CHAPTER XVIII

My father kept on holding my hand. We neither of us spoke; there are moments when words fail us, and these happened to be some. The sun crept higher and higher in the heavens, it beat down on us, but it was tempered by the pleasant, cool sea breezes. We were both looking into the future, and, truth to tell, our hearts were sad. I was making up my mind, and father was making up his mind. At last I, being the younger and more impulsive, spoke:

"It is all right, Daddy," I said. "It was a bit of a dreadful shock; I don't pretend it was anything else. I have always put you--oh, on such a pedestal! But I'll get used to it. You were tempted awfully, or you would never have done it. I am certain of that, and--I have never been tempted at all, so, of course, I can't understand. You were tempted, poor darling, and it--it happened. It is hateful of people to stamp on you, and crush you when you're down; but I suppose it is something horrid inside of them makes them do it. Daddy, I'm not made like that.

I couldn't stamp on you--I couldn't crush you. On the contrary, I have made up my mind. You and I against the world, Daddy mine, against the whole wide world. You won't return to London to-night; you'll stay here, and you'll write to Lady Helen, and you'll tell her that you and I have escaped from the worst prison, and are going to live always together, and that we aren't a bit afraid of poverty, and that, in short, we've made up our minds. We've cut the Gordian knot. We'll be happy together, and we don't care a sc.r.a.p about poverty."

"That's your firm resolve, is it, Heather?" said my father.

"It is. I have been thinking it out--I can't get away from it."

"All right. Give me a kiss, child."

I put my arms round him, and kissed him many times. Again I noticed that there wasn't a bit of shame in his eyes; they looked quite clear, and steadfast, and blue, with that wonderful blue light which I think only comes into the eyes of men who are accustomed to face the sea and the wind, and who have lived a great deal out of doors.

"So that is your final decision?" he repeated. "I like to feel your kisses on my cheek, Heather."

I kissed him again.

"It is," I said.

"Well, now you've to hear mine."

"Oh, yours," I said; "you won't go away from your own Heather--you couldn't--you love her too well."

"G.o.d knows I love you, pretty one. You are the only creature on earth I do love. I love you with all my heart and soul, and that's saying a great deal. For the ten long years I was in prison I kept thinking and thinking of you, child. But for you I might have lost my reason; but your little face, and your ways, and your love for me kept me--well, all right. And now I am a free man again--I mean, I am free to claim your love. But you haven't decided what part Carbury is to play in this."

I shivered very slightly.

"I have told you," I said. "He won't play any part. I--I'm going to write to him. We need not talk about him any more. Yesterday you and my stepmother were opposed to my marrying him; now I also am opposed. There will be no marriage between us. I am all yours."

"Oh, you best child in all the world!"

"Then it's settled, isn't it, Daddy?"

"My little girl, I can't tell. It rests with Carbury himself. But my part--you've got to hear my part now."

I felt very, very sad when he said this. I seemed to guess in advance that a great strain and trial was about to be put upon me. My father looked at me, and then he looked away. Again he took up some great, full bells of heather and crushed them in his hand; he threw them away and turned and faced me.

"There! The worst is out. I have got to stay with her ladyship."

"Father!"

"Yes. I can't get away from it, Heather child. I can't live on nothing, nor, my little girl, can you. We are both dependent on Lady Helen for our daily bread."

"I am not--I won't be," I said.

"But you are," he answered, "and you must be; that's just it. You can't get away from it. She holds the purse. Do you think she will unfasten those purse strings to give you and me an allowance to live away from her?"

"But we can live on so little," I said; "and I can work. I should love to work."

"Well, now, Heather," said my father, "you are no fool."

"I hope I am not," I said.

"You're a very wise girl for your age."

"I hope so," I replied.

"I have watched you, and I know you are wise for your age--very. Being so, therefore, what can you do to earn a living? Just tell me."

I sat very quiet and still. I thought over my different accomplishments.

I could play a little, I could sing a little; I had a smattering of French--a very slight smattering--and I was fond of good English books, history books, and books of travel, and I adored books of adventure, and I could recite a good many pieces from our best poets. But all these things did not form much of a cargo to take on board my ship of life. My father kept looking at me, with that whimsical light in his blue eyes.

"Eh, little woman? Suppose I take you at your word, how do you propose to support yourself and me? There would be, first of all, our lodgings.

We might go to Plymouth, or some other place, not too dear. We might find rooms--kind of country cottage rooms--by the sea, and pay, say, six shillings a week each. It is very unlikely we'd get them for that, but I really want to bring you down as lightly as possible. Well, six shillings a week for you and six shillings for me means twelve shillings, and that would mean, probably, a tiny, tiny sitting-room, and two of the wee-est bedrooms in all the world. Still, it might be done for the price of twelve shillings a week. There would be extras, of course--landladies greatly live by extras--and we should have to put them down, counting coal and light, one part of the year with another, at about three shillings a week, which mounts up, our lodging and our light and coal, to fifteen shillings a week.

"Then, my dear little Heather, there comes that important thing, food, for the bravest of all little girls would get very hungry at times, and if she didn't get hungry she wouldn't be worth her salt. There'd be your breakfast, my dear, and my breakfast, and your snack in the middle of the day, and your tea in the afternoon, and your dinner in the evening; and I don't think the shopkeepers would give us bread, and b.u.t.ter, and milk, and beef, and mutton, and vegetables, and all those sort of things for nothing--I have an impression that they wouldn't. Of course I may be wrong, but that is my impression, and I have a pretty good knowledge of the world. I don't think, dear, that even at starvation price we could be fed under something like another fifteen shillings to a pound a week. Now, my little Heather, how are you to earn, say, one pound fifteen shillings a week--to say nothing of the expense of note-paper, and stamps, and envelopes, and dress?"

"Oh, I have heaps of dress," I said. "There are a great many dresses of mine at the house in London."

"Which have been supplied to you by Lady Helen. I don't really know, if we made this great severance from her, whether we should have any right to take those dresses from her or not--I am inclined to think not, if you ask me. However, suppose you don't want dress for the time being, at least you will want shoe leather, and gloves, and trifles of that sort.

My dear, we can't put down our living, between us, however hard we try, at less than two pounds a week, and that means over a hundred pounds a year. Now, Heather child, I have nothing a year--nothing!"

He stretched out both his arms as he spoke.

"Oh, yes; I am supposed to be one of the richest of old men. I can drive in my motor-car, and I can have a horse, and I can go here, there, and everywhere. I can live in the softest rooms, and I can eat the most dainty food, and I can curse luxury in my heart as you curse it in yours; but I haven't a penny piece to get away from it--not a penny piece; and, as far as I can tell, no more have you."

"Couldn't we live here with Aunt Penelope?" I said.

My voice was very weak and faint. A good deal of my courage was being taken out of me.

"As if we would, Heather! Think how that brave woman supported you during the long years when I was in prison, and could not earn a halfpenny! No, no, Heather; no, no! It was partly to relieve your aunt that I married her ladyship, and, Heather child, I can't get away from her now--I can't--and I am greatly afraid you can't either."

"But she won't have me," I said; "she'll have you back, of course, but not me; and, father, darling, I _can't_ go back!"

"She would have you if I pleaded," said my father, "and if I could tell her you had quite given up young Carbury. She has taken a dislike to that poor boy, G.o.d alone knows why--but I think I can manage it. You see, it's this way. Her ladyship has a great horror of anything approaching a scandal; I never knew anyone with such a downright horror of it; upon my word, in her case it amounts to a downright sin--it does, really. Well, there she is, hating scandal, and if you left her there'd be no end of talk, for in your way you have paid her well for all the luxuries she has showered upon you. People have been civil to her, not for her sake--who would look at a frowzy old woman like her?--yes, child, I say it; I don't mind what I say to you--but a great many people would want to look at your dear, fresh little face; and it is just because of that same dear little face that so many people have come to her ladyship's 'At Homes'; and it is because of that same little face that you and Lady Helen have been asked out so much. She knows it well enough; she knows why she's popular. I can easily get her to let the old life go on, and you shan't be worried with--with that poor fellow Hawtrey. I said to myself, when she was so full of it, 'I don't believe the child will consent,' but there, she told me I was wrong. She said there wasn't a girl in England who'd refuse a match like that; and even I allowed myself to be persuaded that that was the case."

"But, oh, father, wouldn't you have hated it?"

"No, child, not altogether; there might have been worse fates for you.

He's a good man, is Hawtrey; he'd have treated you well; he'd have been very kind to you. I have heard before of girls marrying men old enough to be their fathers, and being happy with them. I dare say if young Carbury had not come in the way you'd have taken him, for there isn't his like in England for chivalry and kindness of heart."

"But he did come," I said.

"Yes; youth naturally mates with youth--it's the true story of life. I'm not blaming you a bit, Heather--not in my heart, I mean. I had to pretend to blame you, of course, the other day."