Miser Farebrother: A Novel (vol. 2 of 3)

"Yes, father."

"Have you ever asked him how I was – have you ever shown, in a single conversation with him, that you have within you those solicitous feelings which a daughter should have for a suffering father? Have you ever shown – " He did not proceed. He lay back, panting, in his chair, and Jeremiah, without looking up, thought: "What an actor he is! Oh, what an actor he is!"

"Father," said Phœbe, in deep distress, "you do me an injustice. It has always been my wish to attend to you, to nurse you, but you would never allow me. 'Let me alone! let me alone!' you said, and have always repulsed me."

"Why? why?" he asked, raising himself in his chair, and bending so excitedly forward that she was frightened, and cried:

"Don't excite yourself, father; you are not strong enough to bear it."

"I know I am not. You know it too. It is not I who am exciting myself – it is you, because you wish to kill me!" She shuddered violently, and covered her face with her hands. "Why, when you have asked me whether you could do anything for me, have I desired you to let me alone? Because I could see plainly that you wished not to be troubled about me; that you were pretending – that you were wholly false in your advances. There are a thousand things a child can do for a parent in my condition which would bring pleasure to him. Have you done one? That I am impatient, querulous, quick-tempered – is not that natural when a man is in anguish day and night? Did you ever give that a thought? do you give it a thought now?"

"Father," said poor Phœbe, feeling acutely the bitter injustice of her father's accusations, and yet not knowing how to combat them without plunging him into deeper excitement, "I will nurse you if you will allow me; I will do everything in my power to restore you to health. Try me, father!"

"You do not intend to leave Parksides, then, without my permission?"

"To leave Parksides without your permission!" she echoed. "No, father!"

"For the few weeks that remain to me you will not leave the house? You will nurse me – you will soothe my last hours?"

"Oh, father, do not speak like that! I will do all you wish."

"Out of your own loving heart?"

"Yes, father, out of my own loving heart!"

"Swear it!" he cried, in a loud, commanding tone, pushing his dead wife's prayer-book to the guileless girl. "Kiss your mother's prayer-book, and prove to me whether you are lying or speaking the truth!"

In an impulse of fervour and self-reproach she kissed the prayer-book. He took it from her hands.

"You are a witness, Jeremiah," he said.

"I am a witness, sir," said Jeremiah.

"You have sworn," said Miser Farebrother to his daughter, "that you will not leave Parksides while I live, unless I drive you forth. That is your oath."

"Yes, father." But she said it with a sinking heart. It seemed to her as if a net were being spread around her, from which it was impossible to escape.

In her bed that night this impression of a forced, inexorable imprisonment became accentuated by a review of what had passed between herself and her father. For what other reason had he made her swear upon her dead mother's prayer-book that she would not leave Parksides without his permission? Could he not have taken her word? Was she to regard all that he had said as of equal value with Mrs. Pamflett's false statements? Were they all leagued against her? and what would be the end of the plot? Could they now compel her to marry Jeremiah Pamflett? No; she would endure a thousand deaths first. But she was imprisoned here in Parksides; she had no longer a will of her own. Her father had turned her only friends from his house, and he and they were the bitterest enemies; he had turned her lover from his house; she was cut off from all she held dear, and was here unprotected, at the mercy of Mrs. Pamflett and her son, and of her father, whose inexplicable behaviour toward her afflicted her with shuddering doubts. Had she been aware of what transpired between her aunt Leth and her father after she had fainted in the earlier part of the day, she would not so readily have fallen into the trap her father had set for her.

When she fell to the ground Aunt Leth and Fred Cornwall started forward with sympathizing eagerness to assist her, but they were motioned sternly back by Miser Farebrother.

"I have ordered you to leave my house," he said. "I can attend to my daughter."

Sadly they turned to the door, but Aunt Leth came swiftly back.

"Listen to me, my dead sister's husband," she said, in a quick, trembling voice. "At my sister's death-bed, in this very room, I promised her to look after her child, my poor niece lying here at our feet, as tenderly as though she were one of my own. I love her as my own child, and I shall redeem my promise to my dead sister. This person" – she pointed to Jeremiah Pamflett – "to whom you say you have promised your daughter's hand, is utterly unworthy of her. She loves an honourable gentleman, and what I can do to bring about her happiness shall be done. If you have a plot against her welfare I will endeavour to circumvent it. My heart and the hearts of my husband and children are ever open to her. Our home is hers; she can come to us at any moment, and we will receive her with joy. In this house there was never for her nor for her dead mother the slightest sign of love."

"My daughter has told you so?" demanded Miser Farebrother.

"She has not told me so," said the indignant woman. "She has always spoken of you with tenderness and gentleness. You know best how you deserved it at her hands. If she cannot find love and protection here, she can find them with me and mine!" She knelt and kissed Phœbe's pale face. "My sweet child! so happy but an hour ago! Come to me if they oppress you here – my child! my daughter!"

"Bundle them out," cried Miser Farebrother, "neck and crop!"

They had no right to stay, and they left the place mournfully.

"Do not be false to Phœbe," said Aunt Leth to Fred.

"No need to say that to me, Aunt Leth," said the young fellow. "Phœbe, and no other woman, shall be my wife."

This encounter it was between Aunt Leth and Miser Farebrother which had caused the miser to extract a binding oath from Phœbe that she would not leave Parksides without his permission.

"How was that done, Jeremiah?" he asked, when his daughter left the room.

"Capitally! capitally, sir!" said Jeremiah. "What an actor you would have made!"

"Perhaps – perhaps," said Miser Farebrother, with a sneer. "I am not half so ill as I look, Jeremiah. Don't reckon too soon upon my death. Excitement like this does me a power of good. They came to trap me, my fine lawyer and tearful sister-in-law; but I have turned the tables upon them. As I will upon every one" – with a keen look at Jeremiah – "who dares to play me false!"

It was fortunate for the miser that his managing clerk did not possess the power of striking a man dead by a glance; if he had, that moment would have been Miser Farebrother's last.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ENGAGEMENT RING

From that day Phœbe's life in Parksides was, as Mrs. Pamflett had threatened, a torture, and had it not been that she was endowed with a reserved strength which lies latent in many gentle natures until a supreme occasion calls it forth, it is likely she could not have lived through the next three or four months. One day her father summoned her.

"It is time now," he said, "that our plans for your future should be finally settled. I have already waited too long."

Phœbe knew what was coming, and though she dreaded it, she had nerved herself to meet it.

"Cannot things remain as they are?" she asked.

It was impossible for her to speak with any show of affection. She had discovered that her father's wish that she should be his nurse was a mere pretence. Believing in it, she had endeavoured to carry it out and to perform her duty; but the stern repulses she met with had convinced her that she had been deceived and betrayed. The oaths she had sworn were binding upon her; she knew that she could not escape from them, and that her life's happiness was blasted; but she resolved not to be beguiled by any further treachery. So she suffered in silence, and with some fortitude, praying for strength, and in some small degree finding it; but she was growing daily thinner and paler, and sometimes an impression stole upon her that her life was slowly ebbing away. "It will be better that I should die," she thought; "then I shall see my mother, and my torture will be at an end."

It was a torture subtly carried out. Phœbe had gauged Mrs. Pamflett, and had rejected with quiet scorn all attempts at an affectionate intimacy. Mrs. Pamflett repaid her with interest.

"When you are my son's wife," she said, "you will be more tractable; you will know me better, and you will love me."

"I shall never know you better," Phœbe replied, "and I shall never love you."

"Proud spirits can be broken," said Mrs. Pamflett.

"Yes," sighed Phœbe; "but I am not proud – I am only faithful; and perhaps I shall soon die."

"You will be no loss," said Mrs. Pamflett; "but before you die you will be my daughter-in-law."

At this period Miser Farebrother had not spoken positively to Phœbe about Jeremiah; he had left it to the young villain to make his way, and, indeed, Jeremiah had attempted to do so. But Phœbe utterly baffled him. He brought her flowers, and at her father's command she received them from his hands. An hour afterward he saw them lying on the floor or in the grounds, where she had dropped or thrown them. He arrayed himself in new suits of clothes and laid himself out for admiration, which she never bestowed upon him. He strove to draw her into conversation, and if he managed to extract a word from her it was but a word – often not even that; a look of scorn and contempt was then his reward. At meals his offers of small courtesies were disregarded. By her father's order she sat at the head of the breakfast and tea table, but she would never pass Jeremiah's cup nor accept it from him. His mean nature resented this treatment in mean ways, and after a while he indulged in sarcasms, speaking at her instead of to her. This change passed unnoticed by her; she might have been deaf and blind to everything he said and did. Two or three weeks after the visit of her aunt and Fred Cornwall to Parksides, Phœbe went to her father with a letter.

"I wish to post this letter," she said. "May I do so?"

"You have sworn not to leave Parksides without my permission," he replied. "I will not allow you to go to the village."

"I had no intention of going without your permission," she said.

He kept her so strictly to her oath that she was virtually a prisoner in Parksides.

"I will have the letter posted for you," he said.

She gave it to him, and he opened it, read it, and burnt it. No answer, of course, could come to a letter that was not sent; but Aunt Leth, of her own accord, wrote to Phœbe, very careful in what she said, because she suspected treachery, and feared that her letter might not reach Phœbe's hands. It did not; nor did letters written by Fanny. They were all opened by Miser Farebrother, read, and burnt.

"Have any letters come for me?" asked Phœbe.

"None," replied her father. "Your precious friends have forgotten you. Now that they are convinced they cannot wring any money out of me, they will have nothing more to do with you."

She did not tell him that she knew he was guilty of an untruth. She had the firmest belief in her aunt's constancy, and this, to some extent, was a comfort to her; but the pain and the grief that lay in silence were very bitter. She never ceased thinking of her lover; that was the keenest torture of all. For when weeks had passed in this way she argued with herself, how could any young man, how could even Fred, be faithful to one who was as dead to him? Perhaps the greatest terror she experienced during these unhappy weeks arose out of a dream. She dreamt that her father was dead, and she woke up with a strange feeling of ease. Would she, then, rejoice in his death? "Am I growing wicked and revengeful?" she asked of herself, in the silence of the night. "Cruel as he is, he is still my father. Send death to me, and end this misery!" It was a prayer to God, and as she grew daily weaker and thinner it seemed as if her prayer would be answered.

So now when her father sent for her, and told her that it was time the plans he had formed for her future should be carried out, she answered, "Cannot things remain as they are?"

"They cannot," said Miser Farebrother. "Mr. Pamflett will come here this evening, and will sleep here to-night. To-morrow morning he will go to London to attend to the business, and in the evening he will return. Before to-morrow night is over you will accept him for your husband."

"I will never do that," said Phœbe.

"You have sworn to obey me," he said, sternly.

"I have not," she said, in as steady a voice as she could command. "I have sworn never to marry without your consent, and I will keep my oath. I have sworn not to leave Parksides unless you thrust me out, and I will keep my oath. There my obligation ends."

"What objection have you to Mr. Pamflett?" he asked.

"I hate and abhor him," said Phœbe, firmly. "He is not a man; he is a reptile."

The door opened, and Mrs. Pamflett appeared.

"Come in," cried Miser Farebrother, "and hear what this ungrateful child calls your son. Repeat it in her hearing," he said to Phœbe.

The girl did not speak.

"I will tell you," said Miser Farebrother, "and if she denies it she lies. I asked her what objection she had to Jeremiah, and she answered that she hated and abhorred him, and that he was not a man but a reptile."

"Did you say that?" exclaimed Mrs. Pamflett, with venom in her voice and eyes.

Phœbe was silent.

"That is the proof," said Miser Farebrother. "If she did not say it she would deny it."

"My son a reptile!" said Mrs. Pamflett; "then what am I – his mother? I shall remember it!"

"Do you want me any longer?" asked Phœbe of her father.

"No; you can go."

At tea time, Jeremiah having arrived, Miser Farebrother sent for his daughter. She sat at the table and poured out the tea. Dark rims were around her eyes, her lips were quivering; but there was no pity for her. They talked of business matters; according to Jeremiah, money was being made fast; profitable negotiations had been entered into that day, and the miser gloated as he jotted down figures and calculated interest.

"Things are looking up, Jeremiah," he said, in a tone of exultation.

"That they are, sir," said Jeremiah. "Everything is going on swimmingly."

Could the thoughts which were harassing him have been read, could his mind have been laid bare, Miser Farebrother would have been aghast. Jeremiah was in a sea of difficulties; he had spread nets for others, they were closing around himself. The accounts he presented to his master were false; the negotiations he had entered into were inventions; the bills he exhibited were forged. There were only two roads of safety for him – one, his speedy marriage with Phœbe; the other, his master's death. His mother was filled with apprehension, for, having a better knowledge of his guilty nature than the others, she divined that he was in some deep trouble.

After tea the miser said, "Jeremiah, you have something in your pocket for my daughter."

Jeremiah produced it – a piece of silver tissue-paper, from which he took a ring.

"It is an engagement ring," said Miser Farebrother. "Give it to Phœbe."

He offered it to her, and she did not raise her hand.

"Take it!" cried Miser Farebrother.

Phœbe took it, and flung it away.

Miser Farebrother rose slowly to his feet. One hand rested on the table, in the other he held his crutch stick.

"Pick it up!" he said, sternly.

Phœbe did not move.

"Pick it up!" he cried again.

Still Phœbe made no motion. Trembling with passion, he lifted his crutch stick and struck her across the neck. It was a cruel blow, and it left a long red streak upon the girl's fair flesh. She tottered, and almost fell to the ground, but she straightened herself, and uttered no word.

"If I were dead," he said, "you could marry your gentleman lawyer."

"If he would have me," Phœbe replied, in a low, firm tone. "I should then not be bound by my oath."

"You hear!" he exclaimed, appealing to Mrs. Pamflett and Jeremiah. "She wishes for my death, and would bring it about if she could in order that she might be free to disgrace me!"

They heard; but Phœbe did not. The pain of the blow was great, and she could scarcely bear it. Blinding tears rushed into her eyes.

"Go from my sight!" said Miser Farebrother. "And bear this in mind: my word is law. You will marry the gentleman I have chosen for you, or my curse shall rest upon you till your dying day! My death alone shall accomplish your guilty desire."

Thereafter there was no peace for her. There was something devilish in the ingenuity displayed by her enemies to torture her soul. There are women, strong women, whom it would have driven to madness; but from this despair Phœbe was mercifully saved. "I will bear it; I will bear it," she murmured, "till the end comes. I must preserve my reason. When I am dead, Aunt Leth will drop a flower on my grave. And Mr. Cornwall, perhaps, will think with sorrow of the poor girl whose heart is his for ever and ever!" She never thought of him now as "Fred;" he was too far removed from her; all was over between them, but she would be faithful to him to the last. She intrenched herself in silence, never opening her lips to Mrs. Pamflett and Jeremiah, and never to her father unless he addressed her and compelled her to reply. From the day he struck her she did not call him "father." She did not regard him as such; her heart was a heart of tenderness, but his merciless conduct had deadened it to him. She thought frequently of her mother, and prayed aloud to that pure spirit. "Take me, mother," she cried, "take your unhappy child from this hard world!" So months passed, her cross becoming harder to bear with every rising sun. Then it was that Phœbe began to fear that in the cruel, unequal fight her reason might be wrecked. At length a crisis came.

During the day her father had been more than usually savage toward her. In the evening he ordered her to her room. She went willingly, and undressing, retired to bed.

She did not know what time of the night it was when she heard her father's voice outside her door. He had tried the handle, but Phœbe never went to bed now without turning the key in the lock.

"Answer me! answer me!" cried her father.

"What do you want?" she asked, sitting up in bed.

"You! Dress this instant, and come out!"

She rose from her bed, and dressed hurriedly, without lighting a candle. Then she went to the door and opened it.

"Assist me to my room," he said, in his cold, cruel voice.

He leant upon her with such force that he almost bore her down. They reached his room.

"Attend to my words," he said, "they may be the last that will ever pass between us. There is ruin on all sides of me. Whom should I trust, if not you? Once more I ask if you will obey me."

"In everything," said Phœbe, "except – "

He did not allow her to finish.

"Except in the way I wish. I will put an end to this. You walk like a ghost about the house. I see you in my dreams. You come, you and your mother, who was like you, a pale, sickly creature, and stand by my bedside in the night. I saw her a few minutes since, and I will submit to it no longer. I will rid myself of you both, now and for ever! Again, will you obey me?"

"Not in the way you wish," replied Phœbe.

"In what other way can you satisfy me? You know well in no other way. You will not?"

"I will not."

With all his strength – with more than his ordinary strength, for he was excited to a furious pitch – he struck her in the face.

"Will you obey me?"

"No."

He struck her again, a frightful blow.

"I call down a curse upon you!" he cried. "You are no longer a child of mine. I drive you from my house. Go, this moment, or I shall kill you!"

She turned and fled without a word. Out into the passage, down the stairs, out of the house, and into the open, quivering, bleeding, and staggering blindly on through the darkness of night.

CHAPTER XVII

DARK CLOUDS ARE GATHERING

During these troublous months in Phœbe's life matters pregnant with momentous issues for weal or woe were progressing in the careers of others who are playing their parts in this domestic drama. From a worldly point of view Fred Cornwall was making rapid progress. He still possessed but a scanty purse, but he saw before him an almost certain prospect of success. He was making a reputation; his foot was on the ladder. He was unhappy and sad at heart, and he took refuge in desperately hard work, slaving day and night, as it is necessary for a man to do if he desires to make his mark in life's tough battle. This incessant labour and his visits to the Lethbridges – which were as frequent as ever – were his only consolation. Faithfully did he cherish Phœbe's image in his memory; he was as true to her as a true man could be; and the esteem and affection which the Lethbridges entertained for him deepened as time wore on. Many were the conversations, many the consultations, which he and the Lethbridges held respecting the young girl upon whose life had fallen so heavy a blow, and whose place in the dear home in Camden Town was open for her if by any happy chance she should come to claim it. That they received no letters from her, that those they wrote to her should remain unanswered, distressed them, but did not shake their faith in her.

"She has written," said Aunt Leth, "and her letters have been intercepted. Ours have never reached her hands. Poor child! poor child!"

"What is the use of being a lawyer," exclaimed Fanny, "if you don't know how to bring her back to us?"

Fred Cornwall smiled sadly. "God knows," he said, "I would risk and sacrifice my life for her if any good could be done! A lawyer's skill is powerless here. She is living with her father, under his protection. He has a legal claim upon her which no action on our part can touch. If she herself made some move we could act; but as it is, the lawful right is on her father's side."

"Her father!" cried Fanny. "Her oppressor! her torturer, you mean!"

"I mean that," replied Fred; "but that does not help us. I have consulted a dozen fellows, and they all agree that, as things stand, nothing can be done. Her father has forbidden us his house; he has a right to do so. To put a foot inside the grounds of Parksides would be a trespass; we should only be bringing ourselves into trouble, and bringing heavier trouble, most likely, upon Phœbe."

"If I were a man," Fanny declared, "I would do it! I would drag her from that wretched, miserable hole; I would tear the hair out of Mrs. Pamflett's head; I – I – "

"Fanny," said her mother, reprovingly, "you don't know what you are saying."

Whereupon Fanny began to cry and express her wish that she lived in a country where there was no law.

In the kitchen, as in the parlour, the principal topic of conversation between Tom Barley and 'Melia Jane was Phœbe. Tom Barley, truly, would have laid his life down for his young mistress; he sorrowed and grieved, and if he could conveniently have got into a personal difficulty with Jeremiah Pamflett which could have been decided by fists or sticks, he would have courted the opportunity with alacrity. But though he cudgelled his brains he could find no way to an issue so agreeable and desirable. The number of times 'Melia Jane laid out the cards to arrive at a proper understanding of Phœbe's future could not be counted. Sometimes it was bad, sometimes it was good; and Tom Barley's spirits rose and fell accordingly. There was always the dark woman, Mrs. Pamflett, exercising her malevolent influence; there was always the dark man, Jeremiah Pamflett, prowling around to do some dreadful deed; there was always the fair man, Fred Cornwall, popping up to circumvent the diabolical plots which surrounded poor Phœbe. The result of the labour of scores of nights, with the heads of Tom Barley and 'Melia Jane very close together bending over the cards, was eventually 'Melia Jane's summing up that it all depended upon Tom Barley.