Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

"Yes, I repeat it. Your heart, your conscience, must own the truth of what I say, if your lips will not. Would you ever have accepted Sir Ronald Keith if your father had not been about to marry Grace Danton?"

The sudden flush that overspread her face answered for her, though she did not speak. She sat looking straight before her into vacancy, with a hard, despairing look in her dark, deep eyes.

"You know you would not. But your father is going to marry a most excellent and most estimable woman; his affection is not wholly his daughter's any longer; she must stand a little in the shade, and see another reign where she used to be queen. She cannot hold the first place in her father's heart and home; so she is ready to leave that home with the first man who asks her. She does not love him; there is no sympathy or feeling in common between them; they are not even of the same religion; she knows that she will be wretched, and that she will make him wretched too. But what does it all matter? Her pride is to be wounded, her self-love humiliated, and every other consideration must yield to that. She is ready to commit perjury, to swear to love and honour a man who is no more to her than that peasant walking along the road. She is ready to degrade herself and risk her soul by a mercenary marriage sooner than bear that wound to pride!"

"Go on!" Kate said, bitterly; "it is well to have one's heart lacerated sometimes, I suppose. Pray go on."

"I intend to go on. You have been used to queening it all your life—to being flattered, and indulged, and pampered to the top of your bent, and it will do you good. When you are this man's miserable wife, you shall never say Father Francis might have warned me—Father Francis might have saved me. You have ruled here with a ring and a clatter; you have been pleased to dazzle and bewilder the simple people of St. Croix, to see yourself looked up to as a sort of goddess. Your rank, and accomplishments, and beauty—we are talking plain truth now, Miss Danton—all these gifts that God has bestowed upon you so bountifully, you have misused. It doesn't seem so to you, does it? You think you have been very good, very charitable, very condescending. I don't deny that you have done good, that you have been a sort of guardian angel to the poor and the sick; but what was your motive? Was it that which makes thousands of girls, as young, and rich, and handsome as yourself, resign everything for the humble garb and lowly duties of a Sister of Charity? Oh, no! You liked to be idolized, to be venerated, and looked up to as an angel upon earth. That pride of yours which induces you to sell yourself for so many thousand pounds per annum was at the bottom of it all. You want to hold a foremost place in the great battle of life—you want all obstacles to give way before you. It can't be; and your whole life is a failure."

"Go on," Kate reiterated, never stirring, never looking at him, and white as death.

"You have fancied yourself very good, very immaculate, and thanked Heaven in an uplifted sort of way that you were not as other women, false, and mean, and sordid. You wanted to walk through life in a pathway of roses without thorns, to a placid death, and a heritage of glory in Heaven. The trials of common people were not for you; sorrow, and disappointment, and suffering were to pass Miss Danton by. You were so good, and so far up in the clouds, nothing low or base could reach you. Well, it was not to be. You were only clay, after all—the porcelain of human clay, perhaps, but very brittle stuff withal. Trouble did come; the man you had made a sort of idol of, to whom you had given your whole heart, with a love so intense as to be sinful—this man abandons you. The sister you have trusted and been fond of, deceives you, and you find that trouble is something more than a word of two syllables. You have been very great, and noble, and heroic all your life, in theory—how do we find you in practice? Why, drooping like any other lovelorn damsel, pining away without one effort at that greatness and heroism you thought so much of; without one purpose to conquer yourself, without one effort to be resigned to the will of Heaven. You rebel against your father's marriage; everybody else ought to be lonely and unhappy because you are; the world ought to wear crape, and the light of the sun be darkened. But the world laughs and sings much as usual, the sun shines as joyously. Your father's marriage will be an accomplished fact, and our modern heroine says 'yes' to the first man who asks her to marry him in a fit of spleen, because she will be Grace Danton's step-daughter, and must retire a little into the background, and look forward to the common humdrum life ordinary mortals lead. She doesn't ask help where help alone is to be found; so in the hour of her trial there is no light for her in earth or Heaven. Oh, my child! stop and think what you are going to do before it is too late."

"I can't think," she said, in a hollow voice. "I only know I am a miserable, sinful, fallen creature. Help me, Father Francis; tell me what I am to do."

"Do not ask help from me," the young priest said, gravely; "ask it of that compassionate Father who is in Heaven. Oh! my child, the way to that land of peace and rest is the way of the Cross—the only way. There are more thorns than roses under our feet, but we must go on like steadfast soldiers to the end, bearing our cross, and keeping the battle-cry of the brave old Crusaders in our hearts, 'God wills it.' Your trouble has been heavy, my poor child, I don't doubt, but you cannot be exempt from the common lot. I am sorry for you, Heaven knows, and I would make your life a happy one if I could, in spite of all the harsh things I may say. It is because I would not have your whole life miserable that I talk to you like this. Your heart acknowledges the truth of every word I have said; and remember there is but one recipe for real happiness—goodness. Be good and you will be happy. It is a hackneyed precept out of a copy-book," Father Francis said, with a slight smile; "but believe me, it is the only infallible rule. Rouse yourself to a better life, my dear Kate; begin a new and more perfect life, and God will help you. Remember, dear child, 'There is a love that never fails when earthly loves decay.'"

She did not speak. She rose up, cold, and white, and rigid. The priest arose too.