The Stowaway Girl | Page 2

be unbelievable if it were not true! He was so gross, so
tubby, so manifestly over-fed, whereas her mother had ever been
elegant and bien soignée. But he had shown kindness to her in his
domineering way. He was not quite so illiterate as his accent and his
general air of uncouthness seemed to imply. In his speech, the broad
vowels of the Lancashire dialect were grafted on to the clipped staccato
of a Cockney. He would scoff at anyone who told him that knives and
forks had precise uses, or that table-napkins were not meant to be
tucked under the chin. In England, especially in the provinces, some
men of affairs cultivate these minor defects, deeming them tokens of
bluff honesty, the hall-marks of the self-made; and David Verity
thought, perhaps, that his pretty, well-spoken niece might be trusted to
maintain the social level of his household without any special effort on
his part.
Shocked, almost, at the disloyalty of her thoughts, Iris tried to close the
rift that had opened so unexpectedly.
"It was stupid of me to take you seriously," she said. "You cannot
really mean that Mr. Bulmer wishes to marry me?"
Verity screwed up his features into an amiable grin. He pressed the tips
of his fingers together until the joints bent backward. When he spoke,
the cigar waggled with each syllable.
"I meant it right enough, my lass," he said.
"But, uncle dear----"
"Stop a bit. Listen to me first, an' say your say when I've finished. Like

everybody else, you think I'm a rich man. David Verity, Esquire,
ship-owner, of Linden House an' Exchange Buildings--it looks all right,
don't it--like one of them furrin apples with rosy peel an' a maggot
inside. You're the first I've told about the maggot. Fact is, I'm broke.
Ship-ownin' is rotten nowadays, unless you've lots of capital. I've lost
mine. Unless I get help, an' a thumpin' big slice of it, my name figures
in the Gazette. I want fifty thousand pounds, an' oo's goin' to give it to
me? Not the public. They're fed up on shippin'. They're not so silly as
they used to be. I put it to owd Dickey yesterday, an' 'e said you
couldn't raise money in Liverpool to-day to build a ferry-boat. But 'e
said summat else. If you wed 'im, 'e makes you a partner in the firm of
Verity, Bulmer an' Co. See? Wot's wrong with that? I've done
everything for you up to date; now it's your turn. Simple, isn't it? P'raps
I ought to have explained things differently, but it didn't occur to me
you'd hobject to bein' the wife of a millionaire, even if 'e is a doddrin'
owd idiot to talk of marryin' agin."
"Oh, uncle!"
With a wail of despair, the girl sank back and covered her face with her
hands. Now that she believed the incredible, she could utter no protest.
The sacrifice demanded was too great. In that bitter moment she would
have welcomed poverty, prayed even for death, as the alternative to
marriage with the man to whom she was being sold.
Verity leaned over the table again and finished the glass of port. This
time there was no lip-smacking, or other aping of the connoisseur. He
was angry, almost alarmed. Resistance, even of this passive sort, raised
the savage in him. Hitherto, Iris had been ready to obey his slightest
whim.
"There's no use cryin' 'Oh, uncle,' an' kicking up a fuss," he snapped
viciously. "Where would you 'ave bin, I'd like to know, if it wasn't for
me? In the gutter--that's where your precious fool of a father left your
mother an' you. You're the best dressed, an' best lookin', an' best
eddicated girl i' Bootle to-day--thanks to me. When your mother kem
'ere ten year ago, an' said her lit'rary gent of a 'usband was dead, neither
of you 'ad 'ad a square meal for weeks--remember that, will you? It isn't

my fault you've got to marry Bulmer. It's just a bit of infernal bad
luck--the same for both of us, if it comes to that. An' why shouldn't you
'ave some of the sours after I've given you all the sweets? You'll 'ave
money to burn; I'm not axin' you to give up some nice young feller for
'im. If you play your cards well, you can 'ave all the fun you want----"
The girl staggered to her feet. She could endure the man's coarseness
but not his innuendoes.
"I will do what you ask," she murmured, though there was a pitiful
quivering at the corners of her mouth that bespoke an agony beyond the
relief of tears. "But please don't say any more, and never again allude to
my dear father in that way, or I may--I may