What were these circumstances to which she so haughtily referred? With my heavy head resting on my weary hands, I sat and contemplated them—ay, looked them fully in the face! Outwardly, matters stood just as they had ever done.
The same circle of servants—of acquaintances—revolved around us. The house was unchanged, the living identically the same, even to the one bottle of fine wine per day, carefully withdrawn from the cobwebbed cellar by Morton, and as carefully decanted for our table.
But this alone, of all the viands set before us, was furnished at my expense. My own small hoard of silverpieces had, it is true, from the time of our ruin, more than sufficed for my absolute wants and Mabel's, confined, as they were, to mere externals of necessary dress; but all other outlay, even to the payment of Mabel's masters (I taught her chiefly myself, however), was met by Evelyn.
We, the children of a proud man, were dependent on strangers. Look upon it as I would, the revolting fact stared me out of countenance. Charity, the chambermaid, had more right to lift an opposing front to Evelyn than I had; for she earned the bread she ate, while I—there was no use concealing the mortifying truth any longer—served the apprenticeship of pauperdom!
True, the house was legally mine—the furniture I used, the plate I was served from, the carriage I occasionally drove out in, were all my own possessions—though, with a slow and moth-like process, I was gradually consuming these. For, at my majority, it was my determination to pay for my support in the intervening years, even if I sacrificed every thing in order to wipe out obligations. Ay, the very corn my horses were eating (what mockery to keep them at all!) was now furnished by another, and must eventually be paid for, with interest.
Then, how would it fare with me, beggared indeed? I would take time by the forelock; I would begin at once.
"Evelyn," I had said, not long after the conversation reverted to, "is there no way in which my property may be fixed, so as to leave the principal untouched, and still yield an income sufficient for my support, and that of Mabel? The bread of dependence is very bitter to me."
"I ate it long," she said, "and found it passing sweet. You are only receiving back the payment for an old debt, Miriam. Your father's lavish generosity can never be repaid, even to his children, by me, who was so long its happy recipient."
The words seemed unanswerable at the time, inconsistent as they were with her past reproaches. Again she said—when the same murmur left my lips upon a later occasion—looking at me sorrowfully as she spoke, and with something incomprehensible to me in her expression that affected me strangely: "Wait until you are of age, Miriam: all can be arranged definitely then; but now, the waves might as well chafe against the rocks that bind them in their bed, as you against your condition;" adding with a tragic look and tone, half playful, of course, "Votre sort, c'est moi. You remember what Louis XIV. said, 'L'État, c'est moi;' now be pacified, I implore you—all will still be well," and she patted my shoulder kindly, and kissed my forehead.
Her forbearance touched me; but the time came when all this was thrown aside. It was the old fable again of the bee and the bee-moth. Having failed in her first efforts, she was now very gradually gluing me against the hive.