Читать книгу The White Gipsy - J. Monk Foster - Страница 4

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The sun was setting behind the high uplands of Thorrell Moor, and the level rays of crimson and yellow light were flooding the wide spreading valley beneath. Upon the rich meadows and brown cornfields—upon white-washed farms and the straggling, picturesque village—on the innumerable trees which dotted the vale, and on the green lanes that intersected it, the falling summer sun shone warmly and pleasantly, lending an additional and fictitious beauty to the scene.

The numberless windows of Carsland Hall, which looked westward, were ablaze in the sunset's radiance like mirrors of polished gold, and all the rooms on that side the Hall were flooded with the mellow beams.

The home of Sir Nicholas Carsland stood midway between the villages of Thorrell and Thorrell Moor. Behind the house the view was bounded by the swelling uplands, whereon, in olden days, beacon fires had flared out; in front, the country was laid bare to the gaze for over a dozen miles.

Standing on the roof of the Hall one could, apparently, have cast a stone into the village of Thorrell; beyond the hamlet the valley opened out, and was dotted by fields and farms for a mile or two. Then, further on, evidences of industrial enterprise shewed themselves in the shape of lines of railway covered with coal wagons, colliery head-gear, and tall chimneys. Next came another village, named Marsh Green, where the miners mainly resided, and away beyond that again a populous town, noted as being the centre of the South-west Lancashire coalfield.

Such was the landscape presented to the eye from the upper windows of Carsland Hall, and Sir Nicholas Carsland was viewing the picture with a melancholy face. He was seated at the deep-bayed window of a room on the second floor which was called his study, his countenance and bearing betraying a mind diseased.

The character of the baronet may be drawn in a very few words. He was a self-made man of the type so common in Lancashire. He had started life at the bottom of the ladder, and in the course of fifty years had amassed a fortune.

At twenty-five he had married an old lady for the sake of the few thousands she possessed. That money had proved the corner-stone of his success; with it one pit had been sunk, with the most gratifying results; other pits had followed until half-a-dozen collieries dotted the fields between Thorrell village and the mining hamlet of Marsh Green.

The elderly woman Nicholas Carsland had married died before his star arose. She was nearly twenty years her husband's senior, and she ceased to live when her first child saw the light, a year after the marriage.

Five years later Nicholas Carsland had married again. On the second occasion it was a union of hearts as well as of hands. The woman he had fallen in love with was a fine handsome girl who earned her livelihood on the pit top he owned.

For ten years, or thereabouts, Carsland and his wife lived happily together. They loved each other, fortune was smiling upon them, the one mine had already developed into three, hence the Carsland household had nothing to disturb its serenity.

By his second wife Carsland had another child, and this was also a boy, who, when his mother shuffled off this mortal coil, was a bonny lad of five.

When the only woman he ever loved died, Carsland was still in the prime of life, being scarcely over forty, but his thoughts never turned again to matrimony. By this time his success had filled his brain with great ambitions.

From a pit lad, working for a shilling a day, he had risen to be a capitalist worth, at least, a hundred thousand pounds, and having done so much he was resolved to do much more.

He began to take an active interest in the affairs of the adjacent town, Earlsford. He got himself elected as a member of the Town Council, sat as a Councillor for several years, and, in due course, was chosen as Mayor. Then a General Election took place, and he was brought out as a candidate; he spent some thousands of pounds on the contest, bribing right and left, giving free ale and free breakfasts to all and sundry who cared to imbibe and eat at his expense, as was the custom in those days—and the free and independent burgesses of Earlsford voted for his opponent.

The defeat was a bitter pill to swallow, after all his former victories, but he gulped it down quickly, and became Mayor for a second year, feasting the Councillors and Aldermen in a royal fashion, and earning the plaudits of all on account of his generosity.

But Nicholas was playing a game, and he won it. During his second year of office a local infirmary was opened by the Prince of Wales. For one day and night His Royal Highness stayed in the neighbourhood as Mayor Carsland's guest, and was entertained on a princely scale of magnificence at Carsland Hall.

His reward came, and quickly. The party for which he had fought a losing battle had possessed itself of the reins of office, and ere long the "plucky and generous coal prince of Thorrell Moor" was gazetted Sir Nicholas Carsland, Bart.

Sitting at the window of the palatial house of stone he had reared for himself, the baronet looked back upon his busy past with a melancholy countenance which was but the reflex of a discontented mind.

His rise had been hardly won, the stumbling stones in his path had been big and numerous, and as he sate there he was asking himself in all seriousness if those things for which he had fought so desperately were worth the stress and struggle he had undergone.

"But for my son."

Those words were articulated lowly, almost unconsciously by the old man, and his eyes were bent towards the small gipsy table upon which an open letter lay. He adjusted his eyeglasses and re-read the missive. The communication ran in this fashion:—

"Dear Father,

In spite of the silence, and the contempt and pitilessness which your silence imply—I make one more appeal to you. Give me one more chance to redeem myself. For the love of God and my poor dear dead mother, do! I have been wild, extravagant, sinful—everything that a man ought not to be—but my wild oats are sown now and I mean to redeem myself if possible.

"I will do whatever you desire—will adopt either medicine or law as a profession. If you do not wish me to become either a doctor or a lawyer, send me abroad. Perhaps that would be best. In the wilds of Australia or America I could settle down, and not only recover my good name, but win a competency some day.

"Heaven knows that I am in earnest now. Will you give me one more chance?

"Faithfully yours,

"SYDNEY B. CARSLAND."

As the old man perused his erring son's passionately written letter his heart was stirred within him and he was inclined to give his erring lad another chance. Despite all his faults and frailties, Sydney Carsland was very dear to his father's heart. The child of love—the wild and handsome lad his second wife had borne him—had always been nearer and dearer than the elder son, although the latter had lived an irreproachable life, and was in every respect a model son.

While Sir Nicholas was weighing the matter in his mind, the door of the room was pushed noiselessly open, and Frederic Carsland, his first born, entered, walking across the thick carpet in a quiet way, and reaching his father's side ere the other was aware of his presence.

"Is that you, Frederic?" Sir Nicholas said, as he perceived his son. "How you surprised me. I did not hear you."

"I wanted to speak to you about Sydney, father," the younger man returned in a hard, and emotionless voice. "I had a letter from him this morning."

"So had I!" the old man burst forth, in a surprised way. "That is it on the table. I was just considering whether I ought to tell you about it."

"And I have only just made up my mind to tell you about his communication. I was not aware that he had written to you. What does he say?"

"The old story of repentance and——but there is the letter; read it for yourself."

Frederic read it without a sign of eagerness or interest, making no comment until every word was read.

"Well?" Sir Nicholas interrogated, almost impatiently.

"It is almost identical with the letter I received."

"But what are we to do? What would you suggest?"

"I have no advice to offer, father. This is a matter which you ought to settle."

"Do you really believe that Sydney intends to reform?"

"Do you wish me to speak as a brother, or as an impartial judge?"

"As both, Frederic."

"That is impossible. The natural impulse of a brother would be to let considerations of charity outweigh all facts, and give him another chance, and another, and so on till the end of the story."

"You do not believe, then, that he means what he has written?"

"How can either of us believe that? How often already has he made strenuous declarations of his repentance and of his resolves to be a different member of society? And the result has ever been the same. I have no ill feelings against Sydney, father, but I think we ought to look the plain facts in the face like men."

"Just so," the baronet responded sadly, his grey head moving to and fro in a plaintive way. "I do not believe he will ever become a better man."

"Don't say that!" Frederic Carsland cried earnestly. "He may reform—will do, some day, I feel sure."

"Then that is a strong plea for giving him another chance."

"No."

"What do you mean?"

"This. All along Sydney has thought that whatever scrapes he got into you would help him out of them, and it is quite possible that his escapades would have been less numerous had his father not been a rich, as well as an over fond and forgiving one. You have forgiven him so often that he thinks he is always certain of talking you over. It is time now that you practised a little cruelty towards him if you wish to be really kind. Refuse all help for the present. Let him fight with the world for a while. Make him shoulder his own troubles. He has ability, I hear, and could earn a decent living on the Press if he would only bend himself resolutely to hard work. Force him to do it by declining to give him more money, and when he has given you indubitable proof of his long talked of reformation, treat him as generously as you desire."

"I believe you are right, Frederic," Sir Nicholas murmured.

"I am right!" the younger man asseverated with emphasis. "To save Sydney from total ruin you must be firm now and apparently cruel. Write to him and tell him in the most definite and unmistakable way that he has finished altogether with you until his reformation is a plain fact."

"I will do it, Frederic. After all, I have been too easy going—much too easy going—with Sydney. I will write to him on the lines you suggest."

"When will you write?"

"To-night—now."

"And I will do so also."