It was in her capacity of godmother to little Kate Standish that, a due interval having elapsed since the loss of their ever-to-be-regretted Julia, Kitty Kilcroney first addressed Sir Jasper on the subject of a second marriage. She was, of course, quite prepared for the shocked refusal which met her.
Was it possible my Lady Kilcroney should not be aware of the solemn vow, by which he had pledged himself to his Dying Treasure, to remain ever faithful to her memory?
My Lady Kilcroney was very well aware of it. Heaven knew, she exclaimed, rolling her pansy eyes towards the ceiling of her drawing-room—she was for the while free of her Court duties, and was established in the Hertford Street mansion—Heaven knew, if ever there was anyone in the world who could appreciate what a second marriage meant to a true mourner it was she! When Bellairs went—“Ah, you never knew my first, Sir Jasper! The most excellent, the most estimable, the most generous and noble-minded of men. There was not a condition in his will, I do assure you! Everything, everything left to me! ‘My dearest wife, Kitty, in token of the perfect happiness she gave me.’ Those were his words, Sir Jasper. But a year’s happiness, alas! and he, poor seraph, scarce able to endure anyone in the room with him with the gout so cruel settled in his joints that, if you’ll believe me, his feet were like nothing so much as warming-pans, and his hands—my poor Bellairs’ hands, why, there were days when he could not have borne that a butterfly should settle on them! When my cherished martyr was released from his sufferings, did I not, like you, vow in my heart that I never, never would replace him?”
Here Kitty fixed her eyes upon Sir Jasper’s lugubrious countenance, and, positively, though her tone was filled with such pious melancholy, they twinkled.
“I fail to see the analogy, my Lady Kilcroney,” said he huffily. “My Julia was as young as she was fair, as elegant in form as she was virtuous in character.”
“True, true, Sir Jasper! Bellairs became, very shortly after our espousals, a wreck, an absolute wreck. But he retained the most admirable amiability of temper. ’Twas indeed that which first drew my heart to him. ‘My dear,’ he said to me, ‘when I heard that my poor old friend Ned had gone smash, and shot himself, and left a little daughter without a farthing to buy a ribbon with, I cast about in my mind what I should do to help her. And, faith, I can think of no better way, my dear, than to make a rich widow of you.’ And then he set to laughing in his droll, wheezing way. ‘I’m game for a year,’ says he, ‘if you can stand the old man for a year,’ says he. ‘I’ll put you in the way of getting the best the world can give you; honour and good repute, and wealth and a young husband in due time—better than if your poor father had kept out of indigo. If you’ll trust me, I’ll trust you,’ says he. And my dear Bellairs kept his word royally. He’d never so much as a suspicion of me; or aught but a smile for my pleasures.” Here a tear suddenly flashed. “I’m proud to say,” cried Kitty. “I deserved his confidence. Is there ever anything so beautiful in life as wedded trust?”
Sir Jasper went home thoughtful. His Julia had had every merit, but if she had had also just the tiniest part of Bellairs’ the Nabob’s generosity of mind, would he, could he have so often—as alas! he had! But there were times when he had been goaded, indubitably driven, to seek distraction. Angel as she had been, to what screaming vapours, what swoons had she not treated him? How often also—here he held his head higher, and made a knowing thrust at a door post with his gold-headed walking-stick as he went by—had she not suspected the vilest deeds when he had been as innocent as the lambs in the field?
“You cannot,” said Sir Jasper, sapiently to himself, as his marital crimes appeared before him suddenly transmogrified into peccadilloes. “You cannot be said to betray a trust that has never been reposed in you.”
Next time my Lady spoke of matrimony to the bereaved, it was in the tone of one who regrets a rash determination, but recognises its binding quality.
“What a pity, Sir Jasper, you should have been led into such fond folly! To take such a vow! Irrevocable of course. Who would have the dreadful courage to suggest the breaking of a pledge to one who is now among the saints. What if a father’s duty points one way? that death-bed obligation sternly points the other.”