第252章

Meanwhile the two plotters had betaken themselves to the same house whither Nicholas had repaired for the first time but a few mornings before, and having obtained access to Mr Bray, and found his daughter from home, had by a train of the most masterly approaches that Ralph's utmost skill could frame, at length laid open the real object of their visit.

`There he sits, Mr Bray,' said Ralph, as the invalid, not yet recovered from his surprise, reclined in his chair, looking alternately at him and Arthur Gride. `What if he has had the ill-fortune to be one cause of your detention in this place -- I have been another; men must live; you are too much a man of the world not to see that in its true light. We offer the best reparation in our power. Reparation! Here is an offer of marriage, that many a titled father would leap at, for his child. Mr Arthur Gride, with the fortune of a prince. Think what a haul it is!'

`My daughter, sir,' returned Bray, haughtily, `as I have brought her up, would be a rich recompense for the largest fortune that a man could bestow in exchange for her hand.'

`Precisely what I told you,' said the artful Ralph, turning to his friend, old Arthur. `Precisely what made me consider the thing so fair and easy.

There is no obligation on either side. You have money, and Miss Madeline has beauty and worth. She has youth, you have money. She has not money, you have not youth. Tit for tat -- quits -- a match of Heaven's own making!'

`Matches are made in Heaven, they say,' added Arthur Gride, leering hideously at the father-in-law he wanted. `If we are married, it will be destiny, according to that.'

`Then think, Mr Bray,' said Ralph, hastily substituting for this argument considerations more nearly allied to earth, `think what a stake is involved in the acceptance or rejection of these proposals of my friend --'

`How can I accept or reject,' interrupted Mr Bray, with an irritable consciousness that it really rested with him to decide. `It is for my daughter to accept or reject; it is for my daughter. You know that.'

`True,' said Ralph, emphatically; `but you have still the power to advise;to state the reasons for and against; to hint a wish.'

`To hint a wish, sir!' returned the debtor, proud and mean by turns, and selfish at all times. `I am her father, am I not? Why should I hint, and beat about the bush? Do you suppose, like her mother's friends and my enemies -- a curse upon them all -- that there is anything in what she has done for me but duty, sir, but duty? Or do you think that my having been unfortunate is a sufficient reason why our relative positions should be changed, and that she should command and I should obey? Hint a wish, too! Perhaps you think, because you see me in this place and scarcely able to leave this chair without assistance, that I am some broken-spirited dependent creature, without the courage or power to do what I may think best for my own child. Still the power to hint a wish! I hope so!'

`Pardon me,' returned Ralph, who thoroughly knew his man, and had taken his ground accordingly; `you do not hear me out. I was about to say that your hinting a wish -- even hinting a wish -- would surely be equivalent to commanding.'

`Why, of course it would,' retorted Mr Bray, in an exasperated tone.

`If you don't happen to have heard of the time, sir, I tell you that there was a time, when I carried every point in triumph against her mother's whole family, although they had power and wealth on their side -- by my will alone.'

`Still,' rejoined Ralph, as mildly as his nature would allow him, `you have not heard me out. You are a man yet qualified to shine in society, with many years of life before you -- that is, if you lived in freer air, and under brighter skies, and chose your own companions. Gaiety is your element, you have shone in it before. Fashion and freedom for you. France, and an annuity that would support you there in luxury, would give you a new lease of life -- transfer you to a new existence. The town rang with your expensive pleasures once, and you could blaze up on a new scene again, profiting by experience, and living a little at others' cost, instead of letting others live at yours. What is there on the reverse side of the picture? What is there? I don't know which is the nearest churchyard, but a gravestone there, wherever it is, and a date -- perhaps two years hence, perhaps twenty. That's all.'

Mr Bray rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, and shaded his face with his hand.

`I speak plainly,' said Ralph, sitting down beside him, `because I feel strongly. It's my interest that you should marry your daughter to my friend Gride, because then he sees me paid -- in part, that is. I don't disguise it. I acknowledge it openly. But what interest have you in recommending her to such a step? Keep that in view. She might object, remonstrate, shed tears, talk of his being too old, and plead that her life would be rendered miserable. But what is it now?'

Several slight gestures on the part of the invalid showed that these arguments were no more lost upon him, than the smallest iota of his demeanour was upon Ralph.

`What is it now, I say,' pursued the wily usurer, `or what has it a chance of being? If you died, indeed, the people you hate would make her happy. But can you bear the thought of that?'

`No!' returned Bray, urged by a vindictive impulse he could not repress.