Part 18

“Yes.”

Bradley hesitated for a moment and then said quietly, “Perhaps, then, I am justified in a breach of confidence to him, in order to answer your question. He is the man who has assumed all the liabilities of the Sierran Land and Timber Company to enable the Bank to resume payment. But he did it on the condition that you were never to know it. For the rest, he was a blacksmith who made a fortune, as Lady Canterbridge will tell you.”

“How very odd--how kind, I mean. I should like to have been civil to him on Frank's account alone.”

“I should see him on business and be civil to him afterwards.” Sir Robert received the American's levity with his usual seriousness.

“No, they must come here for Christmas. His daughter is--?”

“Araminta Eulalie Sharpe,” said Bradley, in defiant memory of Lady Canterbridge.

Sir Robert winced audibly. “I shall rely on you, my dear boy, to help me make it pleasant for them,” he said.

Christmas came, but not Minty. It drew a large contingent from Oldenhurst to the quaint old church, who came to view the green-wreathed monuments, and walls spotted with crimson berries, as if with the blood of former Oldenhurst warriors, and to impress the wondering villagers with the ineffable goodness and bounty of the Creator towards the Lords of Oldenhurst and their friends. Sir Robert, a little gouty, kept the house, and Bradley, somewhat uneasy at the Sharpes' absence, but more distrait with other thoughts, wandered listlessly in the long library. At the lower angle it was embayed into the octagon space of a former tower, which was furnished as a quaint recess for writing or study, pierced through its enormous walls with a lance-shaped window, hidden by heavy curtains. He was gazing abstractedly at the melancholy eyes of Sir Percival, looking down from the dark panel opposite, when he heard the crisp rustle of a skirt. Lady Canterbridge tightly and stiffly buttoned in black from her long narrow boots to her slim, white-collared neck, stood beside him with a prayer-book in her ungloved hand. Bradley colored quickly; the penetrating incense of the Christmas boughs and branches that decked the walls and ceilings, mingled with some indefinable intoxicating aura from the woman at his side, confused his senses. He seemed to be losing himself in some forgotten past coeval with the long, quaintly-lighted room, the rich hangings, and the painted ancestor of this handsome woman. He recovered himself with an effort, and said,

“You are going to church?”

“I may meet them coming home; it's all the same. You like HIM?” she said abruptly, pointing to the portrait. “I thought you did not care for that sort of man over there.”

“A man like that must have felt the impotence of his sacrifice before he died, and that condoned everything,” said Bradley, thoughtfully.

“Then you don't think him a fool? Bob says it was a fair bargain for a title and an office, and that by dying he escaped trial and the confiscation of what he had.”

Bradley did not reply.

“I am disturbing your illusions again. Yet I rather like them. I think you are quite capable of a sacrifice--perhaps you know what it is already.”

He felt that she was looking at him; he felt equally that he could not respond with a commonplace. He was silent.

“I have offended you again, Mr. Bradley,” she said. “Please be Christian, and pardon me. You know this is a season of peace and goodwill.” She raised her blue eyes at the same moment to the Christmas decorations on the ceiling. They were standing before the parted drapery of the lance window. Midway between the arched curtains hung a spray of mistletoe--the conceit of a mischievous housemaid. Their eyes met it simultaneously.

Bradley had Lady Canterbridge's slim, white hand in his own. The next moment voices were heard in the passage, and the door nearly opposite to them opened deliberately. The idea of their apparent seclusion and half compromising attitude flashed through the minds of both at the same time. Lady Canterbridge stepped quickly backward, drawing Bradley with her, into the embrasure of the window; the folds of the curtain swung together and concealed them from view.

The door had been opened by the footman, ushering in a broad-shouldered man, who was carrying a travelling-bag and an umbrella in his hand. Dropping into an arm-chair before the curtain, he waved away the footman, who, even now, mechanically repeated a previously vain attempt to relieve the stranger of his luggage.

“You leave that 'ere grip sack where it is, young man, and tell Sir Robert Mainwaring that Mr. Demander Sharpe, of Californy, wishes to see him--on business--on BUSINESS, do ye' hear? You hang onter that sentence--on BUSINESS! it's about ez much ez you kin carry, I reckon, and leave that grip sack alone.”

From behind the curtain Bradley made a sudden movement to go forward; but Lady Canterbridge--now quite pale but collected--restrained him with a warning movement of her hand. Sir Robert's stick and halting step were next heard along the passage, and he entered the room. His simple and courteous greeting of the stranger was instantly followed by a renewed attack upon the “grip sack,” and a renewed defence of it by the stranger.

“No, Sir Robert,” said the voice argumentatively, “this yer's a BUSINESS interview, and until it's over--if YOU please--we'll remain ez we air. I'm Demander Sharpe, of Californy, and I and my darter, Minty, oncet had the pleasure of knowing your boy over thar, and of meeting him agin the other day at Nice.”

“I think,” said Sir Robert's voice gently, “that these are not the only claims you have upon me. I have only a day or two ago heard from Mr. Bradley that I owe to your generous hands and your disinterested liberality the saving of my California fortune.”

There was the momentary sound of a pushed-back chair, a stamping of feet, and then Mr. Sharpe's voice rose high with the blacksmith's old querulous aggrieved utterance.

“So it's that finikin', conceited Bradley agin--that's giv' me away! Ef that man's all-fired belief in his being the Angel Gabriel and Dan'l Webster rolled inter one don't beat anythin'! I suppose that high-flyin' jay-bird kalkilated to put you and me and my gal and yer boy inter harness for his four hoss chariot and he sittin' kam on the box drivin' us! Why don't he tend to his own business, and look arter his own concerns--instead o' leaving Jinny Bradley and Loo Macy dependent on Kings and Queens and titled folks gen'rally, and he, Jim Bradley, philanderin' with another man's wife--while that thar man is hard at work tryin' to make a honest livin' fer his wife, buckin' agin faro an' the tiger gen'rally at Monaco! Eh? And that man a-inter-meddlin' with me! Ef,” continued the voice, dropped to a tone of hopeless moral conviction, “ef there's a man I mor'aly despise--it's that finikin' Jim Bradley.”

“You quite misunderstand me, my dear sir,” said Sir Robert's hurried voice; “he told me you had pledged him to secrecy, and he only revealed it to explain why you wished to see me.”

There was a grunt of half-placated wrath from Sharpe, and then the voice resumed, but more deliberately, “Well, to come back to business: you've got a boy, Francis, and I've got a darter, Araminty. They've sorter taken a shine to each other and they want to get married. Mind yer--wait a moment!--it wasn't allus so. No, sir; when my gal Araminty first seed your boy in Californy she was poor, and she didn't kalkilate to get inter anybody's family unbeknownst or on sufferance. Then she got rich and you got poor; and then--hold on a minit!--she allows, does my girl, that there ain't any nearer chance o' their making a match than they were afore, for she isn't goin' to hev it said that she married your son fur the chance of some day becomin' Lady Mainwaring.”

“One moment, Mr. Sharpe,” said the voice of the Baronet, gravely: “I am both flattered and pained by what I believe to be the kindly object of your visit. Indeed, I may say I have gathered a suspicion of what might be the sequel of this most unhappy acquaintance of my son and your daughter; but I cannot believe that he has kept you in ignorance of his unfortunate prospects and his still more unfortunate state of health.”

“When I told ye to hold on a minit,” continued the blacksmith's voice, with a touch of querulousness in its accent, “that was jist wot I was comin' to. I knowed part of it from my own pocket, she knowed the rest of it from his lip and the doctors she interviewed. And then she says to me--sez my girl Minty--Pop,' she sez, 'he's got nothing to live for now but his title, and that he never may live to get, so that I think ye kin jist go, Pop, and fairly and squarely, as a honest man, ask his father to let me hev him.' Them's my darter's own words, Sir Robert, and when I tell yer that she's got a million o' dollars to back them, ye'll know she means business, every time.”