CHAPTER VI.
SHATTERED HOPES.
It would be as useless as unpleasant to dilate on Mr. Heriton’s disappointment and anger when Florence related the issue of her visit to Lieutenant Mason. He had anticipated so much from the interview that his vexation was excessive. Perhaps he scarcely acknowledged to himself the whole of the motives which influenced him when he insisted that his daughter should be the bearer of his note; but certain it is that he had secretly hoped much from the effect that he expected Florence’s beauty and grace would have upon the gay and dissipated lieutenant.
His angry speeches, full of childish petulance, were heard in pitying silence, for Florence clearly saw what the end must be, and in her deep compassion for the utter wreck of his hopes forgot her annoyance at the folly with which he had suffered himself to be duped by every knave with whom he came in contact. But her forbearing affection would not calm his restless misery, and when two days elapsed without Lieutenant Mason fulfilling his promise of calling or writing, Mr. Heriton took to his bed, worn out with suspense and anxiety.
“You must go to him again, my darling,” he said imploringly, as Florence stood by his bedside, trying to soothe him into a calmer mood. “Don’t draw back and look at me so! I must know how I am situated with him. If I were but young and strong as I used to be, I would take him by the throat and compel him to refund the money. Go to him, Florence. He is making thousands by this company; he has acknowledged as much more than once; and our pitiful hundreds are nothing in his eyes. Go and bid him return them. I know of a better investment, and you shall yet have your legacy doubled, my poor child.”
“Dear papa, have patience!” pleaded his daughter. “He may come yet. If not, were it not better to submit ourselves to the loss?”
“Pshaw! You have preached these words to me till I am sick of hearing you! Go to Lieutenant Mason. At such an early hour as this he must be at home; and if you choose to persevere, I am sure you will be able to see him.”
“But, dear papa, remember how uselessly I strove before,” said Florence, shrinking from the hateful task.
He started up in bed, every limb quivering with rage.
“Ungenerous girl, have you no feeling for me? Will you let me lie here and die with the anguish and misery of such uncertitude? But I am a fool to ask you this. What do you care for my sufferings? If you dared you would tell me, as my sister Margaret does, that they are my own fault. Leave the room, that I may dress, and do my errand myself!”
“You are too weak to attempt it, sir,” cried Florence, restraining him as he was about to rise. “Only tell me what you wish me to say, and I will go.”
Pacified by this assurance, he gave her ample directions; and, hurrying on her hat and mantle, she trod the way to the Albany once more. She would not think of herself or of the annoyance she underwent on the former occasion, but passed steadily on, intent only upon getting such an explanation from the lieutenant as should set the vexed question of the money at rest forever.
“He will palter with me, perhaps,” she said to herself, “or try to put me off with vague promises, as he has done poor papa; but I must be quietly firm, and refuse to be satisfied with anything but the plain facts of the case. Papa said I was not persevering enough before. He shall not have to say this again. For his sake I will be wary, and obstinate even to rudeness.”
Her courage rose with the occasion, and when her tap at the outer door of the chambers was answered with a careless “Come in,” she stepped forward resolutely.
The servant of Lieutenant Mason was sitting at the table, looking over some accounts. He stared at her insolently, but neither rose nor offered her a seat.
“Your master has not fulfilled his promise of visiting or writing to us,” said Florence. “I will thank you to tell him that I am here. I will not detain him long, but my business is too urgent to be delayed again.”
The man dipped his pen in the ink, and answered, with an impertinent sneer:
“Dear me! Ladies are always in such a hurry that everything must serve their turn. But unfortunately, miss, you’ll have to wait, whether you like it or no, for master’s not in.”
“Then I will wait till he returns,” she said firmly.
A sinister smile passed over his face.
“Well, really, miss, it won’t be worth your while, for I heard him say as he went that he should contrive to make Brompton in his round. He’s more than one person waiting there to see him—some near neighbors of yours, for instance.”
Disdaining to notice this insinuation, Florence hesitated a moment.
“Are you quite sure that he intended calling this morning?”
“Positive,” the man answered glibly. “He says, says he——”
Before he could finish his sentence, the door of the inner room was thrown open. The foreign-looking stranger Florence had seen on her previous visit emerged from it, and, seizing the fellow by the collar, shook him till he shrieked for mercy, and then flung him on the ground.
“Scoundrel!” he exclaimed furiously. “Villain without a heart! Did you forget that there was some one at hand to refute your falsehoods? Has not your wretched master worked evil enough, that you make use of his name to hatch more?”
The man cowered in the corner where he had been thrown—shielding his head with his arm, as if he feared another attack.
“’Pon my word, sir,” he answered servilely, “’pon my word, you are too hard upon me—you are indeed! I’m only doing as I was bid.”
With a contemptuous execration, the gentleman turned from him to Florence, whom his unexpected appearance had stupefied. His voice lowered to tones of the utmost gentleness and compassion as he addressed her.
“I regret that I have alarmed you, but this rascal’s audacity put me into such a passion that I could not control myself. I am sorry to say that he has been willfully deceiving you.”
She could not speak; but her startled glance wandered from his bronzed face to the crouching figure of the servant, who had gathered himself farther from the powerful arm of the indignant stranger.
“Can you bear to hear the truth,” he asked, “even if it be worse—far worse, perhaps, than you have ever anticipated?”
“Yes,” she faltered; “yes.”
Studiously averting his looks so that he might not distress her by appearing to watch the effect of his words, he said slowly:
“Lieutenant Mason is no longer in London—in fact, he has quitted England. Coming here this morning to take possession of these chambers, which their former tenant vacated yesterday, I accidentally learned that he had left the country, solely, I fear, to avoid the reproaches of the unfortunates who have invested their money in the bankrupt company of which he was secretary. And this rascal, it appears to me, has been bribed to tell spurious tales accounting for his absence, until he is beyond all fear of pursuit.”
Long as Florence had foreboded evil, the shock was hard to bear when it actually came; and, putting out her hand, she tried to grasp at the table for support. The stranger was by her side directly. He placed her in a chair, and fetched her a glass of water. When he came back with it she had covered her pale face with her hands and found relief in tears. Her poor father! How would he bear these tidings?
Ashamed to have given way to her emotions before indifferent persons, Florence silently rejected the water, bowed her thanks, and, drawing her veil more closely over her features, rose to depart; but the gentleman attempted to detain her.
“You are not fit to go alone. This news, which it grieved me to tell, has quite overcome you. Pardon me, but have you no friend I could send for whose presence would be a comfort to you now?”
She shook her head, and made another attempt to pass him.
“Your father?” he said hesitatingly. “Your father?”
Her tears burst forth afresh, and she could no longer control them. With nerves weakened by constant anxiety, and harassed by Mr. Heriton’s incessant calls upon her time and sympathy, she was ill fitted to bear this confirmation of her worst fears.
Clasping her hands, she murmured:
“Poor, dear papa! Who shall tell him this?”
And then struggled for composure till her sobs became hysterical.
She was in no condition to walk home, and at the command of the stranger the lieutenant’s servant fetched a cab, to which, with the respectful tenderness of a brother, he supported her trembling steps.
She tried to command her voice to thank him, but in vain. He understood her, however.
“Hush—hush! I have done nothing. I came too late. But if Godfrey Mason ever crosses my path, I will avenge your wrongs, Miss Heriton, and my own!”
Startled by the emphasis with which he spoke, and a certain something in his tones which thrilled through her and awoke long-forgotten memories, Florence for the first time looked fully in his face; but those knitted brows, that dark skin, and the profuse masses of curly beard and mustache which covered the lower part of it, baffled her endeavor to recall when and where she had seen it before. And the gentleman, as soon as he caught her quick, eager glance, drew his low-crowned hat down over his eyes, and, signaling the driver to proceed quickly, retreated, as if desirous of avoiding recognition.
Once on her way home, the bitter energy of his last words and all else concerning him was forgotten in the more pressing thought of how Lieutenant Mason’s flight was to be revealed to her father.
She grew sick with dread as she pictured the state of mind into which he would be thrown when no longer able to delude himself with false hopes. Dismissing the vehicle at the end of the street, she walked slowly toward her own residence; but when her hand would have raised the knocker her heart sank again, and, crossing the road, she went to the lodgings of Susan Denham.
Here she could bathe her eyes, and, perhaps, from that kind friend’s sympathy and counsels, gain strength to bear with her father’s passionate grief.
The cousins were sitting at needlework when she entered—Julia’s tasteful fingers devising new trimmings for one of the pretty Parisian costumes so becoming to her fine figure, while Susan was altering one of her gray merinos for an orphan girl in whom she was interested.
They both arose, uttering expressions of concern, when they saw the jaded looks of their visitor.
“Something has happened!” cried Julia, with a startled air. “Something terrible! What is it—what is it?”
“Give her time to recover herself,” interposed her more considerate cousin. “Sit down, dear Miss Heriton, and let me unfasten your cloak.”
But Julia, as if goaded by some fear that made patient waiting an impossibility, put her aside, and, throwing herself on her knees beside the silent Florence, seized her cold hands in her own feverish palms.
“Speak at once, Miss Heriton! Let us know the worst! You have been out—you have heard tidings which concern us—me—as well as yourself, else you would not be here!”
“I am more selfish than you imagine,” was the reply. “I came to Susan, because I am in great distress. I hope—ah, I hope it is a trouble which will not affect you.”
But there was a doubt and a question in Florence’s unsteady accents, and Julia felt it.
“Tell me where you have been and what you have heard,” she said, so imperiously that Susan, with a look of grave reproof, touched her shoulder.
“I have been to the Albany—to Lieutenant Mason’s chambers.”
“Ha! To tell him your doubts of his honor and honesty,” cried Julia, rising to her feet and looking proudly down upon Florence’s sad face, “to hear him indignantly refute your suspicions, and come away ashamed of your injustice. That is why you are here, is it not? You come to us to confess how cruelly you have wronged him.”
Were there no gathering doubts of his truth in her own highly strained voice? No inward conviction that she was about to hear some appalling truth making itself visible in her dilated eye, her quivering lips? Frightened at the insight she suddenly gained into this troubled heart, and at the misery she must inflict here as well as at home, Florence essayed to rise, but those hot hands held her down.
“She will not answer!” cried Julia wildly. “She is torturing me, and she knows it! Miss Heriton, what has happened? Tell me!” she added fiercely. “You shall tell me! Is he dead?”
Susan again interposed.
“Julia, you are terrifying Miss Heriton! Are you mad?”
But the kneeling girl only repeated the question: “Is he dead?” and the depth of terror in her dark orbs constrained Florence to reply:
“If you mean Lieutenant Mason, he lives; but he has fled the country to avoid his creditors.”
“Who fabricated this?” demanded her startled hearer.
“It was told to me in the presence of his manservant, who did not contradict it.”
Without speaking another word, Julia Denham passed into her bedroom, and in little more than a minute emerged in her walking attire. Her face was crimson, her lips tightly compressed, and from the wild expression of her eyes Florence shrank with terror.
Susan threw herself before her cousin.
“Dear Julia, where are you going?”
Receiving no reply, she cried more urgently than before:
“Julia, what are you about to do? What is this Lieutenant Mason to you?”
“My husband!” she answered, as she repulsed her gentle cousin, and swept proudly from the room.