Читать книгу Sawn Off: A Tale of a Family Tree - Fenn George Manville - Страница 3

“Down again, Very!” cried the Doctor, a week later, as he came in from a botanical ramble to breakfast. “Why, eh? – yes – no: it has been burned.”

“Yes, papa: didn’t you see the flames?”

“Not I. Slept like a top, and I went out through the sandpits and among the fir trees this morning.”

He hurried out of the French window, and out into the road, and looked over the hedge into the park and then returned.

“Seems to have been splashed with petroleum or paraffin. Twice cut down, and once burned. Well, somebody else does not like the hoarding.”

“But, papa, you gave orders for it to be destroyed!”

“I? Hang it all, Very, am I the sort of man to do such a shabby thing?”

“No, papa: I beg your pardon.”

“Granted, pet. Some one in the village thinks it’s a paltry thing to do, and has constituted himself our champion. Confound his insolence! What did he say in his letter?”

“That if you dared to destroy his property, he would prosecute you, papa,” said Veronica.

“Yes, and he has sent me a summons.”

“Oh, papa!”

“Fact, my dear; and I shall be puzzled as to how to defend myself and prove my innocency. I say, Very, my dear, this looks bad for you.”

The girl sighed, and bent over her cup.

“Wouldn’t be a pleasant alliance, my dear, even if it could come off,” continued the Doctor, watching his child furtively. “Ah, dear me! how strangely things do work! Who’d have thought, when we landed in England, that there was the heir to a baron bold waiting to go down on bended knee to my little tyrant, and make her an offer of his heart and hand?”

“Oh, papa, how you do delight in teasing me!”

“Teasing you? Well, isn’t it a fact? You shot him through and through first time we were at church, and your victim has been our humble servant ever since.”

“But, papa, do you think Thomas could have destroyed the hoarding?”

“Well, I don’t know, my dear. He was very indignant about it, and said if this was his place he would soon down with the obstruction.”

“Then it must have been he. You ought to scold him well.”

“What, for getting rid of a nuisance?”

“No: for getting you into such trouble with Lord Pinemount.”

“Hah!” said the Doctor dreamily; “it’s a strange world, Very. Perhaps we had better go back to Iquique.”

“Oh, papa!” cried the girl in dismay.

“Don’t you want to go?”

“What, leave this lovely place, where it is always green, and the flowers are everywhere, for that dreadful dry desert place where one is parched to death? Ah, no, no, no!”

“Humph!” said the Doctor – “always green. Don’t seem so, Very: something, to my mind, is getting ripe at a tremendous rate.”

“I don’t know what you mean, dear,” said the girl consciously.

“Don’t you? Ah well, never mind. But you need not be uneasy, – I do not mean to go back: this place will just suit me to write my book, and I’m not going to stir for all the Lord Pinemounts in England.”

“I wonder how you could ever leave so beautiful a country as England, papa,” said Veronica, as the breakfast went on.

“You wouldn’t wonder, if you knew all,” said the Doctor thoughtfully.

“All, papa? – all what?”

The Doctor was silent, and his child respected his silence. The breakfast was ended, and the paper was thrown down.

“I don’t see why you should not know, my dear. You are a woman now, and thinking about such things.”

Veronica looked across at him wonderingly.

“You asked me why I left England, or some such question. It was because of the woman I loved, my dear.”

“Mamma? To join her at Iquique?”

“No,” said the Doctor thoughtfully; “it was before I knew of her existence.”

“Ah, papa!”

“Yes, my dear. I was desperately in love with a lady before I knew your dear mother.”

Veronica rose with wondering eyes, and knelt down beside her father, resting her elbows on his knees and gazing up in his face.

“Do people – ? You loved mamma very dearly, papa?” she whispered.

“Very, my child; and we were very happy till it pleased Heaven to take her away. She taught a poor, weak, foolish man what a good woman really is.”

There was a long pause, and then Veronica said, —

“Do people love more than once, papa?”

“I don’t know, dear,” he said, smiling. “I loved here in England very desperately, and when the lady I worshipped threw me over for another, I swore I would never look a woman in the face again with the idea of wedding; and in utter disgust left England, and all I knew, to roam for a time in the Malay Archipelago; and from thence I went to South America, following out my natural history tasks. Then I found out I had been a fool.”

“I do not understand you, papa.”

“I found, my darling, that I had wasted the strength of a young man’s first love upon a miserable handsome coquette.”

“How did you find that out, papa?”

“By meeting your dear mother, who was everything a true woman should be; and instead of my life proving to be a miserable state of exile, it was all that joy could give till the day of the great pain.”

There was another long pause, and then the Doctor said cheerfully, —

“And that’s why Doctor Salado went away from England. By the way, Very, I’m not a regular doctor, though I studied medicine after I left England very hard.”

“How can you say so, dear, when you know how all the poor people cried at your going away? They said no one would ever cure them of the fever again as you did. Why, they always called you the great doctor.”

“Yes, my dear: but people here would call me the great quack. There, I’m going for my walk round. But – hullo! here’s his lordship to see the burnt hoarding.”

For just at that moment Lord Pinemount’s loud, harsh voice floated in at the window.

“Disgraceful!” he cried.

Then there was a murmur of another voice, and again of another, as if two men were respectfully addressing his lordship.

“An old scoundrel!” came in at the window again.

“He means me!” cried the Doctor excitedly, rising.

“No, no, papa – please, please!” whispered Veronica, clinging to him.

“But I’m sure he does, Very.”

“I mean, don’t go out, papa dear: you would be so angry.”

“Would be? I am! – furiously angry. How dare he call me an old scoundrel!”

“Pray, pray don’t quarrel with him, dear.”

“I’m not going to, pet; but I’ll knock his head off for him.”

“No, no; you shall not go out, dear. I will not have my dear father disgrace himself like that.”

“I declare, Very, you are worse than your poor mother used to be. I must go and hit him, or I shall explode.”

“Then please explode here, papa dear, at me.”

“You’re a strange girl, Very, ’pon my soul,” cried the Doctor.

“Yes, papa dear,” she said quietly, but clinging tightly to his arm.

“How dare he come and damage my property!” floated in through the window.

“Buzz-buzz-buzz,” from another voice.

“But I will, sir. How dare he? I’ll lay the horsewhip across the scoundrel’s back!”

“Buzz-buzz – buzz-buzz.”

“Law or no law, he shall have the horsewhip first and the fine or imprisonment afterwards. These foreign rowdy ways shall not be tolerated here.”

“Let go, Very. I can’t stand it, I tell you,” said the Doctor. But Veronica threw her arms now about his neck, and laid her head close to his cheek, and clung there.

“Will you let go?”

“No, papa.”

“Do you want me to hit you?”

“Yes, papa dear.”

“Hang it, Very, it’s too bad! You’re a coward. You know I can’t.”

“Yes, papa dear; I know you’d sooner cut off your hand.”

“A blackguardly old scoundrel!” floated through the window.

“Yes? my lord.”

“Ah! I am, am I?” cried the Doctor. “Let go, Very.”

“No, papa dear: never.”

“Out, I suppose?” came, as if shouted for the inmates of the cottage to hear.

“I will be directly, you pompous, titled bully,” muttered the Doctor.

“Buzz-buzz – buzz-buzz,” in two different keys.

“Yes, I suppose so,” cried his lordship; “but if he thinks he is going to defeat me he is sadly mistaken.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Very! will you untie those wretched little arms of yours from about my neck?”

“No, papa dear; and I’m not afraid of your hitting me.”

“Then, if you don’t let go, I’ll hit myself.”

Veronica raised her head a little, and kissed him.

“No: at home, and dare not show his face!” roared Lord Pinemount.

“There!” cried the Doctor. “Every word is a stinging blow in the face, Very.”

“Yes, papa; but I’m kissing the places to make them well,” said Veronica, suiting the action to the word.

“But I’ll let him see.”

“Buzz-buzz-buzz, – boozz-boozz-boozz,” and the sound of horse’s hoofs slowly dying away.

“Gone!” cried the Doctor passionately. “Very, you’ve made me seem like a miserable cowards that man will despise me, and insult us more than ever.”

“You are angry, papa dear; but when you grow calm you will tell me I’ve done quite right.”

“Humph! I’ll tell you so now, my darling,” said the Doctor, kissing her affectionately; “but my fingers itched to knock him down.”

“And when you had done so, you would have been very sorry, papa dear; for you would have hurt yourself.”

“What, my knuckles?”

“No, papa – your dignity as a gentleman; and you would have hurt me, too, very much.”

“You’re a witch, Very,” said the Doctor, drawing a long sigh. “What an overbearing brute it is! and I’ll be bound to say that son of his will develop into just such another animal.”

“Papa!”

“Hallo! what have I said?” cried the Doctor, with his eyes winking.

“Hit me after all,” said Very to herself, as she ran sobbing out of the room, but only to be caught upon the stairs and tenderly kissed and petted till her eyes grew dry, and the hysterical sobs which would rise to her lips had cleared.