SQUIRE GOODALL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 134, 18 March 1948, Page 7

SQUIRE GOODALL

i p I Serial Story |

| By W. RILEY I 1 I

| (.Copyright). |

CHAPTER XXIII. FATHER AND DAUGHTER In any other than Lina the tone would have angered him, but he had prepared himself for this hour. Unconsciously, however, his voice took on a harder note. '“Very well,” he said, “you have told me you are under promise to marry Sir Stephen. I suppose that is with or without the formality of my consent. You are nearly twenty-seven, and- you both know that my consent is not essential. You are simply then taking me into your confidence?” “Well, not exactly,” she replied with a smile. “I am very much hoping that I shall have your approval, but if I cannot have that I must ay least have your consent —for an obvious reason.”

“The reason may be obvious,” returned her father, “but to prevent any possibility of misunderstanding you had better name it.”

“All right,” she said; and her own voice became a little harder, and the smile that lingered in her eyes was cold as sunlight on a frozen pool. “I cannot marry Stephen unless I have ample means of my own, and for them lam dependent on you. You can withhold them if you choose, and therefore I must have your consent.” “Wouldn’t it be more correct to say that unless you have ample means Sir Stephen won’t marry you?” her father inquired in a perfectly level voice. “Not more correct; equally correct,” she answered. “Neither of us is sentimental or a fool, and we have had, of course, to face facts.” “I’m not prepared to admit that neither of you is a fool,” said Squire Goodall drily. “That is a matter of opiniop. What you have agreed upon in this commercial transaction is that Sir Stephen shall barter his position and title for your share of your father’s money, and vice versa. Stripped of all sentimental trimmngs that is so, isn’t it?”

“That is pretty much what it amounts to,” Lina agreed. “It isn’t a scheme that I care to put any money into,” said her father, as deliberately as if he had been turning down a business proposition. “You’ll have to rule me out as a party to the transaction, Lina.” She had been prepared for an angry refusal to discuss the matter at all, for hot abuse of her lover, and equally hot upbraidings of her own conduct in disregarding her father’s known wishes; but she had not expected him to adopt this attitude of the bench —tolerant but wholly judicial. It disconcerted her, though it affected neither her voice not her purpose.

“I can’t rule you out, dad,” she answered. She had dropped “dad” ae being childish a long time ago though she had known her father liked it. It came to her lips readily now when she was about to plead. “You’re essential to what you call the scheme, and I want you to look on my side of the question in as friendly a way as you can.”

He nodded when she looked across at him. He was sitting well back in his chair with one foot thrown over the other and his arms outstretched on the thick arms of the saddlebag whicn his fingers were gently tapping. Lina clasped her knee, and gazed steadily into the cavities where her father’s eyes lurked. „ “I know what you think about me, she said; “and I know I’ve given you more satisfaction, more pleasure—l don’t knotv if I’m using quite the right word —than either Millie or Bill, simply because I’ve more of your own qualities than they have. You love us all in the way goodhearted, orthodox par erne do love their children, and I’m sure you want us all to be happy. But you want U'3 happy your way. Millie and Bill will oblige. They’ll do all the conventional things you want them to do, and be as good as cherubs all thendays; and when they die there’ll be a little conventional text on their tombstones that will tell the world all they ever were and did. And they will both be happy, now and evermore; and they would have been just as happy in overalls behind some country tradesman’s counter. ‘Son, or daughter, of Squire Goodall of Broadbeck,’ somebody may carve on their tombstones, and it won’t be true; it will be about one-fifth of the truth.” She paused. The last words had been uttered with a short laugh; not contemptuous, but as if inviting amused assent. Her-father’s mouth showed the beginning of a smile through he made no comment. . . “I am your child,” she continued, “not one-fifth but five-fiftlis,; and like you I do the things other folk don’t do, and take the risks other folk daren t take, and I get my happiness out of my success out of pulling things off. If you really want me to he happy, and not simply to be happy yourself through me, you must let me go my own way, as you have gone yours all your life.” “But never on capital begged from another,” he observed. “Have the banks never helped you?” she asked.

“‘Helped? yes—accommodated, we call it; ;and I have always, paid them back with interest. In this speculation of yours you are not borrowing capital, you are begging it.” “Not exactly, dad. I am merely asking for an advance.” Notwithstand ing her anxiety regarding the issue the contest elated her and she had the feeling that after a hard struggle she would gain her end. The knowledge that her father admired her and found some satisfaction in the wordy warfare added to her confidence. Moreover he loved as well as admired her; she would always be able to count on his emotion though she would not appeal to it. “Suppose you had died down there in the wood as you might easily have done; 1 take it you would already have provided for me along with your other children?” „ “I had; the provision still stands. lie replied. “In that case what would there have been to hinder this marriage with Stephen? Now that you are not going to die why not look on this provision as'of the nature of an advance? It will save death duties, too.”

Squire Goodall smiled, but there was not much change of expression in his features, and his fingers continued their quiet monody. “Not badly reasoned, Lina,” he said; “but you’ve left something out of the. account, .and that is the terms of the bequest in your case. My will stipulates that if you marry Willerby-Mor-ton your share of the estate, with the

exception of a small annuity which ! would serve you as a dress allowance, shall pass to others, sou won’t be able to get much advance from your banker on that, I'm afraid.” He was careful to keep irony out ol his tone, but the words cut like the lash of a whip and Lina's face lost its colour. Her father watched her closely. If at this point she should blaze into anger, lose her self-control, and hurl reproaches at him, he would know that the victory was his, and he would be disappointed. She did nothing of the sort. She was silent for a moment or two, and then said very qietlv—

“You hold all the trumps, and it leaves me at a very serious disadvantage. Do you mind if I go hack a little way?” “Not at all.”

“1 was saying, you remember, that I know you want me to he happy, and that happiness for me dosen't lie in the ordinary ways of life. Now please try to understand me, even though your prejudices are against my scheme, as you call it I honour and respect you more than anybody and I’m going to tell you everything that’s in my heart. “Dad, I want The Towers! Not now, of course; know that. But what is more L want'Mortons to have The Towers. I want to bo the mother of a new line of Mortons. I shall he glad to be Lady Willerby-Morton; 1 admit it; but I shall be still more glad to be the mother of a baronet who will restore the old traditions and become with my help a power in the land—perhaps a peer. The thought of it fires me, makes me indescribably happy. It’s big business, dad, such as you know the thrill of. Stephen is the necessary means to the end. .1 don t love him, I know, as you think a wife ought to love her husband, and I know he is what they call a loose liver. So arc lots of men. I don’t expect what 1 shan’t get, and neither does he. I like him, he and I have much in common, and he admires me. 1 don’t suppose he’ll live to he old, for men who live fast don’t always live long, but i£ he lives long enough to give me my children 1 shan’t mind. I’ll love them, and the things they bring me, and he can go his way. I’m not promising to reform him; I’m not expecting him to be the model husband; but I’m promising myself happiness that comes with a big scheme; and all big schemes have their difficulties and drawbacks. Now haven’t they?” “So that is your vision splendid, Lina,” he said with his eyes still on her face. “My poor lass!” And again after a short pause, “My poor lass!” “Isn’t it a splendid vision?” Lina asked, intensely. “Why should you profess to pity me?” “No,” he replied; “it isn’t a splendid vision; it’s merely a vision of splendour. It’s an illusion, like the mirages of the desert, and all the happiness you’ll get of it you are getting now, by anticipation, like the man with the muckrake. I sowed the seeds of this disaster when I bought this estate to give you pleasure and myself a new experience, but you shan’t reap' the harvest if I can help it.”.

He saw his daughter’s lips tighten and the eager light die down in her eyes. “I pity you, because I can understand whjst refusal will mean, to. you, and I’m going to refuse you.” “Tell me why,” she forced herself to say.

“I’m going* to do; but my reason’s will carry no weight. All the same, as I listened carefully to you you must listen to me. I’ve gambled in big things myself hut never in any Avhere I couldn’t afford to lose, and never for my own sake alone. Your mother, Lina, was old-fashioned enough to he a good woman who tried to live according to the rules of the Book; and though I never thought much about it I know now that in all my enterprises, at the back of my mind there was the determination never to do anything that would have troubled her and brought a line to her brow if she had lived. For her sake I’ve kept clean hands, and many a time I’ve lifted a tottering business on to its feet not just because it pleased me to tackle an almost hopeless job but the cause I knew it would please hei if I could save people from financial ruin. I’ve saved hundreds—thousands, and I’ve become very rich • in the process; but the richest reward I have to-day is the knowledge that she’ll never reproach me when we meet.”

He was not looking at Lina now but into the red heart of the fire; and he was speaking reflectively, almost as if he had forgotten that his daughter was there. “Soon after I bought this estate, went on, “it came over me that in a way I’d been. helping God to increase the common fund of happiness, and I said to myself that it was what 1 would continue to do for the -rest of my life. There are lots of things that a man in my position can put right, and it pleases mo to think I m using my gifts as my Maker would like me to do. This is all sentiment to you, Lina; silly emotionalism; but to me it’s a principle I won’t let go.” “Isn’t the restoration of the Mortons to their old inheritance one of the things you can put right’” Lina asked. “Not by the sale of my daughter,” —ho answered. “I’m coming to that—” “By the gift of your daughter,” she interrupted in correction. “I say I’m coming to that,” he continued, fixing his eyes again on hexwhite face. “Sentiment rules here as it has ruled elsewhere, and the weightiest reason for my refusal is that I would never dare to look into your mother’s pure eyes if I were to give you, or sell you, to a degraded libertine like Stephen Willerby-*Mor-ton. Then again I love you too much to do it, and I respect our name too much to let it be smirched by such an alliance. Lina, you know that man deserves his reputation, of being the biggest scoundrel in all the country - side. You know it, and you would marry him.” “I have told ydu why,” she said. (To Be Continued). The characters in this story are entirely imaginary. No reference is intended to any living person or to any public or private company.