A Bid for Fortune, Guy Boothby [top 10 novels .txt] 📗

if to listen. Can you imagine my happiness, my delight? She was mine, this lovely girl, my very own! bound to me by all the bonds of love. Oh, happy hour! Oh, sweet delight! I pressed her to my heart again and again. She looked into my face and then away from me, her sweet eyes suffused with tears, then suddenly her expression changed. I turned to see what ailed her, and to my discomfiture discovered her father stalking along the silent deck towards us.

Whispering to her to leave us, she sped away, and I was left alone with her angry parent. That he was angry I judged from his face; nor was I wrong in my conjecture.

"Mr. Hatteras," he said severely, "pray what does this mean? How is it that I find you in this undignified position with my daughter?"

"Mr. Wetherell," I answered, "I can see that an explanation is due to you. Just before you came up I was courageous enough to tell your daughter that I loved her. She has been generous enough to inform me that she returns my affection. And now the best course for me to pursue is to ask your permission to make her my wife."

"You presume, sir, upon the service you rendered my daughter in Sydney. I did not think you would follow it up in this fashion."

"Your daughter is free to love whom she pleases, I take it," I said, my temper getting a little the better of my judgment. "She has been good enough to promise to marry me--if I can obtain your permission. Have you any objection to raise?"

"Only one, and that one is insuperable! Understand me, I forbid it once and for all! In every particular--without hope of change--I forbid it!"

"As you must see it is a matter which affects the happiness of two lives, I feel sure you will be good enough to tell me your reasons?"

"I must decline any discussion on the matter at all. You have my answer, I forbid it!"

"This is to be final, then? I am to understand that you are not to be brought to change your mind by any actions of mine?"

"No, sir, I am not! What I have said is irrevocable. The idea is not to be thought of for a moment. And while I am on this subject let me tell you that your conduct towards my daughter on board this ship has been very distasteful to me. I have the honour to wish you a very good-evening."

"Stay, Mr. Wetherell," I said, as he turned to go. "You have been kind enough to favour me with your views. Now I will give you mine. Your daughter loves me. I am an honest and an industrious man, and I love her with my whole heart and soul. I tell you now, and though you decline to treat me with proper fairness, I give you warning that I intend to marry her if she will still have me--with your consent or without it!"

"You are insolent, sir."

"I assure you I have no desire to be. I endeavour to remember that you are her father, though I must own you lack her sense of what is fair and right."

"I will not discuss the question any further with you. You know my absolute decision. Good-night!"

With anger and happiness struggling in my breast for the mastery, I paced that deck for hours. My heart swelled with joy at the knowledge that my darling loved me, but it sank like lead when I considered the difficulties which threatened us if her father persisted in his present determination. At last, just as eight bells was striking (twelve o'clock), I went below to my cabin. My fellow-passenger was fast asleep--a fact which I was grateful for when I discovered propped against my bottle-rack a tiny envelope with my name upon it. Tearing it open I read the following:--

"MY OWN DEAREST,--

"My father has just informed me of his interview with you. I cannot
understand it or ascribe a reason for it. But whatever happens,
remember that I will be your wife, and the wife of no other.

"May God bless and keep you always.
"Your own,
"PHYLLIS.

"P.S.--Before we leave the ship you must let me know your address
in London."

With such a letter under my pillow, can it be doubted that my dreams were good? Little I guessed the accumulation of troubles to which this little unpleasantness with Mr. Wetherell was destined to be the prelude!


CHAPTER II


LONDON

Now that I come to think the matter out, I don't know that I could give you any definite idea of what my first impressions of London were. One thing at least is certain, I had never had experience of anything approaching such a city before, and, between ourselves, I can't say that I ever want to again. The constant rush and roar of traffic, the crowds of people jostling each other on the pavements, the happiness and the misery, the riches and the poverty, all mixed up together in one jumble, like good and bad fruit in a basket, fairly took my breath away; and when I went down, that first afternoon, and saw the Park in all its summer glory, my amazement may be better imagined than described.

I could have watched the carriages, horsemen, and promenaders for hours on end without any sense of weariness. And when a bystander, seeing that I was a stranger, took compassion upon my ignorance and condescended to point out to me the various celebrities present, my pleasure was complete. There certainly is no place like London for show and glitter, I'll grant you that; but all the same I'd no more think of taking up my permanent abode in it than I'd try to cross the Atlantic in a Chinese sampan.

Having before I left Sydney been recommended to a quiet hotel in a neighbourhood near the Strand, convenient both for sight-seeing and business, I had my luggage conveyed thither, and prepared to make myself comfortable for a time. Every day I waited eagerly for a letter from my sweetheart, the more impatiently because its non-arrival convinced me that they had not yet arrived in London. As it turned out, they had delayed their departure from Naples for two days, and had spent another three in Florence, two in Rome, and a day and a half in Paris.

One morning, however, my faithful watch over the letter rack, which was already becoming a standing joke in the hotel, was rewarded. An envelope bearing an English stamp and postmark, and addressed in a handwriting as familiar to me as my own, stared me in the face. To take it out and break the seal was the work of a moment. It was only a matter of a few lines, but it brought me news that raised me to the seventh heaven of delight.

Mr. and Miss Wetherell had arrived in London the previous afternoon, they were staying at the Hotel Metropole, would leave town for the country at the end of the week, but in the meantime, if I wished to see her, my sweetheart would be in the entrance hall of the British Museum the following morning at eleven o'clock.

How I conducted myself in the interval between my receipt of the letter and the time of the appointment, I have not the least remembrance; I know, however, that half-past ten, on the following morning, found me pacing up and down the street before that venerable pile, scanning with eager eyes every conveyance that approached me. The minutes dragged by with intolerable slowness, but at length the time arrived.

A kindly church clock in the neighbourhood struck the hour, and others all round it immediately took up the tale. Before the last stroke had died away a hansom turned towards the gates from Bury Street, and in it, looking the picture of health and beauty, sat the girl who, I had good reason to know, was more than all the world to me. To attract her attention and signal to the driver to pull up was the work of a second, and a minute later I had helped her to alight, and we were strolling together across the square towards the building.

"Ah, Dick," she said, with a roguish smile, "you don't know what trouble I had to get away this morning. Papa had a dozen places he wished me to go to with him. But when I told him that I had some very important business of my own to attend to before I could go calling, he was kind enough to let me off."

"I'll be bound he thought you meant business with a dressmaker," I laughingly replied, determined to show her that I was not unversed in the ways of women.

"I'm afraid he did," she answered, blushing, "and I feel horribly guilty. But my heart told me I must see you at once, whatever happened."

Could any man desire a prettier speech than that? If so, I was not that man. We were inside the building by this time, ascending the great staircase.

As we entered the room at the top of the stairs, I thought it a good opportunity to ask the question I had been longing to put to her.

"Phyllis, my sweetheart," I said, with a tremor in my voice, "it is a fortnight now since I spoke to you. You have had plenty of time to consider our position. Have you regretted giving me your love?"

We came to a standstill, and leant over a case together, but what it contained I'm sure I haven't the very vaguest idea.

She looked up into my face with a sweet smile.

"Not for one single instant, Dick! Having once given you my love, is it likely I should want it back again?"

"I don't know. Somehow I can't discover sufficient reason for your giving it to me at all."

"Well, be sure I'm not going to tell you. You might grow conceited. Isn't it sufficient that I do love you, and that I am not going to give you up, whatever happens?"

"More than sufficient," I answered solemnly. "But, Phyllis, don't you think I can induce your father to relent? Surely as a good parent he must be anxious to promote your happiness at any cost to himself?"

"I can't understand it at all. He has been so devoted to me all my life that his conduct now is quite inexplicable. Never once has he denied me anything I really set my heart upon, and he always promised me that I should be allowed to marry whomsoever I pleased, provided he was a good and honourable man, and one of whom he could in any way approve. And you are all that, Dick, or I shouldn't have loved you, I know."

"I don't think I'm any worse than the ordinary run of men, dearest, if I am no better. At any rate I love you with a true and honourable love. But don't you think he will come round in time?"

"I'm almost afraid not. He referred to it only yesterday, and seemed quite angry that I should have dared to entertain any thought of you after what he said to me on board ship. It was the first time in my life he ever spoke to me in such a tone, and I felt it keenly. No, Dick, there is