it was accompanied.