Exemplary as your conduct has been since you joined us, I believe that I am not wrong in stating that you were a little wild when you were at Edinburgh."
"I never did anything that I am ashamed of," said Tom.
"Very likely not," Girdlestone answered, with an irrepressible sneer. "The question is, did you do anything that your father was ashamed of?"
"Certainly not," cried Tom hotly. "I was no milksop or psalm singer, but there is nothing that I ever did there of which I should be ashamed of my father knowing."
"Don't speak lightly of psalm singing. It is a good practice in its way, and you would have been none the worse had you indulged in it perhaps. However, that is neither here nor there. What I want you clearly to understand is that my ultimate consent to your union depends entirely upon your own conduct. Above all, I insist that you refrain from unsettling the girl's mind at present."
"I have already promised. Hard as the struggle may be, I shall not break my word. I have the consolation of knowing that if we were separated for twenty years we should still be true to one another."
"That's very satisfactory," said the merchant grimly.
"Nevertheless it is a weary, weary time. If I could only write a line--"
"Not a word," Girdlestone interrupted. "It is only because I trust you that I keep her in London at all. If I thought there was a possibility of your doing such a thing I should remove her at once."
"I shall do nothing without your permission," Tom said, taking up his hat to go. He paused with his hand upon the door. "If ever it seems good to me," he said, "I consider that by giving you due notice I absolve myself from my promise."
"You would not do anything so foolish."
"Still I reserve myself the right of doing so," said Tom, and went off with a heavy heart to his day's work.
"Everything is clear for you now," the old man said to his son triumphantly. "There's no chance of interference, and the girl is in the very humour to be won. I flatter myself that it has been managed with tact. Remember that all is at stake, and go in and win."
"I shall go in," said Ezra "and I think the chances are that I shall win too."
At which reassuring speech the old man laughed, and slapped his son approvingly upon the shoulder.
CHAPTER XXVI.
BREAKING GROUND.
In spite of John Girdlestone's temporary satisfaction and the stoical face which he presented to the world, it is probable that in the whole of London there was no more unhappy and heart-weary man. The long fight against impending misfortune had shattered his iron constitution and weakened him both in body and in mind. It was remarked upon 'Change how much he had aged of late, and moralists commented upon the vanity and inefficacy of the wealth which could not smooth the wrinkles from the great trader's haggard visage. He was surprised himself when he looked in the glass at the change which had come over him. "Never mind," he would say in his dogged heart a hundred times a day, "they can't beat me. Do what they will, they can't beat me." This was the one thought which sustained and consoled him. The preservation of his commercial credit had become the aim and object of his life, to which there was nothing that he was not prepared to sacrifice.
His cunningly devised speculation in diamonds had failed, but this failure had been due to an accident which could neither have been foreseen nor remedied. To carry out this scheme he had, as we have seen, been obliged to borrow money, which had now to be repaid. This he had managed to do, more or less completely, by the sale of the stones which Ezra had brought home, supplemented by the recent profits of the firm. There was still the original deficit to be faced, and John Girdlestone knew that though a settlement might be postponed from month to month, still the day must come, and come soon, when his debts must be met, or his inability to meet them become apparent to the whole world. Should Ezra be successful in his wooing and his ward's forty thousand pounds be thrown into the scale, the firm would shake itself clear from the load which oppressed it.