"Just now, sir, you called it corrupting with a bribe," muttered Mr.
Coxe.
Mr. Gibson took no notice of this speech, but went on--"Inducing one
of my servants to risk her place, without offering her the slightest
equivalent, by begging her to convey a letter clandestinely to my
daughter--a mere child."
"Miss Gibson, sir, is nearly seventeen! I heard you say so only the
other day," said Mr. Coxe, aged twenty. Again Mr. Gibson ignored the
remark.
"A letter which you were unwilling to have seen by her father, who
had tacitly trusted to your honour, by receiving you as an inmate of
his house. Your father's son--I know Major Coxe well--ought to have
come to me, and have said out openly, 'Mr. Gibson, I love--or I fancy
that I love--your daughter; I do not think it right to conceal this
from you, although unable to earn a penny; and with no prospect of an
unassisted livelihood, even for myself, for several years, I shall
not say a word about my feelings--or fancied feelings--to the very
young lady herself.' That is what your father's son ought to have
said; if, indeed, a couple of grains of reticent silence wouldn't
have been better still."
"And if I had said it, sir--perhaps I ought to have said it," said
Mr. Coxe, in a hurry of anxiety, "what would have been your answer?
Would you have sanctioned my passion, sir?"
"I would have said, most probably--I will not be certain of my exact
words in a suppositional case--that you were a young fool, but not
a dishonourable young fool, and I should have told you not to let
your thoughts run upon a calf-love until you had magnified it into
a passion. And I daresay, to make up for the mortification I should
have given you, I might have prescribed your joining the Hollingford
Cricket Club, and set you at liberty as often as I could on the
Saturday afternoons. As it is, I must write to your father's agent in
London, and ask him to remove you out of my household, repaying the
premium, of course, which will enable you to start afresh in some
other doctor's surgery."
"It will so grieve my father," said Mr. Coxe, startled into dismay,
if not repentance.
"I see no other course open. It will give Major Coxe some trouble
(I shall take care that he is at no extra expense), but what I think
will grieve him the most is the betrayal of confidence; for I trusted
you, Edward, like a son of my own!" There was something in Mr.
Gibson's voice when he spoke seriously, especially when he referred
to any feeling of his own--he who so rarely betrayed what was passing
in his heart--that was irresistible to most people: the change from
joking and sarcasm to tender gravity.