but what she will learn from me, she will not come to much harm. I can’t say as much for everybody.”
Mrs. Berry perfectly comprehended the meaning, that did not lie on the surface, but smiled and said:
“Mr. Berry is very properly thinking of the servants, with whom it is objectionable that a very young person should hold much intercourse. But we will take care upon that point.”
“Now, Lygon, if you are ready,” said Mr. Berry, turning from the window.
“If I am ready! Adieu, my darling,” and he pressed Clara to his heart and kissed her affectionately. “Farewell, Mrs. Berry; I will thank you for all your kindness when I return.”
“That will be quite time enough,” said Mrs. Berry, very graciously; “I would charge you with messages, but you will have enough to think about. Let us hear of you, and farewell!”
He went out, and Clara was following to have a last kiss, when Mrs. Berry called her back.
“Your papa has said good-bye to you, Clara.”
The child stood still at command, but her little heart was overflowing, and she gazed very wistfully down towards the gate.
“Would you like to say one more good-bye?” said Mrs. Berry, quickly.
There was a “yes” in the swimming eyes suddenly turned upon the monitrix.
“Then, here,” she said, taking a little Testament from the table, “run and give papa this, and tell him he is to read it on his way.”
Clara fled away like a bird.
Berry was in the chaise, and Lygon’s foot was upon the step, when the child, with her hair streaming in the wind, rushed to her father’s side, and delivered the volume and the message. Lygon smiled, but could not be displeased with what once more brought his lips to his child’s forehead, and in another minute the friends departed.
“What was the book?” said Mr. Berry, gruffly.
“The good one,” replied Lygon.
Evidently the old gentleman had resolved to be displeased with everything in the world.
“I don’t mean that she is worse than anybody else in the same line,” said he, “but it is gross impertinence, in my opinion, to treat other people as if they were heathens. What right had my wife to assume that you had not got the book in your travelling bag?”
“Ah, well,” said Arthur, deprecatingly, “all people have their own ways and usages, and no very great wrong is intended.”
“That’s not the question,” said Mr. Berry.
They drove on in silence for a few minutes, and Berry then said,
“There.”
Without another word he put an envelope into Arthur’s hand. Lygon looked at him inquiringly.
“Why of course,” said Berry, pettishly, “there’s eighty pounds, in five-pound-notes. You need not count ’em, they are all right, you may take my word for it.”
“I was not going to count them.”
“Then you ought to have been. A man is a fool who takes money without counting it. Put ’em up, can’t you. I would have given you gold, but I had only twenty sovereigns in the house. There they are in this bag. Take them, and don’t lose the bag, if you can think of it. Get on, horse, will you.”
And though the appeal to the animal’s volition was gentle enough, the cut that immediately followed it was inconsistent as well as severe.
“Ah,” said Arthur, “you think I might—”
“I don’t think anything, but a man can do several things with an odd hundred pounds in his pocket, which he can’t do without it. I say, did Mrs. Berry have any more talk with you after breakfast?”
“Only about Clara.”
“Nothing else. Not a word about your present business?”
“Not a syllable. Why, did not Mrs. Berry promise that upon that subject she would not open her lips.”
“Lips. I hate the word ‘lips.’ It puts me in a rage.”
Arthur looked at his companion in some astonishment.
“Yes; Mrs. Berry has been good enough to find time to justify the statement which, to my utter astounding, she made this morning. She told you that she had heard of your sorrow from my lips.”
“Which was, I know, an untruth.”
“It was nothing of the kind.”
“What, you did tell her, then?”
“No.”
“I don’t, of course, understand.”
“I should think not, and I should like to know who ever did understand a woman, especially when she grafts upon duplicity, which is natural to her, religion, which is not. Nice crabs come of that grafting, and this is one of them. She heard of the sorrow from my lips. It seems that when I woke in the morning—not that I had much sleep, thinking of your affairs—I said to myself, ‘Poor Arthur.’ She never spoke. I thought she was asleep. But there it was from my lips, and she has been asking me what I thought of a husband who dared, in the presence of a third party, to accuse his wife, unjustly, of a falsehood.”
“Those two words were all that passed before my meeting Mrs. Berry?”
“All. And on those two words hangs her entire justification of what she said to you. These are the notions of people who give away Testaments. Never mind. There’s the station, and, by Jove! yonder comes the train. Look alive, you’ve just time. All right! God bless you!—and Arthur, a word, if the train were upon us. Do nothing rashly. In, in, and get your ticket!”
Lygon saved the train, and was fortunate enough to catch the next for Folkestone.
It was not until he had been travelling for some time in this latter that he had completed his meditations on all that he had heard that crowded morning.
Later, and when on board the French boat, he put his hand into the pocket where lay the Testament he had received from the hand of his child.