“No, my dear; I beg you will give no such order. I am not of such a selfish disposition as to wish the dinner ordered merely with a view to my likes and dislikes; neither is it my desire to curtail any of your enjoyments, however much I may regret that they are not of a more refined or intellectual nature;—have your legs of mutton as you have been accustomed to have. I dare say there will always be bread and cheese or cold meat in the house; thank Heaven, I am not particular, anything simple and wholesome—give me some wine, Roberts; no, the Burgundy, only half a glass—simple and wholesome does for me. Roberts, desire Mrs. Trimmins to take care that she provides a liberal supply of legs of mutton for her mistress.”
“Really, Mr. Crane, you mistake me; I have no particular preference for legs of mutton, I assure—” began Kate.
Mr. Crane raised his hand deprecatingly, and checked her in mid speech.
“Quite enough has been said on this subject,” he interposed, severely; “these endless discussions weary me. I come home tired and annoyed with the cares, and anxieties, and fatigues of business: and when I seek for quiet and repose in the bosom of my family, I am met by these frivolous and vexatious complaints, my dinner made a trial to me, and my digestion upset, my constitution undermined, and my comfort in my home—my domestic comfort, Mrs. Crane—entirely destroyed! However, one word shall end this matter; if I am to be subjected to these ebullitions of—I am afraid I must say, a fretful and dissatisfied temper, I dine at my club in future.”
And having thus worked himself up into a mild, childish, and ineffectual rage, Mr. Crane continued to growl at his wife and harass the servants until dinner was over, and the domestics had departed. And then came out the cause of this agreeable episode in Kate’s married life—the Bundelcundah, East Indiaman, had gone down at sea, all hands had perished, and £40,000 worth of cargo, the property of Jedidiah Crane, had gone down with them!
Tears for their loved and lost ones dimmed the eyes of the widows and orphans of the gallant seamen who had sunk in the Bundelcundah; mothers wept as memory recalled some bright young face, glowing with health and youthful daring, which now lay pale and swollen in the depths of mighty waters; girls, with blanched lips and hollow eyes, grieved for the lovers whom they should behold no more till the sea should give up its dead, in an agony of speechless anguish, to which the sorrow that can find vent in tears would have been a merciful relief; and Crane, the millionaire, fretted over the loss of his £40,000 with a grief as lively and earnest as any of them—for “where the treasure is, there shall the heart be also.”
During all this scene her brother’s difficulties were never absent from the mind of Kate Crane, but she felt that this was not the time to bring them forward, and kept silence. Did the idea occur to her how differently she would have felt had Arthur Hazlehurst been the person to whom she had desired to confide her trouble? Let us hope not, for her heart was full enough without it.