The curse of gold

“Louis,” said George De Marke, “how long was all this after our father’s death; I have never had a thorough knowledge of that time. Everything connected with it was too painful for questions.”

“I remember,” answered Louis, “she had driven you from the house before I was old enough to know that I had a brother. You were happier for it. Year by year, our home had become more uncomfortable and dreary. As age crept on our father, some cause of strife, which always existed, seemed to break out afresh between him and Madame. I never thoroughly understood it, George; there was something in the past never explained to us. Quick words and broken sentences, which I remember now, though scarcely noticed at the time, connect this mystery with your own mother.”

George De Marke looked up with sudden interest. “It is strange,” he said, “but I never heard anything about my mother. Madame never mentioned her!”

“Nor did my father; during his life I was kept so far apart from his confidence, that I never ventured to question him regarding his or her family. Indeed, it was years before I knew that Madame was not alike your mother and mine. It was discovered to me at last by some angry words with which she was taunting him, as if some disgrace had been attached to your birth. This made me angry at the time, but I accepted it as little more than a burst of fiery malice. Forgive me, dear boy, for saying so of my mother; but she was used to saying what came uppermost in her mind when he offended her, and I gave it no importance.”

“I dare say it had no importance,” said George, “she must always have delighted in tormenting him.”

“That is probably true, dear boy—but as I became a man, the fact that I knew absolutely nothing of my mother’s family forced itself upon me. If my father had been living, I would know all about her. Had I been here when he died, that one subject should not have been left in the dark.”

“You would not have had the heart to question him, George. He was sadly changed before he died, and so nervous that a word would make him tremble. Sometimes the very sound of my mother’s voice would set him to shaking all over.”

“My poor father! Did he suffer so much?” inquired George, shading his eyes to conceal the tears that sprung into them.

“More than I can remember without pain,” answered Louis. “He took a terrible dislike to Madame toward the last, and I had great difficulty in protecting him from her temper and cupidity. You cannot know how difficult it was, in health, for his iron will to keep down her parsimony in our household; when he lay sick and helpless, I found it almost impossible to obtain necessary comforts for him.”

“Poor man! so rich—so proud, and brought to that! He must indeed have been miserable.”

“Yes, both in body and mind,” was the answer; “I am sure that something preyed on him at the last. But Madame never left him at this period, and though he seemed anxious to converse with me, her presence always prevented it.”

“Strange what could have troubled him so! Possibly it might have been that he repented of that strange will.”

“Not altogether that, I think. It was some persons he wished to see,—an old man and woman. Madame spoke of them impatiently in that way, but promised to send for them.”

“And did she?”

“No, there was no effort made to send for any one. Another night, when he was growing worse and worse, I heard him pleading with her; some person was to be sent for whom he wished to speak with before he died—must speak with if she was on the face of the earth. Madame became furiously angry then. She no longer attempted to pacify him with promises, but filled the sick-room with her angry revilings, while he lay trembling under her violence till the bed shook beneath him. At last, urged on by rage, such as I had never seen even in her before, she darted toward the bed, and would have seized him by the shoulders, but I flung my arms around her, and prevented the sacrilege by taking her almost by force from the room. When I came back to the bed, our father was stricken with paralysis.

“Oh, George! it would have broken your heart, could you have seen his beseeching eyes follow me around the room after that. I knew that he would have spoken to me then, had the power been left him. Once, when Madame was out for a moment, he made a desperate effort to speak, but his voice came forth in a broken moan; and I saw two great tears roll from the pleading eyes, wrung from some want which he had no power to express.”

“Could he not write?” inquired George, in a troubled voice.

“No; he made an effort, and with his poor shaking hand, strove to scrawl a name; but I could not read it; Madame came in while I was trying to make it out. With an angry glance at him, she took it from my hand and tore it up.

“My poor father’s eyes turned upon her with an expression that would have melted a heart of iron. I have heard of wounded stags, weeping while under the torment of a pack of hounds, George. The great tears which came again to that old man’s eyes, when his wife—I will not call her mother with this feeling upon me—tore up the name he had tried to write, seemed as if shed under like torture.”

“All this fills me with self-reproach. I ought to have been by my poor father’s death-bed. I being older than you, might have comprehended his wishes,” said George De Marke, sadly.

“I cannot tell, George; it might have been a wish to redeem the injustice of his will; sometimes I think it was only his lawyer’s name that he wrote; for Madame looked like death when she read it. I am sure she did read it, illegible as it was, for she muttered something that made the sick man struggle in his bed. Nothing but the fear of losing her grasp on the property could have disturbed her so!”

“It was a strange will, and unjust as strange,” said George. “Why should our father have feared to trust my intellect more than yours, Louis? If at thirty I have never given proofs of insanity, and am the father of a lawful son, then and not till then can I demand an equal share of the property with yourself. This is a strange clause against an elder son, who has never offended him, or deserved anything but kindness at his hands.”

“It is indeed. The anxieties of his death-bed must have arisen from this cause. But it was all needless; for though I had a hard struggle to get my portion from Madame at the time of my majority, it is safe from her control now, and the income is enough for us both.”

George reached forth his hand, grasping that of his brother with grateful warmth.

“You forget,” he said, pointing to his portmanteau, “that I am just from the gold region, and though not able to compete with my rich brother, there will be found yonder enough of gold and bills of exchange for my moderate wants, till the time appointed by my father’s will arrives.”

“Are you so rich as that, George? I am glad of it; independence is the right of every man, but I should have liked to divide with you, after all.”

“I am sure you would, dear old fellow; but the time is not far off, and I think it will go hard for any one to give proofs of insanity against me so far; and if my brain has withstood all that I have endured till now, it will probably hold firm to the end.”

“Yes, that will be easily settled. But the babe? Poor Catharine Lacy left no living child, so it is stated in the hospital record.”

“So it is recorded; poor girl! poor wronged wife!”

“She was a lovely creature,” said Louis, “a sweet, gentle girl. How was she driven to such straits, George?”

“It is answered in a sentence,” was the stern reply. “Madame De Marke, who had doubtless suspicions of our private marriage, induced me to go to India, by promises of giving a portion of my inheritance into my own independent possession. She had entire control, even of the income, you know. In his large shipping-interest, my father had left unsettled affairs at Calcutta, which she professed to be very anxious about. I was to remain abroad two years and settle up all his affairs in the East, as the price of my own independence. I had just married Catharine Lacy, who urged me to make this sacrifice, and expressed herself willing to stay with Madame, hard as her life was, until my return.

“If Madame knew of our marriage, her dissimulation was complete, for she gave no sign of such knowledge. I now understand it all. She either had information of the marriage and wished to separate us, or had a suspicion that the poor child was devoted to me, and that by marrying her, one condition of the will might be secured.”

“It is possible,” muttered Louis.

“With this promise, she sent me to the East Indies, where letters might not reach me for months; made that delicate girl a drudge of all work, and at last drove her to desperation, to the Almshouse, and, God pardon her!—I never can,—to death.”

“It was a terrible fate,” said Louis; “but in charity to my mother, let us hope she was not all to blame. There was a time, George, when I can remember her a stylish and attractive woman—never generous or liberal, it is true, but far, far above what she is now. The powerful will of our father kept down her faults, and at his death they broke over all control. It seems to me that, on this one subject of money, she is a monomaniac.”

“You are her son, Louis, and heaven knows I have little wish to wound you by talking of her failings; but you will comprehend how they bear on this case. If I fail to accomplish the conditions of our father’s will, this property goes to your mother during her life, and afterward to you.”

“Yes, I know; there the sting lies. It is, in fact, my interest she is seeking. It is for me that she hoards and starves, and has committed this terrible wrong.”

“No, it is for the love of hoarding. Did she not struggle to keep possession of your portion also?”

“But that was for my own good, Madame urged; she was in terrible trouble about my fancied extravagance, and would gladly share her den with me in order to roll up her income. I really think it grieves her that I will not consent to this. But we were speaking of Catharine Lacy. I was in complete ignorance of everything you have told me regarding her. Indeed, my whole attention was too painfully occupied elsewhere. I was absent when Madame made her degrading change of residence.”

“I know it; we were both sent out of the way, while she made arrangements for a life of miserable parsimony. Had I dreamed of the way she intended to live, my poor young wife would never have been left to her mercy. From her own confession, Catharine almost perished of absolute want in her miserable den.”

“But her aunt, Mrs. Judson, was a rich woman. It is strange that she did not apply to her,” said Louis. “Did she never think of that?”

“I cannot tell. Probably the poor angel kept her word too faithfully. She had promised not to make our marriage known. Remember, Louis, I was young, and did not think of the cruel necessity that might arise to protect herself by this very confession. When it came, Madame turned her into the street, and somehow—I had no heart to inquire the harrowing particulars—she reached the hospital, and died there!”

The brothers were silent for some minutes; when they looked up, it was through a mist of tears which no manly pride could suppress.

“They were together, your wife and mine,” said Louis, at last, drawing a hand across his eyes. “Poor Catharine!—poor Louisa!”

George did not answer, but his chest heaved, and his face fell forward upon the arms which were folded on the table before him. At last he lifted his face, pale and tear-stained, turning it to his brother.

“This remembrance is killing me, Louis. We will never talk these matters over again.”

“As you think best, George,” replied the brother, “but I must speak with you. My situation is more painful than yours, for suspense is added to the rest!”

“True, true. I interrupted your story, Louis. You see how selfish grief is.”