CHAPTER LXIV.—D’ALMAYNE PLAYS HIS LAST CARD.
“L eave me, sir! I consider your very presence an insult!”
“Before you drive me from you for ever, I am determined to set plainly before you the results which must inevitably follow your decision, and show you unmistakeably the difference between the future which awaits you, and the lot which might even yet be yours if you have only sufficient strength of character to cast aside the meaningless conventionalities of a false and hollow state of society.” D’Almayne—for as the reader has no doubt already conjectured, the foregoing speech proceeded from his lips—paused for a moment to control the excitement under which, despite his endeavours to conceal it, he was evidently labouring. Kate Crane appeared again about to interrupt him; but by a glance and a gesture of the hand he restrained her, while he continued:—“You talk of marriage as a holy tie, and where such a bond is indeed one of the heart, I, sceptic and libertine as you consider me, entirely agree with you; but such a term cannot apply to the cruel mockery which has bound youth, beauty, and intellect to age, decrepitude, and imbecility. But putting aside all idea of affection, the temptation which led you to commit this outrage against every better feeling of your nature exists no longer. Mr. Crane is a ruined man; if, therefore, you adhere to the conventional prejudice which you vainly endeavour to dignify by the name of duty, you have nothing to hope but to sacrifice to it the best years of your life, years in which you will still be young, when your queenly beauty and bright clear intellect will fit you to shine in and lead society of a class in which your elegant tastes, and refined sympathies, would meet with a gratification sufficient in itself to render life one scene of pleasurable excitement. But, more than this, you are ambitious; I can read it in your flashing eye, in the curl of your haughty lip. I would open to you such a field for that ambition as in your wildest moments you have never dreamed of. You do not believe me! you consider me a base, unscrupulous adventurer. If it were so, what have I ever had to call out the higher, nobler qualities of my nature? Nothing! But with such a soul as yours to urge and inspire me, and with your love as my reward, to what height might not my genius soar! What was the great Napoleon but a Corsican adventurer? and yet his was a career an Emperor’s daughter was proud to share. You think I am romancing—talking bombastic nonsense; but it is not so. In America, at the present time, there is an immense field for talent. I know the character of the nation well, know how both its strong and weak points could be turned to account, and form the ladder by which I might climb even to the President’s seat, and once there!—Presidents have ere now become Emperors—from democracy to despotism is the natural transition—history proves it. Since I have known you, a change has come over my every thought and feeling; hitherto I have exerted my talents merely to supply my own fastidious requirements, but now my ideas are enlarged, my aspirations heightened. Brought up from my earliest childhood among men, clever indeed, but without one pure thought, one disinterested feeling, I became—what I am. You have excited in me higher, nobler feelings. I will not deny that your beauty first attracted me; but since I have known you, and each day discovered new qualities with which I could sympathise, I have learned to love you with the only deep, real sentiment I have ever yet felt for one of your sex. Hitherto I have looked on women as mere toys wherewith to solace one’s leisure hours; but in you I recognise a loftier nature; I feel not only in the presence of an intelligence equal to my own, but I have an instinctive perception that you might become my leading star, my tutelary deity! Kate, hear me! my destiny is in your hands. Fly with me to America—everything is prepared; and when we arrive on the soil of a new world, you shall become the bride of a man already possessed of riches sufficient to obtain for you luxuries greater than you have yet enjoyed, and with a gift riches are powerless to procure—talent which has never yet failed me, however critical the position—talent which, henceforward, you shall direct into any course that best may win your approval; knowing that whatever career you may select, the sole reward I shall seek will be your approbation—my only happiness, your affection. You have not heard me unmoved—you cannot, will not refuse me!”
As D’Almayne concluded, he fixed his eyes on Kate’s face, as though he sought to read there his sentence before her lips should pronounce it, while his cheeks flushed, and his eyes glistened with unfeigned emotion. For an instant, unable to bear the intensity of his glance, Kate turned away with a heightened colour, then, recovering her self-possession by a powerful effort, she replied calmly—
“I have heard you thus far, Mr. D’Almayne, without interruption, partly because I believe that, for once, you are speaking under the influence of real feeling; partly because I owe you, as I imagine, a debt of gratitude for your kindness to my brother; these reasons have induced me to listen to addresses, every word of which I consider as the deepest insult which can be offered to a pure-minded woman. You tell me I married Mr. Crane for money; I neither admit nor repel the accusation—like most taunts, it contains a half-truth, so disguised by sarcasm as to appear a whole one. But how doubly sordid should I be, were I to act on your suggestion, and quit my husband,—who, if your supposition be correct, I have sufficiently wronged already,—because he has, as you inform me, been swindled out of his wealth—how I leave your own conscience to inform you! The fact that he is poor, and that you profess yourself rich, is enough to carry conviction to my mind. But I will not enter further into the question: suffice it that your sophistries have failed to blind me, and that I am still able to discern the path of duty—let it lead whither it may, I am resolved to follow it. I have given you, as you requested, a fair hearing and a deliberate reply. For your kindness to my brother, I again thank you. As I gather that you are about to leave this country, and can well imagine it may be necessary for you to do so, farewell for ever! I set your one good deed against your evil ones, and bear you no ill-will. We part neither as friends nor foes.”
As Kate spoke, she rose to quit the room, but D’Almayne interposed between her and the door—
“One moment,” he said in his usual tone of sarcasm; “my modesty cannot permit me to depart, taking credit for a good deed which I have never performed. It was not I who rescued your brother from his difficulty; though, as a stepping-stone to your favour, I would willingly have done so: for that act of kindness you are indebted to——”
“Whom?” inquired Kate, eagerly.
“One to whom, if he had this morning pleaded as I have done, I fancy even your rigid virtue might have afforded a kinder answer—your cousin, Arthur Hazlehurst!”