Part 31 (2/2)
”Oh, a very fine woman, my dear Crane,--always were. But you neglect yourself: you should not do that; keep it up to the last. Well, but to return to the child. You have disposed of her without my consent, without letting me know?”
”Letting you know! How many years is it since you even gave me your address! Never fear: she is in good hands.”
”Whose? At all events I must see her.”
”See her! What for?”
”What for! Hang it, it is natural that, now I am in England, I should at least wish to know what she is like. And I think it very strange that you should send her away, and then make all these difficulties. What's your object? I don't understand it.”
”My object? What could be my object but to serve you? At your request I took, fed, reared a child, whom you could not expect me to love, at my own cost. Did I ever ask you for a s.h.i.+lling? Did I ever suffer you to give me one? Never! At last, hearing no more from you, and what little I heard of you making me think that, if anything happened to me (and I was very ill at the time), you could only find her a burden,--at last I say, the old man came to me,--you had given him my address,--and he offered to take her, and I consented. She is with him.”
”The old man! She is with him! And where is he?”
”I don't know.”
”Humph; how does he live? Can he have got any money?”
”I don't know.”
”Did any old friends take him up?”
”Would he go to old friends?”
Mr. Losely tossed off two fresh gla.s.ses of brandy, one after the other, and, rising, walked to and fro the room, his hands buried in his pockets, and in no comfortable vein of reflection. At length he paused and said, ”Well, upon the whole, I don't see what I could do with the girl just at present, though, of course, I ought to know where she is, and with whom. Tell me, Mrs. Crane, what is she like,--pretty or plain?”
”I suppose the chit would be called pretty,--by some persons at least.”
”Very pretty? handsome?” asked Losely, abruptly. ”Handsome or not, what does it signify? what good comes of beauty? You had beauty enough; what have you done with it?”
At that question, Losely drew himself up with a sudden loftiness of look and gesture, which, though prompted but by offended vanity, improved the expression of the countenance, and restored to it much of its earlier character. Mrs. Crane gazed on him, startled into admiration, and it was in an altered voice, half reproachful, half bitter, that she continued,
”And now that you are satisfied about her, have you no questions to ask about me?--what I do? how I live?” ”My dear Mrs. Crane, I know that you are comfortably off, and were never of a mercenary temper. I trust you are happy, and so forth: I wish I were; things don't prosper with me. If you could conveniently lend me a five-pound note--”
”You would borrow of me, Jasper? Ah! you come to me in your troubles.
You shall have the money,--five pounds, ten pounds, what you please, but you will call again for it: you need me now; you will not utterly desert me now?”
”Best of creatures!--never!” He seized her hand and kissed it. She withdrew it quickly from his clasp, and, glancing over him from head to foot, said, ”But are you really in want?--you are well-dressed, Jasper; that you always were.”
”Not always; three days ago very much the reverse: but I have had a trifling aid, and--”
”Aid in England? from whom? where? Not from him whom you say you had the courage to seek?”
”From whom else? Have I no claim? A miserable alms flung to me. Curse him! I tell you that man's look and language so galled me,--so galled,”
echoed Losely, s.h.i.+fting his hold from the top of his switch to the centre, and bringing the murderous weight of the lead down on the palm of his other hand, ”that, if his eye had quitted mine for a moment, I think I must have brained him, and been--”
”Hanged!” said Mrs. Crane.
”Of course, hanged,” returned Losely, resuming the reckless voice and manner in which there was that peculiar levity which comes from hardness of heart, as from the steel's hardness comes the blade's play. ”But if a man did not sometimes forget consequences, there would be an end of the gallows. I am glad that his eye never left mine.” And the leaden head of the switch fell with a dull dumb sound on the floor.
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