Dawn

by H. Rider Haggard

  "Angela," called her father one day, as he heard her footsteps passinghis study, "come in here; I want to speak to you."

  His daughter stopped, and a look of blank astonishment spread itselfover her face. She had not been called into that study for years. Sheentered, however, as bidden. Her father, who was seated at hiswriting-table, which was piled up with account-books, did not greatlydiffer in appearance from what he was when we last saw him twentyyears ago. His frame had grown more massive, and acquired a slightstoop, but he was still a young, powerful-looking man, and certainlydid not appear a day more than his age of forty-two. The eyes,however, so long as no one was looking at them, had contracted aconcentrated stare, as though they were eternally gazing at someobject in space, and this appearance was rendered the more marked byan apparently permanent puckering of the skin of the forehead. Themoment, however, that they came under the fire of anybody else'soptics, and, oddly enough, more particularly those of his owndaughter, the stare vanished, and they grew shifty and uncertain to acurious degree.

  Philip was employed in adding up something when his daughter entered,and motioned to her to sit down. She did so, and fixed her great greyeyes on him with some curiosity. The effect was remarkable; her fatherfidgeted, made a mistake in his calculations, glanced all round theroom with his shifty eyes (ah, how changed from those bold black eyeswith which Maria Lee fell in love four-and-twenty years ago!) andfinally threw down his pen with an exclamation that would have shockedAngela had she understood it.

  "How often, Angela, have I asked you not to stare me out ofcountenance! It is a most unladylike trick of yours."

  She blushed painfully.

  "I beg your pardon; I forgot. I will look out of the window."

  "Don't be a fool; look like other people. But now I want to speak toyou. In the first place, I find that the household expenditure for thelast year was three hundred and fifty pounds. That is more than I canafford; it must not exceed three hundred this year."

  "I will do my best to keep the expenses down, father; but I can assureyou that there is no money wasted now."

  Then came a pause, which, after humming and hawing a little, Philipwas the first to break.

  "Do you know that I saw your cousin George yesterday? He is back atlast at Isleworth."

  "Yes, Pigott told me that he had come. He has been away a long while."

  "When did you last see him?"

  "When I was about thirteen, I believe; before he lost the election,and went away."

  "He has been down here several times since then. I wonder that you didnot see him."

  "I always disliked him, and kept out of his way."

  "Gad, you can't dislike him more than I do; but I keep good friendswith him for all that, and you must do the same. Now, look here,Angela, will you promise to keep a secret?"

  "Yes, father, if you wish it."

  "Well, then, I appear to be a poor man, don't I? And remember," headded, hastily, "that, with reference to household expenses, I ampoor; but, as a matter of fact"--and here he sunk his voice, andglanced suspiciously round--"I am worth at this moment nearly onehundred and fifty thousand pounds in hard cash."

  "That is six thousand pounds a year at four per cent.," commentedAngela, without a moment's hesitation. "Then I really think you mightput a flue into the old greenhouse, and allow a shilling a week toMrs. Jakes' mother."

  "Curse Mrs. Jakes' mother! Nobody but a woman would have interruptedwith such nonsense. Listen. You must have heard how I was disinheritedon account of my marriage with your mother, and the Isleworth estatesleft to your cousin George, and how, with a refined ingenuity, he wasforbidden to bequeath them back to me or to my children. But markthis, he is not forbidden to sell them to me; no doubt the old mannever dreamt that I should have the money to buy them; but, you see, Ihave almost enough."

  "How did you get so much money?"

  "Get it! First, I took the gold plate my grandfather bought, and soldit. I had no right to do it, but I could not afford to have so muchcapital lying idle. It fetched nearly five thousand pounds. With thisI speculated successfully. In two years I had eighteen thousand. Theeighteen thousand I invested in a fourth share in a coal-mine, whenmoney was scarce and coals cheap. Coals rose enormously just then, andin five years' time I sold my share to the co-holders for eighty-twothousand, in addition to twenty-one thousand received by way ofinterest. Since then I have not speculated, for fear my luck shoulddesert me. I have simply allowed the money to accumulate on mortgageand other investments, and bided my time, for I have sworn to havethose estates back before I die. It is for this cause that I havetoiled, and thought, and screwed, and been cut by the wholeneighbourhood for twenty years; but now I think that, with your help,my time is coming."

  "With _my_ help. What is it that you wish me to do?"

  "Listen," answered her father, nervously tapping his pencil on theaccount-book before him. "George is not very fond of Isleworth--infact, he rather dislikes it; but, like all the Caresfoots, he does notcare about parting with landed property, and, though we appear to begood friends, he hates me too much ever to consent, under ordinarycircumstances, to sell it to me. It is to you I look to overcome thatobjection."

  "I! How?"

  "You are a woman and you ask me how you should get the blind side of aman!"

  "I do not in the least understand you."

  Philip smiled incredulously.

  "Then I suppose I must explain. If ever you take the trouble to lookat yourself in the glass, you will probably see that Nature has beenvery kind to you in the matter of good looks; nor are you by any meansdeficient in brains. Your cousin George is very fond of a prettywoman, and, to be plain, what I want you to do is to make use of youradvantages to get him under your thumb and persuade him into sellingthe property."

  "Oh! father, how can you?" ejaculated Angela, in an agony of shame.

  "You idiot, I won't want you to marry him; I only want you to make afool of him. Surely, being of the sex you are, you won't find _that_an uncongenial occupation."

  Angela's blushes had given away to pallor now, and she answered withcold contempt:

  "I don't think you quite understand what a girl feels--at least, whatI feel, for I know no other girls. Perhaps it would be useless for meto try to explain. I had rather go blind than use my eyes for such ashameful purpose."

  "Angela," said her father, with as much temper as he ever showed now,"let me tell you that you are a silly fool; you are more, you are anencumbrance. Your birth," he added, bitterly, "robbed me of yourmother, and the fact of your being a girl deprived our branch of thefamily of their rights. Now that you have grown up, you prefer togratify your whims rather than help me to realize the object of mylife by a simple course of action that could do no one any harm. Inever asked you to commit yourself in any way. Well, well, it is whatI must expect. We have not seen much of each other heretofore, andperhaps the less we meet in the future the better."

  "You have no right to talk to me so," she answered, with flashingeyes, "though I am your daughter, and it is cowardly to reproach mewith my birth, my sex, and my dependence. Am I responsible for any ofthese things? But I will not burden you long. And as to what youwanted me to do, and think such a little of, I ask you, is it what mypoor mother would have wished her daughter----"

  Here Philip abruptly rose, and left the room and the house.

  "She is as like her mother as possible," he mused, as soon as he wasclear of the house. "It might have been Hilda herself, only she istwice as beautiful as Hilda was. I shall have another bad night afterthis, I know I shall. I must get rid of that girl somehow, I cannotbear her about me; she is a daily reminder of things I dare notremember, and whenever she stares at me with those great eyes of hers,I feel as though she were looking through me. I wonder if she knowsthe story of Maria Lee!"

  And then dismissing, or trying to dismiss, the matter from his mind,he took his way across the fields to Isleworth Hall, a large whitebrick mansion in the Queen Anne style, about two m
iles distant fromthe Abbey, and, on arrival, asked for his cousin George, and was atonce shown into that gentleman's presence.

  Years had told upon George more than they had upon Philip, and, thoughthere were no touches of grey in the flaming red of his hair, thebloodshot eyes, and the puckered crowsfeet beneath them, to saynothing of the slight but constant trembling of the hand, all showedthat he was a man well on in middle-life, and who had lived every dayof it. Time, too, had made the face more intensely unpleasant andvulgar-looking than ever. Such Caresfoot characteristics as itpossessed were, year by year, giving place, in an increasingly greaterdegree, to the kitchen-maid strain introduced by the mother. In short,George Caresfoot did not even look a gentleman, whereas Philipcertainly did.

  "You don't seem very well, George. I am afraid that your travels havenot agreed with you."

  "My dear Philip," answered his cousin, in a languid and affectedvoice, "if you had lived the life that I have for the last twentyyears, you would look a little knocked up. I have had some very goodtimes; but the fact is, that I have been too prodigal of my strength,not thought enough about the future. It is a great mistake, and one ofthe worst results is that I am utterly _blase_ of everything; even _labelle passion_ is played out for me. I haven't seen a woman I caretwopence about for ten years."

  "Ah! you should sell this place, and take a house in town; it wouldsuit you much better."

  "I can do that without selling the place. I don't intend to sell theplace--in fact, nothing would induce me to do so. Some day I maymarry, and want to transmit it to some future Caresfoot; but I confessI don't mean to do that just yet. Marry when you want a nurse, butnever before; that's my maxim. Marriage is an excellent institutionfor parsons and fools, the two classes that Providence has created topopulate the world; but a wise man should as soon think of walkinginto a spring-trap. Take your own case, for instance, my dear Philip;look what marriage led to."

  "At any rate," answered his cousin, bitterly, "it led to youradvantage."

  "Exactly; and that is one of the reasons why I have such a respect forthe institution in the abstract. It has been my personal benefactor,and I worship it accordingly--at a distance. By the way, talking ofmarriage reminds me of its legitimate fruits. Bellamy tells me thatyour daughter Angela (if I had a daughter, I should call her Diabola,it is more appropriate for a woman) has grown uncommonly handsome.Bring her to see me; I adore beauty in all its forms, especially itsfemale form. Is she really so handsome?"

  "I am no judge, but you will soon have an opportunity of forming anopinion--that is, I hope so. I propose coming with Angela to make aformal call on you to-morrow."

  "Good. Tell my fair cousin that I shall be certain to be in, and beprepared, metaphorically, to fall at the feet of so much loveliness.By the way, that reminds me; you have heard of Bellamy's, or ratherMrs. Bellamy's, good fortune, I suppose?"

  "No."

  "What--not? Why, he is now Sir John Bellamy, knight."

  "Indeed! How is that?"

  "You remember the bye-election six months back?"

  "Oh, yes! I was actually badgered by Mrs. Bellamy into promising tovote, much against my personal convenience."

  "Exactly. Well, just at the time, old Prescott died, you may rememberthat Mr. Showers, the member of the Government, was unseated onpetition from some borough or other, and came down here post-haste toget re-elected. But he had Sir Percy Vivyan against him, and, as Iknow to my cost, this benighted country is not fond of those whopreach the gospel of progress. Bellamy, who is a stout Radical, as youknow--chiefly, I fancy, because there is more to be got out of thatside of politics--got the job as Showers' agent. But, three daysbefore, it became quite clear that his cause, cabinet minister or not,was hopeless. Then it was that Mrs.--I beg her pardon, Lady--Bellamycame to the fore. Just as Showers was thinking of withdrawing, shedemanded a private interview with him. Next day she posted off to oldSir Percy, who is a perfect fool of the chivalrous school, and wasdesperately fond of her, and, _mirabile dictu_, that evening Sir Percywithdraws on the plea of ill-health or some such rubbish, and Showerswalks over. Within three months, Mr. Bellamy becomes Sir John Bellamy,nominally for his services as town-clerk of Roxham, and I hear thatold Sir Percy is now perfectly rampant, and goes about cursing herladyship up hill and down dale, and declaring that he has beenshockingly taken-in. How our mutual friend worked the ropes is morethan I can tell you, but she did work them, and to some purpose."

  "She is an uncommonly handsome woman."

  "Ah! yes, you're right there, she is A1; but let us stroll out alittle; it is a fine evening for the 30th of April. To-morrow will bethe 1st of May, so it will, a day neither of us are likely to forget."

  Philip winced at the allusion, but said nothing.

  "By the way," George went on, "I am expecting a visitor, my ward,young Arthur Heigham, who is just back from India. He will be twenty-five in a few days, when he comes of age, and is coming down to settleup. The fact is, that ten thousand of his money is on the Jotleyproperty, and both Bellamy and myself are anxious that it should stopthere for the present, as if the mortgage were called in it might beawkward."

  "Is he well off?"

  "Comfortably; about a thousand a year; comes of an old family too.Bellamy and I knew his father, Captain Heigham, slightly, when we werein business. His wife, by the way, was a distant cousin of ours. Theyare both dead now; the captain was wiped out at Inkerman, and, forsome unknown reason, left me the young gentleman's sole guardian andjoint trustee with a London lawyer, a certain Mr. Borley. I have neverseen him yet--my ward, I mean--he has always been at Eton, orCambridge, or in India, or somewhere."

  Here Philip began to manifest signs of considerable uneasiness, thecause of which was sufficiently apparent; for, whilst they weretalking, a very large and savage-looking animal of the sheep-dog orderhad emerged from the house, and was following him up and down,growling in a low and ominous undertone, its nose being the whileglued to his calves as they alternately presented themselves in hisline of vision.

  "Would you mind calling off this animal, George?" he said at length."He does not look amiable."

  "Oh! that's Snarleyow; don't mind him, he never bites unless youstop." Philip instinctively quickened his pace. "Isn't he a beauty?He's a pure bred Thibet sheep-dog, and I will back him to fightagainst any animal of his own weight. He killed two dogs in onemorning the other day, and pulled down a beggar-woman in the evening.You should have heard her holler."

  At that moment, fortunately for Philip's calves, which were beginningto tingle with an unwholesome excitement, Mr. Snarleyow's attentionwas diverted by the approach of a dog-cart, and he left to enjoy theamusement of snapping and barking at the horse. The cart pulled up atthe door, and out of it emerged a tall and extremely gentlemanly-looking young fellow, followed by a very large red bull-dog.

  "Mr. Caresfoot, I believe," said the young gentleman to George, takingoff his hat.

  "Yes, Mr. Heigham, at your service. I am very glad to see you. Mycousin, Mr. Philip Caresfoot."