The Firm of Girdlestone | Page 6

fifty thousand. I should have done better had
I retired years ago."
"I told you so," the other broke in gruffly.
"You did--you did. But I acted for the best. Forty thousand I leave to
my dear daughter Kate."
A look of interest came over Girdlestone's face. "And the balance?" he
asked.
"I leave that to be equally divided among the various London
institutions for educating the poor. We were both poor boys ourselves,
John, and we know the value of such schools."
Girdlestone looked perhaps a trifle disappointed. The sick man went on
very slowly and painfully--
"My daughter will have forty thousand pounds. But it is so tied up that
she can neither touch it herself nor enable any one else to do so until
she is of age. She has no friends, John, and no relations, save only my
cousin, Dr. George Dimsdale. Never was a girl left more lonely and
unprotected. Take her, I beg of you, and bring her up under your own
eye. Treat her as though she were your child. Guard her above all from
those who would wreck her young life in order to share her fortune. Do
this, old friend, and make me happy on my deathbed."
The merchant made no answer. His heavy eyebrows were drawn down,
and his forehead all puckered with thought.
"You are the one man," continued the sufferer, "whom I know to be
just and upright. Give me the water, for my mouth is dry. Should,
which God forbid, my dear girl perish before she marries, then--" His

breath failed him for a moment, and he paused to recover it.
"Well, what then?"
"Then, old friend, her fortune reverts to you, for there is none who will
use it so well. Those are the terms of the will. But you will guard her
and care for her, as I would myself. She is a tender plant, John, too
weak to grow alone. Promise me that you will do right by her--promise
it?"
"I do promise it," John Girdlestone answered in a deep voice. He was
standing up now, and leaning over to catch the words of the dying man.
Harston was sinking rapidly. With a feeble motion he pointed to a
brown-backed volume upon the table.
"Take up the book," he said.
The merchant picked it up.
"Now, repeat after me, I swear and solemnly pledge myself--"
"I swear and solemnly pledge myself--
"To treasure and guard as if she were my own--" came the tremulous
voice from the bed.
"To treasure and guard as if she were my own--" in the deep bass of the
merchant.
"Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend--"
"Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend--"
"And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!"
"And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!"
The sick man's head fell back exhausted upon his pillow. "Thank God!"

he muttered, "now I can die in peace."
"Turn your mind away from the vanities and dross of this world," John
Girdlestone said sternly, "and fix it upon that which is eternal, and can
never die."
"Are you going?" the invalid asked sadly, for he had taken up his hat
and stick.
"Yes, I must go; I have an appointment in the City at six, which I must
not miss."
"And I have an appointment which I must not miss," the dying man
said with a feeble smile.
"I shall send up the nurse as I go down," Girdlestone said. "Good-bye!"
"Good-bye! God bless you, John!"
The firm, strong hand of the hale man enclosed for a moment the feeble,
burning one of the sufferer. Then John Girdlestone plodded heavily
down the stair, and these friends of forty years' standing had said their
last adieu.
The African merchant kept his appointment in the City, but long before
he reached it John Harston had gone also to keep that last terrible
appointment of which the messenger is death.


CHAPTER II.
CHARITY A LA MODE.
It was a dull October morning in Fenchurch Street, some weeks after
the events with which our story opened. The murky City air looked
murkier still through the glazed office windows. Girdlestone, grim and

grey, as though he were the very embodiment of the weather, stooped
over his mahogany table. He had a long list in front of him, on which
he was checking off, as a prelude to the day's work, the position in the
market of the various speculations in which the capital of the firm was
embarked. His son Ezra lounged in an easy chair opposite him, looking
dishevelled and dark under the eyes, for he had been up half the night,
and the Nemesis of reaction was