He continued to gaze across his writing-table, but with eyes that saw nothing. This was his only child, all that was left to him of her dead mother; and he had loved her, and still loved her, with an intensity which her insignificant little intelligence was far from comprehending. It had been his study from her childhood to gratify every fancy which entered her shallow pate; all that money could buy had been lavished upon her—except the training and education of a lady. ‘I’m not going to have my girl,’ said he, ‘brought up so that she’ll be ashamed of her father and her father’s friends. No; let her learn to play the piano, if she cares to—I always liked a good tune—and to draw and paint and talk French, so that it don’t worry her. But none of your fine finishing schools for me, where she’ll mix with a lot of stuck-up fools and get all sorts of notions into her head.’
So Amy Cross went to a very respectable establishment in North London, where she acquired, to a limited extent, all the above accomplishments; and was sent back to her home very pretty, vain, and vulgar, very proud of her piano and her French, and without a single useful or graceful idea in her head.
This being so, it was not perhaps to be wondered at that Miss Amy Cross should fall an easy victim to the wiles of Lord Englethorpe’s youngest son, the Honourable James Ferrard. That gentleman was at Canterbury, attending the races at Barham Downs with a kindred spirit of his former regiment (then quartered in that city); his commission in which he had been permitted—and only just permitted—to resign; and it had occurred to him that it would be amusing to run over to Margate and contend for a time with humbler Don Juans for the smiles of the Cockney beauties of the place. It so happened that Amy was just then staying there with some relations; and the two met on the jetty, and were mutually attracted by one another’s good looks. The gallant captain found no difficulty in introducing himself both to the girl and her friends; on all of whom his appearance and manner—so different from those of the gentlemen of their society—made a most favourable impression. They met frequently; and he soon succeeded in captivating the heart of poor Amy.
It is due to the captain’s pride of birth and ancestry to say that, at first, flirtation and not marriage was in his thoughts. But when he discovered that the girl’s father was a man of very great wealth, and that she was an only child, he began to think that the game might be worth keeping up in London, with a view to honourable matrimony, immediate comfort, and succession in the future to the old man’s money. For it would have been difficult for Captain Ferrard to have indicated with any precision his present means of existence. It was notorious that his family had long declined to hold any communication with him, further than that the earl allowed him the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds a year, which indeed was all that he could afford, being—for a peer—almost penniless, with a good many children to provide for. The sum named was about enough to keep the young gentleman in gloves and cigars. The balance of his expenditure had to be made up by means of credit, the turf, billiards, pigeon-shooting, and cards. But the first was nearly at an end; the second required capital; the next two are not improved by overmuch tobacco and brandy; and at the fifth the captain was becoming a little too skilful. He was in a desperate state. Why should he not betake himself to his last weapon? He was twenty-eight, with a manly and well-made figure, smooth-faced as a boy of eighteen, brilliant of complexion, with eyes of a peculiarly dark blue. It was more the face of a beautiful woman than that of a man; but there was something wrong about it. The forehead was too retreating, the mouth too hard, and too often expanded in a smile. His manner and bearing were extremely pleasant and ingratiatory. How should an ignorant little girl, fresh from a North London seminary, or her auctioneering papa, detect the festering vices and the cruel heart beneath that fair outside? So he asked permission to call on Miss Cross in London, and readily obtained it.
He called accordingly, saw her alone, and made most satisfactory progress. The second time, he was introduced to papa. Papa, in fact, having heard of the former visit, and knowing the visitor well by repute through certain bill-discounting acquaintances, had left instructions with a faithful retainer—the cook—that he was to be fetched from the City immediately on a repetition of the visit. The result was not quite what Captain Ferrard had expected. Papa sat glum and moody through the interview; when it was over, he attended the visitor to the door, and with some coarseness of manner and roughness of tone, requested him to take notice that his attentions were not desired. Not all Captain Ferrard’s smoothest explanations and assurances sufficed to appease the auctioneer, who simply replied that he didn’t believe a word of them; and that, supposing them to be true, his girl did not want any fine gentleman for a husband, least of all of the stamp of Captain Ferrard, as to whose character and pursuits he further expressed himself pretty roundly. The captain answered with aristocratic contempt and insolence, applied with an ease and absence of emotion which reduced the auctioneer to speechless fury; and so departed.
The only result of this was that the ill-regulated girl, whose lover was the first toy which had been denied to her, became mutinous. She entered, first upon a clandestine correspondence, then upon a series of secret meetings, and ultimately left home one fine day just after she had attained twenty-one, and was married at a suburban church by license. Ferrard calculated that when once the irrevocable step had been taken, a reconciliation with her father and a handsome dowry would be a matter of only a few weeks, and that the plebeian alliance, gilded with the auctioneer’s gold, would be condoned by his family, and would even cause him to be received by them with open arms. But everything went wrong. The bereaved parent, whatever may have been his sufferings in private, did not hasten to clasp his erring daughter to his bosom. When at last she wrote him a letter, carefully dictated by her husband, the only reply received was from a lawyer, stating that Mr Cross declined all communication with Mrs Ferrard or her husband; but that as he did not desire that his daughter should starve, he proposed to make to her exactly the same allowance as her husband received from the Earl of Englethorpe. That nobleman, who had been waiting to see what would happen before finally committing himself, thereupon wrapped himself with much dignity in his family grandeur, and refused to receive either his son or his son’s wife, or to add a farthing to the two hundred and fifty pounds a year.
All this was so far beneath the Honourable James’s just expectations, that he became not a little disgusted with his bargain, with the usual results. Indifference and neglect were speedily followed by quarrels, upbraiding, and taunts; at last by covert, yet none the less positive, unmanly cruelty on the part of the husband, and a return to his former mode of life. This, indeed, he had never really abandoned, though he had put some sort of restraint on the open indulgence of his vices so long as it appeared that anything might be got by doing so; and even now, having regard to what the day might bring forth, he was cunning and cautious to the last degree. At length, Amy fled in despair to her father, who received her coldly, but without anger, in the interview with which this tale commences.
Amy sat on the sofa, her wild sobs becoming less frequent, for she saw that her father was thinking. Weak and foolish as she was, she instinctively appreciated his strength of character enough to know that when Mr Cross took to thinking, something generally happened in consequence; and she hoped that he would find some means of extricating her from the trouble which she had brought upon herself.
Some time had gone by, and the auctioneer remained in the same vein of thought, seemingly forgetful of his daughter’s presence. At last she spoke to him, and he roused himself with a start.
‘Ten o’clock,’ he said, looking at his watch; ‘time you were home.’