A Dark Night's Work (7 page)

All this time, Mr. Ralph Corbet maintained a very quietly decided
attitude towards his own family. He was engaged to Miss Wilkins; and all
he could say was, he felt sorry that they disapproved of it. He was not
able to marry just at present, and before the time for his marriage
arrived, he trusted that his family would take a more reasonable view of
things, and be willing to receive her as his wife with all becoming
respect or affection. This was the substance of what he repeated in
different forms in reply to his father's angry letters. At length, his
invariable determination made way with his father; the paternal
thunderings were subdued to a distant rumbling in the sky; and presently
the inquiry was broached as to how much fortune Miss Wilkins would have;
how much down on her marriage; what were the eventual probabilities. Now
this was a point which Mr. Ralph Corbet himself wished to be informed
upon. He had not thought much about it in making the engagement; he had
been too young, or too much in love. But an only child of a wealthy
attorney ought to have something considerable; and an allowance so as to
enable the young couple to start housekeeping in a moderately good part
of town, would be an advantage to him in his profession. So he replied
to his father, adroitly suggesting that a letter containing certain
modifications of the inquiry which had been rather roughly put in Mr.
Corbet's last, should be sent to him, in order that he might himself
ascertain from Mr. Wilkins what were Ellinor's prospects as regarded
fortune.

The desired letter came; but not in such a form that he could pass it on
to Mr. Wilkins; he preferred to make quotations, and even these
quotations were a little altered and dressed before he sent them on. The
gist of his letter to Mr. Wilkins was this. He stated that he hoped soon
to be in a position to offer Ellinor a home; that he anticipated a steady
progress in his profession, and consequently in his income; but that
contingencies might arise, as his father suggested, which would deprive
him of the power of earning a livelihood, perhaps when it might be more
required than it would be at first; that it was true that, after his
mother's death a small estate in Shropshire would come to him as second
son, and of course Ellinor would receive the benefit of this property,
secured to her legally as Mr. Wilkins thought best—that being a matter
for after discussion—but that at present his father was anxious, as
might be seen from the extract to ascertain whether Mr. Wilkins could
secure him from the contingency of having his son's widow and possible
children thrown upon his hands, by giving Ellinor a dowry; and if so, it
was gently insinuated, what would be the amount of the same.

When Mr. Wilkins received this letter it startled him out of a happy day-
dream. He liked Ralph Corbet and the whole connection quite well enough
to give his consent to an engagement; and sometimes even he was glad to
think that Ellinor's future was assured, and that she would have a
protector and friends after he was dead and gone. But he did not want
them to assume their responsibilities so soon. He had not distinctly
contemplated her marriage as an event likely to happen before his death.
He could not understand how his own life would go on without her: or
indeed why she and Ralph Corbet could not continue just as they were at
present. He came down to breakfast with the letter in his hand. By
Ellinor's blushes, as she glanced at the handwriting, he knew that she
had heard from her lover by the same post; by her tender
caresses—caresses given as if to make up for the pain which the prospect
of her leaving him was sure to cause him—he was certain that she was
aware of the contents of the letter. Yet he put it in his pocket, and
tried to forget it.

He did this not merely from his reluctance to complete any arrangements
which might facilitate Ellinor's marriage. There was a further annoyance
connected with the affair. His money matters had been for some time in
an involved state; he had been living beyond his income, even reckoning
that, as he always did, at the highest point which it ever touched. He
kept no regular accounts, reasoning with himself—or, perhaps, I should
rather say persuading himself—that there was no great occasion for
regular accounts, when he had a steady income arising from his
profession, as well as the interest of a good sum of money left him by
his father; and when, living in his own house near a country town where
provisions were cheap, his expenditure for his small family—only one
child—could never amount to anything like his incomings from the above-
mentioned sources. But servants and horses, and choice wines and rare
fruit-trees, and a habit of purchasing any book or engraving that may
take the fancy, irrespective of the price, run away with money, even
though there be but one child. A year or two ago, Mr. Wilkins had been
startled into a system of exaggerated retrenchment—retrenchment which
only lasted about six weeks—by the sudden bursting of a bubble
speculation in which he had invested a part of his father's savings. But
as soon as the change in his habits, necessitated by his new economies,
became irksome, he had comforted himself for his relapse into his former
easy extravagance of living by remembering the fact that Ellinor was
engaged to the son of a man of large property: and that though Ralph was
only the second son, yet his mother's estate must come to him, as Mr.
Ness had already mentioned, on first hearing of her engagement.

Mr. Wilkins did not doubt that he could easily make Ellinor a fitting
allowance, or even pay down a requisite dowry; but the doing so would
involve an examination into the real state of his affairs, and this
involved distasteful trouble. He had no idea how much more than mere
temporary annoyance would arise out of the investigation. Until it was
made, he decided in his own mind that he would not speak to Ellinor on
the subject of her lover's letter. So for the next few days she was kept
in suspense, seeing little of her father; and during the short times she
was with him she was made aware that he was nervously anxious to keep the
conversation engaged on general topics rather than on the one which she
had at heart. As I have already said, Mr. Corbet had written to her by
the same post as that on which he sent the letter to her father, telling
her of its contents, and begging her (in all those sweet words which
lovers know how to use) to urge her father to compliance for his
sake—his, her lover's—who was pining and lonely in all the crowds of
London, since her loved presence was not there. He did not care for
money, save as a means of hastening their marriage; indeed, if there were
only some income fixed, however small—some time for their marriage
fixed, however distant—he could be patient. He did not want superfluity
of wealth; his habits were simple, as she well knew; and money enough
would be theirs in time, both from her share of contingencies, and the
certainty of his finally possessing Bromley.

Ellinor delayed replying to this letter until her father should have
spoken to her on the subject. But as she perceived that he avoided all
such conversation, the young girl's heart failed her. She began to blame
herself for wishing to leave him, to reproach herself for being accessory
to any step which made him shun being alone with her, and look distressed
and full of care as he did now. It was the usual struggle between father
and lover for the possession of love, instead of the natural and graceful
resignation of the parent to the prescribed course of things; and, as
usual, it was the poor girl who bore the suffering for no fault of her
own: although she blamed herself for being the cause of the disturbance
in the previous order of affairs. Ellinor had no one to speak to
confidentially but her father and her lover, and when they were at issue
she could talk openly to neither, so she brooded over Mr. Corbet's
unanswered letter, and her father's silence, and became pale and
dispirited. Once or twice she looked up suddenly, and caught her
father's eye gazing upon her with a certain wistful anxiety; but the
instant she saw this he pulled himself up, as it were, and would begin
talking gaily about the small topics of the day.

At length Mr. Corbet grew impatient at not hearing either from Mr.
Wilkins or Ellinor, and wrote urgently to the former, making known to him
a new proposal suggested to him by his father, which was, that a certain
sum should be paid down by Mr. Wilkins to be applied, under the
management of trustees, to the improvement of the Bromley estate, out of
the profits of which, or other sources in the elder Mr. Corbet's hands, a
heavy rate of interest should be paid on this advance, which would secure
an income to the young couple immediately, and considerably increase the
value of the estate upon which Ellinor's settlement was to be made. The
terms offered for this laying down of ready money were so advantageous,
that Mr. Wilkins was strongly tempted to accede to them at once; as
Ellinor's pale cheek and want of appetite had only that very morning
smote upon his conscience, and this immediate transfer of ready money was
as a sacrifice, a soothing balm to his self-reproach, and laziness and
dislike to immediate unpleasantness of action had its counterbalancing
weakness in imprudence. Mr. Wilkins made some rough calculations on a
piece of paper—deeds, and all such tests of accuracy, being down at the
office; discovered that he could pay down the sum required; wrote a
letter agreeing to the proposal, and before he sealed it called Ellinor
into his study, and bade her read what he had been writing and tell him
what she thought of it. He watched the colour come rushing into her
white face, her lips quiver and tremble, and even before the letter was
ended she was in his arms kissing him, and thanking him with blushing
caresses rather than words.

"There, there!" said he, smiling and sighing; "that will do. Why, I do
believe you took me for a hard-hearted father, just like a heroine's
father in a book. You've looked as woe-begone this week past as Ophelia.
One can't make up one's mind in a day about such sums of money as this,
little woman; and you should have let your old father have time to
consider."

"Oh, papa; I was only afraid you were angry."

"Well, if I was a bit perplexed, seeing you look so ill and pining was
not the way to bring me round. Old Corbet, I must say, is trying to make
a good bargain for his son. It is well for me that I have never been an
extravagant man."

"But, papa, we don't want all this much."

"Yes, yes! it is all right. You shall go into their family as a well-
portioned girl, if you can't go as a Lady Maria. Come, don't trouble
your little head any more about it. Give me one more kiss, and then
we'll go and order the horses, and have a ride together, by way of
keeping holiday. I deserve a holiday, don't I, Nelly?"

Some country people at work at the roadside, as the father and daughter
passed along, stopped to admire their bright happy looks, and one spoke
of the hereditary handsomeness of the Wilkins family (for the old man,
the present Mr. Wilkins's father, had been fine-looking in his drab
breeches and gaiters, and usual assumption of a yeoman's dress). Another
said it was easy for the rich to be handsome; they had always plenty to
eat, and could ride when they were tired of walking, and had no care for
the morrow to keep them from sleeping at nights. And, in sad
acquiescence with their contrasted lot, the men went on with their
hedging and ditching in silence.

And yet, if they had known—if the poor did know—the troubles and
temptations of the rich; if those men had foreseen the lot darkening over
the father, and including the daughter in its cloud; if Mr. Wilkins
himself had even imagined such a future possible . . . Well, there was
truth in the old heathen saying, "Let no man be envied till his death."

Ellinor had no more rides with her father; no, not ever again; though
they had stopped that afternoon at the summit of a breezy common, and
looked at a ruined hall, not so very far off; and discussed whether they
could reach it that day, and decided that it was too far away for
anything but a hurried inspection, and that some day soon they would make
the old place into the principal object of an excursion. But a rainy
time came on, when no rides were possible; and whether it was the
influence of the weather, or some other care or trouble that oppressed
him, Mr. Wilkins seemed to lose all wish for much active exercise, and
rather sought a stimulus to his spirits and circulation in wine. But of
this Ellinor was innocently unaware. He seemed dull and weary, and sat
long, drowsing and drinking after dinner. If the servants had not been
so fond of him for much previous generosity and kindness, they would have
complained now, and with reason, of his irritability, for all sorts of
things seemed to annoy him.

"You should get the master to take a ride with you, miss," said Dixon,
one day as he was putting Ellinor on her horse. "He's not looking well,
he's studying too much at the office."

But when Ellinor named it to her father, he rather hastily replied that
it was all very well for women to ride out whenever they liked—men had
something else to do; and then, as he saw her look grave and puzzled, he
softened down his abrupt saying by adding that Dunster had been making a
fuss about his partner's non-attendance, and altogether taking a good
deal upon himself in a very offensive way, so that he thought it better
to go pretty regularly to the office, in order to show him who was
master—senior partner, and head of the business, at any rate.

Ellinor sighed a little over her disappointment at her father's
preoccupation, and then forgot her own little regret in anger at Mr.
Dunster, who had seemed all along to be a thorn in her father's side, and
had latterly gained some power and authority over him, the exercise of
which, Ellinor could not help thinking, was a very impertinent line of
conduct from a junior partner, so lately only a paid clerk, to his
superior. There was a sense of something wrong in the Ford Bank
household for many weeks about this time. Mr. Wilkins was not like
himself, and his cheerful ways and careless genial speeches were missed,
even on the days when he was not irritable, and evidently uneasy with
himself and all about him. The spring was late in coming, and cold rain
and sleet made any kind of out-door exercise a trouble and discomfort
rather than a bright natural event in the course of the day. All sound
of winter gaieties, of assemblies and meets, and jovial dinners, had died
away, and the summer pleasures were as yet unthought of. Still Ellinor
had a secret perennial source of sunshine in her heart; whenever she
thought of Ralph she could not feel much oppression from the present
unspoken and indistinct gloom. He loved her; and oh, how she loved him!
and perhaps this very next autumn—but that depended on his own success
in his profession. After all, if it was not this autumn it would be the
next; and with the letters that she received weekly, and the occasional
visits that her lover ran down to Hamley to pay Mr. Ness, Ellinor felt as
if she would almost prefer the delay of the time when she must leave her
father's for a husband's roof.