CHAPTER XXII.—KATE SOWS THE WIND.
So Kate Marsden married the cotton-spinner, and old Mr. Hazlehurst repurchased his farm on very easy terms. We wonder which of the two was best pleased with the bargain! Kate turned very pale when she promised to love, honour, and obey a man whom she disliked, despised, and intended to rule; nor do we wonder at it, for, with all her faults, Kate perceived the intrinsic beauty of truth, and loved it, as she did everything beautiful. But though she loathed herself for what she was doing, though her bitterest enemy could not have taken a harsher view of her conduct than she herself took, she had gone too far to retract, and having swallowed the camel of crushing her own heart and that of Arthur Hazlehurst, she could not stultify herself by straining at the gnat of swearing falsely in the service for the solemnization of matrimony. Kate’s was one of that peculiar order of consciences which can commit a sin knowingly, on an emergency, but dare not be guilty of a blunder. In the one case, the end appears to justify the means; while in the other, the entire transaction is unworthy. Sophistry, Kate, sophistry! which, while you think it, and act upon it, fails to satisfy even your warped and distorted sense of right and wrong.
Kate Marsden married Mr. Crane—there was a union! On the one side youth and beauty; intellect, lofty enough to have aimed at any achievement which the mind of woman has accomplished; energy, sufficient to have gained the object striven for; ambition, that when all was won would have despised the trophies at her feet, and sighed for more worlds to conquer; and a deep passionate nature, combining the fiery elements of a southern temperament with the steady perseverance and inflexible resolution characteristic of a daughter of the sturdy north: on the other side, advancing age, mental weakness, timidity, and its natural concomitant—suspicion, together with a general paucity of ideas, centred in a vulgar pride of wealth. All Kate’s friends congratulated her, and many envied her good fortune; and Horace D’Almayne smiled on his future victim, as he surely reckoned her; and Arthur Hazlehurst sat alone in his dusky chambers, with bitter thoughts busy at his heart, struggling, like a brave and good man, against the tempting fiend that bade him rise up and curse her who had thus rendered desolate his young existence; and the minister of religion stood before the altar, and pronounced his blessing over this hollow mockery of marriage, which no amount of blessing could hallow; and the happy pair drove off to some fool’s paradise to enjoy the honeymoon.
Poor Mr. Crane! if he had dreamed of the volcano of feeling that smouldered at his side beneath that cold, calm exterior, he would assuredly have flung open the carriage-door, sprung out (albeit not accustomed to such feats of activity), and never ceased running until he had reached Manchester. Fortunately, however, his wife’s mind was a sealed book to him, and so he reached the end of his journey in peace and safety.
Having borne the honeymoon with resignation, Kate endured her bad bargain tête-à-tête at various watering-places, and amongst innumerable lakes and mountains of tourist notoriety, until she had taught him the only accomplishment she cared to inculcate, viz., obedience, which he learned very readily, seeing that it relieved him from all trouble and responsibility. This point accomplished, she took him to a fashionable hotel in St. James’s Street, where she wrote to her friend, Arabella Crofton, to join her. However, before that excellent young woman of the world had time to wind up the ends of a few trifling skeins of policy, with which she had been constructing nets for small birds at Baden-Baden, Horace D’Almayne found out the residence of the happy couple, and proceeded to call upon, dine with, and make himself generally useful and agreeable to them. Kate did not like him, but she had been for two months tête-à-tête with Mr. Crane, and Horace possessed this advantage over that devoted husband, that he was not a fool, and Mr. Crane was. Horace was not a fool; on the contrary, he was such a clever knave that it was really a pity that he was not something better: he saw the game he had to play, and he resolved to play it as skilfully as his faculties and experience would enable him. He possessed considerable insight into character, and sufficient tact to accommodate himself to the peculiarities, and avail himself of the weaknesses, he might thus discover. Accordingly, his first move was to endeavour to lull Kate’s suspicions of him, which he saw had been aroused; his next to make himself by degrees useful to her—necessary to her; then, let him win her confidence on any subject (he would have been delighted if she had told him the day of the month, or that she had dropped a pin, in confidence, for it would have been a beginning), until by word, look, or sign, she admitted her indifference towards her husband, and then the game would be his own.
With Mr. Crane D’Almayne’s course appeared very simple. The millionaire’s one clear idea was the omnipotence of wealth; he knew D’Almayne was poor, and that he had lent him money which he never expected to be repaid. He considered him in the light of a sort of Master of the Ceremonies, who could guide him in the ways of fashionable life, whereof he felt his ignorance—a kind of upper upper-servant—the Vizier to his Caliphship, and he lent him money as a delicate way of paying his wages. At present D’Almayne was in high favour with Mr. Crane; his wife was looking very handsome, quite a gem of a wife—equal to his pictures or his port wine; D’Almayne had negotiated his marriage for him, and the speculation had been a successful one; he lent D’Almayne £500 before he had been in town a week. Horace saw it all, but he was not proud; as he would have said, “It suited his book too well,” so he pocketed his wages meekly.
“My dear Kate, can you amuse yourself for a couple of hours or so alone? D’Almayne and I are going to look at a pair of carriage-horses—a—I shall bring him home to luncheon, and—a—now I think of it, I asked him to dine here and go to the concert at the Hanover Square Rooms with us afterwards;” and having thus unfolded his programme for the day, Mr. Crane glanced timidly towards his wife, to learn whether it would receive her sanction and approval. There was a moment’s silence, and then in a low, musical voice, Kate replied coldly—
“I have letters to write this morning, so the arrangement will suit me perfectly. If the horses are fine ones, I hope you will buy them.”
Mr. Crane stroked his chin (a habit in which he indulged when anything pleased him) and smiled. His wife was satisfied with him—happy man! But he had stroked his chin rather prematurely, for, in the same cold tone, Kate resumed—
“There is one point on which I am anxious clearly to understand you. Is it your wish that Mr. D’Almayne should virtually live with us? because, that he will do so, unless some decided measures are taken to discourage him, is self-evident.”
This was a straightforward and uncompromising way of putting the case which slightly discomposed poor Mr. Crane.
D’Almayne was, as we have said, eminently useful to his patron, so much so, that at that precise epoch the good gentleman would have been sorely puzzled how to get on without him; but the more he acknowledged this in his secret soul, the less did he desire that any one, and especially his young wife, should perceive it.
“Well, my dear Kate,” he began, “you see Mr. D’Almayne has turned his attention to points which, engaged as I have been for many years in commerce, I have never found time or opportunity to render myself acquainted with.”
“In fact, he has made himself necessary to you,” interposed Kate.
“No, my dear, no—by no means necessary—not at all so; but that he is useful, very useful to me, I confess. I am sorry to perceive that you have taken up a slightly unreasonable (if I may be permitted to say so) prejudice against this young man.”
“You are mistaken,” returned Kate, calmly. “I am perfectly indifferent to him. If it is your wish to make use of him, he will of course be here constantly; but as you have so kindly yielded to my desire that my friend, Miss Crofton, should reside with us, his presence or his absence will make little difference to me—only, if at any future time you should hear comments on the intimacy, you will remember that I have admitted it solely to gratify you.”
Mr. Crane, propitiated by this concession, and by the grounds on which Kate had placed it, was endeavouring to stroke some form of thanksgiving out of his chin, when the door opened, and the subject of their conversation was shown in. After a few desultory remarks, Horace, turning to Mr. Crane, observed—
“I called at the house-agent’s in my way here, and have obtained the particulars of two houses which it will be quite worth your while to look at; one is in Belgrave Square, the other in Park Lane.”
As he spoke, Kate raised her head and fixed her large eyes upon his face; but he appeared unconscious of having deserved her scrutiny, and was quietly examining some memoranda he had written on the back of a card, regarding the number of rooms and other particulars respecting the houses. So perfectly unconscious was his manner, that for once Kate’s penetration was at fault. She remembered having on one occasion, months before, at the Grange, mentioned in his presence that if she went to live in London she should prefer either Belgrave Square or Park Lane for her residence; but whether he also had recollected this, or whether his selection was the result of accident, she could not decide. Moreover, it was not easy for her to determine how to act in the matter. If he had made the selection intentionally, and she allowed it to pass unnoticed, it would be a sort of tacit admission that she was willing to receive such secret attentions from him, appreciating them as kindnesses rather than resenting them as impertinences; while, on the other hand, if by any chance it was a mere coincidence, she was unwilling to afford him even the minute triumph of perceiving that she felt sufficient interest in him to remember whether or not he had been present on an occasion, since which several months had elapsed, or that she cared to know if he had observed, or regarded her wishes. So she took a middle course, and, availing herself of a pause in the conversation, inquired carelessly—
“Where did you say the houses were situated, Mr. D’Almayne?” On obtaining the information she required, she added, “And how came you to select those particular localities?”
As he turned to reply, their glances met, but his face was perfectly inscrutable.
“If, as your tone implies, they do not meet your approval, my dear Mrs. Crane, we need take no farther trouble in regard to them,” was his ambiguous reply. “I chose them because I fancied situations so generally popular might not be displeasing to you.”
Kate was again foiled, and D’Almayne, as he quietly observed it, muttered inwardly, “Won the first trick, at all events!”
Mr. Crane, leaving the room to put on his great-coat, a precaution without which he was most careful not to stir from home, D’Almayne observed,—
“You would prefer bay carriage-horses to grey, or any more conspicuous colour, would you not?”
Surprised at his having thus discovered her taste, Kate was so far thrown off her guard as to exclaim,—
“How in the world do you know that?”
Horace smiled a quiet smile.
“I reasoned from analog,” he said; “your dress is always rich and striking, but never showy; and the effect is produced by its consistency as a whole.”
Kate involuntarily returned his smile; tact and keen intelligence were qualities she highly appreciated.
“You are a close observer,” she said, “and shall be rewarded by learning the interesting fact that I do prefer bay horses to those of any other colour.”
Before the week was over, Mr. Crane had purchased a magnificent pair of bay carriage-horses, and had taken a lease of a noble mansion in Park Lane. The only fault Kate could discover in either, was the conviction forced upon her that it was to the agency of Horace D’Almayne she was indebted for them.