Cora’s consciousness blinked. “The owner of this property?”
Her father’s tone showed his reserves. “That’s what it depends on you to make him!”
“On me?” the girl gasped.
“He came into it three months ago by the death of his great-uncle, who had lived to ninety-three, but who, having quarrelled mortally with his father, had always refused to receive either sire or son.”
Our young lady bent her eyes on this page of family history, then raised them but dimly lighted. “But now, at least, doesn’t he live here?”
“So little,” her companion replied, “that he comes here today for the very first time. I’ve some business to discuss with him that can best be discussed on this spot; and it’s a vital part of that business that you too should take pains to make him welcome.”
Miss Prodmore failed to ignite. “In his own house?”
“That it’s _not_ his own house is just the point I seek to make! The way I look at it is that it’s _my_ house! The way I look at it even, my dear”--in his demonstration of his ways of looking Mr. Prodmore literally expanded--“is that it’s _our_ house. The whole thing is mortgaged, as it stands, for every penny of its value; and I’m in the pleasant position--do you follow me?” he trumpeted.
Cora jumped. “Of holding the mortgages?”
He caught her with a smile of approval and indeed of surprise. “You keep up with me better than I hoped. I hold every scrap of paper, and it’s a precious collection.”
She smothered, perceptibly, a vague female sigh, glancing over the place more attentively than she had yet done. “Do you mean that you can come down on him?”
“I don’t need to ‘come,’ my dear--I _am_ ‘down.’ _This_ is down!”--and the iron point of Mr. Prodmore’s stick fairly struck, as he rapped it, a spark from the cold pavement. “I came many weeks ago--commercially speaking--and haven’t since budged from the place.”
The girl moved a little about the hall, then turned with a spasm of courage. “Are you going to be very hard?”
If she read the eyes with which he met her she found in them, in spite of a certain accompanying show of pleasantry, her answer. “Hard with _you_?”
“No--that doesn’t matter. Hard with the Captain.”
Mr. Prodmore thought an instant. “‘Hard’ is a stupid, shuffling term. What do you mean by it?”
“Well, I don’t understand business,” Cora said; “but I think I understand _you_, papa, enough to gather that you’ve got, as usual, a striking advantage.”
“As usual, I _have_ scored; but my advantage won’t be striking perhaps till I have sent the blow home. What I appeal to you, as a father, at present to do”--he continued broadly to demonstrate--“is to nerve my arm. I look to you to see me through.”
“Through what, then?”
“Through this most important transaction. Through the speculation of which you’ve been the barely dissimulated subject. I’ve brought you here to receive an impression, and I’ve brought you, even more, to make one.”
The girl turned honestly flat. “But on whom?”
“On me, to begin with--by not being a fool. And then, Miss, on _him_.”
Erect, but as if paralysed, she had the air of facing the worst. “On Captain Yule?”
“By bringing him to the point.”
“But, father,” she asked in evident anguish--“to _what_ point?”
“The point where a gentleman _has_ to.”
Miss Prodmore faltered. “Go down on his knees?”
Her father considered. “No--they don’t do that now.”
“What _do_ they do?”
Mr. Prodmore carried his eyes with a certain sustained majesty to a remote point. “He will know himself.”
“Oh, no, indeed, he won’t,” the girl cried; “they don’t _ever_!”
“Then the sooner they learn--whoever teaches ’em!--the better: the better I mean in particular,” Mr. Prodmore added with an intention discernibly vicious, “for the master of this house. I’ll guarantee that he shall understand that,” he concluded, “for I shall do my part.”
She looked at him as if his part were really to be hated. “But how on earth, sir, can I ever do mine? To begin with, you know, I’ve never even seen him.”
Mr. Prodmore took out his watch; then, having consulted it, put it back with a gesture that seemed to dispose at the same time and in the same manner of the objection. “You’ll see him _now_--from one moment to the other. He’s remarkably handsome, remarkably young, remarkably ambitious, and remarkably clever. He has one of the best and oldest names in this part of the country--a name that, far and wide here, one could do so much with that I’m simply indignant to see him do so little. I propose, my dear, to do with it all he hasn’t, and I further propose, to that end, first to get hold of it. It’s you, Miss Prodmore, who shall take it out of the fire.”
“The fire?”--he had terrible figures.
“Out of the mud, if you prefer. You must pick it up, do you see? My plan is, in short,” Mr. Prodmore pursued, “that when we’ve brushed it off and rubbed it down a bit, blown away the dust and touched up the rust, my daughter shall gracefully bear it.”
She could only oppose, now, a stiff, thick transparency that yielded a view of the course in her own veins, after all, however, mingled with a feebler fluid, of the passionate blood of the Prodmores. “And pray is it also Captain Yule’s plan?”
Her father’s face warned her off the ground of irony, but he replied without violence. “His plans have not yet quite matured. But nothing is more natural,” he added with an ominous smile, “than that they shall do so on the sunny south wall of Miss Prodmore’s best manner.”
Miss Prodmore’s spirit was visibly rising, and a note that might have meant warning for warning sounded in the laugh produced by this sally. “You speak of them, papa, as if they were sour little plums! You exaggerate, I think, the warmth of Miss Prodmore’s nature. It has always been thought remarkably cold.”
“Then you’ll be so good, my dear, as to confound--it mightn’t be amiss even a little to scandalise--that opinion. I’ve spent twenty years in giving you what your poor mother used to call advantages, and they’ve cost me hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It’s now time that, both as a parent and as a man of business, I should get my money back. I couldn’t help your temper,” Mr. Prodmore conceded, “nor your taste, nor even your unfortunate resemblance to the estimable, but far from ornamental, woman who brought you forth; but I paid out a small fortune that you should have, damn you, don’t you know? a good manner. You never show it to me, certainly; but do you mean to tell me that, at this time of day--for other persons--you _haven’t_ got one?”
This pulled our young lady perceptibly up; there was a directness in the argument that was like the ache of old pinches. “If you mean by ‘other persons’ persons who are particularly civil--well, Captain Yule may not see his way to be one of them. He may not _think_--don’t you see?--that I’ve a good manner.”
“Do your duty, Miss, and never mind what he thinks!” Her father’s conception of her duty momentarily sharpened. “Don’t look at him like a sick turkey, and he’ll be sure to think right.”
The colour that sprang into Cora’s face at this rude comparison was such, unfortunately, as perhaps a little to justify it. Yet she retained, in spite of her emotion, some remnant of presence of mind. “I remember your saying once, some time ago, that that was just what he would be sure _not_ to do: I mean when he began to go in for his dreadful ideas----”
Mr. Prodmore took her boldly up. “About the ‘radical programme,’ the ‘social revolution,’ the spoliation of everyone, and the destruction of everything? Why, you stupid thing, I’ve worked round to a complete agreement with him. The taking from those who have by those who haven’t----”
“Well?” said the girl, with some impatience, as he sought the right way of expressing his notion.
“What is it but to receive, from consenting hands, the principal treasure of the rich? If I’m rich, my daughter is my largest property, and I freely make her over. I shall, in other words, forgive my young friend his low opinions if he renounces them for _you_.”
Cora, at this, started as with a glimpse of delight. “He won’t renounce them! He _shan’t_!”
Her father appeared still to enjoy the ingenious way he had put it, so that he had good humour to spare. “If you suggest that you’re in political sympathy with him, you mean then that you’ll take him as he _is_?”
“I won’t take him at all!” she protested with her head very high; but she had no sooner uttered the words than the sound of the approach of wheels caused her dignity to drop. “A fly?--it must be _he_!” She turned right and left, for a retreat or an escape, but her father had already caught her by the wrist. “Surely,” she pitifully panted, “you don’t want me to bounce on him _thus_?”
Mr. Prodmore, as he held her, estimated the effect. “Your frock won’t do--with what it cost me?”
“It’s not my frock, papa,--it’s his thinking I’ve come here for him to see me!”
He let her go and, as she moved away, had another look for the social value of the view of her stout back. It appeared to determine him, for, with a touch of mercy, he passed his word. “He doesn’t think it, and he shan’t know it.”