CHAPTER VI.

"I WILL NOT SELL THE FIRS."

On the morning after Arnold's arrival the squire called his daughter into the south parlor.

"My love," he said, "I want a word with you."

As a rule Frances was very willing to have words with her father. She was always patient and gentle and sweet with him; but she would have been more than human if she had not cast some wistful glances into the garden, where Philip was waiting for her. He and she also had something to talk about that morning, and why did Fluff go out, and play those bewitching airs softly to herself on the guitar? And why did she sing in that wild-bird voice of hers? and why did Philip pause now and then in his walk, as though he was listening--which indeed he was, for it would be difficult for any one to shut their ears to such light and harmonious sounds. Frances hated herself for feeling jealous. No--of course she was not jealous; she could not stoop to anything so mean.

Poor darling little Fluff! and Philip, her true lover, who had remained constant to her for ten long years.

With a smile on her lips, and the old look of patience in her steady eyes, she turned her back to the window and prepared to listen to what the squire had to say.

"The fact is, Frances--" he began. "Sit down, my dear, sit down; I hate to have people standing, it fidgets me so. Oh! you want to be out with that young man; well, Fluff will amuse him--dear little thing, Fluff--most entertaining. Has a way of soothing a man's nerves, which few women possess. You, my dear, have often a most irritating way with you; not that I complain--we all have our faults. You inherit this intense overwrought sort of manner from your mother, Frances."

Frances, who was standing absolutely quiet and still again, smiled slightly.

"You had something to talk to me about," she said, in her gentlest of voice.

"To be sure I had. I can tell you I have my worries--wonder I'm alive--and since your mother died never a bit of sympathy do I get from mortal. There, read that letter from Spens, and see what you make of it.

Impudent? uncalled for? I should think so; but I really do wonder what these lawyers are coming to. Soon there'll be no distinctions between man and man anywhere, when a beggarly country lawyer dares to write to a gentleman like myself in that strain. But read the letter, Frances; you'll have to see Spens this afternoon. _I'm_ not equal to it."

"Let me see what Mr. Spens says," answered Frances.

She took the lawyer's letter from the squire's shaking old fingers, and opened it. Then her face became very pale, and as her eyes glanced rapidly over the contents, she could not help uttering a stifled exclamation.

"Yes, no wonder you're in a rage," said the squire. "The impudence of that letter beats everything."

"But what does Mr. Spens mean?" said Frances. "He says here--unless you can pay the six thousand pounds owing within three months, his client has given him instructions to sell the Firs. What does he mean, father?

I never knew that we owed a penny. Oh, this is awful!"

"And how do you suppose we have lived?" said the squire, who was feeling all that undue sense of irritation which guilty people know so well.

"How have we had our bread and b.u.t.ter? How has the house been kept up?

How have the wages been met? I suppose you thought that that garden of yours--those vegetables and fruit--have kept everything going? That's all a woman knows. Besides, I've been unlucky--two speculations have failed--every penny I put in lost in them. Now, what's the matter, Frances? You have a very unpleasant manner of staring."

"There was my mother's money," said Frances, who was struggling hard to keep herself calm. "That was always supposed to bring in something over two hundred pounds a year. I thought--I imagined--that with the help I was able to give from the garden and the poultry yard that we--we lived within our means."

Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. Fluff was playing "Sweethearts"

on her guitar, and Arnold was leaning with his arms folded against the trunk of a wide-spreading oak-tree. Was he listening to Fluff, or waiting for Frances? She felt like a person struggling through a horrible nightmare.

"I thought we lived within our means," she said, faintly.

"Just like you--women are always imagining things. We have no means to live on; your mother's money has long vanished--it was lost in that silver mine in Peru. And the greater part of the six thousand pounds lent by Spens has one way or another pretty nearly shared the same fate.

I've been a very unlucky man, Frances, and if your mother were here, she'd pity me. I've had no one to sympathize with me since her death."

"I do, father," said his daughter. She went up and put her arms round his old neck. "It was a shock, and I felt half stunned. But I fully sympathize."

"Not that I am going to sell the Firs," said the squire, not returning Frances's embrace, but allowing her to take his limp hand within her own. "No, no; I've no idea of that. Spens and his client, whoever he is, must wait for their money, and that's what you have got to see him about, Frances. Come, now, you must make the best terms you can with Spens--a woman can do what she likes with a man when she knows how to manage."

"But what am I to say, father?"

"Say? Why, that's your lookout. Never heard of a woman yet who couldn't find words. Say? Anything in the world you please, provided you give him to clearly to understand that come what may I will not sell the Firs."

Frances stood still for two whole minutes. During this time she was thinking deeply--so deeply that she forgot the man who was waiting outside--she forgot everything but the great and terrible fact that, notwithstanding all her care and all her toil, beggary was staring them in the face.

"I will see Mr. Spens," she said at last, slowly: "it is not likely that I shall be able to do much. If you have mortgaged the Firs to this client of Mr. Spens, he will most probably require you to sell, in order to realize his money; but I will see him, and let you know the result."

"You had better order the gig, then, and go now; he is sure to be in at this hour. Oh, you want to talk to the man that you fancy is in love with you; but lovers can wait, and business can't. Understand clearly, once for all, Frances, that if the Firs is sold, I die."

"Dear father," said Frances--again she took his unwilling hand in hers--"do you suppose I want the Firs to be sold? Don't I love every stone of the old place, and every flower that grows here? If words can save it, they won't be wanting on my part. But you know better than I do that I am absolutely powerless in the matter."

She went out of the room, and the squire sat with the sun shining full on him, and grumbled. What was a blow to Frances, a blow which half stunned her in its suddenness and unexpectedness, had come gradually to the squire. For years past he knew that while his daughter was doing her utmost to make two ends meet--was toiling early and late to bring in a little money to help the slender household purse--she was only postponing an evil day which could never be averted. From the first, Squire Kane in his own small way had been a speculator--never at any time had he been a lucky one, and now he reaped the results.

After a time he pottered to his feet, and strolled out into the garden.

Frances was nowhere visible, but Arnold and Ellen were standing under a shady tree, holding an animated conversation together.

"Here comes the squire," said Fluff, in a tone of delight. She flew to his side, put her hand through his arm, and looked coaxingly and lovingly into his face.

"I am so glad you are not asleep," she said. "I don't like you when you fall asleep and get so red in the face; you frightened me last night--I was terrified--I cried. Didn't I, Mr. Arnold?"

"Yes," replied Arnold, "you seemed a good deal alarmed. Do you happen to know where your daughter is, Mr. Kane?"

"Yes; she is going into Martinstown on business for me. Ah, yes, Fluff, you always were a sympathizing little woman." Here the squire patted the dimpled hand; he was not interested in Philip Arnold's inquiries.

"If Frances is going to Martinstown, perhaps she will let me accompany her," said Arnold. "I will go and look for her."

He did not wait for the squire's mumbling reply, but started off quickly on his quest.

"Frances does want the gift of sympathy," said the squire, once more addressing himself with affection to Ellen. "Do you know, Fluff, that I am in considerable difficulty; in short, that I am going through just now a terrible trouble--oh, nothing that you can a.s.sist me in, dear.

Still, one does want a little sympathy, and poor dear Frances, in that particular, is sadly, painfully deficient."

"Are you really in great trouble?" said Fluff. She raised her eyes with a look of alarm.

"Oh, I am dreadfully sorry! Shall I play for you, shall I sing something? Let me bring this arm-chair out here by this pear-tree; I'll get my guitar; I'll sing you anything you like--'Robin Adair,' or 'Auld Robin Gray,' or 'A Man's a Man;' you know how very fond you are of Burns."

"You are a good little girl," said the squire. "Place the arm-chair just at that angle, my love. Ah, that's good! I get the full power of the sun here. Somehow it seems to me, Fluff, that the summers are not half as warm as they used to be. Now play 'Bonnie Dundee'--it will be a treat to hear you."

Fluff fingered her guitar lovingly. Then she looked up into the wizened, discontented face of the old man opposite to her.

"Play," said the squire. "Why don't you begin?"

"Only that I'm thinking," said the spoiled child, tapping her foot petulantly. "Squire, I can't help saying it--I don't think you are quite fair to Frances."

"Eh, what?" said Squire Kane, in a voice of astonishment.

"Highty-tighty, what next! Go on with your playing, miss."