Shortly after this, he encountered Margaret Grahame. As she was marriageable, and had ten thousand pounds by way of dowry, he proposed for her hand. How could she refuse ten thousand a year? The possibility of liking Claverhouse Grahame never entered her imagination. She took him as part of the fortune—rather because she could not have the fortune without him, and because the married state was not altogether complete without a husband.
Of love, in its purity and holiness, she had no conception. She considered her father and mother as grand and dignified persons, entitled to filial respect and deference from her. She was passionately fond of state, and pomp, and display, of jewels, of dress, of genealogy—whatever pertained to an elevated position; but an emotion purely disinterested, one equal to a self-sacrifice, she never possessed. She gave her hand to Grahame, because the act brought her ten thousand a year. Her heart was only so far involved in the transaction that it vibrated with pleasure at the prospect of the situation in which such an income would place her.
It was a natural consequence of Grahame’s probation, and his wife’s immeasurable pride—a pride which, like his, had been confined by the economical style of living adopted by her parents, to enable them to give such a wedding portion with her as he had received—that his imagination should convert the capabilities of ten thousand a year into those of five times the amount, and that, by the same process of mental exaggeration, his forty thousand pounds, should appear inexhaustible.
He proceeded to live as though his income possessed an elasticity which enabled it to stretch to any length, and was startled, at the end of some few years, to find that his forty thousand pounds had not only evaporated, but that his liabilities more than exceeded three years’ income. He was too proud to make his wife acquainted with this unpleasant state of his affairs, because it would necessitate suggestions of retrenchment. Now she had formed so large an estimate of her dowry, that he was quite aware she would taunt him with having unjustifiably made away with it, although she had herself spent every shilling of it, and a large sum in addition, in the indulgence of her overweening pride.
She would too, he knew, hurl upon him expressions of contempt, for having inveigled her with so splendid a jointure, from her castle home in the Highlands—where a great deal of dirty state was maintained at a small cost—only to subject her to the degradation of being compelled, when she formed a wish suggested for the gratification of her darling pride, to take the means of accomplishing it into consideration.
He therefore said not a word to her, and went on as before, save that he looked more closely into his own affairs, raised his rents where possible to the highest limits, forgave no tenant, on any plea, arrears, and squeezed all he could out of renewals of leases. Hard, uncompromising, refusing to spend a shilling on his land, he was hated by the whole tenantry, and when, to gratify the stately dreams of his wife, he paid an annual visit to the castle, his tenants, one and all uttered reluctantly the hurrahs which, under the dark threats of the steward, they gave to greet his arrival.
In spite of his efforts, he found it impossible to pay off his liabilities, and make his income support the style in which he lived. What he contrived to save, his wife expended, growing, as her family increased in years, more arrogantly proud than ever. It was not that she lavished or squandered money, but her tastes were enormously expensive. She bought as an empress, preferring to give many hundreds for rare objects rather than single pounds for articles equally handsome, but more common; and it was these heavy drains upon his resources which kept Mr. Grahame in a perpetual state of embarrassment.
At length many of his debts assumed a pressing character; he shrank from appearing in a tradesman’s eyes deficient in funds, and, to obtain ready cash, a first mortgage on a portion of his property was executed.
Once within the vortex, rescue by the aid of his remaining property, without the most rigid curtailment of every unnecessary expense, was utterly hopeless, and at the moment of his forging Wilton’s name to the deed which Chewkle had that morning stolen, a few thousand pounds at his bankers was all he possessed to meet heavy engagements, and all the future, for every acre of his lands was in the possession of a mortgagee.
There was, however, an enormous property to which he preferred a claim by right of descent. It was disputed, and in Chancery; the claimants had been many, but they had dwindled down by death to two—himself and Eustace Wilton.