Hearts Afire - By J. D. Rawden Page 0,8
yet she could say to me, “Father!” His wrath had been steadily growing, in spite of the mist in his eyes and the tenderness in his voice; and suddenly striking the desk a ponderous blow with his closed hand, he said with an unmistakable passion, “My daughter you shall not have!”
“Sir, you are very uncivil; but I am thankful to know so much of your mind. And, to be plain with you, I am determined to marry your daughter if I can compass the matter in any way. It is now, then, open war between us.”
“Stay. To me listen. Not one penny will I give to my daughter, if”—
“To the pit with your money! Dirty money made in dirty business”—
“You bastard!”
“Sir, you have not a good leg which to stand.”
You know, that, being Charlotte's father, I will challenge you.”
“Sir, I will challenge you also a hundred times.”
“Christus!!” roared Joris, “challenge me one hundred times. A fool I would be to answer you. See you these arms and hands? In them you will be as the child of one year. Ere beyond my reason you move me, go!” and he strode to the door and flung it open with a passion that made everyone in the shop straighten themselves, and look curiously toward the two men.
White with rage, and with his hand fashioned in to a fist, Harleigh stamped his way through the shop to the dusty street. Then it struck him that he had not asked the name of the man to whom Charlotte was promised. He swore at himself for the omission. Whether he knew him or not, he was determined to fight him. In the meantime, the most practical revenge was to try and see Charlotte before her father had the opportunity to give her any orders regarding him. Just then he met Sir Edward, and he stopped and asked him the time.
“It will be the half hour after nine, Harleigh. I am going home; shall I have your company, sir?”
“I have not much leisure this morning. I beg a thousand regrets.”
Sir Edward's calm, complacent gravity was unendurable. He turned from him abruptly, and, muttering passionate exclamations, went toward the Semple House. Often he had seen Charlotte between nine and ten o'clock at the foot of the Semple House garden; for it was then possible for her to slip away while Mistress Gordon was busy about her house. And this morning he felt that the very intensity of his desire must surely bring her to their trysting-place behind the lilac hedge.
Whether he was right or wrong, he did not consider; for he was not one of those potent men who have themselves in their own power. Nor had it ever entered his mind that “love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice,” or that the only love worthy of the name refuses to blend with anything that is low or vindictive or clandestine. And, even if he had not loved Charlotte, he would now have been determined to marry her. Never before in all his life had he found an object so engrossing. Pride and revenge were added to love, as motives; but who will say that love was purer or stronger or sweeter for them?
In the meantime Joris was suffering as only such deep natures can suffer. There are domestic fatalities which the wisest and tenderest of parents seem impotent to contend with. Joris had certainly been alarmed by Harleigh's proposal, and his positive assertion that Charlotte loved him, had fallen upon the father's heart with the force of a blow, and the terror of a shock. And the sting of the sorrow was this,—that his child had deceived him. Certainly she had not spoken false words, but truth can be outraged by silence quite as cruelly as by speech.
After Harleigh's departure, he shut the door of his office, walked outside, and stood there some minutes, clasping and unclasping his large hands, like a man full of grief and perplexity. Ere long he remembered his friend Elder Van Heemskirk. This trouble concerned him also, for if Harleigh were informed of the marriage arranged between Charlotte and Sir Edward, he would no doubtless feel himself bound in honor to seek revenge on Sir Edward. Joris put himself in Harleigh's place; and he was certain, that, under the same circumstances, he would feel it disgraceful not interfere with the love-affairs of his wife to be.
He found Elder Van Heemskirk with his hat in his hand, giving his last orders before leaving