Kate Crane was the eldest of a large family; two children younger than herself had died in infancy, so that her next brother was five years her junior. He was a fine, high-spirited lad, generous to a fault, as wilful and determined as his sister, but unfortunately without her power of self-control or steadiness of principle. Thus constituted, he was at once the darling and the torment of his family. Through Mr. Crane’s interest he had obtained a good position in a large mercantile establishment in the city, where, though Kate had at first entertained considerable apprehensions as to his steadiness, he appeared to be going on satisfactorily.
One morning, about three weeks after the date of the occurrences we have related, Mr. Crane having as usual departed for the city to coin money, the mid-day post brought the following letter for his wife—
“Dearest Kate,—It is with reluctance that I take up my pen to ask you whether it will inconvenience you to pay me a part of the next quarter’s allowance you so generously make us, in advance. You know well how I strive and struggle to keep down our expenses, without depriving your dear father (who, I grieve to say, gets weaker and weaker) of the comforts which his declining health renders daily more necessary for him. My best endeavours cannot, however, prevent some of the tradesmen’s bills from getting in arrear,—the fearful expense of your father’s illness absorbing the addition to our income which your kind husband’s liberality has enabled you to make. Such a difficulty is now pressing upon me, and induces me to apply to you. If you can help me, I am sure you will; if you are unable to do so, I can only trust that the beneficent Providence who has hitherto supported me under my heavy trials will not now desert me. Believe me to remain, dearest Kate,
“Ever your affectionate mother,
“Rachel Marsden.”
“P.S.—I am uneasy about Fred; his letters have been short and unsatisfactory for some time; and for the last three weeks he has not written to me at all. I wish you would see him, and endeavour to learn from him how he employs his evenings, &c. You will think my fears unreasonable; but you know how fond and proud we both are of our boy. If anything were to go wrong with him, in your father’s present state of debility, I believe it would be his death-blow.”
Kate’s first impulse on reading the above epistle was to fly to her writing-desk—ten, twenty, thirty pounds, was all that remained: the liberal assistance she had bestowed on Mrs. Leonard and her family having reduced her finances to this low ebb. Reserving only five pounds for her own use, she immediately dispatched a hurried answer, enclosing an order for five-and-twenty pounds, and explaining, in general terms, the reason of her inability to render her parents more effectual assistance, promising to be more careful of their interest for the future.
As she was desiring the servant to post her letter without delay, a sharp knock at the street-door caused her to start, and she had barely time to close her writing-desk, ere Mr. Frederick Marsden was announced, and a tall handsome lad entered.
“Why, Fred, how is this? away from business at this hour! what will that tremendous individual, the ‘Head of the Firm,’ say to you?” inquired Kate, with an attempt at gaiety which scarcely concealed an undefined dread of something having gone wrong, with which her brother’s unexpected arrival, and the information contained in her mother’s letter, had inspired her.
Young Marsden waited until the servant had quitted the room, then, meeting his sister’s glance steadily, he replied—
“It does not much signify what he might say, Kate, for I no longer am a member of his establishment.”
“What do you mean? You have surely never been so mad—so ungrateful to Mr. Crane—so cruel to our mother, as to throw up your appointment!”
“Do not add to my misfortunes by upbraiding me, for I am wretched enough as it is; or at all events hear what I have to tell you first,” was the reply.
Kate made a gesture for him to continue; and he immediately began an eager, hurried recital of his troubles and difficulties. It was the old story—poverty and pride, temptation resisted often, yielded to once; and that once effacing in a moment the recollection and results of the repeated resistance. Youth and impetuosity, led astray by high and generous impulses, without judgment to control them; meanness and malevolence profiting thereby to effect the poor boy’s ruin. And as he stood before her, with his fair clustering hair in wild disorder, his bright cheeks glowing with contrition for the past, and real, earnest, good resolutions for the future,—with the tear-drop sparkling in his bright blue eye, suggesting the childhood from which he had so lately emerged, while the compression of the short, stern upper lip, indicated the approach of the full rich manhood into which, if the world will but grant him forbearance for the present, and fair play for the future, he will surely develop,—what wonder that his sister, deeming him more sinned against than sinning, should press him to her warm woman’s heart, as she murmured—
“My poor boy! don’t make yourself so miserable; we must see what can be done to help you.”
When, however, she had in some degree succeeded in calming his emotion, and they came quietly to review his position, the said question of “What could be done to help him?” appeared no easy one to answer.
The son of his late employer, and junior partner in the establishment—a dissipated and unprincipled young man—had, on Fred Marsden’s first arrival, taken, or pretended to take, an extreme fancy to him, introduced him to his sporting acquaintance, and made him his constant companion. The first fruits of this ill-assorted alliance were, that the high-spirited boy, eager to vie with his associates, was led almost unconsciously into expenses, which soon left him first penniless, then in debt.
In debt!—to owe a few shillings, a few pounds, appears a mere trifle—an imprudence, perhaps, but scarcely a sin; or if a sin, a very venial one—a peccadillo, nothing more. Believe it not! the fact of owing that which, if it be required of him, a man cannot pay, is the step across the Rubicon between honesty and dishonesty, between honour and dishonour, between being a free agent or a bond-slave. To be in debt is to forfeit self-respect; to lose self-respect is to lose the practical result of obedience to the guiding principles of religion and morality; a loss too soon followed by a distaste for the holy things thus dishonoured, by a relaxation of all attempts at self-improvement, by a reckless indifference to the opinion of the good and the true:—the stone set rolling, gathers speed from its own impetus; the wedge inserted, the seam widens, and the stoutest oak is riven. Let a young man be once in debt, and no helping hand stretched out to save him from the consequences of his imprudence before the sense of shame has departed, and the dereliction of duty acquired the fatal force of habit, and it does not require any very profound experience of life to prophesy his future career. No one who has witnessed the mean subterfuges—the paltry evasions—the shameless encroachment on kindness—the parasitical cringing to opulence, which the burden of debt forces on natures not originally deficient in generosity and delicacy of feeling, but must dread for those near or dear to him the first downward step towards this abyss of misery, and exert every nerve to restrain them, ere it be too late.
Frederick Marsden, ignorant as a child of the value of money, and imagining his salary calculated to supply his every fancy, had spent it at least three times over, ere the uncomfortable possibility of being in debt occurred to him; and when he did open his eyes to the fact, his pseudo friend soon quieted his scruples by lending him a sum—not indeed sufficient to defray his debts, but to enable him to continue his career of extravagance a little longer. But the delusion was soon rudely dispelled: after a wine-party, at which Marsden had drunk quite as much, and his friend considerably more than was good for him, the latter, returning home, chose to follow and insult an unprotected girl. Fred attempted to restrain him, but in vain; and on his instituting a more vigorous remonstrance, a quarrel ensued, in which, heated by wine and anger, the junior partner struck his subordinate, by whom he was immediately knocked down in return. Becoming from this moment Frederick’s bitter enemy, he commenced a series of petty persecutions, to which the high-spirited boy submitted with unexpected patience, until on one occasion, stung beyond his powers of endurance by some unjust indignity inflicted on him in the presence of several of his fellow-clerks, he gave vent to his anger, and was instantly summoned before the head of the firm, and only saved himself from dismissal by taking the initiative, and resigning his situation.
“And now, Kate,” he continued, “I have told you the whole truth; I own myself to blame, I see where I have been weak and foolish, where I have been headstrong and impetuous; and I admit that by contracting these debts which are weighing me down, and paralyzing any efforts I might hope to make to regain my character and position, I have acted weakly, and—and”—(with a choking sob)—“almost dishonestly;—” he paused, then added, “and now, seeing all this, feeling it most deeply; anxious only to retrieve the past, or if that is impossible, at all events to do better for the future, how am I to carry out my intentions—how prove to my poor mother that I am in earnest? Oh, Kate, dear Kate, help me—advise me! I know I don’t deserve it; but I have nobody but you to look to!”
Thus appealed to, Kate would not have been the true woman she was, had she hesitated. Fred had acted wrongly, foolishly, but he had done nothing unmanly or mean; he was her own dear brother still, and all the assistance in her power she would render him, gladly. But what was in her power? there was the rub. What were his own ideas? had he any friends, any future prospects? Friends likely to assist him he had none—future prospects he had plenty, but they were very hazy. He should like to go out to India—could Mr. Crane get him a cadetship, or anything else which would enable him to earn his own living? Kate did not know. Mr. Crane would of course be very angry, but she would talk to him, and see what could be done; these debts were the worst part of the affair—did Fred know their amount?
Fred was not exactly aware of their uncomfortable total, but was afraid they could not be less than £150: and a peculiar feature in the case was, that the tradesmen appeared by instinct to have discovered his altered prospects, and were all sending in their bills at once, and clamouring for payment. And so while they schemed, and devised, and hoped, the time slipped away, until it approached the hour at which Mr. Crane usually returned, when Frederick grew alarmed, and would by no means risk meeting him until Kate had talked to him well—from which colloquial process he seemed to expect extraordinary results: thereby proving that this young fellow, however deficient he might be upon most points of worldly knowledge, was not wholly ignorant of some of the arcana of married life; especially of those private enactments relating to the maintenance of the proper authority, rule, and governance of the wife, over that legal and clerical fiction, her lord and master.
When her brother had left her, Kate sat down, and endeavoured to review quietly and dispassionately the circumstances of the case. Her brother must be saved at all hazards; as a first step, his debts must be paid; to do this £150 were required, and she possessed exactly £5, and would not receive any more for another month. She must apply to her husband, that was clear; and now she should reap the advantage of her sacrifice. Had she married Arthur Hazlehurst, knowing that every farthing he possessed was acquired by his mental labour, she could not have ventured to ask him—it would have been unfair to him, wrong on her part; but now the case was different, what were a couple of hundred pounds to a man whose income was reported to be £20,000 a-year! True, Fred had thrown up the appointment which Mr. Crane had obtained for him; this she knew would offend and vex him; worse still, Fred had run in debt—a sin which, as he had no temptation to it himself, her husband regarded with the greatest horror. He would be very angry with Fred, and perhaps refuse to assist him. No doubt she had great influence with him, and where money would in any way make a show, as in the matter of carriages and horses, plate, jewellery, and the like, he was liberal in the extreme; but on other points he was strangely parsimonious. She had never known him give a sixpence away in charity since she had been married; and all such appeals invariably irritated him, and threw him into a state of dogged obstinacy, in which it was perfectly impossible to influence, or in any way control his actions. Her pride rebelled against asking him a favour, even for her brother’s sake; but the mental suffering Kate had gone through since we first made her acquaintance, had given her truer views on certain important points, and she had begun to perceive pride to be one of the rocks on which she had shipwrecked her happiness, and had learned to mistrust it accordingly. Occupied by such thoughts as these, she, for the first time in her married life, sat awaiting her husband’s return with a feeling of mingled anxiety and impatience. At last the expected knock sounded, and in due time Mr. Crane made his appearance in the drawing-room; his greeting to his wife ran thus:—
“Really, my dear, I must be excused for observing that I know no door in London at which I am kept waiting so long as at my own. I am sure my establishment costs me money enough; but the better servants are paid, and the more they’re indulged, the more useless they become. I shouldn’t be surprised if I’ve taken cold standing there. I did hope—no doubt it was unreasonable of me—but I certainly did expect when I married, that a household conducted on so liberal a scale as—I must be allowed to remark—mine is, would be well regulated; that the eye of a mistress would see whether the domestic duties were performed properly.”
He paused, so evidently expecting a reply, that Kate felt it incumbent on her to say something, so she began—
“If Thomas is inattentive, you should desire Roberts to reprove him; and if that does not produce the desired effect, give him warning and let him go.”
“Yes, it is easy to say, ‘Let him go,’ but you forget that one has to teach a new servant all one’s habits and wishes. Thomas has lived with me for some years, and though at times he is slow and dilatory, yet he knows my ways—not that I require much waiting on; thank Heaven, I can wait upon myself: still I am not going to part with a faithful servant merely to satisfy—if I may be allowed the expression—female caprice.”
Having delivered himself of this sensible and consistent opinion, Mr. Crane solemnly stalked off to prepare for dinner. Poor Kate! she had by this time become acquainted with her husband’s small and dreary peculiarities, and she perceived, from his fretful, irritable manner, that something had occurred to disquiet him in the course of the morning. It was clear that this was no favourable moment in which to make her appeal; and yet time pressed. She trusted the dinner would produce a tranquillising effect on him; and she must choose a favourable opportunity, while he was sitting over his wine, to introduce the subject of her brother’s troubles and indiscretions.
Mr. Crane re-appeared with a gloomy brow; he had been obliged to wash his hands in cold water—the hot was a perfect sea of blacks. “Why were his things not put out for him to dress:” Kate believed they had been; unless she was very much mistaken, she had seen them laid out in his dressing-room. “What, his dress shoes?” Kate did not remember to have seen the shoes. “No! he should think not; the shoes were what he was particularly alluding to—they were not put out: on the contrary, it took him quite five minutes to hunt for them. But it was always the case—few things as he required, those few were certain to be neglected;” and in this strain did he bewail himself, until, to Kate’s inexpressible relief, dinner was announced.
Without being exactly a gourmand, Mr. Crane took a deep and solemn interest in his dinner, the cooking of which he criticised with equal acumen and severity. On the present occasion he helped himself to soup, and tasted the first spoonful with an air of anxious inquiry. As he became aware of the flavour, his countenance fell, and the shadow on his brow darkened.
“Have you tasted that compound, Mrs. Crane?” he asked, in a tone indicative of deep but tragic feeling.
“It’s rather salt, is it not?” returned Kate.
“Rather salt! it’s brine, made with sea-water, I’m certain such a deleterious mixture as that is sure to disagree with me: the way they dress my food in this house is undermining my constitution—bringing me to my grave! I’m certain of it! Roberts, take that down to Mrs. Trimmins, and tell her I can’t touch it; and mind such stuff as that does not come up again. That’s the way money is wasted in this family; that woman gets the best and most expensive materials, and then, just because she has not to pay for them herself, goes and spoils them by her unpardonable carelessness—it’s too bad!—oyster sauce. My dear Kate, you’ve given me no sounds now!”
“Really,” rejoined Kate, colouring with annoyance, and making vigorous but fruitless pokes at the cod with the fish-slice, “really, I’m afraid there are no sounds with this fish.”
“No sounds!” repeated Mr. Crane, in a high, whimpering falsetto; “codfish and no sounds! the only part, as Mrs. Trimmins knows; that I care about! Serve up a codfish without sounds! No, really this cannot be allowed to go on; there’s no man cares less about his eating than I do! Take it away, Roberts, I shall not touch a bit. A crust of bread and cheese, if it is but clean and wholesome, is all I require; still, when I do sit down to a dinner, I like to have that dinner fit to eat. As a bachelor, I put up with such annoyances; if they spoilt one’s dinner, one dined at one’s club for the next week, and so gave the cook a hint, which rendered her more careful; but I own, when I married, I did hope that these things might be remedied; that while I was out, working hard from breakfast till dinner-time, to provide funds for all these expenses, the eye of a mistress might have been applied to an occasional inspection of her household; and that her husband’s comfort would have been a fitter study for an amiable and domestic character, than the immoral and pernicious writings of German and French novelists. Take that horrible joint up to your mistress, Roberts, and bring me the cutlets and Tomata-sauce. I should have thought Mrs. Trimmins might have known by this time how much I dislike a great coarse leg of mutton; but I suppose your rural tastes lead you to prefer it to a more refined style of cookery, in which case I must only request that your favourite dish may always be placed at your end of the table; I declare the sight of it is enough to destroy my appetite, and makes me quite uncomfortable!”
“Don’t you think there may be a little fancy in that?” returned Kate, as cutlet and Tomata-sauce at last filled Mr. Crane’s mouth, and stopped his grumbling monologue; “I cannot help thinking good roast meat must contain more nourishment, and for that reason be more wholesome than made dishes.”
A struggle between his rising anger and his descending food having occasioned a fit of choking, which did not tend to increase his general amiability, Mr. Crane, as soon as he was sufficiently recovered, continued—
“Unless it may be for the sake of contradicting me, my dear, I cannot conceive—ugh! ugh!—I cannot conceive why you should imagine it possible you can form a judgment about the matter; with such a strong—I may say Herculean—digestion as you are gifted with, how should you guess how these things affect a delicate organisation like mine? You can doubtless eat these fearful legs of mutton with impunity; but were you to eat the legs of a horse—as I verily believe you could—that would be no argument in favour of dieting me on dog’s-meat. I know you think me fanciful; your more robust temperament does not enable you to sympathise with the difficulties my delicate, sensitive digestion subjects me to—ugh!”
“The better way will be to give the housekeeper a general order never again to send a leg of mutton up to table,” returned Kate; “I have no especial predilection for the joint, and can dine quite as satisfactorily on anything else.”
“No, my dear; I beg you will give no such order. I am not of such a selfish disposition as to wish the dinner ordered merely with a view to my likes and dislikes; neither is it my desire to curtail any of your enjoyments, however much I may regret that they are not of a more refined or intellectual nature;—have your legs of mutton as you have been accustomed to have. I dare say there will always be bread and cheese or cold meat in the house; thank Heaven, I am not particular, anything simple and wholesome—give me some wine, Roberts; no, the Burgundy, only half a glass—simple and wholesome does for me. Roberts, desire Mrs. Trimmins to take care that she provides a liberal supply of legs of mutton for her mistress.”
“Really, Mr. Crane, you mistake me; I have no particular preference for legs of mutton, I assure—” began Kate.
Mr. Crane raised his hand deprecatingly, and checked her in mid speech.
“Quite enough has been said on this subject,” he interposed, severely; “these endless discussions weary me. I come home tired and annoyed with the cares, and anxieties, and fatigues of business: and when I seek for quiet and repose in the bosom of my family, I am met by these frivolous and vexatious complaints, my dinner made a trial to me, and my digestion upset, my constitution undermined, and my comfort in my home—my domestic comfort, Mrs. Crane—entirely destroyed! However, one word shall end this matter; if I am to be subjected to these ebullitions of—I am afraid I must say, a fretful and dissatisfied temper, I dine at my club in future.”
And having thus worked himself up into a mild, childish, and ineffectual rage, Mr. Crane continued to growl at his wife and harass the servants until dinner was over, and the domestics had departed. And then came out the cause of this agreeable episode in Kate’s married life—the Bundelcundah, East Indiaman, had gone down at sea, all hands had perished, and £40,000 worth of cargo, the property of Jedidiah Crane, had gone down with them!
Tears for their loved and lost ones dimmed the eyes of the widows and orphans of the gallant seamen who had sunk in the Bundelcundah; mothers wept as memory recalled some bright young face, glowing with health and youthful daring, which now lay pale and swollen in the depths of mighty waters; girls, with blanched lips and hollow eyes, grieved for the lovers whom they should behold no more till the sea should give up its dead, in an agony of speechless anguish, to which the sorrow that can find vent in tears would have been a merciful relief; and Crane, the millionaire, fretted over the loss of his £40,000 with a grief as lively and earnest as any of them—for “where the treasure is, there shall the heart be also.”
During all this scene her brother’s difficulties were never absent from the mind of Kate Crane, but she felt that this was not the time to bring them forward, and kept silence. Did the idea occur to her how differently she would have felt had Arthur Hazlehurst been the person to whom she had desired to confide her trouble? Let us hope not, for her heart was full enough without it.
“S O he will not do anything for me?”
“Nothing, my poor boy!”
“And you asked him—pressed him very much?”
“Don’t speak of it! I actually stooped to implore him; I did my duty by you thoroughly; I kept down my rebellious heart, though it throbbed as if it would burst. I told him of your youth, your penitence, and I entreated him to befriend you.”
“And he still refused?”
“He said money was ‘tight’ in the city, and that he had none to waste on an ungrateful boy who did not know its value.”
“I am not likely to learn it practically now, unless by trying how I can live without it. I have just five shillings left; though as I am in debt, I cannot honestly call those my own,” was the bitter reply. There was a pause; then suddenly raising his head, Frederick asked abruptly, “Kate, have you got any money?”
“Never was anything so unfortunate!” was Kate’s answer; “I have been at a good deal of expense lately in assisting a distressed family; and yesterday, just before you came, I received a letter from mamma, telling me she was pressed for money in consequence of poor papa’s illness, and, excepting five pounds, I sent her every farthing I had.”
As she thus destroyed his last hope, her brother sprang to his feet, and began to pace the room with hurried strides. At length he exclaimed, “I’ll not stay here to beg or starve—I’ll enlist in a cavalry regiment; I’m quite six feet now, and ride under nine stone; I should not wonder if they’d take me in the Lifeguards or the Blues.”
Kate’s only reply was by a mournful and dissentient shake of the head, and Frederick continued—
“What! you don’t think it gentlemanly to enlist as a private? Well, it would be a bore, having to associate with the Common men—not that I’ve any false pride about me, but a gentleman can’t help being a gentleman, and I own I should feel out of my element. I have it—I’ll work my way out as a sailor to Australia, and go to the gold-fields—eh? Gold is what I want you know. I’ll dig up enough to pay my debts, and keep a decent coat on my back for a year or two, and then I’ll come home, and be a credit to you yet—why won’t that do?”
“Think of our poor mother, Fred; it would break her heart! She is so wrapped up in you—has always loved you the best of all her children; think of all she has upon her now—you would not add to her distress! Oh no, you must give up all such wild thoughts, it would be too cruel!”
As she spoke the boy paused in his impetuous walk, and murmuring, “I shall break her heart any way, miserable wretch that I am!” he flung himself on the sofa, and gave vent to an outburst of mingled shame and contrition.
Kate’s unhappiness at witnessing his grief—which she could soothe, indeed, but of which she was powerless to remove the cause—may readily be imagined. Having after a time succeeded in subduing his extreme sorrow, of which unavailing self-reproach formed the sharpest sting, Kate gave him three out of her five pounds, to provide for his immediate necessities, and dismissed him, promising to take advantage of any symptoms of relenting which Mr. Crane might evince, again to press her suit; and the poor boy departed, in some degree re-assured by hopes of which, even as she expatiated upon them, she perceived the probable fallacy.
As soon as he had quitted her, she sat down and fell into a train of gloomy and bitter reflections. This wealth that surrounded her, of what use was it in her trouble? None! She could not convert it into money to save her brother; and its possession had hardened the heart of him to whom she should naturally turn for assistance—her husband! And as she pronounced the name, an involuntary shudder came over her. She had sold herself to a man she despised, for the good of her family; sold herself to save them from the curse of poverty; and now, at her utmost need, her self-sacrifice proved unavailing—the money she required was denied her—her earnest pleadings were disregarded,—the evil she dreaded had come upon her in its bitterest form, and she was powerless to avert it. Was it for this, then, that she had stifled the voice of affection in her heart—was it for this she had thrown aside the priceless love of Arthur Hazlehurst, and embittered his life and her own by so doing? And now the harrowing doubt which, from the first hour in which she had conceived the project of marrying Mr. Crane, to this moment in which the conviction of its fruitlessness was forced upon her, had never ceased to haunt her, recurred with redoubled vigour. In so acting, had she indeed deceived herself?—had she, instead of performing an act of generous self-sacrifice, committed a sin against her better nature, for which she had no justification, and of which she was now paying the bitter penalty? As she thought it over, the conviction forced itself upon her, more and more strongly, that she had rebelled against the decrees of Providence, and sought to free herself and her family from the cross He had seen fit to lay upon them, by unlawful means; that, blinded by the proud and haughty spirit which precedes a fall, she had done evil that good might come: she had sown the wind—what wonder that she should reap the whirlwind! It was a cruel discovery to make now, when it was too late to remedy the evil; but, fortunately, Kate had a strong brave spirit for good, as well as for evil; and though this new aspect in which she regarded her past conduct occasioned her the deepest remorse, though it displayed her faults of pride and overweening self-confidence in their worst and most repulsive aspect, yet she did not shrink from the scrutiny, but honestly sat in judgment on herself; and where, weighing herself in the balance, she was found wanting, she recognised the deficiency, and unhesitatingly acknowledged her transgression. Yes! she saw it clearly, now it was too late—in the deep, earnest, tender affection of Arthur Hazlehurst, Heaven had bestowed upon her an inestimable blessing, which she had no right to cast from her. By so doing she had inflicted the bitterest wound man can receive, on him who thus had given her his all of love—a wound which time indeed may heal superficially, but which continues to throb and bleed internally while life remains;—that death-blow to hope which the heart receives, when the conviction is forced upon it that the idol enshrined in its inmost recesses is unworthy of such holy sanctuary.
Well, she had chosen her lot, and must abide by it; repining was worse than useless; all chance of happiness she had forfeited by her own act; but there still remained to her the possibility of resignation, which, persevered in, might produce contentment. Could she gain that, and the self-approval of her own conscience, life might become endurable after all. But, to obtain this, one path alone was open to her—the rigid path of duty. She had done Mr. Crane sufficient wrong in marrying him without affection, and for the sake of expediency: if she could not love and honour him—as at God’s holy altar she had falsely sworn to do—she could at least obey him, and strive to render his life as easy and comfortable as in her lay: she would alter her cold manner towards him; she would refrain from the covert sarcasm which lurked under every word she had hitherto addressed to him, and which so thinly veiled the contempt she felt for him, that occasionally even his dull perception penetrated it. Oh, how as the clearer light in which she now regarded her past behaviour fell upon each separate fault and error, did she abhor herself! with what bitter tears of unavailing contrition did she bewail the thoughts, words, and actions, which could never be recalled!—unavailing contrition! yes, unavailing as regards the irrevocable past, but the past only, for there was One who witnessed her true penitence, who has declared, in His gracious mercy, that “a broken and contrite heart He will not despise.”
How long she thus sat, reviewing and grieving over her past errors, and forming good resolutions for the future, and imploring strength from above to enable her to carry them into effect, Kate Crane knew not; but she was startled from her reverie by a knock at the house-door; and ere she had time to banish the traces of her late emotion, a light footstep bounded up the stairs, and Horace D’Almayne entered. Assuming as composed a manner as she was able, she began—
“You are an early visitor to-day, Mr. D’Almayne; so early, indeed, that Mr. Crane has not yet returned from the city.”
“I am aware of that fact already, my dear Mrs. Crane, having parted from my good friend scarcely an hour since, when I left him engaged at Lloyd’s, going into the details of his losses on the unfortunate East Indiaman. I was on my way to visit a friend in Belgravia, when a circumstance occurred which induced me to alter my destination, and take the chance of finding you disengaged; in which case I ventured to hope you would allow me a few minutes’ conversation.”
Rather surprised at his mysterious manner, though by no means so much so as if she had been unacquainted with his habit of making a mountain of any molehill he might happen to stumble upon, Kate motioned to him to be seated, resumed her own chair, and wondered what was to come next.
Probably reading as much in her expression, D’Almayne began—
“You will at once understand why I have thus presumed upon my privilege as an old friend, when I tell you that I have just met, and had a long, and I hope not entirely profitless, conversation with your brother.”
“With Fred!” exclaimed Kate, colouring with mingled surprise and annoyance, for D’Almayne was about the last person to whom she desired to confide her family troubles.
D’Almayne read her thoughts.
“Your brother,” he said, in a tone expressive of wounded feeling, “your brother, entertaining no unkind suspicions of my friendly interest, unhesitatingly confided to me the dilemma in which his inexperience has placed him, and which his want of knowledge of the world has magnified into something much more alarming than it really is. So I obtained his permission to speak to you on the subject, promising, if he would allow me to do so, that between us we should very soon devise means to relieve him from his difficulties.”
“I’m afraid then you have only prepared a fresh disappointment for the poor boy,” returned Kate. “Did he not tell you that he had already applied to me, and that I was so unfortunate as to be unable to render him any effectual assistance?”
“Surely a word from you to Mr. Crane would remove all difficulty? Believe me, you are the only person who could for a moment doubt the effect of such an appeal;” and, as he spoke, D’Almayne fixed his dark, piercing eyes upon her, as though he would read her very soul.
For a moment Kate looked down in confusion and annoyance; then her spirit rose, and calmly returning his glance, she replied—
“My brother, no doubt, wished to spare me pain, by concealing from you that I have already applied to Mr. Crane; but that, irritated against poor Fred, and vexed by the loss of this ship, my husband refused my request.”
Smarting under Mr. Crane’s unkindness, anxious and unhappy about her brother, provoked at Fred’s imprudence in admitting Horace D’Almayne to his confidence, yet clinging to the hope that her companion’s tact and knowledge of life might devise some means of extricating her brother from his difficulties, Kate forgot her usual caution, and spoke eagerly and hastily.
D’Almayne glanced at her as, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, she owned her vain appeal to her husband’s liberality—never had he seen her look so lovely; he had always admitted her statuesque grace, but now the statue had become animated, and her beauty appeared to his fascinated vision enthralling, entrancing; while the absence of the reserve she usually maintained towards him misled him and threw him off his guard. Thus, utterly sceptical as to the existence of female virtue, urged by the impulses of his warm southern blood, and deceived by his experiences of foreign society, he conceived the moment for which he had so long waited and schemed had arrived; gamester-like, he resolved to stake all on the hazard of a die; and, turning towards her, while his voice trembled with an emotion which for once was not feigned, he exclaimed passionately—
“I have witnessed long and silently, though that silence has proceeded from an effort of the strongest self-control, the mean-spirited and selfish conduct of the cold-hearted, witless imbécille to whom it is your misfortune to be allied; I have seen also, with sentiments of the warmest and most vivid admiration, the heroic endurance with which you have borne his insults—the gentle tenderness with which you have striven to conceal his faults—the noble generosity with which you have impoverished yourself to atone for his selfish parsimony. I have seen all this with feelings of the deepest indignation towards him—of the warmest, the most devoted admiration towards you. I have perceived the low, sordid spirit of the one—the beautiful angelic nature of the other; and I have afflicted myself with a vain remorse when the reflection that I was a weak, blind instrument in bringing about this incongruous, this most abhorred union, forced itself upon me—night after night have I lain sleepless, indulging in these sombre reflections. At length a thought, an idea, an inspiration, as it were, flashed across my brain, like lightning through the darkness that overwhelmed me. The laws of man change, it said; they are weak, vain, frivolous; a breath can make, a breath can alter them; but the laws of Heaven are immutable—written on human hearts, whence death alone can efface them. In the stillness of night a voice said, ‘Look within; read your own heart; what do you find written there? Is it not that a strange, sweet, yet mysterious sympathy attracts you towards her—links you to her? Does not an intuition teach you her every thought and wish? When she smiles, does not an ecstatic joy pervade your frame? When she suffers, do you not suffer also?’ I recognised the truth, delightful yet exquisitely painful; but I put it away from me. I said, ‘Our paths in life diverge—the joy of such soul-communion is not for me—I am alone in life!’ But I watched you; I saw your unhappiness increase; you required a friend—again the voice addressed me; it said, ‘Be that friend;’ and I came, and did the little I was able to aid you. I was of use to you, and for the time I was happy. Once more, this day, when your brother confided in me, the voice spoke, ‘Go, Horace,’ it exclaimed, ‘she requires you.’ It had not deceived me; I found you pale, dejected, traces of tears on your silken lashes, sorrow marked in every line of your speaking countenance—in every pose of your graceful figure; and with flashing eyes and burning cheeks you tell me of your wrongs. Again, at this moment, the voice addresses me: ‘It is in vain to strive.’ it cries, ‘you cannot silence the utterances of the heart; they may be repressed for a time, but they will make themselves heard. Listen to their dictates now. She who is part of your soul is unhappy: she seeks affection, and is repelled with insensate coldness; she requires a mind capable of appreciating and reciprocating her own, and is met by feeble incapacity; she asks for common justice—common courtesy, and encounters sordid illiberality, fretful churlishness. Oppressed by her dismal fate, she sits alone and weeps. And shall this continue?—no! break through the trammels of dull conventionality, and let heart speak to heart; tell her of your ardent sympathy—of your tender devotion; ask her to permit your boundless love to compensate for the effete indifference of her despicable partner.’”
Up to this point Kate had been so entirely taken by surprise, and so carried away by the vehemence of D’Almayne’s address, that she could scarcely collect her ideas sufficiently either to comprehend his meaning or to attempt to check him; when, however, encouraged by her silence, he exchanged his German sentimentalism for the plain speaking contained in his last sentence, Kate’s indignation could no longer be restrained, and she cut him short by exclaiming—
“Do not further degrade yourself or insult me, Mr. D’Almayne, by continuing to address to me language which I should have thought you had known me sufficiently to feel sure could excite in me no other feelings than those of contempt and disgust. Leave me, sir! I am disappointed in you; I believed you were too much of a gentleman to have presumed upon Mr. Crane’s mistaken confidence in you, and dared thus to insult me! I shall now, however, feel it my duty to enlighten him as to the true character of the man he has so injudiciously trusted.”
As Kate thus reproached him, a look of fiend-like malignity, compounded of disappointed passion, baffled rage, and an eager thirsting for revenge, passed across D’Almayne’s usually unmoved countenance; it came and went in an instant, but not so quickly as to escape Kate’s keen glance; and, from that time forth, she know that he was a man to be feared, as well as to be disliked.
The malevolent glance with which D’Almayne favoured Kate passed away in a moment, and was succeeded by his usual expression of quiet, contemptuous sarcasm.
“If you choose thus to resent the warmth of expression into which my sympathy for your trials has betrayed me,” he said, “at the same time that you inform Mr. Crane of my delinquencies, pray tell him of the attentions which you have accepted from me, as well as of the one you reject. Tell him of the scroll wrapped round the rose-stalk, asking a private interview, which you instantly granted; tell him of the ostensible visits to the portrait-painter, undertaken to conceal the secret expedition to Mrs. Leonard; tell him that this expedition was made in a carriage hired by me to convey you to meet me by appointment at a house in an obscure quarter of London; and ask him, as a man of the world, whether he imagines you went there simply out of pure benevolence, and whether that benevolence to the wife of a man whom he supposes to have defrauded him, meets with his approval; or rather, I will ask him all this when he applies to me for an explanation of my conduct.” He paused, then perceiving from Kate’s look of embarrassment and annoyance that she recognized and was disconcerted by the force of his remarks, he continued: “You now see the absurdity, as well as the danger, of threatening me. Were Mr. Crane to break with me to-morrow, it would only be the loss of a dull acquaintance—”
“Indeed!” interrupted Kate, with quiet but cutting irony “I should rather have compared it to the fact of your banker failing.”
D’Almayne’s cheeks grew pale, and his lips quivered with suppressed anger, but he continued as if she had not spoken:—
“His vengeance does not greatly alarm me. A man who can snuff a candle with a bullet at twelve paces need not fear an old gentleman!”—(he sneered as he pronounced the word)—“who probably never saw a pistol levelled in his life, and would not easily be brought to face one.” Finding that Kate made no reply, he resumed in a more conciliatory tone: “I think your quick intelligence has by this time shown you the folly of quarrelling with me; let there be truce between us. I will own that carried away by my feelings, I used language in which perhaps I was scarcely warranted; but you must remember that the blood of sunny France sparkles through my veins—that one of my parents sprang from a race, who (unlike you cold and cautious islanders), when they feel strongly, speak with warmth and ardour; and now say, is it to be peace or war between us?”
“I perceive that by my own imprudence, springing not so much from a misconception of your true character, as from a desire not to act from the dictates of what I strove to convince myself was an unfounded prejudice against you, I have so far placed myself in your power that I cannot in a moment judge whether I shall be doing right or wrong by informing my husband of your conduct towards me; but of two things be sure, first, that whatever I decide to be right, I will do; secondly, that neither your threats nor your sophistries will turn me from my purpose; for the rest, after what has occurred to-day, there can be no farther—friendship I will not call it, for it never was so—but alliance between us. I now know you, sir! and that is enough.”
Again the evil look flashed across D’Almayne’s handsome features, but so transient was it that even Kate failed to perceive it. D’Almayne’s quick wit showed him that he had already gained an advantage, which, if he could follow it up, would go far to retrieve the false, or as he considered it premature, step he had taken. If he could induce Kate to conceal the declaration he had made her, the very fact of her having done so would place her still more in his power, his schemes in regard to Mr. Crane might yet be prosecuted; and so confident was he in his own resources, that he even believed he might gain from Kate’s fears that which he began to doubt whether he should obtain from her affection. So assuming the manner of a good man suffering injustice meekly, he rose to depart, saying—
“You are now angry, and unable to regard the matter in its true light. You have confessed you are prejudiced against me, but I know you well enough to feel sure of justice at your hands; nor shall I allow this painful misunderstanding between us to cause any relaxation, on my part, of such efforts as I may be able to make towards freeing your brother from his embarrassments—do not interrupt me,” he continued, seeing Kate was about indignantly to refuse his aid, “I know what you would say—how, still mistrusting me and misinterpreting my motives, you would reject my assistance—and I would gladly save myself the pain of hearing from your lips bitter words, which at some future time you would repent having uttered. I will now leave you, nor shall I again intrude upon you until I have won, at least, your forgiveness.”
D’Almayne was an excellent actor, and as he pronounced the concluding words of the last sentence, his voice trembled with so good an imitation of the pathos of real emotion, that Kate actually glanced towards him to ascertain whether the expression of his face confirmed the idea. Unwilling, however, to weaken the effect he trusted his words had produced, he turned and quitted the room, without having afforded her the opportunity she sought for.
Mr. Crane did not return home that day, being summoned by telegraph to Liverpool,—a merchant there, who was concerned with him in the speculation for which they had chartered the Bundelcundah, East Indiaman, having, on hearing of its loss, blown out his brains. Thus Kate had no opportunity of revealing to her husband D’Almayne’s misdeeds. As soon as she found Mr. Crane had left town, she sent to her brother, intending to warn him against accepting D’Almayne’s offers of assistance, but her messenger brought back her missive, with the announcement that Mr. Marsden had quitted his lodgings. Early the next morning she received the following note:—
“Dear Kate,—You need be under no farther uneasiness on my account. My difficulties are at an end, and a career far better suited to me than the drudgery of a counting-house is afforded me. I am not at liberty to inform you to whom I am indebted for this unhoped-for assistance; but I have indeed met with a true friend in my distress, towards whom I, and all who care for my welfare, must ever feel the deepest gratitude. I am bound by an express stipulation not to reveal the name of the benefactor who has so generously come forward to assist me, even to you; but, believe me, I am not deceived this time. I long to tell you all, but my lips are sealed. I will write to my mother when I can explain more fully my future prospects. Farewell, dear Kate, my faith in human nature is restored; this is not one of the least obligations I owe to my noble-hearted friend.
“Ever yours,
“Fred Marsden.”