The return of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Frere to England had been almost simultaneous with the double catastrophe of Mr. Guyon's death and Katharine's flight. They had returned to Hester's house in Palace Gardens, and had no intention of leaving London during the winter. Gordon was excessively tired of Continental life, and had conceded to fashion rather than consulted his own inclination by spending his honeymoon out of England. Hester, who had never seen any foreign country until after her marriage, had been enchanted with every thing, and would have prolonged her stay with much pleasure, but that she had perceived her husband's weariness, and desire to find himself in England again. Gordon was too essentially sweet-tempered and good-humoured to thwart any one, or to press his own wishes unduly; but his wife was as keen of perception as she was devotedly attached to him, and she read him like a book. A glance at the page, on which incipient boredom was written, was enough for her. With admirable tact and grace she discovered a score of good and sufficient reasons for returning to England; and no one would have guessed, who saw her step gaily into the railway-train at the Embarcadère du Nord, that she was experiencing a keen disappointment, and renouncing a pleasure to which she had ardently aspired. Quiet and persistent self-will, which never failed in its object, but rarely hurt other people in attaining it, was a strong characteristic of Hester; but the stronger had come in--Love, the conqueror, the invincible--and self-will had promptly surrendered. There was a good deal of unconscious selfishness in Gordon Frere's nature--the light, airy, pleasant selfishness which is frequently combined with a large capacity for enjoyment and constitutional indolence, but which in his case would have been easily dispelled on any given occasion by a remonstrance, and never made itself offensive. To this quality his wife's excessive love was particularly calculated to minister, detrimentally to his general character; for her devotion knew no bounds. It was not unnatural that, having departed from the rule and practice of her previous life, by allowing a passion to gain possession of her, Hester should have departed from it by the widest possible divergence. It would have been touching as well as curious to watch the subjugation of the proud, calculating, intellectual woman to the love that filled her whole soul and ruled her whole life. From her wedding-day to that which saw her return to London, and her acquisition of the knowledge of Mr. Guyon's death, by a note despatched from Lady Henmarsh's half-dismantled house in Cavendish Square, on the chance of her arrival, she had never bestowed a thought on Middlemeads, on the embarrassments of Robert Streightley, or the equivocal confidence which existed between herself and Daniel Thacker. She had indeed thought much and often of Katharine--thought of her with exultation; occasionally with a touch of pity, when she satisfied her jealous, passionate soul that no remembrance of her, except in the most ordinary casual way, ever cropped up in Gordon Frere's mind. Hester was destined to learn the truth of a certain proverb about "the letting in of water;" for having opened the floodgates for the admittance of love, she had no power to stop the tide, and the tumbling waves of jealousy thundered in the distance. But, as Hester was, above all things, a reasonable woman, the danger was still far off; indeed, its foretaste was sweet. She liked to assure herself that she had no rival with her husband, whose character, in all but one or two points, she really did understand as thoroughly as she believed she understood it on all. She liked to remember that his was a light, gay--if it must be so called, shallow nature; that all traces of a former rule had passed away, and the sceptre of this kingdom was securely in her hand. How safely she would hold it! how tender and watchful her rule should be! She felt, when this great love laid its grasp upon her, as though she grew ever so many years older in its hold. She mentally compared herself with her husband, and smiled at the difference which existed between them, though her years were fewer by many than his. She utterly laid aside, she completely forgot, her hatred of Robert and Katharine--that hatred which had grown on her unperceived, which she had never deliberately fostered, but had acknowledged, nevertheless, with the strange candour in self-judgment which characterised her. She made no mistake in her estimate of her husband's feelings towards her. She did not look for more than he could give; but she knew exactly how much was comprised in that all, and she joyfully and rightly believed that she possessed it. She knew that Gordon could no more give her the same amount and intensity of love that she gave him than he could read the same books which she read, or be moved by the same impulses, the same associations of thought and feeling. She never repined at the knowledge, she never wished him other than he was; his handsome, refined face was a constant delight to her; she sunned herself in the light and warmth of his joyous, kind, careless, life-enjoying disposition; she watched him with an intense secret pride; in short, she loved him in all the depth and strength of that word of inexhaustible meaning. He loved her, in return, honestly, heartily, and after his careless, joyous fashion. He thought her very handsome and "deuced clever," and was fond of mentioning the latter article of his creed. "Knows every thing, my dear old fellow, and reads every thing, and can talk of every thing; not a bit blue, you know--not in the least; can't bear that sort of thing. Not a bit of show-off in her, I assure you, but a first-rate head, and a splendid woman of business."
As Gordon Frere had, in acquiring wealth and its responsibilities, by no means acquired a taste for business of any kind, and had developed no practical talents whatever, except for getting out of life all the enjoyment attainable by large means, youth, high spirits, and a splendid constitution, it was fortunate for the prosperity and good management of the Frere ménage that its mistress merited the commendation he delighted to bestow. They were both singularly free from littleness of character; and there was not the least danger of jarring susceptibilities being disturbed by the fact that Hester owned all the wealth, and kept the management of affairs in her own hands. Gordon Frere was not a man who could understand the petty pride and that kind of egotism which make a man married to a rich woman perpetually uneasy because she is rich, and perpetually desirous of reminding her and the world that he is the legal proprietor of herself and her money. Hester Frere was not the sort of person to understand that, having given him herself, a woman could estimate her money more highly in the transaction, and aim at keeping her husband mindful of the secondary and comparatively insignificant concession. In the case of these two persons, therefore, wealth had fewer snares than it ordinarily spreads to insure the troubling of peace, and the destruction of self-respect, in marriages of this kind.
It was Gordon's happy, pleasant way to like every body, instinctively, and to be difficult to persuade into disliking them, even when he had discovered for himself, or been convinced by others, that certain persons were not estimable or admirable. Thus, he liked Mr. Thacker, and never thought whether he was not just a little vulgar and presumptuous; whether there was not something about him suggestive of a pronounced talent for scheming, and a remarkably low estimate of his fellow-creatures. He liked Ellen Streightley, and never asked himself whether she was not rather silly, and did not border on the tiresome as a companion. The nearest approach he had ever made to such an idea was when he proudly thought of the advantages which Ellen must derive from Hester's society, and concluded that it was "a splendid thing for her, by Jove!" It did not occur to him to remember that his wife's intimate friend was Mrs. Streightley's sister-in-law, and that it was presumable that his once-adored Katharine's influence was also available for her benefit. He did not feel so cordially towards Lady Henmarsh as might have been desired, it is true; but then he had known her in the old times; he had habitually spoken of her as "the old cat;" he had prided himself immensely on detecting under the veneer of fashion the ingrained vulgarity of her mind, and, like all persons when exercising a talent which they possess in an infinitesimal degree, he was very proud of his perspicacity in this instance, and felt that he was bound, in consistency, never to like Lady Henmarsh. "It isn't as if she really cared about Hester," he would say to himself, or to the friend with whom he was almost as confidential; "but she doesn't, you know; she only cares to make Hester give parties for her purposes--parties by which the old cat pays off all her own obligations; and to have the use of Hester's carriage, and the advantage of Hester's popularity--for every one likes my wife.--I understand her. I'm a sharp fellow in some things, dear old boy, though I never could take to pens and parchment, and look wise and bilious, like you." And Charley Yeldham thought what an enviable nature was this young man's, and what a pity it would be to disturb his serenity by any revelations, supposing it ever came within his power to make them. Perhaps it may appear that Yeldham's cogitations were needless, and that Frere's was not the kind of serenity to be disturbed by any discovery which only touched the past; but this was not so. The one or two points on which Hester did not know her husband's character were precisely those on which his old chum and faithful friend understood him best.
No unmanly laziness, no idle abandonment to the mere surface follies of existence, dictated Gordon Frere's ignorance of the details of the management of his wife's fortune. He knew she was, as he said, "a deuced clever woman, and a first-rate hand at business," and he simply acted, having no meanness in him, on his belief. He never thought at all about the nature of the investments in which his wife's money was placed, neither did he ever think about her former relations with the Streightleys; and had he known that Robert was Hester's debtor to the large amount, which she had advanced to him through Thacker, he would not have seen in the transaction any thing beyond the merest ordinary matter of business.
Gordon Frere was excessively shocked by the intelligence of Mr. Guyon's death. Not that he had any regard for him; indeed, rather because he had not, and because he knew him better (though far from thoroughly) than most of Mr. Guyon's friends, who had not had "business" transactions with the departed gentleman, knew him; and such a death, come to after such a fashion, had a grim and painful effect on a mind which was not callous or irreverent, only frivolous and untrained.
Hester had only waited to impart the intelligence conveyed by Lady Henmarsh's note to her husband before she went to offer her condolences to her ci-devant chaperone, who had urgently requested to see her. But in her manner of telling him there was something that jarred upon Gordon's sensibility. Coldness and curiosity were in her tone, and he did not like it. The event was terrible in itself, and had terrible meaning to Lady Henmarsh and to Katharine Streightley. Gordon thought honestly of the latter as his wife's friend, not as the woman he had loved; and he winced at the little touch of unwomanliness which Hester betrayed. He understood her very incompletely; and though he knew she loved him, he did not know that she loved no one in the world but himself--and herself. The good-natured fellow did not get over the novel sense of annoyance with his wife easily; and to divert the pain of it, he thought he would go and look in on Yeldham, and talk over things with him. But he did not succeed in this. When he reached the Temple, he found Yeldham hopelessly immersed in a consultation with an inexorable solicitor; and the fiat went forth, in a whisper at the door, "heavy case, my dear fellow, and quite impossible to spare five minutes; see you to-morrow, any time." So Gordon went away, in sufficient discontent, and less in love with law and hard work than ever; and so it fell out that not from him, but from Robert, did Yeldham hear the news of Mr. Guyon's death, and that the next interview between the friends was destined to be of a painful and memorable nature.
Hester did not see Gordon Frere, after her visit to Lady Henmarsh, until late in the afternoon; and then they were not alone, so that there was no conversation between them on the additional circumstances which had transpired. In the mean time Hester had seen Thacker, and made communications to him of which the result has been shown in the preceding chapter. Of all these circumstances Gordon Frere was profoundly ignorant. He had left a card for Mrs. Streightley during the afternoon, and made the customary inquiry, to which the well-taught servant had made the invariable answer; and Gordon had turned away from the door without learning that a second calamity, infinitely outweighing the first, had fallen upon the household. When he saw his wife again, she was engaged with visitors; and though he remarked that her face was somewhat flushed, and that she was less gracefully easy in her manner than usual, he imputed these uncommon appearances to the agitating nature of her visit to Lady Henmarsh, and he was rather pleased to think she had not taken the dreadful occurrence, which had affected him powerfully, quite so easily as he had at first supposed. They were not alone at dinner, and Aunt Lavinia, in the pleasure of seeing her niece again after her absence, had affectionately accompanied her to her dressing-room; so that she had had many hours in which to think over the events of the day before she had an opportunity of discussing them with Gordon. During these hours Hester's bad angel had surely been in the ascendant; and Hester's good sense had failed her for once, in the temptation of success, in the consciousness of power where she had been powerless and of superiority where she had been dominated. For once she lost sight of that which was generally the first, the greatest object of her attention, her husband's approbation, and made the first false step in a career which had hitherto been marked by circumspection.
Gordon ran lightly up the stairs, after he had carefully consigned Aunt Lavinia to the carriage and the special care of the servants, and found his wife standing by the fire, whose light was shining on the folds of her velvet dress, and on the few well-chosen jewels she wore. There was a flush of excitement in her face, which added to its beauty, but which made Gordon look at her with surprise. Before he could ask her if any thing had happened, she said, in an eager voice:
"Have you heard the news?"
"No; what news? Any thing more about Mr. Guyon?"
"No; there's only one more event possible for him, and it is to take place on Thursday. Have you heard nothing of the Streightleys?"
"No; I called there to-day. What's the matter, Hester? is any thing wrong with Katharine?" His face was pale, and his voice hurried. Hester started at the word. Why did she not remember; why did she not take warning? Who can tell? It was but another illustration of "the letting in of water." In a harsh voice, through her set teeth, she answered him:
"Yes, there is something wrong with 'Katharine,' as you call her--something very wrong. The bubble has burst--she has run away from her husband!"
"Good God!" was Gordon's only answer; but the tone in which he uttered the exclamation angered Hester, and hardened her.
"Yes," she went on, "there is no doubt about it; I have it on the best authority--Mr. Streightley's own. She has left her husband at a nice time, too--on a proper filial occasion--when her father's dead body is unburied."
Gordon looked at her; and had she been wise she would have taken warning, she would have seen the dawning of a suspicion that she was different to that he had believed her, in that look, and paused before she flung into the gulf of a new and cruel passion the gem of all her treasures, whose pricelessness she knew well. But she was not wise, and she mistook the meaning of that look; she did not know that its sorrow and its misgiving were for her; she gave them to another, in her excited fancy, and she rushed upon her ruin.
"You are deeply concerned, Gordon, are you not, and very anxious to learn all the particulars? You shall hear all I know." He was standing close to her as she spoke, and they were looking steadily at one another.
"I am indeed, Hester," he replied mildly. "I trust there is some terrible mistake; tell me what you have heard."
"There is no mistake; Mrs. Streightley has run away from her husband, leaving a letter for him, like the young ladies in the plays, who elope with a lover when 'Gardy' wants to marry them; only in this case there is no lover, I believe, or he is so very well hidden that nobody knows who he is."
Still Gordon looked at her, but now there was relief in his face. "Thank God there is no infamy in this," he said; "though I deserve to be shot for having believed for a moment there could be infamy in any act of Katharine Guyon's."
"Katharine Streightley's, you mean," said Hester with a sneer; "it strikes me there is some little infamy in her conduct as it is, though there may be no lover in the case."
"No," said Gordon Frere, in a tone of manly decision, "there is no such thing. Misery and misunderstanding, possibly mischief, there may, there must be, but no infamy, no disgrace. I will never hear it said or hinted. This will be set right, I am convinced."
"You are as sanguine as you are chivalrous, Gordon," said Hester; "but there is a little difficulty in setting such matters right, either in the private or the public sense. Mr. Streightley is very generous, we all know, and he gave his wife the love she did not marry him for, as well as the money she did; but he may have his wrongs as well as his faults, and----"
"Why are you so hard and bitter, Hester?" said Gordon, in a quick, unsteady voice. "How have these people offended you? They have always been your friends, have they not? I thought you had known them intimately for years, and always received kindness from them--I am sure you have told me so--and now you speak of their trouble in this sneering way. When you told me of poor old Guyon's death, I was shocked at your want of feeling; and now, God forgive me, but I am not able to resist the suspicion there is something horribly like gladness in your heart. How can this be? What is it all? What has Robert Streightley, what has Katharine done, that you should regard their misery as you do?" He took her hand gently; he looked at her with pity in his clear blue eyes. She saw the "pity," and it maddened her; she did not see that he was thinking of her as much as of that other whom she hated. What! he had reproved her, and on Katharine's account; the first cloud that had obscured the glorious light of her wedded happiness, the first ripple on the ocean of her unimaginable bliss, had come through her! In an instant, in one pang of exceeding agony, her fancy transported her to the gay garden where she had first seen this man, who was now hers; this man whom she loved with all the intensity of a nature whose power and passion she herself was only beginning to understand. In one of those terrible spasms of feeling, which, when we think of them afterwards, make us understand the mystery of eternity, she lived through one memorable day again. She saw the sunshine and the flowers; she felt the perfumed air; she heard the strains of music; she saw the flitting crowd, the gay groups, the fluttering dresses, the rich colours, the young faces; she heard the sounds of talking and laughter, and the soft rustling and flapping of the flower-tents; she saw Katharine and her party, Mr. Guyon and Streightley, and Yeldham, and she saw Gordon Frere; he was walking beside Katharine, and looking at her as lovers look: had he ever so looked at her, his wife,--she who loved him with a love in which she now knew there were untold possibilities of suffering, she who lived only to love him? In the instant during which this vision filled her brain, and wrung her heart, Hester Frere lived through hours of anguish; and yet there was not a perceptible pause between her husband's question and her reply. She spoke it with her hand in his, with her eyes on his, with her face growing paler and harder with every word:
"You do well to ask me such questions," she said; "you do well to suspect me of such feelings. This is as it should be; this is what I should have expected. Perhaps you can answer for Mrs. Streightley's purpose in this flight; perhaps you know why she found her home intolerable, and the bondage into which she sold herself for money unendurable. You answer glibly for her, there is no infamy in her flight--indeed, are you sure there was no infamy in her marriage? Are you sure this is the first time she has deceived Robert Streightley?" She loosed her hand from his hold, and sat down, panting for breath. Gordon still stood, and looked at her; but his face had darkened, and an angry look had come into his eyes. He spoke very slowly, and cold fear came upon Hester, as he said,
"Explain yourself, if you please. Such unwomanly, such base insinuations shall have no reply from me. Say what you think,--ask what you wish to know, plainly; but first, let me say this--that I have been utterly mistaken in you; that I believed you a woman incapable of a meanness, and honoured you as such----"
"Yes," said Hester, in a voice so low that it was hardly audible, "honoured me!--I believe you; but you loved her. Yes; don't start and stammer, and seek to deny it," for Gordon, in sheer astonishment, had started, and tried to speak. "It is useless; I know all. I know how she played with you, and jilted you, and threw you over for the rich man, whom she despised. Do you think because I was only a music-teacher, and not 'in society,' I never heard what society talked about, and had no eyes to see? I tell you, I read your secret and hers the first time I ever saw your face; and I read it again, when I, the new heiress, and the 'great prize of the season,' went up the staircase at Mrs. Pendarvis's ball with you, and she came down with the millionnaire for whom she had discarded you. I don't know why this woman has left her husband, but I can guess; perhaps you do know. I don't care."
"Hush, Hester!" said Frere, and his tone forced her into silence. "Beware lest you reveal to me more of your nature than I can endure. Never venture to speak such words to me again. I am ignorant of Katharine's movements, as you know as well as I do; but I would stake my life on her honour, and I trust her motives, as I trust her actions. If there be, as there must be, a serious misunderstanding between her and Streightley, I pity him with all my heart. I know little of him; but as I have come to know that little, I have learned to respect and esteem him. I will help him to the utmost of my power."
"Will you?" said Hester, with a sneer. "Your will and your power are both likely to be taxed. Mrs. Streightley timed her departure well; she had got all there was to be had out of her great marriage. Robert Streightley is a ruined man!"
Gordon Frere turned a shade paler as he said, quietly,
"Is this true, Hester? are you sure?"
"It is perfectly true, and I am perfectly sure," she replied.
"Then how do you know it?"
She laughed a low quiet laugh.
"Ah, that is my secret," she said.
"So be it," he replied. "And now, understand me. You have taunted me with my love for Katharine Guyon, and her rejection of me. I avow both. I loved her dearly, and I believed she loved me. I asked her to be my wife, and she rejected me. I don't question her motives; I only know that I suffered the keenest misery in consequence. But I say to you, as I would say to any other, who dared to accuse me of sullying the purity of Katharine Streightley by an unauthorised word or look or wish, that it is a base and dastardly lie. She has been to me, since her marriage, as distant as a star,--an object of admiration and reverence indeed, but no more, as she never can be less. Now--I would do any thing in the world to prove to her, and to her husband, that I am the warmest of her friends and the most devoted of her servants.--And now, Hester, one word of ourselves. You are not a foolish woman, speaking random words and swayed by every gust of temper. I presume you have not so spoken to-night; and I give all you have said its weight of sober seriousness. I think you would have done better to have left these words unsaid; but remember this, they can never be unsaid now, and the fruit they are likely to bear will be no sweeter to your taste than to mine. I am going to see Yeldham in the morning, and will breakfast with him. Good-night."
So he left her, and she let him go without a word. The time crept on, and still she sat beside the fire, with the flickering light upon her jewels and her velvet dress, with her dark eyes stern and fixed, and her hands clasped and motionless. It was not until a servant came to ask if the lights might be put out, that she roused herself, and went upstairs to her room. There she found her maid, shivering and yawning in the protracted weariness of waiting.
She dismissed the woman at once, who went out of the room, not without having looked sharply at her mistress. Hester caught the look, and when she was alone, went to her dressing-table, and gazed fixedly at the reflection of her face in the glass.
"Yes," she said; "I am to lose that too, I suppose--power over my feelings first, then over my words, lastly over my features,--and become the weak thing I have always despised. Fool! fool!"
For many weeks after Mr. Guyon's death the inexorable pressure of business, increased by a commercial crisis long impending and now arrived in full severity, obliged Robert Streightley to put his sorrow as far as possible from his thoughts during business hours, and bring all his intellect to grapple with the conduct of his affairs. That the old house of Streightley and Son was in any thing but a prosperous condition; that its cool, calculating manager had rushed wildly into almost impossibly beneficial speculations,--was now pretty generally talked of, and various reasons were assigned for Robert's conduct. Some people, of course, roundly stated that they had never believed in him at all; that all his previous success had been the result of luck, or "flukes;" and that he was merely finding his proper level. Others lamented that spirit of flunkeydom which had led a sharp fellow like Streightley to marry the daughter of an insolvent West-end swell, who had spent all his money in reckless extravagance, and, it was said, had bolted from him now the money was gone. Few--very few--had a word of pity for him; he had been too successful for that; and though during the long years of his triumph he had always been generous and kindhearted to a degree, in the hour of his fall this was not remembered; and it was not even allowed, by those who knew nothing of his private history, that he "took his punishment" well, or that he exhibited a proper pluck under his defeat and downfall.
It mattered little to Robert Streightley what was thought of him even in the City now. The mainspring of his life was broken; she, for whom up to the very last he had plotted and schemed and speculated, had left him. All his efforts now--and he struggled hard--were made to save the reputation of the house. Hour after hour did he and Mr. Fowler spend in going over the books, looking at lists of outstanding debts, the recovery of which was hopeless, and liabilities which it was impossible to evade. Hour after hour did the result of their work show them the hopelessness of their position, and the fact that the final crash was every day drawing nearer. Poor old Mr. Fowler was a pitiable spectacle; to him the fact that "the house" was in difficulties was infinitely more distressing than the thought that with it would go all the savings of years, from time to time invested with it, and all chance of that comfortable pension on retirement on which he could fairly have reckoned.
After Katharine's departure, Robert Streightley seemed to have struck his flag and given up the battle, so far as his business was concerned; endeavouring only to steer his wrecked fortune safely into port. This, notwithstanding all his losses and the bad position of his affairs, he might have been able to do, but that, within three months of the catastrophe, he was obliged to make a payment of five thousand pounds to Mr. Daniel Thacker, as Robert imagined, but in reality to Mrs. Gordon Frere. Streightley had found Thacker hitherto very kindly disposed towards him, and after some consideration he wrote, stating that the security was as good as at the time of the loan; that he would pay the interest, but that it would be a great convenience to him if the repayment of the capital could be postponed for a few months. To this application he had had a reply from Thacker, stating that he would turn it over in his mind, and write again in a few days.
"Turning it over in his mind" meant, of course, consulting his principal. So, as soon as he had sent his answer to Robert's note, Mr. Thacker drove to Palace Gardens, and had the honour of a private interview with the lady of the mansion, in her boudoir. Hester was looking very handsome, as Mr. Thacker thought, though there was a little too much set intensity about her lips for that gentleman's rather full-flavoured taste. After some ordinary conversation, Hester said:
"And now, Mr. Thacker, state the special business of which you wrote to me, and which has brought you here to-day."
"It is one of Streightley's matters, Mrs. Frere. He had, if you recollect, some five thousand and odd pounds from us some months ago, for which we hold as security the assignment of the house in Portland Place, and one or two other minor deeds. That money is, I see, due on the third of next month--a fortnight hence, that is to say; and I have received a letter from Mr. Streightley--who, of course, only knows me in the matter--asking for a renewal of the loan on payment of the interest, and on the continuance of the same security."
"Have you that letter with you?"
"I have."
"Be good enough to let me see it."
As he handed it to her, Thacker said,
"I know that I have no right even to make a suggestion in this matter; but I think, Mrs. Frere, that unless you have any special objection, you might comply with his prayer. The security is undeniable; and Streightley has been so much knocked about lately, poor fellow, in several ways, you know, that----"
"It is impossible for me to read the letter while you talk, Mr. Thacker," said Hester firmly.
Thacker bowed, and turned very red; and Mrs. Frere, leaning back in her chair, opened the note and applied herself to its perusal. She remembered the bold firm handwriting, which she had first seen,--ah, how long since it seemed!--in little formal notes addressed to herself, or enclosing young-ladyish scraps from Ellen. She recollected how she had lingered over those notes in the old days, weaving little romances of the future, in which their writer played a very different part from the one now filled by him. There was not an atom of tenderness in these recollections; on the contrary, as Mrs. Frere thought of the difference between her day-dreams and what had actually occurred, a bitter smile flitted across her face; and as she read the letter her lips were set tighter than ever.
She read it through twice carefully, then folded it up and handed it to Mr. Thacker, saying very calmly,
"I cannot agree to that proposition." It was Mr. Thacker's rule in life never to betray astonishment at any thing. He did not depart from his rule in the present instance; but he must have involuntarily raised his bushy eyebrows a little higher than usual, for Mrs. Frere said to him,
"Did you expect any other answer?"
This was a home question, and Mr. Thacker objected to being called upon to answer home questions. He had not been exactly sure of the state of Mrs. Frere's feelings towards Streightley (of the feeling with which Miss Hester Gould had regarded the same individual, it will be recollected, he had arrived at a perfect knowledge), and he knew that her reply would be entirely governed by them. So he contented himself with saying:
"It is a mere business question with me. You do not require the money elsewhere,--at least so far as I know,--and the security is undeniable. As to the sentimental view of the matter, I know from the experience of that morning at Middlemeads that you are not likely to be biassed by any silliness of that kind. Only, you see, things have changed since then, and poor Streightley is in a very different position now."
"I don't think we need discuss Mr. Streightley's altered position, except so far as this proposition is concerned; and on that you have my decision, Mr. Thacker," said Mrs. Frere coldly.
"And that decision is final? I shall probably be asked to reverse it, and therefore may as well have my cue," said Thacker.
"Quite final. I prefer not to discuss Mr. Streightley or his affairs for the future."
"As you please," returned Mr. Thacker; and then he excused himself for his abrupt departure on the plea of business, and took his leave.
Mr. Thacker had not felt comfortable in Mrs. Frere's society of late; there was an alteration in her manner towards him--a gradual withdrawal of confidence, as he took it; but which was, in reality, only preoccupation of mind, and which Mr. Thacker could very ill brook. Nor were his relations with Gordon Frere at all of a satisfactory kind; that gentleman being accustomed to speak to his wife of Mr. Thacker as "your Hebraic agent, my dear," and to his friends of the same gentleman as "a Jew fellow, who's my wife's trustee, or something."
As Mr. Thacker lay back in his brougham on his way to the City, he fell into a fit of musing over all that had occurred. He drew poor Robert's letter from his pocket-book and read it through; then laid it down on his lap, and recalled the scene that had taken place--recalled Mrs. Frere's words and looks at certain parts of the interview; and said to himself:
"She's a wonder; she certainly is a wonder. Sticks to what she has made up her mind to like a leech; and as to moving her to pity, you might as well clap a blister on the Monument. I'm certain I'm right in my old opinion that she played for Streightley, and that she was as wild as possible when he did not see it, but married that pretty Miss Guyon instead. She'll never forgive him. And the next thing will be, that he won't be able to pay up the first instalment either; and then she'll have Middlemeads. Yes; and I shall have helped her to it too. Well, it must have come, I suppose, in the long-run, even if he had pulled through for a little; but I fancy this will smash him up at once. He must sell the house; that will get wind, and then--by Jove, poor fellow! I'm afraid it's all u-p!" And Mr. Thacker looked and felt much more sorry than might have been supposed. The next day he found it a very difficult and unpleasant task to write to Messrs. Streightley and Son, telling them that, "owing to circumstances over which he had no control," it would be impossible for him to comply with their request, but that he trusted, &c. However, there was no help for it; so, on the receipt of this note, Robert had an interview with Thacker; and within a week the house in Portland Place was stuck all over with bills, announcing the sale of the furniture and of the lease at an early date.
Perhaps during the whole of his trouble this period immediately antecedent to the sale in Portland Place was the most distressing to Robert Streightley. With the exception of an old woman and her daughter--mysterious people who lived in the kitchens, and were supposed to "do for the good gentleman"--every body had left the house but himself; and he used to roam through the various rooms, thinking of Katharine and of her associations with each. Not merely
"In hanging robe and vacant ornament"
did she present herself to his thoughts, but each article of furniture spoke of her taste; wherever his eye fell he was reminded of her. For many weeks after her departure, he had kept her dressing-room locked, and retained the key in his own possession. This room opened into her boudoir, and there, on her writing-table, long after dust had gathered thick upon its leaves, lay her blotting-book open, as she had left it; on it a note just commenced. He had been requested by Katharine's maid to compare the jewels which she had left behind with the list in his own possession, and he had done so. Then he replaced them all, as they had been when she turned away from all the luxury with which he had surrounded her. Often in the evenings, his dreary task of battling with the rising tide of ruin done, he would visit the forsaken shrine of his idol, and feel the pang of her absence all the more keenly for these mute evidences that it was all real, that she had once been there, where silence and emptiness now dwelt. When the blow fell, and he knew the house and furniture must be sold, his wife's rooms were the last to be dismantled. With his own hands, and alone, he packed up every article of her personal property for safe keeping, wherever he should be. When he entered her dressing-room to commence his task, he caught sight of his own reflection in the looking-glass doors of a large wardrobe, and started to see how worn and pale he looked. Some of her dresses were hanging up in the first wardrobe which he opened, and, obedient to an impulse, he caught hold of one of them and kissed it, and went staggering blindly from the room.
A few days before the time announced for the sale in Portland Place the commercial crisis so long dreaded swooped down upon London. Continental politics, unsettled since '48, had been seething and simmering, and daily the aspect of affairs had become more bellicose. Big German States looked at little German States with longing eyes and watering mouths, and consoled themselves by the reflection that if awkward and powerful neighbours snapped at them and went off with a mouthful, they could revenge themselves on smaller fry. Italy moaned in her sleep, tormented by the old but unfulfilled dream of freedom from the Alps to the Adriatic; and France and Russia were looking on expectant. Things in the City had for some time had what is called "a downward tendency." Consols were at 82, and French Rentes lower than they had been known for years. People shook their heads at Spanish Passives, and Egyptian Scrip was at a discount. One of the great discount houses, the Brotherly Bound--formed out of the old firm of Ready, Rowdy, and Dibbs--had recently failed (partly on account of the old partners having taken all their capital out, partly on account of all the new capital which was brought in having been spent by the managing directors in giving banquets to the aristocracy), and the shareholders in similar concerns were beginning to be seriously alarmed. Under the alarm of shareholders, managers drew in their horns, and talked of limiting their business, refused all questionable paper--in which they had been dealing wholesale--and looked not too well pleased at good bills, such as they had never had before. There was gloom on the Stock Exchange, and Clapham dinner-parties were, if possible, duller than usual. No actual outbreak yet though, and chance of peace, so the papers said. If war could only be averted, the crisis would pass. The crisis! it was on them as they spoke. At that moment the clerks in Lothbury were reading off a telegraphic message, containing the few words spoken by the Emperor to a provincial mayor; and when those words appeared in print, it was known that war was meant, and three of the largest establishments in the City suspended payment that afternoon. Up went the Bank rate of discount, and the panic commenced.
These events happened late in the afternoon of a bright spring day, so immediately before the cessation of business, that they were only known to those actually concerned in the City; and it was not until the next morning that the general public was apprised of all that had happened. The news sprawled over the placards of the newspapers in the biggest typo; the news-boys at the suburban omnibuses and railway stations were "sold out" at once; people rushed to tell their friends what had happened; the panic spread to all stock- and shareholders, and even to the depositors in banks. Then towards noon the City began to be filled with a set of people to whom its ways were strange, and who were unfamiliar with its customs. Elderly maiden ladies and rich widows from prim Peckham paradises; old boys, club bucks and fogies, from Bury Street or St. Alban's Place lodgings, who had little annuities on which they lived; artists and actors hurrying down to see the special stockbrokers in whom they implicitly believed; newspaper reporters on the look-out for matter from which to concoct a sensation article; mooners and loungers of every kind, were blocking up Lombard Street and pouring into Cornhill. The old-established banks never quivered for an instant; wild customers brandishing cheques rushed up to the counter, and felt abashed as they were met by the calmest clerks, who, without a hair of their parting or a fold of their cravat displaced, asked them in the most mellifluous voices "how they would have it?" the copper shovels plunged into the drawers, and came out, as usual, full of sovereigns; the forefinger of the clerks duly moistened counted off rolls of notes with the accustomed precision. "Panic?" they seemed to say; "pooh! it must be something more than panic that can affect us."
But three or four of the smaller houses, which had been battling for months with the exigencies of the times, found it impossible to hold on any longer, and succumbed--amongst them the house of Streightley and Son. No stone had been left unturned, no effort untried; but the state of the money-market was such that it was found impossible to realise the securities which they held; and at length, bowed down with despair, old Mr. Fowler wrote with his own hand the notice, that, "owing to the crisis in the money-market having caused a run on the house, and having failed to procure advances on the securities, or obtain the slightest temporary assistance, we find it necessary to suspend our payments." The notice went on to say that the step had been taken with the view to protect as far as possible the interest of the friends of the firm, whose forbearance was confidently relied on, and added, that the books had been placed in the hands of Messrs. Addison and Tottle, and that the early realisation of a satisfactory dividend was anticipated.
It was not to be expected that such an old-established firm could fail without plenty of comment. They talked over "Streightley's smash" that day at City conferences, on the flags of 'Change, and the Gresham Club; and many and various were the opinions expressed.
"'Protect as far as possible the interest of their friends!'" said an indignant merchant, who, when first starting in commerce, had received the greatest assistance from Robert Streightley's father. "Like their d--d impudence! What do they mean by that?"
"Better have protected their friends' principal, and not minded the interest, eh, Jenkinson?" said the wag of Capel Court.
"I'm afraid that the realisation of the satisfactory dividend is all bunkum," said a third. "Lucky if we get fourpence in seven years, I should say."
"It's a good thing old Streightley can't come out of his grave and see this," said a white-bearded patriarch; "he was of the old school--slow and sure."
"Deuced slow and not very sure," said Ralph Elgood, the Rupert of the Stock Exchange. "Bob Streightley's a thundering good fellow, but has been hitting out wildly of late, and now he feels it."
"Nonsense; hitting out wildly!" said young Porunglow, junior partner (of three weeks' standing) of Shaddock, Porunglow, Quaver, and Porunglow, great West-Indian merchants, who had been three months in business, and who frequented the vortex of West-end society. "Streightley might have gone on all right if he had not married old Guyon's daughter; a splendid gal, who made the tin fly like--like old boots! Thundering fine parties they had, sir. None of the Belgravian nobs did it up browner in the way of foreign singers, and Edgington, and Coote and Tinney, and real flowers, and all that kind of thing. I s'pects it's that that's settled Streightley's hash."
"I shall take deuced good care to attend the meeting of creditors," said the first speaker; "and unless the personal expenses are decidedly moderate, I shall take the opportunity of saying a few words on that subject."
This was the tone in which the matter was talked over in the City, and then the talkers turned to the discussion of other things. Of the firm of Streightley and Son nothing soon remained, save the name on the door-posts in Bullion Lane: the winding-up and the meeting of the creditors were duly reported in the City Intelligence; and shortly afterwards a new firm took the old house, and the erasure of the name from the doors and of the memory of the firm from their friends were almost simultaneous.
So there was a smash in Bullion Lane and a sale at Portland Place, and Robert Streightley, the quondam "City magnate," the merchant-prince, had lost his place among rich men, of consequence to mankind and human affairs; and had returned to his former quiet life in his mother's suburban house (for her income had happily been secured against the vicissitudes of business), and had not even begun to "look about him;" but was stunned and silent under the reiterated shocks of calamity.
His mother and sister had taken the intelligence of his ruin as most women do take the tidings of a calamity in which the affections are not concerned--that is to say, quietly and resignedly. If so many other persons had not also been ruined, it would have been much harder to bear, because then inconsiderate, hasty people might have blamed Robert; but as it was, he was only one of many; and they thought about the matter much as they would have thought about a war in Russia, or a revolution in Venetia, the rinderpest, or a railway accident.
As for Robert, he had little personal feeling in the affair. Poverty or wealth made little difference to him. He could have faced the one with courage and confidence, had Katharine remained with him, and bid him grow rich again for her sake; he had valued the other only because it had won her. And now the money which had enabled him to do the evil he had done was gone, and the wife it had purchased was gone; and days had melted into weeks, and weeks into months, and brought no word or sign of her. No language can tell how Robert suffered during all the time that his attention was externally claimed by his business; with what agony of hope deferred he would ask Yeldham, day after day, if there was any chance of discovering her place of retreat. Foremost in Robert Streightley's memory was the mind-picture of his desolate home; keenest of all his torturing thoughts was the idea of his cherished one, so daintily reared, now perhaps exposed to privation or absolute want. Compared with the horror of this feeling, the disgrace of his failure, the loss of his City position, which at another time would in themselves have been sufficient to crush him, now fell upon him with lightness--the world thought with extraordinary lightness--for such a sensitive man. But Yeldham, who alone was in his confidence, knew what were the secret yearnings of his heart. "O God! if we could only find her, Charley; if I could only see her once again, only hear her say she forgave me, I think I'd be content to die, and slip out of it all."
The inquiries which Yeldham had instituted in every possible quarter had all been without result, and already many weeks had elapsed, when one morning Robert received a letter from Mrs. Stanbourne, to whom he had written immediately on Katharine's departure, but from whom, up to that time, he had received no reply. He had had no exact knowledge of her address, and his inquiries had elicited no more precise indication than "Rome;" so he had no resource but waiting--with little patience indeed, and but poorly rewarded, for the letter ran thus: