Miser Farebrother: A Novel (vol. 2 of 3)

"Father!" cried Phœbe, in terror. "Murder you!"

"Murder me. You can do it. If I were to implore you to spare me – to let me live, would you grant my prayer, or would you carry out your wicked designs? We shall see – we shall see. You perceive that I am suffering, and you say you are sorry. Your dead mother knows how far you are speaking the truth; I do not – as yet. It has to be made clear to me. You are my daughter, are you not?"

"Yes, father."

"What kind of love have you given me? What kind of care have you bestowed upon me? For years I have been groaning and suffering here, and you – what have you been doing? Have you attended to me, have you nursed me, have you shown one spark of a daughter's proper feelings? No, not one – not one. Gadding about, going to theatres, dancing, making light friends, laughing, singing, ministering to your vanities, while I, your father, have lain here, cut to the soul by your coldness and want of decent feeling. If it was not in you, you might have pretended it was, and I should have been deceived. It would have made it no better for you, but it might have been better for me. You know that I have a doctor attending me?"

"Yes, father."

"Have you ever asked him how I was – have you ever shown, in a single conversation with him, that you have within you those solicitous feelings which a daughter should have for a suffering father? Have you ever shown – " He did not proceed. He lay back, panting, in his chair, and Jeremiah, without looking up, thought: "What an actor he is! Oh, what an actor he is!"

"Father," said Phœbe, in deep distress, "you do me an injustice. It has always been my wish to attend to you, to nurse you, but you would never allow me. 'Let me alone! let me alone!' you said, and have always repulsed me."

"Why? why?" he asked, raising himself in his chair, and bending so excitedly forward that she was frightened, and cried:

"Don't excite yourself, father; you are not strong enough to bear it."

"I know I am not. You know it too. It is not I who am exciting myself – it is you, because you wish to kill me!" She shuddered violently, and covered her face with her hands. "Why, when you have asked me whether you could do anything for me, have I desired you to let me alone? Because I could see plainly that you wished not to be troubled about me; that you were pretending – that you were wholly false in your advances. There are a thousand things a child can do for a parent in my condition which would bring pleasure to him. Have you done one? That I am impatient, querulous, quick-tempered – is not that natural when a man is in anguish day and night? Did you ever give that a thought? do you give it a thought now?"

"Father," said poor Phœbe, feeling acutely the bitter injustice of her father's accusations, and yet not knowing how to combat them without plunging him into deeper excitement, "I will nurse you if you will allow me; I will do everything in my power to restore you to health. Try me, father!"

"You do not intend to leave Parksides, then, without my permission?"

"To leave Parksides without your permission!" she echoed. "No, father!"

"For the few weeks that remain to me you will not leave the house? You will nurse me – you will soothe my last hours?"

"Oh, father, do not speak like that! I will do all you wish."

"Out of your own loving heart?"

"Yes, father, out of my own loving heart!"

"Swear it!" he cried, in a loud, commanding tone, pushing his dead wife's prayer-book to the guileless girl. "Kiss your mother's prayer-book, and prove to me whether you are lying or speaking the truth!"

In an impulse of fervour and self-reproach she kissed the prayer-book. He took it from her hands.

"You are a witness, Jeremiah," he said.

"I am a witness, sir," said Jeremiah.

"You have sworn," said Miser Farebrother to his daughter, "that you will not leave Parksides while I live, unless I drive you forth. That is your oath."

"Yes, father." But she said it with a sinking heart. It seemed to her as if a net were being spread around her, from which it was impossible to escape.

In her bed that night this impression of a forced, inexorable imprisonment became accentuated by a review of what had passed between herself and her father. For what other reason had he made her swear upon her dead mother's prayer-book that she would not leave Parksides without his permission? Could he not have taken her word? Was she to regard all that he had said as of equal value with Mrs. Pamflett's false statements? Were they all leagued against her? and what would be the end of the plot? Could they now compel her to marry Jeremiah Pamflett? No; she would endure a thousand deaths first. But she was imprisoned here in Parksides; she had no longer a will of her own. Her father had turned her only friends from his house, and he and they were the bitterest enemies; he had turned her lover from his house; she was cut off from all she held dear, and was here unprotected, at the mercy of Mrs. Pamflett and her son, and of her father, whose inexplicable behaviour toward her afflicted her with shuddering doubts. Had she been aware of what transpired between her aunt Leth and her father after she had fainted in the earlier part of the day, she would not so readily have fallen into the trap her father had set for her.

When she fell to the ground Aunt Leth and Fred Cornwall started forward with sympathizing eagerness to assist her, but they were motioned sternly back by Miser Farebrother.

"I have ordered you to leave my house," he said. "I can attend to my daughter."

Sadly they turned to the door, but Aunt Leth came swiftly back.

"Listen to me, my dead sister's husband," she said, in a quick, trembling voice. "At my sister's death-bed, in this very room, I promised her to look after her child, my poor niece lying here at our feet, as tenderly as though she were one of my own. I love her as my own child, and I shall redeem my promise to my dead sister. This person" – she pointed to Jeremiah Pamflett – "to whom you say you have promised your daughter's hand, is utterly unworthy of her. She loves an honourable gentleman, and what I can do to bring about her happiness shall be done. If you have a plot against her welfare I will endeavour to circumvent it. My heart and the hearts of my husband and children are ever open to her. Our home is hers; she can come to us at any moment, and we will receive her with joy. In this house there was never for her nor for her dead mother the slightest sign of love."

"My daughter has told you so?" demanded Miser Farebrother.

"She has not told me so," said the indignant woman. "She has always spoken of you with tenderness and gentleness. You know best how you deserved it at her hands. If she cannot find love and protection here, she can find them with me and mine!" She knelt and kissed Phœbe's pale face. "My sweet child! so happy but an hour ago! Come to me if they oppress you here – my child! my daughter!"

"Bundle them out," cried Miser Farebrother, "neck and crop!"

They had no right to stay, and they left the place mournfully.

"Do not be false to Phœbe," said Aunt Leth to Fred.

"No need to say that to me, Aunt Leth," said the young fellow. "Phœbe, and no other woman, shall be my wife."

This encounter it was between Aunt Leth and Miser Farebrother which had caused the miser to extract a binding oath from Phœbe that she would not leave Parksides without his permission.

"How was that done, Jeremiah?" he asked, when his daughter left the room.

"Capitally! capitally, sir!" said Jeremiah. "What an actor you would have made!"

"Perhaps – perhaps," said Miser Farebrother, with a sneer. "I am not half so ill as I look, Jeremiah. Don't reckon too soon upon my death. Excitement like this does me a power of good. They came to trap me, my fine lawyer and tearful sister-in-law; but I have turned the tables upon them. As I will upon every one" – with a keen look at Jeremiah – "who dares to play me false!"

It was fortunate for the miser that his managing clerk did not possess the power of striking a man dead by a glance; if he had, that moment would have been Miser Farebrother's last.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ENGAGEMENT RING

From that day Phœbe's life in Parksides was, as Mrs. Pamflett had threatened, a torture, and had it not been that she was endowed with a reserved strength which lies latent in many gentle natures until a supreme occasion calls it forth, it is likely she could not have lived through the next three or four months. One day her father summoned her.

"It is time now," he said, "that our plans for your future should be finally settled. I have already waited too long."

Phœbe knew what was coming, and though she dreaded it, she had nerved herself to meet it.

"Cannot things remain as they are?" she asked.

It was impossible for her to speak with any show of affection. She had discovered that her father's wish that she should be his nurse was a mere pretence. Believing in it, she had endeavoured to carry it out and to perform her duty; but the stern repulses she met with had convinced her that she had been deceived and betrayed. The oaths she had sworn were binding upon her; she knew that she could not escape from them, and that her life's happiness was blasted; but she resolved not to be beguiled by any further treachery. So she suffered in silence, and with some fortitude, praying for strength, and in some small degree finding it; but she was growing daily thinner and paler, and sometimes an impression stole upon her that her life was slowly ebbing away. "It will be better that I should die," she thought; "then I shall see my mother, and my torture will be at an end."

It was a torture subtly carried out. Phœbe had gauged Mrs. Pamflett, and had rejected with quiet scorn all attempts at an affectionate intimacy. Mrs. Pamflett repaid her with interest.

"When you are my son's wife," she said, "you will be more tractable; you will know me better, and you will love me."

"I shall never know you better," Phœbe replied, "and I shall never love you."

"Proud spirits can be broken," said Mrs. Pamflett.