Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/96

 more cognisant of my existence! He need not have made love to me, or been very attentive, but just a little—as I used to say, just as much as to the cat!

One day Ashley came to us in a terrible state. Even James saw that something had happened, and I, studying his every mood and expression as I did, knew at once that some distress was in the background. And it was something so new to see Ashley moved—so strong and almost hard as he was—that one felt it more in him than if it had been any other man. At least I did.

"James, my good fellow!" he said, in an excited way, "lend me five pounds, can you? My mother is dangerously ill, and they have written for me to go to her to-night. I happen not to have as much money about me at this moment, and I cannot get any from old Campbell until I have finished my work. He as good as bought my Herodias Dancing yesterday, but still you know it was not done out and out, so I could not very well ask him for the money, could I?"

Poor Ashley! His Herodias Dancing—one of the most hideous things you ever saw—was no more sold to old Campbell than I was! If Ashley could have got into the hands of any picture-dealer whatsoever he would have considered his fortune made. James blushed and hesitated. Five pounds! Ashley might as well have asked him for five hundred. We had not five shillings in the house; for we had had a bad week, and I was thinking somewhat ruefully of the short commons we should have to go upon, and how we were to get fed at all for the next ten days or so; and now Ashley was in trouble too, and wanted us to help him. James looked at me in great embarrassment. One by one we had parted with all our little valuables, but I had kept back one, a very handsome pearl ring of my dear mother's, which our father had given her on her wedding day. This was emphatically the last of our treasures, and I had struggled hard and made many sacrifices to keep it.

When James looked at me so wistfully, and when I thought of Ashley's trouble—his mother perhaps dying, and he her only son, and so fond of her!—I could not help crying; but I could not hesitate. What had been sacred to me for my mother's sake should be given to him for his. There was no sacrilege in this; it was a righteous disposition of a sacred treasure.

"I will get the money from the bank, James," I said.

And Ashley, though he stared, was taken in by the quiet matter-of-fact way in which I spoke. A poor artist in Percy-street, and a banker? Well! it was a kind of miracle, if true; but then there are miracles yet afloat. So I went out and pawned my ring, and came back with the money to Ashley. And of the two, James was decidedly the more astonished. Ashley took the money, said carelessly to me, "I am sorry you have had so much trouble, Miss Mantell," and thanked James very warmly. When he went away I ran up-stairs, and flinging myself on the bed sobbed bitterly. This precious ring—my last possession—and James thanked for lending out of a superfluous balance what I had procured by the sacrifice of my best treasure! It was a little hard; don't you think so, too, Georgie? But I did not let my brother see what I felt; and James, as you know, was one of those dear good creatures who never see anything they are not absolutely told or shown.

But I was half afraid that I had opened the door to a good deal of discomfort in the future; for Ashley would be sure to do about money as he had done about the bedroom, taking for granted that he could have whatever he asked for, and that James could help him with money—from that balance at his banker's—as he could help him with a room from his liberal arrangement of lodging. Not that he was selfish; you must not think that; but he was thoughtless. Was he not an artist? and could he, therefore, be anything but thoughtless? Besides, he did not know the kind of reverential feeling that both James and I had for him, and how we would have rather sacrificed ourselves than see him want anything that we could get for him.

Of course Ashley believed in the banker's balance, and, from the ease with which the loan of five pounds had been had, assumed that more might be had as easily; and not long after his return from the north—for his mother got better, against all expectation—he asked James for another loan; this time to enable his mother and sister to come up to London and make a home with him. And when he spoke of his sister—his dear and beautiful Cora—I saw, what I had long suspected, that one cause of my brother's intense attachment to Ashley was in his love for Cora. It was almost pathetic to watch the expression that came over his face while Ashley was speaking. If only Cora could be brought to London! if only he might sometimes see her!

Ashley wanted twenty pounds. If five could only be had by pawning my ring, I ask you, Georgie, where could twenty come