"Something great! As to earning my bread, you mean? I do not think I could do that. I didn't turn my hand to it early enough.""I wasn't thinking of -- your bread."
"You said -- could I do something great?""Frank, I wrote you a letter and described it all. How I got the courage to do it I do not know. I feel as though I could not bring myself to say it now. I wonder whether you would have the courage.""I should say so. I don't know quite what sort of thing it is;but I generally have pluck enough for anything in a common way.""This is something in an uncommon way."
"I couldn't break open Travers and Treason, and get at the safe, or anything in that way.""It is another sort of safe of which you must break the lock, Frank; another treasure you must steal. Do you not understand me?""Not in the least."
"There is Tom," said Gertrude. "He is always wandering about the place now like a ghost. Let us go back to the gate." Then Frank turned. "You heard, I suppose, of that dreadful affair about the policeman.""There was a row, I was told."
"Did you feel that the family were disgraced?""Not in the least. He had to pay five shillings -- hadn't he -- for telling a policeman to go about his business?""He was -- locked up," said Gertrude, solemnly.
"It's just the same. Nobody thinks anything about that kind of thing. Now, what is it I have got to do? We had better turn back again as soon as we can, because I must go up to the house before I go.""You will?"
"Certainly. I will not leave it to your father to say that Icame skulking about the place, and was ashamed to show my face.
That would not be the way to make him give you your money.""I am sure he'd give it -- if we were once married.""If we were married without having it assured beforehand we should look very blue if things went wrong afterwards.""I asked you whether you had courage."
"Courage enough, I think, when my body is concerned; but I am an awful coward in regard to money. I wouldn't mind hashed mutton and baked potatoes for myself, but I shouldn't like to see you eating them, dearest, after all the luxuries to which you have been accustomed.""I should think nothing of it."
"Did you ever try? I never came absolutely to hashed mutton, but I've known how very uncomfortable it is not to be able to pay for the hot joints. I'm willing to own honestly that married life without an income would not have attractions for me.""But if it was sure to come?"
"Ah, then indeed -- with you! I have just said how nice it would be.""Have you ever been at Ostend?" she asked, suddenly.
"Ostend. Oh, yes. There was a man there who used to cheat horribly at ecarte. He did me out of nearly a hundred pounds one night.""But there's a clergyman there, I'm told.""I don't think this man was in orders. But he might have been.
Parsons come out in so many shapes! This man called himself a count. It was seven years ago.""I am speaking of today."
"I've not been there since."
"Would you like to go there -- with me?"
"It isn't a nice sort of place, I should say, for a honeymoon.
But you shall choose. When we are married you shall go where you like.""To be married!" she exclaimed.
"Married at Ostend! Would your mother like that?""Mother! Oh, dear!"
"I'll be shot if I know what you're after, Gertrude. If you've got anything to say you'd better speak out. I want to go up to the house now."They had now taken one or two turns between the lodge and a point in the road from which the house could be observed, and at which Tom could still be seen wandering about, thinking no doubt of Ayala. Here Frank stopped as though determined not to turn to the lodge again. It was wonderful to Gertrude that he should not have understood what she had already said. When he talked of her mother going with them to the Ostend marriage she was almost beside herself. This lover of hers was a man of the world and must have heard of elopements. But now had come a time in which she must be plain, unless she made up her mind to abandon her plan altogether. "Frank," she said, "if you were to run away with me, then we could be married at Ostend.""Run away with you!"
"It wouldn't be the first time that such a thing has been done.""The commonest thing in the world, my dear, when a girl has got her money in her own hands. Nothing I should like so much.""Money! It's always money. It's nothing but the money, I believe.""That's unkind, Gertrude."
"Ain't you unkind? You won't do anything I ask.""My darling, that hashed mutton and those baked potatoes are too clear before my eyes.""You think of nothing, I believe, but your dinner.""I think, unfortunately, of a great many other things. Hashed mutton is simply symbolical. Under the head of hashed mutton I include poor lodgings, growlers when we get ourselves asked to eat a dinner at somebody's table, limited washing bills, table napkins rolled up in their dirt every day for a week, antimacassars to save the backs of the chairs, a picture of you darning my socks while I am reading a newspaper hired at a halfpenny from the public house round the corner, a pint of beer in the pewter between us -- and perhaps two babies in one cradle because we can't afford to buy a second.""Don't, Sir."
"In such an emergency I am bound to give you the advantage both of my experience and imagination.""Experience!"
"Not about the cradles! That is imagination. My darling, it won't do. You and I have not been brought up to make ourselves happy on a very limited income.""Papa would be sure to give us the money," she said, eagerly.
"In such a matter as this, where your happiness is concerned, my dear, I will trust no one.""My happiness!"
"Yes, my dear, your happiness! I am quite willing to own the truth. I am not fitted to make you happy, if I were put upon the hashed mutton regime as I have described to you. I will not run the risk -- for your sake.""For your own, you mean," she said.
"Nor for my own, if you wish me to add that also."Then they walked up towards the house for some little way in silence. "What is it you intend, then?" she asked.
"I will ask your father once again."
