CHAPTER XVI.—SELFISHNESS AND SORROW.
But most the proud Honoria fear’d th’ event,
And thought to her alone the vision sent:
Her guilt presents to her distracted mind
Heaven’s justice.
—Dryden.
If Flora Wilton’s lovely countenance had so remarkable an effect upon the Duke of St. Allborne, and specially upon the heart of the Honorable Lester Vane, it is very certain that the persons of those gentlemen made no such impression either upon Flora or even Lotte. Both were so embarrassed at their sudden intrusion, as it appeared, upon the privacy of the party in the adjoining garden, that they hurried away without taking particular notice of the individuals composing it.
But both Flora and Lotte had a floating impression that one of the gentlemen there had large, deep, dark eyes; and that he used them too unreservedly and unscrupulously. Flora had also an idea of a fair, young, gentle face, the soft eyes of which regarded her with tenderness and admiration.
Beyond this, nothing was retained in their minds of the persons they had encountered. Flora only laughingly suggested that she should scarcely attempt again to observe her neighbour’s garden from that point of view.
Both girls had quite overlooked Malcolm Grahame; but if the Duke and Lester Vane were struck by the beauty of Flora’s face, so was Malcolm by that of Lotte. It was precisely of that order of prettiness which especially commended itself to his taste. Selfish and proud as his mother, silly and conceited too, there was not much space in his heart for affection; nevertheless, passion occupied a tolerably large space, and the gratification of it was a first consideration with him.
In his eyes Lotte was the “prettiest” girl he had yet seen, and to call the prettiest girl in the kingdom his was an ambition. He did not count the cost even to the poor girl who was to be captured and wear his chains. He had found satins and jewels, and golden gifts achieve wonders; he believed there was no limit to their efficacy in conquering a woman’s scruples, and he had the strongest possible conviction that, if employed without reserve or hesitation, the most severely rigid propriety would succumb to their influence.
To be smitten with the face of Lotte was to desire to obtain her. He viewed it as a question of time and money, and he made a memorandum in his note-book to that effect.
Lotte, thus favoured by his admiration and his intentions, had not observed him; if she had, she would have forgotten him immediately afterwards.
No; her thoughts were employed upon the future. Under the care and kindness of Flora, she had in one short week won back more strength and health than she would have done in a month under the roof of Mrs. Bantom, or such an one as she could herself afford. It must be remembered, too, that her mind was at peace in respect to the present, and hopeful as regarded the future.
One week longer she decided to stay beneath the roof of her good friend, and then into the world again, that she might eat the bread for which her own hands had laboured successfully. It was in vain that Flora endeavoured to change her determination; her self-dependent nature and free spirit recoiled from being indebted even to Flora for a home. So long as she had strength to work, and was able to obtain it, she would support herself until she became the wife of the man she had yet to see and love, and then if able to keep her, she would accept the luxury the wedded state might afford her; if not, they would work together, and together win a living for both.
She did not refuse to accept from Flora a complete stock of clothes, nor the loan of a small sum of money to start with, nor did she ridiculously refuse her profferred assistance in procuring an apartment in a respectable dwelling; nor when Flora urged upon her to employ her abilities upon some description of needlework less slavish and better paid than cap-front making, did she refuse to make the effort, or hesitate to accept work from a juvenile clothing warehouse, obtained through the influence of Flora’s new dressmaker.
Her spirit of independence was neither fastidious nor affected; it was genuine, sincere, and directed her along a path that, while by her open, ingenuous, cheerful, loving disposition, she gained the affection of all who knew her, she commanded their respect by eschewing all obligations calculated to fetter her freedom of action.
Malcolm Grahame, during the last few days of his stay, had contrived to ascertain her name, and the information that she was a humble friend of Miss Wilton’s—a communication he received with great satisfaction, because it intimated that she was poor. To be poor was to be accessible to temptation, and he resolved to use gold profusely to gain her.
He little thought while making this ignoble calculation, that he himself stood on the very brink of a degraded beggary. Lotte was poor, but her poverty had no blur of dishonour upon it.
He caught sight of her walking alone in the garden several times, and rushed to an upper window to waft a kiss viâ his fingers to her, or to lay his hand upon the left side of a rather narrow chest, or to render himself conspicuously ridiculous in other ways. His vagaries were uselessly performed and expended without result, for Lotte did not once perceive him, and left the roof of Flora Wilton, in the Regent’s Park, without knowing, or desiring to know, that any such vain heartless coxcomb as Malcolm Grahame was in existence.
The interview between old Wilton and Grahame was brief; on the side of the former; it was conducted with cold dignity, and on the latter—after two or three revelations were made which yet further opened his eyes to the tremendous character of the gulf, on the verge of which he had stood with so slippery a footing—with an oily obsequiousness which was contemptible.
Nathan Gomer conducted the whole proceedings, and displayed an influence over Wilton, the more extraordinary as it was evidently not obtained at the price of pecuniary obligations. The preliminaries were all arranged, Mr. Grahame consenting to terms which gave him the enjoyment of half the property and surplus funds in trust, until the claim of Wilton was fully substantiated, when Mr. Grahame was to resign his half, and enter upon arrangements by which he would gradually restore to the estate the sums he had received from it.
The arrangement was far from being a satisfactory one to Grahame, but his position was that of a drowning man, and, therefore, he was only too glad to seize anything that floated within his reach, by which he might support himself for a time, if not save himself altogether.
A memorandum was drawn up by Nathan, who grinned as he composed it, grinned as Grahame signed it, and grinned yet more when he appended his name as a witness to it. He even laughed a fat, chuckling laugh as he drew Grahame’s attention to the fact, that the sheet of paper, upon which the memorandum was executed, bore the proper stamp.
It was Grahame’s turn to smile when, throwing a cold doubt upon the realisation of the estates to be thus divided, Gomer laconically requested him to furnish him with a list of his most pressing engagements, and he would at once liquidate them.
“I have some thousands lying idle at my bankers,” he said. “I may as well realize a slightly better percentage from you.”
“And the security?” questioned Grahame, doubtfully.
“I require nothing more than your acknowledgment of the amounts advanced, and your copy of this memorandum,” replied Gomer.
Grahame assented delightedly, and would have taken the most affectionate farewell of both Wilton and Nathan Gomer, but that the former coldly repelled him, and the latter grinned in his face in a manner so strangely impish that he involuntarily shuddered, and hastened away.
As he descended the stairs, he encountered Flora Wilton, just as she was entering her favourite sitting-room, a small one overlooking the garden.
He started as he caught sight of her upturned face, and turning to Nathan Gomer, who was following him, he said—
“Miss Wilton, I presume.”
Nathan nodded.
“How strikingly beautiful!” he ejaculated. “Pray introduce me,” he added.
Gomer did so briefly, saying—
“You will soon have the opportunity of knowing each other better.”
“In truth, Mr. Gomer,” exclaimed Mr. Grahame, in his grandest manner, “I shall look forward with impatience for that honour, I need not add, and high gratification.”
Flora could only look timidly from one to the other, and feel extremely relieved by the absence of both.
Nathan Gomer having, ere they parted, reiterated his promise of supplying Mr. Grahame with all the funds his present need required, that gentleman walked into his mansion with the cold loftiness of a Sultan, and with high elation of spirits. Not that the latter emotion rendered him cheerful; on the contrary, it expanded and inflated his pride—it made him look over to the verge of the horizon, and believe the lands and domains between were his own. It made him regard his servants as serfs, his tradespeople as vassals, his acquaintances as persons who lived only to bask in the sunshine of his smiles, himself an imperial personage, to whom it was the duty of the world in general to bow down and worship.
During the last ten days, he had felt rather disposed to sneak out of sight than to exhibit his greatness to wondering eyes. Now, removed from the danger of imminent disgrace, his own grand staircase appeared too circumscribed for the majesty of his presence.
Whelks, who had—by hot lotions and cold lotions, and fomentations, and blistering garlic, new flannel, a couple of calomel pills, and a half-a-pint of black draught—subdued the ear-ache, lost a sovereign—how, he was mystified in imagining—and taken the form of a ghostly shadow—noticed the change in his master, but with infinitely less surprise than that alteration which made him almost familiar with Chewkle.
With the instinctive perception of individuals of his class, he presumed, by the ascendancy of the commission agent, that “something was up.” He was extremely anxious to find out what: hence, his civility to Chewkle, and his desire to form an acquaintance with him. Whatever that something was, it was plain, by his master’s resumption of stern pomposity that it was “down again.”
Mr. Grahame, preceded by Whelks, entered the room in which he expected to find Mrs. Grahame and one at least of her daughters, but the whole family as well as the two guests, who had been prevailed to extend their visit beyond the term originally intended, were assembled together, engaged in conversation, which did not pause for an instant at the appearance of Mr. Grahame.
“Can it be pawsible, Lady Mawgawet,” exclaimed the young Duke, addressing Miss Margaret Grahame, using the prefix “Lady” as he said in “playfulness,” “that you did not considaw that that young cweachaw wejoices in one of the fawest, divinest faces, ever pwesented by the wosy goddess Beauty to one of youaw chawming sex?”
“I scarcely noticed the person,” returned Margaret, in a cold, supercilious tone, bending her half-closed eyes upon a magnificently jewelled bracelet, clasping her fat white arm, which she placed in various positions to study the effect of the ornament, and to admire trinket and arm together.
Helen looked up at the Duke with a quick action and a glittering eye. She said in a slightly petulant tone—
“Wax dolls have the ‘fairest, divinest faces,’ my lord Duke, yet we do not fall into raptures with them.”
“Not we, assuredly Miss Grahame,” observed Lester Vane, slowly, “but little children do. In their eyes dolls’ faces possess immense attractions, and they have a title to be ranked as the best judges of beauty in dolls, as”——
He paused, and looked into Helen’s eyes.
“As men lay claim to be of loveliness in woman,” she responded, with a scarcely perceptible sneer.
He bowed.
“As, indeed, they ought to be,” he rejoined, quickly; “else why are your sex so desirous to obtain the approving admiration of ours?”
“A fallacy, which your sex has the impertinence to assert, and the fatuity to believe,” she responded with a curling lip.
“A shrewd imbecility, nevertheless,” returned Vane, smiling meaningly. “What say you, Miss Evangeline?”
“Indeed, I think she had the sweetest face I ever beheld!” exclaimed Evangeline, with an enthusiasm which afflicted Mrs. Grahame—if that lady permitted any emotion, residing soberly within her well-ordered frame, to agitate itself to the extent of affliction.
“Pish!” cried Malcolm, “you like dolls, even now. The fact is, you are all at fault; the companion was the prettiest of the two.”
“What, haw maid?” inquired the Duke, extending his eyebrows half way up his forehead.
“No, her friend. I have seen them arm in arm. None of you looked at her face; I did—she had the prettiest in Christendom, St. Allborne, all the world to nothing.”
“May I, without inadvertence, inquire whose merits you are discussing?” inquired Mr. Grahame, with a loftiness he had for some time not displayed.
“I have been listening in pain and astonishment,” responded Mrs. Grahame; “the subject is some creature who suddenly intruded herself upon your family and your guests in your garden, Mr. Grahame.”
“Intruded herself in my garden!” exclaimed ‘Mr. Grahame, in a tone of outraged dignity.
“His grace, perhaps, will repeat the romantic story?” added Mrs. Grahame.
“Oh, weadily, weadily! you are wight, madam, the stowy is womantic,” returned the Duke, with vivacity. “The fact is, my deaw host,” continued he, “we weaw all in the gawden the othaw mawning; we had awested owaw steps for a few seconds, when, all of a moment, an appawition of angelic beauty pwesented itself to owaw dazzled eyes.”
“In my garden!” exclaimed Mr. Grahame, fiercely, as much as to say, “how dare apparitions of angelic beauty present themselves in my garden?”
“No,” returned the Duke, “in the next gawden to the left. She wemained but faw an instant, and then dis-appeawed. We aw divided in opinion with wespect to haw chawms.”
The manner of Mr. Grahame in a moment strangely altered its character.
“The young lady is exquisitely beautiful!” he exclaimed, with an emphasis which made Mrs. Grahame slowly elongate upwards and Margaret Claverhouse open her eyes to their full extent, while the others looked at him with surprise.
At length Mrs. Grahame found a tongue.
“I should have hardly conceived that such a person had attracted the notice of Claver’se Grahame!” she exclaimed, in a tone of contemptuous surprise.
“I have just returned from a visit to the young lady’s father,” he returned, sharply stung by the tone of his wife’s remark.
Mrs. Grahame knew not how to support this dreadful wound to her pride; her upper lip trembled.
“Pray, Mr. Grahame,” she said, “have you been seized by the weakness of toadying to some man, some person, some mushroom trader, because he has been able to make a little parade by successful plunder?”
“Stay, Mistress Grahame,” exclaimed Mr. Grahame, with imperious grandeur. “Before you suffer yourself to be betrayed into any observation you may be disposed hereafter to recall, let me inform you that Mr. Wilton, the father of the young lady of whom you appear to speak and think so slightingly, is a gentleman possessing twenty thousand a year, and cash to the extent of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds”——
An exclamation burst from the lips of all present. Mrs. Grahame felt that she had been premature. How Margaret began to hate Flora!
“Let me add,” continued Mr. Grahame, “that Mr. Wilton can claim an older and a nobler descent than either you, madam, or myself. In his veins runs the blood of the Stuarts, the Eglintons, the Grahames, and the Gordons. When, therefore, you apply the epithets of ‘man’ and ‘person’ to him, you injuriously insult a gentleman entitled to your highest consideration.”
He ought to have added, also, for the “consideration” of his proud lady—“A short time back he was a pauper whom I sued and thrust into prison.”
Mrs. Grahame was sure now she had been premature.
Margaret hated Flora more than ever. She had despised her before; she feared her now.
“Weally,” cried the Duke, “this is a twuly bwilliant dénouement to owaw womance. Gwahame, you must pawsitively intwoduce me to that delightful young lady. Miss—what is haw name?”
“Wilton,” responded Grahame; “Mrs. Grahame will probably make a visit to Miss Wilton, and introduce the young ladies. Miss Wilton, I have no doubt, will be induced to return the visit. This, as a matter of course. Our families are, though distantly, related. Mr. Wilton descends from the elder branch.”
“I shall have the greatest pleasure in paying a visit to this pearl of beauty,” said Mrs. Grahame, with an animation quite unusual to her. “I regret my hasty observations, but who could have dreamed that our next neighbour was of such distinguished birth and position; and a relative too? I will not defer my visit, and taking advantage of the relationship, waive a portion of that ceremony I consider it essential in other cases to observe.”
“So I shall have, too, an introduction to this ‘pearl of beauty,’” thought Lester Vane; “it will save me a world of trouble.”
“May I not go with you when you pay your first visit to Miss Wilton, dear mamma?” asked Evangeline.
“Absurd!” muttered Margaret, contemptuously; “mamma will go alone; I shall not go.”
Mr. Grahame frowned; his wife caught the expression of his face, and in a tone which her daughters all knew was intended to silence opposition, she said—
“Helen and Margaret will accompany me; they will exert themselves to win the favourable opinion of their relative—attracting her to visit us by their cheerful smiles, rather than repelling her by any formal frigidity. You, Evangeline, who set all the rules of propriety at defiance, must remain at home, or you will only commit yourself in some such manner as heroines do in novels.”
“Don’t you think I ought to accompany you, madam?” exclaimed Malcolm, with a strong impression that he should get an opportunity of exchanging looks and words with Lotte. “I think the visit will hardly be en règle, without my presence.”
It suddenly struck Mr. Grahame that a match between Malcolm and Flora Wilton would, in all respects, be most desirable. The young lady possessed a long line of ancestry, wealth, and beauty. What more could a man desire in a wife? A marriage, too, would end the conflicting interests of both parties. He did not doubt for a moment, that Wilton would gladly embrace the advantages offered by such a plan, and he, therefore, almost looked upon it as being accomplished, his own future peace being secured by the arrangement.
It did not occur to him that Flora might object, or Malcolm offer any opposition. He looked upon marriage as a contract, in which it was the parent’s duty to secure for their children eligible matches, and for the children to unhesitatingly complete them.
He was immediately, therefore, anxious that Malcolm should accompany his mother, and his suggestion took the shape of a command. No one but himself had any inkling of his project, but though some little surprise was manifested, no remark was made or objection raised.
As the visit was not to be paid until the next morning, the subject was here changed, and Lester Vane, as before, addressed his attentions almost exclusively to Helen. He rarely spoke to her without conveying a meaning beyond the apparent import of his words. He omitted no opportunity, either by word or glance, to induce her to believe that he was fascinated by her personal attractions and charmed by the graces of her mind.
She threw herself as much in his way as possible, whether in the presence of her family or alone, and she exerted all her powers to enslave him. She was by turns full of fire and life, seemingly gratified by his presence; anon, cold and pettish. She would laugh with him, and frown at him, display interest in what he said or did when he appeared least to desire to chain her attention, and seem most provokingly indifferent when he wished her to listen to him heedfully.
Most of all, when alone, did she play with him.
When, by some tenderness of manner, he would be induced to commence acknowledgments warmer than those warranted by friendship, she would parry his observations, turn them to ridicule, or give to them an interpretation they were never intended to bear: so that he would trust only to his expressive eyes to say what she refused to hear his tongue utter.
He could tell by her drooping lid and rising blush that she comprehended that language, and that if she would defiantly encounter his gaze, she must read it and interpret it.
“She loves me,” he would say to himself, “and she must be mine—under what contract circumstances must alone decide for me.”
That decision was arrived at when he heard that Flora Wilton was well born and rich—his hand should be for her, his passion for Helen.
It is easy to make calculations based on probabilities, but when contingencies are left out, the result mostly takes a very different form to that which it first promised to assume.
Helen had carefully watched his countenance while her father spoke of Flora Wilton; she had not forgotten how his eyes seemed to gloat on her beauty when he beheld her in the garden, and she felt convinced by the expression which passed over his features when he learned that Miss Wilton was of good birth and rich, that he then formed designs respecting her.
A flush of indignation and mortification passed through her frame.
“I will bring him to my feet, and spurn him yet!” she said to herself.
It was in this spirit they were all but toying with each other, when Malcolm, who had been reading the Times, uttered an exclamation, and, turning to his father, he said—
“You remember young Riversdale, sir?—you do, Helen, of course,” he cried, turning to his sister.
Had fame—life—depended upon an unchanged countenance, she must have lost both. She on the instant grew deathly pale; she could not reply—she merely bent her head.
“A son of Major Riversdale,” said Mrs. Grahame; “I think we met them in the north?”
“Yes,” returned Malcolm.
“Ah! I remember; his father died a beggar, and his uncle, an East India merchant, took charge of him—made him a clerk, or something of that kind,” observed Mr. Grahame—“a person one could not notice now. Why did you introduce his name to our notice?”
“Here is a paragraph about him in the Times. It is rather a strange affair, I’ll read it out,” replied Malcolm.
“Do so,” said his mother.
Helen held her breath. She felt that some dreadful disclosure was about to be made, which would overwhelm her, too. Oh, that she might not faint! If only she did not faint, and could get to her room, to wrestle with the trial—for such it must be—alone! She sat with closed hands, teeth, her eyes only open, motionless as a statue. Malcolm turned his eyes upon the journal he held in his hand, and, in a loud, clear voice, read as follows:—
“A singular circumstance attended the departure from these shores of the Peninsula and Oriental Steam Company’s ship, the ‘Ripon,’ bearing the mails for India and China. When off the Needles, a young gentleman, whose name was ascertained to be Mr. Hugh Riversdale, was observed to be regarding the receding cliffs of England with deep emotion. Suddenly, uttering a loud cry, said by some who heard it to be the name of a lady, he sprang on to the taffrail of the ship, and leaped into the sea. Fortunately, a pilot-boat was standing off and on, waiting the arrival of an American liner. Her crew had observed the suicidal act, and made most noble efforts to rescue the young gentleman. Their exertions were, we are happy to say, so far crowned with success that they picked up the body in a lifeless state. Meanwhile, the engines of the ‘Ripon,’ under the thrilling cry of ‘a man overboard,’ had been stopped and reversed, and the crew of the pilot-boat were thus enabled to convey the body on board the steam-ship—the most advisable course to be pursued, as the best medical assistance, with ready access to restoratives, could be there promptly afforded. We are unable to state whether the exertions to restore life were successful, as on the recovery of the body the engines of the steamer were set in motion. The crew of the pilot-boat returned to their vessel, and the Ripon, at race-horse speed, proceeded on her distant voyage.”
“Rather strange affair that!” concluded Malcolm, laying down the paper.
“Vewy womantic! ha! ha!” laughed the young Duke. “Pwepostewous folly that, to dwown oneself for love! Ha! ha!”
Suddenly they were all startled by a terrified cry bursting from the lips of Evangeline. She sprang from her seat, and twined her arms round her eldest sister.
“Helen! Helen!” she cried; “Helen, dearest Helen, you are ill, darling! Speak, Helen! Speak, for Heaven’s sake! Oh, mamma, mamma, pray come to Helen; she is dying!”
Helen sat erect, still, rigid as a stone statue and as lifeless.
She had listened in a state of high-wrought feeling to the reading of the paragraph up to a certain point. She heard the description of Hugh’s emotion at the sight of the diminishing heights of the land containing all that he loved or prized. She knew that her form—her averted form was at that instant before his humid eyes.
She heard his despairing call upon her name; she saw him suddenly spring up upon the vessel’s edge, and leap out with a wild cry, plunging down, down into the dreadful depths of the surging sea, to find that peaceful release from intense mental anguish which she had selfishly and heartlessly denied to him here.
Then all was dark!
She sat motionless, stark, corpse-like, consciousness departing from her, and leaving her without sense or motion.
Mr. and Mrs. Grahame were disturbed at the undignified departure from the proprieties of life displayed by both Helen and Evangeline. Mrs. Grahame especially was grieved to think that the example of icy immobility set on all occasions by Margaret Claverhouse was not followed by both her sisters. The bell was rung violently by Malcolm, who, except Evangeline, displayed the most feeling of the family. Chayter was summoned, and Helen, accompanied by Evangeline, was borne to her apartment.
Lester Vane retired to the garden.
Folding his arms, he paced the sinuous paths thoughtfully.
“So,” he muttered, “the mystery is solved. This youth, Hugh Riversdale, was my assailant in the alcove, and Helen was his companion there. Hem! His merchant uncle has despatched his clerk to India. He, out of his love-sick grief, like a mad fool, leaps into the sea, and she swoons to hear of his folly. She is selfish; but she loves him and seeks to fool me. ’Um! He struck me—this clerk. Well, she shall avenge the blow: away with thoughts of marriage! No; Miss Wilton, young, exquisitely lovely, of proud descent, and great wealth, she shall be my bride; while you, Helen, you—’um! we shall see.”
He leaned upon the slight iron rail which ran along the end of the garden, and gazed thoughtfully into the depths of the flowing stream running soundlessly by.