Part 36 (1/2)

”I come as a woman to appeal to a man,” I said. ”You are a man and I am a woman, we stand on equal ground. You would not like your sister, had you a sister, to do what you want me to do. I appeal to you on behalf of that sister who does not exist.”

He tried to give a laugh, but it would not rise to his lips.

”As you justly remarked,” he said, ”I have not got a sister.”

”But you know, you must know, Mr. Fanning, what you would feel if you had a sister, and she allowed a man who was no relation, no relation whatever, to take her debts and pay them. What would you think of your sister?”

”I'd say the sooner she and that chap married the better,” was Mr.

Fanning's blunt response; ”they'd be relations then fast enough, eh, eh? I think I have about answered you, Miss Wickham.”

”But suppose she did not want to marry that man; suppose she had told him that she never would marry him; suppose he knew perfectly well in his heart that she could not marry him, because she had not a spark of love to give him?”

”But I don't suppose anything of the sort,” said Mr. Fanning, and now his face grew white, uncomfortably white, and I saw his lips trembling.

”There now,” he said, ”you have had your say, and it is my turn. I see perfectly well what you are driving at. You think I have taken an unfair advantage of you, but this was the position. I knew all about it, I had seen it coming for some time. Jane Mullins had dropped hints to mother, and mother had dropped hints to me, and, good gracious! I could tell for myself. I am a man of business; I knew exactly what each of the boarders paid. I knew exactly or nearly to a nicety, and if I didn't my mother did, what the dinners cost which we ate night after night in your dining-room, and what the furniture must have cost, and what the breakfast cost, and the hundred and one things which were necessary to keep up an establishment of that kind, and I said to the mater, 'Look you here, mater, the incomings are so and so, and the outgoings are so and so, and a smash is _inevitable_. It will come sooner or later, and it is my opinion it will come sooner, not later.' The mater agreed with me, for she is shrewd enough, and we both thought a great deal of you, and a great deal of your mother. We knew that although you were dainty in your ways, and belonged to a higher social cla.s.s than we did (we are never going, either of us, to deny that), we knew that you were ignorant of these things, and had not our wisdom, and we thought Jane Mullins was a bit of a goose to have launched in such a hopeless undertaking. But, of course, as the mater said, she said it many, many times, 'There may be money at the back of this thing, Albert, and if there is they may pull through.'

But when Mr. Randolph went off in that fine hurry last winter, we found out all too quickly that there was no money at the back, and then, of course, the result was inevitable.

”I expected Pattens to send a man in, for I had met him once or twice, and he told me that his bill was not paid, and that he did not mean to supply any more meat, and what Pattens said the baker and greengrocer said too, and so did Allthorp the grocer, and so did the fishmonger, Merriman, and so did all the other tradespeople, and if one spoke to me, so did they all. I have paid Pattens, but that is not enough.

Pattens won't trouble you any more, his man has gone, but there is Merriman's man to come on, and there is Allthorp's man, and there are all the others, and then, above and beyond all, there's the landlord, Mr. Hardcastle. Why, the March quarter's rent has not been paid yet, and that is a pretty big sum. So, my dear young lady, things _cannot_ go on, and what is to be done? Now there's the question--what is to be done?”

I stared at him with frightened eyes. It was perfectly true that I knew nothing whatever about business. I had imagined myself business-like, and full of common sense, but I found in this extreme moment that my business qualities were nowhere, and that this hard-headed and yet honest man of the world was facing the position for me, and seeing things as I ought to see them.

”What is to be done?” he repeated. ”Are you going to have the bed on which your mother sleeps sold under her, and she dying, or are you not? I can help you, I have plenty of money, I have a lot of loose cash in the bank which may as well go in your direction as any other.

Shall I spend it for you, or shall I not?”

”But if you do--if you do,” I faltered, ”what does it mean?”

”Mean!” he said, and now a queer light came into his eyes, and he drew nearer again, and bending forward tried to take my hand. I put it hastily behind me.

”I'll be frank,” he said, ”I'll be plain, _it means you_.”

”I cannot, oh! I cannot,” I said. I covered my face with both my hands; I was trembling all over.

”Give me your promise,” he said, dropping his voice very low, ”just give me your promise. I'll not hurry you a bit. Give me your promise that in the future, say in a year (I'll give you a whole year, yes I will, although it goes hard with me)--say in a year, you will be mine, you'll come to me as my little wife, and I won't bother you, upon my soul I won't, before the time. I'll go away from 17 Graham Square, I will, yes I will. The mater can stay, she likes looking after people, and she is downright fond of you, but I won't worry you. Say you'll be my little wife, and you need not have another care. The bills shall be paid, and we'll close the place gradually. The boarding-house, on its present terms, cannot go on, but we will close up gradually, and poor old Miss Mullins need not be a pauper for the rest of her days. She's a right down good sort, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll start her in a little boarding-house of a humble kind on my own hook. Yes, I will, and she shall make a tidy fortune out of it. I'll do all that, and for you, for _you_, and you have only got to promise.”

”But I cannot,” I said, and now I began to sob. ”Oh, I cannot. You don't want a wife who doesn't love you at all.”

”Not even a little bit?” he said, and there was a pathetic ring in his voice. ”Aren't you sure that you love me just a very little bit? Well, well, you will some day; you will when you know me better. I am a very rough sort of diamond, Miss Wickham, but I am a diamond all the same, if being true and honourable and honest and straightforward means anything at all. I don't want to speak too well of myself, but I do know that in my entire life I have never done a real mean or shabby thing. I am an honest fellow out and out, Miss Wickham, and I offer you all I have, and I will get you out of this sc.r.a.pe in a twinkling, that I will. You thought, perhaps, your fine friend Mr. Randolph would do it, but when he guessed how things were going he cut off fast enough to the other side of the world.”

”I won't let you speak of him like that,” I cried, and my voice rose again with anger, and the pity I had felt for Mr. Fanning a moment ago vanished as if it had never existed. ”Mr. Randolph has been our true, true friend, and he may be dead now. Oh, you are cruel to speak of him like that!”

”Very well, we won't talk of him. It is unkind to abuse the dead,”

said Mr. Fanning in a low, considerate sort of voice. ”He sailed, poor chap, in the _Star of Hope_, and the _Star of Hope_ has been wrecked.

He will never come back to bother anybody again, so we won't talk of him.”

I was silent. A cold, faint feeling was stealing over me.