“Positively refuse!” rejoined the old gentleman. “For heaven's sake let me die in peace! Can you not prevail on him to go,” he added to his wife and daughter. “He will kill me outright!”
“You hear what your father says!” cried Mrs. Calverley, in an authoritative tone. “Go, I command you!”
“Yes, I _will_ go,” rejoined Chetwynd; “but not at your bidding! You are the sole cause of this misunderstanding between my father and myself. By your arts you have cheated me out of my inheritance!”
“This is madness!” exclaimed Mr. Carteret, trying to drag him from the room.
“Hear my last, words, sir!” cried Chetwynd to his father. “I never will touch a shilling of your money if it is to be doled out to me by this woman!”
|Pushing aside the attorney's clerk, whom he found on the landing, he hurried downstairs, and had just snatched up his hat in the hall, when he perceived the old butler eyeing him wistfully.
He had a great regard for this faithful old servant, whom he had known since he was a boy, so he went up to him, and patting him kindly on the shoulder, said--
“Good-bye, dear old Norris. I don't mean to remain a minute longer in my father's house, and I may never return to it. Farewell, old friend!”
“You shan't go out thus, sir, unless you knock me down,” rejoined Norris, detaining him. “You'll do yourself a mischief. No one is in the dining-room. Please to go in there. I want to have a few words with you--to reason with you.”
And he tried to draw him towards the room in question; but Chetwynd resisted.
“Reason with me!” he exclaimed. “I know what you'll say, Norris. You'll advise me to make it up with my father, and bow the knee to my stepmother; but I'll die rather!”
“Mr. Chetwynd, it's a chance if your father is alive to-morrow morning. Think of that, and what your feelings will be when he's gone. You'll reproach yourself then, sir, for I know you've a good heart. I've got you out of many a scrape when you were a boy, and I'm persuaded something may be done now, if you'll only condescend to listen to me.”
“Well, I'll stay a few minutes on purpose to talk to you. But I hear Carteret coming downstairs. I don't want to meet him. I don't want to meet anybody--not even my sister.”
“Then I'll tell you what to do, sir. Go up the back staircase to your own room. It's just as you left it. No one will know you're here. I'll come to you as soon as I can.”