Mr Harding?”
“What you have said of my inability to support a—your daughter. I know nothing of the struggle you speak of. I admit I have no profession; but my expectations are not so poor as to make it necessary I should have one. Half of my father’s estate is sufficient to provide against such a future as you allude to. And there are but two of us to share it.”
“If that be your belief, Mr Harding,” rejoined the widow, in the same cold, relentless tone, in which she had all along been speaking, “I am sorry to be the first to disabuse you of it. The estate you speak of will not be so equally divided. Your share in it will be a legacy of a thousand pounds. Such a trifling sum would not go far towards the maintenance of an establishment.”
Henry Harding stayed not to answer the last remark, made half interrogatively. In those that preceded it he had heard enough to satisfy him, that he had no longer any business in the drawing-room of Mrs Mainwaring; and hurriedly recovering his hat and cane, he bade her an abrupt good morning.
He did not deign to address the same scant courtesy to her daughter. Between him and Belle Mainwaring was now opened a gulf so wide, that it could never be bridged over—not even to save him from a broken heart.
As the rejected lover strode away from the cottage that contained what he so lately looked upon as his fiancée, black clouds came rolling over the sky, as if to symbolise the black thoughts in his heart.
In all his youthful life it was the first great shock he had received; a shock both to soul and body—for in the announcement made by Mrs Mainwaring there was a blow aimed at both. His love blighted, his fortune gone—both, as it were, in the same instant! But the bitterest reflection of all was that the love had gone with the fortune. The loss of the latter he could have endured; but to think that the sweet speeches that had been exchanged between him and Belle, the tender glances, and the soft, secret pressure of hands that more than once had been mutually imparted—to think that, on her side, all these had been false, heartless, and hollow, was enough to wound something more than the self-esteem of a nature noble as was his. He could frame no excuse for her conduct. He tried, but without success. It was too clear, the cause of her refusal; too clear were the conditions on which she would have accepted his love, and had led him to believe in its acceptance. Her words and acts had been all pretence—the very essence of coquetry. It was over now, and with a bitter vow he resolved to expel her from his heart—from his thoughts, if that were possible. It was youth entering upon a hard struggle; but to a nature like his, and under such temptation to continue it, there was a chance of success. The woman he had hitherto looked upon as the type of all that was innocent and angelic, had proved herself not only capricious, but cunning, selfish, mean, less deserving of love than contempt. If he could but bear this impression upon his mind, there would be a hope of his recovering the heart he had so inconsiderately sacrificed. He registered a mental vow to do this, and then turned his thoughts towards his father. Against him he was all anger. He had no doubt the threat had been carried out; the will had been made that very morning. The minuteness of Mrs Mainwaring’s information, even to the exact amount of his own legacy, left him no room to question its correctness. How she had obtained it he neither knew nor cared. She was sharp-witted enough to have placed herself in communication with his father’s solicitor, whom he supposed to have made the will. But he did not stay to speculate upon this. His thoughts were all turned upon the testator himself, who by that single stroke had deprived him at once of his love and his living.
In the agony of his soul he could not see how his father had befriended him—how he had saved him from a fate far worse than disinheritance. His contempt for the cruel coquette was not yet decided enough for this.
His father’s threat had been only conditional. He might look forward to a chance of the will being revoked. He might not be restored to full favour. There would be some punishment for his disobedience, which was as complete as if his suit had succeeded. But such a grand penalty would scarce be exacted. It was not compatible with the indulgence he had already experienced.
A meaner spirit would have reasoned thus. Nigel Harding would have done so, and sought restoration to the paternal favour he had forfeited. Not so Henry. His pride had been touched—stung to the quick; and in the midst of his mortification, with his soul suffering from its thwarted passion, while pursuing the path homeward he resolved that his father’s house should know him no more.
And he kept this resolution. On reaching the park-gates, instead of entering, he walked on to the nearest inn, and thence took a fly to the nearest railway station.
In another hour he was in the midst of the great metropolis, with no thought of ever again returning to the green Chiltern Hills, or the shire of Buckingham.
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